The prison rape scandal in Israel; is there a defect, an effect of this on domestic policy that Netanyahu’s administration refuses to condemn what every other government in the world condemns, the forcible race rape of a helpless victim? This is a this is a major domestic issue in Israel, a major domestic story.
The post Max Blumenthal : The MAGA Divide: Israel, Epstein, and Kirk Split Trump’s Base first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
It’s devastatingly clear that there will be no seat at the table for the youth of Gaza to take part in the negotiations over “Gaza’s future” currently being held by U.S. and Israeli officials. As U.S. and Israeli officials discuss whether to move forward with the second phase of the ceasefire and draw Gaza’s fate and future on paper — or whether to announce the collapse of the talks and a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Anti-genocide activists are organising a “For Palestine” charity dinner on Wednesday, 17 December at the Mora Meza Bar in Raynes Park, South London. Organisers describe it as:
an evening of good food, live entertainment, comedy, poetry, and guest speakers all in support of Hope and Play, a charity helping children in Gaza.
All funds raised will go to the Hope and Play charity. Tickets can be ordered here — availability is limited.
The organisers say the Palestine charity dinner aims not only to raise funds, but to bring the community together in shared solidarity with Gaza’s children. It is their inalienable right to live, play, and thrive.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) documented the shocking testimony of a 42-year-old Palestinian woman who, during her recent detention by Israel in northern Gaza, was subjected to sexual assault and severe torture in an Israeli prison.
Her testimony is a stark example of the systematic policy of sexual violence and psychological and physical torture practised by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian detainees.
According to her testimony to PCHR, she was arrested while crossing an Israeli checkpoint in November 2024 and taken to an unknown location, blindfolded, where a series of organized and systematic violations began. She said:
I was tied up and stripped naked, and subjected to repeated beatings and psychological abuse. I felt as though all my humanity was being stripped from me, and that I was merely a tool for humiliation and oppression.
In her testimony to the human rights center’s staff, N.A. spoke of being subjected to various forms of torture and sexual violence, including being raped four times by Israeli soldiers, as well as being repeatedly verbally abused with obscene language, stripped naked and photographed, electrocuted, and beaten all over her body.
The detainee, N.A., explained to the centre’s lawyer:
In the early morning hours, I heard the soldiers shouting that prayers were forbidden in the morning, and I believe it was the fourth day of my detention in Gaza.” I was taken by soldiers to an unknown location because I was blindfolded. They ordered me to undress, which I did. They then placed me on an iron table, forcing my chest and head against it. My hands were tied to the bedpost, and my feet were forcibly pulled apart. I felt a penis being inserted into my anus and felt a man’s body raping me. I started screaming, and they began hitting me on my back and head. I was still blindfolded, and I felt the man ejaculate inside my anus. I screamed and was beaten the whole time. I could hear a camera; I think they were filming me. The rape lasted about 10 minutes. Afterward, I was left in the same position for an hour, with my hands cuffed to the bedposts, my face on the bed, and my feet on the floor. I was completely naked.
Another hour later, I was raped again in the same position. A penis was inserted into my vagina, and I was beaten while screaming. There were several soldiers present, and I could hear their laughter and the sound of a camera recording. The rape was very brief, and there was no ejaculation. During the rape, I was beaten on the head and back.
I can’t describe what I felt; I wished for death every moment. After the rape, I was left alone in the same room, handcuffed to the bed, naked for hours. I could hear soldiers outside speaking Hebrew and laughing. Then, I was raped again vaginally, and I screamed, but they beat me whenever I tried to resist. After about an hour, I don’t know the exact time, a masked soldier entered, removed the blindfold, and lifted the hood from his face. He was fair-skinned and tall. He asked me if I spoke English. I said no. He said he was Russian and asked me to touch his penis, but I refused. He then punched me in the face after raping me.
So, on that day, I was raped twice and left naked in the room for three days. On the first day, I was raped twice. On the second day, I was raped twice. On the third day, I was left naked while they looked at me through the keyhole and photographed me. One of the soldiers told me, “We will post your pictures on social media.” While I was in the room, I started my period, at which point I was told to get dressed and was moved to another room.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) noted that this testimony reflects a recurring pattern of violations against Palestinian detainees, including women, in Israeli prisons, and constitutes part of the ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide against the people of Gaza.
In light of this testimony, PCHR called on the international community, including the United Nations and the States Parties to the Convention against Torture, to take immediate action to end these brutal practices. PCHR also urged the release of Palestinian detainees held arbitrarily and called for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to be granted unrestricted access to places of detention to ensure the protection of their rights and lives.
PCHR emphasised that all women and Palestinians subjected to sexual torture in Israeli prisons face a double threat under the current system. A law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners exacerbates the already dire situation and necessitates urgent international action.
This woman’s testimony is a cry from the heart of Palestinian suffering, revealing the extent of the humiliation and psychological and physical destruction inflicted upon detainees. It confirms that what is happening in Israeli prisons is a systematic policy aimed at destroying the Palestinian people, not merely isolated incidents of abuse.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
The night of drowning over the camps of displaced people in Gaza was not just a passing weather change, but a new chapter in a tragedy that repeats itself every winter, deepening this year with Israel’s forced displacement of hundreds of thousands and their accommodation in dilapidated tents that cannot withstand the wind or rain:
In the hours before dawn, while silence hung over the camp like an exhausting blanket, the sky began to cry out. Heavy rain suddenly poured down, as if the clouds had decided to empty all their anger at once.
It didn’t take long for the water to find its way into the tents. It didn’t just splash against the roofs… it penetrated them.
Um Muhammad, trying to lift a waterlogged blanket, told the Canary
I woke up to find my children sleeping in a pool of water… my heart ached. We just need a tent to shelter us.
In another tent, Abu Alaa was trying to remove the water that had not stopped flowing with a plastic container:
We shouted, we pleaded… but no one heard us. The tent gives way at the first drop of rain.
Amidst the cries, children were jumping in the mud, some shivering from the cold and others from fear. Seven-year-old Hala wrapped her coat around her thin body:
The water was coming in like a river… I was afraid the tent would collapse on us.
In the early hours of the morning, rain flooded many of Gaza’s displacement camps, mixing with sewage that had spilled out due to dilapidated infrastructure. The tents were transformed into a dangerous environment, flooded with contaminated water that increased the suffering of the residents.
The dirt floors inside the tents turned to mud, and the small feet of children sank into it with every step.
“We can’t stay here a minute longer” said Abu Mahmoud, carrying a wet broom:
The rain came in from everywhere… We went outside and didn’t know where to go.
Even the houses that residents tried to repair did not hold up. Rain seeped through cracked roofs and walls covered with nylon sheets, flooding what remained of the furniture.
Umm Ahmad recalls the details of her harsh night:
I woke up to the sound of water pouring into the house… Everything was flooded: the mattresses, the clothes… Even the food was ruined.
In the morning, the displaced people set out in search of new tarpaulins to repair their tents before nightfall, but they were faced with a harsh reality: a sharp rise in prices and a severe shortage due to a months-long ban on their entry into the sector:
Many were forced to evacuate their tents after they were completely flooded, leaving their children in the muddy streets of Gaza, their small bodies shivering from the cold.
Across the camp, the scene was the same: men running to secure tents, women trying to salvage what was left of their bedding, and two older people sitting helplessly after their blankets were flooded.
The cries mingled with the sound of the rain:
The tent is flooded!
Where are we going to go?!
The children are cold!
That night revealed not only the weakness of the tents, but also the fragility of life itself, and the extent of the wound that continues to bleed despite the ceasefire.
Amidst all this, the biggest question remains: how will the children spend the coming winter nights in tents that cannot withstand the first wave of rain?
In Gaza, winter is not feared because it is cold, but because it lays bare everything that cannot be said and reveals the depth of pain that the displaced have been carrying for many months.
Despite all this pain, in every tent there remains a small whisper of resistance, spoken in a low voice:
We will remain standing… even if it is in the mud.
Featured image and additional images supplied
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
On Friday 14 November, while Gaza City was at the mercy of heavy rain, the Patient Friends Hospital turned into a scene of horror and nightmare. The entire ground floor, dedicated to paediatric care, was suddenly flooded, becoming a place no one could have imagined: a waiting room for patients turned into a deep pool, with medical equipment floating above the mud and water:
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Inside the floor, children, some of them malnourished due to years of Israel’s genocide, were trapped by the water. Their small cries mingled with the rain’s roar in a heartbreaking scene.
One man, an employee or a parent, carried a baby in his arms and an oxygen tank on his other shoulder, trying to cross the flooded water to safety. Every step was fraught with danger, and every breath was precious.
Hassan al-Shaer, the Patient Friends Hospital director, stood on the ruins of the floor and described the situation:
This is the only hospital for children in Gaza… The entire floor is flooded with medical equipment. We tried to save what we could, but the lack of equipment and the siege are hampering all our efforts.
The medical staff tried with all their might to pull the children to the upper floors, while water seeped between their feet and respirators got stuck in the mud. Some children were on the verge of losing their lives, while others clung to what remained of their families and nurses or doctors who refused to leave them.
