Francesca Albanese names over 60 states complicit in Gaza genocide
The special UN rapporteur was sanctioned by the US earlier this year for naming companies profiting from the genocide
News Desk, OCT 29, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/francesca-albanese-names-over-60-states-complicit-in-gaza-genocide
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told the General Assembly on 28 October that 63 countries, including key western and Arab states, have fueled or were complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza.
Speaking remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, Albanese presented her 24-page report, ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime,’ which she said documents how states armed, financed, and politically protected Tel Aviv as Gaza’s population was “bombed, starved, and erased” for over two years.
Her findings place the US at the center of Israel’s war economy, accounting for two-thirds of its weapons imports and providing diplomatic cover through seven UN Security Council vetoes.
The report cited Germany, Britain, and a number of other European powers for continuing arms transfers “even as evidence of genocide mounted,” and condemned the EU for sanctioning Russia over the war in Ukraine while remaining Israel’s top trading partner.
Albanese accused global powers of having “harmed, founded, and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid,” allowing its settler-colonial project “to metastasize into genocide – the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine.”
She said the genocide was enabled through “diplomatic protection in international fora meant to preserve peace,” military cooperation that “fed the genocidal machinery,” and the “unchallenged weaponization of aid.”
The report also identified complicity among Arab states, including the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Morocco, which normalized ties with Tel Aviv.
Egypt, she noted, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing,” tightening the siege on Gaza’s last humanitarian route.
Albanese warned that the international system now stands “on a knife-edge between the collapse of the rule of law and hope for renewal,” urging states to suspend all military and trade agreements with Tel Aviv and build “a living framework of rights and dignity, not for the few, but for the many.”
Her presentation provoked an outburst from Israel’s envoy Danny Danon, who called her a “wicked witch.”
Frascnesca fired back, saying, “If the worst thing you can accuse me of is witchcraft, I’ll take it. But if I had the power to make spells, I would use it to stop your crimes once and for all and to ensure those responsible end up behind bars.”
Human rights experts described the report as the UN’s most damning indictment yet of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Albanese had previously been sanctioned by the US in July, after releasing a report that exposed western corporations profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The 27-page report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ named over 60 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Palantir, and Hyundai, for aiding and profiting from Israel’s settlements and military operations, and called for their prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Albanese of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel,” announcing the sanctions as part of Washington’s effort to counter what he called “lawfare.”
The move drew sharp condemnation from UN officials and rights groups, who warned that it threatened global accountability mechanisms.
‘Groundhog Day’: Israel Breaks Ceasefire to Attack Gaza, Killing 104 People, Including 46 Children.
Democracy Now, October 30, 2025
Israel launched major airstrikes on Gaza, killing at least 104 people, including 46 children, in the deadliest attacks since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire was announced. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “powerful strikes” on Gaza Tuesday after Israeli officials accused Hamas of killing an Israeli soldier in Rafah — which Hamas has denied. Netanyahu is trying “everything possible to resume the genocide in Gaza,” says Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza. “The only condition is that he needs to maintain the facade of the ceasefire.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Israel launched major airstrikes on Gaza beginning Tuesday night, killing at least 104 people, including at least 35 children — about a third of the dead — in the most lethal attacks since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire began on October 10th.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered what he called “powerful strikes,” unquote, on Gaza after Israeli officials accused Hamas of killing an Israeli soldier in Rafah. Hamas denied involvement in the soldier’s death.
President Trump defended Israel’s attacks while also saying nothing is going to jeopardize the ceasefire……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/29/gaza_israel_strikes_muhammad_shehada
Patrick Lawrence: The Voices of Many Jews
“Our solidarity with Palestinians is not a betrayal of Judaism, then, but a fulfillment of it.”
these people speak not for the destruction of Israel but for its restoration to sanity — and, so, its salvation.
October 28, 2025, By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/25/patrick-lawrence-the-voices-of-many-jews/
This very welcome letter marks out the significantly worsening alienation between world Jewry and the Zionists’ defacement of the Judaic tradition.
At last, at last, Jews with powerful voices have gathered en masse — a critical mass, I would say — to condemn Israel and the savage spree of murder, starvation and terror it inflicts as we speak upon the Palestinians of Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.
You may by now be aware of the open letter signed by 450–plus American, European and Israeli Jews and made public this week. In it, this sprawling group of distinguished personages denounces the criminality of the Zionist regime and asserts “the universality of justice and the fair and equal application of international law.” The signatories also call for the international community to impose immediate sanctions on apartheid Israel.
This is very big, in my read. I say this not because of what is in this document — calls for justice of this kind are by now many — but, straight to my point, for whose names are on it.
You may know of this letter and you may not, I ought to add: The Guardian reported it in its Oct. 22 editions. Anadolu Ajansi, the Turkish wire service, also had the story right away. Arab News had it, too. So did Middle East Monitor, The New Indian Express, and, stateside, Common Dreams. In Britain, Jewish Voice for Liberation, J.V.L., picked it up.
But the British daily is at writing alone among major Western media to report on this momentous call for worldwide action against the Zionist state. We read nothing of it in major Western media and hear nothing from the mainstream broadcasters. I will return to this important point shortly.
“Join the Worldwide Jewish Call,” as the letter is titled, was organized and put out by an apparently ad hoc “coalition” called Jews Demand Action. The document and various appendages explaining it are here. As the Jews Demand Action website makes clear, the intent is to announce a continually engaged movement in the cause of justice — justice for Palestinians, justice for the Zionist fanatics guilty of perpetrating a genocide, a term the group uses with obvious conviction and also with obvious anger. Among much else, the letter features a form by way of which Jews can sign the petition and receive updates on actions to come.
“At last, a serious global Jewish call for sanctions on Israel,” J.V.L., the British version of Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, proclaimed in the above-noted report.
Yes, at last.
Lots of other Jews have stood publicly against the apartheid state, many for a long time. There is Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, the wonderfully outspoken rabbi and author of The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft (Bais Medrash and Primedia eLaunch, 2020), there is the aforementioned Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Jewish organizations and students active on university campuses and in the streets of major cities. Unqualified praise to them and the many like them I cannot list in full.
I have no certain idea why it took these hundreds of influential people with self-evident consciences so long to join these others against the entity that insists on calling itself “the Jewish state.” To hazard a surmise, the past two years of Israel’s unspeakable barbarism have surely been a torment for the signatories of this letter, as for countless Jews the world over, as they have sought to distinguish their faith and their traditions from the conduct of the ultra-nationalist regime that is supposed to merit their allegiance but has emphatically lost it.
If I had to choose one sentence in this letter above all others for its significance and power — I would rather not but I will — it would be this: “Our solidarity with Palestinians is not a betrayal of Judaism, then, but a fulfillment of it.”
After this truth comes these:
“When our sages taught that to destroy one life is to destroy an entire world, they did not carve exceptions for Palestinians. We shall not rest until this ceasefire carries forward into an end of occupation and apartheid.”
This is the conceptual frame within which the signatories address António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, as well as “presidents, prime ministers, heads of state, [and] permanent representatives to the United Nations.” While approving of the ceasefire, or what remains of it at this point, the letter states,
“And yet there should be no doubt that this ceasefire is fragile: Israeli forces remain in Gaza, the agreement makes no reference to the West Bank, the underlying conditions of occupation, apartheid, and the denial of Palestinian rights remain unaddressed.”
“As Jews and as human beings, we declare: Not in our name,” the letter states. It then lists the four key demands the signatories advance in their names: Respect for the authority of the International Court of Justice (Yes!), a rejection of the complicity Western governments have forced upon their citizens, a full military withdrawal, the supply of aid and everything else needed to reconstruct Gaza, and, finally, “to refute false accusations of antisemitism that abusively deploy our collective history to tarnish those with whom we stand together in the pursuit of peace and justice” (Yes again times 10!).
