Protesters flock to UK arms factories to block deliveries to Israel
The Cradle | December 7, 2023
Hundreds of demonstrators and workers closed off four weapons manufacturing facilities in the UK that produce parts for the F-35 stealth fighter jet, which Tel Aviv utilizes in its ethnic cleansing campaign of the Gaza Strip.
Videos shared on social media show dozens on 7 December barricading the entry points to the four arms factories from early morning, hindering employees from accessing the sites.
Earlier this week, human rights organizations took the Dutch government to court for permitting the delivery of F-35 components to Israel.
US arms and aerospace company Lockheed Martin produced the fighter jet parts. Before their shipment to Israel, these components were stored in a warehouse located in the Netherlands.
In another similar case, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied at the Port of Tacoma in Washington State in an attempt to block a supply vessel suspected of transporting weapons and military equipment to Israel.
Starbucks loses $11bn in value from pro-Palestine action
The Cradle | December 7, 2023
Seatle-based Starbucks Corp has lost over $11 billion in value this last quarter due to Palestinian solidarity boycotts and employee strikes since the beginning of the war in Gaza on 7 October.
The coffee giant tried to bounce back on losses with their holiday season “Red Cup Day” gimmick that would allow consumers to receive a free reusable holiday cup with every purchase.
Since the announcement of Starbucks’ scheme in mid-November, the company has seen its market share crash by 8.96 percent, accounting for $11 billion in losses, the lowest it has experienced since 1992.
The primary factor for the losses of other western corporations, like McDonald’s and KFC, is due to an international boycott action launched against Israel-supporting firms in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The financial hit by Starbucks jumped borders as its franchises in Egypt have turned to downsizing their workforce due to the boycott’s effects.
Starbucks turned to sue their union, Starbucks Workers United, in October after objecting to the latter’s social media post in solidarity with Palestine, citing intellectual property theft and harassment of baristas at Starbucks cafe locations.
“Workers United posted a statement with an image of a bulldozer tearing down part of the Israel and Gaza border, reflecting their support for violence perpetrated by Hamas,” the company note obtained by The Intercept read. “Starbucks unequivocally condemns acts of terrorism, hate, and violence committed by Hamas, and we strongly disagree with the views expressed by Workers United.”
The boycotting impact in West Asia, where pro-Palestine sentiment has been historically strong, has multiple western brands feeling the heat from Morrocco, Kuwait, Jordan, and others.
“The scale of the aggression against the Gaza Strip is unprecedented. Therefore, the reaction, whether on the Arab street or even internationally, is unprecedented,” said Hossam Mahmoud, a member of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) in Egypt.
Military expert: Israel’s talk of flooding Gaza tunnels is ‘psychological warfare’
MEMO | December 6, 2023
Israel’s plans to flood the resistance’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater are part of its “psychological warfare” tactics and are unrealistic, retired Jordanian Colonel and military expert, Mohamed Al-Muqabla, has said.
During an interview with Quds Press yesterday, Al-Muqabla said Israeli occupation forces are “engaging in psychological warfare against the resistance and the people of Gaza. They are constantly discussing plans and tools that could be used to neutralise the effectiveness of the tunnels, weaken the resistance, and undermine its popular support.”
He added: “For the past two months, the Israeli occupation has been unable to discover the main tunnel entrances, despite having sensitive devices. All they have discovered are secondary tunnel entrances, which are often booby-trapped. The previous occupation’s talk about pumping gas into the tunnels to kill the resistance fighters was easier for them than using water, but for two months they have done nothing because they do not know the reality of the tunnels, which are not connected, and therefore the step of flooding the tunnels with water is unrealistic.
Palestinian surgeon slams HRW as unreliable source, says al-Ahli Hospital report ‘baseless’
Press TV – December 6, 2023
A British-Palestinian surgeon has denounced as “unfounded” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the deadly strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, saying it was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence, and that HRW is not a reliable source “as it serves the enemy.”
Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta made the remarks during a lecture titled “The destruction of Gaza’s health sector: confronting devastation and forced displacement” in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday.
Sitta highlighted that HRW neither communicated with the director of the hospital nor contacted the doctor who received Israeli orders for evacuation in its report.
