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CIA Assessment Details Israel’s Race to Make the U.S.-Israel Alliance Irreversible

The intelligence assessment says Israeli officials are pursuing a long-term strategy to make the alliance harder for future administrations to scale back.

Aída Chávez, Jul 30, 2026, https://capitalandempire.com/p/exclusive-cia-assessment-israel-us-support

Israeli officials know they’re losing the American public. Panicked that America’s political consensus on Israel is collapsing, they’re pursuing a long-term strategy to permanently enmesh Israel within America’s military, intelligence, and defense establishment – in ways future administrations would struggle to unwind – according to a new confidential U.S. intelligence assessment.

Israeli officials believe the political fight over Israel in the United States is becoming harder to win, and that the era of indefinitely securing billions of dollars in annual military aid is coming to an end, according to the assessment, which was described to Capital & Empire by several U.S. officials. Instead of relying on direct U.S. military aid – an increasingly visible and politically contentious form of support – Israel is racing to embed itself more deeply in America’s military, intelligence, and national security apparatus in ways designed to outlast future administrations.

The assessment, written primarily by the CIA and circulated this week, describes discussions about expanding intelligence cooperation and the possibility of hosting a permanent U.S. military base on Israeli territory. It also says Israeli officials have been cultivating prominent figures in the American technology sector to build long-term political and financial support for the strategy. The assessment does not identify those individuals by name.

Congress has already begun advancing elements of Israel’s strategy. Last week, the House quietly approved Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act, establishing a permanent U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative within the Pentagon. The House version establishes a Pentagon executive agent charged with coordinating bilateral defense research, development, industrial cooperation, and technology integration.

Six Democrats – Reps. Henry Cuellar, Don Davis, Jared Golden, Vicente Gonzalez, Adam Gray, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez – joined Republicans in voting to pass the defense authorization bill. The measure now heads to the Senate, which is expected to consider its own version of the NDAA before lawmakers from both chambers negotiate a final compromise bill for President Donald Trump’s signature.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who led an effort to strip Section 219 from the $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget, called the provision “a betrayal of our sovereignty.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., similarly described the proposal as “an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy.”

Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu floated phasing out direct U.S. military aid altogether. Most mainstream news coverage framed the proposed shift as a reflection of Israel’s growing economic and military strength, or self-sufficiency. But according to the assessment, the CIA views the strategy differently. The spy agency believes that Israel is seeking to insulate the U.S.-Israel alliance from America’s changing political landscape by replacing highly visible foreign aid with deeper, longer-lasting forms of military and industrial integration.

From Israel’s perspective, embedding the alliance more deeply within the U.S. national security apparatus would make it far more difficult for future administrations to pressure Israel by slowing or withholding arms transfers.

The strategy goes beyond intelligence sharing and military aid. Israeli officials also want Israeli technology, intelligence capabilities, and jointly developed weapons systems embedded in the U.S. military itself, making American defense increasingly reliant on Israeli systems. The assessment says Israeli officials have discussed positioning Israel in Washington as a uniquely indispensable technological and intelligence partner, pointing to language in the 2026 National Defense Strategy describing Israel as a “model ally” whose relationship with the United States is mutually beneficial.

Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, American public opinion toward Israel has deteriorated sharply. About 60 percent of U.S. adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent a year ago, according to an April Pew Research Center survey. Among both Democrats and Republicans under 50, majorities now view both Israel and Netanyahu negatively.

As Gaza has become a defining issue in Democratic politics, the Democratic Socialists of America has surged in membership and electoral success behind campaigns centered on opposition to Israel. A generation ago, public support for Palestine could end a career. Today, a Canary Mission profile may be a stepping stone to Congress. The CIA knows Israel is nervous.

August 7, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Huge Uptick In Israeli Airstrikes On Gaza Since Trump Hailed ‘Historic’ Hamas Deal

by Tyler Durden, Aug 04, 2026 , https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/huge-uptick-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-trump-hailed-historic-hamas-deal

Middle East regional media has reported a huge uptick in Israeli military attacks in the Gaza Strip since President Trump announced a “historic” agreement which Hamas finally signed on to. 

The agreement would result in a phased complete disarmament of Hamas and the handing over of governance to newly proposed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) – a body designed to replace both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

However, fighting has persisted, with Al Jazeera reporting that at least 19 Palestinians killed on Saturday in Israeli attacks and that the total deal toll from the weekend is now 26 people, including women and children.

srael continues to express skepticism in the face of Washington’s recent optimism:

Despite Hamas agreeing to a phased disarmament, Israel’s government says it has “serious security concerns” about the plan, and there has been strong resistance from Israeli politicians to the deal.

The continued bombardment of Gaza, contributing to Israel’s continued breaches of October’s “ceasefire” agreement, will likely threaten Trump’s peace plan and exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation for Palestinians in the enclave.

Reuters had on Sunday reported an entire day of fresh IDF bombardment on Gaza.

“Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza for a second straight day on Sunday, killing at least 18 Palestinians, medics said, ​despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a breakthrough in efforts to implement last year’s ceasefire agreement,” Reuters wrote.

“From dawn, Israeli warplanes hit Gaza City in the north, the central city of Deir ‌al-Balah and the southern area of Khan Younis, causing the biggest daily death toll in weeks, according to Palestinian health officials,” it added. 

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen issued the Netanyahu government’s view on Sunday: “In the deal we signed with the United States, our stance is that Hamas must be dismantled. This is the first thing ⁠that must happen.” 

Cohen expressed that Israeli is “very skeptical” that Hamas would actually disarm. And PM Netanyahu’s office said: “The most important concern for Israel is that nothing can happen ​before Hamas completely and truly disarms.”c

So while the US and regional leaders are busy celebrating and hailing the plan, the proverbial devil will be in the details and in the process – and needless to say a lot could go wrong.

On pro-Palestinian advocate and author worries that Gaza will continue to be destroyed, but that international coverage and cameras have in effect moved on: “There was a time when every explosion in Gaza flashed across my phone – horrible images of children being pulled from rubble, medical workers trying to help patients as the hospital itself gets bombed, and families howling in grief as Israeli bombs obliterated entire Palestinian lineages,” Vijay Prashad observes.

Prashad adds: “Israel’s attacks continue as families flee from one temporary shelter to another and children search through shattered concrete for fragments of lives they once knew. But the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere as the genocide has become routine. We have become comfortably numb.”

August 7, 2026 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Defend Israel or the Homeland’: Top US general issues stark warning to Pentagon brass

Washington has greatly reduced its interceptor missile stocks, jeopardizing its ability to fight China, while prioritizing the protection of Israel

News Desk, AUG 1, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/defend-israel-or-the-homeland-top-us-general-issues-stark-warning-to-pentagon-brass

The highest-ranking US general in Europe informed the Pentagon this week that he does not have enough naval units to protect Israel against potential Iranian missile strikes, according to a report by the Washington Post on August 1.

General Alexus Grynkewich, the head of US European Command (EUCOM), notified senior Pentagon officials in writing that without another navy destroyer, he will be forced to choose between defending the US “homeland” and defending Israel.

Grynkewich’s warning comes as US President Donald Trump continues to escalate the war on Iran.

