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World Central Kitchen Halts Aid Operations in Gaza Due To Israeli Blockade

May 8, 2025

Israel has not allowed any goods to enter Gaza for more than 60 days

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, May 7, 2025

The World Central Kitchen (WCK), a US-based charity, said on Wednesday that it was forced to shut down aid operations in Gaza due to the total Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory.

“After serving more than 130 million total meals and 26 million loaves of bread over the past 18 months, World Central Kitchen no longer has the supplies to cook meals or bake bread in Gaza,” the WCK said in a statement on its website.

“Since Israel closed border crossings in early March, WCK has been unable to replenish the stocks of food that we use to feed hundreds of thousands of Gazans daily,” the statement said.

Palestinian boy Osama Al-Reqep, 5, lies on a bed at Nasser Hospital where he receives treatment, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 1, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

The charity said that in recent weeks, its team in Gaza “stretched every remaining ingredient and fuel source using creativity and determination” but has now “reached the limits of what is possible.”

WCK field kitchens in Gaza have run out of ingredients, and its mobile bakery has run out of flour. The charity said that it has trucks loaded with food and cooking fuel ready to enter Gaza, but they are being blocked by Israel.

“Our trucks—loaded with food and supplies—are waiting in Egypt, Jordan and Israel, ready to enter Gaza,” said José Andrés, a celebrity chef who founded WCK. “But they cannot move without permission. Humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow.”

UN aid agencies have also said they have thousands of trucks ready to bring food into Gaza, but Israel has maintained the blockade, with US backing, even as children are beginning to starve to death.

At least 11 WCK workers have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. The most notorious attack occurred on April 1, 2024, when an Israeli drone fired missiles at three clearly-marked cars carrying WCK employees, who were traveling on a route previously approved by the IDF. The attack killed seven WCK workers, including three British nationals and an American, 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger, a dual US-Canadian citizen who left behind a one-year-old son.

In November 2024, an Israeli attack on a car in Gaza killed three WCK workers. On March 27 of this year, the WCK said one of its volunteers was killed by a strike near a WCK kitchen in Gaza.

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Palestinians awoke to bulldozers. Their village was destroyed by noon

May 8, 2025

Within hours, Israeli forces demolished homes, wells, and even caves in the West Bank hamlet of Khilet al-Dabe’, leaving families with nowhere to shelter.

Basel AdraBy Basel AdraMay 6, 2025

Israeli forces demolish buildings in Khirbet Khilet al-Dabe, in Masafer Yatta, the West Bank, May 5, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

In the early hours of Monday morning, two massive Hyundai excavators and two Caterpillar bulldozers roared out of the gates of the Ma’on settlement in the South Hebron Hills — illegally built on Palestinian land belonging to the village of At-Tuwani. For residents living in the area, the sight of these “yellow monsters,” as they call them, is an omen: the day will be filled with destruction, and families will lose homes they woke up in just hours earlier.

Roughly 90 minutes later, the full force of the operation became clear. Military jeeps, soldiers from the Israeli army, Border Patrol units, Civil Administration officials, and a group of workers assembled and then moved as a unit toward Khirbet Khilet al-Dabe’, a small but resilient village nestled between the higher lands of Shafa Yatta and the lower hills of Masafer Yatta. I rushed there with other local activists to document what we feared was coming.

We were stopped by a group of masked soldiers about 80 meters from the village’s homes. “You are not allowed to move forward,” one soldier barked, dropping a rusty old bucket on the ground and declaring, “This is the boundary of a closed military zone: whoever crosses it will be arrested.”

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We asked if there was an official military order establishing the area as restricted. One soldier responded, “It will arrive in a few minutes.” But the demolition dragged on for hours, and no such order ever appeared. This wasn’t enforcement of a legal ruling, but rather an exercise of sheer military power. In truth, the soldiers didn’t even pretend to be upholding Israel’s own discriminatory laws. They simply threatened us with weapons and arrests.

As soldiers held us back, one excavator tore through two water wells, while others stormed into the community itself. Families were forcefully removed from their homes. Among them was 80-year-old Amna Dababseh and her husband Ali, 87.

Ali Dababseh stands near soldiers as Israeli forces demolish buildings in the West Bank village of Khilet al-Dabe’, May 5, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

“My daughter brought us breakfast and we were just about to eat, when she said the army had entered the village,” Amna recounted. “Suddenly, soldiers were at our door. One pointed at our home and said, ‘Get out. We’re going to demolish this house.’ I told him: ‘My husband had a stroke and can barely walk. I have diabetes. Where do you expect us to go?’ He just said, ‘Go to the mountain. Move!’”

Amna’s voice cracked as she described the chaos. Border police walked around the homes, evicting family after family. Men, women, and children were pushed up a hill overlooking the destruction of their community. “This village has suffered demolitions for 20 years,” Amna said, “but never like this.”

She stood crying among dozens of others, watching her life’s work reduced to rubble. Despite the trauma and shock, she kept repeating: “I will never leave this village — not until my last day.” Her husband and others echoed the same sentiment, determined to defy and resist a system designed to erase them.

