Israeli strike kills six aid security workers in Deir al-Balah
MEMO | May 23, 2025
Six members of a security aid team were killed early Friday in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, due to an Israeli air strike, as reported by the Government Media Office.
The statement, sent to Safa news agency, described the incident as “a horrific massacre” and accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting the team as part of a strategy to “engineer starvation and obstruct humanitarian relief”.
The office condemned the attack, reporting that the Israeli army carried out eight air strikes in the area. Several victims remain at the scene, which has become difficult to access due to continued shelling and ongoing gunfire from Israeli aircraft.
“These individuals were performing purely humanitarian duties,” the statement added, “by securing two trucks carrying vital medicines and medical supplies for the health sector, to ensure their delivery to hospitals in devastated areas. Targeting them is a full-fledged crime that exposes the true intent of the occupation to disrupt the flow of humanitarian and medical aid and to create chaos and insecurity in line with its plan to starve the population and deny treatment to the sick.”
The office further stressed that the Israeli military is systematically enabling the looting of aid and medical convoys by attacking those responsible for coordinating and protecting safe delivery routes.
Bureaucracy is saving both Israel and the EU
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | May 22, 2025
Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement has long been touted as one avenue for the EU to rethink its allegiances with Israel. The article states, “Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”
In recent years, however, there has been more discourse on shared values with Israel than there has been on upholding human rights and international law. Since Israel started its genocide in Gaza in October 2023, the EU has largely upheld Israel’s purported right to defend itself. Only recently has the EU shifted its stance, belatedly and bureaucratically.
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, stated, “Countries see that the situation in Gaza is untenable, and what we want is to really help the people, and… to unblock the humanitarian aid so that it will reach the people.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry retorted with its usual dependence on the colonial security narrative: “We completely reject the direction taken in the statement, which reflects a total misunderstanding of the complex reality Israel is facing.”
Between both statements, there lies a murkier truth than the EU and Israel are trying to project.
If the EU really wanted to help Palestinians, it would have halted its trade agreements long ago. A debate on Article 2, which Israel has completely violated, does not “really help the people”. On the contrary, it helps the EU to form any policy that makes it look benevolent, while extending the time for Israel to continue its genocide in Gaza. Does the EU really need to debate whether Israel has broken Article 2 of the agreement? Furthermore, doesn’t the EU need to take a look at itself for violating Article 2 by supporting genocide in Gaza?
Israel, on the other hand, maintains the illusion that no one else can understand ‘the complex reality’ which is not complex at all. Europe understands colonialism well from the coloniser’s point of view. Palestinians understand the colonial reality from the experience of the colonised population. Israel is also blatantly explaining all steps of how it intends to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians to the point of forced displacement and annihilation. With such a broad picture for everyone to observe and analyse, how can Israel claim ignorance on anyone’s behalf, sparing itself, of course?
Bureaucracy enables the illusion that the EU is shifting its stance. Article 2 shines the spotlight on both ends of colonial violence – both active and complicit. Can the EU really assess Israel’s violations, being complicit in the violations itself? True accountability starts with holding the EU accountable for upholding not only the EU-Israeli Association Agreement, but also supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. There is a need to see Israel as a colonial power committing genocide, and the EU as an enabling participant. Unless the latter’s actions are examined and rescinded, the debate on the EU-Israel Association Agreement will be yet another diplomatic spectacle beneath which more Palestinians will be killed by Israel.
Ex-Adviser to Yanukovych Shot Dead in Madrid Suburbs
Sputnik – 21.05.2025
Spanish police confirmed to RIA Novosti that Andriy Portnov, ex-adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was shot dead on Wednesday morning outside a school in the city of Pozuelo de Alarcon near Madrid.
“We did receive a report about his death. We have no information about the perpetrators yet,” the police said.
Earlier in the day, the Cadena Ser radio station reported, citing police and emergency services, that Portnov was shot dead at the entrance to a school in Pozuelo de Alarcon.
Portnov was included in the Ukrainian database Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) as a “traitor to the motherland” in April 2015, according to the information on the Peacemaker website. He is accused of allegedly calling for murdering Ukrainian citizens and encroaching on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian website Peacemaker is known for its scandalous posts, in which it reveals personal data of journalists and other citizens, labeling them “traitors to their homelands.”
Later in the day, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large on the Kiev Regime’s War Crimes Rodion Miroshnik assumed that Portnov could have some information that was dangerous for Volodymyr Zelensky or someone from his entourage.
