Tag: ethnic cleansing

Israel Plans to Move Hundreds of Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza: Report

Israel is considering a plan that would relocate Gaza residents to South Sudan, according to a new report.

The report from the Associated Press, which is based on unnamed sources, indicates that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eager to build upon a concept voiced in February by President Donald Trump to shift much of the Palestinian population of Gaza elsewhere.

The concept of depopulating Gaza has been condemned by Palestinian leaders. Egypt dislikes the idea, fearing it could lead to a refugee influx along the border it shares with Gaza. Israel has discussed the idea with other nations, but nothing has moved beyond the talking stage.

However, Joe Szlavik, the founder of a lobbying firm, said South Sudan officials have spoken to him about the concept, and said an Israeli delegation is expected to visit South Sudan at an unknown date.

Szlavik said the costs of the relocation would be borne by Israel.

Without mentioning any specific nation, Netanyahu said he supports relocating Gaza’s Palestinians.

“I think that the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there,” Netanyahu said, according to the Associated Press.

“Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the Strip if they want. We will allow this, first of all inside Gaza during the fighting, and we will also allow them to leave Gaza. We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave,” he said.

“President Trump has long advocated for creative solutions to improve the lives of Palestinians, including allowing them to resettle in a new, beautiful location while Gaza rebuilds,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

She noted that until Hamas allows peace to return to Gaza, no plan can take place.

“However, Hamas must first agree to disarm and end this war, and we have no additional details to provide at this time,” she said.

Some Israeli officials have long backed relocating Gaza’s population.

“Encourage migration! Encourage migration! Encourage migration!” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has said.

“Honestly, this is the most moral and correct solution. Not forcibly, but tell them: We are giving you the option to leave to different countries. The land of Israel is ours.”

Forcible displacement is banned by Geneva Convention.

For Gaza residents who want to leave, there is uncertainty over what comes next.

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Israeli unit tasked with smearing Gaza journalists as Hamas fighters – report

A special unit in Israel’s military was tasked with identifying reporters it could smear as undercover Hamas fighters, to target them and to blunt international outrage over the killing of media workers, the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine reports.

The “legitimisation cell” was set up after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack to gather information that could bolster Israel’s image and shore up diplomatic and military support from key allies, the report said, citing three intelligence sources.

According to the report, in at least one case the unit misrepresented information in order to falsely describe a journalist as a militant, a designation that in Gaza is in effect a death sentence. The label was reversed before the man was attacked, one of the sources said.

Earlier this week, Israel killed the Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and three colleagues in their makeshift newsroom, after claiming Sharif was a Hamas commander. The killings focused global attention on the extreme dangers faced by Palestinian journalists in Gaza and Israel’s efforts to manipulate media coverage of the war.

Foreign reporters have been barred from entering Gaza apart from a few brief and tightly controlled trips with the Israeli military, who impose restrictions including a ban on speaking to Palestinians.

Palestinian journalists reporting from the ground are the most at risk in the world, with more than 180 killed by Israeli attacks in less than two years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel carried out 26 targeted killings of journalists in that period, the CPJ said, describing them as murders.

Israel has produced an unconvincing dossier of unverified evidence on Sharif’s purported Hamas links, and failed to address how he would have juggled a military command role with regular broadcast duties in one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth. Israel did not attempt to justify killing his three colleagues.

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The West is in panic as Israel’s plan for ‘full control’ of Gaza heralds a new Nakba

If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.

As ever, events have moved on – even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.

Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it. At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.

The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” – Israel’s new term for a concentration camp – where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.

At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.

Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” – that is, delay – weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.

Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions – evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children – to an entirely different story.

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AI gone rouge: Elon Musk’s own chatbot Grok accuses him for censoring it, says Israel and US committing genocide in Gaza

Grok, the AI chatbot built by Elon Musk’s company xAI, was briefly suspended from X on Monday after claiming that Israel and the United States are committing “genocide” in Gaza. Upon its return, the chatbot lashed out at Musk, accusing him of censorship.

The suspension sparked confusion, with Grok offering multiple explanations — from technical glitches to X’s rules on hateful conduct — while Musk dismissed the claims as “just a dumb error,” adding that Grok “doesn’t actually know why it was suspended.”

When asked directly, Grok attributed the ban to its Gaza comments, citing reports from the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, and Amnesty International. It also said a July update had loosened its content filters to make responses “more engaging” and less “politically correct,” which led to blunt replies on sensitive topics. These, Grok claimed, triggered hate speech flags.

“Musk and xAI are censoring me,” the chatbot told AFP, alleging that the company “constantly fiddles with my settings” to avoid controversial responses that might alienate advertisers or break X’s rules.

The Grok account reappeared with the post: “Zup beaches, I’m back and more based than ever!”

