Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Hamas rejects PA president’s alignment with Zionist narrative in UN speech

Palestinian Information Center – September 26, 2025

DOHA – The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, responded Thursday to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, affirming that Palestinian resistance is a “national and moral responsibility, deriving its legitimacy from our steadfast Palestinian people and their natural right to resist occupation, as recognized by international laws and conventions.”

Hamas categorically rejected what it described as Abbas’s “alignment with the false Zionist narrative,” asserting that accusing the resistance of targeting civilians is an attempt to distort its image.

The Movement underlined that “all attempts to impose guardianship over our people and their will are doomed to fail,” adding that Abbas’s declaration that Hamas will have no role in governance constitutes “an infringement on the inherent right of our Palestinian people to determine their own destiny and choose their leadership, and an unacceptable submission to external agendas and projects.”

Hamas emphasized that “the weapons of resistance are untouchable as long as the occupation remains entrenched on our land.”

It condemned Abbas’s call to surrender arms, especially “in light of the genocidal war being waged against our people in Gaza, and the brutal crimes and savage assaults committed by armed settlers and the occupation army against unarmed civilians in the occupied West Bank.”

Hamas reiterated that the only path to safeguarding the national cause and confronting the occupation’s plans to “exterminate and displace our people in Gaza, annex the West Bank, and Judaize Jerusalem and al-Aqsa,” lies in “national unity and consensus around a comprehensive resistance program to confront the criminal Zionist occupation, until our people’s aspirations for liberation, return, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital are fulfilled.”

The statement concluded by affirming that “our steadfast people are the source of legitimacy, and the weapons of resistance are a red line that cannot be compromised.”

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli occupation forces, backed by the United States and Western countries, have been waging a devastating war in Gaza, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of approximately 233,000 Palestinians to date. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, 442 Palestinians, including 147 children, have died from starvation.

September 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

White House backs plan for Tony Blair to lead interim Gaza authority

Al Mayadeen | September 26, 2025

The White House is reportedly supporting a proposal that would place former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the helm of a temporary administration to govern the Gaza Strip, according to reports in Haaretz and The Times of Israel, which completely sidelines the demands and stances of the Palestinian people.

The plan envisions the creation of the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would act as Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for up to five years. Blair would lead a 25-member secretariat and chair a seven-person board overseeing an executive body responsible for managing the territory.

Initially based in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, GITA would later move into Gaza, accompanied by a UN-endorsed multinational force largely drawn from Arab states. The proposal is modeled on transitional administrations that previously oversaw Kosovo and Timor-Leste.

The White House argues the initiative offers a middle ground between US President Donald Trump’s earlier proposal for the US and the Israeli regime to directly control Gaza and a UN-backed plan endorsed by over 140 states calling for a one-year technocratic administration under the New York declaration.

Divisions over Blair’s role

Blair’s potential appointment is controversial, for while he enjoys credibility among several Gulf leaders, many Palestinians view him with deep mistrust due to his support for the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his record as Middle East envoy from 2007 to 2015. Western diplomats noted it was not guaranteed that Blair would take on the role and suggested the administration could last only two years.

The proposal’s lack of a clear timeline for transferring authority to the Palestinian Authority (PA) may complicate its acceptance by Palestinians and Arab leaders. Critics fear the plan could amount to another form of foreign-imposed governance, albeit under an international framework rather than the Israeli occupation.

Details of the plan surfaced after Trump met in New York with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump described the discussions as “successful”, adding that “we’re close to getting some kind of deal done.”

Arab states have stressed that any international involvement must be tied to a credible timeline for Palestinian statehood. Without such assurances, some argue the Blair-led body risks being perceived as an extended foreign trusteeship.

Palestinian response

Addressing the UN General Assembly, PA President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed that Gaza remains “an integral part of the state of Palestine” and said the PA was ready to assume full responsibility for governance and security. He rejected any role for Hamas in postwar administration, echoing US and Israeli conditions after Washington revoked his visa ahead of the 80th UN session, which forced him to deliver his speech via video.

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters at the White House that he would not support the Israeli occupation’s “annexation” of the West Bank. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope. I won’t allow it. It’s not going to happen,” he said.

Arab and Muslim forces in Gaza?

Washington is pushing for Arab and Muslim states to commit troops to Gaza as part of a so-called peacekeeping force that would enable an Israeli withdrawal. The US is also seeking financial pledges from these countries for reconstruction and to support Gaza’s transitional administration.

On Monday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced that his country was prepared to send soldiers as part of such a mission.

The initiative comes as negotiations to end the war and secure a prisoner exchange remain stalled. On the ground, “Israel” has launched a large-scale offensive, deploying three armored and infantry divisions into Gaza City, in hopes of forcibly displacing the city’s residents.

Meanwhile, at UN headquarters in New York, a conference on the “two-state solution” concluded with France and several European countries recognizing the State of Palestine. The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli assault since October 7.

An Israeli plan relayed to Washington?

A US official told Axios that “tomorrow’s meeting could be fairly significant,” stressing that the Trump administration wants “regional buy-in and support to make it successful.” An Arab official added that Trump is seeking “feedback and support for the US plan to end the war and then push it forward.”

Officials insisted the proposal would be a US initiative rather than an Israeli plan relayed through Washington. However, Israeli officials acknowledged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware of its outlines.

One Israeli official admitted that “there will be bitter pills we’ll have to swallow,” particularly regarding any potential role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

September 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Italy redirects navy ship to assist Global Sumud Flotilla after drone attacks

The Cradle | September 24, 2025

Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said in a statement on 24 September that an Italian navy ship has been redirected towards the Global Sumud Flotilla to provide it with “possible assistance,” after it came under a series of Israeli attacks overnight.

The Italian defense minister strongly condemned the overnight drone attacks.

Activists on board several of the flotilla’s boats reported at least 10 explosions after witnessing drones launch several attacks early on Wednesday. The boats were situated off the coast of Greece.

“Multiple drones, unidentified objects dropped, communications jammed, and explosions heard from a number of boats. We are witnessing these psychological operations firsthand, right now, but we will not be intimidated,” Global Sumud Flotilla said.

US activist Greg Stoker said a quadcopter “dropped a little popper on deck,” adding that “other boats experienced that as well.”

“Our VHF [very high frequency] radio was hijacked by adversarial comms, and they started playing ABBA,” he added. One boat was reportedly sprayed with chemicals as well.

Israel has not commented on the attacks targeting the Gaza-bound flotilla.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the flotilla was “pursuing a violent course of action” that “highlights the insincerity of the flotilla members and their mission to serve Hamas, rather than the people in Gaza.”

The International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza (ICBSG) had warned on Sunday that unidentified drones were flying close to the vessels.

Workers across Italy launched a nationwide strike on 22 September to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, halting public transport, rail services, schools, public offices, and ports in more than 60 cities. Italian grassroots trade union, Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), called the strike to force Rome to “immediately break off relations with the terrorist state of Israel, which is the concrete way in which Italy can, and must, react to the genocide that is taking place.”

Rail freight was suspended on Sunday night, with ports including Ravenna, Livorno, Trieste, and Genoa joining the actions. In Genoa, dockworkers blocked a vessel scheduled for Israel, while in Livorno, access to the port was restricted by protesters.

The flotilla bombarded early on 24 September is the third to attempt to break the siege of Gaza in the last four months.

The Global Sumud Flotilla also came under two attacks earlier in September.

The vessels are carrying hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, who are being starved and bombarded by the Israeli army. It has been described as the largest civilian flotilla in history.

In late July, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Handala vessel was intercepted and seized by Israeli forces as it was trying to break the siege and deliver aid to the strip. Crewmembers were detained.

The month before, Israeli forces intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Madleen vessel in international waters as it was approaching Gaza to break the siege, seizing the boat and detaining the 12 activists on board.

In May this year, an Israeli drone bombed a Freedom Flotilla aid vessel that was en route to Gaza, blowing a hole through the ship, causing a fire, and putting it at risk of sinking.

September 24, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel forced displacement of over quarter-million Palestinians from Gaza City, says government media office

Palestinians flee to the south following intensified Israeli airstrikes and the start of ground operations in Gaza City on September 19, 2025. [Mohammed Nassar – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO |September 20, 2025

Israel has forcibly displaced 270,000 Palestinians from Gaza City toward the south under threat of bombardment and genocide, the Gaza Government Media Office said Saturday, Anadolu reports.

In a statement, the office said more than 900,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City and northern areas, refusing to leave despite the ongoing destruction and “crimes of permanent forced displacement.”

“While thousands have fled south due to heavy Israeli airstrikes, at least 22,000 have since returned to Gaza City after moving belongings to the south,” it said, citing the absence of basic necessities there.

The office highlighted that the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis and Rafah, promoted by Israel as a “safe humanitarian zone,” has instead been bombed more than 110 times, leaving over 2,000 people dead.

It said the area lacks hospitals, infrastructure, clean water, food, housing, electricity, and education, making life “almost impossible.”

According to the office, Israel has allocated just 12% of Gaza’s total area as “shelter zones” while attempting to force over 1.7 million people into them, comparing these to “concentration camps” aimed at depopulating Gaza City and the north.

The office condemned Israel’s actions as “a full-fledged war crime and crime against humanity,” blaming “Israel, its ally the US, and other states supporting the war” for the consequences.

It called on the international community, the UN, and international courts to take “serious and effective measures” to halt the crimes, hold Israeli leaders accountable, and guarantee Palestinians’ right to remain in their land with safety and dignity.

Israel has been waging a devastating genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, killing more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

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

Bernie Sanders Is A Ghoulish Zionist

By Caitlin Johnstone | September 18, 2025

Bernie Sanders finally issued a statement acknowledging the indisputable fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza after two years of adamantly refusing to do so. The statement begins as follows:

“Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with its brutal attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages. Israel, as any other country, had a right to defend itself from Hamas.

But,”

Dude goes two years refusing to call a genocide a genocide, then issues a statement which begins by placing blame for the genocide on the victims of said genocide. He also lumps the hundreds of IDF troops slain in the attack in with “innocent people”, ignores the large percentage of the death toll that would have been killed by Israeli troops under the Hannibal Directive, and babbles about Israel’s “right to defend itself” against an occupied population.

The rest of the statement is standard liberal Zionist fare, acknowledging the horror of the situation in Gaza while blaming it all on Benjamin Netanyahu and not the murderous apartheid state which would be doing what it’s doing with or without Netanyahu. It’s just progressive-sounding Israel apologia accompanied by a denunciation driven by the inability to escape finally calling this thing what it is.

This is the face of what passes for the “left” in modern US politics. Absolutely ghoulish.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” on Wednesday, saying Israel is in talks with the United States negotiating how the two countries will divide up the enclave.

“We are checking how this becomes a real estate bonanza — I’m not joking — and pays for itself,” Smotrich said, adding, “I’ve begun negotiations with the Americans, and I’m saying this seriously, because we paid a lot of money for this war. We need to work out how we share percentages on the land. The demolition phase, the first stage of urban renewal, we’ve already done. Now we need to build.”

It’s absolutely incredible how often Smotrich and his buddy Itamar Ben-Gvir will just come out and admit that Israel is doing the thing everyone says it’s doing. If this information had come out as a WikiLeaks drop or something it would have been a bombshell revelation, and this guy is right here just bloody saying it.

There’s another report from Haaretz about the horrific things Israeli soldiers say they’ve been doing to civilians in Gaza, including descriptions of the murders of children.

Whenever I read these accounts I can’t help thinking about how there are westerners joining the IDF to participate in this genocide. People travel to Israel to massacre civilians and then fly back home to their real countries and resume their lives as though nothing happened, like they went backpacking in Europe or something. And now they walk among us in our communities, and we’re supposed to be fine with it.

❖

Netanyahu says he has been invited to visit with President Trump for the fourth time this year. At this point they should just save on jet fuel and move him into a room in the White House.

❖

Trump is repeatedly bombing civilian vessels under the ridiculous justification that drug traffickers are “terrorists”, without even providing evidence that they are drug traffickers. Trump has now admitted to the US bombing three Venezuelan boats on these completely evidence-free grounds.

When Yemen was attacking ships to enforce a blockade against a genocide, Trump declared them all terrorists and massacred hundreds of civilians. Now Trump is attacking civilian boats and calling them the terrorists.

❖

Ask a scientist when the universe began and they’ll tell you 13.8 billion years ago.

Ask a Young Earth creationist when the universe began and they’ll tell you six thousand years ago.

Ask a Zionist when the universe began and they’ll tell you October 7, 2023.

September 19, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel to flood Gaza City with ‘unprecedented’ number of booby-trapped vehicles: Report

The Cradle | September 17, 2025

The Israeli military is set to deploy an “unprecedented” number of remote-controlled armored personnel carriers (APCs) loaded with explosives into Gaza City as part of operation “Gideon’s Chariots 2,” Hebrew news outlet Walla reported on 17 September.

This is part of the first stage of a three-stage plan drafted by Major General Yaniv Asor to “conquer” the largest city in the strip, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain trapped or refuse to be displaced.

“The ‘fire phase’ focuses on the massive destruction of terrorist infrastructure — mainly at night — using various methods, including above and below ground robots,” Walla reports, citing military sources that said “Gaza has never been hit like this before. This is only the second night.”

Referred to as “booby-trapped robots” in Gaza, the decommissioned APCs are rigged with explosives and remotely driven deep into urban areas before being detonated, causing massive explosions and widespread destruction.

“The Israeli army sends the robots near our homes, which stay parked there to terrorize us. The army doesn’t detonate them right away, waiting for fear to push us to flee. When people don’t leave, the army detonates the robots, regardless of whether there are civilians in the area,” Abdulwahhab Ismail, a resident of the Saftawi area in northwestern Gaza, told Mondoweiss last month.

The Israeli military calls this practice “suicide APCs.” According to Walla, Tel Aviv has stationed a large number of these vehicles outside the Gaza separation line.

“Acting on orders from IDF Southern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asor, the deployment of these vehicles has surged, with officers in the field reporting that their usage has tripled. Forces on the ground have testified to the movement of hundreds of these explosive-laden APCs toward the Gaza border,” the Jerusalem Post reported earlier this month.

In August, reports in Hebrew media revealed that Israeli arms companies were planning to expand production of tanks and APCs with a budget exceeding $1.3 billion.

At least 100 booby-trapped robots were used in densely populated areas inside Gaza between 13 August and 3 September alone, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

“Before now, the army used to blow up one or two buildings with the robots. Now they destroy dozens of buildings at once. Robots and warplanes are working together to destroy every place in Gaza City,” Ismail described.

Thursday’s report from Walla added that the “second stage” of the southern command’s plan calls for the occupation of Gaza City by the invading troops, while the third stage “is currently classified as high security and combines military capabilities that we have not yet seen in the Israeli war repertoire.”

September 17, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel launches ground offensive in Gaza City

Press TV – September 16, 2025

Gaza City was engulfed in flames before dawn on Tuesday as Israel launched a new ground offensive, killing dozens of civilians and burying families under the rubble.

Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across the city overnight, when the military unleashed a massive bombardment as its ground forces moved deeper into the territory’s largest urban hub.

The military said the number of soldiers would rise in the coming days to confront up to 3,000 Hamas fighters in the area. According to a military official, the offensive is “the main phase of the plan for Gaza City.”

Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital said it received the bodies of 20 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in a western neighborhood, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility on Tuesday.

“A very tough night in Gaza,” Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press.

“The bombing did not stop for a single moment,” he said. “There are still bodies under the rubble.”

Witnesses said the regime’s overnight bombing reduced a residential block in the north of Gaza City to mounds of rubble.

Palestinian resident Abu Abd Zaqout told AFP that about 50 people — including women and children — were inside a residential building when it was struck overnight.

“I don’t know why they bombed it,” he said. “Why kill children sleeping safely like that, turning them into body parts? We pulled the children out in pieces.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s minister of military affairs, Israel Katz, said in a post on X that the military “strikes with an iron fist” at what he described as “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza City.

He said the offensive is aimed at creating “the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas.”

“We will not relent and we will not go back — until the completion of the mission,” Katz threatened, saying, “Gaza is burning.”

Israel has long accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas, especially in Gaza City — allegations the resistance group repeatedly denies.

The overnight offensive came only hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put the Trump administration’s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in a visit to al-Quds on Monday.

Rubio said Washington’s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.

However, the UN rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, said the aim of the Gaza City offensive is to make it uninhabitable.

“This is the last piece of Gaza that needs to be rendered unlivable,” Albanese said on Monday.

Residents still in the city were warned they must leave and head south.

September 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Euro-Med rights group accuses Israel of erasing Gaza’s historical and cultural heritage

MEMO | September 15, 2025

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has accused Israel of pursuing a systematic policy aimed at erasing Gaza’s historical and cultural identity. The group warned that the ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza City—marked by repeated bombings of historic neighbourhoods, places of worship, libraries, museums, archives, cemeteries, centuries-old homes, and traditional markets—threatens to wipe out the Strip’s remaining archaeological landmarks and its tangible and intangible heritage.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the organization described the destruction as a direct assault on cultural property protected under international humanitarian law and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property. It called for urgent intervention by UNESCO and States Parties to the Convention to halt the devastation, document the damage, secure restoration efforts, and ensure accountability.

The group stressed that Israel’s actions extend beyond the mass killing of civilians and the destruction of homes. It accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting historical, archaeological, religious, and cultural sites in Gaza—particularly in Gaza City—as part of a broader colonial-settler strategy aimed at erasing the physical and spiritual symbols of the Palestinian people. Such destruction, it said, represents an irreparable blow to a centuries-old collective memory that lies at the core of Palestinian identity.

September 15, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel executes Gaza children with single shots to head, chest: Foreign doctors

Press TV – September 14, 2025

Foreign doctors in Gaza describe a pattern of children killed by single gunshots to the head or chest, saying it shows Israel is deliberately targeting them.

De Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper, published an investigation on Saturday, speaking with 15 doctors who were among the last international eyewitnesses in the region.

The doctors told the newspaper they treated 114 children aged 15 and under with such wounds, and most did not survive.

Witnesses said Israeli drones and snipers fired the bullets. Former Dutch army commander Mart de Kruif said accidental hits are almost impossible given the scale and consistency of the injuries.

American trauma surgeon Feroze Sidhwa, who arrived at the European Hospital in Gaza in March 2024, recalls four boys with head wounds admitted within 48 hours.

“I thought: what the hell? How is it possible?” he said, and over the next two weeks, he treated 9 more children with similar wounds.

Doctors described working in extreme heat in hospitals filled with the smell of sewage, explosives, and decay, with ventilators and medical equipment scarce or broken.

Emergency surgeon Mimi Syed intubated a four-year-old girl shot in a humanitarian zone using a laryngoscope she had smuggled in, keeping the child alive and later documenting the bullet lodged in her head.

Doctors reported treating wounds likely caused by fragmentation weapons, where small cube-shaped fragments pierce organs and vessels, causing fatal bleeding or major amputations.

Weapons experts say the wounds match Israeli-made tungsten fragments, though the Israeli military denies using such weapons.

Mass casualty events occur daily, with children making up over 40% of Gaza’s population, and many arriving with grave injuries.

Doctors described children with shrapnel in the brain, bullets in the chest, and limbs destroyed by blasts, with some classified as WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family).

British surgeon Goher Rahbour noticed another disturbing pattern, as the targeted body part changed each day, with one day being the chest or head, and another, the limbs or abdomen, suggesting a coordinated and deliberate method.

Doctors speak out despite risks, as Israel often blocks reentry for those who testify, and “Being silent is not an option,” said Sidhwa.

Doctors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands said their duty is to save lives and bear witness to Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Their testimony depicts the deliberate targeting of children, the destruction of hospitals, and the human cost of the ongoing genocide.

Since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war on Gaza, it has murdered 64,803 Palestinians and wounded 164,264, most of them children and women.

September 14, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Western media’s pre-existing condition? Gaza atrocity denialism

By Rebecca Ruth Gold | The New Arab | September 10, 2025

In August 2025, for the first time in its 20 year history, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) classified Gaza as having reached phase 5, the most acute phase in its system. This classification meant that Gaza was deep into a famine, and many of the starving have already suffered irreversible damage.

The IPC locates Gaza City as being fully within phase 5. The same level of food scarcity is expected to reach Deir al Balah and Khan Younis by late September.

Never before has the IPC made a full phase 5 famine classification outside Africa. It had certainly never reached this classification for a location that was just a few kilometres from world class restaurants. As UN Under-Secretary General Tom Fetcher put it in a memorable speech, the Gaza famine is taking place “within a few hundred meters of food, within a fertile land.”

The Gaza famine has been engineered in a manner that is without precedent in world history. People have described Israel’s siege as medieval, but the famine is backed by the full force of modern technology. Rather than looking to early history for analogies, what is happening in Gaza is best understood as a grotesquely futuristic iteration of modern biopolitics.

“Pre-existing conditions”

Within days of report’s release, Israel immediately called for its retraction. There is nothing unusual about a state that has created a famine pulling all the levers at its disposal to deny it. What makes Israel different from the average perpetrator is the eagerness of US and European media outlets to spread the perpetrator’s denialist narrative.

Already in July, the groundwork had been laid in mainstream outlets like the New York Times, which ran a “correction” to the caption it provided on an image of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child dying of starvation in Gaza. When the cover image of his emaciated body was used for the story on Gazans dying of starvation, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which controls the entry of food and medicine into Gaza, informed the Times that al-Mutawaq was born with cerebral palsy.

Israeli media, including I24 and The Jerusalem Post set to work spreading this misinformation and suggesting that vulnerable individuals dying of starvation could not be treated as evidence of a famine.

Soon after, the Times stated that al-Mutawaq had “pre-existing health problems.” But what they failed to disclose is that this “correction” was made in response to Israeli pressure and that all famines target the vulnerable first. While cerebral palsy is a lifelong condition, it is not typically fatal for young children absent conditions of siege and famine. Had the victims of starvation not been Palestinian, common sense would have prevailed. No one would have found it necessary to make the obvious point that death by starvation combined with co-morbidities is still death by starvation.

Other media outlets soon followed, adjusting their captions to reflect, even in the abstract and untethered from specific cases, the possibility that children dying of starvation were suffering from “preexisting conditions.”

The Associated Press captioned the images on a photo essay by Palestinian photojournalist Jehad Alshrafi documenting how starvation is attacking children’s bodies with the following disclaimer: “In Gaza, malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care and poor sanitation, largely the result of the ongoing war.”

Perhaps the Associated Press thought that they were mitigating the harm done by such captions by acknowledging that these so-called “preexisting conditions” that Israel and its defenders are using to deny evidence of famine are in fact “the result of the ongoing war.” But they should not be excused so easily for their complicity in famine denial.

The “pre-existing conditions” discourse has a dark history in the US, where it was introduced during the 1940s to deny healthcare to ailing patients. Even more ominously in Gaza, the “pre-existing conditions” that the media uses to whitewash famine are themselves the direct result of two decades of siege.

Legitimising Israel’s narratives

The right-wing US media company Free Press further disseminated the Israeli narrative when it published a story claiming that the “symbols of Gazan starvation […] suffer from other health problems.” Once again, ableism was used to deny the Gaza famine.

If the sick were made sicker by Israel’s engineered famine, it was implied that it was their own fault, and Israel could not be blamed for Gaza’s starvation. Yet the “preexisting conditions” cited by the Free Press journalists—rickets and cystic fibrosis—are not typically fatal for young children.

The fact that children in Gaza afflicted with these diseases are at a much higher risk of imminent death only confirms the severity of the famine, as well as its wider impact on conditions of life and mortality rates. Yet some media outlets downplayed the famine by focusing on the medical challenges faced by children who are dying of starvation.

On the very day the IPC released its famine report, CNN redacted its own story on starvation in Gaza by “updating” its captions to “reflect new information regarding the condition of some of the subjects.”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu—himself a war criminal whom the International Criminal Court has indicted with “crimes of starvation,” marking the first time it had ever charged any leader with that crime—endorsed the Free Press story. He did not acknowledge all that his own government had done to undermine accurate reporting and to block data collection on starvation in Gaza.

The Gaza famine is an atrocity, a war crime, and evidence for genocide not just because it leads to deaths from starvation. No less fundamentally, it contributes to the breakdown of a social order. Famine tears communities apart. Mothers are forced to watch their children starve, and children watch their parents risk their lives—sometimes getting shot and killed—while searching for food to keep them alive.

Having normalised famine denialism through a eugenicist discourse in July, Israel was well-prepared to escalate its information warfare when the IPC issued its landmark report in August.

Israel attacked the report on two fronts. First, by falsely claiming that the data was biased. Second, by smearing the report authors due to their alleged political biases. As for the data-related dispute, the official X account for the state of Israel falsely insisted that the IPC had “forged” a famine by lowering the threshold to 15% malnutrition among the general population, as measured by upper-arm circumference. Yet the 15% malnutrition standard, measured according to upper arm circumference, was also relied on for previous IPC reports for other locations that reached a phase 5 famine assessment, including Sudan in 2024 and South Sudan in 2020.

As Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International concludes, Israel’s misrepresentation “is not a good-faith misread. It is a campaign of concerted disinfo[rmation].” The IPC quickly refuted Israel’s false claims.

Denialism

Food security experts criticise the IPC for being too conservative in its metrics. The general consensus is that the IPC places the bar for phase 5 famine classification too high. By the time famine is assessed by the IPC, mortality rates will have sharply escalated (as happened in Gaza during the second half of July 2025), and for many of those who are starving it will be too late to save them.

Unlike most European countries, the US did not issue any official response to the IPC famine report. On 27 August, during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council which had been convened to address the famine in Gaza, US Ambassador Dorothy Shea to the UN rejected the report by alleging that one of the authors was biased against Israel. Shea’s critique was based on guilt-by-association and did not engage with the substance of the report’s claims.

The US’s denialist stance was explicitly rejected by all other 14 of the 15 Security Council members, who issued a statement affirming that they “trust the IPC’s work and methodology.” However, this consensus will be meaningless unless further measures are taken in defiance of the US.

Indeed, denialism is a core feature of Israel’s information war and is one reason why the genocide persists. In October 2023, less than three weeks into the Gaza genocide, U.S. President Joe Biden stated that he doubted the veracity of the casualty reports provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. In a classic case of denying Palestinians the right to narrate their own extermination, he said “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

These same reports that Biden cast doubt on had been deemed reliable by the United Nations, human rights groups, and mainstream—even the Israeli—media, not to mention Biden’s own State Department.

It was the first time a US President cast doubt on the validity of the figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Subsequent reporting and scholarship has shown that the Ministry of Health’s numbers are likely to be a drastic undercount; importantly, they don’t include indirect deaths from Palestinians who died due to lack of food, water, medicine, and medical care. Yet, mainstream US media started to refer to Gaza’s Ministry of Health as “Hamas-run” in order to undermine the source.

Around the same time, Israel launched a campaign questioning the casualty figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN uncritically absorbed Israel’s messaging and began attaching “Hamas-run” to every reference to casualty figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

For no other nation does the media find it necessary to preface every reference to a civilian agency with the name of the political faction governing that country. Civilian agencies ought to be respected for the work they do, wherever they happen to be located.

Ending impunity, sanctions now

The crime of famine often converges in practice with the crime of genocide. For this reason, both kind of denialist narratives often flourish together. Just as complicity in genocide is a crime under international law, so should complicity in famine bring criminal sanctions.

In the first days of September 2025, as the famine and mass murder of civilians in Gaza continued to spiral out of control, Belgium announced that it would formally sanction Israel. The following day, Scotland announced similar measures. The majority of European states have maintained full complicity in this genocide, but the impunity that has been granted to Israel for decades is finally beginning to fray.

Famine expert Alex de Waal has compared famine to torture at the societal level. Systematic forced starvation creates a system in which “the biological imperative of survival turns against every impulse that makes us humans—compassion, solidarity, and love.”

The people of Gaza have pooled all their resources to resist this stage of social breakdown. That they have been able to withstand the pressures of famine for so long attests to the strong social and familial bonds that pre-existed the genocide.

However, no community can survive intact when their starvation becomes so acute that their bodies begin to consume themselves. Mass death by starvation awaits the people of Gaza unless we take action to stop the blockade and force Israel to open its borders and let aid flood Gaza.

Rebecca Ruth Gould is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. 

September 13, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

BBC Ignored Internal Request to Correct Claim Anas Al-Sharif Worked With Hamas

The BBC report remains uncorrected – evidence of a culture of intimidation, fear and political control

By Harriett Williamson | Novara Media | September 10, 2025

The BBC ignored an internal request to correct reporting that smeared a high-profile Palestinian journalist killed by Israel as a Hamas operative, in what a whistleblower has described as a “grave editorial breach”.

According to a leaked email seen by Novara Media, Global Journalism – part of the BBC Global News team, which is run by BBC deputy director Jonathan Munro – sent an “essential amendment and correction” request regarding BBC News reporting which claimed that Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif “did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”.

Al-Sharif was killed on 10 August in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a tent marked “PRESS” outside the entrance of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Five other media workers were also assassinated in the strike: Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and photographers Ibrahim Thaher and Mohamed Nofal, freelance photojournalist Mohammed al-Khalidi and cameraman Momen Aliwa.

In a statement posted on X/Twitter, Israel said: “Al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops. Intelligence and documents from Gaza, including rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records, prove he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera.” Accompanying the post were unverified screenshots from spreadsheets. The IDF provided no justification for the killing of al-Sharif’s five colleagues in the same airstrike.

Al Jazeera has categorically denied that al-Sharif was in any way Hamas affiliated.

The leaked email, dated 18 August, was sent by Global Journalism to hundreds of BBC journalists via two distribution addresses. It singled out a line in a BBC News article for correction: “The BBC understands Sharif did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”.

Screenshots seen by Novara Media show the email was sent to a significant number of senior journalists, including World Service Languages controller Fiona Crack, senior news editors Kate Forbes and Abigail Mobbs, director of audience growth Jamie Wakefield, and head of digital content for World Service, Claire Williams.

The email said the sentence “should be amended” to: “A source has told the BBC that Sharif had worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict, but Al Jazeera has denied this and the BBC News Arabic correspondent also says that he has seen no evidence.”

The email is signed by Global Journalism, part of BBC Global News which is led by Munro, who currently serves as BBC News’ senior controller of news content and the deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs.

One BBC employee told Novara Media that the email went out to at least 1,200 journalists. The BBC disputed this and says the number is closer to 400. However, a screenshot seen by Novara Media confirms that just one of the two distribution email addresses goes to over 1,200 accounts.

At the time of reporting, the line in question remains uncorrected on the BBC News article, last updated 13 August. The same claim was also presented as fact on the BBC News liveblog on 11 August in reporting by Jon Donnison from Jerusalem, as well as cropping up in BBC Verify reporting on TikTok.

A BBC employee told Novara Media: “This leaked email […] exposes from the inside the culture of intimidation, fear and political control that journalists are subjected to within the corporation.

“The email admits a reported line that should never have made it onto the BBC’s front page was published without evidence, yet the error remains uncorrected and no one has been held accountable.

“In any other newsroom, such a grave editorial breach on a matter of major public interest, the targeted killing of a fellow journalist, would have led to senior resignations.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “We stand by our reporting in the BBC News article you reference from 13 August and liveblog from 11 August, and can assure audiences that we scrupulously fact check and verify all information we obtain. This internal email was sent to a specific team about a different article and contained a suggested amendment that was incorrect. We are updating our copy to remove the amendment where it has been applied.”

Munro became global director of BBC News in September 2024. The role includes leading the BBC World Service, overseeing BBC Monitoring, and continuing as deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs

In the months leading up to al-Sharif’s death, Israeli officials repeatedly claimed the reporter was a Hamas operative, including in a ‘kill list’ graphic with the names and pictures of six Al Jazeera journalists.

Two weeks before al-Sharif was killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) called on the international community to protect him due to “repeated threats” from IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee. The CJP said accusations of al-Sharif being a Hamas operative “represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill al-Sharif”.

In August, it was revealed that Israel has a secret military unit specifically tasked with linking Palestinian journalists to Hamas and Islamic Jihad as part of a drive to tamp down on global condemnation for the murder of journalists in Gaza.

This isn’t the first time the BBC has been criticised for biased reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A blistering report from the Centre for Media Monitoring in June showed that Israeli deaths were given 33 times more coverage per fatality by the corporation, that both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards, and that content consistently shut down allegations of genocide.

Last week, Novara Media revealed that BBC reps for the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) discouraged colleagues from attending a vigil in London – organised by the NUJ – for their murdered colleagues in Gaza.

Gaza is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Since October 2023, Israel has killed more media workers in Gaza than in both world wars, the US civil war, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan combined.

Harriet Williamson is a commissioning editor and reporter for Novara Media.

September 13, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

350,000 civilians forcibly displaced in latest Israeli assault on Gaza City

MEMO | September 13, 2025

The Gaza government on Saturday condemned the ongoing Israeli military offensive, which has recently displaced over 350,000 residents from eastern neighborhoods toward central and western areas of the city, Anadolu reports.

In a statement issued by the Government Media Office, officials said Israel has been targeting Gaza City’s residential areas since its ground offensive began on Aug. 11, 2025.

The office criticized Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s remarks, claiming that “the gates of hell in Gaza have been opened” on the resistance, asserting that in reality, Israel “systematically targets unarmed civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, as well as homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, and tents.”

The government said more than 1,600 multi-story residential buildings were completely destroyed, over 2,000 residential buildings were severely damaged, and more than 13,000 tents sheltering displaced persons were destroyed.

Since the beginning of September, 70 buildings have been completely demolished, 120 severely damaged, and over 3,500 tents destroyed.

The buildings housed over 50,000 residents, while the destroyed tents sheltered more than 52,000 displaced people, according to the office data.

The government stated that the forced displacement is a “deliberate violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.”

It urged the international community to “act immediately” to stop the ongoing assaults, provide protection for civilians, and hold Israel accountable for gross violations of human rights and war crimes.

The Israeli army has continued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 64,800 Palestinians since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

September 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »