Tag: israel

In Beijing, Netanyahu looks to ‘marry Israel’s technology with China’s capacity’

On the second day of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit here, Israel and China took further steps to strengthen economic and scientific relations.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong said Beijing and Jerusalem had agreed to upgrade bilateral relations, including by forming an “innovative comprehensive partnership” meant to “bring the ties and the cooperation between the two countries to new heights,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

“Innovation cooperation is a highlight of our bilateral relations,” Liu said at the conclusion of the third meeting of the China-Israel Committee on Innovation Cooperation, held at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guest House.

Liu said she had visited Israel twice and was “deeply impressed” by its culture of innovation.

“You’re a global leader in research and development,” she said.

Israeli and Chinese ministers and top officials signed 10 bilateral agreements in health, science, education, environmental protection and other areas.

“We want to marry our technology with China’s capacity,” Netanyahu said at the summit.

“We in Israel are eager to share with China our science and technology that can better the lives of all mankind, and the people of China,” he said.

Addressing dozens of Israeli and Chinese government officials, industry leaders, university presidents and private businesspeople, Netanyahu called on Beijing to accelerate the pace of negotiations over an Israel-China free trade agreement, which started exactly one year ago.

Netanyahu said that in today’s world everything is becoming technologized and that therefore all countries need to innovate. He hailed Israel’s startup scene, highlighting Intel’s recent acquisition for $15 billion of Jerusalem-based autonomous driving company Mobileye, adding that Israel is home to 500 additional companies “that do the same thing. A few years ago we had nothing.”

Israel and China both have old, rich histories and traditions, and are committed to improving themselves and advancing technological innovation, he said.

“We have deep roots, but we seek for the sky, for the future. And that means science and technology,” the prime minister added.

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US and Israel Prepping for a New Attack on Iran by Creating a Narrative of Government Chaos

Was it just a coincidence that as Donald Trump met last Monday with Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu to discuss a future attack against Iran that protests, some accompanied by violence, broke out in several cities in Iran? I am not a believer in coincidence. Following that meeting, the US news media — both print and electronic — was flooded with stories painting the protests as a mighty uprising of the Iranian people. A new revolution has begun… or so the Western public is being told.

One of the major purveyors of this narrative is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is an Iranian exile-based political opposition coalition founded in 1981 in Tehran (later relocated to Paris, France, with activities in Albania). It positions itself as a parliament-in-exile and the primary democratic alternative to the Islamic Republic regime. The NCRI advocates for overthrowing the current government and establishing a secular, democratic, pluralistic, and non-nuclear republic in Iran, emphasizing separation of religion and state, gender equality, human rights, and minority rights. And guess what? The NCRI is the creature of a group the US once labeled as a terrorist organization.

The NCRI as a tightly controlled front for the PMOI/MEK, with limited broad support inside Iran. The PMOI was formerly designated a terrorist organization by the US (delisted in 2012) and EU, partly due to past armed actions. The group has been accused of cult-like practices and authoritarian internal structure, though supporters reject these claims and emphasize its democratic platform.

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) or Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), is an Iranian opposition group founded in 1965 with a long history of terrorism in Iran. It is the principal component of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which it describes as its political wing. The People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) has a documented history of violent activities, primarily from the 1970s to the early 2000s, which led to its designation as a terrorist organization by the United States (1997–2012), the European Union (until 2009), and others.

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Once Again, the New York Times Sells Israel’s Genocide in Gaza as Law Enforcement

This is another masterclass from the New York Times in how to sell genocide as law enforcement.

According to today’s headline, “new Israeli rules” mean “suspensions” of aid groups from Gaza – that is, the forced expulsion of 37 humanitarian organizations from Palestinian territory illegally occupied by Israel.

These aid groups organize most of the field hospitals currently operating in Gaza and set up after Israel destroyed the enclave’s proper hospitals. The groups also run emergency shelters, water and sanitation services, and treatment centers for children with acute malnutrition.

Israel’s “registration rules” are a death sentence for a homeless, destitute Palestinian population left vulnerable to starvation, floods, winter cold and disease by Israel’s two-year destruction of their homeland.

Who is to blame? Apparently groups like Doctors Without Borders, Medical Aid for Palestinians and CARE. Why? Because they are “resisting” Israel’s “rules” to “provide detailed information” on their staff in Gaza – information Israel has used time and again to kill those aid workers.

As Doctors Without Borders point out, “we support one in five hospital beds and one in three births” in Gaza. Israel, it added, was “cutting off life-saving medical assistance for hundreds of thousands of people”.

