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How Israeli-Linked Operatives and Firms Are Embedded in U.S. Cyber Systems.

 December 5, 2025 , By: Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/05/how-israeli-linked-operatives-and-firms-are-embedded-in-u-s-cyber-systems/

The Substack report, “Former Israeli Spies Now Overseeing US Government Cybersecurity” by Nate Bear (¡Do Not Panic!), is well worth reading. It uncovers that a firm with deep roots in Israeli military intelligence is now managing critical cybersecurity infrastructure for more than 70 U.S. federal agencies — including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture and Health.

The company, Axonius, was founded by former operatives from Israel’s intelligence unit Unit 8200. Its platform centralizes data from all IT tools used by agencies — giving “visibility and control over all types and number of devices.” This means administrators in Tel Aviv can theoretically track device usage, logins, website access, and can even disable devices or accounts for millions of U.S. federal employees.

While Axonius pitches itself as a tool to unify and strengthen federal cybersecurity, the investigation argues that the massive scale of its deployment — combined with its leadership’s intelligence background — raises serious national security and privacy concerns.

Because much of the company’s engineering and software development is run out of Tel Aviv — and many of its employees are former Israeli spies — critics say the United States has, in effect, outsourced federal level cybersecurity to a foreign intelligence‑linked firm.

Whether Axonius has acted, or plans to act, maliciously remains unclear. But the story highlights how deeply embedded Israeli‑linked cyber intelligence infrastructure may now be across U.S. government systems — something many see as a troubling precedent.

While dystopian in nature, it is a must-read and a must-deal-with report, as we have been exposing what is happening in Gaza. The relentless nature of Israeli surveillance is an unbearable nightmare. You should also read Gaza journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish’s 16-month investigation — “Watched, Tracked, and Targeted in Gaza” — into what is happening in Gaza now, focusing on the surveillance state. Both are must-reads.

This is not a new development. Obviously, thanks to the work of these journalists, I was inspired and did a basic search to find out about the relationship between Israel and United States spy connections, and I found this from 12 years ago, with The Guardian reporting: “The National Security Agency (NSA) has a secret agreement with the Israeli intelligence agency Israeli Sigint National Unit (ISNU) — established in principle in March 2009 — that allows the NSA to share raw, unfiltered intercepted communications with Israel,” and “The sharing of raw, pre‑minimization intelligence contradicts previous government assurances of ‘robust safeguards’ to protect Americans’ privacy.”

So needless to say, this isn’t the first — or the last — time these countries have worked together. What’s striking is how public it seems now, and it’s clear their privacy concerns for Americans aren’t what they once were.

However, as we will see, the relationship is also riddled with a double‑dealing, spy‑vs‑spy aspect that bears remembering. This is also covered in Nate’s Substack report and in a clip below with former CIA agent John Kiriakou, both discussing the distrust Mossad has for our intelligence agencies — and the ongoing issue of stealing technology and spying on the United States.

That distrust has played out a number of times, with Israel being accused or caught spying on the United States. One time was during the Obama Iran talks, with the Wall Street Journal’s shocking report about Israel spying, quoting a senior U.S. official: “It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy.”

Or being accused of planting devices by the White House in 2019 to spy on Donald Trump, or now just hanging out and having secret meetings — like U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee did when he met convicted spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July of this year.

For those who forget Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, he was sentenced to life in prison for stealing classified U.S. material and sharing it with Israel. He served 30 years before being granted parole under President Obama in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020.

But as Kiriakou says in the clip, they don’t trust that we give them the best of our technology. So they work both sides and always in their own interest. After Nate’s report, they might not need to steal it anymore. But based on their pattern already in our history, they won’t stop their spy‑vs‑spy activities.

See below the Kirakou video [on original] for another video about the Mike Huckabee story with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the scandalous—and still unpunished—secret meeting between U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and one of the most notorious Israeli spies, Jonathan Pollard, who handed vast troves of U.S. secrets to his handlers in Tel Aviv and now proudly identifies as an “Israel Firster.”

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Is Quietly Expanding Its Occupation of Gaza Under Cover of “Ceasefire”

For us here in Gaza, this “ceasefire” is a fiction. The bombing has continued as Israel moves its Yellow Line.

By Dalia Abu Ramadan , Truthout, December 4, 2025

I keep asking myself: How can the world believe Israel’s claim that a “ceasefire” is still in place?

The occupation has convinced the world that the bloodshed in Gaza has stopped, while in reality families are still being erased from the civil registry in absolute silence. The world is quiet — perhaps simply because something called a “ceasefire” was announced?

What the world does not see is that, day after day, the Israeli military expands its control inside Gaza. It advances slowly, swallowing a street, a neighborhood, an entire area — quietly redrawing the map while the world celebrates a fabricated calm. The war has not stopped; it has only changed form: from bombing to quiet expansion, from airstrikes to a creeping occupation.

The world also fails to see how Gaza is being flooded with a deceptive illusion of normalcy: sweets, chocolates, and new electronics are allowed in, as if people here crave luxury — while the essentials like meat, eggs, and medicine continue to be blocked.

Imagine that the simplest necessities of life have become rare treasures, and when they do appear, they are sold at outrageous prices. Traders raise prices on essentials like medicines and meat to unbearable levels because the supply is so scarce.

How can the occupation deceive the world so easily? And how can the world swallow this lie while the occupation expands before everyone’s eyes?

The night of November 19, 2025, was one of the hardest nights I have ever lived through. I woke in terror as the explosions shook the ground beneath my body, certain for a moment that the war had returned and the ceasefire had collapsed entirely.

The scene felt identical to the night the second truce ended on March 18, 2025 — those same violent blasts ripping us from our sleep and planting questions in our minds: What is happening? Has the war begun again?

We stepped outside to see what was happening and asked our neighbor, Marwan Al-Namra. He told us, “This isn’t a new war … just a few hours under fire, and then Israel will announce — like always — the return of the ceasefire.”

