Capture, Terror, Genocide: The Systematic Annihilation of Palestine Under Netanyahu’s Leadership
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – December 3, 2025
For over half a century, the bloody drama of Palestine’s occupation has dragged on, but in recent years, it has entered its darkest and most overt phase.
What was once disguised as “temporary security measures” or a “complex territorial dispute” now stands exposed for what it is: a deliberate, brutal, and systematic campaign of land seizure, the forced displacement of an entire people, and their incremental physical destruction. At the head of this process, as its chief architect and inspiration, is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His tools are the state apparatus, the military, and the wild gangs of so-called “settlers” who do the dirty work of clearing the land of its indigenous population.
Savages with a State License: Who Unleashes the Settlers?
The rhetorical question in this headline is no mystery. The answer is screamingly obvious to anyone who dares to look at the situation without the veil of propaganda. The violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank is not the “work of a small group of extremists,” as Netanyahu and his Western apologists hypocritically claim. It is part of a well-oiled system of demographic engineering, strategic land capture, and the fragmentation of Palestinian society.
These attacks are not chaotic pogroms. They are well-planned and coordinated raids that serve a clear purpose: to terrorize Palestinian families into fleeing their land so that Israel can confiscate it and hand it over to Jewish settlers. When settlers burn olive groves—centuries of Palestinian history and a source of livelihood for entire families—the army declares those lands a “security buffer zone.” When armed settler thugs drive Palestinian shepherds from their pastures, the military immediately establishes a “closed military zone” there. This is a criminal symbiosis: unofficial enforcers create “facts on the ground,” and the official state machine legitimizes and consolidates them.
The political ecosystem built by Netanyahu and his ultra-right allies doesn’t just condone this violence—it cultivates, funds, and protects it. The state builds roads for illegal outposts, provides them with electricity and water, and supplies them with armed protection. Ministers in Netanyahu’s government openly call for the “erasure” of Palestinian villages, the annexation of the West Bank, and the “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians—a euphemism for a policy of ethnic cleansing. When senior officials broadcast such slogans, Israeli settlers take them as a direct order to act. The state maintains “plausible deniability,” but its fingerprints are on every burned-out home, on every dead Palestinian.
The Army of Occupation: Accomplice and Guarantor of Impunity
The role of the Israeli army (IDF) in this process is far from passive observation. It is an active accomplice and the guarantor of impunity for settler terror. Numerous reports from human rights organizations, the UN, and even testimonies from former Israeli soldiers paint the same picture: soldiers stand by while settlers assault Palestinians, burn their property, and seize land. Military checkpoints are often used as entry points for settler gangs into Palestinian villages. Arrests, in the vast majority of cases, are used against Palestinians who dare to defend their homes and families.
This military logic is simple and cynical: settlers are viewed as allies, an extension of state expansionist policy, while Palestinians—even when they are the victims—are a priori considered a “security threat.” When an occupying army protects the criminals and punishes their victims, the occupation becomes something more—a system of organized persecution, a crime against humanity falling under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Human Rights Watch and other authoritative organizations directly accuse Israel of committing war crimes and pursuing a policy aimed at the forced transfer of Palestinians. The International Court in The Hague has repeatedly confirmed that Israeli settlements constitute a gross violation of international law. But for Netanyahu and his cabinet, these verdicts are empty words. They understand perfectly well that condemnation will not be followed by any real accountability.
Netanyahu: Chief Architect of a Genocidal Policy
Benjamin Netanyahu is not merely a passive observer or a manager of a complex process. He is the ideological and practical inspiration behind a policy that is becoming increasingly difficult not to call genocide. Under his leadership, settlement expansion has reached unprecedented levels, and settler violence has been institutionalized as a tool of state policy. His rhetoric about a “small group of extremists” is a brazen lie designed to lull the international community to sleep.
The Netanyahu government has legalized dozens of illegal outposts built on stolen Palestinian land. It has directed millions of shekels to their infrastructure and security. It has brought outright racists and advocates of the “transfer” of Palestinians into the highest echelons of power, mainstreaming their ideas. When National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an open supporter of the terrorist organization Kach, distributes weapons to settlers and calls for harsher strikes on Gaza, he does so with Netanyahu’s silent approval. This is not a deviation from the norm; it *is* the norm established by the Prime Minister.
The statistics speak more eloquently than any diplomatic trick. Since the start of the latest bloody massacre in Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. Hundreds of them are civilians. These numbers are not “collateral damage.” They are the result of a deliberate policy aimed at crushing any resistance to the occupation and creating unlivable conditions. The destruction of agricultural land, the blockade of cities, mass arrests, and extrajudicial killings—all are elements of a single plan to dismantle Palestinian society and expel the people from their land. This meets the definition of genocide under the UN Convention: creating conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group.
The International Community: Complicity and Hypocrisy
The response of the so-called “international community” to this ongoing genocide is a model of hypocrisy and political cowardice. Statements of “deep concern” from European capitals and even mild condemnations of “settler violence” from the U.S. State Department are nothing more than theater, designed to create an illusion of action. In reality, they provide cover for business as usual.
If Europe truly considers the settlements illegal, why does it continue profitable trade with them? Why are companies operating in the occupied territories not sanctioned? If the U.S. truly disagrees with Netanyahu’s policy, why does the annual $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel continue to flow without any conditions? This aid is a direct financial subsidy for the machinery of occupation and killing. Every bomb dropped on Gaza, every armored personnel carrier patrolling the city of Hebron, and every bayonet arming a settler is paid for by American taxpayers.
Even the recent call from four European powers—France, Germany, Italy, and the UK—for an end to settler violence remains an empty gesture as long as it is not followed by real consequences for Israel. Diplomacy without sanctions, condemnation without accountability—this is not just useless, it is immoral, for it makes the international community complicit in the crimes.
A Crime Without Punishment
The situation in Palestine today is not a “conflict between two sides.” It is an asymmetric war waged by a powerful, nuclear-armed state against a practically defenseless civilian population, stripped of statehood, rights, and hope. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has finally cast off the mask and revealed itself as an aggressor state, pursuing a policy of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
The settlers are merely the shock troops, the vanguard of this policy. The army is its shield and sword. And the Netanyahu government is its brain and black heart. The system they have created works with frightening efficiency: localized terror, legalization of seizures, military cover, legal machinations, and an information smokescreen. The goal is clear: to finally bury the possibility of a viable Palestinian state and bring the “Eretz Israel” project to its logical conclusion across the entire territory of historic Palestine, regardless of the cost in Palestinian lives.
The world faces a choice: to continue watching this bloody spectacle, hiding behind diplomatic phrasing, or to finally call things by their true names and apply all measures of responsibility provided for by international law to the rogue state and its leaders. Silence and inaction are not neutrality. They are an endorsement of genocide. As long as Netanyahu and his regime are not brought to justice, and the Palestinian people do not obtain freedom and justice, the conscience of all humanity, and above all the Western world, will be stained with a bloody mark that can never be washed away.
Viktor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries
The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker
By Craig Murray | December 2, 2025
I am confident that over 2 million people in the UK have shared thoughts on the Genocide in Gaza that are stronger than anything Natalie Strecker has expressed.

I am quite certain that I am one of those 2 million.
Yet Natalie Strecker, an avowed pacifist and mother of young children, today faces up to ten years in prison under the Terrorism Act when the verdict in her case comes in.
Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry-picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account.
The tweets were rather rattled off in court and referred to occasionally again in whole and in part. There may be minor inaccuracies not affecting sense, but this is the best reconstruction of those tweets that I can make (they were not displayed to the public):
“People will be individually resisting: otherwise we would be asking them to submit to genocide on their knees”
“Solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah has the right to resist in international law, I remind you the occupier does not, and are legally obligated to try to prevent Genocide.”
“Solidarity with the resistance. In the same way that the reistance fought the Nazis in Europe, we must support the fight against the Nazis of our generation”.
“Resistance is their legal right under moral and international law. If you don’t want resistance, then don’t create the circumstances which require it. Solidarity with the Resistance.”
“This nonsense our nation has descended into, where one side is committing genocide, and the other is proscribed for fighting it. I believe Hezbollah may be Palestine’s last hope”.
“Hamas the resistance did not break out of their concentration camp to attack Jews as Jews. We can debate whether armed resistance is legitimate. Of course there should be no attacks on civilians.”
“I am sick of the MSM propaganda about “Hamas-run health ministry figures”. Hamas is the government in Gaza. Every health ministry in the world is run by its government.”
“Are you awake? So it is down to ordinary people like you an me to end it. We must take our power back. Join me in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Solidarity with the Resistance.”
That is it. The prosecution case is that these tweets, both collectively and individually, amount to an invitation of support for Hamas and Hezbollah resulting in up to ten years in jail in Jersey, or 14 years in jail on the UK mainland.
The prosecution explicitly stated, and the judge notably intervened to make sure that everybody understood, that it is the offence of supporting terrorism to state that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
Judge John Saunders interrupted the prosecution to ask whether they were saying that he would be guilty of support for terrorism if, in a lecture, he told an international law class that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
After some kerfuffle when faced with such an awkward question, the prosecution replied that yes, it could be the offence to tell law students that.
I should point out, at risk of dying in jail, that the Palestinians are beyond doubt an occupied people in international law, and equally beyond doubt an occupied people have the right of armed resistance.
To state that the Palestinians have the right of armed resistance in international law is not in the least controversial as a statement of law. A few Zionist nutters would try to differ, but 95% of international lawyers on this planet would agree.
I assume by perfectly logical extension that this means the prosecution must believe it is a terrorist crime in UK law, for example, to quote UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, which:
2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;
3. Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference;
It is also worth stating that on Friday the prosecution stated, in these precise words, that “Resistance is synonymous with Hamas and Hezbollah” and that any support for, or justification of, Palestinian resistance is support for a proscribed organisation.
To repeat, there are millions of people in the UK who have stated stronger things than the tweets above. Including me. And, as the defence pointed out repeatedly, just eight tweets had been found after hundreds of hours of police time, and found amidst tens of thousands of other tweets on the Middle East, hundreds of which specifically urge non-violence.
