I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
The Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday
that it will be signing a contract to purchase two Boeing-made KC-46
tanker aircraft in a deal worth about $500 million that will be funded
by US military aid.
“This is a follow-on contract with the US Government for procuring
two advanced refueling aircraft in addition to four previously purchased
KC-46 aircraft. This will expand the IDF’s new refueling fleet to six
aircraft,’ the Defense Ministry wrote on Facebook.
“The new aircraft will be equipped with Israeli systems and adapted
to the IAF’s operational requirements. The contract’s scope is estimated
at approximately half a billion USD and is funded through US aid,” the
ministry added.
US KC-46 tanker aircraft flying over the water near New Jersey on July 15, 2025 (US Air National Guard photo via DVIDS)
The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid annually,
including $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, a State Department
program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US weapons.
Since October 7, 2023, the US has provided Israel with significantly more aid, including an additional $3.5 billion in FMF that
was part of a $17 billion military assistance package for Israel tucked
into a $95 billion foreign aid bill authorized by Congress and signed
by President Biden last year.
According to Israeli media, the US has financed roughly 70% of Israel’s war-related military spending throughout its genocidal war in Gaza. The US has also spent billions on direct military operations supporting Israel and defending it from Iranian missile attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday and said that he had fulfilled a promise to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state that he made to the settlers 25 years ago.
According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli leader recalled his visit to the Ofra settlement in the year 2000 and saying that “we would do everything to ensure our continued hold on the Land of Israel, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, to thwart the attempts that existed then — and unfortunately still exist — to try to uproot us from here. Thank God, what I promised — we kept.”
Netanyahu said he prevented a Palestinian state despite significant external pressure. “Pressures from home, pressures from abroad, a series of American presidents who wanted to uproot us and to establish a Palestinian state here. We stood firm together. We upheld the promise of the generations,” he said.
The Ofra settlement was started in 1975 and, like all other Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is illegal under international law. Netanyahu was visiting the settlement on Sunday for an event marking its 50th anniversary.
The visit came after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced a major settlement expansion that he said would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” The plan is seen as Smotrich’s reaction to the UK, France, Canada, and Australia declaring their intent to recognize a Palestinian state.
The Trump administration has also expressed significant opposition to its allies’ plans to recognize a Palestinian state, and President Trump has even suggested a trade deal with Canada could be scrapped over Ottawa’s plans.
There are some
governments who are considering to recognise the Palestinian State.
Such a recognition is only a gesture in the right direction. But that
will not bring into existence a Palestinian State. More needs to be
done to produce what this recognition will achieve just symbolically.
There are not many governments in the West and the Middle East that
are interested in doing what is needed to redress the tragic
situation for the people of Palestine.
Regarding the
theoretical questions of a one-state or a two-state solution in
historic Palestine, one thing should be made clear to all the
advocates and followers of such solutions, that we are confronted
with some deep-rooted practical problems. We cannot avoid facing the
questions about the alignment of forces in the world, over which the
Zionists have power and dominance. Keeping in view this reality, we
can say that as long as Israel is a Zionist state, there will never
be a one-state (a secular, socialist-democratic state for all) in
historic Palestine. Neither will Zionists ever accept a two-state
solution as long as they have power in their colonial-settler entity.
Where does that
leave the colonised people of Palestine with the further recognition
of the Palestine state? Obviously, that is not going to change
anything for them.
Mourners
pray during a group funeral for Palestinians, including journalists and
a medic, killed in an overnight Israeli strike, outside the Al-Shifa
Hospital in Gaza City, on August 11, 2025.
(Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Coming
to more accurate estimates would affect the intensity of the political,
diplomatic, and civic pressures for a ceasefire. It would also prompt
more strenuous calls for immediate humanitarian aid, an immediate
ceasefire, and peace negotiations.
New York Times: Patrick Kingsley Aaron Boxerman Isabel Kershner Adam Rasgon Natan Odenheimer Ronen Bergman International Editor: Philip P. Pan
Washington Post: Louisa Loveluck Shira Rubin Abbie Cheeseman Miriam Berger Gerry Shih John Hudson Associate Editor: Karen DeYoung
Wall Street Journal: Foreign News Editor: James Hookway
The American Prospect: Editor, David Dayen
Dropsite News: Ryan Grim Jeremy Scahill
The New Yorker: Editor, David Remnick
You are some of the leading reporters and editors who have covered the Netanyahu genocidal mass murder and mayhem in Gaza.