Although our neighborhood of Al-Rimal itself wasn’t bombed that night, the strikes that hit Al-Zaytoun (two kilometers away) and Al-Shujaiya (five kilometers away) were so close and so powerful that they felt as if they were exploding right behind me. The walls shook violently with every blast……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

So, the question stands: What is the occupation trying to achieve by expanding its borders under the guise of a “ceasefire”?

……………………………………………………………. The picture became even clearer when the Government Media Office announced that the Israeli army had shifted the locations of the yellow markers, extending the zone it controls in eastern Gaza City by an additional 300 meters into the neighborhoods of Al-Shujaiya and Al-Tuffah.

The Israeli occupation never stops —  bombardment, displacement, and full-scale extermination are still occurring, wiping entire families off the civil registry. This is what happened to the Abu Shawish family, erased at dawn on November 22, 2025, as if they were nothing more than numbers added to the ever-growing tally of the dead. What pains me most is the world’s insistence on describing this situation as a “ceasefire” while the bombing, the killing, and the destruction continue without pause.

What kind of ceasefire is this, when the fire never truly stops?

Today, we keep moving forward, even as fear clings to us and the possibility of war returning hangs over every moment. We send my little brother Zaid to school, and my sister Farah is preparing to register at the university after the announcement that Gaza’s universities will soon resume in-person classes instead of online learning.

We are holding onto life with everything we have — even when life itself lets go of us.

Despite the siege, the scarcity, and the constant threat around us, we hold on to our lessons, our dreams, and the hope of a life beyond the rubble. We study, we rebuild, and we push forward, determined to carve out a future from beneath the ruins — simply because we refuse to break. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-is-quietly-expanding-its-occupation-of-gaza-under-cover-of-ceasefire/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=97a3ae2e4e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_04_09_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-97a3ae2e4e-650192793

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, PERSONAL STORIES, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israeli army shells east of Gaza Strip, detonates buildings despite ceasefire.

November 30, 2025 , https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251130-israeli-army-shells-east-of-gaza-strip-detonates-buildings-despite-ceasefire/

The Israeli army carried out airstrikes and home demolitions in the military-controlled yellow zone across the Gaza Strip early Sunday, Anadolu reports.

Israeli aircraft struck several areas in Rafah, while naval vessels fired shells toward the city’s coastline, local sources and witnesses told Anadolu.

Israel’s military vehicles stationed near the Morag Axis, norx`theast of Rafah, conducted sweeping operations and heavy gunfire in the area.

Israeli artillery shelled eastern Khan Younis, and helicopters launched fire on buildings amid home detonations in the area, according to witnesses.

An Israeli airstrike hit east of Al-Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, an Anadolu correspondent said.

In the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli strikes targeted eastern Gaza City, and intense gunfire from Israeli helicopters was reported from eastern Jabalia.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement it signed with the Palestinian group Hamas, having committed nearly 500 violations and killed 354 Palestinians since Oct. 10, according to the Gaza government figures.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed more than 70,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 171,000 people in the over two-year war that has left much of the enclave in ruins.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Microsoft Faces Reckoning for Assisting Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

The tech giant could face legal liability for aiding and abetting “atrocity crimes” in Palestine, legal groups say.

By Mike Ludwig , Truthout, December 3, 2025

head of its annual shareholders meeting on December 5, Microsoft is coming under mounting pressure to reconsider its relationship with the Israeli military, which has used the tech giant’s products to carry out the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

In an open letter to the company released on Tuesday, December 2, an international coalition of legal aid groups said Microsoft and its executives potentially face legal liability for “aiding and abetting … atrocity crimes” committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians.

“Over the last few months, it has become exceedingly clear that Microsoft’s services and technologies have been used to violate Palestinian human rights, and shareholders should be aware of just how much this opens up the company to legal liability,” said Eric Sype, U.S. national organizer at 7amleh–The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, in a statement on December 2.

Microsoft provides “major services” to other Israeli ground, air, and naval forces despite widespread agreement among experts that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to the legal aid groups. The letter lists multiple examples, including Mamram, the Israeli military’s central computing system and “weapons platform” that assisted the assault on Gaza with AI support and cloud services. Microsoft provided “rapid support” to Mamram during the initial months of the genocide to keep systems from crashing, according to the letter.

As Truthout has reported, products provided by Big Tech are so integral to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine that the mass killings and near-total destruction of infrastructure in Gaza are often described as “the first AI-powered genocide.”

By providing technology services to the Israeli government, Microsoft has exposed both the company and its leadership to “wide-ranging criminal and civil legal liability” both internationally and within domestic courts in the United States and European Union, the legal aid groups say.

“The EU dimension is devastatingly critical here — significant infrastructure powering Israel’s military targeting is hosted and processed in Europe, including by Microsoft,” …………………………………………………………………………… https://truthout.org/articles/microsoft-faces-reckoning-for-assisting-israels-genocide-in-gaza/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=19a0adacba-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_03_10_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-0614adc67f-650192793

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

International tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Mondoweiss, By Marianne Dhenin  November 27, 2025

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine held in Barcelona presented striking evidence of Israel’s forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the deliberate destruction of food security in Gaza.

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine convened on November 22 and 23 in Barcelona. The event brought together organizers, human rights advocates, and legal experts and offered a platform for survivors of the ongoing assault on Gaza to present evidence of Israel’s international crimes. After two days of testimony, jurors returned their verdict: Israel, the United States, and other Western powers are guilty of the crimes of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinian people.

“The mass killings, deliberate starvation, systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, environmental devastation, and the targeting of hospitals, shelters, schools, and places of refuge were carried out as a matter of state policy, and with full knowledge of their fatal consequences,” said head juror Ceren Uysal, reading from the verdict as the tribunal closed.

Hosted by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, International People’s Front, and People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty (PCFS), the tribunal offered a quasi-judicial platform for advocates and survivors of Israel’s ongoing genocide to present evidence and legal arguments related to the crimes committed against the Palestinian people. It follows in a tradition of popular forums seeking justice and accountability where institutions have failed to provide it, including previous tribunals on recent crimes in Gaza.

