Crazy isn't it Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party had an 'antisemitism crisis' and now Zack Polanski's Green Party does.
While Nigel Farage's Reform party, with Nigel Farage and loads of Nazi lovers, doesn't.
It's like it's some kind of scam used against Left Wing parties.
“Entire families have been wiped out.” Lebanese President Joseph Aoun recounts the devastating toll of Israel’s war in his country against Hezbollah. “This is a 3-month-old baby,” he says, holding up a heartbreaking picture. “Is this an imminent threat?”
@LBpresidency
Israel’s efforts to influence the Eurovision vote were broader and started years earlier than previously known https://t.co/GWjVVyQM1W A story Mara Hvistendahl and I have worked on for a very long time!
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, won a BAFTA award last night.
The BBC refused to show it but Channel 4 aired it anyway.
There's still some real journalists out there, actually challenging power and showing the terrible war crimes they try to hide.
1/2 [UPDATE]
Warning: extremely long post in 2 parts.
Over the next week Ireland & RTÉ will come under attack for boycotting the Eurovision. Detractors will unfairly manufacture motives for this as if there were no grounds for Ireland to boycott Israel in the contest - as if the war crimes and other transgressions by Israel never happened. Gone from their memory. In the case of RTÉ I'm sure the fact that 274 journalists & media workers were killed by Israel in Gaza between Oct 2023 & eventual ceasefire in Sep 2025 weighs heavily on the staff there. I've updated my list of reasons that form the basis for Ireland's response. So when someone says:
- "Why are you so obsessed? There can be no other reason but antisemitism"
- "What about Hamas hiding in tunnels, booby traps"
- "There are always casualties in war"
- "Invokes Irish history and references Dev or the 1904 Limerick Pogrom"
- Ad hominem attack
Our response has a firm basis. These are the reasons:
THE DEATH TOLL
1. Over 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct 2023 (as of Feb 2026) and 171,000+ have been injured. These are the deaths that have been counted, however thousands more remain under rubble, uncounted. In Jan 2026, a senior Israeli army official confirmed the 70,000 figure to journalists, now agreeing figures that Israel had spent 2 years disputing.
2. Over 21,000 of the dead are children. Approx. 40,000 people have sustained life-altering injuries, incl. ~4,000 who have lost limbs (often amputations performed without anaesthesia). Roughly 10,000 of the injured are children. Save the Children reported over 1,000 babies under 1yr old were killed; 450 of them were born & killed during the war.
3. Official count is an undercount according to 2 independent peer-reviewed studies. The Lancet (Feb 2026) published a household survey where researchers went door-to-door across 2k homes, documenting 9,729 individuals & estimated 75,200 violent deaths in first 15 months. The MoH undercounted by 35%. A separate capture-recapture analysis found an undercount of 41%. 2 diff methods by 2 diff teams producing nearly same result. The Max Planck Institute estimated 100k to 126k dead by Oct 2025. All 3 studies were peer-reviewed. Depressingly, the combined killed & injured, represents over 10% of Gaza's population. Staggering figures.
4. Israel claims it has killed 22k-23k Hamas fighters. But its own military intelligence database, leaked in Aug 2025 & reported by The Guardian & +972 Magazine, recorded only 8,900 fighters confirmed or "probably" dead out of 53,000+ total deaths. That means 83% of dead were civilians.
5. 83% is a floor rather than a ceiling. 53k doesn't include thousands who are unidentified under rubble. Those who aren't counted are overwhelmingly civilians since fighters are tracked by name in Israel's intelligence systems but a family buried under the rubble won't be recorded. 63% of all casualties were killed in airstrikes. Even if you doubled the fighter count it would still leave 67% civilian deaths.
6. Compared to the Russia-Ukraine war: OHCHR has verified 15,172 Ukrainian civilians killed over 4+ years (as of Jan 2026). Combined military deaths on both sides estimated at 375k-465k. Roughly 4% of all deaths in Ukraine are civilian & 96% are combatants. In Gaza those numbers are inverted: 83% civilian, 17% combatant. Daily civilian death rate in Gaza is 8 times higher than in Ukraine. Gaza has a pop. of 2.3m. Ukraine had a pre-war population of around 44m.
