Israel still eyeing a limited attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
AFR, Erin Banco, Apr 19, 2025
New York | Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months despite President Donald Trump telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US was, for now, unwilling to support such a move, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Israeli officials have vowed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and Netanyahu has insisted that any negotiation with Iran must lead to the complete dismantling of its nuclear program.
US and Iranian negotiators are set for a second round of preliminary nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday.
Over the past months, Israel has proposed to the Trump administration a series of options to attack Iran’s facilities, including some with late spring and summer timelines, the sources said. The plans include a mix of airstrikes and commando operations that vary in severity and could set back Tehran’s ability to weaponise its nuclear program by just months or a year or more, the sources said.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Trump told Netanyahu in a White House meeting earlier this month that Washington wanted to prioritise diplomatic talks with Tehran and that he was unwilling to support a strike on the country’s nuclear facilities in the short term.
But Israeli officials now believe that their military could instead launch a limited strike on Iran that would require less US support. Such an attack would be significantly smaller than those Israel initially proposed.
It is unclear if or when Israel would move forward with such a strike, especially with talks on a nuclear deal getting started. Such a move would likely alienate Trump and could risk broader US support for Israel.
Parts of the plans were previously presented last year to the Biden administration, two former senior Biden administration officials told Reuters. Almost all required significant US support via direct military intervention or intelligence sharing. Israel has also requested that Washington help Israel defend itself should Iran retaliate.
In response to a request for comment, the US National Security Council referred Reuters to comments Trump made on Thursday, when he told reporters he has not waved Israel off an attack but that he was not “in a rush” to support military action against Tehran…………………………………………..
While the more limited military strike Israel is considering would require less direct assistance – particularly in the form of US bombers dropping bunker-busting munitions that can reach deeply buried facilities – Israel would still need a promise from Washington that it would help Israel defend itself if attacked by Tehran in the aftermath, the sources said.
Any attack would carry risks. Military and nuclear experts say that even with massive firepower, a strike would probably only temporarily set back a program the West says aims to eventually produce a nuclear bomb, although Iran denies it.
Israeli officials have told Washington in recent weeks that they do not believe US talks with Iran should move forward to the deal-making stage without a guarantee that Tehran will not have the ability to create a nuclear weapon.
“This can be done by agreement, but only if this agreement is Libyan style: They go in, blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment, under American supervision,” Netanyahu said following his talks with Trump. “The second possibility is … that they [Iran] drag out the talks and then there is the military option.”
From Israel’s perspective, this may be a good moment for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been hammered by Israel since the Gaza war began, while the Houthi movement in Yemen has been targeted by US airstrikes. Israel also severely damaged Iran’s air defence systems in an exchange of fire in October 2024.
A top Israeli official, speaking with reporters earlier this month, recognised there was some urgency if the goal was to launch a strike before Iran rebuilds its air defences. But the senior official refused to state any timeline for possible Israeli action and said discussing this would be “pointless”. https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/israel-still-eyeing-a-limited-attack-on-iran-s-nuclear-facilities-20250419-p5lswv
Saying It’s Antisemitic To Oppose Genocide Is Like Saying It’s Anti-Catholic To Oppose Pedophilia
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saying-its-antisemitic-to-oppose?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=161378744&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
On Sunday Israel bombed the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, which readers may remember as the hospital that Israel ferociously insisted it didn’t bomb in October 2023 and accused anyone who said otherwise of antisemitic blood libel. According to a statement from the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Jerusalem, this is now the fifth time this hospital has been bombed since the beginning of the Gaza onslaught.
The IDF is predictably claiming there was a Hamas base in the hospital, because that’s what they always do. The hospitals are Hamas, the ambulances are Hamas, the journalists are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the children are Hamas, every building in Gaza is Hamas, and anyone who disputes this is also Hamas.
God this gets old.
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Israel, October 2023: How dare you say we bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital? We would never bomb a hospital!
Israel, 2023–2025: *bombs all hospitals in Gaza*
Israel, April 2025: We just bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital again.
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Saying that opposing genocide is hateful toward Jews is like saying that opposing child molestation is hateful toward Catholics.
Western Zionists will be like, “All this hate for Israel makes me feel anxious and unsafe!”
Really? Are you sure that’s what you’re feeling? Are you sure it’s not guilt? Gut-wrenching guilt about all those dead kids in the genocide you support? Or cognitive dissonance, because your entire worldview is wrong?
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People often say I hate Israel, but what’s weird is they say it like it’s a bad thing.
So far the “President of Peace” has started a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, reignited the Gaza holocaust, and shifted more US war machinery to west Asia in preparation for war with Iran, all while getting ready to announce the first ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
Trump is just as awful a warmonger as Biden. If there’s a war with Iran he’ll be far worse. He hasn’t even gotten a Ukraine ceasefire.
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The western political faction that’s doing the most to help murder children in Gaza are not the “Yeehaw kill them Arabs” fanatics of the far right, but the “Gosh it’s so complicated, both sides hate each other and they’ve been at war for millennia” fence-sitting of the so-called moderate.
So far the “President of Peace” has started a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, reignited the Gaza holocaust, and shifted more US war machinery to west Asia in preparation for war with Iran, all while getting ready to announce the first ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
Trump is just as awful a warmonger as Biden. If there’s a war with Iran he’ll be far worse. He hasn’t even gotten a Ukraine ceasefire.
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The western political faction that’s doing the most to help murder children in Gaza are not the “Yeehaw kill them Arabs” fanatics of the far right, but the “Gosh it’s so complicated, both sides hate each other and they’ve been at war for millennia” fence-sitting of the so-called moderate.
And this isn’t an ancient conflict, it’s the culmination of abuses which were initiated by western powers dropping a brand new settler-colonialist ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization after the second world war. There was no reason to believe the middle east would not have joined the rest of the world in settling into a more peaceful status quo after WWII without western imperialists forcefully inserting an artificial apartheid state into the region like a shard of glass into a foot and then keeping it there by any amount of violence necessary.
Sure the middle east had plenty of violence prior to the world wars, but if you’ve ever read American and European history you’ll know this wasn’t anything unique to the middle east; it was the norm around the world. It wasn’t until after WWII that things settled down a bit and westerners grew accustomed to a more peaceful status quo; the only reason the middle east wasn’t allowed to join in that movement was because of aggressive western intervention.
By just shrugging saying “Yeah the Israelis hate the Palestinians and the Palestinians hate the Israelis, who’s to say who’s right,” this mainstream line tacitly promotes the notion that we should just let things play out as they are rather than doing everything we can to stop an active genocide that’s being backed by our own leaders. And this is the position put forward by most of the people with prominent voices in our society. They’re not just not helping, they’re discouraging everyone else from helping too.
Israel is About to Empty Gaza
April 13, 2025 By Chris Hedges ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/04/13/israel-is-about-to-empty-gaza/
Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions. The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops.
On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”
Since Israel’s unilateral ending of the ceasefire on March 18 — which was never honored by Israel — Israel has been carrying out relentless bombing and shelling against civilians, killing over 1,400 Palestinians and wounding over 3,600, according to the Palestinian health ministry. An average of one hundred children are being killed daily according to the United Nations. Israel is, at the same time, inciting tensions with Egypt to lay what I suspect will be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, echoing Katz, said Israel would not lift the total blockade until Hamas was “defeated” and the remaining 59 Israeli hostages were released.
