Palestine

[blindpig]

Never Forget Gaza And What It Means About Everything
Nate Bear
Feb 04, 2026



Israel has killed 21 people in Gaza since dawn today, a killing spree which follows the nearly 40 killed earlier this week, bringing the total number of Palestinians murdered since the fake ceasefire to more than 500.

The latest murders, which included children sleeping in their tents because their homes have already been turned to rubble, come after the return of all the hostages.

Remember when Israel said that if Hamas just gave back the hostages the killing would stop? It was a line repeated ad nauseum by Israelis and Zionists on TV and on social media. The new line is that if Hamas disarms the violence will end.

Only stooges and fools believe these depraved lies.

Israel was killing Palestinians long before Hamas, long before hostages, long before any other pretext the genocidal state and its supporters parrot today for their crimes.

In fact, Jews were killing Palestinians before there was even an Israel.

Zionist terror
In a two-year period between 1938 and 1939, there were 36 bomb and gun attacks targeting Arabs by Jewish-Zionist terrorist groups across Palestine. These included simultaneous bomb attacks on vegetable markets in Haifa and Jerusalem in February 1939, the bombing of a cinema in May that year, then another bombing of the same Haifa market in June. These three attacks alone killed more than sixty Palestinians.

Attacks continued regularly through the 1940s, up to the eve of Israel’s creation. Just one month before Israel came into being, Zionists massacred over 100 Palestinians, men, women and children, in the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem.

None of this violence of course was in self defence or in resistance to an occupying power. It was purely colonial and territorial, designed to advance fear, propel ethnic cleansing and achieve the Zionist goal of a Jewish state in Palestine.

And in 1948 this was achieved, not just with help from the west, but also in collaboration with Hitler’s Germany which, in 1933, signed a pact with Zionist leaders that facilitated the transfer of tens of thousands of Jews from Germany to Palestine.

Zionist collaboration with the Nazis is a fact often left out of the officially approved and sanitised story regarding the creation of Israel.

And when Zionists finally got their promised land, not carved out of Europe, the continent that had historically oppressed the Jews, or out of Germany, the country that had just genocided them, but in Palestine, the Zionists continued as they had before, only now with state power behind them.

The Nakba
In the months after Israel was declared a state, about half of Palestine's predominantly Arab population, around 750,000 people, were ethnically cleansed by newly empowered Zionist forces. Homes were stolen, olive groves and vegetable gardens uprooted, and thousands slaughtered during the Nakba. Prominent events include the Lydda massacre, when a nascent Israeli army massacred over 400 Palestinians, including executing 250 people in a mosque; the Safsaf massacre, in which Israeli soldiers executed 70 civilians; and the Abu Shusha Massacre in which dozens of Palestinians were murdered in their homes.

The massacres continued into the 1950s. In November 1956 Israeli troops lined hundreds of Palestinians up against a wall in Khan Younis in Gaza and summarily executed them. An Israeli soldier wrote to his girlfriend: "We killed hundreds, but for me it is not enough."

A soldier of the Israeli military infantry, the Golani Brigade, recounts the events to his girlfriend on November 6, 1956.

“Only the Arabs are to blame for all this and at every opportunity I take revenge on them,” he wrote.

“I am not satisfied with the amount [of people] I have already killed; we killed hundreds but for me it is not enough. At every opportunity I take revenge on them, and opportunities are not lacking, especially these days when I am among thousands of Arabs. They are under curfew, and this is a great opportunity to do anything we want to them. And I’m doing just that, and I won’t stop until I am on my way home, I swear.”
Decades before Hamas. Decades before hostages. Decades before Netanyahu.

Because it’s not about any of those things. It’s about colonisation, ethnic cleansing, and Jewish supremacy.

Which is why the massacres have continued and haven’t stopped. Khan Younis, now a sea of tents, was bombed by Israel earlier this week.

It is tempting to label the genocide of Gaza a culmination, but that would imply some sort of finality, the end of a process.

But there is no end. Today, February 2026, the blood of Palestinians is still flowing and no one is doing anything to stop it.

Einstein’s opposition
None of this is in any way complicated. And arguing that it is complicated, as many reflexively still do, even after all we’ve seen, is itself a form of genocidal anti-Palestinian propaganda which obscures the crystal clear nature of the situation.

The nature of the situation is this: an ethno-supremacist Jewish state fences off Arab communities behind razor wire and checkpoints in AI-surveilled compounds, steals their homes and massacres them. Daily, weekly, monthly. And it has been doing this literally since the day of its creation.

