Talked to a DV org today that may be able to help with some expenses. There are still a lot of unknowns and for now, my big fundraising focus is trying to get a car by the end of June. Another 2-3k should get us there. I am going to look into car loans as well since I was able to get my credit cards down slightly, but it would be ideal to be able to buy outright.

Thanks for your continued support!

venmo/cashapp natsmith89
paypal.me/natoleander
chuffed.org/project/replace-ou…

Mutual Aid: Help a DV Survivor Get Financially Stable

Spending the majority of your time strategizing how to stay on someone's good side is not normal.

^Chuffed

At this point I'm starting to believe the primary purpose of the sham ceasefire in Gaza, broken by Israel to continue a US-backed genocide of Palestinian people, was to allow US corporate media to catch its breath and reset to a position of trying very hard to ignore blatant war crimes against clearly innocent Palestinians. A United Nations investigation has revealed that the IDF executed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including a UN employee, in March 23rd; then tried to bury the evidence, including crushed ambulances, to hide this crime against humanity. Details of the murders make it clear that this activity was deliberate, and yet the portions of the mainstream western media that remain firmly pro-genocide have hardly registered any sort of outcry or calls for action.

1) theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…

Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN

“Seven days ago, civil defence and PRCS ambulances arrived at the scene,” the head of Ocha in Palestine, Jonathan Whittall, said in a video statement. “One by one, [the paramedics and civil defense workers] were hit, they were struck. Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave.

“We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave,” Whittall said. “These ambulances have been buried in the sand. There’s a UN vehicle here, buried in the sand. A bulldozer – Israeli forces bulldozer – has buried them.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said that one of its employees was among the dead found in Rafah."

As an American, please let me once again remind you that none of these atrocities would be happening without US financial, material, and diplomatic support. We're subsidizing the Israeli government, we're shipping the IDF the bombs and weapons being used to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza, and it is by US diplomatic force that Western support for Israel even as it commits a genocide, remains strong, if somewhat less overt than it was at the start of this genocide. Trump (and Biden before him) could end this inhuman slaughter today if he wanted to; he just doesn't want to because killing brown people and taking their resources (beachfront property and natural gas, in this case) is a important business activity for the entire Pig Empire.

In an environment where the media is actively cultivating a numb complicity, and western states are either ignoring the massacres, or as in the Trump regime's case, openly celebrating them, it behooves all of us in the so-called West to reject these attempts to rewind time and protect the genocide. In the months leading up to the ceasefire, Western political leaders and media were on the backfoot as independent media, folks with Tik Tok accounts, protestors, and even everyday people refused to accept the complicity of silence and demanded action. This "reset" must not be allowed to continue while Palestinians in Gaza are murdered with impunity and the complicity of the larger Pig Empire; as noted by Ahmed Moor writing in the Guardian - which is sadly where I have to get my mainstream news about a US-enabled and supported genocide the Trump administration is happily paying for, because US media outlets are still trying to pretend none of this is real:

2) theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Israel executes unarmed Red Crescent paramedics with the west’s blessing

"Nor will global leaders intervene to end the mass murder which has been punctuated by this latest obscenity. Some of them – such as Emmanuel Macron, who called for a ceasefire, might appear to want to end the slaughter. After all, dead babies in incubators and paramedics in a mass grave are unpleasant garlands to wear. But 18 months in, they are too deeply implicated. Who can forget Ursula von der Leyen’s embrace of Netanyahu? Or Keir Starmer’s affirmation of Israel’s “right” to starve Palestinians in Gaza?

Today, those who are tasked with upholding international law have been co-opted by the Israeli leadership, whether they like it or not. The logic of gangland drug dealers and criminals – new members commit crimes to join, and are locked in – prevails.

So far from being complicit, US and European leaders are the authors of this latest atrocity by their Israeli colleagues in Gaza."

#Gaza #Genocide #Israel #Trump #CrimesAgainstHumanity #USA #WarCrimes #Netanyahu #IDF #Media #EthnicCleansing #UN #Imperialism #Netanyahu #UNRWA #SettlerColonialism #RedCrescent

Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN

Workers on a mission to help colleagues were buried in mass grave in southern Gaza, says humanitarian office

^{Lorenzo Tondo (The Guardian)}

In writing about the Trump regime's fascist assault on foreign student anti-genocide protestors, a lot of what we talk about is the domestic social costs these authoritarian actions and a failure to oppose them produce. I don't mean to be callous, because injustice and repression against any part of the opposition to fascism, is injustice and repression that harms us all; to say nothing of the personal costs to the students targeted for having the audacity to think conducting an ongoing genocide in an open air concentration camp is morally wrong. If you want to know why the regime is pursuing these fascist, repressive policies however, and why the administration before them was happy to lay the groundwork that is today enabling Trump to target anti-genocide protests under the false banner of "fighting antisemitism," I must unfortunately conclude that the answer is "probably, because it's working."

How else can you explain political and military leaders in Israel all but admitting they intend to finish off the genocide they've been conducting against Palestinians in Gaza, without much notice in the American media environment, and amid a collapse in popular resistance to the genocide, even as polling indicates a strong shift in American sympathies away from Israel and its crimes against humanity in Gaza?

commondreams.org/news/israel-t…

'Only Hellfire': Israel Says Lifesaving Aid, Troop Withdrawal Off the Table for Gaza

"Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the U.S.-backed genocidal policy of blocking lifesaving humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip will continue, and that Israel Defense Forces troops will remain in the embattled Palestinian enclave indefinitely.