Another organization affected by the new “rules”, the Norwegian Refugee Council, noted that Israel had killed hundreds of aid workers in the past two years. “For us, it is a safety concern for our staff. And acknowledging who they are – it puts them at risk.”

The New York Times wants you to forget who is the criminal here.

It is Israel that’s illegally occupying Gaza and other Palestinian territories – and has been for decades.

It is Israel that has bombed Gaza into the Stone Age.

It is Israel that has ethnically cleansed Gaza’s people from their lands, driving them into ever smaller concentration camps on those ruins, surrounded by Israel’s “yellow line”.

It is Israel that has starved the people of Gaza for months on end by blocking all aid.

It is Israel that’s killed at least 600 aid workers, 1,700 medical staff and 250 journalists in Gaza over the past two years.

It is Israel that has eradicated all Gaza’s hospitals and health care facilities, leaving its maimed and starved population vulnerable to infection and disease.

And it is Israel now expelling aid organizations vital to keep this homeless, bombed, maimed, starved, orphaned, traumatized population alive.

Criminals don’t get to set the “rules” – because the rules they set will, by definition, serve their criminal agenda.

Israel has not hidden that agenda. It wants to eradicate Gaza and its population. It has destroyed the people of Gaza’s homes and the infrastructure they need to survive – from hospitals and schools to sanitation services. It has blocked aid and food, and is now driving out the emergency aid organizations that served as a sticking plaster to keep this population just barely alive.

Israel’s goal is to make life so desperate, so impossible, that the rest of the world will consent to the expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza on “humanitarian” grounds.

The New York Times, like the rest of the media, are using language to persuade you that none of this is happening.

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Palestine was the deadliest place to be a journalist in 2025: Media union

Palestine was the deadliest place to work as a journalist in 2025, with the Middle East as a whole the most dangerous region for media professionals, according to a global journalist union.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the region accounted for 74 deaths last year – more than half of the 128 journalists and media workers killed – in a new report released on Wednesday.

The Middle East was followed by Africa with 18 deaths, Asia Pacific (15), the Americas (11) and Europe (10), according to the report. The vast majority of those killed were men, but the list included 10 women.

“128 journalists killed in a single year is not just a statistic; it is a global crisis. These deaths are a brutal reminder that journalists are being targeted with impunity, simply for doing their job,” IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said.

Palestinian journalists were the biggest cohort of victims: 56 Palestinian media professionals were killed in 2025. Yemen followed, with 13 deaths, Ukraine, with eight, and Sudan, with six, according to the IFJ.

The Paris-based media union cited Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif as the most “emblematic” of the 56 journalists murdered in Palestine last year covering Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Al-Sharif, 28, was killed on August 10 alongside several colleagues when Israeli forces struck a media tent outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

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US To Fund $8.6 Billion Boeing Contract for Israeli F-15 Fighter Jets

The US Department of War announced on Monday that Boeing has been awarded a contract worth up to $8.6 billion to sell Israel new F-15 fighter jets as part of a deal funded by US military aid.

The Israeli Defense Ministry announced the initial deal in November 2024 and said it would be funded by US aid that was included in a massive foreign assistance bill President Biden signed into law earlier that year. At the time, the F-15 deal was valued at $5.2 billion and included 25 new F-15s.

The updated contract with Boeing has a ceiling of up to $8.6 billion since it includes an option to purchase an additional 25 F-15s. The Pentagon said in its announcement that the work on the fighter jets will be “performed at St. Louis, Missouri, and is expected to be complete by December 31, 2035.”

The US has continued to provide Israel with massive amounts of weapons despite its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which, according to several studies, has likely killed more than 100,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women and children. US military aid and direct military intervention have also supported Israel’s wars in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and the occupation of the West Bank.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, in the two years following the October 7 attack, the US government spent at least $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel and another $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion on US military operations in the region in support of Israel.

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Smotrich hails ‘full US support’ for illegal settler expansion in occupied West Bank

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and staunch backer of the illegal settler movement, said on 30 December that Washington has given Tel Aviv “full support” to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.

“The US administration is giving us full support to expand settlements in the West Bank in order to undermine the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich said. 

The statement coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US and came after a meeting between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

“We have had a discussion, big discussion for a long time on the West Bank. And I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100 percent, but we’ll come to a conclusion on the West Bank,” Trump said after the meeting.

When asked by reporters what the disagreement was about, Trump said, “I don’t want to do that, it will be announced at an appropriate time.”

Netanyahu “will do the right thing,” the US president went on to say. 