“Not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza,” he vowed.
But no one in Israel or Gaza expects Hamas, which has weathered the decimation of Gaza and sustained mass slaughter, to surrender or disappear.
The question no longer is will the Palestinians be deported from Gaza but when they will be pushed out and where they will go. The Israeli leadership is apparently torn between driving Palestinians over the border into Egypt or shipping them to countries in Africa. The U.S. and Israel have contacted three East African governments – Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland – to discuss the resettlement of ethnically cleansed Palestinians.
The consequences of wholesale ethnic cleansing will be catastrophic, jeopardizing the stability of the Arab regimes allied with Washington and setting off firestorms of protests within Arab countries. It will likely mean the severing of diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbors Jordan and Egypt, already close to the breaking point, and push the region closer to war.
Diplomatic relations have fallen to their lowest point since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979. The Israeli embassies in Cairo and Amman are largely empty with Israeli staff withdrawn over security concerns following the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions. Egypt has refused to accept the credentials of Uri Rothman, who was appointed to be the Israeli ambassador last September. Egypt did not name a new ambassador to Israel when former ambassador, Khaled Azmi, was recalled last year.
Israeli officials are accusing Egypt of violating the Camp David accords by increasing its military presence and building new military installations in the Northern Sinai, charges Egypt says are fabricated. The peace treaty’s annex permits additional Egyptian military hardware in the Sinai.
Former Israeli chief of the general staff, Herzi Halevi, warned of what he calls Egypt’s “security threat.” Katz said that Israel would not allow Egypt to “violate the peace treaty” between the two countries signed in 1979.
Egyptian officials note that it is Israel that has violated the treaty by occupying the Philadelphi Corridor, also known as the Salahuddin Axis, which runs along the nine mile border between Gaza and Egypt and is supposed to be demilitarized.
“Every Israeli action along Gaza’s border with Egypt constitutes hostile behavior against Egypt’s national security,” Egyptian General Mohammed Rashad, a former military intelligence chief, told the Arabic language newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat.
“Egypt cannot sit idly by in the face of such threats and must prepare for all possible scenarios.”
Israeli officials are openly calling for the “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians to Egypt. Knesset member, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that “displacing most Palestinians from Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai is a practical and effective solution.” He contrasted the high population density — Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet — with the vast “untapped lands” in the Egyptian Northern Sinai and noted that Palestinians share a common culture and language with Egypt, making any deportation “natural.” He also criticized Egypt because it allegedly “benefits economically from the current political situation,” as a mediator between Israel and Hamas and “reaps profits from smuggling operations through the tunnels and the Rafah crossing.”
The Israeli think tank Misgav Institute for National Security, staffed by former Israeli military and security officials, published a paper on Oct. 17, 2023, calling on the government to take advantage of the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip,” and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. A leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry proposed resettling Palestinians from Gaza to the Northern Sinai and constructing barriers and buffer zones to prevent their return.
Any expulsion would likely happen swiftly with Israeli forces, which are already mercilessly herding Palestinians into containment areas in Gaza, carrying out a sustained bombing campaign against the trapped Palestinians while creating porous evacuation portals along the border with Egypt. It would entail a potentially lethal standoff with the Egyptian military, instantly throwing the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who has described any ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza as a “red line,” into crisis. It would be a short step from there to a regional conflict.
Israel has seized territory in Syria and southern Lebanon, part of its vision of “Greater Israel,” which includes occupying land in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It covets the maritime gas fields off Gaza’s coast and has floated plans for a new canal to bypass the Suez Canal, to connect Israel’s bankrupt Eilat Port on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These projects require emptying Gaza of Palestinians and populating it with Jewish colonists.
The anger on the Arab street — an anger I witnessed over the past few months during visits to Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Qatar — will explode in a justifiable fury if mass deportation takes place. These regimes, simply to hold on to power, will be forced to act. Terrorist attacks, whether by organized groups or lone wolves, will proliferate against Israeli and western targets, especially the United States.
The genocide is a recruitment dream for Islamic militants. Washington and Israel must, on some level, understand the cost of this savagery. But it appears as though they accept it, foolishly trying to obliterate those they have cast out of the community of nations, those they refer to as “human animals.”
What do Israel and Washington believe will happen when the Palestinians are expelled from a land they have lived in for centuries? How do they think a people who are desperate, deprived of hope, dignity and a way to make a living, who are being butchered by one of the most technologically advanced armies on the planet, will respond? Do they think creating a Danteesque hell for the Palestinians will blunt terrorism, curb suicide attacks and foster peace? Can they not grasp the rage rippling through the Middle East and how it will implant a hatred towards us that will endure for decades?
The genocide in Gaza is the greatest crime of this century. It will come back to haunt Israel. It will come back to haunt us. It will usher to our doorsteps the evil we have perpetrated on the Palestinians.
You reap what you sow. We have sown a minefield of hatred and violence.
Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics
Belén Fernández, April 11, 2025, https://fair.org/home/media-find-ways-to-minimize-israels-murder-of-paramedics/
Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond to a lethal Israeli attack on another ambulance, which had itself been attempting to rescue victims of an Israeli airstrike.
Eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense workers and one UN staff member were murdered by Israeli gunfire. Their mutilated bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave, their vehicles crushed and buried as well.
The initial Israeli narrative was that nine of the emergency responders were militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously…without headlights or emergency signals.”
As it turns out, however, all headlights and emergency signals were very much on—not that it’s fine to massacre people for driving with no lights, of course. When, after a week of negotiations with Israeli occupying forces, another convoy was finally permitted to access the mass grave and unearth the bodies, the mobile phone of massacre victim Rifat Radwan was found to contain footage of the lead-up to the assault, which shows the clearly marked rescue vehicles advancing with emergency lights on. A barrage of Israeli gunfire then persists for more than five minutes, as Radwan’s screen goes black and he bids farewell to his mother.
Following the release of the video footage, Israel conceded that perhaps its version of events had been partially “mistaken”—but only the claim about the headlights being off. The number of alleged “terrorists” on board was furthermore downgraded from nine to six, the other fatalities naturally being labeled human shields and therefore fundamentally the fault of Hamas.
Anyway, no one committing a genocide really cares about the precise identities of 15 people; mass indiscriminate killing is, after all, the whole point of the undertaking. Since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on March 18, the United Nations calculates that more than 100 children per day have been killed or injured in Gaza.
Ludicrous headlines
Notwithstanding reality, the Western corporate media somehow could not bring itself to report this particular massacre of medics without beating around the bush. The New York Times (4/4/25), for example, ran the following ludicrous headline: “Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On.” There was no room, apparently, to mention the role of Israel in said gunfire barrage, although the syntax implies that the ambulance lights may have perpetrated the killing.
The article’s subheadline specifies that “the UN has said Israel killed the workers”—and yet the singular attribution of this opinion to the United Nations is entirely confounding, given that the very first paragraph of the article itself states that the video “shows that the ambulances and fire truck… were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.”
