foreign affairs
Collateral Genocide: Inside Israel’s Official ‘Legalisation’ of Mass Civilian Killings
An Israeli Government legal analysis published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs inadvertently reveals how mass destruction of civilians in Gaza is built into the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) calculations of legitimate proportionate violence, according to an exclusive Byline Times analysis.
Drawing on two previous investigations, the analysis shows that the Israeli Government’s legal justifications for mass civilian casualties are consistent with an official policy of deliberately using disproportionate force against civilians, which is conducive to genocidal violence.
After six months, the IDF war on Gaza has resulted in the killing of 33,200 Palestinians and the destruction of over 70% of all homes in Gaza, leaving 1.9 million Palestinians displaced. Over 2% of Gaza’s children were killed or injured. Eight out of every 10 schools has been destroyed, along with 84% of all health facilities.
The scale of the violence has caused UN experts to accuse Israel of complicity in genocidal violence. Last year, South Africa launched an unprecedented application to the International Court of Justice calling for the Israeli actions to be recognised as genocide. The court has not yet issued a verdict, but did conclude that the case presented was “plausible” – and urged Israel to take measures to prevent a genocide.
It was only until seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were executed in IDF drone strikes in early April that Israel’s closest allies began to question the IDF’s conduct.
However, so far both the US and UK have largely accepted the IDF’s account that they were a result of grave errors in breach of IDF procedures.
A man displays blood-stained British, Polish, and Australian passports after an Israeli airstrike, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, in April. Photo: AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana/ Alamy
Two major investigations by Byline Times have unearthed evidence that contradicts this narrative. Our reporting revealed that the head of the IDF’s internal inquiry, Major General Yoav Har-Even, had numerous conflicts of interest which raise questions about his ability to conduct a credible inquiry. Not only was Har-Even a participant in the IDF’s “Dahiya doctrine” involving the deliberate use of disproportionate force against civilians in the 2006 Lebanon War, he directly supported the IDF’s war in Gaza from up to February 2024, and is connected to senior Israeli military figures who architected the Dahiya doctrine’s institutionalisation into official IDF policy.
We also exposed how the Obama administration had closely monitored the IDF’s adoption of the Dahiya doctrine, an IDF strategy that justifies countering an enemy by systematically targeting its national civilian population with overwhelming disproportionate force. Obama aides had received credible information that the Dahiya doctrine’s implementation during Operation Cast Lead had resulted in deadly targeting of civilians, and knew that the IDF was incapable of complying with international humanitarian law without significant international pressure. The US Government later colluded with IDF leaders to refute credible evidence of the Israeli military’s complicity in war crimes.
As early as 2010, the US Government was told by the Israeli delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that IDF commanders had considerable leeway in making decisions about proportionality when considering civilian casualty ratios, did not adequately distinguish between civilians and combatants, and routinely created kill zones in areas where civilians had been ordered to evacuate where soldiers could freely shoot “anything that moved”. As a result, even civilian aid convoys had been targeted.
In this context, IDF procedures purportedly created to protect civilians – such as leaflet dropping, roof knocking, warning calls and texts to residents – end up providing a pretext to justify disproportionate violence targeted at civilian areas on a huge scale.
As noted by Larry Lewis, former State Department advisor on civilian harm mitigation, the Israeli Government’s claim that the IDF operates a “gold standard” on civilian protection is “misguided” because: “… the gold standard for civilian harm mitigation is not a checklist of steps but rather an iterative process to learn and adapt. Israel has yet to demonstrate that it has embraced this process. More importantly, the data – not just the staggering death toll, but key attributes of the campaign – suggest Israel’s steps are not working.”
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‘Legalising’ Criminal Impunity
US support has created a climate of impunity allowing the IDF to categorise mass violence against Gazan civilians as a ‘legitimate’ strategy to destroy Hamas.
The way in which this has led to an inherently genocidal logic is reflected in a new Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefing on legal aspects of the conflict in Gaza, published in December 2023.
Set against the background of the Dahiya doctrine, the foreign ministry briefing reveals that the very steps the IDF says it is taking to protect civilian life are being used to justify the disproportionate targeting of them. By defining Israel’s sought-after military advantage at such a high-level – requiring the total obliteration of Hamas capabilities – the obliteration of almost any degree of Palestinian civilian life to achieve this goal can be deemed ‘proportionate’.
The briefing sets out the IDF’s military objectives as follows: “The military advantages that the IDF is seeking include destroying enemy military assets, targeting militants, degrading and denying enemy ability to command and control operations, neutralising underground tunnels and infrastructure used for military purposes, and denying positions (such as sniper, anti-tank and surveillance posts) which endanger IDF ground forces, all of which contribute to the overall objective of securing the release of the hostages and removing Hamas’s capability to attack Israel and its citizens.”
Yet these objectives are so broad and comprehensive, that a proportionality assessment of the permitted civilian casualties incurred in pursuit of them becomes extraordinarily permissive: “LOAC [Law of armed conflict] provides that a proportionality assessment is based on the military commander’s judgement at the time of the attack, not on hindsight: the test is conduct-oriented, not result-oriented.
“As a matter of law, civilian casualties or damage to civilian objects, while tragic, do not of themselves allow for a conclusion in regard to proportionality without an informed assessment of both the expected civilian harm and the military advantage anticipated at the time of the attack.”
The document is thus able to claim that while Israel “wishes no harm to civilians” and is solely targeting military assets and objectives, since Hamas assets are embedded throughout the civilian population and infrastructure of Gaza, these can all be destroyed in the process of targeting them.
This highlights how carefully crafted legal language is used to conceal the IDF’s intentionality in targeting civilians. However, the document reveals that far from being unintended, the IDF deliberately conflates civilian structures with Hamas combatants to the extent that the deliberate and foreseeable mass destruction of “civilian objects” becomes legitimate: “Given this reprehensible strategy, many ostensibly civilian objects may become legitimate targets, as LOAC prescribes that civilian objects become legitimate military targets when, inter alia, they make an effective contribution to military action by their purpose or use. Moreover, under LOAC, Hamas militants who fail to distinguish themselves from the civilian population are legitimate targets, as are civilians taking direct part in hostilities. As a result, it cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming ‘civilians’ or ‘civilian objects’ have been targeted, that an attack was unlawful.”
Legitimising the Partial Destruction of Gazans
Exactly how these pseudo-legal parameters are being interpreted by the IDF in executing its war was clarified in an eye-opening briefing by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), published about a week after the 7 October terrorist attack.
Its author is Colonel Pnina Sharvit Baruch, former director of the International Law Department of the IDF’s Military Advocate General (MAG), which advises commanders on the law.
As Byline Times has previously reported, the INSS – which is the most influential think-tank in Israel among the military establishment – had documented the adoption of the Dahiya doctrine as official IDF policy since 2008.
The new INSS briefing illustrates how the above IDF interpretations of international humanitarian law invert the role of proportionality in the law of armed conflict to justify massive disproportionate targeting of the entirety of Gazan society: “According to the laws of armed conflict, even when attacking a military target, it is forbidden to attack if the collateral damage expected from the attack to civilians and civilian objects is excessive in relation to the military advantage expected from the attack. In view of the enormous threat that Hamas currently poses to Israel, the denial of its military capabilities is expected to give Israel a great security advantage. Without achieving this goal, Hamas will succeed in de facto denying Israel the exercise of its sovereignty in the areas adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip. In light of this significant military advantage, even if many civilians in Gaza are harmed during the attacks, this is not necessarily excessive incidental damage and therefore would not be disproportionate attacks that are illegal.”
By this standard, due to the purported legitimacy of the military advantage to be obtained by seeking to completely degrade Hamas’ military capabilities – and the existential threat to Israel if this goal fails – the mass destruction of Gazan civilians in the process of achieving this goal can be categorised as “proportionate” even if it is on a huge scale.
In other words, the mere fact that the IDF’s military objective is to destroy Hamas is wielded to deny responsibility for the war’s conduct resulting in what the IDF knows will involve mass destruction of Gazan civilians. Such deliberate mass destruction is not being denied, but simply categorised as ‘proportionate’ against the law of armed conflict.
A Phony Defence
Israel’s key defence is that it is not intending to destroy Gazans, but to destroy Hamas - so what happens to Gazans in the process is therefore not intentional. The mass killings of Gazans is portrayed as tragically incidental to the Israeli military objective of eliminating Hamas. This logic would suggest that the war cannot be construed as falling under the definition of the UN Genocide Convention, which refers to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
But this defence fails because the IDF’s military strategies rooted in the Dahiya doctrine show that this supposed distinction in intentionality is specious.
