Tag: israel

Israel ‘freezes’ plans for concentration camp in southern Gaza: Report

Israel’s so-called “Humanitarian City” project, which was planned to be established on the ruins of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, has been frozen, Israeli media reported on 28 July.

“There is no decision to proceed with this, and there is no alternative plan. The political echelon was certain it was heading toward a hostage deal that included withdrawals in the southern Gaza Strip, so it seems they’ve abandoned this initiative – it’s on hold for now,” a senior security source told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The project, described as a concentration camp in Palestinian and Israeli media, was intended to forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to an isolated area near the Egyptian border. Gathering Palestinians there is seen as a first step to ethnically cleansing Gaza and forcing millions of Palestinians to flee to foreign countries as refugees.

Rather than fight Hamas, Israeli forces in Gaza are exerting most of their effort and resources to demolishing homes, residential buildings, and infrastructure to ensure displaced Palestinians have nowhere to return to.

The “Humanitarian City” project aimed to initially force some 600,000 Palestinians into an area between the Philadelphi and Morag axes on the ruins of Rafah.

Military reports estimated that its completion would take at least a year, which angered the Israeli cabinet.

The decision comes as Israel continues to severely restrict aid reaching Gaza, causing starvation and famine in the strip to worsen as a result.

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A new ‘dossier’ reveals extensive pro-Israel bias among reporters, editors and executives at the ‘NYTimes’

Normally, New York Times journalists work under a strict code of behavior meant to reduce the appearance of bias in their reports. They are not, for instance, allowed to attend political rallies or demonstrations in their personal capacity. One Times reporter told me years ago that she couldn’t go to a pro-abortion rights march, even though she didn’t cover the issue. These restrictions extend into the Internet Age. Times journalists on social media are supposed to be guarded in their opinions, and they can be cautioned if they overstep.

But the Times’s struggle against even the appearance of bias vanishes when the subject is Israel and the Palestinians. The organization called Writers Against the War on Gaza recently released a “dossier” which listed “high-ranking editors, journalists and executive officers at the Times” who the group alleges have “material and ideological ties to occupation and apartheid.”

Most obvious are Times reporters who have personal or family connections to Israel’s military. The dossier cites Natan Odenheimer, who actually served in the army’s “Maglan” special forces commando unit for almost 4 years. Interestingly, Odenheimer’s own summary of his experience on the Times website completely leaves out this portion of his biography. He tells us: “I’ve reported on Israelis and Palestinians for over a decade, and my work has also taken me to Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and other locations.” But somehow his military experience didn’t make the cut.

Reporter Isabel Kershner’s two sons served in Israel’s military. And in the past, Ethan Bronner’s son was also a soldier. The dossier notes that Bill Keller, then the Times’s executive editor, actually defended that connection, arguing that Bronner’s reporting benefited, because his son’s service “suppl[ied] a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.” (For the record, this site has over the years been on top of this story. Here’s the Kershner connection, from more than a decade ago. And Phil Weiss explained how Bronner went to great lengths to try and conceal the link.)

Let’s pause for a thought experiment. Let’s say the Times considered hiring a Palestinian reporter in Jerusalem — who it then turned out had belonged to a militant group in his or her youth. The ensuing firestorm of criticism would instantly sink the appointment. 

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Trump Shows Strong Support for Israel as Palestinians in Gaza Starve to Death

President Trump has shown strong support for Israel in recent days, while much of the world has been outraged over the images of Palestinians who are starving to death due to the US-backed Israeli siege on Gaza.

After the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks, Trump blamed the lack of progress on Hamas and suggested it was time for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad,” Trump said on Friday, referring to Hamas.

For its part, Hamas has said that it was surprised by the US and Israel quitting the truce talks and that it was committed to continuing the process until a deal was reached.

In recent weeks, Trump has been claiming that a ceasefire deal was close, but now he is appearing to suggest that Israel should escalate its genocidal war. “They’re gonna have to fight, and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of [Hamas],” he said.

Israeli officials told Axios that they weren’t sure if Trump’s comments were a negotiating tactic or a “green light” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use even more extreme military measures. The report said the Trump administration was rethinking its Gaza strategy, but there’s no sign it’s considering putting pressure on Israel to reach a ceasefire.

Israeli officials also told Axios that Trump has applied virtually no pressure on Netanyahu to end the slaughter in Gaza in recent months. “In most calls and meetings, Trump told Bibi, ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’ In some cases, he even encouraged Netanyahu to go harder on Hamas,” one official said.

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Beyond Gaza’s Shadow: The Unseen War for the West Bank’s Future

Israel is meticulously following a textbook model of instigating unrest in the occupied West Bank. The latest such provocations consisted of stripping the Palestinian-run Hebron (Al-Khalil) municipality of its administrative powers over the venerable Ibrahimi Mosque. Worse, according to Israel Hayom, it granted these powers to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement, an extremist settler body.

Though all Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine can be qualified as extremists, the approximately 7,500 inhabitants of Kiryat Arba represent a more virulent category. This settlement, established in 1972, serves as a strategic foothold to justify subjecting Hebron to stricter military control than virtually any other part of the West Bank.

Kiryat Arba is infamously linked to Baruch Goldstein, the US-Israeli settler who, in February 1994, unleashed a horrific attack. He opened fire at Muslim worshipers kneeling for dawn prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque, mercilessly killing 29. This bloodbath was swiftly followed by another, where the Israeli army brutally cracked down on Palestinian protesters in Hebron and across the West Bank, murdering an additional 25 Palestinians.

Yet, the Israeli Shamgar Commission, tasked with investigating the massacre, resolved in 1994 that the Palestinian mosque, a site of profound religious significance, was to be grotesquely divided: 63% allocated to Jewish worshipers and a mere 37% to Palestinian Muslims.

Since that calamitous decision, oppressive restrictions have been systematically imposed. These include pervasive surveillance and, at times, unjustifiable, extended closures of the site, solely for exclusive settler use.

The latest decision, described by Israel Hayom as “historic and unprecedented,” is profoundly dangerous. It places the fate of this historic Palestinian mosque directly into the hands of those fanatically keen on acquiring the holy site in its entirety. 

But the Ibrahimi Mosque is merely a microcosm of something far more sinister underway across the West Bank. Israel has exploited its war in Gaza to dramatically escalate its violence, carry out mass arrests, confiscate vast tracts of land, systematically destroy Palestinian farms and orchards, and aggressively expand illegal settlements.

Though the West Bank, previously largely subdued by joint Israeli military pressures and Palestinian Authority crackdowns, was not a direct party to the October 7, 2023, assault nor the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, it has inexplicably become a major focus for Israeli military measures.

In the first year of the war, over 10,400 Palestinians were detained in Israeli army crackdowns, with thousands held without charge. Furthermore, hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly ethnically cleansed, largely from the northern West Bank, where entire refugee camps and towns have been systematically destroyed in protracted Israeli military campaigns.

Israel’s overarching aim remains the strangulation of the West Bank. This is achieved by severing communities using ubiquitous military checkpoints, imposing total closures of vast regions, and the cruel suspension of work permits for Palestinian laborers, who are almost entirely dependent on the Israeli work market for survival.

This insidious plan also explicitly targeted all Palestinian holy sites, including the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, and the Ibrahimi Mosque. Even when these shrines were nominally accessible, age restrictions and suffocating military checkpoints make it difficult, at times utterly impossible, for Palestinians to worship there.

In August 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that his relentless violent campaign against the West Bank was part of confronting the “broader Iran terror axis.” Practically, this statement served as a green light for the Israeli army to treat the West Bank as an extension of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Gaza. By mid-July 2025, over 900 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank, while at least 15 were murdered by settlers.

As Palestinians were pushed further against the wall, with no centralized strategy by their leadership to meaningfully resist, Israel exponentially increased its illegal settlement constructions and the brazen legalization of numerous outposts, many built illegally even by Israeli government standards.

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Former Green Beret: ‘Without Question, I Witnessed War Crimes’ In Gaza

A retired US Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked as a contractor at an aid distribution point in Gaza has gone on-the-record with claims that he personally witnessed war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces and by American contractors working for the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). 

“I witnessed the Israeli forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians,” Anthony Aguilar told BBC. “I witnessed the Israeli forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car of civilians that was simply driving away from the site. I witnessed mortar rounds being fired at the crowd… to keep them controlled.” 

The GHF is led by an evangelical Christian leader with close ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. The organization was established in Israel in a collaboration of American evangelicals and private security contractors. Soon after the GHF began distributing aid to war-torn Gaza in May, disturbing reports emerged of Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians approaching aid points for food. Reports of dozens of Palestinians being killed in single incidents have become common. Last week, the UN human rights office said more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to receive food at the distribution points. 

Aguilar was blunt in characterizing what he observed in the context of his US military service: 

“In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population…an unarmed, starving population. I’ve never witnessed that in all the places I’ve been deployed to war until I was in Gaza, at the hands of the IDF and US contractors … Without question, I witnessed war crimes.”

He also condemned the GHF and its hired American guns:    

“My professional opinion of how the sites were established was what I would describe as ‘amateur.’ Inexperienced, untrained, no idea of how to conduct operations of this magnitude. That would be my most benign assessment. In my most frank assessment, I would say that they’re criminal.”

The GHF said Aguilar’s allegations were “categorically false,” telling BBC that the retired Green Beret is “a disgruntled former contractor who was terminated for misconduct.” In a separate statement, GHF said its own investigation concluded his claims are “false and have no basis in reality.” 

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Unacknowledged False Flags: The October 7th Hamas Attack – Part 3

In Part 1 we looked at the official account of the October 7th Hamas Attack. In Part 2 we examined the official narrative claiming the attack came as a complete surprise to the Israeli authorities who, as a result, were not prepared to defend the people living, working and partying on the Israeli side of the “Iron Wall.”

In Part 1 we remarked on Hamas’ incredible military feat. Hamas—primarily the Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades and its elite Nukhba Squads, plus a contingent of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades—breached the Iron Wall in 29 locations simultaneously. They took out all the automated defences and vital observation and early warning systems, and then proceeded to overrun and hold key military installations. Hamas took the Erez Crossing, the Nahal Oz military base, the Sufa outpost, and the IDF bases close to the Be’eri and Kerem Shalom kibbutzim. The most strategically important base they held was the Re’im military base—home to the primary Israeli defensive force in the region, the IDF Gaza Division.

As we noted in Part 2, even Hamas was supposedly “surprised” by the relative ease with which it took and held these crucial Israeli military positions. There are three stories that have been offered to allegedly account for this.

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Gazan aid-seekers ‘sniped in the head’ at GHF distribution center, witnesses say

Samir Shaat, a young man in his thirties, sits in the courtyard of Nasser Medical Complex, recounting what he describes as the worst day of his life. 

On Saturday morning, Shaat went to the al-Shakoush aid distribution site in Rafah city run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). After the closure of all other GHF sites across Gaza, this was the only one still operational. Shaat and his friend were there to bring back food for their families.

As soon as they arrived at 9:40 a.m., Shaat says, Israeli army tanks appeared on a high hill near the site and began firing with heavy machine guns at the thousands of civilians who were waiting for the U.S.-run company’s signal to enter the site. 

Instead of returning home carrying food, Shaat returned carrying his friend, who was shot directly in the head. He carried him for more than a kilometer on foot, running in the hope of saving him. By the time he reached the hospital, his friend had already died on his shoulders.

The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 18 deaths and over 50 injuries were recorded at Nasser Hospital following today’s aid massacre at the GHF center. The Ministry said that the deaths bring the total number of people killed at these centers to 805, while the number of wounded at GHF sites stands at 5,252.

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Settlers said to disconnect water supply for 30 Palestinian villages in order to fill up pool

Settlers have taken over a spring that is used to supply water for 30 Palestinian villages in the Ramallah area, Haaretz reports.

The settlers dismantled the flow of the Ein Samia spring’s water to neighboring villages and instead connected it to a nearby pool, according to the report.

