Annie's New Letters (& notes)

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

The new report by Francesca Albanese « The Truth Beneath the Rubble », has just been released. It analyzes how the media contribute to the genocide in Gaza.

Johann Soufi

@jsoufi

International Lawyer ⚖️ | Researcher

@AfriThucy

🎓 | Justice & Human Rights | Views my own.

Translated from French

📣 The new report by

@FranceskAlbs

, « The Truth Beneath the Rubble », has just been released. It analyzes how the media contribute to the genocide in #Gaza. The media 🇫🇷 are not named specifically. But the practices denounced will be familiar to you… 🧵 Breakdown.👇

https://x.com/jsoufi/status/2110028854547173706

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

2. Francesca Albanese, you know her. The UN Special Rapporteur on 🇵🇸, she has already documented the "anatomy" of the genocide, its colonial dimension, the economy and the complicities that facilitate it. This time, she shows how truth becomes a target.

3. The thesis of his report is simple: destroying the truth is also part of the destruction of the people 🇵🇸. Because the perpetrators of a genocide want to control its narrative: eliminate witnesses, incite hatred, protect the culprits, etc.

4. @FranceskAlbs identifies three practices that reinforce each other and facilitate genocide. 1️⃣. The elimination of journalists 🇵🇸. 2️⃣. Censorship and propaganda 🇮🇱. 3️⃣. The relaying of this propaganda in Western media and online. 📺📱

5. 1️⃣. ELIMINATE THE WITNESSES Gaza is the deadliest conflict ever recorded for journalists. An Israeli soldier, quoted in the report, assumes: "If someone writes an article or works on a laptop, it's as if they were carrying a Kalashnikov."

6. These attacks did not begin in October 2023. More than 20 Palestinian journalists had already been killed beforehand. The assassination of the journalist 🇵🇸/🇺🇸 Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022, foreshadowed, for example, the violence and impunity that we know today.

7. F. Albanese recalls the figures. ✔️ Nearly 300 journalists killed, including about 70 killed in retaliation for their professional activity ✔️ More than 400 injured With, sometimes, "double-tap" strikes to kill the journalists and rescuers who rush to the scene.

8. Israel justifies these strikes, labeling these journalists as "combatants." A legitimization unit would even have been set up as early as 2023. ⚖️: a journalist remains a civilian. It is up to the attacker to prove that he was participating in the hostilities. 👉 ihl-databases.icrc.org/fr/customary-i

9. For Albanese, Israel inverts the rule: journalists killed are labeled "terrorists" or "Hamas agents," without disclosed evidence, often right after their death. Behind it, the intent to persecute an entire sector: more than 150 journalists' homes destroyed.

10. Families too are threatened, sometimes targeted. Wael Al-Dahdouh (@AJEnglish) lost his wife, two children, his grandson, then his eldest son, a journalist. "I knew I was being targeted, but I never would have thought they would go after my family."

11. More than 100 journalists arrested, around thirty still detained. Beatings, sometimes rapes.

@FranceskAlbs reports what would have been said to one of them: "If you write something, [...] we will assassinate you, your wife and your children, in your bedroom."

12. Attacks against journalists are not enough; the tools must also be destroyed. From October 7, 2023, the Tower that housed seven media outlets is destroyed. Then the telecommunications, up to an almost total blackout. Without a network, nothing more can be verified or broadcast.

13. 2️⃣. CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE. Regarding information, Netanyahu speaks of a “battle for the truth.” In Israel, military censorship has hardened: prior authorization required for any “security”-related subject. Independent media are sanctioned, @haaretzcom at the forefront.

14. Since October 2023, foreign press has, in fact, been banned in Gaza, except when integrated into the army or on organized visits. @AJEnglish is banned from Israel. And meanwhile, Israel pays for campaigns on X and YouTube to reach Western audiences.

15. Worse: some media 🇮🇱 incite to genocide. Palestinians are called "Amalek," "cancer," or "cannibals" who "must be eradicated." "There are no innocents" in Gaza. 🗣️ Direct and public incitement to genocide is a crime.

16. 3️⃣. WESTERN MEDIA. And us? 📺📻📰 @FranceskAlbs received 62 contributions analyzing Western media, including in France. No French media outlet 🇫🇷 is cited in his report. 💡But for each practice that follows, ask yourself: Have I seen it in France?