A Palestinian woman walks by as Israeli forces demolish buildings in the West Bank village of Khilet al-Dabe’, May 5, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

“They want to erase us”

What took place in Khilet al-Dabe’ was not merely a demolition — it was a sweeping erasure. In total, nine homes were destroyed, along with six caves, seven wells, four livestock shelters, 10 water tanks, and the village’s only solar energy system and internet infrastructure.

Khirbet Khilet al-Dabe’ is one of the main communities featured in our documentary “No Other Land.” The village is known for its natural greenery and agricultural life, and unlike many others in Masafer Yatta, its residents focus less on livestock and more on cultivating almond, grape, and olive trees. They maintain traditional stone terraces and till the land year-round. The village’s elevated position and lush vegetation make it one of the most visually stunning in the area.

But geography is no protection. Over the past 18 months, four new settler outposts have been established to the east and west of Khilet al-Dabe’. Less than three months ago, on Feb. 10, Israeli forces had entered Khilet al-Dabe’ and destroyed seven homes and two caves. Amer Dababseh, Amna and Ali’s son, had his home and cave demolished that day. Since 2018, his property has been destroyed at least seven times. After the February attack, he and his family sought refuge with his elderly parents; now, that home has also been destroyed.

This time, Israeli forces left Amer and many others with literally nothing. Even the caves — historically used as emergency shelters for displaced families — were demolished. Now, many villagers, including children, have no choice but to sleep in the open.

The aftermath of Israeli demolitions in the West Bank village of Khirbet Khilet al-Dabe’, May 5, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

Once the army withdrew, villagers returned to the site, digging through the rubble for anything salvageable: clothing, kitchenware, personal belongings. The scene resembled a natural disaster, as if an earthquake had flattened their homes, wells, and lives.

The goal of Monday’s demolition, locals believe, is part of a broader effort: to push Palestinian residents off their land and clear the way for further illegal settlement expansion. “They want to erase us — not just our homes, but our presence, our history, and our future,” Amer said. For the families of Khilet al-Dabe’, the rubble is not just debris — it is a reminder that they are standing in the way of an expanding occupation. And despite it all, they are refusing to leave.

Most read on +972

A silent vigil for slain Gazan children, in Tel Aviv, April 26, 2025. (Oren Ziv)

‘We’ve killed so many children — it’s hard to argue with that’

The front pages of newspapers in Israel at a shop in Jerusalem during the judicial overhaul, July 25, 2023. (Chaim Goldbeg/Flash90)

Breaking new records, Israel sees unprecedented spike in media censorship

Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

In response to +972’s inquiry, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) stated that its personnel “conducted enforcement activity against several illegal structures built without permits in Firing Zone 918, in violation of both planning regulations and military access restrictions,” and that “the operation was carried out in full compliance with legal procedures and approved enforcement priorities.”

An Israeli army spokesperson said that “the enforcement actions were carried out after the completion of all required administrative procedures and in accordance with the enforcement priority framework previously presented to the Supreme Court.” It further claimed that “a closure order was issued in the adjacent area, and the general order which applied to the location in question was known to the residents as well. The temporary order issued was presented upon request.”

Basel Adra

Basel Adraa is an activist, journalist, and photographer from the village of a-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills.

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Trump Is the Symptom, U.S. Imperialism Is the Disease

May 5, 2025

admin — April 29, 2025

U.S. Peace Council Statement, April 29, 2025 —

Popular resistance to the Trump administration’s erratic, anti-people, and dangerous domestic and foreign policies is growing every day as seen with the massive demonstrations held throughout the country on and after April 5. We welcome these protests and the popular demands raised by them, but we must criticize significant flaws that block the political changes we desperately need.

Criticism is personalized against President Trump, Elon Musk, and the “billionaires” for actions that have been the hallmark of bipartisan policies for decades. Monied interests — not as individuals but as a class, and regardless of their political party — have always been in control of the U.S. government and have prioritized their interests over the interests of the majority, only limited by the organized people’s movements.

Personalizing the criticism and solely blaming the present administration for the problems created by both parties is tantamount to siding with one group of “billionaires” (Democrat) against the other (Republican). Such is the nature of the two-party duopoly as a system, regardless of personnel changes in the White House. Meanwhile, the entire U.S. body politic lurches from one administration to the next on a rightward trajectory toward fascism.

Largely organized by the Democratic party-based group Indivisible, the “Hands Off!” protests were silent about the U.S.’s bipartisan militaristic foreign policy and focused solely on domestic issues, except for “Hands Off NATO.” Revealingly, “Hands Off Palestine” was omitted from the official demands, though grassroots activists raised it.

This intentional silence on foreign policy, and its arbitrary separation from domestic issues, hide the fact that many domestic problems result from a militaristic foreign policy imposed on our country. Trillions of dollars of much needed funds are redirected from human needs to war mongering in Ukraine, West Asia, and Asia-Pacific. Achieving popular power can be most effectively galvanized if it is informed by politically and consciously recognizing the class basis of war and militarism. In contrast, official demands of the “Hands Off!” mobilization, with its embrace of NATO but silence on genocide in Gaza, obscures the class basis of war.

