Israel has intercepted and detained another 145 activists in the second flotilla effort in a row headed to Gaza to break Israel’s near-total humanitarian aid blockade, after detaining and imprisoning over 450 activists in the first wave of ships last week. The activists, including doctors and journalists, were in a group of nine boats headed to Gaza that were all seized by Israeli officials…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
ANALYSIS: By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent
The signing of the Papua New Guinea-Australia Mutual Defence Treaty — officially known as the Pukpuk Treaty — marks a defining moment in the modern Pacific order.
Framed as a “historic milestone”, the pact re-casts security cooperation between Port Moresby and Canberra while stirring deeper debates about sovereignty, dependency, and the shifting balance of power in the region.
At a joint press conference in Canberra, PNG Prime Minister James Marape called the treaty “a product of geography, not geopolitics”, emphasising the shared neighbourhood and history binding both nations.
“This Treaty was not conceived out of geopolitics or any other reason, but out of geography, history, and the enduring reality of our shared neighbourhood,” Marape said.
Described as “two houses with one fence,” the Pukpuk Treaty cements Australia as PNG’s “security partner of choice.” It encompasses training, intelligence, disaster relief, and maritime cooperation while pledging full respect for sovereignty.
“Papua New Guinea made a strategic and conscious choice – Australia is our security partner of choice. This choice was made not out of pressure or convenience, but from the heart and soul of our coexistence as neighbours,” Marape said.
For Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cast the accord as an extension of “family ties” – a reaffirmation that Australia “will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with PNG to ensure a peaceful and secure Pacific family.”
Intensifying competition
It comes amid intensifying competition for influence across the Pacific, where security and sport now intersect in Canberra’s broader regional strategy.
The Treaty promises to bolster the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) through joint training, infrastructure upgrades, and enhanced maritime surveillance. Marape conceded that the country’s forces have long struggled with under-resourcing.
“The reality is that our Defence Force needs enhanced capacity to defend our sovereign territorial integrity. This Treaty will help us build that capacity – through shared resources, intelligence, technology, and training,” he said.
Yet, retired Major-General Jerry Singirok, former PNGDF commander, has urged caution.
“Signing a Defence Pact with Australia for the purposes of strengthening our military capacity and capabilities is most welcomed, but an Act of Parliament must give legal effect to whatever military activities a foreign country intends,” Singirok said in a statement.
He warned that Sections 202 and 206 of PNG’s Constitution already define the Defence Force’s role and foreign cooperation limits, stressing that any new arrangement must pass parliamentary scrutiny to avoid infringing sovereignty.
The sovereignty debate
Singirok’s warning reflects a broader unease in Port Moresby — that the Pukpuk Treaty could re-entrench post-colonial dependency. He described the PNGDF as “retarded and stagnated”, spending just 0.38 percent of GDP on defence, with limited capacity to patrol its vast land and maritime borders.
“In essence, PNG is in the process of offloading its sovereign responsibilities to protect its national interest and sovereign protection to Australia to fill the gaps and carry,” he wrote.
“This move, while from face value appeals, has serious consequences from dependency to strategic synergy and blatant disregard to sovereignty at the expense of Australia.”
Former leaders, including Sir Warren Dutton, have been even more blunt: “If our Defence Force is trained, funded, and deployed under Australian priorities, then whose sovereignty are we defending? Ours — or theirs?”
Cooperation between the two forces have increased dramatically over the last few years.
Canberra’s broader strategy: Defence to rugby league
The Pukpuk Treaty coincides with Australia’s “Pacific Step-up,” a network of economic, security, and cultural initiatives aimed at deepening ties with its neighbours. Central to this is sport diplomacy — most notably the proposed NRL Pacific team, which Albanese and Marape both support.
Canberra views the NRL deal not simply as a sporting venture but as “soft power in action” — embedding Australian culture and visibility across the Pacific through a sport already seen as a regional passion.
Marape called it “another platform of shared identity” between PNG and Australia, aligning with the spirit of the Pukpuk Treaty: partnership through shared interests.
However, critics argue the twin announcements — a defence pact and an NRL team — reveal a coordinated Australian effort to strengthen influence at multiple levels: security, economy, and society.
The US factor and overall strategy
The Pukpuk Treaty follows last year’s Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) signed between Papua New Guinea and the United States, which grants US forces access to key PNG military facilities, including Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island.
That deal drew domestic protests over transparency and the perception of external control.
The Marape government insisted the arrangement respected PNG’s sovereignty, but combined with the new Australian treaty, it positions the country at the centre of a US-led security network stretching from Hawai’i to Canberra.
Analysts say the two pacts complement each other — with the US providing strategic hardware and global deterrence, and Australia delivering regional training and operational partnership.
Together, they represent a deepening of what one defence analyst called “the Pacific’s most consequential alignment since independence”.
PNG’s deepening security ties with the United States also appear to have shaped its diplomatic posture in the Middle East.
As part of its broader alignment with Washington, PNG in September 2023 opened an embassy in Jerusalem — becoming one of only a handful of states to do so, and signalling strong support for Israel.
In recent UN votes on Gaza, PNG has repeatedly voted against ceasefire resolutions, siding with Israel and the US. Some analysts link this to evangelical Christian influence in PNG’s politics and to the strategic expectation of favour with major powers.
China’s measured response
Beijing has responded cautiously. China’s Embassy in Port Moresby reiterated that it “respects the independent choices of Pacific nations” but warned that “regional security frameworks should not become exclusive blocs.”
China has been one of PNG’s longest and most consistent diplomatic partners since formal relations began in 1976.
China’s role in Papua New Guinea is not limited to diplomatic signalling — it remains a major provider of loans, grants and infrastructure projects across the country, even as the strategic winds shift. Chinese state-owned enterprises and development funds have backed highways, power plants, courts, telecoms and port facilities in PNG.
In recent years, PNG has signed onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and observers count at least 40 Chinese SOEs currently operating in Papua New Guinea, many tied to mining, construction, and trade projects.
While Marape has repeatedly said PNG “welcomes all partners,” the growing web of Western defence agreements has clearly shifted regional dynamics. China views the Pukpuk Treaty as another signal of Canberra and Washington’s determination to counter its influence in the Pacific — even as Port Moresby maintains that its foreign policy is one of “friends to all, enemies to none”.
A balancing act
For Marape, the Treaty is not about choosing sides but strengthening capacity through trust.
“Our cooperation is built on mutual respect, not dominance; on trust, not imposition. Australia never imposed this on us – this was our proposal, and we thank them for walking with us as equal partners,” he said.
He stressed that parliamentary ratification under Section 117 of the Constitution will ensure accountability.
“This is a fireplace conversation between neighbours – Papua New Guinea and Australia. We share this part of the earth forever, and together we will safeguard it for the generations to come,” he added.
The road ahead
Named after the Tok Pisin word for crocodile — pukpuk, a symbol of endurance and guardianship — the Treaty embodies both trust and caution. Its success will depend on transparency, parliamentary oversight, and a shared understanding of what “mutual defence” means in practice.
As PNG moves to ratify the agreement, it stands at a delicate crossroads — between empowerment and dependency, regional cooperation and strategic competition.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Sheffield group Stop Arming Israel shut down the Sheffield-based factory of arms manufacturer Forged Solutions for hours today:
Protesters suspect the Sheffield arms factory is complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Early on 8 October, Stop Arming Israel blockaded the River Don Site for a second time, having successfully done so in August too. The group had previously blockaded the company’s Meadowhall factory back in July on two occasions.
There was reportedly a heavy police presence, but protesters managed to stop numerous cars and lorries from entering in the morning:
A larger protest followed at 11am outside the Meadowhall site.
According to a press release from the group, “Forged Solutions is listed on the Open General Export Licence for the F-35″ fighter jet that Israel has used to decimate Gaza. The company denies making F-35 parts in Sheffield.
Other protests targeting the F-35 supply chain took place in Rochester, Havant, Cheltenham, and Brough.
A Stop Arming Israel spokesperson said the group:
aims not only to target complicity but also direct participation in the genocide in Palestine. Forged Solutions has a long history of supplying parts to companies like Pratt and Whitney and Safran Aero Booster which go on to make engines for fighter jets like the F-35, F-16 and F-15. All of these planes are used by the occupation in its genocide of the Palestinians meaning that Forged Solutions is a participant in the genocide.
A protester, meanwhile, explained that:
As Sheffield residents, we are left with no choice but to take matters into our own hands and blockade the Forged Solutions factories once more. We have lobbied the council and the mayoral authority countless times about the city’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. We are two years into this genocide; campaigning is not enough. The most effective action we can take is to directly halt the activities of these factories – as we have successfully done on multiple occasions – and disrupt the supply chain of weapons being exported to Israel.
Another added:
We will be back!
Featured image and additional images supplied
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
According to a new report from the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC), Israel has committed more than 38,000 human rights and legal violations in the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023.
These 38,359 violations were committed by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and illegal colonial settlers against Palestinian citizens and their property.
Out of these, 31,205 incidents were attributed to the army, while settlers carried out 7,154 attacks, which led to the killing of 33 Palestinians. The report also revealed that settlers established an unprecedented 114 new settlement outposts during this same period, which triggered the forced displacement of 33 Palestinian Bedouin communities. These communities comprised of 455 families and a total of 2,853 people, who were forced to flee their homes.
Since October 2023, Israel has taken control of around 5,500 hectares of Palestinian land, including large areas reclassified as ‘nature reserves’ and ‘state land’.
In addition, about 175 hectares were confiscated through the use of more than 100 military orders for the construction of security infrastructure and 25 buffer zones which were established around the illegal settlements, mainly in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli occupation’s apartheid system ensures the illegal settlers living in these settlements have everything at their disposal, even their own roads, which Palestinians are not permitted to use. Efforts have now intensified, to fragment Palestinian land and isolate communities, by expanding the network of these settler only roads, to connect the various settlements.
Israeli occupation authorities reviewed 355 planning proposals for more than 37,000 new settlement units on over 3,800 hectares in the occupied West Bank and elsewhere. Nearly half have been approved, with the remainder pending. Jerusalem recorded the highest concentration of these plans with 148.
In the past two years, 11 existing outposts have been legalised, and almost 70 have received infrastructure support to strengthen settler hold over Palestinian land. Outposts often start off as nothing more than a caravan placed on Palestinian land by a settler, and are often accompanied by livestock grazing, fencing, and infrastructure that encroach on Palestinian territory.
Settlers use outposts strategically to seize Palestinian lands by establishing a physical, very often violent, presence that gradually expands, displacing Palestinian herders and farmers. The outposts are backed by the IOF and government, and disrupt Palestinian access to their land and resources, leading to forced displacement and land confiscation.
Settler violence, harassment, and theft of resources like water from Palestinian communities are common tactics used to enforce control and drive Palestinians out, facilitating the expansion of these outposts into larger settlements.
Since October 2023, military and settler actions have caused nearly 770 fires in the occupied West Bank, over 200 of which damaged private property while the rest destroyed farmland. These incidents damaged more than 48,000 trees. The violence and land seizures have displaced entire Bedouin communities, uprooting thousands of people from their homes.
The number of checkpoints and barriers in the occupied West Bank, along main routes and at the entrances and exits of villages and towns-which restrict movement of people and goods and isolate communities- now stands at 916, including more than 240 new gates installed since October 2024.
Israeli authorities carried out more than 1,000 demolitions, destroying almost 3,680 Palestinian structures, including over 1,200 inhabited homes and hundreds of agricultural and commercial facilities, while a further 1,670 demolition orders were issued targeting buildings across the West Bank.
In a recent press conference, Muayyad Shaaban, Head of CWRC, said the occupied Palestinian territories have become a testing ground for new colonial policies over the past two years. He accused the Israeli occupation of deploying policies that combine violence, territorial control, and legal measures to empower settlers while denying Palestinians basic rights such as housing, movement, and dignity.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israel has plunged Gaza City into an even deeper humanitarian disaster than it was already in, as many major international aid organizations, which have already been battered by months of siege and bombardment, have now withdrawn or dramatically reined in their operations because of the relentless Israeli military offensive, and systematic displacement orders. This has left most of Gaza City’s Palestinian population, of hundreds of thousands, to face this catastrophe on their own.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), whose international medics provided life saving wound care, surgeries, and malnutrition treatment to Palestinians battered by siege and displacement. announced the suspension of its activities in Gaza City in late September, blaming the continued airstrikes and advancing tanks less than one kilometre from their healthcare facilities for creating ‘an unacceptable level of risk’ to their staff.
