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State Department Reports Record Foreign Arms Sales in 2024

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 26, 2025

The State Department reports that US arms deals sold over $300 billion in weapons to foreign countries last year. The record-high sales include over $20 billion in arms paid for with US aid.

The State Department’s statement on 2024 arms sales explained that “the total value of transferred defense articles and services and security cooperation activities conducted under the Foreign Military Sales system was $117.9 billion.”

Compared to 2023, the State Department says last year’s totals represented an increase of  45.7%, adding, “This is the highest ever annual total of sales and assistance provided to our allies and partners.” According to the statement, $21 billion in the FMS was paid for with US aid.

In addition to the FMS, US arms deals brokered $200 billion in other transactions. “The total authorized value for privately contracted Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) authorizations for FY2024 was $200.8 billion,” the statement explained. “This represents a 27.5% increase, up from $157.5 billion in FY2023.”

Combined, the FMS and DCS sales total over $318 billion.

Most of the weapon sales went to US allies and partners in Europe, the Middle East or East Asia. In Europe, NATO countries continued to buy weapons at a rapid pace as they transferred older systems to Ukraine for the proxy war against Russia. China is the focus of American arm sales in East Asia as Washington prepares to fight a war with Beijing over Taiwan.

In the Middle East, Israel bought, often with US aid, billions in weapons from American arms deals. Tel Aviv is conducting what multiple international human rights organizations have identified as a genocide in Gaza. During the Biden administration, the State Department was flooded with hundreds of reports that American weapons were being used to kill civilians in Gaza.

The State Department asserted that the US arms transfers occurred in “accordance with the U.S. Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, and weighs political, social, human rights, civilian protection, economic, military, nonproliferation, technology security, and end use factors.”

However, the US military aid and arms sales to Israel violate multiple American laws as Israel is committing war crimes with US weapons, the IDF has blocked aid from reaching Gaza, and Tel Aviv has an undeclared nuclear weapons program.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces fatally shoot 2-year-old Palestinian girl in the head near Jenin

Laila Mohammad Ayman Khatib, two, was shot and killed by Israeli forces while she ate dinner with her family near Jenin on January 25. (Photo: Courtesy of the Khatib family)
Defense for Children Palestine | January 26, 2025

Ramallah — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian toddler near Jenin last night.

Laila Mohammad Ayman Khatib, two, was shot and killed by Israeli forces around 8:30 p.m. on January 25 while she was in the living room in her family’s home in the Palestinian town of Muthallath Al-Shuhada, south of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Laila was having dinner with her mother, grandparents, and aunts when sudden Israeli gunfire erupted without warning. Israeli forces fired four bullets through the living room window, one of which struck Laila in the back of the head. Laila’s grandfather carried her out of the house and brought her to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, where she received emergency surgery. Laila was pronounced dead around 10 p.m.

“Israeli forces regularly and routinely carry out military operations with complete contempt for Palestinian life,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Little Laila was having dinner with her family when Israeli forces, unprompted, fired live ammunition into their living room, killing her. It is outrageous that the Israeli military has been permitted by world leaders to kill Palestinian children with impunity in flagrant violations of international law.”

Laila’s mother and aunt sustained injuries from shrapnel during the attack, according to information collected by DCIP.

When Laila’s grandfather exited the house carrying her, he saw Israeli snipers stationed in a Palestinian home across the street from their house. No residents of Muthallath Al-Shuhada were aware of an Israeli military presence at the time of the attack, and later learned that Israeli special forces had infiltrated the Palestinian home. Israeli forces remained in the town until about 11 p.m.

Jenin, its refugee camp, and the surrounding villages have been under an ongoing Israeli military attack dubbed “Operation Iron Wall” since January 21, 2025.

Since the beginning of Operation Iron Wall, 16 Palestinians have been killed, including Laila and 16-year-old Motaz Abu Tabeekh. This operation has also been accompanied by Israeli drone strikes, widespread destruction of infrastructure and homes in the Jenin refugee camp, and the bulldozing of roads. Additionally, hundreds of Palestinians families have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to the continued military assault.

Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2025, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Five children were killed by Israeli drone strikes and three children were shot and killed with live ammunition.

January 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump calls for ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s population to Egypt, Jordan

The Cradle | January 26, 2025

While flying on Air Force One on 26 January, US President Donald Trump told reporters that the residents of Gaza should be “cleaned out” and ethnically cleansed to neighboring Arab countries after Israel’s US-backed bombing campaign turned the enclave into a “demolition site.”