For its part, NPR (4/5/25) went with its own similarly diplomatic headline: “Palestinian Medics Say a Video of Gaza Rescue Crews Under Fire Refutes Israeli Claims.” CNN (4/6/25) opted for: “Video Showing Final Moments of Gaza Emergency Workers Casts Doubt on Israeli Account of Killings.”
NBC News (4/7/25) reported that the Israeli military had “walked back its account of its killing of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in southern Gaza last month after video emerged that called into question its version of events”; the Washington Post (4/6/25) concurred that that Israel had “backtracked on its account…after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on.”
The Guardian (4/5/25), meanwhile, went as far as to assert that the cell phone footage, which “appears to contradict the version of events put forward” by the Israeli military, “appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle” and features “a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.” Imagine if all news reports were written in such roundabout fashion, e.g., “State officials say that what appears to be a bridge collapsed on Thursday into what appears to be a river.”
April 11, 2025
Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics
NBC (4/7/25) presented evidence that killed 15 aid workers and buried their bodies along with their vehicles as an IDF “mistake.”
Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond to a lethal Israeli attack on another ambulance, which had itself been attempting to rescue victims of an Israeli airstrike.
Eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense workers and one UN staff member were murdered by Israeli gunfire. Their mutilated bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave, their vehicles crushed and buried as well.
The initial Israeli narrative was that nine of the emergency responders were militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously…without headlights or emergency signals.”
As it turns out, however, all headlights and emergency signals were very much on—not that it’s fine to massacre people for driving with no lights, of course. When, after a week of negotiations with Israeli occupying forces, another convoy was finally permitted to access the mass grave and unearth the bodies, the mobile phone of massacre victim Rifat Radwan was found to contain footage of the lead-up to the assault, which shows the clearly marked rescue vehicles advancing with emergency lights on. A barrage of Israeli gunfire then persists for more than five minutes, as Radwan’s screen goes black and he bids farewell to his mother.
Following the release of the video footage, Israel conceded that perhaps its version of events had been partially “mistaken”—but only the claim about the headlights being off. The number of alleged “terrorists” on board was furthermore downgraded from nine to six, the other fatalities naturally being labeled human shields and therefore fundamentally the fault of Hamas.
Anyway, no one committing a genocide really cares about the precise identities of 15 people; mass indiscriminate killing is, after all, the whole point of the undertaking. Since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas on March 18, the United Nations calculates that more than 100 children per day have been killed or injured in Gaza.
Ludicrous headlines
The New York Times‘ lead (4/4/25) says the aid workers were killed “when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire”—but the headline omits Israel altogether, and the subhead treats Israel’s responsibility as a UN accusation.
Notwithstanding reality, the Western corporate media somehow could not bring itself to report this particular massacre of medics without beating around the bush. The New York Times (4/4/25), for example, ran the following ludicrous headline: “Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On.” There was no room, apparently, to mention the role of Israel in said gunfire barrage, although the syntax implies that the ambulance lights may have perpetrated the killing.
The article’s subheadline specifies that “the UN has said Israel killed the workers”—and yet the singular attribution of this opinion to the United Nations is entirely confounding, given that the very first paragraph of the article itself states that the video “shows that the ambulances and fire truck… were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.”
For its part, NPR (4/5/25) went with its own similarly diplomatic headline: “Palestinian Medics Say a Video of Gaza Rescue Crews Under Fire Refutes Israeli Claims.” CNN (4/6/25) opted for: “Video Showing Final Moments of Gaza Emergency Workers Casts Doubt on Israeli Account of Killings.”
NBC News (4/7/25) reported that the Israeli military had “walked back its account of its killing of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in southern Gaza last month after video emerged that called into question its version of events”; the Washington Post (4/6/25) concurred that that Israel had “backtracked on its account…after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on.”
The Guardian (4/5/25), meanwhile, went as far as to assert that the cell phone footage, which “appears to contradict the version of events put forward” by the Israeli military, “appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle” and features “a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.” Imagine if all news reports were written in such roundabout fashion, e.g., “State officials say that what appears to be a bridge collapsed on Thursday into what appears to be a river.”
The New York Times on April 7 produced its own follow-up headline, “Video Shows Search for Missing Gaza Paramedics Before Israelis Shoot Rescuers”—thanks to which readers were presumably too busy trying to parse the grammar to think about anything else.
‘Not seen as fully human’
In the case of Israel, corporate media have institutionalized the practice of dancing around the straightforward statement of fact, which is why we never see headlines like “Israel Massacres 15 Palestinian Medics in Rafah,” or, obviously, any acknowledgement that Israel is currently perpetrating a genocide in Gaza (FAIR.org, 12/12/24). Thanks in large part to Israel’s oh-so-special relationship with the US, which happily bankrolls its crimes against humanity, the media have long grotesquely skewed reporting in Israel’s favor in order to validate the whole arrangement.
As Palestinian political analyst and playwright Ahmed Najar writes in a recent op-ed for Al Jazeera (4/6/25), the slaughter of the 15 medics and rescuers in Gaza matters because “their story is not just about one atrocity.” It’s about an entire system
in which Palestinians are presumed guilty. A system in which hospitals must prove they are hospitals, schools must prove they are schools and children must prove they are not human shields.
A system in which, “when Palestinians die, their families have to prove they weren’t terrorists first.” Najar concludes: “When Palestinians are not seen as fully human, then their killers are not seen as fully responsible.”
Western media insistence on giving ample space to Israel’s patently absurd arguments naturally doesn’t help matters—as when the Associated Press (4/6/25) allows an anonymous Israeli military official to contend that there was “no mistreatment” in the killing of the 15 medics. How could there ever be “mistreatment” in a genocide?
In its dispatch on how Israel “walked back” its account of the killing, NBC (4/7/25) quoted the Israeli military as saying that soldiers weren’t trying to “hide anything” by burying the 15 corpses, which is kind of like allowing someone caught holding up a bank with an AK-47 the opportunity to state that they weren’t trying to “steal anything.” From a journalistic standpoint, it makes no sense to grant credibility to a clearly disingenuous narrative. From a propaganda perspective, unfortunately, it does.
‘Good reason to be anxious’
In the end, the slaughter of these 15 men should come as no surprise; as of January, Israel had already killed more than 1,000 health workers in Gaza in a little over a year, while engaging in repeated attacks on hospitals and an obscene decimation of medical infrastructure. On April 1, the UN reported that 408 aid workers had also been killed since October 2023, including 280 UN staff.
Killing medical personnel and emergency responders has long been Israel’s modus operandi. Recall Razan al-Najjar, the 21-year-old Palestinian nurse fatally shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2018, when Israel claimed that unarmed Palestinian protesters were conducting “kite and balloon terrorism.”
Or recall Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which kicked off in Gaza in December 2008 and killed 1,400 Palestinians over a span of 22 days, among them 300 children. The brief assault left 16 medics dead and damaged more than half of Gaza’s hospitals. The Guardian (3/24/09) quoted the Israeli army as reasoning that “medics who operate in the area take the risk upon themselves”—to hell with the Geneva Conventions.
To be sure, war crimes are all in a day’s work for Israel—and covering them up is, it seems, all in a day’s work for the corporate media. In a dispatch about how Israel “acknowledged flaws” in its “mistaken” account of its killing of the rescue workers, the New York Times‘ Isabel Kershner (4/6/25) cited Israeli military affairs analyst Amos Harel on how the Israeli soldiers who did the killing “had ‘good reason to be anxious,’ and that it would be wrong to assume immediately that the case was one of ‘murder in cold blood.’”
Naturally, it would be inhumane to assume that any aspect of genocide might transpire in cold blood. And as Israel continues its quest to normalize total depravity, Western journalism is becoming ever more cold-blooded, too.
Trump declares he would ‘absolutely’ bomb Iran if it refuses to give up its bid for nuclear weapons
The Iran nuclear deal, which Trump scuttled after it was put in place under Barack Obama, was negotiated through multi-party talks.
On Tuesday Trump ridiculed fears of climate change, then pivoted to the Iran threat, which he called much more grave
Says Israel would be ‘very much involved’
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR, 10 April 25 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14589765/donald-trump-bomb-iran-nuclear-weapons.html
President Donald Trump openly discussed military action against Iran just days before talks are set to begin on its nuclear program.
He upped his threats a day after he used colorful language to warn against ‘nuclear heat’ while saying Iran must relinquish nuclear ambitions.
A reporter asked Trump to specify his comment Tuesday that it would be ‘very dangerous’ for Iran if nuclear talks are unsuccessful.
Well they can’t have a nuclear weapon,’ Trump said. Pressed on if he meant military action, Trump responded: ‘Oh if necessary? Absolutely, yeah.’
Asked if he had a deadline with Iran, Trump responded, ‘Yeah, I do,’ but declined to say what it was.
But he said this weekend – with talks set to commence in Oman Saturday – was not the deadline. ‘We have a little time, but we don’t have much time,’ the president said.
‘Because we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon, can’t let them have a nuclear – and we’re gonna let them thrive. I want them to thrive. I want Iran to be great. The only thing they can’t have is a nuclear weapon.
‘I’m not asking for much. I just … they can’t have a nuclear weapon,’ Trump said.
‘But with Iran, yeah, if we, if it requires military, we’re gonna have military. Israel will obviously be very much involved in that. He’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.
In his final cryptic comment, he added: ‘When you start talks, you know they’re going along well or not. And I would say the conclusion would be when I think they’re not going along well. So that’s just a feeling.’
Trump has pledged it is ‘not after a nuclear bomb’ and even expressed interest to direct U.S. investment.
Trump’s comments came on a day he did a sudden U-turn and imposed a 90-day pause on his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, while maintaining a 10 percent across the board tariff and hiking the tariff on China to 125 percent.
The episode revealed both Trump’s willingness to throw the global system into turmoil to achieve his goals, and his willingness to backtrack amid fears of a recession and trillions worth of market losses. He also signed orders directing the Justice Department to investigate Miles Taylor, who wrote a critical book under the pen name ‘Anonymous’ during his first term, and former cyber security official Chris Krebs, who vouched for the security of the 2020 elections during the COVID pandemic.
Satellite images have revealed the deployment of six nuclear-capable B-2 bombers on Diego Garcia, a British-owned naval base that has been critical during U.S. military campaigns.
Trump on Monday said the U.S. would hold top level ‘direct’ talks with Iran – while brandishing new threats and repeating demands that Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
‘We’re having direct talks with Iran. And they’ve started,’ Trump told reporters while seated in the Oval Office next to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, himself a top Iran hawk.
The talks are set to take place in Oman, but Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said the talks would be ‘indirect,’ amid longstanding tensions between the two nations.
The U.S. has avoided such direct talks for years. The Iran nuclear deal, which Trump scuttled after it was put in place under Barack Obama, was negotiated through multi-party talks.
‘I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with, if they can avoid it,’ he added. ‘So we are going to see if we can avoid it, but it’s getting to be very dangerous territory, and hopefully those talks will be successful.’
‘And I think it would be in Iran’s best interests if they are successful.’
On Tuesday Trump ridiculed fears of climate change, then pivoted to the Iran threat, which he called much more grave
‘We were going to be gone, we’re all going to be gone – the environment. No, what they have to worry about is the nuclear – nuclear heat. They don’t have to worry about environmental heat. They have to worry about nuclear heat,’ Trump said on an event where he called for deregulating the coal industry.
‘And if we’re smart, we’re working on that right now with others, having to do with Iran and some other countries,’ Trump said.
‘But that’s the that’s the heat you’re gonna have to worry about. You don’t have to worry about the air is getting warmer. The ocean will rise … within the next 500 to 600 years, giving you a little bit more waterfront property. They say this is going to these guys can handle that. The nuclear we have a bigger problem with, right?’ Trump said.
Iran claims its nuclear program is peaceful, but U.S. intelligence has long warned it was close to being capable of producing nuclear weapons.
How Israel hunts and executes Palestinian medics
The recent case of 15 uniformed first responders killed on their way to work is but the latest in a long, long line of similar crimes
The Israeli army has executed 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza, buried them and lied about them being “terrorists.” For those paying attention, this barbarism is not new, only the latest war crime committed by Israel in a litany of war crimes over the decades.
The combination of the medics being tied up, executed and buried in a mass grave was so horrific that even usually indifferent global media reported on it, albeit without the outrage that would have accompanied such reports were the perpetrator an enemy of the West. (Warning: disturbing video.)
On March 31, Jonathan Whittall, the Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) posted on X, “First responders should never be a target. Yet today @UNOCHA supported @PalestineRCS and Civil Defense to retrieve colleagues from a mass grave in #Rafah #Gaza that was marked with the emergency light from one of their crushed ambulances.”
His thread went on to detail how a week prior, on March 23, contact was lost with ten Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and six Civil Defense first responders, in five ambulances and one fire truck, who’d been dispatched to collect injured people, noting, “For days, OCHA coordinated to reach the site but our access was only granted 5 days later.”
When they finally accessed the site, they “recovered the buried bodies of 8 PRCS, 6 Civil Defense and 1 UN staff,” he wrote, noting, “They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”
According to the PRCS, a ninth EMT is missing and is believed to have been detained.
The UN, The Red Cross, and OCHA have all issued statements of outrage and condemnation of these murders. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said: “They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.”
According to Chapagain, 30 PRCS volunteers and staff have been killed since October 2023 alone.
OCHA called the murders “a huge blow to us” and said, “these abhorrent acts require accountability.” According to the UN, “408 aid workers including more than 280 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza since the war began on 7 October 2023.”
Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, wrote, “They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives. We demand answers & justice.”
The Guardian cites PRCS’ Dr. Bashar Murad, who spoke to one of the paramedics in the convoy:
“He informed us that he was injured and requested assistance, and that another person was also injured. A few minutes later, during the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”
The Israeli army media spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, predictably denied Israeli army wrong-doing and blamed Hamas, claiming the ambulances were “advancing suspiciously” toward Israeli forces. He declared the execution of the medics be an elimination of “a Hamas military operative, along with 8 other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”
Observers on X rebuffed Shoshani, including pointing out the Israeli army has been attacking ambulances for a very long time.
