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Pictures of slain al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh hang on the facade of the building housing the television station’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, after Israel issued a 45-day closure order on September 22, 2024. [ JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli occupation forces raided the closed Al Jazeera office in central Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, shortly after midnight.
The troops extended the closure order for an additional 60 days and posted a new military order on the office entrance, according to the network.
In September last year, Israeli forces stormed the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah under a military order, handed its staff a closure notice, confiscated all equipment and documents, and barred employees from using their vehicles.
Al Jazeera had previously condemned the raid and shutdown, saying such repressive actions are aimed at preventing the world from seeing the true situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the ongoing war on Gaza. Widespread reactions have since condemned the move.
In a statement, the network described the raid as a “criminal act” and said the ongoing Israeli crackdown on free media seeks to conceal its actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The statement rejected the Israeli authorities’ claims used to justify what it called an unlawful raid. It held the government of Benjamin Netanyahu fully responsible for the safety of its journalists and vowed to pursue legal steps to defend its rights and those of its staff.
Al Jazeera also affirmed its commitment to continue reporting the truth with professionalism and impartiality, despite Israeli measures aimed at silencing it.
People walk down a street surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, July 29, 2025
ISRAELI ministers have again exposed how hollow are Western claims to back a two-state solution.
Yet global opinion on Israel’s colonial project has reached a tipping point — and the prospect of real change cannot be dismissed.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leads settlers in a march through occupied East Jerusalem. En route, he calls for Israel to annex Gaza.
Defence Minister Israel Katz decrees: “We will strengthen our hold and sovereignty over Jerusalem, at the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount, forever.”
These are not aberrations: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that he will never tolerate a Palestinian state.
Faced with such extremism, any government serious about a Palestinian state would need to impose tough conditions on Israel: full withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza included.
Yet what conditions do they seek to apply?
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says Britain will recognise Palestine unless Israel “takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza.”
Feeble as that is, at least Starmer makes demands of the aggressor, Israel.
Canada’s Mark Carney decided to lecture the people being massacred. Canada would recognise Palestine — subject to democratic reforms, including elections in which (very democratically) Hamas would be banned.
France’s Emmanuel Macron repeated that an independent Palestine would need to be demilitarised — as if Palestine threatens the existence of Israel, rather than the other way around.
The coloniser’s mindset. Palestine can be “independent,” but only if it chooses leaders we like, and has no means of defending itself.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object 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 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.
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Mr Graham Blewitt who was a former prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal in Sydney on 4 December 2005. [Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images]
A former deputy prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said the amount of evidence pointing to genocide in Gaza is overwhelming and likened the situation to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Anadolu reports.
Graham Blewitt, who helped prosecute war crimes in the Balkans and Nazi crimes in Australia, said in a recent interview with Australian broadcaster SBS News that if he were working in the International Criminal Court today, he would have “no hesitation in bringing an indictment against the Israeli leaders for genocide.”
Blewitt said the mass killings in Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered and buried in 570 sites — including 77 mass graves — was once deemed a “clear-cut genocide” due to the perpetrators’ intent to destroy a targeted group in whole or in part.
He said the same standard may apply to Gaza.
“There’s no direct evidence apart from comments made by various Israeli leaders from time to time suggesting that they just want to wipe the Palestinians from the face of the Earth,” he said.
Blewitt added that the Israeli air campaign has shown a disturbing lack of proportionality.
“They’ll bomb a building and say they’re after a particular Hamas leader and not worry about the 30, 40, 50, 100 people in close proximity who are killed or injured as a result of that strike,” he said.
Unlike in the 1990s, today’s digital age has created a vast archive of visual documentation.
“Now anyone with a phone can record what’s happening, and there’s no end of evidence for those investigating what’s happening in Gaza,” he said.
However, he also warned that investigators currently lack access to Gaza to collect physical evidence or inspect crime scenes on the ground.
– Interference with justice
Blewitt also raised concerns over global political efforts to shield Israeli leaders from prosecution. He criticized US President Donald Trump’s February executive order that sanctioned ICC staff after the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He described it as “an appalling situation” that undermines international justice and could lead some political leaders to be held in contempt.
Blewitt said the situation has left him deeply frustrated.
“I used to be quite optimistic about the capacity of international institutions to hold war criminals accountable,” he said. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
His remarks come as the International Court of Justice continues to examine a case brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The case has placed Israel’s conduct under intensifying legal scrutiny.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object 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.
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Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leads a large group of illegal settlers in a provocative march and mass incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, coinciding with the Jewish commemoration of Tisha B’Av in East Jerusalem on August 3, 2025. [Gazi Samad – Anadolu Agency]
Saudi Arabia on Sunday strongly condemned repeated Israeli provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, following an intrusion by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the flashpoint site, Anadolu reports.
Ben-Gvir led a large group of illegal settlers in a mass incursion into the mosque complex early Sunday to mark the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av.
“These repeated provocative practices by officials of the Israeli occupation government at Al-Aqsa Mosque only serve to fuel conflict in the region,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry warned in a statement.