Some Jews at the time feared this. They feared a Jewish state would become what it now is: a generational evil.

In a 1948 letter to Zionist leaders, Albert Einstein raged that they were ‘terrorists and criminals’, and predicted that colonising Palestine would set up what he called ‘a final catastrophe’ for the Jews.



I don’t mean to recount history, especially for all of you who know it well, but Israel is attempting to rehabilitate itself, Zionists are now in charge of key media outlets including CBS News and TikTok, pro-Palestine content is being heavily censored, and Gaza is slipping from the public consciousness.

My fear is that people get soft-minded. That we get fatigued. That the propaganda works. That Israel and the Zionists, having trained their sights on full information control, succeed. That when Netanyahu says the new battleground is social media, and the forced sale of TikTok was “most important” for Israel, that he’s right. That when the new CEO of TikTok says they are censoring anti-genocide content and are working with over two dozen Jewish organisations to shut down pro-Palestine voices, that they’ll win.

My fear is that after seeing genocide in HD, the comfortable of the imperial core decide it’s too radical to view Israel-Palestine as black and white, when a black and white understanding is the only thing that will do.

So this article is in response to that fear, I suppose.

Because we must never, ever forget what Israel has done to Gaza. What it has done with the support of our governments. The massacres they paid for with our taxes, the children they shredded with our money, the cities, the places of community, worship, laughter, business, and fun they turned to rubble and dust.

Last week an Israeli soldier posted a ‘sunset’ photograph from Rafah on his Instagram. This is what they are proud of. This is what we paid for. This is what support for Israel means. This is Zionism.


The ruins of Rafah pictured by an IDF soldier

And amidst the massacres, we must never forget the individuals. Muhammed Bhar, a young man with Down’s Syndrome ripped apart by IDF attack dogs. A soul so kind and gentle that as the dogs were killing him, he was petting them, trying to soothe them, telling them it was ok. Hind Rajab, a five-year old who, when on the phone to paramedics surrounded by her dead family, told the paramedics she didn’t want to wipe the blood coming from her mouth because it would stain her clothes and her mum would be mad. Hind, who, while on the phone, was murdered in cold blood, her body shredded with hundreds of bullets from an Israeli soldier just metres away. Anas Al-Sharif and all the other journalists killed in Gaza for documenting their own genocide.


Hind Rajab

We must never forget what Gaza says about the monstrous nature of the western system, and of imperialist capitalism.

We must never forget the Palestinians have always been test subjects for western weapons of war and that the drone tech tested in Gaza is now surveilling us in our towns and cities.

We must never forget ICE and US Border Control agents now visiting terror on US cities are trained by the IDF.

We must never forget that there is no talk whatsoever of justice, no talk of holding Israel to any kind of account, no discussion of rebuilding Gaza beyond the criminal Trump mafia racket known as the Board of Peace.

We must never forget that France, the UK, Canada and other western states recognised a Palestinian state not out of a genuine belief in Palestinian statehood or because they consider the Palestinians to be people worthy of a state, but to try and silence critics of their pro-Israel, pro-genocide policies.

Because look what their recognition meant. Nothing. They recognised a state only to let it be destroyed, because the destroyer was Israel.

We must never forget the control the Zionist lobby has over our politics, working behind the scenes to cover up Israeli atrocities, to keep the money flowing to Israel and ensure the country is never held accountable for its crimes.

We must never be cowed by accusations of antisemitism, utilised so effectively for decades to shut down criticism of Israel, the Jews that run it and the Jewish diaspora that supports it.

We must never give in to Zionist disinformation that the conflict is complicated.

Or that it is even a conflict at all.

There is no conflict. There is only a colony of thieves driven by a lust for Palestinian and Arab blood.

There is only apartheid and genocide.

And we have to know that the violence, the genocide and apartheid will only stop when there are either no Palestinians left, or when there is no such thing as Israel. When the ethno-supremacist Jewish state no longer exists. When Zionism is defeated. The violence will only stop when there is one state, called Palestine, led by the expelled, the cleansed and the genocided.

The genocide ends when there is only Palestine, led by Palestinians.

Einstein was right.

Israel has become a generational evil.

And its existence robs us all of our collective humanity.

Ending Zionism and its political project is essential, first and foremost, for the Palestinians.

