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good-old-gossip · 4 days

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Israeli army’s destruction of more schools, health centres in Gaza is additional manifestation of genocide

Palestinian Territory - As part of its genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army hasintentionally destroyed schools and medical facilities during its ground invasion of Gaza City’s southern Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood and Jabalia in Strip’s north.

Seven days after the start of its latest ground incursionin the area, Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza City’sAl-Zaytoun neighbourhood. The Wednesday 15 May withdrawal revealed the destruction of three schools—Ain Jalut, Atta Al-Shawa, and Hassan Al-Nakhalah—as well as the Zaytoun Medical Clinic, which had provided healthcare to the neighbourhood’s roughly80,000 residents.

The Israeli army launched, last Thursday, its third military operation in the Zaytoun neighbourhood since the start of its aggression on the Gaza Strip. The most recent operation included heavy air and artillery raids, a ground incursion with military vehicles, and the destruction of more residential buildings, turning the neighbourhood into a pile of rubble and forcing hundreds of families to evacuate.

Israeli warplanes struck the four-storey Al-Sabra Clinic building at 4:30 am on Wednesday. The clinic, run by UNRWA, is located in the southern Gaza Cityneighbourhood of Al-Sabra and was housing approximately 50 displaced people, including women, children, and people with injuries. The explosion caused additional deaths and injuries, with survivorsbeing pulled out from under the debris.

Prior to the deadly attack, Israeli forces initially brokethrough the clinic’s outer wall, but then left without asking the individuals inside to leave—giving those sheltering inside a false sense of security. Two days later, Israeli forces betrayed them by bombing the clinic with military aircraft, giving no prior notice.

Forty-three-year-old Safiya Rushdi Arhaim told the Euro-Med Monitor team that she and her family had been displaced from the neighbourhood of Al-Zaytoun to Al-Sabra Clinic. They were surprised when, at dawn on Wednesday, F-16 warplanes flew overhead several times before ultimately launching four missiles at thebuilding’s four floors, destroying all of them and killing, harming, or traumatising everyone inside.

Arhaim said that both her son Suleiman, 24, and her husband Tayseer Suleiman Arhaim, 47, were injured during the attack, marking the family’s second set of injuries in a short period of time. She stated that she and the rest of the displaced felt relatively safe in the clinic, especially after the Israeli forces broke into the area and destroyed its outer wall with bulldozers butdid not ask those inside to leave. Instead, Israeli forcesdelivered messages to them over the phone as they approached the Zaytoun neighbourhood, but these messages did not warn them of imminent violence, so they stayed until the planes arrived and destroyed the clinic above their heads. While several families were killed and severely injured, she and her own family members survived the attack.

Over the past few days, Israeli forces have bombed oropened fire on six UNRWA schools in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, which houses thousands of displaced families. The Israeli military forced thesedisplaced people to evacuate anew, arresting and killing a number of them in the process. Currently, it is unknown if the area’s schools are entirely destroyed or if the bombing caused only partial destruction.

These schools join the hundreds that Israeli forces have already destroyed, either fully or partially, since 7 October 2023. The schools have been destroyed by bombings, artillery shells, demolition, or bulldozing.

In its genocidal war, ongoing since 7 October, Israel has completely or partially destroyed 80% of the Gaza Strip’s schools. In a joint statement released on 18 April 2024, UN experts described this as “scholasticide” and the deprivation of another generation of Palestinians of their academic future.

A study published in The New York Times supports theaforementioned figures. According to the report, over 200 schools in the Gaza Strip have been directly targeted by Israeli artillery, bombs, or missiles.

Even the UNRWA-run schools, which have become shelters for hundreds of thousands of civilians who areforcibly displaced, have been and continue to be the target of intense Israeli attacks, some of which occur frequently and others which occur irregularly, even in areas that Israel has declared to be “safe”.

As part of its military assault on the Gaza Strip, ongoing for nearly eight months, the Israeli army hasworked methodically to militarise civilian objects, turning places like hospitals, schools, and other educational institutions into military bases, in clear violation of international law and the conventions on war.

The Israeli army has turned many schools into military bases and detention facilities during its field invasion of most of the Gaza Strip. One such facility is the Salah al-Din Preparatory School in Gaza City, which was turned into a detention and investigation centre for hundreds of people last February.

As it did several months ago with Al-Israa University, in the south of Gaza City, the Israeli army has continued to frequently demolish and blow up civilian buildings after first turning them into military headquarters. All of this is done without respect for the principles of international humanitarian law, such as discrimination, proportionality, and military necessity.

Up until mid-April 2024, the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip is thought to have killed over 6,500 students, 756 teachers, and to have injured thousands more members of both groups. The death toll is expected to rise daily, and over 625,000 students are still believed to have been denied their right to an education over the course of an entire academic year.

The head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajith Sunghay, previously declared that the educational system in Gaza “no longer exists at this stage”, citing the destruction of schools by Israeli bombing operations as well as their use by displaced Palestinians as shelters. “Children can no longer find a place to learn,” he said.

In a report published on 13 December 2023, Euro-Med Monitor revealed that the Israeli army has turned schools sheltering 10s of thousands of displaced people into military centres and field execution sites as part of its genocide against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor received testimonies at the time about Israeli army forces carrying out unjustified field executions and killings of Palestinian civilians after detaining them for days inside the same schools where they had sought refuge from Israeli violence.

Roughly one hundred leading European academics condemned Israel’s genocide against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip in an open letter in March, citing its physical and cultural liquidation of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of theStrip’s educational system.

It is crucial to shield schools in the Gaza Strip from Israel’s military assaults. The international community must put pressure on Israel to cease its military operations against and inside the Strip’s schools, in order to guarantee Palestinian children’s right to education and ensure that they return to their classrooms as soon as possible, especially given that these schools will require extensive repairs and reconstruction.

Converting educational buildings into military bases is a practice that continues Israel’s colonial legacy of dominance and tearing apart the fundamental components of the Palestinian people, particularly their cultural and educational heritage.

The humanitarian community needs to be made aware of the horrific conditions that children in the Gaza Strip are living in. Children are among the most vulnerable populations during times of armed conflict anywhere, and Israel’s ongoing military assault on the Strip is worsening their suffering with every passing day. They are not being protected in any way by international law, and the Israeli army has turned them into direct and intentional targets of killings, executions, and deliberate and indiscriminate attacks. They are also being subjected to crimes such as starvation, siege, denial of health care and basic necessities for survival, and prolonged denial of education, which will negatively impact their ability to exercise their other rights and leave them vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, and exploitation. Finally, there is a risk that future generations will not have the knowledge necessary to rebuild Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip once Israel’s genocidal war ends.

It is important to allow investigative committees and specialised technical committees to visit the Gaza Strip to look into the horrifying crimes Israel has committed and hold it responsible for its repeated violations of the International Convention to Prevent and Punish the Crime of Genocide. These violations include the systematic persecution of Gaza Strip residents due to their Palestinian heritage, which includes killing and abusing them physically and psychologically, undermining their ability to survive, and forcing them to flee their homes by crushing and militarising civilian property.