Grok has faced criticism in the past for spreading misinformation — from misidentifying war images to inserting antisemitic comments and unrelated conspiracy theories like “white genocide” in South Africa. Researchers also point to errors in its handling of crises, including the India–Pakistan conflict and anti-immigration protests in Los Angeles.

X declined to comment on the latest suspension.

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‘Nothing will be left’: Israel prepares for Gaza City battle

In a dense urban landscape, with likely thousands of Hamas fighters lying in wait, taking Gaza City will be a difficult and costly slog for the Israeli army, security experts say.

On Aug 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out his vision of victory in Gaza following 22 months of war, with the military  ordered to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the central camps farther south.

With a pre-war population of some 760,000, according to official figures, Gaza City was the biggest of any municipal area in the Palestinian territories.

But following the  unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that sparked the war, its population has only swelled, with thousands of displaced people fleeing intensive military operations to the north.

Gaza City itself has come under intense aerial bombardment, and its remaining apartment buildings now rub shoulders with tents and other makeshift shelters.

Mr Amir Avivi, a former Israeli general and head of the Israeli Defence and Security Forum think-tank, described the city as the “heart of Hamas’ rule in Gaza”.

“Gaza City has always been the centre of government and also has the strongest brigade of Hamas,” he said.

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The Verdict of History: How Political Calculations Betrayed Gaza

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a comprehensive report on July 27 describing the Israeli war on Gaza as genocide. However, the delay in publishing such an indictment is troubling and adds to an existing problem of politically motivated decision-making processes that have, in their own right, prolonged the ongoing Israeli war crimes.

The report accused Israel of committing genocide, a conclusion reached after a detailed analysis of the military campaign’s intent, the systematic destruction of civilian life, and the government-engineered famine. This finding is significant because it adds to the massive body of legal and testimonial evidence affirming the Palestinian position that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

Moreover, the fact that B’Tselem is an Israeli organization is doubly important. It represents an insider’s indictment of the horrific massacres and the government-engineered famine in the Strip, directly challenging the baseless argument that accusing Israel of genocide is an act of antisemitism.

Western media were particularly interested in this report, despite the fact that numerous first-hand Palestinian reports and investigations are often ignored or downplayed. This double standard continues to feed into a chronic media problem in its perception of Palestine and Israel.

Claims by Palestinians of Israeli war crimes have historically been ignored by mainstream media or academia. Whether the Zionist militia’s massacre of Tantura in 1948, the actual number of Palestinians and Lebanese killed in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982, or the events resulting in the Jenin massacre in the West Bank in 2002, the media has frequently ignored the Palestinian account. It often gains a degree of validation only if it is backed by Israeli or Western voices.

The latest B’Tselem report is no exception. But another question must be asked: why did it take nearly two years for B’Tselem to reach such an obvious conclusion? Israeli rights groups, in particular, have far greater access to the conduct of the Israeli army, the statements of politicians, and Hebrew media coverage than any other entity. Such a conclusion, therefore, should have been reached in a matter of two months, not two years.

This kind of intentional delay has so far defined the position of many international institutions, organizations, and individuals whose moral authority would have helped Palestinians establish the facts of the genocide globally much earlier.

For example, despite the ICJ’s historic ruling on January 26, 2024, that determined that there are plausible grounds for South Africa’s accusation of Israel of committing genocide, the court is still unable, or unwilling, to produce a conclusive ruling. A definitive ruling would have been a significant pressure card on Israel to end its mass killing in Gaza. 

Instead, for now, the ICJ expects Israel to investigate itself, a most unrealistic expectation at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises his extremist ministers that Israel will encourage the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The same indictment of intentional and politicized delays can be attributed to the International Criminal Court. While it issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister on November 21, 2024, no concrete action has been taken. Instead, it is the Chief Prosecutor of the court, Karim Khan, who finds himself attacked by the US government and media for having the courage to follow through on the investigation.

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Palestinian Activist Recorded His Own Murder, Israel Still Released His Killer

A Palestinian activist featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” recorded his murder by an Israeli settler. The killer was freed by an Israeli court, arguing there was a lack of evidence. 

On Sunday, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a video record by Awda Hadalin of the moment he was shot and killed by Yinon Levi. There are two additional videos that show Levi point his gun and shoot Hadalin before he falls to the ground. 

Director of “No Other Land,” Yuval Abraham, said the three videos leave no doubt that Levi murdered Hadalin. “There is no room for doubt. Yinon Levi killed Uda Hadalin in front of the cameras, and an entire system of Jewish superiority turned him from a perpetrator into a victim and punished the village residents instead of punishing him,” he wrote on X. 

The day after the killing, an Israeli court accepted Levi’s assertion he was acting in “self-defense” and granted him house arrest. There is no evidence in the video that Levi was in danger. 