But it is also essential for any hope of a decent human future.

https://www.donotpanic.news/p/never-for ... t-it-means

******

U.S. Envoys Refused to Report “Apocalyptic” Conditions in Gaza.
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 3, 2026
Jonathan Whittall


Destroyed buildings in Beit Hanoun. February 1, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)

The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem suppressed a February 2024 report on northern Gaza because it “lacked balance.” These photos from the UN fact finding trip are visual evidence of the conditions.

Exclusive Photos Show the Reality They Suppressed

In February 2024, just over three months into Israel’s war on Gaza, U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked an internal cable intended for wider distribution among senior officials in the Biden administration that warned northern Gaza had turned into an “apocalyptic wasteland,” according to Reuters. Lew and Hallett reportedly blocked the cable, which described the consequences of Israel’s assault in harrowing detail, because they believed it lacked balance.

The cable was drafted by U.S. Agency for International Development staffers and was based on a two-part humanitarian fact-finding mission by a small United Nations team that visited the area on January 31 and February 1, 2024.

I was part of that mission.

Northern Gaza had been under a total siege for over three months when we were eventually allowed to enter in January 2024. We moved through Gaza City, Beit Lahia, Jabaliya, and Beit Hanoun.

What we found was an endless horizon of destruction. People were living under plastic sheeting or in the rubble of buildings. Schools had been destroyed. In parts of Beit Hanoun, the entire area had been depopulated and decimated. There was a deadly shortage of clean drinking water, food and access to healthcare.

Mass starvation had already set in. Everyone we spoke to asked us for food. People gestured to us in the street for something to eat. Israeli authorities continued to deny the entry of any supplies despite our warnings of the deadly conditions.

We found bodies of people that had been killed for getting too close to Israeli checkpoints. Their remains were being eaten by cats and dogs. On a wall that was still standing in someone’s destroyed home we found the word “Revenge” graffitied in Hebrew, with the date of October 7, 2023, written below.

The purpose of a fact finding mission like this one is to report back on the humanitarian situation on the ground. The goal is to accurately reflect reality, not political balance. The images I captured during that trip are raw evidence of the conditions in northern Gaza at that time. Some, depicting bodies that were left to decompose in open air, are too gruesome to show. A selection is being published here for the first time. Many of these scenes had already been captured by Palestinian journalists, but they too had been dismissed as biased.

Almost exactly two years later to the day, the situation has been made far worse. The Israeli assault has destroyed, flattened and emptied northern Gaza even more—the UN estimates that over 81% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged. Much of the little that is depicted here is now gone.


The inside of a school in Jabaliya with burnt out vehicles and rubble in the courtyard. The school which had recently been attacked by Israeli forces was still being used as an emergency shelter. There was no clean water or sanitation available in the school. January 31, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)


Displaced families use pieces of cloth and plastic sheeting to protect themselves from the cold in the rubble of their destroyed homes in Jabaliya. January 31, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)


The bodies of two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces lie next to tank tracks close to the Netzarim corridor dividing northern and southern Gaza. The bodies are partially eaten by dogs and cats. January 31, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)


A destroyed school with a mural of a white dove still standing in Beit Hanoun. February 1, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)


A destroyed neighbourhood in Beit Hanoun where street dogs were roaming the bombed-out buildings looking for bodies. February 1, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)


A wall in a Palestinian home in Beit Hanoun that soldiers from the Golani brigade had used as a base. On the wall, written in Hebrew, is the word “Revenge” with the date October 7, 2023 below it. February 1, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.)





https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/02/ ... s-in-gaza/

(Many more images at link.)

Hannibal in Khiam: Israel’s Carpet Bombing to Hide Its Losses
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 3, 2026

Video unavailable
This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Free Palestine TV

Laith Marouf & Hadi Hotait travel to al-Khiam village on the border with Occupied Palestine and overlooking al-Hula Valley. The two inspect the now demolished Town Hall of al-Khiam destroyed by the Zionists during their invasion, then visit a home riddled with bullet marks and discuss the valiant resistance fighters who managed to repel 7 waves of invasions. The pair also visit a row of summer vacation homes near a Zionist base that came under target in the past few days.

Filmed on: 30/1/2026
Producer: Hadi Hotait
Montage: Rabih Ghannam

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/02/ ... ts-losses/

Gotta love that Freedom Of The Press....

