Israel seen as likely to attack Iran’s nuclear programme by midyear
Reuters, February 13, 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-israel-seen-as-likely-to-attack-iran-by-midyear/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIweXtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTyVoerHeMoOkbmz2sR-4a0lveMK8ur9BHOtpEZn2L3SWnF0gbx4LTMdwQ_aem_FR1Zy_kD1oyRJKFZoi095Q
U.S. intelligence warns that Israel is likely to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program by midyear, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing multiple intelligence reports.
Such an attack would set back Iran’s nuclear program by weeks or months while escalating tension in the region and risking a wider conflict, according to multiple intelligence reports from the end of the Biden administration and start of the Trump administration, the newspaper reported.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. The White House declined to comment. The Post said the Israeli government, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, told the Post that President Donald Trump “will not permit Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”
“While he prefers negotiating a resolution to American’s long-standing issues with the Iranian regime peacefully, he will not wait indefinitely if Iran isn’t willing to deal, and soon,” Hughes told The Post.
The most comprehensive of the intelligence reports came in early January and was produced by the intelligence directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Post said.
It warned that Israel was likely to attempt an attack on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities.
Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said Israel has determined its bombing of Iran in October degraded Iran’s air defences and left the country exposed to a follow-on assault, said the Post, which did not name the officials.
Iran and Israel engaged in tit-for-tat strikes last year amid wider tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza.
The intelligence reports envisioned two potential strike options that each would involve the United States providing aerial refuelling support and intelligence, the Post said.
Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired on Monday he would prefer to make a deal with Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, saying he also believed Iran would prefer a deal over an armed conflict.
“Everyone thinks Israel, with our help or our approval, will go in and bomb the hell out of them. I would prefer that not happen,” Trump said.
The United States under President Barack Obama and European allies negotiated an agreement with Iran to halt its nuclear program, but Trump in his first term in office, encouraged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, withdrew the United States from the landmark accord and ordered sanctions reimposed on Tehran in 2018.
Iran has since restarted its nuclear program and is enriching uranium, according to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran, Britain, France and Germany have met in Geneva to search for a way to resume nuclear talks, Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Iran’s state TV in January.
As Freed Palestinians Describe Torture, Trump OKs $3 Billion Arms Package for Israel
Like the Biden administration, Trump is claiming an “emergency” in order to bypass Congress.
Common Dreams, Brett Wilkins, 28 Feb 25
As Palestinians released from Israeli imprisonment recount torture and other abuse suffered at the hands of their former captors, the Trump administration on Friday approved a new $3 billion weapons package for Israel.
The new package, reported by Zeteo‘s Prem Thakker, includes nearly $2.716 billion worth of bombs and weapons guidance kits, as well as $295 million in bulldozers. The Trump administration said that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale,” allowing it to bypass Congress, as the Biden administration did on multiple occasions. However, the weapons won’t be delivered until 2026 or 2027.
From October 2023 to October 2024, Israel received a record $17.9 billion worth of U.S. arms as it waged a war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip that left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, or sickened. Israel is facing genocide allegations in an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Reporting on the new package came after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday announced an effort to block four other arms sales totaling $8.56 billion in offensive American weaponry to Israel.
Meanwhile, some of the approximately 1,000 Palestinians released by Israel as part of a prisoner swap described grim stories of abuse by Israeli forces. The former detainees, who were arrested but never charged with any crimes, “have returned visibly malnourished and scarred by the physical and psychological torture they say they faced in Israeli prisons,” according toThe Washington Post. Some returned to what were once their homes to find them destroyed and their relatives killed or wounded by Israeli forces.
Eyas al-Bursh, a doctor volunteering at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when he was captured by Israeli troops, was held in Sde Teiman and the Ofer military prison in the illegally occupied West Bank for 11 months.
“The places where we were held were harsh, sleep was impossible, and we remained handcuffed and blindfolded,” al-Bursh told the Post……………………………………………………………………
Rahdi also said that Mohammed al-Akka, a 44-year-old detainee held with him, died last December. Al-Akka is one of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody, some from suspected torture and, in at least one case, rape with an electric baton. A number of Israeli reservists are being investigated for the alleged gang-rape of a Sde Teiman prisoner. https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-arms-to-israel
Netanyahu’s Quest to Attack Iran’s nuclear facilities with the ‘Mother of all Bombs’
“Mother of all Bombs” into nuclear facilities?
Until recently, Israel lacked “bunker buster” bombs and the capacity to mount
a sustained air attack that would destroy Iran’s entire nuclear program. But
perhaps not anymore.
In January, US military intelligence already assessed that, absent an
agreement, Israel would probably strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, most likely the
Fordow enrichment plant, an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility
20 miles (32 km) from the city of Qom, in the first half of 2025.
By Dan Steinbock, https://www.juancole.com/2025/02/netanyahus-attack-mother.html
The emboldened Netanyahu cabinet is in a war path, again. It is mobilizing to attack Iran and lobbying President Trump into a plan that presumably would use the ‘Mother of All Bombs.
In a press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job” against Iran with the
support of President Trump.
Ever since his rise to power in the late 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has worked toward a war with Iran, presumably to demolish
Tehran’s nuclear facilities but also to ensure its power projection in the region.
Now the emboldened Netanyahu wants to finish the job, decimate Iran’s
nascent nuclear capabilities, undermine Tehran’s future and overthrow its
rulers. After the misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington’s
neoconservative empire-builders are also back, pushing still another forever
war for a “paradigm shift in the Middle East.”
The Israel-Iran scenarios
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discussed with Trump several
possible levels of American backing. According to Israeli observers, there are
now four viable scenarios for an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities,
as seen in the light of US-Israeli relations. Let’s name them.
In the cooperative scenario, the US and Israel cooperate in an attack against
Iran’s nuclear sites, which will be followed by Trump’s ultimatum that Iran must
entirely dismantle its military nuclear program.
In the clash scenario, the Trump administration would build on diplomacy to
seal a nuclear deal. Yet, Israel would attack on its own and thereby undermine
Trump’s efforts causing a bilateral drift between the two countries.
In the investment scenario, Saudi Arabia would offer the US hundreds of
billions of dollars in investment, to avoid a destabilization in the region that
could undermine Riyadh’s 2030 modernization program.
In the solo scenario, Israel attacks Israel’s nuclear facilities without direct US
cooperation, but with the tacit consent of the White House. This would happen
after the Trump administration’s threats and coercive diplomacy against Iran.