“Portnov was an influential official in the Yanukovych era. He could well have had information from the ‘forgotten past’ that could ruin the ‘impeccable reputation’ of certain individuals in the current government. Or he could have had other information that was dangerous for someone from Zelenskyy’s circle or for himself,” Miroshnik said on Telegram.
The assassination looks very much like an “extrajudicial execution,” he added.
“It is hard to believe in the random nature of a murder with a control shot to the head, as well as the lack of connection with the Zelensky regime,” Miroshnik added.
Meanwhile, Spanish newspaper 20minutos reported that Spanish investigators did not rule out a connection between Portnov’s murder and the conflict in Ukraine. There is, however, another line of enquiry, which links the murder to organized crime, the report said.
Netanyahu’s endgame: Isolation and the shattered illusion of power
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 20, 2025
There was a time when Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have all the cards. The Palestinian Authority was largely passive, the occupied West Bank was relatively calm, Israel’s diplomatic reach was expanding, and the United States seemed ready to bend international law to accommodate Israel’s desire for complete control over Palestine.
The Israeli prime minister had also, at least in his own estimation, succeeded in subduing Gaza, the persistently defiant enclave that had for years struggled unsuccessfully to break the suffocating Israeli blockade.
Within Israel, Netanyahu had been celebrated as the nation’s longest-serving prime minister, a figure who promised not only longevity but also unprecedented prosperity. To mark this milestone, Netanyahu employed a visual prop: a map of the Middle East, or, in his own words, “the New Middle East.”
This envisioned new Middle East, according to Netanyahu, was a unified green bloc, representing a future of ‘great blessings’ under Israeli leadership.
Conspicuously absent from this map was Palestine in its entirety—both historic Palestine, now Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Netanyahu’s latest unveiling occurred at the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September, 2023. His supposedly triumphant address was sparsely attended, and among those present, enthusiasm was notably absent. This, however, seemed of little consequence to Netanyahu, his coalition of extremists, or the broader Israeli public.
Historically, Israel has placed its reliance on the support of a select few nations considered, in their own calculus, to be of primary importance: Washington and a handful of European capitals.
Then came the October 7 assault. Initially, Israel leveraged the Palestinian attack to garner Western and international support, both validating its existing policies and justifying its intended response. However, this sympathy rapidly dissipated as it became apparent that Israel’s response entailed a campaign of genocide, the extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s population and West Bank communities.
As images and footage of the devastating carnage in Gaza surfaced, anti-Israeli sentiment surged. Even Israel’s allies struggled to justify the deliberate killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, predominantly women and children.
Nations like Britain imposed partial arms embargoes on Israel, while France attempted a balancing act, calling for a ceasefire while suppressing domestic activists advocating for the same. The pro-Israel Western narrative has become increasingly incoherent, yet remains deeply problematic.
Washington, under President Biden, initially maintained unwavering support, implicitly endorsing Israel’s objective – genocide and ethnic cleansing.
However, as Israel failed to achieve its perceived objectives, Biden’s public stance began to shift. He called for a ceasefire, though without demonstrating any tangible willingness to pressure Israel. Biden’s staunch support for Israel has been cited by many as a contributing factor to the Democratic Party’s losses in the 2024 elections.
Then, Trump arrived. Netanyahu and his supporters, both in Israel and Washington, anticipated that Israel’s actions in Palestine and the wider region — Lebanon, Syria, etc — would align with a broader strategic plan.
They believed Trump’s administration would be willing to escalate further. This escalation, they envisioned, would include military action against Iran, the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, the fragmentation of Syria, the weakening of Yemen’s Ansarallah, and more, without significant concessions.
Initially, Trump signalled a willingness to pursue this agenda: deploying heavier bombs, issuing direct threats against Iran, intensifying operations against Ansarallah, and expressing interest in controlling Gaza and displacing its population.
However, Netanyahu’s expectations yielded only unfulfilled promises. This raises the question: was Trump deliberately misleading Netanyahu, or did evolving circumstances necessitate a reassessment of his initial plans?
The latter explanation appears more plausible. Efforts to intimidate Iran proved ineffective, leading to a series of diplomatic engagements between Tehran and Washington, first in Oman, then in Rome.
Ansarallah demonstrated resilience, prompting the US on 6 May to curtail its military campaigns in Yemen, specifically the Operation ‘Rough Rider’. On 16 May, a US official announced that the USS Harry S. Truman would withdraw from the region.
Notably, on 12 May, Hamas and Washington announced a separate agreement, independent of Israel, for the release of US-Israeli captive Edan Alexander.
