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By DROP SITE NEWS

Story by David Schutz

IBSIQ, WEST BANK—On July 20, around ten masked men raided the Palestinian hamlet of Ibsiq in the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. They arrived in a two car convoy, dressed in Israeli military-issue fatigues, and carried assault rifles fitted with green laser pointers.

While their vehicles blocked the road, they stormed into a cluster of homes. At gunpoint, they forced a Palestinian family to their knees and warned them they had 48 hours to evacuate Area C and go to Area B—referring to technical designations of control in the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. Area C is under full Israeli control and Area B is technically under Palestinian civil administration but shares security control with Israel. The masked men said they would “return and burn the community down,” if the family did not evacuate to Area B.

I had been staying with an elderly Palestinian couple for five days in Ibsiq to document settler violence amid rising threats against the community. As the men approached, I asked one of them who he was. They looked like soldiers, but the vehicles in which they arrived had yellow civilian license plates. These masked assailants were members of the hagmar— settler reservist militias formally attached to the Israeli army and tasked with “security” in West Bank settlements.

The men dragged me behind a fence where four of them beat me until I required hospitalization. They stole the phone of an International Solidarity Mission activist who tried to record the attack.

My host, Abu Safi, who was 84, had little choice but to leave his home after that raid by the hagmar. The family packed up their belongings accumulated over decades in the house and moved to a nearby location in Area B. Abu Safi died of a heart attack soon afterwards.

The raid on Ibsiq, whose Palestinian residents have since all fled the depopulated hamlet, offers a glimpse into an essential part of how Israel rules the West Bank.

In parallel with Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that began in October 2023, Israeli violence from settlers and soldiers in the West Bank escalated to record levels. About 3,000 settler-related attacks causing Palestinian casualties or property damage were recorded between October 2023 and mid-2025, with more than 1,000 of them in the first 8 months of 2025, and 264 incidents in October 2025 alone—the highest monthly total since the UN began monitoring in 2006.

Over the past two years, settlers have increasingly been “going into houses, holding people at gunpoint, and giving them 24 hours to leave, and many have…It happened in Khirbet al-Maktal, Umm Salam, Razeem, and elsewhere,” said a field researcher with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. “We file complaints, but many times the authorities tell us the perpetrators were acting outside their capacity as soldiers, so we’re referred to the police,” he added. “Then the police say it’s a military matter. We end up in a situation where no one investigates.”

An Integrated Web of Civilians and Soldiers
Settler violence against Palestinians often appears sporadic, but it is an official government system with an organized structure operating as intended.

Since 1967, Israel has ruled occupied Palestinian territories through dual structures—military occupation and civilian settlements—each reinforcing the other while mutually devolving responsibility.

At the heart of this arrangement lies a legal device: regional settlement councils, chartered under the 1964 Municipalities Ordinance as standard Israeli municipalities, yet which operate in occupied Palestinian territory. Israeli jurisdiction rests on military orders and the West Bank Emergency Regulations, which extend most aspects of Israeli law in personam to settlers but not to the land itself. Territorial authority is supplied by the Israeli military, making the army the de facto sovereign.

Within this framework, the state delegates enforcement to settlers. Each settlement appoints a ravshatz, or a civilian security coordinator, paid by the Defense Ministry and authorized by the military to command a plain clothes rapid-response squad, or kitat konenut, of 20 to 40 volunteers within the settlement boundary. Weapons are issued from the Defense Ministry’s Department for Settlement Security; additional arms also flow from the National Security Ministry.

Inside Israel proper, these squads fall under police authority. Beyond it, across the military’s sector that covers rural border areas and all West Bank settlements, the ravshatz usually operates through a local security officer, or kabat, who is appointed by the settlement council to coordinate with the army.

Parallel to the ravshatz are the Hagmar Territorial Defense brigades: a reserve network integrating each settlement into a military grid broken out into districts, blocs, and areas. At the two top levels—district and bloc—the hagmar report to the regional hagmar command of the IDF. At the lowest level, the area hagmar corresponds to a single settlement. Each settlement coordinates with its area hagmar through its appointed kabat.

The hagmar are issued uniforms by the IDF, while the kitot konenut are not. The distinction between the kitot konenut and the area hagmar is merely a technical one, with the same settlers often serving in both units.

In short, the settlement appoints a security coordinator who essentially commands his own volunteer militia that is armed and funded by the state. Those same settler volunteers also often serve in uniformed army reservist militias under the control of the military that coordinates with their settlement. The volunteer militias, the reservist militias, and the military itself all work together to attack and terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank.

Although wartime command is meant to shift from local coordinators to the army, the West Bank has never officially been declared a war zone. It remains under what the military calls “ongoing routine security,” a permanent state of civilian control by armed settlers under military cover.

“On paper, the weapons are checked in and out by the ravshatz, but in reality, they almost never come back,” said an Israeli solidarity activist who monitors settler violence in the South Hebron Hills, and who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “In some councils, the armory rules are strict; in others, people just keep the guns at home. It depends on the local kabat and how much the army wants to look the other way.”

While the ravshatz and the settlement’s kitat konenut are technically limited to operating within their settlement, military auxiliaries like hagmar, operating in theory at broader territorial echelons, are not.

“The result is that we have settlers operating as the military without regulation,” Roni Peli, of Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, told Drop Site.

Forced Evictions
This system was on full display in mid-October on the outskirts of Al-Mufaqara, a hamlet in Masafer Yatta. Armed settlers broke into a Palestinian family’s cave-home, forcibly expelled them, and moved in—threatening to shoot anyone who approached. I arrived a few hours later to find the family and several Israeli solidarity activists outside waiting for the police.

“When the Palestinians tried to stop them, a group of armed men arrived, some in uniform, some not, including Binyamin Zarbiv, the ravshatz from Ma’on,” an Israeli activist who witnessed the incident told Drop Site, pointing to the settlement some 200 meters away. They also spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “They aimed their rifles at the Palestinians and at us, while the settlers carried their belongings inside.”

As we waited, an armed man in a ragtag uniform, identified by the activist as one of those who had arrived earlier, demanded my ID. He claimed to be representing Hagmar Har Hevron, though no such Israeli military unit officially exists, and identified himself as a member of three bodies: Ma’on’s rapid-response squad, the area hagmar unit, and a so-called farm patrol. He refused to say which group had sent him.

“The settler who broke in called the ravshatz on his phone,” the activist said. “That’s how it usually happens. The ravshatz makes a few calls, and within minutes they start showing up—half in uniform, half not—all with state-issued rifles.”

The man told me that he would be collecting a full day’s pay for his work, and acknowledged that he could do so whenever he wanted. He claimed his rifle came “from the army,” adding that he had received it “from the base,” but when pressed, he clarified that the “base” was the settlement itself, where no army base exists.

When the Israeli Civil Administration and police finally arrived, accompanied by army soldiers, they declined to review documents proving Palestinian ownership and left the militia in control of the site.

A few kilometers away in Susya, footage from August 24 shows a group of armed men invading the small community, some in fatigues, others in civilian clothes. One of them assaulted a Palestinian resident who was later hospitalized with a severe concussion.

The head of the Susya village council, Jihad Nawaja, said he recognized the attackers immediately. “I’ve known this man for 15 years,” Nawaja told Drop Site, pointing to an armed settler wearing civilian clothing. “The one who beat the Palestinian was his son. They came with armed men from Susya, in uniform, to tell us to evacuate. ‘Leave and move to Hebron,’ they said. There was no other reason for them to come that night.”

The B’Tselem researcher, who is also a resident of Susya, said armed groups of organized settlers frequently also detain Palestinians. They “kidnap people often … anyone who tries to resist eviction. They take him, warn him not to do it again, and release him later,” he said. “I once saw them during an attack near Susya. Settlers were escaping from the police, and one of these men helped drive them away.”

In a recurring pattern, settlers raid in broad daylight and, hours later, the same men reappear in uniform to enforce closures and secure the ground they seized.

“They also actively intercept the army’s radio frequency, to listen in on coordinations with the Palestinians. Once we had coordination for plowing, from four to eight o’clock… they found out and made sure it stopped,” the B’Tselem researcher added.

Rights groups report that complaints about organized violence by armed settlers routinely bounce between various jurisdictions of Israeli authorities. Police classify suspects as “military auxiliaries” and pass the files to the army; the army returns them as “civilian” cases; civilian authorities cite military jurisdiction, and the investigations close for “lack of evidence.”

A Private Army
Before October 7, 2023, Israel maintained about 450 rapid response squads, according to a 2024 report by the Knesset Research and Information Center (KRIC)—the non-partisan research arm of the Israeli parliament. Roughly 390 of the kitot konenut operated under army supervision in West Bank settlements, while the border police (a police paramilitary unit that operates on both sides of the green line) oversaw 50 and the police oversaw fewer than ten.

