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By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 21 starving Palestinians were killed Wednesday morning while seeking aid at a US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site in southern Gaza, after chaos broke out when American mercenaries trapped the crowd and used pepper spray.

What Happened?

According to local sources, when the GHF aid distribution point in northern Rafah opened, starving civilians rushed from long distances and were funneled through a narrow corridor to reach the site.

When they reached, American mercenaries closed the gate and sprayed pepper spray, causing mass panic and suffocation due to the gas and overcrowding. So far, more than 20 people have been killed.

According to survivors, the American mercenaries deliberately closed the gate as aid seekers arrived, causing crushing overcrowding. The Americans then began spraying pepper spray and tear gas, which led to panic and chaos, resulting in people being trampled and killed.

One survivor said there were thousands of aid seekers, adding that these are “not aid sites” but “mass death traps” designed to lure starving people.

Another survivor, while bidding farewell to a relative, said, “The Americans killed him.”

According to medical sources, the majority of the victims were children and fathers who have been starved for months by Israel.

False Accusations

The controversial foundation confirmed the killings, saying “at least 19 of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed amid a chaotic and dangerous surge, driven by agitators in the crowd.”

However, the GHF claimed that “elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest,” without providing any evidence.

GHF personnel identified multiple firearms in the crowd, the organisation alleged, adding that a US worker was threatened with a firearm by someone in the crowd.

The GHF didn’t mention that American mercenaries attacked the aid seekers, leading to chaos and deaths.

In response, Gaza’s Government Media Office slammed GHF’s “false and misleading statement”.

The Office explained what happened:

• This morning, 21 people were killed — 15 from suffocation and 6 by direct gunfire, with dozens more injured.
• GHF called on hundreds of thousands of civilians to receive aid at a center named ‘SDS3’ in southern Gaza. Once thousands of starving people were gathered inside the narrow iron corridors, deliberately designed to restrict movement, the gates were locked.
• Staff of this “criminal organization”, along with Israeli soldiers, sprayed pepper gas and opened fire on the starving crowd, who had come seeking aid.
• This resulted in mass suffocation, stampedes, and immediate deaths within an enclosed area with no exits, a setting clearly designed to cause killings.
• Testimonies from 14 eyewitnesses consistently confirm what happened. The Government Media Office had earlier released verified video evidence showing members of this American-backed organization firing directly at civilians.
• GHF’s attempt to shift blame onto innocent civilians or Palestinian factions is a transparent and unacceptable tactic aimed at evading legal, ethical, and humanitarian responsibility for a deliberate massacre.
• This is not an isolated incident. To date, over 870 civilians have been killed near or at GHF aid sites, more than 5,700 injuried, and 46 others went missing, making it a “direct participant in the genocide and starvation campaign carried out by the Israeli occupation.”

“Mass Death Traps”

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 800 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 5,200 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Additionally, 46 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinains.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”

“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the “lethal” US-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza. In a post on X, Lazzarini indicated that Palestinian lives “have been so devalued”.

“It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” he said.

“Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible of this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.

Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

According to a Haaretz report, conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered forces to shoot at crowds waiting for food near or at the US-backed GHF aid sites to drive them away or disperse them, despite posing no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

In a recent statement, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinian civilians at US-Israeli aid distribution centers in Gaza. The army claimed new field instructions were issued based on “lessons learned.”

A new Associated Press report with leaked footage also detailed how American contractors at GHF aid sites used live ammunition, stun grenades and pepper spray against starving Palestinians seeking food.

16 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sony Thang

I’m Vietnamese.

In 1954, Western powers decided to split Vietnam in two. Not because we asked for it. Not because it was just. But because it served their imperial interests. The South was handed to a US-backed regime we never chose, and this foreign-imposed division was packaged as a “solution.” We were told to accept it, and there would be peace. That half a country was better than none.

But we refused.

Vietnam is not a bargaining chip. We are not a piece of land to be divided and labeled “free” by strangers. When we stood against partition, they called us unreasonable. They called us terrorists. They said we were the problem.

Sound familiar?

Just a few years earlier, in 1947, the same powers had pushed a partition plan for Palestine. Not because the Palestinians agreed, but because foreign powers demanded it. More than 77 years later, the same script is still being used.

Palestinians are told to accept foreign-imposed divisions. To settle for “solutions” written by others. To be grateful for the fragments of their homeland they’re allowed to keep. They’re expected to forget the villages destroyed, the graves of their ancestors, the keys to their stolen homes, and the olive trees they once nurtured.

Vietnam was told to settle for half. We refused. So did Palestine.

They were told to accept UN Resolution 181, just as we were told to accept the Geneva Accords. But we knew that real peace cannot be forced. And it certainly isn’t peace if it begins with erasure. There’s no justice in a deal that demands surrender.

We fought not because we hated peace, but because peace without freedom is a lie. Half a land means half a people. And we proved them wrong. Today, Vietnam is whole. Not North. Not South. But united.

Palestinians understood this too. That’s why they rejected partition. That’s why they continue to resist. 

People often claim that Palestine was never a state. But neither were many other colonized nations. Algeria. Kenya. Ireland. Apartheid-era South Africa. None had internationally recognized statehood, yet no one suggests they should have accepted colonial rule for that reason alone.

