Hillary Clinton: 'We are living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy'

Hillary Clinton did not hold back in her speech at this year's Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, saying that "we are living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy.”
Clinton was speaking at an event commemorating the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when state troopers brutally attacked civil rights demonstrators who were marching for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965.
Here's some of what she said:

"This is a time, my friends, when fundamental rights, civic virtue, freedom of the press, the rule of law, truth, facts, and reason are under assault. And make no mistake, we are living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy."

Clinton also called out the media and the Trump administration.

"When racist and white supremacist views are lifted up in the media and the White House, when hard fought for civil rights are being stripped back, when the single most important fight of our time, which makes it possible to fight every other fight and must be as Fredrick Douglass would say, our North Star, the fight to protect our vote is not gathering the momentum and the energy and the passion it deserves. We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?"

She called on the crowd to renew the fight for voting rights, noting recent setbacks such as the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. She also praised the efforts of Georgia's Stacey Abrams and other activists.

 

"That is why we need starting right now here in Selma, once again, to redouble our efforts with a 21st century civil rights movement devoted to claiming, enforcing and defending the right to vote, once and for all."

The former senator and secretary of state is being honored with the International Unity Award and will be inducted into the National Voting Rights Museum's Women's Hall of Fame.

What a week for the New Troika!

By Habib Siddiqui

 

This past week has been a very exciting week globally.

At home, in the USA, there was the much-anticipated House hearing of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s one-time personal lawyer, the ‘fixer’. He appeared fully prepared, genuine, believable and remorseful for his previous support and lying on behalf of his former boss whom he described as a con-man, liar and cheat. Trump is also a racist and a bigot. None of these epithets for Mr. Trump is, however, new. He is worse.

In order to deflect the public opinion from the domestic scene, Mr. Trump went to Vietnam to meet his new buddy – President Kim Jung Un of North Korea. Even there, the poor POTUS did not have a good night sleep. He watched the damning testimony of the man who previously did not mind ‘taking a bullet’ for him. He was asked to comment about the House hearing. As expected, he said Cohen had lied except on one occasion that being his alleged Russian collusion. Cohen did not have a definitive answer on Trump’s involvement on the matter although he suggested that it was possible based on what he had heard Don Jr. whispering to Mr. Trump at the Oval Office.

As expected, the Republican party members tried to dispute Cohen’s claims alleging him to be a convicted liar. Republican congressman Mark Meadows (of North Carolina) invited Lynne Patton – a longtime Trump associate and current Housing and Urban Development official – to the hearing and referred to her while disputing Cohen's allegation that the president is a racist. 

Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the freshman Democrat from Detroit, was one of the last to question Michael Cohen on Wednesday. She said, "Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them, does not mean they aren't racist."  She added that the use of Patton as a political "prop" was "racism in itself." 

Meadows angrily denied the implication of racism and asked for Tlaib's comment's to be "stricken from the record." 

After Rep. Mark Meadows defended himself against allegations of racism during a House committee meeting Wednesday, critics resurfaced two 2012 videos of the North Carolina Republican in which he vowed to send then-President Barack Obama "home to Kenya." "2012 is the time we're going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is," Meadows said at a June 9, 2012 rally. "We're going to do it!" Three days later, he made a similar remark at a tea party event.

Critics painted Meadows' remarks as an endorsement of "birtherism" – a term for the baseless belief that Obama was not born in the U.S. Many have said the effort to deny the citizenship of the first African-American president without evidence was rooted in racism. 

The official Twitter account for the anti-Trump Democratic Coalition alleged that "Meadows promotes the racist birther conspiracy theory." 

Mr. Trump returned home empty-handed without signing any treaty with Mr. Kim Jung Un. He said that a no deal was better than a bad deal. Apparently, contrary to his bloated claims, Trump has not mastered the art of deal-making, or so it appears now.

Remember Bernie Sanders? The popular U.S. senator from Vermont kicked off his presidential campaign Saturday (March 2) miles from the rent-controlled apartment where he grew up in Brooklyn and forcefully made the case that he is nothing like fellow New Yorker Donald Trump, proclaiming himself the Democrat best prepared to beat the incumbent in 2020.

