Tag: israel

Video confirms Israeli troops fired three tank shells at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital

New video shows that a double-tap attack carried out by Israeli forces on a hospital in Gaza involved three separate munitions, one in the first strike and two in the second, CNN reported on 28 August.

The 25 August attack on Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis in Gaza killed 22 people, including health workers, emergency response crews, and five journalists.

On the morning of the strike, Reuters journalist Hossam al-Masri was operating a live stream from an exterior stairwell on the top floor of the Nasser Hospital.

At 10:09 am, an Israeli munition targeted Masri, killing him and one other man.

Journalists and rescue workers rushed to the stairwell to look for survivors.

At 10:17 am, as rescue workers were carrying a body down the stairwell, a second and third Israeli strike, just milliseconds apart, targeted the stairwell, killing 20 more. 

“One shell hits the staircase where first responders had gathered; a fraction of a second later, another explodes at almost the same spot,” CNN wrote, describing the video.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, said the munitions were likely fired by two separate tanks at the same time.

“The impact of two projectiles at nearly the exact same moment suggests two tanks may have fired on the target simultaneously,” Jenzen-Jones told CNN. “It’s hard to read too much into that, but it suggests a more carefully coordinated attack, rather than a single vehicle firing at a ‘target of opportunity.’ Modern tank guns, supported by the sensors and systems of modern tanks, are very precise.”

“In gruesome video filmed after the second and third strikes, scores of bodies can be seen on the staircase on both the top floor and the floor below,” CNN added.

The five journalists killed were Reuters journalist Hossam al-Masri, Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammad Salama, Independent Arabia and AP journalist Maryam Abu Daqqa, and NBC journalist Muath Abu Taha. 

Journalist Ahmad Abu Aziz later succumbed to his wounds, which were sustained in the same attack. 

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US-Israeli scheme for Lebanon includes forced displacement, turning Beirut suburb into ‘refugee camp’: Report

There is a new US plan for a “clampdown” on Beirut’s southern suburb, which could potentially see the area come under the control of a foreign or Arab security force, according to a report released by Al-Akhbar newspaper on 27 August. 

The southern suburb, a strong base of support for Hezbollah, was heavily bombarded by Israel during its brutal war on Lebanon last year. The suburb has been repeatedly hit by airstrikes since the ceasefire took effect. 

According to Al-Akhbar, the plan aims to “treat the southern suburbs just like Palestinian refugee camps.”

The 1969 Cairo Agreement for years allowed Palestinian groups a degree of autonomy over refugee camps in Lebanon. Despite the agreement being declared null in the 1980s, the status of the camps has remained more or less the same. 

However, Lebanese troops maintain checkpoints and a heavy presence around the camps. Palestinian camps in Lebanon have recently begun a symbolic disarmament process in line with the state’s efforts to monopolize control of weapons in the country. 

The Al-Akhbar report frames the new US plan as part of Washington’s broader goal of disarming Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government vowed to achieve in a cabinet session in early August. 

“The US proposal envisions checkpoints at all entrances [of the Beirut suburb], thorough searches of individuals and vehicles, and a tight control on goods, materials, and money flows. This mission would not be handed to the Lebanese army. Instead, the plan calls for a foreign security force, possibly an Arab one, to take on the task,” it said. 

Al-Akhbar also said the plan falls in line with US efforts to “empty the southern border region.”

A recent report by Axios said there is a US plan for a “Trump economic zone” near the southern border, aimed at preventing Hezbollah from re-establishing its presence there. The report said this would happen with the help of Gulf financing. 

During a press conference in Lebanon’s Presidential Palace on Tuesday, US envoy Tom Barrack confirmed plans for the economic zone. 

“We have to have money coming into the system. The money will come from the Gulf. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are partners and are willing to do that for the south (of Lebanon) if we’re asking a portion of the Lebanese community to give up their livelihood,” Barrack said. 

“We have 40,000 people that are being paid by Iran to fight. What are you gonna do with them? Take their weapon and say ‘by the way, good luck planting olive trees?’ It can’t happen. We have to help them,” he added, referring to Hezbollah members.

“We, all of us, the Gulf, the US, the Lebanese are all gonna act together to create an economic forum that is gonna produce a livelihood,” he went on to say.

This economic zone reportedly serves as an ethnic cleansing plan to remove residents of the southern border villages and prevent the return of those already displaced from there. 

Lebanese MP and former head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate Jamil al-Sayyed said in a post last week that “Envoy Tom Barrack has received the Israeli response to his mediation over the south.”

