The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States
The Israeli media has decided not to report on the horrors that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is perpetrating in Gaza. You simply will not see it on Israeli television………………….. the vast majority of the population simply does not want to know about it.”
The politics of genocide in the United States involves papering over the big gap between the opinions of the electorate and the actions of the U.S. government. While the partnership between the governments of Israel and the United States has never been stronger, the partnership between the people of Israel and the United States has never been weaker. But in the USA, consent of the governed has not been necessary to continue the axis of genocide.
Z Network, By Norman Solomon, July 28, 2025
For decades, countless U.S. officials have proclaimed that the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable. Now, the ties that bind are laced with genocide. The two countries function as accomplices while methodical killing continues in Gaza, with both societies directly – and differently – making it all possible.
The policies of Israel’s government are aligned with the attitudes of most Jewish Israelis. In a recent survey, three-quarters of them (and 64 percent of all Israelis) said they largely agreed with the statement that “there are no innocent people in Gaza” – nearly half of whom are children.
“There is no more ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’ with regard to Israel’s evilness toward the Palestinians,” dissident columnist Gideon Levy wrote three months ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “It is permitted to kill dozens of captive detainees and to starve to death an entire people.” The biggest Israeli media outlets echo and amplify sociopathic voices. “Genocide talk has spread into all TV studios as legitimate talk. Former colonels, past members of the defense establishment, sit on panels and call for genocide without batting an eye.”
Last week, Levy provided an update: “The weapon of deliberate starvation is working. The Gaza ‘Humanitarian’ Foundation, in turn, has become a tragic success. Not only have hundreds of Gazans been shot to death while waiting in line for packages distributed by the GHF, but there are others who don’t manage to reach the distribution points, dying of hunger. Most of these are children and babies…. They lie on hospital floors, on bare beds, or carried on donkey carts. These are pictures from hell. In Israel, many people reject these photos, doubting their veracity. Others express their joy and pride on seeing starving babies.”
Unimpeded, a daily process continues to exterminate more and more of the 2.1 million Palestinian people who remain in Gaza – bombing and shooting civilians while blocking all but a pittance of the food and medicine needed to sustain life. After destroying Gaza’s hospitals, Israel is still targeting healthcare workers (killing at least 70 in May and June), as well as first responders and journalists.
The barbarism is in sync with the belief that “no innocent people” are in Gaza. A relevant observation came from Aldous Huxley in 1936, the same year that the swastika went onto Germany’s flag: “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Kristallnacht happened two years later.
Renowned genocide scholar Omer Bartov explained during an interview on Democracy Now! in mid-July that genocide is “the attempt to destroy not simply people in large numbers, but to destroy them as members of a group. The intent is to destroy the group itself. And it doesn’t mean that you have to kill everyone. It means that the group will be destroyed and that it will not be able to reconstitute itself as a group. And to my mind, this is precisely what Israel is trying to do.”
Bartov, who is Jewish and spent the first half of his life in Israel, said:
“What I see in the Israeli public is an extraordinary indifference by large parts of the public to what Israel is doing and what it’s done in the name of Israeli citizens in Gaza. In part, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli media has decided not to report on the horrors that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is perpetrating in Gaza. You simply will not see it on Israeli television. If some pictures happen to come in, they are presented only as material that might be used by foreign propaganda against Israel. Now, Israeli citizens can, of course, use other media resources. We can all do that. But most of them prefer not to. And I would say that while about 30 percent of the population in Israel is completely in favor of what is happening, and, in fact, is egging the government and the army on, I think the vast majority of the population simply does not want to know about it.”
In Israel, “compassion for Palestinians is taboo except among a fringe of radical activists,” Adam Shatz wrote last month in the London Review of Books. At the same time, “the catastrophe of the last two years far exceeds that of the Nakba.” The consequences “are already being felt well beyond Gaza: in the West Bank, where Israeli soldiers and settlers have presided over an accelerated campaign of displacement and killing (more than a thousand West Bank Palestinians have been killed since 7 October); inside Israel, where Palestinian citizens are subject to increasing levels of ostracism and intimidation; in the wider region, where Israel has established itself as a new Sparta; and in the rest of the world, where the inability of Western powers to condemn Israel’s conduct – much less bring it to an end – has made a mockery of the rules-based order that they claim to uphold.”
The loudest preaching for a “rules-based order” has come from the U.S. government, which makes and breaks international rules at will. …………………………………
Israel’s grisly performance as “a new Sparta” in the region is coproduced by the Pentagon, with the military and intelligence operations of the two nations intricately entangled. The Israeli military has been able to turn Gaza into a genocide zone with at least 70 percent of its arsenal coming from the United States.
………………………………..The politics of genocide in the United States involves papering over the big gap between the opinions of the electorate and the actions of the U.S. government. While the partnership between the governments of Israel and the United States has never been stronger, the partnership between the people of Israel and the United States has never been weaker. But in the USA, consent of the governed has not been necessary to continue the axis of genocide. https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-genocidal-partnership-of-israel-and-the-united-states/
Canada still arming Israel despite official ban, report finds.
Wyatt Reed· August 1, 2025, https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/01/canada-arming-israel-despite-ban/
In the course of a week, Canada accused Israel of violating international law, announced Ottawa will recognize a Palestinian state, and sent aid to be airlifted to Gaza. But a shocking new report makes clear that the proposed 51st state still arms Israel’s death machine.
Canada sent at least 391 shipments containing bullets, military equipment, weapons parts, aircraft components, and communication devices to Israel since late 2023, despite Ottawa’s repeated claims to have ended weapons deliveries to the apartheid state, a new report has revealed.
By sifting through data from the Israel Tax Authority, researchers at Arms Embargo Now discovered what they called “a continuous, massive pipeline of Canadian weapons flowing directly to Israel” comprising over 400,000 bullets, multiple shipments of cartridges, and a variety of parts for Israel’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets. Since mid-2024, Israel received four shipments of Doppler Velocity Sensors, which provide navigation data needed for the F-35’s target acquisition and weapons delivery systems, five shipments of lightweight composite panels used by the planes, and two shipments of Modular Product Testers, which are used to diagnose problems on Israel’s air force fleet.
Of the 391 deliveries identified, the report’s authors were able to track direct 47 shipments of military gear with detailed commercial shipping records sent by Canadian companies to Israeli companies. 38 of those shipments were sent to Israel’s biggest military firm, Elbit Systems, and its various subsidiaries.
In March 2024, the previous Canadian administration claimed to have halted all permits for arms shipments to Tel Aviv, after the legislature passed a non-binding motion declaring that “Israel must respect international humanitarian law” and that “the price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.” In the following months, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted Canada no longer facilitated Israel’s horrors, going as far as publicly chiding one concerned Palestinian, “we’ve stopped exports of arms to Israel.”
But just before the apparent shift in policy, Ottawa greenlit a massive number of permits for Israeli-bound weapons deliveries, front-loading hundreds of orders in an apparent attempt to preemptively circumvent their own ban. Of the $30.6 million in military equipment sent to Israel in 2023 – the highest yearly total on record – $28.5 million was approved between October and December. Even today, many of those shipments continue to be fulfilled. To date, just 30 permits for military deliveries have been cancelled by Canada, which made that decision following a similar move by the UK in mid-2024 after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel was violating international law.
“The Canadian government appears to have pursued a strategy of rushing through a record-breaking number of arms export permit approvals to Israel prior to publicly committing to pause approving any new ones,” Arm Embargo Now explained in their report. “This was then quietly undermined by a series of exceptions and loopholes,” researchers wrote, suggesting “the government’s policy shifts were… aimed at diffusing public criticism while maintaining material support.”
