Tag: israel

Largest European Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers – Report 

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel.

A new report published by a group of 19 civil society organizations and trade unions has exposed the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.

Titled The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers, the report “reveals European financial institutions have provided 36.1 billion EUR in loans and underwritings, and hold 26 billion EUR in shares and bonds in companies selling weapons to Israel,” the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said in a statement on Thursday. The FIDH is one of the organizations involved in the exposé.

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel, the statement said.

It mentioned that French bank BNP Paribas is by far the largest finance provider to companies that have sold weapons to Israel, having provided 5.7 billion EUR in loans and underwritings since 2021.

Other large investors identified by the report include the banks Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS, as well as the Norwegian government pension fund GFPG and the insurance company Allianz. It also mentioned banks such as the UK’s HSBC and Standard Chartered.

“According to international standards on business and human rights, financial institutions have a clear responsibility to ensure that they do not invest in companies that contribute to human rights violations”, said Gaëlle Dusepulchre, Deputy Director of FIDH’s Business, Human Rights & Environment Desk.

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British-Israeli Soldiers in the War-Crimes Zone

British nationals are serving in some of Israel’s “craziest” combat units in Gaza where they view Palestinian fighters as “rats” and “animals”.

The soldiers have pledged to “kill these sons of whores” and “start pummelling them again.”

Declassified has gathered names and photographs of 15 Britons who have recently fought for Israel, and has partially identified another 10.

They are among at least 80 U.K. nationals who the Foreign Office knows to have enlisted in the IDF but is doing nothing to stop.

One of the soldiers, master sergeant Sam Sank, filmed himself fighting in Gaza between December 2023 and January 2024.

Declassified showed the footage to open source intelligence analyst Alysia Alexandra who located the neighbourhood where it was taken.

The tape puts Sank in the Gazan border settlement of Khuza’a while it was being flattened by the IDF during his two-month tour.

Israel’s top human rights group, B’Tselem, has described the IDF’s operation to create a buffer zone in Khuza’a throughout that period as a “war crime”.

“The military demolished the entire town, including residential buildings and mosques,” B’Tselem said, warning that the level of destruction was disproportionate and “violates a basic principle of international humanitarian law.”

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Palestinians released from Israeli torture camps detail ‘nightmare’ conditions

The Israeli army released 33 Palestinian abductees taken captive from Gaza in previous months, Anadolu Agency reported on 21 June, amid continued reports that Israel is subjecting the detainees to severe torture.

“The freed Palestinians were admitted to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital with thin bodies and signs of torture,” said Palestinian medical sources speaking with Anadolu.

The sources added that the detainees were set free in eastern Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Since the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza, Israel has abducted thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and medical and rescue workers.

Israel has released some, while others remain in Israeli captivity.

One of those released on Thursday was Badr Dahlan, 30, who displayed signs of psychological distress, including bugged eyes and difficulty forming sentences while speaking.

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Israel’s pledge to guard an aid route into Gaza falls flat as lawlessness blocks distribution

The Israeli military said Sunday that it was establishing a new safe corridor to deliver aid into southern Gaza. But days later, this self-declared “tactical pause” has brought little relief to desperate Palestinians.
The United Nations and international aid organizations say a breakdown in law and order has made the aid route unusable.
With thousands of truckloads of aid piled up, groups of armed men are regularly blocking convoys, holding drivers at gunpoint and rifling through their cargo, according to a UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media on the issue.
He said lawlessness has emerged as the main obstacle to aid distribution in southern Gaza — where an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians displaced from Rafah, or more than half of Gaza’s entire population, are now sheltering in tent camps and cramped apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.
Here is a closer look at the security challenges facing the UN and aid organizations.
Israel’s ‘tactical pause’ stymied
Israel said Sunday it would observe daily pauses in combat along a route stretching from Kerem Shalom — the strip’s only operational aid crossing in the south — to the nearby city of Khan Younis. Before the pause, aid organizations had reported that the need to coordinate trucks’ movement with the Israelis in an active combat zone was slowing aid distribution.
The UN official familiar with the aid effort said that there has been no sign of Israeli activity along the route. The UN tried to send a convoy of 60 trucks down the road Tuesday to pick up aid at Kerem Shalom. But 35 of the trucks were intercepted by armed men, the official said.

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War on Gaza: ‘Brutal day’ as Israel bombs tents, refugee camps and service workers

Israeli forces bombed displacement tents, municipal workers operating water wells and homes across Gaza on Friday, killing over 75 people according to Al Jazeera Arabic, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in weeks. 

Artillery shelling and gunfire from Israeli tanks targeted displaced people sheltering in Rafah’s coastal al-Mawasi area, previously declared a “humanitarian zone” by the Israeli military.

At least 25 Palestinians were killed in the attack and 50 wounded, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. 

Hours earlier, an Israeli strike hit a municipality facility in Gaza, killing at least seven people, including five workers operating water wells.

Another strike on a home in the densely populated and war-ravaged al-Shati refugee camp killed 10 people and wounded 17, according to Al Jazeera.

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UN: Israeli Authorities Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

Speaking to the UN Security Council, the head of an investigatory body probing the Gaza war found Israeli officials committed war crimes during military operations in the Strip.

Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced her findings to the UNSC on Wednesday, stating the commission had concluded that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

She explained that those crimes include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing using starvation as a method of War, forcible transfer, gender persecution, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture and cruel or inhuman treatment.”