The report found that the division of control between government bodies over these units rests on a 1974 government decision that was never published and is missing from the state archives. Military Order 432 of 1971, which regulates kitot konenut in the West Bank, and related directives on open fire and emergency mobilization also remain classified.

In the report, researchers described sweeping non-cooperation from the Israel police, Defense Ministry, and IDF—none of which provided data on the squads’ authority, arming, or oversight. The KRIC noted that its report relied on partial replies and public sources, as “no response was received from the bodies involved.”

Following October 7, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced more than 700 new kitot konenut, expanding the police-run network, while the army’s share remained largely unchanged. The new units were incorporated under the border police, the only way Ben-Gvir could get a mandate to operate outside the green line. By early 2024, the government listed 906 active units, with a target of 1,086 by year’s end. By late October 2025, 1,052 kitot konenut units were active.

In October 2023, Ben-Gvir’s ministry also began distributing around 10,000 newly purchased assault rifles to kitot konenut and loosened gun-ownership eligibility, while the Defense Ministry supplied training, ammunition, and armory infrastructure. By November 2025, Ben-Gvir’s office said roughly 230,000 gun licenses had been issued over the past two years. Meanwhile, the National Missions Ministry funded vehicles, drones, and surveillance systems; regional councils added weapons and vehicles through private and foreign donors, including U.S.-Jewish federations that gifted sniper rifles to kitot konenut under campaigns like “Friends of Samaria.”

The KRIC noted that much of this equipment was distributed through ravshatz-operated armories, bypassing Israeli military depots. Earlier in 2023, the government created the Mishmar Leumi (National Guard), a Border Police reserve under Ben-Gvir, meant to absorb local militias and volunteer frameworks. Activated after October 7, it became a vehicle for mobilizing and reinforcing kitot konenut, with recruitment tracks allowing civilians to join armed policing roles outside the traditional Magav or IDF pathways. Formally under the police commissioner, its control can shift to the minister of national security in emergencies.Leading critics call it Ben-Gvir’s “private army.”

Simultaneously, the army expanded hagmar battalions, adding about 5,500 reservists for a total of roughly 8,000, divided between regional companies and settlement-level auxiliaries known as bnei hayishuv (“sons of the town”).

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s new Settlements Administration inside the Defense Ministry absorbed powers from the Civil Administration, giving his office direct control over civilian-security budgets: armories, budget lines, weapons requests, and patrol mandates. Under this structure, new siyur havot (“farm patrols”) emerged to police land outside settlement boundaries, funded from the same Defense Ministry budgets as the kitot konenut.

By May 2024, when the army began reducing hagmar deployments, a parallel militia network aligned to Ben-Gvir’s National Guard and Smotrich’s policy priorities was already firmly entrenched. The military is now considering further troop reductions in the West Bank, transferring security responsibilities to “local elements,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

On their websites, West Bank regional councils describe their roles in deliberately opaque terms: the South Hebron Hills Council boasts of “creating and maintaining local security elements”; the Jordan Valley Council pledges to “define security components in conjunction with security forces”; and the Binyamin Council vows to “improve and maintain local security components.”

“They don’t distinguish even between the hagmar and the rapid-response squads, everyone’s in uniform now,” a resident from the South Hebron Hills told Drop Site on condition of anonymity. “I know many of them by name. Some even have criminal records. Now they’ve been given uniforms.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

10 December 2025

Source: dropsitenews.com

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

3 Dec 2025 – The consequences of the US plan to support dividing the Gaza Strip into green and red zones separated by a yellow military line carry grave risks, including the effective displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the transformation of large parts of Gaza into closed military zones under the direct control of the Israeli army.

This plan entrenches long-term illegal control and the forcible de facto annexation of territory. It imposes unlawful collective imprisonment on the civilian population, in clear violation of international law and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Preliminary information indicates that the US plan for the Gaza Strip, being developed through the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), is based on imposing a rigid geographical separation system that divides Gaza into population blocks and closed military zones.

Accordingly, more than half of the Gaza Strip is effectively designated as a closed military zone under the direct control of the Israeli army. Within this area, strict control and management systems are imposed through severe restrictions on movement, the regulation of aid and basic services, and the deprivation of fundamental rights. These measures are used as tools of coercion to force the population to leave their homes and relocate to designated “safe” areas within the same closed zone, without any genuine option to remain or return.

The first phase of the plan divides the Gaza Strip into a red zone covering 47 per cent, which contains most of the civilian population, and a green zone covering 53 per cent, which is under full Israeli military control and where armed groups established and armed by Israel are deployed. The two zones will be separated by a yellow line designated as a military buffer area, in which Israeli forces will apply a shoot-to-kill policy against anyone who approaches or attempts to cross it.

The yellow line, marked by concrete blocks, has not remained fixed but has been pushed beyond the published maps, advancing in some areas by more than one kilometre inside the Gaza Strip. It is used to unilaterally redraw lines of military control, gradually expanding areas under direct Israeli authority, placing additional territory under closed military rule, and severely restricting freedom of movement. This practice entrenches de facto annexation and fragments Gaza’s territorial unity in clear violation of international law.

The plan intersects with Israeli efforts to impose full control over the Gaza Strip’s coastline, designated on the plan’s map as a “red zone,” and to transform it into a closed area under direct Israeli security and economic domination. This would effectively place Gaza’s maritime resources, including fishing waters, gas fields, and existing and potential coastal infrastructure, under Israeli control.

This approach constitutes an illegal seizure and systematic plundering of the resources of an occupied territory. It contradicts the established principle in international law regarding the permanent sovereignty of peoples over their natural resources, and the obligations of the occupying power not to seize public or private property and not to exploit the natural resources of the occupied territory for its exclusive benefit, especially when this is done within the framework of long-term arrangements that undermine the Palestinian people’s right to manage their own resources and maritime domain.

According to information obtained by Euro Med Monitor, the plan is based on transferring the Palestinian population from the red zone to the green zone through various pressure tactics. This is done by creating a coercive environment in the red zone and making access to relative protection and basic services conditional on relocating to designated areas within the green zone, following extensive security screening and vetting. This removes any genuine element of consent and places the process squarely within the scope of forced displacement prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The plan includes the establishment of “cities” of prefabricated container homes (caravans) in the green zone, each housing around 25,000 people within an area of no more than one square kilometre and enclosed by walls and checkpoints. Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life.

The design of these proposed cities mirrors the historical model of ghettos, in which colonial and racist regimes confined specific groups to sealed areas surrounded by walls and guard posts, with movement and resources controlled externally, as seen in Europe during World War II and in other colonial contexts. This system of forced spatial segregation does not constitute “temporary shelter,” but rather creates imposed population enclaves in which entire communities are subjected to management and control instead of being treated as individuals entitled to freedom of movement, residence, and life in their original communities.

Available information indicates that the engineering units responsible for the plan have already begun preparing designs for the first experimental city in Rafah, pending the securing of funding to commence on the ground implementation.

The plan is based on systematic discrimination against Palestinians, as relocation to the temporary “cities” in the green zone is conditional on passing security screening set by Israeli and US authorities. This enables the exclusion of wide categories deemed either “not meeting the requirements” or “posing a security risk,” including those with political or organisational affiliations or civic activity deemed non-aligned with the imposed arrangements, leaving them in areas more exposed to siege and danger. As a result, protection and basic services such as housing, food, and healthcare are transformed from universal rights into tools of selection and coercion, granted or denied based on unilateral security and political assessments.

Life within these temporary cities would be subject to arbitrary security control and externally imposed governance arrangements, leaving residents with no genuine choice to accept or reject them and denying them any role in managing their public affairs. This entrenches a new political and administrative reality that places the future of the Gaza Strip, the identity of its residents, and their right to self-determination on their land under direct threat due to external interference.

The plan goes beyond temporary security or humanitarian measures and forms part of a broader strategy to fragment the unity of the Palestinian land and people. It seeks to entrench a permanent separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by imposing a “starting from scratch” approach through the creation of a new authority in Gaza, separate from the national framework and existing representative institutions and subject to the conditions of the plan’s sponsors. This would re-engineer the Palestinian political structure against the will of people living under occupation, threatening fundamental rights, undermining the social and political fabric, and gravely weakening the inalienable right to self-determination over all occupied Palestinian land.

Euro Med Monitor strongly condemns the United States’ role in formulating and sponsoring this plan, stressing that it is not acting as a “mediator” or humanitarian supporter but as an active party designing a political and operational framework that entrenches occupation, de facto annexation, and forced displacement under the guise of security and humanitarian arrangements. Washington’s supervision of the CMCC, its leadership of the planning process, and its efforts to channel the plan through international frameworks violate its duty under international law not to recognise or assist illegal situations, and raise serious concerns of complicity in grave violations, including forced population transfer, unlawful seizure of land and resources, and the undermining of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The international community must recognise that no arrangements in Gaza can constitute a solution, or even a legitimate temporary administration, unless they are first based on ending the occupation through a complete and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory. This requires ending the illegal military, administrative, and settlement presence, lifting the land, sea, and air blockade, guaranteeing freedom of movement and access including the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials, and enabling the population to rebuild its homes, infrastructure, and civil institutions independently, in full respect of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination on their land.

States and international actors, foremost among them the United Nations and the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions, must reject any plan or field arrangement that maintains or reproduces Israeli control through ghettos or transitional zones, and must refrain from recognising or assisting any situation involving forced population transfer, de facto annexation, exploitation of occupied territory resources, or the undermining of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Immediate pressure must be applied to lift the blockade, open crossings for aid and reconstruction materials, guarantee Palestinians’ right to manage their own affairs and freely choose their representatives, and support international accountability mechanisms to ensure that crimes and violations do not go unpunished.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe.

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Joshua Scheer

3 Dec 2025 – In Gaza, surveillance has become as relentless as the bombing. In “Watched, Tracked, and Targeted in Gaza,” author Mohammed R. Mhawish, describes how Israeli forces use cameras, drones and digital tracking to monitor — and control — every move of Palestinians. The piece pulls back the curtain on a system where daily life, flight and survival are no longer private. If you want to understand what modern conflict means for human dignity — this story is essential.

As I read through this, more than a few points hit especially hard. Here are some of them:

“Life in Gaza … means losing what cannot be seen: the private space of the mind, the intimacy between people, and the ability to speak without fear of being monitored by a machine.”

“The campaign of mass killing … operated, too, through a system of watching, knowing, and collecting us.”

There is so much more — Mhawish spent 16 months reporting for this story, and it shows. This is a must-share article.

You can find their work on Substack, where they’ve published incredible on-the-ground reporting from Gaza. I’ve added this article there as well.

I blame myself for not knowing enough about journalists and people like Mohammed Mhawish — I’m coming back after a long time in the wilderness, so bear with me as I find my ground. But I found it impossible to sit idly by.

Here are some videos:

This first one, from a year ago, features him discussing what it’s like to report on the ground in Gaza — during the same period he would have been working on the original article.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXZQyl0fW_M]

This is his speech from winning the Izzy Award, and his powerful words are for anyone who considers themselves a journalist and for anyone who considers themselves human. I watched this many times over and over just to let his points sink in. I did a podcast about cultural humility and the white mindset but really about those in power and the powerless. No matter your thoughts, he and those who can no longer speak deserve for us to listen, hear, understand, and have humility. And share with everyone.

Here is that video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDq3j7up1g]

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Jon Queally

3 Dec 2025 – The family of Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza Medina, believed killed by the US military in a boat bombing in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 15, has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights accusing US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth of murder over the unlawful attack.

“From numerous news reports, we know that [Hegseth] was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza and the murder of all those on such boats,” reads the petition, filed Tuesday on behalf of Carranza’s family by Dan Kovalik, a human rights attorney based in Pittsburgh.

“Secretary Hegseth,” the petition continues, “has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings.”

The complaint also notes that President Donald Trump, the commander in chief of the US military, “ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”

First reported on by The Guardian, the filing of the petition with the IACHR—an autonomous body under the charter of Organization of American States (OAS) designed to uphold human rights in the Western Hemisphere—could result in the initiation of an investigation and the release of findings about the bombing that took the life of Carranza and two other individuals believed to be aboard the vessel.

The petition, the outlet noted, “marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.” Experts in international human rights law have stated from the outset that the administration’s justifications lack legal basis and that the attacks constitute unlawful criminal acts.

According to The Guardian:

Carranza, 42, appears to have been killed in the second strike of the Trump administration’s bombing campaign, on 15 September. The administration has publicly disclosed 21 strikes on alleged drug boats. Carranza’s family says he was a fisher who would often set out in search of marlin and tuna.

On the day of the strike, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that “This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility”. Trump attached video marked “unclassified” of a small boat floating in the water before it was struck.

Both Hegseth, the highest-ranked civilian at the Pentagon, and Trump have been under growing scrutiny for the series of boat bombings that have resulted in the extrajudicial killing of over 80 people since September. Experts have said the killings should be seen as “murder, plain and simple.”

New revelations about a strike on Sept. 2, in which two survivors of an initial bombing were later killed as they clung to the exploded boat on which they were traveling, has evelated that concern in Washington, DC this week with lawmakers seeking answers about the attack which, even if one accepted the legality of the initial strike under the construct the Trump administration has tried to claim, would constitute a clear human rights violation amounting to a war crime.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse in October, Katerine Hernandez, Carranza’s wife in Colombia, said her husband was “a good man” devoted to fishing and providing for his family. “Why did they just take his life like that?” she asked.

Hernandez denies that Carranza was involved in drug trafficking, as Trump and Hegseth have alleged without providing evidence, but also suggested that even if drug trafficking was taking place, it would not justify his murder. “The fishermen have the right to live,” she said. “Why didn’t they just detain them?”

In a Tuesday statement, the IACHR urged the US government to “ensure respect for human rights” during any and all extraterritorial military operations in the region, noting the deaths of a high number of persons both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, where other strikes have taken place.

“While acknowledging the seriousness of organized crime and its impact on the enjoyment of human rights, the Commission recalls that States are obliged to respect and ensure the right to life of all persons under their jurisdiction,” the statement reads.

“According to the Inter-American jurisprudence, this duty extends to situations when State agents exercise authority or effective control, including extraterritorial actions at sea,” it continues. “When lethal force is used by security or military personnel outside national territory, States have the obligation to demonstrate that such actions were strictly lawful, necessary, and proportionate, and to investigate, ex officio, any resulting loss of life. These obligations persist irrespective of where the operations occur, or the status attributed to the individuals affected. Likewise, persons under State control must always enjoy full respect for due process and humane treatment.”

The commission called on the US to “refrain from employing lethal military force in the context of public security operations, ensuring that any counter-crime or security operation fully complies with international human rights standards; conduct prompt, impartial, and independent investigations into all deaths and detentions resulting from these actions; and adopt effective measures to prevent recurrence.”

Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Michael Leonardi

5 Dec 2025 – Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, represents a systemic, existential threat to the narrative of “Western Civilization” and the myth of supremacy peddled daily by the establishment. Within the Italian media landscape, Maurizio Molinari (former director of La Repubblica and La Stampa) and TV pundit Davide Parenzo serve as prime illustrations of this systemic rot, representing two of the worst examples of the Zionist-dominated media in Italy. As Chris Hedges pointed out last weekend at a forum in Rome, these people – like their American counterparts at the New York Times or the Washington Post – cannot be considered journalists but as servants to power and in this case to Israeli hasbara (zionist propaganda system).

The ferocity of the witch hunt against Albanese is not accidental; it is a panic response. She is dangerous to the establishment not because she is a politician using slogans, but because she wields the unassailable, technical weapon of International Law against a propaganda machine built on lies. This fear has manifested in attacks that have descended into medieval hysteria, leveled not just by Israel, but by a Western alliance—including the United States and most EU member states—that is deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide.

The Witch Hunt: From “Witchcraft” to Campo de’ Fiori

In a shocking display of diplomatic lunacy that occurred—with twisted irony—just days before Halloween, Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, abandoned all pretense of legal argument to engage in literal name-calling. The context of this attack reveals the extent of the conspiracy against her: barred from entering the United States due to punitive sanctions, Albanese was forced to present her latest report, titled Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime remotely from South Africa, where she had just delivered the prestigious annual Nelson Mandela address to a rousing, minutes long standing ovation.

It was against this backdrop—facing a screen because he could not face her in person—that Danon infamously pointed at her image and shrieked, repeatedly, “You are a witch… your reports are pure witchcraft.”

This was not a metaphor; it was a deliberate attempt to cast a woman of law as a monster. As the renowned historian Silvia Federici has tirelessly documented in her work Caliban and the Witch, the label of “witch” is never accidental. It is a political tool used by dying power structures to discipline women who challenge the capitalist and patriarchal order. As Federici notes, the witch hunt was historically a “war against women” launched to destroy those who resisted the enclosure of common lands and the imposition of tyranny. Albanese is the modern target of this war because she resists the enclosure of Palestine and the tyranny of impunity.

The Italian public understood this connection immediately. In response to Danon’s slander, solidarity demonstrations erupted across Italy. Most poignantly, crowds gathered in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori at the foot of the statue of Giordano Bruno. Bruno, the philosopher burned alive at the stake by the Inquisition in 1600 for refusing to recant his truths, stands as the eternal symbol of free thought against dogma. Today, Albanese is the heretic standing against the Inquisition of the Zionist power structure, and the people gathered there to declare that they would not let her burn.

A traditional Italian chant has now become a rallying cry: “Tremate Tremate, le streghe son tornate” (Tremble, tremble, the witches have returned”).

Economic Strangulation and the Strategy of the Bully

Simultaneously, the heavy artillery of the United States government has been deployed to silence her. Leading this assault is secretary of state Marco Rubio, who has ceaselessly demanded her removal. Rubio has openly attacked her integrity, stating in a letter to the UN Secretary-General that “Albanese’s antisemitic remarks and evident bias make her unfit” to serve, and demanding that the UN “fire her immediately.”

These political attacks have morphed into a campaign of personal destruction and economic strangulation. The absurd sanctions wielded against Albanese have resulted in a Kafkaesque nightmare: she has been denied coverage by her private insurance company and is unable to access bank accounts in the United States or Europe. Beyond the financial warfare, the threats to her physical safety are severe; she has received numerous death threats against herself and her family. Furthermore, she is physically barred from entering the very territory she is mandated to monitor—the Occupied Palestinian Territories—and remains banned from entering the United States. Yet, in the face of this unprecedented persecution of a high-ranking UN official, the Italian government and the European Union have not raised a finger to support her or demand these sanctions be lifted.

State Repression and the Media Monolith

To understand why Albanese is vilified in Italy, one must look at the suffocating atmosphere created by the Meloni-led neofascist Italian government. This administration is becoming increasingly repressive, spearheading a general push to equate Zionism with Judaism and effectively criminalize any criticism of Israel. This is exemplified by the state’s current attempt to extradite an Imam who has lived in Torino for over 20 years, targeting him simply for comments he made characterizing October 7th as an act of resistance.

The media narrative is controlled by the GEDI Group, owned by John Elkann of the Agnelli family. Elkann, a Zionist and a business partner deeply tied to Israeli interests, utilizes his media empire to shield the occupation from scrutiny. It is no coincidence that Maurizio Molinari, during his tenure as director of both La Repubblica and La Stampa, enforced a rigid editorial line that demonized Palestinian resistance and whitewashed Israeli crimes.

The Raid on La Stampa in Torino

The tension between these establishment falsehoods and the reality on the ground reached a breaking point last week in Torino during Friday’s General Strike. A group of students participating in the strike entered the headquarters of La Stampa, spray-painting slogans against the genocide and media complicity on the walls, scattering papers across the floor, and creating a chaotic scene of protest.

The reaction was swift and monolithic. These students have been labeled as “violent criminals” with unanimity by the Italian government, the media, and even the figurehead President Sergio Mattarella. Francesca Albanese’s response to this incident, however, was characteristic of her integrity. While she repeatedly denounced the violent tactics used by the students, she refused to join the chorus of condemnation without context. She framed the event as a desperate warning to the media: a signal that the press must stop acting as a “media escort” for Israel, covering up its crimes. She urged the establishment to finally begin covering the truth of the International Law—the reality of a genocide in action for over three years and beyond, the suffocating illegal occupation, and the brutal apartheid system.

Italy as the Epicenter of Global Resistance

This diplomatic and media war is raging against the backdrop of a massive, insurgent movement in Italy that has inspired civil society around the world. While the Meloni government remains 100 percent complicit in the US-Israeli-led genocide—continuing to provide diplomatic cover and arms via the defense giant Leonardo—the people have risen in defiance.

This resistance reached a fever pitch last weekend. Leaders of the Global Sumud Flotilla descended upon Italy, including Greta Thunberg, Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, and Palestinian journalist and activist Ahmed Shihab-Elden. They joined forces with a powerful coalition of intellectual heavyweights, including Francesca Albanese, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Italian human rights crusader Luisa Morgantini and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.

The mobilization was immense. Last Friday saw another general strike led by the courageous Genovese port workers—who continue to block weapons shipments—accompanied by national walkouts in cities across the peninsula. This culminated on Saturday with massive national marches flooding the streets of Milan and Rome, demanding an end to the continuing genocide in Palestine, as the spearhead of movements for oppressed people aroud the world, and an end to the ever expanding war economy.

Chris Hedges, witnessing the sheer scale and moral clarity of the Italian movement, issued a moving tribute to the protesters:

“To Italy, What a privilege and an honor, and frankly the best form of therapy, it was to be with all of you. You have shown the world how to resist and why resistance is a moral imperative. I brought a film crew to document your courage and your understanding of what we face and how little time we have left to save our civil society, protect the rule of law and end the genocide. May Italy be the epicenter of a global resistance. Thank you for inspiring all of us!”

Why She Terrifies Them

Here is why Albanese remains the ultimate target:

1. The Mirror of Western Hypocrisy: She demonstrates with cold data that the EU and US are not “civilized democracies” but active sponsors of apartheid and genocide.
2. Deconstructing the Language: She rejects the media’s deceitful vocabulary. By using terms like settler-colonialism, apartheid and forced removal, she renders the propaganda of the Molinaris and Elkanns ineffective.
3. Breaking the Consensus: Albanese disrupts the establishment by validating the general strikes, the port blockades, and the global solidarity demonstrated by Thunberg, Hedges, and the Global Sumud Flotilla within a framework of international law that demonstrate that these movements are on the side of justice.

Francesca Albanese is the “witch” being hunted by the Western powers because she represents the truth of international law against the brute force of the geopolitical narrative. She dismantles the fiction that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East,” revealing instead that the actions of the Israeli genocide and occupation—and the complicity of many of the world’s most powerful countries — including the neofascist Italian government and the Agnelli-owned media — are the ultimate negation of civilization itself.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Hassan Fattahi

Introduction

The twentieth-century history of science is not only a chronicle of discoveries and inventions but also a narrative of the gradual awakening of moral conscience within scientific practice. Beginning in the secret laboratories of the Manhattan Project and extending to cosmic horizons and existential questions, this trajectory shows how science has shifted from an instrument of domination over nature to a vocation for self-understanding and responsibility toward being. This article synthesizes six interrelated perspectives formed in their historical context and traces this historical‑philosophical journey from the “atomic moment” to the “threshold of awareness.”

1. The Spark That Lit the Nightmare — Einstein’s Letter and the Origins of the Manhattan Project

In the summer of 1939, on the eve of global war, the scientific community was electrified by the discovery of nuclear fission. Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, and Lise Meitner had shown that splitting the uranium nucleus releases enormous energy. Alongside scientific excitement, however, a profound fear emerged: what if Nazi Germany were first to master a controlled chain reaction?

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist and refugee from Nazism, was particularly alarmed. Together with Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller, Szilard sought the moral authority of Albert Einstein to alert the U.S. government. Their meeting at Einstein’s summer home in Peconic, Long Island, produced the historic letter of 2 August 1939 addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Einstein’s letter, technical in tone yet urgent in warning, described the possibility of “very powerful bombs” derived from nuclear fission and urged immediate research and resource acquisition. Alexander Sachs, an economic adviser, delivered and explained the letter to Roosevelt on 11 October; the president’s response was decisive: “Make it happen.”

That two‑page letter set in motion a chain of decisions that led to the Advisory Committee on Uranium and ultimately to the Manhattan Project — the largest and most secretive scientific‑military enterprise in history, involving some 130,000 people. Ironically, Einstein himself, because of his pacifist and left‑leaning political views, was never permitted to participate. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki he expressed deep remorse: “Had I known the Germans would not succeed, I would never have signed that letter.” More than a technical memorandum, Einstein’s letter became a lasting symbol of the intersection of science, fear, and responsibility in the modern age.

2. The First Cry of Conscience from Within the Project — The Franck Report

By mid‑1945, as the war neared its end and Germany’s defeat was certain, ethical questions within the Manhattan Project grew more urgent than technical ones. Was it necessary or morally defensible to use this unprecedented weapon against civilian populations?

In June 1945, a group of physicists at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, led by Nobel laureate James Franck, produced what became known as the Franck Report. This document constituted the first organized, argument‑based protest from inside the project. The committee argued that a sudden atomic attack on Japanese cities was neither militarily necessary nor politically wise. They warned that such an action would trigger a global nuclear arms race and “destroy forever the world’s confidence in the moral sense of American scientists.”

Instead of an immediate strike, the Franck committee proposed a public demonstration of the bomb’s destructive power at an uninhabited site in the presence of international observers and Japanese representatives. Such a demonstration, they argued, might compel surrender while opening the way to international scientific diplomacy and control over atomic energy. The report, however, was largely dismissed by the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy and by military leaders such as General Leslie Groves; within two months the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Although the Franck Report failed in its immediate objective, its historical and ethical significance is profound. It was the first formal articulation of the idea that scientific responsibility extends beyond the laboratory. The report’s legacy continued in institutions such as the Federation of American Scientists and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, whose Doomsday Clock became an enduring emblem of scientific conscience. The Franck Report demonstrated that the modern scientist cannot remain in an ivory tower but must answer for the civilizational consequences of scientific work.

3. The Conscience Becomes Global — The Russell‑Einstein Manifesto and the Pugwash Movement

The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the intensification of the Cold War arms race, elevated the ethical crisis of science to a global level. In this context, Albert Einstein and the British philosopher Bertrand Russell undertook a historic initiative that culminated in the Russell‑Einstein Manifesto of 9 July 1955. Einstein’s endorsement of the manifesto was his final public act before his death in April 1955.

