“Whatever Israel Wants”: Trump Backs Netanyahu’s “Colonial” Wars in Gaza, Iran & Beyond
We speak to journalists Gideon Levy and Rami Khouri about President Trump’s meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump supported Israel’s threats to launch new attacks on Iran and warned Hamas to disarm during the second stage of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement. Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist, called the meeting a “continuation of the American-Israeli drive, that’s been going on for some years now, to reconfigure the Middle East … into a new colonial arrangement, whereby the U.S. and Israel dominate what goes on in the region.” Levy, Israeli journalist for Haaretz, called the meeting an “embarrassment,” noting that “Donald Trump presents himself as someone who promises the sky, who has no demands from Israel whatsoever.”
“A Dark Path”: Ex-State Dept. Official Blasts Trump’s Plans for Postwar Gaza
As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza City, President Donald Trump met Wednesday to discuss plans for a postwar Gaza with his son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This comes as Israeli business leaders are reportedly involved in developing a postwar Gaza plan that includes the creation of a “Trump Riviera” and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk, using financial models developed by the U.S. firm Boston Consulting Group.
Former State Department official Josh Paul says the Trump administration, alongside the Israeli government, is attempting to “transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate” colonialism. The move would “exploit incredible suffering for economic gain,” he adds. Paul was director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department and resigned in protest of the push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. He’s now a director at A New Policy, the lobbying organization he co-founded with fellow resignee Tariq Habash to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine and Israel. Paul also worked with Tony Blair when Blair was Quartet special envoy for Middle East peace and Paul was an adviser for the U.S. security coordinator.
Hunger in Gaza Can’t Be Explained Away by Preexisting Conditions
Outlets like the New York Times have downplayed the famine by pointing to underlying medical conditions. But these ailments only make the suffering worse.
“It Is Our War”: Palestinian American Scholar Rashid Khalidi on U.S. Complicity in Gaza Genocide
As Palestinians face dire starvation caused by the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, at least 181 Palestinians, including 94 children, have now died from hunger-related causes in Gaza. At the same time, in the West Bank, dozens of women are on hunger strike after an Israeli settler killed a Palestinian activist, Odeh Muhammad Hadalin. Israel is now refusing to return Hadalin’s body to the family as his alleged killer walks free. Democracy Now! speaks with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, who has family in the West Bank. “I think it’s time for this idealized vision of Israel to shatter and for people to come to terms with the fact that we are funding and financing this ethnic cleansing, this genocide, this theft, day by day by day, of people’s land in the West Bank,” says Khalidi.
Our Reporter Got Into Gaza. He Witnessed a Famine of Israel’s Making.
The people of Gaza face starvation under the joint U.S.-Israeli food distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Ex-U.S. Diplomat Joins March to Gaza, Says Biden Official Matthew Miller Has “Blood on His Hands”
Activists from around the world are arriving in Egypt ahead of the Global March to Gaza, set to launch June 15, when thousands plan to march to the Rafah border to call for an end to Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and its blockade of the territory. Dozens who flew to Cairo for the march have reportedly been detained, interrogated and deported by Egyptian security forces, but organizers say the event will proceed as planned. Former U.S. diplomat Hala Rharrit, who is taking part in the march, spoke with Democracy Now! earlier this week and said she could not turn a “blind eye” to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. “What type of world are we going to be allowing our children to grow up in, if we stand by while an entire civilian population is forcibly starved?” Rharrit asks.
Rharrit was the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department before she resigned in 2024 to protest the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She accuses her former colleague Matthew Miller of “careerism” after he recently admitted on a podcast that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even though he regularly denied that while serving as a spokesperson for the State Department under Biden.
“Christ Is Still in the Rubble”: Bethlehem Rev. Isaac Calls on U.S. to Stop Funding Gaza Genocide
Christmas celebrations are canceled in the West Bank and the city of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ’s birthplace, for the second year in a row in response to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We feature an excerpt of the Christmas sermon of Reverend Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, titled “Christ Is Still in the Rubble,” referencing a sermon he gave at this time last year titled “Christ in the Rubble,” about the loss of Palestinian life to Israel’s assault of Gaza. We also go to Bethlehem to speak with Reverend Isaac. He shares his message to the U.S. and the rest of the world. “Our fear here in Bethlehem is that there is no one who’s going to hold Israel accountable,” he says. “We’re tired and sick of these wars, which are enabled by American tax money and American politics.”
Congress Keeps Trying to Hide the True Gaza Death Toll
A little-noticed provision in the annual defense bill would bar the Pentagon from citing the Gaza Health Ministry as an authoritative source.
Amnesty International Concludes That Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza
In a new 300-page report, the human rights group joins a growing chorus of legal scholars and activists describing Israel’s assault on Palestinians as genocide.
Congress Keeps Trying to Hide the True Gaza Death Toll
A little-noticed provision in the annual defense bill would bar the Pentagon from citing the Gaza Health Ministry as an authoritative source.
Killer Rabbit 90
Okwari