"Israel's policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population," Katz said. "No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid."

I want to be clear, I'm not saying there's no active resistance to the genocide going on in America, only that the regime's fascist repression is contributing to a climate of fear that's suppression discussion about and resistance to Israel's crimes against humanity in the broader culture. And let's be fair here, the still quite bipartisan nature of support of *this* particular application of fascist terrorism in the American ruling establishment makes opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza perhaps one of the most dangerous acts of anti-fascism a person can undertake in this political moment. When Trump kidnaps a Maryland father and traffics him to a torture prison in El Salvador, the oppositional political and media apparatus in this country are quick to condemn him and demand action. When Trump starts black bagging student protest leaders and shipping them to nightmare jails in politically favorable court districts, that same establishment equivocates, says nothing at all, or sometimes outright supports that repression. Take for example former Biden antisemitism Envoy Deborah Lipstadt:

forward.com/news/712297/studen…

Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy

"I’m not opposed to the administration rescinding the student visas of some of the people that they’re rescinding the student visas of,” she said. “But I just think it should be done properly, according to the laws of the country.”

So uh, you got that? The fascism is fine, but god-damnit there are *rules* people! Please keep in mind that this woman is one of the foremost authorities in the world on The Holocaust, so we can presume she knows she's protecting fascists to support a genocide. I assume, but don't know, that she holds no special place in her heart for the Klepto Kaiser, so I can only surmise that she's just a hardcore Zionist and a big fan of bombing children and hospitals.

Look friends, I know that this is a really bad time to ask people to stick their necks out to oppose a genocide, but Israel just bombed literally the last hospital in Gaza and it barely made the evening news. The regime, and indeed much of the larger ruling class establishment that supports settler colonialism, and profits from the genocide by various means, wants to create an environment where speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and Israel's settler colonial massacres is just criminal and subversive enough to stop most of us from doing it. This will then allow them to easily pick off a much smaller number of people who are brave enough and otherwise able to resist the genocide directly. It is vital that we counteract that by keeping the genocide on our lips, and our outrage about crimes against humanity in the discourse; they can't arrest us all - and Gaza, is running out time.

#Fascism #Israel #Gaza #Genocide #Imperialism #SettlerColonialism #Media #Trump #Palestine #ICE #CrimesAgainstHumanity #DHS #Propaganda #Protest

'Only Hellfire': Israel Says Lifesaving Aid, Troop Withdrawal Off the Table for Gaza

"Israel's defense ministers can't stop publicly confessing to war crimes," said one U.S. journalist.

^{brett-wilkins (Common Dreams)}

As an add on to the post above, if you don't think speaking out against Israel's genocide in Gaza and on behalf of the people being slaughtered there matters, then why is the Netanyahu government working so hard with multi-billion dollar social media companies like Meta to suppress pro-Palestinian speech online?

dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data…

Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram

"A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history.

Government requests for takedowns generally focus on posts made by citizens inside that government’s borders, Meta insiders said. What makes Israel’s campaign unique is its success in censoring speech in many countries outside of Israel. What’s more, Israel's censorship project will echo well into the future, insiders said, as the AI program Meta is currently training how to moderate content will base future decisions on the successful takedown of content critical of Israel’s genocide."

As I've noted elsewhere, it's very clear that the pro-genocide Pig Empire establishment used the sham ceasefire Trump supposedly brokered in Gaza as an excuse to reset the discourse and resume the genocide at pace. We've returned to a pre-2024 media environment of silence and minimization of crimes against humanity, particularly in America, and these folks are working overtime to keep you from talking about, and hopefully (for genocidal monsters) thinking about Gaza while Israel attempts to wipe out the Palestinians there before we wake up and realize what's going on.

The only way to fight this, is to keep talking about it, and resisting both the genocide and the US government's support for it. We've been here before and broke through the cone of silence; in fact that's the whole reason the ruling class establishment is trying to rewind the discourse around the genocide in Gaza to a pre-2024 state. We must not let them get away with it by contributing to that cone of silence.

#Fascism #Israel #Gaza #Genocide #Trump #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #Censorship #Imperialism #SettlerColonialism #CrimesAgainstHumanity #Propaganda #Mark Zuckerberg #OnlineCensorship #Zionism #Netanyahu

Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram

^{Waqas Ahmed (Drop Site News)}

I think folks who argue with me when I point out that stories which don't align with the interests of the investor class of rich people who own media companies are suppressed in corporate media, somehow forget that I simply consume so much "news" that I can literally feel a shift in coverage. Which is why this short blog by media critic Adam Johnson, which mathematically confirms, more or less, everything I've been saying about how Gaza has been driven from the mainstream discourse even as Israel's genocide ramps back up and US public opinion shifts against our client state, did not surprise me at all.

columnblog.com/p/as-trump-and-…

As Trump and Israel Escalate Genocide in Gaza, Popular Media Continues to Ignore It

"Nowhere is the absence of urgency any more glaring than the total erasure of Gaza from the “agenda setting” Sunday morning news shows that both reflect and curate Washington political priorities for the week. In the 5 episodes each for the four Sunday News Shows—ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union—for the weeks of March 23, March 30, April 6, April 13 and April 20, Israeli’s assault on Gaza, and the Trump administration’s full-throated support for it, has not been discussed or mentioned once. That’s 880 minutes of “agenda setting” debate, discussing, and reporting that did not see fit to mention the US support for what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both call an ongoing genocide."