The culmination occurred on 14 May, when Trump delivered a speech at a US-Saudi investment forum in Riyadh, advocating for regional peace and prosperity, lifting sanctions on Syria, and emphasising a diplomatic resolution with Iran.
Conspicuously absent from these regional shifts was Benjamin Netanyahu and his strategic ‘vision’.
Netanyahu responded to these developments by intensifying military operations against Palestinian hospitals in Gaza, targeting patients within the Nasser and European Hospitals. This action, targeting the most vulnerable, was interpreted as a message to Washington and Arab states that his objectives remained unchanged, regardless of the consequences.
The intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza are an attempt by Netanyahu to project strength amidst perceived political vulnerability. This escalation has resulted in a sharp increase in Palestinian casualties and exacerbated food shortages, if not outright famine, for over two million people.
It remains uncertain how long Netanyahu will remain in power, but his political standing has significantly deteriorated. He faces widespread domestic opposition and international condemnation. Even his primary ally, the United States, has signalled a shift in its approach. This period may mark the beginning of the end for Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career and, potentially, for the policies associated with his horrifically violent government.
Israel Continues to Destroy Water Sources: Civilians Targeted While Digging Well in North Gaza
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights | May 19, 2025
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of a group of Palestinian volunteers and activists by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Sunday, 18 May 2025, in al-Saftawi area in northern Gaza Strip, while they were digging a water well to serve the residents amid the inability of Gaza’s municipalities and local bodies to supply them with water.
Footages capturing the incident revealed the IOF’s horrific crime, as they directly and unjustifiably targeted civilians in blatant disregard for the principle of distinction, which ensures protection of civilians and their property. This crime reflects the IOF’s deliberate destruction of water sources, with the aim of turning Gaza into an unlivable zone and forcibly displacing northern Gaza Strip’s residents.
According to our staff’s monitoring, at approximately 18:15 on Sunday, Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at a group of activists, who were digging a water well near al-Waleed Petrol Station in a-Saftawi area, north of the Gaza Strip. As a result, seven people were killed, and they were identified as: ‘Awni Mohammed ‘Awni Abu al-Nour (18), Ibrahim Mohammed Isma’il Khela (27), Isma’il Mohammed Isma’il Khela (29), Anas Ramadan ‘Abed al-Razeq Shanan (29), Fawzi Nafiz Mohammed al-Dadad (36), Hasan Mohammed Abu Warda (30), and Tareq Ziyad Mohammed Tanboura (24). Additionally, 5 others sustained various injuries. It is worth noting that the targeted activists were digging the well due to water scarcity in the area and the inability of Gaza’s municipality to pump water into residents’ houses.
This crime was not a separate incident but came as part of a vicious campaign to kill civilians without deterrence and destroy Gaza’s roads, water and health infrastructure over the past 19 months. The Israeli war machine has destroyed more than 330,000 linear meters of water networks and 655,000 linear meters of sewage networks, in addition to approximately 2,850,000 linear meters of roads and streets. Furthermore, 719 water wells have been targeted,1 and complete or partial damage was inflicted on 89% of the water and sanitation sector’s assets. This has resulted in water insecurity for more than 91% of the Gaza population, with 65% of them receiving less than six liters per person per day,2 constituting a deliberate violation of the right to life and human dignity.
According to UN reports, the destruction of Gaza’s water facilities has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, as 71% of municipal seawater desalination plants have been destroyed (100% in northern Gaza and Gaza City), along with 69% of water production wells (up to 88% in some areas), and 66% of water tanks. Additionally, the main seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza, which produced 10,000 cubic meters per day,3 was destroyed. Oxfam reported that due to this destruction and fuel shortages, water production has decreased by 84%, worsening the population’s suffering and deepening the crisis of access to safe drinking and domestic water amid the near collapse of the infrastructure.4
PCHR affirms that in this compound crime, the IOF killed innocent civilians struggling to secure their right to water, amid an IOF’s deliberate strategy that violates all international laws and conventions by depriving the Gaza Strip’s population of water and food sources. This materialized through systematic starvation and dehydration, using them as weapons of war aimed at subjugation and displacement of residents, thereby imposing harsh living conditions that align with the elements of genocide, as outlined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The intent of this strategy is to deliberately inflict conditions of life on Gaza Strip residents calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. The seriousness of these actions lies not only in their transformation of water resources into tools of oppression but also in reflecting a form of ecocide,5 which severely undermines Palestinians’ rights to life, food, land, and dignity, as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In light of the above, PCHR stresses the urgent need for the international community to condemn these crimes and immediately halt them. PCHR also calls on the member states of the Security Council to awaken their collective conscience and work on issuing a binding and immediate resolution to stop the war, ensure the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and enhance their access to water and essential food supplies by activating Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter against Israel. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to the four Geneva Conventions to pressure and obligate Israel to open safe humanitarian corridors for the delivery of water, fuel, and aid relief, and to allocate urgent resources to repair the damaged water and sewage networks, ensuring the restoration of the bare necessities of life for Gaza’s population.
