Obscene US-Israeli murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed
Western media is either silent or implicitly blaming Tehran for the strike that killed 168 girl
Eva Karene Bartlett, Substack,, Mar 05, 2026
In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.
The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.
It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.
None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.
On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”
At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.
International media reaction: Silence
If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy.
In 2017, in his Aleppo home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.
Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.
Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.
The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”………………………………………….
Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.”Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.
Even if you set aside the actual culprit of the school bombing, legacy media reports are devoid of any concern for the slaughtered children: no details, no empathy, no mention that they were murdered in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The tone would be radically different were the children Israeli, Ukrainian or American. We would see names, ages, stories about them. They would be humanized – if only they were not Iranian (or Palestinian, or Lebanese, or Syrian)………………………………………………… https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/obscene-us-israeli-murder-of-iranian?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=189965341&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
‘Flagrant War Crime’: Investigation Recreates 2025 Israeli Massacre, Cover-Up of 15 Gaza Aid Workers
By Democracy Now!, SCHEERPOST, 27 Feb 26
It’s been almost one year since Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers in a brutal two-hour massacre on a vehicle convoy in southern Gaza. Israeli soldiers had attempted to cover it up by burying the bodies in a shallow mass grave, and crushing the rescue vehicles with heavy machinery, but a new investigation by Forensic Architecture and Earshot has recreated a minute-by-minute accounting of what took place. Director of Earshot Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who analyzed audio from video evidence alongside witness accounts, calls the Israeli response to the attack an “obstruction of justice.” He says “there is no reason why the Israeli army, with all of its GPS coordinates, its drones in the sky, couldn’t have done this internal investigation at a way higher resolution than we can have done.”
“We’ve been able to show that the attack continues for over two hours — until 7 a.m. in the morning, where we have the last recording of the night,” says Samaneh Moafi, assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture.
Transcript……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/27/flagrant-war-crime-investigation-recreates-2025-israeli-massacre-cover-up-of-15-gaza-aid-workers/
Israeli troops fired 900+ rounds at Gaza medics – report

24 Feb, 2026, https://www.rt.com/news/632982-israel-gaza-medics-killing/
Hundreds of rounds were fired at aid workers during a March 2025 massacre at Tal as-Sultan, an independent investigation says
Israeli soldiers fired over 900 rounds at a convoy of clearly marked emergency vehicles in Rafah in 2025, killing 15 Palestinian aid workers, some of them shot at close range, an independent investigation has found.
The attack took place on March 18, 2025 in the Tal as-Sultan area of southern Gaza, where local responders had been dispatched to collect wounded civilians. Fifteen Palestinian aid workers were killed, including medics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and members of the Civil Defense.
The victims were traveling in five ambulances and one fire truck, all clearly marked and operating with emergency lights, when they came under sustained gunfire, according to a report released on Monday by independent research agency Forensic Architecture and audio investigation group Earshot.
Investigators reconstructed the incident using audio recordings, satellite imagery, video footage, and witness testimony. Some of the victims were reportedly “shot ‘execution-style’ from close range.”
Investigators analyzed footage recovered from the phone of one of the slain paramedics and identified at least 910 gunshots during the attack, with 844 bullets fired over five and a half minutes. “During this time, at least five shooters fired simultaneously, and witness testimonies suggest as many as thirty soldiers were present in the area,” according to the report.
The report said Israeli forces later crushed the vehicles with heavy machinery and tried to bury them along with the bodies. The victims, all wearing identifying uniforms or volunteer vests, were recovered from a mass grave nearby, the researchers said.
One of the two survivors was abducted by Israeli forces, and were held without charge for 37 days at the Israeli Sde Teiman detention facility and released in poor health. He testified that soldiers confiscated and buried his phone. The other was used as a “human tool” at an Israeli military checkpoint near the site, the report added.
The Israel Defense Forces said the area was an active combat zone and that troops believed they were facing security risks. They later claimed that one vehicle may have been linked to Hamas, which was disputed by the survivors and humanitarian organizations. An internal Israeli inquiry launched in April 2025 cited “professional failures” but rejected allegations of deliberate killings or criminal conduct and recommended no criminal action against the units involved.
The UN, Red Cross, and a number of human rights groups condemned the killings.
Hundreds of medical and emergency personnel have been killed or injured since October 2023, when the IDF began its campaign in the enclave in response to a Hamas incursion into Israel that left at least 1,200 people dead and 250 taken hostage. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 72,000 people have been killed since the war began.
Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate.

Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].
“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,”
Al Jazeera investigation reveals how US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C have left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians.
By Mohammad Mansour, 10 Feb 202610 Feb 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/10/israel-used-weapons-in-gaza-that-made-thousands-of-palestinians-evaporate
At dawn on August 10, 2024, Yasmin Mahani walked through the smoking ruins of al-Tabin school in Gaza City, searching for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming, but of Saad, there was no trace.
“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic for an investigation that aired on Monday. She searched hospitals and morgues for days. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”
Mahani is one of thousands of Palestinians whose loved ones have simply vanished during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 people.
According to the Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the war began in October 2023, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh.
Experts and witnesses attributed this phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].
Grim forensic accounting
The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate, but the result of grim forensic accounting by Gaza’s Civil Defence.
Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal explained to Al Jazeera that teams use a “method of elimination” at strike sites. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal said.
“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.
The chemistry of erasure
The investigation detailed how specific chemical compositions in Israeli munitions turn human bodies into ash in seconds.
Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.
“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”
According to the investigation, the intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.
“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”
Anatomy of the bombs
The investigation identified specific US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza that are linked to these disappearances:
- MK-84 ‘Hammer’: This 900kg [2,000lb] unguided bomb packed with tritonal generates heat up to 3,500C [6,332F].
- BLU-109 bunker buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel had declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, this bomb evaporated 22 people. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse, burying itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix. This creates a large fireball inside enclosed spaces, incinerating everything within reach.
- GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the al-Tabin school attack. It uses the AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”
Basal of the Civil Defence confirmed finding fragments of GBU-39 wings at sites where bodies had vanished.