So, just let that set in for a minute. In the time frame listed, Israel has committed a confirmed war crime by murdering 15 medics in cold blood, bombed the last functioning hospital in Gaza, instituted a total blockade on aid designed to starve Gazans to death, and its ministers have on multiple occasions bragged about Trump's support being instrumental for their plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians; and those are just the stories *I* covered but the vaunted "Sunday Shows" couldn't spare a minute for. An ongoing genocide in Gaza being aided an abetted by the US President who is also black bagging anti-genocide protestors in American cities and citing foreign policy concerns to justify it, simply did not come up.

If you're wondering why the "Sunday Shows" matter, it's because while very few people reading this watch them, pretty much everyone with power and influence in American politics does. With that having been noted however, it really doesn't matter because Gaza was barely covered in the mainstream nightly news either.

"Despite Israel killing almost 2,000 Palestinians since they broke the ceasefire on March 18, the subject of Gaza has barely registered a blip in the nightly news coverage as well. In the 78 episodes the three major network nightly news shows have aired, there’s only been two segments about Gaza: one 4 minute 17 second segment I noted in The Real News from March 26 on CBS Evening News, and another 1 minute and 44 second segment about the IDF killing 15 medics that aired on ABC’s World News This Week on April 3. In over 1,500 minutes of evening news from the three major networks since March 19 only 6 minutes, or less 0.4 percent, has been reporting on Gaza. NBC Nightly News has not covered the suffering in Gaza at all since March 20, but it did take time out on April 13 to do a 1 minute 46 second profile on an Israeli captive still being held in Gaza."

Surely, the newspapers were better, right? Well, if we're talking about America's paper of record, the New York Times - I wouldn't get your hopes up folks:

"Since March 20, The New York Times has run a total of three front page stories about Gaza out of roughly 220 total front page stories (two on April 6/April 8 about the IDF killing of medics in Gaza and one April 3 about Israel “Initiating Tactics to Hold Gaza Territory”) By way of comparison the Times has run 12 front page stories about Ukraine. “For Ukraine’s Sick Children, a War Within the War,” read one sympathetic front page headline from March 26. “Attack Devastates Ukrainian City,” read another on April 14. Front page coverage of Gaza, when it does exist, does not lead with Palestinian suffering or humanity but instead Israeli denials or sterile coverage of IDF “tactics.”

And finally, while this is just personal analysis, Johnson also thinks the shift has taken us back to pre-2024 media conditions when it comes to the genocide in Gaza; specifically citing the bipartisan support for the US-backed genocide in the American political establishment as the factor that allows the media to simply ignore the situation.

I'm not gonna bother saying I told you so; but I did.

#Fascism #Gaza #Genocide #Media #Imperialism #Trump #Netanyahu #SettlerColonialism #Censorship #Israel #Palestine

As Trump and Israel Escalate Genocide in Gaza, Popular Media Continues to Ignore It

Under Biden, Gaza was excused, downplayed and natural disaster-rized. Under Trump it’s simply not a priority at all.

^{Adam Johnson (The Column)}

After seven weeks of bombing and a genocidal blockade of all humanitarian and food aid going into Gaza, the UN's World Food Program is now announcing that it has run out of food inside the strip; which will further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis engineered by the government off Israel as part of the genocide it's conducting against Palestinians in the enclave.

commondreams.org/news/gaza-foo…

UN Program Out of Food in Gaza as Israel Maintains Blockade

"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed," WFP said Friday. "This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems. Food prices have skyrocketed up to 1,400% compared to during the cease-fire, and essential food commodities are in short supply, raising serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly."

Over 18 months into a U.S.-backed military assault for which Israel faces a genocide case at the Interenational Court of Justice, WFP said that "the situation inside the Gaza Strip has once again reached a breaking point: People are running out of ways to cope, and the fragile gains made during the short ceasefire have unravelled. Without urgent action to open borders for aid and trade to enter, WFP's critical assistance may be forced to end."

While conditions are dire, WFP is prepared to keep feeding people, if Israel will allow aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave. The program highlighted that "more than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance—enough to feed 1 million people for up to four months—is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza by WFP and food security partners as soon as borders reopen."

The program called on "all parties to prioritize the needs of civilians and allow aid to enter Gaza immediately and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law."

I need to stress here that this isn't an activist organization, or political representatives from Gaza talking here; this is a UN program that feeds refugees, the exploited, and folks in crisis situations. There is absolutely no reason to believe they're exaggerating the situation, which in turn means we're watching Israel commit a crime against humanity in real time. If this were anyone other than a US client state in the MENA, the entire American establishment would be able to see that there is no reason to continuously bomb Gaza while enforcing a nearly two month long blockade on food, supplies, and humanitarian aid, unless you're actively trying to kill innocent people. Which of course Israel is; they're committing a genocide, the Trump administration is happily paying for it, and a bipartisan US establishment awash in PAC and donor money, is quietly ignoring that genocide for political, financial, and ideological reasons.