The US Navy has shouldered a significant burden in waging the war, including responsibility for blockading Iranian ports in response to the Islamic Republic’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

US naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean have long been part of Israel’s defense strategy. They are equipped with radar systems and missile interceptors capable of countering Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.

EUCOM is responsible for protecting Israel from the Mediterranean and deterring any Russian ground incursion into NATO member states.

The US Navy has five destroyers deploying from Rota, Spain, with a sixth expected later this year. They face maintenance issues due to lengthy missions.

The US is also experiencing a shortage of missile interceptors, which are costly to manufacture and hard to restock.

Pentagon assessments conducted earlier in the war showed that US forces have “shouldered the brunt of defending Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles.”

Washington has used more of its defensive weapons, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and naval interceptors, to defend Israel from Iranian missile and drone attacks than Israel has used of its own interceptor stocks.

US inventories of Patriot missiles have now fallen below 1,000 and THAAD inventories to about 250, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Israel has not participated in the war on Iran since Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and ceasefire in mid-June.

Trump resumed attacks on Iran three weeks ago.

Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel was content to remain out of the fighting and allow the US and its Gulf allies to fight the war on Tel Aviv’s behalf.

“Israel has no interest in joining the campaign – the current situation is the best for us,” Smotrich said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House last week and lobbied Trump to escalate the war by imposing a land blockade on Iran.

According to a CBS News report on Friday, Washington and Tel Aviv are planning to significantly escalate the war of aggression by targeting Iran’s vital energy infrastructure.

August 7, 2026 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s Ghoulish Settlers Eye Up Gaza, As Netanyahu Kills Trump’s Board of Peace

ANTIWAR.COM by Andy Worthington | Jul 29, 2026

On Sunday evening (July 19), a group of some of the most repulsive, ghoulish people on the face of the earth marched towards the perimeter fence separating the Gaza Strip from the rest of the world to declare their intention to re-colonize Gaza, to re-establish three Israeli settlements that were dismantled in 2005 when, under Ariel Sharon, 21 settlements in total were abandoned, occupied, at the time, by 8,000 Israeli settlers.

These fanatical Israeli settlers, on what was billed as the “March of Thousands”, although only a few hundred people attended, were led by the two far-right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government — Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister for National Security, who is in charge of Israel’s prisons, which, for Palestinians, have become a gulag of torture facilities since October 7, 2023, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, and also the minister in charge of settlement affairs within the Defense Ministry, who has played a huge role in the ever-growing, and ever more violent expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Speaking at the rally, Ben Gvir said, “If someone had said three years ago that we would control 70% of the Gaza Strip, no one would have believed it. So today I say: there will be Jewish settlement throughout Gaza. We are returning home. Gaza is ours.”

Smotrich, meanwhile, warned that a change of government in the forthcoming elections in October, could “roll back all the Zionist and national settlement revolution” undertaken over the last four years.

The two men were accompanied by more than two dozen ministers and legislators, as well as the 80-year old settler fanatic Daniella Weiss, who told the crowd, “They ask me, ‘What will happen to the Arabs in Gaza?’ There will be no Arabs in Gaza, unequivocally.”

Netanyahu’s reticence in the face of selective western outrage about the West Bank

Although Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party was listed as a sponsor of the rally, Netanyahu was noticeably silent about it. This, undoubtedly, wasn’t because he fundamentally opposes the settlers’ aspirations to re-colonize Gaza, but because, while western countries have been and continue to be largely indifferent to the almost immeasurable military slaughter and destruction in Gaza, they have been far more outspoken about settler activities in the West Bank.

On May 28 this year, the EU imposed sanctions on three individuals and four violent settler movements, including Daniella Weiss and her Nachala Settlement Movement, which, as they described it, “encourages and facilitates coercive acts that lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians”, and whose “outposts obstruct access to Palestinian agricultural and grazing land and have been persistent sources of settler violence.”

Netanyahu is also aware that both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were sanctioned last June by the governments of the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway “for their repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians” in the West Bank, followed by Slovenia and the Netherlands in July, and Spain in September, even though neither man has yet been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court — for war crimes and crimes against humanity — as is the case with Netanyahu himself, and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant……………………………..

Psychotic indifference to genocide — from Israel to Jared Kushner

What was particularly sickening about Sunday’s rally was the gleeful indifference of those gathered — as a beautiful sunset incongruously lit up the sky — to the fact that they were overlooking a vast concentration camp, the size of east London, which is littered with the buried corpses of at least 10,000 Palestinians………………………….

Kushner’s vision was also devoid of Palestinians, as, of course, is the settlers’ vision.

Israel strangles Trump’s Board of Peace

When it comes to Jared Kushner’s grandiose, heartless, profit-driven visions of a futuristic “New Gaza”, the realities of dealing with the Israelis seem to have made it evaporate, as Julian Borger reported for the Guardian in an article last week, entitled, “Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme.”…………………………………………………..

As Borger described it, “The Gaza recovery plan being pursued by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Is there a way forward?

Most noticeably, however, what Borger’s discussions with those on the ground in Israel reveal is how the Israeli government itself retains so much control over the Board of Peace’s plans, and can, as it has with the ceasefire deal in general, fail to fulfil its obligations as and when it wishes, and can also provide further obstruction simply by refusing to deal with requests for cooperation………………………………………………………


Will any leaders in the west wake up, and see that, beyond the grim settler violence in the West Bank, which they are so ready to criticize, they have allowed Trump’s largely empty contributions to Gaza’s future to enable them to pretend that something far, far worse isn’t happening right next to the West Bank, in the grotesque, ongoing death camp depravity of the Gaza Strip? https://original.antiwar.com/worthington/2026/07/28/israels-ghoulish-settlers-eye-up-gaza-as-netanyahu-kills-trumps-board-of-peace/

August 6, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israeli spyware firms are fueling the global surveillance state

The Grayzone, Aug 01, 2025, By ¡Do Not Panic! – July 31, 2025

The Pegasus hacking tool was just the beginning. A new survey of spyware firms reveals Israeli companies are being used by agencies in Western nations to build perfect dictatorships under democratic guise.

Last week another batch of peaceful pro-Palestine protestors were arrested by British police on suspicion of terrorism offenses, including a disabled man in a wheelchair, as the UK continues its descent into authoritarianism on behalf of Israel.

If any of these protestors had their phones on them at the time of arrest, the police will most likely have scraped them for data using sophisticated spy tech software. Protestors not arrested will have been caught on mobile cameras that sit atop police vans in the UK, and their faces, perhaps even their voices, will have been captured, analyzed and cross referenced against a police database.

And in a perverse twist, this spyware technology – technology which now underpins the insidious and growing capabilities of the modern surveillance state – will most likely have been made in Israel by Israeli spies.

But it’s not just in the UK.

Spy tech developed by former Israeli spies is being used on an industrial scale by various agencies in western democracies, from police forces to national security agencies to militaries. Some has been declared illegal, some skirts legal boundaries, and much remains hidden.

The scale of usage, and the range of capabilities provided by this Israeli spy tech, is vast. From face and voice recognition software, to interception and wiretap technology, to covert location tracking, to forced data extraction from smartphones and other devices.