He went on to say that HRW did not bother to talk to any of the witnesses of the crime as it unfolded, adding, “I always told you never use HRW as a reliable source because it served the enemy.”
On Sunday, HRW reported that evidence suggested a misfired Gaza rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, which left at least 417 people dead.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, As’ad Abdukhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, said Sitta’s verdict against HRW was “very damning.”
Sitta, traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon. He worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza.
He has already recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians have gone through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.
HRW said in its report that, “The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition,” such as those commonly used by Palestinian resistance groups.
It claimed that the findings of its investigation into the explosion were based on a review of photos and videos, satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and experts.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said all indications pointed to Israel’s responsibility, adding that the HRW report was biased towards Israel and was not “decisive”.
“HRW hasn’t come up with any evidence to support their findings nor eyewitness testimonies nor opinion of independent military exports,” he said, adding that Hamas received questions from HRW two weeks ago but asked it to delay its report until after the war had ended.
The explosion at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel claimed it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has pounded hospitals across the besieged enclave where thousands of displaced people and patients were sheltering.
The regime has falsely accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of using hospitals as bases, which Hamas has dismissed.
Expert: Washington is Zionist-Controlled Territory
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 06.12.2023
Speaking to Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Tuesday, scientist, author and activist for Palestinian Human Rights, Mazin Qumsiyeh said Israel’s actions in Gaza are a genocide that has been ignored by the world, and that Zionists in Israel want to dominate the Middle East and potentially beyond.
Asked what comes next in the conflict, Qumsiyeh said that soon disease, malnutrition and a lack of water and medicine will lead to a civilian death toll that will “quickly overtake the number of civilians killed by bombings.”
He then moved onto discussing what he believes to be Israel’s plans after Gaza.
“That is the long-term plan of Israel, a newly dominated Middle East, in which Israel holds hegemony. But I don’t think they will stop with the Middle East, they will continue because that is what colonialist powers do,” Qumsiyeh warned. “I think China and Russia and other countries need to pay attention very closely to what Israeli plans have been.”
Israel started heavily bombing Gaza days after a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, which killed around 1,200 Israelis according to official numbers. It has since launched a ground campaign in Gaza, promising to eliminate Hamas. More than 16,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including over 7,000 children.
Multiple human rights organizations have described Israel’s actions as genocidal. Israel has targeted UN schools, refugee camps and hospitals, claiming that Hamas militants are hiding in those areas or using them as a base of operation.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why so many countries are silent on this, on an ongoing holocaust, an ongoing genocide,” Qumsiyeh said, adding that he believes it is “not [just] a Palestinian problem, it’s a global problem.”
“The State Department now basically works 95% of its time for Israel,” Qumsiyeh said, pointing to a recent resignation by State Department official Josh Paul, who said in media interviews that there “has been no space allowed for debate” on the transfer of arms to Israel.
“… since Washington is a superpower, with the tails of Washington being the UK and many other countries like Canada and Australia follow suit. So we have a major global problem that could lead to world war,” Qumsiyeh said. “It also already led to the destruction of international law and order and already the UN has become a totally useless organization.”
Political Misfits co-host John Kiriakou asked Qumsiyeh if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could lose his position and if it would matter if he did.
“They need to be stopped as a collective, not as Netanyahu, let’s not make it personal about Netanyahu,” he added.
Israel has maintained that it is doing all that it can to protect civilians in Gaza while attempting to eliminate Hamas. It has repeatedly dismissed claims that has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Environmentalists: Gaza’s Water, Farmland ‘Will Be Unusable’ if Israel Floods Tunnels With Seawater
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 05.12.2023
Gaza’s fragile ecosystem could be permanently damaged by a huge influx of salty seawater like that which Israel is considering pumping into the city, experts said. Some of the deepest tunnels dug by Hamas and other militant groups could be near groundwater depths, souring the area’s drinking water.
According to reports in US media on Tuesday, Israel has pushed ahead with plans to flood Gaza City with seawater in an attempt to destroy the network of tunnels dug beneath the city by Palestinian militant groups.
According to the report, the IDF finished assembling five massive seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip in mid-November. The plan is reportedly to flood the tunnels slowly over several weeks, giving Palestinian fighters and their Israeli captives time to safely evacuate.
