Malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza are beginning to climb, with the health ministry reporting 18 in a single 24-hour period. Doctors report that people are “collapsing” in the street, and Gaza journalist Nahed Hajjaj is warning the world not to be surprised if the remaining reporters in the enclave are soon silenced by starvation.
Unless something drastically changes, things can be expected to get much worse very rapidly.
Meanwhile Israeli forces are setting new records with their massacres of starving civilians seeking aid, with 85 killed in a single day on Sunday.
If this isn’t evil, then nothing is evil. If Israel isn’t evil, then nothing is.
So what’s the plan here? Do we just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments?
And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time?
We’re just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it’s normal?
I’m genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?
I’m asking because I don’t know. I mean, I know what my own government and its allies should do, but I don’t know what we as ordinary members of the public are supposed to do.
You’ll see western pundits and politicians asking “How do we get a ceasefire in Gaza?” or “How do we end hunger in Gaza?” as though it’s some kind of ineffable mystery, which is kind of like a man strangling a child to death while saying “The child is being strangled, but HOW do we stop the child strangulation from occurring?”
It’s not some mystery how to get a ceasefire in Gaza; the empire is the fire. It simply needs to cease firing. Israel’s holocaust in Gaza is made possible only by the support of its western backers, primarily the United States. Numerous Israeli military insiders have acknowledged that none of this would be possible without US support. If the United States and its western allies ceased backing Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, a ceasefire would have to occur.
Likewise, it is not a mystery how to get food into Gaza. You just drive the food on in and give it to people. They’ve got roads and gates right there. The only reason people in Gaza are starving is because western governments (including my own Australia) conspired to pretend to believe that UNRWA is a terrorist organization to justify cutting off critical aid, while doing nothing to pressure Israel into allowing aid to flow freely.
And now Israel and the US empire are monopolizing the delivery of “aid” through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose facilities now see civilians massacred every day for the crime of attempting to obtain food.
The organizations, funding and delivery systems to feed Gaza are all 100 percent fully available (at no cost to Israel, by the way). They’re just not being allowed to provide aid because the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza via death or displacement. The people of Gaza are starving because the west is helping Israel starve Gaza. It really is that simple.
This isn’t some kind of unfortunate famine caused by a drought or natural disaster. It is a deliberately manufactured starvation campaign, implemented with genocidal intent.
To paraphrase Utah Phillips, Gaza isn’t starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses.
Apple has made headlines in recent weeks for touting its commitment to privacy and human rights, rolling out tools to limit surveillance and spyware. But behind the corporate messaging lies a much darker reality.
The company has quietly brought in dozens of veterans from Unit 8200, Israel’s shadowy military intelligence unit known for blackmail, mass surveillance, and targeted killings.
Many of these hires took place as Israel escalated its war on Gaza, and as CEO Tim Cook publicly expressed support for Israel while disciplining employees for pro-Palestinian expressions. Apple’s deepening ties to Israel’s most controversial intelligence raise uncomfortable questions, not only about the company’s political loyalties, but also about how it handles vast troves of personal user data.
A MintPress News investigation has identified dozens of Unit 8200 operatives now working at Apple. The company’s hiring spree coincides with growing scrutiny of its ties to the Israeli government, including its policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF and the Jewish National Fund, both of which play a role in the displacement of the Palestinian people. The intense pro-Israel bias at the corporation has led many former and current employees to speak out.
This investigation is part of a series examining the close collaboration between Unit 8200 and Western tech and media companies. Previous investigations examined the links between Unit 8200 and social media giants like TikTok, Facebook and Google, and how former Unit 8200 spies are now responsible for writing much of America’s news about Israel/Palestine, holding top jobs at outlets like CNN and Axios.
A Few (Dozen) Bad Apples
Israel’s international reputation has taken a severe hit amid multiple spying scandals and ongoing attacks against its neighbors. During this same period, Apple has ramped up its recruitment of former Israeli intelligence personnel.
The Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of former agents from the controversial Israeli intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, raising questions about the corporation’s political direction.
Nir Shkedi is among the most prominent examples. From 2008 to 2015, he served as a commander and Chief of Learning at Unit 8200, leading a team of approximately 120 operatives who developed new artificial intelligence tools to perform rapid data analysis.
Unit 8200 is at the forefront of this technology, and is known to have used AI to auto-generate kill lists of tens of thousands of Gazans, including children. These tools helped the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bypass what it called human targeting, “bottlenecks,” and strike huge numbers of Palestinians.
Shkedi has been a physical design engineer at Apple’s Bay Area campus since 2022.
Noa Goor is another senior Unit 8200 figure turned Apple employee. From 2015 to 2020, Goor rose to become a project manager and head of cybersecurity and big data development team at Unit 8200, where she, in her own words, “invent[ed] creative technological solutions for high priority intelligence goals” and “manag[ed] two strategically important cyber projects” for the IDF.
One of the most important cyber projects Unit 8200 has launched in recent times is the September pager attack on Lebanon, an act that injured thousands of civilians and was widely condemned as an act of international terrorism, including by former CIA Director Leon Panetta. While Goor was not personally involved in that operation, Unit 8200 has spearheaded similarly nefarious actions for decades.
In 2022, Goor was hired by Apple as a system-on-chip design engineer.
Eli Yazovitsky, meanwhile, was directly recruited from Unit 8200. In 2015, he left a high-powered nine-year career as a manager in the military unit to join Apple, where he rose to become an engineering manager. He has since moved on to tech giant Qualcomm.
Unit 8200 is Israel’s most elite—and most controversial—military intelligence unit. It serves as the backbone of both Israel’s burgeoning tech sector and its repressive surveillance apparatus. The unit has developed cutting-edge technology like facial recognition and voice-to-text software to surveil, repress, and target Palestinians.
The vast amounts of data gathered on the Palestinian population, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, have been used for coercion and extortion. If a certain individual needed to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission could be suspended until they complied. Information about extramarital affairs or sexual orientation, especially homosexuality, is exploited as blackmail material. One former Unit 8200 agent recalled that he was instructed during his training to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in intercepted conversations.
Internationally, Unit 8200 may be best known for its “former” agents who created the notorious Pegasus software, used by repressive governments around the world to spy on tens of thousands of prominent figures, including royals, heads of state, activists, and journalists.
Among them was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi operatives in Türkiye in 2018.
