December 17th 2021 was the last day for Dr. Aaron Kheriaty to be a faculty member of the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He had served for almost 15 years as Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Programme at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He was – and, of course, still is – a renowned and respected expert in his field. As a specialist, his comments were welcome in national newspapers and on television. He also chaired the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals for several years.
Ethics, or more specifically, blatant violations of medical ethics, were the direct cause of Dr. Kheriaty’s dismissal. However, Kheriaty was not the violator. Like many other institutions during that extraordinarily hysterical time three years ago, UCI itself violated the basic principles of medical ethics. In the summer of 2021, the university imposed the Covid vaccine mandate for all its students, faculty members and staff. Kheriaty, who was also a lecturer of the medical ethics course, mandatory for medical students, could not stand by and watch this happen. “We talk about the Nuremberg Code that was developed in the wake of the Nazi doctors’ atrocities in World War II to prevent those kinds of atrocities from ever happening again,” he says. “And the very first principle articulated in the Nuremberg Code is the principle of informed consent, which means that an adult of sound mind has the right to accept or refuse to either participate in research or to accept or refuse a medical intervention after being given adequate information about the risks, the benefits and the alternatives,” Kheriaty explains.
Took the university to court because of vaccine coercion
There was no such information on the benefits and risks associated with Covid vaccines available back then, nor is there now. Those who followed the issue closely realised this in the immediate aftermath of the vaccines’ introduction in 2021. “We were lied to about the risks and benefits and the unknowns of the vaccine. And we were forced to take them on penalty of losing our jobs or being kicked out of school or not being able to travel. And I thought this was just egregiously wrong,” Kheriaty says, adding he would not have been able to stand up in front of his students and talk to them about medical ethics, the virtues of moral conduct and the courage to act ethically even under pressure, while at the same time not confronting such a gross breach of ethics himself. Initially, he spoke out publicly against mandatory vaccination and wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he explained that the introduction of vaccine mandates in universities was a violation of medical ethics.
As no major debate followed at the university, he decided to take the university to court in August 2021 over these mandates. “The university very quickly retaliated and put me on administrative leave and then unpaid suspension and then fired me basically as quickly as possible,” Kheriaty says. He adds, however, that he has no regrets. “I’m glad that I can tell my children and grandchildren that during this crisis, when many people were losing their heads and throwing common sense out the window, I tried to stand up and say, ‘no’. It is not right to coerce people in this way, to violate their freedom, to violate their bodily autonomy in this way. It is a violation of human dignity and their human rights,” he says. “I think a lot of folks have come around now to realise that forcing a novel, mostly untested product that lacked efficacy and has serious safety concerns on an entire population and then running an experiment where you vaccinate billions of people with a totally new technology was probably a bad idea,” Kheriaty adds, noting that such vaccine mandates for healthy people had never been implemented before.
Failure of science and medical system
Of course, alongside this global vaccination experiment involving billions of people, there were also a lot of other unscientific measures introduced during the Covid crisis, which were implemented by the authorities with the backing of the apparatus of coercion. What this means, according to Kheriaty, is that both the medical system and science were failing people. “We threw out the traditional rulebook for public health, which involved quarantining and isolating people who are symptomatic and sick. Never before in human history had we isolated and separated and locked down people who were healthy,” he explains. As all can remember, in the case of Covid, this was done on a large scale, systematically, and with coercion – a healthy person had to sit in ‘self-isolation’ for days after exposure to a person who had tested positive for Covid. “I think a lot of folks have come around now to realize the folly of much of what was done,” Kheriaty says. “There’s really no evidence for universal masking, we know that lockdowns did more harm than good, the school closures damaged an entire generation, and the effects of that are actually going to be felt for decades,” he says, citing just a few examples.
The reason why most doctors and scientists remained silent about all this, Kheriaty says, can be explained in part by the fact that science was rapidly becoming politicised. Soon it was no longer science but ideology, which simply had to be accepted. Whereas the scientific method means constantly testing hypotheses and refuting previous knowledge when new evidence-based information comes along to disprove it, this was no longer the case with Covid. There were certain people who were appointed by the authorities to represent science, and who therefore represented what science said. For example, Anthony Fauci, the influential White House Covid policy coordinator, who became the Covid-era ‘science figure’ in the U.S., said in an interview in 2021 that to criticise him was in fact to criticise science.
This situation meant that any scientist or doctor who criticised or doubted the effectiveness of the coercive measures or Covid vaccines was cancelled and could potentially end up losing his or her job. “Look what happened to me. Here is the answer why more doctors did not speak out,” Kheriaty says. So many remained silent, fearing for their careers.
Propaganda and censorship
But Kheriaty says the impact of propaganda and censorship cannot be underestimated as well. All the major media outlets and television broadcasts talked about the highly dangerous virus, the need for lockdown policies and mask mandates, the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the need to achieve herd immunity through vaccination, etc. While all of this and more was constantly propagated, there were numbers always running in the background showing how many people were dying everyday from the disease. Yet COVID-19 was not as deadly a disease as it was portrayed to be – a comprehensive study led by John P. A. Ioannidis, a renowned Stanford University Professor of Medicine, found in October 2022 that the pre-vaccine infection fatality rate (IFR, indicating deaths among all infected) in the 0-69 age group was 0.095%. In the 0-59 age group it was 0.035%, and of course in the still younger age group, still lower. “Fear was deliberately weaponised. There were revelations in the U.K. and Canada about Government agencies and Government actors that were deliberately trying to increase the level of fear in the population in order to get an increased level of compliance with the Government’s dictates,” Kheriaty comments.
At the same time, voices that criticised the coercive measures or otherwise sought to approach the situation in a healthy way were not given a platform. In such a situation, a general consensus on the need for official action emerged, and the majority of doctors and scientists probably believed it. Governments also went to great lengths to ensure that voices on social media criticising their Covid policies were labelled as spreading misinformation and silenced. “Covid was an opportunity for things like censorship and propaganda to manifest and to advance in ways that would have probably taken several decades if they hadn’t occurred during a crisis like that,” Kheriaty says.
On censorship, Kheriaty again speaks from personal experience – he is one of the plaintiffs in a landmark U.S. free speech case Murthy v Missouri (originally Missouri v Biden). In May 2022, the Attorneys General of the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration officials, alleging that the Biden administration, through pressuring the social media companies, was engaging in censorship and thereby suppressing free speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs pointed out that the dissemination of information has been restricted on a variety of topics under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’, including censorship of truthful information related to COVID-19, vaccines, elections, foreign policy and other topics. “The advocates of censorship of course never use the word censorship,” Kheriaty says. “They talk about ‘misinformation’, which is false information that is delivered mistakenly. Disinformation is supposedly when the person intends to deceive and knows that what they’re saying is wrong. But then they had to invent a third term because they were censoring so much true information. They had to invent a term called ‘malinformation’, which is basically true information, but they don’t like its context or it doesn’t support the narrative that they want to support and so they’re going to censor it,” Kheriaty says, explaining the logic of Government censors. In some cases, even satire was censored. Freedom Research has written extensively on this issue on several occasions – e.g. here, here and here. The censorship of truthful information has also been acknowledged by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and he regrets it.
Five individuals were added as plaintiffs to the same lawsuit – Stanford University Medical Professor Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, the then Harvard Medical School Professr Dr. Martin Kulldorff, founder of the Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, leader of the consumer and human rights group Health Freedom Louisiana Jill Hines, and Dr. Kheriaty. They all had been censored by social media companies at the Government’s request. “In my case, I was a critic of vaccine mandates for ethical and legal reasons. These criticisms were censored in many cases, not because we were wrong, not because we were spreading so-called misinformation, but precisely because we were right and we were making compelling arguments that were threatening to the Government’s interests and threatening to the regime’s interests,” Kheriaty says.
In July 2023, Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty issued an unprecedented injunction on the case, restricting officials from the Biden administration and an entire line of agencies, including the security agencies that had requested censorship, from interacting with social media platforms. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterised by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’,” Doughty wrote in a 155-page memorandum ruling accompanying the judgment. “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” he added.
Censorship for financial and political gain
“Censorship was used as a tool of power and to control the flow of information online, which is the new public square. And to try to manage public opinion, not through open debate, dialogue, and discussion, but through operating behind the scenes to control basically the mechanisms that allow information to get out there,” Kheriaty says, explaining that the case is not just about these particular plaintiffs, but millions of people around the world who have suffered because of such censorship decisions. For example, the U.S. authorities may have sent a message to a social media platform about a particular post, saying that they thought it should be taken down. In many cases, the platform – such as Facebook or Twitter – said that the particular post did not break their rules or their ‘community guidelines’.The Government would then say that it thought companies should change their guidelines so that the posts they wanted to be taken down would break the rules of the platforms and could still be taken down. “It truly was Orwellian, as Judge Doughty said, because it was clear that this was not about finding the truth. This was not about getting truthful scientific information or public health information out there. It was about supporting a particular regime’s policy demands and supporting a particular narrative and supporting particular groups that were benefiting financially or politically or in other ways from these policies,” Kheriaty adds.