“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people. You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we can just clean out the whole thing,” Trump said.

“You know, over the centuries, it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to happen. It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” the president added.

“I said to [the Jordanian King], I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess. I’d like him to take people … I’d like Egypt to take people [from Gaza],” Trump continued, saying he would discuss it with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement condemned the inflammatory comments in an official statement: “Trump’s statements are consistent with the worst of the agenda of the extreme Israeli right and a continuation of the denial of the existence of our people … We call on all countries, especially the Egyptian and Jordanian governments, to reject Trump’s plan, and we affirm that our people will thwart this scheme.”

The US president’s son-in-law and powerful businessman, Jared Kushner, has previously advocated developing new communities in Gaza due to its prime location and beaches on the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli businessmen close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have advocated for the development of Gaza as a modern residential community and tax-free business and manufacturing zone, presumably to be built after all or most Palestinians have been expelled.

In the wake of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that took effect on 19 January, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are seeking to return to their homes, or what is left of them.

It is unclear whether the ceasefire will hold or whether Israel will seek to resume the war, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated he will.

Trump’s comments, including his claim that he wants to save Palestinian lives, echoed the recommendations of a leaked Israeli Ministry of Information report issued on 13 October 2023, just a week after Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the beginning of Israel’s massive bombing campaign that has now left Gaza largely uninhabitable.

The plan recommended the ethnic cleansing of Gaza using humanitarian justifications. The document recommends beginning a dedicated campaign that will “motivate” Gazans “to agree to the plan,” and make them give up their land.

Gazans should be convinced that “Allah made sure that you lost this land because of the leadership of Hamas – there is no choice but to move to another place with the help of Your Muslim brothers,” the document reads.

Further, the plan states the government must launch a public relations campaign that will promote the transfer of Palestinians to Arab and western states in a way that does not promote hostility to Israel or damage its reputation.

The deportation of the population from Gaza must be presented as a necessary humanitarian measure to receive international support. Such a deportation could be justified if it will lead to “fewer casualties among the civilian population compared to the expected number of casualties if they remain,” the document says.

The document also states that the US should be leveraged to pressure Egypt to take in the residents of Gaza and to encourage other European countries, and in particular Greece, Spain, and Canada, to help take in and settle the refugees who will be evacuated from Gaza.

Finally, the document claims that if the population of Gaza remains, there will be “many Arab deaths” during the expected occupation of Gaza by the Israeli army, and this will damage Israel’s international image even more than the deportation of the population. For all these reasons, the recommendation of the Ministry of Intelligence is to promote the transfer of all Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai permanently.

January 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Is Blocking 11 American Doctors and Nurses From Leaving Gaza

The group of doctors trapped in Gaza. Photo courtesy of Rahma.
By Prem Thakker | Zeteo | January 25, 2025

Only days into Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas, 11 American doctors and nurses say the Israeli government is blocking them from leaving Gaza and returning to the United States.

The doctors, who entered Gaza on Jan. 9 with authorization and clearance from the Israeli government, were set to leave the enclave on Wednesday. But Israel denied their planned exit, telling the group they couldn’t leave due to an unspecified “incident” at a security checkpoint, affected doctors and a colleague in the US told Zeteo.

It’s unclear what incident Israel was referring to. COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates humanitarian aid entering Gaza, did not immediately answer specific questions about the group. One doctor said the only major incident the group was aware of involved Israeli forces firing on Palestinians returning to their homes in Rafah.

The group, part of the humanitarian organization Rahma, is currently stuck in northern Gaza and was also told by Israel they cannot even move to the south to leave the Strip “due to certain operational considerations that are currently in consideration regarding the activities on these days.”

Shehzad Batliwala, one of the trapped doctors, told Zeteo that many in the group are “needed to provide critical care to US citizens and others back home.”

The doctors and nurses hope they can leave in the coming days. After the delay, Batliwala said Israel initially told the group they wouldn’t be able to leave until next Tuesday, but has since suggested they may be able to leave on Sunday. In any case, the doctors and their advocates said they would remain skeptical until they’ve successfully left Gaza.

Another Team Prevented From Entering

At the same time, the doctors say Israel is also preventing another Rahma team of doctors, who are part of a larger convoy of health workers, from entering Gaza. They were also told that an “incident” occurred near the Kerem Shalom crossing on the Gaza-Israel border, leaving it closed for both entry and exit. They were forced to leave Israel and return to Jordan. It’s unclear if and when they may be allowed to enter.

