World Vaccine Congress: A Report From the Belly of the Beast
Photo credit: @vaccinenation/Twitter
By Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | April 11, 2023
Last week I attended the 23rd World Vaccine Congress in Washington, D.C. — which bills itself as “The Most Important Vaccine Event of the Year”:
“Our event format allows for whole-sector topics, giving an opportunity for people to find out more about their specific area of research and their job-function. By running parallel niche conference channels over the 3 days, it increases the relevance of the whole event for everyone who attends.
“During the sessions you will learn how cutting-edge research efforts can be integrated with
-
- Pharma
- Biotech
- Academia
- Government
“to produce more and better vaccines to the market.”
More than 3,100 people, largely from the pharma and biotech industries and regulatory affairs, attended the event.
Keynote speakers included prominent figures from public health agencies, including Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); various directors of research at BioNTech and Moderna; and academic bigwigs like Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine (my own alma mater).
During the three full days of the conference, neither I nor Dr. Elizabeth Mumper encountered another physician presently in clinical practice.
The event was open to anyone willing to pay the entry fee, which started at $495 for students and went up to $1,000+. But from what I could tell, this was largely a gathering of big and small pharma, biotech and leaders in regulatory affairs.
General impressions
- The majority of attendees truly believe they are doing the right thing.
- The majority of attendees look no further than recommendations from agencies of public health to guide their opinions. In other words, they fully believe COVID-19 mRNA (and other) vaccines are exceedingly safe and have saved millions of lives.
- Beyond members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and officers from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), few, if any, are aware of vaccine trial and post-marketing observational data around COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.
- The keynote speakers and expert panel moderators who raised the topic of “vaccine hesitancy” were dismissive of those who managed to avoid vaccination and were openly contemptuous of those who encouraged others to do the same.
- Except for a few instances, the tone of the presentations and round table discussions were collegial. Aside from the pointed questions that Mumper and I were able to pose, there were no open hints that any of the attendees questioned the conventional narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic response.
- One-on-one exchanges revealed encouraging signs that not everyone there has bought the conventional narratives around the pandemic.
- Calls for public-private “partnerships” were a common theme.
I was able to attend only a fraction of the hundreds of presentations and panel discussions during the conference. Below I summarize the most important points from the sessions I attended and key conversations I had with the presenters.
Note: Throughout this article I have quoted myself and others. I do not have access to any audio or video recordings from the sessions, if there are any. Quotations are paraphrased from my own recollection and are not to be taken verbatim.
Introduction to the conference: Anti-vaxxers are dangerous, expect annual COVID vaccinations
Dr. Gregory Poland, director of vaccine research at the Mayo Clinic, delivered the opening remarks. He then moderated a panel discussion with Marks; Paul Burton, chief medical officer at Moderna; Isabel Oliver, chief scientific advisor transition lead at UKHSA; and Dr. Penny Heaton, vaccines global therapeutic area head, Johnson & Johnson.
This first session was possibly the most fascinating 90 minutes of the entire week. Poland, I learned in a brief conversation with him after the conference, is also a pastor. His oratory skills were on full display during his opening and closing remarks. He also is vaccine-injured.
In February 2022, Poland reported suffering from significant tinnitus after receiving the second dose of “an mRNA vaccine.” At the time, Poland described his symptoms as “extraordinarily bothersome.” Nevertheless, he chose to receive a third dose (monovalent booster).
Poland’s commentary on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines was extremely positive. He said the rapid deployment of the new therapy saved millions of lives and would have saved millions more if it weren’t for the disturbing trend of growing vaccine hesitancy.
I assumed that his vaccine-induced tinnitus had resolved over the last year. It was only at the end of the conference, several days later, when he told me personally that his symptoms were still debilitating, making his unmitigated support of these products even more astonishing.
Poland set the tone for the four-day conference in the first 10 minutes. In his mind, the COVID-19 pandemic was halted through the hard work of our regulatory agencies and the remarkable products borne of the mRNA platform.
The only failure came in the form of “inexplicable” vaccine hesitancy, a phenomenon driven by anti-vax pseudoscientists who are profiting from spreading baseless, fear-driven propaganda.
Combatting vaccine hesitancy is as big a challenge as protecting the world from the next deadly pathogen. Indeed, a significant portion of the events focused on strategies to dismantle the troubling “anti-vaxxers.”
Marks supported Poland’s position that the vaccine-hesitant are irrational, “It’s crazy that they don’t get how great vaccines are,” he said. “I am past trying to argue with people who think that vaccines are not safe.”
I found this remark to be particularly disquieting. What is it going to take for the director of the FDA’s CBER to reassess the safety profile of the mRNA shots?
The panelists expressed shock that some states (Idaho and North Dakota) are considering bills making the administration of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines illegal.
“How can we get the public to understand that science is iterative?” Heaton asked. “COVID vaccines save lives!”
Poland responded: “Can we get an amen?!!”
Marks, flanked by his partners — I mean counterparts — in industry let the audience know what the future would look like. “I am not going to hold my breath waiting for a sterilizing vaccine, protecting against severe disease is enough,” he said.
Marks predicted COVID-19 vaccines would be administered annually or even biannually.
He noted that the challenge will be to identify the strain of interest in June so that we can have a vaccine by September. A 100-day turnaround is possible as long as we have manufacturing ready to go, he said. Heaton (J&J) and Burton (Moderna) nodded in response.
To summarize, leaders of the vaccine industry and the regulatory agencies are, in my impression, convinced that they have offered the world an amazing product and are frustrated that it is not being readily and universally accepted.
They cited the fact that although 70% of Americans received the primary series, only 15% have chosen to receive the bivalent booster that became available in September 2022.
The reluctance of the public to accept the shot, they think, is due to the perceived reduction of threat of the disease, which can be overcome by “proper messaging.”
Of course, the public is correct. The pathogenicity of the strains now circulating is less than the original ancestral strain from 2020. The possibility that reduced uptake could be linked to a poor safety profile was never mentioned.
In their minds, vaccine injuries and serious adverse events are extremely rare. Their incidence has been exaggerated by anti-vax rumor mills. Poland joked that “maybe we should start a rumor that microchips are in ivermectin!”
His rejoinder was met with only sparse, nervous laughter.
Roundtable discussion: ‘Insights and tools to counter vaccine hesitancy’
Though the speakers at the introductory session were clearly entrenched in the “safe and effective” position, they acknowledged that there was a strong and growing swath of the population that was vaccine-hesitant.
More importantly, they were interested in dismantling this movement and not ignoring it. It was an opportunity to engage with them, perhaps in smaller groups or individually. I made my first attempt at a roundtable discussion where people could offer ways to convince the “anti-vaxxers” that they were wrong.
I found myself sitting next to Dame Jennifer Margaret Harries, a British public health physician and chief executive of the UKHSA. The UKHSA has been publishing U.K. health surveillance data with more granularity and frequency than our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
I let her know that I appreciated the data coming from her agency and that I began following the agency’s regular surveillance reports two years ago. She was grateful for the acknowledgment and appreciated my interest in her work.
It was the UKHSA that offered the first glimpse of negative efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines in a public dataset in September 2021.
I asked Harries about that and her tone immediately shifted. She said she was aware of no such thing and that she would have to look into it before commenting.
I was surprised by her response. The report from September 2021 wasn’t an aberration. Subsequent reports from the agency over which she presides indicated there was a large and growing incidence of COVID-19 among the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated.
The UKHSA stopped making that data available several months later. I wanted to know why, but she was unwilling to answer.
I changed tactics and asked her about Tess Lawrie, Ph.D., of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy who notably saw safety signals in the U.K.’s Yellow Card system and, in an open letter in June 2021, urged the director of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to halt the British vaccination campaign.
Harries looked at me sternly and said, “There are a number of prominent physicians in my country who are gaining fame for their unfounded positions around vaccine dangers, most recently a cardiologist.”
“Do you mean Dr. Aseem Malhotra?”
“Yes. He has gotten a lot of attention of late.”
Harries didn’t think Malhotra or Lawrie held credible opinions, or at least that’s what she told me. It wasn’t easy for me to accept this. We didn’t have a chance to speak about this further. I had another brief interaction with Harries later in the week (see below).
An American pediatrician chaired the roundtable. He opened the discussion with a request for ideas on how to counter vaccine hesitancy.
I had one:
“It’s obvious that the Krispy Kreme doughnuts and travel restrictions are carrots and sticks that have only partially worked. Those that remain hesitant are steadfast in their position because they have looked harder than most.
“They aren’t believing rumors. They are listening to credentialed physicians and scientists who have authored numerous peer-reviewed papers and who happen to be COVID-19 vaccine critics. Why don’t we engage them openly and see what they have to say?”
Katie Attwell, Ph.D., a professor from the University of Western Australia whose interest is in vaccine policy and uptake, shot down that idea. I didn’t know who she was at the time. I did manage to speak with her personally later in the week. Her rebuke was curt and to the point, “We cannot give any voice to the critic,” she told me. “Once the public sees them on equal footing with us they may believe what they are saying.”
Implicit in her strategy is the idea that the public cannot separate information from misinformation. Truth, in her mind, cannot stand on its own. It needs to be identified by those who know better.
Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps she knows what the truth is and wants to hide it. My initial impressions were that she was earnestly doing her duty to protect the public through whatever means necessary. It would all come down to assessing her breadth of knowledge on the topic.
Chris Graves, the founder of Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, supported Attwell’s position. He was a smiling, gregarious fellow, who, I found out later, was hired by Merck to analyze different personality types and value/belief systems among the “anti-vax” camp.
Once a person is properly categorized, “personalized messaging” can be used to bring them back to “reality.” According to the abstract of his study:
“Just as precision medicine treats individuals, this study of 3000 parents (inclusive of all demographics) in the USA sought to identify the most effective personalized messaging to address vaccine hesitancy among parents. First, it sought correlations between: demographics; stated specific reasons for vaccine hesitancy; cognitive biases; cognitive styles; identity-linked worldviews; and personality traits.
“Second, it tested 16 messages in the form of mini-narratives, each embodied with a behavioral science principle, to find if certain messages resonated better than others depending on the many factors above.”
I later asked him how he would respond to someone who looked at the trial and observational data and found that it told a different story about the vaccines’ safety. He smiled, “Oh, those are the ones that have a higher need for cognitive closure. Yes. They are stuck because they cannot move forward if there is any uncertainty.”
Graves couldn’t describe what the “personalized messaging” would look like for this group specifically, only that it existed and had been proven to be more effective than the other types of messaging
I asked him if he was aware of how many reports of adverse events had been registered in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. “No,” he said, still smiling.
Panel discussion: ‘What vaccines and COVID have taught us about the science of immunology’
The panel included Ofer Levy, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and VRBPAC member.
This discussion centered around the lack of good biological markers for vaccine efficacy. According to the consensus position of the VRBPAC, antibody levels are not a surrogate for protection.
In other words, an immune response to the vaccine in the form of antibodies should not be used to judge whether the vaccine will do anything useful. Nevertheless, pediatric trials of the original formulation used them as proof of efficacy.
One of the expert panel members was Sharon Benzeno, Ph.D., chief commercial officer of Immune Medicine at Adaptive Biotechnologies, who offered encouraging information. She felt that our approach was too centered on antibody responses and that it would be possible to identify biochemical markers of vaccine-induced cellular immunity in the future.
Levy agreed that this would be an important addition to our fund of knowledge moving forward.
When it came time for questions, I asked the panel:
“As we all know, uptake of the bivalent booster is very low. People are unwilling to subject themselves to another shot because there are no trials that look at outcomes, only immunogenicity, which you yourself are saying is insufficient. Why not insist on trials that can prove an outcome benefit?”
Levy responded that the advisory panel had no say in what kind of studies were required. His advisory committee could only vote yes, no or abstain with regard to approval/authorization.
Another panel member, Alessandro Sette, doctor of biological science, head of Sette Lab and professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, piped in, “It wouldn’t be practical. The signal is too small because we are no longer dealing with a non-naive population.”
Sette had taken the bait. He was saying that most people have either been vaccinated or exposed to the virus already. The booster would have little benefit, if any, on a population that was already protected.
I asked the obvious follow-up: “So why then are we insisting that everyone get boosted?”
Harries, the moderator, immediately stepped in, “Okay, we have veered off topic. Next question.”
I was beginning to understand how this conference was being managed. I don’t believe the sponsors of this meeting expected to encounter many probing questions about the quality of the COVID-19 vaccines from the audience who paid for their expensive tickets. When and if they arose, moderators were quick to intervene.
Was it possible that others in the audience saw what was happening? I believe it to be so. Every time I asked a question, people seated near me told me that they appreciated the question and wondered why it went unanswered.
Even a non-scientist from Moderna approached me several times throughout the conference to let me know she agreed that responding to these issues would be the best way to “increase uptake” and that she was planning on forwarding my questions to her scientific staff.
Panel discussion: How does vaccine law impact uptake and access?
This group was moderated by a lawyer, Brian Dean Abramson, “a leading expert on vaccine law, teaching the subject as adjunct professor of vaccine law at the Florida International University College of Law.”
His opening remarks demonstrated his contempt of the vaccine-hesitant:
“We didn’t get to herd immunity because of these anti-vaxxers.
“They are dangerous. In 2021, they received $4 million in donations. It is estimated that in 2022, more than $20 million have been funneled to their movement.”
The panel included Attwell, whose position was clear from her flat response to my suggestion earlier. Her public page indicates that she has received approximately $2 million in funding for her research into increasing vaccine access and uptake.
Attwell is not a physician or a medical scientist. However, also on this panel was a public health physician from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Chizoba Wonodi, Ph.D., who has 27 years of experience in Africa, Asia and America.
I was encouraged by the flexibility in the audience from my prior challenges and when offered the microphone, I opened with a more aggressive salvo directed at the moderator:
“‘Anti-vax’ is pejorative and reflects ignorance about who the vaccine-hesitant are and why they believe what they believe. This is further reflected when you insert terms like ‘herd immunity’ with regard to this pandemic. Without a sterilizing vaccine, or even one that can prevent infection, herd immunity is an impossibility.
“Rather than inflaming the situation, why don’t we engage with the doctors and scientists who are vaccine-cautionary and hear their arguments in a fair, open and public discussion?”
Once again, Attwell politely but sternly warned the audience that this would be too dangerous in her opinion. I expected that. And I also was again encouraged that the three people sitting around me acknowledged that my point was valid and that it was puzzling that the panelists would not address the merits of my position.
Afterward, Chizoba approached me and let me know she appreciated my question. In her work, she has found that education is the most important thing. She was kind; she believed that many of the vaccine-hesitant physicians could be reached by providing them with the proper information.
I asked her how she would address a physician who simply felt that authorizing a therapy where the double-blinded trial demonstrated a greater all-cause mortality than the placebo was not only unprecedented but illogical.
She stared at me blankly. “Is this from a new study?” she asked.
I told her that this was from the published interim results from the Pfizer/BioNTech trial, the trial that launched the worldwide vaccination campaign. She was not aware of the results.
To her credit, she admitted that she hadn’t looked at the paper but planned on doing so.
The final day
I attended a session titled “Let’s Talk Shots” where Daniel Salmon, Ph.D., presented the work being done at Johns Hopkins Institute for Vaccine Safety.
“LetsTalkShots is designed to support vaccine decision-making. It shares engaging animated content based on a person’s questions or concerns.”
Suffice it to say that there is a lot of thought, money and energy behind the campaign to vaccinate the public. The approach once again is around targeted messaging, which acknowledges that different people need to hear different types of information.
Attwell also presented to the same audience. In this forum, she pointed out that the U.S. government was more tolerant of the vaccine-hesitant than in her country. She suggested that our religious and philosophical exemptions should be eliminated entirely. Only the strictest medical exemptions should be permitted. This will lead to better outcomes.
After her talk, I approached her. She looked up as if she was expecting me to ask her some questions. I asked her if she would be willing to have a more open conversation about her research and opinions. She was.
I let her know that I thought she was smart enough to realize that I was, in fact, a vaccine skeptic. She nodded her head.
“So,” I said, “the number one disinformation spreader may be running for President of the United States. What do you think should be done?”
She smiled uncomfortably and said, “Yes, it’s going to be hard to keep him from getting oxygen.”
In other words, her proposed approach to suffocate the anti-vax spokespersons becomes much harder when they are running for the highest office in the land. I thought she might be willing to reconsider her strategy. She wasn’t.
I tried a different approach. I explained that in my investigation, I haven’t found enough evidence that the COVID-19 mRNA shots were safe or effective, however, I was open to the possibility that the mRNA platform may eventually prove to be a powerful way to create therapies that are safe and effective in the future.
What good would it be to have this technology if half of the public no longer trusts it or the people who are shoving it down their throats while denying them an opportunity to debate them?
“Yes. That’s a good point.”
I told her that in this country, doctors are unwilling to write religious or philosophical exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines for fear of backlash. Many employers won’t accept them anyway, so her position is moot.
“Yes. That’s true.”
I asked her what would be a cause for a medical exemption. She didn’t know. I explained that medical exemptions are considered valid ONLY if the person has evidence of a prior reaction to an mRNA vaccine or to one or more of the ingredients in them. Nobody but a handful of people on the planet knows what exactly is in these things.