Gaza medics under Israeli attack since 2009
I can speak from personal experience. During the January 2009 Israeli war on Gaza, I was among a handful of international volunteers riding in PRCS ambulances, to document their work and the victims they rescued……………………………………………………………………………………….
The abduction and torture of Palestinian doctors is another aspect of Israel’s all-out attack on Gaza’s health system. It is part of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians themselves, depriving them of life-saving care, part of the decades-long policy of killing Palestinians by every means possible, including by preventing the entry of medical equipment and food, starving Palestinians who escaped bombs and sniping.
I will post the same rhetorical question I’ve posed ad nauseam: What would the international reaction be like if it were Russia point-blank assassinating uniformed, unarmed medics? It would be non-stop 24/7 howling in corporate media, victims faces and stories spoken of, demands for more sanctions…
But Israel does this again and again over the decades and all Palestinians get are muted words of concern and calls for investigation, allowing Israel to continue slaughtering medics and emergency workers unabated. No justice. https://www.rt.com/news/615480-palestine-israel-medics-hunt/
Trump’s State Department Would Support Literally Any Israeli Atrocity
It’s clear that Trump’s State Department spokeswoman has been instructed to respond to any and all questions about Israeli atrocities in Gaza by blaming everything on Hamas, without even pretending to care whether the allegations are true.
For some background, Israel has just been caught perpetrating an atrocity so monstrous and so abundantly well-evidenced that even the mainstream western press have felt obligated to report on it. Outlets like the Guardian and the BBC are covering the story of how 15 medical workers for the Red Crescent, Civil Defense, and the UN were apparently handcuffed and executed one by one by Israeli forces in Rafah before being buried in a mass grave. According to Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal, they were each shot more than 20 times.
(As an aside, the fact that Israeli forces have been known to bury the victims of their atrocities in order to hide the evidence is one of the many reasons why the official death toll from the Israeli onslaught in Gaza is definitely a massive undercount.)
Asked by the BBC’s Tom Bateman about these reports during a Monday press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce responded by babbling about how evil Hamas is and how they are to blame for everything bad that happens in Gaza.
Here’s a transcript of the exchange:
Bateman: On Gaza, the UN’s Humanitarian Affairs Office has said that 15 paramedics, Civil Defense, and a UN worker were killed — in their words, one by one — by the IDF. They have dug bodies up, they said, in a shallow grave that have been gathered up, and also vehicles in the sand. Have you got any assessment of what might have happened? And given the potential use of American weapons, is there any assessment of whether or not this complied with international law?
Bruce: Well, I can tell you that for too long Hamas has abused civilian infrastructure, cynically using it to shield themselves. Hamas’s actions have caused humanitarians to be caught in the crossfire. The use of civilians or civilian objects to shield or impede military operations is itself a violation of international humanitarian law, and of course we expect all parties on the ground to comply with international humanitarian law.
Bateman: But there’s specifically a question on any — it’s a question about accounting and accountability given there may have been the use of U.S. weapons, so it’s a question about the State Department rather than Hamas. Is there any actions —
Bruce: Well, every single thing that is happening in Gaza is happening because of Hamas — every single dynamic. I’ll say again — I’ve said it, I think, in every briefing — all of this could stop in a moment if Hamas returned all the hostages and the hostage bodies they are still holding and put down its weapons. There is one — one entity that could stop it for everyone in a moment, and that is Hamas. This is — all loss of life is regrettable — it’s key, obviously — whoever it is, wherever they live. And this has been the nature of what fuels Secretary Rubio and President Trump in their willingness to expend this kind of capital early on in this term to make a difference and to change the situation. So I think that’s — that is the one thing that remains clear in all of this.
At no time does Bruce attempt to deny that the atrocity happened or cast doubt on the veracity of the claims, only justifying Israel’s actions by blaming Hamas. Again, this is a story about medical workers being handcuffed and then executed by gunfire.
Tammy Bruce does this constantly; she did it in response to two separate questions at a press conference last week. When asked about Israel’s assassination of Palestinian journalists Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour, Bruce responded by babbling about October 7 and saying “every single thing that’s happening is a result of Hamas and its choices to drag that region down into a level of suffering that has been excruciating and has caused innumerable deaths.” When asked about the fact that people in Gaza have been unable to access clean drinking water under the Israeli siege, Bruce said, “Hamas did not perform to make sure that the ceasefire could continue, that they did not do what they said they would do. So we know, of course, when it comes to the ground water, of course, this is — it’s a crisis. It’s exacerbated by the fact that you have a terrorist group that just doesn’t care.
She did it again at a press conference the week before when asked by journalist Said Arikat if the State Department considers Israel’s use of siege warfare on a civilian population a war crime, saying “For the horrible suffering of the Gazan people, we know where that sits: it sits with Hamas,” adding that the people of Gaza “have been suffering because of the choices that Hamas has made throughout the years.”
Arikat, by the way, has just tweeted that on Monday he was not called on to ask a question for the first time in nearly 25 years of attending State Department press briefings. He is one of the very few reporters at the State Department who regularly asks challenging questions about US foreign policy.
Britain is aiding Israel’s nuclear force
Israeli ministers may not see their nuclear weapons just as weapons of last resort, to be used if the country were threatened with annihilation.
In the months after the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, several Israeli policymakers and commentators—including heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu who was later suspended from the cabinet—suggested that Israel should use nuclear arms against Hamas fighters in Gaza.
DECLASSIFIED UK, MARK CURTIS, 26 March 2025
When the government recently published its arms exports data for the period July to September last year, one item caught the eye: a licence to sell Israel £7.1m worth of “technology for submarines”.
Israel’s submarines are believed to house nuclear arms.
The government data included a footnote stating that the licence related to “marketing and promotional purposes, including demonstration to potential customers, temporary exhibitions”.
Whatever that might mean, what is clearer is that British ministers have authorised 77 export licences to supply Israel with components for its submarines since 2010. This makes that category of equipment the fourth most numerous for all UK military exports to Israel.
The total value of these licences is £8.96m, Declassified has established. Two of the licences are, however, “open” rather than “single”, meaning that unlimited quantities and values of such equipment can be exported from Britain.
These licences for Israel’s submarines were excluded from the UK’s restrictions on exports of military equipment for Israel announced last September during its bombardment of Gaza.
Also excluded were components from Israel’s F-35 warplanes used to devastating effect in the territory.
Israeli military officials are doubtless pleased that British companies can continue to support their submarines – since their underwater and nuclear arms programmes are both being upgraded.
Nuclear dolphins
Research institute SIPRI estimates that Israel has at least 90 nuclear warheads but that the number could reach as high as 300.
While Israel continues to deny it has nuclear arms, SIPRI says it is “believed to be modernizing its nuclear arsenal and appears to be upgrading its plutonium production reactor site at Dimona” in the Negev desert.
The Stockholm-based institute also notes unconfirmed reports that “all or some of the submarines have been equipped to launch an indigenously produced nuclear-armed sea-launched variant of the Popeye cruise missile, giving Israel a sea-based nuclear strike capability”.
It “assesses that around 10 cruise missile warheads might be available for the submarine fleet”………………………………………………………………………….
‘Armed with nuclear weapons’
Israel’s most recent, and sixth, submarine, known as the INS Drakon, is the country’s largest and was unveiled last November at the Kiel shipyard in northern Germany where it was built, and from where it will be delivered to Israel later this year.
“Israeli nuclear submarines have the capability to be armed with nuclear weapons as well as to perform clandestine spying missions all over the world”, the Jerusalem Post reported at the time.
Israeli ministers may not see their nuclear weapons just as weapons of last resort, to be used if the country were threatened with annihilation.
In the months after the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, several Israeli policymakers and commentators—including heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu who was later suspended from the cabinet—suggested that Israel should use nuclear arms against Hamas fighters in Gaza.
Whitehall in denial
The UK government has consistently refused to acknowledge the open secret that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. One reason Whitehall can be certain, however, is that it helped Israel acquire nuclear arms in the first place.
In the late 1950s, Britain sold Israel 20 tonnes of heavy water, a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium at Israel’s top secret Dimona nuclear site.
In fact, Declassified previously found that staff in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence have for over 40 years believed Israel has developed nuclear arms.
Britain has also aided Israel’s submarine development…………………………………………………………………….https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-is-aiding-israels-nuclear-force/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Button&utm_campaign=ICYMI&utm_content=Button
Ukraine and Israel are not US allies.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 25 Mar 25
They are essentially US Trojan Horses used to project US power dominance in Europe and Middle East respectively.
Both US Trojan Horses have come up lame and are heading for the glue factory.
The US marched their Ukraine Trojan Horse up to Russia’s borders armed with NATO entrance papers and billions in US weapons. When Russia pleaded with the US for years to discuss Russia’s valid security concerns, the US replied ‘Nyet.’ Former President Biden knew Russia would attack but believed any invasion would be a Vietnam style quagmire for Russia. Biden saw the upcoming Russian collapse as the shining achievement of his half century anti-Russian Cold War mantra. That failed spectacularly.
The election of Trump has injected a healthy dose of realpolitik that acknowledges Biden’s folly. Trump is currently in negotiations to put America’s Ukraine Trojan Horse to pastoral retirement. Can’t come soon enough.
America’s Israeli Trojan Horse to dominate the Middle East is a horse of a different color. It’s more like Israel’s Trojan Horse near totally financed by Uncle Sam. America gets to sit back while Israel marches around their neighborhood committing genocide is Gaza, indiscriminately bombing innocents in Syria and Lebanon, and promoting US attacks on Yemen and eventually Iran. All this senseless carnage constitutes Israel serving as the US battering ram to recreate the Middle East according to its dominant worldview.
Like our Ukraine Trojan Horse, our Israeli Trojan Horse is failing to promote America’s true national interests. Most of the world’s 193 countries are aghast America promotes the most grotesque genocide this century. America’s standing may be at an all time low. Like with Ukraine, we’re enabling Israel to self destruct. It’s now a pariah state. Tourism and investment are in decline. Its military is demoralized both from significant casualties and having to commit genocide.
Both allies are flirting with wider war; nuclear in Ukraine, regional war in Israel.
America gets nothing from allies Ukraine and Israel except worldwide condemnation, squandered treasure and diminishing unipolar world dominance.
With allies like Ukraine and Israel, America does not need enemies.
The US hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons must stop
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
By Victor Gilinsky, Leonard Weiss | March 21, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/the-us-hypocrisy-about-israels-nuclear-weapons-must-stop/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel%20s%20nuclear%20weapons&utm_campaign=20250324%20Monday%20Newsletter
An extraordinary three-part series on Israeli television, The Atom and Me, lays out how the country got its nuclear weapons. It takes for granted what anyone who pays attention has known for years. But the series goes well beyond a general discussion about Israel’s nuclear weapons. It shows the country’s single-minded determination to get the bomb no matter what it took, including stealing nuclear explosives and bomb components from the United States and violating a major nuclear arms control treaty to which Israel is a party—and lying about it.
As the Trump administration is in serious discussion about joining Israel in attacks on Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons, it is useful to shed illusions about Israel’s modus operandi.
US officials stay mute. A thread running through the three episodes is a continuing conversation, before he died in 2018, with Benjamin Blumberg, the head of Lakam, the Israeli scientific intelligence agency responsible for the nuclear missions that led to the Israeli bomb, some so secret they were kept from the Mossad. (Mossad is the Israeli agency that handles foreign intelligence collection and covert action.) Blumberg was in failing health and agreed to talk so long as the interview was not aired until after his death.
That conversation is mixed with archival material and recent interviews. The significance of the series lies not in showing what was not previously known—although there are details in that category—but in the admissions on Israeli public television, with the approval of the Israeli censors, about events that have been denied by Israel’s supporters in the United States, including the US government.
Several events discussed in the television series deal directly with the United States: the theft in the 1960s of bomb quantities of uranium 235 from the NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania, where the leaders of the Israeli team that spirited Eichmann out of Argentina appeared inexplicably in 1968 with false identities; the illicit purchase of hundreds of high-speed switches (krytrons) for triggering nuclear weapons, and spiriting them out of the country in the 1980s by Israeli spy and arms dealer, and by then Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan; and, most significantly at this point, Israel’s 1979 nuclear test in the seas off South Africa of what appears to be the initial fission stage for a thermonuclear weapon. The nuclear test violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to which Israel is a party.
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Not since John Kennedy has any US president tried to rein in Israel’s nuclear program. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not challenge the Israelis on nuclear issues (and covered up Israel’s attempt during the 1967 six-day war to sink the US spy ship Liberty). Such has been Israel’s political clout in the United States.
No one was ever charged in the disappearance of nuclear material from NUMEC. When the issue of Israel’s involvement arose again in 1976, President Gerald Ford’s attorney general suggested to the president the possibility of charging US officials, presumably in the Atomic Energy Commission, with failing to report a felony. But it was too late. Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter, who let the matter drop. Milchan was never charged for the filching of krytrons even though he later bragged about his arms dealing and spying for Israel. And Carter—and every US president after him—took no enforcement action in response to the illegal 1979 nuclear test.
The United States’ indulgence of Israeli nuclear weapons has not escaped international attention, and the evident hypocrisy has undermined US nonproliferation policy. The US government’s public position continues to be that it does not know anything about Israeli nuclear weapons, and this will apparently continue until Israel releases the United States’ gag. This policy is allegedly enforced by a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel brags about its nukes. Ironically, the Israelis feel free to allude to their nuclear weapons whenever they find it useful. The best example is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2016 speech on receipt of the Rahav, the latest submarine supplied by Germany. The Times of Israel, using the standard “according to foreign reports,” described the submarine as “capable of delivering a nuclear payload.” In his speech, Netanyahu said, “Above all else, our submarine fleet acts as a deterrent to our enemies … They need to know that Israel can attack, with great might, anyone who tries to harm it.” How else, other than with nuclear weapons, can a submarine be a deterrent? The submarines’ long-range cruise missiles could not only hit Iran’s capital, Tehran, Israel’s main security concern, they could also hit any European capital.
Those submarine-based cruise missiles—if they exist—might be tipped with thermonuclear warheads, which are also carried on planes and ground-based rockets. Light-weight thermonuclear weapons allow flexibility in delivery, but the two-stage designs are highly sophisticated. The Israelis logically decided that they had to conduct at least one low-yield fission test—even though they had promised not to do this—to be sure their first stage produced the radiation that would initiate the thermonuclear fuel in the second stage.
