Microsoft Ousts Head of Israeli Branch Over Use of Tech to Spy on Palestinians

Microsoft continues “to supply cloud and AI arms to the Israeli military,” activists pointed out.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , Truthout Published May 13, 2026

 

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.

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Human Rights

Microsoft Faces Reckoning for Assisting Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

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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about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Shireen Akram-Boshar

Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.

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Craig Murray: Zionism Poisons UK’s Central Nervous System

 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)

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

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.

You can donate here via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through CraigMurray.org.uk.

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.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Tags: Anti-Semitism Craig Murray Gaza Genocide Green Party Iran Israel Jenny Jones Palestine Action’ Tommy Robinson Zionism

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We Can’t Curb Nuclear Proliferation If We Don’t Acknowledge Israel’s Nukes

No credible nonproliferation policy begins by pretending not to see the bombs your ally already has.

By Etan Mabourakh , Truthout Published May 12, 2026

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he drew on a graphic of a bomb while addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2012, in New York City.

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Thirty House Democrats, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro, publicly asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 4 to end the long-standing U.S. policy of ambiguity around Israel’s nuclear capabilities. In a letter, the group asked for answers on detailed questions about Israel’s warheads, delivery systems, fissile material production, and nuclear doctrine. They argue that Congress has a constitutional responsibility to understand the nuclear balance in the Middle East and warn that official silence makes coherent nonproliferation policy impossible.

Lawmakers tied their demand for transparency directly to the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, warning that fighting alongside a state whose nuclear posture remains officially unacknowledged heightens the risks of miscalculation and escalation. It also makes the United States out to be hypocritical — citing the nonexistent threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon yet to be built, which Iran had forsworn, while simultaneously ignoring Israel’s secret, unmonitored, undiscussed nuclear weapons arsenal.

If the United States claims to be deeply concerned about nuclear proliferation in the region, the government has a responsibility to stop ignoring facts that make the entirety of U.S. foreign policy on proliferation look completely disingenuous. The U.S. cannot keep sending billions in weapons unconditionally to a nuclear-armed state while treating open discussion of that reality as impermissible.

This letter is a rare and important challenge to one of the most entrenched taboos in U.S. foreign policy: acknowledging that Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal for decades and that Washington has largely complied with Israel’s desire to maintain silence around it. That posture goes all the way back to a secret 1969 understanding that allowed the issue to remain publicly unspoken even as it has shaped regional calculations. For decades, Washington would not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear capability, and Israel would not confirm it. But declassified National Security Archive material suggests that by 1969, U.S. agencies had already accumulated enough sensitive evidence to treat the issue as a serious intelligence matter, while also deciding that political and foreign policy costs outweighed the benefits of pressing it openly. The result was an unofficial understanding that helped lock the subject inside a veil of deniability, even as internal investigations, wiretaps, and intelligence briefings continued behind the scenes.

If the formal public stance of the U.S. is to not support the existence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East — whether in Iran or Israel — then the foreign policy objective should be to advocate for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. This would require acknowledging that war has utterly failed as a strategy to prevent that goal, especially when the fake threat of an active nuclear weapons program is used to justify military action — as has been the case in costly, useless U.S. wars in Iraq and now in Iran.

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Democrats Demand Answers From Rubio on Number of Nuclear Bombs Owned by Israel

It’s widely known that Israel has covert nuclear warheads, but the US has never officially acknowledged their existence. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout

May 6, 2026

The goal of nonproliferation cannot be credible if it is selective. Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Iran is. Simply acknowledging that fact does not require putting full trust in Tehran to abide by the treaty — indeed, that’s why Iran has been subjected to countless inspection regimes; it simply means that any honest regional nonproliferation framework has to begin with the facts as they are, not as Washington prefers to describe them.

The U.S. cannot keep sending billions in weapons unconditionally to a nuclear-armed state while treating open discussion of that reality as impermissible.

Those facts and suspicions have been a matter of public record for decades, even if U.S. officials have often refused to address them publicly. As far back as 1965, the U.S. government knew that over 200 pounds of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium had gone missing from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) plant in Pennsylvania — triggering enduring investigations and allegations by the CIA and other agencies that the material was clandestinely diverted to the Israeli nuclear program. Decades later, in 1986, former Dimona technician Mordechai Vanunu leaked photographs and data to the Sunday Times that exposed the full scale of Israel’s covert weapons program. These facts have long been known and reported on by countless media outlets and scholars, even if they were officially evaded by the U.S. government.

