Kernow Damo

Israel has done some pretty desperate things in order to paint itself as popular, but this takes the cake... Right, so Kazakhstan did not suddenly discover Israel last week. The relationship has been on the books since 1992. Embassies established. Trade flowing in quiet, functional lines. A UAV assembly contract was established in 2014. Medical systems moving one way, minerals the other. All of it known, established fact. All of it routine. And now the routine is being held up like some kind of major political win and a massive boost for Israel. Like the last 30 years is now some kind of seismic revelation. The announcement did not arrive because something changed. It arrived because something needed to be seen. Kazakhstan did not hold a stage for it. No ceremony. No language of shared purpose. Just an administrative acknowledgment placed into the open and left there. Donald Trump did all the singing and dancing. Israel needed some positive news a win somewhere for the precious Abraham Accords which are looking shaky at best right now, and the best Israel and Trump could do, was slap another name on a minor trade relationship of 30 years with Kazakhstan. What a bunch of losers. Right, so Kazakhstan didn’t just join the Abraham Accords, as you might have been led to believe they had just done. This is a story of optics borne out of Israeli desperation to be seen to have secured some kind of a win, but when you pull it apart, they’re losing hard and fast instead. The announcement was delivered as if it carried some sort of weight. As if it mattered. As if something decisive had suddenly shifted. In the immortal words of former British PM Theresa May, nothing has changed. The documents laying out Kazakhstan’s relationship with Israel have been there for three decades. Kazakhstan and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1992. Embassies opened. Ambassadors exchanged. Trade agreements signed. The contact has never been broken. The relationship has never paused. There is no recognition to announce when recognition already exists. All this is about, is Trump slapping the name Abraham Accords on what already exists.

Israel tried to steer what everyone saw, frame by frame, post by post. But the footage spread faster than the narrative could hold. Whoops! Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu called it a Digital Iron Dome. Not the one in the sky, the one in your head. The idea was simple enough: if you can’t stop the bombs being seen, you can at least stop people understanding what they’re looking at. So the Israeli government signed the contracts, moved the money through the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, hired the same US campaign operatives who sell presidents like detergent, and told the public to be “digital soldiers.” Fill the feeds. Drown the footage. Influence the search field so even ChatGPT speaks in their voice. And it might have worked, if Gaza hadn’t had cameras too. If the footage hadn’t moved faster than the messaging. If the audience hadn’t stopped believing the statements. The Digital Iron Dome didn’t fail because someone broke it. It failed because reality got there first and Israel itself still hasn’t cottoned on to that notion. Right, so Haaretz were the ones who first published the contracts, Israeli media itself, which really does say something. But that is the point of entry for this story. Not a leak, not a whisper, not an accusation circling in commentary. Signed agreements. Ministry of Diaspora Affairs disbursing public money to US strategic communications firms during the bombardment of Gaza. The objective written in the language of public diplomacy, but the targets were American churches, social platforms, and the algorithmic routes that decide which story surfaces first when people search for such things using AI services. The paperwork was not subtle because it did not need to be. The state assumed control of the narrative field as a constant. Their hasbara has delivered for them for years, sure its taken a bit of a knock lately, but surely if we throw enough money at it, we can regain control. Israeli thinking. In their heads, they had no reason to imagine that control could fail. The documents showed a multimillion-dollar campaign. Haaretz reported the scope: the Israeli state seeking to influence US public opinion while the genocide was ongoing.

