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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd R) meets with US President Donald Trump’s Special Representative for the Middle East Steve Witkoff (2nd L) and Trump’s son-in-law and former advisor Jared Kushner (L) in West Jerusalem on October 9, 2025. [Ma’ayan Toaf / GPO – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced early on Friday that the government had officially approved a proposal by US President Donald Trump to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of captives.
The PM office said the government had “approved the framework for the release of all hostages.”
Before the announcement, Netanyahu stated that his government continued to work towards achieving the goals of the war, with the main objective being the return of all those held captive.
Netanyahu added that “Israel is in the midst of a decisive development,” stressing that such progress would not have been possible without the “exceptional assistance” provided by President Donald Trump and his team.
He extended special thanks to Trump’s envoys to the region, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, noting that they had “worked tirelessly for many hours and did their utmost to make this happen.”
Netanyahu concluded that “these efforts serve the interests of Israel and the United States, as well as honourable people everywhere, with the aim of reuniting families with their loved ones.”
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Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Crowds gather in downtown Chicago for an emergency rally, waving flags and holding signs to oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement and National Guard presence on October 8, 2025. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The rule of law is falling apart, so we all need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t keep going in this direction.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have been relentlessly pushing the narrative that the aim of the White House’s deployment of federal immigration agents and hundreds of National Guard members to Chicago is to protect the public in what Trump has called “a war zone.”
But hundreds of people who marched through the city on Wednesday evening were clear about who is wreaking havoc in their communities.
“No ICE, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” residents of the nation’s third-largest city chanted, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents leave Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
Hundreds are marching in downtown Chicago to protest the deployment of National Guard troops and ICE enforcement operations in the city. pic.twitter.com/k23xNvHHOx
Signs at the rally read, “ICE Is Trump’s Gestapo,” “Stop ripping families apart,” and “They blame immigrants so you won’t blame billionaires.”
The demonstration was organized soon after about 300 troops with the Illinois National Guard and 200 Texas National Guard members arrived in the city over the vehement objections of Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrats who have condemned Trump for deploying masked, armed ICE agents to the city for the past month.
While Trump has claimed that “Operation Midway Blitz” is aimed at protecting the public from undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, US citizens have been targeted in raids and with violence perpetrated by immigration agents, who have shot pepper balls at a priest and a journalist, fatally shot a man during a traffic stop, and “deliberately” attacked peaceful protesters, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
The president has continued pushing the claim that protesters and immigrants are responsible for the chaos unfolding in Chicago and has suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act, empowering him to order a larger military force to the city, if court cases filed against the administration halt the deployment of the National Guard.
At the protest Wednesday, one man toldSky News he is “concerned the US is slipping away from democracy to authoritarianism.”
Hundreds of people in downtown Chicago are marching to protest the Trump administration's deployment of National Guard troops and immigration authorities here.
Joely King, who is running to represent Illinois’ 1st Congressional District, toldThe Columbia Chronicle that attending the protest was “like standing up to a bully.”
“The thing with authoritarians, which is what we’re dealing with with the Trump administration, is that they need people to comply in advance to have any power, because it really is a weak movement, it does not support the people,” King said. “So showing up and saying no, you don’t actually have the popular support, you don’t have the power—it shows them that we will not give them what they want and just let them roll us over.”
Dozens of people also gathered Wednesday in “free speech zones” that have been designated outside the ICE facility in Broadview where agents have been taking people they’ve detained, and more assembled for a candlelight vigil in Joliet, where Texas troops were stationed before heading to Broadview.
“To people who are scared, who are detained, we are fighting for you,” Meredith Shoemaker, a 19-year-old Loyola University Chicago student who marched downtown, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We don’t support what is happening.”
On Thursday, Judge April M. Perry in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois heard arguments for and against the National Guard deployment. Illinois officials filed a lawsuit to block the forces from coming to Chicago—a move that prompted Trump to say that Pritzker should be imprisoned for “failing to protect ICE officers.”
Perry, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, declined to rule on the case earlier this week, saying she wanted to hear arguments in a hearing.
At the march on Wednesday evening, another Chicago resident, Jinah Yun-Mitchell, told the Sun-Times that many in the city are determined to “stand up for people that can’t stand up for themselves” as Trump intensifies Operation Midway Blitz, in which more than 1,000 people have been arrested so far.
“The rule of law is falling apart,“ said Yun-Mitchell, ”so we all need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t keep going in this direction.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
US President Donald Trump reads a note as Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a roundtable discussion at the White House in Washington, DC on October 8, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
US Attorney General Pam Bondi generated alarm on Wednesday when she said the Trump administration is going to take the “same approach” to Antifa as it has to drug cartels—as the military bombs boats in the Caribbean it claims are smuggling drugs.
Antifa encompasses autonomous anti-fascist individuals and loosely affiliated groups who lack a national organizational structure or leadership. Still, as the increasingly authoritarian administration works to quash dissent on all fronts, President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order designating the Antifa movement as a domestic terrorist organization.
During a related roundtable on Wednesday—held as the administration worked to deploy the National Guard in Democrat-led cities—Bondi said that “we’re not gonna stop at just arresting the violent criminals we can see in the streets. Fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets; it’s breaking down the organization brick by brick, just like we did with cartels.”
Glancing toward Trump, she continued: “We’re going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa: Destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart. Thanks to your bold leadership, and the designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization—which is exactly what they are—Americans will no longer tolerate their unhinged violence.”
Lawyer and radio host Dean Obeidallah warned: “Please understand that this is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one-party rule.”
Others noted the violence the administration has already taken. Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker said: “My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly ‘carrying drugs,’ the US attorney general says, ‘Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa.’”
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan said, “So he is going to drone strike American citizens?”
HuffPost‘s SV Dáte similarly asked, “So the US military will be summarily killing them from above now?”
Trump has recently announced four bombings of boats he claimed were running drugs, without releasing any evidence. Those US military attacks have killed at least 21 people. Critics in Congress and beyond argue the strikes are illegal under federal and international law.
On Tuesday, top Democrats from key committees in the US House of Representatives demanded further information about the bombings and reminded Trump: “Congress has the sole constitutional responsibility to declare war and to authorize the use of force. You have failed to secure such authorization for these strikes.”
Also on Tuesday, Bondi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers grilled her on a range of topics. Asked about legal justification for the boat bombings by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), she declined to comment.
COONS: How did you conclude that these strikes on boats in the open ocean are legal?
BONDI: I'm not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have issued pic.twitter.com/Lg1FNPBpk7
Ahead of Bondi’s Senate testimony, watchdog groups and hundreds of former employees of the US Department of Justice expressed alarm about her leadership of the DOJ.
“We’re seeing the erosion of the Justice Department’s fabric and integrity at an alarming pace,“ says a letter signed by 282 former DOJ officials. ”Our democratic system cannot survive without the primary institution that enforces the law.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Pro-Palestine protesters in NYC (Photo: Wyatt Souers)
Pro-Palestine organizers credit “how the movement for Palestine has intervened,” for seismic shift in public opinion
US popular discontent over Israel’s war on Gaza has grown over the past two years, a Pew Research poll finds. Currently, 39% of those polled said that Israel’s military action against Hamas has gone too far – up from 31% a year ago and just 27% in late 2023. Six in 10 have an unfavorable view of Israel’s government. This survey was conducted before Trump and Netanyahu announced their so-called “peace plan”.
The Pew Research poll revealed that the percentage of those who believe President Donald Trump favors Israel too much has risen by five points since March, from 31% to 36%. Republicans remain far more likely than Democrats to back Trump’s handling of the conflict and view him as balanced between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet among voters of both parties, more people now believe he’s siding too heavily with Israel since previous polling in March.
Polling conducted by the New York Times and Siena University revealed a dramatic decline in support for Israel among US voters. Following October 7, 47% of US voters said their sympathies lay with Israelis, while just 20% sided with Palestinians. Today, that gap has vanished: 34% now say they back Israel, 35% back Palestinians, and 31% say they’re uncertain or support both equally. A majority of voters now oppose sending additional aid to Israel, at 51%.
Although the claims of antisemitism have been levied against the pro-Palestine movement, especially by the US government, Jewish people in the US have vastly shifted their stance against Israeli action in Palestine. According to a poll conducted by the Washington Post, 61% of surveyed Jewish people in the US believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, and 39% said Israel is guilty of genocide.
“The movement for Palestine has intervened”
According to Miriam Osman, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, these drastic shifts in public opinion reveal “the massive gap between the policies of the ruling class and the vast majority of people who are not represented by them.” Osman says that the cause of this change is “first and foremost the result of Israel’s brutal genocide, live-streamed to our phones daily unlike any other atrocity we have seen,” but also credits “how the movement for Palestine has intervened, expanded, and kept Palestine front and center, building mass protests and organizing infrastructure over the last two years.”
Groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement have been active in organizing mass mobilizations since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 – including taking part in a march of half a million in Washington, DC on November 4, 2023, which to date is the largest demonstration in support of Palestine in US history.
