More deaths during Steve Witkoff’s Gaza visit; BBC presents justification
At least 38 people in Gaza were reported to have died during the aid distribution at sites managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. This coincided with the visit to Gaza by President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Us ambassador, Mike Huckabee. Meanwhile, Rifat Jawaid,m explains how his former employer has continued to disgrace the profession of journalism even in the face of one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in recent memory.
It's All Going Wrong - Are Netanyahu's October 7th Claims Collapsing?
An explosive testimony by a former IDF soldier is rocking Israel's October 7th claims and the media are totally ignoring it.
October 7, 2023, is frequently referred to in Israeli political and military discourse as a day of unprecedented horror. The coordinated assault led by Hamas on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of over 1,100 Israelis, most of them civilians, and shattered the illusion of invulnerability that the Israeli state had cultivated over decades. The attack exposed systemic vulnerabilities in what was widely regarded as the Middle East's most sophisticated intelligence and defense apparatus.
Yet, nearly two years afterwards, amidst much cracking of the story already, from Hannibal Directives being issued, to eyewitness accounts claiming IDF tanks and gunships were targeting their own people, to all the warnings of a Hamas plot having been handed to Israel in the days and weeks before, even bigger cracks in the story are now beginning to show in the narrative that this was all complete surprise. A Testimony from one soldier in particular right now, but taken with others we’ve from other soldiers, survivors, and analysts are painting a far more disturbing picture: not one of total blindness, but of ignored intelligence, cancelled standard military procedures, delayed responses, and a state that has consistently refused to allow any meaningful independent investigation into what actually happened that night.
At the heart of this growing body of evidence is a question that refuses to go away: if Israel has nothing to hide, then why is it hiding everything? The foundation of the official Israeli account is that October 7 was a shock, an unforeseeable act of savagery. But mounting evidence demonstrates that this was not a surprise at all in operational terms. There were warnings, many of them explicit, credible, and urgent.
Exclusive: How Khan’s Israel inquiry was derailed
A major Middle East Eye investigation has uncovered extraordinary details of an intensifying intimidation campaign targeting the British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court over his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.
The campaign has involved threats and warnings directed at Karim Khan by prominent figures, close colleagues and family friends briefing against him, fears for the prosecutor’s safety prompted by a Mossad team in The Hague, and media leaks about sexual assault allegations.
MEE contacted the people discussed in the story for comment and their responses can be found in the full story:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/exclusive-karim-khan-israel-war-crimes-probe-derailed-threats-leaks-sex-claims
An excerpt:
MEE’s investigation can reveal that:
- In April 2024, weeks before Khan applied for the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron privately threatened Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued warrants for Israeli leaders
- In May 2024, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants
- Before the allegations were made, Khan had received a security briefing that indicated that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was active in The Hague and posed a potential threat to the prosecutor
- The woman accusing Khan of sexual misconduct wrote in May 2024 in text messages to Khan that there were “games being played” and attempts to make her a “pawn in some game I don’t want to play”. Two internal ICC investigations into the allegations were closed after she refused to cooperate with them
- The complainant had previously sought and obtained Khan’s help in another complaint against a second senior ICC official. This was during the period in which she later alleged Khan had repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Investigators found no wrongdoing on the part of the individual who was the subject of her complaint
- Thomas Lynch, Khan’s special assistant, who he tasked to liaise with Israel on the Palestine investigation, played a key role in making the allegations against Khan official. Privately however, Lynch had expressed his own doubts about the allegations to Khan’s wife and said that the timing was suspicious. In response to questions from MEE, Lynch described allegations in this article as “false and misleading”.
- A female ICC lawyer told MEE there was a group of people within the court who disagreed with Khan’s approach and who were working to discredit him. She said she had been approached in May 2024 and asked if Khan had ever behaved inappropriately towards her: “I told them he is the last person on my list of men who would do that”
- Khan met Nicholas Kaufman, the British-Israeli defence lawyer, to discuss the Israel investigation just two weeks before he was forced to go on leave after it was publicly revealed that he was under investigation over sexual assault allegations. According to a note of the meeting on file at the ICC, Kaufman told Khan that if the warrants against Netanyahu or Gallant were not dropped, “they will destroy you and they will destroy the court”
- Two former ICC judges have told MEE they have grave concerns about the way the OIOS investigation into the allegations against Khan has been conducted, questioning why the prosecutor was publicly named as the subject of a complaint, and the need for an external investigation into his alleged misconduct
