Tag: palestine

Netanyahu orders Israeli army to seize ‘70% of Gaza Strip’, violating ceasefire deal

Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has given orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the Gaza Strip in a move that threatens to torpedo an already fragile ceasefire and create catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the already devastated territory.

Under the US-brokered ceasefire in October, the Israeli army withdrew to a demarcation line which gave Israel direct control of 53% of the occupied territory. Since then, Israeli forces have steadily advanced their positions westward into the Hamas-controlled half of the strip, and declared an ever-expanded no man’s land west of that, within which they claim the right to decide who can enter and open fire on anyone perceived as a threat.

In recent days, Israeli-backed armed militias have taken a leading role in emptying the territory along the ceasefire line, telling residents to vacate their homes or shelters.

Throughout the eight months of the ceasefire, Israeli forces have continued to open fire on Palestinians within range of the “yellow line” splitting the strip, and carry out airstrikes deeper inside western Gaza, killing more than 900 Palestinians since the truce began.

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Global Sumud Flotilla Urges Probe of US Complicity in Members’ Abduction and Torture by Israel

Testimonies published Tuesday from activists, journalists, medical professionals, and others who took part in the latest international flotilla attempting to break Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza called for an investigation into US complicity in their illegal high-seas abduction and alleged torture, sexual assault, and other abuse by Israeli forces.

“As testimonies from the 428 participants illegally kidnapped by the Israeli regime continue to surface, the United States’ critical role in the abuses and torture of humanitarian volunteers and journalists has become undeniable,” Global Sumud Flotilla’s (GSF) media team said in a statement.

“This role goes beyond the State Department’s diplomatic shielding and the US Embassy’s refusal to assist American families seeking information,” GSF continued. “It includes the very ship on which volunteer participants were illegally detained and tortured, and the weapons used to inflict life-threatening trauma against them.”

That vessel, the amphibious landing ship INS Nahshon, was built by Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding in Louisiana and was fully financed by the US government. GSF activists first became aware of what they now call the “torture boat” when it was used to detain members of the previous Gaza-bound flotilla, dozens of whom required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces.

This time, according to GSF, “detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container. Inside, groups of three to five soldiers systematically brutalized each person who came through the door while those waiting outside listened to the screams.”

Flotilla participant Yassine Benjelloun described his mistreatment by his Israeli captors.

“All of a sudden I hear, ‘Welcome to Israel.’ And I start getting hit, like first hit on the head, second hit in the ribs, then I fall, then they kick me,” he said. “What lasts maybe three or five minutes seems like a lifetime. You don’t know that the door is going to open, and they’re going to kick you out.”

Dr. Jihan Alya Mohd Nordin, a Malaysian physician aboard the flotilla, documented 35 GSF members with fractured or dislocated bones, as well as severe head injuries including concussions and eye or ear trauma, and 14 cases of sexual assault.

“Being a doctor, the main aim is to reduce the sufferings of people,” Jihan said. “But when we cannot do anything to help them, it was the worst and most horrible feeling that I have. It was so devastating.”

Jihan said she was shoved, struck, punched, kicked, and choked by her captors, who forcibly stripped off her hijab.

In addition to the ship, the weapons used against the civilian flotilla members were also made in the USA.

“Stun grenades and metal-bearing projectile rounds were identified by manufacturer markings as products of Combined Tactical Systems (CTS), a brand of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based weapons manufacturer Combined Systems Inc. (CSI),” GSF said. “These weapons were fired at close range in enclosed spaces against participants who were sitting down or trying to sleep, a direct violation of the manufacturer’s own usage guidelines.”

GSF argues that “none of this was accidental.”

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The Israeli Knesset just voted to dissolve itself, but this won’t end the Gaza genocide

Israel might change its government sooner than expected after the Israeli Knesset voted to dissolve itself last week. The bill presented to the parliamentary body on May 20, which passed with a majority of 110 votes in favor and no opposing votes, could lead to early elections in September rather than November of this year. The vote was held in the absence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is set to be reconsidered at three more readings before moving toward implementation.

If passed, the current Knesset will expire, along with the government coalition based on its composition and the current cabinet led by Netanyahu. According to Israeli polls, Netanyahu’s main coalition allies, namely hardline ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have low chances of winning. Although the two main opposition leaders, Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid, joined forces in a new party, polls indicate that Netanyahu’s Likud Party would still win 56 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. This leaves the Likud as the main political force in Israel, but without enough of a majority to form a government on its own, forcing it to form a coalition with other opposition parties.

The vote came amid renewed controversy surrounding the military drafting of Orthodox Haredi Israelis to military service. Haredi leaders presented the bill after Netanyahu’s government failed to advance another bill to exempt the Haredis from military service. 

