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Category: israel

  • ‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

    Ehud Olmert says forcing people into camp would be ethnic cleansing, and anger at Israel over Gaza war is not all down to antisemitism

    The “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.

    Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Israel Unveils A Concentration Camp In Southern Gaza

    It is said that no news is good news. But when the cone of silence is dropped over meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is prudent to be apprehensive about what we don’t know.

    Before Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington, Trump had indicated that he expected their conversations to be focused almost exclusively on ending the Gaza “war.” The sickening euphemism aside, the fact that neither Trump nor Netanyahu are eager to disclose the contents of their meetings opens a wide range of possibilities. 

    The optimistic view is that Netanyahu is attempting to find a way to accommodate the President’s stated desire to end the genocide in Gaza without causing a rupture in his governing coalition.

    The post Israel Unveils A Concentration Camp In Southern Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Tiger Teams To Concentration Camps

    This week on State of Play, host Greg Stoker is joined by Jalyssa Dugrot, an independent journalist recently arrested while covering anti-ICE protests for MintPress News in Los Angeles, and Robert Inlakesh, a Middle East analyst and MintPress contributor known for his reporting on politics, repression, and empire, to examine a rapidly expanding surveillance regime that connects U.S. immigration enforcement to Israeli military intelligence and private tech firms.

    In early 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assembled a covert unit called the “Tiger Team,” a task force supposedly created to address “critical threats.”

    The post Tiger Teams To Concentration Camps appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Yes, Israel’s plan for Rafah would be a crime – but international law has never protected Gaza | Raja Shehadeh

    Palestinians continue to hold on to the practice we call sumoud – refusing to give up or leave – despite the world turning its back on us

    Over the past 21 long months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, voices all over the world have decried the demise of international law and the rule-based order. And indeed, the facade of Israel’s adherence to international law has vanished and policies that constitute war crimes are now brazenly declared.

    This week, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has shared plans to forcibly move Palestinians into a camp in the ruins of Rafah. Once they enter, they cannot leave. In other words, a concentration camp, which by definition is an internment centre for members of a national group (as well as political prisoners or minority groups) on the grounds of security or punishment, usually by military order. Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, was quoted in the Guardian as saying that Katz “laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity”. Hundreds have been killed and thousands wounded trying to access food.

    Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer, and founder of the human rights organisation Al-Haq. His latest book is Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials, with Penny Johnson.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Why Would The Tiny Nation, Palau, Be Complicit In Israeli Genocide?

    Why would the tiny western Pacific island nation of Palau with a population of only 21,862 allow itself to be complicit in the Israeli genocide of three times its own population, now over 60,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza and tens of thousands of Palestinians unaccounted for under the rubble?

    I doubt if anyone in Palau realizes what the Palau government did in their name to make them complicit in a genocide. The question of complicity in the genocide swirls around who made the decision and why for Palau to take away the certification and flag of Gaza bound ship “Conscience, ” a ship that had had the Palau certification for over twelve months.

    The post Why Would The Tiny Nation, Palau, Be Complicit In Israeli Genocide? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Spain And Ireland Join More Than 20 States To Declare ‘Concrete Measures’ Against Israel

    More than 20 countries are convening in Bogota next week to declare “concrete measures against Israel’s violations of international law”, diplomats told Middle East Eye.

    The “emergency summit” is due to be held on 15-16 July, co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and South Africa as co-chairs of The Hague Group, to coordinate diplomatic and legal action to counter what they describe as “a climate of impunity” enabled by Israel and its powerful allies.

    The Hague Group is a bloc of currently eight states, launched on 31 January in the eponymous Dutch city with the stated goal of holding Israel accountable under international law.

    The post Spain And Ireland Join More Than 20 States To Declare ‘Concrete Measures’ Against Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Workers In Europe Refuse Cargo To Israel

    A growing number of logistics and transport workers, along with trade unions across Europe, are taking action against military shipments to Israel as it continues its genocide in the Gaza Strip. One of the most recent examples is the refusal by airport workers in Paris, primarily organized by the trade unions SUD Aérien and CGT Roissy, to deal with military cargo destined for Israel.

    “As workers in the aviation sector, we categorically refuse to participate, directly or indirectly, in logistical operations that could contribute to the crimes currently being committed in Gaza,” SUD Aérien stated.

    French workers have also called for similar blockades in other locations, expressing their solidarity with Palestinians.

    The post Workers In Europe Refuse Cargo To Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel just committed another bloody massacre against children waiting in line for food

    In a scene that reflects the scale of the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation army committed a bloody massacre on Thursday 10 July, killing 16 Palestinian civilians, including eight children and two women, after directly targeting a civilian gathering in the city of Deir al-Balah in the center of the Strip while they were waiting in line to receive food supplements for children.

    Gaza: more women and children killed by Israel

    This crime comes in the context of an open war waged by the occupation on the Gaza Strip for more than 20 months, which has claimed the lives of more than 56,000 civilians and led to the almost complete destruction of the infrastructure.

    Under the blockade and the collapse of vital sectors, humanitarian aid distribution centers have become the last resort for civilians suffering from starvation, milk and medicine shortages, and the absence of any basic necessities.

    In Deir al-Balah, dozens of residents, mostly women and children, walked for miles under the scorching sun to reach a food distribution point run by a local humanitarian organization. Moments before the aid reached them, a surprise Israeli airstrike tore apart the children’s bodies and scattered their remains among the food bags.

    Details of another Israeli massacre in an increasing humanitarian disaster

    According to medical sources at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the bodies of 16 martyrs, including eight children and two women, were brought in, in addition to serious injuries among civilians, most of whom suffered from severe burns and lacerations. Medical staff spoke of “horrific scenes” due to the extent of the injuries, given the limited medical resources and ongoing power cuts.

    This was not the first time that the occupation targeted civilians trying to obtain humanitarian aid. Israel has killed more than 400 people and wounded hundreds of civilians who sought to obtain a little food amid worsening famine conditions at sites designated for food distribution.

    International organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and the World Food Programme, have previously warned of the catastrophic deterioration of the food situation in Gaza, especially in the center and south of the Strip. Field reports confirm that a large proportion of children are now suffering from emaciation and severe malnutrition, as the occupation restricts the entry of food and medicine shipments and obstructs aid at the crossings.

    The repeated targeting of relief points further complicates the crisis and raises questions about the effectiveness of the international response, which has fallen short of the scale of the tragedy. Faced with the scene of scattered body parts and grieving parents, the question arises once again: how long will the occupation be allowed to escape punishment?

    A cry that goes unheard

    Amid the silence of the international community and the impotence of human rights organizations, the suffering of civilians in Gaza continues, with no safe haven and no exception for children. Amid the daily massacres, food aid has become a target, and walking to it is an adventure that may end in a white shroud instead of a carton of milk.

    Gaza is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in its modern history, with famine reaching critical levels amid a near-total halt in humanitarian aid.

    For months, the Israeli occupation has imposed a suffocating blockade that has led to the closure of most land crossings and prevented the entry of food and medical supplies, including shipments of milk and infant formula. This has led to the collapse of supply chains and the inability of international organizations to deliver aid, causing widespread hunger and malnutrition, especially among children and infants.

    With relief centers being targeted and convoys restricted, humanitarian needs have exceeded warning levels, amid suspicious international silence and the UN’s inability to enforce safe humanitarian corridors.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • US media ignores yet another unhinged, racist attack from GOP because the target is Muslim

    Another day, another unhinged racist screed from Republicans in Congress that results in virtually no mainstream media coverage because the target is a Muslim-American. 

    Fine’s latest rant—in concert with the killing of Minnesota progressives last month—appears to have been a bridge too far, even for the normally silent and cynical Democratic leadership.

    Tuesday night, in response to a post on X/Twitter from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that echoed the International Criminal Court’s designation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) posted on X/Twitter. “I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists,” he wrote. “The only shame is that you serve in Congress.” 

    The statement follows a long pattern of targeted racist harassment and incitement from Reps. Fine and Nancy Mace (R-SC). And, just like all previous racist attacks, it did not merit coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, or CBS network news, or on-air coverage at CNN. The only coverage Fine’s bigoted rant solicited were short write-ups in Politico, Reuters, and CNN.com, and NBC News web only, and the only substantive coverage was from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who did an 8 minute, 41 second segment detailing Fine’s long history of incitement.

