Palestine

[blindpig]

Eyewitness reveals GHF contractors fire 'indiscriminately' at civilians in Gaza

US contractors hired to 'secure' aid distribution hubs 'boasted' about how many people they killed

News Desk

AUG 22, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP)

Israeli troops and US subcontractors hired to secure aid distribution hubs in Gaza regularly open fire on desperate Palestinians seeking aid, according to an eyewitness speaking with CBS News.

The witness, whom CBS referred to as “Mike,” asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.

When Mike was hired by a US logistics company, he was told he would drive aid trucks in Israel. Instead, the job involved driving trucks for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in Gaza.

The US and Israel created the GHF to replace the UN as the main distributor of aid in May.

This allows Israel to cut off aid to starving Palestinians at any time, while also controlling their movements. Any Palestinians needing aid must obey the Israeli military's evacuation orders and move their tents to areas near the GHF hubs.

Mike secretly recorded videos in which GHF contractors and Israeli soldiers can be heard indiscriminately firing at starving Palestinians waiting for food.

“It took me two or three days to realize that they were actually shooting at people, they weren't shooting at combatants,” he said.

“We don't see who is shooting on the videos Mike gave us. But he said there was not a single occasion he observed when there was no shooting, and he was at the brightly illuminated sites on average five days a week for several weeks,” CBS News wrote.

CBS reviewed metadata from Mike's phone to confirm the dates and times he was in Gaza.

Israeli troops and GHF contractors have killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Another 800 have been killed seeking aid elsewhere.

Mike said crowds of Palestinians would gather near the GHF sites several hours before they opened in hopes of receiving food for their families.

He has “never seen a crowd of people behave with such intensity and such desperation.”

Mike also shared with CBS that he was once required to clean up both “human and animal remains” next to one GHF site, “due to the foul smell emitted by those remains.”

“I struggle to talk about it,” he said. “I even feel a bit clammy, and I can feel my chest beating harder. I just shut down really.”

“They would often boast about how many people they've killed, if they've managed to shoot animals,” he said. “Or how many birds they'd shot because they were bragging about how good their aim was.”

Mike said he is speaking out because, “It just wouldn't sit right with me if I didn't say something. These atrocities don't have to happen.”

In a 22 August report, Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) – a UN-backed global hunger monitor – officially declared a famine in Gaza for the first time.

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) “categorically rejects” the IPC report and said the body’s assessments have been “inaccurate.”

Dozens have died of starvation in recent weeks, including at least two in the last 24 hours. The total number of starvation deaths in Gaza since the start of the war has risen to 271, including 112 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Despite this, Israel continues to deny that famine has overtaken the strip.

https://thecradle.co/articles/eyewitnes ... ns-in-gaza

UN report confirms half a million Palestinians experiencing manmade famine in Gaza

The strip has reached Phase-5 status, meaning over 640,000 people will face ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels by the end of September

News Desk

AUG 22, 2025


(Photo credit: Getty Images)

The UN-backed global hunger monitor, Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC), has officially declared a famine in Gaza for the first time in a report issued on 22 August.

“This report marks the fifth time the Famine Review Committee (FRC) has been called to review an analysis on the acute food security and nutrition situation in the Gaza Strip. Never before has the Committee had to return so many times to the same crisis, a stark reflection of how suffering has not only persisted but intensified and spread until famine has begun to emerge,” IPC said on Friday.

The report notes that the famine is taking place in Gaza City and surrounding towns, home to around 500,000 Palestinians.

IPC had previously warned that Gaza was on the verge of famine, but did not make an official declaration until now.

Since being established in 2004, IPC has declared five famines, the most recent being in Sudan last year.

“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions, characterized by starvation, destitution, and death,” the IPC report said on Friday.

It added that the famine would spread to Deir al-Balah in the center of Gaza and the southern city of Khan Yunis by the end of September.

By then, a total of over 640,000 people will face “catastrophic levels” of food insecurity – classified as IPC Phase 5 – across the strip.

The UN says the entire population of Gaza under the age of five – over 300,000 children – is at risk of acute malnutrition.

The strip remains under a total Israeli blockade. The aid, which does trickle in, is nowhere near enough to address the population’s needs.

“A ceasefire is an absolute and moral imperative now. The world has waited too long, watching tragic and unnecessary deaths mount from this man-made famine. Widespread malnutrition means that even common and usually mild diseases like diarrhea are becoming fatal, especially for children,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The UN has been bypassed by the Israeli-US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a deadly scheme that has resulted in the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians seeking aid. Israeli forces deliberately open fire on starving Palestinians crammed in GHF aid sites and their vicinity.

Dozens have died of starvation in recent weeks, including at least two in the last 24 hours. The total number of starvation deaths in Gaza since the start of the war has risen to 271, including 112 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Despite this, Israel continues to deny that famine has overtaken the strip.

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) “categorically rejects” the IPC report and said the body’s assessments have been “inaccurate.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the IPC “published a tailor-made fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign.”

“The entire IPC document is based on Hamas lies laundered through organizations with vested interests. There is no famine in Gaza,” it added.

https://thecradle.co/articles/un-report ... ne-in-Gaza

Leaked Israeli data shows civilians make up 83 percent of Palestinians killed in Gaza

Over the past 40 years of wars, civilians have accounted for a larger share of the dead only during the Rwandan genocide

News Desk

AUG 21, 2025


(Photo credit: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

Statistics from a classified Israeli military intelligence database show that over 80 percent of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the start of the genocide in Gaza have been civilians.

“An extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare,” The Guardian reported on 21 August, following an investigation undertaken in collaboration with +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language Local Call.

The Guardian stated that as of May, Israeli intelligence officials listed 8,900 named fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as dead or “probably dead” since the start of the war in 2023.

By way of comparison, Gaza Health authorities have reported that 53,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks during the same period, including fighters and civilians.

This means that the 8,900 dead resistance fighters make up only 17 percent of those killed, and the remaining 44,100 killed, or 83 percent, have been civilians.

The Israeli military database lists 47,653 Palestinians still considered active members of the military wings of Hamas and PIJ.

While the Israeli press and politicians often claim the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are inflated, Israel’s military does not dispute the ministry’s numbers and uses them in its planning.

“That proportion of civilians among those killed would be unusually high, particularly as it has been going on for such a long time,” said Therése Pettersson from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).

“If you single out a particular city or battle in another conflict, you could find similar rates, but very rarely overall.”

In wars tracked by UCDP since 1989, civilians made up a greater proportion of the dead only in the Rwandan genocide.

Such a high proportion of dead civilians reinforces the widely held view, including among many Israeli genocide scholars, that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Multiple intelligence sources familiar with the database said the military viewed it as the only authoritative tally of militant casualties,” The Guardian added.


However, both databases may underestimate casualty numbers.


Other credible estimates of the total killed in Gaza surpass 100,000. This is in part because tens of thousands are likely buried under the rubble, and tens of thousands more have likely died from indirect causes stemming from Israel’s destruction of health and water infrastructure, and harsh limits on the amount of food that can enter the strip.

In contrast to the military’s numbers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that as many as 20,000 Hamas and PIJ fighters have been killed and that the civilian-to-combatant ratio is as low as 1:1.

Itzhak Brik, a retired Israeli general, says that Netanyahu’s claims are false.

“There is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening. It is just one big bluff,” he said.

He says that according to officers serving in Gaza, he remains in contact with, “most” of those killed were civilians.

The scale of the killing was partly owing to the nature of the conflict, said Mary Kaldor, professor emerita at the LSE, director of the Conflict Research Programme.

Israel conducts most of its killings through airstrikes that regularly slaughter dozens, including entire extended families at home while they sleep, to assassinate a low-level Hamas fighter or bureaucrat.


“In Gaza we are talking about a campaign of targeted assassinations, really, rather than battles, and they are carried out with no concern for civilians,” Kaldor said.

The high death toll is also not surprising, considering the genocidal rhetoric regularly expressed by Israeli politicians, generals, journalists, and TV commentators.

Israeli general Aharon Haliva, who led military intelligence when the war began, has said 50,000 Palestinians should die in revenge for the 1,200 Israelis killed in the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, even “if they are children.”

While Israel blames Hamas for all 1,200 deaths during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, most were likely killed by heavy weapons unleashed on the Gaza envelope area by Israeli attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per the Hannibal Directive.

The Israeli military then used these deaths to justify launching a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

https://thecradle.co/articles/leaked-is ... ed-in-gaza

(83% seems low to me, smells of a 'limited hangout'.)

******

Netanyahu Rejects Gaza Deal, Reviews Plans To Occupy Gaza City Instead
August 21, 2025


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the US Independence Day reception, hosted by Newsmax, in occupied al-Quds on Aug 13, 2025. Photo: AP.

Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the mediators’ proposal, as “Israel” prepares military plans to occupy Gaza City and launches the second phase of Operation “Gideon’s Chariots.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided not to respond to the proposal recently approved by Hamas, despite efforts by mediators to push forward a deal.

US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has also distanced himself from the formula he initially supported, with reports noting that he no longer trusts the mediators.

Despite endless Israeli claims that Hamas was being unreasonable and not flexible throughout previous negotiation rounds, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza had already agreed to the new proposal, which is nearly identical to the Witkoff paper previously proposed.

On Monday, Hamas and other Palestinian factions announced their approval of the proposal put forward by mediators from Egypt and Qatar.

Netanyahu Orders Full Israeli Military Occupation of Gaza: Israeli Media


Netanyahu to review new genocide phase
Instead of adhering to the demands of his people, who have been protesting against the resumption of the war in Gaza, Netanyahu is expected to arrive at the Southern Command on Thursday to approve military plans to occupy Gaza City.

“Negotiations will be held under heavy fire, and everything depends on reaching an agreement,” Israeli media said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military spokesperson for the occupation army confirmed on Wednesday evening the launch of the second phase of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots (B)” aimed at occupying Gaza City.

According to the military spokesperson, the 162nd Division has begun operations from Jabalia in the northwest as part of a broader plan to tighten the siege on the city. The statement said the campaign may take an extended period, but could also be halted depending on political directives. It added that the maneuvers are being carried out by conscript units supported by 133,000 reserve soldiers.

At the same time, occupation authorities issued a statement to the settlers of the Gaza Envelope warning of the possibility of hearing heavy explosions and artillery fire “from now on.”

The operation is widely viewed as part of the broader ethnic cleansing plan against Gaza’s population, aiming to depopulate the city through siege, destruction, and forced displacement under the guise of military maneuvers.



https://orinocotribune.com/netanyahu-re ... y-instead/

[blindpig]

West Bank village devastated as Israel uproots thousands of olive trees in 72 hours

The Israeli military carried out a three-day campaign of collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Al-Mughayyir

News Desk

AUG 24, 2025


(Photo credti: Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP via Getty Images)
The Israeli army has uprooted thousands of olive trees in the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir in just the past three days, as part of a collective punishment campaign against Palestinian residents of the village, Israeli media reported on 24 August.


Olive farming is the backbone of Palestinian agriculture. Olive trees in the West Bank are often hundreds of years old, some even over a thousand years old, and are deeply tied to Palestinian identity, representing steadfastness and their historical connection to the land.

The Israeli army began uprooting the trees on Thursday, while also carrying out raids on homes and imposing a siege and curfew, preventing all movement into and out of the village located northeast of Ramallah.

After Israeli occupation forces ended the curfew and withdrew on Sunday, residents immediately began trying to replant the uprooted trees.


Marzouq Abu Naim of the Al-Mughayyir village council told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on Saturday that during the three-day siege, Israeli forces had established military checkpoints to completely seal all entrances to the village, while forcibly closing businesses, including bakeries and pharmacies.


Israeli forces also blocked them from leaving or entering the village, forcing pregnant women to walk through the checkpoints to neighboring villages for treatment.


Soldiers also raided homes, looting money, jewelry, and vehicles.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Israeli forces detained 14 residents, including the head of the village's local council, Amin Abu Alia, and interrogated dozens more during the raids.
Additionally, the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission reported that Israel targeted nearly 300 dunums of farmland, uprooting centuries-old trees, storming homes, and destroying property.


On Thursday night, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, the head of the Israeli Army’s Central Command, stated that Al-Mughayyir would “pay a heavy price” for an alleged shooting attack against Jewish settlers from a nearby illegal outpost the previous day.


“Every village and every enemy needs to know that if they carry out an attack against the residents [settlers], they will pay a heavy price; they will experience a curfew, they will experience a closure, and they will experience ‘shaping operations,’” he said, in an apparent reference to uprooting the olive trees.

“We are now locking in on this village,” Bluth added, saying that the army’s efforts will deter “any village that tries to raise a hand against any of the residents [settlers],” Bluth added.

According to the Times of Israel, a 30-year-old Palestinian resident of Al-Mughayyir allegedly fired at settlers from the outpost, “without hitting any, before engaging in a physical altercation during which an Israeli man was lightly hurt.”

He was later detained by a unit of Israeli reserve soldiers comprised of local Jewish settlers.
Al-Mughayyir has long been a target of settlers and soldiers alike amid plans for ethnic cleansing and further land grabs.

Since 1967, Israel has methodically stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank to build settlements for Jewish settlers immigrating from abroad as part of the Greater Israel colonial project.

Both peaceful and violent efforts of the indigenous Palestinian population to resist Jewish colonization of their lands have been met with harsh violence and military campaigns from the Israeli forces occupying the West Bank.

https://thecradle.co/articles/west-bank ... n-72-hours

Israeli army warns demolishing Gaza City could take ‘over a year’: Report

The army chief has doubled down on his concerns about the occupation plan, and is demanding that ceasefire negotiations be exhausted before the assault begins

News Desk

AUG 24, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images)

The Israeli army has warned the government that implementing Tel Aviv’s order to demolish Gaza City could possibly take “over a year,” Hebrew media reported on 24 August.


The warnings come after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened Hamas that if it does not accept Israel’s terms to end the war, Gaza City would become like Rafah and Beit Hanoun.

The army told the political echelon that “in such a scenario … it would face an even more severe crisis with reserve units, which are already struggling with declining turnout rates and low morale,” according to Haaretz newspaper.

Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir, who has previously clashed with government officials on the Gaza City occupation plans, told the government that the military would not move ahead with the assault until a “humanitarian zone” is established to hold the city’s residents.

Zamir said operations can only start after “necessary operational and legal preparations are complete,” despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands to accelerate the assault on Gaza City.

No humanitarian zones have been established as of yet. In the past, when such zones were established during the war, they continued to come under Israeli bombardment despite being labeled “safe” areas.

“The evacuation of Rafah took two weeks, and the estimate is that evacuating Gaza City, home to approximately 1.2 million people, will take somewhat longer,” army sources told Haaretz.


According to the report, a plan presented by the army would see the Gaza City operation halted if Israel and Hamas manage to agree on a ceasefire deal.

The army continues to insist on exhausting negotiations to release as many captives as possible before beginning any assault, the report added.

Hamas agreed to a new Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire on 18 August. However, Israel is reportedly adamant on moving ahead with the occupation of Gaza City. According to Channel 13, Netanyahu has obstructed seven ceasefire deals since the start of the genocidal war.

Tensions have been high between the army and the government over the occupation plans. Zamir was previously reported to have clashed with Netanyahu over the operation and the threat it poses to the captives.

Zamir has also warned government officials that the operation puts further strain on Israeli soldiers.

Three divisions are currently operating in Gaza, the 99th Division in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, the 162nd Division in the northern city of Jabalia and Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood, and the 36th Division in the Khan Yunis area in the south.


The army says that 130,000 Israeli reserve soldiers will be called up for the assault on Gaza City.

In the coming days, the Israeli army is set to begin one of the largest forced expulsion campaigns of its genocidal war on Gaza, with the help of a special military unit established for the task, the Population Relocation Unit.

The Israeli military will forcibly displace nearly one million Palestinians in Gaza City.

In preparation for the upcoming assault, Israeli forces have been heavily pounding Gaza City neighborhoods with artillery shelling and airstrikes, particularly Sabra and Al-Zaytoun.

Booby-trapped robots deployed by the army continue to target civilian homes in a systematic effort to erase infrastructure, including in Jabalia north of Gaza City.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 21 August that Israel would “continue to maintain control over Gaza even if Hamas agrees to a ceasefire deal at the last moment.”
Famine has been officially declared across the strip. Hundreds of thousands face severe malnutrition.

In the last 24 hours, eight people have died of starvation, bringing the number of malnutrition deaths since the start of the war up to 289 – including 115 children.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-a ... ear-report

******


Hypothesized Map of “Greater Israel”

Egypt demands clarification over Netanyahu’s ‘Greater Israel’ vision
By Al Mayadeen (Posted Aug 22, 2025)

Originally published: Al Mayadeen on August 14, 2025 (more by Al Mayadeen) |

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned recent statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsing the so-called “Greater Israel” vision. The ministry described the remarks as a rejection of the “peace process” and demanded formal clarifications from Tel Aviv.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry reaffirmed Cairo’s commitment to regional peace and security, warning that Netanyahu’s statements fuel instability and contradict international efforts to resolve the region’s ongoing conflicts.

Netanyahu’s comments were made during an August 12 interview with Israeli broadcaster i24News, where he expressed strong support for a territorial vision of “Greater Israel”.

Former Knesset member Sharon Gal presented him with an amulet depicting a map of “the Promised Land,” which includes not only occupied Palestinian territories, but also parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Netanyahu said he felt “very much” connected to this map, calling his mission “historic and spiritual”.

This is not the first time Netanyahu has used maps to promote expansionist narratives. In 2023 and 2024, he displayed controversial maps at the UN General Assembly excluding any Palestinian state, while portraying extended Israeli borders. Critics have said these presentations erase the two-state solution and elevate a vision of regional domination.

Egypt’s role in Gaza mediation undermined
Egypt, a key mediator in ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, views Netanyahu’s remarks as harmful to ongoing diplomatic efforts. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has been actively engaged in talks alongside Qatar and the U.S. to reach a truce and facilitate prisoner exchanges, and Cairo warned that expansionist rhetoric during such negotiations is detrimental to regional peace.

The Foreign Ministry reiterated that peace can only be achieved by ending the war on Gaza and returning to negotiations, leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967 borders with East Al-Quds as its capital.

Regional outrage over Israeli territorial claims
Netanyahu’s expansionist goals sparked outrage across West Asia. Jordan condemned Netanyahu’s remarks as a “dangerous provocative escalation,” calling them a violation of sovereignty and international law, while Saudi Arabia rejected “expansionist projects” by the Israeli occupation, and Qatar said the statements reflect “arrogance” and inflame regional tensions.

In addition, the Arab League described Netanyahu’s words as a threat to Arab national security and a breach of UN principles. It warned that such statements reinforce a colonial mindset and undermine peace initiatives.

Ideological roots of ‘Greater Israel’
The idea of “Greater Israel” is rooted in early revisionist Zionism, championed by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a forefather of Netanyahu’s Likud party. It envisions an Israeli entity extending from the Nile River to the Euphrates River.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has echoed similar ideas, once displaying a map in Paris that included Jordan within “Israel”. He has referred to a future where “Jerusalem expands to Damascus,” putting biblical prophecy at the forefront of Israeli politics.

[blindpig]

Israel kills five journalists in new hospital massacre

The attack, which was broadcast on live television, killed at least 15 people, including a civil defense worker

News Desk

AUG 25, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images)

Over a dozen Palestinians, including five journalists, were killed on 25 August in an Israeli attack on the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis.



At least 15 were killed in total, including Reuters journalist Hossam al-Masri, Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Salama, Independent Arabia and AP journalist Maryam Abu Daqqa, and NBC journalist Muath Abu Taha.

Journalist Ahmad Abu Aziz later succumbed to his wounds, which were sustained in the same attack.

This brings the total number of journalists killed by Israel since October 2023 to at least 245.

One member of Gaza’s Civil Defense was killed as well, and several others were injured. An initial drone strike targeted the upper floor of the hospital, where the journalists were. A second attack took place targeting the rescue team as it was arriving at the scene.

The second Israeli strike was broadcast on live television. Footage shows the strike directly targeting civil defense workers.


The latest massacre in Khan Yunis coincided with continued Israeli attacks and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza City, where Tel Aviv is paving the ground for a large-scale assault and occupation of the area. Massive clouds of smoke were seen rising over Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood on Monday morning as Israeli forces deployed explosive-laden robots into civilian homes.


As part of the occupation plan, Israel plans to displace nearly one million Palestinian residents of Gaza City.

Israel has systematically targeted journalists since the start of the war in Gaza.

Prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and five others were assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on a media tent at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital late on 10 August.

Tel Aviv accused Sharif of being a Hamas operative, as is the case with many of the journalists it targets.

Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham said on 11 August that Israel’s military intelligence created a special unit aimed specifically at justifying attacks in Gaza, including the killing of journalists.

“After 7 October, a team called the ‘Legitimization Cell’ was established in AMAN,” Abraham said, referring to the Israeli military intelligence directorate, which includes Unit 8200.

“Intelligence personnel searched for information to provide ‘legitimization’ for the army’s actions in Gaza, failed Hamas launches, use of human shields, and exploitation of the civilian population. A primary mission … was to find Gazan journalists who could be portrayed in the media as Hamas operatives in disguise,” the Israeli journalist added.

Israel has also systematically targeted hospitals since it began its genocidal campaign against Gaza.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-ki ... l-massacre

Israeli army chief says Gaza ceasefire deal ‘on the table’

The chief of staff reiterated his concerns about the Gaza City occupation plan posing a ‘great danger’ to Israeli captives held in the strip

News Desk

AUG 25, 2025


(Photo credit: Israeli army)

The Chief of Staff of the Israeli military, Eyal Zamir, said on 24 August that a ceasefire and exchange deal is “on the table,” and that Israel must take it.

“There is a deal on the table, it’s the improved Witkoff framework. Now it’s in Netanyahu’s hands. There is great danger to the lives of the hostages in taking over Gaza City,” the army chief said on Sunday, according to Israel’s Channel 13.

In a statement released by the army, Zamir said separately that Operation Gideon’s Chariots – launched in May – has achieved its goals, “and as a result of the military pressure, we created the conditions for the release of the hostages.”

Zamir has been vocal about his concerns regarding the upcoming Israeli assault and takeover of Gaza City.

The army chief has repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu and other government officials over the threat the occupation plan poses to both captives and soldiers in Gaza.

According to a recent report, Hamas has relocated captives to Gaza City in a bid to pressure Tel Aviv against going ahead with the recently approved plan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to convene the security cabinet on 26 August to discuss efforts to reach a deal, Channel 12 reported. It said it would be decided on Monday or Tuesday where the next round of talks will be held – noting that the timing and the makeup of the negotiating team are still undetermined.

According to Channel 12, the next round of talks may take place in the UAE or potentially in Europe.

Hamas agreed to a new Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire on 18 August.

Sources cited by the Times of Israel recently said Tel Aviv’s position remains unchanged regarding its insistence on a comprehensive deal for the release of all the captives, including the realization of its other terms to end the war, among them Hamas disarmament.

Several Hebrew media reports said Netanyahu was examining options and would review the proposal. Others said Israel is determined to move ahead with the occupation of Gaza City.

Channel 13 reported over the weekend that Netanyahu has obstructed seven ceasefire deals since the start of the genocidal war against Gaza. The premier repeatedly succumbs to pressure from his far-right allies, who threaten to collapse the coalition over ceasefire deals and efforts to let aid into Gaza.

Many of the captives held by Hamas have been killed by the Israeli army’s airstrikes. Hundreds of thousands protested in Tel Aviv last week against the approval of the Gaza City occupation, demanding a deal to stop the war and release the captives.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-a ... -the-table

******

Tel Aviv Organizes ‘Influencer Tour’ in Gaza to Whitewash UN-Verified Famine
August 24, 2025


A photo posted on social media by Brooke Goldstein on August 18, 2025 in a post promoting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Photo: Brooke Goldstein/Facebook.

Tel Aviv arranged this week for 10 US and Israeli social media influencers to enter Gaza and “reveal the truth” about what Israel says are “Hamas’s lies” about the starvation of Palestinians in the besieged strip.

The tour was organized by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry.

The ministry framed the effort as a demonstration of “the mechanism of humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza” to “refute Hamas’s lies that are distributed by foreign media.”

The statement referred to the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a mechanism formed to bypass the UN and put Israel in charge of aid deliveries. Over 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while receiving aid from GHF sites since the foundation was launched in late May—and the quantities being delivered amount to a fraction of what is required to address the dire humanitarian needs in Gaza.

Palestinians are regularly shot at and killed by both Israeli forces and US military contractors who run the aid distribution sites.

“The tour took place as part of the fight against Hamas’s campaign to discredit [Israel]—the ‘hunger campaign’—which is meant to damage Israel’s image in the international arena,” the ministry went on to say, adding that organizers also “emphasized the role of the UN and other international organizations, which are refusing to distribute many tons of food that’s waiting.”

The UN had previously said, following GHF’s inception in May, that it would not cooperate with the mechanism for ethical reasons. The UN and other international organizations have accused GHF of accelerating Israel’s goal to forcibly displace residents of Gaza.

Among those granted access to GHF sites is Brooke Goldstein, a pro-Israel US attorney, author, and television personality.

“What I saw proved that what the media is reporting about the situation is absolutely false. The GHF’s mission is to feed the people of Gaza in a way that Hamas can’t steal the food, and it’s working. I witnessed over 13,000 people being fed, including 3,300 women and children,” she said on X on August 20.

Xavier DuRousseau, another influencer, took to social media and wrote, “Israel is NOT the reason many Palestinians are starving.”

“Since you soup kitchen antisemites want to pretend to care about the Gazan struggle, go there and volunteer to distribute the food!” he added. “Israel is NOT blocking food from entering Gaza,” DuRousseau claimed in a separate post.

While the GHF has been delivering some food to Palestinians, it is nowhere near enough to alleviate the crisis in Gaza. This is particularly due to Israel’s closure of all border crossings and the siege it has imposed on the strip.

Authorities in Gaza have revealed that just 14% of the required aid is being delivered by Israel.

An eyewitness speaking with CBS News on Thursday confirmed that Israeli troops and US subcontractors hired to secure aid distribution hubs in Gaza regularly open fire on desperate Palestinians seeking aid, and even boast about it.

This is not the first time eyewitnesses have come forward with testimonies about the violence carried out at GHF sites.

In an August 22 report, Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-backed global hunger monitor—officially declared a famine in Gaza for the first time.

Dozens have died of starvation in recent weeks, including at least two in the last 24 hours. The total number of starvation deaths in Gaza since the start of the war has risen to 271, including 112 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Despite this, Israel continues to deny that famine has overtaken the strip. It continues to accuse Hamas of stealing aid, yet the UN has rejected this claim.

Armed groups backed by Israel, including the gang of Yasser Abu Shabab in Rafah, have been directly implicated in the looting of aid convoys. The Interior Ministry in Gaza has clashed with these armed groups repeatedly in order to prevent the looting of aid.

In early August, US envoy Steve Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited the GHF site in the southernmost city of Rafah in Gaza, which has been destroyed by Israeli forces.

The White House said Witkoff’s visit aimed to “inspect” GHF sites and secure “a plan to deliver more food.” The visit was framed as an effort to advance humanitarian assistance.

However, according to well-known Gaza-based journalist Youssef Fares, GHF “staged the site” ahead of Witkoff’s arrival.

Fares said GHF “buried the blood of the aid seekers who had been injured or killed in recent days, pulled back the tanks and snipers, and reduced the tens of thousands of aid seekers to a small number of families belonging to Yasser Abu Shabab’s men, who entered yesterday through the Morag Corridor to take part in this farcical spectacle, exposed before the world.”

(The Cradle)

https://orinocotribune.com/tel-aviv-org ... ed-famine/

[blindpig]

Israel’s Assassination of Memory

Posted by Internationalist 360° on August 25, 2025
Chris Hedges


Beelzebibi – by Mr. Fish

Israel’s razing of Gaza is not only about ethnic cleansing. It is about the erasure of a people, a culture and a history that expose the lies used to justify the Israeli state.

As Israel ticks off its list of Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians, including mass starvation, it prepares for yet another – the demolition of Gaza City, one of the oldest cities on Earth. Heavy engineering equipment and gigantic armored bulldozers are tearing down hundreds of heavily damaged buildings. Cement trucks are churning out concrete to fill tunnels. Israeli tanks and fighter jets pummel neighborhoods to drive Palestinians who remain in the ruins of the city to the south.

It will take months to turn Gaza City into a parking lot. I have no doubt Israel will replicate the efficiency of the Nazi SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who oversaw the obliteration of Warsaw. He spent his final years in a prison cell. May history, at least in terms of this footnote, repeat itself.

As Israeli tanks advance, Palestinians are fleeing, with neighborhoods such as Sabra and Tuffah, cleansed of its inhabitants. There is little clean water and Israel plans to cut it off in northern Gaza. Food supplies are scarce or wildly overpriced. A bag of flour costs $22.00 a kilo, or your life. A report published Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classifications (IPC) , the world’s leading authority on food insecurity, for the first time has confirmed a famine in Gaza City. It says more than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing “starvation, destitution and death”, with “catastrophic conditions” projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis next month. Nearly 300 people, including 112 children, have died from starvation.

European leaders, along with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, remind us of the real lesson of the Holocaust. It is not Never Again, but, We Do not Care. They are full partners in the genocide. Some wring their hands and say they are “appalled” or “saddened.” Some decry Israel’s orchestrated starvation. A few say they will declare a Palestinian state.

This is Kabuki theater — a way, when the genocide is over, for these Western leaders to insist they stood on the right side of history, even as they armed and funded the genocidal killers, while harassing, silencing or criminalizing those who decried the slaughter.

Israel speaks of occupying Gaza City. But this is a subterfuge. Gaza is not to be occupied. It is to be destroyed. Erased. Wiped off the face of the earth. There is to be nothing left but tons of debris that will be laboriously carted away. The moonscape, devoid of Palestinians of course, will provide the foundation for new Jewish colonies.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to…the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich announced at a conference on increased Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

All that was familiar to me when I lived in Gaza no longer exists. My office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. The coffee shops I frequented. The small cafes on the beach. Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have vanished, no doubt buried under mountains of debris. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.

The imposing Qasr al-Basha fortress in Gaza’s Old City — built by Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the 13th century and known for its relief sculpture of two lions facing each other — is gone. So too is the Barquq Castle, or Qalʿat Barqūqa, a Mamluk-era fortified mosque constructed in 1387-1388, according to an inscription above the entrance gateway. Its ornate Arabic calligraphy by the main gate once read:

“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. The mosques of God shall establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, and fear none except God.”

The Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, the ancient Roman cemetery and the Commonwealth War Cemetery — where more than 3,000 British and commonwealth soldiers from World War I and World War II are buried — have been bombed, and destroyed, along with universities, archives, hospitals, mosques, churches, homes and apartment blocks. Anthedon Harbor, which dates to 1100 B.C. and once provided anchorage for Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman ships, lies in ruins.

I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.

The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.

History is a mortal threat to Israel. It exposes the violent imposition of a European colony in the Arab world. It reveals the ruthless campaign to de-Arabize an Arab country. It underscores the inherent racism towards Arabs, their culture and their traditions. It challenges the myth that, as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said, Zionists created, “a villa in the middle of a jungle.” It mocks the lie that Palestine is exclusively a Jewish homeland. It recalls centuries of Palestinian presence. And it highlights the alien culture of Zionism, implanted on stolen land.

When I covered the genocide in Bosnia, the Serbs blew up mosques, carted away the remains and forbade anyone to speak of the structures they had razed. The goal in Gaza is the same, to wipe out the past and replace it with myth, to mask Israeli crimes, including genocide.

The campaign of erasure banishes intellectual inquiry and stymies the dispassionate examination of history. It celebrates magical thinking. It allows Israelis to pretend the inherent violence that lies at the heart of the Zionist project, going back to the dispossession of Palestinian land in the 1920s and the larger campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, does not exist.

The Israeli government bans public commemorations of the Nakba, or catastrophe, a day of mourning for Palestinians who seek to remember the massacres and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians carried out by Jewish militias in 1948 for this reason. Palestinians are even prevented from carrying their flag.

This denial of historical truth and historical identity permits Israelis to wallow in eternal victimhood. It sustains a morally blind nostalgia for an invented past. If Israelis confront these lies it threatens an existential crisis. It forces them to rethink who they are. Most prefer the comfort of illusion. The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.

Erasure calcifies a society. It shuts down investigations by academics, journalists, historians, artists and intellectuals who seek to explore and examine the past and the present. Calcified societies wage a constant war against truth. Lies and dissimulation must be constantly renewed. Truth is dangerous. Once it is established it is indestructible.

As long as truth is hidden, as long as those who seek truth are silenced, it is impossible for a society to regenerate and reform itself. The Trump administration is in lock step with Israel. It too seeks to prioritize myth over reality. It too silences those who challenge the lies of the past and the lies of the present.

Calcified societies cannot communicate with anyone outside their incestious circles. They deny verifiable fact, the foundation on which rational dialogue takes place. This understanding lay at the heart of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Those who carried out the atrocities of the apartheid regime confessed their crimes in exchange for immunity. By doing so they gave the victims and the victimizers a common language, one rooted in historical truth. Only then was healing possible.

Israel is not only destroying Gaza. It is destroying itself.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/08/ ... of-memory/

******

Video confirms Israeli troops fired three tank shells at Gaza's Nasser Hospital

Israel has repeatedly changed its story to justify a double-tap strike that killed 22 people, including journalists and rescue workers

News Desk

AUG 28, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP)

New video shows that a double-tap attack carried out by Israeli forces on a hospital in Gaza involved three separate munitions, one in the first strike and two in the second, CNN reported on 28 August.

The 25 August attack on Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis in Gaza killed 22 people, including health workers, emergency response crews, and five journalists.

On the morning of the strike, Reuters journalist Hossam al-Masri was operating a live stream from an exterior stairwell on the top floor of the Nasser Hospital.

At 10:09 am, an Israeli munition targeted Masri, killing him and one other man.

Journalists and rescue workers rushed to the stairwell to look for survivors.

At 10:17 am, as rescue workers were carrying a body down the stairwell, a second and third Israeli strike, just milliseconds apart, targeted the stairwell, killing 20 more.

“One shell hits the staircase where first responders had gathered; a fraction of a second later, another explodes at almost the same spot,” CNN wrote, describing the video.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, said the munitions were likely fired by two separate tanks at the same time.

“The impact of two projectiles at nearly the exact same moment suggests two tanks may have fired on the target simultaneously,” Jenzen-Jones told CNN. “It's hard to read too much into that, but it suggests a more carefully coordinated attack, rather than a single vehicle firing at a ‘target of opportunity.’ Modern tank guns, supported by the sensors and systems of modern tanks, are very precise.”

“In gruesome video filmed after the second and third strikes, scores of bodies can be seen on the staircase on both the top floor and the floor below,” CNN added.

The five journalists killed were Reuters journalist Hossam al-Masri, Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammad Salama, Independent Arabia and AP journalist Maryam Abu Daqqa, and NBC journalist Muath Abu Taha.

Journalist Ahmad Abu Aziz later succumbed to his wounds, which were sustained in the same attack.


The fourth-floor balcony and staircase area of the Nasser Hospital was frequently used as a live camera position by Reuters, AP, and other international media outlets. Journalists also gathered in the stairwell to try to get cell service to upload their reports.

Israeli military spokespersons have repeatedly changed their story to deflect blame for the apparently deliberate killings at Nasser Medical Complex, the only hospital still operating in southern Gaza.

As international condemnation grew following the strike, the Israeli military claimed that Hamas was using a camera on the stairwell to monitor its troop movements, even though only the Reuters camera was present.

The military then claimed that six of the those killed were “terrorists” from Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

However, Sky News examined social media pages and obituaries for each of these six people and found that only one, Omar Abu Teim, had been a resistance fighter.

An Israeli security official speaking with CNN acknowledged that Israeli forces received authorization to strike the camera with a drone. The source said Israeli forces instead fired two tank shells, the first at the camera and the second at the crowd that gathered on the stairwell to help with rescue efforts.

“The shocking thing is why the Israeli air forces hit the journalists on the fourth floor. And when we sent our humanitarian staff to rescue them, they attacked them again,” stated Dr Mohammed Saqer, Director of Nursing at Nasser Hospital.

“What's the point of this? Why do you insist on killing us? We are working in a humanitarian area, in a health facility. We should be protected according to international regulations and rules,” Saqer added.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN told the Security Council on Thursday that the Israeli military's recent “double tap” strike on the Gaza hospital was "premeditated."

“The second strike on Nasser hospital was a premeditated strike on medics and journalists who arrived at the scene after the first strike,” stated Riyad Mansour.

“While the world demands a permanent ceasefire, Israel continues its crimes. Where else is the killing of so many civilians and journalists tolerated?”

https://thecradle.co/articles/video-con ... r-hospital

Israel declares Gaza City 'dangerous combat zone' amid nonstop bombing

The Israeli army said its ‘tactical pauses’ aimed at allowing aid deliveries will no longer apply to Gaza City

News Desk

AUG 29, 2025


(Photo credit: Reuters)

The Israeli army declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone” on 29 August, announcing the start of the “initial stages” to seize and occupy the area.

The army also said that the previously announced “tactical pauses” in fighting – aimed at allowing aid deliveries in the strip – will not apply to Gaza City.

It said it would continue the pauses across Gaza while simultaneously carrying out “offensive operations against terror groups in Gaza to protect Israeli civilians.”

“The Israel Defense Forces continue fighting in the Gaza Strip and delivering powerful strikes against Hamas and the terrorist organizations, in preparation for the next phases of the war. Hamas has transformed from a terrorist military organization into a defeated group conducting guerrilla warfare – and it will be also defeated in this arena,” the Israeli army’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.

“We won’t wait. We have begun preliminary operations and the initial stages of the attack on Gaza City, and meanwhile we are working with great force on the city’s outskirts. We will deepen our strikes and will not hesitate until we return all the hostages and dismantle Hamas both militarily and in governance,” he added.

The “tactical pauses” were announced weeks ago. Israel said it would pause attacks in several areas of Gaza from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm.

Despite the announcement, Israeli strikes continued in these areas in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the amount of aid allowed into the strip remained nowhere near enough to address the needs of Gaza’s famine-stricken population, due to a continued Israeli siege.

Dozens of Palestinians, including children, have died of starvation in the last few weeks.

The plan to occupy Gaza City was approved by Israel’s security cabinet on 7 August. Since then, Israeli troops have been decimating Gaza City neighborhoods, including Al-Zaytoun and Sabra, leveling infrastructure by deploying and detonating explosive-laden robots in civilian homes.

Heavy bombing targeted several areas of Gaza City on Friday.

The Israeli army has said that 130,000 Israeli reserve soldiers would be called up for the assault on Gaza City.

The army announced on 27 August that its ground forces were operating on the outskirts of Gaza City in preparation for the upcoming assault.

The plan will see the nearly one million residents of Gaza City forcibly displaced.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-de ... op-bombing

Israel looks to create ‘Hebron emirate’ to weaken PA grip on West Bank: Report

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials are set to meet to ‘examine the feasibility’ of the plan

News Desk

AUG 29, 2025


(Photo credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to implement a plan aimed at “detaching” the occupied West Bank city of Hebron from the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to a report by Israeli news outlet i24.

A meeting will be held on 29 August between Netanyahu, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and Defense Minister Israel Katz, as well as senior security officials. Barkat was the one who initially brought up the plan.

According to the report, the meeting will “examine the feasibility of replacing the PA leadership in the area with local clans and establishing a separate emirate, an entity that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and join the Abraham Accords.”

The plan would further compromise the prospect of Palestinian statehood by dismantling the administrative unity of the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service said “We do not comment on positions presented in closed discussions,” in response to reports that the agency was opposed to the plan.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had reported earlier that tribal leaders in Hebron had sent a letter to the Israeli economy minister proposing the establishment of an “emirate” in the city.

WSJ reported that Wadee al-Jaabari and four other Hebron clan leaders “have signed a letter pledging peace and full recognition of Israel as a Jewish state” in return for Tel Aviv’s recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron.”

The letter vows an abandonment of armed resistance, stressing commitment to a “zero tolerance” policy for “terrorism.”

However, the Palestinian tribes in Hebron, including the Jaabari family, firmly rejected the proposal in July.

“The Palestinians are a conscious people, and it is unthinkable for them to abandon their cause. We, as the Jaabari tribe, declare our complete disapproval and denunciation of what was done by a family member unknown to the tribe and not a resident of Hebron,” said Nafez al-Jaabari at the time.

“We, as the Jaabari tribe, declare our complete disapproval and denunciation of what was done by a family member unknown to the tribe and not a resident of Hebron,” he added.

Palestinian analyst Azzam Abu al-Adas said, “This new entity, the ‘Hebron Emirate,’ is supposed to sign a peace agreement with Israel, denounce terrorism, and join the Abraham Accords.”

“Most likely, the UAE will inject money to revive Hebron, while allowing only Hebron’s workers entry into Israel to create a carrot-and-stick model for the rest of the West Bank cities,” he added.

“In light of the current social collapse and the absence of political and community leadership, this plan will be realistic, and the PA has no tools ‘so far’ to stop it unless the Palestinian leadership recalculates its approach,” he went on to say. “It seems that the dismantling of the PA, which I have been talking about for more than a year and a half – and many opposed me on – will become a reality, and under Arab sponsorship, at least from the UAE.”

The latest report on the Hebron “emirate” comes as Israel has rapidly accelerated settlement expansion and plans to illegally annex the occupied West Bank as a response to the recent revival of the idea of Palestinian statehood and France’s vow to recognize a state of Palestine next month.

Earlier this month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced an unfreezing of the E1 settlement project, which has been frozen for decades as a result of strong opposition from the international community.

It aims to link occupied East Jerusalem – viewed as integral to any future Palestinian state – to the illegal Maale Adumim settlement.

“Today, anyone in the world who tries to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground. Today we are writing a historic chapter in the story of the redemption of the people of Israel in their land,” the finance minister said.

In late July, lawmakers in Israel’s Knesset voted 71-13 in favor of a motion calling for “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley.”

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-lo ... ank-report

UN experts condemn Israel for 'enforced disappearance' of Palestinians at Gaza aid sites

Palestinians abducted from Gaza suffer horrific torture in Israeli prisons

News Desk

AUG 28, 2025


(Photo credit: Eyad Baba, AFP)

UN rights experts condemned on 28 August Israel’s “heinous crime” of abducting starving Palestinians seeking food at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites.

Seven independent experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council issued a joint statement on Thursday, saying they had received reports that several individuals, including one child, had been “forcibly disappeared” after seeking aid at GHF distribution sites in Rafah.

“Reports of enforced disappearances targeting starving civilians seeking their basic right to food is not only shocking, but amounts to torture,” said the statement.

The UN experts accused Israeli forces of direct involvement in the enforced disappearances.

“Using food as a tool to conduct targeted and mass disappearances needs to end now,” the statement added.

The statement was signed by the five members of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on rights in the Palestinian territories, and Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

The statement said the Israeli military had refused to provide information on the fate and whereabouts of persons abducted while seeking aid.

The experts demanded that Israeli authorities “clarify the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons and investigate the enforced disappearances thoroughly and impartially and punish perpetrators.”

Since the beginning of the Israel’s war on Gaza, Israel has abducted thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and medical and rescue workers.

Many reports of extreme torture of Palestinians abducted from the besieged enclave have emerged, in particular from a detention facility at the Sde Teiman military base in Israel.

In June of last year, the New York Times reported accounts of Israel using electric chairs to shock prisoners, sleep deprivation, and electric rods to sodomize them.

The report said 35 of the 4,000 Palestinians passing through the Sde Teiman detention camp died, including one who was sodomized.

Dr. Muneer Al Barsh, Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said that the torture techniques reported by Palestinian detainees include electric shocks, suspension, stretching, and nail pulling. He said multiple detainees reported that Israel used trained dogs to perform “vile acts” on detainees.

Haaretz reported that a senior doctor from Gaza was tortured to death in November while under interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Last week, the UN-backed global hunger monitor, Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC), officially declared a famine in Gaza for the first time.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights office said that Israeli forces and GHF security guards have killed 1,857 Palestinians seeking aid since late May, including 1,021 near GHF sites.

https://thecradle.co/articles/un-expert ... -aid-sites

[blindpig]

Whoever doesn't die from our bullets will die from hunger.
August 30, 11:10



Chronicle of Israeli cannibalism.

"We must completely cut off the supply of water, electricity and food to the Gaza Strip. Whoever does not die from our bullets will die of hunger" (c) Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich

"We must completely cut off the supply of water, electricity and food to the Warsaw Ghetto. Whoever does not die from our bullets will die of hunger" (c) Polish Governor-General Hans Frank

Hans Frank certainly did not say this, but he did exactly the same.
This is the banality of modern Nazism.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10042065.html

Google Translator

******

Four Israeli Soldiers Missing in Gaza as Army Invokes Hannibal Directive

Four Israeli soldiers went missing in Gaza’s Al-Zeitun neighborhood as Palestinian fighters carried out ambushes; Israeli forces responded by invoking the Hannibal Directive amid escalating battles.


Fierce clashes in Gaza’s Al-Zeitun neighborhood left four Israeli soldiers missing as the army invoked the Hannibal Directive. Photo: @ECSaharaui__

August 30, 2025 Hour: 7:56 am

Four Israeli soldiers have gone missing during heavy clashes in Gaza’s Al-Zeitun neighborhood, with the Israeli army reportedly activating the controversial Hannibal Directive to prevent their capture.

Israeli media described the fighting in Al-Zeitun as among the fiercest since October 7, 2023. Palestinian fighters carried out an ambush on a unit of Israel’s Nahal Brigade and attempted to seize more soldiers in a second operation in the same area. Extensive searches were launched, but no official statement has yet been issued by the Israeli military on the fate of the missing troops.

According to Israeli outlets, the Hannibal Directive was implemented as battles intensified through the night in Al-Zeitun, where additional Palestinian fighters joined the clashes. Reports confirmed that one Israeli soldier was killed and 11 others wounded, though the whereabouts of the missing remain unknown.


The events followed a statement earlier in the week from Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, who said the group had lost contact with Edan Alexander, a U.S.-Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza. His case has revived speculation that the Hannibal Directive is once again being used.

Israeli media also reported three major incidents against Israeli forces in Gaza on Friday, which required large-scale rescue and evacuation operations by helicopter. The confrontations took place in Al-Zeitun in southeastern Gaza City, in the Sabra neighborhood in southern Gaza City, and in Khan Younis in the south of the Strip. Palestinian resistance groups said they inflicted dozens of casualties on Israeli troops.

The Hannibal Directive was drafted in 1986 after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah in Lebanon. It instructs Israeli forces to prevent the capture of their comrades at any cost, including lethal force against their own soldiers. The policy has long been criticized for effectively sanctioning the killing of Israeli troops to avoid their use as hostages.

During the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in October 2023, internal investigations revealed that Israeli forces killed their own civilians under the directive.

Since October 2023, at least 63,025 Palestinians have been killed and another 159,490 injured in Israeli military operations in Gaza, according to figures cited in the reports.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/four-isr ... directive/

******

Jonathan Cook: The Media’s Israeli Atrocity Treadmill
August 29, 2025

News outlets are so busy chasing Israel’s latest crime in Gaza — currently its horrific attack on Nasser Hospital — they never pause to piece together the bigger story of genocide.


Palestinian Red Crescent personnel inspect a destroyed ambulances in Deir el-Balah , Gaza Strip, January 2024. (UNRWA Photo/Ashraf Amra/ Wkimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

An investigation by CNN into Israel’s strike on the Nasser Hospital this week — an attack that killed more than 20 people, including emergency workers and five journalists — is a case study in how even well-intentioned journalism, ostensibly examining Israeli crimes, ends up concealing more than it reveals.

CNN’s detailed examination of footage of Monday’s strike on the hospital in Khan Younis found that Israel’s “double-tap” actually involved three missiles.

The first strike hit a fourth-floor stairwell close to a hospital upper balcony. Then, 10 minutes later, as emergency crews and journalists scrambled to help the victims, a second and third strike hit precisely the same spot.

A munitions expert who examined the footage notes that the second and third missiles were almost certainly fired from two different tanks in very close succession.

As he and CNN conclude, that removes any last trace of doubt on whether the attack on the hospital was, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, “a tragic mishap.” Rather, it was a highly coordinated precision strike.

CNN reiterates a further and important contextual point that should obliterate Israel’s subsequent justification for its attack, following what Israel terms an “initial investigation.”

Let us note in passing that the Israeli military is pretending to investigate itself only to dampen the rare furore that has erupted over the strike, chiefly because the new atrocity was caught on camera and killed journalists working for major Western news organisations.

Israel has abandoned almost all of its previous investigations as soon as the Western media could be provided with a fresher atrocity to report on. And Israel seems to have an endless production line of atrocities with which to distract them.

All too predictably, Israel’s “initial investigation” found a “Hamas” excuse.

According to the Israeli military, it hit Nasser Hospital’s stairwell because it had identified a camera there supposedly being used by Hamas.

No ‘Mishap’

Even if we take this claim seriously — which, outrageously, is exactly what the Western media are doing — it falls apart on even the most cursory inspection.

Not least, the Israeli military was fully aware that this was a favoured spot for Gaza’s journalists, a place where they often congregated.

The high elevation and good cell signal meant that it was ideal for uploading their material and for conducting live broadcasts.

Palestinian journalist Abdelrahman Alkahlout posted a video on his social media highlighting the importance of Nasser Hospital for journalists working in Khan Younis.

“Since the beginning of the war, I have relied on this spot at Nasser Medical Complex as the only window to… pic.twitter.com/UHujsMTD4V

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 25, 2025

And the location at Nasser Hospital — the last (barely) functioning medical facility in southern Gaza — meant it was certain to be at the centre of the story every time Israel bombed the surrounding area, as it does relentlessly.

Nasser Hospital was the site from which emergency crews were dispatched, and it was the place where Israel’s bloodied victims were brought for treatment.

CNN’s investigation features several photographs and videos of the journalists Israel killed this week working on the balcony and stairwell in the preceding several months. A photo in the story, by Mohammad Salama, was taken on June 12 and includes two of the journalists Israel killed this week: Mariam Abu Daqqa and Moath Abu Taha.

Before she was killed in an Israeli air attack on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, Palestinian journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa had written a goodbye letter to her young son, Gaith. These are Mariam’s words, narrated by a fellow Palestinian journalist. pic.twitter.com/UOxRLgv0Zm

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 26, 2025

***

This is one of the last videos Palestinian journalist Moaz Abu Taha posted before Israel killed him and 4 other journalists in Gaza.

It was a plea to help Maryam, a young girl who lost part of her skull to an Israeli airstrike. pic.twitter.com/8M9nAYBvYi

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 28, 2025

All of this was known to the Israeli military. When they targeted a “Hamas camera” they knew that, in reality, that camera was being used by a Reuters journalist, Hussam Al-Masri.

Hussam al-Masri, the Reuters journalist killed by Israeli fire on August 25 while operating a live video feed at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, reported on the war’s civilian suffering while himself living in a tent and struggling to find food for his family https://t.co/RrWHJHw8Sf 1/6 pic.twitter.com/6z0bTxrUaC

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 27, 2025

Israel’s ever-present drones, their whine constantly filling the skies over Gaza, had been watching him and other journalists on that stairwell day after day, week after week, for months on end.

And when Israel struck 10 minutes later with two coordinated missiles, it knew that the main victims would be the emergency workers who went to rescue survivors from the first strike and journalists — al-Masri’s friends — who were nearby and rushed to the scene.

Nothing was a “mishap.” It was planned down to the minutest detail.

Reuters Smears Itself

But here is where we get to the main problem with CNN’s coverage.

In picking apart Israel’s patently bogus claims, the investigation treats those claims with a seriousness they in no way merit. And worse, it ignores the wider context that damns Israel and makes the investigation itself — any investigation — utterly redundant in terms of determining whether a war crime was committed.

On that matter, there can be no debate. And yet, CNN’s investigation takes as its premise the idea that there are two sides to be considered and settled. That the truth has to be determined. That Israel’s case needs to be weighed.

These are the straws that Western leaders, and the large contingent of genocide apologists in Western professional circles, including journalists, so desperately clutch at.

Because otherwise it would be only too clear that they have been cheerleading — and assisting — a genocide for two years.

The first point is this: An investigation by Israel, or anyone else for that matter, is not needed to establish whether the targeted camera belonged to Hamas. It didn’t because it belonged to Reuters news agency.

The extraordinary contortions made by Reuters to avoid pointing this simple fact out are illustrative of the way media outlets are willing to construct narratives that actually undermine the very thing they are supposed to be engaged in: truth-telling journalism.

Reuters knows the camera position on the stairwell was not being used by Hamas because Reuters was using it for their live feeds. Images of the wrecked camera even show it wired up for broadcast at the time it was hit.

And yet like the rest of the media, Reuters is required to play dumb: it reports Israel’s outright lie that it targeted a “Hamas camera” — and six terrorists alongside it — as if that might be true.

Reuters headline on the story – the only part that most people read – runs: “Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists.”



Notice, Reuters does not even put scare-quote marks around the term “Hamas camera” to alert readers to the fact that this claim should be treated with caution, or better still derision.

Nor does the agency include a comment from one of its senior editorial staff disputing Israel’s claim or presenting its own side of the story.

Astonishingly, Reuters instead colludes in smearing itself by entertaining Israel’s claim that its own live-feed camera was being used by Hamas.

Rather than defend its own journalist, it leaves it up to an Israeli military spokesperson to later conclude that al-Masri, Reuters’ journalist, was not the intended “target” — and thereby, presumably, exonerate him of being a terrorist. If only Reuters had done that first.



But the Israeli spokesperson’s “admission” only deepens the absurdity of Israel’s claims. How was a Reuters camera serving Hamas when it was being operated at the time by a Reuters journalist who was not the target?

Don’t look to Reuters, or CNN, or any Western media for an answer. The mystery will simply be left to permanently cloud our understanding.

“Reuters colludes in smearing itself by entertaining Israel’s claim …”

Are the media doing all this in the interests of a self-sabotaging notion of phoney “balance?” Or because the job of Reuters and the rest of the establishment media is to reinforce a Western narrative in which Israel is always the good guy, even when it is perpetrating genocidal “mishaps” — and because the journalists these media outlets employ are terrified of incurring the wrath of Israel, and Washington behind it?

If even Reuters behaves this way when its own camera has been recruited by Israel to justify the murder of one of its own journalists, what more can we expect of media like CNN when they “investigate” the story?

These outlets are all so utterly servile to an overarching narrative that promotes the interests of the West and its top military client state in the oil-rich Middle East that they would rather bury the truth than risk taking on the centres of power.

Routine War Crimes

Second, even if we accept Israel’s ludicrous claim that it identified a “Hamas camera” at the site, why did it fire two more missiles 10 minutes later?

The Reuters camera was destroyed and the journalist operating it killed in the first hit. Israel knew that because its drones surveilled the site of the attack.

A second round of missiles was entirely unnecessary — if the aim was to take out the camera.

But, of course, that wasn’t the aim. The goal was — as it has been throughout this genocide — to target both the enclave’s medical workers, who are needed to save the lives of those Israel wants to exterminate, and the media workers Israel wishes to kill so there are no witnesses to its Final Solution for the people of Gaza.

A 10-minute delay between strikes was ideal in attracting the very people that are highest on Israel’s list to murder.

The point intentionally lost as CNN and the rest of the media pretend to debate the logistics of the strike is that this is yet another attack by Israel — one of hundreds — on Gaza’s hospitals over the past two years.

And it is just the latest assassination strike against Gaza’s journalists, more than 200 of whom have been killed — an unprecedented death toll.

Intentionally attacking hospitals and killing journalists used to be considered the gravest of war crimes.

Now these attacks are so routine that the latest one on Nasser Hospital is simply the unremarkable backdrop to a story — a preposterous one — about whether there was a secret Hamas camera in a busy stairwell used by journalists. Even to entertain the story as credible, as the Western media is doing, is an insult to Gaza’s journalists and to western audience’s intelligence.

Third, shortly after the attack on Nasser Hospital, CNN interviewed Dr. Mimi Syed, who revealed that, exceptionally, there had been no foreign doctors or aid workers at Nasser Hospital that day. All of them had been required to attend in person a training session on gender sensitivity at the offices of the World Health Organisation. Attendees have backed up her account.

Even more unusually, even the doctors leaving Gaza the next day, who had no need of the training and tried to be excused, were told they had to attend.

“These outlets are all so utterly servile to an overarching narrative that promotes the interests of the West and its top military client state in the oil-rich Middle East…”

All of this had to be coordinated with an Israeli military liaison body, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), that approves the movement of foreign workers in Gaza if they are to avoid being killed in drone strikes.

Most likely Israel insisted on the pretext for evacuation so it could strike the hospital and kill Palestinian emergency crews and journalists without also harming foreigners and so limit whatever tepid indignation the murder of Palestinian journalists would provoke from the western media.

But at the very minimum, if the pretext for the evacuation was not initiated by Israel, it was Israel that took advantage of an opportunity to strike the hospital when it knew it was going to clear of foreign staff.

Either way, this was no “mishap” — and had nothing to do with a “Hamas camera.”

It was about creating yet another opening to attack a hospital, the last one functioning, just barely, in its area. It was about killing yet more of Gaza’s medical workers and journalists. And it was about further normalising the war crimes needed to advance the genocide to its horrifying end.

And yet this part of the story, perhaps the most crucial in understanding what went on, is not included in CNN’s “investigation” at all, even though it was CNN that conducted the earlier interview in which Dr Syed made her revelation.

You might imagine that CNN and other outlets – were they really interested in getting to the truth – are all over this incriminating testimony. And yet this part of an “investigation” has not been pursued. Extraordinarily, it is all but impossible to find mention of itin coverage of the strike.

The Treadmill

The facts that CNN and other Western media are duty bound to ignore in their news “investigations” are the very facts that are most glaring, most unmistakeable.

That Israel has been systematically destroying the enclave’s hospitals to bring to a hastier close the genocide of Gaza’s people as they are bombed, displaced and starved to death; and that Israel has been assassinating Gaza’s journalists – our chief witnesses to the crime – to add a layer of “plausible deniability” to its genocidal ambitions.

The media’s “investigations” raise but never answer the question of whether Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, even though the answers are staring us in the face. Before we get an answer, Israel is busy with the next atrocity and the restless media busy chasing after fresh answers on the relentless news treadmill.

The truth lies not in the details CNN, Reuters or any other news outlet briefly pore over before pursuing the next “news event”. There is a bigger picture all that frenetic activity is designed to distract from. Journalists and their audiences can study the trees, but they must never be allowed to stand back and see the wood.

Israel was emboldened to kill five journalists at Nasser Hospital this week because the western political and media class meekly swallowed Israel’s patent lies two weeks earlier when Israel killed six journalists in Gaza City, claiming one of them was a terrorist.

No one should be surprised when Israel executes another handful of journalists next week or the week after.

But doubtless there will continue to be media “investigations”. Journalists will show they are on the case – even as hospitals keep getting attacked, journalists keep being assassinated, children keep dying of starvation, and an unremarked genocide unfolds to the bitterest of conclusions.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/29/j ... treadmill/

*******

Largest civilian flotilla in history prepares to sail for Gaza

Hundreds of activists from 44 countries are set to depart from Spain to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, following the seizure of the two previous missions

News Desk

AUG 29, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP)

In what is being described by organizers as the largest humanitarian mission in history, the Global Sumud Flotilla is scheduled to depart on 31 August from several Spanish ports and on 4 September from Tunisia, with dozens of boats carrying participants from 44 countries bound for Gaza.

