The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued secret arrest warrants for three Israeli politicians and two military officials, Haaretz reported on 17 May, citing diplomatic sources.
The timing of their issuance is unknown. The ICC has often issued arrest warrants in secret, publicly announcing them only later to enable a possible arrest of the suspect.
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and State Attorney’s Office do not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The Hague-based court issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former War Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan requested that ICC judges issue the arrest warrants in May 2024, alleging that Netanyahu and Gallant were responsible for war crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, according to the ICC prosecutor.
In response to the issuance of the arrest warrants, the US and Israel carried out a campaign to pressure the ICC to prevent and cancel the arrest warrants issued against the Israeli leaders, Le Mondereported in August 2025.
The campaign, which targeted the ICC chief prosecutor Khan, began in March 2024 after he announced his intention to seek the indictment of Netanyahu and Gallant.
In response, the Israeli prime minister launched a campaign to use “all means” to stop the prosecutor with the help of his allies in London, Washington, and Berlin.
At the end of April 2024, a staff member at the ICC accused Khan of sexual assault.
A source speaking to Le Monde said the allegations were part of an effort to “get rid of the prosecutor” and “hijack the process” of arrest warrants.
In October 2024, while the judges were still determining whether to issue the arrest warrants, a mysterious account named “ICC Leaks” appeared on the social network site X.
The account publicized the allegations of sexual assault made against Karim Khan internally at the ICC the previous May.
The ICC finally issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on 21 November 2024.
In February 2025, Chief Prosecutor Khan was placed under sanctions by the US.
Netanyahu applauded the move, calling the court “anti-Semitic and corrupt.”
Khan continued to work on two other indictments against Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich.
However, Khan has been on temporary leave since 16 May 2025, pending the outcome of the investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations, which he strenuously denies.
During its genocide in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, while destroying most of the strip.
Jewish settlers insist they will colonize Gaza, as they are colonizing the occupied West Bank.
“We are here on the way to new Jewish communities in Gaza,” settler leader Daniella Weiss stated in an interview at the border of the strip in late April.
“The 2 million or whatever number of Arabs, Gazans, who live here will not live in Gaza,” Weiss added. “It can take a week, it can take maybe a few months. They will not live here.”
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UoyDOx5KOWM?feature=oembed& When representatives of Palestinian resistance factions arrived in Cairo in mid-March for talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, they were not told in advance that Nickolay Mladenov would be waiting for them.
Mladenov is no neutral broker. The former UN official now serves as director-general of US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace and its “High Representative for Gaza.”
According to Muhammad Shehada, Mladenov did not come to mediate. He came to deliver an ultimatum on behalf of Israel and the United States: Accept full unconditional disarmament or face a renewed Israeli onslaught.
On The Electronic Intifada Livestream on 7 May, Shehada said Palestinian factions saw Mladenov as “an emissary or an envoy of Benjamin Netanyahu,” the Israeli prime minister.
Citing accounts from participants, Shehada said Mladenov was “extremely condescending,” issuing a threat “that if you don’t accept my proposal, immediately, unconditionally, Israel would get a free hand in Gaza and would resume its military operations.”
A Palestinian writer and researcher from Gaza, Shehada is a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
You can watch his full conversation with co-hosts Ali Abunimah and Nora Barrows-Friedman in the video above.
From the UN to the Israel lobby
Mladenov’s bias is hardly hidden. After leaving his post as UN special coordinator for the “peace process” in 2021, he immediately joined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israel lobby group AIPAC.
His conduct in Cairo exposed what this whole process has really been about: forcing and formalizing Palestinian surrender.
In October, Israel agreed on paper to a ceasefire framework. The Palestinian resistance would ensure the return from Gaza of all living and dead Israeli prisoners of war and captives.
Israel, in turn, was supposed to stop its genocidal attack on Gaza, halt “all military operations,” pull back its forces, allow at least 600 aid trucks a day into the territory, permit 200,000 tents and 60,000 temporary homes, open the Rafah crossing and allow both an International Stabilization Force and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza – a Palestinian-run body meant to begin civilian governance – to enter the territory.
From there, negotiations on a second phase were supposed to begin.
Nickolay Mladenov at the launch of the Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in January 2026. The former UN official, now acting as Board of Peace “high representative,” is seen by Palestinians as a messenger for Israel. (Photo by World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell via Flickr, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
All this was set out in Trump’s so-called peace plan for Gaza, endorsed by the UN Security Council in November – in the face of united opposition from Palestinians who viewed the resolution as capitulating to Tel Aviv and Washington and violating fundamental principles of international law.
The Palestinian resistance nevertheless kept its side of the deal. Israel, to no one’s surprise, violated virtually all of its commitments, while the supposed mediators, especially the United States, did nothing.
As Shehada explained on the Livestream, the only item ever fulfilled was the release of Israeli captives.
Since then, Israel has continued killing Palestinians, choking off aid, blocking temporary shelters and preventing the Palestinian-run administrative committee from even entering the territory.
Yet Washington, the other so-called mediators and much of the media shifted the focus away from Israel’s violations and ongoing crimes and back onto the old colonial demand that Palestinians surrender all means to resist and defend themselves.
Palestinian factions rejected the ultimatum, infuriating Mladenov.
