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31 Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire in Gaza ground war: Report

MEMO | July 4, 2025

At least 31 Israeli soldiers have been killed by friendly fire during the ongoing ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Army Radio reported Friday.

According to the broadcaster, 72 soldiers have died in total due to “operational incidents” since Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27, 2023, representing about 16% of the 440 Israeli soldiers killed in ground operations.

The breakdown of operational deaths includes 31 killed by friendly fire, 23 in ammunition-related incidents, seven run over by armored personnel carriers, and six in unspecified shooting incidents, the report said.

Since the resumption of Israel’s military assault on Gaza on March 18, two soldiers have been killed in operational incidents out of 32 total deaths recorded during that period, according to the broadcaster.

Five additional deaths were attributed to workplace accidents, including falls and mishandling of engineering tools, Army Radio added. One of those incidents occurred Thursday night, though no further details were provided.

Israeli military data shows 882 soldiers have been killed and 6,032 injured since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Despite international calls for a ceasefire, Israel has continued its genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to health authorities in the enclave.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its actions in the enclave.

July 4, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Aid as ambush: The horrifying new face of Israel’s Gaza war

By Eva Bartlett | RT | June 30, 2025

For nearly 630 days, the world has watched the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, primarily by bombing, sniping, and starvation. Off-camera, we’ve read about the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages, including the torturing to death of three doctors from the enclave.

For the last 100 days, Israel has reinforced a full blockade on Gaza, depriving starving Palestinians of food, drinking water, medicines, and fuel – meaning ambulances cannot function. This is following prior blockades last year, and the overall blockade of the strip, which has lasted over 17 years.

Since late May, we’ve been seeing horrific video footage of skeletal Palestinians lined up hoping for food aid being gunned down by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers.

Israel has endlessly bombed Palestinians, destroyed hospitals and abducted doctors and patients. It has bombed churches, schools, UN centres and tents housing displaced Palestinians – in supposed “safe zones” where they were ordered by the Israeli army to flee to. It has killed over 200 journalists and deliberately targeted medics. To those only paying attention recently, these crimes go back decades, and extend to the Israeli army and illegal colonists’ crimes against Palestinian civilians, including children, in the West Bank. Add to this the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas of Lebanon and Syria over the years, and now Israel’s recent unprovoked bombings of Iran.

Suffice it to say that when Israel came under the barrage of Iranian retaliatory missiles, reports of some 30 Israeli civilians suffering panic attacks garnered little sympathy.

Again, those who have been paying attention for longer than two years would also recall previous Israeli wars on Gaza, like in 2014, when Israelis gathered with drinks and snacks on hillsides to rejoice in the bombing of the enclave, or the 2009 t-shirts celebrating snipers killing pregnant women with the phrase “one shot, two kills”.

In 2010, when writing about a traumatized 10 year old I’d met who could no longer walk normally nor speak after the terror of having Israeli tanks shelling his home, I cited a study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme which stated that “91.4 percent of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTSD.”That was fifteen years and numerous Israeli wars on Gaza ago.

The US-Israeli “humanitarian” death traps

The killing of Palestinians in Gaza didn’t stop when Israel attacked Iran. The most insidious new invention is the recently-created US-Israeli “aid” group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Israeli authorities accuse Hamas of stealing aid, and based on this unproven accusation, have deemed that long-established UN aid agencies could no longer operate in Gaza, insisting instead that a group staffed with armed combat veterans (mercenaries is a better word) is better equipped to ensure that food reaches famished Palestinians.

It is outrageous that in spite of some media coverage, Israel has been allowed to for months (over a year, really) block the entrance of thousands of aid trucks amassed outside of Gaza, only to then dictate that hired gunmen would be in charge of “distributing aid.”

The massive irony and duplicity is that even Israeli and Western media have reported on the actual thieves of aid in Gaza: not Hamas, but an ISIS-linked group under the protection of the Israeli army.

As the independent media outlet The Cradle reported, the group’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, “is a known leader of armed gangs linked to ISIS and involved in looting aid under Israeli protection… Multiple reports, including from Haaretz and The Washington Post, confirm that these gangs have been seen looting in full view of Israeli forces, who neither intervene nor prevent the theft.”

In a subsequent post, The Cradle cited the Israeli Army Radio as reporting: “Israel has transferred weapons to members of the militia…The militia operates mainly in the Rafah area, which the Israeli army has occupied and cleared. The militia’s tasks include preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and fighting Hamas.”

What is apparently happening is that starved Palestinians, after walking many kilometres to the distribution sites, are then corralled into tight enclosures and fired upon by the “aid” mercenaries.

Jonathan Whittall, the Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) described the situation as “conditions created to kill, carnage, weaponized hunger, a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”

In a clip posted on June 23, Whittall said, “Israeli authorities are preventing us from distributing through these systems that we’ve established and that we know work. We could reach every family in Gaza, as we have in the past, but we’re prevented from doing so at every turn.”

More recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed Whittall, saying: “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people. People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.” The UN’s own humanitarian efforts are being “strangled” by Israel, he said, and even the aid workers themselves are starving.

The aid-seeking civilians are reportedly being shot in the head and chest, in what looks more like execution than “warning shots” or “crowd control”.

The victims include an 18-month old girl whose X-ray shows a bullet lodged in her chest. According to Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the girl was shot while in her mother’s arms on the way to a GHF aid point.

As far back as last July, an article in The Lancet warning that the total number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused directly and indirectly by Israeli attacks since October 2023 could reach “up to 186,000 or even more.”Other estimates were even more grim, include that of Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has worked extensively from Gaza over the years, who said the number of those dead or soon to die could be over 500,000.

Fast forward to a recent report by Yaakov Garb of Ben-Gurion University, published via the Harvard Dataverse. It describes the false aid distribution design as, “all adjacent to Israeli military installations… manned by armed combat veterans backed by Israeli soldiers. The design creates a ‘chokepoint’ or ‘fatal funnel’ – a predictable movement path from a single entry to a single exit with no cover or concealment.”

It is the graphic on page five which caught people’s attention.  From a population of 2.2 million before the genocide, the graph only accounts for 1.85 million, leaving many asking, where are the remaining 350,000 people? This makes the concerns voiced a year ago more valid.

In his report, Yaakov Garb wrote, “The Israeli military has an obligation, as the occupying power in Gaza, to supply the population with humanitarian relief… If an attacker cannot adequately and neutrally feed a starving population in the wake of a disaster it is ongoingly creating, it is obligated to allow other humanitarian agencies to do so.”

But instead, every day we see new horrors of emaciated Palestinian civilians desperately braving death in hopes of securing food for their families… and being gunned down by the Israeli army and the mercenaries it backs.

It seems, at least, that these actions are finally catching up with Israel, meaning a lack of support for or trust in the state or its representatives, and a global demand for justice for Palestinians.

To cite Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer and former senior UN Human Rights official, who posted recently on X:

“The (Israeli) regime is on trial for genocide. Its leaders are indicted for crimes against humanity. Israel is isolated. The regime is now almost universally despised, just as the Nazi and apartheid regimes were despised. People across the world stand overwhelmingly with Palestine. You don’t come back from apartheid & genocide.”

Eva Bartlett is 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).

July 1, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel kills more Palestinian journalists in Gaza

Press TV – June 30, 2025

Israel continues to target Palestinian journalists covering the regime’s atrocities in Gaza, killing a number of them in Gaza City.

“Several Palestinian journalists were killed and others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, where they had been working to upload news reports,” Rami Abdu, the founder of Chairman of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said in a tweet on Monday.

Medical sources said at least 33 people were killed and dozens of others injured in the attack.

Most of the victims were “journalists, artists, and social media activists”, as the place is one of the few remaining internet access points in the strip,” Abdu added, amid internet blackout.

“It’s increasingly clear that Israel is deliberately targeting data upload hubs used by journalists to transmit reports and images.”

Among the victims was Ismail Abu Hatab, a photojournalist who worked with several media platforms and various outlets, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Telegram.

The office “condemned in the strongest terms the systematic targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation”.

Since this morning, hospital sources said at least 80 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza.

Sources told Al-Jazeera that those killed include 57 Palestinians in northern Gaza, and 15 aid seekers near the so-called aid distribution centers north of the southern city of Rafah.

Israel launched the campaign of genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023. It has killed over 56,530 Palestinians there so far, according to the health ministry of Gaza.

June 30, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza death toll reaches 84,000 far higher than official counts, new study finds

MEMO | June 25, 2025

A new study has found that at least 75,200 Palestinians were killed in Gaza between October 2023 and January 2025 as a direct result of Israel’s military campaign. This figure is almost 40 per cent higher than the death toll reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health (GMoH) for the same period, which stood at approximately 45,650.

The study, Violent and Nonviolent Death Tolls for the Gaza War: New Primary Evidence, present the results from a large-scale household survey the Gaza Mortality Survey (GMS). It is the most comprehensive and scientifically grounded estimate of war-related deaths in the enclave to date. It also estimates 8,540 excess nonviolent deaths, due to starvation, disease, and the collapse of healthcare systems, bringing the combined toll of the war to nearly 84,000 lives lost.

The research was conducted by an international team of scholars: Michael Spagat (Royal Holloway, University of London), Jon Pedersen (independent), Khalil Shikaki (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research), Michael Robbins (Princeton University), Eran Bendavid (Stanford University), Håvard Hegre (Peace Research Institute Oslo), and Debarati Guha-Sapir (Université Catholique de Louvain).