A ‘global genocide, not just an Israeli one’
Legal experts said the use of these indiscriminate weapons implicates not just Israel but also its Western suppliers.
“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,” said lawyer Diana Buttu, a lecturer at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Buttu argued that the supply chain is evidence of complicity. “We see a continuous flow of these weapons from the United States and Europe. They know these weapons do not distinguish between a fighter and a child, yet they continue to send them.”
Buttu emphasised that under international law, the use of weapons that cannot distinguish between combatants and noncombatants constitutes a war crime.
“The world knows Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons,” Buttu said. “The question is why are they allowed to remain outside the system of accountability.”
Collapse of international justice
Despite the International Court of Justice issuing provisional measures against Israel in January 2024, ordering it to prevent acts of genocide, and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024, the killing intensified.
Tariq Shandab, a professor of international law, argued that the international justice system has “failed the test of Gaza”.
“Since the ceasefire agreement [in October], more than 600 Palestinians have been killed,” Shandab said. He highlighted that the war has continued through siege, starvation and strikes. “The blockade on medicine and food is itself a crime against humanity.”
Shandab pointed to the “impunity” granted to Israel by the US veto power at the UN Security Council. However, he noted that universal jurisdiction courts in countries like Germany and France could offer an alternative path to justice, provided there is political will.
For Rafiq Badran, who lost four children in the Bureij refugee camp during the war, these technical definitions mean little. He was only able to recover small parts of his children’s bodies to bury.
“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”
Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Hospitals. Now It’s Banning Doctors Without Borders.

Israel says it will start enforcing its ban on 37 aid groups in Gaza in March, putting more Palestinian lives at risk
.By Eman Abu Zayed , Truthout, February 12, 2026
On January 1, the Israeli occupation revoked the licenses of 37 international and local humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, and it has now warned they must “must complete the cessation of their activities by March 1, 2026.” These organizations provide essential services to civilians: delivering food aid to the poor, supplying clean drinking water, supporting hospitals with medicines and medical equipment, protecting children and women, and overseeing education and nutrition programs in camps and local communities. The decision to revoke the licenses affects more than just paperwork — it threatens the lives of thousands of civilians who rely on this aid daily to survive one of the most severe humanitarian crises the territory has faced.
The license revocation came at the same time that Donald Trump established the “Board of Peace” tasked with overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction and implementing the second phase of the ceasefire. This international group, which includes no representation of Palestinians themselves, is allegedly responsible for facilitating the delivery of aid and the rebuilding of war-damaged areas. However, the ban on humanitarian organizations creates a significant gap, threatening the continuity of vital relief programs and leaving thousands of Palestinians without real protection amid harsh living conditions.
According to international humanitarian law, all parties in conflict are obliged to allow humanitarian aid to enter and to enable neutral organizations to assist those in need, regardless of political or security considerations. This obligation includes protecting civilians and ensuring the continued delivery of food, medicine, and clean water to affected populations. Under these laws, Israel bears the responsibility to permit these organizations to operate in Gaza and facilitate their activities in a way that does not endanger civilians or staff. Denying access to essential services constitutes a direct violation of international law.
According to testimonies from staff within aid organizations operating in Gaza, such as Oxfam, the restrictions imposed by Israel are seen as a means of pressuring humanitarian organizations to halt the delivery of vital aid. One Oxfam employee based in Gaza, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal, explained that these measures are not merely about controlling aid — they aim to criminalize humanitarian work, weaken aid infrastructure, harm civilians, and increase daily suffering.
Staff members from the branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) based at Al-Aqsa Hospital confirmed to Truthout that the restrictions include detailed demands for employee information and operational locations, as well as strict administrative procedures, making it extremely difficult to continue their work and threatening the stability of food, medicine, and water services relied upon by thousands of civilians daily. In light of these pressures, employees believe that the real objective of these policies is not security, but rather to disrupt humanitarian work and widen the gap in aid delivery……………………………………………..
These restrictions come at a critical moment, as humanitarian workers face real dangers in carrying out their duties. Since the beginning of the Israeli assault in October 2023, at least 543 humanitarian workers have been killed while providing aid in Gaza, including staff from local and international organizations. Over 1,700 health care workers have lost their lives while attempting to deliver medical care to the wounded and other patients. Additionally, around 256 journalists and media personnel, as well as more than 140 civil defense workers, have been killed. These shocking statistics demonstrate how Israel has turned humanitarian work into a dangerous mission, threatening the continuity of essential services………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-destroyed-gazas-hospitals-now-its-banning-doctors-without-borders/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=6c4318efa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_02_12_10_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-6c4318efa8-650192793
If You Think Our Rulers Do Bad Things In Secret, Wait Til You See What They Do Out In The Open.
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 09, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-you-think-our-rulers-do-bad-things?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187345674&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world.
They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world.
They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world.
They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world.
They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world.
They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world.
They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.
They’re circling the globe with hundreds of military bases to secure planetary domination in full view of the entire world.
They engage in nuclear brinkmanship and wave around armageddon weapons like pistols in full view of the entire world.
People go homeless and die of exposure while billionaires buy private islands and choose the next president in full view of the entire world.
Weapons manufacturers lobby for wars and then profit from the death and destruction they cause in full view of the entire world.
The president of the United States has repeatedly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli in full view of the entire world.
The US Treasury Secretary has been repeatedly admitting that the US deliberately sparked the violence and unrest in Iran by methodically immiserating the population via economic warfare, in full view of the entire world.
I keep seeing people freaking out and asking how it’s possible that the individuals in the Epstein files haven’t been arrested for their secret nefarious behavior. And I always want to ask them, mate, have you seen the nefarious behavior they’re engaging in right out in the open?
Pay attention to the Epstein files. Pay attention to what little we can learn about how these freaks conduct themselves behind closed doors. By all means, pay close attention to these things.
But don’t forget to also pay attention to the far greater evils they are inflicting in full view of the entire world.
