Tag: palestine

Israel Ignores Trump Demand To Stop Bombing During Peace Discussions

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has ignored President Trump’s request to stop the bombing of Gaza during negotiations with the leaders of Hamas over the latest peace proposal. It appears that Trump may be changing some of his views and slowly beginning to realize that, as the Jewish New York Times Columnist, Tom Friedman, wrote last May 9, “Netanyahu is not our friend.”

In just the last few days, Trump has said emphatically that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, criticized Israel’s bombing of Qatar, and has publicly called for Israel to stop bombing Gaza during the peace discussions.

In addition, Axios reported this past weekend that Trump expressed his frustration in a phone call with Netanyahu telling him “You are always so f——ing negative.” Hopefully, Trump was not fooled by Netanyahu’s showy flattery nominating him for the Nobel peace prize at a White House dinner. AI defines flattery as “excessive or dishonest praise given to further one’s interest rather than to genuinely admire another person.” That is exactly what Netanyahu was doing, and everyone knew it.

Several former presidents have been angered by Netanyahu or by actions or demands by earlier Israeli leaders. According to a 2024 CNN story “Netanyahu earned the undying enmity of former President Barack Obama for trying to tank the Iran nuclear deal” and that former President Bill Clinton “exploded” after his first meeting with Netanyahu saying “Who’s the f——ing Superpower here?”

In fact, according to AI and several news reports, almost every U.S. President since Eisenhower, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed anger or frustration with Israel’s demands, wars, and settlement policies.

Eisenhower went the furthest. According to AI, he was “furious” with Israel for its demand for the U.S. to go with it to war with Egypt over the Suez Canal. “Eisenhower threatened to impose economic sanctions and cut off all aid to force Israel to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula. The pressure worked and Israel pulled back its forces.” What is most amazing is that Eisenhower did this on national television just one week before the 1956 Presidential election.

A recent Washington Post poll revealed that, “Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61% saying Israel has committed war crimes….and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians….”

This poll of 815 American Jews also said 68% gave “negative marks to Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel.” The same report said hundreds of thousands had turned out for pro Palestinian demonstrations across Europe, including 250,000 in Rome.

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has now been condemned by huge majorities in 95% of the countries in this world in both street protests and official actions by national governments and the United Nations.

The U.S. has stood as Israel’s only significant ally, along with a very few tiny countries afraid of losing American foreign aid. It is obvious that our Congress would have led the condemnation of what has gone on in Gaza if it had happened in any other country than Israel. In this situation, the silence by members of Congress has been deafening, apparently because of fear of money directed by the Israel Lobby.

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Boston Police Officers Hospitalized With Broken Bones After Being Attacked by Hamas Supporters During Students for Justice in Palestine March to Celebrate October 7 Attack on Israel

Two Boston police officers suffered broken bones and were hospitalized and two other officers were also injured after being attacked by Hamas supporting rioters during a march by Students for Justice in Palestine celebrating the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.

None of the injuries were reported to be life threatening. Thirteen rioters were reported arrested.

Police also reported “equipment being forcibly removed or damaged, including body-worn cameras, radios, bicycles, and other duty gear” by the pro-Hamas rioters.

The attack came two days after the torching of a Boston police cruiser during a street takeover early Sunday morning.

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Van Jones found out: Gaza dead baby jokes aren’t funny

On Friday, Van Jones joked about kids dying in Gaza.

“If you open your phone, and all you see is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy,” Jones said on Bill Maher’s ‘Real Time’ HBO program.

“That’s basically your whole feed,” Jones said.

The audience laughed and applauded.

The CNN host came off as dismissive of these deaths, calling it a “disinformation campaign” on behalf of Iran and Qatar.

The backlash on social media was fierce, where users made clear that the bloodshed in Gaza was very real and not mere “disinformation.”

Progressive pundit Briahna Joy Reid wrote, “Turning ‘dead Gaza baby’ into a punchline is such an evil choice that I’m struggling to even engage with the outrageous lie that we only care about Gazan deaths because of an Iranian social media campaign.”

The Yaqeen Institute’s Omar Suleiman shot back, “Truly disgraceful and vile (Van Jones). I’m sorry dead Gaza babies bother you so much. Maybe tell the people paying you to put lipstick on a genocide to stop killing them.”

