Tag: palestine

Prosecutor Who Exposed Sde Teiman Rape Video Missing After Netanyahu Calls It ‘Israel’s Most Dangerous Attack’

Israeli police have launched a search for outgoing military prosecutor Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, who admitted leaking a video showing Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian hostage at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in the occupied Negev.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Yerushalmi has been missing for several hours. Police found her car abandoned near a Tel Aviv beach early Sunday morning. Israel Hayom reported that she left a farewell letter inside the vehicle, while Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, said she also left a suicide note at her home.

A senior police source told Haaretz there are serious concerns for her life.

The disappearance comes a few hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the video leak as “the most dangerous propaganda attack in Israel’s history.”

Speaking at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the footage caused “massive damage to Israel’s image, its army, and its soldiers.” He called for an independent investigation into the leak, which has deeply shaken Israel’s political and military establishment.

The leaked video shows Israeli soldiers torturing and raping a Palestinian hostage at the Sde Teiman base, often referred to by Israeli activists as a “human slaughterhouse.” The recording, from July 2024, spread widely online, sparking outrage abroad but mainly panic within Israel’s leadership over reputational damage and the risk of international prosecution.

Following the leak, right-wing activists, including several Israeli ministers, stormed the base to show support for the soldiers, who committed the assault, denouncing their arrest and framing them as heroes.

A Haaretz investigation published Sunday revealed that Yerushalmi, who was dismissed last week by Defense Minister Israel Katz, had for months avoided launching probes into incidents in Gaza that could constitute war crimes.

Military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich reported that Yerushalmi deliberately froze several sensitive cases due to threats and incitement from Israel’s far-right circles following her involvement in the Sde Teiman affair.

“She felt threatened and stopped making decisions out of fear of personal attacks,” a senior army source told the paper.

Among the cases she ignored was the killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in Deir al-Balah in April 2024. An internal field investigation found that the strike violated operational orders, but Yerushalmi chose not to refer it to military police.

A reserve officer told Haaretz that Yerushalmi also refused to open investigations into the killing of 15 medical staff members in Gaza in March 2024, despite documented evidence and calls from inquiry committees.

According to sources quoted by Haaretz, Yerushalmi had received direct threats at her home and workplace.

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Whitewashing the Gaza Gas Exploration

In 2019, UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) reported that the occupied territories lie above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth in Area C of the occupied West Bank and off the Gaza Strip. However, as UNCTAD warned, the Israeli occupation has prevented Palestinians from developing their energy fields.

The missed opportunities added up.

Palestinians’ ransacked energy wealth

Based on the 2010 US Geological survey, the discoveries of oil and natural gas in the Levant Basin amounted to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In 2023 US dollars, the value of these resources translated to $557 billion and $87 billion, respectively. At the eve of October 7, that was about $644 billion in total.

By 2018, 18 years had passed since the drilling of Marine 1 and Marine 2 offshore Gaza. As the Palestinian Authority had not been able to exploit these fields, the accumulated losses were already in billions of dollars. Even in the West, the Israeli stance was seen as needlessly harsh.

In February 2021, amid the covid-19 fog of the pandemic years, talks on a gas pipeline that would deliver reliable energy to the impoverished Gaza seemed to move ahead. The plan would see natural gas from the deepwater Leviathan field operated by Chevron in the eastern Mediterranean flow through an existing pipeline into Israel, and from there into Gaza through a proposed new extension. The Israeli side of the planned pipeline would be funded by Qatar and the section in Gaza paid for by the European Union.

After a painful seven-year pause, the pipeline project was expected to provide “a steady energy source to Gaza, ending rolling blackouts that have helped cripple the economy of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.” Control over these energy resources was a central element in Yasser Arafat’s state-building agenda. As Michael Barron, an energy consultant who has written on Gaza’s energy concurs, “Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources was and remains a central part of the conflict.”