Jacob Granger, MSF Emergency Coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement:
We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces… This is the last thing we wanted.
MSF has highlighted the critical needs of the most vulnerable in Gaza City, including infants in neonatal care and patients with severe, life-threatening injuries who could not be evacuated. It has described hospitals as overwhelmed and facing severe shortages in staff, supplies, and fuel. Until its withdrawal, MSF carried out over 3,640 consultations and treated 1,655 patients suffering from malnutrition and severe trauma injuries and burns, as well as pregnant women and others requiring ongoing medical care who were unable to leave the city.
“With us gone, those left behind face catastrophe with little or no medical help at all,” the organisation warned.
15 MSF staff members have so far been killed in Gaza
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has worked in Gaza City for decades, but it too, as of 1 October, has now been forced to suspend its operations there, relocating to central and Southern Gaza for safety.
The ICRC’s departure is seismic – its workers have long coordinated evacuation corridors, distributed food and water, and kept what little remained of public health infrastructure alive. It also supported baking facilities in 14 displacement camps that provided 45,000 loaves of bread per day. ICRC teams also supported water and wastewater network repairs.
Sarah Davies from the ICRC Jerusalem told the Canary:
We have temporarily suspended operations from out of our Gaza City office – however, we continue to provide operational support to Gaza City, alongside local partners like the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and ongoing programmes continue.
As an organisation that works in conflict zones around the world, we are constantly assessing the risk to our staff, as well as the ability to reach civilians in need in these areas, and as military operations intensified in Gaza City, we were forced to make this decision.
In a statement on 6 October Gaza’s Government Media Office expressed its ‘deep astonishment and strong condemnation’ of the ICRC’s decision, calling it ‘catastrophic, dangerous and irresponsible’, and saying:
It represents a painful retreat from the humanitarian and moral role entrusted to the ICRC, and it does not serve the Palestinian people who are facing daily acts of genocide. Rather, it abandons defenseless civilians without protection or genuine humanitarian support in one of the most dangerous and devastated areas on earth.
We affirm that the International Committee of the Red Cross is a body protected under international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. It has a duty to operate in conflict zones, not to withdraw from them. Such a step at this critical time contradicts the very essence of its humanitarian mandate and the purpose for which it was established.
Although the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has been providing lifesaving clean drinking water at about a dozen sites within Gaza City, reports that even these critical activities are being threatened by heavy bombardments and restricted access, it is still managing to continue with its operations at the moment, although the number of sites are changing every day, based on the conditions, and the ability to access areas. There has also been so much displacement that some of the sites that NRC has been serving are now empty, so they have stopped delivering to them.
The Canary spoke with Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council. She said:
Providing water is the only in person we are doing at the moment. While we are continuing to operate, the water is being delivered by contractors. We have very limited staff that have remained in Gaza city, and most of those are not in conditions where they are able to work, because of lack of connectivity and security.
Most of our staff have fled, we cannot tell them to stay. They have a right to withdraw and we have a duty of care. But I need to make clear, our staff are not the ones going out daily and delivering water. That’s being done by contractors that are connected to the desalination devices, but many have now relocated to the South and brought their equipment with them.
So we have shortages of equipment and fuel, and a limited number of service providers we are still able to work with in Gaza City, to continue providing clean drinking water.
According to Low, the NRC has managed to keep providing support for some of its services over the phone to the people in Gaza City, such as its Legal Aid Programme, and its Protection from Violence Programme, and has also helped some families who have wanted to move to the South but have been unable to do so – maybe because of injury or disability, by paying for their journey.
She says:
But now we are in a situation where we are not sure if that is feasible anymore, because Israel has closed the Northbound route, so if the trucks take Palestinian to the South they will be unable to return to the North.
Twice in September, within a couple of days of each other, NRC staff were confronted by about 40 armed individuals at its premises in Gaza City, while preparations were underway to relocate contingency supplies for operational needs. This had not happened before, in the past two years, and shows how desperate the situation has become.
The group seized 250 litres of fuel, a number of food parcels and also water bottles. Although NRC staff were unharmed, desperate, starving Palestinians, and also armed gangs supported by the occupation are becoming a growing problem in Gaza, while the teams which used to escort aid supplies and act as security, be at the warehouses and at the distribution points, have all been intentionally attacked or threatened by the Israeli occupation.
While MSF and ICRC have halted their work in Gaza City, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) continues to operate, although many of its clinics, hospitals and ambulances have been intentionally damaged or destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, and their staff, along with the Palestinian Civil Defense – who are responsible for providing emergency and relief services – take extreme risks responding to emergencies amid the bombs.
They have been targeted in attacks while responding to airstrikes targeting shelters, schools, and residential towers filled with displaced families. They are often the only medical and rescue providers accessible to civilians in Gaza city.
PRCS staff have been killed since October 2023, while on duty, and in a statement marking two years since the start of the genocide, the PRCS said:
The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza has reached shocking levels: The stench of death filling every corner, and the rubble of destroyed homes, schools, roads, and other civilian infrastructure dominating the landscape… the occupation directly targeted its staff without any regard for their humanitarian mission or the internationally protected emblem of the Red Crescent.
The Palestinian Civil Defense teams in Gaza are the last emergency responders operating in Gaza City, trying to find survivors who have been buried under the rubble, with no specialist equipment and hardly any supplies or fuel left for vehicles.
On 7 October the Civil Defense announced that their teams had recovered the bodies of more than 53,700 and rescued around 125,750 wounded in Gaza, since the beginning of the genocide, and in this time they received 635,000 emergency calls. They were not able to reach 52,000 of these, either due to fuel shortages or due to the areas being targeted by the occupation
The situation is desperate and it is getting much worse every day. As international aid organizations fall silent, not by choice but because of the relentless bombing, encirclement, and systemic destruction, the population of Gaza City has been abandoned to catastrophe. Hospitals are destroyed, water is scarce, and the means of survival for Palestinians are rapidly deteriorating.
The institutions designed to help civilians in times of conflict – MSF, the ICRC, the NRC – are being pushed out one by one. This is not a natural disaster, but the outcome of policy which is deliberate and has been emboldened by global silence.
The Israeli regime has faced no consequences for any of its actions, since its formation in 1948, and acts with total impunity.
This genocide has erased thousands of families from the civil registry, and entire neighborhoods, starved the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, crushed civil infrastructure, and terrorized and murdered medics, aid workers, and civilians. The systematic targeting of these humanitarian personnel is part of the architecture of the occupation, a form of control that does not leave any pathway for accountability.
Shielded by its powerful allies, and insulated from all international legal mechanisms, the occupation has been given the strength to continue pursuing its crimes by a global order that has completely failed to hold it to the same standards that it claims to impose on others.
While the world debates wording, international law is being ripped to pieces. It is time for the illegal Israeli occupation to be held to account and to pay the price for its continuing violations of international law, and its complete disregard for humanity, before it succeeds in its goal of genocide, of erasing Palestinian life in Gaza. All those responsible for these atrocities – the individuals, states and corporations who order them, justify them, and supply them – must face consequences for their crimes.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
Two years after the outbreak of war on Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), described what Gaza is experiencing as:
an extended nightmare of destruction, displacement, bombing, fear, death and hunger.
He called for an immediate ceasefire and the full and unconditional introduction of humanitarian aid, and added:
Sadness, suffering, and deep pain have become a daily reality for millions of people since October 7, 2023. In Gaza, for two years, people have known nothing but devastation, deprivation, and constant fear.
The UN official also renewed his call for the release of all Palestinian hostages and detainees, stressing that the continuing cycle of violence and deprivation “pushed the population to the brink of annihilation.
He added:
There is no way out of this hell except to silence guns, everywhere, and return the voice of humanity to this earth.
Lazzarini also called on the international community to ensure the unrestricted flow of essential humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Importantly, he explained that this had to happen through UNRWA, noting that hunger, disease, and the collapse of public services have made life in the Strip:
beyond the limits of a humanitarian catastrophe.
He stressed the need for accountability and justice for crimes and violations committed since the beginning of the war, saying that:
justice is the only path towards any possible peace.
Lazzarini’s statements come at a time when Gaza is plunged into one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, with more than two million people living under siege amid almost complete destruction of infrastructure, continuous power outages, and severe scarcity of food, water and medicine. Lazzarini concluded:
Gaza today is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a real test for all of our humanity.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
A report issued by the government media office in Gaza has revealed shocking figures on the extent of the destruction that befell the education sector. Local authorities have described the findings as tantamount to “educational genocide” that threatens the future of an entire generation of children in the Strip.
According to the report, a copy of which was received by the Canary, 95% of Gaza’s schools were severely damaged during the war, while 90% of them need complete reconstruction due to the widespread destruction of educational infrastructure.
An analysis of the report’s figures revealed that 668 schools were directly bombed, representing 80% of the total number of schools in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, 165 schools, universities, and educational institutions were completely destroyed, and 392 other educational institutions were partially damaged, completely halting the educational process for the third consecutive year.
Figures show that 785,000 students were deprived of their right to education for the third academic year in a row, while more than 13,500 students lost their lives under Israeli bombing. The report also confirmed the killing of 830 teachers and educational staff, and 193 scientists and researchers, which observers describe as “systematic targeting of the Palestinian mind”.
Israel not only destroyed schools, laboratories, and universities, but also targeted teachers and researchers who constitute the intellectual core of Palestine’s future. An official from the government media office in Gaza said that:
what is happening is not just a war, but an organised process to obliterate national awareness and identity by destroying the entire educational system.
Local, human rights, and international institutions have confirmed at varying times that the continued targeting of schools and educational facilities constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee the protection of civilian institutions, especially educational ones, during armed conflicts.
Tens of thousands of children in Gaza face severe psychological and educational difficulties, in light of the absence of a safe school environment and the lack of the necessary capabilities for distance learning, as hundreds of schools have been turned into shelters or rubble.
In the absence of any international plan to rebuild the education sector, officials at the Gaza media office warn that losing three consecutive years of education will have a “long-term catastrophic impact” on the invading society, considering that the war has not only killed children and teachers, but has “assassinated the entire future.”
As the war enters its third year, rebuilding schools and educational institutions must become an urgent priority within any plan to rebuild Gaza, given that “saving education is the first step to restoring life to the besieged Strip”.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Taher Al-Nunu, media advisor to the head of Hamas’s political bureau, expressed cautious optimism regarding developments in the indirect peace negotiations underway in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh, which aim to reach a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
In a brief press release published by Hamas, Al-Nunu said that the Hamas delegation “provided the necessary positivity and responsibility to achieve the desired progress,” noting that an atmosphere of optimism prevails among the various participating parties. Al-Nunu also emphasised that the current round of talks focuses on three main issues:
According to Al-Nunu, today witnessed an exchange of lists of prisoners to be released, according to previously agreed-upon criteria and numbers, which is seen as an indicator of tangible progress in the negotiations. He added that regional and international mediators, primarily Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, are making intensive efforts to overcome the remaining obstacles to implementing the agreement, stressing that indirect talks continue today with the participation of all parties.
These developments come amid increasing pressure from the international community to end the ongoing war in Gaza, which has left widespread destruction and a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
Despite this positive atmosphere, Hamas and the mediators do not hide their concern about Israel’s long record of obstructing the implementation of previous agreements. In previous rounds of negotiations, Israel was accused of stalling on advanced stages of prisoner exchange deals, in addition to refusing to fully withdraw from the Strip or effectively lift the blockade, which repeatedly led to the collapse of truce attempts.
Tel Aviv was also accused of backtracking on understandings brokered by Egypt and Qatar, particularly regarding expanding humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and the sustainable opening of crossings. These points are considered essential for the Palestinians in any future agreement.
As such, Al-Nunu emphasised that mediators, particularly Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, are making great efforts to overcome obstacles, including pressuring the Israeli side to ensure compliance with any agreement reached. He explained that indirect negotiations between the parties are continuing today, with intensified efforts to formulate practical steps to end the months-long war, which has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and caused massive destruction to the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure.
This round of talks comes amid mounting international pressure on Israel to halt its ongoing military operation, following warnings from human rights and UN organisations that Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
While capitals await the results of the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, the Palestinian streets, particularly the residents of Gaza, remains awaiting tangible results that will end the blockade, cease fire, and put an end to years of suffering.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Zohran Mamdani, the front-running Mayoral candidate in New York City, has caused uproar on social media over a statement he made on October 7.
