Tag: palestine

Peter Thiel: From Gaza AI War Criminal To White House Puppet Master

The screams of babies as buildings collapse in Gaza. Terrified parents carrying the remains of their children away in plastic carrier bags. These scenes – altogether too familiar today – come enabled by German-American tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his company, Palantir, whose software uses AI and big data to help the Israeli military surveil, target and slaughter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. It is also used by ICE, the FBI and U.S. law enforcement to destroy privacy, to attack whistleblowers, and to turn the Orwellian concept of “pre-crime” (identifying and tracking potential subversives before they commit any offense) into a reality.

The Silicon Valley oligarch has deep ties to the CIA and the military-industrial complex and is one of the Republican Party’s most powerful backers. Already one of the world’s most influential individuals, if Donald Trump wins in November, Thiel has set himself up to become a “shadow president,” wielding gigantic power over us all. This is his story.

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Israel to Establish Jewish-Only Settlements in Northern Gaza as Annexation Moves Forward

Israel has set its sights on a potential annexation of northern Gaza, framing it as a “closed military zone.” This comes one year after the same area endured an all-out ground assault. Coupled with Israel’s newly established “buffer zone” and the occupation of two corridors in central and southern Gaza, the territory is being gradually eroded.

In late October 2023, Israel launched its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, concentrating primarily on the northern portion of the besieged enclave. At the same time, Israel issued demands for medical staff at all major hospitals to abandon their facilities.

It then released CGI imagery depicting a “Hamas headquarters” under al-Shifa Hospital, which was later debunked after the medical facility was bombed and invaded. It had also ordered some 1.1 million civilians to flee towards the South, where “safe zones” were said to be located. Today, Israel has again shifted its focus onto northern Gaza, ordering the civilian population to flee and signaling to the remaining staff of the Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and Al-Awda Hospitals that they should immediately evacuate or be subjected to consequences of another military assault.

Israel has now coupled its invasion of the Jabalia Refugee Camp with speculation that the government is moving forward with a plan reportedly considered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in secret meetings back in September. This plan, publicly supported by certain Israeli members of the Knesset and former military officials, involves seizing northern Gaza and declaring it a “closed military zone.”

According to Haaretz, Netanyahu’s administration is now preparing to enter the “next phase” of its war on Gaza, which could result in the de facto annexation of the area north of the Netzarim Corridor. This corridor, which has been occupied by the Israeli military, effectively splits the Gaza Strip in half. It played a crucial role in the breakdown of previous ceasefire talks, as Israel refused to agree to a permanent withdrawal from the area.

The possibility of allowing Jewish settlers to establish colonies in northern Gaza is also being discussed. Since January, the settler movement has held conferences promoting this topic, signaling growing support for the idea.

Additionally, on May 6, after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli military immediately invaded the Rafah Crossing in southern Gaza. The invasion continued until Israel’s forces occupied the entire Palestine-Egypt border area, known as the Philadelphia Corridor. This, along with the destruction of infrastructure and agricultural land on Gaza’s outskirts over the past year to create a new “buffer zone,” has effectively reduced Gaza into an even smaller enclave. Over 1.5 million people are now crammed into overcrowded, unsanitary tent cities.

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White House Ignored Warning from Pentagon, State Dept that Israel Was Creating a Catastrophe in Gaza

Recently released emails from Reuters show that officials in the White House ignored warnings from their counterparts at the Defense and State Department warning that Israel was committing war crimes and creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Reuters reviewed emails from the Departments of Defense and State from last October, showing that high-ranking officials warned about supporting Israel as it committed war crimes in Gaza.

“As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House, the outlet reported. “The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel.”

The warning came from Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in an Oct. 13 email sent to senior White House aides. She explained an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone.”  

Stroul and other officials were pushing the White House to take a more sympathetic position on the suffering of Palestinians and ask Israel to give Gazans more time to comply with Tel Aviv’s evacuation orders. 

While the Biden administration claims that it did pressure Israel early in the onslaught and that did make a difference, Reuters reports that the White House had little impact on Tel Aviv’s military operations. 