While military service is mandatory for Jewish Israelis, few end up in Unit 8200 by accident. Described as “Israel’s Harvard,” parents spend fortunes on STEM-based extracurricular lessons for their children in the hopes that they will be selected to join the IDF’s most elite and selective unit. Those chosen are rewarded with lucrative careers in the tech industry upon completion of their service.
Given Unit 8200’s documented history of violence, espionage, and surveillance, both domestically and internationally, it is worth asking whether tech giants should be hiring its alumni in such large numbers.
Shkedi, Goor, and Yazovitsky are the most high-profile examples, but they are from alone. A closer look reveals that dozens of other Unit 8200 veterans have also secured key roles at Apple.
Engineering and Hardware Design:
Natanel Nissan, formerly head of data analysis at Unit 8200, joined Apple’s Tel Aviv office in 2022. Ofek Har-Even, a longtime officer and manager in the unit, has been a design verification engineer at Apple since 2022. Gal Sharon, a former intelligence systems operator and data analyst, has also worked as a physical design engineer since that same year.
Mayan Hochler and Shai Buzgalo, both former Unit 8200 analysts and instructors, hold roles in physical design and validation engineering, respectively.
Software and Cybersecurity:
Ofer Tlusty, who served nearly six years in Unit 8200 as a security and intelligence analyst, has worked as a software engineer at Apple since 2021. Ofek Rafaeli, who served between 2012 and 2016 and rose to project manager during Israel’s 2016 assault on Gaza, became a software engineer at Apple in 2023.
Guy Levy, a former intelligence analyst, now also works as a software engineer.
AI, Machine Learning, and Validation:
Avital Kleiman, a six-year veteran of Unit 8200, is now a machine learning algorithm engineer at Apple. Niv Lev Ari, currently a validation engineer, notes in his LinkedIn profile that he received a letter of commendation from Unit 8200 commander Aviv Kochavi for his work in the unit.
Other Technical Roles:
Shahar Moshe, who worked as an intelligence specialist at Unit 8200 from 2012 to 2015, is now a design verification engineer. Gil Avniel, who spent over five years in the unit, currently serves as a network engineer.
An Apple Rots From the Core
The growing number of former Israeli intelligence operatives working at Apple does not seem to concern the company’s senior management. CEO Tim Cook is known to hold strongly pro-Israel views and has spearheaded the Silicon Valley giant’s collaboration with the Israeli state.
Apple has acquired several Israeli tech firms and now operates three centers in the country, employing around 2,000 people. In 2014, Cook invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the company headquarters in Cupertino, CA, where, in front of the cameras, the two openly embraced. The following year, Cook accepted an invitation from President Reuven Rivlin to visit Israel. “It is a great privilege to host you and your team here,” Rivlin said, “Even for me, as one who prefers to write with a pen and paper, it is clear what a great miracle you have created when I look at my staff, and my grandchildren.”
Effusive praise for the Apple CEO has also come in the form of honors from pro-Israel organizations. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League presented Cook with its inaugural Courage Against Hate Award at its Never Is Now Summit on anti-Semitism and Hate, where the organization described him as a “visionary leader in the business community.”
In the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks, Cook sent out a company-wide email expressing his solidarity with Israel. “Like so many of you, I am devastated by the horrific attacks in Israel and the tragic reports coming out of the region,” he wrote, My heart goes out to the victims, those who have lost loved ones, and all of the innocent people who are suffering as a result of this violence.”
Yet, according to Apples4Ceasefire—a group of former and current employees opposing Israeli actions in Gaza—he has yet to say anything publicly about the mass devastation caused by the Israeli response to October 7.
Indeed, the Silicon Valley corporation has a policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF, which raises money to buy equipment for IDF soldiers, and the Jewish National Fund, an organization that participates in the theft and destruction of Palestinian land.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple employees have been disciplined or even fired for wearing pins, bracelets, or keffiyehs in support of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, groups such as Apples4Ceasefire continue to speak out about what they describe as Apple’s complicity in genocide.
The Unit 8200 Tech Takeover
To be fair, Apple is far from the only tech or media company to hire large numbers of former Unit 8200 operatives. A 2022 MintPress exposé revealed hundreds of Israeli intelligence veterans working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Perhaps the most notable of these is Emi Palmor, a former Israeli justice ministry official who sits on Facebook’s 21-person Oversight Board. Described by Mark Zuckerberg as his platform’s “supreme court,” the board ultimately decides what content is allowed or removed from the world’s largest social network. Facebook has worked closely with the Israeli government to censor or deplatform Palestinian content and accounts.
Even TikTok, often seen as a more open platform, has been hiring former Israeli spies to help manage its operations, according to a November investigation by MintPress. Reut Medalion, for example, served as a Unit 8200 intelligence commander and led its cybersecurity operations team.
In December 2023, during the peak of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Medalion moved to New York City to accept a job as global incident manager for TikTok’s trust and safety division. Considering the events going on in the world at the time, it’s worth asking what sorts of “global incidents” she was brought in to manage.
After MintPress exposed Medalion’s past to a worldwide audience, she deleted her entire digital footprint from the internet.
Former Israeli intelligence operatives have also found their way into American newsrooms, shaping coverage of the Middle East. A recent MintPress investigation uncovered a network of former Unit 8200 operatives working in some of the most influential newsrooms in the United States.
Among them is Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, whose Middle Eastern coverage won him the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award. Until at least 2023, Ravid was a member of Unit 8200. CNN has also hired at least two former agents to produce their news coverage, one of whom, Tal Heinrich, now serves as the official spokesperson for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Given this pattern, Silicon Valley’s partiality towards Israel should not come as no surprise. From tech giants like Google and Amazon to social media powerhouses like TikTok and Facebook, the field is filled with former Israeli spies. Apple is no exception, having hired dozens, if not more, Unit 8200 operatives to run its platforms and shape the company.
This investigation does not claim that the Israeli state is deliberately infiltrating Silicon Valley. However, what it does unquestionably suggest is that the outlook and general biases of these entities are strongly pro-Israel. What does it say about Silicon Valley’s culture that individuals with well-documented ties to a controversial foreign spy agency are considered ideal hires?
It is unthinkable that former intelligence agents of Hezbollah, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, or Russia’s FSB or GRU would be hired en masse, and trusted with our most sensitive data. Yet, when it comes to Israel (or U.S.surveillanceagencies), the answer is different. Many of these employees are not even “former” agents, and are directly recruited from Unit 8200 while still in active service, despite Israeli law explicitly prohibiting the group’s members from identifying themselves or divulging their alliances.