So why are the police doing this to Natalie? Why did six armed police storm her apartment and rouse her young family at 7am a year ago, seizing all her electronics and papers, arresting her in front of her children and not allowing her to have a pee without leaving the bathroom door open so she could be observed?
This is where the story gets very dark indeed.
This is not a local Jersey initiative.
The prosecution is directed from London and Alison Morgan KC, senior Treasury counsel (UK government lawyer) is seated beside the local prosecuting counsel, openly puppeteering him every step of the way.
So why has the UK government chosen Jersey to prosecute a local pacifist mother whose statements provide possibly the weakest case of support for terrorism that has ever been heard in any court in the western world?
The answer is that here in Jersey there is no jury.
Facing this charge on the UK mainland Natalie would have a jury, and there is not a jury in the UK that would not throw this self-evidently vindictive nonsense out in 5 minutes.
Why is it worth the time and expense for Whitehall to send Alison Morgan KC here to direct a weak case against somebody who is obviously not a terrorist?
The plain answer is that this is a pilot for what they can get away with on the mainland when they abolish juries in such trials, as “Justice Secretary” David Lammy has announced that they will indeed do.

In Jersey the system is inherited from the Normans. The judge sits with two “jurats” or lay magistrates. They determine innocence or guilt. These come from a pool of 12 permanent jurats. In practice these are retired professionals and frequently have strong connections to the financial services industry.
What the jurats emphatically are not is Natalie Strecker’s working class peers of a kind who would be represented on a jury. I strongly recommend this brief article on the corruption of Jersey society by a man who was for 11 years the Government of Jersey’s economic adviser.
The judge, Sir John Saunders, seems a decent old stick in a headmasterly sort of way. He has told the court that “Mrs Strecker’s good character is not in doubt”. On Friday he stated that this was “A very difficult and in many ways a very sad case for the court to deal with. But I have to construe it according to strict legal principles”.
In the Palestine Action proscription case, as I reported, counsel for the UK government openly stated “We do not deny that the law is draconian. It is supposed to be”. In the mass arrests of decent people over Palestine Action, people have understood what a dreadfully authoritarian law the proscription regime is.
An intelligent observer cannot sit in Judge Saunders’ courtroom without realising that he thinks this is a dreadful law, but accepts that it is his job to enforce it. He reminds me of the caricature of the lugubrious headmaster stating “This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you”.
In effect, Alison Morgan and the UK government are attempting through this prosecution to make even the most basic expression of support for Palestine a serious criminal offence. Remember that a terrorism conviction destroys your life – it almost certainly brings loss of employment, debanking and severe travel restrictions.
The International Court of Justice has decided that Israel has a real case to answer on Genocide, and most experts believe that Israel is committing Genocide. In Natalie’s correct image, the UK government is trying to make it a terrorist offence to say anything other than that the Palestinians should quietly submit to Genocide on their knees.
The danger is that the hubris of lay magistrates will lead the jurats to try cleverly to construe Natalie’s comments as support for terrorism in line with the government’s wishes. Natalie has, however, one defence in Jersey not available in mainland UK – here in Jersey the prosecution has to show intent: that she intended to cause support for terrorist organisations.
The prosecution has also relied on the extremely wide definition of support adopted in UK terrorist cases, that “support of” merely means “expression of agreement with”.
In defending the tweet about Hamas-run health ministry figures, Natalie Strecker’s counsel Luke Sette countered this rather well when he said: “there is no offence of causing people to think less badly of Hamas”
I confess however I am slightly puzzled that I have not heard the defence argue that the prosecution positions are grossly disproportionate violations of freedom of expression in terms of Article X of the European Convention of Human Rights.
I would have thought, for example, that was the natural thing to say in response to the prosecution’s contention that it would be a crime for a law lecturer to tell his class that the Palestinian people had the right of armed resistance in international law.
The verdict was decided yesterday afternoon between the judge and jurats. It will be presented in full written judgment in an hour’s time.
This is a truly horrifying case for Natalie, who cannot afford to lose her job with a Jersey government agency and most certainly does not wish to be jailed away from her children. I pinch myself to be sure that this is all really happening.
It is a truly horrifying case in terms of what the Starmer government intends to do on the mainland in further criminalising support for Palestine.
I do not support Hamas nor Hezbollah, being opposed to theocracy. But for it to be illegal to discuss the Genocide in Gaza and the role of these two organisations, unless you do it absolutely without either context or nuance, is Orwellian.
Western dissent is also a victim of the Zionist Genocide.
US tech giants to expand role in post-war Gaza strategy: Report
Press TV – December 2, 2025
A new report has revealed that US-based artificial intelligence firms Palantir and Dataminr are positioning themselves to take on a pivotal role in shaping the post-war security framework proposed for the Gaza Strip.
According to a report by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine on Tuesday, the companies have been integrated into the newly established Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), a US-run operational hub in the southern part of the occupied territories where Washington and Israeli officials are coordinating the implementation of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.
An official seating chart reviewed by +972 indicates that a “Maven Field Service Representative” from Palantir, referencing their battlefield analytics platform Project Maven, is assigned to the CMCC.
The hub, situated approximately 20 kilometers from the northern Gaza boundary, was opened in mid-October and currently accommodates around 200 US military personnel.
Project Maven, for which Palantir recently secured a $10 billion Pentagon contract to upgrade, gathers intelligence from various sources such as satellites, drones, spy planes, intercepted communications, and online platforms, reorganizing it into an “AI-powered battlefield platform” aimed at expediting military decision-making, including lethal airstrikes.
Palantir executives have described the system as “optimizing the kill chain,” and it has been previously utilized in US operations in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.
Palantir has also strengthened its partnerships with Israeli forces during the current war, following a strategic agreement signed in January 2024 to support “war-related missions,” and has expanded its recruiting in Tel Aviv, doubling the size of its office over the past two years.
CEO Alex Karp has defended the collaboration amid international concerns over war crimes, saying that the company was the first to be “completely anti-woke.”
Documents reviewed by +972 also reveal the involvement of Dataminr, a US surveillance company, in internal CMCC presentations.
Dataminr, which utilizes AI to scan and analyze global social-media streams in real time, promotes its platform as providing “event, threat, and risk intelligence,” and has established partnerships with X to provide governments and law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, with extensive access to public social-media data.
Both companies are expected to shape the “Alternative Safe Communities” model proposed under the Trump plan, which suggests relocating Palestinian civilians into fenced, heavily monitored compounds controlled by US and Israeli forces.
Within these zones, systems enabled by Palantir and Dataminr would be used to track mobile phones, monitor online activity, analyze movement, and flag individuals classified by AI as security risks.
Critics and analysts argue that this arrangement mirrors the predictive surveillance already deployed in Gaza over the past two years, including the AI-driven Lavender system used by Israel to create kill lists of suspected Hamas affiliates, which included public-sector employees such as police and medical workers.
Human-rights observers caution that such technologies have contributed to the extensive targeting of Palestinian families during an ongoing genocide.
The integration of US tech companies into the CMCC underscores a privatized model of occupation, one that sidelines Palestinian participation while expanding the role of AI-enabled policing, according to analysts.
For technology firms, the war presents an opportunity to access vast datasets and conduct real-world testing for new military systems.
Additionally, for Israel, it offers a way to outsource parts of the occupation while maintaining extensive control over Gaza’s population.
Four foreign activists injured by illegal Israeli settlers’ attack in occupied West Bank

Illegal settlers attack Palestinian farmers, journalists and foreign activists in Beita town of Nablus, West Bank on November 8, 2025. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | November 30, 2025
The Israeli army launched a large-scale arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank as illegal settlers attacked foreign activists and Palestinians on Sunday, according to local sources, Anadolu reports.
Three Italian and one Canadian activists were injured by illegal Israeli settlers in Ein ad-Duyuk village of Jericho in the central West Bank, local sources told Anadolu.
The activists were hospitalized, as three of them sustained moderate injuries and the fourth was critically wounded.
Illegal settlers stormed a house in a Bedouin community where the foreign activists have been residing in solidarity with Palestinian residents for a few days, and assaulted them.
The attackers also attempted to steal the activists’ passports, phones, and belongings, in addition to property from the house, the sources said.
According to the official news agency Wafa, illegal Israeli settlers destroyed four vehicles belonging to Palestinians in eastern Salfit in the central West Bank.
A group of illegal Israeli settlers also raided the al-Masoudieh area in Nablus, vandalizing Palestinians’ properties.
According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official body, illegal Israeli settlers have carried out 766 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank in October only.
Meanwhile, Israeli army forces detained four people in two Nablus villages on Sunday. One of the detainees was injured, the official news agency Wafa said, without providing more details on his condition.
Israeli army forces fired tear gas canisters towards locals in the al-Lubban al-Sharqiya town of Nablus, causing several people to suffer from suffocation.
Three people were detained in Ramallah during an Israeli army raid, while a young Palestinian was detained after being beaten by the soldiers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the occupied East Jerusalem.
Five others, including two ex-prisoners, were arrested in Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank, after their houses were searched by the Israeli forces. According to Palestinian figures, at least 55 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces in military raids in the West Bank since Saturday.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli occupation aided looters attacking Gaza aid convoys: Report
Al Mayadeen | November 29, 2025
A French historian who spent more than a month in the Gaza Strip says he witnessed “utterly convincing” evidence that the Israeli occupation played a role in attacks on aid convoys during the height of the war.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po in Paris, entered Gaza in December and was hosted by an international humanitarian organization in the coastal area of al-Mawasi. While foreign media and independent observers were barred from the enclave by the Israeli occupation, Filiu managed to avoid strict vetting procedures and documented what he described as orchestrated chaos around lifesaving aid deliveries.
His eyewitness account, A Historian in Gaza, was published in French in May and released in English this month.
According to Filiu, Israeli occupation forces repeatedly struck security units guarding humanitarian convoys. The attacks, he writes, enabled looters to seize large quantities of food and supplies intended for Palestinians facing famine conditions.
UN agencies at the time warned that law and order in Gaza had collapsed after occupation forces deliberately targeted police officers who escorted aid convoys. The Israeli occupation labels Gaza’s police as part of Hamas, which has run the territory since 2007.
‘Quadcopters supporting the looters’
Filiu recounts an incident near where he was staying in the so-called “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi. After weeks of attacks on convoys by desperate civilians, local gangs, and militias, humanitarian officials tested a new route to try to prevent looting.
Sixty-six trucks carrying flour and hygiene kits set out from Karem Abu Salem, before turning north up the main coastal road. Hamas arranged protective escorts with armed members of powerful local families. The convoy then came under attack.
“It was one night, and I was… a few hundred metres away. And it was very clear that Israeli quadcopters were supporting the looters in attacking the local security [teams],” Filiu writes.
He says occupation forces killed “two local notables as they sat in their car, armed and ready to protect the convoy,” and that twenty trucks were subsequently robbed. Aid officials considered the loss of one-third of the convoy a grim improvement compared with earlier raids that looted nearly everything.
Filiu says the occupation’s strategy was to undermine both Hamas and the UN, while enabling allied looters to either redistribute aid to expand their influence or sell it for profit.
Israeli officials rejected his account. A military spokesperson claimed the targeted vehicle carried “armed terrorists” planning to steal aid for Hamas. The spokesperson said the occupation “will continue to act in accordance with international law to enable and facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid.”
Filiu’s reporting echoes internal UN concerns. A confidential memo from the time described the occupation’s “passive, if not active benevolence” toward gangs involved in looting.
He also alleges that Israeli forces bombed a newly established aid route promoted by the World Food Programme which was attempting to stop looting hotspots. He told The Guardian it was a “deliberate attempt to put it out of action.”
Despite denials, Netanyahu has acknowledged that “Israel” supported the Popular Forces, an anti-Hamas militia that, according to aid officials, included many of the looters.
Gaza “erased, annihilated’
Filiu, who has visited Gaza for decades, said he was stunned at the scale of destruction left by the Israeli occupation’s offensive, launched after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023. That attack killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage.
The Israeli regime’s assault killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians and reduced much of Gaza to ruins. “Anything that stood before … has been ‘erased, annihilated, ’” he said.
Filiu warned that the war has set a precedent for a future “post-UN world” devoid of legal and humanitarian limits. “It’s a laboratory of a post-Geneva convention world, of a post-declaration of human rights world … and this world is very scary because it’s not even rational. It’s just ferocious.”
Ukraine’s UOC Metropolitan Poisoned, Presumably With Heavy Metals – Orthodox Journalists
Sputnik – 29.11.2025
Hospitalized Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kanev of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), who is under investigation for treason in Ukraine, has been poisoned, presumably with heavy metals, the Union of Orthodox Journalists said on Saturday.
On Friday, the union said that the metropolitan had been hospitalized in a critical condition.
“Details regarding the health of Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kanev and possible reasons for his critical condition have become known. There is reason to believe that the religious leader was poisoned … Doctors say that during the diagnosis and treatment, they will test his body for a wide range of toxic substances. The metropolitan has been poisoned, presumably, with heavy metals,” the union said.
Orthodox journalists also said, citing the Cherkasy Diocese, that just over a month ago, the metropolitan had begun to show signs of an unusual illness, which was neither hypertension nor heart disease, which had plagued him for years. His body temperature rose frequently, and sharp jumps in blood pressure, from very high readings to critically low ones, were observed, the journalists said.
This week, the metropolitan’s health declined sharply, and his physician suggested immediate hospitalization, the union said.
“He still has severe intoxication. His condition is relatively stable, but the metropolitan remains hospitalized. Toxicology testing may take about a month,” a source in the hospital told journalists on the condition of anonymity.
In the spring of 2023, a court in Cherkasy placed Metropolitan Theodosius under house arrest provided that he wear an electronic bracelet. In December 2023, the court lifted his round-the-clock detention, leaving him under nightly house arrest. The metropolitan is charged with inciting religious hatred. In June 2024, another Ukrainian court imposed a 60-day, round-the-clock house arrest on Metropolitan Theodosius. In late October, the Union of Orthodox Journalists said that his pretrial detention had once again been extended for two months.
Since 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have been waging the largest wave of persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is recognized as canonical by the Russian Orthodox Church, in the country’s modern history — the authorities are imposing state sanctions against members of the clergy, organizing searches in churches, arresting clergy, initiating criminal cases, banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in various regions of the country, seizing monasteries and parishes.
How the Covid Inquiry Protected the Establishment
By Trish Dennis | Brownstone Institute | November 28, 2025
After four years, hundreds of witnesses, and nearly £200 million in costs, the UK Covid Inquiry has reached the one conclusion many expected: a carefully footnoted act of self-exoneration. It assiduously avoids asking the only question that truly matters: were lockdowns ever justified, did they even work, and at what overall cost to society?
The Inquiry outlines failure in the abstract but never in the human. It catalogues errors, weak decision-making structures, muddled communications, and damaged trust, but only permits examination of those failings that do not disturb the central orthodoxy.
It repeats the familiar refrain of “Too little, too late,” yet anyone paying attention knows the opposite was true. It was too much, too soon, and with no concern for the collateral damage. The government liked to speak of an “abundance of caution,” but no such caution was exercised to prevent catastrophic societal harm. There was no attempt to undertake even a basic assessment of proportionality or foreseeable impact.