#Israel #Genocide #Gaza #Palestinians #Blockadge #UN #WorldFoodProgram #Starvation #CrimesAgainstHumanity #Fascism #Trump #Media #Blackout #Imperialism #SettlerColonialism

UN Program Out of Food in Gaza as Israel Maintains Blockade

"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed. This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced," said the World Food Program.

^{jessica-corbett (Common Dreams)}

Speaking before the International Court of Justice, the Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands articulated what everyone who isn't openly lying to obscure a genocide already knows; Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war and its blockade of Gaza is an international crime.

commondreams.org/news/icj-hear…

Palestinian Envoy to ICJ: Israel Using Starvation as 'Weapon of War' in 'Genocidal Campaign'

"The siege has created conditions that are "incompatible with sustaining life or the continued existence of Palestinians in Gaza," Hijazi said.

The ambassador noted that the ICJ hearing was taking place to consider whether Israel is violating international law.

"It is not about the number of aid trucks Israel is or is not allowing into the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza," said Hijazi. "It is about Israel destroying the fundamentals of life in Palestine while it blocks U.N. and other humanitarians from providing lifesaving aid to the population. It is about Israel unraveling fundamental principles of international law, including their obligations under the U.N. Charter."

"Starvation is here," Hijazi added. "Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war."

My friends, I honestly don't know what more I can say here when the facts speak for themselves. Israel has totally blockaded Gaza, they're bombing the shit out of the people inside, and the military isn't allowing enough food, or seemingly any medical supplies or other lifesaving humanitarian aid through to the Palestinian people its bombing. As this clearly genocidal shit is going on, a US media is largely ignoring the crisis while apparently hoping all the Palestinians will be dead before their audience notices we're helping Israel exterminate or ethnically cleanse an entire people in Gaza.

And all the while a Pig Empire establishment continues to manufacture consent for the slaughter by pretending the Netanyahu government's motives are unknowable in the fog of war, despite the fact that cabinet ministers keep blurting out their intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza and we're watching what can only be an attempted genocide unfold on Tik Tok videos day, after horrifying day. History is going to be written about the cowardice, complicity, and depraved indifference to human life on display in the Pig Empire establishment here; the only question is will we as Americans survive our own fascist chickens coming home to roost long enough to help write it.

#Fascism #Trump #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #ICJ #Imperialism #Famine #SettlerColonialism #WarCrimes #CrimesAgainstHumanity #Starvation #AmmarHijazi #Blockade #Netanyahu #Palestine #Palestinians #WhiteSupremacy

Palestinian Envoy to ICJ: Israel Using Starvation as 'Weapon of War' in 'Genocidal Campaign'

"Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives," said Palestinian envoy Ammar Hijazi.

^{julia-conley (Common Dreams)}

Well, I guess members of the Isareli government have repeated their intentions to permanently occupy and ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians enough times that even American corporate media has to care; the Guardian however is doing a much better job of honestly acknowledging what Israel's latest plan for Gaza ultimately means.

On the heels of the Netanyahu government's plan to displace the population of Gaza and consolidate territorial control over the occupied region, Finance Minister Smotrich said the quiet part out loud - Gaza will be completely destroyed, and Palestinians will (be forced to, presumably) "leave in great numbers for other countries" - essentially as refugees from a genocide the colonizer world refuses to acknowledge; but we can't expect Smotrich to admit that part too.

Israel's finance minister Bezalel Smotrich

theguardian.com/world/2025/may…

Gaza will be entirely destroyed, Israeli minister says

"An Israeli government minister has vowed that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” as a result of an Israeli military victory, and that its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”, raising fears of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory.

The declaration on Tuesday by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, came a day after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which an Israeli official said would entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.

The Israeli threats to seize control of the territory permanently has stirred global outrage.

“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s operations,” the UK’s Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, said. “Any attempt to annex land in Gaza would be unacceptable.”

The disturbing part here is that Smotrich's horrifying, genocidal statement is really only "news" because Pig Empire media is objectively pro-genocide and has caught a case of intentional amnesia about Israel's now-nineteen month long campaign to wipe out the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israeli ministers have been talking about emptying Gaza of Palestinians for months, the goddamn President of the United States has openly mused about turning the entire area into beachfront condos built by American companies, and as we speak Israel is actively engineering a famine in Gaza by blockading food and medical supplies into the occupied region.

Ethnic cleansing is just a more polite term for genocide, and even if you're too ignorant to understand that, International Courts have already ruled that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza, and warrants have been issued for the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Taken as a whole, the actions and statements of the Israeli government, both before and after it broke the ceasefire, have always indicated that their plan was to permanently occupy and "ethnically cleanse" Gaza; it is only through willfully complicit ignorance that clearly pro-genocide mainstream media outlets have refused to properly contextualize news from Gaza through the lens of Israel's obvious and openly articulated intentions to complete the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

Unfortunately for the cowards, collaborators, and profiteers in our mainstream establishment however, the combination of Israel's announced Operation Gideon’s Chariots offensive, and Smotrich's crude, gleeful bluntness, have made it more or less impossible to pretend we don't know what the Netanyahu government is doing; even if that same mainstream establishment is still struggling to admit there can't be any good reasons to conduct "ethnic cleansing" regardless of their political alliances and personal racisms.