Based on face-to-face interviews, the study randomly selected 2,000 households across Gaza, representing a population sample of 9,729 individuals. Data were gathered between 30 December 2024 and 5 January 2025, under conditions of extreme violence, displacement, and siege. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research led the fieldwork.

The survey found that 56.2 per cent of violent deaths were among women, children and the elderly, figures that align closely with GMoH reports and counter claims that the ministry has inflated civilian casualties.

By contrast, the study found the GMoH likely undercounted total fatalities, with the official figure falling below even the lower bound of the study’s 95 per cent confidence interval. In absolute terms, the bottom estimate of 63,600 is still more than 17,000 above the GMoH total.

The researchers took additional steps to mitigate bias and account for the massive displacement of Gaza’s population, including statistical raking to match expected demographic distributions and using mobile tracking and live data uploads for verification. The survey also corrected for under-sampled areas like Northern Gaza and Rafah.

Nonviolent deaths, largely from disease, hunger, and denial of medical care, are often overlooked in conflict tolls, but the GMS sets a precedent by offering a grounded estimate. The study calculated that 8,540 of these were “excess” deaths—deaths that would not have occurred under peacetime conditions. Infants were particularly affected: among 357 children born after the war began, four died, indicating extreme neonatal vulnerability.

The authors say their results contradict narratives that cast doubt on Palestinian casualty reports. They found no evidence to support allegations that GMoH has exaggerated figures, and instead concluded that the ministry’s records are conservative. Furthermore, the demographic profile of the dead—mostly civilians—supports broader human rights findings that Israel’s war in Gaza has disproportionately targeted non-combatants.

This study comes as Israel faces a genocide investigation at the International Court of Justice and mounting scrutiny over its conduct in Gaza. The authors say their work lays the foundation for accurate historical reckoning and accountability.

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

Yemeni defence minister affirms maritime blockade of Israel to continue

MEMO | June 25, 2025

Advisor to the director of the Moral Guidance Department at the Yemeni Ministry of Defence, Brigadier General Abed Thawr stressed Tuesday that the maritime blockade imposed by the Houthis on Israeli and Israel-bound ships will continue, adding that the recent conflict between Iran and Israel and the subsequent ceasefire, will not affect the group’s support for the Palestinian cause.

“Gaza will remain our cause and our common destiny” he told Al-Resalah Net.

“From 7 October 2023, until now, Yemen has not stopped supporting Gaza politically, militarily, and popularly, because Palestine lives in our hearts, and the battle of Gaza is the battle of all free people,” he added. Thawr stressed that Yemen, under the leadership of its armed forces and revolutionary leadership, will continue to impose a naval and air blockade on the “Zionist entity” and will not allow any ship to pass into the occupied ports, regardless of its nationality or destination.

“The enemy has ignored humanitarian demands for the entry of food and medicine and the opening of the crossings, and therefore the Yemeni response will continue with our missiles and drones”.

Thawr explained that the weekly mass demonstrations in Yemen since the start of the aggression on Gaza in October 2023, are a clear manifestation of the depth of popular affiliation with the Palestinian cause.

“The people of Gaza are our people, their honour is our honour, and we will harness all our military and economic capabilities to support them until their suffering is alleviated and what the occupation has destroyed is rebuilt”.

He also criticised “shameful and humiliating” official Arab positions, stressing that the Yemeni people will not wait for action from subservient governments but will continue to stand with Gaza until its liberation.

“As long as Yemen exists, rest assured that Israel and America will remain besieged in the Red Sea, and that Gaza will never be left alone. Victory is near, God willing, and we will remain faithful to the covenant until the end,” he concluded.

June 25, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | 1 Comment

The rise of Abu Shabab: Mapping the Gaza militia armed by Israel

By Muhammad Shehada | The New Arab | June 10, 2025

A political earthquake hit Israel last week when former Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman revealed that “the Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State [in Gaza], at the direction of the prime minister”.

Netanyahu has since admitted that Israel had been “running” proxy militias in Gaza, but tried to put a positive spin on it, claiming that such a move aims to challenge Hamas’s rule.

But branding these gangs as potential rivals to Hamas masks the very goal of why Israel created them in the first place. Around 300 untrained thieves, drug dealers, criminals, and convicted murderers cannot overpower Hamas’s estimated 30,000 militants.

Their actual role has more to do with advancing Israel’s genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza while creating plausible deniability.

Furthermore, recent evidence indicates that Israel may have been collaborating with some of these Islamic State-linked elements even before 7 October.

Abu Shabab: A front for an Israeli proxy?

The most prominent gang leader in Gaza is Yasser Abu Shabab. His name first appeared in August 2024 on Hamas-linked social media groups as the figure responsible for looting the vast majority of humanitarian aid and reselling it on the black market for astronomical prices.

A senior security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab’s gang had been active for months before then.

Local authorities knew Abu Shabab well. He was serving a long sentence in prison for the possession of large quantities of drugs, according to three knowledgeable sources. He was one of many inmates who escaped under the cover of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

Some other inmates were released on parole when Israel began bombing government facilities. Israeli newspapers like Maariv and Yediot Ahronot confirmed Abu Shabab’s criminal history through people close to him, and even added that he had links to the Islamic State (IS) through smuggling drugs from Sinai into Gaza.

Police in Gaza were perplexed when he emerged as a top gang leader. The security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab is 35 years old, thin, weak, short (around 150cm in height), uncharismatic, illiterate, has strabismus in one eye, and has never received military training.

To them, he didn’t seem like someone with the leadership skills necessary to form a group of 300 armed militants, steal truckloads of aid, and store it under the radar.

Local authorities quickly decided that Abu Shabab was merely a front for an Israeli astroturfing campaign to maintain its policy of starvation in Gaza after the international community pressured Netanyahu to ease his total siege and allow a trickle of aid into the enclave.

What made this clear, according to them, is how Israeli drones bombed emergency committee volunteers or police officers every time they came close to thwarting a looting attempt by that gang in particular.

By late September 2024, Abu Shabab was talked about in Gaza as an Israeli-backed collaborator, not just a gang leader. That is when Hamas militants attempted to ambush him, firing around 90 bullets at a vehicle they thought belonged to Abu Shabab.

The vehicle, however, was identical to the one used by Islam Hijazi, the program officer of a US charity called Heal Palestine. She was tragically killed in the incident.

Two months later, Abu Shabab received widespread media attention after he burned a fuel truck and completely shut down the route used by aid convoys to retaliate against another Hamas ambush that killed his brother Fathi and 21 other members of his gang.

Soon after, the Washington Post revealed that the UN had named Abu Shabab in an internal memo as the main figure behind aid looting under “passive or active IDF protection”. This left little room for doubt that Abu Shabab’s gang was a tool for Israel to maintain starvation while externalising blame.

Mapping gang leaders: IS, ex-PA intel officers, and murderers

Abu Shabab’s deputy is thought to be Ghassan al-Dahini, 38, reportedly a former lieutenant in the Palestinian Authority (PA). Dahini is the one running the gang’s operations on the ground and actively trying to recruit new members, along with Saddam Abu Zakkar, per local authorities. His Facebook profile displays Israeli hostage emojis.

Another senior Palestinian security source told The New Arab that Dahini was a member of the “Army of Islam”, the extremist group responsible for kidnapping journalist Alan Johnston in 2007.

The group pledged allegiance to IS in 2015. Ghassan’s brother, Mohammed, died in prison after he was detained on drug-related offences, and Ghassan himself was imprisoned twice in March 2020 and November 2022, per the source. He added that “the Army of Islam relied on Dahini for the Sinai smuggling routes”.

On Sunday, Dahini posted a video of himself in military gear in Eastern Rafah close to Israel’s perimeter fence. He was standing next to a white pickup truck with a UAE license plate from Sharjah and firing a brand-new Serbian Zastava rifle.

Another prominent gang leader in Rafah is Shadi Soufi, a convicted murderer who was awaiting a death sentence before 7 October for killing a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader. Like Yasser, he also escaped prison during the war and was named by humanitarian organisations as responsible for looting aid under Israeli protection in Rafah.

Soufi, al-Dahini, and Abu Shabab are from the same Bedouin Tarabin clan that stretches across Rafah, Israel’s Negev desert, Egypt’s Sinai, and Jordan. Abu Shabab’s family recently disowned him for collaborating with Israel and said they will go after him to hold him accountable.

Another prominent leader of the Abu Shabab gang is Essam Soliman Nabahin, 35, a convicted murderer and IS member. He was implicated in a series of bombings against Hamas in 2015 by extremist Salafist groups and escaped to Sinai to formally join IS’s ranks. He caught the attention of Egyptian media in 2017 after taking part in attacks against the Egyptian army.

Nabahin’s name resurfaced in June 2023 when the police raided a house in central Gaza where he was hiding. He killed a police officer and was convicted in a military court before his escape in the early days of the war.

Israel says Nabahin was previously “recorded launching rockets into Israel without coordination with Hamas”.

Local authorities in Gaza have long suspected that IS-linked individuals like Nabahin were being pushed by Israel’s Shin Bet to fire one or two primitive projectiles sporadically to give Israel a pretext to strike Gaza and bomb specific targets. Hence, the police detained those militants repeatedly.

A senior Palestinian security source told The New Arab that authorities in Gaza caught a collaborator in 2018 who directed such occasional rocket attacks to give Israel cover for military action in Gaza.

Other members of the gang include multiple known drug dealers and convicted murderers.

How is Israel helping them?

Israel’s government has admitted it provided weapons to these gangs, mostly rifles and other light weaponry, in addition to money and equipment. Footage posted by Abu Shabab’s gang showed them driving in white pickup trucks with machineguns on top that looked virtually identical to those of Hamas.

In addition, Israel provides these gangs with safe refuge in areas fully depopulated by the Israeli military, like Rafah, and declared “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian entering would be killed on the spot. They are also provided with logistical support, protection, and even access to Israeli territory.

A Palestinian journalist documented one case of a gang member crossing into Israel, which could explain how those gangs disappeared completely during the ceasefire last January.

On the ground, the Abu Shabab gang has established warehouses operated with forklifts where they store looted aid. They have also established a military complex, according to the UN, which said the Israeli army would force aid convoys to drive through the areas where the gangs had positioned their militants and put up checkpoints to loot trucks.

And where the Israeli military goes, so do the gangs. After Israel issued forcible expulsion orders for Khan Younis and raided the European hospital and its surrounding area, Abu Shabab moved into the ‘Jarghoun’ villa in that very same area, per security sources.

On Tuesday, Israeli news channel i24 reported that Israel had launched airstrikes to protect the gang after it was attacked by Hamas militants in southern Gaza. The strikes killed four Hamas members.

What role do the gangs play on Israel’s behalf?

The Israeli-backed gangs in Gaza have become an unofficial arm of the Israeli military. For instance, whenever Israel gets pressured to allow food into Gaza, it immediately unleashes the gangs to maintain their use of starvation as a weapon of war, while blaming it on Hamas.

Experts believe Israel is using starvation as a tool for genocide by imposing conditions on a group “calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Prolonged starvation inflicts permanent mental and physical damage, particularly on children.

Israel has also been using these gangs to orchestrate chaos and engineer societal collapse through attacks on markets, shops, private businesses, homes, warehouses, soup kitchens, and other places vital to maintaining the population’s survival.

For instance, in early May 2025, a gang attacked a communal kitchen in Gaza. As soon as volunteers arrived to stop the looting, Israel bombed it and killed six volunteers, which implies it was a coordinated attack.

The Israeli army also sends the gangs on reconnaissance and surveillance missions in dangerous areas. Last month, Hamas released footage of an ambush it carried out against armed men in Rafah whom it thought were undercover Israeli troops. They turned out to be Abu Shabab militants.

Israel also uses the gangs to infiltrate Palestinian society and gather intelligence, as well as to kidnap and interrogate Palestinians by luring them with the promise of food, as documented by Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi.

Israel is using proxy gangs for the final phase of the war

The most concerning use of these gangs, however, is Israel’s recently announced plan to push Gazans into camps in Rafah on Egypt’s borders to depopulate and destroy “everything that remains” of the rest of the enclave. This is a precursor to Israel’s declared goal of the mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and other countries.

The Abu Shabab gang recently announced establishing an encampment area in eastern Rafah near the Egyptian borders and is using the very aid they have been systematically looting to lure starved Gazans into moving there.

This announcement was preceded by a clear rebranding psyop, where the same gang responsible for looting aid suddenly and shamelessly declared itself as a new “security force” that aims to “protect aid from looting”. They have since emerged in brand-new military and police uniforms in the Israeli-designated buffer zone in Rafah, where no Palestinians are allowed to enter.

Remarkably, Israel has allowed these gang members to wear Palestinian flags and insignia on their uniforms, while at the same time refusing to let the Palestinian Authority’s staff at the Rafah border crossing wear any such symbols.

In other words, Israel is using these gangs as a front. The Israeli army knows that if it orders Gazans to come to camps in eastern Rafah, people will immediately know it’s a trap for mass expulsion. But if a uniformed Palestinian force with good PR on social media makes such a demand, some people might fall for the trap.

Israel has used this same proxy tactic in Lebanon against Palestinians in 1982, where the Israeli military bolstered the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and used it and other militias to commit the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which saw 3,500 Palestinians killed.

Those collaborators collapsed after the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, as their leaders surrendered or fled to Israel. The same fate awaits these new Israeli-backed gangs once the Gaza genocide comes to an end.

Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the EU Affairs Manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Follow him on Twitter: @muhammadshehad2

June 17, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Soumoud Convoy blocked in Libya en route to break Gaza blockade

Al Mayadeen | June 15, 2025

Pro-Palestinian activists, who were participating in a march aimed at breaking the Israeli blockade on Gaza, were forced to retreat to the Misrata region of western Libya after being blocked by the authorities in the country’s east, according to statements made by organizers on Sunday.

The “Soumoud” convoy, which had been stopped by the eastern authorities, decided to fall back to near Misrata, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of Tripoli. Misrata, which is under the control of the UN-recognized Government of National Unity based in Tripoli, stands in contrast to the eastern region of Libya, where military commander Khalifa Haftar holds authority.

The convoy, consisting of more than 1,000 people from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia, had faced a “military blockade” since Friday at the entrance to Sirte, a region under the control of Haftar.

Organizers reported that the convoy had been placed under what they described as a “systematic siege,” leaving them without access to food, water, or medicine while also facing severely disrupted communications.

The organizers also condemned the arrest of multiple convoy participants, among them at least three bloggers who had been recording the mission’s progress since it set out from Tunisia on June 9.

The Joint Action Coordination Committee for Palestine, the organizing body behind the convoy, called for the urgent release of 13 detained participants still in the custody of eastern Libyan authorities, according to a statement reported by Tunisia’s La Presse newspaper.

The group, in an accompanying video, reiterated its commitment to pushing forward with the mission toward Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, emphasizing its goal of breaking the blockade and stopping what it described as the genocide of Palestinians resisting in Gaza.

Israeli Security Minister Israel Katz called on Egyptian authorities on June 11 to prevent the al-Soumoud convoy from reaching the Rafah border crossing, accusing the international pro-Palestine activists of being “jihadists” and warning that their presence could potentially endanger Israeli occupation forces as well as what he referred to as “regional stability.”

Katz argued that the convoy posed a threat to Israeli troops stationed near the border while also warning it could trigger unrest within Egypt and among what he described as “moderate” Arab governments in the region. He further warned that if Egyptian authorities failed to act, the Israeli occupation forces would take what they deemed “necessary measures” to stop the convoy’s advance toward Gaza.

June 15, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Malaysia announces the “Fleet of a Thousand Ships” initiative to break the siege on Gaza

Palestinian Information Center – June 15, 2025

KUALA LUMPUR – Civil society organizations in Malaysia have unveiled a major international initiative—described as the largest of its kind—aimed at breaking the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip through a global maritime movement involving a thousand ships departing from multiple continents. The initiative is being hailed as an “uprising of human conscience” in support of Palestinians and a call to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing crimes.

This announcement was made during a press conference held in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, where Azmi Abdul Hamid, President of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organizations (MAPIM), said that the initiative is a response to the escalating Israeli aggression and the genocidal crimes being committed against Gaza’s population. He emphasized that the project is gaining growing support from organizations across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Abdul Hamid noted that the recent seizure of the Madleen vessel by Israeli forces has helped refocus global attention on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and has reignited solidarity movements around the world.

He added that the “Fleet of a Thousand Ships” would be broader and more coordinated than the 2010 “Freedom Flotilla,” which was led by the Mavi Marmara.

According to a joint statement signed by dozens of Malaysian institutions, the objectives of this maritime mission include: the immediate lifting of the siege, the delivery of humanitarian aid, the provision of international protection for Gaza’s residents, and the prosecution of Israeli leaders for war crimes.

The initiative also aims to pressure governments to take responsibility by ensuring protection for their citizens who join the mission—thereby increasing international pressure on Israel.

In a related development, Malaysian activists held a protest in front of the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, demanding an end to relations with companies supporting the Israeli occupation—most notably the American company Caterpillar, which is accused of supplying equipment used in demolitions and settlement construction. Protesters described ongoing cooperation with such companies as “complicity in genocide.”

MAPIM also announced concrete steps to expand the campaign, including the establishment of an international secretariat and a financial fund to support the logistical and technical preparations for launching the fleet. Open calls have been made to companies and individuals to contribute to the success of the initiative.

Observers anticipate that the “Fleet of a Thousand Ships” initiative will become a focal point of global attention—especially amid growing popular solidarity with Gaza and the failure of international institutions to stop Israeli aggression—underscoring the need for independent action by global civil society.

June 15, 2025 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 1 Comment

Egypt detains over 200 activists ahead of pro-Gaza aid convoy

MEMO | June 13, 2025

The Egyptian authorities have arrested more than 200 activists who had arrived in Cairo to join a planned march to Egypt’s Rafah border crossing and demand breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The organizers said in a statement on Thursday that approximately 4,000 people from more than 40 countries had booked flights to Cairo to participate in the event, and a large number of them had already arrived before the scheduled departure time from Egypt.

The organizers hoped “to work side by side with the Egyptian government” as a key and effective partner, adding that their goal is to demand an end to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

Activists organizing the convoy revealed that Egyptian security personnel in civilian clothes arrested activists from the hotels where they were staying, interrogated them, and in some cases confiscated their phones. “Some were released, while others remain in detention” they added.

The organizers confirmed in a statement that their legal team is monitoring these cases, noting that they “complied with all legal requirements imposed by the Egyptian authorities”.

The convoy of humanitarian aid dubbed Global March to Gaza set out from the Tunisian capital on Monday with the participation of thousands of volunteers from Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. According to the organizers; the aim is to raise international awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and provide humanitarian aid.

The participants were scheduled to travel by bus to the city of Arish in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday and continue on foot to the border with the Gaza Strip, where they intend to camp for three days in an attempt to pressure authorities to open the crossing.

June 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

GHF contractor reveals ‘horrific’ details of US-Israeli ‘aid traps’

The Cradle | June 12, 2025

An anonymous US security contractor employed at one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) aid sites in the Gaza Strip has slammed the entire initiative as “pure chaos,” calling it “absolutely horrific” while accusing Israeli forces of continuously firing at unarmed Palestinians.

“I thought I was signing up for an aid mission. But what I’ve witnessed in Gaza is horrific,” the anonymous contractor wrote in a Zeteo article published on 12 June. “I am one of hundreds of security contractors who have been in Gaza to facilitate aid under the new US-backed GHF project. And it’s all bullshit,” the contractor added.

The contractor said his group of 300 people who were deployed to Gaza were provided with machine guns and pistols, and that while some of them had a military background, others did not – stressing “no one was tested to ensure they had proper training.”

“We were later issued less lethal options: pepper spray, flashbang grenades. You guessed it: no one was tested to see if they knew how to properly use them. How close to people can you throw a flashbang? If you’re going to pepper-spray someone, where do you spray? For how long? Nobody knows because nobody told us. We’re talking about people who don’t have access to water, and we’re ready to spray them in the face with pepper spray,” he said.

The contractor also stressed that no cultural awareness training was offered.

He confirmed that on the second day after the GHF was launched, the site he operated at was completely overrun by starving Palestinian civilians. “They were never aggressive towards us,” the contractor made sure to emphasize.

After falling back a second time, the contractor confirms that his group was ordered to expel all the aid seekers from the area, and that he witnessed other contractors firing live ammunition into the air.

One even pushed a Palestinian to the ground.

“We all got in a line and began pushing these people out. We’re telling crying women trying to pick up food for their families that they had to go. They were looking at this food on the ground that they desperately needed, and they couldn’t take it. It was absolutely horrific.”

“I was later told that the Israeli military needed to clear those people out because they were going to come through. They soon showed up with tanks, as some sort of security presence, but we had pushed people out by then,” he went on to say, adding that “This idea that the Israeli military isn’t involved is bullshit.”

The contractor confirmed that the Israeli military has set up offices in the GHF compounds.

While they are not directly “on-site” during the aid operations, their tanks and sniper units are just hundreds of meters away, and “You can hear them shooting all day.”

The contractor notes one specific episode where hundreds of Palestinians approaching an aid site came under Israeli artillery fire.

“Tanks fire all day long near these aid sites. Snipers fire from what used to be a hospital. Bombs and bullets fly all day long in one direction – toward Palestinians … But never any fire from the opposite direction,” he added, calling the distribution sites “aid traps.”

“The west doesn’t really want to believe the Palestinian media,” the contractor also said.

Just two days ago, at least 36 aid seekers were killed and another 208 injured by Israeli attacks on GHF sites.

A video circulating online shows Israeli artillery shelling a group of civilians on the morning of 10 June as they attempted to reach the Netzarim Corridor aid site.

Since GHF was launched on 27 May, at least 240 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed and 2,152 injured by Israeli forces at aid sites.

The Gaza Government Media office has referred to the GHF sites as “death traps.”

GHF has been repeatedly condemned by the UN and other international humanitarian groups for being designed to reinforce further displacement of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Most of the distribution centers are located in southern Gaza, with one in the center near the Netzarim Corridor. Palestinians are forced to travel long distances under bombardment and gunfire, before being crammed into extremely tight spaces and subjected to intensive restrictions.

Meanwhile, Israel’s recent ongoing operation – dubbed Gideon’s Chariots – continues to kill dozens and displace thousands across Gaza on a daily basis.

June 12, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The wheels fall off of ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ in Gaza

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | June 11, 2025

The Israeli military has proven itself totally incapable of achieving success in Gaza, and its latest military operation proves this without a shadow of a doubt.

On March 18, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a surprise campaign of airstrikes against the Gaza Strip, which would kill hundreds of civilians over the course of the following few days. The declaration was also issued by the Zionist regime’s premier; he was breaking the ceasefire.

Netanyahu then issued a statement on the issue in which he claimed that his army had “resumed combat in full force,” threatening that the deadly airstrikes against densely populated civilian areas are “just the beginning.”

From that point on, for weeks, Israeli military and political figures warned of a looming ground invasion, asserting that it would be the final blow and “destroy Hamas”. Threat after threat came, yet the only thing that continued to materialize was airstrikes that targeted civilians.

On May 4, the Israeli cabinet officially approved a renewed ground operation in Gaza. What it proceeded to do was simply issue threats, while its bombardment of civilian infrastructure continued and the Israeli media fantasized about all of the potential strategies that were going to be implemented in what they started labelling “phase 2” of the war.

It wasn’t until May 16, after an escalation in the scale of its daily massacres, that the Zionist military would finally announce they had started the operation. During the course of the deadly air campaign, I estimated that three main components of this so-called “phase 2” would develop within the span of the following few days.

It panned out exactly as I assumed it would: First, an intensified series of raids against civilian targets. This would be followed by an announcement of a ridiculous-sounding name to the operation – I said Pigeons Chariots as a joke (it turned out to be Gideon’s Chariots) – which would make the Israeli public feel good about themselves and provide more content for Israeli media hype. Finally, small and meaningless incursions into zones surrounding the built-up [now almost entirely destroyed] areas in order to claim the ground operation was in full swing.

Nearly a month later, the Israeli military finally began actually running incursions into the built-up areas in northern Gaza and Khan Younis, yet each time they advanced, they were almost immediately falling into complex ambushes. Their casualties were high, and the Israeli military censor was employed to hide losses.

The Zionist regime’s troop numbers in Gaza are a fraction of what they had mustered prior to the ceasefire that was implemented in January. Report after report claimed that anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 reservists had been called upon to serve in the Gaza Strip. It is difficult to know how many additional reserve soldiers actually showed up, as even the claims about how many had been recalled appeared to be jumping all over the place.

Despite having destroyed the large majority of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, also having entered most areas throughout the besieged coastal territory during the course of the war, there is no built part of the Gaza Strip that the Israelis have gained operational control over. Even in the so-called buffer zone, occasional ambushes occur and take out some of their soldiers.

It has been clear from the beginning of the so-called “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” that there is no real plan behind it; it is simply an exercise in committing genocide while doing more of the same as their forces did during “phase one” of the Gaza war. Except now, their soldiers are fatigued, less well-equipped, many of them refuse to show up for duty, and there is a general sense of a loss of morale, according to Israeli media leaks.

The former Chief of Staff for the Zionist entity’s armed forces, Mosh Ya’alon, even said the following about the ongoing operation:

“Throughout my years of service and participation in cabinet discussions, I do not recall a single instance in which the cabinet approved a military operation without a prior determination of its objective, or, to put it another way, the expected “end.” We are waging the longest war in our history without a clear objective for the operation, other than the illusory slogan of “complete victory,” which translates into an eternal political war.”

As each day passes, the Israeli regime appears to be attempting everything it can come up with to try and stir as much chaos and desperately chase the image of victory. Netanyahu still claims he is seeking a total victory in his “seven-front war” but has little to show for it.

In fact, he is essentially back in the same position he found himself one year ago from now, bogged down in a losing war and waging genocide in the hope that maybe victory will fall from the sky.

The tactical victories that the Israelis managed to score in Lebanon with their terrorist pager attack and assassinations of the Hezbollah senior leadership have since faded. They also clearly played their main cards in Lebanon and lost all of the advantages they had spent years working to develop.

Desperate bombing attacks in the Southern Suburb of Beirut affect nothing on the ground. In fact, what they have done since the ceasefire, committing over 3,000 violations and continuing to occupy territory in the south, only proves why Lebanon needs an armed resistance in order to protect the country.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the Syrian government may have served as a blow, but even with their illegal invasion and occupation of southern Syrian territory, there is no clear endgame for the Zionists. Meanwhile, the space still exists for a grassroots resistance to slowly build itself. Although the situation there is unpredictable, it does not necessarily favour the Israelis in the long run.

It appears as if the wheels have fallen off the “Gideon’s Chariots” operation in Gaza also, which leaves the Israelis with one real option for escalation, desperately chasing “total victory”, an attack on Iran. Yet this option could involve costs that outweigh any potential benefits.

Afraid to fight, desperately backing Daesh-linked gangsters and using food as a weapon of war against a tormented civilian population, the Israelis are stuck and incapable of navigating a path toward victory. If the Zionist regime ends the conflict now, it is an admission of defeat and will topple the Netanyahu coalition; if it continues on its current trajectory, this war could prove fatal.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

How Israel is weaponising water in Gaza | People & Power Documentary

Al Jazeera | March 20, 2025

The People & Power team travelled through Gaza just weeks before October 7, 2023 to document Israel’s weaponising of water. The situation already seemed desperate back then.

As a ceasefire came into place in January this year, our team in Gaza went to look for the people they met 18 months earlier.

Most of Gaza’s remaining water infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. Israel’s cutting of external water supplies and systematic destruction of water facilities have reduced the amount of water available to Palestinians in Gaza to as little as 2 litres per person a day. Water-borne diseases are running rampant through communities.

Thirst Among the Ruins tells the story of the systematic targeted obliteration of Gaza’s water infrastructure by Israel, and how it violates international humanitarian law.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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