Tag: perpetual war

Why Didn’t Netanyahu’s Cabinet Preempt October 7 (if it Knew About it in Advance)?

In his fiery speech to the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against accusations of genocide levelled against Israel, as many delegates walked out and hundreds of protesters rallied against him across Manhattan.

After Netanyahu had downplayed Israeli settler violence, rejected Gaza genocide and presented a number of misrepresentations, his speech reached its hallucinatory crescendo: “Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide.”

Netanyahu’s speech was an effort to shift attention away from a political storm brewing in Israel that won’t go away. It failed.

October 7, 2023 was no surprise

A day after October 7, 2023 Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer said that the “massive attacks by Hamas leadership into Israel … is no less than Israel’s 9/11.” I fully disagreed. In the same interview for CNBC, I said the attack did not come out of the blue: “The Israeli-Hamas War is a logical result of 50 years of failed military policies.”

Half a decade before. I had written of the ticking time bomb in Gaza. And a day or two before October 7, I warned of the coming explosion. It was not a prophetic insight. That date was the 50-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and a high-profile escalation was a no-brainer.

But why wasn’t Hamas’s operation disrupted when Netanyahu cabinet knew about it in advance?

In early 2025, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) investigations into the October 7 attack disclosed severe, deep-rooted intelligence miscalculations and fundamental misconceptions on the nature of Hamas and its intentions by both the Israeli government and military.

Probing the same attack, Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, pointed fingers at Prime Minister Netanyahu. The key mistakes featured the political idea of Hamas as an Israeli asset, the intelligence misjudgment that it couldn’t launch a large-scale attack, and weak defensive deployment.

As we are approaching the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (October 5, 1973), the Hamas-led attack (October 7, 2023) and the late October election in Israel, new disclosures have been many recently.

Intriguingly, many of these warnings were initially reported a long while ago. Now they have been weaponized in the bitter Israeli election struggle. That’s why most focus on Netanyahu and his cabinet rather than his rivals, several of whom effectively supported the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

UAE president’s pre-October 7 warning of a major operation

A week and a half before October 7, 2023 UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi and spoke with him for 45 minutes.

In that conversation, bin Zayed warned that Hamas’ then-leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel. He expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords.

MBZ told Netanyahu that Israel should be ready. He recommended trying to find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation.

To bin Zayed’s surprise, the Israeli PM felt there was little reason for concern. Netanyahu reassured him that Israel was prepared for any scenario.

The story was disclosed in early September by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval in their new book, Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment (in Hebrew).

If the story is valid, the inaction of Netanyahu’s cabinet on October 7 was a colossal political failure at the highest level of the Israeli government.

Hamas leader’s pre-October 7 warnings

Just days ago, former senior Fatah official Sufian Abu Zaida, who mediated between Israel and Hamas before the attacks on October 7, 2023, said that the sides had been close to signing an agreement before the massacre.

In an interview with Egypt’s Alghad TV, Abu Zaida said that Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar warned twice in September 2023 he was preparing a major operation.

The disclosures make the pre-October 7 diplomatic environment even more consequential. Abu Zaida says Israel and Hamas were nearing a proposed arrangement, which involved Palestinian prisoners, easing restrictions on Gaza and measures concerning electricity, water and workers.

Reportedly, Sinwar explicitly dictated an ominous message to Abu Zaida, ordering him to deliver it to Israeli officials word-for-word. Sinwar warned that Hamas would put cards on the table and cause an “earthquake” in negotiations, demanding that Israel prepare to “empty its prisons.”

Subsequently, then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar briefed Netanyahu on the meeting with Abu Zaida in mid-September 2023. Two days later, senior Israeli defense figures held an urgent discussion on Sinwar’s threat.

At the end of September, Egypt’s then-intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, came to Israel, reportedly to deliver a warning that Hamas was preparing for something big.

Why were these high-level warnings ignored on October 7?

Oddly enough, many of these disclosures have been known since late fall 2023, when I, too, incorporated them in my The Fall of Israel (2024).

Repeated warnings, repeated inaction

After October 7, the Egyptian intelligence chief Kamel acknowledged that Israel had ignored repeated warnings that “an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big.”

While Netanyahu denied receiving any such advance warning, the Egyptian said that the Israeli PM had received direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister. Similarly, Michael McCaul, Chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters of the alleged warning.

The inconvenient fact was that Israeli intelligence authorities had been aware of the threat for months yet ignored it.

Right after October 7, several Israeli media released several reports indicating that intelligence analysts’ warnings were ignored. In November 2023, even the New York Times reported “Israel knew Hamas’s attack plan more than a year ago.”

What was new in the Times piece was the document verifying the story. Code-named Jericho Wall, the 40-page blueprint outlined a lethal invasion.

But it was known to have been circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders. Yet, experts determined an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities.

In effect, based on over 1 year of evidence, Hamas militants had trained for the blitz attacks in at least six sites across Gaza in plain sight and less than 1.5 km from Israel’s heavily fortified and monitored border, as even the mainstream CNN concluded barely a week after October 7.

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Reporting of the RAF Fairford Arrests Blows the Idea of a ‘Free Press’ Out of the Water

It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately.

They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues.

The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing that claim all too obviously out of the water.

Here are the known facts so far.

Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties.

On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason officers were on the scene so quickly.

Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days.

It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”.

Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.

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Eisenhower and Washington Both Spoke Out Against War

“God help the Nation when it has a President who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.”
~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to his White House Staff Secretary, Gen. Andrew Goodpaster

These words are quoted in a book about Eisenhower’s foreign policy called Ike’s Bluff – President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle To Save The World by Evan Thomas.

In the same paragraph as the words above are these: “When Defense Secretary Neil McElroy warned him that further cuts would harm national security, Eisenhower acerbically replied, ‘If you go to any military installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell the commander that Ike says he will give him an extra star for his shoulder if he cuts his budget, there’ll be such a rush to cut costs that you’ll have to get out of the way.’”

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Ottawa on Jan. 10, 1946, Eisenhower said these words: “I hate war only as a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

In a speech broadcast from London in 1959, Eisenhower said: “I think people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Because of these and many other things he said and did, I think a very strong case can be made that Eisenhower was our most antiwar President.

Certainly his most famous remarks were given in his farewell address from the White House on Jan. 17, 1961. He talked of the “grave implications” of “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”

Then he added these famous words: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

I think Eisenhower would be shocked at how far we have gone down the road against which he warned, especially since the Pentagon is now wanting a one-year budget of an incomprehensible sum of more than one trillion, four hundred billion.

Less famous than his farewell address is his first major speech after his inauguration. It was given on April 16, 1953 at a meeting in Washington to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and was probably the most antiwar speech ever given by an American President.

He gave several examples of wonderful things that could be done with war money and then said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

He added: “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all… it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

This speech is quoted above Eisenhower’s grave and in a book by Brett Baker entitled Three Days In January – Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission.

In addition to his inspiring words, Eisenhower ended the Korean War and even went on national television shortly before the 1956 election to refuse Israel’s request (demand) to join a war against Egypt over the Suez Canal.

Mitchell Bard wrote in The Times of Israel in 2014: “Eisenhower went on television to criticize Israel’s failure to withdraw from Egypt and warned he would impose sanctions if it failed to comply. Eisenhower was prepared to cut off all economic aid, to lift the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal, and to apply sanctions on Israel.”

Israel withdrew, and war was averted.

I think it is very significant that possibly our other most antiwar President was our other most famous General, George Washington. His farewell address has been read in a ceremonial session of the Senate every year since 1862.

In that speech, he warned against “overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

He added these very important words: “A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest… betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” (Israel?)

Finally, in Scott Berg’s lengthy biography of Woodrow Wilson is a statement about World War 1 made by Winston Churchill to a New York newspaper editor: “America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the world war.”

Then Churchill added: “If you hadn’t entered the war the allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no break-down in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have… enthroned Nazism.” (p583)

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The Mirage of Statecraft: America’s Blind Drift in West Asia

For decades, the architecture of West Asia has rested on a comforting fiction: that Pax Americana could indefinitely manage the region through the policy of offshore balancing, security guarantees to autocrats and the supreme might of the U.S. military.

That order is gone. Not bruised, not bending, but wholly vaporized.

Washington’s illusion that it could facilely pivot away from the region while maintaining a stranglehold on its security dynamics has collided with the hard reality of enduring quagmires. Current historical events have swept away the geopolitical framework of the past that relied on predictable diplomatic patterns, managed proxy clashes and the arrogant belief that normalization pacts could be achieved while entirely ignoring public sentiment.

As Washington stumbles through the wreckage, one inescapable harrowing question hangs in the air: the old-order is spent; the status quo is dead; America is rudderless, clueless and at war. So what now?

To understand how the United States found itself adrift, one must confront a bipartisan delusion. For a quarter century, since the launch of the “war on terror,” U.S. strategists have operated on the flawed belief that military might could permanently freeze a dynamic region in embers.

Washington thought it could dispense billions in weaponry, project power through sprawling military bases across the Persian Gulf and treat the fundamental grievances of millions as merely background noise. It assumed that Arab rulers would remain compliant, that energy routes would remain permanently pacified by default and that their adversaries, like Iran, could be permanently contained through economic starvation, sabotage and periodic airstrikes.

The foundation has buckled under the weight of its own contradictions. The proliferation of precision drones, ballistic missiles and asymmetric warfare has punctured the myth of invulnerability. The comforting scripts of past decades no longer apply.

The United States now finds itself entangled in ever-widening military clashes. It is a superpower operating on muscle memory, reacting with kinetic force and without a coherent doctrinal compass. A rudderless empire is dangerous; not because of its strength, but because of its unpredictability.

Washington’s current geopolitical posture fluctuates between grand attempts to engineer a “new regional order” through flawed summits and reactively managing wars without a clear vision. Policy roadmaps look brilliant in think tanks, but they completely fail to align with the fractured realities of Beirut, San’a, Tehran, or Gaza. Policymakers ignore the reality that regional state and non-state actors have learned to operate around, beneath and directly against American power.

To label the current American establishment “clueless” is not an insult; it is a structural diagnosis. There is a profound failure of imagination among leaders who refuse to accept that U.S. hegemony in West Asia is no longer the organizing principle of local affairs. Regional powers are hedging, diversifying partnerships by building stronger ties with China and Russia, while pursuing their own agendas independent of Washington’s preferences.

When fighting a war you do not know how to exit and clinging to a status quo that has turned to ashes, you are no longer shaping events. Events are shaping you.

If the old superpower playbook is bankrupt and you are flying blind, what comes next? It is unrealistic to believe that the political conditions that led to the 1995 Oslo Accords or the 2010-2011 Arab Spring can be recreated today.

The Gaza revolution of October 7, 2023, alongside the ongoing U.S.-Israel war against Iran, have established a completely new reality for the region. The road ahead for the United States demands a radical sober geopolitical reckoning built on epochal realities; much like the following:

  • Acknowledge the limits of power: Washington must accept that it can no longer dictate and control the geopolitical dynamics of the Levant and the Persian Gulf. It cannot rely on sheer military might to sustain its regional alliances with undemocratic regimes. The U.S.-led security framework has been exposed as an outdated fantasy that needs to be completely abandoned. Security will increasingly be negotiated, or fought over, by the people who actually live there.
  • Prioritize diplomatic statecraft over force: A realistic withdrawal from the addiction to endless interventions is long overdue. If the U.S. insists on maintaining a footprint in the region, it must replace its default reliance on military force and transactional alliances with diplomacy involving all regional stakeholders. It cannot continue treating allies merely as military outposts and and gas stations.
  • Stop enabling the Zionist colony: High priority must be given to the immediate cessation of all military assistance and diplomatic backing for Israel; ending the decades-long blank check policy. Washington should instead leverage its significant economic and diplomatic weight to end the genocide in occupied Gaza and the West Bank and halt Israel’s military escalation against its neighbors.
  • Palestinian grievances must be addressed: True lasting regional peace is impossible without placing justice for the Palestinians at the center of all diplomatic efforts. The United States must pivot toward comprehending and addressing root political grievances rather than furthering Israel’s reliance on brute military force. Until Washington transitions from active accomplice in Israel’s protracted expansive wars and begins acting as an honest broker bound by international law, any talk of regional stability will remain a cruel and lethal mirage.

The courage of regional state and non-state actors who, at great cost, have been resisting injustice has inspired a wave of action among frustrated, subjugated and oppressed people across the globe.

West Asia is writing a new chapter in real time. It is being written in the ink of shifting alliances, bitter resentments and intense struggles for local autonomy. The United States will be left completely sidelined, bypassed not by another global superpower, but by the relentless march of a region that has finally learned to move forward without asking permission from Washington. America’s political class must wake up to the changing reality.

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America’s Greenland deal has a radioactive backstory

The US, Denmark, and Greenland have signed a new agreement to expand American military activity on the island. Washington calls Greenland vital to its security, but an expanded military presence also raises an older question: What risks does the Arctic island take on in return?

The agreement builds on a defense partnership dating back to 1951. That history includes an episode that brought the risks of Washington’s Cold War strategy into sharp focus: An American mission over Greenland that ended in a nuclear disaster.

The nuclear patrols over Greenland

In the 1960s, in the middle of the Cold War, the US Air Force launched Operation Chrome Dome. This mission implied keeping bombers armed with nuclear weapons on continuous airborne alert, ready to strike the USSR if necessary. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’, you’ll remember that Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong’s crew was involved in such a patrol mission.

Theoretically, this strategy was feasible: It would have made it impossible for the USSR to disarm the US with a single blow. However, in practice, as the number of nuclear-armed aircraft patrols increased, so did the number of incidents involving nuclear weapons.

Then-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advocated for ending this program, arguing that Americans had already established an effective early warning system for ballistic missile launches, so the US could take fewer risks and cut costs. However, the Strategic Air Command resisted this idea, fearing it would decrease their importance and result in budget cuts. 

A horrific incident occurred in 1966 over Spain when a bomber collided with a refueling tanker aircraft, resulting in several fatalities and nuclear bombs landing on beaches and in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this incident, the US considered the nuclear threat from the USSR a matter of primary importance, one which justified any security measures. 

Eventually, after intense debates, a compromise was reached: The number of patrolling bombers would be reduced, but the airborne patrols would continue.

Thule Air Base in northern Greenland was established in the 1950s. A Mercator projection map gives a distorted sense of distance; in reality, its location was very convenient for potentially launching missiles at the USSR and monitoring missile launches from there. It also provided a convenient vantage point for reconnaissance of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet nuclear test site. 

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Mystery Explosions: Syria’s Recovering Gas Network Keeps Getting Sabotaged

Syria has reported at least two acts of major sabotage against its gas infrastructure in six weeks, and it raises questions over who or what group is behind it, and what this means for future energy transit projects.

Monday evening saw a fire rage out of control for many hours at a gas pipeline between al-Shola and Deir Ezzor following a mystery explosion. 

Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), which oversees the site, called it an act of sabotage which abruptly halted gas flows from the Jbeissa gas plant to power generation stations, according to details from state-run SANA.

The New Arab writes that “In January, the SPC began pumping raw gas from the Jbeissa fields in Hasakah to the Furqlus gas plant in Homs province, with around 1.2 million cubic metres passing through the network each day to support electricity generation.”

The report adds, “Damascus has also been working to reconnect other major eastern gas facilities to the national network.”

For several years stretching through much of the last decade, Syrian cities – including the capital – have suffered intermittent and long power outages. It was especially during the tail-end of the proxy war to oust Assad that lack of fuel and electricity became a major crisis.

Damascus residents, for example, often had a mere one hour of electricity in their homes per day – if at all. Entire remote villages and towns simply proceeded with daily life amid a total and persistent blackout. This was to a large degree the result of a US-led sanctions war which in effect strangled the population. US troops had even for years directly occupied Syria’s eastern oil and gas fields, which had been crucial for meeting domestic energy needs.

But now after Jolani and his HTS jihadists seized power, and with Washington sanctions declared removed, the country is trying to restore and rebuild services.

While no group has yet claimed responsibility for sabotaging facilities in the east, it illustrates how the country is still in a deeply unstable situation.

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Ukraine Air-Drops Exploding Robots Deep Behind Russian Lines, Killing Thousands

Ukraine claims it killed around 3,000 Russian soldiers in a secret operation that included dropping bomb-carrying robots behind enemy lines by drone.

The Telegraph reports that the mission, known as Operation Vivaldi, was carried out by Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps over several months.

The unit also claims it retook 48 square miles of Russian-occupied land.

According to the report, a large drone carries a small robot on wheels, loaded with explosives, 10 miles or more into Russian territory in the Donetsk region before releasing it.

Operators then drive the robot, which is known as Gryphon, by remote control toward Russian troops preparing to ambush Ukrainian forces and detonate it.

The unit’s commander claimed Ukraine is the first country to use the tactic.

The drones needed to carry the robots are large enough that it is easy for Russian troops to spot and shoot down.

To get them through, Ukrainian forces jam Russian surveillance drones, hit enemy positions with artillery and drones to keep troops pinned down and fly only at night.

Some of the robots have reached as far as 12 miles behind Russian lines.

Once the robots strike, Ukrainian infantry move in on foot to capture the ground, then wait for drones and artillery to hit the next target.

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History Will Tell How Canada’s Spies Helped Trump in Cuba

Canada has long assisted the US bid to suffocate Cuba. And the roots of intelligence sharing undercut the idea of Ottawa standing up to US bullying.

On Saturday the Globe and Mail confirmed that Canada has long spied on Cuba for the US. In “Canadians passed intelligence to U.S. at time of alleged attacks in Cuba: source”, Robert Fife reports, “A Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana and Canadians were using satellite equipment brought into Cuba by the United States when officials from both countries began experiencing debilitating symptoms caused by alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia.”

The long story about the 2017 “Havana syndrome” describes how a Canadian diplomat gathered human intelligence on the island, which was often passed on directly to a CIA agent at the US embassy. Another source told Fife that “Canadians were using satellite equipment brought in surreptitiously by the United States.” The information gathered was sent to the intelligence division at Global Affairs, CSIS and to Five Eyes partners (US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand). Fife added, “the two sources said the Canadian embassy’s intelligence-gathering was valued by the U.S. because of Canada’s longstanding friendship with Cuba. Unlike the Americans, Canadian diplomats had better access to Cuban officials and were allowed to travel outside of Havana.”

As has been documented by multiple sources, including the 2015 International Journal article “Our men in Havana: Canadian foreign intelligence operations in Castro’s Cuba”, Canada has spied for the US since the Cuban revolution. In fact, Washington’s request for Canadian spying assistance is part of the reason Ottawa didn’t sever diplomatic relations with Havana after the 1959 revolution. In the 2007 book Three Nights in Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and the Cold War World Robert Wright explains: “Recently declassified State Department documents have revealed that, far from encouraging Canada to support the embargo, the United States secretly urged [Prime Minister John] Diefenbaker to maintain normal relations because it was thought that Canada would be well positioned to gather intelligence on the island.”

Ottawa did not let Washington down. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s NSA, listened to Cuban leaders’ secret conversations from an interception post in the Canadian embassy in Havana and Canadian diplomats were among the first to alert the US to incoming Soviet arms and troops before the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A senior Canadian official, close to Washington, in Inside Canadian intelligence: exposing the new realities of espionage and international terrorism “admitted that the U.S. made ‘far greater use’ of our intelligence during the Cuban Missile Crisis than has been revealed.” Pentagon and State Department sources cite the UK and Canada as the only countries that “supply any real military information on Cuba” with Canada providing “the best” military intelligence.

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IT’S OFFICIAL: Hegseth Orders U.S. Cyber Command and Pentagon Intelligence Apparatus to Mobilize Against Foreign Threats Targeting 2026 Elections

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is not playing games with America’s midterms.

A Sept. 22 memorandum directs U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the rest of the Defense Intelligence Enterprise to prioritize Department of War intelligence and cyber power against foreign actors trying to meddle in the 2026 elections.

The subject line is blunt: “Countering Foreign Threats to 2026 Elections.”

Hegseth writes that as the country approaches this election cycle, “we must prove that we can and will protect the integrity of our democratic processes from any threat.”

He quotes President Trump directly: “free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic” and “no country can be great without fair elections.”

Then he gives the order.

Cyber Command and the Combat Support Agencies “will prioritize the use of DoW intelligence and cyber capabilities to ensure foreign actors do not meddle in our democratic systems.”

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Google Earth exposes devastation in Gaza with new updated images

Google Earth has updated its images to show the devastating scale of destruction across Gaza with swathes of the strip reduced to rubble.

Israeli’s military action in Gaza has led to the damage and destruction of the majority of housing, hospitals, schools, and buildings across the 141 square mile territory, which is widely considered one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not allowed foreign journalists, independent investigators or several human rights groups into the strip. The Independent’s Bel Trew flew over the war-torn region last year and noted the “torched ruins of once-bustling cities” leaving Gaza in “ash and ruin”.

“It is as if giants have torn through anything that once lived here: monstrous teeth have ripped chunks out of the few buildings that still teeter above ground. Everything else appears stamped underfoot,” she said.

Barry Andrews, Member of the European Parliament for the Dublin constituency wrote: “The updated Google satellite images of Gaza are quite incredible, for all to see…”

It is unclear when the update was made. The Independent has contacted Google for comment.

Earlier this month, the UN called for international investigators to be granted access to all areas of Gaza to help collect evidence and document alleged violations as human remains continued to be uncovered from underneath the rubble.

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