Chris Hedges: Profiting From Genocide
SOTT, Chris Hedges, MintPressNews, Wed, 02 Jul 2025
Chris Hedges breaks down a damning new UN report by Francesca Albanese exposing how tech giants, arms manufacturers, banks, and universities are profiting from Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
War is a business. So is genocide. The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
The report, which includes a database of over 1,000 corporate entities that collaborate with Israel, demands these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes.
“It describes Israel’s ‘forever-occupation’ as the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”
The post-Holocaust industrialists’ trials and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid the legal framework for recognizing the criminal responsibility of institutions and businesses that participate in international crimes. This new report makes clear that decisions made by the International Court of Justice place an obligation on entities “to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.”
Albanese told me:
The report lambasts corporations for “providing Israel with the weapons and machinery required to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of leisure and worship, livelihoods and productive assets, such as olive groves and orchards.”
The Palestinian territory, the report notes, is a “captive market” because of Israeli-imposed restrictions on trade and investment, tree planting, fishing and water for colonies. Corporations have profiteered from this “captive market” by “exploiting Palestinian labour and resources, degrading and diverting natural resources, building and powering colonies and selling and marketing derived goods and services in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and globally.”
“Israel gains from this exploitation, while it costs the Palestinian economy at least 35 per cent of its GDP. Banks, asset management firms, pension funds and insurers have “channeled finance into the illegal occupation,” the report charges. In addition:
“Universities — centres of intellectual growth and power — have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality.
“Surveillance and incarceration technologies have evolved into tools for indiscriminate targeting of the Palestinian population. Heavy machinery previously used for house demolitions, infrastructure destruction and resource seizure in the West Bank have been repurposed to obliterate the urban landscape of Gaza, preventing displaced populations from returning and reconstituting as a community.
“The military assault on the Palestinians has also provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military capabilities: air defense platforms, drones, targeting tools powered by artificial intelligence and even the F-35 programme led by the United States of America. These technologies are then marketed as ‘battle proven’.”
Since 2020, Israel has been the eighth largest arms exporter in the world. Its two biggest weapons companies are Elbit Systems Ltd and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd (IAI). It has a series of international partnerships with foreign weapons firms, including “for the F-35 fighter jet, led by United States-based Lockheed Martin.”
“Components and parts constructed globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet, which Israel customizes and maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies.”
The report reads:
“Since October 2023, F-35s and F-16s jets have been integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza.
“Drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have also been omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza. Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries have long flown alongside fighter jets, surveilling Palestinians and delivering target intelligence. In the past two decades, with support from these companies and collaborations with institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drones used by Israel acquired automated weapons systems and the ability to fly in swarm formation.”
Japan’s FANUC companies sell automation products and provide robotic machinery for weapons production lines, including for IAI, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin. Shipping companies such as the Danish A.P. Moller — Maersk A/Stransport components, parts, weapons and raw materials, sustaining a steady flow of United States-supplied military equipment post-October 2023.”
There was a “65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide.” This “generated a sharp surge in their annual profits, while foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit.”
At the same time, tech companies have profited from the genocide:
“While providing dual-use infrastructure to integrate mass data collection and surveillance, while profiting from the unique testing ground for military technology offered by the occupied Palestinian territory, they enhance carceral and surveillance services, from closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, biometric surveillance, advanced tech checkpoint networks, ‘smart walls’ and drone surveillance, to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground military personnel.”
“Israeli tech firms often grow out of military infrastructure and strategy,” the report reads, “as the NSO Group, founded by ex-Unit 8200 members, did. Its Pegasus spyware, designed for covert smartphone surveillance, has been used against Palestinian activists and licensed globally to target leaders, journalists and human rights defenders. Exported under the Defense Export Control Law, NSO group surveillance technology enables ‘spyware diplomacy’ while reinforcing State impunity.”
IBM, whose technology facilitated Nazi Germany’s generation and tabulation of punched cards for nationalcensus data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management and concentration camp capacity, is once again a partner in this current genocide.
It has operated in Israel since 1972. It provides training for Israeli military and intelligence agencies, especially Unit 8200, which is responsible for clandestine operations, the collection of signal intelligence and code decryption, along with counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence and surveillance.
“Since 2019,IBM Israelhas operated and upgraded the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel,” the report notes.
Microsoft, active in Israel since1989, is “embedded in the prison service, police, universities and schools — including in colonies. Microsoft has been integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003, while acquiring Israeli cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups.”
“As Israeli apartheid, military and population-control systems generate increasing volumes of data, its reliance on cloud storage and computing has grown,” the report reads. “In 2021, Israel awarded Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Amazon.com, Inc. a $1.2 billion contract (Project Nimbus) — largely funded through Ministry of Defense expenditure — to provide core tech infrastructure.”
Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon“grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”
The Israeli military, the report points out, “has developed artificial intelligence systems such as ‘Lavender,’ ‘Gospel’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ to process data and generate lists of targets, reshaping modern warfare and illustrating the dual-use nature of artificial intelligence.”
There are “reasonable grounds,” the report reads, to believe that Palantir Technology Inc., which has a long relationship with Israel, “has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
Palantir’s CEO in April 2025 responded to accusations that Palantir kills Palestinians in Gaza by saying, “mostly terrorists, that’s true.”
The report reads:
“Civilian technologies have long served as dual-use tools of settler-colonial occupation. Israeli military operations rely heavily on equipment from leading global manufacturers to ‘unground’ Palestinians from their land, demolishing homes, public buildings, farmland, roads and other vital infrastructure. Since October 2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza.”
Caterpillar Inc. has for decades provided the Israeli military with equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes, mosques, hospitals as well as “burying alive wounded Palestinians,” and killed activists, such as Rachel Corrie………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Genocide requires a vast network and billions of dollars to sustain it. Israel could not carry out its mass slaughter of the Palestinians without this ecosystem.
These entities, which profit from industrial violence against the Palestinians and mass displacement, are as guilty of genocide as the Israeli military units decimating the people in Gaza.
They too are war criminals, They too must be held accountable.
Comment: Israel is a major network operation…locking in every necessity with redundancy and delivery…no stone unturned, no challenge without guarantees and framework. It is jaw-dropping…really. https://www.sott.net/article/503682-Chris-Hedges-Profiting-from-genocide
Why Are Pedophiles the Most Successful Capitalists?
COMMENT. There is so much to interest and value in this article. I’m about 90% in agreement with it.
BUT – it’s just that the author seems to conclude pretty much that captalism is so evil that it just about causes pedophilia.
The glaring gap here is whether or not there are just as many greedy pedophile types in positions of power in communist and socialist regimes?
The same psychological traits that enable billionaires to destroy millions of lives for profit also enable them to rape children—and capitalism rewards both forms of predation.
BettBeat Media, Nov 16, 2025, https://bettbeat.substack.com/p/why-are-pedophiles-the-most-successful/comments
The question haunts every honest observer of power: Why do sexual predators rise to the pinnacles of capitalist society with such disturbing regularity? Why does the same system that rewards the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the alleged child molester Woody Allen, the rapist Harvey Weinstein, and countless other monsters also elevate them to positions where they can inflict maximum damage? The answer reveals the most horrifying truth about our economic system—capitalism doesn’t just tolerate sexual predation, it actively selects for it.
The Epstein case exposes a terrifying pattern that extends far beyond one billionaire’s island of horrors. The psychological mechanisms that drive powerful men to sexually abuse children—the ultimate form of exploitation, the need for absolute dominance, the complete dehumanization of others, the divorce from empathy—are precisely the same mechanisms that capitalism rewards in its most successful practitioners. This is not coincidence. This is selection pressure.
Consider the psychological profile of the successful pedophile: They must be master manipulators, capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerability. They must possess an almost supernatural ability to compartmentalize, maintaining public personas while committing unspeakable acts in private. They must be skilled at reading power dynamics, understanding instinctively who can be victimized and who must be courted. They must be comfortable with the complete objectification of other human beings, viewing them as resources to be consumed rather than people deserving dignity.
