General

Mondoweiss: Trump’s push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel

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Trump’s push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel

Israel isn’t a vassal state of the U.S., JD Vance said. But when it comes to the ceasefire in Gaza and annexing the West Bank, Israeli decision-making is deeply intertwined with Washington’s current priorities.

The succession of U.S. officials arriving in Tel Aviv over the week has fueled consternation in Israeli political circles as Washington ups the pressure on Israel to stick to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Israeli political circles have bristled at having to bend to the American President’s will, as opposition use the opportunity to lambast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for turning Israel into a “vassal” of the United States.

Virtually all of Trump’s inner circle has made the rounds in Tel Aviv throughout the past week, including U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

They were all there, JD Vance said, to monitor the ceasefire, rushing to add: “But not monitoring in the sense of, you know…you monitor a toddler.” But Israeli media referred to the flurry of visits as American “Bibi-sitting.”

Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published a caricature on Wednesday portraying Netanyahu as a child playing with toy tanks and airplanes while Witkoff tells him, “Just a little while more, and then off to bed.” Maariv published another cartoon showing Witkoff, Vance, and Kushner closely tailing Netanyahu, who says, “Honestly, I’m just going to the toilet.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid didn’t hold back either. At the opening of the Knesset’s winter session, Lapid slammed Netanyahu for getting Israel into “the most dangerous political crisis in its history,” and for sabotaging past ceasefire deals that could have seen the earlier release of the Israeli captives in Gaza. Lapid also said that Netanyahu had turned Israel into “a vassal state that takes orders concerning its own security.”

Things got even tenser during a press conference with Netanyahu when Vance was asked by a reporter whether Israel was becoming a “protectorate” of the U.S.

“We don’t want a vassal state, and that’s not what Israel is,” Vance responded. “We don’t want a client state, and that’s not what Israel is.”

Vance’s insistence on what the U.S. isn’t doing, of course, is the thing that cements it in everyone’s minds.

Netanyahu is still chafing at the prospect of an international coalition of forces that would enter Gaza, and has objected to the participation of Turkish forces in particular. When asked about the matter on Tuesday, Vance said that “nothing will be forced on Israel,” noting that Turkey still has “a constructive role” to play.

The visits by Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, and Rubio came as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza was about to unravel last Sunday, October 19, following an incident in Rafah in which two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion. Israel accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire and launched a series of strikes across Gaza, killing at least 40 Palestinians. Hamas denied any knowledge of the Rafah incident, with reports that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer running over an unexploded ordinance, of which the White House was reportedly aware.

Later, Trump told Fox News that both parties were respecting the ceasefire as Israel ceased its bombardment by the end of the day.

Political circles in Israel regarded the halt of Israel’s blitz as a sign that Netanyahu had folded under continuous U.S. pressure to make the ceasefire work. Israel’s hardline National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, regarded the decision as “shameful” and called on Netanyahu to resume its full-scale onslaught against Gaza.

Now there’s another sticking point that is continuing to fuel U.S.-Israeli tensions: annexation.

West Bank annexation is off the table. Or is it?

Continues…

 

Follow-up on Irish election from Jewish Insider

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Follow-up to Ganainm’s article: Two feminists fight for the Irish presidency

Ireland is set to elect a new president tomorrow. Like in Israel, the role of president is largely ceremonial, but unlike in Israel, where the Knesset elects the president and the choice is mostly the result of backroom political deals, the Irish president is directly elected by the people.

That means the choice reflects the mood of the Irish public — and after the news coming out of the Emerald Isle over the past two years, it may come as no surprise that the country appears to be on the verge of choosing a candidate with anti-Israel, antisemitic and even anti-Western views.

The current president, Michael D. Higgins, is no friend of Israel or the Jews, having called antisemitism accusations an Israeli “PR exercise.” When the Jewish community asked him not to attend a Holocaust remembrance ceremony out of a concern that he would politicize it, he went anyway and gave a speech comparing Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza to the Holocaust.

The country’s former justice minister, Alan Shatter, told Jewish Insider that the leading candidate for the presidency, Catherine Connolly, “if elected, will present as Michael D. Higgins on steroids.”

Connolly, a legislator representing Galway West since 2016, is a hard-left candidate running as an independent, and led a recent Irish Times poll by 18 points.