Colonialism doesn’t ask whether you had embassies or a parliament. It only asks whether it can get away with taking your land.

Palestinians had land. They had memory. They lived lives rooted in soil long before anyone came to redraw their borders. Denying them statehood simply holds them to a standard no colonized people could ever meet.

Vietnam prevailed because we remembered who we were.

Palestinians remember too.

And that memory threatens those whose power depends on historical amnesia.

In 1973, Lê Đức Thọ became the only person in history to refuse the Nobel Peace Prize. He did not reject it out of pride, but because he understood there could be no peace while US bombs were still falling. Peace cannot be awarded by the same hands that drop napalm. By walking away from global applause, he kept his dignity and reminded the world that peace without justice is nothing but theater.

Today, Palestinians are once again being told to accept less, to surrender more, and to thank their occupiers for whatever remains.

But like Vietnam, they refuse.

They refuse to disappear quietly.

And they will not trade their freedom for silence.

One day, like us, they too will be whole again.

Because the land remembers.

And so do the people.

___________________________________________

Sony Thang is a Vietnamese writer

15 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Anthony Fulton

Twenty years ago, Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza after the post-1967 years of occupation and settlement. An overriding factor governing the decision to withdraw was the issue of demography. With a population of over two million Palestinians, Gaza has always represented a significant part of a broad demographic problem facing the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East.’ Within Israel and the occupied territories (the area that has been under direct or indirect Israeli control for 58 years) there are over 14 million people. Approximately half are Israeli Jews, the other half, Palestinians. This underreported reality stands sharply at odds with the notion of a Jewish and democratic state, especially one which aspires to the land borders of a Greater Israel.

Twenty-one months after Israel re-entered, Gaza stands in ruins – obliterated, to use the current Trumpian term. The State of Israel has unleashed terror upon the Strip on an unprecedented scale. The different elements of the collective punishment of Gaza have become familiar but still make for shocking reading: the indiscriminate bombing; the sniper and drone attacks; the withholding of aid; the domicide; the ongoing forced displacement; the restriction of access to water, food, healthcare; the targeting of civilians and razing of infrastructure.

That these things add up to genocide is hardly a matter for debate anymore. Instead, we need to ask where all this is headed. We can’t simply accept the hasbara narrative that Israel only wants the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas. The current state of the Strip cannot support this. There is no access to Gaza, but we can look at satellite photographs. We can look at the footage provided by Palestinians. We can also listen to Israelis in public, political and media spaces. More is going on here. This is a war that is going way beyond the oft-repeated objectives.

It seems perverse on the part of many Western commentators not to link the devastation of Gaza to current public discourse in Israel and to Zionist concerns about demography and Palestinian fertility. There are two aspects of this genocidal tragedy that suggest a renewed drive on Israel’s part to tackle a perceived ‘demographic timebomb.’ Firstly, Israel is manifestly engaged with the idea of the ethnic cleansing of the population and secondly, it is waging a war on the Palestinian future through the daily targeting of women and children.

The forced transfer of the Gazan population is now openly discussed, an entirely possible endgame legitimized by Trump’s plan. A new infrastructure of resettlement (with a nomenclature betraying a nostalgia for Gush Katif) is being prepared by the IDF’s D9 Caterpillar bulldozers. Palestinians have been uprooted and are continually being displaced within the Strip. The GHF aid ‘system’ is exacerbating this. Their homes have been destroyed and the areas that Palestinians can move in are now extremely limited, the conditions intolerable. It is in this context that we are presented with the current idea of a ‘humanitarian city.’ As Trump himself has put it, Gaza is a ‘hellhole.’ It might seem to some that the world will not stand by and let the ethnic cleansing of Gaza happen but, of course, it’s already happening. The uncomfortable optics of forced transfer won’t be an issue when conditions have become so bad that people beg to leave and their ejection from their own land can be spun as an act of mercy.

Bad enough, you may think. But what should be equally as outrageous to the outside world is Israel’s sustained assault on Palestinian children and women. At the point of writing, a figure of over 57,000 fatalities in Gaza includes 17,000 children and 9,000 women.

South Africa’s ongoing case at the ICJ includes the accusation that Israel, in contravention of the Genocide Convention, is imposing measures intended to prevent births within the Gazan population. A recent U.N. report by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory criticizes Israel for deliberately targeting health facilities in Gaza, destroying ‘in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.’ The WHO has warned of a health system at breaking point. Cesarean sections are being performed without anesthetic in those few hospitals still operating and newborn children are dying due to a scarcity of incubators and medical staff. The weaponization of aid means that, according to UNICEF, 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women currently require treatment for acute malnutrition in Gaza. Doctors have described a critical shortage of baby formula as being a direct result of Israeli aid restrictions.

This onslaught on children and mothers is a key component of this genocide which can be linked to a long-held Zionist obsession with Palestinian birthrates. Mandate Palestine was not, of course, a land without a people, as pioneers of the state such as Israel’s first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, knew. The country has always worried about the need to manufacture and maintain a Jewish majority. A chief architect of the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Arnon ‘the Arab Counter’ Soffer, long warned of the danger for the Jewish state of the Palestinian womb, Arafat’s ‘biological weapon.’