Thus, in this light, it appears that those like Apples4Ceasefire struggling to end the company’s double standards are fighting an uphill battle.
The odious idea of a camp within a camp. The Gaza Strip, with an even greater concentration of Palestinian civilian life within an ever-shrinking stretch of territory. These are the proposals ventured by the Israeli government even as the official Palestinian death toll marches upwards to 60,000. They envisage the placement of some 600,000 displaced and houseless beings currently living in tents in the area of al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coast in a creepily termed “humanitarian city”. This would be the prelude for an ultimate relocation of the strip’s entire population of over 2 million in an area that will become an even smaller prison than the Strip already is.
The preparation for such a forced removal – yet another among so many Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians – is in full swing. The analysis of satellite imagery from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) by Al Jazeera’s Sanad investigations unit found that approximately 12,800 buildings were demolished in Rafah between early April and early July alone. In the Knesset on May 11 this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave words to those deeds: “We are demolishing more and more [of their] homes, they have nowhere to return to. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.”
Camps of concentrated human life – concentration camps, in other words – are often given a different dressing to what they are meant to be. Authoritarian states enjoy using them to re-educate and reform the inmates even as they gradually kill them. Indeed, the proposals from the Israel’s Defense Department carry with them plans for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” where Gazans would “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate, and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
The emetic candy floss of “humanitarian” in the context of a camp is a self-negating nonsense similar to other experiments in cruelty: the relocation of Boer civilians during the colonial wars waged by Britain to camps which saw dysentery and starvation; the movement of Vietnamese villagers into fortified hamlets to prevent their infiltration by the Vietcong in the 1960s; the creation of Pacific concentration camps to detain refugees seeking Australia by boat in what came to be called the “Pacific Solution.”
Those in the business of doing humanitarian deeds were understandably appalled by Israel’s latest plans. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), stated that this would “de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations.” It would certainly “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland.” Self-evidently and sadly, that would be one of the main aims.
A few of Israeli’s former Prime Ministers have ditched the coloured goggles in considering the plans for such a mislabelled city. Yair Lapid, who spent a mere six months in office in 2022, told Israeli Army Radio that it was “a bad idea from every possible perspective – security, political, economic, logistical.” While preferring not to use the term “concentration camp” with regards such a construction, incarcerating individuals by effectively preventing their exit would make such a term appropriate.
Ehud Olmert’s words to The Guardian were even less inclined to varnish the matter. “If they [the Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing.” To create a camp that would effectively “clean” more than half of Gaza of its population could hardly be understood as a plan to save Palestinians. “It is to deport them, to push and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have at least.”
Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg was also full of candour in expressing the view that the plan was “for all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Gaza’s Palestinians, “an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law”. This would also add the burgeoning grounds of illegality already being alleged in this month’s petition by three Israeli reserve soldiers of Israel’s Supreme Court questioning the legality of Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Instancing abundant examples of forced transfer and expulsions of the Palestinian population during its various phases, commentators such as former chief of staff of the IDF, Moshe “Bogy” Ya’alon, are unreserved about how such programs fare before international law. “Evacuating an entire population? Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation, it’s a war crime,” he told journalist Lucy Aharish. “Israel’s soldiers had been sent in “to commit war crimes.”
There is also some resistance from within the IDF, less on humanitarian grounds than practical ones. To even prepare such a plan in the midst of negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and finally resolving the hostage situation was the first telling problem. The other was how the IDF could feasibly undertake what would be a grand jailing experiment while preventing the infiltration of Hamas.
This ghastly push by the Netanyahu government involves an enormous amount of wishful thinking. Ideally, the Palestinians will simply leave. If not, they will live in even more carceral conditions than they faced before October 2023. But to assume that this cartoon strip humanitarianism, papered over a ghoulish program of inflicted suffering, will add to the emptying well of Israeli security, is testament to how utterly desperate, and delusionary, the Israeli PM and his cabinet members have become.
In the wake of recent strikes by Israel and the United States on Iranian cities, military sites and nuclear facilities, a troubling paradox has emerged: actions intended to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may actually be accelerating its pursuit of them and encouraging other countries to follow suit.
The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.
It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.
In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his fellow Holocaust scholars for failing to acknowledge reality.
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Bartov writes. “Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
And resist he did. In November 2023, Bartov wrote another op-ed for The New York Times saying “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”
Apparently he is seeing the proof now and has stopped resisting what’s been clear from the very beginning. And it would seem the editors of the Gray Lady have ceased resisting as well.
In an internal memo obtained by The Intercept last year, New York Times reporters were explicitly told to avoid the use of the word “genocide”, as well as terms like “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory”.
“‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law,” the memo reads. “In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”
Earlier this year the American Friends Service Committee cancelled its paid advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, saying the outlet had wanted them to change the word “genocide” to “war” in order for their ad to be published.
What is significant is that even experts who’ve been resisting acknowledging the reality of the genocide in Gaza because of their bias toward Israel have stopped doing so, and that even the imperial media outlets most fiendishly devoted to running propaganda cover for that genocide have run out of room to hide.
The Israel apologists have lost the argument. They might not know it yet, but they have. Public sentiment has turned irreversibly against them as people’s eyes are opened to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, and more and more propagandists are choosing to rescue what’s left of their tattered credibility instead of going down with the sinking ship.
Truth is slowly beginning to get a word in edgewise.
The day after Donald Trump welcomed indicted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States for the third time in less than six months, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Francesca Albanese for her clear-eyed critiques of Israel’s genocide.
In a July 9 press statement, Rubio charged that Albanese “has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” He alleged that Albanese “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West … including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants” for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
“No comment on mafia style intimidation techniques,” Albanese responded to the sanctions in a text message to Al Jazeera. “Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.” She queried why she had been sanctioned: “for having exposed a genocide? For having denounced the system? They never challenged me on the facts.”
In the height of irony, war criminal Netanyahu nominated serial lawbreaker Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. But it is Albanese who deserves that prize.
“The UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not the U.S. punitive pushback by way of targeted sanctions denying her entry into the country and freezing any American assets she may have,” Richard Falk, who served as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine from 2008 to 2014, told Truthout.
“This was an intimidating attack on Albanese, an unpaid civil servant, for her brave truth-telling and expert knowledge fully in accord with expectations of the job to report periodically to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly,” Falk added. “Her well-documented reports have broken the mainstream silence in the West on Israel’s genocidal assault, carried out before the eyes and ears of the world, shocking many by its transparency and sadism over a period of more than 20 months.She has also exposed shameful patterns of U.S. complicity with Israeli criminality.”