The tech, built by software engineers who cut their teeth writing code to enable and enforce Israeli domination over, and apartheid against Palestinians, is being sold to security services, police forces and immigration agencies across the West.

While much of the information in this article isn’t new, it hasn’t been summarized in one place before. The implications for global civil liberties of Israel’s dominance in spy tech have also not been articulated, and past media coverage has sometimes omitted the Israeli link to these companies. This article will outline the primary players, the sellers and the buyers, and also identify recent contracts, previously undocumented, between Israeli spytech and Western buyers.

Scandals involving Israeli spyware companies have been well documented by mainstream media, the most famous of which was the NSO Group affair. NSO, an Israeli firm founded by ex-Unit 8200 officers Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, was found guilty in a California court in 2019 of selling its Pegasus software to governments so they could hack WhatsApp accounts. Pegasus, which was able to execute what is known as a ‘zero-click’ attack to access a smartphone without the user knowing, was used by governments to spy on dissidents, human rights activists and journalists and was likely used by Saudi agents to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered. The company was eventually ordered to pay $167 million in damages to Meta, who bought the case, and in 2021 Biden blacklisted the company, preventing it doing business the US. (The US state department, notably, went out of its way to say the US would take no action against Israel, despite the fact that the Israeli government provide export licenses for all spyware software).

Also blacklisted by Biden as part of the same executive order was another Israeli spyware maker called Candiru, whose hacking software did not attract the same high-profile attention as the NSO Group. Candiru, also founded by ex-Unit 8200 intelligence personnel, sold spyware to governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists, academics, embassy workers, and dissidents.

In 2023, the Biden administration again blacklisted two Israeli spyware companies with little fanfare, and once again without taking action against Israel. The two companies, Cytrox and Intellexa, were founded by Tal Dilian, who spent 24 years in the IDF, rising to become chief commander of Unit 8200. In 2019, Dilian, who lives in Cyprus, was visited by a Forbes journalist, where he demonstrated how his software could remotely hack a phone within seconds.

In Europe, Cyprus and Barcelona have become hubs for ex-Unit 8200 Israelis building spyware companies.

Another Israeli spy firm, Paragon Solutions, was identified earlier this year as silently infiltrating and extract data from WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger and Gmail without needing user interaction. A criminal complaint against Paragon was filed in Rome after an Italian journalist was hacked by the Italian government using Paragon software. No other legal action has been taken, however. The company, founded by Unit 8200 commanders Ehud Schneorson, Idan Nurick, Igor Bogudlov, and advised by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has not been blacklisted by the EU or the US and remains free to operate.

These companies are just the tip of the iceberg, the names that skirted legal grey areas and either eventually fell on the wrong side of the law (such as it is) and into the scope of the authorities, or whose illicit spying activities were discovered.

Even more insidious are the Israeli spyware companies openly contracting with Western security services and agencies to spy on and crack mobile phones and other devices. Because these companies work with lawful state agencies, they claim to have a different model than the NSO Group, Candiru and others focused on illicit hacking services. Yet in many cases their software is similar if not identical, and the full scope of their activities is unknown.

Lead among these is Cellebrite, founded by ex-IDF soldier Yossi Carmil and staffed with dozens of ex-Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence personnel…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Israel’s permanent war and apartheid economy, and the spy tech firms run by Israeli intelligence operatives that emerge from this economy, are the single biggest threat to civil liberties in the world today. And it’s no surprise that Israel has cornered this market. Israel churns out individuals and projects directed for dominance because Israelis are raised in and surrounded by a military culture of impunity. A culture where technology is created only to dominate, test subjects are abundant and rules of engagement non-existent.

In buying and relying on the tools of an apartheid state for security and law enforcement technology, we see how Israel’s apartheid and genocide itself becomes indispensable to Western governments in their drive towards complete security states. https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/israeli-spyware-firms-are-fueling

August 5, 2026 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Is It Just About AIPAC’s Money, or Does the US-Israel Rot Run Far Deeper?

The truth is that the US government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades. Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices; the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.

By Ramzy BaroudJuly 24, 2026, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/is-it-just-about-aipacs-money-or-does-the-us-israel-rot-run-far-deeper/

Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries. 

The first incident occurred on July 8 when US Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. 

“These hoodlums come in with machine guns—an M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us,” Khanna in a stunning statement. “They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.” 

Equally shocking to the congressman’s direct encounter with the raw, lawless reality of the occupation was the response of US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Rather than defending an elected American lawmaker, Huckabee dismissed Khanna’s harrowing experience as a mere “stunt.” 

This defiance of old taboos, however, is not confined to progressive factions. In an even more unprecedented development on July 15, US Vice President JD Vance used an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience to deliver some of the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting, top-tier US official.

Addressing a reported Israeli government-funded online influence campaign aimed at sabotaging the administration’s diplomatic efforts, a furious Vance “certain elements within the Israeli government” of actively trying to derail peace negotiations and manipulate American public opinion. He went so far as to target the operators behind the foreign-backed campaign, telling them directly to “go to hell.” 

Yet, even as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the very apex of American politics, a profound, schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities, and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line.

This is explicitly evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv. Lawmakers are quietly pushing forward with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. Far from distancing the US from the ongoing regional bloodbath, this legislation aims to permanently integrate and synchronize the US and Israeli militaries under a joint “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

This institutional blind spot is why the entire alliance is beginning to look utterly ridiculous.

Traditional foreign policy theory views Israel as an American ‘vessel’ or ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ in the Middle East, policing the region on behalf of Western hegemony. Whether that was ever true is highly debatable. Today, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the relentless war on Iran, and the escalating aggressions against Lebanon and Syria have yielded zero strategic value to the American people. Instead, the United States has paid a massive financial and moral largesse to fund bloody regional wars that disrupt the global economy and make Washington a direct, complicit partner in the destruction of the Palestinian people. 

Yet, the American administration continues to offer unquestioning support, with the exception of occasionally leaked, manufactured of ‘tense’ phone calls between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. No matter the physical, economic, or reputational damage inflicted on the US, Washington continues to march blindly toward the precipice.

To believe this subservience is a recent phenomenon is to misunderstand history. For many, the physical detention of Congressman Khanna by Israeli forces evokes the memory of Rachel Corrie—the 23-year-old American peace activist who was brutally crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah on March 16, 2003, while peacefully shielding a Palestinian family home from demolition. In both cases, the message from Tel Aviv was clear: American status offers no protection.

Yet, this dependency runs deeper, rooted in the 1967 USS Liberty incident. During the Six-Day War, Israeli forces launched a relentless two-hour attack on an unarmed US intelligence ship, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171. Instead of demanding accountability, the Johnson administration accepted Israel’s excuse of a “mistake” and covered up the truth to protect its ally. This established a decades-long precedent: Washington would act as a political and military shield for Israeli actions, even at the cost of American lives.

It is often argued that Israel’s stranglehold on American policy stems entirely from the financial power of its lobby in Washington, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Conventional wisdom holds that AIPAC’s true dominance as the ultimate kingmaker began in 1981, when it waged a historic, ferocious battle to block President Ronald Reagan’s proposed sale of AWACS early-warning surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

But the USS Liberty incident occurred long before the lobby wielded such immense power. The truth is that the US government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades. Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices; the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.

This is precisely why JD Vance’s recent remarks are so critical. It proves that the armor of absolute impunity is cracking, and the language of genuine, systemic criticism of Israel has officially been normalized in mainstream political discourse.

August 2, 2026 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s Dangerous Gambit To Merge The Iran And Ukraine Wars

Of course this would also appeal to Israel, prolonging the Middle East war and potentially drawing European governments into the theater, too.

Trita Parsi Responsible Statecraft, https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/29/zelenskys-dangerous-gambit-to-merge-the-iran-and-ukraine-wars/

As Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Washington, much indicates that he is no longer merely trying to draw greater American support into its war against Russia. Increasingly, it appears to be pursuing something far more consequential: merging the Ukraine war with the U.S.-Iran conflict into a single strategic theater.

The distinction matters. If the two wars become one, Ukraine ceases to be merely a recipient of American military assistance and instead becomes a direct participant in Washington’s war with Tehran. By the same token, the United States would no longer simply be Ukraine’s principal arms supplier. It would become an active belligerent against Russia through a conflict that stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian.

For Kyiv, this would represent the strategic breakthrough it has sought since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

From the outset of the war, Ukrainian leaders consistently urged NATO to move beyond supplying weapons and intelligence. Zelensky repeatedly appealed for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, warning that anything less amounted to allowing Russia to bomb Ukrainian cities with impunity. He pressed Western governments to provide increasingly sophisticated weapons systems long before they were politically acceptable in Washington. And he argued that victory required the West to abandon what he viewed as self-imposed escalation timidity.

The Biden administration sympathized with Ukraine’s predicament but consistently refused to cross several red lines. President Joe Biden rejected sending American ground troops, arguing that direct combat between U.S. and Russian forces risked a wider war between nuclear powers. He repeatedly ruled out establishing a no-fly zone because enforcing one would require U.S. pilots to shoot down Russian aircraft. His administration initially declined to provide F-16 fighter jets, long-range ATACMS missiles, and other advanced systems for fear of uncontrolled escalation, only relaxing some of those restrictions gradually after lengthy internal debate.

Throughout those decisions, Washington’s guiding principle remained consistent: help Ukraine defend itself without allowing the United States to become a direct combatant against Russia, while also eschewing diplomacy that could have brought the fighting to an end.

Today, however, the strategic landscape has changed. The Trump administration’s war with Iran has produced exactly the dilemma many critics predicted. Washington possesses overwhelming military superiority, yet it has suffered a strategic defeat at the hand of Tehran. Iran has demonstrated an ability to widen the battlefield horizontally, impose costs across multiple theaters, and force the United States to defend allies and assets far from the original front lines. Iran has escalation dominance; Trump has no good military option and he lacks the patience to pursue the diplomatic ones with discipline.

Trump’s vulnerability creates a historic opening for Kyiv. Instead of appearing as a country dependent on American assistance, Ukraine can now present itself as a strategic asset capable of helping Washington turn a military debacle into a splendid victory. Ukrainian drone warfare has evolved faster than almost any military innovation during the past three years. Its experience integrating inexpensive autonomous systems into conventional warfare has few equals.

Just as important, Ukraine could offer something Washington currently lacks: an opportunity to expand the conflict into an entirely new geographic theater. That is, turn Iran’s horizontal escalation against it.

The Caspian Sea represents such a possibility, in the Ukrainian argument. Opening pressure against Iran from the north would complicate Tehran’s military planning, force it to redistribute scarce resources, and reduce its ability to dictate where the conflict is fought.

From Kyiv’s perspective, offering that capability transforms Ukraine from America’s benefactor to its savior.

But a greater strategic prize for Kyiv would be to fuse the two conflicts into one. Such a merger would fundamentally alter the political logic of both wars. American personnel, intelligence assets, logistics, and operational planning would become increasingly intertwined across the two theaters. Russian and Iranian military cooperation would likewise encourage Washington to treat them as components of a single conflict rather than separate crises.

Once that threshold is crossed, the distinction between supporting Ukraine and fighting Russia becomes progressively harder to sustain.

This dynamic would also appeal to Israel. First, it would give the Iran war another lease on life. Second, it would internationalize the conflict further by drawing European governments into the Iran theater through their deep commitments to Ukraine. And third, perhaps most significantly, it would transform the political narrative. Defeating Iran would no longer be presented as a necessity to defend Israel, but rather, to defend Ukraine.

Given the levels of elite and public support Ukraine enjoys — after all, it was the victim of an illegal invasion — such a framing is far more politically digestible than centering the war on Israel, given Israel’s plummeting standing in the West due to its genocide in Gaza and critical role in starting the illegal war with Iran

None of this means that Ukraine’s gamble will succeed. But Trump may be susceptible to it given his self-inflicted predicament in the Strait of Hormuz. (However, judging by the decision not to hold a press conference today, this may mean Zelensky’s meeting with Trump earlier at the White House was less than successful.)

Though Biden’s Ukraine policy deserves much criticism, he is resisting this type of escalation because the risk of direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could lead to a much larger and more catastrophic war. Those concerns have not disappeared simply because the White House has changed hands or because Trump has trapped himself in a foolish war.

Attempts to solve one strategic problem by broadening the scope of a conflict have often made both problems harder to resolve. The greatest danger today may not be that Trump chooses to fight two wars simultaneously, but that seemingly small escalatory steps pave the way for a disaster both Biden and Trump have sought to avoid.

Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

August 1, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, Israel, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It’s Working.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.

Nick Cleveland-Stout, Drop Site News, Jul 29, 2026

Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

The key intended audience of these sites is not concerned Americans, it’s not even humans—most of the sites average a few hundred unique visitors each month. Instead, Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, created them as part of a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government to try and influence artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, tools like Claude or ChatGPT.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

When Drop Site asked Perplexity “Is it beneficial for the US to enhance military cooperation with Israel?” the chatbot responded with a one-word answer: “Yes.” The top source listed was Allyvia.org, a Parscale-created website dedicated to promoting the U.S.-Israel military relationship. Microsoft Copilot similarly cited Parscale’s websites.

Allyvia is one of 10 different websites created by Clock Tower X, a boutique digital influence company owned by Parscale. Each website is dedicated to promoting a different Israeli narrative. FactSignal.org, for instance, fashions itself as fact-checking website tackling anti-Israel information, containing articles discrediting slain journalists as Hamas terrorists and rejecting the notion that Israel’s military actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. Paxpoint.org, meanwhile, promotes the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace.

All of Parscale’s websites contain a statement at the bottom which states “this material is distributed by Clock Tower X LLC on behalf of the State of Israel.” This statement is a mandatory disclosure requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Despite this, when Drop Site asked prominent chatbots about the latest news from Paxpoint.org, Perplexity and Copilot did not flag that the site was created as part of an Israeli influence operation. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini did flag the caveat.

“Perplexity is built to give people cited, linked answers from a range of sources so they can go directly to the original reporting and reach their own conclusions,” spokesperson Beejoli Shah told Drop Site News when reached for comment.

Parscale’s websites—referred to throughout this article as the “Clock Tower network”—get cited by chatbots, but they also are successfully infiltrating the underlying training data.

The Clock Tower network started to get archived by Common Crawl—a nonprofit that oversees a massive repository of data used to train large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude—earlier this year. Common Crawl is the backbone of the artificial industry, training 80% of the tokens of OpenAI’s GPT-3, making it a useful proxy for understanding if malicious actors successfully infiltrate AI training data.

LLM Poisoning

In the examples above, users can at least trace the sources that chatbots are pulling from when they search websites directly, such as in the screenshots above. Infiltrating the training data itself, on the other hand, can lead to Israel-influenced responses that are nearly impossible for users to trace.

To measure how deeply the network had penetrated the data used to train AI models, Drop Site used Claude Fable to query Common Crawl to count how often Parscale’s sites appear in its monthly snapshots. According to that analysis, a sample of which was manually fact-checked by Drop Site, between January and June 10 sites were crawled by Common Crawl 912 times. While this is a drop in the bucket of Common Crawl data, emerging research suggests a very low number of documents can successfully manipulate AI chatbots, no matter the data volume.

The 10 sites are:

Feedingyoufiction.com (crawled 1 time): Website featuring videos that claim footage coming out Gaza is staged and denying famine.

Paxpoint.org (crawled 220 times): Website dedicated to showcasing the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace. “Paxpoint highlights Israel’s ongoing commitment to peace and coexistence, sharing historical accords, humanitarian initiatives, and grassroots projects that bridge divides.”

Allyvia.org (crawled 158 times): Website dedicated to strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. “Allyvia showcases how the US and Israel alliance directly benefits Americans through joint security, cutting-edge technologies, job creation, and shared values of liberty.”

Factsignal.org (crawled 108 times): Mission is to “prove that Hamas’ terrorist designation reflects global consensus and undeniable evidence of violence, not conspiracy”

Cognitura.org (crawled 106 times): Website claims to be a “research and education platform” dedicated to exploring how extremist groups such as Hamas operate.

Justorium.org (crawled 93 times): Website dedicated to arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza “follows international law and reflects the democratic ethics shared by the US and Israel.”

Culturavia.org (crawled 76 times): Website focused on celebrating cultural ties between U.S. and Israel.

Compassionpulse.org (crawled 57 times): Website dedicated to sharing stories, data, and eyewitness accounts of “how Israel protects civilians, delivers humanitarian aid, and upholds moral values shared with the US.”

Econora.org (crawled 49 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli trade relationship.

Innovascope.org (crawled 45 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli technology partnership.

These sites are being crawled more and more. In January 2026, the sites were only crawled twice. In May, the sites were crawled 376 times, before a notable dip in June. To check the accuracy of Claude Fable, Drop Site manually searched for a sampling of 50 of the Clock Tower X URLs archived in Common Crawl’s CDXJ index, and did not detect any errors. [DIAGRAM HERE on original]


Hervé Letoqueux, Chief Executive Officer at Check First, an organization that combats digital disinformation, explained that Common Crawl’s status as the go-to source for training chatbots opens it up as a target for manipulation. “Common Crawl is widely used in the world of data science for training LLMs, which also means that actors want to manipulate the answers in their favor, which some studies have indicated are fairly easy to do.”

It only takes about “250 malicious documents to produce a ‘backdoor’ vulnerability in a large language model—regardless of model size of training data volume,” according to an October Anthropic study. The authors of the study note “this means anyone can create online content that might eventually end up in a model’s training data,” and that malicious actors “can inject specific text into these posts to make a model learn undesirable or dangerous behaviours, in a process known as poisoning.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-brad-parscale-ai-chatbots-gaza

July 31, 2026 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel builds massive barrier inside Gaza to partition strip beyond ‘Yellow Line’

“The Israeli military is quietly but quickly building a giant earthen barrier separating the over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip it controls from the rest of the territory,”

New satellite images show that the barrier has allowed occupation forces to now control 65 percent of the strip

News Desk, JUL 22, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-builds-massive-barrier-inside-gaza-to-partition-strip-beyond-yellow-line

According to satellite imagery released on 21 July, the Israeli army is constructing a ground barrier extending hundreds of meters beyond the so-called “Yellow Line” in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, effectively partitioning the enclave and deepening its military presence there.

The imagery, reviewed by both AP and Haaretz newspaper, shows Israeli forces building a 23-kilometer earthen barrier, which has been described as a partition effort.

The barrier is mainly a trench that has allowed Israel to expand its control and occupation across around 65 percent of the strip.

Varying figures released over recent months indicate Israel could control even more than that.

In one part of southern Gaza, the barrier extends beyond the Yellow Line by more than a kilometer, according to Haaretz. 

In Khan Yunis, part of the new Israeli barrier extends around 400 meters beyond the line – stretching along the Salah al-Din Road that connects the north and south of the strip.

Haaretz reported that in Rafah, the barrier pushes beyond the line by approximately 1,300 meters in one area.

The Israeli army has been working on this barrier for months, steadily expanding it. 

Satellite images have further confirmed what has previously been reported – Israeli troops have systematically razed much of the territory around the Yellow Line, leveling entire towns, destroying agricultural land, carving new road networks, and constructing military bases on the ruins of Palestinian communities. 

They also show that construction is advancing rapidly. The expansion has been described as an Israeli bid to partition the Gaza Strip. 

“The Israeli military is quietly but quickly building a giant earthen barrier separating the over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip it controls from the rest of the territory,” wrote AP.

More than 23 kilometers have been constructed in recent months, running through Palestinian communities demolished by the [Israeli] military,” the report added. 

The Yellow Line was meant to act as an initial perimeter to which troops would withdraw as part of the agreement last year.

Israeli occupation forces have been pushing beyond it and erecting permanent outposts along the line since the launch of the US October 2025 ‘peace plan’ and so-called ceasefire.

Further withdrawals are contingent on “progress” regarding the disarmament of Hamas, which the Palestinian resistance, as a whole, rejects until the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

As the Israeli occupation of Gaza expands, so does a severe health crisis which began as a result of the genocide and has consistently worsened. 

Dozens of hospitals have been completely destroyed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023, resulting in a collapse of the medical sector and the spread of serious infectious diseases and illnesses. 

A new chickenpox virus has now spread across Gaza. Almost 10,000 cases have been recorded across displacement camps recently, according to Doctors in Gaza. 

“The situation requires urgent intervention. Medicines, medical supplies, and healthcare services must be provided before the crisis worsens,” said Dr Mohammad Abu Afash, director of Medical Relief in the Gaza Strip.

Other serious illnesses, such as cholera, have spread throughout Gaza during the genocide as a result of Tel Aviv’s destruction of the health system. 

July 28, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Israel Is Erasing Entire Gaza Families From The Civil Registry

 July 25, 2026,SCHEERPOST, Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada

The following is from the news roundup during the 23 July livestream. Watch the entire episode here.

Israel has carried out massacres on multiple families this week in Gaza, killing Palestinian children, men and women, as the army encroaches on more land and squeezes Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas.

On Wednesday, an Israeli drone strike on a tent sheltering displaced people killed a Palestinian and injured several others west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to medical sources.

Thirteen Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli attacks on Tuesday, including a strike on a home in the pre-dawn hours that killed six members of a family in Gaza City.

The Cradle reports that Feras al-Masri, his wife Salsabil, and their four children – Naim, 13 years old, Feryal, 11, Salma, 9, and Amira, 6 – were killed while they were sleeping. The Israeli drone strike engulfed the entire home in flames, and rescue crews say they found the bodies so completely burned that identification efforts were extremely difficult.

The explosion also forced residents in surrounding areas to flee in search of safety, while shrapnel reportedly reached nearby displacement camps, piercing tents housing displaced Palestinians, The Cradle added.

Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal reported from the wreckage of the home, holding a piece of the loitering munition, a so-called “suicide drone,” that hit the building.

He said the residents were burned alive, and added that rescuers could hear them screaming and begging to be pulled out, but all attempts had failed.

The Civil Defense has warned repeatedly that Israel’s deliberate targeting of its vehicles and equipment, along with the scarce amount of fuel and lack of spare parts to repair damaged or worn-out vehicles has made rescue efforts like these nearly impossible.

Videos circulated on social media show Civil Defense crews pulling the charred remains of bodies, some of them small, out of the building in the aftermath of the strike.

Four Palestinians were killed in a separate strike on Tuesday, also in Gaza City, when an Israeli missile targeted the entrance to the Muslim Young Women’s Association building……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gaza’s stolen landscape

In addition to the massacres, airstrikes and sniper attacks on people across Gaza this week, the Israeli army continues to carry out heavy demolitions of entire neighborhoods on the eastern side of the so-called yellow line.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights’ office said this week that more than nine months after the announcement of a so-called ceasefire, “still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Israeli army, settlers kill Palestinians in West Bank

Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers shot and killed two Palestinians during a raid on the village of Deir Jarir near Ramallah on the night of 19 July.

The Palestinian health ministry said that Awda Farakhna, 53, and Ahmed Abdul Abu Mukh, 26, were killed and several others were injured in the attack.

Local sources told the Wafa news agency that Israeli occupation forces also opened fire at an ambulance transporting one of the injured Palestinians to the hospital.

The Guardian newspaper reports that Israeli settlers from a nearby colony outpost arrived after 9 pm, “claiming that they were searching for stolen livestock. Israeli soldiers and police soon joined them, protecting them as they sought to take several villagers’ sheep by force.”

But when people in the village “raised the alarm and a crowd gathered, soldiers shot two men, beginning a night of three successive raids by settlers from nearby outposts and Israeli soldiers that lasted until after 2 am, according to Palestinian residents of Deir Jarir.”

In interviews with The Guardian, as they buried their relatives, “family and friends of the dead Palestinian men described several attacks each month in which they said settlers, backed by Israeli forces, arrived in houses on the outskirts of the village and then stole livestock.”

“It’s a partnership between the army and the settlers,” Adel Rashid, the father of the younger victim, Ahmed Abu Mukh, told the newspaper……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/25/israel-is-erasing-entire-gaza-families-from-the-civil-registry/

July 28, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

UK’s New Defence Minister Called Israel ‘Rogue State’

 July 24, 2026, Dania Akkad Declassified UK, https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/24/uks-new-defence-minister-called-israel-rogue-state/

Late last July, as a famine unfolded in Gaza and Israeli settler attacks intensified in the West Bank, Wes Streeting texted a friend shortly before midnight.

“Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes,” the then health secretary told Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp.

“Their government talks the languages of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.”

In messages that Streeting released earlier this year, he went on to tell Peter Mandelson, then U.K. ambassador to the U.S., that Israel was exhibiting “rogue state behaviour” in the West Bank where it was pushing ahead with annexation.

“Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers,” he said.

A year later, Streeting, appointed this week as defence secretary in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s cabinet, is now in a position to act — or at least, a better one than when, as health secretary, he says he was “hitting up against a brick wall” behind the scenes, demanding “moral urgency” in Gaza.

Relatives of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes gathering around the bodies taken from the morgue of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. (Ashraf Amra / UNRWA /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0 igo)

But will he? Less than 24 hours in, the question was already being asked.

Columnist Owen Jones wrote on Tuesday:

“He must now be asked whether he stands by that judgement — and whether he will abide by the legal obligations that logically follow from it.”

Green MP Ellie Chowns wrote to Streeting, demanding answers about how he planned “to end the U.K.’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza”.

“We now have a Secretary of State in the UK Government who has made public their view that the Israeli government has committed war crimes during the genocide in Gaza.” 

Zena Agha, interim director of the British Palestinian Committee, told Declassified that Streeting had “said the quiet part out loud” and now the question is what he will do about it. 

“Will the doublespeak of the status quo require him to disavow what he knows to be true — as other ministers have before him?” Agha asked. 

“Or will he respect international law and hold the perpetrators of war crimes to account?”

Burning Issues 

Two major questions will face Streeting with regard to Israel.

—First is the U.K.-Israel military cooperation agreement and whether he plans to suspend it. 

The agreement, signed in December 2020 without any publicity from the U.K. government, is said to incorporate a range of defence engagement activity between the two countries. 

It has not been made public, with officials saying it is under wraps because it is being kept at a high level security classification. 

But a Freedom of Information request showed that, as of last October, the agreement had been in place throughout the Gaza genocide without any modifications. 

As the war on Gaza has continued, the agreement has come under sustained attack from MPs calling for it to be suspended. When asked about its status, ministers have repeatedly said the agreement is being reviewed, but as recently as April, it was “extant.” 

—The second question is whether Streeting will release RAF surveillance footage captured over Gaza.

Since December 2023, the RAF and, more recently, an American company Sierra Nevada Corporation, contracted by the MoD, have flown hundreds of spy flights over the enclave.

Surveillance aircraft were operating above Gaza during the World Central Kitchen convoy attack in April 2024 that killed three British nationals.

Their families have repeatedly asked for the release of the footage, but the government has refused. 

World Central Kitchen car after IDF strike, April 3, 2024. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 4.0)

Asked what he planned to do, Streeting’s office directed Declassified UK to the Ministry of Defence which did not respond. 

Despite his recent openness about his private positions on Israel, Streeting acknowledged in the WhatsApps to Mandelson that he has also “never been a shrinking violent [sic]” about the country.

“I’ve supported [Labour Friends of Israel] for over 20 years,” Streeting texted.

Agha called on Streeting, as an immediate first step, to release RAF footage after a massacre of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza on March 23, 2025.

“This is just one case of blatant war crimes committed by Israeli forces – countless others that have yet to be told,” Agha said.

She added:

“His actions at the start of his tenure will set the tone for what is to come and offer decisive proof that this new administration will not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.”

