July 29, 23:00
Google Translator
*******
The Vast Network of Israeli Spy Tech Behind The Modern Surveillance State
Nate Bear
Jul 29, 2025
Last week another batch of peaceful pro-Palestine protestors were arrested by British police on suspicion of terrorism offences, including a disabled man in a wheelchair, as the UK continues its descent into authoritarianism on behalf of Israel.
If any of these protestors had their phones on them at the time of arrest, the police will most likely have scraped them for data using sophisticated spy tech software. Protestors not arrested will have been caught on mobile cameras that sit atop police vans in the UK, and their faces, perhaps even their voices, will have been captured, analysed and cross referenced against a police database.
And in a perverse twist, this spyware technology - technology which now underpins the insidious and growing capabilities of the modern surveillance state - will most likely have been made in Israel by Israeli spies.
But it’s not just in the UK.
Spy tech developed by former Israeli spies is being used on an industrial scale by various agencies in western democracies, from police forces to national security agencies to militaries. Some has been declared illegal, some skirts legal boundaries, and much remains hidden.
The scale of usage, and the range of capabilities provided by this Israeli spy tech, is vast. From face and voice recognition software, to interception and wiretap technology, to covert location tracking, to forced data extraction from smartphones and other devices.
The tech, built by software engineers who cut their teeth writing code to enable and enforce Israeli domination over, and apartheid against Palestinians, is being sold to security services, police forces and immigration agencies across the west.
While much of the information in this article isn’t new, it hasn’t been summarised in one place before. The implications for global civil liberties of Israel’s dominance in spy tech have also not been articulated, and past media coverage has sometimes omitted the Israeli link to these companies. This article will outline the primary players, the sellers and the buyers, and also identify recent contracts, previously undocumented, between Israeli spytech and western buyers.
The first thing to say is that a few scandals involving Israeli spyware companies have been well documented by mainstream media, the most famous of which was the NSO Group affair. NSO, an Israeli firm founded by ex-Unit 8200 officers Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, was found guilty in a California court in 2019 of selling its Pegasus software to governments so they could hack WhatsApp accounts. Pegasus, which was able to execute what is known as a ‘zero-click’ attack to access a smartphone without the user knowing, was used by governments to spy on dissidents, human rights activists and journalists and was likely used by Saudi agents to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered. The company was eventually ordered to pay $167 million in damages to Meta, who bought the case, and in 2021 Biden blacklisted the company, preventing it doing business the US. (The US state department, notably, went out of its way to say the US would take no action against Israel, despite the fact that the Israeli government provide export licenses for all spyware software).
Also blacklisted by Biden as part of the same executive order was another Israeli spyware maker called Candiru, whose hacking software did not attract the same high-profile attention as the NSO Group. Candiru, also founded by ex-Unit 8200 intelligence personnel, sold spyware to governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists, academics, embassy workers, and dissidents.
In 2023, the Biden administration again blacklisted two Israeli spyware companies with little fanfare, and once again without taking action against Israel. The two companies, Cytrox and Intellexa, were founded by Tal Dilian, who spent 24 years in the IDF, rising to become chief commander of Unit 8200. In 2019, Dilian, who lives in Cyprus, was visited by a Forbes journalist, where he demonstrated how his software could remotely hack a phone within seconds.
In Europe, Cyprus and Barcelona have become hubs for ex-Unit 8200 Israelis building spyware companies.
Another Israeli spy firm, Paragon Solutions, was identified earlier this year as silently infiltrating and extract data from WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger and Gmail without needing user interaction. A criminal complaint against Paragon was filed in Rome after an Italian journalist was hacked by the Italian government using Paragon software. No other legal action has been taken, however. The company, founded by Unit 8200 commanders Ehud Schneorson, Idan Nurick, Igor Bogudlov, and advised by former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, has not been blacklisted by the EU or the US and remains free to operate.
These companies are just the tip of the iceberg, the names that skirted legal grey areas and either eventually fell on the wrong side of the law (such as it is) and into the scope of the authorities, or whose illicit spying activities were discovered.
Even more insidious are the Israeli spyware companies openly contracting with western security services and agencies to spy on and crack mobile phones and other devices. Because these companies work with lawful state agencies, they claim to have a different model than the NSO Group, Candiru and others focused on illicit hacking services. Yet in many cases their software is similar if not identical, and the full scope of their activities is unknown.
