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Category: israel

  • Norwegian doctor in Gaza: ‘It’s worse than any horror film’

     

    Norwegian doctor Nil Ekiz, who is of Turkish origin, described the scenes she witnessed during her work in Gaza as “worse than horror films,” stressing that the humanitarian tragedy there cannot be expressed in words and will remain etched in her memory for the rest of her life.

    In an interview with Anadolu Agency, Ekiz explained that she worked at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis last September as part of a medical mission with a Norwegian organisation. She entered the Strip with a team of four doctors after lengthy and complicated coordination procedures.

    She said:

    From the moment we entered Gaza, we saw destroyed houses, wrecked cars and rubble everywhere. Children ran towards our car, pointing to their mouths because they were so hungry. Not a single building was intact; the destruction was total.

    Norwegian doctor: Patients on the floor and a shortage of medicine

    The Norwegian doctor pointed out that Nasser Hospital, which normally has a capacity of around 340 beds, was treating more than 800 patients at one time.

    People were sleeping on the floor, in the corridors, in front of the lifts, and even on the stairs. Most of them had been wounded by bullets or shrapnel, while patients with chronic diseases were dying in their tents without treatment.

    She described a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, stressing that

    even basic anaesthetics were not available, and simple painkillers such as paracetamol were scarce. Patients were screaming in pain after surgery.

    In many cases, doctors were forced to discharge patients despite their urgent need for care due to the severe overcrowding.

    One-third of the victims were children

    Ekiz said she met a forensic doctor in Gaza who told her that 30% of those killed were children.

    The youngest child I saw was six years old. She was shot in the chest and the bullet pierced her stomach. Despite our attempts to save her, she died.

    She explained that most of the casualties were civilians who had gathered at food distribution points, and eyewitnesses confirmed that Israeli forces deliberately targeted those areas.

    In the intensive care units, I saw children aged three, five and seven with head injuries, and young people with serious wounds that were not healing due to malnutrition and infection.

    Medical staff inject themselves with solutions

    The doctor described the dire conditions faced by health workers, saying that doctors and nurses were living in tents near hospitals, most having lost between 15 and 20 kilograms due to hunger and exhaustion.

     

    Medical staff were forced to inject themselves with solutions to continue working. Many of them have lost their families and children, yet they continue to perform their humanitarian duty in unbearable conditions.

    She recounted a particularly painful story:

    The father of a child with a head injury came to me begging me to take him to Norway to save him, but he died a few days later. That feeling of helplessness in the face of death is indescribable.

    ‘What is happening in Gaza is not a war’

    When asked whether Israel was deliberately targeting children, Ekiz replied:

    I haven’t seen it myself, but when you see that a third of the victims are children, you realise that it cannot be a coincidence. This does not happen in a normal war.

    She concluded:

    I will return to Gaza early next year to continue my humanitarian work. It is our duty to tell what we have seen so that what happened will not be forgotten.

    Two years of extermination

    On 8 October 2023, Israel launched a campaign of genocide against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, with American support, which lasted for two years. It included killing, starvation, destruction and forced displacement, resulting in the martyrdom of 68,643 Palestinians and the injury of 170,655 others, most of them children and women.

    Featured image via the Palestinian Information Center

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Teasing the Armageddon Fanciers: Trump’s Announcement on Nuclear Testing

    Nuclear weapons have made the world safe for hypocrisy and unsafe in every other respect. Astride the nonsense that is nuclear apartheid – the forced separation of the states that are permitted to have nuclear weapons and those that do not – sits that rumpled, crumpled creature called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). For decades, the nuclear club has dangled an unfulfilled promise to eventually disarm its arsenals by encouraging non-nuclear-weapon states to pursue peaceful uses of the atom.  Preference, instead, has been given to enlarging inventories and developing ever more ingenious and idiotic ways of turning humans and animal life into ash and offal.

    Little wonder that some countries have sought admission to the club via the back door, avoiding the priestly strictures and promises of the NPT. The Democratic Republic of North Korea is merely the unabashed example there, while Israel remains even less reputable for its coyness in possessing weapons it regards as both indispensable and officially “absent”. Other countries, such as Iran, have been lectured and bombed into compliance.  Again, more hypocrisy.

    On such rocky terrain, the US President’s instruction to his newly named Department of War to resume nuclear testing is almost prosaic, if characteristically inaccurate. On social media, Donald Trump declared, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.” Strictly speaking, North Korea remains the black sheep of an otherwise unprincipled flock to consistently test nuclear weapons since the late 1990s, while 187 states have added signatures to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

    Other streaky details included the assertion that the US had a nuclear weapons inventory larger than that of any other state, something “accomplished” through “a complete update and renovation of existing weapons” during Trump’s first term.

    The announcement did cause a titter among the nuclear chatting classes. “For both technical and political reasons,” remarked Heather Williams, Director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and a Senior Fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the United States is unlikely to return to nuclear explosive testing any time soon”.  She did concede that Trump’s post pointed “to increasing nuclear competition between the United States, Russia, and China.” Whatever the bluster, and however many bipartisan calls to do so, the current administration had been “slow to seriously invest in this nuclear competition.”

    This line of reasoning is telling. The issue for Williams is not to decry the resumption of a type of testing – the explosive, high-yield variety – but to chide the President for not taking a serious interest in joining the great game of nuclear modernization with other powers. “Nuclear testing is not the best step forward in that competition, but it should raise alarm within the administration about the state of the United States’ nuclear enterprise and the urgency of investing in nuclear modernization.” And there you have it.

    Rebeccah L. Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute does some speculative gardening around the announcement with the same sentiment. Trump might have meant, she writes in the Wall Street Journal, “conducting flight tests of delivery systems.” Maybe he was referring to explosive yield-producing tests. And those naughty Russians and Chinese were simply not behaving in terms of keeping their nuclear arsenals splendidly inert. With the familiar nuclear hawkishness that occupies the world of stubborn lunacy, Heinrichs is unequivocal about what the administration should do: “Whatever Mr. Trump means by ‘testing,’ the US should work urgently to improve and adapt its nuclear deterrent. To do this, Mr. Trump should let the last arms-control treaty between the US and Russia – the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start – expire in February.” This, it seems, counts for good sense.

    Other commentators tended to fall into the literal school of Trump interpretation. There is no room for allegory, symbolism, or fleeting suggestion there. Tilman Ruff, affiliated with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, among other groups, offers his concerns. “If Trump is referring to the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, this would be an extremely unfortunate, regrettable step by the United States,” he fears, writing in that blandest of fora, The Conversation. “It would almost inevitably be followed by tit-for-tat reciprocal announcements by other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China, and cement an accelerating arms race that puts us all in great jeopardy.”

    Ruff points out the obvious dangers of such a resumption: the risks of global radioactive fallout; the risk, even if the tests were conducted underground, of “the possible release and venting of radioactive materials, as well as the potential leakage into groundwater.” Gloomy stuff indeed.

    Others did the inevitable and, in Trump’s case, inconsequential thing of trying to correct America’s highest magistrate by appealing to hard-boiled facts. “Nothing [in the announcement] is correct,” grumbled Tom Nichols from The Atlantic. “Trump did not create a larger stockpile by ‘updating’ in his first term.  No nation except North Korea has tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s.”

    At The New York Times, W. J. Hennigan took some relish in pointing out that the province of nuclear testing lay not with the Pentagon but the Energy Department.  But then came the jitters. “The president’s ambiguity is worrisome not only because America’s public can’t know what he means, but because America’s adversaries don’t.”

    The problem goes deeper than that, and Hennigan admits that the breaking of the moratorium on nuclear testing is always something peaking around the corner. The US, for instance, is constructing the means of conducting “subcritical nuclear tests, or underground experiments that test nuclear components of a warhead but stop short of creating a nuclear chain reaction, and therefore, a full weapons test.”

    Even if the Trump announcement was to be taken seriously – and there is much to suggest that it be confined to a moment of loose thinking in cerebral twilight – dangers of any resumption of full testing will only marginally endanger the planet more than matters stand. The nuclear club, with its Armageddon fanciers and Doomsday flirters, remains snobbishly determined to keep the world in permanent danger. An arms race is already taking place, however euphemized it might be.

    The post Teasing the Armageddon Fanciers: Trump’s Announcement on Nuclear Testing first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Teasing the Armageddon Fanciers: Trump’s Announcement on Nuclear Testing

    Nuclear weapons have made the world safe for hypocrisy and unsafe in every other respect. Astride the nonsense that is nuclear apartheid – the forced separation of the states that are permitted to have nuclear weapons and those that do not – sits that rumpled, crumpled creature called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). For decades, the nuclear club has dangled an unfulfilled promise to eventually disarm its arsenals by encouraging non-nuclear-weapon states to pursue peaceful uses of the atom.  Preference, instead, has been given to enlarging inventories and developing ever more ingenious and idiotic ways of turning humans and animal life into ash and offal.