Ultimately, US priorities will matter the most. But these can be elusive and
contradictory. Some in the Congress have called for more US military action,
including direct attacks against Iran. Others have echoed the Biden
Administration’s calls for restraint and de-escalation.
Here’s the problem: any escalation with Iran, whether by the US, Israel or
both would likely regionalize the Gaza devastation, which is mis-aligned with
Trumps’ economic and geopolitical goals in the Middle East.
Targeting Iran
Ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when President Carter froze
billions of dollars in Iranian assets, Washington has sought to restore the
status quo ante of the Shah that had made Iran safe to American capitalism.
In the 1980s, US intelligence and logistics played a vital role in arming
Baghdad in the Iran-Iraq War, perhaps the most lethal conventional war
between developing countries yet, with total casualty estimates up to 1 to 2
million. In 1988, the US launched an attack against Iran, presumably in
retaliation for Iran’s laying mines in areas in the Gulf. In the mid-90s, the
Clinton administration declared a total embargo on dealings with Iran.
In 2002, President Bush included Iran in his “Axis of evil” speech.
Subsequently, US and Israel cooperated in training secessionist forces in
Iran’s Kurdistan province. In 2007, US reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to
bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Instead, during the next three years, the US
and Israel deployed the Stuxnet virus, the world’s first offensive cyber
weapon, to destroy almost a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
In 2015, years of challenging talks resulted in a nuclear deal (Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) between Iran, the US and a set of
world powers. Despite Iran’s adherence to it, the Trump administration pulled
the US out of the deal in 2018. As tensions escalated, the Trump
administration assassinated Iran’s most important general, Qasem Soleimani,
in a deadly drone strike in January 2020.
The longstanding quest for Iran War
While the covert war in the shadows has prevailed since the Islamic
Revolution, US regime change efforts moved to a new stage during the Bush
administration. Since 2003, US Army has conducted an analysis called
TIRANNT (Theater Iran Near-Term) for a full-scale war with Iran. Reportedly,
this plan (CONPLAN 8022) would be activated in the eventuality of a Second
9/11, on the presumption that Iran would be behind such a pivotal operation.
That may be one reason why Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan and PM
Netanyahu explicitly compared Hamas’s October 7 offensive to the 9/11 terror
attacks, which sparked the US. global war on terror. Concurrently, many in
Washington sought a pretext for a link with Iran, to legitimize a major regional
conflict. In contrast, the U.S. Directorate of National Intelligence assessed that
Iran had no foreknowledge of or involvement in the October 7 attacks.
For its part, Netanyahu’s government calculated that an Iran conflict could
divert mounting negative public attention from atrocities in Gaza and the West
Bank.
There were precedents. In 2011 Netanyahu had ordered the Mossad and IDF
to prepare for an attack on Iran within 15 days. Yet, Mossad’s chief Tamir
Pardo and chief of staff Benny Gantz, the opposition’s key member in
Netanyahu’s war cabinet, questioned the PM’s legal authority to give such an
order without the cabinet’s approval. Netanyahu had backed off.
A month after the Hamas offensive, Netanyahu’s Mossad chief David Barnea
stated Iran had stepped up terror worldwide.” If Israelis or Jews are harmed,
he added, Israel’s response would go to Tehran’s “highest echelon.”
Using October 7 against Iran
In April 2024, Israel bombed Iranian embassy in Damascus in which 16
people were killed, including the targets, half a dozen high-level officers of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC launched a broad retaliatory attack against Israel and the Israeli-
occupied Golan Heights with successive waves of drones, cruise missiles,
and ballistic missiles. Giving full public notice that its response was on the
way, Tehran designed it carefully as a show of force that would not trigger a
wave of escalation. It caused minimal damage in Israel. However, as Israel
would later acknowledge, despite containment efforts by the US, the UK,
France and Jordan, some of Iran’s ballistic missiles penetrated Israel’s
defenses, hitting the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel.
Iran’s attack targeted Israeli territory as a warning shot. It demonstrated
Tehran’s ability to counteract Israel’s huge air superiority, though lacking a
modern air force of its own. It also highlighted Israel’s dependency on major
Western powers to protect itself and the inadequacy of that protection.
So, how would Israel respond to a conventional “existential crisis” with Iran?
In late 2023, the hypothesis was tested in a high-level US war game.
Intriguingly, initially the US participants presumed that self-restraint would
prevail in this high-level war game. Yet, the simulation’s cold logic compelled
them into a sequence of steps that quickly went nuclear.
“Mother of all Bombs” into nuclear facilities?
Until recently, Israel lacked “bunker buster” bombs and the capacity to mount
a sustained air attack that would destroy Iran’s entire nuclear program. But
perhaps not anymore.
Recently, German newspaper “Bild” revealed that the US envoy to the Middle
East, Steve Witkoff, announced Washington’s intention to deliver one of the
most powerful non-nuclear weapons systems to Israel, known as the “Mother
of All Bombs.” Reportedly, Pentagon denies the story.
Weighing almost 10,000 kg, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast
(MOAB) bomb can destroy deep underground bunkers. The explosive yield is
comparable to that of small tactical nuclear weapons.
In January, US military intelligence already assessed that, absent an
agreement, Israel would probably strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, most likely the
Fordow enrichment plant, an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility
20 miles (32 km) from the city of Qom, in the first half of 2025.
First tested in 2003, the “Mother of All Bombs,” a 30,000-pound (14,000-
kilogram) monster was used for the first time in combat in 2017 in Afghanistan
by the Trump administration, despite the dire collateral damage.
Whether such use of the MOAB would spark a regional war or trigger waves
of new terror and insurgencies in the Middle East is a matter of debate. But it
would mean a potentially catastrophic escalation in the region and reshape
geopolitical landscape in the early 21 st century.
The author of The Fall of Israel (2025), Dr Dan Steinbock is the founder of
Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute
(US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center
(Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/
State Dept. Plans New $7 Billion Arms Sale to Israel
This comes as President Trump talks up an ethnic cleansing plan for the Gaza Strip
by Connor Freeman February 8, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/08/state-dept-plans-new-7-billion-arms-sale-to-israel/
The State Department has formally notified Congress of its plans for a massive arms sale to Israel worth over $7 billion, including thousands of missiles and bombs, the Associated Press reported on Friday. This follows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington DC this week and Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will “own” Gaza after it is ethnically cleansed of its indigenous Palestinian population.