- Gaza’s Government Media Office, Press Release No. (817), an update of the most important statistics of the genocide war on Gaza. ↩︎
- Report: Humanitarian response by the UN and humanitarian partners during phase one of the ceasefire. link: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-humanitarian-response-by-the-un-and-humanitarian-partners-during-phase-one-of-the-ceasefire/ ↩︎
- “Gaza Strip: WASH Infrastructure Damage Assessment”, Analysis of data presented in WASH Cluster Meeting note (12 June 2024) based on finding of UNOSAT (3 June 2024). ↩︎
- Oxfam, Report: How Israel has weaponized water in its military campaign in Gaza, June 2024, link: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621609/bp-water-war-crimes-180724-en.pdf;jsessionid=70739990D729E028EB247E737686F0FD?sequence=1 ↩︎
- [1] Laurent Lambert, “Ecocide as Genocide: A Human Security Approach to ‘Utter Annihilation’ in Gaza”, October 06, 2024 Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/ecocide-as-genocide-a-human-security-approach-to-utter-annihilation-in-gaza.pdf ↩︎
Exposing Hypocrisy: Palestine, the ICJ, and the Collapse of Liberal Legitimacy
By Taut Bataut – New Eastern Outlook – May 20, 2025
ICJ has recently postponed the hearing of South Africa’s case against Israeli war crimes to January 12, 2026, providing it more time to annihilate Gaza. This marks the collapse and failure of the international system.
The Ongoing Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
Since October 7, 2023, the Palestinians have been facing one of the worst genocidal operations in the world. More than 50000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been intentionally killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) under the pretense of eliminating Hamas. However, this war has exposed the self-proclaimed champions of human rights and liberalism. The United States and the European Union have constantly been providing military, diplomatic, and financial aid to Israel.
The latter has emerged as the largest recipient of the US aid since its illegitimate inception. Moreover, the US government has vetoed multiple United Nations resolutions seeking to establish humanitarian peace in the region. U.S. President Donald Trump also reiterated his country’s support for Israel after his re-election. He also proposed a plan to relocate the native people of Gaza to the neighboring countries and occupy the region for the long term.
The Zionist state has intentionally targeted aid workers, mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure in violation of international law. In an unprecedented move, the Netanyahu administration is using starvation and hunger as a weapon of war against the innocent civilians of the Gaza Strip. Several heart-wrenching images of starved children from Gaza have emerged on social media during all this time. Amnesty International and the different international humanitarian agencies have condemned these Israeli policies and declared them a war crime.
Global Legal Responses and the Case at the ICJ
While most of the Muslim nations hesitated even to utter a single sentence against the ongoing Israeli war crimes and genocide in Israel, South Africa filed a case against the Zionist state in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023 under the 1948 Genocide Convention. This Convention, established to halt the recurrence of Holocaust like events, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” More than 10 countries, including Turkey, Ireland, Egypt, the Maldives, Chile, Belgium, and Mexico, have joined the case against Israel.
The petition demanded urgent actions to prevent further Israeli war crimes in Gaza. However, despite the presence of numerous evidence and reports by international human rights organizations, the ICJ failed to halt the genocide of innocent civilians of the Gaza Strip. The court was also commissioned to determine whether the Israeli Defense Forces were committing genocide in Gaza. Since 2023, the court has made no considerable decision against the Israeli war crimes.
Exposing Hypocrisy and Seeking Alternatives to Western Hegemony
The world, especially the Gazans, is waiting for the international community to stand against the atrocities and the war crimes of the IDF and the Netanyahu government. However, the Western world and its puppet Arab nations are constantly ignoring the plight of the innocent Palestinians. This has exposed the international organizations, the OIC, and the Western liberal values. The ICJ’s recent decision to postpone the hearing till January 2026 demonstrates its apathy towards the citizens of Gaza in particular and towards the citizens of Third World countries in particular.
Israeli war crimes and apartheid in Palestine date back to the former’s inception in 1948. Since then, the Zionist groups in Palestine have been occupying the properties of the native peoples. Israel’s history is replete with rapes, torture, and killing of innocent children and women in Palestinian territory. The Zionist leaders have always supported sexual assault by the Israeli Defense Forces.
