ICJ Orders Israel to End Its Unlawful Occupation of Palestinian Territories
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest United Nations body for hearing disputes between states, has ruled 14-1 that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible” as it issued an unprecedented and sweeping condemnation of Jerusalem’s rule over the lands it captured 57 years ago.
ICJ President Nawaf Salam read out the “nonbinding advisory opinion” issued by the 15-judge panel. They pointed to a wide list of policies, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians. According to them, all of these measures violated international laws against acquiring territory by force and impeded Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
According to a summary of the more than 80-page opinion, other nations were not obliged to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s occupation in the said territory. Israel’s “abuse of its status as the occupying power” renders its “presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful,” the court said.
“Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the decision further read.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized ICJ’s opinion, saying the territories are part of the Jewish people’s historic homeland. But the resounding breadth of the decision could impact international opinion and fuel moves for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. The court’s opinion was sought by the UN General Assembly after a Palestinian request concerning Israel’s massive genocidal assaults on Gaza.
According to The Hague court, the General Assembly and Security Council should consider “the precise modalities” to end Netanyahu’s men’s presence in the territories. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will send the advisory opinion to the 193-member world body.
“It is for the General Assembly to decide how to proceed in the matter,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said.
Guterres has signified his call once again for Israel and the Palestinians to engage “on the long-delayed political path towards ending the occupation and resolving the conflict in line with international law, relevant resolutions and bilateral agreements,” the spokesperson said.
Guterres also stressed that a two-state solution is “the only viable path” to seeing Israel and “a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian state” living side by side in peace and security, Haq said.
World leaders react on ICJ’s landmark decision
Following the historic decision of the ICJ, leaders from around the globe reacted. Palestinian officials lauded ICJ and said the Justice ruling was a “watershed moment” in their decades-long fight for justice. Israel’s reaction is expected to be not favorable as the United States’ top ally criticized the ruling on Saturday, July 20, after initial silence.
United Kingdom’s newly formed Labour government said it “respects the independence of the ICJ” and is considering the ruling before making an official response. The Foreign Office added the U.K. is “strongly opposed to the expansion of illegal settlements and rising settler violence.”
(Related: EU states considering SANCTIONS against Israel for defiance against ICJ ceasefire order.)
For Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Espen Barth Eide, the ICJ ruling is crystal clear. “Israeli policies and practices are to be considered annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and are in violation of international law,” he wrote on X. Malaysia called on all states to compel Israel to abide by the ruling of the ICJ and immediately end their support to Israel in continuing its illegal occupation of Palestine.
Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Sadadi said: “Israel’s impunity must end. Its war crimes must be stopped. Israel must be held accountable.” Moreover, Kuwait’s foreign minister called on the international community to carry out its “legal, political and moral duties to achieve the aspirations of the brotherly Palestinian people to establish their independent state and to stop the aggression against Gaza.” Saudi Arabia welcomed the ruling while stressing the “need to take practical and credible steps to reach a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration denounced the ICJ’s opinion that Israeli settlements are “inconsistent” with international law.
“We are concerned that the breadth of the court’s opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict and bring about an urgently needed just and lasting peace with two states living side by side in peace and security,” the Department of State told Reuters.
On the other side, Spain was taking a safer stance. “The government urges the UN and the international community to take into consideration the conclusions of the report and to adopt appropriate measures in this regard,” it said.
IsraelCollapse.com contains similar stories regarding Israeli violations of international law.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith Promises Bill Protecting Rights to Refuse Vaccines is Coming
(LifeSiteNews) – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has promised that the province’s Bill of Rights will be amended this fall so that there are protections added for people’s personal medical decisions that most likely will include one having the right to refuse a vaccine.
Smith’s promise to add protections for personal choice on vaccinations comes because of the COVID jab mandates put in place for a time in Alberta under former Premier Jason Kenney.
Speaking to Albertans at a recent town hall in Bonnyville, Smith said that the COVID crisis resulted in many people being discriminated against for their own medical decisions and that “it shouldn’t have happened.”
Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party (UCP), said that she believes “every person has to be able to do their own assessment, their own health assessment, to be able to make those decisions.”
The original plan by Smith was to add protections for one’s vaccine status directly Alberta Human Rights Act (AHRA). However, this plan was nixed after she was advised by Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel chair Preston Manning that this was not the right legislation for an additional protection.