The commission noted that Hamas has committed similar crimes throughout the latest conflict.

During the eight-month assault on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed over 37,000 Palestinians and injured an estimated 85,000. Israeli bombings have also destroyed most of Gaza’s homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and farmland. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been plunged into near-famine conditions.

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IDF: Netanyahu’s Goal of Eliminating Hamas Is Unachievable

The spokesman for the Israeli military explained that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of eradicating Hamas is not achievable. The statement comes amid a growing rift between the Israeli leader and the military.

In remarks to Israel’s Channel 13 News on Wednesday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military spokesperson, explained that the PM’s stated objective in Gaza is an insult to the Israeli people. “This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear – it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” he said. “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people – whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”

The statement from Hagari reflects assessments from US intelligence and military officials that destroying Hamas is not something that can be accomplished. The US intelligence community’s threat assessment released in March said that Israel would likely be fighting Hamas for years to come.

Netanyahu’s office responded to Hagari’s remarks by saying the prime minister’s ends in Gaza remain unchanged. Netanyahu “has defined the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities as one of the goals of the war. The Israeli military, of course, is committed to this,” the statement said.

It is not the only time Netanyahu has clashed with members of his military in recent days. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced a limited pause to operations in a select area of Rafah during daylight hours to allow more aid to reach the Palestinians. Netanyahu quickly denounced the move as “unacceptable.”

Other divides have emerged within the Israeli government. Last week, former IDF general Benny Gantz withdrew from the war cabinet over Netanyahu’s refusal to work out a hostage release agreement. Gantz’s exit led Netanyahu to dissolve the war cabinet entirely.

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Mossad and its network of little helpers, the Sayanim

As I am hoping to organise a conversation with colleague David Miller in the very near future to discuss his research into the Zionist movement tentacles that have embedded themselves deep inside the UK governmental and public sectors including education – I am publishing his recent article for Al Mayadeen English:

The Mossad have been exposed as targeting the International Criminal Court, including directly threatening its personnel and their families. What else does the Mossad get up to?

Zionist intelligence agencies launched a war on the International Criminal Court in January 2015. This was when it was confirmed that Palestine would join the court after it was recognised as a state by the UN general assembly.

“Israel’s” intelligence agencies routinely surveilled the ICC’s current chief prosecutor Karim Khan, his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, and dozens of other ICC and UN officials. Israeli intelligence also monitored materials that the Palestinian Authority submitted to the prosecutor’s office, and surveilled employees at four Palestinian human rights organizations whose submissions are central to the probe.

Multiple agencies including the Mossad, Shin Bet, and “National Security Council” were involved, in addition to the occupation military. “Israel’s” Ministry of Strategic Affairs, under Gilad Erdan, was involved in the surveilling of Palestinian human rights organizations that were submitting reports to the ICC.

It is reported that “a large whiteboard in an Israeli intelligence department contained the names of about 60 people under surveillance – half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel.”

Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency of the Zionist colony was involved in attempting to recruit senior ICC officials.

The former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, allegedly threatened the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation.

Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the period leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.

Cohen, is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband. Regime officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor.

Cohen met with Bensouda on a number of occasions, including “ambushing” her during a meeting with Joseph Kabila, the then president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It appears he was a Mossad agent of influence.

Mossad also targeted Bensouda’s successor, the current chief prosecutor Karim Khan. The ICC confirmed there had been “several forms of threats and communications that could be viewed as attempts to unduly influence its activities”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have taken a keen interest in the operation, even sending intelligence teams “instructions” and “areas of interest” regarding their monitoring of ICC officials. One source stressed that Netanyahu was “obsessed, obsessed, obsessed” with finding out what materials the ICC was receiving.

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Biden’s Gaza pier is bringing in chicken aid at $20,730 a pound

You’ve heard of $2,000 toilet seats? The Pentagon is famous for its cost overruns, and that was during the Reagan era.

But now we present the $20,730 per pound chicken.

With all of the U.S. aid from that pier reportedly falling into the hands of HAMAS terrorists, who take the aid and either eat it themselves or sell it at inflated prices to the displaced, that’s some mighty fine chicken, maybe the most gourmet chicken out there, except that it probably isn’t.

It’s just monstrous cost overruns, inflated prices tied to the swamp and its greedy military contractors whose interest in perpetuating wars is a matter of company profits. And we shouldn’t leave the potential for corruption going on, too.

And that’s just the chicken.

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UN probe finds Israel GUILTY of crimes against humanity in Gaza

Israel is guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations (UN) committee has concluded.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) made this conclusion on June 12, deeming Tel Aviv guilty of the atrocities committed during its eight-month-long campaign of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The COI said Israeli authorities are accountable for “the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare, murder or willful killing, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, forcible transfer, sexual violence, torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, and outrages upon personal dignity.”

The COI also discovered that “the crimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, [and] forcible transfer” were also committed. According to the commission’s findings, the the enormous number of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza is “the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with the intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality, and adequate precautions.”

Moreover, the investigation resolved that the inflammatory remarks by Israeli officials “amounted to incitement and may constitute other serious international crimes,” adding that direct and public provocation to genocide is a crime under international law whenever committed.

The COI also criticized Israel’s continued assaults on civilian evacuation routes and “safe areas” and stated leading Israeli authorities have “weaponized the siege and used the provision of life-sustaining necessities, including by severing water, food, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian assistance, for strategic and political gains.”

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