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Press TV: Nearly a dozen Palestinians are killed in the West Bank as the Israeli regime launches a major military offensive in several cities across the occupied territories.

Joining us on this edition of the News Review, we have Palestinian scientist and author Mazin Qumsiyeh joining us from Bethlehem, and also we have Editor of Veterans today, Mr. Kevin Barrett, joining us from Saidiya, Morocco. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Let's start off with Mr. Qumsiyeh in Bethlehem. Sir, please give us your assessment of this wave of Israeli aggression, provocations, and crimes that we've been seeing increasing over the past days.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: But of course, ever since the Gaza genocide started in late October, the aggression in the West Bank is increasing as well. Indeed, what we observe is in the past months or so we had over 653 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, and about 5400 who were injured. This seems to be accelerating, because as you pointed out 11 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in the past hours including six in Janine and five in the Tubas area. So the israeli military is accelerating its actions, especially in and around refugee camps in the north of the West Bank. And as usual it will expand to other parts of the West Bank, as (when it) started in the north of the West Bank and then it expanded to the south of the West Bank. So my prediction is that more violence will be done towards the Palestinians by both the soldiers and the settlers. Already settlers are killing also Palestinians and attacking them. I even have friends of mine who were attacked by settler gangs basically doing pogroms in places like Jit and other areas. This is all done with the blessings of the Israeli government, of course, and its military, which is part and parcel of this apartheid regime. So in the West Bank, we're catching up with Gaza, in terms of numbers slowly beginning to increase.

Mr. Kevin Barrett, many observers believe that the settler violence that is going on parallel to the Israeli occupation forces' violence against Palestinians is part of a greater plan to eliminate the Palestinians, and it has been intensified on purpose. Also, Islamic Jihad believes Israel's large-scale military campaign that we're seeing now is part of the regime's plans to tighten control over-occupied Al-Quds and also the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. Do you see it in that light as well?

Kevin Barrett: Yes, I agree completely. And I also just wanted to mention that it's a great honor to appear in the same show with Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh  He's a hero of mine, and everybody should try to get on his email list, one of the most informative sources for what's really going on in occupied Palestine.

So the settler violence is portrayed in the Western media as though it's somehow different from the official Israeli government violence. But even now, the Western media is having to admit that the crazed, fanatical, messianic-millenarian settlers, who make no bones about the fact that what they're trying to do is force their messiah to come by  ramping up these abominations in the Holy Land, believing that horrific violence is the way to force their Messiah to come—who they believe will be a world conqueror who will subjugate all of the other nations to the Jews, and every Jew will have a couple of thousand slaves, and this so-called Messiah will rule the world from a “rebuilt” blood-sacrifice temple which will supposedly replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the oldest and greatest Islamic architectural monument on earth.

So these people are trying to create an apocalyptic war. And their current phase of that war is the genocide of all of the people of Palestine. And the settlers are straightforwar