5
#000000
#FFFFFF
War & Peace
'Has Trump’s Invasion of Greenland Already Begun?': Experts Fearful as MAGA-Linked Oil Company Prepares Unauthorized Drilling
"Let nobody think Trump has given up on taking Greenland," warned one professor of European politics.
Aug 08, 2026
After appearing to back off earlier this year, President Donald Trump this week renewed his threats to seize Greenland. A Saturday report that a Texas oil company with ties to Trump had begun preparing to drill in the Arctic territory without permission has raised fresh concerns that his push for control of the island may already be moving beyond rhetoric.
As The Guardian reported, Greenland’s government issued a “strong warning” last week after learning that a Texas oil company called Greenland Energy had begun making unauthorized preparations for oil extraction in Jameson Land, a remote area of eastern Greenland, including bringing drilling materials ashore.
The company, founded last year, has claimed that Jameson Land may contain $1 trillion worth of crude oil and announced plans to drill two wells there—a project that requires approval from Greenland’s government.
The company also has ties to several Trump allies and associates. According to The Guardian:
Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, a prominent right-wing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters.”
It has also appointed as a director a US Navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defense plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital.”
Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation.”
A Greenland Energy representative falsely claimed in June that the company had permission to place equipment on Jameson Land, before later saying there had been confusion.
But the following month, residents saw a barge arrive with drilling equipment. A Danish outlet confirmed that the delivery was intended for Greenland Energy.
Following the delivery, Greenland’s government said on July 30 that the company "did not have the necessary approvals from the mineral resources authority" and would receive a warning that "all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority—before they are carried out."
Two days later, Trump posted an ominious digitally altered image to Truth Social depicting himself as a giant looming over a Greenlandic town, captioned "Hello, Greenland!"
A day earlier, Trump had appeared on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice, where host Steve Gruber reminded him that he had predicted Greenland would be under US control by the time he leaves office in 2029.
“You’ll be right," Trump replied. "Greenland is important. Not from their standpoint, from our standpoint. You should make that bet.”
Before this week’s comments, Trump had spoken far less publicly about Greenland since January, when he threatened to use military force to take over the island if Denmark did not cede it. To pressure NATO allies, Trump threatened steep tariffs on several European countries, but backed off after Europe pledged retaliatory tariffs, causing panic in the financial markets.
"Let nobody think Trump has given up on taking Greenland," said John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at Maynooth University in Ireland. He added that Greenland Energy’s unauthorized activity "is the latest act of lawlessness his acolytes are engaged in."
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, responded to the story by asking, "Has Trump’s invasion of Greenland already begun?"
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat suggested it was possible. "Invasions," she said, "often start with 'technical' projects that justify the presence of operatives and 'technical experts' who are also doing recon and advance prep."
The Greenlandic government ultimately said it “would not be proportionate” to order Greenland Energy to remove the drilling equipment, a decision that The Guardian said underscored the difficult position facing its officials.
"They could grant permission for oil drilling, even though the planned wells appear to fall within a conservation area protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands," the report explained. "Or they could refuse and, some worry, give Trump a pretext to advance his imperialist agenda."
Although the project has not been approved, a Greenland Energy representative said a vessel carrying additional drilling equipment would depart Canada in September, with drilling set to begin in October.
Jessica Berlin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, warned that allowing the equipment to remain would signal weakness that Trump could exploit.
"Don’t even think about allowing this," she wrote in a post directed to the Greenlandic and Danish governments. "If you give them an inch, they’ll take 100 miles. Kick them out now or accept that you just opened the floodgates."
"Like Putin, you can’t negotiate with Trump," she added. "Showing weakness will just guarantee the next outrage."
As part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense clause, which obligates member nations to defend one another from armed attack. But NATO has no precedent for how Article 5 would apply if one member—the US—attacked another.
O'Brennan warned, "Europe—you are about to be seriously tested."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Genocide Deniers Call Gaza Starvation a 'Hoax' by Citing UNICEF—Which Reported Famine
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who last year admitted Gazans were starving—was among those noting a new global hunger report by the UN agency that reported the 2025 famine as it unfolded.
