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Is malba dumping & municipal waste dumping permitted on public playgrounds? Sector 29 Leisure Valley playgrounds, visited by thousands, are plagued by daily waste dumping, inert waste piles & frequent fires. What action is needed to keep public spaces clean & safe? MoEF&CC Ministry of Health Ministry of Housing... show more
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![Exclusive: Search for bodies, guns in LA’s notorious MacArthur Park is allegedly halted by lefty pol — as California Post watches on | Jamie Paige, California Post A high-tech search for dead bodies, guns and other criminal evidence dumped in MacArthur Park Lake was halted at the last minute on Monday morning, The California Post has learned. Park rangers told the search’s organizers that they shut down the planned operation on Monday morning at the last minute after the intervention from LA City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez. Her office did not immediately return requests for comment regarding the reasons for the last-minute shutdown. The shutdown happened moments after The Post arrived on the scene and despite the search mission being planned for months. A press release promoting the search, being conducting by Safe Cities USA, was distributed last week saying a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) would scour flood of the lake of bodies. The operation was designed to scan the bottom of the murky lake for human remains, weapons and other possible criminal evidence long rumored to be submerged there. Local businessman John Alle, who owns multiple properties near MacArthur Park, organized the effort. He said it grew out of conversations he and his group, the Santa Monica Coalition, had with families whose loved ones vanished after spending time in and around the park. Alle hired sonar and remotely operated vehicle specialist Robert Fallon, whose work typically involves scanning oceans, harbors, shipwrecks and municipal infrastructure in zero-visibility, high-risk environments. Alle told The Post he has repeatedly tried to work with the councilwoman’s office to address the growing crisis at the park. Ahead of Monday’s operation, he said he reached out to city officials and was told no special permit was required because the work posed no environmental disturbance — no one would enter the lake and nothing would be removed from it. Alle said he also reached out directly to Hernandez’s office but never received a response. As recently as Sunday, Alle said, park rangers confirmed the crew had the green light. That changed when Fallon’s team arrived Monday morning with their equipment staged and ready. Alle said the lead park ranger told them the operation had to stop — first saying that Hernandez, a Democratic Socialists of America-backed lawmaker, had stepped in, then later saying her office had called. Rangers threatened to arrest the crew if they didn’t halt the operation, Alle claimed, and ultimately issued the team a parking ticket as the project was shut down. “People were bent over, shooting up, overdosing right next to us while we were being shut [down],” Alle told The Post. “I pointed it out and said, ‘Do you think that might be more important than what we’re trying to do?’ Because when they die, that’s going to be a bigger issue.” The Post has spent more than a month reporting from MacArthur Park and has repeatedly witnessed the same bleak conditions described by Alle and Fallon: open drug use in broad daylight, people slumped unconscious on benches and grass, burned debris from overnight fires, needles scattered near walkways and playgrounds, and trash piling up along the lake’s edge. Alle said the motivation behind the operation wasn’t political — it was humanitarian. “Forty thousand people live within one square mile here,” he said. “Families. Kids. This used to be one of the most beautiful parks in Los Angeles. Now people are scared to walk through it. “We wanted to show the city what’s really happening,” Alle said. “Above the water and below it.” Fallon said his team regularly works in environments where visibility is zero, using sonar to identify submerged objects without disturbing them. The same technology, he said, would have allowed crews to identify anything resting on the lake bottom — from wheelchairs and bikes to guns, knives or bodies — without putting a person in harm’s way. Fallon said the conditions at MacArthur Park Lake made traditional diving unsafe. “This is one of the dirtiest bodies of water I’ve ever seen,” Fallon said. “You’ve got layers of trash, debris, dead animals, human waste, needles — all of it. There’s constant dumping going on. “Sonar would have picked up anything,” Fallon said. “Without putting a human being in that water.” Alle also addressed the question many residents and investigators ask but rarely hear answered: How bodies could remain hidden in a shallow public lake for years. “We kept asking one question — how are the bodies not surfacing?” Alle said. “And what we were told is they’re weighted down, tied to bicycles, wheelchairs, whatever they could find.” During Monday’s visit, an ambulance arrived and transported a person who appeared to have overdosed while activity in the park continued around them. The California Post reached out to Hernandez’s office for comment, including whether she or her staff directed park rangers to shut down the operation, but did not receive a response by publication time. As of Monday afternoon, the sonar search had not been rescheduled.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2016118487882596720/amplify_video_thumb/2016118387072446464/img/C8AAZYpDkHBY-E3i.jpg)
![Abductions, Enforced Disappearances, and Unlawful Detentions: Zambia's Descent into State Lawlessness By Sishuwa Sishuwa Zambia is on a knife-edge only several hours before voters head to the ballot box on 13 August to choose political leaders in a general election that might see Hakainde Hichilema becoming the latest casualty of the anti-incumbent election wave that has recently seen the defeat of sitting presidents in other African countries such as Botswana and Malawi. As i show in greater detail below, Hichilema is racing into the final days unfettered by any rules and willing to do anything he want to steal the results. People’s rights are being arbitrarily withdrawn. Abductions, enforced disappearances, unlawful detentions, and political violence instigated by the state and ruling party cadres have characterised the descent into state lawlessness ahead of Thursday’s election. Those on the receiving end are people who question authority or do much more than what is convenient as well as opposition officials, members, and supporters (perceived or real). The sight of anguished family members pleading to the state to disclose the whereabouts of their abducted loved ones has become very