- Post author:dizzy
- Post published:2 March 2025
- Post category:Fascism/genocide/human rights violations/Israel/Palestine/politics/Zionism
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As Freed Palestinians Describe Torture, Trump OKs $3 Billion Arms Package for Israel
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Like the Biden administration, Trump is claiming an “emergency” in order to bypass Congress.
As Palestinians released from Israeli imprisonment recount torture and other abuse suffered at the hands of their former captors, the Trump administration on Friday approved a new $3 billion weapons package for Israel.
The new package, reported by Zeteo‘s Prem Thakker, includes nearly $2.716 billion worth of bombs and weapons guidance kits, as well as $295 million in bulldozers. The Trump administration said that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale,” allowing it to bypass Congress, as the Biden administration did on multiple occasions. However, the weapons won’t be delivered until 2026 or 2027.
From October 2023 to October 2024, Israel received a record $17.9 billion worth of U.S. arms as it waged a war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip that left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, or sickened. Israel is facing genocide allegations in an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Reporting on the new package came after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday announced an effort to block four other arms sales totaling $8.56 billion in offensive American weaponry to Israel.
Meanwhile, some of the approximately 1,000 Palestinians released by Israel as part of a prisoner swap described grim stories of abuse by Israeli forces. The former detainees, who were arrested but never charged with any crimes, “have returned visibly malnourished and scarred by the physical and psychological torture they say they faced in Israeli prisons,” according to The Washington Post. Some returned to what were once their homes to find them destroyed and their relatives killed or wounded by Israeli forces.
Eyas al-Bursh, a doctor volunteering at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when he was captured by Israeli troops, was held in Sde Teiman and the Ofer military prison in the illegally occupied West Bank for 11 months.
“The places where we were held were harsh, sleep was impossible, and we remained handcuffed and blindfolded,” al-Bursh told the Post.
“We endured psychological and physical torture without a single day of respite—whether through beatings, abuse, punches, or even verbal insults and humiliation,” he added.
The Israel Defense Forces told the Post that it “acts in accordance with Israeli and international law in order to protect the rights of the detainees held in the detention and questioning facilities.”
However, farmer Ashraf al-Radhi, who was held for 14 months—including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—told the Post that “we witnessed all kinds of humiliation.”
According to the newspaper:
Radhi said he “wished for death” during his detention, which included long periods when he was blindfolded, handcuffed, andcrammed into a filthy cell with dozens of other prisoners. The 34-year-old said he had no access to a lawyer; no idea why he was there; or what, in his absence, had become of his family.
Rahdi also said that Mohammed al-Akka, a 44-year-old detainee held with him, died last December. Al-Akka is one of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody, some from suspected torture and, in at least one case, rape with an electric baton. A number of Israeli reservists are being investigated for the alleged gang-rape of a Sde Teiman prisoner.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
As With Biden, Sanders Aims to Torpedo Trump’s Weapons Sales to Israel
BBC and Guardian editors held private meetings with Israeli General
https://www.declassifieduk.org/bbc-guardian-editors-private-meetings-with-israeli-general-kohavi
DECLASSIFIED UK Exclusive: Former IDF chief of staff met with Britain’s top journalists to promote Israel’s war on Gaza.
Israel’s former top military officer, General Aviv Kohavi held private meetings with the editors of major British news organisations one month after the Gaza bombing began, Declassified can reveal.
The meetings took place with Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, and Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times.
Further meetings were due to be held with Sky News chairman David Rhodes at the Israeli embassy, and then shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, between 7 and 9 November 2023, according to Kohavi’s itinerary.
By this time, Israeli forces had killed over 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and Israeli officials had made several public statements of genocidal intent. Kohavi had only stepped down from running Israel’s military months earlier.
During his tenure, he justified attacks on journalists, saying the soldiers who shot reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank “showed courage” and that he had not one “gram of regret” for flattening the Associated Press (AP) office in Gaza.
The information about General Kohavi’s visit comes in documents obtained in Israel under the Freedom of Information Act by lawyer Elad Man and seen by Declassified.
They reveal how Kohavi’s tour of Britain was planned with support from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and Ministry of Defence.
The trip was specifically designed to take advantage of a perceived “reversal in the attitude of Western countries toward Israel [in light of] the severity of the events… of October 7”.
To this end, Kohavi was tasked with cultivating support for Israel as it escalated its brutal military offensive in Gaza.
…
Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/bbc-guardian-editors-private-meetings-with-israeli-general-kohavi
‘Trump Gaza’ AI Video Denounced as Vicious Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
(Photo: screenshot/Truth Social)
“Monsters rejoicing in their genocide” was how one observer described the computer-generated video
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk feasting on local cuisine, U.S. President Donald Trump caressing the arm of a belly dancer in a nightclub, and the Israeli prime minister lounging by a pool are all part of the computer-generated vision Trump shared on his social media platform Tuesday evening for the future of Gaza following Israel’s destruction of the enclave.
Accompanied by an upbeat song heralding “Trump Gaza, shining bright, golden future, a brand new life,” the “sinister” artificial intelligence-made video “must be seen to be believed,” said British trade unionist Howard Beckett.
“Monsters rejoicing in their genocide and ethnic cleansing,” he said, summarizing the 34-second video. “It is truly racist fascism.”
The video was posted amid the fragile cease-fire that’s been in place since mid-January in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians since it began bombarding the enclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
As negotiators have worked toward a permanent cease-fire in recent weeks, Trump has floated a proposal to turn Gaza—home to 2 million people—into a playground for the rich called the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Advocates and experts warned earlier this month that Trump’s proposal to “clean out” Palestinians as part of his latest real estate venture was an explicit call for ethnic cleansing—one that, according to the video Trump posted on Truth Social, includes the construction of a property called “Trump Gaza” and an immense statue depicting the president.
Toward the end of the video Musk, who poured $277 million into Trump’s presidential campaign and has grown richer since Trump took office, is shown again walking through a crowd as money rains down around him.
Palestinian American historian Ussama Makdisi called the video depicting the U.S. colonization of Gaza “sick,” but suggested it showed an extreme outcome of the American political establishment’s view and treatment of Palestinian rights for decades, including its support for Israel’s assault on the enclave.
“What else should we expect from the culmination of a bipartisan U.S. consensus that for a century has waged war on the idea that Palestinians deserve equality and freedom?” said Makdisi.
Ben Goggin, deputy technology editor for NBC News, noted that “nearly all” of the comments posted in response to the video on Trump’s own platform were negative, with self-identified supporters calling it “just plain horrible” and “filth.”
The origin of the video was not clear on Wednesday; Trump shared it without commenting on who made it.
International human rights experts and a United Nations committee have said there is evidence that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and this week Democracy for the Arab World Now called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate former U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration for “aiding and abetting” alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The ICC has also issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes. Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year.
Trump’s video, said British-Nigerian activist and author Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, envisions “ethnic cleansing rebranded as a real estate deal.”
“Colonialist white supremacist zionism,” she said, describing the video. “Pure evil.”
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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