Tag: palestine

Controversial Aid Plan For Gaza Revealed In New Document, Includes American CEOs & Banks

The organization set to administer Israel’s controversial plan to take control of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza will use private contractors to secure hubs where Palestinians will receive 1,750 kcal meals that will cost donors a little more than a dollar each.

Details about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) strategy for Gaza are laid out in a 14-page document circulating amongst aid organizations working on Gaza and seen by Middle East Eye.

The hitherto unknown nonprofit, which was registered in Switzerland in February, has been touted as the umbrella body that will seemingly take over humanitarian operations in Gaza while inviting NGOs to “take advantage” of its “logistics, security and transparency frameworks”.

The pitch-like document offers detailed information about how the foundation, largely led by Americans and involving a mix of disaster relief, security and financial experts, will operate and how it is organized, though some details appear yet to be finalized. The document is undated.

The new details have emerged as UN agencies and international aid organizations, which have roundly rejected the plan that GHF would administer, reportedly coming under pressure from the US government to participate. Earlier this week, Amnesty Switzerland raised concerns that, based on the information available, GHF could be risking contributing to international crimes through its services. 

The Israeli operation appears to already be underway. Israel security cabinet approved its plan on Sunday with satellite evidence emerging on Wednesday suggesting that work has already begun to build the humanitarian hubs from which aid will be distributed.

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‘Gideon’s Chariots’ Aim to Finalize the Genocide

Drunk on impunity, Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing and permanent recolonization of Gaza. 

Israel uses the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction — this, even as many of the Palestinian children who’ve somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. “We are complicit,” says one angry, grieving doctor. “It is an abomination.”

Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, “We are occupying Gaza to stay.”

Unanimously approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Security Cabinet, the new “conquering of Gaza” formalizes Israel’s plan for the indefinite occupation, forced expulsion and incorporation into “sanitized” Israeli zones of an already long-besieged civilian population “for its own protection.”

The expansion of an onslaught that has left more than 185,000 Gazans dead, wounded or missing [according to a 2024 study by The Lancet] and millions homeless, hungry, maimed and traumatized is being ludicrously framed as a final mission to dismantle Hamas and retrieve hostages, even though Israel repeatedly failed at each before breaking a ceasefire that would have accomplished both.

“Gideon’s Chariots will begin with great force and will not end until all its objectives are achieved,” Israel thundered, again virtually ignoring the fact that permanent occupation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing violate international law.

“No more going in and out – this is a war for victory,” said apartheid Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who urged Israelis embrace, not fear the word “occupation … A people that wants to live must occupy its land.”

But the operation’s name, Gideon’s Chariots, Merkavot Gideon, invokes the righteous Biblical warrior who led a chosen few to annihilate the Midianites, an ancient Arabian peninsula tribe. The name “layers this symbolism with menace,” [as the staff of The New Arab write], blending the concepts of divine vengeance with state-sanctioned ethnic violence, the “mythic instruments of war (with) the Israeli Merkava tanks that have long razed homes and lives in Gaza and the West Bank.”

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Israeli Military Lists Returning Hostages as Least Important Goal for Gaza

The Israeli military has listed the return of the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza as its least important goal in its plans for an escalated assault on the Strip, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, retrieving the hostages was placed last in a list of six objectives. Those goals include:

  1. Defeating Hamas
  2. Operational control over the territory
  3. Demilitarizing the territory
  4. Striking Hamas government targets
  5. Concentrating and moving the population
  6. Returning the captives

News of the Israeli military’s goals comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that retrieving the hostages was not his priority, something that’s been clear for a long time but hasn’t been explicitly stated by the Israeli leader until last week.

The Israeli military finalized plans for the expanded offensive, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariot,” on Tuesday and Wednesday after the government approved the escalation.

The purpose of the expanded assault is to achieve the full Israeli military occupation of Gaza and concentrate the entire civilian population into a tiny area of southern Gaza with the goal of forcing them to leave to achieve ethnic cleansing.

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It Was Never About Hostages. It Was Never About Hamas.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that freeing the Israeli hostages in Gaza was not his top priority, suggesting instead that defeating Hamas should take precedence over a hostage deal.

“We have many objectives, many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to bring back all of our hostages. That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Nothing the prime minister said here is true or valid — unless by “enemies” he means “all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu has been fairly transparent about the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is neither freeing the hostages nor defeating Hamas, but seizing Palestinian territory and removing its Palestinian inhabitants. He has openly said that Israel will occupy Gaza via military force, completely ruling out the possibility of any form of Palestinian government for the enclave. He has openly said he wants to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, which explicitly entails removing “all” Palestinians and never allowing them to return.

So they’ve made this perfectly clear. This isn’t about Hamas, except insofar as an armed resistance group will make it difficult to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza. And it certainly isn’t about hostages.