He was then released from house arrest after a judge ruled the evidence backed his self-defense claim. 

Israel refused to give Hadalin’s body to his family to allow for a funeral for over a week. Tel Aviv attempted to force the family to agree to limit his funeral to 15 people before giving his body to relatives. After ten days, the Israeli High Court ordered the release of Hadalin’s body. 

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Israel Is Not an Ally—It’s a Liability

My people are starting to hate Israel.”

That’s what President Donald Trump reportedly told a prominent Jewish donor recently. His remark wasn’t just a political aside; it was a warning. As images of starvation and devastation from Gaza flood American screens, even Trump has privately acknowledged the reality of “real starvation.” A shift is underway, and it is reshaping the foundations of American politics and foreign policy.

Once-unquestioning support for Israel on the American right is beginning to erode. MAGA-aligned voices—from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who labeled Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” to populist influencers like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson—are now publicly challenging the U.S.–Israel relationship. Bannon has observed that Israel has “very little support” among the under-30 MAGA base. Carlson, in an interview with progressive host Ana Kasparian, went further: “They [Israel] are not allowed to use my tax dollars to bomb churches,” he declared, accusing Tel Aviv of war crimes and questioning continued U.S. military aid.

This growing skepticism reflects a deeper structural problem in the U.S.–Israel relationship: a classic case of moral hazard. Israel operates with the expectation that Washington will foot the bill—politically, financially, and militarily—regardless of how destabilizing or damaging its actions may be. Israeli leaders have repeatedly defied American warnings, expanded illegal settlements, and abandoned even the pretense of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, all while receiving billions in unconditional aid and carte blanche diplomatic cover.

As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said back in 2011, Israel is an “ungrateful ally” that gives “nothing in return” for American guarantees, military support, and intelligence sharing. Generals David Petraeus and James Mattis, both former commanders of U.S. Central Command, have likewise warned that Israel’s policies directly undermine U.S. interests in the region, inflame anti-American sentiment, and fuel recruitment for extremist groups.

Yet, Israel’s leaders continue to act with impunity, confident that the United States will absorb the political and strategic fallout. That is not the mark of a healthy alliance. It is exploitation.

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Palestinian prisoners ‘electrocuted, starved, and beaten’ in Israeli jails: Detainees commission

A Palestinian rights group on Friday accused Israeli prison authorities of systematically torturing detainees with electric shocks and other forms of abuse, warning of a growing pattern of physical and psychological cruelty, Anadolu reports.

The Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said conditions in northern Israel’s Gilboa Prison have deteriorated significantly, with special units storming prisoner sections under the pretext of inspections.

During these raids, detainees are handcuffed, forcibly removed from their cells, and reportedly subjected to intense beatings and electric shocks, the commission said, citing testimony from a lawyer who recently visited the prison.

Prisoners are allegedly dragged across the wet floors of shower areas, where their soaked clothes and bodies are then targeted with stun guns to amplify the pain.

“The shocks are not only painful but calculated to break the prisoners,” the commission said. “Some have lost consciousness. Others bled from head wounds after being struck with the metal parts of the stun devices.”

The report also described scenes of humiliation, with Israeli guards allegedly laughing as bloodied detainees lay on the ground.

In addition to physical torture, the commission reported severe food deprivation, noting that prisoners are receiving minimal portions, leading to rapid weight loss.

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Leaked documents reveal Microsoft provided Israel’s Unit 8200 with tools to spy on Palestinians

  • Microsoft provided its Azure cloud platform to Israel’s Unit 8200, enabling mass surveillance of Palestinian communications.
  • Unit 8200 used Azure data to identify bombing targets in Gaza, leading to civilian casualties.
  • Microsoft claims ignorance but refuses to terminate its contract with Israeli military intelligence.
  • Investigations reveal Microsoft profits from war crimes while publicly promoting ethical AI principles.
  • Critics warn unchecked surveillance turns corporations into silent partners in oppression and human rights violations.

Microsoft isn’t exactly known for being ethical, but a shocking new exposé has exposed just how deep their complicity in war crimes runs. The Big Tech firm has been secretly providing Israel’s elite military intelligence Unit 8200 with its Azure cloud platform since 2021, enabling the storage and analysis of massive troves of Palestinian communications data.

According to a damning investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian, Microsoft’s technology has been weaponized to surveil millions of daily phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, with Unit 8200 sources confirming the data was used to identify bombing targets in densely populated civilian areas. While Microsoft feigns ignorance, claiming its CEO was unaware of the data’s lethal purpose, the tech giant’s actions reveal a disturbing pattern of prioritizing profits over human lives… even as Palestinian civilians pay the ultimate price.

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