It came as Israel continues to commit violence in Palestine. Israel has violated the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in effect since October 10, 2025, at least 497 times, killing more than 340 people, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. On November 17, the United Nations Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s plan for an international force that he will lead to oversee the continued occupation of Gaza, drawing condemnation from legal experts and rights groups, who argue the plan violates Palestine’s right to self-determination and will fail to protect Palestinians.

Against this backdrop, the International People’s Tribunal repudiated the status quo. It offered striking evidence for Israel’s guilt, particularly for the forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the undermining of their food security. “The strategy of using food as a weapon has been going on for a long time in Palestine and Lebanon, but now it is intensified,” Razan Zuayter, PCFS global co-chairperson, told Mondoweiss. Zuayter also chairs the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), which endorsed the tribunal.

Over the course of the two-day event, more than a dozen witnesses made this case. Farmers testified that Israeli forces had razed their lands, uprooting trees, killing livestock, and blackening the soil. One witness, who testified anonymously for fear of reprisal, described an attack Israeli forces committed on their land in May 2024. “A group of bulldozers and tanks attacked our area and destroyed a set of chicken farms for meat and egg production,” they said. “The stench of death and foul odors spread throughout the place, forcing us to flee.”

Musheir El Farra wept on the stand on November 23, recounting Israeli attacks on his hometown of Khan Younis that killed more than 200 members of his extended family. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/international-tribunal-finds-israel-guilty-of-genocide-ecocide-and-the-forced-starvation-of-the-palestinians-in-gaza/

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

A Ceasefire in Name Only: Gaza’s Prolonged Purgatory

2 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-ceasefire-in-name-only-gazas-prolonged-purgatory/

A ceasefire can be a strange thing. The assumption, generally speaking, is that the parties to it restrain themselves for a period of time, ordering their forces and disciplining their charges from straying. But straying happens, transgressions inevitable. Some are genuine enough: silly misunderstandings, hot headed confusion, a fear that the other side has broken it. Room for error, and a degree of death and injury, is crudely permitted.

In the case of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, transgressions have become the lingua franca of the parties, though Israel remains, by far, the perpetrator par excellence. The latter’s departures from the agreement have been so vicious as to prompt the observation that they are pursuing a mutilated reading of the agreement, essentially a “reduce fire.” The deaths of 347 Palestinians in Gaza since October 10, including 136 children, do not point to cooling restraint.

On October 28, at least 104 Palestinians were slaughtered in a single day. This might have suggested a breach so serious as to suggest a repudiation. Not so, claimed Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani. “Fortunately,” he told a US audience, “I think the main parties – both of them [Israel and Hamas] – are acknowledging that the ceasefire should hold and they should stick to the agreement.”

What is becoming apparent is that the ceasefire has led to a state of affairs where Israeli forces have been permitted enormous latitude in the way it inflicts violence on local Gazans. The UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action, Sofia Calltorp, reveals how Gazan women told her “again and again: there may be a ceasefire, but the war is not over. The attacks are fewer, but the killings continue.” Agnès Callmard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, goes so far as to declare that the ceasefire has created “a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal.” What has in fact happened is a mere reduction of “the scale of [Israel’s] attacks” and the meagre allowance of humanitarian aid into the Strip.

In a briefing note released on November 27, the organisation is adamant that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Expulsions continue, prosecutions of alleged atrocities and war crimes by Israeli forces non-existent. The means to build the crucial infrastructure required to sustain life is being hampered, while unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble and sewage, remain unaddressed.

Structural realities have also intruded. The Israeli Defense Forces remain in control of over 58% of Gaza. According to a clutch of special rapporteurs and experts in the employ of the United Nations, including Francesca Albanese, Ben Saul and Irene Khan, 40 active Israeli sites continue to operate “beyond the agreed withdrawal line, in clear breach of the ceasefire terms.” They also warn that the UN Security Council resolution authorising the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), with Egypt and Israel coordinating border matters alongside a spanking new Palestinian trained police force “risks replicating – if not aggravating – the model of security coordination that has entrenched Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime in the West Bank.”

Humanitarian assistance remains at a painful trickle, an obscene state of affairs given the levelling devastation wrought by the war (85% of water and sanitation facilities were damaged or destroyed; likewise 92% of homes). The charity Oxfam does not spare any details in what is needed: “The most pressing needs include food and healthcare and shelter, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene services (WASH) including menstrual products and waste management services.” While some food and goods have become more available in local markets, they remain prohibitively expensive for Gaza’s residents.

Between October 10 and 21, seventeen international non-government organisations had essential aid shipments for Gaza, including water, food, tents, and medical supplies, blocked, with Israeli authorities claiming they were not authorised to do so. Some 99 requests by international NGOs to deliver aid were rejected, along with six requests from UN agencies. “This includes,” stated Oxfam last month, “agencies that continue to have long-standing INGO registration with Palestinian and Israeli authorities and are legally permitted to operate by the latter while new registration processes are ongoing.”

A system of brutality, practised, insistent, even casual, has been entrenched against those in Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank. The summary execution of two men in Jenin by Israeli soldiers after their surrender was lauded by Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who thought the killings the very thing “expected of them.” Implicit is the suggestion that Palestinians are required to behave in specific, tolerated ways: humbly submit to their apparently generous oppressors, suffer ceaseless purgatorial deprivation and accept a ceasefire in name only.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Outrage after footage of Israeli soldiers executing two Palestinians in Jenin goes viral.

Human rights organizations call the killing of two unarmed Palestinians in Jenin by Israeli soldiers an “extrajudicial execution.”

By Qassam Muaddi  November 28, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/outrage-after-footage-of-israeli-soldiers-executing-two-palestinians-in-jenin-goes-viral/

The killing of two unarmed Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin has provoked international outrage after video footage of the incident went viral on Friday. Credited to the local Palestine TV station, the footage shows two young Palestinian men surrendering to Israeli soldiers and lying on the ground in front of a garage under soldiers’ instructions. They then appear to be directed by the soldiers to go back inside the garage, where one of the troops is seen aiming and shooting at him as he lies on the ground.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the victims as Muntaser Billah Abdallah, 26, and Yousef Asaasah, 37. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing in a statement, calling it “a war crime” and a case of “extrajudicial killing.”

The Israeli army and border police said in a joint statement on Friday that Israeli troops “operated to apprehend wanted individuals” allegedly affiliated with a resistance network in the Jenin area, and that after they exited, “fire was directed toward the suspects.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, under whose jurisdiction the border police operates, voiced his “total support” for the Israeli soldiers in question, asserting that they “acted exactly as expected of them: terrorists must die.”

The footage has drawn widespread condemnation from rights groups, with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem stating that “the execution documented today is the result of an accelerated dehumanization process of Palestinians” and calling on the international community to “put an end to Israel’s impunity.”

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the killings, saying in a statement that “killings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank have been surging, without accountability, even in the rare cases where investigations are announced.”

A pattern of extrajudicial execution

While the latest killing in Jenin was caught on video, Palestinians have remarked that it is not an isolated incident. In 2022, the Palestinian Human Rights Association documented 38 cases of the arbitrary killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces between August 1 and November 4. Yet the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank has sharply risen since October 2023, with at least 1,030 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the past two years in the West Bank.

The killing of the two Palestinians in Jenin comes two days after the Israeli army announced the launch of a new wide-scale military operation in the northern West Bank, which began with a large raid into Tubas. The operation comes almost a year after Israel’s previous “Iron Wall” offensive in the northern West Bank, during which Israeli forces displaced over 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem.

Jenin city and its adjacent refugee camp have been at the center of Israeli military raids since late 2021, as it became the center of Palestinian armed resistance groups such as the Jenin Brigade. After October 2023, Israel launched a protracted military campaign to dismantle them.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | civil liberties, Israel | Leave a comment

UN Condemns ‘Brazen’ Israeli Killing of Surrendering Palestinians in West Bank

A UN official decried the incident as “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

Brad Reed, Nov 28, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-kills-surrendering-palestinians

The United Nations on Friday accused Israeli security forces of carrying out a “brazen” killing of two Palestinian men who were seen surrendering in video footage.

The footage, which was first aired by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation and reposted on X by Drop Site, shows two Palestinian men exiting with their hands raised from a building in the West Bank city of Jenin that had been surrounded by Israeli forces.

The two men then crawled out of the building entrance and knelt down with their hands still raised before apparently being instructed by Israeli forces to go back toward the entrance of the building. The two men did so, and were then shot dead by at least one Israeli officer.

According to France 24, United Nations rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters on Friday that the incident was “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

“We are appalled at the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin,” he emphasized.

Laurence added that UN rights chief Volker Turk was demanding “independent, prompt, and effective investigations into the killings of Palestinians,” and for those involved in the killings to “be held fully to account.”

The Palestinian Authority, which identified the two men killed by Israeli officers as 37-year-old Yussef Ali Asa’sa and 26-year-old Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmud Abdullah, accused Israeli forces of carrying out “brutal” executions that amounted to a “war crime.”

In a joint statement, Israeli police and the military said that the “incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies,” and they claimed that the two men killed were “wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces.”

Despite pledges for a review of the incident, BBC reports that Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already given a thumbs-up to officers’ actions and he responded to footage of the incident by saying, “Terrorists must die.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

How Zionism was sold to the world

Harriet Malinowitz’s new book, “Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara,” reveals how Israeli propaganda and public relations promoted Zionism while concealing Palestinian oppression and dispossession. 

Mondoweiss, By Eleanor J. Bader  November 29, 2025 

There are a number of pressing questions at the heart of Harriet Malinowitz’s newly released book, Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara. “How could what was initially a small group of Eastern European Jewish thinkers and activists convince the Jews of the world to agree that they were all one ‘people’ undergoing one shared threat with one shared path to salvation – as well as a shared imperative to seek it?” she asks. “How could they convince the rest of the world to include them in the family of nations? And how could they convince all involved – including themselves – that their project of liberation was a benign and noble one to which they were entitled, producing no casualties or collateral damage?” 

The answers to these queries are at the crux of Selling Israel, and the book not only systematically examines them, but dives into how hasbara – globally enacted but Israeli government-instigated propaganda and public relations efforts– has been used to boost Zionism, diminish the perception of Palestinian oppression, and promote the fallacy that the 78- year-old country began as a land without people. 

The exhaustively researched work was touted by Publisher’s Weekly as “an impressive and meticulous challenge to established narratives.”

Malinowitz spoke to reporter Eleanor J. Bader about herself, her research, and her findings shortly after the book’s publication.

Malinowitz………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… During my own time on a kibbutz, there were Palestinian men working in the fields not far from the kibbutz members and international volunteers, but when we were all called in for a break in the “breakfast hut,” I saw that they simply kept working. I also met and drank tea with Palestinian merchants in the “shuk,” or Arab market, in Old Jerusalem, so I realized that what I’d been told about everyone in Israel being Jewish was untrue. I was told they were “Israeli Arabs” – without any coherent explanation. This left me completely baffled. Still, I was sure that I must be the one who wasn’t getting something…………………………

……………………….. I read Lenni Brenner’s 1983 book, Zionism in the Age of Dictators, which talked about Zionist complicity with Nazis. That provided another jolt.

I knew just enough to be excited by the first Intifada in 1987. But by the time of the second Intifada in 2002, people had cell phones and I could hear gunfire in Jenin via Democracy Now! on the radio. There were now blogs and listservs which carried information in new ways. But I was still naïve enough to be astounded that Israel refused to let a UN fact-finding team into the area.

This was a real turning point for me……………………………….

…………………………………… when I returned to the U.S., I plunged into research on the history of Palestine and of Zionism and eventually merged those interests with my research on propaganda, already well underway. I soon knew that I wanted to write a book on Zionism and propaganda, but it took me twenty years to complete the project!

Bader: The idea that God promised Israel to the Jews is largely unchallenged. Why is this?

Malinowitz: I think people are afraid to mess with other people’s religious beliefs, particularly where God is concerned. Plus, a lot of people believe the claim! 