Ein Samia includes five wells that belong to the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Water Authority. The wells were vandalized four times in the past month.

Nonetheless, the IDF has not deployed troops to secure the spring, and no suspects have been arrested.

Settlers have damaged security cameras at Ein Samia and vandalized water infrastructure in what has caused prolonged water outages to the neighboring villages.

The pool that the settlers are using Ein Samia to fill is called “Shepherds Spring,” and is named after two Israelis who were killed in a 2023 terror attack.

In a video urging the public to donate to the pool, settlers say it has pumped water to the Ramallah area since 1965. “But we did not give up, and after significant efforts, Shepherds Spring is coming back to life,” says Micha Sudai, the owner of an illegal farm outpost nearby.

Responding to the Haaretz report, the IDF says that in recent days, troops received several reports of Israeli civilians damaging water infrastructure in the Ein Samia area. However, by the time troops arrived at the scene, the suspects had fled.

The army says it takes the issue seriously and has allowed PA municipal workers to conduct repairs at Ein Samia.

Arrests in incidents of settler violence are highly rare and convictions are even less likely in what has led a growing number of Western countries to impose sanctions against violent settlers.

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Will ‘Greater Syria’ and ‘Greater Israel’ Collide or Co-exist under the Al Qaeda Regime?

With the fall of Syria came the reshaping of the Resistance Axis, weakened by the loss of the central hub linking the regional state and non-state actors, and providing the land bridge that connected Iran to Palestine. Syria was historically instrumental in the manufacture and development of the weapons being used by the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance factions against Israel.

This is an update on the current state of affairs in the region, focusing on Lebanon and Syria since the ‘ceasefire’ between the US, Israel, and Iran. It is a ceasefire designed to enable Israel to replenish air defence interceptor supplies and to prepare for the next stage of the long war against Iran. As with the ceasefire between Iran and Hezbollah that came into effect on 27 November 2024, we saw a US/Israel pivot to Syria and the fall of the Syrian Government within ten days, leading to an Al Qaeda Junta controlling Syria and acting as a de facto Zionist alliance proxy in the region.

Lebanon

Trump’s inexperienced, economic hit-man, and envoy to the Middle East (West Asia) is Thomas Barrack. In recent weeks, Barrack has been pushing the Lebanese Government for the full disarmament of Hezbollah, contrary to UN resolution 1701, which specifies the withdrawal of Hezbollah to the north of the Litani River. Both the US and Trump’s advisors know that this is an unrealistic demand, as Hezbollah will never agree to disarm while Israel is on their borders and occupying land in southern Lebanon.

Barrack is demanding that the disarmament comes into effect within four months, which is also unrealistic. In the 1980s, after the Lebanese Civil War, the Zionist-aligned Lebanese Forces were disarmed, which at the time represented less than 10% of Hezbollah’s capabilities. This process took two or three years.

Proposing the disarmament of Hezbollah is a similar tactic to demanding Iran abandons its nuclear energy development or its defensive missile program. The Zionist bloc know it will not be adopted. For Israel, the goal is to weaken the Resistance in Lebanon and Iraq in the interim period before a resurgence of aggression against Iran. The preferred option in Lebanon is to manufacture a civil war which will occupy Hezbollah internally, reducing their ability to react to Israeli aggression, in theory. However, this is a miscalculation on the part of the Zionist bloc.

Barrack is insistent upon the Hezbollah disarmament, but he is not applying the same pressure on Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon, or to stop its daily bombing raids and drone assassinations across Lebanon.

Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability to withstand and prevent any serious ground invasion by the Zionist forces, while the Lebanese Army (LAF) has been unable to prevent further Zionist incursions since the ceasefire. This is largely because the US, the chief sponsor of the LAF, has ensured that the LAF are not equipped with air defence capabilities or the ground superiority necessary to be able to defend the country against the asymmetric force of the US-empowered Zionist military. They are restricted to ‘reporting’ the daily Zionist violations and regular assassinations of Lebanese civilians on the basis that they are ‘Hezbollah’.

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