“Israel never fulfilled phase one of the Trump deal. How are you asking us to move to phase two when the first phase was never fulfilled?” Shehada said, summarizing the position Palestinian resistance representatives put to Mladenov.
Terms of surrender
In a recent +972 Magazine article, Shehada reports on two Arabic-language documents laying out Mladenov’s demands.
Mladenov set out a 250-day timeline ending with Palestinians handing over even personal weapons and, “only once an investigative committee verifies that Gaza is completely free of any weapons whatsoever – a very elusive process – would Israel make a limited and ‘gradual’ withdrawal over an undefined period of time to the ‘Red Line’ that would still leave it in control of about 38 percent of Gaza.”
“Rubble removal and reconstruction under Mladenov’s proposal would only begin on day 251,” Shehada adds.
The documents – reviewed by The Electronic Intifada – strip Hamas and the other factions of any governing role. They place Gaza under external control, similar to the colonial Mandate under which Britain ruled Palestine after World War I.
Israel would remain in control of Gaza deep into the process, with the final stage still preserving an indefinite Israeli “security perimeter” inside the territory.
The point is plain enough. Israel and the US want to keep using hunger, destruction, despair and blackmail to impose what Israel’s army – despite more than two years of genocide and devastation – could not impose by force.
Shehada summarized the logic clearly on Livestream. Mladenov, he said, demanded that Palestinians “become absolutely defenseless, weaponless,” and trust their lives to an occupier and its backers who have never stopped killing them.
What then is the endgame? According to Shehada, Mladenov’s proposals aim “to completely rewrite the Trump plan to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s satisfaction,” in order to render it unworkable and “give Israel an absolute free hand to do whatever it wants.”
While humanitarian relief and recovery were supposed to begin immediately in phase one, Mladenov is holding the civilian population’s most basic rights and their very survival hostage to total surrender by the resistance.
He is, according to Shehada, seeking the “destruction of everything that they [Palestinians] have that might be used as either defensive weaponry or as basic leverage in any future negotiations.”
Decommissioning vs. disarmament
Trump’s plan does not even mention disarmament. Instead it calls for “placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning.”
That language comes directly from the Northern Ireland peace process. In practice, decommissioning meant armed groups did not immediately give up their weapons, but placed them out of sight and out of use so long as the political process advanced and Britain took reciprocal steps to withdraw its forces and dismantle its repressive apparatus in the north of Ireland.
The weapons remained an insurance card if commitments were violated. Indeed, the Irish Republican Army slowed, and at crisis points suspended, its participation in decommissioning to pressure the British government to fulfill its promises.
“Hamas was saying that we can do this,” according to Shehada. “Lock all the weapons up in depots for the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and then you need an agreement to end the Palestinian question, to end Israel’s apartheid.”
Actual disarmament – the final destruction of resistance weapons – would therefore be the result of a political settlement and a reciprocal process, not a precondition imposed only on one side.
As flawed and Israel-biased as it was, Shehada acknowledged that by adopting the concept of decommissioning, the Trump framework “was premised on the idea that you don’t have to surrender, you don’t have to capitulate.”
According to Shehada, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ireland and the United Kingdom support decommissioning as a mechanism for Gaza.
Netanyahu and Mladenov replaced that with demands for outright disarmament – meaning, as Shehada put it, “surrender everything you have. You have absolutely no leverage whatsoever.”
But the comparison has limits.
Northern Ireland involved a political process that at least formally recognized the rights and aspirations of all participants and established a path towards a united Ireland, the core objective of the Irish anti-colonial struggle.
With Palestine, even states backing decommissioning still start from the colonial premise that Palestinian resistance is the problem, not Zionist colonization, apartheid, siege and genocide.
Iran changes the power balance
This is why the regional dimension matters. The demand that the Palestinian – and for that matter Lebanese – resistance surrender rests on the assumption that the US and Israel still dominate the region so completely that they can dictate terms and everybody else must obey.
But the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, and Hizballah’s formidable resistance in Lebanon, have exposed real limits to that power.
Iran has not only withstood a full-scale joint assault by the world’s and the region’s strongest and most genocidal military forces, it has arguably emerged stronger.
Shehada said Trump’s Board of Peace “began to unravel” once the US and Israel attacked Iran.
He noted that Indonesia suspended its participation and said Gaza’s factions drew a blunt lesson from the regional confrontation: “If you stand your ground, if you hit back, you strike back, you maintain steadfastness, you will get your way.”
“That lesson was immediately caught by people in Gaza,” Shehada said. It made the resistance factions “even more uncompromising on accepting the Mladenov proposal.”
Despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation Israel deliberately maintains, Washington and Tel Aviv have not secured the regional omnipotence they claim.
The existence of Palestinian weapons is not the root problem, but the consequence of the root problem: Zionist occupation, land theft, apartheid and genocide, sustained by US imperial power.
This basic truth cannot be wished away.
Any plan that begins by demanding Palestinian submission while leaving Israeli colonial power intact is a fraud.
Palestine, especially Gaza, does not need more such scams dressed up as “peace.” Its people need liberation and the restoration of all their rights.
The durable Western support for Israel even as it has perpetrated genocide since 7 October 2023 underscores that liberation will not be a gift from the likes of Mladenov, nor a reward for what Israel’s arms suppliers and financiers consider Palestinian good behavior.
As in every anti-colonial struggle, liberation will be won by Palestinians through their own efforts and sacrifices – and through the broader regional struggle to end the US imperial domination without which the Zionist colony in Palestine would disintegrate.
Tens of thousands of Jewish settlers descended on occupied Jerusalem on 14 May to celebrate the so-called ‘Flag March,’ beating Palestinian residents in the Muslim Quarter of the city, damaging storefronts, and shouting anti-Arab slogans.
The event, also known as the Flag Dance, commemorates the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967.
Even before the parade began, Zionist youths pushed and cursed Palestinian residents and activists from “Standing Together,” an Israeli-Palestinian group established to protect Palestinians during the parade.
“When we put our bodies on the line, it oftentimes reduces the violence because settlers are less willing to attack when there are Jews there or when we document what’s going on,” stated Ori Shaham, the group’s international spokesperson.
The parade has long been marked by violence, extreme racism, and hate songs directed against the Palestinian residents of the Old City.
On Wednesday, the Knesset’s Aliyah, Absorption, and Diaspora Committee held a discussion on the violence directed against Christians during the annual parade.
The committee’s chairman, MK Gilad Kariv, stated that “there is nothing more ugly and offensive to the status of Jerusalem than the ugly behavior on the sidelines of the Flag Parade.”
“Every year we know what will happen … Muslim and Christian residents will close their shops, close their homes and schools, and lock themselves in their homes so as not to be exposed to violence? Is this the way of Judaism and the Torah of Israel?”
Last month, Haaretz reported that the Authority for Jewish National Identity in the Prime Minister’s Office provided nearly $200,000 in funding to organize the parade.
The remainder of the $400,000 budget was provided by the Foundation for the Renewal of Communities in Israel, an umbrella organization for several Torah groups.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir used the Flag Day march to make a provocative raid on the Temple Mount, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the Israeli leader made a secret visit to the United Arab Emirates during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, though Abu Dhabi later denied the claim.
“In the midst of Operation Roaring Lion, Prime Minister Netanyahu secretly visited the United Arab Emirates, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed,” his office said in a statement. “This visit has led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE.”
In response, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry said that it “denies reports circulating regarding an alleged visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE, or receiving any Israeli military delegation in the country.”
President Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan sign the Abraham Accords on September 15, 2020 (White House photo)
“The UAE reaffirms that its relations with Israel are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements. Accordingly, any claims regarding unannounced visits or undisclosed arrangements are entirely unfounded unless officially announced by the relevant authorities in the UAE,” the statement added.
In response to the Israeli statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested that Iran was aware of a visit by Netanyahu to the UAE. “Netanyahu has now publicly revealed what Iran’s security services long ago conveyed to our leadership,” he wrote on X.
“Enmity with the Great People of Iran is a foolish gamble. Collusion with Israel in doing so: unforgivable. Those colluding with Israel to sow division will be held to account,” Araghchi added.
The claim from Netanyahu’s office comes amid a series of revelations about the UAE’s ties with Israel and its involvement in the war on Iran.
“They were the first Abraham Accord member,” Huckabee said, referring to the UAE. “But look at the benefits that they have had as a result: Israel just sent them Iron Dome batteries and personnel to help operate them. How come? Because there’s an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel.”
At the time of the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, which also included a normalization deal between Israel and Bahrain, US and Israeli officials were clear that one goal of the accords was to create a regional alliance against Iran.
The UAE has also launched direct strikes against Iran, including an attack on Iranian oil infrastructure that came after the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran came into effect.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold banners and signs as they protest outside the Microsoft Build conference at the Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.
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Microsoft’s Israel subsidiary has announced that its general manager, Alon Haimovich, will be stepping down from his position on May 31, after an investigation into the subsidiary’s collaboration with the Israeli military.
Microsoft ordered an inquiry into its Israel subsidiary last year after a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealed the Israeli military’s extensive use of Microsoft’s Azure platform for surveillance.
The Israeli military, it was found, used Microsoft’s Azure cloud-based system to store millions of daily phone calls made by Palestinians, enabling it to capture a much larger pool of everyday Palestinian communication than possible on military servers. According to +972 Magazine, this has created “what is likely one of the world’s largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group.” This has in turn shaped the Israeli military’s operations in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Though Microsoft claimed its leadership was unaware of how the Azure cloud system would be used, leaked documents revealed that Israel’s military surveillance gave specific instructions for its vision of a project that would store “A million [Palestinian] calls an hour.”
The Israeli military’s Unit 8200 — an intelligence unit comparable to the U.S.’s National Security Agency — had approached Microsoft’s CEO in 2021 to work with Microsoft’s Azure to create a specific database for its mass surveillance of Palestinians.
The tech giant could face legal liability for aiding and abetting “atrocity crimes” in Palestine, legal groups say. By Mike Ludwig , Truthout
December 3, 2025
Israeli military sources said that intelligence from the phone calls was then used to identify bombing targets in Gaza, and that the military’s use of Azure had increased during the course of the genocide in Gaza. Initially, the Israeli military had focused its use of the Azure cloud platform on the West Bank, creating a network of surveillance used to assist in the Israeli occupation’s domination there.