But the Netanyahu cabinets’ intransigence is working against Israel’s long-term interest in peace and stability. In particular, the recognition of the Palestinian state, especially by countries like the UK and Italy with large energy firms registered in their jurisdiction (BG and ENI, respectively), could clarify the legal ambiguity. It could ensure the Palestinian Authority with a secure source of income that is no longer reliant on Israel.

But that has never been acceptable to the Netanyahu cabinets. 

Illegal offshore tenders amid huge onshore destruction

In December 2022, Israeli Ministry of Energy launched the Fourth Offshore Bid Round offering new exploration licenses. A year later, it awarded licenses to several Israeli and international companies: Eni (Italy), Dana Petroleum (UK, a subsidiary of a South Korean company), and Ratio Petroleum (Israel). The problem is that these tenders violated international law, however.

Nonetheless, just a few months later in June 2023, following years of stalled talks, Israel approved the development of the Gaza Marine field, while Egypt’s state-owned EGAS (Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company) was to lead extraction efforts in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Nonetheless, Israel stipulated that Hamas must not benefit financially.

Ironically, PM Netanyahu had for years ensured, as part of his Gaza strategy, that Hamas can receive multi-million-dollar shipments, via intermediation. The double-faced ploy used Hamas to disrupt the Palestinian Authority (PA), to keep Gaza weak and ultimately to reap the gas benefits to Israel.

As a net effect, active gas exploration or production could not commence due to the ongoing tensions in and around the Strip, which undermined investment and infrastructure development. The resulting stalemate status quo harmed Egypt’s mediation and interest in fostering regional energy stability.

As Israel initiated its ground assault in Gaza a week after October 7, 2023, Energy Minister Israel Katz pledged on X that “all the civilian population in Aza [Gaza’s Hebraized name] is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

But Netanyahu’s veteran Likud ally had another, equally destructive role. It was Katz’s Ministry that awarded the exploration licenses to the companies on October 29, 2023, violating international law – just two days after the lethal fury of the full-scale invasion in Gaza of the Israeli military. If it wasn’t pre-planned, it was certainly most convenient.

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Haaretz Report: Lynch Mobs, Arson, and Slaughtered Animals Mark Unprecedented Israeli Settler Violence Across the West Bank

A new investigative report from Haaretz exposes a shocking escalation of settler and military-backed violence across the occupied West Bank — a campaign marked by organized lynch mobs, arson attacks, and the slaughtering of Palestinian livestock, described by local witnesses as “terror under the guise of security.”

The report, titled “Lynch Mobs, Arson, Slaughtered Animals: The West Bank Faces Unprecedented Israeli Violence,” catalogs a wave of brutality unleashed by armed settler militias over the past months, often operating with protection or open collaboration from Israeli soldiers. The evidence paints a grim picture of systemic state-sanctioned aggression and near-total impunity for the perpetrators.

A Campaign of Terror Across the Hills

According to eyewitnesses cited by Haaretz, coordinated settler groups have attacked dozens of Palestinian villages, burning homes, destroying crops, and setting herds ablaze. Livestock — a lifeline for many rural families — has been massacred in acts of intimidation designed to drive Palestinians from their land.

Residents recounted scenes of coordinated terror. “They came after midnight with rifles and masks,” one witness said. “They torched the fields, shot the sheep, and beat anyone who tried to stop them.”

The report highlights that these raids have intensified in scope and brutality since early summer. With Israeli military forces stationed mere kilometers away, settlement militias have acted freely — sometimes escorted by soldiers, according to the testimonies.

Human Rights Monitors Sound Alarm

Israeli rights groups, including Yesh Din and B’Tselem, confirmed that violent settler incursions have dramatically risen since the Gaza war’s escalation. In recent weeks, entire Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills and northern Jordan Valley were reportedly forced to flee following repeated armed assaults.

Yesh Din’s monitoring team described the situation as “a campaign of terror being carried out under state protection.” Footage and testimonies published through Haaretz indicate Israeli forces not only failed to intervene but, in several cases, actively shielded settlers from consequences.

“The army now behaves as a protective arm of the settlers,” one source told Haaretz. “Every complaint filed by a farmer or herder ends up buried — or worse, punished.”

