Tag: israel

Inside Israel’s Torture Camps: Abuse, Secrecy and Impunity

After October 7, 2023, Israel expanded and reorganized a system of military detention facilities used for people detained in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians passed through facilities under the direct control of the Israel Defense Forces, brought there for registration, interrogation and decisions about further incarceration. But what was officially intended as a temporary stage quickly turned into prolonged detention; the Israeli military itself later acknowledged that, because of the unprecedented number of detainees and overcrowding in regular prisons, many remained in military camps far longer than anticipated.

Behind the barbed wire, accounts of abuse quickly piled up. Released detainees described routine blindfolding, shackling, beatings, dog attacks, starvation, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care and sexual violence. These abuses were independently documented by Amnesty International, the UN human rights office and later UN special mechanisms. In May 2024, the Israeli military conceded that Sde Teiman and Anatot are military lockups where Palestinians are held indefinitely without trial or charges under the “Unlawful Combatants” law. Two years later, the system is still operating.

Geopolitics Prime has assembled a comprehensive picture of this system, drawing on survivor testimonies, legal documents, internal military correspondence and findings from human rights organizations and UN mechanisms.

Keep reading

Has Netanyahu Undermined the US?

Netanyahu, I believe, is a sick individual. In 2024, in his Knesset speech, Netanyahu said: “I’ve been warning about Iran for 30 years.”  It was reported on March 3rd, during a visit to a site struck by an Iranian missile, Netanyahu stated: “We read in this week’s Torah portion, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember—and we act.”

In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God gives King Saul a specific, direct order to carry out this command. The prophet Samuel relays the message: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. ‘”

The harshness of the command in 1 Samuel has disturbed Jewish scholars for centuries, leading to various interpretations that move beyond a literal call for genocide. If Netanyahu believes that genocide is the command of God, that is NOT in the self-interest of the United States. He knows you cannot accomplish regime change from the air. This is the very first time when we are in a partnership with another country who is really calling the shots here where the interests of Netanyahu are by no means the same national interest of the United States.

This Iran War is Netanyahu’s war, not America’s. He is consumed with hatred and he will NEVER stop because he sees only total annihalation of Persia. This has been an ancient feud that goes back thousands of years. We should NOT be involved because Netanyahu will NEVER accept peace so this war will NEVER see a resolution while it is draining the resources of the USA leaving the country vulnerable on a grand scale. The US can be defeated conventionally because of Netanyahu.

Let me make this very clear. The US has bombed the hell out of Iran to the point that the stockpile of conventional weapons has been seriously depleted. I warned from the outset, if I was on the other side of the table, I would use this war to drain the US as we have used Ukraine to weaken Russia. There is no way to win this war. Iran cannot be bombed into oblivion. Sources familiar with internal data state that the US has fired a vast number of its most advanced long-range missiles. Reports suggest that almost ALL of the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and the newer PrSM have been used during the campaign. These are costly, land-based missiles valued at well over $1 million each.

It would take boots on the ground to secure the Strait of Hormuz meaning you must occupy 50 miles inland on each side of the Strait permanently. Anyone who is NOT biased can see Netanyahu has dragged us into his endless war trying to fulfill 1 Samuel 15:2-3.

Keep reading

How To Cover Up A Genocide — Israel Destroys 10 Million Tons of Evidence

Could you imagine living in a time when erasing 10 million tons of evidence of genocide is barely even newsworthy? Somehow we’re now in such a repulsive era.

There have been a select few articles detailing Israel’s efforts to clear literally millions of tons of evidence of its genocidal acts. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor recently reported on the carting away of 100 trucks per day of debris, pieces of destroyed lives, and human remains. Obviously, no small undertaking.

“This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites.”

As Al Jazeera also reported this month,

“[The Euro-Med report] estimates that there are approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip, much of it the result of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the enclave.”