Source - https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6330/Israeli-army’s-destruction-of-more-schools,-health-centres-in-Gaza-is-additional-manifestation-of-genocide

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watermelonsource · 5 months

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🚨breaking: sole survivor of october 7th kibb'utz be'eri attack breaks her silence

hadas dagan recounts the horrific details of israel's shelling and air strikes on its own people.

the october 7th attacks have been used to justify the current genocide in gaza, despite mounting evidence that israel knew about the attack.

a lot of money was made by individuals who seemed to have knowledge of the attack ahead of time as well.

many questions have been and are continuing to be raised around the validity of israel's various claims related to october 7th and israeli actions in gaza being attributed to hamas.

the israeli army has been caught generating fake propaganda to generate sympathy and gaslight the global community about their actions in gaza multiple times since october 7th.

including a staged hostage video in a hospital:

claiming a calendar written in arabic was a list of hamas guards:

accusing citizens of being hamas and staging surrender videos:

youtube

and outright lies about 40 infants who were allegedly beheaded on october 7th

US president joe biden initially claimed he had seen photos of the beheaded infants.

• all information verifiable with google

• follow @watermelonsource for more "too much news at once" 🍉

#israel #palestine #gaza #current events #world at war #corruption #breaking news #hostages #israeli hostages #friendly fire

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theinconvenientlifestyle · 4 months

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Israel’s statements to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday were a fabric of already-discredited lies about supposed atrocities that even Israel’s own records make impossible – and completely ignored the many deaths caused by Israeli forces among their own people during the 7 October resistance raid.

At the centre of Israel’s lies was a litany of ‘atrocity porn’ of rapes, mutilations and beheaded babies – again, already debunked and contradicting the evidence – but the testimony of an Israeli mother and daughter, interviewed on TV after they were released by Hamas, undermines even further Israel’s lurid lies. Hin and Ajam told their Israeli TV interviewer that they were treated like ‘malkot’, queens – and that this is how Palestinian men treat women generally: [video in link above]

Unsurprisingly, this has not been shown on UK ‘mainstream’ TV. Hin and Ajam are not unique. Numerous women survivors of Israel’s ‘friendly fire’ and released hostages have told how they were treated courteously and well – and even that their captors put their own bodies between them and IDF bombs to protect them.

By contrast, under Israel’s ‘Hannibal directive’, Israeli forces killed hundreds of their own citizens with missiles and tank shells, a number that the IDF itself described as ‘immense’.

It is to be hoped that the ICJ judges are not as ignorant as the insulting Israeli statements take them to be.

#palestine #israel #gaza #free palestine

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voskhozhdeniye · 4 months

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Westerners Have An Absolutely Psychotic View Of Airstrikes

Canadian online outlet The Breach has published a letter by CBC’s senior manager of journalistic standards Nancy Waugh which highlights perfectly the bizarre psychological relationship that westerners have with bombs and airstrikes in foreign countries.

In response to multiple complaints from a retired Humber College professor about the wildly biased language that Canada’s state broadcaster has been using to describe Israel’s war on Gaza, Waugh acknowledged that the CBC routinely uses words like “murderous,” “vicious,” “brutal,” “massacre,” and “slaughter” to refer to the October 7 Hamas attack while using far less emotionally charged words like “intensive,” “unrelenting,” and “punishing” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last three months.

Waugh defended this extreme discrepancy by saying that Israel’s attacks in Gaza differ from the Hamas attack on Israelis in that Israel’s killings are done “remotely”.

“Different words are used because although both result in death and injury, the events they describe are very different,” Waugh wrote. “The raid saw Hamas gunmen stream through the border fence and attack Israelis directly with firearms, knives and explosives. Gunmen chased down festival goers, assaulted kibbutzniks then shot them, fought hand to hand, and threw grenades. The attack was brutal, often vicious, and certainly murderous.”

“Bombs dropped from thousands of feet and artillery shells lofted into Gaza from kilometers away result in death and destruction on a massive scale, but it is carried out remotely,” Waugh continued. “The deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die.”

I’ve written a number of essays trying to point at the baseless and irrational way westerners view military explosives as a far more civilized and humane way of killing human beings than bullets or blades, but I’ve never written anything that sums it up as clearly as this frank admission by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s senior manager of journalistic standards.

Military explosives rip human bodies apart. They burn people alive. They trap them under rubble where they die excruciatingly slowly in one of the most horrifying ways imaginable. They leave people without limbs. They dismember and disfigure children for life. Many of the most agonizing deaths in human history have been caused by bombs.

There are thousands of Gazans who have yet to be counted among the dead because their bodies are still buried under the rubble of fallen buildings. Many of them would not have died instantly. Some are still alive, waiting for days in a state terror and searing pain for a rescue that will never come.

A UNICEF report released last month said that more than a thousand children had had one or both legs amputated since October 7 as a result of damage received by US-sponsored Israeli airstrikes, a number which would be significantly higher by now. We know that many such amputations have occurred without anaesthesia, because Israeli siege warfare has cut off Gaza’s healthcare system from the necessary supplies.

If this is not vicious, then nothing is vicious. If this is not brutal, then nothing is brutal. If this is not murderous, then nothing is murderous. But it doesn’t get labeled as such by the western press, because it is being done “remotely”.

The belief that these attacks should be considered less vicious and brutal because they are launched from a distance by people who won’t see their effects is as psychologically immature as a little girl who believes you can’t see her because she has covered her own eyes. An attack which kills and maims and tortures doesn’t cease to be brutal and vicious just because it looks like a blip on a screen to you. Human suffering isn’t made less acute or less significant by being far away.

But this is how most westerners see the use of military explosives these days. We’re so used to hearing about our government and its allies raining bombs upon the middle east and Africa that we’ve developed a kind of immunity to the psychological impact of exactly what that means in reality. The typical western mind has come to view bombings more like a weather event that simply occurs in those places, like how south Asian countries experience monsoons.

In reality, bombings are no less savage than attacks by guns, grenades, knives or machetes. In fact they actually allow for more savagery to take place, because they kill so much more efficiently, and because the troops who use them can keep killing and killing without losing morale and accumulating mental trauma from the horrors they have been inflicting upon their fellow human beings.

Dead is dead. Dismembered is dismembered. Pain is pain. Anguish is anguish. The unexamined assumption that the western empire’s prefered methods of killing are less brutal and murderous than those of an impoverished militant group is a psychological defense mechanism we have put in place to shelter ourselves from knowledge of our own brutality and murderousness.

In truth if you look at all the death, destruction, suffering and pain that Israel has inflicted on Gaza since October 7, there is no question that Israel is vastly more vicious, brutal and murderous than Hamas has ever been, and so are its allies who are supporting its actions. The only way to believe otherwise would be to psychologically hide away from the reality of what’s actually happening, which is as truth-based and mature as the kid with her hands over her eyes saying “Now you can’t see me!”

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lihyot-am-chofshi-beartzeinu · 7 months

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How Hamas manipulates the media in Gaza

"Our movie presents the history of the area, the nature of Hamas, the inaccuracies of the media. We interview Hamas leaders, western military spokesmen, Middle eastern politicians, leading journalists."

By AJN STAFF November 2, 2023, 2:15 pm

History is repeating itself, the co-producer of the 2016 film Eyeless in Gaza says.

Made after Operation Protective Edge, the documentary explores the media’s culpability in distorting how that conflict between Hamas and Israel was portrayed on TV and in the press.

“Hamas fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel, precipitating a war in Gaza,” co-producer Ruth Magid said.

“In spite of the fact that Hamas’s actions were a war crime, the sympathy of the international media was essentially with them and hostile to Israel. Israel was painted as the aggressor while Hamas was a freedom fighting liberation army.

“This despite the brutality of Hamas towards its own population, their well-documented callous use of their own brethren as human shields, their public execution of members of Fatah, gays and any deviants, their diversion of aid to provide materials for the building of terror tunnels and weapons, their antisemitic fanatic founding charter, and more.”

Ruth and Robert Magid decided to make a documentary exposing media bias.