    Little wonder that some countries have sought admission to the club via the back door, avoiding the priestly strictures and promises of the NPT. The Democratic Republic of North Korea is merely the unabashed example there, while Israel remains even less reputable for its coyness in possessing weapons it regards as both indispensable and officially “absent”. Other countries, such as Iran, have been lectured and bombed into compliance.  Again, more hypocrisy.

    On such rocky terrain, the US President’s instruction to his newly named Department of War to resume nuclear testing is almost prosaic, if characteristically inaccurate. On social media, Donald Trump declared, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.” Strictly speaking, North Korea remains the black sheep of an otherwise unprincipled flock to consistently test nuclear weapons since the late 1990s, while 187 states have added signatures to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

    Other streaky details included the assertion that the US had a nuclear weapons inventory larger than that of any other state, something “accomplished” through “a complete update and renovation of existing weapons” during Trump’s first term.

    The announcement did cause a titter among the nuclear chatting classes. “For both technical and political reasons,” remarked Heather Williams, Director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and a Senior Fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the United States is unlikely to return to nuclear explosive testing any time soon”.  She did concede that Trump’s post pointed “to increasing nuclear competition between the United States, Russia, and China.” Whatever the bluster, and however many bipartisan calls to do so, the current administration had been “slow to seriously invest in this nuclear competition.”

    This line of reasoning is telling. The issue for Williams is not to decry the resumption of a type of testing – the explosive, high-yield variety – but to chide the President for not taking a serious interest in joining the great game of nuclear modernization with other powers. “Nuclear testing is not the best step forward in that competition, but it should raise alarm within the administration about the state of the United States’ nuclear enterprise and the urgency of investing in nuclear modernization.” And there you have it.

    Rebeccah L. Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute does some speculative gardening around the announcement with the same sentiment. Trump might have meant, she writes in the Wall Street Journal, “conducting flight tests of delivery systems.” Maybe he was referring to explosive yield-producing tests. And those naughty Russians and Chinese were simply not behaving in terms of keeping their nuclear arsenals splendidly inert. With the familiar nuclear hawkishness that occupies the world of stubborn lunacy, Heinrichs is unequivocal about what the administration should do: “Whatever Mr. Trump means by ‘testing,’ the US should work urgently to improve and adapt its nuclear deterrent. To do this, Mr. Trump should let the last arms-control treaty between the US and Russia – the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start – expire in February.” This, it seems, counts for good sense.

    Other commentators tended to fall into the literal school of Trump interpretation. There is no room for allegory, symbolism, or fleeting suggestion there. Tilman Ruff, affiliated with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, among other groups, offers his concerns. “If Trump is referring to the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, this would be an extremely unfortunate, regrettable step by the United States,” he fears, writing in that blandest of fora, The Conversation. “It would almost inevitably be followed by tit-for-tat reciprocal announcements by other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China, and cement an accelerating arms race that puts us all in great jeopardy.”

    Ruff points out the obvious dangers of such a resumption: the risks of global radioactive fallout; the risk, even if the tests were conducted underground, of “the possible release and venting of radioactive materials, as well as the potential leakage into groundwater.” Gloomy stuff indeed.

    Others did the inevitable and, in Trump’s case, inconsequential thing of trying to correct America’s highest magistrate by appealing to hard-boiled facts. “Nothing [in the announcement] is correct,” grumbled Tom Nichols from The Atlantic. “Trump did not create a larger stockpile by ‘updating’ in his first term.  No nation except North Korea has tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s.”

    At The New York Times, W. J. Hennigan took some relish in pointing out that the province of nuclear testing lay not with the Pentagon but the Energy Department.  But then came the jitters. “The president’s ambiguity is worrisome not only because America’s public can’t know what he means, but because America’s adversaries don’t.”

    The problem goes deeper than that, and Hennigan admits that the breaking of the moratorium on nuclear testing is always something peaking around the corner. The US, for instance, is constructing the means of conducting “subcritical nuclear tests, or underground experiments that test nuclear components of a warhead but stop short of creating a nuclear chain reaction, and therefore, a full weapons test.”

    Even if the Trump announcement was to be taken seriously – and there is much to suggest that it be confined to a moment of loose thinking in cerebral twilight – dangers of any resumption of full testing will only marginally endanger the planet more than matters stand. The nuclear club, with its Armageddon fanciers and Doomsday flirters, remains snobbishly determined to keep the world in permanent danger. An arms race is already taking place, however euphemized it might be.

    The post Teasing the Armageddon Fanciers: Trump’s Announcement on Nuclear Testing first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The US And Israel: Tale Of Two Rogue Settler-Colonial States

    Over the last two weeks, images of starving Palestinians in a dystopian backdrop of bombed out buildings reflect the horrific reality of a terrain that has experienced the equivalent of six Hiroshima atomic bombs. It is a reminder that the genocide in Gaza continues even as the pathetic zealous characters surrounding the U.S. President spoke of a ceasefire, an end to the assault on Gaza, and Trump as the peace president.

    That cynical game was finally brought to an end with the unsurprising announcement by Benjamin Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal and Prime Minister of the ethno-supremacist apartheid state of Israel, that Israel will resume the bombing of the occupied Palestinian people.

    The post The US And Israel: Tale Of Two Rogue Settler-Colonial States appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel bans ICRC from prisons — they’re terrified of witnesses

    On October 7, 2023, the Israeli regime suspended International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visits to all Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli occupation jails, under the pretext of “security concerns”.

    ICRC plays an essential humanitarian role for Palestinian detainees

    The organisation has a long history of visiting Palestinians detained by the Israeli regime, and of facilitating family visits that are often otherwise impossible to arrange.

    Sarah Davies, from the ICRC delegation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, told The Canary:

    In the first nine months of 2023, we facilitated permits for almost 50,000 family members and transported those who could conduct family visits to their relatives in Israeli detention facilities. This complex programme involved facilitating the request for permits as well as the transportation of family members. In the last 10 years, the ICRC transported around one million relatives to visit their detained loved ones, at a rhythm of one or two family visits per month.

    Katz says ICRC visits could “harm state security”

    Israeli occupation Minister of Defense Israel Katz has confirmed that these visits will remain suspended “until further notice”, claiming they “may be exploited to convey messages or information that could harm state security”.

    On October 29, he signed an order barring ICRC visits not only to Palestinian political prisoners from the West Bank who are detained by the occupation, but also to those from Gaza whom Israel deems “unlawful combatants”.

    ‘Unlawful combatants’ lack legal protection, but term not recognised under international law

    In the case of the Israeli regime, the label of “unlawful combatant” is being used not only against resistance fighters — who, under international law, have the right to resist their occupier by any means — but also against civilians. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza — including doctors such as Hussam Abu Saffiyah, more than 50 journalists, humanitarian first responders, and even children kidnapped by Israel — are being wrongly labelled as “unlawful combatants.”

    They are held without formal charge or trial and are not permitted to receive visits from lawyers. These detainees suffer systematic torture and abuse at the hands of the Israeli occupation. Although international law prohibits the detention without trial of residents of an occupied territory except in highly exceptional cases, this policy has been institutionalised through Israeli occupation laws.

    According to a September 2025 report from The Guardian, based on an Israeli military database, only about a quarter of Gaza detainees were classified as fighters by intelligence, with the rest being civilians. Nevertheless, the occupation has continued expanding its use of the “unlawful combatant” law — drawing sharp criticism from human rights groups.

    Banning ICRC visits is a violation of international law

    The ban on ICRC visits violates international obligations — particularly those outlined in the Geneva Conventions — which grant the organisation access to all detainees in armed conflicts.

    Davies explains:

    Wherever and whoever they may be, detainees need to be treated with humanity and dignity at all times. This is an international legal requirement applicable to all detaining authorities in Israel and the occupied territories.

    The decision also eliminates crucial independent oversight of the treatment and conditions of Palestinian detainees — at a time when unprecedented violations are being committed against Palestinians who have been arrested, detained, and forcibly disappeared by the Israeli regime.

    According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS), preventing ICRC teams from visiting thousands of Palestinian political prisoners “constitutes an additional cover for the prison system to continue and intensify its crimes — including the slow killing of prisoners, while concealing evidence of abuse.”

    No oversight on horrendous abuses of Palestinian prisoners without ICRC visits

    Testimonies from those recently released confirm this abuse — as do the bodies of martyred prisoners returned by the Israeli occupation. The occupation refused to identify almost all of these bodies, instead sending them back with no names or ID — only numbers.

    Many bore overwhelming evidence of brutality, including torture, hanging, starvation, and organ theft. Others were unrecognisable when received, due to the torture and abuse they endured before death. A large number arrived blindfolded and handcuffed, with visible signs of mutilation — indicating they were likely executed.ICRC

    Many thousands of Palestinians continue to be physically and psychologically tortured and starved in Israeli occupation prisons and detention camps. A vast number of these detainees are held under “administrative detention” or “unlawful combatant” status — meaning they are charged with no crime and tried by no court.

    Israeli occupation’s ‘justice system’ fully responsible for systematic abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees

    The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) accuses the Supreme Court and the wider judicial system of the Israeli occupation of direct responsibility for the systematic human rights violations against Palestinian detainees. It says they have “actively enabled the colonial regime’s genocidal policies — including those carried out inside prisons — through torture, starvation, denial of medical care, sexual assaults, and degrading detention conditions.”

    Sarah Davies told The Canary:

    The ICRC stands prepared to resume its regular detention visits at the earliest opportunity to continue, among other things, monitoring the treatment of detainees and the conditions of detention in all relevant facilities. This remains a priority for the ICRC in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Committed to its mandate and responsibilities, the ICRC will continue stressing to the relevant authorities their obligations for as long as it is necessary.

    Katz’s decision to block ICRC visits comes shortly after the Knesset’s preliminary approval of legislation that would allow the execution of Palestinian prisoners.

    Featured image via RedCrossWebsite

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Cambridge Students’ Union gives the boot to the NUS

    The Cambridge Students’ Union (SU) has decisively voted to disaffiliate from the National Union of Students (NUS) in a recent referendum.

    Cambridge Students’ Union boots the NUS

    This move has been driven by concerns over the NUS’s continued use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which equates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, and its failure to support pro-Palestinian student activism, particularly during the genocide in Gaza. The vote concluded with 1,772 votes in favour of disaffiliation, 1,284 against, and 719 abstentions, a massive win for all those students who had campaigned and mobilised for positive change.

    The Canary contacted all parties involved for comment, but has not received any responses.

    The Cambridge SU motion cited the NUS’s lack of action on calls from students to promote Palestinian causes, claiming that the union has selectively supported causes aligned with its internal agenda, while neglecting others, especially those related to Palestinian rights and activism, while also ‘failing to act on growing Islamophobia’.

    ​The vote also included a referendum on whether Cambridge SU should campaign for the end of university investments and collaborations with institutions associated with occupation and weapons manufacturing.

    The motion for divestment had strong backing, with over 3,200 students voting in favour. Cambridge’s activism has already seen notable successes, including King’s College, one of its most prominent colleges, deciding to divest from arms and occupation-linked companies back in May of this year.​

    Cambridge SU’s activism and votes are reflective of a growing student movement towards ethical investment, Palestinian solidarity, and holding institutions accountable for their associations with genocide and occupation. ​

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gaza to Sudan: Israel’s role in a second genocidal war is being overlooked

    On 26 October, the city of El Fasher in southern Sudan fell to the Rapid Support Force (RSF). The RSF reportedly began massacring civilians immediately after taking control. The death toll included nearly 500 patients at the local hospital. But in the press coverage that followed, some dimensions of the war in Sudan were suspiciously absent.

    Many countries have a stake in Sudan. Its former colonial ruler, Britain, whose military equipment has appeared on the battlefield, is just one. UAE is centrally involved, arming the RSF and fuelling the war. But much less remarked upon is the role of Israel. It seems one genocide isn’t enough for the pariah state.

    In a podcast interview on 12 June (at around 49 minutes in), Sudan expert Joshua Craze shed some light on this:

    I remember being in a room last April with a very senior member of the US [Biden] administration in DC and he said to me, ‘Joshua, you have made a category error. You think Sudan is in Africa. Sudan is not in Africa, my friend. Sudan is in the Gulf.

    The official went on to confirm that US policy in the region centres Israel’s relationship with UAE:
    When we go to see the Emirates, what number on our to-do list do you think Sudan is? It is not on our to-do list. What we have to do is keep the Emirates onside with Israel and onside against Iran.
    You can, and should, listen to the full episode here.

    ‘Sudan is not in Africa’

    Sudan normalised relations with Israel in 2020 under pressure from the first Trump administration. As Responsible Statecraft wrote in 2024:

    …as part of a deal in which the Trump Administration removed Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, Sudan agreed to join the Abraham Accords. General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, head of Sudan’s sovereignty council and de facto head of state, met with Netanyahu in Kampala, Uganda.

    The Kampala deal was brokered by UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed. It resulted in Sudan freezing Hamas assets. There had also been talks about relocating Hamas leaders to Sudan as part of a peace deal. This form of exile was flatly rejected by Hamas.

    Burhan’s deputy, against whom he is now fighting a war, also has ties to Israel:

    General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as “Hemedti” also had close ties with Israel. He developed close relations with the UAE, renting out his Rapid Support Force (RSF) units to fight as mercenaries in Yemen, whereby he also established strong links with Israel’s Mossad.

    When war broke out in Sudan in 2023, Israel already had connections with both men and their forces:

    The [Israeli] Foreign Ministry leaned towards al-Burhan and the SAF, Mossad towards the RSF.

    In this sense, Israel has a stake in — and influence over — both sides in the civil war which has killed tens of thousands and displaced 12-14 million people.

    And this is part of a broader Israeli strategy in regards to Africa and the Middle East.

    Sudan: Israel’s regional influence

    Israel also seeks to increase its scope for economic activity in the region and build intelligence links which it can wield against exiled Palestinian militant groups in North Africa.

    Writing for the Middle East Eye in May 2023, Shady Ibrahim from Centre for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) said:

    Israel has a strategic interest in normalising relations with Sudan, as the Sudanese Red Sea coast is essential from a security and economic perspective.

    Sudan represents the heart of Africa, with deep extensions into the African continent thanks to its location, large geographical area and expansive borders.

    He said backing particular groups in the region was a way of counter-balancing the hostility that many countries around Israel feel towards it. This was in line with what is know as the “periphery doctrine”. Backing RSF is an example of this strategy being applied.

    And Israel also hopes that normalising relations would help curb the smuggling of arms into Gaza from Sudan. Previously, Israel has conducted air strikes against smugglers.

    RSF are anti-Islamist

    RSF have cut a bloody swathe across southern Sudan which echoes the march of ISIS across Iraq and in the mid-2010s. As Joshua Craze explained in April 2025:

    Hemedti’s war machine is predicated on continual expansion. Since the RSF offers its recruits licence to loot and raid in lieu of wages, absent fresh targets, its forces have a tendency to disperse. In every city it captures, the RSF has employed the same playbook: destroy state institutions, plunder humanitarian resources, raze civilian property.

    Perhaps it is this which has led far-right commentators like Tommy Robinson to brand them as ‘Islamist’. However, this is not correct. The truth is much more complicated.

    Shady Ibrahim explained, while Islamists have foothold in the Sudanese army “the RSF aligns most closely with Israel’s strategic interests and national goals”.

    It has vowed to combat “radical Islamists” and recently removed the word “al-Quds” (Arabic for “Jerusalem”) from its logo.

    Not for the first-time, the western far-right is conflating ‘Muslim’ with ‘Islamist’. Robinson, of course, is currently in Israel.

    Colonial nexus

    Sudan sits at the meeting point of colonial interests. And the people of Sudan’s wellbeing is clearly less important than these power games. At least to the people playing them. It may not be widely understood that Israel is a  key player in the country, but the “little Ulster in the desert” — as the British called their Zionist settler-state — is exactly that.

    Neither RSF nor the SAF are squeaky clean institutions. But it is hard to see how the war could have been prosecuted with the ferocity we’ve seen without the active involvement of the UAE and Israel. The charge levelled against RSF is genocide. And as bombing continues in Gaza, it seems like genocide is something Israel just can’t get enough of.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • State Department Office Finds “Hundreds” of Possible Israeli Rights Violations

    A classified State Department report released just days before the current ceasefire agreement went into effect found that Israel has committed “many hundreds” of potential human rights violations in Gaza that would render it illegal to continue sending weapons to many Israeli military units, reporting finds. According to The Washington Post, officials say that the possible violations were…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Life after genocide: A Gazan’s message to the world about the ceasefire

    In September, before the current ceasefire deal was announced, we spoke with two Palestinians in Gaza—Mohamed Abu Tawila (a former English teacher) and his nephew Abdul Rahman (a would-be college student)—about surviving 700 days of genocidal destruction at the hands of Israel’s military and with the full backing of the United States. In this critical follow-up episode, we speak once again with Mohamed Abu Tawila from Gaza to get an on-the-ground account of life for Palestinians after the shaky implementation of the ceasefire began on Oct. 10.

    Additional links/info:

    Featured Music:

    • Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song

    Credits:

    • Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
    Transcript

    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez and we’ve got a short but extremely important episode for you guys today. Back in September, we published an intense and harrowing interview with two Palestinians in Gaza, Mohamed Abu Tawila, a former English teacher and his nephew, Abdul Rahman, a would-be college student displaced by the war. These are two men who had somehow managed to survive what was then at the time, 700 days of genocidal bombing, shooting for starvation, and the systematic destruction of life and civilization as such, all at the hands of Israel’s military and with the full backing of the United States.