Independent footage shared by journalist Jasper Nathaniel on X reinforces those accounts. His video, filmed near one of the recently attacked villages, shows soldiers standing by as masked settlers torch fields and chase fleeing residents — evidence, he wrote, of “open collaboration between military units and armed settlers.”

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Trump calls Israel’s latest Gaza massacre justified; 104 Palestinians, including 46 children killed

Israel massacred another 104 Palestinians, including 46 children, inside Gaza after claiming that its forces came under attack, winning the approval from President Donald Trump, who said Israel “should hit back.”

Israel has been violating the Kushner-Witkoff ceasefire since it was put in place earlier this month, with the full support of the Trump administration. The Israelis understand that all they have to do is float an allegation of a looming Hamas attack and they can resume attacks inside the destroyed enclave.

The Associated Press reported:

Hamas replied in kind on Wednesday, saying the Israeli strikes reveal “a clear Israeli intention to undermine the ceasefire agreement and impose new realities by force.” The group also said in a statement that the U.S. is offering Netanyahu a “political cover” to carry on with its aggression in Gaza.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who Trump once called a “perfect Adelson puppet,” summed up the administration’s position after another deadly Israeli strike on Saturday, saying, “Israel didn’t surrender its right to self-defense. Obviously, the ceasefire is based on obligations on both sides. Israel has a right to self-defense, terrorist activity is an imminent threat to Israel.”

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Israel Declares Gaza Ceasefire Back on After It Kills Over 100 Palestinians, Including 46 Children

The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that it was re-implementing the ceasefire in Gaza after unleashing heavy airstrikes across the Strip that, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 46 children, and 20 women, though it bombed the Strip again later in the day.

The escalation came after Israel claimed that its troops in Rafah came under attack, which killed one Israeli soldier. Israel accused Hamas of being behind the attack, but according to Israeli media, the IDF doesn’t know if the attack was approved by Hamas leadership or if it was carried out independently by a cell of Palestinian fighters isolated in the Israeli-occupied area. Israel’s Walla news reported that the attack started when Israeli troops were using heavy equipment in the area and a tunnel the militants were hiding in began to collapse.

For its part, Hamas denied involvement and said that it had “no relation to the shooting incident in Rafah and reaffirms its commitment to the cease-fire agreement.” Israel claimed that the bombardment that killed mostly women and children targeted 30 “terror commanders.”

Israeli media reports said that Israel was ready to launch heavy airstrikes in Gaza before the incident and Rafah over claims that Hamas was violating the deal based on a video Israel said showed Hamas staging the discovery of an Israeli body. But the US said there was no evidence Hamas breached the deal and objected to the escalation.

Israel has been violating the Gaza ceasefire deal since it went into effect on October 10 by not allowing the agreed-upon number of aid trucks to enter the Strip, and has also continued attacks in Gaza, killing about 100 before the major escalation on Tuesday. Later on Wednesday, Israel launched another airstrike in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, killing at least two people.

Despite the breaches, the US hasn’t offered any public criticism of Israel’s actions and has backed the massive bombardment. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” President Trump said on Wednesday.

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Calls Out Israel for Slaughtering Dozens of Children in Gaza

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Wednesday called out Israel for its heavy bombardment in Gaza and the killing of dozens of children in the Strip.

“Israel’s military said Wednesday that the ceasefire was back on in Gaza after it killed 104 people, including 46 children, according to local health officials,” Greene wrote on X. “46 CHILDREN!!! Are these not war crimes?”

Israel’s heavy airstrikes that began on Tuesday pounded targets across Gaza and also killed 20 women, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry said that another 253 people were wounded, including 78 children and 84 women.

In recent months, Greene has been outspoken in her opposition to US military aid to Israel and has introduced bills attempting to strip assistance to Israel from the annual Pentagon spending bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act.

Back in July, Greene became the first Republican in Congress to label Israel’s campaign in Gaza a genocide. “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” she said.

