Haifa Diary
Haifa is on the "front line" in any action in the north but this blog looks at life in the shadow of danger to all of Israel
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
How does the US transport oil through Hormuz?
At least 25 million barrels of oil were transferred yesterday 25th August from small tankers to supertankers, after crossing Hormuz via the southern route near the coast of Oman. This is in excess of the average 20 million barrels shipped prior to the outbreak of war with Iran
Small tankers, moving without signaling, cross Hormuz—without risking that
expensive supertankers will be hit by Iranian launches—and then transfer their
oil "back to back" to supertankers that are outside the range of
Iranian danger, and from there they continue outward to the world.
The oil is transferred from all the Gulf states except from Iran.
This is how the US reduces the risk of damage to the large oil tankers and
minimizes exposure to harm from Iranian launches.
Meanwhile Qatari liquefied gas exports have crashed by 96% over the past six months following the war with Iran
During these months, Qatar exported only 18 shipments of liquefied gas compared to 509 shipments in the same period last year.
According to Reuters, Qatar lost $24 billion in liquefied gas revenues. The increase in American liquefied gas exports strengthened at Qatar's expense and covered part of the global demand; however, Europe's gas reserves are depleted—which could lead to a rise in gas prices.
Summary:
1. Because of Iran, Qatar lost $24 billion in revenue (less money for incitement against Israel, which is already reflected in a significant reduction of Qatari budgets).
2. The US is selling more gas.
3. Europeans are going to pay dearly for gas this coming winter.
Friday, August 21, 2026
Palestinians Poison Sheep & No One Reports It
I'll spare you the gruesome video of the dying sheep. It happened yesterday.
in a farm's grazing land. Not the first time, the ninth in two years.
Last time it was water troughs, oil mixed in so the poison
would float and get scooped up in the first bucket. This time, dates and bread
laced with poison and left where the sheep would find them first. They found
them first. Convulsions, foam at the mouth. A shepherd found the rest.
I went looking for who else was covering it. The UN
report: doesn't exist. The BBC piece: doesn't exist. The AFP wire: doesn't
exist.
What I found instead was a headline from the last time this
happened, when Jewish-owned sheep died the same way: "Israeli Colonizers
Poison Sheep." Ours. Not theirs. Ours, with the victim and the perpetrator
swapped, printed and shared and believed.
So let me save everyone the suspense. There will be no UN
OCHA report on the bread, no BBC segment on the dates and Btselem and Yeah Din
will not cover any if this.
The people who merely yawned when Jewish babies were stabbed
in their cots will not be losing sleep over the sheep
Thursday, August 20, 2026
GAZA HUMANITARIAN AID SINCE CEASEFIRE
According to the IDF, more than 2 million tons of food have entered Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire. Around 600 trucks enter daily, with 70–80% carrying food, while food prices have fallen by approximately 72%. Forty-one internationally operated bakeries are producing more than 3 million pita breads per day alongside dozens of local bakeries. (Hamas still attempting to claim taxes on products entering Gaza)
The IDF says Gaza is receiving more than 70,000 cubic meters of water daily, exceeding 60 liters per person. The water system is supported by roughly 250 water trucks, 2,800 distribution points, four operational pipelines, desalination facilities and dozens of wells.
More than 78,000 tons
of hygiene and sanitation supplies have also entered.
More than 21,000 tons of medical equipment have entered
since the ceasefire, while hospital-bed capacity has increased by more than
50%. Eight permanent hospitals, four field hospitals and four medical centers
are operating in northern Gaza, while two permanent hospitals and eight field
hospitals are operating in the south.
The IDF says the volume of aid entering Gaza exceeds
humanitarian requirements assessed by UN agencies and international
organizations. It accuses Hamas of interfering with humanitarian operations,
exploiting civilian infrastructure and distribution mechanisms, and attempting
to smuggle prohibited items under cover of aid. Israel says it will continue
coordinating with international partners to expand the humanitarian response
while preventing Hamas from exploiting it.
Monday, August 17, 2026
IDF Killing Gazan Children
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Thursday, August 13, 2026
“The “Gaza genocide” is the Greatest Hoax of all Time
(Based on published article by Andrew Fox)
“The “Gaza genocide” is the greatest hoax of all time, enabled by social media, antisemitism, and gullibility.
Remember: genocide means a deliberate attempt to exterminate a group, simply for being members of that group. That’s what “genocide in Gaza” alleges: that Israel is unsuccessfully attempting to exterminate every last Palestinian.
But what about the overall population of Gaza? If Israel had wanted to wipe out every Palestinian, you’d expect that overall total to fall, right?
At some point, the word genocide has to survive contact with arithmetic. Gaza’s own records now sit in open contradiction with the claim that Israel attempted to destroy its population: approximately 121,000 live births since 7 October 2023, against a reported direct war death toll, including natural deaths, of just over 73,000.
The extermination narrative looks increasingly absurd. More babies have been born in Gaza during the war than Gazans have been recorded as killed, including both civilians and combatants.
The usual escape route is to say that genocide need not succeed. That is legally correct and intellectually evasive when deployed to make every contrary fact disappear. Genocidal intent still has to be proved, and the ICJ has held that, where it is inferred from conduct, the destruction of the group must be the only reasonable inference available.
In Croatia v Serbia, it examined whether civilians had been spared, evacuated or allowed to survive when their supposed destroyers had the opportunity to kill them. Conduct preserving members of the protected population counted against genocide. Now apply that reasoning to Gaza.
a a) Start with polio. In September 2024, while Israeli troops were still fighting across the Strip, Israel agreed daily, area-specific pauses so Palestinian and international medical teams could vaccinate Gaza’s children. The first round reached 559,161 children under ten, around 95 per cent of the eligible population.
b)b) Israel then agreed to do it again. The second round reached 556,774 children, with 448,425 children between two and ten also receiving vitamin A. The campaign required the delivery of 1.6 million vaccine doses, refrigerators, freezers, ice boxes and hundreds of vaccine carriers. WHO and UNICEF planned for the vaccines and cold-chain equipment to transit through Ben Gurion Airport before entering Gaza.
c) c) A third campaign followed in February 2025. It vaccinated 602,795 children under ten, reaching 102 per cent of the estimated target because medical teams found children missed during earlier rounds.
d) d) The combined figure is 1,718,730 administered polio doses. (That represents repeated protection of roughly 600,000 individual children, rather than 1.7 million different children.) Almost the entire under-10 population was reached again and again.
These vaccines were administered by Palestinian health workers, WHO, UNICEF, UNRWA and their partners. Without Israeli cooperation, the campaigns could not have happened.
UNICEF’s end-of-year report says the outbreak had been interrupted by July 2025. It also records 49,000 children under two receiving catch-up vaccinations, with coverage exceeding 80 per cent. BCG vaccinations rose from 37,471 in 2024 to 47,556 in 2025.
It was an enormous public health enterprise, run over several months, involving thousands of workers and protecting nearly every child in Gaza from paralysis.
That is the physical reality of what Israel enabled: the children it was supposedly trying to destroy were repeatedly protected against a disease that could disable or kill them.
A coherent programme of genocide cannot be inferred by treating every Israeli action that preserved Palestinian life as irrelevant.
BIRTH FIGURES The birth figures deepen the problem for the accusation. A reconstruction using Gaza Ministry of Health and civil registration records suggests approximately 12,000 babies were born during the final quarter of 2023, around 38,000 during 2024, 49,267 live births during 2025, and roughly 21,000 so far in 2026. The latest portion is necessarily estimated because complete July and August registrations have not yet been published.
Many babies born during the first months had been conceived before 7 October. That explanation expired nine months into the war. Tens of thousands of children were subsequently conceived and delivered while Israel supposedly pursued the biological destruction of Gaza.
Births fell below their pre-war level, hardly surprising amid displacement and combat. Miscarriages, premature births and maternal complications also rose. Nothing about those conditions was humane or desirable.
However, the comparison remains devastating. Approximately 121,000 live births against just over 73,000 reported direct war deaths leaves a difference approaching 48,000. The number killed includes combatants as well as civilians, of course.
Gaza’s overall resident population fell because the calculation includes outward migration, the missing and other demographic changes. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that around 100,000 people left Gaza during the war. A decline driven substantially by people leaving a war zone cannot simply be relabelled as physical destruction.
No Israeli advocate needs to pretend that civilian life in Gaza was tolerable. It was an urban war fought against an enemy dug into hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools and camps. Hamas designed that battlefield to make civilian deaths unavoidable and politically useful.
Israel issued evacuation warnings, created corridors and humanitarian zones, admitted food and medicine, coordinated medical evacuations, paused military operations and enabled almost 600,000 Palestinian children to receive repeated protection against polio. Around 121,000 babies were born during the war, far exceeding the reported direct death toll.
The genocide allegation survives only by declaring every piece of exculpatory evidence meaningless. Births supposedly tell us nothing. Vaccinations tell us nothing. Food deliveries tell us nothing. Humanitarian pauses tell us nothing. Failed famine predictions tell us nothing. The absence of measured famine mortality tells us nothing.
Such reasoning insulates the genocide accusation from reality for the Palestinians. Every death becomes proof of genocide, while every Palestinian life preserved through Israeli cooperation is dismissed as public relations.
The simpler explanation: Israel fought a devastating war against Hamas, accepting extraordinary military and political costs while repeatedly undertaking measures to preserve Palestinian civilian life. Those measures were imperfect and sometimes failed, as measures do in war.
Gaza’s own birth records, vaccination figures and famine evidence have negated the allegations. A country attempting to destroy a people does not enable more than 120,000 births, facilitate 1.7 million childhood vaccine doses and support humanitarian operations feeding virtually the entire population.
That is war, with all its brutality and tragedy. It is not
genocide.