Aug 07, 2026
For nearly three years, Israeli officials and their US backers have denounced United Nations agencies reporting the facts of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza as lies, but now many of them are citing the latest global hunger study by the United Nations Children's Fund as proof that last year's famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in the coastal exclave was a "hoax."
The UNICEF-led State of Palestine Nutrition Cluster Coordination Meeting report, published on July 22, shows decreased hunger rates in areas of Gaza accessible to those conducting the survey. With Israeli forces controlling the majority of Gaza's territory and much of the strip flattened and inaccessible, the report's authors warned that "the survey findings should therefore be interpreted as representative."
This did not stop the Israeli government and media, and Israel's supporters and sympathetic media abroad, from citing UNICEF—which on Thursday said that Israel is killing about one child a day in Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire—and the broader UN, which they formerly accused of "lies," "antisemitism," "blood libels," and "hoaxes" throughout a war that a UN commission of inquiry called a genocide.
"Once again, facts prevail over fiction," Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said. "UN bodies are acknowledging that the false narrative against Israel is falling apart."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee may have forgotten his acknowledgement last year—along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance—that Palestinians were "starving" in Gaza, aspersing the media for reporting on the starvation.
Eylon Levy—the British-Israeli former spokesperson for Israel known for purveying disinformation like the infamous October 7 "beheaded babies" lie—also ran with the narrative, posting on X that "the 'Gaza Famine' was always a hoax."
Except it wasn't.
UN agencies and other humanitarian groups started sounding the alarm on looming starvation in Gaza in the weeks after Israel began annihilating the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. By February 2024, UNICEF warned that "famine is imminent" in Gaza as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited the deaths of six infants from malnutrition and dehydration.
As Gaza's hunger crisis worsened under Israel's "complete siege," UN agencies, including UNICEF, regularly warned about starvation in the strip. In February 2024, UN officials were accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—one of the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Michael Fakhri, the top UN expert on the right to food, accused Israel of genocidal forced starvation of Gazans.
In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-aided top global authority on hunger crises—declared a Phase 5, or "catastrophic," famine in Gaza as at least hundreds of Palestinians perished from malnutrition and related causes.
“Famine is now a grim reality for children in Gaza," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said at the time. “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children."
The IPC lifted Gaza's famine designation in December 2025, citing improved—but still highly restricted—access of humanitarian aid into Gaza following a nominal ceasefire agreement reached two months earlier. However, last month the IPC published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in Phase 4 (emergency).
"The situation remains fragile," IPC warned.
Many of the people who deny that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a quarter million Palestinians in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide there—a conclusion reached by numerous UN officials, scholars, jurists, rights groups, and the approximately 20 nations that formally joined South Africa's pending genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—are the same ones who have denied not only the Gaza famine, but that anyone was ever starving there.
They asked to see photos of starving Palestinians, and when shown them, they, and corporate media outlets including The New York Times, attempted to explain or even dismiss the evidence by claiming the emaciated—or often dead—children suffered from preexisting conditions, as if that somehow absolved Israel for their deaths. Others posted images of a Gaza market stocked with food or overweight Palestinians in a bid to debunk the fact of starvation in Gaza.
Still others dismissed images of starving Gazans as Hamas propaganda, with US media personality Megyn Kelly opining that Palestinians are "fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera."
Keep Reading
Show Less
What Kind of Ceasefire Is This? UNICEF Says 300 Children Killed in Gaza Over 300 Days
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said one United Nations official.
Aug 06, 2026
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Rights Groups: Israel’s Killing of Journalist Amal Khalil ‘Must Be Investigated as a War Crime’
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” said one campaigner demanding a probe into the Lebanese reporter's death.
Aug 06, 2026
An Amnesty International investigation published Thursday led human rights defenders in Lebanon and around the world to renew their calls for a war crimes probe into an Israeli attack that killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and wounded a colleague earlier this year.
Khalil, a 42-year-old veteran correspondent for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and 21-year-old freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting in the southern Lebanese village of al-Tiri on April 22 when an IDF drone bombed what Amnesty said was a civilian vehicle traveling in front of them. A second strike then hit the journalists' car, wounding them.
