Tag: palestine

Mike Huckabee: US No Longer Pursuing Goal of Palestinian State

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday that he believes the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state.

“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” the former Arkansas governor told the outlet, adding that he didn’t think those “changes” would happen “in our lifetime.”

When asked if the US was still pursuing the goal of a Palestinian state, he said, “I don’t think so.”

While the US has been working against a Palestinian state for decades by continuing to back Israel as it expands illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Huckabee’s comments mark one of the most explicit denials of the goal of a Palestinian state from a top US official.

Huckabee also suggested that a Palestinian state could be carved out of a Muslim country. “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” he said, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

For Huckabee, his opposition to a Palestinian state is ideological and rooted in his religious beliefs. As a Christian Zionist, Huckabee believes that God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel.

Keep reading

State Department Weighing $500 Million Grant to Controversial Gaza Aid Group: Report

According to The New Arab, the State Department is considering a massive distribution to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The new Israeli and US-backed agency has been accused by human rights groups of being a tool of Tel Aviv to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza rather than an organization attempting to feed the starving people of the Strip.

Citing two current and two former officials, the outlet reported that the State Department is considering a $500 million transfer to the GHF. The money would fund the organization for about six months.

Responding to an inquiry by the Libertarian Institute, the State Department press office declined to confirm the report, only stating that the GHF is “an independent organization” that “currently does not receive [US government] funding.” It directed further questions to the organization itself, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some US officials have opposed the large grant, raising concerns related to incidents when Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians near GHF aid sites.

The GHF has met intense criticism for being unprepared to provide food and other desperately needed supplies in Gaza. UN and other aid agencies previously used established distribution networks to feed the millions of people languishing under the Israeli blockade. However, since the GHF was established in February, Israel has refused to allow UN and international agencies to bring aid into Gaza in favor of the new organization.

In the first weeks of the GHF operations in Gaza, Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians attempting to get food, prompting top officials and firms to cut ties with the agency. GHF’s previous executive director, Jake Wood, resigned just hours before the organization began operating in the Strip, arguing the group’s plans were not in line with “humanitarian principles.”

Reverend Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical Christian leader and staunch Zionist, took over Wood’s role last week.

Keep reading

US and Israel turn “aid” centers into slaughter zones

Israeli forces massacred more than 400 Palestinians and injured more than 2,000 in airstrikes, tank shellings, drone attacks and with sniper fire between 29 May and 4 June.

Attacks continued against hospitals, medical clinics, residential buildings, schools turned into shelters and inside humiliating death traps engineered by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers under the guise of distributing meager amounts of snacks to millions of starving people – while real international aid remains in trucks, stuck behind the crossings, for more than three consecutive months.

Nearly 100 Palestinians were killed and 440 injured between 3 and 4 June alone, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

On Monday, 2 June, Israeli airstrikes flattened a home in Gaza City, pinning a baby and his 5-year-old brother beneath the rubble. This clip, filmed by Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, shows the moment the two children were rescued by Palestinian first responders and civil defense workers.

Keep reading

Former State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller Admits Israel Has Committed War Crimes in Gaza

Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has said that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, an admission that comes after he spent his time in the Biden administration providing cover for Israeli atrocities in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Miller made the comments on a Sky News podcast when asked if he thought Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. “I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he said.

From the podium at the State Department, Miller repeatedly claimed that there wasn’t enough proof to conclude that Israel was committing war crimes despite the overwhelming evidence, and justified continued US support for the slaughter of Palestinians.

“At the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion, you’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded they have committed war crimes,” Miller said.

Miller admitted that he believed Israel committed war crimes while he was in the State Department, but “qualified” his answer, claiming it wasn’t clear whether it was Israeli state policy to commit war crimes or if they had been committed only by individual members of the military.

But Miller also admitted there hasn’t been any accountability for the war crimes committed by the Israeli military. “We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to,” he said.

Keep reading

Greta Thunberg Seeks Spotlight In Gaza After Abandoning Climate Crusade

What does an autistic 22-year-old living most of her life in 1st world decadence with her rich celebrity parents know about climate science?  Or the complexities of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians?  Not a damn thing, really, which is why it’s confounding that such a person seems to continually garner a steady spotlight from the establishment media when it comes to environmental and geopolitical causes. 