While official lawlessness did not start with Trump, the new president is bent on changing the present post-war imperialist order with another one that gives the empire even more impunity. The U.S. ruling class as a whole has been accelerating the tendency for the U.S. to operate outside the bounds of both national and international law, regardless of who is in office.

The West’s proxy war on Russia continues in Ukraine, while war clouds are gathering around creating another proxy war with the People’s Republic of China using Taiwan and South Korea. And, all the while, the U.S./Israel genocide continues against Palestine and its allies. The imminent war with Iran, supported by both parties, is yet another pressing issue that can best be explained within the framework of imperialism.

On top of all this, is a bipartisan commitment to enhance the repressive apparatus of the state domestically — from cop-cities to the repression on campuses, the criminalization of speech and assembly, restrictions on truthful education, and the further weaponization of the judicial system itself. Intensification of domestic austerity programs, deregulation and destruction of all government organizations that protect and enhance the lives of working people, and attacks on trade unions are the flip side for maintaining a militaristic empire.

All this should make clear that neither of the two billionaire-controlled parties will or can be the urgently needed opposition to imperialism. Current world conditions necessitate building an opposition movement to war and militarism that is even more materially focused on anti-imperialism. This requires understanding the clear link between the empire’s foreign and domestic policies and calling for an end to militarism and redirection of resources to human needs.

Instead of looking for the lesser of two evils, we urge joining people’s independent campaigns to cut the military budget, to close U.S. and NATO foreign military bases, to establish Zones of Peace in our region, and to stop the militarization of police and domestic repression. An anti-imperialist understanding is key to the success of our people’s struggle for peace and a more just society.

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Norway FM slams Western silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza

April 30, 2025
Middle East Monitor, April 25, 2025

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide speaks to the press at UN headquarters in New York on January 23, 2024. [Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images]

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide speaks to the press at UN headquarters in New York on January 23, 2024. [Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images]

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has voiced deep concern over the silence of some countries regarding Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and denounced the reluctance of foreign ministers to issue statements of condemnation, Anadolu reported.

This came during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, yesterday, following a meeting at the Turkish Foreign Ministry in the capital, Ankara.

“The silence of others on what is happening in Gaza worries me,” Eide said, adding: “Many of my Western counterparts are making a grave mistake by not clarifying their views.”

Regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its global impact, Eide said Norway has not remained silent on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and was among the first countries to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

“We were among the first countries to say that Israel’s response to the attacks of October 7 went far beyond international human rights law or the principle of proportionality,” he said, emphasising that consistency in this position is crucial.

“We must defend human rights and international legal laws and principles, and we believe that these rules must be applied in all circumstances,” he added.

Israel has killed more than 51,400 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children.

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Kashmir and the Indus

April 29, 2025

The Causes of Heightened Ethnic, Political and Religious Tension in Kashmir

Craig Murray, Apr 28, 2025

Maharaja Ranjit Singh with two British officers, artist unknown, 19th century, gouache and gold on paper.

India’s Hindutva Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has used the Kashmir terrorism incident to abrogate the 1960s Indus Waters Treaty—a longstanding goal of Modi. The Indian version of the “terrorist attack,” most of whose victims were Muslim, has largely been accepted by Western governments without evidence.

False flags abound nowadays. You may recall that we were told that the most deadly rocket ever fired by Hamas killed only Palestinians in a hospital compound, while the most deadly rocket ever fired by Hezbollah killed only Druze children. I have at present an open mind about what occurred in Kashmir.

It is however certain that tearing up the Indus Waters Treaty is a long term Modi goal. The Indus supplies 80% of Pakistan’s agricultural water, and the supply is already insufficient, with disastrous salination of the lower reaches of the river as the sea creeps into the areas once occupied by the mighty flow. I visited the area of lower Sind five years ago and witnessed the fields encrused with white salt.

India controls the upstream flow into Pakistan of approximately 70% of the total water of the Indus, about 55% of all of Pakistan’s agricultural water.

In September 2016 in response to earlier violence in Kashmir, Modi initiated his slogan “Blood and water cannot flow together” and threatened to cut the Indus supply. He increased India’s out-take from the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej tributaries and restarted the Tulbul canal project. In both 2019 and 2022 while campaigning in Haryana, Modi made strong speeches threatening to cut off the water “wasted on Pakistan.”

In 2023 Modi issued formal notice to Pakistan of India’s desire to renegotiate the Indus Waters Treaty and repeated this in 2024 when Pakistan did not respond. On both occasions India cited “counter-terrorism” as one of three reasons for review (the others being environmental protection and hydro-electric generation). As counter-terrorism can scarcely be linked to agricultural water allocation, this illustrates Modi’s grandstanding approach.