As Khalil and Faraj sheltered in a nearby building, IDF drones hovered overhead for two hours before the structure was bombed, collapsing it. Lebanese Red Cross personnel coordinated access to the site with Israeli authorities, and once granted permission, rushed to the scene and pulled Faraj—who suffered a fractured skull, severe leg and eye injuries, and a crushed hand—from the rubble. But due to what they called threats of further attack while trying to save the mortally wounded Khalil, the Red Cross workers said they had to withdraw. Recovery operations were delayed for hours.
A medical examiner's report said that Khalil died of cardiac arrest due to head trauma and severe bleeding hours after rescuers were forced to leave her.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam at the time condemned that attack as "a clear-cut war crime."
The IDF contends that it declared the area where Khalil was killed off-limits and that it was targeting Hezbollah militants.
"The IDF does not target journalists in any way and works as much as possible to minimize harm that may befall them while maintaining the security of our forces," a spokesperson said.
However, dozens of journalists have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Lebanon, while the figure is in the hundreds in Gaza, where Israel is waging what Amnesty and many others say is a genocide in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The IDF also attacked and invaded Lebanon—which it has repeatedly done before—to stop Hezbollah from firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel was the world's leading killer of journalists last year, while the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in February that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist deaths worldwide in 2025.
“The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, but the facts and evidence show that it has repeatedly done so. Amal Khalil and Zainab Faraj are the latest victims in a long series of such attacks,” Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, said Thursday. “The evidence is clear that the Israeli military knew or should have known that Faraj and Khalil were civilians, but attacked them anyway, and then prevented paramedics from rescuing them for hours."
“Israeli forces’ continued killing of journalists shows a brazen willingness to commit atrocities without any fear of consequences," Kaiss added.
Amnesty argues that the IDF strike on the building where the journalists were sheltering, and the subsequent delay in allowing first responders to rescue them, should be investigated as a war crime.
“Amnesty International’s investigation paints a harrowing picture of a direct attack on two civilians while they had sought refuge from Israeli attacks," Amnesty Middle East and North Africa regional director Heba Morayef said Thursday in a statement.
"After the first strike had eliminated the military-stated target, and with two drones flying low overhead, the Israeli military knew or should have known that two civilian women were sheltering in that building," she continued. "Despite this, they proceeded with what we have reasonable grounds to believe amounted to a direct attack on civilians, demonstrating a shocking disregard for international humanitarian law (IHL)."
“The fact that the two journalists were in what Israel has designated a no-return zone does not make them lawful targets," Morayef added. "All parties to a conflict have a clear obligation to distinguish between civilians and military targets at all times and to direct their attacks only at military objectives. There can be no justification for targeting civilians who sought shelter in search of safety. This attack must be promptly, independently, and impartially investigated as a war crime.”
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said Thursday that “Amnesty International’s findings paint, yet again, a deeply disturbing picture of a systemic failure of legal mechanisms designed precisely to protect civilians—including journalists.”
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” Qudah stressed. "This repeated failure to conduct transparent investigations into attacks on journalists has reinforced a climate of impunity and hollowed out the protections granted to the press under IHL."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Bay of Pigs Reloaded': New CIA Task Force to Further Destabilize Cuba Revealed
The revelation comes as the State Department "has been on a full-throttle media blitz," noted one writer, "painting Cuba as an espionage superpower and a threat to US national security."
Aug 05, 2026
After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, "setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes."
"In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs," the newspaper noted. "The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump's demands."
Despite the anonymous sources' claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, "Bay of Pigs reloaded."
The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that "the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country's communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans for the island."
The agency also declined to comment on Politico's piece, which pointed out that "US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him."
Sharing Politico's coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is "hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere."
Enrique "Ric" Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, "is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime," El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, "Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree."
This week's reporting followed the July release of a "McCarthyite" US Department of State document that was widely decried as an "attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly," as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba, where the Trump administration has fueled a humanitarian crisis.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the department's report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was "exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country."
During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, "an influence and espionage superpower." His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump's $275 Billion Battleship Fleet Set to Be 'Most Expensive US Warships Ever'
"At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, healthcare, and childcare, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’" said one Democratic senator.
Aug 05, 2026
The Trump administration's controversial plan to build a new "Golden Fleet" of guided-missile battleships is drawing mounting criticism from budget watchdogs, defense analysts, and Democratic lawmakers, who warn the proposal would put taxpayers on the hook for what could be the costliest naval procurement in US history.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday said the cost to build 15 Trump-class nuclear-powered battleships is approximately $275 billion in current dollars through 2056—roughly 50% more than a previous estimate.
"Under the 2027 shipbuilding plan, compared with the 2025 plan, the Navy would purchase substantially more large surface combatants," the CBO said. "The average annual amount of funding needed to buy surface combatants would rise by slightly more than two-thirds, from about $11 billion to $19 billion."
"By 2035, the Navy's 2027 plan would more than double the tonnage of large surface combatants that shipbuilders would need to produce," the office added. "Overall, the tonnage of large surface combatants to be constructed would need to increase by 60%, while the tonnage of small surface combatants would decrease by about 40%. Accommodating such a sizable increase in the production of large surface combatants could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry."
One journalist noted that the Trump-class battleships' cost would make them "the most expensive US warships ever produced."
President Donald Trump claimed in December that his proposed Golden Fleet would "help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world."
The president explicitly linked his desire to revive battleships—which were last built in the US in 1944 and were all decommissioned by the early 1990s—to his affinity for the 1950s television documentary series "Victory at Sea."
Critics say the program will inflate already historically high military budgets while diverting hundreds of billions of dollars that would be better spent on underfunded social programs.
"At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, healthcare, and childcare, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ including plastering his name across a new battleship," Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Wednesday in response to the CBO analysis.
"Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex."
"Just like Trump’s ‘Golden Dome,’ the ‘Golden Fleet’ is expected to cost much more than previously estimated," he continued, referring to the president's proposed missile defense system that Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) derided as a "dangerous $1.2 trillion boondoggle."
“While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex," Merkley added. "I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to reject moving forward with this wasteful project, and instead invest in programs that help families thrive."
In addition to cost, military experts and others noted the obsolescence of battleships—which are now all scrapped or museum pieces—and the fact that they make great big targets.
Among the most outspoken critics of the Golden Fleet is Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who has argued that the ships represent a throwback to outdated naval warfare doctrine.
Rather than concentrating enormous combat power in a handful of exceptionally expensive vessels, Cancian has said the Navy's own operational concepts increasingly emphasize "distributed maritime operations," the spreading of offensive capabilities across larger numbers of smaller, networked ships that are harder for adversaries to target.
Bernard Loo, a senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, was even more blunt in a December CBNC interview, calling the proposed Trump-class ships "bomb magnets."
“The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target," Loo added.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Gaza Holds Mass Funeral for 112 Palestinians Slaughtered by Israel in 2023
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked a Civil Defense spokesperson at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
Aug 04, 2026
Palestinians on Tuesday held a mass funeral in the Gaza Strip for more than 100 people killed in a 2023 Israeli attack as the local Ministry of Health's confirmed death toll for Israel's genocidal assault climbed to at least 73,377.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, experts have warned the true toll could be much higher, with an unknown number of remains trapped beneath the ruins of the besieged territory.
Tuesday's funeral in Gaza City was for 112 people, including 40 children, who were among the over 300 killed in a November 22, 2023 Israeli attack on the Sabra neighborhood, in which "warplanes flattened a residential block," according to The Associated Press.
For the funeral, the bodies were wrapped in Palestinian flags, with photos of the dead attached.
As CBS News detailed:
One mourner showered flower petals over the covered bodies of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan as women and children watched from atop partly demolished buildings around the earthen square. A banner with the faces of dozens of children served as the backdrop of a speech from the spokesperson of Gaza's Civil Defense.
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked Mahmoud Basal at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
The words "Stop the genocide in Gaza," in both Arabic and English, had been scrawled on the podium he spoke from.
Mourners also held signs with messages in both languages. One said in English, "Children of Gaza have the right to live."
Gaza's Civil Defense said that while these remains were found in wrecked buildings in the area, as part of a search operation launched nearly two weeks ago that involved 136 hours of "arduous" work, at least 157 others are still missing.
Given the limited equipment in Gaza, despite months of a supposed ceasefire, "the crews were digging with their hands through masses of reinforced concrete," said Mohammed Abu Dan, who supervised the operation, according to Reuters.
"Many bodies disintegrated and evaporated because of the intensity of the explosion," he explained.