“We called it Eyeless in Gaza, after a phrase in a poem by John Milton, ‘eyeless’ clearly referring to the blindness of wide swathes of the media,” said Ruth.

Now, she said, history is repeating itself.

“Frenzied mobs are marching around the world screaming for the entire destruction of the Jewish state. Information provided by the Hamas terrorists themselves, the perpetrators of the sadistic depraved pogrom of October 7, is automatically accepted by the media as true. Again the media is complicit in stoking the fires of hatred and ignorance.

“Our movie presents the history of the area, the nature of Hamas, the inaccuracies of the media. We interview Hamas leaders, western military spokesmen, Middle eastern politicians, leading journalists.

“The audience will recognise how relevant this documentary is to the current conflict.”

Eyeless in Gaza reveals how Hamas manipulated media coverage in 2014, intimidating and threatening journalists and forcing them to create a false impression of the impact of Israeli shelling by focusing solely on civilian casualties.

Footage shows Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zohri, who is normally guarded when facing Western media. But speaking to the documentary’s Palestinian crew, he admits that when Israel drops leaflets urging civilians to leave their homes ahead of an imminent airstrike, “Hamas asked people to stay in their homes.”

The documentary also includes footage filmed by an Indian camera crew that shows Palestinian terrorists firing rockets towards Israel from the middle of a residential area, as well as an extensive interview with RT TV correspondent Harry Fear, who covered Gaza for three years but was expelled after tweeting that Hamas was launching missiles near his hotel.

Fear says in the documentary that during the conflict it was clear that the side paying the highest price, namely the Palestinians, could have been spared much of the suffering if only Hamas, which claimed to represent them, had accepted the ceasefires that were then offered.

Watch Eyeless in Gaza on YouTube here.

#i/p conflict #eyeless in gaza #gaza #hamas #anti-hamas #free palestine from hamas #Youtube

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drwilfredwaterson · 9 months

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Earthquakes in Various Places: Lions and Lovers, and Cruel Snowy Summers…Oh, My! Part 7/10.

Touch: "Pilot" (alternatively "Tales of the Red Thread") is the first episode of Touch. It originally aired in a special preview event held January 25, 2012, on FOX.

"Today we'll send over 300 billion e-mails 19 billion text messages. Yet we'll still feel alone. The average person will say 2,250 words to 7.4 other individuals. Will these words be used to hurt or to heal? The ratio is always the same. 1 to 1.618, over and over and over again. The patterns are hidden in plain sight. You just have to know where to look. Things most people see as chaos actually follow subtle laws of behavior. Galaxies, plants, seashells. The patterns never lie. But only some of us can see how the pieces fit together. 7,080,360,000 of us live on this tiny planet. This is the story of some of those people. There's an ancient Chinese myth about the Red Thread of Fate. It says the gods have tied a red thread around every one of our ankles and attached it to all the people whose lives we're destined to touch. This thread may stretch, or tangle, but it'll never break. It's all predetermined by mathematical probability, and it's my job to keep track of those numbers, to make the connections for those who need to find each other, the ones whose lives need to touch. I was born 4,161 days ago, on October 26, 2000. I've been alive for 11 years, 4 months, 21 days and 14 hours. And in all that time I've never said a single word." - Jake/Jacob/Israel Bohm

October 26, 2000: Strong's Concordance #4161 motsa: a place or act of going forth, issue, export, source, spring, growing place, a mine. Original Word: מוֹצָא

A Web search leads Jake's father, Martin, to the Teller Institute, a rundown home at 318 West Tesla Street. Arthur Teller explains that, on his own, Jake discovered the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical ratio concerning patterns repeated in nature: a wave's curve, a shell's spiral, segments of a pineapple. Jake sees vast connections that amount to road maps, and it's Martin's job, his destiny, to follow them for Jake.

"Imagine the unspeakable beauty of the universe he sees! No wonder he doesn't talk." - Arthur Teller on Jacob/Israel Bohm

In the 2012 television series Touch, season 1, episode 9, "Music of the Spheres", Jacob "Jake" Bohm, a mute boy who mysteriously feels the suffering of those along his path and aims to positively adjust their fates, is revealed as possibly one of the "Lamed Vav Tzadikim" by a Hasidic man. In the second season of Touch, Jake and other people who have special gifts are referred to as members of the 36; throughout the episodes they are exploited for their capabilities and are hunted down by one who believes they hold too much power. The final episode features consideration of the Kabbalah and the mystical roots of the legend of the 36.

Lamedvavnik (Yiddish: למד־װאָװניק), is the Yiddish term for one of the 36 humble righteous ones or Tzadikim mentioned in kabbalah or Jewish mysticism. According to this teaching, at any given time there are at least 36 holy persons in the world who are Tzadikim. These holy people are hidden; i.e., nobody knows who they are. According to some versions of the story, they themselves may not know who they are.

For the sake of these 36 hidden saints, God preserves the world even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism. This is similar to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Hebrew Bible, where God told Abraham that he would spare the city of Sodom if there was a quorum of at least 10 righteous men. Since nobody knows who the Lamedvavniks are, not even themselves, every Jew should act as if he or she might be one of them; i.e., lead a holy and humble life and pray for the sake of fellow human beings. It is also said that one of these 36 could potentially be the Jewish Messiah if the world is ready for them to reveal themselves. Otherwise, they live and die as an ordinary person. Whether the person knows they are the potential Messiah is debated. (Wikipedia)

Touch - Season 1 Trailer

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Published: 12/5/2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvQ_qJYZ-7A dvQ_qJYZ-7A adjqqvyz 1+4+600+70+70+700+400+500=2345. 2345+7=2352. Strong's Concordance #2352 chuwr: hole, cave, a pit, to bore; the crevice of a serpent; a prison cell, a grave, a tomb. Original Word: חוּר

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Pages 870 and 871: Isaiah 11:1 But a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse, A twig shall sprout from his stock. Isaiah 11:2 The spirit of the Lord shall alight upon him: A spirit of wisdom and insight, A spirit of counsel and valor, A spirit of devotion and reverence for the Lord. Isaiah 11:3 He shall sense the truth by his reverence for the Lord; He shall not judge by what his eyes behold, Nor decide by what his ears perceive. Isaiah 11:4 Thus he shall judge the poor with equity And decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouth And slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Isaiah 11:5 Justice shall be the girdle of his loins, And faithfulness the girdle of his waist. Isaiah 11:6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard lie down with the kid; the calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together, With a little boy to herd them. Isaiah 11:7 The cow and the bear shall graze, Their young shall lie down together; And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw. Isaiah 11:8 A babe shall play Over a viper's hole, And an infant shall pass his hand Over an adder's den. Isaiah 11:9 In all of My sacred mount Nothing evil or vile shall be done; For the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord As water covers the sea. Isaiah 11:10 In that day, The stock of Jesse that has remained standing Shall become a standard to peoples--Nations shall seek his counsel And his abode shall be honored.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1053: Jeremiah 17:13 O Hope of Israel! O Lord! All who forsake You shall be put to shame, Those in the land who turn from You Shall be doomed men, For they have forsaken the Lord, The Fount of living waters.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1459: Psalm 39:7 Man walks about as a mere shadow; mere futility is his hustle and bustle, amassing and not knowing who will gather in. Psalm 39:8 What, then, can I count on, O Lord? In You my hope lies.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1616: Proverbs 10:28 The righteous can look forward to joy, But the hope of the wicked is doomed. Proverbs 10:29 The way of the Lord is a stronghold for the blameless, But a ruin for evildoers.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1617: Proverbs 11:7 At death the hopes of a wicked man are doomed, And the ambition of evil men comes to nothing.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1620: Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred sickens the heart, But desire realized is a tree of life.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English): Page 1678: Job 14:7 There is hope for a tree; If it is cut down it will renew itself; Its shoots will not cease.

