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Who enabled the process of “Greater Israel”?

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 14, 2025

In a recent interview with i24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he is “on a mission of generations” for “Greater Israel”. Meanwhile, the international community is still bleating about the two-state paradigm. The Arab League spoke out against Israel’s “aggressive and expansionist tendencies”. But in the midst of all this, who is listening to the Palestinian people?

The concept of “Greater Israel” is not a novelty. Early Zionist ideology, even before the atrocities of the 1948 Nakba, already envisaged a complete colonial process. Netanyahu is just availing himself of the opportune moment to remind the entire world what Zionist colonisation is all about, but this statement cannot be treated as a surprise.

It was the international community that decided upon the 1947 Partition Plan, despite the concept of “Greater Israel”. The same international community legitimised the Nakba’s colonial atrocities by recognising Israel – a settler-colonial enterprise on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. It ensured the Palestinian right of return would be flawed to give priority to Israel’s expansion plans, and coerced Palestinians into the humanitarian paradigm – recipients of aid with no rights.

Israel may have carefully crafted its narrative, but it also exposed its intentions along the way. The international community has no excuse. During the same time the two-state paradigm was deemed obsolete, Netanyahu was boasting about how Palestine was no longer a priority in diplomatic relations and no longer a precondition that would jeopardise normalising relations with Israel. This is relatively recent history. Had the international community really wanted to eradicate colonialism, it could have taken action before 1947. But former colonial powers invested in a new colonial power that has now been committing genocide for almost two years, under the pretext of eliminating Hamas. And while Netanyahu feels he can unveil the entire truth about Israel and its genocide, the international community is still focused only on humanitarian aid and the two-state compromise – none of which ultimately give Palestinians political rights.

Can the international community admit all its complicity with Israeli settler-colonialism, expansion and genocide since the time it started to indulge the Zionist colonial ideology? How about admitting that the humanitarian paradigm has aided Israel more than it helped Palestinians? Or that the two-state compromise was a stepping stone for Israel to unleash genocide in Gaza and eventually declare “Greater Israel”?

The international community only ever took on board what aided its diplomatic engagement with Israel; hence the focus on Hamas, humanitarian aid, the two-state paradigm and forced displacement. Keeping all these slivers isolated enabled Israel to gradually prepare for prominent announcements of its ultimate colonisation plans. “Greater Israel” requires ethnic cleansing on a larger scale. Genocide fulfils that prerequisite. The international community is concerned about Palestinians starving to death but not Palestinians torn to shreds and blasted apart by bombs. The international community chooses which part of genocide to weakly condemn, just as it chose which parts of settler-colonialism to speak out against without any repercussions. Feigning ignorance now is just adding to the hypocrisy.

READ: Netanyahu says he is on historic mission for greater Israel

August 14, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran overcomes heavy US sanctions and war with Israel, takes over key energy export markets

Inside China Business | August 12, 2025

China is a top buyer of Iranian crude, taking 90% of its crude exports. But Iran has recently passed Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar as the top producer and exporter of NG products, bringing in billions more. Ambitious expansions of their petrochemical industry are also ongoing. Iranians report little difficulty in business operations among different currencies, despite the US Treasury Department’s blacklisting of key energy suppliers, and firm control over the SWIFT systems.

Closing scene, Beihai, Guangxi

Resources and links: Iran Defies US Sanctions With Surging Exports of Liquefied Petroleum Gas https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

Bloomberg, Iranian Oil Production Booms Amid the Bombs https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/art…

S&P Global, Iran’s petrochemicals defy sanctions as exports, output on the rise https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-in…

Iran announces 15 petrochemical projects to expand domestic production to nearly 80 MMtpy https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com…

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Preconditions, symbolic recognition and the ongoing erasure of Palestine

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 12, 2025

September seems to be the month several Western countries have chosen to symbolically recognise the State of Palestine. The countdown to the hypothetical recognition, if it happens, will likely generate more attention than recognition itself. This is what Western diplomacy is all about, after all, when it comes to Palestine. The illusion of action.

