Report: Netanyahu Ordered Drone Attack on Gaza Aid Flotilla Boats in Tunisia
US intelligence officials told CBS News that Israeli forces launched drones from a submarine and dropped incendiary devices on two aid boats
by Dave DeCamp | October 5, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/05/report-netanyahu-ordered-drone-attack-on-gaza-aid-flotilla-boats-in-tunisia/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly ordered attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla that were carried out in early September while the boats were moored in Tunisia, CBS News reported on Friday.
A total of two boats were hit in two attacks that were conducted on September 8 and September 9. Two US intelligence officials told CBS News that Israel forces fired drones from a submarine that dropped incendiary devices and caused fires.
The report noted that under international law, the use of incendiary devices against civilian populations or civilian targets is prohibited. The attacks targeted the Family, a Portuguese-flagged vessel, and the Alma, a British-flagged vessel. In both cases, the crews were able to extinguish the fire, and the attacks caused no casualties.
In a September 22 interview, US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack acknowledged that Israel was behind the operation by saying Israel had attacked Tunisia. “So Israel is attacking Syria. Israel is attacking Lebanon. Israel is attacking Tunisia,” Barrack told The National.
In a statement to CBS, the Global Sumud Flotilla said, “Confirmation of Israeli involvement would not surprise us; it would simply lay bare a pattern of arrogance and impunity so grotesque that it cannot escape eventual reckoning.”
The group added, “Whether the purpose of these attacks was to kill us, scare us away, or disable our boats, they recklessly endangered civilians and humanitarian volunteers. The world must take note: attempts to silence, intimidate, or obstruct our commitment to the Palestinian cause and people will not succeed. We call for urgent, independent investigations into these attacks and full accountability for those responsible.”
Despite the attack in Tunisia, the flotilla continued on its mission to attempt to bring food to starving Palestinians living under the Israeli blockade in Gaza. The boats came under attack from multiple drones while sailing in the Mediterranean Sea south of Greece, and they were all eventually captured by Israeli forces while in international waters and approaching Gaza.
Hundreds of activists, including at least 24 US citizens, were thrown into prison when the IDF brought them to Israel. Some have since been deported and are alleging they were severely mistreated by Israeli forces.
Israel Says No Gaza Ceasefire in Place Despite Trump’s Call for a Stop to the Bombing
Israeli forces have killed more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza over the past two days
by Dave DeCamp | October 5, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/05/israel-says-no-gaza-ceasefire-in-place-despite-trumps-call-for-an-immediate-halt-to-the-bombing/
The Israeli government said on Sunday that there is no ceasefire in place in Gaza despite President Trump’s calls for Israel to “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza” as the IDF continues to slaughter Palestinians across the Strip.
“While certain bombings have actually stopped inside of the Gaza Strip, there’s no ceasefire in place at this point in time,” said Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Badrosian, according to The Associated Press.
Badrosian added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in “regular contact” with Trump and that the upcoming negotiations in Egypt aimed at securing the release of Israelis held by Hamas and implementing a ceasefire will “be confined to a few days maximum, with no tolerance for maneuvers that will delay talks by Hamas.”
Trump first made the call for Israel to stop bombing Gaza on Friday after Hamas issued its response to the US-Israeli ceasefire proposal. On Saturday, Trump said that he appreciated that “Israel has temporarily stopped the bombing,’ but on the same day, the IDF killed at least 70 Palestinians in Gaza, according to medical sources speaking to Al Jazeera.
The IDF killed at least 129 Palestinians in Gaza over the past two days, according to daily updates released by Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Health Ministry said in its latest release on Sunday that it recorded the deaths of 63 Palestinians and the injury of 153 over the previous 24-hour period.
Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks on Sunday killed at least 24 Palestinians, including at least 12 who were killed in Gaza City. According to Israeli media, the IDF was ordered to halt its operation to conquer Gaza City, but it has continued to bomb the area.
One Israeli strike in Gaza City on Saturday killed 18 people, including seven children between the ages of two months and eight years, according to a statement from Gaza’s Civil Defense.
The IDF also continues to kill desperate Palestinians attempting to get food. According to the AP, at least four Palestinians were killed near an aid site in southern Gaza on Sunday.
On top of the violent deaths, Palestinians continue to starve to death amid the famine caused by the Israeli siege. According to releases from the Health Ministry, at least three Palestinians, including two children, died of starvation over the past two days.
The ministry said on Sunday that its violent death toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 67,139, and the number of wounded has climbed to 169,583. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.
Patrick Lawrence: Power and Justice
You just know Trump’s name is written into this document, and at his insistence, in the cause of his vulgar pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize he will never get. But never mind this. The Gaza Peace Plan released Monday reads as if Netanyahu dictated it.
Trump. – If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas.
By Patrick Lawrence , ScheerPost, October 5, 2025
Those were an eventful few days as the General Assembly convened at the United Nations Secretariat in New York Sept. 22. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and Andorra formally recognized the state of Palestine on the first day of the General Debate, Sept. 23. Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal had done so two days earlier. With Spain, New Zealand, Finland, Ireland, Norway and other nations also recognizing, virtually the whole of the Western bloc except the United States now accepts Palestine as a sovereign state.
The imperium fades further into its corner. Always good.
And eventful days have followed all the new endorsements of the sovereignty of the Palestinian people. President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, presented a grandly titled Gaza Peace Plan at the White House on Monday, Sept. 29. After several days of suspense and speculation, Hamas responded to this document on Friday. This was not the wholesale acceptance of the 20–point plan Trump seemed to think it was (or wish it was): No, this was skilled statecraft on Hamas’s part — “a responsible position in dealing with the plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump,” as the Hamas statement describes itself. “Responsible,” as I read the text, means responsible to the long-suffering Palestinians in Gaza and responsible to the principles of the Palestinian cause.
What do we have here? How shall we understand these apparently disparate events? In my view, we witness a running confrontation between power and justice. This seems to me the defining struggle of our time, and it sharpens as we speak.
You hear a lot of different things about those recognitions at the U.N. in support of a Palestinian state. “What a mockery,” Ali Abunimah, the principled director of The Electronic Intifada, wrote on “X” as heads of state stood at the podium and made these announcements. “Now they just need an actual state.” The Nation called the West’s declarations of support for an independent Palestine “a despicable sham.”
OK, there is a case here. These countries, one and all, call for a two-state solution, and a deader letter I cannot think of. Britain and France pile so many conditions atop their declarations — political candidates in the not-yet-realized Palestine will be vetted, Hamas (never mind its popularity) will be barred from any role in government, textbooks will be censored etc. — that you have to wonder what they mean by “sovereignty” and “self-determination.” Britain and France continue to arm Israel as it terrorizes the people we know as Palestinians.
But those many blurting these out-of-hand dismissals have it wrong, in my view. I am not in the habit of approving of anything Keir Starmer or Emmanuel Macron does, but in this case the British prime minister and the French president, odious “centrists” that they are, deserve what we used to call — alas, for the days when there was a serious left — critical support. The West ex-the United States has finally joined the global majority: Four-fifths of the U.N.’s 193 members now support a Palestinian nation.
No, I am with what many West Bank Palestinians have said since the General Debate convened. A woman named Raya, as quoted in the above-linked document: “Recognition is considered a good and unexpected step, but it will have no real value unless it is followed by serious and practical measures.…” From Alia: “It’s not about if they recognize us or not. It’s about if there is even something left to recognize.” And from Samia: “Recognition of Palestinian statehood is great but will be futile if the genocide on Gaza and occupation do not come to an end.”