My statement on the two year anniversary of October 7, 2023. pic.twitter.com/JlsXUeAeYd
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 7, 2025
Mamdani is currently ahead in the polls by 18 points, and his position on issues such as taxing the rich has won him popularity among New Yorkers.
Previously, Mamdani has expressed anti-Israel views and called for defunding the police. However, he claims to have softened his view on both.
That said, his statement on 7 October 2025 – the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel- has stirred massive controversy online.
Mamdani managed to frame Palestinian resistance to 80 years of brutal Israeli occupation as equivalent to those 80 years of Israeli violence.
I know he and his team – and even many of his supporters – believe this was the best possible statement he could have made, one that they believe centers the devastation inflicted on Palestinians since Oct 7.
But the reality is that to frame an instance of Palestinian violence,… https://t.co/kgtokid2U7
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) October 7, 2025
I don’t like to engage in liberal gotchas, but imagine comparing 1 event with 100 years of systematic ethnic-cleansing campaign. https://t.co/dXoGR9CRJW
— Raja Abdulhaq (@Raja48) October 7, 2025
He has reinforced the same frameworks that politicians across the world have been using to justify further violence against Palestinians for the past two years.
Zohran’s latest statement is disgraceful. It hides behind the language of morality while reinforcing the same frameworks that dehumanize Palestinians.
He begins by calling October 7 a “horrific war crime,” centering Israeli suffering as the starting point of the story. That… https://t.co/5WdaYtnd83
— Nerdeen Kiswani (@NerdeenKiswani) October 7, 2025
He seemingly attempted to condemn Israel’s crimes, but in reality, he completely distorted the facts.
Resistance is not a “horrific war crime,” Hamas did not kill “1,100 Israelis” on October 7, and occupation soldiers aren’t “hostages.” These facts matter. @ZohranKMamdani can’t balance out these distortions and lies by also condemning “Israel’s” crimes. He knows this but he’s… https://t.co/AyrTH2bvQC
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) October 7, 2025
Israel’s use of the Hannibal directive has been widely covered by the media. Yet still, Mamdani claimed Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis. This has been proven to be a fabrication.
According to Electronic Intifada, Israeli implementation of the Hannibal Directive was official, almost immediate, and deliberate.
Additionally, it took place in the knowledge of the risk of “endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves”.
Mamdani’s attempts to ‘both sides’ a literal live-streamed genocide appear to have alienated a large proportion of his supporters.
what the Democrats still don’t understand is there is no longer a centrist position. you cannot both sides a fucking genocide and expect anyone to take you seriously https://t.co/u0CucpnkIK
— Bobby the Terrible (@secondbyfarce) October 7, 2025
the stupidest thing about centrist takes is that you just end up pissing off both sides and pleasing no one. the left think you’re a sellout and the right think you’re hamas, how does that benefit you? its better to stand on business https://t.co/JoSLlHoFxH
— hole respecter (@bigsnugga) October 7, 2025
on zohran: acknowledging that it’s a genocide but then continuing to condemn the resistance is actually worse and more evil than simple genocide denial.
— Em Cohen gazafunds.com (@EmCohen_) October 7, 2025
Even so, Zionists have still attacked Mamdani for the same statement. His pathetic attempts to appease the right have blown up in his face. He managed to piss everyone off.
The Zionists on CNN are unanimously attacking Zohran Mamdani for his October 7th statements
So not only was Mamdani factually wrong and cowardly but he’s still getting attacked by the establishment for it
He condemned the Palestinian resistance and pissed off the entire left,…
— Revolutionary Blackout
(@SocialistMMA) October 8, 2025
Zohran also managed to write a whole statement without once mentioning Palestine or Palestinians.
Did he forget how to spell it?
He never once said Palestinians or Palestine. Not once. https://t.co/2G3AcnOe1Y
— Hussein (@EyesOnSouth1) October 7, 2025
ignoring the obvious ignorance of pretending the genocide was an aftermath of oct 7th & the obvious undercount on the death toll it really amazes me that these type of statements still manage to tiptoe around mentioning Palestinians or Palestine directly https://t.co/9ZsSmkn9Ca
— aya (@chrrypicked) October 7, 2025
People living under occupation have a right to resistance – by any means necessary.
Imagine starting off a commemoration of the Armenian genocide with denouncing the Van uprising
Or commemorating the Holocaust with denouncing Herschel Grynszpan
Or the Trail of Tears, condemning Native Americans who kidnapped settlers https://t.co/CXaLMwVvRZ
— Aidan Simardone (@AidanSimardone) October 7, 2025
This week, Mamdani managed to further distance himself from the far-left by attacking both Cuba and Venezuela. He claimed the leaders of both countries were ‘dictators’.
Democratic New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has once again gone out of his way to distance himself from the far-left by attacking Cuba and Venezuela. “I want to be clear about my position. I believe both Nicolás Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel are dictators. Their… pic.twitter.com/m7qOajV3hb
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) October 7, 2025
As the Canary previously reported, US military forces attacked two more Venezuelan vessels in international waters near the South American nation on 3 and 4 October. This brings the total number of similar strikes to four, with at least 21 people dead. This is a clear violation of international law.
Mamdani’s campaign has been based on his socialist values. But now, he seems to have taken a cop out.
I usually like to ignore the internal rants of US politicians but if you’re posing as a socialist and calling for the overthrow of revolutionary states that have actually transformed the economic conditions then you it’s a cop out. You’re parroting an imperialist line against… https://t.co/zXucGFQjjc
— Aidrean Ó Gallchobhair
(@adriang86518036) October 8, 2025
This is also the same Cuba that repeated chest-beating US administrations have imposed an imperialistic embargo on for the past 65 years after Fidel Castro defeated US-backed tyrant Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship. The long-term economic sanctions have decimated the Cuban economy –
Mamdani is standing to be a politician in a country that is arguably the current most brutal imperial power. Where’s the critical thinking?
How the most savage imperial power in recent times gets to occupy the moral high ground and call victims of its oppression “dictators” or “undemocratic” is a serious indictment on critical thinking. https://t.co/RN3preOeYc
— Charles N. Ngaruiya (@cnngaruiya) October 8, 2025
He’s shown that he isn’t truly far-left.
Hot take, but if supporting decolonial movements and supporting the right of the dispossessed to violently oppose and resist their colonizer is too “radical left” for you, then you do not and have not ever belonged to the left; push comes to shove, you are an imperialist at heart https://t.co/GPcOxSkYHV
— mischa ☭ (@redmischa) October 7, 2025
But if you want to talk about dictatorships.
What makes it worse is that he won’t dare call a pro-US (real) dictatorship a dictatorship. https://t.co/Q7fgqR3Fgz
— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) October 7, 2025
Mamdami is running on a democratic socialist platform, yet in recent days, he has shown that deep down, his values are much the same as those of the imperialist leaders currently governing the US. His attempts not to piss off the pro-Israel lobby have backfired, and it now seems that there is no one he hasn’t pissed off.
Feature image via Zohran Mamdani for NYC/YouTube
By HG
This post was originally published on Canary.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government is playing a very dangerous game, bolstering rising fascism by pandering to both the far right and a genocidal foreign state. And on 7 October, it dug in with its anti-Semitic language just as far-right thugs put up Israeli flags in the street.
Jewish Voice for Peace has called the treatment of “Jewish people as a monolithic group” a ‘contemporary expression of antisemitism’. And the Labour Party seems to be doing just that. Because in a social media post clearly talking about Israel, it seemed to conflate the country with “the Jewish community”. This is despite many Jewish people being vocal in their opposition to the state of Israel and its war crimes.
At a time when Starmer’s government is seeking to crack down even further on people’s democratic right to protest, the prime minister doubled down on this anti-Semitism. He called the 7 October offensive “the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust”. It was, however, an attack by people from an occupied nation (Palestine) against an occupying nation (Israel). It was no more an attack on “the Jewish people” than Britain’s war against the Nazis in World War Two was an attack on “the German people” (both, of course, resulted in the deaths of civilians).
But Starmer didn’t stop there. He also sought to link Israel’s settler colonialism – and resistance to it – back to tensions in Britain. This was a clear attempt to justify the government’s crackdown on peaceful anti-genocide protesters by trying to link an attack in Israel to last week’s attack in Manchester – which did specifically target Jewish people. Yet again, this was a dangerous conflation between two separate issues. As Jewish leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said last week:
Speaking as a member of the Jewish community, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like they had to be silent about a genocide that’s happening because of an outrageous, atrocious attack that happened on our soil too. These are separate things and we should condemn them all.
A previous Labour Party report noted the hierarchy of racism within the organisation. In particular, it highlighted how officials prioritised concerns about anti-Jewish discrimination over anti-Muslim or anti-Black discrimination. And this is still apparent today. Because while Labour chooses to commemorate the deaths of around 780 Israeli civilians on 7 October (at the hands of Israeli bombs or Hamas-led fighters), it still prefers not to commemorate the 20,000+ children Israel has killed in Gaza in the following two years. It talks about the need for aid, but not an end to Israel’s genocidal occupation.
Islamophobia is at record levels in Britain right now, and just in recent days there was an arson attack on a mosque. There has long been a growing problem with this type of hatred. But Labour has barely mentioned it.
At the same time, the party has mentioned other past genocides but refused to accept the overwhelming consensus among experts that Israel has been committing genocide for the last two years. Turning a blind eye to the decimation of Gaza, Starmer simply echoed Israeli propaganda in his 7 October message, saying “our priority in the Middle East remains the same – release the hostages”. Not holding genocidal war criminals to account for Israel’s relentless terrorisation of the people in Gaza. It’s the Israeli hostages, around 20 of them, that matter to Labour – not the hundreds of thousands of suffering Palestinians who have lost everything, including 67,173 of their family members, friends, and neighbours. Labour’s institutional racism is right there in front of us, for everyone to see.
The type of dehumanising message Labour is sending out has an impact.
Indeed, on the same day as Labour’s anti-Semitic conflation of the Israeli state and Jewish people, a group of thugs which has proudly stated “THERE IS NO GENOCIDE IN GAZA” put dozens of Israeli flags up in Hastings:
The English flags have been replaced with Israeli flags in Hastings. pic.twitter.com/eOTYYPaG2T
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) October 7, 2025
Labour is playing a very dangerous game. By backing and denying genocide, and then trying to link opposition to that genocide to antisemitism, it is not only fuelling confusion and division among people who don’t understand what’s going on. It is emboldening genocide-deniers to push their ideology further and further into the public domain.
If we want to stop fascist ideology, we have to stop Starmer’s Labour too.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
An Israeli propaganda video attempting to smear the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) activists who were abducted in international waters last week has fallen on its face – hard and very fast – thanks to the habitual shoddiness of the ethnostate’s ‘hasbara’.
US so-called ‘influencer’ Lizzy Savetsky, one of several invited to meet and receive instructions from wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu last week to publish paid pro-Israel propaganda, published a video in which she claims to be on board one of the GSF boats and that she did not find any aid on board, but did find ‘needles and condoms’ – but didn’t show them on camera as you’d expect.
And she points to supposed supplies brought by the GSF volunteers – revealing that the propagandists were so lazy they didn’t even bother to source any European products for the scam but used Israeli groceries instead:
The colonial propaganda’s shoddiness was quickly picked up by commentators who pointed out the ‘Israeli’ orange juice and milk in boxes on the counter:
If the propagandists were too lazy to buy foreign groceries, they were certainly too lazy to go to Ashdod port, where the almost fifty boats stolen by Israel are being held:
Nor did they seem to think anyone would notice the ‘mezzuzot’ – Jewish religious boxes containing scripture verses put on door posts – indicating the boat was an Israeli vessel:
Despite what appears to have been an attempt by Israeli bots to boost the ‘likes’ on the video, it was very nearly ‘ratioed’, a sign of a disastrous post, as hundreds of respondents posted replies mocking the incompetence and laziness of the Israeli propaganda machine. These were a few of the picks:
So far, despite the shame, Savetsky has not locked or deleted her account. Perhaps the contracts with Israel for paid propaganda don’t allow it.
But while watching Israeli shills crash and burn has its funny side, Israeli crimes are deadly serious. The occupation has murdered almost 700,000 Palestinian civilians in two years of genocide, more than half of them under five years old – and has already attacked the new flotilla that set sail last week in international waters and abducted its crews, to silence and inaction from the UK and other western governments.
