For nearly 630 days, the world has watched the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, primarily by bombing, sniping, and starvation. Off-camera, we’ve read about the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages, including the torturing to death of three doctors from the enclave.
For the last 100 days, Israel has reinforced a full blockade on Gaza, depriving starving Palestinians of food, drinking water, medicines, and fuel – meaning ambulances cannot function. . This is following prior blockades last year, and the overall blockade of the strip, which has lasted over 17 years.
Since late May, we’ve been seeing horrific video footage of skeletal Palestinians lined up hoping for food aid being gunned down by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers.
Israel has endlessly bombed Palestinians, destroyed hospitals and abducted doctors and patients. It has bombed churches, schools, UN centres and tents housing displaced Palestinians – in supposed “safe zones” where they were ordered by the Israeli army to flee to. It has killed over 200 journalists and deliberately targeted medics. To those only paying attention recently, these crimes go back decades, and extend to the Israeli army and illegal colonists’ crimes against Palestinian civilians, including children, in the West Bank. Add to this the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas of Lebanon and Syria over the years, and now Israel’s recent unprovoked bombings of Iran.
Suffice it to say that when Israel came under the barrage of Iranian retaliatory missiles, reports of some 30 Israeli civilians suffering panic attacks garnered little sympathy.
Again, those who have been paying attention for longer than two years would also recall previous Israeli wars on Gaza, like in 2014, when Israelis gathered with drinks and snacks on hillsides to rejoice in the bombing of the enclave, or the 2009 t-shirts celebrating snipers killing pregnant women with the phrase “one shot, two kills”.
In 2010, when writing about a traumatized 10 year old I’d met who could no longer walk normally nor speak after the terror of having Israeli tanks shelling his home, I cited a study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme which stated that “91.4 percent of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTSD.”That was fifteen years and numerous Israeli wars on Gaza ago.
The US-Israeli “humanitarian” death traps
The killing of Palestinians in Gaza didn’t stop when Israel attacked Iran. The most insidious new invention is the recently-created US-Israeli “aid” group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Israeli authorities accuse Hamas of stealing aid, and based on this unproven accusation, have deemed that long-established UN aid agencies could no longer operate in Gaza, insisting instead that a group staffed with armed combat veterans (mercenaries is a better word) is better equipped to ensure that food reaches famished Palestinians.
It is outrageous that in spite of some media coverage, Israel has been allowed to for months (over a year, really) block the entrance of thousands of aid trucks amassed outside of Gaza, only to then dictate that hired gunmen would be in charge of “distributing aid.”
The massive irony and duplicity is that even Israeli and Western media have reported on the actual thieves of aid in Gaza: not Hamas, but an ISIS-linked group under the protection of the Israeli army.
As the independent media outlet The Cradle reported, the group’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, “is a known leader of armed gangs linked to ISIS and involved in looting aid under Israeli protection… Multiple reports, including from Haaretz and The Washington Post, confirm that these gangs have been seen looting in full view of Israeli forces, who neither intervene nor prevent the theft.”
In a subsequent post, The Cradle cited the Israeli Army Radio as reporting: “Israel has transferred weapons to members of the militia…The militia operates mainly in the Rafah area, which the Israeli army has occupied and cleared. The militia’s tasks include preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and fighting Hamas.”
What is apparently happening is that starved Palestinians, after walking many kilometres to the distribution sites, are then corralled into tight enclosures and fired upon by the “aid” mercenaries.
Jonathan Whittall, the Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) described the situation as “conditions created to kill, carnage, weaponized hunger, a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”
In a clip posted on June 23, Whittall said, “Israeli authorities are preventing us from distributing through these systems that we’ve established and that we know work. We could reach every family in Gaza, as we have in the past, but we’re prevented from doing so at every turn.”
More recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed Whittall, saying: “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.. People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.” The UN’s own humanitarian efforts are being “strangled” by Israel, he said, and even the aid workers themselves are starving.
The aid-seeking civilians are reportedly being shot in the head and chest, in what looks more like execution than “warning shots” or “crowd control”.
The victims include an 18-month old girl whose X-ray shows a bullet lodged in her chest. According to Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the girl was shot while in her mother’s arms on the way to a GHF aid point.
As far back as last July, an article in The Lancet warning that the total number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused directly and indirectly by Israeli attacks since October 2023 could reach “up to 186,000 or even more.”Other estimates were even more grim, include that of Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has worked extensively from Gaza over the years, who said the number of those dead or soon to die could be over 500,000.
Fast forward to a recent report by Yaakov Garb of Ben-Gurion University, published via the Harvard Dataverse. It describes the false aid distribution design as, “all adjacent to Israeli military installations… manned by armed combat veterans backed by Israeli soldiers. The design creates a ‘chokepoint’ or ‘fatal funnel’ – a predictable movement path from a single entry to a single exit with no cover or concealment.”
It is the graphic on page five which caught people’s attention. From a population of 2.2 million before the genocide, the graph only accounts for 1.85 million, leaving many asking, where are the remaining 350,000 people? This makes the concerns voiced a year ago more valid.
In his report, Yaakov Garb wrote, “The Israeli military has an obligation, as the occupying power in Gaza, to supply the population with humanitarian relief… If an attacker cannot adequately and neutrally feed a starving population in the wake of a disaster it is ongoingly creating, it is obligated to allow other humanitarian agencies to do so.”
But instead, every day we see new horrors of emaciated Palestinian civilians desperately braving death in hopes of securing food for their families… and being gunned down by the Israeli army and the mercenaries it backs.