US President Joe Biden meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, in October 2023. Photo: White House/ZUMA Press Wire/ Alamy
According to the Israeli Ministry of Affairs’ own legal brief, IDF military doctrine explicitly calculates the disproportionate destruction of Palestinian civilian life and infrastructure, resulting in the partial physical destruction of the group, as a necessary and inevitable corollary of trying to secure its military advantage.
As indicated by numerous statements from senior IDF figures previously reported by Byline Times (such as IDF advisor Colonel Gabi Siboni or Major General Giora Eiland, an advisor to defence minister Yoav Gallant whose company supplies technology to the IDF for targeting purposes in Gaza), this calculation potentially encompasses the whole of the ‘enemy’ society.
The Dahiya doctrine and its extension to the Israeli operation in Gaza reveals that the destruction of Gazan civilian life is not ‘incidental’ at all to the IDF’s mission, but is an integral feature of its military objective (total defeat of Hamas) – precisely because that objective, by the IDF’s own calculation, cannot be achieved without the comprehensive and indiscriminate destruction of Gazan society and people.
Responsibility for Foreseeable Destruction
Adding to this picture, in 2004 the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) set a crucial precedent. It clarified that a person can be found guilty of genocide even if they do not have a specific intent to destroy an ethnic or religious group in whole or in part. As long as the person enters a joint criminal enterprise in which genocide is a reasonably foreseeable consequence, they can be found guilty. The comprehensive destruction of Gazan society in breach of international humanitarian law has clearly been a foreseeable consequence of the ongoing IDF operation.
Over the last 16 years, the Dahiya doctrine was institutionalised into standard IDF policy by senior Israeli military leaders who are directly involved in Israel’s operation in Gaza.
Leaked State Department documents examined by Byline Times confirm that this logic of disproportionate violence in Gaza has evolved under the watchful eye of the United States. Through years of US support, coaching, and international cover, the IDF has been empowered to construct a sophisticated legal justification for the Dahiya doctrine’s advocacy of disproportionate violence against Palestinian civilians.
In the wake of the 7 October terrorist attack, the logic of the Dahiya doctrine has become increasingly radicalised. The greater the perceived existential threat, the greater the degree of collateral damage considered justifiable to eliminate that threat. The Israeli government’s legal constructions around the proportionality of collateral damage against perceived military advantage have thus become increasingly genocidal.
With the Hamas strike seen as representing a potential existential threat to Israel requiring the total annihilation of Hamas as a military objective, these legal constructions calculate that the disproportionate destruction of large sections of Gazan society is entirely ‘proportionate’ to the military advantage being legitimately pursued.
In effect, IDF military doctrine now makes any amount of destruction of Gaza appear ‘proportionate’ to the goal of annihilating Hamas. Far from actually protecting civilians, IDF civilian harm mitigation procedures instead become mechanisms to facilitate the deployment of overwhelming disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure across Gaza, seen by the IDF as operating symbiotically with Hamas.
This also means that the intentionality behind this destruction cannot be denied because it is inherently factored into the IDF’s proportionality calculations and rendered legitimate as an inevitable but regrettable corollary of pursing the military objective of eliminating Hamas. The simple moral mistake here is the false assumption that pursuing a military objective automatically implies that killing civilians in the process is unintentional.
That is why so many senior figures across the Israeli Government have been able to openly articulate the idea that the partial or even total destruction of Gaza is a necessary if perhaps regrettable mechanism to achieve the goal of eliminating Hamas.
Attempting to move Gaza’s wholesale destruction to the realm of collateral damage, however, does not negate its genocidal nature. When that scale of collateral damage entailing the collapse of Gazan society is recognised by the Israeli Government as a direct outcome of the pursuit of military objectives, then this remains an intended outcome of its actions even if it is cast as tragic and regrettable.
Rwanda ‘Cash for Humans’ Flights Leave Asylum Seekers ‘Terrified’
I was about to interrupt the world’s largest aviation conference. It was 2022 and, along with another activist who’d survived torture and navigated the UK asylum system, I’d travelled to Amsterdam to publicly condemn the private airlines who’d agreed to undertake the Government’s cruel ‘cash-for-humans' Rwanda flights.
As you would expect, my heart rate was through the roof, and I was extremely nervous. By the time my cue came, I stood up and took to the stage to say as loud as I could that Privilege Style airlines were profiting from the pain of refugees. I only remember a woman walking me off the stage after I’d said my piece.
The stunt was a success. The crowd applauded and, after the event, a member of the board even wrote to us to express their support. Along with public support and other actions organised by groups that I’m part of (the charity Freedom from Torture and the survivor of torture network Survivors Speak OUT) as part of our Stop the Flights campaign, Privilege Style, the airline tipped to carry out the flights, emailed us to confirm that they had pulled out of the scheme. I was so proud. We’d done it.
These memories are now complicated for me. While I’m proud of my team’s achievements, the time between then and now is littered with false hopes, anti-refugee hysteria, and now the real possibility of a flight to Rwanda. I feel like all our efforts, after all this time, have come to very little. People like us have been ignored.
I know what it’s like to have to leave my home against my will, and at very short notice. I have also taken a traumatic journey under difficult circumstances to reach safety. This unexpected chapter turned my life upside down, and it’s only through support and having the reassurance of knowing that my status is secured that I’ve been able to start the hard work of recovering and rebuilding my life.
But for so many other people I know who are waiting for their claims to be processed, in some cases for decades, they are terrified that the plane ticket to Rwanda could come at any time and have raised these feelings of anxiety in our group meetings. They are living in limbo in the UK and haven’t been able to start rebuilding their lives yet. One phone call could spell disaster.
Despite claims by the government that Rwanda is ‘safe’, the Supreme Court, UNHCR, and other human rights experts don’t agree. There are still many serious human rights concerns.
In the time since announcing the scheme, while arguing that Rwanda was safe, the Government has also granted asylum to Rwandan refugees. All of this makes my hair stand up on end. How can our Government play politics with the lives of people fleeing persecution, war, and torture? Some of the people who this Government is happy to put on a plane include victims of human trafficking and survivors of torture.
The Bill I am fighting will allow the Government to shirk its responsibility to commitments that the UK solemnly made in the wake of the Second World War. The people in power are playing God with human lives.
We are bound to see images and footage of people being herded onto planes like cattle, being flown to a country 4,000 miles away where those on board have no family or cultural ties, where there’s no guarantee of safety or a roof over their head, and where the possibility of being sent back to the hands of their torturers can’t be ruled out. We are flying people into the unknown. I ask you, is this what 'safe’ looks like?
On Monday, the Rwanda Bill returns to the House of Commons, meaning we are one step closer to it passing and Suella Braverman’s ‘dream’ of flights in the air coming true. For me, as a refugee, the dream is a nightmare.
Leaked Documents Expose how Israeli War Ministers Created IDF Policy of Mass Killing With US Support
Secret US State Department documents reveal how senior Israeli figures involved in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza, Operation Swords of Iron, played key roles in IDF military doctrines justifying the use of “disproportionate force” against civilians, with the knowledge and support of senior US Government officials.
The documents show that US officials have known for over a decade that a deliberate IDF policy of using disproportionate violence against civilians could result in targeting of civilian aid convoys, but worked to conceal this, creating a climate of impunity that has led to what many UN experts consider genocide in Gaza.
As early as 2010, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead’s destruction of significant swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, US officials were privately told by independent Israeli legal and human rights experts that the IDF was incapable of conducting meaningful reforms to avoid breaches of international humanitarian law and that only “international pressure” on the Israeli Government could hold the IDF’s “senior leadership accountable”.
As early as 2008, the State Department was closely monitoring how incumbent Israeli War Cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot played a crucial role in enshrining the controversial ‘Dahiya Doctrine’ – which calls for the use of disproportionate mass killing of civilians – into core Israeli military strategy, Byline Times can exclusively reveal.
People search for victims in the rubble of houses hit by Israeli bombing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in November 2023. Photo: UPI / Alamy Stock Photo
The doctrine was implemented with devastating consequences in Operation Cast Lead, whose war crimes were documented by the UN inquiry led by Justice Richard Goldstone. The inquiry found that Israel committed actions "amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity". Yet in 2009, the Obama administration worked secretly with senior Israeli military leaders – including current Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – to “refute” Goldstone's findings.
US officials advised the IDF to use internal inquiries and reviews as a way to undermine the report despite receiving credible information from independent experts in Israel vindicating Goldstone's main criticisms of Israeli policy.
US Government officials were specifically advised by the Israel division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that the IDF was implementing an indiscriminate shoot-to-kill policy in zones where leaflets had been dropped – an alarming precursor of the “kill zones” established in Gaza during the current war according to Ha’aretz. The policy had resulted in ICRC aid worker vehicles being targeted twice by the IDF.
The documents examined by Byline Times and obtained via the Wikileaks archive suggest that the systematic targeting of civilians became entrenched into IDF military practices with increasing impunity under the Obama administration’s watch. They also show that IDF procedures resulting in the potential targeting of aid vehicles have been in place for over a decade – and were effectively reinforced with US support.
They throw new light on how IDF military doctrine has intentionally widened the parameters of ‘proportionality’ to justify the disproportionate destruction of Palestinian civilians. These parameters mean that the larger the defined threat against Israel, the larger the military objective and therefore the wider the scope for disproportionate destruction of Palestinian civilians.
Israel’s Current War Cabinet and the Dahiya Doctrine
The inherently disproportionate targeting of Palestinian civilians enabled by the IDF’s new AI ‘Lavender’ technology in the current war on Gaza has been exposed in a recent report by +972 magazine and Local Call. The report shows how AI programming run by the IDF’s cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200, permits the killing of up to 20 Palestinian civilians as ‘proportionate’ to the goal of targeting a single Hamas operative.
Yet the secret and confidential diplomatic cables unearthed by Byline Times show that the disproportionality built into the IDF’s deployment of AI in Gaza is a direct consequence of Israeli military doctrines. Disproportionate violence can therefore be traced back to intentional IDF military decisions which see Palestinian civilian life as expendable in the pursuit of military goals to counter Hamas.
One document marked ‘secret’, from 15 October 2008, provided US Government officials with a detailed summary of communications from IDF regional commanders to local Hebrew media. Sent from Tel Aviv to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State, the cable reveals how US officials were intimately monitoring the IDF’s development of what it now openly called the “Dahiya doctrine”.
The document describes statements made in 2008 by Gadi Eisenkot, currently a minister within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s War Cabinet who previously served as IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019. Eisenkot’s Israeli National Unity party joined Netanyahu’s coalition government after the 7 October terror attack to form an emergency unity government. In 2008, Eisenkot was a regional commander in the IDF.
“On the northern border, Major General Gadi Eisenkot described a GOI [Government of Israel] policy to respond with indiscriminate force against Lebanon should hostilities resume”, notes the secret State Department cable.
Although Eisenkot’s statements about the Dahiya doctrine in 2008 are well-known, Byline Times can reveal for the first time that his stated confirmation of the doctrine’s formal approval by the IDF was being closely observed by the Obama administration: “OC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot described a tense situation along the northern Israeli border – and suggested a crushing Israeli response should fighting resume… Eisenkot labeled any Israeli response to resumed conflict the ‘Dahiya doctrine’ in reference to the levelled Dahiya quarter in Beirut during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. He said Israel will use disproportionate force upon any village that fires upon Israel, ‘causing great damage and destruction.’ Eisenkot made very clear: this is not a recommendation, but an already approved plan – from the Israeli perspective, these are ‘not civilian villages, they are military bases.’”
As previously reported by Byline Times, the implications of the Dahiya doctrine were further spelled out by several other IDF officials that year in papers published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). In one, Colonel Gabi Siboni, who is now Chief Methodologist for the IDF’s Research Centre for Force Utilisation, a military planner for the IDF’s Northern Command and a consultant for the Israeli Ministry of Defence, explained that the IDF’s response to hostilities “aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand a long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike… must prioritise damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite… and should target economic interests and the centres of civilian power that support the organisation… This approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well.”
The implications of the Dahiya doctrine for the IDF’s rules of engagement were presented to the Knesset Committee for Foreign and Security Affairs during the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza: “The troops will be preceded by a ferocious pillar of fire. After the shooting, the warnings, anyone remaining in the area, in one of the most densely populated urban sites in the world is either a terrorist or knows the price to pay.”
The Dahiya doctrine was therefore behind the IDF’s policy of broadcasting evacuation orders to local civilian districts in Gaza, followed by massive military bombardments.
Dahiya Doctrine and the IDF’s Artificial Intelligence Unit
Another senior Israeli military figure directly linked to the current use of AI targeting technology across the Gaza Strip was also involved in developing the Dahiya doctrine as a key plank of IDF policy.
In a paper published in 2009 shortly after Colonel Siboni’s intervention, then IDF Major General Giora Eiland, who had previously served as head of the Israeli National Security Council from 2004 to 2006, explained how Israel would fight another war with Lebanon through a policy of collective punishment of the entire nation: “Such a war will lead to the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population. There will be no recurrence of the situation where Beirut residents (not including the Dahiye quarter) go to the beach and cafes while Haifa residents sit in bomb shelters. Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hezbollah’s behaviour more than anything else.”
According to the INSS at the time, these papers were not simply academic musings but represented the fact that the Dahiya doctrine was now formally part of “the IDF’s new response policy”.
In other words, Eiland’s argument that deliberately and disproportionately targeting the entire civilian population of the enemy’s national or ethnic group is a legitimate strategy to deter further attacks was not merely his opinion, but an integral part of Israeli military strategy.
Although retired, Eiland is currently serving as an adviser to Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. He is also director of an Israeli company supplying AI technology to the IDF for military targeting across the Gaza Strip.
Since 2021, Eiland has served on the board of directors of Corsight, an AI facial recognition company whose technology is being used by Israel’s military intelligence unit (including Unit 8200 running Lavender) to collect information about Palestinians. Corsight’s mass surveillance capabilities use Google Photos to create a database of Palestinian faces. This is used by the IDF to identify alleged Hamas operatives and people connected to them from drone footage and other imagery.
On 5 April, BBC News television interviewed Eiland about the findings of the IDF’s internal inquiry into the killings of WCK aid workers.
Eiland told the broadcaster that “errors” were common and “regrettable” in IDF targeting. The BBC did not mention Eiland’s firm’s role in supporting the IDF’s targeting processes across Gaza.
Eiland’s narrative of regrettable errors is, however, deceptive given that in November 2023, he published an op-ed in Yedioth Aharonot calling for the IDF to target the entirety of the Gazan population, articulating the same logic as the Dahiya doctrine. He stated that Israel is fighting the entire "State of Gaza", saying: “Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the organisation, and on the other hand, if they go through a humanitarian disaster; then presumably, some Hamas fighters and more junior commanders will begin to understand that the war is futile and that it is better to prevent irreversible harm to their families.”
Eiland added that “we do not support suffering on the other side as an end, but as a means” and urged that Israel “must not… fight only Hamas fighters”, but must wage war “against the opposing system in its entirety, because it is precisely the civilian collapse that will bring the end of the war closer.”
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, Eiland’s “statements are an accurate reflection” of the “strategy pursued in the Gaza Strip at present”.
That month, in a separate TV interview on Israel’s Channel 12, Eiland described Gaza as “a Nazi state, in which they have managed to recruit the entire civil society in support of the struggle against Israel.” He criticised the idea that there is “Hamas, bad people, and civilians in Gaza, who are innocent and need to be saved."
"That is not the reality in Gaza… Every other home in Gaza has an entrance down to the tunnels below," he said, adding: "These are private homes. All the hospital and school administrators are Hamas workers. There is a great effort by all Gazans against Israel. They are united around their leadership, not opposed to the leadership.”
Israeli Defence Minister: Pushing for War in Gaza
In the same month that his own advisor publicly supported Israel’s targeting of civilians across Gaza, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant made a direct reference to the logic of the Dahiya doctrine when he threatened Lebanese citizens in the context of IDF practices in Gaza: “I am saying here to the citizens of Lebanon, I already see the citizens in Gaza walking with white flags along the coast... If Hezbollah makes mistakes of this kind, the ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we are doing in Gaza, we know how to do in Beirut.”
Gallant’s comments appear to confirm that Israel’s military strategy in Gaza has been precisely what his advisor Eiland described.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shakes hands with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken at The Kirya in Tel Aviv, In 2023. Photo: American Photo Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
The State Department documents examined by Byline Times show that Gallant was also one of the earliest supporters of a large-scale IDF military intervention in Gaza to eliminate Hamas. Within the 2008 diplomatic cable, US Government officials noted statements by Gallant during his tenure as head of the IDF’s Southern Command: “In the south, Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant [sic] suggested Israel could retake the Gaza Strip at any time – but with a heavy price."
Galant argued that the decision to militarily disengage from Gaza was creating a deteriorating security situation: “Nevertheless, Galant argued that the balance of power remains in Israel’s favour – Hamas is ‘still a thousandth of Israel’s military might.’ As such, he suggests the IDF can do ‘almost anything it feels like in the Gaza Strip.’”
In 2007, another State Department document marked ‘confidential’, sent to the US National Security Council, Secretary of Defence, Secretary of State and US European Command, records how Yoav Gallant “is pushing for a large-scale campaign in Gaza” although this was opposed at the time by then IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi on the grounds that the IDF “would suffer casualties, and large numbers of Palestinian civilians would be injured and killed… under intense international media coverage”.
US Hears Evidence of how IDF Policy Facilitates War Crimes
It was not long before Gallant got his wish when the IDF launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. Further State Department documents reveal how the US Government received compelling evidence from independent observers in Israel of IDF complicity in war crimes during the operation – but actively sought to sanitise it. Incumbent defence minister Gallant participated in that historic process.
Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, more than 5,000 injured, and some 100,000 left homeless with numerous schools, hospitals and other civilian structures destroyed. Goldstone's report in 2009 concluded that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. In particular, the report concluded that the IDF had implemented a military doctrine involving “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations”.
This was, in other words, the Dahiya doctrine applied to the Gaza Strip.
In April 2011, Goldstone wrote an op-ed recanting the idea that the use of disproportionate force was the result of a “deliberate” policy. Three co-authors of his UN report, however, affirmed that “nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions of that report". They also noted that the UN team had been subjected to significant pressure to “sanitise” their findings: “Had we given in to pressures from any quarter to sanitise our conclusions, we would be doing a serious injustice to the hundreds of innocent civilians killed during the Gaza conflict, the thousands injured, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives continue to be deeply affected by the conflict and the blockade… To deny modes of accountability reinforces impunity.” The Obama administration appears to have been a significant force in pushing for the report to be changed.
The State Department already knew that the “Dahiya doctrine” was an “approved plan” of the IDF since Major General Gadi Eisenkot had first articulated it in 2008. After the publication of the Goldstone report, the US Government continued to receive information on the IDF’s strategy of disproportionate force, and knew it could result in the targeting of civilian aid convoys.
One US government cable, from 27 January 2010 and marked ‘confidential’, reported here for the first time, shows how then Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner met with a range of Israeli and international NGOs, as well as UN agencies, who all questioned the credibility of ongoing IDF investigations into the crimes documented by the Goldstone report. The State Department cable was sent to the National Security Council, Secretary of State, and United Nations offices in Geneva and New York.
“All agreed on the need for an independent commission to review the credibility of IDF investigations”, the cable recorded. Limor Yehuda of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s oldest and largest human rights organisation, warned Posner “that IDF internal investigations could not resolve the main issues of how Israel conducted the military operation, including its targeting and policy decisions”. Even as she expressed scepticism of some of the Goldstone's findings, she said that “only international pressure could influence the GOI to create an independent investigation that could hold senior leadership accountable for alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) during the armed conflict.”
A key focus of the cable is a confidential ‘Conduct of Hostilities’ report about Operation Cast Lead prepared in June 2009 by the Israel delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was submitted to the Israeli Government.
The ICRC report, according to the cable, identified “fundamental disagreements between the IDF and the ICRC regarding distinction” between combatants and non-combatants. For the IDF, “a policeman who was not engaged in hostilities against Israel” was still identified as a combatant, for instance, who could be legitimately targeted.
“Another disagreement was the targeting of civilian infrastructure”, noted the cable. “For the IDF… open agricultural land might be a legitimate target because at some point in the future it could be used for firing rockets at Israel; for the ICRC, this was a highly problematic assumption.”
Kill Zones
Similar IDF assumptions led to a ‘shoot-anything-that-moves’ policy in areas where the IDF had dropped leaflets, the confidential ICRC report revealed. The State Department document describes a crucial conversation between the head of the ICRC Israel delegation, Pierre Wettach, and Obama aide Michael Posner:
“Another ICRC concern was that for the IDF, ‘force protection’ meant a ‘zero casualty’ policy. Wettach commented that the GOI position as articulated by the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] was that force protection was a legitimate excuse for all actions by Israel. Wettach observed, however, that ‘dropping leaflets is fine, but it doesn’t mean that once it’s done, you can shoot at anything that moves.’”
The ICRC representatives told Posner that the tendency to permit disproportionate targeting of civilians was because the IDF gave “as much latitude as far down the chain of command as possible”, allowing IDF soldiers to make targeting decisions against civilians and civilian structures in zones where warnings had already been distributed.
This is consistent with reports of “kill zones” in relation to the current Israeli operation in Gaza, attributed to IDF sources, where soldiers do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in areas after orders to evacuate have already been delivered.
The State Department document used the IDF’s permissive approach to explain an incident during Operation Cast Lead similar to the IDF’s April targeting of WCK aid workers: “Wettach added that there had been two incidents during Cast Lead in which ICRC vehicles were fired on by the IDF, which should never have happened. Though the IDF fire did not cause any casualties, it led to the suspension of ICRC movement in Gaza for two days.”
Whitewashing War-Crimes
This document throws new light on a separate State Department cable which was previously discovered in 2019. The cable revealed how the Obama administration was secretly colluding with the IDF to refute the Goldstone report. Senior IDF commanders, including the current Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, were coached by US officials in how to undermine the Goldstone report on the world stage. According to the cable: “During these meetings, A/S Posner stressed the purpose of his visit was to ‘listen and learn’ from Israeli interlocutors, and to confer about how the Government of Israel could most effectively tell its ‘story’ regarding Operation Cast Lead to the international community.”
Ignoring everything he was told by Israeli legal and human rights experts, the cable also shows how Posner instructed IDF officials to draw a “distinction between human rights law and international humanitarian law, stressing that the latter is the legal regime applicable to situations of armed conflict such as during the Israeli Cast Lead operation in Gaza”. He then claimed that “the United Nations and many state members of the Human Rights Council… want to apply human rights law, and not IHL, to the Gaza conflict, which he described as ‘wrong-headed.’”
During the meetings with IDF leaders, Posner reassured Israeli officials that the US would work to help the IDF communicate its claims of complying with international humanitarian law to the world. Describing the Goldstone report as a “fundamentally flawed report”, Posner told the IDF leaders that: “… the United States understood the complexities of operating in a densely populated area while facing an asymmetric threat. He stressed the importance of changing the public debate to better reflect a changing world in which tough decisions were made in the face of these asymmetric challenges.”
The documents unveiled here throw new light on the scale of violence in Gaza during Operation Swords of Iron. Rather than being a catalogue of regrettable errors, it has been the result of a deliberate policy of disproportionate force intentionally targeted against civilians and civilian infrastructure. Though formalised in 2006 during the war in Lebanon as the ‘Dahiya doctrine’, it was first tested and applied in Gaza via Operation Cast Lead. By colluding with Israeli military leaders to help the IDF justify this illegal form of asymmetrical warfare through new procedures and legal justifications, the Obama administration was complicit in the institutionalisation of the Dahiya doctrine as an integral component of IDF policy.
The Israeli Ministry of Defence and the IDF did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The US State Department and former Obama aide Michael Posner were contacted for comment but are yet to respond.
No Human Being Can Exist
Nine hundred, 1,000, 1,500, 1,800, 2,600, 3,500, 4,600, 5,000, 5,900, 6,500. The fatality figures, with which no one can keep up, are augmented every few hours with another twenty here and thirty there as this building or that is brought down in a cataclysmic burst of fire, smoke, and rubble. Three or four hundred people — or more — are being killed every day.
Israeli Aid Worker Inquiry Compromised by Ties to IDF Mass Killing Doctrine
The head of the IDF’s internal inquiry into the killings of aid workers holds direct ties to the IDF operation in Gaza, including to senior Israeli military figures behind military practices which legitimise the targeted mass killing of civilians in pursuit of military objectives, Byline Times can exclusively reveal.
The connections raise urgent questions about the conclusions of the inquiry, which identified “grave errors” behind the IDF actions and sacked two senior officers.
In early April, seven British, Australian, US-Canadian, Polish and Palestinian aid workers with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) were targeted and killed by IDF drone strikes.
The IDF immediately denied that the strikes were intentional. Following global outrage, the IDF launched an internal inquiry which found that the killings were a “grave accident” resulting from mistaken identity due to violations of IDF standard operating procedures.
However, Byline Times’ investigation reveals that retired Major General Yoav Har-Even, a former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate who was tasked by the Israeli Government to lead the IDF’s internal investigation into the aid worker killings, has been directly involved in supporting the IDF military campaign in Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.
He also has ties to the key architects of the IDF’s ‘Dahiya doctrine’ – including incumbent Israeli Government War Cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot – which enshrines disproportionate mass violence against civilians into standard targeting procedures.
