Tag: ethnic cleansing

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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Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.

Areckoning could be coming for pro-Israel groups known for doxxing Palestine advocates. In March, the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) filed a class-action lawsuit in Illinois state court against the organizations Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism, as well as groups and individuals identified as their funders or board members.

“This case represents addressing a broader harm caused by organized doxxing and harassment campaigns,” Laila Ali, a Chicago-based artist and activist and one of six named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told Truthout. “I’m hoping that it’ll establish clear consequences for those who engage in those tactics.”

StopAntisemitism and Canary Mission have histories of systematically posting the personal information of individuals (known as doxxing or doxing) who engage in pro-Palestine speech, or criticize Israel’s assaults on Palestine and the United States’ involvement, on their websites and social media channels to whip up attack campaigns. Many of those targeted have been Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian young professionals who have faced backlash on university campuses or in their workplaces, as well as online harassment and threats to their personal safety.

Alongside Ali, the named plaintiffs in the new case include two physicians, an IT professional, a former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student organizer, and an English lecturer at Loyola University Chicago. The class includes anyone residing in Illinois who has had their personal information shared by StopAntisemitism or Canary Mission without their consent and experienced harm as a result. CAIR-Chicago Staff Attorney Noah Halpern told Truthout his organization expects the group to include about 300 people. The organization is still soliciting outreach from Illinois residents who may be part of this class.

“The goal is to have relief for everyone and do that through this vehicle of a class action,” Halpern explained to Truthout. The lawsuit seeks injunctive and declaratory relief and damages, meaning CAIR-Chicago would like to secure a judgment prohibiting the defendants from doxxing Illinois residents, requiring the defendants to remove existing content about Illinois residents from their social media channels and websites, awarding damages to compensate for harms to the plaintiffs, and assessing punitive damages.

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The destruction of Gaza has not ended

As the war in Iran absorbs the world’s attention, with its images of dead school girls and flattened buildings, it may be easy to overlook Gaza. It has been a full five months since a ceasefire went into effect. It did not stop the bloodshed and intense suffering: Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians since October, and the enclave remains in dire need of food and medicine. Yet Gaza has disappeared from America’s front pages as the Trump administration’s Board of Peace, mostly bereft of Palestinian leadership, attempts to steer a peace plan to its second phase.

Moving on implies that one was once preoccupied with something. It is true that people all over the world intently watched Israel’s war of annihilation unfold on their smartphone screens. They were appalled by the indiscriminate violence that killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Campuses erupted in protest.

Their governments, however, had abandoned Gaza long before. As Israeli bombs and missiles killed and maimed Palestinians and leveled hospitals and refugee camps, Washington kept the weapons flowing to Tel Aviv while providing an Israeli veto at the U.N. Security Council. European and Arab governments protested, some more vehemently than others, but lacked either the will or the influence to stop what a growing consensus of historians, jurists, human rights groups, and international legal bodies considered genocide.

In “A Historian in Gaza,” eminent historian Jean-Pierre Filiu shows us the consequences of this international indifference, drawing on his monthlong visit to the shattered strip in early 2025. “Gazans know the world has abandoned them,” Filiu writes. “At first they believed that images of the slaughter would so horrify the international public that they would demand action to end it. The realization that this was not going to happen compounded the wounds of the injured with its own pain.”

Filiu teaches Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. Before becoming a scholar about 20 years ago, he served as a diplomat for the French government, holding several high-level positions, including postings in Tunisia, Jordan, and Syria. He has written extensively about jihadism, authoritarianism, and the centrality of Gaza to any enduring peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

If the process of forgetting has already begun, Filiu’s experience, recorded in a compact 197 pages, is meant to refocus our minds on what some might prefer to erase from memory. Hospitals under siege, patients operated on without anesthetics, infants dying of hypothermia, children mutilated by bombs and missiles, women too exhausted and malnourished to breastfeed, journalists mowed down for the crime of reporting, and entire families crushed under the weight of their collapsing apartment blocks. “Nothing had prepared me for what I saw and experienced in Gaza,” Filiu writes. “Nothing at all.”

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Satellite images reveal Israel expanding Gaza military sites

The United States has proposed plans to rebuild Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that was flattened by two years of Israeli bombardment. It has been touted as the centrepiece of a US-Israeli vision for a post-war Gaza, but satellite images suggest the project has stalled before even breaking ground.