Now consider the psychological profile of the successful capitalist: They must be master manipulators, capable of identifying and exploiting market vulnerabilities. They must possess an almost supernatural ability to compartmentalize, maintaining public philanthropy while devastating communities in private. They must be skilled at reading power dynamics, understanding instinctively who can be exploited and who must be courted. They must be comfortable with the complete objectification of other human beings, viewing workers as resources to be consumed rather than people deserving dignity.
The overlap is not accidental—it is systemic. Capitalism rewards psychopathy because psychopathy is useful to capital accumulation. The same emotional architecture that allows a man to rape a child also allows him to foreclose on a family’s home, to dump toxic waste in poor communities, to lobby against cancer treatment funding while profiting from carcinogenic products. The capacity for dehumanization is not a bug in the capitalist system—it is the essential feature.
“They were pedophiles who became wealthy precisely because the psychological traits that enable sexual predation also enable economic predation under capitalism. And because economic power enables sexual power over children”
The Epstein Network as Capitalist Laboratory
Jeffrey Epstein’s operation was not an aberration but a perfect expression of capitalist logic. His island served as both a laboratory for sexual domination and a networking hub for economic domination. The same men who raped children on Epstein’s planes were simultaneously pillaging entire economies through their hedge funds and private equity firms. Bill Clinton, who flew on the “Lolita Express” many times, also championed the financial deregulation that enabled the 2008 economic collapse. Donald Trump, who allegedly raped a 13-year-old girl at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, built his real estate empire through systematic exploitation of contractors and workers.
The connection runs deeper than shared moral bankruptcy. Sexual predation and economic predation require identical psychological tools: the ability to identify the vulnerable, the skill to isolate them from support systems, the capacity to exploit power imbalances, and the willingness to destroy lives for personal gratification. Epstein’s genius was recognizing that men who had perfected these skills in the economic realm would eagerly apply them in the sexual realm.
This explains why Epstein’s client list reads like a who’s who of global capitalism: hedge fund managers, investment bankers, real estate moguls, media executives, and their political enablers. These were not wealthy men who happened to be pedophiles—they were pedophiles who became wealthy precisely because the psychological traits that enable sexual predation also enable economic predation under capitalism. And because economic power enables sexual power over children.
The Israeli Connection: Where Imperialism Meets Sexual Violence
The tentacles of Epstein’s network inevitably lead back to Israel, that laboratory of racist capitalist brutality disguised as ‘democracy’. Multiple sources suggest that Epstein operated as a Mossad asset, using sexual blackmail to control political and economic elites on behalf of Israeli interests. This connection is not surprising—it is inevitable. Israel represents the purest distillation of predatory capitalism combined with colonial violence, a system that requires the complete dehumanization of its Palestinian victims.
The psychological profile of the settler who burns Palestinian children alive in their homes, kidnaps and disappears 8-year-old Palestinian girls, and beats up Palestinian old ladies with laughter is identical to the psychological profile of the billionaire who profits from child labor in his factories: both require the complete severance of empathy, the total objectification of their victims, and the ability to justify any atrocity in service of their desires. The Israeli state that operates the world’s largest open-air prison in Gaza while claiming to be a beacon of civilization operates according to the same logic as the capitalist who imposes starvation wages while lecturing about ‘economic freedom’.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s primary accomplice, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a media mogul with extensive ties to Israeli intelligence. The operation’s sophisticated surveillance capabilities, international scope, and protection from prosecution all bear the hallmarks of state-level intelligence operations. But more than operational support, Israel provided the ideological framework that made Epstein’s crimes possible: the belief that some humans are inherently superior to others and therefore entitled to use inferior humans as objects for their pleasure.
Superior Jewish DNA
The same supremacist ideology that allows Israelis to shoot Palestinian children for sport also allows billionaires to destroy the lives of workers’ children through environmental destruction, healthcare denial, and educational defunding. Sexual predation and imperial predation spring from the same poisoned well of human supremacy that capitalism depends upon for its existence.
Surprisingly yet unsurprisingly, Epstein was a devoted believer in eugenics—the pseudoscientific 19th-century racist ideology that his own Jewish ancestors had been victimized by—and harbored grandiose fantasies of seeding the human race with what he considered his “superior Jewish DNA.” The irony was lost on him: a man who embodied every antisemitic stereotype about Jewish financial manipulation and sexual degeneracy had reinvented himself as the master race. Epstein’s eugenics obsession reveals the final psychological piece of the predator-capitalist puzzle—the megalomaniacal belief that wealth proves genetic superiority, that economic domination justifies any form of human breeding program, and that the right to rape and reproduce flows naturally from the right to buy and sell.
His New Mexico ranch was reportedly intended as a breeding facility where he would impregnate multiple women to spread his “superior” genes—the ultimate fusion of sexual predation, capitalist accumulation, and fascist ideology. The man who trafficked children for billionaire rapists saw himself not as a criminal but as an evolutionary benefactor, using his wealth to “improve” the species through forced reproduction. Capitalism had so thoroughly warped his psychology that he genuinely believed his financial success proved his genetic worth.
The Silence for Capital
The most damning evidence of capitalism’s complicity in sexual predation is not what it does but what it refuses to see. Despite overwhelming evidence of systematic child abuse among the global elite, the mainstream media treats each revelation as an isolated scandal rather than a systemic feature. Despite clear patterns linking economic power to sexual violence, academia refuses to examine the connection. Despite obvious signs that pedophile networks operate at the highest levels of government and finance, law enforcement consistently fails to investigate or prosecute.
This silence is not incompetence—it is self-preservation. Capitalism cannot afford to acknowledge that its most successful practitioners are also its most depraved predators because this would expose the moral bankruptcy at the system’s core. The same corporate media that celebrates billionaire “philanthropy” cannot simultaneously expose billionaire child rape, genocide and theft without undermining the entire mythology of virtuous wealth creation.
The legal system that protects corporate criminals from accountability cannot suddenly develop a conscience about sexual criminals without calling attention to its systematic bias in favor of wealth and power. The political establishment that serves corporate interests cannot prosecute the sexual crimes of their financial backers without severing their own sources of funding and support.
The Fascist Trajectory
The same psychological mechanisms that enable the abuse of individual children also enable the abuse of entire populations. The billionaire who can rape a child with no sense of moral conflict can also engineer famines, fund genocides, and destroy democracies with equal emotional detachment.
This is why every fascist movement in history has been funded and supported by capitalist elites: fascism is simply capitalism with its mask removed, the open acknowledgment that some humans exist only to serve the pleasures and profits of others. The concentration camps of Nazi Germany were built by the same corporate executives who built the factories that exploited workers to death. The genocide in Gaza is funded by the same billionaires who profit from the destruction of Palestinian society.
Sexual predation against children represents the ultimate expression of this fascist logic: the complete negation of another human being’s autonomy, dignity, and right to exist as anything other than an object for consumption. Once this psychological barrier has been crossed—once a person becomes capable of sexually abusing a child—no other moral boundary can restrain them. They become capable of any atrocity in service of their desires.
“Jeffrey Epstein was not a monster who happened to be rich—he was rich because he was a monster”
The connection between pedophilia and capitalist success is not a conspiracy theory—it is an observable pattern that demands explanation. That explanation reveals the most uncomfortable truth about our economic system: it does not reward virtue, innovation, or social contribution. It rewards the capacity for predation, the willingness to treat other humans as consumable resources, and the ability to sever all emotional connection to the suffering one causes.
Jeffrey Epstein was not a monster who happened to be rich—he was rich because he was a monster. His wealth came not from productive economic activity but from his willingness to provide other monsters with access to victims they could not obtain through their own efforts. His clients were not wealthy men who happened to be pedophiles—they were pedophiles who became wealthy because capitalism rewards the psychological traits that enable both sexual and economic predation.