Left to Bleed: How Israeli Forces Treat the Killing of Palestinian Children as Routine

February 8, 2026, by Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/08/left-to-bleed-how-israeli-forces-treat-the-killing-of-palestinian-children-as-routine/
New reports have surfaced regarding a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, Jadallah Jadallah, who was shot by Israeli paratroopers in the al-Fawar (also spelled al-Faraa) refugee camp in the northern West Bank in November 2025. Video footage cited by Haaretz shows Jadallah bleeding on the ground for nearly 45 minutes while Israeli soldiers remained nearby, with no immediate medical assistance despite his pleas for help. The delay has drawn widespread scrutiny from rights groups and critics of the military’s conduct, raising questions about the handling of the incident and broader practices surrounding the use of force in occupied territory. The Israel Defense Forces have stated that troops engaged a threat and provided initial treatment, but the footage and eyewitness accounts continue to fuel debate over the response to the teenager’s wounding.
Jadallah Jadallah, a 14-year-old Palestinian, was shot by an Israeli paratrooper unit in the al-Far’a refugee camp. Video footage shows him bleeding on the ground while pleading for help, as his family reportedly watched from a distance. Israel is currently holding his body. According to the Israel Defense Forces, “a terrorist who posed an immediate threat was identified, the force fired at him and provided first aid.”
For more on the story
None of this is new. The killing of Palestinian children has become so routine that individual cases blur into one another, barely registering before the next name is added to the list. In today’s Palestine, Israeli violence is not an aberration or a “tragic mistake,” but a system—one sustained by decades of impunity, political cover, and media fatigue. Each child’s death is treated as an isolated incident, even as the pattern is unmistakable: an occupation that normalizes lethal force and renders Palestinian lives, especially those of children, disposable. With Al Jazeera reporting among others a long list of murders of Children with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem saying
“Israel’s army routinely fires live ammunition, tear gas, stun grenades, and other weapons at Palestinians in the occupied territories, often justifying the assaults by claiming stones were thrown. B’Tselem has described the military’s conduct as an “open-fire policy” that permits the “unjustified use of lethal force” and “conveys Israel’s deep disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”
The consequences are especially severe for children. “Decades of systemic impunity has created a situation where Israeli forces shoot to kill without limit,” Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCI-P) said last month following the killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. “As Palestinian children are increasingly targeted in the West Bank, Israeli forces’ rules of engagement seemingly allow for the direct targeting of Palestinian children where no threat exists to justify the use of intentional lethal force.”
And so the killings continue—not because they are hidden, but because they are allowed and most damning is not that these deaths occur, but that they clearly no longer shock anyone who has the power to stop them.
Why Trump’s Denunciations of the Iranian Killings Ring Fatally Hollow
How the Ghost of Renee Nicole Good Haunts His Response to Iran’s Protests
By Juan Cole, TomDispatch, 3 Feb 26
The pro-democracy protesters in Iran deserved so much better. They deserved the support of a democratic United States that could sincerely urge the rule of law and habeas corpus (allowing people to legally challenge their detentions) be respected, not to speak of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly in accordance with the Constitution. Unfortunately, President Donald J. Trump has forfeited any claim to respect for such rights or a principled foreign policy and so has proved strikingly ineffective in aiding those protesters.
The arbitrary arrests and killings committed by agents of Trump’s authoritarian-style rule differ only in number, not in kind, from the detainments and killings of protesters carried out by the basij (or pro-regime street militias) in Iran. In fact, they rendered his protests and bluster about Iran the height of hypocrisy. Above all, the killing of Renee Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis by a Trumpian ICE agent haunted his response, providing the all-too-grim Iranian regime with an easy rebuttal to American claims of moral superiority.
Rioters and Terrorists
Trump’s threats of intervention in Iran came after the latest round of demonstrations and strikes there this winter. In late December, bazaar merchants in Iran decried the collapse of the nation’s currency, the rial. For many years, it had been under severe pressure thanks to Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, renewed European sanctions over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and incompetent government financial policies. In December, the rial fell to 1.4 million to the dollar — and no, that is not a misprint — having lost 40% of its value over the course of the previous year. Inflation was already running at 42%, harming those on fixed incomes, while the rial’s decline particularly hurt the ability of Iranians to afford imported goods. ……………….
A turning point came on January 8th, when security force thugs began shooting down demonstrators en masse and stacking up bodies. Until then, the demonstrations had been largely peaceful……………………………………………………………………………………………………
By mid-January, human rights organizations were estimating that thousands of demonstrators had been mown down by the Iranian police and military. Even Iran’s clerical leader, Ali Khamenei, confirmed that thousands were dead, though ludicrously enough, he blamed Donald Trump for instigating their acts. On January 9th, perhaps as a cover for its police and military sniping into crowds, the government cut the country’s internet off, while denouncing all protesters as “rioters” and “terrorists.”
Antifa-Led Hellfire
And here’s the truly sad thing: while such unhinged rhetorical excesses were once the province of dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes like those in Iran and North Korea, the White House is now competing with Tehran and Pyongyang on a remarkably even playing field. The Trump White House, for instance, excused the dispatch of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, last year on the grounds of a “Radical left reign of terror,” “antifa-led hellfire,” and “lunatics” committing widespread mayhem in that city, even deploying “explosives.” Of course, Trump’s image of Portland as an apocalyptic, anarchist free-fire zone bore no relation to reality, but it did bear an eerie relation to the language of the authoritarian regimes in Iran and North Korea.
That means Trump’s America now stands on increasingly shaky ground when it accuses other regimes of atrocities. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://tomdispatch.com/why-trumps-denunciations-of-the-iranian-killings-ring-fatally-hollow/
Trump’s October 10 ceasefire, Board of Peace, simply continues Israeli Palestinian genocide in slow motion.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 26 Jan 26
That was some ceasefire Trump negotiated with Israel October 10. Since then Israel has killed nearly 500 Palestinians with bullets and bombs. Many more are likely dead from starvation and disease as Israel lets in less than 170 trucks of food daily instead of the required and promised 600. ‘Ha ha…little nourishment for you starving Palestinians.’