This means that Israel has already removed/destroyed 15% of the evidence of its genocidal actions. Very exciting. Only 85% left to go.

Plus, they’ve already stolen 60 to 70% of Gaza. So there’s only 30 to 40% left to steal. Also very thrilling.

Keep reading

Netanyahu Admits He Spent ‘Close To 1,000 Hours’ On American Television To Bring The U.S. Into War With Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly admitted in a recent Hebrew-language television interview that he spent close to 1,000 hours on American television over nearly four decades to build the political consensus in the United States that ultimately resulted in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.

“It also took a long time to bring America to this understanding,” Netanyahu said in the interview, which aired on Israeli Channel 14 and was widely clipped and shared on social media with English subtitles. “I was able to do that because I had close to a thousand hours on American television.”

The admission is remarkable for a sitting head of government — an explicit acknowledgment that sustained, long-running foreign lobbying of American public opinion, conducted through U.S. broadcast and cable networks over four decades, was a deliberate strategy to shape U.S. foreign policy toward war with Iran.

Netanyahu framed the effort as a patient, decades-long project. He has appeared on virtually every major American television outlet since the 1980s — Fox News, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNBC, MSNBC — frequently warning of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, repeatedly describing Iran as being “minutes away” from a nuclear weapon, and pressing successive U.S. administrations to treat Tehran as an existential threat requiring direct military action.

The war Netanyahu spent decades lobbying for began on February 28, 2026, when U.S. and Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and multiple senior IRGC officials. According to a New York Times investigation, Netanyahu made a “hard sell” to President Trump in the White House Situation Room on February 11, arguing that Iran was ripe for regime change and that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could bring an end to the Islamic Republic.

The CBS News 60 Minutes interview with Netanyahu in May 2026 — his first U.S. broadcast interview since the war began — offered additional texture. Netanyahu confirmed that Trump had told him “I want to go in there” regarding the removal of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles. When asked whether the war was over, Netanyahu said significant work remained: nuclear material still needed to be removed, enrichment sites dismantled, proxy networks dismantled.

The 1,000-hours claim, now viral across social media platforms, has drawn significant reaction. Critics describe it as a candid admission of systematic foreign influence over American foreign policy decision-making — influence conducted through the open megaphone of U.S. network television, in addition to scores of visits to American officials. The pattern Netanyahu describes — sustained narrative-building through American media over decades — is a textbook soft-power influence campaign, conducted in plain sight, aimed directly at shaping the conditions under which the United States would enter a war.

Analysts have noted the irony: while foreign influence in American politics is typically treated as a covert threat to be countered, Netanyahu’s approach operated entirely in the open, on American airwaves, with the enthusiastic cooperation of American broadcast networks that granted him access for decades.

Keep reading

Qusra Is Just a Warning: Israel’s Blueprint for the West Bank

If you want to understand the bleak future awaiting the occupied West Bank, do not look away. Just pay attention to the events unfolding in the small Palestinian town of Qusra, south of Nablus.

The story of the future of the West Bank begins here.

While much of the media is treating reports emerging from the area as simply another episode of “settler violence,” it is not. Qusra represents something far more consequential: a glimpse into the new Plan Dalet that Israel has in store for Palestinians.

Plan Dalet was the military blueprint through which Zionist forces conquered much of historic Palestine, village by village, during the Nakba.

The plan did not suddenly emerge in 1948. It built on military schemes dating back to 1945, developing into a strategy for conquering Palestinian towns and villages, destroying communities and expelling their inhabitants.

The significance of this history today is not merely symbolic. The Nakba was a process, implemented in stages. So, too, is the annexation of the West Bank.

Nor is this merely an intellectual argument. Israeli officials have openly invoked a new Nakba as an intended outcome. In November 2023, Avi Dichter declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” adding, “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

True to form, this new Nakba carries many of the characteristics of the old one: coordinated violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and land confiscation.

The genocide in Gaza represents the zenith of this violence – a more devastating manifestation, but a continuation of the original sin upon which the Israeli state was established.