    Adding urgency to the violent rhetoric is the fact that Omar was among the Minnesota officials who appeared on target lists compiled by accused murderer Vance Boelter, who allegedly assassinated Democrats in a shooting spree last month.

    Unlike Fine’s previous racist screeds, this one at least resulted in condemnation from Democratic leadership in the House. Previous racist social media posts merited no such response. But Fine’s latest rant—in concert with the killing of Minnesota progressives last month—appears to have been a bridge too far, even for the normally silent and cynical Democratic leadership. 

    In the past, Fine has called Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) ​“a terrorist” who ​“shouldn’t be American.” (Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan). He said Tlaib and Omar ​“might consider leaving before I get [to Congress]. #BombsAway.” He has advocated running over and killing pro-Palestine protesters, called Palestinians ​“animals,” referred to Muslims as ​“rapists,” and openly cheered starving civilians in Gaza. In May, Fine attacked Tlaib on X/Twitter, writing in response to her condemnation of Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza, ​“Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.” In June, Fine’s colleague Mace told the PBD Podcast she wanted to “send Ilhan Omar Back To Somalia,” in response to Omar’s criticisms of Trump’s immigration crackdowns. She later doubled down on X/Twitter: “Omar clearly has more loyalty to the corrupt hellhole she came from than to the country she was elected to serve.” 

    None of these attacks merited any mainstream media coverage—much less any sustained outrage or condemnation. The only reason the latest round of incitement got a handful of blurbs in Politico and CNN.com and (belatedly) a segment on MSNBC is likely because Democrats finally condemned them. And that’s all. Crickets from the New York Times, Washington Post network news, and CNN.

    This raises the question: What would Fine or Mace have to say to justify actual media outrage? Actual sustained coverage? These attacks are not subtle or reliant on dog whistles. They’re out in the open, proudly hateful, and an invitation for their proudly bigoted social media followers to double down. 

    Contrast this media silence after months of sustained racist incitement against Reps. Omar and Tlaib with the week-long media meltdown last September when Tlaib suggested that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she was potentially biased against pro-Palestine protesters. ​“We’ve [protested for] climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs,” Tlaib told the Detroit Metro Times. ​“But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

    “Antisemitism” scandals in our media are almost never about combating the very real dangers of antisemitism. They’re about disciplining critics of Israel.

    This comment turned out to be entirely correct. The Nessel-led prosecution arrested seven pro-Palestine protesters in a pre-dawn raid in April and the charges were later dropped after Nessel was pressured to recuse herself for anti-Palestinian bias. But at the time, despite the interviewer himself defending Tlaib, the congresswoman’s remarks solicited a full-blown “antisemitism” scandal meriting coverage in USA Today, Newsweek, Fox News and The Free Press, and culminating in a smear campaign by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, which outright asserted Tlaib was an anti-Jewish bigot. This was is addition to the countless articles and segments in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Axios, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, and ABC News in late 2023 lamenting Tlaib’s alleged “antisemitism” because she defended the term ​“from the River to the Sea” as a call for equality and freedom in Palestine.

    Tapper, who hosts two influential cable news shows—his daily weekday show The Lead, and the Sunday morning agenda-setting news program State of the Union—is the most nakedly hypocritical commentator in all of media. He effectively manufactured the “antisemitism” scandal targeting Tlaib last September out of whole cloth, outright lying about her in an interview with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting,” Tapper somberly said on air, “that [AG Nessel] shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish”—which is not at all what Tlaib said. A smear neither Bash nor Tapper ever apologized for or retracted, only opaquely saying they “misspoke” in a throwaway line days later. 

    Since this shameful, false smear of Tlaib, there’s been a half-dozen racist attacks on Tlaib and her Muslim colleague in Congress by Fine and others, and has Tapper done a single segment on it? He has not. He did, however, find time last night to platform the  head of pro-Israel pressure group ADL Jonathan Greenblatt so he could (again) defend Musk’s neo-Nazi gesture from Trump’s inauguration and accuse the largest union in the country, the National Education Association, of “antisemitism” for cutting ties with the ADL over its promotion of anti-Palestinian racism and Israeli foreign policy. Tapper also conspicuously failed to ask Greenblatt about a recent high profile rebuke of Greenblatt by Yehuda Cohen, father of Israeli captive Nimrod Cohen, who accused Greenblatt of fabricating a story about his family to promote “cheap patriotism” and “endless war in Gaza.”

    Defending the expression “from the River to the Sea” and noting allegations—entirely correct, it turns out—of anti-Palestinian bias from a state prosecutor results in weeks-long media scandal, meltdowns, cable news mentions, pundit commentary, and congressional censures. Yet out-in-the-open anti-Muslim bigtory and calls for violence against sitting members of Congress are barely mentioned at all. The double standard—which, as Zeteo’s Prem Thakker notes, isn’t really a double standard since only one side is actually being bigoted—could not be more obvious. The question is, why? 

    The reason is that “antisemitism” scandals in our media are almost never about combating the very real dangers of antisemitism. They’re about disciplining critics of Israel. They’re about using the language of liberalism against liberalism, protecting US and Israeli regional hegemony by attacking anyone undermining its ideological underpinnings. Meanwhile, actual racism, actual incitement, and actual defamation of Muslim-Americans solicits a yawn because it poses no challenge to US and Israeli national security interests and, in key ways, assists them by stoking the anti-Muslim racism essential for its maintenance. It’s an inconsistency that has always been present, but with the latest crop of cartoonishly racist MAGA trolls in Congress, the glaring double standard has grown wider and more obvious. The question is whether anyone in mainstream media, beyond a one-off segment on MSNBC, will note it, much less gin up a scandal over it.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Nearly 800 killed at Gaza food hubs and aid convoy routes since end of May, UN says

    UN human rights office says 615 of the deaths were in vicinity of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

    At least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday.

    The GHF, proposed by Israel as an alternative to the UN aid system in Gaza, has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of principles of humanitarian impartiality and what they have said could be complicity in war crimes.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Nearly 800 killed at Gaza food hubs and aid convoy routes since end of May, UN says

    UN human rights office says 615 of the deaths were in vicinity of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

    At least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May, the UN human rights office said on Friday.

    The GHF, proposed by Israel as an alternative to the UN aid system in Gaza, has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of principles of humanitarian impartiality and what they have said could be complicity in war crimes.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Genocidal Israel kills hundreds of Palestinians as another scandal around GHF emerges

    Israel has continued to assault Gaza with on onslaught of air strikes. Once again, many aid-seekers have been killed whilst queuing for food and other vital supplies. However, such atrocities are not taking up much space in Western media outlets. As horrifying death tolls emerge daily, the scourge of the American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) continues to bring danger to a starving population.

    According to estimates from Al-Jazeera, just this week tens of Palestinians have been slaughtered every day:

    And, of those hundreds dead, many were killed by Israeli forces whilst queuing for food. In fact, more than 750 Palestinians have been killed at GHF sites since 27 May. The fact that GHF is still allowed into Gaza to create hotspots of slaughter is a disgrace.

    Israel’s barbarism via GHF

    However, it’s not for want of trying. Just days ago, a remarkable 200 charities came together to call for an end to:

     the deadly Israeli distribution scheme (including the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) in Gaza, revert to the existing UN-led coordination mechanisms, and lift the Israeli government’s blockade on aid and commercial supplies.

    The group featured Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), Oxfam, Amnesty International, and Save the Children. They explained that 400 previous aid distribution points had been replaced with just four:

    military-controlled distribution sites, forcing two million people into overcrowded, militarized zones where they face daily gunfire and mass casualties while trying to access food and are denied other life-saving supplies.

    The group express their collective outrage that many humanitarian charities have the infrastructure and experience to effectively distribute aid in Gaza, but Israel is instead only equipping GHF to operate in the area.

    Legal proceedings

    Moreover, fifteen international human rights foundations have also demanded that GHF and other private groups claiming to provide aid in Gaza to cease their actions or face legal consequences:

    Failure to do so may expose these organizations and their officers, representatives, and agents to further risk of criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting or otherwise being complicit in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide in violation of international law, U.S. law and other relevant national laws under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

    GHF’s scandalous rollout of aid has killed hundreds of Palestinians, even more appalling given established organisations are ready and waiting to provide aid. However, they’re being restricted by Israel:

    After Israeli authorities barred aid deliveries by UNRWA and other established humanitarian actors to an estimated 2.1 million starving Palestinians in Gaza, they—apparently with US backing—promoted the creation of GHF as a vehicle to supplant the UN-led humanitarian assistance architecture that has operated in the territory for more than seven decades.

    GHF operate in a militarised fashion wholly unsuited to distributing aid to a besieged, bombed, and starving population. They couldn’t have received more condemnation from international experts and organisations who actually have extensive experience in aid distribution. However, that’s apparently just the tip of the iceberg. Further concerns have been raised as it’s emerged that a US Department of State official:

    waived nine mandatory counterterrorism and anti-fraud safeguards to rush a $30m award last month to a controversial Gaza aid group backed by the Trump administration and Israel.

    Of course, that aid group in question is GHF. Jeremy Lewin signed off on the millions of dollars for GHF despite the fact that doing so did not meet:

    minimum technical or budgetary standards.

    Instead, Lewin rushed the order through for a group that have been described by Amnesty International as having an:

    inhuman and deadly militarised scheme.

    The Trump administration also ignored warnings from its own affiliated aid agency about the incompetence and danger of GHF.

    On top of that, the US consultancy firm who have bankrolled GHF – Boston Consulting Group – have been dropped by Save the Children for their “utterly unacceptable” choices.

    Concentration camps

    In a further desecration of Palestinian autonomy, it has also emerged that BCG created models:

    of how much it would cost to “relocate” large parts of the Palestinian population outside of the Israeli-occupied territory.

    Save the Children CEO, Inger Ashing, called the ‘relocation’ “utterly unacceptable” and said that it was:

    devoid of humanity, disregards fundamental rights and dignity, and raises serious ethical and legal questions.

    For their part, BCG has tried to distance itself from the ‘modelling’ mentioned above, claiming they weren’t paid for that work. It remains to be seen how that particular defence will play out in the international criminal court.

    However, let’s immediately do away with the conciliatory language of BHC and GHF. This ‘relocation’ is ethnic cleansing that is forcibly displacing Palestinians into concentration camps. The Canary’s HG reported on Israel’s forcible expulsion of Palestinians in Rafah into concentration camps, along with their horrific insistence that anyone refusing to enter the camp would be killed:

    Israel has made it clear that anyone who does not make their way to the new concentration camp, on what used to be Rafah city, will become a legitimate target for elimination.

    Of course, as HG pointed out:

     At no point so far has Israel needed a legitimate justification for eliminating anyone. They have done what they want, to whom they want, from the start.

    Israel’s policy of concentration camps is entirely in line with GHF’s plans for Gaza. When aid points have been forcibly reduced by Israel from 400 to 4, what else are starving people supposed to do? If they go to those aid spots, as 750 Palestinians cannot tell you, they’ll be killed. Middle East Eye have reported that:

    Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has proposed creating camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” in the Gaza Strip to house Palestinians and “deradicalise” them.

    According to Reuters the plans are “voluntary,” but have allegedly already been discussed with the Trump administration. GHF have claimed that they have no such plans to implement “Humanitarian Transit Areas.”

    However, given Israel’s constant tactic of repeatedly bombing and displacing Palestinians to chase them out of certain areas; given the concentration camps in Rafah right now; given the GHF dead that the group refuses to take responsibility for – it is no great stretch that people are wary of their future intentions.

    GHF are an Israeli- and American-backed death machine. If anything, they fit in nicely with the horror that Israel keep unleashing on Palestinians.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on Israel: “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide”

    Part 2 of Democracy Now!’s conversation with Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration, shortly after publishing a report on corporations supporting what she calls Israel’s “economy of genocide.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Project 2025 caught trying to destroy UNRWA on behalf of pro-Israel groups

    A key Project 2025 architect, as well as major donors to the infamous Trump administration-linked initiative, have been at the heart of a sprawling UK-US-Israeli nexus working to delegitimize the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

    Previously, the Canary reported on a notable piece of propaganda the Israeli government put out smearing the UNRWA on X. Crucially, this was just weeks ahead of the launch of the controversial US-Israel coordinated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). We exposed how the baseless claims in its one-minute-long video originated from a report produced by the British dark money foreign policy think tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS).

    Now, the Canary can reveal that the day the genocidal settler state plastered the HJS report’s ‘findings’ across its social media, a Project 2025 author was helping the think tank to launch another publication discrediting UNRWA and various UN bodies.

    Another Henry Jackson Society report smearing aid and human rights groups

    On 7 May, the HJS hosted a launch event for a new publication. Once more, this was awash with criticism of UNRWA, and other UN bodies operating in Palestine.

    Titled, Human Rights NGOs: A Crisis of Trust – The Root Causes and Recommended Remedies, as the name suggests, it presented a 40-page smear of various human rights organisations. While its sole focus wasn’t Israel, it naturally honed in on NGOs critical of the genocidal occupier.

    Perhaps predictably after the pair of high profile human rights nonprofits separately set out how Israel is perpetrating genocide, the HJS report had Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in its particular sights.

    And like clockwork, it also leaned into propaganda about the UNRWA laying cover for Hamas. Furthermore, the report dedicated an entire section to casting doubt on Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of it ethnic cleansing project. Broadly, it shamelessly contested the idea Israel is committing genocide. One part goes to pains to suggest that official reports about the famine conditions in Gaza from the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) are false.

    For this, it referenced another report from the Tel Aviv University-affiliated think tank the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). This points to discrepancies between OCHA and IPC’s aid data and what Israel reports. It spuriously suggested the UN’s information relies on:

    incomplete presentation of the distribution of aid in the Strip

    Unsurprisingly, the controversial think tank has long perpetuated justification of the IOF’s actions – those illegal under international law. Its current executive director is Tamir Hayman, the former head of the IOF Intelligence Directorate between 2018 and 2021. His tenure follows previous director Amos Yadlin, who also served as a former IOF intelligence chief.

    The US Department of State has also financed its work. The US Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) began one donation of US $628,000 on 1 October 2023. Obviously, this was mere days before 7 October and the subsequent start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. According to official government records, it appears to have finished paying this grant in February this year. In other words, this was amid the so-called ceasefire – that Israel continued to violate – and ultimately shattered altogether.

    Meet NGO Monitor: an Israeli nonprofit with direct ties to the state

    The speakers list for the HJS report launch was illuminating.

    The first was (self-described) human rights lawyer Anne Herzberg. The former New York attorney and Israeli settler is a legal advisor for a notorious Jerusalem-based nonprofit known as NGO Monitor.

    For all intents and purposes, the organisation is another pro-Israel pressure group. Far from a nonpartisan watchdog entity it self-proclaims, NGO Monitor has been an instrumental front group for Israel’s domestic and international efforts to discredit aid and human rights NGOs critical of the colonial settler state’s violence.

    Its once mission statement preserved on the Internet Archive alluded to this in not so many explicit words. This previously stated how its goal is:

    to end the practice used by certain self-declared humanitarian NGOs of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.

    In short, its entire raison d’etre is to smear groups and bodies championing Palestinian rights. Needless to say, over the years, it has targeted numerous boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) groups. It has also attacked prominent international human rights organisations. Unsurprisingly, that has included both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – that the HJS report honed in on.

    Towards the end of May, NGO Monitor published its own controversial report. This too laundered many of the same unfounded claims about UN agencies and aid NGOs in Gaza. In particular, its publication linked official UK government aid to programmes in which it alleged:

    Hamas was likely dictating the disbursement of UK taxpayer funds

    A Project 2025 architect at the HJS report launch

    Next to Herzberg on the HJS’s report launch speaker list was the Heritage Foundation’s Max Primorac. As the bio for him on the event noted, Primorac is a senior research fellow at the think tank’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. The center covers matters concerning “Europe, foreign aid and global development”. He previously acted as the COO for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

    But significantly, it was Primorac who authored Project 2025’s chapter on international aid. One particularly telling paragraph advocates for the US international aid arm, USAID, to cut aid to “states allied to Iran”. Naturally,  this singled out Palestine and Lebanon. It argues that the administration should limit aid in these places:

    to the advancement of narrow strategic priorities and support for basic American values, such as aid to persecuted religious minorities.

    Primorac also input into a previous chapter concerning the Department of State. This called for the US to terminate funding for UN organisations, including UNRWA, and international NGOs.