Water, medicine, everything needed to sustain life is restricted to drive out the beleaguered living in makeshift tents. Why tents? Israel, with over 50,000 tons of Biden, Trump bombs, pulverized over 80% of all Gaza buildings, including over 90 % of all housing. Likely over 10,000 Gaza corpses are rotting under the 60 million tons of rubble including over 9 million tons of hazardous material. Ceasefire notwithstanding, Israel has knocked down or damaged over 2,500 post ceasefire buildings.
In order to force Palestinians from Gaza, Israel has reopened the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it’s Israel’s version of a reverse Roach Motel. Palestinians can check out…but they can never check back into their rightful homeland. Every Palestinian that leaves, along with every Palestinian shot, bombed or starved to death, is one less pesky Palestinian to get rid of in absorbing Gaza into Greater Israel.
Israel has exploited the ceasefire to occupy over 50% of Gaza territory, shooting any Palestinian who strays over or close to Israel’s yellow boundary lines.
Astonishingly, the UN Security Council’s November 17 Resolution 2803 (2025) certified Trump’s Board of Peace which effectively makes Trump Gaza’s ruler, totally excluding Palestinian involvement. In doing so it upends over 70 years of UN resolutions and requirements that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to live and govern their homeland free from subjugation; indeed annihilation.
Why did this Security Council resolution pass? Simple, Trump essentially blackmailed Council members that it was either Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace, excluding Palestinians, or he would greenlight continuing the horrific 2 year bombing obliteration of Gaza and its citizens till they were all dead and gone. .
Israel, with US support, will never allow a Palestinian state in Gaza the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The horrific daily slaughter may be reduced to a trickle, but it will continue indefinitely till every Palestinian in Gaza is gone.
Trump’s ceasefire and Board of peace have the additional benefit to both Israel and Trump administration of removing the daily ethnic cleansing of Gaza from mainstream media coverage. They have moved on to more dramatic foreign hotspots in Venezuela, Iran and Greenland as well as Trump’s ICE thugs murdering fellow citizens in Minneapolis
Israel and the Trump administration’s slow motion genocide of Palestinians in Gaza should be opposed by all decent, moral nations and persons as fervently as their opposition to the preceding two yearlong all out genocide. Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace has put lipstick on the pig of Israeli genocide destroying Palestinians in Gaza.
A Cruel Truce: Israel’s Ongoing Demolition of Gaza

15 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-cruel-truce-israels-ongoing-demolition-of-gaza/
What matters peace if it permits killing, maiming and destroying the infrastructure of a society supposedly once at war? This is the situation facing Gaza as the occupying Israeli forces go about their business making the Strip even more uninhabitable for the Palestinian residents, ensuring that that land will be vacated, either through force or massaged consent, to enable its eventual seizure.
In a January 12 report, The New York Times found that Israel had razed over 2,500 buildings in the Strip since the ceasefire with Hamas commenced on October 10, 2025. These have been initiated on the Israeli side of the demarcated side known as the Yellow Line. The report, however, also notes the demolition of buildings on the side controlled by Hamas. “The scale of ongoing destruction is stark. Across eastern Gaza, in areas under Israeli control, satellite imagery reveals that entire blocks have been erased since the cease-fire, as well as swaths of farmland and agricultural greenhouses.”
The NYT quoted the grave words of Gaza-based political analyst Mohammed Al-Astal: “The Israeli military is destroying everything in front of it – homes, schools, factories and streets. There’s no security justification for what it’s doing.” A former Israeli official did not disagree. “This is absolute destruction,” assessed Shaul Arieli, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza in the 1990s. “It’s not selective, it’s everything.”
Under the thin covering of a cruel truce, Israel’s demolition campaign, according to the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, is intended to “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and impose forced displacement and collective punishment on the people of Gaza.”
Justifications provided to the NYT were not reassuring, relying on that part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan affirming that, “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” An Israeli military official denied a lack of discrimination in the destruction. At times, buildings collapsed because of the IDF’s detonation of explosives in tunnels underneath them. The air force had also been striking structures deemed a threat to Israeli soldiers, some of them being adjacent to the Yellow Line. It was also conceded that demolitions were taking place on both sides of the Yellow Line, though Israeli forces had not crossed the line in doing so.
This pattern is not a newly discovered one. The BBC took note of this in November last year when it revealed that “entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.” The broadcaster’s Verify unit had analysed satellite imagery showing “that the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale.” Many of the buildings destroyed showed no indication of being damaged prior to their razing, notably in such areas as eastern Khan Younis, around Abasan al-Kabira. Gardens, trees and a number of small orchards were also pulverised in the exercise.
Such actions should have been considered blatant violations of the ceasefire terms. Israeli officials, current and former, were having none of it. Ex-head of the National Security Doctrine Department, Eitan Shamir, suggested that the IDF had acted in accordance with the terms, seeing as they did not apply to areas of the Strip behind the Yellow Line. This gorgeous casuistry also found form in the cold language of an IDF spokesperson who explained that, in accordance with the agreement, “all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure.” The level of destruction permitted relies on the beholder’s definition of the threat posed.
In December, it was the turn of Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, which found much the same thing. “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood.” The images also revealed demolitions in the southern city of Rafah and the levelling of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the destruction by an occupying power of real or personal property belonging either individually or collectively to private persons, or to a State, public authorities, or social or co-operative organisations, except in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary as part of military operations (Article 53).
In an email to Al Jazeera in December, Adil Haque of Rutgers Law School was sceptical that the systematically destructive activities of the IDF had complied with the provisions of the Convention. “With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Absolute necessity, he explained, had to “arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat.”
In responding to the NYT report, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, summed up the grim state of affairs with characteristic sharpness. “The so called peace plan,” she fumed on social media, “is allowing Israel to ‘finish the job’: 450 killed; 2,500 structures destroyed; lifesaving aid blocked.” Less a peace plan, it would seem, than a state of ongoing, permitted violence falling just short of war.