Since then, the movement for Palestine has taken a constant array of diverse forms, engaging potentially millions of people in the US. These include the wave of Gaza solidarity encampments protests, started by students at Columbia University and quickly spread across the country and around the world. Visits to the United States by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have seen mass demonstrations in July of 2024 in Washington, DC, and September during UNGA week in both 2024 and 2025.
The waves of pro-Palestine organizing in the United States have been sustained by a variety of organizations and coalitions, some in existence prior to October 2023 and some coming on the scene after. While the Palestinian Youth Movement has been active for decades, two years ago the Palestinian diaspora organization joined forces with other groups including the ANSWER Coalition and the People’s Forum to form “Shut it Down for Palestine”, a coalition which holds public meetings in New York City each week.
List of US citizens killed by Israel grows
The victims of Israel’s genocide and occupation includes US citizens, but the Israeli government has faced not accountability from the US for these killings. These include Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist shot by Israeli forces while at a protest in the West Bank, and Sayfollah Musallet, a Palestinian-American beaten to death by Israeli settlers while visiting family, also in the West Bank.
The US Department of Justice launched investigations against the alleged killings of US citizens by Hamas during October 7, and charged Hamas leaders with terrorism. However, when it comes to Israeli killings of US citizens, the US government has deferred to Israel to conduct its own internal investigations.
Establishment digs heels in
Demonstrations have also targeted members of the political establishment who have refused to respond to the sea change in constituent opinion and shift their stance in support of Israel. These include those in the liberal wing of politics, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – who has faced waves of activist pickets both outside his office and his home in New York City.
Some activists, notably, members of the anti-war group CODEPINK have taken to filming direct confrontations with politicians in the halls of Congress over their support for Israel – including those in the Democratic Party. When campaigning as Kamala Harris’ running mate last year, Tim Walz was called out by CODEPINK activists while at a DNC women’s caucus event for his support for Israel.
After 2 years of Israel’s genocide and war on Gaza, the US government shows no sign of changing its unwavering financial and political support for Israel. Although the Trump administration has been especially staunch in its support, establishment leaders of the Democratic Party have also remained, in many ways, just as supportive as two years ago. As recently as April of this year, establishment Senators including Schumer, fellow New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, voted down a Bernie Sanders-led effort to limit US arms sales to Israel.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Larry Ellison speaking at a conference. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The pending purchase of TikTok, blessed by the Trump-Netanyahu duo, once again sets off alarm bells regarding the marriage of economic, geopolitical, and military interests.
Launched in 2017 by the private Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok quickly became one of the most important social networks on the planet. By early 2025, it had 1.6 billion active users, more than half of them outside China, of whom an estimated 170 million are North American; 1 in 5 people in the US get their news from this network, 4 in 10 among the 18-29 age group. Today, it is the fastest-growing platform among the younger segments of the global population.
The US government has waged a long battle to force ByteDance to sell the US branch of TikTok to a group of “domestic” capitalists, citing national security concerns and threatening to ban the platform in the US if the deal did not go through. On September 25, the White House announced through an Executive Order signed by Trump, “Save TikTok by Protecting National Security”, the terms under which the transaction would take place. According to the document, the app in the US “will be majority-owned and controlled by US persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary, as ByteDance Ltd. and its affiliates will own less than 20% of the entity, with the remainder held by certain investors.” Who are these mysterious “certain investors” that the Executive Order does not directly mention?
None other than a consortium led by the giant Texas-based company Oracle, which already stored TikTok data in the US. Its main shareholder is an 81-year-old American tycoon who, unlike Elon Musk, is relatively unknown to the public: Larry Ellison. Ellison, in addition to being the new owner, would also take on key roles in managing security, data, and algorithm auditing. In a nutshell, he will be the new boss of the vertical video platform in the United States, a company valued at USD 14 billion. But perhaps the most relevant aspect of the case is not the amount of the transaction, but its long-term implications for power. As a BBC article states, “Investors will control the algorithm that powers the US version of TikTok, and Americans will occupy six of the seven seats on the board of directors that will oversee it.”
Why is Larry Ellison’s role (geo)politically relevant, and what does Israel have to do with it?
What is admitted need not be proved, as the old adage goes. The day after the announcement, before an audience of podcasters and TikTokers at the Israeli consulate in New York, a blunt Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “Weapons change over time; the most important ones are social media,” adding that the purchase of TikTok “is the most important purchase being made right now.” A purchase that, incidentally, had been preceded a month earlier by the appointment of Erica Mindel, a US citizen and former Israeli military instructor, as the company’s new Director of Public Policy for Hate Speech. So did Israel buy TikTok? It depends on how you look at it. The key lies with Larry Ellison and his ties to the genocidal state. So who is this Ellison?
