“If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel.”
– Greta Thunberg
edition.cnn.com/2025/06/08/mid…
#israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #Palestine #Gaza #Madleen #FreedomFlotila #GazaFreedomFlotilla #GretaThunberg
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
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 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
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)
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
Bezalel Smotrich says Palestinians will ‘leave in great numbers to third countries’, raising fears of ethnic cleansingJason Burke (The Guardian)
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
Workers on a mission to help colleagues were buried in mass grave in southern Gaza, says humanitarian officeLorenzo Tondo (The Guardian)
To the surprise of precisely no one who isn't a credulous rube high on imperialism, settler colonialism, and weapons contractor bribes, Israel has started bombing children and houses again in Gaza. Naturally of course a Trump regime that wants to pave over Gaza and build luxury hotels and casinos for an obscenely wealthy, globetrotting ruling class if it can just find a way to get rid of all those pesky Palestinians, stands fully in support of resuming the US armed, funded, and politically protected genocide.
commondreams.org/news/israel-v…
Backed by Trump, Israel Shreds Cease-Fire Deal and Kills Over 400 Across Gaza
"A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday killed more than 400 people and left a fragile cease-fire agreement in tatters just over two months after it was reached, with Israel's prime minister pledging "increasing military strength" in an enclave already decimated by more than a year of bombing.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the Netanyahu government consulted with the Trump administration ahead of the latest Gaza bombardment. Leavitt expressed the White House's total support for Israel's attacks.
While Israel had been carrying out more limited deadly attacks on Gaza despite the cease-fire deal—including strikes over the weekend that killed at least nine—Tuesday's bombings were described as the "heaviest assault on the territory since the cease-fire took effect in January."
Speaking frankly, there are more detailed articles featuring a lot more atrocity porn available online, but I chose to highlight this short piece because the headline writer understood the importance of centering the Trump regime's full support for this monstrous, objectively illegal bullshit. The US government is supplying the bombs, funding the Netanyahu government, and actively praising Israel for resuming crimes against humanity; that makes the atrocities in Gaza Trump's genocide, the same as it made them Biden's genocide before him. None of this is lost on most media observers outside of the United States, but an American corporate media complex that has always supported the mass murder of Palestinians remains reluctant to center that knowledge, even if it hurts the fascist assclown currently calling their work "illegal" and threatening to come after them with the full force of the U.S. government.
Of course everyone in the media, American or international, is claiming to be "shocked" that Israel has willfully imploded the ceasefire, and telling you that you should be shocked too. Naturally however, that position too is a grotesque farce that ignores available evidence and reality itself. This may be the first large-scale bombing since Netanyahu agreed to pretend he cared about a cease-fire for a while, but Israel already resumed the genocide when it tightened the blockade of, and cut electricity to Gaza; a region that is more or less constantly in a state of humanitarian crisis because Israel has been conducting a war of extermination there and purposely starving the population inside for seventeen months and counting. Furthermore, all of this is pretty consistent with statements made by various high ranking officials in the Netanyahu government, who have openly flouted their intentions to break the cease fire and ethnically cleanse (by whatever means are necessary) the Palestinian people in Gaza. The fact that American corporate media rarely reports on these stated intentions, and is foundationally committed to credulously taking Netanyahu's word for it when he claims to be seeking peace while bombing hospitals and murdering babies, does not mean the larger US establishment is unware of these facts - just that they're hoping you are.
The fact is, Trump, his administration, and American arms manufacturers should be on trial for crimes against humanity as we speak, and the reality that he is not alone in that because committing genocide in Gaza is a largely bipartisan position in the American establishment does absolutely nothing to alter the situation.