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
On Wednesday morning, the International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza announced that Israeli occupation forces had intercepted the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ as it sailed in international waters towards the Gaza Strip, in an attack it described as ‘a new war crime’.
The committee said in a statement:
The Israeli occupation is once again committing a war crime in international waters. We will not stop… The genocide must be stopped and the blockade broken.
In a separate post on the X platform, the committee clarified that the attack took place 120 nautical miles (about 220 km) off the coast of Gaza, confirming that the operation took place in international waters, far from the Israeli border.
Interception of the FFC x TMTG flotilla has started
The Israeli military has no legal jurisdiction over international waters. Our flotilla poses no harm. We carry vital aid worth over $110,000 USD in medicines, respiratory equipment, and nutritional supplies that were… pic.twitter.com/H61WsbZc3b
— ICBSG | اللجنة الدولية لكسر الحصار عن غزة (@ICBSOFGAZA) October 8, 2025
The Freedom Flotilla consists of 11 ships that set sail from the Italian coast a few days ago, carrying civilian activists and humanitarian aid for the residents of the besieged Gaza Strip, where approximately 2.4 million Palestinians live in deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
Since 2 March, Israel has continued to close the crossings into Gaza, preventing humanitarian aid from entering, which has exacerbated the food crisis and caused famine, despite the accumulation of relief trucks at the crossings. The Israeli authorities sometimes allow limited quantities to enter, which are insufficient to alleviate the suffering, while some shipments are looted by armed groups, which the Gaza government says Israel protects.
In a subsequent update, the International Committee confirmed in a tweet on ‘X’ that three ships, the ‘Gaza Sunbirds’, ‘Alaa Al-Najjar’ and ‘Anas Al-Sharif’, were attacked and illegally intercepted by the Israeli army at 4:34 a.m. at the same location off the Palestinian coast.
The committee posted a video documenting the moment of the attack on the Sunbirds boat, showing soldiers attempting to destroy the camera in order to conceal what it described as a ‘crime.’ The committee also reported that the ship Al-Dameer, which was carrying 93 journalists, doctors and activists, was attacked by an Israeli military helicopter.
The Freedom Flotilla accounts on the X platform broadcast footage documenting what it said was:
an attack by the occupation forces on the Al-Dameer ship before dawn, in international waters, near Palestinian territorial waters.
The committee confirmed that this attack represents ‘a new act of state piracy carried out by the Israeli occupation, in clear violation of international law.’
A few days ago, Israel attacked the ‘Steadfastness Fleet’ as it was also heading to Gaza, in a similar operation carried out by its forces at sea, reflecting a repeated escalation against peaceful civilian movements aimed at breaking the siege imposed on the Strip for more than 17 years.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Associated Press
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
In more than two years of war, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to massive bombing by the Israeli occupation army. An estimated total of 200,000 tonnes of explosives, using all types of weapons, missiles and explosive devices from land, air, and sea have bombarded Gaza.
This quantity is equivalent to the total energy of approximately 13 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs. Inevitably, this raises questions about the extent of the destruction, the nature of the human and material losses, and the area of land affected compared to a similar historical disaster.
The US bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighed around 4 tonnes. It destroyed approximately 13 km², killed approximately 180,000 people immediately and in the following months. In Gaza, Professor Paul Rogers has said that the bombs dropped are:
equivalent to six Hiroshimas.
And, there’s another key difference. The bombings in Gaza are spread across cities and residential neighbourhoods covering large areas. The relentless barrage has caused widespread and continuous destruction, with the systematic annihilation of infrastructure and basic services.
And, the Gaza Strip covers an area of 365 km², way less than half the size of London, which covers an area of 1,572 km². And, the population in Gaza are trapped in the midst of widespread destruction, with nowhere to go. The Gaza government ministry has reported:
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 67,183 Palestinians and injured 169,841 others since 7 October 2023.
More than 169,000 people suffered permanent physical injuries, with thousands of cases of amputation and paralysis. Thousands of families have been completely wiped out of the civil registry, and tens of thousands have been displaced.
Medical and educational infrastructure have been ravaged and left barely functioning. Families have lost all their possessions, and been displaced many, many times over. Electricity is scarce, as is water, and communication networks are patchy at best.
The ongoing war and destruction have created two generations living in insecurity under daily fear, hunger and cold, amid darkness and power cuts. Children sleep on the floor without lights, students write their homework by candlelight, and hospitals operate with extremely restricted means.
Although the explosions are distributed and non-nuclear, the scale of human, social and economic destruction is equivalent to or exceeds the impact of a nuclear explosion on a small city, with long-term effects on future generations.
The real irony lies in the difference between the numerical energy of the explosives and the scale of human and social destruction. Gaza today is not just a geographical area; it is a symbol of ongoing suffering and educational, health and social annihilation. Comparing the explosive yield to the Hiroshima bomb puts the scale of the tragedy into perspective for the world, but it is not enough to convey the psychological and social dimensions of what Palestinian generations are experiencing under this ongoing siege.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Gaza News
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Gaza, which has been living under the weight of Israel’s war of extermination for more than two years, is now facing one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of modern times. Widespread destruction that has affected all sectors of Palestinian society.
A statistical report issued by the Gaza Government Media Office, a copy of which was obtained by the Canary, highlighted the scale of direct losses, which exceeded $70 billion and affected all areas of life in the sector. The damage ranged from from health and education to housing and basic services, confirming the continuing humanitarian suffering of more than 2.4 million Palestinians.
The continuous bombing of hospitals and medical centres has led to initial losses estimated at $5 billion. Meanwhile losses in education have exceeded $4 billion, with schools and universities destroyed. The education sector has lost thousands of teachers and researchers, including 830 teachers and 193 scientists and researchers. In addition, some 785,000 students have been deprived of their right to education for the third consecutive year, which will have a catastrophic impact on future generations.
The war has destroyed thousands of homes, resulting in initial losses in the housing sector estimated at $28 billion, while damage to religious institutions amounted to approximately $1 billion, with 835 mosques and three churches destroyed. These losses were not limited to infrastructure, but also led to the displacement of tens of thousands of residents and created a general state of insecurity and deprivation.
The local industry suffered initial destruction worth $4 billion, trade $4.5 billion, and agriculture $2.8 billion. The media sector incurred losses of up to $4 billion, and the entertainment and hotel sector $2 billion.
These figures reveal the near-total collapse of the local economy, exacerbating the suffering of the population under the ongoing blockade and shortage of basic resources.
Homes and household services were affected to the tune of $4 billion, while communications and internet networks suffered $3 billion in damage, transportation $2.8 billion, electricity $1.4 billion, and municipalities and public services around $6 billion. Taken together, these losses reflect the daily suffering of the population from power cuts, water shortages and the disruption of vital services, making life in the Strip almost impossible.
These figures confirm that Gaza is not just a war zone, but an ongoing humanitarian tragedy that threatens future generations. The report calls on the international community to take immediate action to stop the violence, protect civilians, ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid, work to rebuild the sector and rehabilitate its infrastructure, and find a fair mechanism to compensate for the losses, in order to ensure a dignified life for the people of Gaza after two years of continuous destruction.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Associated Press
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Two years into the genocide in Gaza and the expansion of the Israel occupation’s military operations across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, prisoner’s rights organisations say the occupation’s prisons have become central to a system of organised violence.
A new report, titled Prisons as a Frontline of Genocide: Two Years of War Crimes Against Palestinian Political Detainees, by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, and Addameer, details widespread abuses against Palestinian political detainees, and describes this past two years as:
one of the most brutal periods in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement, which has long resisted a prison system designed to physically and psychologically destroy detainees.
The total number of Palestinian political prisoners Israel has killed while in detention, since 1967, is estimated at 314 people. According to the report, 77 have been killed, and their identities confirmed, since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. This is a record number, with the deaths attributed to beatings, medical neglect, starvation, and torture.
The findings of the report draw on hundreds of testimonies, legal documents, and official statements, including public threats from Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and the occupation’s far-right government.
Israel’s occupation authorities are accused of committing large-scale war crimes and crimes against humanity- torture, sexual assault, deliberate starvation, denial of medical care, and enforced disappearances- under the watch of a judicial system that offers ‘legal cover’ to these acts.
Since October 2023, the scale of arrests and violence by Israel has intensified dramatically.
In the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, approximately 20,000 Palestinians have been detained – among them 1,600 children and nearly 600 women. The mass arrests have come alongside collective punishment measures such as beatings, home demolitions, the use of detainees as human shields, and the destruction of neighbourhood infrastructure in Tulkarem and Jenin.
Violations also included the demolition of prisoners’ family homes, use of family members as hostages, use of detainees as human shields, and field executions. According to the report, the arrests have also provided cover for expanding illegal settlements.
Among those detained are 202 journalists, most held under administrative detention – with no charge or trial, or accused of ‘incitement’, a charge frequently applied to restrict free expression. Two Gaza reporters, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdel Wahid, have vanished in Israeli custody. The report also confirms that 360 medical professionals have been detained, three who died from torture while in detention. These were Lyad Al-Rantisi, Adnan Al-Barsh, and Ziad Al-Dalu.
These is a regime of repression and deprivation inside the Israeli occupation prisons, where prisoners have reported being tortured with stun grenades and electroshock weapons, subjected to strip searches and sexual assault, and kept in solitary confinement.
Food is being deliberately limited, contributing to the spread of disease, including outbreaks of scabies. Those classified as ‘unlawful combatants’, most of whom are from Gaza, are held without trial or charge for indefinite periods.
The testimonies of Gaza detainees have revealed new depths of abuse. Some described being tortured from the moment of arrest through interrogation and imprisonment. Human rights monitors have documented 46 confirmed deaths among Gaza detainees, out of the total 77 prisoners killed since the war began.
Others remain unaccounted for. Camps such as Sde Teiman have reportedly become central sites of torture and killing, while the underground Rakevet section of Ramla Prison is known to be a place of enforced disappearance.
As of October 2025, more than 11,100 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons. This is more than double the number before the genocide began, and the highest total since the Second Intifada.
Of those detained, 350 are facing or serving life sentences, and 17 of these have been imprisoned since before the Oslo Accords, four of them since 1986. The report records 53 female prisoners, and over 400 children detained. The many Palestinians imprisoned in secret military camps are not included in official figures.
Before the genocide began, the total prison population stood at around 5,250, including 40 women and 180 children.
The surge since 2023 has coincided with bans on family visits, the exclusion of the International Committee of the Red Cross from inspection visits, and the criminalisation of human rights groups- Addameer, along with Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Al-Mezan have been targeted by US sanctions and declared ‘terrorist’ entities, a move which aims to dismantle any remaining form of accountability.
The report describes these combined measures as a ‘policy of extermination’- a campaign to destroy the physical and psychological resilience of an entire population through incarceration, torture, and isolation.
They demand that the international community moves beyond its statements of concern and bring about binding resolutions supporting the Palestinian right to freedom and self-determination. It argues that what is unfolding inside the prison walls reflects the wider devastation across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The silence of the international community, it warns, risks normalising a system of disappearance and death- a system that has ’turned the prison into a weapon of genocide’.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition of humanitarian, volunteer-crewed boats, which set sail for Gaza in the wake of Israel’s criminal attack on and seizure of the larger Global Sumud Flotilla, has already been attacked in international waters. The flotilla was some 150 nautical miles away from Gaza, with at least eight of its boats already invaded and crews kidnapped – the Abd Elkarim Eid, Alaa Al-Najar, Anas Al-Sharif, Gaza Sunbird, Leïla Khaled, Milad, Soul of My Soul, and Um Saad. The Conscience, one of the few powered boats in the flotilla, kept sailing longest despite being under attack by an Israeli military helicopter, but has now also been seized and its crew abducted.
Footage from one of the boats show an Israeli soldier attacking a mast-mounted camera:
A statement from the flotilla organiser calls on governments of those attacked to act urgently. Shamefully, the UK government has already said that Israel’s criminal attacks on humanitarians in international waters is a “matter for the Israeli government”.
A statement from Palestinian legal group Adalah condemns yet another flagrant violation of international law by the occupation regime as it continues to starve Gaza:
Adalah condemns Israel’s assault and unlawful interception of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s flagship vessel, the Conscience, and eight sailboats of the Thousands Madleens — a coordinated humanitarian initiative sailing together to confront Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza amid the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
Before losing all communication early this morning, participants aboard the Conscience — primarily doctors, nurses, and journalists — reported being attacked by an Israeli military helicopter, while Israeli naval forces simultaneously intercepted and boarded the Thousands Madleens sailboats. The vessels were located approximately 120 nautical miles from Gaza, deep in international waters, when the attack took place. According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military is transporting participants to an Israeli port.