This important plea asserts that you all know better than to rely only
on the extensive understatement of the deaths and serious injuries put
forward by Hamas. You need to DO BETTER for your readers by digging
deeper into the much higher estimates of deaths by experts in disaster
casualties. Eye-witness accounts which do not support the Hamas
undercount.
Both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, for different reasons, favor undercounts. Hamas, the
governing entity in Gaza, keeps a strictly defined undercount of
casualties from Israeli bombardments, does not count the large immediate
secondary fatalities from the effects of Israeli blocking of food,
water, medicine, healthcare, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies for
what’s left of destroyed hospitals and clinics.
An official
undercount from the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose 15 counters are now
themselves starving, temper accusations by the people of Gaza and its
allies that Hamas has not protected them, even by sharing bomb shelters.
Hamas badly underestimated the total savagery of the Israeli response
to its October 7 attack through the mysteriously collapsed multitiered
Israeli border security complex. Hamas fell into a lethal trap prompted
by fears that a near deal between the U.S., Israel, and Gulf Arab states would sideline permanently the question of Palestine.
Now,
if you take the current Hamas figure of just over 62,000, you are
telling the public that 97% of Gazans are still alive. This is lethally
absurd.
As sensitive journalists, you probably agree that the undercount is significant. As the Washington Post
foreign affairs editor Karen DeYoung has often said, “…Independent
media are not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza, and the casualty counts
are most certainly under-reported.”
In thousands of news articles,
there is the same exact obligatory reference, to wit: “More than X
number of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began
according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.” That severe undercount
becomes the reported casualty figure despite the Israeli unchallenged,
daily demolition bombing of Gaza.
As a result, unlike other armed
conflicts in the world, the vast undercount of fatalities and injuries
in Gaza is a vastly underreported story. Coming to more accurate
estimates would affect the intensity of the political, diplomatic, and
civic pressures for a ceasefire. It would also prompt more strenuous
calls for immediate humanitarian aid, an immediate ceasefire, and peace
negotiations.
Start with common sense. Gaza had 2.3 million people
before October 7, 2023, in a cramped area the geographical size of
Philadelphia. The Gaza Strip has experienced the most intense, daily
bombardment on civilians and civilian infrastructure since World War II.
There are no army bases or airfields in Gaza, only an under-armed small
guerrilla force hiding in tunnels facing a supermodern military backed
by supermodern U.S. military weapons and other Biden-Trump assistance.
As
of mid-April 2025, University of Bradford (United Kingdom) emeritus
professor Paul Rogers, a specialist on aerial and artillery bomb
devastation, described the level of destruction in totally besieged Gaza
as the “equivalent of six Hiroshimas, but even more destructive”
because many more of the bombs over Gaza drop over targeted
locations—schools, apartment buildings, hospitals, clinics, markets,
refugee encampments, roads, water mains, electricity circuits, and even
the agricultural areas to deny the people of Gaza from growing some of
their own food. Starvation, death by uncontrolled fires, infections, and
the thousands of babies born into the rubble each month spiral the
daily accelerating toll.
Now, if you take the current Hamas figure
of just over 62,000, you are telling the public that 97% of Gazans are
still alive. This is lethally absurd. A more conservative figure is that
over 500,000 Palestinians have been killed from Netanyahu’s non-stop
Palestinian Holocaust (more than all the U.S. soldiers killed in WWII.)
This means that an incredible about 1-out-of-4 Palestinians have been
killed.
American doctors and other health workers back from Gaza
say almost all the survivors are either sick, injured, or dying. Without
insulin, medicines for cancer, asthma, and heart disease for many
months, with no shelters, with dense, deadly air pollutants, from
incessant bombings, their observations are not surprising.
So,
reporters and editors, start working on casualty estimates that
accurately reflect the realities, in addition to respecting the
Palestinian dead and properly highlighting the Trump-Congress role in
this slaughter. Imagine if you will, if the shoe were on the other foot; does anyone think such an undercount would be tolerated from the outset?