The front-runner’s anti-Israel history goes back to before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, and includes remarks that crossed the line into antisemitism. In 2021, Connolly wrote in a parliamentary question that Israel is “attempt[ing] to accomplish Jewish supremacy,” using language associated with centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Mondoweiss: Israel returns 195 dead bodies to Gaza, many mutilated with hands bound, signs of torture

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Mondoweiss: Israel returns 195 dead bodies to Gaza, many mutilated with hands bound, signs of torture
The Gaza Ministry of Health published photos of the mutilated bodies of Palestinian prisoners. Most of them showed clear signs of torture — hands and feet bound, blindfolded, bodies showing marks of tank tracks, burns, fractures, and deep wounds.

The Gaza Government Media Office announced on Wednesday morning the burial ceremonies of 54 unidentified Palestinian bodies that the Ministry of Health had received from Israel through the Red Cross, as part of the ongoing exchange of deceased prisoners during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Since it was impossible to identify the disfigured and mutilated bodies, they are all being buried in a mass grave, the Government Media Office said.

Since October 14, the Gaza Health Ministry has received the bodies of over 195 deceased Palestinian prisoners. The majority of the bodies show clear signs of torture, the Ministry says, including bullet holes fired from point-blank range, bruises, and signs of mutilation. Several bodies were received with their hands tied behind their backs, and several more with blindfolds over their eyes. The Health Ministry also said that several bodies showed signs of strangulation from hangings, with ropes found tied around the bodies’ necks, while others bore marks of tank tracks. Other bodies were found with missing organs, health officials added.

Mondoweiss received, reviewed, and verified photographs of some of the mutilated bodies from the Gaza Ministry of Health. They are horrific and show clear signs of torture. The Ministry of Health has uploaded several photos of the mutilated bodies online and made them available to families of people who went missing during the war, in the hopes that they might identify them. We strongly advise that readers proceed with extreme caution if viewing the Ministry of Health photos, as they are highly disturbing and graphic. For those reasons Mondoweiss has decided not to republish the photos, but we will share the link to the health ministry’s Google Drive folder here.

Of the 195 bodies, only 57 have been identified so far. During the burial ceremony of 54 of the unidentified martyrs, the Government Media Office’s Director Ismail al-Thawabta said that the bodies that had been received were held for a period of five days to allow for forensic examinations. When none of the families with missing loved ones were able to positively identify the bodies, they were handed over to the Department of Endowments (Awqaf) for burial.

“Forensic teams found martyrs with their hands and feet bound with zip ties, while others had blindfolds over their eyes, and some bodies bore markings of tank tracks, in addition to burns, fractures, and deep wounds,” Thawabta said. “These show signs of brutal torture before execution.”

They were buried in numbered graves in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza earlier this morning.

The Gaza Government Media Office said the mutilated bodies of Palestinian prisoners were received by the Ministry of Health with hands and feet bound with zip ties, some with blindfolds over their eyes, and others bearing the marks of tank tracks, burns, fractures, and deep wounds, October 22, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Families whose loved ones went missing during the war have flocked to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the hopes of identifying them and finding some closure. Health authorities gather family members in a large room and display pictures of the bodies, most of them disfigured and mutilated. The families have to sit through the images and try to find identifying features on the bodies.

In video testimony obtained for Mondoweiss, Wahba Shabat stands in shock in Nasser Hospital after identifying the body of her son, Mahmoud Shabat, 34, who went missing on October 7, 2023.

Wahba later learned that Mahmoud had been one of the fighters who had crossed into Israel on that day.

“We want to honor him with a dignified burial,” said Ismail Shabat, Mahmoud Shabat’s father, in video testimony for Mondoweiss. “He chose this path, and he was free to do so. All we want to do is give him a final resting place, nothing more. Now I can say I am at peace, after knowing what happened to my son.”

Wahba, Mahmoud’s mother, says that the body arrived naked, disfigured, showing signs of torture all over his body. “His head was crushed, his face was shattered, and he had broken limbs,” she said.

“When I saw the pictures of the missing, I suspected that one of the photos might be of my son Mahmoud,” she continued. “I immediately came to the hospital after a family member showed me the photo on their phone. I examined his body and found the mark on his head that I knew would be there.”

Mahmoud had been injured in the head during the Great March of Return between 2018 and 2019, a period in which Israel maimed, wounded, or killed over 30,000 Palestinians protesting at Gaza’s border fence. “He underwent several operations, and the scars remained,” Wahba Shabat said. “I recognized him immediately and collapsed at the sight of the condition his body arrived in.”

She explains that before identifying him, she had repeatedly described him to the doctors at Nasser Hospital, until his identity was confirmed. “I was shocked by the severity of the torture he suffered. All this torture on one young man! They even returned him naked, without dignity,” she described, explaining that the signs were apparent because the body had not undergone decomposition, as it had been frozen solid.