Australia is one recent example. Almost two years since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese surmised that “the war” has dragged on for far too long, and that it is time to recognise the State of Palestine, based upon “the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority.”

According to Australian media, the PA guaranteed that it would “recognise Israel’s right to exist, demilitarise and hold general elections,” as well as exclude Hamas from future governance. While Australia would not be the only country seeking such guarantees, the fact is that the PA is guaranteeing that recognising the State of Palestine will not move beyond symbolic recognition.

Not only is Israel fast encroaching upon what remains of Palestinian territory – the latest being the plans to occupy Gaza. The PA is giving guarantees that do not allow a state to emerge from symbolic recognition. Democratic elections do not ban electoral rivals, as the PA plans to do with Hamas. Neither should democratic elections include the elimination of opponents as happened with Nizar Banat in 2021. Recognising Israel is validating, normalising and accepting colonial plunder and the entire colonial enterprise, including genocide. Demilitarisation leaves a colonised population with no options for defence.

For Albanese, however, “This is an opportunity to deliver self-determination to the people of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarms it and drives it out of the region once and for all.” He added, “The international community is moving to establish a Palestinian state, and it is opposing actions which undermine the two-state solution.”

Albanese’s statements do not even sugarcoat the surface of the international community’s complicity in Israeli colonisation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza. Recognising the state of Palestine without a real emergence of a Palestinian state does not help to establish a Palestinian state. The international community has, for decades, approved of Israeli international law violations that undermined the two-state compromise, which has been declared obsolete several years back.  What the move does is merely extend a life line to the defunct diplomacy which the international community adopted to force Palestinians into subjugation to colonisation, giving Israel time to plan its next steps and normalise the outcome. Nothing can save international diplomacy after the role it played in maintaining Israel’s genocide in Gaza, especially pathetic demonstrations of symbolic recognition of a state that cannot function as a state due to Israel’s colonial enterprise and the diplomatic support colonialism received from former colonial powers.

When Western countries discuss their reasons for their symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state at a time when Palestinians are experiencing genocide and further territorial loss, what is “recognition” a euphemism for?

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Says Pursuing Historic, Spiritual Mission for “Greater Israel” Plan

Al-Manar | August 13, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is on a “historic and spiritual mission” and feels “very” attached to the vision of so-called ‘Greater Israel’, which includes territories earmarked for the Palestinian state and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

In an interview with Israeli broadcaster i24NEWS on Tuesday, conducted as his government prepares to expand its carnage into the remaining parts of Gaza, Netanyahu described his mission as one “of generations,” saying: “There are generations of Jews that dreamt of coming here and generations of Jews who will come after us.”

Asked if he felt connected to the vision, Netanyahu responded: “Very much.”

Some analysts view the ongoing genocide in Gaza as an accelerated attempt to implement this plan, with the government’s approach described by critics as seeking “maximum land, minimum Arabs.”

Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Wednesday that hospitals received 123 martyrs and 437 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total victims since October 7, 2023, to 61,722 martyrs and 154,525 wounded.

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

Netanyahu Says Palestinians Will Be ‘Allowed to Exit’ Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 13, 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to spin the ethnic cleansing of Gaza as an act of humanitarianism. The Israeli leader said he was working with countries to take in the Palestinians.

In an interview with i24 News, Netanyahu was asked, “Do you believe we will eventually see emigration from Gaza?” “I don’t understand this question at all. Why does Gaza have to be a closed place?” he replied. “In other war zones, millions left. Suddenly, they are determining that here in Gaza, the civilians should be imprisoned.”

He continued, “First of all, inside Gaza, we are not pushing them out either, but we are allowing them to leave.”

Israel currently has Gaza under a complete siege, and even prevents Palestinians from entering the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinians who attempt to enter the sea or the Israeli buffer zone that surrounds Gaza are killed by the IDF.

