Although Baker, the Atlantic Council and NGOs allies beholden to them would counter that they are at least as hard on Hamas as they are on Israel, that is a false dichotomy.
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This article is based on the Atlantic Council’s Elise Baker’s recent Unpacking the UN findings of war crimes by Hamas & Israel since October 7 (2023) article. Though I moved the date 75 years earlier to Israel’s Independence Day to show that the Gaza issue did not suddenly begin one sprightly morning in the late autumn of last year, and that Israel’s April 9, 1948 Deir Yassin massacres and the rapes, which veterans of Israel’s war of independence still boast about, must also be included in our abacus, along with these live tv boasts of serving Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian prisoners following October 7th.
Moving the date from NATO’s arbitrary one of October 7 2023 also says that, though justice may be blind, objective and unbiased, NATO’s Atlantic Council, its acolytes and its servants are not. Whereas Lady Justice is supposed to fairly adjudicate based only on the information presented to her, the Atlantic Council is far too blinkered by its own pro NATO biases, as well as that of its main sponsors, to be considered neutral.
Although Baker, the Atlantic Council and NGOs allies beholden to them would counter that they are at least as hard on Hamas as they are on Israel, that is a false dichotomy. The Atlantic Council works on an annual budget in excess of $70 million and, as much of that comes from Gulf State conglomerates and sectarian Lebanese war lords like Bahaa Hariri, they must throw the Palestinians the occasional bone.
This is all the more so when we look at their rabid hatred of the secular Syria Arab Republic and of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, Syria’s three main allies and, if any readers think mentioning them is off topic, they are very mistaken, because not only is gelding all four of them the primary objective of the Atlantic Council and all of their minions as well, but it also explains their approach to Gaza.
That is not my biased opinion but it is the stated policy of the Atlantic Council, whose mission statement clearly proclaims that it is geared to helping shape the world in NATO’s image. It is that over-arching aim that explains why they commissioned these rabidly anti Iranian papers here and here, why they stupidly lie that Russia (!) is controlling North Africa through what remains of Libya and why Assad (!) and Putin (!) have wrecked thousands of hospitals in ISIS controlled northern Syria.
On that latter point, not only was I on national Syria TV donating tens of thousands of dollars from my own pocket to Syrian children’s hospitals but I brought Caelainn Hogan, an Irish Muslim Brotherhood stooge there, where she penned this anodyne article on Syria’s hospitals for the New York Times. And, though I can be seen here chatting with the late and great Irish nun, Sr Bridie Doody in Damascus’ Italian Hospital, the reader should also note that not only was Doody and her Italian Hospital subjected to years of shelling from Baker’s ISIS heroes, but copious evidence, like Sr Doody’s, has been studiously elided from NATO’s narrative. Try as Baker, Hogan and their ilk might, and lie as they and their Muslim Brotherhood buddies might like, all the evidence points to ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood and their many Atlantic Council buddies lying through their back teeth about all of these non-existent hospitals Assad and Putin supposedly attacked in northern Syria.
The relevance of those non-existent ISIS controlled hospitals to this Gaza report is that Elise Baker was the Atlantic Council’s anchor woman in spinning those lies about ISIS’ non existent hospitals and the reason Baker and her buddies lied about all that was to keep the Muslim Brotherhood’s command staff in northern Lebanon and the Gulf States onside.
If we do a quick trawl for Elise Baker on linkedin, twitter as well as in the Atlantic Council and its affiliated sites here and here, we find that Baker is up to her oxters with all kinds of NATO and Muslim Brotherhood front groups determined to destroy secular Syria and her allies. And, if we look at this Baker article, we see that her remit and that of her pals in the CIA’s equally well resourced Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy is to financially shake down Syria, but also Iran and Russia as well. They are, in short, grifters.
But Do You Condemn Hamas?
Following the October 7th attack by Hamas and its allies, all NATO interviews had to be prefaced with a blanket condemnation of Hamas, which was the main Palestinian group involved in those Muslim Brotherhood inspired attacks. Although Hamas’s former betrayal of Syria disgusts me, it does not surprise me as Hamas, being starved of funds, was easy prey for the Muslim Brotherhood, who should also be sitting in the dock alongside Israel.
Prior to October 7th, Israel’s murder of Palestinian civilians both in Gaza and in the West Bank just seemed routine, an immutable constant of no greater strategic consequence and as just a price Palestinians had to pay for living under Israeli rule. Though the highly coordinated attacks of that day came as a surprise to many, the Muslim Brotherhood, working in tandem with their Al Jazeera chums, made an excellent effort in showcasing those events to the world in much the same way their videos whitewashed the war crimes of their Syrian ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated terror groups to the world.