The
State Department testified in late 2023 that their estimates were
higher than Hamas, and the witness, an assistant secretary of state, was
shut down from further disclosure. Freedom of Information Act
litigation, pending before the Biden and Trump State Departments, is
confronting the usual stonewalling that this department has long been
conducting.
There are credible sources for you to pursue among
universities, international relief organizations, and United Nations
food and humanitarian agencies. Specialists (e.g., the University of
Edinburgh’s Global Health Department, The Lancet, etc.), have
spoken out or published reports on the undercount. Reporting on the work
of these and other specialists will advance the public’s right to know.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Gaza hospital volunteer, has compiled many of these sources and can be reached through the website gazahealthcareletters.org. His writing for the New York Times
and other established publications and electronic media is compelling
and reflects the on-the-ground reality in Gaza. (See my lengthy
interview with Dr. Sidhwa on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, to be released on August 16, 2025).
Thank you for considering the higher significance of your crucial profession.
Donald
Trump’s attacks on democracy, justice, and a free press are escalating —
putting everything we stand for at risk. We believe a better world is
possible, but we can’t get there without your support.
Common
Dreams stands apart. We answer only to you — our readers, activists, and
changemakers — not to billionaires or corporations. Our independence
allows us to cover the vital stories that others won’t, spotlighting
movements for peace, equality, and human rights.
Right now, our
work faces unprecedented challenges. Misinformation is spreading,
journalists are under attack, and financial pressures are mounting. As a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, your support is crucial to keep this journalism alive.
Whatever you can give — $10, $25, or $100 — helps us stay strong and responsive when the world needs us most.
Together,
we’ll continue to build the independent, courageous journalism our
movement relies on. Thank you for being part of this community.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Ralph
Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of "The Seventeen
Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future" (2012). His new book is,
"Wrecking America: How Trump's Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All" (2020,
co-authored with Mark Green).
Israel’s current genocide in Gaza and recently announced plans to
occupy Gaza City are both part of a long and tortured history of Israeli
military occupations of the tiny strip.
A
convoy of Israeli military vehicles drives down a road on the border
with the Gaza Strip on October 15, 2023. (Menahem Kahana / AFP via Getty
Images)
Whenever we imagine that Israel’s genocide has reached its nadir, the
country plumbs new depths of evil. Israel’s genocidal energy in Gaza
seems bottomless.
On Thursday, nearly two years into the genocide, Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Fox News that Israel intends to
take military control of the entire Gaza Strip. On Friday, Israel’s
security cabinet approved a plan to occupy Gaza City, which will involve the mass displacement of “all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City.”
If implemented, the planned reoccupation, which comes exactly twenty
years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005,
will unleash Israel’s third military occupation of Gaza, culminating a
decades-long history marked by brutal violence, mass slaughter and
ethnic cleansing, and endless displacements. Not that Israel is not
already an occupying force in Gaza. According to the United Nations,
Israel is still occupying Gaza, because it continues to control the
territory by land, air, and sea. Freely touting its ethnic cleansing schemes there, now Israel wants Gaza without its people. It’s a settler-colonial campaign branded as military occupation.
Gaza is not a state in conflict with Israel. It’s the largest refugee
camp on earth. Squeezed in a tiny sliver of land (1.3 percent of
Palestine), the majority of its two million people live in cramped
refugee camps, most of which have been in existence for over seven
decades.
It started during the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians at
Israel’s founding in 1948 when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly
expelled from their land and homes in Israel and made lifetime refugees.
Nearly 250,000 of those uprooted flooded into
Gaza, the last surviving Palestinian city along the Mediterranean
coast, tripling its population overnight and rendering it a colossal
refugee camp squashed between desert and sea. Providing shelter to the
displaced inhabitants of over 250 razed Palestinian towns and villages,
Gaza became a Noah’s ark for Palestine after the Nakba.
The tragedy was so profound that the United Nations set up
that year a special agency to provide aid to Palestinian refugees, the
United Nations Relief for Palestinian Refugees, which was shortly succeeded by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and soon moved its headquarters to Gaza City.Gaza is not a state in conflict with Israel. It’s the largest refugee camp on earth.