Microsoft’s inquiry has concluded, according to The Guardian, and has resulted in Microsoft Israel’s general manager, Haimovich, leaving the company.
Several other managers of Microsoft Israel have also left their positions amidst the inquiry.
Though it has not laid out its full findings, Microsoft’s inquiry concluded that the Israeli military intelligence unit violated Microsoft’s terms of service, which prohibit the use of its technology to facilitate mass surveillance. Microsoft then ended Unit 8200’s ability to access its cloud services and AI used to support its surveillance project.
Beyond the Azure cloud system, Microsoft is used in all major infrastructure in the Israeli military system.
In a statement sent to Truthout upon the news that Microsoft Israel’s general manager would be departing, No Azure for Apartheid, an activist group that is part of a broader movement of tech organizers, said the decision “comes at the heels of relentless pressure from our campaign” as well as that of other activists.
“Microsoft has tried to quietly say goodbye to war criminal Alon Haimovich, who oversaw the development of Azure tools for the Israeli military which helped accelerate the first AI-powered genocide,” the group said.
Contrary to claims that Microsoft’s leadership did not know how the technology would be used, No Azure for Apartheid asserts that Haimovich worked closely with Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella.
“Microsoft workers who continue to speak up about those war crimes are arrested, prosecuted, brutalized, fired and sanctioned,” the statement continues.
The statement also claims that Microsoft’s investigations have not stopped it from “continuing to supply cloud and AI arms to the Israeli military” and that the group “refuse[s] to allow Microsoft to scapegoat one or a handful of individuals to wipe its hands clean of its complicity in genocide.” Microsoft, they said, must “end this collusion and cut off all ties with the Israeli military and government immediately.”
Hossam Nasr, an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid and a former tech worker fired by Microsoft for speaking out against the company’s complicity with Israel’s military, told Truthout:
Over the course of the genocide, we’ve come to learn how deeply embedded Microsoft is within the Israeli military ecosystem. Microsoft supplies cloud, AI, computing, storage and advanced AI models to the Israeli military to be used not just by Unit 8200 but also Mamram, Ofek, and specific naval, air and ground units in the Israeli military. Microsoft has a footprint in all major military infrastructures in Israel.
Following a relentless campaign waged by No Azure for Apartheid — which included a worker petition signed by over 2000 employees, disruptions at key events, and an encampment and sit-in at the president’s office last summer — Microsoft became the first U.S. tech company to end some of its contracts with the Israeli military in September 2025, Nasr said. But although the company stopped selling some of its cloud and AI services to Unit 8200, “the vast majority of their contracts with the Israeli military remain intact.”
Microsoft continues to be a partner in not only Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but in the war on Iran and Israel’s war on southern Lebanon, Nasr said.
“This gives us even more fuel and motivation to continue our organizing. We’re not going to stop until all our demands are met — until Microsoft ends all of its contracts with the Israeli military.”
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Consortium News, Volume 31, Number 131 — Thursday, May 14, 2026
Not questioning Zionism has long been the entry ticket to the British political and media Establishment, but although public belief in the Zionist narrative is fatally damaged, prosecutions of pro-Palestinian activists continue.
Demonstration protesting Gaza genocide in Edinburgh outside the Scottish first minister’s office, July 19, 2025. (Photo from author’s website)
Unquestioning Zionism has for decades been the entry ticket to the British political and media Establishment.
Anybody who was not a fully certified and compliant Zionist would find their career limited – as Jeremy Corbyn, Alan Duncan, Robin Cook and David Mellor all found. Most others, of course, were never allowed to progress that far.
In the media there are any number of examples — Antoinette Lattouf, Emily Wilder, Katie Halper, Gabriele Nunziante and Sangita Myska — just from the top of my head. Lack of enthusiasm for Israel is career-destroying.
One consequence is that now, as the U.K. political system retches to try and vomit up a new prime minister, every single one of the contenders — Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting — has a long history of nailed-on, certified Zionism and relationship with both Israel and Labour Friends of Israel, and is a long-term recipient of Zionist lobby cash.
The media have spent the last several days since the local elections studiously ignoring the fact that support for genocide is a key factor in alienating the Labour Party’s traditional voting base — or when they do mention it, relating it only to Muslim voters. One thing we know for certain is that any probable new prime minister is not going to change Britain’s support for the genocidal zionist entity.
Zionism has long poisoned the central nervous system of the U.K. body politic.
For many years, due to its media control, this system worked seamlessly.
The media portrayed a benign image of Israel as a bastion of liberal democratic values under siege from corrupt and barbaric Arab peoples.
The genocide of Palestinians, which has been in progress almost 80 years, proceeded at a pace and by methods which rigorous media control made it possible to convince Western audiences was not really happening at all.
When a kickback against genocide came on Oct. 7, 2023, media gatekeeping made the declaration of condemnation of Hamas a ritual which had to be observed to ensure purity before you were permitted to express anything else at all.
The media united around false atrocity stories of the events of Oct. 7. Then they united around false Israeli narratives in which every Gazan hospital, clinic, school, public utility and eventually home was a secret Hamas missile base.
Zionist Narrative Fatally Damaged
At this point, something broke. There was a spectacular burst in public opinion. From being a lulling, soothing narrative of European civilisational superiority, the Zionist propaganda was revealed as obvious lies in the service of the very worst atrocities man could do to man (and child).
