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Category: israel

  • British establishment has sided with Israeli hooligans over UK police and residents

    British politicians and pundits have seemingly decided they’re all pro-hooliganism. They’re not just supporting hooliganism in general, either; they’re supporting the introduction of foreign hooligans who pose a risk to British citizens. The hooligans in question are the ultras of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, and this isn’t the first time the British establishment has attempted to gaslight us on this:


    What the hell is going on in this country that our politicians and political figures are more dedicated to violent foreign hooligans than the truth?

    Israeli Hooligans: A history of violence

    As we reported at the time, Sky News initially reported that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans ran riot in Amsterdam in 2024. 


    Many outlets immediately described the scenes of 70’s style hooliganism as a 30’s style pogrom against Jewish people. And they’re still trying to present that narrative today:


    As we reported yesterday, Keir Starmer himself has stepped in to defend the hooligans. This is despite the police and Birmingham City Council deciding it’s unsafe to invite a roving horde of genocide-supporting nationalists:

    Politics aside, these are football ‘fans’ in the true ‘fanatic’ sense. This isn’t normal behaviour for European games in the 21st century, and British people have no interest in bringing it back:


    So, Birmingham is against it and the broader public are against it.

    But is there someone we forgot to ask?

    The establishment steps in

    Increasingly, British politicians and pundits are on something of an auto-psychotic kamikaze mission to blow up their own reputations. Anyone looking at the facts of this situation can see that there’s an obvious risk to British safety. And yet – and fucking yet – these establishment ghouls are once again trying to say that it’s antisemitism.

    Here’s Sky News getting in on it:

    Here’s ex Liberal Democrat leader and current weirdo Tim Farron talking as if he was in Football Factory:

    Here he is suggesting we should permit Israeli hooliganism in 2025 because we had hooligans of our own half a century ago:


    Good argument, Tim – may be should all drink lead and use mustard gas too?

    Either Farron is incredibly foolish or he thinks his followers are.

    Here’s Frances Coppola highlighting that conflating Israeli hooligans with Jewish people in general is considered antisemitic under the IHRA definition that the establishment pretends to respect:


    Here’s just one of many right-wing pundits who are increasingly losing it because they know the public is no longer buying into their delusions:

    Threats

    These selfish British journalists and politicians are playing an incredibly dangerous game.  If you keep pointing at soldiers carrying out a genocide or hooligans doing hooliganism and saying ‘this is all Jewish people‘, eventually some portion of the public is going to  believe you.

    To be honest, we think they can see what they’re doing, and they just don’t care.

    The antisemitism smear worked well enough for a time, and they’re going to keep pushing it for as long as they can to provide cover for their genocidal Israeli allies.

    Featured image via Quds News Network/X screenshot

     

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel’s Perpetual War Machine Demonstrates That Environmental Warfare Is A Tool

    The zionist ethnostate’s recent pause in hostilities against the people of Gaza due to so-called Phase 1 of President Trump’s 20 Point Gaza Peace Plan has resulted in a collective sigh of relief for many the world over, who have observed and/or have been victims of the ongoing genocidal onslaught that’s pillaged an estimated 70,000 lives, including approximately 20,000 women and children, included the use of starvation as a weapon, and has reduced the Gaza Strip to rubble as critical infrastructure including homes, schools/universities, hospitals and places of worship have all been decimated by the Israel Occupying Force’s (IOF) war machine that has been aided, abetted, and funded by the United States and other Western governments.

    The post Israel’s Perpetual War Machine Demonstrates That Environmental Warfare Is A Tool appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Thousands Of Film Workers Pledge To End Complicity With Genocide

    Despite repression and retaliation, the Gaza genocide has pushed an unprecedented wave of artists across the entertainment industry to back the cultural boycott of Israel.

    In recent months, a wave of artists throughout the entertainment industry has begun speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    The post Thousands Of Film Workers Pledge To End Complicity With Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Gaza, Gas, And The Real Estate Empire Behind Trump’s Deal

    As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas comes into effect, two million Gazans are returning to what is left of their homes. Part of the deal includes a vast prisoner swap, that sees the remaining 20 Israelis captured on October 7, 2023, going back to their homeland, and almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being released from Israeli jails. A further 10,000 remain behind bars, including top political prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti. Israel has also stated that it will not return the remains of hundreds of Palestinians it is holding, sparking intense speculation as to what those corpses would reveal.

    Joining the Behind the Headlines show & MintCast Podcast to discuss the ceasefire, and the increasingly pro-Israel tone of our corporate media, is Aaron Maté. Aaron is an award-winning journalist from Canada.

    The post Gaza, Gas, And The Real Estate Empire Behind Trump’s Deal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Washington’s New War Front To Box In China And Turkiye

    The tripartite alliance between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel is deepening as a security and political nucleus for a broader project aimed at linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and encircling China’s growing influence in West Asia and southern Europe. Turkiye views this alliance as a direct strategic threat to its regional ambitions and national security.

    The post Washington’s New War Front To Box In China And Turkiye appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “No Kings” — Another Chapter in the Quest for an Empire without an Emperor

     

    There are many hyped “No Kings” protests this weekend. They seem fairly clearly a creation of the DNC or some appendage of it.

    They reflect a wretched sentiment I criticized back in 2017 — how many were “In Search of an Empire without an Emperor”:

    When Trump uses military violence in Yemen or Syria, he is lauded by presumed liberals like Van Jones and Fareed Zakaria as presidential.… This leads to a political culture based on loving or hating various political figures.

    It is a case of interesting timing that these protests are taking place after the so-called “ceasefire” finally happened in Gaza.

    The establishment very much wants to stuff people back into their partisan boxes and to eviscerate any notion that decent people on the left and right might build on their revulsion of imperial Israel’s genocide.

    Moreover, I’d not be shocked if “liberals” at these “protests” had signs for more weapons to Ukraine and in defense of John Bolton.

    So, if you do go to these protests, I’d recommend you have a sign denouncing Empire, the duopoly, and/or wear a keffiyeh.

    Protest the protest.

    What is needed is a massive realignment of US politics. We need people breaking out of their partisan boxes, not calcifying in them. This is part of my VotePact.org project, which can upend and make right much of US politics.

    The post “No Kings” — Another Chapter in the Quest for an Empire without an Emperor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The West’s Dehumanization Of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable

    In October 2024, a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

    I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

    I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

    I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the Western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

    I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

    I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset, it dominates headlines for days.

    I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

    I thought about it when all of Western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

    Day after day after day, we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a Western Jew, or any Westerner.

    These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way Western civilization came right out into the cold, harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

    Ours is a profoundly sick society.

    One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the West needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the West from the savage Muslim hordes — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the West.

    But whenever I come across this argument, all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the West if this is what it has become?

    Even if we pretend that these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to Western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

    If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

    These last two years have shown us that Western civilization doesn’t need protection; it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

    The post The West’s Dehumanization Of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth

    [First published by Middle East Eye]

    Ceasefires stick because the two sides in a war have reached military stalemate – or because the incentives for each side in laying down their arms outweigh those of continuing the bloodshed.

    None of this applies in Gaza.

    The past two years in the enclave have been many things. But the one thing they have not been is a war, whatever Western politicians and media wish us to believe.

    Which means the current narrative of a “ceasefire” is as much a lie as the preceding narrative of a “Gaza war”.

    The ceasefire is not “fragile”, as we keep being told. It is non-existent, as evidenced by Israel’s continual violations – from its soldiers continuing to shoot dead Palestinian civilians to its blocking promised aid.

    So what is really going on?

    To understand the “ceasefire” and US President Donald Trump’s even more deluded 20-point “peace plan”, we first need to make sense of what the earlier “war” rhetoric was used to conceal.

    Over the past 24 months, we witnessed something deeply sinister.

    We watched the indiscriminate slaughter of a largely civilian population, already under a 17-year siege, by Israel, a regional military goliath supported and armed by the global military goliath of the United States.

    We watched the erasure of almost every home in Gaza – in what already amounted to a concentration camp for its people.

    Families were forced into makeshift tents, as they had been when they were expelled decades ago at gunpoint from their lands in what is now Israel—but this time they have been exposed to a toxic brew of the rubble-dust of their former homes and the spent materials from many Hiroshimas-worth of bombs dropped on the enclave.

    We watched a captive population being starved for months on end, in what amounted to, on the most generous view, an undisguised policy of collective punishment – a crime against humanity for which the International Criminal Court is pursuing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza have been physically damaged, in addition to their psychological trauma, by a malnourishment that has altered their DNA – damage that will most likely be passed on to future generations.

    We watched Gaza’s hospitals being systematically dismantled, one by one, until the entire health sector was hollowed out, unable to deal with either the flood of wounded or the growing tide of malnourished children.

    We watched large-scale ethnic cleansing operations, in which families – or what was left of them – were driven out of “kill zones” into areas Israel termed “safe zones”, only for those safe zones to quickly turn, undeclared, into new kill zones.