The low point was not just rain, but a stark test of the weakness of the infrastructure and the extent of the suffering that Gaza has endured for years. Here, in the children’s hospital, the tragedy of the entire city was embodied: children in need of food, medicine, a safe place to sleep, and protection from the rain that threatened their lives as it had since birth.
Amidst the mud and water, there was a small glimmer of humanity: the voices of the medical staff at the Patient Friends Hospital who never stopped trying to save every child, and the embrace of parents hugging their children, whispering to them:
We are with you… we will not let anything take you away from us.
In Gaza, the rain reveals the fragility of everything, but at the same time, it reveals the resilience of the human heart in the face of adversity, even if that resilience is found in muddy puddles, amid the mud and the voices of young children.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Regional Labour Court in Rhineland-Palatinate -Bavaria upheld a previous ruling requiring German club Mainz to pay €1.5 million to its former player Anwar El Ghazi, after it was proven that the club had illegally terminated his contract based on a post expressing solidarity with Palestine during Israel’s two-year genocide in Gaza in 2023.
In October 2023, Anwar El Ghazi posted on social media expressing his support for the Palestinians, including the famous phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ which German authorities consider an inflammatory slogan, while the American Jewish Committee describes it as a call for the elimination of Israel.
Following the post, Mainz suspended the football star, describing his behaviour as ‘unacceptable’, before later lifting the suspension after El Ghazi expressed ‘remorse’, according to the club’s statement at the time. However, the player later reiterated that he did not regret his stance and would not back down from his statements, prompting the club to terminate his contract in November 2023.
In July 2024, the Mainz Labour Court ruled that the termination decision was arbitrary and ordered the club to pay El Ghazi’s wages for the period from November 2023 to July 2024, totalling €1.5 million.
Mainz attempted to appeal the decision in the hope of recovering the amount, but the regional court finally rejected the appeal on Wednesday, 12 November 2025, confirming that there was no legal justification for the club’s immediate dismissal of the player.
In a statement following the ruling, club president Stefan Hoffmann said:
We must respect the court’s decision, which found that our player’s conduct after the events of October 2023 did not justify the immediate termination of his contract. However, we emphasise that Mainz’s values do not allow for any action or statement that contradicts our fundamental principles.
For his part, Anwar El Ghazi wrote immediately after his dismissal and the termination of his contract with the German club:
Stand up for what is right, even if you have to stand alone.
Anwar El Ghazi, born in the Netherlands to parents of Moroccan origin, is one of the players who represented prominent European clubs such as Ajax Amsterdam, Aston Villa and Eindhoven before joining Mainz in 2023. He played only three matches with the team before the crisis.
After being dismissed from the German club, El Ghazi joined Cardiff City in England in August 2024, then moved to Al-Sailiya in Qatar in September of the same year.
The final ruling in El Ghazi’s favour once again highlights the pressure European athletes are under due to their stance on the war in Gaza, amid widespread debate about freedom of expression and its limits on the European continent.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Four of the world’s leading Middle East studies associations have expressed grave concern over the decision to cancel an academic conference on Palestine, which was scheduled to be held at the Collège de France in Paris on 13 and 14 November, jointly organised by the institute’s Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World and the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies.
In a joint letter addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron, Minister of Education Philippe Batiste, and President of the Collège de France Thomas Romer, the organisations called for the decision to be reconsidered, for a formal apology to be issued to the organisers and participants, and for the conference to be allowed to go ahead as planned.
The letter was signed by the:
In their letter, the associations affirmed their unwavering support for freedom of scientific research and academic expression, explaining that the conference, entitled ‘Palestine and Europe: The Weight of the Past and Contemporary Dynamics,’ aimed to examine the place of the Palestinian issue in current European political and scientific contexts.
The letter said that the cancellation of the conference following political pressure and misleading comments on social media was ‘deeply troubling,’ noting that questioning the legitimacy of an academic event constituted an unjustified attack on the integrity of the researchers participating in it.
It added that ‘distorting academic work and describing it as biased undermines the principles of historical and social research,’ stressing that scientific debate should be resolved within academic circles and not through political interference.
The associations pointed out that national and international laws oblige France to protect academic freedoms, citing Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as well as Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and includes freedom of research and teaching.
The associations warned that cancelling the conference constituted a serious violation of these obligations and set a dangerous precedent that could open the door to political interference in determining the issues that universities are allowed to research.
The letter considered that this interference threatens intellectual pluralism and undermines critical research, and carries the risk of encouraging further attacks on academic freedom in France and beyond.
The associations also expressed concern about the use of the concepts of ‘scientific’ and ‘academic neutrality’ to justify restrictions on research activities, stressing that cancelling a seminar at a prestigious institution such as the Collège de France sends a negative message to the international scientific community.
At the end of their letter, the associations called on the Ministry of Education and the administration of the Collège de France to rectify the mistake by issuing a public apology to the organisers and participants, allowing the conference to take place, and renewing their commitment to free and open scientific debate.
They also called for the protection of professors and students from political and media pressure that affects their academic freedom and personal safety.
On 10 November, the Collège de France administration announced the cancellation of the conference, claiming that it contained ‘biased and antisemitic content’ and asserting that the decision was made in accordance with its commitment to ‘neutrality in political issues.’
The cancellation came after an article in the French newspaper Le Point and direct pressure from Higher Education Minister Philippe Batiste, who considered the conference to be ‘political interference in scientific research.’
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that Israel has destroyed or damaged more than 282,000 homes in the Gaza Strip during its ongoing genocide.
The agency said in a post on the X platform that these figures are based on data from the Humanitarian Shelter Mechanism (Global Shelter Cluster), which is jointly managed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
UNRWA explained that the ongoing Israeli bombardment has left tens of thousands of Palestinian families homeless, forced to live in tents under harsh conditions, especially with winter approaching. The agency added that displaced families are living in cramped spaces, suffering from a lack of privacy and difficulty accessing basic services.
UNRWA confirmed that, in cooperation with partner humanitarian organisations, it continues to provide assistance and relief to displaced families to alleviate their suffering.
The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel has been in place since 10 October, but Israel violates it on a daily basis, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian deaths and injuries, as well as restrictions on the entry of food, medical supplies and tents, amid a growing need for urgent shelter as winter approaches.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
Asia Pacific Report
An Australian author whose award-winning book about Israel’s military and surveillance industry has swept the world is scathing about a controversial Gaza transit company.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about how Israel tests arms and surveillance technologies in the illegal occupation of Palestine, says the shadowy scheme carrying Palestinians to South Africa or other countries was waging “disaster capitalism”.
He said the Al-Majd Europe outfit that reportedly flew 153 people from Gaza to South Aftica could have been operating for weeks or months before being noticed.
Commenting on this mysterious flight carrying people from Gaza that transited through Kenya’s capital Nairobi and ended up in South Africa, Loewenstein told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there had been rumours about companies making such flights.
He said such flights apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.
“South Africa was apparently the final destination, considering it is one of the most pro-Palestine countries on the planet,” he said.
Lowenstein said there were “no names or associations” on the “incredibly strange” company website, which “almost looks like it was created by AI”, calling what it does “disaster capitalism” – a theme of one of his earlier books.
‘Making money out of misery’
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” Loewenstein said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry has warned against groups exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian crisis for human trafficking in the wake of the mysterious arrival of 153 people from Gaza in South Africa this week.
The ministry warned that “companies and entities that mislead our people, incite them to deportation or displacement or engage in human trafficking and exploit their tragic and catastrophic humanitarian conditions will bear the legal consequences of their unlawful actions and will be subject to prosecution and accountability.”
In a statement, the ministry also urged Palestinian families in Gaza “to exercise caution and avoid falling prey to human trafficking networks, blood merchants, and displacement agents”.
The departure of people from Gaza to South Africa was closely coordinated with Israeli authorities.
Everything started with an advertised post from the Al-Majd Europe organisation promising to safely evacuate Palestinian families outside the Gaza Strip, so many Palestinians filled in their applications and were waiting for a call from the organisation.
The situation in Gaza has pushed Palestinians to pay whatever they could to leave the Strip.
‘They lost everything’
“They have lost everything. They lost their houses, and they believe that they do not have any future here,” an Al Jazeera reporter said.
The television channel also said Gazans who used the transit company were forced to pay up to US$5000 to enable them to cross the so-called “yellow line” and be driven from Karem Abu Salem crossing to Ramon airport in southern Israel.
This is a risky move because at least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire for crossing the yellow line. So the operation would have required Israeli military cooperation.
The Gazans were then flown to Nairobi in Kenyan on a Romanian aircraft and transferred to a flight to Johannesburg where border officials held them for 12 hours because they reportedly did not have Israeli exit stamps in their passports.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto
While Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian children in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the news broke in Aotearoa New Zealand that our government had been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) in September to recognise a Palestinian State now — before it was too late forever.