Evidence of the intent to target women and children can be seen in statements by Israeli public figures, collated in South Africa’s petition to the ICJ and freely available elsewhere. These senior figures include not just the usual suspects like Ben Gvir and Smotrich but also the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog who responded to Oct 7th with the declaration that there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza, ‘an entire nation’ is responsible.’ This normalization of genocidal discourse, particularly in relation to women and children, is enabled by a national political consensus and an indifferent Israeli public. It seems that there is not one righteous man in Gaza, or indeed, woman or child. ‘The children… have brought this upon themselves’, as one opposition member of the Knesset put it.

Barring international intervention, it seems certain that at the end of this latest phase in Gaza there will be fewer Palestinians. The demographic facts will have changed; they have already changed. The numbers are appalling enough, with 57,000 fatalities likely being an underestimate. But there are also names. For those who care to seek them out.

Indiscriminate blanket bombing has killed thousands of civilians and rendered Gaza unlivable. This is a war of homicidal excess, not one that is being waged to recover hostages and eliminate a terrorist organization. It is difficult not to conclude that it is part of a longer-term project to change the ethnic balance between the river and the sea.

Such are the ongoing demands of Zionism and its insatiable hunger for land, that it is not enough to erase the Palestinian past and present. Ethnic cleansing can only be part of a wider strategy. The demographic threat of tomorrow must also be addressed.

The facts are available, as is the evidence of intention. If the hostage situation is resolved, if Hamas is somehow ‘defeated’, who seriously believes that the expansionist, frontier state of Israel will leave Gaza alone? Or the West Bank? If Zionism is to avoid a death spiral, the demographic timebomb must be defused. The project demands land, and it demands a Jewish majority on that land.

Anthony Fulton writes about Israel-Palestine. He has contributed to Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Antiwar.com, The Times of Israel, Countercurrents, Mondoweiss and other media.

14 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud 

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu geared up for what was intended as a triumphant visit to Washington, commencing on Monday, July 7, 2025, Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades in Beit Hanoun were meticulously preparing their own stark counter-narrative. On the very inaugural day of the Israeli leader’s high-stakes diplomatic trip, the battalion launched a devastating strike, inflicting significant casualties on Israeli soldiers. The Israeli army, notorious for obfuscating its military losses, begrudgingly acknowledged five soldiers killed and 14 wounded, some critically.

This audacious operation, coupled with numerous others across both northern and southern Gaza, offered an undeniable truth: Israel’s utter inability to secure any segment of the Strip. This failure undermines its proclaimed intent to establish control over the genocide-stricken territory, seemingly as a prelude to forcibly displacing the entire population, first to Rafah in the south, and ultimately, towards Egypt.

Netanyahu may possess a sharp political cunning, yet his acumen primarily serves his personal survival as a politician. It demonstrably fails to harness politics for the genuine good of his nation, let alone for global stability. He might project an image of eloquence, but this perceived mastery of words often flourishes only because he remains largely unchallenged within his customary political circles.

Consider, for instance, this pronouncement he uttered on July 6, 2025, just hours before his flight to Washington:

“Our joint involvement brought a great victory over our mutual enemy – Iran. Iran has dedicated itself, for years, to our destruction, and for years, we had apprehensions: What should we do about Iran? Would we be able to take on Iran? And now, our heroic pilots flew in the skies of Iran, and the IDF did wonders, along with the Mossad and all other security branches…”

Stripped of critical context, this self-congratulatory declaration implies an earth-shattering event poised to fundamentally alter “the face of the Middle East,” a favored refrain of Netanyahu’s. Yet, beyond the relentless and baseless claims of having decisively defeated Iran – a narrative utterly devoid of credibility among sober political analysts – mere hours later, Palestinians in Gaza, enduring over 639 days of a relentless and internationally recognized genocide, delivered an undeniable message: Israel cannot even subjugate Beit Hanoun.

What, then, is Beit Hanoun?

In essence, this small town, encompassing an approximate area of 12.5 square kilometers (4.8 square miles), persists merely as a geographic marker and a name. It has been almost entirely obliterated, its entire pre-war population, estimated at around 60,000 residents, wholly displaced.

Owing to its perilous proximity to the Israeli border, often as close as 1.5 kilometers (approximately 1 mile), Beit Hanoun has been a primary target in nearly all of Israel’s prior aggressions against Gaza. It bore a disproportionately heavier burden of destruction compared to other Palestinian areas, dating back as early as 2004, 2006, and 2014.

However, the latest war and genocide have left virtually no building intact; some structures have been bombed repeatedly, rendering the entire area a haunting tableau of charred devastation. Indeed, numerous charred remains of victims still lie in the streets of Beit Hanoun or entombed beneath its vast rubble to this day.

Adding profound insult to grievous injury, the city was literally branded with the Star of David. In January 2025, chilling satellite imagery starkly revealed a giant Star of David carved into what was once fertile farmland in Beit Hanoun. Historically, alongside Beit Lahia and other eastern regions, the town constituted a vital segment of Gaza’s food basket – a role that became acutely critical during the two decades of suffocating Israeli siege.

Though much of this crucial agricultural land had already been appropriated by the Israeli army as ‘military zones,’ it still managed to somewhat stave off outright famine. Thus, the deliberate destruction of Beit Hanoun fundamentally equates to a deliberate assault on Gaza’s very capacity for survival.