    Of course, it’s a blueprint the Trump administration awash with Project 2025 connections from the get-go has been only too happy to follow. After suspending aid to UNRWA as per Israel’s propaganda, the Trump administration has maintained this.

    What’s more, the 922-page conservative manifesto, published in April 2023, contains a noteworthy passage about Iran’s nuclear technology that’s only too prescient. This reads that:

    the U.S. must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and delivery capabilities and more broadly block Iranian ambitions. This means, inter alia, reinstituting and expanding Trump Administration sanctions; providing security assistance for regional partners; supporting, through public diplomacy and otherwise, freedom-seeking Iranian people in their revolt against the mullahs; and ensuring Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    As the Canary’s Charlie Jay previously underscored, the US and Israel have long used unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s purported nuclear capabilities as a pretext for imperialistic expansionism in the region. Project 2025 laid this playbook out in no uncertain terms.

    Awash with Israel government connections

    Herzberg and Primorac’s cameos at the HJS report launch event is hardly the only connection between the British dark money think tank, the Israeli nonprofit, and Project 2025 either.

    For one, the previous report the HJS put out – and which Israel ran its propaganda piece over – also had a significant direct link to NGO Monitor. Specifically, co-author Salo Aizenberg has regularly written reports for the Jerusalem-based organisation.

    NGO Monitor’s involvement with both HJS reports is also telling.

    In April 2024, +972 Magazine unearthed the damning resume of its founder Gerald Steinberg. The 2004 document showed that Steinberg had served as a consultant to the government of Israel. Notably, this was two years after he’d established NGO Monitor. In other words, the organisation has had direct ties to the Israeli government from the beginning. B’nai B’rith International, which set up the infamous pro-Israel lobby group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is also one of its founding organisations.

    A 2018 report by Policy Working Group – a collective of ex-Israeli diplomats and academics – exposed the organisation’s de facto affiliation to the Israeli government. Notably, it stated how:

    NGO Monitor describes itself as politically “independent and nonpartisan”. In reality, the organization operates in close coordination and cooperation with the Israeli government.

    The group highlighted an instance as far back as 2009, in which the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a press conference for the nonprofit. This was over a report the nonprofit had produced on so-called ‘lawfare’. Specifically, this contested the legitimacy of human rights NGOs like Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Haq taking Israeli war criminals to court.

    The author of the problematic publication was none other than Anne Herzberg. Naturally, this was a fact which the HJS was only too content to boast about in its report launch.

    Unsurprisingly, NGO Monitor’s proximity to the Israeli government doesn’t stop there. The state has repeatedly provided support for its numerous lobbying efforts in Europe. Alongside this, the nonprofit has publicised its cosy ties to government ministries across multiple annual reports.

    NGO Monitor’s opaque funding hypocrisy

    And like the HJS, NGO Monitor is not transparent about its funding sources. While it styles itself as a nonprofit transparency watchdog, it’s with no small irony that the Israeli organisation itself doesn’t disclose its own donors.

    Over the years, journalists and researchers have dug up an informative list of its financiers nonetheless.

    Some of its US donors have emerged in Form 990 filings with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Funders have sent donations via a US-registered organisation Research + Evaluation = Promoting Organizational Responsibility and Transparency (REPORT), formerly American Friends of NGO Monitor (AFNGOM). NGO Monitor’s website notes only how it “receives significant financial support” from REPORT, but not who has funded it through the shell donation vehicle.

    The group has also reported some – albeit obscure – donor information to the Israel registrar for nonprofits. This details donations of over NIS 100,000 (approximately £20,648) or more than NIS 50,000 (currently £10,324) if it constitutes at least 20% of the nonprofit’s annual turnover.

    Guidestar – the online register that displays this information – shows that three donors made contributions exceeding this in 2023. The largest donation comprised NIS 4,199,733 (£867,176). It lists two further donations of NIS 1,219,534 (£251,811) and NIS 186,814 (£38,574). Unfortunately, it does not provide the names of the donors for these amounts.

    The Israeli government charity registrar only makes this information available for a small fee. Due to the moral implications of making this payment, the Canary has not accessed this.

    Moreover, historic records that groups have obtained previously have revealed that donors have primarily funneled donations through other organisations, and therefore the originating source remains largely hidden. The 2018 Policy Working Group report identified that REPORT had contributed 90.7% of the group’s total income for 2016.

    The Orion Foundation – a company registered in the British tax haven the Isle of Man – also made some of its donations that year. Evidently, the company is a conduit for a donor who wanted their donation to stay out of the public view.

    Donors revealed

    The Canary has traced a number of its donors for recent years. Many also fund the HJS. You can explore these here:

    Its biggest identifiable donors included US property mogul Myron Zimmerman’s philanthropic organisation, the MZ Foundation. The Canary previously highlighted that it has bankrolled illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank via funding to the Central Fund of Israel.

    San Francisco-based Koret Foundation was another and is a known donor to numerous Zionist causes and lobby groups. It’s the charitable arm of the Koret family, who established clothing company Koret of California in 1939.

    The Emerson Family Foundation also cropped up and is another prolific donor to a multitude of pro-Israel groups. One of its founding couple – Rita Emerson – previously sat on the board of REPORT and Zionist organisation Stand With Us.

    Alongside these, the Maryland-based Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Foundation has given significant sums to NGO Monitor. It has long funnelled funds to a vast number of pro-Israel groups.

    Also among the hall of NGO Monitor donation infamy was neoconservative heiress to the Sears, Roebuck and Co. department store fortune Nina Rosenwald’s Abstraction Fund. As an SOAS report on the HJS previously noted, Rosenwald:

    Has been dubbed “the Sugar Mama of anti-Muslim Hate”, and is the founder and director of the Gatestone Institute, which has been accused of promoting the ‘White Genocide’ theory that white populations in the USA and Europe are being replaced by non-white populations as part of a deliberate policy.

    HJS and NGO Monitor funders: bankrolling Project 2025

    What’s even more significant, is that a number of HJS and NGO Monitor’s donors have bankrolled Project 2025 advisory groups. These have done so to the staggering tune of close to $99m:

    The bulk of these went via the Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund (DAF). Mother Jones once branded it the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement – and for good reason. The DAF has distributed gargantuan sums to a who’s who of multifarious right-wing groups, and has included many pro-Israel causes. As the Canary previously detailed, DAFs enable donors to conceal their identity.

    The Canary didn’t include the Emerson Family Foundation in the above network graph. However, the philanthropic foundation gave to another significant donor of Project 2025-affiliated groups: the Bradley Impact Fund. An investigation by Desmog recently singled out the organisation as one of six billionaire family fortunes financing the Heritage Foundation-led initiative. It uncovered the fund had poured more than $50m into Project 2025 advisory board organisations. It also underscored it had made further donations to the Donors Trust.

    Pro-Israel Project 2025 links

    Excluding DAFs like the Donors Trust and Jewish Communal Fund, HJS and NGO Monitor donors have given almost $8.46m to Project 2025 groups in the past five years.

    Turning Point USA accounted for the lion’s share of this – at more than $6.6m ($10.5m with DAF donation included). The group promotes ultranationalist neoliberal conservative ideals on campuses across the US. Naturally, it has invariably meant manifest support for Israel. This has taken the form of pro-Israel “Activism Kits”, events with prominent Zionists, and sponsoring students on “educational trips” to the genocidal settler state.

    Then, there’s the powerful far right Claremont Institute. HJS donor the Jack Roth Foundation ploughed £1.3m into the extreme neoconservative think tank between 2020 and 2024. DAFs take this figure to £1.62m.

    In October 2024, Claremont Institute senior fellow Steven F. Hayward penned a Trump ‘Agenda for Day One’ for the think tank’s online publication. Top of his list was to suspend all US aid to UNRWA, and to completely disband it, spuriously claiming it had become a “willing adjunct to Hamas in Gaza”. Through its numerous publications, the think tank has put out a number of articles advancing pro-Israel propaganda.

    The ‘Israel Victory Project’: a sinister love-letter to genocide

    Perhaps the most obvious pro-Israel Project 2025 advisory board member is the right-wing Zionist think tank, the Middle East Forum (MEF). Multiple HJS and NGO Monitor donors together gave the MEF $173,500 during the same period (of $9.2m when including DAFs). Since 2017, the MEF has operated the controversial ‘Israel Victory Project’.

    As the name suggests, it’s all about engineering Israel’s entire occupation of Palestine. Its website is peppered with sinister platitudes to Zionist total dominion, stating its goal to steer:

    U.S. and Israeli policy toward backing an Israel victory over the Palestinians to end the conflict by convincing the Palestinians of their defeat in their century-long war against Israel.

    The landing page reads like a love letter to Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans. A dashboard delivers regularly updated statistics counting ‘Israeli Military Achievements’. One disturbing figure notes the number of ‘terrorists’ the IOF has slaughtered in Gaza: “+24,000”. It lists this next to a 1.08:1 ratio of civilians to combatants – outrageously implying that nearly half the civilians it has killed are Hamas operatives.

    Paving the way for the aid as a tool of genocide

    The connections between two organisations at the forefront of manufacturing smears against established aid mechanisms in Gaza, and Project 2025 has clear significance amid the present situation with the GHF.

    The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace remarked recently how the GHF reads like a “prelude to implementing” the “Trump plan”. This was of course the president’s machinations for the ‘voluntary’ removal – that is, the forced mass expulsion – of Palestinians from Gaza. Naturally, Trump’s vision is very much in step with Netanyahu and many among Israel’s far-right government. After all, many haven’t exactly concealed their explicit genocidal occupation ambitions. And, as the Canary previously pointed out, the settler state’s weaponisation of aid is a fundamental part of its leaked ground offensive plan operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’.

    And on 26 June, the US government approved $30m in direct funding for the GHF. It did so amid repeated reports of the IOF massacring – in the hundreds – Palestinians seeking aid. Of course, taking a leaf out of the IOF propaganda playbook, the GHF has denied its role.

    Not coincidences

    None of this is coincidence. Israel’s manoeuvres to concentrate Palestinians at its deliberate death trap aid distribution points is a calculated feature of its ethnic cleansing agenda. The funding signals the Trump administration’s emphatic support for this. Of course, the US has long been an active partner in Israel’s violent colonial annexation of Palestine so it’s hardly surprising.

    It all comes amid unsettling revelations over proposals bearing the GHF’s name that went to the heart of the Trump Whitehouse. The documents put forward plans for ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’, confining the Palestinian population in eight GHF-controlled compounds. And as Reuters reported, the proposals called for:

     using the sprawling facilities to “gain trust with the local population” and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision for Gaza.”

    These horrifying proposals are already materialising. Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has signalled to the IOF to prepare Rafah for a ‘humanitarian city’. The plan involves forcing 600,000 Palestinians into this Israel-commanded area. But it amounts to nothing short of chilling propaganda for what is in essence, literal concentration camps.

    Now, Project 2025’s ties to organs of Israel’s UNRWA propaganda brings the IOF’s blood-soaked inauguration of the GHF into sharp relief. The aid outfit was always a front – or more to the point, an active instrument – in Israel’s genocide, which a Trump-tied rightwing pro-Israel network paved the way for from the start.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel arrests Israeli journalist over tweet, opens terrorism investigation 

    Nazareth, Israel, July 10, 2025—Police arrested and detained journalist and activist Israel Frey on Wednesday, July 9, in Tel Aviv after the State Attorney’s office opened a criminal investigation on Tuesday on accusations of inciting terrorism based on a social media post on X. A Tel Aviv court on Thursday extended Frey’s detention by three days.

    Frey is a journalist known for his reporting on the Israeli occupation in the West Bank for several outlets, including Haaretz and YNET, according to CPJ’s review of his work.

    “Israeli authorities’ arrest of journalist Israel Frey underscores authorities’ growing intolerance of freedom of expression since the start of the war on October 7, 2023,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Israeli authorities must immediately release Frey and all detained Palestinian journalists, and end their ongoing crackdown on the press and dissenting voices.”

    After the news that five Israeli soldiers were killed by an explosive device in northern Gaza, Frey tweeted that “The world is a better place this morning without five young men who participated in one of the most horrific crimes against humanity.” 

    Frey’s attorneys, Riham Nassra and Michal Pomeranz, told CPJ that the tweet does not legally constitute support for terrorism, describing the incident as a “political arrest.”

    The State Attorney’s office responded to CPJ’s emailed request for comment with a copy of the court document about the case. The police and the Ministry of National Security issued a joint statement saying they would “deal firmly with anyone who incites or expresses support for the enemy.”

    This is the third time Frey has been investigated, he told CPJ on Tuesday, before his arrest, adding that “In previous instances, it was alleged that my posts contained incitement, but the files were closed.” 

    On October 16, 2023, Frey went into hiding after his home was attacked the previous day by a mob of far-right Israelis after he expressed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

    CPJ has documented Israeli authorities’ arrests of 85 Palestinian journalists since October 7, 2023, the start of the Israel-Gaza war. In that same time period, this is the first time Israeli authorities have arrested and opened an investigation against an Israeli journalist for expressing an opinion.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Admin Sanctions UN Palestine Rapporteur Over Her Opposition to Genocide

    Defenders of Palestine and the rule of law on Wednesday condemned Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement of sanctions targeting United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. In a post on the social media site X, Rubio said he is imposing sanctions on Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Concentration camps are back – why does that not bother anyone?

    Israel has soft-launched its concentration camp in Rafah, and Donald Trump has hard-launched Alligator Alcatraz, while other countries look the other way.

    Concentration camps in the US and Gaza

    Israel has made it clear that anyone who does not make their way to the new concentration camp, on what used to be Rafah city, will become a legitimate target for elimination.

    Just to be clear, though. At no point so far has Israel needed a legitimate justification for eliminating anyone. They have done what they want, to whom they want, from the start.

    Israel could not have made their intentions clearer – ethnic cleansing.

    And still, Western Government are supporting it – providing weapons and support and pretending they don’t see the long list of war crimes because little Netanyahu might throw a temper tantrum.

    So what choice to Palestinians have right now? Go to a concentration camp, eventually die of starvation, or be murdered by Israel. Or don’t, and Israel will exterminate you for failing to comply with their sick little game.

    Everyone looks back on World War II and wonders how the Nazi’s got away with what they did for so long. Here’s your answer.

    Looking the other way

    Benjamin Netanyahu has watched on as Trump launched Alligator Alcatraz, which experts have already deemed unsafe only days after opening. They have designed it to hold up to 3,000 detainees.

    Already, detainees are reporting dangerous and inhumane conditions, including lack of access to water, inadequate food and denial of religious rights. Additionally, reports suggest dangerous temperatures, giant bugs, no hospital visits, and unsanitary conditions. Never mind no confidential calls with attorneys.

    Trump and Netanyahu are playing from the exact same book – fascism.

    ‘Sticking point’

    Meanwhile, David Lammy said that Israel’s planned concentration camps were a ‘sticking point’.

    On Tuesday 8 July, the National reported that when the foreign secretary was confronted with the Israeli defence minister’s plans to build a camp on the ruins of Rafah, he said it was “a big sticking point for getting that ceasefire”.

    Pretty funny how the Lancet’s estimates of 189,000 dead were not a sticking point. Or bombing schools and every hospital in Gaza.

    Calling it a ‘sticking point’ is ridiculous. A sticking point is not agreeing on what colour carpet to buy or what time to go see the new Superman movie. Countless breaches of international law and straight-up war crimes are not sticking points. Yet again, the UK is failing to uphold international law and is complicit in Israel’s genocide.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Depraved US government sanctions Francesca Albanese for criticism of Israel

    The US government have sanctioned UN expert Francesca Albanese for her critiques of genocidal Israel. US secretary of state Marco Rubio released a statement imposing sanctions on Albanese for her:

    efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.

    Rubio continued:

    Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.

    That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

    In fact, Albanese’s open contempt for the US, Israel, and the West has been entirely well-founded and meticulously researched. The UN Special Rapporteur has been a shining light of an expert understanding of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. And, almost certainly the cause of Rubio’s consternation, has been her robust explanations of how the US and the West are facilitating Israel’s genocide.

    US sanctions Albanese

    In his statement, Rubio repeats the legal misapprehension that Trump’s administration have repeatedly trotted out. Namely, that Albanese is overreaching through her agreement with the International Criminal Court (ICC) that those responsible for the genocide must be brought to legal justice. Of course, it’s obvious why Rubio is going after Albanese rather than the ICC directly. Albanese is one person who has made immeasurable contributions to both expert and public understanding of Israel’s genocide. It’s a cowardly move designed to cow Albanese.

    However, unfortunately for Rubio, Albanese remains unmoved by the US sanctions on her. In a message sent to Al Jazeera she said:

    No comment on mafia style intimidation techniques.

    Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.

    Rubio in particular notes that the US believes Albanese’s interventions to be an overreach because:

    Neither the United States nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute, making this action a gross infringement on the sovereignty of both countries.

    Here, Rubio argues that the ICC have no jurisdiction over the US. But, this is a gross misinterpretation of the legal facts. As Human Rights Watch explained:

    The claim that the statute is “overreaching” because it supposedly binds states that have not ratified the treaty through the exercise of jurisdiction over their nationals is a gross distortion.

    As the rights experts explain, the ICC does not “bind” non-States Parties or give them obligations towards the court. Only state parties – member states of the ICC – are obliged to respond to treaties from the ICC. In other words, the US need not (and do not, for that matter) treat any missives from the ICC as a legal obligation. To the US, it’s a communication of international legal jurisprudence. Importantly, none of this is new in international law:

    this possibility already exists as part of general international law and corresponds with established state practice…there is, moreover, nothing unusual about the conferral of jurisdiction over nationals of non-State Parties through the mechanism of treaty law.

    And, as is typical for a belligerent and hypocritical US:

    It has in fact exercised jurisdiction over non-U.S. nationals in a number of cases, on the basis of the treaty provisions empowering it to do so.

    Rubio’s sanctioning of Albanese is no misunderstanding of international legal norms. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence a prominent legal critic of Israel’s genocide. And, it is the type of hostility we can expect of a state bankrolling genocide.

    Outrage

    For those of us with more of a moral backbone, there has been plenty of outrage about the US sanctions on Albanese.

    The president of the UN Human Rights Council, Jürg Lauber, decried the US’ attempted intimidation:

    Amnesty International also decried the sanctions:

    Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said of the US sanctions on Albanese:

    This is a shameless and transparent attack on the fundamental principles of international justice. Special Rapporteurs are not appointed to please governments or to be popular but to deliver their mandate.

    Francesca Albanese’s mandate is to advocate for human rights and international law, essential at a time when the very survival of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip is at stake. These sanctions come just days after she published a new report detailing how companies have profited from Israel’s illegal occupation, its brutal system of apartheid and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    And, Callamard forcefully concluded:

    States must forcefully reject these disgraceful, vindictive sanctions and exert maximum diplomatic pressure on the US government to reverse them.

    One commenter got to the heart of why the sanctioning happened:

    Researcher Philip Proudfoot referred to the “crown jewels”:

    Economist Yanis Varoufakis spoke out:

    And, Albanese herself said of the US sanctions on her:

    Just to be sure, on this day more than ever: I stand firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done. I come from a country with a tradition of illustrious legal scholars, talented lawyers and courageous judges who have defended justice at great cost and often with their own life. I intend to honor that tradition.

    American lies

    The US sanctions on Albanese is the attempt of a state reckoning with the growing global condemnation of their closest ally, Israel. It is unheard of for states to single out single UN experts. And, the statement from Rubio is riddled with lies, misapprehensions, and bluster. It is simply a fact that the arrest warrants issued by the ICC for the butcher Netanyahu and his accomplice Gallant are due to their architecture of Israel’s genocide.

    Albanese has shown the grit and strength of character that is typical of her work. Her priceless efforts have evidently threatened a global superpower – long may it continue.

    As ever, the American illusion of freedom and democracy is entirely conditional on who it considers strategic allies and anyone who objects to their total geopolitical dominance is, by default, a terrorist.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/UN Human Rights Council

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Historic Genocide Case Heard In Barbados Supreme Court

    Bridgetown, Barbados-In a landmark moment for regional justice and international law, the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration (CMPI) has filed a powerful legal challenge before the Supreme Court of Barbados, calling for urgent national action in response to Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza. The case urges the Barbados government to align its foreign policy with its obligations under international humanitarian law, amid overwhelming global evidence of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.

    The case, brought by CMPI Secretary David McDonald Denny, is being led by veteran human rights attorney and Secretary of the Caribbean Against Apartheid in Palestine (CAAP) Mr Lalu Hanuman.

    The post Historic Genocide Case Heard In Barbados Supreme Court appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Army Building New Air Bases, Ammunition Depots For Israel

    The US Army Corps of Engineers is constructing new military infrastructure for Israel across several bases, including airfields, hangars, and ammunition depots, according to public records reported by Haaretz on 8 July.

    The current projects total more than $250 million, with future ones expected to exceed $1 billion, based on a call for interested contractors originally scheduled for June but postponed due to Israel’s war against Iran.

    The Israeli news site Haaretz reported on the public documents on Monday.

    The US Army Corps of Engineers is using contractors to build ammunition depots, refuelling stations, and concrete structures for Israeli military bases.

    The post US Army Building New Air Bases, Ammunition Depots For Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The shifting ground: why British Jews are afraid

    By Rabbi Neil Janes

    Who is the ‘regular’ Jew – your neighbour, friend, colleague and why are they feeling so anxious this week?

    In this piece, you’ll meet a regular Jewish family and hear how they experience the world and why recent events are such a worry for them – and what we can all do about it.

    I say to you as their rabbi, there can be no making peace in the world if it’s at the cost of Jews…and their history and deeply held core aspects of their identity.

    Until that is accepted, there is a clear label for opposition to such a stance: anti-Jewish racism.

    Meet the Smiths: an ordinary Jewish family in anxious times

    Allow me to introduce you to the Smith family. They’re an imaginary family from middle England and they are Jewish.

    They’re almost definitely members of a Progressive synagogue and certainly strongly identify with their Jewish identity.

    They’ve lived in Britain all their lives and worked hard. They’ve raised their children, sent them to university, paid taxes. And when they go to synagogue, they want their synagogue to be liberal, tolerant, inclusive.

    They love the fact that their rabbi is a woman and their community has a Pride Shabbat.

    And when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians?

    They’ve been lifelong donors to peace charities, organisations working in the field and whenever they visit Israel, they ensure that they visit Arab-Israeli coexistence projects and hear from Palestinians living in the West Bank.

    They are as close as you can get to what you probably imagine is the good Jew…(though for some, they are not ‘good enough’ Jews because they haven’t disavowed Zionism and believe in Israel’s right to exist).

    If you saw them walking down the street you probably wouldn’t even know they were Jewish… Except for the fact that they probably invited you to their children’s weddings, bat mitzvahs and maybe even a home Chanukah lighting.

    A legacy of resilience and refuge

    The Smiths ended up in the UK because half of the family were refugees from Nazi Europe.

    Two-thirds of this side of the family was murdered and a third survived. Some came to the UK. Some had sought refuge in what was then British Mandate Palestine – there were no other places in the world that they could go.

    The other side of their family were refugees from Egypt. Around the time of the Suez crisis the family had to leave Alexandria. A few of the family came to the UK.

    The rest of the family, because they couldn’t get visas anywhere else, went to Israel. Of course, there were also the cousins who were already in Israel along with the dispersed family across practically every corner of the globe.

    For centuries, no matter where their families were, they prayed in the direction of the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

    Why am I spending so long introducing the Smiths to you?

    Because this is the Jewish Household which makes up the majority of the approximately 250,000 Jews that live in the UK ( at least those that live outside of the main Jewish population centres).

    They’re not famous, they’re not VIP’s, they’re not politicians, they don’t have podcasts or public social media profiles, they don’t work in the Jewish community, they’re not on the streets, they don’t fly flags.

    They donate to Jewish charities. And they will be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

    And there’s every chance that they live in a part of the UK where the Jewish community numbers just 0.3% of the population.

    The closest they get to identity politics is that they wear a small Star of David necklace and have placed their mezuzah on the door outside of their house.

    Although lately they’ve considered moving it inside.

    And they regularly turn up to interfaith activities and help coordinate the Holocaust Memorial Day service in their local council chambers.

    The shifting ground beneath their feet

    Lately, though, the Smiths have become more and more anxious.

    There’s regular graffiti in the villages and towns. Sometimes it’s just swastikas. But it’s also included calls for death to Jews or to ‘F*** Israel’.

    They’ve heard from their friends that their grandchildren are being targeted in school in the playground and “I love Hamas” has been graffitied on to the desks.

    But that’s not what’s making them anxious lately. That’s just since 7th October 2023.

    Lately, the tone of political discourse has become coarser and more violent.

    The Smiths admit they’re probably online too much and seeing the viciousness of debate, sometimes they go to bed feeling scared. And it’s not just in person and online discourse.

    There have been recent murders of Jews and Israelis in other parts of the world and it always feels close to home. Violent acts of vandalism and abuse on the streets.

    The campaigning is apparently to help the Palestinians and draw attention to the plight of Gazans. But for them it appears to be at the cost of their security as citizens of the UK.

    They don’t feel that they can trust the national broadcaster, the BBC, because whilst the excuse of broadcasting violent chants for death seems to be ‘it was a mistake’, it feels too contrived.

    And they saw the hordes of concert goers, at a festival, not only supporting the chant for death of Israelis, but also calling for a ‘Free Palestine’ which is deniable but seems to be clearly a shorthand for ‘Free from the river to the sea’ and destruction of Israel.

    It looked to them like something from a far-right rally or the 1930s.

    Fear: they know what this means

    They know what this means. And they know what it means because they’re no longer allowed to discuss, display or give voice to their support for Zionism.

    They know what it means because their nephews and nieces have all served in the IDF and now apparently they deserve to die.

    Cousins’ homes have been destroyed from the missile barrages from the Islamic Republic of Iran and this has been celebrated by throngs of people.

    They know what it means because they go to their synagogue and hear prayers for peace, for Palestinians and Israelis, and they see no equivalent anywhere else – just for freeing Palestine and certainly barely a call for a release of hostages.

    Members of their community have got relatives and friends who have been murdered or were taken hostage.

    Where they are praying for peace and are desperate to change the humanitarian situation in Gaza and end the horror of innocent deaths, it feels like everywhere else is calling for destruction.

    They know what it means because in living memory their families were made unwelcome in the countries in which they found themselves.

    And the small number of Jews that ended up in Britain have always thought that this would be their forever home. Even though they were separated from other family members whose forever home is the State of Israel.

    They know what it means because they see online that Israeli (Jewish) influence is constantly the centre of conspiracy theories of global power.

    They know what it means because their local MP refuses to speak out on the question of Jewish and Israeli lives in as public and regular way as they regularly speak out about Gaza and Palestinians.

    They’re told it’s because of the size of their mailbox.

    They know what it means because the synagogue activities require a password and a security guard and no publicity.

    They know what it means because the local peace and justice group which obsesses about either the rights of Palestinians or the environment has nothing to say when chants for death are heard on their television screens.

    And there is no outrage from the councillors who are never shy about how they want the world to live in peace.

    They know what it means because it’s no longer good enough for them to have been a good Jew. They now must be either a closet Jew or change their opinions.

    They know what it means because their grandchild’s university can run a course about ‘Religion and War’ in 2024 with several lectures about Islam and Gaza but without any mention of Jews, Hamas and anti-Judaism.

    And the same university had to cut short a meeting because of fears for safety of Jews in the room due to protestors.

    They know what it means because it seems no matter how much their rabbi is involved in local interfaith social cohesion projects their local MP and council seems to be disinterested in tackling deep rooted anti-Judaism.

    And they know what it means because apparently the cost of Jewish community security in this country and their concerns about the calls for violence which were broadcast on the national broadcaster are dismissed as irrelevant in the face of the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

    And I say to you as their rabbi, there can be no making peace in the world if it’s at the cost of Jews, like the Smith family, and their history and deeply held core aspects of their identity.

    Until that is accepted, there is a clear label for opposition to such a stance: anti-Jewish racism.

    My Rabbinate changed: a call to action

    My rabbinate changed in 2023.

    I realised that I had to work harder and in a more focused way on the need for social cohesion here in the UK with the Jewish voice actively engaged in the wider conversation. Even when I hear and see problematic material sometimes shared by other faith community leaders.

    My task was to build bridges with sincere and serious friends across all faiths and none in the hope that we could jointly diminish the radicalised voices and amplify the voice of hope.

    I needed to pray harder for peace which seemed beyond all our reaches and pledged my support for people involved directly in the hard work of building a better more peaceful world for Israelis and Palestinians and all life on this planet.

    And I needed to redouble my efforts to protect my community and ensure that they could continue to celebrate every aspect of their identity, including a connection to the land and State of Israel, with every political hue of member who comes to our services. Including when that means calling out uncomfortable truths on their behalf.

    The unacceptable price of “peace”

    Graffiti equating a Star of David with a Swastika. A direct comparison between Jews and Nazis (Norwich, October 2024). Source: Community Service Trust (CST) Antisemitic Incidents report (2024).

    But…let me be clear: if there can only be peace without Jews and their ideas, there is a name for that. Anti-Jewish Racism.

    The Smiths know it. I know it. And it’s about time the rest of the world said they knew it and called it out too.

    But sadly the Smiths don’t have much confidence in that happening and sadly, neither do I.

    Credits

    This blog was written by Rabbi Neil Janes and was first published on 01/07/2025.

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • EXPOSED: UK government gagged the MSM over SAS involvement in Israel’s genocide in Gaza

    Author and journalist Matt Kennard has published the ‘D-Notice’ that sought to censor media coverage of SAS involvement in Gaza from the start of Israel’s genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory.

    State approval before publication. Does that sound authoritarian to anyone else?

    On 28 Oct 2023, Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee secretary Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds sent a “private and confidential” advisory notice – a D-Notice – to editors. It said:

    Reports have started to appear in some publications claiming that UK Special Forces have deployed to sensitive areas of the Middle East… May I take this opportunity to remind editors that publication of such information contravenes the DSMA notice code. I therefore advise that claims of such deployments should not be published nor broadcast without first seeking Defence and Security Media advice.

    The D-Notice aimed to “prevent the inadvertent disclosure of classified information about: Special Forces and other MOD units” which could “bestow an advantage on an adversary”. And Dodds said:

    Should any Editor currently be considering publishing or broadcasting information on these operations, may I ask you to seek my advice beforehand?

    This followed a news report the previous day alleging SAS presence on Cyprus (where RAF Akrotiri was becoming a key asset for Western support for Israeli occupation forces) in apparent preparation for Gaza operations. No more reports came out after that regarding SAS activity in Gaza.

    Declassified UK has long criticised the British media – and the BBC in particular – for failing to give the public key information about the state’s involvement in Gaza during the genocide. This includes the contribution of RAF Akrotiri, British intelligence presence in Israel, and possible UK boots (including SAS boots) on the ground in Gaza itself.

    D-Notice: gagging the media to hide Britain’s role in Gaza

    Some UK journalists were apparently doing their job by investigating Britain’s role further, because there were numerous requests for DSMA advice from reporters themselves. But nothing came of this.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ]) has opposed Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories, finding the occupation illegal and that accusations of Israel committing genocide in Gaza were plausible.

    The International Criminal Court (ICC), meanwhile, has issued arrest warrants for top Israeli figures in relation to war crimes in Gaza.

    In this context, the British public deserves to know whether our taxes have funded UK involvement in serious crimes under international law. But so far, the state’s censorship mechanisms – like this D-Notice – have prevented journalists from publishing further information.

    As Kennard insists:

    The ICC and ICJ must investigate

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military

    Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza has been fueled by a surge in deliveries of military-grade jet fuel from U.S. providers. In this visual, we expose the companies and governments complicit in this supply chain, while highlighting grassroots efforts to track and disrupt this deadly cargo through direct action, boycott campaigns, and community resistance.

    The post Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jewish women hit London streets to highlight Israel’s mass murder of children in Gaza

    On 4 July, older Jewish women took to the streets of Hampstead and Highgate in London. Their aim was to highlight the shocking level of children that Israel has killed in Gaza since 2023.

    Opposing Israel

    The group, Jewish Peaceniks, has “been curating events to oppose” Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. And in their latest action, they stood with placards highlighting that the number of children in Hampstead and Highgate is similar to the number Israel has murdered in Gaza. The placards insisted:

    Israel has killed… over 18,000 children in Gaza

    About 18,000 children live… in Hampstead & Highgate

    Imagine… this area… with no children

    Stand up! Speak out! With us… who as Jews… say ‘not in our name’

    Israel has killed or injured at least 50,000 children in Gaza since 2023. It has murdered, on average, around one child per hour, trying to terrorise Palestinians into leaving their homeland. The official death toll currently stands at around “57,418 people, including at least 17,400 children”. But this is likely to be an underestimation due to a strict documentation and verification process, which is all the more difficult because of the occupying power’s obliteration of the territory. The apartheid state is also starving children to death.

    Back in 2014, Holocaust survivors and their descendants were already warning of Israel’s genocidal treatment of Palestinians. They said:

    Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

    And they added:

    “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!

    Keep speaking out. Keep deepening understanding.

    Jewish Peaceniks will host an event in London on 23 July at 6.30 pm. They will show “4 short films at ArtHouse Crouch End cinema… that span history from before the creation of the state of Israel to the present time”. The event page calls the screening an “opportunity to deepen understanding”.

    This will be their “third fundraising screening for Gaza”. And they point out that:

    All proceeds from the tickets will go to to REBUILD GAZA 24, a remarkable initiative spearheaded by British Dr Mohamed, who as well as serving as a medic in Gaza for sixteen gruelling months has been instrumental in setting up this life saving desalination centre in Gaza.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Are We Witnessing The Collapse Of International Law?

    These past thirty years, the proponents of the Unipolar World have proceeded to methodically dismantle the norms, principles and diplomatic usages to such an extent that contemporary international relations are characterized by social media postings.

    First, UN resolutions have been construed to provide a veneer of legality to wars of choice against UN Member-States such as Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

    These gross violations of AA 2(4) of the UN Charter proceeded out of a deliberate intent to shirk the core principles of the UN Charter such as respect for national sovereignty and the peaceful resolution of international disputes.

    The post Are We Witnessing The Collapse Of International Law? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • New Footage Exposes Ragtag US Mercenaries Firing Toward Gaza Aid Seekers

    On July 2, the Associated Press released an exposé containing short videos which appeared to show American mercenaries associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opening fire on aid-seekers in Gaza during an incident in southern Gaza this May. The footage was supplied by a former employee of UG Solutions, a firm charged with securing GHF distribution sites.

    “I think you hit one,” one soldier of fortune says to another following a loud burst of gunfire.

    “Hell yeah, boy!” another exclaims.

    In an apparent attempt to control the damage from the AP investigation, UG Solutions has distributed a pair of videos comprising over seven minutes of footage to the press.

    The post New Footage Exposes Ragtag US Mercenaries Firing Toward Gaza Aid Seekers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israeli Minister Says Israel Plans to Confine Palestinians in Gaza to a Camp

    Israel’s Defense Minister said on Monday that he has instructed the military to prepare plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp where they will be imprisoned by Israeli soldiers. Minister Israel Katz told reporters that the Israeli government was planning to establish a so-called “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza, on what used to be Rafah until Israel decimated the city.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New Michael Rosen book shows the power words have to “fight the nightmare” of genocide normalisation

    National treasure Michael Rosen has a beautiful ability to mix humour and reality with intense emotion. And his new book – Words United – does just this, providing us with a powerful tool for reflecting on and resisting the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.

    Profits to Palestine, ‘word-drones’ to its oppressors

    Fascists killed members of Michael Rosen’s family during the Holocaust, and he has long sought to educate children and adults alike about the horrors of racist ideologies. That’s why, since the start of the genocide in 2023, he has stood consistently with the Palestinian people suffering their own Holocaust at the hands of Israeli fascists.

    In his new book, he says he’s recently been trying to “find words to make the events feel less overwhelming”. And he thoroughly hopes words can “puncture the armour that surrounds our politicians as they engineer war, starvation and mass killing”.

    Words, he suggests, may be able to “bring us together to help us fight the nightmare”. And they may “give people hope and strength to get up in the morning and fight on”. That’s why the book seeks to:

    pierce the armour of lies, bias and misinformation peddled by politicians and the media as they engineer and support war, starvation and genocide in Palestine

    Publisher Culture Matters describes the book as “a fleet of word-drones” aiming to expose Israel’s heinous war crimes and Western complicity in them.

    Rosen will give the profits from the new book to Medical Aid for Palestine.

    Michael Rosen: “freedom slips away” in silence

    The book mostly brings together “poems, thoughts, sketches and performance pieces” that Rosen has written during the Gaza genocide.

    Michael Rosen regularly warns of the dangers of the encroaching authoritarianism in many Western nations as their political elites seek to defend Israel’s genocidal crimes. In one poem, for example, he insists:

    Freedom has no warning lights

    when it slips away

    it doesn’t flash red.

    It quietly slips away, he adds:

    When they start saying you can’t

    speak your mind

    It also slips away:

    When they start locking people up

    without giving them a fair hearing

    He criticises liberal voices in particular for their double standards, saying in another poem:

    …when it comes
    to what the Israeli government and army do,
    liberal opinion seems to sometimes lose its voice,
    seems to sometimes fail to switch on the alarm bells
    and warning lights.
    Seems not to cry out from its
    liberal heart.

    Coming from a Jewish family, he also laments the thoroughly racist minimising of Palestinian pain and centring of Jewish pain during a time of mass murder and destruction in Palestine. He calls out genocide-apologists’ antisemitic words as they continue to cynically weaponise antisemitism allegations to try and silence people daring to display empathy. And he points to the absurdity of Israelis being free to call for control of lands “from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river” but Palestinians and their supporters facing smears for demanding freedom “from the river to the sea”.

    What is power?

    A potent image Michael Rosen creates is that of a Martian, who free from worldly propaganda sees the simple reality of two very different sides that face very different treatment – those who want peace and those who want war. Imagine the alleged or actual mistakes of the left in Britain in recent decades, he says, and then compare these to:

    the death and destruction our leaders have brought
    through bombs and guns,
    either directly or indirectly.

    He clarifies:

    On the one side, words, demos, articles, social media posts.
    On the other the most ingenious
    and up to date ways of destroying
    hundreds of thousands of buildings
    and killing hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people.

    The Martian would ask why the treatment of these two groups is so different “in the public arena”.

    In another poem, the Martian ponders:

    How come some people have power over
    other people?
    I ask
    because it doesn’t always seem to work out
    too nice.
    I see that it’s nice for the ones
    with the power
    but not so nice for those without the power

    It adds:

    the ones with no power
    have to do what the powerful ones tell them to do.
    Seems like they have to work a lot
    and don’t always have enough to eat
    don’t always have somewhere to live
    and I can see that they get bombs dropped on them
    sometimes too.

    That seems to be mostly OK with the people with power.
    They like that.
    They come on your screens and explain
    why dropping bombs on people is OK.

    And it points out that:

    …I hear people with power saying
    you’ve got to have people with power.
    Well I guess they would say that.

    But for the majority of people – those of us without power, things are bad.

    The lingering question, then, is: why do we allow those with power to keep their power?

    Michael Rosen shows us our voices are more powerful than we think

    Things don’t need to be this way. We don’t have to let our governments and media normalise genocide. We can take their power away. And words play a key role in that. We can spread the truth about why the world is the way it is, we can inspire resistance to that right now, and we can spread hope for a better future.

    Words United is an incredibly moving reflection on violence, power, hypocrisy, identity, language, and resistance amid the ongoing nightmare in Gaza. But it’s also typically Michael Rosen – accessible, clear, empathetic, relatable, rhythmic, and witty. And it’s an essential contribution to the battle against gaslighting genocidal governments across the West.

    Words United is published by Culture Matters and available here.

    Featured image supplied

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Netanyahu Says Relocating Palestinians From Gaza Gives Them “Free Choice”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump this week in Washington, D.C. Trump and Netanyahu are discussing Israel’s war in Gaza, with Netanyahu suggesting that new plans for the forced relocation of refugees to other countries would give Palestinians the “freedom” to choose. But what Palestinians actually want is “the freedom to return to the places from…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US’s Largest Labor Union Votes to Cut All Ties to the Anti-Defamation League

    In a momentous vote, the National Education Association’s 7,000-member policymaking body cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League. On July 6, the NEA’s national Representative Assembly approved New Business Item 39, committing that the NEA “will not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or statistics.” The reasoning…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.