"My experience as a child, living in a family that struggled economically, powerfully influenced my life and my values. I know where I came from," Sanders boomed in his unmistakable Brooklyn accent. "And that is something I will never forget."

He is right. With a huge support base from the state of Vermont to California, from the state of Florida to the Washington state since his failed bid against Senator Hillary Clinton in 2016, he is currently the front runner within the Democrat hopefuls.

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When Avichai Mandelblit was being considered for the post of Israeli attorney general, the selection committee had a question: If there was enough evidence, would he prosecute the man who was then his boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? After all, Mr. Mandelblit served for three years as Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, a position of deep trust.

Mr. Mandelblit did not hesitate. He said, yes.

Israel's attorney general (AG) announced Thursday (Feb. 28) that his office plans to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges after a two-year investigation. Mr. Mandelblit outlined the cases against the prime minister in a 57-page letter sent to Netanyahu’s lawyers. The prime minister faces one count of bribery and three counts of breach of trust. Police have previously recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different cases.

The decision marks the first time in Israel’s history that a serving prime minister has been told he faces criminal charges and casts a heavy shadow over Netanyahu’s re-election campaign.

In the parlor game that has captivated Israel in recent weeks, many Israelis had feared that the soft-spoken AG might not have the guts to take a tough line against his one-time patron to prove his independence, burnishing his credentials for what they suspect is his ambition to serve on the Supreme Court. He proved them wrong despite the attacks on him that have been intense and personal. His father’s gravestone was desecrated by rightwing vandals.

In a brief interview with Israeli television, Mr. Mandelblit had said earlier that his main responsibility was to protect the institution of the attorney general’s office. “I didn’t invent it, it was here for 70 years before,” he said, “and it will continue to exist for decades to come.”

The Israeli justice system has a record of independence, having convicted a former president, Moshe Katsav, of rape, and a former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, of bribery.

With elections just six weeks away, Netanyahu called the prosecution's announcement "outrageous" and an "unprecedented witch hunt" carried out by his liberal opponents. He vowed to refute all allegations which he said are "blood libel." He has said he will not quit even if he is indicted, and under Israeli law he is not required to do so until he has been convicted and the appeals process has been exhausted. 

But there is legal precedent for ministers being forced to step down after being charged.

On Thursday, President Trump said that while he was not familiar with the specifics of the allegations against Netanyahu, the Israeli leader has done “a great job as prime minister.” In Netanyahu’s televised address, he thanked “my friend Trump” for his words and said that as prime minister he had built strong relationships with Trump that had benefited Israel’s security.

Netanyahu is also very close to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and main adviser on the Middle East affairs. [Jared’s dad Charles was a major donor for pro-Israel causes. Netanyahu once slept at Jared’s bed when visiting the USA.]

Netanyahu is a closet fascist. Thus, last week he mentored an agreement for an electoral alliance between the radical far-right – fascist - group Jewish Power and two other factions, which is likely to give the party at least one seat in the Knesset. The Jewish Power party calls for the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, complete Israeli control over all land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the cancellation of the Oslo peace accords and for the imposition of Israeli sovereignty over Al Aqsa and the Temple Mount. It also advocates the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are deemed not loyal enough to the country and the deportation of what it calls “Arab extremists”.

The extremist party is believed to be spawned from the Kahanist movement, founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was personally accused of plotting various terrorist attacks throughout the 1970s against the Palestinian Arabs. Kahane’s followers continue to face accusations of supporting domestic terrorism and incitement to racism.

Netanyahu’s alliance with a fascist group like Jewish Power was so abhorring that even the American Jewish Committee, a powerful New-York based Jewish advocacy group, said it felt “compelled to speak out” about the merger which it called “reprehensible”.

Last Monday (Feb. 25) around 90 powerful rabbis and scholars, part of Torat Chayim, a worldwide association of progressive-minded Orthodox rabbis, joined the denunciation of the Israeli leader’s new deal calling Jewish Power “lamentable”.

Torat Chayim said Jewish Power was “a racist, violently nationalist party which justifies terrorist activity by Jews, is anti-democratic, preaches hatred toward other Jews and Arabs”. Among the signatories were renowned scholars Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and Rabbi Asher Lopatin.

"The ends do not justify the means," they wrote in a statement published online.

History has taught us that the fascists are known to like or admire each other. Netanyahu’s gesture with the Jewish Power, and Trump’s admiration for known fascists and authoritarian leaders of our time, including Netanyahu, Duterte and Kim, once again give credence to that well-known fact.

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Perhaps the most important event last week was Pakistan’s magnanimous release of the captured Indian pilot. Prime Minister Imran Khan announced Thursday to release captured Indian Air Force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan on Friday as a ‘gesture of peace’. However, in the same breath he warned India that any ‘miscalculation’ may prove disastrous for the whole region.

The two nuclear-armed countries came very close to a major conflict when Indian warplanes used Israeli-made SPICE 2000 precision-guided bombs (weighing 1 metric ton each) in airstrikes targeting a suspected hideout for the Kashmiri freedom fighters belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). The group allegedly had claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Indian-Occupied Kashmir earlier in February that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary troopers. [Note: SPICE (smart precise impact and cost effective) bombs are the largest conventional bomb in the Indian Air Force's arsenal.]

I am dismayed with the international media discussing their biased and faulty opinions and ideas on the crisis. They sadly ignored the core of the issue. They opined, either imprudently or purposely, that unless the ‘terrorist’ dens are wiped out such crisis would never end. In my opinion, addressing the symptoms without the root causes will never solve the problem, which is all about: Kashmir, the Kashmiris, their rights and their aspirations for freedom and peace. For more than seven decades they have been denied a U.N.-mandated plebiscite (per UNSC Resolution 47) to decide their own fate. Instead, they had to settle for what the UN HCHR chief has rightly noted, the “total impunity for enforced disappearances.”

The horrific case of Asifa Bano, an eight-year-old Muslim girl gang-raped and strangled to death in a Hindu temple by eight men in Indian-occupied Kashmir, including four police officers is just one example of what Kashmiris face day in and day out. These criminals were supported by two ministers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That is the sad reality in Modi’s India, which is fueling anger, frustration and sense of hopelessness amongst the Kashmiri people.

Over the years, Kashmir has become a symbol of agony, pain, suffering, tragedies and what not. Here are some sobering statistics from the last 20 years of India’s oppression in Kashmir:

·         Kashmiris Killed by the Indian army: 94,479

·         Custodial killings by Indian army: 7,048

·         Disappearances of Kashmiris at the hands of Indian police: 10,125

·         Gang rapes by Indians in Kashmir: 10,283

·         Kashmiris blinded by Indian firing: 188

·         Kashmiri children orphaned: 20,085

·         Kashmiri women widowed: 20,005

·         Kashmiri buildings destroyed: 106,071.

While we may not like see a repeat of the recent bloody episodes between two nuclear-armed nations, it would be utter folly to say that we don’t understand why a disgruntled Kashmiri had blown himself up to inflict pain on his persecutors. Modi’s India has to answer why Kashmiri civilians are agitated today as never before, why they are tired of false promises, why they despise the Indian occupation forces in their midst.

Addressing the symptoms while ignoring the root causes is not only foolish, it is inexcusable. If the international community is serious about finding genuine regional peace, it must allow the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide their own fate (much like what it did for the people of East Timor and South Sudan): whether they want to remain part of India or join Pakistan or be an independent nation allowing all its citizens to live as equals in a dignified way.

As long as the Kashmiri people are denied their very basic rights to decide their fate, where truly lies the root cause of the Kashmir problem, hoping for peace is simply delusional! The sooner the Indian government understands this vital truth and delivers on its promise to hold a referendum the better for its people and the entire region.

India with the second largest population and seventh largest landmass is the world's largest defense importer and has been investing tens of billions in updating its military equipment. India is now Israel's biggest arms market, buying weapons at an average of $1 billion each year. In 2017, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said India would buy nearly $2 billion worth of weapons technology, making it the military exporting giant's largest ever defense contract. The apartheid state of Israel has also been a major arms seller to the other apartheid state of Myanmar that is guilty of genocide of the Rohingya people.