That is why the Castro letter deserves attention beyond the news cycle. The lawmakers wrote that ambiguity about Israel’s program makes coherent nonproliferation policy impossible not only for Iran, but for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and every other state making decisions based on the capabilities of its neighbors. These 30 Democrats are right to express this concern, and the principle involved is larger than one conflict: There’s no such thing as a rules-based order built on exceptions for allies and punishment for adversaries.

We will not be able to resolve complex issues of nuclear proliferation if we cannot even share a basic reality. The Orwellian “ceasefires” in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran illustrate this clearly. The U.S. government and its allies lie, and then expect the other side to not just accept their terms, but also their version of the truth — a recipe for perpetual conflict.

Ironically, tragic and repeated U.S. failures of diplomacy have strengthened the most conservative forces inside Iran, who benefit most from isolation, siege, and perpetual confrontation. If U.S. officials profess to care about the Iranian people, regional peace, and genuine nonproliferation, they should be building diplomatic pathways that reduce incentives for weaponization, not destroying the possibility of trust altogether.

The United States should state openly what it knows, demand transparency from all regional actors, and return to the hard work of diplomacy. The rest of Congress should insist on answers to the questions raised in the Castro letter, not bury them. And anyone serious about preventing nuclear catastrophe should be willing to say a simple thing out loud: There is no credible nonproliferation policy that begins by pretending not to see the bombs your ally already has.

Press freedom is under attack

As Trump cracks down on political speech, independent media is increasingly necessary.

Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from the frontlines of global conflict, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis and more.

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about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Etan Mabourakh

Etan Mabourakh is the national organizing manager at the National Iranian American Council, where he organizes grassroots volunteers through a nationwide chapter network and coalitions across the United States. A Jewish Iranian American based in New York, Etan has consulted on campaigns at every level of government, speaks frequently on U.S.–Iran policy, as well as civil rights and antiwar advocacy.

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Trump threatens Iran will be “decimated” if it does not accept US dictated deal

 

Kevin Reed, WSWS.org, 13 May 2026

With the US ceasefire announced on April 8 all but over, the conflict with Iran is intensifying with President Trump escalating threats of renewed military attacks against Tehran.

On Monday, Trump dismissed Iran’s latest reply to the US proposal as “totally unacceptable,” called it a “piece of garbage,” and said he “didn’t even finish reading it.” He said the ceasefire—which effectively ended last week when the US fired on Iranian military targets—was on “massive life support.”

On Tuesday, before departing for China, the president continued with the posture that the US is dictating terms to Iran. When asked if he was going to discuss the war with Beijing, Trump said he would talk to President Xi about the war but mostly about trade and added that Iran was not really one of the topics because the US had it “very much under control.”

He told reporters, “We’re only going to make a good deal,” and then said, “We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”

Trump continued to insist that the US has already “won” and that a deal with Iran has little significance. Along with the threat to “decimate” Iran, Trump warned on May 7 that the US would soon have to “look at one big glow coming out of Iran”—a comment widely understood as a threat to use nuclear weapons.

Iran’s latest confirmed position, as reported by state broadcaster and other outlets, is that any settlement must include war reparations, sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Tehran was “not asking for anything unusual” and that the country was demanding only its “legitimate rights.”

The Iranian proposal also reportedly included a willingness to dilute part of its enriched uranium and transfer the rest abroad, but not under terms that would amount to a complete capitulation to Washington.

The key political point is that Iran is refusing to accept the framework dictated by US imperialism which, with the support of Israel, has carried out the illegal war including targeting 13,000 sites with missiles strikes and murdering the entire political leadership of the country.

While the White House has portrayed Iran’s position as obstructive, Tehran has consistently and explicitly linked any peace agreement to compensation for damage done and an acknowledgment of its sovereign rights over the strategic waterway.

Over the past 48 hours, there has been no publicly confirmed report of an Iranian or US strike sinking boats in the Strait of Hormuz itself, but the waterway remains the central strategic flashpoint of the war. The US has maintained naval pressure and claimed it is working to reopen the strait, while Tehran has insisted it retains sovereign rights there.

In practical terms, the strait is not under “absolute control” by Washington despite the claim by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on May 4. The ongoing disruption, militarized patrols and negotiations show the strait to be a contested chokepoint which is not under US control.