#Facism #Trump #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #EthnicCleansing #Palestinians #Smotrich #ICC #ICJ #Imperialism #SettlerColonialism #Media #Collaboration #MassMurder #EngineeredFamine #WarCrimes #CrimesAgainstHumanity

Gaza will be entirely destroyed, Israeli minister says

Bezalel Smotrich says Palestinians will ‘leave in great numbers to third countries’, raising fears of ethnic cleansing

^{Jason Burke (The Guardian)}

I don't know if most people realize the overall quality of foreign policy reporting in American media is generally pretty horrible. Part of this is because structurally under capitalism for profit media tends to align with US imperial objectives at the expense of the truth, part of it is that reading audiences aren't diplomacy wonks so the complex details of international relationships have to be shoehorned into some form of narrative, and part of it is that most state level negotiations are conducted in secret so you can print pretty much any bullshit you want and call it "reading the tea leaves" because nobody is going to hold you to account for being wrong later. Which isn't to say it's impossible to do good foreign policy reporting, just that it usually involves interrogating primary sources who aren't going to want to talk to you if you're critical of their decisions and (often false) arguments. In a modern, eviscerated media age that places profit and cultural relevance much higher than journalistic accuracy in their hierarchy of priorities, pretty much every corporate media news outlet employs at least one name-brand foreign policy analyst who writes opinion columns based on vibes.

I mention this because over the past week I've read at least a dozen "front page" opinion pieces, primarily from "centrist" analysts, arguing that Trump's recent MENA mutual hand-job tour indicates that Downmarket Mussolini has "abandoned" Israel, or at least "put Benjamin Netanyahu on notice." Typically, the evidence to support this conclusion will revolve around Trump's cozy relationship with Qatar, sealed by an open bribe in the form of a $400M dollar luxury jet, and the fact that Der Leader's top diplomat Steve Witkoff negotiated with Hamas to secure the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, apparently without consulting Israel. The implication, which is sometimes even stated openly, is that this "deteriorating" relationship and one throwaway statement about starving Palestinians, means the Trump regime may be about to break with Israel's US-backed genocide in Gaza.

This is of course, absolute bullshit for one extremely obvious reason; namely that the Trump administration continues to openly greenlight Israel's genocide in Gaza. This is not supposition; between Trump's statements, the US government's actions, and the Netanyahu regime's responses it is abundantly clear that the project to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into riverfront property is still on, and Der Leader is happy to trade tacit US approval for the genocide or removal of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel, to simply smooth over a MENA foreign policy initiative designed to increase Trump's global influence while enriching him and his family.

To demonstrate why I know this let's look at this detailed report by Jeremy Scahill who actually *did* contact a source for his foreign policy analysis; specifically a senior Hamas official.

dropsitenews.com/p/witkoff-ham…

Hamas Says Witkoff Personally Promised to Lift Gaza Blockade in Exchange for Edan Alexander

“It was a deal,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau who has previously engaged in direct talks with U.S. officials. He said the pledge was made by “Witkoff, himself.” In an interview with Drop Site, Naim said the agreement was: “If we release [Alexander], Trump will speak out thanking Hamas for its gesture, obliging Israel on the second day to open the borders and allow aid to come into Gaza, and [Trump would] call for an immediate ceasefire and to go for negotiations to end the war.”

“He did nothing of this,” Naim added. “They didn't violate the deal. They threw it in the trash.”

This is a detailed, granular piece of journalism that explores the genocidal behavior Israel is engaging in as it attempts to starve Palestinians to death while continually bombing hospitals and refugee camps, as well as why the things Trump claims he's actually doing to mitigate engineered starvation in Gaza are mostly bullshit. What's important for our purposes here is the knowledge that the Trump regime pretty much just straight up lied to Hamas in order to secure the release of Edan Alexander and some flattery for Der Leader, and the reality that both Israeli leadership and the President are *still* openly talking about ethnically cleansing Gaza!

Look, I have no problem believing that Netanyahu is irked at Trump for his embarrassing love affair with the Qataris, but the idea that the Klepto Kaiser is "abandoning" Israel even as his regime continues to ship Israel billions of dollars in weapons while mapping out a post-Palestinian future for Gaza, is either embarrassingly naïve, or an open admission that Palestinian lives have so little value to you that their extermination or exile doesn't rise to the level of discussion. In this media environment, it could be both.

#Trump #Fascism #Gaza #Israel #Genocide #Netanyahu #Qatar #ForeignPolicy #WarCrimes #EthnicCleansing #Media #Hamas

Hamas Says Witkoff Personally Promised to Lift Gaza Blockade in Exchange for Edan Alexander

The U.S. immediately broke the deal, senior Hamas official Basem Naim tells Drop Site. “They threw it in the trash” and there has been “zero” progress on a Gaza ceasefire.