Lead among these is Cellebrite, founded by ex-IDF soldier Yossi Carmil and staffed with dozens of ex-Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence personnel. Cellebrite’s flagship tool is called the Universal Forensic Extraction Device which extracts data including contacts, locations, deleted messages, and calls from a range of devices including smartphones, pads, SIM cards, and GPS devices. In the US Cellebrite has a $30 million contract with ICE, and a $1.6 million contract with Customs & Border Protection to scrape the data from phones seized at the border. The surveillance firm also worked with the FBI to unlock the phone of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crook. And Cellebrite is looking to embed itself more deeply in the US security and surveillance state. Drop Site News last year revealed that Cellebrite has hired a lobbying firm and has set up a dedicated arm of its business to win more US government contracts, after raking in more than $18 million from US federal government contracts in 2024. In December 2023 Cellebrite boasted it had signed a one-million dollar contract with “one of the largest police departments in the country” without disclosing which one. Given that they were referenced as “a long-time customer,” the most likely candidate is the NYPD, who have been documented as working with Cellebrite for years.
On top of this, my research has found that Cellebrite has active contracts with a host of US federal agencies, from the Navy, to the DEA, the Coast Guard, to the Fish and Wildlife Service. A number of US embassies also contract with Cellebrite including the US embassies in Lima, Bogota and Asuncion. US Special Operations Command, the agency which oversees the various special operations programmes across the US military branches, also pays for Cellebrite tools, as does Global Strike Command, the US Air Force unit responsible for nuclear attacks.
Cellebrite is just as active in the UK. In 2020 the company signed a three-year, two million pound contract with London’s Metropolitan police for Cellebrite’s premium product. The Met said the Cellebrite software is the only one on the market “that meets Met police requirements,” particularly its ability to crack Android phones. It’s not clear if this contract was renewed.
In 2018 Police Scotland signed a £370,000 contract with Cellebrite to provide 41 mobile ‘cyber kiosks’ to be rolled out across Scotland, enabling on-site phone cracking. And in 2022 North Wales Police paid Cellebrite over a quarter of a million pounds for a suite of tools which enabled ‘password bypass’ and ‘brute forcing’ of phones.
Kent Police, the police force whose armed police recently threatened with arrest people for holding Palestine flags, signed a one year contract with Cellebrite last year. And this year, two additional UK police forces have signed contracts with Cellebrite. In February the City of London Police, the police for London’s financial district and distinct from the Met Police, paid one hundred thousand pounds for Cellebrite tools. And in April Leicestershire Police signed a one-year contract with Cellebrite that cost them £328,700. Cellebrite also has a contract with the UK’s Department for Transport.
In the UK, Cellebrite is an approved supplier under what is known as the ‘Digital Forensics Dynamic Purchasing System’ which, according to the body responsible for signing commercial deals for UK police forces “enables the streamlined procurement across UK forces for Cellebrite tools.”
How widespread the use of Cellebrite tools is by UK police forces is unknown. Freedom of Information Requests have previously found twenty six of the UK’s forty seven police forces admitted using the technology, with others planning to trial it. More recent FOI requests to UK police forces this year concerning their use of Cellebrite, from South Wales to West Yorkshire, have been denied on so-called ‘national security’ grounds.
Cellebrite has boasted of its work enabling the Israeli genocide of Gaza, saying it has been ‘instrumental’ in providing phone hacking services to Israeli intelligence since October 7th.
Arguably even more sophisticated tools are offered by Israeli spy tech firm Cobwebs Technologies, founded by former IDF Unit 8200 officers Omri Timianker, Udi Levy, and Shay Attias and which employs a number of ex-Unit 8200 on its staff. Among the services offered by Cobwebs (sold to a company called PenLink in 2023 but retaining the CobWebs team) is an AI-powered service enabling facial and image recognition across social media and the deep web, and a feature called WebLoc that enables the tracking of mobile phone movements in a specific area selected by the user. This capability, known as geofencing, is enabled by in-app advertising which pulls personal data from smartphones, data which is then sold to spy tech companies like Cobwebs for integration into tools like WebLoc. A now-deleted 2019 press release details in corporate tech speak the services offered by the company. Cobwebs previously signed a $2.7 million contract with ICE, has an active $3.2 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security and last June entered into a huge $5.3 million contract with the Texas Department of Public Safety. A 2024 report also found that the LAPD has been using Cobwebs’ suite of surveillance and tracking tools for a number of years.
