Tag: israel

Israel Lobby Funded Half of New UK Cabinet

Pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to parliament, Declassified can reveal.

The list of recipients includes Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner,  Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Jonathan Reynolds, who will oversee arms exports to Israel as U.K. trade secretary, is another beneficiary, alongside Labour’s election mastermind Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security.  

Some of the donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region.

Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle were recently listed as vice-chairs of LFI.

Other major funders include pro-Israel businessmen Gary Lubner, Trevor Chinn, and Stuart Roden.

The total value of the donations amounts to over £600,000.

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Pro-Israel Group Censoring Social Media Led by Former Israeli Intelligence Officers

CyberWell, an Israeli nonprofit with deep ties to the intelligence arm of an Israeli government propaganda effort, has been influential in shaping social media content since October 7. The group, which purports to be independent, has lobbied Meta, X (formerly known as Twitter), and TikTok to remove social media posts under the banner of fighting hate and antisemitism.

The group claimed a major victory regarding Meta’s decision on Tuesday to expand its definition of antisemitic hate speech to include many criticisms of “Zionists” – those who call for an independent state in the Middle East that privileges Jews over other ethnic groups. “CyberWell intends to leverage its technological tools and analysis efforts to ensure this policy is implemented efficiently and fully, and that Meta’s moderation tools are trained to effectively bar this content,” the organization claimed in a press release.

The success is the latest string of victories to shape permissible speech when it comes to Israel and its actions.

In January, CyberWell reported that it had pushed to censor accounts that disputed the false allegation that Hamas had slaughtered dozens of babies during the October 7th attack. Any accounts disputing claims around babies killed during the attack, CyberWell argued, are akin to “content denying or distorting the Holocaust.” President Joe Biden and leading Israeli figures have falsely claimed that Hamas beheaded or burned forty babies during the assault into Israel.

That claim has been widely debunked. Despite repeated false assertions to the contrary, only one baby was killed during the Hamas assault: a 10-month-old infant named Mila Cohen, who was killed at Kibbutz Be’eri. In more recent months, CyberWell has lobbied TikTok and Meta to censor social media posts with the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” claiming that the slogan constitutes hate speech.

CyberWell is one of many agenda-driven nonprofits now censoring social media discourse, including benign or true information, under the cover of fighting hate and misinformation. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, funded a nonprofit that worked to censor tweets critical of pandemic-related policies. The U.S. government funds several think tanks that work to moderate social media content critical of NATO’s policies impacting Ukraine.

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Israeli soldiers turn Gaza into ‘free fire zone littered with corpses’

Israeli troops are authorized to “open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians,” and have turned Gaza into a “landscape littered with corpses,” +972 Mag reported on 8 July.

Journalists from the Tel Aviv-based news magazine interviewed six Israeli soldiers who have participated in the Gaza invasion and occupation in recent months.

The sources, including five who wished to remain anonymous, recounted how Israeli soldiers “routinely executed Palestinian civilians” simply because they entered areas designated as “no-go zones.”

“There was total freedom of action,” said B, a soldier who operated in Gaza. “If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain – you just shoot.”

When soldiers see someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” B continued. “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”

B went on to describe an incident in November when soldiers killed 15 to 20 Palestinians, including children, who evacuated the wrong way when a gunfight broke out near a school.

“Everyone who went to the right was killed … There was a pile of bodies,” he told +972.

Another soldier, S., stated that a fellow soldier shot and killed a Palestinian family just for walking around near the soldiers’ protected compound.

“At first, they say ‘four people.’ It turns into two children plus two adults, and by the end, it’s a man, a woman, and two children. You can assemble the picture yourself.”

A., an officer who served in the army’s Operations Directorate, explained that he was supposed to get authorization before shooting at “hospitals, clinics, schools, religious institutions, [and] buildings of international organizations.”

But in practice, “I can count on one hand the cases where we were told not to shoot. Even with sensitive things like schools, [approval] feels like only a formality.”

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Israel calls for Gaza TRUCE after coming up short on “munitions, motivation and troops”

Despite claiming strength and success publicly, Israel’s army leaders are in a state of fear and trembling over their failed operation in the Gaza Strip coupled with what is now coming down the pike from Lebanon.

According to reports, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are privately pushing for a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza as the “best way” to recover the more than 100 hostages that still remain. A Gaza ceasefire will also help Israel to “reach a deal with Hezbollah” to prevent any further expansion of the war.

Six current and former security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The New York Times revealed that Israel’s top brass is scared of getting stuck in a “forever war” that can never be won because Israel’s “army is short of spare parts, munitions, motivation, and even troops.”

“Under-equipped for further fighting after Israel’s longest war in decades, the generals also think their forces need time to recuperate in case a land war breaks out against Hezbollah,” reported the Times.

“Fewer reservists are reporting for duty … [and] officers are increasingly distrustful of their commanders,” the report reads, further explaining that some of Israel’s tanks in Gaza “are not loaded with the full capacity of the shells that they usually carry.”

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Israeli outlet confirms IDF killed its own people on Oct. 7th

After nine months of an Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has confirmed what my colleagues Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada (EI) and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone reported back in October: that Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive and killed its own citizens on Oct. 7th.

