Tag: ethnic cleansing

US-Israel plan aims to empty Gaza of Palestinians, build AI-powered ‘smart cities’: Report

A postwar plan for Gaza circulating within President Donald Trump’s White House envisions demolishing the strip, confiscating all public land within it, paying small amounts to remove the entire population of more than 2 million Palestinians, and building “a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” on its ruins, The Washington Post reported on 31 August.

A 38-page prospectus seen by The Post envisions placing Gaza in a trust controlled by Israeli and American investors. The trust will then serve as the vehicle for the development of the strip into a high-tech commercial, residential, and tourist hub resembling Dubai.

The Post reports that the proposal to establish the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust, was developed by some of the same Israelis who created the deadly, US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was used as a pretext to block the delivery of food aid by the UN.

Financial planning for the GREAT Trust project was carried out by a team from the Boston Consulting Group, which also worked on establishing the GHF.

The plan calls for the “voluntary” departure of Gaza’s residents to another country, making them refugees, or herding them into “restricted, secured zones” amounting to concentration camps, within the strip.

In exchange for abandoning their land, Palestinians would be “offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property,” The Post writes. The token could allegedly be used to “finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in the new ”AI-powered smart cities'” to be built in Gaza.

“Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food,” The Post further wrote.

After beginning his term as president in January, Trump boasted that all Palestinians would be removed from Gaza, never to return, and the strip redeveloped as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

“I looked at a picture of Gaza, it’s like a massive demolition site,” Trump stated just two days after taking office.

“It’s got to be rebuilt in a different way.” Gaza, he said, was “a phenomenal location … on the sea, the best weather. Everything’s good. Some beautiful things can be done with it.”

Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a Jewish real estate developer from New York, as his Special Envoy to the Middle East and point man for alleged negotiations with Hamas to reach a ceasefire.

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IDF: Gaza City declared as ‘dangerous combat zone,’ bodies of 2 hostages recovered

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have announced that Gaza City has been declared a “dangerous combat zone.”

On Friday, the IDF said that the pauses in fighting, previously implemented in certain parts of Gaza to allow humanitarian aid distribution, would no longer apply inside Gaza City as the offensive there has moved up.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the body of Ilan Weiss, one of the 251 people kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, had been recovered within Gaza City.

Netanyahu added that the remains of a second hostage were also recovered from Gaza and are undergoing identification by forensic experts.

The IDF stressed that it will continue to facilitate humanitarian assistance throughout most of the enclave, but not in Gaza City, while simultaneously pressing forward with “offensive operations against terror groups in Gaza to protect Israeli civilians.”

The IDF once again urged civilians in Gaza City to evacuate southward.

Also on Friday, the IDF reported that soldiers operating in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City spotted “a group of terrorists hiding in a military compound about 100 meters away.”

According to the statement, Israeli forces “called in an Air Force aircraft, which struck the building and killed the terrorists.” 

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State Department Says It’s Denying Visas to Palestinian Officials Ahead of UN General Assembly

The Department of State denied visas to Palestinian leaders to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York City next month and will revoke visas that were previously granted to those individuals.

A statement from a State Department spokesperson said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is both denying and revoking visas from individuals who belong to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) ahead of the U.N. meeting, which will be held between Sept. 9 and 28.

“It is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” the statement reads.

The department said that before either “can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism,” and that includes the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas that left more than 1,200 people dead and more than 250 hostages being taken into Gaza.

“The PA must also end its attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns” such as appealing to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), along with attempts to create the recognition of a Palestinian state, the statement added.

The State Department said those actions have “materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks.”

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Even the media’s Gaza ‘investigations’ hide the real story of Israel’s atrocities

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 so-called “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.

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Washington stands alone at UN Security Council defending manmade famine in Gaza

All but one of the 15 members of the UN Security Council – the US – declared that the famine in Gaza is a “manmade crisis” and warned that using starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law and constitutes a war crime, during a meeting on 27 August.

The 14 council members announced in a statement that they support an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, a significant surge of aid throughout Gaza, and for Israel to immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on relief deliveries.

“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” the statement read. “Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has officially declared famine in Gaza for the first time in a report issued on 22 August, and warned it will likely spread. 

The assessment found that 514,000 Palestinians – nearly a quarter of the enclave’s population – are already experiencing famine, a figure projected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

Israel demanded that the IPC retract its findings, dismissing them as false and biased. Tel Aviv claimed the assessment relied on partial data from Hamas and failed to consider what it called a recent influx of food.

At the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, acting US Ambassador Dorothy Shea also attacked the IPC report, saying it “doesn’t pass the test on either.” 

She acknowledged that hunger is widespread and that humanitarian needs “must be met,” but framed addressing those needs as a US priority rather than endorsing the IPC’s declaration.

Since its creation in 2004, the IPC has declared famine only five times, most recently in Sudan last year. Its decision to apply the same classification to Gaza underscores the severity of the crisis.

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

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. 

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US-Israeli scheme for Lebanon includes forced displacement, turning Beirut suburb into ‘refugee camp’: Report

There is a new US plan for a “clampdown” on Beirut’s southern suburb, which could potentially see the area come under the control of a foreign or Arab security force, according to a report released by Al-Akhbar newspaper on 27 August. 

The southern suburb, a strong base of support for Hezbollah, was heavily bombarded by Israel during its brutal war on Lebanon last year. The suburb has been repeatedly hit by airstrikes since the ceasefire took effect. 

According to Al-Akhbar, the plan aims to “treat the southern suburbs just like Palestinian refugee camps.”

The 1969 Cairo Agreement for years allowed Palestinian groups a degree of autonomy over refugee camps in Lebanon. Despite the agreement being declared null in the 1980s, the status of the camps has remained more or less the same. 

However, Lebanese troops maintain checkpoints and a heavy presence around the camps. Palestinian camps in Lebanon have recently begun a symbolic disarmament process in line with the state’s efforts to monopolize control of weapons in the country. 

The Al-Akhbar report frames the new US plan as part of Washington’s broader goal of disarming Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government vowed to achieve in a cabinet session in early August. 

“The US proposal envisions checkpoints at all entrances [of the Beirut suburb], thorough searches of individuals and vehicles, and a tight control on goods, materials, and money flows. This mission would not be handed to the Lebanese army. Instead, the plan calls for a foreign security force, possibly an Arab one, to take on the task,” it said. 

Al-Akhbar also said the plan falls in line with US efforts to “empty the southern border region.”

A recent report by Axios said there is a US plan for a “Trump economic zone” near the southern border, aimed at preventing Hezbollah from re-establishing its presence there. The report said this would happen with the help of Gulf financing. 

During a press conference in Lebanon’s Presidential Palace on Tuesday, US envoy Tom Barrack confirmed plans for the economic zone. 

“We have to have money coming into the system. The money will come from the Gulf. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are partners and are willing to do that for the south (of Lebanon) if we’re asking a portion of the Lebanese community to give up their livelihood,” Barrack said. 

“We have 40,000 people that are being paid by Iran to fight. What are you gonna do with them? Take their weapon and say ‘by the way, good luck planting olive trees?’ It can’t happen. We have to help them,” he added, referring to Hezbollah members.

“We, all of us, the Gulf, the US, the Lebanese are all gonna act together to create an economic forum that is gonna produce a livelihood,” he went on to say.

This economic zone reportedly serves as an ethnic cleansing plan to remove residents of the southern border villages and prevent the return of those already displaced from there. 

Lebanese MP and former head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate Jamil al-Sayyed said in a post last week that “Envoy Tom Barrack has received the Israeli response to his mediation over the south.”

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More US lawmakers publicly blame Israel for starvation, deaths in Gaza

U.S. lawmakers who may have been silent for the last 22 months are now speaking out publicly and blaming Israel for the starvation and famine conditions in the Gaza Strip.

On CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and long-time Israel supporter, slammed Jerusalem for Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, declaring that “Israel is starving Palestinians with impunity.” Gazans are “systematically being starved to death because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive,” Shaheen said.

When Brennan asked whether Shaheen should have spoken out earlier she replied, “We should be doing more and we should have done more… not just democrats, but also Republicans.”

Going further than Shaheen, 14 U.S. lawmakers have called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide to date, including 13 Democrats and one Republican.

Those lawmakers are Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Al Green (D-Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the first Republican to do so — has been front and center.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” Greene said on X on Saturday. “And I will not be silent about it.”

While stopping short of calling Israel’s actions a “genocide,” others have also turned up the heat and have called for halting U.S. weapons aid to Jerusalem until it reverses course.

“Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency,” Rep. Angus King (I-Maine) declared in a statement at the end of last month. He said he would no longer support aid to Israel, “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.”

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The Palestine Chronicle Case: When Truth Becomes the Crime

The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity – grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.

At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine. For decades he has written, taught, and spoken in public, producing books translated into multiple languages, contributing columns to international publications, addressing audiences in universities and public forums across continents. He is not a shadowy figure; he is a man whose work has been consistent, transparent, and intellectually rigorous. His life is not untouched by the tragedy he describes: many members of his family were killed under Israeli bombardments. Yet while mainstream media rushed to amplify unproven allegations against him, they remained deaf to his personal grief. His tragedy was ignored, his integrity overlooked, his voice distorted – because his engagement is unbearable to those who would prefer silence.

A Crime of Conscience, Not of Law

He is an engaged journalist in the noblest sense: independent, lucid, unflinching. His so-called crime is not collusion with violence but fidelity to memory. That is why he is demonized – not for what he has done in law, but for what he represents in conscience. America, unable to silence Palestinian voices through censorship alone, now instrumentalizes its justice system to achieve by indictment what it failed to achieve by argument. Having harassed universities, intimidated students, and punished professors for their solidarity with Gaza, it turns the courtroom into a new battlefield. And Congress, captive to the whims of its Zionist masters, joins the manhunt, targeting a journalist for the sole offense of telling the truth of his people. As for the mainstream press, it chooses cowardice: ignoring his family’s suffering, ignoring the emptiness of the charges, while echoing the accusations of power as if they were evidence.

Law Twisted into Weapon

The complaint filed against Ramzy Baroud and the organization (People Media Project) that runs the Palestine Chronicle rests on the Alien Tort Statute, grotesquely overstretched to criminalize editorial decisions rather than acts of war. It alleges that by publishing articles from Abdallah Aljamal – described by Israel as a Hamas operative killed during a hostage rescue – the Chronicle “aided and abetted” terrorism. But here lies the first fissure: this characterization of Aljamal comes exclusively from Israeli military sources, themselves a belligerent party. It has never been independently verified. The claim that he was both a journalist and a Hamas operative remains an allegation, not an established fact. To treat it as judicial evidence is to replace proof with propaganda.

Even if – hypothetically – Aljamal had, at the demand of a militant group, harbored hostages, such a circumstance would not in itself render him culpable: what ordinary civilian in a war zone can refuse the command of militants under threat of force? And even if it occurred, how could Ramzy Baroud have known of it? Even taken at face value, the allegation collapses upon scrutiny. No evidence demonstrates that the Chronicle or its editor had actual knowledge of Aljamal’s supposed operational role, nor that modest freelance payments – if any at all – bore any causal nexus to hostage-taking. The federal judge, in February 2025, dismissed the original complaint precisely for lack of proof of knowledge or intent. The plaintiffs returned with an amended filing, repackaged in rhetoric and pathos, but still devoid of the material elements required under international law: actus reus (a substantial contribution to the crime) and mens rea (intent or knowledge).

To equate the publication of articles with material support for terrorism is not jurisprudence but a juridical contortion. It is the substitution of law by politics, the criminalization of journalism under the mask of counterterrorism. What is sought is not justice but intimidation – to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.

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In defiance of voter base, DNC rejects resolution calling for Israel arms embargo

On Tuesday, Democratic National Committee (DNC) members at the party’s summer meetings rejected Resolution 18, which called for the recognition of a Palestinian state, a ceasefire in Gaza, an arms embargo, and a suspension of military aid to Israel.

Instead, members backed a status quo resolution introduced by DNC Chair Ken Martin, which simply called for more aid to be allowed into Gaza and a two-state solution. Despite the support, Martin went on to withdraw the resolution.

“I know that there are some who are interested in making changes today, but as we’ve seen, there’s divide in our party on this issue,” said Martin. “This is a moment that calls for shared dialog. It calls for shared advocacy, and that’s why I’ve decided today, at this moment, listening to the testimony and listening to people in our party, to withdraw my amendment and resolution.”

Martin says he will establish a task force “comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this” so that they can “bring solutions back to our party.”

Resolution 18 had faced opposition from lobby groups like Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI).

“Should it advance, it will further divide our Party, provide a gift to Republicans, and send a signal that will embolden Israel’s adversaries,” claimed DMFI president and CEO Brian Romick. “As we get closer to the midterms, Democrats need to be united, not continuing intra-party fights that don’t get us closer to taking back Congress.”

Polling has consistently shown that Democratic voters are, in fact, united on Israel. A majority of them oppose the genocide in Gaza and want the Israeli government held accountable for its actions in the region.

This month, YouGov and The Economist published a poll showing that 69% of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That includes 77% of Kamala Harris voters.

According to a June Quinnipiac survey, 12% of Democratic voters sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians, while a July Gallup poll found that just 8% of Democratic voters support Israel’s military actions in Gaza and only 9% support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

An April poll from Data for Progress and Zeteo showed that 71% of likely Democratic primary voters think the United States should end arms transfers to Israel until it stops its attacks on civilians and supports the rights of the Palestinians.

80% of likely Democratic primary voters under the age of 45 believe that military assistance to Israel should be restricted.

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