“I believe with complete faith in the coming of Mashiach. Though he tarry, nonetheless I await him every day, that he will come.”.

"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone." - Audrey Hepburn

"The words of kindness are more healing to a drooping heart than balm or honey." - Sarah Fielding

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world." - Robin Williams

"Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill." - Buddha

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." - Henry David Thoreau

Captain 89P13, Groot: "I Love You Guys" | Guardians of the Galaxy 3|

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Published: May 6, 2023 (126th day) Duration: 0:38 (38 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p-IltZyEek 8: Infinity p-IltZyEek eeiklptyz 5+5+9+10+20+60+100+400+500=1109. 1109+8=1117. 1117+38=1155. 1155+126=1281. Strong's Concordance #1281 bariach: from barach; to go through, flee, fleeing, a fugitive, crooked, noble, piercing. Original Word: בָּרִיחַ

Acts 22:6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. Acts 22:7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ Acts 22:8 “’Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. “’I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. Acts 22:10 “’What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ Acts 22:11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. Acts 22:12 “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. Acts 22:13 He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him. Acts 22:14 “Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. Acts 22:15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard Acts 22:16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’ Acts 22:17 “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance Acts 22:18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’ Acts 22:19 “’Lord,’ I replied, ‘these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. Acts 22:20 And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’ Acts 22:21 “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” Acts 22:22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

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theivorybilledwoodpecker · 8 days

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Israeli forces press Gaza offensive from north and south

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-step-up-attacks-jabalia-camp-rafah-gaza-2024-05-13/

CAIRO, May 13 (Reuters) - Israeli forces pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza's northern edge on Monday to recapture an area from Hamas fighters, while in the south tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, leaving Palestinian civilians scrambling to find safety.Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid, which humanitarian groups say is worsening an already dire situation. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee again after around half of Gaza's population took sanctuary there after Israel ordered evacuations from northern Gaza in October. Gaza's health authority appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid, medical supplies and fuel to power generators and ambulances. "The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel," it said. A foreign U.N. staff member was killed on Monday when a vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck - the first international U.N. casualty in the Gaza war, a U.N. spokesperson said. In northern Gaza's Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, Israeli forces pushed into an area where they claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago. Residents fled along rubble-strewn streets carrying bags of belongings. Tank shells landed in the centre of the camp and health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies from overnight airstrikes. "We don't know where to go. We have been displaced from one place to the next... We are running in the streets. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the tank and the bulldozer. It is on that street," said one woman, who did not give her name. The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, with 57 killed in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israeli troops are seeking to wipe out Hamas, which has said it is committed to Israel's destruction. The militant group burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies. Hamas' armed wing said because of Israeli bombardments it had lost contact with militants guarding four Israeli hostages, including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in a video released by Hamas in late April. Attending a Memorial Day ceremony to mark Israel's fallen soldiers in Jerusalem on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war against Hamas was a struggle to secure Israel's "existence, liberty, security and prosperity". "Our war of independence is not over yet," he said.In Rafah, Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments on the eastern areas of the city, killing people in an airstrike on a house in the Brazil neighbourhood. Residents said Israeli air and ground bombardments were intensifying and tanks had cut off the main north-south Salahuddin road dividing east of the city from the central area. "The tanks cut the Salahuddin road east of the city, the forces are now in the southeast side, building up near the built-up area. The situation is dreadful and the sounds of explosions never stopped," said Bassam, 57, from the Shaboura neighbourhood in Rafah. "People continue to leave Rafah ... no place looks safe now and people do not want to escape at the last minute," he told Reuters via a chat app.

#palestine #israel #gaza

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bloghrexach · 1 month

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💥 … “Cria fama y acuéstate a dormir!” — a saying in Spanish that means once you become ‘famous’ for something, there’s not much left to do!! — Hence: if you’re know for lying, why believe your stories/statements?

“While western societies were quick to believe Israeli propaganda about 7 October, much of the Arab and non-western world remained sceptical due to Israel's staggering record of lies.

Shortly after the Hamas offensive against Israel on 7 October, the Israeli propaganda machine went into high gear to implement its genocidal war in Gaza.

Ghoulish allegations of decapitated and burned babies, mass rape of women, and other unconfirmed crimes were widely disseminated to a white supremacist western world ready to believe any Israeli claim about the racially inferior Palestinians.

Acting as stenographers for the Israeli government, western mainstream media outlets immediately began reporting unsubstantiated claims as incontestable truth before quietly retracting many of them.

Israeli witnesses to the 7 October events testified that Israeli forces targeted and killed Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters alike. Reports also indicated that Israeli shelling of Israeli homes and military bases caused israeli deaths, burned homes, and other destruction.

Yet such revelations did not dissuade the western media and governments from parroting Israel’s racist fabrications.

But the scepticism among the south nations has nothing to do with some conscious or unconscious bias against the “Jewish” state.

Israel’s notorious lack of credibility is the reason why most do not believe its claims.

'Staggering' record of lies.

Since 1948, Israel has accumulated a staggering record of lies, myths, and fabrications - just as the Zionist movement has done since its birth.

Over the last 75 years, Arab and European researchers worked extensively to debunk these lies.

Since the mid-1980s, Israeli historians have also exposed Israel’s fabrications through its own official state and military archives.

Israel’s biggest lie of all is its very foundation, which rested on the major Zionist crime of ethnic cleansing.

Fortunately, today we are witnessing Western media redeem themselves, adhering to journalistic ethics and beginning to question Israel's narrative;

“Did you feel it necessary to flatten the embassy in Damascus?”

“We didn’t flatten anything. I can assure you people in that building” … “so you did it”? 🫤

“There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content.” — Joseph Goebbels … 💥

#reclaimthenarrative — 🕊🍉 — #FreePalestine

@hrexach

#dr rex equality news information education #graphic source #graphic #graphics #hortyrex ©#horty #quote #it is what it is #war #palestine #israeli occupation #Israel #zionistterror #israeli propaganda #liar liar

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oobsie-daisy · 7 months

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thesportssoundoff · 5 years

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“Look there’s Holloway vs Edgar and you’re watching this so don’t even give me any of your shit” UFC 240 Preview

Joey

July 22nd, 2019

Every once in a while, about once a year or so, the UFC has a PPV that's utterly pointless. It's just a show on the schedule designed to make up for a cancelled show or just a PPV "make some money" cash grab. This card is a little bit column A, little bit column B and so there's really not much to say in the lead in. The UFC lost a show in January when they had a bunch of main events fall through and they needed to move Cejudo and Dillashaw to ESPN+. In response to that happening, the UFC wound up needing to fill a schedule slot and SO we get two July PPVs (we were originally going to get two October ones but they reconfigured the sched). To further complicate matters, they loaded up July (two title fights plus a crazy undercard) and loaded up August (DC/Stipe, Romero/Costa, Nate/Pettis, Heinisch/Brunson plus all sorts of goodies) so this PPV sandwiched in the middle got a whole bunch of nada. This is basically a three fight card and if we're being honest, it just might be a one fight card if you consider Neal/Price and Cyborg/Spencer pointless. The next three cards after this are all going to be pretty special in their own ways (DC/Stipe, Khabib/Dustin and Israel/Whittaker) so we're just here to kill some time at an unfair price point. This card is a collection of spent shell casings on the Old West that is MMA. The summer is basically the UFC's seasonal fuck up session; more people are willing to spend money in the summer but fighters don't like fighting and the schedule is so packed that you run the risk of just burning all your bullets. Barring something unforseen, this will be the worst PPV of the year but ya got Holloway/Edgar so I'll be there. OH and it's a Canadian card! Cursed!

Fights: 12

Debuts: Giacomo Lemos, Tanner Boser, Yoshinori Horie

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 1 (Lauren Murphy vs Mara Romero CANCELLED)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 4 (Frankie Edgar, Max Holloway, Cyborg, Alexis Davis)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 2 (Alexis Davis,Erik Koch)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 3 (Geoff Neal, Hakeem Dawodu, Alejandre Pantoja)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 22-12

Frankie Edgar- 2-1 Max Holloway- 3-1 Cyborg- 3-1 Felicia Spencer- 1-0 Geoff Neal- 3-0 Niko Price- 4-2 Olivier Aubin-Mercier- 2-2 Arman Tsarukyan- 0-1 Marc Andre Berriault- 0-1 Kryztsof Jokto- 1-3

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Featherweight- 3 (37) Welterweight- 2 (41) Women’s Flyweight- 2 (21) Middleweight- 1 (24) Flyweight- 1 (9) Women’s Featherweight- 1 (7) Heavyweight- 1 (22) Lightweight- 1 (45)

Bantamweight- (39) Light Heavyweight- (29) Women’s Bantamweight- (13) Women’s Strawweight- (19)

2019 Number Tracker

Debuting Fighters (20-43)- Tanner Bosse, Yoshinori Horie, Giacomo Lemos

Short Notice Fighters (20-27)-

Second Fight (40-16)- Kyle Stewart, Sarah Frota, Sueng Woo Choi, Viviane Araújo, Marc-André Barriault, Arman Tsaryukan

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (14-27)- Gavin Tucker, Frankie Edgar

Undefeated Fighters (25-29)- Giacomo Lemos

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (9-8)-

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (20-17)- Erik Koch, Sarah Frota, Max Holloway

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- In no small part, I think it's fair to acknowledge that moving PPVs to ESPN+ has, at least for me, dampened the enthusiasm fans have for PPV. Maybe that'll ultimately be a good thing but on principle alone, these cards seem a tick below the old school "gather round and party" UFC PPV events. Beyond that though, are we not giving Edgar vs Holloway its just due as a title fight? Max Holloway is still in my opinion the greatest featherweight of all time and this fight would be yet another step towards solidifying a potential hall of fame resume. It's not wrong to suggest that a stoppage over Edgar would be yet another step towards solidifying Holloway's spot among the GOAT. On the other hand, we just saw him get beaten up by Dustin Poirier up a weight class. Going up and taking a risk didn't impact BJ Penn and Conor McGregor but those two had a different sort of legacy and a more dedicated fanbase to make sure those things didn't matter. Frankie Edgar earned a title shot with wins over Jeremy Stephens and Yair Rodriguez before risking it all in the pursuit of being the ultimate company man. A short notice loss to Brian Ortega seemed to put him further to the back of the line but Edgar returned a little over a month later to decision Cub Swanson and has laid low since. In many ways, Edgar getting put back into the title picture is a rare example of the UFC doing something nice and fair. Edgar should've gone to the back of the line but instead the UFC rewarded him for doing them a favor in taking the Ortega fight.

2- Is the UFC being overly presumptious/optimistic in believing that the winner of this fight can make a quick enough turnaround to fight Volkanovski in early October? As champion, I think the quickest turnaround Frankie Edgar ever made was early October to late February but he was also 7 years younger then. For Holloway, December to March WAS supposed to be his quickest turnaround but he got hurt and the fight got scrapped.

3- Does Holloway have to finish Frankie Edgar to get his buzz back or would a win suffice for most fans?

4- Has any other fighter lost five straight title fights in the UFC? If Edgar loses to Holloway, I think he'll officially break his own record (that he holds with Urijah Faber who lost to Cruz and Barao twice).

5- I wonder IF the UFC could do it over, would they still go through with trying a female featherweight division. It got them a few Cyborg fights (which at the very least gave them a salvaged PPV or two) but overall, you have to wonder if this is what they expected when they (lazily) fell into the division. Although Felicia Spencer is probably a far more reputable opponent for Cyborg than when Cyborg was trying to get the UFC to sign Pam Sorenson.

6- The entire UFC/Cyborg situation could be done over the course of a few days but allow me the opportunity to try and paint the numbers here briefly:

Cyborg was signed because the UFC still had designs of Ronda (now vanquished by Holly Holm) making the comeback, rising up and facing Cyborg once before she'd go on to do other things. It didn't QUITE work out that way and so the UFC had a fighter they had no interest in taking up space on their cards. At this point Brazilian MMA was on a serious slump and Cyborg represented someone who could headline a card or two there, give the UFC some depth on PPVs. Then the UFC wound up deciding to go full bore with a 145 lb division----without Cyborg in the opening fight. It seemed like they were trying to set up Cyborg for the winner but GDR/Holm was a PPV bust and GDR didn't want the fight so they scrapped THAT and tried again with Cyborg as the lead dog. From there, Cyborg turned into a pretty decent PPV draw even though it always felt like this was an arraigned marriage more or less. Her two headliners did well enough (210K-ish vs Yanit, 375K-ish with Holly Holm) but the UFC never seemed to like her much and the feeling was mutual seemingly. Cyborg supported Leslie Smith's Project Spearhead on multiple occasions and would accuse the UFC of bias against her on a number of occasions. The UFC would in turn tell her to stop worrying about things that don't matter and for her to stop trying to act as her own matchmaker. There was a borderline embarrassing moment where Cyborg had a member of the media during a press conference ask Dana White to unblock her on Instagram. Both sides were in a convenient set up where they needed to at least tolerate one another and they could barely pull that off.

Things came to a head when the UFC finally sacked up (at the demands of Amanda Nunes seemingly) and gave us the champ vs champ fight. If Nina Ansaroff deserves a ton of credit for being a liason between the UFC and Amanda Nunes, Cyborg deserves an equal amount of credit for giving them a reason to get over Nunes wiping Meisha Tate and Ronda Rousey while also being a pest about doing media. Nunes wiped Cyborg out and the entire narrative on her changed in an instant. With the changing narrative though emerged the challenge; Nunes wanted a rematch, Cyborg wanted a rematch while the UFC had no interest in Cyborg vs Nunes II with one fight remaining on her deal. Cyborg flirted openly with leaving the UFC, said pretty much as such recently and just when the UFC felt like they were out of the Cyborg business, Amanda Nunes stirred it back up by wanting to REMATCH Cyborg still although I'd suppose the UFC doing a Cyborg fight by and large was bound to make it an issue regardless. Now the only buzz to the co-main is whether Cyborg can win to set up a potential rematch that 90% of the people watching probably have no belief in actually happening.

I think if everybody was on truth serum, you'd probably get a breakdown where everybody agrees that this has no chance of panning out in a positive sense. The UFC on a truth serum would probably be fine with Cyborg not fighting for them after this unless it was on some sort of team friendly deal so to speak (although all MMA contracts are team friendly given the nature of the biz). Cyborg would probably be just fine with fighting in Bellator and being some kind of a novelty act for her remaining fans unless the UFC paid her greatly and made some concessions on their protocol for fighter relations. Amanda Nunes is fine with whatever happens but she probably knows a Cyborg rematch as a co-main trumps trying to convince fans that a GDR rematch or a fight with Macy Chiasson or a fight with Yanit Kunitskaya is must see programming. Cyborg makes the most money in the UFC in theory, the UFC makes the most money with Nunes-Cyborg 2 and Nunes' career resume becomes GOAT regardless of gender if she finishes Cyborg again. It just requires too many ifs, buts or unless' to feel like it has any probability of happening.

7- Which does the UFC want more; a Cyborg win so they can quietly do away with 145 lbs or a Felicia Spencer win where they can stick to Cyborg one last time and maybe give Amanda Nunes something to do?

8- Even if it's probably an ESPN PPV prelim headliner on a more complete card, I'm really excited about Niko Price vs Geoff Neal. Of all the DWTCS guys signed, it could be argued that Geoff Neal is the best so far. He's an insanely good striker with stout takedown defense and some of the best in the pocket combinations you'll see at 170 lbs. He's developing more and more into someone who should be remembered as 170 lbs continues to amass depth in the middle rankings. I have some concerns about his ability to rally in a tough fight and I do think he'll struggle with the bigger welterweights but so far so good. Conversely Niko Price has gone from ultra exciting prospect to a solid proven action fighter who looks set to make the mantle of violent finisher at 170 lbs from the likes of Tim Means and Matt Brown. He'll be a great test for Neal and at the very least, this should be an exciting fight.

9- Is the bloom off of the Hakeem Dawodu rose or are we still holding on? He's 2-1 in the UFC but none of those performances were really of the standout variety. The fact that he's facing a debuting guy and not a proven 145 lber after beating Kyle Bochniak suggests the UFC is looking to slow it down, reassess and see if they can rebuild him again.

10- Can a fighter who is 16-5-1 be a prospect? I suppose that'll have to be the case with 27 year old HW Tanner Boser. Canada needs SOMEBODY to emerge from the mess and Boser, who has been fighting out in Russia, is probably one of their better chances unless you're sold on Gavin Tucker or Hakeem Dawodu. He kicks off the show vs Giacomo Lemos on ESPN+.

11- Erik Koch has fought in the UFC since 2011. He was one of MMA's weirdest resumes with elite names like Dustin Poirier, Rafael Asssuncao, Clay Guida, Ricardo Lamas and Bobby Green on it. He was a former title contender for Jose Aldo's featherweight title. He's got 21 pro fights, fought in three different UFC weight classes and is just NOW 30. You want to ask "Why are they bothering?" but clearly there's something they like there. Maybe Koch just finally needed to get healthy or maybe the UFC just feels some sort of compulsion towards having a guy who WAS going to be a #1 contender get on the right track. Just feels weird at this point. Koch faces Kyle Stewart who made a short notice debut in January as the first ever fight on the first ever ESPN card.

12- Three fighters on their second fights to keep an eye on; 1) Arman Tsarukyan on short-ish notice gave Islam Makhachev some serious problems as a quick scrambler who had some power in his hands. He was outwrestled but kept going at a pretty hot clip and made a good enough account of himself that he's on the MAIN CARD here against Olivier Aubin-Mercier. 2) Viviane Araujo looked fantastic against Talita Bernardo in a short notice fight up two weight classes. After beating Bernardo up for two rounds, she finished her with a flying knee in the third round to pick up the upset short notice win. She gets one of those "Let's see what they can't do!" step ups against the insanely slow but insanely strong veteran Alexis Davis. That one has potential to be messy. Lastly Sarah Frota looked pretty impressive in her UFC debut which was hampered by her completely blowing the 115 lb weight limit at 123 lbs. She's got some Thiago Silva-esque vibes in terms of being a powerful slow stalker who wings power shots at will and bets on her chin being better than yours when things get tough. She'll be facing Gillian Robertson who will offer nothing on the feet but is a tremendously adept grappler who can snag subs at will. Remember Livia Souza almost subbed Frota with an armbar.

#MMA #UFC #Edgar #Holloway #UFC 240 #Canada

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Holding Ukraine hostage: How the president and his allies, chasing 2020 ammunition, fanned a political storm (Donald Trump used the levers of the United States government and taxpayer dollars to chase a conspiracy theory to prove the Russian government didn't attack our elections in 2016!! This should outrage every American, reublican, democrat and independent.)

By Greg Miller, Paul Sonne, Greg Jaffe and Michael Birnbaum | Published

October 04, 2019 10:14 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 5, 2019 9:40 AM ET |

By mid-May, the U.S. relationship with Ukraine was unraveling: The U.S. ambassador had been recalled home for no apparent reason, the country’s new president was anxious about U.S. support, and President Trump’s personal lawyer was hawking Kiev conspiracy theories.

Amid this turbulence, an unexpected figure stepped forward to assert that he was now in charge of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had no apparent standing to seize this critical portfolio, nor any apparent qualifications as a diplomat beyond the $1 million he’d given to Trump’s inauguration.

But when some in the White House and State Department sought to block his power grab, current and former U.S. officials said, he rebuffed their demands to know who had granted him such authority with two words:

“The president.”

Over the next four months, Sondland worked closely with Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, to reorient America’s relationship with Kiev around the president’s political interests.

Newly released texts exchanged by Sondland, Volker and other U.S. officials during this period read like a government-sanctioned shakedown. Again and again, they make clear that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would not get military aid or the Oval Office invitation he coveted until he committed to investigations that Trump hoped would deliver damaging information on former vice president Joe Biden and undermine the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Rather than official State Department email, the text exchanges between the diplomats took place over WhatsApp, a U.S. official said.

Only if Zelensky can convince Trump that he will “ ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016” will he be granted a meeting with the president, Volker tells one of Zelensky’s top advisers in late July in a text that alludes to Trump’s belief that Ukraine sought to sabotage him in the presidential election. In a separate message weeks later, Sondland emphasizes that the president “really wants the deliverable.”

The exchanges reveal the direct participation of State Department officials sworn to serve the country in events that increasingly bear the markings of a multipronged political conspiracy.

At the same time Sondland and Volker were using diplomatic channels to press Trump’s demands, the president and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, were using other channels to deliver the same message. At the center of the scandal is a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky that was exposed by a government whistleblower and triggered an impeachment inquiry.

On the receiving end of these demands was a country turning to the United States for help with legitimate desperation. Over the past five years, Ukraine has endured incursions by Russian paramilitary forces, the loss of the Crimean Peninsula after its seizure by Moscow, and a deadly and ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists — not to mention its own internal political and economic problems, and corruption.

Against this backdrop, Ukrainian officials cited in the texts released by House committees late Thursday come across as feeling abused by their American counterparts. Zelensky “is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics,” a U.S. official, dispatched to Kiev after former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed on May 7, said in a text.

Sondland brushed aside his counterpart’s apprehension. “We need to get the conversation started and the relationship built,” he wrote back, “irrespective of the pretext.”

Although brief and cryptic, that exchange captures a more pervasive divide within the Trump administration between career national security officials disturbed by what they perceived as a dangerous decoupling of U.S. foreign policy from core national interests, and political appointees who became complicit in the president’s use of American influence to advance his electoral interests.

This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials, as well as documents released in recent days by congressional committees involved in the impeachment inquiry against the president. The officials interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject as well as fear of retaliation. Sondland did not respond to requests for comments.

RE-LITIGATING 2016

Trump’s preoccupation with Ukraine traces back to the 2016 U.S. presidential race, when a financial ledger surfaced in Kiev linking Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to millions of dollars in secret payments from a pro-Russian, Ukrainian political party he advised. The disclosures forced Manafort to resign his campaign position and fueled suspicions that Trump’s candidacy was being assisted by interference from Moscow.

Trump came to see the ensuing investigations of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia as part of an effort to delegitimize his presidency. In his July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump complained about the Russia probe and recycled discredited conspiracy theories, including that Russia had not really hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee, and that the proof of that supposed hoax — the DNC hard drives — had been smuggled into Ukraine for hiding.

There is no evidence to substantiate any of these allegations.

“A lot of it started with Ukraine,” Trump said at a point in the conversation where he also alluded to aid and arms promised to Ukraine while telling Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor.” Among other things, Trump explicitly asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of Biden and his son.

Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, became similarly entangled in webs of unfounded accusations. By the time the Russia investigation concluded without uncovering clear evidence that Trump’s campaign had conspired with Moscow, Giuliani and Trump had both turned their attention to Ukraine as a potential ally that could both help validate their theories and provide ammunition against political adversaries.

To advance this shared agenda, Trump began exploiting the powers of the executive branch.

Trump enlisted Attorney General William P. Barr to launch investigations into the origins of the Russia probe, searching for proof that the work of the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III were politically tainted. As part of that effort, The Washington Post revealed this week, Barr traveled to Britain and Italy, hoping their security services could expose improprieties by American intelligence agencies.

Trump also began circumventing his own National Security Council at the White House and deploying trusted allies to pursue political dirt and re-litigate the history of the 2016 election. His target was a country that Manafort had long said was out to get Trump in 2016: Ukraine.

Sondland, 61, appears to have never held a position in government before being named U.S. ambassador to the European Union in June 2018. He amassed much of his wealth by acquiring and managing luxury hotels in cities including Seattle and Portland, Ore.

Sondland sought to distance himself from Trump in 2016, backing out of a Seattle fundraiser for the GOP candidate over what a company spokesman described as concerns with Trump’s “anti-immigrant” policies.

But Sondland didn’t stay away for long, later routing $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund through a collection of shell companies that obscured his involvement.

In Brussels, Sondland garnered a reputation for his truculent manner and fondness for the trappings of privilege. He peppered closed-door negotiations with four-letter words. He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.

Sondland seemed to chafe at the constraints of his assignment. He traveled for meetings in Israel, Romania and other countries with little or no coordination with other officials. He acquired a reputation for being indiscreet, and was chastised for using his personal phone for state business, officials said.

Sondland also shuttled repeatedly back to Washington, often seeking face time with Trump. When he couldn’t gain entry to the Oval Office, officials said, he would meet instead with White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, preferring someone closer to Trump’s inner circle than national security officials responsible for Europe.

“He always seemed to be in D.C.,” a former White House official said. “People would say, ‘Does he spend any time in Brussels?’ ”

TRUMP’S MAN

Sondland’s approach to the job was seen more as a source of irritation than trouble until May, when he moved to stake his claim to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

After Zelensky’s election, White House officials began making plans for who would take part in the U.S. delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration.

National security adviser John Bolton removed Sondland’s name from the list, only to see it reinserted, a clear indication that Bolton had been overruled by the Oval Office.

Photos of the event show a beaming Sondland alongside Zelensky, as well as other U.S. officials including Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

In the ensuing months, Sondland maneuvered to cement a position of influence in the relationship between Trump and the new Ukrainian president. In early June, Sondland threw a lavish Independence Day reception — a month ahead of the U.S. holiday — at a cavernous antique car museum in central Brussels.

An enormous U.S. flag was projected onto a wall. Jay Leno — whom Sondland billed as a personal friend — delivered a standup routine whose U.S.-focused patter fell flat on the ears of European officials. At a private dinner afterward, Sondland hosted an eclectic mix of guests. Among those at the candlelit table were Zelensky, Leno and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

Within weeks, Sondland and Volker were deep into their efforts to consummate a secret political pact between Trump and Zelensky. Texts show the extent to which they explicitly pursued a transaction tying U.S. military aid and a future visit to the White House to a hard commitment from Ukraine to revive a corruption probe of a company, Burisma, that had employed Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, as a board member making between $50,000 and $100,000 a month, according to people familiar with the matter.

A July 19 exchange between Sondland and Volker shows them discussing the status of their efforts to secure clear cooperation from Zelensky before the approaching Trump-Zelensky phone call.

Sondland said that he had spoken “directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He’s got it.” Volker replied that he had met over breakfast with Giuliani to apprise him of their progress, and the two later went on to discuss what Zelensky would need to do to secure the Oval Office meeting.

“Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation — and address any specific personnel issues — if there are any,” Volker wrote.

Officials in Washington and Kiev were increasingly alarmed by developments that were out in the open, including the mysterious suspension of aid and Giuliani’s penchant for revealing his schemes in appearances on cable television.

Behind the scenes, other red flags surfaced. In a White House meeting in early July, Sondland surprised a room of U.S. officials and members of a small Ukrainian delegation when he diverged from U.S. talking points approved in advance by Bolton and others. As part of the conversation, U.S. officials recited their desire for Ukraine to continue seeking to rid its government and state-run companies of corruption.

But Sondland interjected that the United States also had other targets in mind for Kiev that went beyond its active, ongoing investigations. He didn’t cite Burisma or Biden by name, but the implication of his words struck others in the room as troubling and obvious, particularly given Giuliani’s public comments.

“What was shocking was that he said it in front of so many people,” said one official familiar with the meeting.

Such concerns in Washington were by then already tributaries in a stream of information flowing to a CIA employee who shared their dismay and would soon begin compiling an extraordinary whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general.

In Kiev, William B. “Bill” Taylor, who had served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and had agreed to return on an emergency basis after Yovanovitch’s removal, was raising alarms.

Taylor, who was recruited by Volker, had been hesitant to even take the job.

“I’m still trying to navigate this new world,” Volker texted him this spring.

“I’m not sure that’s a world I want to set foot in,” Taylor replied.

On July 21, he voiced his concern about Ukraine being treated as a pawn in America’s “domestic, reelection politics,” only to have his concerns dismissed by Sondland, who suggested that Taylor was failing to recognize how bending to Trump’s demands was the only path to improving the countries’ fraught relationship.

The next day, one of Zelensky’s top advisers, Andrey Yermak, spoke by phone with Giuliani. Coached by the tandem of Sondland and Volker, Yermak appears to have given Giuliani the reassurances he needed to secure Zelensky’s phone call with Trump.

When that call happened three days later, some White House officials who had suspicions but were not read-in to the hidden agenda were so alarmed by Trump’s conduct, and the pressure he applied to Zelensky for a political “favor,” that they stuffed a transcript of the call onto a computer system reserved for some of the government’s most highly classified secrets.

Among those engaged in the shadow diplomacy, however, the call was regarded as a breakthrough. Yermak told Volker that the “call went well,” and that Zelensky got his promised invitation to the White House, but no specific date. “Great,” Volker wrote back, noting that he would now set in motion a preliminary meeting in Madrid between Yermak and Giuliani.

Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian president needed to make a public promise to pursue the corruption investigations, according to Volker’s testimony. Sondland and Volker set about revising the wording of a statement proposed by the Ukrainians that Zelensky could issue upon announcing his trip to Washington. When the two diplomats sent the statement to Giuliani, he was dismayed that it wasn’t more specific, and according to Volker, he demanded that the Ukrainians insert specific references to the 2016 election and Burisma, the gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board.

In an Aug. 10 text message, Volker tells Yermak that once the statement is ironed out, they can then “use that” to get the date for the meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

Yermak’s response makes the bargain clear. “Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations,” he writes.

“Sounds great!” Volker replies.

Ultimately, Volker testified Thursday on Capitol Hill, the statement was shelved, because the Ukrainians didn’t feel comfortable making explicit reference to the Burisma and election interference investigations.