As they dined together in Washington, Netanyahu told Trump he had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination, which Netanyahu sent to the Nobel Committee 10 days after the U.S. bombed nuclear facilities in Iran, rewarded Trump for his unwavering support for the crimes of the Zionist regime in both Palestine and Iran. Trump has continued and increased Joe Biden’s financial, political, and diplomatic assistance to Israel’s (now) 21-month-long genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. Trump also dutifully complied with Netanyahu’s plea to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, dropping several 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Iran. U.S. participation in Israel’s international crimes is patently illegal.
“Anatomy of a Genocide”
On July 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Anatomy of a Genocide” with the UN Human Rights Council. The summary begins, “After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza.” That was one year ago. Not content with destroying Gaza, Israel continues to slaughter, starve, and displace the Palestinian people.
In this report, Albanese thoroughly documents Israel’s commission of genocide which is prohibited by the Genocide Convention. She cites the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) order that Israel prevent and punish genocide and ensure humanitarian aid, which Israel has ignored. Albanese finds that “Israel has strategically invoked the international humanitarian law framework as ‘humanitarian camouflage’ to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza.” Israel, she charges, “appears to represent itself as conducting a ‘proportionate genocide.’” The crime of genocide, Albanese notes, entails “both individual and State responsibility.”
Israel’s actions “have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold,” Albanese continues. “[D]isplacing and erasing the Indigenous Arab presence,” she writes, “has been an inevitable part of the forming of Israel as a ‘Jewish State.’”
Since illegally acquiring Palestinian territory by force in 1967, “Israel has advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination,” the report reads. “Genocide cannot be justified under any circumstances, including purported self-defence.” The ICJ has repeatedly held that Israel, as occupier, does not have a right to self-defense against the occupied Palestinians.
Albanese recommends that UN member states immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel, and investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide under principles of universal jurisdiction.
“Genocide as Colonial Erasure”
On October 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Genocide as Colonial Erasure.” In it, she expands her analysis of Israel’s genocide beyond the July 1 report. She cites the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion of July 2024, finding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, and reaffirming that the unlawfulness of the occupation “vitiates [Israel’s] claims of purported self-defence.” Albanese writes that “the only lawful recourse available to Israel is its unconditional withdrawal from the whole of that territory.”
When this report was filed, at least 90 percent of Palestinians in Gaza had been forcibly displaced, “many more than 10 times,” Albanese writes. Israeli officials and religious leaders “continue to encourage erasure and dispossession of Palestinians, setting new thresholds for acceptable violence against civilians. The Nakba, which has been ongoing since 1948, has been deliberately accelerated.”
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, Minister of Energy Eli Cohen said that “Gaza must remain in ruins for decades to come” and that Israel will not help rebuild its civilian infrastructure. The Israeli army has damaged or destroyed some 90% of the Gaza Strip’s housing stock, as well as destroying most hospitals and all schools and universities, as well as water purification plants and other essential infrastructure, leaving over 2 million people to try to live in rubble.
Note that Cohen is a member of the ruling right wing Likud Party headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than being from the extremist Religious Zionism bloc that is in coalition with the Likud. A former accountant and teacher of business at Tel Aviv University, Cohen has been listed among the top 100 most influential Israelis.
Keeping millions of Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, living in ruins for decades is not the sort of goal announced by sane, civilized, ordinary European politicians. At least, not since the 1930s. If a Likud Party stalwart like Cohen openly speaks like this, imagine what the Religious Zionism and Jewish Power cabinet members and members of parliament sound like.
Also on Sunday, the Associated Press reports from an eyewitness, Ramadan Nassar, that some 14 adults brought 20 children to collect water from a distribution point in Nuseirat in central Gaza. As though out of nowhere, an Israeli missile struck them, killing six children and four adults. AP says that the Israeli military alleged that the strike was a technical error. There seem to be a lot of those, since over half of the 58,000 Palestinians Israel has killed since October 2023 have been women and children, and many of the rest were noncombatant men.
Most water in Gaza is not potable, since Israel has deliberately destroyed water purification plants, and ground water is full of bacteria. Watery diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and even death, is common in the Palestinian population of Gaza, including among vulnerable infants and children.
Just as civilized politicians don’t talk about making millions of people live in rubble for decades, civilized militaries don’t have rules of engagement that allow for 20, or 50, or even 100 civilian deaths for every militant targeted.
NATO is refusing to do joint military operations with Israel because of these unacceptable rules of engagement, which would get any NATO officer court-martialed who tried to implement them.
In addition, Palestinian media sources reported that Israeli airstrikes and attacks left 95 people dead on Sunday, 52 of them in Gaza City.
On Monday, UNICEF announced that it recorded 5,800 cases of malnutrition among children in the Gaza Strip during the month of June, as IMEMC reports:
Severe acute malnutrition involves muscle wastage and pencil-like arms, and produces permanent brain damage.
For nearly 630 days, the world has watched the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, primarily by bombing, sniping, and starvation. Off-camera, we’ve read about the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages, including the torturing to death of three doctors from the enclave.
For the last 100 days, Israel has reinforced a full blockade on Gaza, depriving starving Palestinians of food, drinking water, medicines, and fuel – meaning ambulances cannot function. . This is following prior blockades last year, and the overall blockade of the strip, which has lasted over 17 years.
Since late May, we’ve been seeing horrific video footage of skeletal Palestinians lined up hoping for food aid being gunned down by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers.
Israel has endlessly bombed Palestinians, destroyed hospitals and abducted doctors and patients. It has bombed churches, schools, UN centres and tents housing displaced Palestinians – in supposed “safe zones” where they were ordered by the Israeli army to flee to. It has killed over 200 journalists and deliberately targeted medics. To those only paying attention recently, these crimes go back decades, and extend to the Israeli army and illegal colonists’ crimes against Palestinian civilians, including children, in the West Bank. Add to this the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas of Lebanon and Syria over the years, and now Israel’s recent unprovoked bombings of Iran.
Suffice it to say that when Israel came under the barrage of Iranian retaliatory missiles, reports of some 30 Israeli civilians suffering panic attacks garnered little sympathy.
