Tag: ethnic cleansing

Among the Few Who Resist Hidden Persuasion

Most folks are caught up in points of view shaped for them by others.

These others can vary from parents, teachers, religious figures, writers of various persuasions, podcasters and ideologically driven politicians of right or left who, in their worse manifestations are wolves in political clothing — a recent example of which now resides in the “Oval Office.”

In other words, there are plenty of would-be sources of inspiration out there, but it is always a good thing to look before you leap.

It is interesting that once a charismatic ideologue becomes a powerful “world leader,” a large number of other less powerful national leaders, to say nothing of their millions of constituents, fall into line.

If there is a political or ideological interest to be served, the less powerful might offer excuses and rationalizations to accept the most barbaric of policies of the principal in power.

This is the case of those Western European leaders going along with the policies of the American-Israeli leadership cabal. A principled stand, or even a stand based on the most cursory knowledge of history, seems to be beyond these subalterns. Yet, taken one by one, they are all “normal” politicians.

‘Normal’ Politicians

Many of the politicians who rotate as elected leaders of democratic nations must learn to reflect an established party line even if it no longer reflects reality. That is, even if it means lying about the present and/or de-contextualizing the past.

Take, for example, the reaction of otherwise normal politicians to the Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian incursion into Israel. The reaction of Israeli politicians was predictable and a good example of ideological distortion.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incursion as “the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust.” His claim follows the national Israeli narrative that asserts nothing Jewish Israel does can justify such an attack by Palestinians. It must be due to anti-Semitism.

In truth, the 2023 Palestinian incursion and the violence associated with it, had nothing to do with the Jewishness of the majority Israelis, but everything to do with the behavior of the Israeli state: the colonialist dispossession of the Palestinians and the discrimination practiced toward them by an entity that choses to call itself a Jewish state.

The anti-semitic charge might fit into the Israel = home of the Jews narrative believed by just about all Jews in Israel and some in the diaspora, but it is nonetheless misleading.

Until now, the Israeli narrative has been accepted by the West’s “normal” politicians. They have interpreted Oct. 7, 2023, as an anti-Semitic act.

For instance, the British prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, called the incursion a “pogrom.”  French President Emmanuel Macron called it an “unspeakable horror” which “feeds on anti-Semitism and propagates it.”

U.S. President Joe Biden labeled the attack “unadulterated evil” and connected it to a global surge in anti-Semitism. The U.S. secretary of state at the time, Antony Blinken, condemned the incursion as a horrific dehumanization of Israelis.

Keir Starmer in the U.K., the current prime minister who was then the leader of the opposition Labour Party, termed the attack the “darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for solidarity against a “new wave of anti-Semitism,” while European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the incursion was a unique horror and pain inflicted upon the Jewish people. 

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Israel threatens Gaza war resumption to force disarmament as ‘truce’ frays

In the shattered neighbourhoods of Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, the roar of Israeli drones and the concussive thud of controlled demolitions are daily reminders that the war has never really ended.

Despite a “ceasefire” in place since October, families continue to pull bodies from the rubble. According to local medical sources, 828 Palestinians have been killed since the “truce” began. Now, families in Gaza are bracing for a renewed offensive as Israeli officials threaten to tear up the fragile agreement to force a surrender.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly cancelled a scheduled security cabinet meeting on Sunday, opting instead for smaller consultations. Simultaneously, the military has ramped up pressure to resume hostilities. A senior official in the Israeli military’s General Staff told Channel 15 that an additional round of fighting was “almost inevitable”, citing the refusal of Hamas to surrender its weapons and the alleged “failure” of the International Stabilization Force, a multinational body deployed under the recent truce framework to oversee security and manage the ceasefire’s implementation.

Israel’s Army Radio reported that on the ground, the military has steadily been enlarging the territory it controls in the besieged enclave. By gradually pushing the “ceasefire”-established “Yellow Line” westwards, Israeli forces have expanded their territorial control to 59 percent of the Strip, regularising their occupation through daily violations of the “ceasefire” and moving additional troops from the Lebanese front into Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

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Israel ‘weaponizing’ water in Gaza – medical charity

Israel has used access to water as a weapon and a form of “collective punishment” against Palestinians in Gaza, according to a report by international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Israel has rejected the claims as baseless.

The organization said in a report released Tuesday that Israel has “engineered” water scarcity in the strip, creating “conditions incompatible with human dignity and survival.” Access to water, sanitation and hygiene has been “severely undermined” since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, it stated.

The report highlights a sharp rise in water-shortage-related diseases, including diarrhea, skin infections, lice, and infected wounds. Additionally, the lack of clean water and sanitation is also worsening malnutrition and severely affecting mental health.

Gaza has no natural freshwater sources, relying instead on groundwater and seawater, both of which require treatment. Much of the infrastructure, including desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines, and sewage systems, has been rendered inoperable or inaccessible, according to MSF.

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Far Right Israeli Settler Movement Enters Syria in a Push for “Greater Israel”

yrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”

“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.

After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.

Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.

The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again

In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.

“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.

But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.

On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.

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“An Occupied Nation”: Whistleblower Says Palantir Has Taken Over The US Government

A former Palantir executive recently confirmed what many have long suspected. In a public statement, the whistleblower said it plainly: Palantir intended to take over the US government, and many of his former colleagues are now installed inside the federal apparatus. He called it an occupied nation. He is not alone. Thirteen former Palantir employees—engineers, managers, and a member of the company’s own privacy team—signed a letter shared with NPR warning that guardrails meant to prevent discrimination, disinformation, and abuse of power have been violated and are being rapidly dismantled.

What Palantir represents is something unprecedented: the convergence of American imperialism, Zionism, technofascism, and surveillance capitalism into a single instrument of control. Understanding how we got here requires looking at the machine Palantir has built, who built it, and what they believe.

Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. Its first major investor was In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, which seeded the company with millions and opened the door to every major intelligence and defense agency. The logic was deliberate: The American ruling class recognized decades ago that the state’s coercive power—surveillance, targeting, data harvesting—could be run more effectively and more profitably through private contractors. When a government agency surveils its own citizens, there are hearings, FOIA requests, oversight committees. When a private company does it, it is a trade secret.

That strategy has paid off enormously. Palantir now holds contracts worth over $10 billion with the US Army alone. The Trump regime tapped Palantir to build a master database on American citizens. The Pentagon expanded its Maven Smart System contract by $795 million to deploy AI-powered battlefield intelligence across the empire. In June, the military swore in four tech executives as Army Reserve lieutenant colonels—including Palantir’s CTO—in a program that embeds Silicon Valley directly into military planning. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a $30 million contract for Palantir’s ImmigrationOS platform, which provides near real-time tracking of people targeted for deportation. Thousands of American police departments use Palantir’s Gotham platform for domestic surveillance.

Abroad, the consequences are even more devastating. Palantir’s AI platforms have been deployed by Israel’s military to systematically prosecute the assault on Gaza. AI targeting systems built on Palantir’s architecture—known by names like Lavender, The Gospel, and Where’s Daddy—have enabled the kind of automated killing that produces mass civilian casualties at scale. Palantir’s own executives have been recorded discussing how bombing densely populated areas generates the movement data their algorithms need to train on. When people flee, make phone calls, search for loved ones, rush to hospitals that no longer exist—that movement becomes fuel for the machine. Palantir’s platforms were deployed in the illegal capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Israel’s terrorist pager attack against Lebanon, and the US carpet bombing of Iran at the behest of Israel—the same campaign that destroyed a girls’ elementary school in Minab.

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Genocide Doesn’t Happen Without Language to Incite It

How is information made legitimate, and when is it appropriate for journalists to introduce skepticism? What happens when only one side of a conflict is given the legitimate voice, always repeated and rarely questioned, even when those sources have proven many times to have promulgated lies?

Military studies scholars and analysts understand that there is always a long genesis of historical, political and economic factors that can eventually erupt into conflict. In many ways, US establishment media seemed unwilling or unable (but likely both) to narrate a more complex, historically accurate account of the war on Gaza.

The Intercept (4/15/24) reported that editorial directives at the New York Times and CNN, two of the most important news sources in the US, advised reporters to avoid certain “taboo” words, such as “genocide” and “massacre.” Yet between October 7 and November 24, 2023, the Times used the word “massacre” 53 times—referring to Israelis killed by Palestinians, but only once to refer to a Palestinian killed by Israel (Intercept, 1/9/24).

From November onward, as deaths in Gaza piled up, the Times habitually avoided using emotionally fraught terms for Palestinians. Another term, “ethnic cleansing,” was also barred from use, along with “refugee camps” and “occupied territories.”

As the Times source who leaked the directives said, “You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict.”

US news outlets were crippled by these verbal restrictions, incapable of offering an accurate explanation of what was happening in Gaza by imposing such constraints on humanitarian language, and international principles and laws.

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Israeli soldiers and settlers using sexual violence to push Palestinians out – report

Israeli soldiers and settlers are systematically using sexual violence and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, according to a report by the West Bank Protection Consortium – a group of international humanitarian organizations. 

The report, published on Sunday and titled ‘Sexual Violence and Forcible Transfer in the West Bank’, documents at least 16 cases of conflict-related sexual violence attributed to Israeli settlers and soldiers over the past three years. The researchers noted that the actual number is likely significantly higher, as survivors often remain silent due to shame, stigma, and fear of retaliation associated with reporting such crimes. 

Victims who have chosen to come forward described harassment, assault, and intimidation inside their own homes, including forced nudity, invasive body cavity searches, exposure of genitals to minors, and threats of rape. Men and boys also reported forced stripping, sexualized humiliation, and degrading treatment. 

More than 70% of displaced households surveyed cited threats to women and children, particularly sexualized violence, as a decisive reason for leaving their homes and communities. 

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What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.

Although the 2005 Gaza disengagement was perhaps less a change of heart than one of strategy, as his senior adviser later admitted, the lyric became a byword of Israeli politics, an oft-cited reminder that perspective is everything.

Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.

Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.

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IDF escalates efforts to prevent civilian return to southern Lebanon after ceasefire

The next big “battle” for southern Lebanon has started, though it is one that does not involve bombs or rockets.

As of April 17, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire had kicked in. By Sunday, large numbers of Lebanese civilians attempted to return to southern Lebanon, despite IDF instructions not to.

Foreign media reports and social media showed videos and included interviews of Lebanese civilians using a variety of makeshift means to cross the Litani River into southern Lebanon, even at points where the IDF had destroyed the existing bridges.

Some said that they succeeded in reaching their villages and found significant amounts of damage.

Others said that though they were able to get into southern Lebanon, the IDF blocked the road to their village or used warning fire to make them turn back.

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British universities paid security firm to ‘spy’ on pro-Palestine students

Twelve British universities paid a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to “spy” on student protesters and academics, including those who have expressed solidarity with Palestine, it can be revealed.

A joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates has uncovered evidence that Horus Security Consultancy Limited trawled through student social media feeds and conducted secret counter-terror threat assessments on behalf of some of Britain’s most elite institutions.

Horus, which describes itself as a “leading intelligence” firm, has been paid at least 440,000 pounds ($594,000) by universities since 2022.

Among those monitored were a Palestinian academic invited to give a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University and a pro-Gaza PhD student at the London School of Economics, according to internal documents.

In October 2024, the University of Bristol provided the firm with a list of student protest groups it wished to receive alerts about, an internal university email suggests. It included pro-Palestinian and animal rights activists.

In total, 12 universities paid the firm to monitor campus protest activity. Others include the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London (UCL), King’s College London (KCL), the University of Sheffield, the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham and Cardiff Metropolitan University.

There is no suggestion that this activity is illegal.

These findings have come to light after Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests to more than 150 universities.

All the institutions named in this article were approached for comment by Al Jazeera and Liberty Investigates.

The University of Oxford, UCL, KCL, the University of Leicester and the University of Nottingham did not respond to requests for comment.

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