An Al Jazeera Digital Investigations Unit examination of Planet Labs and Sentinel Hub satellite imagery revealed that Israeli military fortifications are expanding at a relentless pace across Gaza, particularly in Rafah.

Analysis of imagery from February 25 to March 15 confirmed that while rubble removal has essentially ceased in Beit Hanoon in the north and Rafah, Israeli forces are systematically entrenching a permanent military reality across the devastated enclave.

While civilian reconstruction has slowed, Israeli military construction has accelerated. Satellite imagery from March 10 shows extensive clearing and fortification at the strategic al-Muntar hilltop in Shujayea, a neighbourhood in Gaza City, and outposts in Khan Younis in Gaza’s south.

In central Gaza, Sentinel imagery from March 15 revealed ongoing work on a trench and dirt berm reaching as far as the Maghazi camp near Deir el-Balah. In Juhor ad-Dik, new roads now link established military sites to newly levelled areas, suggesting the creation of permanent outposts.

These findings align with a late 2025 investigation by Forensic Architecture that identified 48 Israeli military sites within Gaza – 13 of which were built after an October “ceasefire”. These sites have evolved into permanent bases with paved roads, watchtowers and constant communication links to Israel’s domestic military network.

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How the IDF is implementing the ‘Gaza model’ in south Lebanon

The IDF said Saturday it struck terrorists in southern Lebanon and, for the first time, used the term “yellow line,” previously applied only to a line in Gaza to which IDF forces withdrew in October 2025 under the agreement with Hamas as part of the hostage deal.

The military later said it had eliminated a terrorist cell operating near troops in what it described as a forward defense line aimed at preventing direct threats to northern communities. It also struck an underground shaft south of the line and Hezbollah terrorists identified entering it.

Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire in Lebanon and his statement that Israel should halt strikes there, a “yellow line” has effectively been established where IDF forces remain deployed, similar to the arrangement in Gaza. During the ceasefire, the IDF continues to strengthen its hold on key positions in southern Lebanon.

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The Winner at the DNC’s Latest Meeting? Israel, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

In the aftermath of last week’s big meeting of the Democratic National Committee in New Orleans, supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance have been quite content. “We’re pleased that the DNC Resolutions Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions,” the president of Democratic Majority for Israel said. The CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a former national security advisor to Kamala Harris, expressed gratitude to the DNC’s leadership.

Why did pro-Israel groups voice so much pleasure and praise – not only for the sidelining of pro-human-rights resolutions but also for the process that sidelined them? The answer has to do with the DNC’s mechanism that thwarted changes in positions on Israel. A panel named the Middle East Working Group gummed up all efforts to align the DNC with the views of most Democratic voters, even while supposedly hard at work.

Last Friday, the transparent thinness of the pretense caused Politico to headline an article this way: “Inside the DNC’s Middle East (Not) Working Group.” But the not-working group had been functioning quite well – as a charade for delay and obfuscation.

The day before the derisive headline appeared, the DNC Resolutions Committee dispensed with a resolution about events in Gaza and the West Bank. Its provisions included a declaration that the DNC “supports pausing or conditioning U.S. weapons transfers to any military units credibly implicated in violations of international humanitarian law or obstruction of humanitarian assistance.”

That resolution critical of Israel went nowhere, which is to say it went to the so-called working group, also known as a “task force.”

Assisting the diversion as chair of the Resolutions Committee was political strategist Ron Harris, described in his home state of Minnesota as a “longtime Democratic Party insider.” He made false claims during the meeting: “I know that the task force has met once a month since it was created…. I have the confidence that work is happening…. These are people working really really hard over a very thorny issue…. They are doing their work…. They’re hearing from experts and all sorts of things.”

The falsehood that the task force had met “once a month,” when actually it had scarcely met, was enough reason for me to contact Harris and ask where he’d gotten that (mis)information. He replied that it was “according to the DNC staffer coordinating the process.”

The basic problem with the working group is not only that it hasn’t done much of anything in the nearly eight months since DNC Chair Ken Martin announced it with great fanfare. The underlying hoax is that it was set up not to reflect the views of registered Democrats nationwide.

