Tag: israel

The Gaza Catastrophe

It was obvious almost from the get-go what Israel was up to in Gaza. I wrote the article below in early December of 2023. Gaza was to be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians, full stop. Whether by bullets, bombs, disease, mass starvation, or expulsion, Palestinians were to be eliminated from the land, replaced by Jewish settlers. A beach blanket bingo fantasy scene would follow.

Chris Hedges writes about this today, honestly and powerfully. Caitlin Johnstone puts it bluntly in her latest, the title of which is “They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It.” It’s all so shameful and disgusting.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote in 2023, when Israel got a blank check from Biden and Blinken. Now that blank check has become a mandate from the Trump administration, complete with fantasies of a “new” Gaza, depopulated of Palestinians, featuring a fantasy Trump tower. Can the U.S. government sink any lower? I suppose it can.

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The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States

For decades, countless U.S. officials have proclaimed that the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable. Now, the ties that bind are laced with genocide. The two countries function as accomplices while methodical killing continues in Gaza, with both societies directly – and differently – making it all possible.

The policies of Israel’s government are aligned with the attitudes of most Jewish Israelis. In a recent survey, three-quarters of them (and 64 percent of all Israelis) said they largely agreed with the statement that “there are no innocent people in Gaza” – nearly half of whom are children.

“There is no more ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’ with regard to Israel’s evilness toward the Palestinians,” dissident columnist Gideon Levy wrote three months ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “It is permitted to kill dozens of captive detainees and to starve to death an entire people.” The biggest Israeli media outlets echo and amplify sociopathic voices. “Genocide talk has spread into all TV studios as legitimate talk. Former colonels, past members of the defense establishment, sit on panels and call for genocide without batting an eye.”

Last week, Levy provided an update: “The weapon of deliberate starvation is working. The Gaza ‘Humanitarian’ Foundation, in turn, has become a tragic success. Not only have hundreds of Gazans been shot to death while waiting in line for packages distributed by the GHF, but there are others who don’t manage to reach the distribution points, dying of hunger. Most of these are children and babies…. They lie on hospital floors, on bare beds, or carried on donkey carts. These are pictures from hell. In Israel, many people reject these photos, doubting their veracity. Others express their joy and pride on seeing starving babies.”

Unimpeded, a daily process continues to exterminate more and more of the 2.1 million Palestinian people who remain in Gaza – bombing and shooting civilians while blocking all but a pittance of the food and medicine needed to sustain life. After destroying Gaza’s hospitals, Israel is still targeting healthcare workers (killing at least 70 in May and June), as well as first responders and journalists.

The barbarism is in sync with the belief that “no innocent people” are in Gaza. A relevant observation came from Aldous Huxley in 1936, the same year that the swastika went onto Germany’s flag: “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Kristallnacht happened two years later.

Renowned genocide scholar Omer Bartov explained during an interview on Democracy Now! in mid-July that genocide is “the attempt to destroy not simply people in large numbers, but to destroy them as members of a group. The intent is to destroy the group itself. And it doesn’t mean that you have to kill everyone. It means that the group will be destroyed and that it will not be able to reconstitute itself as a group. And to my mind, this is precisely what Israel is trying to do.”

Bartov, who is Jewish and spent the first half of his life in Israel, said:

“What I see in the Israeli public is an extraordinary indifference by large parts of the public to what Israel is doing and what it’s done in the name of Israeli citizens in Gaza. In part, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli media has decided not to report on the horrors that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is perpetrating in Gaza. You simply will not see it on Israeli television. If some pictures happen to come in, they are presented only as material that might be used by foreign propaganda against Israel. Now, Israeli citizens can, of course, use other media resources. We can all do that. But most of them prefer not to. And I would say that while about 30 percent of the population in Israel is completely in favor of what is happening, and, in fact, is egging the government and the army on, I think the vast majority of the population simply does not want to know about it.”

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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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