Tag: israel

It Was Never About Hostages. It Was Never About Hamas.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that freeing the Israeli hostages in Gaza was not his top priority, suggesting instead that defeating Hamas should take precedence over a hostage deal.

“We have many objectives, many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to bring back all of our hostages. That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Nothing the prime minister said here is true or valid — unless by “enemies” he means “all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu has been fairly transparent about the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is neither freeing the hostages nor defeating Hamas, but seizing Palestinian territory and removing its Palestinian inhabitants. He has openly said that Israel will occupy Gaza via military force, completely ruling out the possibility of any form of Palestinian government for the enclave. He has openly said he wants to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, which explicitly entails removing “all” Palestinians and never allowing them to return.

So they’ve made this perfectly clear. This isn’t about Hamas, except insofar as an armed resistance group will make it difficult to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza. And it certainly isn’t about hostages.

And yet, bizarrely, this is how the western political-media class continues to frame this onslaught. They call it Israel’s “war with Hamas”, when it’s nothing other than an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. They prattle on about October 7, hostages, and terrorism, even though it has already been made abundantly clear that this has nothing to do with any of those things. They act as though the admission was simply never made.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about hostages and Hamas after the US and Israel said the goal is the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They told you what this is really about. They said it. With their face holes. They said it right to you. End of debate.

Israel has been seeking ways to purge Gaza of Palestinians for generations. That’s all this has ever been about. Not October 7. Not hostages. Not Hamas. Not terrorism. Everything about Israel’s operations in Gaza have indicated that their real goal is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory and not to free hostages or defeat Hamas. And then when Trump took office, they started openly admitting it.

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Rep. MTG Says House Bill to Criminalize EU and UN-Backed Boycotts of Israel with $1 Million Fines and 20-Year Sentences Has Been PULLED

The U.S. House of Representatives has reportedly pulled H.R. 867, the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, following fierce opposition from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and former Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), aimed to expand the 2018 Anti-Boycott Act to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations and European Union, targeting efforts to boycott U.S. allies, particularly Israel.

The Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 is a U.S. federal law that prohibits U.S. individuals and companies from participating in or supporting foreign-led boycotts against countries that are friendly to the United States, unless such boycotts are sanctioned by U.S. law.

This legislation is particularly aimed at countering boycotts initiated by foreign entities, such as the Arab League’s boycott of Israel.

The Arab League’s boycott of Israel—originally initiated in 1945—still exists on paper, but only a few member countries continue to actively enforce it in a comprehensive way.

  • Iraq
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Libya
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Yemen

Violations can result in civil penalties up to $300,000 or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, and criminal penalties up to $1 million and/or imprisonment for up to 20 years.

In recent years, several companies have faced penalties for antiboycott violations:

  • Quantum Corporation was fined $151,875 for 45 alleged violations involving requests from a distributor in the United Arab Emirates to refrain from importing Israeli-origin goods.
  • Wabtec Corporation was hit with a $153,175 fine for 43 violations after failing to report requests from a Qatari customer to participate in a foreign boycott by avoiding Israeli-origin goods.
  • Pratt & Whitney was penalized $48,750 for 13 violations tied to similar unreported requests from a Qatari customer urging the company to refrain from importing products from Israel.

The new bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and several others, will expand the 2018 law’s scope to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations and its affiliates.

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RFK Jr. Calls Out King Abdullah: ‘They’ve Cut Us Off’

It’s a rare moment today in American politics that Donald Trump’s West Wing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi are on the same side of an issue. And it’s rarer still that each of these parties is irritated at the same person.

Yet as Jordan’s King Abdullah II returns to Washington on Monday, top Trump aides, Kennedy, and Pelosi are venting their frustration with one of the Middle East’s longest-serving monarchs.

At issue: the commitment Abdullah made in February sitting by Trump’s side in the Oval Office to accept 2,000 children from Gaza with cancer and other grave illnesses.

Abdullah, say multiple high-ranking officials in both parties, is slow-walking his pledge, and Jordan has only accepted a fraction of sick children because of fears Israel will not let them and their families return to Gaza after treatment.

“They took 44, and then they’ve cut us off,” Kennedy told me over the weekend.

Alluding to Abdullah, an adviser and ally to American presidents for over a quarter-century, Kennedy said: “I would encourage him to put the welfare of these children first and put the politics aside.”

The health secretary pointedly recalled that the king’s “statements to President Trump were really unconditional.” Kennedy repeatedly emphasized the life-and-death urgency of the patients. “These kids are very, very fragile,” he said.

A top West Wing official involved in the discussions was even more to the point, calling Jordan’s reluctance to fully fulfill their pledge “a sad commentary” and that “the war makes things difficult for obvious reasons.”

Pelosi, who has a longstanding friendship with Abdullah, took matters into her own hands last week and had a blunt, private conversation with Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S., Dina Kawar. Kawar told Pelosi that Abdullah’s pledge was contingent on Israel allowing those children who’ve finished treatment to return to Gaza and suggested the former speaker talk to the king, I’m told by a person familiar with the conversation.

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Yemeni Missile Strikes Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport

A missile fired from Yemen struck an access road on the grounds of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, as a heavy US bombing campaign has failed to deter Yemen’s Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah.

According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli military tried multiple times to intercept the missile but failed. A US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that’s deployed to Israel also failed to intercept the Yemeni missile.

The missile left a crater, and six people were injured by the attack, though none of them were seriously hurt. The Houthis have fired a series of missiles and drones at Israel since the Israeli military resumed its genocidal war on Gaza on March 18, but the Sunday attack marked the first time a Yemeni missile made it past Israel’s air defenses.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel would respond to the Houthi attack. “We’ve acted against them in the past, and we’ll act again in the future,” he said. “This isn’t a one-and-done, but there will be some big hits.”

Israel launched a few rounds of airstrikes on Yemen last year but hasn’t done so under the Trump administration. In March, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the US has asked Israel not to respond to the Houthis’ attacks and said that US forces will handle the retaliation.

Since March 15, the US has launched over 1,000 strikes on Yemen, killing more than 200 civilians. The Trump administration started the bombing campaign in response to the Houthis announcing they would re-impose their blockade on Israeli shipping after Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in violation of the ceasefire deal.

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Donald Trump fired national security adviser Mike Waltz for ‘plotting with Israel’s leader to bomb Iran’

President Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser Mike Waltz because he was plotting with Israel‘s leader to attack Iran, it was claimed last night.

Waltz, 51, was thought to have been fired because he accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat about plans to attack Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group, causing global embarrassment for the Trump administration.

But last night the Washington Post reported the real reason for Trump’s ire was that Waltz huddled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s White House visit in February and ‘appeared to share the Israeli leader’s conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran,’ according to a source.

Trump was angered that Waltz ‘engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump.’

The source said: ‘Waltz wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution. 

It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it. You can’t do that. You work for the president of your country, not the president of another country.’

Waltz, a former Green Beret, was sacked from his position as head of the National Security Council (NSC) on Friday and will now become ambassador to the United Nations, a ‘massive downgrade move to save face’, according to one Trump insider.

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Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza

A ship carrying supplies bound for the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters on Friday, according to the activist group that organized the flotilla. The vessel reportedly took at least one direct hit to its hull and sustained damage from fire, forcing its crew to issue an urgent call for help.

Organizers with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of their vessels was attacked by an unidentified drone in the early hours of Friday morning, noting the ship was not far off the coast of Malta when it was hit.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a press release. “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull. [. . .] The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

An FFC spokesperson, Caoimhe Butterly, later told Reuters that the ship was struck en route to Malta, where it was scheduled to pick up other activists, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. The group said it had arranged the aid shipment “under a media black out to avoid any potential sabotage.”

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Two Israeli businessmen murdered hours apart in same LA neighborhood — with one held captive for hours and beaten to death

Two Israeli businessmen were found murdered hours apart in their homes in the same section of Los Angeles Saturday, with one tied up and beaten to death while the other was identified as the brother of a prison warden in the Jewish state, police said.

There is no apparent connection between the two killings, but they both occurred in the San Fernando Valley inside the victims’ homes.

The murder of Alexander Modebadze, 47, was particularly heinous, according to cops.

Three attackers broke into Modebadze’s home, held him captive for hours and savagely beat him to death, police said in a statement.

Police later arrested and charged three Georgian nationals for the murder: Pata Kochiashvili, Zaza Outarashvili and Basiki Kutsishvili.

They are being held on a $2 million bail.

Later that day, cops found another murdered Israeli businessman in the San Fernando Valley: Meni Hidhra, the brother of the warden of Israel’s Nitzan Prison, the Jewish Journal reported.

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U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It’s Coming Home.

Rita Murad, a 21-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel and student at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, was arrested by Israeli authorities in November 2023 after sharing three Instagram stories on the morning of October 7. The images included a picture of a bulldozer breaking through the border fence in Gaza and a quote: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” She was suspended from university and faced up to five years in prison.

In recent years, Israeli security officials have boasted of a “ChatGPT-like” arsenal used to monitor social media users for supporting or inciting terrorism. It was released in full force after Hamas’s bloody attack on October 7. Right-wing activists and politicians instructed police forces to arrest hundreds of Palestinians within Israel and east Jerusalem for social media-related offenses. Many had engaged in relatively low-level political speech, like posting verses from the Quran on WhatsApp or sharing images from Gaza on their Instagram stories.

When the New York Times covered Murad’s saga last year, the journalist Jesse Baron wrote that, in the U.S., “There is certainly no way to charge people with a crime for their reaction to a terrorist attack. In Israel, the situation is completely different.”

Soon, that may no longer be the case.

Hundreds of students with various legal statuses have been threatened with deportation on similar grounds in the U.S. this year. Recent high-profile cases have targeted those associated with student-led dissent against the Israeli military’s policies in Gaza. There is Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, taken from his Columbia University residence and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. There is Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts disappeared from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, by plainclothes officers allegedly for co-authoring an op-ed calling on university administrators to heed student protesters’ demands. And there is Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia philosophy student arrested by ICE agents outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office where he was scheduled for his naturalization interview.

In some instances, the State Department has relied on informants, blacklists, and technology as simple as a screenshot. But the U.S. is in the process of activating a suite of algorithmic surveillance tools Israeli authorities have also used to monitor and criminalize online speech.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department was launching an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” initiative to accelerate the cancellation of student visas. Algorithms would collect data from social media profiles, news outlets, and doxing sites to enforce the January 20 executive order targeting foreign nationals who threaten to “overthrow or replace the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands.” The arsenal was built in concert with American tech companies over the past two decades and already deployed, in part, within the U.S. immigration system.

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Netanyahu’s Wife Caught On Mic Saying ‘Fewer’ Than 24 Hostages Alive In Gaza

It appears that Israel has intelligence which strongly suggests the majority of 59 hostages remaining in Gaza are dead. It has long been acknowledged that at least some of the captives are deceased, but the Israeli government has kept a tight lid on information it has on the numbers.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara has unleashed new controversy, heightening tensions and outrage from victims’ families. She was heard on a hot mic at an event on Monday saying that “fewer” than 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza.

It’s unclear whether she intended to be heard by the audience at a moment her husband, PM Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking, but she muttered something key and it was picked up by the microphone.

Below is CNN’s account of what happened and what was said:

“We have of course an important task, not only to win but also to bring home (the hostages),” Netanyahu said at a meeting with Israeli holiday torchbearers on Monday. “Until today we have returned 196 of our hostages, 147 of whom were alive. There are… up to 24 living. Up to 24 living.”

“Fewer,” Sara Netanyahu interrupted quietly, seated to her husband’s right.

“I say up to,” Netanyahu quickly responded. “And the rest are, I’m sorry to say, not alive. And we will return them.”

Lately Israeli officials have issued alarm, saying they believe more hostages may be in danger of dying as the conflict drags on. Ceasefire negotiations with Hamas have been collapsed and nonexistent for months at this point.

Victims’ families and anti-Netanyahu protesters have demanded the resumption of the truce deal, in order to see the remaining captives released. The Netanyahu government has instead opted for a military solution.

“On the eve of Memorial Day, you sowed indescribable panic in the hearts of the families of the hostages – families already living in agonizing uncertainty,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement, blasting Israeli leadership.

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Amnesty International: Israel Carrying Out ‘Live-Streamed Genocide’ in Gaza

Amnesty International said in its annual human rights report that Israel is carrying out a “live-streamed genocide” as the world looks on.

“Since 7 October 2023 – when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages – the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said in an introduction to the report.

“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals, and schools,” Callamard added.

The report said that Israel was committing the crime of genocide by “killing Palestinian civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inciting conditions of life calculated to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction by causing mass forced displacement, obstructing or denying lifesaving aid, and by damaging or destroying life-sustaining infrastructure.”

Amnesty first concluded Israel was committing genocide in Gaza in a report published in December 2024. The US has rejected the conclusion and has opposed the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice since US officials are implicated due to US military aid and other types of support for Israel.

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