    And as Trump stepped up the pressure for a “ceasefire”, we watched Israel unleash an orgy of violence, destroying as much of Gaza City as it could before the deadline arrived to stop.

    Rhetoric of ‘Gaza war’

    None of this can, or should, be described as a war.

    The United Nations, every major human rights organization in the world, including Israel’s B’Tselem, and the world’s leading body of genocide scholars agree that what has happened in Gaza meets the definition of genocide, as laid out in the UN’s Genocide Convention, ratified by Israel, the US, Britain, and the European Union.

    Nonetheless, Israel and the West’s rhetoric about “war” has been crucial in selling to Western publics an equally dishonest rhetoric of a “ceasefire” and hopes for “peace”.

    The lie of the current ceasefire is a counterpart of the lie about a “Gaza war” narrated to us over the past two years. The framing serves exactly the same purpose: to disguise Israel’s larger goals.

    On Tuesday, in the midst of the “ceasefire”, as the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians were being traded, Israel was killing more Palestinians. The Financial Times was among the media outlets reporting that Israeli soldiers had killed “several” Palestinians that day.

    Earlier, Israeli soldiers posted videos as they pulled out of Gaza City of their torching homes, food supplies, and a vital sewage treatment plant.

    In other words, Israel never had any intention of halting its fire.

    This is a familiar pattern.

    Israel killed at least 170 Palestinians during an earlier “ceasefire” negotiated by Trump, in January, which it then unilaterally ended weeks later so that it could revive the genocide.

    And in Lebanon, where a ceasefire is supposed to have been in force for the past year, overseen by the United States and France, Israel is recorded to have broken its terms more than 4,500 times.

    As former British ambassador Craig Murray observed of the ceasefire period, Israel “has killed hundreds of people, including infants, demolished tens of thousands of homes and annexed five areas of Lebanon”.

    Does anyone imagine Gaza, a tiny territory without an army or the trappings of statehood, will fare any better than Lebanon under an Israeli ceasefire?

    Ceasefire charade

    The ceasefire may be a temporary lull in Israel’s genocidal, two-year assault on Gaza but it does nothing to cease Israel’s decade-long occupation of the Palestinian territories – the inciting cause of the “war”.

    The occupation continues.

    It also does nothing to cease Israel’s system of apartheid rule over Palestinians, judged illegal by the world’s highest court last year.

    Then, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza, and that other states pressure it into such a withdrawal.

    The UN General Assembly gave Israel till last month to honor the ICJ’s ruling. Israel has not just ignored that deadline. Even during the current “ceasefire”, Israeli soldiers continue to be directly stationed in more than half of Gaza.

    Additionally, of course, Israel still controls all of Gaza’s territory at arm’s length through its spy drones, attack drones and fighter jets, surveillance technology, and land and naval blockades.

    It should be a truism that a state bent on genocide has no reason to stop its genocide unless it is forced to do so – by a stronger party.

    Trump has been striding the world stage pretending to be doing just that, strong-arming Israel and Hamas. But only the credulous – and the Western political and media class – fall for this charade.

    The “ceasefire” is not “fragile”. It was set up to fail, not to provide a path to peace. Its real purpose is to provide Israel with a fresh mandate to renew the genocide.

    Dehumanized prisoners

    For decades, Palestinians have been forced to live with a catch-22: damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

    Any resistance to their brutal occupation results in slaughter – or “mowing the lawn”, as Israel terms it – as well as their designation as “terrorists”.

    But a policy of no resistance, as pursued by Mahmoud Abbas’ compliant Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, hangs Palestinians out to dry – living as permanent, dehumanized prisoners under Israeli rule, herded into ever-shrinking reservations while Jewish militias are licensed to build settlements on their land.

    The same kind of bogus “choice” is central to the current “ceasefire”.

    Hamas has got a hostage swap – after thousands of Palestinians were seized off the street (and thousands more will soon be seized to replace them) – while the people of Gaza win a brief respite from Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign. That was the formula for cornering Hamas into approving a ceasefire agreement it knows only too well is primed with tripwires.

    The most obvious is the requirement on Hamas to return the last remaining Israelis held captive in Gaza, including 28 bodies, in exchange for some 2,000 Palestinian hostages in Israel’s prisons. The agreement set a 72-hour timeframe for the exchange.

    Hamas has found it harder to locate the sites of the dead. So far, they have returned 10, though one appears to be non-Israeli.

    The wasteland that is now Gaza has few landmarks to identify the locations of original burial sites. And the mountains of rubble under which the Israelis’ bodies lie – created by the US-supplied bunker-busting bombs Israel dropped that most likely killed them – are almost impossible to move without heavy machinery, sorely lacking in Gaza.

    Even if the sites can be identified and the rubble removed, Hamas may discover that the bodies no longer exist, that they have been vaporized, alongside Palestinian victims, by Israel’s bombs. And of course, there is a further likely problem: some of the bodies may be located in more than half of Gaza, which Israel is still occupying, and Hamas cannot access.

    As the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ultimate neutral arbiter, has conceded, finding the bodies in these circumstances will be a “massive challenge”.

    Another catch-22.

    Notably, though the Western media has happily amplified Israeli claims of Hamas’s bad faith over returning the bodies, as well as the suffering of waiting Israeli families, it has provided little comparable coverage on the condition of the Palestinian bodies returned by Israel.

    The refrigerated corpses arrived at Nasser hospital in Gaza without any form of identification, and with staff there unable to run DNA tests because of the destruction inflicted by Israel on its facilities. Families will have no idea who their loved ones are unless they try to identify them personally.

    That will be a gruesome and distressing task. Doctors noted that the returned bodies were still cuffed and blindfolded, executed with bullets to the head, and with clear signs that they had been tortured before and after their deaths.

    Meanwhile, even before the 72-hour timeframe for the exchange was reached, Israel exploited the delay to renew the starvation of Gaza, restricting aid desperately needed to address the famine it had engineered.

    More ominously, according to Israeli media reports, the US has agreed to a “secret clause” with Israel to allow it to resume its genocidal “war” if Hamas cannot produce all the bodies within the three-day window.

    Double bind

    Then, if Hamas can avoid this tripwire, there is a requirement on the group to lay down its weapons. This is being presented as a precondition for “peace”. But the one certainty is that, even were Hamas to disarm, peace would not be the outcome.

    This week, in his usual style, Trump made undefined threats.

    “If they [Hamas] don’t disarm,” he said, “we will disarm them”. He added that, if the US got involved, “it will happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm.”

    This intentionally puts Hamas and others pursuing armed resistance against Israel’s occupation – a right recognized in international law – in a double bind.

    First, a disarmed population in Gaza will be even more defenseless in the face of Israeli attacks.

    Whatever the rights or wrongs of Hamas’ military strategy, it is hard to ignore the fact that the prolonged toll of fighting on Israeli troops – in terms of psychological trauma and casualty figures – has served as some sort of countervailing pressure.

    Large numbers of Israelis have taken to the streets to oppose Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza – but not, as polls show, because most care about the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinians there.

    Rather, their protests have been driven by concerns about the plight of Israeli captives in Gaza and about the toll on Israeli soldiers.

    Hamas, and many of Gaza’s population, will worry that disarmament would swing the cost-benefit analysis among Israelis even further towards continued genocide. It risks more bloodletting by Israel, not peace.

    Lose-lose conundrum

    Second, Hamas is unlikely to agree to disarm when there are criminal clans, armed and backed by Israel, and some of them linked to the Islamic State, roaming Gaza’s streets.

    Palestinians have long understood that Israel’s ambition is to undermine the Palestinians’ major national liberation movements – whether Hamas or Fatah – by promoting in their place feudal warlords.

    One Palestinian analyst warned me 14 years ago of the dangers of what he referred to as Israel’s plan for the “Afghanistanization” of Gaza and the West Bank.

    Israel’s ultimate divide-and-rule strategy would involve promoting rival clan leaders who focus on protecting their own small fiefdoms and fighting each other, rather than trying to resist the illegal occupation and seek a unified Palestinian state.

    At the height of the genocide, the clans proved how dangerous such a development could be for ordinary Palestinians. Aided by Israel, and with Hamas pinned down in their tunnels, these gangs looted aid trucks, stole aid from weaker families, then took that food for their own families and sold the rest at extortionate prices few could afford. Everyone else starved.

    The post It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth

    [First published by Middle East Eye]

    Ceasefires stick because the two sides in a war have reached military stalemate – or because the incentives for each side in laying down their arms outweigh those of continuing the bloodshed.

    None of this applies in Gaza.

    The past two years in the enclave have been many things. But the one thing they have not been is a war, whatever Western politicians and media wish us to believe.

    Which means the current narrative of a “ceasefire” is as much a lie as the preceding narrative of a “Gaza war”.

    The ceasefire is not “fragile”, as we keep being told. It is non-existent, as evidenced by Israel’s continual violations – from its soldiers continuing to shoot dead Palestinian civilians to its blocking promised aid.