7. For comparison: Afghanistan 28% civilian, Syria 28%, Yemen 13% - Gaza at 83% exceeds all of these.
DESTRUCTION & ETHNIC CLEANSING
8. 81% of all structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. In northern Gaza 84%. By Oct 2025 ... 92% of housing units were either fully destroyed or damaged. UN experts use the term "domicide": mass destruction of homes to expel a population & make an area uninhabitable.
9. Over 80% of water & sanitation infrastructure destroyed. 200 of 283 water wells destroyed or out of order. 85% of sewage pumping stations destroyed. 85 of 103 desalination plants damaged or destroyed. All 6 major wastewater treatment plants knocked out. Raw sewage flows through displacement camps. Polio has returned.
10. 95% of Gaza's farmland was damaged. 89% of annual crops & 98% of tree crops were destroyed. 71% of greenhouses damaged. 83% of agricultural wells were destroyed. Buffer zone alone consumed 35% of agricultural land. Capacity to grow food has been decimated.
11. 79% of mosques destroyed. 815 Islamic holy sites destroyed. 3 churches destroyed incl. Church of Saint Porphyrius ... one of oldest churches in world. 19 cemeteries destroyed. UNESCO confirmed that 164 cultural heritage sites had been damaged.
12. Can you return when 92% of homes are destroyed, 95% of schools are rubble, 80% of water infrastructure is gone & every university has been bombed? There is nothing to return to. Israeli minister Gila Gamliel confirmed it openly: "We have already completely annihilated 75% of the entire Strip. There remains 25% which we are now taking over. There will be nothing left there that would really have the potential to be habitable." The destruction causes the displacement.
EDUCATION
13. All of Gaza's 19 universities have been damaged. 80% of university buildings destroyed. 95% of higher education campuses severely damaged or destroyed (UNESCO). There are 90k students with a college. Over 150 academics & researchers have been killed. Israeli soldiers even filmed themselves setting Al-Aqsa University's library on fire. UN experts call this "scholasticide."
14. 778 of Gaza's 815 schools (95.5%) damaged. 137 reduced to rubble. 760 teachers & educational staff killed. 765,000 children completely out of school. You don't destroy 95% of schools if the population is staying.
15. UN warns that prolonged exposure to extreme violence, grief & deprivation is fundamentally altering brain development of an entire generation. In Jerusalem too, Palestinian education is being strangled: in Jan 2026 Israel barred over 230 Palestinian teachers (most from Bethlehem) from entering the city under the permit system, forcing 15 Christian schools serving 12k+ students to suspend classes in protest. 57 teachers were ultimately denied permits on unexplained "security" grounds. The principal of Jerusalem's Bishop's School called them "permits of humiliation."
STARVATION AS A WEAPON
16. By Aug 2024, 84% of Gaza was under evacuation orders with the population now crammed into just 12.6% of Gaza which was designated as a "humanitarian zone." Israel then attacked those "safe zones" ... bombing the places it had ordered people to move to. UN calls this "cartographic terror": forced displacement through contradictory maps, unclear communications & unreliable protocols into areas that were then targeted.
17. Before the war, around 500 trucks entered Gaza daily. Israel cut that to an average of 30. It blocked piped water, cut fuel to desalination plants, imposed a 130-day total fuel blockade & destroyed the food production system. By late 2025, 1.6m people (77% of Gaza's population) were in food crisis or worse. Over 500,000 in "Emergency" food insecurity ... one step below the worst classification.
18. When a US-funded food monitoring body (FEWS NET) issued a food crisis warning for northern Gaza in Dec 2024, the US government pressured them to retract it. Kenneth Roth, former HRW director, said it "sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations to interfere." Meanwhile children were starving.