Per the State Department, Congress was notified of two separate sales, one is worth $6.75 billion. This first sale includes 2,800 500-pound bombs and 166 small-diameter bombs, along with thousands of guidance kits, fuses, bomb components, and other equipment. Deliveries of these bombs would begin later this year. The other package, worth $660 million, includes 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment. Deliveries for this second arms sale are expected to take place by 2028. According to the AP, the use of these missiles will require the IDF to receive supplemental training by the US military.
Officials from the Joe Biden administration informally made Congress aware of the sale last month, at the time they said some of the weapons could be sent from current Pentagon stockpiles but most of the arms would take at least a year, or more likely several years, to deliver.
This comes as a fragile ceasefire in Gaza is still holding, despite the IDF killing dozens of Palestinians in Gaza since it was implemented and amid hostage exchanges on both sides. Israeli officials indicate that the increased military aid and arms sales are meant to compel Netanyahu to see the ceasefire deal through to its second and third phases, following the current 42-day truce. Last month, Trump released a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that the previous administration had paused over a dispute regarding the Israeli invasion of Rafah last year.
Earlier this week, Trump asked leaders in Congress to approve another $1 billion arms transfer, financed with US military aid, that includes 4,700 1,000-pound bombs worth over $700 million and $300 million worth of armored bulldozers. The bulldozers are infamously used to carry out violent assaults and home demolitions in the occupied West Bank.
The news of the additional arms sales comes as Trump is talking up his plan for Gaza to be ethnically cleansed before the US takes over the Strip and begins a huge real estate development project there. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the IDF to prepare for the “voluntary departure” of the Palestinians from Gaza in accordance with Trump’s plan. He said the Palestinians should be sent to Western countries like Ireland, Norway, and Spain which have recognized the state of Palestine and been highly critical of Tel Aviv’s genocidal onslaught.
Initially, Trump had insisted that nearly 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza could be sent to Egypt and Jordan but the proposal was sharply rejected by Cairo and Amman along with the Palestinians themselves.
Therefore, in order to pursue this forced displacement plan, the Israelis will have to restart their genocidal campaign in Gaza where, according to a recent study in the British medical journal The Lancet, approximately 70,000 people have been killed as result of Israeli military action.
Scores of American doctors, nurses, and surgeons, who have spent hundreds of weeks combined volunteering in Gaza, wrote in an open letter to the White House last fall that tens of thousands more Palestinians had been starved to death as a result of the US-backed siege and Israel’s consistent blocking of vital humanitarian aid.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on the Conflicts of Interest podcast. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96.
Israel sends missiles to Ukraine – Axios
https://www.rt.com/news/611950-israel-patriot-missiles-ukraine/, 30 Jan 24
Russia had warned against the transfer of Patriot interceptors
About 90 interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems have been sent from Israel to Poland, from where they will be forwarded to Ukraine, Axios has reported, citing three anonymous sources.
After Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retired their US-supplied Patriots in April 2024, Kiev asked for the missiles. Moscow warned West Jerusalem of potential consequences at the time, and the idea seemed to have gone nowhere.
“In recent days,” Axios reported this week, several US Air Force C-17 transport planes ferried the missiles from an airbase in southern Israel to the Polish city of Rzeszow, NATO’s logistics hub for supplying Ukraine.
West Jerusalem informed Moscow of the move and said it was “only returning the Patriot system to the US” rather than supplying weapons to Ukraine, Axios reported, citing an anonymous senior Israeli official. The same official claimed this was the same thing as the US transfer of artillery shells from “emergency storage” in Israel to Ukraine two years ago.
Both the Pentagon and the US European Command declined to give Axios a comment for the story. Russia has not officially addressed the matter as of yet.
According to Axios, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take calls from Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky “for weeks.” The situation changed in late September when Netanyahu needed Zelensky’s permission for Hasidic pilgrims to visit Uman, a town south of Kiev where their movement’s founder, Reb Nachman of Bratslav, is buried. Zelensky refused until Netanyahu approved the Patriot transfer, a Ukrainian official told Axios.
A spokesperson for Netanyahu acknowledged to Axios that a Patriot system has been “returned to the US,” adding that “it is not known to us whether it was delivered to Ukraine.” The spokesperson also denied any connection between the Patriots and the Uman pilgrimage.
The missile delivery is the “most significant” Israeli contribution to Kiev since the Russia-Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. West Jerusalem has long insisted on providing only humanitarian aid to Kiev, out of concern about retaliation from Moscow in Syria, or through supplying Iran with sophisticated weapons, according to media.
Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, warned Israel in July that arming Kiev would “have certain political consequences,” noting that any weapons sent to Ukraine “will eventually be destroyed,” just like the others.
Moscow has reduced its military presence in Syria after President Bashar Assad’s government in Damascus collapsed under an offensive by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants in December. Israel used the upheaval to destroy much of Syria’s military infrastructure and occupy additional territory in the Golan Heights. Earlier this month, Russia concluded a “strategic partnership” agreement with Iran.
Is ‘Israel’ using small nuclear weapons in Gaza and South Lebanon?
Robert Daly, Christopher Busby, Source: Al Mayadeen English, 6 Sep 2024, https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/is–israel–using-small-nuclear-weapons-in-gaza-and-south-le
Dr. Christopher Busby is part a mixed crew of investigative reporters and commentators from Lebanon and some film-makers investigating “Israel’s” use of enriched uranium in strikes on Gaza on Lebanon, and aim to follow up on the strange illnesses that are appearing on the battlefield.
The American Peace Information Council (APIC) and Green Audit (UK) are conducting an investigation of “Israel’s” possible use of small nuclear weapons in Gaza and South Lebanon. Dr. Christopher Busby—Scientific Secretary, European Committee on Radiation Risk; once Member, UK Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters; once Member, UK Ministry of Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board—presents the scientific and social background of the case below.
APIC and Green Audit ask people who drive ambulances down in the South, or live there, to come forward with engine air filters from ambulances driven in bombed areas, samples of long hair (at least 10 cm in length) if they live in bombed areas, and Geiger counter readings and soil samples from bomb craters. Please send these samples and evidence to Al Mayadeen who will forward them to us. One would think that the easiest way to obtain ambulance air filters would be from the Lebanese Red Cross, but its General Secretary, Mr. Georges Kitanneh, refuses to assist this investigation.
‘Israel’ in Gaza: Red Mercury.
Dr. Christopher Busby
In 2021, a scientific report in the prestigious journal Nature confirmed what I had been saying since 2006. “Israel” has, since its attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and those on Gaza in 2008 and 2014, used a new nuclear weapon, one which kills with a high temperature radiation flash and with neutrons. This weapon, which leaves an identification footprint, but no fission products like Caesium-137, we now know was also employed by the USA in Fallujah, Iraq in 2003, and previously in Kosovo also.
The residues, inhalable Uranium aerosol dust, together with the neutron damage to tissues, cause a range of serious and often fatal health effects that puzzle doctors and defy treatment. Without knowing what caused such effects, which often mimic other illnesses or result in fungal infections that kill, doctors are powerless to help and just watch the exposed individuals die.
In the cases of direct exposures to the flash, parts of the body, arms, legs, places that were not behind significant shielding are burned to blackened sticks. The aerosol Uranium dust is inhaled, destroys the lungs through fibrosis, is translocated to the lymphatic system, and later causes cancers, not only lymphomas and leukemias, but pretty much any cancer as a result of localisation of the Uranium particle in the organ, for example the breast, which has extensive lymphatic vessels. If the particle is coughed up and swallowed, it can end up immobilised in the colon and cause cancer there.
Downstream results in exposed populations include genetic effects, unexplained infant mortality, congenital malformations, miscarriages, sex ratio perturbations at birth, and fertility loss, all of which were found in epidemiological studies I helped carry out in Fallujah from 2010-2011.
This is not science fiction or arm-waving. I have acted as an expert witness in two successful legal cases, one in England and one in Australia, where the judge and coroner court concluded that the particles caused colon cancer. I am helping a US DU veteran at the moment in his case against the military. He has a pituitary tumour (the small gland is located behind the nose where the particles lodge).
I began this investigation in 2006 when an article appeared in a Lebanese newspaper reporting that an Israeli bomb crater in Khiam was radioactive. A Dr. Ali Khobeisi had taken a Geiger counter to the crater and found a 20-times background radiation level in the crater relative to nearby. By 2006, I had become something of an alternative authority on Depleted Uranium weapons (DU). I had given evidence to the US Congressional Committee on Veterans Affairs on the effects of DU and Gulf War syndrome, I had visited Iraq and also Kosovo, and I was a member of the UK government Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (DUOB); I had written articles, including for the United Nations, I had given evidence to the Royal Society.
I asked a colleague to go to Lebanon and get samples from the crater, and also an ambulance air filter. When they were analysed, using two separate methods, they showed the presence not of Depleted Uranium, but of Enriched Uranium (EU). Now this is impossible, unless the weapon was made from EU or created EU from neutron irradiation of U-234 and U-238.
To follow the explanation of the problem, you need some science. Natural Uranium, as mined, has three isotopes, U-238 U-234 and U-235. Most of this Uranium by mass is U-238 (99.7%). The 0.3% of U-235 is important for nuclear bombs and nuclear energy and is extracted in various ways to make EU. What is left behind is less radioactive U-238, and this is what is termed Depleted Uranium (DU).
When U-238 decays, it changes into Thorium-234, which rapidly changes into Protoactinium-234 and this turns into Uranium-234. Then you get a long list of progeny, but these do not concern us. All this happens quite quickly, and the process releases some gamma rays which make DU a gamma radiation hazard, contrary to the statements of the military that DU is not a handling hazard. It is. But this is not important in this story.
The main issue here is this. Was the enriched Uranium in the Lebanon bomb a real finding? Could it have been a laboratory error? The answer is No. We used two different laboratories and two different Uranium analysis methods, ICPMS and alpha spectrometry.
What we found was picked up by the reporter Robert Fisk, who put the story into The Independent in October 2006: The Mystery of “Israel’s” Secret Uranium Bomb.
Until we found EU, I had focused on the health effects of DU. Everyone did. But in 2006 I was contacted by an eminent Italian nuclear physicist, Emilio Del Guidice. I met him in London, where he told me that the source of the EU was a new weapon which used Hydrogen or heavy hydrogen, Deuterium dissolved in Uranium and when this warhead, as small as a baseball, was fired at a solid object, the hydrogen suffered Cold Fusion to form Helium with the emission of a powerful gamma ray which cause the U238 to convert to an unstable U-239 which decayed to U-235 and a neutron.
I am not a nuclear physicist, though I have my own ideas about this explanation but at that time I accepted that he knew what he was talking about. At least it explained the source of the enrichment.
In 2008 I was approached by some doctors in Egypt who wondered if the Israelis were bombing Gaza with DU. With some difficulty, I obtained samples from Gaza, again soil samples and an air filter, and analysis showed the presence of EU. In 2010, as part of our study of the congenital malformations in Fallujah, we analysed the hair of the mothers for 52 elements to try and identify the cause of the birth defects. We found EU in the mothers’ hair.
Further support for the existence of an EU-containing or EU-producing weapon came from a study of a Kosovo war Veteran whose mysterious illnesses were investigated thoroughly by some doctors in Liverpool and Manchester. The man’s kidneys contained Enriched Uranium.
Emilio del Guidice had not stood still in this Sherlock Holmes investigation. Together with reporters from Italian TV (Rai News) he had visited the father of Cold Fusion, Prof Martin Fleischmann, whom I had also previously worked with when I was at the University of Kent in 1980. Fleishmann added to the intriguing scientific puzzle, but was unwilling to get involved. It seemed that scientists looking at cold fusion were dying under suspicious circumstances. Fleischmann himself had seemingly been poisoned with something that caused multi-site cancer and passed away on August 3, 2012. A cold fusion colleague developed the same multi-site cancer and didn’t survive.
Del Guidice and the Rai News producer following up the story wrote a book: The Secret of the Three Bullets, published in 2014. It is still in print and contains their side of the story. I am in the book under various names. But a few months before its publication, del Guidice unexpectedly died when alone in his house.
I am told that the Rai News co-author editor of the book, Maurizio Torrealta has gone into hiding after having been posted three real bullets in an envelope.
Fast forward to 2021. The Nature paper gave the results of analyses of 65 samples of soil, sand, cement, and building materials from Gaza. Using gamma spectrometry (where you use the whole sample and look at the identifiable peaks from U-235 and Th-234 = U238) the authors identified some significantly high levels of Enriched Uranium in all the samples, but mostly in the soil samples. The levels of enrichment had become greater than those that we found in our earlier studies. The natural isotope mass ratio in nature (U238/U235) is 138. In Lebanon we found 116. In Gaza 108. The 2021 paper found about 85. Since this was before the recent bombing, this contamination must date to the 2014 Israeli bombing. What should we expect to find now?
In March of this year, I wrote to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the official UN watchdogs for the use of nuclear weapons. My colleague from Fallujah, Dr. Mohamad Al-Darraji also sent my letter under his name. Nothing happened. No reply. He was to organise a Press Conference in Vienna to draw attention to the use of this weapon in Fallujah, and the cover up of the residual high levels of radiation by the Iraqi Ministry of Science. I made a video to be presented at this conference (it is online). But he couldn’t get a venue.
I followed the letter up with a second version in July, demanding that the IAEA respond. I wrote a paper about the issue and submitted it to two journals, putting the pre-print online. It was rejected on the basis that the reviewers didn’t believe the Nature analysis results. Eventually, Al-Darraji got a reply from the IAEA (naturally, I didn’t). The IAEA didn’t believe the Nature results. Nothing to investigate. No problem.
The UK Green Party House of Lords member, Baroness Jenny Jones (who I know) asked a question in UK Parliament. The government said they didn’t have anything to say about it. About the high level of Enriched Uranium in Gaza.
So that’s it. What can we do? “Israel” and the USA (at least) have developed what is almost certainly a mini-neutron bomb. “Israel” is using it in Gaza. And may be using it in Lebanon (again). In fact, there is evidence for the development of such a bomb having been tested as long ago as October 1962, in the final US atmospheric test in the Dominic series in the Pacific. This was the test named “Housatonic” which achieved 9.96Mt yield but reportedly had zero fallout. That means it had no fission primer in the first stage, a necessary requirement for all the hydrogen bombs before it.
The significance of this appears to have been overlooked, but, astonishingly, you can find details on Wikipedia. The UK government put all that stuff under the Official Secrets Act and when I was representing the Test Veterans in the Royal Courts of Justice from 2010 to 2016, I was refused access to these details. The new bomb was successfully detonated just before the Kennedy Kruschev test ban, and just before Kennedy was assassinated. Could there be a link?
I have joined a mixed crew of investigative reporters and commentators from Lebanon and some film-makers to seek out the solution to this conundrum. We aim to follow up on the strange illnesses that are appearing on the battlefield. We aim to look for Enriched Uranium and also neutron activation products like Cobalt-60, Tritium and Carbon-14. In a new development, the laboratories that I used to examine the earlier samples have all suddenly closed their doors. One of them was shut down altogether after the first Gaza analysis. One of them was threatened. But we can do a lot with what we have.
What we want is for people to obtain Geiger Counters to check out the impact sites soon after the explosion, and if it is radioactive to get us samples of dust and dirt. We want women’s hair samples, especially long hair, cut from the nape of the neck, from women who were near or lived in areas that were bombed. You can buy a simple Geiger Counter now for about 60 euros. You can even get a low-resolution portable gamma spectrometer for about 350 euros.
We would like anyone with comments or information to contact us. This is a big deal.
The weapon will certainly be used in future exchanges, and will make local nuclear war possible, since the scary scenarios involving fallout may not materialise. I have named the device Red Mercury because that is what it probably is (remember the red mercury story: written off officially by science (haha) as a fraud, as a phony). Red Mercury was Stalin’s code for Enriched Uranium. Clearly, from the Dominic Housatonic test, the USA also developed the weapon. Since it kills without leaving fission products, it is invisible to the global nuclear explosion detection systems and the IAEA watchdogs.
But there is no doubt the IAEA know about it. Their latest report on Uranium in the Environment completely ignores Enriched Uranium. When I asked one of the report authors why, I was told they were short of money. They only had enough to look at Depleted Uranium. Can you believe this stuff?
‘National scandal’: The BBC’s Gaza cover-up
Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, new research finds.
MARK CURTIS, DECLASSIFIED.UK, 15 January 2025
- Declassified researched the BBC’s online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby.
- “It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”, leading media professor says.
The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Declassified’s new analysis finds.
Our research into the BBC’s written outputs since October 2023 finds the corporation has mainly not reported at all the major ways the UK government has been working with Israel.
It found that the BBC has reported just four times in 15 months that the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza.
Only one BBC report on the subject has been written since December 2023, despite the fact that hundreds of such spy missions have been conducted, almost daily, in aid of Israeli intelligence.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says these flights are solely to aid the rescue of hostages held by Hamas. Only one BBC online report mentions the UK may be providing targeting information to Israel or flying weapons to the country.
None of the articles otherwise raise concerns about the UK being willing to collaborate militarily with Israel at a time it is devastating Gaza.
Omitting the news
When Israel’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, was allowed to attend a British military meeting in London last November, this also went unreported by the BBC in its written outputs.
Halevi’s visit was highly controversial, given he has led Israeli military operations throughout its destruction of Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Our research also finds that the BBC has never reported that the British military has been training Israeli armed forces personnel in the UK during the Gaza war. ……………………………………………………………………………………….
Arms exports
In sharp contrast to other UK government policies concerning Israel, the BBC has published many articles mentioning British arms exports to Israel.
In these reports, the BBC has occasionally cited concerns by human rights groups and MPs about the possible use by Israel of these arms, at the same time as citing pro-Israel figures.
However, article headlines have rarely been critical of these weapons sales.
………………………………………. many headlines are conciliatory towards Israel. These include:
‘Deputy PM: It’s still legal for the UK to sell arms to Israel’
‘UK defends partial Israel arms ban as Netanyahu calls it “shameful”’
‘UK ban on selling arms to Israel would benefit Hamas, says Cameron’
‘Boris Johnson: Shameful to call for UK to end arms sales to Israel’
There are no headlines about the possible use of UK arms by Israel in Gaza, or any directly reflecting the repeated calls by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to halt all UK arms exports and military assistance to Israel.
The prominent legal action against the government for arming Israel brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the Global Legal Action Network and Al-Haq, has been ignored by the BBC. Declassified could find no BBC written coverage of this at all.
The most prominent group challenging British arms exports, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, has been mentioned six times on the BBC website in 15 months.
Declassified has uncovered three other disturbing aspects of Britain’s arming of Israel, none of which appears to have been covered by the BBC.
Voluntary censorship
Neither has the BBC covered the possible role of UK spy agency GCHQ or the army’s special forces, the SAS, in facilitating Israeli military operations.
These are live issues given that GCHQ operates an extensive intelligence operation on Cyprus, from where the RAF planes are flown over Gaza.
GCHQ is known to have aided past Israeli combat operations in Gaza. Yet Declassified could find no reports on the BBC website mentioning GCHQ in the context of Gaza.
Reporting on the SAS was subject by the government to a D-Notice – a voluntary gagging order not to publish ‘sensitive’ information concerning ‘national security’- in October 2023.
It followed reporting by the Mail that an SAS team was positioned on Cyprus, reportedly to help rescue British hostages held by Hamas.
Since then, it appears the entire UK national media, including the BBC, has complied with this. The BBC has no articles covering or speculating on an SAS role in Israel or Gaza.
Unreported collusion
There are other ways in which the British government is in effect colluding with Israel which have gone unreported by the BBC.
Perhaps incredibly, the BBC has not reported in its written outputs since October 2023 that the UK is engaged in negotiations with Israel to secure a free trade agreement.
Conservative and Labour ministers have since 2022 held five rounds of talks with the Israeli government, whose economy minister, Nir Barkat, is an outspoken supporter of its attacks on Palestinians.
Jonathan Reynolds, the current trade minister pursuing the prospective new deal, is a recipient of funding from Britain’s Israel lobby.
Neither has the BBC reported on the arrests by the UK authorities of pro-Palestinian journalists in Britain. ……………………..
Lobby, what lobby?
Neither has any effort been made by BBC journalists to highlight the influence in the UK parliament exercised by the Israel lobby, notably Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).
This is a major gap in reporting since these are among the largest lobbying forces in British politics, funding dozens of MPs to go on “fact-finding” visits to Israel………………………………………………………
‘National scandal’
Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “The BBC is clearly utterly failing to inform the public about how the UK military and government is complicit in the horrors of Gaza. This is a national scandal, showing how far away the corporation is from being a public service broadcaster.”
He added: “The BBC’s failure to accurately report on Israel’s genocide in Gaza is as much to do with what it refuses to report as with what it does report. It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”…………………………………………… more https://www.declassifieduk.org/national-scandal-the-bbcs-gaza-cover-up/
Chris Hedges: The Ceasefire Charade
By Chris Hedges ScheerPost, January 16, 2025 m https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/16/chris-hedges-the-ceasefire-charade/
Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.
If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.
The Israeli cabinet has delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.
The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.” He warned that his cabinet will not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.
The deal includes three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages – 33 Israelis who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses – in exchange for up to 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the 7th day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.
But it is Netanyahu’s office that appears to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire. “In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice,” while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza. Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.
The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even if the Israelis finally accept the agreement, threaten to implode it. Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily. There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable. There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the U.N. agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced. There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1979 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.
Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed. Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps.” There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student. Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s National Security Minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.
Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).
Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel. The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the right to defend itself.
Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children. Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:
the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.
These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defense and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2,251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.
These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were injured. In May 2021, Israel killed over 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.
And then the breaching of the security barriers on Oct. 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison. The attacks by Palestinian gunmen left some 1,200 Israeli dead — including some killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.
This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged – the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This proposed ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.
But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.
Report: Israel and Hamas Agree ‘in Principle’ to Ceasefire and Hostage Deal
According to media reports, the deal on the table doesn’t commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire
by Dave DeCamp January 14, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/14/report-israel-and-hamas-agree-in-principle-to-ceasefire-and-hostage-deal/
CBS News reported Tuesday that both Israel and Hamas have agreed “in principle” to a draft hostage and ceasefire deal that could be finalized this week.
The report, which cited US, Arab, and Israeli officials, said if the final details are worked out and the Israeli government approves it, the deal could be implemented as soon as this weekend, before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
The Associated Press had a similar report that said Hamas had accepted a draft deal and that details were still being finalized before Israeli approval. The deal is largely based on a proposal President Biden put forward in May 2024, which Hamas accepted months ago.
According to Israeli media reports, pressure on Netanyahu from Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is the reason why there’s been progress in recent days.
The deal involves three phases, but according to AP, it would not commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire or full withdrawal from Gaza.
The AP report reads: “Details of the second phase still must be negotiated during the first. Those details remain difficult to resolve — and the deal does not include written guarantees that the ceasefire will continue until a deal is reached. That means Israel could resume its military campaign after the first phase ends.”
According to media reports, the first phase involves a 42-day ceasefire, and during that time, Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages, including women, children, the elderly, and five female IDF soldiers. Some of the hostages released in the first phase may be dead, but Israeli officials said they believe most are still alive. In exchange, Israel is expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
During the first phase, Israeli troops will withdraw from population centers in Gaza, and Palestinians will be able to return to north Gaza, although there is nothing for them to return to since IDF has destroyed nearly every building in sight. Aid deliveries will also be surged, with 600 trucks per day expected to enter the Strip.
The second phase of the deal would involve the release of all male Israeli hostages from Gaza and a full IDF withdrawal, with many details still needing to be worked out. The third phase would involve the exchange of bodies and the start of the reconstruction of Gaza.
Report: Israel Refusing To Commit to a Permanent Gaza Ceasefire as Part of Hostage Deal
According to Haaretz, Israel’s position is one of the main disputes in the current negotiations
ANTIWAR.com by Dave DeCamp January 12, 2025
One of the main disputes in the ongoing Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations in Qatar is Israel’s refusal to commit to ending the war after a potential deal’s second phase, Haaretz reported on Sunday.
A permanent ceasefire has been one of Hamas’s main demands, and the report said the Palestinian group wants the genocidal war to end after the second phase of the deal.
Instead of committing to a permanent ceasefire, the report said there will be an attempt to present a US commitment to “work with Israel towards ending the war.” That would mean the deal would hinge on a US promise to pressure Israel to end military operations in Gaza, and there would be no actual commitment from Israel.
The Haaretz report comes as US officials are insisting that a deal is “very close.” Hamas officials have also told the media that negotiations have been moving in a positive direction and that they were waiting for the Israeli officials Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent to Qatar to approve their latest draft proposal.
Officials from the incoming Trump administration are also saying that a deal could happen soon, including Steve Witkoff, who will serve as Trump’s envoy to the Middle East and has been involved in the latest negotiations.
Trump himself has repeatedly threatened there would be “hell to pay” if Hamas didn’t start releasing Israeli hostages by his inauguration. Vice President-elect JD Vance elaborated on what that might mean in an interview on Sunday.………………………………… more https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/12/report-israel-refusing-to-commit-to-a-permanent-gaza-ceasefire-as-part-of-hostage-deal/
The UK military’s secret visits to Israel
Top British officers have made at least five unpublicised trips to Tel Aviv to meet Israeli officials, one to discuss ‘future operations’ in the Middle East.
MARK CURTIS, 9 January 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uk-militarys-secret-visits-to-israel/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=What+you+might+have+missed
The most senior figures in the UK military made at least five unpublicised visits to Israel in the months after it began striking Gaza in October 2023, Declassified has found.
British government data shows that Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff and the UK’s top soldier, visited Israel on 21 January 2024.
On the trip he met the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, “to discuss future operations in the region”.
By then, Israel had already killed around 25,000 Palestinians, as international condemnation mounted.
This was Radakin’s second known visit to Israel, after he accompanied then defence secretary Grant Shapps on an official trip in December 2023. Shapps’ visit was disclosed at the time by the British government.
Radakin is also known to have visited Halevi again in Israel in August last year, while in November the Israeli soldier was invited by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to attend a meeting in London.
Halevi was given special immunity by the UK authorities to avoid the possibility of being arrested for war crimes while in Britain.
Another senior UK figure who has visited Israel is the head of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, who undertook a trip on 9 January 2024, for purposes which are undeclared in the government data.
The RAF has since flown hundreds of spy missions over Gaza, in aid of Israeli intelligence. The UK says that only information related to Hamas hostage-taking is passed to Israel from these flights, which take off from the UK’s sprawling military and intelligence base on Cyprus.
‘UK-Israel bilateral’
James Hockenhull, the head of Strategic Command – the UK military’s senior leadership body – also quietly visited Tel Aviv for a “UK-Israel bilateral” on 28 December 2023.
This was one day before the South African government filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Six weeks later, on 13 February 2024, Hockenhull hosted an Israeli general, Eliezer Toledano, in London, in a further unpublicised visit.
Toledano serves as the head of the Israeli military’s Strategy and Third-Circle Directorate, which focuses on Iran.
Also visiting Israel have been other senior MoD officials, such as General Charles Stickland, the Chief Joint Operations at the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters which is responsible “for the command and integration of UK global operations”.
Stickland visited Israel on 18 March 2024, described in the government documents as “MoD Directed attendance at meetings to be held in Tel Aviv”.
On the same day, Paul Wyatt, the MoD’s Director General for Security Policy, was also “meeting counterparts” in Tel Aviv.
‘Tacit approval’
The unpublicised visits by senior UK figures raise further concerns about the level of military assistance Britain is providing to Israel.
Chris Law, the SNP MP for Dundee Central said: “This new information will only fuel suspicions that successive UK governments have given tacit approval to and are complicit in what many are now considering to be a genocide in Gaza.
“The UK government must be up-front about the full extent of the British armed forces’ involvement in Gaza and detail precisely what support they have given throughout this conflict to the Israeli Defence Forces. This must include details of any further visits by senior military figures to Israel.”
He added: “The UK government may think that it is being clever by withholding this information, but ultimately it will only cede ground to misinformation and encourage guesswork. By detailing the exact involvement of British military figures, the UK government can prove once and for all that they are not complicit in this tragedy.”
In addition to the RAF’s surveillance flights over Gaza, Declassified has also documented British military training of Israeli personnel in the UK, arms supplies to the Israeli military after Britain announced limited sanctions, and the use of UK airspace to send weapons to Israel.
An MoD spokesperson said: “As part of the concerted UK effort, along with allies and partners, to reach a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, senior defence officials have visited Israel for routine diplomatic visits.”
They added: “Discussions included the UK calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the need for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law while recognising Israel’s right to security.”
Lancet Study: Gaza Health Ministry Undercounted Death Toll By 41%
The study doesn’t account for indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege
by Dave DeCamp January 9, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/09/lancet-study-gaza-health-ministry-undercounted-death-toll-by-41/
A new study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has significantly undercounted the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s genocidal war.
The study reviewed the period between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024, and found there were 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in that timeframe. At the end of June 2024, Gaza’s Health Ministry said there were 37,877 dead, an undercount of about 41%.
As of October 2024, the study said the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli military action likely exceeds 70,000. The latest numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll at 46,006.
Explaining the methodology, the study said it used “capture-recapture methods to estimate total deaths from traumatic injury in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024. By combining three data lists—official hospital lists, an MoH survey, and social media obituaries—we provide an estimate of mortality that accounts for under-reporting.”
The study accounts only for deaths caused by violence and not indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and the destruction of medical and other civilian infrastructure.
The figures coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry have been under significant scrutiny from Israeli officials and their supporters in the West. In the early days of the genocidal war, President Biden cast doubt on their accuracy, but a high-level US State Department official later acknowledged the real number of dead was likely higher than what the Health Ministry was reporting.
The number of indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege is unclear but is likely significantly higher than the violent deaths. A letter written by experts and published by The Lancet in July 2024 estimated that if the war ended at that time, the conflict could account for 186,000 deaths, including 37,396 violent deaths (based on June 2024 Health Ministry figures) and indirect deaths.
Ireland formally joins ICJ genocide case against Israel
Ireland is the latest country to join South Africa in attempting to hold Israel accountable at the International Court of Justice in the Hague
News Desk, JAN 7, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/ireland-formally-joins-icj-genocide-case-against-israel
Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.
“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the ICJ said in a statement on 7 January.
Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin announced in December his government would join the ICJ case.
Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response, while the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, described Ireland’s Prime Minister, Simon Harris, as antisemitic.
Harris responded by saying, “You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible. You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People are being left to starve, and humanitarian aid is not flowing.”
US-Palestinian entrepreneur and art curator Faisal Saleh said he has begun efforts to lease the closed Israeli embassy building and convert it into a Palestinian museum.
“This will be a very powerful symbolic move where Palestinian art replaces the genocidal entity representation in Ireland,” Saleh told Anadolu Ajansi on 3 January.
Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, placing the strip under total siege and unleashing a horrific bombing campaign targeting Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters alike.