common in Lusaka. A special unit consisting of officers, from the Drug Enforcement Commission, the only body that has pre-signed search warrants, has been assembled to raid houses, arrest political opponents, and forcibly abduct opposition members or sympathisers. The script is the same: those abducted by armed state agents who move in motor vehicles without license plates, are usually taken to ‘safe houses’, not police stations, which makes it difficult for families to find their illegally detained relatives. Their phones and other electronic devices are confiscated, making it impossible to communicate with the abducted or know what has happened to them. This situation has left many people living in a state of fear and paralysis. In the last few days, I have spoken to civil society activists such as Brebner Changala, prominent personalities like Mulenga Kapwepwe, and at least 14 journalists who have all resigned themselves to any possibility. “We are just waiting for our turn. We do not know when we will be abducted and where we will be taken. When you are no longer able to reach us, just know that we have been taken”, one of them told me. The profile of those abducted is largely the same: opposition members and innocent people suspected to be supporting or financing Brian Mundubile, Hichilema’s main rival in the election. Nearly all of them are being arrested daily without following due process. Many of these people have been abducted from their homes or the street rather than being summoned to the police, charged, and either issued with bond or taken to court within the prescribed legal time-frame. Musa Mwenye, one of Zambia’s most outstanding citizens who, as Attorney General, defended the Constitution in 2014 when ministers wanted to overthrow it, captured the state of things in the country when he published the following observation on 10 August: “When people are held in detention beyond the reach of the courts, contrary to the law and due process, they are being held ‘extra judicially’. Further, when people are detained for their political activities and mobilization, they are ‘political detainees’. Do we have political detainees who are being held extra judicially in Zambia today? Sadly, the answer is yes. I never thought I would ever utter the words, ‘political detainee’ and ‘extra judicial detention’ in one sentence with regards to democratic Zambia, whose democratic credentials have been a beacon of good governance and the rule of law in Africa and beyond. In the past, when persons were detained for their political activities, the accused persons were subjected to due process in courts of law. We are now witnessing detentions without even the pretension of any court process, whatsoever. This is not who we are, and, it is certainly not what we should be known for. Zambia’s well-earned name in observance of human rights and our democratic credentials is in serious jeopardy. I appeal to the Government to release all political detainees who are being held extra judicially or to present them before courts of law for the due process of the law to take its course.” On the same day, Amnesty International released its latest report on the state of human rights in Zambia. Titled “Authoritarian practices eating away at human rights in Zambia: Escalating crackdown on human rights ahead of the 2026 general elections”, the mild but relatively critical report details how the Hichilema administration has presided over “an alarming regression into authoritarian practices that undermine human rights and participation in government”, leading to “a climate of fear and impunity”. To read Amnesty’s report, click here: A coalition of 11 civil society organisations has become the latest interest group to raise alarm about this deteriorating state of democracy. The civic bodies detailed major concerns that undermine the integrity of the electoral process. These include the restrictions on opposition mobilisation, the unequal treatment accorded to the competing contestants by state institutions, the use of public resources for partisan advantage, the unchecked electoral violence, and the late/unclear guidance on valid ballot marking. They further called on the electoral body to “act with visible impartiality”, on Hichilema to stop the “use state resources for partisan gain”, and on “the police [to] hold perpetrators of violence accountable – regardless of political affiliation”. Unfortunately, their call has come too late and is unlikely to meet positive reception from the authorities. As one of Hichilema's presidential aides regularly tells some of us, ‘You can cut my finger: HH is going nowhere. It is high time you started working with him.” Given that impunity and lawlessness appear to be Hichilema’s governing principles, it is easy to see where the aide’s confidence is coming from. Much of this “climate of fear and impunity” has been created by the authorities as part of a wider effort to save Hichilema from electoral defeat. The actual details behind the effort are as chilling as they are alarming. A prominent local businessman and one of my closet friends, Stelios Sardanis, was murdered on 9 August in his house a few days after he shared fears that his life was in danger because ‘they are accusing me of financing the opposition’. Masked men came from the bush, attacked him, and vanished in the same bush. Another prominent local businessman, Valden Findlay, has been in unlawful detention since 4 August without charge! Like many of those abducted, Findlay is being kept in a shipping container in Mwembeshi, not in any prison system, or police station. His crime? Suspicion that he is financing the opposition. Only last night, nearly the entire top leadership of Mundubile’s campaign committee was either abducted and taken to unknown places or ordered by the authorities to appear before the police today. Among the affected are Mundubile’s spokesperson George Chisanga, national campaign manager Japhen Mwakalombe, and senior presidential campaign official Sebastian Kopulande (abducted). A day earlier, Mundubile’s media team was abducted and taken to an unknown place. A week before that, on 27 July, Kennedy Kamba, the official in charge of vote protection in Mundubile’s party, was arrested. He remains in detention without charge. Meanwhile, 32 artists, journalists, and other senior officials in Mundubile’s campaign team were arrested in Western Province during a lawful and peaceful rally that police deliberately disrupted for no reason using tear gas canisters. The arrested were charged with minor offences such as conduct likely to cause breach of peace, but none of them have been given bond or taken to court and consequently remain in unlawful detention, over 600 kilometers away from their families. More opposition leaders, members and supporters are earmarked for arrest and abduction today, tomorrow, and perhaps beyond. The goal of these abductions, arrests and detentions is twofold: either provoke a reaction that Hichilema can use as a pretext to declare a state of emergency, suspend the Constitution, cancel the election, and arrest even more people, or deprive Mundubile of his core support team that can help prevent industrial scale vote-rigging in Thursday’s election. In my lifetime, I have watched the end of the one-party state, the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, the protection of presidential term limits, the defence of the constitution from executive-driven manipulation, the election of a Tonga to State House, and the repeated peaceful transitions of power enabled by a professional military that chose non-intervention whenever an incumbent was defeated. After this week’s election, I remain confident that I will be witness to an even more extraordinary national story: an opposition challenger who overcame enormous obstacles to win power at the first attempt, defeating a president who promoted regionalism, nurtured corruption, eroded democracy, increased poverty, and enabled multinational plunder of the country’s mineral wealth. I maintain that Hichilema will lose Thursday's election. Although the president is doing his desperate best to try to steal the vote, I am convinced that he is going, whether he likes it or not. In fact, his desperate antics reveal his fear even at this late hour. As I have said before, the only thing that can save Hichilema from defeat is reckless industrial scale vote-rigging or the pre-ballot death of his main rival. There are several factors that militate against the opposition in African politics, but the obstacles that have been placed in the path of Brian Mundubile are considerable. This is why I am saying his victory will be extraordinary, given the lengths to which Hichilema has gone to retain power. I have nothing personal against Hichilema. It is just that my professional training empowers me to see things that many others can only see after the event. As early as June 2023, I warned that Hichilema was so desperate to retain power that he had devised a five-point plan which, “if successfully implemented, risks undermining Zambia’s hard-won democracy”. I identified the plan as consisting of five objectives: containing the Catholic Church; co-opting influential elites from civil society; capturing the two formal institutions that are critical to the management of elections: the Electoral Commission of Zambia and the judiciary; weakening opposition parties; and covering corruption tracks. In the same article, I explained the three reasons behind Hichilema’s early desperation to secure a second term: fear of prosecution, the desire to avoid the embarrassment of losing power after just one term, and the push for a sectarian agenda aimed at entrenching his co-ethnic Tongas in state positions and grossly reducing the influence of the majority Bemba and Chewa ethnic groups in public life. At the time, few people understood what I was saying. Some said I just hated Hichilema, and not even reason-based evidence to the contrary changed their false perceptions. Others like Hichilema's fellow ethnic Tongas, led by Dr O’Brien Kaaba, a law lecturer at the University of Zambia, and Dr Priva Hang’andu, a Policy Advisor at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), rose to the President’s defence, dismissing my concerns about “shrinking democratic space, mounting corruption, political intolerance, and government desperation” as entirely unfounded. To read my 2023 article, click here: To read Kaaba and Hang’andu’s response in defence of their fellow Tonga, click here: Well, the passage of time has absolved me and given practical meaning to Thabo Mbeki’s observation that “Empty stomachs can be good or bad teachers. The problem with our African intellectuals is that they too have stomachs, in addition to their excellent brains.” For the sake of Zambia, I wish my 2023 concerns were wrong. I raised them then in the hope that Hichilema, who was elected on a ticket of democratic reform, could change for the better before it was too late. Unfortunately, his transition from a promising reform to a despot only got worse with time, as I showed two years later in another opinion piece published by the Mail & Guardian several months before Hichilema's State House team asked the newspaper's new editors to stop giving me platform. To read the article in which I examined how the fear of losing power and the financial and political benefits that come with it after only one term in office was evident in President Hichilema’s increasingly panicky and politically suicidal decisions, click here: The “authoritarian practices” and ‘escalating crackdown on human rights” that Amnesty International and others were to only to notice three years later could have been stopped much earlier if many voices had stood up to Hichilema before his autocratic aspirations were emboldened by their silence. The obstacles that Hichilema has placed in Mundubile’s path to power are illustrative of how the president has, over the last five years, repeatedly abused state institutions to systematically destroy organised political opposition and any semblance or vestige of autonomy in formal institutions outside the executive. There are many obstacles that Hichilema has placed in Mundubile’s path, but I will highlight only 10 here to illustrate the point that the leading opposition challenger has had so many domestic and foreign forces working against him in this election that it is extraordinary that he has made it a competitive contest. The first obstacle was the limitation placed on Mundubile's international travel. When he tried to leave the country to mobilise resources for his presidential bid, the state blocked him. He was arrested at the airport, charged with a cyber-related offence, and had all his travel documents and phones confiscated. The latter action means that he has not been able to leave Zambia since March this year as his passport remains with the state. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work. The second obstacle was the restriction on the political party ticket that Mundubile could use to run in the election. After the state instigated divisions in all parties that were perceived as capable of serving as possible vehicles for the expression of his presidential ambition, including the main opposition Patriotic Front (PF) to which he belonged, another opposition party, namely the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) offered him a platform. However, the state quickly moved in and, as it had done to other parties, factionalised the FDD to prevent him from running on it. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, ultimately finding a home in the little-known National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity (NRPUP) on the eve of nominations. The third obstacle was mere appearance on the ballot. After Mundubile formally presented his credentials to the officials of the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), what should have been a straightforward acceptance of his nomination papers turned into a long waiting game as the authorities exerted significant pressure on the electoral body to find reason to disqualify his candidature, as was done to several other presidential hopefuls. Instead of complaining, he remained calm throughout this unnecessary attempt at electoral exclusion until the ECZ, hours later, reluctantly accepted his nomination. The fourth obstacle emerged soon after Mundubile became a presidential candidate. As soon as his campaign took off to a rapturous reception, the ECZ halted it, ordering that no one should conduct meetings that have not been sanctioned by the electoral body. The ECZ subsequently imposed a campaign schedule that required him to start in his strongest constituencies and end in the ruling party strongholds: Northwestern, Western, and Southern provinces. Any keen observer understood the motivation: to arrest whatever momentum his campaign would have built by the time he was arriving in the final three provinces where he was expected to draw the least crowds. To demonstrate their lack of impartiality, the ECZ decided against issuing any campaign schedule to Hichilema, treating him as President who can go wherever he wants rather than a presidential candidate who, like his rivals, was subject to the same rules. When thousands turned up at Mundubile's rallies in the first two provinces, the ruling party and the state employed violence in a bid to curtail his campaign activities and provoke a reaction that could be used as a pretext for arresting him. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, even as his campaign vehicles were extensively destroyed by ruling party thugs. The fifth obstacle is the scarce resources resulting in part from restrictions placed on Mundubile's capacity to mobilise financial resources for his campaign. Unable to leave the country, he turned to local businessmen for support but nearly all who tried to render a helping hand had their bank accounts frozen or faced threats and intimidation from the authorities. Others who were merely suspected to be sympathetic to him were arrested and kept in detention without charge (the earlier cited Valden Findlay is a good example here) or murdered in suspicious circumstances by unknown people (As I said, Stelios Sardanis had expressed concern about state-linked threats on his life before he was assassinated!). Instead of complaining, Mundubile quietly went about his work, successfully turning to crowdfunding to raise resources from ordinary citizens who, overlooking their own struggles, injected whatever little money they could afford into his campaign. The sixth obstacle is extremely limited media coverage. After his candidacy was confirmed, the state blocked any positive coverage of Mundubile in the publicly funded media and while the ruling party used financially rewarding ads to buy almost all the advertising space in the private media, that is in newspapers, television and radio stations. This was in addition to buying influencers and almost the entire music industry to endorse and support Hichilema. The objective of crowding Mundubile out of media coverage was to help nurture the false narrative that there is no opposition in Zambia. Instead of complaining that he is completely blacked out of coverage by the public media and has much of the private media arraigned against him, Mundubile quietly went about his work, regularly communicating with the public through his social media pages, public rallies, one radio station (Hot FM) and one television station (KBN) – the latter two suffering continued threats and intimidation from the state and ruling party for daring to carry his adverts. The seventh obstacle was the denial of permission for Mundubile to use the airspace for efficient campaign activities. At the start of his campaign, a known private charter company that should have flown him around the country approached the authorities on his behalf to seek clearance. Its application was however frustrated by the authorities who only said “those above” had denied it. Instead of complaining, Mundubile quietly went about his work. He undertook all his campaign activities across 116 districts and 10 provinces – minus the places he was unable to visit due to violent attacks from ruling party cadres – in less than 60 days using road travel. So grave was the threat of violence against Mundubile in Southern Province, what should have been his concluding stop, that he had to cancel his trip there and instead hold a virtual public rally, following credible intelligence reports that he was earmarked for assassination while in the province. The eighth obstacle has been the constant arrests and abduction of his campaign officials and even parliamentary candidates as well as high-level defections of his party functionaries to the ruling party following extremely attractive financial inducements. As stated earlier, his media team has been abducted and remains in unlawful detention. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work with remnants of his previously bigger campaign team. The ninth obstacle has been state-instigated baits to lure him into provocation. In Kitwe, his campaign team was attacked, but the attackers deliberately left behind the bus they had used to launch the attacks in the hope that he and his team would set it ablaze so that they could be arrested for arson and kept in detention. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Lusaka, his campaign team was violently attacked. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Solwezi, his campaign team was violently attacked. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Luampa, Kalabo and Mongu, his campaign team was violently attacked by ruling party cadres and the police. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. Had he accepted the bait, he could, by now, be in prison or six feet under the ground. The tenth obstacle has been the attempt by the state to undermine his vote protection measures. It is hard enough to go into an election that is administered by a largely compromised Electoral Commission of Zambia. Never before has the ECZ been led by a chairperson who is the incumbent president’s former personal lawyer; who, unlike all her predecessors who came from the judiciary and had a lucrative lifetime pension to fall back on in case of exit from office, knows that she will have no job if her former client loses the election tomorrow; and who has a daughter facing a no-bail murder charge that was revised to the less serious charge of manslaughter in unclear circumstances that many saw as a possible trade-off, linked to the election, between those in the executive and the accused’s mother. Amidst credible fears of vote manipulation, Mundubile managed under difficult circumstances to organise about seven million Kwacha for the payment of polling agents throughout the country. On 10 August, state agents grabbed all this money for no credible reason in a move that is clearly aimed at making it easier to bribe the polling agents and manipulate the vote, especially if, as some fear, the government will shut down the internet during the counting and employ violent thugs to remove opposition polling agents and election observers for the purpose of facilitating the swapping of the ballots or inflating the figures in support of the incumbent president in ruling party strongholds where turnout might be low. Instead of complaining, he has quietly gone about his work, believing that with the support of the people, there is little that the president can do to prevent his exit from power. Mundubile has proved his mettle. In essence, many people are supporting Mundubile in this election not because he is the best candidate but because he is the recipient of the revulsion against a president that many people see as primarily serving foreign commercial interests as well as his own private interests and those of his ethnic-regional community. Mundubile has become the figurehead of a growing movement that is determined to peacefully remove a dangerous president who, were he to succeed in stealing the vote, would set Zambia on an even more perilous path. I sincerely hope the Zambian people will turn out on Thursday to say “enough.” However, with a compromised ECZ, a police service that only arrests members of the opposition, a partisan leadership in charge of the country’s military, and an incumbent president with a character that knows no restraint, anything is possible after Thursday’s vote. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. NB: The violence in the attached video clip shows what happens when soldiers, who are not trained to maintain law and order, are deployed to handle police functions, as Hichilema did in January this year when he asked them to "sort out" informal small scale miners in the country's North-Western Province. The pro-Hichilema army commander, Geoffrey Zyeele ,whose orders resulted in this barbaric violence after he directed soldiers "to exterminate and fumigate all illegal miners" remains in his position to date.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2087156707646435407/amplify_video_thumb/2087156612624486400/img/tBq-LUqbDa9z8pmW.jpg)
![THE TRUTH ABOUT OCTOBER 7TH: Reports confirm that Netanyahu, the Mossad and the IDF deliberately allowed the October 7th attack by Hamas to take place. They knew one year in advance of the attack and did nothing to stop it. They deliberately stood down during the attack allowing many more innocent Israelis to be slaughtered in order to get domestic and international support for war in Gaza and Iran. HOW DID OCTOBER 7TH HAPPEN? On October 7th, Hamas was able to carry out its shocking terror attack against Israel, despite Israel’s intelligence, military and security apparatus commonly considered the best in the world. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself tweeted and quickly deleted a statement denying any foreknowledge of the October 7th attack. “Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas" the tweet said, before it was promptly deleted. Why did Netanyahu’s team delete that tweet? Because in fact he did have intelligence that there would be an attack by Hamas and tried to hide this from the world. Foreign security services, Israeli security services and the Israeli public all knew that Hamas was planning a violent, cross-border incursion where they would attempt to over-run and attack the kibbutz communities in southern Israel and take prisoners back to Gaza. And they also knew when. But it happened anyway. Why? Ten days before the attack, and then again three days before the attack, Egypt intelligence officials passed “repeated warnings” to the highest levels of Israel’s government. In one of these warnings, Egypts premiere intelligence minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu and warned that Hamas was about to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Unnamed Egyptian officials told YNET News that they were shocked by Netanyahu’s “indifference to the news.” But Israel didn’t have to trust or believe Egypt, because actually, most of the warnings of the October 7th attack came from Israeli civilians and the Israeli military itself. The civilians and soldiers who brought these emergency warnings to the military were ignored and in some cases, strangely enough, threatened with legal action. In 2022, the IDF, through confidential sources, or spies, in Gaza, actually obtained the detailed Hamas Al Aqsa Flood attack plans. Codenamed “Jericho Wall” by Israel, the excursion plan called for a barrage of rockets to begin the attack and for gunmen to pour into Israel en masse via para-gliders, on motorcycles and on foot and take hostages back into Gaza, all of which happened on October 7th. Hamas followed the blueprint that Israel already had with shocking precision. So Israel had the attack blueprints, but were they taken seriously by the IDF? Yes, the plans were diligently studied. A presentation on the planned attack was given to senior officers in the IDF’S Gaza division. The presentation concluded with this sentence: “This invasion constitutes the gravest threat that IDF forces are facing in the defense of Israel” So in response to this, did Israel’s security establishment beef up and enhance their surveillance of Hamas militants on the other side of the border? No, stunningly, they actually did the exact opposite. They decided to entirely stop monitoring Hamas’s handheld radio traffic. Because they saw it “as a waste of effort” even though during that same time in 2022, Israelis living in the kibbutz communities near the Gaza border, most of whom have some type of military training due to Israel’s mandatory IDF service laws, were, according to Israeli media, picking up clear evidence that Hamas was “practicing the breaching of the fence and conquering kibbutzim and seizing hostages and destroying everything in their path.” Then, In April 2023, 6 months before the attack, again according to Israeli media, the IDF “restricted the ability” of Israelis living near the border “to monitor Hamas’ wireless traffic.” In September 2023, less than a month before the attack, the head of the IDF’s “Devil’s Advocate” intelligence unit, which challenges prevailing narratives within Israel’s military, twice alerted senior decision-makers in both the army and political spheres about Hamas’ plans for a large-scale cross-border military operation. He reiterated these warnings in person at Intelligence Branch strategic assessment sessions on September 26th and 27th. Just days before the attack. So it was clear to everyone that Hamas wasn’t only planning to do something horrible, but it was also clear what that horrible and evil thing was. According to a female IDF soldier who spoke to Israel’s channel 12 news program, she was constantly trying to warn her superiors about the gravity of Hamas training exercises. She was threatened with legal action. “We were told that if we continue to harass on this issue, you will stand trial.” So, Egypt knew, the Israeli military knew, and the Israeli civilians knew. Yet, two days before October 7th, the Israeli military took two entire commando brigades, or around 100 soldiers, away from the the soon to be breached locations of the Gaza border and sent them to the other side of the country, to the West Bank village of Huwara despite no Hamas presence being in Huwara and despite there being giant Israeli dance parties taking place right along the same border fence where violent, escalating and obvious Hamas drills of breaching and kidnapping were taking place. According to Israeli media reports, Lt. Col. Sahar Fogel, an operations officer at the IDF’s Gaza Division, opposed the approval of the Nova Party based on the last minute nature of its event application and the intensifying Hamas drills at the border and because if something were to happen, more soldiers were on holiday. It was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The Lt. Col. explained his opposition to the party’s approval to his superiors. He was instructed to allow the event. Israeli Newspaper Haaretz reported that other Gaza division officers privately “told of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party.” In February 2024, Elkana Federman, the head of security for the Nova festival gave an interview to Israel’s Channel 14 where he made a statement that hasn’t been reported on by any American media. “I had a guard at the festival who had served in the Re’im Division [near Gaza border], and a week before the festival he sent me a voice message, basically warning me, saying, ‘Elkana, something is going to happen over Sukkot. I just wanted to let you know, there are a lot of warnings, I passed the voice message on to local IDF officials and they told me everything was all right.” The Hamas attacks were violent and brutal. They have been likened to tragic events such as September 11th and the Holocaust, so it comes as a surprise that Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Likud party have at times described the attacks as somewhat of a political gift. Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the Knesset, referred to the attack as sort of gift from God because they are being used to justify the current ongoing war, stating: “We were meant to fight this war against Hamas, as is happening now, and luckily for us it came from the heavens.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that Israel didn’t have domestic or international support to invade or destroy Gaza. He said the October 7th Hamas attack solved both of those problems for him, stating “We couldn’t get the domestic consensus to make a definitive solution to the problem of Hamas. That is, no one would agree across the Israeli public to go in and basically destroy Hamas, go throughout Gaza and destroy Hamas. We didn’t have the international consensus either; nobody would understand why we are doing it. Both conditions were created because of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.” Did the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community, and the political leadership of Israel allow this ghastly attack to happen to justify wiping out the population of Gaza? The evidence proves, yes. WHERE WAS THE IDF? During the October 7th attacks what did the Israeli military do? For hours they did nothing, it was a deliberate military stand down order. It's important to remember that Israel is just slightly bigger than the size of the state of New Jersey. But for some reason, once the Hamas attacks began, the time it took the Israeli army and rescue teams to arrive, fight and rescue Israelis at the different kibbutz communities and sites being attacked took anywhere from 4 hours to more than 20 hours. The New York Times has reported: “Thousands of soldiers were less than 40 minutes from the towns that were under attack.” A video that Israeli media obtained from an army helicopter, corroborated by Israeli survivors, prove that there were more than 500 Israeli soldiers directly outside of the Kibbutz entrance, fully armed, with Humvees and tanks but it took 10 hours for those soldiers to show up. Avital, a survivor of the Be’eri attack, described to Haaretz: “500 soldiers stood outside, with equipment and vehicles. I remember yelling at them, ‘We’re being slaughtered, come in, save us and no one said anything.” So why did it take so long for help to arrive? Haaretz reported: “At 7 A.M., the party organizers called Lt. Col. Elad Zandani, the man tasked with approving the festival and told him that terrorists were shooting the partygoers. He suggested that they fend for themselves. The first IDF forces arrived at the party scene at 3 P.M., that’s an 8 hour response time for one of the most efficient, capable and well militarized security forces in the world operating in a country the size of New Jersey with their Gaza division only a few miles away. And what makes this even more strange? Around 4 hours into the Hamas assault, at 10:46AM, Israel was already launching operations and bombing targets inside of Gaza. So, if Israel could begin an offensive attack into Gaza within 4 hours, why did it take more than 6 hours and in most cases more than 10 hours and even 20 hours in some cases to mobilize inside of their own country to stop the ongoing attack and to defend the lives of their own people? The New York Times quoted Ben Zion, an Israeli military reservist who spoke to Israeli media. He said his unit voluntarily left central Israel in a convoy at 1:30PM, they got together and left for the south on their own. He expected to see the roads packed with soldiers and equipment and armored vehicles heading south. “The roads were empty!” he recalled in an interview. Roughly seven hours into the fighting, he turned to the reservist next to him and asked: “Where’s the IDF?” The brutal and deadly Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th is so central to justifying Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that Israel is actually outlawing questioning the October 7th government narrative. Israelis who spread information counter to the October 7th government narrative, which the Israeli Knesset calls “falsehoods and propaganda” could face up to 5 years in prison. Between the abundance of concrete evidence that suggests Israeli military allowed October 7th to happen by ignoring dozens of reliable and specific warnings, threatening soldiers with legal actions who tried to warn their military superiors and taking troops away from the area of the Gaza border that was attacked and now evidence that suggests there was some type of military stand down order in place on October 7th, it is important to ask, what was October 7th and what kind of war is the United States supporting? WHAT IS THE HANNIBAL DIRECTIVE? Images and videos of burnt cars, blacked and charred bodies and incinerated homes in southern Israel were plastered on every phone screen and television after the October 7th Hamas attack. The images and videos were used by the Israeli government to justify the military’s heavy handed tactics in their ongoing war against Hamas, But were all the images and videos actually the result of the Hamas attack? Innocent Israeli civilians were brutally killed by Hamas on October 7th, but there is evidence that proves the IDF killed their own Israeli citizens in what is known as the Hannibal Directive. To understand what the Israeli military did to their own civilians on October 7th, you have to understand the political aspirations of Hamas and what the goal of taking hostages is, it is political leverage. There are over 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. 3,000 of whom haven’t been to trial or charged with a crime. When militant groups manage to capture Israeli civilians or soldiers it gives them leverage to force a prisoner swap and get some of their people out of Israeli prison. For example, in 1986, Hamas managed to kidnap 3 Israeli soldiers and bring them to Gaza. They demanded 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in return for these soldiers. After this, the military drafted a secret field order to prevent future kidnappings. It was called the "Hannibal Directive." The directive gets its name from the Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than allow himself to be captured alive by the romans. In 2003, strangely enough on October 7th 2003, three Israeli soldiers were taken hostage and brought into Lebanon. Following the activation of the Hannibal Directive, IDF attack helicopters fired indiscriminately on 26 vehicles thus ensuring the death of their own soldiers and therefore robbing Lebanese militants of the ability to demand Israel make concessions. The Last known application of the Hannibal Directive was in 2014. In Rafah. Hamas fighters managed to capture an Israeli soldier, Lt. Hadar Goldin. Instead of allowing the lieutenant to be used as leverage by Hamas, the military killed him. Dropping bombs, missiles and shells on the area he was being held, killing the soldier and also over 100 Palestinian civilians. The scale of the Hannibal Directive on October 7th was entirely different from those of the past. A retired Israeli air force general, Nof Erez, described it during a podcast with Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper saying “The Hannibal Directive was apparently applied at a certain stage, because at the moment they understand there is a kidnapping, they immediately say, ‘Guys, this is Hannibal.’ But the Hannibal we trained for all of the last twenty years, is for a vehicle we know at what point of the fence it enters, on what side it drives, and maybe even on which road it drives. This was a Mass Hannibal.” We know the Hannibal Directive means to kill your own, so what does “mass Hannibal” mean? A large mainstream Israeli media outlet reported: “In the week after Black Shabbat, October 7th, soldiers of elite units, at the initiative of the Southern Command, checked about 70 vehicles that remained in the area between the Otaf settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed.” 70 vehicles and in some cases, everyone in the vehicle was killed. These are Israelis killed by Israel. Again, only reported on in the Israeli media. Tuval Escapa, is a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri. He set up a hotline so kibbutz residents could communicate with the Israeli army. He told Haaretz that “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions, including shelling houses on their occupants” in order to eliminate would-be hostages as well the terrorists. They shelled entire houses. Do we hear this in the American mainstream media? That the Israeli military targeted and destroyed over 70 cars with hellfire missiles that were filled with Israelis and that they decimated entire Israeli homes with tank shells? A report in Haaretz on October 20th notes that the Israeli military also carried out an airstrike on their own military base, the Erez crossing. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time. An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat gave an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli hostages during gun battles with Hamas militants. IDF General Barak Hiram, prevented hundreds of troops from entering Kibbutz Be’eri for hours on October 7th, when he finally allowed the IDF to go in, he ordered tanks to fire on multiple homes. The tank shells killed at least 12 Israeli hostages and 3 children. Recently the UN published an investigation confirming several of these facts, namely, that the IDF had in fact activated the Hannibal Directive on October 7th stating “The Commission is aware of allegations that Israeli Special Forces used the “Hannibal Directive” to prevent the capture of Israeli civilians and their transfer to Gaza, even at the cost of killing them" The Commission documented one statement by an ISF tank crew, confirming that the crew had applied the Hannibal Directive. The Israeli military, Israeli civilians and the United Nations all admit to the IDF purposely killing their own on October 7th. How many? It’s hard to know the exact number, but the imagery of charred bodies and incinerated cars and homes are still being used to this day to manufacture consent and support for Israel’s ongoing assault of the Gaza Strip, where more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed including 15,000 innocent children. ISRAEL'S FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR HAMAS: Israel and Netanyahu helped funnel over $1 Billion dollars to Hamas in order to keep Palestine from being recognized as a State. It was Netanyahu and Israel who helped create Hamas thinking that they could control them and would be able to use Hamas as an excuse for their continued military operations and occupation in Gaza. ISRAEL'S SECRET NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The front lines of the war between Israel and Hamas are expanding and moving beyond Gaza. Yemen’s Houthis intensified their involvement, going from simply attacking Israeli bound cargo ships to now navigating an armed drone over 1,200 miles, evading Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and managed to strike inside Tel Aviv causing a massive explosions. In addition to their ongoing war in Gaza, Israel has attacked or been attacked by Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to promise Israel unconditional and limitless support. But has anyone even asked if this support is LEGAL? According to the 1976 Symington and Glenn Amendments of the Armed Foreign Assistance Act, which is now a part of the Arms Export Control Act, the United States cannot give foreign aid, whether that’s economic or military, to any nuclear armed state that is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, but the United States gives billions of dollars every year to Israel and according to all international arms organizations, Israel has anywhere from 90 to 400 nuclear warheads and Israel has not signed the NPT. So how does this legally happen? The United States and Israel simply pretend Israel does not have nuclear weapons, literally, that’s what’s done. It is called “Nuclear Ambiguity.” This nuclear ambiguity, which allows Israel to continue to receive billions from the U.S. and also operate and maintain their nuclear arsenal with absolutely no international oversight and zero regulation, is maintained and preserved through the threat of force. Due to a previously Top Secret gag order, all U.S. government agency employees and contractors are forbidden from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Even insinuating or mentioning information that’s already in the public domain is forbidden for all federal employees and contractors. It sounds hard to believe but let’s give an example: James Doyle used to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a nuclear security specialist. He violated this gag order. Doyle wrote an academic article arguing that Nuclear weapons do not do a good job at deterring countries from attacking one another, he wrote: “Nuclear weapons did not deter Egypt and Syria from attacking Israel in 1973, Argentina from attacking British territory in 1982 or Iraq from attacking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.” A clear reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons. Doyle’s security clearance was promptly withdrawn, his home was raided, his computers were seized and he was fired from the Department of Energy. So apparently that’s how it works. In 2018, The New Yorker published a stunning report in which they discuss another way Israel’s nuclear ambiguity is enforced: secret presidential letters. According to former U.S. officials and former Israeli officials, every recent US administration since Clinton in 1993 has performed the same ritual as it came into office. They all agreed to undermine U.S. law by signing secret letters, brought to them by hand by their Israeli counterparts stipulating that they’ll never acknowledge what everyone knows: that Israel indeed has nuclear weapons. The National Archives is currently refusing to release the letters, arguing that even confirming their existence would violate the secrecy pact. So there’s a gag order that stops all federal employees and contractors from simply acknowledging Israel’s nuclear weapons and U.S. presidents sign secret letters promising not to acknowledge or pressure Israel to do anything relating to their proliferation status. That means asking questions like these are entirely off limits enforced by the threat of government violence or law fare. But all of this information leads to a series of questions: Where does Israel dispose of the toxic waste its program generates? Are Israel’s nuclear weapons ever used to coerce the U.S. into making adverse policy decisions? How about our allies? Besides apartheid South Africa, has Israel offered any of its nuclear weapons for sale to other foreign countries? To U.S. adversaries? Has Israel mounted nuclear weapons onto its German supplied Dolphin class submarines? Or their American supplied F-35 jets? No questions are allowed and what is the cost, the dollar amount, for Americans, of this “nuclear ambiguity” policy? To be exact, almost $240 billion dollars of military and economic aid has gone from the U.S. taxpayer since the passing of the Symington and Glenn Amendments. That’s far more than the United States spent rebuilding Europe under the Marshall Plan. And none of that quarter of a trillion dollars should have been allowed under U.S. law. That’s the price of keeping Israel’s secret. A quarter trillion and yet where is the International Atomic Energy Agency and international nuclear inspectors? The same ones who monitor every other nuclear armed country in the world? DOES ISRAEL PERSECUTE CHRISTIANS? Before the war, Israel’s Christian minority were already being targeted with dispossession and violence. In Jerusalem’s Old City, narrow streets line the ancient neighborhood and Jewish Israeli civilians spitting on and attacking Christian clergy members is commonplace in Israel. Evidence of this shows a video from a few days before October 7th of Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem carrying a cross while a group of Orthodox Jewish Israelis many of them children walk by and spit at the Christians. It’s become mainstream to believe Christians don’t belong in Israel and only Jewish people do. A few years ago, the mission, the Virgin Mary’s place of death, was attacked and vandalized by Israelis. The graffiti on the ancient walls read “Death to heretical Christians, the enemies of Israel,” and “May his name and memory be obliterated,” in reference to Jesus. According to Haaretz, at a Jewish school, the leader of an anti-assimilation group Bentzi Gopstien told students that it’s quote “mitzvah” or a “good deed” to burn and destroy Christian churches. Should Americans, especially Christian Americans be allowing billions of their tax dollars to be used to ethnically cleanse, attack and bomb Holy sites and Christian civilians? What has happened since Israel has launched its war against Hamas? Israel has displaced 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, 80% of the buildings and homes have been reduced to rubble, at least 45,000 Palestinians have been killed with 50% being women and children. In America, we’re told we should prioritize sending billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel over dealing with our own issues here at home because Israel needs to be able defend itself. Well, it seems like what initially appeared as a defensive war, is appearing more like an offensive war with the expansionist goal of the permanent military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Did the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community, and the political leadership of Israel allow this terrible attack to happen to justify wiping out the population of Gaza, a genocide justified by an attack that Israel could have stopped had they wanted to.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1941665181420904891/amplify_video_thumb/1941627551786385409/img/gp24yzSPk-cDYjh4.jpg)