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"Israel’s public image is somewhat protected by the fact that its behavior is so profoundly evil that simply talking about it strains credulity among the uninformed, in the same way you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist if you talk about some of the things the CIA has openly admitted to doing in the past. Many people literally cannot believe anyone could be as evil as Israel is, so the true extent of their crimes go unseen."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Anti-Genocide Activism Is Terrorism In The Empire Of Lies

The western public has stopped viewing Palestine as an intimidating issue to speak out about, and it’s causing a major problem for the Israel PR machine.

One of the biggest obstacles for the pro-Palestine movement used to be the way Israel-Palestine was incorrectly regarded as a super complex issue that the average busy member of the public can’t hope to understand. That’s changing now because a live-streamed genocide is straightforward enough to override the “No you don’t understand what’s happening because words, words, words” schtick that Israel apologists always use to shut people down, but for a long time the hasbarists were able to intimidate people into silence just by knowing a bunch of clever talking points that the average casual observer would struggle to come up with answers for.

Glastonbury 2025: Amy Taylor of Amyl & The Sniffers uses her platform to stand in solidarity with Palestine

BBC#Glastonbury #Glastonbury2025 pic.twitter.com/KKOOqeuLzA

— Far Out Magazine (@FarOutMag) June 28, 2025

One of my favorite clips from the Glastonbury Festival came from Australian band Amyl and the Sniffers, whose vocalist Amy Taylor gave an off-the-cuff speech about Palestine and colonialism and the parallels between what white colonizers did to Indigenous Australians and what’s happening to the Palestinians today.

It wasn’t a perfect or super eloquent speech by Taylor’s own admission, but it was passionate and it got the point across. At the end she said, “That’s the truth and I thought I’d share that today. It was gonna be something way more poetic but that’s just what I said; it’s not perfect but I think it’s better to say anything than to say nothing at all right now.”

More and more people are seeing this when it comes to Gaza — that it’s better to say anything than to say nothing at all right now. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about about the apartheid state of Israel and the history of the Zionist project. You know what you’re seeing and you know it’s wrong, and that’s enough. Don’t let anyone intimidate you into being silent on the defining issue of our times.

Aaron Maté : Americans Murdering Gazans

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’

Israel’s defence minister has laid out plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme that legal experts and academics described as a blueprint for crimes against humanity. Israel Katz said he has ordered Israel’s military to prepare for establishing a camp, which he called a “humanitarian city”, on the ruins of the city of Rafah, Haaretz newspaper reported.

Palestinians would go through “security screening” before entering, and once inside would not be allowed to leave, Katz said at a briefing for Israeli journalists. Israeli forces would control the perimeter of the site and initially “move” 600,000 Palestinians into the area – mostly people currently displaced in the al-Mawasi area. Eventually the entire population of Gaza would be housed there, and Israel aims to implement “the emigration plan, which will happen”, Haaretz quoted him saying.

Since Donald Trump suggested at the start of the year that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “clean out” the strip, Israeli politicians including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have enthusiastically promoted forced deportation, often presenting it as a US project.

Katz’s scheme breaks international law, said Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers. It also directly contradicted claims made hours earlier by the office of Israel’s military chief, which said in a letter that Palestinians were only displaced inside Gaza for their own protection. “(Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that,” Sfard said. “It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.

“While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual. When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity,” Sfard added.

"Freedom to Choose"?: Peter Beinart Slams Trump-Netanyahu Plan for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Another IDF Soldier in Gaza Speaks Out

Another Israel Defense Forces soldier has spoken out publicly against the IDF’s brutalization of civilians in Gaza.

In an interview with the British Sky News Monday, a reservist who has served three tours of duty in Gaza spoke candidly about orders he and other soldiers received to shoot any person arbitrarily who entered defined “no-go zones,” regardless of whether they posed a threat.

The soldier gave his testimony anonymously for fear of being labeled a “traitor.” However, he identified himself as a reservist from the 252nd Division who was stationed at the Netzarim Corridor, a road which divides North and South Gaza.

The area has been one of the most critical strategic points for Israel’s occupation of Gaza, allowing control over the flow of aid and people.

The soldiers, stationed on the edge of a civilian neighborhood in the homes of displaced Palestinians, were ordered by their commanders to kill anyone who passed an “imaginary line” that marked the beginning of the military stronghold, the soldier said.

“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” the soldier said. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is.”

“It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle,” he said.

'Some Israeli commanders can decide to do war crimes.'

An IDF soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said his conscience won't let him stay silent about arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza.https://t.co/gTz1NqQk8v pic.twitter.com/WWzIv6Ck0o

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 7, 2025

The soldier said that the prevailing attitude among the troops was that all Palestinians were “terrorists,” and that this attitude was reinforced by commanders.

“They say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn’t be there, and if he still comes, it means he’s a terrorist,” he said. “This is what they tell you. But I don’t really think it’s true. It’s just poor people, civilians, that don’t really have too many choices.”

He said that when soldiers in the corridor kill civilians, a lot of them “think that they did something good.”

That sense of impunity, he said, comes from the higher-ups.

“Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that,” he said.

“You can’t be in this scenario for so long and not normalize it,” he said. “Killing is normalized, and you don’t see the problem.”

This anonymous soldier is the latest of many who have decided to speak out against atrocities their military has committed.

His testimony comes on the heels of a harrowing Haaretz expose, in which several other Israeli soldiers described being ordered to shoot Palestinian aid-seekers, turning the U.S.-Israeli administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites into “killing fields.” Others provided The Associated Press with video of soldiers bombarding civilians in an aid site with pepper spray and stun grenades.

Still others have spoken out against the attacks on civilians near the Israeli stronghold at Netzarim.

In April, a report by the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence detailed many more accounts of brutality over the first year-and-a-half of the war. It included accounts of Israeli soldiers razing agricultural land, bulldozing entire city blocks, and designating “large swathes of the land” that “were turned into massive kill zones.”

“All of them were wiped off the face of the Earth. Annihilation, expropriation, and expulsion are immoral and must never be normalized or legitimized,” the report said.

The soldier who spoke to Sky News said his deployment left a similar stain on his conscience.

“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country,” he said. “I think the war is… a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over.”

Indirect talks over Gaza ceasefire continue as Netanyahu arrives in Washington

Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas over a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza continued for a second day on Monday, hours before a meeting in Washington between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Avi Dichter, an Israeli minister and member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said he expected Trump’s meeting with the Israeli prime minister would go beyond Gaza to include the possibility of normalising ties with Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia – an ambitious project that is central to the US president’s policy in the Middle East.

“I think it will first of all be focused on a term we have often used but now has real meaning; a new Middle East,” Dichter told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on Monday. Trump has increased pressure for a deal in Gaza in recent weeks and raised the possibility that a ceasefire could be declared in a matter of hours or days.

Before departing for Washington on Sunday evening, Netanyahu said he was confident a deal could be achieved and that Israeli negotiators had been given clear instructions to achieve a ceasefire – but only with conditions that Israel has already agreed. ... The current proposal envisages a phased release of about 28 hostages held by Hamas during an initial 60-day ceasefire, as well as the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza, a surge of humanitarian aid and discussions on a definitive end to the 21-month conflict.

In March, a previous ceasefire collapsed when Israel reneged on a promise to engage in negotiations that would have led to a second scheduled phase of the existing truce and possibly a permanent cessation of hostilities. Hamas officials have now demanded strong guarantees that Israel will not launch a new offensive after the 60 days is over. The militant Islamist organisation also wants the UN and other international organisations to control deliveries of humanitarian aid in Gaza, and bar the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive US and Israel-backed private organisation that started distributing aid in Gaza in May and has been mired in controversy.

A further point of dispute is Hamas’s demand for Israel’s military to pull back much further than proposed in negotiations. The Israeli military now holds about two-thirds of Gaza, including key strategic corridors as well as a swath of the southern part of the territory that has been razed flat and which Israel is reluctant to give up.

Tony Blair thinktank worked with project developing ‘Trump Riviera’ Gaza plan

Tony Blair’s thinktank worked with a project developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a “Trump Riviera” and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk. The project, led by Israeli business people and using financial models developed by the US consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), was developed against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s vision of taking over the Palestinian territory and transforming it into a resort.

While the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) said it was not involved in the authorship of the plan, two staff took part in calls as the project evolved. The staff also took part in a message group used for the project, along with figures from BCG and the Israeli business people, while a TBI document titled “Gaza Economic Blueprint” was shared within it, the Financial Times reported.

The report prompted an angry reaction from the institute, which Blair set up after he left Downing Street. It has more than 900 staff in more than 45 countries. ... The institute denied it was involved in the preparation of a slide deck, which the FT reported had been developed by the Israeli business people using BCG’s financial models and was said to have proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area.

The slides reportedly outlined a plan called the “Great Trust” and was shared with the Trump administration. It envisaged that private investors would have been attracted to Gaza once many of the inhabitants had been paid to leave. The plan outlined in the slides was reported to have been created to attract Trump’s attention and that of wealthy Gulf rulers. Among 10 “mega projects”, the document includes the “MBS Ring” and “MBZ Central” highways – named after the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – and an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”.

Trial to consider Trump’s ‘ideological-deportation policy’ targeting pro-Palestinian students

A lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s effort to deport foreign students over pro-Palestinian views goes to trial in a Massachusetts federal court on Monday, where the government for the first time will need to defend its extraordinary position that it can deport noncitizens over their political speech.

The case was brought by the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP); its Harvard, Rutgers and New York University chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) following the arrest and detention of several noncitizen students and scholars who have spoken out on Palestinian rights. The government has claimed the authority to deport noncitizens who have committed no crimes but whose presence it deems poses a threat to US foreign policy.

Witnesses testified on Monday about the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s harsh clampdowns on university campuses, with professors describing how they have censored their own speech and activities despite Trump’s long insistence that under him Americans will have a robust first amendment.

“What the public and what the court heard from our witnesses today is about the powerful chill that the government’s policy has cast over university communities,” Ramya Krishnan, lead counsel for the plaintiffs told reporters outside the courthouse on Monday. “Noncitizen students and faculty on our university campuses today are terrified.”

The case is the first of half-dozen legal challenges to the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on universities to make it to trial, with civil rights and education advocates asking the judge to declare the “ideological-deportation policy” unconstitutional and unlawful.

Iranian president says Israel tried to assassinate him

The Iranian president has said that Israel attempted to assassinate him by bombarding an area in which he was holding a meeting. “They did try, yes. They acted accordingly, but they failed,” Masoud Pezeshkian told the US media personality Tucker Carlson in response to a question on whether he believed Israel had tried to kill him. Carlson’s interview, conducted via an interpreter and released on Monday, is one the first interviews the Iranian president has given with western media since the 12-day war fought between Israel and Iran last month.

“It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting … they tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks from Farsi, without specifying whether the alleged attempt was during the recent war. ...

A move to kill Pezeshkian, elected last summer, would be a qualitatively different step by Israel and underline the extent to which it was not seeking just to weaken Iran’s military leadership and cadre of nuclear scientists, but to destroy the political leadership as well. At times during the 12-day war Trump spoke in favour of regime change, but seemed to back off as the campaign persisted. He now talks in terms of securing a permanent deal with Iran, but the detail of what the US is willing to offer Iran is light.

Report: Syria Talks With Israel Involve Seizing North Lebanon

Israeli media began reporting new specificities about the Syria-Israel peace talks that have been ongoing for awhile, and incredibly they seem to suggest that the deal is centering around discussions of carving off parts of Lebanon to give to Syria’s Islamist government.

The normalization was centering heavily around the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. Israel invaded and occupied parts of Golan in 1967, and invaded further parts of Golan in December after the ouster of the Assad government. The new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government has argued that public opinion obliges them to try to get the Golan back.

Or at least part of the Golan. Israeli media are suggesting that a compromise under discussion would see Israel return one third of the Golan to Syria, at least nominally, though potentially with Israel being allowed to continuing leasing it, and then compensating Syria with parts of Lebanon.

The HTS is reportedly keen to seize Tripoli, historically Tripoli of the Levant to distinguish it from the one in Libya, arguing it is a Sunni majority city and was separated from Syria proper during the French mandate. They also reportedly want the Bekaa Valley.

Kiev Meltdown Infighting After Russia Pokrovsk Breakthrough Trump Rebuffs Kiev On Arms Macron Upset

‘Reality TV spectacle’: outrage as federal agents raid LA neighborhood with horses and armored cars

Dozens of federal officers in tactical gear and about 90 California national guard troops descended on a historic immigrant neighborhood in Los Angeles on Monday – mounting a sweeping show that local leaders denounced as a “reality TV spectacle” and intimidation tactic. The troops were deployed to a mostly empty park in the MacArthur Park neighborhood for about an hour, some on horseback and others in armored military vehicles. Agents were also operating an armored vehicle with a mounted rifle.

It wasn’t immediately clear that any arrests were made. But the operation on Monday morning has drawn widespread criticism from city leaders, who have characterized the militarized immigration raid as an intimidation tactic. “What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” said Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, who called it a “political stunt”.

This is footage from today in MacArthur Park.

Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through.

The SECOND I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge to tell them it needed to end NOW.

Absolutely outrageous. pic.twitter.com/sxGzjGlYlr

— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 7, 2025

Bass said that children who were attending a nearby day care had to be quickly ushered inside as agents swept through the neighborhood, including through its namesake park. The agents arrived at about 10.30am, and left the neighborhood Bass spoke to a Department of Homeland Security representative, according to reporters at the scene. ... Since the raids kicked off, the normally bustling neighborhood had emptied out – fewer street vendors had been selling food and wares along the sidewalk. Many undocumented workers were avoiding reporting to their jobs at restaurants and shops, parks and public spaces were eerily empty. ...

“This morning looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Los Angeles city council, adding if Border Patrol wants to film in LA, “you should apply for a film permit like everybody else. And stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody who lives in this great city and disrupt our economy every day.”

Ábrego García will be deported again if released from jail before trial, says DoJ attorney

The US government would initiate deportation proceedings against Kilmar Ábrego García if he’s released from jail before he stands trial on human smuggling charges in Tennessee, a justice department attorney told a federal judge in Maryland on Monday. The disclosure by US lawyer Jonathan Guynn contradicts statements by spokespeople for the justice department and the White House, who said last month that Ábrego García would stand trial and possibly spend time in an American prison before the government moves to deport him.

Guynn made the revelation during a federal court hearing in Maryland, where Ábrego García’s wife, a US citizen, is suing the Trump administration over his mistaken deportation in March and trying to prevent him from being expelled again. Guynn said US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would detain Ábrego García once he’s released from jail and send him to a “third country” that isn’t his native El Salvador. However, Guynn said he didn’t know which country that would be.

Paula Xinis, a US district judge, said trying to determine what will happen to Ábrego García has been “like trying to nail Jello to a wall”. She scheduled a hearing for Thursday for US officials to explain possible next steps if Ábrego García is released.

Ábrego García’s case became a flashpoint over Donald Trump’s immigration policies when he was deported in March to a notorious mega prison in his native El Salvador. The Trump administration claimed he was in the MS-13 gang, although Ábrego García was never charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied the allegation.

In recent court filings, Ábrego García’s lawyers wrote that he had been tortured while being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador. He and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM” according to the filing, and Ábrego García was beaten and threatened.

Peter Beinart on Zohran Mamdani & Why Democratic Voters Are Increasingly Skeptical of Israel

Melting glaciers and ice caps could unleash wave of volcanic eruptions, study says

The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests. The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended.

Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels is now melting ice caps and glaciers across the world. The biggest risk of a resurgence of volcanic eruptions is in west Antarctica, the researchers said, where at least 100 volcanoes lie under the thick ice. This ice is very likely to be lost in the coming decades and centuries as the world warms.

Volcanic eruptions can cool the planet temporarily by shooting sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. However, sustained eruptions would pump significant greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. This would further heat the planet and potentially create a vicious circle, in which rising temperatures melt ice that leads to further eruptions and more global heating. ...

Previous research has shown volcanic activity increased globally by two to six times after the last ice age, but the Chilean study was one of the first to show how this happened. A similar phenomenon was reported via the analysis of rocks in eastern California in 2004.

A recent review by scientists found there had been relatively little study on how the climate crisis had been affecting volcanic activity. They said more research was “critically important” in order to be better prepared for the damage caused by volcanic eruptions to people and their livelihoods and for possible climate-volcano feedback loops that could amplify the climate crisis. For example, more extreme rainfall is also expected to increase violent explosive eruptions.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding

Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting. Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancun when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp.

The Greece trip, first reported by the Daily Beast, ended in time for Cruz to appear at the site of the disaster on Monday morning to decry the tragedy and promise a response from lawmakers. “There’s no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say ‘OK what could be done differently to prevent this disaster?’” Cruz told Fox News. “The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way.”

The National Weather Service has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and around $20bn in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials.

But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis. Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, prior to its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting. A further $50m in Noaa grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems and coastal ecosystems was also removed.

Also of Interest

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

Trump and Netanyahu to plot war and genocide in White House meeting

Palestinians fear razing of villages in West Bank, as settlers circle their homes

Iran Throws Cold Water on Idea of Resuming Talks With the US This Week

Patrick Lawrence: Trump Dead-Ends Putin

Man kidnapped by Argentina’s military regime as baby is reunited with relatives

Trump Caves Again Over Tariffs - Uncertainty Increases

Vijay Prashad: Patents of a Parasitical North

Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid?

DOJ: There was NO Epstein Client List

CAUGHT! FBI Deleted FULL MINUTE From Epstein Jail Cell Video! w/Sam Tripoli

A Little Night Music

LaVern Baker – It's So Fine

LaVern Baker - Dix-A-Billy

LaVern Baker – Jim Dandy

LaVern Baker - Humpty Dumpty Heart

Lavern Baker - Tweedle Dee

LaVern Baker – Love Me Right

Lavern Baker - Bumble Bee

LaVern Baker - Voodoo Voodoo

LaVern Baker – Gimme A Pigfoot