However, the international community remains indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians. The ICJ’s postponement of the hearing till next year demonstrates its commitment to justice and peace in the world. This move has once again revealed that the US-backed unipolar liberal world order has failed. It has also exposed the reality of the so-called champions of human rights. The United States and other Western nations have always echoed their concerns about the Ukrainian people. However, their nonchalance to the plight of the Palestinians exposes their hypocrisy.
Although the Palestinians and their supporters around the world were hopeful about the ICJ, this is the time to realize that all the international institutions were made merely to prolong the US hegemony and serve the Western interests. It is improbable that the ICJ would declare Israeli operations as genocide. However, even if it does so, it would be too late, as hundreds more Palestinians would have been killed by then. Nonetheless, South Africa’s case against the ICJ has further exposed the Western world order and its institutions. It is the right time for third-world countries to look for an inclusive and egalitarian world order. BRICS provides the best alternative to the developing countries pursuing their ambition of following independent foreign policies and mutual development.
Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador dictatorship: Made in Israel
By Alan MACLOED | MintPress News | May 14, 2025
Nayib Bukele may be Palestinian, but the dictatorship he has built in El Salvador is very much made in Israel. From arming his security forces to supplying him with weapons and high-tech surveillance tools, MintPress explores the Israeli influence helping to prop up the man who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”
Arming a Dictatorship
Since Bukele’s ascension to the presidency in 2019, Israeli exports to El Salvador have been rapidly advancing, growing at an annual rate of more than 21%. This increase consists primarily of weapons. Salvadoran forces are well supplied with Israeli hardware. The military and police use the Israeli-made Galil and ARAD 5 rifles, the Uzi submachine gun, numerous Israeli pistols, and ride in AIL Storm and Plasan Yagu armored vehicles.
Some equipment Salvadoran forces use comes free, courtesy of Israeli sources. In 2019, an Israeli NGO, the Jerusalem Foundation (a group that builds illegal settlements on Palestinian land), announced that it would donate $3 million worth of supplies to the Salvadoran police and military.
For others, however, the Bukele administration is paying top dollar, meaning that this relationship is extremely profitable for the high-tech Israeli defense sector.
In 2020, the Salvadoran police paid around $3.4 million for one year’s use of three Israeli spyware products. These tools include GEOLOC, a program that intercepts calls and texts from targeted phones, and Web Tangles, which uses individuals’ social media accounts to build up files on people, including using their photos for facial recognition. A third, Wave Guard Tracer (marketed in some regions as Guardian), tracks users’ movements through the GPS on their phone.
Perhaps the most notorious piece of spyware used, however, is Pegasus, developed by the NSO Group, an outgrowth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200. The app hit the headlines in 2022, when it was revealed that repressive governments the world over had used it to surveil thousands of public figures, including kings, presidents, politicians, activists, and reporters. El Salvador was one of the most heavily penetrated nations. A report from Citizen Lab found that the Bukele administration was using it to secretly monitor dozens of public figures critical of the president, including 22 journalists from the independent outlet El Faro.
Incarceration Nation
Bukele has used these Israeli tools and weapons to crack down on dissent and opposition to his rule. Since 2022, when he declared a State of Exception, suspending rights and civil liberties, he has imprisoned at least 85,000 people, a staggering figure for such a small country. Today, around 2% of the adult population — along with over 3,000 children — languish behind bars in dangerously overcrowded jails.
The most well-known of these is the Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT), which is by far and away the largest prison in world history. Built to incarcerate over 40,000 people, it is to this center that the Trump administration has been sending migrants rounded up by ICE. In a meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office, President Trump stated that U.S. nationals would be sent there next.
El Salvador holds vastly more people in prisons per capita than any other country, and conditions are among the worst in the world. Food is sparse, lights are kept on 24 hours a day, and cells are frequently packed with more than 100 occupants. Those incarcerated at CECOT are allowed no contact with the outside world, not even with their families or lawyers.
Often, the first thing a Salvadoran family hears about their disappeared relative is news that he died while incarcerated. Torture is commonplace. Osiris Luna, the director of El Salvador’s prison system, has even been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in “gross human rights abuses.”
Bukele has justified the mass imprisonment of his countrymen as a necessary step to break the power of organized gangs and drug cartels. Yet a significant portion of those held are his political opponents. Among those detained are union leaders, politicians, and human rights defenders.
Facing the threat of imprisonment or other punishment, El Faro has moved its operations to neighboring Costa Rica.