Instead, Smith promised that a better “law” dealing directly with vaccine status will be forthcoming.
On Monday, Smith confirmed on X that an updated version of the Bill of Rights is coming.
“It’s time. Let’s get this done,” she wrote.
Last year, Smith, as reported by LifeSiteNews, promised to enshrine into “law” protections for people in her province who choose not to be vaccinated as well as strengthen gun rights and safeguard free speech by beefing up the provincial Bill of Rights.
“You have my commitment, no one’s going to be forced to be vaccinated,” Smith told Alberta blogger Shaun Newman.
On Smith’s first day on the job and only minutes after being sworn in, she said that during the COVID years the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
She took over from Kenney as leader of the UCP on October 11, 2022, after winning the party leadership. The UCP then won a general election in May 2023. Kenney was ousted due to low approval ratings and for reneging on promises not to lock Alberta down during COVID.
Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire Alberta Health Services board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.
Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs.
While Smith has not said much regarding the COVID shots since taking office, she has allowed her caucus members to have broad views when it comes to known safety issues related to the jabs.
UCP MLA Eric Bouchard hosted a sold-out event titled “An Injection of Truth” that featured prominent doctors and experts speaking out against COVID vaccines and mandates.
“Injection of Truth” included well-known speakers critical of COVID mandates and the shots, including Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. William Makis, canceled doctor Mark Trozzi and pediatric neurologist Eric Payne.
The COVID shots were heavily promoted by the federal government and all provincial governments in Canada, with the Alberta government under Kenney being no exception.
The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.
New Emails Reveal Big Tech-Biden Collusion on Covid Narratives, Involving CDC & Twitter Censorship
Trying to refute collusive practices involving major social media companies is probably not high on the agenda of the US government right this moment; nevertheless, the evidence of the highly controversial practice keeps rolling in.
America First Legal (AFL), a conservative non-profit, has disclosed a new batch of documents obtained through litigation, this time against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It concerns May 2021 communications meant to set the tone online and “manage” the government agenda around topics related to Covid vaccines.
The emails were exchanged between Facebook and CDC – and the documents focus on the activities of CDC spokesperson Carol Crawford, who also “happened” to be involved with Twitter’s Partner Support Portal around the same time.
This Twitter program’s “secret superpower” was that it allowed government-affiliated individuals to participate in flagging content for censorship.
Genelle Adrien (of the Politics and Government Outreach Team over at Facebook) and Crawford “star” in the email chain obtained by AFL, with the latter being asked point blank that the CDC approve Facebook’s “COVID-19 Information Center FAQ.”
Of concern to Adrien was particularly what the platform’s users should be allowed to say about the vaccine’s side effects. And CDC provided that guidance – some words were replaced, and other sentences were removed.
Thus “joint pain” was gone, but “nausea” was added as a possible side effect. And then these whole two sentences disappeared from what Facebook had prepared as its Covid vaccine safety FAQ:
“More serious side effects are extremely rare. A person is far more likely to be seriously harmed by a disease than by its vaccine.”
There are various ways to interpret this decision, but one is that CDC (by proxy, as Facebook’s guidance adviser) may have wished to avoid the risk of getting sued (alas, it did get sued – but for colluding with Facebook).
Even though the original language was fairly “soft” – if anything, the social platform looked keen to minimize any serious side effects, and promote the vaccines – it was too much for CDC to stand behind.
In one of the emails, Crawford writes that the CDC had no “cleared language, as far as I know, to support the second and third sentences.”
However, the Biden administration continued to urge people to get the jab throughout that year, with Biden himself spreading seemingly unfounded fear that the unvaccinated people would “soon overwhelm hospitals” with “a winter (2021/22) of severe illness and death” up ahead.
But, as AFL notes: “The CDC appears to have admitted that in May of 2021, months after the vaccine had already been rolled out, they could not confirm that the vaccine was safer than contracting COVID-19 itself and developing natural immunity. Nonetheless, the CDC continued to push the American people to take the vaccine.”
Lawmakers Urge Federal Trade Commission to Take Action Against Online Ads for Junk Foods
A group of lawmakers has called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to tackle online advertisements for junk foods ostensibly aimed at younger viewers.
