Category: News

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, releases report accusing more than 45 entities of making money from Israel’s Gaza genocide and illegal occupation of the West Bank.

The report traces those entities that are involved in the business of elimination, of replacing, and of course, of enabling. Some are the big military companies like Elbit, Caterpillar, and Lockheed Martin, but the report also lists financial institutions, educational institutions, and Big Tech companies, including Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Palantir, as well as many, many others. (Read the report for a full list.)

And, surprise, surprise, killing Palestinians is big business. “Arms companies have turned over near record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry that has obliterated a virtually defenceless civilian population,” the report notes.

Read more at https://zeteo.com/p/economy-of-genocide-un-expert-accuses

Read the full UN report at https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/

 ‘Our failures impact audiences,’ the signatories – including over 100 anonymous BBC staff members – wrote in their letter

More than 400 cultural figures, journalists and industry professionals, including Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes and British director Mike Leigh, have signed a blistering open letter to BBC leadership accusing the broadcaster of censoring Palestinian voices and calling for the resignation of board member Sir Robbie Gibb, who until last year served as the director of The Jewish Chronicle, over alleged conflicts of interest.

As first reported in The Guardian, the letter – also signed anonymously by 111 current BBC staff members – criticizes the corporation’s Israel-Gaza coverage, claiming it falls short of its own editorial and is “crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government.” Citing a “culture of censorship,” the signatories say staff have been penalized for sharing content critical of Israel.

Read more on Haaretz (paywalled)

Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime

The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.

Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.

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Read More at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/02/israeli-military-bomb-fragments-gaza-al-baqa-cafe

Israel is conditioning aid delivery to force Gazans south into ‘concentration zones.’ This plan has begun to stall, but that only portends greater brutality.

 Maybe you were waiting for the alarm bells to ring, or for the Israeli army spokesperson to issue an official announcement. But the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, long referred to in Israeli parlance as “transfer,” is already underway. Not in some distant future. Right now.

It’s not exactly happening before Israeli eyes — it’s always possible to look away — but the echoes are reaching Israeli homes. The thundering blasts from Gaza heard across the country are personal messages, like those the army used to send Gazans in a previous era of cruelty: “Your home is about to be bombed. Leave immediately.” This is the updated version of the message, addressed not to the people of Gaza, but to Israeli citizens: “The transfer is underway. It is progressing. And it cannot be undone.”

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Read more at https://www.972mag.com/gaza-expulsion-aid-delivery/

Dozens more wounded as crowds approached food distribution centres run by Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities.

Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza.

Later in the day, at least 14 people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they were moving towards another GHF distribution site, in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern border. On Tuesday Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians around GHF sites.

Read more on The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/11/israeli-forces-kill-at-least-60-palestinians-seeking-food-aid-in-gaza-health-officials-say

 One of the definitions of genocide, according to the 1948 UN convention, is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This is an accurate description of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. It has killed 452 aid workers, systematically killed police officers charged with protecting aid, destroyed infrastructure needed to carry humanitarian aid, blocked fuel and water needed to cook food. More than 95% of agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, 81% of cropland has been damaged and 83% of plant life has been destroyed. Almost all of its cattle and poultry are dead; milk production is nearly halted.

Israel has criminalised Unrwa, Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, and three months ago imposed a total blockade. It then replaced the existing humanitarian structures with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Its purpose, as Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, was to allow the entry of the “minimum necessary” so that “the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”. Stop what? Well, Smotrich openly declares that Israel will expel all surviving Palestinians from Gaza. Not only does the GHF provide far too little and often unusable aid, but it also set up aid points in the south to deliberately empty Gaza’s north. Israeli troops then repeatedly massacred starving Palestinians, replacing the existing humanitarian structures with what Tory MP Kit Malthouse called “a shooting gallery, an abattoir”.

The Madleen did not make it to Gaza’s shores. Yet its crew exposed an obscenity that has repulsed western citizens, who will one day force their governments to cease their complicity – which is why, in the end, Israel will lose.

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/greta-thunberg-gaza-aid-mission-madleen

(4 June 2025) The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat. 

Emergency medical teams have confirmed treating hundreds of trauma cases. Yesterday alone, dozens were declared dead at hospitals after Israeli forces said they had opened fire.

This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived 2 million people of the essentials they need to survive.  

I echo the Secretary-General’s call for immediate, independent investigations. These are not isolated incidents, and the perpetrators must be held accountable. 

No one should have to risk their life to feed their children. 

As I have repeatedly stressed, we must be allowed to do our jobs: We have the teams, the plan, the supplies and the experience.

Open the crossings – all of them. 

Let in lifesaving aid at scale, from all directions. 

Lift the restrictions on what and how much aid we can bring in. 

Ensure our convoys aren’t held up by delays and denials.

Release the hostages. Implement the ceasefire.

We value the support of more and more Member States who are joining our call: Let us work.

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/statement-aid-distribution-gaza-tom-fletcher-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief

Witnesses say Israeli forces opened fire on people near distribution point run by Israel-backed foundation

More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to receive food at an aid distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza, according to witnesses, and a hospital run by the Red Cross confirming it was treating many wounded.

Witnesses said Israeli forces had opened fire as Palestinians headed toward the aid distribution site in Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“My brother went to receive aid from the American distribution points in Rafah when the bullets started raining down on them,” Yarin Abu al-Naja, 44, said. “The Israeli soldiers had started shooting at the people there. My brother went with two of his friends. One of them was critically injured in the head, the other was killed, and my brother was shot in the back.”

“He was transported to the hospital by a donkey cart – no ambulances can reach the area, and there were dozens of injured and dead,” Naja added. “We saw him placed on the ground. There were no available beds due to the large number of casualties and dead arriving from the same location. The scenes were horrific – people missing limbs, hands or legs, others decapitated, or with open abdomens.”

Media reports said dozens of people were being treated at the hospital after the latest incident at the controversial site in Rafah. Officials at the field hospital did not say who opened fire but added that another 175 people were wounded.

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Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/palestinians-gunned-down-while-trying-to-reach-food-aid-site-in-gaza-hospital-says

While airstrikes account for mass casualties, bulldozers and explosives are flattening Gaza from the ground — what soldiers say is a systematic campaign to make the Strip unlivable, a joint investigation reveals.

This logic of mass destruction has also been applied in the West Bank, albeit on a smaller scale. In fact, a military source told +972 and Local Call that the nature of the destruction in Gaza stems from the tactics the army developed in Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank during the Second Intifada — “exposing the terrain” in military parlance.

Read the full article on +972 Magazine

I was one of two volunteers from the human rights organisation International Solidarity Movement arrested in the Palestinian occupied territories in January this year. The charge: Disrupting the Israeli military and police from stealing Palestinian land from the Abu Na’eem family on the rural outskirts of the village al-Mughayyir, about 27 kilometres north-east of Ramallah.

Handcuffed, I was forced to sit in the back of a military truck, surrounded by soldiers pointing rifles at me. Staring out the back window I watched the Israeli flag unfurl against the Bedouin encampment as the village vanished from view.

I was suddenly alone and powerless in an undemocratic, rogue state.

Read the full article with images and videos at greenleft.org.au

For more information about the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) see: https://palsolidarity.org/about/faq/