    So what is really going on?

    To understand the “ceasefire” and US President Donald Trump’s even more deluded 20-point “peace plan”, we first need to make sense of what the earlier “war” rhetoric was used to conceal.

    Over the past 24 months, we witnessed something deeply sinister.

    We watched the indiscriminate slaughter of a largely civilian population, already under a 17-year siege, by Israel, a regional military goliath supported and armed by the global military goliath of the United States.

    We watched the erasure of almost every home in Gaza – in what already amounted to a concentration camp for its people.

    Families were forced into makeshift tents, as they had been when they were expelled decades ago at gunpoint from their lands in what is now Israel—but this time they have been exposed to a toxic brew of the rubble-dust of their former homes and the spent materials from many Hiroshimas-worth of bombs dropped on the enclave.

    We watched a captive population being starved for months on end, in what amounted to, on the most generous view, an undisguised policy of collective punishment – a crime against humanity for which the International Criminal Court is pursuing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza have been physically damaged, in addition to their psychological trauma, by a malnourishment that has altered their DNA – damage that will most likely be passed on to future generations.

    We watched Gaza’s hospitals being systematically dismantled, one by one, until the entire health sector was hollowed out, unable to deal with either the flood of wounded or the growing tide of malnourished children.

    We watched large-scale ethnic cleansing operations, in which families – or what was left of them – were driven out of “kill zones” into areas Israel termed “safe zones”, only for those safe zones to quickly turn, undeclared, into new kill zones.

    And as Trump stepped up the pressure for a “ceasefire”, we watched Israel unleash an orgy of violence, destroying as much of Gaza City as it could before the deadline arrived to stop.

    Rhetoric of ‘Gaza war’

    None of this can, or should, be described as a war.

    The United Nations, every major human rights organization in the world, including Israel’s B’Tselem, and the world’s leading body of genocide scholars agree that what has happened in Gaza meets the definition of genocide, as laid out in the UN’s Genocide Convention, ratified by Israel, the US, Britain, and the European Union.

    Nonetheless, Israel and the West’s rhetoric about “war” has been crucial in selling to Western publics an equally dishonest rhetoric of a “ceasefire” and hopes for “peace”.

    The lie of the current ceasefire is a counterpart of the lie about a “Gaza war” narrated to us over the past two years. The framing serves exactly the same purpose: to disguise Israel’s larger goals.

    On Tuesday, in the midst of the “ceasefire”, as the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians were being traded, Israel was killing more Palestinians. The Financial Times was among the media outlets reporting that Israeli soldiers had killed “several” Palestinians that day.

    Earlier, Israeli soldiers posted videos as they pulled out of Gaza City of their torching homes, food supplies, and a vital sewage treatment plant.

    In other words, Israel never had any intention of halting its fire.

    This is a familiar pattern.

    Israel killed at least 170 Palestinians during an earlier “ceasefire” negotiated by Trump, in January, which it then unilaterally ended weeks later so that it could revive the genocide.

    And in Lebanon, where a ceasefire is supposed to have been in force for the past year, overseen by the United States and France, Israel is recorded to have broken its terms more than 4,500 times.

    As former British ambassador Craig Murray observed of the ceasefire period, Israel “has killed hundreds of people, including infants, demolished tens of thousands of homes and annexed five areas of Lebanon”.

    Does anyone imagine Gaza, a tiny territory without an army or the trappings of statehood, will fare any better than Lebanon under an Israeli ceasefire?

    Ceasefire charade

    The ceasefire may be a temporary lull in Israel’s genocidal, two-year assault on Gaza but it does nothing to cease Israel’s decade-long occupation of the Palestinian territories – the inciting cause of the “war”.

    The occupation continues.

    It also does nothing to cease Israel’s system of apartheid rule over Palestinians, judged illegal by the world’s highest court last year.

    Then, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza, and that other states pressure it into such a withdrawal.

    The UN General Assembly gave Israel till last month to honor the ICJ’s ruling. Israel has not just ignored that deadline. Even during the current “ceasefire”, Israeli soldiers continue to be directly stationed in more than half of Gaza.

    Additionally, of course, Israel still controls all of Gaza’s territory at arm’s length through its spy drones, attack drones and fighter jets, surveillance technology, and land and naval blockades.

    It should be a truism that a state bent on genocide has no reason to stop its genocide unless it is forced to do so – by a stronger party.

    Trump has been striding the world stage pretending to be doing just that, strong-arming Israel and Hamas. But only the credulous – and the Western political and media class – fall for this charade.

    The “ceasefire” is not “fragile”. It was set up to fail, not to provide a path to peace. Its real purpose is to provide Israel with a fresh mandate to renew the genocide.

    Dehumanized prisoners

    For decades, Palestinians have been forced to live with a catch-22: damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

    Any resistance to their brutal occupation results in slaughter – or “mowing the lawn”, as Israel terms it – as well as their designation as “terrorists”.

    But a policy of no resistance, as pursued by Mahmoud Abbas’ compliant Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, hangs Palestinians out to dry – living as permanent, dehumanized prisoners under Israeli rule, herded into ever-shrinking reservations while Jewish militias are licensed to build settlements on their land.

    The same kind of bogus “choice” is central to the current “ceasefire”.

    Hamas has got a hostage swap – after thousands of Palestinians were seized off the street (and thousands more will soon be seized to replace them) – while the people of Gaza win a brief respite from Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign. That was the formula for cornering Hamas into approving a ceasefire agreement it knows only too well is primed with tripwires.

    The most obvious is the requirement on Hamas to return the last remaining Israelis held captive in Gaza, including 28 bodies, in exchange for some 2,000 Palestinian hostages in Israel’s prisons. The agreement set a 72-hour timeframe for the exchange.

    Hamas has found it harder to locate the sites of the dead. So far, they have returned 10, though one appears to be non-Israeli.

    The wasteland that is now Gaza has few landmarks to identify the locations of original burial sites. And the mountains of rubble under which the Israelis’ bodies lie – created by the US-supplied bunker-busting bombs Israel dropped that most likely killed them – are almost impossible to move without heavy machinery, sorely lacking in Gaza.

    Even if the sites can be identified and the rubble removed, Hamas may discover that the bodies no longer exist, that they have been vaporized, alongside Palestinian victims, by Israel’s bombs. And of course, there is a further likely problem: some of the bodies may be located in more than half of Gaza, which Israel is still occupying, and Hamas cannot access.

    As the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ultimate neutral arbiter, has conceded, finding the bodies in these circumstances will be a “massive challenge”.

    Another catch-22.

    Notably, though the Western media has happily amplified Israeli claims of Hamas’s bad faith over returning the bodies, as well as the suffering of waiting Israeli families, it has provided little comparable coverage on the condition of the Palestinian bodies returned by Israel.

    The refrigerated corpses arrived at Nasser hospital in Gaza without any form of identification, and with staff there unable to run DNA tests because of the destruction inflicted by Israel on its facilities. Families will have no idea who their loved ones are unless they try to identify them personally.

    That will be a gruesome and distressing task. Doctors noted that the returned bodies were still cuffed and blindfolded, executed with bullets to the head, and with clear signs that they had been tortured before and after their deaths.

    Meanwhile, even before the 72-hour timeframe for the exchange was reached, Israel exploited the delay to renew the starvation of Gaza, restricting aid desperately needed to address the famine it had engineered.

    More ominously, according to Israeli media reports, the US has agreed to a “secret clause” with Israel to allow it to resume its genocidal “war” if Hamas cannot produce all the bodies within the three-day window.

    Double bind

    Then, if Hamas can avoid this tripwire, there is a requirement on the group to lay down its weapons. This is being presented as a precondition for “peace”. But the one certainty is that, even were Hamas to disarm, peace would not be the outcome.

    This week, in his usual style, Trump made undefined threats.

    “If they [Hamas] don’t disarm,” he said, “we will disarm them”. He added that, if the US got involved, “it will happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm.”

    This intentionally puts Hamas and others pursuing armed resistance against Israel’s occupation – a right recognized in international law – in a double bind.

    First, a disarmed population in Gaza will be even more defenseless in the face of Israeli attacks.

    Whatever the rights or wrongs of Hamas’ military strategy, it is hard to ignore the fact that the prolonged toll of fighting on Israeli troops – in terms of psychological trauma and casualty figures – has served as some sort of countervailing pressure.

    Large numbers of Israelis have taken to the streets to oppose Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza – but not, as polls show, because most care about the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinians there.

    Rather, their protests have been driven by concerns about the plight of Israeli captives in Gaza and about the toll on Israeli soldiers.

    Hamas, and many of Gaza’s population, will worry that disarmament would swing the cost-benefit analysis among Israelis even further towards continued genocide. It risks more bloodletting by Israel, not peace.

    Lose-lose conundrum

    Second, Hamas is unlikely to agree to disarm when there are criminal clans, armed and backed by Israel, and some of them linked to the Islamic State, roaming Gaza’s streets.