The owner of Oracle – cloud applications, databases, and servers, with 160,000 employees around the globe – is currently the second richest person on the planet (behind only Musk), with a fortune valued at USD 350 billion, according to Forbes. He lives on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he bought in 2012 for USD 300 million; he is a shareholder in X and Tesla; he owns almost 50% of the media giant Paramount-Skydance (including CBS), valued at USD 28 billion. An interesting fact provided by Forbes: “Ellison never finished college. He started out creating databases for the CIA.” His trusted business partner: Safra Catz, Oracle’s CEO since 2014, born in Israel and, like Ellison, a personal friend of … Netanyahu. According to a press release, “a few months before the start of the genocidal war in Gaza, Catz met with Netanyahu to discuss the expansion of Oracle’s projects in the Israeli-occupied territories.” But this is not an isolated incident. The close relationship between the new owner of TikTok and Israel goes back a long way, so much so that on one occasion Ellison even offered Netanyahu a seat on Oracle’s board of directors.
According to data provided by the BDS Movement, in 2019, Oracle leased an underground data center in Har Hotzvim, Jerusalem, to provide Israeli banks, health funds, and military forces with AI processing and information storage services; in 2021, it became the first multinational technology company to sell cloud services to Israel within the occupied territories; in 2022, it hosted soldiers and software developers from the Israeli army’s C41 Corp. to learn how to use Oracle’s cloud for military purposes…
It is no coincidence that Catz, Oracle’s all-powerful CEO, states that “for employees, it’s clear: if you’re not pro-US or pro-Israel, don’t work here”; nor is it surprising that some of her employees commented to The Intercept that “the atmosphere is horrible, people are terrified to even mention Palestine.” According to the same source, as soon as Israel’s military retaliation in Gaza began in October 2023, Catz demanded that the inscription “Oracle Stands with Israel” appear on all company screens in more than 180 countries. In the same context of the aggression against Palestinians in Gaza, Oracle developed the “Words of Iron” project, in collaboration with Israeli ministries, “to help the country elevate pro-Israel content and counter critical narratives on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.” In other words, a weapon at the service of propaganda, in that theater of operations that has now become fundamental, as Netanyahu himself knows: cognitive warfare. The Intercept also reports that a year ago, Oracle partnered with one of Israel’s largest defense companies, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, on an AI project to provide “fighters with rapid, actionable information on the battlefield.” In other words, war on the ground.
The relationship with Trump and his consolidation as media emperor
However close Ellison’s relations with the State of Israel and its army may be (he has also been a major donor to the US organization Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), which channels millions of dollars to the soldiers of that country) it would have been very difficult for his company to win the approval of the Trump administration if its owner were not close to the president of the United States himself. After many years of donating to both parties but closer to the Democrats – an admirer of Clinton, disenchanted with Obama – Ellison’s balance began to shift toward the Republican side, especially its more radical wing. In 2016, he donated a significant sum to Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries and, according to Wired, later became a “reliable donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party during the 2020 and 2024 cycles,” which allowed him to become very close to Donald Trump. Although perhaps somewhat exaggerated, one of Trump’s advisers interviewed by that website referred to the Oracle owner as “the shadow president of the United States.”
In any case, what is certain is that Netanyahu and Trump’s personal friend will not be satisfied with his latest acquisition from the Chinese. The US media has been reporting in recent weeks that the Ellisons, Larry and his son/heir David, are going for more. They now have their sights set on the acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery – which includes CNN. According to the national media watchdog organization FAIR, if the sale goes through, it would “create an unprecedented level of media consolidation” in the history of global media, including powerful news channels, film production companies, cable television … to which must be added control over TikTok. The danger of hyper-concentration of media power has been pointed out by various groups. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that regulatory agencies should block the potential merger “because it is a dangerous concentration of power.” Or, as professor of digital sociology Steven Buckley points out: “It is not a sign of a healthy democracy when billionaires buy up all the cultural consumption media.” For now, regardless of whether this latest move by the Ellison clan comes to fruition, his purchase of TikTok, blessed by the Trump-Netanyahu duo, once again sets off alarm bells regarding the marriage of economic, geopolitical, and military interests; just at a time when global awareness seems to be awakening to the urgent need to stop the war machines of Israel and the United States.
Miguel Ruíz is a Mexican-Ecuadorian sociologist. He holds a PhD in Latin American Studies (UNAM). He has been a professor and researcher at various universities in Mexico and Ecuador. He currently teaches at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences and is a member of the Institute of Economic Research, both at the Central University of Ecuador.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