In 2020 the company opened an office in London with the intent to provide its spy tech to UK police and security services, but no public information on UK bodies working with Cobwebs is available.
Another Israeli spy tech firm working with western security services, police forces and government agencies is Cognyte. The firm, spun out of another Israeli spy tech company called Verint, is led by Elad Sharon, Gil Cohen and Ronny Lempel, all of whom are IDF and Unit 8200 graduates. CEO Sharon’s LinkedIn banner is a Cognyte-branded image proclaiming the company stands with Israel.
Cognyte makes “network intelligence” tools that hoover up huge quantities of information, including anything running through 4G/5G towers, telecom metadata, messaging platforms, phone calls and network signals, to spot patterns and anomalies in communications. This gets fed into a data platform ‘solution’ that enables users to connect dots and analyse information. This is all supposedly legal, but information on the nature of the work and the agencies contracting with Cognyte is scarce. Cognyte announces the awards but never the end users.
What we do know is that in the last 18 months, western law enforcement agencies, national security agencies and militaries have signed deals with Cognyte worth collectively close to $60 million. These include a $20 million, three-year deal with a national security agency in Europe, a $3 million agreement with a US police department and a $10 million contract with a European military announced just last week. The press release for the military deal explained how “Cognyte continues to deliver field-proven solutions that empower frontline military teams with the actionable intelligence they need to operate.”
Two buyers I have identified, listed on a US government procurement website, are the US Secret Service and the US embassy in El Salvador. And in 2023, Reuters revealed that Cognyte had sold interception software to Myamar’s state-owned telecoms company just prior to the military coup that installed the junta who committed a genocide against the Rohingya people.
Similar to Cellebrite and Cobwebs, a search on LinkedIn for ex-Unit 8200 who now work at Cognyte brings up dozens of names.
The company that Cognyte span out of, Verint, is also Israeli, founded by former intelligence officers and has also worked with western security agencies. In 2014 Verint built Switzerland’s wiretap and surveillance infrastructure, and in 2017 was paid $35 million by the US Department of Defense to work on a major undisclosed project. In 2018 Verint scored part of a 50 million pound deal to provide UK police with new cyber intelligence capabilities. Verint has since pivoted its business model to focus on customer engagement platforms, with much of the military and security spytech spun out into Cognyte.
Another Israeli company that has partnered with British police forces is Corsight AI which has sold its facial recognition technology to the Essex Police. Corsight’s software, which enables the identification and cross referencing of peoples faces, was perfected first on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to the linked article, the technology has been deployed during the genocide of Gaza. The founder and chairman of Corsight’s parent company, Cortica, is Igal Raichelgauz, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Corsight has also sold its facial recognition to Sao Paulo’s military police and to Bogota’s metropolitan police.
Israeli facial recognition company, Briefcam, also has contracts with UK police forces as well as police departments in the US. In the UK, Cumbria police use Briefcam’s analytics system in their county-wide network of CCTV, but claim to have disabled the facial recognition component. In France, Briefcam had its contracts cancelled in 2023 after it was revealed scores of police forces across the country were using them illegally in breach of French privacy laws. Police in Brussels and Warsaw also use Corsight facial recognition, and in the US Chicago, Springfield and Beverly Hills PD have confirmed their usage of Corsight.
NICE, an Israeli company founded by ex-IDF soldiers, has captured the market for identifying financial fraud, serving 85% of the Fortune 500 and a number of European regulators. A multi-billion dollar company, it has also provided surveillance tools for cities including license plate recognition, face capture, as well as hand held GPS-based video terminals and mobile video sensors to track citizens. A 2015 Buzzfeed investigation found NICE was supplying secret surveillance software to a number of countries.
An honourable mention must go to Israel's Black Cube, founded by ex-Unit 8200 intelligence spooks Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus. Black Cube was notoriously hired by Hollywood rapist Harvey Weinstein (a man who said he was '“Israeli in his heart and mind”) to spy on and gather information about his accusers. BlackCube has been implicated in a number of spying scandals and in the past has employed western diplomats including Vivian Bercovici, Canada's former ambassador to Israel.