While all eyes were on Gaza beginning on October 7, 2023, the West Bank was largely ignored, allowing Israel the space to escalate violence in all its forms to levels unseen in decades.

The result has been staggering. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 240 children, and wounded thousands more. Tens of thousands have been detained, while more than 33,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps alone.

Now, back to Qusra.

Beginning on August 9, armed Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the outskirts of the town.

They blocked access to the houses, erected tents outside them and cut water and electricity supplies. Families, including young children, were effectively trapped inside.

The Israeli military subsequently declared the surrounding area a closed military zone, restricting access by Palestinians, activists and journalists.

What emerged was not simply settler violence but a division of labor: settlers create the crisis; the army imposes the restrictions; Palestinian movement is curtailed; and the victims themselves are pressured to leave.

And the siege continued. As I write these words, the siege of the Qusra homes has concluded its second week.

Qusra is not incidental to this strategy. Israel has already confiscated its land for the settlement of Migdalim, while nearby outposts including Esh Kodesh have long been associated with attacks and attempts to seize Palestinian agricultural land.

Control of such areas is essential to the larger project of connecting settlement blocs, fragmenting Palestinian territory and transforming Palestinian communities into isolated enclaves.

A few years ago, the Israeli government behaved as though its plan to formally annex large swathes of the West Bank had been placed on hold. Yet, since October 7, annexation has moved from aspiration to obsession – in both words and action.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir oversaw the mass distribution of weapons after October 7, arming thousands of civilian security-squad members with rifles amid an already heavily armed settler population.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has systematically worked to transfer powers over the West Bank from military administration to Israeli civilian authorities – one of the clearest institutional mechanisms of annexation.

Keep reading

Netanyahu: ‘No Deal Possible With Iran’s Savages’ — Backs Trump’s Economic Siege As Operation Economic Outcast Goes Full Force

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday night there can be no agreement with Iran’s leadership, describing the regime’s rulers as “savages.” The comments by Netanyahu came as the Trump administration launched a wide-ranging campaign of economic pressure against Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told an event held by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Wednesday night that he doubted an agreement could be reached with Iran’s leadership. “I doubt an agreement can be reached with that group there, with those savages. I tell you – an agreement cannot be reached,” he said.

His remarks came as the Trump administration’s new campaign to squeeze Iran economically, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast” by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, went into full force. Every last dime that Iran normally makes from exporting oil and shipping it around the world, from its banking system to front companies that do business on its behalf around the globe, would be targeted by the unprecedented effort to economically strangle Iran.

During his White House visit in July, Netanyahu urged Trump to “tighten the siege” on Iran. Now, the Israeli PM is reinforcing his previous position, saying that the Iranian leadership must fundamentally change or be strangled economically for good.

The Iranian maritime blacklist of 45 vessels that have allegedly flouted its rules for navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is already having an impact on global shipping. Three major Indian refineries and one global energy major told Reuters on Wednesday that they will no longer use vessels listed on the Iranian maritime black list for crude oil imports, citing security reasons.

Keep reading

How the Media Sells Genocide

The Western media manufactures consent for genocide. It normalizes Israel’s decades-long military occupation and apartheid. It erases Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. It perpetuates the fallacy of Israeli victimhood. It betrays, discredits and demonizes the work of Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, at least 220 of whom have been killed by Israel between Oct. 7, 2023, and August 2025. It supinely accepts draconian Israeli censorship. It acquiesces with tepid letters of protest at Israel’s refusal to allow foreign reporters in Gaza — an effort by Israel to mask its war crimes. It amplifies Israeli lies, from beheaded babies to widespread sexual assault of Israeli women on Oct. 7, to obfuscate the truth.

When writing about Gaza, verbs are in the passive tense. There is no subject. No one is accountable. Genocide, it seems, is an act of God. No different from an earthquake or tsunami. Clichés and opaque adjectives such as the “cycle of violence” or “clashes” distort and falsify reality.