19. A peer-reviewed Lancet study screened 219,783 children using MUAC measurements. By Aug 2025: 54,600+ were acutely malnourished, 12,800 severely. In Gaza City malnutrition rose 6-fold in 5 months to 28.8%. Rates tracked directly with aid blockades: rose when aid blocked, fell during ceasefire, rose again when blockade resumed. 440 people had died from starvation by Sept 2025 (Gaza MoH); over 150 of them were children (UNICEF, Oct 2025). Babies died of hypothermia; shelter, fuel & blankets blocked.
20. In the "Flour Massacre" on Feb 29 2024: thousands of Palestinians were queueing for food from aid trucks. Israeli tanks & snipers opened fire, killing at least 118 & injuring 760+. Israel claimed a "stampede." Hospital doctors documented gunshot wounds to the head, neck & upper body.
21. May-Aug 2025: 1,760 killed while seeking food. 994 near sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US/Israeli-backed body that international orgs refused to join. UN called it "not impartial, neutral or independent." Sites designed like compounds: barbed wire, single entrance, watch points. MSF called for it to be dismantled. Amnesty titled their report "Starvation or Gunfire." GHF closed after 5 months having "contributed to tragic loss of hundreds of Palestinian lives." People queued knowing they might be killed because the alternative was watching their children starve.
22. Israel demanded biodata on all aid workers from 37 international organisations incl. MSF & Oxfam. Those who refused were banned. $50+m in food, meds & shelter were blocked at border crossings at the very time children were starving in Gaza.
23. 320 essential medicines went out of stock. 710 medical consumables were completely unavailable (71% shortage). Israel blocked anaesthesia, antibiotics, IV solutions, surgical tools, insulin, dialysis supplies, oxygen cylinders & even gauze under a "dual use" justification. They did not provide a definitive list of banned items. This meant that doctors had to perform surgery without anaesthesia, without sutures, without painkillers. It is documented that these restrictions were the direct cause of deaths.
24. In Jan 2025, Israel said that Gaza's sea shore was a complete "no-go zone". They banned all fishing. Before the war, approx. 6,000 people worked in fishing. By Dec 2024, 200 fishermen had been killed by Israeli forces. UN documented 28 attacks on fishermen between Jan & May 2025 alone ... 11 killed, 34 injured. Fishing infrastructure destroyed. For a population being starved, the sea was the last potential food source & Israel closed it.
25. Over 18,500 critically ill patients need medical evacuation from Gaza incl. 4,000 children. At current pace it would take 5 to 10 years to evacuate them all. Israel destroyed Gaza's only cancer hospital (Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital) ... 11,000 cancer patients now stranded with no treatment. Around 400 kidney dialysis patients died by July 2025. 1,360 patients died waiting to travel after Israel seized Rafah crossing in May 2024. Between 6 & 10 patients die every day while waiting for evacuation.
26. Israel has deliberately destroyed rescue equipment needed to recover bodies from rubble. In one strike on a parking garage in Jabaliya, 9 bulldozers provided by Egypt & Qatar were destroyed. UN reported that destruction of "vital lifting gear halts search for thousands buried under rubble." Families search for the missing with bare hands ... forced to collect body parts in plastic bags. Over 10,000 people were trapped under rubble as of May 2024. Without excavators, they remain there.
ATTACKS ON HOSPITALS & MEDICS
27. By early 2026, no hospitals in Gaza were operating fully. Out of 36, only 17 were partially operating. WHO documented 735 attacks on healthcare in Gaza, killing 917 people & damaging 125 health facilities.
28. Between 1,580 & 1,722 healthcare workers were killed in Gaza between Oct 2023 & mid-2025. An average of two medical professionals killed every single day for nearly two years.
29. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopaedics at Al-Shifa, stayed to treat the wounded. He was arrested, stripped & taken to Ofer Prison. Four months later he was dead. A fellow prisoner saw him dragged into the yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding & unable to stand. Israel has not returned his body to his family for more than a year.
30. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, paediatric director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was detained in Dec 2024. He refused to leave his very ill patients & premature infants. In 2026 it was confirmed that he'd been subjected to severe torture, starvation & massive weight loss. He remains held without charge.
