Israel's Ch. 12 says Trump's team told Israel that "immediately" after his inauguration Trump would remove any delays or embargoes on weapons shipments. This narrative pretends Biden has actually implemented any meaningful withholding, which he has not. ⬇️ Over the past year, Biden has facilitated Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and its attacks against the West Bank and refused to stop it. The Biden-Harris administration is responsible for creating ideal conditions for Trump's emerging Israel First national security team.

Full statement from Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades, on the killing of the six hostages in Gaza announced Sunday by Israel.

He appears to confirm they were killed by their guards as a result of a change in policy implemented after a previous Israeli rescue operation in Nuseirat in June. Here is the statement:

“Netanyahu and the occupation army alone bear full responsibility for the deaths of the captives, as they deliberately obstructed any prisoner exchange deals for narrow interests, in addition to intentionally killing dozens of them through direct airstrikes.

“We say to everyone, clearly, that after the Nusseirat incident, new instructions were issued to the fighters assigned to guard the captives regarding how to deal with them in the event the occupation army approaches their detention location.

“Netanyahu's insistence on freeing the captives through military pressure instead of making a deal will mean their return to their families in coffins. Their families must choose: either dead or alive.” Yesterday, a senior Hamas official, Khalil Al-Khayya said that Hamas had lost contact more than three months ago with the people guarding dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and four other captives after intense Israeli bombing.

Al Qassam Brigades had announced that publicly on its social media channels on May 13. Al-Khayya told Al Jazeera yesterday, “Since that day nothing has been known about his life.”

Here was the announcement from Abu Obeida posted May 13:

Iran’s Fars News Agency said Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated at around 2am local time in some sort of air strike on a residence in a housing area for Iranian IRGC war veterans in northern Tehran. Hezbollah has not officially confirmed the death of senior commander Fouad Shukr in an Israeli strike in a Beirut suburb Tuesday, but said he was in the building where at least 4 people were killed and dozens injured. Hezbollah said it is waiting to determine its response.

Regarding rumors about Israeli officials facing indictment by the ICC, some relevant context: In 2002, Pres. Bush signed into law a bipartisan bill that authorizes the U.S. to use force to liberate any U.S. or allied personnel charged with war crimes.

Known in the human rights community as "The Hague Invasion Act," it also lists as “persons authorized to be freed” from the ICC through U.S. actions “military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan.” It is important to note that these rumors that the ICC may hand down indictments against Israeli officials started via Israeli media outlets, likely from Israeli sources (though the reports say sources in the Hague). It is quite possible that Netanyahu or his minions are behind these leaks for their own political reasons (that are not entirely clear at present).

On March 4, @theintercept published a story about how Kibbutz Be’eri denied a report in the NYT regarding the sexual assault of two girls on October 7. The NYT told us they stood by the reporting. Our story is here:



Now, the NYT reports on a new video filmed by an Israeli soldier who discovered the girls that completely undermines the NYT report. And the NYT now quotes kibbutz residents as saying it was false.

Yet the NYT has not retracted it on the original Screams Without Words story, which has won a Polk Award and is constantly cited as the definitive account of systematic sexual violence by Hamas on October 7. The NYT has serious questions to answer about how this false story made its way into the “paper of record.” The new story about the video is here:

theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt…
nytimes.com/2024/03/25/wor… Instead of retracting the story and issuing a correction, the NYT has added an “update” that constitutes a spin job within its original story aimed at exonerating itself for not actually verifying such a serious allegation before printing it:

The president of the ICJ is Judge Joan Donoghue, former top legal advisor under Hillary Clinton at the State Department during the Obama Admin. She will imminently read the court's ruling on South Africa's request for emergency provisional measures in Israel genocide case. The court could rule entirely in South Africa's favor and order all of the measures requested, including directing a halt to Israel's attacks and siege against Gaza. It could dismiss it entirely or it could rule in favor of only some requests or create its own tailored orders.

Israel’s representative Tal Becker tells ICJ that South Africa’s case “profoundly distorted factual & legal picture,” claiming it seeks to erase Jewish history. Says their argument is “barely distinguishable” from Hamas’s rhetoric, accuses them of “weaponizing” the term genocide. Becker called October 7 "the largest calculated mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.” Says the court must understand the "brutality and lawlessness” of the force Israel is fighting in Gaza.

South Africa's legal team begins argument at ICJ by saying, "South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people." South African lawyer Adila Hassim: Israel has engaged in a “systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred.” It has subjected the people of Gaza to “one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare” by sea, land and air.

This was a pernicious lie that was promoted by Biden and his administration to justify Israel’s attacking of hospitals. Those of us who warned that this was a lie at the time were accused of being Hamas propagandists.

https://twitter.com/rollingstone/status/1737982283536060834

Here is my article from Nov. 21 about Al Shifa and how Biden gave Israel political cover to lay siege to the hospital:


theintercept.com/2023/11/21/al-…
theintercept.com/2023/11/21/al-…

A few thoughts about the issue of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the credibility of the US and NATO: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a bald faced act of aggression, replete with war crimes, and is rightly being condemned as such by large numbers of people and nations across the globe.

The questions from reporters here are solid. And the answers from the State Department spokesperson are, unfortunately, not shocking. This is a bi-partisan horror and Joe Biden has a very long history of defending Israel's gratuitous violence and killings.

https://twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1391873402709872646

No one should pretend the US is some neutral party in what Israel is doing right now. Throughout his career, Biden has repeatedly supported Israel when it kills women & children. Ex-Israeli PM and war criminal Menachem Begin once said Biden was too extreme even for him on this.

Amy Klobuchar has been a significant participant in the racist criminal justice system in Minnesota and nationally. As a prosecutor she pushed for harsher prison sentences against nonviolent offenders & boasted of police support for her policies. Just last year, Klobuchar pushed for hundreds of millions of dollars more for police, as my colleague @akela_lacy reported: theintercept.com/2019/05/14/amy…

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote. Remember this vote next time one of these 10 Democrats or Sanders tells you that Trump is the most dangerous president in history. They just facilitated outrageous surveillance powers for William Barr and the FBI.

The DeVos & Prince families have a long record of financing the most dangerous right wing extremist individuals & causes in the country. They gave the seed money to the radical religious right, poured money into anti-choice groups & are funding the current coronavirus "protests." One of their most prized politicians is Mike Pence. We focus a lot on Trump, but Pence is their rock. The fact that he is in charge of the administration's COVID-19 response is terrifying to anyone who knows his history and that of the DeVos/Prince financial militia.

People attacking Sanders for endorsing Biden are either being disingenuous or didn’t study Sanders’ career. He chose to run in the Dem Primary. He played by its rules. People who supported Sanders with eyes wide open knew this was a given if he lost. He told you he would do it. Sanders could have spent 2016-2019 mobilizing a 3rd Party. But he wouldn’t do that. He never has advocated that path. Ask Ralph Nader about Bernie and 3rd parties. You can be angry or disappointed, but don’t pretend Sanders ever stood for a different outcome if he lost.

The richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, had a meeting to discuss how to smear a warehouse worker who demanded a safe workplace for his colleagues. You can share your thoughts on it with former Obama WH spokesman and current Amazon PR hack @JayCarney: vice.com/en_us/article/… This is what @JayCarney said about people who were reporting on and condemning Amazon’s disgraceful firing of Christian Smalls, the Staten Island Amazon warehouse worker who organized a walkout to demand a safe workplace. Disgusting.

https://twitter.com/jaycarney/status/1245552664244621312?s=21

https://twitter.com/JayCarney/status/1245552664244621312

First sentence I agree with. Third sentence is a total and complete piece of insanity that contradicts everything we know about asymptomatic carriers and public risk. My god.

https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1239200647616004096

All candidates should be urgently demand implementing mail voting and other measures. Calling for people to go to large group settings, particularly older people, is reckless no matter the reason you want them to go there. And Biden has a large base of older voters.

For all the talk of toxic supporters, Biden Democrats have sent a loud scornful message to the people demanding urgent action on health care, student debt, climate and many other issues that their voices don’t matter. That’s the tone. Scorn. Mock. Shame. People won’t forget it. They mock your sense of urgency and vision for a more just world and then demand your full support for their disastrous candidate and then will blame you when their corporate message fails to defeat a dangerous tyrant in the White House.

Trump's mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis politico.com/news/2020/03/0… “Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear”

The corporate media & establishment panic over Sanders created a myth that pretends tonight was some epic defeat for Sanders. In reality, he is fighting very powerful political & economic forces and insidious smears and propaganda. This is a close race. Keep all this in context. The truth is Sanders is taking on the former Vice President of a very popular Democratic administration. He is constantly smeared & maligned by powerful media. He faces sustained Super PAC attacks & Bloomberg attacks. He is a Democratic Socialist. And he is very much in this race

I don’t get Warren’s attack on Sanders record, saying he’s been on the right side of a slew of issues for 30 years but lost many battles. He stood up to powerful establishments of both parties when it was unpopular but right and he also did it while she was a Republican. History is filled with people who fought when it was unpopular, when they were smeared and laughed at, but they kept focus. And that’s how many major battles have been won across the country and the world.