You find some big names among the signatories (and the open letter does not give the full list): Daniel Levy, previously a “peace” negotiator for Israel and now a prominent critic; Gabor Maté, the physician-psychotherapist; Wallace Shawn, the playwright, actor, and reliable old leftie; Amy Eilberg, an American rabbi and activist; Peter Beinart (one of the organizers of Jews Demand Action), Naomi Klein, the “progressive” Canadian writer; Yuval Abraham, who co-directed No Other Land, the documentary that took an Oscar last year.
If I do not put the point too simply, these people speak not for the destruction of Israel but for its restoration to sanity — and, so, its salvation. They do not mention the two-state solution in their letter, but one gains the impression it is this for which they hope. One may differ strenuously with them on these points (as I do, emphatically), but what I will shorthand as their moderation is part of what makes their open letter so important: These are (shorthand again) mainstream Jews.
Who can say how carefully or how many presidents, prime ministers, U.N. reps, etc. will consider this letter? But this is not the salient point. This letter marks out the significantly worsening alienation between world Jewry and the state that is supposed to represent its home. And in so doing it widens and deepens the already evident isolation of the Jewish state. This latter effect may not be the intent of the open letter’s signatories, but it will prove unmistakably to be among the document’s consequences.
A Growing Consensus
We represent the growing consensus of world Jews, not the Israeli government,” the letter declares in one of its subheads. Exactly so. And as The Guardian piece cited above points out, the open letter should be read alongside some stunning numbers coming out of the most recent opinion polls. In a recent Washington Post survey, 61 percent of American Jews asked think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza; just under 40 percent stand with the open letter’s signatories: We witness a genocide.
In a poll that does not distinguish between Jews and non–Jews, The Brookings Institution finds that 45 percent of those surveyed think Israel is committing genocide. A recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University indicates 50 percent of register voters agree; among Democratic voters the number is 77 percent. On Thursday Reuters published a survey indicating that 59 percent of the Jews and non–Jews polled think the United States should recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.
I see a highly significant conflict growing ever sharper between the increasing number of outspoken Jews of conscience and those many — and they remain very many — who continue to defend the righteousness of the Israeli terror machine. Things are getting especially awkward for mainstream media such as the Zionist-supervised New York Times, wherein we find no mention of Jews Demand Action and its forthright open letter. This cannot end well for the Times and all the pilot fish that follow it.
However long the Times stays silent, however many media billionaire Zionists take over and corrupt, however many Bari Weisses they put in high places, this will do nothing other than discredit these media. They are effectively complicit in the Zionists’ defacement of the Judaic tradition. This is another way the open letter is important.
The world has long and urgently needed to hear from the “we” whose names are on this letter. Non–Jews need to learn of and make the distinction between Judaism and the frenzied Zionism that now rules Israel so they can think clearly of these questions. And as they are well aware, those Jews who reject Israel’s ultra-nationalist Zionism must make themselves heard for the sake of Judaism, too.
I do not accept that any great wave of anti–Semitism is breaking upon us — there is no “ferocious surge,” in Joe Biden’s preposterous phrase. But the potential for such a turn, given the extent of Israel’s inhumanity in combination with its claim to be “the Jewish home,” is obvious.
The Zionist hoards love the threat of anti–Semitism: How well it serves their pernicious purpose. At last this insidious ruse is countered by those whose voices count for most — the voices of Jews.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.
UN Human Rights Office Warns Israeli Settler Violence in West Bank Is “Surging”
The Trump administration insisted last week that it would not allow Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, October 27, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/un-human-rights-office-warns-israeli-settler-violence-in-west-bank-is-surging/
he UN Human Rights office for Palestine has warned that Israel is rapidly accelerating its campaign to annex the occupied West Bank, with settlers adding outposts at a pace 10 times higher than the previous average rate just in the past year.
Recent settler attacks on the olive harvest have underscored the danger faced by Palestinian communities, the office noted, with this season alone seeing 150 settler attacks so far.
This includes an attack caught on camera by a journalist last week, when a 53-year-old woman was beaten by settlers and sent to the hospital during the olive harvest; as well as an attack on a 58-year-old olive farmer in Nahalin, west of Bethlehem, on Thursday, the office said.
These attacks represent just a fraction of the settler violence faced by Palestinians as Israel escalates its annexation campaign amid its genocide in Gaza, the office said. UN officials, citing Israeli group Peace Now, said that there have been 757 settler attacks in the West Bank just in the first half of 2025, marking a 13 percent increase over the previous year.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have created 84 new illegal outposts in the West Bank, marking a “rapid escalation” of the previous pace of eight new settlements per year on average, the office said.
The violence is “making life impossible for Palestinians in many communities across the occupied West Bank and leaving them with no genuine choice but to leave their homes.”
“These actions advance Israel’s stated policy to consolidate annexation in clear violation of international law,” the office said.
The UN statement comes just days after the Trump administration repeated its supposed opposition to annexation.
“It won’t happen,” said President Donald Trump last week when asked about annexation. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
But as the UN statement and that of other experts has underscored, Israel is already in the process of annexing the West Bank, both in policy and in practice. Top Israeli ministers have spent recent months formalizing plans for annexation, vowing to annex the West Bank in all but name or, in some cases, outright calling for the illegal policy.
Hi-Tech Holocaust: How Microsoft Aids The Gaza Genocide
The Azure/IDF partnership is the result of a decades-long relationship between Microsoft and the State of Israel, one which has helped both entities.
Netanyahu himself has showered praise on the corporation, describing the Microsoft/Israel partnership as “a marriage made in heaven.”
Alan Macleod, Mintpress News, 28 Oct 25
Israel’s genocide is being powered by Microsoft. From creating a massive digital dragnet, aiding in the production of A.I.-generated kill lists, hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its internal affairs, and suppressing figures opposing the slaughter, the Seattle-based tech corporation has played a key role in the violence.
MintPress has detailed the deep collaboration between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Amazon, Google, TikTok, Apple, Palantir, and Oracle, but Microsoft’s relationship with the government and armed forces of Israel is potentially the closest, leading then-CEO Steve Ballmer to state that “Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company.” MintPress explores the decades-long partnership between Microsoft and Israel, and the employees trying to break that marriage from the inside.
The point of all this was to create an enormous digital dragnet, where Palestinians’ every move, word, and keystroke was recorded in monitored in the greatest and most dystopian digital dragnet ever created. In the words of Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, the IDF’s surveillance division, the plan was to “track everyone, all of the time.”
Sariel argued that big data was the solution to Israel’s problems, envisaging a future where Israel intercepted and stored “a million calls an hour” from Palestine, and used A.I. to search for keywords and identify threats.
There was no way, however, that Israel could do this alone, as it did not possess the expertise or anything like the storage capacity needed for such a project. To this end, Sariel travelled to Seattle in 2021 to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to pitch him on the surveillance partnership whereby Microsoft would build Unit 8200 a customized and segregated area within its Azure platform.
The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to transcribe, translate, and otherwise process intelligence garnered via mass surveillance, which is then linked to Israel’s A.I.-based weapons systems.
The largest and most controversial organization within the Israeli military, Unit 8200 has long been the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech spying operation. The unit is dedicated to surveillance, cyberwarfare, and online manipulation operations. Last year, it carried out the Lebanese Pager Attack, an act that wounded thousands of civilians. Unit 8200 agents were also behind many of the most infamous international spyware and hacking cases, including the Pegasus software, that was used to surveil tens of thousands of the world’s most prominent political leaders, journalists, and human rights campaigners.
Sariel’s policy of mass surveillance changed the internal attitude at Unit 8200. “Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,” said one officer. The gargantuan trove of information compiled in Microsoft Azure amounted to a vast repository on the entire Palestinian population – a giant database of kompromat that is used to extort and blackmail the region’s indigenous people. If a person was secretly gay, or cheating on their spouse, for example, that information was readily available to Unit 8200 agents, who would then use it to turn their targets into informants. One former Unit 8200 member revealed that, as part of their training, they were made to memorize different Arabic slang words for “gay”, so that they could identify them in conversations.