Again, those who have been paying attention for longer than two years would also recall previous Israeli wars on Gaza, like in 2014, when Israelis gathered with drinks and snacks on hillsides to rejoice in the bombing of the enclave, or the 2009 t-shirts celebrating snipers killing pregnant women with the phrase “one shot, two kills”.
In 2010, when writing about a traumatized 10 year old I’d met who could no longer walk normally nor speak after the terror of having Israeli tanks shelling his home, I cited a study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme which stated that “91.4 percent of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTSD.”That was fifteen years and numerous Israeli wars on Gaza ago.
The US-Israeli “humanitarian” death traps
The killing of Palestinians in Gaza didn’t stop when Israel attacked Iran. The most insidious new invention is the recently-created US-Israeli “aid” group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Israeli authorities accuse Hamas of stealing aid, and based on this unproven accusation, have deemed that long-established UN aid agencies could no longer operate in Gaza, insisting instead that a group staffed with armed combat veterans (mercenaries is a better word) is better equipped to ensure that food reaches famished Palestinians.
It is outrageous that in spite of some media coverage, Israel has been allowed to for months (over a year, really) block the entrance of thousands of aid trucks amassed outside of Gaza, only to then dictate that hired gunmen would be in charge of “distributing aid.”
The massive irony and duplicity is that even Israeli and Western media have reported on the actual thieves of aid in Gaza: not Hamas, but an ISIS-linked group under the protection of the Israeli army.
As the independent media outlet The Cradle reported, the group’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, “is a known leader of armed gangs linked to ISIS and involved in looting aid under Israeli protection… Multiple reports, including from Haaretz and The Washington Post, confirm that these gangs have been seen looting in full view of Israeli forces, who neither intervene nor prevent the theft.”
In a subsequent post, The Cradle cited the Israeli Army Radio as reporting: “Israel has transferred weapons to members of the militia…The militia operates mainly in the Rafah area, which the Israeli army has occupied and cleared. The militia’s tasks include preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and fighting Hamas.”
What is apparently happening is that starved Palestinians, after walking many kilometres to the distribution sites, are then corralled into tight enclosures and fired upon by the “aid” mercenaries.
Jonathan Whittall, the Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) described the situation as “conditions created to kill, carnage, weaponized hunger, a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”
In a clip posted on June 23, Whittall said, “Israeli authorities are preventing us from distributing through these systems that we’ve established and that we know work. We could reach every family in Gaza, as we have in the past, but we’re prevented from doing so at every turn.”
More recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed Whittall, saying: “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.. People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.” The UN’s own humanitarian efforts are being “strangled” by Israel, he said, and even the aid workers themselves are starving.
The aid-seeking civilians are reportedly being shot in the head and chest, in what looks more like execution than “warning shots” or “crowd control”.
The victims include an 18-month old girl whose X-ray shows a bullet lodged in her chest. According to Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the girl was shot while in her mother’s arms on the way to a GHF aid point.
As far back as last July, an article in The Lancet warning that the total number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused directly and indirectly by Israeli attacks since October 2023 could reach “up to 186,000 or even more.”Other estimates were even more grim, include that of Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has worked extensively from Gaza over the years, who said the number of those dead or soon to die could be over 500,000.
Fast forward to a recent report by Yaakov Garb of Ben-Gurion University, published via the Harvard Dataverse. It describes the false aid distribution design as, “all adjacent to Israeli military installations… manned by armed combat veterans backed by Israeli soldiers. The design creates a ‘chokepoint’ or ‘fatal funnel’ – a predictable movement path from a single entry to a single exit with no cover or concealment.”
It is the graphic on page five which caught people’s attention. From a population of 2.2 million before the genocide, the graph only accounts for 1.85 million, leaving many asking, where are the remaining 350,000 people? This makes the concerns voiced a year ago more valid.
In his report, Yaakov Garb wrote, “The Israeli military has an obligation, as the occupying power in Gaza, to supply the population with humanitarian relief… If an attacker cannot adequately and neutrally feed a starving population in the wake of a disaster it is ongoingly creating, it is obligated to allow other humanitarian agencies to do so.”
But instead, every day we see new horrors of emaciated Palestinian civilians desperately braving death in hopes of securing food for their families… and being gunned down by the Israeli army and the mercenaries it backs.
It seems, at least, that these actions are finally catching up with Israel, meaning a lack of support for or trust in the state or its representatives, and a global demand for justice for Palestinians.
To cite Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer and former senior UN Human Rights official, who posted recently on X:
“The (Israeli) regime is on trial for genocide. Its leaders are indicted for crimes against humanity. Israel is isolated. The regime is now almost universally despised, just as the Nazi and apartheid regimes were despised. People across the world stand overwhelmingly with Palestine. You don’t come back from apartheid & genocide.”
Part of tens of billions in US aid to Israel, the projects include multi-year tenders for hangars, fuel stations, and ammunition sites.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is constructing new military infrastructure for Israel across several bases, including airfields, hangars, and ammunition depots, according to public records reported by Haaretz on 8 July.
The current projects total more than $250 million, with future ones expected to exceed $1 billion, based on a call for interested contractors originally scheduled for June but postponed due to Israel’s war against Iran.
The Israeli news site Haaretz reported on the public documents on Monday.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is using contractors to build ammunition depots, refuelling stations, and concrete structures for Israeli military bases. The documents also show that the US is seeking contractors for building maintenance and repairs, including work on airfields.
One project for hangars, maintenance rooms, and storage facilities for new Boeing KC-46 tankers that Israel is expected to receive in the coming years is projected to cost over $100 million. Another facility to house CH-53K helicopters is expected to cost up to $250 million.
The US is also soliciting bids for ammunition storage buildings, estimated at up to $100 million. A separate seven-year tender, capped at $900 million, covers maintenance, repairs, construction, demolition, and infrastructure upgrades at unspecified sites for the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
These projects are funded through foreign military financing. Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in military aid, under a system that allows the US and Israel to determine how to spend the funds, which are routed to US defense contractors.
Since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Washington has also provided supplemental military aid totalling around $18 billion.
The US has previously used military aid for Israeli infrastructure. In 2012, public tender documents showed large-scale US-funded works at Nevatim air base. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the US had constructed a secret facility there, known as site “911.”
The construction projects detailed on Monday were planned before the June 2025 Israeli attack on Iran. On 2 July, Reuters cited an Israeli official confirming that Iranian ballistic missiles struck several Israeli military sites during the 12-day exchange.
Earlier in June, Washington approved a $510 million arms deal for Israel, adding over 7,000 JDAM kits and support services to the growing list of weapons transfers in 2025.