After the funeral prayers, one relative, Taysir al-Hassayna, told the AP, "The only crime of these martyrs was that they remained steadfast and resilient in their homes, believing that these homes would protect them."
For those who haven't been found, al-Hassayna added, it's "as if their bodies had evaporated without a trace."
Al Jazeera reported that surviving relatives used the funeral "to renew accusations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza and demanded international investigations into the attack and the hundreds of bodies still believed to be buried under rubble across the territory."
The International Criminal Court in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, citing alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel faces a genocide case led by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.
The latter tribunal has directed Israel to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations" of violations of the Genocide Convention, but a report published Monday details how Israeli soldiers and civilian contractors are systematically removing potential proof from Gaza.
Specifically, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that at least 10 million tons of rubble "have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel's unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip."
Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace for Gaza appears to be going back on the disarmament deal it reached last week with Hamas, potentially jeopardizing the entire process—a development that didn't surprise Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the associate director of editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
"The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel's occupation of Gaza," he said. "It exists to facilitate Gaza's ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Board of Peace ‘Betraying the Very Agreement They Just Made' by Accepting Israel’s Refusal to Withdraw Troops in Gaza
"This tweet is Netanyahu’s way of sabotaging the agreement," said one analyst.
Aug 04, 2026
US President Donald Trump's Gaza Board of Peace appears to be going back on the disarmament deal it reached last week with Hamas in order to meet Israel's demands, and it may throw the entire process into jeopardy.
A roadmap agreed to last week, which Trump touted as a massive diplomatic breakthrough, stated that Hamas would begin to decommission its arms in tandem with Israel halting its attacks and withdrawing its forces to the so-called "yellow line" agreed to during the first phase of the ceasefire in October 2025.
In the ten months since the deal, Israel has been gradually advancing its forces deeper into Gaza beyond the ceasefire line to the point where it now controls around 60-70% of Gaza, while its more than 2 million inhabitants are crammed into an area that has largely been reduced to rubble.
Last week's peace roadmap said explicitly that the gradual decommissioning of Hamas' heavy weapons, arms depots, production facilities, and tunnels "shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases." Trump echoed this last week, stating that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would withdraw as disarmament proceeds.
Though Trump claimed Israel was "very happy" with the deal, its leaders have spent days crying foul, stating that withdrawal would only occur after Hamas completely disarms. Meanwhile, Hamas said it would only go along with the disarmament if Israel withdraws at the same time.
In defiance of the agreement's language calling to honor ceasefire commitments "without delay," Israel launched attacks across Gaza on Sunday that killed at least 18 Palestinians, the largest daily toll in weeks. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Israel's Army Radio that there was no deal for it to halt attacks on Gaza.
The strategy appears to have worked. Following meetings between Netanyahu and the Board of Peace Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, on Monday, the board released a statement posted to social media that essentially rewrote the original agreement to match Israel's demands and claimed it had been part of the agreement from the start.
"Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators," the board said. "This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike."
Hamas responded by reiterating that it and other armed factions in Gaza “remain committed to what was agreed regarding the implementation of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, including all parties’ obligations,” and called for “a clear and official response” from Mladenov regarding what was agreed upon.
The new statement from the Board of Peace directly contradicted Mladenov's flat statement on Thursday that "withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning."
Muhammad Shehada, a political analyst from Gaza at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Board of Peace was "betraying the very agreement they just made" and "taking Netanyahu’s side fully."
"The roadmap explicitly said withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning," he wrote on social media. "It never said withdrawal would happen only after decommissioning is fully completed."
"The roadmap made a distinction between 'heavy weapons' (e.g. tunnels, rockets, RPGs) and 'personal/light weapons,' and allowed Palestinian factions to retain light weapons for protection in case Israel reneges," he added. "Including light weapons now in this tweet is Netanyahu’s way of sabotaging the agreement."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the associate director of editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, said the Board of Peace's abrupt reversal "shouldn’t surprise anyone."
"The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel’s occupation of Gaza," he said. "It exists to facilitate Gaza’s ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community."
Since the so-called “ceasefire” went into effect last October following two years of genocidal war, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, bringing the official death toll above 73,000. Experts warn the true number of Palestinians who have been killed since Israel began its attacks in October 2023 is likely far higher.