The cloud database is also used to provide after-the-fact justification for arrests of innocent peoples. Off-hand, out-of-context comments made years ago can be used to portray anyone as a member of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or another armed resistance force.
“These people get entered into the system, and the data on them just keeps growing,” an Israeli intelligence official who served in the West Bank said.
When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, [the Azure surveillance repository] is where they find the excuse. We’re now in a situation where almost no one in the [Occupied] Territories is ‘clean,’ in terms of what intelligence has on them.
Unit 8200 has also used big data to compile A.I.-generated kill lists featuring tens of thousands of people. One program gave every Gazan, even women and children, a score of between 1 and 100, based on a number of factors. If they live in the same building or are in group chats with known or suspected Hamas members, for instance, their score is increased. Once their score reached a certain threshold, all Gazans were automatically placed on a kill list that was minimally overseen by humans.
According to multiple Unit 8200 agents, Microsoft Azure’s cloud-based storage platform allowed Israel to overcome targeting bottlenecks, using all manner of data to research and identify individuals for assassination, which led to the killing of tens of thousands of people during the first weeks of its post-October 7 onslaught.
Of course, the vast majority of the deaths have been civilians – around 70% were women and children. But Israeli officials can also go back after the fact and scour their digital dragnet to justify any killing, finding connections or any other incriminating evidence. A senior Israeli military officer described the cloud technology as “a weapon in every sense of the word.” Other officials, however, have gone so far as to raise concerns that Israel’s overreliance on Microsoft as a service is a strategic vulnerability that should be corrected.
Microsoft Sees No Evil, Only Profits
Throughout all this, Microsoft has protested its innocence – and ignorance – of Israeli crimes. “At no time during this engagement or since that time has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cell phone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned,” a spokesperson for the company stated, adding, “Any allegations about Microsoft leadership involvement and support of this project … are false.”
But leaked documents suggest Microsoft engineers understood exactly what sort of data was being stored in Azure, and what their clients hoped to achieve. “Technically, they’re not supposed to be told exactly what it is, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out,” one engineer said. “You tell [Microsoft] we don’t have any more space on the servers, that it’s audio files. It’s pretty clear what it is.”
Others felt that the idea that Microsoft did not know that one of the world’s most notorious spying organizations might be using big data to spy on people was not credible, especially given how closely the two entities had been working together for years. “Microsoft says that it can’t figure out if their customers are committing crimes against humanity or mass surveillance, while at the same time Microsoft employees are working alongside uniformed IDF. Absurd!” Paul Biggar, the founder of Tech For Palestine, told MintPress.
The corporation’s claim of innocence seems even more tenuous, given the fact that Microsoft employs hundreds of former Unit 8200 agents, and recruits directly from the organization. A 2022 MintPress investigation found at least 166 former Unit 8200 operatives who went on to work for Microsoft, including many who helped design Azure itself.
Microsoft’s role in Gaza goes far beyond locking out the ICC. From cloud warfare to surveillance, it’s helping power Israel’s war machine………………………………………………………………………………
Corporate Zionism: Roots in Israel’s War Economy
The Azure/IDF partnership is the result of a decades-long relationship between Microsoft and the State of Israel, one which has helped both entities. Microsoft established its first branch in Israel in 1989, and two years later, opened a research and development center in the city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv. The first of its kind outside the United States, the center has continued to expand, and now directly employs an estimated 2,700 workers…………………………………………………………………
Every CEO in Microsoft’s history has flown to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including Bill Gates, who, in 2016, stated that hi-tech Israeli security was “improving the world.
In short, Microsoft is a cornerstone of Israel’s burgeoning hi-tech sector, which accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP and more than half of its total exports. Netanyahu himself has showered praise on the corporation, describing the Microsoft/Israel partnership as “a marriage made in heaven.”…………………..
Cracking Down on Internal Resistance
A greater threat than Iran to Microsoft, however, is its own employees, hundreds of whom have organized to oppose its role in the genocide. Under the banner of No Azure for Apartheid, workers demand that: Microsoft terminates all Azure contracts with Israel; disclose all ties to the Israeli national security state; publicly call for a ceasefire, and stop persecuting employees who speak out about the genocide……………………………………………………………………..
Targeting Enemies
Company employees are far from the only target of Microsoft’s wrath, however. In May, Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced that Microsoft had locked him out of his official ICC email account, just as he was formalizing charges against Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders. For many, the timing was not a coincidence, but rather a message……………………………………………………………..https://www.mintpressnews.com/microsoft-israel-surveillance-azure-idf-gaza-genocide/290534/
Trump backs renewed Israeli strikes in Gaza
The US president denied that the resumption of hostilities was “jeopardizing” the ceasefire
US and China to ‘work together’ on Ukraine settlement – Trump
29 Oct, 2025
US President Donald Trump has defended Israel’s renewed strikes in Gaza nearly three weeks into a ceasefire he helped broker.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “immediate and powerful strikes” on Tuesday evening, citing Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers still holding parts of the Palestinian enclave. At least 30 Palestinians were killed in the action, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government.
“As I understand it, they took out an Israeli soldier,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday en route from Japan to South Korea. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back – and they should hit back. When that happens, they should hit back,” he added.
US Vice President J.D. Vance earlier said the ceasefire was holding despite “little skirmishes here and there.” Axios cited unnamed senior US officials as saying the White House had urged Israel not to take “radical measures” that could collapse the truce.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), last week two of its soldiers were attacked and killed by Hamas in Rafah, southern Gaza, and more soldiers came under fire in the same area on Tuesday. Hamas denied involvement in both incidents, accusing Israel of “a blatant ceasefire violation.”
The Palestinian armed group warned that the escalation “will lead to a delay” in recovering and returning the bodies of the 13 remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Israeli officials earlier accused Hamas of dragging its feet in handing over all the remains, as agreed under the ceasefire mediated by the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye, which took effect on October 10.
International Court of Justice Delivers Opinion on Israel’s Obligations
Voltaire Network | 25 October 2025, https://www.voltairenet.org/article223043.html
At the request of the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the internal court of the United Nations, issued an advisory opinion on 22 October on the “Obligations of Israel with regard to the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations and third States in and in connection with the Occupied Palestinian Territory”
he Court is of the opinion that the State of Israel, as the occupying power, must fulfil its obligations under international humanitarian law. These obligations include:
ensuring that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has access to the essentials of daily life, including water, food, clothing, sleeping materials, shelter and fuel, as well as medical items and services;
accepting and facilitating to the fullest extent possible relief actions for the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as long as they are inadequately supplied, as has been observed in the Gaza Strip, including relief actions by the United Nations and its entities, in particular the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and by international organizations and third States, and not to prevent such actions;
respecting and protecting all emergency and medical personnel, as well as their premises;
respecting the prohibition of forcible transfer and deportation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
respecting the right of protected persons in the Occupied Palestinian Territory who are detained by the State of Israel to receive visits
respecting the prohibition of the use of starvation as a method of warfare against civilians. Furthermore, the Court is of the opinion that, as the occupying power, the State of Israel has an obligation under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations and third States in and in connection with the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
It is of the view that the State of Israel has an obligation to cooperate in good faith with the United Nations by giving it full assistance in any action undertaken by it in accordance with United Nations’ Charter, including through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, in and in connection with the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
It is of the view that the State of Israel has an obligation under Article 105 of the United Nations Charter to ensure full respect for the privileges and immunities accorded to the United Nations, including its structures and organs, and its officials, in and in connection with the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
It is of the view that the State of Israel has an obligation under article II of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations to ensure full respect for the inviolability of the premises of the United Nations, including those of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and the exemption of the property and assets of the United Nations from all forms of coercion.
Finally, it is of the view that the State of Israel has an obligation, under articles V, VI and VII of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, to ensure full respect for the privileges and immunities accorded to United Nations officials and experts on mission for the United Nations, in and in connection with the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Report: Israel Launched Airstrike in Gaza on Saturday After Getting US Approval.
The IDF has killed at least 93 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect
by Dave DeCamp | October 26, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/26/report-israel-launched-airstrike-in-gaza-on-saturday-after-getting-us-approval/
Israel launched an airstrike in Gaza on Saturday after notifying the US and getting approval to launch the attack, the Israeli news site Ynet has reported.
The Israeli military launched the strike in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in central Gaza, claiming it targeted a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) who was planning an attack on the IDF, a claim PIJ strongly denied.
PIJ said in a statement that the claim that its military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was preparing an attack was “a pure false claim and fabrication through which the occupation seeks to justify its aggression and violation of the ceasefire.” PIJ, which supported the ceasefire deal, called on mediating countries to “compel” Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza.
The strike wounded four Palestinians, according to the al-Awda Hospital. “The hospital has received four injured people following the Israeli occupation’s targeting of a civilian car in the al-Ahli Club area in Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza,” the hospital said.
The Ynet report said the alleged PIJ operative who was targeted was wounded, not killed. According to Israeli sources, the strike came after Israel passed intelligence to the US, and the attack was only launched after coordination with US Central Command (CENTCOM), which included notifying CENTCOM Commander Adm Brad Cooper. CENTCOM has established a military post in southern Gaza where it is overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was also briefed on the strike right after it was launched. The attack marked the first time that Israel and the US used a new mechanism to coordinate on military action in Gaza under the ceasefire deal. Hamas, a signatory to the ceasefire deal, called the Israeli strike a “clear violation” of the agreement.
In response to the report and criticism of the US-Israel relationship, Israeli officials said they were coordinating with the US but insisted Israel doesn’t need “approval” to bomb Gaza.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, Israel also launched a drone strike on Friday that killed two Palestinians, and there’s no sign that Israel coordinated with the US on the attack. Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that Israeli forces have killed at least 93 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect, including four who were killed over the previous 48 hours.
Israel and US Scorn ICJ Ruling Against Starving Civilians as Method of Warfare
The World Court says Israel has a duty as the occupying power to cooperate with UN relief efforts, not impede them.
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout. October 24, 2025
World Court) told Israel what seems obvious to any reasonable person — that it cannot starve civilians as a method of warfare. But Israel does not act in accordance with international law, as evidenced by its two-year campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, during which it has killed over 68,000 Gazans (more likely 680,000, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on September 15).
In its 71-page advisory opinion, issued on October 22, the ICJ reiterated that Israel is illegally occupying the Gaza Strip. The court unanimously held that as the occupying power, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza, has essential supplies of everyday life, including water, food, shelter, clothing, bedding, and fuel, as well as medical equipment and services. The court also held that Israel must respect and protect all medical and relief personnel and facilities.
The ICJ ruled 10-1 in its advisory opinion that Israel has an obligation to facilitate humanitarian relief by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other international organizations and third states, and must refrain from impeding that relief.
And the court unanimously held that Israel must respect the prohibition on deportation and forcible transfer in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and the right of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel to be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The court noted that transfer is forcible not just when it is achieved by physical force, but also when people have no choice but to leave because the occupying power has inflicted conditions of life that are intolerable.
The ICJ rejected Israel’s bogus defense that its national security trumped its obligations under international humanitarian law, saying that the protection of security interests is not a “free-standing exception” allowing a state to violate its international humanitarian law obligations………………………………………………………………………….
Impacts of ICJ Advisory Opinions
Although advisory opinions of the ICJ are nonbinding, they carry great moral, political, and diplomatic weight with third states. On July 19, 2024, the ICJ held that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and all states have an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. As a result of that ruling (and domestic pressure), several states have now recognized Palestine as an independent state…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it “categorically rejects” the ICJ’s October 22 advisory opinion, stating that the court ignored the “extensive evidence” Israel provided of what it claimed was UNRWA’s “infiltration” by Hamas and UNRWA’s complicity in terrorist activities. “This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘International Law,’” the ministry alleged.
Likewise, the U.S. State Department called the advisory opinion “corrupt,” claiming that it “unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Current Situation
Before the October 10 ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, UN-supported global experts warned that over 640,000 Palestinians were facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity and that there was an “entirely man-made” famine in Gaza City.
Since the ceasefire began, Israel has started allowing some aid into Gaza, but nowhere near enough to meet its legal obligations and assist the starving Gazans. The UN World Food Program is getting about 750 tons of food aid into Gaza daily, still far below its target of 2,000 tons per day. Although the ceasefire agreement requires 600 trucks per day of food and other humanitarian supplies, only 263 trucks entered Gaza on October 20, and 281 trucks entered Gaza on October 22, less than half of the agreed-upon number.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has suspended operations, as it runs out of money and faces leadership problems and logistical obstacles to a resumption of its work.
Meanwhile, the ICJ is considering the merits of South Africa’s case against Israel that alleges Israel breached the Genocide Convention. Arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — for intentionally and knowingly depriving the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival and intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population — are pending in the International Criminal Court.
During the past two years, millions of people globally have demonstrated in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has achieved widespread popular support.
The new advisory opinion issued by the ICJ will continue to shame Israel in the eyes of the world. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-and-us-scorn-icj-ruling-against-starving-civilians-as-method-of-warfare/
Israel’s AI use in Gaza potentially normalizes civilian killings, obscures blame, exposes Big Tech complicity: Expert
Israel is using AI systems with known inaccuracy risks at ‘almost every stage’ of its military operations, says Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute
Mevlut Ozkan 07.04.2025, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/artificial-intelligence/israel-s-ai-use-in-gaza-potentially-normalizes-civilian-killings-obscures-blame-exposes-big-tech-complicity-expert/3526518
– The sheer scale and complexity of AI models makes it ‘impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,’ warns Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI
– ‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies … despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates … and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting,’ says expert
ISTANBUL
Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip – aided by tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon – is fueling concerns over the normalization of mass civilian casualties and raising serious questions about the complicity of these firms in potential war crimes, according to a leading AI expert.
Multiple reports have confirmed that Israel has deployed AI models such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to conduct mass surveillance, identify targets, and direct strikes against tens of thousands of individuals in Gaza – often in their own homes – all with minimal human oversight.
Rights groups and experts say these systems have played a critical role in Israel’s incessant and apparently indiscriminate attacks, which have laid to waste massive swaths of the besieged enclave and killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
“With the explicit use of AI models that we know lack precision accuracy, we are only going to see the normalization of mass civilian casualties, as we have kind of seen with Gaza,” Heidy Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI, told Anadolu.
Khlaaf, who is currently a chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute, warned that this trend could establish a dangerous precedent in warfare where military forces deflect responsibility for potential war crimes onto AI systems, while benefiting from the lack of a robust international mechanism to intervene or hold actors accountable.
“This is really a dangerous combination that can lead to military entities not being held accountable for potential war crimes, where they can simply point to an AI system and say, ‘Hey, it’s this algorithm that decided this. It wasn’t me,’” she said.
She stressed that Israel is using AI systems at “almost every stage” of its military operations – from intelligence collection and planning to final target selection.
The AI models, she explained, are trained on a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery, intercepted communications, drone surveillance, and the tracking of individuals or groups.
“They develop multiple AI algorithms that use a statistical or probabilistic calculation from this historical data that they’ve been trained on to predict where future targets may be,” she elaborated.
However, she emphasized that these predictions “do not necessarily reflect reality.”
Khlaaf pointed to recent revelations that commercial large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4 were used by the Israeli military to translate and transcribe intercepted Palestinian communications, automatically adding individuals to target lists “purely based on keywords.”
She noted that various investigations have confirmed that one of the Israeli military’s operational strategies involves generating large numbers of targets through AI without verifying their accuracy.
The expert underlined that AI models are fundamentally unreliable for tasks requiring high precision, such as targeting in military operations, because they rely on statistical probabilities rather than verified intelligence.
“Unfortunately, assessments have shown that AI models used for targeting can have an accuracy rate as low as 25%,” Khlaaf said.
“So, given this track record of AI’s high error rates, with a force like the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), who is willing to accept a large amount of civilian casualties to take one target out … then this sort of inaccurate automation of target selection is really not far from indiscriminate bombing at scale.”
Automation without accountability
Khlaaf further emphasized that the increasing use of AI in war is setting a dangerous precedent, where accountability is obscured.
“AI is setting this precedent that normalizes inaccurate targeting practices, and because of the sheer scale and complexity of these models, it then becomes impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,” she asserted.
Even the so-called “human in the loop” safeguard, often promoted as a fail-safe against AI errors, appears insufficient in the case of the IDF, she added.
Investigations revealed that the humans overseeing Israel’s AI-generated targets operated under “very loose guidance,” casting doubt on whether efforts were even made to minimize civilian casualties, according to Khlaaf.
She warned that the current trajectory could enable militaries to shield themselves from war crime allegations by blaming AI for erroneous targeting.
“If it’s hard to trace … why an AI may have contributed to civilian casualties, then you can very well imagine a case where it’s used heavily exactly to avoid accountability for killing a large amount of civilians,” she said.
‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft explicitly working with IDF’
Khlaaf confirmed that major US-based tech firms are directly involved in supplying AI and cloud computing capabilities to the Israeli military.
“This is not a new trend,” she noted, recalling that Google has been providing AI and cloud services to the Israeli military since 2021 through its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus, alongside Amazon.
Microsoft’s involvement also deepened after October 2023, as Israel relied more on its cloud computing services, AI models, and technical support, she said.
Other companies, including Palantir, have also been linked to Israeli military operations, although details of their roles remain sparse, she added.
Crucially, Khlaaf argued that these partnerships went beyond the sale of general-purpose AI tools.
“It’s important to point out that the IDF isn’t just using off-the-shelf cloud or AI services and taking them and just putting them in military applications,” she explained.
“Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies for intelligence and targeting, despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates, their failure modes, and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting.”
The implications suggest that tech companies were “complicit and directly enabling” Israeli actions, including those that “would be categorized or ruled as unlawful or that amount to war crimes,” Khlaaf said.
“If it has been determined that the IDF is committing specific war crimes, and the tech companies have guided them in committing those war crimes, then yes, that makes them very much complicit,” she added.
‘An enormous gap’
Khlaaf warned that the world is witnessing “the full embrace of automated targeting without due process or accountability,” a phenomenon backed by increasing investments from Israel, the US Department of Defense, and the EU.
“Our legal and technical frameworks are not prepared for this type of AI-based warfare,” she said.
Although existing international law, such as Article 36 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, mandates legal reviews for new weapons, there are currently no binding international regulations specific to AI-driven military technologies.
Additionally, while the US maintains export controls on specific AI-enabling technologies such as GPUs and certain datasets, there is no “wholesale ban on AI military technology specifically,” she noted.
“There’s an enormous gap there that hasn’t really been addressed as of yet,” Khlaaf said.
Trump’s push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel.
Israel isn’t a vassal state of the U.S., JD Vance said. But when it comes to the ceasefire in Gaza and annexing the West Bank, Israeli decision-making is deeply intertwined with Washington’s current priorities.
Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi October 24, 2025
The succession of U.S. officials arriving in Tel Aviv over the week has fueled consternation in Israeli political circles as Washington ups the pressure on Israel to stick to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Israeli political circles have bristled at having to bend to the American President’s will, as opposition use the opportunity to lambast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for turning Israel into a “vassal” of the United States.
Virtually all of Trump’s inner circle has made the rounds in Tel Aviv throughout the past week, including U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
They were all there, JD Vance said, to monitor the ceasefire, rushing to add: “But not monitoring in the sense of, you know…you monitor a toddler.” But Israeli media referred to the flurry of visits as American “Bibi-sitting.”
Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published a caricature on Wednesday portraying Netanyahu as a child playing with toy tanks and airplanes while Witkoff tells him, “Just a little while more, and then off to bed.” Maariv published another cartoon showing Witkoff, Vance, and Kushner closely tailing Netanyahu, who says, “Honestly, I’m just going to the toilet.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid didn’t hold back either. At the opening of the Knesset’s winter session, Lapid slammed Netanyahu for getting Israel into “the most dangerous political crisis in its history,” and for sabotaging past ceasefire deals that could have seen the earlier release of the Israeli captives in Gaza. Lapid also said that Netanyahu had turned Israel into “a vassal state that takes orders concerning its own security.”
Things got even tenser during a press conference with Netanyahu when Vance was asked by a reporter whether Israel was becoming a “protectorate” of the U.S. …………………………………………………
The visits by Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, and Rubio came as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza was about to unravel last Sunday, October 19, following an incident in Rafah in which two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion. Israel accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire and launched a series of strikes across Gaza, killing at least 40 Palestinians. Hamas denied any knowledge of the Rafah incident, with reports that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer running over an unexploded ordinance, of which the White House was reportedly aware. …………….
Political circles in Israel regarded the halt of Israel’s blitz as a sign that Netanyahu had folded under continuous U.S. pressure to make the ceasefire work. Israel’s hardline National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, regarded the decision as “shameful” and called on Netanyahu to resume its full-scale onslaught against Gaza.
Now there’s another sticking point that is continuing to fuel U.S.-Israeli tensions: annexation.
West Bank annexation is off the table. Or is it?
In the midst of this wave of criticism, Netanyahu announced his candidacy for the post of Prime Minister in the upcoming November 2026 elections. Netanyahu is currently the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history, having led a shifting arrangement of right and center-right coalitions for a total of 18 years.
In the middle of JD Vance’s visit, the Israeli Knesset voted in favor of the first reading of a bill that would annex the West Bank. The reaction from the U.S. was unprecedented.
Before boarding his flight to Tel Aviv earleir this week, Secretary of State Rubio said that the vote was “counterproductive” and “threatening to the peace deal.” Vance went further, calling the vote “weird,” “stupid,” and an “insult,” adding that “the policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
But the hardest U.S. reaction came from Trump himself, who said in an interview with Time magazine that Israel’s annexation of the West Bank “will not happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” adding that “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
The problem is that annexing the West Bank has been Netanyahu’s most important electoral promise since 2019. He has been spearheading a years-long legislative effort to make that annexation a reality, starting with the 2018 Nation-State Law, then with the Knesset resolution to reject a Palestinian state in July 2024, and finally with last July’s Knesset resolution allowing the government to annex the West Bank.
This is particularly inconvenient for Benjamin Netanyahu, as he needs to avoid any major confrontation with Washington at the current moment……………………………………………………..
In his first term, Donald Trump also clashed with a Netanyahu-led government that had pledged to annex parts of the West Bank. Trump halted the annexation process by brokering normalization agreements with several Arab states, most crucially the United Arab Emirates. The importance of the so-called Abraham Accords, for Trump, comes from the fact that the remaining Gulf countries that have yet to normalize relations with Israel — Qatar and Saudi Arabia — are the key to securing regional U.S. economic and political dominance. This is part of the larger U.S. agenda of reasserting American hegemony and confronting the rising influence of China. A part of Trump’s roadmap to get there is by integrating Israel in the Middle East.
After its genocide in Gaza, Israel is facing international isolation, so regional integration should seemingly be an Israeli priority as well. But in this instance, integration would force Israel to at least temporarily pause its plans to assert Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea, as the Likud’s charter put it.
Smotrich gave voice to that supremacist dream while speaking at a tech conference on Thursday, saying that Israel would not give up annexation for the sake of normalization: “If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop.”……………………………………………………….