17. First, the vocabulary. 🤐 Internal guidelines from @nytimes have leaked: caution with the terms "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," "occupied territory." "Palestine" to be used only "in very rare cases."

18. Albanese then denounces the fake news and accusations 🇮🇱 relayed without verification by these media outlets. The "beheaded babies," the Hamas HQ under the hospitals, @UNRWA infiltrated: accusations relayed without any verification. The corrections, far fewer…

19. Another example? The expression: “Human shields.” 176 times in the NYT, 81 times at the BBC. How many on @LCI or @BFMTV? It's one of the main 🇮🇱 rhetorical devices, including before the @CIJ_ICJ, to justify its indiscriminate attacks.

20. The work of the UN, the ICJ, the @CourPenaleInt? Underreported, attacked, or presented as "controversial." More than 100 times, @BBC presenters have dismissed the accusation of genocide, without citing the genocidal statements of Israeli leaders.

21. When the facts are undeniable, they erase the author, minimize the crime. According to the study cited in the report, Israel's responsibility is omitted or minimized in 83% of the BBC's relevant headlines. “Hind Rajab, 6 years old, found dead in Gaza.” Found dead…

22. F. Albanese also speaks of an "unequal distribution of empathy." The word "barbarian" is almost always reserved for violence against Israelis. Count how many times you've heard it in France, and about whom.

23. Finally, the platforms. At Meta, X, and Google: posts deleted, accounts suspended, "shadow banning." (This thread will probably be too 🤐) Palestinian voices are disappearing. The official Israeli narrative is amplified.

24. F. Albanese has a word to describe this entire process: "mediacide." A genocide does not destroy only human beings. It also destroys the evidence that makes this destruction visible. Without witnesses, impunity becomes easier.

25. F. Albanese calls on the media to "stop whitewashing propaganda by giving it a journalistic form." Because "justice depends on the survival of the evidence elements." Gaza's journalists have done their part, at the cost of their lives. The French media, have they?

26. The full report (in English and French) is available on the United Nations website. 🇺🇳 🔗 documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/

Checkpoints in the occupied West Bank choking Palestinian life, warns UN expert- – Israel’s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today.

Fact Sheet Israeli Checkpoints in the West Bank Palestine 2026 https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/Factsheet_Movement_and_Access_April_2026_1.pdf

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/checkpoints-occupied-west-bank-choking-palestinian-life-warns-un-expert

02 October 2026

GENEVA – Israel’s expanding system of checkpoints, road gates and other movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank is fragmenting Palestinian territory and aggravating the arbitrary system of control that costs Palestinians time, livelihoods, education and lives, a UN expert warned today.

“Arbitrariness itself becomes a form of torment when every journey, every appointment and every family visit depends on whether a gate is open or a soldier allows passage,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

“Numbers alone cannot capture what this system inflicts. It steals hours and days from people’s lives, separates families, deprives students of education and workers of livelihoods and obstructs access to life-saving health care.”

Highlighting one case among hundreds, the Special Rapporteur said that in July 2026, four-month-old Ahmed Zaid died after Israeli soldiers prevented his family from reaching an ambulance waiting beyond a military checkpoint for more than an hour. “Ahmed’s death is a devastating illustration of what this system means in human terms,” Albanese said. “For millions of Palestinians, reaching work, school, university, hospital or family can take hours, involve being rerouted without warning or become altogether impossible.”

As of December 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 925 checkpoints and other obstacles restricting the movement of some 3.4 million Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem – the highest number in 20 years, and 43 per cent above the average of the preceding two decades.

Recent investigations reviewed by the mandate, drawing on on-the-ground reporting, surveys of hundreds of Palestinians, satellite imagery and billions of GPS data points, show that this choking regime has only intensified. Since October 2023, delays around Nablus have surged beyond levels recorded anywhere else in the West Bank. In Beit Furik, a town of nearly 16,000 people with a single gate, a 15-minute drive routinely took more than five hours, and up to 10 hours on the worst days. About half of those surveyed said checkpoints had affected their own or their spouse’s ability to find work.

The Special Rapporteur pointed to an unmistakable link between the proliferation of checkpoints and the rapidly deteriorating situation across the West Bank: settler terror, accelerating settlement expansion, demolitions, forced displacement and the deliberate destruction of Palestinian agricultural life.