In December of that year, South Africa filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel, claiming its actions in Gaza were in violation of the Genocide Convention.
Several countries have since joined the case, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, and Turkiye.
In fifteen months of war, Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, while injuring over 105,000.
The campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave, including homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, agricultural land, and water infrastructure, making Gaza largely unlivable.
Israeli soldiers and politicians have declared it their goal to forcibly expel all 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian cities and refugee camps.
Genocide: The New Normal
The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless.
By Chris Hedges ScheerPost January 7, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/07/chris-hedges-genocide-the-new-normal/
Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”
Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.
The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.
The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless. We will not even pay lip service to it. This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation. The genocide in Gaza is the template for the future. And those in the Global South know it.
The “wretched of the earth” who lack sophisticated weapons, who do not have modern armies, artillery units, missiles, navies, armored units and warplanes, will strike back with crude tools. They will match individual acts of terror against massive campaigns of state terror.
Are we surprised we are hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But let’s be clear. We started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from our moral void.
Israel’s frustration at the dogged resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon increases the bloodlust. Members of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee sent a letter to Minister of Defense Israel Katz, calling on the government to intensify the siege of Gaza.
“Effective control of the territory and the population is the only means towards cleansing enemy lines from the strip, and naturally towards decisive victory, rather than treading [water] in a war of attrition, where the side that is most worn is Israel,” they write. “Therefore we end up inserting our soldiers again and again into neighborhoods and alleys that were already conquered by them many times.”
Israel, the letter reads, must carry out “remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)” It should ensure the “elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)” and it must facilitate the “remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege.”
The letter concludes that “after these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, [the] IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests…. This should be done in the northern Gaza Strip, and similarly in any other territory: encirclement, evacuation of the population to a humanitarian zone, and effective siege until surrender or full elimination of the enemy. This is how every army acts, and so must the IDF act.”
In short, exterminate the brutes.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old U.S. military veteran who plowed his pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 14 people and injuring 35 others, spoke to us in the language we use to speak to the Arab world. Indiscriminate death. The targeting of innocents. The callous indifference to life. The thirst for revenge. The demonization of others. The belief that fate or God or western civilization has decreed that we have a right to impose our vision of the world with violence. Jabbar, who posted videos online in which he professed his support for Islamic State, is our murderous doppelgänger. He will not be the last.
“When a society is dispossessed, when the injustices thrust upon it appear insoluble, when the ‘enemy’ is all-powerful, when one’s own people are bestialised as insects, cockroaches, ‘two-legged beasts,’ then the mind moves beyond reason,” Robert Fisk writes in The Great War for Civilization. “It becomes fascinated in two senses: with the idea of an afterlife and with the possibility that this belief will somehow provide a weapon of more than nuclear potential. When the United States was turning Beirut into a NATO base in 1983, and using its firepower against Muslim guerrillas in the mountains to the east, Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Baalbek were promising that God would rid Lebanon of the American presence. I wrote at the time — not entirely with my tongue in my cheek — that this was likely to be a titanic battle: U.S. technology versus God. Who would win? Then on 23 October 1983 a lone suicide bomber drove a truckload of explosives into the U.S. Marine compound at Beirut airport and killed 241 American servicemen in six seconds…I later interviewed one of the few surviving marines to have seen the bomber. ‘All I can remember,’ he told me, ‘is that the guy was smiling.’
These acts of terrorism, or in the case of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen armed resistance, are used to justify endless mass killing. This Via Dolorosa leads to a global death spiral, especially as the climate crisis reconfigures the planet and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, become hollow appendages.
We are sowing the Middle East with dragon’s teeth and, as in the ancient Greek myth, these teeth are rising from the soil as enraged warriors determined to destroy us.
BBC staffers reveal editor’s ‘entire job’ to whitewash Israeli war crimes
News editor Raffi Berg reportedly controls online coverage of genocide in Gaza to ensure Israeli crimes are ‘watered down’ or ignored
News Desk, DEC 28, 2024, https://thecradle.co/articles/bbc-staffers-reveal-editors-entire-job-to-whitewash-israeli-war-crimes
BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.
“This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.
Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.
Another BBC journalist said Berg plays a key role in a broader BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.”
“How much power he has is wild,” said another journalist.
There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff,” another journalist explained.
In one case, Berg downplayed Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Berg chose a headline that stated, “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide,” to describe the Amnesty report and failed to post the story for 12 hours after it was written to suppress its online reach.
The journalists interviewed by Drop Site also noted that the Amnesty report was not covered on the BBC’s flagship news programs—BBC One’s News At One, News At Six, or News At Ten or its flagship current affairs program, BBC Two’s Newsnight.
“Anyone who writes on Gaza or Israel is asked: ‘Has it gone to edpol [editorial policy], lawyers, and has it gone to Raffi?'” another journalist said.
Raffi Berg, who wrote a book praising clandestine Mossad operations, wields great power to influence perceptions of Israel’s war on Gaza because the BBC news website is the most-visited news site on the internet, with over 1.1 billion visits in May alone.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, and flattened large swathes of the besieged enclave.
The pro-Israel bias imposed by Berg is evident in the language used to cover the war.
While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” wrote Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent.
In another case, the BBC published a story with a headline that hid Israel’s responsibility for killing an entire family in a missile strike.
“Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast,” the headline stated.
Drop Site notes that when the BBC does mention Israel as the perpetrator, it uses the caveat “reportedly.”
The BBC also uses euphemisms preferred by the Israeli army to hide its soldiers’ war crimes. For example, the BBC describes the forcible transfer or ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians as “evacuations.”
In one case, the BBC described Israel’s total siege on Gaza with a headline stating, “Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas.”
Defense minister Yoav Gallant’s public vow to impose a “full siege” on Gaza while calling Palestinians “human animals” received just one mention in any BBC online content.
The journalists speaking with Drop Site said they made specific requests to BBC management to balance its coverage, but their requests have been ignored.
“Many of us have raised concerns that Raffi has the power to reframe every story, and we are ignored,” one journalist said.
“Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one stated. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [BBC management] just ignore it.”
The journalist said they demanded that stories should “emphasize that Israel had not granted the BBC access to Gaza, that the network should end the practice of presenting the official Israeli versions of events as fact, and that the BBC should do more to offer context about Israeli occupation and the fact that Gaza is overwhelmingly populated by descendants of refugees forcibly driven from their homes beginning in 1948.”
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