And yet, bizarrely, this is how the western political-media class continues to frame this onslaught. They call it Israel’s “war with Hamas”, when it’s nothing other than an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. They prattle on about October 7, hostages, and terrorism, even though it has already been made abundantly clear that this has nothing to do with any of those things. They act as though the admission was simply never made.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about hostages and Hamas after the US and Israel said the goal is the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They told you what this is really about. They said it. With their face holes. They said it right to you. End of debate.

Israel has been seeking ways to purge Gaza of Palestinians for generations. That’s all this has ever been about. Not October 7. Not hostages. Not Hamas. Not terrorism. Everything about Israel’s operations in Gaza have indicated that their real goal is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory and not to free hostages or defeat Hamas. And then when Trump took office, they started openly admitting it.

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RFK Jr. Calls Out King Abdullah: ‘They’ve Cut Us Off’

It’s a rare moment today in American politics that Donald Trump’s West Wing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi are on the same side of an issue. And it’s rarer still that each of these parties is irritated at the same person.

Yet as Jordan’s King Abdullah II returns to Washington on Monday, top Trump aides, Kennedy, and Pelosi are venting their frustration with one of the Middle East’s longest-serving monarchs.

At issue: the commitment Abdullah made in February sitting by Trump’s side in the Oval Office to accept 2,000 children from Gaza with cancer and other grave illnesses.

Abdullah, say multiple high-ranking officials in both parties, is slow-walking his pledge, and Jordan has only accepted a fraction of sick children because of fears Israel will not let them and their families return to Gaza after treatment.

“They took 44, and then they’ve cut us off,” Kennedy told me over the weekend.

Alluding to Abdullah, an adviser and ally to American presidents for over a quarter-century, Kennedy said: “I would encourage him to put the welfare of these children first and put the politics aside.”

The health secretary pointedly recalled that the king’s “statements to President Trump were really unconditional.” Kennedy repeatedly emphasized the life-and-death urgency of the patients. “These kids are very, very fragile,” he said.

A top West Wing official involved in the discussions was even more to the point, calling Jordan’s reluctance to fully fulfill their pledge “a sad commentary” and that “the war makes things difficult for obvious reasons.”

Pelosi, who has a longstanding friendship with Abdullah, took matters into her own hands last week and had a blunt, private conversation with Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S., Dina Kawar. Kawar told Pelosi that Abdullah’s pledge was contingent on Israel allowing those children who’ve finished treatment to return to Gaza and suggested the former speaker talk to the king, I’m told by a person familiar with the conversation.

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Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza

A ship carrying supplies bound for the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters on Friday, according to the activist group that organized the flotilla. The vessel reportedly took at least one direct hit to its hull and sustained damage from fire, forcing its crew to issue an urgent call for help.

Organizers with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of their vessels was attacked by an unidentified drone in the early hours of Friday morning, noting the ship was not far off the coast of Malta when it was hit.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a press release. “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull. [. . .] The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

An FFC spokesperson, Caoimhe Butterly, later told Reuters that the ship was struck en route to Malta, where it was scheduled to pick up other activists, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. The group said it had arranged the aid shipment “under a media black out to avoid any potential sabotage.”

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Netanyahu’s Wife Caught On Mic Saying ‘Fewer’ Than 24 Hostages Alive In Gaza

It appears that Israel has intelligence which strongly suggests the majority of 59 hostages remaining in Gaza are dead. It has long been acknowledged that at least some of the captives are deceased, but the Israeli government has kept a tight lid on information it has on the numbers.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara has unleashed new controversy, heightening tensions and outrage from victims’ families. She was heard on a hot mic at an event on Monday saying that “fewer” than 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza.

It’s unclear whether she intended to be heard by the audience at a moment her husband, PM Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking, but she muttered something key and it was picked up by the microphone.

Below is CNN’s account of what happened and what was said:

“We have of course an important task, not only to win but also to bring home (the hostages),” Netanyahu said at a meeting with Israeli holiday torchbearers on Monday. “Until today we have returned 196 of our hostages, 147 of whom were alive. There are… up to 24 living. Up to 24 living.”

“Fewer,” Sara Netanyahu interrupted quietly, seated to her husband’s right.

“I say up to,” Netanyahu quickly responded. “And the rest are, I’m sorry to say, not alive. And we will return them.”

Lately Israeli officials have issued alarm, saying they believe more hostages may be in danger of dying as the conflict drags on. Ceasefire negotiations with Hamas have been collapsed and nonexistent for months at this point.

Victims’ families and anti-Netanyahu protesters have demanded the resumption of the truce deal, in order to see the remaining captives released. The Netanyahu government has instead opted for a military solution.

“On the eve of Memorial Day, you sowed indescribable panic in the hearts of the families of the hostages – families already living in agonizing uncertainty,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement, blasting Israeli leadership.

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Amnesty International: Israel Carrying Out ‘Live-Streamed Genocide’ in Gaza

Amnesty International said in its annual human rights report that Israel is carrying out a “live-streamed genocide” as the world looks on.

“Since 7 October 2023 – when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages – the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said in an introduction to the report.

“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals, and schools,” Callamard added.

The report said that Israel was committing the crime of genocide by “killing Palestinian civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inciting conditions of life calculated to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction by causing mass forced displacement, obstructing or denying lifesaving aid, and by damaging or destroying life-sustaining infrastructure.”

Amnesty first concluded Israel was committing genocide in Gaza in a report published in December 2024. The US has rejected the conclusion and has opposed the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice since US officials are implicated due to US military aid and other types of support for Israel.

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A Monstrous Media & Murder in Gaza

Here is yet another example of stunningly craven journalism from The Guardian, entirely illustrative of what is going on across the British establishment media in its coverage of Israeli war crimes in Gaza for the past 18 months.

We are now a month on from Israel executing 15 paramedics and hiding their bodies in a mass grave. Since then, video footage has surfaced of that atrocity, showing Israeli soldiers firing on a convoy of emergency vehicles that were clearly marked and with their warning lights on.

We have had postmortems of the victims showing they were shot from close-range in the head and torso. And we’ve had eye-witness accounts of the killings.

All of that, of course, is on top of compelling circumstantial evidence. Israel sought to destroy the evidence of its war crime by crushing the emergency vehicles and then burying them, along with the bodies of the 15 crew members, presumably in the hope that they would decompose and make it hard to forensically determine exactly what had happened.

The latest evidence to emerge, reported by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper this week, shows that Israeli soldiers fired continuously for three and a half minutes on the convoy, despite the emergency vehicles being clearly marked.

According to details from an internal investigation by the Israeli military leaked to the paper, the soldiers fired from near-point-blank range and even while the emergency workers were trying to identify themselves.

(Not surprisingly, the other parts of the investigation, those made public, have been a whitewash, suggesting only “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”.)

In other words, this new evidence confirms that Israeli soldiers intentionally murdered most of the occupants of the emergency vehicles with a prolonged hail of bullets.

Those who survived, the postmortems suggest, were executed with shots to the head or torso. Then the evidence was hurriedly buried.

None of this is surprising. We have known for some time, as repeatedly reported by the Israeli media, that the Israeli military has created undeclared “kill zones”, where anything that moves is shot — even children, aid workers and emergency crews.

As has also been evident for most of the past 18 months, Israel is implementing a policy to destroy Gaza’s health sector, including its hospitals and ambulances, and killing or kidnapping medical staff —on top of wrecking the rest of the enclave’s infrastructure.

The goal is to force the Palestinian population out of Gaza, driving them into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai.

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Ben Gvir to promote Gaza starvation plan at private Brooklyn ‘welcoming’ brunch

Fascist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is set to appear on April 27 at the home of a Brooklyn businessman and Jewish power broker named Harry Adjmi, according to a private invitation. 

Update: Jeremy Loffredo, a reporter for The Grayzone, was turned away from the Midwood, Brooklyn venue which hosted Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on April 25. He witnessed a heavy security presence outside, with about 100 Shomrim, or volunteer Orthodox Jewish civilian patrolmen on the scene, operating alongside NYPD officers. Loffredo said a small number of Palestine solidarity protesters were confronted by a much larger number of local Zionist supporters of Ben Gvir, who attempted to intimidate them while the civilian patrols obstructed their movements. Among the Zionists outside the venue were members of the Jewish Defense League, the terrorist outfit founded by the late Meir Kahane, who serves as the inspiration of Ben Gvir’s fascist Jewish Power (Otzmah Yehudit) Party in Israel.

The Grayzone has obtained a private invitation to a “welcoming” party for Itamar Ben-Gvir, a messianic settler who has been convicted in a Jerusalem court of abetting a terrorist organization. The party will be held at the home of Harry Adjmi, a Brooklyn-based businessman and influential local Jewish powerbroker who has donated to the campaigns of Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Republican President Donald Trump.

Adjmi confirmed to The Grayzone that he will be hosting Ben Gvir at his home in the Syrian Jewish bastion of Midwood, just off Ocean Avenue.

Hailing from the openly supremacist Jewish Power (Otzmah Yehudit) party, Ben Gvir is the most extreme figure to have ever served as an Israeli minister. A zealous supporter of torture and genocide, he has been filmed celebrating a settler terror attack in which a Palestinian baby was burned to death. Ben Gvir was also videotaped in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron leading a mob of fellow settlers in a violent assault on Palestinian merchants. The Biden administration considered banning him from entering the US in 2022. 

According to the invite to the Brooklyn brunch with Ben Gvir, “RSVP will be required for security.”

Ben-Gvir’s first stop after arriving in the US on April 23 was Mar-a-Lago, the personal residence of President Donald Trump, where he said “senior Republicans… expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid warehouses should be bombed.” 

Throughout the Israeli minister’s speaking tour, which included a stop at Yale University’s Shabtai society, which was co-founded by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, he advanced his plan to “starve Gaza.” 100 students and 30 faculty members reportedly attended his speech.

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