“His bones were fractured. His feet showed clear marks of being chained, and his hands were tied behind his back,” she continued. “There was a bullet wound to his head, and a rope was around his neck. It was clearly visible. They executed him without mercy.”

“If they return even a small piece of flesh from my son, that will be enough for me to honor and bury him”

Majeda Qdeih
Wahba went on to say that not a single bone had been left intact in his face. “Even in the worst wars, torture does not reach this level,” she said. “The resistance took prisoners from the Israeli army to Gaza and kept them for two years. Look at how they were returned to their families: alive, walking, talking, not mutilated or tortured to death. So why are only our prisoners killed in cold blood and returned to their families like this — broken, tortured, tied up, and strangled?’

Continues…

Matt Goodwin: Labour is betraying the rape gang victims —yet again

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Keir Starmer, Labour minister Jess Phillips, and the Labour Party are not serious about delivering truth and justice to the victims of the Pakistani rape gangs. This is the only conclusion one can draw after the events of the last week.

The Labour Party, the party that had to be dragged kicking and screaming into committing to a national inquiry to begin with, and Keir Starmer, the prime minister who less than a year ago derided all those who called for an inquiry into the mass rape of white working-class children as ‘jumping on the bandwagon of the far-right’, have never really wanted to prioritise the worst scandal in British history.

More interested in votes from Labour’s Muslim constituents than the pursuit of truth, more influenced by a ‘progressive’ ideology that presents minorities as good and majorities as bad, when it comes to Keir Starmer, as The Times pointed out this week, ‘a palpable sense has remained that he has never fully grasped why [an inquiry] is necessary’.

This reluctance, if not refusal, to take the rape gang scandal seriously has run through pretty much everything Labour has said and done this year.

Labour’s steadfast refusal to commit to an inquiry until the last possible moment, even when it was obvious to everybody else in the room that this was necessary.

Labour Ministers like Lucy Powell, who only five months ago dismissed people who care about the issue on live radio as ‘blowing a little trumpet’ and ‘dog-whistle’, displaying an attitude toward this scandal the British people have long suspected is rife among Labour Party politicians.

Labour’s decision to then insult the many victims of the scandal by initially pushing for a series of underfunded local inquiries, rather than the proper, fully-funded, national inquiry the scandal clearly warrants –and which would no doubt be offered in a second were it involving the mass rape of black or Muslim children.

Labour politicians like London Mayor Sadiq Khan refusing to take seriously rumours of rape gang activity in our own capital city, claiming there are ‘no reports and no indication’ of rape gangs despite an assortment of social workers, charities, experts, and survivors saying otherwise.

And now, as we’ve seen in Labour’s cack-handed approach to managing the inquiry this week, a refusal by the Labour government to get its arms around the issue in the way it would were it to involve one of their favoured minority groups.

I mean, seriously, could you imagine the Labour Party responding to the scandal in all these ways were this to involve highly organised gangs of white men targeting vulnerable Muslim children?

Could you imagine how quickly Labour would act, how it would instantly remove any and every obstacle and barrier to finding those victims the truth and justice they deserve?

Instead, by dragging their heels and showing the same indifference toward the rape gang scandal as politicians showed toward the issue for decades, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have now, clearly, lost the confidence and trust of the most important people of all –the victims.

Five survivors have now left the inquiry, with some claiming that behind the scenes Labour Ministers have been trying to downplay the racial and religious aspects of the scandal —as indeed they have done for the last 30 years.

Others have, rightly, complained about the fact Labour has been pushing forward former police officers and social workers to lead the inquiry, in other words asking people from the same stained authorities to essentially mark their own homework.

Put simply, this is not how a serious government, a serious political party that was sincerely concerned about the scandal would behave.

And everybody in the country can see it –the double standards, the glaring hypocrisy, the indifference, the instinctive desire to prioritise Labour votes from Muslims, and to not ‘upset’ the very same Muslim communities that happened to have nearly cost the likes of Jess Phillips and several other Labour MPs their seats last year.

I can see it, you can see it, the whole country can see it.

So, now, already months after Keir Starmer committed to the rape gang inquiry, Labour has nobody to lead it. Victims have lost confidence. And the shocking crimes are continuing.

The country’s reckoning with the true scale and severity of the rape scandal has yet to arrive. Truth and justice are nowhere to be seen. And the world looks on, wondering how a mature, supposedly civilised society like Britain could allow this to happen.

All that remains in Westminster, all that remains visible to everybody in the country except Keir Starmer, is a Labour government that is once again displaying the same terrible outlook that led to this scandal being downplayed and ignored in the first place: indifference

Indifference towards the issue, indifference towards the victims, and a stubborn refusal to prioritise it over everything else.

This will be Keir Starmer’s legacy, in the end –the man who failed to recognise the need for a full, national inquiry into the mass rape of our children when the neeD for it was obvious to everybody else in the room, and who then, after being dragged into finally committing to one, failed to show victims the respect and decency they deserve by making the inquiry swift, effective, impartial, and laser-focused on finding truth and justice.

Shame on Keir Starmer, and shame on the Labour government. Because those girls, and their families, deserve so much better than this.

Gaza as Beachfront Property Plan

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From Mark Wauck’s Meaning in History.

So, last Sunday Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff appeared on 60 Minutes to be interviewed by Lesley Stahl. Knuckleheads like these guys can’t resist the opportunity to expose themselves in public, because they have no clue about themselves. They think people will be like, ‘You guys are so great!’ You have to click on the link to the 1:27 video:

Genghis Khan @GenghisMFKhan

Oops.

“A master plan Jared’s been working on for 2 years”

Watch Jared Kushner’s face when this goofball blurts out the fact they were planning on rebuilding Gaza into prime beachfront property BEFORE the October 7th attacks.

Secrets out.

7:05 PM · Oct 22, 2025

Already they got a master plan that Jared’s been working on—for more than two years. The master plan, of course, is to remove the Palestinians from Gaza by hook or by crook—by genocide, ethnic cleansing, whatever it takes. What do you wanna bet that this master plan was already a glimmer in their eyes when the “Abraham Accords” was first proposed? Because that was simply a plan to freeze the Palestinians out of the entire Middle East. How far back do you think this master plan goes? Back to 2015?

To get the full import of this you have to recall that the Kushner tribe are close friends of Netanyahu—Netanyahu stayed at their place years ago, when Jared was just a little fella still only dreaming of making billions in international real estate deals. What emerges is a picture of the Kushners and the Trumps conniving to use US military might to cleanse Gaza and cash in—like you never seen before! They just needed Netanyahu to get the ball rolling, in a manner of speaking. He, of course, was only too willing to do what needed to be done, and probably to get a cut of the action.

You think I’m going to far? Prove me wrong—but first rewatch that video. Was this—the whole Trump MAGA shtick—the biggest con ever?

Stahl did ask about the genocide. Another golden moment:

Stahl: Before the hostages actually come out, you decide to go to Gaza.

Kushner: Mhm.

Stahl: And what did you see?

Kushner: It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area, and then you see these people moving back. And I asked the IDF, “Where are they going?” Like, I’m looking around. These are all ruins. And they said, “Well, they’re going back to the areas where their destroyed home was, onto their plot, and they’re going to pitch a tent.” And it’s very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go.

Stahl: Would you say now having been there that it was genocide?

Kushner: No. No. Absolutely not.

Witkoff: No.

What’re you talkin’ about? Looks like it was freakin’ nuked, but who would ever suspect genocide? Anyway, business is business.

What a country we’ve become.

The Gaza peace farce

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The Gaza peace farce.

Information Liberation: Tommy Robinson’s Israeli Govt-Funded Hasbara Tour Backfires

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Tommy Robinson went to Israel on a government-funded propaganda tour only to get humiliated repeatedly and condemned by members of the foreign government he sought to serve.Rabbi Yishai Fleisher, a former advisor to Itamar Ben-Gvir who serves as the international spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron, told Robinson the British “have a special place in hell for turning on the Jewish people.”

“Robinson—who fashions himself a British nationalist—just sits there and takes it, assuring him Brits love Israel,” I noted on X.

 


Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who Wikipedia notes is the “first openly gay right-wing member of the Knesset and the first openly gay man from Likud to serve in the Knesset,” further humiliated Robinson by shushing him for jumping the gun and interrupting him during his little scripted spiel.

 


The trip quickly turned into an apology tour with Robinson visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem to atone for his sins:

 


He also disavowed British nationalists who think ethnic Brits are the real British people and told the Israeli media that unlike ethno-nationalists, he doesn’t “believe that Jews are flooding Europe [with immigrants].”

 

 


When Robinson tried his shtick claiming that the Anti-Defamation League and the Board of Deputies of British Jews are somehow in bed with pro-Palestine groups and don’t represent Jews, the i24 reporter countered that they’re diehard pro-Israel groups—at which point he just started stammering.

A Jewish Majority poll released in February found that 79% of American Jews “are members of or generally support the policies of the Anti-Defamation League.”

Continues at Information Liberation...