Tag: israel

Trump Reverses Course In Gaza, Now Says He Wants To Move Residents, Egypt Refuses

President Trump stepped on a land mine yesterday when talking with reporters on Air Force One about the situation in Gaza.

The comments come after Hamas humiliated female IDF hostages yesterday by putting them on stage in a public act of vengeance.

Hamas has also refused to provide an accurate list of the remaining hostages in violation of the terms of the ceasefire. The agreement to end the conflict is now in jeapardy.

The President mentioned he has a plan to ask neighboring countries to take in the million and a half residents remaining in the bombed-out territory.

This is a shift from his previous pressure to allow Gazans to return to the northern sector since the ceasefire.

“I’d like Egypt to take people…You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.”

“I spoke with the King of Jordan about the possibility of transferring Gazans to neighboring countries.”

“I told him to take more people because the Gaza Strip is in a real mess. I want Egypt to take in people too, and I will talk to Al-Sisi tomorrow.”

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Leaked documents expose deep ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.

The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies. 

These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published its own story. The investigation shows how the Israeli army deepened its reliance on civilian tech giants after October 7, and comes amid growing protests by cloud company employees who fear that the technology they developed has helped Israel commit war crimes.

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Israel Passes Thoughtcrime Law Banning Doubts Over Official Narrative Of October 7th Attack

The political reverberations of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hamas continue to erode the foundation the Netanyahu government strengthened itself upon across the 15-month war. Over the course of the conflict, Netanyahu’s regime took unprecedented measures to consolidate power in the office of prime minister under the justification that the war constituted a state of emergency that required effectively dictatorial powers. With the war at least momentarily at a pause, the iron-fisted grasp Netanyahu held over Israel has started to slip away. The rapid deterioration of support for Netanyahu has led to the prime minister taking increasingly desperate measures to preserve his future.

The latest development serving that interest comes in the form of an Orwellian law passed by the Knesset that makes questioning the official narrative about the events of October 7th a thoughtcrime. Those events have long been marred by accusations of security failures and even speculation as to whether Netanyahu’s regime permitted the attack as a false flag to salvage his 6th term as Prime Minister Of Israel amidst the massive protests calling for his resignation that preceded it. Netanyahu now faces that same pressure yet again in the fallout from agreeing to a ceasefire with Hamas.

Following the official recognition of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Netanyahu lost the support of extreme rightwing factions of the ruling coalition of his government. That political upheaval was instigated by former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Israel’s Jewish Power party as well as the leader of the Religious Zionism party and Netanyahu’s Minister Of Finance Bezalel Smotrich. The mass resignations of their respective party members from the Knesset led by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were followed by the resignation of Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces. Halevi’s resignation will take effect on March 6th.

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When Israeli Warplanes Rain Death on Gaza, the Co-Pilot Is Uncle Sam

In recent weeks, political soothsayers have speculated about a wide variety of odious new policies the incoming Trump administration and its allies in Congress may or may not pursue. No one can predict with certainty which of those measures they will inflict on us and which they’ll forget about.  But we can make one prediction with utter confidence. The White House and large bipartisan majorities in Congress will continue their lavish support for Israel’s war on Gaza, however catastrophic the results.

Washington has supplied a large share of the armaments that have allowed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to rain death and destruction on Gaza (not to speak of Lebanon) over the past year and a quarter. Before October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other groups attacked southern Israel, that country was receiving $3.8 billion worth of American military aid annually. Since then, the floodgates have opened and $18 billion worth of arms have flowed out. The ghastly results have shocked people and governments across the globe.

In early 2024, the United Nations General Assembly and International Court of Justice condemned the war being waged on the people of Gaza and, in November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and Médecins Sans Frontières all followed with determinations that Israel was indeed committing genocide.

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The Gaza Genocide: The Fall of Israel’s Immunity

A dramatic escape was cited by Israeli media as the reason that Yuval Vagdani, a soldier in the Israeli army, managed to escape justice in Brazil.

Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the only Israeli soldier being pursued for similar crimes.

According to the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (KAN), more than 50 Israeli soldiers are being pursued in countries ranging from South Africa to Sri Lanka to Sweden.

In one case, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint in a Swedish court against Boaz Ben David, an Israeli sniper from the 932 Battalion of the Israeli Nahal Brigade. He is also accused of committing war crimes in Gaza.

The Nahal Brigade has been at the heart of numerous war crimes in Gaza. Established in 1982, the brigade is notorious for its unhinged violence against occupied Palestinians. Their role in the latest genocidal atrocities in the Strip has far exceeded their own dark legacy.

Even if these 50 individuals are apprehended and sentenced, the price exacted from the Israeli army pales in comparison to the crimes carried out.

Numbers, though helpful, are rarely enough to convey collective pain. The medical journal Lancet’s latest report is still worthy of reflection. Using a new data-collecting method called ‘capture–recapture analysis’, the report indicates that by the first nine months of the war, between October 2023 and June 2024, 64,260 Palestinians have been killed.

Still, capturing and trying Israeli war criminals is not just about the fate of these individuals. It is about accountability – an absent term in the history of Israeli human rights violations, war crimes, and recurring genocides against Palestinians.

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The U.S. Establishment’s Intense Commitment to Exterminating Palestinians

In today’s U.S., people are actually not allowed to avoid punishment if they publicly express the opinion that America’s continuing to donate the weapons and satellite intelligence that Israeli troops are using to exterminate the Gazans is unacceptable to them.

On January 16th, Caitlin Johnstone aptly headlined “None Of These War Criminals Will Face Justice While The US Empire Exists”, and opened with:

Two journalists were ejected from a State Department press conference on Thursday for asking inconvenient questions about Gaza. One of them, Sam Husseini, was physically carried out by security while demanding to know why Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not in The Hague for his war crimes.

Husseini was then forcibly removed for asking questions about Gaza, and about Israel’s nuclear program and Hannibal directive. Blinken told Husseini to “respect the process,” to which Husseini replied, “Respect the process? Respect the process? While everybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ says Israel’s doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process? Criminal! Why aren’t you in the Hague?”

The western political-media class is expressing outrage over the incident, not because of journalists being manhandled for asking critical questions of their government, but because those journalists asked critical questions. …

Just the day before, the January 15th edition of The Chris Hedges Report, “America’s Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report”, showed the great international war reporter Hedges interviewing two young rising stars and Ph.D. students at America’s leading STEM University, MIT, who are being driven out, and their scholarships and grant funding cancelled, simply because they consider genocide to be unacceptable. One, named Prahlad Iyengar, had been a National Science Foundation Fellow studying for his Ph.D. in the intersection of quantum information, quantum sensing, and machine learning; and the other, who is Richard Solomon, had been studying for his Ph.D in the political economy of trade and science, and who had previously been a Vice Consul and Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department.

That 58-minute video starts out with an excellent four-minute introduction by Hedges, and then proceeds to his interviewing each of these two young men regarding the circumstances that had led up to his virtually inevitable expulsion from MIT. Each of these two describes clearly his own activities that had caused him to be now involuntarily seeking employment outside of his intended career-path (because each of the two is now a marked man within that career-path inside the U.S. empire). Each, though in a very different professional field from the other — one of them representing the STEM side, and the other the political-science side — describes a situation that I would characterize as being the incompatibility in today’s United States, between success within the U.S.-and-allied Establishment, versus decency or what might be called “conscience,” so that a stark choice must be made between those two objectives. Holding both of them simultaneously is prohibited by the U.S. Establishment. One may pursue success, or one may pursue being decent, but one cannot pursue both at once, without being punished for doing so.

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‘Why Aren’t You in The Hague?’: Sam Husseini and Max Blumenthal confront Tony Blinken

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal confronted Blinken, asking why he continued to “keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May” and whether he was “compromised by Israel.” Moments later, Sam Husseini was dragged from the presser by cops after attempting to ask a question.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken held his final press conference on Thursday and was confronted about his support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza by two veteran reporters, including independent journalist Sam Husseini, who was dragged out of the room while telling Blinken he belonged in The Hague.

Max Blumenthal, founder of The Grayzone, disrupted Blinken’s opening statement, saying, “Three hundred reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs, why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?” … “Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism? Why did you allow my friends to be massacred?”

Blumenthal continued to pepper Blinken with questions as he was escorted out of the room. “Are you compromised by Israel? Why did you allow the Holocaust of our time to happen? How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?”

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Keir Starmer’s Support for the Gaza Ceasefire Is Riddled With Lies

There are so many lies, deceptions and misdirections in Sir Keir Starmer’s statement on the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas yesterday that they need to be picked apart line by line.

Starmer: After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for. They have borne the brunt of this conflict – triggered by the brutal terrorists of Hamas, who committed the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023.

Under no reasonable definition can the last 15 months be described as a “conflict”. The slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as Israel’s program to starve the rest of the population, should rightly be understood as a genocide, one the International Court of Justice began investigating a year ago, and one that has been attested to by every major international human rights group, as well as a growing number of Holocaust scholars.

Starmer does at least hint at the truth in conceding that the ceasefire is “long overdue”. The genocide in Gaza could have been brought to an end at any point by US pressure. Indeed, the outlines of the current ceasefire were advanced by the Biden administration back in May. It was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blocked progress. Israel’s western patrons, including Starmer, rewarded him with weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover. If the ceasefire is “overdue”, Starmer is fully responsible for that delay.

Further, the “conflict” wasn’t “triggered” by Hamas’ attack of October 7, as Starmer claims. The “conflict” has been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, triggered by Israel’s continuous efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, with western backing, in an explicitly colonial project. Israel wants us to believe the “conflict” clock started ticking on October 7. Only the ignorant, and contemptible politicians like Starmer, repeat that lie.

The killings on October 7 2023 weren’t “the deadliest massacre of Jewish people” since the Holocaust. That’s another cynical Israeli talking point repeated by Starmer whose sole purpose is to rationalise Israel’s genocide. The “deadliest massacre” for Jews since the Holocaust was, in fact, committed by the Argentinian junta, which disappeared and murdered thousands of Jews in the late 1970s. And unlike Hamas, whose victims were killed not because they were Jews but because they were Israelis and viewed as members of an oppressor nation, Argentina’s generals killed Jews specifically for being Jewish. Nonetheless, that massacre – inconvenient to the West – has been carefully memory-holed, including by Starmer.

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American journalist handcuffed & forcibly removed from Blinken’s last presser

A journalist was dragged out of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s final press briefing on Thursday, after trying to ask a question about the Gaza ceasefire.

Blinken claimed that the past four years have seen successful diplomacy, including the truce, even though both Israel and Hamas gave President-elect Donald Trump the credit for the deal.

Sam Husseini, a well known reporter focused on the Middle East, began to put questions to Blinken on his personal reaction to the ceasefire, and reminded the official of the findings of genocide against Israel by multiple international NGOs.

Blinken responded that journalists had to “respect the process” and that he would take questions after he was done with his speech.

In a video posted by Ryan Grim of DropSite News, several uniformed Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) officers can be seen approaching Husseini, who is seated in the briefing room.

“Get your hands off me!” Husseini cried out as the guards seized him. “Answer my damn question.”

“You pontificate about a free press!” he called out. “I am asking questions after being told by [State Department spokesman] Matt Miller that he will not answer my questions.”

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Israel massacres dozens in Gaza after Biden announces ceasefire

In a video statement Wednesday afternoon, US President Joe Biden announced that a ceasefire agreement had been reached between Hamas and Israel and would be implemented on Sunday. “A ceasefire and a hostage deal have been reached between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said.

Biden claimed that the first phase of the agreement would include the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza and the release of a number of hostages held by Hamas.”

Israel reacted to Biden’s announcement by continuing to massacre dozens of people in Gaza. More than 30 people were killed in bombings on refugee camps, residential neighborhoods and hospitals Wednesday following the announcement, on top of 50 that had been killed earlier in the day.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following Biden’s announcement, “An official statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be issued only after the completion of the final details of the agreement, which are being worked on at present.”

It subsequently said in a statement, “The Israeli negotiations team in Doha reported to Netanyahu of a last-minute attempt by Hamas to withdraw from a clause in the agreement,” adding, “Netanyahu instructed the negotiations team to uphold the understandings that were agreed upon and to reject the last-minute blackmail attempts by Hamas.”

Regardless of whether an agreement is finally reached and whether Israeli troops formally withdraw from Gaza, any “ceasefire” would continue the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the brutal apartheid regime to which the Palestinians are subjected.

Notably, the Israeli “ceasefire” with Lebanon worked out in November has been followed by almost daily bombardment of Lebanese territory by Israel, and there is every reason to believe this would be the case for Gaza as well.

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