How would a doctor (or anyone else) know whether a given person was at an increased risk for an untoward event?
“I don’t know.”
I asked her if she was aware of the evidence of medical fraud around the Pfizer vaccine trials. She said she read something about it a while ago but didn’t think it was important.
Finally, I asked her why she thought vaccinating everyone was the right thing to do.
“Vaccination rates in my country are higher than in yours and we fared better.”
But there are countries whose vaccination rates are much lower than both countries and mortality rates are even lower. How could she explain that? She couldn’t.
Observations from Dr. Elizabeth Mumper
Mumper attended “Partnering for Vaccine Equity Program,” chaired by Joe Smyser, Ph.D., CEO of The Public Good Projects.
She shared this with me:
“This lecture was about vaccine acceptance and demand, specifically social and behavioral drivers, and how to link action and policy through the use of the social sciences.
“The strategy was to empower community leaders to take public health messages to communities. The research showed that disparities in vaccine acceptance decreased in black and brown communities which had the program. Research shows that now the most vaccine-hesitant are white, rural and right-wing.
“In the program described, they worked with social media influencers (like young women who did beauty blogs) to repeat public health messages to their audiences. They identified 212,700,000 disinformation messages about vaccines, most of which came from the United States.
“In this project, they worked closely with Twitter and facilitated the removal of what they deemed misinformation. They recruited 495 influencers who would share information voluntarily with their followers. As a result, they reached 60 million people.
“They know that so-called ‘anti-vaxxers will not come after social media influencers.’ The program provided training and webinars to educate how to compose effective public health messages.
“This public health social scientist called anti-vaxxers ‘idiots and jerks.’
“During the question and answer period, I said that in my experience, many parents who were vaccine-hesitant were very smart and had advanced degrees. People like doctors and lawyers and engineers knew someone in their family who had an adverse vaccine reaction. I suggested it would be more effective to engage with the vaccine-hesitant and discover what data they are relying on rather than using vitriolic name-calling.
“I am paraphrasing the speaker’s response below. He said, ‘We work upstream. We want to know where they are getting their misinformation. I can call people idiots and jerks if they are giving out misinformation. If you even raise questions like about the HPV vaccine, you will get speaker invitation and book deals. People are getting rich from spreading misinformation. We know what the right information is.’”
Mumper summarized:
“It was profoundly disturbing for me to hear details about how social scientists and public health officials worked directly with Twitter to remove content they deemed to be misinformation. Their assertion ‘that we know what is true’ did not ring true. Their efforts were directed at increasing vaccine uptake in all age groups for which emergency use authorization had been granted.
“The speaker did not seem to take into account the First Amendment rights for free speech of those who posted data questioning the effectiveness of COVID vaccines.
“I was surprised by the vitriolic rhetoric directed at those who reported side effects from the vaccine or who questioned the risk-benefit ratio.
“It was unsettling to hear how public health officials courted social media influencers to spread messages for their followers to get vaccinated. Yet they scrubbed messages from doctors and scientists who posted inconvenient data about COVID-19 vaccines.”
The last question of the symposium
The final day wound down with another plenary session. Once again, Poland moderated a panel of vaccine researchers who discussed how to quickly manufacture more durable vaccines, i.e., ones that would have longer-lasting protection.
One of the researchers made a remarkable observation. Early in the pandemic, prior to vaccine availability, young infants who contracted COVID-19 were found to have robust and enduring immunity by every measure even three years later. Perhaps some clues lay within this interesting cohort.
Mumper saw a great opportunity to pull the rug from under their feet. She said:
“I am a pediatrician in Virginia. I have been shocked at how well my infant patients did with COVID-19. The CDC has told us that the survival rate from COVID-19 is 99.997% in these infants. Now you, too, are telling us that we know these kids have great protection two years after infection.
“I am wondering why I should be pushing these vaccines on a 6-month-old when I don’t have any long-term data on what things like lipid nanoparticles do to babies. So convince me!”
(Laughter from audience.)
Poland to the panelist: “You have 30 seconds to answer.”
(More laughter.)
Panelist: “That would require more time and a bottle of wine.”
(Laughter.)
Panelist: “I don’t think I can answer that question.”
Mumper: “OK, Anybody else?”
Panelist Andrea Carfi, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Moderna, took a shot at it, pointing out that Mumper is under the “misconception” that long-term effects of COVID-19 are less than that of the vaccines while admitting that he didn’t know what the long-term sequelae of infection were either.
Poland accepted Carfi’s response as sufficient and closed the discussion.
Those sitting next to us once again noted the merits of Mumper’s concern. Moreover, Carfi’s response didn’t resolve the issue at all. If the long-term effects of both the vaccine and the infection are unknown, on what grounds are we pushing the jab on these children?
Final thoughts
This was a rare opportunity to engage with vaccine proponents in their own house on their own terms. In my assessment, their foundation is crumbling and their structure will eventually collapse.
The big players must see this, which is why they are quick to squelch any lines of inquiry that will expose the hypocrisy.
This wasn’t lost on the audience. As I mentioned, some of them were able to realize that simple questions were not met with clear answers.
It is clear to me that the “pro-vaccine” camp is not as monolithic as we often think. There is a spectrum of skepticism amongst them. They also recognize that the vaccine-hesitant range the full continuum from “SARS-CoV-2 virus deniers” to the “wait and seers.”
They have the means to construct sophisticated “information” campaigns that target the vaccine-cautionary with specific messaging.
I suggest we use their model to at least acknowledge that we can be more precise in how we bring them to their senses.
In my first open comment in a roundtable discussion, I summarized the situation as follows:
“There are many people who are vaccine-hesitant that do not have the capacity to read scientific papers and analyze data. They see two groups who are mirror images of each other. Both sides think the other side is incredibly gullible, that they are listening to misinformation spreaders and are endangering the rest of us for their own personal gain.
“They can also see the one big difference between the two. One side is asking for an open discussion around this important issue. The other believes that only their side should have the right to express themselves while the other needs to be silenced.
“How do you think this is going to play out? Why would the undecided ever choose to follow the group that advocates censorship over open debate?”
By refusing to engage us in any meaningful exchange they may be able to bring over a few of the vaccine-hesitant to their side by what can be best described as “conversion therapy.”
However, in the end, their tower will topple because it is not based on logic, the scientific method or the unassailable facts. It relies on censorship of the voices of those who are qualified to speak on the matter to manufacture “consensus.”
It is incumbent on us to decide what should be done to hasten the inevitable emergence of sensibility around this matter.
I am quite certain there are people who know vaccines are causing incalculable harm but advocate their widespread use anyway. A few of them were likely at the conference. They won’t be swayed by open debate, however, they represent only a tiny minority of all vaccine advocates.
I suggest that we begin by not regarding every vaccine proponent as an engineer of mass murder. Most are woefully uninformed. In attempting to achieve herd immunity they have succumbed to herd mentality. They need to be reached.
In my recent experience, I see that it is possible through open dialogue. This is precisely why the engineers of this pandemic and its response want to make sure this never happens. Despite what they say publicly, I don’t think they are worried about the vaccine skeptics remaining hesitant — they are worried about losing members of their own herd to the truth.
Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Doctors in Kentucky, California Received Millions in Bonus Payments for Vaccinating Medicaid Patients Against COVID
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 11, 2023
The federal government and insurers incentivized healthcare providers in Kentucky and California to vaccinate Medicaid patients against COVID-19 by offering bonuses based on the percentage of patients successfully vaccinated.
“[This is] truly sickening and I am embarrassed for my profession by this,” Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, wrote on her Substack, where she posted several documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine provider incentive programs.
The documents help to draw a picture of the broader effort at the federal, state and local levels to unleash a range of strategies targeting low-income and people-of-color communities, which tended to have lower vaccination rates.
The strategies included providing hundreds of millions of dollars for the creation of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for training “trusted” and “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in every state.
Nass’ revelations showed these efforts went beyond advertising, fear campaigns, payments to patients and payments to trusted community actors and included, in some cases, direct financial incentives to healthcare providers.
Kentucky: Medicaid paid doctors up to $250 per vaccinated Medicaid patient
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky told physicians in 2021 it would “recognize your hard work by offering incentives for helping patients make the choice to become vaccinated.”
The more people vaccinated, the higher the per-person incentive.
For physicians who treated an Anthem Medicaid cohort with a minimum of 25 patients in their practice, Anthem Medicaid offered incentives for vaccination by Sept. 1, 2021, that ranged from a $20 bonus per vaccinated person for physicians who vaccinated 30% of the cohort, to $125 per vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of the cohort, with several incremental steps in between.
As time went on, the rates increased.