The Epstein network reveals capitalism in its purest form: a system where those most willing to inflict suffering rise to positions where they can inflict maximum suffering. The children destroyed on Epstein’s island are not fundamentally different from the children destroyed in sweatshops, the children poisoned by industrial pollution, the children murdered by American bombs purchased with taxpayer money. All are victims of the same system, sacrificed to the same gods of profit and power.
Breaking this system requires more than prosecuting individual predators—it requires acknowledging that predation is not a bug in capitalism but its essential feature. It requires recognizing that the same system that elevates pedophiles to positions of supreme power will never voluntarily reform itself. It requires understanding that the choice before us is not between different types of capitalism but between capitalism and human survival.
The children crying in Epstein’s dungeons and the children dying in Gaza are calling out with the same voice, demanding that we choose between preserving a system that rewards monsters and building a world where human dignity becomes the foundation of economic and political organization. Their cries echo across time and space, asking the same question that haunts every moment of our historical crisis: How long will we tolerate a system that rewards our destroyers and punishes our protectors?
The answer lies not in reforming capitalism but in replacing it with an economic system based on human cooperation rather than human predation, on shared prosperity rather than concentrated wealth, on the protection of the vulnerable rather than their exploitation. Only when we build such a system will the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world lose their power to turn children into commodities and suffering into profit.
Until then, every day we allow this system to continue is another day we choose the predators over their victims, the monsters over the children, the system over our souls. The choice has never been clearer. The time for choosing has never been shorter. The cost of choosing wrong has never been higher.
#9 TOP STORY OF 2025: Why six Australian Jews accused leading local Zionist of antisemitism
By David Glanz | 27 December 2025
When a leading Zionist calls six other Australian Jews “antisemitic” – and worse – over criticisms of Israel, the issues are deep. Hence this February piece, by those six, was so vital, well-received and much read.
Six Melbourne Jews, labelled “antisemites” by prominent lawyer Mark Leibler, have made a formal complaint against him to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Dr David Glanz details their position.
IMAGINE calling a group of Jews ‘repulsive and revolting human beings’.
At a time when Nazi thugs are openly organising on our streets and swastikas are being daubed on Jewish buildings, it’s surely the stuff of Far-Right memes. Inspiration for more foul graffiti.
But the author of the words was certainly no Nazi. The phrase was written by Mark Leibler AC, one of Melbourne’s leading lawyers, a member of the University of Melbourne Council, a former president of the Zionist Federation of Australia and the current chair of the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.
Mr Leibler wrote the words as part of a post on Twitter/X that he paid to promote, reaching some 400,000 people.
His target was anti-Zionist Jews in general and – given that we were organising an anti-Zionist rally the day after the post – surely the five of us, some of whom are migrants from Israel.
Mr Leibler didn’t pull his punches. He went on to say that our relatives killed in the Holocaust would be rolling in their graves.
And – this stings, given our track record of anti-racism – that we are ‘vicious antisemites’.
Now Mr Leibler is entitled to his support for Zionism. The idea that Jews would be best served by the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine is, after all, a political position and one that has been contested within Jewish communities for some 140 years.
He is also entitled to defend the State of Israel and its actions in Gaza over the past 16 months.
We disagree with him on both counts. We organised our rally at Parliament House because we wanted to put on the public record that some Jews oppose the settler colonial conquest of Palestine and the consequences that have flowed from that, including apartheid laws within Israel and the West Bank and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
We know that we are a minority within the Jewish community. We don’t claim to speak for all Melbourne Jews — quite the opposite. Our argument is that no one, including Mr Leibler, gets to speak for all Jews.
But we know that the number of Jews standing against the genocide and in solidarity with Palestine is growing, not just in Melbourne but around the world.
Over the past 16 months there have been impressive and lively rallies by dissenting Jews in the U.S., a Jewish bloc of up to 1,000 on Palestine rallies in London and, here in Melbourne, Jews taking part in each of the 71 weekly rallies for Palestine, with Jews often invited to speak from the platform.
We include in our ranks the descendants of Holocaust survivors and those who lost family in the Nazi death camps.
So the one thing we are certain Mr Leibler is not entitled to do is to dismiss us as beyond the pale. We have a right to speak, to be heard (and disagreed with) as Jews.
We have submitted a complaint about Mr Leibler’s post on X to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
As we are all Jews, and as Mr Leibler attacked us as such, we would argue that his post is not just offensive but antisemitic.
And given that our rally was to highlight the issue of discrimination against Palestinians and all victims of racism, we would argue that Mr Leibler’s post was an attempt to victimise us by exposing us to ridicule and contempt as Jews in the public arena.
It is also insulting. We include in our ranks the descendants of Holocaust survivors and those who lost family in the Nazi death camps.
We don’t want money or revenge. A public apology would suffice.
We have been denigrated and impugned. But the suffering of the Palestinians makes any slight we have experienced pale to nothing in comparison.
And that is the tragedy. While Mr Leibler uses his position of power to attack us as the “wrong sort of Jews”, some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza squat in the rubble of their homes, their hospitals and schools, their mosques and churches, and mourn their tens of thousands of dead.
Our rally called for an end to the suffering and discrimination. It was joined by many Jews and our non-Jewish supporters.
Mr Leibler’s post was a calculated and pre-emptive smear to undermine our rejection of all forms of racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.
He was obviously concerned about our impact. We must be doing something right.
Dr David Glanz, Nachshon Amir, Shahar Amir, Dr Keren Tova Rubinstein and Dr Guy Gillor are anti-Zionist Jews in Melbourne, who organised a rally against genocide and racism at the Victorian Parliament.
58 Years of Occupation — And the Shocking Report Israel Doesn’t Want You to Read
December 26, 2025 , By Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/26/58-years-of-occupation-and-the-shocking-report-israel-doesnt-want-you-to-read/
Inspired by a Common Dreams report today about the ATV attack in the West Bank, I looked into Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli military veterans who speak out against the occupation of Palestine. They’ve described the regional defense units—responsible for numerous attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank—as little more than settler militias dressed in uniform.
I did some digging and found their November report, I’m not sure who else might have missed it, but it’s definitely worth reading. The report is titled: “JOINT SITUATION REPORT: 58 Years of Occupation, The Two-Year War in Gaza.”
The report’s lead writer is Tal Raviv O’Regan, and the steering committee includes Noa Sattath, Ziv Stahl, and Tal Steiner. The translation was done by Maya Johnston, with English editing by Rachel Druck.
They do disclose this, and so will I: the report is the work of thirteen human rights organizations, some of which receive most of their funding from foreign political sources. Even so, they’re proud of the support from those who share our belief that the occupation isn’t just an internal Israeli issue and who are committed to defending human rights.
Some Key Points Noted in the Report Include:
“The occupation, illegal and immoral in itself, has led to widespread human rights abuses, breaches of international humanitarian law, and increasingly entrenched apartheid.”
“Practices Israel employed even before the war have intensified to the point where they have become routine and unprecedented in scale.”
“Most shocking are the creation of mass hunger and a humanitarian crisis, among the worst in the world.”
“Crimes are rarely investigated by military or civilian law enforcement.”
“Settler violence and forced expulsions of Palestinian communities have surged, unchecked by authorities.”
“Israel continued to control many aspects of the residents’ lives… significantly contributing to a chronic humanitarian crisis.”
“To end the war and begin the process of healing… all parties must honor the cease‑fire agreement and fulfill their obligations under international law.”
“Israel must bravely and honestly investigate its actions… acknowledge war crimes and violations of the law, and draw the necessary conclusions.”
“Starving a civilian population is strictly prohibited under international law.”
“Israel has an active duty to ensure regular, uninterrupted flow of food and humanitarian aid.”
about Breaking the Silence from their page: “Founded in March 2004 by a group of soldiers who served in Hebron, Breaking the Silence has since acquired a special standing in the eyes of the Israeli public and in the media because of its unique role in giving voice to the experience of soldiers. To date, the organization has collected testimonies from more than 1,400 soldiers who represent all strata of Israeli society and cover nearly all units that operate in the territories.”