The ongoing frenzy of political recriminations in Israeli circles is a sign that they’re gearing up for elections and trying to score points against their rivals. What this tells us is that the Israeli political establishment has, at least implicitly, accepted that the war is over for the moment. But the fact that this political theater unfolds in the shadow of unprecedented U.S. pressure suggests how deeply Israeli decision-making is intertwined with Washington’s priorities. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/trumps-push-to-uphold-gaza-ceasefire-is-creating-a-political-crisis-in-israel/
To Media, Gaza Ceasefire Holds Despite Repeated Israeli Strikes.
the media unceasingly grant Israel space to present deceitful arguments as credible, without ever emphasizing that Hamas is not the one that is dropping 153 tons of bombs in one day during a supposed “ceasefire.”
Belén Fernández, October 21, 2025, https://fair.org/slider/to-media-gaza-ceasefire-holds-despite-repeated-israeli-strikes/
On October 10, a ceasefire was declared in the Gaza Strip, where more than 67,000 Palestinians were officially killed in just over two years of Israel’s United States-backed genocide. With an estimated 10,000 bodies still buried under the all-consuming rubble, and indirect deaths unaccounted for, this number is almost certainly a drastic underestimate. Shortly after the ceasefire took effect, US President Donald Trump pronounced the war in Gaza “over,” proclaiming that “at long last we have peace in the Middle East.”
In the ten days following the implementation of the ostensible truce, the Israeli military reportedly killed at least 97 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 230, violating the ceasefire agreement no fewer than 80 times. One might have expected, then, to see a headline or two along the lines of, I dunno, “Israel Violates Ceasefire”—or maybe “So Much for ‘Peace’ in Gaza.”
No such headlines turned up in the Western corporate media—not that there weren’t some pretty spectacular violations to choose from. On October 17, for example, 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family, including seven children and three women, were blasted to bits in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood while attempting to reach their home. According to the Israelis, the family’s vehicle had trespassed over the so-called “yellow line,” the invisible boundary arbitrarily demarcating the more than 50% of Gazan territory still occupied by the genocidal army.
Then on October 19, Israel bombed the living daylights out of central and southern Gaza and killed dozens after alleging a ceasefire violation by Hamas—an allegation that not even Trump found convincing, but that enabled such impressively passive headlines as “Strikes Hit Gaza After Truce Violations Alleged” (Guardian, 10/19/25). Once the carnage was complete, the BBC (10/19/25) assured readers that “Israel Says It Will Return to Ceasefire After Gaza Strikes.” For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed the Knesset that the Israeli military had dropped 153 tons of bombs on Gaza during this particular, um, pause in the ceasefire.
While most media outlets consistently describe the ceasefire as “fragile” (NBC News, 10/20/25) and “delicate” (ABC News, 10/20/25), they somehow can’t bring themselves to state the obvious: If you don’t cease firing, it’s not a ceasefire. Of course, the refusal to call a spade a spade should perhaps come as no surprise from an industry that continues to peddle the narrative of a “ceasefire” in Lebanon despite acknowledging “near-daily strikes” (New York Times, 7/9/25) on the country by Israel and the killing of some 250 people in the first seven months following the truce declaration last Novemberin the first seven months following the truce declaration last November.
‘Both sides have accused the other’
There is also the pernicious media tendency of allowing equal weight to ceasefire breach allegations by Israel and Hamas given the former’s mendacious—not to mention genocidal—track record. This mendaciousness has been on display for decades, most prominently in Israel’s eternal claim to be fighting “terrorists”—a fight that somehow never fails to kill thousands upon thousands of civilians; at least 20,000 of those killed in the latest two-year showdown were children, with a whole lot more presumed to be buried beneath the rubble. In the episode involving the Abu Shaaban family, the Israelis invoked a typical lie from their vast arsenal: a “suspicious vehicle” had approached Israeli troops “in a way that caused an imminent threat to them”—so they killed the family, and that was that.
And yet the media unceasingly grant Israel space to present deceitful arguments as credible, without ever emphasizing that Hamas is not the one that is dropping 153 tons of bombs in one day during a supposed “ceasefire.”
Case in point: an NBC News dispatch (10/19/25) titled “Israel and Hamas trade accusations of ceasefire violations,” in which we are told that “both sides have accused the other of violating the terms of the deal.” The next sentence outlines Israel’s primary ongoing gripe regarding Hamas’s alleged ceasefire transgressions: “Israel says Hamas is delaying the release of the bodies of hostages held inside Gaza, while Hamas says it will take time to search for and recover remains.”
In accordance with the ceasefire agreement, Hamas promptly returned all living hostages in its possession to Israel, and it has returned the remains of several more. But the group has said it is unable to recover the remaining bodies because they lie under formidable quantities of rubble, thanks to Israel’s recent pulverization of the enclave. Rather than allowing the necessary machinery into Gaza to assist with excavating the remains that Israel so urgently demands, Netanyahu has instead announced that the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until Hamas “fulfills” its part of the deal.
Any logical observer might conclude that Israel is actively endeavoring to sabotage the “ceasefire.” But the corporate media are not in the business of logical observation. In its writeup, titled “Hamas Returns Bodies as Fragile Gaza Ceasefire Holds,” the Financial Times presents as entirely legitimate an arrangement in which “Israeli officials have accused Hamas of returning the bodies too slowly, and threatened to limit the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza in an effort to pressure the militant group to accelerate the returns” (10/19/25).
Anyway, nothing to see here: just some more casual enforced starvation and illegal aid deprivation in an already famine-stricken territory. It’s all in a day’s work during a “fragile ceasefire.”
Ceasefire ‘holding’?
In the aftermath of the Abu Shaaban family massacre, CNN reported (10/17/25) that the ceasefire was “holding”—albeit not without “coming under strain,” naming as the first culprit the “failure of Hamas to return all the bodies.” The question of the return of the bodies occupied the first 10 paragraphs of the piece, so that when CNN also named “the initially slow entry of aid” into Gaza and the “continued, if isolated, incidents of killings of Palestinians in Israeli strikes” as contributing to the “strain,” it had already been made clear to the reader which facet of the alleged violations was the most important.
The next day, NBC News employed a similarly diplomatic approach to Israel’s ongoing lethal operations, noting that “even as the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel holds, Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces” (10/18/25). Again, the media are apparently incapable of coming right out and stating that Israel has unequivocally violated the ceasefire, or that a ceasefire is not a ceasefire if one side is permitted to engage in continued slaughter.
According to the delusions of the Washington Post (10/15/25), meanwhile, Israel is “largely restrained from attacking Hamas under the ceasefire sponsored by Trump,” resulting in a situation in which “Hamas’s enduring grip has significant implications for the future of Gaza and President Donald Trump’s peace plan.” As usual, Israel is let off the hook for its campaign to literally annihilate Gaza’s future.
And yet this particular intervention by the Post is at least less batshit crazy than another one courtesy of columnist George F. Will (10/13/25), who has determined that “primary credit for the Gaza ceasefire” goes to the Israeli army and Netanyahu.
I would advise anyone with blood pressure problems to avoid so much as glancing at the column in question, but the gist of his argument is basically that genocide was a “necessary precondition for the cessation of warfare.” (Secondary credit goes to the US for “enabl[ing] Israel’s victory by not restraining its self-defense.”) It would seem, of course, that not launching a genocide in the first place might be an easier way to avoid warfare—a “cessation” of which has not been achieved in Gaza anyway.
“Greatest threat” to peace?
Indeed, while most corporate media commentary is not as transparently deranged as Will’s, there persists the notion that it is Hamas, not Israel, that is the greatest obstacle to peace—see, for instance, CNN‘s (10/17/25) “Why Hamas Remains the Greatest Threat to Trump’s Gaza Plan.” When Reuters (10/19/25) listed the “formidable obstacles to Trump’s plan to end the war,” it named “Hamas disarming, the governance of Gaza, the make-up of an international ‘stabilization force,’ and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state” that have yet to be resolved. Notice which actor is missing.
