Tag: palestine

One Hostage and One Million People Will Pay?

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has now said something that should disturb anyone. According to The Jerusalem Post, Katz threatened to destroy what remains of Gaza City and forcibly evacuate around ONE MILLION Palestinians if Hamas takes a single Israeli hostage. Think about what is being said. One person is captured and a million people may be driven from their homes while what remains of their city is destroyed. The Jerusalem Post itself acknowledged that such a statement could make Israel’s defense against genocide and war crimes accusations at The Hague more difficult because international law requires proportionality.

This is precisely why international humanitarian law prohibits COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she did not personally commit. Collective penalties and measures of intimidation are prohibited. This principle exists because humanity has already traveled down this road. Governments cannot punish an entire village, city, ethnic population, or civilian society because one person or armed organization committed an offense. Otherwise there is no law of war. There is merely vengeance.

There is also a serious distinction between hostage taking and the capture of an enemy combatant during warfare. Israel deems taken soldiers “hostages” rather than “prisoners of war.” The Geneva Conventions contain an entire framework governing prisoners of war and people detained during armed conflict. The ICRC makes clear that POWs and other wartime detainees are protected by international humanitarian law. Hostage taking is prohibited, but so is collective punishment.

If Hamas deliberately seizes a civilian to compel Israel to act, that can constitute hostage taking. If a combatant is captured during hostilities, the legal analysis is different and depends upon the nature of the conflict and the person’s status. Governments cannot simply erase the laws governing wartime detention by changing the vocabulary.

Consider the scale of what Katz has threatened. Gaza today contains roughly two million people. Katz threatened to extinguish roughly HALF of the entire population of Gaza. He did not say he would punish the people responsible. He threatened to destroy what remains of their city and remove approximately one million human beings.

People seem to misunderstand what genocide actually means under international law. You do not have to exterminate every member of an ethnic or national population before the word becomes legally relevant. The Genocide Convention covers acts committed with the specific intent to destroy a protected group “in whole or in part,” and international courts have interpreted that “part” as having to be substantial. Numbers matter, but so does the significance of the population being targeted and the evidence concerning intent.

Look at Srebrenica. More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered while the wider Muslim population was forcibly removed from the enclave. International tribunals concluded that genocide had occurred even though the victims represented only a fraction of Bosnia’s entire Muslim population. The courts looked at the targeted community, the killings, the expulsions and what those actions demonstrated about the intent to destroy that community.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that people cannot be punished for offenses they did not personally commit and expressly prohibits collective penalties. Article 49 prohibits mass forcible transfers from occupied territory except under narrow circumstances involving civilian security or imperative military necessity, with additional protections and an obligation to return evacuees when hostilities cease.

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 Actresses Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder Handcuffed While Protesting Netanyahu’s UN Speech

Actresses Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon were taken into custody Thursday outside the United Nations in New York during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly.

Jewish Voice for Peace organized the protest, which took place a few blocks from the UN headquarters on Thursday.

Protesters wore matching shirts that read “Fund people not bombs” and carried banners including “Stop Arming Israel” and “End the Genocide.”

Chants captured on video included “Netanyahu, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide,” “Let Gaza live,” and “Stop arming Israel.”

An NYPD spokesperson said Community Affairs officers warned the crowd to leave.

“They continued to block the intersection. Multiple individuals who didn’t comply were taken into custody,” the spokesperson said, without giving a final headcount.

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Bibi: Send More Bombs

As we approach the three-year mark of the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israel has signaled that it has every intention of continuing its massive bombing campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and possibly other countries. And Donald Trump has signaled that he is ready to help. On September 15, the Washington Post reported a decision by the Trump administration to provide Israel with some 40,000 of the US Air Force’s massive 2,000-pound bombs, the largest such transfer to any country in many years.

Bombs Away for Zion

Specifically, the administration announced that it was prepared to “sell” to Israel a $2.8 billion package of US Air Force 2000-pound bombs, consisting of 20,000 MK-84 bombs and another 20,000 BLU-117 bombs. The two versions are similar in size, weight, and functionality. Although both models are considered “general purpose” and “dumb” bombs, they can be configured with various guidance kits into precision guided munitions, aka “smart bombs.” Presumably, Israel will use its own guidance kits which it produces domestically. The administration’s package for Israel also includes 20,000 of the USAF’s I-2000 penetrator warheads, which function as a heavy-duty bomb body for the MK-84 or the BLU-117, effectively converting the munition into a hard target penetrator or “bunker buster.”