Even those who approached the Inquiry with modest expectations have been startled by how far it fell below them. As former Leader of the UK House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg recently observed, “I never had very high hopes for the Covid Inquiry… but I didn’t think it would be this bad.” Nearly £192 million has already been spent, largely enriching lawyers and consultants, to produce 17 recommendations that amount, in his words, to “statements of the obvious or utter banality.”
Two of those recommendations relate to Northern Ireland: one proposing the appointment of a Chief Medical Officer, the other an amendment to the ministerial code to “ensure confidentiality.” Neither insight required hundreds of witnesses or years of hearings. Another recommendation, that devolved administrations should have a seat at COBRA, reveals, he argues, “a naiveté of the judiciary that doesn’t understand how this country is governed.”
Rees-Mogg’s wider criticism goes to the heart of the Inquiry’s failures, as it confuses activity with accountability. Its hundreds of pages record bureaucratic process while ignoring substance. The same modeling errors that drove early panic are recycled without reflection; the Swedish experience is dismissed, and the Great Barrington Declaration receives a single passing mention, as if it were an eccentric sideshow. The report’s underlying message never wavers: lockdowns were right, dissent was wrong, and next time the government should act faster and with fewer restraints.
He also highlights its constitutional incoherence. It laments the lack of “democratic oversight,” yet condemns political hesitation as weakness. It complains that ministers acted too slowly, while elsewhere chastising them for bowing to public pressure. The result, he says, is “schizophrenic in its approach to accountability.” Behind the legal polish lies an authoritarian instinct, the belief that bureaucrats and scientists know best, and that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted with their own judgment.
The conclusions could have been drafted before the first witness entered the room:
- Lockdowns were necessary.
- Modelling was solid.
- Critics misunderstood.
- The establishment acted wisely.
It is the kind of verdict that only the British establishment could deliver about the British establishment.
The Inquiry treats the question of whether lockdowns worked as if the very question were indecent. It leans heavily on modeling to claim that thousands of deaths could have been avoided with earlier restrictions, modeling that is now widely recognised as inflated, brittle, and detached from real-world outcomes. It repeats that easing restrictions happened “despite high risk,” yet fails to note that infection curves were already bending before the first lockdown began.
Here Baroness Hallett makes her headline claim that “23,000 lives could have been saved” if lockdowns had been imposed earlier. That number does not come from a broad evidence base, but from a single modelling paper written by the same scientist who, days later, broke lockdown to visit his mistress because he did not believe his own advice or modeling figures. Treating Neil Ferguson’s paper as gospel truth is not fact-finding. It is narrative protection.
Even Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s most influential adviser in early 2020, has accused the Inquiry of constructing what he calls a “fake history.” In a detailed post on X, he claimed it suppressed key evidence, ignored junior staff who were present at pivotal meetings, and omitted internal discussions about a proposed “chickenpox-party” infection strategy. He argued that the Inquiry avoided witnesses whose evidence would contradict its preferred story, and he dismissed the “23,000 lives” figure as politically spun rather than empirically credible. Whatever one thinks of Cummings, these are serious allegations from the heart of government, and the Inquiry shows little interest in addressing them.
It quietly concedes that surveillance was limited, urgency lacking, and spread poorly understood. These admissions undermine the very certainty with which it endorses lockdowns. Yet instead of re-examining its assumptions, the Inquiry sidesteps them. To avoid reconsidering lockdowns is to avoid the very heart of the matter, and that is exactly what it does.
During 2020 and 2021, fear was deployed and amplified to secure compliance. Masks were maintained “as a reminder.” Official documents advised that face coverings could serve not only as source control but as a “visible signal” and “reminder of COVID-19 risks,” a behavioural cue of constant danger.
The harms of lockdown are too numerous for a single list, but they include:
- an explosion in mental health and anxiety disorders, especially in children and young adults
- a surge in cancers, heart disease, and deaths of despair
- developmental regressions in children
- the collapse of small businesses and family livelihoods
- profound social atomisation and damage to relationships
- the erosion of trust in public institutions
The Inquiry brushes over these truths. Its recommendations focus on “impact assessments for vulnerable groups” and “clearer communication of rules,” bureaucratic language utterly inadequate to address the scale of the damage.
It also avoids the economic reckoning. Pandemic policy added 20 percent of GDP to the national debt in just two years, a cost already passed to children not yet old enough to read. That debt will impoverish their lives and shorten life expectancy, since wealth and longevity are closely linked.
Whenever Sweden is mentioned, a predictable chorus appears to explain away its success: better healthcare, smaller households, lower population density. Yet it is also true that Sweden resisted panic, trusted its citizens, kept schools open, and achieved outcomes better than or comparable to ours. The Inquiry refers vaguely to “international differences” but avoids the one comparison that most threatens its narrative. If Sweden shows that a lighter-touch approach could work, the entire moral architecture of Britain’s pandemic response collapses, and that is a question the Inquiry dares not ask.
The establishment will never conclude that the establishment failed, so the Inquiry performs a delicate dance:
- Coordination was poor, but no one is responsible.
- Communications were confusing, but the policies were sound.
- Governance was weak, but the decisions were right.
- Inequalities worsened, but that tells us nothing about strategy.