[blindpig]

The Future of the West Bank: Settler Takeover and Annexation
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 6, 2026
Fathi Nimer



Introduction

“We’re all going to end up in Jordan,” remarked a young man from Al-Jiftlik, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. His comment reflects growing despair in the West Bank countryside, where Israeli settler-colonial expansion has intensified to unprecedented levels. This is particularly true in the Jordan Valley, the agricultural heartland along the West Bank’s eastern frontier with Jordan. Once known among Palestinians as the “bride of the Jordan Valley,” Al-Jiftlik now illustrates the gravity of Israeli state-sponsored settler expansion on Palestinian land, having transformed from a prosperous agricultural community into one under siege and facing sustained displacement pressure.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, land seizure in the West Bank has shifted from creeping settler encroachment to a vicious military-backed campaign of territorial theft. This commentary shows how the Israeli regime’s land appropriation policy in the West Bank, once justified through bureaucratic-legal land seizure orders, has now increasingly shifted toward direct settler takeovers. This shift does not indicate a change in objectives but rather an escalation of existing settlement expansion mechanisms, signaling the growing power and influence of the settler movement over Israeli policy.

The Rise of Settler Regional Councils

In the aftermath of the 1967 war and Israel’s occupation of the remainder of Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, former Israeli minister Yigal Allon drafted a plan for the colonization of the West Bank. The plan proposed constructing settlements to enable the annexation of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley while fragmenting the West Bank into enclaves under Jordanian rule or limited Palestinian autonomy. Although never formally adopted, the plan has nonetheless served as a guiding framework for the placement and expansion of settlements.

Between 1967 and 1979, the Israeli regime established 79 settlements in the West Bank. As the settler population grew to nearly 100,000, governing bodies were created to oversee and administer these illegal communities. These took the form of local, municipal, and regional councils responsible for managing settlers’ “civil” affairs, including planning and administrative functions within settlement areas. The Israeli military established the first settler regional council in the Jordan Valley in early 1979, followed later that year by the Mateh Binyamin council. Soon after, the Yesha Council was formed as an umbrella organization coordinating the activities of settler councils.

Although the Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) is the Israeli military unit tasked with administering the occupation of the West Bank, settler regional councils have gained increasing influence over Palestinian affairs in recent years. These councils exercise quasi-governmental authority, plan and administer infrastructure, and provide services. They embody a system of settler self-rule that further fragments Palestinian geography and governance, bypassing international law with the backing of the Israeli regime. In practice, settler councils function as parallel administrative authorities, operating outside formal state channels while wielding de facto state power. Their integration into Israel’s broader bureaucratic apparatus has blurred the distinction between official governance and informal settler enforcement.

In February 2023, Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich was granted broad authority over settlement planning, construction, and civilian affairs in the West Bank. This arrangement effectively transferred key powers previously held by COGAT and its operational arm, the Civil Administration, to Smotrich and his settler allies. This transfer of authority has enabled unprecedented settlement growth while severely constraining Palestinian life and development across much of the West Bank.

Today, six settler regional councils preside over the occupied West Bank, openly calling to bring in one million settlers and impose “Israeli sovereignty” over the territory. Their representatives have increasingly become the public face of the occupation, exemplified by figures such as Shai Eigner. Identified as the land inspector for the Jordan Valley’s settler regional council, Eigner has become a notorious figure among Palestinian residents of the Al-Jiftlik area. Local reports describe repeated incidents in which he has threatened Palestinians and used drones to monitor and intimidate them on agricultural land. Although media outlets often distinguish between settler and army violence—framing the former as “wildcards” acting independently of the latter—in practice, state and settler violence are indistinguishable, operating as mutually reinforcing arms of the same settler-colonial system.

In 2024, the Palestinian Authority (PA) distributed supplies and water tanks to support communities whose cattle had been stolen; among them was Al-Farisia, which had endured years of settler attacks. Shortly after the PA visit concluded, Eigner—accompanied by Israeli soldiers—arrived to inspect the aid and intimidate residents. In the months that followed, settlers repeatedly raided and robbed the same rural community.

Despite these attacks, Palestinians in the Jordan Valley remain determined to stay on their land and resist ongoing colonization. Initiatives such as the Jordan Valley Solidarity Movement have supported community steadfastness by rebuilding demolished homes, constructing clinics, repairing damaged structures, and securing temporary access to water. Yet as the settler movement grows increasingly emboldened, assaults on Palestinian communities have intensified, leaving residents facing an ever more uneven struggle. Grassroots volunteers are stretched thin in confronting a well-resourced, state-backed apparatus of settler-colonial expansion.

A Unified System of Dispossession

It is important to understand that Eigner’s actions, and those of other settler council representatives, are carried out in coordination with Israeli security forces and state authorities. Israeli settlers and state institutions thus operate as an integrated apparatus advancing Palestinian dispossession and displacement. In one documented case in the Jordan Valley, Palestinian villagers reported that armed settlers seized their livestock and removed the animals in the presence of Israeli security forces. Residents stated that the forces failed to intervene, questioning Palestinian ownership claims rather than preventing the transfer of the animals to settlers. Such incidents reflect broader patterns in which settler violence and state enforcement function in tandem.

Israeli state-imposed restrictions on movement and access to resources operate alongside settler seizures, together undermining Palestinian livelihoods and driving displacement. Trucks transporting animal feed are routinely stopped, searched, and confiscated by Israeli authorities under allegations of smuggling without evidence. Israeli occupation forces regularly subject Palestinians to arbitrary delays and harassment at checkpoints, where movement and daily life depend on soldiers’ discretion. These practices collectively reinforce a regime of coercive displacement.

Since October 7, 2023, the situation has deteriorated. Occupation authorities have installed new metal gates at the entrances of many Palestinian communities to exert comprehensive control over movement. This practice is especially pronounced in the Jordan Valley, where an activist from Al-Zbeidat, a village neighboring Al-Jiftlik, has described the current period as the “age of gates.” These barriers confine Palestinians to urban enclaves and sever them from land and livelihoods. Although Palestinians constitute more than 80% of the Jordan Valley’s population, they are restricted to roughly 5% of the territory, facilitating settlement expansion. This restriction is the culmination of decades of displacement: the Jordan Valley has witnessed a steep decline in its Palestinian population since 1967, from approximately 275,000 to about 60,000 today.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military safeguards settlement housing on occupied Palestinian land and connects settlements to state infrastructure. The Israeli regime designates settlements as “national priority areas,” granting them access to subsidies, state-backed mortgages, agricultural grants, and salary incentives, particularly in education. This designation functions as a policy instrument to expand and sustain settlements as part of Israel’s broader territorial strategy in the West Bank. Israeli state institutions, working in coordination with the settler movement, also select settlement sites to control water, farmland, and strategic corridors, preventing the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian polity.

This approach is characteristic of settler-colonial governance, in which an indigenous population is fragmented, economically constrained, and politically marginalized to secure demographic dominance. These conditions are not incidental byproducts of occupation but engineered outcomes of a coherent, long-term strategy.

De Facto Annexation Without Consequences

What experts once described as a “creeping annexation” has become an accelerated drive toward formal annexation. Regional settler councils openly frame Palestinian community initiatives as threats to the “Zionist enterprise,” revealing the fundamental contradiction between Palestinian survival and settler-colonial objectives. While some settler organizations articulate this explicitly, it reflects the underlying aim of Israel’s colonization of Palestine.

For decades, the international community has paid lip service to negotiations over land even as it was actively seized, without exerting meaningful pressure to halt expropriation. Israeli ministers and political representatives across both governing and opposition parties have openly vowed to annex additional territory and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet, these declarations—along with unchecked settler aggression—have met no material repercussions.

Instead, some states have imposed targeted sanctions on individual settler leaders deemed particularly abusive toward Palestinians. There is little evidence that these measures have alleviated Palestinian suffering or curtailed settlement expansion. They also raise further questions: what threshold of rights violations is deemed sanctionable, and why are specific individuals targeted while the broader settler population—now exceeding 700,000—remains unaffected? Such policies expose the tension between addressing individual acts of violence and confronting the systemic, state-supported structures that enable them.

In practice, these measures—alongside symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state—function as gestures that allow states to avoid the diplomatic cost of applying meaningful pressure on the Israeli regime. Meanwhile, the Israeli regime’s policy of providing state subsidies and material support to individuals relocating to illegal settlements remains untouched by individual sanction frameworks.

This inconsistent approach has produced a tiered system of accountability and, alongside Israeli impunity in Gaza, has eroded international legal norms and the post–World War II international order. A system that sanctions a handful of Israeli settlers while ignoring the state institutions that enable them sends a clear message: structural impunity remains firmly intact.

Conclusion

The Palestinian community of Arab al-Kaabneh foreshadows the future that awaits Palestinian communities should settler regional councils achieve their objectives. For years, the rural community faced systematic harassment, including repeated attacks, livestock theft, and settler intimidation. Its school was deliberately targeted: teachers were assaulted, children threatened, and fear was instilled through tactics such as the digging of child-sized graves outside its grounds. Persistent threats at checkpoints and a pervasive climate of fear disrupted education and daily life. While Arab al-Kaabneh’s experience reflects that of many villages across the region, its outcome is especially stark. As of July 2025, the community has been entirely depopulated, and settler outposts have been established in its place.

The fate of Arab al-Kaabneh exemplifies the broader pattern of Palestinian displacement unfolding across the West Bank. Absent meaningful intervention, similar outcomes are likely to follow elsewhere.

The objectives of Israeli policy in the West Bank have become increasingly explicit and remain fundamentally incompatible with any future in which Palestinians are free and sovereign. The long-standing approach of “managing the conflict” without addressing its root causes has become untenable. While Palestinians continue to assert their right to remain on their land amid an expanding territorial regime, the question now is whether third states will act—or once again leave Palestinians to confront these intensifying assaults on their land and rights alone.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/02/ ... nnexation/

*****

Washington imposes 'terrorist-grade sanctions' on Francesca Albanese, ICC judges

US tech companies requested that Washington impose sanctions after the UN rights official sent 'threatening letters' warning them of complicity in the genocide in Gaza

News Desk

FEB 6, 2026


(Photo credit: AFP)

White House officials have used “terrorist-grade sanctions” to target officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, freezing assets and disrupting war crimes investigations, Reuters reported on 6 February.


According to interviews the news agency conducted with U.S. and UN officials and sanctioned individuals, Washington is seeking to penalize the ICC over investigations into US and Israeli war crimes.

The effort to target the UN and ICC came in response to requests from at least two US tech companies involved in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Reuters wrote that the companies approached the White House after receiving letters from Albanese warning they were contributing to “gross violations of human rights” by Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The companies identified by Albanese include Alphabet, Amazon, Caterpillar, Chevron, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, and Palantir.

Tech companies have helped the Israeli military with cloud services and AI to operate weapons systems, including choosing targets to bomb, such as low-level members of Hamas and their wives, children, and neighbors living in the same building.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon.

In July, the White House responded to Albanese’s “threatening” letters by placing her and some ICC staff on the US State Department’s Specially Designated Nationals sanctions list, which is traditionally reserved for individuals involved in terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and weapons proliferation.

The UN says Albanese has diplomatic immunity and that the sanctions are illegal. It called on the decision to be reversed, warning it could undermine the wider international human rights system.

A few months after placing the UN special rapporteur and the ICC staff on the sanctions list, US officials removed Syrian officials from the same list, including Syria’s self-proclaimed President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas al-Khattab.

The terror designation was lifted from Sharaa, the former Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) commander known for ordering suicide bombings to target Shia civilians and minority groups, in preparation for his visit to the White House last November.

https://thecradle.co/articles/washingto ... icc-judges

Graham storms out of meeting with Lebanon army chief who said Hezbollah 'not a terror group'

The army chief’s first planned visit to the US was abruptly canceled weeks ago after a Lebanese military statement condemning Israel

News Desk

FEB 6, 2026


(Photo credit: US Embassy in Beirut/X)

The chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), Rudolphe Haikal, visited Washington this week and held talks with several officials, including pro-Israel Senator Lindsey Graham.

The visit comes several weeks after his first planned trip was abruptly canceled before his departure over a Lebanese army statement condemning Israeli occupation and attacks in Lebanon.

I just had a very brief meeting with the Lebanese Chief of Defense General Rodolphe Haykal. I asked him point blank if he believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. He said, “No, not in the context of Lebanon.” With that, I ended the meeting.

They are clearly a terrorist…

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) February 5, 2026

After the meeting with Graham, the senator took to social media to complain that Haikal refused to call Hezbollah a terror group.

“I just had a very brief meeting with the Lebanese Chief of Defense General Rodolphe Haykal. I asked him point blank if he believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. He said, ‘No, not in the context of Lebanon.’ With that, I ended the meeting,” Graham said on X on 5 February.

“They are clearly a terrorist organization. Hezbollah has American blood on its hands. Just ask the US Marines,” he added. Graham was referring to the 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing in Beirut, in which 241 US servicemembers were killed.

The US has attributed the attack to Hezbollah. While the Lebanese resistance group was not officially formed until two years later, the bombing is widely believed to have been carried out by a group that later evolved into Hezbollah.