31. Five-year-old Hind Rajab was trapped in a car surrounded by six dead family members, killed by tank fire. She stayed on the phone with the Red Crescent for hours. Two paramedics were sent to rescue her, after getting military clearance. Their ambulance was hit by a tank round. All three died. Forensic analysis found 335 bullets were fired at the car from 13-23 metres away. She was 5 years old.
32. In March 2025 in Rafah, Israeli forces targeted five ambulances & a fire truck "one by one." The bodies of 15 aid workers were later found in a mass grave. They had been shot at close range in the head & chest, some with hands or feet bound.
CHILDREN
33. Over 1,500 Palestinian children have been detained since Oct 2023. They are subjected to the same "torturous environment" as adults: starvation, beatings, sexual harassment & psychological abuse. Some returned to Gaza severely traumatised & completely alone, unable to find surviving family.
34. Israel systematically prosecutes Palestinian children in military courts, 500 to 700 every year. Children taken in night raids, blindfolded, bound with zip ties, beaten in transit & interrogated without a parent or lawyer present. Conviction rate near 100%, based almost entirely on coerced confessions.
TORTURE
35. UN reported that torture of Palestinian prisoners has become "state doctrine." Methods documented include rape with objects incl. rifle barrels, genital electric shocks, setting dogs on detainees, starvation & prolonged shackling until bone was exposed, requiring amputations.
36. More than 18,500 Palestinians have been detained since Oct 2023 and 9,245 are still in custody. There are 3,358 held under "administrative detention", indefinitely & without charge based on secret evidence that is not revealed to them or their lawyers. Over 4k are "enforced disappearances." Red Cross have been denied access. Those detained without charge should be considered Palestinian hostages. Over 50 UNRWA staff have been arrested, interrogated specifically about UNRWA's work & tortured ... a deliberate targeting of the agency itself.
37. Of 59 journalists released from Israeli custody, 58 reported being tortured. 2 reported that they were raped.
38. At Sde Teiman detention facility, soldiers raped a Palestinian detainee so violently he required emergency surgery for life-threatening rectal injuries. When military police came to investigate, right-wing mobs ... incl. sitting members of the Knesset ... stormed the base & physically attacked the investigators. Soldiers charged with "severe physical assault" only. No rape charges, despite medical evidence. Even those charges were later dropped.
39. Israeli soldiers have routinely filmed themselves breaking into Palestinian homes, rummaging through women's underwear, displaying it as war trophies & posting it online with sexualised, degrading commentary. No disciplinary action.
40. National Security Minister Ben-Gvir ordered on 14 Nov 2023 that Palestinian detainees be kept handcuffed in dark cells with iron beds & pit toilets, with Israeli national anthem blaring continuously. He described degradation of prisoner conditions as "one of his highest goals." He ordered caloric intake cuts & defended prisoner starvation before the Supreme Court. He reopened Rakefet prison at Ayalon ... a facility that had been closed since 1985 because of its inhumane underground conditions.
41. Palestinians held outdoors in cages referred to internally as "monkey cages." Detainees forced to wear diapers because toilet access routinely denied. Forced to take hallucinogenic drugs. During some interrogations detainees were held in "disco rooms" where deafening music was blasted continuously. To further torment captives held from Gaza, images of the destruction in Gaza were displayed in the prisons. Released detainees, incl children, were dumped at random locations at night, sometimes wearing only diapers or underwear. Some had lost limbs, sight or ability to speak while in prison.
42. 17yr old Walid Khalid Ahmad died in Megiddo Prison in Mar 2025. Autopsy documented starvation, dehydration, untreated infections & systemic neglect. A child had starved to death in an Israeli prison.
43. The witness who leaked the Sde Teiman sexual abuse footage ended up vilified & prosecuted while the perpetrators were celebrated & protected. Some senior ministers described torture as a "holy job." A rabbi offered blessings to the abusers. The Israeli public largely opposed any investigation. Over 1,300 torture complaints between 2001-2020 produced 2 investigations & zero indictments. Only 1 case has been prosecuted since Oct 2023: a reservist sentenced to 7 months for severely assaulting bound & blindfolded detainees.
