Leaked documents revealed a disturbing partnership between UK Lawyers for Israel and the Israeli government, aimed at undermining human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. This collaboration is part of a larger effort to stifle accountability for Israel’s violations of international law. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced plans to annex the West Bank by 2025. With the possibility of a Trump administration returning to power in the U.S., this timeline underscores Israel’s long-term strategy to entrench its control over occupied Palestinian territories.
The recently brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has temporarily eased fears of a regional war, but its implications are deeply troubling for Palestinians. As Mitchell Plitnick and Abdaljawad Omar write, the agreement furthers Israel’s goal of isolating Gaza from Lebanon and decoupling the Axis of Resistance. Meanwhile, in Gaza, families fleeing Israeli evacuation orders were targeted in an airstrike on a school, killing 18 people. As Tareq Hajjaj writes, “there is no safe choice” for Palestinians forced to leave their homes amid relentless violence.
Tech giants like Google and Amazon are facing growing scrutiny for their role in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Tauriq Jenkins highlights their complicity in violations of international law through advanced technologies used in Israel’s assaults. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is under fire for supporting a resolution to block U.S. arms sales to Israel, signaling a potential shift in Democratic Party rhetoric on unconditional U.S. aid. But as the White House condemns the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, U.S. complicity in shielding Israel from accountability remains perhaps the key obstacle to ending the bloodshed in Gaza.
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Must read: Diaries from North Gaza: One Woman’s Story of Survival
Since October 7, 2023, Sondos Sabra has kept a diary of the genocide. These entries serve as a window into her life and the universal Gazan story of what it means to survive. “I remember that I remember, and I will not have that memory erased.”
Catch-up
🇬🇧 Anas Ambri: Leaked documents show the extent of collaboration between the pro-Israel legal advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel and the Israeli government, in their attempt to “counter” the work of human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
🇮🇱 Qassam Muaddi: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has announced that 2025 will be the year Israel annexes the West Bank. With the Trump administration entering the White House, the stage is set for Israel to finally take total control over the occupied territory.
⚽ Yakov Hirsch: The media’s censorship of the facts of the Amsterdam soccer hooligan violence was more than just bad reporting. It was yet another example of the ideological fiction that Jewish actions can never be blamed for the violence they cause.
🫏 Michael Arria: Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is getting attacked for his support of a resolution to block future U.S. arms sales to Israel, but we will likely be hearing more Democrats sounding like him as the party shifts on the issue of U.S. aid to Israel.
🇱🇧 Mitchell Plitnick: Unpacking the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hezbollah and what it means for a potential regional war and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
🇱🇧 Abdaljawad Omar: The ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel has accomplished Israel’s goal of decoupling Gaza from Lebanon. But while the future of the Axis of Resistance remains unclear, so does Israel’s own strategic path forward.
🇵🇸 Tareq Hajjaj: This week, families in Gaza City followed orders to evacuate to a nearby school, and then Israel bombed it, killing 18 people. There is no safe choice for Palestinians when they are forced to decide whether to leave their homes.
💻 Tauriq Jenkins: The role of tech giants like Google and Amazon Web Services in perpetrating the plausible genocide in Gaza is coming under increasing scrutiny. Their involvement in advanced military operations implicates them in violations of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law.
🇺🇸 Michael Arria: The White House joined lawmakers across both parties in condemning the ICC’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Senator Tom Cotton even suggested that the U.S. should take military action against the court over the warrants.
👩⚕️ Areej Hijazi: “I am an obstetrician and gynecologist who has worked in Gaza throughout the Israeli genocide. I have seen the destruction of Gaza’s medical sector firsthand. My patients’ stories tell the story of the genocide.“
Let’s add this to the weekly briefing: Btselem just published a new report,
Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Soldiers in the Center of Hebron…For over a year, Israel has been waging waged an unrestrained war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and within the State of Israel. The violence that has always characterized the Israeli apartheid regime’s treatment of Palestinians is now appearing in its most direct and exposed form. This report focuses on one facet of this violence: recurring instances of severe abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the center of Hebron throughout the summer of 2024….
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202412_unleashed
Here’s the full report:
The Hamas-led attack on 7 October greatly exacerbated the ongoing dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli discourse, which filled with explicit calls for violence and revenge by politicians and opinion leaders. With Palestinians collectively presented as an undifferentiated mass of enemies, causing them harm is considered not only legitimate but even welcome. Throughout 2024, many Jewish-Israelis have adopted the view that every Palestinian is guilty until proven otherwise – including military officers directly in charge of running the daily lives of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories… Since the beginning of the war, many attacks on Palestinians by soldiers and settlers have been documented throughout the West Bank.7 The attacks were aimed at Palestinians suspected of no wrongdoing and of ten carried out in plain sight, in full view of officers and commanders. Together with the rise in the scale and frequency of such attacks, this means they are not isolated incidents, but the outcome of an explicit, deliberate and systemic policy… this has led soldiers to see themselves as authorized to play the role of prosecutor, judge and executioner in any encounter with a Palestinian….
https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202412_unleashed_eng.pdf