100 days into ceasefire Gaza still deliberately deprived of water as aid groups forced to scavenge under illegal blockade
14 January 2026 AIMN Editorial https://theaimn.net/100-days-into-ceasefire-gaza-still-deliberately-deprived-of-water-as-aid-groups-forced-to-scavenge-under-illegal-blockade/
Oxfam Australia
Oxfam and partners restore limited water access for 156,000 amid near-total water and sanitation infrastructure collapse.
100 days into the ceasefire announcement, in a week that has seen more severe weather hitting Gaza, needs remain desperate. Oxfam and dozens of other INGOs working in Gaza have had to further adapt their operations to keep life-saving work continuing, even as they face uncertainty over new registration requirements imposed by Israeli authorities.
Oxfam and partners restore limited water access for 156,000 amid near-total water and sanitation infrastructure collapse.
100 days into the ceasefire announcement, in a week that has seen more severe weather hitting Gaza, needs remain desperate. Oxfam and dozens of other INGOs working in Gaza have had to further adapt their operations to keep life-saving work continuing, even as they face uncertainty over new registration requirements imposed by Israeli authorities.
Despite months of severely restricted aid inflows, amidst power disruptions, access shutdowns and repeated rejection of essential materials, work has continued. Oxfam has worked around the clock with experts from local partner organisations, to restore vital water wells – even sifting through rubble to salvage and repurpose damaged materials, including sheet metal.
According to assessments carried out by Oxfam’s partner, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), the total cost to rebuild all of the water and sanitation facilities, systems and infrastructure which have been destroyed or damaged by Israel in Gaza will be around $800 million. However, the figure could be even higher, since parts of Gaza remain inaccessible and construction costs have also doubled, due to the lack of materials being allowed in.
The wells restored by Oxfam and partners are located in Gaza City and Khan Younis, and are now providing at least 156,000 people with a life-saving and sustainable water supply. Work continues on a further eight wells and two water pumping stations, which should be working again by February, providing continuous fresh water for 175,000 more people.
Wassem Mushtaha, Oxfam Gaza Response lead, said: “We did not just re-open these wells. We have been solving a moving puzzle under the siege and restrictions to make the wells operational – salvaging parts, repurposing equipment, and paying inflated prices to get critical components, all while trying to keep our teams safe.
“For as long as systematic policies and practices preventing aid agencies from getting essential supplies into Gaza persist, we will have to keep finding a way to reach people in need. It’s not an acceptable situation, but as humanitarians, we can never give up trying to save lives.
So much more could have been achieved if our efforts had not been undermined at every turn – which continues to this day. Oxfam alone has over 2 million dollars’ worth of aid and water and sanitation equipment ready to enter Gaza, but these supplies have been repeatedly rejected since March 2025.”
Israeli authorities have made a meaningful humanitarian response impossible by design. Israel defends threats to deregister up to 37 international NGOs – claiming humanitarian organisations’ impacts have been “inconsequential.” But NGOs have repeatedly appealed to Israel to be allowed to do their jobs, calling on Israel to lift restrictions undermining civilian survival. In reality, Israel continues to block effective relief efforts and the restoration of essential infrastructure.
In response to the challenges, Oxfam has increased its procurement of aid from local markets where possible, and continues to expand services in areas such as social-psychological support and health promotion, WASH, emergency livelihoods, multi-purpose cash transfer, food voucher distribution, and public health promotion – essential areas, with less reliance on materials that Israel continues to systematically reject.
Monther Shoblaq, Director General of CMWU, said aid agencies should not have to operate in a way that is needlessly time consuming and exhausting:
“While it’s commendable that dedicated staff are going to such lengths to bring water access to those who need it so desperately, the equipment needed is just across the border, blocked from entry. Agencies are having to resort to salvaging materials from the rubble of bombed water infrastructure and the remains of people’s homes, repurposing parts, and paying inflated prices. This is the direct result of Israeli restrictions, last-resort measures forced by siege conditions.
Needs in Gaza exceed far beyond the aid and reconstruction materials Israel is allowing in and the situation will worsen if Israel’s collective punishment and illegal blockade continues. Water deprivation is just one of the many human rights violations Israel has undertaken with impunity. Oxfam and other organisations who have operated in Gaza for decades must be allowed to respond at the scale.
Here’s who really weaponizes children in the Russia-Ukraine conflict
As accusations of abductions resurface, it’s clear the West doesn’t care about facts on the ground if they contradict the narrative.

By Eva Bartlett, a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). 9 Jan, 2026 https://www.rt.com/news/630762-russia-ukraine-abducted-children/
For the last three years, Ukraine and concerted legacy media campaigns have been screaming that Russia has abducted, or forcibly displaced, thousands of Ukrainian children – even up to 1.5 million!
The accusations resurged in December, with a UN General Assembly vote on a draft resolution on the return of Ukrainian children.
During the meeting, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa once again pushed claims that “at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia,” in spite of the fact that months prior, during the June Istanbul talks, the Ukrainian side finally provided a list of the children it accuses Russia of abducting: 339 children, surprisingly far fewer than the number alleged for years.
The absence of over 19,500 on the list indeed leads to many questions, mainly: is Ukraine lying again? Recall that in 2022, the accusations by the (now former) Ukrainian ombudswoman, Lyudmila Denisova, about “sexual atrocities” allegedly committed by Russian soldiers, were revealed to be lies and propaganda. So much so that Denisova was sacked. But before her dismissal, legacy media and the UN all backed the lies.
Some recent accusations are that children were being sent to labor camps in Russia – “165 re-education camps where Ukrainian children are militarized and Russified” – or even of being sent to North Korea, as Katerina Rashevskaya of the Ukrainian Regional Center for Human Rights told the US Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on December 3.
The footnotes of the claims made by Rashevskaya, instead of a source for the information, say “The Regional Human Rights Center can provide information upon request.” In other words, her sources are “trust me, bro.”
Regarding the North Korean camp in question, if two Russian teens were sent there, they’d potentially be made to enjoy water slides, basketball and volleyball courts, an arcade room, a rock climbing wall, art and performance halls, an archery range, a private beach, and hikes in the mountains.