The report was unclear about the disposition of the White House toward the plan. The Biden administration has largely supported Israel’s actions in Gaza as self-defense against Hamas, but given rhetorical warning against violating Palestinian human rights. The warnings have had little effect, though, as nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by IDF bombing and ground operations since Hamas attacked several Israeli border towns in early October, killing some 1,200 people.
Andrey Frolov, co-chair of Moscow’s Environmental Organizations, told Sputnik on Tuesday that an influx of salty seawater could wreck Gaza’s fragile ecosystem, making it difficult to sustain life there.
“When water comes in, it all depends of course, depending on the scale of the disaster. That is, what kind of tunnels are they, where are they laid and what is their size. Because the first thing that immediately catches your eye is that if the tunnels are shallow, say, two to three meters deep, then this will simply undermine the foundations of buildings. When moisture enters, the stability of the soil changes, subsidence begins, and accordingly, it will just begin [to collapse]. Israel has already destroyed the entire city, so I think that for them it is not important.”
“There is information that these tunnels are hundreds of square kilometers in size and go to a depth of up to 80 meters,” he noted, adding that it was probably “a bit of an exaggeration.”
Frolov noted “it depends on the waters” how the influx of salty seawater would affect the fresh groundwater. Some of the deepest tunnels rumored to have been dug in Gaza could be near the depths of the aquifers.
“Because seawater can get into these aquifers it will make them salty. As a result, those wells that were used in Gaza will simply stop working. The territory was already short on water, Israel supplied water from the Sea of Galilee. If a large amount of sea water is pumped into it, it will simply become unusable.”
He noted the salt will also impact agriculture in Gaza, making it “so that any kind of farming or maintaining green spaces will simply be impossible.”
“Our nature lives in biocenosis. That is, it is a complex of living beings that adapt to a certain habitat. If the biocenosis is salted and the living conditions are changed, then some species simply will not be able to live there. And if one, two, three species stop living, then the entire biocenosis crumbles,” he explained.
Top Defense Official: US Can Handle Middle East, Russia and China All at Once
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 5, 2023
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady said the Pentagon was prepared to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, aid the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, and arm Taiwan for a potential war with China. The Admiral argued all the military efforts could be completed simultaneously and the Navy was not stretched thin.
At an Atlantic Council event, Grady said, “You look at what is required to support Ukraine, look at what might be required to support our partner in Israel, and then, of course, you put Taiwan on top of that—we have the construct that we do with combatant commanders and the rest that should allow us to command and control those three things all at one time.” He continued, “It’s part of our campaigning process, which is central to the national defense strategy. Is it challenging? Sure.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration pledged to give Ukraine the weapons needed to win the war. Over the past 19 months, Washington has sent Kiev tens of billions in arms.
Over the past two months, Washington has sent Tel Aviv 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. Israel has targeted civilian homes with American-made bombs. However, the White House has refused to place any conditions on the aid it sends to Tel Aviv.
The transfers have stretched American weapons depots to their redline levels. The shortage has led the White House to send cluster variants of artillery shells to both Ukraine and Israel.
In addition to arms transfers, the US has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops and facilitate weapons shipments to Kiev. In the Middle East region, the White House deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups.
Grady’s belief that the US could fight a three-front war is White House policy. President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to pass a $106 billion funding package to fund arming Ukraine, Israel, and a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific.
The Admiral also indicated that military-to-military talks between the US and China may start soon. “So we’re ready when they are and I suspect we’ll see that shortly, “he said.
During a meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, the two leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications. However, the US has engaged in a pair of provocative naval maneuvers in the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims.
Workers worldwide urged to block Israeli ships as Gaza genocide escalates
Press TV – December 5, 2023
The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) has urged all labor activists, trade unionists, and workers’ organizations to block Israeli ships over the genocide committed by the occupying regime against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Masar Badil called on the international global working class to “block and reject the appearance or docking of any Israeli ship in any global port; to refuse to load or unload any Israeli ship” and to refuse to transport weapons of war to the Israeli entity.
“The hands of the workers should not be sullied with the cargo of genocide,” it added.
According to Masar Badil, the action is “a material means of besieging the occupation and supporting the colonized, occupied people of Palestine.”
The group also hailed Yemen for “blocking the use of Yemeni seas for the transportation and passage of Zionist ships and cargo.”
“All states should follow the Yemeni example and prohibit the use of their ports and seas to arm this genocidal regime!”
Last month, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, announced that the military units would target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or carrying the Israeli flag.
Masar Badil also said that Israel is not alone in carrying out its genocide and warned that every port and company that allows Israeli ships to dock at its port is “a full partner in war crimes and genocide.”
“[Israel] is backed, armed, and funded by the imperialist powers – first and foremost, the United States, together with its partners in Canada, France, Germany, and Britain,” it said.
“Every port and company that allows Israeli ships of any kind to dock at its port is a full partner in war crimes and genocide with the blood of the Palestinian people on their hands and must be held accountable,” it added.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
Nearly 16,000 Palestinians have been killed and approximately 1.9 million others have been internally displaced as a result of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.
More Journalists Killed as Israel Resumes Military Operations in Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 4, 2023
At least three Palestinian journalists have been killed in the Israeli onslaught in Gaza since Tel Aviv broke a truce and resumed military operations on Friday. Human rights groups have described the dozens of dead journalists in the besieged enclave as unprecedented.
Anthony Bellanger, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, told the Associated Press that three or four journalists have been killed in Gaza since Friday. He said, “Unfortunately, we received the bad news this weekend — after the end of this cease-fire — and at least three or four were killed.”
Tel Aviv told Reuters and Agence France Presse that Israel could not ensure the safety of their reporters in Gaza.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports over 50 journalists have been killed in Gaza since Israel began military operations following the October 7 Hamas attack. Three other reporters are missing, and 11 have been injured. Additionally, five Israeli journalists were killed on October 7, and Tel Aviv’s military operations in southern Lebanon killed three reporters.
Israel has also cracked down on journalists in other areas. At least 19 reporters have been arrested.
Bellanger said the killing of journalists in Gaza is unlike what has occurred in other war zones. “In a war, you know, a classical war, I can say that in Syria, in Iraq, in ex-Yugoslavia, we didn’t see this kind of massacre,” he explained.
CPJ says the war in Gaza produced the deadliest month for journalists since the group began keeping count. “The Israel-Gaza war has taken a severe toll on journalists… which has led to the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992,” a statement from the group said.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned journalism was being eradicated in Gaza. The group said, “Journalism is in the process of being eradicated in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s refusal to heed calls to protect media personnel.”
Turkish intelligence official warns Israel: Targeting Hamas officials abroad will have ‘serious consequences’

Head of Hamas’ politburo Ismail Haniyeh (Center)
Press TV – December 4, 2023
Turkey has issued a strong warning to Israel, saying the regime would face Ankara’s serious action if it tries to target key figures of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas who are based outside Gaza, including in Turkey.
“Necessary warnings were made to the interlocutors based on the news of Israeli officials’ statements, and it was expressed to Israel that (such an act) would have serious consequences,” a Turkish intelligence official said on Monday, according to Reuters.
The warning came a day after the Israeli broadcaster Kan released a recording from Ronen Bar, who serves as the head of Israel’s so-called internal security service Shin Bet, in which he said that the regime would hunt down Hamas in countries like Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar even if it takes years.
Bar said the Israeli administration had set a goal to target Hamas officials who are based outside Gaza.
Key Hamas leaders, including its top political officials, live outside the besieged Gaza as part of the group’s policy to garner support from other countries for the fight against the Israeli regime.
Head of Hamas’ politburo Ismail Haniyeh has been shuttling between Qatar and Turkey in recent weeks amid Israel’s aggression on Gaza that has left nearly 16,000 people dead.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly condemned Israel for its brutal military campaign against Gaza while warning the regime against political and economic consequences if it continues with the aggression.
The presence of Hamas leaders in Qatar helped the Arab country mediate a seven-day ceasefire in Gaza that ended on Friday.
Israel’s aggression against Gaza began on October 7 after Hamas launched a major military operation into the Israeli-occupied territories near Gaza, killing some 1,400 Israeli settlers and military forces.
Let me emphasize one thing right off the bat: Schneider was an entirely innocent man. Why, he wasn’t even a communist. Instead, he was simply a man of great integrity who believed that he had a responsibility to support and defend the constitution of Chile. That’s what got him killed.