How did Greta Thunberg become the poster child for global progressive activism when she is provably ignorant on every conceivable level?  Is it simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time?  Or, did someone call in a major favor?  Thunberg is, at the very least, no stranger to opportunism and self promotion. 

She has dealt with a series of embarrassing failures on the climate change front, including being forced to erase a 2018 Twitter post in which she predicted climate catastrophe by 2023.  Her theatrical arrests at protest events across Europe have done little to attract the kind of media frenzy she obviously craves, and so, it would appear that global warming is no longer a crusade she feels compelled to undertake.  There’s no more clout to be chased.

Instead, Greta has identified the ripest progressive bandwagon of the day and jumped aboard – Namely the war in Gaza.

Wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh and pontificating about “genocide”, the career activist has traveled with a protest group on an aid ship to Gaza.  The sailing boat Madleen, operated by Freedom Flotilla Coalition, departed from the Sicilian port of Catania in southern Italy.  It will try to reach the shores of the Gaza Strip in an effort to bring in some aid and raise “international awareness” over the ongoing humanitarian crisis, the activists said at a press conference on Sunday.

One can argue the finer points of how the war in Gaza is being handled (by Hamas or by Israel), but few people want to hear about this debate from Greta Thunberg.

In mid-May, Israel eased its blockade of Gaza after nearly three months, allowing a limited amount of humanitarian aid into the territory.  Though Thunberg’s group claims their goal is to “break the blockade” it’s unlikely that she would be attempting this kind of promotional stunt if conditions had not already loosened. 

The political left’s obsession with the Gaza war is strange considering the majority of Palestinians are fundamentalists that violently oppose nearly every progressive ideal from women’s rights to gay pride.  However, the situation is much like the George Floyd incident in that it provides a dramatic backdrop, a tool for absorbing certain groups into the leftist fold to be used as fodder for the deconstruction of the west.

Keep reading

Israeli Mossad named as funder of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Top Israeli lawmakers have accused their government of laundering massive sums through a shadowy network of US humanitarian and mercenary orgs. The weaponized aid initiative is the linchpin of Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by forcing the starving population into concentration camp-like hubs.

Israel’s scheme to commandeer aid distribution in Gaza ended in chaos on May 27, with Israeli soldiers reportedly opening fire on stampeding crowds of hungry Palestinians after just 8000 boxes of rations were handed out by an opaque organization calling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Founded this February in Switzerland under a cloud of mystery, GHF serves as an umbrella for a network of private mercenary firms which Israel is using to supplant the role of the United Nations in feeding Palestinians after bringing them to the brink of starvation.

At the moment, the public has no idea who is funding the opaque aid boondoggle. A GHF spokesman told the Washington Post “the foundation has already secured $100 million from an undisclosed donor.” 

Right-wing Israeli opposition figure and Member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman proclaimed that GHF’s mysterious financial angel was, in fact, the Israeli government. “The money for humanitarian aid comes from the Mossad and the Ministry of Defense,” Lieberman wrote on Twitter/X, complaining, “Hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of Israeli citizens.”

Keep reading

FBI investigating ‘targeted terror attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, director says

Police said a male suspect was taken into custody on Sunday after an attack that injured multiple people in Boulder, Colorado, in what the FBI director described as a “targeted” act of terror.

While stressing that the information was “very preliminary,” Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said that the man was apprehended following calls to the police dispatch of someone with a weapon who was “setting people on fire.”

Redfearn said he wasn’t in a position to identify the suspect yet, noting that he’d been taken to the hospital. He said there were multiple injuries among the victims, ranging “from very serious to more minor.”

The Boulder attack occurred in the vicinity of a walk to remember the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.

FBI Director Kash Patel, in a statement, described the incident as a targeted terror attack and said agents were on the scene.

Redfearn, however, said it was too early to speculate about a motive.

“We are not calling it a terror attack at this moment,” he said. “This was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in downtown Boulder on Pearl Street and this act was unacceptable,” he said. “I ask that you join me in thinking about the victims, the families of those victims, and everyone involved in this tragedy.”

Keep reading

American Contractors Throw Stun Grenades At Gazans Outside Aid Site

The United States government has distanced itself from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) operations, after the aid group’s initial attempts to distribute food in a famine zone outside Rafah in the Gaza Strip turned to chaos.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce made clear in fresh statements that “This is not a state department effort. We don’t have a plan.” She added that “I’m not going to speculate or to say what they should or should not do.”

There’s tension and a bit of a standoff between the GHF and UN groups, with the latter fiercely criticizing the lack of experience or track record of the former, which appears to have been authorized by Israel based largely on the founder’s close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The use of American mercenaries to protect GHF aid sites inside Gaza has also proven ultra-controversial. And matters aren’t going to be helped by the new footage which has emerged showing US contractors throwing stun grenades at Palestinians along a security fence. 

“Footage circulated by Palestinian media purportedly shows members of an American security company throwing stun grenades at Gazans outside an aid distribution site in the Netzarim Corridor area,” TOI reports.

Keep reading

New Israeli Law Allows Palestinians as Young as 12 to Be Imprisoned for Life

Agroup of UN human rights experts is raising alarm over a recently-passed Israeli law that allows children as young as 12 years old to be sentenced to life in prison, saying that the legislation is likely a violation of international human rights law.

The experts say that the law, passed late last year, is crafted specifically to target Palestinian children, as Israeli authorities often accuse Palestinian children of terrorism while not charging Israeli children the same way — one fixture of Israel’s apartheid system.

“[A]uthorizing up to life imprisonment for children as young as 12 years old is not consistent with international law,” the experts wrote in a statement this month. “Under [the Convention on the Rights of the Child], the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

The statement was signed by UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestine territory, Francesca Albanese, as well as Ben Saul, special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights in counterterrorism; Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education; and K.P. Ashwini, special rapporteur on racism and intolerance.

Israel often accuses children of terrorism for actions like throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at cars, with Israeli forces killing many children for stone throwing over the decades and Israeli lawmakers passing a minimum sentence of three years for the act.

Israeli officials have also long framed all Palestinians, including children, as terrorists.

This has led to the detention and killing of huge numbers of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation. According to a recent report by Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), the proportion of children in administrative detention — meaning that they are being held without charges — has reached a record high amid Israel’s genocide.

Citing numbers from the Israeli Prison Service, DCIP reports that nearly 40 percent of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons are being held without charges. This amounts to 119 of the 323 imprisoned by Israeli authorities, which represents “both the highest number and the highest proportion” in DCIP’s records on administrative detention.

“These figures highlight Israel’s continued criminalization of Palestinian childhood and its deepening disregard for fundamental legal protections,” the group wrote, adding that children and their families are frequently forbidden from contacting their lawyers by Israeli authorities.

The Israeli Knesset has sought to further punish these families in another recent law condemned in the UN experts’ statement.

That law, passed last year, allows child welfare benefits to be taken away if children are convicted of terrorist offenses. Experts say that the legislation is “overbroad” and not backed by evidence that such a punishment would deter supposed terrorist acts.

“We note that Israeli law does not withdraw benefits from children convicted of other serious offences, suggesting that the Amendment does not legitimately aim to suspend benefits that may be unnecessary while the child is in detention, but serves an ulterior punitive purpose,” the experts wrote.

This legislation, too, is aimed at punishing Palestinian children and their families, experts say, and is likely a violation of international law.

Keep reading

Palestinians flee intensified Israeli attacks after mass displacement orders in north Gaza

Israel intensified its aerial attacks and ground operations in northern Gaza on 30 May, as Palestinians began fleeing due to the massive-scale evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army the night before. 

Al Jazeera reported that “families were forced to wait until sunrise to begin escaping” due to the continuous attacks early on Friday, which began shortly after the order was issued. 

Since the early morning hours, Israel has been targeting homes and high-rise residential buildings in Jabalia al-Balad, Shujaiya, and Al-Tuffah, Palestinian media outlets reported. 

A woman was killed and several people injured in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia al-Balad.

Three people were also killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Saftawi area, north of Gaza City. In total, at least 18 people have been killed across Gaza since dawn. 

“There’s no safe place at all. Where can we go? We’re better off dying here than being displaced again, because death is more merciful than that. There’s bombing everywhere,” a Gaza City resident told Al Jazeera.

Israel’s latest evacuation orders were issued late on 29 May for almost all of Gaza City and other areas in the north. 

Around one million people who have already been displaced multiple times across the area are now being forcibly uprooted once again. 

Keep reading