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mike huckabee
'We're Wiping Them Out': Netanyahu Shows Off Kill List 'Punch Card' to a Fawning Mike Huckabee
"I’m extremely creeped out," said one journalist in response to the staged video between the Israeli prime minister and the US ambassador. "Just going to go ahead and say it."
Mar 17, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday posted a video of himself showing off what he said was a list of kill targets to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
In the video, Netanyahu informs Huckabee that he recently "erased" two names off the punch card, while noting that there are "many more to go."
Huckabee then expresses relief to Netanyahu that his name is not on the punch card, to which Netanyahu replies that the former Republican Arkansas governor was on a "list of the good, good guys."
Netanyahu then says that he's "proud to stand shoulder to shoulder" with the US military in "getting rid of these lunatics" that the two countries started bombing more than two weeks ago in Iran.
"We're wiping them out," the Israeli prime minister boasts.
"I love it," Huckabee responds. "Thank you, mister prime minister."
Crossing names off the list is good - doing it shoulder to shoulder with our American friends is even better.
Good to see Ambassador @GovMikeHuckabee. Always a pleasure.
🇮🇱🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/FZrZN03IZI
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 17, 2026
Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky expressed disgust at the two men being so jovial about matters of life and death.
"PM Netanyahu and US Ambassador Huckabee amuse themselves with a kill list," she wrote. "Yes, really."
Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone expressed a similar sentiment.
"I’m extremely creeped out," Andreone wrote. "Just going to go ahead and say it."
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‘Incompetence Everywhere’: Fury as US Embassy Says Americans Stuck in Israel Are On Their Own
"The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Mar 03, 2026
The US Embassy in Jerusalem sparked outrage on Tuesday when it said it was unable to help Americans stuck in Israel leave the country amid an escalating regional conflict with Iran.
In a message posted on social media, the embassy said it "is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel," and recommended seeking help from Israeli tourism officials.
"The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has begun operating shuttles to the Taba Border Crossing as of March 2," the embassy stated. "To be added to the passenger list for a shuttle, you must register via the Ministry’s evacuation form. The US Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism's shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety."
The embassy's message came three days after the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, which has retaliated by launching drone strikes on US allies throughout the Middle East.
Many critics slammed the US embassy for being so unprepared to help its own citizens despite having advance knowledge that a large-scale attack on Iran was a real possibility.
"Mike Huckabee’s embassy is always ready to defend Israel," wrote Zeteo News editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan, "but not to help American citizens, it seems."
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that the Jerusalem embassy's helplessness in the face of an emergency was evidence of "incompetence everywhere."
"So the State Department is forcing everyone to immediately leave the region but is also refusing to help people leave the region," he wrote. "The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well."
Murphy's criticism was echoed by former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a one-time ally of President Donald Trump who in recent months has become a staunch critic of the president's decisions.
"American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year," she wrote, "and here is our own US Embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own. The betrayal is unbelievable."
Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, expressed outrage at the Trump White House for leaving Americans out to dry.
"All those years demagoguing Benghazi and pretending to give a shit about Americans overseas," wrote Vietor, "and now the White House starts a reckless war with Iran and tells everyone trying to escape the chaos that you're on your own."
Sam Stein, a reporter at The Bulwark, observed that the US Department of State only put out an alert encouraging Americans to leave Israel and 13 other countries in the region on Monday, two days after the strikes against Iran began.
"This morning, the Embassy in Jerusalem says it can't help with that," Stein marveled.
Anti-gun violence activist Fred Guttenberg unleashed an angry tirade at the Trump administration upon seeing the US embassy's message.
"THEY HAD NO FUCKING PLAN!!!" he wrote. "Americans are at risk now because they had no FUCKING plan."
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Huckabee Accused of Inciting Murder After Israeli Settlers Kill Palestinian-American Teen
"The US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens," said one group.
Feb 23, 2026
Human rights defenders this week accused US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who recently endorsed Israel conquering much of the Middle East—of inciting deadly violence after Israeli colonists in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine fatally shot a Palestinian-American teenager who was trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, was shot dead last Wednesday by a masked Israeli settler armed with an M-16 rifle in the village of Mukhmas, where the 19-year-old Philadelphia native had been living and helping his father, Mohammed Abu Siyam, tend the family's livestock and cultivate their olive trees.
According to eyewitness accounts as reported by independent New York journalist and Palestine specialist Jasper Diamond Nathaniel:
At least four other local Palestinians were wounded by settler gunfire during the invasion of the village, including another young man whose foot may be amputated. Some were shot while carrying the wounded to safety. Many others were severely beaten with metal rods. Israeli soldiers, who accompanied the settlers into the village, responded to the shooting rampage by firing stun grenades and tear gas into the residential area, burning an elderly man. When it was over, settlers walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats under the military’s watch. It was the first full day of Ramadan. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.
While human rights groups and some Democratic US lawmakers have called for a full investigation into Abu Siyam's killing, Huckabee has so far been silent. Last July, Huckabee responded to Israeli settlers' killing of 23-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death while visiting relatives in the West Bank, as "a criminal and terrorist act" that Israeli authorities should "aggressively investigate." As is usually the case when Israeli settlers kill Palestinians, no one has been charged for killing Musallet.
Last Friday, Huckabee—who during his ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—sat for an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson during which he backed the realization of a so-called “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, saying that "it would be fine" if Israel "took it all," as many Jews and Evangelical Christians believe their common deity figure "God" intended them to do.
Numerous observers said the envoy's remarks inherently endorsed violence and forced displacement akin to what's happening to Palestinians living under occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid—and in the case of Gaza, genocide.
"Shortly after the lynching murder of an American citizen, footage aired of the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justifying the very structure of occupation, and rhetoric of ethnic cleansing, that led to the murder and continuing attacks on the occupied West Bank," the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said in a statement Monday.
ADC said Huckabee's endorsement of Greater Israel "signals permission and the green light for Israeli forces to use violence and empower settlers for further annexation and dispossession."
The group continued:
The United States continues to fund, shield, and excuse Israeli violence, forced displacement, and mass atrocity across Palestine. Now the US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens. At the same time, Congress continues to put Israel first by sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least a dozen Americans since 2022. Time and again, our government refuses to defend the rights, dignity, and safety of its own citizens simply to appease the demands of a foreign government and give impunity to Israel.
"The impunity cannot continue," ADC added.
Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have publicly declared their support for Greater Israel, sparking widespread condemnation throughout the Arab world and beyond.
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'All Eyes On Gaza City' as Israel Ramps Up Campaign of Conquest and Ethnic Cleansing
"The explicit goal of turning Palestine's largest city into a wasteland has nothing to do with hostages or Hamas and everything to do with genocide," said one critic.
Aug 21, 2025
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—Israel's plan to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza—intensified Thursday, with fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israeli forces will take over all of the embattled strip even if Hamas agrees to a ceasefire and one of his far-right ministers vowing to continue the genocidal war even "at the expense of the hostages' lives."
"We have begun the preliminary actions and the initial stages of the offensive on Gaza City, and already now [Israeli] forces are holding positions on the outskirts of Gaza City," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Effie Defrin told reporters. "We will intensify the strikes on Hamas in Gaza City, the political and military stronghold of the terror organization."
Defrin added that the IDF is warning residents to evacuate in a bid to "minimize harm to civilians." However, critics say "evacuate" is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, the stated goal of Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said earlier this month: "We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed. On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
Arutz Sheva reported that Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—which ultimately aims to force much of Gaza's population into a concentration camp in order to make way for possible Jewish recolonization of the strip—will involve five IDF divisions, two of them reserves. The news site said that the IDF will issue new emergency draft orders to 60,000 reservists, who will augment the 70,000 who are already activated.
IDF Col. (Res.) Marco Moreno said Thursday that the only way to achieve security is via the "voluntary migration" of everyone in Gaza—another euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' unwillingness to voluntarily abandon their homeland.