Supporting Swords of Iron
Between 2016 and February 2024, Maj. Gen. Yoav Har-Even has served as CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of the largest defence companies in Israel. Rafael was established in 1948 as part of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, and in 2002 was incorporated as an Israeli Government-owned limited company.
Yet Maj. Gen. Har-Even played a direct role in supporting Operation ‘Swords of Iron’, the official codename for Israel’s war across the Gaza Strip launched after the 7 October terror attack. As CEO of Rafael, he presided over a period of “intensive activity during Swords of Iron War” according to an official Rafael company report.
Har-Even was originally due to step down in December 2023, but extended his tenure to support the IDF war in Gaza. The chairman of Rafael’s board thanked him at the time for “his current efforts in the ‘Swords of Iron’ war.”
From December to February, Rafael “intensified its support for the IDF and the security system,” according to the company press release. “Efforts focused on accelerating supplies and implementing Rafael’s systems for the IDF… In addition, efforts were made to supply systems supporting the military effort”, including missile production and parts for the Trophy Active Protection System (APS) used in Challenger tanks in IDF ground operations:
“Rafael also continued to support the security establishment at the IDF bases and operational areas supporting use of the systems, identifying needs and providing immediate solutions while continuously upgrading the systems and integrating new operational capabilities in the midst of combat.”
Additionally, some 20% of Rafael employees were recruited into the IDF reserves.
The company press release confirms that Rafael’s Trophy APS “has been a critical asset enabling the ground maneuvering of IDF troops in Gaza.” Last year, Rafael conducted live tests of the Trophy system in collaboration with the UK Ministry of Defence.
Dahiya Doctrine
Yoav Har-Even’s direct involvement in supporting the IDF operation in Gaza, despite also being tasked to lead the investigation into the conduct of the operation, is an obvious conflict of interest which has been unreported until now.
Yet Har-Even also has direct ties to key Israeli military figures involved in the development and execution of the controversial ‘Dahiya doctrine’, an IDF military strategy for asymmetric warfare which exhorts the use of “disproportionate force” targeted at civilians and civilian infrastructure in pursuit of military objectives.
The doctrine is named after the Dahiya neighbourhood in Beirut, where civilian buildings were comprehensively pulverised by Israeli air power during the 2006 Lebanon war. Over 1,000 Lebanese people were killed, and one million Lebanese civilians displaced due to the destruction of civilian infrastructure by the IDF.
As an IDF Commander during the Lebanon War, Har-Even was directly involved in the execution of the Dahiya doctrine. The strategy of disproportionate force was later formally enshrined into standard Israeli military practices.
During Har-Even’s tenure, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems has been a longtime client of G.Bina, an Israeli security consulting firm founded and run by Colonel Gabi Sibon, one of the earliest architects of the ‘Dahiya doctrine’.
In 2008, the ‘Dahiya doctrine’ was first publicly articulated by then head of the IDF’s Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot, who had executed the strategy in 2006.
“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on,” Eisenkot told the Israeli press in 2008. “We will apply disproportionate force and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”
Eisenkot would go on to serve as the IDF’s twenty-first chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, and is currently a minister within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s War Cabinet. His Israeli National Unity party joined Netanyahu’s coalition government after the 7 October terrorist attack to form an emergency unity government.
Following Eisenkot’s comments in 2008, IDF Colonel Gabriel (Gabi) Siboni further spelt out the implications of the Dahiya doctrine in a paper that year for Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). The INSS is one of the most powerful think tanks in Israel with close ties to the Israeli military establishment.
In his paper titled Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War, Col. Siboni wrote:
“With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand a long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritise damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite… and should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organisation… This approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well.”
The INSS acknowledged at the time that the Dahiya doctrine was now formally part of “the IDF’s new response policy”.
The implications of the Dahiya doctrine for the IDF’s rules of engagement were later presented to the Knesset Committee for Foreign and Security Affairs during the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) in Gaza: “The troops will be preceded by a ferocious pillar of fire. After the shooting, the warnings, anyone remaining in the area, in one of the most densely populated urban sites in the world is either a terrorist or knows the price to pay.”
Dahiya in Gaza
Rafael Advanced Defence System’s connection to Col. Siboni represents another set of undisclosed conflicts of interest for Yoav Har-Even due to Siboni’s extensive involvement in the Israeli military establishment.
In addition to Rafael, Siboni’s clients also include the Israeli Ministry of Defence and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
Col. Gabi Siboni has played a direct role in crafting the IDF’s military strategy and tactics. An active IDF consultant, he serves as Chief Methodologist of the IDF Research Centre for Force Utilisation and Buildup and a senior planner for the IDF’s Northern Command.
In 2019, Siboni and current war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot co-authored a briefing on Israel’s national security strategy published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
During the current war, Col. Siboni has openly supported the IDF’s policies of mass killings of civilians in Gaza while promoting flawed data underplaying the scale of IDF killings of Palestinian civilians during the conflict.
In a paper for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), Siboni drew on Dahiya doctrine thinking to justify the scale of violence against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza. In comments that genocidally conflate Hamas’ existence with the civilian population of Gaza, Siboni suggested that Gazan civilians represent a new generation of terrorists:
“Hamas is deeply embedded in the population of the Gaza Strip. Not only do Hamas terrorists receive support and assistance from the population, some of the ‘civilian’ population has intensified resistance and taken up arms against IDF forces. The events of Simchat Torah when a barbaric mob joined the Nukhba terrorists in carrying out the massacre in Gaza border communities, was not exceptional. In fact, this is a ‘popular’ war with the participation of civilians.
"The Gaza Strip has seen the emergence of a generation whose sole goal is to kill and exterminate Jews. In the face of this resistance, the IDF is succeeding in advancing methodically and systematically.”
Whitewashing the Civilian Casualty Ratio
Despite this justification for targeted mass killings of the civilian population of Gaza on the grounds that they can be presumed to be terrorists, Siboni also claimed that civilian casualties in Gaza are “the lowest in the world when compared to all the wars in urban areas in the past hundred years”, suggesting a ratio of 1.3 civilians for each Hamas terrorist killed (which he wrote is far lower than average ratios in other urban conflicts of 5-7 non-combatants for every dead combatant).
In contrast, independent research by London-based charity Action on Armed Violence found that on average the IDF was killing 10.1 civilians per air strike.
A recent report by +972 Magazine and Local Call based on former and active IDF sources shows that the civilian casualty ratio is even higher. According to the report, the IDF’s new AI ‘Lavender’ technology run by the IDF’s cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200, permits the killing of up to 20 Palestinian civilians for every low-level Hamas operative.
A Compromised Inquiry
The extensive involvement of Yoav Har-Even in supporting the IDF’s war in Gaza – as well his longstanding connections to senior IDF generals who helped make the disproportionate targeting of civilians a key plank of the IDF’s approach to asymmetric warfare – raise urgent questions about the integrity of his investigation into the IDF’s killings of WCK.
The UK Government has so far accepted the findings of the IDF inquiry, with Foreign Secretary David Cameron saying: “Lessons must be learnt from today’s initial findings from the IDF. It’s clear major reform of Israel’s deconfliction mechanism is badly needed to ensure the safety of aid workers.” He also called for “a wholly independent review to ensure the utmost transparency and accountability.”
Byline Times’ investigation, however, indicates that the IDF inquiry cannot be taken at face value. Conducted by a senior IDF veteran embedded in Israel's military establishment who himself participated in the Dahiya doctrine, the inquiry completely ignored how the IDF’s longstanding policy of disproportionate force against civilians could have played a critical role in the executions of WCK aid workers.
The Israeli Ministry of Defence declined to comment. The IDF, Rafael, G.Bina and the Foreign Office were contacted for comment.
The Orbánisation of British Politics: Farage and Braverman Headline with Hungarian Prime Minister at National Conservatism Conference
Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage have been announced as speakers alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at this year’s National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Brussels next week.
Braverman also spoke at last year's UK event with other Conservative politicians including Michael Gove, Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger. Last year the Byline Times reported on NatCon's links to Orbán, US billionaire Peter Thiel, and the organisations funding this effort to mainstream Christian Nationalism.
The line-up for this year’s NatCon Brussels further demonstrates Orbán’s influence on the right of European politics and also includes many speakers with links to radical right networks in Europe and the US who aim to roll back reproductive and sexuality rights.
Toby Young’s Free Speech Union (FSU) is again well represented at NatCon, demonstrating the organisation's links to the movement.
James Orr and Matthew Goodwin both spoke at NatCon UK and are speaking again in Brussels. Orr was chair of NatCon UK, and is UK chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation (EBF) which is the organisation behind NatCon.