US Marines had entered Lebanon as a ‘peacekeeping’ force, while backing Israel’s occupation of the country at that time.

“They have been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by both Republican and Democrat administrations since 1997 – for good reason. As long as this attitude exists from the Lebanese Armed Forces, I don’t think we have a reliable partner in them. I am tired of the double speak in the Middle East. Too much is at stake,” Graham went on to say.

Haikal met with Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a day earlier.

He also met with senior members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including US Representative Brian Mast and Representative Gregory Meeks.


Additionally, the army chief held meetings at the CIA, the US National Security Council, and the Pentagon, where he met Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.

Upon arriving on 2 February, Haikal first visited US CENTCOM headquarters in Florida.

His visit is expected to focus on LAF efforts to disarm Hezbollah. Lebanese media outlet MTV reported before the visit that Haikal will present detailed military maps to US officials, as well as a list of Hezbollah tunnels and military sites.

The report claimed Haikal will also give “deadlines” for the implementation of the Lebanese military plan to disarm Hezbollah.

The LAF commander was supposed to visit the US in November 2025.

Many local reports said at the time that the trip was canceled just hours before he was meant to depart, and that Haikal was snubbed by US officials because of a statement condemning Israel's deadly attacks and illegal occupation of south Lebanon.

A military source also confirmed this to AFP.

“It is clear that the Lebanese Chief Head of Defense – because of a reference to Israel as the enemy and his weak, almost non-existent effort to disarm Hezbollah – is a giant setback for efforts to move Lebanon forward. This combination makes the Lebanese Armed Forces not a very good investment for America,” Graham wrote on X at the time.

The LAF has been dismantling Hezbollah’s infrastructure south of the Litani River in line with the ceasefire deal reached last year. The resistance group willingly handed over many of its positions in the south Litani area throughout last year.

Under US pressure, the Lebanese government adopted a decision in August for the resistance movement's full disarmament.

The LAF was ordered to draft a disarmament plan, which has been kept confidential.

Reports in the last few months have claimed that Haikal is not willing to implement the process before Israel ends its attacks on the country and withdraws its forces from the south.

The army chief has also reportedly threatened to resign if he is compelled to risk a civil war by attempting to disarm Hezbollah by force.

Hezbollah has rejected full disarmament. It says it is eventually willing to discuss incorporating its arms into the Lebanese military as part of a national defense strategy, but stresses that it will not enter into any such discussion until Israel ends its near-daily attacks on Lebanon and withdraws its forces occupying the country.

Over 300 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the November 2024 ceasefire.

https://thecradle.co/articles/graham-st ... rror-group

My senator is a prince of cunts.

Hezbollah, Hamas are not terrorists, they are counter-terrorists. The Zionists, the USA, Lindsey Graham are terrorists.

[blindpig]

Trump plans first 'Board of Peace' meeting despite nonstop Israeli violations of Gaza truce

Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip are reportedly marked for high-value development while the rest remains under siege

News Desk

FEB 7, 2026


(Photo credit: Reuters)

The US government plans to convene the first meeting of the so-called Board of Peace on 19 February, Axios reported on 6 February.

"It will be the first Board of Peace meeting and a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction," a US official is quoted as saying. The White House is also reportedly seeking to push ahead with the second phase of the unfulfilled “ceasefire.”


According to US and diplomatic sources who spoke with Axios, Washington intends to use the meeting to push forward implementation of phase two while seeking international funding for reconstruction.


“Nothing has been confirmed yet, but the administration is planning it and has started checking which leaders are able to attend,” one source said.

The meeting is expected to be held at the Institute of Peace in Washington, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet Trump on 18 February, one day before the planned gathering.

Netanyahu has accepted the invitation for Israel to join the board, but has yet to sign the charter.

The board, launched in late January and chaired by Trump for life, currently has 27 members.

A UN Security Council resolution adopted in mid-November authorized the board to oversee implementation of the Gaza ceasefire and work on governance and reconstruction.

The initiative met with a cautious attitude by many in the west, while Palestinians outright condemned the move, as no Palestinian officials are in the governing board.

Although Washington claims that the second phase of the “ceasefire” has started, Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 550 Palestinians since phase one began in October.


The Board of Peace's charter promotes a so-called “New Gaza” built around high-end real estate, industrial zones, and is based on a ceasefire framework that leaves roughly half of Gaza under Israeli control, entrenching territorial partitions, with Israeli-controlled areas set for high-value development, while the rest of the strip remains under siege.