A typical Associated Press dispatch (10/13/25) headlined “Despite Momentous Ceasefire, the Path for Lasting Peace and Rebuilding in Gaza Is Precipitous” explains that “how and when Hamas is to disarm, and where its arms will go, are unclear, as are plans for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.” Never do such articles find the need to point out that Israel is a state whose very existence is predicated on ethnic cleansing and perpetual war—or to cite such relevant findings as the determination by a United Nations commission of inquiry that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
The Genocide Convention defines the phenomenon as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Such acts include “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The inconceivable bodily and mental devastation that Israel has deliberately inflicted on the people of Gaza clearly continues despite Trump’s announcement that the war in Gaza is “over.” And as Israel continues to violate the so-called “ceasefire” while attempting to redirect blame to justify its own unceasing aggression, the media’s lack of scrutiny only abets those violations.
International Court of Justice Finds Israelis Broke Law by Starving Palestinians of Gaza
Juan Cole10/23/2025. https://www.juancole.com/2025/10/israelis-starving-palestinians.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The International Court of Justice, established by the UN to adjudicate issues among nations, issued an advisory opinion on Wednesday branding the Israeli blockade on food and medical aid into the occupied Gaza Strip illegal.
I mean, surely this conclusion is simple common sense. You can’t starve people. That’s not only illegal, that is the height of immorality and cruelty. The war criminals who head up the Israeli government hold that they can do whatever they want to people on the grounds that they are Palestinians, or that millions are terrorists, or that there are no innocents among certain populations. No one with a heart and a mind agrees with them. Unfortunately, there are lots of heartless mindless people in the world, some of them extremely powerful.
In a world where International Humanitarian Law is increasingly brazenly flouted, as a way of undermining it and ensuring that its violators retain impunity, the Court upheld the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on occupied populations, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights of 16 December 1966 (hereinafter the “ICESCR”), a UN instrument that Israel signed.
The Court reminds us, “As an occupying Power, Israel is obliged to ensure the basic needs of the local population, including the supplies essential for their survival. Obligations to this effect are set out in Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The obligation is also implied by the UN Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.
The Court adds, “Israel is not only required to perform the positive obligation to ensure essential supplies to the local population “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”, but it is also under a negative obligation not to impede the provision of these supplies or the performance of services related to public health.”
Instead of fulfilling these obligations, the Israeli government created a famine in Gaza by blocking the entry of UN food trucks: “According to the IPC, by 12 May 2025, half of the population of the Gaza Strip faced emergency levels of food insecurity . . . and nearly half a million people faced catastrophic levels of food insecurity.”
Israel also has an obligation to avoid killing aid workers. Even where an aid worker might engage in resistance activities, Israel can only kill this person while they are actively engaged in warfare, not while they are in scrubs operating on a patient. The ICJ notes, “that, according to the United Nations, between 7 October 2023 and 20 August 2025, at least 531 humanitarian workers, including 366 United Nations personnel, were killed in the Gaza Strip . . .”
That is, Israeli has a positive obligation to ensure that the population it occupies is well-fed and gets health care. But it also has a negative obligation, where it fails in the positive one, to avoid interfering with the provision of such aid by the UN, UNRWA and other aid agencies, to ensure Palestinians are not malnourished or deprived of medical care.
The Court notes that the Geneva Convention prohibits the forcible expulsion of civilian populations from occupied territories, as does the UN Charter.
But, “According to some participants, including the United Nations, the Israeli military has issued numerous displacement orders, ‘forcing hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded areas and restricting the United Nations’ ability to deliver urgently needed essential supplies.”
The Court upheld the UN-mandated role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in providing aid to Palestinian refugees. It quotes a UN document that
Israeli officials alleged that UNRWA was extensively penetrated by Hamas. The Court did not find these allegations credible, writing, “the Court finds that Israel has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA employees ‘are members of Hamas . . . or other terrorist factions.’” UNRWA had 17,000 employees in Gaza and the Court could not rule out that a handful were dirty, but it finds that the UN and UNRWA investigated all credible charges and that the organization’s neutrality is not in doubt.
The Likud-led government of Israel throws the accusation of “terrorist” around without any evidence at all almost as indiscriminately as it does the accusation of “antisemitism.” In fact, virtually anyone who gets in the way of Likud schemes is smeared with both adjectives. The problem for this extremist Israeli propaganda is that it cannot stand up in the eyes of seasoned jurists, who make their judgments not out of fear or tribalism or emotion but out of a gimlet-eyed review of the evidence.
From my own point of view — the ICJ did not come out and say this, though it perhaps implies it — the Likud officials wanted to starve the Palestinians of Gaza. UNRWA got in the way of this genocidal project. They therefore slandered and banned UNRWA.
The Court pointed out that no other organization has UNRWA’s capacity to deliver aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. It admits that it would be permissible for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure the health and well-being of the Palestinians it occupies using other organizations. The ICJ points out, however, that Israel has not in actuality provided any such mechanism, and that the now-disbanded “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” was fairly useless and certainly did not replace UNRWA. The Israelis cared so little about actual food aid that this past summer the UN concluded that they had fostered a famine in Gaza.
In the end the Court concurred with UN Secretary-General António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres that ” “there is currently no realistic alternative to UNRWA that could adequately provide the services and assistance required by Palestine refugees.”
“The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of the International Court of Justice.” Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Israel may also not keep out other aid organizations (as it has done): “Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention refers to aid provided by ‘States or by impartial humanitarian organizations’. Thus, as long as the population remains inadequately supplied and Israel is not itself operating a system of humanitarian support that is in accordance with its obligations under international humanitarian law, Israel is obliged under Article 59 to agree to and facilitate relief schemes provided by third States or impartial humanitarian organizations such as the ICRC.”
In the end, the Court found that it has jurisdiction over Gaza; that it has the prerogative of issuing this advisory opinion; and that it is doing so.
It unanimously finds that Israel has the duty:
“to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services;”
It also finds that Israel has an obligation to let UNRWA do its job in Gaza.
Of 11 justices, only the Ugandan Christian Zionist Julia Sebutinde dissented on this one.
Also, Israel has to stop destroying hospitals and killing or abducting doctors (this one was also unanimous.)
The Israelis have to stop mass expulsions of Palestinians (unanimous).
Basically, the ICJ found that the entire conduct of the war on Gaza by Israel has been carried out in an illegal manner.
Shamefully, the US State Department under Marco Rubio denounced the ICJ advisory opinion. The US after WW II showed itself a leader in erecting the structure of International Humanitarian Law, in hopes of forestalling another global conflict. Some 64 million people were killed in WW II, almost the entire population of today’s UK or France. Now America is tearing down the edifice of law that it helped build. And that will come back to bite us on the posterior.
About the Author
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
Why there can be no peace for Palestinians.
For those governments looking for means of controlling restive populations, the Gaza war of the last two years is nothing more than a gruesome marketing tool, the continued harassment of people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem becomes another marketing tool, selling the means of control, of surveillance, of remote controlled killing.
22 October 2025 , Bert Hetebry, https://theaimn.net/why-there-can-be-no-peace-for-palestinians/
At the end of 2024, according to UNHCR, there were estimated to be 123.2 million people world wide, forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order. That is 1.5% of the world population. Or if you want to make it real numbers instead of a percentage, for every 1,000 people in the world there are 15 people who are displaced, superfluous to needs, unwanted.
These people form a long line, an almost endless stream of desperation, seeking a safe refuge, seeking work, seeking dignity, yet they are shunned, shoved aside and when they do make it to a ‘promised land’ of sorts, they are remain vulnerable, able to be exploited, yet some make it, find a new home, but many do not.
In 2017, the Chinese artist and humanitarian Ai Weiwei produced a documentary The Human Flow, documenting the march to nowhere, people unwanted, pushed aside, rejected from from the Middle East, from Myanmar, from Africa, from Central America. Millions of people looking for somewhere, anywhere they could make a life. Since that time, the problem has increased, and nation after nation is trying to find ways of controlling this human flotsam.
And that can bring us to Gaza.
No one asks what drove Hamas to mount the attack of 7 October 2023 which killed 1200 Israeli people who were partying at a music festival, and no body asks why Hamas took 250 people as hostages. Hamas are a terrorist organisation, and what ever they do, is an act of terrorism.
That appears to be the conventional wisdom.
What makes a terrorist? Are all Palestinians terrorists?
And despite the best efforts of Donald Trump, what chance is there of peace for the Palestinians in Gaza, in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank?
After eighty years of Israeli occupation, after a hundred years of war against Palestinians, I hold very little hope that the current cease fire will result in peace for Palestinians.
Despite the cost of war, the Israeli economy is in very good shape. This is not in Israel’s interests to stop the war.
The reason is economics.
Israel, with a Jewish population of around 7.7 million represents about 1% of the world’s population, but is a major supplier in the sale of military and surveillance products and services. Over one third of Israeli exports are arms and surveillance equipment and services. Where for most nations military industries are essentially for local markets, Israel’s military and surveillance industries rely on export, constituting as much as 80% of their revenues according to Taylor & Francis online, vol 25, 2025.
It is hard to imagine, from the relative safety of the lives we live, of the freedoms we have, that the freedom to travel around whether it is just locally, near where we live or even to hook up a caravan and do a 20,000km trip ‘around the block’, what it would be like to have a constant awareness that you are being watched. The sort of scenario depicted in the novel, 1984, where Big Brother is watching, where every step you take is noticed, where every word you utter is heard. Where, it seems, even your thoughts are somehow monitored.
I had a sense of that recently. I don’t much like the self checkout at the supermarkets, but used one when buying just three items. It was busy, and as I am scanning my items, placing them carefully on the correct side of the checkout I was using, an attendant came and swiped her card, I asked he what she was doing, apparently she had be warned by the electronic surveillance camera that I might be stealing stuff. Bunnings are using camera surveillance to address theft from their stores, have considered using face recognition, but got into a spot of bother regarding that, but have been a bit quiet on that front lately, so perhaps it’s there, and then there is the profiling of people, certain people look like thieves, right?
The surveillance systems in supermarkets has become so ubiquitous, so sophisticated that any unusual activity is noticed and monitored. In this case, I bought three items, I did not have a trolley but carried them by hand to the check out, and from there followed normal procedure… Except I did not have nor did I purchase a bag to carry them home, I used my hands. So the camera thought perhaps I was trying to steal stuff, or at least looked ‘different’ enough to be possibly suspicious.
The cameras will pick up any behaviour which is considered unusual, any person which fits a specified criteria can be followed through their shopping expedition, monitoring behaviour, and security personnel are advised and will greet the person before they leave the store. And yes, it is easy to justify that sort of surveillance in a supermarket or other retail environment where shop lifting is an issue. And yes, although it would be denied, there is a profiling of shoppers through the surveillance system.
In Israel, the surveillance of Palestinians is not in shops, it is constant, ever-present, it is part of life as a Palestinian… As a ’terrorist’.
To define a group as ‘terrorist’ is dehumanising. It takes away the sense of individuality, the thought that those ‘terrorists’ cannot think for themselves, but are almost mechanically filled with evil intent. It also denies the ability to consider what makes those people subject to such categorisation. And there-in lies the actual juxtaposing of the term, that the so called ‘terrorists’ are being terrorised.
It is difficult to think that with the sophisticated surveillance that Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank are subjected to that the Israelis did not know that Hamas were planning, in fact training for the 7 October attack which was the catalyst for the two years destruction of Gaza. Antony Loewenstein in his 2023 book The Palestine Laboratory writes:
“The most effective example of separatism is the encirclement of Gaza, trapping more than 2 million Palestinians behind high fences, under constant drone surveillance, infrequent missile attack, and largely closed borders enforced by Israel and Egypt. When Israel completed the sixty-five-kilometer high-tech barrier along the entire border with Gaza in late 2021, at a cost of US$1.11 billion, a ceremony in southern Israel took place to mark the occasion.” (The barrier was a rebuilding of a barrier fence which had been destroyed in 2001.)
Facial recognition technology, developed by Israeli firms, AnyVision and Corsight AI among others is used extensively through a growing network of cameras both in Gaza and throughout the West Bank as well as through mobile phones, means that the IDF and other government departments effectively follow interested subjects. Big Brother is constantly watching.
The technologies are sold at various marketing shows, with the mantra that these products are ‘conflict proven’, often with videos of ‘terrorists’ being arrested or otherwise dealt with as evidence of their effectiveness.
The growing use of drones both for surveillance and as means of delivering explosive devices is another export industry, again, proven effectiveness as a marketing tool is demonstrated through videos of the fight against terrorism, in Gaza and the West Bank.
Other means of ‘following’ people is through mobile phone technology. A programme ‘Pegasus’ developed by the Israeli NSO Group was instrumental in monitoring members of the drug cartels resulting in a reduction of murders committed in the drug wars which raged during the early 2000s.
NSO were blamed for being an accessory to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, enabling him to be ‘followed’, tracking his movements before his death.
The sale of exploding communication devices used by Hezbollah across Lebanon last year was another surreptitious use of technology, selling ‘safe’ communications devices, safe, in that they could not be tracked like mobile phones can be tracked, proved to be nothing less than selling murder weapons to be operated remotely; murder by remote control.
But that is part of the technology, the means of remote controlled murder. Israeli industry is at the cutting edge of drones, both for surveillance and for delivering bombs, delivering death and destruction. Not just in controlling Palestinians, but unwanted people, people seeking a better life, somewhere, anywhere but where they are unwanted. Surveillance drones are sent over the Mediterranean Sea, through the sale of surveillance systems to European countries struggling with the influx of stateless and unwanted people, the drones send images to a central, remote site where the images are viewed, and when a boat is in trouble, can message ships, coast guards, officials to help should such a boat be in trouble. Many are inflatable boats and because of overcrowding, deflate, and with the crisis of too many unwanted people, may choose to send the emergency message at a time when the boat has sunk and there is little chance of survivors. Other technologies monitor the movement of mobile phones, tracking the signals as the phones are carried on the journeys to a hoped for freedom.
Client states of these technologies are many, and particularly those states which have ethnic and religious divides, states where civil uprisings are feared, where authoritarian governments need to increase control over populations.
In dealing with the troubles in Gaza during the current conflict, searching for Hamas, drones deliver ordinance to blow up suspected places Hamas may or may nor be hiding, hospitals, schools for example because we know that in that small enclave, where over 2.3 million people are crammed together, Hamas is using human shields, right?
Using technology as an instrument of control, of surveillance, of murder is demonstrated time and again, and that has been a major tool of control Israel has used and continues to use, and the people in Gaza know they are being watched, they cannot escape the surveillance, and so in their preparation for the attack on 7 October 2023, every move had been watched, had been recorded. Could it be that Israel actually wanted the attack to occur, thinking that perhaps a small attack could happen but an excuse for another conflict, another punishment, but when the number of fatalities, the number of injuries, the number of hostages, it became the ultimate excuse for the devastation we have seen over the past two years.
For those governments looking for means of controlling restive populations, the Gaza war of the last two years is nothing more than a gruesome marketing tool, the continued harassment of people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem becomes another marketing tool, selling the means of control, of surveillance, of remote controlled killing.
And the means used, the technology of terrorising is exported, the industry being a huge component of the Israeli economy.
The importance of Gaza and The West Bank is to use it as a marketing tool for other nations needing to control populations, to ensure conformity, to quell dissent. There can be no peace for Palestinians in the marketing of surveillance mechanisms.
There can be no peace for Palestinians while they can be used to sell the means of population control. To sell the Big Brother tools and the armaments and explosives for when needed to ‘mow the grass’, as Prime Minister Netanyahu used to say during his earlier term in power, to keep the anxiety level in Gaza heightened.
How can there ever be peace for Palestinians?
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