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The Chris Hedges Report: Starvation and Profiteering in Gaza (w/ Francesca Albanese)

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

Chris Hedges, Jun 26, 2025

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

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.

“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”……………………………………………TRANSCRIPT………………………………….. …………..https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/25/the-chris-hedges-report-starvation-and-profiteering-in-gaza-w-francesca-albanese/

June 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

When Will Western Support for Israeli Genocide Finally Crack?

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.

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / Common Dreams, 5 June25 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/when-will-western-support-for-israeli-genocide-finally-crack

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.

June 9, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Extermination as negotiation: Understanding Israel’s strategy in Gaza

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.

Mondoweiss, By Abdaljawad Omar  May 23, 2025  

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.

In this moment, what Israel seeks is a “stable instability” in which Gaza is rendered uninhabitable yet governed, massacred yet silent, present yet politically nullified. Both plans — the one it executes and the one it rejects — serve this grammar. Whether through total war or managed containment, the objective remains: to erase Palestine as a subject of history, and to replace it with a population that can be controlled, administered, or vanished. Whether this will succeed remains uncertain. But the cracks are visible in the disillusionment of soldiers and in the rage of Israeli prisoners’ families. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/extermination-disguised-as-negotiation-understanding-israels-strategy-in-gaza/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKiJnVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFhMVJScjZYcDE0UEpFRko2AR6Ov_j6MzhAmpAl-ntfqrrz9g7gbweyo2JQZgXmQD20EFcLFNN_7U3rbw1FBA_aem_EoA46q1R_Hz9m5KhsFpSqw

May 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel’s aid plan for Gaza is a key part of its strategy to expel Palestinians

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.

Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi  May 22, 2025

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.”

The statement was followed on May 6 by a statement by UN aid teams, who said the plan “appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaponize the aid.” 

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/

May 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza: Israel’s Operation Gideon’s Chariots

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?  

May 21, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza-israels-operation-gideons-chariots/

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.

May 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Expulsion and Occupation: Israel’s Proposed Gaza Plan

May 7, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/expulsion-and-occupation-israels-proposed-gaza-plan/

Killing civilians wholesale, starving them to convince those unaffected to change course, and shepherding whole populations like livestock into conditions of further misery would all qualify as heinous crimes in international law. When it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, this approach is seen as necessary politics, unalloyed by the restraints of humanitarianism. When confronted with these harsh realities on the ground, unequivocal denials follow: This is not happening in Gaza; no one is starving. And if that were the case, blame those misguided savages in Hamas.  

As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness. Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire. There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023 matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter. There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.

Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer. According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages. What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission.” Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south. Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces, to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.  

The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamier, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas and the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”

Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism. The Israeli Finance Finister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer. He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence. “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.  

Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, gives a sense of the flavour. Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor. As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism.”

The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness. Expulsion, relocation, transfer. These are the words famously used to move on populations of sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost. That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse poignancy to this. They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn. Smotrich also points the finger to desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration. The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment. “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.”

Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning. In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.

The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary. A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground. All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks. Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty. Hunger, notably among children, is rampant. Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”

The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, seeing that it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality.”  

The same point has been made by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place. “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change.”

To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar takes place. But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state risk and oblivion.

May 9, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Call it what it clearly is: Genocide

April 26, 2025, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/call-it-what-it-clearly-is-genocide/

Some dare not call it genocide

Folks following the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, fully enabled by America, are of two views.

Those of us in the peace community instantly recognised that Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack was a genocidal ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza.

We didn’t have to guess. Israeli leaders made clear through word and deed that return of Israeli hostages was secondary to their primary goal of killing and clearing out all 2,300,000 Palestinians so Gaza could be redeveloped to expand Greater Israel.

It was also clear that the US, under both Biden and Trump, were and are in complete accord with Israel’s grisly, murderous policy. Biden feigned sympathy for the tens of thousands of dead Palestinian innocents on his watch and the decimated 139 square miles of Gaza rubble. But he kept mum while delivering over $20 billion in weapons allowing Israel to rain down on Gaza over 50,000 tons of American bombs dropped from American planes.

Trump, no surprise, gloried in the worst genocide this century. He invited indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to the Oval Office to discuss which African countries they could intimidate to take in the roughly 2.2 million remaining starving, sick, traumatized Palestinians. Trump is eager to kick start his biggest real estate project ever, expanding Greater Israel into Gaza once the Palestinians have been cleared out. That is grotesque, not something to champion.

Then there are those who refuse to believe or admit that genocide is occurring before their eyes and ears in real time.

Reasons likely many.

Some simply view it not as genocide but a war between Israel and Hamas.

Some argue that the Palestinian destruction, no matter how horrible, does not rise to genocide which they equate to the Nazi horrors of WWII.

Some are in complete sympathy with Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign, indeed, cheering it on. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s new Ambassador to Israel, claims there is no such thing as Palestine or even Palestinians, so let the ethnic cleansing proceed unabated to expand Greater Israel.

There is a near total blackout in mainstream media of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Whether conservative or progressive, the talking heads go mute when it comes to the informing the public of the most horrific US policy in their lifetime.

None in Congress dare cross the Israel lobby by calling it genocide. To do so risks having millions in lobby campaign funds dry up or worse, going to a pro lobby primary opponent. Some are horrified by the violence crushing the Palestinians but cannot embrace the moral imperative to call it out and demand its end.

To his credit, Sen. Bernie Sanders tried twice to pass Senate Joint Resolutions to cut off the flow of genocide weapons to Israel but only garnered 17 votes from the other 99 mostly genocide-supporting Senators. But tho Sanders calls Israel’s conduct “ethnic cleansing”, he refuses to call it what it truly is: genocide.

Representing Sanders’ Senate opposite is colleague John Fetterman, who supports Israel cutting off all food, medicine, and water to Gaza until the Israeli hostages are released. Horrifying.

Israel breaks the January ceasefire with daily bombings, killing dozens of Palestinian innocents while most Americans turn away.

Collectively, American genocide deniers enable President Trump to fund, supply, and cheer on arguably the most murderous, destructive and tragically bi-partisan foreign policy in American history.

April 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment