Children play at a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City’s Jabalya refugee camp, February 6, 2025, after collecting donated food
Urgent divestment call for local authority schemes
THE Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) has invested over £12 billion in firms complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide, new research by campaigners revealed today.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (PSC) freedom of information requests have found that LGPS funds, administered by local councils across Britain, invest more than £450 million in BAE Systems, which manufactures components used by Israel’s F-16 fighter jets.
More than £80m is invested in Caterpillar, which produces bulldozers used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals.
And more than £90m is invested in RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon, which produces bombs used by the Israeli military.
Investments in Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet, purveyors of cloud computing infrastructure to Israel’s intelligence-gathering Project Nimbus, totals £4.7bn.
The research also shows that LGPS funds hold more than £28m in Israeli government bonds.
A man walks between tents for displaced Palestinians next to destroyed buildings following the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, February 6, 2025
ISRAEL publicly began “preparations” for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza today despite international rejection of US President Donald Trump’s proposal to empty the territory of its population.
Egypt has launched a diplomatic blitz behind the scenes warning any such action would put its peace deal with Israel at risk, officials said.
The Trump administration has already dialled back aspects of the suggestion given its frosty international reception, saying any relocation of the region’s 2.3 million people would be temporary.
US officials have provided few details about how or when the plan could be imposed on Palestinians.
In a social media post, President Trump said today that Israel would turn Gaza over to the US after the war and no US soldiers would be needed for his plan to redevelop it.
The Palestinians have strongly rejected Mr Trump’s proposal, which amounts to ethnic cleansing.
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Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that he has ordered the military to make preparations to facilitate the emigration of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza through land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2025. (Photo: Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Instead of kowtowing to Israel and doing the bidding of its genocidal government, the president should act in the interests of our nation,” said one critic.
Amid global outrage over U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to take over the war-torn Gaza Strip, the Republican also faced criticism on Thursday for his executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court.
“Bullying the International Criminal Court is a desperate tactic to intimidate those who uphold international law and seek accountability for Israeli war crimes in Gaza,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad in a statement.
“It’s a ‘lawless Israel first’ policy that further damages the reputation of the United States, which has already been harmed greatly by our nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” he continued. “Instead of kowtowing to Israel and doing the bidding of its genocidal government, the president should act in the interests of our nation.”
According to NewsNation, which first reported on Trump’s order, it was “originally set to be signed Tuesday and pushed back due to a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the subject of an ICC arrest warrant over Israel’s assault on Gaza.
“It is obvious that President Trump wants no oversight of his actions or those of the far-right Israeli government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu.”
The ICC in November also issued related warrants for former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri. Neither Israel nor the United States—which arms Netanyahu’s government—are parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the tribunal for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
The court “has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel,” Trump’s order claims. “The ICC has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting” Netanyahu and Gallant.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the armed forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest,” the order adds, citing a 2002 U.S. law that opponents call the Hague Invasion Act, which empowers the president to use military force to free any American or citizen of an ally held by the court.
“Americans want more oversight on those in power, not less,” Awad argued. “From his firing of independent U.S. inspector generals to this order, it is obvious that President Trump wants no oversight of his actions or those of the far-right Israeli government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. American greatness relies on check and balances, never on one man’s whims.”
During Trump’s first term, he sanctioned ICC officials and revoked the chief prosecutor’s visa. His new order, NewsNation reported, “will put financial and visa sanctions on individuals and family members who help the ICC investigate U.S. citizens or allies.”
According to NBC News, a White House fact sheet on the order says that “the ICC was designed to be a court of last resort,” and “both the United States and Israel maintain robust judiciary systems and should never be subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.”
Charlie Hogle, staff attorney with ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement that “victims of human rights abuses around the world turn to the International Criminal Court when they have nowhere else to go, and President Trump’s executive order will make it harder for them to find justice. The order also raises serious First Amendment concerns because it puts people in the United States at risk of harsh penalties for helping the court identify and investigate atrocities committed anywhere, by anyone. This is an attack on both accountability and free speech.”
Sanctioning ICC staff and their families “because they did their job in investigating U.S. torture and advancing justice for Palestinians in the face of Israel’s 15-month total assault on Gaza is a direct attack on the rule of law,” declared Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The broad scope of the executive order is intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful.”
Center for International Policy’s vice president of government affairs, Dylan Williams, argued that Trump’s order “continues his march to make America a pariah state” and “provides succor to brutal dictators, aggressors, and other human rights abusers around the world whom he admires.”
“It is not a coincidence that Trump’s move against the ICC comes just hours after he proposed that the United States carry out a crime against humanity in Gaza.”
“It is not a coincidence that Trump’s move against the ICC comes just hours after he proposed that the United States carry out a crime against humanity in Gaza, while standing next to a man wanted by the court to answer for war crimes in that territory,” Williams said. “The objective of attacking the court is to ensure absolute impunity for those, like both of them, who seek to act unrestrained by any law.”
“States that are party to the Rome Statute should reaffirm and carry out their obligations with respect to the court, including the consistent enforcement of its duly issued warrants and orders,” he continued. “American lawmakers should treat this attack on a judicial body and its officers as they do Trump’s efforts to destroy domestic institutions of justice, independent of the fact that they may disagree with certain rulings or actions of such bodies.”
Williams added that “defending the legitimacy of the ICC is an inseparable part of the fight to protect the rule of law in the United States and around the world from the forces of autocracy and oligarchy. Those who fail to firmly oppose Trump’s attack on the court—or worse, support it—are proving themselves to be only fair-weather friends to democracy and human rights at best, or complicit in their destruction outright.”
Netanyahu and Gallant’s visits to the U.S. this week have been met with protests and calls for their arrests.
Punchbowl News‘ Max Cohen reported that Netanyahu met with and pressured U.S. senators to pass a federal ICC sanctions bill that was advanced early last month by the House of Representatives’ Republican majority and 45 Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Cohen said, “reiterated Dems are eager to get a bipartisan compromise and Netanyahu agreed there should be a compromise.”
This post was updated with additional comment and details after the White House released the executive order.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts
and reality then.
Four UN Special Rapporteurs have written jointly to the UK government demanding explanation of its inappropriate persecution of journalists and political activists under the Terrorism Act. They state that those persecuted:
appear to have no credible connection to “terrorist” or “hostile” activity
The cases taken up by the United Nations are those of Johanna Ross (Ganyukova), John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray (yes, me), Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst. The UN letter is signed by:
Ben Saul Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism
Irene Khan Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
Gina Romero Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
Ana Brian Nougrères Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy
Under this UN special procedure, the letter is sent to the government in question which has sixty days to respond. This letter was sent by the UN to Starmer’s government on 4 December. No reply having been received, it has now been published.
It is worth noting that even with the UN letter on its desk and ignored, Starmer’s government in fact stepped up the use of the Terrorism Act against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists in this period. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Tony Greenstein, among others, happened after the letter was drafted.
I should be clear that I was, working with Justice for All International (for which we had a crowdfunder last year in relation to the Assange case at the UN), heavily involved in assisting with preparation of this initiative, and made three visits to the UN in Geneva on the subject together with Sharof Azizov, and on one occasion Richard Medhurst. Your subscriptions and donations to this blog are the only funding I have to make such activity possible, so thank you.
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There is no sign the UN has given the Starmer government pause; human rights are extremely low on their agenda. Support for Israel and the crushing of pro-Palestinian sentiment, or of any criticism of western foreign policy, is extremely high on their agenda.
UK 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/QILgUHrdWREGenocide 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/O74hZCKKdpA
A view of Gaza City after Israel’s destruction of it, February 4, 2025
WE CAN’T say the mask has slipped. US President Donald Trump has never masked his contempt for human rights or international law.
But the US president saying the United States will “take over” the Gaza Strip and expel all its inhabitants is a watershed moment. It is an unambiguous demand for ethnic cleansing on a huge scale.
Trump doesn’t mince words about what he sees happening to Palestinians who refuse to be driven out, saying they have to go to “some place they can live and not die.” Nor is the erasure of the Palestinians to be confined to Gaza; he moots Israel’s annexation of the West Bank too.
It hardly needs saying that if Trump wanted Palestinians to “live and not die,” he would not continue to arm the Israeli war machine that has killed them in their tens of thousands over the past year, or connive, by extending the suspension of funds to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, at starving them of food and medicine.
The same point applies to the British government.
The mood music from Labour’s Trump apologists is that there’s nothing to see here — it’s just Trump, he says a lot of wild things. Scottish Blairite Jim Murphy says we shouldn’t take him “literally in what he says because he often has no intention of doing it.” Cabinet Minister Steve Reed says there’s no need for a “running commentary” on US presidential statements and we should give Trump credit for securing the current ceasefire.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy likewise refuses to acknowledge the US government’s extremism, saying “Trump is right” to want to rebuild Gaza — a ludicrous evasion of the central part of Trump’s proposal, which is to rebuild it without Palestinians — before reiterating support for the two-state solution.
To say Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is too outlandish to take seriously ignores the brutal fact that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is already happening.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.UK 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/QILgUHrdWREGenocide 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/O74hZCKKdpA