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi said Jones’ comments were a blueprint for how pro-Israel elites try to censor “what is actually happening in Gaza: A genocide of children conducted by Israel and defended by plenty of folks in the US, many of them on Israel’s payroll.”

NBC News’s Hola Gorani reacted in a post, “I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Gaza videos in the last 2 years, including content filmed by our brave teams inside the strip, and can confirm that the ‘dead Gaza baby’ images are quite real, not the product of a ‘disinformation campaign’ and that there is nothing funny about them.”

Media critic Sana Saeed might have summed it up best, “The reason Van Jones can get up, use ‘dead Gaza babies’ so crassly, toss in a joke about Diddy mid-sentence, and have an audience erupt in laughter – without hesitation for either context or content – is because of the depth and breadth of dehumanization that’s been permitted toward Palestinians…There is no America in which ‘dead Jewish babies’ could ever be invoked in such a vulgar way on such a platform.”

On Sunday, Jones apologized. Twice. Jones also turned off X replies to his apology.

This did not stop people from replying.

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Bibi Has Been Giving Money to Hamas. An Insidious Intelligence Operation

Confirmed by Israeli media. “Not Fake News”. Bibi has been giving money to Hamas

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (Times of Israel October 8, 2023, emphasis added)

According to Netanyahu:

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Let us be clear. These deceitful money payments are NOT in support of Hamas as a Palestinian political entity involved in the Resistance Movement.  Quite the opposite.

What is at stake is an insidious intelligence op, in support of so-called “intelligence assets” within Hamas.

What is at stake is a carefully planned False Flag Agenda which from the outset on October 7, 2023, upholds Hamas as the alleged “Aggressor” against the people of Israel.

What is the truth, what is the lie?.  The Netanyahu government and its Ministry of Intelligence from the very outset have “blood on their hands”. They are responsible for Israeli deaths resulting from the False Flag agenda.

What is the relationship between Mossad and Hamas?  There is a long history.

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. It was supported at the outset by Israeli intelligence as a means to weaken the Palestinian Authority:

“Thanks to Mossad, (Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”), Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation.

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. (L’Humanité, translated from French)

“How Israel helped to Spawn Hamas”. WSJ

“Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. WSJ January 24, 2009, emphasis added)

The Historic Statement of  Rep. Ron Paul 

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)

What this statement entails is that Hamas is and remains “an intelligence asset”, namely “an “asset” to Israel as well as US intelligence.

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Israel Says No Gaza Ceasefire in Place Despite Trump’s Call for a Stop to the Bombing

The Israeli government said on Sunday that there is no ceasefire in place in Gaza despite President Trump’s calls for Israel to “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza” as the IDF continues to slaughter Palestinians across the Strip.

“While certain bombings have actually stopped inside of the Gaza Strip, there’s no ceasefire in place at this point in time,” said Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Badrosian, according to The Associated Press.

Badrosian added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in “regular contact” with Trump and that the upcoming negotiations in Egypt aimed at securing the release of Israelis held by Hamas and implementing a ceasefire will “be confined to a few days maximum, with no tolerance for maneuvers that will delay talks by Hamas.”

Trump first made the call for Israel to stop bombing Gaza on Friday after Hamas issued its response to the US-Israeli ceasefire proposal. On Saturday, Trump said that he appreciated that “Israel has temporarily stopped the bombing,’ but on the same day, the IDF killed at least 70 Palestinians in Gaza, according to medical sources speaking to Al Jazeera.

The IDF killed at least 129 Palestinians in Gaza over the past two days, according to daily updates released by Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Health Ministry said in its latest release on Sunday that it recorded the deaths of 63 Palestinians and the injury of 153 over the previous 24-hour period.

Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks on Sunday killed at least 24 Palestinians, including at least 12 who were killed in Gaza City. According to Israeli media, the IDF was ordered to halt its operation to conquer Gaza City, but it has continued to bomb the area.

One Israeli strike in Gaza City on Saturday killed 18 people, including seven children between the ages of two months and eight years, according to a statement from Gaza’s Civil Defense.