In recent years, the Israelis have filmed joint exercises between their own “special commando” units and those sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the expertise supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza and other civilian-thronged battlefronts. At least 16 Indian “Garud” commandos – part of a 45-strong Indian military delegation – were for a time based at the Nevatim and Palmachim air bases in Israel.

As I noted in my 2005 article - USA-Israel-India: Semantics of 'Common' Vision - “Gone are those days when India was one country that had been doggedly anti-Zionist and a powerful voice in the non-aligned movement.” Just as Israel today considers the Occupied Territories of West Bank and Gaza as integral parts of Israel, so does India for the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir. Both see the minority Muslims as common foes. “The BJP is the Likud in saffron, as the Zionist Movement is the BJP in gaberdine.”

In his first visit to India last year – preceded by a trip to Israel by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai in which more than a hundred civilians were killed. “Indians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks,” he told Modi. “We remember the horrific savagery of Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.” As noted recently by veteran journalist Robert Fisk, this was also BJP-speak.

Since 9/11, the USA has joined this Entente of Evil to reshape the Muslim world in ways that we haven’t seen in the past. It was no accident that President Trump would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and move the US Embassy there.

Nor is it difficult to understand the toxic foundation stone of the relationship between these three countries under the leadership of murderous, right-wing fascist leaders – one of Zionism under Netanyahu, another of Hindutva under Modi and the other one of New Americanism that is racist and bigoted under Trump. All these leaders have fascist leanings and share an ugly history of murder, oppression and persecution of minorities. They can say that they are not racists or bigots. But their deeds – past and present – speak volumes. That is enough for us to discern them!

 

Bangladesh Tells UN It Cannot Accept More Rohingya Refugees

Bangladesh has told the United Nations Security Council that it cannot take in any more Rohingya refugees.

Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque told the body Thursday: "I regret to inform the council that Bangladesh would no longer be in a position to accommodate more people from Myanmar."

He accused Myanmar of making "hollow promises and various obstructionist approaches" in the negotiations to return the Rohingyas to Myanmar.

"Is Bangladesh paying the price for being responsive and responsible in showing empathy to a persecuted minority population of a neighboring country?" Haque asked. "Not a single Rohingya has volunteered to return to Rakhine due to the absence of conducive environment there."

Hau Do Suan, Myanmar's ambassador, said his country needs more time in its efforts to repatriate the Rohingyas. He asked the council to consider the "huge physical as well as psychological barriers" in the process of returning the Rohingyas. "It takes time and patience as well as courage to build trust and confidence among different communities in Rakhine."

British Ambassador Karen Pierce said, "We are very disappointed that there hasn't been more progress on getting the refugees back." She added: "The scale of what has been done to the Rohingya Muslims and the allegations of crimes against humanity really mark this out as one of the most terrible events of this century so far."

Russia and China, unlike the Western members of the council, believe that it is up to just Myanmar and Bangladesh to craft a solution for the return of the Rohingyas.

More than 720,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape persecution and violence in Myanmar. Because of previous refugee crises in Myanmar, Bangladesh currently is home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees.

The United Nations has praised the country’s generosity and has appealed to the authorities to continue to allow people fleeing violence in Myanmar to seek safety in Bangladesh.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is a predominantly Buddhist country. It has a long history of tension with its ethnic minorities, much of it based on religion. Southern Chin State is the only State in Myanmar with a Christian majority. It also is the poorest and least developed region in the country.

The large Rohingya Muslim population in Rakhine State continues to suffer discrimination and repression from the majority Buddhist community. Though they have lived in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya are denied citizenship and remain stateless.