“Palestinian communities are increasingly being transformed into isolated enclaves – separate cells of a long-exposed carceral regime, connected or disconnected at the whim of the occupying power,” she said. “The checkpoints are not isolated inconveniences. The checkpoint system is unlawful, as is the occupation from which it emanates.”

In its July 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Israeli policies had fragmented the West Bank, severed East Jerusalem from it and encircled Palestinian communities in enclaves, obstructing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

“The international community’s unforgivable delay in giving effect to the Court’s demand that Israel’s unlawful presence end ‘as rapidly as possible’ is a hallmark of complicity.”

“This system of fragmentation and control must end,” Albanese said. “Palestinians must be able to move freely across their own land, live together as a people and exercise their right to self-determination.”

*Francesca Albanese is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967

Mosab Abu Toha: On this day in 2023, Israel carried out a terror strike on my friend Heba Zaqout’s home, killing her and two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud. Heba was an artist and a schoolteacher. Many of her artworks were destroyed in the strike, too...

Heba Zaqout’s home in Gaza Palestine- destroyed by Israel

Heba Zaqout art

Heba Zaqout art

Mosab Abu Toha

@MosabAbuToha

On this day in 2023, Israel carried out a terror strike on my friend Heba Zaqout’s home, killing her and two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud.

Heba was an artist and a schoolteacher.

Many of her artworks were destroyed in the strike, too.

In 2021, Heba contributed her art to a special section of Peripheries, Peripheries, Harvard Divinity School’s literary and arts journal, which I co-edited.

Her death was an immense loss, not only to her family and friends but also to the world of art and education.

May Heba’s memory, and the memory of Adam and Mahmoud, live forever.

https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/2110126414683152506

Looted Antiquities, Billionaire Collectors, and the Politics of Return: "...This is ongoing. Since the genocide in Gaza began, over 20,000 rare artifacts spanning the prehistoric to the Ottoman periods, housed in Gaza City's Pasha's Palace museum, have gone missing or been looted. Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed more than 316 archaeological sites and buildings in Gaza. Meanwhile, a 2025 study by Palestinian researchers found that, as the war in Gaza continued, archaeological theft in the West Bank skyrocketed...."

Syro-Hittite Female Idol. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

The Institute for Palestine Studies: The IPS blog, Palestine Square, is a lively forum for the dissemination of ideas by opinion makers on the latest developments concerning Palestine. It hosts analysis and commentary by IPS researchers as well as by contributors to its books, journals, and conferences. https://www.palestine-studies.org/

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1659622#

Date: October 06 2026

Author: Laila AlQaddumi

".... Of the 180 objects seized, 40 came from Palestine.

The Palestinian-origin objects included a stele, Bronze Age ivory figurines, incense burners, a red carnelian sunfish amulet that is still missing, and five Neolithic stone masks worth more than $2 million. Dating to around 7000 BCE, the masks are among the oldest known in the world. About 15 such masks are known, all found in the West Bank and near the Dead Sea. One of the oldest, the al-Ram mask, was reportedly taken from a Palestinian villager at al-Ram by Thomas Chaplin, a British missionary doctor and scientist who wrote for the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Today, these masks are scattered across museums in New York, London, Paris, and Jerusalem — largely inaccessible to West Bank Palestinians, who need a permit to enter Israel. Steinhardt alone held eight, which he displayed in his New York home beside his Picassos.

Death mask dating from 6000 to 7000 B.C. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

Two of the five masks remain at the Israel Museum, where a plaque crediting Steinhardt's collection was recently removed due to its contested provenance. One of the masks at the museum was taken from the West Bank in 1970 by then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who inscribed his own name inside it. Dayan illegally amassed a large archeological collection routinely using military resources to collect artifacts across the West Bank and Gaza, intimidating Palestinians into selling artifacts at a fraction of their value.

Although Steinhardt was ordered to repatriate his Palestinian-origin items, New York prosecutors argued that the looting had occurred either inside Israel or in areas Israel exercises authority over, and slated the objects to be returned only to Israel, including pieces from areas under Palestinian Authority control such as the West Bank.

Ivory cosmetic spoon dating from Assyrian civilization 700-800 BC, looted from Hebron. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

In January 2023, a small Assyrian "cosmetic spoon” dating to between 700 and 800 B.C.E. was handed to the PA's Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Maayah by George Noll, head of the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs, in the first U.S. repatriation of a cultural object to the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli antiquities dealer Gil Chaya sold the spoon, originally from the small Palestinian village of Khirbet al-Koum in Hebron in the Occupied West Bank, to Steinhardt in January of 2003.

According to a report filed by prosecutors with a New York court, many of Steinhardt's purchases from Chaya, who was licensed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, were artifacts sourced from looters across the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Emails obtained during the investigation show Chaya pressuring hired "peasants" to continue searching for a missing artifact fragment. The Manhattan DA's office says Chaya remains under investigation for trafficking illegal antiquities.

Gold Masks dating back to roughly 5000 B.C.E. Source: New York District Attorney's Office, press release.

The same Israel Antiquities Authority that licensed dealers like Chaya also appears as a beneficiary of American collector philanthropy. Shelby White, widow of Wall Street pioneer Leon Levy, chairs the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a U.S. charity funneling tax-exempt donations directly to the Israeli government agency. The Shelby White & Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Archaeological Center was built around a Roman mosaic in the ethnically cleansed town of Lydda.

In 2023, a Manhattan DA investigation that had begun years earlier culminated in the seizure of 89 antiquities valued at $69 million from White's collection. The U.S. returned two looted sculptures worth $275,000 to Iraq and seized 17 more objects on loan from her at the Met, including a Chinese funerary piece that had sat in storage, still dirt-caked, for over 20 years.

The Ivory Plaque, depicting a human headed winged sphinx, from the period of King Sargon I (721-725 BCE) in Nimrud. Likely looted from Northern Iraq in the 1990's. Source: New York District Attorney's Office, press release.

In 2010, the arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby, whose president, Steve Green, had inspected objects in the UAE, purchased more than 5,500 ancient artifacts smuggled out of Iraq, worth more than $1 million. The artifacts were sold by an antiquities dealer from the UAE and two other dealers from Israel who claimed the artifacts belonged to a dealer from Israel who was not present. One Israeli dealer provided a statement of provenance claiming that the objects had been “legally acquired in the late 1960s by [the third Israeli dealer's] father, from local markets.”

The cuneiform tablets and objects were destined for the Green family's Museum of the Bible in Washington before the artifacts were seized.

Hobby Lobby's ties to Israel extended beyond antiquities acquisitions. The company donated $25,000 to organizations based in illegal Israeli settlements, including archaeological groups active in Palestinian territory, while the Green family's Museum of the Bible gave $15,000 to the University of the Holy Land, a Christian graduate school whose late co-founder pioneered in Qumran studies — the West Bank site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, often invoked to support Israeli claims to Palestinian land on biblical grounds.

Green also co-sponsors the “Covenant Journey,” which brings young Evangelicals — among Israel's strongest U.S. political allies — to Israel to turn them into pro-Israel advocates. The program was modeled directly on Birthright Israel, which Steinhardt co-founded. The Green family has also funded a Bible-centered public-school curriculum that an Oklahoma school district shelved in 2014 after civil liberties groups challenged it; a version adapted for secular Jewish public schools was later used in Israel.

The same structure repeats: objects of cultural value are removed from their regional contexts during periods of war and political upheaval, and circulated through a small network of dealers and collectors for profit or political, ideological, and religious purposes. Many of the objects found in the homes of wealthy collectors and in prestigious museums were removed during periods of conflict and occupation, whether during the Lebanese Civil War, the Syrian war, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, or Israel's Occupation of Palestine.

Israel stands alone in the region with a legally sanctioned private antiquities trade, and it has never ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention against illicit trafficking. Scholars have estimated that approximately 8.4 million archaeological objects were looted or trafficked from the Palestinian territories between May 1967 and June 2019.

This is ongoing. Since the genocide in Gaza began, over 20,000 rare artifacts spanning the prehistoric to the Ottoman periods, housed in Gaza City's Pasha's Palace museum, have gone missing or been looted. Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed more than 316 archaeological sites and buildings in Gaza. Meanwhile, a 2025 study by Palestinian researchers found that, as the war in Gaza continued, archaeological theft in the West Bank skyrocketed...." READ MORE https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1659622

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