The kingdom stressed that such actions “violate international laws and norms” and undermine peace efforts.
Riyadh reiterated its “continued demand that the international community stop the practices of Israeli occupation officials” and called for urgent international intervention.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area Temple Mount, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.
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Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point near the Zikim border crossing in a desperate attempt to receive limited flour supplies in Gaza City, Gaza, on July 29, 2025. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
The pièce de résistance in the political tsunami that swept across parliaments, streets of world capitals, and podiums, culminating in a cascade of recognitions for Palestine, was Israel’s starvation campaign. A deliberate deprivation that tore through the veil of diplomatic neutrality. When images of emaciated children and hollow-eyed families flooded the world’s screens, the silence shattered. From Madrid to Brasília, from Pretoria to Dublin, governments that once tiptoed around the issue found their voices. Chile, Spain, Norway—each stepped forward, not out of political convenience, but because the moral cost of inaction had become unbearable. The campaign was not just a humanitarian crisis—it was the moral rupture that forced the world to choose: complicity or conscience.
This rupture was not born in isolation. It followed months of mounting evidence, from UN agencies and human rights organizations, that Israel’s siege on Gaza had crossed every red line of international law. The deliberate targeting of food supplies, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the weaponization of starvation are not just morally abhorrent—they are prosecutable war crimes under the Rome Statute. And yet, the United States, long seen as the indispensable power in global diplomacy, chose silence. Worse—it chose endorsement.
The US endorsement of Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza is not just a policy misstep—it is a grotesque moral betrayal that will haunt the nation’s soul and forever brand President Trump’s legacy with shame. To support the deliberate starvation of children is to stand on the wrong side of humanity. The harrowing images of skeletal Palestinian toddlers conjure the darkest chapters of history—ghastly reminders of Jewish children in Nazi death camps. That such horrors are now mirrored with American complicity is a stain that no amount of spin or silence can erase. This is not hyperbole—it is history repeating itself in grotesque imitation. The very nation that once vowed “never again” now finds itself employing the same tactics it once condemned. And the man at the center of this moral collapse is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu, drunk on his cunning, believes he can outmaneuver justice, stretching the Gaza war like a smokescreen to dodge the noose tightening around him at home. In his desperate bid for survival, he’s not just burying Gaza in rubble and grief; he’s dragging America’s reputation through blood-soaked mud, staining it with shame and criminal complicity. Every day this war drags on is another day the US is tethered to a man who treats human suffering as a political chess piece.
Like a modern-day Macbeth, Netanyahu clings to power with bloodied hands, convinced that his mastery of manipulation can outwit fate. He drags the Gaza war endlessly, not for strategy but for survival, hoping the fog of war will obscure the reckoning awaiting him at home, the noose tightening with every indictment and protest. In doing so, he mirrors the tyrants of history who believed brutality could buy them time—Milosevic in the Balkans, Pinochet in Chile—men who misinterpreted carnage for control. And as he orchestrates this siege, he pulls the United States into the mire, staining its legacy with complicity, shame, and the kind of moral failure that history never forgets. Gaza burns, and with it, the illusion that this war is anything but a desperate man’s gambit.
What makes this moment especially perilous is the semi-silence of American institutions. What would it take for the growing dissent within the US Congress, the media, and civil society to reach a critical mass that convinces President Trump to pressure Netanyahu into ending the conflict in Gaza? Where is the moral clarity that once defined American leadership? The answer lies in a toxic blend of political inertia and strategic delusion—a belief that supporting Israel, no matter the cost is a geopolitical imperative. But this calculus is crumbling. The world is watching, and the moral ledger is being written in real time.
Trump, Netanyahu, the donor class, and the GHF death trap
President Trump must awaken to the peril of Netanyahu’s war of deception. This is not a statesman’s struggle—it is the desperate theater of a man cornered by scandal, clinging to power through destruction. If Trump continues to tether himself to Netanyahu’s intrigue, he risks allowing Netanyahu to drag him into a moral and political abyss from which there may be no return. History is merciless to those who stand beside tyrants in their final acts. The bloodshed in Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe—it is a trap. And unless Trump distances himself now, he will find his legacy shackled to a war that was never his, but whose shame will be his to bear.
Why does President Trump allow Netanyahu to run circles around him, dragging his reputation through blood and betrayal? The answer is simple: money and influence. The Zionist lobby and donor class that bankrolled Trump’s rise now demand unwavering loyalty to Israel, even as his MAGA base grows disillusioned. “My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump reportedly warned a prominent Jewish donor. Yet the financial leash remains tight, and Trump’s silence is bought at the cost of his legacy. The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF), a private aid contractor with no prior experience in humanitarian relief, has become a grotesque symbol of failure and cruelty. Designed as an alternative to UN agencies, its distribution sites have turned into death traps. Over 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, shot by Israeli soldiers working alongside GHF contractors. Retired U.S. Green Beret Anthony Aguilar, who served as a subcontractor, testified: “What I witnessed were war crimes—indiscriminate violence against starving civilians.”
People walk down a street surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, July 29, 2025