Bader: You write that Israelis rarely invoked the Nazi Holocaust before the 1960s because it was felt that the loss of six million Jews seemed like a sign of weakness, as if they’d gone to their deaths “like sheep to the slaughter.”  Yet you also note that the genocide was seen by David Ben-Gurion to be a ‘beneficial disaster.’ Can you elaborate?

Malinowitz: I was shocked by how disparaged survivors of the Holocaust were in the country’s early years, as if they were a stain on Israeli masculinity that had to be expunged. Later, though, there was an ideological shift; the Israeli military reassured the world that they were strong, determined, and capable of fighting back if attacked, but at the same time the Holocaust could be invoked as a reminder of their perpetual victimhood, justifying all their exploits in the name of averting another genocide against the Jewish people.  Similarly, the Holocaust has been used strategically when it serves international fundraising or is needed to garner empathy for Israel as an allegedly beleaguered nation. 

Bader: Zionism was mostly promoted by Ashkenazi Jews who put forward the idea that there is one unified Jewish people. How did that idea spread?

Malinowitz: Zionism started out as an idea hatched by Eastern and Central European Jews, emerging in response to their own dire situation in the late nineteenth century. ………….For me, the claim that Israel represents all Jewish people is a fallacy. I, for one, was never consulted about this!

………………………………………………………………Malinowitz: Doubt can be a powerful weapon. There is a template that was developed by the tobacco industry that Zionists, climate and Holocaust deniers, Armenian genocide deniers, and others have used. The idea is there are competing narratives and both should be equally considered – rather than examining their credibility. This was why it took so long to convince the public that smoking caused cancer – because industry operatives challenged scientific expertise with their own “research,” leaving people thinking that the jury was still out and they might as well go on smoking until there was a clear and present danger. It’s been the same with Nakba denial. If the Zionists didn’t really force the Palestinians out in 1948, then they bear no responsibility for the refugees, right?

Bader: The idea that Israel is essential to Jewish survival has long been accepted as true. Why did alternatives to Zionism fail to gain traction?

…………………………………………………………………….., Zionists pushed the idea of Israel as the only solution t0 antisemitism, the only way Jews could be safe. …

…………………………………………………………………………..https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/how-zionism-was-sold-to-the-world/

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media, resources - print | Leave a comment

Israel is violating all its ceasefire agreements and escalating on all fronts

Israel is using existing ceasefire agreements to establish new realities on the ground, projecting itself as the regional hegemon by launching attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

By Qassam Muaddi and Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau  November 28, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/israel-is-violating-all-its-ceasefire-agreements-and-escalating-on-all-fronts/

The war that Israel allegedly fought on “seven fronts” a year ago is supposed to be over. But Israel is now escalating on all fronts to achieve what it could not during the war, launching strikes and military incursions across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day last Sunday as home demolitions have continued throughout the week; in Lebanon, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Hassan Ali Tabtabai; in the West Bank, the Israeli army has launched a wide-ranging military operation concentrated around the towns and villages of the northern Tubas governorate; and in Syria just this morning, Israel launched missile and artillery strikes in the southern Damascus countryside, killing 13 Syrians.

All of this takes place as Israel is nominally party to two ceasefires, respectively with Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel’s violation of both has become routine and has escalated significantly in recent weeks.

In Gaza, local sources tell Mondoweiss that a new status quo has emerged in which Israel continues to seize the opportunity to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza while claiming its actions are in response to an alleged “violation” on the part of Hamas. Israeli forces have also conducted dozens of demolitions of Palestinian buildings over the week, accompanied by shelling in eastern Gaza City, Rafah, and Khan Younis. Last Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day, and on the Tuesday before that, the Israeli army killed 33 Palestinians in a single night. 

In all cases, the military either claims that Palestinian fighters trapped in Rafah and surrounded by Israeli forces allegedly violated the ceasefire, or it claims that Palestinian fighters approached the yellow line demarcating the area from which Israeli forces had withdrawn since the ceasefire came into effect last October.


But Israeli forces have been shooting at Palestinians near the yellow line indiscriminately, many of them trying to return to their homes in the area. The line remains invisible to most Gaza residents and can only be identified by the yellow concrete blocks Israeli forces have placed across various points, supposedly demarcating the ceasefire withdrawal borders, which effectively cut Gaza in half. The Israeli army also dropped leaflets over Palestinian encampments west of the yellow line, warning them that anyone who approaches the virtual border will expose themselves to danger.

Through these policies, the Israeli army is entrenching Gaza’s de facto division into two areas, one controlled by Hamas and the other controlled by the Israeli army. Even though this state of affairs is supposed to be temporary and linked to the “first phase” of the ceasefire, the deliberate ambiguity of the deal’s terms and the lack of an implementation mechanism make it easy for Israel to declare that Hamas is in violation of the terms — and hence refuse to withdraw further from Gaza. The effect this has had is to force almost all of the Strip’s population into less than half of its already overcrowded territory.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces have launched a wide-scale military operation in the northern West Bank concentrated around the so-called “pentagon of villages” — Tubas, Tammun, Aqaba, Tayasir, and Wadi al-Fara — which the Israeli intelligence establishment considers a “hotbed” of resistance activity. Ostensibly to root out resistance in the Tubas district, local residents told Mondoweiss that the real reason for the military invasion is to thin out the population in the area, laying the groundwork for land confiscation and settlement building.

In Lebanon, the international peacekeeping forces — UNIFIL — reported last week that Israeli forces had committed around 10,000 violations of the ceasefire deal with Lebanon, including 2,500 land incursions and 7,500 airspace violations, since entering into its ceasefire with Hezbollah a year ago in November 2024. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot also reported that the Israeli army has conducted 1,200 land raids into 21 Lebanese villages over the past year.

These violations escalated significantly over recent weeks, culminating in the strike that killed Hezbollah chief of staff Tabtabai on Sunday, who is considered the highest-ranking Hezbollah member to be targeted since the ceasefire began. Following the assassination, Israel put its forces near Lebanon’s border on alert, as Hezbollah officials insinuated the possibility of a response. This series of escalations now threatens to blow up the Lebanon ceasefire.

Using ceasefires to establish realities on the ground

Both ceasefire deals in Lebanon and Gaza were only made possible after long months of mediation, in which Hezbollah and Hamas each eventually accepted terms that allowed Israel to maintain forces in their territories, without any practical guarantees that the ceasefires would be sustainable.

Yet Israel is using these truces to establish new realities on the ground, entrenching its occupation of parts of Gaza and southern Lebanon while asserting its military dominance on the regional stage. This projection of control aims to impose Israel’s vision for a “new Middle East” and a new status quo that recognizes Israel as the uncontested hegemon.

This can be gleaned in Israel’s active escalation in Syria, where Israel has tried to counter the expansion of Turkey’s influence in the country.

Israeli forces continue to position themselves in Syrian territory while conducting land raids in cities such as Quneitra and its surroundings. Last Monday, official Syrian TV reported that Israeli forces “bulldozed extensive farming areas” in the Syrian village of Breiqa in the southern part of the country. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Syrian media outlets reported that Israeli fighter jets flew over several Syrian governorates, and on the following day, an Israeli force invaded the Syrian town of Beit Jinn. When the force was reportedly uncovered, clashes between the Israeli force and Syrians reportedly led to the injury of two Israeli soldiers. According to Syrian state TV, Israeli shelling and strikes led to the killing of 13 Syrians, including at least two children.

Israeli strikes across Syrian territory have continued to become more flagrant over recent weeks, while previous strikes in Damascus in July aimed to strengthen Druze separatist elements in Suwayda. The reality on the ground Israel hopes to create is one of regional fragmentation.

In Gaza, this is manifesting in the recently declared plan to build “alternative safe communities” that would make up a “new Gaza” in the part of the Strip under Israeli control, which appears to have received U.S. backing. Earlier in July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had stated that Israel would create a “humanitarian city” built over the flattened remains of Rafah, which was supposedly meant to house 600,000 Palestinians and would be used as a pathway for Palestinians to “voluntarily migrate” out of Gaza, a plan that was characterized by UN officials and human rights experts as a “concentration camp.” 

In that same month, a Reuters report revealed that the U.S.-run and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — so-called “aid” sites meant to replace the UN’s aid distribution system, but where thousands of Palestinians were gunned down in what were described by Gazans as “death traps” — had drafted plans to create so-called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” meant to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The GHF was itself the “brainchild” of Israeli officials, the New York Times reported last May.

Now that plans for a “new Gaza” have surfaced as part of the Trump-backed ceasefire framework, new reports have begun to emerge that UG Solutions, the U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the GHF, is now recruiting for a new deployment in Gaza to run ten to 15 more aid sites during the ceasefire.

All these developments take place as Israel attempts to continue to advance its goals. In Lebanon and Syria, it is to establish itself as a regional hegemon, and in Gaza, it is to achieve during the ceasefire what it could not achieve during the war — the ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the rubric of “voluntary migration.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Amnesty: So-Called Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide

Juan Cole11/28/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/ceasefire-smokescreen-continued.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Amnesty International concludes that, over a month after a ceasefire was agreed upon in Gaza and all living Israeli hostages were returned, the Israeli authorities continue to pursue the textbook definition of genocide “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Moreover, Israeli leaders continue openly to affirm that this course of action is intentional on their parts.

Dan Steinbock here at Informed Comment recently made a similar argument, calling what the Israelis are doing “ecocide.”

The Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnes Calmard, observed that “Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life, with humanitarian aid still severely restricted.” Amnesty says that the Israeli military continues to occupy on the order of 55% of the Gaza Strip. There has been no move to rehabilitate the farmland that has been deliberately destroyed by the Israelis over two years or rebuild livestock. The Israelis routinely shoot at Palestinian fishing boats, preventing them from harvesting protein from the sea. The report concludes, “Palestinians are left virtually totally deprived of independent access to forms of sustenance.”

Ms. Calmard warned that: “The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”

Amnesty observes that Israeli fighter pilots and troops have killed about 350 people in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire was trumpeted on October 9. Moreover, Israelis are deliberately obstructing the process of rebuilding “life-sustaining infrastructure.” This cruel behavior is also illegal, directly violating “multiple orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to ensure that Palestinians have access to humanitarian supplies.”

Let me just say that Israeli authorities agreed as part of the ceasefire to allow 600 trucks of food and other aid into Gaza daily. It is only allowing in about 200 trucks per day, only a third of what was pledged. As a result, the World Food Program says it is only able to reach about 100,000 households with food parcels and wheat, and even then it can only get them 75% of full rations. Its target is 320,000 households or 1.6 million needy people.

Again, this is me speaking: These limitations are not natural. They are the result of deliberate Israeli policies. Israeli troops at checkpoints are deliberately slow-rolling the entry of aid into Gaza on orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme-right cabinet. They are restricting overall humanitarian throughput, creating “major bottlenecks, including de-prioritization of humanitarian cargo, low offloading rates, scanning capacity, and suspended

December 1, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel is violating ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, and Trump is allowing it

Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss, Thu, 27 Nov 2025 

In recent days, Israel has dramatically escalated its violations of the ceasefire in both Gaza and Lebanon, which have been met with utter silence from the United States. Could this mean a return to the full-scale atrocities of the past two years?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “ceasefire” means: “a suspension of active hostilities.” The so-called “kids’ definition” is: “a temporary stopping of warfare.” That all seems clear enough.

But Israel’s definition differs significantly. They understand “ceasefire” to mean: “they cease, we fire.”

This is not news to Palestinians, Lebanese, or any of Israel’s neighbors. Much like how Israel and its supporters like to say that there was “peace” before October 7, 2023, questions of violence are always defined not by whether there is shooting or bombing but by whether Israelis are getting hit with those bullets and bombs.

When the United States imposed or brokered ceasefires between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, it was well understood by all that Washington would have to keep Israel on a tight leash for the agreements to hold. It was not hard to anticipate that the attention to that task would not be sustainable under Donald Trump.