Greene has also clashed with the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC after it attacked her in response to her criticism of Israel. “The truth is AIPAC needs to register as a foreign lobbyist by US law because they are representing the secular government of nuclear armed Israel 100%!!!” Greene wrote on X in August.

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Inside The Trump Administration’s “Master Plan” For Gaza Regime Change

On October 10, the latest Gaza ceasefire was officially declared. According to the plan, ‘Phase One’ of the ceasefire was supposed to include a full cessation of hostilities, the mutual exchange of captives on both sides, with pledges for at least 400 humanitarian aid trucks to enter the besieged coastal territory for five days and an unlimited number afterwards.

From day one, Israel not only violated the ceasefire agreement through shooting dead a number of Palestinian civilians, but also unleashed a range of Palestinian collaborator militias to begin targeting Gaza’s local security forces. Hamas, as the governing force inside the Gaza Strip decided to re-deploy some 7,000 police and security officers to the streets of the war-ravaged territory, attempting to restore order after its forces were prevented from operating during Israel’s relentless bombardments.

Although Israel’s own forces have directly murdered over 100 Palestinian civilians since the start of the ceasefire, it had decided to switch its strategy on October 10 to using proxy forces to do its bidding instead of its own soldiers. The insidious plot, or “master plan” that has been in the works over the past two years, as US Envoy Steve Witkoff admitted during a recent interview on 60-minutes, also involves carving up Gaza into cantons ruled by separate forces.

This plot is a strategy for a multi-layered scheme that will seek to effect regime change, and in its worst iteration means the tax payer will foot the bill for another multi-national war of aggression — the goal being the completion of the objectives Israel failed to achieve through its own military operations.

In order to fully understand this scheme, all the relevant factors must be explored.

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Netanyahu Orders ‘Immediate and Powerful’ Attacks on Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli military to “immediately carry out forceful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” his office said in a statement, signaling the Gaza ceasefire deal is about to collapse.

Israel is claiming that its forces in Rafah came under attack by Hamas fighters, and Palestinians on the ground reported hearing gunfire and strikes in the south, but Hamas has said that it had “no relation to the shooting incident in Rafah and reaffirms its commitment to the cease-fire agreement.”

Israel currently controls about 58% of Gaza’s territory, and Netanyahu has reportedly decided to take over more territory.

After Netanyahu’s announcement, a series of airstrikes were reported in Gaza City and Khan Younis. According to Al Jazeera, witnesses said a “massive” strike hit near the Al-Shifa Hospital. At least 30 people have been killed, and pictures and videos show that many children are among the dead and wounded.

Netanyahu’s statement also came after Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire deal over claims that it was delaying and staging the recovery of the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages. Before the agreement was signed, Israeli officials acknowledged that the bodies would take time to find, and CNN cited officials who said some remains may never be found.

Israel released a video on Tuesday that it said showed Hamas burying a body and then bringing in the Red Cross to recover it, but according to Israeli media, the US didn’t buy Israel’s claim that the footage showed that Hamas violated the ceasefire and objected to Israel launching airstrikes. Then, the alleged attack took place in Rafah, and Netanyahu renewed airstrikes.

Israel has also impeded efforts to recover more bodies by refusing to allow Turkish and Qatari teams to enter the Strip and help locate and retrieve remains, according to two Arab officials speaking to The Times of Israel. The initiative would have also involved representatives from Israel, the US, and Egypt aiding in the effort.

In response to Netanyahu’s announcement, Hamas has said that it has postponed the planned handover of another body due to Israeli “violations.” Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said any Israeli escalations “will hinder search, digging, and retrieval operations of the bodies, which will lead to a delay in recovering the bodies.” Later in the day, Hamas said that it found two more Israeli bodies during excavations in Gaza City.

While there has been a de-escalation in Gaza, Israeli forces have continued launching attacks since the ceasefire deal was signed on October 10, killing more than 100 Palestinians in that time. Israel has also not allowed the agreed-upon number of aid trucks to enter Gaza.

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The World Confronts the Genocide Washington Is Trying To Bury

On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”

Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only allowed 15% of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.

While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel’s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.

This is only the first part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from Israel-backed criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.

Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and previously said it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump’s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, nor to any plan for the future of Palestine.

In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face value or even repeat them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump’s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.

Trump’s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “lost a lot of support in the world,” he offers a shortcut back to “business as usual” for governments eager to protect – and even expand – profitable ties despite Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.

In his first term, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the big prize: Saudi Arabia.

But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries except Turkiye (which abstained) voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either don’t recognize Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.

Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But the foundational basis of Netanyahu’s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the sea and the Jordan.” And on October 22, during Vice President Vance’s visit to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Bank.

Trump unveiled his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the result of a conference in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” to enforce a ruling by the international Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended “as quickly as possible.”

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CIA provided contradictory intel on Hamas during Trump-brokered peace deal, envoys reveal

As U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner worked to secure a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, they faced an unexpected obstacle: conflicting intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In a revealing interview with “60 Minutes,” Witkoff disclosed that while mediators from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt assured them Hamas was open to negotiations, the CIA delivered daily briefings insisting the militant group would reject the deal. The discrepancy raises critical questions about the reliability of U.S. intelligence and its role in high-stakes diplomacy.

The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan faced skepticism from regional players and international observers. Yet Kushner and Witkoff, leveraging personal relationships with Arab leaders, believed Hamas could be persuaded to accept key concessions—including a hostage release and ceasefire.

According to Witkoff, while Qatar’s emir, Turkey’s president and Egypt’s leadership privately signaled Hamas’ willingness to engage, the CIA’s assessments painted a starkly different picture.

“We were getting, because of our relationships… we were hearing that Hamas was positive on the deal,” Witkoff told “60 Minutes.” “And yet I was reading intelligence reports every day and getting briefings from the CIA three times a day and those intelligence briefings were suggesting that Hamas was going to say no.”

The contradiction forced Kushner and Witkoff to make a crucial judgment call: trust their diplomatic sources or defer to the CIA’s warnings.

Did the CIA mislead or misinterpret?

The White House defended the intelligence community’s role, with an official telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided “critical support” throughout negotiations.

“It is the responsibility of the intelligence community to provide full scopes of assessments to the negotiating team to ensure they have the full range of information and can achieve the best possible outcome—as they did,” the official said.

But according to BrightU.AI‘s Enoch, Witkoff’s account suggests the CIA’s assessments may have been flawed—or deliberately skewed. The implications extend beyond Hamas, reinforcing long-standing concerns about intelligence politicization, particularly regarding Russia, Iran and other geopolitical flashpoints.

A pattern of distrust in U.S. intelligence

This incident adds to a growing list of credibility issues surrounding U.S. intelligence agencies. President Donald Trump famously clashed with the CIA, accusing it of undermining his policies. Sens. Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard have also voiced skepticism about intelligence assessments on Russia and Syria.

The Hamas episode underscores a recurring dilemma: when intelligence contradicts firsthand diplomatic feedback, which should policymakers trust?

Ultimately, Kushner and Witkoff’s gamble paid off. Hamas accepted the ceasefire, freeing hostages and opening the door to further negotiations. But the revelation that the CIA’s intelligence directly contradicted mediators’ assurances raises troubling questions. Was the CIA misinformed—or was it pushing an agenda? And if intelligence agencies can be so wrong on Hamas, how reliable are their assessments on Iran, Russia or China?

For now, the Trump administration celebrates a rare diplomatic victory. But the deeper lesson may be that in an era of intelligence wars and geopolitical deception, sometimes the best intelligence comes not from classified briefings—but from trusted allies on the ground.

As the U.S. navigates future conflicts, the balance between intelligence analysis and real-world diplomacy will remain fraught. The Hamas case serves as a stark reminder that truth in foreign policy is often elusive—and sometimes, the most reliable intelligence comes from those who refuse to take “official assessments” at face value.

Watch the video below where Trump was lauded for the historic peace deal in Gaza.

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