Israel’s profligate use of massive munitions on civilian populations has drawn international criticism since the opening weeks of the Gaza conflict. According to CNN, “In the first month of its war in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away…. Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there. Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth, so the use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect.”

“The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,” said John Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimizing civilian harm in conflict. Such massive bombs are “normally used sparingly by Western militaries, experts say, because of their potential impact on densely populated areas like Gaza. International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate bombing.”

Separately, a writer for the Concord Monitor has described the catastrophic effects of a MK-84 2000-pound bomb being dropped on a crowded residential area such as Gaza: “The detonation will create an instantaneous fireball that will lash out at temperatures exceeding 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The explosion will carve a crater 50 feet wide and 35 feet deep and hurl 10,000 pounds of rock and dirt debris at supersonic speed. The lethal radius will be a quarter-mile wide and will kill all the people within that area. But the destruction will not stop there. The bomb will rip through thick concrete and metal, creating a wider blast radius. The blast waves will be felt up to half a mile away, rupturing lungs and tearing off limbs. A single bomb will destroy entire city blocks.”

Israel regularly boasts about the professionalism of its military and likes to call the IDF the “most moral army in the world.” Its record in action tells a vastly different story. One curious decision by the IDF that apparently has never been challenged by the US is why it has opted for 2000-pound bombs against “soft” civilian targets, when 250-pound, 500-pound and 1000-pound munitions, which are readily available from the US, are far cheaper and cause far less collateral damage. Could it be that Israel’s real goal is simply genocide, a charge that it has claimed is unfounded

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Is Europe Restraining Israel – or Merely Protecting the Two-State Illusion?

This time, Europe seems serious about holding Israel accountable – or at least that is what 11 European countries, together with Canada, want us to believe.

On September 8, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK announced their intention to introduce national restrictions, support European restrictions, or actively consider measures against trade in goods with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Undeniably, the announcement represents a significant political and legal precedent. Dismissing it outright would be impulsive, particularly considering the participation of governments such as those of Canada and the UK, which have historically provided Israel with extensive political and diplomatic support.

Yet celebrating the announcement as an earth-shattering event without examining its context, timing and potential effectiveness would be equally rash. Worse, it could contribute to weakening the public pressure that finally compelled Western governments to take even these limited steps.

The political meaning of the initiative notwithstanding, several important qualifications must be considered.

First, most of the 12 governments have announced intentions, rather than binding and immediately enforceable restrictions.

The decision is therefore still vulnerable to political negotiations, legislative delays, pressure from pro-Israel groups and changing electoral calculations. Without firm deadlines and enforceable mechanisms, today’s declared intentions could become irrelevant by the time they are implemented.

Second, France and Canada have yet to publish detailed implementation schedules. The UK, on the other hand, has announced a comparatively extensive package, covering settlement goods and services related to finance, construction, infrastructure, real estate and advertising. However, its restrictions could take six to nine months to enter into force.

Even if these measures eventually exert meaningful pressure, Israel has been granted additional time to advance its annexation plans and create further irreversible facts on the ground.

Third, the joint commitment focuses largely on goods, while Israel’s settlement enterprise depends on a far broader network of financing, investment, construction, technology and services. These connections often operate through complicated corporate structures that conceal whether a company or transaction is directly linked to a settlement.

Fourth, the initiative is primarily concerned with settlements, particularly the E1 project. E1 is the strategically located area between occupied East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement bloc. Israeli construction there would further divide the occupied West Bank, sever Palestinian territorial continuity and isolate occupied East Jerusalem from surrounding Palestinian communities.

Europe fears that completing E1 would destroy the remaining geographical basis for a future Palestinian state. That concern is defensible insofar as the two-state solution remains Europe’s declared foreign-policy strategy.

Yet the joint declaration does not refer to the genocide in Gaza. Nor does it confront the wider system of Israeli military occupation that enables settlement expansion, forced displacement and land confiscation. It addresses one particularly alarming manifestation of the occupation while leaving the larger structure largely untouched.

Fifth, there is still no coordinated suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and no collective European arms embargo against Israel.

This omission is especially consequential when measured against the broader economic relationship. European Commission figures show that total EU-Israel trade in goods increased in both 2024 and 2025, the first two full calendar years following the beginning of the genocide.