July was the deadliest month for Palestinians this year, with more than 150 Palestinians killed. Israeli leaders have discussed fully "conquering" the strip, controlling it indefinitely, and moving in illegal Israeli settlers.
Keep Reading
Show Less
‘They Are Murder Victims,’ Sen. Tim Kaine Says of People Killed by Trump Boat Strikes
"I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Aug 04, 2026
Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday accused the Trump administration of committing murder with its campaign of military strikes against purported drug trafficking vessels, which has killed at least 221 people since its launch in September 2025.
In a letter sent to President Donald Trump, Kaine (D-Va.) said that he reviewed classified notifications sent to Congress related to the boat strike campaign and concluded that the US "is engaged in violent and fatal attacks against people far beyond those" whom the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said would be legitimate military targets.
Kaine didn't go into detail about the OLC's classified legal opinion justifying the strikes, but he said the evidence he has gathered suggests the US "has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."
"They are murder victims," Kaine emphasized.
Kaine also pointed to a recent analysis conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, first reported on by The Washington Post last month, which found that the boat strike campaign "has had no effect on the flow of illegal drugs into the United States."
Kaine concluded his letter by urging Trump to "closely examine the circumstances of these strikes, to ensure that you are personally aware of the extent to which the leadership of the Department of Defense has exceeded your July 2025 directive, incurring massive expense and operating with dubious legality, and with no progress towards your stated objective."
"And once you have done so," Kaine added, "I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Despite Kaine's warnings, there is little sign that the administration is rethinking its boat strike campaign.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Monday announced the formation of the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new command structure aimed specifically at combating international drug cartels.
Journalist Juan Esteban Silva described the announcement of the task force as "major shift" in US security strategy that is putting "Colombia and Venezuela... at the center of the conversation."
An analysis published by The Diplomatic Insight on Tuesday said the SOUTHCOM announcement "aligns with Trump administration’s anti-narcotics campaign under a permanent command structure with expanded geographic reach, part of what the administration has described as a 'maximum pressure' policy against transnational criminal networks in the hemisphere."
The analysis also noted that the new command structure replaces Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which has been responsible for carrying out boat strike operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Words Are Not Enough': Senate Democrats Say Trump Must Take Action to Prevent More Mass Atrocities in Sudan
The US, said a group of senators led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, must suspend weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, which arms the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Aug 04, 2026
Writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday led 20 members of the Democratic Caucus in demanding that the Trump administration go beyond simply denouncing the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group in Sudan that has been accused of war crimes in the country's civil war, and take "concrete action" to stop more mass atrocities as the group encircles the city of El Obeid.
"These actions should include ceasing certain US arms sales to external actors that are fueling this war, including the United Arab Emirates, which continues to arm the RSF," wrote the senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The lawmakers wrote to Rubio as an estimated 500,000 civilians were at risk in El Obeid, where many people have sought safety following RSF attacks across the Kordofan region.
The letter came as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said civilians are facing drone attacks in El Obeid, with humanitarian assistance also put at risk by the assault.
A number of the signatories, including Van Hollen and Sanders, have previously called on the Trump administration to end its complicity in RSF attacks like those that occurred in El Fasher last October, which United Nations investigators said bore the "hallmarks of genocide" after the group killed more than 6,000 civilians in the first three days of its offensive in the besieged city.
The senators described attacks like those on El-Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, where RSF forces "proceeded to search the wards and killing those they found, including patients, accompanying persons and medical personnel," killing an estimated 460 people before pursuing civilians who tried to escape.
Reports described "the perpetrators chasing people in open fields, firing at them with automatic rifles and mounted submachine guns, and running over fleeing persons with vehicles, causing mass casualties," the senators wrote.
More than 14 million people have also been forcibly displaced by the civil war.
But the scale of atrocities would likely not have been possible without the RSF's support from the UAE, for which the Trump administration fast-tracked a weapons sale in May after having provided the country with $7 billion in weapons just two months earlier.
Also in May, said the senators, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that the UAE trained hundreds of Colombian mercenaries who then took part in the atrocities in El Fasher and trained RSF recruits, including child soldiers.
Now, they wrote, the RSF's "encirclement and systematic crippling of resources in El Obeid increasingly parallels El Fasher, and this administration must use its leverage and influence to prevent a repeat of El Fasher’s horrors in El Obeid before it is too late."