But by that point, Volker and Sondland were themselves unwitting to developments in Washington that would in time expose their months-long enterprise and trigger an impeachment inquiry against the president.

On Aug. 12 — the day before Volker and Sondland traded triumphant texts about the statement they wanted issued by Zelensky — the CIA whistleblower submitted his nine-page document to the inspector general of the intelligence community. Over the next several weeks, events proceeded along two separate tracks that finally converged this week in the secure hearing room of the House Intelligence Committee.

On Sept. 1, Taylor raised his concerns again. “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” That same day, at a meeting in Warsaw, the Ukrainians were hearing the same message from Vice President Pence when he told Zelensky that the United States was still concerned that Ukraine was not doing enough on corruption.

Sondland refused to engage Taylor on the matter by text, telling him to “Call me.”

A week later, on Sept. 8, Taylor issued a more forceful warning, saying that he would not be part of coercing a public pledge from Zelensky and withholding aid that Ukraine desperately needed. “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance,” he said. If that were to unfold, he said, “The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”

One day later, on Sept. 9, Taylor confronted Sondland one last time by text, saying, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Sondland, perhaps anticipating how this exchange would play out if it came into the possession of investigators or were released to the public, replied in an earnest tone: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”

Birnbaum reported from Brussels. Julie Tate and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

In call to Ukraine’s president, Trump revived a favorite conspiracy theory about the DNC hack

By Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell and Ellen Nakashima | Published September 25, 2019 6:27 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 5, 2019 9:35 AM ET

For years cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was a source of news, not a subject, as it unraveled some of the world’s most notorious hacks.

But ever since the company exposed Russian intrusions into Democratic Party computers in 2016 — findings President Trump repeatedly has attacked — CrowdStrike has been a subject of allegations that rippled through conservative news sources, onto social media, into the criminal trial of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone and, finally, in July, into a call between the president and his Ukrainian counterpart.

The release Wednesday of the text of that call prompted an ecstatic response on right-wing corners of the Internet. “CROWDSTRIKE IS BACK ON THE MENU BOYS,” said one thread Wednesday on the Reddit message board “the_donald,” devoted to pro-Trump discussion. In another thread, a commenter wrote, “Trump just put ‘Ukrainian CrowdStrike’ into the consciousness and conversation of every normie that is following this story.”

But more broadly, the vilification of CrowdStrike, a firm that long has worked closely with U.S. officials, illustrates the shape-shifting nature of misinformation as it moves across media, mixing fact with innuendo before ultimately reaching the president — owner of the world’s loudest megaphone.

“This is insane,” said Robert Johnston, CEO of Adlumin and a former CrowdStrike investigator who worked on the probe into the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers. “This is absolute babbling to the president of Ukraine. It’s hard to finger exactly which conspiracy theory he’s subscribing to. But none of them have any grounding in reality.”

The month before the Ukraine call, Trump voiced dark suspicions about CrowdStrike in a call with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. That same day, Breitbart News had published a story, based on documents that had emerged in Stone’s trial on charges of lying, obstruction and witness tampering, about how the FBI relied on information from CrowdStrike in its probe of the DNC hack.

“Take a look at Ukraine,” Trump said to Hannity in a conversation that was broadcast on his show. “How come the FBI didn’t take the server from the DNC? Just think about that one, Sean.”

People familiar with the president’s thinking said he has come to suspect the DNC server hacked by Russian intelligence agents in 2016 may have been hidden in Ukraine. The president has been known to embrace conspiracy theories, but it wasn’t immediately clear how he reached that belief about the DNC server or how that would even have been physically possible.

While it’s true that the FBI did not take custody of the affected servers, people familiar with FBI hack investigations say the agency often relies on forensic analysis by outside firms, including CrowdStrike, which is among the nation’s most prominent, having handled North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures in 2014, among others. CrowdStrike said it “provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI.”

The FBI felt it was not necessary to enter the DNC's premises and take custody of the affected servers, as agents were able to obtain complete copies of forensic images made by CrowdStrike, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The issue emerged again, on July 25, when Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate CrowdStrike during a call in which he also belittled special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and urged investigation of the son of former vice president Joseph Biden. Notes from the call were released Wednesday amid a scandal over whether Trump improperly pressured a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent, using nearly $400 million in expected foreign aid as leverage.

The nature of Trump’s reference to CrowdStrike is not obvious from the notes the White House released. At one point, he said, “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say, Ukraine has it.”

Trump added, “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.” Zelensky appeared to agree to the request, saying his new prosecutor general “will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned.”

The Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity firm’s assertion in June 2016 that Russia had hacked the DNC has been repeatedly confirmed by the Justice Department, members of Congress and Mueller’s office, which indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers last year for their role in the breach.

Nevertheless, the company has become a boogeyman of right-wing conspiracy theorists, who have falsely claimed that the company helped Democratic leaders cover up what they insist was a breach by a secret party insider.

Trump's comments on Wednesday helped solidify the company as a punching bag for his allies in the right-wing media. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said the “reference to CrowdStrike, mark my words, is momentous,” and added, “The Democrats are bent out of shape that Trump even knows about CrowdStrike."

President Trump has long made CrowdStrike a target. He’s echoed conspiracy theorists in claiming that the company is owned by, as he said in 2017, “a very rich Ukrainian.” The company’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russia-born cyber and national security expert and a U.S. citizen. He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a major Washington think tank whose donors include the foundation of Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire.

The company has also been pulled into the QAnon conspiracy theory, after an anonymous author — purportedly, a top-secret intelligence officer slowly revealing Trump's plot to foil a global pedophile cabal — claimed last year that CrowdStrike had helped China access Hillary Clinton's emails. (No officials have alleged anything close to that.)

CrowdStrike said in a statement Wednesday that it stands by its “findings and conclusions that have been fully supported by the U.S. intelligence community.” The $14 billion company saw its stock fall roughly 1 percent Wednesday.

As CrowdStrike trended on Twitter Wednesday, driven by false claims about the company, Facebook also surfaced misinformation for queries of the firm's name. Among the top results was an article featuring a meme of DNC chairman Tom Perez in a wig along with erroneous claims about the “CrowdStrike ruse.” The site touts itself as “The First Stop on Your Daily Commute to the Truth."

Suspicion about CrowdStrike’s role appears to have first entered the conservative media ecosystem in early 2017, following a BuzzFeed report that the FBI had not requested access to the DNC servers before concluding that they were penetrated by Russian hackers. In January 2017, Breitbart ran an article conveying basic details about the firm’s leadership and raising questions about its ties to Google. (CrowdStrike has plainly advertised investments made by a private equity firm affiliated with Google.)

Two months later, Tony Shaffer, a member of Trump’s 2020 reelection advisory board, posted on Facebook, “When the FBI accepts info from DNC-Hired Cybersecurity Firm & adopts the report as their own we have a big problem."

In June 2017, the conservative news site Daily Caller said “a cloud of doubt (was) hanging over the DNC’s Russia narrative” in part due to the involvement by CrowdStrike, which it said was “Funded By Clinton-Loving Google $$." A month later, the conservative Washington Times wrote that “CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin."

That theory has been boosted by Stone, Trump's longtime adviser, who has argued in legal filings this year that CrowdStrike's analysis was fatally compromised. Stone and others in Trump's orbit have alleged without evidence that Democratic insiders spearheaded the breach.

Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike suggests he still doubts the intelligence community’s findings of Russian involvement. DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa tweeted that it was “complete nonsense” and “surreal” that “Trump used “a call with a foreign leader to push conspiracy theories.”

Devlin Barrett and Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.

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