That package formed part of a broader escalation in US military support, which by mid-year had surpassed $9 billion. Tel Aviv reported receiving more than 90,000 tons of US weapons in 600 days – deliveries Netanyahu credited to Trump as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Around the same time, the Pentagon halted multiple arms shipments to Ukraine, despite internal reviews showing no critical shortage.
The decision followed concerns over stockpile depletion after the US assisted Israel in intercepting Iranian missiles. Senior officials have since pushed for a shift in US military focus toward the Pacific.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a camp to concentrate the entire civilian population of Gaza on the ruins of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
According to Haaretz, Katz said that once Palestinian civilians are pushed into what he is calling a “humanitarian city,” they will not be allowed to leave. The idea is to first transfer 600,000 civilians from the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast in southern Gaza, followed by the rest of the civilian population.
Katz said that if conditions permit, the “city” could be built during a potential 60-day ceasefire, comments that will make Hamas less likely to agree to a temporary truce. The Israeli defense minister also said that during the ceasefire, Israel will maintain control of the “Morag Corridor,” a strip of land between Rafah and Khan Younis.
Katz also suggested the camp can facilitate the government’s ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing, which it refers to as “voluntary migration,” telling reporters that Israel will implement “the emigration plan, which will happen.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has previously said that the goal of Israel’s current military operation, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots, is to create a concentration camp south of the Morag Corridor and pressure the civilians forced into it to leave.
“The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places,” Smotrich said in May.
Katz’s comments come after Reuters reported that the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) had proposed to the US government the idea of creating camps it called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside Gaza or possibly outside Gaza.
The GHF plan describes the camps as “large-scale” and “voluntary” places where the Palestinian population could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
Katz said Israel is seeking “international partners” to manage the zone and that four aid distribution sites would be set up inside the camp, suggesting the GHF will be involved in the plan. GHF aid sites are secured by American security contractors, who have been credibly accused of using live ammunition and stun grenades to disperse crowds of hungry Palestinian civilians.
The UN has named dozens of multinationals in a report for profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. . Stephanie Tran reports.
A landmark United Nations report has named dozens of multinational corporations that are aiding and profiting from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in war crimes and calling for urgent accountability.
Authored by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the report details the role of weapons manufacturers, tech firms, energy companies and financial institutions in sustaining an “economy of occupation turned genocidal.”
But the list of named companies is just the beginning. Albanese describes the report as “the tip of the iceberg,” noting that more than 1,000 corporate entities were investigated for their involvement in Israel’s war machinery.
Weapons and warfare
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein — whose award-winning book, podcast and film series The Palestine Laboratory exposes how Israel’s occupation has become a global model for repression — told MWM:
“This landmark report goes to the heart of why Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine has lasted so long; the longest in modern times. Far too many corporations and individuals are making money from oppression. I’m honoured that the report frequently cites my work, The Palestine Laboratory, a book, podcast and film series that details how Israel’s occupation is a key model and inspiration for many around the world.”
“Cutting off Israel’s financial lifeline is the only way that this abomination will end.”
Surveillance and Silicon Valley
The UN report devotes substantial attention to the role of Silicon Valley in enabling Israel’s high-tech war.
Palantir Technologies, the U.S. surveillance firm founded by Peter Thiel, expanded its support for the Israeli military after October 2023. The company has provided “automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
In January 2024, Palantir’s board met in Tel Aviv “in solidarity”. In April 2024, CEO Alex Karp dismissed concerns about civilian casualties by stating that Palantir had killed “mostly terrorists.”
Microsoft operates its largest research centre outside the U.S. in Israel, and has been “integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003”. In October 2023, Microsoft’s Azure platform supported the Israeli military’s overloaded cloud systems. According to an Israeli colonel quoted in the report, “cloud tech is a weapon in every sense of the word.”
Amazon and Google, through their $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, provide Israel with core cloud infrastructure for the military and government agencies.
IBM, which has operated in Israel since 1972, has operated the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, “enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel.”
Hewlett-Packard (HP) “has long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel,” supplying technology to the military, prison system, and police.
NSO Group, infamous for its Pegasus spyware, is cited as a textbook case of “spyware diplomacy.” Founded by former Israeli intelligence officers, the company has licensed its tools to repressive governments worldwide and used them to surveil Palestinian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Financing Occupation
The financial industry underpins much of the infrastructure of occupation and genocide. Israeli treasury bonds, underwritten by global banks such as Barclays and BNP Paribas, have provided critical financing to the Israeli government. Asset managers like Blackrock, Vanguard and Allianz’s PIMCO were among more than 400 investors from 36 countries to purchase these bonds.
Blackrock and Vanguard are also among the largest shareholders in Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, and Chevron. Their funds distribute these investments across global markets via ETFs and mutual funds, spreading complicity to millions of unwitting investors.
Energy and resources
Glencore and Drummond Company dominate coal exports to Israel, primarily from Colombia and South Africa. Even after Colombia announced a suspension of coal exports to Israel in 2024, shipments continued through subsidiaries.
Chevron, which supplies over 70% of Israel’s energy, paid $453 million in royalties and taxes to the Israeli government in 2023. The company profits from the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields and owns a stake in the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through occupied Palestinian maritime territory.
BP, the British energy giant, expanded its presence in 2025 with new exploration licences in maritime zones off the Gaza coast, areas Israel occupies in violation of international law.
Machinery
Heavy machinery has long played a role in Israel’s occupation through the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of illegal settlements.
Caterpillar Inc. has supplied the Israeli military with bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure. Since October 2023, Caterpillar equipment has been used to “carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”. In 2025, the company signed another multi-million-dollar contract with Israel.
Heavy machinery producers Volvo and HD Hyundai have also been linked to the destruction of Palestinian property. After October 2023, Israel increased the use of this equipment, levelling entire districts in Gaza, including Rafah and Jabalia. The Israeli military reportedly obscured the logos of the machinery during these operations.
Volvo is also tied to the settlement economy through its joint ownership of Merkavim, a bus manufacturer serving Israeli colonies.
Shipping, Tourism and Logistics
Multinational logistics firms are another key part of the war economy. A.P. Moller–Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, is responsible for transporting weapons parts, military equipment, and raw materials to Israel. Since October 2023, the company has facilitated the continued flow of US-supplied arms.