Other Canadian institutions to have assisted Israel’s genocidal siege include a number of its universities. A separate report published by Just Peace Advocates found that in 2023 up to $100 million went completely untaxed as it was funneled to Israeli universities from their ‘charitable’ arms in Canada. The money went to a variety of schools with strong ties to occupation forces, including Israel’s self-described “academic home of soldiers,” Bar-Ilan University, which took in around $4 million that year.
In addition, nearly $17 million was sent tax-free to Ben-Gurion University in 2023, which bragged of having “transformed itself into a back office for war” in October that year. Months later, Ben-Gurion announced the creation of two new “elite academic programs for future [Israeli military] recruits, as part of preparations for the transfer of IDF technological units to southern Israel.” The university says it works “in tandem” with the Israeli Air Force Flight School and claims to have trained around 1,000 pilots for military service.
Also receiving untaxed funds was Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, which has been described as “the incubator of most nuclear weapons work in Israel.” Weizmann has well-documented ties to a variety of Israeli spies implicated in efforts to steal nuclear secrets, and drew international attention after it was partially destroyed in a retaliatory Iranian airstrike on June 15.
According to Just Peace Advocates, Canadian sources delivered over $36 million to the Weizmann Institute in 2023.
Trump Deploys Nuclear Subs Amid War of Words With Russia’s Medvedev.
The US president and the former Russian president have exchanged verbal threats about possible nuclear strikes amid the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
AUG 2, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/trump-deploys-nuclear-subs-amid-war-of-words-with-russias-medvedev
US President Donald Trump ordered the repositioning of two nuclear submarines on 2 August in response to “highly provocative” comments made by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.
“I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social Platform on Friday.
On Thursday, Medvedev had warned that Trump should be mindful of “how dangerous” Russia’s nuclear weapons could be.
“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” Trump stated.
In recent weeks, Trump has been exchanging public insults and nuclear threats with Medvedev, who is viewed as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Earlier this week, Trump insulted Medvedev directly, stating, “Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”
Medvedev, who served as president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister from 2012 to 2020, shot back in a post on Telegram.
“If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right and will continue to proceed along its own path,” he stated.
On 17 July, Medvedev warned that Moscow must be prepared to deliver preemptive strikes against the west if necessary.
Speaking to TASS on the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference, Medvedev said, “The west’s treacherous nature and its warped sense of superiority are still evident. And we should therefore act accordingly, responding in full or even delivering preemptive strikes if need be.”
Medvedev’s comments followed a string of threatening statements made by the US president toward Moscow after announcing plans to deliver new weapons to Kiev.
A Financial Times report revealed that Trump encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a 4 July phone call to strike deep into Russian territory. According to sources, Trump asked, “Can you hit Moscow? Can you hit St. Petersburg too?”
Zelensky allegedly responded, “Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons.”
In the wake of the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites in June, Trump also responded to Medvedev allegedly suggesting that Moscow provide nuclear weapons to Tehran, a claim he later denied.
“Did I hear Former President Medvedev, from Russia, casually throwing around the ‘N word’ (Nuclear!), and saying that he and other Countries would supply Nuclear Warheads to Iran?” Trump wrote on 23 June.
Trump then delivered a veiled threat to Russia by boasting about US nuclear submarine capabilities.
“They are the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built,” he stated.
Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation
Julie Hollar, Fair, July 29, 2025
- “Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)
- “More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)
- “No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)
- “Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)
- “Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)
This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.
Devastatingly late to care
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”………………………………………………………………………………
July 29, 2025
Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation
Even as media report more regularly on starvation in Gaza, coverage still tends to obscure responsibility—as with this CNN headline (7/26/25) blaming the baby’s death on the “starvation crisis” rather than on the US-backed Israeli government.
The headlines are increasingly dire.
- “Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)
- “More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)
- “No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)
- “Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)
- “Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)
This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.
Devastatingly late to care
An informative Wall Street Journal chart (7/27/25) shows the complete cutoff of food into Gaza at the beginning of 2025—a genocidal policy decision by Israel that was not accompanied by increased coverage in US media of famine in the Strip.
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”
A modest increase in food aid was allowed into the Strip during a ceasefire in early 2025. But on March 2, 2025, Netanyahu announced a complete blockade on the occupied territory. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.”
After more than two months of a total blockade, Israel on May 19 began allowing in a trickle of aid through US/Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) centers (FAIR.org, 6/6/25)—while targeting with snipers those who came for it—but it is not anywhere near enough, and the population in Gaza is now on the brink of mass death, experts warn. According to UNICEF (7/27/25):
The entire population of over 2 million people in Gaza is severely food insecure. One out of every three people has not eaten for days, and 80% of all reported deaths by starvation are children.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 147 Gazans have died from malnutrition since the start of Israel’s post–October 7 assault. Most have been in the past few weeks.
Mainstream politicians are finally starting to speak out—even Donald Trump has acknowledged “real starvation” in Gaza—but as critical observers have pointed out, it is devastatingly late to begin to profess concern. Jack Mirkinson’s Discourse Blog (7/28/25) quoted Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk:
I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality…. Once a famine gathers momentum, the effort required to contain it increases exponentially. It would now take an overwhelmingly large aid operation to reverse the coming wave of mortality, and it would take months.
And there are long-term, permanent health consequences to famine, even when lives are saved (NPR, 7/29/25). Mirkinson lambasted leaders like Cory Booker and Hillary Clinton for failing to speak up before now: “It is too late for them to wash the blood from their hands.”
Major US media, likewise, bear a share of responsibility for the hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The conditions of famine have been out in the open for well over a year, and yet it was considered barely newsworthy in US news media.
A MediaCloud search of online US news reports mentioning “Gaza” and either “famine” or “starvation” shows that since Netanyahu’s March 2 announcement of a total blockade—which could only mean rapidly increasing famine conditions—there was a brief blip of media attention, and then even less news coverage than usual for the rest of March and April. Media attention rose modestly in May, at a time when the world body that classifies famines announced in May that one in five people in Gaza were “likely to face starvation between May 11 and September 30″—in other words, that flooding Gaza with aid was of the highest urgency.
But as aid continued to be held up, and Gazans were shot by Israeli snipers when attempting to retrieve the little offered them, that coverage eventually dwindled, until the current spike that began on July 21.
FAIR (e.g., 3/22/24, 4/25/25, 5/16/25, 5/16/25) has repeatedly criticized US media for coverage that largely absolves Israel of responsibility for its policy of forced starvation—what Human Rights Watch (5/15/25) called “a tool of extermination”—implemented with the backing of the US government.
The current headlines reveal that the coverage still largely diverts attention from Israeli (let alone US) responsibility, but it’s a positive development that major US news media are beginning to devote serious coverage to the issue. Imagine how different this all could have looked had they given it the attention it has warranted, and the accountability it has demanded, when alarms were first raised. https://fair.org/home/media-largely-ignored-gaza-famine-when-there-was-time-to-avert-mass-starvation/
Trump moves nuclear submarines after ex-Russia president’s tweet
Andrew Roth Guardian, 2 Aug 25
Order comes after president’s anger at tweet from Dmitry Medvedev which called Trump’s threat to sanction Russia over Ukraine a ‘step towards war’.
Donald Trump has said that he has deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump wrote that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines because of “highly provocative statements” by Medvedev, noting he was now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.
