Tag: israel

Full Israeli Ground Offensive In Gaza City Begins: ‘We Will Not Relent Until Mission Complete’

“Gaza is burning,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared Tuesday. “We will not relent and we will not go back – until the completion of the mission.”

The Israeli military launched the mainstay of its ground offensive in Gaza City on Tuesday, advancing slowly into the densely populated urban center, which has already suffered immense destruction due to airstrikes. Residents are being told to immediately evacuate to the south. Huge lines of vehicles packed with families’ belongings could be seen scrambling to get out of the war-ravaged city.

Gaza City residents told Al Jazeera they are subject to “heavy, relentless” bombardment – and least 68 people have been killed by Israeli air strikes across Gaza since dawn. Videos also showed huge explosions rocking the city on Tuesday, with large bombs concentrated Tal al-Hawa, a neighborhood in the south of Gaza City.

Currently, many Arab and Islamic leaders are gathered in the Qatari capital of Doha, where they condemned the new IDF military’s push deeper into Gaza City, decrying it as a “cowardly” attack and pronouncing it as “genocide”.

Also in Qatar is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who interestingly after expressing ironclad commitment to Israel, still said: “We have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen,” and that extended warfare could “deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” He further declared that “The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one.”

He added, “At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation. But I think time, unfortunately, is running out.” He had expressed while in Israel Monday that peace for Gaza may not be possible.

As for Israel, it has called up 60,000 more reservists to accomplish the new “expanded ground operations” in Gaza City. This is already after putting the country on alert.

The past week has seen Israel pull down several high-rise buildings in the area of fighting, leaving them rubble, alleging they were used by Hamas…

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Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say

A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he contemplated a Catholic conversion.

On September 11, one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.”

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August under the guise of a summertime Hamptons lunch. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.

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Turkey wary of Israeli threat following airstrike on Hamas in Qatar

An Israeli strike on a meeting of Hamas officials in Qatar has cast a cloud of growing concern across Turkey that it could be the next target.

Turkish Defense Ministry spokesman Rear Adm. Zeki Akturk warned in Ankara on Thursday that Israel would “further expand its reckless attacks, as it did in Qatar, and drag the entire region, including its own country, into disaster.”

Israel and Turkey were once strong regional partners, but ties between the countries ran into difficulties from the late 2000s and have reached an all-time low over the war in Gaza sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack in southern Israel. Tensions also have risen as the two countries have competed for influence in neighboring Syria since the fall of Bashar Assad’s government last year.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause and of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The Turkish president has criticized Israel, and particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with strident rhetoric since the start of the Gaza war, accusing Israel of genocide and likening Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Hamas officials regularly visit Turkey and some have taken up residence there. Israel previously accused Turkey of allowing Hamas to plan attacks from its territory, as well as carrying out recruitment and fundraising.

Erdogan is close to Qatar’s leaders and Turkey maintains strong military and commercial ties to the emirate. He is due to travel to Qatar this weekend for an Arab and Muslim leaders’ summit.

After Israel’s attacks on the territory of Iran, Syria, Yemen and now Qatar, Ankara is bound to be concerned by Israel’s ability to freely use the airspace of neighboring states.

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Britain Bans Israelis From Prestigious Military Academy

Israelis have been barred from one of Britain’s top defence academies because of the war in Gaza. The Telegraph has the story.

The Royal College of Defence Studies will not accept students from Israel from next year, the Government confirmed.

Amir Baram, the Director General of Israel’s Defence ministry, who studied at the college, said the decision was “a profoundly dishonourable act of disloyalty to an ally at war”.

In a letter to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), shared with the Telegraph, he called it a “discriminatory act” that amounted to a “disgraceful break with Britain’s proud tradition of tolerance – and plain decency”.

It is the first time that the college has excluded Israelis.

Maj Gen Baram said the decision came at a time when Israel was “defending international shipping from Houthi aggression, preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of an Islamist regime that chants ‘Death to England’, and fighting to bring home 48 hostages from Hamas captivity”. …

An MoD spokesman said British military educational courses had long been open to personnel from a “wide range of countries, with all UK military courses emphasising compliance with international humanitarian law”.

He added: “However, the Israeli Government’s decision to further escalate its military operation in Gaza is wrong.” …

The Israeli Ministry of Defence said that the ban was on all Israeli citizens enrolling, not just soldiers. …

The exclusion of Israelis from the college is the latest in a string of punitive actions against Israel taken by Downing Street.

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What Is ICE Doing With This Israeli Spyware Firm?

The deployment of Paragon’s Graphite spyware was a major scandal in Italy. Earlier this year, the messaging app WhatsApp revealed that 90 journalists and civil society figures had been targeted by the military-grade surveillance tech, which gives “total access” to a victim’s messages. The Italian government admitted to spying on refugee rights activists, and Paragon cancelled its contract with the government almost immediately after the story broke.

Now the same software may be coming to America—and again with an immigration focus. Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security quietly lifted a stop-work order on a $2 million contract that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had with Paragon for a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.”

The deal was first signed by the Biden administration, and it was frozen in October 2024, less than a week after Wired broke the news of the contract. An administration official later insisted to Wired that, rather than reacting to bad publicity, they were reviewing the contract to comply with President Joe Biden’s order to ensure that commercial spyware use by the U.S. government “does not undermine democracy, civil rights and civil liberties.”

The details of that review—or even the contract itself—were never publicly disclosed. But the results are clear: ICE now has a green light to use whatever software Paragon was offering. (Neither Paragon nor ICE responded to requests for comment from The Guardian.)

The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, dedicated to researching electronic surveillance, found that Graphite targeted users through a “zero-click exploit.” By adding someone to a WhatsApp group in a certain way, Graphite can force their phones to read an infected PDF file without the user’s input. In other words, a cyberattack can be disguised as a spam text—and works even if victims ignore it.

After discovering the vulnerability with the Citizen Lab’s help, WhatsApp said in a statement that it was “constantly working to stay ahead of threats” and “build new layers of protection into WhatsApp.”

Paragon was co-founded by Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister and general in charge of military intelligence, and Ehud Schneorson, a former head of Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the National Security Agency. Last year, an American private equity firm bought Paragon for $500 million with the intention of merging it into RED Lattice, a firm connected to former U.S. intelligence officials. Paragon has positioned itself as a more ethical alternative to NSO Group, a spyware company similarly run by Unit 8200 veterans.

In 2021, NSO Group suffered a series of scandals after it was revealed that its Pegasus spyware was sold to police states around the world and was possibly used to spy on journalists who were murdered. NSO Group accused the media of running a “vicious and slanderous campaign” and promised to “thoroughly investigate any credible proof of misuse.” The Biden administration hit NSO Group with economic sanctions in response.

Around the time that the Pegasus scandal was breaking, a Paragon executive boasted to Forbes that their company would only deal with customers who “abide by international norms and respect fundamental rights and freedoms.”

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‘No Palestinian State, This Place Is Ours’: Netanyahu Rejects UN Two State Recognition

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has firmly rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood at a moment it is being pushed in the UN General Assembly, declaring, “There will be no Palestinian state – this land belongs to us.“

His audience burst into loud applause, at a celebratory event marking a major housing deal in Ma’ale Adumim this week. The occasion was an “umbrella agreement” between the Israeli government and Ma’ale Adumim, which includes the planned development of the highly contested E1 area, a highly sensitive zone both Israel and the Palestinians recognize as geopolitically crucial to their futures.

Construction in E1 would effectively sever the territorial continuity of a future Palestinian state, which has resulted in fierce condemnation from those who deem it an intentional and decisive blow to any two-state solution.

Underscoring how controversial developing this piece of land has been, the 12-square-kilometer (4.6 sq. mile) area in Judea has sat untouched for several decades. It was first proposed for Israeli development in 1994, but has seen no movement since, amid international pressure.

Ma’ale Adumim, at currently some 40,000 residents, will see the expanse into the contested land zone result in an additional 7,000 new housing units, or enough for about 30,000 more Israelis.

“[T]his is about to realize the doubling of the city of Ma’ale Adumim. There will be 70,000 people here in five years. That will be a huge change,” Netanyahu said in his speech.

Netanyahu’s firm declaration that “there will be no Palestinian state” was a direct challenge on the ground to what’s happening at the United Nations meeting in New York:

The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Friday to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urge Israel to commit to a Palestinian state, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposes.

The 193-member world body approved a nonbinding resolution endorsing the “New York Declaration,” which sets out a phased plan to end the nearly 80-year conflict. The vote was 142-10 with 12 abstentions.

Of course, this is largely symbolic – but Israel’s relations with leading European countries such as France and Germany have been very negatively impacted, also as some like Denmark even mull sanctions.

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US lawmakers introduce ‘thought police’ bill to strip citizens of passports over Israel criticism

A US congressman is introducing a bill that could potentially be used to deny US citizens the right to travel based solely on their speech, including for criticism of Israel, the Intercept reported on 13 September.

Introduced by Florida Congressman Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the bill would grant Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to revoke the passports of US citizens in the same way he has revoked the green cards and visas of foreign nationals in the US for criticizing Israel.

In March, Secretary of State Rubio revoked the visa of Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk after she wrote an opinion piece critical of Israel in the Tufts University student newspaper in 2024. 

The op-ed did not mention Hamas, but called for boycotting and divesting from Israel.

One section of the bill grants the Secretary of State the ability to deny passports to people determined to have “knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”

The reference to “material support” disturbs civil liberties advocates because it is vague and can be interpreted to include speech and anti-war activism.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which functions as a front for Israeli intelligence in the US, and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law suggested in a letter last year that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was providing “material support” for Hamas by organizing campus protests against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The provision regarding material support to terrorism poses a threat specifically to journalists, The Intercept noted.

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Gaza and the death of conscience

There are moments in history that strip away every illusion we carry about ourselves. Gaza is one such moment. For nearly two years, the world has witnessed a genocide live on its screens. We have seen children pulled from rubble, families starving in tents, hospitals turned to dust. We cannot say we did not know. Every image, every cry, every number has reached us in real time. And yet the killing goes on, the silence goes on, life goes on.