“All the testimonies we publish are meticulously researched, and all facts are cross-checked with additional eyewitnesses and/or the archives of other human rights organizations that are active in the field. Every soldier who gives a testimony to Breaking the Silence is well-aware of the aims of the organization and the interview. Most soldiers choose to remain anonymous, due to various pressures from military officials and society at large. Our first priority is to safeguard the soldiers who choose to testify to the public about their military service.”
Here are some videos [on original] from former soldiers and other contributors from Breaking the Silence. You can find more here
From Democracy Now! interviewing two former Israeli soldiers who are members of Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli army veterans exposing the realities of the occupation. Tal Sagi, the group’s education director, shares his experience growing up in a settlement and joining the military without understanding what occupation meant: “We’ve been told that this is security and we have to control millions of lives and we don’t have other options… We’re trying to say that there are other options.”
Breaking the Silence deputy director Nadav Weiman explains why the group is touring U.S. colleges and advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza: “We stood in checkpoints. We raided homes. We attacked Gaza from the air. We fought from the ground… When you bring reality, you bring real conversation about the occupation, and you bring real conversation about Gaza.”
This is the kind of issue that Hillary Clinton and others refer to when they talk about the TikTok problem in media and the importance of connecting with people around the world quickly and effectively. She, along with Sarah Hurwitz—who dislikes the democratization of information and longs for the era of Old Media where corporations controlled the flow—laments that people now receive less explanation and more video content, such as live-streamed genocide that can be reduced to statistics. Hurwitz acknowledges she may appear a “monster” to viewers and controversially insists that Holocaust education should primarily serve as antisemitism education rather than a lesson for broader human experience.
Because Hurwitz refuses to see the Holocaust as a broad human experience, because then it’s clear that what is happening in Israel today would not pass that test.
Today, we can become knowledgeable and informed in ways that were not possible before the democratization of information—so we must keep our eyes open, even as many try to silence opposition voices with money and power. While there is no end in sight, there is a hopeful continuum: as more people become informed and reconnect with their humanity, change becomes possible. Those in Breaking the Silence have clearly found theirs.
Here is another report from Democracy Now!, from 10 years ago, documenting another time when Israel was killing civilians and Breaking the Silence was speaking out.
Occupied and Imperiled: Charting a Path for Zaporizhzhia’s Nuclear Future
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, is a central issue in U. S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
ByNewsroom, December 27, 2025, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/12/27/occupied-and-imperiled-charting-a-path-for-zaporizhzhias-nuclear-future/
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, is a central issue in U. S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. This matter is part of a broader peace proposal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, comprising 20 key points. The power plant has been under Russian control since March 2022, with Russia asserting ownership while most of the world maintains it belongs to Ukraine. A significant proposal has emerged from the U. S. for a joint trilateral operation of the plant with Ukrainian participation and an American chief manager overseeing its operations.
Currently located in Enerhodar, the power plant has six reactors and a total capacity of 5.7 gigawatts. However, since Russia’s takeover, five reactors have been shut down, and the last one ceased operation in September 2022. Four of the reactors have transitioned to using fuel from Westinghouse, moving away from Russian nuclear fuel. The plant’s management states that all reactors are now in “cold shutdown. ” Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacks on the plant and disruptions to its power lines, which has often compelled it to rely on emergency diesel generators for essential cooling functions.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, is a central issue in U. S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. This matter is part of a broader peace proposal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, comprising 20 key points. The power plant has been under Russian control since March 2022, with Russia asserting ownership while most of the world maintains it belongs to Ukraine. A significant proposal has emerged from the U. S. for a joint trilateral operation of the plant with Ukrainian participation and an American chief manager overseeing its operations.
Currently located in Enerhodar, the power plant has six reactors and a total capacity of 5.7 gigawatts. However, since Russia’s takeover, five reactors have been shut down, and the last one ceased operation in September 2022. Four of the reactors have transitioned to using fuel from Westinghouse, moving away from Russian nuclear fuel. The plant’s management states that all reactors are now in “cold shutdown. ” Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacks on the plant and disruptions to its power lines, which has often compelled it to rely on emergency diesel generators for essential cooling functions.
An ongoing concern is the dwindling water supply necessary for cooling the reactors, exacerbated by the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in 2023. The plant requires adequate water for both its reactors and spent fuel pools; without it, the risk of overheating and fire increases. Reports indicate a significant drop in the water level at the plant’s cooling pond, raising alarms about the safety of operations, as the current reserves may only suffice for one or two reactors. Consequently, the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant raises critical questions about nuclear safety amid the conflict and the potential repercussions if issues remain unaddressed.
Turkey Makes Another $9 Billion Bet on Russian Nuclear Power
By Julianne Geiger – Oil Price, Dec 26, 2025,
Turkey just took another very large, very deliberate step deeper into Russia’s energy orbit — and this time it comes with a $9 billion price tag.
Ankara says that Russia has provided $9 billion in new financing for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkey’s first-ever nuclear facility, which is being built by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom on the Mediterranean coast. According to Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, the bulk of that money will be deployed in 2026 and 2027, with as much as $4–5 billion flowing next year alone. The plant is now expected to come online in 2026, after multiple delays.
While this may look like a straightforward infrastructure update, it’s more about how deeply intertwined Turkish and Russian energy interests remain, despite years of flowery talk about diversification and reduced dependence on Moscow.
Akkuyu has always been different from Turkey’s other energy ambitions. It is a build-own-operate project. This means that Rosatom shoulders the financial risk, owns the plant, and will operate it for decades. That structure is precisely why Akkuyu survived when Turkey’s second nuclear project at Sinop collapsed under runaway costs and political complexity. Only Russia stayed……………………………………. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Turkey-Makes-Another-9-Billion-Bet-on-Russian-Nuclear-Power.html
Palantir’s Palestine: How AI Gods Are Building Our Extinction
“Zionism is evil,” she says with the quiet certainty of someone who has spent a lifetime studying its fruits. “It is purely evil. It has created disasters, misery, atrocities, wars, aggression, unhappiness, insecurity for millions of Palestinians and Arabs. This ideology has no place whatsoever in a just world. None
The machines are not coming for us. They are already here. And the men who control them have made their intentions terrifyingly clear.
BettBeat Medi, Dec 26, 2025
But Zionism, in its current iteration, is not merely an ideology. It is a business model. It is a technology demonstration. It is the beta test for systems that will eventually be deployed everywhere.
The Israeli military’s Project Lavender uses AI to identify targets for assassination. Soldiers describe processing “dozens of them a day” with “zero added value as a human.” The algorithm marks. The human clicks. The bomb falls.
This is not a war. It is a sick twisted video game.
Palantir’s technology identifies the targets. Musk’s Starlink provides the communications. American military contractors supply the weapons. And the entire apparatus is funded by governments whose citizens have marched in the millions demanding it stop.
There is a moment in every civilization’s collapse when the instruments of its destruction become visible to those paying attention. We are living in that moment now. But the warning signs are not carved in stone or written in prophecy—they are embedded in source code, amplified by algorithms, and funded by men who speak openly of human extinction while racing to cause it.
In a nondescript office in Palo Alto, a man who claims to fear fascism has become its most sophisticated architect. In a sprawling Texas compound, another man who styles himself a free speech absolutist uses his platform to amplify the voices calling for ethnic cleansing. And in the bombed-out hospitals of Gaza, their technologies converge in a laboratory of horrors that prefigures what awaits us all.
The four horsemen of this apocalypse do not ride horses. They deploy algorithms.
The Confession
Professor Stuart Russell has spent fifty years studying artificial intelligence. He wrote the textbook from which nearly every AI CEO in Silicon Valley learned their craft. And now, at eighty hours a week, he works not to advance the field he helped create, but to prevent it from annihilating the species.
“They are playing Russian roulette with every human being on Earth,” Russell said in a recent interview, his voice carrying the weight of someone who has seen the calculations and understood their implications. “Without our permission. They’re coming into our houses, putting a gun to the head of our children, pulling the trigger, and saying, ‘Well, you know, possibly everyone will die. Oops. But possibly we’ll get incredibly rich.’”