“The tide of international thinking on Palestinian statehood has shifted markedly . . . Israel’s actions are rapidly extinguishing any prospect of realising a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict,” the draft paper read.
“This leaves recognition of Palestine as the only viable option to maintain New Zealand’s long-standard support for a two-state solution.”
This is what Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour were told by MFAT, but these politicians had predetermined they were going to suck up hard to US President Donald Trump and Israel.
Seymour had to be served and so did Peters, as Luxon did their bidding again.
The way to do it with as little local public backlash and media attention was to say it was “complicated” to the press and the public, to be very secretive and let NZ First staff write a cabinet paper of their own — with a couple of options in it, and then bury the Cabinet outcomes until Peters announced it at the UN General Assembly.
The horror of a nation’s collective groan as Winston Peters read that speech still echoes over this naked complicity with genocide and colonisation, making most people feel wild and revolted, laced with the way they were being ignored and trampled on back here at home.
Disgusting business
The horror of Aotearoa aligning itself with this disgusting business sickens many but it was only The Post which published the news last night because as per usual this sort of thing is never really news in our newsrooms.
How many New Zealanders know how many Palestinians Israel have killed since the ceasefire thanks to our media?
What’s that about?
At least 69,000 killed, including 20,000 children.
RNZ was silent about this but instead published how four bills had passed this week while we were focused on a side show — no not the police scandal, but Te Pāti Māori apparently.
Whatever!
Buried in the fine print was the way Education Minister Erica Stanford had ripped Te Tiriti obligations off school boards and Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill had slipped past its third reading, because there was not much of a headline in that.
The way New Zealand backed Israel over the two-state solution for Palestine has weak leadership stamped all over it — and that is galling but it’s gaslighting the nation to then boast of a win over a photo op with Trump.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
There is an invisible line dividing Gaza, and any Palestinian who attempts to cross it, or even get close to it, is killed.
That is what happened to Ibrahim and Mazen al-Najjar, two men from the same family, on November 5th. Displaced in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, they attempted to go to their home in the eastern part of Khan Younis, to attempt to retrieve some belongings. It was a simple enough task. The only problem was, their home lies behind the ‘yellow line’, which is the area of Gaza under full Israeli military control since the ceasefire on October 10.
The post Israel Kills Gazans Trying To Return To Homes Beyond The ‘Yellow Line’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced legislation on Friday to recognize Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza and call for the U.S. to take concrete actions like an arms embargo to end the ongoing slaughter. “The Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza has not ended, and it will not end until we act,” said Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress. The resolution…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The trial of anti-genocide journalist Sarah Wilkinson on charges under the Terrorism Act began on Friday 14 November, for her reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the state is treating as ‘support for Hamas’, the Palestinian resistance organisation banned in the UK as a terrorist organisation.
In an exclusive interview with the Canary, Sarah Wilkinson spoke before entering the Old Bailey to Gerry Tasker. She described the Starmer regime’s war on pro-Palestine journalism and the freedoms of speech and protest as state terror – and stressed that while she may be on trial, Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the right to freedom of the Palestinian people remain the real issue:
Gerry also spoke to Sarah as she left the court, where she updated him on the schedule of her case and that the state – its usual pattern – is making her wait more than a year for her full trial:
Wilkinson, like other journalists and activists charged under the Terrorism Act for opposing genocide and Starmer’s terrorism ban on non-violent protest group Palestine Action, faces up to fourteen years in prison simply for opposing Israel’s mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
A violent settler attack took place in the occupied West Bank town of Beita on 8 November. Masked colonial Zionist settlers attacked journalists, Red Crescent volunteers, activists, and Palestinian farmers. 15 people were injured, including five journalists.
That morning, a large group of residents and international activists made their way to the mountain area of town. They aimed to aid and protect the Palestinian farmers while picking their olives. Also present were several journalists and paramedics. After some time, the group began to see movement amongst the trees.
Al Jazeera photojournalist Louy Alsaeed told the Canary around 40 masked Israeli settlers suddenly appeared, descending the mountain and surrounding the area. Their attack was coordinated, sustained, and violent, with clubs, sticks and rocks used as weapons.
Alsaeed said:
I felt really close to death, for the first time in my life. They tried to catch us, and started throwing rocks at us from above. It was very difficult to escape from that mountainous area. I kept running, but every time I looked back, I saw someone trying to catch me. Many journalists fell while trying to escape. I was one of them. I fell with all my equipment. We expected problems, but not like this. They planned this very well. They hid behind trees, and then made themselves into groups and attacked us.
Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamad Alatrash has severe bruising and pain from escaping the attack. He says the attack was an:
exceptional and extremely violent incident, aimed at harming people in the area.
Alatrash told the Canary:
I was born and raised in an area where settlers were only a short distance from my home. But what I witnessed in this attack was exceptional. We could see the hatred in the settler’s eyes, the extreme violence in their behaviour, and the clear intent to kill, through the brutal blows they directed at several people. Everyone in the area was thinking only about individual survival. We had no choice but to move towards a rough and steep wadi area.
Reuters photojournalist Raneen Sawafta had difficulty jumping down, and was surrounded, isolated, and repeatedly beaten. She suffered multiple fractures and fragmentation in her knee joint. Photojournalist Nael Buaytal also suffered fractures in the ankle as a result of jumping.
Alatrash said:
I could hear Raneen screaming loudly, and felt devastated I couldn’t help her. The settlers were only a few metres from me, as I was trying to jump and escape the mountain area. I was fully aware that if they managed to catch and surround me, they would kill me. I had no choice but to jump into the wadi.
Many farmers in the occupied West Bank are unable to reach their land, because of violence from settlers and Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Until recently, the presence of activists, especially internationals, provided some protection for them, but not now. According to Alsaeed, settlers are stealing olives when farmers cannot get to their land. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) are also clamping down on activists who help farmers, prevented them from returning to Palestine at a later date.
But farmers continue persevering, despite the violence. Olive trees are deeply rooted in Palestinian heritage, culture and identity. The harvest is also relied on, economically, by 100,000 Palestinian families, and accounts for almost three quarters of the West Bank economy.
The settlers terrorising Beita live in Evyatar settlement, on Beita’s mountain. Founded in May 2021, Evyatar started as an unapproved outpost. It grew in size and, last year, was officially authorized as a new settlement. 16 acres of Palestinian land were declared ‘state land’ and seized for this settlement.
The settlers have recently erected a tent on the farmer’s land, the first step in gaining control of the area. Then they move in, restrict Palestinian access, and forcibly displace them. Eventually, these outposts are legalised, and expand into a settlement.
Beita has a long history of resistance against the occupation and Evyatar settlement. But protests have been met with extreme IOF violence. Since 2020, 18 demonstrators in Beita have been killed by the IOF, including American peace activist, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who they shot in the head. Thousands more have been injured. Children bear the brunt of this violence, and are receiving psychosocial support from the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Evyatar settlement was founded by the ultra nationalist Nachala Settlement Movement, set up by extremist settler leader Daniella Weiss. Weiss, a prominent far-right Israeli Orthodox Zionist, was symbolically sanctioned by the UK government earlier this year.
Alsaeed told the Canary:
No one can stop the settlers acting how they do. The problem is getting worse and worse because these attacks are under the protection of the soldiers and the government. I don’t think there is a solution.
Beita has suffered repeated violent settler attacks during this olive harvest. Several weeks ago vehicles were set alight, and many Palestinians were injured. The IOF fired tear gas toward the Palestinians, which 13 year old Aysam Mualla inhaled. He suffered critical injuries, and died in hospital this week:
Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is an everyday occurrence, and Palestinian journalists risk their lives to expose crimes the Israeli occupation commit. Alatrash says he still feels “intense fear about going to areas of confrontation”, as he knows he could be subjected to another similar attack.
Until the international community takes decisive action, the cycle of violence and dispossession will continue. But Alsaeed and Alatrash say they will continue to give a voice to Palestinian communities deeply affected by the violence.
Featured images and video via David Reeb
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
Reuters has revealed that during 2024, the US gathered intelligence indicating that Israel discussed the possibility of sending Palestinian soldiers into tunnels in Gaza believed to contain explosives, raising questions about the use of civilians as human shields, which is prohibited under international law.
The information was shared with the White House and analysed by intelligence agencies in the final weeks of former President Joe Biden’s administration. Two former US officials, who asked not to be named, have now revealed the information sparked internal debate about how widespread the practice was and whether Israeli soldiers were acting on instructions from military commanders.
The sources did not specify whether the Palestinians referred to were prisoners or civilians, and it was unclear whether the Biden administration had discussed the information with the Israeli government. White House and CIA officials did not comment on the report.
The Israeli army said in a statement that:
The use of civilians as human shields is strictly prohibited, and they may not be forced to participate in military operations.
It added that the military police’s criminal investigation division is investigating suspicions of Palestinian involvement in military operations. The Israeli government did not respond to questions about whether it had discussed this information with the United States.
The report noted that media reports accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields, particularly by deploying its fighters in civilian facilities such as hospitals, accusations that the movement has denied.
The new intelligence also included legal warnings from Israeli lawyers that there was evidence that could lead to war crimes charges. According to former US officials, senior US officials believed that the information supported concerns about possible war crimes, which could place the US under potential liability if Israel’s involvement was proven.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
A number of football stars and human rights groups have sent an open letter to UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, calling for “the immediate exclusion of Israel from European football” over what they described as “grave violations and war crimes against Palestinians”.
The letter, prepared by the organisation Game Over Israel and published on its Instagram account, was supported by several human rights organisations, including Athletes for Peace, the Gaza Tribunal, and the Hind Rajab Foundation.
It was signed by more than 70 players from around the world, most notably former French star Paul Pogba, Moroccan Hakim Ziyech, Spaniard Adama Traoré and Dutchman Anwar El Ghazi.
The letter begins:
Football does not belong to anyone; it belongs to everyone because it is part of our shared human heritage.
The signatories expressed “deep concern about the failure of the European Football Association to take a moral stance by excluding Israel from European competitions”, stressing that “tolerance of Israel threatens to undermine the spirit and human essence of the game.”
The letter also stressed that it is necessary for “UEFA to uphold its legal and moral responsibilities and immediately expel Israel from European football”, adding that:
no sporting or civilised arena should welcome a regime that commits genocide, apartheid and crimes against humanity.
The letter accused UEFA of facilitating Israel’s violations by allowing its teams to participate in and finance international competitions, calling for an immediate and comprehensive ban on them.
This move comes days after a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October 2025, ending a two-year war on the Gaza Strip that resulted in — according to United Nations estimates — to the deaths of more than 69,000 Palestinians and the injury of some 170,000 others, most of them women and children, in addition to the destruction of about 90% of civilian infrastructure, with reconstruction costs estimated at $70 billion.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime,” Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
The post Chris Hedges Report: The Member States Complicit In Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
It has been 10 days since political prisoners Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib ate any food.
It has been 9 days since Heba Muraisi ate any food.
It has been 7 days since Jon Cink ate any food.
It has been 4 days since Teuta Hoxha ate any food.
It has been 3 days since Kamran Ahmed ate any food.
After the first 2 to 3 days without food, your body begins breaking down its own fat stores for energy, then its muscles, vital organs, and bone marrow, eating itself alive. The first days are the hardest. Then, you stop craving food at all as your body settles into the inharmonious rhythm of starvation. By day ten, significant medical intervention is required.
The post On The Prisoners For Palestine Hunger Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Football legend and Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has asked fans to make sure to pack the Barcelona Nou Camp stadium next Tuesday, 18 November, for a special Palestine–Catalunya charity match:
Pep Guardiola has a record of solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s genocide, land theft and crimes against humanity, calling last month for a mass march against the genocide and using a speech in June to warn against silence and complicity. His support highlights how football culture can challenge political silence and mobilise public solidarity.
All ticket revenue from next week’s match will go toward humanitarian aid and community projects in Palestine.
Tickets are available here.
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Italian journalist Gabriele Nunziata lost his job last week after he asked a European Commission (EC) spokeswoman whether Israel should pay to rebuild Gaza, just as the EC insists Russia must rebuild Ukraine. The EU Israel relationship becomes even more suspicious after the spokeswoman refused to say that Israel should pay, despite its proportionally far greater and entirely deliberate destruction of Gaza – and its slaughter of approaching 700,000 innocent Palestinians – while Nunziata’s employers decided his question was ‘without justification’.
On Thursday, Nunziata’s colleagues challenged the EC about its failure to state the obvious. They demanded to know whether anyone at the EC had called Agenzia Nova and Italia One to ask them to act against Nunziata for daring to speak up on behalf of decency:
The EC spokesman denied it. But somebody did – and if not the EC, then the Israel lobby following its usual pattern of trying to ruin the lives and careers of anyone, particularly journalists, who do their jobs and challenge and scrutinise it.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
The reckoning has begun. Israel’s descent into fascism echoes what Hannah Arendt, Malcolm X, and Frantz Fanon witnessed in their own time — the empire’s violence returning home.
Now, almost 80 years after the massacres of 1948, can Israel withstand the inevitable? Is the end finally upon Israel?
Lebanese scholar Leila Nicolas in a recent Al Mayadeen article applies Arendt’s “imperial boomerang” theory, arguing that the violence intrinsic to the subjugation of Palestinians is chipping away at Israel, like an axe to a tree.
Israel’s violence, Nicolas cautions, has come home to roost — producing the very totalitarian state Arendt warned against.
Arendt spoke of colonies as ‘laboratories of domination’ — spaces where the coloniser sharpens and expands its imperial toolkit beyond legal or moral constraint. These tools and practices, Arendt is likely to agree, are turning inward. In these laboratories, the coloniser perfected methods which circle back to Europe itself, sooner or later. The hallmarks of this playbook have been on public display since Israel’s establishment, institutionalising racism and weaponisation of the legislature to sustain its racist ethnostate.
Since its inception, Israel has been shaped by colonial violence. During the Nakba in 1947, Israeli armed forces massacred Palestinians — sparing not even children — and razed entire cities to the ground. Around 500 villages were destroyed during the founding years of the State of Israel. Forests were planted on their remains to hide they ever existed. And the story continues. Surely you’ve heard of Netanyahu?
In the words of Arendt:
Barbarism, once practiced on the periphery, will one day strike back at the centre.
Netanyahu, take note.
Israel never was and never will be a unique case. It’s another settler-colonial project which has failed to subjugate Palestinians into oblivion. The forces that sustain it — racism, militarism, and religious fanaticism — are those devouring the coloniser from within.
During the Gaza genocide, Israeli leaders and media figures called Palestinians “human animals” and framed its disproportionate response as a biblical war of “light versus darkness.” “Remember what Amalek did to you?” The butcher was heard saying.
Across the West Bank, settlers unleashed pogrom-like violence against Palestinians, largely protected by state forces loyal to far-right minister Itamar (in Arabic Himar) Ben-Gvir. The 2018 Nation-State Law legally enshrined Jewish supremacy, rendering Palestinians inside Israel as second-class citizens. In Arendt’s terms, Israel operates under a dual legal system — a formal apartheid.
Israel’s decision to arm thousands of extremist settlers has blurred the line between the military and ideological militias, ultimately losing control over the monster within.
As Nicolas points out, Israel’s war in Gaza is about much more than the wanton extermination of Palestinians. It erodes the ethical basis of Israeli society and pushes the state closer to the brink
Frantz Fanon, writing from the battlefields of French-mandated Algeria, described this psychological self-destruction in The Wretched of the Earth.
Colonialism, he wrote:
dehumanises the coloniser just as it dehumanises the colonised.
Violence, once a tool of domination, becomes an addiction. In Fanon’s words:
the coloniser becomes a creature of habit, intoxicated by power.
These words ring true decades on in the context of Israel’s militarised nationalism. The settler-colonial project has produced generations conditioned to see violence as normal, purity as virtue, and domination as destiny. And to think that Gen Z are wild.
While Arendt analysed the political structure of this decay, Fanon diagnosed its psychological wound.
Israeli journalist Menachem Rahat, writing for HaMizrachi, a pro-Zionist outlet, warns of a historical pattern that he calls “the curse of the eighth decade.”
He notes that both previous Jewish sovereignties — the Davidic and Hasmonean kingdoms — collapsed around their eighth decade, not from external invasion but from internal division and moral rot.
The State of Israel, now in its eighth decade of life and about to celebrate its 75th birthday, is today closer than ever before to the danger of a fratricidal war, each man against his brother,
Rahat continues that they shouldn’t be worried about ‘Palestinian criminal gangs’ for the danger lies within.
Far more threatening and dangerous to our future is the division and polarisation within Israeli society.
It is a striking echo of Arendt’s imperial boomerang — the violence that defines a colonial power inevitably turns inward, and its founding myths unravel.
Arendt, Malcolm X, and Fanon, all warned that the empire falls not when the oppressed rise up, but when the coloniser cuts off its nose to spite its face. If Arendt’s prophecy holds, the colonial state cannot remain confined to its victims. Sooner or later, the machinery of dehumanisation turns inward.
Colonialism always comes home.
For Israel, that reckoning is underway — colonialism is coming home. As Malcolm X warned, the empire’s chickens always come home to roost.
The question is no longer if, but when. The passage of 80 years since this all began has not dulled international attention to Israeli transgressions. Support for Palestinians is louder than ever and the latest chapter of Israeli colonial violence in Gaza will not, and must not, be forgotten.
From rising global pressure, to growing condemnation from the International Court of Justice, is the outside world finally taking note? Is it enough to pierce through Israel’s colonial armour? Is God, the almighty, making a late comeback on Fergie time? All of the above?
Only one way to find out. Should I create a calendar invite?
2028, we’ve got our eyes on you.
Featured image via Naji Al Ali
By Jamal Awar
This post was originally published on Canary.
In the waning weeks of President Joe Biden’s first term, the U.S. came into possession of intelligence of Israeli officials discussing their military’s use of Palestinians as human shields in Gaza — but refused to act upon this knowledge, reporting finds. U.S. officials received intelligence late in 2024 that the Israeli military had sent Palestinians into tunnels they believed were loaded…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When I finally fled from my home in Gaza City to Khan Younis in southern Gaza this September, I left behind everything that reminded me of myself. I dreamed of returning, yet I kept wondering whether there was anything left for me to stay for in this land. In the south, I felt like a stranger. If exile feels this hollow inside Gaza, what would life abroad be like? I spent a whole month in a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
George Orwell at the BBC
The resignations of Tim Davie, BBC director general, and Deborah Turness, BBC head of news, after an intense, right-wing campaign led by the Daily Telegraph reveals much about the state of British ‘mainstream’ media.
Before we discuss the latest scandal, consider first some relevant facts about BBC coverage of the Middle East. In June 2025, a devastating indictment of BBC ‘impartiality’ was published by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) in the form of a detailed report into the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Gaza. The stated aim of CfMM is to ‘promote fair, accurate and responsible journalism about Muslims and Islam through verifiable evidence and constructive engagement.’
The report examined BBC content from 7 October 2023 to 7 October 2024. A total of 3,873 BBC articles and 32,092 segments broadcast on BBC television and radio were analysed. CfMM’s key findings were:
These findings suggest that the BBC values the lives of Israelis considerably more than the lives of Palestinians. This appalling revelation was apparently not a resigning matter for senior BBC figures.
At the parliamentary launch of the CfMM report, Richard Burgess, the BBC director of news content, was challenged by Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph. The exchange was filmed by a participant at the meeting. Oborne robustly confronted Burgess with as many as six ways in which BBC News has misled its audiences:
1. The BBC has never mentioned the Hannibal directive, implemented by Israel on 7 October 2023, that permitted the Israeli killing of Israeli civilians to prevent them being taken captive by Hamas. See our media alert from February 2025.
2. The BBC has never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine which underlies Israel’s murderous ‘mowing the lawn’ Gaza strategy over the past two decades: repeated devastating assaults on the Palestinians to weaken their resistance to the brutal and illegal Israeli occupation, and to make it easier to ethnically cleanse them.
3. The BBC has not reported the many dozens of genocidal statements from Israeli officials. In particular, the BBC buried Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblically-inspired comparison of the Palestinians to ‘Amalek’; a people the Jews were instructed by God to wipe from the face of the earth.
4. By contrast, on more than 100 occasions when guests tried to refer to what is happening in Gaza as genocide, BBC staff immediately shut them down on air.
5. The BBC has largely ignored Israel’s campaign of murdering Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
6. Finally, Oborne observed that the distinguished Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who lives in the UK and teaches at Oxford University, has never been invited to appear by the BBC.
Burgess gave a feeble, bureaucratic response excusing himself, saying that, ‘My role is to direct the journalists and I’m not a Middle East expert’. When Hamza Yusuf of Declassified UK challenged Burgess to explain why the BBC was not reporting British spy planes operating over Gaza from RAF base Akrotiri on Cyprus, the BBC editor gave this bizarre and misleading answer:
‘I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel.’
Why did Burgess say ‘in Israel’? Why did he erase Palestine? Was he actually unaware that Gaza is an occupied Palestinian territory? Nobody was asking the BBC to ‘overplay’ what the UK is doing; but simply to report its role, rather than bury it to the point of invisibility. Whitewashing genocide as ‘what’s happening in Israel’ is wretched BBC newspeak.
But there was no national scandal, no media outrage and denunciations. As far as we could tell, the exchanges with Richard Burgess were not reported anywhere in the UK national press. Only the National newspaper in Scotland reported it. No BBC heads rolled.
The BBC Is a ‘Leftist Propaganda Machine’?
This time it is different. The hard-right Daily Telegraph, famously antagonistic towards the supposed lefty-liberal-biased BBC, was leaked an internal BBC memo written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. Prescott had previously been a journalist, including a decade at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times, where he was the chief political correspondent and later the political editor.
Prescott’s 8,000-word report said that a BBC Panorama documentary, broadcast in October 2024, edited a Donald Trump speech so that he appeared to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021.
In his speech in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Trump had said:
‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.’
However, in the Panorama edit he was shown saying:
‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.’
The two sections of the speech that were edited together were more than 50 minutes apart. The ‘fight like hell’ comment was taken from a section where Trump alleged how ‘corrupt’ US elections are.
More widely, Prescott accused the corporation of ‘serious and systemic’ bias in its editorial coverage, including BBC Arabic’s reporting of ‘the Israel-Gaza war’ which was supposedly anti-Israel and pro-Hamas. All of this was catnip to the right-wing media and commentators who immediately used it as a weapon to attack the BBC.
The Telegraph led with a front-page story headlined: ‘BBC’s Trump bias exposed in memo leak’
The following day, the Telegraph headlined on its front page Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s call that: ‘Heads “should roll over BBC bias”’.
The Telegraph also published a comment piece from Danny Cohen, former director of BBC television, under the headline:
‘Now we have the evidence. The BBC knowingly helped spread Hamas lies and hate’
The sub-headline was: ‘The rot has spread far beyond the infamous Arabic service’
Cohen claimed: ‘An internal report reveals that the BBC has knowingly spread Hamas propaganda and anti-Semitic hate.’
A few days after the leaked memo was reported by the Telegraph, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the BBC as ‘100% fake news’. She added that British taxpayers were being ‘forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine’. The notion that the BBC is a ‘leftist propaganda machine’ is an exotic, bizarre reversal of reality.
A report in the Guardian quoted an anonymous BBC insider saying that the BBC board member that ‘led the charge’ over Prescott’s claims was Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief who also helped to found the right-wing news channel GB News. Gibb is a controversial figure even among BBC journalists, where he has been accused of interfering in stories where he perceives the editorial line to be left-leaning or ‘woke’. Reportedly, Gibb, a friend of Prescott’s, was the driving force behind then prime minister Boris Johnson’s appointment of Prescott to the BBC’s editorial committee.
In 2020, Gibb led a consortium to buy the right-wing Jewish Chronicle, an ardent supporter of the state of Israel, whose journalism has been repeatedly discredited, even leading to several long-time columnists resigning. Alan Rusbridger, former Guardian editor, observed last year that the Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Jake Wallis Simons, appointed by Gibb, is ‘bitterly critical of the BBC’s reporting of the war’ for supposedly being anti-Israel. Again, a reversal of reality.
As Rusbridger noted:
‘How can Gibb possibly back his own editor while sitting on the board of the BBC, which is said by the same man [Wallis Simons] to actively hate Israel?’
After Davie and Turness had resigned, Trump responded that they had left the BBC: ‘because they were caught “doctoring” my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th.’
He added:
‘These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. What a terrible thing for Democracy!’
Trump has now threatened a $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC if they do not withdraw the offending Panorama documentary.
Political columnist Steve Richards, a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, observed:
‘It’s ironic but predictable that the BBC duo – who tried so hard to please the right wing papers – are removed by the right wing papers.’
The poet, author and academic Michael Rosen noted wryly:
‘Tim Davie was privately educated, went to Cambridge and was a Tory candidate and deputy chair of a local Conservative Party Association. Clear case of left-wing bias. If the left wing rot’s gotta stop, then we need to start with private schools, Cambridge and the Tory Party.’
Pro-Israel Impunity at the BBC
Richard Sanders, an award-winning producer who has made over fifty films in history, news and current affairs, including Al-Jazeera’s ‘October 7’ and ‘The Labour Files’ documentaries, noted via X:
‘BBC Panorama’s Trump gaff was shockingly poor.
‘But the contrast between the furore it’s caused and the silence over their far more egregious 2019 doc on Corbyn reveals the reaction to these scandals is all about the interests at stake – not the scale of the crime.’
Sanders is referring here to the notorious Panorama documentary, ‘Is Labour Antisemitic?, by John Ware, who had previously made clear his antagonism towards Corbyn’s politics. As we wrote in a media alert at the time, it quickly became clear that the programme makers were not interested in a serious appraisal of the supposed evidence and that the question was merely rhetorical.
The entire thrust of the programme was that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was antisemitic. The Panorama broadcast was immediately followed by BBC News at Ten which gave it extensive coverage, pumping up the propaganda value of the bogus ‘investigation’.
At the time, Peter Oborne, mentioned above, said via Twitter:
‘I proposed to the BBC a documentary on Tory Islamophobia three years ago [in 2016]. Zero interest.’
In a carefully researched and detailed series called ‘The Labour Files’, produced by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit, Sanders exposed the multiple deceptions of the Panorama documentary. One of these concerned Ben Westerman, a Jewish member of Labour’s disputes team. He claimed to Ware in the documentary that he had personally encountered antisemitism during a face-to-face disciplinary meeting with a Labour activist. He claimed that the person had asked him where he was from and, when Westerman refused to say, had asked him if he was from Israel.
As Al Jazeera revealed, Westerman had been interviewing Helen Marks, a Jewish Labour party activist who had been accused of antisemitism. She had been accompanied to the meeting by her friend, Rica Bird, also a Jewish woman. It was Bird who had asked Westerman where he was from. But she had actually asked him which local branch of the Labour Party he was from. She had never asked him if he was from Israel. The women had a tape recording to prove their version of events. As far as we are aware, Panorama has never issued an apology for this appalling misrepresentation.
As we observed in our media alert on 5 October 2022, there was a shocking, if entirely predictable, mass media blanket of silence in response to ‘The Labour Files’.
Sanders added on the current scandal:
‘Whatever you think of the BBC today is a bleak, bleak day for British broadcasting. The Trump gaffe was poor – but it happened a year ago, and no-one in Trump’s team had noticed.
‘Equally worrying, Prescott clearly had an agenda where coverage of Gaza was concerned. His principal criticism of BBC Arabic was that it wasn’t similar enough to BBC English – which, by any objective, purely journalistic criteria is a good thing.
‘Today’s events lay bare the immense pressures operating behind the scenes and help explain why the BBC’s coverage of Gaza has been so abject over the last 2 years. It’ll now get worse.’
He continued:
‘Ironic this should happen on same day this excruciating video emerges of Mossad fan boy Raffi Berg. Yes – this really is the person who has been BBC Online’s Middle East News Editor throughout the assault on Gaza.’
Sanders then linked to a clip where Berg was interviewed about his book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort. Berg said that, in writing the book, he had been ‘accepted into a circle of trust among the people who belonged to, some of whom still work for, the Mossad’. He added: ‘as a Jewish person and an admirer of the state of Israel’, Mossad’s ‘fantastic operations’ made him ‘tremendously proud… talking about it still gives me goosebumps’. The public is to understand that Berg is an impartial BBC news editor on issues related to Israel and Palestine.
Berg has now launched legal proceedings against Owen Jones and Drop Site News. This is in response to a long and detailed article, including interviews with anonymous former and current BBC journalists, that Jones published last December titled, ‘The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza’.
When the BBC refused to show the powerful documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, it compounded its complicity in Israel’s genocide. The Corporation’s earlier withdrawal of ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, had already epitomised how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby (see our media alert here).
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack detailed how Israel has systematically targeted hospitals, health care centres, medics themselves and even their families. Doctors told the filmmakers of how they had been detained, beaten and tortured by the Israelis, confirmed by an anonymous Israeli whistleblower. The nonsensical reason given by the BBC for cancelling the film, which it had itself commissioned from Basement Films, was the risk that broadcasting it would create ‘a perception of partiality’. Reporting the truth about Israel’s crimes would be ‘partial’? Such inversion of reality has become standard for the national broadcaster.
The film was instead shown by Channel 4 on 2 July. After watching it, Gary Lineker, who had essentially been pushed out of the BBC for his honesty on Gaza and other issues, said that, ‘The BBC should hang its head in shame.’
Ben de Pear, the documentary’s executive producer for Basement Films and a former Channel 4 News editor, accused the BBC of trying to gag him and others over its decision not to show the documentary. In a statement that he posted to LinkedIn, de Pear said the film had passed through many ‘BBC compliance hoops’ and that the BBC were now attempting to stop him talking about the film’s ‘painful journey’ to the screen:
‘I rejected and refused to sign the double gagging clause the BBC bosses tried multiple times to get me to sign. Not only could we have been sued for saying the BBC refused to air the film (palpably and provably true) but also if any other company had said it, the BBC could sue us.
‘Not only could we not tell the truth that was already stated, but neither could others. Reader, I didn’t sign it.’
At a conference in Sheffield, de Pear criticised Tim Davie, then still the BBC director-general, over the BBC’s decision to drop the film:
‘All the decisions about our film were not taken by journalists, they were taken by Tim Davie. He is just a PR person. Tim Davie is taking editorial decisions which, frankly, he is not capable of making.’
How ironic that quote sounds now.
Meanwhile, BBC News daily regurgitates Israeli propaganda bullet points with impunity. Last week, BBC newsreader Clive Myrie announced on News at Ten:
‘Now, it’s almost a month since the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect. And, despite claims of violations, the truce is still holding.’
As B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, has pointed out, since the ceasefire agreement took effect on 10 October 2025, Israel has killed at least 241 Palestinians in Gaza, 117 of them children. More than 600 people have been injured. If 241 Israelis had been killed over the past month, the BBC would certainly not have reported that ‘the truce is still holding’.
The latest events reveal that the BBC bends all too easily to sustained pressure from established power and the right-wing press.
The post Inversion of Reality first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Shawan Jabarin says US colleagues and funders have distanced themselves from West Bank-based Al-Haq over the sanctions
Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.
Today, staff work without pay because their banks closed their accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese talks to journalist Chris Hedges about her new report that examines how 60+ countries are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity demonstrated to the world in a “livestreamed atrocity”.
INTERVIEW: The Chris Hedges Report
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
This network includes dozens of other countries that contribute with seemingly minor components, such as warplane wheels.
Rejection of this system is imperative, Albanese says. These same technologies used to destroy the lives of Palestinians will inevitably be turned against the citizens of Israel’s funders.
“Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go,” Albanese warns.
“Every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.”
The transcript:
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, in her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, calls out the role 63 nations have in sustaining the Israeli genocide. Albanese, who because of sanctions imposed on her by the Trump administration, had to address the UN General Assembly from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, slams what she calls “decades of moral and political failure.”
“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasize into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she told the UN.
The genocide, she notes, has diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace,” military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery,” the unchallenged weaponization of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.
The 24-page report details how the “live-streamed atrocity” is facilitated by third states. She excoriates the United States for providing “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations, the report noted, collaborate with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, providing Israel with weapons, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted.”
The report chastised the US Congress for passing a $26.4 billion arms package for Israel, although Israel was at the time threatening to invade Rafah in defiance of the Biden administration’s demand that Rafah be spared.
The report also condemns Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, for weapons shipments that include everything from “frigates to torpedoes,” as well as the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.
At the same time, Arab states have not severed ties with Israel. Egypt, for example, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.
Francesca Albanese talks to Chris Hedges Video: The Chris Hedges Report
The Gaza genocide, the report states, “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest.” Her report coincides with the ceasefire that isn’t. More than 300 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was announced two weeks ago.
The first major ceasefire breach on October 19 led to Israeli air strikes that killed 100 Palestinians and wounded 150 others. Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure daily bombings that obliterate buildings and homes. Shelling and gunfire continue to kill and wound civilians, while drones continue to hover overhead broadcasting ominous threats.
Essential food items, humanitarian aid and medical supplies remain scarce because of the ongoing Israeli siege. And the Israeli army controls more than half of the Gaza Strip, shooting anyone, including families, who come too close to its invisible border known as the “yellow line”.
Joining me to discuss her report, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the complicity of numerous states in sustaining the genocide in Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine.
Before we get into the report, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s just a complete disconnect between what is described by the international community, i.e. “a ceasefire”, the pace may have slowed down, but nothing’s changed.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, thank you for having me, Chris. I do agree that it seems that there is a complete disconnect between reality and political discourse. Because after the ceasefire, the attention has been forced to shift from Gaza elsewhere.
I do believe, for example, that the increased attention to the catastrophic situation in Sudan, which has been such for years now, all of a sudden is due to the fact that there is a need for, especially from Western countries and the US, Israel and their acolytes to focus on a new emergency.
‘There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace.’
There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace. I mean, the Palestinians have not seen a day of peace because Israel has continued to fire, to use violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. Over 230 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire, 100 of them in one day in 24 hours, including 50 children.
And starvation continues. Yes, there has been an increase in the number of trucks, but far, far below what is needed with much confusion because it’s very hard to deliver aid. All the more, Israel maintains a control over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip while the entire Gaza population is amassed in small portions, guarded portions of the territory.
So there is no peace. Meanwhile, while the Security Council seems to be ready to approve a Security Council resolution that will create a non-acronistic form of tutelage, of trusteeship over Palestine, over Gaza, the West Bank is abandoned to the violence and the ethnic cleansing pushed by armed settlers and soldiers while Israel jails continue to fill up with bodies to torture of adults and children alike. This is the reality in the occupied Palestinian territory today and so it makes absolutely no sense where the political discourse is.
CHRIS HEDGES: Two issues about Gaza. One, of course, Israel has seized over 50% or occupies over 50 percent of Gaza. And as I understand it, they’re not allowing any reconstruction supplies, including cement, in.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: This is also my understanding. They have allowed in food, water and some essential materials needed for hospitals, mainly camp hospitals, tents. But anything related to sustainability is prohibited.
There are many food items that are also prohibited because they are considered luxurious. And the question, Chris, is, and this is why I harbor so much frustration these days toward member states because in the case of genocide, you have heard yourself the argument, well, the recalcitrance of certain states to use the genocide framework saying — and it’s pure nonsense from a legal point of view — but saying, well, the International Court of Justice has not concluded that it’s genocide.
Well, it has concluded already that there is a risk of genocide two years ago, in January, 2024. But however, even when the court does conclude on something relevant like in July, 2024, that the occupation is illegal and must be dismantled totally and unconditionally, this should be the starting point of any peace related or forward-looking discussions.
Instead of deliberating how to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, member states continue to maintain dialogue with Israel as Israel has sovereignty over the territory. See, so it’s completely dystopic, the future they are leading Palestinians out of despair into.
But they are also forcing the popular movement, the global movement that has formed made of young people and workers to stop. Because look at what’s happening in France, in Italy, in Germany, in the UK — any kind of attempt at maintaining the light turned on Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank is assaulted. Protests, conferences, there is a very active assault on anything that concerns Palestine.
So this is why I’m saying we are far, far beyond the mismanagement of the lack of understanding, I mean the negligence in approaching the question of Palestine, it’s active complicity to sustain Israel in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
CHRIS HEDGES: Which, as you point out in your report, has been true from the beginning despite a slight change in rhetoric recognising the two-state solution. The UK did this while only cutting back on shipments by 10 percent.
But I want to ask before we get into the report, what do you think Israel’s goal is? Is it just to slow-walk the genocide until it can resume it? Is it to create this appalling, uninhabitable, unlivable ghetto? What do you think Israel’s goal is?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that now more than ever it is impossible to separate and distinguish the goals of Israel from the goals of the United States. We tend to have a fragmented view of what happens, analysing for example the relationship between Lebanon and Israel, between Iran and Israel, or between Israel and the Palestinians.
‘One of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.’
In fact, do, I mean, one of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.
But there is this idea of Greater Israel and for a long time I have been among those who thought, who were wondering what it is, this “Greater Israel” because of course you look at the map by Israeli leaders in several occasions with this Greater Israel going from the Nile to the Euphrates and you say come on they cannot do that, they cannot occupy Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq.
But then everything changes when you look at it from a non-territorial border expansion perspective. And if you think that in fact domination can be exerted, established, other than by expanding the physical borders and through military occupation, but through domination and financial control, control from outside, power domination, you see that the Greater Israel project has already started and it’s very advanced.
Look at the annihilation of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon. So all those who were historically considered not friends of Israel have been annihilated. And the other Arab countries that remain either do not have the capacity to confront Israel and perish the thought they explored the idea of unity among them or with others. And the others are fine with it.
Ultimately, I think that Greater Israel is the quintessential explanation of the US imperialistic design in that part of the world for which the Palestinians remain a thorn in the side not just for Israel but for the imperialistic project itself because the Palestinians are still there resisting.
They don’t want to go, they don’t want to be tamed, they don’t want to be dominated so they are the last line, the last frontier of resistance, both physically and in the imagination. And therefore, you see, the fierceness against them has scaled up, with the US now getting ready with boots on the ground to get rid of them. This is my interpretation of the general design behind Israel-United States, where Israelis are going to pay a heavy price like many in the region, not just the Palestinians.
CHRIS HEDGES: So you see the imposition of American troops in Gaza as another step forward to the depopulation of Gaza.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes, yes, I don’t trust any promise made to the Palestinians either by Israel or by the United States because what I’ve seen over the past two years shows me, demonstrates to all of us in fact, that they don’t care at all about the Palestinians. Otherwise, they would have seen their suffering.
‘The beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.’
It’s just not like people like us who can really divide their life. Is it pre-genocide? Does it happen to you as well? Are you talking of pre-genocide or after genocide? Because in fact, the beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.
Now I don’t think so, which doesn’t mean that I think that the UN is over, but in order not to be over, in order to make sense to the people, it is to be led by dignity, principles like dignity, equality and freedom for all. And we are absolutely far from that today.
CHRIS HEDGES: And what is it that brought you to this decision? Is it the acceptance of this faux ceasefire on the part of the UN, or was it before this moment?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: No, it’s before. It’s before. It’s the fact that for two years most states, primarily in the West, but with the acquiescence of other states in the region have supported the Israeli mantra of “self-defence”.
Sorry, it was a mantra because again, self-defence has a very, I’m not saying that Israel had no right to protect itself. Of course Israel had suffered a ferocious attack on October 7. Some say similar to the attacks it had inflicted on the Palestinians. Others say more brutal, say less brutal. It doesn’t matter.
Israel suffered a horrible, violent attack. Israeli civilians suffered a horrible attack on October 7th. But hey, this didn’t give the possibility to Israel to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, meaning the right to wage a war.
This is not legal. And on this I can say I’m surprised by how conservative are member states when it comes to the interpretation of international law, except on this, in the sense that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already set the limits of the right of invoking self-defence for member states.
And it can only be done against states where there is a concrete threat that the state will attack which is not the case here. So yes, Israel could defend itself, but not wage a war. And while the war was clearly identifiable more for its crimes than not its tendency to avoid crimes, member states have continued to say nothing and it was very extreme violence against the Palestinians in Gaza but also against the Palestinians in the West Bank. And for two years they’ve not used their power to stop it.
So I’m convinced that in order to have a political shift vis-à-vis Israel, there must be a political shift at the country level, because governments are completely subdued to the dictates of the US. Of course, if the US wanted, this would stop, but the US with this constellation of figures in the government is not going to stop.
And plus look at how the West in particular has contributed to dehumanise the Palestinians. Even today you hear people saying yes, Palestinians have been killed in these numbers because they’ve been used as human shields when the only evidence that they’ve been used as human shields is against Israel because Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank and in Gaza alike.
You see Palestinians have returned to be wrapped into this colonial tropism of them being the savages, the barbarians, in a way, they have brought havoc upon themselves. This is the narrative that the West has used toward the Palestinians. And by doing that, it has created, they have created the fertile ground for Israel’s impunity.
CHRIS HEDGES: Let’s talk about the nations that you single out in your report that have continued to sustain the genocide, either through weapons shipments, but also the commercial interests. I think your previous report talked about the money that was being made off of the genocide. Just lay out the extent of that collaboration and to the extent that you can, the sums of money involved.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, yeah, let me start with introducing generally two components, the military component and the trade and investment ones, which are quite interrelated. And states have, in general, I name 62 states, primarily Western states, but with substantive collaboration of states from the Global South, global majority, including some Arab states.
So they have altogether ignored, obscured and somewhat even profited from Israel’s violations of international law through military and economic channels. So military cooperation through arms trades or intelligence sharing has fueled Israel’s war machine during the occupation, the illegal occupation, and especially during the genocide while the United States and Germany alone have provided about 90 percent of Israel’s arms export.
At least 26 states have supplied or facilitated the transfer of arms or components, while many others have continued to buy weapons tested on the Palestinians. And this is why in my previous report, the ones looking at the private sector, I was shocked to see how much the Israeli stock exchange had gone up during the genocide.
And this is particularly because of a growth in the military industry. On the other hand, there is the trade and investment sector. Both have sustained and profited from Israel’s economy. Think that between 2023, 2024, actually the end of 2022 and 2024, exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals, energy minerals and what is called the dual-use have totaled almost US$500 billion, helping Israel finance its military occupation.
Now one third of this trade is with the European Union while the rest is complemented by North American countries, the US and Canada, who have free trade agreements with Israel and several Arab states that have continued to deepen economic ties.
Only a few states have marginally reduced trade during the genocide, but in general the indirect commercial flows, including with states that have supposedly no diplomatic relations with Israel, have continued undisturbed.
It’s a very grim picture of the reality. But let me add just one extra element. I do believe that in many respects, the problem is ideological. As I said, there is a tendency to treat Ukraine, for example, vis-a-vis Russia, in a very different fashion than Palestine versus Israel. And this is why I think there is an element of Orientalism that accompanies also the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
CHRIS HEDGES: Talk a little bit about the kinds of weapons that have been shipped to Israel. These are, and we should be clear that, of course, the Palestinians do not have a conventional army, don’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have mechanized units, including tanks, they don’t have artillery, and yet the weapons shipments that are coming in are some of the most sophisticated armaments that are used in a conventional war.
And as a leaked Israeli report, I think it was +972, provided, 83 percent of the people killed in Gaza are civilians.
FRANCISCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes. First of all, there are two things that are weapons, what is considered conventional weapons and dual-use. And both should have been suspended according to the decision of the International Court of Justice concerning Israel in the Nicaragua v. Germany case.
Meanwhile, there are two things: there is the transfer of weapons directly to Israel, and this includes aircraft, materials to compose the drones, because Israel doesn’t produce anything on its own, it requires components — artillery shells, for example, cannon ammunition, rifles, anti-tank missiles, bombs.
So these are all things that have been provided primarily by the United States. Germany, which is the second largest arms exporter to Israel has supplied a range of weapons from frigates to torpedoes.
And also, and then there is Italy, which has also provided spare parts for bombs and airplanes and the United Kingdom, who has played a key role in providing intelligence. And there is also the question of the UN. Not everything is easy to track because the United States have traveled … the United States are the prime provider of weapons, also because they are the assembler of the F-35 programme.
So there are 17 or 19 countries which cooperate and all of them say, well, you know, I mean, yes, I know that the F-35 is used in Israel, by Israel, but I only contribute to a small part. I only contribute to the wheels. I only contribute to the wings. I only provide these hooks or this engine.
Well, everything is assembled in the US and then sold or transferred or gifted to Israel. And it’s extremely problematic because this is why I say it’s a collective crime, because no one can assume the responsibility on their own but eventually all together they contribute to make this genocide implicating so many countries.
CHRIS HEDGES: So Francesca, Israel is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world. To what extent do those relationships have? I mean, I think one of the largest purchasers of Israeli drones is India. We’ve seen India shift its position vis-a-vis Palestine.
Historically, it’s always stood with the Palestinian people. That’s no longer true under [Narendra] Modi. To what extent do those ties affect the response by the 63 some states that you write about for collaborating with the genocide.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: So let me first expand on this. Weapon and military technology sale is a core component of Israel’s economy. And since 2024, it has constituted one third of Israeli exports. And of course, there are two elements connected to this, is that these exports enhances Israel’s manufacturing capacity, but also horribly worsens the life of the Palestinians because Israeli military technology is tested on the Palestinians under occupation or other people under other Israeli related military activities.
Now, the fact that the arms export has increased of nearly 20 percent during the genocide, doubling toward Europe. And only the trade with Europe accounts for over 50 percent of Israeli military sales, selling to so many other countries, including in the Global South, the Asia and Pacific states in the Asia-Pacific region account for 23 percent of the purchase, with India being probably the major. But also 12 percent of the weapons tested on the Palestinians are purchased by Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. So what does it tell us?
It explains what you were hinting at in the question, the fact that this is also reflected in the political shift toward Israel that has been recorded at the General Assembly level. If you see how some African countries and Asian countries, including India, are behaving vis-a-vis Israel, it’s 180 degrees turn compared to where they were in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
This is because on the one hand, Israel is embedded in the global economy, but also it’s a global economy that is veering toward ultra liberal, I mean, it’s following ultra-liberalist ideologies and therefore capital and wealth and accumulation of resources, including military power, comes first.
‘It’s very sad, but this is the reality . . . since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.’
It’s very sad, but this is the reality. And it’s important to know because this is a long, as I was hinting before, my sense is that this is a long term trajectory that didn’t start on October 7, 2023. I mean, probably since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.
I mean, there is this, not a common denominator, but the unifying factor for many is force, how the monopoly of force that comes with weapons, capital and algorithms. And yeah, this is where the world is going.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we’ve seen these weapons systems which of course are tested. They’re sold as bad. say the term is battle tested without naming the Palestinians, but they are sold to Greece to hold back migrants coming from North Africa. They are used along the border in the United States with Mexico.
And it’s not just that these weapons are “battle tested” on the Palestinians and we haven’t even spoken about these huge surveillance systems, but the very methods of control, the way they’re used are exported through military advisors.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Of course, because in fact, the Israeli population is made almost entirely of soldiers. Of course, there are those who do not enlist in the army for religious reasons or because they are contentious objectors, they’re a tiny minority. But the majority of the people of Israelis go through the army.
And then many of them transfer their know-how or what they have been doing into their next career steps. So the fact that Israel, as I was documenting in my previous report, Israel’s startup economy has a huge dark side to the fact that it’s connected to the military industry and to the surveillance industry.
There is a significant body of Israeli citizens who are going around providing advice, intelligence and training in the Global South both to mercenaries and states proper like Morocco. So there is an Israelisation and Palestinianisation of the international relations or rather of the relations between individuals and states.
And I think the interesting thing, this is why I’m saying Palestine is such a revealer, it’s because, as you say, eventually these tools of control and securitisation have concentrated in the hands of those who are fortifying borders at the expense of refugees and migrants.
So it’s really clear what’s happening here. There are oligarchs who are getting richer and richer and more and more protected in their fortresses where the state is providing the fertile ground to have it, but it’s not states that are benefiting from this inequality, because the majority of the people within states, look at the US, but also in Europe, are not benefiting from anything, in fact.
They’re victims. This is why you equally exploit it. This is why I’m saying it’s another degree of suffering, of course, than the Palestinians. But every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, internally as well. I mean, with Sikh farmers who were protesting Modi were out on the roads, suddenly, over their heads were Israeli-made drones dropping tear gas canisters.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, exactly. Drones are one of the most exported devices from Israel’s technology and they are in use by Frontex to surveil the Mediterranean Sea, as you were saying, the US-Mexican border. But more and more, they’re getting into people’s lives.
Also look at the way certain technologies have been perfected across borders. I remember earlier this summer, this is very anecdotal, I’ve not done research on it, but I knew that we were seeing something quite and horribly revolutionary.
This year, this summer during the protests in Serbia, where students and ordinary citizens were taken to the streets against the government and have been protesting for one year now, people in Serbia. I saw the use of these sound weapons, oxygen-fed weapons.
So there are bombs that produce such a pain in the body who finds itself in the wave that it’s excruciating. And then of course people try to flee, but they also lose senses, et cetera. And I’ve seen this in Serbia.
And now I understand that it’s being used in Gaza as well, where the bomb doesn’t produce fire, it produces a movement of air that causes pain to the body and even to internal organs. It’s incredible. And these are weapons that have been perfected through testing here and there, and Serbia keeps on selling and buying military technology to and from Israel.
CHRIS HEDGES: I just want to close with, I mean, I think your reports, the last two reports in particular, show the complete failure on the part of governments as well as corporations to respond legally in terms of their legal obligations to the genocide. What do we do now? What must be done to quote Lenin?
How, because this, as you have pointed out repeatedly, really presages the complete breakdown of the rule of law. What as citizens must we do?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that we have passed the alarm area. I mean, we are really in a critical place and I sense it because instead of correcting itself, the system led by governments is accentuating its authoritarian traits. Think of the repressive measures that the UK government is taking against protesters, against civil society, against journalists standing in solidarity with Palestine, for justice in Palestine.
In France and in Italy at the same time, conferences academic freedom is shrinking and in the same days, conferences of reputable historians and military and legal experts have been cancelled owing to the pressure of the pro-genocide groups, pro-Israel groups in their respective countries. People, including in Germany, are being persecuted, including academics, for their own exercise of free speech.
This tells me that there is very little pretense that Western states, so-called liberal democracies, the most attached to this idea of democracy are ready to defend for real. So in this sense, it’s up to us citizens to be vigilant and to make sure that we do not buy products connected or services connected to the legality of the occupation, the apartheid and the genocide.
And there are various organisations that collect lists of companies and entities, including universities that are connected to this unlawful endeavor. BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] is one, don’t buy into the occupation who profits profundo, but also students associations.
‘There is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.’
And this is something that has taught me, it’s very touching because it’s really the work of students, faculty members and staff that has mapped what each university does. And I think it gives the possibility to act, everyone in our own domain. Then of course there is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.
But also we need to make sure that businesses divest. Either through our purchase power, people have to step away and stop using platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com. I know that Amazon is very convenient, but guys, we might also return to buy books in libraries, ordering books through libraries.
Of course, not all of us can, but many do, many can. On the way to work, buy a book in a library, order a book in a bookstore. We need to reduce our reliance on the tools that have been used, that have been perfected through the slaughter of the Palestinians. And of course, make government accountable. There are lawyers, associations, and jurists who are taking government officials to court, businesses to court. But again, I do not think that there is one strategy that is going to be the winning one.
It’s the plurality of actions from a plurality of actors that is going to produce results and slow down the genocide and then help dismantle the occupation and the apartheid. It’s a long trajectory and the fight has just started.
CHRIS HEDGES: Thank you, Francesca, and I want to thank Thomas [Hedges], Diego [Ramos], Max [Jones] and Sofia [Menemenlis], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. This interview is republished from The Chris Hedges Report.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
During the current phase of Zionist genocide, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has done more than any other world leader to support the Palestinian people against Israeli genocide and to defend a future for Palestine of self-determination, sovereignty, reparations, and the right of return, as well as to demand accountability for those responsible for and complicit in the genocide.
Petro has taken bold actions within his own country—angering Colombia’s powerful Zionist right-wing opposition—to block the shipment of coal to Israel and cut other economic as well as diplomatic ties with the genocidal entity, in line with Colombia’s obligations as a State Party to the Genocide Convention.
The post Stand With Palestine By Standing With Colombia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
On Saturday, 8 November, 2025, Dan Perry wrote in The Jerusalem Post about Israel’s projected lifting of the media blockade on Gaza. Perry laments that Israeli censorship has left all reporting of the atrocity in the hands of Palestinians, who refuse to be silent. To date, Israel has assassinated over 240 Palestinian journalists.
Perry writes: “The High Court ruled last week that the government must consider allowing foreign journalists into Gaza but also granted a one-month extension due to the still-unclear situation in the Strip.” He asserts that Israel had and has no motive for excluding foreign journalists save concern for their own protection.
The post Winter In Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.