Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Dave Rich, a professed expert on antisemitism and the Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), whose stated mission is to protect Jewish security in Britain. They work closely with government and the police, but have been condemned by, amongst others, the Jewish peace movement Na’amod for their vilification of Jewish opponents of Israel’s genocide, alongside anti-genocide protests more broadly.
Confronted with Israel openly committing to a grave war crime, who does Rich reserve his ire for?
The few British politicians condemning the crime.
He’s written an article for the Jewish Chronicle headlined “Pro-Gaza MPs comparing Israel to Nazis brought shame onto Parliament”. That’s because of comparisons between the proposed concentration camp and the Nazis made by two MPs elected on a platform opposing the genocide:
It is hard to think of any more pointed use of Nazi language and imagery than what two Independent MPs, Iqbal Mohamed from Dewsbury and Batley and Adnan Hussain of Blackburn, posted on X this week. Mohamed accused Israel of committing a “holocaust” in Gaza; Hussain posted: “We’re on the concentration camp stage. Gas chambers next?”
How Rich chooses to describe the concentration camp is revealing and deeply disturbing. He writes:
They were responding to news reports that Israel planned to construct a humanitarian zone in Gaza to separate Palestinian civilians from Hamas, and the use of the word “concentrate” in one headline was all it took to open the Nazi-themed floodgates.
Those who engage in atrocity denial receive damning judgements from history, and rightly so. Israel is planning to concentrate the Palestinian population in a camp, where they will be forbidden from leaving. Those who do not oblige will be regarded as legitimate military targets. This is a concentration camp.
The claim that this is a “humanitarian zone” is a perverse, Orwellian upending of the English language. We already know how Israel interprets ‘humanitarian’ given the experience of the so-called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’. In this case, after Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza from 2nd March – an objective, incontrovertible war crime – this Israeli-American front brought in limited amounts of often unusable aid, focused in the south in an attempt to coerce the population into depopulating the north.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu this week announced he has nominated Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize during a visit to Washington | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The US president is desperate for a peace prize. That doesn’t align with Netanyahu’s plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza
Donald Trump’s claim to be nearing a breakthrough in the Gaza conflict, as he insisted ahead of his meetings with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu this week, in the end came to nothing.
Netanyahu has returned home from Washington. Mediating sessions continue in Qatar, but prospects are poor, which is hardly surprising given Netanyahu’s war aims of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in Gaza and much of the occupied West Bank.
Away from Gaza, Netanyahu wants to denuclearise Iran and force a change to its government. While Israel may present the recent war with Iran as a great success, developments since then suggest otherwise.
The key to the nuclear weapon issue is how much of the 60% enriched uranium that Iran has hidden away has survived, not whether it needs to enrich it further for a potential nuclear weapon. The common belief that the 90% enrichment is essential for weapons-grade uranium is wrong; the Hiroshima bomb used 80%.
Even 60% would be enough. Such a device may not be as efficient as one with 95% enrichment; it would be crude and cumbersome and might even be too heavy to deliver, but it could certainly power a test device and detonate.
That would be a huge symbolic moment, and would certainly make it much more important to move to a diplomatic outcome to the crisis, however much Netanyahu would oppose that.
In short, Netanyahu’s war has not ended Iran’s nuclear potential, with its programme damaged but far from destroyed. Similarly, the Iranian regime shows little sign of instability despite being under economic pressure.
Gaza, meanwhile, is turning into a double disaster for Israel as it transitions to fully fledged pariah status. In the past five weeks, another 640 Palestinians have been killed and over 4,500 wounded.
Hungry children are being killed and maimed as they wait for food. One of the few emergency hospitals still functional is a small, 60-bed Red Cross hospital in the south of Gaza. It says it has dealt with 2,200 weapon-related wounds in recent weeks.
To make matters worse, Netanyahu’s defence minister, Israel Katz, insists that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will now be concentrated into a huge detention camp in the south of the strip pending deportation to who knows where.
On top of this, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are even failing to destroy Hamas. Just ten IDF soldiers have been killed in the last two weeks, and another 14 injured. These figures may be very low compared with the scores of Palestinians killed every week, but they are more than enough to demonstrate that Hamas is still active and even controls parts of Gaza. We can also assume there is little shortage of angry young recruits to Hamas who have seen their families and friends killed and maimed.
The conflict continues in other ways, as well. When Israel fought its air war against Iran last month, the impression given by most of the mainstream media was that while occasional Iranian missiles might have got through the multi-layered Israeli air defences, their impact was minimal – perhaps causing some damage and even a handful of deaths and injuries, but with far greater costs to Iran.
While the extent of the fatalities and injuries may be correct, the 42 Iranian ballistic missiles that reached Israeli territory had a substantially greater impact than was admitted, with at least six hitting heavily protected military targets, including a major airbase and an intelligence-gathering centre.
Iran’s non-military targets included oil and power facilities, while its other missiles exploded in densely populated residential areas and left 15,000 homeless. These attacks cannot be reported within Israel due to strict military censorship rules.
This is relevant because it relates to possible future developments, especially Trump’s pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, for which Netanyahu announced he had nominated him this week.
For Israel, US support was crucial in its support during its war with Iran. The IDF’s air defences relied heavily on an advanced X-Band Radar run by the US military, while two US Navy destroyers provided anti-missile cover. The Pentagon also provided two ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defence anti-missile systems, which launched at least 36 interceptor missiles, reportedly costing $12m each.
In the immediate post-conflict period, direct US support will expand further. Even before the war on Gaza began in October 2023, the US spent an annual $3.8bn on military assistance for Israel. That has since shot up, reaching $18bn in the first 12 months of the war.
The US is deeply embedded in the defence of Israel, but Netanyahu’s war aims have not been met, and he needs the conflict to continue for his own political survival. When the next phase of war starts, the US will be intimately involved, and Trump will see his vision of a Nobel Peace Prize disappearing over the horizon.
For the second week running, demonstrators were arrested for holding signs reading ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’ in Parliament Square today, with others expected to take part in later actions across the UK.
Expressing public support for Palestine Action is now a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act following the group’s proscription by home secretary Yvette Cooper. It is the first time anti-terror law, designed to ban groups like Al Qaida and Isis, has been used to designate a domestic, non-violent direct action group a terrorist organisation.
The action, organised by Defend Our Juries, aims to challenge that proscription. Further such actions are set to take place in Bristol, Manchester and Cardiff. An independently organised demonstration is also being held in Derry, and one man took ‘solo action’ by posing with a sign in the market town of Kendal in Cumbria.
One man took action alone in Kendal. (Credit unknown.)
Bill, a 76-year-old university lecturer, told Novara Media he was participating in the London action because he disagreed “with this government’s definition of a terrorist”. “I might as well call you a red bell pepper, and now you have all the legal rights of a red bell pepper,” he said. Asked how he felt about the prospect of a charge under the terrorism act, he replied, “it’s all an adventure.”
Vote Labour for Genocide.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Kai Cunningham speaking to YouTuber Wesley Winter. Credit: Wesley Winter/YouTube
This ‘may come across as racist’.
A far-right activist who said Britain needs a “national socialist government” has been suspended from Reform UK following a Novara Media investigation.
In April, a reporter from Unherd, a news and commentary website owned by GB News owner Paul Marshall, went to Dagenham, Essex to report on the insurgent rise of Reform UK.
According to Unherd’s dispatch, in a tense meeting in Rainham working men’s club where a party seeking to professionalise met with a “lagered-up, pissed-off crowd”, one voice cut through the atmosphere. “There’s no point squabbling,” Kai Cunningham is reported to have said, to the loudest cheer of the night. “Reform is our only chance. The country is broken. Barking and Dagenham is broken, and all the lefties need to hear us say it’s broken, and realise we’re still here advocating for our country.”
Cunningham was described by Unherd as “representative of the new Reform”, but he also appears to be representative of something else.
In May, Cunningham was filmed among the small number of attendees at a “remigration” rally in Birmingham organised by far-right party Britain First.
In comments to a YouTuber who was filming the event, Cunningham said: “What Britain needs is a national socialist government.”
He then promoted the political group White Vanguard. “White Vanguard are the only British national socialist activist group. That’s what’s going to bring change – the only change.”
“National socialism is on the rise. It’s the only thing that’s going to save Britain,” he said.
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When approached by Novara Media, a Reform UK spokesman said: “Kai Cunningham’s membership has been suspended with immediate effect pending the outcome of an internal investigation. We will never tolerate those with extreme views in our party.”
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Eternity C sinking after it was attacked by Ansar Allah at sea. Photo: Ansar Allah Media Center
The two strategic operations are part of an escalation by the Yemeni resistance group against the Israeli occupation, in response to its continued genocide in Gaza.
The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni armed forces escalated their operations in the Red Sea last week against merchant vessels that violated the movement’s previously declared naval blockade by docking in the ports of occupied Palestine.
“Magic Seas”
The Yemeni Armed Forces’ spokesperson, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced in a televised speech on Monday, July 7, that Liberian-flagged Greek-operated cargo ship “Magic Seas” was struck, one day earlier, by two unmanned boats, five ballistic and cruise missiles, and three drones.
Saree added that the attack sank the ship, but the Yemeni Forces allowed its crew to safely evacuate.
“Eternity C”
On Wednesday, July 9, Ansar Allah released a video of an attack launched Monday on Liberian-flagged bulk carrier “Eternity C”, as it made its way to the occupied Palestinian city of Umm al-Rashrash (also known as Eilat).
Repeated warnings and calls by Ansar Allah’s naval forces for the crew to evacuate the vessel prior to the attack were heard at the beginning of the video. However, the ship continued sailing towards the port, ignoring the instructions.
Saree confirmed that “Eternity C” completely sank after it was targeted with an unmanned surface vehicle, and six cruise and ballistic missiles. He also pointed out that a special unit from the Yemeni naval forces moved to rescue several members of the vessel crew, who were provided with medical care and transported to a safe location.
According to media reports, the crew consisted of 25 members, four of whom were killed in the attack, 10 were saved after a 48-hour rescue operation, while 11 are still missing, including six who are believed to be taken by Ansar Allah to an unknown location.
Ansar Allah hits Ben Gurion Airport and vows to continue maritime blockade until Israel ends Gaza genocide
The recent escalation of Ansar Allah’s attacks has not been limited to the ban on Israel’s maritime navigation. Yemeni missiles have continued to target strategic sites in the depth of the territories occupied by Israel.
On Thursday, July 10, the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a strike on the Israeli occupation’s Lod Airport (known as Ben Gurion) using a Zolfiqa precision ballistic missile.
Ansar Allah confirmed the success of the operation in a statement, noting that it resulted in halting air traffic, and driving millions of panicked Israeli settlers into shelters after air raid sirens sounded in over 300 towns and cities occupied by Israel.
The Yemeni resistance movement vowed to expand their operations by targeting more military and strategic Israeli sites inside occupied Palestine, while persisting with a maritime blockade on Israeli ports, until “the crimes of the Zionist entity in Gaza are brought to an end.”