Since coming to power in late 2022, Netanyahu’s government has been rapidly advancing Israel’s longstanding goal of annexing the West Bank, which was occupied illegally during the 1967 war. 

New illegal settlements are being established at an accelerated rate, and the Knesset has approved a bill calling to impose Israeli “sovereignty” over the territory. 

Trump recently claimed that he would “not allow” Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.

“Trump and his top advisors asked Netanyahu to change Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank during their meeting on Monday,” informed sources told Axios on 30 December.

“The White House thinks a violent escalation in the West Bank would undermine efforts to implement the Gaza peace agreement and prevent the expansion of the Abraham Accords before the end of Trump’s term,” the sources went on to say, adding that the US president’s team asked the Israelis to “calm things down.”

“The president and his team raised settler violence against Palestinian civilians, the financial instability of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli settlements expansion. Netanyahu spoke very strongly against settler violence and said he is going to take more action,” the sources said.

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Bloody Diamonds: How Your Engagement Ring Helps Fund a Genocide in Gaza

Did your engagement ring help fund a genocide in Gaza? Quite possibly. Despite possessing no mines of their own, Israel is a major player in the world’s diamond business, buying up minerals across Africa and selling them to the West, netting billions in the process. Diamonds are Israel’s most important export, and directly bankroll the country’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza. MintPress explores the dark world of Israeli blood diamonds.

A Gigantic Industry

Any visitor walking through Tel Aviv’s exclusive Ramat Gan district will be struck by its wealth. Skyscrapers are everywhere, and expensive jewelry stores lines the streets. Ramat Gan is the center of the world’s diamond industry, with more than 15,000 people employed by the Israel Diamond Exchange in the business of cutting, polishing, importing, exporting, and marketing the stones.

Israel’s largest export is not tech industry or its food. Diamonds alone account for over 15% of all the country’s exports, with other jewelry also contributing significantly to its economy. Between 2018 and 2023, Israel exported over $60 billion dollars worth of precious stones.

Their number one customer is the United States. Historically, Israel has accounted for between one third and one half of all the diamonds sold across America, a growing market already worth $20 billion per year.

Genocide Stones

Unlike gold, diamonds are rarely hallmarked, meaning that few American brides know that their engagement and wedding rings were crafted and polished in Israel. Even fewer are aware that their purchase directly funds the slaughter in Gaza and Israel’s ongoing seizure of land in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.

“Overall, the Israeli diamond industry contributes about $1 billion annually to the Israeli military and security industries … every time somebody buys a diamond that was exported from Israel, some of that money ends up in the Israeli military,” Israeli economist, Shir Hever, testified at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in 2010.

Perhaps the key figure in the Israeli diamond industry is business magnate, Beny Steinmetz. Considered by many to be Israel’s richest man, the 69-year-old founder of Steinmetz Diamond Group first entered the industry in 1988, purchasing a production factory in Apartheid South Africa.

Through his charitable foundation, Steinmetz has poured money into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), including “adopting” a unit of the Givati Brigade, buying equipment for them. During Operation Cast Lead in 2009, the brigade carried out a massacre, forcing dozens of Palestinian civilians into a house in Gaza, bombed the house, and prevented ambulances from approaching. Rescue workers who eventually found their bodies also reported seeing the words “The only good Arab is a dead Arab” daubed in Hebrew on the remains of the building.

More recently, the Givati Brigade has been filmed setting fire to Palestinian food supplies, and a Gaza sewage plant, as well as demolishing more homes.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has destroyed 92% of the schools and residential buildings of Gaza, shot around 300 journalists, and killed at least 20,000 children. UNICEF estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 children in Gaza have lost one or more limbs. In addition to its violence in Palestine, Israel has invaded and occupied Lebanon and Syria, and bombed Iran, Tunisia, Yemen, and Qatar.

The US Pays in Dollars, Africa Pays in Blood

Israel’s appetite for diamonds is directly fueling civil war and bloodshed across Africa, where it supplies military hardware with governments, warlords, and local armed groups in exchange for access to the continent’s mineral wealth. Israel-based International Diamond Industries (IDI), for example, secured a monopoly on diamond production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a deal that, according to a United Nations panel, included covert weapons transfers and the training of Congolese security forces by IDF commanders. The deal was fantastically lucrative for IDI, who paid only $20 million for a monopoly generating $600 million per year.

Meanwhile, in 2002 in war-ravaged Sierra Leone, for just $1.2 million in cash, Steinmetz himself managed to acquire half of the Koidu Ltd., a company that accounted for 90% of the country’s diamonds. In 2011, Koidu produced a reported $200 million worth of diamonds.