The manifesto’s stark message—“Either war or the end of humanity”—warned that a future nuclear war would not merely be a political defeat but a biological extinction of civilization. It called for placing humanity above nationality, race, and ideology and urged the convening of an international conference of scientists to deliberate on the dangers of nuclear weapons and the moral responsibilities of science.

The practical response came in 1957 with the first Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, convened in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, through the patronage of Cyrus Eaton and the participation of scientists from both East and West, including Joseph Rotblat. Pugwash established three core principles:

• Scientists should act as global citizens rather than instruments of state power.
• Science must serve peace and international cooperation.
• Control of nuclear technology must be global and transparent.

Pugwash played a discreet but influential role during crises such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and contributed to the diplomatic environment that produced treaties like the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. In 1995, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash movement were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their contribution to reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions. Rotblat’s dictum—“A scientist must think twice: once before discovery and again before application”—captures the movement’s ethical core.

4. Conscience in the Streets — Mass Movements Against Nuclear Weapons

In Japan, hibakusha—survivors of the atomic bombings—became powerful moral witnesses on the international stage. During the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement fused with environmental and anti-war activism to promote a concept of “positive peace,” defined not merely as the absence of war but as the presence of justice and sustainable development. Cultural expressions—songs, films, posters—and scientific warnings about “nuclear winter” by scientists such as Carl Sagan and others helped convey the catastrophic global consequences of nuclear war.

The movement reached its zenith in the 1980s in response to the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Mass demonstrations across Europe and North America, involving millions, exerted moral pressure that contributed to the political climate leading to the Intermediate‑Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 between Reagan and Gorbachev. These movements effected three fundamental changes:

• The emergence of a transnational civil society.
• The transformation of scientists from agents of technological power into moral conscience.
• A redefinition of security from possession of weapons to the ability to live without fear of annihilation.

5. Expanding the Field of Responsibility — From Nuclear Energy to Planetary Stewardship

With the end of the Cold War, the immediate specter of global nuclear war receded, but the scientific conscience did not fade; rather, it broadened. If the twentieth century was the century of the bomb, the twenty-first century is the century of the biosphere, genomics, data, and artificial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking, a symbolic heir to Einstein’s public voice, warned in his later years that humanity faces multiple existential risks—nuclear war, climate change, and uncontrolled artificial intelligence—and that collective moral maturity must precede technological expansion. Freeman Dyson, reflecting on scientific responsibility, spoke of “intellectual sustainability”: a commitment to preserving diversity and complexity in both ecosystems and thought. Carlo Rovelli, a contemporary physicist and philosopher, has argued for an “ethical cosmology” grounded in the ontological humility taught by modern physics: the universe is not human-centered, and knowledge that assumes human centrality is dangerous.

In the present century, the boundary between “scientist” and “planetary citizen” has largely dissolved. Climate scientists, philosophers, and artists now speak together in public forums because scientific decisions shape political and ethical outcomes for the entire planet. Movements such as Scientists for Future inherit Pugwash’s spirit and adapt it to contemporary challenges: protecting life as an integrated whole rather than defending narrow national or disciplinary interests.

6. Cosmic Horizons — The Transition from Power to Awareness

At the most expansive horizon, scientific conscience transcends terrestrial and anthropocentric limits and acquires a cosmic dimension. If intelligent life is rare in the universe, then the existence of conscious beings may carry a unique responsibility: to preserve the capacity of the cosmos to know itself. This idea, articulated by thinkers such as Hawking and Rovelli, reframes science not merely as accumulation of power or information but as a form of awareness—the universe becoming conscious through its living parts.

Hawking wrote that humanity is the means by which the universe contemplates itself; our extinction would therefore be a kind of cosmic forgetting. From this vantage point, technological error or ecological destruction is not merely local harm but the dimming of a portion of cosmic awareness. Science thus moves from “power” to “wisdom,” from “domination” to “commitment.”

Conclusion The Return to Wisdom

The sixfold narrative—from Einstein’s letter to cosmic ethics—tells a story of science’s gradual maturation:

• The Atomic Age: knowledge as power; ethics focused on responsibility to prevent annihilation.
• Philosophical Reflection: crisis of meaning; ethics as deep reflection on the limits of understanding.
• Popular Movements: science for survival; the shift from state‑centric to planetary concerns.
• Public Engagement: science in the public sphere; the scientist as an informed citizen.
• Cosmic Perspective: science as awareness; ethics of care at planetary and cosmic scales.
• The Present: a collective stewardship led by multiple generations and disciplines.

In the face of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, the central task for science may be to restore its connection to wisdom. If science answers the question of how, wisdom asks why. A civilization without a sense of why moves with speed but without direction. The scientific conscience of the future must operate on three levels:

• Cognitive: avoid absolute certainties and embrace complexity.
• Ethical: commit to life as a fundamental value.
• Aesthetic: perceive the world not only as matter but as meaning.

As Carlo Rovelli observes, “When knowledge deepens, it turns into silence—a silence of respect for being.” Perhaps the science of the future will not be the enemy of reason but a renewed form of it: reason infused with meaning, life, and self-awareness. A civilization that internalizes this lesson will not fear knowledge, for it will know that knowledge, when accompanied by love and responsibility, becomes salvation. This is the path of science’s maturation: from the atom to awareness.

Hassan Fattahi is a lecturer and writer who specializes in physics, astronomy, and science policy.

4 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Alan MacLeod

25 Nov 2025 – Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual. But Ellison is not alone. Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.

Media Monopoly

Paramount Skydance– an Ellison-owned company– is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN. This lead is largely due to Ellison’s proximity to President Trump, who will ultimately have to sign off on such a deal.

Ellison has already spoken to senior White House officials about axing CNN hosts and content that Trump is said to dislike, including anchors, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. It is this willingness to completely reorientate the network’s political direction that has made him the White House’s preferred purchaser of Warner Brothers Discovery. He is reportedly so wealthy that he can afford to pay in cash.

Ellison, whose net worth stands at a staggering $278 billion, has been on a media spending spree of late. Earlier this year, he provided the funds for Skydance to purchase Paramount Global, another gigantic conglomerate that controls such products as CBS, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Streaming, and Showtime.

Immediately upon being appointed CEO of CBS News, Larry’s son, David, began drastically reorientating the network’s political outlook, firing staff, pushing it to become pro-Trump, and appointing self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief.

The Ellison family, however, is far from finished. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle.

Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform’s security and operations, giving the world’s second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. Trump himself stated that he was extremely pleased that Oracle would be controlling the platform. “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said.

The Ellison family’s sudden venture into the realm of media and communications has shocked many, with senior media figures sounding the alarm. Longtime CBS News anchor, Dan Rather, warned that “we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” “It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” he stated, citing pressure to change coverage to be more pro-Trump. “I think if [the Ellisons] were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever, and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News,” he concluded.

Billionaire Capture

Rather is correct. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments.

Sitting on a fortune of over $480 billion, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in world history, and is projected to, within the next decade, become the planet’s first trillionaire. In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, in a deal worth around $44 billion. The South-African born tech magnate quickly set about turning the platform into a vehicle for advancing his own far-right politics. In 2024, for example, he was a key figure in promoting an attempt to topple Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation about the country’s election, and even threatening Maduro with a future in the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

He has also very publicly rewritten his generative AI chatbot, Grok, on multiple occasions, so it would produce more conservative responses to users’ questions. One result of this was that Grok began to praise Adolf Hitler.

Musk overtook Jeff Bezos last year to become the world’s richest man. And like Musk, the Amazon founder and CEO has made several moves into the world of media. In 2013, he bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and quickly began exerting his influence on the newspaper, firing anti-establishment writers and hiring pro-war columnists. This came just months after he bought a minority stake in Business Insider (now rebranded to Insider).

One year later, in 2014, Amazon paid nearly a billion dollars to purchase Twitch, a streaming platform which hosts around 7 million monthly broadcasters. Amazon also owns a wide range of other media ventures, including movie studio MGM, audiobook platform, Audible, and movie database website, IMDB.

French billionaire, Bernard Arnault, meanwhile, has been buying up large swaths of his country’s media outlets. The chairman of luxury conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and the world’s seventh-richest man now sits on a media empire that includes daily newspapers such as Le Parisien and Les Echoes, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, as well as Radio Classique.

The remaining three individuals rounding out the top seven list all owe their wealth primarily to their media empires. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are collectively worth over half a trillion dollars. Google has become the dominant force in today’s hi-tech economy, and is also a major player in social media, having bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Thirty-five percent of Americans use the video platform as a primary source of news.

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, owes his $203 billion fortune to his social media and tech ventures, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Like YouTube, Zuckerberg’s companies are major players in the modern news landscape, with 38%, 20% and 5% of Americans relying on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for their news and views.

MAGA Mouthpieces

Many of these wealthy individuals have joined forces with President Trump, in an effort to support Republican policies and push a conservative worldview. Chief among these is the Ellison family, who quickly announced significant changes as CBS News, promising “unbiased” coverage and more “varied ideological perspectives”– widely understood as a shift towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage.

Larry Ellison holds deeply conservative views, and became a top donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a close Trump confident. Indeed, one Trump insider, noting his influence, went so far as to call Ellison as the “shadow President of the United States.”

Musk, of course, very publicly turned Twitter into a conservative-dominated platform, and was an unofficial member of Trump’s cabinet, becoming de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Zuckerberg has also taken a number of steps to align his platforms with the MAGA movement, including firing his fact-checking team (widely associated with liberal politics) and prioritizing what he calls “free speech.” Content moderation teams, the Meta CEO said, would be moved from California to Texas, “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”

Zuckerberg replaced Meta’s president of global affairs, the former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who was George W. Bush’s chief of staff. He also appointed Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board, despite his complete lack of relevant experience.

Many of these moves were likely made in response to Trump’s threat to imprison Zuckerberg “for the rest of his life” if he did anything to “cheat” him out of a 2024 presidential election victory. Zuckerberg subsequently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and, alongside Bezos and other tech moguls, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Bezos, meanwhile, pursued similar measures at The Washington Post, announcing that the newspaper would no longer publish opinions skeptical of capitalism. “We are going to be writing every day in support of defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote, noting that readers wishing to see alternative viewpoints can find them on “the internet.”

The decision was widely seen as a major shakeup, and provoked public opposition from Post employees. “Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today,” said the newspaper’s lead economics journalist Jeff Stein. “[It] makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.”

The move was quite the reversal for Bezos, who had once called Trump a “threat to democracy.” Yet, by January 2025, he was sitting with Zuckerberg, Musk, and Arnault in prominent positions behind Trump at his inauguration.

Considering his nationality, Arnault has a surprisingly close relationship with Trump. In 2019, the French billionaire opened a new Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, a move that some have suggested was an attempt to please the president. Trump attended the facility’s opening, calling Arnault an “artist” and a “visionary.”

Due to their relationship with the Trumps, the Arnault family have become unofficial intermediaries between the French and U.S. governments. They were hosted by the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in 2023, and, during an escalating trade war earlier this year, Bernard visited the White House to dampen down tensions between the U.S. and France.

Pentagon Contractors

A key factor in the rise of many of the world’s top seven richest individuals is their proximity to the U.S. national security state, with many of their companies growing wealthy in part due to feeding from the trough of Pentagon contracts. Today’s wars and espionage rely as much on hi-tech computing equipment as tanks and guns, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a $9 billion cloud computing contract.

Bezos’ Amazon has long enjoyed a close relationship with the CIA, having signed a $600 million contract with the agency in 2014. Yet both Google and Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, have been intertwined with Langley since their inception.

The CIA bankrolled and oversaw Brin’s PhD research at Stanford University, work which would later form the basis of Google. As one investigation noted, “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.”

As late as 2005, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist arm, was a major shareholder in Google. These shares were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth. By 2007, the government was using enhanced versions of Google Earth to surveil and target enemies in Iraq and beyond, according to The Washington Post. By this time, the Post also notes, Google was partnering with Lockheed Martin to produce futuristic technology for the military. There also exists a revolving door of employment between Google and various branches of Federal government.

It would be no stretch, meanwhile, to state that Elon Musk owes his largesse in no small part to his intimate relationship with the CIA. In-Q-Tel chief Mike Griffin helped birth SpaceX, providing support and advice from the beginning, and even accompanied Musk to Russia in 2002, where the pair attempted to purchase cheap intercontinental ballistic missiles to start the company.

Griffin repeatedly championed Musk at the CIA, describing him as the “Henry Ford” of the space industry, and worthy of the government’s full support. Still, by 2008, SpaceX was in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and believing both SpaceX and Tesla Motors would be liquidated. But he was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract that Griffin had helped secure.

Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse. But its primary customers continue to be U.S. government agencies, such as the Air Force, Space Development Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. And recently, the Pentagon has recruited him to help it win a nuclear war. A new SpaceX spinoff company, Castelion, is working on building a network of armed satellites circling North America, designed to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles. A successful operation would give the United States an impervious shield, and allow it to act as it wants around the world, without threat of retaliation, effectively ending the era of mutually assured destruction, and plunging the planet into a dangerous new epoch.

Six of the seven members of Castelion’s leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-Space X employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the CIA, including Griffin himself. Elon named his oldest child Griffin Musk. Another of his sons, X Æ A-12, is named after a CIA spy plane.

No billionaire, however, is more intimately connected to the CIA than Larry Ellison. Ellison began his career by working with the CIA on a database system called Project Oracle. In 1977, he would co-found tech giant Oracle (named after his previous project). The CIA was Oracle’s only customer for some time, before Ellison branched out and began to win contracts with other branches of the national security state, including Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the NSA.

That close partnership continues to this day. In 2020, the company won a 15-year contract with the CIA and 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies worth tens of billions of dollars. And today, its upper ranks are filled with former CIA executives. One example of this is Leon Panetta, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, who sits on its board of directors.

Arming and Supporting Israel

Another key attribute that many of the world’s richest individuals share is their passionate support for Israel and its expansionist project.

Nowhere is this more evident than with Ellison, who has made it his life’s goal to advance the Jewish State’s interests, both at home and abroad. Ellison is an enthusiastic supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed with on his private island in Hawaii. So impressed was he with the embattled prime minister that he offered him a seat on Oracle’s board, replete with a yearly salary of $450,000.

Ellison is the largest single donor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In 2017 alone, he pledged $16.6 million to build a new training facility for IDF soldiers, whom he described as defending “our home.” At a fundraiser, he explained that:

Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”

David Ellison is no less ardent a Zionist, and even met with a top Israeli general in order to aid a project spying on American citizens, according to an investigation by The Grayzone. The scheme was aimed at attacking American citizens participating in pro-Palestine activism in the face of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The documents also mention Brin’s name as a potential collaborator in the plan.

Oracle’s Israeli CEO, Safra Catz, is also a close friend of Netanyahu’s, and describes the corporation as on a “mission” to support Israel. Together, Catz and Ellison have enforced a strict pro-Israel stance across the company. In the wake of the October 2023 violence, Catz instructed that the words “Oracle stands with Israel” must be printed on company screens across the world in more than 180 countries.

Unsurprisingly, the support and collaboration with Israel has led to significant pushback among employees. Catz’s response to their concerns was blunt. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:

This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”

It has been widely reported, even in the corporate media, that the Ellison family’s foray into the world of media was triggered by their desire to help Israel in its public relations battle, something Tel Aviv is keenly aware that they are losing. As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League said, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” explaining that young people around the world are being exposed daily to videos of Israeli aggression, leading to a PR disaster.

Former congressman Mike Gallagher, a leader in the attempts to ban TikTok, explained how his bill had failed, but, after October 7, 2023, and the worldwide outrage at Israeli actions, it found new life on Capitol Hill, and was passed into law, forcing its imminent sale to a consortium led by Oracle.

This pro-Israel sea change has already occurred at CBS News, with the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss first came to public attention while still at college, founding an organization that attempted to have Muslim and Arab professors fired for their pro-Palestine views. As The Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.” Last week, at the Jewish Leadership Conference, she stated that she sees her mission at CBS as “redraw[ing] the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in America by sidelining voices like Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson, and elevate “charismatic” leaders like Alan Dershowitz, who represents “the vast majority of Americans.”

Zuckerberg’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – have displayed a no less concerted bias in favor of Israel. As far back as 2016, Facebook was collaborating with the Israeli government on matters of censorship, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked revealing that the social media platform complied with 95% of her requests for pro-Palestine content to be removed.

The Facebook/Israel partnership was deepened in 2020 when the company appointed Emi Palmor, the former Director General of the Ministry of Justice of Israel and an ex-spy with IDF intelligence group Unit 8200, to its oversight board, a 21-person committee ultimately in charge of the political direction of the site.

Zuckerberg’s platforms have long shut down Palestinian voices on dubious “hate speech” grounds. However, the censorship was drastically increased after the October 7 attacks. Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the “systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.” noting how they reviewed 1050 cases of censorship of Palestinian voices, including those documenting human rights abuses against themselves. 1049 of them, the study concluded, were entirely peaceful utterances of support for Palestine, and did not break any of Meta’s terms of service.

In 2023, Instagram also inserted the word “terrorist” into the bios of thousands of users who mentioned they were Palestinian. When challenged on this, they claimed it was an auto-translation bug.

Internally, Meta staff have complained about systematic suppression of their voices and the creation of a “hostile and unsafe work environment” for Palestinian and Muslim employees.

WhatsApp, meanwhile, is a battleground in more than one sense. The Israeli military is using Palestinians’ WhatsApp data in order to track and target tens of thousands of people in Gaza. It is unclear how or whether Meta is collaborating with the Israeli military in this endeavor. However, it has been suggested that some of the dozens of former Israeli spies now working in top jobs at Meta could be producing backdoors in the software, or simply passing the data onto their former colleagues. A 2022 MintPress investigation found hundreds of former Unit 8200 operatives working at Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Zuckerberg himself is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, and has numerous familial connections to the state. After the October 2023 attacks, he released a statement denouncing Hamas and other resistance forces as “pure evil,” an action that earned him an official thank you from the State of Israel.

Musk has also put himself and his vehicles in the service of Israel. In November 2023, he traveled to Israel to meet with both Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog and offer his unqualified support to their attack on Gaza. Describing Hamas as “evil” and “revel[ing] in the joy of killing civilians,” Musk attempted to publicly whitewash Israeli violence, stating unequivocally that the IDF goes out of its way “to avoid killing civilians.” At the time of his visit, Israeli strikes had killed at least 20,000 people in four weeks of bombings.

Netanyahu has stated that Twitter is among Israel’s “most important weapons” in the war, and defended Musk from accusations of fascism, after he gave a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

During his visit, Musk also signed a deal with the government of Israel, giving the latter effective control and oversight over Starlink communications portals operating in Israel and Gaza.

Google and Amazon, too, are key players facilitating the hi-tech genocide in Gaza. In 2021, the pair signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and AI infrastructure to the IDF – technology that has been used to target the civilian population of the densely-populated strip. The deal has sparked a rebellion among employees, who organized sit-ins and other protests against their collaboration.

Many other Google employees, however, are intimately linked with the State of Israel. There are at least 99 former Unit 8200 spies working in key positions at the Silicon Valley giant. One prominent example is Gavriel Goidel, who was a longtime commander and head of learning at Unit 8200, before being hired by Google to become the company’s head of strategy and operations.

Google has also collaborated in disseminating Israeli government propaganda to tens of millions of Europeans, despite the content breaking its own terms of service.

Part of this may be down to the disposition of Brin himself. Normally avoiding the limelight and refraining from making political statements, the Russian-born magnate bitterly condemned the United Nations as “transparently antisemitic” after it released a report detailing his company’s participation in the Gaza genocide. “Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” he added.

Arnault has remained quiet on Gaza. He has, however, invested heavily in Israel. Diamonds and other precious stones are a mainstay of the Israeli economy, and the Frenchman’s luxury brands disseminate the stones globally. Activists have called for Israeli diamonds to be labeled conflict minerals and boycotted by ethical consumers. He also invested in Israeli tech and security firm, Wiz, a company recently purchased by Google for $32 billion. Earlier this month, LVMH signed a $55 million deal with Israeli actress and former IDF soldier, Gal Gadot, making her the the face of their brand.

We are living in an era of unprecedented global inequality. Together, these seven individuals– Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Arnault– control more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity (over 4 billion people) combined. Sitting on heretofore unimaginable fortunes, they have begun buying up assets, including media outlets, at record pace.

For billionaires, the utility of capturing the press is threefold: firstly, it shields them and their class from press scrutiny and criticism. Second, it gives them a mouthpiece to push the public debate towards even more business-friendly laws and regulations. And third, they can use their outlets to champion any causes and promote any other agendas they have.

We have seen all three play out here, as, collectively, our press is rapidly moving towards more conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Israel positions, shutting out any dissenting voices from their ranks.

The effect on democracy, a free society, and the public’s right to a diversity of opinions has been highly deleterious. When it comes to media, we already suffered from an illusion of choice. However, the supercharged concentration of ownership of American and global media in the hands of just a handful of individuals has only exacerbated this problem. There once was a time that individuals looking for alternative viewpoints would simply go online to find them. But with censorship of dissenting opinions – particularly on Israel/Palestine – growing, this is becoming increasingly unviable.

In short, then, what the planet’s mega-rich capture of our media system shows is that billionaires are not only a serious drain on resources, but an existential threat to an open society and the free flow of information.

________________________________________

Alan MacLeod is an academic, journalist, and senior staff writer for MintPress News.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

We’re on a trajectory where soon all our information will be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire megacorporations that can then use that information to surveil, manipulate and oppress us–1984 Redux.

30 Nov 2025 – It’s a full-time job protecting your mental lucidity in this dystopia.

It was hard enough to form a clear perception of reality when all we had to deal with was the propaganda of plutocrat-owned media corporations and the indoctrination of our power-serving education systems. Now on top of those still-persisting obfuscations we’ve got things like Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and an exponentially growing field of AI perception management to work through.

I remember watching Julian Assange give a talk way back in 2017 where he described a future in which artificial intelligence is able to harvest the data of individual internet users and then manipulate the information they see online in a custom-built perceptual prism designed to manipulate their thinking at a level far too subtle to be noticed. He compared it to the way a computer program can play chess with strategies looking 20 to 30 moves ahead at a level the human brain just can’t keep up with, saying that we’ll one day have artificial intelligence that can manipulate public perception with a similar degree of sophistication.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQRZvnGp1Gs&t=693s]

That future is a lot easier to imagine now than it was back in 2017. To be sure, the ruling class is not pouring trillions of dollars into AI so that we can all have free Studio Ghibli-style illustrations of ourselves. There is an understanding that major returns on investment will come largely in the form of these new technologies being deliberately knit into every part of our civilization, driven by the official and unofficial power structures that we live under, and that this will happen in a way that benefits the rich and powerful.

We’re on a trajectory where soon all our information will be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire megacorporations who can then use that information to surveil, manipulate and oppress us. All our medical and financial information. Whole psychological profiles based on what we view and say online. A far more thorough assessment of our personalities than we could ever create on our own.

This information can then be used to determine what sort of advertisements for which products would be likely to work on us, or maybe even produce a custom-made ad on the spot just for us. It can be used to determine what type of power-serving news media or punditry is likely to appeal to our confirmation biases and then make sure it crosses our line of sight at some ideal moment in our day. It can be used to determine how likely we are to oppose the imperial machine in any way, from joining a peace march to starting a union to leading an armed revolution. It can be used to closely monitor our individual path toward political radicalization, and it can be used to feed us information intended to steer that dissident energy toward political movements that don’t threaten the status quo.

Our rulers see AI as an opportunity to recapture the degree of social control that was shaken by the arrival of widespread internet access — a loss of information hegemony we’ve seen oligarchs and empire managers openly complaining about with regard to how social media has spread public dissent on issues like Israel and Palestine.

Journalist Whitney Webb has flagged the fact that Google plutocrat Eric Schmidt co-authored a book with war criminal Henry Kissinger which envisions a future where the public becomes increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence to do our thinking and creative expression for us, allowing our consciousness to become further and further intertwined with these oligarch-owned technologies.

“The Kissinger/Eric Schmidt book on AI basically states that the real promise of AI, from their perspective, is as a tool of perception manipulation — that eventually people will not be able to interpret or perceive reality without the help of an AI via cognitive diminishment and learned helplessness,” Webb warns.

Once we’ve outsourced our cognitive sovereignty to AI, our minds have been captured by the owners of the machines.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvKnD3_Ia44]

So it’s a dark and creepy trail we are traveling down. As a collective we’re going to have to find it within ourselves to start fighting back against this dystopia which is consuming more and more of what’s decent in our world, and as individuals we’re going to have to find ways to maintain our inner clarity despite the empire’s increasingly aggressive efforts to make us vapid, stupid and confused.

Luckily for us there are still large aspects of our humanity which they cannot infiltrate or control, and we would do well to familiarize ourselves with that terrain. Inspiration. Creativity. Consciousness. Spiritual awakening. These are realms wherein the tech plutocrats and imperial social engineers cannot tread.

Explore your own consciousness. Inquire deeply into the nature of self and the mind until clarity dawns on you. Heal your inner wounds. Remove from within yourself all the mental hooks of fear and hatred so that the propagandists can find no psychological purchase with which to manipulate you. Follow the faint whisperings of your muse, and learn to help your inspiration birth new creative expression into the world.

These are the kinds of things we’ll have to do to preserve ourselves as we move into this strange new world, on top of the usual business of staying informed and learning to see through the propaganda illusions. Luckily these things are all good for us anyway; the path toward protecting our humanity also just happens to be the path toward becoming a healthier human being and making the world a better place.

We are being called to awaken, and to transform. We are being beckoned not away from our humanity as the transhumanists imagine but deep into the heart of it, to a widespread blossoming of a bud that’s been waiting within us this entire time. This age invites us to evolve into a truly conscious species.

_____________________________________

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

19 Nov 2025 – A UN expert today expressed serious concern with the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2803, warning that it runs counter to the Palestinian right to self-determination, consolidates Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including ongoing unlawful policies and practices, and therefore risks legitimating ongoing mass violence.

