Israelis Understand That Trump Can End The Nightmare In Gaza. Americans Should Know This Too.
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 19, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israelis-understand-that-trump-can?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=171337355&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s so revealing how Israelis keep begging Trump to end the killing in Gaza, because they understand that the US president has the power to force Israel to stop. It seems like Israelis understand this far better than Americans do.
Six former Israeli hostages and the widow of a slain hostage have released a video pleading with President Trump in English to support a comprehensive deal to make peace in Gaza so that the remaining hostages can be freed.
“You have the power to make history, to be the president of peace, the one who ended the war, ended the suffering, and brought every hostage home, including my little brother,” implores one of the hostages.
“President Trump, please act now before it’s too late for them, too,” pleads the widow.
This is not the first time Israelis have begged Trump to force an end to the slaughter. Earlier this month more than 600 former senior Israeli security officials from Mossad and Shin Bet sent Trump a letter urging him to compel Netanyahu to make peace in Gaza. They did this because they understand something that many Americans do not: that the US president has always had the power to end the Gaza holocaust.
It’s crazy how many times I’ve encountered Americans telling me that this is “Israel’s war” and there’s nothing the president can do to end it. It was mostly Democrats doing this back when Biden was president and I was slamming Genocide Joe for continuing this mass atrocity, and now that Trump is in office it’s his supporters who show up in my comments section white knighting for the president.
“It’s not our war and we should stay out of it,” they sometimes claim, mistakenly thinking that critics of the US-backed genocide are asking for some kind of US intervention.
But the call isn’t for the US to intervene, it’s for the US to stop intervening. To end the US interventionism that has been underway for two years. The Gaza holocaust can be ended by the US simply ceasing to add wood to the fire.
Israeli military insiders have been saying again and again that the onslaught in Gaza would not be possible without US support.
A senior Israeli air force official told Haaretz last year that “without the Americans’ supply of weapons to the Israel Defense Forces, especially the air force, Israel would have had a hard time sustaining its war for more than a few months.”
In November 2023 retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told Jewish News Syndicate that, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote the following last year:
“The entire Israel Air Force relies completely on American aircraft: fighter planes, transport planes, refueler planes and helicopters. All of Israel’s air power is based on the American commitment to defend Israel. We have no other reliable source for essential supplies of equipment, munitions and advanced weapons that Israel cannot manufacture on its own. In recent months, hundreds of American transport planes have landed at IAF bases carrying thousands of tons of advanced, vital military equipment and munitions.”
The Israelis clearly understand that they’ve been entirely dependent on the US for the IDF’s acts of butchery in Gaza this entire time, and they clearly understand that the US president has the ability to turn off the tap whenever he wants.
And now they are begging the president to do so with increasing urgency, because it’s been made clear to them that their own government isn’t going to stop until it is forced to stop. They can’t stop the gunman, so they’re turning to the man who’s feeding him the ammo.
It would be good if Americans understood this as well. Trump is committing genocide in Gaza, just as surely as Netanyahu is, and he could end it at any time. The fact that he still has not chosen to do so makes him one of the most evil people on earth.
Israel’s man inside the CIA betrayed the US, new files show.
Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America
Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship.……………………………………………..
Kit Klarenberg and Wyatt Reed, Grayzone, August 15, 2025
Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish émigrés and Israeli operatives without “any clearances” from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by historian Jefferson Morley as “a leading architect of America’s strategic relationship with Israel,” detailing Angleton’s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel’s theft of US nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.
Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his “most important” task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.
According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev’s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted “practically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.” Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced “500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish” who “knew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.”
Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the “release” of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.
The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by US intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that the US provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel’s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.
Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel’s Mossad as Angleton’s “primary source” of information, confirm that the CIA’s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency – and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with US interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.
Other newly declassified files from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.
A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel’s founders. Over a dozen references to “Israel,” “Tel Aviv,” or descriptions of figures as “Jewish,” which were scrubbed from the 2018 release, can now be viewed on the National Archives site.
The documents reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.
Those documents also reveal that Angleton’s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald’s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton’s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America
Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship. The scene of the crime was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, a uranium processing facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania owned by a Zionist financier named David Lowenthal. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro, a fellow Zionist hired by Lowenthal to run the plant, illegally diverted hundreds of kilograms of nuclear fissile material to Israel. Posing as a scientist, the notorious Mossad spy Rafi Eitan visited NUMEC three years later to continue the heist.
As Jefferson Morley documented in his biography of Angleton, “The Ghost,” the late CIA counterintelligence chief made sure the CIA looked the other way as Israel constructed its first nuclear weapon out of the stolen fissile material. According to Morley, “Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.”
A 1977 investigation by the US Government Accountability Office found that the CIA withheld information about the NUMEC nuclear theft from the FBI and Department of Energy, and “found that certain key individuals had not been contacted by the FBI almost 2 years into the FBI’s current investigation.”
The latest batch of Church Committee files add new detail about Angleton’s compromising of US national security to benefit Israel, and his attempts to cover up his betrayal.
During his testimony before the Committee, Angleton was pressed about media reports alleging that he and his counterintelligence unit provided Israel with technical support for constructing nuclear weapons. He strenuously denied the charges, insisting the CIA had never played any role in providing Tel Aviv with nuclear materials. However, when questioned about whether “Israeli intelligence efforts” were ever conducted in the US “aimed at acquiring… nuclear technology,” Angleton equivocated………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/15/cias-angleton-israeli-spy-ring-files/
Zionism Is What It Does
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 21, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/zionism-is-what-it-does?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=171529578&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel apologists always attack anti-Zionists by saying “Zionism just means self-determination for Jews! If you hate Zionism then you hate Jews!”
No, that’s not what Zionism means. Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That’s what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things.
There is simply no argument to the contrary. This is indisputably what Zionism looks like. There is no other alternate reality iteration of Zionism you can point to where genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and nonstop violence and abuse are not happening. This is the only way Zionism looks. The Zionist experiment has been run, and these are the results.
Trying to argue that Zionism doesn’t mean genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and nonstop violence and abuse is exactly the same as trying to argue that Nazism doesn’t mean all the things that happened when the Nazism experiment was run. Nazism means all the things that happened under Nazism. You can’t legitimately tell me “No, actually, Nazism just means a safe and prosperous homeland for the German people.” We’ve seen what Nazism looks like, and we’ve seen what Zionism looks like. To argue otherwise is to argue with reality.
It’s just so obnoxious how Israel supporters are like “Zionism means these nice things and nice words, so if you’re against Zionism you’re against the nice things and nice words!” No, asshole, that’s not how it works. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own reality.
Israel is what it does. Zionism is what it does. You can’t separate them from their actions. The debate about the true nature of these things has been settled by the reality of what is happening.
It doesn’t matter if you believe Israel just wants to live in peace. It doesn’t matter if you believe Zionism is just the idea that Jews deserve self-determination. Reality says you’re wrong. Reality says Israel and Zionism mean nonstop violence and abuse. Reality says Israel and Zionism necessarily entail genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Because that’s the reality on the ground.
Them’s the facts. If you disagree with them, you are objectively wrong.
I saw a clip of ABC host Patricia Karvelas raking Netanyahu policy advisor Ophir Falk over the coals for his denialism of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and the thought occurred to me that Israel really has lost the normies. All the mainstream western empire loyalists who dutifully toe the imperial line under normal circumstances are dropping away, one by one.
The fact that Israel has managed to alienate western liberals is so funny, because they’d be Israel’s biggest cheerleaders if they were given the tiniest bit of justification for that position.
So much about Israel fits in perfectly with western liberal mythology. A US-aligned capitalist democracy run by a plucky religious minority who survived horrific persecution, which embraces secular progressive values and reinforces the dominant western narratives about the wonderful things the US-led order has been able to accomplish since its triumphant glorious victory in the second world war. All Israel had to do was give them something, anything, and they’d still think Israel is the greatest thing in the world. They just needed an excuse — even a very meager one.
But Israel couldn’t even give them that. Genocide, racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and expansionism were just too important to its driving ideology. The Zionist project simply could not continue without going mask-off at some point, so now they’ve lost all the mainstream moderate liberals and pretty much everyone besides the “killing Muslims is good” far right extremists and the “we have to support Israel because God commands it” Christian Zionists.
Eventually all the contradictions had to come out into the light.
The Israeli press are pushing the narrative that if people in Gaza are suffering so bad they should leave, which is precisely the narrative I said we’d soon be hearing from Israel in facilitation of its longstanding ethnic cleansing agenda.
Last month I wrote the following in an article titled “They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It”:
“Western governments are beginning to speak out against the mass atrocity in Gaza, far too little and far too late. We can expect Israel and the United States to respond to this outcry by saying that Palestinians need to be evacuated out of Gaza as quickly as possible in order to rescue them from this deliberately manufactured humanitarian crisis. We can expect them to denounce anyone who opposes this ethnic cleansing operation as evil monsters who want to starve the poor Palestinians.”
The Jerusalem Post has just published an opinion piece titled “Gaza humanitarian crisis should expedite Trump’s relocation plan,” subtitled “Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal.”
The article’s author, Gol Kalev, complains that “the Gazans” are being “denied the basic human right to flee a war” by the mean, nasty Europeans who just want to accuse Israel of war crimes and atrocities.
“They are needed under the rubble in Gaza — not just by Hamas, who uses them as human shields, but also by Europe and its proxies, who use them as pawns in their age-old opposition to the Jewish state, and as a proxy assault on America,” Kalev writes, arguing that public frustration “should not be directed at Israel, but at those standing in the way of Trump’s relocation plan, including European leaders.”
“Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal — which could lead to safety and prosperity for Gazans, and peace for the entire region,” writes Kalev. “The public message must be clear: Let the Gazans be free — let them flee.”
Just as I said they would do, they’re disguising a naked ethnic cleansing operation as humanitarianism and denouncing anyone who wants to provide Palestinians with a massive relief effort in their historic homeland as an uncaring monster. We can expect to see more of this messaging going forward.
Anyone who tells you they support Israel for religious reasons is telling you to stop trying to reason with them. They’re saying their position is not based on facts, evidence, logic or morality, but their blind faith in a collection of made up stories. So there’s nothing you could possibly say to them that would change their mind or convince them that they are wrong.
Trying to debate or reason with such a person would be the same as trying to convince someone that there is no God. It’s an entirely unfalsifiable position about which no argument can be made using facts and evidence.
Someone like Mike Huckabee is never telling the truth or saying what he really thinks is going on when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, he’s just making whatever mouth noises he needs to make to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy and secure his eternal reward. Such people have no place in the conversation. They should be completely excluded from the debate, because they are not actually participating in it. They’re just lying and manipulating for reasons that have nothing to do with truth or morality.
Stopping The Gaza Holocaust Is The First Step Toward A Healthy World
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 13, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/stopping-the-gaza-holocaust-is-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=170832055&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Nicole on Facebook writes, “I would love to hear you explain how Palestine is the moral question of our time. Why it’s so important. How it’s related to every movement and should be a concern to everyone.”
Palestine is the moral question of our time because the abuse of the Palestinians is the most glaring, in-your-face symptom of the imperial disease. You can see the effects of so many of the empire’s abusive dynamics in how this thing is playing out, from racism to colonialism to militarism to war profiteering to mass media propaganda to empire-building to government corruption to suppression of free speech to ecocide to the heartless, mindless, soul-eating nature of the capitalist system under which we all live.
But there’s more to it than that. The primary reason to place Palestine front and center as the moral issue of our time is because if we can’t sort out the morality of an active genocide backed by our own western governments, we’re not going to be able to sort out anything else. Stopping the Gaza holocaust and bringing justice to the Palestinians is the very first step toward a healthy civilization.
Palestine is the moral issue of our time for the same reason if you saw someone in your family torturing another member of your family to death, it would be the most urgent matter happening in your life at that moment. You’d have other problems in your life, but that would come first.
If we’re the sort of society that would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of our own government and its allies, then we’re not the sort of society that can steer away from its trajectory toward dystopia and armageddon. If you’re the sort of individual who would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of your own government and its allies, then you’re not the sort of individual who can help steer our species away from disaster.
Gaza is not the only thing that matters in the world. But if you’re not forcefully opposing the Gaza holocaust, you definitely don’t have a healthy enough conscience to address any of the world’s other problems.
I sometimes see Israel supporters refer to pro-Palestine sentiment as “virtue signaling”, which is funny because it means they view themselves as holding the unpopular, unvirtuous position. But really there’s nothing particularly virtuous about supporting Gaza, and it’s not some cool, special thing you’d want to signal about yourself. It’s just what you do when you’re not an extremely shitty person. It’s the basic, bare-minimum expectation of normal human morality.
I don’t want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t oppose the Gaza holocaust. I don’t want to follow any commentators or analysts who don’t speak out against the Gaza holocaust. At this point I don’t even want to listen to any music or read any poetry from people who don’t take a stand against the Gaza holocaust. Since 2023 I’ve moved from rejecting anyone who actively sided with Israel to rejecting anyone who is even complicit in their silence.
The other day I saw some Australian influencer forcefully trying to assert that it’s okay not to take a position on Gaza, and nobody in her replies was buying it. Supporting Israel and aligning with US foreign policy comes with a lot of career benefits for high-profile individuals, and you don’t get to both enjoy those perks and also keep ethical people interested in what you have to say. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose between the perks and the people. You actually do.
Opposition to the Gaza holocaust is the very first step in assessing if someone is worth my time. If you can’t even meet the basic, bare-minimum expectation of opposing an active genocide, then you are too callous and apathetic to be my friend. If you can’t even get this basic, kindergarten-level moral question right, then your mind is too shallow and your heart too hardened for me to be interested in your analysis, your ideas, your politics, or your art.
There are so many terrible things in our world, and there is so much work that needs to be done to address them. I don’t know what ideas, strategies and movements will get us out of this mess, but I do know that if any are going to emerge they’re going to come from the people who’ve been taking a strong stand against Israel and its western allies these last two years. Those are the individuals, movements, and political factions to pay attention to going forward. Nobody else is equipped to help.
A Shield of Lies: Netanyahu’s Battle Against the World
13 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-shield-of-lies-netanyahus-battle-against-the-world/
It was a sign of someone desperate that his message has failed to take wing and make its way to better lands. With the strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Gaza Strip sundered and falling over, leaving only a thick butcher’s bill (over 60,000 deaths for starters), extraordinary suffering and humanitarian catastrophe, he thought it wise to confront foreign press outlets on a late Sunday in the hope that the tide might turn away from his exemplary viciousness. There had been, he moaned like a wounded starlet, a “global campaign of lies” about Israel’s war in Gaza. In doing so, he merely inflated the arguments against him with boisterous credit and almost irrefutable plausibility.
The conference, which gave “an opportunity to puncture the lies and tell the truth,” involved the following points: Hamas still has thousands of fighters in Gaza; it vowed to repeat what it had done on October 7, 2023; it continued to expound the goal of wishing to destroy Israel even as it subjugated Gazans, stole their precious food, and shot those seeking to move to safe zones, the latter term being itself a monstrosity in the context of this conflict. Paternally, Netanyahu as the punishing father figure, thought he had deciphered the true desire of those in Gaza, which presumably would not have entailed the killing of Palestinians by the tens of thousands and starving the rest. Everything could be blamed on a militant organisation he had done so much to praise as a countering force against Fatah in the West Bank. As things stood now, Gazans seemed to be suffering from a highly developed sense of Stockholm’s syndrome, “begging us, and they’re begging the world: ‘Free us, Free us, and free Gaza from Hamas’.”
With a solid body of mendacity to work with, Netanyahu proceeded to build an edifice of fantasy few others outside Israel could contend with: that the same Israeli forces who starve, kill and maim the civilian populace of the Strip have no wish to impose an occupation but “free it from Hamas terrorists. The war can end tomorrow if Gaza, or rather if Hamas lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.” Israeli policy was not one of starving the Palestinians into famine wrecks, skeletal ruin and physiological malfunction. That hideous criminal pursuit fell to Hamas, apparently responsible for the violent looting of aid trucks and the deliberate creation of “a shortage of supply.” Fantastically, Netanyahu blamed the United Nations for refusing “to distribute the thousands of trucks that we let into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing,” a delightful complaint given his government’s overt hatred for a body he always wished to be rid of from the occupied territories. The synapses in Netanyahu-Land seemed frailer than ever, if not altogether snapped.
He then belted out the now familiar five-point vision of the Strip once Hamas is defeated. This elusive “day after” includes the following objectives: the disarming of Hamas, the freeing of all hostages, the demilitarising of the Gaza Strip, granting Israel “overriding security control”, the creation of a non-Israeli administration that will not “educate its children for terror, doesn’t pay terrorists and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel.” Unlike other proposals advanced by France, the UK and Canada, the Palestinian Authority is also excluded from the arrangements, since no Palestinian politician is worth the Israeli PM’s time. Netanyahu’s idea of a politically viable Palestinian is one manacled to the security regime of other powers.
The stage for the next slaughter is set, namely, the dismantling of “the two remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the Central Camps. Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war, and the best way to end it speedily.” Netanyahu feigns a humanitarian streak in stating that the civilian population will be allowed to “leave the combat areas to designated safe zones.” The process of ethnic cleansing, or simply cleansing of the population, is to simply continue.
Oblivious to Netanyahu’s fortified wall of prejudice is that much of the groundwork for precisely those outcomes he hopes to avoid have already been laid. Whether it be Hamas or any other militant organisation, the notion of pacifist subordinate figures content with their status in any territory where Israel has the last word on everything is absurdly unrealistic.
Doing everything to make his case even less convincing, Netanyahu then told Israeli journalists after seeing the foreign scribblers off that he had never halted all humanitarian aid to Gaza. Even the patriotic Times of Israel found this a bit rich, noting that “his government had enacted that policy earlier this year.” The paper went on to quote the announcement from the premier’s office on March 2: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease.”
Netanyahu also refused to accept the proposition that Gaza’s population was starving. Shortages in supply yes; starvation no. “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.” The same could be said about the supreme crime of all: “if we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.” A wise head might have told him that few who commit genocide or engineer circumstances of mass murder ever make the intention that obvious.
Hellish’: heatwave brings hottest nights on record to the Middle East.
Temperatures did not drop below 36C in Sedom, Israel on Tuesday
night, while several parts of Jordan stayed above 35C on Monday.
Guardian 15th Aug 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/hellish-heatwave-brings-hottest-nights-on-record-to-the-middle-east
In major shift, Germany ends arms exports to Israel amid Netanyahu’s Gaza takeover plan
Chancellor Friedrich Merz bans shipments of military equipment that could be used in Gaza
The Week, By Ajish P Joy August 09, 2025
Germany has announced it will halt approval of weapons exports to Israel for use in the Gaza Strip “until further notice,” marking a sharp policy shift for one of Israel’s staunchest allies. Chancellor Friedrich Merz made the declaration yesterday after weeks of publicly criticising Israel’s “unclear” goals in Gaza and expressing concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis, though until now he had avoided altering policy.
The decision followed intense domestic debate over how to respond to credible reports of widespread malnutrition and even starvation in Gaza. The immediate trigger was Israel’s decision yesterday to step up military operations in the territory and take over Gaza City.
Merz said the new offensive, approved by the Israeli cabinet, made it “increasingly difficult” to see how Israel could achieve its stated aims of disarming Hamas and freeing the remaining 50 hostages. He affirmed Germany’s commitment to those objectives but stressed that a ceasefire and relief for civilians were top priorities. He also urged Israel to halt any moves towards annexing parts of the West Bank.
Under the new policy, Berlin will not approve the export of any military equipment that could be used in Gaza. Merz said the government was “deeply worried about the continued suffering of the civilian population” and that the planned offensive placed “even stronger responsibility” on Israel to ensure humanitarian provisions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theweek.in/news/middle-east/2025/08/09/in-major-shift-germany-ends-arms-exports-to-israel-after-netanyahu-s-gaza-takeover-plan.html
Israel Is Beginning To Choke On Its Own Lies
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 08, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-is-beginning-to-choke-on-its?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=170415282&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Netanyahu has confirmed reports that Israel plans an extreme escalation in Gaza which will entail the total military occupation of the entire enclave and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which the Israeli spin machine has termed “voluntary migration”.
To be clear, anyone who says the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would be “voluntary” is lying. Starving a population and deliberately making their land uninhabitable is exactly the same as forcing them out at gunpoint. Saying “leave or you’ll starve” is not meaningfully different from saying “leave or I’ll shoot you in the head”. Israel’s planned mass expulsion will be as forced and involuntary as any in recorded history.
President Trump has fully signed off on this move, washing his hands of the mass atrocity he is cosigning by telling the press that it’s going to be “pretty much up to Israel.”
Trump is lying. It’s up to him. That’s why more than 600 former senior Israeli security officials from Mossad and Shin Bet just sent Trump a letter urging him to compel Netanyahu to make peace in Gaza. They understand that the US president has always had the power to end the Gaza holocaust; numerous Israeli insiders have said that this mass atrocity would not be possible without US assistance.
Trump could end all this at any time, and chooses not to. This makes him one of the most evil people in the world.
This whole genocide is powered by lies. Netanyahu just told Fox News that the horrifying aerial footage of the destruction in Gaza that we’ve been seeing is because every single building in Gaza was booby trapped with explosives by Hamas.
“The reason you see the flattened buildings is because Hamas booby traps every single building,” Netanyahu said. “So when we come in, we first have the population moved even though Hamas tries to keep them in the combat zones. But after they move, and we start to move into the neighborhoods that are now populated only by terrorists, they ignite these booby traps. So what we do is we put in an APC, an armored personnel carrier, with a lot of explosives. Detonate it. It sets off all the booby traps and the buildings begin to collapse as a result of that. They’re empty buildings, they’re not populated buildings.”
Absolutely nobody believes this is true. Not one single person alive on this earth sincerely believes that Gaza now looks like a gravel parking lot because Hamas placed explosives inside every single building. Netanyahu doesn’t believe it. Israel’s most venomous supporters don’t believe it. It’s just part of the nonstop fountain of lies they are spewing to avoid acknowledging what we all know we’re looking at. They’ve told so many lies by now that they’ve got to keep lying and lying just to stay afloat, like a man desperately treading water to avoid drowning.
This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. It’s actually degrading at this point. The lies Israel and its supporters have to pretend to believe are getting so ridiculous that supporting Israel is now an act of public humiliation and self-debasement.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has a long rant on his social media accounts complaining that Israel’s “status in the United States is collapsing”, including among Republicans, with public sentiment turning against them because of what is happening in Gaza.
As you might expect, Bennett does not frame this as a sign that Israel should stop committing genocide in Gaza, but rather complains of a crisis of “antisemitism” in the United States, and accuses Netanyahu of failing to adequately propagandize Americans.
“Jews in the United States are subject to a torrential wave of anti-Semitism, like him I don’t remember in my life,” Bennett moans, adding, “Antisemites increase to compare the ‘hunger’ in Gaza to the Holocaust, and thus reduce the memory of the Holocaust. They act that the hunger accusation will haunt israel its citizens, our soldiers, for generations.”
“If Netanyahu’s propaganda men worked against the enemies of Israel *outside* a tenth of the talent, speed and dedication with which they operate the propaganda machine against their political rivals *inside* israel our situation would be amazing,” Bennet writes, saying he wants to “re-establish a rapid and synchronized explanation headquarters”.
“Explanation” is the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”, i.e. pro-Israel propaganda.
Meanwhile the term “hasbara” itself is reportedly being abandoned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, as westerners have come to associate the term with genocide propaganda.
The Times of Israel reports:
“Long referred to as hasbara, a term used to denote both public relations and propaganda that has been freighted with negative baggage in recent years, the ministry now brands its approach as toda’a — which translates to ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’ — an apparent shift toward broader, more proactive messaging.”
So they’re not abandoning the genocide, and they’re not abandoning the genocide propaganda, they’re just abandoning the word for the genocide propaganda because people have come to associate that word with propaganda in support of genocide.
The entire Zionist project is built on a foundation of lies. And their lies are starting to catch up with them. They’re now at a point where the lies are beginning to damage the public image they’re intended to protect.
When a liar is recognized as a liar, his lies will forevermore work only as an antidote to his past lies, and as a light to further expose his intent. From that point on any lie he tells just shows people how ugly his character and intentions really are.
There is no other weapon that works that way. No other weapon which when it’s seen immediately stops working, actively disarms the attacker, starts fixing what he broke, and starts attacking him.
Smotrich Announces Major West Bank Settlement Expansion To ‘Bury the Idea of a Palestinian State’.
The planned construction appears to be a response to Western countries saying they will recognize a Palestinian state
by Dave DeCamp | August 14, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/14/smotrich-announces-major-west-bank-settlement-expansion-to-bury-the-idea-of-a-palestinian-state/
The Israeli government is moving forward with a plan for the massive expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that would cut off the northern part of the Palestinian territory from its southern regions, a plan Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”
Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry that allows him to expand settlements, announced that he plans to approve the construction of 3,401 housing units for the controversial E1 settlement project, which has been frozen for decades due to international opposition.
“They will talk about a Palestinian dream, and we will continue to build a Jewish reality,” Smotrich said at a press conference at the site of the planned construction. “This reality is what will permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”
In an earlier statement, Smotrich said, “After decades of international pressure and freezes, we are breaking conventions and connecting Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem. This is Zionism at its best – building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel.”
The announcement appears to be Smotrich’s response to several Western countries, including the UK, France, Canada, and Australia, announcing plans to recognize a Palestinian state by September if certain conditions are met.
The Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said the Israeli government’s Higher Planning Council is set to hold a hearing next Wednesday, August 20, for the final approval of the settlement construction. The group said the hearing was scheduled at “record speed.”
“The E1 plan is deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution. We are standing at the edge of an abyss, and the government is driving us forward at full speed,” Peace Now said in a statement.
“There is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the terrible war in Gaza — the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel — and it will ultimately come. The government’s annexation moves are taking us further away from this solution and guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed,” the group added.
The news was also strongly condemned by Palestinian officials. The presidency of the Palestinian National Council said the settlement expansion was a “systemic plan to steal land, Judaize it, and impose biblical and Talmudic facts on the conflict.”
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel using Microsoft cloud for mass surveillance of Palestine.
Aug 09, 2025 , Mikael Thalen (Tech Reporter), https://san.com/cc/a-million-calls-an-hour-israel-using-microsoft-cloud-for-mass-surveillance-of-palestine/
Summary
1 million an hour
Israel is reportedly collecting and storing as much as 1 million phone calls an hour from Palestine on Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers.
200 million hours
Since the partnership began between Microsoft and Israel in 2022, over 200 million hours of phone call audio has been captured as of July.
Used in war
The captured cell phone data from Gaza and the West Bank is reportedly being used for blackmail, detainments, arrests and airstrikes.
Full story
Israel’s military intelligence unit has been relying on Microsoft to conduct mass surveillance of phone calls from Palestine, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and the Local Call. The operation, enabled by a customized and segregated environment on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, is reportedly capable of processing up to 1 million phone calls an hour.
The system launched in 2022 following a meeting the year prior between Yossi Sariel, then the commander of the intelligence agency known as Unit 8200, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Leaked internal Microsoft documents as well as interviews with 11 sources, including Microsoft staff and Israeli intelligence officials, revealed that approximately 11,500 terabytes of data, equivalent to 200 million hours of audio, was stored on Microsoft servers in the Netherlands and Ireland as of July.
The captured data has reportedly been used to target Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank for blackmail, detention and arrest.
Arrests, detainments and airstrikes
“When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, that’s where they find the excuse,” a Unit 8200 source was quoted as saying.
Israel also dug through the data, according to the investigation, after carrying out airstrikes to find intelligence that could be cited as justification.
Captured phone calls are retained in the cloud for around one month. That time may be expanded to give Unit 8200 the ability to retrieve older telephone conversations involving people who become of interest, The Guardian said.
Microsoft denies knowledge
Microsoft said its CEO was not aware of the types of data that would be stored when he agreed to aid Unit 8200. An external review commissioned by Microsoft on the partnership, carried out earlier this year after the ties between the company and Israel were revealed, found no evidence that Azure was used to target or harm people in Palestine, the company said.
After the surveillance operation was uncovered, Microsoft again said that at no time was it “aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned.”
Internal records on the 2021 meeting between Nadella and Sariel do not show that cell phone surveillance was mentioned. Instead, Sariel is said to have referred to “sensitive workloads” of secret data.
Other documents, however, suggest Microsoft engineers in both the U.S. and Israel were aware that raw intelligence, such as audio files, would be stored in the cloud environment. Israel initially reached out to Microsoft after realizing its own internal servers were incapable of storing such vast amounts of data.
“You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out,” one source 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.”
Numerous Israeli sources insisted that the mass-surveillance program had saved lives by detecting and thwarting attacks on civilians. The system, however, did not prevent the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, which has been used to justify increased surveillance.
Alan Judd (Content Editor) contributed to this report.
Over 100 Children Have Died of Severe Hunger Amid Israeli Siege: Gaza Health Ministry.
“People are being starved, children are being killed, families have lost everything,” said the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Brad Reed, Aug 11, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-children-starvation-2673875979
The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Monday that more than 100 children in Gaza have died of severe hunger during Israel’s siege of the territory.
As Al Jazeera reported, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said that a total of 222 Palestinians have died from hunger during the siege, including 101 children. The vast majority of these deaths have come in just the last three weeks when the hunger crisis in Gaza started to garner international media attention, the ministry said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on Monday emphasized the direness of the situation in a statement calling for a cease-fire to allow more aid into Gaza.
“People are being starved, children are being killed,” the agency said. “Families have lost everything. Political will and leadership can stop an escalation and end the war. Every heartbeat counts.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that there is no starvation crisis in Gaza and has said such reports are part of a “fake” propaganda campaign waged by Israel’s enemies.
However, it isn’t just the Gaza Health Ministry warning of a hunger crisis in the region, as international charity Save the Children last week said that 43% of pregnant and breastfeeding women who showed up to its clinics in Gaza last month were malnourished, which represented a threefold increase since March, when the Israeli military imposed a total siege on the area.
The latest numbers about starvation in Gaza come as the Israeli government is pushing forward with a plan to fully invade and occupy Gaza, which experts have warned will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis among its people.
“If these plans are implemented, they will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings, and destruction,” said Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations assistant secretary general, over the weekend.
Netanyahu’s Plan To Occupy Gaza Violates World Court Ruling That Israeli Occupation is Illegal.
August 12, 2025 By Marjorie Cohn ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/12/netanyahus-plan-to-occupy-gaza-violates-world-court-ruling-that-israeli-occupation-is-illegal/
As the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip surpasses 61,000 and Israel continues to starve Gazans to death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that Israel plans to occupy all of Gaza. When asked in an August 7 appearance on Fox News whether Israel would “take control of all of Gaza,” Netanyahu replied, “We intend to.”
The Israeli Occupation Forces say they already control about 75 percent of Gaza. The remaining 25 percent includes Gaza City, Khan Younis, and many neighborhoods and refugee camps in central Gaza.
Israel’s occupation of Gaza flies in the face of the July 19 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court). In its landmark 83-page advisory opinion, the ICJ held, “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.”
During the proceedings at the ICJ, Israel had argued that because it withdrew its military forces from Gaza in 2005, it no longer occupied the Gaza Strip. But the World Court concluded that Israel continues to occupy Gaza because it exercises “effective control” of “the land, sea and air borders” and maintains “restrictions on movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone.” The court noted that “This is even more so since 7 October 2023.”
Israel’s Security Cabinet Approves the Takeover of Gaza City
Netanyahu’s stated intention leaves no doubt that he aims to make Israel’s occupation of Gaza official. On August 8, in the first step toward executing that plan, the Israeli security cabinet authorized the takeover of Gaza City, the forcible displacement of the 1 million Palestinians taking refuge there, and their confinement in “camps.”
To eliminate media witnesses to its impending slaughter, Israeli Occupation Forces killed five Al Jazeera journalists near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital on the evening of August 10. They included the beloved Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had reported widely from northern Gaza.
“The Israeli Government’s plan for a complete military takeover of the occupied Gaza strip must be immediately halted. It runs contrary to the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel must bring its occupation to an end as soon as possible, to the realisation of the agreed two-State solution and to the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk stated on August 8. “On all evidence to date, this further escalation will result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes.”
In a Joint Statement issued on August 9, more than 20 countries, joined by the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, expressed “their strong condemnation and categorical rejection of Israel’s announcement of its intention to impose full military control over the Gaza Strip.” They wrote, “We consider this announcement a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli/facts on the ground by force, in contravention of international legitimacy.”
On August 10, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting at the request of the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Greece, and Slovenia, who issued the following statement:
We condemn the Government of Israel’s decision to further expand its military operations in Gaza. This plan risks violating international humanitarian law. We call on Israel to urgently reverse this decision and not to implement it. And we reiterate that any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law … We call on both parties to secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all the hostages, and to urgently advance efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
All UN member countries except Israel and the U.S. denounced Netanyahu’s occupation plan for Gaza at the Council meeting. For example, the representative from Somalia said the ICJ “was unequivocal” that Israel’s occupation, blockade, denial of humanitarian access, and actions constituting collective punishment in Gaza violate international law. Algeria’s representative strongly condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s decision to displace the entire population of Gaza City and northern Gaza and impose full military control of Gaza, stating that “these are war crimes, and those who draw their maps in blood must not walk in the shadow of impunity.” The delegate from Denmark invoked the ICJ’s ruling that any unilateral attempts to alter the demography or status of Gaza amounts to a clear violation of international law. China’s ambassador said the Council “must firmly oppose any attempt to occupy Gaza.”
The same day the Council met, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the decision of the Israeli occupation authorities to occupy the Gaza Strip and categorically condemns their persistence in committing crimes of starvation, brutal practices, and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.”
Trump Gives Israel the Green Light to Occupy Gaza
“They’re talking about occupying areas that are packed with so many people,” said Mukhlis al-Masri, who was forced to leave his home in northern Gaza and is now in Khan Younis. He told The New York Times that “If they do that, there will be incalculable killing. The situation will be more dangerous than anyone can imagine.”
The United States tried to prevent the meeting of the Security Council, the body empowered by the UN Charter to maintain international peace and security. Although unable to thwart the meeting from taking place, the threat of a U.S. veto prevented the Council from considering a resolution.
Dorothy Shea, U.S. interim ambassador to the UN, charged that the Security Council meeting was “emblematic of the counterproductive role that far too many governments on this council and throughout the UN system have played on the issue.” Her comments demonstrate the U.S.’s consistent defiance of international law.
Donald Trump gave Israel the tacit green light to take over Gaza. “That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” he said when asked about Netanyahu’s plan.
The United States routinely provides Israel with diplomatic cover for its international crimes – not only in the Security Council, but also at the ICJ and the International Criminal Court. The ICC has charged Netanyahu with the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
And the U.S. also flouts its legal obligations by enabling – indeed, aiding and abetting – Israel’s genocide by providing millions of dollars in weapons used to massacre Palestinians.
The U.S. has the power to stop Netanyahu’s illegal and dangerous plan. “Unless the United States changes its stance, I think ultimately, Israel will continue with this plan,” warned Will Todman, chief of staff of the geopolitics and foreign policy department and a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That would be a disaster – for the people of Gaza and the region, the rule of law, and the integrity of the global community.
The West is in panic as Israel’s plan for ‘full control’ of Gaza heralds a new Nakba.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution
Jonathan Cook, Aug 14, 2025
If you thought western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
As ever, events have moved on – even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.
Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it. At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.
The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” – Israel’s new term for a concentration camp – where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.
At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.
Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” – that is, delay – weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.
Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions – evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children – to an entirely different story.
Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.
We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide – analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.
Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.
And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.
According to France’s foreign affairs minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”
In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.
Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.
As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.
Boot on Gaza’s neck
How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.
While western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.
Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen – misnamed a “humanitarian city” – alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.
The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.
Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.
Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.
An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel – or those who enabled them.
[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-west-is-in-panic-as-israels-plan?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=170880402&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=19l92&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Iran’s nuclear chief urges IAEA to condemn Israeli terrorism.
TEHRAN, Aug. 13 (MNA), https://en.mehrnews.com/news/235334/Nuclear-chief-urges-IAEA-to-condemn-Israeli-terrorism
– Vice President and Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should condemn the Israeli regime’s killing of Iranian nuclear scientists.
He paid tribute to the memory of the martyrs of the media, the nuclear martyrs, and the recent imposed war.
“A number of institutions affiliated with the Zionist regime pretend that the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was an act in the interest of the security of humanity. These narratives are so skillfully reflected that uninformed people believe them, and today we expect the media to stand strong and firmly against the combined war of the enemies of this land and reflect the correct narrative,” he said.
“Israel is neither a member of the NPT nor a member of the safeguards, but it has influence in the International Atomic Energy Agency and with this influence it exploits the confidential information of countries. With the support of the United States, they are carrying out evil actions in the region,” he added.
Eslami noted that during the 12-day war, a number of centers registered under the Agency’s continuous surveillance, which were monitored by 130 inspectors, were repeatedly attacked using missiles and various projectiles.
“The Americans had been planning an attack on our facilities for a long time. This is despite the fact that none of the official institutions have submitted a report on Iran’s non-compliance or deviation from the safeguards in recent years,” Eslami further stressed.
He emphasized, “A fabricated and fake case has been formed by the Zionist regime, and the accusations and excuses are nothing more than an attempt to stop Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. If their claims were true, they should have provided clear evidence. These fake statements are only a cover to prevent the progress of the Iranian nation.”
“Such double standards and efforts to prevent Iran from entering advanced scientific fields are the same hegemonic system that, at huge costs, is trying to deprive our nation of nuclear technology and other modern technologies. This approach is a tangible manifestation of their identity; the same crimes they are committing in Palestine today.”
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