The Government appealed Judge Doughty’s initial injunction, and last September the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit also said that Biden’s White House, top health-care decision-makers and the FBI had likely violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The three-judge unanimous decision stated that the White House “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences”. In other words, undue influence was used to get tech companies to remove or restrict the circulation of posts about, for example, the coronavirus or the election. The ruling still limited the scope of the injunction issued by Judge Doughty by removing the ban on some of the agencies that were included in the original injunction.
However, in June of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the injunction by a vote of six to three. The majority of the Supreme Court based its decision not to uphold the injunction primarily on the fact that the plaintiffs did not, in their view, have standing. According to the majority of the court, companies such as Facebook and YouTube have long been engaged in content moderation, and in their view, the plaintiffs did not show that the companies decided to remove the posts because of Government pressure. “While the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices, the evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgement,” wrote Amy Coney Barrett, the judge who produced the majority opinion.
However, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, who dissented, criticised their colleagues for failing to address the restriction on freedom of expression that Government coercion of content moderation poses in such a decision. Alito, who wrote the minority opinion, said that the court “shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion, in this case, to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think”.
Kheriaty comments that the majority of the Supreme Court judges essentially took one technical detail – whether or not Government officials specifically mentioned their names in the censorship request – and rejected the injunction on that basis.
The case continues
However, the substantive dispute in the case continues. It has now been joined with another similar case brought against the U.S. Government by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Kennedy family member who until recently ran for President and now supports the candidacy of Donald Trump. Kennedy has long been critical of vaccines, and in particular vaccine programmes for children, and given the commercial interests of Big Pharma it is not surprising that he is accused of spreading misinformation by interested parties and Government agencies that pressured social media to censor his posts also during the Covid crisis. While the other plaintiffs could be said not to have been named in the censorship requests by the Government, Kennedy has been explicitly mentioned along with the Children’s Health Defence (CHD), an organisation he founded to promote children’s health interests. In August, the same federal judge Doughty ruled that since the previous decision was made because the Government did not name the other plaintiffs while pushing social media towards censorship, both Kennedy and CHD, who were named, have a legal basis for an injunction. This dispute will now resume in the higher courts. “So even on the Supreme Court’s very, very high standing threshold that it set in this particular case, we believe that the court’s going to find that Kennedy has standing,” Kheriaty says.
He also points out that it is very important that this case continues and that it continues to be talked about. People don’t realise, he says, that what is happening is direct censorship by governments. “And certainly in the United States and in many other Western nations, they’re doing so in ways that violate their own constitutions or violate their own laws that would prevent the Government from abridging people’s free speech rights,” he says.
Covid aftermath: a situation of great trauma
While the censorship hearings in the courts continue, many people will not want to look back on the Covid crisis as a whole and the damaging decisions taken by the authorities at the time. Still less can we talk about those who were in power or who recommended and made harmful decisions being held accountable in any way. According to Kheriaty, this is to be expected because, first of all, the people in power are largely the same as they were then. Moreover, it is worth reiterating that the majority of society not only supported the lockdown policies and coercion that was implemented during the crisis, but were active in it themselves. “There were just too many ordinary people who refused to allow family members to come to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner because they weren’t vaccinated. Or people who pressured their loved ones to get vaccinated. In some cases, those people were injured by the vaccines. I mean, that’s just a really hard thing to reckon with,” notes Kheriaty. “It takes a rare person of extraordinary courage to be able to admit that they were wrong on something like that,” he adds.
So it is a situation of great trauma, according to Kheriaty. “I think we’re in a state similar now to Germany following World War II, where atrocities were revealed, but the country as a whole is in shell shock and people don’t want to think about their complicity with a regime,” he says.
A new generation had to grow up in order to somehow make sense of the past and make peace with it. Kheriaty believes the case is similar with Covid. “Our children who were harmed by school closures, who had their adolescence or their young adulthood robbed from them for several years. I think they’re going to want to ask questions about, hey, what the heck happened when I was 18 years old and was supposed to start my first year at the university? The next two years were just a bloody mess in my life and it’s completely disruptive,” he says. Kheriaty believes that from such a distance, society will finally be able to honestly assess what happened. But it will still be very difficult to find those responsible. “The people who did this to them probably are either going to be out of power or dead and gone before we get a real reckoning,” he adds.
First published by Freedom Research. Subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Following on from yesterday’s debate about GB News (can’t remember how it started) I had forgotten until this morning that the former PM is going to have a show. I accept that any media outlet in the relative mainstream may have a fairly broad of views expressed on it (except the BBC) but how a channel can feature that man and have any credibility is beyond me.
I struggle to see the man as anything but a pathetic spineless buffoon desperately grasping for relevance.
GB News seems to be where the architects of the failed Brexit project go to die.
You are very charitable toward the man. I think the buffoon thing is just an act.
Don’t know why you’ve attracted so many downvotes.
Quite right, ToF. The buffoonery is all an act and I don’t think we have ever seen the real person called Boris Johnson, just the image he projects. The downvotes are probably from Brexiteers who can see no wrong in the man. What’s with his hair though? Did he get a perm and it went wrong? Has he been sleeping on the sofa again? It is a sad reflection of GB News that the year started with Mark Steyn and ends with Johnson.
I voted to leave the EU but even if he had executed Brexit in the way I think it should have been done that cannot excuse what he did with regard to the Covid scam.
Like most of his actions, there is no conviction behind any of them. That is what marks him out as a fraud. Yes, he did get behind Brexit but it seems we are still somehow inextricably and inexplicably linked to the EU – the ECHR being just one example. It shows that Brexit, the one that was oven ready, was actually only ever half-baked and left the door open for a reversal – if required – which is what I believe some people in power actually want to happen, against the wishes of the people. It would put us neatly back into a common jurisdiction which serves the Agenda 2030 project very well – you can’t have sovereign nations after all.
Brexit gave us the opportunity to scrap VAT, a terrible, terrible tax.
That we didn’t is all the evidence I need to know it was always the intention that we rejoin.
Spot on. Boris is a chancer.
Brexit. Some struggle to accept the colossal failure it has been.
We’ve gone from being governed by Brussels bureaucrats to being governed by Whitehall bureaucrats with an identical agenda.
Maybe they think we have a better chance now of affecting things through the ballot box or perhaps the illusion of “independence” is prize enough for them. I don’t know.
I still think it was a step in the right direction and a pre requisite to the changes that I would like to see happen here, but it was never going to be the whole solution, just a beginning. We need to cure our addiction to a nanny state. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime. Here I go being despondent again – that patronising writer will be back to tell me off.
Maybe our children’s children will start to see the benefits…:-)
I like to think things will turn around one day.
Brexit has been handled by remainers, of course.
The EU is part of the globalist plan and institutionally anti-white, so attempting to leave was absolutely necessary.
The economic costs are trivial compared to those of 26 years of the highest immigration by far in our history, lockdowns or Net Zero.
Brexit was handled by Remainers is just excuses.
Boris Johnson walked away from the project days after winning the referendum. The whole thing was fronted and led by clowns. Lots of people have good ideas. But execution is everything. And anyone could have seen the people behind the project were a bunch of lightweight talkers. Was the project undermined? Yes. Were the leaders of the project ready for opposition? No. Should they have been prepared? Of course. But bullshitters don’t plan, don’t prepare, they bullshit.
Regarding you’re anti-white comment, you are way way off the mark. The anti-whiteness is 100% an anglo-saxon, UK/US obsession. Spend any amount of time in continental Europe and you’ll see that there is nothing of the kind going on there. That obsessive white self hatred is 100% a US thing that the UK has copied for reasons that are quite beyond me.
Same. I think it’s totally inappropriate and they’ve lost pretty much all credibility tbh. I think Neil Oliver and Patrick Christys are the only saving graces on that channel now. ( Spoken by someone who doesn’t actually watch it, only clips posted online. ) Somehow the inclusion of Johnson kind of negates all the good bits for me. The buck stopped with him during the entire shitfest scamdemic, and he blatantly wore his ”rules for thee but not for me” hat on many occasions, but he went ahead and screwed over the British people anyway. And pretending he was at death’s door, bloody lying PoS!
