Censored! Press TV discussion today of UNRWA’s report that 50,000 children across the Gaza strip are suffering from acute malnutrition
This morning’s 10 minute live on-air chat with the Press TV anchor in Teheran and with a scholar based in Morocco was dedicated to the latest report of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees describing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as catastrophic.
Regrettably Belgium appears to have banned dissemination of the Press TV website (again) and I am unable to view the video. Perhaps readers in different jurisdictions will have better luck.
See https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/129847
In any case, I use this platform to repeat my points in the video, which I directed in particular at Russian officials who monitor closely what is being said in Iran. My point was that lamentations and expressions of outrage over the genocide Israel is perpetrating in Gaza are presently a woefully insufficient response.
The time for action has arrived and I advanced one possible course of action, namely for countries with the determination to put an end to the suffering and death of innocent children come together and take a page from the American foreign and military policy playbook, forming a Coalition of the Willing to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza by force.
I find it understandable that Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other neighboring states do not by themselves take military action against Israel even in the very limited sense of ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches the Gazans in amounts to stave off famine. Each country individually would expose itself to devastating Israeli revenge attacks that would cost the lives of their citizens and cause great material damage. However, if there is a collective force, say, to open Haifa port to ships with aid or to open the land border crossings, that would be an entirely different matter. And for this I can think of no country better placed to play a leading role than Russia, which happens to have its own naval base and air base in Syria as well as other military assets in the region.
There are, of course, many open issues raised by this proposal, some of which were mentioned by my fellow panelist. However, he also noted that if European and NATO countries like Norway and Spain that have formally recognized the Palestinian state were to join the coalition, it would have still greater likelihood of success in the face of not only Israeli but also American opposition.
The other topic raised by Press TV today was why Europe looks on with indifference at the Israeli war crimes and general inhumanity displayed by the Netanyahu government. My simple answer is the “Never Again” slogan, the reference to the slaughter of 6 million Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, for which European leaders, and Germans above all, feel collective guilt to this day. Regrettably this has deprived them of reason amidst the Israeli atrocities in Gaza. And what the Israeli government is doing is a tragedy not only for their victims but for themselves. They are desecrating the memory of the Holocaust dead and it will take more than one generation to live down these crimes against humanity.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
A reader has kindly sent in the following link to yesterday’s show which is accessible without difficulty as well as the full transcript shown below:
https://odysee.com/2024-06-16-PressTV---Kevin-Barrett,-Gilbert-Doctorow:f
Transcript below by a reader
PressTV 0:07
And I welcome everyone to Press TV's news review program, where we get in-depth in one of the day's top stories. And now today in review, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA says over 50,000 children across the Gaza Strip are suffering from acute malnutrition. UNRWA described the humanitarian situation as catastrophic, adding Gazans are now facing desperate levels of hunger due to the Israeli blockade. UN children's agency UNICEF also said the children of Gaza are living in constant terror due to Israeli bombardment. UNICEF said Israeli forced displacement of Gazans in Rafah has caused agency to lose track of over 3,000 children. It added the humanitarian conditions and the suffering of citizens in Gaza is worsening by the day, due to the continuous blockade by Israeli forces.
1:00
And joining us for our program now forward is Dr. Kevin Barrett, editor at "Veterans Today", joining us at Saidia, Morocco; and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst, joining us out of Brussels. Gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you both to the program. Dr. Barrett, we'll start with you. Hope you're doing well out there in Morocco. Your thoughts about the regime continuing to block all humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza, and that's impacting the development of vulnerable small children?
Dr Kevin Barrett 1:31
Well, the genocidal Zionist regime is deliberately starving children of Palestine, and they're admitting this. They're not even trying to hide it. Numerous Israeli leaders have spoken about, made clearly genocidal statements, such as these statements about how the children who survived when we "mowed the lawn" in 2008 or 2014 are the same people who then grew up to support Hamas and so on. So we really should have just killed all the children back then, and by implication, we should kill them now. The top rabbi in Israel has basically said this, as have a number of the other Israeli leaders. So they're not even hiding the fact that they're deliberately slaughtering, torturing, and maiming children as national policy.
2:21
And the fact that this is allowed to happen in today's world is astonishing. Right now we're celebrating Eid al-Adha in the Islamic world, which is the celebration of the end of human sacrifice, and specifically the end of sacrificing children. That was a common practice in the ancient Mediterranean, among the Venetian Carthaginian culture particularly, but others as well. And when God told people to stop sacrificing their children, that was a momentous step forward for civilization. But apparently we're going back to the era of the sacrifice of children as this bizarre, psychotic, millenary and messianic, genocidal cult of satanic so-called Jews, really Zionists in occupied Palestine, is sacrificing children by the tens of thousands.
3:16
And the low estimate of the number of children murdered so far is somewhere in the neighborhood of the 15, 16, 17,000 children. The reality is much higher, of course, as so many children have been lost track of, as we've heard, are buried beneath the rubble where they've died very slowly and painfully in horrible anguish, due to the Zionists deliberately dropping their buildings on top of them. So this is, it's completely disgusting and unacceptable that the world is allowing this to continue.
Press TV: 3:43
Thank you, Dr. Barrett. And Gilbert Doctorow, welcome to the conversation, sir, and welcome to the program. Mr. Doctorow, I mean, the Israeli regime has the bigger guns, the tanks, the bigger bombs, the helicopters and fighter jets, far superior firepower. Why do you need to pick as your main victim the women and hungry children of Gaza?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD 4:06
Well, I add my voice of outrage to what Israel is doing in Gaza. This genocide is unacceptable, but who is acting against it? And I would like to use this opportunity that you have given me the microphone to suggest a way out of this. The way out is to follow a page from the American playbook, it's called "form a coalition of the willing". It is clear for understandable reasons that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other neighbors of Israel are reluctant to enter into a military confrontation with Israel because they know very well that this will be very damaging to their own populations and many people will die in a valiant effort that may or may not succeed.
4:52
It is a different situation if it's not one country or two countries that go up against has blockade of Israel, but a coalition of nations. And I would propose, insofar as I am well aware that Russian officials follow your Press TV, I make a proposal to them that they lead this coalition. The ability of the Russians who are based in, have naval base in Syria, and who are present in the region is large. The Israelis will not go to war with Russia if Russia heads a coalition to break the blockade.
I didn't say to break the Israeli army. No, to break the blockade for humanitarian grounds. That will be morally acceptable, and if it is not one nation [sound breakup]
PressTV 5:52
Thank you, Mr. Doctorow. We're kind of having a loose connection toward the end of your words there, but hopefully that will get resolved. Dr. Barrett, a lot of people say that's exactly what the Israeli regime wants. It wants to see a coalition on the other side with opposition to the atrocities that's committing in Gaza. It wants to see regional powers get involved, so the U.S. gets involved, so Berlin and London. So basically, a world war erupts to try to protect the starving children of Gaza. Is that really what it's going to take?
Barrett: 6:25
Well, that seems to be what Netanyahu and his camp are working for. Netanyahu has been trying to unleash a big war in the region, and a potential world war, in order to create the fog of war under which he could finish the genocide of the Palestinians. And he's been trying to do this since, well, really for his whole political career, which began by creating the so-called War on Terror at the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism in 1979, where he summoned a number of top US leaders and set out the agenda, which was that post-Cold War, they would transition to a so-called War on Terror, which would really be a war by the West against Israel's enemies. And so Netanyahu was then involved in the public relations launch for this on September 11, 2001. 9-11 was an Israeli job. And since then, Netanyahu and his faction has been pushing for a world war, trying to drag the Americans into a big war. Again, that's the way that he thinks he could finish the genocide of Palestine.
7:32
And that is a pretty horrific prospect. As for to what extent does that limit the military options against the Zionist entity, I'm not sure that, again, yes, if we were talking about trying to bring a coalition of the willing into outright war with the Zionist entity that could easily spin off into a World War III. But a blocking effort, if it were the right coalition of nations-- that would have to include not just Russia and its allies, but also countries like Turkey, and maybe even Saudi Arabia-- that is a kind of a bridge- building exercise across the contours of the current system of alliances that we're seeing as we see the U.S. imperial occupied Zionist world on one side and this emerging independent BRICS world on the other.
8:26
If you had a coalition that included members of both, if you could get Norway and Spain and these other-- Ireland and pro-Palestinian NATO countries on the side of sending military forces to break the blockade along with Russia and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with countries like Iran in a secondary role, that actually might have a chance of succeeding. But of course, the question is who's going to bail the cat? Who has the courage to actually stand up against these monstrous forces? But at some point, we need that courage if we're going to stop this mass slaughter of children. So I think this is an idea that should be explored.
Press TV: 9:00
Thank you. And final thoughts with you, Mr. Gilbert Doctorow there. Why are Western leaders so, I mean, obviously, they've all said time and again, nothing justifies the collective punishment taking place, the endless war crimes and atrocities being committed, especially against the children of Gaza, why are they not doing more to put a stop to it, to feed the children throughout this onslaught campaign?
Doctorow: 9:26
The answer is "Never again." The unfortunate aspect of everything that has proceeded since October of last year is that European nations, and Germany in particular as a leader in this, have a collective guilt for the awful things they did to the Jewish people before and during World War II. And for that reason, "Never again" is the slogan that justifies, they think, the ongoing genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza. That has to be broken. Unfortunately for the Jewish people, for the Israeli population, they have destroyed their moral authority, and they have desecrated the memory of the six million people who died in the Holocaust.
10:13
That is a tragedy that will take them several generations to live down. But we have to begin with remedying the situation today. And I totally concur with my fellow panelist that a broader coalition that takes in some NATO members who have recognized Palestine would be ideal. I was not suggesting at any point that they all march in and try to defeat the Israeli army. That would be a very good formula for the start of World War III. But a more modest, limited, and urgent effort to break the blockade, I think that will work.
Press TV: 10:52
And you know, I was going to sign off, but I really want to get Dr. Barrett's take on that. And that's a powerful argument that Mr. Doctorow is making, that somehow giving Israel, the West giving Israel this carte blanche to do what it wants in Gaza, it's pathetic to think, but I'm sure some Western leaders feel it's some kind of reparation for the Holocaust.
Barrett: 11:15
It's become the new religion, it's replaced Christianity, the gas chambers are the crucifixion, Israel is the resurrection, and so on. And so it's a new de facto religion in the West. And I personally think that that's the product of the Zionist propaganda machine that dominates Western media, rather than the historical reality in which I think that the conflict between Jews and non-Jews throughout all of history has not been one of spotless victims on one side and evil perpetrators on the other. It's been a mixed bag. And if anything, I think the Jewish people have been more sinning than sinned against. And I know that's an absolutely heretical thought to end the show on, but I'm sorry. I believe it's the truth.
Press TV:
All right gentlemen, stay safe, to both of you. And thank you both for your input on our program here. Dr. Kevin Barrett there, editor at "Veterans Today", joining us out of Morocco, and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst joining us out of Brussels.
12:06
And viewers, that brings us to your conclusion of this segment of your PressTV News Review program. Thank you for tuning in, and goodbye for now.