A Palestinian Who Loves Israel
Amid the chaos, Bukele has fired tens of thousands of public service workers and reduced taxes on the business community. He has also reoriented El Salvador’s foreign policy from a progressive, anti-imperialist stance to allying itself with right-wing governments around the world, including Israel.
Despite coming from a prominent Palestinian family that emigrated from Jerusalem in the early 20th century, throughout his political career, he has made a point of vocally supporting Israel, its culture, and its foreign policy. As far back as 2015, when he was Mayor of San Salvador, the Israeli Embassy had identified him as a “partner for cooperation.”
Three years later, in February 2018, he visited Israel on a trip organized by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, and American Jewish Congress President, Jack Rosen. There, he participated in a security conference attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, and made a public appearance at the Western Wall.
El Salvador is home to a large Palestinian population; some 100,000 live in the small country. And yet, the Central American nation is far from a stronghold of support for anti-colonial struggles. Palestinians in El Salvador have generally done very well and entered society’s upper echelons. Bukele is actually the third Palestinian to become president.
Historically, the Latin American business community has sided with conservative or reactionary forces, and the Palestinian diaspora has shied away from supporting resistance movements in the Middle East.
“Bukele’s culture is not so much Palestinian as it is neo-fascist. That’s his culture. So he is going to identify with repressive governments around the world,” Roberto Lovato, a Salvadoran-American writer and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told MintPress News.
The country is also home to a large and active evangelical Christian community, for whom Israel’s rise is a key issue. Despite being the son of the country’s most notable imam — one who claimed his son is a practicing Muslim — Bukele has positioned himself as a Christian conservative, and his evangelical supporters say he was chosen by God to rid the nation of gang violence. “I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in His word, I believe in His word revealed in the Holy Bible,” he said.
Dirty Wars and Dirty Politics
The connections between Israel and El Salvador, however, predate Bukele by decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, the country was a hotspot in the Cold War, and U.S.-backed death squads battled the leftist FMLN rebels. The military regime killed around 75,000 civilians in a dirty war that scars the region to this day. The violence was so extreme and so well-publicized that even the United States sought to distance itself from it. Into that void stepped Israel, providing 83% of El Salvador’s military needs from 1975 to 1979, including napalm. In return, El Salvador moved its embassy to Jerusalem, legitimizing Israel’s claim to the city.
Lovato, a former member of the FMLN, told MintPress that the country was turned into a “laboratory for repression.”
During the Civil War, the U.S. government aligned a whole panoply of different practitioners of torture and mass murder. You had trainers from Taiwan, Israel, and other countries going to El Salvador to train the Salvadoran government to do what they had learned how to do.”
One of the most notable individuals who received Israeli training was Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, leader of a far-right death squad. D’Aubuisson is known to have ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Nicknamed “Blowtorch Bob” for his penchant for using the tool on his opponents’ genitals, his death squad is thought to have killed some 30,000 people, many of whom were tortured to death. Thus, it is no stretch to say that El Salvador’s repressive state apparatus has long been sustained by Israeli money, tech, and know-how.
But this is far from an isolated example. Indeed, Israel has supplied weapons and training to repressive governments around the world, honing the skills acquired suppressing the Palestinian population and taking them global.
In Guatemala, Israel sold planes, armored personnel carriers and rifles to the military, and even built them a domestic ammunition factory. General Efraín Ríos Montt thanked Israel for its participation in a coup that brought him to power in 1982, stating that it went so smoothly “because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis.” Around 300 Israeli advisors worked to train Ríos Montt’s forces into genocidal death squads who systematically killed over 200,000 Mayans. A sign of the deep connections between the two groups is that Ríos Montt’s men began referring to the indigenous Mayans as “Palestinians” during their attacks.
It is a similar story in Colombia, where the country’s most notorious death squads were trained by Israeli operatives, such as General Rafael Eitan. To this day, Colombian police and military make extensive use of Israeli weaponry. So normalized has the Israeli influence become in Colombian society that, in 2011, sitting President Juan Manuel Santos appeared in an advertisement for Israeli mercenary firm Global CST. “They are people with a lot of experience. They have been helping us to work better,” he stated.
Israel also armed and supported the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, even as the latter explicitly targeted over 1,000 Jews in the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
In Nicaragua, Israel supplied the Somoza dictatorship, helping it carry out a dirty war. In Rwanda, it sold weapons to the Hutu government as it was carrying out a genocide against the Tutsi population. Israeli weapons were used by Serbia during the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s. And successive administrations in Tel Aviv also helped sustain the Apartheid government of South Africa, sending it weapons and sharing intelligence with it.
Therefore, it should come as little surprise that Bukele’s administration has sought and established such close ties to the Israeli government. These weapons and techniques, honed on the Palestinian population, are going global, helping a government thousands of miles away crack down on civil liberties. While Bukele — a Palestinian — is very much in charge of El Salvador, it is clear that his dictatorship has a distinct Israeli flavor.
Five more Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza; death toll rises to 222
Deceased Palestinian photojournalist Aziz al-Hajjar
Press TV | May 18, 2025
Five more Palestinian journalists have been killed in separate Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll to 222 since the start of the Israeli genocidal war against the besieged coastal territory in early October of 2023, according to local authorities.
Photojournalist Aziz al-Hajjar, his wife, and their children were killed on Sunday when Israeli warplanes bombed a house in the Saftawi neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip.
The family of Abdul Rahman Tawfiq al-Abadleh also confirmed that the Palestinian journalist was killed in an Israeli bombardment in the town of al-Qarara, located north of Khan Yunis. They said they had lost contact with Abadleh two days earlier.
Deceased Palestinian journalist Abdul Rahman Tawfiq al-Abadleh
Gaza’s government media office also said Palestinian journalists Nour Qandil and Khaled Abu Seif lost their lives alongside their young daughter in the Israeli strike that targeted their home in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Deceased Palestinian journalist Nour Qandil and her husband Khaled Abu Seif
Furthermore, Palestinian journalist Ahmad al-Zinati was killed alongside his wife, Nour al-Madhoun, and their children, Muhammad and Khaled, on Saturday night when their tent was bombed in Khan Yunis.
Deceased Palestinian journalist Ahmad al-Zinati alongside his family
The deaths came only two days after Ahmed al-Halou, a reporter for the local al-Quds News Network, was killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military resumed bombardment of Gaza on March 18, killing thousands of Palestinians, and injuring many others, after it shattered the 2-month ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas and the deal on the exchange of Israeli captives with Palestinian abductees.
At least 53,272 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and another 120,673 individuals injured in the brutal Israeli military onslaught on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and former Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the besieged coastal territory.
UK Labour approved more weapons to Israel in three months than Tories did in four years
MEMO | May 17, 2025
The UK’s Labour government is reported to have approved approximately $160 million worth of arms exports to Israel between October and December 2024, more than the total approved during the entire four-year term of Conservative leadership preceding it. The figure, drawn from newly released strategic export licensing data, reflects an unprecedented rise in UK military support to Israel as the occupation state continues its genocide in Gaza
By comparison, from 2020 to 2023, UK arms export licences to Israel totalled approximately $144 million, including $39 million in 2020, $30 million in 2021, $52 million in 2022 and $23 million in 2023.
The stark figures, compiled by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), come amid mounting criticism of the UK’s ongoing military support for Israel as the occupation state continues its devastating war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
“This is the Labour government aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” said Emily Apple, CAAT’s media coordinator. “It is sickening that instead of imposing a full two-way arms embargo, Keir Starmer’s government has massively increased the amount of military equipment the UK is sending to Israel.”
The revelations coincide with a High Court case in which the UK government is defending its decision to continue supplying F-35 fighter jet components used by Israel in Gaza. Under international and domestic law, the UK is obliged to suspend arms exports where there is a clear risk they could be used to commit serious violations of international law.
However, government lawyers have argued that the available evidence does not support the conclusion that a genocide is occurring or has occurred in Gaza. This, despite the government’s own insistence that any determination of genocide is for the courts to decide.
In response, CAAT challenged the government’s claims, highlighting what it described as contradictions in the official narrative. “The UK government is arguing that ‘the impact of suspending F-35 components on operations in Gaza is likely to be minimal’ because the ‘IDF is one of the most significant and well-equipped militaries in the world’,” CAAT said. “However, the claim that the impact would be ‘minimal’ is contradicted by the facts.”
According to CAAT, Israel is operating its fleet of 39 F-35s at five times the usual rate, creating a surge in demand for spare parts. Freedom of Information disclosures show that the UK’s open licence for F-35 components was used 14 times more frequently in 2023 than in any previous year.
The arms export disclosures come as Israel continues its siege on Gaza, blocking food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies for over ten weeks, measures that have compounded an already catastrophic situation. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), nearly half a million Palestinians are enduring “catastrophic” levels of hunger, with another one million facing emergency conditions.
The crisis has escalated since Israel broke a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in March and announced its intention to occupy the entirety of the Gaza Strip. The UN has warned that these actions may amount to war crimes and has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access.
Despite these warnings, the UK continues to supply weapons to Israel, a move legal experts say could render British officials complicit in the atrocities being committed. Human rights groups have condemned the UK’s position as morally indefensible and legally precarious.
Call for international probe into the fate of forcibly disappeared Gazans
Palestinian Information Center – May 17, 2025
GAZA – The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons (PCMFD) said that Israel is practicing arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings against civilians in the Gaza Strip, calling for an international investigation.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the center condemned Israel for withholding information about the forcibly disappeared from their families and preventing them from knowing the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, which compounds the suffering of thousands of families in Gaza.
The center called on the UN and the international community to open an independent investigation to reveal the fate and whereabouts of thousands of detainees from the Gaza Strip and to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against them.
The statement stressed that enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity under international law and cannot be tolerated or overlooked, calling for the activation of the mandate of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and for Israel to be compelled to reveal the fate of those detained and disappeared during the military aggression in Gaza.
PCMFD also called for the inclusion of the issue of missing Palestinians in the work of the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly as an urgent humanitarian issue requiring immediate international action.
Thousands of families in Gaza continue to live in painful limbo, amid the absence of any effective international body tracking the fate of the disappeared and missing, it pointed out, stressing the need to break the silence and act before it is too late.
According to a report by the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies, the Israeli occupation army carried out field executions of Gazan prisoners who were captured during the war. About 43 prisoners executed by the occupation army have been identified, while it continues to conceal the names of dozens of prisoners who were executed in various ways.
All estimates and testimonies from families and residents of Gaza indicate that the Israeli occupation army has arrested more than 11,000 citizens since the onset of the war on Gaza, subjecting them to all forms of abuse and torture and executing a large number of them.
The Palestine Center revealed that Israel opened new detention camps under army control to accommodate the large numbers of detainees after October 7, and practiced all forms of internationally prohibited torture inside them, in addition to immoral practices that reached the level of rape, depriving prisoners of the basic life essentials, amid an unprecedented policy of starvation. It warned of the continued martyrdom of prisoners in Israeli prisons as a result of such repressive and criminal practices.
The center called on the international community and human rights institutions to intervene immediately and form committees of inquiry to document the crimes of murder and torture against prisoners, to pressure Israel to stop these violations, and to demand that the International Criminal Court bring Israeli officials to trial as war criminals for their direct responsibility for these crimes and for providing cover for their perpetrators.
NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel’s Gaza genocide
MEMO | May 16, 2025
In the latest example of escalating repression against Palestine solidarity activism on US campuses, New York University (NYU) has withheld the diploma of student speaker Logan Rozos after he used his commencement address to denounce Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the US’s complicity.
Rozos, graduating from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualised Study, told his fellow students on Wednesday: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”
In his speech, Rozos condemned the genocide “supported politically and militarily by the United States, paid for by our tax dollars and livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months.” He further stated: “I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, and all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity.”
Razos’s remarks were met with widespread applause from students. NYU swiftly responded by issuing a statement denouncing Rozos, accusing him of violating university rules and announcing it would withhold his diploma pending disciplinary action.
The university also removed Rozos’s student profile from its website, adding to concerns about institutional retaliation.
This incident comes amid a wider crackdown on free speech and pro-Palestinian activism at US universities. NYU, like many elite institutions, has adopted the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates political opposition to Zionism and Israel’s colonial violence with anti-Jewish hatred. Critics, including human rights scholars and Jewish groups, warn that such measures are being weaponised to suppress Palestinian advocacy and silence dissenting voices.
Rozos’s speech, and NYU’s reaction, follows a pattern of repression at the university. Over the past year, NYU administrators have called police to disperse peaceful encampments and arrested dozens of students and faculty protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The university has also updated its conduct guidelines to classify phrases such as “Zionist” as discriminatory, explicitly erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
In December 2024, NYU declared two tenured professors, Andrew Ross and Sonya Posmentier, “persona non grata” after they joined a sit-in demanding the university divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Months later, NYU cancelled a talk by Doctors Without Borders’ former president Dr Joanne Liu, deeming her slides on Gaza civilian casualties potentially “anti-Semitic.”
Human rights advocates and academic freedom organisations have condemned these actions, warning that universities like NYU are sacrificing core principles of free speech and academic independence under pressure from pro-Israel donors, political figures, and lobby groups.
Rozos’s speech, which framed Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide livestreamed in real time, resonates with warnings from genocide scholars, legal experts and international bodies that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide. Despite this, Rozos now faces institutional reprisals for expressing what many human rights defenders see as an urgent moral truth.
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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