IDF CONDUCT
44. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American surgeon, volunteered in Gaza in 2024. He reported to CBS News that IDF snipers were deliberately shooting children: "No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by 'the world's best sniper.'" He said 70-75% of his surgical patients were elementary school age or younger. Over 20 American doctors corroborated this. Prof Nizam Mamode, a retired NHS transplant surgery lead, gave evidence to UK Parliament that after bombings, Israeli drones would descend & "pick off" injured children on the ground. He told MPs: "I was operating on children who would say: 'this quadcopter came down & hovered over me & shot me.'" Youngest child he operated on was three years old.
45. A Haaretz investigation found soldiers described a "kill zone" in the Netzarim corridor where anyone who crosses an unmarked line is shot. A commander ordered that "anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians." Of 200 reported "militants" killed, only 10 were confirmed Hamas members. At least 773 have been killed & 2,000+ wounded near the "Yellow Line" during the Gaza ceasefire (since Oct 2025), with many of them women & children.
46. Israel used AI systems called "Lavender" & "Where's Daddy?" to generate a kill list of 37,000 people. Human operators spent ~20 seconds per target as a "rubber stamp." "Where's Daddy?" tracked targets to their family homes at night, then bombed them with unguided "dumb bombs", killing entire families. NOTE:Pre-authorised civilian casualty threshold was 15-20 per low-ranking target, *over 100 per senior target* - as per 6 intelligence officer testimonies.
47. In Apr 2025, Breaking the Silence (Israeli veterans' organisation) published testimony from dozens of soldiers describing orders to "deliberately, methodically & systematically annihilate" everything within a buffer zone consuming 16% of Gaza. Kill order: "Adult, male, kill. Shoot to kill." Soldiers briefed there was "no civilian population" & all remaining Palestinians were "terrorists." Israeli soldiers have built roads & permanent military bases across over 26% of Gaza ... infrastructure for permanent presence, not a temporary operation.
48. IDF systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields ... codenamed "the mosquito protocol." Detainees dressed in IDF uniforms, cameras strapped to them, sent into suspected booby-trapped buildings first. An officer said: "Almost every platoon keeps a 'shawish'... We operate a sub-army of slaves." It was confirmed the practice was systemic. Israeli Supreme Court had previously banned an identical practice under a different name.
49. In first six weeks alone, Israel dropped nearly 600 US-made 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza. A Harvard study found one-third landed within lethal range of hospitals. A single 2,000-pound bomb has lethal blast radius of over 350 metres. UN said use of such bombs on residential buildings, schools & refugee camps "raises serious concerns under the laws of war."
50. Human Rights Watch confirmed Israel used white phosphorus which burns at 800°C & cannot be extinguished with water. These were used over populated areas in both Gaza & Lebanon. A researcher mapped 248 white phosphorus strikes in Lebanon, where 39% hit civilian areas. HRW called this "unlawfully indiscriminate."
51. Washington Post verified over 120 videos of soldiers celebrating destruction of homes, mosques & civilian infrastructure. One soldier destroyed 21 homes "to commemorate 21 Israeli soldiers." Approx. 1,000 soldiers named in an ICC complaint based on footage they posted themselves. In April 2026, Haaretz reported open looting of Lebanese homes & businesses by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon: motorcycles, TVs, paintings, sofas & rugs loaded into vehicles in plain sight. Further testimonies described theft of gold bars. Military police checkpoints meant to stop looting were removed or never set up. Battalion & brigade commanders were aware but did not act. As one soldier put it: "when there is no punishment, the message is clear."
SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
52. Israel deliberately destroyed Gaza's maternity hospitals, neonatal wards & territory's only IVF clinic. UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women said targeting of Palestinian women is deliberate & systematic. Women forced to undergo C-sections without anaesthesia, antibiotics or clean water. Maternal & neonatal death rates have skyrocketed.
53. Based on Gaza's birth rate & overall death toll, I estimate 1,000 to 1,500 pregnant women have been directly killed. That figure does not incl. deaths from there being no hospitals left to deliver babies, or from ambulances being bombed.