“Denying entry to humanitarian workers, especially during a ceasefire period, makes no sense given the dire healthcare and humanitarian needs on the ground,” Batliwala said. “As someone currently in Gaza, I can confirm that there are patients urgently awaiting follow-up and surgical intervention, none of which is happening due to these restrictions.”

A young boy holds the hand of an injured man at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after an Israeli attack in Gaza on Jan. 16, 2025. Photo by Abdalrahman T. A. Abusalama/Anadolu via Getty Images

Dr. Adam Hamawy, a US Army combat surgeon veteran – whom Sen. Tammy Duckworth credits with saving her life after she was wounded two decades ago during the Iraq War – is among the convoy of medical professionals trying to enter Gaza. Hamawy, who was also among a team of doctors temporarily barred from leaving Gaza in May, told Zeteo that Israel has “continued to hinder entry and exit of medical and humanitarian workers since the beginning of this genocide.”

The convoy, led by the UN and Rahma, includes some 50 people. At least 14 are American, Hamawy said.

Test for Trump

Israel’s decision to block the groups underscores the fragility of the first phase of a long-awaited ceasefire agreement, the first test for newly-elected President Donald Trump in the region. While the bombs have largely stopped in Gaza, Israeli forces have still continued its killing – particularly in the West Bank. Among the tens of thousands of people Israeli forces have killed, hundreds have been medical workers and volunteers – including American World Central Kitchen worker Jacob Flickinger.

Israel’s actions also renew concerns about the US government’s commitment to ensuring the Israeli government protects Americans in both Gaza and the West Bank. In the last year, the US continued to send billions in US military aid and provide diplomatic cover despite Israel’s actions against US citizens, including the killing of 26-year-old American Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank last September.

The State Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment. Zeteo also reached out to the offices of senators representing the states where the doctors trapped in Gaza hail, including Texas’ Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, California’s Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Florida’s Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, Colorado’s Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, and Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.

Only Hickenlooper’s office responded, saying they are “in contact with a Colorado doctor in Gaza as well as with the US Embassy.”

January 26, 2025 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Any Federal Officials Pay for What They Did?

By James Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | December 31, 2024

The biggest scientific con of the century is finally being exposed. But will any politicians or government officials ever be held responsible for the carnage they unleashed on Americans?

In early 2020, when the Covid pandemic was starting to ravage America, federal bureaucrats and politicians rushed to suppress any suggestion that the pandemic originated from a Chinese government lab bankrolled by US government agencies. Key Biden administration officials effectively exonerated the Chinese government even though the Chinese completely stonewalled any outside investigation into the origin of the Covid virus, as the Wall Street Journal recently revealed in a front-page scoop.

The FBI’s top expert concluded that the virus leaked from the lab but he was derailed by the Biden administration, blocked from presenting his evidence at a key White House meeting in August 2021. Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, part of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, concluded that Covid leaked from a lab but they were muzzled. The Inspector General is conducting an investigation to determine why those experts were silenced. The Department of Energy also concluded that Covid originated in a lab. In September 2023, a senior CIA analyst told a Congressional committee that six key CIA analysts had been bribed by the agency to abandon their conclusion that Covid originated in a lab leak.

The Chinese government first admitted that a pandemic had broken out in the city of Wuhan in early 2020. Though the Chinese military-affiliated Wuhan Institute of Virology had been experimenting with bats for years, the Chinese government insisted the new virus came from a nearby marketplace. But the lead scientists involved with bat research had all been struck down by Covid-19 symptoms shortly before the Chinese government denied any responsibility. There was a deluge of circumstantial evidence quickly linking the new virus to the lab.

The outbreak of Covid-19 spurred one of the most brazen cover-ups in modern US history. The National Institute for Health had been financing gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That type of research seeks to genetically alter organisms to enable the spread of viruses into new species. Such research is extremely dangerous; as MIT professor Kevin Esvelt asked in 2021, “Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?” The risks were compounded because the Wuhan Institute had a very poor safety rating. Two years earlier, the State Department confidentially “warned other federal agencies about safety issues at Wuhan labs studying bat Covid,” but the public disclosure of that alert was delayed until 2022.

In January 2020, top federal scientists recognized that the pandemic could obliterate their reputations. Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health, wrote in an email that “a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.” The “conspiracy” was the facts of the matter.

