August 10, 2025
Dave Decamp
“The even harsher military action by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, approved by the Israeli Cabinet last night, makes it increasingly difficult for the German government to see how these goals will be achieved,” the German leader said. “Under these circumstances, the German government will not authorize any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice.”
While Merz’s comments leave open the possibility of providing weapons to Israel that could be considered “defensive,” his announcement is significant since Germany is one of Israel’s strongest supporters and top arms suppliers, second only to the US.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), from 2019 to 2023, the US and Germany accounted for 99% of Israel’s arms exports, with the US providing 69% and Germany providing 30%.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shot at Merz on Sunday, saying the German leader “buckled” due to pressure. “I think [Merz has] been a good friend of Israel, but I think he’s buckled under the pressure of false TV reports, the internal pressure from various groups,” Netanyahu said.
Defending his decision on Sunday, Merz said he would still help Israel “defend itself” but that the German government couldn’t supply weapons that could be used in an offensive where hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed.
“Solidarity with Israel does not mean we consider every single decision by the Israeli government to be good, or that we support it, even to the extent of providing military support in the form of weapons,” Merz said.
August 9, 2025
Brett Wilkins
Appearing on Fox News‘ “Fox & Friends,” Huckabee singled out the United Kingdom after Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticized Israel’s U.S.-backed plan to fully occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse approximately 1 million Palestinians from parts of the embattled coastal enclave.
“They never get credit for the things they do to try to prevent civilian loss of life,” Huckabee said of Israel, whose 22-month assault and siege of Gaza has left at least 226,600 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing amid loosened rules of engagement effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed while targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
“You have got the Brits out there complaining about humanitarian aid and the fact that they don’t like the way Israel is prosecuting the war,” Huckabee continued. “I would remind the British to go back and look at their own history. At the end of World War II they weren’t dropping food into Germany, they were dropping massive bombs. Just remember Dresden – over 25,000 civilians were killed in that bombing alone.”
U.S. and British warplanes indiscriminately bombed Dresden with munitions including 4,000-pound “blockbusters” and incendiary explosives over two days in February 1945. The heat generated by the inferno melted human flesh, turning many victims into piles of goop. Men, women, children; the sick and the elderly; refugees and Allied prisoners of war – even the animals in the city zoo—were incinerated together.
Acclaimed author Kurt Vonnegut – an American POW imprisoned in Dresden at the time, whose seminal novel Slaughterhouse-Five was inspired by the firebombing – later described the attack as “carnage unfathomable.” After viewing images of the bombing, then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked: “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?”
As the old adage posits, “history is written by the victors,” and no Allied officials were ever held accountable for atrocities committed against their Axis enemies. However, after the war, the Nuremberg trials, Fourth Geneva Convention, and Genocide Convention sought to ensure that horrors like Nazi and Japanese war crimes and what the British described as the “terror bombing” of Germany never happened again.
Huckabee’s comments drew stinging rebuke on social media.
“So Mike Huckabee’s defense of mass civilian death is… referencing more mass civilian death?” one U.S. military veteran said on X.
“Justifying today’s atrocities by pointing to yesterday’s doesn’t make it moral. It makes it monstrous,” he added. “In fact, the lesson of Dresden should be never again, not ‘do it again.’ But here we have a U.S. diplomat cosplaying a foreign country’s mouthpiece for atrocities.”
August 10, 2025
In a video released Saturday, the Religious Zionism Party leader said he had remained in Netanyahu's coalition government "as long as I believed we were driving for decisive victory," but that he had now "lost faith that the prime minister can and wishes to lead the [Israeli military] there."
Earlier this week, Netanyahu vowed to occupy all of Gaza directly, before proposing a plan that would focus first on occupying Gaza City, while forcibly displacing the nearly 1 million Palestinians still living there.
Netanyahu's security cabinet, which includes Smotrich, approved the plan after a meeting that lasted throughout the night Thursday into Friday morning.
"Netanyahu and the cabinet decided to carry out a military operation whose goal is not victory, but to pressure Hamas for a partial prisoner deal," Smotrich added.
"That's not how you win a war," Smotrich claimed, saying he had promoted his own plan that would lead to "a lightning-fast military victory."
Smotrich urged Netanyahu to "convene the cabinet again and announce unequivocally that there will be no stopping halfway, no partial deal — this time we go for a decisive, clear step toward victory."
Netanyahu has come under pressure from Smotrich and his ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for allowing even small amounts of food into Gaza to feed starving Palestinians and for not escalating a war that has already flattened much of the strip and killed more than 100,000 people.
Despite his harsh criticism of Netanyahu on Saturday, Smotrich did not threaten to resign or call for snap elections to bring down Israel's coalition government.
Army chief Eyal Zamir also criticized the plan, but for other reasons. He warned of the consequences of displacing about one million people from Gaza City and the potential that Israeli soldiers still held captive by Hamas in Gaza could be killed as a result of the operation.
The meeting devolved into a "shouting" match after Zamir expressed his objection to the plan, advocating that the army encircle and lay siege to Gaza City instead.
In a "heated exchange" with National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, Zamir said, "There is no humanitarian answer for a million people we will transfer. Everything will be complicated."
Smotrich and his Jewish supremacist allies have publicly supported continuing the war indefinitely, including at the expense of the Israeli captives.
Smotrich demands the full reoccupation of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the strip's two million people (forcing them to become refugees in foreign countries), and the establishment of Jewish settlements across the enclave.
Dave Decamp
Germany
is Israel's second biggest arms supplier
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
said on Friday that Berlin was halting the export of military equipment that
Israel could use in Gaza “until further notice,” a step that came in response
to the Israeli cabinet approving plans to significantly escalate Israel’s
genocidal war with the goal of taking over Gaza City.
“The even harsher military action by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, approved by the Israeli Cabinet last night, makes it increasingly difficult for the German government to see how these goals will be achieved,” the German leader said. “Under these circumstances, the German government will not authorize any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice.”
While Merz’s comments leave open the possibility of providing weapons to Israel that could be considered “defensive,” his announcement is significant since Germany is one of Israel’s strongest supporters and top arms suppliers, second only to the US.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), from 2019 to 2023, the US and Germany accounted for 99% of Israel’s arms exports, with the US providing 69% and Germany providing 30%.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shot at Merz on Sunday, saying the German leader “buckled” due to pressure. “I think [Merz has] been a good friend of Israel, but I think he’s buckled under the pressure of false TV reports, the internal pressure from various groups,” Netanyahu said.
Defending his decision on Sunday, Merz said he would still help Israel “defend itself” but that the German government couldn’t supply weapons that could be used in an offensive where hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed.
“Solidarity with Israel does not mean we consider every single decision by the Israeli government to be good, or that we support it, even to the extent of providing military support in the form of weapons,” Merz said.
August 9, 2025
Brett Wilkins
"Justifying
today's atrocities by pointing to yesterday's doesn't make it moral," said
one critic. "It makes it monstrous."
Amid growing international
condemnation of Israel’s annihilation and starvation of Gaza – including from
staunch ally Britain—U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Friday
attempted to defend the genocidal assault on Gaza by invoking one of the most notorious
Allied atrocities of World War II.Appearing on Fox News‘ “Fox & Friends,” Huckabee singled out the United Kingdom after Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticized Israel’s U.S.-backed plan to fully occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse approximately 1 million Palestinians from parts of the embattled coastal enclave.
“They never get credit for the things they do to try to prevent civilian loss of life,” Huckabee said of Israel, whose 22-month assault and siege of Gaza has left at least 226,600 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing amid loosened rules of engagement effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed while targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
“You have got the Brits out there complaining about humanitarian aid and the fact that they don’t like the way Israel is prosecuting the war,” Huckabee continued. “I would remind the British to go back and look at their own history. At the end of World War II they weren’t dropping food into Germany, they were dropping massive bombs. Just remember Dresden – over 25,000 civilians were killed in that bombing alone.”