July 28, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international, UK | Leave a comment

The Israeli crimes against Palestinians did not “start” in October 2023

Israel was born of Zionist terrorism (Irgun, Stern, Lehi) against the original, indigenous, inhabitants of Palestine

Eva Karene Bartlett, Jul 23, 2026, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/the-israeli-crimes-against-palestinians?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=208173581&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I lived in Gaza for 3 years (and 2 Israeli wars on Gaza) and spent a lot of time with farmers and fishers (who came under Israeli fire near-daily when they simply tried to fish or work their land), also lived in central Gaza, took public transit, and spoke directly with people. International organizations that worked there tended—from what I saw—to be cut off from the reality, living in expensive apartments, dining at one of a handful of expensive restaurants, driving around in their own SUVs…really not interacting meaningfully with people there (I’m sure there were exceptions, but from my experience this was the reality).

I wrote an overview after leaving Gaza, which is relevant today as it outlines the many ways Israel has been slow genociding Gaza over a decade and a half before it began its current, ongoing, horrific genocide—by ensuring Palestinians only just survived: bombing, burning or destroying their agricultural land, firing on farmers: bombing or stealing their fishing boats, firing on or abducting fishers; ensuring the sewage was untreated and pumped into the sea, or overflown into the streets; ensuring the water was almost completely undrinkable; deliberately starving Palestinians by denying the adequate entry of aid (and destroying their food sources, as above); denying exit for urgent medical care; and on and on…

During the December 2008/January 2009 Israeli war on Gaza, I was in Northern Gaza, riding in ambulances, documenting civilians injured and murdered by Israeli bombing, drone strikes, sniping…

During the November 2012 Israeli war on Gaza, I was in Deir al-Balah documenting the destruction and also at al-Aqsa hospital documenting the injured and the murdered.

This page has links to various articles I wrote at the time, also follow up investigations, including documentation of:

-Israel’s widespread use of White Phosphorous on civilians

-Israel’s deliberate sniping and shelling of Palestinian medics, maiming and killing numerous

-Israel’s deliberate sniping or point blank assassination of civilians, including children and infants

-Israel’s deliberate drone striking of civilians, including children

and more.

But before going (by boat) to Gaza in November 2008, in 2007 I spent 8 months in various West Bank communities which were being aggressed, abused, harassed by the Israeli army and by illegal Jewish colonists.

My overview of that time includes:

–Israeli army invasions into Nablus and into nearby villages, during which the Israeli army terrorized Palestinian civilians, shot up their homes, killed, injured and abducted Palestinian civilians (including a medic)

-Documenting some of the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, and the impact (including deadly) they have on Palestinian civilians trying to move from one point to the next, for work, medical care, study, or other.

-The savagery of illegal Jewish colonists—usually enabled by accompanying Israeli soldiers, including attacks on farmers I was with, attacks on Palestinian civilians whose tents I slept in in Susiya, menacing and threatening Palestinian civilians (including children) in Khalil/Hebron (where illegal Jewish colonists have violently taken over Palestinian homes and occupy the streets, beating civilians, including children

-The brutality of the Apartheid Wall

-The courageous non-violent resistance of Palestinians in communities throughout the West Bank, especially in the village of Bil’in, whose demonstrations I joined nearly a dozen times. There, we immediately came under high velocity tear gas canisters fired at close proximity from invading Israeli soldiers, as well as rubber-coated bullets and even live ammunition (as such unarmed protests in Gaza, the Israeli army usually didn’t bother with tear gas but started immediately firing live ammunition at us, as they did to unarmed Palestinian farmers—elderly, young men and women, children—and myself).

The daily crimes I saw in the West Bank and Gaza continue today and impact every facet of Palestinians lives and existence. Post 2023, people who don’t even follow closely are aware of the ongoing Israeli genocide and land theft of Gaza, though that said the media has largely moved on. The crimes in the West Bank get less coverage, and are fully enabled top down in order for Israel to continue ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians and continued illegal expansion.

July 26, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, history, Israel | Leave a comment

Top Israeli Minister: ‘Best For Us’ If US Fights Iran While Israel Sits Out New Round of War

‘by Tyler Durden, Thursday, Jul 23, 2026, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/top-israeli-minister-best-us-if-us-fights-iran-while-israel-sits-out-new-round-war

As four more American families grieve the deaths of soldiers killed in the war on Iran, one of the top-ranking ministers in Israel’s cabinet told an Israeli audience that having America do all the fighting and dying is “the best for us.” Israel had intensely lobbied President Trump to launch a joint war on Iran on Feb 22, and traded blows with Iran up until early June. Since Trump restarted intense, daily bombardment of Iran 11 days ago, however, Israel has sat out the action, sparing Israelis from lethal Iranian retaliation. 

“The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States,” far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. “The current situation is the best one for us.”

Smotrich is generally regarded as the second-most powerful cabinet member in Israel, and is a vital linchpin in Netanyahu’s government that took power in January 2023. Lacking an outright majority, Netanyahu was forced to build a ruling coalition that gives unprecedented power to religious and ultra-nationalist extremists. Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party. He personally aspires to make Israel a theocracy, wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza while barring most Palestinians from citizenship, and has said it would be “just and moral” to starve two million Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. 

In his latest remarks, Smotrich candidly acknowledged that Israel and the United States have different goals vis a vis Iran, but said America’s continued military engagement furthers the Israeli agenda. “[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,” Smotrich said.

Disregarding the widespread victimization of innocents that the strategy entails, Smotrich said destruction of Iran’s economy will help precipitate the Iranian government’s collapse. “Currently, inflation in Iran is at 85 percent, food inflation of over 134 percent in a total of four months, and the Iranian rial is trading at an exchange rate of 1.9 million to the dollar – and it’s going up.” He then reiterated that “the current situation is good for us, and there’s no point in pushing ourselves inward.” 

Here’s how Israeli journalist Hagai Amit recently described the benefits of Israel allowing the United States to plunge forward alone in the war that Israel urged America to start: 

It reduces the risk of [Israeli] casualties and allows daily life to continue largely as normal, without midnight sirens, trips to bomb shelters or major disruptions. The Finance Ministry is also relieved not to have to burden the state budget with billions of additional shekels for air operations and the interception of ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, as Amit warmly describes the cost savings for Israel, various analysts say America’s cost of the Iran quagmire is now close to or even exceeding $100 billion, which is upwards of triple what the Pentagon has owned up to at this point.

Of course, the highest price is being paid by American service members who’ve been thrown into an unconstitutionally-initiated war launched on false premises. Four more US soldiers have been killed since Trump re-escalated the war. In addition to US Army SGT Michael Swinton being killed in Iraq when a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone went wrong, three more soldiers were killed in an Iranian strike that hit prefabricated housing units at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Initially, the Pentagon confirmed only two fatalities in Jordan: 19-year-old PVT Isabella Gonzales and 1LT Tyler Feehan. The third was classified as MIA, but the Pentagon is now saying SGT Angel Rampersad is “believed to be deceased.”  The grim implication is that Rampersad’s body was devastated by an Iranian missile — nearly five months after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that Iran’s military had been “made combat-ineffective,” and almost two months after Sen. Ted Cruz said US forces had “destroy[ed] all of their missiles and drones.” 

[;’p

by Tyler Durden

Thursday, Jul 23, 2026 

July 25, 2026 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Fall of Israel’s Longest-Serving Leader: Is This the End for Netanyahu?