The truth is unbearable but undeniable: we have failed Gaza, and in doing so, we have failed ourselves as human beings.

Frantz Fanon once wrote that colonialism is not a machine but a human reality, and when confronted, it responds with naked violence. Gaza is the purest proof of this truth in our own time. Israel’s colonial war does not speak the language of justice or dialogue; it speaks through bombs, siege, and starvation. Genocide today does not come only with the slogans of hatred but with the bureaucratic jargon of “security,” “collateral damage,” “military necessity.” Western governments supply the bombs while speaking of peace. The United Nations counts the dead while doing nothing to stop the dying. Media outlets repeat official lines while children are buried under rubble.

As Talal Asad reminds us, secular modernity has perfected this art: to kill massively while convincing itself it remains moral. To dress violence in legality, to turn blood into statistics, to make atrocity look like policy. Gaza has become the stage where this moral corruption plays out openly.

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Qatar Pressures Arab Allies To Close Embassies In Israel: ‘The Gloves Are Off’

Qatar is leaning on Arab countries who have embassies in Israel to close them, as diplomatic retaliation for this week’s brazen Israeli airstrikes on Doha, which killed several Hamas leaders – including Khalil al-Hayya – and a Qatari security official.

Specifically, the United Arab Emirates is being pressured to shutter its embassy in Tel Aviv. The UAE was an initial signer of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. It officially inaugurated its embassy in July of 2021 as part of the historic normalization deal.

Washington has been hoping to expand the accords to other Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, but with the Gaza war raging, this seems definitely off and nowhere on the horizon.

“The gloves are off,” a Gulf diplomat speaking with Haaretz said. The UAE has vehemently condemned the attack on Qatar, and  summoned the Israeli deputy ambassador, David Ohad Horsandi, to complain of “outrageous attack” which violated Qatar’s sovereignty. 

Haaretz has suggested that Qatar might even alter its security ties with the United States. “Qatar’s prime minister told the White House his country would now re-evaluate its security partnership with Washington,” Haaretz reported.

“From Doha’s perspective, accusing Qatar of hosting Hamas leaders is seen as a knife in the back and could affect continued cooperation with Mossad as well as other interactions between the emirate and Israel,” Haaretz added.

The oil and gas rich GCC countries had throughout the decade-plus long Syria proxy war cooperated closely with Israeli intelligence, past reports have said.

But the Gaza crisis has strained all of these past ties, which mostly focused on countering Iranian and Shia influence across the Middle East, and Assad became prime target number one for regime change – given his deep cooperation with the Iranians.

Yet even the Saudis have by and large mended relations with Iran. While the royal family pays lip service to defending Palestinians, it is the common populations of Gulf states which tend to be more hardline in the pro-Palestinian cause.

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U.S. Plan To Disarm Hezbollah Is a Diplomatic Dead End

The United States has given Lebanon until the end of the year to disarm Hezbollah in exchange for ending Israeli military operations there. This proposal, delivered to President Joseph Aoun, offers incremental Israeli withdrawals over the next few months in return for Hezbollah’s gradual dissolution—an outcome that’s nearly impossible in practice and already rejected by the group. Washington’s attempt to link Israeli withdrawals to Hezbollah’s disarmament ignores military and political realities. Disarming the terrorist group is not a matter of transactional diplomacy, but a near-impossible task that risks wasting diplomatic capital while the greater Middle East sinks deeper into instability.

Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack delivered the offer, which outlines an Israeli concession of five border points in cooperation with the Lebanese military. Ideal as it sounds, the Iran-backed group has had its teeth sunk into Lebanese civil, political, and even military sectors for decades, and it is the first watershed moment for the legitimacy of Aoun’s new administration. A former army chief, Aoun countered with a point-for-point trade that Israel has since rejected, given the terrorist group’s outright refusal to disarm.

The Lebanese Army still presented the disarmament plan, which won cabinet approval in early September despite Shiite ministers walking out in protest—but it still sidesteps the core problem: Disarmament cannot be bargained with a terrorist organization that’s already embedded in the political and military state. 

In fact, the same Shiite cabinet members who walked out during the discussion were members of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party, the allied Shiite Amal party, and one independent Shiite minister. Simultaneously a foreign terrorist organization and a political party, Hezbollah is a “state within a state,” with deep-seated influence in the Lebanese government that has blocked legislative business and influenced elections. 

Two possible outcomes could have resulted from the deal: Aoun could attempt to disarm Hezbollah and risk another civil war, or the government could stall and prompt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene militarily. 

Given Israel’s strike in Qatar against Hamas leadership earlier this week, the latter was more probable. Any hope for the former was lost last week when Ortagus visited Lebanon alongside U.S. Army commanders, indicating clearly that the U.S. is lending strategic expertise to help the Lebanese Army execute the plan. Israel has already begun its campaign against Hezbollah sites in northeast Lebanon. Additionally, Israel recently refocused its military personnel and hardware to their two-pronged effort in Gaza and Lebanon, backed by American shipments of military aid as well.

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