The bipartisan group of lawmakers led by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) made the request in a June 17 letter addressed to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan and four other commissioners. It urged the FTC to update its decade-old report on food marketing to children and adolescents, emphasizing the need to address the rapidly evolving landscape of digital advertising.
“We are alarmed by the proliferation of unhealthy food and beverage marketing directed toward children across online platforms,” the letter read. “Such marketing can impact children’s food preferences, purchase requests [and] consumption patterns, and could ultimately contribute to unhealthy eating patterns that increase the risk of chronic disease.”
The lawmakers characterized the need for regulatory action as urgent, in light of projected increases in childhood diabetes rates and the billions spent annually on influencer marketing. “We appreciate the FTC’s consideration of this letter and we hope to see [the commission] further its work to protect children from online marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages,” the letter continued.
The correspondence by Booker and his colleagues in Congress zoomed in on two particular aspects of this online marketing. First, they expressed worry about how companies target ads to children in different socioeconomic and demographic groups. They cited a study that found Black children were exposed to between 86 and 119 percent more food and beverage TV ads than their White peers.
Second, they highlighted the growing role of social media influencers in promoting unhealthy foods to young audiences. “There are countless recent examples of influencers on TikTok promoting food and beverage products where it is not always made clear the influencer is being paid to promote these products or has a material connection to the brand,” the lawmakers noted.
Companies spend BILLIONS to bombard kids with ads
Lindsey Smith Taillie, associate professor at the University of North Carolina‘s Gillings School of Global Public Health, put in her two cents on the effects of digital marketing for unhealthy foods in an April op-ed published in The Hill.
She recounted how her four-year-old child saw an ad for a candy brand during Super Bowl 2024. Two weeks after that, Taillie’s child still remembered the ad – and right in time for their supermarket visit.
“A 30-second commercial seems harmless. However, new research shows that food marketing to kids is more than a nuisance. It’s a key driver of poor diets,” Taillie wrote.
(Related: Junk food ads on TV strongly influence children’s eating habits.)
“Food marketing impacts what kids like, buy and eat – increasing the risk of dental caries, obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Like tobacco, tighter regulation of junk food marketing to children is needed to protect their health.”
According to her, digital marketing is particularly worrisome as it does not look like marketing. This “disguised” promotion, she added, “limits kids’ ability to distinguish these marketing techniques from unbranded content.”
Taillie ultimately concluded: “Food marketing hooks kids on unhealthy foods, creating poor eating habits that can last a lifetime. Children deserve to live, learn and play free from the influence of the junk food industry, [and] regulations on food marketing can help.”
Head over to JunkFood.news for similar stories.
Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Reportedly Flew a Drone Over the Fairgrounds Before the Speech & Could Have Dropped Explosives on Trump
Immediately after every mass shooting, fake news jumps to the podium to declare it was a “lone shooter” with a “long gun.” No matter how many bullets are fired, from how many directions, and no matter what intel, equipment, planning, recon and technology was involved, the narrative stays the same from day one. Plus, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency never ever have any security footage from mass shootings. Why? Is that all just too difficult for the 3-stooges-like FBI to handle?
Well, it’s supposedly not too much for a “lone gunman” who’s twenty years old and can’t shoot a watermelon with a rifle from 100 yards away. They’re saying Thomas Matthew Crooks worked alone to try to murder former President Donald Trump, but did he? If he was working alone, why did he have drones, multiple ladders, multiple encrypted cell phones and a homemade IED with a detonator (but he supposedly did not do any research on how to construct a bomb)?
The bigger question looms: Why didn’t Trump’s security teams fly their own drones over the fairgrounds before and during the event? That would have spotted the “lone shooter” on the roof, spotted his drone flying over beforehand, and been proof to the world (and the liberal conspiracy theorists) that the assassination attempt was not “staged,” or at least not by Trump’s side.
Thomas Matthew Crooks flew a drone repeatedly over the fairgrounds and could have easily dropped and detonated explosives on Trump during the speech
It’s now becoming quite obvious that the Deep State planned Trump’s assassination, and that Crooks did NOT work alone, but more as the patsy who himself was assassinated for his participation. If Crooks was too incompetent to build his own improvised explosive device, according to the FBI’s research, then how did he get it? Also, why didn’t Crooks rig his drone to drop the bomb on Trump, just to be sure he finished the “job?” Maybe there’s a reason they’re called “secret service,” because there’s much more to this story to be told, that’s all being covered up.
Why didn’t the Secret Service have their own drones for aerial security footage? Why were there absolutely ZERO security cameras set up and running before and during the Trump speech? Why were the Secret Service afraid to stand on a slightly slanted rooftop, when another group of security officials had no problem doing the same, on an even more slanted roof, that still wasn’t even dangerous, compared to what most roofers function atop?
Why is the FBI stonewalling Freedom of Information Act requests? What do they have to hide? Shouldn’t every Secret Service employee and other hired “help” be tried for conspiracy to commit murder, since there is so much evidence now that all of these “lapses” in security are more like complacency in a well-drafted plan to allow a shooter to take several pot shots at Trump, and even prepare with drone footage, homemade explosives, encrypted cell phones and accounts overseas, equipment he couldn’t carry alone, and access to buildings where secret service were inside eating donuts and drinking coffee?
The number one tell-tale sign that this whole assassination attempt was a set-up by the Deep State is that Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle claims that the reason her own anti-sniper snipers weren’t on the roof of the barn is because she didn’t want them to fall off and get hurt. Take one look at that roof and you will see it’s barely slanted at all. Big lie.
The other tell-tale sign is the puts investors placed against Trump assets and Rumble, knowing their values would tumble if Trump got killed, and they would make billions of dollars. Follow the bouncing ball folks.
Don’t forget to tune your apocalypse dial to Preparedness.news for updates on real news about the surviving and thriving what the communists in D.C. have planned for Trump and the rest of us next.
Ontario Gov’t Drops Over 100 Fines from Covid Era for Compliance Violations
(LifeSiteNews) — Canadian pro-freedom legal advocacy group The Democracy Fund (TDF) says that because of generous donor support it secured the staying or withdrawal of 109 COVID-era tickets given to multiple people in Ontario.
The TDF said in a press update sent to LifeSiteNews that most often the charges were withdrawn or stayed “due to a lack of reasonable prospect of conviction, delay, non-appearance of the government’s witness at trial, or a decision taken by the Crown not to proceed.”
“It’s gratifying to see our hard work pay off, and a relief to our clients who have endured years of legal uncertainty,” TDF paralegal Jenna Little said.
“But the government is still doggedly pursuing many clients for charges that should not have been brought in the first place and consume scarce judicial resources.”
The TDF observed that its clients were charged under the Quarantine Act s.15 (failure to provide information to screening officer), s.58 (failure to complete ArriveCan, failure to arrange for quarantine), or s.66 (obstruct an officer).
It noted that the fine for each charge was around $5,000, with “with potential total fines for conviction on all charges reaching $681,250.”
“Though many of these cases have been successfully resolved, many remain,” the TDF said.
Some of the charges were issued under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, such as s.7.0.11 (obstruct an officer), which can carry a one-year jail sentence and a $10,000 fine.
The TDF stated that in “rare cases” some clients were also charged under “s.10 of the Reopening Act (gather or fail to close premises).”
“Fines under those statutes range from $125 to $19,000,” the TDF said.
The TDF noted that despite the recent court wins, there are still “hundreds” of clients who are facing “potential fines and jail time for peacefully protesting or objecting to government overreach during COVID lockdowns.”
The TDF said that during COVID the government used the opportunity to enact “rights-infringing, overbroad laws.”
“Legislators and bureaucrats zealously enforced these laws against Canadians in an effort to secure compliance and suppress peaceful protest. Fortunately, The Democracy Fund (TDF) and its team of lawyers and paralegals, with the support of generous donors, fought back,” it said.
The TDF, founded in 2021, bills itself as a Canadian charity “dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education and relieving poverty,” by promoting constitutional rights “through litigation and public education.”
In early July, LifeSiteNews reported that TDF lawyers helped get criminal charges against a Canadian man who participated in the pro-family 1 Million March 4 Children protest over radical LGBT ideology being taught in public schools dropped by the Crown.
Over the last couple of years, the TDF has been active in helping Canadians persecuted under COVID mandates and rules fight back. Notable people it has helped include Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill, an Ontario pediatrician who has been embroiled in a legal battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) for her anti-COVID views. She has also had the help of Elon Musk.
COVID vaccine mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.