In the last episode of the Israeli television series, journalist Meir Doron, who has written on Israel’s security secrets, says: “After the nuclear test, for the first time, the heads of the Israeli nuclear program, Blumberg, Shimon Peres, and all the people from the reactor, could sleep soundly at night. They knew that what they’re building works.”
While Israel did not sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it signed and ratified the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which obligates parties not to explode a nuclear device in the atmosphere or oceans. Such a test also triggers a nonproliferation provision of US law, the 1977 Glenn Amendment (Sec.102 (B) to the Arms Export Control Act), that imposes severe sanctions on any country (other than the five approved in the NPT) that explodes a nuclear device after 1977. Upon learning of such an explosion, the president is supposed to impose the wide-ranging sanctions “forthwith.” That, of course, did not happen.
The nuclear explosion’s characteristic two-hump signal was detected by a US satellite on September 22, 1979, and US intelligence agencies were convinced Israel was the culprit. President Carter did not want to risk his ongoing Middle East policy efforts by blaming Israel. The White House asked a group of scientists whether the detected light flash could somehow have been unconnected with a nuclear explosion. The scientists came up with some ideas that gave the president a public out. At the same time, the White House kept classified Navy reports on ocean sound waves from the explosion that supported the satellite data. And Carter wrote in his diary: “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa.” All this was essentially a cover-up.
The Glenn Amendment allows the president to delay sanctions on national security grounds or waive them entirely with the help of congressional action. The law does not allow the president to ignore it. But that is exactly what all of them have done.
The price of silence. The US government’s silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons has meant silence about them in discussions on Iran’s nuclear program. Public debate is an essential part of US policy development and, in the case of Iran, is hobbled by an inability to have an honest appraisal of the nature and purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
The inability to have honest public discussion allows for the pretense by Israel and its supporters that it faces an existential threat from Iran, which is ready to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv as soon as it gets one. Various aspects of the Iran issue are hidden by an inability to weigh all the elements of policy needed to arrive at an intelligent US policy.
The US government’s silence has also taught the press to avoid the issue. The last time a White House correspondent asked about Israeli nuclear weapons, even then indirectly, was when Helen Thomas asked President Obama in 2009 whether he knew of any nuclear weapons in the Middle East. She got a chilly non-response—Obama said he was not going to speculate.
An exception to the general lack of press interest in the issue is a 2018 New Yorker report by Adam Entous, revealing how US presidents have signed secret letters to the Israelis promising to do nothing to interfere with Israel’s nuclear weapons or acknowledge their existence.
Israel claims this US obligation flows from a “deal” made by Nixon and Golda Meir in their 1969 meeting during the 15 minutes when they were alone. William Quandt, Kissinger’s aide at the time, says in the third episode, “There is no documentary record on the American side to this day. No one else was in the room.” Nor has any Israeli record appeared. Without any record, there can be no enduring obligation.
So why did US presidents go along with the Israeli version of the US obligation, including denying any knowledge about Israeli nuclear weapons, long after it ceased to be in the United States’s interest to do so? Entous reported that when Trump first entered office in 2017 his staff was confronted by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (a former American who switched allegiance to Israel). He is said to have acted “like he owned the place,” but it worked. He got his way.
The single-mindedness of the Israeli establishment—that what it thinks is best for Israel overrides all other considerations—is caught at the end of the third television episode. The conversation with Benjamin Blumberg turns to Israel’s more-than-amicable relations with apartheid-era South Africa, from which it got uranium to fuel the Dimona reactor and later permission to conduct the 1979 nuclear test, and to which Israel provided tritium to upgrade South Africa’s nuclear weapons. He is asked, was not South Africa an oppressive racist regime? “All true,” said Blumberg, “but what do I care. I wanted what was best for Israel.” It’s time to realize that what is “best for Israel” is not necessarily good for the United States.
Editor’s note: Victor Gilinsky was a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the events in question. Leonard Weiss was a long-term aide to Senator Glenn and the author of the first version of the Glenn Amendment. They both appear in the mentioned Israeli TV series.
Report: Israel Planning More Aggressive Invasion of Gaza
The IDF will take control of the humanitarian aid in the Strip
by Kyle Anzalone, March 24, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/23/report-israel-planning-more-aggressive-invasion-of-gaza/
According to the Washington Post, the Israeli military is gearing up for a major ground operation in Gaza that could last months or longer. Last week, Israel broke a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas and conducted large-scale bombings in the Strip that killed hundreds.
The Post spoke with current and former Israeli officials, who explained that “The new and more aggressive tactics” would probably include “direct military control of humanitarian aid,” “targeting more of Hamas’s civilian leadership, and evacuating women, children and vetted noncombatants from neighborhoods to ‘humanitarian bubbles.’”
The officials said those who are not evacuated would face a siege that is a “more intense version of a tactic employed last year in northern Gaza.” In 2024, the Israeli military carried out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals for Northern Gaza.
The plan called for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians south of the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed, either by military action or starvation.
The Post reported the more brutal strategy reflects a change in military leadership, and the new policy is more in line with the view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi stepped down from that post earlier this month. He was replaced by Eyal Zamir.
Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander of the military’s Gaza division, explained to the Post that President Donald Trump’s vigorous support for Tel Aviv gives Israeli military commanders more faith that they will have the equipment needed in Gaza.
“Now there is new [IDF] leadership, there is the backup from the U.S., there is the fact that we have enough munitions, and the fact that we finished our main missions in the north and can concentrate on Gaza,” Avivi said. “The plans are decisive. There will be a full-scale attack and they will not stop until Hamas is eradicated completely. We’ll see.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has decimated the Strip and killed at least 50,000 Gazans. Still, Israeli and US officials have said Hamas has returned to its prewar strength. The Post noted that the IDF would not be less restrained in order to defeat Hamas.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a former senior IDF intelligence official and head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security think tank explained, “There is less opposition now with Zamir and [Defense Minister Israel] Katz. They are more ready.”
“The government was committed to removing Hamas from power,” Kuperwasser added. “The security establishment was not happy with this idea. They were trying to focus more on military assets and less on civilian assets. Because once you remove Hamas from Gaza, the IDF would have to rule Gaza.”
While the Post report says the IDF plans to wage a counterinsurgency in Gaza, Katz has said Tel Aviv will expel the Palestinians and annex the Strip. “I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza, while evacuating the population, and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers,” he said on Friday.
On Saturday night, the Israeli Security Council established a new office that will coordinate the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Since breaking the ceasefire and hostage deal last week, Israel has resumed large-scale bombing in Gaza. Additionally, Israeli troops have attacked Rafah in southern Gaza and the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.
Katz: Israel To Begin Annexing Gaza
The Defense Minister explained that Israel will begin seizing territory and will not stop until all hostages are released
by Kyle Anzalone March 21, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/21/katz-israel-to-begin-annexing-gaza/
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the IDF will begin annexing parts of the Gaza Strip. President Donald Trump and Israeli officials have discussed expelling the Palestinians from the Strip.
“I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza, while evacuating the population, and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers,” he said on Friday. “The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel.”
On Wednesday, Katz directly threatened the civilian population of Gaza with “utter destruction and devastation” if they did not release the hostage and expel Hamas from Gaza. He added if the Palestinians did that, then they would be allowed to leave Gaza for another country.
While Katz is demanding Hamas release the hostages, the renewed assault on the Strip breaks a hostage and ceasefire deal that would have led to the release of the remains of the Israeli captives. Since Israel resumed bombing Gaza, at least 500 have been killed, including 200 children.
Katz explained in his Friday statement that he will deploy “all military and civilian pressure tools including the evacuation of Gaza’s population southward and the implementation of voluntary relocation plans for Gaza residents.” He added that the IDF would establish “permanent Israeli control of the territory.”
On Friday, the Times of Israel reported that Egypt said it was willing to temporarily house half a million Palestinians in the northern Sinai while Gaza is rebuilt.
Still, Tel Aviv and Washington lack a country to send the roughly two million permanently resettle Palestinians. Over the past week, reports said Syria, Somalia, Somaliland, and Sudan received offers from Washington to resettle Palestinians.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.
Israel Makes Its Most Explicit Statement Of Genocidal Intent Yet
Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 20, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-makes-its-most-explicit-statement?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=159470039&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=357cr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has published an explicit statement of genocidal intent toward the people of Gaza, threatening civilians in the enclave with collective punishment in the form of “total devastation” if they do not find a way to overthrow Hamas and free all Israeli hostages.
Katz’s statement reads as follows:
“Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before.
“Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza, and the second Sinwar will bring upon it total ruin. The Israeli Air Force’s attack against Hamas terrorists was only the first step. What follows will be far harsher, and you will bear the full cost.
“Take the advice of the U.S. President: return the hostages and kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you — including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose. The alternative is destruction and total devastation.”
When Katz says “Take the advice of the US president,” he is referring to a statement made by President Trump earlier this month which made essentially the same threat addressed “to the People of Gaza,” saying, “A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”
When I criticized the US president for these remarks which explicitly threaten Gaza’s civilians, I got a deluge of Trump supporters telling me he wasn’t really talking about “the people of Gaza” as he said, but was rather speaking only about the ones who are actively holding hostages. Katz’s statement makes it abundantly clear that they were wrong, and that those of us who called a spade a spade at the time were correct.
The Israeli defense minister is simply following Trump’s position and reiterating what everyone who isn’t a blinkered partisan hack knew Trump was saying two weeks ago. He is doing this in exactly the same way Benjamin Netanyahu followed Trump’s position on ethnically cleansing Gaza last month by enthusiastically endorsing the plan Trump put forward to permanently remove all Palestinians from the enclave. Trump puts forward the plan, and Israeli officials put it into action.
So you’ve got both the US and Israeli governments openly threatening the entire population of the Gaza strip with the war crime of collective punishment if they don’t somehow kick Hamas out of Gaza, and additionally announcing the intent to inflict “total devastation” upon that population if they do not.
This is about as explicit an admission of genocidal intent as you can possibly come up with.
In its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, South African prosecutors compiled a mountain of evidence of Israeli officials announcing the intent to commit genocide in Gaza, such as Netanyahu describing Gaza’s population as “Amalek” in reference to a Bible story about a people who were completely annihilated on the orders of God, or former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant describing Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” while declaring a “total siege” on the enclave.
Al Jazeera’s Raz Segal and Penny Green wrote the following regarding the ICJ case last year:
“The crime of genocide has two elements — intention and execution — both of which have to be proven when accusations are made… Intention is usually harder to prove when accusations of genocide are made; the petitioner has to be able to prove “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” in the language of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. But in Israel’s case, intention too has been laid bare by an ample amount of evidence — as the South African legal team pointed out.”
And Katz’s statement is probably the most clear and explicit admission yet. It’s hard to imagine a clearer declaration of genocidal intent than delivering a video statement addressed to a civilian population threatening them with “total devastation” if they don’t do as they’re told.
We may be sure that these statements by Katz and Trump have been added to files held by those who hope to successfully prosecute these monsters for war crimes one day. We may also be sure that they will be recorded in what will eventually be seen as one of the darker chapters in our civilization’s history.
Israel Restarts Large-Scale Bombing of Gaza, Over 400 Killed
Many of the dead are children as Israel is hitting homes and tents sheltering displaced Palestinians
by Dave DeCamp March 18, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/17/israel-restarts-large-scale-bombing-of-gaza-over-100-killed/
The Israeli military on Tuesday morning began launching large-scale airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, marking the full-scale resumption of Israel’s genocidal war.
Around 1:00 pm Gaza time, Al Jazeera reported that 404 Palestinians had been killed and 562 had been wounded by Israeli strikes on homes and tents sheltering displaced Palestinians across the Strip.
Pictures and videos from Gaza that have surfaced online show there is a large number of child casualties. “Israeli bombardment has returned to Gaza, bringing massacres with it once again,” Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif wrote on X. “The bodies of children, killed in their sleep, lay scattered in the aftermath.”
The massive attack came about two weeks after Israel imposed a total blockade on aid and all other goods entering Gaza at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Israel violated the agreement by imposing the blockade, refusing to engage in negotiations on the second phase, and killing Palestinians throughout the truce.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday morning that he instructed the Israeli military to escalate in Gaza in response to Hamas rejecting US and Israeli terms for an extended temporary ceasefire. Hamas wanted Israel to stick to the deal it agreed to in January, which would have involved a permanent truce and full Israeli withdrawal.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have instructed the IDF to take strong action against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu’s office said. “This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.”
The statement added that Israel will “from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength. The operational plan was presented by the IDF over the weekend and approved by the political leadership.”
Hamas told Reuters that Israel had chosen to end the ceasefire unilaterally and that Israel’s attacks expose the remaining Israeli hostages to an “unknown fate.”
The White House confirmed that President Trump was notified before Israel launched the massive bombing. “The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt repeated Trump’s threat that “all hell would break loose” in Gaza. Trump previously threatened that the “people of Gaza” would be “dead” if the hostages weren’t immediately freed.
Since President Trump came into office, he has provided a massive amount of military aid to Israel, approving over $12 billion in arms deals and supplying Israel with 2,000-pound bombs. The Trump administration did not pressure Israel to implement the ceasefire deal reached in January.
With Trump’s ‘Thumbs Up’, Netanyahu restarts Gaza genocide.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 21 Mar 25
Over 400 killed, 500 injured in massive Israeli bombing of Palestinians sheltering in tents from earlier Israeli bombings.
Trump was notified in advance and gave the typical US green light to proceed. In under 2 months Trump has funneled $12 billion in genocide weapons including many 2,000 lb. bombs to fuel Netanyahu’s latest genocide campaign.
Trump is anxious for all the Palestinians in Gaza to be dead and gone so he can begin his massive real estate development there to create a ‘Greater Israel.’
The massive Israeli bombing comes 2 weeks after Netanyahu blocked all humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza. Whether killing Palestinians slowly with no food, fmedicine or killing them quickly with 2,000 lb. US bombs, Netanyahu and Trump cover the gamut of ghoulish death in Gaza.
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