“I welcome the UN Security Council’s renewed attention on Gaza and the urgent need for a permanent ceasefire,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

“But I am deeply perplexed. Despite the horrors of the last two years and the ICJ’s clear jurisprudence, the Council has chosen not to ground its response in the very body of law it is obliged to uphold: international human rights law, including the right of self-determination, the law governing the use of force, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter.”

“Article 24(2) of the UN Charter makes clear that in discharging its duties, the Council ‘shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.’

“Rather than charting a pathway toward ending the occupation and ensuring Palestinian protection, the resolution risks entrenching external control over Gaza’s governance, borders, security, and reconstruction. The resolution betrays the people it claims to protect.”

The resolution was adopted on Monday (17) with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions from Russia and China.

Albanese stressed that Resolution 2803 replaces clear legal obligations towards Palestinians with a “security-first, capital-driven model of foreign control” that entrenches existing power asymmetries. “The mandate to ‘secure borders,’ ‘protect civilians,’ and ‘decommission weapons,’ focuses almost exclusively on disarming Palestinian armed groups while doing nothing to end the root cause of the violence: Israel’s ongoing unlawful siege, occupation, racial segregation and apartheid, and ethnic cleansing,” she said.

“A military force answering to a so-called ‘Board of Peace’ chaired by the President of the United States, an active party to this conflict that has continually provided military, economic and diplomatic support to the illegal occupying Power, is not legal,” the expert said. “It is a brazen attempt to impose, by threat of continued force against a virtually defenceless population, US and Israeli interests, plain and simple.”

“Essentially, it will leave Palestine in the hands of a puppet administration, assigning the United States, which shares complicity in the genocide, as the new manager of the open-air prison that Israel has already established.”

“If the OPT, including Gaza, requires an international presence, it should be mandated to supervise Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, in line with the ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion and General Assembly resolution,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Such a presence should protect civilians, guarantee the cessation of hostilities, prevent further displacement, ensure accountability for grave breaches, and support the Palestinian people in exercising their right to freely determine their political future.”

Albanese warned that as long as Israel remains physically present in any portion of the OPT, including the Gaza Strip, it is an internationally wrongful act that all States, including the United States, are bound not to recognise, aid or assist.”

“The ICJ was clear: self-determination is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and the UN and all States have an obligation to assist in its realisation. This can only begin with the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory. Replacing an abusive trustee with another is not self-determination, it is unlawful”.

The Special Rapporteur said that Palestinians do not need a surveillance force over the ruins of their destroyed homeland. “They need a protective international presence that ends Israel’s unlawful occupation, stops the genocide and restores their capacity for self-governance. Protection means lifting the blockade, ensuring unhindered humanitarian access, supporting Palestinian-led governance, guaranteeing the right of return and enforcing international law in full,” she said.

Albanese also warned that the plan has already been used by some States as a “political pressure valve” to suspend discussions on sanctions and other concrete measures necessary to halt serious violations. “States cannot ignore serious breaches of peremptory norms because a political plan offers temporary diplomatic convenience.”

“I therefore urge all states, especially those that voted in favour of the resolution, to interpret and implement it in a manner consistent with binding international law,” she said. “To sideline international law renders the UN complicit, undermines the UN Charter and can only lead to “intensifying human carnage”.

“This is an existential moment,” Albanese said. “The international community must not allow Gaza’s future – or the future of the Palestinian people to be decided without their agency and consent. Only an approach rooted in justice, legality, and self-determination can lead to genuine peace.”

Francesca Albanese is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

Special Rapporteurs/Independent Experts/Working Groups are independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Together, these experts are referred to as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. While the UN Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for Special Procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the UN. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN or OHCHR.

Country-specific observations and recommendations by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the special procedures, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, can be found on the Universal Human Rights Index [https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/]

UN Human Rights, Country Page — OPT

For more information and media requests, please contact: hrc-sr-opt@un.org
For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) or Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org)

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on X @UN_SPExperts.

Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel and Lebanon

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Amnesty International

27 Nov 2025 – More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in their intent, said Amnesty International today.

In a briefing released today, the organization provides a legal analysis of the ongoing genocide along with testimonies from local residents, medical staff and humanitarian workers highlighting the dire ongoing conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.

“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”

— Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International

In December 2024 Amnesty International issued an extensive study concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza arguing that Israel had carried out three acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, including killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

Today despite a reduction in scale of attacks, and some limited improvements, there has been no meaningful change in the conditions Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and no evidence to indicate that Israel’s intent has changed.

“Israel has inflicted devastating harm on Palestinians in Gaza through its genocide, including two years of relentless bombardment and deliberate systematic starvation. So far, there is no indication that Israel is taking serious measures to reverse the deadly impact of its crimes and no evidence that its intent has changed. In fact, Israeli authorities are continuing their ruthless policies, restricting access to vital humanitarian aid and essential services, and deliberately imposing conditions calculated to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

At least 347people, including 136 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire was announced on 9 October. Israel continues to restrict access to critical aid and relief supplies, including medical supplies and equipment necessary to repair life-sustaining infrastructure, violating multiple orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to ensure that Palestinians have access to humanitarian supplies, in the case brought by South Africa to prevent Israel’s genocide. In January 2024, the ICJ found that Palestinians’ rights under the Genocide Convention, namely their survival were plausibly at risk.

The objective probability that the current conditions would lead to the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza persists, particularly considering the enhanced vulnerability of the population to sickness and spread of disease following months of famine caused by years of unlawful blockade and months of total siege earlier this year.  This has created circumstances that would lead to a slow death of Palestinians resulting from the lack of proper food, water, shelter, clothing or sanitation.

While there has been some very limited improvement, Israel continues to severely restrict the entry of supplies and the restoration of services essential for the survival of the civilian population including by blocking the entry of equipment and material necessary to repair life-sustaining infrastructure and required to remove unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble and sewage, all of which pose serious and potentially irreversible public health and environmental risks.  Israel is also limiting the distribution of aid, including by  restricting which organizations are allowed to deliver relief within the Gaza Strip. Simply increasing the number of trucks entering Gaza is not sufficient. According to OCHA, while households are now having two meals per day (up from one daily meal in July) dietary diversity remains low with access to nutritious foods including vegetables, fruits and protein still out of reach for many families, and items like eggs and meat scare or unaffordable.

Israel’s systematic displacement of Palestinians from fertile lands has continued unabated, with Israeli military currently deployed across around 54-58% of the Gaza Strip.  Israel has not stopped severely limiting Palestinians’ access to the sea. It has taken no measures to address the impact of its extensive destruction of farming land and livestock over the last two year. Altogether, this means that, Palestinians are left virtually totally deprived of independent access to forms of sustenance.

“Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life, with humanitarian aid still severely restricted. Still today, even after repeated warnings by international bodies, three sets of legally binding orders by the ICJ, and two ICJ advisory opinions, and despite Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, both as an occupying power and as a party to an armed conflict, Israel deliberately continues not to provide or allow necessary supplies to reach the civilian population in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

Additionally, Israeli authorities have failed to investigate or prosecute those suspected of responsibility for acts of genocide or hold accountable officials who have made genocidal statements. Even the ceasefire came about as a result of international pressure, including from the United States, not an explicit change of stance by Israel

“Israel must lift its inhumane blockade and ensure unfettered access to food, medicine, fuel, reconstruction and repair materials. Israel must also make concerted efforts to repair critical infrastructure, restore essential services, provide adequate shelter for the displaced and ensure they can return to their homes,” said Agnès Callamard.

In recent weeks, signs have emerged that the international community is easing pressure on Israel to end its violations. The newly adopted UN resolution on the future of Gaza fails to include clear commitments to uphold human rights or ensure accountability for atrocities. Most recently, the German government cited the ceasefire when it announced the lifting of a suspension on the issuance of certain arms export licences to Israel as of 24 November. A planned vote on suspending the EU-Israel trade agreement was also halted.

“Now is not the time to ease pressure on the Israeli authorities. World leaders must demonstrate that they truly are committed to upholding their duty to prevent genocide and to ending the impunity that has fuelled decades of Israeli crimes across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They must halt all arms transfers to Israel until Israel’s crimes under international law cease.  They must press Israeli authorities to grant human rights monitors and journalists access to Gaza to ensure transparent reporting on the impact of Israel’s actions on conditions in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Israeli officials responsible for orchestrating, overseeing and materially committing genocide remain in power.  Failing to demonstrate that they or their government will be held accountable effectively gives them free rein to continue the genocide and commit further human rights violations in Gaza and in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.”

“The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide. Israel’s pattern of conduct in Gaza, including the deliberate, unlawful denial of lifesaving aid to Palestinians, many of whom are injured, malnourished and at risk of serious disease, continues to threaten their survival. The international community cannot afford to be complacent: states must keep up pressure on Israel to allow unfettered access to humanitarian aid, lift its unlawful blockade and end its ongoing genocide. Companies must immediately suspend any operations that contribute or are directly linked to Israel’s genocide,” said Agnès Callamard.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org