Between Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, physicians received payments ranging from $100 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 30% of their patient cohort, to $250 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of their patient cohort.
In 2022, the Anthem provider incentive program changed to a flat rate. Providers received $50 per newly vaccinated Medicaid patient. This included children ages 6 months to 4 years and kids 12 and older vaccinated between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, and children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated between June 1 and Dec. 31, 2022.
Medi-Cal: $350 million in incentives to vaccinate low-income children, people of color
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) on Aug. 6, 2021, announced $350 million in incentive payments — $250 million to providers and $100 million for direct non-monetary payments, such as gift cards, to vaccine recipients — to encourage vaccination among Medi-Cal’s 14 million beneficiaries.
Of the $350 million, $175 million came from state general funds and $175 million from federal funding. The funding period lasted from Sept. 2, 2021, through Feb. 29, 2022.
The program offered incentives to managed care plans in the name of “health equity.” In the press release, DHCS Director Will Lightborne said that raising rates among Medi-Cal beneficiaries was essential because “California will only be safe when everyone is safe.”
Nass noted that this program was rolled out one day after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN the vaccines don’t prevent virus transmission. “That’s clearly a contradiction,” Nass told The Defender.
The funding targeted Medicaid recipients with low vaccine uptake — the homebound, communities of color, youth ages 12 to 25 and people ages 50 to 64 with multiple chronic conditions — and incentivized outreach and vaccination activities for providers and pharmacies.
At the time of the announcement, only 45.6% of Medi-Cal beneficiaries age 12 and over had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to over 76% of Californians overall.
The DHCS funding included payments to community-based organizations, food banks, advocacy groups and faith-based organizations. This key strategy of funding grassroots leaders to act as “grassroots” proxies spreading the federal government’s vaccine message was widespread throughout the pandemic.
Providers could also couple this grant with a CAIRVaxGrant, which offered providers up to $10,000 to enter all of their historical electronic health record immunizations into the California Immunization Registry (CAIR).
The grant stipulated that after startup costs, payments would be directly tied to “meeting specific vaccination goals,” similar to the Kentucky program.
The incentive payment structure under the California plan was complex, paying a financial reward to healthcare providers who met particular benchmarks that varied by county and demographic but overall increased the percentage of vaccinated patients among their Medicare beneficiaries.
Under this incentive structure, providers had to meet particular vaccination targets in order to get paid. Those who were especially successful in increasing vaccination rates in the target groups would be entered into a “high performance pool,” receiving extra money for substantially moving the vaccination rates for Medicaid recipients 75% higher than baseline or within 10% of a given county’s general rate.
In the equation that determined the incentive payment structure, different demographic groups were weighted differently. For example, vaccine recipients ages 12 to 25 were weighted more highly than older recipients and those in the two racial/ethnic groups with the lowest uptake were also given greater weight.
By Jan. 21 of this year, despite this $250 million push, Medi-Cal vaccination had only increased to 52.9%.
Medicaid pays doctors more to administer COVID vaccines than other shots
As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Biden administration fully funded the COVID-19 vaccination program, making vaccines free regardless of health insurance status.
To cover the costs of the uninsured and underinsured, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) paid provider costs of vaccine administration through an Uninsured Program and a COVID-19 Coverage Assistance Fund.
Reimbursements were based on national Medicare rates, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which sets those rates, increased the reimbursement rate over time. Through March 14, 2021, HRSA paid $28.93 for a single-dose vaccine or for the second dose in a series of 2, and $16.94 for the first dose in a series of two.
On March 15, 2021, those rates increased to $40 per dose and $75.50 for an “in-home” dose of the vaccine.
Nass said the initial payments were in line with Medicaid payments for other vaccines, but the increased payment marked a departure from the usual reimbursement structure.
Usually, all CMS changes to Medicare payments for specific services must go through notice and comment rulemaking, but “to save time during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency bypassed that route before increasing payments for administering the vaccines,” JAMA reported.
CMS said the higher payments were meant to help expand COVID-19 vaccination, supporting “actions taken by providers, such as growing existing vaccination sites, conducting patient outreach and education, and hiring additional staff,” Healthcare Finance News reported.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Global Thunder 23: What Message Do US’ Latest Nuclear Drills Send Russia?
B-52H Stratofortresses from the 2nd Bomb Wing line up on the runway at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., Oct. 14, 2020. The B-52 is a long-range, heavy bomber that can perform a variety of missions and has been the backbone of U.S. strategic bomber forces for more than 60 years.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
United States Strategic Command, the Pentagon arm responsible for military operations involving nuclear weapons, kicked off annual command and control drills this week. What message do the drills send Washington’s adversaries?
STRATCOM’s press service has done its best to calm concerns about the nuclear drills which began on Tuesday, assuring that they are ordinary, annually-scheduled exercises definitely “not” being held “in response to the actions by any nation or other actors.”
“Global Thunder 23 (GT23) involves personnel throughout the strategic enterprise including US STRATCOM components and subordinate units. The purpose of GT23 is to enhance nuclear readiness and ensure a safe, secure, and reliable deterrence force,” the command said in a statement.
“In addition to US personnel, GT23 will involve key allied personnel and partners, including United Kingdom personnel, who will integrate into senior leadership teams and work across a broad spectrum of areas offering policy support and operational insight… As in previous years, Global Thunder 23 will include an increase in bomber aircraft flights throughout the exercise,” STRATCOM added.
The formal goal of the drills seems pretty simple: to train US forces responsible for launching nuclear weapons against Washington’s adversaries, and assess operational readiness in coordination with allies – typically including Britain, Canada, Denmark, Australia, and South Korea. US forces involved in the drills ordinarily involve Air Force Global Strike Command and nuclear bomber wings dotting North America, plus forces responsible for launching America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear submarine crews.
The first Global Thunder drills were held in October 2014 – the same year relations between the West and Russia collapsed in the aftermath of a US-backed coup in Kiev. So much for STRATCOM’s statement that the drills aren’t held “in response to the actions of any nation.”
The last Global Thunder drills were held in November 2021, with the 2022 drills postponed to this week amid the escalation of the Ukraine crisis into a full-blown NATO-Russia proxy war.
Global Thunder 23 comes at a curious time. Washington and its allies spent the better part of the last year warning about purported Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, leaving aside the fact that the US is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in wartime, and the fact that only America’s doctrine allows for nukes to be used preemptively and against non-nuclear-armed enemies.
What Other Recent Nuclear Drills Have There Been?
A separate STRATCOM command exercise dubbed “Global Lightning” was held in January 2022 in coordination with US Indo Pacific Command, with those drills focusing on “headquarters processes and procedures necessary to plan and respond to a military crisis.” Unlike Global Thunder, Global Lightning involves no associated field training.
Last October, NATO held the “Steadfast Noon” drills, simulating the use of American nuclear weapons by Washington’s European allies. Those exercises took place in Belgium, the UK, and over the North Sea. 14 countries and 60 aircraft of various types, including nuclear-capable bombers and spy and tanker planes, took part.
Russia’s nuclear forces held their own nuclear exercises, dubbed “Grom” (“Thunder”), the same month, notifying the US on what the Pentagon said was a “routine annual exercise” in compliance with arms control obligations. The Grom drills involved tests of components of all three elements of Russia’s nuclear triad, including live-fire launches of submarine, aircraft, and ground-based nuclear missile systems.
The nuclear superpowers aren’t the only ones to have conducted nuclear exercises recently. Last month, North Korea held two days-worth of drills “simulating a nuclear counterattack” against enemy targets – including the firing of a tactical missile carrying a mock nuclear weapon, amid growing regional tensions sparked by the increased frequency of US, South Korean, and Japanese exercises.
Drills’ Dangers
One doesn’t have to go very far back in history to recognize the danger of nuclear exercises resulting in a spiraling escalation. Nearly 40 years ago, in November 1983, a NATO command post drill known as Able Archer almost sparked a global nuclear holocaust after the Soviet military brass and the KGB became convinced that the Reagan administration was preparing an all-out surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet “evil empire.” Recently declassified documents have revealed that Pentagon planners deliberately took a number of provocative steps to raise Soviet suspicions, including a radio-silent airlift of 19,000 US troops to Europe, training involving “new nuclear weapons release procedures,” and multiple intentional “slips of the tongue” involving references to B-52 bomber flights as “strikes.” Additional declassified docs released in 2021 revealed that the Soviet military took the Able Archer drills so seriously that it prepped over 100 strike aircraft in Central Europe with live nuclear weapons.