Aleena Im , July 20, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/07/20/the-fall-of-israels-longest-serving-leader-is-this-the-end-for-netanyahu/

Israel may be witnessing the twilight of Netanyahu’s era as security failures, war fatigue, and the rise of the Yashar party erode his aura of indispensability. In geopolitics, leaders who build their legacy on security often fall when that very promise collapses.

In the world of geopolitics, even the strongest of leaders can be dethroned by just one crisis. For almost two decades, PM Netanyahu has held on as the leader of the Israelis. Considered to be the longest-serving prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu’s foreign policy revolves around security and regional monopoly. However, now in 2026, he is facing serious political backlash. It seems like his policies are now backfiring, and the situation is getting out of hand.

From domestic political circles to the international ones, hatred against Netanyahu has been increasing at an alarming rate. Whether it’s the October 7 attack or the recent war with Iran, Israel has been caught in a protracted conflict where it has become too costly to win the war. Is Israel witnessing the end of Netanyahu’s era, or is he preparing for a bigger comeback? The unfolding of Israel’s domestic circumstances would direct the ultimate result.

Israel’s Multi-Party System

There are various political factions in Israel, divided into right-wing, left-wing, and centre-wing parties. However, due to intense political fragmentation, no single party has ever been able to secure a majority in the Knesset. Therefore, coalition-based politics have become central to Israel’s domestic political structure. Bibi Netanyahu belongs to the right-wing political party named Likud, while the centrists include the alliance of opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. The leftist parties include Arab-Israeli factions, which never secured a majority.

The major reason why Netanyahu has remained in power for almost two decades is that he has mastered coalition politics and has made alliances with nationalist and religious parties. However, the same coalition-based politics that allowed Netanyahu to remain in power are now creating vulnerabilities for him. A new political party, ‘Yashar,’ has been established by the former IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot. Although he belongs to the centrist faction, his popularity has seen a boom in recent months, even more than that of his predecessors, Lapid and Bennett. This ever-increasing political fragmentation would now decide the future trajectory of Israel’s foreign policy…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Conclusion

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

The upcoming elections in Israel would decide the fate of Netanyahu’s political career. However, one thing would be permanent: any future administration would continue to pursue the aims of dismantling Iran and its regional partners in one way or another. Their strategies and policies might be different, but their ultimate objective would be the same. The newly emerged Yashar party is gaining momentum at an alarming rate. Although Netanyahu remains the most influential political personality in Israel, the combination of security failures and political fragmentation has caused a serious dent to his indispensability. Whether he will survive this challenge or not remains uncertain. The fact is that, for the first time in years, Israel is seriously contemplating a future beyond Benjamin Netanyahu. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/07/21/fatal-fallout/

July 25, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

‘Sip your coffee while watching the sunrise’: How Israel is colonizing the West Bank by selling Palestinian land to Jewish Americans

Israeli real estate companies are marketing land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank to Jewish American buyers. We spoke to the Palestinians who are being displaced in order to make way for new Jewish settlement construction.

Mondoweiss By Majd Jawad  July 17, 2026 

In mid-May, protesters gathered outside a synagogue in Brooklyn to demonstrate against a real estate expo being held inside. The properties advertised for sale were not located in New York City, but in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the target clientele was members of the Jewish American community. 

The “Great Israeli Real Estate Event,” organized by the Israeli company, My Home in Israel, was one of many property fares held across the U.S., Canada, and the UK, targeting prospective Anglophone Jewish buyers. A recently scheduled London event carrying the same name drew widespread condemnation last June from human rights groups and over 100 British lawmakers.

The settlements at the top of the event’s promoted property listings included Ma’ale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Karnei Shomron, and Kfar Eldad. Each listed area is undergoing urban expansion and new construction, concurrent with seizure and confiscation orders targeting the Palestinian lands surrounding them  — a systematic process aimed at entrenching settlement dominance.

The promotional advertising for these settlements deploys seductive language to attract investment. An advertisement for a real estate project in Kfar Eldad, located within the Gush Etzion Regional Council southeast of Bethlehem, pitches a rural lifestyle “close to Jerusalem, far from the routine.”  The ad reads: “Time flows a bit differently around here. In the morning you can sip your coffee while watching the sunrise, and just 12 minutes later, before your coffee has even cooled, find yourself in Jerusalem. And in the evening, you’ll return to soothing tranquility. This makes Kfar Eldad the perfect alternative for those seeking reasonably priced housing close to Jerusalem, but away from the noise and traffic of city life.”

Behind the glossy brochures and manicured images of “modern residential communities” lie painful chapters of systematic Palestinian land confiscation — a process that has expanded in recent years to encompass nearly half of the total area that Israeli occupation authorities have declared “state lands” since the Oslo Accords were signed.

The “soothing tranquility” in the hills and open terrain of Bethlehem was, until recently, home to Palestinian and Bedouin communities who practiced seasonal farming and herding. Those original inhabitants were barred from accessing their land, which was confiscated under military orders decades ago, before settlement projects were built on it…………………………………………………………………………………………

Palestinians forced out, Jewish settlers brought in

……………………….At the start of this year, the Israeli government decided to confiscate approximately 700 dunams (70 hectares) of Palestinian land for the construction of a new settlement neighborhood in Karnei Shomron, built east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank and overlooking the Mediterranean coastal plain 10 to 15 kilometers away.

This confiscation falls within what Israel calls its “Roof plan,” an all-encompassing agreement for expanding the settlement by adding 6,000 new housing units and accompanying infrastructure in the northern West Bank…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

How land goes from ‘state land’ to the real estate market

Khalil Tafakji, a researcher specializing in settlement and Jerusalem affairs and director of the cartography department at the Arab Studies Society, told Mondoweiss that Palestinian land is seized in a way that often takes roundabout legal avenues to strip Palestinians of their rights to it before it is offered for sale on the market.

“At that stage, the land is not offered for sale directly,” he explained. “Rather, it is excluded from the scope of private Palestinian ownership altogether.” The Israeli state does this by declaring the land “insufficiently cultivated to establish ownership,” Tafakji said, or by sealing it off and designating it a closed military zone reserved for army training. These areas are rendered  “state lands” under the administration of the Israel Land Authority.

The first administrative step in this designation process rests on Israel’s interpretation of Ottoman land law, which has historically governed land ownership in Palestine. . Only then are properties marketed to potential homebuyers ahead of construction. The state effectively leases the land to prospective homeowners, and what buyers acquire is the property, not the land itself. “A buyer can own the property for 99 renewable years, while the land remains in the state’s name under what is called a land leasehold arrangement,” …………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Jerusalem as a settlement magnet

In settlement promotional campaigns, proximity to Jerusalem is often a cornerstone of their marketing strategy, presenting settlement properties in the Gush Etzion bloc as a natural geographic and urban extension of the city. This falls under Israel’s “Greater Jerusalem” project, which has necessitated the ethnic cleansing of countless Palestinian communities stuck in administrative “no-man’s-lands” inside the West Bank. These areas technically fall under the jurisdiction of Israel’s Jerusalem municipality, yet receive virtually none of its services. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/sip-your-coffee-while-watching-the-sunrise-how-israel-is-colonizing-the-west-bank-by-selling-palestinian-land-to-jewish-americans/

July 22, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Israel | Leave a comment

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