Medvedev had earlier said that Trump’s threats to sanction Russia and a recent ultimatum were “a threat and a step towards war”.
“I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump responded. “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”
He did not specify whether he was referring to nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines.
Asked later by reporters why he ordered the submarine movement, Trump said: “A threat was made by a former president of Russia and we’re going to protect our people.”…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/01/trump-nuclear-submarines-russia-ukraine
‘Designed as Death Traps’: Fmr. Green Beret Who Worked at Gaza Food Sites Reveals Rampant War Crimes.
July 30, 2025 democracynow!,
As more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed seeking aid at militarized aid distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a former GHF security contractor tells Democracy Now! he saw U.S. mercenaries and Israeli forces commit war crimes by indiscriminately shooting at starving Palestinians waiting for aid. “What I witnessed in Gaza, I can only describe as a dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland,” says Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. soldier who worked as a subcontractor with UG Solutions in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid delivery operation. “We, the United States, are complicit. We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza.”
Transcript……………………………………………………………………….
Report Slams Canada’s “Systematic Deception” Over Weapons Transfers to Israel
Activists say the government is misleading the public as Canadian weapons flow to Israel despite pledged restrictions.
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours , Truthout, July 29, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/report-slams-canadas-systematic-deception-over-weapons-transfers-to-israel/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=dd4ceeb9ab-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_07_29_09_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-dd4ceeb9ab-650192793
Rights advocates in Canada are accusing the government of misleading the public by allowing huge amounts of weapons to be sent to Israel despite a pledge to curtail such transfers.
In a new report issued on July 29, a coalition of advocacy groups released new details about the scope of Canadian-made arms exports to Israel amid the country’s war on the Gaza Strip.
Using commercial shipping and Israeli import data, the report found that at least 47 shipments of military related components were sent from Canadian weapons manufacturers to Israeli arms companies between October 2023 and July 2025.
That’s only a few months after the Canadian government said it was opposed to Canadian-made weapons being used in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Rachel Small, the Canada lead at World Beyond War, one of the groups behind the report, told Truthout that the findings expose “one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in Canadian foreign policy in many decades”.
“What we’ve seen over the past 21 months is, over and over again, Liberal [government] ministers standing in parliament, making public statements, claiming that Canada had paused or restricted or limited or was no longer sending arms to Israel,” Small told Truthout in an interview.
“And while Palestinian families were literally burying their children [in Gaza] … we now know that fighter jet parts literally flew from Halifax to Israel on Air Canada flights, hidden in the cargo underneath passenger seats,” Small said.
“What this report reveals is not bureaucratic oversight; what this looks like is systematic deception. It makes Canada directly complicit in what scholars and organizations all agree is a genocide.”
Pressure to Suspend Exports
The report’s findings come as Israel faces a fresh wave of global condemnation over its blockade of Gaza, which has led to a starvation crisis across the bombarded coastal enclave.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, nearly 150 Palestinians have died of hunger since the war began in October 2023, including dozens in recent days.
More than half of those casualties are children, and the United Nations has warned that the number of starvation-linked deaths could rapidly rise unless aid is allowed into the territory in a sustained way.
But long before Israel’s escalation of its blockade in March, people around the world had been calling on their governments to stop sending weapons to Israel that could be used in deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
In Canada, Palestinian rights advocates and other civil society groups demanded an arms embargo against Israel and called on the government to uphold its obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
That pact stipulates that signatories cannot send arms to a country when they have knowledge that those weapons could be used in war crimes, genocide, and attacks on civilians, among other violations of international law.
In March 2024, Canada’s parliament passed a non-binding motion urging the government to suspend further arms sales to Israel.
As pressure continued to mount, in September of last year, then-Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly announced that the government had not approved any new export permits for Israel since January 8, 2024.
Joly said Ottawa had suspended “around 30” existing permits. She also said the government was opposed to a planned sale by the United States of Canadian-made weapons parts to Israel that was made public just a few weeks earlier.
“Our policy is clear: We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period,” Joly told reporters at the time.
Millions in Arms Sent in 2024
Still, human rights advocates immediately questioned why the government didn’t suspend all permits that had been granted for weapons destined for Israel.
The report also noted that, under a decades-old defense pact between Canada and the U.S., most Canadian-made weapons and weapons parts do not need permits to be exported to the country’s southern neighbor.
That has created what some experts have described as a black hole in terms of reporting requirements — and raised concerns that Canadian weapons components could end up in Israel if they are shipped via the U.S.
In fact, in March, anti-war group Project Ploughshares reported that a Canadian Crown corporation — a government contracting agency — had signed a contract in September 2024 with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide artillery propellants used to launch explosive 155m shells that will be sent to Israel.
“This agreement was finalized while the intensive bombardment of Gaza continued,” Project Ploughshares noted, as well as after Canada announced it was suspending weapons exports to Israel.
Tuesday’s report focused on direct military exports from Canada to Israel, not weapons that reach Israel via the U.S.
In an emailed statement sent to Truthout on Wednesday afternoon, Global Affairs Canada, Canada’s foreign affairs department, said it could not confirm the details included in the report, including the number of shipments of items to Israel as well as their method of transit. The department also did not directly answer Truthout’s question about why it hasn’t cancelled all existing weapons export permits to Israel.
“Canada has not approved any new permits for items to Israel that could be used in the current conflict in Gaza since January 8, 2024,” it said, adding that the approximately 30 export permits that were suspended last year “remain suspended and cannot be used to export to Israel”.
“Global Affairs Canada continues to assess all permit applications on a case-by-case basis under Canada’s risk assessment framework, including the criteria set out in the Arms Trade Treaty and enshrined in the Export and Import Permits Act. Any items requiring an export permit adhere to Canada’s rigorous export permit regime,” it said.
The government’s own data shows that Canada exported $13.8 million ($18.9 million Canadian) in direct military supplies and technology to Israel last year.
The weapons were authorized for transfer through 164 permits issued before the January 8 freeze, the government said.
“Global Affairs Canada’s approach since January 8, 2024, has been to not issue permits and to suspend a limited number of export permits for military items destined for Israel,” the ministry said in its report on 2024 exports.
“These suspensions allow for further review into whether the authorized items could be used in the ongoing conflict in a manner inconsistent with Canada’s foreign policy objectives.”
Two-Way Arms Embargo
Tuesday’s report calls on the Canadian government to impose a two-way arms embargo that would cancel all existing arms export permits from Canada and prevent Canada from importing weapons from Israel.
That’s because advocates say the Canadian government should not be buying weapons marketed as “battle tested” on Palestinians or providing profits to Israeli arms manufacturers.
The report also urges Canada to end indirect weapons transfers to Israel through the U.S., including by requiring “end-use assurances” that no arms sent to the U.S. will end up in Israel.
Corey Balsam, national coordinator of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, another one of the groups involved in the report, said arms embargoes are tools the Canadian government has used before in other circumstances.
“I think the government recognizes that it has a responsibility to stop the arms [to Israel], and that’s why they’ve taken some limited measures. But those measures are obviously insufficient,” Balsam told Truthout.
“We’ve grown up with this idea of never again post-Holocaust and that’s something that we hear politicians in Canada repeating,” he said. “And here we are, just letting this happen, and worse, actually contributing. It’s really shameful.”
Balsam added that “if Canada really supports international law and human rights, it needs to be applied across the board”, including to its ally, Israel.
Small also said Canada is at a crossroads.
“I think they are really going to have to choose whether they’re going to continue to try to hide the Canada-Israel arms trade … or whether they’re going to take action and actually stop the flow of these weapons,” Small said.