The expedition was announced in early August, and will be joined by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Portuguese politician Mariana Mortagua, departing with the express goal of breaking the siege on the starving Gaza enclave.

“This summer, dozens of boats, both large and small, will set sail from ports across the world, converging on Gaza in the largest civilian flotilla of its kind in history,” organizer Haifa Mansouri said at a press conference in Tunis.

Mansouri explained the mission pools the resources, participants, and coordination of four networks that usually operate independently: the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, the Global Movement to Gaza, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and Sumud Nusantara.

She said the goal is to “break the illegal blockade on Gaza by sea, establish a humanitarian corridor, and confront the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Seif Abu Keshk, another organizer, said over 6,000 activists have registered to participate. “They need to act to defend human rights and to guarantee a safe passage for this flotilla,” he told reporters in Barcelona, urging political intervention.

This flotilla is the third to head for Gaza in recent months in an attempt to break the siege and draw international attention to the humanitarian crisis imposed on the enclave.

On 26 July, Israeli naval forces illegally boarded the Handala boat about 70 nautical miles (approximately 130 kilometers) from Gaza, abducting 21 civilians, including two Al Jazeera journalists, French National Assembly member Gabrielle Cathala, and EU parliamentarian Emma Fourreau.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition said the raid was illegal under international law, having been conducted in international waters.

Earlier, on 9 June, Israeli forces seized the Madleen vessel as it carried baby formula and medical supplies toward Gaza. Twelve activists were detained, including Thunberg and EU lawmaker Rima Hassan. Israel mocked the participants as “celebrities” staging a “selfie yacht.”

Rights groups, including the European Left and the Adala Human Rights Center, condemned the seizures as violations of international law, accusing Tel Aviv of using starvation as a weapon to conceal its war crimes in Gaza.

https://thecradle.co/articles/largest-c ... e_vignette

Lebanese army chief 'appalled' by US diktat to disarm Hezbollah: Report

A US senator who visited Lebanon as part of a delegation this week said there must be a ‘Plan B’ to disarm Hezbollah through ‘military force’

News Desk

AUG 29, 2025


(Photo credit: X/UNIFIL)

The commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), Rudolphe Haikal, was “appalled” by the recent pressures exerted by Washington and the US delegation that visited Beirut this week, according to sources cited by Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Haikal was quoted by the sources as saying that he “would prefer to resign” if the army was ordered to implement a plan that would “spill the blood of Lebanese.”

Other army commanders have reportedly refused to develop any “executive disarmament plan with a list of objectives or a timetable,” the report said.

“The Americans understood from the Lebanese army, regardless of politics, that it lacks the technical capacity to implement a large and comprehensive disarmament plan, and offered that the US provide the army with intelligence information about Hezbollah positions in any region,” it cited informed sources as saying.

The sources added that “Some members of the [US] delegation proposed something even more dangerous: offering Israeli intelligence assistance to the army, and the possibility of Israeli drones accompanying the army to identify targets to be raided.”

A report released by The National has also cited sources saying that the army command is concerned about the disarmament issue.

“The army is not happy with the process, and [Haikal] has at some point threatened to resign,” a security official told the outlet.

“He wants the government to pursue a comprehensive agreement and avoid putting the army in a direct confrontation with the group and other factions in Lebanon,” he added.

The army is still “expected” to submit a plan for disarmament, the sources added.

“We’re now waiting for the army. The [government] session is scheduled for Tuesday for the army to deliver the plan. There is no disagreement, and they are ready.”

The Lebanese army commented on the reports in a press release posted on X.

“The media is covering information about the Army Command's position on the tasks undertaken by the military establishment at the current stage. The Army Command affirms that it is carrying out its missions with the highest levels of responsibility and professionalism, and keenness to preserve the homeland's security and internal stability, in accordance with the decision of the political authority, and in commitment to performing its duty regardless of the difficulties,” it said.

“The national duty that the Army is honored to perform is a firm and irrevocable commitment. Soldiers of various ranks have made great sacrifices in this context during various stages, especially with the continued Israeli aggression against our homeland. The Command calls on the media not to cover the affairs of the military establishment and not to speculate about its decisions, and to refer to its official statements for accurate information,” the LAF added.

The Lebanese government adopted the disarmament decision on 5 August, following months of heavy pressure from Washington.

The LAF will present an implementation plan to the government at the start of the coming month.

Hezbollah has rejected the cabinet decision and continues to call for dialogue with the state on the formation of a national defense strategy that will see its arms incorporated into the Lebanese army and be available for use if the country is attacked.

The resistance movement is demanding guarantees that such a strategy will be reachable, but refuses to discuss the matter while Israel continues to attack south Lebanon and occupy several positions near the border in violation of the ceasefire.

A US delegation visited Lebanon this week and confirmed that Israel will not consider withdrawing its forces from south Lebanon until the government disarms the resistance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on 25 August praising the Lebanese government’s decision on disarming Hezbollah, while indicating Tel Aviv’s willingness for a “gradual reduction” of its forces in south Lebanon if the proper “steps” are taken.

Israel occupies several locations along the border in violation of the ceasefire agreement, and launches near-daily airstrikes and drone attacks on southern Lebanon.

Over 200 people have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was reached in November 2024.

Staunchly pro-Israel US senator Lindsey Graham, who was part of the delegation that visited Beirut this week, said on Thursday that “If we cannot reach a peaceful disarmament solution for Hezbollah, then we need to look at plan B.”

“Plan B is disarming Hezbollah by military force,” he added. “If we have to use military force to disarm Hezbollah, I think it’s in America’s interest to make sure the Lebanese army is successful.”

During the visit, US officials confirmed reports of plans to create a “Trump economic zone” in southern Lebanon.

The zone reportedly aims to prevent Hezbollah from re-establishing itself near the border. It is also said to include the forced displacement of residents in the border villages, and a continued Israeli military presence in parts of south Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal Movement, are expected to begin a series of protests next week in rejection of the government’s disarmament decision and US diktats to the Lebanese state.

https://thecradle.co/articles/lebanese- ... lah-report

[blindpig]

Nancy Ohanian

Don’t look away
Originally published: LA Progressive on August 25, 2025 by Skip Kaltenheuser (more by LA Progressive) | (Posted Aug 28, 2025)

It’s 2025. There’s an Internet. Who can now pretend they have no idea what Israel has done, is doing, aims to do?

It’s obvious to the entire world that the Biden and Trump administrations have run cover for Israel while enabling the horrors before us.

But for those seeking a deeper understanding, or perhaps sources to encourage others to understand what is taking place, many important documentaries stand ready to enlighten.

One, Who Killed Shireen?, was recently viewed at the National Press Club. In 2022 Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazerra, was clearly marked as press in blue body armor yet fatally shot in the back of the head by an Israeli sniper, and her producer wounded.

Israel made fanciful claims such as Abu Akleh being killed by fire from Palestinian militants. After Israeli explanations eventually turned to wet tissue, Israel refused to identify even the unit responsible, denying the Biden administration access, while refusing changes to rules of engagement that might protect innocents in the future. The desire to know the perpetrators was widely shared by Abu Akleh’s family and colleagues and by many in the Middle East who respected the journalist as a trusted and valued source interpreting what was happening around them.

The press club ballroom was at capacity, mostly with members of the general public who bought tickets to view the 40-minute investigative film and a panel discussion afterwards. The documentary was backed by Zeteo, a news outlet owned by Mehdi Hassan. The investigation, akin to a detective story, was headed by Dion Nissenbaum, an American journalist with experience in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The investigative team established that Israel knew at the outset its soldiers were culpable. Initial American assessments determined the shooting intentional, and that the shooter could be convicted of murder in an American courtroom. The Biden aministration then flipped, concluding there was no reason to believe the killing was intentional, laying the cause on “tragic circumstances.”

Nissenbaum’s crew believes they have pinpointed the shooter, including from comments from an unidentified Israeli official and IDF soldiers who spoke anonymously. There were no consequences for anyone. The alleged shooter, 20-year-old Alon Scagio, was made a captain in another unit and died in combat. Soldiers angry at Scagio being identified used pictures of Abu Akleh for target practice. The cost of the Biden Administration’s failure to dent Israel’s impunity over the Abu Akleh murder have been high. It sent a signal that Israel had no worries about declaring open season on the press to damp down coverage of Israel’s actions. Over two hundred media workers have been killed, many with their family members.

The Biden administration’s softballing the matter, even running cover for Israel’s crime, is a major takeaway from the film. Hassan hopes that Biden is haunted by his lack of action in the case. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) sent a video stating that the impunity Israel has enjoyed since the Abu Akleh killing likely paved the way for killing at least a half dozen Americans and other civilians.

An Israeli colonel tweeted “Wearing a vest that says ‘press’ doesn’t turn a terrorist into a journalist.” This writer has been shocked to hear similar sentiments from U.S. journalists asked to stand up for Palestinian journalists.

A preview of Who Killed Shireen? can be found here.



massive database of documentaries on Palestinians and their plight can be found at Palestinecinema. com, many of them brief yet poignant, most within the past two decades. Brief is sometimes a welcome alternative. Although longer films are well-done and effective, the sheer injustice over decades can overwhelm one’s sensibilities. Four minutes worth every moment are in a Brief Animated History of the Question of Palestine, put out by the UN Palestinian Rights Committee, accessible on You- Tube. This is a quick shot to fire at those nonsensically denying Palestinians are a real people, or that there’s an occupation.

One coming to mind is U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a pastor whose enterprises include decades of taking Christian evangelical tourists to Israeli settlements. Of late Huckabee is bewildered by reports of harassment of Christians, and by arson attacks on an ancient church near Jerusalem.

He says he’s troubled by the recent brutal beating death of a U.S. citizen at the hands of West Bank Israeli settlers. Who knows, perhaps one day he’ll end up getting religion.

Naw. Huckabee recently infuriated the Irish by telling them to “sober up” and asking if they’d “fallen into a vat of Guinness” after Ireland explored legislation banning goods from settlements in occupied territories.

Among other animated films Huckabee would benefit from is one done in 2022 by a West Bank human rights organization, viewable at AlHaq.org and on YouTube. The nine minute Israel’s Settler Colonial Apartheid Regime: Segregating the Palestinian People, succinctly explains the history of Israeli apartheid.

A great exposé of the threat Israeli spyware poses to privacy, including in America and dozens of other countries, arrived via Surveilled, a 2024 HBO documentary by Ronan Farrow. It carefully examines an NSO Group product called Pegasus which can turn a cell phone into “a spy in your pocket.” It’s also another instance of Palestine as a proving ground for such technology.

Not just for Israeli companies. According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, American companies are exploring AI and other technical abilities in synch with Israel, including Google, Meta and Microsoft, which quickly penalize or fire employees who protest their employers’ involvement.

Intelligence expert James Bamford has written in The Nation on Palantir Technologies supplying powerful targeting capabilities. He says U.S. tech companies have provided AI that targets thousands of Palestinians, often slaying their families with them. Many targets are not even alleged militants. Some are also cultural pillars. Even poets.

This is how culture is erased. The Farrow film delving deep into Pegasus is an excellent start on understanding how tech companies put the Orwell in Orwellian. If you’re not on HBO, DemocracyNow.org has excellent segments on Surveilled.

For those tired of hearing the de rigueur preface that the slaughter before us began on October 7th, 2023, the 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom, by Abby Martin, provides excellent ammo.

Available on YouTube, it uses archival footage to examine what happened during peaceful demonstrations in Gaza during the Great March of Return, in which 200 unarmed civilians were killed and many maimed. Doctors Without Borders puts the number of demonstrators injured in the weekly protests by the fence that pens Palestinians into Gaza, held over a 636- day period starting in March of 2018, at over 35,600.

Often they were hit by bone-shattering gunshots in the quest to inflict the worst and longest-lasting injuries possible.

The gleeful depravity of the Israeli euphemism “mowing the lawn”—code for terrorizing Palestinians—was on clear display. Israeli snipers’ targeting of medics who responded, as well as of journalists and children, was a warmup for what everyone not in a self-induced coma sees they have now wrought.

If one slides about the Internet, one will soon come across the film being attacked as biased and supporting terrorism. Such claims nicely illustrate Israel’s public relations machine as they try to tear down critics of Israel’s occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.

But the footage in the film is bulletproof.

Related is a 14-minute film The Waiting Room, about three of the patients who were injured in those demonstrations and how their lives changed. It’s available at msf.org, the site of Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which works in over seventy countries to save lives and ease the suffering of those in crisis.

There is a more recent film exploring attacks on medical workers. Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, is a BBC project that the BBC later cancelled the showing of, to wide condemnation. It’s not for nothing that last year over 230 members of the British media industry, including 100 BBC staff members, signed a letter accusing the BBC of favoring Israel in its news broadcasts and lacking fair and accurate evidence-based journalism in its coverage of Gaza.

The five and a half minute trailer for the film, which can be seen at zeteo.com, begins with the murder of fifteen medics on a rescue mission. IDF soldiers subsequently buried them in a mass grave with their vehicles.



After the grave was found, the discovered cell phone of a slain medic who was recording the operation put the lie to Israel’s explanations of the deaths. The film contrasts the brutality to medical workers, in violation of international law, with their perseverance trying to maintain a semblance of care in impossible situations as medical centers are bombed and Israel methodically robs Gaza of irreplaceable medical expertise and training.

The media firm Zeteo acquired the film. Alas, it is only available to subscribers as an incentive to sign up.

Given the power of this film, and the dire timing as malnutrition and starvation take hold in Gaza and medical workers pass out from hunger and exhaustion, it would be a public service for Zeteo to make it freely available to the public.

Viewers could then widely distribute it via the Internet throughout the world, including to members of Congress. The film might change even hardened minds. The need for that is immediate.


Mr. Fish

The subject of methodical assaults on medical workers and facilities can be pursued at DemocracyNow.org, which has multiple filmed interviews with doctors in Gaza and with volunteer medical workers from abroad who’ve provided services. Their morality and courage are stunning. Their undeniable testimony proving IDF solders deliberately and frequently target children and infants in the head is a stain Israel’s enablers can never erase.

What is one to make of the mentality of encroaching settlers in illegal settlements who don’t just claim but believe they have divine real estate deeds, solid as the tablets handed Moses? British-American Louis Theroux has done scores of documentaries, many for the BBC, winning multiple awards.

He spent a great deal of time getting to know these religious-nationalist settlers, including Daniella Weiss, the movement’s “Godmother.” Theroux also spends time with Palestinians, learning how their lives have been impacted by the settlers entering their communities.

His new film, The Settlers, can be viewed at the Films for Action site, FilmsforAction.org, as can his 2011 film The Ultra Zionists.

One is struck by how these settlers surround themselves in a religious echo chamber that reinforces justification of the indefensible. The dehumanization of those whose land they covet is a required building block for this chamber.

Another exploration is done in the 2016 film The Settlers (inside the Jewish settlements), by Israeli film director Shimon Dotan, who looked at both religious and secular settlers. It is also accessible at Films for Action, as are scores of other films showing diverse aspects of the lives of those in the region and also people impacted back in America.

An example of the latter is Inside Meta’s Palestine Censorship, on the internal censorship of pro-Palestine content and intimidation of Meta employees, owing to the massive media company’s ties to Israel.

Such ties by many companies profiting from the destruction of Palestinians are explored in Exposing a Global Economy of Genocide, an interview with UN special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, who was sanctioned by Trump after releasing her recent report on the economic machinery that helps drive the oppression.

Inside Occupied Palestine offers the combined perspectives of Veterans for Peace, U.S. activists and a former Israeli Air Force Blackhawk pilot. They convey the impossible circumstances for Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation, also at FilmsforAction.org. The flip side of what Israel is doing is not just the horror the U.S. government enables on its path to pariah status, but the harm it inflicts on American society.

The Chris Hedges Report, available on several sites including Scheerpost.com, often fleshes out related themes in front of a camera. Recently Hedges discusses The End of Academic Freedom with Dr. Maura Finkelstein, an academic fired for speaking out in defense of Palestinians, detractors awarding her the slur “self-hating jew.”

Such filmed reports are critical to include alongside discussion of documentaries on Palestinians. Even though that level of brutality inflicted by Israel is not widely apparent here, our rights and academic freedoms are being brutalized and careers damaged. This is inseparable from what America enables Israel to do, as it is motivated by Israel’s desire to crush public scrutiny of what it does and to destroy critics.

And, of course, there’s 2024’s No Other Land, a joint Palestinian-Israeli documentary showing the forced displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yaata in the West Bank after it was declared an Israeli “firing zone.”

It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. It has yet to find a distributor for North America.

On March 24th, Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian co-director of the film, was severely beaten by Israeli West Bank settlers. No consequences. On July 28th, Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian consultant on the film, was shot dead by Yinon Levi, an Israeli settler who’d been under U.S. sanctions for violent attacks on Palestinians until Trump removed them. No consequences.

Delving into these filmed offerings will provide insight into what a diminishing American morality means not just for America but for lowering the bar for morality around the world. If Americans fail to understand and stop what we’re enabling in Israel, the reverberations will come to haunt them like banshees.

Don’t look away.

https://mronline.org/2025/08/28/dont-look-away/

******

Israel’s ‘new, violent Zionism’ as a harbinger of Imperial geo-politics of submission and obedience

Alastair Crooke

September 1, 2025

For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful, Alastair Crooke writes.

Israel’s strategy from past decades continues to rest on the hope of achieving some literal Chimeric transformative ‘de-radicalisation’ of both Palestinians and of the Region, writ large – a de-radicalisation that will make ‘Israel safe’. This has been the ‘holy grail’ objective for Zionists since Israel was first founded. The code word for this chimaera today is the ‘Abraham Accords’.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington and key Trump ‘whisperer’ – writes Anna Barsky in Ma’ariv (Hebrew) on 24 August – “sees reality with cold political eyes. He is convinced that a real agreement [on Gaza] will never be concluded with Hamas, but [only] with the United States. What is needed, Dermer says, is the Americans’ adoption of Israel’s principles: the same five points that the Cabinet approved: disarmament of Hamas, return of all hostages, complete demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in the Strip – and an alternative civilian government that is not Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority”.

From the perspective of Dermer, a partial hostage release deal – which Hamas has accepted – would be a political disaster. By contrast, were Washington to endorse the Dermer outcome – as an ‘American plan’ – Barsky infers Dermer suggesting: “we would have a situation in which everyone benefits”. Moreover, in Dermer’s logic, “the mere opening of a partial deal gives Hamas a window of two to three months, during which it can strengthen itself and even try to obtain a different ‘final scenario’ from that of the Americans – one that suits [Hamas] better”. “This, according to Dermer, is the truly dangerous scenario”, writes Barsky.

Dermer has for years insisted that Israel can have no peace without the prior ‘transformative de-radicalisation’ of all Palestinians. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer says, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too!”

Some years earlier, when Dermer was asked what he saw to be the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed. Yet, more important than disarmament however, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians must be mutationally “de-radicalised”.

When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more significantly, the Japanese had been fully ‘de-radicalised’ and rendered docile by the war’s end:

“Japan had U.S. forces for 75 years. Germany — U.S. forces for 75 years. And if anyone thinks that was by agreement at the beginning they’re kidding themselves. It was imposed, then they understood it was good for them. And over time there was a mutual interest in keeping it”.

Trump is aware of Dermer’s thesis, but seemingly it is Netanyahu who instinctively dithers, so Barsky writes:

“A partial deal [with Hamas] will almost certainly lead to the resignation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir [from the government]… The government will fall apart … A partial deal means the end of the right-right government … Netanyahu knows this well, which is why his hesitation is so difficult. And yet, there is a limit to how long one can hold the rope at both ends”.

Trump seemingly accepts the ‘Dermer Thesis’: “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad”, Trump said of Hamas before leaving for his recent weekend trip to Scotland. “It got to a point where you’re [i.e. Israel] gonna have to finish the job”.

But Dermer’s notion about having the consciousness of adversaries seared by defeat was never just about Hamas alone. It extended to all Palestinians and the region as a whole – and, of course to Iran in particular.

Gideon Levy writes that we must thank the former head of the Military Intelligence, Aharon Haliva, for admitting on Channel 12:

“We need genocide every few years; the murder of the Palestinian people is a legitimate, even essential act”. This is how a “moderate” general in the IDF speaks … killing 50,000 people is “necessary”.

This ‘necessity’ is no longer ‘rational’. It has metamorphosed into bloodlust. Benny Barbash, an Israeli playwright, writes of the many Israelis he meets, including at the demonstrations in favour of a hostage-prisoner deal, who frankly admit:

“Listen, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but the children dying in Gaza really don’t bother me at all. Nor the hunger that’s there, or not. It really doesn’t interest me. I’ll tell you straight: As far as I’m concerned, they can all drop dead there”’

“Genocide as the IDF’s legacy, for the sake of future generations”; “For every one [Israeli] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die. It doesn’t matter now, children. I’m not speaking out of revenge; it’s out of a message to future generations. There’s nothing to be done, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price”, Gideon Levy soberly quotes General Haliva saying (emphasis added).

This must be understood to represent a profound shift within the core of Zionist thinking (from Ben Gurion to Kahane). Yossi Klein writes (in Haaretz Hebrew) that:

“We are indeed in the stage of barbarism, but this is not the end of Zionism … [This barbarism] has not killed Zionism. On the contrary, it has made it relevant. Zionism has had various versions, but none resembled the new, updated, violent Zionism: the Zionism of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir …

“The old Zionism is no longer relevant. It established a state and revived its language. It has no more goals … If you ask a Zionist today what their Zionism is, they wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘Zionism’ has become an empty word … Until [that is] Meir Kahane came along. He came with an updated Zionism whose goals are clear: to expel Arabs and settle Jews. This is a Zionism that doesn’t hide behind pretty words. “Voluntary evacuation” makes it laugh. “Transfer” enchants it. It is proud of “apartheid” … To be a Zionist today is to be Ben-Gvir. To be non-Zionist is to be antisemitic. An antisemite [today] is someone who reads Haaretz …”.

Smotrich declared this week that the Jewish people are experiencing ‘physically’, “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.

It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek (see Jonathan Muskat in Times of Israel)).

Thus we can see Washington’s new found thrall for de-capitation of intransigent leaderships (Yemen, Syria and Iran); the support for the political neutering of Hizbullah and the Shi’a in Lebanon; the normalisation of assassination for recalcitrant heads of state (as was mooted for Imam Kamenei); and for the toppling of state structures (i.e. as planned for Iran on 13 June).

The transformation of Israel to this Revisionist Zionism – and its hold over key factions of U.S. thinking – is precisely why war between Iran and Israel has come to be perceived as inevitable.

The Supreme Leader of Iran articulated his understanding of the implications explicitly in his public address earlier this week:

“This [American] hostility has persisted for 45 years, across different U.S. administrations, parties, and presidents. Always the same hostility, sanctions, and threats against the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people. The question is why?.

“In the past, they hid the real reason behind labels like terrorism, human rights, women’s rights, or democracy. If they did state it, they framed it more politely, saying: ‘We want Iran’s behaviour to change”.

“But the man in office today in America gave it away. He revealed the true objective: ‘Our conflict with Iran, with the Iranian people, is because Iran must obey America’. That is what we, the Iranian nation, must clearly understand. In other words: A power in the world expects that Iran—with all its history, dignity and its legacy as a great nation — should simply be submissive. That is the real reason for all the enmity”.

“Those who argue, “Why not negotiate directly with America to solve your problems?” are also looking only at the surface. That’s not the real issue. The real problem is that the U.S. wants Iran to be obedient to its commands. The Iranian people are deeply offended by such a great insult, and they will stand with all their strength against anyone who harbours such a false expectation of them … the U.S.’ real goal is Iran’s submission. Iranians will never accept this ‘great insult’”.

‘De-radicalisation’ in the Dermer thesis’ meaning means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the region to total powerlessness – including that of a spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness. The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude, former head of the Department of Ethics and Law at France’s prestigious Saint-Cyr Military Academy, has observed.

Former IDF Ombudsman Major General (Res). Itzhak Brik too has warned that Israel’s political leadership are “gambling with Israel’s very existence”:

“They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and, or, secondly] a continuing of the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long”.

Thus, as Zionism transforms to what Yossi Klein has defined as ‘late stage Barbarism’, the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work, despite Hude’s and Brik’s deep scepticism? Could such Israeli ‘terror’ impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as Israeli satellites within an overall Pax Americana?”

The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation:

“On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is, the Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”.

Hude identifies too such extreme ‘will to power’ without limits as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it.

For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than it is itself, the Leviathan then must – and will – fall.

This is precisely why Iran, even now, knows it must prepare for the Big War as Leviathan ‘arises’. And so too, must Russia – for it is one single war being prosecuted against recalcitrants to the American new order.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... obedience/

[blindpig]

Genocide Scholars Association declares Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza

Israeli leaders regularly make genocidal statements when speaking in Hebrew to domestic audiences

News Desk

SEP 1, 2025


(Photo credit: Fatima Shbair, AP)

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has passed a resolution declaring that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The world-leading association issued a resolution on 1 September declaring that “Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).”

The three-page resolution calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population.”

The association's president, Melanie O'Brien of the University of Western Australia, told Reuters that “This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide.”

The resolution was passed after a vote in which 86 percent of the 500 members who voted expressed their approval.

While speaking to the western press, Israeli leaders deny they are committing genocide in Gaza. They claim they are fighting a war to defeat Hamas and are trying to protect the civilian population of the strip at the same time.

However, when speaking in Hebrew in the Israeli press, Israeli politicians, generals, religious leaders, and political commentators regularly make genocidal statements, expressing their desire to “destroy Amalek,” starve Palestinians into submission, flatten Gaza, and ethnically cleanse it of its roughly 2 million inhabitants.

Israel is accused of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a case brought against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.


Full text of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Resolution on the Situation in Gaza https://t.co/y9gMKodU34 pic.twitter.com/qBS334yaXz

— Adil Haque (@AdHaque110) September 1, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant are accused of the war crime of using starvation as a weapon at the ICJ.

Tel Aviv launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, broke the Israeli siege of the strip and attacked Israeli settlements and military bases, capturing more than 250 soldiers and civilians.

Roughly 1,200 Israelis were killed during the attack, the majority by Israeli attack helicopters, tanks, and drones, per the Hannibal Directive. Israel then blamed all the deaths on Hamas.

Since then, Israel's military action has killed 63,000 people according to the Gaza Health Ministry. However, independent estimates of the dead are even higher, surpassing 100,000.

Most of Gaza has now been flattened, forcing hundreds of thousands to live in tents. Starvation and famine are spreading as Israel severely restricts the amount of food entering the besieged enclave.

The Israeli military is now in the process of demolishing Gaza City, the last major city standing in the strip, and is attempting to push the population into concentration camps being established in Rafah in southern Gaza.

Hamas welcomed the resolution on Monday. “This prestigious scholarly stance reinforces the documented evidence and facts presented before international courts,” said Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza Government Media Office.

The resolution “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable,” Thawabta stated.

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as waging war with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

It includes killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and/or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

https://thecradle.co/articles/genocide- ... de-in-gaza

New data reveals Israel's 'systematic destruction' of Palestinian cultural heritage

Over 100 cultural centers have been wiped out by Israeli attacks, while museums and ancient manuscripts have been destroyed

News Desk

SEP 2, 2025


(Photo credit: AFP)

Newly released data compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, with help from other organizations including UNESCO, has revealed the extent to which culture and heritage in the Gaza Strip have been “systematically” targeted by Israel during its genocidal war.

The data was gathered via satellite imagery and field reports from Palestinians on the ground in Gaza.

Many who helped put together the findings were killed by Israel, including Bassem Hassouna, director of Gaza’s Culture Ministry. In March last year, he was killed by an Israeli attack near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

According to the compiled data, 25 registered cultural institutions and over 80 unregistered cultural centers were destroyed – including the Palestinian Planning Center, Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center, and Bayader Theater Association.

Additionally, seven cultural collectives were eradicated and their members displaced, with some of their founders killed. Dozens of poets, artists, and musicians have lost their lives to the genocidal war that began on 7 October.

An estimated 87 libraries were also destroyed by Israel, including the Omari Mosque Library, which held centuries-old manuscripts.

The Palestinian Culture Ministry data adds that 146 historic homes were destroyed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling. A total of 12 museums were destroyed as well.

The Omari Mosque Manuscripts (dating back to 1514 AD), Gaza Municipal Archives (150 years of records), Land Registry records, Ministry of Education Archives, Ministry of Awqaf Archives (Ottoman waqf documents), and Azhar Institute Archives have all been destroyed.

The destruction of around 110 cultural heritage sites has also been verified by UNESCO, the data shows.

“This report is the culmination of previous reports based on what we receive from sources … which provides a basis for the continuation of these reports. This contributes to conveying the message of our besieged people … as well as exposing the occupation’s ongoing crimes in all aspects, especially since killing culture is an essential part of killing the Palestinian identity,” the ministry said.

The previously unpublished data comes as Israel is preparing a devastating assault to seize and occupy Gaza City.

It is now operating on Gaza City’s outskirts, erasing infrastructure and causing mass destruction ahead of the large-scale attack.

https://thecradle.co/articles/new-data- ... l-heritage

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‘Humanitarianism’ in Gaza Distracts From Justice
September 1, 2025

The political and media establishment has finally begun to acknowledge Palestinian suffering, but this shift remains hollow until those complicit in Israel’s genocide are truly exposed.


A U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command C-17 Globemaster III performs an airdrop of humanitarian aid over Gaza, March 29, 2024. (Staff Sgt. Caleb Roland/U.S. Air Force/Public Domain)

By Anthony Hayward
Declassified UK

Some 21 months into Israel’s genocide, Palestinian suffering is only now being somewhat humanised by Britain’s political and media establishment.

But “humanitarianism” that omits naming the perpetrators or enablers just soothes public conscience and obscures complicity. Stripped of context, images of starving children trigger pity, not justice. Genocide becomes spectacle.

There are many parallels between the current catastrophe in Gaza with the Biafra war in Nigeria from 1967-70. That war caused between one and three million deaths, mostly by famine, as Nigerian federal forces — backed and armed by Britain — tried to stop the oil-rich region of Biafra from seceding from the country.

Then as now, humanitarianism served the British establishment as distraction — with expressions of dismay at suffering, while continuing to support the perpetrators.

Narrative management

British media coverage of Biafra was very limited initially but from mid-1968, images of starving children — their bellies swollen from kwashiorkor — flooded Western outlets and dominated headlines.

The surge in media attention brought increased scrutiny of Britain’s role. Some outlets acknowledged that Britain was arming Nigeria primarily to protect British oil interests, then controlled by Shell and BP.

However, in a supposedly post-colonial era, when Britain was frequently criticised by newly independent nations for its lingering influence, openly defending these interests risked a political backlash.

Labour’s then foreign secretary Michael Stewart, addressing the Commonwealth Correspondents Association in December 1968, cautioned:

“It is extremely important that we should not appear to try to order their affairs as if the colonial empire was still in existence.”

To manage this tension, the British government launched what former BBC correspondent Frederick Forsyth — who left to report independently — described in July 1969 as “an unremitting public relations campaign… to persuade Parliament, Press and public of the righteousness of Nigeria’s cause”.

The government’s public line framed the war not as a battle over oil, but as a fight to preserve African unity. Stewart warned on BBC Panorama in July 1969 that partitioning Nigeria risked “tearing Africa into 2000 pieces” — a scenario he said would threaten regional development and undermine the Commonwealth, the cornerstone of Britain’s postcolonial foreign policy.

British ministers defended their continued arms sales to Nigeria as a supposed lever of moral influence.

In a January 1969 interview, prime minister Harold Wilson claimed Britain was “not unconditionally behind the Government of Nigeria,” insisting it supplied “very limited” arms only to exert pressure on Nigeria over “control of their troops, massacre, [and] genocide.”

Behind the scenes, the Foreign Office maintained close correspondence with the BBC to shape coverage and prevent scrutiny of Britain’s commercial interests.

British high commissioner to Nigeria David Hunt wrote to the FCO in 1969 stating: “I very much hope that you will keep on at the BBC… I hope you never forget that they are our enemies. They have decided to follow a policy which is contrary to that of the British Government and contrary to British interests.”

Through such narrative management — both in public rhetoric and media pressure — the British government successfully reframed its involvement from defending oil interests to being a concerned partner in African development.

Depoliticising the conflict

Humanitarian coverage brought global attention but depoliticised the conflict. As historian Lasse Heerten noted, it became “the epitome of humanitarian crisis,” obscuring Britain’s role in arming Nigeria. It also cast Africa as a site of helpless suffering, with Britain as its saviour.

The public response manifested itself in humanitarian campaigns rather than political action. During Christmas 1968, the BBC’s Blue Peter programme raised funds for a mobile hospital.

As the camera lingered on a starving child, presenter Valerie Singleton told viewers: “We’re not going to say which side is right, or which side is wrong… except that all war is always wrong. No matter who’s fault it is that thousands are dying every day, it isn’t his fault.”

Such messages, however well-meaning, demanded compassion, not justice, and blurred lines between oppressor and oppressed.

Biafra diaspora groups pushed back. The Save Biafra Committee declared: “It comes back to us,” stressing that “the essential problem is to end the war” and to push for an end to arms sales and for political accountability “from the streets and by pressure and lobbies at every level.”

Yet, over time, public attention faded. As one Guardian article noted in 1969, “perhaps we have become numbed by the sheer persistence of Biafran sufferings.”

British journalist Auberon Waugh captured the core failure of Britain’s humanitarian discourse when he lamented in December 1968: “Not a single newspaper has seen fit to point out that the children are dying as the direct and intended result of a siege which is supported by the British Government.”

From Biafra to Gaza

While the specifics differ, Britain’s role in Biafra half a century ago echoes disturbingly in Gaza today: alignment with a militarised state, media suppression of the true political context, arms exports underplayed or framed as moral leverage and civilian suffering cast as an humanitarian emergency.

In Biafra, Britain supported Nigeria under the guise of promoting regional stability, masking its true motives: oil and postcolonial influence. Biafra’s demand for self-determination was dismissed and regarded as dangerous fragmentation.


Starving woman in a refugee camp during the Nigeria-Biafra war, late 1960s. (CDC; US Dept. of Health and Human Services)

In Gaza, Britain amplifies Israel’s “right to self-defence,” while sidelining Palestinians’ right to self-determination. UK military and diplomatic support to Israel is framed as opposition to Hamas, but in reality serves Whitehall’s strategic goals, its alignment with the US, and corporate interests.

The consistent thread is a fear of Palestinian sovereignty disrupting Western dominance.

In both cases, focusing on aid, not the structures producing the suffering, operates as narrative management, letting Britain project moral concern while obscuring its complicity.

This is evident in the West’s response to U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s recent report. Calls for a ceasefire or humanitarian aid are permitted but structural critique and demands for divestment from Israel and accountability, are aggressively dismissed.

As in Biafra, a pure humanitarian framing of the crisis in Gaza today risks depoliticising violence and deflecting outrage.

Complicit actors

Take the Daily Express article titled “The suffering of little Muhammad clinging on to life in Gaza hell shames us all,” accompanied by an image of an emaciated child. Hailed as a shift in editorial stance, it came after the paper repeated claims made by Israel — not supported by independent evidence — that Hamas “deliberately hides behind civilians or beneath hospitals” and steals aid.

While the article expresses horror at Gaza’s conditions, it omits key causes: Israel’s blockade, the obstruction of aid and the inadequacies of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The silence practically deflects blame from Israel.

Britain’s media have consistently and utterly failed to report the numerous ways in which the British government has been supporting Israel throughout the genocide.

Similarly, while David Lammy’s recent statement links the crisis to Israel’s renewed offensive, by describing events as “a grotesque spectacle,” he positions Britain as a shocked bystander rather than a complicit actor.

Lammy’s words ring hollow given Britain’s continued military support — including ongoing supply of parts for Israeli F-35 jets, following a failed legal challenge.

The mutually reinforcing relationship of British foreign policy and corporate interests is starkly illustrated by a pre-action letter sent by Leigh Day to the Foreign Office last week.

This requests greater transparency around Lammy’s decision to invite staff from Shell and BAE Systems — a British arms manufacturer and major supplier of F-35 components used by Israel — into diplomatic roles to “champion their interests overseas.”

Embedding corporate power at the heart of government erodes policy independence and, in contexts like Gaza and Nigeria — both during the Biafra conflict and continuing today in the Niger Delta — entrenches cycles of violence where people’s lives are subordinated to profit.

Gaza’s starvation is not merely a tragedy — it is a deliberate weapon used by Israel. While the British establishment now appears more willing to acknowledge Palestinian suffering, framing this solely as a humanitarian crisis repeats the failures of Biafra.

True compassion demands naming and shaming those in the British establishment complicit in Gaza’s suffering, to hold them accountable and end impunity.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/09/01/h ... m-justice/

[blindpig]

PFLP: The US Administration is Leading the War of Genocide in Gaza and Managing the Ethnic Cleansing
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 2, 2025



• The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine holds the American administration, with its president Donald Trump and its current administration, fully responsible for the ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip; America is effectively leading the war of genocide against our people and directly overseeing the occupation’s crimes and ethnic cleansing against our people in Gaza City.
• The Gaza Strip, especially Gaza City, is witnessing an unprecedented bloody escalation characterized by indiscriminate bombing and massacres that amount to war crimes unparalleled in history, amidst a shameful international silence that amounts to complicity. Gaza City, in particular, faces the most dangerous stages of the war of extermination with the absence of any safe places and a near-complete collapse of the humanitarian sector and services.
• The visit of the American ambassador to the occupation to the settlement of “Efrat”, built on the lands of citizens in Bethlehem, with the aim of encouraging its seizure, confirms the American administration’s involvement in crimes against our people and proves this criminal ambassador’s direct adoption of settlement and ethnic cleansing policies.
• The Front calls for escalating popular and political pressure globally on the American administration to stop the war and end its direct involvement in these horrific massacres, considering it the party capable of ending this crime and saving Gaza from famine and genocide.
September 1st, 2025

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/09/ ... cleansing/

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Israeli drone bombs UNIFIL position in south Lebanon

UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have faced repeated Israeli attacks over the past two years

News Desk

SEP 3, 2025


(Photo credit: Mahmoud Zayyat, AFP)

Israeli drones dropped four grenades near UNIFIL personnel on 2 September, the peacekeeping force said, landing meters away from troops clearing access routes to one of its border positions in southern Lebanon.

The attack occurred southeast of the village of Marwahin, and was described as “one of the most serious attacks on UNIFIL personnel and assets since the cessation of hostilities agreement of last November.”

According to UNIFIL, the grenades landed dangerously close to its forces. One exploded within 20 meters of personnel, while three others impacted within 100 meters of troops and vehicles. The drones were observed returning towards Israel after the strikes.

The peacekeeping mission emphasized that the Israeli army had been informed in advance of the road clearance, which was intended to remove obstacles blocking access to a UN position.

The incident came less than a week after the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend UNIFIL’s mandate until the end of 2026, after which UNIFIL will spend a year winding down and withdrawing, and the Lebanese army will take over security in its former deployment areas.

UNIFIL has been deployed in south Lebanon since 1978. Its mandate expanded in 2006 after Hezbollah thwarted an Israeli ground invasion in southern Lebanon.

The UN peacekeeping force has been subject to repeated attacks by Israeli forces in the past. In one instance, an Israeli airstrike on 7 November 2024 hit a convoy at a Lebanese army checkpoint in Saida, killing three civilians and injuring soldiers and UN troops.

In October 2024 alone, Israeli fire repeatedly targeted UNIFIL positions on separate occasions, wounding several peacekeepers, including Indonesian and Sri Lankan soldiers, while tanks and drones struck and demolished watchtowers, and troops forced entry into a base in southern Lebanon.

UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti confirmed on 18 October of that year that Israeli attacks on UN personnel were deliberate, stating that the army had targeted the force “several times, including five deliberate times.”

Israel has continued to attack Lebanese territory despite the ceasefire reached last November, while continuing to occupy five positions near the border and expanding its presence across south Lebanon.

On 31 August, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri warned that Israel has increased its occupation and blocked residents of more than 30 towns from returning, calling a recent tour by Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir an “insult.”

Berri also criticized the Lebanese Cabinet's decision to disarm the resistance, while accusing Netanyahu of pursuing a “historic mission” to absorb all of Lebanon into the so-called Greater Israel project.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-d ... th-lebanon

Nearly 100 Palestinians starve to death in Gaza in under two weeks

Six people, including a child, have succumbed to acute malnutrition in the last 24 hours, as Israel escalates deadly attacks across Gaza ahead of its big assault

News Desk

SEP 3, 2025


(Photo credit: Reuters)

At least 89 Palestinians, including over a dozen children, have died of starvation in the Gaza Strip over the past 11 days alone, as Israel continues to maintain its brutal siege while preparing for a massive assault to seize and occupy Gaza City.

“The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip recorded six deaths in the past 24 hours due to famine and malnutrition, including one child, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths to 367 martyrs, including 131 children,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a statement on 3 September.

“Since the announcement of IPC, 89 deaths have been recorded, including 16 children,” the ministry statement went on to say.

The Health Ministry statement was referring to a report issued on 22 August by the UN-backed global hunger monitor Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC).

The report marked the first official declaration that famine has indeed overtaken Gaza as a result of the blockade imposed by Israel.


It noted that the famine is taking place predominantly in Gaza City and surrounding towns, home to around 500,000 Palestinians, adding that the starvation would spread to Deir al-Balah in the center of Gaza and the southern city of Khan Yunis by the end of September. By then, a total of over 640,000 people will face “catastrophic levels” of food insecurity – classified as IPC Phase 5 – across the strip.


The UN has been bypassed in aid deliveries by the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – where Israeli forces and US contractors open fire at starving aid seekers at poorly-run distribution sites on a daily basis.

At least a dozen Palestinians were killed on Tuesday while seeking aid, according to the Health Ministry.

The strip remains under a total Israeli blockade. The aid that does trickle in is nowhere near enough to address the population’s needs.

Israeli forces are now operating on Gaza City’s outskirts, erasing infrastructure and causing mass destruction ahead of the large-scale attack and invasion.

At least 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks across Gaza since Tuesday morning.

Israel says the operation to occupy Gaza City aims to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities, secure the release of captives, establish security control over the area, and demilitarize the strip.

https://thecradle.co/articles/nearly-10 ... -two-weeks

(If some Pakistani general went rogue and nuked Tel Aviv I'd nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.)

[blindpig]

Israeli army commander visited Nova festival moments before Hamas attack, took ‘no action’ despite warnings

Previous reports in Hebrew media have said warnings about a potential Hamas attack had been issued months prior to 7 October

News Desk

SEP 3, 2025


(Photo credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

A top Israeli military commander visited the site of the Nova music festival that came under attack on 7 October, but took “no preemptive action” despite receiving prior intelligence warnings, Haaretz reported on 2 September.

Lieutenant Colonel Haim Cohen, commander of the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade, “arrived at the site after receiving prior intelligence warnings, but he took no preemptive action,” the Haaretz report said.

Cohen saw the huge crowds at the music festival and noted that only a small number of police officers were present, according to the report. But he told army investigators he had no information that would have forced him to act differently or disperse the festival.

Haaretz said it is unclear exactly what kind of intelligence information Cohen was informed of.

“It was a mistake not to consider canceling or dispersing the festival during the divisional assessment held that night,” says an army investigation obtained by the Israeli newspaper.

The investigation also said that Cohen made a miscalculation when he did not assign a military force to the site, given the size of the crowd, the timing, and the location.

Cohen arrived at the site of the Nova festival at 5:30 am, about an hour before the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Cohen was updated on the intelligence that was arriving as he was driving to the site.

Throughout the night before the Hamas operation began, the Israeli army, military intelligence, and Shin Bet were receiving signs of “unusual” Hamas activity, as has been previously reported.

Cohen “saw a force of the Yamam counterterrorism unit and another police vehicle positioned on Route 232,” but told army investigators that the increased police presence reassured him that the event was secure. However, the probe revealed only 50 officers were there, and that several had left by the time the attack started.

“Even after Cohen arrived at the division's base, and despite escalating alerts, he did not mention the festival in situation briefings nor change the military's preparedness to secure it.”

“Most sector forces were unaware it was taking place and therefore lacked knowledge … This information, however, was fully available to Cohen and fresh in his memory,” the report went on to say.

