Caitlin Johnstone: Israel Arrests US Journalist, Fires on UN Peacekeepers, Bombs Beirut, Kills More Kids, Etc

The U.S. State Department did not hold a press briefing on Thursday, which is understandable, given the difficulty of keeping up with — much less justifying — the criminality of its ally Israel.

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.

I used to be able to write individual articles about the individual bad things the U.S. empire is involved in around the world. These days I’m increasingly finding it necessary to cram a bunch of them into a single daily write-up to touch on as many of them as I can, just to stay on top of things.

On Tuesday, Israel arrested The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, an American journalist who had recently done some on the ground reporting on last week’s Iranian missile strikes in Israel.

[On Friday, The Grayzone reported that Loffredo is out of jail but unable to leave the country.] 

Israeli news outlet Ynet reported that the charges against Loffredo included “aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy,” which, as his fellow Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg notes, can be punished by the death penalty in Israel.

I have learned that the district court in Israel has ordered US journalist Jeremy Loffredo to be released from custody but has forbidden him from leaving the country for a period of time

Will update as soon as we know more about these terms#FreeJeremyLoffredo pic.twitter.com/2GqskzlDW4

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 11, 2024

In a statement, The Grayzone said that officially Israeli police were holding the reporter

“on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing… the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”

Loffredo’s report on the missile strikes features footage of explosions at the IDF’s Nevatim Airbase, as well as shots of the location where a missile landed near the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Imagine if an Iranian missile landed right next to the C.I.A. headquarters and the US said a reporter was forbidden on pain of death to report anything about this major news story, even for foreign journalists.

???Military arrested journalist Jeremy Loffredo @loffredojeremy ?

His last video posted on X reports the damage Iran did to Israel’s strategic locations. Damages the mainstream media did not report. Now @X has locked his acct from repost. pic.twitter.com/YKM2wzWDUi

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) October 9, 2024

Interestingly, the same things were reported on by other foreign news outlets without any arrests being made. As journalist Dan Cohen noted on Twitter, a report from Nick Schifrin of PBS News also featured footage of the blast site near Mossad headquarters, but Schifrin has not been arrested. Perhaps Loffredo is being singled out more because The Grayzone has been reporting on Israel’s lies and criminality than because of his work in this specific instance.

In other news, Axios reports that the U.S. and Israeli governments have moved closer to a consensus on Israel’s coming “major attack” on Iran, with the Biden administration accepting this enormous escalation despite fears that it will spark a large-scale war.

“The Biden administration accepts that Israel will soon launch a major attack on Iran, but it fears that strikes on certain targets could dramatically escalate the regional war,” writes Axios’ Barak Ravid.

A U.N. inquiry has accused Israel of “extermination” because of its systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system via “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

“The report found that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment,” a U.N. press release reads.

“These actions constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination.”

If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the U.S. will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of anti-Semitism.

Israeli forces repeatedly fired on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, injuring two U.N. workers by causing them to fall from a tower that was struck. Israel has killed hundreds of U.N. humanitarian workers in Gaza over the past year, but extending these attacks to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon is a significant new addition to the list of Israeli criminality.

Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated residential area of central Beirut have reportedly killed at least 22 people, injuring at least 117.

Israel killed at least 28 people in an airstrike on a school where civilians have been sheltering in Gaza, reportedly including many women and children as per usual. Al Jazeera reports that they’re having trouble identifying and counting the dead because the bodies are so unrecognizably shredded. Dozens more were killed elsewhere in Gaza over the last 24 hours.

In the last 24 hours Israel has:
– opened fire on UN peacekeeping forces in 3 bases
– killed 28 refugees in a school in Gaza
– killed 40 plus civilians in Central Beirut

and Nelson Mandela's grandson has been banned from the UK for criticising Israel.

Dystopia is here now.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) October 10, 2024

And then there’s the New York Times report we discussed this week  adding to the mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israeli forces are routinely, deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip. There is too much evidence that this is happening for anyone to legitimately deny it at this point.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department did not hold a press briefing, which is understandable. If I were in charge of justifying the behavior of the U.S. government and its allies, I wouldn’t want to face the press either.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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