A massive headache has landed for dozens of Israeli leaders not least Netanyahu himself, as the world just got a bit smaller for them. Right, so Turkey has now put Netanyahu on the arrest list. Not a metaphor. An actual warrant. Genocide, crimes against humanity, names spelled out in black ink. Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir. Israel Katz. The general staff. The men who signed off, nodded through, looked away. Thirty-seven of them in total, so this is more than just another diplomatic rebuke. It’s a full on booking sheet. The thing is with such moves they are more than just symbolic, because they are based in statute. It sits in a court’s registry. It exists in the world. It will still exist when the tanks pull back, when the cameras move on, and when the politicians and the media pretend they didn’t see what we all saw. The ICC already has its own warrants open. Now another state has issued their own and strengthened that case, another state has joined the file and again, one of the names on the paperwork is the guy who runs Israel. Right, so the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and thirty-six senior Israeli officials. The filing named genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The warrants were lodged through the Turkish penal code under Articles 76 and 77. The legal basis was universal jurisdiction in cases of mass atrocity. The paperwork moved through Istanbul’s criminal court. It has been reported that the likes of Hamas have welcomed the action as a step towards accountability. Israel dismissed it as a political show. So who’s been named then Damo? Well, not all 37 officials that I can find, but those that have been named include Netanyahu, War Minister Israel Katz, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, and head of the navy David Saar Salama. These are the officials responsible for military, internal security, and general staff command. The warrants came after the International Criminal Court had of course already applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC filings named starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, m*rder, persecution, and inhumane acts. The ICC Prosecutor’s statement is public. The ICC charge sheet is public. The two warrant tracks now sit alongside one another: the ICC at the level of international criminal law, Turkey at the level of state jurisdiction.

The UK's role in failing Sudan goes beyond arming the UAE - they factored in a price on the lives of the Sudanese people too. Right, so they’ll tell you Sudan is a tragedy. That it is distant, unfortunate, chaotic, one of those conflicts the world can’t quite get a grip on. But that’s not true. Sudan is not a tragedy. It is, at least in part, an accounting decision. The UK cut its aid budget back in in 2020. Folded Department for International Development into the Foreign Office. Scattered the people who know how to stop mass killings before they start. And when Sudan fell in 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces were burning homes in Geneina and the likes of Human Rights Watch was calling it ethnic cleansing, the Foreign Office sat down and looked at four options. One of those options was civilian protection. But they decided to say balls to that and picked the cheapest one instead. Because the question was never “How do we stop this?” The question asked instead was “What’s the price of Sudanese lives?” And they priced them out accordingly. Right, so back in 2020 the UK government cut the foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent. It was presented as a financial adjustment, a necessary step due to economic pressure, more cuts, more austerity as we’ve become sick and tired of here, all framed in the language of responsibility and tightening belts, we’re all in this together and all of that chuff, but the effect was structural and long-term. Billions of pounds were removed from the systems designed to prevent and mitigate humanitarian collapse. This was not a single-year measure that snapped back. It became the new baseline, a new normal, a quiet reduction in capacity to act before v*olence escalates. It did not make headlines in the language of crisis. It made headlines as policy, cutting foreign aid was made to sound reasonable, better them than us. And policy feels bloodless in the moment it is announced. But policy is what determines whether, three years later, civilians live or die when a state fractures.

When a state is pushed to the point where it can no longer absorb the pressure, it doesn’t bend — it breaks. Lebanon just reached that point. Right, so they called it a ceasefire. Said hostilities would stop at four in the morning on 27 November 2024. Wrote it down. Signed it. Announced it like a closing ceremony. Hezbollah withdrew north of the Litani River. Lebanese Army took up the south. UNIFIL logged the maps. The paperwork was clean, but it’s all that was. The air was not. Israeli drones never left the sky. Israeli shells never really stopped finding the same villages they had found before. The ceasefire existed in statements, not in practice and so it has continued for almost a year now. But despite Israel’s thousands of ceasefire violations, then came the pressure on Lebanon didn’t it. Not on Israel to stop the strikes. On Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Disarm the resistance to secure the border, while Israel keep on firing, keep on occupying territory. Hand over the only deterrent to the literal threat. Call it stability. Call it peace. Call it anything except what it is. A quiet demand being made under bombardment. Well Hezbollah hasn’t returned fire. Not yet. But it is also increasingly no longer ruling it out either. Right, so the Lebanese ceasefire. The wording was explicit. The time was fixed. Four in the morning, 27th November last year. Hostilities to stop. The area south of the Litani River was to be secured by the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah to remain north of that line. Israel to cease offensive operations against Lebanese territory. UNIFIL to monitor compliance. The ceasefire was presented as the practical implementation of Resolution 1701. The same resolution that has governed the Lebanon-Israel border since 2006. No clause requiring disarmament. No clause requiring surrender. A freeze. A line. A halt. Hezbollah pulled its fighters back. The Litani became the marker. The Lebanese Army increased its deployment in the south. UNIFIL patrol logs continued. The operational map remained visible. The ceasefire existed in writing. But it didn’t exist in movement, nor in the field in the field. The reality held from Lebanon’s side, but as suual when it comes to ceasefires, not from Israel’s. Israeli drones remain over southern Lebanon to this day. They remain over the valleys and villages. The engine noise overhead has never stopped. UNIFIL continue to record the flights, even above their own heads. The violations have been documented pretty much daily for all this time. There were also strikes of course.

