Tag: palestine

How NYT Reports on Weaponized Famine So You Don’t Have to Give a Damn

More than two months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a complete blockade of aid—including food, water and medical supplies—from entering the besieged Gaza strip. It’s a severe escalation of Israel’s now 19-month genocide against Palestinians in Gaza—and what the World Health Organization (5/12/25) has described as “one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.”

With no replenishing stock, aid groups have begun running out of supplies to distribute to families in need.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (5/16/25) reports that their “flour and food parcels have run out,” and that “one third of essential medical supplies are already out of stock.” More than a week ago, World Central Kitchen reported that they no longer have supplies to cook hot meals and bake bread for starving families—they’ve since repurposed their pots to distribute filtered water.

With Gaza’s entire population experiencing crisis-level food insecurity, and with three-quarters facing “emergency” or “catastrophic” levels of deprivation, the famine has been recognized by Human Rights Watch interim executive director Federico Borello as “a tool of extermination.”

At first glance, the April 29 New York Times offered what many would call an objective account with the headline: “UN Faults Israel Over Blockade of Aid for Gaza” (web version here: 4/28/25).

A closer look at the piece however, reveals the Times’ usual spinelessness in its Gaza coverage, unquestioningly accepting Israeli framing in its supposed right to carry out its ongoing genocide.

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Trump administration working on plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya

The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said. 

In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.

The State Department and the National Security Council did not respond to multiple requests for comment.  

Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said that Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that has run Gaza, was not aware of any discussions about moving Palestinians to Libya.

“Palestinians are very rooted in their homeland, very strongly committed to the homeland and they are ready to fight up to the end and to sacrifice anything to defend their land, their homeland, their families, and the future of their children,” Naim said in response to questions from NBC News. “[Palestinians] are exclusively the only party who have the right to decide for the Palestinians, including Gaza and Gazans, what to do and what not to do.”

Representatives of the Israeli government declined to comment. 

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Militant Zionists Spur Arrest of Pro-Palestine Student, Judge Rules

A U.S. federal court in Massachusetts has ruled that the detention of a former student who expressed pro-Palestine views was unconstitutional and that it was a punitive measure triggered almost solely by a complaint from the Zionist militant group Betar.

Late last week, Judge Angel Kelley wrote in her decision that a former student at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), detained unlawfully by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), be released, providing the first court admission that a Zionist extremist groups is working with U.S. authorities to violate free speech rights.

Judge Kelley wrote that the government’s “pursuit of [the former student’s] detention seems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide.” 

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Israel concedes error in video claiming to show Hamas tunnels under Gaza hospital

The Israeli military has conceded that a video it released claiming to show Hamas-built tunnels underneath a southern Gaza hospital actually shows different buildings.

On Tuesday, at least nine so-called bunker-busting missiles hit the European Hospital compound in Khan Younis, Gaza’s last cancer and cardiac care hospital.

At least 16 people were killed and more than 70 were injured. The hospital has now had to close due to the damage caused to buildings and water and sewage connections.

Patients have been evacuated, although nearby intensive care units have struggled to accommodate the extra people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet (ISA) claimed Hamas had constructed a command centre underneath the hospital, and said it believed the group’s military commander Mohammed Sinwar was killed in the attack.

The IDF released a video late on Tuesday highlighting what it said was tunnel infrastructure.

But analysis of satellite imagery shows the buildings highlighted are in a school 150-200 metres away.

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Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Ben Cohen ARRESTED for Disrupting Senate Hearing During RFK Jr.’s Testimony with Pro-Gaza Protest

Ben Cohen — the far-left co-founder of the notoriously woke Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company — was ARRESTED Wednesday during a Senate hearing for causing a major disruption with a deranged pro-Gaza protest while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was testifying.

Cohen disrupted the proceedings with an unhinged pro-Gaza protest, accusing Congress of “killing poor kids in Gaza” and bizarrely linking Medicaid funding to the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to NBC News.

Capitol Police were forced to remove Cohen and six other protesters after their outbursts derailed the hearing.

The scene quickly descended into chaos after one protester shouted, “RFK kills people with AIDS,” before Cohen stood up and launched into a tirade blaming the U.S. for the deaths of Palestinian children.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chaired the hearing, swiftly ordered the removal of the disrupters.

“Members of the audience are reminded disruptions will not be permitted while the committee conducts its business. Capitol Police are asked to remove the individuals from the hearing room,” Cassidy announced while Cohen was forcibly removed by a Capitol police.

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One Side Routinely Uses Human Shields in Gaza—But Not the Side That’s Usually Blamed

Since the earliest days of the post–October 7 US/Israeli genocide in Gaza, corporate media outlets have claimed that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields. Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention characterizes the practice thusly:

The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.