Tourism platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com are profiting from the settlement project. Booking.com listings in the West Bank have increased from 26 in 2018 to 70 in 2023; Airbnb listings have grown from 139 in 2016 to 350 in 2025. These platforms promote illegal settlements while restricting Palestinian access to land and resources.
Calls for sanctions
Albanese’s report is a damning indictment, not only of Israel’s genocide in Gaza but of the global political and economic architecture that enables it. The evidence it presents leaves no ambiguity, multinational corporations are not peripheral actors but central to the machinery of occupation, apartheid and now genocide.
Albanese urged states to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halt all trade and investment ties with companies implicated in violations of international law, and freeze the assets of individuals and entities facilitating human rights abuses.
She called on the International Criminal Court and national courts to investigate and prosecute corporate executives for their role in war crimes and for laundering the proceeds of genocide.
Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office.
The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this.
This comes as the Trump administration revokes the US visas of British punk rap duo Bob Vylan ahead of a US tour for chanting “Death, death to the IDF” at a concert in the UK. Trump’s sycophantic supporters who spent years complaining that their free speech rights were under assault appear fine with their government deciding what words Americans are allowed to hear in their own country.
This also comes as Trump actively intervenes in the Israeli judicial system to prevent Netanyahu’s corruption trial from moving forward.
The president has repeatedly taken to social media to demand that Israel abandon its corruption case against the prime minister, at one point even implying that the US could cut off arms supplies if his trial isn’t canceled.
“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel,” Trump said. “We are not going to stand for this. We just had a Great Victory with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the helm — And this greatly tarnishes our Victory. LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”
It’s so revealing what the US government is and is not willing to threaten conditioning military supplies on, and what it’s willing to interfere in Israel’s affairs to accomplish.
Ever since the Gaza holocaust began we’ve been hearing lines like “Israel is a sovereign country” and “Israel is a sovereign state that makes its own decisions” when reporters ask why the White House doesn’t leverage arms shipments to demand more humanitarian treatment for civilians in the Gaza Strip. But the president of the United States is willing to leverage those same arms shipments to directly interfere in Israeli legal proceedings which have nothing to do with the US government in order to get Netanyahu out of trouble.
And it would appear that the president’s intervention has been successful; Netanyahu’s corruption trial has since been postponed.
When it comes to committing genocide using American weapons funded by American taxpayers, Israel is a sovereign state upon which the US can exert zero leverage or control. When it comes to meddling in the corruption trial of a man who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, the White House pulls no punches in protecting its favorite genocide monster.
There is no meaningful separation between the US and Israeli governments. They’re two member states in the undeclared empire that sprawls across the entire western world, and Trump and Netanyahu are two of the most depraved and most consequential managers of this empire today.
They are thick as thieves. They are partners in crime.
The Trump administration has approved a new arms deal for Israel that will provide the country with $510 million worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), kits that turn bombs into precision-guided weapons, as the US continues to provide military aid to support the genocidal war in Gaza.
According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the State Department notified Congress of the sale of 3,845 JDAMS for 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs and 3,280 JDAMS for 500-pound MK 82 bombs. The deal also includes US “government and contractor engineering, logistics, and technical support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”
The DSCA said Boeing is the principal contractor for the deal. The notification of the potential deal begins a time period when US lawmakers could potentially block the sale, but there’s little opposition to US military support for Israel within Congress, despite the many war crimes the US is implicated in by providing Israel with weapons.
Fragments of bombs with US-provided JDAM kits have been found at the scene of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have massacred many civilians. In 2023, Human Rights Watch said it identified JDAM fragments that were found in two airstrikes on homes in central Gaza that killed 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women.
It’s unclear at this point how the deal will be financed, but many arms sales to Israel are funded by US military aid, and US assistance to Israel has significantly increased since October 7, 2023. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in that time, US funding has covered an estimated 70% of Israel’s war-related military spending.
In your leader “The war that should have been avoided” (FT View, June 14), you rightly identify the roots of the present Israel-Iran crisis as the “flawed decision in 2018 [by President Donald Trump] to withdraw the US unilaterally” from the so-called JCPOA agreement that corralled Iran’s atomic ambitions.
Iran has been a signatory to the 191-member Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it was open to signature in 1968. This treaty, applying international safeguards, controls the nuclear activities of its signatory states.
Israel, however — which is believed to have as many as 200 nuclear weapons — has always refused to sign the NPT.
Now steps have been taken in the Iranian parliament to withdraw Iran from membership of the NPT. Many in power in Iran feel Israel is being rewarded by the international community for staying outside the NPT regime.
Indeed, the final communiqué of the G7 in Canada on June 17 criticised Iran, which had been attacked by Israel; while Israel, the G7 asserted, had the right to defend itself. Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, was warned it cannot have any. Israel, which has nuclear WMDs, was praised! By taking unilateral military action against Iran and successfully encouraging the US to do the same, Israel undermined the credibility of the international community’s law-based order. This is a very slippery slope.
As the dust settles on the “12 Day War”, it is ever-clearer that the conflict was a crushing defeat for Israel and the US. In retrospect, the Zionist entity’s sole success was a wave of assassinations in the conflict’s first hours. A fawning June 19thFinancial Times report hinted cutting-edge technology drawing together diverse data and intelligence sources was responsible. This raises the obvious question of whether Tel Aviv was assisted in its murderous spree by notorious private spying giant Palantir.
An avowedly pro-Israel tech giant founded by Donald Trump confidante and ardent Zionist Peter Thiel, which reportedly provides artificial intelligence tech supporting Tel Aviv’s genocide in Gaza, Palantir’s tendrils extend typically unseen into almost every conceivable sphere of public and private life across the West. Moreover, the firm – launched with seed funding from CIA venture capital wing In-Q-Tel – has long-played a pivotal but barely acknowledged role in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear research.
The interpretation Palantir was one way or another involved in Israel’s illegal “preemptive” war of aggression against Tehran is amply reinforced by the release of sensitive Israeli documents by Iran’s intelligence ministry. These files indicate the IAEA previously provided Israeli intelligence with the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently assassinated. Additionally, current Association chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, long-running, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials. Subsequent disclosures could expose the IAEA’s dark alliance with Palantir.
‘Fishing Expedition’
In July 2015, the Obama administration inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Tehran. Under its auspices, in return for sanctions relief, the IAEA was granted unimpeded access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, to ensure the Islamic Republic was not developing nuclear weapons. Vast amounts of information on and within the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents were collected along the way. The Association consistently found Iran was stringently adhering to the JCPOA’s terms.