Yet, Beit Hanoun simply refuses to die. On the contrary, it persists as one of the most active and formidable fronts for the Palestinian Resistance, posing one of the most perplexing military quandaries for the Israeli army. This defiance occurs despite Israel’s state-of-the-art killing technology, overwhelming troop numbers, and a seemingly endless supply chain, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s boundless generosity.

When Israel initiated its full-scale ground offensive on Gaza on October 27, 2023, it commenced precisely in Beit Hanoun. Astonishingly, it took the Resistance merely three days – between October 27 and November 1 – to discern the tactics of the invading Israeli army and adapt accordingly.

On November 1, Al-Qassam declared it had decimated four Israeli Merkava tanks and armored vehicles using Yasin 105 anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades, followed by the precision targeting of an Israeli soldier gathering with a quadcopter drone. On November 11, the Israeli army itself reluctantly admitted to the killing of four soldiers and the wounding of others in a booby-trapped tunnel in Beit Hanoun. The Resistance further asserted it had detonated an anti-personnel improvised explosive device (IED) targeting Israeli forces occupying a civilian home in the area.

Numerous other operations followed, each as lethal and sophisticated as its predecessors. It became terrifyingly evident that the more destruction the Israeli army wrought upon Beit Hanoun, the more fiercely and resiliently its resistance emerged. Desperate for a conclusive victory, the Israeli army brazenly declared on December 18, 2023, that it had “dismantled” the Al-Qassam battalions in the town. Consequently, its war tactics in the area supposedly shifted from a full-scale invasion to “holding operations,” predicated on the false premise that the Israeli army was now in “full control.”

That, too, proved to be another pipedream. The Israeli army was repeatedly forced to withdraw from Beit Hanoun as Palestinian fighters, expertly utilizing previously excavated tunnels – and possibly newly dug ones – infiltrated back into their ravaged town. They ingeniously leveraged the very mass destruction inflicted by the Israeli army to their strategic advantage, turning the urban wasteland into a complex battlefield.

The deadly July 7 attack on Israeli forces marked the 639th day since the war’s inception on October 7, 2023. This operation unequivocally signaled Israel’s failure, not only to occupy the town definitively, but also to truly conquer any part of Gaza. Beit Hanoun is, in essence, a microcosm of Gaza’s undefeated, and arguably undefeatable, nature.

And like every sacred piece of land in Gaza and throughout Palestine, the history of Beit Hanoun predates the very existence of Israel by millennia. Beit Hanoun, an ancient settlement, is believed to have been founded by a pagan king named Hanoun. Archaeological findings in the area testify to both ancient constructions and uninterrupted habitation across countless epochs.

It was there, just west of Beit Hanoun, that the Ayyubids famously vanquished the Crusaders at the Battle of Umm al-Nasser hill in 1239. To commemorate that pivotal victory, a mosque was consecrated bearing the battle’s name. Tragically, this very mosque, the revered Umm al-Naser Mosque, was obliterated by Israel in November 2023, with news of its destruction confirmed in January the following year.

If the human spirit were merely quantifiable by stones and concrete, Beit Hanoun would have been meticulously erased from both existence and memory long ago. The human spirit, however, can only be truly measured by the unyielding steadfastness of a people’s collective will. As clever as he may perceive himself to be, neither Netanyahu nor his formidable, US-backed army will ever manage to defeat this ancient Palestinian town, nor Gaza, nor the indomitable Palestinian people themselves. If history has bequeathed us any certain lesson, it is precisely this.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Proximity as power: “From zero distance” “من مسافة صفر” has become both a tactical descriptor and a rhetorical device used to assert that resistance is not abstract or remote, but visceral, embodied, and unflinching.

An unyielding fedayeen ethos — where resistance is not merely tactical, but sacrificial, rooted in the unwavering willingness to give one’s life for a just cause — has not only kept the movement alive, but made its endurance a testament.

Hamas’s innovative and courageous approach to guerrilla warfare has — against immense odds — held firm under the combined military might of Israel and the United States. Through tactical evolution, close-range ambushes, locally manufactured weaponry, and an unyielding fedayeen ethos, the resistance has not only survived but maintained control over key terrain, shaped ceasefire negotiations, and frustrated Israel’s strategic goals.

This battlefield endurance marked a strategic inflection point in October 2023, when Hamas recalibrated its tactics toward a more decentralized, guerrilla-based resistance. Its ability to regenerate forces, adapt rapidly to battlefield conditions, and impose costs on elite IDF units demonstrates a level of operational resilience that few anticipated. What was expected to be a swift eradication has instead become a prolonged confrontation — one where Hamas’s battlefield endurance now reverberates as political leverage.

Early in its military evolution, Hamas relied on symbolic resistance — rocket attacks and statements that signaled defiance more than battlefield effectiveness, especially during conflicts like “Operation Cast Lead” and “Protective Edge.” These gestures were about enduring, asserting presence, and maintaining political legitimacy under siege.

But since the October 2023 offensive, that paradigm has shifted. Hamas has embraced tactical attrition, deploying advanced IEDs, close-range anti-tank strikes, and adaptive guerrilla maneuvers to inflict measurable damage and contest territory. Their strategy now aims not just to survive, but to frustrate Israeli operations and achieve concrete military objectives — even at extraordinary cost.

