Itamar Ben-Gvir promotes future Israeli settlements in Gaza
Press TV – May 21, 2024
An Israeli minister has once again called for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and an expansion of settlements in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Itamar Ben-Gvir in comments carried by Israel’s Maariv news site on Tuesday advocated a full military takeover of Gaza.
The far-right minister said Israel should push the Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave to make way for settlements.
“Israel should be the one that controls the Gaza Strip, unequivocally, and no one else,” Ben-Gvir said.
Most important, he said, is “encouraging voluntary emigration of Palestinians” from the territory. “I would love to live in Gaza if possible.”
Last week, the minister said the settlements called for by far-right attendees were the “true solution.”
“We must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza. It is moral!”
The minister has repeatedly called for the mass expulsion of Gazans and urged settlers to move into the besieged territory since Israel launched the savage military campaign across the region in early October.
Ben-Gvir has also said he “opposes transferring humanitarian aid” to the Gaza Strip, where basic necessities are scarce and a famine is looming.
Since early October, Ben-Gvir has encouraged shooting Palestinian women and children in Gaza, execution of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails “to free prison space.” He has threatened to quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet if the genocidal campaign ends.
ICC MUST INVESTIGATE BRITISH MINISTERS FOR COMPLICITY IN GAZA WAR CRIMES
By Mark Curtis | Declassified UK | May 20, 2024
With the ICC’s chief prosecutor issuing an application for an arrest warrant against Israel’s prime minister for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”, attention must turn to those who have aided Israel.
British ministers have for months been materially assisting Israel during its onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza. This support is being provided in three main ways.
First, the UK is providing arms to Israel. Recently filed court documents reveal that, as of January this year, the UK government had 28 extant and 28 pending “high-risk” licences with Israel marked as “most likely to be used by the IDF in offensive operations in Gaza”.
On 18 January, Israeli forces bombed a residential compound in Gaza housing the emergency medical team of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a British charity. Four British doctors were injured in the airstrike, alongside MAP staff members and a bodyguard.
The attack was carried out by an F-16 jet, components for which have been supplied by UK companies.
But the UK continues to arm Israel, rejecting repeated calls by campaign groups, former supreme court judges and some MPs to halt them.
Second, the UK military is training Israeli armed forces personnel in Britain during the genocide.
The government has admitted that “there are currently six Israeli Armed Forces officers posted in the UK”. It says “Israel is represented by Armed Forces personnel in its Embassy in the UK, and as participants in UK defence-led training courses”.
Third, the UK military is conducting spy flights over Gaza in support of Israel. Declassified has found that over 200 surveillance missions over Gaza have been undertaken by the Royal Air Force, which is likely to have gathered around 1,000 hours of surveillance footage.
None of this spy activity is being used to halt Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. The UK government says these surveillance activities are solely to aid the release of hostages held by Hamas.
Although the ICC has also indicted Hamas’ leadership for hostage taking, there is little evidence that Britain’s surveillance of Gaza has helped save lives. Rather it encourages Netanyahu to continue a military campaign and avoid negotiating a ceasefire, a path many of the hostages’ families favour.
Secrecy to avoid prosecution
British ministers are refusing to provide detailed information about these three areas of activity to parliament, likely to avoid prosecution for complicity in war crimes.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) is, for example, refusing to give parliament further information about its training of Israeli military personnel in Britain or a military agreement signed with Israel in 2020.
The UK government is also refusing to give any details about the spy flights over Gaza, which began on 3 December.
Court documents show UK ministers decided to continue arms exports to Israel on 8 April, one week after the strike that killed three British aid workers who were employed by the charity World Central Kitchen.
Also on 8 April, the UK began its latest round of negotiations with Israeli ministers to strike a new trade agreement. Rather than sanctioning Israel over its actions in Gaza, the UK is deepening commercial relations.
Legitimacy of investigation
The ICC has legitimacy in investigating British ministers since they are shielded legally and politically at the domestic level.
There is almost no chance the UK system will hold ministers accountable for aiding war crimes, particularly since they are protected by “crown immunity”.
This deems that ministers cannot commit a legal wrong and do not act as persons but as agents steeped with Crown authority, and are therefore untouchable under the law.