According to one Israeli military source, Israeli forces were ordered to turn the boundary area around Gaza into a “killing zone” — thereby knowingly killing Israelis in that zone. Under the Hannibal doctrine, Israel’s aim was to kill its own people rather than let them be traded in a future exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The Israeli military has suppressed this killing of its own people on Oct. 7th all while manufacturing support for its rampage in Gaza ever since.

The same establishment media outlets that have long ignored this aspect of Oct. 7th smeared my independent media colleagues at Grayzone and EI for reporting it. This includes two hit pieces in the Washington Post, and even more brazenly, three pieces in Haaretz — which is now acknowledging what it has repeatedly attacked Max and Grayzone for reporting.

I went on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” to debate this issue and related matters. I was joined by the veteran, courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy along with two other Israelis — one a former IDF spokesperson who was not keen on letting me speak.

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Biden Admin ‘Undeniably Complicit’ in Israel’s Starvation Campaign in Gaza : Ex-Officials Say

A dozen former Biden administration officials signed a letter posted on X Friday describing the U.S.’s unrelenting support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and how the backing ultimately puts America’s interests at risk and a “target” on its back.

“It has not made his rallies any safer, it has emboldened extremists while it has been devastating for the Palestinian people, ensuring a vicious cycle of poverty and hopelessness, with all the implications of that cycle, for generations to come,” the wrote.

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Israeli Lawmaker Says Iran is Israel’s Main Target

Shortly after the 7 October Hamas attack, U.S. politicians — who get patted on their heads for their loyalty to Israel before anything else — were tripping over themselves to assign blame on Tehran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the neocon warhawk who can’t fight his way out of a paper bag, Graham announced that he would introduce a resolution to “allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business.”

“Iran, if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you,” the nothing of a man said.

Israel has made it clear since the beginning of the war that Tehran is the “head of the snake” and its ultimate target. Once again, U.S. forces could be compelled to fight in a war to make sure Israel remains the only nuclear power in the region.

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Senior Israeli Lawmaker Suggests Nuclear Attack on Iran

A longtime Israeli lawmaker and former defense minister took to the airwaves and social media on Wednesday to suggest his country should do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“It is not possible anymore to stop the Iranian nuclear program with conventional means,” Avigdor Liberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party said during a Channel 12 interview. “And we will have to use all the means that are available to us.”

“We will have to stop with the deliberate policy of ambiguity, and it needs to be clear what is at stake here,” Liberman continued, apparently referring to Israel’s refusal to say whether it has nuclear weapons. “What is at stake here is the future of this nation, the future of the state of Israel, and we will not take any risks.”

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Pentagon chief recommends avoiding Israel-Hezbollah war but sends fighter jets to Israel anyway

For U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin an immediate diplomatic solution is needed to prevent a “costly war” between Israel and Lebanon despite “Hezbollah’s provocations.”

“Diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation. We’re urgently seeking a diplomatic agreement that restores lasting calm to Israel’s northern border and enables civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border,” Austin claimed to reporters during a meeting at the Pentagon with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on June 25.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire on a near-daily basis since the beginning of the war in Gaza, but escalating attacks over the last several weeks have caused growing unease. And the U.S. official blamed the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah’s threats. “Hezbollah’s provocations threaten to drag the Israeli and Lebanese people into a war that they do not want and such a war would be a catastrophe for Lebanon and it would be devastating for innocent Israeli and Lebanese civilians,” Austin told Gallant. “Another war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war with terrible consequences for the Middle East, and so diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation.”

Previously, Gallant suggested Israel pursue a large-scale war against Hezbollah but during the meeting, he said he was “working closely” with Austin to find a diplomatic resolution. However, they also discussed military “readiness in every possible scenario.” Gallant insisted on the threat of nuclear war with Iran, telling Austin that “time is running out.”

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Top Hezbollah commander assassinated by Israeli drone in south Lebanon

An Israeli drone strike in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit on 3 July, Mohammed Naame Nasser, marking the second high-profile assassination of a resistance commander in as many months.

The Aziz Unit reportedly operates in the eastern sector of the Lebanese–Israeli border region.

Israel’s latest provocation inside Lebanese soil comes as border tensions threaten to boil over, with western officials set to meet in the French capital on Wednesday to discuss ways to “defuse” the crisis.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General, Sheikh Naim Qassem, stressed that the only path to a de-escalation on Israel’s northern border is a full ceasefire in Gaza.

“If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion,” the Lebanese resistance leader told AP.

“Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” Qassem said. “But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel … If Israel wages the war, it means it doesn’t control its extent or who enters into it.”

Nearly nine months into Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza, authorities have recently intensified threats to expand the war against Lebanon in a last-ditch effort to regain control of the northern occupied territories.

Nevertheless, the lack of a clear strategy to disengage from Gaza, on top of a critical manpower and munitions crisis, has deepened rifts between the military and political leaders in Israel. Earlier this week, top security officials told the New York Times (NYT) that they are pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza, even if it means “keeping Hamas in power for now.”

On Tuesday, the NYT report received a swift response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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