It seems, at least, that these actions are finally catching up with Israel, meaning a lack of support for or trust in the state or its representatives, and a global demand for justice for Palestinians.
To cite Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer and former senior UN Human Rights official, who posted recently on X:
“The (Israeli) regime is on trial for genocide. Its leaders are indicted for crimes against humanity. Israel is isolated. The regime is now almost universally despised, just as the Nazi and apartheid regimes were despised. People across the world stand overwhelmingly with Palestine. You don’t come back from apartheid & genocide.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a camp to concentrate the entire civilian population of Gaza on the ruins of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
According to Haaretz, Katz said that once Palestinian civilians are pushed into what he is calling a “humanitarian city,” they will not be allowed to leave. The idea is to first transfer 600,000 civilians from the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast in southern Gaza, followed by the rest of the civilian population.
Katz said that if conditions permit, the “city” could be built during a potential 60-day ceasefire, comments that will make Hamas less likely to agree to a temporary truce. The Israeli defense minister also said that during the ceasefire, Israel will maintain control of the “Morag Corridor,” a strip of land between Rafah and Khan Younis.
Katz also suggested the camp can facilitate the government’s ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing, which it refers to as “voluntary migration,” telling reporters that Israel will implement “the emigration plan, which will happen.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has previously said that the goal of Israel’s current military operation, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots, is to create a concentration camp south of the Morag Corridor and pressure the civilians forced into it to leave.
“The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places,” Smotrich said in May.
Katz’s comments come after Reuters reported that the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) had proposed to the US government the idea of creating camps it called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside Gaza or possibly outside Gaza.
The GHF plan describes the camps as “large-scale” and “voluntary” places where the Palestinian population could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
Katz said Israel is seeking “international partners” to manage the zone and that four aid distribution sites would be set up inside the camp, suggesting the GHF will be involved in the plan. GHF aid sites are secured by American security contractors, who have been credibly accused of using live ammunition and stun grenades to disperse crowds of hungry Palestinian civilians.
The UN has named dozens of multinationals in a report for profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. . Stephanie Tran reports.
A landmark United Nations report has named dozens of multinational corporations that are aiding and profiting from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in war crimes and calling for urgent accountability.
Authored by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the report details the role of weapons manufacturers, tech firms, energy companies and financial institutions in sustaining an “economy of occupation turned genocidal.”
But the list of named companies is just the beginning. Albanese describes the report as “the tip of the iceberg,” noting that more than 1,000 corporate entities were investigated for their involvement in Israel’s war machinery.
Weapons and warfare
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein — whose award-winning book, podcast and film series The Palestine Laboratory exposes how Israel’s occupation has become a global model for repression — told MWM:
“This landmark report goes to the heart of why Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine has lasted so long; the longest in modern times. Far too many corporations and individuals are making money from oppression. I’m honoured that the report frequently cites my work, The Palestine Laboratory, a book, podcast and film series that details how Israel’s occupation is a key model and inspiration for many around the world.”
“Cutting off Israel’s financial lifeline is the only way that this abomination will end.”
Surveillance and Silicon Valley
The UN report devotes substantial attention to the role of Silicon Valley in enabling Israel’s high-tech war.
Palantir Technologies, the U.S. surveillance firm founded by Peter Thiel, expanded its support for the Israeli military after October 2023. The company has provided “automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
In January 2024, Palantir’s board met in Tel Aviv “in solidarity”. In April 2024, CEO Alex Karp dismissed concerns about civilian casualties by stating that Palantir had killed “mostly terrorists.”
Microsoft operates its largest research centre outside the U.S. in Israel, and has been “integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003”. In October 2023, Microsoft’s Azure platform supported the Israeli military’s overloaded cloud systems. According to an Israeli colonel quoted in the report, “cloud tech is a weapon in every sense of the word.”
Amazon and Google, through their $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, provide Israel with core cloud infrastructure for the military and government agencies.
IBM, which has operated in Israel since 1972, has operated the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, “enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel.”
Hewlett-Packard (HP) “has long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel,” supplying technology to the military, prison system, and police.
NSO Group, infamous for its Pegasus spyware, is cited as a textbook case of “spyware diplomacy.” Founded by former Israeli intelligence officers, the company has licensed its tools to repressive governments worldwide and used them to surveil Palestinian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Financing Occupation
The financial industry underpins much of the infrastructure of occupation and genocide. Israeli treasury bonds, underwritten by global banks such as Barclays and BNP Paribas, have provided critical financing to the Israeli government. Asset managers like Blackrock, Vanguard and Allianz’s PIMCO were among more than 400 investors from 36 countries to purchase these bonds.
Blackrock and Vanguard are also among the largest shareholders in Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, and Chevron. Their funds distribute these investments across global markets via ETFs and mutual funds, spreading complicity to millions of unwitting investors.
Energy and resources
Glencore and Drummond Company dominate coal exports to Israel, primarily from Colombia and South Africa. Even after Colombia announced a suspension of coal exports to Israel in 2024, shipments continued through subsidiaries.
Chevron, which supplies over 70% of Israel’s energy, paid $453 million in royalties and taxes to the Israeli government in 2023. The company profits from the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields and owns a stake in the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through occupied Palestinian maritime territory.
BP, the British energy giant, expanded its presence in 2025 with new exploration licences in maritime zones off the Gaza coast, areas Israel occupies in violation of international law.
Machinery
Heavy machinery has long played a role in Israel’s occupation through the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of illegal settlements.
