British military trained in Israel amid Gaza genocide
Armed forces personnel have ‘studied on educational staff courses’ since October 2023, Ministry of Defence discloses
JOHN McEVOY, DECLASSIFIED UK, 26 November 2025
British military personnel trained in Israel amid the Gaza genocide, Declassified can reveal.
The information comes in response to a parliamentary question tabled by Zarah Sultana MP.
On 18 November, Sultana asked the Ministry of Defence “whether any British armed forces officers have studied or trained at Israeli military colleges since October 2023”.
Defence minister Al Carns responded earlier today, saying: “Fewer than five British Armed Forces personnel have studied on educational staff courses in Israel since October 2023”.
It remains unclear where the troops studied or which branches of the military they came from.
But the revelation exposes a new layer of British military collaboration with Israel amid what the UN commission of inquiry has described as a genocide.
Charlie Herbert, a retired British army general, told Declassified: “It is absolutely extraordinary to think that UK military personnel have been undertaking military education or training courses in Israel over the past two years.
“Given the credible allegations of war crimes against the political and military leadership of the IDF, all such exchanges should have immediately ceased.
“It does our armed forces a huge disservice to be associated with the IDF, given the conduct of the IDF in Gaza since late 2023 and to think that we are training in Israel only adds to the accusations of UK complicity in this genocide”…………………….
Military training
The disclosure about British military officers training in Israel comes after Declassified revealed how Israeli soldiers have trained in Britain over the past two years…………………………………………………………………….. https://www.declassifieduk.org/british-military-trained-in-israel-amid-gaza-genocide/
Confronting The Media’s Gaza Group-Think
None of this would be so significant, of course, if our celebrated “free press” was, in fact, as free it claims. If it really served as a watchdog on power. If it really held the feet of the political class to the fire. If it really served as a Fourth Estate. Then the politicians would have no place to hide.
But that is not what the corporate media do. Instead, they echo and amplify the political establishment’s priorities. They are, in fact, the media wing of the establishment.
The western media’s failure to report the reality of Gaza didn’t start on 7 October 2023. It’s always been like this. Here’s why journalists won’t tell you the truth about Palestine/
Breaking free of media group-think is a scary, lonely journey. I know. I was forced to do it
16 November 2025
An audio reading of this article can be found here.]
The past two years have seen a catastrophic failure by western journalists to report properly what amounts to an undoubted genocide in Gaza. This has been a low point even by the dismal standards set by our profession, and further reason why audiences continue to distrust us in ever greater numbers.
There is a comforting argument – comforting especially for those journalists who have failed so scandalously during this period – that seeks to explain, and excuse, this failure. Israel’s exclusion of western reporters, so the claim goes, has made it impossible to determine exactly what is occurring on the ground in Gaza.
There are several obvious rejoinders to this.
First, why would any journalist give Israel the benefit of the doubt in Gaza – as we have been doing – when it is the party keeping out reporters? The media’s working assumption must be that Israel has excluded us because it has plenty to hide. The obligation must be on Israel to demonstrate that it is acting out of military necessity and proportionately. That cannot be the starting point, as it has been, of western media coverage.
When one party, Israel, denies journalists the chance to report, our default responsibility is to adopt a posture of extreme scepticism towards its claims. It is to subject those claims to intense scrutiny – all the more so when the world’s highest court has ruled that that Israel’s very presence in Gaza is as an illegal occupier, one that should have left the Palestinian territories long ago.
Second, and just as self-evidently, this explanation arrogantly discounts the work of hundreds of Palestinian journalists who have risked their lives to show us precisely what is happening in Gaza. It is to view their contribution, even as they are being slaughtered by Israel in unprecedented numbers, as, at best, worthless and as, at worst, Hamas propaganda. It is to breathe life into Israel’s self-serving rationalisations for murdering our colleagues – and thereby sets a precedent that normalises the targeting of journalists in the future.
It is also to treat these Palestinian journalists with the same colonial contempt demonstrated by British aristocrats a century ago, when they promised away the Palestinians’ homeland to European Jews, as if Palestine was a possession Britain was entitled to dispose of as it saw fit.
And third – and this is the issue I want to grapple with tonight – the presence of western journalists in Gaza would not have made any dramatic difference to the way the slaughter of Palestinians was presented. Audiences would still have received a sanitised version of the genocide. Failure is baked into western media coverage of Israel and Palestine. I know this firsthand from 20 years of reporting from the region.
Career suicide
When it comes to the festering wound in what was once historic Palestine, the job of western journalists is to obfuscate, equivocate, distort and excuse. It always has been. I will get to the reasons why a little later. [If you prefer, you can skip direct to that section under the subhead “Why so craven?”]
Israel has been able to get away with genocide in Gaza precisely because, for the preceding decades, the western media refused to report on – or hold Israel accountable for – its well-documented ethnic cleansing operations against Palestinians, and its brutal apartheid rule over them.
A few of our most principled journalists tried to report these things in real time. But they publicly paid a high price for doing so. Any colleagues who might have thought of following in their footsteps learnt the necessary lesson: that emulating these journalists would be career suicide.