^{Jeremy Scahill (Drop Site News)}

Given the centrality of fascist attacks on the "Lügenpresse" to their overall nazi agenda, I am sympathetic to liberals who get nervous when I go after US media outlets for lying to smear critics of power; including some outlets being directly threatened by Trump. But sympathy and the ability to understand where those folks are coming from, doesn't change the reality that corporate media in the US has long since given up even the pretense of authentic journalism, and has willingly functioned as a propaganda vehicle for American imperial and colonialist objectives for pretty much its entire existence; and long before the rise of Trump. The fact that it's not always politically convenient to point this out, doesn't make it any less true, or any less damaging for our political and news discourse as a whole.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the US media's 19 month-long insistence that there are two equally valid "sides" in a discussion between genocidal warmongers and folks who oppose Israel bombing hospitals and refugee camps as part of an intentional project to conduct a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. At virtually every turn, this is a corporate media establishment that has defended a genocide, and viciously smeared anyone who opposed that genocide, while actively covering up for unhinged Zionists who celebrate murdering women and children while claiming basically every dead Palestinian is a terrorist or at least acceptable collateral damage in the fight to "end Hamas." Furthermore this behavior has continued well into the second Trump era, even as Israel engineers a famine to starve Palestinians to death in Gaza, and the Trumpenreich itself kidnaps and tries to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors while seizing control of higher education institutes under the guise of fighting "antisemitism" that really just means "opposing Israel's genocide."

For an example of what I'm talking about, let's look at this story about that time the New York Times decided to ferret out the truth, and answer the question that's been on precisely no rational person's mind - "is popular children's entertainer Ms. Rachel an agent of Hamas?"

archive.ph/yE3mF

The New York Times Really Asked Ms. Rachel If She’s Paid By Hamas

"Here's something else you won't find in this New York Times article: the name of anyone in StopAntisemitism, a public irritant with no legitimacy whatsoever. It's bizarre that Tracy declines to identify the person behind the organization: Liora Reznichenko, a.k.a. Liora Rez, is the founder of StopAntisemitism. She spoke at a U.S. House committee in 2024. Her main activity consists of brigading private citizens and trying to get them fired from their jobs, while she hides her own identifying information; she has a focus on targeting any criticism of Israel. According to the Washington Post, StopAntisemitism is supported in part by the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation—Tracy refers to the organization, though not by name—as well as partially funded by the Merona Leadership Foundation, which in 2022 tax filings reportedly paid Reznichenko $125,633 and gave her organization approximately $270,000. This publicly available information failed to make it into Tracy's report.

To make it abundantly clear: Reznichenko does not provide any evidence that Ms. Rachel is funded by Hamas, either on her own website or to Tracy. The reporter's manufactured conflict primarily hinges on some Zionist crackpot with a Twitter account and an ongoing defamation lawsuit against her, and yet she receives the benefit of anonymity as well as a helpful ally. "Accurso’s activism has divided Jewish parents distraught by the relative dearth of posts about Israeli children, with whom many Jews worldwide feel a powerful connection," Tracy wrote. If I were his editor, I'd ask what this means. "Relative dearth"? "A powerful connection"? And this is unique, somehow? In another paragraph, Tracy wrote of Griffin-Accurso, "She did not dispute that she has posted more frequently about Gazan children." Why would she dispute it?"

Sweet mother of christ folks. For those of you who don't know, Ms Rachel is a children's content creator who really loves kids, and through her contacts with Palestinian children during again, an ongoing genocide, has started speaking out on her personal social media accounts on behalf of Palestinian child amputees and starving kids in Gaza. To the unhinged Zionist pro-genocide propaganda machine in America this means she must clearly be working for Hamas, and they've started a now weeks long smear campaign to declare Mrs. Rachel, basically a terrorist. Absurd you say; and indeed it is. But the Times, a paper that loves dead Palestinian kids and supports the genocide, decided to treat this as a "both sides" and "some are saying" story to help these maggots persecute, again, popular children's entertainer Ms. Rachel. For supporting Palestinian child amputees.

Excuse me while I vomit.

I don't want to keep harping on the point, but I think it's important to understand just how disconnected from reality a lot of foreign policy analysts in mainstream US media are right now; particularly when reporting on anything remotely related to the Trump regime's continued support for Israel's ongoing, and indeed accelerating, genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In this instance, while a number of "centrist" (both left, and right leaning) pundits were theorizing that Trump's corrupt bribery tour of the MENA region (that notably did not feature a visit to Israel), signaled a shift in US Gaza policy, word was oozing out of a Trump regime with more leaks than a colander about a blatantly genocidal scheme to "move" over 1 million Palestinians to Libya. As this Truthout summary notes, that means the Trump regime is planning an ethnic cleansing operation; which as we've discussed before, is essentially a more polite way to say "genocide."

truthout.org/articles/trump-ad…

Trump Administration Reportedly Considering Plan to Move Palestinians to Libya

"A plan reportedly under consideration by the Trump administration to send up to one million Gazans to the divided country of Libya was met with criticism on Friday and Saturday, with several observers calling it part of a plan to carry out ethnic cleansing.

On Friday, NBC News reported that the Trump administration has broached the plan with Libya’s leadership, though no final agreement has been reached. NBC News’ reporting relied on several unnamed sources “with knowledge of the effort.”

“This is absolutely categorically an ethnic cleansing and sending people to Libya of all places is unconscionable,” wrote investigative journalist James Stout on Bluesky on Friday, in response to the reporting."

As the article notes, the Trump administration has denied that any such plans are in the works, but given the quantity of details NBC was able to report on, and the fact that it lines up with literally every single other thing Downmarket Mussolini and his minions have said about his plans or positions on Gaza, I see no particular reason to believe the fascist US government on this one. So, as he has at various times indicated he would do, Trump is working towards ethnically cleansing Gaza of Palestinians on behalf of his ally and ideological soulmate Benjamin Netanyahu, in what would absolutely be an act of genocide. This is pretty cut and dry; and by no means does it indicate a *positive* change in the Trump regime's Gaza policy.

So, how has pro-genocide, corporate American media reported on these alarming developments? Well, let's just say it hasn't been great. To demonstrate my point, let's look at the actual NBC reporting that the Truthout story was built around.

nbcnews.com/politics/national-…

Trump administration working on plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya

"The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said.

In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said."

Okay, so you can see why I think the regime's denials are bullshit right? NBC knows way too much for this to be a fabrication; and so do we as observers who've been following Trump's actions and statements on Gaza. All is not well however, because NBC insists on framing even this obvious story about Trump and Israel teaming up to do ethnic cleansing, in a blatantly pro-genocide context. For example, you won't find the term "ethnic cleansing" in this story, even though that's what it's literally about. NBC also works hard to lend credibility to Trump and Israel's narrative that the Palestinians would leave for Libya willingly; a preposterous proposition when you consider all the violations they've already suffered to keep their home in Gaza, as a Hamas spokesman indicated.

So, at the same time Israel is accelerating its genocidal project in Gaza, and Trump is working on a plan for ethnic cleansing, dipshit foreign policy writers want you to believe he's turning against Israel's genocide because he made one comment about starving children and accepted a plane from Qatar? I think it's obvious Trump traded Gaza to Israel to smooth over his MENA grift vacation and he's muddying the waters to deflect blame now.

These hacks should be working at Foot Locker, not writing opinion pieces that deny a genocide.

#Trump #Gaza #Israel #Genocide #Libya #Media #EthnicCleansing #MENA #Palestinians #EngineeredFamine

Trump administration working on plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya

Details are murky, but the plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libyan leadership.

^{Courtney Kube (NBC News)}

I'm just going to admit that no matter how low my opinion of the IOF and the genocidal Netanyahu government is, I did not have Israeli troops firing "warning shots" at an international delegation of foreign diplomats from 24 countries, including the UK, Canada, and France who have all recently criticized Israel's ongoing and accelerating US-backed genocide in Gaza, on my bingo card.

commondreams.org/news/israel-s…

Outrage After Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot Live Rounds at Foreign Diplomats in West Bank

"Palestinian officials were briefing a group of more than 20 diplomats about the crisis in the illegally occupied West Bank—where Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians including hundreds of children since October 2023 while pushing ahead with massive land theft and colonization—when they came under fire.

According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the delegation "deviated" from the route approved by Israeli occupation authorities "and entered an area where they were not authorized to be," prompting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers to fire "warning shots to distance them away."

"The IDF regrets the inconvenience caused," the ministry added.

Israeli media reported IDF troops fired shots in the air. However, video footage of the incident appears to show soldiers aiming their guns and firing straight ahead in the direction of the diplomats as they scrambled for cover. Israeli officials have often been caught lying about the actions of IDF troops in Palestine.

The delegation included diplomats from the European Union and countries including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the United Kingdom."

It's time to grab your asses folks because the ride is about to get bumpy. The pro-Israel, pro-genocide propaganda machine is already working overtime to minimize this incident, but let me assure you that shooting at diplomats is an act of war and that shit is on video. Furthermore, even if you accept the Israeli Foreign Ministry's lies about "warning shots," they're still openly threatening the representatives of sovereign, even allied nations, for getting too close to evidence of their crimes and talking to refugees displaced by violent Israeli oppression. This is obviously an act of retaliation designed to intimidate foreign governments that are increasing pressure on Israel to end its genocidal campaign in Gaza and more broadly human rights abuses against Palestinians living under Israeli occupation; particularly the three G7 governments that formally condemned Israel's engineered famine in Gaza on Monday.

Look, I don't blame folks for being skeptical of the idea that Pig Empire politicians that have actively enabled Israel's genocidal war of extermination in Gaza for 19 months, actually care about Palestinian lives. They don't; but public opinion across pretty much all of the Western world has now swung so hard against "starving babies to death" that the very same governments that enabled this nightmare are trying to distance themselves from the slaughter they've helped create. Time is running out for team genocide and I realize that the Netanyahu government is jam-packed to the gills with emboldened, bloodthirsty racists, but this is an unprecedented act of global aggression that is going to live in infamy right alongside the genocide Israel is conducting against Palestinians in Gaza, and the multiple US governments who've made all this carnage and murder possible. Zionists have lost their fucking minds if they think they can bully the whole world at once; the tide *is* turning against Israel and Netanyahu, which is why they're trying to wipe out all the Palestinians in Gaza as fast as possible, before anyone works up the courage to actually try and stop them.