See what I mean by critical support?
Flawed as all the statements of recognition are, they seem to have uncorked the bottle wherein the justice genie reposed. This is not to be missed. The walkout when Bibi Netanyahu spoke was even more fun to watch than last year’s. So was the straight-no-chaser language with which heads of state denounced the Israelis’ genocidal barbarities. Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president, described Zionist Israelis as Nazis and called for the U.N. to organize an international force to break the Israeli blockade and stop the savagery.
Petro is right: The Israeli–American peace plan notwithstanding, it is ultimately going to take armed intervention to stop the Zionists’ terror spree. A head of state has finally put this thought on the table.
While the General Assembly proceeded with its business, the Spanish and Italians dispatched naval vessels to sail with the aid flotilla of 50–odd ships then making its way to the waters off Gaza. The Israelis intercepted these vessels late last week — illegally, in international waters — and their crews were deported. But a new flotilla of 11 vessels instantly set sail across the Mediterranean. Also last week, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish premier, announced that U.S. ships and planes transporting arms and matériel to Israel will be barred from transiting through Spanish ports and air bases. These moves cannot be seen as unrelated to developments on the diplomatic side.
You didn’t have to be at the U.N. last month (and I wasn’t) to understand the gravity of these events — to feel the explosive energy in the air inside and outside the Secretariat. You could see it in the real-time videos posted on social media. The world, the non–West naturally in the lead, was at last declaring, “Enough!” Taking the occasion to its essence, this was a full-frontal confrontation with power in the cause of global justice. One dramatic scene stays with me even now: When Gustavo Petro resumed his seat after speaking, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was videoed standing above him and holding his head in a fraternal embrace.
“This historic moment,” the Brazilian president exclaimed when it was his turn at the podium. So it was.
And then what?
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly had a difficult time settling on a flight plan when he flew from Tel Aviv to New York, given he is wanted under international law for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Norway, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands are among the nations that indicated they would honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant were he to enter their territory. How was it he was allowed into the Secretariat at all, it was logical to wonder.
We can surmise that part of the Israeli prime minister’s purpose in attending this year’s General Assembly — where he called those who walked out when he spoke “an antisemitic mob” — was openly to flout international law and, per usual, everything the U.N. stands for. The subtext from the moment Bibi arrived in Manhattan was clear: There is no question of the global majority bringing the Israeli terror machine to justice, he wanted to demonstrate, and power, not law, will remain what makes the world go around.
And this is how I read Netanyahu’s summit with President Trump on Monday — their fourth since Trump reassumed office in January. The 20–point plan they released has all kinds of things going on in it, but, taking a step back, it is fairly understood as a reply to the global majority’s just-stated desire for a humane and moral order. Read for its larger meaning, this is a declaration that we — we, all of us — live in a lawless world now and that legitimacy, international institutions, and (certainly not) common notions of justice count for nothing. Force alone counts in the world Trump and Bibi propose to stand astride like the co-emperors who ruled the ancient world after Constantine established an eastern capital in 330 AD.
The text of this document can be read here, courtesy of the BBC. In broad outline — and a broad outline is all there is to it at this point — it calls for an immediate ceasefire, after which — within 72 hours — Hamas is to release all remaining captives still alive and the bodies of the dead. In exchange, Israel will release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Palestinians taken prisoner since the events of Oct. 7, 2023. Then Hamas is to disarm, and the Israelis are to begin a phased withdrawal of their troops, but these will continue to occupy “for the foreseeable future” an expanding buffer inside the Gaza Strip’s eastern border.
Then come the longer-term provisions. “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone” in which Hamas will have no presence or role. “Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza.” And then the question of government and administration.
Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee… made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body headed and chaired by Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
You just know Trump’s name is written into this document, and at his insistence, in the cause of his vulgar pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize he will never get. But never mind this. The Gaza Peace Plan released Monday reads as if Netanyahu dictated it, and I will offer odds he did. This thing is written loosely such that it gives Bibi all the room he needs to betray it now that he endorses it. This would, of course, be in keeping with every other agreement with Hamas and/or the United States that Netanyahu has accepted to date.
Hamas, as widely reported, did not formally receive the peace plan until after it was made public and, of course, had no role in its composition. This was intended as a take-it-or-leave-it offer such that, as Bibi and Trump made clear as they stood at opposing podiums Monday afternoon, Hamas’s leaders may as well have guns pointed to their temples.
Bibi:
If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accepted and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself.
Trump, following this remark:
Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.
And for good measure, Trump again Friday on Truth Social, his digital bullhorn, warned Hamas that it had until Sunday to accept the plan:
If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas.
Tell me, is this statecraft, or is this power using the threat of genocide as blackmail? Corollary question: Is the overarching proposal here that a regime guilty of the most savage acts of barbarity at least since the Reich shall now proceed on with impunity — no responsibility for its crimes, no answerability to the institutions of global justice?
As to the question of statehood, Hamas’s longstanding demand and the vital preoccupation of the 100–plus nations attending the General Assembly just days earlier, there is no provision at all in this plan unless we count this (and I cannot):
While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA [the Palestinian Authority] reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.
It is simply unbelievable to me that these two grotesquely irresponsible people would expect anyone to take this kind of language at all seriously. Try to count the escape hatches in this provision, which is No. 19 of the 20 comprising the plan. I identify at least three, maybe four……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I cannot honestly read this moment with any certainty. On Thursday, bang in the middle of these proceedings, Israel Katz, the Zionist state’s defense minister and another of the fanatics in the Netanyahu government, announced that if the half-million residents remaining in Gaza City do not evacuate they will be considered terrorists; the implications of this status will be evident. What is our question: Will the Netanyahu regime hold to the “peace plan,” or how long will it take for Bibi to abrogate it? In the day since Hamas announced its openness to negotiation based on the plan, let me remind you, Israel has not stopped the bombing. …………………………………………………………………….
There is absolutely zero interest in the wishes of Palestinians in this plan. No mention at all of the West Bank or the escalating cruelties of diabolic settlers as they steal ever more Palestinian land. And not to be missed, indifference to what the majority of humanity just made clear at the General Assembly.
This is power announcing its utter contempt for anything other than raw force — forms of force that see no need any longer to disguise themselves.
There is no discounting the significance of events last week at the U.N. and outside its gates. The world has broken its silence. At the highest levels of government in the non–Western majority, it is learning — I can no longer bear this co-opted phrase, but here goes—to speak truth to power. Power and justice are, so to say, now on the record as in open conflict. This is not nothing. There is more to come. I have no trouble anticipating which will finally, however far in the future, win out over the other. https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/05/patrick-lawrence-power-and-justice/
Trump Swears At Netanyahu As Israel’s Standing in the U.S. Continues to Decline
Dimitri Lascaris. Oct 07, 2025, https://reason2resist.substack.com/p/trump-swears-at-netanyahu-as-israels?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2811845&post_id=175468550&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
After Trump and Netanyahu presented an ultimatum to the Palestinian resistance on September 30, Hamas issued a statement in which it accepted key parts of the ultimatum but diplomatically rejected other parts.
Hamas also signalled its strong willingness to negotiate the points of contention.
Hamas’s response prompted Trump to demand an end to Israel’s bombing of Gaza, but Netanyahu refused to comply. Israeli forces continue to this day to murder Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu reportedly told Trump that Hamas has rejected the Trump ‘peace plan’. Relying on an anonymous source, Axios claims that this prompted a fiery response from Trump.
Despite the theatrics, Hamas and Israeli negotiators have convened in Egypt. New negotiations are said to have begun.
Against this backdrop, the Washington Post just issued a poll showing that Israel’s standing among American Jews continues to plummet.
In the latest episode of Reason2Resist, I argue that, whatever happens in the negotiations in Cairo, Israel has lost the propaganda war, and it is only a matter of time before the U.S. government is forced to rein in its rabid Israeli attack dog.
I also discuss a new, $10 million lawsuit that he and four other Canadian lawyers have filed against Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 10 current and former students of the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. They allege that TMU’s administration falsely accused them of antisemitism.
Israel Droned Flotilla Activists And Then Abused Greta Thunberg
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 05, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-droned-flotilla-activists?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=175313119&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Who would have imagined five years ago when we were seeing Greta Thunberg amplified by every mainstream western liberal institution that we would one day hear reports that she has been captured and tormented by the Israeli military for trying to bring formula to starving babies?
The Guardian reports the following:
“In an email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry to people close to Thunberg, and seen by the Guardian, an official who has visited the activist in prison said she claimed she was detained in a cell infested with bedbugs, with too little food and water.
“ ‘The embassy has been able to meet with Greta,’ reads the email. ‘She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.’
“ ‘Another detainee reportedly told another embassy that they had seen her [Thunberg] being forced to hold flags while pictures were taken. She wondered whether images of her had been distributed,’ the Swedish ministry’s official added.
“The allegation was corroborated by at least two other members of the flotilla who had been detained by Israeli forces and released on Saturday.
“ ‘They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,’ the Turkish activist Ersin Çelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.
“Lorenzo D’Agostino, a journalist and another flotilla participant, said after returning to Istanbul that Thunberg was ‘wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy’ — a scene described with disbelief and anger by those who witnessed it.”
These reports, as shocking as they are, also happen to more or less reflect exactly what the Israeli regime said it intended to do to Global Sumud Flotilla activists when they were captured.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”
“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.
After the flotilla activists were abducted by the IDF, Ben-Gvir filmed himself taunting them and calling them “terrorists”.
Israel, needless to say, has an extensively documented record of torturing and abusing individuals who’ve been given the “terrorist” label by the regime.
So it would appear that they singled out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for abuse in order to send a message and deter future efforts to break the siege on Gaza.
After “Greater Israel,” Netanyahu calls for a “Super-Sparta” and “finishing the job in Gaza”
Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 3 October 2025, by Thierry Meyssan, translation, Roger Lagassé, https://www.voltairenet.org/article222905.html
Benyamin Netanyahu’s drift from avowed conservatism to Nazism is increasingly evident. After claiming the “historical and spiritual” mission of achieving a “Greater Israel,” that is, conquering the territories of its seven neighbors, he has just called for transforming Israel into a “super-Sparta,” that is, militarizing the state and ceasing all trade with its allies. If words have any meaning, he constantly makes us understand that his references are the fascists Vladimir Jabotinsky and Leo Strauss. From one drift to another, he engaged in a shameless act of lying before the United Nations General Assembly, attributing dark thoughts to his adversaries and claiming the right to continue massacring.
Last week, I warned our readers, particularly Israeli ones, against Benjamin Netanyahu’s rapid drift toward fascistism—and perhaps Naziism, in Ben-Gurion’s words about Vladimir Jabotinsky. [1] I had indeed noted the Prime Minister’s public conversion to the doctrine of “Greater Israel.” Let us recall that this expression is not intended to justify the annexation of the entire Palestinian territories to the State of Israel, but also eastern Egypt, parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of Lebanon, most of Syria, and part of Iraq, to the point of reforming the ancient Assyrian empire “from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
This announcement, made exclusively in Hebrew, that is, for the sole use of his fellow Israelis, drew strong criticism from all Arab leaders, even reaching the United Nations Security Council on September 23. Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf declared that “the Israeli occupation compromises any prospect of creating an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, not only on the ground but also in people’s minds.” Fueled by the myth of “Greater Israel,” the Israeli government seeks to redefine the region’s borders and extend its hegemony in defiance of international law and the norms governing peaceful coexistence between states; a statement echoed by the Russian Permanent Representative.
Indeed, how can one not question this reference, which the Prime Minister had always avoided citing throughout his political career and which he now uses in the midst of the “genocide” in Gaza? The term genocide is not a legal whim, but the carefully chosen word of the “Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories,” which submitted its report (reference A/79/363) to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20 [2].
This is also the opinion of Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Advocate General of the Israel Defense Forces. The latter had warned the IDF General Staff that 1.2 million Gazans could not be displaced without ensuring their fate. But on September 8, General Eyal ’Amir, Chief of Staff, overruled these objections. This is the first time since the creation of the State of Israel that a Chief of Staff has ignored the warnings of an Advocate General.
No matter. Benjamin Netanyahu is now reclaiming his complex legacy of fascism and Nazism: on September 15, during a conference organized by Israel’s Accountant General, the Prime Minister declared that the entire world was now against the State of Israel (which is false: he is against its own policies). Particularly Europeans, who are giving in to pressure from their Arab and Muslim immigrants. The enemy is no longer Hamas and Iran, but Belgium and Spain. Also, he continued, Israel must transform itself into a self-sufficient country… a “Super-Sparta.” It must abandon its conventional economic activities and develop its defense industries. [3]
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke cautiously about this myth, saying: “We are Athens and Sparta. But we are going to become Athens and super-Sparta.” It must be remembered that no politician has referred to Sparta since the fall of the Third Reich. It was a leitmotif of the Nazis and their allies, right up to the Japanese imperialists. Everyone claimed to be a Spartan against Athens, just as today, everyone claims to be an Athens against Sparta… except Benjamin Netanyahu and the Straussians. This is why I immediately refer you to what I wrote two years ago [4]: the man behind Netanyahu’s legal coup, the Israeli-American Elliott Abrams, claims not only to be Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, but also to Leo Strauss.
But Leo Strauss was not only a disciple of Jabotinsky, whom he came to welcome in New York with Benzion Netanyahu (Benyamin’s father). He was a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago. He secretly trained his favorite students. He called them his “hoplites” (that is, his soldiers, in reference to ancient Greece). He tested them by sending them to disrupt the classes of his rivals. Then he taught them that to protect themselves from a possible holocaust, they should not rely on democracies, weak regimes, but build their own dictatorships. It was his students, like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who rigged US intelligence and initiated both the attacks of September 11 and the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The reference to Sparta is a means of recognition that all fascists understand. Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, commented the next day on Radio 103FM, declaring: “Sparta was destroyed. He is the son of a historian. He surprised me. Sparta is a sword, why did he mention it? Because it transformed us into a country at war. We don’t want to be a state at war, we want to be a prosperous, prosperous, and popular country in the world.” Above all, he should have said and repeated that Benzion Netanyahu was a fascist and that Sparta is an unworthy reference in a democracy, that the Holocaust survivors who, fleeing aboard the Exodus, participated in the creation of the State of Israel would turn in their graves to hear the Prime Minister evoke a Nazi myth and perpetrate genocide.
As if that weren’t enough, Benjamin Netanyahu continued to lie before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly [5]. In a room deserted by three-quarters of the diplomatic delegations, he claimed that Hamas had massacred “1,200 innocent people” on October 7, while, according to the Israeli press, he had ordered the IDF to kill soldiers and civilians themselves so that they would not be “taken prisoner by the enemy” [6]. He is therefore responsible for half of the deaths he denounces. Then, he claimed that Hamas called in its charter for “the murder of all Jews on the planet,” which was never included in it. He boasted of taking all necessary measures to protect Gazan civilians, while all non-Israeli—and often Israeli—experts note the opposite. He accused all those who try to save Gazans of being anti-Semitic and of spreading anti-Semitism, without realizing that it is his policy, carried out in the name of a self-proclaimed “Jewish state,” that fuels this anti-Semitism. He accused 90% of the Palestinian people of supporting the horrors of October 7, while they supported a military operation by the entire Resistance (except Fatah) and largely disassociated themselves from the crimes committed that day. He accused the Palestinians of not wanting an independent state alongside Israel, but instead of Israel, while Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords alongside Yitzhak Rabin, accepting the “two-state solution.” And so on.
When will we admit that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer a democrat and that it is our duty to fight him before he kills all the Gazans and begins to purge the Israelis? More than anyone else, Israelis, whose parents were betrayed by their homelands and delivered to Nazi barbarism, should rise up against what the State of Israel is becoming, not only against the Arabs, but also against them.
They Really Think They’ll Be Able To Propagandize The World Into Liking Israel Again.
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 06, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-really-think-theyll-be-able?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=175387550&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.
Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.
Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.
Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.
Right, use Zionist oligarchs and influence operations to manipulate governments and institutions into crushing free speech which opposes a genocidal apartheid state. That’ll get everyone supporting the genocidal apartheid state.
Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.
In order to successfully propagandize people you need to first get them to trust you, and then you need to feed them narratives which appeal to the cognitive biases they already hold. Nobody trusts Israel apologia anymore, and people’s biases are now stacked squarely against the Zionist entity. They’ve got nothing to work with and nowhere to start from.
If a coworker you hate came up to you and started stealing stuff off your desk while telling you he’s your friend and that he would never steal from you, you’re not going to believe him no matter how many words he says to you. No matter how skillful a manipulator he is, no matter how eloquent his words are, nothing he says will trump your first hand observations of your material reality.
That’s what it’s like at this point. They’re trying to throw a bunch of language at us in order to convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen, haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, and don’t know what we know. And they assume it will work because the language they’re throwing at us is being circulated in high volumes and costs a lot of money.
It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.
Now that everyone’s aware that Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post to churn out propaganda on its behalf, whenever you see a video online of some young social media-savvy personality promoting pro-Israel narratives you see their replies flooded with memes and jokes about their $7k jackpot. From now on whenever some sunglasses-wearing zillennial shows up going “Israel is surrounded on all sides by Islamofascists and you think JEWS are the problem? Uhh, no babe. Walk with me,” everyone’s going to go “Found one of those $7k posts.”
It just doesn’t work. Psychological manipulation only goes so far. There’s only so much that clever language can do to decouple someone’s mind from their direct experience of material reality.
This is where Israel went wrong in alienating the liberal Zionists. They needed people at the table who understood how normal human beings think, who could help the Israel project walk the delicate line between apartheid abuses papered over with propaganda and full-scale atrocities which would alienate the world. Instead they decided to go all in with the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, trusting that the propaganda machine which had served them so well all those decades would continue to carry them through any international upset they might cause.
It hasn’t turned out that way. The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.
Panic in Israel as Hamas agrees to release all of the hostages
Laura and Normal Island News, Oct 04, 2025, https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/panic-in-israel-as-hamas-agrees-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1407757&post_id=175259462&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
In a worrying turn of events, Hamas has agreed to release all remaining prisoners in accordance with Donald Trump’s peace proposal. The plan will involve the de-radicalisation and disarmament of Gaza, but not the de-radicalisation and disarmament of Israel. Nevertheless, Netanyahu feels Israel is being unfairly picked on.
Trump has instructed Netanyahu to immediately halt all bombing of Gaza, but Netanyahu has sensibly ignored him and continued bombing throughout the night. Be honest, who would miss the opportunity for some last minute mass murder? Not a Zionist, that’s for sure.
Understandably, Hamas’ announcement has been met with horror in the Israeli war room which has successfully held off a peace deal for two years so it can kill as many Palestinians as possible.
Israel only had to sacrifice half of the hostages to achieve this goal and would be quite happy to sacrifice the other half for two more years of slaughter. It is therefore drawing up emergency plans to derail the peace process and blame Hamas. I’m told a false flag is not off the table.
Netanyahu has launched an investigation to establish why the IDF failed to murder all of the Hamas negotiators before they could agree to peace. This was an enormous and unforgivable oversight.
While Netanyahu and his accomplices are worried a peace deal could mean they face jail, Israelis are torn on the idea of a ceasefire. On the one hand, they don’t give a fuck about those prisoners, but on the other hand, they have bombed everything there is to bomb several times over, and taking selfies among the rubble gets old. Mass slaughter is even making some of them feel sad.
One Zionist was told the pang he felt when he squished children with a bulldozer might have been a conscience, although it was probably self-pity. Either way, he was promptly arrested, and we don’t talk about him anymore. His family has destroyed all pictures of him.
Given the serious risk of self-pity spreading among IDF ranks, perhaps it really is time to end this thing, and I can go back to doing anything other than satirising a fucking genocide. Palestinians have no idea how hard my life is.
Let’s just end this thing now and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done…
It’s fair to say Israel has achieved many things throughout this genocide. For example, it has destroyed 80% of the buildings, 86% of the farmland, 90% of the cattle, 89% of water and sanitation infrastructure, 100% of desalination plants, and it has made Gaza more or less unliveable. Israel has killed so many civilians that the world lost count.
Israel didn’t stop at Gaza either. It killed a load of people in the West Bank and Syria and Yemen and Iran and Qatar and Lebanon. Who remembers the time when Israel’s pagers took the eyeballs of doctors and nurses and all of the nicest people laughed? Good times.
The relentless bombing campaign was not Israel’s only achievement though. Israel successfully colonised TikTok, the social media app that was promised to God’s chosen people 3,000 years ago. Israel is carrying out a Nakba on TikTok by culling everyone who has ever used the word “AIPAC”. Needless to say, AIPAC does not exist and it’s racist to say otherwise.
Mahmoud Abbas says he is willing to make regular child sacrifices to Israel in exchange for the Gaza presidency, but he has been told his services will not be needed. If a peace deal can be agreed, we have the exciting prospect of Tony Blair ruling Gaza from afar without the consent of Palestinians.
We need someone with the ability to eliminate all evidence of genocide. It’s gonna take the most ghoulish person imaginable to erase hundreds of thousands of corpses and act like they never existed. Needless to say, Blair is just as keen to harness the souls of the dead as he was to steal oil in Iraq.
Once the peace deal is in place, Palestinians will kindly be allowed to live in tents with minimal rations and occasional bombings until they get fed up and leave. At this point, Blair will be given a Nobel Peace Prize and all mentions of Palestine will be erased from the history books. Sadly though, Netanyahu will probably be in jail on corruption charges. Life can be so unfair x
Trump says Hamas ‘ready for peace’, tells Israel to stop bombing Gaza
By Alastair McCready, Umut Uras and Urooba Jamal, 4 Oct 20254 Oct 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/10/4/live-trumps-tells-israel-stop-bombing-gaza-after-hamas-ceasefire-reply
Hamas has submitted its response to US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, with the group agreeing to hand over administration of the enclave to Palestinian technocrats and free all Israeli captives.
The Palestinian group’s response did not address the crucial issue of its disarmament, but it said it was willing to “immediately enter” peace negotiations through mediators.
In a video address following Hamas’s statement, President Trump said the development was “unprecedented”, before cautioning that it’s important to get the “final word down in concrete”.
Trump also said he believes Hamas is ready for a “lasting peace”, as he called on Israel to “immediately stop bombing Gaza” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Israel has continued its deadly bombardment of Gaza, killing at least 72 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to medical sources.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 66,288 people and wounded 169,165 since October 2023. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks and about 200 were taken captive.
Israel Raids Global Sumud Flotilla, Abducts Over 400 Volunteers, Group Says.
“This is an unlawful abduction, in direct violation of international law and basic human rights,” the flotilla said.
By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg , Truthout, October 2, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/israel-raids-global-sumud-flotilla-abducts-over-400-volunteers-group-says/
Overnight on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers raided more than a dozen boats carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, blocked the ships’ communications, and abducted more than 400 volunteers from 47 countries.
During the raid, Israeli forces attacked volunteers with water cannons and doused them with “skunk water,” according to a press release issued by the flotilla. The volunteers were reportedly taken to the large naval vessel, the MSC Johannesburg, but the lawyers representing the volunteers have been given “minimal updates,” as per the press release.
“This is an unlawful abduction, in direct violation of international law and basic human rights,” the group said, adding that “intercepting humanitarian vessels in international waters is a war crime.”
“[D]enying legal counsel and concealing the fate of those seized compounds that crime,” the group continued.
The Global Sumud Flotilla set sail in August, carrying volunteers from more than 40 countries on dozens of civilian boats filled with humanitarian aid for Gaza, including baby formula, medicine, and prosthetic limbs. As a result of Israel’s genocide, Gaza has the largest population of child amputees per capita in the world.
The flotilla posted several prerecorded messages from volunteers stating their name, their country of origin, and that they had been abducted by Israeli forces.
Among the people aboard the flotilla were Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s grandson; European Parliament Member Emma Fourreau; and climate justice activist Greta Thunberg. The raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla occurred on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Israel largely shuts down for the holiday, but that did not stop the raid or its attacks on Gaza.
Israel’s raid on the boats sparked demonstrations overnight throughout the world, and Italian unions have called for a general strike on Friday in solidarity with the flotilla. The unions held a general strike just weeks ago in support of the flotilla.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Israel’s raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla “an act of piracy meant to sustain its genocide.”
“Every nation that pays lip service to international law should condemn this illegal attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla and take their own steps to forcibly break the siege of Gaza,” CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.
Earlier this week, more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers called on the Trump administration to protect the volunteers onboard the flotilla’s ships.
“The law is clear: any attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla or its civilians is a clear and blatant violation of international law,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “The United States has an obligation to protect its citizens from foreign attack.”
The lawmakers also demanded that the administration “address the issue at root of this voyage: the brutal Israeli blockade and genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.”
The flotilla said they will not be deterred by Israel’s illegal attacks on the flotilla.
“We have to make it clear: They take one boat, we sail with 40,” the group posted on Instagram. “They try to stop us, we escalate. Take the streets, take the ports, take the seas.”
Israeli Defense Minister says half a million Palestinians in Gaza City will be considered ‘terrorists’ if they don’t evacuate.
One of the most devastating aspects of the ongoing Israeli campaign has been the phenomenon of what locals call the use of remote-controlled “robots” rigged with explosives and sent into dense built-up areas to be detonated, causing widespread destruction………….. each of these explosions equals the explosive force of two heavy air missiles.
With at least half a million people still left in Gaza City, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a “final warning” for residents to evacuate, saying those who remain will soon be regarded as “terrorists or terrorist supporters.”
By Qassam Muaddi October 1, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/israeli-defense-minister-says-half-a-million-palestinians-in-gaza-city-will-be-considered-terrorists-if-they-dont-evacuate/
The Israeli army just announced that it won’t allow Palestinians in central and southern Gaza to travel north to Gaza City. Movement will only be allowed to leave the city for the south, the Israeli army said in a statement. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also said that this was the Palestinians’ “last warning” to leave Gaza City, adding that anyone who remains will be considered “terrorists or terrorist supporters.”
An estimated 500,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, who are now officially cut off from any provisions coming from the south, including food, water, fuel, and medicine. To the north, Gaza City is completely sealed off from northern Gaza, including the cities of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun, where the Israeli army is operating and has emptied of most of its inhabitants.
The announcement comes two days after the Trump administration announced its new plan for the end of the war on Gaza, amid an intensification of Israel’s campaign in Gaza City ahead of its planned occupation in the coming days or hours. According to the Israeli army, some 700,000 Palestinians have left, leaving at least 500,000 Palestinians still within the city. As of last Monday, September 29, half a million Palestinians remain trapped there, occupying a space of less than 8 square kilometers, UNRWA spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna said.
The slow pace of evacuations from the city for the central and southern parts of the Strip had forced the Israeli army to delay sending in the third of its three military divisions (the 36th division), finally pushing it into Gaza last week.
Israel’s Channel 12 quoted military sources saying that the occupation would take up to three months, according to a report airing on September 16. The Israeli channel had reported earlier in August of disagreements between the Israeli army and the Israeli cabinet on the timing of the scheduled invasion. The cabinet insists on a faster operation, while the army prefers to conduct operations at a slower pace.
According to the Israeli daily Maariv, the Israeli army is avoiding combat with Palestinian resistance fighters, concentrating on air and artillery strikes to increase pressure on residents before sending in ground troops. Yet armored Israeli vehicles have still reached several areas, including the vital Jalaa street and the vicinity of the al-Shifa Hospital.
Despite the slow advance of ground forces, aerial and artillery bombardment has been relentless, sowing overwhelming destruction. Already, the iconic Shuja’iyya district in eastern Gaza City has been completely flattened, 90% of the Tuffah district has been destroyed, and 300 buildings have been demolished in Gaza’s largest neighborhood, Zeitoun.
In addition to entire residential blocks, Israeli strikes have targeted universities, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken shelter.
Remote-controlled ‘robots’ rigged to explode
One of the most devastating aspects of the ongoing Israeli campaign has been the phenomenon of what locals call the use of remote-controlled “robots” rigged with explosives and sent into dense built-up areas to be detonated, causing widespread destruction.
The deadly weapon is essentially an outdated Israeli armored personnel carrier (APC), which is retrofitted with large amounts of explosives and sent into neighborhoods. According to a report by Israeli army radio reporter Doron Kadosh, aired on September 21, each of these explosions equals the explosive force of two heavy air missiles.
The report pointed out that each APC explosion sends fragments across 500 square meters, turning the sky red for several seconds and pulverizing anything — including bodies — in its perimeter. The report confirmed that the Israeli army has been using these weapons “at an industrial scale,” detonating dozens of APCs in Gaza City every day, especially at night.
Meanwhile, Nibal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), told Al-Araby TV on Wednesday that the only two hospitals still operating in Gaza City are the al-Ahli Arab Hospital and the al-Quds Hospital, which is also owned by PRCS. Both hospitals are running without essential medical supplies, and access to al-Quds Hospital has been cut off by Israeli forces for the past nine days, Farsakh said, adding that the hospital can only treat the patients already inside it.
Farsakh said that the hospital is using its last stock of oxygen canisters, which are about to run out at any moment, warning that today’s blockade on the only way into the city puts thousands of patients at risk. Farsakh noted that as large numbers of wounded individuals have continued to require treatment, most essential medicines and medical supplies have run out.
If Gaza City falls
Amid the offensive, Palestinians are practically trapped in the city. Moving south is only possible through vehicles that charge up to 8,000 shekels per trip (about $2,420), with long delays due to the high volume of requests. For thousands of families, the only alternative is to flee on foot, which is impossible for the elderly, the sick, and the wounded. Many of them have already fled Israeli strikes numerous times.
Although most Palestinians from north Gaza have already fled the cities of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, which have been completely destroyed, most of them moved a short distance south to Gaza City.
The majority of them had fled during the Israeli operation between October and December of 2024, dubbed “the Generals’ Plan.” The majority of these displaced Palestinians returned to the destroyed north during the ceasefire between January and March of this year. After Israel broke the ceasefire, most Palestinians remained in the north, exhausted by the displacement they had already experienced since October 2023, especially after Israel bombed places to which they had fled in the south that the army designated as “safe zones.”
The Palestinians who have already fled Gaza City have concentrated in the central Gaza Strip, in and around the cities of Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younis, and the coastal Mawasi area. These areas have been crowded with tent encampments for almost two years.
A Palestinian displaced from Gaza City in Mawasi, who asked not to be named, told Mondoweiss that “there is no place left in Mawasi, not even for a needle.” He noted that “people are expanding the tent encampments into the areas in Khan Younis controlled by the Israeli army, which is putting their lives at risk.”
“They’ve been removing the rubble of other people’s homes with their bare hands for days, just to make some room for another tent,” he said.
Another Palestinian who remains in Gaza City told Mondoweiss that “we had a difficult and long discussion inside my family over moving out or not, and decided to split.”
“My mother and two sisters left to the south, and my father and I remained,” they said. “The moment we said goodbye was the most difficult of my entire life. I hugged my mother for several minutes, and we both wept, as neither of us knew if we were going to see each other again.”
Gaza City is the largest urban center in the Strip, and is 5,000 years old. It has been an economic and cultural hub for a millennia.
Now Palestinians fear that Israel plans on wiping it out entirely, the same way it did with Rafah, which has now been completely leveled. If Gaza City meets the same fate, it would be the end of the Gaza Strip as we know it.
How the media tears up its own rulebook to hide Israel’s atrocities
Jonathon Cook, 30 September 2025 , https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-09-30/media-rulebook-hide-israel-atrocities/
The news cycle has rules every rookie journalist understands. When the media choose to break them, you can be sure it is for entirely non-journalistic reasons
You can tell much from how the media choose to cover a news story – and from the facts they decide to e, mphasise in a headline. And you can tell even more from the fact that, on certain subjects, the media uniformly choose to break the most basic rules of news gathering taught to every young journalist.
Typically, reporters try to extract as much news “value” from a story as they can. That means there is often a formula hiding behind the coverage.
When the news first hits, it is handled as what we call a “breaking story”. It is the first draft of the event, containing essential information as it can best be understood at the time of the report.
Here’s an example of a possible headline on a breaking news story: “Two dead, over 40 injured as London-to-Brighton train derails.”
Later the same news event is repackaged in what is called a “follow-up” – once more information is available and errors can be corrected, or because, with more time to talk to those directly involved, there is the chance to present a different, or more interesting, angle on the same story.
Here’s the headline on a possible follow-up: “Train driver reportedly had heart attack before fatal train derailment.”
But there are cases where the natural order of the news cycle gets disrupted – and when it does, there are invariably likely to be non-journalistic reasons in play.
In the case of Israel, the news-gathering rulebook often gets torn up.
The first lesson taught to every rookie journalist is this: wherever possible, supply the reader with the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of the story.
I would not be the first to note how often news media forget in headlines – the only part of a story most readers see – to mention the first of those points, “Who?”, if the responsible party is Israel and it is committing indisputable war crimes.
We have had two years filled with this kind of rogue reporting, designed to obscure Israel’s role in systematically perpetrating atrocities that amount to genocide:
But I want to highlight a less noticed element to the media’s perverse coverage of Israel. And that is the regular skewing of the traditional news cycle. Too often the media simply skip the breaking stage of a news story and head straight to the follow-up.
By now, you might be able to guess why. Because a breaking story presents only the essential facts, and those facts cannot disguise the nature of Israel’s crimes.
By moving straight to the follow-up, the media get to muddy the water with Israel’s rationale, however preposterous, for its war crimes at the very moment those crimes first come to public attention.
Let us take as an example Israel’s strike last month on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the only major hospital still functioning, partially, in Gaza after Israel put out of action dozens of others. The strike killed scores of journalists and rescue workers.
The media uniformly framed Israel’s attack on a protected building – a hospital – and its murder of civilians there as potentially warranted by amplifying an Israeli claim that was patently ridiculous on at least three counts.
First, Israel claimed that it was targeting a camera on an outside balcony – and that the camera was such a threat, and an immediate one, that it needed to hit Nasser hospital with missiles to destroy it.
Second, Israel claimed that the camera was being used by Hamas, even though it belonged to a Reuters journalist and was actually being used by Reuters for a live feed at the time it and the hospital were hit.
And third, Israel claimed that the only way the camera could be disabled was by hitting the hospital with a series of missile strikes that killed journalists and emergency workers who rushed to assist those killed and injured in the initial strike that had destroyed the camera.
The problem with the coverage ran much deeper than the astounding levels of gullibility demonstrated by the entire press corps in reporting Israel’s “Hamas camera” claim.
The media also had to pervert the normal news cycle by failing to report the attack on the hospital as a breaking story. Instead the media moved straight to the follow-up, in which Israel was allowed to foreground its atrocity “denial” with the camera claim.
In large part, the media could do this only because Israel – which understands how to manipulate the news cycle, especially when the media are so ready to spread its disinformation – had its excuses ready from the outset of the attack. That alone should have rung alarm bells with any real journalists.
But further, major media outlets all chose as their follow-up Israel’s ludicrous rationale for an illegal attack on the hospital: the red herring of the “Hamas camera”. Were they doing their jobs properly, these outlets could have chosen an entirely different follow-up. They could have taken testimony from experts and witnesses on the ground to tear apart Israel’s tissue of lies.
The goal here, of course, was to distort the audience’s understanding of a simple news event – Israel’s attack on a hospital in violation of international law to kill journalists and emergency workers, also in violation of international law – to ensure any loss of sympathy with Israel was kept to a minimum.
The media’s role in artificially sustaining support for Israel, in the face of all the evidence of its crimes, has been absolutely essential to smoothing the path, over the past two years, to genocide.
Once you understand how the media pervert the normal news cycle when it serves larger political purposes, the strange presentation of other events starts to make more sense. Such as the minimal coverage of police detaining George Galloway, a former MP and leader of a UK political party, at Gatwick airport at the weekend under draconian terrorism laws. Galloway also had his electronic devices seized.
His detention alone should have been a big news story. But there was also plenty of extra news “value” that could have been extracted from it.
The story was more than ripe for follow-ups, given Galloway’s outspokenness about Israel and its genocide in Gaza; the Starmer government’s efforts to silence dissent on Gaza from journalists, lawyers and now politicians using terrorism laws; and the government’s recent abuses of the terrorism laws to proscribe for the first time in British history the direct-action group Palestine Action, which has been targeting weapons factories in the UK, like the Israeli firm Elbit’s, supplying Israel with the tools to carry out the Gaza genocide.
Were the Russian government to detain and seize the electronic devices of a politician critical of Putin’s policies in Ukraine, we all know how the British media would cover that story. There would be endless follow-ups of Putin’s growing and ruthless authoritarianism, of the struggle of critics to speak openly about events in Ukraine, of the need for more sanctions on Russia, and so on.
Contrast that to the coverage of Galloway’s persecution – which comes in the wake, also largely unreported, of a growing number of arrests and investigations of journalists and lawyers under the same terrorism laws after they have criticised the Starmer government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide.
Notice two days later the lack of follow-ups in the British media on Galloway’s detention. Outlets have reported the breaking story – one in which headlines connect Galloway to “terrorism” – but not issued follow-ups whose headlines might push back against the authoritarian over-reach of the British security state overseen by Starmer.
In this case, the breaking story serves the British establishment’s interests in implicitly vilifying Galloway far better than any follow-up.
A follow-up would either have to “put up” – that is, provide a rationale for detaining Galloway under terrorism laws that, we can infer, doesn’t exist – or interrogate the narrative the government has been manufacturing to justify its persecution of regime dissidents.
Paradoxically, the only outlet that has offered a follow-up – as shown in the screenshot above of a Google search late this afternoon – was from the rightwing Israeli outlet The Jerusalem Post. Uniquely, its headline “‘Politically motivated intimidation’: George Galloway reportedly detained at Gatwick airport” captures the story the British media is carefully avoiding.
The media aren’t reporting the news. They are shaping the news to shape our minds, our perceptions, our sympathies. Until we grasp that simple fact, we will continue cheering those whose only goal is to keep oppressing us and enriching themselves.
Trump says Israel can ‘finish the job’ in Gaza if Hamas rejects latest ceasefire plan
If Hamas rejects the deal, Trump said Israel “would have my full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group. Netanyahu said Hamas could choose the “easy way or hard way” going forward.
Donald Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the latest U.S.-backed “peace plan” in Gaza and threatened Hamas that if it rejects the proposal, Israel would have his “full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group.
By Michael Arria September 29, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/trump-says-israel-can-finish-the-job-in-gaza-if-hamas-rejects-latest-ceasefire-plan/
President Donald Trump says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the latest U.S.-backed “peace plan,” which is ostensibly aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza.
Trump made the announcement during a joint press conference with Netanyahu, which followed a White House meeting between the two leaders. It’s Netanyahu’s fourth trip to Washington since Trump began his term in January.
During the meeting, Trump facilitated an Oval Office phone call between Netanyahu and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, in which the Israeli leader apologized for the September 9 attack on Doha.
Netanyahu expressed regret about the strikes and, specifically, “that, in targeting Hamas leadership during hostage negotiations, Israel violated Qatari sovereignty,” according to a White House readout of the phone call.
Despite being touted as a diplomatic breakthrough, the 20-point plan recycles a number of previous White House declarations.
The plan would include a prisoner swap, complete Hamas disarmament, and the formulation of a transitional government led by an international body. Additionaly, it requires Gaza to become “deradicalized terror-free zone.”
Trump would chair a “board of peace” to reconstruct the Gaza Strip as part of the program, while Jordan and Egypt would train new Palestinian security forces.
Trump told reporters that it was an “extremely fair” proposal and claimed that Hamas “wants to get this done too,” despite reports that Hamas has yet to receive the plan.
“I also want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for agreeing to the plan and for trusting that if we work together, we can bring an end to the death and destruction that we’ve seen for so many years, decades, even centuries and begin a new chapter of security, peace and prosperity for the entire region,” said Trump.
If Hamas rejects the deal, Trump said Israel “would have my full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group. Netanyahu said Hamas could choose the “easy way or hard way” going forward.
“Everyone understands that the ultimate result must be the elimination of any danger posed in the region, and that danger is caused by Hamas,” explained Trump.
Neither leader took questions after the press conference.
Shortly before the meeting, Axios published a report by Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid, which claimed Trump is “willing to break with him over Gaza for the first time since returning to office.” It quoted an anonymous Trump official who insisted that “everyone — and I mean everyone — is exasperated with Bibi.”
Despite such assertions, the Trump administration has continued to support the assault on Gaza without conditions of any kind.
Earlier this month, in a 72-page report, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and called for an arms embargo on the country.
“What does this mean for the international community?,” wrote UN human rights chief and commission member Navi Pillay after the report was released. “It means its obligations are not optional. Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs,” she continued. “That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing. To do nothing is not neutrality. It is complicity.”
Exposing JFK Airport’s hidden arms pipeline to Israel
Shipping records obtained by Mondoweiss show New York’s JFK Airport is a key transit hub for U.S. weapons parts headed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
By Shaniyat Turani-Chowdhury September 30, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/exposing-jfk-airports-hidden-arms-pipeline-to-israel/
On July 16, 2025, a Boeing 747 operated by Challenge Airlines lifted off from JFK Airport in New York. The cargo manifest listed a 347-kilogram shipment from Lockheed Martin. Inside was a BRU-68 bomb release unit, a mechanism that allows an F-35 fighter jet to drop 2,000-pound bombs.
The flight’s final stop was Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel, home to the F-35I fleet bombing Gaza.
This was not an isolated transfer. Internal shipping records shared by the Palestinian Youth Movement, and cross-referenced with public flight-tracking data, reveal a steady flow of U.S.-made weapons components moving from New York to Israel. Parts for fighter jets, missile launchers, and ammunition have routinely left JFK on commercial cargo flights while Israel’s air campaign destroys homes, schools, and hospitals.
These shipments started before the current genocide, but have increased greatly since October 7, 2023. They continue now despite mounting evidence of war crimes and calls for an arms embargo. What they reveal is that New York City is a crucial logistical hub in the supply chain arming Israel’s assault.
Between July 2 and July 23, at least six arms shipments from JFK to Israel were verified through waybills, flight data, and internal records provided to Mondoweiss.
These findings add new depth to earlier reporting in The Intercept and The Ditch, showing how JFK Airport has become a critical link in Israel’s military supply chain.
“What these records show is that the genocide in Gaza isn’t only manufactured in Washington—it’s facilitated right here in New York,” said Kaleem Hawa of the Palestinian Youth Movement. “JFK has become a gateway for the weapons that are killing our people.”
These flights and their deadly cargo reveal the logistics networks arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza that, for many in the U.S., is hiding in plain sight.
A civilian airport moving weapons to genocide
Challenge Airlines flight ICL982 departs JFK for Tel Aviv on a near-routine schedule, often before sunrise. Cargo bays handle electronics, produce, and mail. Mixed in are crates labeled “aircraft components” or “hazardous materials,” terms that hide their military use.
Among the shipments traced in July were:
- Aircraft structural parts and missile launcher struts from Lockheed Martin
- Fuel selector valves used in Elbit Systems aircraft
- Ammunition link containers for Israel Military Industries
- A BRU-68 ejector unit for the F-35
- Wingtip protective lenses for fighter jets
Each part is essential to the maintenance and repair of larger weapons systems, and they are moved under the cover of civilian logistics.
“Most of us just scan the cargo tags—we’re not told what’s inside,” a JFK cargo worker who asked to remain anonymous told Mondoweiss. “When pallets show up wrapped and labeled ‘confidential’ or ‘secret,’ we know not to ask questions. They bypass normal screening. We just load them.”
A second cargo handler recalled the difference on days when major military shipments arrive. “The pallets are heavier, wrapped tight, and marked with tags you don’t see on normal freight. Security is always hovering nearby. We’re told nothing and only given the signal to load.”
Why JFK? Geography, logistics, and loopholes
JFK’s east coast location shortens routes to Europe and the Middle East. Explosives depots along the coast allow rapid transport from factory to plane.
Jack Cinamon of Shadow World Investigations, an international research group that tracks the global arms trade and corruption, who studies U.S.-Israel weapons transfers, points to two reasons JFK is such a strategic node in the supply chain. The first is proximity to suppliers. “Along the East Coast are multiple explosives and ammunition depots,” he explained to Mondoweiss. “Being close to those locations makes JFK much more advantageous.”
Cinamon also says the abundance of established cargo carriers, like Challenge and FedEx, which operate full logistics hubs inside JFK, provides cover for defense contractors.
The airport also stores hazardous and explosive materials, a capability not available everywhere. This combination lets military cargo move in the same space as ordinary freight, hidden by commercial operations.
JFK is not the only American airport feeding the supply lines into Israel’s war machine. Dallas-Fort Worth, Memphis International, and Oakland also serve as key transit points in this network.
The endpoint: Nevatim Air Base
The end of the line is Nevatim Air Base, carved into the Negev desert southeast of Be’er Sheva. It’s here that Israel stations its fleet of F-35I “Adir” jets, the U.S.-built fighters engineered for precision bombing runs.
Among the cargo routed from New York City are BRU-68 ejector units, the hardware that allows these jets to release heavy munitions. The Pentagon itself places the BRU-68 under “Category VIII – Aircraft and Related Articles” on the U.S. Munitions List, noting its use in deploying precision weapons like the 2,000-pound GBU-31. These ejectors wear down quickly and must be replaced often, making the shipments routine. Alongside them are fuel valves, targeting consoles, and protective lenses—the pieces that keep the F-35Is in the sky and combat-ready.
The path is seamless. Parts are made from a Lockheed Martin assembly line, to a cargo bay at JFK, to the blast craters in Rafah. It is this steady pipeline between New York and Nevatim that enables Israel to sustain its air campaign over Gaza.
Law, policy, and complicity
Under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Israel receives exemptions that speed licensing for some weapons components. The Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Law bar U.S. assistance to military units committing human rights abuses, yet exports have continued throughout the bombing of Gaza.
Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s head of military, security, and policing work, told Mondoweiss any state transferring arms to Israel “risks complicity in genocide and war crimes” and violates its obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide. States that knowingly continue transfers, he added, risk “aiding and assisting” in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Wilcken noted that Israel’s preferential treatment under U.S. export rules does not override international obligations. “International humanitarian law prohibits all states—including the U.S.—from transferring weapons to a party to an armed conflict where there is a clear risk that doing so would contribute to the commission of war crimes,” he said. Amnesty has long called for a total arms embargo, citing extensive evidence of repeated violations in Gaza.
The risk extends to private industry. “Companies, their executives, and employees risk being accomplices in crimes under international law if the products and services they provide contribute substantively in the commission of those crimes,” Wilcken explained. If they know their cargo will likely be used unlawfully, “they could be found legally liable.”
Amnesty says the threshold for halting arms transfers has already been met. Court challenges in Belgium and the Netherlands have successfully blocked shipments to Israel, even as similar efforts in France and the UK have failed.
In Belgium, regional governments suspended licenses for military goods bound for Israel following legal pressure and public outcry, while in Ireland, parliamentarians have raised questions over flights carrying Israeli explosives through Shannon Airport. Reporting from The Ditch revealed that shipments tied to Israel’s Ministry of Defense were routed through Europe, sparking scrutiny of how states may be complicit in the transfer of arms used in Gaza.
Congressional oversight
JFK Airport sits within the district of Congress member Gregory Meeks, who, as a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, holds one of the key positions in Congress responsible for reviewing and overseeing arms sales. Under the Arms Export Control Act, his committee can delay, question, or block transfers, and Meeks has made use of that authority in the past. In 2021, he sought a temporary pause on a $735 million sale of precision-guided munitions to Israel to allow more time to review, and in 2024, he pressed the State Department for further assurances on a multibillion-dollar package of F-15s. These episodes highlight that he is not only aware of the stakes but is willing, at least in certain cases, to assert the committee’s oversight powers.
At the same time, Meeks has long been supported by pro-Israel advocacy networks, including AIPAC, whose lobbying efforts consistently push for expedited transfers and minimal restrictions on U.S. defense exports to Israel. Meeks has received more than $400,000 from AIPAC as of the most recent federal elections filings. Those ties place him at the center of competing pressures: on one side, his formal role as a gatekeeper tasked with scrutinizing foreign military sales, and on the other, the political influence of a lobby that has made the uninterrupted flow of weapons a top priority.
Mondoweiss contacted Representative Meeks for a comment on the fact that these shipments leave directly from his district through JFK. His office did not respond.
Protest and suppression
On July 9, protesters gathered outside JFK to stop a shipment of Elbit Systems parts. Authorities responded with a coordinated lock down. The Port Authority, MTA, and NYPD restricted access to all terminals, barring the press from the grounds. Protesters were pushed out of sight.
“We were blocked from every angle,” said a protester who asked to remain anonymous. “Police set up barricades so far back you couldn’t see the cargo area—not the planes, not the loading trucks, nothing. Anyone without a boarding pass was turned away. From where we were pushed, it was impossible to tell if anything was being moved. It felt deliberate.”
“They shut down the public’s right to witness it,” added another organizer.
The flight left on schedule.
Trump’s 20-Point Gamble: A bold bid to end the Gaza War – or a recipe for stalemate?
30 September 2025 Roswell AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/trumps-20-point-gamble-a-bold-bid-to-end-the-gaza-war-or-a-recipe-for-stalemate/
In the sweltering corridors of power at the White House, where deals are struck and destinies rewritten over Diet Cokes and classified briefings, President Trump has once again thrust himself into the heart of the Middle East maelstrom. On September 29, 2025, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump unveiled a sweeping 20-point plan aimed at halting Israel’s relentless war on Gaza – a conflict that has claimed over 66,000 Palestinian lives and left the enclave in rubble since October 2023.
With characteristic bombast, Trump declared the proposal “tremendous,” a “game-changer” that could usher in “greatness in the Middle East,” while Netanyahu nodded in apparent agreement, vowing Israel’s full backing if Hamas balks.
Here is the full text of the peace proposal:
- Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.
- Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.
- If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.
- Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.
- Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.
- Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
- Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.
- Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025, agreement.
- Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.
A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.- A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.
- No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.
- Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.
- A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people.
- The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The ISF will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A deconfliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties.
- Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the [Israeli military] will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the [Israeli military], ISF, the guarantors, and the Unites States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the [Israeli military] will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.
- In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the [Israeli military] to the ISF.
- An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence to try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.
- While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.
- The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence.
Yet, as the ink dries on this audacious blueprint – floated last week to leaders from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and beyond at the UN General Assembly – the devil lurks in the details, and Hamas has yet to even receive a written copy. The plan nods to Palestinian aspirations for statehood, a pathway Netanyahu has long scorned, while offering amnesty to Hamas fighters who swear off violence and exile for the rest – echoing Trump’s first-term Abraham Accords but with a sharper edge of coercion.
Trump’s optimism is infectious: “Everyone else has accepted it,” he boasted, hinting at full U.S. support for Israel to “do what you have to do” if talks falter. But with Gaza City under fresh bombardment and over 700,000 displaced in recent escalations, the question hangs heavy: Is this a genuine olive branch, or another high-stakes poker game where the Palestinians hold the weakest hand? As the world watches, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
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