Finian Cunningham
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In a devastating twist to emerge over the weekend it now seems that the Malaysian civilian airliner downed over Ukraine was most probably brought down as a result of sabotage by the US-backed Kiev regime.

The purpose of this audacious act of mass murder – in which 298 lives were lost – was carried out with the intention of framing the Russian government. Washington, the chief sponsor of the Kiev regime, must have known about the plot, if not being fully complicit in it.

The key to this dramatic twist is the identification of incriminating audio tapes over the weekend as fake – tapes that were created initially to implicate Moscow, as part of a massive black operation involving the destruction of the civilian airliner and all those onboard. Nationals from more than 12 countries were onboard the doomed Boeing 777, most of them Dutch, Malaysian, Australian, as well as American, Canadian, British and several other European states.

Within hours of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashing into a wheat field in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine last Thursday, Western governments and media have gradually stoked a frenzy of accusations that Moscow had a hand in the disaster. US President Barack Obama announced that unnamed American intelligence sources said that the suspected surface-to-air missile believed to have taken the jet down was fired from territory held by anti-Kiev self-defence militias. Or as Obama put it: «Russian-backed separatists».

Barry Grey

As Israel escalated its murderous attack on Gaza on Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to promote an Egyptian ceasefire plan backed by Israel that amounts to a demand for abject surrender by Hamas.

The plan, already rejected last week by the Islamist movement, requires that the Palestinians in Gaza end all military resistance to Israel’s blockade of the impoverished territory. It does not address Hamas’ demands for a lifting of the blockade and release of hundreds of Hamas supporters arrested last month during Israel’s weeks-long rampage on the West Bank.

Despite the overwhelming military superiority of Israel and the isolation of Hamas, the Islamist movement has mounted a level of resistance that has taken the Zionist regime and its American backers by surprise. On Tuesday, after Hamas rockets landed near the Tel Aviv airport, the US Federal Aviation Administration suspended all US commercial flights into and out of Israel.

The ceasefire proposal was worked out between Washington and Cairo, with the support of the Arab League, the United Nations, the European Union and the US/Israeli puppet Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas, to provide a cover for Israel to launch its ground invasion and dramatically expand its assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza. It was designed to provoke a rejection by Hamas in an attempt to foist responsibility for the mass killing in Gaza on the Palestinian leadership there. Egypt is directly aiding the Israeli military onslaught by keeping the Gaza/Egypt border crossing at Rafah sealed, preventing the Palestinians from seeking refuge in Egypt. The US-led “diplomatic offensive” gives Israel a green light to continue its mass killing. It serves as a political accompaniment to Tel Aviv’s military violence.

Patrick Martin

Gaza death toll doubles in four days

The death toll from Israeli violence in Gaza approached 600 Palestinians as of Tuesday morning local time, according to reports from hospitals and emergency care workers in the beleaguered territory. The United Nations estimated that three quarters of the dead were civilians, including more than 100 children of all ages.

Over 120 people were killed on Sunday, most of the them in the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City, and as many or more on Monday, in what observers described as the most intense military onslaught since the 1967 war, in which Israel first seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Particularly horrific was the slaughter of entire family groups, including 28 members of the Abu Jami family killed by an air strike near Khan Younis in southern Gaza; only four members of the family survived. In Rafah, near the Egyptian border, 11 members of the Siyam family were killed, including seven children.

Israeli tanks fired on a hospital in central Gaza Monday, killing at least five people and wounding 60, half of them medical staff. Twelve shells hit the Al Aqsa hospital, smashing into the administration building, the intensive care unit and the surgery department, according to Palestinian health officials.

Given the number of shells fired into the hospital, this was clearly a deliberate war crime, not a “mistake” as claimed by the Israeli government and parroted by the US and international media.