Washington really thought Venezuela would just fold. Instead they might be about to go hypersonic on Trump instead! Right, so they’ve been blowing up boats in the Caribbean. Not drug labs. Not submarines full of cartel cash. Boats. Wooden hulls. Fibre skiffs. The kind used by fishermen who go out before sunrise and don’t come back if the engines fail. The footage goes up on X with patriotic music and censored frames, like the censorship is meant to make it look clinical. It doesn’t. It makes it look like they don’t want you to see who was on the deck when the missile hit and that’s largely because they don’t even know themselves. The War Secretary calls them narco-terrorists. The DEA’s own map says the drugs comes from Mexico and Colombia. They don’t pause. They don’t correct. They don’t blink. Because you’re not meant to check. You’re meant to clap. The United States calls this counter-narcotics. Caracas calls it pre-invasion shaping. And now Moscow has turned up offering to give Venezuela hypersonic missiles. Right, so the ongoing strikes by the US on alleged drug boats, which mysteriously never get evidenced, corroborating footage never actually corroborates anything, but still more military assets find themselves in the Caribbean anyway. The vessels hit were described as narcotics-trafficking boats. The classification was asserted at the moment of destruction. The identification of the people k*lled would come later, and then it didn’t come at all. The images were fire on water, black hulls, no faces. The statements described precision. The records did not show names. No public list of victims was released because the US didn’t know them. The campaign sat in the gap between visibility and proof. The Pentagon confirmed that strikes were taking place. The justification was constant: narco-terrorism, maritime interdiction, national security. The phrase “narco-terrorism” entered the official vocabulary. The term carried weight. The public was expected to recognise it as threat. The casualties were unnamed. The context remained undefined. The footage was provided without verification. The press releases carried the line. The narrative travelled faster than the evidence ever could, not hard when more and more people surmise there isn’t any to actually present.

You don’t offer tax holidays to people who already want to live there. You do that when the belief is gone. Zionism has evidently had its day then. Right, so Israel is offering new immigrants and returning residents a zero per cent income tax rate in 2026, rising in stages afterward, on earnings up to one million shekels. That sits on top of the ten-year exemption on foreign income already available under the Law of Return. Full tax holidays. During a wartime deficit. All while Israel commits genocide in Gaza. The mass killing of civilians, the destruction of hospitals, homes, universities, and the forced displacement of the population as have been documented over 2 long years and amid multiple violations of the current ceasefire. The record, despite Israel’s best efforts is public. The death toll is civilian. The siege very much engineered by them. At the same time, Israelis have been leaving in droves, especially those working in the tech sector, which Israel is so proud of. The departures are logged, the economy’s freefall is documented. And the government is trying to sell these tax breaks as some kind of Zionist revival. When a “homeland” has to pay its own people to come “home”, then clearly it is nothing of the sort to them. Zionism is clearly finished if you have to bribe Jews to engage with it. Right, so a state calling itself the Jewish homeland has begun paying Jews to live there. Israel is offering new immigrants and returning residents a zero per cent income tax rate for the year 2026, with the rate rising in stages afterward. The policy was announced to great fanfare. Therefore it is not a rumour. It is not a trial. It is a budget measure. The government has set out the timeline and the thresholds and the eligibility conditions. The offer sits alongside an existing ten-year exemption on foreign income for new immigrants and those who have lived abroad for a decade or longer. Anyone, anywhere paying tax will know this is not a minor offer, these are not marginal deductions. These are full exemptions. The state is suspending its claim to tax revenue full stop for a defined group of arrivals. The eligibility process runs through the Population and Immigration Authority and the Tax Authority. The classification of an applicant as a new immigrant or senior returning resident determines access to the exemption. Proof of foreign residence for ten consecutive years is required for the foreign income exemption. The requirements are listed in the residency determination guidelines.