It also includes so-called incentives for the “voluntary” relocation of Gaza’s displaced population during reconstruction, with estimates suggesting up to 500,000 people could be displaced permanently.

https://thecradle.co/articles/Trump-pla ... Gaza-truce

Israeli settlers storm Gaza to 'plant trees' in bid to establish Jewish settlement/b]

Settler activists wish to expel and even exterminate Palestinians in order to 'settle all over Gaza'

News Desk

FEB 7, 2026


(Photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)

Hundreds of Israeli settlers held a protest and briefly entered Gaza on 7 February as part of a broader effort to establish Jewish settlements on the ruins of Palestinian cities in the devastated enclave.


“Gaza belongs solely to the people of Israel! The time has come to settle in Gaza!” the Nachala settlement movement stated in a post on social media documenting the protest.

Knesset member Ariel Kallner, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, gave a speech at the demonstration.

“The nation of Israel’s rebirth will come when an Israeli flag flies over Gaza — when Jewish communities thrive in Gaza. That will be the absolute victory over absolute evil,” Kallner claimed.

“We will not surrender to Trump’s dictates: No to an international Gaza, yes to a Jewish Gaza,” one of the slogans read.


Since Israel's campaign of genocide in Gaza began, the occupation army has killed at least 71,000 Palestinians.


Some estimates of the death toll are much higher, reaching into the hundreds of thousands, due to the unknown number of bodies trapped under the rubble plus indirect deaths from a lack of medicine, clean water, and sufficient food.


After Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the government established settlements for Jewish Israelis in both territories in an effort illegally annex the occupied Palestinian land over time.

In 2005, former prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the settlements in Gaza to be evacuated in an effort to gain political support in the US for retaining settlements in the West Bank.


All settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.

Nachala said about 1,500 people took part in its demonstration, including Israeli army reservists and at least two coalition lawmakers.


Some Jewish activists then crossed into Gaza to plant trees.

Videos of the demonstration posted to social media showed settlers playing loud music and celebrating at the Gaza border fence.

“We planted trees in Gaza!” yells one man in a white pick-up truck as the crowd applauds.


“God willing, we’ll settle all over Gaza,” another activist declares.

The Israeli army, which has declared Gaza a closed military zone, stopped the settlers in the “buffer zone,” brought them back to Israel, and handed them over to the police for further questioning.

“Approaching the barrier area and entering it is dangerous and disrupts the activity of security forces in the area,” the military said.

Shortly after the beginning of the genocide in October 2023, Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence proposed forcibly expelling the entirety of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians using humanitarian concerns as a pretext.

Israeli politicians and rabbis have also called for the extermination of Palestinians, including women, babies, children, and animals, by citing as justification the biblical precedent of the ancient Israelites exterminating the Amalekites.

https://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1 ... 2c055.jpeg

*****

Netanyahu Rushes to Washington as U.S.-Iran Talks Move Forward


Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: EFE.

February 8, 2026 Hour: 4:56 am

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has moved up a planned state visit to the United States, scheduling a high-stakes meeting with President Donald Trump for Wednesday, February 11, 2026.
The accelerated diplomacy, announced by Tel Aviv’s regime on Monday, comes amid Israeli concern over the trajectory of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks. Netanyahu stated on Saturday that the core agenda of the summit will be these negotiations.

According to a statement from his office, Netanyahu intends to press the U.S. administration to adopt a harder line, insisting that any negotiation must include limiting ballistic missiles and ending support for resistance movements such as the Houthis and Hezbollah.


Israeli media, citing government sources, report the visit was initiated by Netanyahu over concerns that Washington is softening its position, potentially seeking a narrower agreement focused solely on nuclear matters.

Israel’s specific objectives, as outlined in local reports, extend beyond halting uranium enrichment. They include a demand to cap Iran’s missile range at 300 kilometers—rendering Israel out of reach—and mechanisms to block Iranian financing for the Axis of Resistance.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian cautiously labeled Friday’s negotiations with the U.S. “a step forward”, but firmly reiterated Tehran’s refusal to abandon peaceful uranium enrichment.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/netanyah ... e-forward/

Cause Bibi knows that the next thing out of Trump's mouth is the last thing he's heard. Bibi don't give a fuck about Yankee bodybags or his good friend's electoral issues, he's got a jail to stay out of and god is on his side.