Although communication channels between the Kremlin and the White House have improved since that time, the situation involving nuclear weapons can arguably be said to be even more dangerous today than it was in the mid-1980s. Since then, the US has not only moved nuclear weapons-related defense infrastructure over 1,000 km closer to Russia’s borders, but come up with a dangerous new military doctrine known as “Prompt Global Strike,” which envisions a massed non-nuclear attack against adversaries using ballistic and cruise missiles to quickly decapitate the enemy’s political and military leadership. The PGS initiative, announced by the Pentagon shortly after Washington’s exit from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, prompted Moscow to begin research into an array of next-gen hypersonic weapons designed specifically to make US military planners think twice before deciding to launch aggression.
It Was a Sad Friday in Jerusalem
By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 10, 2023
April 7 was “Good Friday” for Western Christians, the day when they believe Jesus was hung on a cross. But it was a “Sad Friday” in Jerusalem. To the Muslims of the world, this is the third Friday of Ramadan, and this morning worshippers attempting to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem were prevented entry to the area and severely beaten by Israeli Police batons. Street vendors and shopkeepers were also attacked by Israeli Police. It was indeed a sad Friday.
Who gave the order to attack the worshippers inside the Al Aqsa Mosque?
Kobi Shabtai is the Commissioner of the Israel Police. In 2021, he ordered the police to prevent access to the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem in a similar escalation of tensions then.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leaked a recording of a conversation with Shabtai, in which he said, “There’s nothing we can do. They murder. It’s in their nature. That’s the mentality of the Arabs.” There were calls by Israeli Arab politicians for his dismissal because of his racist remarks.
Why did Israeli police storm Al-Aqsa Mosque?
On April 4, about 80,000 worshippers attended the evening prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. Some of the Palestinians stayed overnight in the mosque to pray in a tradition observed during Ramadan. Some voiced concern to protect the third holiest site in Islam from extremist Jewish settlers who had threatened to come to the mosque to offer animal sacrifices in honor of Passover, which began on April 4.
The extremist Jewish settlers have a plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish Temple on its site.
By the early hours of April 5, Palestinians had filled the streets near the mosque to pray the early morning prayer. The Israeli police were ordered to prevent Palestinians under the age of 40 to enter the area for prayers. By evening, the police entered the mosque by force and arrested dozens of worshippers after severely beating both men and women praying inside.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement “What happened in Jerusalem is a major crime against the worshipers. Prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque is not with the permission of the [Israeli] occupation, but rather it is our right.”
Israeli air strikes on Gaza
In response to the attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, several rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli air force then targeted multiple locations across Gaza causing damage to homes and the Al-Durrah Children’s Hospital in Gaza City. The Geneva Convention prohibits attacking civilian health facilities.
Israel has imposed a blockade upon Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2007, an illegal act of collective punishment. Israel’s repeated attacks upon the Gaza Strip have primarily impacted civilians, resulting in potential war crimes and crimes against humanity according to international investigations. Israel uses U.S. weapons to enforce its blockade and attack the Gaza Strip in violation of U.S. laws.
Lebanon rockets
A Palestinian resistance group in southern Lebanon launched rockets yesterday at Israel from Marjayoun in southern Lebanon in response to the Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Israeli forces then retaliated by striking southern Lebanon, but both sides have since stopped, and no casualties were reported. The flare-up came at a time when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is in Lebanon on a private visit.
Previous attacks
The Arab League met in an emergency session after the Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque left at least 12 Palestinian injured, and 400 arrested on April 5, who remains in custody at Atarot police station in East Jerusalem.
The raids continued into the morning as Israeli police were videoed assaulting and pushing Palestinians out of the compound and preventing them from praying, while Israeli extremist settlers were allowed in under police protection. The police used stun grenades, tear gas, batons, and rifles to beat the worshippers. Some victims suffered respiratory injuries due to the gas which was thrown into the mosque after the police first broke the upper windows.
The Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “The extremist approaches that control the policy of the Israeli government will lead to widespread confrontations with the Palestinians if they are not put to an end.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that the Israeli police prevented them from reaching the mosque to attend to three injured victims who needed hospitalization.
Israeli police said in a statement that they were forced to enter the compound after “masked agitators” locked themselves inside the mosque with fireworks, sticks, and stones. No violence would have occurred if the police had remained outside. The police had never been threatened by people inside the mosque, and it was an unprovoked attack on people praying inside a closed building.
“Israel is committed to maintaining freedom of worship, freedom of access to all religions and the status quo and will not allow violent extremists to change that,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu is calling the victims inside the mosque ‘extremists’ when in fact it is his citizens, the extremist Jews who provoked the attack by insisting on going to the mosque during Passover. Netanyahu’s government is an alliance between his party and extremist Jewish parties who call for the deportation of all Palestinians, and refuse all calls for human rights for Palestinians. Netanyahu is bound to be beholden to those extremists, even though he has ridiculed them in the past. If he were to stand up to them now, the alliance would be broken, his government would fall, and he would go straight to jail. The only thing keeping him out of jail on multiple corruption charges is those extremists like Ithamar Ben-Gvir.
The U.S. reaction
The UN, Turkey, the U.S., Canada, and several other countries and bodies have expressed concern about Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Washington said on Wednesday that it was “extremely concerned” about the violence.
“We urge all sides to avoid further escalation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It is imperative now more than ever that Israelis and Palestinians work together to de-escalate tensions and restore calm.”
“We remain extremely concerned by the continuing violence and we urge all sides to avoid further escalation,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Since 1948, the U.S. has provided Israel with over $125 billion in military aid, which transformed the Israeli forces and police into one of the world’s top forces. Israel has been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally, and yet the U.S. has never once held Israel accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the apartheid state in Israel.
With its silence, the U.S. stands complicit in the crimes against the Palestinian people who are deprived of every human right.
Turkey
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Israeli police raid, calling such acts in the mosque compound a “red line” for Turkey.
“I condemn the vile acts against the first qibla of Muslims in the name of my country and people, and I call for the attacks to be halted as soon as possible,” Erdogan said. “The name of this is the politics of repression, the politics of blood, the politics of provocation. Turkey can never remain silent and unmoved in the face of these attacks.
Canada
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “We need to see the Israeli government shifting in its approach, and Canada is saying that as a dear and close and steadfast friend to Israel, we are deeply concerned about the direction that the Israeli government has been taking.”
UAE
The UAE foreign ministry said in a statement, “The UAE called on Israeli authorities to halt escalation and avoid exacerbating tension and instability in the region.”
Saudi-Iran agreement
The recent restoration of full diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia has changed the Middle East. Now, the two biggest powerhouses in the region have put differences aside and are willing to work together for peace and security. Neither nation has normalized a relationship with Israel, even though Netanyahu stated in December 2022 that getting a deal with Saudi Arabia was one of the two biggest goals of his new administration.
The U.S. has not offered any leadership for decades on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In the meantime, the U.S. has slipped from global leadership, especially from the days of influence in the Middle East, since the area has turned independent of dictates from the Oval Office.
Samidoun statement on smear campaign in Germany
A statement by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network:
On Saturday, 8 April, nearly 1,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin in solidarity with Palestine. The reality of this demonstration was that it was strong and organized, an expression of outrage and internationalism against the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation regime.
Despite the presence of an excessively large number of police as well as Arabic translators specifically brought by the police to surveil the crowd, there were no incidents reported by anyone while the demonstration took place. Instead, images of the demonstration spread around the world, a sign that Palestinians, Arabs, and internationalists in Germany have not forgotten the ongoing injustice in Palestine.
As always, when there is a large demonstration for Palestine, and particularly when the Palestinian and Arab community in Berlin speaks out for justice and against racism and repression, the attacks and attempts to criminalize the demonstration soon follow. We have seen this same rhetoric play out time and time again, and every time a new pretext is used to incite the suppression of the Palestinian voice in Berlin — as well as the suppression of all voices for justice.
This time, the pretext is a sensationalized video that is widely circulated by German media. The video in question contains deliberate translation errors, open demonization of Palestinians in general and Samidoun Network in particular, and openly vilifies political prisoners on hunger strike fighting blatantly political charges as civilians before occupation military courts, elderly political prisoners being murdered in Israeli prisons due to medical neglect, and child prisoners. The video attempts to highlight a single voice allegedly shouting an anti-Semitic slogan during the demonstration. The individual that allegedly shouted this statement is never shown in the video, they were not joined by any other person, the chant did not come from the front of the demonstration nor over the microphone, and this individual voice in a mass demonstration of a thousand people just happened to be close enough to these “journalists” for them to pick up his chant and use it to launch an extensive smear campaign against organizing for Palestine in Germany.
The identity of this person is entirely unclear, as is their reason for shouting this or even whether they were a participant in the demonstration at all. One thing is clear: they had nothing to do with the organization, direction, leadership or political framework of the mobilization and this statement does not reflect our clear anti-racist, anti-colonial vision for a liberated Palestine. Every single Palestinian demonstration in Germany is routinely and falsely targeted and smeared as anti-Jewish, when it is in fact anti-racist and pro-liberation. This is also being used to try to criminalize Samidoun, our member organizations and our initiatives in other countries thousands of kilometers away, which shows the true intentions of this campaign.