Back to Baker
Now that we have established where Baker and her Atlantic Council stand on the Middle East, we can return to her report before moving on to the evidence it adduces. Her article is anchored on this UN report, which was accompanied by two supplemental notes, one on Israel’s supposed crimes and one on Hamas‘. Although Baker stresses how independent and impartial the judges are, as she also draws our attention to the fact that these independent and impartial judges also recently examined unrest in “Myanmar, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela,” all of whom happen to be in NATO’s bad books, we have to conclude that, just like Baker and the Atlantic Council, these judges are not straight shooters.
Because Israel refused to interact with them, because the PLO, which has no significant presence in Gaza, provided “extensive comments” and because, even though Gaza is totally sealed off, they could still procure a large number of “witness and survivor interviews in Turkey and Egypt”, the credibility of the report can be questioned. That said, warts and all, it is still a useful, if somewhat pedantic, exercise worth commenting on.
Alleged Palestinian war crimes
Baker’s summary alleges that “members of Hamas’s military wing, other Palestinian armed groups, and Palestinian civilians committed war crimes and violated international humanitarian and human rights law in their October 7, 2023, attack”. It goes on to infer that most Israelis, from a “nine-month-old shot and killed while hiding with her mother” to virtually any other Israelis the Palestinians got their hands on were summarily killed and that “Palestinian fighters also committed the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity by desecrating corpses, including burning, mutilating, lacerating, decapitating, and undressing and subsequently exhibiting bodies” and that, though allegations of rape cannot be confirmed, the Palestinians committed a large number of outrages on their female captives, that likewise can be classified as war crimes. A pretty heavy rap sheet, in other words.
Military response in Gaza
The first thing to note about this heading is that Baker used it, the inference being that the outraged Israelis responded to a massive October 7th atrocity that just happened out of the blue and for no discernible reason. Importantly, this is not the case and, there can never be peace in the Holy Land, as long as the Atlantic Council and NATO’s other organs cynically play this politics of the last atrocity card.
That said, Baker’s report alleges “that Israeli authorities and members of the security forces committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and violated international humanitarian and human rights law, in their military campaign in Gaza”. These alleged crimes include “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare…… the war crimes of murder and intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, as well as the crime against humanity of murder…. Israeli forces targeted civilians who were clearly unarmed, including civilians sheltering at a church, a child holding a white flag, and three unarmed Israeli hostages”.
Although Baker turgidly ploughs on with her list of alleged Israeli outrages, she alludes to nothing those of us who follow Al Jazeera, Al Mayadeen or uncensored social media would not be more fully aware of, but leaves us with no hints, besides contributing to the Atlantic Council or some other NATO front group as to what we can do to help set matters right.
The solution, as I see it, can only be arrived at by having binding agreements to stop the violence at both the local and international levels. At the local level, that means the Palestinians and Israelis coming to a deal regarding hostages and related matters. But, when Israel goes out of its way to assassinate those it is in negotiations with, there can be no negotiations, even though it should be patently obvious that neither Israel nor its American sponsor have ever negotiated in good faith.
And then we have the international negotiations, where Syria, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians would sit on one side of the table and Israel, the United States and their toadies would sit on the other. But not only has Elise Baker and her Atlantic Council employers made it plain that their role is to shake down Syria, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians but there is no guarantee that any such negotiations can work with NATO’s loaded dice.
Even leaving Israel’s illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons to one side, Israel’s bargaining strategy since even before Clinton’s 2000 Camp David Summit would be familiar to any student of game theory, whereby Israel and the Palestinians re-divided Palestine, only for Israel to keep dividing the remaining Palestinian portion, until they painted the Palestinians into the little corners they have now confined them to. Though Baker, the Atlantic Council, the United States and Israel might think they have the Palestinians check mated, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria and Russia will not be so easily cornered by the carrots and sticks employed for so long against the long suffering Palestinians.
Though NATO, the Atlantic Council and their legions of fellow travelers can call Assad, Putin and Nasrallah all the names under heaven, and though they can assassinate peace negotiators in Beirut, Damascus, Kiev, Tehran or wherever else they like, the wars NATO instigated in Ukraine and the Middle East are all going to reach a new level of intensity, where the main players opposed to NATO no longer care about the empty barks of Elise Baker and NATO’s other charlatans, who will quickly fade, like most grifters do, into historical obscurity, obsolescence and irrelevance.