Most of the refugees who flooded into Gaza came from towns and
villages in central and southern Palestine and from northern parts as
far as Galilee. But those from villages around Gaza had to endure the
tragedy of being displaced within sight of their lost lands and homes.
As Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan later confessed,
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not
even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you
because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not
exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place
of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the
place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman.
There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a
former Arab population.
Those settlements, built on the ruins of uprooted Palestinians,
served as a constant reminder of the Nakba. To cite the late Lebanese
writer Elias Khoury,
voice of the Palestinian refugees: “Nahal Oz was a military settlement
founded by the Nahal units of the Israeli army to harass Palestinian
farmers who had been driven out of their villages and had become
refugees in Gaza.”
Over the next seven decades, Gaza’s bleak refugee reality would set
into motion a long and tortured history of Israeli military occupations
of the tiny strip.
Israel’s Brutal Invasions
In November 1956, embarking on its first occupation of Gaza, Israeli
forces invaded the territory by launching military raids on its
impoverished refugee camps. The occupation took place during Tripartite Aggression against
Egypt, which was then controlling Gaza. It started with a series of
horrific massacres. Israeli soldiers entered Khan Yunis and collected
all adult males from their homes and shot them at their doorsteps and in
the streets, killing at least 520 people.
Even Rafah in the south was not safe from Israeli invasions and mass
slaughter. On November 12, Israeli forces invaded the refugee camps in
Rafah, rounded up male residents, and killed and wounded hundreds of
people in cold blood. The bodies of the victims were dumped in the
district of Tell Zurab, west of Rafah, where families had to risk
curfews to pick up the bodies of loved ones and bury them, though most
of the burials were carried out without identification. The bloodshed,
known as the Rafah massacre, sent waves of horror through the camps.
And so Gaza got a first taste of what an Israeli occupation was like:
thousands of civilians were killed and wounded throughout the whole
Gaza Strip, and hundreds of prisoners summarily executed. The carnage
was described by the Red Cross as “scenes of terror.” It was so
appalling that E. L. M. Burns, the head of the UN observer mission in
Gaza, warned that
Israel’s atrocities there intended to wipe out Gaza’s refugee
population, which according to international law, amounted to an act of
genocide.
Because Gaza was essentially a massive refugee camp of
displaced Palestinians who were expelled from their homes inside Israel
during the Nakba, Israel became the first occupying power in history
that uprooted a native population, chased it into exile, and occupied
it. (Isarel’s invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s would mete out the same fate to Palestinian refugees there, culminating in the horrific Sabra and Shatila massacre, which was also condemned by the UN as “an act of genocide.”)
Even Israeli military leaders like Dayan were forced to admit that grim reality. As he confessed that
year: “What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight
years, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and have watched how,
before their very eyes, we have turned their lands and villages, where
they and their forefathers dwelled, into our home.”
But the Nakba was only the beginning. Unsatisfied with uprooting
Palestinians, Israel would routinely invade Gaza, wreak horror, and
carry out a series of massacres. Frequently after 1948, Israeli forces
would raid Gaza’s refugee camps, slaughtering and displacing thousands
of refugees, and demolishing their homes and camps. In January 1949,
with the bloody memory of the Nakba still fresh in Gaza, Israeli forces bombed f
Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter, was killed by an Israeli
airstrike on Sunday night. This is the message he had prepared for his
family, and his call for the world not to forget Gaza
The following statement was posthumously published on Anas
al-Sharif’s X account, after an attack on a tent for journalists near
al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Seven people in total were killed
including al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to Al Jazeera.
This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know
that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings. Allah knows
I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for
my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and
streets of the Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would
extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our
original town of occupied Asqalan (al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came
first, and His decree is final.
I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and
loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it
is, without distortion or falsification – so that Allah may bear witness
against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those
who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered
remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre
that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.
Anas al-Sharif with his daughter, Sham, and son, Salah. Photograph: Faceboook
I entrust you with Palestine – the jewel in the crown of the Muslim
world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you
with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had
the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were
crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn
apart and scattered across the walls. I urge you not to let chains
silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation
of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises
over our stolen homeland.
I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my
beloved daughter, Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the
chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed. I entrust you with my dear
son, Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life
until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.
I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me
to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light
guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on
my behalf with the best of rewards.