    Palestinians have long understood that Israel’s ambition is to undermine the Palestinians’ major national liberation movements – whether Hamas or Fatah – by promoting in their place feudal warlords.

    One Palestinian analyst warned me 14 years ago of the dangers of what he referred to as Israel’s plan for the “Afghanistanization” of Gaza and the West Bank.

    Israel’s ultimate divide-and-rule strategy would involve promoting rival clan leaders who focus on protecting their own small fiefdoms and fighting each other, rather than trying to resist the illegal occupation and seek a unified Palestinian state.

    At the height of the genocide, the clans proved how dangerous such a development could be for ordinary Palestinians. Aided by Israel, and with Hamas pinned down in their tunnels, these gangs looted aid trucks, stole aid from weaker families, then took that food for their own families and sold the rest at extortionate prices few could afford. Everyone else starved.

    The post It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • VIDEO: Israeli coloniser uses his own baby to block aid trucks destined for starving Gaza

    An Israeli settler has been filmed using his own baby to block heavy articulated lorries full of aid to prevent food and medicines reaching starving Palestinians in Gaza.

    What will Israelis do next?

    The baby is no doll used for effect – the child’s head can be seen moving back and forth as the footage progresses:

    Israel is riddled with paedophiles, including allegedly government ministers, including well over than two thousand foreigners given refuge and whose extradition is blocked by the regime. It’s clear that Israelis don’t care a jot for the lives, safety, and wellbeing of Palestinian children – Israel has murdered hundreds of thousands of them in Gaza – but it seems they, or at least the most fanatically supremacist and genocidal, don’t even care much for the lives and safety of their own children.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • David Miller wins ‘significant victory’ over Israel-lobby group ‘Campaign against Antisemitism’

    Professor David Miller has won what he describes as a “significant victory” in court over pro-Israel lobby group Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA).

    David Miller: a ‘significant victory’

    David Miller was sacked by Bristol University to satisfy Israel lobby demands despite the two lawyer-led inquiries it set up both finding that he had said nothing antisemitic, but went on to win a major, precedent-setting victory when an employment tribunal ruled that anti-Israel views are protected political opinion. But CAA decided to mount a private prosecution of Miller for allegedly ‘menacing’ posts on X.

    He has also been targeted for detention as part of the Starmer regime’s war on anti-Israel speech and protest.

    But on Friday 17 October, a magistrate has ruled that the CAA was withholding information when it began the prosecution – that it has still not disclosed, but has now been ordered to, as Miller posted on X:

    BREAKING: I have just won a significant victory against the comically named ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ at Westminster Magistrates Court. The CAA is attempting to mount a private prosecution against me for sending four ‘menacing’ posts on X (‘Tweets’).

    But today, the judge ruled that the CAA had withheld significant information from the court when they had originally applied for the Summons against me. They now have 28 days to comply with an order to disclose all relevant communications between their directors, trustees and staff on the question of whether they were seeking to silence me or to undermine my Employment Appeal Tribunal (which is scheduled for next month).

    This is a great victory in the battle to develop anti-Zionist movement in the UK. Please, if you can, support my crowdfunder to help me with my legal costs in defeating the CAA.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • West Bank Death Toll Amid Genocide Tops 1,000 as Israeli Forces Kill Child

    The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied West Bank amid the Gaza genocide has surpassed 1,000, according to the UN, after soldiers killed a young Palestinian child while he was reportedly playing soccer on Thursday. The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported Friday that Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,001…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli Settler Attacks in Occupied West Bank “Fit Into the Plan of the State”

    Just days after the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect, President Trump has issued new threats against Hamas, saying Thursday the United States would back a military intervention against the group if it fails to uphold the ceasefire agreement. “There is the fear all the time that the war will be renewed,” says Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Autopsies of martyrs’ bodies reveal Israel stole human organs from them

    The Ministry of Health in Gaza, through its Director General Dr. Munir Al-Barsh, announced today shocking details regarding the bodies of martyrs handed over by the Israeli occupation forces, numbering 120 bodies.

    Al-Barsh said that medical teams were shocked by the condition of the bodies. He said they showed signs of severe torture, noting that some of the martyrs were bound in chains. Meanwhile, autopsy results showed that a number of them were executed at close range, while others were left to bleed to death without any medical assistance.

    He added that medical examinations revealed that the occupation had looted human organs from the bodies of some of the martyrs, including corneas, kidneys, and livers, which is a horrific war crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

    Israel violate international law time and time again

    Al-Barsh explained that the families have only identified six martyrs so far, calling on the families of the missing to go to hospitals and specialised centres within ten days to identify the bodies before they are buried.

    The Director-General of the Ministry of Health called for the formation of an independent UN committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the desecration of the bodies of the martyrs, stressing that these crimes reveal an unprecedented level of violations against humanity committed by the occupation against the Palestinian people.

    He also pointed out that the occupation forces’ dogs had mauled a large number of bodies that had been recovered from under the rubble, in a scene that reflects the ugliness of Israeli crimes and their systematic targeting of human dignity even after martyrdom.

    Al-Barsh concluded his statement by emphasising that the Ministry of Health in Gaza will document all these crimes with medical and legal evidence, in preparation for presenting them to the relevant international bodies, calling on the international community to take urgent action to stop these violations and hold the occupation accountable for its crimes against the martyrs and the entire Palestinian people.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • New figures show Gaza buried under 80 million tons of rubble with 20,000 unexploded bombs

    The Government Media Office revealed in an official statement that the Gaza Strip is facing the largest construction and humanitarian disaster in modern history. The volume of rubble resulting from the war of extermination waged by the Israeli occupation two years ago has exceeded 70 million tons of rubble and waste, including thousands of completely destroyed homes and facilities.

    The statement emphasised that the widespread destruction has turned Gaza into an environmental and structural disaster zone. The destruction is invariably hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid and obstructing rescue and relief efforts. It also noted that the Zionist occupation is deliberately preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove rubble and recover bodies by continuing to close the crossings and preventing the entry of engineering materials and supplies.

    Gaza under rubble

    The office explained that initial estimates indicate the presence of approximately 20,000 unexploded ordnance left over from the Israeli bombing, including bombs and missiles that require precise engineering treatment before any rubble removal can begin. The statement warned of the imminent danger these explosives pose to the lives of civilians and workers on the ground.

    The Gaza Government Media Office also called on the international community to assume its legal and humanitarian responsibilities and pressure the Israeli occupation to urgently open the crossings and enable the relevant authorities to begin immediate rubble removal and reconstruction. It emphasised that any delay in this process would mean the continuation of the disaster and the escalation of health and environmental risks.

    The office indicated that government agencies are working on developing a comprehensive national plan for rubble management, which includes identifying areas of accumulation, dealing with hazardous waste, and developing a plan for recycling and temporary storage, ensuring the gradual and efficient return of life to the Gaza Strip.

    The statement concluded by emphasising that the massive destruction and the occupation’s responsibility for this disaster require urgent international action, and that continued global silence constitutes complicity in the ongoing crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Palestinian resistance frees 87% of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment

    The Palestine Centre for Prisoner Studies has said that the Palestinian resistance was able to free 87% of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment in occupation prisons as part of the various stages of the Tufan al-Ahrar deal.

    The Prisoner Studies Centre added that 3,985 prisoners were freed by the three resistance deals during two years of Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

    Palestine prisoners receive huge sentences

    Statistics from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Studies Centre show that the resistance freed 503 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment out of a total of 580 prisoners who were serving life sentences in Israeli prisons before the exchange deals, many of whom had spent more than 25 years in Israeli prisons.

    In addition, 114 women, 297 children and 33 prisoners who were expected to receive life sentences or long prison terms were also freed.

    Last Monday, the Israeli occupation released 1,968 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 who had been sentenced to life imprisonment or long prison terms and 1,718 prisoners from the Gaza Strip who had been arrested during the war.

    This came in implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement that came into effect last Friday, in accordance with US President Trump’s plan to end the war on Gaza.

    The first phase of the ceasefire agreement between the resistance and Israel came into effect last Friday afternoon. The agreement is based on a plan proposed by US President Donald Trump, which includes a number of provisions, including: an end to the war, a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army, the mutual release of prisoners, and the immediate entry of aid into the Strip.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gardaí thugs told their October 4 violence broke the law

    A report from the Irish Network of Legal Observers (INLO) has declared that, when stopping peaceful Palestine demonstrators on October 4, the Garda Síochána (Republic of Ireland police) likely was:

    …in violation of obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 21) and the European Convention on Human Rights (article 11).

    The protesters were attacked on East Wall Road when attempting to march to block Dublin port tunnel. Two days before, anti-genocide activists had succeeded in shutting down that area, causing significant disruption in response to the Irish government’s participation in Zionist mass slaughter. Ireland continues to allow Shannon airport to be used as a stop off point for US military flights, on their way to the illegitimate entity commonly referred to as ‘Israel’. It is also the second largest trading partner with the Zionist regime, and by far the highest per capita.