All of which might cause you to ask where exactly the US stands on all of this? Well, as it turns out US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was only a few miles away, speaking to the media from Tel Aviv in Israel proper. Was Huckabee on hand to pressure Israel to stop slaughtering innocent Palestinian civilians, or starving Palestinian babies to death in Gaza? Absolutely not. The former US Senator was there to express his outrage at Canada, Britain, and France for condemning Israel, even as the settler colonial nation is murdering hundreds of Palestinians via airstrike, and starving women and children to death in Gaza.

npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-54049…

So, let me just sum up here: the entire planet has turned against Israel's genocide forcing even Pig Empire governments to say something, the IDF is firing "warning shots" at foreign diplomats, and our ambassador to the region thinks *Palestinians* are like the Nazis from WWII? We're ruled by monsters who clearly think we're all stupid.

#Gaza #Genocide #Israel #Palestinians #MikeHuckabee #WarCrimes #Imperialism #Colonialism

Outrage After Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot Live Rounds at Foreign Diplomats in West Bank

Among those shot at were representatives of three nations that threatened "concrete actions" if Israel doesn't end its assault and siege on Gaza and others that support a genocide case against the country.

^{brett-wilkins (Common Dreams)}

Despite what appears to be a broad, albeit primarily rhetorical, shift in mainstream establishment opinion about Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza across most of the Pig Empire, Very Serious People TM in the US remain inside a disturbingly bipartisan, pro-genocide unreality bubble. Inside that bubble it seems far more reasonable to discuss Trump's personal relationships with Israel's fascist PM Benjamin Netanyahu than it would be to talk about all the ways his regime has actively expanded on the Biden administration's open facilitation of that genocide, even as it continues to this very moment. Yet outside that bubble, across the broader planet and even in the US discourse that exists beyond corporate media and in pocket political actors, the reality that this is America's genocide too is inescapable.

Take for example the absurd "humanitarian aid" scheme the Trump regime and Netanyahu cooked up to pretend Israel wasn't trying engineer a famine as part of its broader, openly stated project to ethnically cleanse, occupy, and colonize Gaza, that was nevertheless treated as a plausible sign Trump was reigning Israel in by a credulous, pro-genocide US establishment and media complex. The moment the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" and the plan to distribute aid under the watchful eye of the IOF and U.S. mercenary contractors was revealed, everyone living in the real world, including UN aid officials and humanitarian relief experts immediately said this wasn't going to stop the intentional starvation and the whole thing smelled fishy. Folks who truly understood the nature of Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza however, spoke of a far darker possibility; that the reason to march Palestinians halfway across the Gaza strip and herd them like cattle into a heavily-surveilled area surrounded by soldiers, was to directly facilitated and further the genocide and mass displacement of Gazans itself.

Well, now that IOF forces have engaged in a massacre at one of these sham food distribution sites, actively engineered, supported, and protected by the Trump administration and our hired military contractors, I think we can chalk this one up as yet another L for team genocide and the US establishment unreality bubble. As Israel sprints towards pariah state status, and the international community is searching for an off ramp before public opinion drowns their formerly pro-genocide leaders, the Trump regime has responded by actively facilitating and even participating in a settler colonial massacre that's part of a larger ongoing genocide. Yet somehow, despite plenty of corporate media coverage of the incident, this reality largely escapes Very Serious People TM in the American discourse.

commondreams.org/news/witkoff-…

'The Witkoff Massacre': Hundreds Killed or Wounded as Israeli Forces Open Fire on Gaza Food Aid Site

"Health officials in Gaza and multiple witnesses at the site near the southern city of Rafah reported that "Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometer (1,000 yards) away from an aid site run by an Israeli-backed foundation," according to the Associated Press.

"The international community must act immediately and decisively to compel Israel to end its inhumane aid distribution mechanism in Gaza, following today’s massacre near a U.S.-backed aid centre south of Rafah, where Israeli forces killed or injured over 220 starving civilians," said the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), in a Sunday morning statement, which had personnel on the ground near the aid station."

Folks, we are literally luring starving Gazans out of hiding with the promise of food, concentrating them in pens, and then letting IOF soldiers shoot at them while calling that "humanitarian aid" and pretending we're doing something about an ongoing genocide. There are no words I'm comfortable uttering in this political climate that can adequately cover the outrage, revulsion, and loathing I feel towards a Trump regime, US corporate media, and a broader bipartisan American establishment that contains plenty of rich Democrats, that has brought this livestreamed genocide into being. Even now, even among those who at this late an hour have finally decided that TikTok videos of starving toddlers means this really is a genocide, are trying to couch this in terms of "Netanyahu's genocidal war" despite the fact that literally none of this would be possible with direct American material support, and a US corporate media complex devoted to manufacturing consent for murdering babies and bombing hospitals. Infuriating.

The truth however is that 19 months into an ongoing genocide, the propaganda bubble is starting to burst; you can't stop reality from being real, forever. We, the United States of America, own this genocide, and the whole world is watching while we pretend our government isn't an active participant.

#Trump #Fascism #Media #Gaza #Propaganda #Genocide #Israel #Massacre #Palestinians #Witkoff

'The Witkoff Massacre': Hundreds Killed or Wounded as Israeli Forces Open Fire on Gaza Food Aid Site

"The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them."

^{jon-queally (Common Dreams)}