I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm
Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and
months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of
an olive tree that does not bend – patient, trusting in Allah, and
carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and
faith. I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah
Almighty.
If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah
that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured
that what is with Allah is better and everlasting. O Allah, accept me
among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a
light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family.
Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I
kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.
Do not forget Gaza. And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.
Israel has murdered Anas Al-Sharif, 28, a steadfast, well-known Al Jazeera correspondent called "the voice of Gaza
to the world," in a targeted strike in Gaza City that also killed four
other journalists. Long threatened by Israel for his relentless coverage
of Israeli atrocities, Al-Sharif vowed to continue "every day and every
hour to report what is happening - this is our cause." In a last
message, Al-Sharif wrote, "I lived pain in all its details and I tasted
loss and grief time and again...Do not forget Gaza."
Al-Sharif was among five Al Jazeera journalists killed in
a clearly targeted strike on a tent housing them outside the main gate
of al-Shifa Hospital late Sunday. The other victims were Al Jazeera
correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher,
Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. In his last post before his death,
al-Sharif said Israel had launched intense bombing, called "fire belts,"
on Gaza City; his final video showed the sky lit by orange flashes as
loud booms sounded.
Calling Al-Sharif "one of Gaza's bravest
journalists" - and one of the most prominent with over half a million
followers online - Al Jazeera said he and his colleagues were among the
last remaining voices in Gaza "conveying its tragic reality to the
world." It accused Israel of waging a “campaign of incitement”
against its journalists by repeatedly fabricating evidence seeking to
link them to Hamas; in the last 22 months, the Israeli military has
killed over 230 journalists, including multiple ones from Al Jazeera.
A
U.N. rapporteur had earlier cited Israel's "repeated threats and
accusations" against Al-Sharif, arguing, "Fears for (his) safety are
well-founded." Last month, Israel claimed it had "unequivocal proof” he was a member of Hamas, and on Sunday they admitted to a deliberate strike
against Al-Sharif, "the head of a terrorist cell." Colleagues dismissed
the claim as propaganda, with "zero evidence" to support it. Said a
colleague of Al-Sharif's: "His entire daily routine was standing in
front of a camera from morning to evening."
Other journalists also charge
Israel is waging "a deliberate war on journalists" purely for their
willingness to risk their lives to document Israel's genocidal crimes,
from mass bombardment to mass starvation. “Israel’s strategy is clear:
Silence the truth by murdering those who report it," said The Palestine Chronicle's
Ramzi Baroud, who mourned having to lose so many journalists solely for
their "commitment to the truth." Still, he insisted, "Their deaths will
not bury the Palestinian story."
Al-Sharif had earlier written that,
"despite all (the) difficulties and tragic circumstances" he and his
colleagues had faced over the last brutal year and a half, he held to
his belief that "it is the duty of the world to see and witness what we
are documenting...This drives us to continue in our coverage to our last
breath." Still, he knew death likely awaited. "This is my will and
final message," he wrote in April. "If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice."
"First, peace and God’s mercy and blessings be upon you," he wrote in the translated post published
by his family. "God knows I have given all my effort and strength to be
a support and a voice for my people since I opened my eyes to life in
the alleys and streets of Jabalia Refugee Camp. My hope was that God
would grant me life so I could return with my family and loved ones to
our original town of Ashkelon (Al-Majdal), now occupied. But God’s will
was swifter, and His judgment is inevitable."
Berating "those who
remained silent, who accepted our killing," he goes on to entrust those
reading "with Palestine, the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat
of every free person in this world...with its people and its innocent
children who were not granted a lifetime to dream or live in safety and
peace," and with his wife and two children he did not live to see grow.
"I die steadfast in my principles," he writes. "Forgive me if I have
fallen short, and pray for mercy for me, for I have kept my promise...Do
not forget Gaza."
"I lost my voice screaming, 'Massacre, massacre,' hoping that the world takes action. But it is an unjust world." - Anas Jamal Al-Sharif.
In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
Israel has been using a Microsoft cloud platform
to store massive amounts of data and intelligence on Palestinians in
both the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to a new investigation carried out by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian.
The investigation reveals that Microsoft’s chief executive met in
2021 with the commander of Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – the military
intelligence unit involved in the pager terror attacks against Lebanon
and other covert operations across the region.