Therefore, any losses suffered by the settlements – which represent only a small part of Israel’s overall trade – could therefore be absorbed through Israel’s much larger economic relationship with Europe.

The military contradiction is even more glaring. According to SIPRI, Germany provided 31 percent of Israel’s major arms imports between 2021 and 2025, making it Israel’s second-largest supplier after the US. Israel continued receiving major weapons throughout this period despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

European states are also major purchasers of Israeli military technology. Europe received 41 percent of Israeli arms exports during the same period, helping sustain an industry deeply integrated into Israel’s military establishment.

Europe is therefore attempting to restrict the settlements while continuing to maintain economic and military relationships with the state that finances, protects and expands them.

A counterargument with some legitimacy is that the announced measures constitute a first step and that greater accountability may follow. But this argument carries weight only if we understand why these governments acted in the first place.

If the restrictions are primarily intended to weaken Benjamin Netanyahu before Israel’s October elections, they may prove to be temporary political instruments whose future depends on the electoral outcome.

Some hope, however, can be found in the growing public solidarity with Palestine across Europe.

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Israeli settlers cutting water to drive Palestinians off land

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have accused Israeli settlers of deliberately cutting water supplies and targeting wells in an effort to force them from their land.

Residents of Khirbet Al-Tawil told RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij that the community’s main water line was cut around four and a half months ago and that attempts to repair it were blocked. After a long, dry summer left water increasingly scarce, locals say settlers are now trying to pump their remaining wells dry.

“Some people have already run out of water,” a local farmer said, adding that residents have had to transport supplies at night, risking having their vehicles seized.

Activists have established a permanent presence in Khirbet Al-Tawil to support the community. During one confrontation over access to a well, the Israeli military declared the area a closed military zone, according to the report.

One activist, a retired IDF colonel, said he challenged the order and was detained. The case against him was later thrown out.

“The most serious problem in my story is not what the settlers do, it’s what the soldiers do,” he said. He also accused the Israeli government of backing the settlers, claiming their ultimate goal is to drive Palestinians from large parts of the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly sought to play down settler violence, accusing the media of exaggerating the problem.

Residents of Khirbet Al-Tawil, however, say they have no intention of leaving.

“They just want to empty this place,” one farmer told RT, referring to the settlers.

With some wells already dangerously low, residents fear that exhausting the remaining water supplies could ultimately make staying on their land impossible.

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Palestine Action: From UK Direct Action to US Terror Designation

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Palestine Action, a UK organization proscribed as a terrorist group in July 2025. The designation also included the transnational group Masar Badil and the Italy-based digital services provider Autistici Inventati as part of a broader action against the growing threat of violent far-left terrorism.

Palestine Action was founded in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard as a UK-based direct-action group. It describes itself as targeting “corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex” to “make it impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians.”

The group has targeted Israeli and Western defense manufacturers, a global logistics firm, a British military base, the office of a pro-Israel advocacy organization, a university, and a golf resort owned by President Trump.

Since its founding, the group has forced the permanent closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory and pushed the company to abandon its London headquarters. In 2021, American activist Max Geller was arrested in Kent for chaining himself to a van outside an Elbit-owned weapons factory. In 2022, the group attacked a factory in Glasgow, causing what UK officials later described as millions of dollars in damage.

In May 2023, activists broke into the Kuehne + Nagel offices at Leicester’s Meridian Business Park. They spray-painted the building and dismantled equipment, including phones and computers. In a separate action, a man drove to the gate of Elbit’s UAV Tactical Systems factory with his hands glued to the steering wheel while a woman locked herself inside the car. The protest camp at the site brought the total number of arrests to 43.

In May 2024, activists at the same business park rammed a truck through the factory’s perimeter fence. They climbed onto the roof, broke through it with tools, and sprayed red paint across the building. Seven people were arrested.

On August 6, 2024, seven people aged 20 to 51 broke into Elbit’s Filton facility near Bristol. They were charged with criminal damage, violent disorder, and aggravated burglary. One was also charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent for allegedly striking a police officer with a sledgehammer.

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Israel Orders UK Jerusalem Consulate Closed And Expels British Diplomats Over West Bank Sanctions

Israel began to take action against Britain on Tuesday after twelve Western countries including Britain imposed trade restrictions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel ordered the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem within 30 days and expelled British representatives from two international coordination centers in the country, including the International Support Center for Gaza in Kiryat Gat.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the retaliatory package after UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed that Britain — joined by France, Canada, and nine other countries — would ban imports of all goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, along with certain services including financing, construction, infrastructure, and real estate related to those settlements.

Sa’ar said the UK representatives at the Gaza coordination centers would be expelled within a month, British training operations for Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and more than a dozen British politicians would be barred from entering Israel.

The UK had briefed the Trump administration before the announcement. U.S. officials confirmed Trump was briefed but that the White House did not ask London to hold off — signaling Washington’s ambivalence. American Ambassador Mike Huckabee said the U.S. “takes a different approach to the settlements” but expressed concern and said the intent could be achieved by other means.

Israel’s government called the sanctions “a political attempt to impair our sovereignty and prevent us from defending our citizens and interests.” A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office added: “These measures will not succeed in deterring us.”

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How Britain Tried To Rig the Trial of a Genocide Opponent – and Lost

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offense to invite support for a proscribed organization. Greenstein’s reference to a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, it argued, amounted to support for Hamas. Three social media posts and a blog article. The bill the State was demanding for those words – fourteen years.

Judge Sarah Plaschkes repeatedly objected when Greenstein brought the wider historical-political context of Palestine/Israel into the courtroom – warning him against treating the proceedings as a political forum. When the closing speech came, Greenstein was by now so concerned about what might happen to his barrister that he decided to address the jury himself (no doubt considering what had happened to Barrister Rajiv Menon KC – more of whom later). For thirty minutes he examined the prosecution case and the context in which his posts had been written. The jury wasn’t asked to lay aside the offending words; instead, he guided the jurors in an articulate reading (see his address to the jury, here) in which the world in which they’d been written was made clear (full trial coverage at the Canary, here).

But this court was rigged and thus determined to keep all context out of the courtroom. Nevertheless, despite Judge Plaschkes’ hostile interruptions, Greenstein’s speech laid bare the realities the prosecution had no interest in facing: his opposition to Hamas evident in dozens of articles he’d penned and published on his platform over the years; and Israel’s genocide in Gaza after October 2023. He spelled out the difference between supporting Hamas and defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli oppression, and the obvious point that the posts in contention clearly did not express support for Hamas.

Greenstein recounted to the jury how his grandparents fled Poland before the War, and most of those left behind perished in Treblinka. To him, Greenstein told the jury, the Holocaust was not history, but inheritance. He invoked the story of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a parallel of Gaza: young Jewish men and women rising up against the SS with smuggled pistols against tanks, knowing it was hopeless yet choosing resistance anyway. October 7th was Gaza’s uprising. The judge objected.

Once Greenstein had finished speaking (to a round of applause from the public gallery), Judge Plaschkes addressed the court to say that she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. She then dismissed his address as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. An extraordinary turn of phrase in a criminal trial in which Greenstein was about to find out whether he was to be sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added Palestine Action to the UK’s list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. But proscription criminalizes more than membership. Up to fourteen years in prison can follow under section 12, which makes it an offence to “invite support for a proscribed organization” or to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization…” That was the provision the Crown used to prosecute Tony Greenstein, and it applies right now to public expressions of support for Palestine Action. Serious concerns over freedom of expression and peaceful assembly were raised by a group of five UN Special Rapporteurs over proscribing a group for property destruction.

On 6 August 2024 activists from Palestine Action staged a break-in at Elbit Systems, in Filton, near Bristol.  It’s an Israeli defense company with British operations supplying equipment to the IDF. They entered facilities, sabotaged machinery and hindered production they regarded as part of Israel’s war-making infrastructure. During the parliamentary debate on the proscription order, it was argued that Palestine Action had targeted only industrial facilities, and not civilians. The government went ahead with proscription anyway.

Rajiv Menon KC represented one of the six defendants in the February 2026 Filton Trial. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but the jury failed to agree on criminal damage. At the May retrial, four were convicted. Menon’s closing speech was a masterclass and invoked the 1670 Bushell case – a landmark ruling on jury independence from judicial interference, arguing that the judge could not direct a conviction. Judge Jeremy Johnson then referred Menon for contempt, a referral the Court of Appeal overturned on procedural grounds in May before Johnson referred to it correctly in June.

The Filton defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge – the barrister who defended them is now facing contempt proceedings for the way he did it.

So what lies behind all this courtroom drama is a routine machinery. Proscription – the government’s designation of an organization as terrorist – takes effect by order of the Home Secretary. It falls to the barrister to gauge how far a closing speech can go before crossing the line into contempt, while the judge cautions against political argument. Indeed, the evidence shows that judges are increasingly directing what juries are allowed to hear before threatening barristers with contempt. To an outside observer there is little sign of a conflict – yet behind these routine procedures is something damning: what the jury doesn’t get to hear – could mean years in prison.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that Britain is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In September 2024, as the government suspended thirty arms export licenses to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that “there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Thirty licenses suspended out of three hundred and fifty. Britain would also continue to supply F-35 components through the global parts pool serving Israel, with the government arguing that withdrawal would undermine allied security. British weapons armed a state committing a genocide despite their supposed withdrawal.

The state that arms Israel prosecutes those who oppose it.

The Crown had brought three posts, a blog article and an accusation of terrorism before the jury. But Greenstein stood on that essential context – despite the hostile judge’s interjections. And a mere two hours after retiring – the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

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Israeli Defense Minister Katz: 70% Of Gaza Is Desolate, 80% Of Gazans Want To Migrate, Israel Is Ready To Move Them Out

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz delivered a wide-ranging assessment of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, making clear that the forced displacement of Gaza’s population remains central to Israel’s strategic vision — and that Israel is prepared to carry it out the moment political conditions allow.

Katz stated that between 60% and 70% of Gaza is now desolate. “About 70% of the area is desolate — without residents, without houses, without tunnels,” he said, while acknowledging that work remains to be completed.

On the question of Gaza’s population, Katz was direct: “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration.” He cited surveys showing that approximately 80% of Gaza’s population wants to emigrate, adding that Hamas is the primary obstacle preventing them from leaving. “Hamas doesn’t allow them, and there are no countries in the world that will take them,” he said.

Katz said Israel is fully prepared to facilitate the departure of Gaza’s population by sea, by air, or by any other available means. He noted that Egypt has refused to serve as a transit route. The sticking point, he explained, is that Arab countries willing to accept Gazan migrants are demanding U.S. backing before moving forward. “Every country that is willing wants American backing,” Katz said. “Currently, President Trump didn’t cancel this; he froze it. All the Arab countries came to him due to their pressure on this matter.”

Katz indicated that the moment for resumed military and territorial action will come when it becomes clear that Hamas is not meeting its commitments. “Then we will get a green light to move forward militarily, territorially, and in other areas, and this thing will gain momentum,” he said.

On the West Bank, Katz rejected the characterization of settler violence as “Jewish terror,” stating he has canceled that term. “Terror is whoever acts to commit terror against the State of Israel,” he said. He confirmed that the IDF has conquered refugee camps in the West Bank, evacuated 40,000 residents who have not returned, destroyed infrastructure, killed terrorists, and remains inside those areas.

Katz also summarized the broader scope of Israeli military action: “We destroyed 70% of Gaza. We destroyed areas in southern Lebanon; we ruined dozens of villages that served as Hezbollah strongholds. We evacuated 200,000 residents.”

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Palestinian Journalist Calls Hakeem Jeffries a ‘Monkey’ and ‘Errand Boy’

A Palestinian journalist blew right through the forbidden red line of African American racist terms by referring to black House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as a “monkey” and a “boy.”

Now, former MSNBC commentator Rula Jebreal is trying to explain, but black lawmakers are having none of it.

Specifically, Jebreal took fire from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Friday after she called Jeffries an “AIPAC monkey” — the acronym a reference to the pro-Israel lobby group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — and then an “errand boy,” a description dangerously close to the definition of a slave.

Jebreal used the epithets during an appearance on Wajahat Ali’s The Left Hook podcast where she criticized the black Democrat’s support for Israel and accused him of doing the bidding of AIPAC.

“His name is Hakeem. ‘Hakeem’ is an Arabic name which means ‘healer.’ He’s not a healer, he’s a divider,” Jebreal said, the New York Post reported.

“He is a bought and paid by AIPAC monkey,” she continued. “With all due respect — and I don’t mean it in a racist way.”

“He is just basically an errand boy, and we’re done and tired,” Jebreal said.

After Jabreal’s rant, Ali tried to bail her out of linguistic trouble, interjecting that using the term “monkey” has “terrible racial connotations… but I think you caught yourself and said you didn’t mean it with any racial animosity.”

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