‘Legitimization Cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas
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- Written by Yuval Abraham Yuval Abraham
- Published: 15 August 2025 15 August 2025
The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the “Legitimization Cell,” tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.
Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave. It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week.
According to the sources, the Legitimization Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.
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Read more at: https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara/
‘If these words reach you … Israel has succeeded in killing me’: the last words of a journalist killed in Gaza
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- Written by Anas al-Sharif Anas al-Sharif
- Published: 12 August 2025 12 August 2025
Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Sunday night. This is the message he had prepared for his family, and his call for the world not to forget Gaza
I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification – so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.
Read Anas al-Sharif's full statement at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/11/anas-al-sharif-al-jazeera-journalist-killed-gaza-israeli-airstrike
Joe Biden is complicit in Gaza’s starvation. Blood is on his hands
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- Written by Mohamad Bazzi Mohamad Bazzi
- Published: 10 August 2025 10 August 2025
At several points during his presidency, Biden could have stopped starvation from spreading in Gaza, if his administration had listened to warnings from the UN and aid groups and used them as an impetus to limit unconditional US military support for Israel. Biden’s record is not only shocking for the multiple missed opportunities he had to change course, but for his callousness toward the suffering of Palestinians.
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In February 2024, Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned of the speed and scale of Israel’s mass starvation campaign. “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely,” he told the Guardian, echoing reports by UN agencies and humanitarian groups showing that Israel was deliberately blocking foodand other aid from entering Gaza, and using starvation as a weapon – a war crime under international law.
With such detailed warnings, the Biden administration and Israel’s other western supporters could not claim that they didn’t know the severity of hunger in Gaza, and the extent of Israel’s policy of intentionally starvingPalestinians. As the alarms of imminent famine intensified in the spring of 2024, Biden could have acted by pressuring the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to allow more food into Gaza and enforcing US laws which ban weapons shipments to US allies that obstruct humanitarian aid.
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Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/09/biden-complicit-gaza-starvation
‘A deadly scheme’: Palestinians face indiscriminate gunfire at food sites
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- Written by Manisha Ganguly | The Guardian Manisha Ganguly | The Guardian
- Published: 09 August 2025 09 August 2025
A Guardian investigation analysing visual evidence, bullets, medical data and patterns of injuries from two hospitals, as well as interviews with medical organisations and surgeons, across approximately 50 days of food distribution, appears to show a sustained Israeli pattern of firing on Palestinians seeking food.
According to the UN, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed since 27 May while seeking food, with 859 killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.
A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
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- Written by Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham
- Published: 06 August 2025 06 August 2025
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
Thanks to the control it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has long intercepted phone calls in the occupied territories. But the indiscriminate new system allows intelligence officers to play back the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a much larger pool of ordinary civilians.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloud
And at: https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveillance-cloud-azure/