Iran’s mission to the UN has said that the UN Security Council condemnation of Israel’s attack on its consular section in Syrian capital could have prevented the need for retaliation. |

💬 "Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated," it said on the social media platform X Thursday. Iran has pledged retaliation for the Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian military advisors at its diplomatic annex in Damascus along with six Syrians on April 1. [...] "Russia had drafted a press statement condemning the Israeli attack on the diplomatic premises in Syria but was stopped by the insistence of our Anglo-Saxon colleagues," Moscow's UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told reporters.

■ US missile ship anchors off Israeli coast: Report (Anadolu)
■ US Moving More Assets to Mideast to Bolster Deterrence Ahead of Iran Retaliation (Sputnik News)
■ Qatar and Kuwait Forbid US From Using their Bases to Attack Iran (Hal Turner)
■ France Evacuates Families of Diplomats from Israel; UK Tells Citizens to Leave Israel (Hal Turner)
■ ‘Islamic world will celebrate the destruction of Israel’: Is war inevitable between Tehran and West Jerusalem?

■ APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN THE GAZA STRIP (ORDER OF 26 JANUARY 2024) (.pdf) + APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)
■ THE EXPRESSION OF HATRED FOR GENTILES (Richard Edmondson/Nahida Izzat) (10/04/14)

Israeli warplanes have conducted fresh air raids on the besieged Gaza Strip, killing a total of 30 Palestinians and wounding dozens. | The Palestinian WAFA news agency reported on Friday that 29 people lost their lives in the aerial assaults that targeted the Tabatibi family home in Gaza City's Daraj neighborhood. ● Also on Friday, the report added, Israeli warplanes bombed areas in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, including a primary school. One civilian was killed and dozens more were injured in the Israeli strikes on the school housing displaced people. The injured were transferred to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. ● Earlier, Palestinian media reports said Israeli forces had bombed several parts of northern Gaza. The reports said some of the bombings occurred in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, while a mosque in central Gaza City was also targeted. ● Israeli forces also bombed a vacated residence in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Earlier, Al Jazeera reported that six people were killed after Israeli forces bombed the Firas market in Gaza City. ● The Israeli strikes come amid growing calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where more than six months of a brutal Israeli aggression has killed at least 33,634 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 76,214 others.

■ Over 60 members of Gaza family killed in separate Israeli strikes (Digital Journal)

Various resistance groups erupt in a chorus of condemnation and condolence after an “Israeli” airstrike claimed the lives of Hamas’ leader, Ismail Hanieyh’s sons and his grandchildren. | On Wednesday, three sons and three grandchildren of Haniyeh, Hamas’ Political Bureau chief, were martyred in the strike that targeted a vehicle at the al-Shati refugee camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, which is enduring a genocidal “Israeli” war. The Islamic Jihad, Hamas’ fellow Gaza-based resistance movement, condemned the atrocity “in the strongest terms,” calling it...

💬 "...a “war crime” and a “barbaric massacre committed by the criminal Nazi entity.” “This cowardly operation confirms that the enemy is in a state of confusion as a result of the failure to achieve its goals on the ground, and seeks to compensate for it by directing the arrows of its blind hatred in revenge against the sons of the fighters and their families,” it added.

The group vowed that such acts of barbarity would only increase the resistance’s determination and steadfastness in committing to the rights of the Palestinian people. Such resistance, the Islamic Jihad asserted, would continue “until the occupation is defeated and the enemy is forced to stop the genocidal war.” The “Israeli” entity launched the war on Gaza on October 7 following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by the territory’s resistance groups against the occupied territories. Nearly 33,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been martyred in the brutal military onslaught so far.

■ Hamas’ Haniyeh: Interests of Palestinians Our Only Priority (Alahed News)
■ Haniyeh says Hamas won’t back down on its goals after Israeli murder of his sons (04/11/24)

Israeli journalist, Yuval Abraham, has written a detailed, multiple-sourced detailing how the Israeli forces have marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination using an AI targeting system.

💬 “Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes”.

💬 “During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing”.

■ ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza (04/04/24)

Nafeez Ahmed | US State Department documents show just how involved America is – and how they coached Israeli officials on how to undermine findings and defend themselves | Secret US State Department documents reveal how senior Israeli figures involved in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza, Operation Swords of Iron, played key roles in IDF military doctrines justifying the use of “disproportionate force” against civilians, with the knowledge and support of senior US Government officials. ■ The documents show that US officials have known for over a decade that a deliberate IDF policy of using disproportionate violence against civilians could result in targeting of civilian aid convoys, but worked to conceal this, creating a climate of impunity that has led to what many UN experts consider genocide in Gaza. ■ As early as 2010, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead’s destruction of significant swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, US officials were privately told by independent Israeli legal and human rights experts that the IDF was incapable of conducting meaningful reforms to avoid breaches of international humanitarian law and that only “international pressure” on the Israeli Government could hold the IDF’s “senior leadership accountable”.

💬 "...this war has destroyed Ukraine. And the longer it continues, the less there will be of Ukraine. It is very simple, if this goes on longer, Russia will capture more territory. If it goes on long enough, Russia will capture Odessa. Kiev, if we continue the way we're doing. This is a Biden project that goes back 10 years now, we'll completely destroy Ukraine. The idea that this is "siding with" Ukraine is absurd. Anyone who really follows events knows that we're not siding with Ukraine, we have paid for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to go to the front lines and die, for more and more territory to be lost. — Jeffrey Sachs