"Even if Hamas disarms, raises a white flag, and disappears, it won't be long before a new organization rises in Gaza with the same agenda to destroy the state of Israel," Moreno said during a TV interview. "The only way to ensure true security is through the voluntary migration of all Gaza residents."
Israeli Settlement Minister Orit Strook, a member of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, told the radio station Kol BaRama Wednesday that she favors continuing the war "even if it is clear that Hamas will execute the hostages," 20 of whom remain imprisoned since the October 7, 2023 attack.
"Of course, it is not only me who will vote to continue the war at the expense of the hostages' lives," added Strook, who is known for her extreme support for illegal Israeli settler colonization of Palestine and for allegedly filming her and her husband's sexual abuse of their daughter for pornographic videos.
Hamas condemned the Israeli operation in a statement accusing the Netanyahu government of "continuing its brutal war against innocent civilians, escalating its criminal operations in Gaza City with the aim of destroying it, and displacing its residents in a full-fledged war crime."
The United Nations human rights office said Wednesday that "Israel's reported decision to take full control of Gaza City and to forcibly displace its population will lead to mass killings of civilians and destruction of infrastructure vital to the survival of the population."
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said President Donald Trump—who has said he wants to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East"—is "fully supportive" of Israel's campaign.
Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, while Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces Thursday, including nine aid-seekers and five family members massacred in a drone strike in Khan Younis. Two massacres in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood killed four and eight people respectively, while four people were killed in a separate strike on a family home in the al-Shanti area.
Two more Palestinians also reportedly starved to death in Gaza, where at least 271 people including 112 children have died from malnutrition driven by Israel's "complete siege."
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 62,122 Palestinians—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 156,700 others, with thousands more missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Expert analyses including multiple peer-reviewed studies have concluded the official Gaza Health Ministry death toll is likely a vast undercount.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, a joint investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that, contrary to Israeli claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, a staggering 5 out of 6 Palestinians killed in the strip between October 2023 and May were noncombatants.
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As Israeli Genocide Intensifies, Majority of Americans Support Palestinian Statehood
"Israel has lost the support of the world, including the American people," said policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs.
Aug 20, 2025
As the US backs Israel's plans to occupy Gaza and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank, a solid majority of Americans say the world should recognize a Palestinian state.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday, 58% of Americans believe that every country in the United Nations should recognize a Palestinian state, compared with just 33% who said they should not and 9% who said they were unsure.
In recent weeks, as Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid has inflicted mass starvation across the enclave, many American allies—including Canada, the UK, and France—have broken with the US by indicating their intent to recognize the State of Palestine. In total, 147 of the UN's 193 member states—over 75%—now recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation.
Last week, the foreign ministers of 26 states signed onto a statement that the crisis in Gaza has reached "unimaginable levels" and called on Israel to allow unrestricted humanitarian aid into the strip. As of Tuesday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 266 people, including 122 children, had been starved to death as a result of the blockade.
In Gaza City, where Israel has begun a devastating campaign of bombing, shelling, and shooting civilians and demolishing their homes, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported Friday that malnutrition has reached 21.5%, "meaning nearly one in five young children is now malnourished."
Amnesty International says the rise in malnutrition is the result of a "deliberate campaign of starvation" by Israel aimed at "systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life." Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have described their nation's military actions as "genocide."
While the administration of US President Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and many Democrats continue to back Israel's actions to the hilt, they are increasingly out of step with the views of the American public.
In a July 29 Gallup poll, just 32% said they approved of Israel's military actions in Gaza, while 60% disapproved. The decline in support among Democrats is especially striking: Where 36% said they supported Israel's actions in October 2023, that number has plummeted to just 8%.
But unlike elsewhere in the world, this has not resulted in a sea change among politicians. Just 13 House Democrats signed onto a letter earlier this month calling on the Trump administration to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Israel has meanwhile moved forward with actions explicitly aimed at making a Palestinian state impossible.
On Wednesday, Israel gave the final approval for a massive new illegal settlement in the West Bank known as E1, which slices the Palestinian territory in two and cuts off Palestinian communities between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has championed the proposal, saying it "buries the idea of a Palestinian state."
Trump and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have reportedly given approval to the plan, as part of a reversal in the decades-old US policy opposing Israel's settlements in the West Bank, which violate international law.
International business professor Avraham Shama argued in The Hill on Wednesday that Israel's "increasingly brutal" actions will only continue to galvanize the world toward the plight of the Palestinians.
"Soon, the Palestinian people will be recognized as a sovereign nation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by most countries. They now have the political and moral momentum toward achieving this goal," Shama said. "The case for Palestinian independence has been getting clearer and more urgent with every Israeli bombing of mostly innocent Gazans, and with every death from starvation caused by Israel's withholding of food."
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, told Common Dreams that through its continued support for Israel, the US government is increasingly isolating itself.
"Israel has lost the support of the world, including the American people," Sachs said. "Israel's genocide has made it a pariah state, propped up by the White House over the objections of the American people."
"The only way to peace, and to rescue Israel from its murderous ways," he said, "is to implement the two-state solution immediately, as almost all of the world demands. It's now up to Trump to end US complicity in the genocide and to recognize Palestine."
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With Reported Trump Backing, Israel to Approve Settlement Aimed at 'Burying' Potential for Palestinian State
The Palestinian foreign ministry called the E1 plan "an extension of crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation."
Aug 14, 2025
One of Israel's biggest proponents of breaking international law by expanding settlements in the West Bank claimed Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Trump administration have both given their approval for an expansion scheme that has been blocked for decades and that threatens the possibility of ever establishing a Palestinian state.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich held up a map showing a corridor known as E1, which would link Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim, at a press conference in the illegal settlement where he proclaimed that the proposal "buries the idea of a Palestinian state."
"This is Zionism at its best—building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel," said Smotrich. "This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize. Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground."
The announcement followed recent statements from leaders in France, the United Kingdom, and Canada saying they were prepared to join the vast majority of United Nations member states in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
In a statement with the headline, "Burying the Idea of a Palestinian State," the finance minister said Israel plans to build 3,401 homes for Israeli settlers in the E1 corridor.
The plan still needs the approval of Israel's High Planning Council, which is expected next week. After the project is approved, settlers could begin housing construction in about a year.
The Israeli group Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog, said Thursday that "government is driving us forward at full speed" toward "an abyss."
"The Netanyahu government is exploiting every minute to deepen the annexation of the West Bank and prevent the possibility of a two-state solution," said Peace Now. "The government of Israel is condemning us to continued bloodshed, instead of working to end it."
Smotrich, whose popularity in Israel has plummeted in recent months, claimed U.S. President Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, Trump's ambassador to Israel, reversed the United States' longstanding opposition to the E1 plan, which would cut off Palestinian communities between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, including an historic area called al-Bariyah.
The proposed settlement would also close to Palestinians the main highway going from Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.
"The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid," Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli rights group Ir Amim, told Middle East Eye. "It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to 'bury' the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty. An immediate consequence could be the uprooting of more than a dozen Palestinian communities living in the E1 area."
Netanyahu and the Trump administration have not confirmed Smotrich's claim that they back the establishment of E1, but the White House has signaled a lack of support for the longstanding U.S. policy of working toward a two-state solution.
Huckabee said in a June interview with Bloomberg News that the U.S. is no longer seeking an independent Palestinian state.
"The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid. It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to 'bury' the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty."
Smotrich said Thursday that Huckabee and Trump believe "a Palestinian state would endanger the existence of Israel" and that "God promised [the West Bank] to our father Abraham and gave [it] to us thousands of years ago."
He added, using the biblical term for the West Bank, that Netanyahu "backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria, and is letting me create the revolution."
The U.S. State Department was vague in its response to questions from The Times of Israel about the E1 settlement on Thursday.
"A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with the Trump administration's goal to achieve peace in the region," said the agency. "We refer you to the government of Israel for more information."
Countries including the U.K., New Zealand, Canada, and Australia imposed sanctions on Smotrich in June for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the rate of which has doubled over the last year.
In a statement, the Palestinian foreign ministry called the new settlement plan "an extension of crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation."
Tatarsky said Smotrich's announcement on Thursday showed how international supporters of Palestinian statehood must "understand that Israel is undeterred by diplomatic gestures or condemnations" and take "concrete action" to stop the expansion of illegal settlements.
Speaking to The Guardian Wednesday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said countries that have recently signaled plans to recognize Palestinian statehood must also focus on ending Israel's assault and blockade in Gaza, which has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians so far—including at least 239 people who have starved to death.
“Of course it's important to recognize the state of Palestine," Albanese said. "It's incoherent that they've not done it already."
"Ending the question of Palestine in line with international law is possible and necessary," she added. "End the genocide today, end the permanent occupation this year, and end apartheid. This is what's going to guarantee freedom and equal rights for everyone."
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In Swipe at UK, Huckabee Cites Allied Bombing of Dresden to Defend Israel's Gaza Genocide
"Justifying today's atrocities by pointing to yesterday's doesn't make it moral," said one critic. "It makes it monstrous."
Aug 08, 2025
Amid growing international condemnation of Israel's annihilation and starvation of Gaza—including from staunch ally Britain—U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Friday attempted to defend the genocidal assault on Gaza by invoking one of the most notorious Allied atrocities of World War II.
Appearing on Fox News' "Fox & Friends," Huckabee singled out the United Kingdom after Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticized Israel's U.S.-backed plan to fully occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse approximately 1 million Palestinians from parts of the embattled coastal enclave.
"They never get credit for the things they do to try to prevent civilian loss of life," Huckabee said of Israel, whose 22-month assault and siege of Gaza has left at least 226,600 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing amid loosened rules of engagement effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed while targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Mike Huckabee on genocide accusations against Israel: "Just remember Dresden. Over 25,000 civilians were killed in that bombing alone, and it wasn't food that the British were sending in to Germany."
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 8, 2025 at 5:23 AM
"You have got the Brits out there complaining about humanitarian aid and the fact that they don't like the way Israel is prosecuting the war," Huckabee continued. "I would remind the British to go back and look at their own history. At the end of World War II they weren't dropping food into Germany, they were dropping massive bombs. Just remember Dresden—over 25,000 civilians were killed in that bombing alone."
U.S. and British warplanes indiscriminately bombed Dresden with munitions including 4,000-pound "blockbusters" and incendiary explosives over two days in February 1945. The heat generated by the inferno melted human flesh, turning many victims into piles of goop. Men, women, children; the sick and the elderly; refugees and Allied prisoners of war—even the animals in the city zoo—were incinerated together.
Acclaimed author Kurt Vonnegut—an American POW imprisoned in Dresden at the time, whose seminal novel Slaughterhouse-Five was inspired by the firebombing—later described the attack as "carnage unfathomable." After viewing images of the bombing, then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked: "Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?"
As the old adage posits, "history is written by the victors," and no Allied officials were ever held accountable for atrocities committed against their Axis enemies. However, after the war, the Nuremberg trials, Fourth Geneva Convention, and Genocide Convention sought to ensure that horrors like Nazi and Japanese war crimes and what the British described as the "terror bombing" of Germany never happened again.
Huckabee's comments drew stinging rebuke on social media.
"So Mike Huckabee's defense of mass civilian death is... referencing more mass civilian death?" one U.S. military veteran said on X.
"Justifying today's atrocities by pointing to yesterday's doesn't make it moral. It makes it monstrous," he added. "In fact, the lesson of Dresden should be never again, not 'do it again.' But here we have a U.S. diplomat cosplaying a foreign country's mouthpiece for atrocities."
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Speaker Johnson Calls Illegally Occupied West Bank 'Integral Part' of Israel
"International law is completely unambiguous on this question," said one critic. "What settlers call 'Judea and Samaria' is the legal property of the Palestinians—Israel has zero legal claim to the land."
Aug 04, 2025
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday led a high-level Republican delegation on a visit to the occupied West Bank, where the second-in-line to the U.S. presidency told a rapt audience in an illegal Jewish settler colony that they are the rightful owners of the Palestinian territory.
"The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people," Johnson (R-La.) said in Ariel, using the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem. Ariel was built on land stolen from the Palestinian towns of Salfit, Marda, and Iskaka after Israeli forces conquered the West Bank in a 1967 war waged on false pretense of an imminent threat of Egyptian and Syrian attack.
"Judea and Samaria are the front line of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it," Johnson added.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Johnson's visit, calling his endorsement of Israeli annexation a "blatant violation of international law."
"All settlement activity is illegal and void," the ministry stressed, adding that Johnson's stance "undermines Arab and American efforts to stop the war and cycle of violence, while flagrantly contradicting the declared U.S. position on settlements and settler violence."
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 1,013 Palestinians, including 214 children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Settlers, often protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have launched numerous deadly pogroms and other attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in what critics say is a bid to finish what Israel started in 1948—the total conquest of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of its Arab population, and Israeli annexation.
Johnson, who is reportedly the highest-ranking American official to visit an Israeli settlement, was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who while running for president in 2008 denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—as well as Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.).
Tenney leads the congressional Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus, which supports Israeli annexation of what it calls the "biblical heartland of Israel."
Last month, all 15 Israeli government ministers from Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party urged the prime minister to annex the West Bank. On July 23, members of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, voted 71-13 in favor of a symbolic measure declaring "Judea and Samaria" to be "an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural, and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people" and asserting that "Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel."
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. Following U.S President Donald Trump's reelection last November, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the far-right Religious Zionist party, said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
The Israeli government has repeatedly approved construction and expansion of settlements in a bid to establish irreversible "facts on the ground" that will survive developments in international law and moves by an increasing number of nations to formally recognize Palestinian statehood.
Around 150 U.N. member states currently recognize or plan to recognize Palestine. Recently, France became the first Group of Seven member to announce it will officially recognize Palestine. Last week, Canada said it would also do so, with conditions attached, and the United Kingdom threatened recognition of Palestine if Israel does not take "substantive steps" to end its annihilation of Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 200,000 people since October 2023.
Last year, the International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—found that the occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible. Both Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 8(2) the International Criminal Court Rome Statute prohibit settlement activity.
Construction of Ariel began in 1978, the same year the U.S. State Department first adopted the official position that Israeli settlements are "inconsistent with international law." That position stood until then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reversed it during the first Trump administration. Biden-era Secretary of State Antony Blinken restored the long-standing State Department position in 2024.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signaled support for reverting to the first Trump administration's position, and the State Department has lifted sanctions imposed on some extremist settlers during the Biden administration. Last week, one of those settlers, Yinon Levy, allegedly murdered Palestinian peace activist Awda Hathaleen in Umm al-Kheir after the latter was denied entry into the United States to take part in an interfaith speaking tour.
Approximately 750,000 Israelis currently reside in more than 250 illegal settler colonies in the West Bank. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle in Israel, it has refused to allow the approximately five million Palestinian refugees—people ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the foundation of Israel in 1948 and their descendants—to exercise their legal right of return to their homeland.
The Republicans' visit to the West Bank followed last week's tour by Huckabee and Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff of a Gaza aid distribution center run by a U.S.-backed group condemned for its role in Israeli forces' massacres of desperate people seeking food and other lifesaving aid—a visit denounced by one critic as a "blatant theatrical display."
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Trump Officials' Gaza Tour Slammed as 'Blatant Theatrical Display'
"The goal is clear—to erase the truth, discredit thousands of recorded videos, and wash away the blood," said one Palestinian photojournalist.
Aug 01, 2025
Palestinians and international humanitarian groups were among those who denounced Friday's highly orchestrated tour of a Gaza aid distribution center run by a U.S.-backed group condemned for its role in Israeli forces' massacres of desperate people seeking food and other lifesaving aid.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff visited one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) distribution sites near Rafah in southern Gaza, where Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials presented a sanitized version of a reality normally characterized by near-daily massacres of desperate, starving Palestinians clamoring for food and other aid.