Caterpillar Inc. has supplied the Israeli military with bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure. Since October 2023, Caterpillar equipment has been used to “carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”. In 2025, the company signed another multi-million-dollar contract with Israel.
Heavy machinery producers Volvo and HD Hyundai have also been linked to the destruction of Palestinian property. After October 2023, Israel increased the use of this equipment, levelling entire districts in Gaza, including Rafah and Jabalia. The Israeli military reportedly obscured the logos of the machinery during these operations.
Volvo is also tied to the settlement economy through its joint ownership of Merkavim, a bus manufacturer serving Israeli colonies.
Shipping, Tourism and Logistics
Multinational logistics firms are another key part of the war economy. A.P. Moller–Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, is responsible for transporting weapons parts, military equipment, and raw materials to Israel. Since October 2023, the company has facilitated the continued flow of US-supplied arms.
Tourism platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com are profiting from the settlement project. Booking.com listings in the West Bank have increased from 26 in 2018 to 70 in 2023; Airbnb listings have grown from 139 in 2016 to 350 in 2025. These platforms promote illegal settlements while restricting Palestinian access to land and resources.
Calls for sanctions
Albanese’s report is a damning indictment, not only of Israel’s genocide in Gaza but of the global political and economic architecture that enables it. The evidence it presents leaves no ambiguity, multinational corporations are not peripheral actors but central to the machinery of occupation, apartheid and now genocide.
Albanese urged states to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halt all trade and investment ties with companies implicated in violations of international law, and freeze the assets of individuals and entities facilitating human rights abuses.
She called on the International Criminal Court and national courts to investigate and prosecute corporate executives for their role in war crimes and for laundering the proceeds of genocide.
The smell of blood and smoke still lingers in the memory of those who lived through the Nuseirat massacre in the heart of the Gaza Strip.
One year has passed since the slaughter on 8 June 2024, when Israeli forces launched a “hostage rescue” operation against Hamas.
However, that military raid – which killed more than 270 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians – left behind nothing in Nuseirat but devastation and collective loss.
As families continue to mourn, media reports, including by theNew York Times, have added another layer of pain.
They revealed that Western countries, including the US and UK, provided intelligence ahead of the operation through surveillance flights and advanced monitoring technology.
Today, survivors of the massacre hold those countries responsible, saying that surveillance planes which filled the skies over the camp in the days leading up to the operation may have been “British and American eyes directing the fire from above.”
‘Unforgivable’
Raed Abdel Fattah, 38, is still unable to return to normal life after what he experienced that bloody morning.
“I was with my wife and our three children in the market when the airstrikes began. We ran aimlessly through the street, just trying to survive.
“We tried to take cover in a parked car on the side of the road. We passed it just seconds before it was struck by a missile and went up in flames. Had we been a moment later, we would have been buried under the rubble.”
Raed pauses, then continues in a tense voice: “We ran into the Nuseirat market as bullets rained down around us, with bodies and the wounded filling the streets.
“There was no safe place. In front of us was a young man selling sweets – suddenly, a quadcopter drone shot him in the head.
“His brain spilled out before my eyes. I couldn’t hold myself together. It was a moment of human collapse I haven’t recovered from to this day.”
He adds: “This massacre was not random. Everything was calculated precisely, as if they were tracking every move.
“When I learned that the US and Britain provided Israel with intelligence from reconnaissance planes, I felt betrayed from above.
“These planes were not only Israeli. If they supplied images or data, they are part of the decision – and partners in the outcome.”
Raed is not seeking sympathy: “We do not want diplomatic apologies. Whoever provided the information opened the door to the massacre, even from afar. This is unforgivable and cannot be forgotten.”
Britain has sent more than 500 surveillance flights over Gaza since the war began, supposedly to help Israel locate hostages.
The raid on Nuseirat is one of the only examples where Israel freed captives through military force, increasing the likelihood that British intelligence contributed in some way.
British pilots conducted 24 flights over Gaza in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of the massacre.
Francesca Albanese joins Chris Hedges to break down the current starvation campaign in Gaza, and her upcoming report detailing the profiteering corporations capitalizing on the erasure of Palestinians
There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.
Israel’s siege on the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.
Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.
In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says.
A few weeks ago the media office of the Gaza government issued a statement declaring that the Israeli Defense Forces now control over 77 percent of the territory in the Gaza Strip, much of it in ruins from the continuing Israeli Air Force attacks on suspected Hamas sites. Many of the known Hamas leadership at the time of its October 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel have been killed or have fled Gaza. But the organization has survived and now there are as many as 20,000 Hamas members. Young recruits today try to control the delivery of relief food and other goods to Gaza along with the black market that dominates what is left of its economy.
If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.
The U.S., U.K., Canadian, and other governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. But the rhetoric is shifting and protest movement is growing louder.
After 20 months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5th?
Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.
On May 30th, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.
“We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”
After 20 months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5th?
On May 30th, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.
“We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”
He was referring to statements like the one from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who openly admitted that the starvation policy is meant to leave Palestinians “totally despairing, understanding that there’s no hope and nothing to look for,” so that they will submit to ethnic cleansing from Gaza and a “new life in other places.”
Fletcher called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop this campaign of forced displacement, and insisted, “we would expect governments all over the world to stand for international humanitarian law. The international community is very, very clear on that.”
Palestinians might wish that were true. If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.
Some Western governments have finally started using stronger language to condemn Israel’s actions. But the question is: Will they act? Or is this just more political theater to appease public outrage while the machinery of destruction grinds on?
This moment should force a reckoning: How is it possible that the U.S. and Israel can perpetrate such crimes with impunity? What would it take for U.S. allies to ignore pressure from Washington and enforce international law?
If impoverished, war-ravaged Yemen can single-handedly deny Israel access to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and drive the Israeli port of Eilat into bankruptcy, more powerful countries can surely isolate Israel diplomatically and economically, protect the Palestinians and end the genocide. But they haven’t even tried.
Some are now making tentative moves. On May 19th, the U.K., France, and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s actions as “intolerable,” “unacceptable,” “abhorrent,” “wholly disproportionate,” and “egregious.” The U.K. suspended trade talks with Israel, and they promised “further concrete actions,” including targeted sanctions, if Israel does not end its offensive in Gaza and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The three countries publicly committed to the Arab Plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, and to building an international consensus for it at the UN’s High-Level Two-State Solution Conference in New York on June 17th-20th, which is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
They also committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation, including ten more since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza. President Emmanuel Macron, under pressure from the leftist La France Insoumise party, says France may officially recognize Palestine at the UN conference in June.
Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, claimed during his election campaign that Canada already had an arms embargo against Israel, but was swiftly challenged on that. Canada has suspended a small number of export licenses, but it’s still supplying parts for Israel’s 39 F-35s, and for 36 more that Israel has ordered from Lockheed Martin.
A General Dynamics factory in Quebec is the sole supplier of artillery propellant for deadly 155 mm artillery shells used in Gaza, and it took an emergency campaign by human rights groups in August 2024 to force Canada to scrap a new contract for that same factory to supply Israel with 50,000 high-explosive mortar shells.
The U.K. is just as compromised. The new Labour government elected in July 2024 quickly restored funding to UNRWA, as Canada has. In September, it suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel, mostly for parts used in warplanes, helicopters, drones, and targeting. But, like Canada, the U.K. still supplies many other parts that end up in Israeli F-35s bombing Gaza.
Declassified UK published a report on the F-35 program that revealed how it compromises the sovereignty of partner countries. While the U.K. produces 15% of the parts that go into every F-35, the U.S. military takes immediate ownership of the British-made parts, stores them on British air force bases, and then orders the U.K. to ship them to Texas for use in new planes or to Israel and other countries as spare parts for planes already in use.
Shipping these planes and parts to Israel is in clear violation of U.S., U.K. and other countries’ arms export laws. British campaigners argue that if the U.K. is serious about halting genocide, it must stop all shipments of F-35 parts sent to Israel–directly or indirectly. With huge marches in London drawing hundreds of thousands of people, and protests on June 17th at three factories that make F-35 parts, activists will keep applying more pressure until they result in the “concrete actions” the British government has promised.
Denmark is facing a similar conflict. Amnesty International, Oxfam, Action Aid, and Al-Haq are in court suing the Danish government and the nation’s largest weapons company, Terma, to stop them from sending Israel critical bomb release mechanisms and other F-35 parts.
These disputes over Canadian artillery propellant, Danish bomb-release mechanisms, and the multinational nature of the F-35 program highlight how any country that provides even small but critical parts or materials for deadly weapons systems must ensure they are not used to commit war crimes.
In turn, all steps to cut off Israel’s weapons supplies can help to save Palestinian lives, and the full arms embargo that the UN General Assembly voted for in September 2024 can be instrumental in ending the genocide if more countries will join it. As Sam Perlo-Freeman of Campaign Against the Arms Trade said of the U.K.’s legal obligation to stop shipping F-35 parts,
“These spare parts are essential to keep Israel’s F-35s flying, and therefore stopping them will reduce the number of bombings and killings of civilians Israel can commit. It is as simple as that.”
Germany was responsible for 30% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, largely through two large warship deals. Four German-built Saar 6 corvettes, Israel’s largest warships, are already bombarding Gaza, while ThyssenKrupp is building three new submarines for Israel in Kiel.
But no country has provided a greater share of the tools of genocide in Gaza than the United States, including nearly all the warplanes, helicopters, bombs, and air-to-ground missiles that are destroying Gaza and killing Palestinians. The U.S. government has a legal responsibility to stop sending all these weapons, which Israel uses mainly to commit industrial-scale war crimes, up to and including genocide, against the people of Palestine, as well as to attack its other neighbors.
Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.
Yet there are signs that Trump is beginning to assert some independence from Netanyahu and from the war hawks in his own party and inner circle. He refused to visit Israel on his recent Middle East tour, he’s negotiating with Iran despite Israeli opposition, and he removed Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor for engaging in unauthorized warmongering against Iran with Netanyahu. His decisions to end the Yemen bombing campaign and lift sanctions on Syria suggest an unpredictable but real departure from the neocon playbook, as do his negotiations with Russia and Iran.
Has Netanyahu finally overplayed his hand? His campaign of ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion in pursuit of a biblical “Greater Israel,” the deliberate starvation of Gaza, and his efforts to entangle the U.S. in a war with Iran have pushed Israel’s longtime allies to the edge. The emerging rift between Trump and Netanyahu could mark the beginning of the end of the decades-long blanket of impunity the U.S. has wrapped around Israel. It could also give other governments the political space to respond to Israeli war crimes without fear of U.S. retaliation.
The huge and consistent protests throughout Europe are putting pressure on Western governments to take action. A new survey conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that very few Europeans—between 6% and 16% in each country—find Israel’s assault on Gaza proportionate or justified.
For now, however, the Western governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. The rhetoric is shifting—but history will judge this moment not by what governments say, but by what they do.
As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. The Madleen ship was launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and initially planned to sail from Malta last month, but the group’s ship was damaged in a drone attack. The new mission includes the renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who speaks with Democracy Now! live from the Madleen. “We deem the risk of silence and the risk of inaction to be so much more deadly than this mission,” says Thunberg.
Transcript…………………………..
GRETA THUNBERG: “A month after our latest attempt to go on with this mission, the boat was bombed twice. All evidence suggests Israel. And we are doing this because we have to keep our promise to the Palestinians to do everything in our power to protest against the genocide and to try to open up a humanitarian corridor.“………………………………………………..
…. I happen to have a platform for some reason, and then it is my moral obligation to use that platform. And if my presence on this boat can make a difference, if that can show in any way that the world has not forgotten about Palestine, and to try once again to attempt to break the siege and open up a humanitarian corridor and deliver the extremely needed humanitarian aid, then that is a risk I am willing to take.
And it’s something that we just simply have to do. We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so.
………………………………. My message is that right now international law is failing us. International institutions, our governments are failing us. Media, our companies are all failing us. Or “failing us” is a diplomatic way of saying that our system seems to be designed in a way that is built upon exploitation and oppression of people. And so, there’s no one to turn to. There’s no one we can turn to to rescue the situation, but it falls on us to step up, to continue flooding the streets, to continue organizing, boycotting, to speak up on all platforms to try to send a clear message that we will not stand for what is happening right now.
The US has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council that called for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and unrestricted entry of humanitarian aid, basically all the things Netanyahu doesn’t want.
The resolution was co-sponsored by the Hamas-controlled countries of Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Somalia who are collectively called the E-10 (presumably the “E” stand for evil).
Horrifyingly, the resolution received 14 votes in favour, with no abstentions, and only one against. Even the UK and France sided with the Evil 10. History will not be kind to them. Thank god the US representative proudly raised a hand that was dripping with Palestinian blood. One day her grandkids are going to look back at this moment with pride.
The US has now single-handedly vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza for the fifth time to avoid the risk of saving Palestinian lives.
If you didn’t know, the veto power was introduced for the US to protect Israel, no matter how many international laws it breaks. If the entire world objects to Israel’s actions, Israel can simply overrule them through its proxy. Isn’t that nice?
Reassuringly, more than half of the vetoes the US has ever used have been to protect Israel. Just imagine what might have happened if AIPAC had not purchased so many members of congress. It doesn’t bear thinking about…
If the resolution was accepted, it would mean that Hamas could quickly rearm with medicines and baby food. No wonder the US called it a “performative resolution” and made it clear Palestinians will not be spared until Hamas has been removed from Gaza.
Just don’t mention that Hamas offered to release all hostages, disarm and leave Gaza in return for a permanent ceasefire, and Netanyahu said “no” because he wants to do ethnic cleansing. The last thing we need is people noticing the hypocrisy .
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to colonize Gaza, saying, “We will take control of all the territory of the Strip”. He is using starvation as a weapon, as Donald Trump tries to expel Palestinians to Libya or other countries. The US imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to protect Israeli war criminals.
Israeli minister boasts: “We’re destroying everything… We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza”
Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Israeli security cabinet and Netanyahu ally, boasted that the IDF is “destroying everything left in the Gaza Strip”, and that “the army is leaving no stone unturned”, reported the top Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Smotrich admitted that Israel is intentionally killing civilian members of the government of Gaza, including those who are not part of Hamas. “We’re eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers”, he said with pride. “We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed”, bragged Smotrich.
In November 2023, just a few weeks after the war started, Smotrich publicly called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, through so-called “voluntary migration”.
After Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024, Smotrich tweeted that 2025 would be the year when Israel fully colonized and officially annexed “Judea and Samaria”, the term Israeli settlers use for the West Bank — which according to international law is Palestinian territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
In Gaza, Israel uses starvation as a “bargaining chip”, UN humanitarian chief says
As Israel unilaterally restarted its brutal war in March, it also imposed a suffocating blockade on Gaza, preventing food and medicine from entering the densely populated strip.
The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, stated on 13 May that all 2.1 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza faced famine conditions.
Fletcher called on the UN Security Council (UNSC) “to stop the 21st-century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza”.
The UNSC has been unable to take action, however, because it has been paralyzed by the United States, which has repeatedly used its veto power to protect Israel. This was true under the Joe Biden administration, and it has continued since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Fletcher serves as the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
“I can tell you from having visited what’s left of Gaza’s medical system that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you”, Fletcher recalled. “As one hospital worker described it, ‘children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin’”.
The UN humanitarian chief stated that “Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians”.
Instead of allowing in UN aid, the US and Israel created an alternative mechanism that Fletcher described as a “cynical sideshow” and “deliberate distraction”, which is merely a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement”.
The US-Israeli plan for Gaza “makes starvation a bargaining chip”, the UN humanitarian chief said.
“We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished”, the UN humanitarian chief explained.
Israel’s mass starvation strategy
Israel is using mass starvation as a tactic to try to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, or kill those who refuse to leave.
The independent website Drop Site News reported on speeches given by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which frankly outline their sadistic strategy.
Netanyahu revealed that he only allowed a few aid trucks to enter Gaza in order to minimize international condemnation and ensure continued US support………………………………………………………….
Trump plans to expel Palestinians and ethnically cleanse Gaza
Trump has floated various plans to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel Palestinians to another country………………………………………………………………………
Trump’s ICC sanctions paralyze the Hague, protecting Israel from legal consequences
In February 2025, just two weeks after he returned to the White House, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC, accusing it of “engag[ing] in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest”, the White House warned.
The Trump administration invoked the 2002 American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. This law, which was passed under the George W. Bush administration, is commonly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”, and threatens military intervention in the Netherlands to stop the prosecution of US officials and their allies.
The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights denounced Trump’s sanctions on the ICC as a “direct attack on the rule of law” that is “intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful”.
A non-governmental organization that helps the ICC compile evidence had to move its money out of US bank accounts, due to Trump’s sanctions, according to the AP.
Behind the language of planning lies a campaign of sterilization and condensation — a vision of Gaza not as a home, but as a holding site. Leaked reports whisper of forced transfers, of Palestinians being sent to Libya or elsewhere in Africa, sketching futures of removal dressed in the language of pragmatism. In other words, Israel maneuvers, cajoles, agrees, renges, returns to blood, and ultimately remains hesitant in fulfilling even its own plans.
Whether it’s total conquest or managed containment, Israel doesn’t have a single grand strategy for Gaza, but it uses the possibility of both to prolong the war.
In the weeks since the unveiling of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” the renewed Israeli offensive to permanently “conquer” all of Gaza, it has become increasingly clear that Israel’s internal decision-making is not oriented toward a singular strategic endgame, but toward a recursive logic of exhaustion.
Israel isn’t choosing between total conquest and technocratic containment via an Arab-brokered ceasefire plan. Instead, it is deploying these options as devices to stretch the war and weaponize its duration rather than end it. Neither is an actual alternative to the other.
This is not a paradox, but a method. “Gideon’s Chariots,” with its objective to concentrate over two million Palestinians in Rafah and “cleanse” the remainder of Gaza, is not merely a plan of conquest. It is a fantasy of sterilization dressed in logistical rationality. Its brutality lies not only in its intentions — military and demographic — but also in its open-endedness, because it will be an occupation without governance or responsibility.
It imagines Gaza as a surgical field: empty of social density and politics, a flattened terrain where the Israeli army may operate unhindered and where civilians are transformed into captives or debris. This is where extermination can proceed behind the veil of humanitarian logistics. But this is the thing: while Israel announces its plan and leaks many of its contours, making sure that the endgame of extermination is out in the open, it also delays its fulfillment.
The rejection of the Egyptian proposal for Gaza’s postwar governance, meanwhile, functions less as a strategic rebuttal and more as a temporal maneuver: it defers the stabilization of Gaza, suspends the possibility of a postwar architecture, and secures Israel’s role as the sole arbiter of movement, aid, reconstruction, and survival. The proposal — which secured the backing of the Arab League — offered a ceasefire, the release of prisoners, and the creation of a Palestinian technocratic administration in Gaza under regional and international auspices. The governing authority would be civilian, non-Hamas, and possibly linked to the Palestinian Authority. Arab security forces, primarily from Egypt and the UAE, would maintain public order. Israel, in theory, would retain the ability to strike if Hamas rearmed, but the core logic was one of pacified governance and externally monitored reconstruction.
But this alternative, while marketed as pragmatic containment, reveals its own structure of control. It does not offer Palestinains liberation or sovereignty. It does not restore Palestinian political life. Instead, it imagines a depoliticized Gaza, administered through foreign technocrats, where governance is reduced to management and resistance is metabolized into security threats.
Yes, it ends the massacres, but it continues the process of unmaking through other means. Yes, it stops ethnic cleansing and genocide, but it only offers a minimum respite. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Behind the language of planning lies a campaign of sterilization and condensation — a vision of Gaza not as a home, but as a holding site. Leaked reports whisper of forced transfers, of Palestinians being sent to Libya or elsewhere in Africa, sketching futures of removal dressed in the language of pragmatism. In other words, Israel maneuvers, cajoles, agrees, renges, returns to blood, and ultimately remains hesitant in fulfilling even its own plans.
………………………………..rather than shift course, Israel doubles down, leaning into ambiguity and attrition, hoping to exhaust global outrage the way it hopes to exhaust Palestinian resistance: through delay, confusion, the normalization of collapse, and of course, through coercion by the weaponization of antisemitism.
The Israeli military expects that it will occupy 75% of Gaza’s territory within two months and plans to “concentrate” the entire civilian population into three small areas in the Strip.
According to Israeli media, Palestinian civilians will be confined to the center of Gaza City, a strip of land in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat, and an area in al-Mawasi on the coast in southern Gaza.
The IDF said the purpose of the offensive is to destroy Hamas infrastructure, although previous reports have said the plan is to destroy every remaining building in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already made clear that Israel’s goal was the full military occupation of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the territory, which he calls the “Trump plan,” although it’s unclear where the Palestinian population could go.
The IDF announcement about its offensive comes as a new US and Israeli-backed aid scheme is expected to be launched in Gaza, but there are conflicting reports about when it will actually start. According to Haaretz, the aid distribution, which will involve private American security contractors, will start Monday, although other Israeli media reports say it has been postponed.
The aid scheme has been rejected by the UN and other aid agencies that operate in Gaza, and it has been condemned as a transparent effort to forcibly displace starving Palestinian civilians into concentration camps. Amid the criticism, Jake Wood, the CEO of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was created for the US-Israeli aid plan, announced his resignation.
“The aid program cannot be implemented while adhering to humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, fairness, and independence – principles I will not abandon,” Wood said. He called on Israel to “significantly expand aid delivery to Gaza through all possible means.”
Israel’s plan to handle the distribution of aid in Gaza via a U.S. private contractor is a key part of its plan to ethnically cleanse its population. Here’s how.
The forcible expulsion of the Palestinian people is now the explicit goal of Israel’s war on Gaza. Late on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would only end the war if “Hamas surrenders, Gaza is demilitarized, and we implement the Trump plan.”
Trump walked back his February plan for the U.S. to “own” Gaza, expel its people, and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” but Netanyahu seized upon it all the same and took it as a green light to exterminate Gaza. The latest phase in this plan is Israel’s weaponization of humanitarian aid for the purpose of furthering the Gaza final solution.
The plan is simple: starve Gaza’s population, and only create one designated flattened stretch of land where they can come to get food rations — facilitated by the Israeli army and run by a U.S. private contractor. Gaza’s population will be forced to go to these collection points, where they will be corralled inside what would effectively be a concentration camp, located in what used to be the city of Rafah, now a flattened wasteland.
Netanyahu made all this clear in his latest announcement, which came a day after Israel said it would allow “minimal” amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza for “diplomatic reasons” — to avoid war crimes charges and images of famine.
On Monday, the Israeli war cabinet finally approved the entry of the aid, after two months of a complete Israeli blockade on the besieged territory. This forced starvation has led to the spread of hunger and disease, with the Gaza Government Media Office reporting that at least 70,000 Palestinian children have been hospitalized for severe malnutrition.
The cabinet decision followed intense negotiations with Hamas in Qatar, with the mediation of the Gulf state, and pressure from the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. The talks started following Hamas’s release of Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander earlier last week…………………………………………………………
Israel’s goal: Ethnic cleansing
When Israel announced its latest offensive aiming to control all of Gaza, dubbed operation “Gideon’s Chariot,” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that one of the phases of the the operation would include transferring the majority of the Palestinian population to the south of the Strip, especially in the Rafah area. These reports appeared simultaneously alongside Netanyahu’s statements to Israeli reservists last week that Israel aims to force Palestinians out of Gaza, and that the main obstacle is finding countries willing to accept them. The concentration of Palestinians in southern Gaza is seen by most analysts as a preparatory step for forcing them out. It is believed that this new plan to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza might be the last piece of this strategy…………………………………………………..
New aid plan
Even though the Israeli war cabinet approved the entry of aid trucks on Monday, the actual implementation of the entry of aid has been gradual. On Thursday, the Gaza Government Media Office announced that some trucks arrived in the Strip for distribution three days after they were due.
International organizations, including UN bodies such as UNRWA and the World Food Programme (WFP), have traditionally been key players in aid distribution in Gaza. But minutes following the cabinet’s decision this week, the Times of Israel reported that Israel would be adopting a new mechanism to distribute aid through the Israeli army, bypassing international organizations.
The most important component of this new mechanism is that aid wouldn’t be distributed to all parts of the Gaza Strip, but to specific distribution points where Palestinians would be required to move to receive it.
This Israeli plan has actually been previously announced as a joint U.S.-Israeli plan, which included the distribution of aid determined by limited rations to households. In Israel’s new plan, rather than working with traditional aid groups, the distribution would be organized by the recently established, U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. On May 4, international organizations present in Gaza unanimously voiced their rejection of the plan in a joint statement, saying that “it contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic as part of a military strategy.”
A month earlier, on April 8, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres rejected Israeli control over aid distribution in Gaza, stating that it risks “further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour.” Guterres added that the UN “will not participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect the humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”
Meanwhile, Gaza starves
As Israel continues to be formally engaged in ceasefire talks with Hamas in Qatar, its decision to allow the entry of aid was presented as a step forward in the effort to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. However, if carried out according to Israel’s plan, the delivery of aid itself could become another step in the ongoing Israeli strategy to fulfill its now explicit goal of expelling the strip of its Palestinian population.
In the meantime, hunger in the strip accentuates by the minute, claiming so far the lives of at least 57 Palestinians, mostly children, since October 2023 according to the Palestinian health ministry, and provoking the miscarriage of 300 pregnant women due to lack of nutrients. Gaza’s government media office also said that an unspecified number of elderly people had died due to the lack of medicines, in the same time period.
All of this continues as Israeli forces escalate airstrikes across the strip, killing 82 Palestinians in the past 24 hours (Tuesday to Wednesday), according to the Palestinian health ministry. Since October 2023, the Israeli assault on Gaza has officially killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, with most estimates of the genocide’s total toll being much higher. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/israels-aid-plan-for-gaza-is-a-key-part-of-its-strategy-to-expel-palestinians/
a broader, ever more lethal offensive was in the offing with five new IDF divisions even as aid was being provided. This was implicitly telling. Did Palestinian civilians matter in so far as they should be fed, even as they were being butchered and encouraged into fleeing?
The latest phase of slaughter and seizure on the part of Israeli forces in Gaza has commenced. Following relentless airstrikes that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is now in full swing, begun even as Israel and Hamas concluded a second day of ceasefire talks in Doha. The intention, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, is to expand “operational control” in the Strip while seeking to free the remaining Israeli hostages. In the process, it hopes to achieve what has, to date, been much pie in the sky: defeating Hamas and seizing control of the enclave.
The mendacious pattern of the IDF and Netanyahu government has become clearer than ever. It comes in instalments, much like a distasteful fashion show. The opening begins with unequivocal, hot denial: famine is not taking place, and any aid to Gaza has been looted by the Hamas authorities; civilians were not targeted, let alone massacred; aid workers were not butchered but legitimately killed as they had Hamas militants among them. And there is no ethnic cleansing and genocide to speak of. To claim otherwise was antisemitic.
Then comes the large dollop of corrective, inconvenient reality, be it a film, a blatant statement, or some item of damning evidence. The next stage is one of quibbles and qualifications: Gaza will receive some necessaries; there is a humanitarian crisis, because we were told by the United States, our main sponsor, that this was the case; and there might have been some cases where civilians were killed, a problem easily rectified by an internal investigation by the military.
Just prior to the latest assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in leaked quotes, revealed another dark purpose of the new military operation. “We are destroying more and more homes. They have no nowhere to return to,” he said in testimony before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. “The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate outside the Gaza Strip.” Here was a state official’s declaration of intent to ethnically cleanse a population.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was even blunter, something praised by Netanyahu. Israel’s objective, he revealed in a statement on March 19, was to destroy “everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip.” What was currently underway involved “conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.”
The Netanyahu government has also added another twist to the ghastly performance. On March 18, the provision of various “basic” forms of humanitarian aid into Gaza was announced. The measure was approved by a security cabinet meeting pressed by concerns from military officials warning that food supplies from UN sources and other aid groups had run out. The pressure had also come from, in Netanyahu’s words in a March 19 video address, Israel’s “greatest friends in the world”, the trying sort who claimed that there was “‘one thing we cannot stand. We cannot accept images of hunger, mass hunger. We cannot stand that. We will not be able to support you’.” How inconveniently squeamish of them.
That same day, United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said nine aid trucks had been cleared by Israeli authorities to enter Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem crossing. This was an absurd, ineffectual number, given the 500 trucks or more that entered Gaza prior to October 2023.
Fanatics who subscribe to the ethnic cleansing, rid-of-Palestine school were understandably disappointed, even at this obscenely modest provision of aid. “Any humanitarian aid that enters the Strip… will fuel Hamas and give it oxygen while our hostages languish in tunnels,” moaned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “We must crush Hamas, not simultaneously give it oxygen.” He also wished that Netanyahu “explain to our friends in the White House the implications of this ‘aid’, which only prolongs the war and delays our victory and the return of all our hostages.”
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, also of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, was in a similar mood, making the farcical resumption of aid sound like criminal salvation for a savage people. “This is our tragedy with Netanyahu’s approach. A leader who could have led to a clear victory and be remembered as the one who defeated radical Islam but who time after time let this historic opportunity slip away. Letting humanitarian aid in now directly harms the war effort to achieve victory and is another obstacle to the release of the hostages.”
The picture emerging from Israel’s latest mission of carnage is one of murderous dysfunction. It made little sense to Knesset member Moshe Saada, for instance, that a broader, ever more lethal offensive was in the offing with five new IDF divisions even as aid was being provided. This was implicitly telling. Did Palestinian civilians matter in so far as they should be fed, even as they were being butchered and encouraged into fleeing?
The extent of the horror has now reached the point where it is being acknowledged in the capitals of Israel’s close allies. A joint statement from the UK, France and Canada affirmed opposition to “the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.” Israel’s permission of “a basic quantity of food into Gaza” was wholly inadequate in the face of “intolerable” human suffering. Denying essential humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population in the Strip “is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate.”
For much time, the notion of consciously eliminating the Palestinian presence in Gaza, through starvation, massacre and displacement, was confined to the racial, ethnoreligious fringes of purist lunacy typified by Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Their vocal presence and frank advocacy have now made that ambition a grotesque, ongoing reality.
I will never forget the Gaza holocaust. I will never let anyone else forget about the Gaza holocaust.
No matter what happens or how this thing turns out, I will never let anyone my voice touches forget that our rulers did the most evil things imaginable right in front of us and lied to us about it the entire time.
I will never stop doing everything I can with my own small platform to help ensure that the perpetrators of this mass atrocity are brought to justice.
I will never stop doing everything I can to help bring down the western empire and to help free Palestine from the Zionist entity.
I will never forget those shaking children. Those tiny shredded bodies. Those starved, skeletal forms. The explosions followed by screams. The atrocities followed by western media silence.
I will never forget, and I will never forgive. I will never forgive our leaders. I will never forgive the western press. I will never forgive Israel. I will never forgive the mainstream US political parties. I will always want for them exactly what they wanted for the Palestinians.
No matter what happens or what they do in the future, they will always be the people who did this to Gaza. They will always be the people who inflicted this nightmare upon our species. That will always be the most significant thing about them. It will always be the single most defining characteristic about who they are as human beings.
And the same is true of all the ordinary members of the public who continued to stand with Israel long after evidence of its criminality became undeniable. They are genocide supporters, first and foremost.
If you stood on the side of Israel during the Gaza holocaust, then that is the most important thing about you, and it always will be. It doesn’t matter if you go to church on Sunday. It doesn’t matter if you are nice to your children and your pets. It doesn’t matter if you give money to charity, support local farmers, or drive an electric vehicle. The thing that matters most about you as a person is that you supported history’s first live-streamed genocide, and it always will be the thing that matters most about you.
I will keep bringing this up. Year after year. Decade after decade. I will keep rubbing everyone’s face in it. I will never tire of doing so. I will always do my part to remind the world who these people are, and what they did to Gaza.
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