Hamas’s arsenal — locally produced rockets like the Qassam and Sejjil, Yassin-105 anti-tank missiles, mortars, small arms, and IEDs — reflects tactical ingenuity forged under siege. Hidden workshops across Gaza continue to churn out weapons despite relentless Israeli airstrikes on manufacturing sites. Designs adapt quickly to battlefield needs, a resilience that has become central to the resistance’s strategy.

Short-range, high-mobility munitions now dominate Hamas’s tactical playbook. In Gaza’s dense urban terrain, these allow for ambushes and quick strikes against armored vehicles and infantry. IEDs have evolved with shaped charges to pierce Israeli armor, while battlefield reports suggest techniques borrowed from Hezbollah, like time-delayed secondary blasts targeting rescue teams.

The shift from symbolic defiance to tactical attrition has profoundly reshaped the ceasefire landscape. Hamas is no longer negotiating from a position of desperation or mere survival — it’s leveraging battlefield resilience as political capital.

Despite catastrophic losses, Hamas has demonstrated sustained operational capacity: ambushing Israeli forces, reoccupying “cleared” zones, and maintaining weapons production under siege. This has forced Israel to revise its war aims. While Prime Minister Netanyahu initially vowed to “eliminate Hamas,” recent statements prioritize hostage recovery and hint at diplomatic flexibility.

The contrast in combat range between Israel and Hamas/allied factions is stark. Hamas’s weapons are effective only up close — fighters must crawl through ruins, approach tanks, and manually affix explosives, often under direct fire. These acts are not just tactical gambits; they are embodiments of courage, of a resistance willing to risk everything for each meter of home ground.

In contrast, Israeli forces remain largely aerial. Jets, drones, and artillery shell from a distance, insulated from the terrain. Where Hamas confronts power face-to-face, Israel enacts domination from above. The fedayeen fight not only through physical presence, but through the convictions etched into their bodies — their endurance, memory, and refusal to yield become weapons in themselves in a war of asymmetric annihilation.

In May 2025 Israel shifted toward static, artillery-heavy operations under a campaign it calls Gideon’s Chariots, ultimately bogging its forces down in Gaza’s rubble. But Hamas’s proximity-based tactics continue to exact losses, leveraging embodied resistance (their bodies are their chariots) to turn courage and terrain into strategic assets. So, the fight evolved into a test of political endurance — where Hamas’s mere survival became its strongest bargaining chip.

Hamas’s astonishing battlefield endurance has enabled ceasefire negotiations — but also complicated them. By surviving, and in some respects outmaneuvering a vastly militarily superior adversary, Hamas enters talks not as a defeated actor but as one with leverage. This inversion fuels a paradox: the group’s resilience, once a rationale for its containment, now demands political concessions. Hence, current ceasefire proposals encompass phased Israeli withdrawals, hostage exchanges, and even frameworks for post-war governance.

Hamas’s shift toward tactical attrition has transformed its role in ceasefire negotiations and broader political calculations. Having survived months of intense warfare and demonstrated operational resilience, it now negotiates from a position of strength — demanding full Israeli withdrawal, rejecting disarmament, and asserting itself as a legitimate stakeholder.

This leverage directly challenges the Palestinian Authority’s claim to sole governance, with Hamas’s battlefield credibility outpacing the PA’s diplomatic relevance in Gaza. International mediators are increasingly forced to reckon with Hamas’s influence, and proposals for hybrid governance models or technocratic oversight suggest it may seek indirect political control while retaining its military posture.

Regionally, this endurance has unsettled Israeli and U.S. plans for a post-Hamas Gaza, while strengthening Hamas’s standing among segments of the Palestinian population and sympathetic Arab publics.

Mediators are increasingly forced to reckon with Hamas’s influence because the group remains a central actor in both battlefield dynamics and negotiation outcomes. Here’s specific evidence:

• Direct Engagement by Mediators: Hamas has submitted a “positive response” to ceasefire proposals from Qatar and Egypt, signaling its readiness to negotiate terms including IDF withdrawal and humanitarian guarantees. Mediators have acknowledged Hamas’s role by continuing proximity talks in Doha, with Israel sending a delegation despite publicly rejecting Hamas’s proposed amendments.

• U.S. Recognition of Hamas’s Role: President Trump stated that “Hamas wants to have that ceasefire” and emphasized that the deal would not improve if Hamas rejected it. The U.S. has also reportedly offered guarantees to Hamas via Qatari mediators that the war would not resume after a 60-day truce — a tacit acknowledgment of Hamas’s negotiating power.

• Hostage Leverage: Hamas’s continued control over hostages has forced Israel and international actors to engage with it directly. The group has used staggered hostage release proposals to shape ceasefire terms, including demands for prisoner swaps and territorial withdrawal.

• Territorial Control: Despite prolonged Israeli operations, Hamas retains control over central Gaza, including strategic areas like Nuseirat and Deir el-Balah. This control allows it to reassert tactical dominance and influence aid distribution, further entrenching its role in negotiations.

Hamas’s evolution from symbolic resistance to tactical attrition has upended traditional power dynamics. By forcing Israel into a protracted conflict with no clear exit, the group has secured a role in shaping Gaza’s future — whether its adversaries acknowledge it or not. The question now is not if Hamas will be part of post-war negotiations, but on what terms.

