U.S. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had a son travel to Ukraine and fight against Russian forces in Donbass. He knows the inner-workings of the conflict.
Yesterday, he issued this statement in response to reports ‘American-led’ mercenary units were executing Russian prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention.
The public inquiry into alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan has obtained a previously deleted cache of data that could hold crucial evidence, the BBC can reveal.
The files were permanently erased from a server by a UK Special Forces contractor in 2016, during a murder investigation into the SAS.
But the public inquiry team has now secured backups of the server – part of a Special Forces communications system codenamed “Sonata” – believed to have been created before the files were erased.
The backups are likely to contain information about SAS operations on which members of the elite regiment were suspected of unlawfully killing unarmed Afghan detainees and civilians.
A spokesperson for the inquiry confirmed to the BBC that they had obtained the backups, adding: “We now hold the relevant material and are exploring a technical solution to retrieve and review the data to determine its relevance to the investigation.”
The spokesperson said the inquiry team was approached during several days of hearings about computer evidence last December by someone offering them access to the backups, but the inquiry declined to comment on the source of the offer.
This is the first time backups of Sonata have been obtained by investigators outside UK Special Forces, which blocked previous efforts by the Royal Military Police (RMP) to copy the server.
To the dismay of the RMP investigators, a contractor hired by UK Special Forces (UKSF) during the murder investigation ran a program on the server in 2016 designed to permanently erase previously deleted files.
This process, known as “zeroing”, flew in the face of explicit instructions the RMP had given to UKSF that no data should be tampered with before the server could be copied.
Israeli forces in recent months have targeted forests and populated areas in southern Lebanon with internationally banned white phosphorus bombs and munitions, local media reports say.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that the most recent attacks occurred near the town of Kfar Kila.
Israeli forces are also carrying out “a search operation” near Kfar Kila from their base in Metula, a town on the northern side of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories.
The report further says the attacks endangered civilians’ lives and caused massive fires in the region.
Israel continues to use white phosphorus munitions in south Lebanon, causing lasting damage and driving villagers away.
A series of reports have said that white phosphorus attacks are “putting civilians at grave risk” and “contributing to displacement”.
A recent investigation by Qatar-based al-Jazeera found that Israel had dropped 117 phosphoric bombs on southern Lebanon, striking at least 32 towns and villages between October and March.
The impacted area spanned nearly the entirety of Lebanon’s 100km southern border with the occupied territories. Israel’s repeated use of white phosphorous has drawn the ire of international humanitarian organizations.
On March 19, Oxfam called on the administration of US President Joe Biden to “immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel.”
Israel reportedly used US-supplied white phosphorus munitions in an October attack in southern Lebanon, according to a Washington Post investigation in December.
Photos and videos verified by international rights groups and reviewed by The Post show the characteristic ribbons of white phosphorus smoke falling over Dheira, a southern Lebanese village, on October 16.
British nationals are serving in some of Israel’s “craziest” combat units in Gaza where they view Palestinian fighters as “rats” and “animals”.
The soldiers have pledged to “kill these sons of whores” and “start pummelling them again.”
Declassified has gathered names and photographs of 15 Britons who have recently fought for Israel, and has partially identified another 10.
They are among at least 80 U.K. nationals who the Foreign Office knows to have enlisted in the IDF but is doing nothing to stop.
One of the soldiers, master sergeant Sam Sank, filmed himself fighting in Gaza between December 2023 and January 2024.
Declassified showed the footage to open source intelligence analyst Alysia Alexandra who located the neighbourhood where it was taken.
The tape puts Sank in the Gazan border settlement of Khuza’a while it was being flattened by the IDF during his two-month tour.
Israel’s top human rights group, B’Tselem, has described the IDF’s operation to create a buffer zone in Khuza’a throughout that period as a “war crime”.
“The military demolished the entire town, including residential buildings and mosques,” B’Tselem said, warning that the level of destruction was disproportionate and “violates a basic principle of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking to the UN Security Council, the head of an investigatory body probing the Gaza war found Israeli officials committed war crimes during military operations in the Strip.
Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced her findings to the UNSC on Wednesday, stating the commission had concluded that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”
She explained that those crimes include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing using starvation as a method of War, forcible transfer, gender persecution, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture and cruel or inhuman treatment.”
The commission noted that Hamas has committed similar crimes throughout the latest conflict.
During the eight-month assault on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed over 37,000 Palestinians and injured an estimated 85,000. Israeli bombings have also destroyed most of Gaza’s homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and farmland. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been plunged into near-famine conditions.
Israel is guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations (UN) committee has concluded.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) made this conclusion on June 12, deeming Tel Aviv guilty of the atrocities committed during its eight-month-long campaign of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The COI said Israeli authorities are accountable for “the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare, murder or willful killing, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, forcible transfer, sexual violence, torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, and outrages upon personal dignity.”
The COI also discovered that “the crimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, [and] forcible transfer” were also committed. According to the commission’s findings, the the enormous number of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza is “the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with the intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality, and adequate precautions.”
Moreover, the investigation resolved that the inflammatory remarks by Israeli officials “amounted to incitement and may constitute other serious international crimes,” adding that direct and public provocation to genocide is a crime under international law whenever committed.
The COI also criticized Israel’s continued assaults on civilian evacuation routes and “safe areas” and stated leading Israeli authorities have “weaponized the siege and used the provision of life-sustaining necessities, including by severing water, food, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian assistance, for strategic and political gains.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) provides a detailed analysis of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli assault on Gaza. The report finds both sides committed war crimes but concludes there is no evidence to support the claim that Hamas engaged in mass rape during its rampage in southern Israel. The COI found evidence of Israel intentionally killing civilians and Israeli forces engaged in acts of sexual torture.
The report’s analysis of the events on October 7 concluded Hamas intentionally targeted two dozen civilian targets, leading to hundreds of deaths. The COI found evidence that members of Hamas committed sexual assaults on Israelis, with some female bodies found undressed.
However, the report debunks the widespread claim that top Israeli and US officials have often repeated that Hamas engaged in mass rape during its attack. “The Commission has reviewed testimonies obtained by journalists and the Israeli police concerning rape but has not been able to independently verify such allegations,” the report says. “Additionally, the Commission found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence or statements and discounted these from its assessment.”
While the assertion that Hamas engaged in mass rape on October 7 has been widely discussed in the US media, the Palestinian accusations that Israeli forces have systematically engaged in horrific sexual violence have gone largely unreported.
The COI found evidence to back the Palestinian claims that Israel is engaging in systemic sexual torture and humiliation. “Based on testimonies and verified video footage and photographs, the Commission finds that sexual violence has been perpetrated throughout the [Israeli enforced] evacuation processes.” The report continues, “Palestinians were made to watch members of their family and community strip in public and walk completely or partially undressed while subjected to sexual harassment.”
The Israeli forces inflicted sexual torture on males, according to the COI. “Males were repeatedly filmed and photographed by soldiers while subjected to forced public stripping and nudity, sexual torture and inhumane or cruel treatment,” the report found.
The COI concluded that the Israeli forces were authorized or allowed to engage in the sexual abuse. “The Commission concludes that forced public stripping and nudity and other types of abuse by Israeli military personnel were either ordered or condoned.” It adds, “These acts were intended to humiliate and degrade the victims and the Palestinian community at large by perpetuating gender stereotypes that create a sense of shame, subordination, emasculation and inferiority.”
Another day, another mass murder by Israel in Gaza using U.S.-provided weapons.
At least 45 people were killed, mainly women and children, inside a UN-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The IDF said it was targeting a Hamas compound that was operating inside the school, according to CNN.
The report said U.S.-made munitions were used in the strike – the same GBU-39 small-diameter bombs that Israel used in its recent bombing of a tent camp of displaced Gazans that killed 35.
Netanyahu “is killing the civilians, he is not killing militants, it’s innocent people asleep in a UNRWA facility… what did children and elderly do? What did they do to him? He is looking for Hamas people? Go look for them, why are you killing us in schools?”
The report, citing journalists in the area working with CNN, said the school, which was housing 20,000, was hit by three missiles.
Mark this most recent event as yet another piece of evidence that Israel literally owns the U.S. Congress.
Netanyahu accepts Congress’ invitation to speak despite blowback.
Tensions have been mounting in recent weeks after Speaker Mike Johnson announced his plan to invite Netanyahu to address Congress
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accepted an invitation from congressional leaders to address a joint session, a decision that has sparked tension within the Democratic Party over Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
In a post to X, formerly known as Twitter, Netanyahu wrote that he was looking forward to the opportunity to “present the truth” to Congress about the “just war” that Israel has been waging in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 others were taken hostage. In the months following Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, at least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities, while millions of others have fled from their homes.
“I am very moved to have the privilege of representing Israel before both Houses of Congress and to present the truth about our just war against those who seek to destroy us to the representatives of the American people and the entire world,” Netanyahu wrote.
Tensions have been mounting in recent weeks after Speaker Mike Johnson announced his plan to invite Netanyahu to address Congress. The Democratic Party has splintered over U.S. support for Israel in its ongoing war in Gaza, particularly after recent strikes in a designated safe zone for Palestinians in the southern city of Rafah that reportedly killed at least 45 people.
Progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has been outspoken in his disapproval of U.S. military support for Israel’s war, denounced the invitation.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. He should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress. I certainly will not attend,” Sanders wrote in a post to X.
Sanders also referenced the International Criminal Court’s seeking arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for alleged war crimes committed on both sides.
Several months after media commentators began predicting a “strategic defeat” for Israeli forces in Gaza, Israel’s military high command is claiming it has lost control over various units in their armed forces.
The argument appears to scapegoat occupation soldiers to provide plausible deniability for their superiors and dissociate them from war crimes charges. The vast body of evidence emerging on these alleged ‘rogue Israeli units’ could potentially lead to a damning indictment of Tel Aviv’s military leadership.
Despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) recent call on Israel to halt its military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains resolute in his vow to invade, even while personally facing an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant. Marred by internal division and pressure to comply with the ICJ order, Tel Aviv finds itself in a precarious position.
‘Rogue units’ in the occupation army
Hebrew-daily Haaretz dropped a narrative bombshell last weekend when it claimed that the Israeli army’s “General Staff lost control over the units, especially reserve units, months ago.” The article attempts to depict a situation in which Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has just “woken up” to the reality of allegedly rogue elements operating under his watch, with these ‘uncontrolled units’ committing the crimes cited by the ICJ against Israel.
Throughout the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers have been publishing evidence of themselves committing crimes, showing genocidal intent, and performing perverse acts while operating inside the besieged coastal territory.
These incriminating clips, published primarily on TikTok and Instagram and also within Telegram groups that glorify the killing of Palestinian civilians, have attracted a lot of bad press. It appears that Israel’s leadership is now floating the “few bad apples” strategy to absolve their military high brass of accountability.
It won’t be easy. Some of these social media groups are run by occupation officials. Furthermore, the Israeli military establishment has admitted to running accounts on Telegram that showcase snuff films as part of a psychological warfare operation under the “Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department.”
Hellbound and Down 
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