Let me briefly document a couple of distinguished foreign correspondents in Jerusalem who were made examples of, and then provide more recent illustrations of my own run-ins with western editors………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Becoming an outcast
I only learnt of these distinguished reporters’ troubles some time after I had similar experiences covering the region as a freelance – something I did for 20 years. In my early years, I repeatedly came up against the same editorial pressures and resistance faced by Adams and Neff more than quarter of a century earlier. I felt similarly isolated, besieged, outcast – and eventually abandoned any hope of continuing to report for major western media outlets.
I submitted stories to both the Guardian – where I had previously been a staff journalist for many years – and the International Herald Tribune, now refashioned as the International New York Times.
Let me quickly illustrate an example I had with each…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Why so craven?
The big question is why. Here is an outline of the various pressures, some practical and others structural, that keep the western media so craven towards Israel.
Partisan reporters: Historically, most publications – especially US outlets – have put Jewish reporters in charge of their Jerusalem bureaux, based on the probably correct assumption that, given Israel’s tribal political ideology of Zionism, Jewish reporters will have better access to Israeli officials. Which, in turn, tells us that these papers are chiefly interested in what Israeli sources have to say, not what Palestinians say. In truth, western media aren’t watchdogs. They don’t challenge the existing power imbalance, they reproduce it.
Many of these Jewish reporters have not hidden their deep attachment and partisanship towards Israel.
Many years ago, a Jewish journalist friend based in Jerusalem wrote to me after I first made this point public, stating: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like [the New York Times’ then bureau chief Ethan] Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Imagine if you can, the New York Times employing a Palestinian as their Jerusalem correspondent – I know, it’s inconceivable. But not just that: employing them while the correspondent had a child working for the Palestinian Authority, or, even more fittingly, one fighting in a Fatah military brigade.
Meanwhile, the BBC openly backs its Middle East online editor, Raffi Berg, even though its own whistleblowing staff have accused him of skewing the corporation’s coverage of Israel and Palestine. Berg has not been shy in admitting his own tribal affiliation to Israel. In an interview about his “insider” book on Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Berg states that “as a Jewish person and admirer of the state of Israel” he gets “goosebumps” of pride hearing about Mossad operations.
Berg has a framed letter from Benjamin Netanyahu and a photo of himself with the former Israeli ambassador to the UK hanging on his wall at home. He counts a former senior Mossad official as a close friend. And when the journalist Owen Jones wrote a piece revealing the near-revolt of BBC staff at Berg’s role, Berg’s first thought was to seek legal help from Mark Lewis, the former head of UK Lawyers for Israel, well-known for using lawfare as a way to bully and silence critics of Israel.
Can we imagine the BBC appointing a Palestinian or Arab to that same hyper-sensitive post and then supporting them when it emerged that they had a framed letter from the assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and a photo with Yasser Arafat hanging on their wall at home?
Partisan bureau staff: It is considered entirely normal for western media to employ partisan Israeli Jews as support staff. As Neff noted, they exert subtle and sometimes not so subtle pressures on correspondents to be more sympathetic towards Israeli narratives.
An investigation by Alison Weir of If Americans Knew found, for example, that in 2004 Israeli staff at the AP news agency’s bureau in Jerusalem had refused either to use or return video footage sent in by a Palestinian cameraman that showed Israeli soldiers shooting an unarmed youth in the abdomen. Instead, they destroyed the tape.
Media lobby groups: Camera and Honest Reporting operate as a pair of media sheepdogs, aggressively herding journalists into line. As I found, they can make your life very hard indeed: they can mobilise large numbers of fanatical Israel supporters to bombard publications with complaints, they can damage your credibility with your own editors, and they can alert Israeli officials to put you on a media blacklist. Most reporters see them as very dangerous organisations to cross.
Access: A general flaw in journalism’s claim to be a watchdog on power – remember, we call ourselves the Fourth Estate – is that reporters invariably need access to high-level officials, whether for stories, steers or comments. A journalist with such a source is seen by editors as far more useful, and reliable, than one without. This is true whether one’s beat is crime, politics, sport or entertainment.
However, access inevitably comes at a price – of independence. ………………………………….
Pressures from head office: Notice too that media head offices in the US and Europe are subject to another layer of lobby pressure – this time through the lobby’s association of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League or the Board of British Deputies are there claiming to represent local Jewish communities, who they report to be “upset”, “frightened”, “bullied” or “anxious” every time Israel is criticised.
……………………………………..The result is that the bar set for publication, if a story is critical of Israel, is far higher than it is for other regions. Just think of how readily journalists attribute atrocities in Ukraine to Russia, compared to how reticent journalists – sometime the same ones – are to identify worse crimes in Gaza as atrocities and name Israel as the responsible party.
Israeli government censorship: It is often not understood that Israel operates a military censorship system that limits what journalists can say. This is especially important given that much of what is written by Jerusalem correspondents relates to Israel’s illegal military occupation.