In other words, when civilians are used to shield military targets, attacking those targets can be legal under international law, but the attacker, as Al Jazeera (11/13/23) noted, still has to adhere to

the principles of distinction and proportionality: An army has the duty to target only the enemy, even if this means facing greater risks to minimize civilian casualties; and to weigh the military value of each attack against the civilian casualties that are likely to result from it.

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Israel’s Crimes on the West Bank

In 1948, the newly proclaimed Israeli government seized 78 percent of Palestinian land and expelled more than half of the population (750,00 people) from their villages and towns.

This act disregarded United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which called for the termination of the colonial British Mandate and the partition of Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state. This process came to be known as the Nakba (Catastrophe).

The Palestinians gathered in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the neighbouring Arab states in the hope that they would soon be able to return to their homes. Indeed, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) noted that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid.”

Nothing of the sort ever happened — Palestinians are still waiting for that “earliest practicable date.”

In September 1948, Palestinians hastily organised the All-Palestine Government in Gaza, a largely nominal attempt to exercise sovereignty over their stolen lands. Many of its officials, including Prime Minister Ahmed Hilmi Pasha Abd al-Baqi (1882–1963) and Foreign Minister Jamal al-Husseini (1894–1982), came from elite Palestinian families, their political vision shaped by the distress of their great ruin.

Following the 1949 Armistice Agreements — signed between Israel and its neighbouring states Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria after the 1948 war — most of the territory that was not occupied by Israel came under the control of Jordan and Egypt. Jordan controlled what is now the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt.

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Trump could recognize Palestine – media

US President Donald Trump could formally recognize the state of Palestine at the upcoming Gulf-US summit in Saudi Arabia, the news outlet Media Line has reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

Palestine is recognized as a sovereign nation by 147 countries, including Russia and most nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. However, most Western European countries, Israel, and the US do not officially consider it a sovereign state. Many nations have called for its recognition as the only way to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, which escalated in 2023 when Israel launched a military operation in Gaza following a surprise Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis and saw 250 taken hostage.

“President Donald Trump will issue a declaration regarding the State of Palestine and American recognition of it, and that there will be the establishment of a Palestinian state without the presence of Hamas,” a Gulf diplomatic source, who declined to be named or disclose his position, told the outlet. The source also added that the announcement “will be the most important declaration that will change the balance of power in the Middle East.”

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Israeli cabinet votes to formalize annexation of occupied West Bank territory

In a landmark and highly controversial decision, Israel’s cabinet voted on 13 May to take full responsibility for land registration in Area C of the occupied West Bank – an area comprising around 60 percent of the territory and home to the vast majority of Israeli settlements. The move, pushed by far-right Ministers Israel Katz and Bezalel Smotrich, is widely being described by critics as a de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords, Area C was placed under temporary Israeli control, with an eventual transition to Palestinian Authority (PA) administration expected. That transition never materialized. Now, with the new cabinet resolution, any land registration efforts by Palestinians in Area C will be declared legally void by Israel. Israeli authorities plan to initiate formal land registration processes, conduct widespread land surveys, and potentially reclassify vast tracts as “state land,” opening them for settlement expansion.

Under international law, all Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank is illegal.

“This is a dangerous step toward realizing the messianic vision of the annexationist government,” said Israeli rights group Yesh Din, warning that the move violates international law and threatens the rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinian activists, such as Ayed Jafry from the village of Sinjil, say the policy will further entrench dispossession. “We’re now dealing directly with the occupation again,” he told Middle East Eye (MEE). “This opens the door for settlers to seize land without oversight.”

According to Israeli media, the government is changing its policy from restricting land use unless permitted to broadly permitting land claims unless explicitly prohibited. Finance Minister Smotrich declared the move part of a broader campaign of “normalization and de facto sovereignty,” aiming to eliminate any prospects for a future Palestinian state.

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CENSORSHIP KINGDOM: Retired Constable to Sue UK Police After Arrest Over a Social Media Post Denouncing Anti-Semitism

The United Kingdom continues its decent into authoritarianism and censorship of social media content.

Now, a retired constable is getting ready to sue Kent Police after being arrested back in 2023 for posting a social media reply warning about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from the force he had served for a decade after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X.

The 71-year-old was detained for eight hours, interrogated and ultimately issued with a caution after officers visited his home on November 2 2023.”

Last week, Kent Police sent out a statement saying that the caution was a mistake and has been deleted from Foulkes’s record.

The local law enforcement agency admitted that it was ‘not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued’.

“On Sunday, Mr. Foulkes accepted an offer from the Free Speech Union (FSU) to fund a legal challenge against the force for wrongful arrest and detention.

‘The FSU and Lord [Toby] Young have generously agreed to fully fund a lawsuit against Kent Police’, he said. ‘I’m extremely grateful for such excellent support and would urge anyone concerned about the sustained attack on free speech to please join the FSU. They’re fighting hard every day for all of us’.”

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