“But Washington was slow to address the suffering of Palestinians, said three senior U.S. officials involved in the decision-making process,” the article explains. “And while the ground invasion was ultimately delayed by about 10 days, the three officials attributed the pause more to operational preparations by the Israeli military than U.S. pressure.”

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Words Kill: Why Israel Gets Away With Murder in Gaza and Lebanon

The official Israeli army version of why it has targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly bombardment of September 20 in south Lebanon is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their own homes.

This official explanation by the Israeli military was meant to justify the killing of 492 people and the wounding of 1,645 in a single day of Israeli strikes.

This ready-to-serve explanation shall accompany us throughout the Israeli war in Lebanon, however long it takes. Israeli media is now heavily citing these claims and, by extension, US and western media are following suit.

Keep this in mind as you reflect on earlier statements made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 13 when he argued that there are no civilians in Gaza and “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible”.

Israel does this in every war it launches against any Palestinian or Arab nation. Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructures from its bank of targets, it immediately turns the civilian population into the main targets of its war.

A quick glance at the number of civilians killed in the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza should be enough to demonstrate that Israel targets ordinary people as a matter of course.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, children and women constitute the largest percentage of the war’s victims at 69 percent. If we factor in the number of adult males who have been killed – a number that includes doctors, medics, civil defense workers and numerous other categories – it will become obvious that the vast majority of all of Gaza’s victims are civilians.

Only Israeli media, and their allies in the west, continue to find justifications of why Palestinian civilians, and now Lebanese, are being killed in large numbers.

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October 7th in Retrospect, Why Hamas Attacked

A year has passed since Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7th. Dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas conducted an improbable attack that resulted in 1200 dead Israelis and over 250 hostages taken into Gaza. Israel also initiated the Hannibal Directive that day, killing some of their civilians to prevent them from being taken into Gaza. In the aftermath of the attack, political pundits and analysts ruminated on why Hamas attacked. From Hamas’ perspective, October 7th was a justified response to 75 years of Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people. Beyond that rationale, experts could not fully explain October 7th. However, in retrospect, other elements may have driven Hamas’ strategic calculus for the October 7th attacks.

One of the motivating factors behind Hamas’ October 7th attack was the group’s unpopularity amongst Palestinians in Gaza. According to James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, roughly 20% of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas before Oct 7th. One of the most notable instances of public disobedience came in July 2023 when thousands of Palestinians took to the streets against the Islamist group over the economic and living conditions in Gaza caused by Israel’s brutal blockade. The demonstrations were violently broken up in what was considered a rare but powerful display of frustration against Hamas’ rule.

Taking these elements into consideration, Hamas sought to use October 7th as an attempt to reconfigure its image as an authoritarian militant group into a fighting force protecting Palestinians against Israeli aggression. Hamas believed that by framing October 7th as a revolutionary act of resistance against Israel, Palestinians would see them as protectors of their struggle and see Hamas in a favorable light.

Geopolitical considerations in the Middle East also contributed to the October 7th attack. Hamas ultimately felt the need to debunk the narrative that the Middle East could ignore the Palestinian struggle entirely. For example, Jordan and Egypt relinquished their political leverage when both nations made peace with Israel without conditioning the creation of a Palestinian state.

In the months before the Hamas attack, Saudi Arabia was on the brink of repeating this same pattern by normalizing relations with Israel. Washington and Riyadh were engaged in high-level discussions in which the Saudis sought a U.S. defense pact. The White House pushed the Kingdom to drop its demands that normalization with Tel Aviv be conditioned on a Palestinian state.

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“We Spread Misinformation”: CBS Photojournalist Lights Himself On Fire Near White House 

A CBS News photojournalist from Phoenix, Arizona, lost his marbles in Washington, DC Saturday evening near the White House at the Black Lives Matter Plaza, setting himself on fire while screaming, “I am a journalist. We spread the misinformation.”

Sam Mena Jr, a photojournalist for ​AZFamily KTVK 3TV and KPHO CBS 5 News, set his left arm on fire while attempting self-immolation during a pro-Palestinian rally near the White House. He shouted, “Free Palestine!”, and “I’m a journalist and I’m ashamed! We spread the misinformation!”