Ultimately, Hamas’s evolution confronts not just military paradigms, but political certainties. Its place in Gaza’s future is no longer hypothetical; it’s embedded in the rubble, the resistance, and the negotiations that follow.

14 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israel has killed 1,588 health workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry announced Sunday.

Dr. Muneer Al-Boursh, the ministry’s secretary-general, said Israel struck Dr. Ahmed Qandeel, a general surgery consultant and a pillar of Gaza’s medical community. “His death is not an exception,” Al-Barsh said. “It is part of a systematic campaign of extermination.”

Al-Boursh added that doctors, nurses, and paramedics face danger every day. “We documented 1,588 health professionals killed while performing their humanitarian duty,” he said.

Hospitals in Gaza have become military targets. Ambulances now serve as moving coffins, Al-Boursh warned. “This violates all international laws and norms,” he said.

“Why kill doctors?” he asked. “Because their presence means life. Their resilience disrupts the machine of death. The occupier fears healers as much as it fears fighters.”

Over the past 21 months, Israel’s genocide has crushed Gaza’s health system. The army destroyed 34 of 38 hospitals, both public and private. Only four hospitals still function, and then only at limited capacity.

Israeli restrictions have blocked international medical teams from entering Gaza. This ban deepened staff shortages and pushed the system to the brink of collapse.

Gaza now faces a dire shortage of medicines and equipment. Health workers struggle to treat the wounded and the sick under constant bombardment and crippling blockade.

Dr. Al-Boursh urged urgent global action to protect health workers and restore medical services in Gaza before the system fails entirely.

14 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Despite overwhelming pressers from Tel Aviv and Washington, the International Criminal Court (ICC) dismissed requests concerning the arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and former defense minister.

The ICC’s judges on Wednesday ruled that the tribunal’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip would stand.

The orders were issued due to the duo’s actions either leading to, prolonging or reinforcing the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on Gaza that has so far claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The judges said the warrants would remain active while the court continued to review the regime’s so-called objections to its jurisdiction in the case.

They also rejected a parallel Israeli plea to freeze the broader investigation into crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories, underscoring the tribunal’s refusal to yield to diplomatic pressure.

The regime, which has long denied the court’s jurisdiction, insists the warfare is a legitimate response to a historic resistance operation on October 7, 2023 that took place after decades of US-backed Israeli bloodshed and destruction targeting Palestinians. 

In their ruling, the judges said the regime’s argument that a separate April decision by an ICC appeals chamber invalidated the arrest warrants was “incorrect.”

They clarified that while Tel Aviv’s jurisdictional challenge was still under review, it had no bearing on the current validity of the arrest warrants.

The warrants remain in force, the court stated, until a specific ruling on jurisdiction was made — a timeline that remains undefined.

The ICC’s determination to proceed with the Gaza war crimes case has unfolded against a backdrop of mounting threats, political interference, and retaliation targeting its senior officials.

On May 1, 2024, Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli lawyer closely tied to Israeli regime, warned ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan during a private meeting in The Hague that both he and the court would be “destroyed” if he refused to withdraw the arrest warrants.

Kaufman, who claimed to be relaying an offer from Netanyahu’s legal advisor, urged Khan to reclassify the case files as confidential, suggesting it would allow Tel Aviv to respond privately and help Khan discreetly exit the case.

The lawyer, however, later denied acting on official instruction and claimed he had spoken on his own initiative.

The threats against Khan followed months of escalating US hostility towards the court over the Gaza investigation.

In February 2025, Washington revoked Khan’s visa, froze his assets, and barred his family from entering the US.

By June, the administration of former US President Joe Biden had imposed sanctions on four ICC judges involved in the issuance of the arrest warrants, two of whom participated in the Wednesday ruling that upheld them.

17 July 2025

Source: tasnimnews.com

MSF says Israel’s actions amount to ‘orchestrated ethnic cleansing,’ accuses EU of complicity through inaction

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Thursday sharply criticized the EU for its continued failure to act decisively to stop what the organization calls “orchestrated ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, accusing the bloc of complicity in the face of deliberate mass suffering.

In a post on X, the MSF said it had sent an open letter to EU leaders nearly a month earlier, on June 16, urging immediate action to stop the mass atrocities unfolding in the Palestinian enclave.

“The EU can and must act now to stop mass atrocities in Gaza,” it wrote. “Yet, amid EU member states’ inaction, orchestrated ethnic cleansing in Gaza continues.”

According to MSF, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the conflict, including 12 of its own staff members. The group said the most recent MSF staffer was killed on July 3 while attempting to retrieve a bag of flour.

“The human carnage and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza are deliberate. Humanitarian aid is weaponised and blocked. Healthcare services are targeted daily,” the organization stated.

MSF also condemned the EU Foreign Affairs Council’s latest conclusions, adopted on Tuesday, calling them “yet another sign of the unwillingness to exert pressure on Israel to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

“Once again, the EU demonstrated hypocrisy and shocking double standards when it comes to protecting civilians and ensuring the respect of international humanitarian law,” it said.

Calling on the EU to “turn its words into actions and to end its double standards,” MSF concluded by emphasizing the legal and moral responsibilities of all states to stop the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

“Every state has a moral and legal responsibility to recognise and stop the ongoing atrocities in Gaza,” it wrote.

The letter was directed at top EU leadership, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

EU foreign ministers met on Monday and Tuesday to discuss growing concerns over Israel’s attacks in Gaza, amid mounting civilian casualties and international calls for accountability.

However, member states were unable to reach a consensus, resulting in no formal decision to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement or impose sanctions.

Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, Israel has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since late October 2023, killing nearly 58,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

The relentless bombardment has destroyed the enclave and led to food shortages and the spread of diseases.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

17 July 2025

Source: yenisafak.com

By Rima Najjar

What is unfolding in Gaza now is not merely resistance — it is the rehearsal of liberation under fire. A resistance movement becomes a campaign of liberation when it transcends survival and begins to articulate a vision for post-oppression life — one that includes governance, justice, and cultural renewal. This shift requires codifying demands, building institutions, and claiming moral and legal authority by invoking international law.

Hamas exemplifies this transformation. After winning the 2006 elections only to be sidelined by the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), it began building autonomous governance in Gaza. Through grassroots organizing, parallel institutions, and external funding — including support from Iran and Qatar — Hamas established courts, security forces, schools, health clinics, and charities such as the Al-Salah Association. These efforts were not cosmetic; they filled voids left by the PA’s corruption and collaboration. In doing so, Hamas weaponized Gaza’s siege conditions to legitimize its rule, leveraging smuggling tunnels, local weapons production, and strategic aid distribution to frame itself as the sole entity resisting Israel’s blockade.

This consolidation allowed Hamas to survive sanctions, assassination campaigns, and multiple wars — transforming it from a guerrilla faction into Gaza’s de facto government. While isolated diplomatically, its ability to provide services and maintain a military presence has rendered the PA increasingly irrelevant. Hamas thus inhabits the contested space where resistance evolves into governance — where refusal becomes blueprint.

In Gaza today, the battlefield is not only kinetic — it is administrative. Resistance fighters are simultaneously managing aid distribution, coordinating ceasefire logistics, and negotiating hostage exchanges, blurring the line between insurgency and governance. Hamas operatives have reportedly overseen the allocation of food and medical supplies in northern Gaza, where international agencies rely on local networks to reach civilians amid rubble and displacement. Even under bombardment, tunnel infrastructure has been repurposed for transporting aid and sheltering wounded fighters, reflecting a dual-use logic that merges survival with statecraft. This fluidity — where combatants become coordinators and siege conditions produce governance improvisation — marks Gaza as a space where resistance is no longer reactive, but structurally adaptive.

In Palestine, this threshold between resistance and liberation has always been deliberately obscured by occupying forces and global spectators alike. The resistance in Gaza constantly oscillates between tactical survival and strategic nation-building, between reacting to atrocity and rehearsing statehood. Yet the grammar of liberation — the insistence that our struggle writes sovereignty before it’s achieved— remains irreducible, carved into our literature, politics, and memory.

Our narrative has never been mere lament; it is preemptive statecraft. Our poetry was policy before we had parliament. Our militancy was cartography before we had maps. We did not wait for the world to hand us nationhood; we authored it in exile. Every verse by Mahmoud Darwish, every act of defiance by Leila Khaled, every refusal by Ghassan Kanafani, every tunnel strategy by Mohammad al-Deif— these were not gestures. They were infrastructures of future liberation and governance in our homeland.

Darwish drafted the grammar of sovereignty in verse, not as metaphor but as legislative syntax. His work rituals survival, codifies return, and legislates dignity. Kanafani transformed allegory into insurgency; his assassination in 1972 by Mossad — though never officially confirmed — was a tactical strike against Palestinian futurity itself.

Leila Khaled weaponized spectacle to rupture silence, turning hijacking into pedagogy, insisting that armed struggle was not rage but roadmap. Deif, commander of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, turned strategy into infrastructure — operationalizing resistance through weapons production, tunnel networks, and siege adaptation.

When Israel assassinated him in July 2024 and boasted of it, it was because Deif’s resistance was battlefield legible; Kanafani’s was historiographically dangerous. And long before formal recognition or diplomatic overtures, Salman Abu Sitta reconstructed Palestine through forensic cartography — mapping over 1,600 erased villages and 30,000 place names from colonial archives and oral testimony. His Atlas of Palestine wasn’t just a record of dispossession; it was a tactical document for return, proposing logistical pathways for repatriation that defied erasure. Abu Sitta made geography militant — proving that even the terrain itself could be reclaimed in exile.

As a Palestinian, I did not simply inherit resistance; like so many others before me, I enacted it. At the American University of Beirut where I was a student, I didn’t wait for institutional permission to speak. I created Speakers Corner (modeled after Hyde Park Corner) — a breach in colonial order, a space of insurgent clarity. There, Leila Khaled spoke not in apology but in assertion, electrifying the campus with the grammar of refusal. That moment did not belong to history; it belonged to a continuum.

Yet AUB could not tolerate that continuum. Speakers Corner was shut down, deemed too volatile for academic containment. When it was later revived, its radical spirit had been exorcised — replaced with administrative protocols, limited access, and pre-cleared topics. The rupture was deliberate. But memory defies erasure.

That same resistance-to-liberation arc plays out now in digital terrain. Facebook, once a space of connection, has become a battleground of control. I receive “fact-check” spam dismissing verified reports of Israeli damage from Iranian strikes. This is not algorithmic misfire — it is epistemic warfare. It continues the same logic that assassinated Kanafani, surveilled Darwish, and policed Khaled’s movements: Palestinian testimony must be flagged, filtered, invalidated.

But we do not post to be believed. We post to archive, to indict, to survive narratively. Gaza burns, and we narrate it. Not just as catastrophe — but as calculus. This moment is not a breakdown; it is a blueprint. The liberation campaign underway today continues what Darwish composed, what Khaled choreographed, what Kanafani imagined, and what Deif engineered.

My presence — at AUB, online, in exile — is not symbolic. It is strategic. Because every word I write, every image I share, insists: we are not waiting. We are building it.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

17 July 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Frank Bergman

A renowned oncologist has issued a disturbing wake-up call to the world while presenting irrefutable evidence that Covid mRNA “vaccines” have caused the biggest surge in deadly cancer cases in human history.

The warning was issued by Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital Medical School at the University of London.

The globally recognized doctor is best known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research.

Dalgleish argues that Covid mRNA “vaccines” are the cause of skyrocketing excess deaths recorded all around the world since early 2021.

He also asserts that the injections are linked to surges in cancer, which he described as “turbo cancers.” 

The disease has been found to form and spread so rapidly among vaccinated people that doctors have dubbed the phenomenon “turbo cancer.”

Doctors have revealed that some “turbo cancers” spread so quickly that seemingly healthy patients can die within a week of being diagnosed.

Oncologists are also warning that these aggressive cancers don’t respond to conventional treatments.

This phenomenon has been seen globally.

During a new interview with Alex Jones on InfoWars, Dr. Dalgleish reveals chilling new proof that mRNA injections have triggered an unprecedented cancer epidemic.

“This is not theoretical or speculative,” Dalgleish declares before presenting his findings.

“Decades of research have demonstrated the risks of foreign DNA integrating into foreign cells, leading to potentially catastrophic outcomes.

“Synthetic DNA contamination, as detected in Australian vials of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ by [virologist] David Speicher, presents risks of a genomic instability which can manifest as cancers, immune disorders, and hereditary diseases.

“To explain in more straightforward terms, the ‘vaccines’ contain lipid nanoparticles which encapsulate synthetic DNA fragments.

“These nanoparticles deliver this DNA into the various organs throughout the body.”

“The DNA has the potential to integrate into our own genetic material,” the professor adds.

“As such, these ‘vaccines’ are not vaccines.

“They are, in fact, gene therapy-based.

“This genomic integration, as the scientific literature makes clear, can lead to cancer development, immune system disruption, and more.

“The sheer levels of contamination detected, up to 145 times the permissible limit in some cases, are extraordinary and far beyond what should be allowed in any medicinal product.

“The real-world evidence from the UK, while this may sound like a remote possibility, I’m here to tell you that we are already seeing evidence of these effects in real patients.”

[https://rumble.com/embed/v6rhmq7/?pub=4]

Dangleish has been issuing increasing warnings that Covid mRNA injections cause cancer in recent months.

“This is happening on a horrendous scale,” Dalgleish warned in February.

One way in which the spike protein in the mRNA boosters can induce cancer is by removing immune surveillance, Dalgleish says.

It can also kickstart oncogenes, which are mutated versions of the proto-oncogenes that regulate normal cell growth and division.

Dalgleish is worried that this T-cell suppression has created a ticking time bomb among the general public.

In a few years’ time, the issue will result in a disastrous explosion of early cancers.

Dalgleish warns that deadly cancers in 20- to 30-year-olds  – that would normally appear when a person is 70 to 80 years old –  are already surging.

He has been speaking out since 2022 about the increase in cancers that he and other doctors have witnessed and has written several articles on the subject.

Dalgleish says research indicates that the mRNA “vaccines” are causing both T-cell suppression and antibody class switching.

“I think the turbo cancers are probably caused by that,” he warned.

He also recently warned that the “evil” injections have triggered a global “explosion” in cases of deadly “turbo cancers.”

As Slay News reported in December, Prof. Dalgleish raised the alarm during an international forum of experts investigating the mass Covid vaccination campaign.

He warned that he has seen an “explosion” of deadly “turbo cancers” in his patients who have received Covid mRNA injections.

While addressing the Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International forum, founded by Dr. Stephen Frost and moderated by Charles Kovess, Dalgleish told the panel of experts:

“We must stop messenger RNA [mRNA] at all costs… It’s not only mad, it’s evil.”

[https://rumble.com/embed/v5xztvh/?pub=4]

The warnings from Dalgleish come as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently made the explosive admission that Covid mRNA “vaccines” are spiked with contaminants that triggered a global surge in cancers.

The federal agency made the admission after an FDA study confirmed that Pfizer’s Covid mRNA “vaccine” contains dangerous levels of excess DNA contamination.

As Slay News previously reported, leading scientists have been warning for some time that surges in deadly cancers among the Covid-vaccinated were caused by DNA fragments in the mRNA injections.

Those warnings have now been confirmed in a bombshell study conducted in the FDA’s own laboratory.

Tests conducted at the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Maryland found shocking levels of DNA contamination in the “vaccines.”

The residual DNA levels exceeded regulatory safety limits by up to 470 times.

17 July 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca