The BBC, Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse have all called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza as starvation there becomes imminent. In a statement, the news outlets said, “We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.” We speak with Afeef Nessouli, a journalist who just returned from Gaza, where he volunteered as an aid worker. “It has been an incredibly awful experience to see people sort of become sicker and sicker from hunger,” says Nessouli, who describes visiting community kitchens in Gaza that have run out of food. “Many of us would just have one meal a day,” he says of his seven weeks in Gaza. Now his colleagues who remain in Gaza “are having one meal every three days.”
The starvation crisis in Gaza is deepening under Israel’s brutal blockade and amid regular massacres of civilians attempting to secure aid at the only officially sanctioned aid sites, run by Israeli troops and American mercenaries. The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the onset of famine are the subjects of a new report by analysts Davide Piscitelli and Alex de Waal for the research organization Forensic Architecture on the “architecture of genocidal starvation” in Gaza. “I’ve been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today,” says de Waal, who is also the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: In one of the deadliest days yet for aid seekers in Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 115 people on Sunday, including 92 who were killed while seeking aid. In the deadliest attack, at least 79 people at the Zikim crossing in North Gaza were massacred as they gathered near an aid convoy sent by the U.N. World Food Programme in northern Gaza in the hopes of getting flour. In a statement, the U.N. agency said, quote, “As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” unquote.
These latest killings come as the starvation crisis in Gaza continues to deepen. UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, has accused Israel of starving civilians, including a million children. The entire population, more than 2 million people, lack access to sufficient food, putting their lives at immediate risk. Health authorities in Gaza say 19 people died of starvation over the last day, including at least one infant. This is the uncle of 3-month-old Yahya Al-Najjar.
ANAN AL-NAJJAR: [translated] He died due to malnutrition and the unavailability of baby formula at the Gaza Strip. We urge the entire world, all Arab countries and everyone with a living consciousness, humanity and dignity, to just stand with the children, just to let baby formula get into the Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Since late May, when militarized aid sites run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were established, nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to access aid, and more than 5,700 have been injured……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/21/forensic_architecture
It’s an experiment — to see what kinds of abuses the public will accept without causing significant disruption to the imperial status quo.
It’s a psychological operation — to push out the boundaries of what’s normal and acceptable in our minds so that we will consent to even more horrific abuses in the future.
It’s a symptom — of Zionism, of colonialism, of militarism, of capitalism, of western supremacism, of empire-building, of propaganda, of ignorance, of apathy, of delusion, of ego.
It’s a manifestation — of violent racist, supremacist and xenophobic belief systems that have always been there but were previously restrained, meeting with the unwholesome nature of alliances that have long been in place but have been aggressively normalized.
It’s a mirror — showing us accurately and impartially who we currently are as a civilization.
It’s a disclosure — showing us what the western empire we live under really is underneath its fake plastic mask of liberal democracy and righteous humanitarianism.
It’s a revelation — showing us who among us really stands for truth and justice and who has been deceiving us about themselves and their motives this entire time.
It’s a catalyst — a galvanizing force and a rallying cry for all who realize that the murderous power structures we live under can no longer be allowed to stand, and a blaring alarm clock opening more and more snoozing eyes to the need for revolutionary change.
It’s a test — of who we are as a species and what we are made of, and of whether we can transcend the destructive patterning that is driving humanity to its doom.
It’s a question — asking us what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and what kind of people we want to be.
It’s an invitation — to become something better than what we are now.
Malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza are beginning to climb, with the health ministry reporting 18 in a single 24-hour period. Doctors report that people are “collapsing” in the street, and Gaza journalist Nahed Hajjaj is warning the world not to be surprised if the remaining reporters in the enclave are soon silenced by starvation.
Unless something drastically changes, things can be expected to get much worse very rapidly.
Meanwhile Israeli forces are setting new records with their massacres of starving civilians seeking aid, with 85 killed in a single day on Sunday.
If this isn’t evil, then nothing is evil. If Israel isn’t evil, then nothing is.
So what’s the plan here? Do we just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments?
And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time?
We’re just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it’s normal?
I’m genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?
I’m asking because I don’t know. I mean, I know what my own government and its allies should do, but I don’t know what we as ordinary members of the public are supposed to do.
You’ll see western pundits and politicians asking “How do we get a ceasefire in Gaza?” or “How do we end hunger in Gaza?” as though it’s some kind of ineffable mystery, which is kind of like a man strangling a child to death while saying “The child is being strangled, but HOW do we stop the child strangulation from occurring?”
It’s not some mystery how to get a ceasefire in Gaza; the empire is the fire. It simply needs to cease firing. Israel’s holocaust in Gaza is made possible only by the support of its western backers, primarily the United States. Numerous Israeli military insiders have acknowledged that none of this would be possible without US support. If the United States and its western allies ceased backing Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, a ceasefire would have to occur.
Likewise, it is not a mystery how to get food into Gaza. You just drive the food on in and give it to people. They’ve got roads and gates right there. The only reason people in Gaza are starving is because western governments (including my own Australia) conspired to pretend to believe that UNRWA is a terrorist organization to justify cutting off critical aid, while doing nothing to pressure Israel into allowing aid to flow freely.
And now Israel and the US empire are monopolizing the delivery of “aid” through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose facilities now see civilians massacred every day for the crime of attempting to obtain food.
The organizations, funding and delivery systems to feed Gaza are all 100 percent fully available (at no cost to Israel, by the way). They’re just not being allowed to provide aid because the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza via death or displacement. The people of Gaza are starving because the west is helping Israel starve Gaza. It really is that simple.
This isn’t some kind of unfortunate famine caused by a drought or natural disaster. It is a deliberately manufactured starvation campaign, implemented with genocidal intent.
To paraphrase Utah Phillips, Gaza isn’t starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses.
Remarks of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, at the Hague Group Emergency Conference of States in Bogotá, Colombia.
I express my appreciation to the government of Colombia and South Africa for convening this group, and to all members of the Hague Group, its founding members for their principled stance, and the others who are joining. May you keep groing and so the strength and effectiveness of your concrete actions.
Thank you also to the Secretariat for its tireless work, and last but not least, the Palestinian experts—individuals and organisations who travelled to Bogota from occupied Palestine, historical Palestine/Israel and other places of the diaspora/exile, to accompany this process, after providing HG with outstanding, evidence-based briefings.
And of course all of you who are here today,
It is important to be here today, in a moment that may prove historical indeed. There is hope that these two days will move all present to work together to take concrete measures to end the genocide in Gaza and, hopefully, end the erasure of the
Palestinian for what remains of Palestine—because this is the testing ground for a system where freedom, rights, and justice are made real for all. This hope, that people like me hold tight, is a discipline. A discipline we all should have.
The occupied Palestinian territory today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last UN function—humanitarian aid—in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture. Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid—while the majority openly cheers and calls for more—remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom. .
The atrocities of the past 21 months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.
Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to NY, are still debating recognition of the State of Palestine—not because it’s unimportant, but because for 35 years states have stalled, refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the PA” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes. Meanwhile political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered—it is political will that has abdicated.
But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected into political agendas (yet), a revolutionary shift is underway—one that, if sustained, will be remembered as a moment when history changed course.
And this is why I came to this meeting with a sense of being at a historical turning point —discursively and politically.
First, the narrative is shifting: away from Israel’s endlessly invoked “right to self-defence” and toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades. The weaponisation of antisemitism applied to Palestinian words, and narratives, and the dehumanising use of the terrorism framework for Palestinian action (from armed resistance to the work of NGOs pursuing justice in international arena), has led to a global political paralysis that has been intentional. It must be redressed. The time is now.
Second, and consequentially, we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority it pains me that I have yet to see this include European countries. As a European, I fear what the region and its institutions have come to symbolize to many: a sodality of states preaching international law yet guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vassals to the US empire, even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery and when it comes to Palestine: from silence to complicity.
But the presence of European countries at this meeting shows that a different path is possible. To them I say: the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just a coalition, but a new moral center in world politics. Please, stand with them.
Millions are watching—hoping—for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity, and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.
Principled states must rise to this moment. It does not need to have a political allegiance, color, political party flags or ideologies: it needs to be upheld by basic human values. Those which Israel has been mercilessly crushing for 21 months now.
Meanwhile I applaud the calling of this emergency conference in Bogota to address the unrelenting devastation in Gaza. So it is on this, that focus must be directed. The measures adopted in January by the Hague Group were symbolically powerful. It was the signal of the discursive and political shift needed. But they are the absolute bear minimum. I implore you to expand your commitment. And to turn that commitment into concrete actions, legislatively, judicially in each of your jurisdictions. And to consider first and foremost, what must we do to stop the genocidal onslaught. For Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, this question is existential. But it really is applicable to the humanity of all of us.
In this context my responsibility here is to recommend to you, uncompromisingly and dispassionately, the cure for the root cause. We are long past dealing with symptoms, the comfort zone of too many these days. And my words will show that what the Hague Group has committed to do and is considering expanding upon, is a small commitment towards what’s just and due based on your obligations under international law.
Obligations, not sympathy, not charity.
Each state immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel. Their military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic, relations – both imports and exports – and to make sure that their private sector, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other goods, and services providers in the supply chains do the same. Treating the occupation as business as usual translates into supporting or providing aid or assistance to the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT. These ties must be terminated as a matter of urgency. I will have the opportunity to elaborate on the technicalities and implications in our further sessions but lets be clear, I mean cutting ties with Israel as a whole. Cutting ties only with the “components” of it in the oPt is not an option.
This is in line with the duty on all states stemming from the July 2024 Advisory Opinion which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, which it declared tantamount to racial segregation and apartheid . The General Assembly adopted that opinion. These findings are more than sufficient for action. Further, it is the state of Israel who is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, so it is the state that must be responsible for its wrongdoings.
As I argue in my last report to the HRC, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation, and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its longstanding policies and economy of occupation. It has been inseparable for decades. The longer states and others stay engaged, the more this illegality at its heart is legitimised. This is the complicity. Now that economy has turned genocidal. There is no good Israel, bad Israel.
I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on SA for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognised the state’s criminal system as a whole? And here, what Israel is doing is worse. This comparison— is a legal and factual assessment supported by international legal proceedings many in this room are part of.
This is what concrete measures mean. Negotiating with Israel on how to manage what remains of Gaza and West Bank, in Brussels or elsewhere, is an utter dishonor to international law.
And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter—not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors, but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.
The odious idea of a camp within a camp. The Gaza Strip, with an even greater concentration of Palestinian civilian life within an ever-shrinking stretch of territory. These are the proposals ventured by the Israeli government even as the official Palestinian death toll marches upwards to 60,000. They envisage the placement of some 600,000 displaced and houseless beings currently living in tents in the area of al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coast in a creepily termed “humanitarian city”. This would be the prelude for an ultimate relocation of the strip’s entire population of over 2 million in an area that will become an even smaller prison than the Strip already is.
The preparation for such a forced removal – yet another among so many Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians – is in full swing. The analysis of satellite imagery from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) by Al Jazeera’s Sanad investigations unit found that approximately 12,800 buildings were demolished in Rafah between early April and early July alone. In the Knesset on May 11 this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave words to those deeds: “We are demolishing more and more [of their] homes, they have nowhere to return to. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.”
Camps of concentrated human life – concentration camps, in other words – are often given a different dressing to what they are meant to be. Authoritarian states enjoy using them to re-educate and reform the inmates even as they gradually kill them. Indeed, the proposals from the Israel’s Defense Department carry with them plans for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” where Gazans would “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate, and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
The emetic candy floss of “humanitarian” in the context of a camp is a self-negating nonsense similar to other experiments in cruelty: the relocation of Boer civilians during the colonial wars waged by Britain to camps which saw dysentery and starvation; the movement of Vietnamese villagers into fortified hamlets to prevent their infiltration by the Vietcong in the 1960s; the creation of Pacific concentration camps to detain refugees seeking Australia by boat in what came to be called the “Pacific Solution.”
Those in the business of doing humanitarian deeds were understandably appalled by Israel’s latest plans. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), stated that this would “de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations.” It would certainly “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland.” Self-evidently and sadly, that would be one of the main aims.
A few of Israeli’s former Prime Ministers have ditched the coloured goggles in considering the plans for such a mislabelled city. Yair Lapid, who spent a mere six months in office in 2022, told Israeli Army Radio that it was “a bad idea from every possible perspective – security, political, economic, logistical.” While preferring not to use the term “concentration camp” with regards such a construction, incarcerating individuals by effectively preventing their exit would make such a term appropriate.
Ehud Olmert’s words to The Guardian were even less inclined to varnish the matter. “If they [the Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing.” To create a camp that would effectively “clean” more than half of Gaza of its population could hardly be understood as a plan to save Palestinians. “It is to deport them, to push and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have at least.”
Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg was also full of candour in expressing the view that the plan was “for all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Gaza’s Palestinians, “an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law”. This would also add the burgeoning grounds of illegality already being alleged in this month’s petition by three Israeli reserve soldiers of Israel’s Supreme Court questioning the legality of Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Instancing abundant examples of forced transfer and expulsions of the Palestinian population during its various phases, commentators such as former chief of staff of the IDF, Moshe “Bogy” Ya’alon, are unreserved about how such programs fare before international law. “Evacuating an entire population? Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation, it’s a war crime,” he told journalist Lucy Aharish. “Israel’s soldiers had been sent in “to commit war crimes.”