BBC America's coverage on Kashmir problem is simply disappointing

I occasionally view BBC America for the world news when it airs in the PBS TV around 7:30 p.m. (eastern time).
Tonight, I was simply disappointed to see that Ms. Ayers of The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was interviewed to discuss the Kashmir problem on March 1.  She is a well-known pro-Indian propagandist who has been using her position within the CFR to create pro-India policy for the US government. Her suggestion that the root of the Kashmir problem is all about home-grown terrorist organizations that operate from Pakistan.
No, she is wrong. The root problem is India's refusal to honor a UN mandated plebiscite on Kashmir by its inhabitants to resolve the problem for more than seven decades. Instead of holding that plebiscite,  India has killed nearly 95,000 Kashmiri Muslims (just in the last two decades) who are tired of India's double talks by trying to avoid holding such a plebiscite. India refuses to understand that the so-called terrorist activities by disgruntled Kashmiri Muslims would not have happened had they felt good about being part of India. Indian government has no respect for the rights of Kashmiri people to decide their fate. Indian democracy is a sham when it comes to minority groups, esp. the people of J&K!
CFR has long been a pro-Israel and pro-India think tank with its sinister plan to bring war against the Muslim world. Since 9/11 it continues to play that hideous role to ruin every Muslim country.
I am simply disappointed to see Ms Ayers's interview aired in the BBC America news program. She and her likes are biased pundits with hideous agenda and should not be interviewed in the BBC for their shallow opinion, which only create atmosphere for more war and destructions.
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Here is my personal letter below that I sent to Ms. Ayers:

Dear Ms. Ayers,
I was simply shocked to hear your expert view on Kashmir problem in this evening's BBC America News program (PBS TV), March 1. Your opinion that the root problem of the crisis owes it to terrorist organizations that operate from inside Pakistan is a grossly faulty one. What a shallow analysis from a pundit like you! A high school student in J&K would have a better answer to the decades-old problem than what you aired. Shame on you!

Is it too difficult to find the root cause on the Kashmiri problem for any researcher, if he/she is serious? I don't believe so, after all, the problem is older than seven decades when the British colonial administration left the problem unresolved. India promised to conduct a plebiscite to honor the people's wish in J&K. Afraid that the Muslim majority region would opt for independence, if not join with Pakistan, the so-called democratic India (that you are so fond of promoting as an utterly biased researcher) never allowed such a referendum to be held. India has broken promises and has never been sincere.

 You can't be ignorant of the fact that some 95,000 Kashmiri Muslims have been killed by Indian government forces in the Indian occupied territories in the last two decades alone, not to mention tens of thousands that have simply disappeared. Why are the people of J&K so furious about Indian rule there? Have you ever visited the territory and interviewed those disgruntled Kashmiris? Instead of resolving the issue India's heavy handed attitude, rape of Muslim women by its forces, and vigilante activities of BJP hoodlums have simply made the situation worse than any time before. It is this frustration that is fueling anger by the young folks who are tired of Indian double-talks and 'expert' opinion of pro-Indian pseudo-pundits who are for the status-quo and not for the peaceful resolution of the problem through referendum. Why don't you ask for such to be held to resolve the issue? Did not we see such referendum for East Timor? Why double standards when victims are Muslims?

Your hypocrisy cannot be hidden under the rug! It is inexcusable and shameless!

While I don't justify violence by anyone, but I can understand why someone would commit suicide attack when he/she sees no light at the end of the tunnel, dug by pundits like you, and the Indian fascist BJP government, which is whipping up bigotry all across India.

Rather than talking about the daily suffering of the people of J&K and their frustration, which breeds freedom fighters (your 'terrorists') you shamefully ignore the root cause and talk about symptoms. What a sham! You give a bad name to analytical thinking and common sense.

Your biased and faulty opinions about Kashmir are not worthy at all to be shared with the international community. They are for warmongers and yellow journalists. They are wrong and only provide justification for continuing suffering of the persecuted people, something that we had seen too often with the White minority rule in South Africa until its coffin was nailed. It was people like you that supported the white supremacist rule there at one time. Now with the new reality, many 'experts' had changed their color, but cannot hide the ugly past of supporting a heinous regime until it fell. Wake up and become a real human being and help the world by standing for justice and demanding such unequivocally. Is that too difficult a task?

Regards,
Habib Siddiqui
Philadelphia, USA

p.s. I am not a Pakistani and have no family connection with the country or its people.
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Note: Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). At CFR her work focuses on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018. In 2015, she served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S.-India Relations. Ayres served previously as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013 and providing policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Prior to that, Ayres was the founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, which enjoys a close on-the-ground, decade-long partnership with Dua Consulting in New Delhi, supplementing our expert capabilities with veteran Indian government affairs professionals and an extensive network of former Indian officials.