Just before the incident, the MSM photojournalist posted a lengthy blog post to his website, telling anyone who read the post exactly what he was going to do:

“To the 10 thousand children in Gaza that have lost a limb in this conflict, I give my left arm to you. I pray my voice was able to raise up yours, and that your smiles never disappear.” 

What’s very concerning is that the MSM photojournalist, who possibly had a few screws loose, was just feet from former President Trump during a press conference in Arizona late last month. 

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Anti-Israel Protestor Sets Himself on Fire Outside White House

An anti-Israel protester, identified as Samuel Mena Jr, lit himself on fire outside of the White House during an anti-Israel protest on Saturday evening.

In photos and videos  of the incident, Mena Jr,  is seen screaming in pain as he raises his left arm engulfed in pain and

Several bystanders rished to his aid, dousing him with water and beating out the flames with pieces of clothing.

Mena screamed about ‘misinformation’ and announced that he is a journalist.

Jessica Costescu from Free Beacon captured the harrowing incident and its aftermath.

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Investigation reveals Israeli troops committing first ever ‘live streamed genocide’

Al Jazeera has released a new documentary, available on YouTube, detailing Israeli war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza, based on videos filmed and posted on social media by soldiers themselves.

“We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first livestreamed genocide in history,” Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa told Al Jazeera’s investigative unit (I-Unit).

Since the start of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza last October, Israeli soldiers have posted thousands of videos and photos on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

Rodney Dixon, an international law expert featured in the film, says the videos are “a treasure trove which you very seldom come across … something which I think prosecutors will be licking their lips at.”

The film also includes information collected by Al Jazeera journalists working on the ground in Gaza, as well as Israeli military drone footage. It is unclear how Al Jazeera obtained the drone footage.

The videos show evidence of the Israeli army’s murder of unarmed civilians, wanton destruction, torture of detainees, and use of human shields in Gaza.

Many videos showed Israeli soldiers using explosives to demolish residential buildings and homes.

“The fact that they’ve been able to rig these buildings up with explosives shows very clearly that there’s no current threat from those buildings,” Charlie Herbert, a retired major general in the British Army and researcher for the project, told Al Jazeera.

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Israeli authorities are using facial recognition technology to entrench apartheid

The Israeli authorities are using an experimental facial recognition system known as Red Wolf to track Palestinians and automate harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement, Amnesty International said today.  In a new report, Automated Apartheid, the organization documents how Red Wolf is part of an ever-growing surveillance network which is entrenching the Israeli government’s control over Palestinians, and which helps to maintain Israel’s system of apartheid. Red Wolf is deployed at military checkpoints in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, where it scans Palestinians’ faces and adds them to vast surveillance databases without their consent.

Amnesty International also documented how Israel’s use of facial recognition technology against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem has increased, especially in the wake of protests and in the areas around illegal settlements. In both Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem, facial recognition technology supports a dense network of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to keep Palestinians under near-constant observation. Automated Apartheid shows how this surveillance is part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians, with the aim of minimizing their presence in strategic areas.

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Israel bombs Palestinian journalist’s home in latest Gaza massacre

Palestinian journalist Wafa Aludaini was killed alongside her family on 30 September in an Israeli airstrike targeting their home in central Gaza. 

Aludaini’s family home was bombed by Israel on Monday, killing her with her husband and two children, according to several Palestinian media reports. 

Gaza’s Government Media Office identified her as the 174th Palestinian journalist to be killed by Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on 7 October.

She worked “with several English-speaking media outlets,” the media office said, urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for its “crimes against journalists.”

“Through her words and actions, she stood as both a storyteller and a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for freedom,” wrote the Palestine Chronicle, with who Aludaini worked as a contributor, on 30 September. 

Israeli airstrikes continue to pound the entirety of the Gaza Strip on a daily basis. 

A woman and her child were killed in Deir al-Balah on Monday after an Israeli airstrike targeted a home in the Hakr al-Jami area of the city.

“Israeli occupation forces committed two massacres against families in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, resulting in the killing of at least 20 Palestinians and the injury of 108 others,” WAFA news agency reported.

Since 7 October, at least 41,615 people have been reported killed and another 96,359 injured. 

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