The FSU’s Frank Ferudi is also speaking. Ferudi, formerly of the Revolutionary Communist Party, is the Executive Director of the Brussels branch of the Hungarian government-backed college Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). Furedi told Politico that his position at MCC Brussels was “a chance to fight back in the culture wars” in an article that labelled him “Orban’s attack dog”.
In May 2022, Furedi also spoke at the US-based Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted in Budapest. CPAC is an annual conference organised by the American Conservative Union (ACU), the foremost Republican organisation in the US.
Another NatCon speaker Ralph Gert Schoellhammer is a Visiting Fellow at MCC Budapest. He is also a writer for UnHerd, Spiked, and the European Conservative and a regular on GB News and Talk TV.
NatCon features several other speakers from institutes backed by the Hungarian Government. John O'Sullivan is president of the Danube Institute, a Hungarian conservative think tank that receives state funding, and Rob Dreher is a fellow of the institute. Another speaker Gladden Pappin is president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, Hungary’s foreign policy research institute of state.
NatCon has been linked to the brand of Christian Nationalism adopted by the radical right in the US. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation who spoke at NatCon UK 2023 is an author of Project 2025 which sets out the agenda for a second Trump presidency, including policies that would “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination” and roll back access to abortion and contraception with a “focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance.”
Speaking at NatCon 2024, Paul Coleman is the executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF) and a lawyer. The Southern Poverty Law Center based in the US which monitors far-right activity has labelled the ADF as a hate group. The organisation was also named in an EU report Tip of the Iceberg (TOTI) as being a key organisation in a Europe-wide network involved in funnelling US and Russian dark money into religious extremism with the aim of rolling back reproductive and sexuality rights. Between 2008 and 2019 ADF spent over $23,000,000 on anti-gender campaigning across Europe.
ADF’s UK entity has recently ramped up lobbying in Westminster, according to analysis by the Observer the latest financial accounts for ADF UK show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.
Another NatCon speaker Ladislav Ilčić MEP is a Croatian politician who represents Hrvatski suverenisti (Croatian Sovereigntists) and is part of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
Ilčić also attended the European Congress of Families conference (ECF) held in Croatia in September 2023 which featured speakers from other key organisations named in the TOTI report including Brian Brown of the International Organization of the Family which is directly linked to Russian oligarchs who have been under western sanctions since the annexation of Crimea. In 2014 Brown organised a conference inside the Kremlin palace.
Other ECF speakers included Conservative MPs Miriam Cates and Ranil Jayawardena. ECF was organised by the ECR which contains factions of socially conservative, right-wing populist, liberal-conservative, Christian democratic, far-right, and national conservative parties.
Three other members of the ECR are also speaking at NatCon 2024, co-chairman Ryszard Legutko from Poland, Dutch independent MEP Rob Roos, and Vice President Hermann Tertsch del Valle-Lersundi who is a member of the Spanish VOX Political Party which is named in the TOTI report as being part of the $700,000,000 anti-gender network.
European politicians at NatCon 2024 also include members of the Identity and Democracy Party, Tom Vandendriessche of Belgium's Vlaams Belang party who although described themselves as centre-right are widely considered to be on the far right, and Patricia Chagnon, an MEP representing Marie Le Pen's National Rally party.
Other NatCon speakers include:
Melanie Phillips, columnist for The Times and the Jewish News Syndicate, and regular on the BBC is also speaking at the conference.
So too is Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist and political analyst who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, accused of being a hate group and fake news publisher that has received funding from the Mercer Family Foundation run by the billionaire Mercer family who also funded Cambridge Analytica. The Gatestone Institute has ties to the British 'think tanks' the Henry Jackson Society and Policy Exchange as reported by the Byline Times.
Also speaking is German aristocrat Gloria von Thurn und Taxis who worked closely with conservative Traditionalist Catholic leaders within the church and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, with whom she planned to set up a school to educate and train right-wing Catholics.
The conference's special guest is Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German Cardinal of the Catholic Church who has courted controversy for public criticism of Pope Francis stating that the Pope has “uttered plenty of material heresies”.
The Dilemma Facing Civil Servants Over the UK’s Arms Sales to Israel
It was recently reported that the union which represents civil servants – the Public and Commercial Services Union – was considering taking legal action to prevent its members in the Department for Business and Trade “from being forced to carry out unlawful acts”. In this case, being required to process arms sales to Israel, which the union suggested could make them criminally liable for being complicit with war crimes.
The Government continues to maintain that arms sales to Israel are lawful, with Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden recently telling the BBC that Israel is "still facing this existential threat from Hamas" and was "prosecuting a legitimate war of self-defence".
He added that the UK would “of course act in accordance with our obligations under law in respect of arms sales", implying that arms sales could be suspended if there is clear evidence of systematic Israeli violations of international humanitarian law.
Dowden’s position is inconsistent with separate comments, made in a leaked recording by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, Alicia Kearns, suggesting that the Government has already received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law.
The matter could quickly be cleared up if the Government was willing to publish its internal legal advice, but it has so far refused to do so – on the basis that the advice is confidential. Kearns, a former Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence official, has repeatedly pressed ministers, including Foreign Secretary David Cameron, on the legal advice they have received and called for the Government to come clean.
Adding to the pressure, last week former Supreme Court justices were among 600 lawyers who wrote to the Government saying that weapon exports to Israel must end because the UK risks breaking international law over a "plausible risk of genocide" in Gaza.
This controversy has fuelled a long-running debate over who is to determine what is lawful and ethical in government policy, and what the duty is of civil servants in such cases. Such matters were highly topical during Brexit, and have also been at issue in the context of the Government’s handling of immigration.
Some commentators argue that it is civil servants’ duty to obey ministers, who have democratic legitimacy by virtue of their election to office, no matter what. Others point out that the civil service code, which defines and expands on four core values of the civil service, is crystal clear in its obligation on civil servants to act with integrity and to comply with the law.
I explored this issue at length previously, in which I discussed the dilemmas facing public servants when they are tasked with implementing a policy with which they do not agree or that they consider is unethical or illegal. “Is our primary duty to the elected government of the day, even when it may be breaking the law or wilfully deceiving the public?" I observed. "Or is our duty to some broader notion of the 'public good’"?
If the latter, how is that to be defined, and by whom? If we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, do we become complicit ourselves? But if we speak out, are we breaking our pledge of impartial service to the government of the day and undermining the foundation of trust between politicians and officials?”
After grappling with the matter from several different angles, I eventually came to the conclusion that the only viable course for a civil servant who felt conflicted, and unable to carry out ministerial orders, was to ask to be reassigned or to resign.
As I put it in my own resignation letter from the Foreign Office in 2019, “each person has to find their own level of comfort”. You don’t have the right to change policy – that is for elected politicians and the ultimate verdict of voters. But you do have a right to your own personal conscience, and a right not to be a part of something you believe to be unethical.
That may sound like a harsh judgement, requiring blameless civil servants to lose their jobs for something which may in hindsight end up being determined to have been wrong. But, government could not function if officials downed tools any time they had a concern. In a democracy, advisors advise, and ministers decide.
There will always be ambiguity over what is unlawful, unconscionable or unethical because these are subjective decisions. In the case of arms sales, the UK’s export licensing criteria only provide overall guidelines, which are open to interpretation.
Ruins of a destroyed mosque in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
For example, when I was Head of Human Rights in the Foreign Office, it was our department’s responsibility to advise on whether a particular arms sale might put us in breach of the export guidelines’ human rights criteria.
We had to weigh up considerations such as: whether the recipient country was a functioning democracy; whether it had a disciplined and accountable chain of military command, subject to civilian oversight; its overall record on respect for human rights and humanitarian law; whether breaches are properly investigated and perpetrators duly punished, or whether there is a pattern of repeated violations, and failure to sanction those who commit them; the circumstances in which the weapons might be put to use – for offensive or defensive purposes; for legitimate military reasons to protect national security against a legitimate enemy, or to suppress internal dissent; to be used in a proportionate manner, or indiscriminately, in a way which put unacceptable numbers of civilians at risk; whether the equipment in question had a dual use function, different from the one for which the weapons were ostensibly being sought, which meant they might end up being used for inappropriate purposes; and the risk of the weapons being diverted from their intended destination and falling into the hands of a terrorist group or unregulated militia instead.
Thus, for example, a country might ask to buy a relatively innocuous sounding piece of equipment, such as protective armour or night vision goggles, for the ostensible purpose of helping their police forces maintain order during large public demonstrations. This sounds reasonable. However, if the country in question has a track record of ruthlessly suppressing internal dissent, or of oppressing particular minorities, then we might recommend against the sale.
In short, we had to weigh up the kind of weapons being sought, the nature of the country trying to buy them, and the circumstances in which the weapons might be used. Different analysts can come to different conclusions – as evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Office’s human rights department often used to end up in vigorous disagreement with different parts of Whitehall over the appropriateness of certain arms sales.
In the case of Israel, I can see why arguments might be made in either direction. There are many, grave concerns, which I share, about Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza and its blocking of aid to the desperate civilians there, as well as over its long-standing treatment of Palestinians, occupation of the West Bank, and construction of new settlements in violation of international humanitarian law.
If I was still Head of the Human Rights in the Foreign Office, I would definitely argue in favour of suspending arms sales, until we saw more consistent efforts to protect civilians and aid workers, and facilitate aid into the Strip.
But, whatever my personal abhorrence of Israel’s current Government, and deep anguish over its conduct in Gaza, I accept that others might come to a different conclusion – pointing to Israel’s status as a democracy, with a civilian-led, generally disciplined military, which is entitled to respond to the unprecedently brutal attack on it on 7 October 2023 by Hamas. Not least since Hamas continues to assert its desire to destroy Israel, continues to hold more than 100 Israeli hostages, and bears prime responsibility for putting civilians at risk by its own tactics of hiding among them.
It is hard to write about this subject without risking a ton of opprobrium on my head, from those who can see no good in the Palestinians, or only evil in Israel. But, as so often in foreign policy, nothing is black and white.
I have no doubt that behind the scenes there is a vigorous debate going on across Whitehall, and between civil servants and ministers, on the UK’s overall approach towards Israel and Gaza. That is entirely as it should be, and civil servants should neither be lionized or penalised, for simply doing their job.
Russia’s Recklessness with Zaporizhzhia – Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant
On 7 April, Russia launched a drone attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant were reckless.
“No nuclear power plant in the world is designed to withstand [such incidents],” a recent IAEA statement read. “Shelling of [the] Zaporizhzhia NPP and its infrastructure is unacceptable.” If the attacks continue, such incidents would “significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident,” the IAEA added.
The incident impacted one of the power plant’s six reactors, and the events were a “serious incident with [the] potential to undermine [the] integrity of the reactor’s containment system.” The statement concluded that the attack was a “serious incident that endangered [the] nuclear safety and security [of Ukraine].”
This is not the first time the Russians have attacked the ZNPP. Since the beginning of the war, Russia has occupied territory around the power plant. When the Russian invasion began, the Russians shelled the facility with their artillery as they took over the area in March 2022. Several months later, Russian forces attacked the facility again in November 2022. This prompted a statement from the United Nations urging the Russians to stop their attacks on the area. The Russians ignored these pleas, and instead, they turned the installation into an army base. This further jeopardized the area.
By 2023, matters became worse. Throughout the year, the power plant lost power, thus risking the safety and security of the facility. Power is necessary for the plant to function. The longer the facility is without power, the “higher the chance of a possible nuclear meltdown.”
To make matters worse, the IAEA reported that Russian forces had placed “mines along the perimeter” of the ZNPP. The Ukrainian government also made its own assessments, stating that objects resembling explosives had been placed on the “roof of the power plant.” If any of these explosives were to detonate, this would seriously jeopardize the facility and its surroundings.
Finally, during the summer of 2023, the Russians destroyed the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. The structure contained the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnipro River, which supplied the ZNPP. The dam’s destruction not only destroyed “more than one million hectares of [farm] land,” but it also impacted water levels around the ZNPP. Russian forces further tampered with the cooling process of the ZNPP by mining the plant’s cooling pond.
In other words, shelling the power plant, placing explosives in and around the perimeter, tampering with water supplies to the plant, and mining the plant’s cooling pond have all negatively impacted the area around the ZNPP. Should this recklessness continue, the Russians could jeopardize millions of lives.
Recent Russian strikes on the ZNPP have increased concerns about a potential nuclear event in the area. If such an incident were to occur, the impact would be “10 times larger” than the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that the blast radius of a destroyed ZNPP would be 150 kilometers (93 miles). Such devastation would have multiple consequences. First, millions of citizens within the blast radius would be killed or injured by the tragedy. Nuclear fallout would span much further, impacting areas on the Black Sea, and several of Ukraine’s neighboring countries.
Furthermore, millions of hectares of farmland would be destroyed, several facilities and factories would contaminate Ukrainian waterways, and much of Ukraine’s agriculture in central, southern, and eastern Ukraine would be destroyed. This would impact the price of food globally. In other words, the destruction of the ZNPP would be costly.
Overall, the situation at the ZNPP is dire. The recent Russian drone strikes on the facility have once again highlighted the gravity of the situation.
For two years, the Ukrainian government and the IAEA have continued to raise the alarm about Russia’s mistreatment of the area, but their concerns have gone largely ignored. Given the recent attacks, the international community must try to force an end to Russia’s war. Otherwise, if the Russians continue to conduct these attacks without consequence, then this could result in a major catastrophe for the globe. At that point, it would be too late for the world to intervene.
A potential tragedy at the ZNPP is avoidable. The international community, however, must determine if it is willing to prevent Russia from conducting such a devastating atrocity.
Machine Learning and the Carnage in Gaza
Are we witnessing the first AI-assisted genocide? Reports that Israel is using untested AI systems to exact deadly air strikes with a lenient civilian casualty margin may seem beyond imagination, but make no mistake, Machine Learning is the future of war.
The Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call reported recently that the Israeli army was isolating and identifying thousands of Palestinians as potential bombing targets using an AI-assisted targeting system called Lavender.
Reports suggest that the Lavender system created a kill list of Hamas or militia operatives or associates and that these individuals were often targeted in their family home, with sources citing that 15 to 20 civilian casualties were deemed permissible for a junior-level target, and upwards of 100 civilian casualties were permissible for a senior commander.
For lower-level targets, so-called dumb bombs were reportedly used, these unguided munitions typically pose a greater threat to civilians, particularly in regions as densely populated as Gaza. US Intelligence reports from December indicated that 40 to 45 per cent of air-to-ground missiles launched by Israel were dumb bombs.
People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers were killed in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy
The new wave of AI advances aligns with three primary military uses; autonomous weapons systems, cyber warfare, and underpinning military support systems in decision-making.
The danger is, as with many other fields related to AI, there is no established ethical framework or legal structure, militaries are investing heavily in AI technology, but without a human-centred approach with clear regulations and an adherence to international human rights law, the proliferation and autonomy of Machine Learning in war is incredibly dangerous.
Drones have been implemented in combat for years; between 2009 and 2017, the number of American soldiers on the battlefield has decreased by 90% and the number of U.S. drone strikes increased tenfold. Today, U.S., Russian, Israeli, Chinese, Iranian, and Turkish drones are flying attacks in the Middle East, the African continent, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
The advent of Machine Learning and innovation within the field of AI technology has paved the way for fully autonomous weapons, the use of which has already been documented in Ukraine. The Saker Scout, an autonomous drone, can identify 64 different types of Russian ‘military objects’ and launch an attack without human oversight.
Autonomous weapons systems that enable advanced AI systems to execute deadly strikes pose an unprecedented threat and demand critical scrutiny around compliance with international human rights and ethical standards. Are we really willing to entrust an algorithm with the lives and deaths of human beings?
The Lavender software system reportedly used in Israel analyses information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks each particular person based on the extent of their perceived involvement in the military wing of Hamas or other terrorist militias. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.
Lavender uses machine learning technology to identify characteristics of known Hamas and militia operatives, whose information was fed to the machine as training data, and then to locate these same characteristics among the general population, the sources explained. An individual found to have several different incriminating features will automatically becomes a potential target for assassination, along with anyone else deemed expendable who happens to be caught within the accepted causality radius. The reports have been widely condemned with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressing serious concern last week.
Israel’s war offensive in Gaza has become one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century; between 7 October 2023 and 7 April 2024 at least 33,175 Palestinians were killed, and 75,886 Palestinians were injured. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, fatalities include over 14,000 children and 9,220 women. In the first 100 days alone Israel dropped eight times the total number of bombs the United States dropped in Iraq over a six-year period. 196 aid workers have been killed, along with 105 journalists. Foreign media continues to be denied access to the besieged enclave.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Occupied territories says she believes Israel has committed “acts of genocide” in Gaza. In January the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide, ordering six interim measures that Israel must take to prevent genocide. Since the ICJ ruling a further 6,918 Palestinians have been killed, and famine has set in with Palestinians now accounting for some 80 per cent of those facing famine worldwide.
Could the use of untested AI technology with minimal human oversight be contributing to the scale of death and destruction in Gaza? And if so, who bears responsibility? As with most bleeding-edge technology, AI was always destined for the battlefield, but according to these reports the cold reasoning of Machine Learning has been quickly promoted to degrees of autonomy historically reserved for only the darkest dystopian horror Science Fiction writers could imagine.
Rapidly advancing technology weaponised in this way sets a dangerous precedent. It is an established principle within the laws of war that civilians are to be protected. Relying on a computer-based system to identify civilians and combatants without human analysis of the raw data, and with pre-programmed allowances for civilian casualties could constitute a breach of international humanitarian law.
The US Department of Defence has released a series of policies on military AI, most recently the Data, Analytics, and AI Adoption Strategy released in November of 2023. The report includes a series of user guidelines, including ensuring military AI systems are auditable and that high-consequence applications undergo senior-level review. Whilst this work is essential in starting the necessary conversations around regulation, the guidelines in the report are non-binding and unenforceable. The International community must work at pace to create an enforceable international framework that limits the risks of Machine Learning in warfare.
The Lavender system, on the surface, could be considered a decision support system; one of any number of computerised tools which may use AI-based software to produce analysis to inform military decision-making. These systems collate evidence and combine data sources in order to identify people or objects and to make recommendations for military operations, or predictions about future situations.
Where the use of Lavender has veered into alarming territory is that these recommendations are seemingly being accepted as orders. The damage of empowering machines to make life-and-death decisions may only become apparent in the aftermath of Israel’s assault on Gaza, by which point the threat to humanity may already be too grave to mitigate.
Quds Day Rallies in Yemen Intensify Amid Biden’s Strategic Shift
On International Quds Day, when protests are held around the world to show solidarity with Palestinians, Yemenis are once again at the forefront of worldwide solidarity with Gaza. Yemenis of all stripes took to the streets in unprecedented numbers on Friday to demonstrate their support for Palestine as well as Ansar Allah’s (Houthis) Red Sea operation against Israeli, American and British ships until the war in Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted. This year’s protests came as the Biden Administration embarked upon new moves aimed at Yemen’s Central Bank in a bid to pressure Ansar Allah to stop targeting Israeli ships.
The annual event, which falls annually on the last Friday of every Ramadan and sees rallies held across the globe in support of the Palestinian cause, is especially meaningful this year as Israel’s war against Gaza rages on. With the largest rallies taking place in Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a, over 130 cities and squares throughout Yemen filled hundreds of thousands on Friday carrying Palestinians, Yemen and Lebanese Hezbollah flags and carrying banners blaming the United States for the ongoing war in Gaza.
The collective voice of the demonstrations was unified to renew their commitment to Palestinians, to stress that the Palestine issue is the most important to Yemen, that Yemen must take the initiative to liberate it whatever the cost and to call on Muslims around the world to boycott Israeli products.
On March 26, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council reaffirmed in a ceremony in Sana’a on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the Saudi-led war on Yemen that the country’s maritime operations in the Red Sea against Israeli-linked ships will only cease when Tel Aviv’s crimes in Gaza stop, “The only way to stop Yemen’s operations is to stop genocide and violence against the oppressed people of Gaza,” he said.
This year, a new significance
Friday’s protests were unique as they not only attracted crowds from across Yemen’s diverse political and social spectrums: Shafi’i, Zaydi, Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood, but also thousands of former allies of the Saudi-led coalition, who put down arms and joined Ansar Allah following the party’s reaction to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and U.S. support for Tel Aviv.
“By God Almighty, it is an honor to be in AlSabeen Square for supporting Gaza. I deeply regret the past days in which I was on the side of the U.S. allies,” protester Ahmed Mohamed Binh told MintPress. Binh was one of the leaders of the Saudi-led coalition in Marib and a staunch opponent of Ansar Allah. Yet, he returned to Sana’a after announcing that he had joined Ansar Allah because of their support for Gaza. Today, he is one of the most vocal advocates for commemorating Al-Quds Day in Sana’a.
Masses of Yemenis mark Jerusalem Day (Al-Quds Day), in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 5, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Ironically, the aggression against Gaza and the American participation in the ongoing massacres have made Yemenis more united than ever while increasing the popularity of Ansar Allah not only in Yemen but across the world. Activists, jurists and politicians have applauded and described them as heroes trying to stop genocide in Gaza. This is despite nine years and billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and the U.S. to contain Ansar Allah.
This year’s Quds Day rallies fall three days after a pro-Palestine conference titled “Palestine the Central Cause of the Nation” was held in Sana’a. The four-day conference discussed the Quranic vision of the Palestinian cause, the struggle of Yemenis in Palestine throughout history, the importance of economic boycotts, and Yemen’s political, military, and popular role in supporting Gaza.
Participants from around the world who stand in solidarity with Palestine joined the conference remotely. On the first day, televised speeches were delivered by British politician and parliamentarian George Galloway, Russian philosopher and advisor to President Vladimir Putin Aleksandr Dugin, South African parliamentarian Zulivlele Mandela – grandson of late South African leader Nelson Mandela and Indian writer and political activist Tushar Gandhi, grandson of the spiritual leader of India Mahatma Gandhi. Representing Cuba was Elida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara.
The conference comes as Ansar Allah is making preparations to host leaders of Palestinian resistance movements, particularly leaders from Hamas, in the event that they are expelled from Qatar due to American pressure.
Taking the war to the bank
The demonstrations were not just aimed at the Palestine issue. They challenged the U.S. role in Yemen, most recently attempts by the Biden Administration to force Yemeni banks to relocate their headquarters from the capital, Sana’a (where Ansar Allah is based), to Aden, home to a number of groups allied with the U.S. On Tuesday, the Central Bank of Aden, run by Washington’s allies, issued a decision requiring banks to transfer their headquarters to Aden, threatening to implement the Anti-Terrorist Financing Law against any bank that violates the decision.
The decision used the U.S. classification of Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization to justify the move, which allegedly came in response to a new 100 riyal coin issued by the Sana’a Central Bank to replace damaged 100 riyal bills. However, the justification is inconsistent with the decision of the Central Bank in Aden. The new currency issued by the Central Bank in Sana’a did not affect exchange rates. Economists have confirmed that it is not new money being created, but rather a substitute for damaged banknotes, and therefore, the banking system was not affected.
Abdul-Malik al-Ajr, a negotiator for the Yemeni delegation, said of the move, “What occurred was the normal process of replacing damaged currency, not printing a new one. This is a normal procedure that all governments carry out periodically, but because of the war and the siege, Yemen was unable to replace this damaged currency, and it became a problem for many residents, especially in grocery stores, taxis, public transportation, bakeries and water stations.”
Following the announcement of the new coin, citizens flocked to exchange points set up by the Central Bank in Sana’a. The currency was minted according to international standards, and the process of issuing it will not affect the exchange rates because its distribution will depend on replacing the damaged one by replacing each damaged 100 note with a 100 coin,” the Central Bank in Sana’a said in a statement.
Ansar Alla’s spokesperson, Muhammed Abdul Salam, said of the move, “Printing a one hundred riyal coin is not in vain, but rather a necessary step taken as a substitute for a damaged paper currency. We wonder why America and European countries are upset as a result of what the Central Bank of Yemen has done in partially addressing the situation of the national currency, which has been subjected and is [stll] being subjected to a brutal war by the coalition and by America itself.”
Ymenis protest marking Jerusalem Day in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 5, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Yemeni financial experts told MintPress that the United States Agency for International Development recently supervised the development of new systems for the Central Bank in Aden, including the “Unified National Network,” a financial transfer system. The Central Bank in Aden has asked banks, exchange companies, and transfer companies to join that system exclusively. For the U.S., this means that it will be able to access financial and banking data and financial transfers.
Al-Tadamum Bank, the Bank of Yemen and Kuwait, the Al-Amal Microfinance Bank, the Shamil Bank of Yemen and Bahrain, and the Al-Kuraimi Islamic Microfinance Bank, which together comprise over 80% of Yemen’s bank accounts, have already joined the Unified National Network.
The decision by the Biden administration to designate Ansar Allah as a “Global Terrorist group” has already harmed thousands of Yemeni families, as many international banks, exchange shops, and firms have already ceased participating in commercial or financial transactions with Yemenis due to the fear of triggering U.S. sanctions. Nearly 80% of Yemenis live in areas under AnsarAllah’s control, including the country’s capital, Sana’a’a and the major port of al-Hodeida. Consequently, the U.S. economic pressure will inevitably push more Yemeni civilians closer to famine.
Feature photo | A Yemeni man holds a poster of Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas, during a protest marking Quds Day in support of Palestinians in Gaza, Sanaa, Yemen, April 05, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
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