“We’re not asking them to move mountains,” she added. “It’s the bare minimum to [ask them to] stop Canada from being deeply complicit in what I would say is one of the greatest moral crises of our time.”
An unwanted visitor to Britain’s shores – a harbinger of death
28th July 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/an-unwanted-visitor-to-britains-shores-a-harbinger-of-death/
Not reference to the recent visit of US President Donald Trump to Scotland, but instead the Nuclear Free Local Authorities are highlighting the delivery of US nuclear weapons to RAF Lakenheath earlier this month. Fortunately Mr Trump will be leaving after a short stay, unfortunately the B-61 nuclear weapons will not.
RAF Lakenheath is, despite its cover name, the United States Air Force’s largest airbase in the United Kingdom, a home to two squadrons of the F35A nuclear capable fighter bomber able to carry the B61-12 ‘tactical’ nuclear bomb. Rather than being a weapon designed for delivery as part of a strategic nuclear exchange, the B-61 is intended for use as a ‘battlefield’ weapon for more immediate employment in a direct conflict in Europe with Russia.
Given the current ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia with heightened tensions between Russia and the USA and its NATO allies, this makes it employment frightening more likely in the present than it was in the past.
Anti-nuclear campaigners at Nukewatch have published a detailed expose of a recent flight of a giant C-17 Globemaster from the United States which observed by the Nukewatchers on its arrival at the Suffolk airbase. As the aircraft was operated by a specialist unit authorised to transport nuclear weapons and had travelled in-bound from the US Air Force’s main nuclear weapons storage site at the Kirtland Air Force base in New Mexico to Suffolk, Nukewatch believe that this aircraft was carrying nuclear weapons. This would be the first deployment of US nuclear weapons in the UK since 2008.
Nukewatch ‘judge that the evidence publicly available from our observations and flight-tracking data now supports the conclusion that nuclear weapons are based at the Lakenheath US airbase.’
Their excellent report can be found at https://www.nukewatch.org.uk/how-the-us-air-force-brought-nuclear-weapons-to-lakenheath-air-base-the-inside-story/
In response, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has launched a campaign calling on the UK Government to make a full public disclosure and hold a debate and a vote in Parliament about the acceptance of this deployment. These nuclear weapons will be available for use at the command of US President with the British Prime Minister Starmer has zero say on the matter. This makes Lakenheath an obvious future target for a pre-emptive nuclear attack in the event of a future conflict with Russia. In recent polling, 61% of Britons surveyed were opposed to any deployment of US nuclear weapons in the UK.
CND is inviting its supporters to sign an online petition to their local MP at https://cnd.eaction.org.uk/dontmakeusatarget
CND previously uncovered through a legal challenge that the US military – as ‘visiting forces’ – have a blanket exemption from nuclear safety regulations. This was issued in March 2021 by the former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. It means that there is no requirement for the USAF to carry out emergency planning on nuclear matters.
French nuclear weapons, 2025
Bulletin, By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle | July 15, 2025
France’s nuclear weapons stockpile has remained stable over the past decade and contains approximately 290 warheads for delivery by ballistic missile submarines and aircraft. Nearly all of France’s stockpiled warheads are deployed or operationally available for deployment on short notice. In addition, up to 80 warheads—the older TN75 warheads assumed to have been recently removed from the Le Vigilant submarine—are believed to be in the dismantlement queue and are likely no longer considered part of France’s stockpile.
The current force level is the result of adjustments made to France’s nuclear posture following former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on March 21, 2008, that the arsenal would be reduced to fewer than 300 warheads (Sarkozy 2008). As Sarkozy said in 2008, the 300-warhead stockpile is “half the maximum number of warheads [France] had during the Cold War” (Sarkozy 2008). By our estimate, the French warhead inventory peaked in 1991-1992 at around 540 warheads, and the size of today’s stockpile is about the same as it was in 1984, although the composition is significantly different.
President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed the Sarkozy formulation of “under 300 nuclear weapons” in a speech on February 7, 2020 (Élysée 2020) (see Table 1 –on original). Under President Macron, France has engaged in a long-term modernization and strengthening of its nuclear forces, which have included significant budget increases to the deterrent force in recent years (Assemblée Nationale 2024). It is possible but unclear if the decision to add another nuclear air base will increase the stockpile.
Research methodology and confidence
The analyses and estimates made in this Nuclear Notebook are derived from a combination of open sources: (1) state-originating data (e.g. government statements, declassified documents, budgetary information, and military operations and exercises); (2) non-state-originating data (e.g. media reports, think tank analyses, and industry publications); and (3) commercial satellite imagery. Because each of these sources provides different and limited information that is subject to varying degrees of uncertainty, we crosscheck each data point by using multiple sources and supplementing them with private conversations with officials whenever possible.
As a democracy with an active civil society and media landscape, it is possible to obtain relatively higher-quality information about France’s nuclear arsenal compared to many other nuclear-armed countries. France is one of only two countries (the other being the United States) that have publicly disclosed the size of their nuclear stockpile. French policy and military officials also offer regular statements on France’s nuclear doctrine and associated modernization programs.
Despite these positive steps, some challenges persist in obtaining reliable information about France’s nuclear arsenal. France’s freedom of information laws are more restrictive than in the United States and United Kingdom, and since 2008, a law initially designed to limit proliferation of French nuclear information has in practice been implemented on such a broad scale that it has restricted the ability of researchers and journalists to effectively analyze and disseminate data about discrete elements of France’s nuclear stockpile (Cooper 2022; Légifrance 2008). As a result, it is highly challenging to verify information presented by official sources, particularly as such statements rarely contain technical details………………………………………………….
……………………………………The role of French nuclear weapons
Successive heads of state, including Presidents Sarkozy, Hollande, and now Macron, have periodically described the role of French nuclear weapons. The Defense Ministry’s 2017 Defense and National Security Strategic Review reiterated that the nuclear doctrine is “strictly defensive,” and that using nuclear weapons “would only be conceivable in extreme circumstances of legitimate self-defense,” involving France’s vital interests. What exactly these “vital interests” are, however, remains unclear. During and after the Cold War, French leaders considered France’s “vital interests” to extend beyond its national boundaries; this discourse has been revived in earnest with the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. In February 2020, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France’s “vital interests now have a European dimension,” and sought to engage the European Union on the “role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in [its] collective security” (Élysée 2020).
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the heightened possibility of nuclear use in Europe, this discourse came under greater scrutiny and analysis. In October 2022, Macron clarified that France’s vital interests “would not be at stake if there was a nuclear ballistic attack in Ukraine or in the region,” apparently attempting to avoid being seen as expanding French nuclear doctrine (France TV 2022). Explicitly ruling out a nuclear role in case of Russian nuclear escalation in Ukraine appeared to contradict France’s statement at the August 2022 Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which explained that “for deterrence to work, the circumstances under which nuclear weapons would [or would not] be used are not, and should not be, precisely defined, so as not to enable a potential aggressor to calculate the risk inherent in a potential attack” (2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 2022).
The discussion around the role of France’s deterrent in Europe has intensified after the election of Donald Trump as US President, and even more so given the Trump administration’s open disdain for the United States’ European allies, overtures toward Russia, and threats to stop supporting Ukraine. While the broad contours of France’s nuclear posture will likely remain largely unchanged for the near future, how it is communicated and demonstrated appear to be evolving (Maitre 2025).