What this compendium demonstrates is that Israel and its apartheid economy sits at the centre of the drive towards a fully surveilled, zero-dissent world. Across the globe, Israeli spyware is ushering in a distinct 21st century fascism that fuses new technologies of control to a tried-and-tested framework that seeks to spy, suppress and dominate. Under the guise of citizen safety and crime fighting, Israeli tech is smoothing the gears of authoritarianism.
Israel's permanent war and apartheid economy, and the spy tech firms run by Israeli intelligence operatives that emerge from this economy, are the single biggest threat to civil liberties in the world today. And it’s no surprise that Israel has cornered this market. Israel churns out individuals and projects directed for dominance because Israelis are raised in and surrounded by a military culture of impunity. A culture where technology is created only to dominate, test subjects are abundant and rules of engagement non-existent.
In buying and relying on the tools of an apartheid state for security and law enforcement technology, we see how Israel’s apartheid and genocide itself becomes indispensable to western governments in their drive towards complete security states.
Our world is becoming more authoritarian and fascist because tools developed by authoritarians and fascists are being employed across the public and private sphere.
This is why, as I argued in my last article, we must de-Zionise the world.
The surveillance and spy tech industry is just another strand of the deep and pernicious web of influence Israel has spun across the west, a web that is choking our politics, throttling our civil liberties and has led to a holocaust.
Our future, and a future for the Palestinians, depends on dismantling this web and rooting out the influence of Israel in our societies.
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/the-vast- ... i-spy-tech
******
The Gleefulness of Evil Spells Doom for Israel
A journey into a new, improved, and joyful Heart of Darkness
Ohio Barbarian
Jul 29, 2025
It is often said that the Nazis taught us the banality of evil. The world saw, through the new wonder of television, these otherwise ordinary people just following orders, just making the best of a bad situation which was imposed upon them by authorities they had a duty to obey.
That’s the gist of what those clinical mass murderers presented as their defense at Nuremberg, which was found wanting by the rest of the world.
The Zionists have one-upped their historical tormentors by teaching us the gleefulness of evil. Unlike the Germans, who at least had the sense not to make live broadcasts of their crimes, the Israelis actively celebrate theirs in real time on the worldwide internet.
Let us count just a few of the ways.
Look at the new duds we found!
No food for you, Arab scum! Israelis blocking the delivery of food into Gaza,
and looting it,
Israelis Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza From Front-Row Seats - The New York Times
(Courtesy Jewish Voice for Labour UK)
Israelis are brutally honest about their true goal—an ethnically pure Jewish state, the borders of which are never really defined. We need look no further than the current Minister of Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who provides a bottomless pit of genocidal quotations. To wit:
Occupation, settlement, and encouragement of emigration. Only in this way can we solve the problem of Gaza. To occupy all the land. To settle in all the land. And of course, to encourage the voluntary emigration of as many [Palestinian] people as possible to other countries.—June 6, 2024
The only way to achieve victory . . . is through the complete conquest of the Strip, a total cessation of "humanitarian" aid, and the encouragement of emigration. —July 8, 2025
[T]he food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure. —April 23, 2025
[W]hen Israel acts like the rightful owners of this land, this is what brings results. I see it in the terrorists' jail cells ... You should see them whining and crying in their cells. And this is our proof: When we decide we can, we succeed.—October 21, 2024
Why are there so many arrestees? Can't we kill some? Are you trying to tell me they all raise their hands? What can we do with so many arrestees. It's dangerous for the soldiers.—April 25, 2024
[The] only humane solution for Gaza is the mass deportation of its inhabitants.—January 28, 2024
We have all seen the graphic results of this deliberate Israeli policy. Videos of bombed hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, and just recently, a kindergarten(see Jimmy Dore on YouTube or Rumble). Like him, I don’t have the heart to post another image of a dismembered or starved child, but, in some ways, this one is even worse.
Gaza before and Gaza now. How can anyone live in such a place? Exactly. They can’t. That’s the plan.
Israel is a whole culture of people who have been indoctrinated since birth that their settler cause is just and any means necessary to accomplish said cause is justified. They’re obviously also taught to celebrate it at every opportunity. And they truly believe, if anything far more so than people like Goering did.
And that, dear readers, is their fatal mistake.
Zionists believed in their cause so much they celebrated and bragged about it, and they must have genuinely believed that their control over the United States government and American corporate media would infect the majority of the American people with their lust for killing Arabs and taking their land.
That has not and will not happen. It’s just now dawning on people like Netanyahu that something might be going horribly wrong, which is why they invited a bunch of younger Trump-supporting podcasters to Israel to set their minds right.
That won’t work, either.
The majority of the American people have already turned against Israel. This happened over a year ago, but the Israelis, and the Trump Administration, simply couldn’t believe it. Only now, as even the British Government’s blind support for Israel begins to quaver, do they start to notice what is growing in their rearview mirror.
Those “objects” will only grow bigger, for two principle reasons.
First, most Americans are fundamentally decent people who don’t like seeing women and children massacred and starved to death in supersized numbers.
Second, most Americans suffer from a declining standard of living and want most of that money our government is sending overseas spent on us here at home.
Instead, we’re being forced to pay for the genocide while our leaders threaten to jail us just for calling a spade a spade and order us to think about something else, like all of the imaginary things they have accomplished for us in the imaginations of their propagandists.
They should have known better. After all, we didn’t feel the joy of a Woman of Color at the cusp of the Presidency who told us to shut up about the genocide when She was speaking about some of those imaginary things just last year.
Yeah, I know, it was more like
Sorry not sorry, Israelis. We Americans do not feel your joy at the torment and death of parents and children. We do not share your expansionist dreams in the Middle East. We know that the time for Manifest Destiny is long gone, we recall the banality of Nazi evil and reject the gleeful evil of Zionism because both are wrong, unnecessary, and have absolutely no redeeming social value in global society.
We Americans are also heartily sick and tired of being sick and tired of PAYING for your atrocities as well. We haven’t figured out quite how to stop our government from doing that yet, but we will. It is only a matter of time now.
Israel delenda est.
While it breaks my heart to say that it will be way too little and way too late for way too many, there will come a day when that command I paraphrased from Cato will have been accomplished.
And when it is, it will be because most Americans, most Europeans, and most people on the planet in general, cannot even comprehend how we are supposed to feel the joy at the sight of Zionists celebrating cruelty.
Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.
https://ohiobarbarian.substack.com/p/th ... dium=email
******
It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Much For Mainstream Voices To Start Speaking Up About Gaza
As western pundits, politicians and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.
Caitlin Johnstone
Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights. The Israeli organizations join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide in their conclusion.
The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse.
Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that “starving people to death is a red line.” This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been.
MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled “Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit.”, featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC employee, has done a 180 and is now raking Israel over the coals on the air for its deliberately engineered starvation campaign. The New York Times finally overcame its phobia of the g-word with an op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”
We’re now seeing notoriously Zionist swamp monsters in the Democratic Party like Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar changing their tune and attacking Netanyahu and Trump for their joint genocide project in Gaza, with increasingly forceful pushback from some on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.
As western pundits, politicians and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.
People who’ve been staring at this genocide from the beginning have been asking the entire time, what is it going to take? What will it take for our society to stop sleepwalking through inane trivialities and vapid distractions and start opposing the holocaust of our day?
Raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp packed full of children wasn’t enough.
Burning children alive wasn’t enough.
Systematically destroying Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure — up to and including entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment one by one — wasn’t enough.
Killing more journalists than were killed in both World Wars plus the US Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine wasn’t enough.
The systemic rape and torture of prisoners wasn’t enough.
IDF soldiers routinely sharing photos and videos of themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children wasn’t enough.
Israeli officials openly expressing genocidal intent for the people of Gaza wasn’t enough.
The US president and Israeli prime minister openly declaring their goal of the complete ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian territory wasn’t enough.
Field testing new weapons of war on Palestinians like they’re guinea pigs in a laboratory wasn’t enough.
Leaving countless civilians to slowly suffocate or die of dehydration trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings wasn’t enough.
Creating an AI system to ensure that suspected Hamas fighters are bombed when they’re at home with their children and naming it “Where’s Daddy?” wasn’t enough.
Using Palestinians as human shields wasn’t enough.
Burying injured civilians alive with bulldozers wasn’t enough.
The IDF admitting to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces wasn’t enough.
IDF snipers routinely shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip wasn’t enough.
The IDF flying drones which play the sounds of crying babies at night in order to lure out hiding civilians to murder them wasn’t enough.
IDF troops telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians seeking food from aid sites wasn’t enough.
Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of starving civilians on designated days — leg day, head day, genitals day, etc — wasn’t enough.
Far right Israeli citizens setting up blockades to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza while they enjoyed parties and barbecues at the blockade sites wasn’t enough.
Using lies and propaganda to dismantle the aid system for bringing essential food and life-supporting supplies into Gaza, to replace it with a US/Israeli op where aid seekers are massacred every single day, wasn’t enough.
Using siege warfare to deliberately starve Gaza for the previous 22 months wasn’t enough.
But now that starvation has hit a critical point and deaths from malnutrition are skyrocketing, now that images of dead skeletal children are filling our screens, now that the damage to organs and brains from starvation will be irreversible in many cases — now it’s enough.
That was the line, apparently. That’s what mainstream western consciousness has decided is too much. Everything up until that line was fine, but now it’s not fine anymore.
And the killing is still going on. The sudden awakening of conscience hasn’t translated into any material actions or changes at all yet. If it had come in October or November 2023 like it should have we might be seeing that opposition translate into actually saving Gaza by now, but the light has only just been switched on. It’s not even guaranteed that those who are speaking up will continue to do so.
I’m glad people are waking up to the cruel reality of this nightmare. I’m grateful to each and every influential voice who uses their platform to speak out, even at this late date. I truly am.
But I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.
We are not living right. We are not thinking right. We are not feeling right. We are warped and twisted. The information we consume and the norms we’ve been conditioned to accept have corrupted our souls.
We have been made into something bad. Something ugly. Something shameful. Something we need to do everything in our power to change.
We need to rescue ourselves from what we have become. We need to transform, deeply and radically, into something that could never again allow something like this to occur.
The way things are clearly isn’t working. The mainstream worldview is clearly a lie. Everything we’ve been taught to believe about our society, our nation, our government and our world was clearly false.
We need to fight our way through the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that our entire way of looking at things as a collective has failed, and we need to find a new way of being.
Otherwise we’re going to keep being smashed in the face with increasingly horrifying reminders of what we have allowed ourselves to become.
The lessons will repeat until they are learned.
We had better start learning them.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/07 ... bout-gaza/
******
Famine as a method of extermination
The point of no return of the Israeli genocide
29 Jul 2025 , 9:34 am .
Displaced Palestinian mother Samah Matar holds her malnourished son Youssef, who suffers from cerebral palsy, at a school where they are sheltering amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 24, 2025. (Photo: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters)
Since the start of the genocidal campaign in October 2023, more than 120 people in the Gaza Strip have died of starvation. Of that number, more than 83 are children , but what is alarming is that 54% of the total deaths from this cause have occurred since last Monday, July 21, generating strong international alarm at what represents a new phase of intensification of Israeli apartheid in the Strip.
A hundred international humanitarian organizations have described the current situation as a "mass famine," while the United Nations (UN) has warned that one in five Gazan children is suffering from malnutrition, a figure that is likely to rise as the Israeli military carries out precision strikes against humanitarian convoys and food delivery sites.
Following the intense and lethal bombing campaign on Gaza that has characterized these past 21 months of terrorist aggression, a maneuver that has been accompanied by aggressive Israeli settler expeditions and the division and annexation of parts of the territory through the creation of "buffer zones," Tel Aviv now aims to tighten its comprehensive siege of the Strip, with the planned objective of starving the population to a final expulsion.
Today, more than 2 million people remain trapped in the Strip.
For more than 145 days, Israel has closed all Gaza border crossings and carried out attacks on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's delivery sites, while also blocking the entry of humanitarian aid, primarily food, from international organizations attempting to continue operating in the Strip.
The near-total destruction of critical infrastructure in vast portions of Gaza, followed by the erosion of the social, economic, and productive fabric, has further limited the population's access to food. This is not only due to the existing restrictions (consciously implemented by Israel) on receiving aid, but also to the lethal economic effects of the systematic bombing.
In a comprehensive report on this situation published by +972 Magazine, Ahmed Ahmed exposes the economic side of the apartheid and terrorist operation in Gaza. The journalist describes how food prices have skyrocketed due to shortages and the siege.
"A kilo of flour now costs NIS 200 ($60), rice NIS 180 ($54), lentils NIS 100 ($30), local tomatoes NIS 80 ($23), and cucumbers NIS 70 ($21)," says Ahmed, describing the situation of one Palestinian family he interviewed. The wages, which are close to $300 at best for those still able to engage in some economic activity, would only cover very limited food supplies, further increasing their dependence on aid deliveries blocked by Israel.
In addition to the high prices and scarcity, the economically active population pays fees exceeding 40% to withdraw their money, a situation that exacerbates the general lack of access to food and basic goods, typical of a concentration camp.
Desperation has reached such a point that Palestinians are risking intercepting humanitarian aid trucks near the Netzarim corridor before they reach the delivery points, where it is unsafe to receive food due to precision strikes by the Israeli military.
In his report, Ahmed briefly recounts the story of a family of ranchers and farmers who attacked an aid truck, risking being killed by soldiers. They managed to seize a 25-kilogram sack of flour, but were later robbed by people with knives, most likely in the same desperate situation.
In a new report dated July 27, 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) states :
"Of the 74 malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 occurred in July, including 24 children under five, one child over five, and 38 adults. Most of these individuals were declared dead upon arrival at health facilities or died shortly afterward, with clear signs of severe wasting on their bodies."
THE CRIMINAL PRACTICE OF "DOUBLE TAP"
Added to the current phase of escalation marked by the planned famine in the Gaza Strip is the intensification of the "double-tap" airstrike, which consists of bombing areas of rubble to thwart rescue efforts. In this way, Israel guarantees the killing of civilian targets, whether through injury, starvation, or suffocation from toxic gases.
An investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, supported by sources within the Israeli military, confirmed the escalation of this criminal practice, which carries "a death sentence for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of wounded civilians trapped under the rubble, along with their would-be rescuers," the report highlights.
The "double tap" has made rescue efforts impossible and endangered rescue personnel, both locally and internationally. In March of this year alone, 15 paramedics and rescue workers were killed by the Israeli army, with autopsies showing precise gunshot wounds to the head and torso .
However, rescues continue to occur, albeit on a limited basis. In response, the emergence of the "double tap" practice seeks to eliminate any possibility of saving civilians from the rubble.
This method, according to the investigation by the media involved, "is widely considered illegal under international law, not only because it deliberately targets first responders, such as journalists, rescue workers, and doctors, but also because it seeks to deter rescue efforts altogether and cause further harm to civilians."
With mass starvation, the expansion of the "double tap," and the accelerated expansion of illegal settler settlements, Israel is increasingly effectively shrinking the Gaza Strip, severely encircling its inhabitants who still persist in their determination not to leave their land.
Currently, Gazans are confined to less than 15% of the entire enclave, resulting in a concentration camp-like reality comparable to that of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: "Approximately 2.3 million people are living in overcrowded, stifling conditions, with less space than that allocated to detainees at Guantanamo Bay," the Euro-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights said in a press release earlier this month .
The plan to eliminate all basic living conditions in Gaza also includes access to water. In mid-July, using drones, Israel killed seven children and four adults who were trying to collect water from a tanker truck, aiming to scare away the thirsty crowd that had gathered there for the same purpose.
But the effort to starve the population is strategic. According to Asem Alnabih , who holds responsibilities in the Gaza municipality:
"During the past 21 months of Israeli aggression, 75% of Gaza City's wells have been destroyed by Israel, while the remaining wells have either stopped or are operating partially for limited hours, which is insufficient to meet the population's needs."
On the other hand, murders at aid delivery sites have been increasing rapidly. Refaat Ibrahim, a journalist working from the Gaza Strip, states that, as of June 8, approximately 130 Palestinians had been killed there. In his latest report , published on July 26, he indicated that "the number has risen to around 900."
BEYOND THE CEASEFIRE
It is clear that we are witnessing a turning point in Israel's genocidal campaign against the Gaza Strip. A point of no return has been reached, where the lethality and criminality of Tel Aviv's operations are reaching ever-increasing levels without resulting in significant diplomatic and international costs. We are witnessing the most catastrophic, lethal, and horrific phase of the genocide against the Palestinian people.
To confirm this, it's important to refer to the recent report from the UN World Food Program, reviewed and analyzed by Mondoweiss . According to the institution:
"People are dying due to a lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is increasing, with 90,000 women and children in need of urgent treatment. Nearly one in three people have gone days without eating. Food aid is the only way for most people to have access to any food, as the price of a one-kilogram sack of flour has exceeded $100 in local markets."
Mondoweiss, citing health sources in Gaza, has warned that the exacerbation of malnutrition cases is overwhelming the Strip's health services, which are already severely deteriorated by bombing and a shortage of basic supplies to treat the sick and wounded:
"The numbers [of those who are malnourished] are increasing daily [...] Malnutrition leads to a collapse of immunity and physical deterioration, placing a heavy burden on Nasser Hospital amid a lack of treatment options," the outlet reports.
Furthermore, among the most affected sectors "are newborns, who lack the means to feed themselves. Mothers cannot breastfeed due to malnutrition, which hampers milk production. Infant formula is also unavailable in the markets. At Nasser Hospital, Yahya al-Najjar died at three months of age last Saturday, July 19, after a long battle with malnutrition," Mondoweiss states.
Recently, it was reported that David Barnea, director of Mossad, Israel's intelligence and espionage agency, was in Washington to speak with Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy. It was reported that the conversation raised the ongoing negotiations with Ethiopia, Libya, and Indonesia to accept Palestinians fleeing Gaza. However, the progress of these efforts and whether they will actually benefit Tel Aviv are still unknown.
Barnea's journey is closely linked to the escalating genocide on the ground. Israel is rendering Gaza uninhabitable, and the ongoing massacres, "double-tap" air operations, and precision strikes on humanitarian aid delivery sites, where the use of snipers has been confirmed, seek to push the population south (specifically Rafah), where plans are underway to confine the entire population, in a contemporary version of Auschwitz.
While the army advances toward this objective, Barnea and Netanyahu are working diplomatically to secure a third country to host the Palestinians, who have two options: starve to death or flee southward to an open-air prison. Nothing is stopping Israel from implementing this plan, only the opposition of the countries that have been contacted to cooperate with the final phase of ethnic cleansing.
In this sense, the short-term outlook is equally frightening. Journalist Malak Hijazi believes that the process of diplomatic normalization with Israel, as framed within the Abraham Accords, has not completely halted, although the red line remains the recognition of a Palestinian state and the demand for a ceasefire. He highlights the cases of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Lebanon, among others, which are being pressured to move closer to Tel Aviv.
But a new vector must be added to Hijazi's analysis: under what material conditions would a Palestinian state exist, an option that Israel will never accept? What would a ceasefire achieve if the restoration of basic economic and social conditions in the Strip is not guaranteed, something that Israel will not allow either? There are no simple answers to these questions.
While a ceasefire would alleviate the suffering of Gazans, the genocide has already progressed to the point where even minimal living conditions for the population are no longer possible. A temporary ceasefire does not address the demographic, social, and human fracture created by Tel Aviv's extermination operation.
Everything indicates that Israel will not budge until it turns Gaza into a rubble-strewn graveyard. Tablet, one of the most proactive Zionist magazines and politically positioned to the right of Netanyahu—which is saying something— advocates the complete annihilation of the Palestinian territory as a guarantee of Israel's continued existence. Liel Leibovitz , the magazine's editor, stated in a July 22 article:
"What we cannot do under any circumstances is return to the October 6 mentality, to believe that our enemies view the world with the same rationality as we do or that they value anything—the lives of their children, for example, or the well-being of their citizens—more than the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Anyone who continues to talk about international intervention, humanitarian aid, or economic development is simply advocating a repetition of the same costly mistake, only next time, probably, with a much higher death toll."
Leibovitz, in short, is referring to the (small but still ubiquitous) notion that it is possible to reach an agreement with Hamas, negotiate a peace deal, and build a binational consensus on the future of the Palestinian territories. For the author, this represents an affront that must be vigorously combated, as October 7th would have demonstrated that there is nothing left to negotiate.
This pro-annihilation and pro-extermination of Palestine mentality will not end with a ceasefire. Ending the genocide is an existential goal of Zionism, which has linked its own destiny to that of the Israeli state project.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/el ... io-israeli
Google Translator
The Two-State Solution is Dead. What the world is offering Palestinians isn’t a state.
REPORT via Channel 13: Leaked Israeli Records Show Government Pursued Starvation Strategy to Force Hamas Surrender