The Israeli broadcast field was supposed to be sealed to control their propaganda. Well now Iran has started speaking Hebrew and its genius! Right, so Israel built its war on the assumption that nobody inside Israel would ever hear the truth. The Military Censor screens the news before it airs. The broadcast networks stay inside the security frame. The public receives the war through an approved script and we thought our media was bad. Gaza is shown as a target map, not a place where people live. The ICJ ruling naming plausible genocide is not in the nightly bulletins. The UN reporting on starvation is not on the main channels. The collapse of hospitals and neighbourhoods is not presented as fact. The state needs the silence. And so information warfare is about to become the next battlefront. Iran is setting up a Hebrew-language television channel. Not for dialogue. Not for diplomacy. But for entry. And Israel is losing its mind over it. Right, so Iran has approved the establishment of a Hebrew-language television channel. The directive comes through the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, they do have some very on the nose departmental titles don’t they? The council recorded the decision in its policy register. Foreign Minister Masoud Pezeshkian chaired the session, he’s behind this move. Implementation sits with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the Iranian state broadcaster. The purpose is to counter the propaganda of the Zionist regime in the media space. The announcement did not include a launch date for this it has to be said, but the network structure already exists. IRIB broadcasts in English through PressTV, in Arabic through Al-Alam, in Spanish through HispanTV. A Hebrew-language station extends a standing broadcast architecture rather than creates a new one, so what they’re planning here is quite feasible. The field it will enter is heavily controlled though. Israel operates a Military Censor with legal authority to review publications. Israeli news organisations submit sensitive material to the censor before publication. Haaretz has documented newsroom procedures. Journalists describe clearance as standard workflow. The censorship is not symbolic. The directives are binding. Material can be blocked or amended before broadcast. The wider media environment is concentrated too. Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 101st of 180 in its press freedom index. Ownership is clustered among political and commercial elites.

Israel didn’t expect the cost of this war to hit back, but the financial ground beneath it just shifted and matters are escalating. Right, so they tell you genocide is complicated. They tell you it’s tragic, regrettable, unresolvable, a matter of perspectives, a conflict older than memory. They say this while the paperwork sits in plain sight evidencing all the whys and wherefores though. On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that genocide in Gaza was plausible. Not debated. Not speculated. Plausible. And when that ruling landed, the law changed. A duty switched on. Every state, every public institution, every bank tied into the European system became responsible for what it funded next. The European Investment Bank kept its project pipeline open though. The listings are public. The dates are visible. Nobody hid anything. They didn’t need to. They assumed you would be too overwhelmed to read a database. They assumed you would look away. They always do. The problem this time is: someone didn’t. The Hind Rajab Foundation read the documents. And now the bank is on the record and they are getting dragged to court it seems. And this carries major consequences for Israel and those facilitating their funding. Right, so the ICJ ruled that the charge of genocide in Gaza was plausible, we all know this by now don’t we? The ruling did not conclude the case, that is very much ongoing. But it do something of at least equal weight to my mind. It imposed a legal duty on states to prevent assistance to the acts under investigation. That duty applied immediately. It did not wait for appeals. It did not wait for a final verdict. It didn’t need to. It landed the moment the order was issued. The court’s language was explicit. States must ensure they do not aid or assist a genocide while it is being examined. That duty is not complicated. It is binding, under treaty law that every European state has ratified. The European Investment Bank is the public development bank of the European Union. It is not an ordinary lender. It does not operate on commercial discretion. Its financing decisions are part of the legal fabric of the European bloc. It is owned by the member states. Its commitments are governed by EU law. It publishes its operating framework. It publishes its environmental and social compliance standards. It places human rights compliance as a stated condition of financing. These are eligibility rules for public funds.

The government claim that was used to shape a national security decision still hasn't presented the proof for it. Why are we still waiting? Right, so they said Palestine Action was an Iranian front. They said it with a straight face. They said it in Parliament. They said it in the papers. Nobody showed any evidence, but the statement moved anyway, because that’s how these things work when the right people want them to. Then Private Eye reported that the Iran line may not have come from intelligence at all, but from a PR shop working for Elbit Systems UK, the weapons manufacturer that Palestine Action were of course actually targeting. CMS Strategic, named in that report, denied it outright. Categorically untrue. End of statement. And yet the timing sits there, with all the subtlety of a brick: a protest group hammering at an arms company, a story about Iran arriving late and awfully convenient, and a government that didn’t wait for proof before reaching for the terrorism laws of course. Right, so back on the 23, the Home Secretary stood in the House of Commons and stated that she intended to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000. There was no intelligence assessment placed before the House at that time. There was no dossier released to MPs. The statement was made as policy declaration, not as presentation of evidence. The Draft Proscription Order was laid before Parliament a week later. The order was listed as Statutory Instrument 2025/803. The language of the instrument named Palestine Action as an organisation to be added to the list of proscribed groups. The document did not contain an annex of evidential material, so once again, we all had to take the governments word for this, but the legal effect of the instrument was to of course criminalise membership, support, or association. The House of Commons approved the order on 2 July which passed. The debate transcript shows the Iran link being referenced by members during the session though. Again, no intelligence report was tabled. The vote proceeded without a closed session, without a briefing from the Intelligence and Security Committee, and without disclosure of the basis for the Iran claim. The House of Lords approved the order on 3 July. The approval followed the same pattern. Reference to Iran. No evidence. No questioning of the origin of that claim. The procedural path from announcement to approval ran without interruption. The proscription came into force on 5 July. From that time, Palestine Action was treated in law as a terrorist organisation. Individuals associated with the network became liable to arrest and prosecution for activities that had previously been charged as criminal damage, trespass, or public order offences, because of course, they’ve never harmed anyone, failing the very definition of terror.

Netanyahu want to start another war, but the cost of this one won’t land where he thinks it will. It'll land much closer to home... Right, so Israel is now talking about striking Yemen, and the justification being offered is as ever security and self-defence, all despite the fact that Ansarallah, the Houthis, aren’t actually striking Israel at the moment due to the Gaza ceasefire. The launches toward Eilat have paused, as has the blockade in the Red Sea and the strikes on Ben Gurion airport and the like. The movement has said publicly that their operations are tied to the war on Gaza and will stop when the war stops, hence why they have downed tools whilst the ceasefire, Israeli violations of it aside, still holds. If Israel hits Yemen now, therefore it won’t be answering anything. It will be starting something. And the Houthis have already stated how they will respond. If Netanyahu wants some he can have some. They will answer directly. That is their recorded position. That is what they have always done in the past. So the issue here isn’t security or self defence. It’s a government under pressure, looking for a move that can be framed as decisive, desperate for yet another war front. But opening a new front doesn’t make the existing ones disappear, nor does it save Netanyahu from his ongoing corruption trial and coalition divisions. It stacks the consequences. It raises the cost. It kicks his problems down the road for a little longer. It shows where the strain already is. Right, so Israel is talking about striking Yemen. Calling it self-defence. But the Houthis aren’t striking Israel right now. Their position has been stated in public: their operations are tied to the genocide on Gaza and will stop when the genocide stops, paise as ceasefires hold as allegedly is the case right now, though who has ceased and who is still firing is another matter of course. As far as Ansarallah are concerned, the Houthis, they announced a pause in their Red Sea actions, conditional on Israel not escalating and bringing down the ceasefire once again. Their spokespeople made the position clear: if Israel escalates, they resume, and if Israel attacks Yemen directly, they will respond. If Israel want to have a go, the Houthis are saying you know where we are. But if Israel strikes Yemen now, it is not answering anything. It is starting something. And the consequences of that start are not unknown. They are recorded. There is a track record. They have happened before. Not just to Israel either, but to others who already tried to break this movement. And they failed. Not because they didn’t try hard enough. But because the Houthis have beaten everybody who has tried before.

New York just elected a pro-Palestine mayor and the reaction in Tel Aviv was panic, because the story they’ve relied on for fifty years just broke. Right, so New York didn’t just elect Zohran Mamdani — it also triggered an absolute meltdown in Tel Aviv. The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel just chose a mayor who called for a ceasefire in Gaza and opposed NYPD–Israel police exchange programmes, and did it without apology. And the moment that result hit, the reaction in Israel was not calm, not measured, not diplomatic — it was panic. Netanyahu flapping because Mamdani said ICC warrants should apply to everyone. Itamar Ben-Gvir — a man with a documented conviction for incitement — called the election a disgrace. Meanwhile, the likes of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, the JFREJ had been openly campaigning for him in full daylight. They weren’t crying in Tel Aviv because New York changed. They were crying because the narrative did. And its finally turned against them in NYC. Right, so New York didn’t just elect a mayor — it broke a story that was never supposed to break. Zohran Mamdani won, emphatically and cleanly. There has been no dispute, no recount theatre, no quiet backroom reassurance to the people who usually get reassured. And here’s the thing that matters: he won exactly as he is. No distancing. No coded language. No “of course I support Israel’s security” throat-clearing. He went in with a ceasefire demand in public view, with his opposition to NYPD-Israel training exchanges on record, and he didn’t apologise for any of it. That’s the point. There was no retreat. And this isn’t some rural backwater or a city council ward. It’s New York. The largest Jewish population outside Israel. The city that has been treated like a satellite capital for Israeli messaging. The place where political consultants have spent decades telling every candidate the same thing: you don’t cross that line. And Mamdani crossed it. Stepped over it like it wasn’t there. And the city voted him in anyway. This wasn’t a boutique left coalition. It wasn’t a grad-seminar activist bloc. This was tenants’ unions, nurses, subway riders, restaurant workers, people paying rent to hedge funds, people being policed like a problem instead of a public. It was the class that actually lives in the city, not the class that owns pieces of it. And that class did not flinch when the smear started.

Trump called it peace. What he actually built was a weapons corridor, and now it’s blowing up in his face and Iran have popcorn. Right, so Donald Trump said he’d built a bridge of peace, and what he actually built was an arms market with a flag on it. The TRIPP corridor — his grand plan to join Armenia and Azerbaijan, box in Iran and call it diplomacy — has gone the way of every Trump deal before it: the photo survived, the peace didn’t. Within months of the signing, the two sides were buying jets from opposite sides of another diplomatic split, India and Pakistan were dragged into the fallout, and Iran, the country Trump swore to isolate, has ended up even stronger than when he started. The cameras caught a handshake; history caught a scam. This wasn’t peace through strength, it was profit through instability — a 99-year lease on chaos sold as vision, and another Trump instigated project that may have run its course, having run on headlines and little else. Right, so Trump called it peace. The cameras caught the handshake, the flags, the podium, the promise of a corridor that would turn two old enemies into trading partners and show the world that American deal-making still ruled the map. Trump and his art of the deal. The ink was barely dry before the headlines declared it historic: Armenia and Azerbaijan signing a White House-brokered agreement to open a route through Armenia’s southern Syunik province, linking Azerbaijan’s mainland to its Nakhchivan exclave and on to Turkey. They called it the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity — TRIPP for short — a modern Silk Road with Trump’s name on it, his ego must be stroked at all times, but living up to the more literal definition of the word now, as the plan has tripped up and fallen on its face. Washington sold it as the moment the Caucasus would finally break its habit of war. But the habit didn’t break. It just shifted. Within months both sides were buying new aircraft, Iran was running drills on its northern border, and the map Trump claimed as his triumph had become the outline of another arms race. Everything about TRIPP was built on imbalance. Armenia came to the table weakened, cut adrift from Moscow, far too preoccupied with Ukraine. Azerbaijan arrived emboldened, armed by Turkey, flush with energy money from selling its oil via Turkey to Israel, fresh from victory over Armenia previously. The deal that followed reflected that power gap: a corridor carved through Armenian soil giving Azerbaijan a direct road to Turkey and giving the US a permanent foothold in the one strip of land that still connected Iran to the Caucasus. On paper it was about trade and transit; in practice it was about control.

They say Lebanon is a failed state — but Iraq just proved that’s a lie. Same resistance, same logic, but only one faces US coercion. Why? Right, so apparently linking disarmament to foreign withdrawal is a mark of statehood in Iraq but a mark of failure in Lebanon. Same sentence, different accent, opposite outcome. Baghdad tells Washington the militias will stand down when the Americans finally pack up and go, and it’s called sovereignty. Beirut says Hezbollah will disarm when Israel stops crossing its border and breaching a ceasefire it has abused for almost a year now and it’s called collapse. Tom Barrack calls that proof that Lebanon is “a failed state.” Well he should know — Washington’s been rehearsing that diagnosis for years in Israel’s interests – how else do you turn a blind eye to thousands upon thousands of ceasefire breaches and still blame the victim of them? When a country stops being useful, the US stops calling it sovereign. “Failed State” in this playbook doesn’t mean collapse, it means disobedience. Iraq still fits inside the the banner of usefulness because it has oil and strategic importance; Lebanon doesn’t. It has Hezbollah and is therefore a threat to Israel in their book, even as Israel once again launches strikes across the south of their country. That’s the real divide. But the hypocrisy of Trump’s pro Israel goons isn’t going to go ignored.

They said trade with Israel was “paused.” The government’s own data tells a different story. The date it OMITTED Tells an even bigger one. Right, so the government’s own figures have given the game away. Buried in a Department for Business and Trade factsheet dated 31 October, because Halloween is frankly the perfect day to release news like this, it says exports to Israel rose 10.5 percent to £3.6 billion in the year to June 2025. That’s from the previous June, so that is basically Starmer’s first year in power — and it happened while Gaza continued to be burned and Labour claimed to have “paused” a trade deal out of principle. The truth is, they only paused the headlines. And those billions they’ve just announced? Well they are just the part they’re willing to print. It’s just the tip of the iceberg because they don’t include everything. They don’t include the arms licences, MoD contracts, offshore finance and hidden service deals – they all sit below the waterline. What they published is just the tip; what they’re profiting from is the iceberg. And for a government that talks so much about moral clarity, it’s remarkable how much they’ve managed to hide and now it’s going to blow up in their face. Right so the figures are not leaked. They’re not hearsay. They’re the government’s own numbers here, sitting quietly in a Department for Business and Trade factsheet from Halloween. In the twelve months to the end of June 2025 - the first full year of Keir Starmer’s premiership, so this is on him - British exports to Israel rose by £342 million, up 10.5 per cent, to £3.6 billion. Imports from Israel dipped slightly to £2.6 billion, a 4.6 per cent fall. People here not wanting to buy Israeli it seems, or invest in a nation so destabilised by its own crackpot and genocidal government, but actually that’s only a small part of the truth. The total value of trade between the two countries reached £6.2 billion, a 3.7 per cent increase on the previous year. Those numbers appear under the seal of His Majesty’s Government, not in a campaign pamphlet, they are official, they are shameful. The contradiction is in and of itself damaging enough to Starmer’s regime. In public the Labour government told the country it had “paused” talks on a new UK–Israel Free Trade Agreement. In private, or at least on paper, trade was still climbing. What was frozen was not the money; it was the accountability. The figures show that far from retreating, Britain deepened its commercial ties at the very moment it claimed to be distancing itself.

Israel just arrested its top military lawyer — not for a crime, but for exposing one. The whistleblower told the truth… and now she’s the one in handcuffs. Right, so imagine being Israel’s top military lawyer — years spent defending the “most moral army in the world,” turning war crimes into paperwork as that entails, and then one day realising the paperwork itself is the crime. That was Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi. She leaked the footage from Sde Teiman — soldiers assaulting a bound Palestinian prisoner — she was the whistleblower. She resigned, vanished, was found, and was promptly arrested. The soldiers? Out on bail, arguing due process. The whistle-blower? Treated like a spy. That’s Israel’s most moral army for you though isn’t it? Aside from all of their misconduct on the battlefield, back at home t*rture gets court management; truth gets handcuffs. And the best part? The system thinks it’s proving its own integrity by prosecuting the only honest person in uniform. They tried to bury a whistleblower, and instead the state has indicted itself once more as amoral, bereft of legitimacy and where the crime of speaking out is the worst crime of all. Right, so Israel’s top military lawyer leaked proof of a war crime committed by her own state military, how mad a sentence is that at any time anywhere — yet instead of addressing what is a massive scandal in any other state, the system she served came for her instead of for the soldiers. Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi wasn’t some dissident clerk. She was the head of the army’s law machine, the woman who signed off every operation the politicians called legal. When she confirmed she’d leaked the Sde Teiman video — soldiers surrounding a restrained Palestinian prisoner and assaulting him — she didn’t just break secrecy. She broke the illusion that the law still ruled. She resigned last Friday. By Sunday she was missing, her car abandoned on a Tel Aviv beach, a letter at home that made her family fear the worst. Hours later police said she was safe. Then they arrested her. The soldiers stayed free; the lawyer went in cuffs. That’s Israel’s moral order laid out in sequence. Sde Teiman isn’t a secret any more. It’s a desert compound where Palestinians are dumped after raids — shackled, blindfolded, left unnamed. It is a place notorious for beatings, medical neglect and d*aths in custody.

The former Prince Andrew has been destroyed over Epstein. So why is Peter Mandelson, with the same connections, still sitting in power untouched? Right, so Prince Andrew’s out — stripped, erased, repackaged as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — the royal family finally admitting what everyone else already knew: he was a liability they couldn’t spin their way out of anymore. The King swung the axe, all titles gone, Royal Lodge soon to follow. And yet Peter Mandelson, who spent his own holidays in Jeffrey Epstein’s company and wrote “my best pal” in the man’s birthday book, still floats serenely through Westminster as Lord Mandelson. That’s the state of British morality in one picture: a monarch of all people playing moral referee while an elected government hides behind procedure to avoid doing likewise with Mandelson. Andrew loses his titles to save the brand; Mandelson keeps his but why? One rule for royals, none for Starmer’s sort? And presumably Starmer’s fine with that in spite of everything. Right, so when even the monarchy is more willing to cut loose its own than the government, you know the country has rotted from the inside out. On 30 October Charles signed off on the removal of every title and honour that still tied Prince Andrew to the institution that raised him. Buckingham Palace confirmed that he would now be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The phrase carried quiet violence. His style “His Royal Highness” was gone. His right to call himself Prince was gone. The Duke of York, the Earl of Inverness, the Baron Killyleagh — all set aside, pending the legal wash-through that will eventually return them to the Crown. The same week, palace aides briefed that he would vacate Royal Lodge in Windsor and move into private accommodation. For a family that measures itself in continuity, that was a decapitation. No one pretended it was an act of morality in the biblical sense. It was self-preservation. The Firm was circling the wagons. The monarchy’s entire business model is moral appearance. When that collapses, the brand dies. After years of pressure — the BBC interview, the Virginia Giuffre lawsuit, the settlement that cost roughly £12 million — Charles finally did what the late Queen had only half done.

Israel says Hamas returned the 'wrong remains' — but the facts tell a different story. They've literally banned DNA kits from Gaza. Right, so Israel’s run out of excuses again — so they’ve started digging up new ones. The b*mbing as we know never stopped, it just got relabelled “ceasefire,” and now the latest moral cover story is that Hamas sent them the wrong remains of Israeli hostages and they must have done it on purpose. That’s the hook — the pretext to switch the war machine back on. Trouble is, it’s already falling apart. Haaretz, one of Israel’s own papers says Hamas warned them the IDs were uncertain. Other outlets have said Israel is blocking forensic tools and every DNA kit that could’ve proved who was who and that they’ve banned the autopsy tools needed as well. Then CENTCOM steps in with a miracle drone clip of “Hamas looting aid” — one truck, no proof, just propaganda. The whole thing stinks of coordination: Washington and Israel both fabricate stories which get debunked, Israel of course fabricates more moral outrage despite the clear lack of morals on show in their government, and together it is becoming more and more obvious that they are both clearing the runway to start the genocide in full all over again. Right, so Israel’s government is accusing Hamas of returning “the wrong remains.” The claim runs like this: Hamas sent back bodies said to be Israeli captives, and forensic tests proved they weren’t. The insinuation is deliberate deceit though — that Hamas is mocking Israel by handing over random corpses.