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Relatives and loved ones of Palestinians, who lost their lives in an Israeli attack on the ez-Zeytun neighborhood, mourn the deceased as the bodies are being taken to El Ehli Baptist Hospital for funeral in eastern Gaza City, Gaza on August 6, 2025. [Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency]
The United Nations said on Thursday it opposes expanding the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said in New York: “We stand firmly against any escalation of the conflict. It’s already been extremely ruinous.”
He noted that the fighting has already claimed “more than 60,000 people” over nearly two years of war.
Haq warned of “the prospect of huge levels of humanitarian suffering, including potential starvations that could worsen if the conflict gets worse.”
His remarks came as Israel’s security cabinet convened later that day to discuss further steps in the Gaza war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his support for the full occupation of Gaza, despite opposition from military leaders, amid concerns that intensifying the fighting could endanger the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
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Israeli opposition leader and parliament (Knesset) member Yair Lapid in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024,[ Jack GUEZ / AFP /Getty Images]
Israeli opposition leaders on Friday condemned the government’s decision to occupy Gaza City, calling it a politically motivated disaster that endangers lives and undermines Israel’s security, Anadolu reports.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of capitulating to the extremist demands of far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
The criticism from Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, comes after Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a plan by Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City.
“In complete contradiction to the opinion of the military and security ranks, without considering the erosion and exhaustion of the fighting forces, Ben Gvir and Smotrich dragged Netanyahu into a move that will take months,” said Lapid.
He added that this will “lead to the death of the hostages, the killing of many soldiers, cost tens of billions to the Israeli taxpayers, and lead to a political collapse.”
He warned that Israel will be “trapped in the field without a goal, without defining the picture of the day after, in a useless occupation that no one understands where it is leading.”
Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, warned that the Cabinet’s move goes against professional military advice.
“The decision made by the Cabinet, contrary to the professional stance of the chief of staff who warned of the many dangers such a move would bring, proves that life-and-death decisions are being made in opposition to security considerations and the war’s objectives,” he said.
“The Oct. 7 prime minister is once again sacrificing the security of Israeli citizens for the sake of his seat,” Lieberman added.
Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats party, called the decision “a disaster for generations.”
“Its implication, a death sentence for the hostages and more bereaved families,” he warned.
“All of this is for reasons of political survival and messianic visions,” Golan said, emphasizing: “We must intensify the struggle. Toppling this government will save lives.”
Israel has been facing mounting outrage over its destructive war on Gaza, where more than 61,200 people have been killed since October 2023.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
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Women protestors chant and wave Palestinian flags during a mass demonstration to protest the starvation crisis in Gaza, in Rabat Morocco on July 20 2025. [ISSAM ZERROK/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images]
Hundreds of doctors in Morocco participated in a one-day hunger strike on Thursday to protest Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The hunger strike came in response to a call from the Moroccan non-governmental organisation “Doctors for Palestine”.
A Moroccan doctor, Ahmed Zeroual, who is participating in the strike, told Anadolu Agency that the one-day hunger strike aims to show solidarity with medical personnel in Gaza and to protest the starvation imposed by Israel on Palestinians.
Dr Zeroual added that it also comes within the context of global solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
He explained that doctors in the Kingdom are trying to draw attention to the suffering of medical personnel in Gaza and the Palestinians as a whole due to the Israeli blockade imposed on the Strip.
Dr Zeroual noted that hundreds of doctors from across the country have responded to the call and participated in the hunger strike.
Dr Zeroual, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, spent six weeks in Gaza hospitals during March and April.
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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (C) makes a speech as he attends the three-day International Palestine Conference, led by France and Saudi Arabia and attended by Turkiye at the United Nations Trusteeship Council in New York, United States on July 28, 2025. [Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency]
More than 200 prominent figures from across the world, including political leaders, academics, human rights advocates, journalists, religious scholars and cultural icons, have issued a joint letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres calling for “the dismantling of apartheid” and “an end to impunity” for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
The letter issued yesterday warns that “silence has become complicity and hesitation a betrayal of the very Charter upon which the United Nations was founded.” It accuses Israel of committing “one of the most extensive massacres in modern history” in Gaza during June and July 2025, in which more than 60,000 Palestinians – including over 17,000 children – were killed, and over two million displaced.
The letter presents what it calls “seven myths” that have sustained Israel’s oppression since before its creation. It describes the 1948 Nakba as a “deliberate erasure” of the indigenous Palestinian people, with over 500 villages destroyed and more than 700,000 Palestinians made stateless, and rejects the narrative of Israel’s “birth” as a lawful or just event.
Tracing an unbroken chain of violence, the signatories cite the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948, the atrocities at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, the brutal assault on Jenin in 2002, repeated bombardments of Gaza from 2008 to 2021, and the devastation unleashed since 7 October 2023. These, they argue, expose a “deliberate project of colonial expansion, racial domination, and cultural erasure, underpinned by… legal impunity.”
The appeal condemns Israel’s June 2025 attack on Iran as an unprovoked act of aggression against a sovereign state and accuses it of “normalising assassination” as a state policy. It warns that the regime’s “vast apparatus of disinformation” has been used to criminalise resistance, silence dissent, and invert the moral order by branding victims as aggressors.
Affirming the Palestinian right to resist occupation under UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, the letter insists that justice can only come through “a democratic referendum, inclusive of all indigenous inhabitants, be they Muslim, Christian, or Jew, and excluding those settled by colonial force.”
Declaring Zionism “not reformable” and the Israeli state “inherently exploitative, oppressive, war-mongering and unjust,” the signatories call for its dismantlement as a political and legal entity. They urge the UN to take “urgent and unequivocal action” not only in response to the June–July 2025 atrocities, but as “a historical reckoning for the accumulated crimes committed over more than a century against the Palestinian people.”
“Liberation from apartheid. Liberation from impunity. Liberation from a structure that for more than 80 years has perpetuated occupation, dispossession, and mass murder,” the letter concludes. “No arsenal of lies, no machinery of occupation, and no doctrine of impunity can withstand the long moral reckoning that history demands.”
Protesters demand a European Union arms embargo on Israel and rejection of a trade deal with the country as punishmnent for its annihilation of Gaza during a May 27, 2025 demonstration outside the European Commission office in Barcelona. (Photo: Albert Llop/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The people have spoken and they refuse to be complicit,” said one campaigner. “Across continents, ordinary citizens demand an end to the fuel that powers settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.”
Large percentages of people in five nations want arms, fuel, and machinery embargoes on Israel in response to its obliteration and starvation of Gaza, a poll published Thursday revealed.
The survey—which was conducted last month by Pollfish for the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine and endorsed by Progressive International—queried people in Brazil, Colombia, Greece, South Africa, and Spain about whether their governments, fuel companies, weapons makers, and heavy machinery manufacturers should stop, reduce, continue, or increase business with Israel.
Nearly two-thirds of Spanish respondents said they strongly support or support their government taking action “to reduce trade in weapons, fuel, and other relevant goods to pressure Israel to end its military actions in Gaza.” In Greece, 63% back an embargo, while 35% oppose it. Sixty percent of Colombians, 58% of South Africans, and 48% of Brazilians strongly or somewhat support punitive sanctions on Israel.
Conversely, 27% of Brazilians said they do not support or strongly oppose an embargo on Israel, while 20% of South Africans, 14% of Colombians and Greeks, and 12% of Spaniards feel the same.
Support for ending or reducing weapons transfers was strong in all five nations, with 76% of Colombian respondents, 75% of Spaniards and Greeks, 66% of South Africans, and 59% of Brazilians favoring such action.
A majority of respondents in all five countries also said that companies providing arms, fuel, or heavy machinery to Israel “should be held responsible for how those products are used in Gaza.”
📊 New poll: People across the world say companies selling weapons, fuel, or heavy machinery to Israel should be held accountable for how those products are used in Gaza.🇪🇸 76%🇬🇷 71%🇨🇴 70%🇧🇷 62%🇿🇦 60%#EnergyEmbargoNow #NoFuelForGenocide@progintl.bsky.social
“The people have spoken and they refuse to be complicit,” Global Energy Embargo for Palestine campaigner Ana Sánchez said in a statement.
“Across continents, ordinary citizens demand an end to the fuel that powers settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide,” Sánchez added. “No state that claims to uphold democracy can justify maintaining energy, military, or economic ties with Israel while it commits a genocide in Palestine. This is not just about trade; it’s about people’s power to cut the supply lines of oppression.”
The poll was published 670 days into Israel’s U.S.-backed assault and siege on Gaza, which has left at least 226,600 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and hundreds of thousands more starving amid increasingly deadly famine as Israel blocks aid from entering the embattled enclave.
The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—is moving ahead with plans for the “full conquest,” reoccupation, and ethnic cleansing of the strip, which U.S. President Donald Trumpwants to transform into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Israel’s conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations. Among the countries in the survey, Colombia—which severed diplomatic ties with Israel in May 2024—Spain, and Brazil have formally joined or signaled their intent to join South Africa’s case.
The ICJ also found last year that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid.
“What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people is not war, it is genocide,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in February 2024 shortly after recalling his ambassador to Tel Aviv. “If this isn’t genocide, I don’t know what is.”
On Thursday, European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera—who is Spanish—toldPolitico, “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed, and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera said. “A concrete population is confined, with no homes—being destroyed—no food, water, or medicines—being forbidden to access—and subject to bombing and shooting even when they are trying to get humanitarian aid. Any humanity is absent, and no witness[es] are allowed.”
Of the surveyed nations, all but Greece support an arms embargo on Israel. The other four countries took part in last month’s Hague Group emergency ministerial conference in Colombia, which was organized by Progressive International and ended with the publication of a joint action plan for “coordinated diplomatic, legal, and economic measures to restrain Israel’s assault on the occupied Palestinian territories and defend international law at large.”
“The message from the peoples of the world is loud and clear: They want action to end the assault on Gaza—not just words,” Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler said in a statement accompanying the new survey’s publication.
“Across continents, majorities are calling for their governments to halt arms sales and restrain Israel’s occupation,” Adler added. “That’s why states are coming together through the Hague Group to take concrete measures toward accountability. It’s time for others to follow their lead.”
Meanwhile, a survey published Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute revealed that 8 in 10 Israeli Jews “are not so troubled or not at all troubled personally” by “the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.”
Eight people, including a child, starved to death in Gaza that day, on which local officials said that more than 80 Palestinians were killed by Israel’s bombs, bullets, and blockade.
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.