Unit 8200 chief Yossi Sariel convinced Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to
grant Israeli military intelligence access to a “customized and
segregated area” inside the Azure cloud platform, according to The Guardian.
It then began building “a sweeping and intrusive system that collects
and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day
by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Microsoft says its chief executive was unaware of what data would be stored on the platform.
Yet the report cites a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and
interviews with nearly a dozen employees of the company and of Unit 8200
– revealing the storage of everyday communications and data on the
daily lives of regular Palestinian civilians.
Three Unit 8200 sources said the platform helped pave the way for
many deadly airstrikes in Gaza, and Israeli army operations in the
occupied West Bank.
Other sources say Tel Aviv needed Microsoft due to a lack of storage
space and computing power to carry out its espionage plans.
Israel hoped to intercept, record, and store “a million calls an hour,” according to intelligence sources.
The system was designed to be placed on Microsoft servers under
layers of security developed by the company with directives from Unit
8200.
According to the leaked documents, droves of sensitive information
are inside the company’s data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The Guardian reported earlier this year that Israel relied
on Microsoft tech for its genocidal campaign against Gaza. An internal
review carried out by the company claimed “no evidence” that its
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems or cloud platforms were used for
harm.
“The company had held conversations with Israeli defense officials
and stipulated how its technology should be used in Gaza, insisting
Microsoft systems must not be employed for the identification of targets
for lethal strikes,” a company source told The Guardian this week.
Unit 8200 sources confirmed, however, that “intelligence drawn from
the enormous repositories of phone calls held in Azure had been used to
research and identify bombing targets in Gaza.”
“When planning an airstrike on an individual located within densely
populated areas where high numbers of civilians are present, officers
would use the cloud-based system to examine calls made by people in the
immediate vicinity,” they added.
Israel has relied heavily on western tech firms for mass surveillance and attacks on Palestinians.
In March, +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that Unit 8200 developed a ‘Chat GPT-like’ tool programmed to compile massive collections of intercepted Palestinian communications.
The tool was trained to understand colloquial Arabic and uses large
amounts of Palestinian phone calls and text messages obtained through
surveillance.
“The IDF has become increasingly dependent on the likes of Microsoft,
Amazon, and Google to store and analyze greater volumes of data and
intelligence information for longer period,” Israeli sources told The Guardian in January this year.
Advanced facial recognition technology
has also played a leading role in the forced disappearance and
abduction of scores of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel.
Earlier this year, Google announced plans to acquire the Israeli
cloud security startup Wiz in a $32 billion deal. The Israeli startup
was founded by and consists of members of Unit 8200.
Last year, Google fired dozens of employees after
they staged a series of sit-in protests across the US to oppose Project
Nimbus, which aims to provide the Israeli army with advanced AI and
cloud services.
US President Donald Trump
and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk in the midst of a
joint news conference in the White House in Washington, U.S., January
28, 2020. — Reuters
Twenty-one months into
the protracted conflict, the Gaza massacre is marked by an
ever-increasing number of innocent civilian casualties, with the death
toll having surpassed 60,000, according to Reuters.
Calling it
“genocide”, the former Israeli prime minister wrote a piece in Haaretz, a
leftist Israeli mainstream newspaper, outlining the war crimes Israel
is committing in Gaza. Now, a highly plausible threat of famine looms
over innocent Gazans, with a large number being children. As the
situation worsens manifold, people, both in the US and around the globe,
are perplexed at the unstinted US support for Israel even when the
genocide of the 21st century plays out on their TV screens.
Recently,
the Trump administration announced that, in case of a natural disaster,
the federal government would not assist US cities and states that
boycott Israeli companies. This has led the core base of the Republican
Party to question the veracity of Trump’s ‘America First’ slogan.
It is certainly difficult for Mr Trump to balance the factions within
his party surrounding the issue; on the one hand, hawkish members of
the administration, such as Senator Ted Cruz, routinely advocate for US
involvement. On the other hand, some conservative voices in the
Republican Party strongly oppose direct US interference in yet another
conflict. For instance, Republican lawmaker and an influential voice in
the party, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is among the very few who openly
oppose Israel's heinous actions.