On the plus side, Johnson has neither the organisational skills nor work ethic of someone like Blair or Clinton. So unlike those two monsters, the amount of damage he can inflict on others at this point is pretty minimal. His entire power is in his gab and I’ll be stunned if there is anyone left prepared to take what he has to say seriously.
Which Clinton?
Hillary failed to get elected while Bill did not much at all.
As for Blair, he did a lot but most of it damaged us. He had gaining support from almost all the media and the bulk of the official opposition as well as academia and the civil service. On that basis he could do as he liked. Even the intelligence service lied for him.
A fair assessment of Boris after his term as Mayor would have to be positive, not that I agree with all he did.
I’m thinking of The Ckinton Foundation and Tony Blair Institute. These are not insignificant organisations that attempt to shape policy in that devious backdoor, out of the public view kind of way (and of course enrich their founders in the process). They are bastions of evil, as far as I can see.
But you have to have a minimum of work ethic and stick to it ness which Boris Johnson definitely doesn’t have.
I doubt he’ll do much damage talking on GB News. If I’m anything to go by, his once mildly amusing toff schtick now grates the f**k out of me. I literally can’t stand to listen to the man.
100%
Well, that’s one presenter’s programme that I won’t be watching on GBN. I appreciate Neil Oliver’s output, and even Rees-Mogg’s and one or two others. Being charitable, it might be a back door way of keeping Ofcom at bay!
Quite how Neil Oliver holds on is a miracle. He is a saving grace alright and has never once wobbled in his message or delivery. A man of great integrity.
Absolutely Mogs.
China India Reject Wind Solar Obsession
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
“…intelligence experts warn….”
should read
“…intelligence experts, funded by vested interests, are fomenting a new wave of radicalisation…”
Surprised this isn’t in the roundup. /sarc.
South Africa institute proceedings with the International Criminal Court against Israel:
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231229-pre-01-00-en.pdf
Full ICJ filing here:
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf#page=72
Typical response:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/blood-libel-israel-slams-south-africa-for-filing-icj-genocide-motion-over-gaza-war/
The South African government lacks any credibility.
‘UN experts today called for accountability against xenophobia, racism and hate speech that were harming migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and even citizens perceived as foreign throughout the country.
Experts noted that xenophobia, especially against low-income, African and South East Asian migrants and refugees, had been a feature of South African politics for many years. In 2008, for example, xenophobic violence resulted in the death of over 60 people and contributed to the displacement of at least 100,000.
Xenophobia is often explicitly racialised, targeting low-income Black migrants and refugees and, in some cases, South African citizens accused of being “too Black to be South African.”
In one highly publicised incident in April 2022, a 43-year-old Zimbabwean national and father of four was killed in Diepsloot by a group going door-to-door demanding to see visas. The attackers drove the victim out of a place where he was seeking refuge, beat him and set him on fire.
The violence has continued unabated—it is alleged that the burning of the Yeoville Market in Johannesburg on 20 June 2022 was carried out by persons targeting migrant shopkeepers.’
United Nations Human Rights July 2022
‘South African government data indicated between 58 and 74 murders on farms annually in the period 2015–2017……….annual murder count of 20,000 total murders in South Africa.’
‘What is happening in Cape Town, what has been allowed to develop on the forgotten and dumped communities of the Cape Flats, has to be a crime against humanity: 1 875 people have been killed there this year.
In June last year, there were 344 murders in Cape Town. This year that number had spiralled to 448.’
IOL 13 July 2019
List of UN resolutions concerning Israel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel#
The U.N. also lacks any credibility.
Typical. Meanwhile their human lawn mowing has successfully killed over 21,000 dead and 7000 mossing, the majority children. Northern Gaza is flattened in order to “dissuade” the native population from returning.
Stomach churning stuff that the bigots can’t look directly at.
War is a dirty business. No-one comes out of it with clean hands…
There are wars and then there are slaughters…
….and CodePink.org has a petition to encourage other countries to follow SA’s lead:
https://www.codepink.org/icj
I’m looking for the petition to encourage the Saudi coalition to stop bombing the crap out of Yemeni civilians. Is that on a different list.?
That ended thankfully.
A nice piece to get the blood pressure of all the warmongers and Israel apologists ATL and BTL up: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-genocide-betrays-the-holocaust?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=140183849&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=97oj4&utm_medium=email
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6067/Amid-ongoing-genocide-in-Gaza,-systematic-Israeli-theft-occurring-in-Palestinian-civilian-homes
According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army’s crimes extend beyond arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and field executions. They also involve the intentional destruction of property, the theft of personal belongings, and the looting and burning of homes—all part of a systematic strategy that is evidently based on collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Based on the testimonies it has been documenting, the Euro-Med Monitor team stated that its preliminary estimates suggest that the Israeli army may have looted valuable possessions worth tens of millions of dollars, in addition to stealing personal belongings from Palestinian civilians.
Perhaps they need to re-read that bit in the Bible and why it didn’t go so well for Saul….
Well I’m not interested enough to click on the article but I’m willing to bet everyone on that New Year’s Honours list is a complete arsehole.
You’re right not to, Mogs, it’ll only spike your blood pressure! It’s a certain sign that the trolls and ogres have captured the castle but, more than that, it shows how utterly meaningless these baubles are except to those who still get dazzled by their cheap and tacky glitter.
Why is our money being given to any sports bodies? How can taking money in taxes and then giving some of it away again be more efficient than us giving or spending money directly to causes we approve of? Why do I have to fund Parkrun?
Words fail.
‘Women raped by Hamas were found with nails driven into their thighs and groin and were passed around by terrorists who slaughtered them after or even during gang-rape, horrifying new witness accounts of October 7 reveal.
‘Images shown to the New York Times by Israeli authorities showed a woman who had dozens of nails driven into her thighs and genitals in a savage example of mutilation, while other clips displayed the corpses of soldiers and civilians alike who had been either shot or stabbed in the groin.
Another dark image dubbed ‘the woman in the black dress’ showed the corpse of an Israeli later identified as Gal Abdush. She is seen splayed on the floor, legs wrenched apart with her vagina exposed, and covered in burns. Her lifeless body was crumpled in the dirt next to the husk of a heavily damaged car riddled with bullet holes.
Both Gal and her husband were slaughtered by Hamas as they tried in vain to escape along highway Route 232, away from the Nova music festival massacre. Their sons, Eliav, 10, and Refael, 7, have been left orphaned.
Meanwhile, several witnesses described seeing many other women raped and killed on Route 232, with soldiers and investigators claiming they discovered bodies around the Nova festival ground who showed signs of abuse in and around their genitals, the New York Times reported.
One witness, named only as Sapir, said she watched in horror from a hiding place in the shrubs just off Route 232 as Hamas gunmen gang-raped several women, stabbing them in the back when they protested and cutting off their breasts.
‘One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,’ Sapir said.
But these latest accounts only bring into sharper focus the inhuman treatment of Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas attackers, adding to a mountain of evidence already exposed.’
Mail online 30 Dec. 2023
How can anyone downtick this, antisemitism is rife sadly even here.
Perhaps people bright enough not to fall for UK government propaganda about a deadly virus and a climate emergency are also bright enough not to fall for Israeli government propaganda?
Or so monumentally dim that either they cannot comprehend the written English or perhaps cannot even read:
‘Images shown to the New York Times.’
‘Another dark image dubbed ‘the woman in the black dress’ showed the corpse of an Israeli later identified as Gal Abdush.
She is seen splayed on the floor, legs wrenched apart with her vagina exposed, and covered in burns. Her lifeless body was crumpled in the dirt next to the husk of a heavily damaged car riddled with bullet holes.
Both Gal and her husband were slaughtered by Hamas as they tried in vain to escape along highway Route 232, away from the Nova music festival massacre. Their sons, Eliav, 10, and Refael, 7, have been left orphaned.’
Reference above
Christ, you’re even thicker than Monro.
That it is written in the NYT is not evidence that it is true.
Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting ‘na na na na nah! I can’t hear you!’ is pathetic.
‘Video sources were clearly identified. Much of the footage was taken from Hamas body cameras, a sure sign the killers thought they were murdering in impunity. CCTV cameras and victims’ phones provided time-stamped evidence too.’
Yep, the selective outrage and hypocrisy of the resident Jew-hating, anti-Israel, rape apologist Hamas Fanclub ( and we all know who they are by now ) is plain for all to see. The first-hand accounts and witness testimonies, including that of the doctors examining the released female hostages, will be discounted and deemed to be lies, based purely on the heritage of the victims, such is the strength of their prejudice against all things Israel.