The fact that Washington is publicly appealing to China to help “open” the strait is an open admission that the US cannot simply command passage through the strait by fiat. Reports on Tuesday that the UAE carried out a covert strike on Iran’s Lavan Island refinery demonstrates that the conflict over the strait involves multiple regional actors operating as proxies for US imperialism.

Although Abu Dhabi has not publicly acknowledged involvement, the reported strike caused a major fire and is expected to disrupt refinery production for months. A report by Reuters also stated, based on accounts from anonymous sources, that Saudi Arabia has been involved in covert anti-Iran operations. These reports confirm that the war is being conducted by a network of state actors, proxies and covert actions across the Gulf, all managed by the US government.

On Tuesday, Jules “Jay” Hurst, the Pentagon’s top budget official, told lawmakers that the cost of the war had increased to approximately $29 billion due to “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs and also just general operational costs.”Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

Hurst’s testimony exposed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s effort to cover up the escalating cost of the war in testimony before both House and Senate appropriations committees by refusing to answer any questions about the total cost of the ten-week war. Hegseth’s appearance before Congress came amid a White House request for a 2027 military budget of roughly $1.5 trillion.

The Iranian Ministry of Health has reported 3,468 people killed in Iran, including more than 1,700 civilians, and over 26,500 injured. US casualties include roughly 200 wounded service members and 13 dead.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump denounced media criticism of the war writing, “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement.” The administration’s attacks on public criticism are being paired with Pentagon restrictions that limit press access including credentials being revoked on “security” grounds.

Department of War policies have also targeted Pentagon reporters and, in the case of military publications, imposed tighter control over content and access. The aim is to silence criticism while expanding censorship and threats of legal action under wartime conditions.

Trump’s insistence that the US does not need any help from China clashes sharply with the fact that top US officials have been publicly urging Beijing to use its influence on Iran to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary Bessent called on China to “step up” diplomatically, making clear that Washington is seeking Chinese assistance even while pretending otherwise.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes continued, resulting in the killing of two paramedics in southern Lebanon on Sunday in strikes on health committee sites. The killing of medical workers—a strategic aim by the Zionist regime throughout the Gaza genocide—exposes the criminal character of the Lebanon campaign.

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Report: Saudi Arabia Launched Attacks Against Iran During US-Israeli Bombing Campaign

The report from Reuters came after The Wall Street Journal reported that the UAE did the same

by Dave DeCamp | May 12, 2026 at 7:06 pm ET | Saudi Arabia, UAE

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia launched numerous, unpublicized strikes against Iran during the US-Israeli bombing campaign, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.”

The report came a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that the UAE also launched direct attacks on Iran, including one that came after the ceasefire between the US and Iran came into effect.

The Reuters report, which cited Western and Iranian officials, said there was a different dynamic between Riyadh and Tehran than between Riyadh and the UAE.

US and Saudi F-15 fighter jets fly together in 2019 (US Air Force photo)

“The UAE has taken a more hawkish stance, seeking to ⁠extract ⁠a cost from Iran and engaging only rarely in ⁠public diplomacy with Tehran,” the report said. “Saudi Arabia has meanwhile sought to prevent ​the conflict from escalating and has stayed in regular contact with Iran, including via Tehran’s ambassador in Riyadh.”

Officials said that the Saudis launched strikes against Iran in late March in response to Iranian attacks on Saudi territory and that Tehran was made aware of the strikes.

Officials said that Riyadh threatened to take a more hawkish approach and hit Iran harder, which led to a decrease in Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia, which hosts US troops and has a close military relationship with Washington. Saudi Arabia maintains a fleet of US-made fighter jets, and Washington had previously backed a brutal Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen from 2015 to 2022.

The UAE is seen as being much more openly aligned with Israel due to the 2020 normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords, and Israel has reportedly deployed an Iron Dome air defense battery to the Gulf Arab state.

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Direct action is a weapon of the people

 Jon Cink The Electronic Intifada 11 May 2026

 

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.

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‘War Crimes of Wanton Destruction’: Amnesty Condemns Israeli Attacks on Gaza High-Rise Buildings

 

Palestinians were seen walking in Gaza City with the belongings they could carry on October 10, 2025.

(Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable.”

Jake Johnson

May 12, 2026

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.”

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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.