    I spoke in that interview to Mohamed and Abdul Rahman about their daily struggle to survive in the midst of a genocide in the middle of a 22 mile open air killing field that is the Gaza Strip. We also talked about the vital lifesaving and dangerous operation that they have been running during the war to secure and transport clean water to people around Gaza who are clinging to life and have no other access to water to drink. They have been using crowdsourced money that people donate online to rent trucks and buy fuel, which is extremely expensive and in short supply under the blockade and deliver treated water to fellow Goins who desperately need it. Now. We recorded and published that interview before News of the latest ceasefire agreement was announced at the end of September, and Shakily implemented on October 10th, and when I say Shakily implemented, it’s because I’m reading daily and weekly updates from trusted journalists and Gaza and outlets covering Gaza.

    Like this latest report from Tareq S. Hajjaj in Mondoweiss, which was published on October 29th, the Israeli army announced that a soldier in Rafa had been killed by gunfire on Tuesday before the source of the gunfire could be confirmed. Netanyahu blamed it on Hamas and gave the order for the Army to launch powerful strikes on Gaza. The resumption, the Israeli bombing campaign killed over a hundred people, 46 of whom were children, and 20 of whom were women according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. On Wednesday, Hamas released a statement saying it had nothing to do with the incident and that it remained fully committed to the ceasefire agreement in all areas. Nevertheless, the Israeli army carried out the attacks across several locations in Gaza. An army statement later said that Israeli forces had struck 30 terrorists holding command positions in the strip. Later on Wednesday, the Israeli army announced that it was resuming the ceasefire agreement after having killed over a hundred people in a single night.

    Tuesday’s, airstrikes were not the first time Israel bombed Gaza. During the ongoing ceasefire agreement under the pretense that Hamas had violated the ceasefire. On October 19th, the Israeli army said that Hamas had violated the ceasefire following an explosion in Rafa that led to the death of two Israeli soldiers. Israel claimed Hamas was responsible despite the resistance group’s denial of the accusation and the later emergence of reports that the explosion was from an Israeli bulldozer running over unexploded ordinance. The army killed over a dozen people. In its retaliation, Mondo Weiss reviewed the records of the people killed in airstrikes. Since the ceasefire went into effect, the evidence points to an Israeli tactic of assassinating resistance fighters that had evaded detection during the war under the pretext of retaliation for alleged violations of the ceasefire by Hamas. In essence, Israel is continuing to carry out its war during the ceasefire.

    Now, we’ll link to that piece in Monde Weiss and a few others so that you can read more on the situation in Gaza and with the ceasefire. But today to give y’all an on the ground view of life in Gaza after the ceasefire began and to provide y’all with a critical update on our last interview with Muhammad and Abdul Achman, I was able to get back in touch with Muhammad and send him some questions. Then he recorded his answers and sent them back to me with the little internet connection he has. Once again, we have provided links in the show notes of this episode to Mohammed’s Instagram account and to the Instagram and crowdfunding pages for the water delivery operation, which is called Living Water Mutual Aid in Gaza. If you want updates on the water operation or if you want to contribute to it, you can find all the info you need there and now without further ado, here is my short conversation with former English teacher Mohamed Abu Tawila in Gaza in the wake of the new tenuous ceasefire.

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    Hello everyone. My name Mohamed Abu Tawila from Gaza, and I am speaking to you from Gaza. I want to express my sincere graduated to generous Maximilian es for his fearless efforts to bring the voice of people in Gaza to the world and for giving us this space to speak honestly about our suffering and our hopes after two years of war and genocide. I am entirely honored to be here today sharing with you what life is real like on the ground, what you are feeling and what we are dreaming of in these days that we hope will mark the beginning of a more peaceful and dignified life for every person in Gaza.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Well, Mohamed, brother, it is really, really great to hear your voice, even if we can’t be communicating on a live conversation, just knowing that you’re there, hearing your voice is really, really special and I’m really, really grateful to you for staying in contact with us and giving us these critical updates, and I wanted to ask if we could start by just having you tell us what were you thinking and feeling when the ceasefire began? What does this news mean to you and your family? After two years of genocide?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    When the cease fire began, I felt a mix of disbelief and emptiness. After two years of genocide, silence felt strange, almost frightening. My family and I, we relieved the bombing stopped, but we couldn’t celebrate. We have lost too much ,our homes, our friends, our peace. Still this news gives a small spark of hope. Maybe we can breathe again, maybe we can start replying our lives. But in Gaza, every ceasefire feels regular, like a short pause between storms.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Can you describe what life has been like in Gaza in these past few weeks since the ceasefire began? How were Palestinians reacting? What are people doing thinking and feeling now that the bombing has at least temporarily stopped

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    Since the ceasefire began, people in Gaza are living between temporarily relief that the bombing has a storm and deep solar for what the war left behind. Many people have returned to their homes only to find wide the spread destruction and rub trying to clean up or build symbol shelter. Aid has started to enter, but is still very limited, and services remain almost nonexisting. Despite the ban and loss, Palestinian are showing resilience and cautious hope that this truth could be the beginning of safer life.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Can you describe what Gaza looks like right now? What is left of the Gaza Strip?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    Gaza now looks almost completely destroyed. Entire neighbor hoods have been live, roads are broken, and water and electricity are near Neal. People live among the rubble or in temporarily tense trying to clean up about life of their homes. Life is extremely hard, but despite the massive destruction, Palestinians continues to show resilience and hope to oblig.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    In our last interview together, we talked about your efforts to get clean water to people in Gaza. Can you remind listeners about those efforts and why they are so important and are you still trying to get water to people now as we speak?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    Yes, I am still working to provide the clean water for the siblings families in Gaza. As water has become extremely scarce and almost sources are either contaminated or salt, I’m currently distributing water tanks to families in camps and shelter, and we are working to expand these offers to reach more areas, especially with the rising temperature and the destruction, the water network.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    What do people in Gaza need most right now and what can people around the world do to help?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    People in Gaza now need water, food, safe shelter, and medical care. Life is extremely difficult. After the destruction and lake of basic services. People around the world can help by supporting trust, humanitarian campaigns, spearing awareness, and brushing for aid, AEs, even small acts of support can make a really different.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Do you have hope that the war will truly end? What dreams do you have for the future of your life, your family, and your country?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    Despite everything we have been through, yes, I still have a great hope that the war will entirely end, because the people of Gaza are excited from ban and destruction and only want to live in peace. I dream of seeing my country free and safe with home being built and instead of destroyed and school filled with children left and instead of the sound of bombs on a personal level, I dream of living a simple, dignified life with my family and begin apply to travel abroad to continue my education so that one day I can return and help replied Gaza with new knowledge and experience.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    As you know man, this podcast is by workers and for workers. Do you have any final messages that you want to send from Gaza to working people around the world after you’ve endured two years of genocide?

    Mohamed Abu Tawila:

    My message to workers everywhere is one of resilience and unity from Gaza. I say to you, you know what hard works means and what it means to keep standing despite span and laws Here, we continue life with the same hands that replied among the rebel. Just as you build a better world with efforts and never, I ask you to never forget Gaza and to keep rising your voice for justice and freedom because workers everywhere share the same dream, to live with dignity and bees and to see the fruit of their hard work in a better future for the children.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to send my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks to Mohamed Abu Tawila for giving us these critical updates from Gaza and for everything he and others are doing to provide mutual aid to their fellow Palestinians in need. Again, if you want to learn more about those mutual aid efforts, follow the links that we’ve provided in the show notes to this episode, and of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for continuing to care about this. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People, and if you can’t wait that long, then please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle, and that includes dozens of documentary reports from Gaza and the occupied West Bank that we published in just the last two years alone. I beg you, please watch them, please share them. Please help us get these stories out there to as many people as possible. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Israeli Lawyer Resigns for Leaking Video of Sexual Abuse of Palestinian Prisoner

    Israel’s top military lawyer has resigned after taking responsibility for the leak of a horrific video showing the sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner by Israeli guards, after the military launched a investigation into the leak this week. The military announced on Wednesday that it was opening a criminal probe into the leak in order to seek out and punish those responsible…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • EXCLUSIVE: dozens of Jewish people sign letter supporting persecuted Dr Rahmeh Aladwan

    Dozens of British Jewish people have signed a statement of support for NHS medic Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, who has been relentlessly targeted by the Starmer regime and Israel lobby for raids, arrests, harassment and prosecution, along with attempts to remove her medical licence – and by the Israel lobby with threats of violence and murder.

    Dr Rahmeh Aladwan: now receiving support from Jewish people

    The Starmer regime has specifically targeted Dr Rahmeh Aladwan for describing Zionism as ‘Jewish supremacy’, a description that can hardly be said to be inaccurate given the existence of Israel as an apartheid ethnostate busily stealing more land from its non-Jewish neighbours, and which certainly does not apply to non-Zionists. It has has been used by academics, media and think-tanks to describe the Zionist ideology – and fascist Israeli ministers like Bezalel Smotrich have even said that international law is for gentiles and does not apply to the ‘chosen people’.