This is not hyperbole from an outsider. This is the assessment of a man whose students now run the companies building these systems. And here is what should terrify you: the CEOs themselves agree with him.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, estimates a 25% chance of human extinction from AI. Elon Musk puts it at 20-30%. Sam Altman, before becoming CEO of OpenAI, declared that creating superhuman intelligence is “the biggest risk to human existence that there is.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“These bombs are cheaper and you don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..The [Palantir] company’s software now powers what Israeli soldiers describe with chilling bureaucratic efficiency: “I would invest 20 seconds for each target and do dozens of them a day. I had zero added value as a human. Apart from being a stamp of approval.”
Twenty seconds. That is the value of a Palestinian life in the algorithmic calculus of Alex Karp’s creation. The machine decides who dies. The human merely clicks.
When whistleblowers revealed that Israeli intelligence officers were using “dumb bombs”—unguided munitions with no precision capability—on targets identified by Palantir’s AI, their justification was purely economic: “These bombs are cheaper and you don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people.”
Unimportant people. Children. Doctors. Journalists. Poets.
Karp has admitted, in a moment of rare candor: “I have asked myself if I were younger, at college, would I be protesting me?”
He knows the answer. We all know the answer. He simply does not care.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Musk is the CEO of xAI, OpenAI’s largest competitor. He has declared himself a 30% believer in human extinction from AI. And he is using the world’s most influential social media platform to promote the political movements most likely to strip away the regulations that might prevent that extinction.
The fascists have captured the algorithm.
The Laboratory of the Future
Dr. Ghada Karmi was a child in 1948 when she lost her homeland. She remembers enough to know that she lost her world. For seventy-seven years, she has watched as the mechanisms of Palestinian erasure evolved from rifles and bulldozers to algorithms and autonomous weapons systems.
“Zionism is evil,” she says with the quiet certainty of someone who has spent a lifetime studying its fruits. “It is purely evil. It has created disasters, misery, atrocities, wars, aggression, unhappiness, insecurity for millions of Palestinians and Arabs. This ideology has no place whatsoever in a just world. None. It has to go. It has to end. And it has to be removed. Even its memory has to go.”
But Zionism, in its current iteration, is not merely an ideology. It is a business model. It is a technology demonstration. It is the beta test for systems that will eventually be deployed everywhere.
The Israeli military’s Project Lavender uses AI to identify targets for assassination. Soldiers describe processing “dozens of them a day” with “zero added value as a human.” The algorithm marks. The human clicks. The bomb falls.
This is not a war. It is a sick twisted video game.
Palantir’s technology identifies the targets. Musk’s Starlink provides the communications. American military contractors supply the weapons. And the entire apparatus is funded by governments whose citizens have marched in the millions demanding it stop.
“The genocide has not provoked a change in the official attitude,” Dr. Karmi observes. “I’m astonished by this and it needs an explanation.”
The explanation is simpler and more terrifying than any conspiracy. The explanation is that the people who control these technologies have decided that some lives are worth twenty seconds of consideration and others are worth none at all. And the governments that might regulate them have been captured by men waving fifty billion dollar checks.
“They dangle fifty billion dollar checks in front of the governments,” Professor Russell explains. “On the other side, you’ve got very well-meaning, brilliant scientists like Jeff Hinton saying, actually, no, this is the end of the human race. But Jeff doesn’t have a fifty billion dollar check.”
The King Midas Problem
Russell invokes the legend of King Midas to explain the trap we have built for ourselves. ………………………………………………………………………………..
The CEOs know this. They have signed statements acknowledging it. They estimate the odds of catastrophe at one in four, one in three, and they continue anyway.
Why?
Because the economic value of AGI—artificial general intelligence—has been estimated at fifteen quadrillion dollars. This sum acts, in Russell’s metaphor, as “a giant magnet in the future. ……………………………………………………………
“The people developing the AI systems,” Russell observes, “they don’t even understand how the AI systems work. So their 25% chance of extinction is just a seat of the pants guess. They actually have no idea.”
No idea. But they’re spending a trillion dollars anyway. Because the magnet is too strong. Because the incentives are too powerful. Because they have convinced themselves that someone else will figure out the safety problem. Eventually. Probably. Maybe.
What Now?
If everything goes right—if somehow we solve the control problem, if somehow we prevent extinction, if somehow we navigate the transition to artificial general intelligence without destroying ourselves—what then? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Enablers
Dr. Karmi returns again and again to a simple question: Why?
“Why should a state that was invented, with an invented population, have become so important that we can’t live without it?” she asks of Israel. But the question applies equally to Silicon Valley, to the tech platforms, to the entire apparatus of algorithmic control that now shapes our politics, our perceptions, our possibilities.
The answer, she suggests, lies in understanding the enablers.
“I think it’s absolutely crucial now to focus on the enablers,” she argues. “Because we can go on and on giving examples of Israeli brutality, of the atrocities, of the cruelties. That’s not for me the point. The point is who is allowing this to happen?”
The same question must be asked of AI. Who is allowing this to happen? Who is funding the companies that acknowledge a 25% chance of human extinction and continue anyway? Who is providing the regulatory vacuum in which these technologies develop unchecked? Who is amplifying the voices calling for acceleration while silencing those calling for caution?
The answer is the same class of people who have enabled every catastrophe of the modern era: the comfortable, the compliant, the compromised. The politicians who take the fifty billion dollar checks. The journalists who amplify the preferred narratives. The citizens who scroll past the warnings because they are too busy, too distracted, too convinced that someone else will handle it.
“All the polls that have been done say most people, 80% maybe, don’t want there to be super intelligent machines,” Russell notes. “But they don’t know what to do.”
They don’t know what to do. So they do nothing. And the machines keep learning. And the algorithms keep shaping. And the billionaires keep abusing. And the bombs keep falling. And the future keeps narrowing.
The Resistance
Russell’s advice is almost quaint in its simplicity: “Talk to your representative, your MP, your congressperson. Because I think the policymakers need to hear from people. The only voices they’re hearing right now are the tech companies and their fifty billion dollar checks.
………………………………… the point is not that resistance will succeed. The point is that resistance is the only thing that might succeed.
…………………………….We still have a choice. The machines are not yet smarter than us. The algorithms are not yet in complete control. The billionaires are not yet omnipotent.
But the window is closing. The event horizon may already be behind us. And the men who control the most powerful technologies in human history have made their values abundantly clear.
They will pursue profit over safety. They will amplify hatred over tolerance. They will choose rape over romance. They will enable genocide if the margins are favorable. They will risk extinction if the upside is sufficient.
This is not speculation. This is the record. This is what they are doing, right now, in plain sight.
The question is not whether we understand the danger. The question is what we will do about it……………………………………………………….. https://bettbeat.substack.com/p/palantirs-palestine-how-ai-gods-are?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=437130&post_id=180304933&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=46by4&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Europe’s nuclear sites on high alert for drone threats in the year ahead
Western countries scramble to bring in new defences as experts see rise of autonomous threats everywhere
Thomas Harding, December 26, 2025. https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/europe/2025/12/26/europes-nuclear-facilities-put-on-a-2026-drone-alert/
It was a taste of what could become one of the decisive threats next year, when the flight path between Dublin and Britain’s Sellafield nuclear reactor was disrupted by unidentified drones.
On the incoming jet was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife, minutes away from landing at Dublin Airport, slightly ahead of schedule.
After an Irish naval vessel reported that a number of drones were manoeuvring 36km north-east of the city – Sellafield is just 200km from the capital – Ireland’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said it was a “co-ordinated threat” to “put pressure” on Europe and Ukraine.
Just days later, the menace shifted. The French Navy opened fire on drones detected over a highly sensitive site housing the country’s fleet of nuclear submarines.
The drones at Ile Longue naval base were ultimately intercepted with jamming systems, but their presence over one of the continent’s most heavily protected sites sent a clear message: Europe is waking up to significant vulnerabilities to its military and civilian nuclear sites, and Russia is widely suspected to be behind the activity.
Nuclear threat
France has19 nuclear power stations, Britain has five − including Sellafield, in Cumbria, north-west England − and many more are spread across the continent. Defence analysts have warned that a hostile state could target a vulnerable power station rather than resorting to the outright belligerence of launching a nuclear weapon.
Causing a nuclear incident with several drone strikes would be difficult, but even a limited attack could cause symbolic and economic damage. Fallout could include enforced shutdowns, mass evacuations and financial market panic, all without a state crossing the nuclear threshold.
“What if Russia just blows up one of the nuclear power plants in the UK using drones that are flown from within the UK?” said Ed Arnold, a senior military analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think tank. “That’s a different vector of threat, but it would achieve the same result from a Russian perspective.”
He added that the sites’ “vulnerabilities are really quite critical, because this is hard to defend against,” and that even just flying drones over sensitive sites “is cheap, deniable and has a high economic impact”.
Ukraine, on one level, is responsible for tactics that were previously the stuff of imagination. Its remarkably successful Operation Spider-Web in June demonstrated the changed boundaries of warfare.
The operation used more than 100 short-range kamikaze drones launched from lorries parked within 10km of several Russian airbases, destroying 11 Russian long-range bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
“Although it was a costly lesson, it likely opened Moscow’s eyes to the opportunities afforded by these capabilities,” wrote Dr Daniel Salisbury in an International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank paper on the growing threat. “Even minimal capability can use emerging technologies to hold nuclear assets at risk,” he added.
A year ago, the idea of a head of state being targeted for assassination by drones seemed like a plot from a Tom Clancy novel. Not any more. Presidential security details now carry drone jammers that resemble oversized guns.
But it is not just the French and Irish incidents that are setting off a wave of concern over Europe. Last month, drones were spotted over Kleine-Brogel Air Base in Belgium on three consecutive nights.
New modes
In the Netherlands, guards fired at drones over Volkel Air Base, which hosts US nuclear weapons under Nato’s nuclear-sharing arrangements. Earlier this month, Dutch F-35 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept a drone.
Similar incidents have been reported around RAF Lakenheath in eastern England, which is likely to soon host US nuclear weapons after a two decade absence.
What is troubling the authorities is that the flights are clustered around high-value nuclear and military sites, with drones larger and more capable than those usually used by hobbyists.
“These are not people flying toys,” said Belgium’s Defence Minister, Theo Francken, after the Kleine-Brogel incursion. “They came to spy, to see where the F-16s are, where the ammunition is and other highly strategic information.” Furthermore, some of the UAVs flew higher and proved resistant to jamming.
This adds to a series of incidents since September in which drones flew over civilian airports across Eastern Europe, as well as Germany and Scandinavia.
The flights, likely conducted by criminal gangs and paid for in cryptocurrency by Moscow, could well be construed as “hostile reconnaissance” to look into sites or indeed test their anti-drone technology for a future conflict.
Drones can also gather real-time imagery that satellites cannot and if one could capture either a French nuclear-armed submarines leaving Ile Longue or a Royal Navy one departing Faslane in Scotland it would give enemies a significant tracking advantage.
Drones everywhere
Hostile states can also use the rapidly expanding civilian drone market to blend into the noise to hide their true intentions. In Britain it is estimated that by 2030 there could be 76,000 commercial drones operating in its airspace, according to The Economist. And across Europe, more than 3,800 close encounters between drones and aircraft were recorded last year − more than double the previous year.
Drones, Mr Arnold argued, are perfectly suited to “grey zone” operations, those activities that fall short of open warfare but inflict disruption and apprehension.
Annabelle Walker, an analyst at the intelligence company Sibylline, also suggested that Russia has a strong interest in probing Nato’s readiness.
“The use of drones has exposed a particular gap in European countries,” she said. “Testing response times, decision-making and co-ordination tells you a lot and it can all be done below the threshold of war.”
Shoot ’em down?
Shooting down drones risks collateral damage. Main defences include jamming or “spoofing”, in which drones are tricked into misidentifying their location. Jamming is less effective against autonomous drones programmed to strike or that are using fibre-optic control − as seen widely in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Defenders can use physical countermeasures such as guns that shoot nets, and shotguns, which are broadly carried in Ukraine. The National understands that Kyiv is set to unveil next year a state-of-the art interceptor drone. The counter-drone industry is now becoming a major market for defence companies.
To defend against a serious attack on a nuclear site, governments must identify vulnerable locations then use a layered defence of radar, electronic warfare and trained personnel dedicated to counter-drone operations, said Douglas Barrie of the IISS.
But air defence was an area where European states had underinvested for decades since the Cold War ended. “Western Europe and the UK really need to pay more attention as this is back on the agenda in a big way,” Mr Barrie told The National.
“Moscow is clearly in the frame, and they’re testing the boundaries of what they can get away with before the other side pushes back,” he added.
Mr Zelenskyy’s near-miss over Dublin was not necessarily an act of war but it was a warning − as were the other incidents − and Moscow may well consider further disruptive operations that avoid open conflict.
It is now a question of whether Europe can strengthen its defences against a threat that will only intensify.
Israeli Occupation Intensifies: Defense Minister Vows Permanent Gaza Presence as Settler Violence Escalates in West Bank.
by Dave DeCamp | December 23, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/12/23/israeli-defense-minister-vows-permanent-israeli-occupation-of-gaza-establishment-of-settlements/
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Tuesday that the Israeli military will “never leave all of Gaza” and will eventually establish settlements in the northern part of the Strip.
“We are deep inside Gaza and will never leave all of Gaza – that will not happen. We are here to defend and to prevent what happened,” Katz said during an event in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“With God’s help, when the time comes, also in northern Gaza, we will establish Nahal pioneer groups in place of the settlements that were evacuated,” Katz added, referring to an IDF program that establishes communities for Israeli soldiers. “We’ll do it in the right way, at the appropriate time.”
Katz also vowed that Israel would not withdraw “one millimeter” from Syria, referring to the territory it has captured in southwest Syria since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
After his remarks sparked backlash, Katz appeared to walk back the comments on settlements. “The government has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip,” his office said in a statement, though it added that he made the comments in a “security context,” suggesting it wasn’t a complete walk back about what he said about establishing military communities.
An unnamed US official criticized Katz’s comments, saying that he was “provoking” the Arab world. “The more Israel provokes, the less the Arab countries want to work with them,” the US official said in a statement to journalists.
“The United States remains fully committed to President Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan, which was agreed to by all parties and endorsed by the international community. The plan envisions a phased approach to security, governance, and reconstruction in Gaza. We expect all parties to adhere to the commitments they made under the 20-Point Plan,” the official added.
Katz did not walk back his comments about a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, and other Israeli officials have made similar vows. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said earlier this month that the so-called “yellow line,” the vague boundary separating the Israeli-occupied side of Gaza from the rest of the Strip, is a “new border.”
The IDF currently occupies more than 50% of Gaza, and Palestinians, for the most part, have been cleansed from the area, besides the Israeli-backed anti-Hamas militias and gangs and a small number of civilians living with them. If Israel’s occupation doesn’t end, Israeli settlers will continue to push for the establishment of settlements on the IDF side of the yellow line.
The Nachala movement, a group of settlers pushing for Jewish settlement in Gaza and the complete expulsion of the Palestinian population, welcomed Katz’s initial comments, saying it was a “step in the right direction toward returning Jewish settlement in Gaza.” Settlers with the Nachala movement recently entered Gaza and raised an Israeli flag.
Nachala has strong support among members of the Israeli government and the Knesset. Senior members of the Israeli government have been explicit in their desire for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the establishment of Jewish settlements. A few days after the Gaza ceasefire deal was signed, which Israel has continued to violate by killing over 400 Palestinians, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed there would be “Jewish settlements in Gaza.”
Kushner, Witkoff draft $112B proposal to develop Gaza into ‘smart city’ with luxury resorts.
by Shane Galvin, 22 Dec 25, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kushner-witkoff-draft-112b-proposal-to-develop-gaza-into-smart-city-with-luxury-resorts-and-us-footing-60b/ar-AA1SK9NI?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Trump administration reps have just revealed a grandiose $112 billion plan to rebuild war-torn Gaza into a futuristic international destination dubbed “Project Sunrise.”
The 10-year development plan, drafted by first son-in-law Jared Kushner, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, and two top White House aides, is currently courting investor countries with a 32-slide PowerPoint presentation detailing the bold plan to renovate burning rubble into beach resorts.
Gaza would see the development of luxury hotels, high speed rail and AI-optimized smart grid features that would revolutionize the small slice of the coveted Mediterranean coastline into a bustling metropolis, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Gaza’s destruction has been profound, but we believe what lies ahead is not just restoration — it’s a chance to develop a gateway of prosperity in the Middle East with state-of-the-art infrastructure, urban design, and technology,” the executive summary slide read, according to the outlet.
The total $112 billion cost would be spread out over 10 years, with the US agreeing to “anchor” up to $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debts by raising industry funds.
“Reimagining Gaza as a ‘smart city’ with tech-driven governance and services,” one slide from the PowerPoint presentation beamed.
The ambitious proposal — developed within the last 45 days by Kushner, Witkoff, and White House aides consulted Israeli security experts about the path forward — further called for establishing a “Chief Digital Office and an innovation lab to define standards and guide policymaking.”
The presentation does not go into detail about which countries or companies would be investing in the rebuilding fund, according to WSJ.
Though the plan mapped out distinct phases of construction, it did not provide details for housing the 2 million Palestinians who would be displaced during the massive construction necessary.
There is an estimated 68 million tons of rubble in Gaza after thousands of Israeli airstrikes leveled cities during the two-year war in Gaza.
US officials who have knowledge of the proposal are skeptical that it will come to fruition because a condition would be Hamas agreeing to disarm, the Journal reported.
Witkoff, meanwhile, met Saturday in Miami with high-level delegations from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar to discuss implementation for the second phase of the Gaza cease-fire plan.
Iran rejects inspections of bombed nuclear sites without IAEA framework
Iran says UN nuclear watchdog must first define ‘post-war conditions’ following US strikes on its nuclear facilities in June.
By Anadolu. 24 Dec 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/24/iran-rejects-inspections-of-bombed-nuclear-sites-without-iaea-framework
Iran has rejected calls to allow inspections of nuclear facilities bombed during attacks by the United States in June, saying the United Nations nuclear watchdog must first define “post-war conditions” governing access to sites hit by military attacks.
Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said Tehran would not permit inspections of facilities struck by the US until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) establishes a clear framework for such visits, according to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency.
“If there are established procedures for the post-war situation, the agency should announce them so that we can act accordingly,” Eslami said.
He added that Tehran had formally communicated its position to the IAEA, insisting that rules must be “defined and codified” for cases in which nuclear facilities under international safeguards are subjected to military attack.
During a 12-day war with Israel in June, the US military bombed three major Iranian nuclear facilities – Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan – using bunker-buster munitions. More than 430 people were killed, and thousands more were wounded in the wave of attacks, according to Iran’s Ministry of Health.
The strikes followed Israel’s surprise attack on Iran, which killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists, as well as senior military commanders, and targeted several nuclear programme-related sites.
Tehran denies seeking a nuclear bomb.
Israel, meanwhile, is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Following the US attacks, Iran expelled IAEA inspectors stationed in the country, accusing the agency of failing to condemn the attacks.
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The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on “installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations”.
Eslami said if the IAEA supports or tolerates military action against safeguarded nuclear sites, it should say so explicitly.
“But if such attacks are not permitted, they must be condemned – and once condemned, the post-war conditions must be clarified,” he said, adding that Iran would not accept “political and psychological pressure” to allow inspections before that happens.
‘No legal effect’ of nuclear deal
Eslami also criticised a UN Security Council meeting on nuclear non-proliferation held on Tuesday, describing the statements made there as completely unprofessional and non-legal, according to Tasnim.
A key point of contention was the legal status of Resolution 2231, which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir-Saeid Iravani, told the UNSC that Resolution 2231 expired on October 18, 2025, and therefore “ceased to have any legal effect or operative mandate”.
His position was echoed by the representatives of Russia and China.
Iravani said Iran remained committed to “principled diplomacy and genuine negotiations”, placing responsibility on France, the United Kingdom and the US to take steps to restore trust, according to the state-run news agency IRNA.
The US representative at the meeting, Morgan Ortagus, said Washington remained open to talks but only if Iran agreed to direct and meaningful dialogue.
“Foremost, there can be no enrichment inside of Iran,” she said.
Before the June escalation, Iran and the US had held five rounds of indirect nuclear negotiations, mediated by Oman, without reaching a breakthrough.
Trump Floundering Efforts to Shore Up US Hegemony
Michael Hudson The Unz Review, December 20, 2025
The National Security Strategy’s Drive to Shed the Costs of Imposing Its U.S. Unipolar Empire
The one area in which the National Security Strategy makes a claim to be realistic is to recognize that the United States cannot directly be seen to impose its control by force. This task is to be delegated more to client oligarchies and their governments, by assigning responsibility (and most important, the military costs) on a regionwide basis along lines similar to how the European Union’s foreign and domestic political policies have been made subordinate to NATO Cold War policy controlled by the United States.
Replacing at least the anti-Russian rhetoric of Biden’s and the EU’s support for the war against Russia, the NSS proposes dividing the world into spheres of influence for the major regional powers: the United States (monopolizing control of all of Latin America and the Caribbean for itself), Russia (with its Central Asian and other former Soviet republics, including what formerly was eastern Ukraine), and China over mainland Asian neighbors. A Pacific NATO-like arrangement to be shepherded (and financed) by Japan, with India as the wild card. The EU under NATO are dismissed as a waning power with little influence.
This plan is not really a division of spheres of regional influence at all, in the sense that World War II’s 1945 Yalta conference was. It does carve out a uniquely U.S. control over Latin America and the Caribbean. European and Asian countries are to keep away from investing in the major resources of these countries.[1] This is Trump’s travesty of the Monroe Doctrine. That doctrine called for a reciprocity with foreign countries: Europe would stay out of political control of Latin American countries, and the United States would not interfere in European affairs. But U.S. officials had no problem with the newly independent Latin American countries going deeply into debt to British and other foreign creditors who imposed debt dependency, much as France did with Haiti as the price of its buying its political freedom to abolish domestic slavery. The effect was for many of these countries obtained political freedom from colonialism only to fall into debt dependency. But the Monroe Doctrine was only concerned with direct political and military control.
The major U.S. violation of the original Monroe Doctrine has been to maneuvere to control Eurasian affairs. It has meddled in European elections, most notably in Italy and Greece after World War II by mounting right-wing challenges to their rising Communist parties. And it has ringed Eurasia with U.S. military bases and mounted regime change coups. The effect is that U.S. diplomats have been trying for eighty years to turn the entire world into a unipolar U.S. region of influence.
But the military and related costs of this effort have been largely responsible for the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit since the Korean War, and also the U.S. domestic budget deficit (at least until the neoliberal tax cuts on the revenue side of the budget). These costs are to be shifted onto foreign countries.
The costs of maintaining the U.S. diplomatic empire must be assigned on a region-wide basis under the leadership of particularly loyal U.S. proxies, much as is the case with NATO countries Europe under British, French and German dominance.
In Asia, U.S. diplomacy relies on the Quad (Japan, Australia, India and the United States) along with friendly governments in South Korea and the Philippines to prevent their economies and those of China and other countries in the region from obtaining oil and gas from Russia, Iran and Venezuela to install military basis ringing China. Much as U.S. neocons are trying to convince NATO allies that these adversaries pose an imminent military threat, Asian countries are being mobilized to support a separatist political movement in Taiwan.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Trump’s drive to attract foreign financing to the U.S. debt market via cryptocurrency
In seeking to counter other countries’ moves away from the dollar, the most recent U.S. tactic is to try to surreptitiously get other countries to hold dollars by persuading them to invest in stablecoins – cryptocurrency that is invested in U.S. Treasury securities, not bonds of China or other countries…………………………………….
And a major aim of cryptocurrencies is, of course, to facilitate tax evasion and criminal activities through libertarian “privacy” (that is, secrecy from public authorities) and criminal management of such currencies themselves. The Trump Administration’s support for cryptocurrencies actually is a new version of the U.S. drive to promote offshore banking centers in the 1960s…………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.unz.com/mhudson/trump-floundering-efforts-to-shore-up-us-hegemony/
The Real Story Behind the Russia–Ukraine War—and What Happens Next
local Ukrainian nationalists joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht in its depredations against Jews, Poles, Roma and Russians when it first swept through the country from the west on its way to Stalingrad; and then, in turn, the Russian populations from the Donbas and south campaigned with the Red Army during its vengeance-wreaking return from the east after winning the bloody 1943 battle of Stalingrad that turned the course of WWII.
As Washington sleepwalks deeper into conflicts that have nothing to do with genuine US security, the stakes for ordinary Americans grow higher by the day.
by David Stockman, Doug Casey’s International Man , 27 Dec 25
Notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was “unprovoked” and unrelated to NATO’s own transparent provocations in the region.
The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.
Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?
After all, if despite Rubio’s treachery President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.
The answer, however, is a resounding no!
Our firm rebuke of the hoary Munich analogy as it has been falsely applied to Putin is based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that’s what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.
For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935–1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war: German military spending had already reach 23% of GDP, even before its invasion of Poland in September 1939 and its subsequent commencement of actual military campaigns of invasion and occupation.
Not surprisingly, the same kind of claim on resources occurred when the United States took it upon itself to counter the aggression of Germany and Japan on a global basis. By 1944 defense spending was equal to 40% of America’s GDP, and would have totaled more than $2 trillion per year in present day dollars of purchasing power.
Military Spending As A Percent Of GDP In Nazi Germany
- 1935: 8%.
- 1936: 13%.
- 1937: 13%.
- 1938: 17%.
- 1939: 23%.
- 1940: 38%.
- 1941: 47%.
- 1942: 55%.
- 1943: 61%.
- 1944: 75%
By contrast, during the final year before Washington/NATO triggered the Ukraine proxy war in February 2022, the Russian military budget was $65 billion, which amounted to just 3.5% of its GDP.
Moreover, the prior years showed no build-up of the kind that has always accompanied historic aggressors. For the period 1992 to 2022, for instance, the average military spending by Russia was 3.8% of GDP– with a minimum of 2.7% in 1998 and a maximum of 5.4% in 2016.
Needless to say, you don’t invade the Baltics or Poland—to say nothing of Germany, France, the Benelux and crossing the English Channel—on 3.5% of GDP! Not even remotely.
Since full scale war broke out in 2022 Russian military spending has increased significantly to 6% of GDP, but all of that is being consumed by the Demolition Derby in Ukraine—barely 100 miles from its own border.
That is, even at 6% of GDP Russia has not yet been able to subdue its own historic borderlands. So if Russia self-evidently does not have the economic and military capacity to conquer its non-Ukrainian neighbors in its own region, let alone Europe proper, what is the war really about?
Continue readingRussia wants to build a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next few years .
Project aims to supply energy for its lunar space programme
Guy Faulconbridge, Wednesday 24 December 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/space/russia-china-space-race-moon-nuclear-power-b2890010.html
Russia is reportedly planning to establish a nuclear power plant on the moon within the next decade.
This ambitious project aims to supply energy for its lunar space programme and a joint research station with China, as global powers intensify their
efforts in lunar exploration.
Historically, Russia has held a prominent position in space, notably with Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey in 1961.
However, its dominance has waned in recent decades, with the nation now trailing behind the United States and, increasingly, China.
The country’s lunar aspirations faced a significant setback in August 2023 when its uncrewed Luna-25 mission crashed during a landing attempt.
Furthermore, the landscape of space launches, once a Russian speciality, has been revolutionised by figures such as Elon Musk, adding to the competitive pressure.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, said in a statement that it planned to build a lunar power plant by 2036 and signed a contract with the Lavochkin Association aerospace company to do it.
Roscosmos said the purpose of the plant was to power Russia’s lunar programme, including rovers, an observatory and the infrastructure of the joint Russian-Chinese International Lunar Research Station.
“The project is an important step towards the creation of a permanently functioning scientific lunar station and the transition from one-time missions to a long-term lunar exploration program,” Roscosmos said.
Roscosmos did not say explicitly that the plant would be nuclear but it said the participants included Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom and the Kurchatov Institute, Russia’s leading nuclear research institute.
The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, said in June that one of the corporation’s aims was to put a nuclear power plant on the moon and to explore Venus, known as Earth’s “sister” planet.
The moon, which is 384,400 km (238,855 miles) from our planet, moderates Earth’s wobble on its axis, which ensures a more stable climate. It also causes tides in the world’s oceans.
1A 15 years after Fukushima disaster locals fear return of Japan’s nuclear power.
Sarah Hooper, December 24, 2025, https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/24/15-years-after-fukushima-disaster-locals-fear-return-of-japans-nuclear-power-25764288/
Japan is returning to nuclear energy almost 15 years after the Fukushima disaster – but not everyone is convinced it’s a good idea.
The world’s largest nuclear power plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, shut down most of its reactors after the deadly 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster was triggered in March 2011 when four of the plant’s reactor buildings were damaged in the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history, which had a magnitude of 9.0.
In the aftermath, Japan began the process of shutting down many of its nuclear power plants, including Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, north of Tokyo.
But as the country looks to become self-sufficient when it comes to energy, it’s rebooting many of the nuclear plants shut down after the tsunami.
Restarting nuclear facilities is a ‘significant move’ for Japan
Dr Leslie Mabon, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Systems in the School of Engineering and Innovation at the Open University, has researched how nuclear facilities affect the environment and communities near Fukushima in Japan.
He told Metro that none of the reactors which are going to be restarted are in nuclear stations in Fukushima Prefecture, but restarting Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is a significant move
‘What is significant about this restart is not only the size of the plant – the largest in Japan – but also that it is operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), who are also responsible for the Fukushima Dai’ichi plant that faced the meltdowns in 2011,’ he explained.
‘A crucial question at the heart of the controversy over nuclear restarts in Japan is: who does it benefit?’
Local governments and citizens living near nuclear plants have raised concerns about the safety of the plants, especially because the electricity produced won’t power their own communities.
‘Electricity from the plant primarily benefits those living in the Tokyo metropolitan area, some 200km south-east,’ Dr Mabon added.
‘Citizens and political figures in Niigata, and other regions like it, where restarts are on the horizon, may well be asking why they have to take up the risk for a power plant that benefits those living far away.’
An ageing and declining population in rural areas where the nuclear power plants are also located poses another problem.
‘Local and regional politicians face a very difficult balancing act between the jobs and economic benefits that hosting a nuclear plant brings on one hand, versus the concerns some of their citizens might have about safety and fairness on the other,’ he said.
Widespread outcry over nuclear power
Local residents aren’t supportive of the move, however, with dozens of protesters assembling outside after politicians voted to reopen the plant.
TEPCO, the energy company which will operate the plants, said in a statement: ‘We remain firmly committed to never repeating such an accident and ensuring Niigata residents never experience anything similar to 2011.’
Despite widespread outcry by residents – some 60% of whom don’t believe conditions to restart the plant have been met – it will reopen in January.
Local resident Ayako Oga was protesting after the vote – she was forced to relocate after the meltdown of the Fukushima plant placed her home inside the exclusion zone.
She said: ‘As a victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident, I wish that no one, whether in Japan or anywhere in the world, ever again suffers the damage of a nuclear accident.’
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