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Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Spy Industry Connections

After his first arrest for sex crimes, Jeffrey Epstein tried to get into a new line of work: surveillance. In 2015, he partnered with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to invest in a security tech startup called Reporty Homeland Security, now known as Carbyne. Leaked emails show that Epstein was using Barak to seek out opportunities in the surveillance industry and build connections with powerful figures around the globe, including American businessman Peter Thiel, the former director of Israeli signals intelligence, and two people in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s circle.

After he was first caught sexually exploiting teenage girls, Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution in 2008; he served a little over a year in detention. Meanwhile, he invested his wealth in bizarre projects, including a ranch to breed women with his DNA and “efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you,” according to The New York Times.

The leaked emails show that Epstein was also interested in more mundane means of spying on and manipulating people, which overlapped with the technologies governments often pursue. This interest crossed borders.

Barak’s email inbox was quietly posted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a website widely considered to be a successor to WikiLeaks, on a file-sharing platform for verified journalists and researchers in May 2025. The contents came from Handala, a hacker group named for a Palestinian cartoon character that has been leaking files taken from senior Israeli officials for several months.

Although the emails were posted without technical metadata or cryptographic signatures that would allow their authenticity to be verified, they include dozens of images, videos, voice recordings, and scanned documents from Barak and his friends and family that have never been published elsewhere. And they include information that was not publicly known at the time of the email leaks, including a reference to Epstein’s birthday book.

The emails below, which have not been published elsewhere, paint a picture of Epstein as a man very eager to be at the nexus between private money and public surveillance. While they were hammering out the Reporty investment, Epstein invited Barak to come to a meeting with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in May 2014. Although Barak couldn’t make that meeting, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel [sic]” and offered to set up a dinner the following month.

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More US lawmakers publicly blame Israel for starvation, deaths in Gaza

U.S. lawmakers who may have been silent for the last 22 months are now speaking out publicly and blaming Israel for the starvation and famine conditions in the Gaza Strip.

On CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and long-time Israel supporter, slammed Jerusalem for Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, declaring that “Israel is starving Palestinians with impunity.” Gazans are “systematically being starved to death because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive,” Shaheen said.

When Brennan asked whether Shaheen should have spoken out earlier she replied, “We should be doing more and we should have done more… not just democrats, but also Republicans.”

Going further than Shaheen, 14 U.S. lawmakers have called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide to date, including 13 Democrats and one Republican.

Those lawmakers are Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Al Green (D-Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the first Republican to do so — has been front and center.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” Greene said on X on Saturday. “And I will not be silent about it.”

While stopping short of calling Israel’s actions a “genocide,” others have also turned up the heat and have called for halting U.S. weapons aid to Jerusalem until it reverses course.

“Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency,” Rep. Angus King (I-Maine) declared in a statement at the end of last month. He said he would no longer support aid to Israel, “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.”

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The Palestine Chronicle Case: When Truth Becomes the Crime

The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity – grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.

At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine. For decades he has written, taught, and spoken in public, producing books translated into multiple languages, contributing columns to international publications, addressing audiences in universities and public forums across continents. He is not a shadowy figure; he is a man whose work has been consistent, transparent, and intellectually rigorous. His life is not untouched by the tragedy he describes: many members of his family were killed under Israeli bombardments. Yet while mainstream media rushed to amplify unproven allegations against him, they remained deaf to his personal grief. His tragedy was ignored, his integrity overlooked, his voice distorted – because his engagement is unbearable to those who would prefer silence.

A Crime of Conscience, Not of Law

He is an engaged journalist in the noblest sense: independent, lucid, unflinching. His so-called crime is not collusion with violence but fidelity to memory. That is why he is demonized – not for what he has done in law, but for what he represents in conscience. America, unable to silence Palestinian voices through censorship alone, now instrumentalizes its justice system to achieve by indictment what it failed to achieve by argument. Having harassed universities, intimidated students, and punished professors for their solidarity with Gaza, it turns the courtroom into a new battlefield. And Congress, captive to the whims of its Zionist masters, joins the manhunt, targeting a journalist for the sole offense of telling the truth of his people. As for the mainstream press, it chooses cowardice: ignoring his family’s suffering, ignoring the emptiness of the charges, while echoing the accusations of power as if they were evidence.

Law Twisted into Weapon

The complaint filed against Ramzy Baroud and the organization (People Media Project) that runs the Palestine Chronicle rests on the Alien Tort Statute, grotesquely overstretched to criminalize editorial decisions rather than acts of war. It alleges that by publishing articles from Abdallah Aljamal – described by Israel as a Hamas operative killed during a hostage rescue – the Chronicle “aided and abetted” terrorism. But here lies the first fissure: this characterization of Aljamal comes exclusively from Israeli military sources, themselves a belligerent party. It has never been independently verified. The claim that he was both a journalist and a Hamas operative remains an allegation, not an established fact. To treat it as judicial evidence is to replace proof with propaganda.

Even if – hypothetically – Aljamal had, at the demand of a militant group, harbored hostages, such a circumstance would not in itself render him culpable: what ordinary civilian in a war zone can refuse the command of militants under threat of force? And even if it occurred, how could Ramzy Baroud have known of it? Even taken at face value, the allegation collapses upon scrutiny. No evidence demonstrates that the Chronicle or its editor had actual knowledge of Aljamal’s supposed operational role, nor that modest freelance payments – if any at all – bore any causal nexus to hostage-taking. The federal judge, in February 2025, dismissed the original complaint precisely for lack of proof of knowledge or intent. The plaintiffs returned with an amended filing, repackaged in rhetoric and pathos, but still devoid of the material elements required under international law: actus reus (a substantial contribution to the crime) and mens rea (intent or knowledge).

To equate the publication of articles with material support for terrorism is not jurisprudence but a juridical contortion. It is the substitution of law by politics, the criminalization of journalism under the mask of counterterrorism. What is sought is not justice but intimidation – to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.

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In defiance of voter base, DNC rejects resolution calling for Israel arms embargo

On Tuesday, Democratic National Committee (DNC) members at the party’s summer meetings rejected Resolution 18, which called for the recognition of a Palestinian state, a ceasefire in Gaza, an arms embargo, and a suspension of military aid to Israel.

Instead, members backed a status quo resolution introduced by DNC Chair Ken Martin, which simply called for more aid to be allowed into Gaza and a two-state solution. Despite the support, Martin went on to withdraw the resolution.

“I know that there are some who are interested in making changes today, but as we’ve seen, there’s divide in our party on this issue,” said Martin. “This is a moment that calls for shared dialog. It calls for shared advocacy, and that’s why I’ve decided today, at this moment, listening to the testimony and listening to people in our party, to withdraw my amendment and resolution.”

Martin says he will establish a task force “comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this” so that they can “bring solutions back to our party.”

Resolution 18 had faced opposition from lobby groups like Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI).

“Should it advance, it will further divide our Party, provide a gift to Republicans, and send a signal that will embolden Israel’s adversaries,” claimed DMFI president and CEO Brian Romick. “As we get closer to the midterms, Democrats need to be united, not continuing intra-party fights that don’t get us closer to taking back Congress.”

Polling has consistently shown that Democratic voters are, in fact, united on Israel. A majority of them oppose the genocide in Gaza and want the Israeli government held accountable for its actions in the region.

This month, YouGov and The Economist published a poll showing that 69% of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That includes 77% of Kamala Harris voters.

According to a June Quinnipiac survey, 12% of Democratic voters sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians, while a July Gallup poll found that just 8% of Democratic voters support Israel’s military actions in Gaza and only 9% support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

An April poll from Data for Progress and Zeteo showed that 71% of likely Democratic primary voters think the United States should end arms transfers to Israel until it stops its attacks on civilians and supports the rights of the Palestinians.

80% of likely Democratic primary voters under the age of 45 believe that military assistance to Israel should be restricted.

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Iranians leak personal photos of former prime minister Ehud Barak

Iranian online accounts have leaked personal photos and documents of former prime minister Ehud Barak, Friday reports said.

The photos show Barak posing in a bathroom with a glass of red wine and visiting tourist attractions at an unspecified location.

The leaks, which were posted on social media by Iranian users in recent days, also included an image of Barak’s passport and identity card.

Iranian online accounts have leaked personal photos and documents of former prime minister Ehud Barak, Friday reports said.

The photos show Barak posing in a bathroom with a glass of red wine and visiting tourist attractions at an unspecified location.

The leaks, which were posted on social media by Iranian users in recent days, also included an image of Barak’s passport and identity card.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the leak or where the photos were obtained.

The leaks appeared to date from Barak’s tenure as defense minister from 2007 to 2013.

One of the photos included a timestamp from July 2011, and other photos were marked from July 2009, while Barak was on vacation in Europe with his family.

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Israeli Drones Attack Metro Damascus, Killing at Least Eight Syrian Soldiers

Military tensions between Israel and Syria continue to grow precipitously, with a new flurry of Israeli drone strikes against the Kiswah, a suburb of the capital city of Damascus. The strikes killed at least eight Syrian soldiers and wounded others.

The attack, according to Syrian state media, targeted buildings belonging to the Syrian Army, and killed members of the 44th Division. The IDF has not commented about why they attacked Syria, which will doubtless further complicate ongoing security talks between the two nations.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned today’s strikes as a “grave violation of international law” and a threat to Syrian sovereignty. It is just the latest violation in the area, as Israel also invaded the village of Beit Jinn just down the road earlier this week, capturing a number of Syrian civilians.

Though they never really offered a pretext for why they invaded Beit Jinn, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a statement thereafter declaring Israel intends to remain in the occupied territory within that area to defend the settlements inside the occupied Golan Heights.

The current Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led government of Syria took power in December, and Israel invaded southwestern Syria almost immediately thereafter, seizing an ever-increasing amount of territory. Israel has at least nine military posts they’ve established in Syrian territory since then, and have imposed a full ban on the Syrian military being in any of the governorates south of Damascus.

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Israeli official Alexandrovich skips US court hearing on child sex charges

A senior Israeli official accused of child sex crimes in the United States has failed to appear for a scheduled court hearing in his case, weeks after he returned to Israel, prompting concerns that he may have fled to avoid facing trial.

Tom Artiom Alexandrovich’s lawyer, David Chesnoff, told the court in Nevada on Wednesday that he told his client not to attend the hearing.

“He was instructed by me that he didn’t have to be here,” Chesnoff said.

However, Judge Barbara Schifalacqua was quick to shut down the suggestion, stressing that suspects released on bond like Alexandrovich have “to make every court appearance”.

“I’m looking at his bond documents that indicate the court appearance that he was ordered to appear at was today,” Schifalacqua told Chesnoff. “And so your oral – I guess – request without anything before the court to waive his appearance here today is hereby denied.”

Alexandrovich’s case has been stirring controversy and making international headlines since his arrest was announced earlier this month.

The Israeli official was arrested on August 6, but the incident was not made public until more than a week later, when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department announced an undercover operation “targeting child sex predators”.

Alexandrovich was released and allowed to return to Israel after being charged with luring or attempting to lure a child online to engage in sexual conduct.

His release without travel restrictions has led to speculations that he may have received preferential treatment due to the close ties between the US and Israel.

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How Western Media Helped Turn Israel’s Genocide Into ‘Fake News’

Israel’s justification for the mass slaughter of Gaza’s people and their starvation – now officially confirmed as a famine engineered by Israel – was built on a parade of easily discredited lies from the start: of beheaded infants, of babies in ovens, of mass rape.

It should surprise no one that Israel continued advancing similarly outrageous lies as it set about – as all genocidal regimes must do – dismantling the most basic infrastructure of survival for Gaza’s population.

It cut off humanitarian aid delivered by the United Nations agency Unrwa, and destroyed the enclave’s hospitals, while killing, jailing and torturing its medical personnel.

Israel claimed it had documents proving the UN was a front for Hamas – documents it never produced. Meanwhile, all 36 of Gaza’s hospitals have been attacked – attacks whose implicit rationale was that they were built atop Hamas “command and control centres”, though those centres have never been found.

Expanding this narrative, Israel rounded up and jailed the enclave’s leading doctors, who had been working round the clock to treat the endless tide of maimed men, women and children, as supposed “Hamas operatives” in disguise.

Also as any genocidal regime must do – especially one that wishes to uphold the pretence that it is a democracy with the world’s “most moral army” – Israel laboured tirelessly to cast a pall of darkness over its atrocities.

It blocked western journalists from accessing Gaza, and then picked off Palestinian journalists in the enclave one by one, until more than 200 had been assassinated, 11 in the past couple of weeks alone, including contributors to Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera. Others have been forced to flee to safety abroad.

The western press corps, which barely raised a peep about its exclusion for most of the past 22 months of genocide, collectively shrugged its shoulders as its colleagues in Gaza were slowly exterminated. Nothing to see here.

That was until this month, when Israel celebrated an air strike that killed six Palestinian journalists, including the entire five-person team covering Gaza City for Al Jazeera.

The strike’s timing was extremely fortuitous. Israel is calling up 60,000 troops for a last push into the remains of Gaza City, where around one million Palestinians – half of them children – are holed up, being starved to death.

Those civilians will either be killed or rounded up into a concentration camp Israel is calling a “humanitarian city”, close to the border with Egypt. There, they will await their ultimate expulsion – possibly to South Sudan, a failed state where Israel provided the arms that fuelled civil war and violence.

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