Polling is clear. Three-quarters of Democrats agree that “Israel is committing genocide,” and a large majority are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis by a 4-to-1 margin. But only a minority of the Middle East Working Group’s eight members has a record of supporting Palestinian rights, while several are firm supporters of Israel. The oil-and-water mix seems destined for stalemate or mere platitudes. But stalemate and platitudes appear to be just fine from here to the horizon for DNC leadership.

Such stalling mechanisms and scant real representation are as old as the political hills. In this case, an unfortunate boost has come from James Zogby, who for decades bravely worked inside the Democratic Party and elsewhere to advocate for the human rights of Palestinians, in sharp contrast to U.S. foreign policy.

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Israeli army says soldiers accused of abusing Palestinian to return to duty

Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir has authorised five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian inmate in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp to return to reserve service after charges against them were dropped, according to Israeli media reports.

The soldiers, all from the Force 100 unit assigned to guard military prisons, are being reinstated despite an ongoing, internal military inquiry into their conduct.

Israeli Army Radio reported that some of the reservists have already returned to active duty, including deployment to combat roles.

An Israeli army statement, cited by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, said: “The investigation does not prevent them from continuing to serve … the command-level investigation will be completed as soon as possible.”

The reinstatement comes after Israel’s top military lawyer dropped all charges against the soldiers last month, closing a case that had been among the most divisive in Israel’s recent history.

The soldiers had been charged with aggravated assault and causing severe injury, after footage broadcast by Israeli television showed them abusing a Palestinian man in Sde Teiman. The military’s own indictment described soldiers stabbing the detainee with a sharp object near his rectum, causing cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an internal tear.

A doctor at the facility, Yoel Donchin, told Haaretz he was so shocked by the Palestinian inmate’s condition that he initially assumed it was the work of a rival armed group.

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Five hundred more pro-Palestine protesters arrested in UK despite High Court ruling

Another 523 arrests were made in Britain on Saturday of people carrying placards with the words: “I oppose genocide; I support Palestine Action”.

The protesters were participating in Saturday’s “Everyone” demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, organised by civil liberties organisation Defend Our Juries, challenging the ban on direct action group Palestine Action. Their ages ranging from 18 to 87 years old, demonstrators were all arrested under counter-terror laws on suspicion of indicating support for a proscribed organisation.

Over 3,300 people have now been arrested on these charges during various protests since Palestine Action was outlawed by the Labour government in June-July last year.

The latest mass roundup takes place after the UK’s High Court has ruled the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful. The government’s appeal is due to be heard this month, on April 28 and 29 and the arrests are clearly meant to back an overturn of the original verdict.

A Defend Our Juries spokesperson commented, “The Met are choosing to make arrests despite the government’s ban on the group being ruled unlawful by the High Court, and leading lawyers warning that any arrests would be unlawful.”

This criticism was echoed by Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK’s Law and Human Rights Director, who said, “Today’s mass arrests of peaceful protesters in Trafalgar Square under UK terrorism law are yet another blow to civil liberties in this country—and made all the more outrageous by the Metropolitan Police’s own U-turn.

“The High Court ruled in February that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful. The Met rightly said it would stop making arrests.”

The about turn took place on March 25, with the Met issuing a statement claiming it had only paused arrests while it became clear whether the government would be granted the right to appeal.

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Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and 87-year-old among more than 500 Palestine Action supporters arrested at mass demo in London

Massive Attack musician Robert Del Naja has been arrested with over 500 supporters of banned group Palestine Action during a major protest in central London Today. 

The singer-songwriter from Bristol was seen being spoken to by officers as he took part in the march against the group’s ban in Trafalgar Square. 

Del Naja was among hundreds of demonstrators who sat with sings reading ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. 

He was later carried away by three officers and arrested on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation.

The Metropolitan Police said 523 people aged between 18 and 87 had been arrested at the mass event. 

Protesters gathered in the central London landmark from 1pm and held up their placards, despite police warning any individuals engaging in such criminal activity would be arrested. 

The group, which organisers Defend Our Juries said consisted of some 500 people, initially sat silently as around 100 police officers moved in to make arrests.

But some later started chanting ‘shame on you’ at officers as they carried protesters who refused to walk to police vans away. 

Proscription makes it a criminal offence to belong to or support Palestine Action, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. 

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