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” George Orwell warned.

Terms such as “genocide,” “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territories” magically disappear from media reports on Palestinians, whose resistance is routinely described as “savage” and “barbaric.” New York Times reporters are instructed by editors to avoid terms such as “Palestine,” “genocide,” “carnage,” “refugee camp,” “slaughter” and “massacre,” when referencing Palestinians.

The media slavishly regurgitates what Israel feeds it. Saturation bombing becomes “surgical air strikes.” Israel’s weaponization of famine becomes a “food shortage.” The killing of unarmed civilians — including children — becomes “clashes.” The hilltop fortress-like compounds of Jewish colonists becomes “neighborhoods.” Extrajudicial assassination of a journalist or a doctor becomes “died.”

Genocide, referred to as the “Israel-Hamas war” is justified as “self-defense,” part of the mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, churches and other civilian targets are obliterated, they are labeled “Hamas command centers” or targeted because Hamas is “using civilians as human shields” — something Israel does routinely, when the army binds detained Palestinians and forces them to enter potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels ahead of Israeli troops.

When Israelis are held by Hamas, they are “hostages,” even if they serve in the military. When Palestinians — including children — are held without charges or trial and disappeared into Israeli detention centers, where torture is “widespread” and “systematic,” they are “prisoners.”

Missile attacks on tent cities or hospitals are blamed on Palestinian armed groups firing errant rockets. If Israel acknowledges the attacks — which very rarely happens — they are described as a “tragic mistake.”

Civil institutions in Gaza are characterized as “Hamas-run” to cast doubt on the veracity of what they report. The New York Times routinely qualifies announcements from the Gaza Health Ministry by noting it “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” masking the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.

The result is some of the most convoluted writing in the history of journalism, including the Nov. 5, 2023 New York Times headline that reads: “Explosions Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.”

“When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?” I asked in my column The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.

“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

The camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

“When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif and three other journalists were killed on Aug. 10 in their media tent near Al Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?” I asked.

“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

Keep reading

Caught on Video: Alleged Israeli Crime Boss Gunned Down in Broad Daylight at Gas Station in Caesarea

Yushvaev had often been arrested, but never convicted.

Shocking footage that’s going viral online shows a man being shot dead at a gas station in Israel’s Caesarea.

The man has been identified as Yanis Yushvaev, described in local media as the boss of Israel’s Caucasian Mafia.

The Times of Israel reported:

“Yushvaev, 40, a resident of the central town of Or Akiva, was well known to police and had been repeatedly arrested in recent years on suspicion of violent crimes.

Footage of the shooting showed a man wearing a hoodie and cap approaching a restaurant at the Caesarea Junction gas station. The man met Yushvaev and two other men at the door as they walked out, and passed them by, only to suddenly spin around, draw a handgun, and shoot Yushvaev from behind at point-blank range. He then fled the scene.”

Keep reading

Israeli PM Netanyahu claims Iran tried to assassinate his son

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of trying to assassinate one of his sons.

“This is an unbelievable case. Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to murder him, tried to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 on Monday, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“Iran tried to murder one of my sons. And this is why this promise [I am making] is more than a luxury – without it, they could succeed [in killing my son]. People need to show some restraint, especially during an election campaign,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister stated that he had spoken to David Zini, director of the Israeli Security Agency Shin Bet, asking him to increase security for any prime ministerial candidate.

Netanyahu did not clarify during the phone interview which of his sons—35-year-old Yair Netanyahu or 31-year-old Avner Netanyahu—was targeted by the alleged plot, nor did he provide specific details of how Israeli intelligence was made aware of it.

Shin Bet previously extended protective services to Netanyahu’s sons and his wife, Sara Netanyahu, in July.

Netanyahu’s announcement comes after Israel revealed a large store of weapons — including rockets, grenades, drones, sniper rifles, automated weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers, mortars and other military firepower — it has confiscated from Hezbollah and Hamas in recent months. Both Iranian-backed groups have been linked to widespread regional violence and historical attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of American and international citizens.

Keep reading

No Coming Back from Genocide: Israel’s Global Counter-Offensive Has Begun

Colombia’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights marks a dangerous turning point.

By becoming only the second country in the world – after the United States – to endorse Israel’s illegal annexation of Syrian territory, Bogotá has signaled a complete reversal of Gustavo Petro’s foreign policy under new far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella.

However, Colombia is not an isolated case. It reflects a broader, highly aggressive campaign by Israel to systematically dismantle and reverse hard-won pro-Palestine and pro-Arab positions worldwide. In fact, the shift in Bogotá comes alongside dramatic changes in Caracas, where Venezuela’s interim leadership has moved to restore consular ties with Israel after a 17-year freeze.

The same thing is happening in Europe. A prime example is Slovenia, where the newly installed government under Janez Janša removed the Palestinian flag from government buildings and announced its intention to freeze the country’s 2024 recognition of Palestinian statehood and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Israel knows that its so-called ‘PR problem’ is no longer that of a merely tainted image resulting from occasional negative news coverage. The genocide in Gaza, coupled with genocidal discourse and wars of aggression across the Middle East, means that Israel, this time around, will not easily recover from the damage it has inflicted on its global reputation.

Though some circles, including those purportedly critical of Israel, insist that the problem is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of extremists, the truth is far more unpleasant for Israel. Indeed, Israel as a country, as a colonial project and as an ideology is increasingly being questioned.

Even some within Israel’s own mainstream media have begun acknowledging the depth of the crisis. “Maybe it’s time to understand that this isn’t just a PR failure, but a moral failure,” prominent Israeli television anchor Yonit Levi said last year. The Washington Post, meanwhile, described Israel as “turning into a global pariah.”

But Israeli leaders, though refusing to acknowledge the potentially irreversible changes in the global mood toward their country and Zionism as a whole, are comforted by two factors: one, continued US – and, by extension, Western – support; and two, directly related to the first, their ability to shift governments’ positions toward Israel through political, diplomatic and other means.

For Israel, the people never mattered; only governments do.

Colombia illustrates precisely why. Israel did not need to reverse Colombian public opinion or undo years of solidarity with Palestine. It only needed a change of government. The election of the unabashedly pro-Israel De la Espriella provided exactly that.

The political consequences were almost immediate. De la Espriella moved to restore full relations with Israel, withdraw Colombia’s support for South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice, resume coal exports and, most consequentially, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan.

This rapid reversal also gives greater significance to former President Petro’s repeated statements of US and Israeli interference in the election that defeated left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. Though these accusations remain contested, the outcome itself is unmistakable: a change of government was enough to begin dismantling years of Colombian policy on Palestine and Israel.

The same applies to Venezuela. Many initially viewed the US capture of pro-Palestine President Nicolás Maduro as merely another episode in Washington’s long history of intervention in Latin America. But the speed of Venezuela’s subsequent realignment suggests a broader transformation.

The clearest indication is Caracas’ growing closeness to Tel Aviv. Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Israel under Hugo Chávez in 2009 over the war on Gaza. Seventeen years later, the two governments have agreed to restore consular services – a significant step toward normalization and a powerful symbol of Venezuela’s changing geopolitical orientation.

Israel’s relationship with much of the Global South has historically been fraught, shaped by its colonial character, military aggression and close alignment with Western power.

Under Netanyahu, however, Israel worked systematically to break that isolation, expanding its influence across Africa, Asia and Latin America as the US-dominated global order began to weaken.

Gaza dramatically reversed those gains, not only in the Global South but worldwide. The challenge now is to make that reversal lasting – and Israel’s recent gains in Colombia, Venezuela, Slovenia and elsewhere temporary.

Keep reading