The IDF also continues to kill desperate Palestinians attempting to get food. According to the AP, at least four Palestinians were killed near an aid site in southern Gaza on Sunday.

On top of the violent deaths, Palestinians continue to starve to death amid the famine caused by the Israeli siege. According to releases from the Health Ministry, at least three Palestinians, including two children, died of starvation over the past two days.

The ministry said on Sunday that its violent death toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 67,139, and the number of wounded has climbed to 169,583. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.

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The U.S. Government Doesn’t Want You To Read This Report on Israel’s Business Deals

The U.S. government doesn’t want you to read what Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has to say. In July 2025, the State Department announced that it was going to freeze her assets for her “lawfare that targets U.S. and Israeli persons.”

Albanese, the State Department press release noted, had “directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC)” at The Hague “in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” And she had “recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations.”

A few weeks earlier, Albanese had submitted her report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.” It accuses several global companies of profiting “from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide,” including Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir, Caterpillar, and even Booking.com. (The report also mentions that companies have been asked for comment, which appears to be the “threatening letters” referred to by the State Department.)

Whether or not one accepts Albanese’s characterization of Israel’s actions, the report itself is an interesting read on the economics of war. The report details how some firms profit directly from providing the state with the tools to inflict violence while others take advantage of the state’s monopoly on violence to grab a monopoly on resources. Albanese calls for international sanctions, legal action, and consumer boycotts aimed at changing these companies’ behavior.

The U.S. government’s attempts to stop the report from being published in the 
first place make it especially worth reading.
Politicians have long wanted to erode Americans’ right to vote with their wallets, and they’ve used boycotts of Israel as a test case to introduce wide-ranging anti-boycott laws. By accusing the United Nations of “lawfare” for simply printing a report, the government is attacking the right of consumers and investors to hear information that lets them make politically conscious decisions.

The Palestinian rights movement has made boycotts a central pillar of its activism, but the actual choice of targets has often been sloppy and incoherent. Activists have gone after Coca-Cola and Pepsi as vague symbols of America and Starbucks over a union dispute that tangentially involved Palestinian symbolism. The infamous protests at Columbia University focused on cutting
indirect ties to weapons companies.

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Trump orders Israel to stop Gaza strikes after Hamas agrees to release Israeli hostages

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered Israel to stop bombing the Gaza Strip after Hamas said it accepted some elements of the president’s plan to end the nearly two-year war and return all remaining hostages who were taken during the deadly attack.

Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump said. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly … this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.”

In a video Trump later posted on social media, he thanked multiple countries that helped him achieve the deal, including Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, among others.

So many people fought so hard,” he said in the footage. “This is a big day. We’ll see how it all turns out. We have to get the final word down and concrete. Very importantly, I look forward to having the hostages come home to their parents and having some of the hostages, unfortunately, you know the condition they’re in, come home likewise to their parents because their parents wanted them just as much as though that young man or young woman were alive.”

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Israel declares 600,000 in Gaza City ‘military targets,’ cuts off lifeline from south

At least 600,000 Palestinians are currently under siege in Gaza City amid the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment, encirclement, and expulsion campaign, the New Arab reported on 2 October. 

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that all Palestinians remaining in the city must abandon their homes, pass Israeli checkpoints, and move to tent encampments in the south, stressing that anyone who stays will be considered a “terrorist” or “terrorist supporter” and targeted by invading Israeli forces.

Now is the “last opportunity for Gaza residents” to move south, Katz said. 

Israeli forces have currently blocked all travel northward on the Rashid coastal road, cutting off the city’s last surviving lifeline for humanitarian aid and preventing Palestinians who had moved south temporarily in search of food and shelter from returning.

“The only safe road for bringing in food and medicine has been cut. Announcements and speeches mean nothing if aid cannot reach civilians,” stated Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson of the Gaza civil defense, in a press statement.

While the Israeli military expected a mass exodus to the south, between 600,000 and 700,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, the UN estimated.

Those remaining are either unwilling or unable to leave their homes.

“We are not leaving. Yesterday, a drone dropped grenades on the rooftop of our building, but we are not leaving,” said 24-year-old Hani while speaking to Reuters.

“We are afraid that if we leave, we will never see Gaza City again.”