There is also some resistance from within the IDF, less on humanitarian grounds than practical ones. To even prepare such a plan in the midst of negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and finally resolving the hostage situation was the first telling problem. The other was how the IDF could feasibly undertake what would be a grand jailing experiment while preventing the infiltration of Hamas.
This ghastly push by the Netanyahu government involves an enormous amount of wishful thinking. Ideally, the Palestinians will simply leave. If not, they will live in even more carceral conditions than they faced before October 2023. But to assume that this cartoon strip humanitarianism, papered over a ghoulish program of inflicted suffering, will add to the emptying well of Israeli security, is testament to how utterly desperate, and delusionary, the Israeli PM and his cabinet members have become.
The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.
It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.
In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his fellow Holocaust scholars for failing to acknowledge reality.
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Bartov writes. “Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
And resist he did. In November 2023, Bartov wrote another op-ed for The New York Times saying “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”
Apparently he is seeing the proof now and has stopped resisting what’s been clear from the very beginning. And it would seem the editors of the Gray Lady have ceased resisting as well.
In an internal memo obtained by The Intercept last year, New York Times reporters were explicitly told to avoid the use of the word “genocide”, as well as terms like “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory”.
“‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law,” the memo reads. “In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”
Earlier this year the American Friends Service Committee cancelled its paid advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, saying the outlet had wanted them to change the word “genocide” to “war” in order for their ad to be published.
What is significant is that even experts who’ve been resisting acknowledging the reality of the genocide in Gaza because of their bias toward Israel have stopped doing so, and that even the imperial media outlets most fiendishly devoted to running propaganda cover for that genocide have run out of room to hide.
The Israel apologists have lost the argument. They might not know it yet, but they have. Public sentiment has turned irreversibly against them as people’s eyes are opened to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, and more and more propagandists are choosing to rescue what’s left of their tattered credibility instead of going down with the sinking ship.
Truth is slowly beginning to get a word in edgewise.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, Minister of Energy Eli Cohen said that “Gaza must remain in ruins for decades to come” and that Israel will not help rebuild its civilian infrastructure. The Israeli army has damaged or destroyed some 90% of the Gaza Strip’s housing stock, as well as destroying most hospitals and all schools and universities, as well as water purification plants and other essential infrastructure, leaving over 2 million people to try to live in rubble.
Note that Cohen is a member of the ruling right wing Likud Party headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than being from the extremist Religious Zionism bloc that is in coalition with the Likud. A former accountant and teacher of business at Tel Aviv University, Cohen has been listed among the top 100 most influential Israelis.
Keeping millions of Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, living in ruins for decades is not the sort of goal announced by sane, civilized, ordinary European politicians. At least, not since the 1930s. If a Likud Party stalwart like Cohen openly speaks like this, imagine what the Religious Zionism and Jewish Power cabinet members and members of parliament sound like.
Also on Sunday, the Associated Press reports from an eyewitness, Ramadan Nassar, that some 14 adults brought 20 children to collect water from a distribution point in Nuseirat in central Gaza. As though out of nowhere, an Israeli missile struck them, killing six children and four adults. AP says that the Israeli military alleged that the strike was a technical error. There seem to be a lot of those, since over half of the 58,000 Palestinians Israel has killed since October 2023 have been women and children, and many of the rest were noncombatant men.
Most water in Gaza is not potable, since Israel has deliberately destroyed water purification plants, and ground water is full of bacteria. Watery diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and even death, is common in the Palestinian population of Gaza, including among vulnerable infants and children.
Just as civilized politicians don’t talk about making millions of people live in rubble for decades, civilized militaries don’t have rules of engagement that allow for 20, or 50, or even 100 civilian deaths for every militant targeted.
NATO is refusing to do joint military operations with Israel because of these unacceptable rules of engagement, which would get any NATO officer court-martialed who tried to implement them.
In addition, Palestinian media sources reported that Israeli airstrikes and attacks left 95 people dead on Sunday, 52 of them in Gaza City.
On Monday, UNICEF announced that it recorded 5,800 cases of malnutrition among children in the Gaza Strip during the month of June, as IMEMC reports:
Severe acute malnutrition involves muscle wastage and pencil-like arms, and produces permanent brain damage.
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.
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