cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33671952

Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Jul 25, 2025

Israel attacked the Cairo Elementary School for Girls in central Gaza City just as people had gathered in the school yard for Friday prayers, according to multiple eyewitnesses. Many of the displaced in the school are from areas in northern Beit Hanoun, which has been nearly completely destroyed and emptied by the Israeli military. So far, Israel has not published even a perfunctory justification for the strike and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions submitted by Drop Site about the attack.

Communications have been restored and the Freedom Flotilla ship Handala remains en route and on mission to challenge the blockade of Gaza. 19 Human Rights Defenders and 2 Journalists from 12 countries are on board.

Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ

For over a hundred years, DeBeers has dominated and controlled the global diamond trade.

But today, Chinese factories are mass-producing lab-grown diamonds, which are chemically identical to natural stones, and prices are collapsing worldwide for both man-made and natural diamonds.

DeBeers sources most of their rough diamonds from mines in Botswana, and the new government there is determined to move DeBeers' value chains to Botswana itself, thereby retaining billions of dollars in industry revenues in-country.

Anglo-American is DeBeers' parent company, and they are trying to divest their holdings. But even after writing off $4.5 billion in book value in two years, no buyers can be found.

Clearly sensing a turning-point in world opinion, as the death toll from starvation mounts exponentially in Gaza, Israel brought dozens of sympathetic journalists to a crossing to wage a PR campaign on Thursday.

The Israeli government has pivoted to a new deflection: The famine in Gaza is not the result of Israel’s publicly announced March 2 blockade of all food entering Gaza, nor is it connected to the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which replaced the UNRWA aid system Israel shut down with its own militarized version in late May. Instead, according to the new Israeli campaign, the blame lies with the United Nations. “Hundreds of aid trucks have entered Gaza with Israel’s approval, but the supplies are standing idle, undelivered,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on X. “The reason? The UN refuses to distribute the aid.”

The focal point of the Israeli accusation against the UN is a collection of some 900 aid trucks that have already crossed into Gaza but which have been unable to distribute the aid. Yet Israel has actively prevented the UN from distributing aid. Tamara Alrifai, a spokesperson for UNRWA, told Drop Site that Israeli restrictions on the movement of the organization’s staff have made distribution impossible. “Claiming that the UN isn’t picking up food and other urgent supplies, and promoting images that these goods are just sitting near the crossing is disingenuous to say the least,” she said.

A recent US government internal review rebuffs claims that Palestinian group Hamas systematically diverted US-funded humanitarian aid, challenging previous assertions by Israel and the US.

An unreported US Agency for International Development (USAID) study examined 156 cases of lost or stolen aid between October 2023 and May 2025, and found no evidence of Hamas benefiting from US-supplied aid.

The report contradicts claims by Israel and the US, which have been used to justify a controversial new armed private aid operation, which has resulted over 1,000 deaths among starving aid-seekers.

Separately, Reuters reported that Elon Musk’s Starlink systems used by Ukrainian military units were down for two and a half hours overnight, a senior commander said, part of a global issue that disrupted the satellite internet provider.

Starlink experienced one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline, the agency reported.

The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, later said the incident had highlighted the risk of reliance on the systems, and called for communication and connectivity methods to be diversified.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33633211

Amichay Eliyahu’s comments came amid growing hunger in the territory, where Israel controls the delivery of food.

Patrick Kingsley and Johnatan Reiss
July 24, 2025 Updated 5:23 p.m. ET

https://archive.ph/wip/tnJEu

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33609844

By MEE staff Published date: 24 July 2025 13:49 BST

Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed that he has launched a new political party alongside fellow independent lawmaker Zarah Sultana.

In a joint statement published on X on Thursday, the two said that the system was “rigged” when the current government “says there is no money for the poor, but billions for war”.

The pair also cited UK complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza as reason for the need for an alternative party.

Good news!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33613816

By #MEE staff
Published date: 24 July 2025 11:59 BST

It said the international community "cannot remain inactive" in the face of "ongoing atrocities", and that the move is based on the “plausibility that the rights of Palestinians to protection against acts of genocide are being irreversibly impaired”. [...] However, campaigners have pointed to Brazil's crude oil exports to Israel - 2.7m barrels were shipped in 2024 alone - prompting calls from Brazilian oil worker unions for the government to implement an energy embargo against Israel.

Looks like Zelensky is out of western graces.

https://archive.ph/VqIbK

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33604842

Thursday, July 24th 2025 - 09:32 UTC

Brazilian authorities announced Wednesday the South American country's formal decision to join South Africa's lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Itamaraty said in a statement that the government was outraged by “recurring episodes of violence against the civilian population in the State of Palestine,” extending beyond the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.