This new mission, which set sail with around 145 participants from around the world, sought to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly siege of Gaza.
Israel’s assault on unarmed civilians at sea and its seizure of humanitarian vessels constitute a grave breach of international law and highlight the impunity with which Israel continues to act.
Adalah wrote to Israeli authorities to inform them that it will represent all flotilla participants and has demanded immediate access to them upon their arrival in Israel. Adalah will challenge the unlawful detention and the confiscation of the ships and aid.
Below are pre-attack videos from some of the national delegations, including UK, participating. Individuals have also recorded their own personal versions.
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
In a statement delivered before the United Nations Human Rights Council on 2 October 2025 , Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called to protect human rights defenders in Gaza and to grant international investigators unrestricted access to examine violations committed amid Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.
The statement was delivered remotely from Gaza by Maha Hussaini, Head of Media at Euro-Med Monitor, during the Council’s 60th session under Item 8. Hussaini stressed that the continued silence of states and civil society representatives severely undermines international law and enables further violations.
Addressing the Council, Hussaini said: “I speak to you from my last refuge after I was forcibly expelled from my home in Gaza City under relentless Israeli bombardment, though I do not know if by the time you hear these words I will still be alive or buried beneath the rubble.”
She continued: “Gaza is under unprecedented Israeli attacks, and I have been forcibly displaced along with my colleagues at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor several times now. I’m meant to present this statement as a human rights defender, to document and to advocate. But today I can no longer count the Israeli crimes I witness, because they surround me in every breath and every hour.”
Hussaini further noted: “It is a shame that I had to tear up my business card identifying me as a human rights worker at some point during this genocide to avoid being killed or detained by the Israeli military.”
She concluded: “We demand, not plead, we demand protection for those documenting genocide in Gaza, we demand unhindered access for international investigators, and we demand that perpetrators face justice. Every silence from you, representatives of states and civil society, is another strike of the hammer driving the coffin of international law.”
On 4 October 2025, in its response to a call for input by UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, Al-Haq drew urgent attention to the escalating and systematic efforts to silence Palestinian voices and dismantle the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society. The submission highlights how Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime has intensified its campaign to suppress resistance, criminalise advocacy and quash any pursuit of accountability as it pursues Palestinian erasure.
https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/26700.html
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
The world as we know it died two years ago today, on October 7, 2023 — but not, as we’ve been incessantly bludgeoned into believing, because Palestinian resistance fighters who broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip went on a killing spree in southern Israel in a desperate response to 75 years of persistent oppression, apartheid and murder by the State of Israel.
Those attacks — horrific as they were, with 1,195 people killed and 251 others taken hostage (although it should be noted that no one knows how many were killed by Israeli forces themselves under the notorious Hannibal Directive) — were portrayed by Israel as a genocide, and as an existential threat to their very existence by sub-human monsters, but that was clearly untrue.
The post Two Years Of Israel’s Genocide In Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
An anti-genocide protester has read out a poem about a murdered nine-year-old Palestinian girl and her family as he was being arrested by the Metropolitan Police during today’s protests to mark two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza:
Israel has slaughtered or starved to death almost 700,000 Palestinians, two thirds of them children according to Israeli military data, since 7 October 2023 on the pretext of a raid from Gaza into southern Israel that the Israeli regime knew about and told its troops to hold back, before ordering the ‘Hannibal doctrine’ slaughter of hundreds of its own people and then fabricating atrocity propaganda of mass rapes and beheaded or baked Israeli babies. Israel has killed almost 400,000 children under five in Gaza in the two years since.
The genocide, with its daily bombing of tents, hospitals and so-called ‘safe zones’ and the criminal starvation blockade, continues while western governments including that of the UK, collaborate.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
Nearly 10,000 Palestinians have been reported missing by their families in Gaza, their fates unknown, with likely thousands more nowhere to be found because they were killed with their entire family unit, health officials have said. According to Gaza Health Ministry information official Zaher al-Wahidi, about 6,000 people are believed by their families to be buried under the rubble in Gaza…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
There’s been a widening rift between American right wingers in recent years. While Donald Trump enjoys widespread support from the right, his followers are increasingly split into two camps on the issue of Israel:
The latter group has become increasingly loud since the death of Charlie Kirk, with conspiracy theories arising around the idea that Israel assassinated the YouTuber because he was planning to stop supporting them. This accusation was always incredibly tenuous – and it still is – but the American conspiracy theorist Candace Owens has now come forwards with this:
JUST IN: Candace Owens releases text chains with Charlie Kirk revealing he decided to abandon Israel pic.twitter.com/xQ3X9ebNjQ
— YourFavoriteGuy (@guychristensen_) October 6, 2025
Regardless of whether the theory has any merit, there are many prominent right wingers who believe it. As a result, it could potentially do serious damage to the Israel-US relationship in years to come.
Candace Owens has a history of anti-Israel sentiment; she’s also been accused of antisemitism:
Candace Owens doesn’t love Hitler, she just wants you to know that all the criticisms of him are exagaratted. Definitely no sinister agenda there, she’s just a stickler for historical accuracy. pic.twitter.com/Q3H9i0DjeN
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) July 9, 2024
candace owens trending, so here’s that time she literally defended hitler. “if hitler just wanted to make germany great and have things run well, ok, fine.” pic.twitter.com/rdaAX991RQ
—
(@zei_squirrel) December 2, 2020
It’s important to understand the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The former is opposition to the supporters of an expansionist ethno-state which has gone from committing apartheid to committing genocide; the latter is suggesting there’s something inherently wrong with all Jewish people regardless of their politics.
Conspiracy-minded right wingers who follow Owens are highlighting these three lines from Kirk:
Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this.
Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro Israel cause.
While some accused Owens of fabricating the texts, she wasn’t the only person in the chain, and Turning Point USA (TPUSA) have confirmed their authenticity:
BREAKING:
The Candace Owens screenshots are real.
They also confirmed Kirk wrote a warning letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Big mistake. pic.twitter.com/JsdR4zJutL
— ADAM (@AdameMedia) October 7, 2025
Owens also said the following, suggesting she probably isn’t coordinating with TPUSA (that or they’re trying to make it seem otherwise):
Candace Owens just revealed that Turning Point USA has made tens of millions of dollars since the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Grief became a business model.
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) October 7, 2025
Her supporters believe that Candace Owens has actually played this situation to ‘expose’ the dishonesty of TPUSA and other American right wingers:
Candace Owens, my hats off to you
You don’t have subpoena power but you know you are dealing with liars so you tell the world what the messages say and let them all lie themselves into a corner before dropping receipts.
They did. Just as you knew they would.
Perfection.
— Clint Russell (@LibertyLockPod) October 7, 2025
Another figure on the right with a history of antisemitism is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had this to say:
Hello. https://t.co/HuUKL5Z81B
— Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@mtgreenee) October 6, 2025
The other big voice on the right pushing back against Israel is Tucker Carlson. While he hasn’t commented on Owens’ latest leak, he has said plenty on Israel in recent months:
JUST IN: Tucker Carlson slams Israeli PM Netanyahu for openly interfering in US politics:
“Going on television to attack Americans because they’re not fully on board with sending billions more to a country of 9 million people?”pic.twitter.com/mzdGYD4Bj9
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws1) October 2, 2025
Tucker Carlson blasted US leaders for letting Israel dictate American policy, saying Netanyahu brags about controlling Trump and the US, and called it humiliating that Americans are being forced into harmful decisions for another country.
Carlson said the “humiliation ritual” pic.twitter.com/Acjq2IDtXF
— Irlandarra (@aldamu_jo) October 4, 2025
The idea that Israel killed Charlie Kirk is admittedly outlandish. At the same time, the official story on what happened to Kirk is also increasingly strange:
BREAKING: There was no exit wound behind Charlie Kirk because his “bone density was so so impressive he’s like a man of steel”. Well, that’s me convinced!
— Kit Klarenberg
(@KitKlarenberg) September 21, 2025
This isn’t us saying we think they did it, of course, as so far the only thing we’ve seen to suggest Israel’s involvement was Benjamin Netanyahu denying that he had anything to do with it:
Netanyahu Keeps Making Statements Saying Israel Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk
This is like repeatedly going out in public to yell “I did not have a sex dream about my cousin!” so that nobody thinks you had a sex dream about your cousin.
Reading by Tim Foley. pic.twitter.com/Q6xbk5rV4b
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 20, 2025
Our interest in this story is primarily the rift it’s creating in the American political sphere.
What you need to understand is that every few years an even more unhinged version of American right forms around some cause or grievance that they use to push out the current establishment within the Republican Party. Most recently we saw this when the Tea Party weirdoes came for the neo-cons, and we saw it again when Trump came for what was left.
There are people on the right in America who understand Trump won’t live forever, and that when he goes there’ll be a vacuum. These people need a cause to rally around, and figures like Carlson and Candace Owens have clearly decided that cause is Israel.
They’re not wrong to suggest Israel has embarrassed America; they’re also not wrong to believe the public is turning against Israel; they’re just wrong about everything else.
While it’s doubtful Owens will have anything as impactful as what she’s released, she has hinted at more to come:
Should I release more of the text chain tomorrow?
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) October 7, 2025
We’ll keep you updated on this chasm of doubt and conspiracy as it widens.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore
By Willem Moore
This post was originally published on Canary.
Hundreds of anti-genocide protesters have shut down Kings Cross station in London to mark the second anniversary of 7 October 2023, when Israel killed hundreds of its own people through the ‘Hannibal doctrine’ and used it as an excuse to begin a genocide that’s has killed almost 700,000 civilians in Gaza:
The protest at Kings Cross comes as the Starmer government pushes ahead with plans to restrict UK protest rights to protect Israel and its lobbyists from scrutiny.
As the Canary’s Alaa Shamali previously wrote, on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, the repercussions of the major confrontation continue. It reshaped the political and security landscape in the Middle East, and profoundly affected the Israeli interior and the international situation surrounding Palestine. We’ve watched as Israel has waged a genocide on the people of Gaza for two years.
Despite the heavy human cost, this event marked a historic turning point. The Palestinian resistance managed to break through the wall of international indifference. Crucially, they have brought the Palestinian cause back to the forefront of the global consciousness as one of liberation and the rights of a people under occupation.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
Intent to destroy all or part of a group is required to meet the criteria of genocide, and Israeli officials have made their intentions towards the people of Gaza explicitly clear, says Phyllis Bennis. In this discussion of her new book, Understanding Palestine & Israel, she explains how other recognized genocides have been defined, the influence of the Holocaust and its aftermath on Zionism and Jewish identity, and why the ceasefire movement indicates a change in the movement for Palestinian rights.
Guests:
Credits:
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in the World News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with this as we open our program today. Somewhere between 66,000 and 80,000 people have been buried under the rubble and Gaza and killed the majority of women and children. Most of the infrastructure has been destroyed. Over 1.2 million people face starvation and seemingly nothing is being done to end this massacre. Many of the most profound voices and leaders of the fight against the war in Gaza are members of the Jewish community who say not in our name. And today we’re joined by Phyllis Benni. She directs the Institute for Policy Studies New internationalism project that focuses on Middle East, particularly Palestinian rights, US militarism and un issues. She’s also a fellow at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 2001, she helped found the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Most recently spent six years on the Board of Jewish Voices for Peace, and her most recent book is Understanding Palestine in Israel. Phyllis, welcome back. It’s good to see you. Good to have you back with us again.
Phyllis Bennis:
Great to be with you, mark. It’s good to be back with the real news
Marc Steiner:
And maybe one day we’ll have a conversation of some good news
Phyllis Bennis:
In SHA as they say. If
Marc Steiner:
So, the book you just wrote, I mean, I’m interested in how you did this book just very quickly because it’s so huge and thorough and obviously well-written. But I mean, it covers so much territory, it the history of what’s happened between Palestine, Israel to where we are now and why, and the analysis it runs all through it.
Phyllis Bennis:
Well, thanks for that. The Cheater’s version is, it’s based on an earlier book, but it is a very different new book. I did a series of small primers on different Middle East issues, one of which was on Israel Palestine.
And that one went through seven new updates over the years. It was done as FAQs, so it was in a sense like a website disguised as a book we might say. And every time the print edition ran out, it was four or 5,000 copies each time before printing a new one, we would add a bunch of new questions. So it got to be very messy and very disorganized and whatever. And this time around, this could have been the eighth version of that, but I sort of said, we can’t keep doing this partly because it’s a mess and hard to follow, hard to read, but also because this is a different moment.
The reality of genocide made things different. We had to do something different. There was an entirely new constituency who needed some version of this, and I knew it wasn’t going to be to just do a bunch of new questions. So this book is really quite different. There’s a lot more narrative sections to it, a longer introduction forward by a Palestinian analyst, much longer analysis of the current situation. But it included a lot of the questions from the earlier one as well, rewritten, updated, but still there. So it was partly designed for what we might call the ceasefire movement,
Speaker 3:
This
Phyllis Bennis:
Extraordinary rise of people who showed up, not because the existing Palestinian rights movement was completely responsible for mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people for the first time. I mean, that would’ve been great. We were responsible for some of it,
But the rest of it was a very spontaneous reaction of people, a human reaction to what they were seeing on their phones day after day, on their screens, on their computers, on their televisions, in the radio, in the newspapers. And people were saying, this is not okay, whatever I used to think, or maybe I didn’t ever really think about Israel Palestine before, but now this is not okay. And as people came to see that it was not only not okay that children were being burned alive in their tents in front of the world, but that we were writing the checks for it, that we were sending the bombs, that we were sending the planes, more and more people said, that’s not okay. We need a ceasefire. We need a permanent ceasefire right now. And that movement was kind of extraordinary because it was based on a lot of people who didn’t really have any of the political background, didn’t know the history, but were responding as human beings and also the students, the incredible students who had organized these encampments on campuses across the country and were doing teach-ins within the encampments. They were doing Passover seders because there were so many Jewish kids within those encampments, but they also didn’t really have a chance to learn a lot of the history either. So the book is also for them, when you say settler colonialism, what does that really mean? What’s the context of that? So that’s what this book is for. It’s for all those different people.
Marc Steiner:
A couple of things you said I want to explore a bit, and one is this argument over the word genocide and why you say that what’s happening at this moment by the Israelis towards the Palestinians is genocide?
Phyllis Bennis:
Well, let me say one note in advance, comparing this to what it took to normalize the issue of using the word apartheid to describe Israeli actions
Against the Palestinians. The debate over that, which was not a debate for either South Africans or Palestinians for many, many people understood that well, but for the rest of the world, and particularly the western world and most especially for the United States, that was a very contentious notion. And the debate over that question began back around thousand 2001 and a very long time ago, and it wasn’t really until 20 years had gone by that we were able to normalize that with the production of these massive reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and BET sem and Ash Dean and all these other organizations around the world, parts of the United Nations started saying that what Israel is doing is in violation of the international covenant for the punishment and prevention of the crime of apartheid. So that’s the starting point when we’re talking about genocide. It took less than 20 days to normalize it, partly because the association, 800 Scholars of Genocide and the Holocaust who even knew that there was an organization of Holocaust scholars, I
Marc Steiner:
Didn’t, didn’t either.
Phyllis Bennis:
Turns out that there were, and they immediately said, within days within, it was just over a week. We’re not sure yet. There’s not enough evidence yet, but we think this is genocide. And just a couple of months ago, they issued their final report saying, there is no question. This is genocide. So that’s the context. Now, why was it so difficult and why is it important? It’s difficult, I think because people think that the word genocide refers only to the Holocaust and that it has to look like massive levels of industrial sized killing
Of people. What people don’t usually know is that the Genocide Convention that was passed back in 1948 and signed by almost every member of the United Nations, almost every country is a party to it. It was a very specific outline of what genocide meant. So it was easier to understand actually than a lot of other parts of international law where it’s kind of designed for confusion. It’s designed for only the most elite lawyers to really know what they’re talking about. This one is really pretty straightforward. It basically says there’s two things that have to happen for some act of violence to be considered genocide. Number one, there has to be an intention, a specific intention to destroy all or part of a group. As a group. You don’t actually have to kill anybody if you create the conditions that a group of people somewhere can’t exist anymore because you’ve destroyed their housing, you’ve poisoned their water, you’ve denied them access to electricity, all those things, and people are forced to either leave or they get killed or something else.
That could be genocide, that could be the intent to commit genocide if that’s your intention. So intention is the first thing that your goal is to destroy a group as a group. Then the second point is there has to be at least one of five identified acts of violence that you commit against that group so it can killing members of the group. It can include causing serious physical or mental injury to the group. It can include creating conditions that make it impossible for the group to survive. It can include making it impossible for children to be born in the group, and it can include transferring children from the group to some other group
If you commit any one of those things and have the intention to destroy the group that makes it genocide. So it’s important to understand that there is this very specific criteria for what makes something genocide, and it doesn’t have to look anything like the Holocaust. Thankfully, that has not happened again with that kind of wholesale slaughter all at one time. But what we are seeing in Gaza is at least four of those five actions and the words of Israeli officials themselves has made clear their intention. Mark. Historically, it’s always been very hard to prove the case of genocide. Usually it’s not hard to prove the actions. The harder part is to prove the intention. How do you prove what’s in somebody’s mind? Well, this time, that was really easy. What the South African team put forward when they brought up their case before the International Court of Justice was based entirely on what Israeli officials had said publicly in Knesset meetings to the meeting.
And we’re talking about the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, a host of Knesset members, poets, musicians, leading intellectuals, all of them using language that said, there are no innocent people in Gaza. We are going to kill them all. They are like rats that need to be killed. This kind of language. When I first started hearing these remarks early on in the period right after the attacks of October 7th, it sounded too familiar because it sounded like the language from the Indian wars in this country back in the 1860s, seventies, and eighties. There was one in particular in what’s known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, right.
Phyllis Bennis:
You know about this. The commander who happened to be a Methodist minister, interestingly enough, ordered his troops to attack a sleeping village on the shores of Sand Creek, and his name was John Chivington. And some of the soldiers who were sent out as scouts came back and said, we can’t kill them. They’re sleeping. This is a village of old people and women and children, and we promised them protection. We can’t just kill them. And his answer was, knits, make lice kill them all, including the children.
This was the language we were hearing from the Israeli Knesset, and that’s what made it genocide. So the point of using the point of fighting for people to recognize it is not just because it’s a horrifying thing and you want people to be horrified. People are horrified enough seeing what it looks like, but it’s to make clear that there needs to be accountability. The Genocide Convention requires things of not only the perpetrator who it requires to stop it, but it requires those who have signed the genocide Convention like the United States, like most of the world, to do whatever they can to stop it. So for example, you and I are old enough to remember back in 1994 when the genocide in Rwanda was going
Marc Steiner:
On. Absolutely.
Phyllis Bennis:
It wasn’t visible like this. We weren’t seeing it on our televisions. There was no social media, there were no computers in people’s homes, but people did know about it. Everybody at the UN knew about it. The Clinton administration,
Marc Steiner:
They all knew I covered it long distance exactly
Phyllis Bennis:
As well. But the reason they didn’t want to call it a genocide was not because it wasn’t horrifying enough, it was because if they did, they would be obligated to do something about it and they were not prepared to do it. That was the thing that made it different, plus the fact that now people all around the world were seeing it and demanding of their own governments, you’ve got to do something
Marc Steiner:
Thinking about the way you put this book together. It’s very thorough, no stone left unturned, deep analysis all the way through historical analysis. And one of the things I kept thinking about as I was reading it was how does this happen? How do the oppressed become the oppressor? I mean, every time I turned a page, you wrote something that popped in my head again, and it’s something that I really have been wrestling with a lot. And your book maybe take a deeper dive into it. What are your thoughts?
Phyllis Bennis:
Well, this is a complicated question. You’re talking about Israel and Israelis,
Marc Steiner:
Right,
Phyllis Bennis:
As the oppressed
Marc Steiner:
And Jews
Phyllis Bennis:
And Jews, and some of that is true, but it’s also important to keep in mind that Zionism, the call for creating a Jewish dominated state in what was then an Arab land of Palestine had been a minority position in the Jewish community worldwide from its origins in the 1890s, right up through World War ii. And it took the Holocaust and its aftermath to make Zionism a majority position.
Marc Steiner:
Absolutely.
Phyllis Bennis:
And it wasn’t even the Holocaust alone. It was the fact that after the Holocaust, the Jews who had either escaped the Holocaust or had survived the Holocaust somehow, who were indeed a people without a land, they were not going to a land without a people. They were going to a populated land that had an indigenous population that had been there for centuries where they wanted to go mostly was not there. They mostly wanted to come to the United States because they had family there, but they wanted to go for many, it was to go to the UK where they might also have family. These were also mainly by this time, they were mainly city dwellers. They were urban people, they were educated. They were not farmers, they were not peasants like my grandfather who came from Russia way before the Holocaust. They were not that. They didn’t want to go to some desert country and spend time digging up the land. That wasn’t the first choice. But the US didn’t let them in because of the combination of antisemitism and anti-communist. There was this assumption that all of these Jews are not only bad people, we don’t like Jews, but they’re also probably all communists.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly
Phyllis Bennis:
Right. So the combination meant that they couldn’t mostly get into the United States. So Israel, as it was in the form, in its formative years, became the only real place that they could find a home. So it’s not surprising that people went there, and it’s not surprising that for Jews who already were in other places around the world, took on the campaigning for it and said, yes, this is what we need to survive in this new world. The opposition to Zionism in the past had really been rooted in this understanding. For example, in Russia, during the time of the pogroms, the time when my grandfather did come, what you had were Russian nationals attacking Jewish villages, Jewish towns,
And it was incredibly violent, destroying the towns, burning down Jewish shops, killing Jewish men, raping Jewish women. It was a horrific set of years of these kinds of attacks. And the first call of these people was, get out, get out. You don’t belong here. You’re not really Russian, get out. And for many Jews who survived the Groms, what happened later was that Zionist organizers would come and say, you should come with us. You’re not really Russian, you’re not really something else. You’re really Jews. You don’t belong here. You should come with us to this new country. They were saying the same thing as these antisemitic mists, and the answer for many of them was, why should we have to leave here? We’ve lived here for centuries. Our graves are here, our families are here. We speak this language. So it was a very difficult challenge to encourage people to take it up in Israel, including today, the majority of Israelis are not descended from survivors of the Holocaust.
So I think it’s always a dicey proposition to sort of position Israelis as historic victims. Some Jews certainly are historic victims, and some of them ended up in Israel, but it’s not a where you had an entire population that ended up there, all of whom were faced with this. The Mizrahi Jews, for instance, did not go through the Holocaust at all in the way that European Jews did. They weren’t driven there until much, much later when there were antisemitic attacks and some of their countries, some of them were made up, but most of them it did happen, and they ended up leaving and going to this new
Marc Steiner:
Jewish,
Phyllis Bennis:
But it wasn’t part of the origin of the state that made that possible. The origin of the state, and this is the other part that’s important that most people don’t have a chance to learn, is that the people who created the idea of Zionism, the founder of modern Zionism for Theodore Herzl, who famously wrote this book, the Jewish State,
Speaker 3:
Which
Phyllis Bennis:
Outlined this idea to begin with, but he also wrote diaries and published diaries. When I was a kid, when I was growing up, Jewish kid, very heavy duty Zionist, I was going to be what we used to call a professional Jew. I worked for the Jewish Centers Association, all that stuff, and I was going to do that as my career. But then when I went off to college, I sort of put all that aside, got involved in Vietnam and other things, and at some point when something came back and sort of slapped me upside the face and said, you got to look at this Middle East stuff again.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, right. I thought,
Phyllis Bennis:
I think maybe I was wrong about this Israel stuff. Something just didn’t quite sit right. Being a good Jewish girl, I went to my father’s library and read Herzl, and he had Herzl’s diary, and I read Herzl’s diary and I read the news that Herzl wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the infamous British colonialist for whom Zimbabwe used to be named Rhodesia
Marc Steiner:
Exactly
Phyllis Bennis:
Writes to Cecil Rhodes, and he says, you might wonder why am I asking you for support? He was trying to get Cecil Rhodes to endorse this project of a Jewish state in Palestine to get the king to endorse this and make it a project of the British Empire. And he says, you may wonder why am I coming to you? You are interested in Africa. I’m interested in this little piece of Arabia. You are concerned about Englishmen, I’m concerned about Jews. So why am I asking you?
And then he answers his own question and he says, because our projects are both something colonial. And I read that and said, oh, well, I won’t say on radio what I said, but you can imagine. I said, oh dear, I was way wrong about this. And it was sort of, okay, well that makes sense. I had been studying colonialism, studying imperialism, and all of a sudden it was like, oh, that’s what that was. And the rest was mostly propaganda after a very real crisis of the Holocaust. No question. But seeing that as the solution was a very, very propaganda driven response
Marc Steiner:
When we were younger, we all kind of were enamored by that. In 67, I actually tried to join the Israeli army in the midst of my anti-war work because of the war in 67.
Phyllis Bennis:
That was the moment that everything changed in the us. I was a
Marc Steiner:
Kid,
Phyllis Bennis:
Got a few years on me. I was one of the kids running up and down the steps of the Hollywood Bowl at the giant fundraiser Hollywood held for beleaguered Israel in the 67 war. But that was the moment aside from us kids with our bucket of cash and checks that we were running up and down collecting. That was the moment in the six day war that the Pentagon looked at Israel differently and said, we can do business with these people. These guys are good. There was a lot of propaganda that wasn’t true about that war, that little beleaguered. Israel was invaded by six Arab armies. Not true, but there were at least two Arab armies that were really fighting against Israel. Israel bested them very quickly and very well. They had a very well-trained army. It was small, but they had all the best weapons in the world, provided mainly by France and Czechoslovakia, both sides of the Cold War.
And the Pentagon looked at this and said, wow, these guys are good. We could maybe do something here. And that began the collaboration between the Pentagon and the Israeli military that continues to this day as the bedrock of that so-called special relationship. So that was really one of the consequences, perhaps along with the Israeli occupation of so much Arab land of all of the rest of Palestine, plus the Syrian Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula. But it was also the creation of this special relationship with the US that came out of the six day War. So it was a very momentous moment.
Marc Steiner:
I wonder how all that you’ve written in this book and looking at the history and why we are where we are, and we found ourselves in this moment where just before we went into studio tape, Donald Trump made some pretty horrendous statements about Israel and Palestinians and what could come next given the real politic of our country at the moment where the right wing is in power and the right wing is in power in Israel, as I often say, most of the Israelis who would’ve sat with Palestinians live in the United States, now they’re not in Israel anymore. So I’m curious where you think this moment takes us.
Phyllis Bennis:
Yeah, it’s a really important question mark and a good one. I think that what we’re seeing right now is the extraordinary confluence of two very contradictory realities. On the one hand, those of us who have worked on Palestinian rights for many, many years, for more decades than I like to think have always, yeah, I’ve always focused on changing the discourse, changing the narrative in this country based on the idea that when you get people to understand things differently, that creates a new popular understanding, a new public discourse, a new kind of narrative that begins to influence the media coverage. And over time, the media coverage is transformed and eventually you get to the hardest part, which is the political discourse, enough of a shift to actually change the policy. So that was our theory of change, if you will, for all these many years. What we have seen in these last two years has been an extraordinary explosive transformation of the public discourse and an absolutely enormous change in the media discourse.
As bad as the mainstream media still is, and it is still terrible in a whole host of ways. It is night and day beyond what it ever was in the past. I’ll take a little diversion for a moment. I was speaking not too long ago at a series of events in Albany and Syracuse, that area, and at one of the events, there was a question about the media. Why is the media so bad? Why is the media so terrible? What can we do about it? Should we boycott all the mass media? And I said, look, it is terrible. And it’s also true that it is way better than it ever has been before. People were like, no, that’s not true. That can’t be true. And I pulled out a couple of examples. I still get the print editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post, partly because they have comics, but also so do I. But it’s, it’s also important because when you look at it online, you go straight to News International, middle East, Israel,
Right to it, and you don’t see everything else that you might not read the article, but you at least see the headlines what’s being talked about, which I find very important. So I started clipping again like I used to before the internet. And I had among other things, the day about, I guess it was about three or four weeks ago that the number of people killed by Israeli assault in Gaza, that was known, that was made up just of the people where we know their name, their birthdate and their ID number had hit 60,000. It’s now of course over 67,000, but the day it hit 60,000 big front page article in the New York Times, the jump piece was a, I dunno, page five or six, whatever it was. And the article finished on the jump and below it was a graph showing the ages how many children of each age group, from zero to one, one to two, two to three, three to four, all the way up to 18, the numbers in graph form. Then the other two columns began in tiny little two or three point type. You could barely read in Arabic and in Transliterate English, the name and age of all the children
That had been killed column after column. And at the bottom of that first page, it went to the next page. That was the entire of column after column after column of children’s names. And at the bottom of the last column of that second page, it said, these names represent 18% of the children who have been killed
To run. The rest of them would’ve taken five more pages. It was stunning. It was a stunning piece of journalism. And somebody from the audience called out, but that was an ad somebody took in the paper, sorry, this wasn’t the times, this was the post. This was in the Washington Post. And I said, no, this was a front page article, a news article. It wasn’t in the opinion section. Here it is. And I passed it around for people to look at because people couldn’t see it because the press is still really bad. It uses different kind of language. Israelis are killed by Palestinians. Palestinians die, passive voice. They’re not killed by anybody, they just die. So there’s a lot of huge problems here, but we have to look at what has changed. And I think that is extraordinary. What we haven’t, to come back to your question, what we haven’t done yet, and we’re starting to, but we haven’t done enough, is to change the political discourse to actually change the policy.
And here what we’re seeing, I mean we did have 50 members of the house now have signed on to the block, the bomb bill, that would stop several of the key components that Israel is using militarily to assault Gaza. It would stop them from being sent. That’s not enough to pass. But we’ve never had anything close to that number of people signing on to cutting aid to Israel military aid. The other thing that’s important is recognizing the now massive divide between the electeds, particularly in the Democratic party. It’s true among Republicans, but not nearly as dramatically. The continuing support for aid to Israel, shipping off the arms to Israel, all of that, and the position of the base of the Democratic party of whom 77%, we’ve never been close to that. 77% of Democrats say no more aid to Israel. That’s unprecedented. And I think at some point, political operatives are going to have to start recognizing that gap that they will not stay in power.
Whatever money they get from APAC is not going to be enough to buy votes. When 77% of people are saying one thing and their leadership and their existing members are saying the opposite, that money isn’t going to buy them the votes they need to stay in office. So that’s where we are right now. The other side of it, that’s the good news, is that we’ve seen this incredible shift in the discourse at every level. The problem is all of those shifts mean we are in the middle of a medium to long-term shift and we don’t have a medium term to survive. Because the other part of it is that for these almost two years, the situation in Gaza has gotten so horrific that we’ve were on the verge of losing an entire generation of children to a lack of education, lack of sufficient food, lack of ability to grow into a normal adulthood because they’ll be stunted. 20% of the people, of the children of Gaza were being stunted in 2018, according to the United States, way before this genocide started, they were already in the then 12th year of a boycott of a blockade. So this is the challenge that we face. The shifts that are underway will work to change the policy, but we don’t have enough time for Palestinians to survive that time. It will take for that to happen.
Marc Steiner:
You’ve written so much in this book and you’ve said so much today. The question I would have before we maybe have to break, and there’s so much more to say that’s in your book we haven’t even gotten to yet, that politically you’ve been at this game of analysis and writing for a long time, looking at our politics here, looking at the Middle East and more. So I’m really interested to hear what your analysis is about where you think this takes us in this country and beyond. We see at this moment Trump’s rhetoric about Israel and Palestine, which is just horrendous, and that the force of the right taking hold in this country more than it has in our lifetime ever. And given what’s happening in Israel Palestine now and the utter destruction and slaughter taking place in Gaza, what do you think this takes us?
Phyllis Bennis:
There’s only one thing that I’m sure of in a period of profound uncertainty. The one thing that I’m certain of is that building a movement for Palestinian rights and Palestinian lives, which is what we are now facing, has to be central to the movement against fascism and authoritarianism. That we can’t any longer separate them. Those movements have to be linked and in a very powerful way. That was similar to what happened in 2020 when the murder of George Floyd sparked what became a global, but was especially a US movement, unprecedented a movement against police violence and for black freedom
And for a generation of young people who came of age at that moment, some of them in 2014 with the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, and the similar, the Rise of Black Matter at that time. But then particularly in 2020 with George Floyd’s killing, we had young people coming of age saying, my identity now is wrapped up with being part of a movement for justice. The movement for social justice is what defines me. This was particularly not more powerfully, but particularly evident just because it was such a giant leap away from the past among young Jews who in the past had grown up saying that identification with Israel is my identity as a Jew, when you and I were growing up, that was sort of all there was there. If you identified as Jewish, which most Jews did, you identified with Israel. That was kind of the deal.
And now there’s choices. The Youth wing of Jewish Voice for peace. For instance, the organization I’m very proud to work with has, I think it’s about 70 or 80 campus chapters. The encampments had thousands of Jewish students as part of the encampments, identifying their own life, their own Jewish identity, their identity as people of this country, their identities as people, as human beings was wrapped up with Palestinian rights as the moral issue of their time. In the same way that in 2020, the question of racial justice became the moral issue of their time. People speak of the justice generation, which started around 2020 and is now central to this notion of the young people who have made the issue of Palestinian survival and Palestinian rights crucial to their identity in the context of social justice. So that’s what we are facing right now, the challenges.
Can we bring those change identities, those changing understandings to a political reality, to change the policy, most especially to change the policy of providing the weapons that enable this genocide? Can we do that in time to survive, to see the survival of at least most of the maybe 2 million people that are still surviving In Gaza, Gaza had a population of 2.3 million. About a hundred thousand have fled to other countries. The other 200,000, we don’t know. Some have fled. Too many have died. Too many are still buried under the rubble. We don’t even know how many. We don’t know how many. What gives me a little bit of hope, mark, in this really hopeless
Speaker 3:
Time
Phyllis Bennis:
Is that we saw already in this ceasefire movement that I described earlier, this somewhat spontaneous, somewhat organized movement of people that came into being within the first weeks of this genocide, came out into the streets and huge numbers, 400,000 on one day in Washington dc, tens of thousands in cities across the country, and continuing on and on demanding an immediate ceasefire. And it did two things that in some ways the Palestinian rights movement itself had never really done very effectively. Number one was to stay on message, a kind of message discipline, which was cease fire. Now, that was the call. But the other thing which seems somewhat contradictory to that was that that movement managed to redefine what ceasefire meant. So immediate ceasefire quickly became immediate and permanent ceasefire is what we’re demanding. And then it was an immediate and permanent ceasefire that has to include three things.
Number one, the obvious thing, stop killing people with your bombs and your tanks and your planes and your bullets. Stop killing people. Number two, allow in unlimited amounts of food and water and medicine and all the things that had been denied, allow unah to work. Allow the trucks to come in, stop keeping out what it takes to survive. That was number two, and that had to be part of the ceasefire. And number three, perhaps the most important for those of us in this country, stop sending the weapons. So those three parts became the definition of the ceasefire we are calling for. It wasn’t just a pause long enough to exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners and then go back to war. It had to include these things. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten that kind of a ceasefire yet. But that has been the demand. And when you have that breadth of people supporting it, people all across the country seeing for the first time, and I’ve been involved as you have been in lots of different movements from Vietnam, the anti-apartheid movement, central America, the Iraq war, anti-war movement, Afghanistan, all these
Speaker 3:
Movements.
Phyllis Bennis:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen the kind of breadth of politically motivated resignations of people who worked for the federal government that we saw this time around.
Marc Steiner:
Absolutely right.
Phyllis Bennis:
Everyone from the thousand plus people at U-S-A-I-D 500 or more at the State Department, not who resigned, but who came out in protest, I think five or six resigned, and others resigned from the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior. You had the White House interns, right? The most ambitious kids in the country who came out and said, we are not the leaders of today, but we strive to be the leaders of tomorrow and we can’t do it. Mr. President, this was addressed to the guy who became known as genocide. Joe addressed to President Biden. This was not even about Trump to say, we can’t do it when you hold this policy, the staff of the Biden, a presidential campaign in 2024, before he stepped down, they wrote a public letter saying, we can’t do our job of getting you reelected if you hold onto this policy. I’ve never seen anything like that.
Marc Steiner:
No, right. It’s unprecedented
Phyllis Bennis:
Policy. The poll that was taken in April of this year, April of 2025, when people were actually trying to find out why didn’t Kamala Harris win what was really going on there? And what they did was to poll a very specific group of voters, voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Biden in 2024. Meaning they either voted for Trump or they voted for members of Congress but didn’t vote for President, or they voted for an alternative. A third party voted for the Greens or somebody else, or they voted for Mickey Bounce or they voted for Gaza. And the question was, we know there’s lots of reasons why you didn’t vote for the Democrat, for the heir of Biden, but you did vote for him the time before. What was the most important reason you didn’t this time? I assumed it would be the economy.
The economy was second. The first was Gaza. I was shocked. I was sure it had to be wrong, but it wasn’t. It was right. 29% of the people who voted for Biden in 2020 and did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 said the reason was they refused to stop sending the weapons to Gaza, that they refused to whatever part it was the people who didn’t like what happened at the DNC when they refused to allow a Palestinian speaker even to have a presence for a moment on the stage. All of that led to them losing the election. Whether that was the only reason for the election, I don’t know, but we do know it was the largest single reason that people abandoned the presidential tier of the Democratic Party ticket.
Marc Steiner:
So everything you’ve been saying in the time we’ve had the other day, it earths a little bit more and we’ll have to come back and do some more and maybe even talk more about the book. The book. It’s a wonderful book.
Phyllis Bennis:
People, if you can see the book, the second printing, which is going to have an index, which the first one didn’t, is going to be out in a couple of weeks. People can get the second printing. The first printing is gone, but the book will be available and it can be ordered now.
Marc Steiner:
It is an important book to read and to wrestle with. And I bought my copyright here in Baltimore. Read Emma’s, so you can find in any bookstores in Baltimore. They’re here or wherever you’re listening to us from in San Diego, Vancouver, wherever you are. And I want to thank you so much, Phyllis, for joining us again today, and I look forward to continue this conversation. And there’s much more to talk about, much more to do, and thank you for all your work as well.
Phyllis Bennis:
Thank you, mark. It’s been a pleasure.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, thank you to Phyllis Bennis for joining us today, and we’ll be linking to her work. Thanks to David Hebdon for running our program today, and Steven Frank for editing the program as well as Producer Rut Ali for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here through Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you liked us to cover. Just write to me ats@theo.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Phyllis Pennis for joining us today and for the work that she does. So for the crew here at The World News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Israel took over a dozen UK citizens and residents hostage last week in international waters. And while the British government looked the other way, as it has with Israel’s genocide in Gaza in general, we want to highlight their stories.
After trying to smear the international aid volunteers, Israel illegally abducted around 500 of them from the Global Sumud Flotilla. The captors then took them to the notorious Ketziot torture centre, where they proceeded to abuse them. Abductees reported “violence, humiliation, deprivation of food and water, and a lack of legal counsel”.
Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whom the UK has sanctioned for his incitement of violence and hatred against Palestinians, visited the hostage facility and said the peaceful humanitarians deserved “the conditions of terrorists”. He added that he was “proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters”.
Prize-winning climate campaigner Greta Thunberg faced torture, with witnesses saying the Israeli hostage-takers “dragged [her] by her hair in front of our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag”. The kidnappers also “singled out” Jewish organiser David Adler, whom they forced to “hold and look at an Israeli flag”.
The UK abandoned people joining the flotilla from Britain, however. There was near-silence regarding their illegal abduction, and a spokesperson for genocide-denier Keir Starmer simply called it “a matter for the Israeli government“. Critics responded by questioning why it wasn’t a concern for the British government and calling it “a disgraceful dereliction of duty“. And they doubted the government would have had the same response if it had been Russia that had attacked UK vessels and kidnapped UK citizens in international waters.
The daughter of one British abductee insisted that while the government “may not agree with the flotilla’s mission, they have a responsibility to their citizens”. And she called its silence “inexcusable”.
Here is why he tried to break the siege of Gaza
pic.twitter.com/RT8o1X72En
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) October 7, 2025
"Imagine what they are willing to do to Palestinians if they're willing to do that to us."
British-Palestinian journalist Kieran Andrieu tells @SkyYaldaHakim his experience being detained by Israeli authorities aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla.https://t.co/VIHyTycgur pic.twitter.com/noKAjc5msx
— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 6, 2025
Sarah Wilkinson just faced horrific abuse in an Israeli prison and has now been detained by terror police at Heathrow Airport for pointless questioning. She has no money, no phone.
Her 'crime' is that she has covered the genocide in Gaza with footage Israel try to suppress. pic.twitter.com/0091VZfGh8— The Crispin Flintoff Show (@CrispinShow) October 6, 2025
Released Scottish #GlobalSumudFilotilla abductee Margaret Pacetta is hospitalised with a broken leg, multiple infections & severe dehydration pic.twitter.com/NTLpFqN4qG
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) October 7, 2025
The humanitarian mission to break Israel’s brutal, illegal siege of occupied Gaza is far from over. Because the Thousand Madleens to Gaza flotilla is sailing right now. More British participants are on board and
The 'Thousand Madleens' convoy continues sailing towards Gaza to break the decades-long Israeli siege
Led by the ship Conscience, the 11-vessel Freedom Flotilla Coalition continues its mission across the Mediterranean, with over 150 international activists from 30… pic.twitter.com/XBUNwJEkg4
— Global Sumud Flotilla (@GlobalSumud) October 7, 2025
One participant, emergency nurse and paramedic Leigh Evans, insisted that:
If we all went there, they couldn’t do what they’re doing
But failing that, he said, we can rise up and force our politicians to take action.
'I am on the Thousand Madleens flotilla to Gaza. My message to the world is to rise up, go to Palestine. If we all went there, they couldn't do what they're doing'
Leigh Evans, an emergency nurse and paramedic from the Thousands of Madleens convoy of the Freedom Flotilla… pic.twitter.com/137PLTPuCf
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) October 6, 2025
And he’s right. For humanity to prevail, we desperately need brave, compassionate people like those we’ve mentioned above to step up and demand justice. Whether that’s joining a flotilla, supporting one, or doing everything we can from our own community to bring about change, action is no longer optional. It’s a duty for anyone who doesn’t want this descent into dystopia to become the new normal.
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
Declassified UK have managed to record a US spy plane leaving a UK air base in Cyprus:
NEW — Gaza spy plane spotted leaving UK air base on Cyprus
by @pmillerinfo & @alex_macondo
Exclusive: Declassified captures first footage of an American spy plane taking off from a Royal Air Force base bound for Gaza.https://t.co/x1l5YUPyrb
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) October 7, 2025
The plane was “bound for Gaza“, according to Declassified UK. It’s an important sighting, because the plane has flown without its tracker turned on while making previous flights, making it impossible to monitor.
In the UK, Declassified UK and other independent journalists have spearheaded reporting on the UK military’s involvement in flights over Gaza from RAF Akrotiri:
We reported in July that the UK would consider a request by the ICC to hand over surveillance footage from Gaza. The Times only just picked up on it today https://t.co/PRZ4vHKfzh
— Phil Miller (@pmillerinfo) October 25, 2024
Flight tracking data now shows the ZZ338 aircraft, one of the two targeted by Palestine Action, is already back in the air. pic.twitter.com/f4eqHnuA34
— John McEvoy (@jmcevoy_2) July 2, 2025
Read my full investigation for @PDeepDive here
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) October 6, 2025
Journalists Phil Miller and Alex Morris captured the spy plane footage for Declassified UK. In their write up, they explained that they’d seen the plane’s tracker ‘periodically turn on its location beacon at this airfield’. The purpose of recording the plane was:
to confirm if these split second flashes on the tracking website actually result in surveillance missions – or if the plane never leaves Akrotiri. There have been five such pings since the UN Commission of Inquiry declared there is a genocide in Gaza.
On the night that they captured the footage, the beacon momentarily turned on. As they noted, it’s turned on several more times since then.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence hired a private US security firm to send spy flights over Gaza.
Declassified’s @pmillerinfo & @alex_macondo camped outside RAF Akrotiri to capture the first footage of these planes deploying to Gaza to collect intel for Israel
— John McEvoy (@jmcevoy_2) October 7, 2025
The official narrative is that the RAF is providing surveillance capacity to help Israel locate the hostages in Gaza. There are some issues with this narrative, however, as Miller and Morris highlighted:
When terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 school girls in Nigeria, the RAF sent a Sentinel spy plane to help look for them. Taking off from neighbouring Ghana, the Sentinel “mapped the whole of Nigeria” in 10 sorties and located the school girls within the first few weeks.
So why does Israel, with its vastly more advanced surveillance capabilities than Nigeria, really require so much assistance from Britain’s spy flight programme?
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said in the past that Israel wouldn’t halt the war even if there was a deal to release hostages.
Featured image via Pedro Aragao
By Willem Moore
This post was originally published on Canary.
Wanted Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed – again – that Iran is within ‘six months’ of having intercontinental ballistic atomic missiles that, with just a minor tweak, could strike cities on the US east coast.
Speaking to pro-Israel mouthpiece Ben Shapiro, Netanyahu said that Washington, New York, Boston, even Trump’s Mar a Lago playground, would be within reach of these missiles – well, as long as they added another 3,000km to their supposed 8,000km range:
Netanyahu omitted to mention that the US already has nuclear missiles that could erase Iran if Iran tried to hold any US cities under its ‘atomic gun’, but then he would. He’s been making the claim that Iran is ‘this close’ to atomic weapons for more than three decades – every time he wants the US and its allies to attack Iran.
He first made the claim in 1992, then in 1995, then 1996, then again every two or three years – every time he sets his sights on having his US backers do his dirty work for him, as this handy summary by Riverwand shows:
US military and intelligence experts say not only that Iran is not ‘close’ to having atomic weapons, but that it is not even trying to develop them. Which is an astonishing illustration of restraint, really. With a warmongering, war criminal land-thief like Netanyahu and his fellow fanatics in your neighbourhood – who have repeatedly bombed you, assassinated your people and whipped up war against you, why wouldn’t you?
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
The U.S. has spent over $30 billion supporting the Israeli military and conducting war across the Middle East over the first two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza — a genocide only made possible by the U.S.’s financial support, a new report concludes. Brown University’s Costs of War project released a series of reports on the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When the long-awaited Gaza ceasefire was announced back in January 2025, displaced people counted down the minutes until they were allowed to return to their homes — or what remained of their homes. They had spent nights on streets where frost chilled their bones, enduring an undignified life while waiting for January 27 to dawn. Then they marched, walking for long miles without bending their…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An ‘inter-universities march’ is taking place in London to mark two years of genocide in Gaza:
View this post on Instagram
People have shared videos of the march online:
We’re now stuck outside the LSE library. Rumours of more protests at the BBC and Downing St. There has been a force mobilisation. pic.twitter.com/ABDoFO6JPt
— Chris Hobbs (@obbsie) October 7, 2025
This white strip shows thousands of names presumably of those who are deceased pic.twitter.com/zAXgW0PX0I
— Chris Hobbs (@obbsie) October 7, 2025
SOAS Liberated Zone promoted the upcoming march on 6 October, writing:
JOIN US THIS TUESDAY OCTOBER 7TH FOR OUR INTER UNI MARCH MARKING TWO YEARS SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA
Two years. Two years and 77 years of genocide, of forced starvation, of murder, ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, torture and settler colonialism. Two years of watching the world’s silence and our universities’ complicity as they continue to invest in and profit from settler colonial violence by the zionist entity. Two years of resistance, two years of steadfastness of our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
As students, academics, workers, people of conscience, we cannot allow this to continue with business as usual during a live streamed genocide. We must transform everything we do into strength, into solidarity, into relentless action and a relentless fight. Our student intifada is still continuing. Our unity matters. Every step we take through our campuses is a refusal to let genocide be normalized, ignored, or erased.
Every step we take through our campuses is to resist their complicity through investments, Israeli academic partnerships. Every step we take is showing them that their repression will never intimidate us. That they can try to discipline us, suspend us, expel us, that they can attempt to erase Palestine from our universities but that we will never abide to that and that we will ensure that never happens. We will continue to rise and our goals will be achieved.
We march together because we know that justice and liberation will never come from the institutions complicit in oppression, will come from us, the students and the masses – from the people who refuse to look away, from students who choose to act over comfort.
Two years and we remain unshaken in our fight. We will keep rising, keep resisting, and keep demanding accountability. What are you waiting for? Join us in the struggle join us in the fight, we have seen students rise up in history amongst other struggles for liberation and achieve their goals. For Palestine, it will be next, liberation is inevitable and the students united will never be defeated.
Featured image via X/Twitter
By Willem Moore
This post was originally published on Canary.
(@soasliberatedzone)