In its severest form, that means Israel simply refuses journalists access to certain areas, as it has done for two years in Gaza. Or it can require them to embed with the Israeli military, as the BBC has done on several occasions during the Gaza genocide. Or it can demand that journalists don’t tell important facts about what is going on.
……………………………………….Israeli government control: Israel licenses foreign correspondents by issuing them a Government Press Office card. For the past 20 years, Israel has issued the cards only to journalists formally working for a news organisation it regards as “accredited”. ………
……………………………………..Rebuilding our worldview
These practical pressures gain much of their force because journalists and editors have historically been afraid of being accused of antisemitism by Israel. It is tempting to overestimate this pressure. I suspect it is better viewed as a cover story, rationalising the failure of journalists to do their job properly – as illustrated by their reluctance to identify the Gaza genocide as a genocide.
But beyond these practical pressures, there is a deeper reason for why the western media avoid serious criticism of Israel.
Israel is integral to a continuing western colonial system of power projection into the oil-rich Middle East. Israel is the West’s ultimate client state. Western establishments need Israel protected.
None of this would be so significant, of course, if our celebrated “free press” was, in fact, as free it claims. If it really served as a watchdog on power. If it really held the feet of the political class to the fire. If it really served as a Fourth Estate. Then the politicians would have no place to hide.
But that is not what the corporate media do. Instead, they echo and amplify the political establishment’s priorities. They are, in fact, the media wing of the establishment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-11-16/media-group-scary-journey/
Over 92 Percent of Homes in Gaza Are Rubble. How Do We Even Start Rebuilding?
To resurrect Gaza, the world must reckon with the genocide. Despite the ceasefire, Israel is blocking access to cement.
By Hend Salama Abo Helow , Truthout, November 22, 2025
n the wake of the United Nations Security Council rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza — including the creation of a so-called “board of peace” and a militarized “international stabilization force” — the very notion of rebuilding is slipping through the cracks, overshadowed by what is framed as the more urgent need to keep the peace in place. But peace manufactured this way is nothing but an expansion and deepening of the humanitarian crisis already unfolding.
Gaza City was already in a perpetual state of destruction and rebuilding long before the current genocide erupted. It has endured relentless aggression that reduced residential homes to rubble, wiped out entire neighborhoods, and massacred civilians. Five wars — 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and May 2023 — brutally dismantled Gaza’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, education, and culture, leaving behind a consumed cycle of devastation.
Yet each time, once the bombardment stopped, reconstruction began, even if it was in a slow rhythm. Gaza would rise again — recovering, thriving even, in forms more vibrantly echoing and picturesque than before. But this genocide has unleashed an unprecedented scale of destruction, so vast and unrelenting that stumbling upon an intact home today feels like witnessing one of life’s seven miracles………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/over-92-percent-of-homes-in-gaza-are-rubble-how-do-we-even-start-rebuilding/
Security Council Shamefully Grants Colonial Domination Over Palestine to the US.
The resolution incorporates Donald Trump’s “peace plan.” It grants control over Gaza to the U.S.-led “Board of Peace” and it orders the deployment of a U.S.-led occupation force called “International Stabilization Force (ISF).” Trump will oversee both colonial bodies, in collaboration with Israel. Palestinians will not be allowed to participate in their own governance.
“It is a brazen attempt to impose, by threat of continued force against a virtually defenseless population, U.S. and Israeli interests, plain and simple.”
A UN Special Rapporteur has decried the resolution as a violation of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, November 21, 2025
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly committed the UN’s original sin when it partitioned Palestine to create Israel. This launched the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous people, and the establishment of a settler colonial state.
Now, 78 years later, the UN Security Council has committed the UN’s second cardinal sin. It enshrined Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, put its imprimatur on Israel’s genocide, and granted colonial control over the lives of the Palestinians to the United States, which has aided and abetted the genocide.
On November 17, 2025, the Council adopted Resolution 2803, by a vote of 13-0. Russia and China, both permanent members of the Security Council, could have vetoed it. But shamefully they abstained, ostensibly influenced by support for the resolution from several Arab and Muslim states, including Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
The resolution incorporates Donald Trump’s “peace plan.” It grants control over Gaza to the U.S.-led “Board of Peace” and it orders the deployment of a U.S.-led occupation force called “International Stabilization Force (ISF).” Trump will oversee both colonial bodies, in collaboration with Israel. Palestinians will not be allowed to participate in their own governance.
The Board of Peace is designed to function as a transitional administrator of Gaza. It will control all services and humanitarian aid, all ingress and egress into and out of Gaza, and will supervise the financing and reconstruction of Gaza. The resolution “underscores the importance” of humanitarian assistance but does not require the unimpeded provision of aid.
The ISF will not be a peacekeeping force. Since the Council authorized it “to use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate,” the ISF will have the power to disarm Palestinian groups, as Israel insists. There is no provision in the resolution for disarming the Israel Occupation Forces, the body that has been conducting the genocide.
“A military force answering to a so-called ‘Board of Peace’ chaired by the President of the United States, an active party to this conflict that has continually provided military, economic and diplomatic support to the illegal occupying Power, is not legal,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. “It is a brazen attempt to impose, by threat of continued force against a virtually defenseless population, U.S. and Israeli interests, plain and simple.”
“Essentially, it will leave Palestine in the hands of a puppet administration, assigning the United States, which shares complicity in the genocide, as the new manager of the open-air prison that Israel has already established,” Albanese added.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 170,000. Nearly everyone in Gaza has been displaced by Israel multiple times and Gaza has largely been reduced to rubble. Israel has violated the latest ceasefire at least 393 times and killed at least 312 Palestinians since it went into effect on October 10, 2025.
In three recent cases, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case of genocide by Israel, that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, and that Israel has illegally used starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Resolution Violates the Palestinian People’s Right to Self-Determination
The Security Council resolution violates fundamental tenets of international law including the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. “The ICJ was clear: self-determination is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and the UN and all States have an obligation to assist in its realization,” Albanese said…………………………………………………..
Resolution 2803 “rewards the U.S., a co-perpetrator of genocide, with control over Gaza and its potentially lucrative reconstruction process, while simultaneously relieving the Israeli regime of all of its responsibilities as an illegally occupying force,” Yara Hawari wrote in Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian-led think tank. “Palestinian participation is expected to be tightly limited and heavily conditioned. Trump’s plan confines it to ‘technocratic’ and ‘apolitical’ roles, subject to continuous external supervision and effectively excluding any representatives with democratic legitimacy or political agency.”
Hamas and other Palestinian factions rejected the resolution. They wrote in a joint statement that ISF “will turn into a type of imposed guardianship or administration — reproducing a reality that restricts the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to managing their own affairs.”
“Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation,” Hamas said…………………………………………………………………………
it won’t prevent Israel from carrying out its military operations or aerial bombardments of Gaza. It may even help Israel achieve its goals.”
Uniting for Peace
……………………………………………..In adopting Resolution 2803, the Security Council did not discharge its responsibilities under the Charter to act on behalf of Palestine, a permanent observer state, which is undergoing the first live-streamed genocide in history. Nor is the Council discharging its responsibility to maintain international peace and security by memorializing an illegal occupation and an ongoing genocide.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has declared that he will introduce a Uniting for Peace resolution in the UN General Assembly to establish a multinational protection force for Palestinians and levy sanctions and an arms blockade to end the genocide and liberate Palestine from the unlawful Israeli occupation.
In retaliation, the U.S. government has revoked Petro’s visa, imposed sanctions against him, raised punitive tariffs on Colombia, and threatened the use of military force against Colombia.
People opposed to the U.S.’s colonial takeover of Palestine can join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, lobby for arms embargoes, and support accountability for Israeli and U.S. leaders responsible for perpetrating the genocide.
We must do everything within our power to stop this atrocity and support the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. https://truthout.org/articles/security-council-shamefully-grants-colonial-domination-over-palestine-to-the-us/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=7ccb24ce9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_21_07_46_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-09cad751f9-650192793
From Libya to Palestine: The UN’s Betrayal Of Arabs and Muslims
Dimitri Lascaris, Nov 22, 2025, https://reason2resist.substack.com/p/from-libya-to-palestine-the-uns-betrayal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2811845&post_id=179602803&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
On November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council betrayed the Palestinian people by adopting a resolution that endorsed Donald Trump’s criminal and fraudulent “peace plan” for Gaza.
That resolution, Resolution 2803, is by no means the first time that the UN Security Council has stabbed Arab and Muslim peoples in the back.
Another notorious example of the Security Council’s contempt for the rights and interests of Arab and Muslim peoples is UNSC Resolution 1973.
Adopted on March 17, 2011, Security Council Resolution 1973 approved a no-fly zone over Libya. This led directly to NATO’s destruction of the once-prosperous, African country.
Few people are as knowledgeable about NATO’s destruction of Libya, and the UN Security Council’s complicity in Libya’s destruction, as Canadian researcher and author, Owen Schalk.
A new book by Owen examines the role of Canada – a NATO member – in the destruction of Libya. The book is titled “Targeting Libya – How Canada went from building public works to bombing an oil-rich country and creating chaos for its citizens.”
Press-hating president kisses up to press-murdering crown prince
Nov. 18, 2025 / Freedom of the Press Foundation, https://freedom.press/issues/press-hating-president-kisses-up-to-press-murdering-crown-prince/
President Donald Trump shamefully welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House today. He brushed aside questions about Prince Mohammed’s role in the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, commenting that “things happen” and “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
Freedom of the Press Foundation Director of Advocacy Seth Stern said:
“Somehow calling a female reporter ‘piggy’ was only the second-most offensive anti-press utterance to come out of the president’s mouth in recent days. And somehow Biden’s infamous fist bump is now only the second-most disgusting public display of flattery by a U.S. president to journalist-murderer Mohammed bin Salman.
“Scolding a U.S. reporter for asking questions about MBS ordering a fellow journalist to be bonesawed signals to dictators everywhere that they can murder journalists with impunity — as if Trump hadn’t already sent that message clearly enough by bankrolling and arming Israel while it does just that in Gaza.
“Today’s fiasco felt like the nail in the coffin for whatever was left of the U.S.’s global standing as a leader on press freedom. The next president is going to have their work cut out for them in rebuilding that credibility. In the meantime, judges, lawmakers, and everyone else in a position to slow the backslide need to step up and rise to the moment before more journalists get killed.”
Palestinians Will Not Let the Genocide Kill Their Hopes: The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2025)
The Palestinian people continue to resist the inhuman Israeli occupation and genocide, turning art and culture into spaces of memory, dignity, and hope.
20 November 2025. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
In the United Nations’ Humanitarian Situation Update #340 on the Gaza Strip (12 November 2025), there is a section on the distress experienced by more than 1 million Palestinian children in Gaza. The most common symptoms among children reported in the assessment are ‘aggressive behaviour (93 per cent), violence toward younger children (90 per cent), sadness and withdrawal (86 per cent), sleep disturbances (79 per cent), and education avoidance (69 per cent)’. Children account for about half the population in Gaza, where the median age is 19.6 years. They will struggle for a very long time to overcome these symptoms. There is no end in sight to the concrete conditions that produce them, namely the ongoing genocide and occupation.
Children face extraordinary attacks by the Israeli forces, some of which were documented in a recent report by Defense for Children International. For instance, on 22 October 2025, sixteen-year-old Saadi Mohammad Saadi Hasanain and a group of other children went to Saadi’s destroyed home to collect some of his belongings and firewood. Israeli quadcopters opened fire on them, forcing the children to scatter. Two of the boys escaped the attack; Saadi and another boy could not. The next morning, Saadi’s family found the body of the other boy, his head crushed. Beside him they found Saadi’s phone, his shoes, and his pants. Saadi’s shirt was tied around the body of the murdered boy. There is no news of Saadi, and his family fears he has been taken by Israeli forces.
Our latest dossier, Despite Everything: Cultural Resistance for a Free Palestine, includes a powerful line from the eighteen-year-old Gazan artist Ibraheem Mohana, who came of age during the genocide: ‘They started the war to kill our hopes, but we won’t let that happen’. We won’t let that happen. That refusal is a powerful sensibility.
The title of the dossier references the words of Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri – despite everything, including the genocide, Palestinian culture will endure and will flourish. Not only will Palestinian culture survive the genocide, but it is the people’s cultural resources that will help heal the children and provide them with a pathway back to some level of sanity. Art is a safe refuge, a practice that allows a people to manage trauma that cannot be assimilated into their collective life. The trauma imposed on Palestinians is not necessarily an event but a process, a total way of life. Palestinian life, in fact, is marked by trauma. Art is a refuge from such trauma. No wonder that so many children who survive war and its afflictions on the body and mind can find a measure of healing through the therapy of art…………………………………………….
Art can be a refusal to be erased, a testimony against imperialist narratives, and an attempt to keep historical memory alive. ‘Whatever I can use to protect myself – paintbrush, pen, gun – they are tools of self-defence’, wrote the late Palestinian novelist and militant of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ghassan Kanafani. Palestinian artists pointed out that South Africans produced murals, music, poetry, and theatre as part of the anti-apartheid struggle (which we documented in our dossier on the Medu Art Ensemble).
The imprint of the fight for human dignity is not only present on the battlefields of national liberation but equally in the hearts of the people who aspire to win their freedom, even as others seek to deny them that right. The struggle of the oppressed to win their freedom is a struggle to vitalise cultural resources into a democratic force of their own.’………………………………………..
Since 7 October 2023, Israeli bombs have fallen on the sites of Palestinian social reproduction (bakeries, fishing boats, agricultural fields, homes, hospitals) and institutions of Palestinian cultural life (universities, galleries, mosques, and libraries). One of these institutions is the Edward Said Public Library in northern Gaza, which attracted dozens of visitors every day. The poet Mosab Abu Toha founded the library in 2017 and, in 2019, decided to raise money for a second branch in Gaza City which had a computer lab where children and adults could learn to use computer programmes and design websites.
In November 2023, the Israelis bombed the Gaza Municipal Library. Over the following months, they also bombed Gaza’s public universities, destroying their libraries. By April 2024, thirteen public libraries had been erased. ……………………………………………………………………
Abu Toha built the Edward Said Public Library in the aftermath of the fifty-one-day bombardment of Gaza in 2014. During the bombardment, the poet Khaled Juma wrote perhaps one of the most powerful elegies for Palestinian survival:
Oh, rascal children of Gaza.
You who constantly disturbed me with your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning with rush and chaos,
You who broke my vase and stole the lonely flower on my balcony,
Come back –
And scream as you want,
And break all the vases,
Steal all the flowers.
Come back.
Just come back.
Just come back. https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/palestine-children-art/
Israel accelerates production of Iron Dome with US aid money.
By Tzally Greenberg, Nov 21, 2025, https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2025/11/21/israel-accelerates-production-of-iron-dome-with-us-aid-money/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=c4-overmatch
JERUSALEM — Israel will accelerate production of Iron Dome components with “billions of dollars” of U.S. aid money, the Israeli Defense Ministry said Nov. 20.
The announcement comes amid a tense ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, as Hezbollah continues to arm and strengthen itself in Lebanon and Hamas declares that it has no intention of giving up weapons. Israel used Iron Dome interceptors to intercept thousands of rockets fired from these two fronts during the two-year “Iron Swords” war.
Government officials here did not specify the exact amount of the purchase, but its Defense Ministry noted that the it will be made from the special U.S. aid package approved by Congress in April 2024 under the Biden administration, totaling at $8.7 billion.
This is the second purchase of interceptors from Rafael by the Israeli Defense Ministry in the past year that from that pot of money.
Israeli officials have said Iron Dome interceptors caught thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon.
Iron Dome is an air defense system that intercepts short- and medium-range rockets and missiles, mortars, drones, helicopters and more. The Israeli Air Force claims that since the defense system began its operational service in 2011 it has shown a 95% interception success rate.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is the prime contractor for the Iron Dome defense system, collaborating with ELTA Systems – a division in Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and mPrest Systems.
Iran says IAEA vote nullified inspections deal with UN watchdog
Iran’s foreign minister said an accord it reached with the UN nuclear
watchdog is now invalid after the agency’s 35-member Board of Governors
adopted a Western-backed resolution demanding greater transparency from
Tehran. The resolution demanded Iran allow international verification of
its enriched uranium stockpile and access to atomic sites hit in June by US
and Israeli strikes. “Today, in an official letter to the
Director-General of the Agency, it was announced that this understanding is
no longer valid and is considered terminated,” Abbas Araghchi said on
Thursday. He was referring to an interim agreement signed between Tehran
and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo in September aimed at
eventually resuming inspections of sites stricken by the attacks.
Iran International 20th Nov 2025,
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202511205237
Israel Launches Major Attacks Across Gaza, Killing at Least 28 Palestinians, Including Many Children.
by Dave DeCamp | November 19, 2025 https://news.antiwar.com/2025/11/19/israel-launches-major-attacks-across-gaza-killing-at-least-24-palestinians-including-many-children/
The Israeli military launched strikes across Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 28 Palestinians, including 17 women and children, as it continues to violate the US-backed ceasefire deal.
The Israeli military claimed that its forces came under fire in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, but provided no evidence, and according to Israeli media, there were no casualties among IDF troops, and the attack occurred on the Israeli-occupied side of the yellow line. Hamas later denied that its fighters fired on Israeli troops, and called the claim “a weak and exposed attempt to justify their ongoing crimes and violations.” Following the alleged incident, the IDF unleashed strikes on Gaza City.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that one Israeli strike targeted the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs in southeastern Gaza City, killing at least 10 people, including two women and three children. Al Jazeera reported that a family of five in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood was wiped out by Israeli strikes.
In southern Gaza, WAFA reported that at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast. The news agency also said that an Israeli attack on a neighborhood of Khan Younis killed two children.
The Israeli escalation came two days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution affirming President Trump’s so-called “ceasefire deal” that places the Gaza Strip under the control of the US-led board. Since the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect on October 10, the Trump administration has backed Israel’s continued attacks on Palestinians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier in the day that since October 10, Israeli forces have killed 280 Palestinians and injured 670. The strikes on Wednesday bring the total death toll during the “ceasefire” to more than 300.
US Reaches Initial Deal With Saudi Arabia on Nuclear Sharing.
The absence of a 123 Agreement — designed to prevent countries from manufacturing fuel which could be diverted to weapons — has implications across the region. Should Saudi Arabia win access to the full nuclear fuel cycle, other Middle Eastern countries including Iran and the United Arab Emirates may demand the same conditions.
By Ari Natter and Jonathan Tirone, November 20, 2025
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
- US negotiations with Saudi Arabia on a nuclear technology-sharing deal have been completed, potentially allowing American companies to build reactors in the kingdom.
- A formal 123 Atomic Energy Act agreement, which includes non-proliferation requirements, has yet to be signed, according to a US Energy Department spokesman.
- The prospect of a deal has alarmed non-proliferation experts and some members of Congress who have raised concerns over weapons-grade material and the potential for Saudi Arabia to gain access to the full nuclear fuel cycle.
US negotiations with Saudi Arabia on a long-sought nuclear technology-sharing deal have been completed, potentially opening the door for American companies to build reactors in the kingdom.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi Arabian counterpart signed a joint declaration signifying the talks were finished, the Trump administration said Tuesday following a White House visit by the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A formal 123 Atomic Energy Act agreement, which customarily includes non-proliferation requirements, has yet to be signed, a US Energy Department spokesman confirmed.
If finalized, such an agreement between the two nations could inject new life into America’s atomic energy sector and provide a boost to Westinghouse Electric Co. and other US companies that want to construct plants or sell reactor technology to Saudi Arabia. Still, the prospect has alarmed non-proliferation experts and some members of Congress who have raised concerns over weapons-grade material.
The absence of a 123 Agreement — designed to prevent countries from manufacturing fuel which could be diverted to weapons — has implications across the region. Should Saudi Arabia win access to the full nuclear fuel cycle, other Middle Eastern countries including Iran and the United Arab Emirates may demand the same conditions.
“It does include fuel cycle activities,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told journalists after speaking by phone with Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman early Wednesday. The IAEA hasn’t been notified about whether or not there will be a 123 Agreement attached to the deal, Grossi said.
Both the Energy Department and the White House didn’t immediately respond to questions seeking clarity over whether the deal would include the so-called “gold standard,” barring the enrichment and reprocessing of spent uranium that Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to agree to in the past
………………..The declaration signed Tuesday “builds the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar nuclear energy partnership with the Kingdom; confirms that the United States and American companies will be the Kingdom’s civil nuclear cooperation partners of choice; and ensures that all cooperation will be conducted in a manner consistent with strong nonproliferation standards,” the White House said in a fact sheet.
On Nov. 17, ahead of the Saudi crown prince’s visit to the White House, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Channel 14 TV that he’s skeptical of an agreement.
“I think Israel should be opposed, because it would bring about a situation where there will constantly have to be monitoring and oversight, to check whether the nuclear civilian project is sliding toward the military side,” Cohen said “This will constantly have to be checked.”
Non-proliferation watch dog groups pointed to the fact that the formal agreement, known as 123 for the section of the US Atomic Energy Act that discusses transfers of nuclear equipment and material to other nations, wasn’t announced…………. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-19/us-reaches-intitial-deal-with-saudi-arabia-on-nuclear-sharing
Israel Moved Gaza’s Yellow Line And Then Shelled Palestinians For Being On The Wrong Side.
Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 22, 2025
Drop Site News reports that the IDF quietly moved part of the “yellow line” which divides Gaza 300 meters forward, and then started shelling Palestinians for being on the “wrong side” of the line.
They just keep finding new ways to carve off more pieces of Gaza and murder more Palestinians.
❖
Haaretz has a disturbing story out about a 14 year-old Palestinian boy who was waiting for his school bus in the West Bank on a quiet street eating a cookie, when suddenly a bunch of IDF vehicles pulled up and a soldier shot him directly in the face with a teargas canister. Then they sped off.
The boy lost his right eye in the attack………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-moved-gazas-yellow-line-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=179610682&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Palestine Laboratory: Exporting Occupation Technology (w/ Antony Loewenstein) | The Chris Hedges Report
Gaza has become a testing ground for Israeli and Western weapons and surveillance tools — technologies that will inevitably be used to target populations across the globe.
Chris Hedges, Nov 20, 2025, https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-palestine-laboratory-exporting
This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
Filmmaker, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein documents how Israel has used Gaza as a weapons showcase. Spyware, killer drones, robot dogs and other weapons are debuted in Gaza and field-tested on the civilian population, demonstrating their effectiveness to regimes around the world that await their chance to purchase them.
Loewenstein joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle what he has learned from writing The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World and producing The Palestine Laboratory, a documentary based on the book.
“I think the whole idea of what Israel…has been showing the world, I say two things. One, what weapons you can use to murder, kill, target Palestinians but also how to get away with it. I think Israel sells that concept,” Loewenstein explains.
As spyware companies like Pegasus and Paragon and arms companies like Elbit and Rafael see business boom, Loewenstein argues countries have a moral imperative to end trading with Israel. These same technologies perpetuating the genocide in Gaza, Loewenstein explains, will come back to haunt the citizenry of purchasing countries.
“All these governments around the world, whether they’re so-called democratic or repressive, are obsessed with these tools. They can’t give them up. They’re desperate to listen to their opponents, to the journalists, to activists,” Loewenstein remarks.
“It’s very hard for these regimes to give them up because there’s no regulation. There’s just none. It just doesn’t exist.”
UN Security Council Gives US ‘Mandate’ Over Palestine
The council endorsed Donald Trump’s neo-colonial governing board over a territory that he said should be depopulated to make way for his resort fantasy to be built on the bones of the victims of Israel’s genocide, reports Joe Lauria.
November 17, 2025, By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/17/un-security-council-gives-us-mandate-over-palestine/
The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a resolution that gives the world body’s imprimatur to Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, a territory he said publicly should be ethnically cleansed to develop a Mediterranean resort.
The council voted 13 nations in favor with two abstentions from China and Russia, which could have vetoed Trump’s plans.
The resolution essentially revives the colonial mandate system of the League of Nations after the First World War, and the United Nations’ trusteeship system after the Second World War, both schemes in which colonial powers remained in charge of a colonized territory while it was supposed to wean it towards independence.
The resolution that passed on Monday says “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
The resolution “welcomes” the establishment of a Board of Peace (BoP) “as a transitional administration” in Gaza to coordinate reconstruction. The resolution authorizes the board to set up a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza “to deploy under unified command acceptable to the BoP.” Though the resolution does not say who will head the BoP, Trump has made it clear that he would be running it himself.
Nations will contribute troops to the force “in close consultation and cooperation” with Egypt and Israel. But it will be Donald Trump who ultimately gets to call the shots of this international military force.
[See: Jeffery Sachs: Trump’s UN Ploy]
Among the Trump-run forces’ tasks is to demilitarize Gaza by decommissioning weapons and destroying military infrastructure. In a statement reacting to the resolution, Hamas said: “The resolution imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject.” Hamas says it has a legal right under international law, which it does, to resist Israel’s occupation with force if necessary.
If the stabilization force actually tries to disarm Hamas we could be looking at armed combat between them. The U.N.-approved force would in essence then be taking up the unfinished job of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to defeat Hamas.
In step with Hamas’ disarmament, the IDF is supposed to withdraw from Gaza, according to the measure. An annex to the resolution says Palestinians cannot be forcibly expelled from Gaza and Israel can neither annex nor continue to occupy Gaza, according to the remarks to the council by Algeria’s ambassador.
An expert Arab committee with take part with Trump’s board in running Gaza until the Palestinian Authority takes full control. Israel took part in the meeting as a guest but did not have a vote.
Why Russia Abstained
The U.S. draft resolution initially did not mention possible future, Palestinian sovereignty, but it was added after opposition from Arab states and other countries. That addition allowed the Arabs, and importantly the Palestinian Authority, to back the resolution. That led Russia, which had opposed the initial draft, to drop the threat of its veto and China joined in abstaining.
In explaining his abstention to the Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Russia “has taken note of Ramallah’s position, as well as that of many Arab-Muslim States that spoke in favor of the American draft so as to avoid renewed bloodshed in the enclave. In this regard, we chose not to submit our own draft, which was aimed at amending the US concept to bring it in conformity with long-standing UN resolutions agreed previously.”
Bur he also complained that the stabilization force would not coordinate with the Palestinian Authority
“This may entrench the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, and it is reminiscent of colonial practices and the British mandate for Palestine granted by the League of Nations, when the opinions of the Palestinians themselves were not taken into account whatsoever,” he said.
Nebenzia also raised an alarm about the force become engaged in the war. “The resolution … confers on the ISF such extensive peace enforcement mandate that the Mission may actually transform into a party to the conflict going beyond the confines of peacekeeping,” he said. The Russian envoy blamed the U.S. for “arm-twisting in capitals or pressuring delegations here in New York,” which he said can “hardly be called working in good faith.”
Nebenzia said:
“In essence, the Council is giving its blessing to the US initiative relying exclusively on Washington’s honor, we leave the Gaza Strip at the mercy of the Board of Peace and the ISF, whose working methods are still unknown to us.
The most important thing here is making sure that this document does not become a smokescreen for unbridled experiments by the US and Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) nor turn into a death sentence for the two-state solution.” … There is no cause for celebration: today is a sorrowful day for the Security Council. Besides the wishes of the parties concerned, there is also such notion as the integrity of the Security Council. And today, with the adoption of this resolution, that integrity and the prerogatives of the Council have been undermined. …
Regrettably, we’ve already had the unfortunate experience when decisions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which were pushed through by the US, led to the opposite to what was intended. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
PA & Arabs Agree
The PA has long collaborated with Israel in its occupation of the West Bank. Its long-standing opposition to Hamas’ resistance makes it amenable to the United States taking control of Gaza to run it with Israel if the Authority is given a seat at the table.
That, however is not a sure thing as the extremists in Israel’s cabinet blew a fuse when it saw that a mere mention — a throwaway line — about some distant possibility of recognizing Palestine was added to the resolution. Netanyahu himself on Sunday reiterated his opposition to the Palestinian state and vowed that it would never come to pass.
How his government will proceed with U.S. administration of Gaza will be of the greatest interest. As Netanyahu is loudly insisting that Hamas will disarm the “easy way or the hard way,” it will bear watching whether the IDF, which occupies half of Gaza, and the international force, with the Palestinian Authority’s blessings, join arms to fight Hamas to crush the last of the violent resistance to Israeli dominance over Palestine.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
UN Security Council Resolution On Gaza Is An ‘Atrocity’
On Monday, November 17, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution endorsing Donald Trump’s so-called ‘peace plan’ for Gaza.
The resolution approves the creation of a Trump-led “peace board” to supervise the Gaza Strip, calls for the ‘demilitarization’ of Gaza without imposing any restrictions on the arming of Israel, and authorizes an “international stabilization force” to police and disarm Palestinian resistance groups.
Worst of all, the resolution does not provide for the creation of a Palestinian state. It merely expresses a hallucinatory aspiration that Palestinians might one day have a fireside chat with the genocidal Israeli entity about the two-state delusion.
The UNSC members that voted in favour of this travesty were: the U.S., U.K., France, Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, South Korea, Pakistan, Panama, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia.
To their discredit, Russia and China refrained from exercising their veto and abstained.
In this episode of R2R, I analyze the UNSC resolution with fellow attorney, Craig Mokhiber. Craig is an American former UN human rights official who resigned from the UN in late 2023 over its failure to stop what he described (with complete justification) as a “textbook genocide” in Gaza.
According to Craig, the Security Council’s resolution is an “atrocity”.
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