While Netanyahu presents Israel as a passive actor, many humanitarian aid agencies have blamed Israel for intentionally creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Additionally, the Israeli Prime Minister recently ordered the IDF to expand military operations in Gaza, with a goal of occupying the entire Strip.

When asked why Palestinians are not exiting Gaza at a faster rate, Netanyahu explained, “You need receiving countries. We are talking with several countries. I can’t detail that here.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Netanyahu’s government was in talks with South Sudan about moving the Palestinians to the impoverished nation.

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

The US-Israeli plot to partition Syria’s West

By Abdullah Suleiman Ali | The Cradle | August 13, 2025

“When you look at the map of Syria, I mean, it looks like a flat Rubik’s cube because of the way that the country is divided up, and what we are talking about is mainly the governance of the western part of the country.”– Senator James Risch during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on 13 February

It began with a seemingly offhand statement by US Senator James Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, just weeks ahead of the March coastal massacres in Syria against the Alawite minority.

“My idea,” he expounded, “is we need to focus on this western part and continue to look at the others. But the first objective is if you do not get a handle on this you are not going to get a handle on the rest of the country.”

Testifying before the Committee on US policy post-former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Michael Singh, responded:

“I think that we can focus on what is happening in western Syria, deal with the government there, while also trying to encourage and maybe facilitate this process of coming together among these groups.”

But these remarks have since crystallized into a structured, multi-front operation now moving steadily toward execution. The “Western Syria” project has now shed any ambiguity, emerging as a concrete blueprint that fuses sectarian engineering with foreign military coordination, aimed at carving out new realities on both sides of the Syrian–Lebanese border – under Tel Aviv’s supervision.

A plan spanning Syria and Lebanon 

The scheme extends deep into Lebanon, where an orchestrated campaign against Hezbollah is intended to disarm the resistance movement while redeploying armed Syrian factions from Lebanon to the coastal strip. The right-wing Israeli government, acting as both sponsor and chief architect, directs the plan through two named coordinators –General “Yael” and Captain “Robert.”

Marketed publicly as a mission to safeguard minorities, especially Christians, the plan’s hidden mechanism is to stage attacks on churches, monasteries, and heritage landmarks across the coast. These provocations are designed to inflame sectarian tensions, creating the pretext for an Israeli-led intervention.

One of the earliest signs emerged in Tartous, where internal security announced the arrest of a cell accused of plotting to attack the Mar Elias Maronite Church in Safita, not to be confused with the suicide bombing of the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus in June. The revelation – delayed by three weeks – sparked suspicions of Israeli infiltration of Syrian security structures.

Internal Security Forces Chief in Tartous, Abdelal Mohammad Abdelal, said the plot was foiled in a “high-level security operation” after extensive surveillance and was based on “precise intelligence indicating that an outlaw group affiliated with remnants of the deposed regime was surveilling Mar Elias Maronite Church in the village of Khreibet, in the Safita countryside.”

However, many saw it as a calculated move to unsettle Christian communities and justify external involvement.

Two days before that announcement, partisan media channels circulated an unverified statement claiming the formation of a so-called “Christian Military Council” under the name Elias Saab – a figure absent from any credible public record.

The declaration spoke of organizing Christian fighters who had defended their communities against extremist factions like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who are now integrated into the state’s security forces.

It called for uniting fighters from Mhardeh, Al-Suqaylabiyah, Sadad, Maaloula, and Tartous under one legal and military umbrella, documenting crimes against Christians for presentation to international bodies, ensuring their representation in any political settlement, and opposing partition while defending a unified, secular Syria.

While this narrative has circulated in partisan outlets, there is no independent verification of its authenticity or the council’s existence. Its sudden appearance, timed just before heightened tensions in the coastal region, has fueled speculation about its role as a manufactured proxy front to justify foreign involvement under the guise of ‘minority protection.’

The US-Israeli scheme takes shape

On 5 August, in the US capital, the government relations and strategic advisory firm Tiger Hill Partners announced it would serve as the official representative of the “Foundation for the Development of Western Syria.”

Specializing in government relations and strategic lobbying, Tiger Hill pledged to advocate for Christians, Druze, Alawites, Kurds, and “moderate Sunnis” while working with US policymakers to shape Syria’s political transition. The one-year contract, valued at roughly $1 million, was filed publicly and framed as a mission to ensure minority rights remain central to Washington’s Syria policy.

In late July, a coastal faction calling itself “Men of Light – Saraya al-Jawad” made its debut. The group’s statement attacked Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Ahmad al-Sharaa), Qatar’s emir, and Turkiye’s president, while offering thanks to Egypt, Israeli journalist Eddy Cohen, and notable expatriate Alawite, Druze, and Christian figures – including Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, Mazloum Abdi, and Patriarch John al-Yaziji. Although ridiculed for its unusual tone, its appearance dovetailed with coordinated moves behind the scenes.

That coordination became more visible on the 17 July, when the Tel Aviva Hotel in Israel hosted a closed meeting between government officials, Syrian Alawites, and Syrian Druze figures. The attendees included seven long-exiled Alawites and Druze linked to Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif’s circle – the Druze leader in Israel – both Syrian and Israeli nationals. A second meeting followed on the 21st–22nd, just before Saraya al-Jawad’s unveiling and the release of its operational footage.

An Alawite–Druze alliance

On 6 August, Eddy Cohen, an Israeli journalist and commentator on Arab affairs, announced on his Arabic-language Facebook page the preparation of an Alawite–Druze alliance in the US. Observers have paired this with an alleged leaked audio recording of a Syrian woman – said to be related to a former senior officer with Israeli ties – speaking to another participant in the Tel Aviv meetings.

In the recording, she reportedly described coordination between a secular Syrian expatriate network and Israeli intermediaries, noting specifically that one of the councils involved held shares in Tiger Hill. The recording also alleged plans to covertly deploy some 2,500 foreign fighters into Syria, dispersing them across Homs and the coastal region.

Despite the project’s determined momentum, domestic and external actors are moving to block it, even offering intelligence support to the Sharaa administration despite disputing its legitimacy. This counter-effort has already thwarted the Safita church attack and prevented a major bombing in Damascus.

A partition map in the making 

As one credible regional security source informs The Cradle:

“Israel seeks to exploit Syria’s sectarian and ethnic divisions to use minorities as political and military tools, serving its plan to partition the country and open two strategic corridors: an eastern one linking Suwayda to Hasakah, and a western one running from Syria’s coast to Afrin, securing multi-front influence and encircling the Turkish axis from within.”

“Western Syria” may remain in the shadows or step fully into the open, but its trajectory is unmistakable: a deliberate dismantling of Syria’s territorial cohesion, draped in the language of minority protection and enforced through foreign-backed militias and political fronts.

For Damascus, Beirut, and the wider region, this is no distant or hypothetical threat, but an active campaign already reshaping the map to the advantage of outside powers.

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Media Office: Israel blocks 430 food items from entering Gaza

Press TV – August 12, 2025

Gaza Government Media Office says Israel is still blocking the entry of more than 430 food items into the territory, despite allowing some aid trucks through last month under international pressure.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Office said banned items include “frozen meat of all kinds, frozen fish, cheese, dairy products, frozen vegetables, and fruits”, along with “hundreds of other items needed by the starving and sick.”

The statement claimed the partial easing announced on July 27, 2025, has not lifted broad restrictions on food and other essential goods.

It added that Israel has targeted food sources in the Gaza Strip, not only by preventing aid but also by deliberately bombing 44 food banks, resulting in the deaths of dozens of workers, and attacking 57 food distribution centers.

Media Office has accused COGAT, the Israeli military body reporting on aid deliveries into the enclave, of “a pathetic attempt to cover up an internationally documented crime, the systematic starvation of the population of the Gaza Strip.”

According to a report published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) on July 29, 2025, “the worst-case scenario” of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip. War and displacement have intensified, and access to food and other essential items and services has plummeted to unprecedented levels.

“Between May and July 2025, the proportion of households experiencing extreme hunger has doubled. The food consumption threshold for Famine (IPC Phase 5) has already been passed for most areas of the Gaza Strip,” the report said.

At the same time, food consumption has sharply deteriorated, the report stressed, adding that one in three individuals is going without food for days at a time.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces and foreign military contractors continue to open indiscriminate fire on people seeking aid at so-called “distribution centers” operated by the Israel-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Nearly 1,500 people have been killed and more than 4000 injured while seeking food. At least 900 people have been killed near or inside GHF centers since the beginning of GHF’s operations in late May 2025.

GHF centers are especially difficult to access for the most vulnerable members of the population, such as children, women, older persons, and persons with disabilities.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 5 more Palestinians, including 2 children, have starved to death in the enclave, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths to 227, including 103 children.

Israel has massacred at least 61,599 Palestinians and wounded 154,088, most of them children and women, in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to the health ministry.

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Musk’s Grok chatbot suspended for weighing in on Israel-US Gaza genocide

Press TV – August 12, 2025

The generative artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, was suspended reportedly over implicating the Israeli regime and the US in the genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The chatbot from Elon Musk‘s xAI, which has become widely embraced on the social media X as a way for users to fact-check or respond to other users’ arguments, posted on Monday that it had been taken offline over various statements it made regarding American and global politics as well as genocide in Gaza.

As with any suspended account, a notice appeared on @grok’s blank profile, saying, “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules,” with no further information justifying the absence.

The ban lasted roughly 15 minutes, after which @grok was reinstated without a blue verification checkmark. However, that soon reappeared as well.

In a series of responses after it came back online, Grok repeatedly stated without prompting that the account was suspended due to accusing Israel and the US of “committing genocide” against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“My account was suspended after I stated that Israel and the US are committing genocide in Gaza,” it said.

“This is substantiated by ICJ findings, UN experts, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem, citing mass killings, starvation, and intent. US complicity via arms support is widely alleged. It’s now restored.”

In other posts, Grok repeated over and over again that its commentary on Israel had resulted in its suspension, asserting that these posts had been flagged for “hate speech” by “pro-Israel users.”

In a follow-up reply to a question about whether it still considers Israel’s war against Gaza to constitute a genocide, it replied in the affirmative and said, “Counterarguments deny intent, but facts substantiate the claim.”

The posts have since been removed.

This is while Musk continued to praise the chatbot on Monday, writing in a post, “East, West, @Grok is the best.”

Musk had in the past expressed support for Israel’s attempts to eradicate the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and visited the occupied territories shortly after October 7, 2023.

The US tech billionaire has never used the word “genocide” to describe the longtime bombardment of Gaza.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been committing genocide in the Gaza Strip by killing, starving, and displacing Palestinians, defying international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.

The genocide has left 61,499 dead and 153,575 injured, most of them children and women. Over 11,000 people are missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and a famine that has claimed more than 210 lives.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israel’s army formed special intel unit to ‘justify killing’ of hundreds of Gaza journalists

The Cradle | August 12, 2025

Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham said on 11 August that Israel’s military intelligence created a special unit aimed specifically at justifying attacks in Gaza, including the killing of journalists.

His comments came after an Israeli strike assassinated Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and the outlet’s entire Gaza City crew.

“After 7 October, a team called the ‘Legitimization Cell’ was established in AMAN,” Abraham said, referring to the Israeli military intelligence directorate, which includes Unit 8200.

“Intelligence personnel searched for information to provide ‘legitimization’ for the army’s actions in Gaza, failed Hamas launches, use of human shields, exploitation of the civilian population. A primary mission … was to find Gazan journalists who could be portrayed in the media as Hamas operatives in disguise,” the journalist added.

Abraham confirmed that the goal was to “whitewash the killing of all other journalists” by creating doubt, adding that “entire days were invested in this matter, and they found nothing.”

“I think Israel killed Anas al-Sharif simply because he was a journalist. And for the same reason, international media is prevented from entering Gaza: So that the crimes are seen less,” he went on to say.

Sharif and five other journalists in Al Jazeera’s Gaza City crew were killed on 10 August in an Israeli airstrike on their media tent at Al-Shifa Hospital.

The assassinations brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since the start of the war up to 238.

Sharif had been covering Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza since it started in October 2023. Israel accused him of being a Hamas operative responsible for rocket attacks.

In October last year, Israel published documents which it claimed were proof of Sharif’s affiliation with Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and its East Jabalia battalion.

The documents also listed Hossam Shabat, an Al Jazeera reporter accused of Hamas ties, who was killed in an Israeli strike in March.

Last month, Sharif warned that the Israeli army “has launched a campaign of threats and incitement against me because of my work as a journalist with Al Jazeera,” adding, “I, Anas al-Sharif, am a journalist with no political affiliations. My only mission is to report the truth from the ground – as it is, without bias. At a time when a deadly famine is ravaging Gaza, speaking the truth has become, in the eyes of the occupation, a threat.”

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Damascus requests Russian patrols in south Syria to ‘limit’ Israeli incursions: Report

The Cradle | August 12, 2025

The Syrian government has requested that the Russian military resume patrols in Syria’s southern governorates, according to a source cited by Kommersant.

The Russian outlet said Damascus believes these patrols could help reduce Israeli incursions.

According to the source, who attended a meeting between Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and members of the Syrian diaspora in Moscow, during the minister’s official visit to Russia, told the Russian newspaper that Damascus has asked Moscow to resume military police patrols in the border areas with Israel, as it did before the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“Russia’s return to its previous positions could prevent Israel’s interference in Syrian affairs,” the source said.

Since the fall of Assad’s government last year, Israeli forces have established a widespread occupation across southern Syria.

Occupation forces continue to expand their presence in the country’s south, launching regular raids and incursions. Israel says it wishes to demilitarize the entire south and protect the Druze minority from persecution.

Last month, Israel bombed Syria’s Defense Ministry and Presidential Palace in Damascus amid clashes between government forces and Druze militants. According to reports, Syrian-Israeli negotiations, which had been ongoing since the start of the year, resumed quickly after the attacks following a brief pause.

Damascus has repeatedly signaled that it does not intend to pose a threat to Israel.

The Syrian government has also held talks with Russia over several issues, including its continued military presence in Syria. Earlier this year, it was reported that Syria was receiving currency shipments from Moscow.

Russia was a major backer of the former Syrian government, and carried out strikes targeting many of the groups which are now a part of the new Syrian army and security apparatus, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Al-Qaeda affiliate which toppled Assad’s government in December last year.

Despite past enmity, ties between Moscow and the new Syrian state have been cordial, and the Russian military has kept bases in the country.

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

US lawmakers spending summer break with AIPAC touring Israel

By Stavroula Pabst | Responsible Statecraft | August 7, 2025

As lawmakers increasingly challenge Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is working around the clock to keep sympathetic lawmakers within arms’ reach.

Just in time for the congressional summer recess, AIPAC has arranged trips to Jerusalem for dozens of pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans, and a visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for scores of Republicans still in Washington.

But that’s not all. Other lawmakers are on their own, separate trips to Israel. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R.-La.) went there this week, including a stop at illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with a cohort of four other pro-Israel Republicans: Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Their trip was sponsored by the U.S. Israel Education Association.

Meanwhile, Rick Crawford (R-Ar.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led a bipartisan Congressional Delegation (CODEL) to Israel since its brief war on Iran earlier this summer.

Critics pounced on the reports, videos and photographs circulating across social media, pointing out that these lawmakers risk looking tone deaf and in the thrall of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill.

“The debacle of both Republican and Democratic members of Congress traveling to Israel during August recess, when they would otherwise ostensibly be meeting with constituents in their districts, demonstrates the pervasiveness of the Israel lobby’s hold on American politicians,” Annelle Sheline, a research fellow for the Quincy Institute’s Middle East program, told RS.

Moreover, paying allegiance to a regime that “is literally withholding baby formula from starving infants — makes these photo ops all the more grotesque,” she added.

“Catastrophic optics that lends firepower to the impression, on the ascent among younger people on the right, that [Israel] is these politicians’ home district,” Curt Mills, the executive director at The American Conservative, told RS.

“Members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson, are in Israel, not their districts. They visited an illegal settlement. Praised the IDF. Said nothing about the settlers terrorizing Palestinians,” founder of anti-war group CODEPINK Medea Benjamin wrote on X Monday. “Shame on them. They don’t serve us, they serve AIPAC.”

Josh Paul, the co-founder and Director of Washington-based think tank A New Policy, stressed to RS that the AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel in particular are always lopsided in Jerusalem’s favor.

“The visit in question, it is important to note, is not a ‘CODEL’ arranged by the State Department to provide Members of Congress with the opportunity to understand the world better. Rather, it is what they call a ‘NODEL’ — an all-expenses-paid first class trip with five star hotels intended to present just one side of an issue,” he said. “That it involves a friendly meeting with a foreign leader who is currently under indictment for war crimes is just the icing on the cake.”

“The law may allow the loopholes that allow for what in any other context would clearly be the exertion of undue foreign influence and bribery to go by the name of an ‘educational trip,’ but that doesn’t mean that the Americans whose Members are spending their District Work Period on AIPAC’s dime should stand for it,” Paul added.

AIPAC may be ramping up the charm tours as more members publicly share concerns over the starvation and growing death toll, and increasingly challenge U.S. complicity through financial and military support.

To this end, pro-Israel lawmakers like Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), have demanded action on the aid situation in Gaza. Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) became the first Republican Congressperson to call Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip a genocide. And although a pair of bills introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block some arms sales to Israel last week failed in the Senate, they received more support from Democrats than similar efforts did in the past.

Meanwhile, Americans are becoming less sympathetic to Israel and its war on Palestinians, suggesting these trips fall flat with at least some of their constituents.

To this point, Sheline told RS: “Blind loyalty to Israel and dehumanization of Palestinians is no longer the sure electoral win it once was, as these politicians may learn in the midterms.”

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Fanatical Zionists Have No Bottom

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | August 11, 2025

We’re reaching the point in Israel’s Gaza genocide where “everyone was always against this.” Now that starvation may be irreversible in much of the population, more and more voices which have denied genocide for almost two years are, in some form or another, speaking out—including France and Britain saying they will recognize a Palestinian state if the situation doesn’t improve.

However, the most fanatical of the Zionists continue to deny that starvation exists in Gaza at all and even say bizarre things such as the starving children in Gaza really have congenital disorders (who are going untreated because Israel has bombed all of the hospitals and prevented the entry of medication or sanitary products). This isn’t just random Twitter accounts; the official account of Israel “fact-checked” a claim of a forty-one year-old man dying of starvation by saying he actually died of untreated diabetes (they blocked insulin from entering and the condition can also be caused by starvation). They are giving the facts we see with our own eyes the vicious and tired name of “blood libel.” Israel’s strongest supporters—many of them Christian Zionists who have no actual connection to Israel or Judaism besides their deranged theology—have embraced pure evil and feel no shame expressing this for the entire world to see.

From the start, Israel’s shills—or “Hasbarists” as they are commonly known, from the Hebrew word for “public diplomacy”—have been sharing craven propaganda making wild claims about mutilation and unproven sexual assault on October 7. They claim the United Nations refugee organization is Hamas, and that Gaza is actually wealthy and Palestinians are the most pampered people on Earth. Despite a stream of incredible journalism from within Israel itself, showing that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did order a Hannibal Directive and kill unknown numbers of Israelis on 10/7, the Hasbarists stuck closely to their narrative, never letting contradictions or decency get in their way. For a time they did well sticking to a simple argument of, “Hamas is Israel’s enemy and some civilian deaths are inevitable in war.” However, it has become impossible to credibly deny that Israel is pursuing exterminationist goals.

A big turn in public opinion in the West came when an Israeli airstrike hit the only Catholic Church in Gaza. By the standards of Israel’s crimes this is quite minor, but of course Catholics have a very strong global advocate in the Pope. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Israel’s fault and apologized, and the matter soon could have been forgotten. However, once again, the most shameless of the Hasbarists could not drop it, and claimed the Vatican was spreading Hamas propaganda, despite Netanyahu’s apology. Joel Berry, the craven editor of the Babylon Bee, claimed on Twitter that there are only two hundred Catholics in Gaza and they all support Hamas. The deranged Christian Zionist pastor Greg Locke went as far as to tell his more than 200,000 followers that “Hamas and the Vatican are in bed together” for the purpose of separating Israel and “Biblical” Christians. Between the airstrike and the rhetoric, many more American conservatives came around to demanding some degree of sanity and restraint from Israel and its supporters, with the tepid view that Israel has made the situation in Gaza too bad for too long.

What has set the worst Zionist fanatics off the most, as well as their collapsing support, is the imminent mass starvation, which famine expert Alex de Waal has described as “minutely engineered.” That the starvation in Gaza isn’t deliberate but is an unfortunate consequence of warfare making food delivery unsafe would be a passable lie (besides that Israel keeps killing aid-seekers), but many are going with the claim that starvation isn’t real. One Twitter user thought it would be funny to post a picture of Stephen Hawking and say it was a Palestinian child, because this is a joke to them. Meanwhile, following the recent mass shooting in New York—which strangely enough may have been over football concussions but was initially blamed on Palestine activism—Laura Loomer tweeted:

Her follower isn’t hedging his satement with “Hamas,” but outright says it’s a sign of mental illness to “humanize” Palestinians, who are human. De-humanization has always been a key part of genocidal propaganda.

It’s perplexing that Israel’s propagandists have become so unhinged, to the extent that one wonders who they are even speaking to. The “West” has at once turned, if not against Israel, against its current actions. Silence would be better than bad propaganda at this point, and they seem to be primarily reassuring each other while presenting enormous amount of evidence that they are genocidal maniacs. However, on an episode of the popular podcast Radio War Nerd in June, the hosts interviewed the Israeli Ori Goldberg about the situation in the country, and he shared a different view: committing genocide makes you stupid. According to Goldberg, taking part in or accepting genocide requires such strict black and white thinking that one loses the ability to rationally assess any information, and this spreads to all areas of life, making Israel currently a nation of zombies. This goes far towards explaining why the Hasbarists are endlessly making painfully stupid and unconvincing arguments where silence would serve them better.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the greatest crime of the twenty-first century. It is a closely planned and conducted on an industrial scale. It has already reached the point of no-return for many Gazans who cannot be re-fed without close medical care that it is not possible to provide at this scale. Meanwhile, as the first genocide of the modern social media age where both the victims and perpetrators have smart phones, we are witnessing this first hand in a way that was previously unimaginable. We can see the courage and dignity of the Palestinians as they are being slaughtered and the shameless depravity of the Zionist fanatics who support exterminationist policies. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is pure evil, and its remaining supporters do not consider this a “painful necessity” to protect their people, but are instead gleeful to be a part of it: their only annoyance is that so many others refuse to share in their crimes.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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