The vote to dissolve the Knesset also comes amid mounting criticism of Netanyahu over his performance during the war on Iran and the security failure on October 7, 2023.

But what would the dissolution of the Israeli Knesset mean for Palestinians? And what does it say about the current state of Israeli politics that Netanyahu didn’t oppose the vote to move to early elections?

The short answer is: not much, or at least not for the better. Israel’s opposition parties have backed the war on Gaza, the expansion of settlements, and the war on Lebanon just as fervently as Netanyahu’s coalition, and in some cases have criticized him for not going far enough. Any new government will most likely pursue the same fundamental policies toward Palestinians. In the near term, the more pressing concern is what the current government will do to shore up its electoral standing before it leaves office. Precedent suggests that means further escalation.

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Israel’s organ theft scandal exposes a culture of desecration

On 25 January, Israeli President Isaac Herzog stood before a crowd celebrating what Tel Aviv claimed was a world record in kidney donations. The event, promoted after a lobbying push to Guinness World Records, was meant to project generosity, discipline, and moral purpose.

But Guinness listed only the gathering itself as a record, not the kidney donations that Tel Aviv had turned into a public relations show.

The bodies behind the numbers

In Gaza, where Israel has been returning Palestinian bodies in bags, sometimes decomposed, mutilated, or showing signs of surgical interference, the celebration landed differently. For Palestinian health officials, the question was not how Israel had produced so many donors, but whether all of those bodies had consented.

Dimming Israel’s “propaganda facade” was none other than Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. He said Israel’s “record numbers” raised serious questions about the sources of the kidneys and other organs now being celebrated. He pointed to the stark contradiction of an occupation state that has held Palestinian bodies for years in the “cemeteries of numbers” and refrigerators while presenting itself to the world as a humanitarian model in organ donation.

Bursh cited documented cases of bodies returned to families missing organs, especially kidneys, without medical reports, autopsy files, or any legal path to accountability. He demanded an independent international investigation into whether Israel’s claimed achievement had been built on the theft of Palestinian organs.

Just over a week later, Israel returned the scattered remains of some 54 Palestinians to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Forensic teams quickly got to work in an attempt to identify the bodies and give closure to their families, but noted that many of the corpses had clear signs of torture and the surgical organ removal.

This was not the first such warning since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Ten days into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, allegations of organ theft had already surfaced. By late November 2023, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called for an investigation into the theft of Palestinian organs, after “medical professionals found evidence of organ theft, including missing cochleas and corneas as well as other vital organs like livers, kidneys, and hearts.”

Israel and its defenders moved to blunt the spread of these allegations by invoking “blood libel” and antisemitism. Because the evidence came from Palestinians, calls for international scrutiny have largely fallen on deaf ears.

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US to build AI park and nuclear energy facility in southern Israel with 99-year lease in motion

Israel and the United States have allegedly reached an agreement to establish a large-scale technology park in southern Israel, with the deal expected to be signed in Jerusalem later this month. The facility is set to function primarily as a strategic chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence centre.

A document obtained by Globes showed that the project, designated “Fort Foundry One,” will occupy approximately 16,000 dunams in either the Negev or Gaza Envelope region.

The memorandum of understanding, signed by the chief of the National Artificial Intelligence Headquarters, Brigadier General (res.) Erez Askal and US Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg granted the United States a 99-year lease on the land.

While the territory will remain under Israeli sovereignty, ongoing management and primary investment will come from the United States, with American technology companies operating alongside Israeli firms.

This agreement appears to be occurring as Middle Eastern economies look to become part of the US’ Pax Silica, as Israel’s tech sector experiences renewed momentum following the Gaza war.

The recently signed Pax Silicaa deal is a US-led international initiative launched in late 2025 to build secure, resilient supply chains for advanced technologies, especially AI and semiconductors, under the Trump administration 

Current members of Pax Silica include the United States (as Lead), Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Qatar (Joined January 12) and the United Arab Emirates (Joined January 14).

The high electricity demands of data centres and AI computing systems have raised the possibility of constructing a new nuclear reactor on-site, which could prove complex given Israel’s non-signatory status to international civilian nuclear reactor treaties.

In an earlier report by the Times of Israel, construction work at Israel’s only nuclear site in Dimona appeared to increase at the end of 2025, indicating an increase of development of the sector ahead of the announcement of the new AI centres.

The Associated Press first reported on excavations at the facility, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) south of Jerusalem, in 2021. 

The United States’ treaty membership could enable a unique regulatory model where the reactor operates under American supervision despite its location on Israeli territory, though official documentation refers more broadly to “high-density energy infrastructure.”

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Daily Mail lies: Oct 7 victim saved from rape by non-existent Muslim prohibition on violating scarred women

The latest Oct. 7 rape hoax propaganda piece from The Daily insists that the only reason a woman at the Nova music festival wasn’t raped by Hamas members is that she had a scar – and falsely claims that “scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”

In one of its most brazen disinformation efforts in years, the British tabloid The Daily Mail has published a fake news story claiming that an Israeli woman who was permitted to leave by Hamas militants only avoided being sexually assaulted by showing her captors her scar.

According to the woman in question, May Hayat, she had been taken prisoner by “terrorists” at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when she began to detect “an energy and look in their eyes that every woman knows what’s going to happen next.”

However, she insists the men declined to rape her because Muslims subscribe to a belief system under which “a scar like [hers] means a strong woman,” and “if something happened to her because of them, the 72 virgins they are promised will not come looking for them in heaven.”

This claim contradicts all known Islamic jurisprudence, including the mainstream Sunni doctrine espoused by Hamas – which forbids fighters (and men more generally) from carrying out sexual violence against women, and which does not in any way single out women with scars for special treatment.

But The Daily Mail article, entitled “October 7 survivor reveals how a childhood scar saved her from Hamas terrorists,” fully endorses Hayat’s extraordinarily suspicious claim. Hayat, the outlet states credulously, was later “told that such scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”

Hayat’s story, in which she now claims she narrowly avoided being raped, has changed significantly over the years. One month after the attack, Hayat alleged that she escaped her supposed Hamas captors, telling Reuters: “I could see how they were fighting over whether to kill me or not, and I ran away.”

Now, however, The Daily Mail writes that Hayat was actually freed when “the leader” of a Hamas cell acknowledged her scar, and “shook his head at his fellow terrorist before telling May she was free to go.”

It’s not The Daily Mail’s first attempt to launder Israeli rape hoax propaganda. In June 2024, The Grayzone revealed that what the tabloid billed as an “exclusive” story confirming Palestinians raped Israeli women on October 7 actually consisted of coerced confessions which were so full of contradictions about nonexistent victims that they are all but guaranteed to be false.

The author of that debunked report, Natalie Lisbona, has been photographed smiling with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for his involvement in war crimes in Gaza.

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It’s the genocide, stupid

On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign.

The rollout was highly on-brand for the Democratic establishment. The 192-page document seems slapped together, is full of typos, and was released only because CNN obtained a copy. In an accompanying note, DNC Chair Ken Martin said the report didn’t meet his standards, but that it was being released “because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”

In fact, the report has further eroded that trust by omitting some big, obvious reasons why Harris lost. Concerns about Biden’s age and his inexplicable decision to run for reelection are barely mentioned, and there’s virtually no analysis of the Democratic policies that might have helped propel Trump to another victory.

If one were compiling such a list, support for the Gaza genocide would presumably be near the top, but the issue is not mentioned once in the massive report.

You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.

A couple of months later, she reiterated her position on The View, telling the hosts that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently. Although later in the interview she said that, unlike Biden, she would put Republicans in her cabinet.

Throughout the Harris campaign, Palestine advocates called on the former Senator to shift her position and take a firm stance against Israel’s actions.

“By taking a strong stand against Netanyahu’s authoritarian policies, the Biden-Harris administration can unify the Democratic Party and regain the trust of key voter bases, including young people, Arabs, and Muslims,” read an open letter to Harris from the Not Another Bomb coalition to Harris at the time. “This decisive action will reinforce the administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights, contrasting sharply with the far-right extremism embodied by Trump and his supporters. It sends a clear message that the Democratic Party stands for peace, justice, and the protection of all people, thereby strengthening the coalition needed to secure victory in the 2024 elections and beyond.”

She wouldn’t budge.

At the Democratic National Convention that August, the Uncommitted Movement pushed for a Palestinian speaker to be included. “The difficulty in approving even a single Palestinian American speaker among the dozens of speakers on the convention stage sends a troubling message to our anti-war voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party,” explained a statement from the organization’s founders.

The request was denied.

It’s inaccurate to say the campaign simply ignored these issues. On the contrary, they leaned in from the opposite direction, embracing hawkish former House member Liz Cheney and sending Rep. Ritchie Torres to Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, to tell voters that Harris would stand with Israel.

There’s a certain kind of centrist pundit who likes to wax sarcastic about the 2024 election and point out that Trump is also an ardent supporter of Israel. The inference is that people concerned about Gaza accomplished nothing by voting against Harris.

However, this brand of snark often presupposes that people fed up with the genocide actually voted. Yes, some people backed Trump because they irrationally believed that the guy currently bombing Iran was antiwar, but the actual number of people that foolish is presumably negligible. Much hay is also made over the Green Party, but Jill Stein got fewer than 900,000 votes and thus had no discernible impact on the ultimate result.

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Israel Ramps Up Demolitions of Palestinian Homes Ahead of Fall Elections

East Jerusalem is days away from its largest forced displacement since 1967.

Eight Palestinian homes are set to be demolished by the end of May — the highest number in a single month, according to the Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim since it began tracking such demolitions.

“Soon, these will all be gone,” said Fakhri Abu Diab, a longtime East Jerusalem activist whose own home was demolished in 2024, gesturing at the homes lining the valley walls. “They will be taken by settlers or destroyed, and then we will have nowhere to go.”

The eight families had engaged in a protracted legal struggle to fight the orders, but as Ir Amim international outreach coordinator Tess Miller confirmed, “there is no longer any legal process underway that could stop the demolitions. All potential legal remedies have been exhausted.”

The legal framework driving the demolitions relies on two laws. The first is the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, which came into force in 1970. The law holds that Jewish families or property owners who lost property, often due to anti-Jewish pogroms in Jerusalem before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, are entitled to petition the state to reclaim title to such property.

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Media Twist Opposition to Land Theft Into Hatred of a Religion

As revelations about the Catholic Church abuse scandals emerged in the early 2000s, protests at churches grew. In Los Angeles, protesters “defiantly entered” a “church with a wooden cross covered with photographs of abuse victims,” according to the LA Times (6/2/03). An AP report (9/23/02) covered what was then “the largest protest” in response to the sex abuse scandal at “the cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of Boston, in months.”

The protests continued for years; in 2018, the National Catholic Reporter (8/26/18) recounted, about “30 protesters, including survivors of clergy sex abuse, stood outside the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC,” to call for an “end to cover-ups.”

The widespread molestation of children by priests who had the protection of the church hierarchy angered Catholics and non-Catholics alike. And at no point did any reasonable observer misinterpret these protests as attempts to intimidate Catholic mass goers or spread anti-Catholicism.

Today in New York City, the press is focusing on a series of protests against real estate events that promote “properties for sale in the occupied Palestinian territories” (Intercept, 5/11/26), settlements that are widely recognized as illegal under international law (Amnesty International, 1/30/19). Several such events have taken place at synagogues; the first protest against these illegal land sales, at the Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in November 2025, sparked so much outcry it inspired a new law giving police authority to restrict demonstrations near houses of worship (Politico, 4/24/26).

The local media have fanned the misconception that these are anti-Jewish protests, meant to intimidate Jewish worshippers attending synagogue, when in fact they are pro-Palestine protests against illegal land sales that are strategically held inside a house of worship.

In the Catholic sex scandal case, it was easy for most people to see that the protests were not about religion or bigotry, but about an injustice committed within a religious order. In the occupied land sales case, the press entertained the notion that any condemnation of Israel that happens within earshot of a synagogue must be rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment.

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US Targets Hamas Support Networks

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning four individuals associated with a pro-Hamas flotilla that is trying to access Gaza in support of the terrorist group, the department said in a May 19 statement.

The flotilla is organized by the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), which has been classified as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States.

“The PCPA was established with funding from Hamas’s International Relations Bureau and Hamas directs its activity through the placement of Hamas officials throughout the organization, including its executive body, the General Secretariat,” the Treasury said.

“So-called humanitarian flotillas that are organized by or supporting designated parties represent a significant compliance risk for financial institutions. Sanctioned terrorist groups continue to maintain significant influence over maritime flotillas to Gaza.”

The four individuals sanctioned by the Treasury include a Spanish member of the PCPA’s General Secretariat, who is a central figure of the flotilla; the acting secretary general and president of the PCPA, who is from Jordan; a Belgium-based European coordinator for the Samidoun organization; and a Samidoun coordinator from Spain.

Samidoun is a front organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Both the PCPA and Samidoun act on behalf of sanctioned Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Treasury said.

In addition, OFAC sanctioned several members of Muslim Brotherhood networks who are aligned with Hamas.

All property and interests in property of the sanctioned individuals that are in the United States or in control of U.S. persons are effectively blocked and must be reported to OFAC. The sanctions prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions involving the property or interests in property of those who are sanctioned.

“The pro-terror flotilla attempting to reach Gaza is a ludicrous attempt to undermine President Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “Treasury will continue to sever Hamas’ global financial support networks, no matter where in the world they are.”

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