I wonder if any non-Israeli hostages claiming they experienced or witnessed sexual violence would actually get a fairer hearing and may even be given the benefit of the doubt. But you’re right. It’s just blatant antisemitism and such people are absolutely sickening to me. Women especially should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, even more so if you laughingly refer to yourself as a ‘feminist’!
But this info comes from the villainous, pathologically lying Israeli side, not the Hamas-run ‘Gaza Ministry of Truth’, perma-victim ‘Palestinian’ side, ergo it’s bound to be a load of fictitious kack, right?! We all know that terrorists tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the TRUTH, don’t we? That’s a given.
Well said.
‘Hamas relies on the Israeli government’s aim to minimise collateral damage, and is also aware of the West‘s sensitivity towards civilian casualties. Hamas’ use of human shields is therefore likely aimed at minimising their own vulnerabilities by limiting the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) freedom of action. It is also aimed at gaining diplomatic and public opinion-related leverage, by presenting Israel and the IDF as an aggressor that indiscriminately strikes civilians.
Hamas’ most common uses of human shields include:
Firing rockets, artillery and mortars from or in proximity to heavily populated civilian areas, often from or near facilities which should be protected according to the Geneva Convention (e.g. schools, hospitals, or mosques).
Locating military or security-related infrastructures such as HQs, bases, armouries, access routes, lathes, or defensive positions within or in proximity to civilian areas.
Protecting terrorists’ houses and military facilities, or rescuing terrorists who were besieged or warned by the IDF.
Combating the IDF from or in proximity to residential and commercial areas, including using civilians for intelligence gathering missions.
By engaging in these acts, Hamas employs a win-win scenario:
if indeed the IDF uses kinetic power, and the number of civilian causalities surges, Hamas can use that as a weapon in the lawfare it conducts. It would be able to accuse the IDF (and Israel) of committing war crimes, which in turn could result in the imposition of a wide array of sanctions.
On the other hand, if the IDF limits its use of military power in Gaza to avoid collateral damage, Hamas will be less vulnerable to Israeli attacks, and thereby able to protect its assets while continuing to fight.
Hamas’ growing strategic distress in the face of recent geopolitical developments will probably push the organisation towards a more pragmatic strategy in the near future.
However, the movement is simultaneously preparing itself for yet another round of armed conflict with Israel. If this indeed happens, and in light of the success of the human shield practice, there is every reason to believe Hamas will continue resorting to the use of civilians as human shields.
Recommendations
Without delving into the complex landscape of Pol/Mil responses to asymmetric challenges, countries and militaries that wish to protect their national security interests and fulfil their strategic objectives must address the following issues: Strategically, nations should prepare to publicly justify their position, and reveal their adversary’s use of civilians in combat.
That can only be accomplished by thoroughly documenting incidents, preparing supportive messages, and working across multiple channels to convey those narratives.
Target audiences should be thoroughly considered, including governments, NGOs, transnational organisations, colleges and universities, and general public opinion (including social media platforms and other fora).
Such a plan should be an inherent part of any strategy, and should be prepared before commencing any military operation.
Operationally, priority should be given to information activities aimed at the very civilians who are used as human shields, in order to undermine the adversary and convince civilians to actively or passively refuse to serve as human shields.
These aspects should be an inherent part of any operational plan, and should be prepared before commencing any military operation. Such activities need to be coherent, consistent and coordinated.
When it comes to lawfare, nations should focus on two sets of measures:
Defensive.
Governments should thoroughly investigate every case in which the military is accused of committing war crimes, even if the alleged government knows the claims to be false.
Governments should not ignore any claims, as this allows the adversary to control the narrative.
Such investigations should be conducted in accordance with international law best practices.
Nations who are or who have been subject to allegations (founded or unfounded) of war crimes that occurred specifically in an urban or contested environment should proactively engage the international community to evaluate and revise – if necessary – international law to fit the 21st century battlefield.
Special attention should be given to the legal aspects of warfare, in the sense that military planning should include legal advisors who are highly familiar with international law.’
STRATCOM 2014
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12910945/BORIS-JOHNSON-claim-moral-superiority-autocracies-judges-America-seek-power-people-Let-2024-year-champion-true-democracy.html
He is utterly, utterly shameless. Introspection is presumably just a word in a dictionary for Bozo.
Staggering.