Recent events have proven that to be true. Israel has never held to either ceasefire, of course. But in recent days, it has dramatically escalated its violations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and these violations have been met with utter silence from the United States.

Are we about to see a return to the full-scale atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon that became so sickeningly familiar these past two years? And why did the U.S. go to the trouble of brokering these ceasefire agreements if they were just going to let Israel destroy them so flagrantly and easily?

Above all, what is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to achieve, as he seems to be calling all the shots, directly or indirectly?

Israel’s aims

Israel’s goals are clear enough: endless war.

After the United Nations Security Council shamefully voted to endorse Donald Trump’s colonialist plan to impose conditions on the Palestinians as the price for stopping Israel’s full-scale genocide in Gaza, Netanyahu reactednot like a leader who had gotten what he wanted, but like a man who just saw a development he needed to prevent.

He said in a series of posts on X:

“Israel extends its hand in peace and prosperity to all of our neighbors” and calls on neighboring countries to “join us in expelling Hamas and its supporters from the region.”

Expulsion of Hamaswas not part ofTrump’s plan or the Security Council’s resolution. Netanyahu obviously added this to prick Hamas, add fuel to his efforts to undermine the Trump plan, and to toss a bone to his right flank.

Israel had never heeded the ceasefire to begin with. More than 340 overwhelmingly non-combatant Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was put in place, and over 15,000 more structures in Gaza have been destroyed, just as flooding, overflowing sewage, rains, and the cold weather of approaching winter start to hit the already battered population.

In just the past few days, though, Israel has killed more than 60 Palestinians in Gaza, a sign of escalation. It is no coincidence that this uptick comes on the heels of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s (MBS) visit to Washington where he once again insisted, much to Trump’s annoyance, that if Donald Trump wanted to see a normalization deal between his kingdom and Israel, there would need to be a clear, committed path to a Palestinian state with a timeline. Whether MBS was sincere about that or not, Netanyahu has no intention of making even the slightest gesture in that direction, and the escalation in Gaza was, at least in part, his response to that part of the Trump-MBS confab.

Israel’s justifications for its attacks on Palestinians are threadbare and reflect how little Washington cares…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.sott.net/article/503226-Israel-is-violating-ceasefires-in-Gaza-and-Lebanon-and-Trump-is-allowing-it

December 1, 2025 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s threat of nukes shows us who is running U.S. foreign policy.

And so what Israel is successfully doing is drawing Trump into a war with Iran which will be on a scale which no military expect could even imagine was possible………………..Worse, will be any scenario where the Israelis or the U.S. can justify using nuclear weapons if the conventional attack doesn’t quite go to plan.

Martin Jay, November 27, 2025, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/11/27/israels-threat-of-nukes-shows-us-who-running-us-foreign-policy/

Isn’t it a failure of both U.S. foreign policy and of Israel that a war with Iran is seen as a solution to America’s failing hegemony?

It is a long-debated subject. Whether it is the U.S. which controls Israel or the other way around. In the 70s, under President Nixon, many analysts firmly believed, despite the JFK assassination, that it was still the U.S. who called the shots and used Israel as a useful tool in the Middle East to keep a rowdy group of Arab states in check and subservient to America’s interests. But it is in recent years where we have to see if Israel has done that effectively and meticulously in America’s interests, given that most analysts agree that Israel and the U.S. are both preparing for war with Iran.

Given that Israel’s main task was to keep the region in order to serve America’s hegemony and its energy needs, one has to ask isn’t it a failure of both U.S. foreign policy and of Israel that a war with Iran is seen as a solution to America’s failing hegemony? And doesn’t this tail wagging the dog scenario show itself in the clear light once and for all?

Recently two startling revelations about Israel’s attacks on Iran in June – otherwise known as the ‘twelve-day war’ have surfaced which should worry Americans as it shows just how far this abusive relationship has become, with Israel playing the role of the spoilt child waving daddy’s pistol as its master. Former CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou and the formidable U.S. academic John Mearsheimer have both confirmed that it was Israel who basically threatened Trump that if he didn’t send ‘bunker buster’ bombs to Iran in a bid to destroy the country’s underground nuclear facilities that they, Israel, would bomb Iran with nuclear weapons. Trump rolled over of course and complied.

But this extraordinary act by Israel illustrates just how far this Nabokov-esque relationship between Lolita and her foster dad has got. To the point that world wars involving nukes is now on the table for any U.S. president who thinks he can play hardball with Israel. The twist to this story is that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites was not at all a success as it has become evident that the Iranians knew it was coming and moved out a lot of the nukes days beforehand. And even the bombing itself didn’t have anywhere near the impact that was expected. It was symbolic more than anything in that it sent a message to the Iranians that such an act was possible under the Trump administration.

In many ways the attack was a gift to the Iranians as it focused their minds and made them aware where they needed to improve their defensive capabilities. It was a test run and they learnt from it.

But for the Americans it certainly couldn’t be called a success.

If it were a success, even the laziest two-bit hack in Washington could arrive at the obvious question, when hostilities kick off again, why are we at war with Iran if we’ve taken out their nuclear capability?

The U.S. has been busy in recent weeks sending naval ships and preparing for air-to-air refuelling of Israel’s jets – crucial in any conflict with Iran given the distance between the two countries – which merely confirms two poignant points. Firstly, that Iran’s response the first time round had significant impact on Israel’s military arsenal (many military sites in Israel were taken out completely, barely mentioned by U.S. media); and secondly that even the U.S. had had its own stocks depleted – which is why a pause quickly came about after the twelve-days was. U.S. and Israel needed to rearm but also prepare themselves for the second phase, while Iran itself has improved its own air defences and reached out to Russia and China for rearming.