It is, however, important to note
that multiple US presidents, regardless of the party, have done
Israel’s bidding. For instance, under the Biden administration,
according to The Guardian, the US vetoed five UNSC resolutions calling
for a ceasefire in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict in October
2023, thus effectively allowing Israel to carry out genocidal actions
without any ramifications and international accountability.
It is,
therefore, a worthy question to ask: Why is the US blind to Israel’s
genocidal policies that threaten regional peace and stability? Well, the
answer to such a question is rather intricate and multifaceted: there
are cultural, economic and political factors behind the US’s
unconditional and sustained support for Israel.
First, elite
Christian Zionism is one of the driving factors. Christian Zionism is
the ancient belief among Christians, especially evangelical Protestants,
that the modern state of Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy and that
standing up for the state of Israel is a religious duty. It refers to
the historical return of the Jewish people to the holy land.
Some
of the key tenets of the ideology include: the establishment of the
Temple in Jerusalem, which is a prerequisite to the arrival of Jesus;
Israeli sovereignty over all of historic Palestine, including the West
Bank.
With roots entrenched in ancient biblical narrative,
evangelical Zionism has an overarching influence on American foreign
policy, especially in the Middle East: it is mainly promulgated by
conservative think tanks and right-wing political figures.
According
to Dr Noam Chomsky, the extremist Zionism of the vast evangelical
movement has now become “a substantial part of the Republican Party’s
base”.
For instance, in a recent podcast with Tucker Carlson, a
conservative media figure and former Fox News host, Ted Cruz, a
Republican Senator from Texas and a former presidential candidate,
stated: “Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, from the bible, that
those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will
be cursed, and from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of
things”.
Consequently, evangelical Zionists have become a major
political force in the American political landscape, playing a pivotal
role behind the US’s unwavering support for Israel. Through effective
lobbying, they have influenced significant US policy decisions: the
relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem – a region of profound cultural
and religious significance claimed by both Israel and Palestine.
This
religious fervour of evangelical Zionists has helped lay the
foundation, but it is lobbying groups that turn this sentiment into
legislative action. Chief among them is the American–Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has been instrumental in shaping both
Republicans’ and Democrats’ positions on Israel.
Established in
1951, AIPAC began as a small advocacy group. However, since then, it has
evolved into one of the most well-funded and powerful lobbies in
Washington DC. While it claims to be bipartisan and focused on
strengthening the US-Israel relationship, its influence often skews US
foreign policy in favour of Israel – regardless of human rights or the
concerns surrounding the violations of international law.
AIPAC
lobbies Congress aggressively to ensure continued military aid, fiercely
opposes any legislation critical of Israeli actions and promotes
policies that shield Israel from accountability. For instance, it plays a
key role in ensuring that Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid.
It also opposed the No Way to Treat a Child Act, which aimed to
restrict US funding from being used to detain or abuse Palestinian
children. Also, AIPAC supported legislation that penalised individuals
and companies that boycott and condemn Israel.
In election cycles,
AIPAC has funnelled millions of dollars through its affiliated Super
PACs like United Democracy Project, targeting lawmakers critical of
Israeli policies. In 2022, it spent heavily to defeat progressive
candidates such as Rep Donna Edwards and Rep Andy Levin, both of whom
supported conditioning aid to Israel. Meanwhile, it has helped elect
more compliant figures by boosting their campaigns financially.
By
exerting pressure through substantial campaign contributions,
high-profile conferences, and mobilisation of pro-Israel political
networks, AIPAC has ensured that challenging Israel’s policies comes at a
heavy cost that few are willing to pay. AIPAC’s pervasive influence has
led to dire consequences for the Jewish community as well. When
Israel’s war crimes are justified as 'Jewish self-defence' – as AIPAC
routinely does – it inevitably ties Judaism to the bombing of children.
The
US’s unconditional support of Israel has fueled anti-American sentiment
all around the world. Ignoring Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza,
turning a blind eye to the expansion of the Jewish settlements in the
West Bank, and the US’s perpetual opposition to peace calls by the
international community undermines the very principles the US has
advocated for.
While Washington lectures Russia and China on human
rights, its blanket defence of Israel’s atrocities exposes a moral
bankruptcy that undermines US credibility worldwide.