    And many British Jews agree. In the first few hours it has been available, dozens have signed a public statement supporting Dr Rahmeh Aladwan and condemning the state’s persecution of her and the Islamophobic actions of UK PM Keir Starmer, his shiny Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the General Medical Council. The statement reads:

    Statement in Support of Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, the British-Palestinian Doctor Who is Being Persecuted by the General Medical Council and Wes Streeting

    We the undersigned, being Jewish or of Jewish origin, wish to protest at the abusive actions and discriminatory treatment that a British-Palestinian doctor, Rahmeh Aladwan, has experienced at the hands of the General Medical Council and the Secretary of State for Health & Care, Wes Streeting MP.

    Dr Radwan was first referred by the GMC to a hearing of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) on 27 August, because of comments that she had made which they deemed anti-Semitic. The MPTS found that there was no case to answer.

    Immediately Streeting made threats of legal action if the decision was not reversed. Instead of ignoring Streeting’s threats and bluster the GMC re-referred Dr Aladwan to the MPTS on 3 October and a hearing was scheduled for 27 October.

    In the meantime Dr Aladwan was arrested by the Metropolitan Police [MPS] on 25 October. Among the allegations were ‘incitement to racial hatred’ by calling for the eradication of the State of Israel at a demonstration outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on 21st July.

    Since when is it anti-Semitic to call for the eradication of an Apartheid state be it in South Africa or Israel/Palestine? Was the eradication of the Nazi state anti-German?

    We wish to state that we are opposed to the weaponisation of anti-Semitism against critics of the Israeli state and its genocide in Gaza. This ‘Labour’ government under Keir Starmer has deliberately set out to associate Jews in Britain with the genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza. We consider that that is anti-Semitic.

    When Starmer stated that banning violent Tel Aviv Maccabi fans from an Aston Villa football game was the equivalent of banning British Jews he gave the game away. Starmer has supported Israel’s genocide every inch of the way in the past two years whilst engaging in genocide denial. He turned a blind eye to the racist chants of Maccabi fans such as ‘Death to the Arabs’, ‘There are no school in Gaza because there are no children left’ and ‘We will take your girls, when we rape them we will shout today is death!’. Anti-Palestinian racism is of no concern to Starmer.

    We are sick and tired of Jews being used by racist politicians such as Starmer and Streeting as an excuse to continue to support the genocide of Palestinians and Israeli war crimes. Those who use Jews in this way are themselves anti-Semitic.

    We urge the MPTS to uphold its decision of 25 September that Dr Aladwan had no case to answer and to refuse to be intimidated by threats from the government or the Zionist lobby.

    This does not mean that we agree with everything that Dr Rahmeh has said. However as someone who has lost friends and family in Gaza, Rahmeh is entitled to freedom of speech without the interference of Starmer’s Thought Police in the MPS. Given their abysmal record, the Metropolitan Police are in no position to accuse others of racism.

    The statement’s author, Brighton-based Jewish anti-genocide campaigner Tony Greenstein, said of Dr Rahmeh Aladwan:

    Given that the pretext for striking her off the medical register is that old hoary chestnut ‘anti-Semitism’ I am asking Jewish people or people of Jewish origin to sign the statement here.

    Please share and if you know other Jewish people who may be willing to sign please ask them.

    Please do NOT sign it if you are not Jewish or of Jewish origin.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Belfast campaigner found not guilty of criminal damage over BDS stickers

    The British state’s attempts to crack down on pro-Palestine campaigning suffered another blow on Thursday 30 October, as an activist from the BDS Belfast group was acquitted on charges of criminal damage. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a Palestinian-led campaign to weaken the economy of so-called ‘Israel’. The alleged offence took place at the West Belfast Kennedy Centre branch of Sainsbury’s in April 2024. The retailer accused activist Martin Rafferty of damaging a SodaStream box by placing on it a sticker featuring the Palestine flag and the words ‘Boycott Israeli Apartheid’. The group’s goal is to raise awareness that the purchase of anything made in the criminal settler-colony funds the regime’s ongoing crimes of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

    SodaStream is one such item made in the illegitimate Zionist state, where its factory in the Naqab desert has been linked to displacing Bedouin communities from their land. In a complaint raised with the Advertising Standards Agency by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) on behalf of BDS Belfast, the legal campaigners pointed out the false claims on SodaStream packaging, asserting that the product is made by “Jews and Arabs working side-by-side in peace and harmony.” This is clearly an absurd boast for a company benefiting from an apartheid state committing genocide against ‘Arabs’, or Palestinians as they ought to be called.

    BDS actions uphold the law; they don’t break it

    BDS Belfast have argued that the matter should never have been brought to court in the first place, given that they are upholding international law by attempting to prevent the funding of war crimes. Instead, retailers should be facing prosecution for their role in funnelling money to the terrorist Israeli Occupation Forces. Taxes taken by the settler-colony’s government from companies based there are used to fund its military.

    ICJP campaigners have already taken steps to warn major supermarkets of their potential complicity. Some, such as the Coop, have already ended all trade with ‘Israel’. BDS Belfast has previously been part of a successful campaign in Ireland that prompted Lidl to stop stocking products made on stolen Palestinian land.

    The already ridiculous judicial hounding of the Belfast activists descended into even greater farce today, as the prosecution’s main witness failed to show. A Sainsbury’s manager gave a statement claiming that Rafferty had damaged the SodaStream box, causing £110 in damage. He had requested to appear behind a screen, claiming potential risk to his safety.

    Once again today, the BDS Belfast legal team dismissed this argument. The activist group’s standard form of action is to remove Israeli products from shelves and sticker them symbolically, something they have done at least once a day in Sainsbury’s and local Home Bargains stores for over 18 months. Barrister Conor O’Kane pointed out that, given this frequency, they would have encountered the manager possibly 100s of times, and no threatening behaviour towards him was ever observed.

    Non-existent prosecution case collapses into farce in Belfast

    The magistrate inexplicably gave the prosecution two hours to compile some actual evidence, now that their only witness was AWOL —an optimistic decision given the scantness of the proof compiled over the last year since the case was brought. Frantic ringing of Sainsbury’s ensued, as the desperate state legal team attempted to cobble together something to enhance their threadbare material.

    After two hours, they returned empty-handed, but then had the gall to ask the magistrate for an adjournment. A visibly angry O’Kane castigated the prosecution for the request, pointing out how long-winded the matter had already been, with 11 court appearances in this case and a related one involving two other BDS Belfast activists. He insisted the opposing legal team’s persistence signalled a politically motivated case against Palestine activists, pointing out that had the sticker been, for example, a Manchester United one, the matter would never have been dragged out to this extent, or even reached court to begin with.

    The magistrate was left with no option but to conclude the trial on the same day, rather than waste more public money on a matter that has likely cost tens of thousands of pounds haranguing anti-genocide campaigners. With the prosecution unable to provide a witness and no means of linking Rafferty to the alleged damage, the non-existent case collapsed, and the magistrate returned a not guilty verdict. A jubilant gallery of 20 supporters erupted in delight, with shouts of “free Palestine” and “justice for the children of Palestine” called out, before security intervened.

    Speaking outside and flanked by solicitor Aiden Carlin and a crowd bearing Palestine flags and keffiyehs, Rafferty said:

    Sainsbury’s, the judiciary, and the police… were adamant they wanted a conviction today. They wanted a sentence to stop what is spreading, not just in Belfast, Ireland, and Britain, but globally. People are taking matters into their own hands by running the boycott campaign, which is one of the few things putting pressure on the Israelis.

    Irish unions must match their counterparts in Italy and Spain

    He went on to express solidarity and sympathy with the Sainsbury’s manager, pointing out how workers and activists can work together to get blood-stained Israeli rubbish out of shops:

    We know the pressure the manager was under; we see the position he was put in—he’s a worker, just like us. And those at the top, they didn’t come into court today to defend their ethical policies or their procurement policies or why they’re funding the genocide in Palestine.

    He also called on unions to back workers, as IDATU did in the 1980s when it urged its staff to cease handling South African products:

    Get behind the workers now! The time is now to show leadership, not to wait and see what the workers are doing.

    The Belfast activist encouraged those unions to match the deeds of comrades in Italy and Spain, who have brought their nations to a standstill with massive general strikes for Palestine. He concluded by pushing Palestine activists to get involved with similar actions to those done by BDS Belfast, and to rid supermarkets of Israeli items. The Six Counties campaign group have placed a particular focus on Home Bargains, due to its extensive range of Zionist tat.

    Though the group has never ceased its actions despite looming prosecutions, the verdict is likely to deliver a shot in the arm to a growing campaign. As similar actions spread throughout the world, an already collapsing Zionist economy will find it increasingly complex to sustain its colonial ambitions.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • US ambassador Mike Waltz was just humiliated in front of the UN

    A day after Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon was humiliated by the UN’s human rights expert Francesca Albanese, it was US ambassador Mike Waltz’s turn – this time at the hands of Cuba’s dignified foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez.

    Mike Waltz: humiliated

    Rodríguez raised a simple point of order, accusing Mike Waltz of lying to the UN General Assembly and insulting its dignity by lying about Cuba’s influence and activities as he attempted to argue against a UN resolution to lift US sanctions on Cuba.

    After it, Waltz was not permitted to continue speaking, and the assembled nations voted massively in favour of the resolution to end the embargo, with 165 of the UN’s 193 member states supporting it – the US mission to the UN could only publish the speech he would have given in an attempt to mask Waltz’s humiliation and the world’s condemnation:

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Sainsbury’s BDS sticker activists found not guilty in preposterous trial

    On Thursday 30 October, three Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Zionist activists were found not guilty of criminal damage after charges brought in a dragged-out case by the state were dismissed. The BDS activists from Belfast were charged with the offences for putting stickers on SodaStream products in Sainsbury’s – warning customers the product was Israeli, and therefore complicit in genocide.

    However, the result appears to have been largely ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media. Marty Rafferty, one of the accused, spoke to cheering supporters afterwards:

    Sainsbury’s and the state: preposterous

    The BDS Belfast group said in a statement:

    Today was the final day of a long running attempt by Sainsbury’s, the police and justice system to put an end to an extremely effective form of direct action that highlights Sainsbury’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

    An activist from BDS Belfast had been charged with criminal damage for placing boycott stickers on soda stream boxes in the store 16 months ago. In that time other activists have faced similar charges and many more have received banning orders from Sainsbury’s to try and prevent activists continuing the campaign of making customers and staff aware of Sainsbury’s complicity in the genocide.

    Time and again the police have attempted to harass and intimidate activists, both in the Sainsbury’s store and at activist’s homes. The justice system has consistently attempted to undermine our defence team by making decisions regarding the case without consulting our legal team, constantly adjourning the case, 11 mentions in court over a period of 16 months.

    Unheard of in such a low level charge and then today allowing the only prosecution witness to give their testimony behind a screen and then, when the witness refuses to come to court not once, but 3 times, the judge allowed the witness statement to stand.

    It is only in very extreme cases that a witness can give their testimony behind a screen and virtually unheard of for judge to accept the testimony if the witness refuses to turn up at court. All these tactics have not stopped our activists from continuing the campaign for the same reason that the state has deployed such draconian measures to try and stop our campaign.

    THE REASON IS THIS. Because the campaign is working and the campaign is spreading!

    Farmers and producers of goods in the Zionist “state” have reported how their products are being rejected for sale throughout Europe, and how importers throughout Europe are being told by their customers that they don’t want any goods from Israel because they don’t want protests in their stores.

    That is as a direct result of the actions we take here in Belfast and others throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and throughout Europe take as part of the wider BDS campaign.

    The Starmer regime and the UK state continue to wage a ‘lawfare’ war against support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s genocide. As BDS Belfast note, that is because it works – damaging the finances of colluding businesses and shredding the public image of collaborator politicians like Starmer and their Israeli sponsors, along with that of the whole Zionist project.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Video: anti-Zionist Jews burn Israel flag in Jerusalem

    Anti-Zionist Jews have burned the Israeli flag at the Sabbath Square intersection in Jerusalem to remind the world that, despite the antisemitic efforts of the Israel lobby and its allies or servants to equate the two, Zionism is not Judaism:

     

    Israel is a terror state and even some of its own citizens recognise it.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Chris Hedges Report: Is Israel ‘On The Brink?’

    Despite the demoralization and destruction produced by Israel’s two-year-long genocidal campaign on the Palestinians, Israel potentially finds itself at its weakest point in its short history.

    In his new book, Israel on the Brink, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé makes the case that Israel’s current path forward is unsustainable. With a combination of domestic, political, military and international pressures, Israel will continue to destabilize.

    Pappé writes, “A potential fall of Israel could either be like the end of South Vietnam, the total erasure of a state, or like South Africa, the fall of a particular ideological regime and its replacement by another. I believe that in the case of Israel, elements of both scenarios will unfold sooner than many of us can comprehend or prepare for.”

    The post Chris Hedges Report: Is Israel ‘On The Brink?’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel’s Repeated Ceasefire Violations Are Part Of Its Strategy

    The Israeli army announced that a soldier in Rafah had been killed by gunfire on Tuesday. Before the source of the gunfire could be confirmed, Netanyahu blamed it on Hamas, and gave the order for the army to launch “powerful strikes” on Gaza. The resumption of the Israeli bombing campaign killed over 100 people, 46 of whom were children, and 20 of whom were women, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health on Wednesday.

    Hamas released a statement saying it had nothing to do with the incident and that it remained fully committed to the ceasefire agreement in all areas. Nevertheless, the Israeli army carried out the attacks across several locations in Gaza. An army statement later said that Israeli forces had struck “30 terrorists holding command positions” in the Strip.

    The post Israel’s Repeated Ceasefire Violations Are Part Of Its Strategy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Francesca Albanese Names Over 60 States Complicit In Gaza Genocide

    The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told the General Assembly on 28 October that 63 countries, including key western and Arab states, have fueled or were complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza.

    Speaking remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, Albanese presented her 24-page report, ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime,’ which she said documents how states armed, financed, and politically protected Tel Aviv as Gaza’s population was “bombed, starved, and erased” for over two years.

    Her findings place the US at the center of Israel’s war economy, accounting for two-thirds of its weapons imports and providing diplomatic cover through seven UN Security Council vetoes.

    The post Francesca Albanese Names Over 60 States Complicit In Gaza Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Arms Firm Secures UK Ban On Palestine Protests

    A U.S. arms firm has launched legal action against pro-Palestine activists in Britain, it can be revealed.

    Court documents show Moog, which makes military aircraft parts and has links to Israel’s arms trade, applied for an injunction in September to prevent protests at its U.K. sites.

    The application, which was granted by the High Court, sought to stop “persons unknown” who “for the purpose of protest enter occupy or remain on” the firm’s facilities across Britain.

    Moog returned to court earlier this month and obtained a wider injunction to cover interference with “access to or egress from that land and premises.”

    This means protesters are barred from blocking traffic around entrances and exits and face risk of arrest on public land adjacent to the company’s sites.

    The post US Arms Firm Secures UK Ban On Palestine Protests appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel launches probe over Sde Teiman prison rape — but only to find the whistleblower

    Israel’s military has announced a ‘criminal probe’ over incidents of torture and rape by guards and soldiers at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp. The prison camp, where hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are held without charge and where torture, sexual torture and rape have been reported by the United Nations as common, with numerous abductees dying from their injuries. But the authorities are not investigating the abuse.

    Instead, they are trying to find out – and charge – who leaked a video showing the gang-rape of an abductee last year, according to Israeli media.

    Sde Teiman prison investigation

    Israeli paper Haaretz reports that the investigation:

    focuses on suspicions that the video – showing IDF soldiers allegedly abusing a detained Palestinian – was leaked by associates of the military advocate general. According to the IDF, “Involvement of elements in the Military Prosecutor’s Office is being examined.

    IDF Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi has been put on forced leave “pending further clarification of details in the matter.

    The Zionist regime’s response is reminiscent of the reaction of then-new Labour party leader Keir Starmer who, when a leaked report exposed extensive racism, misogyny, abuse, rigging and theft by senior Labour staff, promptly ordered an investigation, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds and then later an even more expensive and ultimately abandoned court case. Into who leaked the report.

    Nothing was done about the racism, misogyny, abuse, rigging and theft except to commission a report Starmer and his acolytes then ignored.

    An Israeli court sentenced a single IDF soldier to seven months in prison and a demotion for his part in the torture exposed by the video. Five others were charged but have still not been convicted and their lawyers are trying to have the cases quashed.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Dear Western media – ‘Israel’ killing scores of Palestinians is definitely a ceasefire violation

    The Zionist land theft project, referred to by its backers as ‘Israel’, engaged in its most brazen truce violation yet on October 28, killing over 100 Palestinians including at least 35 children. In response, Western mainstream media violated the English language, coming up with ever more inventive ways to redefine the established meaning of entirely straightforward concepts like ‘ceasefire’. ‘Israel’ tends to define this as “you cease, and we fire”, and the likes of the Guardian have now put their own unique spin on the word.

    In a headline that has since changed, but stayed up for around 24 hours from the moment the Zionist entity commenced its heaviest bombing since the so-called truce of October 10, they declared:

    ‘Ceasefire’ usually means the fire ceases

    The conventional definition of the word would mean all parties stop attacking, but apparently 104 Palestinians massacred isn’t quite enough for the Guardian to see this as a breach of the deal. Rather, it’s just merely putting it at risk. Who knows what it might take to cause an actual violation in the paper’s eyes – 500 Palestinians dead? 1000? Or maybe it’s when Hamas fails to sift through several million tonnes of rubble in a couple of weeks to find and return the remains of Israeli prisoners.

    That certainly seems to be the view of the Independent, happy to lead with the Israeli verdict that a “violation of [the] ceasefire” has occurred. CBS have been content to do likewise. This, of course, is well worn territory for these outlets and their peers. In a report into media bias since the Trump backed peace plan came into effect, FAIR inform us that:

    …the Israeli military reportedly killed at least 97 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 230, violating the ceasefire agreement no fewer than 80 times.

    They recount the “passive headlines” that followed massive Zionist bombardment of Gaza on October 19 that killed dozens, with the Guardian again being a culprit, simply reporting it as “Strikes Hit Gaza After Truce Violations Alleged”. Articles the day after in NBC News and ABC News describe the ceasefire as “fragile” and “delicate” respectively, despite the fact that it had obviously been dramatically broken by Netanyahu’s regime. Similar passive language was used to describe the latest killing spree, with a headline from AP News reading:

    Israel’s military says ceasefire is back on as death toll from overnight strikes in Gaza reaches 104

    Passive headlines hide the culprit — Zionists

    Like the Guardian headline, no attribution for the strikes is given, as if this sudden bombardment was just an unfortunate natural disaster rather than a deliberate act of collective punishment against a civilian population. The piece goes on to engage in the journalistic failing we’ve all become accustomed to – simply reporting what both sides say with no actual attempt to determine the truth or provide context:

    The bombardment pointed to Israel’s readiness to strike hard at what it says are Hamas violations of the ceasefire deal. Meanwhile the militant group denies it is responsible and blames Israel for violations.

    Proper practice in this case would mean firstly treating Zionist claims with extreme scepticism, given their well-documented history of lies. It would also involve acknowledging the extremely challenging task Hamas has in retrieving bodies to meet the terms of the ceasefire – terms which set no timeframe for completing the work. They instead refer simply to the:

    …establishment of an information-sharing mechanism between the two sides through the mediators and the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] to exchange information and intelligence on any remaining deceased hostages that were not retrieved within the [first] 72 hours…

    Lastly, it would factor in the different incentives at play. Hamas, after two years of genocide, were clearly eager to accept a truce, even one with very unfavourable terms that call for the group’s dismantling. They have no motivation to collapse the agreement. For Netanyahu, continuation of the war keeps him out of jail, pleases a society lost to genocidal fervour and satiates the bloodlust of his coalition partners. He thus has every incentive to falsely claim Hamas violations at every opportunity, and recommence the slaughter.

    BBC serve up an extended gaslighting session

    For their part, the BBC’s timeline of the carnage unleashed by Zionist butchers on Tuesday acts like a prolonged gaslighting session, so riddled is it with tortured dissembling about what actually happened. It starts with us being prepped to understand that the mass murder of children we’re about to see is for a very good reason, as we’re told that:

    Israel says coffin from Hamas did not contain another hostage’s body

    Then we learn:

    Israel accuses Hamas of ‘deception plot’

    They go on to tell us of the horrifying case of Amar, paralysed by Israeli fire. Not to worry though, as he was simply “hit by a stray bullet fired by an Israeli drone”, certainly not deliberately targeted as countless Gazan children have been by snipers and quadcopters. Next we get a word from the “Hamas-run health ministry“, who certainly sound very untrustworthy, despite their stats likely underestimating the death toll. Moving on, we’re again schooled that a ceasefire doesn’t actually mean ceasing fire, as long as it’s Zionists bombing kids. Instead, it’s once again merely “fragile“, rather than being smashed into a million shards:

    Israeli air strikes hit Gaza as tensions rise over fragile ceasefire

    We get a word in from serial liar US Vice-President JD Vance, who helpfully reminds us that, as bombs rain down on innocents:

    The ceasefire is holding. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.

    Israeli soldier killed by… who knows, just start the bombing

    With crystal clear command of the facts, the second most powerful man in the world informs us that:

    We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an Israeli military soldier.

    So Hamas, or somebody else, possibly Santa Claus or the Loch Ness monster, attacked an armed thug who has no right to be in Gaza in the first place. The important thing is, something happened to a Zionist genocidaire, and that means we must have swift re-establishment of the principle that one land thief’s life is worth 100 of the indigenous population.

    We do get a quick word from Turkey, who say ‘Israel’ is openly violating the ceasefire agreement. That’s just Turkey’s opinion of course, not at all a straightforward fact the BBC could declare themselves. Thankfully, normal service is resumed with the final post of the night, as we’re once again reminded of the Zionist narrative:

    Israel strikes Gaza after accusing Hamas of ceasefire violations

    Not bad for a single evening’s work, even if it doesn’t top any of the greatest hits produced by our crusading, speaking-truth-to-power, universally loved media class.

    One might think that after two years of having dismembered Palestinian children strewn across their social media feeds, journos would have woken up to who the baddies actually are. Whether it’s racism, the concentrated ownership of media by right-wing billionaires, the Zionist lobby or all of the above, they seemingly remain unmoved.

    In times where existential threats and reality bending AI make truth more important than ever, the very people meant to use language to inform us instead unceasingly abuse it to mislead us.

    Featured image via Unbiasthenews

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel launches deadly West Bank airstrike — its first in nine months

    In what was the first airstrike by the Israeli regime in the occupied West Bank in nine months, three Palestinians were killed Tuesday morning, October 28.

    ‘Israel’s’ security forces used a combination of bullets and bombardment to carry out the killings, which took place in the village of Kafr Qud, west of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank. Afterward, they sent in military reinforcements and surrounded nearby farmland. Israeli media reported that snipers killed two men in a cave, while another man was killed when an airstrike hit a vehicle. The resulting explosion set fire to surrounding farmland and olive trees.

    Israel’s first West Bank airstrike in nine months

    The IOF, which took away the bodies of the martyred Palestinians, said it had targeted “a terrorist cell that had planned an attack and was linked to a terrorist network based in the Jenin refugee camp.”

    The victims, all in their 20s, were named as Abdullah Mohammed Omar Jalamneh, Qais Ibrahim Mohammed Albaytawi, and Ahmed Azmi Aref Nasharti.

    Defence Minister Israel Katz praised the targeted killings, warning that “any attempt by terrorist organisations to rebuild their infrastructure in Judea and Samaria will be crushed with an iron fist.”

    In a statement, Hamas said:

    This crime represents the bloody policy of occupation and its dangerous escalation in the West Bank — a desperate attempt to subjugate our people and break their will, which will never be achieved no matter the brutality of the occupation.

    Since January 2025, there has been a major military offensive against Palestinian refugee camps in both Jenin and Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, forcibly displacing 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. Moreover, these raids are part of wider IOF operations in the occupied West Bank, which have escalated dramatically since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza and serve as collective punishment of the Palestinian population. Violent settler attacks have also intensified to unprecedented levels since October 2023.

    West Bank airstrikeWest Bank airstrike

    Featured image via REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Former Mossad chief: we’ve planted ‘manipulated equipment’ all over the world

    Israeli fanatic and genocide-denier ‘journalist’ Jake Wallis Simons interviewed Yossi Cohen, former director of Israeli intelligence group Mossad, about Israel’s exploding pager attack on Lebanon last year that killed and maimed thousands of people, including children.

    Cohen boasted about being the inventor of the “manipulated equipment method” and that Israel already used it years before in Lebanon. Horrifically, he said that Israel has planted similar devices in “all countries that you can imagine”. Cohen and his interviewers chuckled at what fun this is:

    Unsurprisingly, this sickening revelation from the former Mossad chief has gone barely noticed in mainstream media.

    Worst blunt rotation

    Also in the studio was Wallis Simons’s co-host – none other than Andrew Fox, the ‘Aston Villa fan’ who claimed earlier this month to be honorary chair of a non-existent “Jewish Villans” supporters club so that he could tour UK TV studios arguing that West Midlands Police’s decision to ban violent, racist thugs – supposedly ‘fans’ – from attending Israeli football Maccabi Tel Aviv’s match with Villa in November.

    As well as his stint as editor of libel-rag The Jewish Chronicle and his genocide denial, Wallis Simons is known as writer of ‘Israelophobia’, a 2023 book in which he claims that hatred of Israel’s apartheid, colonialism and oppression of the Palestinian people is “the newest version” of antisemitism.

    Featured image via X

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Right To Resist Is The Right Of The People!

    Just days after the Zionist entity of “Israel” signed the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, numerous violations were already reported, including the firing on civilians, the blocking of the full amount of daily aid convoys promised, and failure to withdraw soldiers from all areas stipulated in the ceasefire. After two years of outright genocide and over 75 years of an openly racist settler colonial regime enacting apartheid law, there is little to be surprised about regarding “Israel’s” behavior.

    The question is not why “Israel” has repeatedly violated its own agreements and international law, as that is to be expected from a rogue entity committing genocide.

    The post The Right To Resist Is The Right Of The People! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Palestine Solidarity In US Labor Will Come From The Rank And File

    As Israel’s genocide in Gaza intensified in late 2023, a small number of U.S. labor unions began calling for a ceasefire. Others soon joined in, and many also started calling for a halt of military support to Israel. For many union members, statements didn’t go far enough, so they formed new national networks or pushed their unions to divest from Israel. Some even went on strike.

    Pro-Palestine organizing within U.S. unions is not new, but the breadth of criticism of Israel’s actions and sympathy with Palestinians coming out of the labor movement may have signaled a shift away from U.S. labor’s historic support for the Zionist movement and the State of Israel

    The post Palestine Solidarity In US Labor Will Come From The Rank And File appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israeli soldier denied entry into Prague — airport detains murderer

    Authorities at Prague airport detained an Israeli soldier who actively helped the terrorist state commit genocide. Israeli soldier denied entry into the Czech Republic after a 15-hour detention.

    According to ynet Global, the man travelled to Prague with his wife “after months of reserve duty.” Or, in other words, after months of murdering innocent Palestinians. Hilariously, he also claimed they ‘treated him like a criminal.’ Funny that.

    In the end, the couple had to pay for their own return tickets and lost their holiday.

    Reports suggest he was denied entry to the Schengen Area after French authorities issued a well-earned criminal alert against him in the Schengen Information System. Authorities put them through 15 hours of questioning before deportation to Israel.

    Israeli soldier denied entry: No safe haven for war criminals.

    He claimed:

    I don’t understand why we’re being deported or what I supposedly did that led to this kind of ‘warning’ against me.

    These people are so far removed from reality that they don’t realise that committing genocide might raise the occasional red flag when travelling internationally.

    The Schengen zone prevents travel for individuals with certain criminal records, including drug trafficking and murder. While the Schengen criteria don’t explicitly include ‘war crimes’ or ‘genocide’ in black and white. But anyone with a brain can put two and two together.

    He also tried to suggest that someone had stolen his identity and used it to commit serious crimes. Again, did murdering babies slip his mind?

    Earlier this month, British lawyers said that British courts can now try and jail Brits who served in Israel’s genocide, under the Foreign Enlistment Act. This is thanks to the UK finally recognising the Palestinian state. However, the law cannot be applied retrospectively. This means that those who have served in the IDF over the two years prior to September will effectively get away scot-free.

    Declassified UK have previously reported that 80 Brits were serving in the Israeli military on 7 October 2023. This raises questions about a future in which the UK will have baby-murdering ex-IDF soldiers roaming the streets.

    It’s sickening that IDF soldiers feel such entitlement for their little autumn holiday, after trapping 2 million Palestinians in Gaza while they’ve besieged it into oblivion

    Now, if a certain British prime minister could stop inviting violent Israeli thugs and war criminals into the UK, that would be great.

    Feature image via Associated Press/YouTube

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UNRWA sounds the alarm as Israel blocks medicine — the world hits snooze

    The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned of an impending humanitarian disaster in Gaza after Israeli occupation authorities blocked shipments of life-saving medicines from entering the besieged territory for more than two years.

    The agency said in a statement that thousands of wounded and sick people in Gaza are suffering from psychological trauma and chronic injuries that have changed the course of their lives, while its health centres face a severe shortage of essential medical supplies — leading to an increasing number of preventable deaths.

    UNRWA: Every hour of delay costs lives

    UNRWA said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that dozens of trucks loaded with vital medicines remain stranded at the crossing, awaiting permission to enter.

     

    Despite these challenges, UNRWA continues to provide health services across various areas of the Strip, with the number of medical consultations provided since the start of the war exceeding 15 million — even as its staff are working in conditions it has described as “almost impossible.”

    The agency called for the immediate admission of medical and humanitarian supplies, stressing that restricting the entry of aid constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law and threatens the lives of thousands of civilians — especially children, the sick, and older people.

    UNRWA concluded its statement by emphasising that the continued prevention of aid would lead to:

    a complete collapse of the health system in Gaza,’ calling on the international community to take urgent action to pressure the occupying authorities to open the crossings and allow the entry of medicines without restrictions or conditions.

    UNRWA’s alarm isn’t just about medicine — it’s about a world watching a preventable collapse unfold in real time, and choosing not to act.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • AIPAC donations scandal: secret funding links uncovered by US journalist

    Investigative work by a US journalist and campaigner has exposed a new tactic of the US–Israel lobby AIPAC to disguise the funding it donates to politicians to ‘encourage’ them to support Israel and attack its critics.

    AIPAC has a new tactic

    Journalist Matthew Eadie said earlier this month that he had analysed hundreds of donations — often massive — to US politicians and identified a pattern in which donations were made to politicians previously supported directly by AIPAC, the biggest and most influential US–Israel lobby group, but which are now being made through individuals tied to AIPAC instead, allowing politicians to appear to be at arm’s length:

    Then, last week, Eadie posted emails that showed AIPAC using a ‘hidden webpage’ and hidden donation pages that appeared to have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to “pro-Israel front-runner” Laura Fine and other candidates and incumbents:

    Shady websites

    Eadie then notes that the homepage of the website AIPAC was pushing (archive) has now been inactivated, but that the donations pages to the pro-Israel politicians are still active — and that AIPAC has not responded to his enquiries:

    AIPAC

    “what’s also clear is that donors are being sent this link from AIPAC driving donations without any transparency of that happening.”

    Matthew Eadie

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Popular left activist ‘GenXGirl’ then took Eadie’s research and ran with it, using it to dig into the donations given to Israel-fanatic black politician Hakeem Jeffries. She said that:

    Using 3 campaigns for Hakeem Jeffries’ (aka AIPAC Shakur), I created a graphic to help you understand how the secret campaigns are structured & why you won’t be able to see AIPAC in FEC filings but AIPAC will still be able to track donations through unique IDs and show candidates how much their network has donated to buy pro-Israel votes.

    Her resulting graphic speaks volumes:

    AIPACAIPAC’s tactics in response to the hate millions of Americans feel toward Israel because of the Gaza genocide are reminiscent of the way in which Keir Starmer’s handlers — and Starmer himself — hid donations from Israel lobbyists in the run-up to, and during, the Labour party leadership election. Starmer’s faction knew most Labour members would not touch Starmer with the proverbial barge pole if they knew how his and his supporters’ funding was coming from many of the same people who funded the antisemitism scam used to sabotage former party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

    The scandal of the alleged criminality of the decision not to declare donations as required by law is covered in Paul Holden’s explosive new book The Fraud, which is being serialised by The Canary. Labour Together, the pro-Israel group that hid huge donations from Israel lobbyists, responded to Holden’s book by setting private investigators onto him to try to dig up dirt.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Living Amid Bombs and Bloodshed, Painters in Gaza Hold Steadfast to Their Craft

    Despite the horror and brutality of life under the relentless torture of occupation, the world is astonished that Gazans still hold on to hope. We create hope for others when we insist on believing that Gaza can rise again from the rubble, even as we hear the sounds of bombardment destroying our homes, snatching the lives of our loved ones, and shattering our dreams. Painter Frans Al-Salmi…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Report says Israel committing genocide — world urged to act

    An independent international commission of inquiry established by the United Nations has urged member states to use all available legal and diplomatic means to maintain the ceasefire in Gaza. Member states are to provide broad support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state according to the UN report.

    UN report accuses Israel of genocide and names top officials as inciters

    The commission, formed by the Human Rights Council, submitted its report on Tuesday to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, which deals with social, humanitarian, and human rights issues. The findings, initially published on September 16, accuse Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    The report states that Israel carried out four acts that meet the definition of genocide as outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. It also notes that the Israeli president, prime minister, and former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, “publicly incited” the commission of this crime.

    In a recorded video statement, the Chair of the Commission, Navi Pillay, stressed the need for member states to prioritise holding perpetrators of violations accountable by supporting the International Criminal Court’s investigations and applying the principle of universal jurisdiction to pursue those implicated among their dual nationals.

    Pillay added that the recent ceasefire:

    may postpone the implementation of Israel’s territorial objectives in Gaza, but it has not ended the changes it has imposed on the ground.

    And, Pillay noted that statements by Israeli leaders “confirm their continued intention to impose a new demographic reality in the Gaza Strip.”

    UN: Israel pursuing permanent military control and demographic fragmentation of Gaza

    The Commission explained in its report that Israel has sought to impose permanent military control over Gaza, destroying civilian infrastructure and essential resources vital to the population’s survival, while carrying out forced displacement and the geographic fragmentation of the Strip. It also noted that Israeli officials have publicly supported plans for settlement construction and the annexation of territory.

    Pillay concluded by stating that the international community has both a moral and legal obligation to end these grave violations and to “ensure justice and accountability for all Palestinian victims.”

    Featured image via the United Nations

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.