Anthony Fauci, the chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), speedily enlisted a handful of trusted scientists to gin up a paper supposedly “proving” that the virus could not have originated in the lab. A top NIAID scientist accepted the task of debunking the lab-leak story because, as he emailed a colleague, “Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories.” The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, enlisted in the cover-up with an op-ed by 27 scientists who proclaimed: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.” Maybe the same scientists also sent an addendum to NIH: Keep giving us grant money or your reputation will “swim with the fishes.”

Further “proof” was provided by a torrent of accusations of racism against anyone who publicly suggested that the virus originated in a Chinese lab. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center added a federal fist to the debate, pressuring Twitter to suppress hundreds of thousands of accounts (including thousands of average Americans) in early 2020 for the crime of suggesting that Covid originated in a lab. Bureaucrats secretly decided that wildly exaggerated forecasts of pandemic mortality made the First Amendment null and void.

If Covid-19 had been initially recognized as the result of one of the biggest government boondoggles in history, it would have been far more difficult for American politicians and government scientists to pirouette as saviors as they seized sway over daily life.

The virus that the NIH financed provided push-button dictatorial power to politicians at every level of government. In the name of saving lives, politicians entitled themselves to destroy an unlimited number of livelihoods. Most governors responded to Covid-19 by dropping the equivalent of a Reverse Neutron Bomb — something that destroys the economy while leaving human beings unharmed. But the only way to assume people were uninjured was to presume that their lives were totally detached from their jobs, bank accounts, mortgage and rent payments, and friends and family.

A virus with a 99+% survival rate spawned a 100% presumption in favor of despotism. From the start of the pandemic, many people who swore allegiance to “science and data” also believed that absolute power would keep them safe. Doubters became dissidents who deserved to be covertly silenced.

Shutdown advocates appealed to science like righteous priests invoking God and the Bible to sanctify scourging enemies. But the “science” was often farcically unreliable. Mandatory mask mandates became the new version of the Emancipation Proclamation. Fauci and other top officials deceived Americans into believing that cloth masks offered far more protection than they delivered. Do Americans finally recognize that the federal government was the biggest source of disinformation during the pandemic?

A century ago, historian Henry Adams declared that politics has “always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” Covid-19 policies were so disruptive in part because politicians intentionally sought to maximize fear and rage against anyone who refused to submit to any dictate. After the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines collapsed, Biden responded by dictating that a hundred million American adults must get injected based on his personal decree.

A few weeks later at a CNN town hall, Biden derided vaccine skeptics as murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you” with Covid. A few months later, a Rasmussen poll found that 59% of Democratic voters favored house arrest for the unvaccinated, and 45% favored locking the unvaxxed into government detention facilities. Almost half of Democrats favored empowering the government to “fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing Covid-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.” But hatred proved to be as ineffective as the Pfizer vaccine when it came to fighting Covid-19.

Fauci, who was also Biden’s chief medical advisor, justified Covid mandates because average citizens “don’t have the ability” to determine what is best for them. But Congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was at the center of string-pulling to shirk responsibility for the Wuhan debacle. After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested prosecuting Fauci for false testimony on bankrolling “gain-of-function” research, Fauci howled that his critics are “really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” But not nearly as dangerous as vesting vast power in secretive federal agencies.

On September 20, 2023, the Biden administration belatedly banned the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving any US government research funding for 10 years as punishment for its unauthorized gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses. But why did the Biden administration omit the same condemnation and similar prohibitions from any American scientist, institute, or government officials that had any role in this debacle?

Instead of Tony Fauci bobbleheads, the slogan “Your Government at Work” superimposed atop a million American caskets captured the reality of Covid-19.

January 25, 2025 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel demands UNRWA end operations in Palestine by Jan. 30

Palestinian Information Center – January 25, 2025

Israel’s permanent representative to the UN Danny Danon has called on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to halt its operations in Occupied Jerusalem and evacuate its premises in the city “no later than January 30,” the day an Israeli ban on the organization is due to take effect.

As the date for the enforcement of the Israeli ban approaches, Danon told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday that UNRWA’s premises in Jerusalem must be vacated as stipulated by law.

The Israeli envoy claimed that the Israeli legislation came as a direct response to the acute national security risks posed by the widespread infiltration of UNRWA’s ranks by Hamas and other armed groups, and the agency’s persistent refusal to address the very grave and material concerns raised by Israel.

Most UN member states consider UNRWA, the largest aid agency for Palestinians, to be the irreplaceable backbone of humanitarian operations. However, few levers have been pulled to try to ensure the agency’s existence.

Asked by Arab News about this discrepancy between public statements of support and meaningful action, and whether it means Western countries are undermining the same multilateral values on which they were founded, UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said: “The same question could be asked about the importance of international humanitarian law and the blatant and constant disregard of that law.”

“You can ask the same question about the disrespect for the resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. And you can ask the same question about the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, and the court’s call for its withdrawal.”

“And so, it’s obviously frustrating,” Lazzarini added. “What we have witnessed is an extraordinary ‘crisis of impunity,’ to the extent that international humanitarian law is almost becoming irrelevant if no mechanism is put in place to address this impunity.”

Legislation blocking UNRWA from operating within the occupied Palestinian territories was approved overwhelmingly by the Knesset last October. The ban also prevents any Israeli authority from maintaining contact with the relief agency.

Delivery of aid to Gaza and the West Bank requires close coordination between UNRWA and the Israeli occupation authority. If the legislation is executed, Israel will no longer issue work or entry permits for the agency’s staff, while coordination with the Israeli occupation army that is essential for ensuring safe passage for aid deliveries will no longer be possible.

Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Israel has relentlessly condemned the aid agency and bombed its buildings and personnel. More than 260 of its staff have been killed, while a coordinated Israeli media campaign has attempted to discredit the agency by portraying it as a tool of Hamas.

January 25, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel destroys only water desalination plant in northern Gaza

MEMO | January 25, 2025

The Palestinian Water Authority announced that the occupation army destroyed the water desalination plant during its recent ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip.

It issued a statement that for the sixth consecutive day, its technical crews have been working on assessing the damage in northern Gaza resulting from the Israeli aggression. Due to the massive destruction of residential areas, infrastructure, and roads, they have encountered significant difficulties in their access to water and sanitation facilities.

The Water Authority explained that its technical crews were able to reach the seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza and conduct an initial technical assessment of the extent of damage sustained. The assessment revealed serious technical malfunctions in the electrical and electromechanical components of all the plant’s operations stages and units. Moreover, the occupation completely destroyed some of the plant’s main components, which led to the destruction of five seawater supply wells, the plant’s intake pipeline, two power generators, a pump and a return water line, as well as the destruction of the external fences and output pumps.

The Water Authority confirmed that this plant is the only one serving northern Gaza and the Wadi Gaza area, providing clean water to the entire northwestern neighbourhoods of Gaza City with a production capacity of 10,000 cubic metres per day. There are no alternatives to cover this amount, and it is difficult to drill water wells due to the high salinity of the groundwater reservoir with seawater in the city’s western areas.

It also stressed that the damage to the desalination plants worsens the already dire water situation in Gaza, as it is the only safe and reliable source of drinking water for the population.

The Water Authority confirmed that, within the framework of the first phase of its emergency relief work, it will provide and install ten mobile desalination stations in the central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip. The production capacity of these stations will each reach 25 cubic metres per hour to produce 250 cubic metres for ten hours once operation begins.

It is noted that the mobile desalination station installations will provide emergency and urgent solutions to ensure the continuity of drinking water provision for all citizens.

January 25, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Experts uncover UK’s deep role in Israel’s war on Gaza

MEMO | January 24, 2025

The UK has played a role in Israel’s war on Gaza, while efforts have been taken to suppress media coverage of its actions, speakers at a London seminar told attendees on Wednesday.

Organised by the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) and hosted by Zeinab Kamal, the seminar brought together journalists, legal analysts, and human rights advocates in a discussion of how Britain’s military, financial, and diplomatic engagement with the Israeli occupation helped to facilitate Israel’s war on Gaza.

Investigative journalist Matt Kennard highlighted how a D-notice had been issued on 28 October to suppress media coverage of British special forces in Gaza. A leaked New York Times report confirmed that UK spy teams had been gathering intelligence that Israel, as quoted by an Israeli official, “could not collect on its own”. Despite these revelations, however, British media outlets have remained silent and have reinforced what Kennard called “a media blackout”.

Criticising the Labour Government’s decision to partially suspend 30 out of an estimated 350 arms exports licenses to Israel as “window dressing”, Kennard pointed to the huge role the British military was undertaking in Gaza. He noted that 47 per cent of all reconnaissance flights over Gaza were conducted by the UK, twice as many as Israel’s own. He added that the UK’s legal liability has been called into greater question given the stonewalling of parliamentary questions around the nature of Britain’s military surveillance. He stressed that UK intelligence has likely enabled war crimes and called for full legal scrutiny, particularly regarding the SAS’s 15-month unaccounted deployment.