"The purpose of the visit was to give [President Donald Trump] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza," Witkoff wrote on the social media site X.
In recent days, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have acknowledged that Palestinians are starving, with Vance lamenting that "little kids... are clearly starving to death"—a direct contradiction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's lie that "there is no starvation in Gaza."
However, unconditional U.S. support for Israel continues unabated and practically unchallenged, save for another failed bid led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to suspend some arms transfers.
Palestinian photojournalist Osama Abu Rabee described Friday's visit as "a blatant theatrical display."
"Everything appears organized and civilized: no repression, no pepper spray, no gunfire or casualties, not even crowd stampedes," Abu Rabee wrote on social media. "The goal is clear—to erase the truth, discredit thousands of recorded videos, and wash away the blood of nearly 1,000 starving martyrs and hundreds of wounded victims trapped in humiliation."
"To perfect the staged scene, aid distribution was restricted to the families of mercenaries loyal to Yasser Abu Shabab's forces," he added, referring to the Israel-backed anti-Hamas alleged drug trafficker known for looting humanitarian shipments. "Snipers and tanks were withdrawn, and the deception ceremony was prepared—one that Trump's envoy arrived to witness and rubber-stamp as 'reality.'"
Huckabee—who during his ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—claimed on social media that GHF has served more than 100 million meals in two months, a dubious assertion emblazoned on banners around the site he visited.
"Gaza has 2 million people. If that number were true, every person in Gaza should have received 50 meals by now," Gaza teacher and activist Alaa Radwan wrote on the social media site X. "But I know for a fact that my family didn't get a single one. Neither did my friends."
"One hundred million meals. And yet famine is tearing through people's bodies," Radwan continued. "One hundred million meals. And my mother, my father, and my siblings have lost nearly half their body weight. What kind of lie is this? What kind of cruelty does it take to put out a number so outrageous, so disconnected from reality, while the world watches children collapse from hunger?"
"If they insist on lying, they could at least try to make it believable," she added. "But even that seems too much to ask."
Shortly after Huckabee and Witkoff left Gaza, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the IDF killings of aid-seekers at GHF sites are "war crimes" and urged the abandonment of the "U.S.-backed death trap scheme."
"U.S.-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths," HRW noted.
1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, most by the Israeli military, between May 27 and July 21 in Gaza.Israeli forces routinely opening fire on starving Palestinians amount to war crimes.Learn more: bit.ly/46yFXlj
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— Human Rights Watch (@hrw.org) August 1, 2025 at 6:50 AM
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys."
IDF whistleblowers including officers and soldiers have said they were ordered to open fire on civilians seeking aid at GHF sites with live bullets and artillery shells.
Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. special forces colonel who worked as a security subcontractor at GHF sites before resigning, described Israeli troops and American mercenaries indiscriminately shooting at starving Palestinian aid-seekers.
"What I saw on the sites, around the sites, to and from the sites, can be described as nothing but war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of international law," Aguilar told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman earlier this week. "This is not hyperbole. This is not platitudes or drama. This is the truth... The sites were designed to lure, bait aid, and kill."
HRW added that "the dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of Israel's use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war—a war crime—as well as Israel's continued intentional deprivation of aid and basic services, which amounts to the crime against humanity of extermination, and acts of genocide."
The International Court of Justice, where Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by dozens of nations, has repeatedly ordered Israel to avoid genocidal acts in Gaza and allow humanitarian aid into the strip, where more than 60,200 Palestinians have been killed and over 146,800 others wounded since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
However, Israel has ignored these orders. Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza that has fueled deadly mass starvation and disease—for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including mass starvation and murder.
Responding to Huckabee and Witkoff's visit, Oxfam America director of peace and security Scott Paul called on the U.S. government "to use its full influence to put an end to this catastrophe before we pass the point of no return."
"We do not have time for symbolic measures—a few more trucks, airdrops, and humanitarian pauses may be better than nothing—but in reality, they are far more effective in grabbing headlines than they are at saving lives," he said.
"Without urgent, meaningful action, these numbers are going to spiral out of control in the coming days," Paul added, "and the growing death toll will be an indelible stain on this administration."