Why authorities would agree to such ludicrously low purchase prices might be explained by a 2021 ruling by a Swiss court, that found Steinmetz guilty of paying $8.5 million in bribes to the wife of the president of Guinea. These bribes, the court ruled, secured him the rights to lucrative iron ore concessions in the country’s Simandou region. Steinmetz was sentenced to five years in prison. The Israeli billionaire is currently facing similarly grave corruption charges in Romania.

The diamond rush in D.R. Congo, Sierra Leone and other African nations has resulted in civil war, human trafficking, forced child labor, and other serious human rights violations by groups intent on securing a slice of the diamond industry for themselves. But they are relatively small players in comparison to the Israelis.

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Trump Says He’ll Support an Israeli Attack on Iran If Tehran ‘Continues’ Its Missile Program

President Trump said on Monday that he would support an Israeli attack on Iran if Tehran “continues” its conventional missile program or if it works to rebuild its civilian nuclear program that was damaged by US airstrikes during the US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic in June.

The president made the comments at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked if he would back more Israeli attacks on Iran. “If they continue with the missiles, yes. The nuclear, fast,” he said.

“One will be yes, absolutely,” he added, appearing to reference Iran’s missiles. “The other was we’ll do it immediately,” he said, referencing the possibility of Iran rebuilding its nuclear program. The president also threatened to “knock the hell” out of Iran if it “builds up again.”

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Trump Claims Israel Is Complying With Gaza Deal ‘100%’ Despite Constant IDF Ceasefire Violations

During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida on Monday, President Trump claimed Israel was holding up its end of the Gaza ceasefire deal “100%” despite constant IDF attacks on Palestinians in the Strip and other Israeli violations.

Since the deal went into effect on October 10, the Israeli military has killed at least 414 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The IDF has continued demolitions and has expanded the so-called “yellow line,” the vague boundary that separates the IDF-occupied side of Gaza and the Hamas-controlled side. Israel has also maintained restrictions on aid and shelter materials entering Gaza.

When asked by a reporter at Mar-a-Lago if he was concerned that Israel wasn’t moving quickly enough into “phase two” of the plan, Trump said he was “not concerned about anything Israel is doing” and that Israel has “lived up to the plan 100%.”

Trump also appeared to issue an ultimatum to Hamas during the press conference, saying that if the group doesn’t disarm within a certain amount of time, there will be “hell to pay” and that it will be “horrible for them.”

The president said that Hamas has already agreed to disarm, but the group has been consistent in its position that it won’t give up its weapons unless a Palestinian state is established, or if progress is made in that direction. Trump’s 20-point peace plan said that Gaza would be “demilitarized,” but Hamas only agreed to use the plan as a basis for negotiations.

So far, the only deal Israel and Hamas have signed outlined a ceasefire and the exchange of Israeli captives and Palestinians held in Israeli jails. “Our people are defending themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as the occupation remains,” the new spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said on Monday.

Trump also claimed during the press conference that the US and Israel are helping the “people of Gaza” even though both countries are not allowing reconstruction to take place, as civilians are living in flimsy tents and the rubble of bombed-out buildings amid harsh winter storms. In recent weeks, at least 20 people in Gaza have died due to the weather.

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US Improperly Tracked Over Half of US Military Aid for Israel

As Israel conducted a brutal onslaught in Gaza over the past two years, the Department of War did not adequately monitor most of the arms sent to Tel Aviv. 

“Before October 2023, the DoD conducted enhanced end‑use monitoring (EEUM) of defense articles the US Government provided to Israel,” a report released by the Pentagon’s Inspector General explained. “However, after October 2023, the DoD only partially complied with the requirements for conducting EEUM of defense articles provided to Israel.”

Prior to the Hamas attack in southern Israel, about 70% of weapons sent to Israel were properly monitored by the Department of War. After Israel began its genocidal military campaign, oversight dropped to 44% according to the IG. The report audited $13.4 billion in security assistance that Washington gave to Tel Aviv from October 2023 to April 2024. 

The IG warned that the lack of oversight meant the Pentagon could “not ensure accountability of sensitive US defense articles provided to Israel.

After the October 7, 2023, attack, the US rushed additional military aid to Israel. The arms fueled Israel’s onslaught in Gaza that has likely killed over 100,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of the Strip. 

The Department of War has also failed to properly track billions of dollars in weapons the US sent to Ukraine. Weapons from Ukraine turned up in the hands of African militants and European criminals. 

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