Modi does not have the physical power to stop the Indus, but does have the ability short term to divert more of the river to Indian irrigation and storage, sufficient to cause some immediate distress in Pakistan. Indian media are already thrilled with the idea. But long term major reblancing of the river water allocation would require substantive new infrastructure in India. Such projects however would be both economically viable and likely wildly popular with Modi’s Hindutva base both for promoting Indian development and for damaging Pakistan.

In 2019, Modi revoked Article 270 of the Indian constitution which gave special autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir, incorporating them into India proper. He did this despite the Constitution stating it could only be done with the support of the “Constituent Assembly of the State.” That body no longer existed, having been replaced by a “legislative Assembly.” Modi used another Constitutional provision to replace “Constituent Assembly” with “Legislative Assembly,” which seems fair enough. But having suspended the Legislative Assembly, he then claimed that its powers were now vested in the Governor, a Modi appointee.

Modi then agreed with himself to remove the autonomy of Indian Kashmir—a move that had no significant support among its 97% Muslim inhabitants and was accompanied by a ferocious crackdown, indeed lockdown, and the destruction of its once thriving tourism industry. He simultaneously repealed another provision preventing non Kashmiris from buying property in the region. Modi himself is therefore very much the cause of heightened ethnic, political and religious tension in Kashmir.

It is generally recognised that the situation of Kashmir, partly in India and partly in Pakistan with a small portion in China, and the Indian part occupied by deeply dissatisfied Muslims, is a result of the disastrous British partition of India of 1947. But in fact British responsibility for the disaster of modern Kashmir goes back a hundred years further than that, to 1846.

Kashmir was part of the Dourrani Afghan Empire from 1758 until 1819, when it was captured by the Sikh Empire of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. Singh was always careful to place Muslim Governors over Muslim lands, including from the Dourrani family itself. He allied with the British during the First Afghan War, and sent troops, including Kashmiri levies, to aid the British invasion in 1839. However after Ranjit Singh’s death and civil war over the succession, the British attacked the Sikh Empire to “restore stability.” Following the battle of Sobraon, the British annexed the land between the Beas and Ravi rivers, while by the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846 the British sold Jammu and Kashmir to the former Sikh wazir, Gulab Singh, for 50 lakhs of rupees.

Gulab Singh was a particularly murderous character who had played an extraordinarily Machiavellian role in the Sikh court of Ranjit Singh and his immediate successors, and had of course looted from the Sikh treaury the money he paid to the British. So he paid the British with stolen money for land the British had just stolen.

This is how the extraordinary situation arose that the Muslim territories of Kahmir and Jammu had a Hindu ruler (Gulab Singh was a Hindu Dogra). That anomaly was the direct cause of the disastrous division of the territory by the British in the Partition 100 years later.

It is extremely frequent that today’s conflicts are caused by the actions of the British Empire reverberating down and continuing their evil over generations. It is equally frequent that it is very hard to find analyses that explain the truth behind the conflicts.

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On ‘Moral Panic’ and the Courage to Speak: The West’s Silence on Gaza

April 24, 2025

avatarBy Ilan Pappé, Znet, April 23, 2025, 6 Mins Read

The Palestinians do not have the luxury for Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small but important step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed.

The responses in the Western world to the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians?

Why is the Democratic Party in the US complicit, directly and indirectly, in sustaining the daily inhumanity in Palestine—a complicity so visible that it probably was one of the reasons they lost the election, as the Arab American and progressive vote in key states could, and justifiably so, not forgive the Biden administration for its part in the genocide in the Gaza Strip?

This is a pertinent question, given that we are dealing with a televised genocide that has now been renewed on the ground. It is different from previous periods in which Western indifference and complicity were displayed, either during the Nakba or the long years of occupation since 1967.

During the Nakba and up to 1967, it was not easy to get hold of information, and the oppression after 1967 was mostly incremental and, as such, was ignored by the Western media and politics, which refused to acknowledge its cumulative effect on the Palestinians.  

But these last eighteen months are very different. Ignoring the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank can only be described as intentional and not out of ignorance. Both the Israelis’ actions and the discourse that accompanies them are too visible to be ignored, unless politicians, academics, and journalists choose to do so. 

This kind of ignorance is, first and foremost, the result of successful Israeli lobbying that thrived on the fertile ground of European guilt complex, racism and Islamophobia.  In the case of the US, it is also the outcome of many years of an effective and ruthless lobbying machine that very few in academia, media, and, in particular, politics dare to disobey.

This phenomenon is known in recent scholarship as moral panic, very characteristic of the more conscientious sections of Western societies: intellectuals, journalists, and artists.

Moral panic is a situation in which a person is afraid of adhering to his or her own moral convictions because this would demand some courage that might have consequences. We are not always tested in situations that require courage, or at least integrity. When it does happen, it is in situations where morality is not an abstract idea but a call for action.

This is why so many Germans were silent when Jews were sent to extermination camps, and this is why white Americans stood by when African Americans were lynched or earlier on enslaved and abused.  

What is the price that leading Western journalists, veteran politicians, tenured professors, or CEOs of well-known companies would have to pay if they were to blame Israel for committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip?

It seems that they are worried about two possible outcomes. The first is being condemned as antisemites or Holocaust deniers, and secondly, they fear that their honest response would trigger a discussion that will include the complicity of their country, or Europe, or the West in general, in enabling the genocide and all the criminal policies against the Palestinians that preceded it.

This moral panic leads to some astonishing phenomena. In general, it transforms educated, highly articulate, and knowledgeable persons into total imbeciles when they talk about Palestine. It disallows the more perceptive and thoughtful members of the security services from examining the Israeli demands to include all Palestinian resistance on a terrorist list, and it dehumanizes the Palestinian victims in the mainstream media.

The lack of compassion and basic solidarity with the victims of genocide was exposed by the double standards shown by mainstream media in the West, and in particular by the more established newspapers in the US, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. When the editor of Palestine Chronicle, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, lost 56 members of his family—killed by the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip—not one of his colleagues in American journalism bothered to talk to him or show any interest in hearing about this atrocity. On the other hand, a fabricated Israeli allegation of a connection between the Chronicle and a family in whose block of flats hostages were held triggered a huge interest by these outlets and attracted their attention.

This imbalance in humanity and solidarity is just one example of the distortions that moral panic brings with it. I have little doubt that the actions against Palestinian or pro-Palestinian students in the US, or against known activists in Britain and France, as well as the arrest of the editor of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, in Switzerland, are all manifestations of this distorted moral behavior.

A similar case unfolded just recently in Australia. Mary Kostakidis, a famous Australian journalist and former prime-time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter, has been taken to the federal court over her—one should say quite tame—reporting on the situation in the Gaza Strip. The very fact that the court has not dismissed this allegation upon its arrival shows you how deeply rooted moral panic is in the Global North.

But there is another side to it. Thankfully, there is a much larger group of people who are not afraid of taking the risks involved in clearly stating their support for the Palestinians, and who do show this solidarity while knowing it may lead to suspension, deportation, or even jail time. They are not easily found among the mainstream academia, media, or politics, but they are the authentic voice of their societies in many parts of the Western world.

The Palestinians do not have the luxury for Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small but important step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed—firstly to stop the destruction of Palestine and its people, and second, to create the conditions for a decolonized and liberated Palestine in the future.

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April 21, 2025

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐬, 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠

–Nasir Khan

The death of Pope Francis today in Rome is a sad event for all those who knew of his concern for the weak and poor. He opposed wars and bloodshed of fellow humans. Even yesterday, on Easter Sunday, he pleaded for a ceasefire in Gaza and the end of the humanitarian catastrophe there by those who are waging war on Gaza and destroying its people in the most brutal ways.

Will Israel and its major patrons of war and destruction in the Middle East pay any attention to the dying religious leader’s words?

We, who stand for truth, justice, and respect for international and humanitarian laws, offer our respect to the departed leader and send condolences to the followers of the Catholic Church.

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𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐬 ‘𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬’ 𝐋𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐈𝐃𝐅 𝐌𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟏𝟓 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐬

April 21, 2025

𝐴 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑓 𝐼𝐷𝐹 𝑣𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑎 ‘𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟-𝑢𝑝’

by Kyle Anzalone, Antiwar News, April 20, 2025

An inquiry by the Israeli Defense Forces into its soldiers murdering 15 Palestinian medics in Rafah last month dismissed its forces’ opening fire on the first responders.

The report by the IDF (Israeli Army) found that “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings” were the cause of Israeli soldiers killing 15 Palestinian medics. It concluded the troops opened fire on the ambulances “after perceiving an immediate and tangible threat.”

On March 23, IDF soldiers in Rafah opened fire on a convoy of ambulances. Initially, Tel Aviv claimed that the vehicles were driving erratically and without their lights on. However, a video from one of the medics’ phones showed that the ambulances were driving with caution and were using their sirens.

After the massacre of the medics, most of whom worked for the Red Crescent, the IDF buried the victims and their vehicles in a mass grave. Once the crime scene was exhumed, autopsies showed most of the first responders were killed by bullets to the head or chest.

The report claimed the mass grave was not an effort at an IDF cover-up. “There was no attempt to conceal the event, which was discussed with international organizations and the UN, including coordination for the removal of bodies,” the IDF asserted.

Breaking the Silence, an organization of IDF veterans, called the report a “cover-up.” “The investigation is riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details. The only ‘serious’ disciplinary action taken: the dismissal of the deputy commander of Golani’s elite unit.” The statement continued. “His reported ‘failure’ was submitting an incomplete account of the incident. In other words, he lied.”

The organization added, “We all remember when the IDF claimed that the ambulances’ emergency lights weren’t on — and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth.”

Over the past 18 months, the IDF has committed countless atrocities in Gaza. Most of the time, the mass killings of Palestinians by Israelis go unreported in Western media.

However, on a few occasions, IDF operations have come under scrutiny in the US. Tel Aviv has skirted any responsibility for the war crimes by investigating its forces and concluding there were errors made but no intentional or systemic wrongdoing.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.

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Why did UK media ignore Lammy’s secret meeting with Israeli foreign minister?

April 20, 2025

Peter Oborne

Published date: 17 April 2025 20:35 BST | Last update:2 days 22 hours ago

The British government wanted to keep this visit quiet, and journalists in the country were only too keen to comply

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is pictured in London on 26 March 2025 (Benjamin Cremel/AFP)

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is pictured in London on 26 March 2025 (Benjamin Cremel/AFP)

In theory, the role of the media is to tell the truth and hold power to account. British newspapers and broadcasters have not fulfilled this function when it comes to Israel and the Gaza war.

On the contrary, British journalists have repeated the lies promoted by Israeli and British politicians. Some have produced fresh lies of their own, effectively acting as the propaganda arm of the Israeli state. 

The latest case in point concerns this week’s visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar with his British counterpart, David Lammy. There’s no question this was major news. 

Saar was meeting the British foreign secretary just days after Israeli authorities detained and deported two Labour MPs – a month after Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas, opening the way to a fresh round of atrocities; and almost two months into Israel’s latest illegal blockade of Gaza. 

All this amid growing speculation that Israel is pressing for a new war on Iran.

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At the same time, Saar is one of the most senior members of a government on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The International Criminal Court has also put out an arrest warrant for his boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Saar himself recently attempted to justify Israel’s decision to cut off aid to Gaza, which is an act of collective punishment and a war crime.

No follow-up

Most people would expect such an individual to be treated as a pariah by a British government that regularly waxes lyrical on the “rules-based international order”. Instead, Britain rolled out the red carpet, with one difference: Saar’s visit was kept secret, unannounced by either the Israeli or British governments. 

On Tuesday, Middle East Eye revealed that Saar was due to visit the country imminently, thus making the trip public knowledge. No mainstream British newspaper followed up on the story. 

It only emerged that Saar had met Lammy in London after the Israeli government confirmed later on Tuesday that the two had discussed Iran’s nuclear programme and ongoing negotiations to free Israeli captives in Gaza. 

Israeli foreign minister meets David Lammy in London in unannounced trip

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MEE reported on the meeting, as did the Scottish paper, The National. The story also appeared in Israeli media.

It would be reasonable to expect the British Foreign Office to release a statement on the meeting, as is normally the case, and especially because Israel had done so. But there was no formal statement on Tuesday, and the Foreign Office declined to comment on the record in response to multiple requests by MEE.

One might have expected the meeting between Saar and Lammy to be of interest to British journalists. A visit by the foreign minister of a state that is at war and on trial for genocide was surely massive news.

One would have thought that any decent reporter would have been keen to put questions to Saar and Lammy. But that was not so. Our mainstream media joined forces with the Foreign Office and treated the Saar visit as a state secret.

Not a single mainstream British newspaper or channel covered the meeting, other than a belated Guardian story on Wednesday.

‘Utterly disgraceful’

Let’s try a mental experiment and suppose that Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, had been quietly smuggled into Britain to meet our foreign secretary. It would have made front-page news everywhere.

The day after the meeting between Saar and Lammy, MEE published interviews with two independent MPs, Iqbal Mohamed and Ayoub Khan, and Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski, in which they expressed concern over the affair.

Mohamed said Saar should not have been welcomed while Israel “continues its onslaught on the Palestinian people”. Khan described the meeting as “utterly disgraceful”. Polanski said it “shows more contempt for the huge concerns of a vast majority of people in the UK who want the killing to stop”.

The secrecy surrounding Saar’s visit … required the collaboration of the mainstream British media

On Wednesday evening, MEE reported that two legal groups had formally submitted a request to the UK’s attorney general and director of public prosecutions, seeking their consent to apply for an arrest warrant targeting the Israeli foreign minister.

The UK-based Global Legal Action Network and the Hind Rajab Foundation alleged that Saar had aided and abetted torture and grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza, and that he was implicated in the detention and torture of Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, who was taken captive in late 2024.

But these serious allegations against a man who had just met the British foreign secretary were apparently of no interest to the ever-so-respectable British media.

Eventually, The Guardian published a story reporting on the visit, quoting the Foreign Office – which had finally gone on the record to describe Saar’s trip as “private”.

Whatever the purpose of Saar’s visit, which encompassed a long discussion with Lammy about a range of Middle Eastern issues, it was not to visit friends and family. 

Deep unease

At the time of writing, the Foreign Office had still not published a news release about the trip. Apart from The Guardian, no major British paper – including the Telegraph, Times, Mail and Sun – had reported on Saar’s visit.

The BBC, which had not reported on the visit either, has instead suggested Saar was in Israel: an article on Thursday said the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews “visited Israel on Thursday, where he met” Saar. In fact, that meeting appears to have taken place in London.

Arrest warrant sought for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on visit to UK

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It’s long past time that the BBC learned that behaving as the official state stenographer does huge damage to its once-glorious reputation.

It’s obvious why the Starmer government wanted the Saar visit kept quiet. There is deep unease inside the Labour Party about British complicity in what many experts view as an Israeli genocide in Gaza. 

It’s much more helpful for Saar to be hustled in and out of Britain quietly, without any official word of his visit. No awkward questions, no news conferences – no need for Lammy to explain why Britain continues to provide arms and diplomatic support to Israel. 

The secrecy surrounding Saar’s visit, which has conveniently come during Parliament’s Easter recess, required the collaboration of the mainstream British media. As so often during the murderous Gaza war, they cheerfully obliged. 

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Palestinian Resistance in an Orwellian World

April 16, 2025

April 15, 2025

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In Palestine, Israel has been the executioner and the United States has been the executor of ethnic cleansing and genocide, though it is those who uphold international law that are blamed, writes M. Reza Behnam.

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu with President Donald Trump in a White House press event on April 7. (White House/Flickr)

By M. Reza Behnam
Z-Network

In the Orwellian world in which we now dwell, countries and groups that uphold international law are labeled terrorists or supporters of terrorism, while those that commit unspeakable crimes, flagrantly violating international and humanitarian laws, remain unlabeled and unpunished.

What the last year and a half in Gaza has glaringly demonstrated is how little the United States cares about upholding international law.  And that its outpost, Israel, continues to operate lawlessly outside international rules and moral norms.  In Palestine, Israel has been the executioner and the United States has been the executor of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have been breaking the law for Israel.

Unlike his predecessor, however, who attempted to hide or disguise his breach of international and U.S. laws, the Trump White House overtly and brazenly violates both.

The United States continues to provide lethal weapons for Tel Aviv’s engineered humanitarian catastrophe despite the fact that it is a signatory to the 1948 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” known as the Genocide Convention, a binding treaty which established a “responsibility to protect” obligation on state parties, whether they ratified it or not.

The Convention defined genocide and definitively recognized it as crime.  It also criminalized complicity and established duties on state parties to take measures to prevent and to punish perpetrators.

In addition to the above treaty, the 1945 U.N. Charter, 1949 Geneva Conventions, as well as other binding U.N. documents established a collective “responsibility to protect” against genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The obligation was meant to insure that the international community never again, as it did during World War II, failed to act.

History will harshly and rightly judge those countries and officials who have failed to fulfill their moral as well as their legal obligations to end the genocide.  And it will heap praise on those who did.

Unfortunately, no one has asked why the United States has been battering and mercilessly penalizing countries and groups that have been faithfully upholding their obligations under Article I of the Convention to “prevent and punish genocide.”

To counteract the Orwellian distortions that frame Israel’s ongoing atrocities it is important to give recognition to those who have acted on their moral and legal obligations under international law.

In a world where powerful nations act with impunity, some have acted to end the genocide:  Ansar Allah (also known as Houthis) in Yemen; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Islamic Republic of Iran and South Africa.

Resistance to oppression has been central to their identities and it is what has united them in solidarity with Palestinian resistance movements.  They have paid a great price for carrying out the mandates of international and humanitarian laws.

The United States designates any country or group that struggles against and opposes Israel as terrorists.

Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen

Satellite photo of Bab-el-Mandeb, the strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden where Ansar Allah has targeted certain commercial ships from pro-Israel countries. (WorldWind software/Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)

In response to Israel’s invasion and humanitarian blockade of Gaza, Ansar Allah entered the Gaza war on Oct. 31, 2023.  It began missile/drone attacks on commercial and military vessels linked to Israel in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.  The attacks were halted when the ceasefire agreement went into effect on Jan.19. When Israel violated the ceasefire in mid-March and restarted its genocidal campaign and blockade of food and medicine to Gaza, Ansar Allah resumed its attacks.

Its Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center explained: 

“We hope it is understood that the actions taken by the [Ansar Allah military]… stem from a deep sense of religious, humanitarian and moral responsibility toward the oppressed Palestinian people and aim to pressure the Israeli usurper entity to reopen the crossings to the Gaza Strip and allow the entry of aid, including food and medical supplies.”

The U.S. corporate media has disparagingly framed Ansar Allah as a regional proxy of Tehran.  They have failed, however, to report on Yemen’s  historical solidarity with Palestine.

In 1947, for example, Yemeni representatives to the United Nations opposed the partition of Palestine and during the 1973 October War, the Bab al-Mandab strait was closed to ships carrying fuel to Israel.  Also, the Republic of Yemen, following unification in 1990, pushed for U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization; and it extended the same rights and resources to Palestinian refugees as they did to their own citizens.

Hezbollah (Party of God) in Lebanon

Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Like Ansar Allah in Yemen, Hezbollah has been painted by the United States and the West as a terrorist organization.  It is in reality a national political party and military force dedicated to the defense of Lebanon and Palestinians against Israeli expansion and aggression.

The Israeli invasions and siege of Lebanon in 1982 drove the resistance.  Hezbollah officially announced its existence in 1985 in an “Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World.”  In the letter, they declared their intent to remove the Israeli occupiers from Lebanon, Palestine and Jerusalem.  The manifesto was revised in 2009 to reflect the organization’s commitment to work within the multi-sectarian Lebanese state.

Hezbollah, in solidarity with the Palestinians, began a campaign of attacks against the Zionist regime one day after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on Oct. 7.  They began shelling Israeli forces in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, opening a front in southern Lebanon.  Hezbollah refused to stop the attacks until Tel Aviv ended its genocide against the Palestinians.  During the brief ceasefire, they paused fighting.

Israel has assassinated a number of Hezbollah leaders, including popular secretary-general, Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah in 2024, believing it could crush the resistance.

The concept of resistance has been a guiding ideology of Hezbollah.  Its image in the Muslim world has been reinforced by its example of liberating Lebanese land in 2000 and 2006 through armed struggle against the Israeli occupiers, its unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, and in its opposition to U.S.-Israeli regional hegemony.

The ideas and ideals of the 1979 Iranian Revolution have driven Hezbollah’s evolution, which Iran has supported since the group’s early days.

Islamic Republic of Iran

Protest in Tehran against Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, Nov. 18, 2023. (Mostafa Tehrani/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)

Iran has, since 1979, come to be defined by its culture of resistance to U.S.-Israel hegemony and its commitment to Palestinian self-determination.  Resistance has been central to its foreign policy.  Article 152 of the December 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran declares that resolution:

“The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon the rejection of all forms of domination, both the exertion of it and submission to it, the preservation of the independence of the country…the defence of the rights of all Muslims, nonalignment with respect to the hegemonist superpowers, and the maintenance of mutually peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States.”

Additionally, Article 154, which states that Iran will refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, underscores the country’s support for “the just struggles of the mustad’affun [oppressed] against the mustakbirun [oppressors] in every corner of the globe.”

Iran has been fulfilling its responsibilities under international law to oppose Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.  Consequently, placing it at odds with U.S. administrations and under crippling economic sanctions since its history shifted from monarchy to an Islamic Republic.

Republic of South Africa

Lawyers for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at The Hague during public hearings in January 2024. (International Court of Justice)

South Africa, on Dec. 29, 2023, filed an application to institute proceedings against Israel before the judicial organ of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.  It brought the case by invoking its “obligation to prevent genocide” as a signatory to the UN Genocide Convention.

In “South Africa v. Israel,” lawyers for the High Court of South Africa argued that the “The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest levels of the state.”

Although the ICJ ordered (Jan. 26, 2024) Israel to take all measures to prevent acts of genocide, to punish those committing such acts and to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance and basic services, Israel has never complied with the Court’s legally binding ruling.

Since its initial application, South Africa has filed three other petitions to the ICJ for additional emergency protections for the Palestinians and 13 countries have filed declarations of support.

South Africa has, furthermore, refused to be bullied by the United States.  Despite threats from the current administration, including cuts to financial aid, Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola emphasized South Africa’s principled commitment to the rule of law and refusal to withdraw its case before the ICJ.

Silence of So-Called Civilized World

Ironically, while protestors on U.S. university campuses are kidnapped, illegally detained by the government for opposing the genocide in Gaza, the American president, disregarding international law, welcomes, rather than arrests, indicted war criminal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the White House.

[See: ICC Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu]

The obligation under customary international law to investigate and prosecute war criminals has been firmly established.  It is found in a number of treaties, in numerous resolutions adopted by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and reaffirmed on several occasions by the U.N. Security Council.  In addition, the preamble to the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has confirmed “the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.”

Non-party states to the ICC, like the United States, are obliged to cooperate with the court not only in cases referred by the Security Council but also under provisions in the 1949 Geneva Conventions whereby states must “respect and ensure” deference for international humanitarian law.

With regard to the actions of Palestinian resistance movements, it should be noted that the U.N. General Assembly has passed a number of resolutions recognizing the legitimacy of armed resistance as a means of oppressed peoples to achieve self-determination and independence.

The official silence of the so-called civilized world, particularly the United States, regarding Israel’s campaign of terror and barbarity in Gaza and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has set a dangerous precedent.  Rather than execute its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent and protect Palestinians from genocide, Washington has waged war against those who have.

The United States has, to its misfortune, invested heavily in its Zionist outpost, masquerading as a law-abiding moral country.  Israel has no written constitution and no defined borders; with that, it has lived outside the rules and laws of international conventions.

As a colonial entity, Israel’s leaders have known that in order to complete their supremacist aims in Palestine, they would have to operate outside international and humanitarian laws.  Unrestrained, that is what it has done for more than eight decades.  

The fate of Gaza dictates the future not only for Palestinians but for Zionist Israelis and Americans as well.  Most importantly, it asks the question will the new international order be one in which “might makes right” or “right makes right?”

M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East.

This article is from Z-Network.

Tags: Axis of Resistance Genocide Convention Hezbollah International Law Iranian Constitution M. Reza Behnam Palestinian genocide Palestinian resistance

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