Tag: israel

Israel Leveled Gaza — Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World

Four years ago, Mahmoud Isleem al-Basos began messaging Shadi al-Tabatiby on social media, again and again, asking to join him on shoots. Al-Tabatiby, one of Gaza’s best-known drone journalists, didn’t pay much attention at first.

“But Mahmoud was persistent,” al-Tabatiby said. “So I told him, ‘Fine, I’ll meet you.’”

Twice, al-Tabatiby told al-Basos where he’d be filming; both times, al-Basos showed up and waited.

“There’s an age gap between us, but I love people who work hard and want to learn,” al-Tabatiby said. “I found that in Mahmoud.”

The two grew close, and al-Basos began joining al-Tabatiby on shoots.

Then came Israel’s war on Gaza. Al-Tabatiby, who was freelancing for The Associated Press, relocated to the south. Al-Basos stayed in the north. With movement between the two areas cut off by the Israeli military, they kept in touch.

Al-Tabatiby started assigning al-Basos shoots from afar, and the young journalist picked up work with international outlets, including Reuters and the Turkish news agency Anadolu.

Even after al-Tabatiby evacuated to Egypt a year ago, they stayed in close contact.

Two weeks ago, on March 15, al-Basos was filming preparations for a Ramadan iftar in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia. The backdrop was a new expansion of a displacement camp opened by the London-based Al-Khair Foundation, which was paying al-Basos to film the event. Then two Israeli airstrikes hit the area. At least seven people were killed, including al-Basos.

“I was in shock,” Al-Tabatiby said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

He added, with incredulity, “We were in a ceasefire.”

Al-Basos became the fifth drone journalist to be killed by Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.

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Publisher’s Firing Shows Double Standard in Israel/Palestine Cartooning

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

After the cartoon ran last month, a local Jewish activist group took offense at the perceived antisemitic nature of the anti-war cartoon. The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County was so upset it purchased a full-page ad condemning the cartoon to run in the Sunday edition (2/9/25).

That Doris and Danzinger are both of Jewish descent did not deter the complainers. Neither did their politics. Doris (Stet News, 3/2/25) describes himself as pro-Israel, as well as the Post‘s “only Jewish editor.” Danzinger told comics scholar Kent Worcester (Comics Journal, 11/05) that he agreed “with a great many things that the Republicans have been traditionally for,” and that he voted for George H.W. Bush twice.

For his temerity to run an anti-war cartoon acknowledging the Palestinian dead, Doris was fired by Gannett, the conglomerate that owns hundreds of newspapers across the country, including the Post. Gannett issued a statement that the cartoon “did not meet our standards” and “would not have been published if the proper protocols were followed.” “We sincerely regret the error,” said the spokesperson for the Post, “and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again.” Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) remarked that Gannet executives are “afraid of their shadow.”

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From JFK to Donald Trump: How the USA Became Wedded to Zionist Israel

There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.

JFK and Israel/Palestine

Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region.

In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said, “I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.” That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored.  

Kennedy did not just issue warnings. To the chagrin of the Israelis, JFK established friendly relations with Egypt’s President Nasser. The Kennedy administration provided loans and aid to Egypt.

The JFK administration supported UN resolution 194 which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees driven out of their homeland. Although Israel committed to abide by UN resolutions when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, the Israelis reneged on this commitment and were hostile to the resolution. The day before JFK was assassinated, the New York Times reported (p 19), “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees” and “U.S. Stand Angers Israel.”  The second item begins, “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestinian-refugee debate.”

John Kennedy’s brother Robert was Attorney General and headed the Department of Justice. For two years, up until the end of 1963, the DOJ made increasingly strict demands that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as agents of a foreign country. In response, the AZC stalled, delayed, and created the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

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Israeli soldier tells CBS News he was ordered to use Palestinians as human shields in Gaza

The war is back in Gaza. Since abandoning a ceasefire on March 17, the Israel Defense Forces have pounded the Palestinian territory with waves of deadly strikes it says are targeting Hamas terrorists. Those strikes have brought the overall death toll in Gaza to well over 50,000 since the beginning of the war, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.

CBS News spoke recently with an Israeli soldier who has questioned the military’s tactics. Tommy — not his real name, as he agreed to speak with CBS News on the condition of anonymity — fought in Gaza for the IDF, and his account of the tactics used raises some serious questions.

“We’ve burned down buildings for no reasons, which is violating the international law, of course,” he told CBS News. “…And we used human shields as protection.”

Tommy said his commander ordered his unit to use Gazan civilians to search buildings for explosives instead of dogs.

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The Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics

A far-right, pro-Israel group with a history of support for terror and genocide is working closely with the Trump administration, preparing dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestine figures it wants deported from the United States.

Betar U.S. is known to have had several meetings with senior government officials and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the nationwide anti-genocide student demonstrations that began at Columbia University last year.

Ross Glick, the group’s executive director until last month, noted that he met with a diverse set of influential lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and aides to Republican Senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford, and that all supported Betar U.S.’ campaign to rid the country of thousands of “terror supporters.”