This smear tactic aims at putting in question our clear stance against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, and by extent, our natural stance against the statement allegedly shouted by a single individual in the vicinity of the demonstration. Principled organization for Palestine is by definition anti-Zionist, against this racist and colonial system that oppresses and attempts at eliminating the Palestinian people. And we are joined in this struggle with our anti-zionist Jewish comrades, because our struggle is not in the context of a religious conflict, but is a liberation movement against colonialism, occupation, and oppression.
Two very important points about the weaponization of such incidents that are impossible to account for in a mass demonstration:
- We view such statements as a tool in the hands of reactionary and repressive forces, including pro-apartheid organizations that seek to criminalize support for Palestine.
- Zionism and its ongoing drive to designate this fascist ideology as “Jewish” has long played a nefarious role in confusing Zionism, a racist political ideology, with Judaism and Jewishness. The same is true of Western powers that repeatedly refer to the Israeli occupation as the “Jewish state”, attempting to tar all Jews with the brush of Zionist crimes. It is the Palestinian liberation movement that rejects the equation of Jews with Zionists and the Zionist movement that seeks to institutionalize that same equation.
Further, we are also clear that these coordinated attacks do not reflect any desire to act against racism, including anti-Semitism, in Berlin or in Germany. Instead, they exist to achieve three main objectives:
- Attempt to manufacture a pretext to prohibit organizations working for justice and liberation in Palestine, like the Samidoun Network, or to ban demonstrations, like the upcoming marches to commemorate the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, the catastrophic occupation of Palestine, as we experienced in May 2022.
- Attempt to manufacture anti-Palestinian racism and repression on the streets of Berlin and to intimidate our community from participating in actions and demonstrations.
- Attempt to draw attention away from the topic of the demonstration itself — that is, the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, justified by the German government and its political parties, up to and including the extreme settler movement that marched through the West Bank of occupied Palestine today, the calls to occupy all of Jordan as well as all of Palestine by Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the attacks on Palestinians at prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.
We will not be silenced or suppressed, and we will not stand by as our community is targeted for repression and criminalization. We urge all to join us on Sunday, 16 April for the March to Free Palestinian Prisoners. With our collective clarity and voice, we once again affirm, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Archbishop Hanna demands freedom of access Jerusalem’s holy sites
MEMO | April 11, 2023
The head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, has demanded Palestinian Muslims and Christians be guaranteed freedom of access to their holy places in the occupied city of Jerusalem to practise their religious rituals in peace.
For years Israeli checkpoints have impeded the arrival of Christian worshippers to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he added, adding that Christian pilgrims visit Palestine to pray, worship and seek blessings from the holy places, and not to be stopped at the checkpoints and be abused.
Archbishop Hanna said freedom of worship and freedom of access to the holy places in Jerusalem are one of the most basic rights, and therefore it is not permissible to overlook these rights, or accept the fait accompli imposed by the Israeli occupation on Palestinians, where the city of Jerusalem becomes a military barracks with checkpoints in every corner.
“These days, Palestinian Christians are eager to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and pray in it, but, unfortunately, there are unjust measures that prevent Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem, where military checkpoints and the Apartheid Wall surround the Holy City and prevent Palestinian Christians and Muslims, from reaching their holy places until after they obtain special permits that allow them to enter,” he explained.
“It is not permissible to hinder the arrival of Palestinian Christians and pilgrims coming from different parts of the world to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as our Muslim brothers who wish to reach Al-Aqsa Mosque,” he added.
“Open Jerusalem for its people so that they may reach it with complete freedom. Open Jerusalem to all its visitors and pilgrims who come to it from all parts of the world. Jerusalem is the city of our faith and the incubator of our most important sanctities. No believer should be prevented from reaching the holy places in this blessed part of the world,” he said.
‘Smile-kill-enjoy’: Motto of candidate to lead Israel’s National Guard
The former Unit 101 paratrooper commander, told his soldiers to enjoy killing Palestinians
The Cradle – April 10 2023
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, one of the leading candidates to head Israel’s new National Guard is Avinoam Emunah, a retired colonel known for advocating violence against Palestinians.
Middle East Eye (MEE) noted that Emunah is the former commander of the infamous elite paratroopers Unit 101. Established in 1953, the unit was first led by former general and prime minister Ariel Sharon and was known for carrying out operations terrorizing Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian civilians.
While a member of Unit 101, Emunah fought in campaigns during the Second Intifada, the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and the war on Gaza in 2014.
Sources in the Israeli military report that Emunah punished his soldiers who did not use enough violence during fighting in the Gaza Strip in 2014.
In addition, a Video emerged of Emunah telling his soldiers, “Much of the time, you’ll be seeing them fleeing … Kill them as they flee” and “Smile, guys. You should enjoy it. Try to enjoy it.”
In a 2015 article published in an army magazine, he dubbed the “smile-kill-enjoy” motto as “words to spur on” the troops.
On 2 April, Israel’s government announced the establishment of the National Guard under the supervision of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is also known for his extreme anti-Palestinian views.
Haaretz reported as well that when asked who he would like to see enlist in the national guard, Ben-Gvir specifically mentioned La Familia, the racist hooligan fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, and said that there are “officers and ethical people” among them.
The Israeli government approved a budget of around $278 million for the establishment of the armed branch while also increasing the salaries of over 3,000 police officers.
Ben Gvir said the establishment of the National Guard is “important news for Israeli residents and will improve personal security.”
However, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called the proposed national guard “a private, armed militia that … will first and foremost act in mixed cities, first and foremost against the Arab population.”
Ben Gvir had previously called for establishing an Israeli National Guard to prepare the country for a new “imminent” war with Hamas.
The deal to establish the National Guard was reached with Gvir’s party, Otzma Yehudit, in exchange for not leaving the government over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to postpone the legislation of the controversial judicial reform bill.
‘Pentagon Leak’ Indicates US Allies Not Falling in Line With Washington’s All-In Ukraine Policy
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
The apparent Pentagon leak has shown that Washington’s attempts to force its allies into following its military agenda is not working well anymore, as the Kiev regime is losing grip and ground, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told Sputnik.
Alleged Pentagon documents, with some of them marked “top secret,” have found their way to the web over the past few weeks. The trove contains information ranging from American military plans in Ukraine, to sensitive data linked to China and the Middle East, and also shed new light on Washington’s spying on its allies. This is not the first time that Pentagon documents have been leaked: in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, turned over a batch of Pentagon files pertaining to the US’ involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 to The New York Times, which prompted a heated public debate. Meanwhile, the veracity of the latest trove is in question, as South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have dismissed the apparent leak as “false.”
“There’s so much speculation,” said Daniel McAdams. “Could it be someone from the Pentagon who understands that the White House has absolutely no idea what it’s doing and is dragging us into World War III? Could it be someone like that, a whistleblower? Possibly. Could it be someone in the White House understanding that this is a lost war? They’ve lost the war and they’re looking for an off-ramp. And if they could point out the fact that Ukraine’s resources are severely depleted when the so-called spring offensive comes and it fails like most people expect it to fail, they could say, ‘Well, the information was out there. You all knew that they didn’t have a chance anyway, so it’s not our fault. See you later.’ You know, that could be another thing.”
Judging from the documents in question, the US has recently been busy with persuading its allies to kick off deliveries of military equipment and lethal weapons to the Kiev regime. The alleged Pentagon files shed light on Seoul’s concerns that artillery shells provided to the US by South Korea could then be transferred to Ukraine. The batch also showed that the US has not given up hope on forcing Tel Aviv into sending missiles to the Kiev regime and even alleged that the Bulgarian government is considering sending Kiev its MiG fighter jets. However, the US allies have resolutely denied planning any of the aforementioned weaponrs deliveries to Kiev.
“I don’t think it’s anything unusual to see the US pressuring its so-called allies into doing what Washington wants done on foreign policy,” McAdams noted. “I mean, the leaks are very strange, because it’s not obvious what the purpose of leaking them was right now. The idea that the US is pressuring countries like South Korea and Israel is not a surprise, but it does show at least that the US is all-in on its Ukraine policy and it’s demanding that the rest of the world fall in line (…) There are two reasons [for the US pressuring its allies to give weapons to Ukraine]. First of all, the neocons (…) who run our foreign policy, they never back off. They never back away. That’s number one. And number two, this whole thing is a money-laundering scheme. The Central Europeans give up Soviet-era weapons, and then they use money given to them by Washington to purchase brand new weapons from the US military-industrial complex. This is a massive scam on a multi-tens of billions of dollars scale.”