And so what Israel is successfully doing is drawing Trump into a war with Iran which will be on a scale which no military expect could even imagine was possible, given that this time around Iran is so much better prepared and that the surprise of using Azerbaijani airspace cannot be repeated. The Israelis don’t have any hit-n-run surprise tactics to rely on, which might lead some analysts to believe that a bigger, broader attack is in the making with the U.S. as a key partner rather than chief supplier. Worse, will be any scenario where the Israelis or the U.S. can justify using nuclear weapons if the conventional attack doesn’t quite go to plan. And all this under the watch of Donald Trump whose entire support base was about stopping ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East. How will he explain to his broader support base that he has nothing to do with U.S. troops being sent to their deaths in Iran, that it is Israel who controls such decisions?

December 1, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Gaza Plan Condemned as ‘Concentration Camps Within a Mass Concentration Camp’

After previous plans by Israel for the mass expulsion of Palestinians, onlookers fear the proposal to house some displaced Palestinians in “compounds” they may not be allowed to leave.

Stephen Prager, Comon Dreams, Nov 26, 2025

A new Trump administration plan to put Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied parts of Gaza into “residential compounds” is raising eyebrows among international observers, who fear it could more closely resemble a system of “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”

Under the current “ceasefire” agreement—which remains technically intact despite hundreds of alleged violations by Israel that have resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians—Israel still occupies the eastern portion of Gaza, an area greater than 50% of the entire strip. The vast majority of the territory’s nearly 2 million inhabitants are crammed onto the other side of the yellow line into an area of roughly 60 square miles—around the size of St Louis, Missouri, or Akron, Ohio.

As Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, explained Monday at a briefing to the UN Security Council: “Two years of fighting has left almost 80% of Gaza’s 250,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Over 1.7 million people remain displaced, many in overcrowded shelters without adequate access to water, food, or medical care.”

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the new US proposal would seek to resettle some of those Palestinians in what the Trump administration calls “Alternative Safe Communities,”on the Israeli-controlled side of the yellow line.

Based on information from US officials and European diplomats, the Timessaid these “model compounds” are envisioned as a housing option “more permanent than tent villages, but still made up of structures meant to be temporary. Each could provide housing for as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people alongside medical clinics and schools.”

The project is being led by Trump official Aryeh Lightstone, who previously served as an aide to Trump’s first envoy to Jerusalem. According to the Times: “His team includes an eclectic, fluctuating group of American diplomats, Israeli magnates and officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the sweeping Washington cost-cutting effort overseen earlier this year by Elon Musk.”

The source of funding for the project remains unclear, though the cost of just one compound is estimated to run into the tens of millions. Meanwhile, the newspaper noted that even if ten of these compounds were constructed, it would be just a fraction of what is needed to provide safety and shelter to all of Gaza’s displaced people. It’s unlikely that the first structures would be complete for months.

While the Times said that “the plan could offer relief for thousands of Palestinians who have endured two years of war,” it also pointed to criticisms that it “could entrench a de facto partition of Gaza into Israeli- and Hamas-controlled zones.” Others raised concerns about whether the people of Gaza will even want to move from their homes after years or decades of resisting Israel’s occupation.

But digging deeper into the report, critics have noted troubling language. For one thing, Israeli officials have the final say over which Palestinians are allowed to enter the “compounds” and will heavily scrutinize the backgrounds of applicants, likely leading many to be blacklisted.

In one section, titled “Freedom of Movement,” the Times report noted that “some Israeli officials have argued that, for security reasons, Palestinians should only be able to move into the new compounds, not to leave them, according to officials.”

This language harkens back to a proposal earlier this year by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who called for the creation of a massive “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah that would be used as part of an “emigration plan” for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

Under that plan, Palestinians would have been given “security screenings” and once inside would not be allowed to leave. Humanitarian organizations, including those inside Israel, roundly condemned the plan as essentially a “concentration camp.”

Prior to that, Trump called for the people of Gaza—“all of them”—to be permanently expelled and for the US to “take over” the strip, demolish the remaining buildings, and construct what he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.” That plan was widely described as one of ethnic cleansing.

The new plan to move Palestinians to “compounds” is raising similar concerns.

“What is it called when a military force concentrates an ethnic or religious group into compounds without the ability to leave?” asked Assal Rad, a PhD in Middle Eastern history and a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC.

Sana Saeed, a senior producer for AJ+, put it more plainly: “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”……………………………………………

……………………………………….. there is a conspicuous lack of any clear plan for what happens to those Palestinians who continue to live outside the safe communities, warning that Israel’s security clearances could serve as a way of marking them as fair targets for even more escalated military attacks.

“Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the ‘red zone,’” he said, “risk being labelled ‘Hamas supporters’ and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel’s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-gaza-compounds

November 29, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

British military trained in Israel amid Gaza genocide

Armed forces personnel have ‘studied on educational staff courses’ since October 2023, Ministry of Defence discloses

JOHN McEVOY, DECLASSIFIED UK, 26 November 2025

British military personnel trained in Israel amid the Gaza genocide, Declassified can reveal.

The information comes in response to a parliamentary question tabled by Zarah Sultana MP.

On 18 November, Sultana asked the Ministry of Defence “whether any British armed forces officers have studied or trained at Israeli military colleges since October 2023”.

Defence minister Al Carns responded earlier today, saying: “Fewer than five British Armed Forces personnel have studied on educational staff courses in Israel since October 2023”.

It remains unclear where the troops studied or which branches of the military they came from.

But the revelation exposes a new layer of British military collaboration with Israel amid what the UN commission of inquiry has described as a genocide.

Charlie Herbert, a retired British army general, told Declassified: “It is absolutely extraordinary to think that UK military personnel have been undertaking military education or training courses in Israel over the past two years.

“Given the credible allegations of war crimes against the political and military leadership of the IDF, all such exchanges should have immediately ceased.

“It does our armed forces a huge disservice to be associated with the IDF, given the conduct of the IDF in Gaza since late 2023 and to think that we are training in Israel only adds to the accusations of UK complicity in this genocide”…………………….

Military training

The disclosure about British military officers training in Israel comes after Declassified revealed how Israeli soldiers have trained in Britain over the past two years…………………………………………………………………….. https://www.declassifieduk.org/british-military-trained-in-israel-amid-gaza-genocide/

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

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