The closure of Rashid Street to northward travel is part of an effort to cleanse the northern strip, according to Ramallah-based political analyst Hani al-Masri. 

“Turning the road into a one-way corridor south is a tool of collective pressure, a strategy to forcibly reshape Gaza’s population,” Masri told the New Arab.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud reported Thursday that the Israeli military was creating “mayhem and panic” by ordering people to leave their homes, but then pursuing them on the Rashid Road south with helicopters, drones, and tanks. 

“A big part of the reason that people are not now leaving Gaza City is because of the fear and the intimidation created by the Israeli military,” he said.

Al-Akhbar reported on Thursday that Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes on Gaza City, including in the neighborhoods of Al-Nasr, Sheikh Radwan, and Al-Shati in the city’s northwest, as well as Al-Daraj, Al-Tuffah, and Al-Nafaq in the northeast, and Al-Sabra in the south.

Gaza’s Health Ministry continues to record an average of 100 Palestinians killed per day, Al-Akhbar added, not including the dozens missing whose bodies rescuers are not able to retrieve due to Israeli fire. 

One strike on Wednesday killed the son of Gaza’s civil defense commander and injured several other rescue officers.

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Israel’s Katz Says Civilians in Gaza City Have ‘Last Opportunity to Leave,’ Will Be Treated as ‘Terrorists’

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday issued a threat to Palestinian civilians in famine-stricken Gaza City, warning they have their “last opportunity” to leave the besieged city and that they will be treated as “terrorists” if they remain.

Katz said in a post on X that the IDF has almost encircled Gaza City. “This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza City itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force,” he wrote.

“Those who remain in Gaza will be considered terrorists and terror supporters,” he added.

Israel’s goals for Gaza City involve cleansing it of its Palestinian population and razing every single building to the ground. The IDF has claimed that more than 780,000 civilians have fled, while other estimates put the number around 400,000. Either way, hundreds of thousands of civilians remain for several reasons, including the fact that many are too sick for another displacement.

Among the civilians remaining are the Christians based at the two churches in Gaza City: the Holy Family Catholic Church and the St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church. The clergy have stated they will not leave since they are assisting hundreds of displaced Palestinians sheltering at their facilities.

Palestinians in Gaza City also have reason to believe they will still be targeted in southern Gaza as the IDF continues to bomb the areas it’s telling them to flee to. On Tuesday, Israel bombed a tent in the al-Mawasi camp in the south, killing seven people, including four women and a child, who had fled Gaza City earlier this month.

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Israeli Knesset Advances Bill To Execute Palestinian Prisoners Who Killed Jews

In yet another development which will certainly complicate current Trump administration efforts to find peace in Gaza, the National Security Committee in the Israeli Knesset is advancing a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners detained for killing Israelis.

Killings which are deemed motivated by “racism or hostility to the public” or aimed at harming the “State of Israel” or seeking to thwart the “revival of the Jewish people” would be a capital offensive, according to the legislation. Interestingly, the wording highlights Jewish citizens of Israel are the priority – and not for example Christian, Muslim, or Druze citizens.

It has unleashed immediate controversy both within and outside of Israel. For starters, some Israeli officials as well as families of Oct.7 victims fear that this puts the remaining hostages in Gaza at immediate risk. Notably, the bill does not apply the opposite direction – that is, it would not apply to Israelis who kill Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s coordinator for negotiations on the captives, Gal Hirsch, has gone on record as vehemently opposing the bill.

“It’s not for nothing that we are asking not to hold this discussion. I completely disagree with your assessment of the situation, Minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” he said in a communication protesting the initiative. “Especially when we are engaged in a combined military and diplomatic effort to bring back the hostages, this discussion does not help us.”

An initial Sunday Knesset committee vote was 4-1 in favor, while more of rounds of votes needed for the bill to become law, according to protocol. 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been leading the charge, resisting calls to postpone the vote due to the precariousness of the hostage situation. 

One Palestinian rights group had this to say:

The Israeli bill was denounced by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society as an “unprecedented savagery,” warning that it would entrench what they described as “systematic crimes” against detainees through legislation.

Increasingly, there have been shootings and terroristic attacks by Palestinians in places like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, related to ongoing events in Gaza and the West Bank.

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