The US sent Ukraine nearly $47 billion worth of military aid last year and still Washington is pressuring smaller allied nations to join its effort and fork out. However, the problem is that it isn’t working and those countries are pushing back and saying “no,” McAdams continued. He cited French President Emmanuel Macron as saying recently: “We can’t just follow the Americans on their foreign policy anymore.” According to the US scholar, this is a clear indication that “there is a shift coming.” In addition, it has also become clear that the Kiev regime is incapable of winning on the battlefield and negotiations are long overdue. The apparent Pentagon leak describes a gloomy picture of Ukraine’s depleted stockpiles and manpower.
“I think what it says is that it’s hopeless. But again, the strange thing about these leaks is that this is hardly a revelation. Anyone who follows the Ukraine-Russia conflict beyond just watching CNN understands that Ukraine is in a terrible situation. It’s already lost a thousand tanks. Another 100 tanks is not going to make a big difference. You can’t train a military on all of these different weapons systems and military systems and none of them are interconnected, none of them match. You’ve got a German tank over here, an English tank over here, and an American tank over here. You can’t win a war that way against any opponent, but certainly not against the Russian military. It can’t be won that way. So it’s not a revelation, it confirms what many people who are following this thing already know,” McAdams concluded.
Kremlin responds to claim of secret rocket purchases
RT | April 11, 2023
The Kremlin has rejected a claim that it was planning to secretly acquire rockets from Egypt. The allegations were said to have come from leaked US intelligence files.
“This looks like yet another false story, as there are many of them today [in the media]. That is how one should treat such reports,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with journalists on Tuesday.
The Washington Post cited a US intelligence document on Monday that claimed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had ordered the production of up to 40,000 rockets so they could be discreetly shipped to Russia.
El-Sisi was quoted as telling officials that the operation should be secret “to avoid problems with the West.” He also reportedly mentioned plans to supply Moscow with artillery rounds and gunpowder.
According to the Post, the document was among alleged classified Pentagon files that were dumped online earlier this year and unearthed by news organizations last week.
Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid told the Post that Cairo remains committed to non-involvement in the Ukraine conflict and to “maintain equal distance with both sides.”
“We continue to urge both parties to cease hostilities and reach a political solution through negotiations,” Zeid said.
Al Qahera News, meanwhile, cited an Egyptian official who claimed that the Post’s story is “nonsense that is not based on truth.”
Egypt has maintained close ties with Moscow since Soviet times and is one of the top buyers of Russian weapons. At the same time, the country has good relations with the US, as the two states share a history of security cooperation. The US has also provided military assistance to Egypt.
The US and its allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, aiming to cut its export revenues.
Sergey Chemezov – the head of state-run Russian company Rostec, which oversees the work of several defense manufacturers – said in January that the production of munitions has been substantially increased. He stated that “the talk… about Russia running out of rockets and rounds is complete nonsense.”
‘Pentagon Leak’ Shows US Dragging Allies Into War With Russia
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have all rushed to deny the veracity of the alleged Pentagon leak. The dump not only exposed Washington’s possible plans and routine spying, but also cast a shadow on its allies, with Seoul, London, Tel Aviv, and Sofia branding the batch as “false.”
The US Justice Department on April 10 opened an investigation into the purported leak of US Department of Defense intelligence documents. The trove of apparently classified files contains the Pentagon’s assessments of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Washington’s efforts to persuade its allies to jump on its proxy war bandwagon.
“I think [the documents are] extraordinary, for a number of reasons,” Professor Joe Siracusa, US political expert and dean of Global Futures, Curtin University, told Sputnik. “Number one, most leaks in the past we’ve learned about in retrospect. These documents are fresh. Some of them are barely 40 days old and tell us exactly the debates that are going on in South Korea. South Korea doesn’t like to pass on ammunition to third parties, for example. And there’s a debate within South Korea about the pressure from the Americans. And there it is. It’s all in the documents. It’s not even in the South Korean media. What’s extraordinary about this is how recent these documents are. And it’s not like Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or Julian Assange, [where] sometimes the documents are two or three years afterwards, or even in my day, the Pentagon Papers were many years afterwards. These are very fresh and, I think, very embarrassing.”
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
The much-discussed Pentagon docs showed that South Korea found itself between a rock and a hard place after agreeing to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles. The problem was that Seoul was worried that Washington would divert munitions to the Kiev regime. The Asian nation’s official policy prohibits it from providing lethal weapons to countries at war. In addition, the report concerning South Korea’s back-and-forths was based on signals intelligence, meaning the US has been spying on its ally, as per The New York Times.
While the leak risks triggering tensions between Washington and Seoul, it may simultaneously backfire on longstanding relations between South Korea and Russia. Addressing the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Seoul against arming the Kiev regime. The Russian president suggested that Seoul would be similarly disappointed if Moscow had resumed nuclear cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Likewise, Israel appears to be displeased after the disclosure of potential scenarios in which the US believes Tel Aviv would supply Ukraine with lethal weapons. One of the scenarios, eloquently titled the “Turkish Model,” envisages that Israel could supply defense systems to Kiev through a third party while still calling for dialogue between Ukraine and Russia. The Pentagon’s list of Israeli weapons supposedly includes Barak 8 missiles, the Spyder air defense system, and Spike anti-tank missiles.
The apparently leaked report hypothesized that Tel Aviv would provide lethal weapons to Ukraine in the event of a diplomatic crisis with Moscow stemming from Russia’s growing ties with Iran. Moscow’s reinforcement of Syria’s air defenses resulting in the downing of Israeli aircraft could also drive a wedge between Israel and Russia, as per the document.
Yet another scenario raised by the report envisions US cooperation with Israel to prepare action against Tehran in order to persuade the Israelis to arm the Kiev regime.
While Israeli administrations have avoided sending lethal weapons to Kiev, the Israeli media alleged in November 2022 that Tel Aviv had agreed to fund several million dollars’ worth of supplies of “strategic materials” to Ukraine. The Israeli authorities allegedly asked participants of the deal to keep it on the hush so as not to anger Moscow. Media also suggested that Israel is covertly aiding Ukraine with intelligence and that Tel Aviv had agreed that NATO members could supply the Kiev regime with weapons systems containing Israeli components like electro-optical and fire-control systems.
To frustrate Israeli officials even further, the alleged Pentagon documents suggested that the leadership of the Israeli secret service Mossad had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in protests against the nation’s judicial reform, advocated by the Netanyahu government.
The much-discussed docs further alleged that a Russian fighter jet “nearly shot down” a British spy plane off the coast of Crimea on September 29, 2022. At the time, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace did not describe the incident as “a near-shootdown,” but called it a “malfunction,” adding that he had spoken with senior Russian defense officials about it.
As per the US press, the apparent episode shows that despite their bellicose rhetoric, Western military officials are trying hard to avoid being drawn directly into conflict with Moscow.
When it comes to Bulgaria, the country allegedly offered to donate its MiG-29s to Kiev, as per “the Pentagon leak.” On April 10, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense asserted to the public that it had not held any talks on the provision of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. “Such a decision would lead to a deficit of capabilities which is contrary to the country’s Constitution,” the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense stated.
Who’s Behind the ‘Leak’?
As per the American press, US officials have confirmed that the Pentagon docs “appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs” compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, adding that at least one had been modified from the original at some point. Nonetheless, the media highlighted, citing US officials, that the apparent authenticity of the documents “is not an indication of their accuracy.”
“When they first came out, the Pentagon denied they were real,” Siracusa said. “There was a little fairy tale about these may be fake documents. Well, they are not fake documents. Someone might have fooled around with a sentence or two. They’re real documents and they come from the top Joint Chiefs, from various PowerPoint displays or whatever it is. Somebody stole these and passed them out. And so you ask yourself, were these passed on to show that the Ukrainians are probably now losing the war or were they passed on as a signal to other people? I mean, is this somebody who’s trying to bring peace to the region? I’m very interested in why people take this information. Because taking this information and publishing it is treason.”
The US political expert wonders as to who leaked the documents and what goals they are pursuing. According to Siracusa, they could be motivated by a higher humanitarian purpose or “might have just simply been released as a childhood or as a pubescent conflict between two kids who can get into the system who were playing games.” At the same time, someone in the Pentagon may have released these to show the American people that the US proxy war in Ukraine is doomed and they are trying to sweeten the pill, showing in advance that there were preconditions for a defeat, the professor presumed.
