Youth Demand activists in Old Street, central London, April 5, 2025
DOZENS of activists from Youth Demand blocked streets in central London on Saturday, calling for the government to impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
The activists also said the super-rich and fossil fuel elites should be made to pay damages to communities and countries worst harmed by fossil fuel burning.
Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, 22, a politics and international relations student from east London, took part in the action.
He said: “Every day the Labour government is killing children in Palestine and they do not care so long as the money from Israeli trade keeps flowing.
“We have all seen what’s happening in Gaza and we must not look away. Children are dying. Entire families are starving.
“Our government has a direct part in this genocide and they know it. Just two weeks ago, [Foreign Secretary] David Lammy himself admitted that Israel was violating international humanitarian law.
“Instead of having any humanity, our government is trying to silence and suppress those speaking out about these crimes.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Yet the Western media will keep treating Israeli lies about war crimes as credible claims
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So what we have here is an unbelievably grave war crime – the massacre of 15 Red Crescent medics and first responders, which the Israeli military covered up and lied about.
If this had been 15 Israeli medics and first responders butchered by Hamas, the media coverage would be deafening. It would be front page news and lead news bulletins. Every Western leader under the sun would issue damning statements condemning the utter evil of Hamas.Subscribe
But these victims were Palestinian. On the BBC news website, it’s four stories down – but most damningly, the headline is: “Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings.”
“Appears” to contradict? What does this even mean? The footage definitively proves the Israeli account is a litany of lies. What possible room for doubt exists here?
Just imagine this footage had never been uncovered. Indeed, in the case of so many of Israel’s war crimes, there is no such footage, and Israeli claims are simply allowed to stand.
And what’s even more disturbing is this will not change the Western media’s modus operandi. As I’ve noted, Western media outlets have done rebuttals of Israeli claims before. CNN took apart Israeli claims about the so-called Flour Massacre, when over 100 Palestinians were massacred while waiting for flour. The Washington Post took apart Israel’s claims about the November 2023 assault on al-Shifa hospital. The New York Times examined how, contrary to Israeli claims, 2,000lb bombs were being dropped on so-called ‘safe zones’ by the Israeli military.
The point isn’t just that these rebuttals aren’t frequent enough, or given proper prominence, or treated with the requisite gravity – i.e. as evidence of extreme war crimes. It’s that they are orphaned from the wider narrative. Western media outlets should make clear that Israel has a proven record of entirely false statements about such atrocities. But, like a perverse Groundhog Day, they act as though these rebuttals never happened.
People gather around the body of Palestinian paramedic Mohamed Bahloul, who was killed with other first responders a week before in Israeli military fire on ambulances, as it lies at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2025. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
“Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left.”
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
So I guess everything the IDF said a few days ago about those paramedics in Gaza was not true at all.
NYTimes just released this video found on the cell phone of one paramedic.
“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives,” Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN’s humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers “did not randomly attack” any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on “terrorists” who approached them in “suspicious vehicles.” Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles which the soldiers open fired were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF’s version of events.
🚨This video was discovered on the cellphone of a paramedic who was found along with 14 other Palestinian rescue and medical workers in a mass grave in Gaza.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies presented it to the UN Security Council this week. https://t.co/FozXtJ3Nsb
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues “were directly and deliberately shot at” by the IDF. “The car is clearly marked with ‘Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.’ The car’s number was clear and the crews’ uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question.”
The release of the video sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
“The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre; and intentionally lied about it,” said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. “The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted.”
“Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left,” said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
Mourners gather around the bodies of 8 Red Crescent emergency responders, recovered in Rafah a week after an Israeli attack, as they are transported for burial from a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, March 31, 2025
The massacre of Red Crescent and civil defence aid workers has elicited little coverage and no condemnation by major powers — this is the age of lawlessness, warns JOE GILL
IT IS difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now the US does not even bother with that. It is fully on board with genocide.
Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no-one will stop them. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC, and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.
As Israeli anti-zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi wrote this week:
“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since May 24 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action. Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs. Not a word from the ICJ.
“Zionism and US imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”
Under the Joe Biden administration, secretary of state Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians (they would never use a word as clear as “killing,” always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).
Today, under the Donald Trump regime, the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside. This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what they believe is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.