The very purpose of the ICC is to investigate and prosecute the commission, including aiding and abetting, of the most serious crimes when domestic authorities refuse to act.
They don’t care
The international Genocide Convention requires all states to prevent and punish genocide.
The principle of the Responsibility to Protect, adopted by all states in 2005, highlights the responsibility of states to prevent “atrocity crimes” such as war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
UK ministers are not only failing to uphold these norms: they are actively supporting those Israeli decision-makers violating them.
British ministers have consistently defended Israel’s attacks on Palestinians as the death toll has mounted to the tens of thousands. They explicitly reject South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Evidence suggests UK ministers just don’t care about international law or how many people – Palestinians or Britons – are killed in Gaza.
At the same time, the British government is refusing to publish the legal advice it has received on whether Israel is violating international law in Gaza.
Ministers responsible
Arrest warrants have been issued by the ICC against Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Its chief prosecutor, the British barrister Karim Khan, says he has “reasonable grounds to believe” that the two Israeli ministers “bear criminal responsibility” for crimes including “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”, “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population” and “extermination and/or murder”.
Rishi Sunak as prime minister, along with foreign secretary David Cameron, defence secretary Grant Shapps and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch – who all approve UK arms exports to Israel – must be investigated over their complicity in war crimes.
Deputy foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell, who has acted as the government’s chief apologist for Israel’s actions in the British parliament, should also not escape the ICC’s attention.
Nor should defence minister Leo Doherty and former foreign secretary James Cleverly (now home secretary), who contributed to UK government decisions on policy towards Israel.
Mark Curtis is the director of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.
Israel army is floundering in Gaza, ex-commander says
MEMO | May 20, 2024
Reserve Commander General Gadi Shamni has warned that the Israeli army is “floundering” in Gaza, adding that Israel “clearly” will not achieve the goals it has set for its bombing campaign.
In an interview with Maariv newspaper, Shamni said, “It is difficult to see how all the Israeli detainees will be returned from the Gaza Strip,” adding that he believes Hamas will suffer losses due to the war, but will not be “eliminated militarily”.
According to Shamni, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned Israel to “years of confusion, isolation, and severe damage to the economy.”
“The most dangerous thing is the dramatic erosion of the status of Israel, which was a regional power until the Hamas attack on the Gaza envelope settlements on October 7,” he added.
Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation army has continued its aggression against the Gaza Strip, with American and European support, as its planes bomb hospitals, resident buildings, towers and Palestinian civilian homes, destroying them over the heads of their residents, and preventing the entry of water, food, medicine and fuel. More than 35,450 Palestinians have been killed as a result, while over 79,470 have been injured. A further 1.7 million have been forcibly displaced from their homes and neighbourhoods, according to UN data, many numerous times.
ICC applies for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Sinwar
The Cradle | May 20, 2024
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the movement’s military wing chief, Mohammad Deif, and Political Bureau head, Ismail Haniyeh, for war crimes.
Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to believe that all bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity from at least 7 October 2023.
The ICC, based in The Hague, opened an investigation into Israel’s actions in the occupied territories in 2021. The investigation has been expanded to cover both Israeli and Hamas actions since the start of the Gaza war on 7 October.
The ICC accused Hamas of killing several hundred Israelis and of committing various war crimes during its assault on Israeli military bases and settlements during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The ICC accusations include extermination, murder, taking hostages, rape and other sexual crimes, and torture.
The ICC statement also does not mention that during the 7 October Hamas attack, Israeli forces killed many of their own civilians by responding with heavy weapons. Israeli media has reported that the army used helicopters, drones, and tanks to open fire on Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives in settlements (kibbutzim), military bases, and the Nova music festival site.
These heavy weapons burned many Israelis alive or buried them under the rubble of the houses they destroyed. The killings and resulting mutilation of the bodies were then blamed on Hamas by Israeli authorities, who suggested fighters from Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had tortured them.
UN investigators have sought evidence that Hamas has committed mass rapes on 7 October in response to Israeli claims, but Israel has failed to provide it. Many reports of Hamas committing mass rape, including in a widely publicized article in the New York Times in December, have been shown to be false.
The ICC also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes, including extermination, murder, directing attacks at civilians, and using starvation as a weapon of war.
The ICC statement focused on Israel’s efforts to starve Palestinians in Gaza, citing its efforts to cut off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the enclave starting on 9 October. The ICC statement mentions Israeli attacks on civilians, including those queuing for food.
The statement claims that Israel carried out these war crimes as part of a right to self-defense and to defeat Hamas, win the release of Israeli captives held by the group, and punish civilians it viewed as a “threat.”
At the same time, the ICC statement did not mention the reason for the Hamas attack, namely to break the 17-year siege on Gaza, end decades of illegal occupation and settlement in the West Bank, and free thousands of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli prisons.
The ICC statement makes no mention of Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza, of Israeli sniper drones killing civilians, and of the torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees swept up in Gaza and taken to detention facilities in Israel. The ICC statement also makes no mention of Israeli efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza nor of the estimated number of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombings and other actions, which now exceeds 34,000, including some 8,000 children, according to conservative UN estimates.
In response, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that Karim Khan’s “baseless blood libel against Israel has crossed a red line in his lawfare efforts against the lone Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.”
“The blood libel will not deter Israel from defending itself and accomplishing all its just war objectives,” says the official. Netanyahu will issue a video statement later in the day.
One civilian killed as Ukrainian drone strikes minibus – governor
RT | May 19, 2024
One person has been killed and “many” others wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike on a minibus carrying civilians in Russia’s Kherson Region, Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Sunday.
The attack took place in the village of Radensk on Sunday morning, Saldo wrote on Telegram. The UAV targeted a vehicle with workers on their way to harvest strawberries, he added.
“The explosion killed one person. There are many wounded, who are receiving necessary medical assistance,” the governor said.
Russian regions have seen several attacks on buses by Ukrainian drones since the start of this month.
On May 6, seven people were killed and dozens wounded after UAVs targeted two minibuses carrying farmers near the village of Beryozovka in Belgorod Region.
Two days earlier, two people were injured when a drone struck a bus in the village of Voznesenka, also in Belgorod Region.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that “a number of attempts by the Kiev regime to carry out terrorist attacks” on Russian territory with the use of US-supplied ATACMS missiles and drones were prevented overnight.
Nine ATACMS were shot down by air defenses over Crimea, while a total of 57 drones were intercepted in the Krasnodar Region, the ministry said. Three UAVs were destroyed in Belgorod Region, it added.
Another Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza, death toll climbs to 145 since Oct. 7

Press TV – May 19, 2024
The government media office in the Gaza Strip says one more Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the blockaded coastal territory, taking the death toll to 145 since last October when resistance fighters launched a large-scale operation against the occupying regime.
Journalist Abdullah al-Najjar lost his life on Saturday when Israeli fighter jets carried out an airstrike against a neighborhood in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Earlier in the day, Palestinian medical sources said at least 28 people, including women and children, were killed in Israeli continuous raids on the camp.
Palestinian security sources added that Israeli warplanes targeted several residential houses and a shelter center for displaced people in the area with missiles.
The raids caused large explosions in the Jabalia refugee camp, which had been witnessing a ground invasion for several days.
Israeli forces in Gaza killed Palestinian journalist Mahmoud Juhjouh along with his wife and children on Thursday.
Local Palestinian media reported that Juhjouh was killed in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, when a bomb struck his family home.
The journalist worked for the Palestine Post Network.
According to reports, Jahjouh had been forcibly displaced several times due to Israeli bombardment, and had finally returned to his home after Israeli forces withdrew from areas in northern Gaza.
The United Nations has raised concern over the “extraordinarily high numbers of journalists and media workers who have been killed, attacked, injured and detained” in recent months.
“We pay special tribute to the courage and resilience of journalists and media workers in Gaza who continue to put their own lives on the line every day in the course of duty, while also enduring enormous hardship and tragic loss of colleagues, friends and families in one of the bloodiest, most ruthless conflicts of our time,” UN experts said in a statement.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.
Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.
So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 35,386 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 79,366 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.
West ‘playing with fire’ – Moscow
RT | May 18, 2024
The West only risks further escalation by arming and encouraging Kiev to strike Russian territory, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
The warning comes as Ukrainian strikes against Russian cities intensify on the backdrop of Kiev losing ground in the Kharkov Region.
“The profile of the American and British handlers of the [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky regime is clearly visible behind these barbaric attacks,” Zakharova told reporters. “They are not only providing longer-range missiles and heavy weapons, but are giving a green light to their use against Russia.”
“Once again, we would like to unequivocally warn Washington, London, Brussels and other Western capitals, as well as Kiev, which is under their control, that they are playing with fire. Russia will not leave such encroachments on its territory unanswered,” the spokeswoman stressed.
On Thursday and Friday, the Ukrainian troops launched a combined assault on Crimea, Krasnodar and other Russian regions using UAVs and naval drones. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 100 drones were intercepted mid-air, while six unmanned boats were destroyed by the Black Sea Fleet.
During its briefing on Friday, the MOD added that over the course of the week Russian troops had intercepted dozens of US-made ATACMS missiles, as well as nearly 200 rockets, including projectiles fired from US-made HIMARS and Czech-made Vampire launchers. The Hammer guided bombs delivered by France, the Storm Shadow cruise missiles made by the UK, and nearly 330 UAVs were also used in the attacks, it said.
A total of 19 civilians were killed in Russia’s Belgorod region on May 12 alone, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. On Friday, Gladkov wrote on Telegram that a Ukrainian drone hit a civilian car, killing a mother and her four-year-old daughter.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that the shelling of residential areas is pushing Moscow to create a buffer zone along the border with Ukraine. “If this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone. This is what we are doing,” he said during his trip to China.
Last month, the New York Times cited senior Pentagon officials as saying that the US had allowed Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles against targets in Crimea. British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed to journalists on Tuesday that London allows Kiev to strike Crimea with UK-supplied weapons.
The largely Russian-speaking peninsula voted in 2014 to leave Ukraine and join Russia following the Western-backed coup in Kiev that took place earlier that year.
Over 600 mosques destroyed in Israeli onslaught on Gaza since Oct. 7
Press TV – May 18, 2024
The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in the Gaza Strip says Israeli military forces have fully destroyed or damaged hundreds of mosques in the besieged coastal territory ever since the Tel Aviv regime started its bloody onslaught in early October last year.
The ministry announced in a statement that the total number of mosques completely destroyed in the current conflict stands at 604, while another 200 have been partially destroyed.
The statement said Israeli troops have also desecrated at least 60 cemeteries during their ground invasion of Gaza, and used bulldozers to dig up graves and steal the bodies of more than 1,000 people.
It said 15 buildings belonging to the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs were destroyed during the Israeli aggression, among them the headquarters of the ministry, the main office of the Holy Quran Radio in Gaza City, the Endowment Management office in Khan Younis, and a repository for documents and manuscripts.
The statement said that 91 employees of the ministry have been killed in the Israeli attacks.
Israel launched its onslaught against the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals, residences, and houses of worship, after Palestinian resistance movements launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the usurping entity on October 7 last year.
At least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the latest health ministry update in Gaza on Saturday. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced during the war as well.
US university president placed on leave for accepting demands of Palestine supporters
MEMO | May 17, 2024
Sonoma State University’s President, Mike Lee, has been placed on administrative leave for announcing an agreement with pro-Palestinian activists to pursue an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and divestment strategies.
California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia said yesterday that Mike Lee was put on leave for accepting the demands of protesting students without obtaining “proper approvals.”
She added in a statement published on the website of the University of California, to which Sonoma University is affiliated: “For now, because of this insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative leave.”
This decision is considered the harshest disciplinary action imposed on the president of any of the US universities that have witnessed anti-war protests.
Since April, US, Canadian, British, French and Indian universities have witnessed protests rejecting the Israeli war on Gaza and demanding university administrations stop their academic cooperation with Israeli academic institutions.
Protesters also demand that their universities withdraw their investments from companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories and arm the Israeli army.
In New York riot police were sent into campuses to disperse protesters and remove encampments set up in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