54. Hundreds of Palestinian women & girls arbitrarily detained since Oct 7. Denied menstruation pads, food & medicine. Severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were kept in a cage in the rain & cold without food. Women stripped naked & searched by male soldiers. At least 2 female detainees raped, others threatened. Photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances taken by soldiers & uploaded online. Women & children reported as "gone missing after contact with the Israeli army." There's a report of at least one female infant being forcibly transferred to Israel.
55. Over 90% of Gaza's population forcibly displaced into overcrowded camps averaging 1.5 square metres per person. Women & girls stripped of all privacy & bodily autonomy. Collapse of societal structures has driven a rise in child marriage as a survival mechanism.
STATE SUPPORTED SETTLER VIOLENCE
56. Settler violence in West Bank hit highest daily average since records began in 2006. Settlers are armed, equipped & trained by Israeli military. Government also provides them with security equipment (drones, off-road vehicles) which are then used to attack & harass Palestinians. Effectively this is policy. Netanyahu has dismissed the violence as the work of "a handful of kids." In May 2026, IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth admitted he prefers troops use nonlethal means against settler stone-throwers ... while in 2025 alone the IDF killed 42 Palestinian stone-throwers on West Bank roads.
57. In Apr 2024, settlers attacked 11 villages over several days, resulting in 4 dead, 100 cars burned & thousands of animals killed. Israeli military blocked ambulances from reaching the wounded.
58. Near Bethlehem in Aug 2024, settlers handcuffed two 15-year-old Palestinian boys, broke their legs & urinated on them.
59. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in West Bank incl East Jerusalem since Oct 7 2023. This is 10 times the previous 20-year average. 167 of the dead are children ... approx. 1/5 of all West Bank children Israel has killed since UN records began in 2000, in just 2 years. Settler attacks increased from ~1,860 in 2021-2023 to at 3,088+ in 2023-2025. More than 40k were displaced by military attacks, destroying 3 refugee camps. Bluth boasted in May 2026 the IDF was "killing like we haven't killed since 1967" & spoke of "turning villages into conflict zones." Defence Minister Katz instructed the military to "prepare for an extended stay for the coming year and to not allow the return of residents." Settler groups put up billboards with the slogan "No future in Palestine" beside images of Gaza's destruction.
60. Between Feb 28 & April 27 2026, OCHA recorded 13 Palestinians killed by settlers, 100's injured & 622 driven from their homes ... an avg of ~7 attacks a day. For all of 2025 toll was up to 15 settler killings: 2 months of 2026 nearly matched a full year. During Eid al-Fitr in Mar 2026, 15-30 West Bank communities were attacked over multiple nights, burning homes, vehicles & fields. Israeli forces were present but largely did not intervene; in some cases soldiers took part in the attacks. Amir Odeh (28) was shot dead in Qusra; Odeh Awawdeh (25) was shot dead trying to stop settlers stealing his sheep.
@AndyMitten This is getting worse. Also spot the gambling sponsor. The incentives are all wrong. Fake quotes, gain attention and generate affiliate rev.
UNICEF is outraged by the killing of two drivers of trucks contracted by UNICEF to provide clean water to families in the Gaza Strip.
The victims were killed by Israeli fire in an incident that took place early this morning at the Mansoura water filling point in northern Gaza. UNICEF extends our condolences to the families of the men killed.
Full statement: https://t.co/gFQLWpCcaP
Today Massive Attack is sharing their collaboration with Tom Waits, "Boots on the Ground."
The song chronicles the madness and rabid abandonment of mankind to the commands of "The Masters of War” as Dylan put it.
https://t.co/dgoayB70p7
"BOOTS ON THE GROUND"
Thank you Tom Waits and Massive Attack for writing the soundtrack of our time.
Rage without Hate.
Together we are One.
#UNA
https://t.co/lFaZXrzseE
Israel is a depraved society far surpassing the racist brutality of the South African apartheid state. It is a criminal entity the likes of which I have never seen before … & I grew up in apartheid South Africa