The media covered up the horrors and the Israeli government raced to stem the flow of images out of Gaza by murdering every journalist there, but public belief in the zionist narrative was fatally damaged.
The result of that was Western Zionist governments became scared of their own populations. In virtually every Western state, extreme authoritarian measures were adopted to limit free speech and punish pro-Palestinian protest.
This was followed by attempts to reinforce the exclusion from public life of non-Zionists by a new wave of accusations of anti-Semitism, reinforced by waves of false flag or agent provocateur organised “anti-Semitic incidents.”
Incidentally the Hasbara invented “Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya” so-called terrorist group – actually an Israeli-operated Telegram account – was first “revealed” to the Western public by Joe Truzman of Israeli Washington-front organisation the Foundation for Defending Democracy (F.D.D.).
Nick Stewart of the F.D.D. has subsequently been added to the Witkoff-Kushner negotiating team with Iran and flew to Islamabad with them.
The Iranians have entirely sensibly refused to engage with this group as simply representing Israel.
That is where we are now, with extraordinary developments like the effort to jail and debar Rajiv Menon KC for contempt of court for what I had called the greatest legal speech I ever read, and the charging of thousands of peaceful citizens under terrorism laws for supporting Palestine Action.
[On Tuesday, human rights barrister Menon won his appeal against contempt of court proceedings leveled at him for a closing speech in the trial of Palestine Action activists.
On the same day, however, news outlets reported that a “terrorism connection” was added to the case, which the jury did not know about and which means four of the anti-genocide defendants found guilty in a retrial can be sentenced as terrorists.]
Those are but horrible symptoms of a wider malaise — and the fundamental shift is that the majority of the population, and above all of younger people, now realise that they are governed by a political and media class which acts in service of a Zionist project which is truly evil.
The billionaire class was already allied with the far right. As the appalling fall in living standards of ordinary people since the 2008 banking crisis has been caused by the massive and artificially wrought concentration of wealth which followed, the efforts to divert attention from the hoarders of wealth instead to scapegoat immigrants have entailed massive financial and corporate media backing for racist politicians.
Racism & Zionism Ally
This now syncs neatly with their need for support for Zionism. Zionism has found support through an easy alliance with the rampant Islamophobia that underpins much of the anti-migrant sentiment in the U.K. and rest of the Western world.
Israel’s core support now does not feel the need to hide the fact that Israel was always a deeply racist project.
Israel’s core supporters now glory in racist genocide, as the Tommy Robinson march this weekend will demonstrate and as the Israeli flags at Reform rallies show.
On last week’s election coverage on all U.K. television channels, every single time a Green representative came on they were immediately pushed to criticise Zack Polanski’s comments on the Golders Green incident — where a certified lunatic stabbed two Jewish men after stabbing a Muslim man.
I was sad — and somewhat shocked — to hear every single Green Party representative head immediately for the Jeremy Corbyn tactic of abject apology and condemnation of “anti-Semitism.”
Only Jenny Jones then pushed back against the conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Jenny Jones, The Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, member of the House of Lords. (Official Portrait, Wikipedia)
The exclusion of non-Zionists is still in force within the political and media class. It will remain in force until we change the political and media class.
Personally, the disconnect between the revulsion of the large majority of people of the Western world at the genocide in Gaza, and the people’s complete lack of political power to stop their uni-party political leaderships from supporting genocide, has fundamentally changed my view of politics.
I now fully accept that the change the Western world needs is revolutionary, not incremental.
The problem is those of the exploited classes who have reached breaking point, have so far been easily diverted down the track of racism and away from their true enemies. I fear that is a tactic not likely to fail soon.
We continue to fight with what weapons we have to hand. On May 27 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh we will continue our legal battle against the proscription of Palestine Action.
The May 27 hearing will be on our motion to suspend the proscription in Scotland pending the Scottish judicial review. Decent, caring people are still being dragged through the Scottish courts on potentially life-changing terrorism charges merely for expressing their support for Palestine Action’s attempts to stop genocide.
Many have been dragged to court again and again as their cases are continually put off, while the legal establishment havers over the proscription.
The Crown Office refuses to drop prosecutions and Police Scotland refuses to say it will not arrest people. Nobody has any certainty as to whether the law is being enforced or not.
Arrests and prosecutions appear entirely at executive whim – the very definition of arbitrary government. We seek to end this uncertainty.
The U.K. government is bringing a counter motion to sist (suspend) the judicial review pending the conclusion of the English proceedings — a straight Unionist argument that these things should be decided in London for the whole of the U.K.
I do hope you will come to the court in Edinburgh on May 27, both to witness the proceedings and to demonstrate outside and show that public revulsion at genocide is not going away, and is only increased by Israel’s illegal attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
I am afraid these proceedings are horribly expensive to keep the legal battle going. Again, please contribute if you can, but do not contribute if it causes you difficulty. If you know people who are able to afford to help and likely to be sympathetic, please do contact them and ask their assistance. We are trying to keep a lot of very good people out of prison.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Subscriptions to keep Craig Murray’s blog going are gratefully received. Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, Murray has set up new methods of payment including a GoFundMe appeal and a Patreon account.