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'What a Coincidence': Netanyahu Corruption Trial Adjourned as Israel Bombs Syria
"Last month it was Iran, now Syria! All thanks to free U.S. military supplies," said one observer.
Jul 16, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's testimony in his criminal corruption trial was cut short Wednesday as Israeli airstrikes pounded Damascus, the Syrian capital, despite considerable efforts by that country's rulers to appease Israel.
Al Jazeera reported Israeli strikes targeted the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters and the vicinity of the Syrian Presidential Palace, killing at least one person and wounding 18 others in a dramatic escalation that followed Israel's threat to intervene in clashes between government forces and Druze militants in and around the southern city of Suwayda. There are approximately 700,000 Druze—an Abrahamic religion descended from a branch of Shia Islam—in Syria, 250,000 in Lebanon, and 145,000 in Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on the social media site X that "warnings in Damascus have ended—now painful blows will come."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "will continue to operate forcefully in Suwayda to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until their complete withdrawal," Katz added.
Huge explosions were seen in Damascus as Israel bombed Syria’s defence ministry during a live Al Jazeera broadcast nearby.
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— aljazeera.com (@aljazeera.com) July 16, 2025 at 5:53 AM
The Syrian Interior Ministry subsequently announced a cease-fire agreement for Suwayda. Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou confirmed the deal "to completely halt all military operations in Suwayda by all parties" and "to fully integrate Suwayda into the Syrian state."
Syria is the third country bombed by Israel within the past 24 hours. IDF airstrikes targeting the resistance group Hezbollah, including one on a camp housing Syrian refugees, killed 12 people in eastern Lebanon Tuesday amid the ongoing 21-month annihilation of Gaza that has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The attacks also follow last month's unprovoked Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran, including the country's civilian nuclear facilities.
The timing of Wednesday's strikes raised eyebrows, especially given Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's painstaking efforts to avoid conflict with Israel. These include not retaliating for the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes in Syria since last year, cutting off arms supply lines to Hezbollah, and expressing a willingness to hammer out a peace deal with Israel—with which Damascus has technically been at war since 1948.
The conciliatory stance of al-Sharaa—who in 2012 created the al-Qaeda-backed al-Nusra Front to fight and ultimately overthrow the dynastic regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—prompted the Trump administration to lift long-nstanding sanctions on Damascus. The U.S. administration also removed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Nusra Front formerly led by al-Sharaa, from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
As was the case with Israel's June bombing of Iran and alleged stonewalling of an agreement to end the Gaza war and secure the return of Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas, numerous observers accused Netanyahu of bombing yet another country in a bid to stay in power by forestalling a reckoning in his three cases of alleged criminal bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. If fully convicted, the prime minister faces up to 10 years behind bars.
"Israel could end the Gaza war, sit and talk with Syria and Saudi Arabia, and even manage its issues with Turkey through direct channels it already has," Middle East Eye Turkey bureau chief Ragıp Soylu wrote on X. "But Netanyahu chooses to distract its public from the corruption trial by keeping Israel in perpetual war with its neighbors."
Others accused Netanyahu of ordering the attack on Syria in a bid to keep Shas, the far-right ultra-Orthodox Jewish political party, from leaving his government.
"It didn't work. Shas is leaving anyway," Israeli-American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim noted on X. "No one believes him and he is willing to kill people everywhere to get his way."
Netanyahu—who in addition to his domestic criminal trial is also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—denies any corruption.
In language that echoes his own description of efforts to hold him accountable in the United States, U.S. President Donald Trump has called the cases against Netanyahu a "witch hunt" and called for their dismissal. In an unusual show of support, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee attended Wednesday's session of Netanyahu's trial in Tel Aviv District Court.
"This whole trial is wrong," Huckabee asserted, according to Axios.
Netanyahu stands accused of accepting more than $200,000 in gifts from wealthy businessmen, and of a quid pro quo in which he provided a telecom titan hundreds of millions of dollars worth of regulatory relief in exchange for favorable coverage.
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