#Gaza #Genocide #Trump #Fascism #SettlerColonialism #Israel #Netanyahu #Imperialism #EthnicCleansing #Media #CrimesAgainstHumanity
"This return to violence does not come as a surprise," said one advocacy group. "Netanyahu has, from the beginning, signaled his intention to abandon the cease-fire process before it could become a lasting peace."jake-johnson (Common Dreams)
Admin of todon.nl suggests, and rightly so, that the default/flagship Mastodon instance (isn’t decentralisation great?) be moved to a more neutral jurisdiction than Germany:
“Herewith the urgent request to move the Mastodon server presented to new users as the default (mastodon.social) to a more neutral jurisdiction (e.g. Switzerland). An alternative is to set up a new Mastodon server in a more neutral jurisdiction, which can then serve as a new flagship server.
The trigger for this is the regular negative moderation of people who speak out against the largest and bloodiest genocide of our time, the one in Palestine. In particular they use (or abuse, how you want to look at it) of a German law that seeks to counter so-called Holocaust reversal. With hiding behind this law, the moderators of mastodon.social (and especially its owner) are also unwittingly sitting in the chair of the (German) judge.
Apart from the fact that one local law should not affect the entire Mastodon project, the question is whether this law and the concept of Holocaust reversal are legally tenable in an international context.”
github.com/mastodon/mastodon/d…
Mastodon mod closes the ticket after stating “There is no current plan to make changes to the Mastodon instances operated by Mastodon gGmbH. People are free to choose any Mastodon server when signing up for the platform.”
And this (see screenshot) is what that “choice” looks like.
This decentralisation anti-pattern – along with the fact that they didn’t close registrations after hitting a certain size to create a social precedent and allow distribution to other servers (as I advised Eugen to do back in the day) – is why there is a flagship instance to begin with when it’s an absolute contradiction of terms in a system that purports to be decentralised.
#fediverse #mastoson #mastodonSocial #todonNL #Germany #israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #Palestine #Gaza
Herewith the urgent request to move the Mastodon server presented to new users as the default (mastodon.social) to a more neutral jurisdiction (e.g. Switzerland). An alternative is to set up a new ...GitHub
Big thanks to all the useful idiots to helped make this happen. Pat yourselves on the back. You couldn’t even forgo a few hours of your entertainment to boycott a whitewashing event for an ongoing genocide. Go you!
#israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #eurovision #EU #whitewashing #softPower syzito.xyz/@fkamiah17/11456278…
"Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project think tank, said that Israel’s government was 'desperately trying to find soft power venues' and that Eurovision was one of the few opportunities it had left." https://www.nytimes.Syzito.xyz
Only one thing on everyone’s mind? The genocide being carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people? No? Oh, a song contest sponsored by Israel that Israel is using to whitewash its genocide. Ah, my bad, sorry.
Enjoy your entertainment.
#eurovision #EU #europe #europeanValues #genocide #israel #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #esc2025 en.osm.town/@opencage/11452243…
Attached: 1 image Are you ready for the most fabulous, glitzy, glamorous #geoweirdness thread of all time? 🕺💃🎤 Here in Europe there's only one thing on everyone's mind this week: the annual Eurovision Song contest.OSM Town | Mapstodon for OpenStreetMap
[This time around, #Trump isn’t just separating & jailing #immigrants, he’s separating & jailing families who are long time residents.]
THE #IMMIGRANT FAMILIES JAILED IN #TEXAS
#Children have long been put in migrant #detention if they were apprehended at the #border. Today, lawyers have found, #families are being removed from stable lives in the #UnitedStates.
#immigration #law #TheCrueltyIsThePoint #EthnicCleansing
newyorker.com/news/the-lede/th…
Anyone who supports Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people is a monster. If that’s you, stop and take a moment to really let that sink in. You’re the worst of the worst. You’re the kind of fascist who would have cheered on the Holocaust.
theguardian.com/world/2025/apr…
#israel #Palestine #Gaza #WestBank #settlerColonialism #apartheid #ethnicCleansing #genocide
Munther Abed, 27, was in the first ambulance on the scene of an airstrike near Rafah when Israeli soldiers opened fireMalak A Tantesh (The Guardian)