Major protests have been held in London and other cities against the ban on Palestine Action. (Dinendra Haria / ZUMA Press)
On 13 February, the UK’s High Court of Justice ruled that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful.
Palestine Action was added to the list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, a move initiated by the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and passed by Britain’s Parliament.
In February, a panel of three senior judges allowed the challenge brought by Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, on two grounds.
First, the pathway to reach the decision to proscribe was not in line with the Home Office’s own policy. Second, a crucial ruling held that the ban under the Terrorism Act interfered with the fundamental rights of free expression and free assembly.
Yet the group remains banned, pending the outcome of the British government’s appeal.
The government’s challenge to the February ruling was heard by the Court of Appeal in late April. The verdict in the appeal case is expected within the coming weeks.
Paying no mind to the proscription, people from all walks of life have continued to show their opposition to the UK’s role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and in imperial violence throughout the Middle East. It’s clear beyond any doubt that Westminster failed at halting autonomous resistance or popular support for Palestine Action.
Direct action is a political strategy with little regard for established pathways to change when operating within a political environment that fails to prioritize human life over the interests of global finance and a decaying imperial order. Direct action is a weapon of the people.
As I write this, I am currently incarcerated in the UK, accused of being connected to an action at Brize Norton which saw two people enter a Royal Air Force base and spray paint on Voyager aircrafts which were being used to refuel British spy planes. The spy planes had regularly been seen above Gaza during Israel’s genocidal campaign, and have more recently been used to support US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Yvette Cooper responded to the action at Brize Norton by announcing proscription. My co-defendants and I were arrested by counterterrorism police.
We were held completely incommunicado for the first 48 hours. Now, we all await trial in prison.
We have already spent approximately 10 months on remand (in pre-trial detention) and face additional time if not granted bail. Under most circumstances, the limit on detention in police custody is 24 hours and imprisonment without conviction should not exceed six months.
Moreover, being imprisoned under the Terrorism Act subjects us to further surveillance and security measures while in prison. A Muslim co-defendant of mine, held in the Wormwood Scrubs prison, has recently been visited by counterterrorism officers and instructed not to speak Arabic or practice Islam outside of his cell.
We are all subjected to legislation that is on paper the same. In reality, our treatment differs based in part on our proximity to contemporary stereotypes of terrorism.
These stereotypes, created through mainstream media and the entertainment industry, are directly linked to the state’s ability to disregard its subjects’ claims to rights, seemingly celebrated in liberal democracies.
Freedom to practice one’s religion is one of those rights.
Terror of occupation
Contemporary domestic counterterrorism powers deliberately lack many of the safeguards that, however imperfect, exist under most other encounters with the state. I am being subjected to this firsthand.
Globally, the so-called war on terror green-lighted torture and prolonged imprisonment of innocent people without any judicial oversight in places like Guantanamo or US-run black sites.
Terrorism, defined as the use of “terror” to advance a political or ideological cause, leaves out the reality that the colonizer or Western soldiers’ acts of terror are considered perfectly justified, no matter how brutal.
For the colonized, any attempts at survival are quickly designated as acts of terrorism, regardless of the actual means of resistance. From First Nations on the American continent through Algeria to Ireland and Palestine, labeling occupied people as terrorists is an attempt to strip them of their right to govern themselves and govern their land.
Palestinian children understand the meaning of terrorism far better than Shabana Mahmood, the current home secretary, or Yvette Cooper ever could. They live through the terror of occupation day in, day out.
The decision to proscribe cannot be viewed as an isolated instance of state repression. Countering so-called terrorism, with all its material consequences, has been deployed to stifle dissent throughout history.
The meaning of terrorism has always been deliberately vague and often manipulated to fit the given ruling class and its ideological interests. The designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was not an error in an otherwise well-designed system.
It might have been an escalation, but nevertheless it was one that is in line with the historical utilization of a broad range of counterinsurgency tactics against effective political movements.
So while resistance to genocide and occupation never relied on permission from the courts, the ruling of Palestine Action’s proscription as unlawful is extremely significant nonetheless. It is the first successful legal challenge to a group’s proscription since the current counterterrorism powers came into force at the start of the century.
The court ruling from 13 February isn’t only a massive victory for the freedom of speech and right to protest in the UK. It challenges the state’s hegemony on deploying counterterrorism powers as a tool to manufacture a climate of fear, to distract, to justify invasion or genocide and in our case, attempt to make us into a deterrent.
The past 10 months have seen a sharp rise in public critiques of counterterrorism powers, especially in the context of political repression.
That has been made possible in no small way thanks to the campaign organized by Defend Our Juries and thanks to continuing resistance on the streets, on the top of weapons factories, and within prisons.
I reject the label of “terrorist.” I reject it only insofar as this rejection leads to the naming of terror experienced by millions in this country and globally – lack of social care, poverty, homelessness, brutal border policies and imperial wars.
State-sanctioned terrorism is policy-driven and deliberate terror, aimed at protecting the ideology of free market capitalism. I witness the effects of state-sanctioned terrorism daily through the stories and the fears of many women held behind the same walls as me.
I reject the label of “terrorist” as a way to reject the notion that all life isn’t equal.
I believe that we will ultimately see the unlawful proscription of Palestine Action completely lifted. However, we have a duty to keep up the struggle against the strategic deployment of counterterrorism powers at large beyond this moment.
Something that seems unavoidable at a time of increased imperial violence enacted by the US and the Zionist regime, whose leaders, yet again, rely on the excuse of fighting terrorism to justify their attacks on sovereign countries, all the while instilling terror themselves.
Jon Cink is in pre-trial detention after being arrested for allegedly breaking into Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airforce base, and helping to decommission two warplanes suspected of being used in the Gaza genocide.
Amnesty International released a report Tuesday detailing the Israeli military’s leveling of more than a dozen high-rise residential and commercial buildings in the Gaza Strip late last year, attacks that the leading human rights organization said must be investigated as “war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment.”
The new report cites “celebratory and gleeful” comments from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz as evidence that there was no plausible military objective for Israel’s destruction of at least 13 multistory residential and commercial buildings in Gaza City between September and October 2025. In one mid-September social media post, Katz boasted that Israeli bombs sent one Gaza university “soaring to the heavens.”
Amnesty, which has called Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, notes that the Fourth Geneva Convention bars occupying powers from engaging in collective punishment and property destruction “except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”
“In the month preceding the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Israel expanded and escalated its relentless assault on Gaza City, causing one of the worst waves of mass displacement during the genocide,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns. “A key pattern of this assault was the deliberate destruction, through aerial bombardment, of multi-story civilian buildings, leveling the homes of thousands of civilians, and destroying makeshift camps in their vicinity.”
“All the available evidence indicates that Israel’s destruction of these 13 high-rise buildings was not ‘rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’ and as such must be investigated as war crimes,” she added.
“”Our children are sick from the rain and cold. It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything.“
Amnesty said that satellite imagery, interviews with residents displaced by Israel’s large-scale destruction of Gaza buildings, and verified video footage revealed “a chilling pattern of deliberate destruction of the civilian structures by Israeli forces without requisite military necessity.” A 32-year-old IT engineer told the group that his family, including three children, is now living in a tent in southern Gaza after Israel bombed the 10-story Al-Najm building in Gaza City.
“Our children are sick from the rain and cold,” the man said. “It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything. My other children, a six-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, are traumatized; we had to run away from home and they saw it bombed into rubble in front of their eyes. They don’t understand and I can’t explain it to them.”
The United Nations has estimated that Israeli attacks have damaged or destroyed more than 80% of structures in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, when Israel’s assault began in response to a deadly Hamas-led attack.
“The widespread destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, including homes, either through bombardment or demolitions with explosives, combined with Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry of shelter material into Gaza and the prohibition on the return to the areas east of the yellow line, have inflicted catastrophic suffering on Gaza’s population,” said Guevara Rosas. “Israel must allow immediate, unfettered access to indispensable aid and goods, including shelter material.”
“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable,” she added.
Palestinian-Spanish activist Saif Abukeshek (centre) a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla, is escorted by prison service guards to a hearing at the District Court in Ashkelon, Israel, on Sunday, May 3, 20
A PALESTINE solidarity activist deported from Israel today has vowed to keep mobilising “for a free Palestine.”
Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish dual national, and Thiago Avila of Brazil’s deportation was announced by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Mr Abu Keshek posted a defiant video following his arrival in Athens, Greece, pointing out that his comrades were still sailing with the Global Sumud Flotilla determined to get aid into Gaza.
“Mobilise in every corner of the world, on land and at sea, for a free Palestine,” he urged.
Israel attacked the flotilla in international waters near Greece on April 30, kidnapping 175 people but only taking Mr Abu Keshek and Mr Avila back to Israel for interrogation.
They both reported ill treatment by Israeli authorities — Mr Avila that he was beaten unconscious, while Mr Abu Keshek was reportedly forced to lie face down blindfolded on the boat all the way to Israel.
In his video, Mr Abu Keshek drew attention to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, over 3,000 of whom are in “administrative detention,” having never been tried. These military orders can be renewed indefinitely.
“I am sure that the treatment I faced is nothing compared to the suffering they are going through,” he said.
Human rights and prisoner advocacy groups have accused Israel of systematic abuse of prisoners, including rape and setting dogs on them.
In March, Israel dropped charges against five soldiers accused of sodomising a Palestinian prisoner with a “sharp object.”
Footage of the notorious incident was leaked by former Israeli military advocate-general Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, resulting in her resignation and disgrace.
Although this step would not have changed much – if anything- as the Zionist entity would have retained its privileged access to the European market, in another shameful, unmasking reaction, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul declared the three countries’ move to be “inappropriate“, saying: “We have to talk with Israel about the critical issues… that has to be done in a critical, constructive dialogue with Israel.”
“Inappropriate!”
After two and a half years of genocide in Gaza and the blockade of all aid? In light of the unprecedented brutality in the West Bank, committed by the “scum of Zionist settlers” who, with the help of Israeli occupation forces, are perpetrating a “second Nakba”? After months of slaughtering civilians in Lebanon, destroying all infrastructure just as the inhuman settler colonial fanatics of a Greater Israel did in Gaza, and bombing the Iranian population?
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Instead of finally taking action against all these repulsive massacres, Wadephul offers nothing but empty talk about Germany’s supposed historical responsibility for the Zionist mass murderers and the mantra-like repetition of a “constructive dialogue” with them being necessary.
In 19 months, this “constructive dialogue” has yielded no results for the victims of the Zionists, but as Wadephul insists on continuing it, it is high time to take a closer look at what this kind of dialogue actually entails.
Constructive dialogue
“Constructive dialogue is a form of conversation where people with different perspectives seek to understand one another – without abandoning their own beliefs – in order to live, learn, and work together. It is especially well-suited for grappling with important, complex issues that often divide people.”
As Gaza becomes a death camp, German complicity reveals the West’s racist ‘biopolitics’
If this is a definition provided by experts, such a dialogue between Germany and Israel is completely unnecessary.
When it comes to genocide, settler violence, the decades-long ongoing Nakba, the destruction of southern Lebanon and the bombing of Lebanese and Iranian residential neighbourhoods, Berlin and the Zionists do not have a single “different perspective” that needs to be clarified. They “understand each other”; they do not even have to “abandon their own beliefs”, and none of these crimes would “divide” them.
We learn even more: “At its core, constructive dialogue prioritises mutual understanding: the shared effort to understand others’ views while knowing that others are making the same effort toward yours. Through this process, participants may enrich their own perspectives, clarify differences, uncover common ground, or even create opportunities for future collaboration that once seemed out of reach.”
This helps us understand why such a dialogue is actually pointless.
In light of all the crimes against humanity that the Zionists continue to commit, there already exists “mutual understanding” between them and Germany. And it goes without saying that for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whatever his best friends have announced to do, have done and continue to do in Gaza and beyond is anything but a genocide.
In a “constructive dialogue”, Berlin and the Zionist entity cannot “enrich” their perspectives or “clarify differences”, since they are in complete agreement on everything the Zionists do.
They cannot “uncover common ground”, for they are brothers in arms and allies in genocide. And they cannot even “create opportunities for future cooperation” because, as much as the murderous genocide project of the Palestinian people is a joint one, so was the following annihilation of the Lebanese and Iranians. None of them has ever “seemed out of reach”.
Throwing smoke bombs
Wadephul, who came under pressure from the three EU member states, responded by resorting to a tried-and-true tactic that is nothing more than a large-scale deception, as another look into what “constructive dialogue” does not mean.
“Constructive dialogue is not about persuading others or winning an argument, and it is not about proving the other side wrong. While these may be reasonable goals for other forms of conversation, these are not the aims of constructive dialogue.”
And that is why Germany wants to continue the “constructive dialogue”. By definition, it rules out everything that actually needs to be done.
This hypocritical “constructive dialogue” is intended to prevent the German foreign minister from doing what he actually ought to do: convincing the Zionists to stop their heinous crimes and putting pressure on them. He would have to do everything in his power to stand up to the killing machine known as Israel, to save the lives of those it slaughters.
Actions rather than empty words would simply be the duty – and indeed, the historical responsibility – of a German foreign minister. How constructive would that be? It would directly serve the cause of life, not Zionist necropolitics.
Yet can one imagine a German foreign minister not only delivering empty “constructive” talk without consequences? Who would even dare to impose sanctions on the Zionist regime that commits an almost infinite list of barbaric crimes on a daily basis?
‘Israel First’
Certainly not, but there is much to be learned from Wadephul’s call for a “constructive dialogue”.
To call for such a “constructive dialogue” now – after Germany has unreservedly supported and encouraged the genocide for two and a half years, as well as the ongoing wars of aggression against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran – is in fact putting “Israel First”.
Israel is gripped by messianic fervour for a biblical war
Another “constructive dialogue” will lead nowhere, because it is not meant to and must not lead anywhere. Nothing is supposed to change. The eradication of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples is to continue. It is an expression of the barely concealed contempt, rooted in white supremacy, that both Germany and the Zionists harbour towards Arab and Persian civilisation.
Germany, on the other hand, honours Zionism’s contribution to western civilisation, which essentially amounts to developing some of the most advanced military technologies and the most sophisticated surveillance technologies for the purpose of killing and controlling people. Both are expressions of the Zionist cult of death, which Germany supports and seeks to profit from.
“Israel First” – that is a very German doctrine and has been for decades.
Today, we see the consequences: while the German government, even in the face of genocide, attempts to appease and deceive its own people and the world by calling for a “creative dialogue”, it is simultaneously paving the way for the messianic-Zionist horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The “constructive dialogue” that Wadephul suggests is nothing more than another coffee-table chat in which Germany, in a thoroughly constructive manner, assures the Zionists of a free hand and support for the continuation of their barbaric campaigns of extermination.
As there will never be any consequences, such talks, to borrow Wadephul’s phrase, are utterly “inappropriate”.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Jurgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a temporary Professor for the Structure of modern societies at the University of Erfurt, Germany and a visiting professor for Political Sociology at Humboldt University Berlin. His latest books include On Social Closure. Theorizing Exclusion, Exploitation, and Elimination (Oxford University Press 2024). Siedlerkolonialismus. Grundlagentexte und aktuelle Analysen (edited with Ilan Pappe; Nomos 2024).
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
(Photo credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Palestinian-Spanish activist Saif Abukeshek (centre) a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla, is escorted by prison service guards to a hearing at the District Court in Ashkelon, Israel, on Sunday, May 3, 20
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