    Garda pepper sprayed people in the face at point blank range for trying to stop a genocide

    The gardaí were clearly keen to avoid a repeat of the events 48 hours earlier, as a group of around 150 protesters broke off from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) rally being held in the city centre that day, and made their way towards the port.

    The INLO had seven observers present in “high-visibility orange vests” to observe the police response to the group, with the first incident occurring at 14:08. The report describes protesters locking arms and attempting to push through the garda line. The gardaí responded with batons and “pepper spray at short range within one metre”, both a violation of the Garda’s own policies.

    Its Incapacitant Spray Policy states that the irritant may only be used:

    …when faced with violence or the threat of violence and it is reasonable to believe that such violence or threat of violence may result in injury to themselves or others, including self-harm by an individual.

    The observer report asserts that:

    No violence or threat of violence was present at the protest and protesters retreated when pepper spray was used. Pepper spray continued to be used as the protesters retreated.

    Police are also forbidden from using pepper spray within one metre, except when unavoidable, which the INLO say was not the case on October 4.

    The legal observers also note the lack of verbal warning given to those targeted, and the indiscriminate and reckless use of the spray that resulted in INLO members being affected themselves. One even reported being deliberately targeted:

    In both my footage and others which was later shared to me, the Garda is clearly shown to be using IS [incapacitant spray] on me despite me visibly being a LO [Legal Observer] that was retreating with the crowd. Given that he paused from spraying the protesters and then me, I believe I was being targeted for having filmed him misusing the IS on protesters in close proximity.

    The report goes on to outline how gardaí have an obligation to do precisely the opposite of targeting LO’s – they are required to have protection in much the same way doctors or journalists do at protests.

    Broken wrists and crushed heads as louts in uniform run amok

    As for batons, their use is only permitted if it is proportionate, necessary, and provided for by law. The report describes excessive use of force, such as hits directed at around head height and fleeing protesters being struck. Other brutal treatment highlighted includes:

    …one protester who had raised his hands to surrender was pushed to the ground and as a result, broke his wrist and when another person was put into a choke hold while being arrested.

    This incident occurred during a second confrontation at 15:55. Another shocking case of thuggery was when one man broke through police lines, before being caught by police:

    The garda dragged the man to the ground, and sat on his head to subdue him. This effectively placed the protester in a choke hold. Another garda kneeled on the man’s back, while he was handcuffed and face down. The man could be heard saying that he
    was bleeding, losing feeling in his hand and indicated that he was in pain.

    The report’s findings are extensively corroborated by footage taken that day by activists present. Paul Murphy, a TD for People Before Profit said protesters were:

    …subject to gross Garda brutality. The videos are horrific. I can’t think of the last time you had such Garda viciousness and violence against protesters since maybe the Rossport protest.

    The Rossport protests in 2005 were in response to five men being imprisoned for interfering with construction of a Shell pipeline.

    Cops don’t uphold the law – they’re just the hired goons of a murderous political class

    The INLO report concludes by describing Garda actions as “disproportionate and in violation of their own policies”. It reiterates the likely breach of crucial human rights law such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The UN Human Rights Committee states:

    Peaceful assemblies can sometimes be used to pursue contentious ideas or goals. Their
    scale or nature can cause disruption, for example of vehicular or pedestrian movement or economic activity. These consequences, whether intended or unintended, do not call into question the protection such assemblies enjoy. To the extent that an event may create such disruptions or risks, these must be managed within the framework of the Covenant.

    The brutality of October 4 is simply another reminder that the police aren’t there to protect the law – they are simply the hired thugs paid off by a genocidal political class to ensure their role in mass slaughter can continue unabated. If cops were there to ensure legal frameworks are adhered to, they would be assisting the protesters in disruptive action, as citizens continue to act as the sole upholders of the Genocide Convention ignored by those in power.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Video: London university sets police on peaceful student anti-genocide protest

    City University London has called the police on students carrying out a peaceful anti-genocide protest. One social media user posted footage of the protest:

    Security guards told students that the university had called in police because using an image of University President Anthony Finkelstein supposedly constituted hate speech. However, when they arrived officers made no mention of hate speech and took no issue with the protesters’ materials, telling them instead that they were causing a ‘disruption’.

    The social media user also explained that students:

    demonstrated against the employment of lecturer Michael Ben-Gad, who they claim served in the IDF. Ben-Gad is an economics professor, and students are demanding his immediate removal.

    The Starmer regime is waging war on the protest rights of UK citizens, in order to protect Israel and its interests, with student protest and Jewish anti-genocide activists particularly targeted. Shamefully, many universities are eagerly collaborating.

    Starmer’s government has appointed an Israel-funded, genocide-defending campus group to give obligatory ‘training’ to university staff on supposed antisemitism and is implementing legislation to further restrict anti-genocide protest.

    Featured image via Instagram

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • New sanctions for Russia, yet not even a whisper about Israel – quelle surprise

    A raft of new economic sanctions has been announced for Russia. Yet not a peep from the UK government about any punishment for genocide state Israel.

    Announced Wednesday as part of the UK’s Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, the sanctions target include oil firms, ports, tech companies, and individuals. The list also includes specific ships.

    The ships are part of what is being called the Russian ‘shadow fleet’. Reuters reports:

    The new sanctions target 51 ships within the shadow fleet, as well as individuals and entities across sectors including energy and defence.
    The shadow fleet has increasingly been the target of sanctions from Britain, the United States and the European Union since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
    It is a network of older tankers that officials say are used to avoid sanctions on Russian oil.
    Announcing the move, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves said “no place for Russia on global markets”.

    Sanctions on Russia, but any sanctions on Israel?

    UK sanctions on Israel have been minimal. When they have been placed they have mostly target settlers in the West Bank. That’s good. But on the whole, they ignore the active genocide in Gaza.

    June saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy announce asset freezes and other measures on far-right ministers Bezalel Yoel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir:

    In their personal capacity, Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are now sanctioned for their repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians, effective immediately.

    In 2024, the UK government froze 30 arms export licences to Israel.

    However, it was reported that UK military sales to Israel had increased to a record value in 2025.

    Channel 4 FactCheck reported:

    Our analysis of Israel Tax Authority customs data finds that Israel imported nearly £1 million worth of UK munitions in the first nine months of the year.

    That’s more than double the amount received in any of the previous three years.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been rightly condemned by everyone but a few marginal fantasists. Yet Israel, which is actively carrying out the worst crime of the 21st century, has received a mild rhetorical slap on the wrist while arms sales have INCREASED. The UK’s inability to be even-handed in its approach to international law can only be read as yet another sign of its decay and irrelevance.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Highly influential Westminster lobby group sought billionaire money to push pro-Israel agenda

    The British public knows little about Britain’s “most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group“. But thanks to a new report, we now have a better picture of how it works.

    The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) lobby group has a dominant position in the Tory party, counting around 80% of its MPs as members. But CFI hides its funding sources from the public.

    Fortunately, Declassified UK has been working hard to give us an idea of where it gets its money from. And a new report reveals the backroom billionaire dealings of a prominent Conservative politician in service of Israeli interests.

    Tory lobbyist: Billionaire funds “for my work for Israel”

    Declassified got hold of emails shedding light on the behaviour of Stuart Polak. The Israel lobbyist led CFI for 25 years, before entering the House of Lords in late 2015. He has claimed at least £235,000 in expenses as a peer since then.

    The emails revealed the Tory lobbyist seeking money from US billionaire Paul Singer and coordinating with top Israeli diplomats. For example, Polak told Israeli diplomat Ido Aharoni in 2015 that:

    I have made some real progress in obtaining support for my work for Israel from Paul Singer in NYC.

    As Declassified‘s John McEvoy explained:

    Singer is a New York-based billionaire hedge fund manager and major donor to Friends of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), a group which raises funds for the Israeli armed forces.

    Polak also asked Aharoni to:

    consider whether you can arrange for me to be introduced to other Paul Singers.

    McEvoy pointed out that:

    CFI was the largest donor of free overseas trips for MPs between 2012 and 2022, but has never disclosed who is funding its pro-Israel jaunts and other lobbying exercises.

    Any other foreign influence in Britain on this scale would be a national scandal

    Journalist Jonathan Cook has previously noted Conservative politicians suggesting the party’s “unconditional backing for Israel derives, at least in part, from the financial leverage exerted by wealthy pro-Israel donors”. And former Tory MP Alan Duncan has raised concerns about CFI, saying in 2024 that it was “doing the bidding” of wanted Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Duncan added that Polak should not sit in the House of Lords because he is “exercising the interests of another country”. Indeed, as Declassified pointed out:

    Of the 40 questions [Polak] has asked since he became a Lord, only seven have not related to Palestine, Israel or the Middle East.

    Other emails from the Declassified report suggest that Polak was working very hard to serve Israel’s interests with his lobbying inside the Tory government.

    Former UK diplomat Richard Dalton has argued that the increasingly powerful and aggressive Israel lobby “is a very powerful force in our society”, as is the British establishment’s commitment to serving US interests.

    The latest Declassified report is yet another revelation that makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists in the Conservative Party, and the Labour Party, has contributed to Britain’s ongoing complicity and participation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza since 2023. And it’s hard to believe the media, parliament, or the general public would allow any other force lobbying for a lawbreaking foreign state to get away with so much.

    Featured image via House of Lords/photography by Roger Harris

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Genocide supporting Labour government work to overturn ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans

    Late on 16 October, West Midlands Police issued a statement reporting that Maccabi Tel Aviv (MTA) fans would not be allowed to attend an upcoming game against Aston Villa. They cited safety concerns, particularly after the recent riots in Amsterdam. During that particular incident MTA fans tore down Palestine flags, and rampaged through streets shouting “gas Gaza” and “kill the Arabs”. In retaliation, locals fought MTA fans on the streets of Amsterdam. MTA fans were also subject to antisemitic attacks.

    At the time, the Amsterdam riots were widely reported and condemned solely as antisemitic in mainstream reporting, particularly in Anglophone media. However, these reports downplayed the Tel Aviv fans’ racist attacks during the riot.

    Astonishingly, Keir Starmer has taken the extraordinary step to intervene and condemn the ban on MTA fans in their upcoming game against Aston Villa.

    ‘Current intelligence and previous incidents’

    West Midlands Police issued the following statement at 22:30 on 16 October:

    We are committed to delivering fair and impartial policing, while balancing the public’s right to protest with our duty to ensure public safety.

    Following a thorough assessment, we have classified the upcoming Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel-Aviv fixture as high risk.[…]

    This decision is based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Amsterdam.

    Based on our professional judgement, we believe this measure will help mitigate risks to public safety.

    The decision was made by Birmingham City Council, which chose not to issue a safety certificate for the match. However, West Midlands Police stated that they support the decision to prevent away supporters from attending. Aston Villa also confirmed the statement.

    Amsterdam riots

    The ‘previous incidents’ that the West Midlands police referred to include the riot in Amsterdam earlier this month. On 7 November, Ajax played Mac Tel Aviv in the Dutch city.

    There has been widespread hostility towards Israel’s participation in international sport due to the genocide it’s currently carrying out against Palestine. However, the city’s authorities were reportedly reassured by the fact that Ajax has historically identified as a Jewish team. Nevertheless, the night descended into violent clashes between supporters, pro-Palestinian protesters, taxi drivers, and roving bands of thugs.

    The day before the match, Maccabi fans attacked a taxi and a squat displaying Palestinian flags, threatening to kill the people inside. On the day itself, as mentioned earlier, footage shows Mac supporters tearing down Palestinian flags and chanting slogans including “gas Gaza”,  “kill the arabs”, and “there are no schools in Gaza, because all the children are dead”.

    In the Johan Cruyff Arena, Tel Aviv supporters ignored a moment of silence for flood victims in Spain. Outside the stadium, one local filmed a crowd of MTA fans attacking locals in Amsterdam. Taxi drivers then attacked MTA fans, seeking revenge for the previous day. Footage also appears to show a car running over Israeli fans after mounting the curb.

    There was some evidence of co-ordination for the violence – with one chat group reportedly referring to it as a “jew hunt”. British fans present during the violence also reported that “they were looking for Jews not just Israelis.” However, Amsterdam police reported that a distinction was made between Israeli fans and Jewish people in general.

    ‘The wrong decision’

    Regarding the decision to prevent Tel Aviv supporters from attending the Aston Villa game, independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr Ayoub Khan stated that:

    From the moment that the match was announced, it was clear that there were latent safety risks that even our capable security and police authorities would not be able to fully manage.

    However, other politicians were much less welcoming of the decision. Starmer said:

    This is the wrong decision. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.

    Likewise, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch posted that Starmer should:

    guarantee that Jewish fans can walk into any football stadium in this country.

    If not, it sends a horrendous and shameful message: there are parts of Britain where Jews simply cannot go.

    Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, stated that:

    You don’t tackle antisemitism by banning its victims. This decision must be reversed.

    Now, it appears that the government is actively intervening to bring in the Tel Aviv supporters. At 12:27 today, BBC News reported that a Downing Street spokesperson stated:

    Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is meeting officials to discuss what more can be done to try and find a way through to resolve this, and what more can be done to allow fans to attend the game safely.

    The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve Reed, spoke to the local council this morning, and the Home Office is urgently working to support police to try and find a way through this.

    The same old story

    Like much of the British media in the wake of the Amsterdam riots, UK party leaders chose to focus solely on the violence against Tel Aviv fans, characterising it as wholly antisemitic. They chose to omit mention of the genocidal rhetoric, violence, and property damage carried out by the Maccabi supporters.

    This is a microcosm of the way that UK MPs and the mainstream media has portrayed Israel and its citizens in general. They treat violence against Palestinians and their allies as unimportant and ignored. Meanwhile, all opposition to Israel is lumped together with vile antisemitism.

    The Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv fixture is high risk. The West Midlands police force is perfectly correct in its assessment there. The Tel Aviv fans have shown that they are perfectly happy perpetrating violence against the cities around them. The fact that Starmer and his fellow party leaders are determined to risk a riot just to show their support for Israel is nothing short of the most craven cowardice.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Palestine Action win right to appeal ruling over their proscription

    The British government have lost their appeal to stop lawyers challenging a ban on Palestine Action (PA). The non-violent direct action group were proscribed in July. The case is seen by critics as a landmark case for civil liberties.

    The Guardian reported:

    On Friday, three judges, led by the lady chief justice, upheld Mr Justice Chamberlain’s decision to grant the Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori a judicial review of the group’s proscription under the Terrorism Act”

    Palestine Action prevail

    Huda Ammori herself tweeted:

    The Home Office had tried to argue the “proper forum”:

    for Palestine Action to challenge the ban was the POAC (Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission), which parliament had designated for that purpose, rather than judicial review.

    The hearing that will now go ahead is scheduled for three days beginning on 25 November. And, as the Guardian reported, the case is significant because it’s:

    …the first time that an organisation banned under anti-terrorism law has been granted a court trial to challenge proscription.

    Fellow activist group Defend Our Juries were in buoyant mood following the decision:

    Your Party co-leader Zarah Sultana called it a “huge win”:

    The legal detail of the decision was recorded at the court and can be viewed here.

    Absurd, authoritarian ban

    In a statement released via Cryptpad, Huda Ammori attacked the “extreme” ban:

    The Court of Appeal has rightly rejected Yvette Cooper’s attempt to block a legal review of her absurdly authoritarian ban — while granting us additional grounds on which to challenge it. This is a landmark victory: not only against one of the most extreme attacks on civil liberties in recent British history, but for the fundamental principle that government ministers can and must be held accountable when they act unlawfully.

    Ammori called the government out for their cowardice:

    The Government’s effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its blatantly anti-democratic proscription — branding a protest group as ‘terrorists’ for the first time in British history — has backfired spectacularly, and we now head into the Judicial Review in November with an even stronger legal footing.

    Staggering misuse

    Ammori also condemned the arrest over over 2000 people since the proscription came into effect:

    Arresting peaceful protesters and those disrupting the arms trade is a dangerous misuse of counter-terror resources, with over 2,000 people having now been arrested — a staggering 3,100% increase in counter-terror arrests. Rather than being used to protect the public, the Terrorism Act is being used as a political tool to silence them.

    And, she argued that the proscription of Palestine Action has wide-ranging ramifications:

    This ban doesn’t just affect Palestine Action supporters — it casts a chilling shadow over anyone speaking out against Israel’s atrocities and the UK’s complicity in them, and sets a dangerous precedent that can be used against any protest group. It’s time for the Government to listen to the overwhelming and mounting backlash — including from the United Nations, human rights watchdogs and free speech defenders to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, as well as the vast majority of its own Party members and voices across the political spectrum — and lift this widely condemned, utterly Orwellian ban.

    The fight continues, but this staggering abuse of counter-terror powers by the genocide-supporting British government must not be allowed to stand.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gaza Soup Kitchen provides essential services to a population that now has nothing

    Gaza Soup Kitchen (GSK) is a Palestinian NGO that was set up in early 2024 by brothers Hani and Mahmoud Almadhoun, to provide hot meals and clean water to the people of Gaza. The venture has been a lifeline for many thousands enduring extreme food insecurity and famine.

    What started as a simple Go Fund Me personal campaign, with one kitchen in Beit Lahia feeding 150 families daily, quickly expanded as hunger grew among the population. Multiple kitchens now serve communities across the Strip, providing up to 3000 individual meals every day, depending on supplies, safety and access to ingredients.

    Gaza Soup Kitchen speaks to the Canary

    Abe Ajrami is one of five board members of the organisation. He helps with coordinating GSK’s fundraising and decision making on aspects such as safety and location of GSKs operations. Although Ajrami lives in the US, he has family in Northern Gaza, who have been forcibly displaced and are currently living in tents.

    Ajrami told the Canary:

    We have established ourselves as an honest charity that does good work in Gaza, and people feel that. None of us are paid, even for any of our travel expenses, and we don’t charge the organisation a single penny. People fundraise for us, and individuals and businesses also give us donations.

    And Ajrami is clear that if Israel were to ever allow an adequate food supply into Gaza, there would be no need for GSK:

    If there was enough affordable food in Gaza, we would not exist. We hope to get to that point, where we are not needed. Gazans are people who were doing OK for themselves, who have dignity, and now they are standing in line to use a bathroom, and standing in line to get water and to have a simple meal. It is sad but, judging by our food parcel registration, it tells you how much there is a need for us.

    Unfortunately, there is much, much more to be done:

    We are pretty much a drop in the ocean, despite all the things we do.

    There are currently 10 soup kitchens operating in the South and Central area of the Strip. Depending on the amount of supplies allowed across the border, each kitchen can cost as much as $1000 a day to run, while the type of food entering Gaza dictates the type of meals cooked by GSK chefs.

    Huge demand for GSK

    Ajrami says:

    Gazan people are very creative. Lentil soup has been the hero. It has always been affordable, and is a great source of protein, and doesn’t go bad. So we can buy huge quantities and store it. Lentils are mixed with lots of things, when we can find them. The chefs work with what they have, to create a variety of meals.

    Although GSK stopped their operations in the North over a month ago, due to forced evacuations and safety issues, it has still managed to send food parcels to Gaza City. There, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have remained, with food and water very scarce.

    According to Ajrami, within minutes of the online registration opening for food parcels, the number of applicants far exceeds the number of parcels available:

    We now have a big focus on providing these food parcels to families. The demand is huge, but we do our best to make sure people can get what they need, especially if they are weak or sick.

    ‘We try to help everyone in Gaza, any way we can’

    20 year old Khalid Qadas is one of the more than 60 humanitarian volunteers working with GSK on the ground in Gaza, and is their photographer and spokesperson.

    He told the Canary:

    Although we are happy that we’ve finished the war- the shelling, the guns, the blood, the death, because we are so tired, Palestinians have lost their children, their homes, their money, their work, and their lives have stopped for the past two years. People have lost everything. They also don’t have enough food. So now the people really need our work, and we try to help everyone in Gaza, any way we can.

    Qadas tells me that over 1000 food parcels are made every day for families in need. GSK also cooks and serves food daily for 300-500 families at each of its 10 food points. Medical teams and patients in Gaza’s hospitals are not forgotten, with hot meals delivered by the teams, as well as food parcels- which sometimes even manage to provide baby milk, nappies, fruit, food, and clothes for children. These items are often impossible to find for the population of Gaza but, if available, are usually just too expensive to purchase. GSK tries to buy local, so source their supplies from local farmers wherever possible, and from local markets.

    But the organisation does not only provide food for Palestinians. It also buys clean desalinated water, as water is now contaminated and good quality drinking water is extremely rare. Their 10 water tankers then go out to different areas each day, so people are able to fill up their water containers. There is even a medical point which sees high numbers of patients, despite many challenges and lack of supplies. It offers urgent care, consultations, mental health support, and prescriptions to people who would otherwise not be able to access medical attention.

    Besieged volunteers

    Months after arriving in Gaza, Qadas’ home was bombed, and his father had a stroke. He now lives with the rest of his family in a tent. Although Qadas’ parents are both from Gaza, he was born in the UAE, and had never visited the enclave until three months before the start of this genocide, when he travelled to the Strip to start a medical degree, at Al Aqsa University. This means that unlike other 20 year olds in Gaza, Qadas has been lucky enough not to have experienced any of the six others conflicts with Israel since 2005.

    He told me:

    This is the first war I have experienced in Gaza. I am volunteering at GSK for eight months now, and still studying online, although I have changed to a nursing degree so I could finish quicker. I arrived here three months before the war, with my sister, and my mother and father. We bought a house in the North of Gaza but it was bombed on the fourth day of the war. We then lived in my grandather’s house but he also ended up losing his home, so now we are in a tent in the South. Two months into the war, my father also had a stroke. We have lost everything.

    Qadas’ has volunteered with GSK for the past eight months, and says his work as photographer, moving from site to site and talking with everyone, has taught him so much about Gaza, its people, and about life in general, and he is grateful for this experience.

    Hope for a better tomorrow

    Qadas also told me:

    We are like a family at GSK. I work from 5am until 8pm sometimes, but I love it. To be honest, before this work, I knew nothing about Gaza or its people, but my work as a volunteer with GSK has been so good for me and I’ve learnt so much and now understand much more.

    He explains:

    All the time, I say I am so sad, I need to go to another country, but Gaza’s people have positive energy. They are still smiling and say tomorrow will be better. I don’t know how they are like this. And you know, from nothing they do everything. for example, we don’t have a shower so he makes a shower. We don’t have a lighter, he makes a lighter. How, I don’t know! People in Gaza say that everything that happens in your life is from God, that God knows what is best for you. I am learning so much from them.

    As the ceasefire officially takes effect, a fragile sense of relief has spread across Gaza. But the guarantee of aid is filled with uncertainty. Netanyahu has how announced that only 300 trucks of supplies will be allowed into Gaza, half the number previously agreed upon, because Hamas has, as yet been unable to find all bodies of Israeli prisoners still in Gaza.

    Road to recovery

    Despite the setbacks, Gaza Soup Kitchen (GSK) continues with its tireless work, and will, no doubt, be returning to the North to continue its operations, as conditions allow. The reduced flow of supplies stretches the charity’s resources thin, but volunteers like Qadas remain determined to provide hot meals, water, and essential parcels to thousands of families still struggling to survive.

    The road to recovery will be long for those in Gaza. Homes must be rebuilt, loved ones mourned, and dignity restored. Yet, in the face of hardship, the resilience of Gaza’s population endures, and is sustained by the small but vital support of organizations like GSK and the hope of a better tomorrow.

    The road to recovery for Gaza’s people will be long. They face the challenge of rebuilding their homes, grieving lost family members, and also reclaiming their dignity. Yet the resilience of Gaza’s population endures, and is sustained by the small but vital support of organizations like GSK, and the hope of a better tomorrow.

    Please help Gaza Soup Kitchen with its vital work by donating here.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israeli guards stripped and filmed Thunberg naked, wrote ‘whore’ on her luggage

    Israeli guards stripped humanitarian activist Greta Thunberg naked and wrote ‘whore Greta’ on her luggage after abducting her, and around four hundred other volunteer crew members, in a criminal attack in international waters on the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying baby food and other vital items to Gaza:

    Thunberg

    Greta Thunberg: multiple human rights violations by Israel

    The fascist thugs’ violence toward Thunberg had already become known from other released crew, but the grim details of the appalling abuse are only now coming out.

    Among the crimes Israeli guards and troops committed against Thunberg:

    • “Israeli soldiers hit, kicked, starved, and tortured me” – Greta Thunberg herself.
    • “They placed a flag next to me, and anytime the flag touched me, they kicked me”.
    • “Whenever I raised my head to look at Ben-Gvir, I was kicked”.
    • She was filmed while stripped naked.
    • She and others were kept in a prison cell at 40 degrees Celsius and deprived of water.
    • Guards threatened to gas her and others, showing them gas cylinders.
    • She and others were kept in solitary confinement for long periods in parasite-infested cell

    Thunberg and others also reported that every time anyone looked up from the ground in the ‘stress positions’ they were forced to maintain on concrete floors, they were knocked to the ground and beaten. Thunberg was also tormented with an Israeli flag:

    The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted “Don’t touch the flag” and kicked me in the side. After a while·, my hands were put in cable ties, very tight. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me as I sat there.

    They take my bag and throw away all the things they interpret as Palestine-related. They take each thing and stare into my eyes and at the same time pick up a knife and slowly cut them apart with it, while ten people take selfies.

    You felt like you couldn’t “afford” to cry because you were so dehydrated. It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We kept asking: Can we get water? Can we get water?

    In the end, people were screaming. The guards kept walking in front of the bars, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles of water in, in the garbage cans in front of us.

    Thunberg also reported the support she received from other abducted volunteers – and the price they paid for it:

    I needed to go to the bathroom and asked to. Then I needed to be led through where people were sitting and they saw me. A female member of the Swedish delegation said: “We are with you Greta.”

    Then she was taken aside and beaten.

    Israel is a terror state and a fascist, ethno-supremacist project. If this is how it will treat Thunberg and other foreign victims, imagine what it is doing every day to Palestinian hostages.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • British sailors may get medals defending the Israeli genocide

    British sailors could be in line for medals for supporting the Israeli genocide of Gaza. In a story that nearly slipped under the radar, a British minister (with links to military and private intelligence) told parliament of the plans.

    On 13 October, Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley asked the Secretary of Defence:

    if he will award medals to the crew of the HMS Diamond for their work during the period of November 2023 and July 2024.

    But that day it was Labour veterans minister Louise Sandher-Jones who answered:

    Medallic recognition for the operational activity undertaken by HMS Diamond during the period November 2023 and July 2024, is under consideration by the Ministry of Defence in accordance with the existing process.

    Yemen attacks

    But what was HMS Diamond doing between November 2023 and 2026?

    Well, readers. HMS Diamond, a type-45 Royal Navy frigate, was taking on Houthi drones.

    The UK Defence Journal says the vessel:

    played a key role in international maritime operations following a series of Houthi attacks on commercial and naval vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

    In fact:

    In December 2023, Diamond shot down a suspected attack drone launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen using its Sea Viper missile system, marking the first time in decades that a Royal Navy ship had engaged an aerial target in combat.

    The Journals said:

    the ship was credited with downing nine hostile drones and an anti-ship ballistic missile while providing protection to international shipping and allied vessels.

    Anti-genocide operations

    But why were Yemen’s Houthis firing at shipping? Well, a better question might be ‘whose shipping were they firing at?’

    As the Canary reported at the time, the Houthis say they were targeting Israeli-owned and genocide-linked shipping in the Red Sea:

    Since October 2023, the Houthis have carried out near-daily attacks against Israeli-linked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, as well as targeting Israeli infrastructure, such as air and sea ports. They have stepped up their campaign against the occupation since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, launching dozens of missiles and drones at it.

    And why were they firing at said shipping? Well, the Houthis would claim they were trying to stop the Israeli genocide of Palestinians:

    These attacks have been successful, with huge impacts on Israel. More than 100 commercial ships in the Red Sea have been targeted, resulting in costly detours and insurance hikes, and Eilat Port has been forced to reduce its operations by 90 percent.

    Now the Canary isn’t in the habit of co-signing anyone’s missile strikes. But this really seems like an important detail. One which is absent from the parliamentary exchange above. And from the little coverage of that exchange in the press.

    And all in all, the Houthis seem determined to keep harassing shipping despite a ceasefire agreement being in force in Gaza.

    Sandher-Jones background

    The story doesn’t stop there. Labour’s Sandher-Jones deserves attention too. She is one of a group of new ex-military MPs Keir Starmer steered into parliament with some fanfare. Starmer likes nothing more than being photographed close to military things and people.

    Before becoming an MP, she served in military intelligence in Afghanistan. And later joined the private intelligence firm Mackenzie Intelligence Services (MIS).

    MIS experts have regularly appeared in the media to discuss military and intelligence issues around Iran, Gaza and Syria.

    The Canary is unaware of any timescale for medal awards for the sailors who engaged Houthi drones aimed at Israel or genocide-linked shipping. Rest assured, we’ll be keeping an eye out for updates.

    Featured image via House of Commons/Roger Harris

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • VIDEO: Israel again violates Lebanon ceasefire with over 20 airstrikes

    Israel has again massively violated its ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, hitting southern Lebanon this evening with more than twenty airstrikes. Palestinian journalist Wissam Nassar published video of some of the strikes:

    This is the third time in just the last week that Israel has launched unprovoked attacks on southern Lebanon. Last week it launched an ‘intensive’ series of strikes that killed and wounded civilians. A day earlier, it bombed hundreds of bulldozers and other construction vehicles in six heavy machinery yards in the same area to prevent rebuilding of areas it has destroyed.

    The terror state cannot be trusted to keep a single agreement.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israeli Assault Has Left 20,000 Unexploded Bombs Across Gaza, Officials Estimate

    As the ceasefire agreement tentatively holds and Palestinians return to their homes in hopes of rebuilding after Israel’s genocide, Gaza officials estimate that there are massive amounts of rubble and unexploded bombs that stand in the way of their efforts, potentially laying in wait to cause further harm. On Thursday, the Gaza Government Media Office reported that officials estimate that…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • When Ceasefire Finally Arrived Here in Gaza, What Poured Out of Me Was Grief

    I thought that joy would keep me awake after the ceasefire in Gaza was confirmed in the hours before dawn on October 10, but instead, tears did. I opened my phone to check on my people, only to find sorrow spreading everywhere. After two years of endless war, what poured out of many of us was not joy — it was the grief we had buried too long. There was no true cry of joy around me as there…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Palestinian hostages bodies reveal that Israel turns prisons into graveyards of torture

    With the implementation of the third phase of the ‘Flood of the Free’ deal, a new group of prisoners from the Gaza Strip regained their freedom after many years of detention in Israeli occupation prisons.

    However, the freedom they had eagerly awaited did not come as they had hoped; most of them emerged with exhausted bodies, amputated limbs, chronic illnesses, and deep scars that bear witness to the cruelty of the torture and ill-treatment they were subjected to, especially during the last months prior to their release.

    This report documents the most serious violations committed by the occupation authorities against the released prisoners and analyses them in light of international humanitarian law and international human rights law as war crimes and crimes against humanity that are not subject to a statute of limitations.

    This report reviews the conditions in which prisoners lived in Israeli prisons, as revealed by a number of those who were released from prison a few days ago.

    Occupation practices against Gaza prisoners prior to release

    Based on the testimonies of released prisoners, the Israeli prison administration’s treatment during the period prior to their release was characterised by the following patterns.

    Continuous physical torture:

    • Prisoners were severely beaten for days on end, especially during the last four days before their release, which was described as a ‘farewell gift.’
    • Sharp instruments and rifle butts were used in the assaults, with deliberate focus on old injuries.
    • Torture with electric shocks, prolonged shackling, and forcing prisoners into painful physical positions.

    Psychological humiliation and threats:

    • Threatening prisoners with the killing of their children or the demolition of their homes in Gaza.
    • Spreading false news about the martyrdom of their families in order to break them psychologically.
    • Depriving them of communication with the outside world and the most basic elements of human dignity.

    Inhumane conditions of detention:

    • Prisoners describe the cells as ‘silent graves’: cramped, dark, lacking ventilation and blankets.
    • Severe shortage of food, water and personal hygiene items.
    • Blankets are only allowed for four hours a day, with prisoners sleeping on the cold floor the rest of the time.
    • Skin diseases such as scabies are widespread as a result of deliberate neglect of health.

    Systematic medical neglect

    • A number of prisoners have died due to being denied treatment.
    • Leaving the wounded without medical care and even assaulting their injuries during torture.
    • Amputation of limbs and permanent disabilities among some of those released as a result of this neglect.

    Testimonies from released prisoners

    A number of prisoners detailed their experiences in Israel’s prisons. Naji al-Jaafari said:

    What I experienced in captivity can only be described as a slow death… starvation, torture, isolation, humiliation… every day felt like a whole year.

    Abdul Hamid Alian said:

    We slept on iron beds without mattresses, blindfolded all day long, unable to see the light and hearing nothing but screams.

    Mahmoud Abu Salah said:

    They tied us up at 3 a.m. and threatened to kill my children… Dogs slept on top of us all night long.

    Mansour Atef Rayan said:

    They forced prisoners to beat each other with their shoes, and those who refused were subjected to group beatings and electric shocks.

    Additional testimonies show that some prisoners entered prison on their own two feet and left in wheelchairs as a result of torture and amputation, while others discovered that they had lost their entire families during the war on Gaza, facing a double tragedy of pain and loss.

    Clear signs of torture

    Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director general of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, said that the released prisoners who arrived at the complex clearly showed signs of torture and ill-treatment, noting that some of them had lost limbs, while others suffered from chronic injuries for which they had received no treatment during their detention.

    For its part, the International Solidarity Foundation with Palestinian Prisoners (Tadamon) confirmed that the widespread images of the released prisoners constitute compelling visual evidence of the scale of the grave and systematic violations that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity according to the Geneva Conventions.

    The Prisoners’ Media Office explained that what is happening inside prisons constitutes a slow genocide against Palestinian prisoners, carried out away from the eyes of the media and international organisations, under a systematic blackout aimed at concealing crimes and preventing access by international observers and investigators.

    The office called on the international community to take urgent action to release all prisoners, especially the sick, those who are older, those held in administrative detention and those forcibly disappeared, considering their continued detention a direct threat to their lives and a flagrant violation of all humanitarian rules.

    It also called on the United Nations, the Human Rights Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send fact-finding committees to investigate and document these violations as a policy of systematic torture.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UN, ICC Urged to Investigate Murder of Palestinian Journalist Saleh Aljafarawi

    On Monday, October 13, legal representatives for murdered Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi filed complaints and demands for investigation with the International Criminal Court and multiple UN committees and special rapporteurs, Sara Segneri, a partner at Confinium Strategies, announced this week on social media. The requests for investigations were sent to UN Special Rapporteur for…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.