They pointed out that the administration has acknowledged that further "mass atrocities could be imminent” in Sudan, as a State Department spokesperson said on June 22. In November 2025, Rubio himself said that the RSF was "clearly receiving assistance from outside" and that “something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support the RSF is getting as they continue their advances.”
Despite those acknowledgments, said the senators, the Trump administration has shown a "grave failure to act despite the chorus of alarm bells."
"What occurred in El Fasher is a stark warning of what could unfold in El Obeid and across Sudan if this administration—and the international community—continues this current pattern of inaction," wrote Van Hollen and his colleagues.
"While we welcome the State Department’s expression of concern about the escalating situation in El Obeid, words are not enough," they said. "The United States must use the leverage and influence at our disposal to prevent further atrocities in El Obeid and help bring this brutal war in Sudan to an end."
The senators called for a response to their letter by August 17, urging the administration to provide "an update on what other actions the administration is taking, beyond just words, to prevent mass atrocities in El Obeid."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Outrage Builds Over Apparent US Use of 2,000-Pound Bomb on Iranian Family Home
"Everyone in the chain of command who authorized this should be charged with murder."
Aug 02, 2026
Outrage over another apparent US war crime against Iranian civilians continued to grow over the weekend following New York Times reporting that the United States appears to have dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a family home in a densely populated neighborhood of Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
The newspaper spoke with weapons experts who analyzed photos, videos, and satellite imagery of the strike—which, according to Iranian officials, killed taxi driver Qeysar Jafari, his wife Zahra Jafari, and their 2-year-old son Sina, and hospitalized their two surviving children, Mohammad Reza and Mehdi.
While a spokesperson for US Central Command told the Times it is "looking into" reports that the family members were killed in the strike overnight Thursday and "the US military never targets civilians," Stanford University law professor Tom Dannenbaum outlined the United States' legal obligations.
"The attacking force must take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm, including in its selection of munitions, times of attack and, whenever circumstances allow, by issuing effective advance warnings," he said. Using a Mark-84 bomb in a crowded area "is very difficult to reconcile with" that.
Some readers and critics of the war highlighted Dannenbaum's comments while sharing the report on social media.
Former longtime Human Rights Watch leader Kenneth Roth similarly said: "Why did the US military drop a huge 2,000-pound bomb in a densely populated residential area in Iran? It is very hard to reconcile that use with the legal requirement to avoid disproportionate harm to civilians."
Journalist Rania Khalek denounced the attack as "barbaric savagery by soulless ghouls," while Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, condemned it "a clear WAR CRIME."
Responding to Hashemi, Barbara Slavin, a George Washington University lecturer and Stimson Center distinguished fellow, said that "we are becoming more like Israel every day."
Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained that "for years, Israel was using [2,000-pound] American bombs to kill Gazan refugees in tents. Both the Biden and Trump administrations permitted it. A precedent was set. Now it appears the US is doing the same in Iran."
"A [2,000-pound] bomb was dropped on a family house in Qeshm, killing a taxi driver (the father), the mother, and a 2-year-old, according to The New York Times," he continued. "Yes, a taxi driver. And a toddler. And his mother. "The Times found no indication of a military site near the family's home or any reports of military casualties from the strike."
Cory Archibald, co-founder of Track AIPAC, which documents spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and related groups, stressed to people in the US, "That's what our government spends money on instead of giving you healthcare."
Leftist US political commentator Kyle Kulinski was among those demanding consequences for whoever carried out the deadly attack, declaring: "Pure terrorism. These people need to be in prison for life."
Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democrat who recently ran for Congress in California, agreed, saying that "everyone in the chain of command who authorized this should be charged with murder."
Since President Donald Trump and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, other apparent war crimes have included attacks on civilian infrastructure such as a water desalination plant, strikes that forced children to evacuate a hospital, and the destruction of a school in Minab that killed over 100 people.
Trump claimed late Saturday that he halted planned strikes on Iran due to progress in negotiations to end the illegal conflict. Appearing on CNN after the announcement, Parsi said that "I don't believe there was an imminent attack. We've gone through this several times, in which Trump issues these threats, and then he backs off because the other side calls his bluff."
Keep Reading
Show Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy