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"Never forget that the US Congress gave Netanyahu dozens of standing ovations during a single speech while he was in the middle of perpetrating history’s first live-streamed genocide. This is who they are. It will always be who they are."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

If This Is What Israel Does, Then Israel Shouldn’t Exist

Gaza’s youngest social media influencer has been killed by Israeli forces after touching tens of thousands of lives with her stories of survival in the besieged Palestinian territory. Her name was Yaqeen Hammad. She was 11 years old.

Israeli forces fired upon starving civilians in Gaza on Tuesday when they rushed inside a facility holding aid, reportedly killing three and wounding dozens more. The facility was operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the latest US-Israeli scheme to bypass normal UN aid distribution and lure Gaza’s population into specific concentrated locations.

A new report from the Associated Press confirms that Israeli forces have been using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza as a matter of policy. This is actually using human shields in the very real sense of deliberately forcing civilians between yourself and potential enemy fire, not in the fake sense of being somewhere near civilians as per the made-up “human shields” narrative that Israel uses to blame its daily massacres on Hamas.

A survey of Jewish Israelis conducted by an Israeli polling firm has found that 82 percent of respondents support the total ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and 47 percent believe Israeli forces should kill every man, woman and child in every city they capture there.

Haaretz reports on the poll’s findings:

“Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today.”

Recent survey finds that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis back expelling Palestinians from Gaza https://t.co/rqoMq5YhYX

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 28, 2025

These are just a few reports from the past few days, on top of all the other staggeringly evil things that Israel has been doing this whole time.

If this is Israel, then Israel should not exist. If what we are seeing in Gaza is what it means for Israel to exist, then it shouldn’t.

People scream bloody murder when you say this, but it shouldn’t be a controversial position. I’m not saying Jews shouldn’t exist, I’m saying a genocidal apartheid state should not exist. A state is an artificial construct of the human mind, held together by human actions. If the actions we are witnessing in Gaza are the product of the artificial construct of the Israeli state, then that artificial construct should be dismantled, and those actions should cease.

I would say this about any other man-made construct that is doing the things Israel is doing. If some scientists built a robot that spends all day every day massacring children, then I would say the robot should be unmade. If you drew a Star of David on the robot’s head, it wouldn’t suddenly make me an evil antisemite to say that the child-murdering robot should be dismantled.

Dismantling the apartheid state of Israel would mean granting everyone citizenship and equal rights, allowing right of return, denazifying apartheid culture, paying extensive reparations, and righting the wrongs of the past. You could still call what remains “Israel” if you wanted to, but it would be nothing like the state that presently exists under that name.

Would this upset the feelings of some Jewish people? Yes. Would it inconvenience the lives of some Jewish people? Certainly. But that would be infinitely preferable to the daily massacres, genocidal atrocities and reckless regional warmongering we are witnessing from the state of Israel. Advocating the end of this genocidal state doesn’t make someone a monster, advocating its continuation does. The only way to believe otherwise is to take it as a given that Palestinian lives are worth less than Jewish feelings.

Israel is currently presenting nonstop arguments for its own cessation. Every video that comes out showing Israelis acting in monstrous ways and innocent Palestinians being murdered, tortured and abused in the most horrific ways imaginable is an argument for which there is no verbal counter-argument. Every day that goes by, the genocidal apartheid state of Israel is proving to the world that it should not exist.

Phil Giraldi : FREE PALESTINE!

Four people killed after starving Palestinians burst into UN food warehouse in Gaza

Four people have died as thousands of Palestinians burst into a United Nations warehouse in Gaza, tearing away sections of the building’s metal walls in a desperate attempt to find food. Two people were fatally crushed and two others died of gunshot wounds after the crowd forced its way into the World Food Programme warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday afternoon, health officials said.

It was not immediately clear if Israeli forces, private contractors or others had opened fire. A Red Cross field hospital said injuries from the scene included women and children with gunshot wounds.

Footage showed throngs of people shouting and pushing into the building while others threw bags of flour and boxes into the crowd. “Hordes of hungry people broke into WFP’s al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in search of food supplies that were pre-positioned for distribution,” WFP said in a statement, which warned of “alarming and deteriorating conditions on the ground”.

“Humanitarian needs have spiralled out of control after 80 days of complete blockade of all food assistance and other aid into Gaza,” the statement said. “Gaza needs an immediate scale-up of food assistance. This is the only way to reassure people that they will not starve.” A UN envoy compared the limited aid being allowed into Gaza to “a lifeboat after the ship has sunk”.

Jeremy Scahill: Shadowy Israeli-U.S. Aid Plan Is Weapon in "Netanyahu's War of Annihilation" in Gaza

US distances itself from Gaza food delivery group amid questions over its leadership, funding

After a rollout trumpeted by US officials, the US- and Israeli-backed effort that claimed it would return large-scale food deliveries to Gaza was born an orphan, with questions growing over its leadership, sources of funding and ties to Israeli officials and private US security contractors. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had said it would securely provide food supplies to the Gaza Strip, ending an Israeli blockade that UN officials say have led to the brink of a famine.

Instead, early reports and leaked video of its operations that began this week have depicted a scene of chaos, with crowds storming a distribution site and Israeli military officials confirming they had fired “warning shots” to restore order. Gaza health officials said at least one civilian had been killed and 48 injured in the incident. In a statement, GHF downplayed the episode, claimed there had been no casualties, and said it had distributed 14,550 food boxes, or 840,262 meals, according to its own calculations.

But GHF had no experience distributing food in a famine zone, and as of Wednesday, its leadership remained opaque, if not deliberately obscure. A number of executives and board members have refuted links to the group or stepped down, including Jake Wood, the ex-Marine who previously headed the group. When he resigned on Sunday, he said that it “is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon”.

Both a Geneva-based company and a Delaware-based company tied to the organisation are reportedly being dissolved, a GHF spokesperson told an investigative Israeli media outlet, increasing speculation over its initiators and sources of funding. The New York Times has reported that the idea for the group came from “Israeli officials in the earliest weeks of the war” as a way to undermine Hamas.

And the US state department has also distanced itself from GHF’s operations, with a spokesperson saying she could not speak to the group’s chaotic rollout or what plans could be made to extend aid to hundreds of thousands more people in Gaza who would not receive aid.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Is Europe a Threat to Netanyahu?

Israeli Strikes in Gaza Kill 79 More Palestinians Over 24 Hours

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks killed at least 79 Palestinians and wounded 163 over the previous 24-hour period as relentless Israeli strikes continue to hit targets across the Strip.

The Health Ministry’s numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals. However, the ministry said that the figures do not include hospitals in the North Gaza Governorate “due to the difficulty of accessing them.”

“There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff covers for Israel in Gaza

UK court orders police return devices to Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley

A British court has ruled that UK police must hand back electronic devices seized from The Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley in October 2024, in what lawyers have described as a “resounding victory for press freedom.” All seven seized items were handed back on Tuesday, Winstanley confirmed in a statement.

The recorder of London, Mark Lucraft, London’s highest circuit judge, on 13 May ruled that a search warrant used by London’s Metropolitan Police to seize seven items from Winstanley’s home was unlawfully issued. “I am very troubled by the way in which the search warrant was drafted, approved and granted where items were to be seized from a journalist,” Judge Lucraft wrote in his ruling. The judge also denied the police’s request for a “production order,” a legal power that can be invoked in British courts to require journalists to disclose documents in limited cases.

“Any warrant seeking material in the hands of a journalist requires extremely careful handling,” Judge Lucraft noted.

Some good news: a court has forced the police to give back all the devices they seized in the "unlawful" raid on my home in October.

Read my full statement:https://t.co/JmcI5SRote pic.twitter.com/BV4kY88L4t

— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) May 27, 2025

Norm Finkelstein HUMILIATES & DESTROYS Israel Apologist On Piers Morgan!

Netanyahu Threatening To Upend US-Iran Talks By Attacking Iran

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening to upend negotiations between the US and Iran by potentially attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.

The report said that the threat from Israel led to a recent tense phone call between Netanyahu and President Trump and a series of meetings between senior US and Israeli officials in recent days. ...

US officials are concerned that Israel could strike Iran with little notice, and a unilateral attack could still get the US involved. The Times report said that Israeli officials “close to Mr. Netanyahu believe the US would have no choice but to assist Israel militarily if Iran counterattacked.”

There are signs that the US and Israel could be considering a covert attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently visited Israel to discuss covert options, according to the report. Israel has a history of conducting attacks on Iranian soil, including assassinations and sabotage of nuclear facilities.

Max Blumenthal : My Weeks In Iran

Trump says he warned Israel against attack on Iran as nuclear deal ‘very close’

Donald Trump has claimed he warned Israel against attacking Iran because he believed he was very close to a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme in which US inspectors will be given unparalleled access to sites to ensure the country is not planning to build a nuclear bomb. At a White House press conference on Wednesday, the US president confirmed he held talks last week with Israel and told them it was “not appropriate” to attack Tehran because he believed he could reach a deal within weeks.

At the heart of Trump’s deal is a planned Iranian preparedness to allow US, and not just UN, inspectors to visit Iran’s nuclear facilities to ensure Tehran is not enriching uranium to levels that would allow it to make a nuclear bomb. Current verification is undertaken by a UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. “I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in a lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up,” Trump said, adding that he believed he was very close to an agreement.

The US president’s remarks implied, but did not confirm, that – subject to the new intrusive verification inspectorate – Iran would be allowed to continue to enrich uranium. The issue has been Tehran’s key demand in five rounds of talks between Iran and the US, which have been mediated by Oman. Iran’s nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, on Wednesday said the country was willing to see US inspectors enter its nuclear sites, but he insisted sovereignty required it to be entitled to enrich uranium, and not rely on imports.

Russia-Ukraine-US negotiation chess and poker

Court SLAPS DOWN Trump Liberation Day Tariffs

US federal court blocks Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs

A federal trade court on Wednesday blocked Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law. The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority, left US trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.

“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the court wrote, referring to the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. ...

At least seven lawsuits are challenging the levies, the centerpiece of Trump’s trade policy. Tariffs must typically be approved by Congress, but Trump says he has the power to act because the country’s trade deficits amount to a national emergency. He imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world at one point, sending markets reeling.

The plaintiffs argued that the emergency powers law does not authorize the use of tariffs, and even if it did, the trade deficit does not meet the law’s requirement that an emergency be triggered only by an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” The US has run a trade deficit with the rest of the world for 49 consecutive years.

Judge orders release of Harvard researcher charged with smuggling frog embryos

A federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States. Colleagues and academics also testified on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer.

“It is excellent science,” Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova’s research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that “by mapping embryonic development, novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging”. West said that Petrova’s medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her “in a heartbeat”.

Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the US Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court. “We are gratified that today’s hearing gave us the opportunity to present clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan international airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her,” Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement. “At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention.”

Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.

As she passed through a US Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan international airport in February, Petrova was questioned about the samples. She told the Associated Press in an interview last month that she did not realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak anything into the country. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being canceled.

Military seizing massive swaths of public lands at the border

The Trump administration has transferred thousands of acres of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border to be controlled by the Department of Defense (DoD). The transfer is part of an ongoing expansion of the military’s presence along the border which the administration claims is necessary to “control” illegal immigration.

Critics of the land transfer, including some who live near the affected areas, have raised concerns about the environmental impact of military operations on these large swathes of land. Additionally, much of the land now under the jurisdiction of the military encompasses national parks and other federal lands which the public is losing access to.

The land that has been transferred to the DoD, called the Roosevelt Reservation, is a 60-foot-wide strip spanning roughly 170 square miles along the border. Already the Pentagon has used its newly acquired access to this land to establish National Defense Areas (NDAs) in New Mexico and Texas. These NDAs will function as expansions of Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss, Army installations in Arizona and Texas respectively. ...

Transferring control of federal lands to the Department of Defense enables the administration to use the military for domestic law enforcement, an activity which would otherwise be unlawful under the Posse Comitatus Act, according to several legal scholars who focus on national security. Servicemembers operating within the NMNDA will have enhanced authorities, including authorization to “temporarily detain trespassers on the NMNDA until an appropriate law enforcement entity can assume custody,” “conduct cursory searches of trespassers on the NMNDA to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and Department of Defense (DoD) property,” and “conduct crowd control measures as necessary to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and DoD property.”

Democrats' Narcissism on FULL DISPLAY

Turmoil, resignations and ‘psychological warfare’: how Trump is crippling US national parks

Throwing up his hands in disgust and abruptly resigning was not how Mark Nebel envisioned he would end his long career with the National Park Service. He loved his job at the Grand Canyon, where he had worked for 15 years. As manager of the park’s geosciences program, Nebel, 68, oversaw efforts to protect its geology and paleontology as well as monitoring water sources, air quality and the effects of climate change. He had planned to stay in his position at least five more years before retiring. There was still much research to do to support the vulnerable ecosystems in one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.

But after Donald Trump took office, Nebel’s rewarding job turned into a bottomless pit of frustrations. As “department of government efficiency” (Doge) staff embedded themselves in the National Park Service on their hunt for “waste, fraud and abuse”, Nebel says his program – which works closely with universities, non-profits and Native American tribes – became hamstrung. “They made it impossible to do agreements with outside organizations, uphold contracts, purchase the tools we needed or send samples out to a lab for analysis,” he says. “And we were supposed to stop talking about climate change.”

He and his staff were also experiencing constant emotional stress. So Nebel made the tough decision to retire early to protect his health. “It was incredibly difficult and heartbreaking,” he says. “But I was tired of being manipulated, humiliated and unable to do the work that I was hired to do for the American people.”

Famously described as “America’s best idea” by the writer Wallace Stegner, the US national park system encompasses 85m acres with units in all 50 states, ranging from crown jewels such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone to national battlefields and tiny historic sites. The system is almost universally beloved; a recent Pew survey found it was, at 76%, the most-approved-of federal agency. And it seems to only grow more popular, hosting a record 331 million visitors last year. It is also a reliable economic engine for rural communities across the country, generating billions of dollars in tourism spending.

But this summer, the mood inside the parks is bleak. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former National Park Service employees paint a picture of turmoil and fear – the result of unprecedented staff reductions, untenable new rules and proposed funding cuts to the tune of more than $1bn. Adding to this anxiety is a decision by the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, to give Tyler Hassen, a former oil company executive working for Doge, broad administrative authority over the Department of Interior, which oversees the national park system.

When the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to the federal government and the environment began to take shape last winter, park insiders held their breath. Now, they say, their worst fears are bearing fruit – threatening the agency’s ability to recover endangered species, monitor ecosystem health, protect air and water quality, uphold treaty obligations to Native American tribes, and study the impacts of climate change.

UN Report Shows Small Chance of Breaching 2°C of Warming in Near Future

A World Meteorological Organization report released Wednesday predicts there's a small chance that the average global temperature will exceed 2°C of warming above the preindustrial average in at least one of the next five years—an occurrence that one expert said would be "completely unprecedented."

"That was effectively impossible a few years ago," Adam Scaife, a researcher at the U.K. Met Office, said during a media briefing. Over the long term, 2°C of warming is associated with more frequent and deadly heatwaves, destructive extreme weather, more rapid sea-level rise, and accelerated biodiversity loss.

While the WMO report puts the chance of breaching the 2°C threshold before 2030 at just 1%, Scaife stressed that "the probability will increase as the climate warms."

"It is shocking that 2°C is plausible," said Scaife.

The WMO, Met Office, and other organizations behind the report said there's an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will surpass 2024 as the hottest on record, as the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels worldwide relentlessly warm the planet.

The report suggests it's even more probable—86%—that the average global temperature in at least one of the next five years will breach the critical 1.5°C warming threshold set by the Paris climate accord. Last year was the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.

Arctic warming is expected "to be more than three and a half times the global average," WMO said, portending further loss of sea ice.

"We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record," WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems, and our planet."

The report is the latest piece of evidence that the international community is badly failing to constrain runaway planetary heating, which is wreaking havoc globally in the form of increasingly extreme weather, severe public health impacts, and more.

In the U.S.—the world's top economy and largest historical contributor to planet-warming emissions—oil and gas production surged to a record high last year, and President Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to further boost fossil fuels while shredding green-energy initiatives and withdrawing from global efforts to combat the climate crisis.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

'She saw them burn': Gaza girl devastated after family killed in Israeli strike

Patrick Lawrence: The White House as Playpen

U.S.-Supplied Air Defenses Fail In Ukraine

Rob Urie: Why the US Must Officially End the Ukraine War for It to Stop

China Is Going to Win the AI Race

Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’

Rick Derringer, ubiquitous guitarist in US pop and rock, dies aged 77

Harvard scores court victory over Trump while celebrating new graduates

Zionism’s SECRET Fascist History

A Little Night Music

Velvelettes - He Was Really Sayin’ Somthin’

The Velvelettes - These Things Will Keep Me Loving You

The Velvelettes - A Bird In The Hand (Is Worth Two In The Bush)

The Velvelettes - Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I

The Velvelettes - A Love So Deep Inside

The Velvelettes - I'm The Exception To The Rule

The Velvelettes - Mama Please

The Velvelettes - Let Love Live (A Little Bit Longer)

Velvelettes - My Foolish Heart (Keeps Hanging On To A Memory)

Velvelettes - You Can't Get Away