If the US
seeks to restore its global credibility and allow the true voice of its
people to shape foreign policy, it must begin by curbing the
disproportionate influence of lobbies that act in the interests of
foreign governments – often at the expense of justice, democracy, and
the public will.
The writer lives in New York and aspires to be a legal scholar. He can be reached at: alibilal4471@gmail.com
The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is attacking Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she became the first Republican member of Congress to label Israel’s actions against the Palestinians in Gaza a genocide.
According to Al Jazeera, in a fundraising email to
supporters on Thursday, AIPAC called Greene’s remarks “disgusting” and
accused her of betraying “American values” for calling Israel’s brutal
campaign in Gaza a genocide, which aligns Greene with many human rights
organizations and genocide scholars, including Israeli ones.
“You expect anti-Israel smears from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar,”
AIPAC said in the email, referring to two House Democrats known for
their critical view of Israel. “But now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has
joined their ranks – spouting the same vile rhetoric and voting against
the US-Israel alliance.”
AIPAC said Greene was now the “newest member of the anti-Israel
Squad” and claimed her view was a “betrayal of American values and a
dangerous distortion of the truth.”
Greene has referred to Israel’s actions as genocide at least twice in posts on X. In her first post, Greene said
that it’s “the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in
Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the
genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”
In another post,
the Georgia congresswoman said many Americans are “against radical
Islamic terrorism, but we are also against genocide.” She has also
repeatedly referred to Israel as “nuclear-armed Israel,” making her one
of the first members of Congress to directly acknowledge Israel’s secret
nuclear arsenal.
AIPAC is known to spend big on pro-Israel candidates and is likely
going to fund an opponent of Greene’s when she comes up for election
again. The pro-Israel group has also targeted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY),
the only other Republican in Congress to offer significant criticism of
Israel and who consistently votes against aid to Israel.
Britain
strongly pushed for a United Nations conference statement to demand the
disarmament of Hamas and its withdrawal from Gaza, Middle East Eye has
learnt.
A UN conference in New York last week, attended by more than 100 countries and co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, aimed to advance momentum for a two-state solution.
The New York Declaration, released afterwards, demands that Hamas end its rule over Gaza and hand its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
Numerous diplomatic sources told MEE the UK was pivotal in pushing
for these demands to be included in the statement, as well as the
inclusion of strong language condemning the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
The statement marked the first time that Arab League states have end0rsed such positions at the UN.
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It was described as "both historic and unprecedented" by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.
He hailed that for "the first time" Arab and Middle Eastern countries
"condemn Hamas, condemn 7 October, call for its disarmament, call for
its exclusion from any form of participation in the governance of
Palestine, and clearly express their intention to maintain normalised
relations with Israel in the future and to join Israel and the future
state of Palestine in a regional organisation".
MEE has contacted the British Foreign Office for comment.
UK and France to recognise Palestinian statehood
During the conference, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy
announced that the UK intends to recognise Palestinian statehood in
September, following France's commitment that it would do so days
earlier.
Barring a dramatic diplomatic reversal, France and Britain will become the first G7 countries to recognise Palestine.
But these moves, and the UN conference, are unlikely to create any significant momentum towards a two-state solution.
Will the UK recognising the State of Palestine make any difference?
Neither the US nor Israel attended the conference, which the US State
Department described as a "publicity stunt" that would "prolong the
war, embolden Hamas, and reward its obstruction and undermine real-world
efforts to achieve peace".
France's announcement on 24 July that it would recognise the state of Palestine in September provoked the
ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who "strongly
condemned" what he called a decision that "rewards terrorism".
On 23 July, the Israeli parliament passed a non-binding motion calling on the Israeli government to annex the occupied West Bank.
And on 4 August, unnamed sources close to Netanyahu briefed local media that he is now pushing for the full occupation of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Channel 12 quoted "senior figures in the Prime Minister's Office" as
saying: "The decision has been made, Israel is heading towards the
occupation of the Gaza Strip."
This would involve expanding ground operations into areas where
captives are believed to be held, and into locations where Israeli
troops have not operated for over a year, including western Gaza City
and the central refugee camps.
In these circumstances, a viable Palestinian state is highly unlikely to materialise.