In addition to statements about France’s vital interests in Europe, Macron announced in March 2025 the addition of a nuclear air base at Luxeuil in eastern France, which will become the first base to house France’s new hypersonic nuclear cruise missile by 2035 (Élysée 2025). And when French jets (including Rafale jets from the nuclear base at Saint Dizier) deployed to northern Sweden in April 2025, France’s ambassador to Sweden explicitly stated: “As President Macron has said, it is of course the case that our French vital interests also include the interests of our allies. In that perspective, the nuclear umbrella also applies to our allies and of course Sweden is among them” (Granlund 2025)…………………….
………………..France does not have a no-first-use policy and reserves the right to conduct a “final warning” limited nuclear strike to signal to an adversary that they have crossed a line—or to signal the French resolve to conduct further nuclear strikes if necessary—in an attempt to “reestablish deterrence” (Élysée 2020; Tertrais 2020). Although France is a member of NATO, its nuclear forces are not part of the alliance’s integrated military command structure. …………………………..
……………………………………………………………………….. Command, control, and communication
France maintains strict and centralized control over its nuclear arsenal, with the president having sole and final authority as to the decision to use nuclear weapons. However, in practice, the implementation of such a decision would involve additional military personnel—namely the highest- and second-highest-ranking military officers: the Chef d’État-Major des Armées (CEMA) and the Chef de l’État-Major Particulier du Président de la République (CEMP), who is the president’s top military advisor.
Only one of those officials—the CEMA—is enshrined in the French defense code as the responsible official for ensuring that the president’s order is executed (Légifrance 2025). However, conflicting accounts appear to exist regarding the CEMP’s role, with testimony reportedly indicating that under previous administrations, the president and the CEMP each carried one half of the nuclear codes (Pelopidas 2019; Wellerstein 2019).
The primary command post for the president to transmit nuclear orders is called “Jupiter” and is located underneath the Élysée Palace ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Submarine-launched ballistic missiles
The French force of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) constitutes the backbone of the French nuclear deterrent. Under the command of the Strategic Ocean Force (Force Océanique Stratégique, or FOST), the French Navy (Marine Nationale) operates four Triomphant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) equipped with nuclear-armed long-range ballistic missiles—Le Triomphant (hull number S616), Le Téméraire (S617), Le Vigilant (S618), and Le Terrible (S619)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Air-launched cruise missiles
The second leg of France’s nuclear arsenal consists of nuclear ASMPA (air-sol moyenne portée-amélioré) air-launched cruise missiles for delivery by fighter-bombers operated by the Strategic Air Forces and the Naval Nuclear Aviation Force………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The nuclear weapons complex
France’s nuclear weapons complex is managed by the Direction des Applications Militaires (DAM), a department within the Nuclear Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies renouvelables, or CEA). DAM is responsible for research, design, manufacture, operational maintenance, and dismantlement of nuclear warheads………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-07/french-nuclear-weapons-2025/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=French%20nuclear%20arsenal%20today&utm_campaign=20250724%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29
Israeli Navy Seizes Second Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla Vessel in 2 Months
“The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said.
Common Dreams, Olivia Rosane, 26 July 25
The Israeli military intercepted and seized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel The Handala late Saturday night local time as it attempted to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that Israeli forces cut the cameras on board the ship at 11:43 pm local time, when it was around 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
Jul 26, 2025
The Israeli military intercepted and seized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel The Handala late Saturday night local time as it attempted to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that Israeli forces cut the cameras on board the ship at 11:43 pm local time, when it was around 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
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“The unarmed boat was carrying lifesaving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized,” the coalition wrote. “The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that its navy had intercepted the ship, as Al Jazeera reported……………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-freedom-flotilla
Entering a Golden Age for War Profiteers
Scheerpost, July 28, 2025 By William D. Hartung / TomDispatch
When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence wielded by a partnership between the military and a growing cohort of U.S. weapons contractors and came up with the ominous term “military-industrial complex,” he could never have imagined quite how large and powerful that complex would become. In fact, in recent years, one firm — Lockheed Martin — has normally gotten more Pentagon funding than the entire U.S. State Department. And mind you, that was before the Trump administration moved to sharply slash spending on diplomacy and jack up the Pentagon budget to an astonishing $1 trillion per year.
In a new study issued by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, Stephen Semler and I lay out just how powerful those arms makers and their allies have become, as Pentagon budgets simply never stop rising. And consider this: in the five years from 2020 to 2024, 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending went to private firms and $791 billion went to just five companies: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). And mind you, that was before Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget bill landed on planet Earth, drastically slashing spending on diplomacy and domestic programs to make room for major tax cuts and near-record Pentagon outlays.
In short, the “garrison state” Eisenhower warned of has arrived, with negative consequences for nearly everyone but the executives and shareholders of those giant weapons conglomerates and their competitors in the emerging military tech sector who are now hot on their trail. High-tech militarists like Peter Thiel of Palantir, Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey of Anduril have promised a new, more affordable, more nimble, and supposedly more effective version of the military-industrial complex, as set out in Anduril’s “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” an ode to the supposed value of those emerging tech firms.
Curiously enough, that Anduril essay is actually a remarkably apt critique of the Big Five contractors and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon, pointing out their unswerving penchant for cost overruns, delays in scheduling, and pork-barrel politics to preserve weapons systems that all too often no longer serve any useful military purpose. That document goes on to say that, while the Lockheed Martins of the world served a useful function in the ancient days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, today they are incapable of building the next-generation of weaponry. The reason: their archaic business model and their inability to master the software at the heart of a coming new generation of semi-autonomous, pilotless weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing. For their part, the new titans of tech boldly claim that they can provide exactly such a futuristic generation of weaponry far more effectively and at far less cost, and that their weapons systems will preserve or even extend American global military dominance into the distant future by outpacing China in the development of next generation technologies.
War and a Possible Coming Techno-Autocracy
Could there indeed be a new, improved military-industrial complex just waiting in the wings, one aligned with this country’s actual defense needs that doesn’t gouge taxpayers in the process?
Don’t count on it, not at least if it’s premised on the development of “miracle weapons” that will cost so much less and do so much more than current systems. Such a notion, it seems, arises in every generation, only to routinely fall flat. From the “electronic battlefield” that was supposed to pinpoint and destroy Viet Cong forces in the jungles of Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War years to Ronald Reagan’s failed vision of an impenetrable “Star Wars” missile shield, to the failure of precision-guided munitions and networked warfare to bring victory in Iraq and Afghanistan during this country’s Global War on Terror, the notion that superior military technology is the key to winning America’s wars and expanding U.S. power and influence has been routinely marked by failure. And that’s been true even if the weapons work as advertised (which all too often they don’t).
And while you’re at it, don’t forget, for example, that, nearly 30 years later, the highly touted, high-tech F-35 combat aircraft — once hailed as a technological marvel-in-the-making that would usher in a revolution in both warfare and military procurement — still isn’t ready for prime time. Designed for multiple war-fighting tasks, including winning aerial dogfights, supporting troops on the ground, and bombing enemy targets, the F-35 has turned out to be able to do none of those things particularly well. And to add insult to injury, the plane is so complex that it spends almost as much time being maintained or repaired as being ready to do battle.
That history of technological hubris and strategic failure should be kept in mind when listening to the — so far unproven — claims of the leaders of this country’s military-tech sector about the value of their latest gadgets. For one thing, everything they propose to build — from swarms of drones to unpiloted aircraft, land vehicles, and ships — will rely on extremely complex software that is bound to fail somewhere along the way. And even if, by some miracle, their systems, including artificial intelligence, work as advertised, they may not only not prove decisive in the wars of the future but make wars of aggression that much more likely. After all, countries that master new technologies are tempted to go on the attack, putting fewer of their own people at immediate risk while doing devastating harm to targeted populations. The use of Palantir’s technology by the Israeli Defense Forces to increase the number of targets devastated in a given time frame in their campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza could foreshadow the new age of warfare if emerging military technologies aren’t brought under some system of control and accountability.
A further risk posed by AI-driven warfare is the possibility that the new weapons could choose their targets without human intervention. Current Pentagon policy promises to keep a human “in the loop” in the use of such systems, but military logic runs counter to such claims. As Anduril President and Chief Strategy Officer Christian Brose has written in his seminal book Kill Chain, the high-tech wars of the future will hinge on which side can identify and destroy its targets most quickly — an imperative that would ensure slow-moving humans were left out of the process.
In short, two possibilities arise if the U.S. military transitions to the “new improved” military-industrial complex espoused by the denizens of Silicon Valley: complex systems that don’t perform as advertised, or new capabilities that may make war both more likely and more deadly. And such dystopian outcomes will only be reinforced by the ideology of the new Silicon Valley militarists. They see themselves as both the “founders” of a new form of warfare and “the new patriots” poised to restore American greatness without the need for a democratic government in the war-making mix. Their ideal, in fact, would be to ensure that the government got out of the way and let them solve the myriad problems we face alone. Ayn Rand would be proud.
Such a techno-autocracy would be far more likely to serve the interests of a relatively small elite than aid the average American in any way. From Peter Thiel’s quest for a way to live forever to Elon Musk’s desire to enable the mass colonization of space, it’s not at all clear that, if such goals could even be achieved, they would be generally available. It’s more likely that such opportunities would be restricted to the species of superior beings that the techno-militarists see themselves as being.
The Ultimate Brawl Between the Big Five and the Emerging Tech Firms?………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/28/entering-a-golden-age-for-war-profiteers/
Intentional Policies: Dystopian Killing Fields and Starvation in Gaza
27 July 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/intentional-policies-dystopian-killing-fields-and-starvation-in-gaza/
Starvation as a way of life. Starvation as a way of death. Starvation as policy, justification and vengeance. As the state of Israel hums along frittering, scratching and violating international human rights conventions, the chroniclers are kept busy on the morgue’s relentlessly growing inventory and peace’s loss. Of late, a vast number of humanitarian organisations have decided to express their collective outrage in a statement at what is happening in Gaza.
The statement as run by Doctors Without Borders on July 23 is stark: “As the Israel government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste before their eyes.” Two months after the implementation of the controlled aid scheme by Israel, utilising the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, over 100 organisations were “sounding the alarm and urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege; and agree to a ceasefire now.”
Outside Gaza, and even within the Strip, abundant supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sat untouched. Humanitarian organisations had been prevented from accessing them. “The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.” A paltry figure of 28 trucks a day were being allowed into the Strip.
The relevant gore is recounted: massacres at food sites in the Gaza Strip are impossible to ignore; the figures from the UN suggest that 875 Palestinians had been slaughtered while seeking sustenance as of July 13. The frequency of these “flour massacres” is also receiving comment from those in the employ of the operation being run by GHF, policed by private contractors and the IDF. Retired US special forces officer Anthony Aguilar, who resigned from working with the GHF, told the BBC that he had “witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at crowds of Palestinians.” During his entire career, he had never seen such “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”
The NGO statement goes on to note the rise of cases of acute malnutrition, most prevalent among children and the elderly. (The World Food Programme has warned that one in three Gazans do not eat for days at a time, with 90,000 women and children requiring treatment.) “Illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”
In the face of this, international law’s decrees appear like the neglected statues of a distant land. The three sets of Provisional Measures Orders from the International Court of Justice, handed down since 2024, have warned Israel to observe its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and address the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. In its modifying order of provisional measures handed down on March 28, 2024, the ICJ instructed Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.” These include the provision of “food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care” and “increasing the capacity of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary.”
The latest concession from Israel to deal with this engineered humanitarian catastrophe is a promise to open humanitarian corridors to permit UN convoys into the Strip. In addition to that, COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing humanitarian affairs in Gaza, has announced that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will be permitted to parachute humanitarian aid to those in Gaza. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has made a small team of British military planners and logisticians available to assist Jordan in this endeavour. On July 27, the IDF also released a statement claiming it had made the first airdrop including “seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food.” These efforts, in their practical futility, are a reiteration of the humanitarian airdrops conducted by the US military and Jordan’s air force in March last year.
These drops will do little to alter the cruel, strangulating model of aid delivery in place, emboldening the fittest recipients capable of outpacing their adversaries. Those recipients will also be fortunate not to be injured or killed by the dropped packages, instances of which were recorded in March last year. “Why use airdrops,” asks Juliette Touma, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, “when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” Using trucks was “much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper.” Precisely why using them is so unappealing to the IDF.
Instead of focusing on isolating Israel, its allies prefer piecemeal approaches that prolong the suffering of the Palestinians. Measures such as those announced by Starmer to “evacuate children from Gaza who need medical assistance, bringing them to the UK for specialist and medical treatment” only serve to encourage the Israeli war machine. The aid drops serve to do much the same. The objective is one of inflicting a sufficient degree of harm that will encourage the eventual depopulation of the enclave. Israel’s allies, with intentional or unintentional complicity, will clean up.
Israel’s genocide is big business – and the face of the future
“Gaza not only looks like a dress rehearsal for the kind of combat US soldiers may face. It is a test of the American public’s tolerance for the levels of death and destruction that such kinds of warfare entail.”
21 July 2025, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2025-07-21/israel-genocide-big-business/
US corporations and military planners welcome the ‘legal maneuver space’ Israel has opened up for them to profit from warfare that slaughters and starves civilians
[An audio version of this article is available here]
The Financial Times revealed this month that a cabal of Israeli investors, one of the world’s top business consulting groups and a think-tank headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair had been secretly working on plans to exploit the ruins of Gaza as prime real estate.
The secret consortium appears to have been seeking practical ways to realise US President Donlad Trump’s “vision” of Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East”: transforming the small coastal enclave into a playground for the rich and an enticing investment opportunity, once it can be ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian population.
Meanwhile, the UK government has declared Palestine Action a terrorist organisation – the first time in British history that a direct-action campaign group has been banned under Britain’s already draconian terrorism legislation.
Notably, the government of Keir Starmer took the decision to proscribe Palestine Action after lobbying from Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons maker whose factories in the UK have been targeted by Palestine Action for disruption. Elbit supplies Israel with killer drones and other weapons central to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
These revelations came to light as the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, published a report – titled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” – exposing Big Business’ extensive involvement in, and profits from, Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
Albanese lists dozens of major western companies that are deeply invested in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
This is not a new development, as she notes. These firms have exploited business opportunities associated with Israel’s violent occupation of the Palestinian people’s lands for years, and in some cases decades.
The switch from Israel’s occupation of Gaza to its current genocide hasn’t threatened profits; it has enhanced them. Or as Albanese puts it: “The profits have increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”
The special rapporteur has been a growing thorn in the side of Israel and its western sponsors over the past 21 months of slaughter in Gaza.
That explains why Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, announced soon after her report was issued that he was imposing sanctions on Albanese for her efforts to shed light on the crimes of Israeli and US officials.
Revealingly, he called her statements – rooted in international law – “economic warfare against the United States and Israel”. Albanese and the UN system of universal human rights that stands behind her, it seems, represent a threat to western profiteering.
Window on the future
Israel effectively serves as the world’s largest business incubator – though, in its case, not just by nurturing start-up companies.
Rather, it offers global corporations the chance to test and refine new weapons, machinery, technologies, data collection and automation processes in the occupied territories. These developments are associated with mass oppression, control, surveillance, incarceration, ethnic cleansing – and now genocide.
In a world of shrinking resources and growing climate chaos, such innovative technologies of subjugation are likely to have domestic, in addition to overseas, applications. Gaza is the corporate world’s laboratory, and a window into our own future.
In her 60-page report, Albanese writes that her research “reveals how the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech… while investors and private and public institutions profit freely”.
Her point was underscored by the Israeli arms firm Rafael, which issued a promotional video of its Spike FireFly drone that showed it locating, chasing and killing a Palestinian in what it called “urban warfare” in Gaza.
As the UN special rapporteur points out, quite aside from the issue of genocide in Gaza, western companies have been under a legal and moral obligation to sever ties with Israel’s system of occupation since last summer.
That was when the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel’s decades-old occupation was a criminal enterprise based on apartheid and forcible transfer – or what Albanese refers to as policies of “displacement and replacement”.
Instead, the corporate sector – and western governments – continue to deepen their involvement in Israel’s crimes.
It is not just arms manufacturers profiting from the genocidal levelling of Gaza and the occupations of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Big Tech, construction and materials firms, agribusiness, the tourism industry, the goods and services sector, and supply chains have also got in on the act.
And enabling it all is a finance sector – which includes banks, pension funds, universities, insurers and charities – keen to continue investing in this architecture of oppression.
Albanese describes the mosaic of companies partnering with Israel as “an eco-system sustaining this illegality”.
Escaping scrutiny
For these corporations and their enablers, international law – the legal system Albanese and her fellow UN rapporteurs are there to uphold – serves as an impediment to the pursuit of profit.
Albanese notes that the business sector can escape scrutiny by shielding behind other actors.
Israel and its senior officials are on notice for committing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
When she wrote to 48 companies to warn them that they were colluding in this criminality, they either responded that this was Israel’s responsibility, not theirs, or that it was for states, not international law, to regulate their business activities.
Corporations, Albanese points out, can secure their biggest profits in the “grey areas of the law” – laws they have helped to shape.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 jets, whose “beast mode” has been shop-windowed by Israel as it has destroyed Gaza, depend on some 1,600 other specialist firms operating in eight separate states, including Britain.
Late last month the UK high court, while admitting British-made components used in the F-35 were likely to contribute to war crimes in Gaza, ruled that it was up to Starmer’s government to make “acutely sensitive and political” decisions about the export of these parts.
UK foreign secretary David Lammy, by contrast, told a parliamentary committee it was not for the government to assess whether Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza, using British arms, it was “a decision for the court”.
Lockheed Martin has joined the buck-passing. A spokesperson said: “Foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions. Discussions about those sales are best addressed by the US government.”
Big Tech collusion
Albanese also points the finger at leading tech firms for rapidly and deeply embedding in Israel’s illegal occupation, including by acquiring Israeli start-ups that exploit expertise gained from the oppression of Palestinians.
The NSO Group has developed Pegasus phone spyware that is now being used to surveill politicians, journalists and human rights activists around the world.
Last year the Biden administration signed a contract with another Israeli spyware firm, Paragon. Will we learn one day that the US used exactly this kind of technology to spy on Albanese and other international law experts, on the pretext that they were waging so-called “economic warfare”?
IBM trains Israeli military and intelligence personnel, and is central to the collection and storage of biometric data on Palestinians. Hewlett Packard Enterprises supplies technology to Israel’s occupation regime, prison service and police.
Microsoft has developed its largest centre outside the US in Israel, from which it has fashioned systems for use by the Israeli military, while Google and Amazon have a $1.2 billion contract to provide it with tech infrastructure.
The prestigious research university MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has collaborated with Israel and companies like Elbit to develop automated weapons systems for drones and refine their swarm formations.
Palantir, which supplies the Israeli military with Artificial Intelligence platforms, announced a deeper strategic partnership in January 2024, early in Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, over what the Bloomberg news agency termed “Battle Tech”.
Over the past 21 months, Israel has been introducing new automated programs driven by AI – such as “Lavendar”, “Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?” – to select huge numbers of targets in Gaza with little or no human oversight.
Albanese calls this “the dark side of the start-up nation that is so embedded, so intimately related to the military industry aims and gains.”
Not surprisingly, tech firms are falling back on all-too-familiar smears against the special rapporteur and the UN for pulling back the veil on their activities. The Washington Post reported that, in the wake of Albanese’s report, Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, called the UN “transparently antisemitic” in a chat on a staff forum.
Concentration camp
There are a long list of other household names in Albanese’s report: Caterpillar, Volvo and Hyundai are accused of supplying heavy machinery to destroy homes, mosques and infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.
Leading banks such as BNP Paribas and Barclays have underwritten treasury bonds to boost market confidence in Israel through the genocide and maintain its favourable interest rates.
BP, Chevron and other energy firms are profiting from existing gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean and pipelines that pass through Palestinian maritime waters off Gaza. Israel issued exploration licences for Gaza’s own undeveloped gas field, off the coast, shortly after launching its genocidal slaughter.
Israel’s latest plan to create, in its own words, a “concentration” camp inside Gaza – where Palestinian civilians are to be tightly confined under armed guard – will doubtless rely on business partnerships similar to those behind the bogus “aid distribution hubs” Israel has already imposed on the enclave’s people.
Israeli soldiers have testified that they are being ordered to shoot into crowds of starving Palestinians queueing for food at these hubs – explaining why dozens of Palestinians have been killed daily for weeks on end.
Those hubs, run by the misleadingly named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, were in part the brainchild of the Boston Consulting Group, the same management consultants caught this month plotting to turn Gaza into Trump’s Palestinian-free “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Israel’s planned concentration camp built on the ruins of the city of Rafah – to be termed, again deceptively, a “humanitarian zone” – will require all those entering to be “security screened”, using biometric data, before their incarceration.
Doubtless other contractors, using largely automated systems, will control the camp’s interior until, in the Israeli government’s words, “an emigration plan” can be implemented to expel the population from Gaza.
Albanese points to the many precedents for private corporations driving some of the most horrifying crimes in history, from slavery to the Holocaust.
Albanese urges lawyers and civil society actors to pursue legal avenues against these firms in the countries in which they are registered. Where possible, consumers should exert what pressure they can by boycotting these corporations.
She concludes by recommending that states impose sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel.
Further, she calls on the besieged International Criminal Court – four of whose judges are, like her, under US sanctions – as well as national courts “to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes”.
Psychopathic culture
All of this is crucial to understanding why western capitals have continued to partner in Israel’s slaughter, even as Holocaust and genocide scholars – many of them Israeli – have reached a firm consensus that its actions amount to genocide.
Governing parties in western countries like the US and Britain are largely dependent on Big Business, both for their electoral success and, after victory at the polling booth, in maintaining popularity through the promotion of “economic stability”.
Keir Starmer reached power in the UK after spurning the popular grassroots funding model of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and wooing instead the corporate sector with promises that the party would be in its pocket.
His reassurances were also key to making sure the billionaire-owned media – which had ferociously turned on Corbyn, constantly vilifying him as an “antisemite” for his democratic socialist and pro-Palestinian positions – smoothed Starmer’s path to Downing Street.
In the US, the billionaires even have one of their own in power, in Donald Trump. But even his campaign depended on funding from big donors like Miriam Adelson, the Israeli widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson is among a number of top donors, funding both main parties, who make no bones about their number one political priority being Israel.
Once in power, parties are then effectively held to ransom by major corporations on large areas of domestic and foreign policy.
The financial sector had to be bailed out by taxpayers – and still is through so-called “austerity measures” – after its reckless excesses crashed the global ecomomy in the late 2000s. Western governments considered the banks “too big to fail”.
Similarly, Israel – the world’s biggest incubator for the arms and surveillance industries – is just too big to be allowed to fail as well. Even as it commits genocide.
Critics of the rise of globalised corporations over the past half century, such as famed linguist Noam Chomsky and law professor Joel Bakan, have long noted the inherently psychopathic traits of corporate culture.
Corporations are legally obligated to pursue profit and prioritise shareholder value over other considerations. Limitations on their freedoms to do so are near non-existent after waves of deregulation from suborned western governments.
Bakan observes that corporations are indifferent to the suffering or safety of others. They are incapable of maintaining enduring relationships. They lack any sense of guilt, or capacity for self-restraint. And they lie, cheat and deceive to maximise profits.
These psychopathic tendencies have been on show in scandal after scandal, whether from the tobacco and banking industries, or from pharmaceutical and energy companies.
Why would Big Business behave any better in pursuing profits tied up in the Gaza genocide?
Bakan addresses those who confuse his argument with a conspiracy theory. The psychopathic behaviours of corporations simply reflect the legal imperatives on them as institutions – what he calls their “logical dynamic” – to maximise profit and sideline rivals, whatever the consequences for the wider society, future generations or the planet.
Growing fat on genocide
The stakes in Gaza are high for western governments precisely because they are so high for the business world growing fat on Israel’s genocide.
Governments and corporations have an overwhelming shared interest in protecting Israel from scrutiny and criticism: it serves as their colonial attack dog in the oil-rich Middle East, and it acts as a cash-cow for the weapons, surveillance and incarceration industries.
Which explains why Trump and Starmer, on one side, and university administrations, on the other, have invested so much political and moral capital in crushing the spaces, especially in academia, where free speech and protest are supposed to be most prized.
The unversities are far from a disinterested party. Before their campus encampments were trashed by police, student demonstrators sought to highlight how heavily invested the universities are in the economy of occupation and genocide, both financially and through research partnerships with the Israeli military and Israeli universities.
The need to ringfence Israel from scrutiny also explains rapid moves in the West both to impute “antisemitism” to every effort to hold Israel, or its genocidal army, to account.
The desperate lengths to which governments will go was on display this month as UK officials and the establishment media kicked up a storm of outrage after a punk band at Glastonbury chanted “Death, death to the IDF!” – a reference to Israel’s genocidal army.
And as the power of the antisemitism accusation has weakened from misuse, western capitals are now rewriting their statutes to designate as “terrorism” any attempt to put a spoke in the wheels of the genocide economy, by for example sabotaging weapons factories.
Morality and international law are being scattered to the winds to keep the West’s most important colonial spin-off a money-maker.
Business as usual
Israel’s indispensability to the corporate sector and a captured western political class extends far beyond tiny Gaza. Israel is playing an outsize role as a war-industries incubator on a global battlefield in which the West seeks to ensure its continuing military and economic primacy over China.
Last month the global business elite – comprising tech billionaires and corporate titans, joined by political leaders, media editors, and military and intelligence officials – met once again at the publicity-shy Bilderberg summit, this year hosted in Stockholm.
Prominent were the CEOs of major “defence” suppliers and arms manufacturers such as Palantir, Thales, Helsing, Anduril and Saab.
Drone warfare – being used in innovative ways by key military clients like Israel and Ukraine – was high on the agenda. The greater integration of AI into drones appears to have been a mainstay of the discussions.
The subtext this year, as in recent years, was a supposed rising threat from China and an associated “authoritarian axis” comprising Russia, Iran and North Korea. This threat is seen chiefly in economic and technological terms.
In May, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google and a Bilderberg board member, wrote with alarm in the New York Times: “China is at parity or pulling ahead of the United States in a variety of technologies, notably at the AI frontier.”
He added that the West was in a race against China over the imminent development of super-intelligent AI, which would give the winner “the keys to control the entire world”.
Schmidt, like other Bilderberg regulars, predicts that the power-draining needs of super AI will lead to ever-intensifying energy wars for the West to stay top dog.
Or as a Guardian report on the conference summed up the mood: “In this desperate winner-takes-all race for the keys to the world, in which the ‘geopolitics of energy’ becomes ever more important, power stations – along with the data centers they feed – are going to become the No 1 military targets.”
Israel’s slaughter in Gaza is seen as playing a critical role in opening up the “battlescape”.
The same corporations cashing in on the Gaza genocide stand to benefit from the more permissive environment – legally and militarily – created by Israel for future wars, ones where massacred civilians count only as “incidental deaths”.
An April article in the New Yorker magazine set out the challenge facing US military planners, who have considered themselves hobbled since the 1980s by the rise of a human rights community that developed an expertise in the laws of war independently from the Pentagon’s self-serving interpretations.
The result, say US generals regretfully, has been a “general aversion to collateral damage risk” – that is, killing civilians.
Pentagon military planners are keen to use the slaughter in Gaza as a precedent for their own genocidal violence in subduing future economic rivals like China and Russia who threaten the official US doctrine of “global full-spectrum dominance”.
The New Yorker sets out this thinking: “Gaza not only looks like a dress rehearsal for the kind of combat US soldiers may face. It is a test of the American public’s tolerance for the levels of death and destruction that such kinds of warfare entail.”
According to the magazine, the genocidal violence being unleashed by Israel is opening up the “legal maneuver space” – the space needed to commit crimes against humanity in full view.
This is where much of the impulse comes from in western capitals to normalise the genocide – present it as business as usual – and demonise its opponents.
The arms makers and tech companies whose coffers have been swollen by Israel’s genocide in Gaza stand to make far greater riches from a similarly devastating war against China.
Whatever the script we are sold, there will be nothing moral or existential about this coming battle. As ever, it will be about rich people keen to get even richer.
Does Israel have secret nuclear weapons?
26 Jul 2025 If You’re Listening | ABC News In-depthI
srael is steadfast that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. But at the same time, there’s more than a sneaking suspicion that Israel has a nuclear weapon of their own. The Israeli government has never officially confirmed or denied that it possesses a nuclear arsenal. In truly one of the most extraordinary stories we’ve told on this show, we get to the bottom of how Israel hides its nukes, how we found out about them, and why the global community seems to be fine with it.
‘One Meal Every Three Days’: Journalist & Aid Worker Back from Gaza on Stark Reality on the Ground
By DemocracyNow! 25July 25
The BBC, Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse have all called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza as starvation there becomes imminent. In a statement, the news outlets said, “We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.” We speak with Afeef Nessouli, a journalist who just returned from Gaza, where he volunteered as an aid worker. “It has been an incredibly awful experience to see people sort of become sicker and sicker from hunger,” says Nessouli, who describes visiting community kitchens in Gaza that have run out of food. “Many of us would just have one meal a day,” he says of his seven weeks in Gaza. Now his colleagues who remain in Gaza “are having one meal every three days.”
Transcript………………………………………………………………………..https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/25/one-meal-every-three-days-journalist-aid-worker-back-from-gaza-on-stark-reality-on-the-ground/
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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