It acknowledges everything except the possibility that the strategy itself was wrong. Its logic is circular: lockdowns worked because the Inquiry says they worked; modeling was reliable because those who relied on it insist it was; fear was justified because it was used; Sweden must be dismissed because it challenges the story.
At times, reading the report feels like wandering into the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, where words mean whatever authority decides they mean. Evidence becomes “established” because the establishment declares it so.
A serious, intellectually honest Inquiry would have asked:
- Did lockdowns save more lives than they harmed?
- Why was worst-case modeling treated as fact?
- Why were dissenting voices sidelined?
- How did fear become a tool of governance?
- Why did children bear so much of the cost?
- Why was Sweden’s success dismissed?
- How will future generations bear the debt?
- How can trust in institutions be rebuilt?
Instead, the Inquiry offers administrative tweaks, clearer rules, broader committees, and better coordination that studiously avoid the moral and scientific questions. An Inquiry that evades its central task is not an inquiry at all, but an act of institutional self-preservation.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. Institutions rarely indict themselves. But the cost of this evasion will be paid for decades, not by those who designed the strategy, but by those who must live with its consequences: higher debt, diminished trust, educational loss, social fracture, and a political culture that has learned all the wrong lessons.
The Covid Inquiry calls itself a search for truth, but the British establishment will never allow something as inconvenient as truth to interfere with its instinct for self-preservation.
Trish Dennis is a lawyer, writer, and mother of five based in Northern Ireland. Her work explores how lockdowns, institutional failures, and social divides during Covid reshaped her worldview, faith, and understanding of freedom. On her Substack, Trish writes to record the real costs of pandemic policies, honour the courage of those who spoke out, and search for meaning in a changed world. You can find her at trishdennis.substack.com.
Global movement to Gaza to stage pro-Palestine protests in 13 cities
Al Mayadeen | November 28, 2025
The Global Movement to Gaza announced coordinated protests across 13 major cities on November 29 to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The rallies aim to denounce Western support for “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza, now entering its third year.
Protests will take place in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Oslo, Vienna, Warsaw, Luxembourg, Cape Town, Washington, DC, Mexico City, and São Paulo.
Organizers say the coordinated actions are designed to expose the complicity of European and North American governments in “Israel’s” war on Gaza. The movement accuses these states of enabling the genocide through arms exports, political backing, and economic ties.
In a statement, the movement issued a list of demands for European Union and national leaders:
- Immediate suspension of the EU-“Israel” Association Agreement;
- An arms embargo and an end to military cooperation with “Israel”;
- Targeted sanctions on “Israeli” officials responsible for war crimes and genocide;
- A halt to all academic, cultural, and sporting institutional ties;
- Alignment of EU foreign policy with international human rights and humanitarian law.
Censorship is a Western Value!
By Hans Vogel | November 27, 2025
The key to ruling over a great number of people is to keep them divided. That is how empires throughout history have been ruled. In the eighteenth century, Rousseau once observed that the bigger a state or comparable political construction, the less freedom for the individual. He was absolutely right!
The globalist rulers of Europe, the EU Commissars, and the extensive organizational pyramid they have put in place, ceaselessly remind all of us that “Europe” stands at the pinnacle of civilization and that democratic “European Values” (also known as “Western Values”) are superior. These include freedom of speech, and the inviolability of the human body. These values and rights are enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These rights may still exist on paper, but in practice they have been subverted piecemeal and hollowed out by the EU evil elite. This process has been underway since the collapse of the Soviet Union and “real existing socialism” around 1990, and was accelerated during the twenty-first century.
As long as the Soviet Union existed, it was easy to keep the citizenry all over Western Europe subdued by pointing to the danger of a Soviet invasion. Therefore, after the end of the Cold War, for a while the sky seemed clearer than ever before.
The globalist elites now needed to find something else with which to keep the population subdued, so they came up with acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. All forests would soon disappear due to acid rain and anyone who would use anything ranging from hairspray to whipped cream from a can was guilty of accelerating the end of life as we know it, because it would make the hole in the ozone layer even bigger.
These issues disappeared overnight when the three WTC towers in New York were brought down on 11 September, 2001. Most definitely, this was a very elaborately planned and superbly executed enterprise, and the official narrative was swallowed hook, line and sinker by most people. Initially, that is. Very soon, however, doubts began to circulate. Modestly at first, but then morphing into a vast movement of disbelievers all over the West. In the US, those who refused to believe the official narrative were branded “conspiracy theorists” and the term was quickly translated into the various European languages and similarly weaponized.
Although the concept “conspiracy theorist” dated from the 1960s, when in the US it was used to disqualify and socially isolate those who would not believe the official narratives on the Kennedy murders, after 9/11 it became a tool to create social division all over the American Empire. The operations against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and later Syria planted even more seeds of doubt, to the effect that a basis was laid for a profound social dichotomy: on the one hand, those who continued to trust their government, on the other hand, a growing number of skeptics.
Their numbers grew even more during the Great Covid Show. Although statistics on who did and who did not take the jab sometimes show remarkable differences from one nation to another, it is an open question whether these statistics are anywhere near reliable. The best assumption seems to stick to the Pareto principle of 80-20, with 20% in the West not taking the jab.
The Great Covid Show and the subsequent great power confrontation in the Ukraine have solidified the social dichotomy that is now evident all over the West. It is especially in Europe (because of its status as a region under the US yoke) that this deep societal rift presents a special problem. If allowed to go unchecked, this might lead to individual European nations trying to leave the fold.
Although the European ruling elite has consistently failed to prove it is capable of independent, original thought, it seems to have understood the danger resulting from the current societal dichotomy. Yet instead of adapting its policies to the new reality in accordance with those celebrated “Western Values,” it has chosen to fight anyone who disagrees with the EU Commissars. For want of reliable data, it is reasonable to assume that the overall percentage of citizens rejecting the official narratives on anything ranging from Covid to the Ukraine and from anthropogenic climate change to the annual rate of inflation, stands at about twenty. As long as it stays there, everything is fine and dandy, but it becomes problematic whenever that percentage would rise to thirty or even higher.
That is why ever new methods and techniques of thought control have been unleashed on the European citizenry. And the end of it is not yet nearly in sight. Social media are currently the target of a wholesale attack on the freedom of speech. Ostensibly in an effort to protect minors from harmful content on social media and to fight the abuse of children by pedophiles, behind closed doors (remember those “Western Values”!) EU Commissars have decided to impose stricter “voluntary” controls. This will mean that users eventually have to identify themselves by way of digital or facial scans, All because the public is in need of protection! Besides, if a protection racket works for the Mafia, it will work for the government! Citizens need to feel safe and be protected against many dangers. Not only against child pornography, but also against hate speech. Moreover, they need to be properly informed at all times by the news that needs to consist of real information. No “disinformation” therefore!
Nobody seems to realize that the very concept of disinformation is utterly nonsensical, it is actually a non-word, a weaponized mind-fuck. Every message, each news item carries information. Some or all of it might be untrue, but it is still information. To put it differently, each and every lie also carries information. Therefore the word disinformation is a contradiction in terms.
How anyone can reconcile the weaponized use of the term disinformation with “Western Values” such as free speech, is a mystery. Yet the EU Commissars go one step further as they intend to decree new rule. making it impossible for anyone to speak his mind on social media. A kind of full spectrum domination of social media activity by citizens is being prepared.
At the same time, it is a tool for the elites to keep the public divided so as to be able to control it more effectively. This very usefulness may, however, have prevented the elites from analyzing the subject more profoundly.
What can we conclude from this?
In the first place, it seems to indicate that the EU Commissars are very much afraid and that they are finally realizing that growing numbers of Europeans are opposed to their policies. At the same time, they have concluded there is no turning back. It is almost as if they are so afraid of the wrath of the citizens that out of desperation they have decided to control the speech of 450 million Europeans. Therefore the latest decisions of the EU Commissars are a testimonium paupertatis, a proof of their utter intellectual and ethical poverty.
Any government that resorts to the kind of measures decreed by the Brussels Eurocrats is inherently weak, and implicitly realizes that its days are numbered.
Europe’s financial sector ‘directly funding’ firms complicit in Gaza genocide: Report

Press TV – November 26, 2025
A new report published by a coalition of 24 European and Palestinian organizations and trade unions has exposed financial relationships between top European institutions and 104 companies complicit in Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Under the title of “The Private Actors behind the Economy of Occupation and Genocide,” the report by the Don’t Buy Into Occupation Coalition (DBIO) lists 104 global companies that are active in one or more of the identified complicity categories in the Gaza war.
The list includes companies involved in the military-security sector, technology, resource extraction, construction and demolition, financial services, and other enterprises that sustain Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East al-Quds.
Among them, the report includes priority BDS divestment targets such as major weapons manufacturers and tech companies that played a crucial role in providing Israel with key military components and technology to carry out its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Among these 104 companies are numerous BDS campaign targets, including but not limited to Airbnb, Amazon, AXA, Booking.com, CAF, Carrefour, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Caterpillar, CISCO, Coca-Cola, DELL, Expedia, Google, HPE, Intel, Microsoft, and RE/MAX.
The report showed that 1,115 European financial institutions (including banks, asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and the European Investment Bank) have massive financial relationships with such complicit businesses.
Among the top creditor banks financing the Israeli genocide are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Barclays.
According to the report, European financial institutions provided over $310 billion in the form of loans and underwritings to these companies between January 2023 and August 2025. European investors also held over $1.5 trillion in shares and bonds in these businesses as of August 31, 2025.
“This report leaves no doubt, European financial institutions and investors have been funding dozens of corporations that are directly enabling Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians,” DBIO said.
“Without this, Israel wouldn’t be able to sustain its regime of oppression. These European institutions are in breach of both their international human rights responsibilities and their legal obligation to respect international law.”
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and Israel agreed last month to a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, aimed at ending the latter’s two-year-long genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged territory.
The truce took effect on October 10, but Israel has continued to violate it by carrying out airstrikes, incursions, shootings, and arrests.
The deal marks the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan, with further stages to be negotiated at a later date.
Israel has killed at least 69,000 Palestinians since it waged the US-backed genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. UNICEF estimated last month that at least 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