U.S. and British warplanes indiscriminately bombed Dresden with munitions including 4,000-pound “blockbusters” and incendiary explosives over two days in February 1945. The heat generated by the inferno melted human flesh, turning many victims into piles of goop. Men, women, children; the sick and the elderly; refugees and Allied prisoners of war – even the animals in the city zoo—were incinerated together.
Acclaimed author Kurt Vonnegut – an American POW imprisoned in Dresden at the time, whose seminal novel Slaughterhouse-Five was inspired by the firebombing – later described the attack as “carnage unfathomable.” After viewing images of the bombing, then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked: “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?”
As the old adage posits, “history is written by the victors,” and no Allied officials were ever held accountable for atrocities committed against their Axis enemies. However, after the war, the Nuremberg trials, Fourth Geneva Convention, and Genocide Convention sought to ensure that horrors like Nazi and Japanese war crimes and what the British described as the “terror bombing” of Germany never happened again.
Huckabee’s comments drew stinging rebuke on social media.
“So Mike Huckabee’s defense of mass civilian death is… referencing more mass civilian death?” one U.S. military veteran said on X.
“Justifying today’s atrocities by pointing to yesterday’s doesn’t make it moral. It makes it monstrous,” he added. “In fact, the lesson of Dresden should be never again, not ‘do it again.’ But here we have a U.S. diplomat cosplaying a foreign country’s mouthpiece for atrocities.”
August 10, 2025
The
extremist Israeli minister is angered that Netanyahu's plan to occupy Gaza City
while starving Palesinians does not go far enough
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich stated on 10 August that he has "lost faith" that Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can achieve a "decisive victory" over
Hamas in Gaza, days after his security cabinet agreed to launch a new offensive
to directly occupy Gaza City.In a video released Saturday, the Religious Zionism Party leader said he had remained in Netanyahu's coalition government "as long as I believed we were driving for decisive victory," but that he had now "lost faith that the prime minister can and wishes to lead the [Israeli military] there."
Earlier this week, Netanyahu vowed to occupy all of Gaza directly, before proposing a plan that would focus first on occupying Gaza City, while forcibly displacing the nearly 1 million Palestinians still living there.
Netanyahu's security cabinet, which includes Smotrich, approved the plan after a meeting that lasted throughout the night Thursday into Friday morning.
"Netanyahu and the cabinet decided to carry out a military operation whose goal is not victory, but to pressure Hamas for a partial prisoner deal," Smotrich added.
"That's not how you win a war," Smotrich claimed, saying he had promoted his own plan that would lead to "a lightning-fast military victory."
Smotrich urged Netanyahu to "convene the cabinet again and announce unequivocally that there will be no stopping halfway, no partial deal — this time we go for a decisive, clear step toward victory."
Netanyahu has come under pressure from Smotrich and his ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for allowing even small amounts of food into Gaza to feed starving Palestinians and for not escalating a war that has already flattened much of the strip and killed more than 100,000 people.
Despite his harsh criticism of Netanyahu on Saturday, Smotrich did not threaten to resign or call for snap elections to bring down Israel's coalition government.
Army chief Eyal Zamir also criticized the plan, but for other reasons. He warned of the consequences of displacing about one million people from Gaza City and the potential that Israeli soldiers still held captive by Hamas in Gaza could be killed as a result of the operation.
The meeting devolved into a "shouting" match after Zamir expressed his objection to the plan, advocating that the army encircle and lay siege to Gaza City instead.
In a "heated exchange" with National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, Zamir said, "There is no humanitarian answer for a million people we will transfer. Everything will be complicated."
Smotrich and his Jewish supremacist allies have publicly supported continuing the war indefinitely, including at the expense of the Israeli captives.
Smotrich demands the full reoccupation of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the strip's two million people (forcing them to become refugees in foreign countries), and the establishment of Jewish settlements across the enclave.
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