Following Trump’s first inauguration however, the JCPOA began to come apart at the seams. In October 2017, he refused to certify Iran’s compliance with its obligations on bogus grounds, and began threatening to tear up the agreement outright and reimpose sanctions. The next March, then-IAEA director general Yukiya Amano sounded alarm over this prospect, claiming the JCPOA had produced “the world’s most robust [nuclear] verification regime” in Iran, and its cessation would represent a “great loss”. He went on to boast of how Association inspectors:
“Now spend 3,000 calendar days per year on the ground in Iran. We have installed some 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment. We have carried out more than 60 complementary accesses [unannounced inspections] and visited more than 190 buildings…We collect and analyse hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by our sophisticated surveillance cameras…about half of the total number of such images that we collect throughout the world. We collect over one million pieces of open source information each month.”
Amano added IAEA activities in Tehran were “supported by state-of-the-art technology, including data collecting and processing systems.” Unmentioned was that these innovative resources were provided by Palantir. The company’s central role in scrutinizing Iran’s nuclear compliance and intimate handshake with the IAEA was revealed two months later by Bloomberg, mere days before the Trump administration shredded the Agreement and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz effusively praised Palantir’s contribution:
“We have a completely unique and unparalleled intrusive verification regime that was not there before the agreement.”
A tool dubbed Mosaic served as “the analytical core” and “platform of choice” for the IAEA’s verification mission in Iran. The software helped the Association “plan and justify unscheduled probes”, collating and processing data from around 400 million “digital objects” globally, “including social media feeds and satellite photographs.” Mosaic was also charged with examining en-masse documents not only collected by the IAEA, but tens of thousands of sensitive files stolen by Mossad from Tehran.
Bloomberg quoted Ali Vaez, International Crisis Group’s Iran Project director, as expressing concern about Mosaic analysing “dirty” data obtained by Mossad, “which prides itself on deception.” After all, “even a small amount of false information could trigger a flurry of unnecessary snap inspections and derail an agreement that took years to reach.” The broader the terms of Palantir’s work with the IAEA, the more the mission “appears as a fishing expedition,” Vaez fretted, suggesting Iran could become less willing “to open its doors to inspectors.”
Vaez’s comments were eerily prophetic. Recent disclosures of intensive collusion between the IAEA and Zionist entity authorities, and the resultant prospect Association inspections assisted Israeli and US attacks on Tehran, prompted Iranian lawmakers to unanimously pass legislation indefinitely suspending cooperation with the Association on June 25th. It is unlikely IAEA inspectors will ever be permitted to tread on the Islamic Republic’s territory again. But Bloomberg highlighted a number of other anxieties that have only gained in gravity in light of recent events.
‘False Assumption’
For one, the outlet recorded how Palantir’s IAEA role granted the company “access to information that governments don’t,” while questioning whether “an international agency known for its independence” could truly remain neutral and objective given “Thiel’s close personal ties to Trump.” Furthermore, Bloomberg noted the Association’s Palantir-provided “enhanced investigative abilities” had “raised concern that the IAEA may overstep the boundary between nuclear monitoring and intelligence-gathering,” transforming its inspectors into unwitting “potential cyber sleuths.”
Such fears were only exacerbated by Mosaic being based upon Palantir’s highly controversial “predictive-policing software”. For the IAEA, this capability turned “databases of classified information into maps” helping “inspectors visualize ties between the people, places and material involved in nuclear activities” in Tehran. The risk of innocent Iranian civilians being made targets for surveillance, harassment, or even assassination created by erroneous data being fed into and/or pumped out by Mosaic is gargantuan.
Bloomberg quoted a representative of a British company “that advises governments on verification issues” as saying “predictive-analysis” systems were extremely vulnerable to such corruption, “either by accident or design.” He noted, “you will generate a false return if you add a false assumption into the system…[and] end up convincing yourself that shadows are real.” Of course, a dangerous “false assumption” lay at the very core of the IAEA’s inspection mission in Iran – namely, that Tehran was developing nukes in the first place.
The Islamic Republic has for decades consistently denied any suggestion it harbours ambitions to possess nuclear weapons. Her denials were corroborated by a November 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate expressing “high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted” any and all research into nuclear weapons. This assessment remained unchanged for several years, and was reportedly shared by Mossad. As Bloomberg recorded, come May 2018 the IAEA had “certified Iran’s work 10 times.”
In March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Iran had not restarted the nuclear weapons program it halted in 2003. On June 17th, with the 12 Day War well-underway, IAEA chief Grossi declared “we did not have any proof of a systematic effort” by Tehran “to move into a nuclear weapon.” Yet, Israel justified its attacks based on an intelligence dossier that concluded the Islamic Republic had in fact reached the “point of no return” in acquiring nukes.
That dodgy dossier depended in no small part on the findings of a May IAEA report. The document provided no new information – itsdubious charges related “to activities dating back decades” at three sites where purportedly, until the early 2000s, “undeclared nuclear material” was handled. If this report was analysed by Palantir’s “predictive-analysis” systems, it is all but inevitable false results and connections would’ve been created, in turn influencing the Zionist entity’s targets and strategy.
One of the “predictive policing” tools innovated by Palantir guiding Mosaic’s operations is Gotham, which is used by an uncertain number of Western law enforcement agencies. Leaked documents on the resource show it collects an extraordinary volume of data on entire populations – whether they are law-abiding, suspected of having committed a crime, or simply connected to individuals accused of wrongdoing. This includes sex, race, names, contact details, addresses, prior warrants, mugshots, surveillance photos, personal relationships, past and current employers, and identifying features such as tattoos.
In October 2024, a major Norwegian asset manager divested from Palantir due to the company offering “AI-based predictive policing systems”, aiding the Zionist entity’s mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. These systems are designed “to identify individuals who are likely to launch ‘lone wolf terrorist’ attacks, facilitating their arrests preemptively before the strikes that it is projected they would carry out.” Their deployment results in countless Palestinians languishing in Israeli dungeons without charge or trial.
If Mosaic informed the Zionist entity’s strategy during the 12 Day War, that may account for why individuals with no connection whatsoever to Iran’s civilian nuclear program were directly targeted for assassination. This includes Majid Tajan Jari, a prominent professor in the field of AI locally, slain in an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tehran on June 16th. Yet, reliance on faulty or false information collated by Mosaic would simultaneously explain the conflict ending in embarrassing defeat for Israel, and victory for Tehran.
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