Shortly after Glick’s trip to Washington, D.C., Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that promises “the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation” and to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

Trump himself announced that Khalil’s arrest, which made worldwide headlines, was “the first of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The 45th and 47th president has also stated that he plans to deport “Communists” and “Marxists” from the United States, even those who are citizens. As such, this marks an escalation in government-backed suppression of dissent not seen since the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.

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The High Price of War With Iran: $10 Gas and the Collapse of the US Economy

Israel is currently in turmoil, marked by widespread protests demanding Netanyahu’s resignation. Critics accuse him of prolonging war for political gain, while his dismissal of top security officials and ongoing attacks on the judiciary have further intensified the unrest.

Meanwhile, Washington DC’s drumbeat for war never stops. It’s always at the expense of a decent and secure standard of living for people in this country and abroad.

The Trump Administration, after the series of heady airstrikes against Yemen, is at this moment being beseeched by Netanyahu and his associates to prepare for a seemingly consequence-free nuclear strike against Iran, completing the trifecta of Netanyahu’s long-standing dream.

I have consistently warned against the consequences of an attack on Iran, delivering 155 speeches to the House, 63 presentations alone in the 109th Congress, between 2005 and 2007, when the Bush Administration deliberated using nuclear “bunker-busters” as a means of bringing Iran to heel.

I understood the politics then and I understand them today. I warned hundreds of times that it was not in America’s interests to go to war against Netanyahu’s hit list: Iraq, Iran, Libya…

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Federal Agents Arrest Tufts Student as Part of Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Speech

On Tuesday, ICE agents arrested a PhD student at Tufts University, a private university in Massachusetts, an arrest that appears to be part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen in the US on an F-1 student visa, was arrested outside of her apartment and is now in federal custody. Her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said she has not been able to contact her.

“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her. No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of. We hope Rumeysa will be released immediately,” Khanbabai said.

Khanbabi said that “based on patterns we are seeing across the country, her exercising her free speech rights appear to have played a role in her detention,” referring to the targeting of foreign students who are critical of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Ozturk has been targeted by the Canary Mission, a pro-Israel group that doxxes students and professors who are critical of Israel. The Canary Mission’s page on Ozturk lists only one example of her “anti-Israel activism,” the co-authoring of an op-ed that called for Tufts University to divest from Israel and “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”

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NAT SEC ARCHIVE: Concerned About Nuclear Weapons, JFK Pushed for Inspection of Israel Nuclear Facilities

President John F Kennedy worried that Israel’s nuclear program was a potentially serious proliferation risk and insisted that Israel permit periodic inspections to mitigate the danger, according to declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.  Kennedy pressured the government of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to prevent a military nuclear program, particularly after stage-managed tours of the Dimona facility for U.S. government scientists in 1961 and 1962 raised suspicions within U.S. intelligence that Israel might be concealing its underlying nuclear aims.  Kennedy’s long-run objective, documents show, was to broaden and institutionalize inspections of Dimona by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On 30 May 1961, Kennedy met Ben-Gurion in Manhattan to discuss the bilateral relationship and Middle East issues. However, a central (and indeed the first) issue in their meeting was the Israeli nuclear program, about which President Kennedy was most concerned.   According to a draft record of their discussion, which has never been cited, and is published here for the first time, Ben-Gurion spoke “rapidly and in a low voice” and “some words were missed.”  He emphasized the peaceful, economic development-oriented nature of the Israeli nuclear project. Nevertheless the note taker, Assistant Secretary of State Philips Talbot, believed that he heard Ben-Gurion mention a “pilot” plant to process plutonium for “atomic power” and also say that “there is no intention to develop weapons capacity now.” Ben-Gurion tacitly acknowledged that the Dimona reactor had a military potential, or so Talbot believed he had heard.  The final U.S. version of the memcon retained the sentence about plutonium but did not include the language about a “pilot” plant and  “weapons capacity.”

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What Is Israeli Qatargate?

The gist of the evolving controversy shaking Israeli politics to the core is allegations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides received payments from Qatar while managing hostage negotiations. 

Both the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and police are investigating claims that Qatar funded the salary of Netanyahu’s spokesperson, who had access to classified war-related materials.

Netanyahu has pushed for the dismissal of Ronen Bar, the head of the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, accusing him of blackmail, and failure to prevent the October 7th attacks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet voted unanimously on March 20-21, 2025, to dismiss Bar, with the dismissal initially set to take effect by April 10, 2025. However, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction on March 22, 2025, freezing the dismissal until a hearing scheduled for no later than April 8, 2025. On March 25, 2025, the High Court extended the freeze on Bar’s ouster but allowed Netanyahu to begin interviewing potential replacements, indicating that while the dismissal process is stalled, it has not been fully overturned.

There have long been allegations of corruption within the Netanyahu administration.

There are allegations Netanyahu allowed the October 7th attack in order to cause a national security crisis and stay in power in the face of months-long protests and demands for his resignation from the opposition, due to the Israeli Prime Minister’s push for ‘judicial reform’.

Some on the political right theorize this is the Israeli ‘deep state’ working to remove a successful conservative leader, in collusion with worldwide globalist forces.

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The Last Chapter of the Genocide

This is the last chapter of the genocide.

It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza.

No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.

Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.

The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies.

The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.

The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. 

The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. 

The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”

The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.

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