British human rights lawyer and Director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), Tayab Ali, explained how diplomatic manoeuvres and arms exports have directly facilitated Israel’s war on Gaza. He condemned Britain’s continued arms sales to Israel despite mounting evidence of war crimes, arguing that these actions demonstrate the UK’s active participation in the war.

Ali denounced the government’s chronic inability to enforce international law, especially regarding accountability mechanisms like the International Criminal Court (ICC) or similar investigations. He urged civil society and advocacy groups to heighten the pressure through legal actions, grassroots mobilisation, sanctions and judicial challenges against Britain’s complicity.

Political activist and researcher Dr. Samer Jaber focused on the financial ties between UK institutions and Israeli banks that fund settlement expansion, emphasising that these financial lifelines are essential to sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project. Jaber called for immediate legislation to cut off these financial lifelines, asserting that the most effective way to hold Israel accountable is through divestment and economic sanctions.

Director of the British-Palestinian Committee (BPC), Dr. Sara Husseini, placed the discussion in a broader context, noting the increasing repression of pro-Palestinian activism in the UK. She warned of upcoming political moves aimed at normalising Israeli apartheid, including the revival of the Abraham Accords and the bypassing of Palestinian institutions in reconstruction efforts. She called for sustained pressure on UK MPs, the need for Palestinian-led initiatives in policy spaces, and emphasised the importance of building a broad, multi-front movement to challenge the UK’s role.

January 24, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel holds multiple Palestinian doctors captive. Some are already dead

By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 22, 2025

As you read this, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian doctor from Gaza, is likely still in Israeli detention – and, according to mounting evidence, being tortured.

Despite the recent hostage swap with Hamas, multiple health professionals are still being held captive, with abundant reports of mistreatment, neglect and torture. One of these is Dr. Abu Safiya, arrested on December 27 and transferred to the notorious Sde Teyman prison camp (dubbed Israel’s version of Guantanamo Bay).

As each day passes, and with reports from released prisoners who attest Dr. Abu Safiya was being tortured while they were in the same prison, fears of his death grow. At least three Palestinian doctors abducted from Gaza have died in Israeli prisons since October 2023.

Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of  Kamal Adwan Hospital, was taken after the IDF had repeatedly attacked the hospital over the course of over three months, ultimately invading it, burning and severely damaging essential buildings, and detaining dozens of medical staff. By now the chilling scene of Dr. Abu Safiya walking toward the Israeli tank has gone viral, as people around the world are demanding his release.

According to Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity working in Palestine, when the IDF invaded his place of work, “an estimated 350 people, including patients, were forced to leave the hospital. Some patients arrived at the Indonesian Hospital, which was not able to provide any care after being forced out of service by the Israeli military on December 24. The last remaining partially operational hospital in the North Gaza Governorate, al-Awda Hospital, is on the brink of collapse, struggling to function amid relentless attacks and resource shortages.”

The non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports that after abducting him, “the Israeli army subsequently transferred Dr. Abu Safiya to a field interrogation site in the Al-Fakhura area of Jabalia Refugee Camp, where he was stripped and whipped with a thick wire commonly used for street electrical wiring.”

The torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has been widely reported. Methods include electric shocks to genitals, stress positions, psychological torture, near-starvation, and rape resulting in serious internal damage.

Following a request by the non-profit organization Physicians for Humans Rights-Israel (PHRI) for a legal visit to  Abu Safiya, the Israeli military claimed that it had “found no indication of the arrest or detention of the individual in question.”

However, one report cites Palestinians released from Sde Teiman detention camp on December 29, 2024, saying Dr. Abu Safiya was being held there. One of the released Palestinians said the doctor had given him the phone numbers of his sons, and requested that The Red Cross and media look into his situation.

On January 5, PHRI posted on X, “The Israeli military also continues to withhold information about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention location, despite retracting their earlier claim that he isn’t being held in Israel.”

A more recently-released detainee, Hazem Alwan, said he had been abducted from Jabalia by the Israeli army and used as a human shield before ultimately being taken to an Israeli prison, where he says he spent two days with Dr. Abu Safiya.

“It was clear, the brutal methods of torture used by the occupation on him. Dr. Hussam is in danger, nobody is looking after him. His mental state is completely shattered, completely…”

In October 2024, when the Israeli army invaded Kamal Adwan Hospital, they killed Dr. Abu Safiya’s son, Ibrahim. But Dr. Safiya continued to work to help injured Palestinians in the dire conditions of northern Gaza.

In November 2024, he was injured in an Israeli quad-copter drone attack, believed to be, “an assassination attempt by Israel due to his unwavering commitment to providing medical care to patients in northern Gaza.”

He continued his updates from the besieged hospital, on December 6, 2024, noting, “The situation inside and around the hospital is catastrophic. There are a large number of martyrs and wounded, including four martyrs from the hospital’s medical staff, and there are no surgeons left.”

He spoke of the series of Israeli airstrikes, just outside the hospital, and of being forced by Israeli soldiers to evacuate all patients, displaced persons and medical staff to the hospital yard and forcibly take them out to the checkpoint.

“In the morning, we were shocked to see hundreds of dead bodies and wounded people in the streets surrounding the hospital.”

On January 9, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, an NGO based in the Jabalis refugee camp in Palestine, noted that, “Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention was extended until February 13, 2025 by an Israeli Court” and that his legal counsel – which has been prevented from seeing him – will remain banned from visiting the doctor until January 22.

Still another doctor, Dr. Akram Abu Ouda, head of Orthopedics at the Indonesian Hospital (also in northern Gaza) is missing. Ramy Abdu (of Euro-Med) noted, “He has been detained by Israel for over a year, and it is our duty to remind the world he is wrongfully imprisoned, suffering under torture, with his health deteriorating.”

Palestinian doctors tortured to death

In September 2024, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, stated, “Dr. Ziad Eldalou is the third doctor confirmed to have died while being detained by Israel since October 7, 2023.”

Eldalou was, the OHCHR notes, an internal medicine physician at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, detained with other healthcare workers by invading Israeli soldiers on March 18, 2024, who died just three days later, while in detention.

In its report on Dr. Abu Safiya, Euro-Med recalls the deaths of Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, head of the orthopedics department at Al-Shifa Hospital, who was “killed under torture at Ofer Detention Centre on April 19, 2024,” and Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi, head of the obstetrics department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was “killed due to torture at an Israeli Shin Bet interrogation center in Ashkelon, one week after his detention in November 2023. Israeli authorities concealed his death for more than seven months.”

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was “likely raped to death,” wrote United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese.

These murders, and the imprisonment and torture of numerous Palestinian doctors from Gaza, and the killing of over 1,000 Palestinian health and medical professionals, are part of Israel’s systematic attack on every aspect of Gaza’s health care system, as well as on the Palestinians’ morale: seeing doctors who didn’t abandon their patients be imprisoned, tortured and killed is a crushing blow.

Both Mofokeng and Albanese, at the beginning of January, 2025, issued an urgent warning: “We are horrified and concerned by reports from northern Gaza and especially the attack on the healthcare workers including the last remaining of 22 now-destroyed hospitals: Kamal Adwan Hospital.”

“We are gravely concerned with the fate of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, yet another doctor to be harassed, kidnapped and arbitrarily detained by the occupation forces, in his case for defying evacuation orders to leave his patients and colleagues behind. This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realization of the right to health in Gaza.”

The lack of information on Dr. Abu Safiya’s well-being, the testimonies from released abductees that he was being tortured, and the prohibition on him accessing his lawyer have heightened fears that he could die in Israeli detention.

This must not be allowed to happen. As Euro-Med stated, immediate international intervention is needed for his release. What’s even more tragic is that were he being held by one of the West’s proclaimed ‘adversaries’, rather than its allies, such intervention would not be long in coming.

Eva Bartlett is a a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump nominee for UN ambassador says Jews have ‘biblical right’ to occupied West Bank

(Photo credit: Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times)
The Cradle | January 22, 2025

Representative Elise Stefanik, recently nominated by President Donald Trump for the position of US ambassador to the UN, said that she supports the claims made by the far right in Israel that Jews have the “biblical right” to take land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, made the statement while being questioned during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on 21 January to discuss her confirmation as the new UN Ambassador.

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen asked Stefanik whether she supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Stefanik, who is known to be a staunch advocate of Israel and supports its decision to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), refused to answer the question directly, saying, “I think they deserve more than the failures that they have suffered under the leadership of terrorists.”

Van Hollen pressed her further by saying that she had previously stated to him in a private meeting that “Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank.”

“I rarely get surprised by answers in my office, but I asked you if you believe the views of Israeli Finance Minister (Bezalel) Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who believe that Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank. In that conversation, you said to me (yes) that you agree with that view. Is that your view today?”

Stefanik responded with one word, “Yes.”

The term “biblical right” refers to claims by extremist Jews and Zionist Christians that the Torah included a promise from God to give the entire historical land of Palestine to modern-day Jews. It claims that Jews are justified in killing and ethnically cleansing Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their lands and homes.

In June last year, US-Israeli billionaire Miriam Adelson reportedly donated $100 million to Trump for his presidential campaign in exchange for a promise to allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

https://twitter.com/KhalilJeries/status/1874889229815460333

Representative Stefanik was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2014, the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, at just 30 years old, and represented New York’s 21st Congressional District.

She made headlines in 2024 by questioning the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about what she claimed was antisemitism on college campuses.

At the time, US students at university campuses all across the country were protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

After positioning herself as a champion in the fight against the alleged rise in antisemitism, Rep. Stefanik began receiving large donations from Republican Jewish donors.

POLITICO reported that she “raked in more than $7 million during the first quarter of the year [2024] fueled by her support from prominent Jewish Republicans in the wake of her grilling of university presidents over campus antisemitism.”

The claim that Israeli Jews have the biblical right to the West Bank ignores the rights of Palestine’s indigenous Christians, who have lived in the Holy Land continuously since the time of Jesus over 2000 years ago. Palestinian Christians refer to themselves as “living stones,” in reference to Jesus telling his disciple Peter, “On this rock I will build my church.”

https://twitter.com/a_westgate/status/1718710112603283504

Israel’s occupation and Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 have brought the Palestinian Christian community to the brink of extinction.

In January of last year, Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem stated, “Here in the West Bank, many Palestinian Christian families have already left out of fear. They look at what was happening in Gaza, and they think, ‘Could this happen to us one day?’”

Isaac said it is “impossible to thrive as a community in the midst of conflict, oppression and occupation.”

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli snipers kill two Palestinian children in Gaza’s Rafah despite ceasefire

Press TV – January 21, 2025

Israeli gunfire has killed two Palestinian children and injured several others in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, despite a ceasefire currently in effect between Israel and Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

Zakaria Hamid Yahya Barbakh was fatally shot on Monday near al-Awda Square in southern areas of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip, before witnesses filmed the Israeli army opening fire on a man trying to recover the child’s body.

According to reports, another Palestinian kid had been killed and nine others, among them children, were injured by Israeli gunfire in Rafah earlier in the day.

Palestinian sources reported that Israeli tanks violated a designated buffer zone, unleashing heavy gunfire on civilians. According to the sources, the military pushed forward 850 meters (2,789 feet) into the territory, surpassing the 700-meter limit established in the ceasefire agreement.

The ceasefire agreement, which took effect on Sunday, is designed to last for 42 days and includes provisions for negotiations on subsequent phases, mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. As part of the agreement, Hamas released three Israeli women in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children.

As the ceasefire continues in war-wracked Gaza. the Israeli violence rages in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli settlers, backed by military forces, unleashed violence in the occupied West Bank villages north of al-Quds, where Palestinian homes, a nursery and a local business were burned.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Palestine, in a statement, has expressed alarm at the “wave of renewed violence” by Israeli settlers and armed forces in the occupied West Bank, amid the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

In addition to the violence perpetrated by settlers, Israeli forces have reportedly established military checkpoints and closed roads across the West Bank, restricting Palestinians’ movement.

According to Palestinian media outlets, all entrances to al-Khalil, Qalqilya, and Salfit, as well as several towns and villages within the Salfit governorate have been closed, with similar measures being enforced in Bethlehem.

In a related development, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order reversing sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which were previously implemented by the Joe Biden administration as part of efforts against what they called the “extremist settlement movement.”

January 21, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

97 bodies recovered in Rafah as search for 10,000 missing continues in Gaza

Press TV – January 20, 2025

Medical sources say more than 97 bodies were recovered in Rafah a day after the Gaza ceasefire took effect.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Monday that 60 Gazans lost their lives on that first day.

Palestinian authorities estimate the number of unrecovered bodies to be around 10,000, with some claiming the number to be as high as 15,000.

Around 2,840 bodies were also said to have been “evaporated without a trace” due to the extreme temperatures caused by Israeli weapons.

The Israeli bombing of Gaza has left more than two-thirds of all buildings in the strip damaged or destroyed.

The recovery of dead bodies has also been compounded since Israeli forces have regularly attacked civil defense units.

During the Israeli campaign of genocide in Gaza, 99 civil defense members were killed with 319 being injured. At least 27 members of the Gaza civil defense were also abducted by Israeli soldiers with their fate currently being unknown.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, as of Monday, the death toll of Israel’s aggression surpasses 47,000.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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