Several reports have emerged since the war in Gaza began, revealing that Israeli authorities ignored multiple warnings about Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Just weeks after resistance fighters flooded into the Israeli settlements surrounding Gaza, the Times of Israel cited eyewitness accounts from soldiers in Israel’s Combat Intelligence Corps, which is responsible for surveilling the Gaza border.

They said warnings of Hamas training for such an attack were issued at least three months prior.

Surveillance soldiers serving on a base in Nahal Oz, one kilometer from Gaza, reported information on Hamas operatives conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes, and placing explosives along the border. According to the soldiers, no action was taken in response to the reports.

The Financial Times (FT) said in November 2023 that a detailed report by low-ranking officers was sent to senior officials in the army weeks before the attack. The army report warned Hamas was training to “blow up border posts at several locations, enter Israeli territory, and take over kibbutzim.”

The officers also provided video footage of Hamas practicing taking prisoners.

Significant amounts of evidence have also emerged on Israel’s implementation of the Hannibal Directive – a measure taken to prevent the capture of Israelis.

Israeli helicopters and tanks indiscriminately opened fire at the settlements that were stormed by resistance fighters that Saturday, causing mass destruction and Israeli casualties – testimonies have confirmed.

An investigation by The Cradle’s William Van Wagenen last year revealed that the majority of those killed at the Nova music festival on 7 October were actually gunned down by Israeli Border Police.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-a ... e-warnings

UAE calls Israel's West Bank annexation plans ‘red line’ for Abraham Accords[/b

Officials in Tel Aviv have unveiled a plan to annex 82 percent of the occupied West Bank, vowing there will 'never be a Palestinian state'

News Desk

SEP 3, 2025


(Photo credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The UAE warned on 3 September that Israel's annexation plans for the occupied West Bank would be considered a red line and would “destroy the vision” of the Abraham Accords.

“Annexation of the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE,” said Lana Nusseibeh, assistant minister for political affairs and envoy of the minister of foreign affairs of the UAE.

She added that it “would severely undermine the vision and spirit of [Abraham] Accords, end the pursuit of regional integration, and would alter the widely-shared consensus on what the trajectory of this conflict should be – two states living side by side in peace, prosperity, and security.”

Her remarks came after far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich presented a plan urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “make a historic decision to apply Israeli sovereignty to all open areas in Judea and Samaria.”

The plan calls for annexing most of the occupied West Bank, including 82 percent of the territory, and for eliminating what Smotrich called the “idea of dividing our small land.”

The finance minister declared that “there will never, and can never be, a Palestinian state in our land,” vowing to destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA) “just as we do to Hamas” if it resists. He described the annexation plan as a “preventative step” against international recognition of Palestinian statehood.

In mid-August, Israel approved construction of the E1 settlement near Jerusalem, a project designed to split the occupied West Bank and isolate occupied East Jerusalem.

The plan involves 3,401 settler homes between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, a move condemned by the UN, EU, and several states as illegal under international law.

“We call on the Israeli government to suspend these plans. Extremists, of any kind, cannot be allowed to dictate the region’s trajectory. Peace requires courage, persistence, and a refusal to let violence define our choices,” Nusseibeh said.

She recalled that the Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 under US mediation, were built on the premise of halting annexation.

At the time, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan thanked Netanyahu for freezing land grabs, describing that pause as reinforcement of “our shared will to achieve a better future for generations to come.”

“The accords were always a way to support the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspiration for an independent state. That was our position in 2020, and it remains our position today,” Nussaibeh also stated.

https://thecradle.co/articles/uae-calls ... am-accords

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vanessa beeley
6h
Vanessa Beeley

BRICS countries are not doing enough to end Gaza genocide. Feel free to challenge the facts presented here, by Prof. Patrick Bond:

[Link is in the comments]

Beyond the obvious neighbours and India fingered by Netanyahu, there are other BRICS+ ‘blessors’ (as end-times allies of Netanyahu self-describe) witnessed in this ten-point (partial) catalogue of how war and profits make for unfortunate bedfellows:

Russia is the number 1 coal supplier to the genocide and South Africa #2 now that Colombia and Turkey [fake] have declared Boycott Divestment Sanctions BDS against Israel;

Brazil supplies 9% of Israel’s oil while Russia operates the main shipping export terminal for one of the largest oil suppliers (Kazakhstan), and as Michael Karadjis points out, “Israel imports a small but regular amount of oil from its BRICS neighbour Egypt, via Sidi Kerir, near Alexandria, the terminus of the SUMED pipeline.

Oil from BRICS members United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as Iraq, also feeds into this pipeline”;in both South Africa and Brazil, leading officials have openly bragged in recent weeks that they will not impose coal and oil sanctions on Israel, with the latter’s defense minister also opposing potential cancellation of military cooperation with Tel Aviv-based Elbit Systems (currently ‘paused’);

India supplies vital military equipment for use in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon, including Adani-Elbit’s deadly medium-altitude, long-endurance (‘male’)drones;

the two main parts of Israel’s main port – at Haifa – were privatised in recent years by Shanghai International Port Group and Adani, facilitating more efficient supply of weapons and ammo to the IDF;

Chinese-Israeli trade hit a recent record of $20 bn/annum, including $14.4 billion of exports to Israel (number 1 in the world in 2022) – in spite of December 2023 claims that Chinese Cosco ships would avoid Israeli ports (a stance reversed in February);

India is the number 5 trader with Israel at nearly $5 billion;

the normalisation of Arab-Israeli trade continues, e.g. a recent wartime 5% increase in UAE-Israeli commerce – thanks to increasingly crucial transshipment services following Houthi disruptions to Red Sea shipping – featuring co-U.S. sub-imperial powers Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia, as Netanyahu himself bragged when applauding the new land route;

South African arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz (the ruling party’s leading campaign contributor a year ago, and a tireless pro-Israel propagandist this year) operates a military joint venture with Elbit Systems, has a Tel Aviv office and runs an “Ichikowitz Family International Tefillin Bank” supplying the Israel Defense Forces;thousands of migrants from Ethiopia, and hundreds from India, now serve as IDF-employed draftees or mercenaries, alongside an unknown number of South African citizens, and what may be as many as tens of thousands of Russians, because there are, as Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar conceded, “one million plus Russian passport holders or double passport holders who live in Israel. This is a very very complicated affair because according to the Russian Constitution, Russia has to protect them. The fact that many of these are hardcore Zionist and with a genocidal mentality makes the problem even more unsolvable…”

https://substack.com/@vanessabeeley/not ... ail-digest

[blindpig]

Israeli finance minister vows to eliminate Palestinian state hopes 'once and for all' by annexing most of West Bank
Several European nations plan to recognize a Palestinian state this month at the UN General Assembly


News Desk

SEP 4, 2025


(Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on 3 September for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to annex 82 percent of the occupied West Bank, home to around three million indigenous Palestinians.

Smotrich said Israel should annex the majority of the occupied West Bank as a response to proposals by several European nations to recognize a Palestinian state. He called it “a preventative step against the diplomatic assault that’s planned against us.”

“The main goal is to remove, once and for all, this idea of a Palestinian state,” he stated at a news conference in occupied Jerusalem.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since conquering the Palestinian territories during the Six-Day War in 1967, which Palestinians refer to as the Naksa, or setback. Expanding a state’s territory through conquest and war is illegal under international law.

Since then, Israel has forcibly confiscated Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank to build settlements for Jewish Israelis. Some 500,000 Jewish Israelis live in the settlements, which are also illegal under international law.

Until now, Israeli leaders have not moved to annex the occupied West Bank, formally making it part of Israel, fearing international backlash. They also fear pressure to give citizenship to Palestinians living in any annexed territories, thereby threatening Israel's Jewish demographic majority.

As a result, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have lived under Israeli military rule, without political and civil rights, for more than 50 years.

They are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections, are tried in military courts, regularly detained without trial for lengthy periods, regularly denied permits to build homes on their own land, and their movement is severely restricted by Israeli military checkpoints.

At the same time, Jewish settlers enjoy Israeli citizenship, the benefits of a democratic system, and freedom of movement, including on Jewish-only roads.

Human rights groups have likened this discriminatory situation, based on the ideology of Jewish supremacism, to the former Apartheid system in South Africa.

Smotrich, who is also a leader of the Jewish settler movement, said that Palestinians would not be given any rights of Israeli citizenship if their land is annexed. Palestinians “would continue to run their own affairs” on a local level, he said, but “the territory would be ours.”

“I have no interest in allowing them to enjoy everything that the State of Israel has to offer. We did not establish this country to make our enemies prosper,” Smotrich told reporters.

Under Smotrich’s direction, Israel recently authorized additional settlement construction in a strategic area of the occupied West Bank, known as E-1, in an effort to cut the West Bank in half and make the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state impossible in the future.

Earlier this week, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu will gather top ministers and aides for a discussion on Thursday to explore the possibility of annexing parts of the occupied West Bank.

The meeting will reportedly involve discussion of the implications of international recognition of a Palestinian state, and how Israel should respond to such a move.

Several European nations intend to defy US and Israeli wishes and recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month.

Finance Minister Smotrich said on 14 August that Netanyahu backs his policy for a West Bank “revolution,” referring to plans to build in E-1, and “burying” the idea of a Palestinian state.

“He backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and is letting me create the revolution,” Smotrich said.

“Today, anyone in the world who tries to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground. Today we are writing a historic chapter in the story of the redemption of the people of Israel in their land,” the finance minister added.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-f ... -west-bank

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‘Gaza City occupation may not affect Hamas’: Israeli army warns Tel Aviv

Israel is insisting on going ahead with the massive assault despite Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire proposal last month

News Desk

SEP 4, 2025


(Photo credit: AP)

The Israeli military has expressed doubt over how effective the planned assault to occupy Gaza City will be in terms of forcing Hamas into submission, according to Israel’s Broadcasting Corporation (KAN).

KAN reported on 4 September that an army representative addressed a closed-door panel of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee a day earlier.

“Why would the occupation of Gaza City cause Hamas to budge at all? I did not say it would move Hamas; it is not certain at all. The city has symbolic significance,” he told the committee, according to KAN.

The panel was also informed by the military representative that around 800,000 Palestinians reside in Gaza City.

Israel has declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone” and has already initiated plans to forcibly displace the nearly one million residents.

Previous reports have revealed heavy tensions between the government and Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir, who went to great lengths pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the danger the occupation plan poses to the captives held by the resistance in Gaza.

Zamir also told Netanyahu that the operation will put further unnecessary strain on Israeli troops.

The army chief plans to tell the government that “there will be no choice but to impose military rule on all of Gaza from November,” Channel 12 reported on 3 September. Zamir has previously called on the government to accept an exchange and ceasefire deal.

On Wednesday, Hamas said it was willing “to enter into a comprehensive deal in which all enemy prisoners held by the resistance will be freed in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation.”

“This agreement will end the war on the Gaza Strip, result in the withdrawal of all occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip, open the border crossings to allow the entry of all the Gaza Strip’s necessities, and start the process of rebuilding,” it added. “The Hamas movement is still awaiting the response of the Zionist enemy to the proposal.”

Hamas had said in a statement on 18 August that it accepted the latest Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal in the Gaza Strip.

However, Israel rejected the deal and insisted on going ahead with the occupation of Gaza City.

“This is more spin by Hamas, containing nothing new,” Netanyahu’s office said in reference to Hamas’s statement.

The premier's office added that the war can end immediately if five conditions are met – the release of all captives, the disarmament of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in Gaza, and “the establishment of an alternative civilian administration that does not indoctrinate for terror, does not dispatch terror, and does not threaten Israel.”

A leaked Israeli army document obtained by Hebrew media has concluded that Operation Gideon’s Chariots, launched by the military in Gaza earlier this year, failed to achieve its goals.

Israel’s Channel 12 said the document asserts that the two main goals – defeating Hamas and freeing captives – failed.

Late last month, Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood after a large-scale ambush by members of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, which killed at least one soldier. Israeli troops have operated in Al-Zaytoun seven times since the start of the war, but have failed to root out Hamas’s Qassam Brigades.

https://thecradle.co/articles/gaza-city ... s-tel-aviv

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Profiting From an Ethnically-Cleansed Gaza
September 4, 2025

U.S. plan proposes to replace Palestinians in Gaza with projects including Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands and Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zones.


What Happens to Palestinians? (Midday India, Sept. 3, YouTube Screenshot)

By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams

The White House is “circulating” a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of a high-tech “Riviera of the Middle East” brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered “smart cities.”

That’s according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.

“Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets… resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments,” the prospectus states.


Trump’s Riviera Plan Replaces Palestinians in Gaza. (Wikileaks, Twitter Screenshot, July 2025)

However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to “genocide packaged as real estate.”

The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.

According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal “was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group”—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.

The GREAT Trust envisions “a US-led multilateral custodianship” lasting a decade or longer and leading to “a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is “demilitarized and de-radicalized.”

“However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to ‘genocide packaged as real estate’.”

Josh Paul — a former U.S. State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration’s decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal — told Democracy Now! last week that Trump’s plan for Gaza is “essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate” colonialism.

The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75 percent of Gaza’s population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75 percent of them permanently.

The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.

The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.


Still from AI-generated video promoting Trump’s takeover plans for Gaza, which the U.S. president posted on his social media account on Feb. 26, 2025. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

The proposal projects huge profits for investors — nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), U.S. military contractor CACI — which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison — electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.

Central to the plan are 10 “megaprojects,” including half a dozen “smart cities,” a regional logistics hub to be built over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors — large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a U.S. data safe haven, an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone,” and “Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands” similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.

In addition to “massive” financial gains for private U.S. investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to “strengthen” its “hold in the east Mediterranean and secure U.S. industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf.”

Earlier this year, Trump said the U.S. would “take over” Gaza, American real estate developers would “level it out” and build the “Riviera of the Middle East” atop its ruins after Palestinians—”all of them”—leave Palestine’s coastal exclave. The president called for the “voluntary” transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.


An aerial photo of displaced Palestinians waiting in northern Nuseirat to return to their homes in Gaza, Jan. 6, 2025. (Ashraf Amra/United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

“Voluntary emigration” is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians’ general unwillingness to leave their homeland.

According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries.

However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.

“I’m staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now,” one Gazan man told the Post. “But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland.”

The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president’s son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza’s future.

While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.

“We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. “On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains.”

The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called “The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality” where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.

The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel’s 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/09/04/p ... nsed-gaza/

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The UN’s Hidden Power to Launch Military Action in Gaza
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 3, 2025



Palestine Deep Dive

Former UN speechwriter Mark Seddon urges member states at the United Nations General Assembly to invoke the Uniting for Peace resolution and establish a protective international force to defend Gaza.

He outlines how the General Assembly can bypass the U.S. veto at the Security Council by using Uniting for Peace to form a “coalition of the willing,” capable of delivering humanitarian aid, enforcing a no-fly zone, and protect the population from Israel’s onslaught.

Mark Seddon brings deep insider experience: he served as a speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, media advisor to former UNGA President María Fernanda Espinosa, and was Al Jazeera’s first UN Correspondent.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/09/ ... n-in-gaza/