Regarding the list of 339 children Ukraine says were abducted by Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked, “30 percent of the names on the list could not be verified, as most of those children were never in Russia, are now adults, or have already returned to their families. As for the Ukrainian children who are actually in our country, they are under state care in appropriate institutions. They are safe now; in many cases, their evacuation from combat zones saved their lives. Local children’s rights commissioners are now working to reunite them with their relatives.”
Just as legacy media has whitewashed the eight years of Ukraine’s war against Donbass civilians prior to Russia commencing its military operation in 2022, including the Ukrainian shelling which killed 250 children starting in 2014, media likewise ignore the children Russia says are missing.
During the talks in Istanbul, Zakharova noted, “the Russian side presented Ukraine with a list of 20 Russian children who are either currently in Ukraine or relocated from Ukraine to Western Europe, including to countries that endorsed this very statement. Now, the burden falls on these states to provide Russia with a substantive response regarding our ‘list of 20.’”
Over 500 Ukrainian orphans abused in Türkiye
Recently, Donbass-based journalist Christelle Néant wrote about a report published on a pro-Ukrainian website which broke the story of 510 Ukrainian children who had been evacuated by a Ukrainian oligarch in 2022 from Dnepropetrovsk to Türkiye, where the benevolent foundation which brought them there allegedly allowed its staff to beat the children, sexually assault them, and deny them food if they refused to perform on camera to raise funds for their lodging. These are just some of the reported violations of the orphans’ rights.
The details of the report show that the children suffered physically and psychologically. Additionally, two underage teens were impregnated by staff at the hotel they stayed in, with educators allegedly aware of the interactions.
According to Néant, the orphanage director’s response to the fact of one of the teens in her care becoming pregnant was to blame the girl: “This young girl comes from an asocial family. Well, this way of life is already inscribed in every cell, in the blood of these children.”
“In almost 10 years of work in Donbass,” Néant wrote, “I have conducted or filmed many humanitarian missions to orphanages in the region. And never ever have I heard a director make such vile remarks about one of the children in her care. Even the most difficult and recalcitrant were cared for with pedagogy, love, and patience.”
Ukraine hunting down children
In April 2023, Christelle Néant and I interviewed Artyomovsk civilians who had recently been rescued by Russian soldiers. In addition to being deliberately shelled by Ukrainian forces who knew they were sheltering in the basement of a residential building, the civilians we spoke to told us about Ukrainian military police hunting for children.
The evacuees told us some of these police went by the name ‘White Angels’, and were taking childrenaway without their consent or that of their parents.
Around that time, more reports came out about these abductions or attempted abductions, including an 11-year-old girl who spoke of how White Angels, who introduced themselves as military police, came to the basement she was sheltering in with a photo of her, looking for her, and saying they needed to take her away, because “Russia killed her mother.” According to the girl, her mother was alive and with her.
Reports of these abductions also emerged in Avdeyevka, Kupyansk, Slavyansk, Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka, as well as in Ukrainsk and Zhelannoye.
Néant wrote of a July 2023 conference on Ukraine’s crimes against the Donbass children, in which Liliya and her daughter Kira from Schastye, in the Lugansk People’s Republic, spoke.
They gave evidence of how, “at the start of the special military operation (when Ukraine controlled Schastye), around ten children were taken from a school in Schastye to western Ukraine by the headmistress of the school, on orders from Kiev, without informing their parents.”
The children were even forbidden to call their parents, Néant wrote, “But Kira knew her mother’s telephone number by heart and managed to call her to let her know that they were in Lviv and then Khoust. Thanks to Liliya’s determination to find her daughter, we discovered how Kiev ‘exports’ the children it abducts.” Ukraine had forged a new “original” birth certificate for Kira. The girl said she and the other children were to be sent to Poland.
Former SBU officer Vasily Prozorov spoke at the same conference, where he explained, according to Néant, “that one of his investigations had revealed that some of the children abducted by Ukraine are sent to pedophile networks in Great Britain, via a whole network of Ukrainian and British officials or former officials who work together. On the British side, members of MI6 and the Foreign Office are involved.”
Prozorov, she wrote, spoke of “another of his investigations on organizations registered in EU countries involved in ‘exporting’ children from Ukraine under the pretext of providing them with shelter. These organizations take unaccompanied Ukrainian children out of Ukraine. What happens to them afterwards is unknown.”
Evacuees from Kherson reject ‘abduction’ claims
In November 2022, in the southern Russian seaside city Anapa, I met numerous people displaced from Kherson who were being lodged in hotels and apartments in the city.
The first site I visited was a few minutes by taxi outside of the city, one of many hotels along the coast. The hotel director showing me around said they don’t call them refugees, “we call them guests of the building,” and spoke affectionately of them, how grateful they were to be there, far from any shelling. Just under 500 refugees had been living there since October, she told me.
No guards monitored the entrance/exit; the refugees walked around tidy grounds. But in any case, I asked about their freedom of movement, or lack thereof.
“They move freely, of course. We don’t prohibit them from going out. Many aren’t here now because they’re in town, looking for jobs, getting documents. Children are at school.”
With my hired translator, I spoke with two Kherson women, a young mother and her own mother, to hear their stories.
“We were living with explosions at night, it was very scary, not only for myself, but for my children and for my grandchildren,” the older woman said. “When you go to bed, you don’t know if you will get out of bed in the morning. We were forced to leave.”
I asked who was shelling them. “Word of mouth transmits very clearly, and people around us spoke about it. We were bombed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russian soldiers protected us.”
The younger woman said she used to speak with the Russian soldiers there. “They are friendly. We wanted to hug them, because we felt protected. They helped us, gave us humanitarian aid, brought it to the house.”
Some minutes’ taxi ride away, I visited an apartment complex that could have served tourists in summer. There, fifty buildings housed around 1,500 refugees who had also arrived in October, mostly from Kherson Region.
My translator and I walked around, passing playgrounds, a pharmacy, a library, a swimming pool, a gym, a small petting zoo with peacocks, and a kindergarten. Near a playground, I spoke with a mother sitting on a bench with two of her four children.
“In the early days, there was bombing. We spent two and a half weeks in the basement. It was unbearable, the children were very afraid.” One of her daughters became ill. “She had acute inflammation of the lower jaw, we think due to hypothermia. We took her to Simferopol and she had surgery.”
In Anapa, she said, her children had full medical examinations. “We were helped by the mayor of the city of Anapa. We are grateful for everything.”
I mentioned that according to Western media, she and her family were kidnapped by Russia. She replied that her husband’s parents had demanded to see the children, having been told that children were being separated from their parents in Russia.
“His mother called three days in a row, saying, ‘Where are the children?’ We answered, ‘They went to the cinema. They’re playing, etc.’ She said, ‘Show me the children, they say that they took your children from you.’”
Details matter
Whereas legacy media continue to push the “Evil Russia child kidnapper” narrative, there is ample evidence that Ukraine is guilty of doing precisely what it accuses Russia of. The is also a significant absence of evidence regarding the ‘20,000 kidnapped children’ claims still being pushed.
Will media investigate the reports of abuse of Ukrainian children in Türkiye? Surely not. It wouldn’t suit their scripted anti-Russia bias.
Genocide in Gaza, Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank: UN Report.

Juan Cole, 01/08/2026, https://www.juancole.com/2026/01/genocide-apartheid-palestinian.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The UN Office of Human Rights, headed by Volker Türk, on Wednesday issued an extensive report on the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank in which it for the first time described Israeli policies there as Apartheid. The executive summary says, “The report warns that Israel is violating international law requiring States to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.”
Türk told the UN, “There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank. Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives – every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.” He is referring to racial discrimination in Apartheid South Africa from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.
He concluded, “Every negative trend documented in the report has not only continued but accelerated. And every day this is allowed to continue, the consequences worsen for Palestinians.”
The report ( PDF here) stresses how drastically the human rights situation for Palestinians in the West Bank has deteriorated since 2022:
* Palestinians in the West bank live under a different and harsher set of laws than do the Israeli squatters who have flooded into the territory
* Palestinians therefore have less access to resources, including land and water, than do the squatters
* The report notes that the International Court of Justice in the Hague found in 2024 that “the systemic discrimination against Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with the restrictions of movement imposed on Palestinians through checkpoints, as well as limited access to roads, natural resources, land and basic social facilities, amounted to a situation of racial segregation.” The ICJ noted then that the situation verged on Apartheid and would be properly so characterized if the Israelis did not take immediate ameliorating steps (they did not). The ICJ, indeed, ruled the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories it seized in 1967 to now be illegal, since it had departed so extensively from International Humanitarian Law in its rule of these people. Moreover, IHL had envisioned occupations to be short and to endure only during an active war, not to stretch into decades.
* Palestinians’ land and homes are routinely taken away from them by the Israeli authorities or are arbitrarily and lawlessly encroached on by the Israeli squatters. In Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas Governorates, some 32,000 people were recently expelled by Israeli troops from the refugee camps in which they had lived. The report adds, “Thousands of Palestinians have also been evicted from their homes across the West Bank, which may amount to unlawful transfer, a war crime.” That is, the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute forbid transferring people in militarily occupied territories out of their homes. When the Nazis occupied Poland they expelled a lot of Poles from it in hopes of replacing them with Germans, and these laws were designed prevent a repeat of such policies. The IHRA people can jump up and down all they like, but the Nazi plan for Poland and the Zionist plan for Gaza and the West Bank are very similar.
* Palestinians face “criminal prosecution in military courts during which their due process and fair trial rights are systematically violated.” This treatment is only accorded Palestinians. Israeli squatters on the West Bank who do get into trouble with the law are tried in Israeli civil courts as though they were living in Israel.
* The UN says, “The report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe the separation, segregation and subordination are intended to be permanent, to maintain oppression and domination of Palestinians. ‘Acts committed with the intention to maintain such a policy amount to a violation of Article 3 of ICERD (the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid,’ it finds.”
* Israeli troops and squatters sometimes just shoot down innocent Palestinians. They don’t treat Israelis that way, an obvious sign of discrimination. The High Commission on Human Rights, the report says,”has consistently documented patterns of unlawful killings of Palestinians, including apparent extra- judicial executions by the ISF [the Israeli military], with almost complete impunity.” Elsewhere the report notes, “ISF [Israeli Security Forces] have killed 2,321 Palestinians (1,760 men, 65 women, 496 children) in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the absence of hostilities there, and injured thousands more, in many instances causing life-long injuries and disabilities. In the same period, 205 Israelis (including 148 men, 32 women, 25 children) have been killed in the occupied West Bank,” In the old days, the Israelis maintained a ten to one ration of Palestinians killed to Israelis. The report doesn’t say so, but that ratio has been raised to 100 to one or 1000 to one in some cases.
* The Israelis have demolished the infrastructure of water for the Palestinian West Bank, and then confiscated the water. They make the Palestinians buy back their own water from an Israeli corporation.
‘Year of bloodshed’: West Bank authorities record nearly 24,000 army, settler attacks on Palestinians in 2025
Around 35,000 trees have been uprooted or destroyed by illegal settlers this year, while 14 Palestinian citizens have been killed
News Desk, JAN 6, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35236
Head of Palestine’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC), Minister Muayyad Shaaban, said in a new report that over 23,000 attacks have been carried out on Palestinians by settlers and the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank this year.
According to the CWRC report, 2025 saw Israeli troops and illegal settlers commit 23,827 attacks across the territory.
“The attacks were categorized as follows: 1,382 targeted land and trees, 16,664 attacks targeted individuals, while 5,398 attacks targeted property,” the report reads.
“The Israeli army was responsible for 18,384 attacks, while colonizers carried out 4,723 attacks, and both parties together were involved in an additional 720 attacks,” Shaaban is quoted as saying during a press conference at CWRC headquarters in Ramallah.
The minister said 2025 was “a year marked by bloodshed.”
“The occupying power did not simply expand colonies; it aimed to redefine the very concept of control. That is, domination is no longer limited to physical land, but rather, it extends to reshaping geography, symbolism, and the entire existence of the Palestinian people,” he added.
As a result of this year’s violence in the occupied West Bank, 14 Palestinian citizens have been killed.
Shaaban went on to say that 35,000 trees have been destroyed this year, and that settlers have caused 434 fires, which impacted Palestinian property and agriculture.
Meanwhile, land confiscation and settlement expansion are surging.
“Israeli occupation authorities effectively control approximately 41 percent of the West Bank, maintain a tight grip on nearly 70 percent of Area C, and control over 90 percent of the Jordan Valley through a comprehensive system of military orders and expropriation measures,” according to CWRC.
The 1993 US-sponsored Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security forces, and gave the Palestinians limited autonomy in some parts of the occupied West Bank. This was said to be in preparation for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
However, the accords did not end Israel’s military occupation and gave the Israeli government time to confiscate more Palestinian land and continue illegally expanding West Bank settlements.
The agreement resulted in the splitting of the West Bank into areas A, B, and C. Area A gave the PA authority over civil and security matters, while Area B gave it control only over civil matters. In Area C, Israel was granted full control.
Since then, illegal settlements have continued to expand, including in Areas A and B.
Since the start of 2025, Israel has been occupying multiple West Bank refugee camps and has been carrying out a systematic campaign of destruction and displacement.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been uprooted from their homes in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year, mainly in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas.
As army and settler violence surges, the government also continues to advance plans for illegally annexing the territory.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and staunch backer of the illegal settler movement, said on 30 December that Washington has given Tel Aviv “full support” to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.
As Israel bans aid orgs in Gaza, notorious mercenary firm seeks “Targeter”

the Israeli government is using the absurdly onerous new registration standards as cover to ban virtually every credible international aid organization from entering Gaza.
Max Blumenthal·December 31, 2025, https://thegrayzone.com/2025/12/31/israel-aid-gaza-mercenary-targeter/
Are Israel and the Trump admin planning to revive the dystopian Gaza Humanitarian Foundation scheme that spawned famine and death under cover of humanitarian aid?
In its bid to continue the genocide in Gaza, Israel has banned 37 international aid organizations from entering the decimated, militarily occupied coastal enclave. This leaves only five humanitarian groups still able to operate inside Gaza.
At the same time, one of the US mercenary firms responsible for securing the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites which were present during the worst periods of famine in Gaza, when at least 3000 Palestinian civilians were gunned down while seeking aid, has posted an ad soliciting former special forces soldiers for offensive operations.
UG Solutions, the scandal-stained private mercenary firm, announced this December that it was hiring an “experienced Targeter to support intelligence-driven operations through the identification, development, validation, and maintenance of operational targets.” The targeter will be expected to “Develop, validate, and maintain operational target packages in accordance with approved targeting processes.”
Anthony Aguilar, the retired United States Army Lt. Col and former Green Beret who blew the whistle on UG Solutions’ human rights abuses in Gaza, told me he believes that Israel’s ban on the 37 international aid organizations signals the return of UG Solutions as part of a restructured version of the Israeli-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation scheme.
While it’s unclear where the UG Solutions targeter position will be deployed, if they are being hired for upcoming operations in Gaza, Aguilar says “this shows that the US, though paramilitary contractors, is now going to either directly target, or feed target data to the IDF.”
To set the stage for its blanket ban on international aid organizations, Israel’s intel-tied Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has demanded that all staffers of aid NGOs prove they do not support calls to boycott Israel, that they do not support armed struggle or oppose Israel’s existence as an exclusivist Jewish state, and that they do not “actively advance delegitimization activities against the State of Israel.”
Aid staffers must also demonstrate that they have never questioned the established history of the Holocaust or challenged official Israeli narratives about October 7 – including, presumably, that Palestinians committed “mass rape” or beheaded babies.
Israel has also demanded that Doctors Without Borders provide COGAT occupation administrators with the personal data of its staff and donors, an unprecedented move by a belligerent in a conflict which few, if any, aid groups could ever honor.
It seems obvious that the Israeli government is using the absurdly onerous new registration standards as cover to ban virtually every credible international aid organization from entering Gaza. In doing so, the apartheid entity seemingly seeks to deprive Palestinians living inside the yellow occupation line of sustenance, forcing them to leave Gaza, or to move into one of the high-tech, concentration camp-like “smart cities” mapped out in the dystopian new “Project Sunrise” proposal marketed by Trump cronies Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
And it is there that they would be “secured” by a mercenary outfit like UG Solutions – and targeted if they dared to resist.
Below is a list of all the aid orgs banned by Israel from operating in Gaza:
1. Accion contra el Hambre – Action Against Hunger
2. Action Aid
3. Alianza por la Solidaridad
4. Artsen zonder Grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres Nederland)
5. Campaign for the Children of Palestine (CCP Japan)
6. CARE
7. DanChurchAid
8. Danish Refugee Council
9. Handicap International – Humanity and Inclusion
10. Japan International Volunteer center
11. Medecins Du Monde (FRANCE)
12. Medecins du Monde Switzerland
13. Medecins Sans Frontières Belgium
14. Medecins Sans Frontieres France
15. Medicos del Mundo (Spain)
16. Mercy Corps
17. MSF Spain – Doctors Without Borders Spain
18. NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL
19. Oxfam Novib
20. Premiere Urgence Internationale
21. Terre des hommes Lausanne
22. The International Rescue Committee (IRC)
23. WeWorld-GVC
24. World Vision International
25. Relief International
26. Fondazione AVSI
27. Movement for Peace – MPDL
28. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
29. Medico International
30. PSAS – The Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden
31. Defense for Children International
32. Medical Aid for Palestinians – UK
33. Caritas Internationalis
34. Caritas Jerusalem
35. Near East council churches
36. OXFAM Quebec
37. War Child holland
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