“I’m very curious about who released them and why,” he said. “Right now, people say there’s not much importance in them. That’s not true at all, because the very fact that they were released suggests to me that there are leaks at the highest levels of the Pentagon. And when things escape the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings, I have to ask myself, ‘Well, why did that happen?’ Or maybe it actually happened with somebody on the Joint Chiefs who’s very unhappy about this situation. All kinds of things are whirling on beneath the actual story itself. We don’t know the real story yet. But I think, once we find out, if we find out who leaked this and why, I think we’ll even have a bigger story than we have today.”
Remarkably, the apparent leak followed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream bombshell, which detailed how US and Norwegian operatives axed the underwater pipelines at the request of the Biden administration. In his follow-up articles on Substack, Hersh hinted that disgruntled CIA officials could be behind the leak of the Nord Stream plot. However, the US mainstream press almost completely ignored the veteran journalist’s story, in contrast to the latest Pentagon dump, which has been widely disseminated by the Western press over the past week.
US Proxy War in Ukraine is De Facto Direct Involvement
The NYT called the Pentagon leaks a “nightmare for the Five Eyes” intelligence alliance. However, Siracusa does not believe that the apparent leak will pose a challenge to the Anglophone bloc. As per him, it won’t impact the bloc’s intelligence sharing. However, when it comes to other allies of Washington, the unfolding scandal has definitely hit a raw nerve.
“I think The New York Times saying that this is going to have an enormous impact on the Five Eyes is an exaggeration,” Siracusa said. “I mean, the Five Eyes are on board anyway, and they’ll put up with it. But I think it would be a little disturbing to me if I were a leader of a government to find out that my deepest conversations with my military chiefs was being reported in The New York Times. I would just wonder ‘How reliable is an ally that allows top secret information, these conversations, my words, your words, to be published in print for the world to see and for my enemies to use against me.’ I think if you were a friend of the United States, tonight you’d be a little more nervous than you were yesterday.”
To complicate matters further, the leak pertains to the US and NATO’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine and their attempts to involve more nations in their fold, thus putting the latter in dire straits. According to Siracusa, “these leaked documents (…) show that America is guiding the war, it’s providing targeting information, satellite information” to hit Russian troops and positions. The professor highlighted that he regards “a proxy war as a real war.” “This is direct involvement,” he stressed.
“I do not approve of American proxy involvement in this war. And when I find out that America is playing a leading role, continuing the war, because the longer this war goes on, the more people who are going to die, and it’s going to have no purpose at the end, because Russia will get the Donbass and Crimea, all the rest of it. I mean, there is nothing that Zelensky or the Americans can do to change the outcome, that they could have had one year ago. Now I’m looking at direct American involvement in a war that the United States says it’s not directly involved in. Well, look, that’s a lie,” Siracusa concluded.
Kiev to run out of its anti-air missiles
By Lucas Leiroz | April 11, 2023
Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the catastrophic situation of Kiev’s war arsenal. According to a major Western media outlet, the neo-Nazi regime will run out of most of its anti-air missiles by next month. The source of the newspaper would be an alleged leaked Pentagon’s document. The case shows once again how unfavorable the military scenario of the conflict is for the Ukrainian forces.
The subject was discussed in a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal. According to the outlet, documents leaked on the Pentagon’s official social networks would have exposed an extremely pessimistic forecast about the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, pointing to the nearly total exhaustion of Kiev’s anti-aircraft defense capacity. Anti-air missiles are expected to run out in May, which will further complicate the Ukrainian situation and boost demand for new NATO weapons packages in order to prolong the alliance’s proxy war.
The forecast is based on a calculation taking into account the recent numbers of the Ukrainian army. Currently, Kiev is expending about 69 Buk missiles and 200 S-300 missiles a month to maintain its defense positions against the Russian air attacks. With these numbers, it is most likely that the Buk missiles will run out in early April and that the stock of S-300s will expire by May 3rd, according to Pentagon’s officials in the leaked document.
Indeed, some measures to mitigate the effects of Ukrainian anti-aircraft weakness have already been taken by Western forces. Kiev received three Iris-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany, in addition to eight American NASAMS systems. However, these devices allow a limited number of launches, which do not cover as much territory as the S-300 missiles. This limited aid has made it difficult to efficiently supply new Western missiles to Ukraine, making Kiev still heavily dependent on Soviet-era launch systems.
In this sense, a new wave of broad military support would be needed to overcome the Ukrainian deficit. The US military, according to what is exposed in the revealed paper, estimate that the necessary number will reach 16 Irist-T or NASAMS batteries and up to 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries. It is necessary to remember that recently the American president Joe Biden had already authorized the sending of a Patriot battery, at the same time that Germany, France and Italy promised to supply a SAMP-T system to the neo-Nazi regime. However, this equipment has not yet reached Ukraine, which is why the situation of Kiev’s defense has not yet improved.
Since late 2022, requests for military aid focused on anti-aircraft defense have been constant in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s speeches. He considers this type of equipment a “number one priority”, and his advisors have also requested, in addition to anti-missile systems, the well-known US F-16 fighter jets, which have been repeatedly banned by the US government. Some pro-Ukrainian analysts believe that these aid packages would be a kind of “game changer”, but renowned experts rule out any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict, regardless of whether NATO weapons reach the battlefield.
It is important to note that the US government has not yet commented on the case, with the Pentagon being silent on the authenticity of the supposed leak. The matter comes amid a recent wave of releases of classified Pentagon’s documents. Other reports from the department were exposed on social networks, including information on sensitive topics such as China, the Middle East and terrorism. There has been strong distrust on the part of analysts about the veracity of these alleged leaks. Some commentators argue that if the releases were true there would be no room for the Western media to report their existence, with a strong censorship initiative trying to hide the incident.
Although there is not enough information to point out the veracity of these leakages, it is possible to say that at least with regard to the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, there is a great possibility that the numbers are real, considering the evident defeat of Kiev’s forces in the battlefield. In a more realistic perspective, it is possible to suspect that in fact there are no “leaks”, but that the Pentagon would be deliberately publishing the numbers to increase the fear of a Ukrainian defeat in public opinion, boosting support for the shipment of new weapons.
What we have seen recently is the absolute failure of the “Ukrainian victory” narrative, as Russian advances have made it clear which side militarily controls the combats. Due to this, there seems to be currently an attempt at “damage control”, with officials and mainstream media partially admitting Ukraine’s defeat. If before the justification for sending weapons was that Kiev would be winning, now it is said that Kiev is losing, but “must win”. The aim is to spread anti-Russian fear in public opinion and to convince ordinary citizens that the shipment of weapons is an urgent measure in order to save the West.
In a rational and strategic analysis, it is possible to see that at no time did Moscow show interest in expanding the limits of its military operation, therefore there is no reason for any kind of fear on the part of Western citizens. On the other hand, the exhaustion of Ukrainian forces seems to be good news, since, faced with the inability to continue fighting, the Kiev regime would be forced to surrender, which would end hostilities. This would be the best-case scenario for all sides except for NATO’s pro-war elites.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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Israel authorises electronic tracking of Palestinians
MEMO | January 7, 2026
Israel has authorised the use of electronic tracking devices on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, formalising real-time surveillance of civilians who have not been charged, tried or convicted of any crime, according to a new directive issued by the Israeli army.
The order allows Israeli authorities to compel Palestinians placed under administrative movement restrictions to wear or carry electronic monitoring devices and criminalises any attempt to tamper with them. The measure embeds electronic tagging within Israel’s system of military rule over the occupied territory, further expanding the regime of surveillance imposed on the Palestinian civilian population.
Significantly in another example of the Israel’s apartheid rule, defence minister, Israel Katz, has explicitly excluded illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank from the directive, underscoring the discriminatory nature of the policy and its application along ethnic and national lines. The order was issued following coordination between the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Security Agency, Israel Police, the Ministry of Justice and the military’s legal authorities responsible for the occupied West Bank.
Human rights observers note that the policy applies to civilians subjected to Israel’s system of administrative control, a framework that routinely denies Palestinians due process and relies on secret evidence. Palestinians placed under such measures often face severe movement restrictions, prolonged surveillance and the constant threat of detention without trial.
The new directive reflects what journalist and filmmaker Antony Loewenstein has described as Israel’s “Palestine Laboratory”, a system in which Palestinians are used as testing grounds for advanced military and surveillance technologies later exported abroad. In his work, Loewenstein argues that Israel exports not only weapons but a comprehensive model for controlling what it labels “difficult populations”, combining military force, mass surveillance and spatial domination.
This model is explored in Al Jazeera’s latest documentary How Israel tests military tech on Palestinians, part of The Palestine Laboratory series. The film documents how Israeli checkpoints function as experimental sites for so-called “frictionless” technologies, including AI-enabled remotely operated weapons that fire stun grenades, tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets. These systems are deployed at checkpoints where Palestinians are routinely subjected to intrusive searches and data collection. … continue
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