Rapprochement, Dialogue, and a Peaceful Resolution of Jammu and Kashmir

"As long as Indo-Pakistan relations remain strained, not only will the solution of the Kashmir question recede further and further into the background, but even the fragile peace in the subcontinent will hang by a thin thread. Such a situation is obviously fraught with disastrous consequences not only for India and Pakistan but for the entire subcontinent.
Everyone needs to be open to diplomacy and peaceful negotiations to further the India-Pakistan peace process. The aims of that process should be the phased withdrawal of forces from both sides of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, the rehabilitation of detained prisoners, and repair of the frayed ethnic fabric in all parts of civil society. We have the resilience and the wherewithal to forge ahead without sabre rattling and braggadocio.
Jammu and Kashmir is a part of the subcontinent, and we cannot run away from this geographical reality. Unfortunately, our State has become a bone of contention between India and Pakistan, and we are caught between a rock and a hard place. It is, in the vital interest of J & K that these two countries should initiate dialogue, as opposed to war, with each other.
In civilized societies, political dissent is not curbed and national integrity is not maintained by military interventions. The more military officials get involved in issues of politics, governance, and national interest, the more blurred the line between national interest and hawkish national security becomes.
The imminent release of captured Indian Air force Pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, by Pakistani authorities bodes well for South Asia and is a much needed prioritization of national interest and foreign policy over belligerent national security," writes Nyla Ali Khan who is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir, The Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. Nyla Ali Khan has also served as an guest editor working on articles from the Jammu and Kashmir region for Oxford University Press (New York), helping to identify, commission, and review articles. 

Image Source Wikipedia

To read her article, click here.

India uses Israeli-made smart 'SPICE bombs' in Pakistan strike

Indian warplanes used Israeli-made SPICE 2000 precision-guided bombs in airstrikes targeting a militant camp inside Pakistan on Tuesday, defence sources said.
The airstrikes, launched by Indian jets against a training camp allegedly used by militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), have drastically escalated tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
The group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir earlier in the month that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary troopers.
New Delhi said a "very large number" of JeM militants were killed in the strike on the camp, where it alleges fighters were planning further attacks on India. 
Five Mirage 2000s launched the airstrikes using the Israeli-made smart bombs, Indian defence sources told local media.

The jets were not planning to initially cross the Line of Control - the de facto border that divides Kashmir – but were forced to due to the size of the bombs - weighing 1,000 kg each - and strong winds in the region.

The Israeli-manufactured bombs were pre-fed with GPS coordinates and an image of the militant camp.
SPICE (smart precise impact and cost effective) bombs are the largest conventional bomb in the Indian Air Force's arsenal.
India is the world's largest defence importer and has been investing tens of billions in updating its military equipment to counter long-standing tensions with regional rivals China and Pakistan.
India is now Israel's biggest arms market, buying weapons at an average of $1 billion each year.
In 2017, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said India would buy nearly $2 billion worth of weapons technology, making it the military exporting giant's largest ever defence contract.

UN Council: Israel Intentionally Shot Children and Journalists in Gaza

Officials say killings are part of Israel's 'obligation'.   

Jason Ditz  

Israel is furious at the UN Human Rights Council most of the time, but they are particularly furious whenever the body offers a report, as Israel tends to violate a lot of human rights. In this case, the council has announced an “independent inquiry” into the protests at the Gaza border.

Every Friday, for months now, Palestinian protesters have rallied near the Gaza border to protest the Israeli blockade. Every Friday, Israel shoots a large number of people. The investigation ruled that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel violated international law.

The report noted that 154 out of 183 people killed by Israel in that time were entirely unarmed. They noted Israel had repeatedly, deliberately shot children and journalists, as well as disabled protesters. International law, needless to say, frowns upon those sorts of deliberate killings.

While Israeli officials reacted with typical fury, it is noteworthy that they didn’t deny any of the content of the report. Instead, Acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz argued Israel has a “right of self-defense and the obligation to defend its citizens and borders.” In essence, he is arguing that Israel had an obligation to shoot those unarmed children.