France, Italy to form new international force for southern Lebanon
MEMO | July 3, 2026
France’s Foreign Ministry has announced ongoing preparations with Italy to form new international coalition forces to be deployed in southern Lebanon after the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) ends.
Speaking to Saudi broadcaster Al Hadath, the ministry said the multinational force would be deployed in southern Lebanon with US backing and the participation of several European countries.
It said the force would be deployed at the request of the Lebanese authorities to support the Lebanese army in carrying out its duties and to strengthen stability.
The ministry added that consultations with partners are continuing to finalise the force’s deployment mechanism, amid security arrangements linked to the recent framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
‘Unprecedented corruption,’ crypto ventures help Trump net $2.2bn in profits since return to office
The Cradle | July 3, 2026
US President Donald Trump’s income last year soared to more than $2.2 billion, largely due to cryptocurrency holdings and related ventures he himself was able to regulate, according to financial disclosure forms released on 3 July.
In contrast, during his first term in office, the president’s income was primarily derived from his real estate businesses, including hotels, golf courses, and other properties, such as Mar-a-Lago. In 2024, before returning to the White House, he reported making over $600 million.
Last week, Trump claimed his skyrocketing wealth was due to the stock market’s rise. “You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up,” he told reporters last week.
However, the president’s financial disclosures indicate most of his new wealth has resulted from cryptocurrency and related ventures, which he has helped enable by relaxing rules on crypto markets.
In 2024, Trump launched crypto company World Liberty Financial. A UAE state-linked firm acquired a 49 percent stake in the company for $500 million, shortly before his inauguration as president.
The acquisition provided a substantial early windfall for the Trump family, allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to flow into Trump-controlled entities. Just months later, the US president approved the export of tightly guarded AI chips to the UAE, suggesting a connection between the two deals and a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency coin issued by World Liberty Financial and promoted by Trump to his supporters has crashed in value by around 85 percent since its launch.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Trump made $1 billion on various crypto deals while his supporters lost vast amounts.
Days before returning to the White House, he launched his memecoin, $TRUMP, which reached a market value of nearly $15 billion before plunging 97 percent to about $400 million.
Roughly two-thirds of investors in the president’s memecoin have lost money, WSJ added.
“Since he retook office, he’s making over a billion dollars a year off of crypto, while at the same time his administration is writing the rules of the road for how crypto will be regulated,” Lee Reiners, a Duke University lecturer, told the Washington Post.
“Not only is this an unprecedented level of self-dealing and self-enrichment, the scale is really hard to wrap your head around.”
“It’s corruption on a scale that, to be honest, has few rivals in world history,” said Norm Eisen, who served as ethics advisor to former US president Barack Obama. “That’s because you never had the combination of a president willing to fully monetize the Oval Office combined with a world full of countries and other special interests who are willing to fork over vast sums.”
Trump or people close to him have also reportedly profited from massive, highly suspicious trading spikes in oil futures and stock indexes that occurred just minutes before the president issued major, market-moving announcements on social media regarding the US war on Iran.
Economists, lawmakers, and market analysts have raised concerns about potential insider trading, data leaks, and market manipulation coming from the White House.
UN, MSM: Israel Is Deliberately and Genocidally Murdering Children
By Kevin Barrett – American Free Press – July 3, 2026
American mass media have historically demonized Palestinians and downplayed or covered up Israel’s crimes. But on June 24, Americans woke up to a CNN headline that must have made more than a few of them choke on their kosher coffee. That headline put it plainly: “Israel deliberately targeting children in ongoing genocide against Palestinians, UN commission finds.”
CNN’s headline included two assertions that have been true for decades: 1) Israel deliberately murders children, not accidentally as so-called collateral damage, but deliberately as part of a de facto national policy; and 2) Israel is committing “an ongoing genocide against Palestinians.” And while it is shocking that any government is pursuing such unbelievably evil policies, and even more shocking that American taxpayers are paying for it, the most shocking thing of all is that American mainstream media are finally admitting the truth after 78 years of systematic Israeli child-killing and genocide.
On April 9, 1948, more than 110 Palestinian men, women, and children were slaughtered in the village of Deir Yassin. The New York Times reported that more than half of the victims were women and children. It was just one of hundreds of massacres by the invading Jews who had long planned to steal Palestinian land and property by way of such a bloodbath.
During the 1948 Nakba (Palestinian holocaust) the Jews raped and murdered girls, tossed babies around with bayonets, and burned people to death with flamethrowers. Unlike the false atrocity propaganda stories invented by these same Jews’ descendants after the heroic October 7 2023 concentration camp breakout by Hamas, the 1948 abominations actually happened.
You can watch one of the Nakba perpetrators, Yosef Diamont, chuckling over his crimes in a viral YouTube video: “Tantura was a rich village and had beautiful houses. And the women in the village used to wear nice clothes. One of the (Israeli) soldiers raped a 16-year-old girl..” (Breaks out laughing.) “The soldiers took flamethrowers, and ran after the villagers and burned them. It was horrible. And no one is allowed to talk about that. I won’t talk about it, because it would be a big scandal.”
The whole Zionist project that created “Israel” is, by definition, genocidal: Its purpose has always been to murder and expel the Palestinians in order to steal their land and property. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nation whose very existence is an act of ever-expanding genocide deliberately and systematically murders children.
In 2001 Chris Hedges described the way Israeli soldiers routinely hunt children for sport:
“Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”
American media, dominated as it is by Zionist Jews, has long hidden these facts from the American people. Hedges was effectively fired by The New York Times for his honest reporting.
So why is CNN finally telling the truth? Mainly because since 2023, Israel’s atrocities have grown too big to ignore. Tens of thousands of children have been murdered in just a few years.
CNN’s story covered the June 18 UN Report “‘The essence of childhood has been destroyed’: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023.” The report estimates that at least 20,179 children have been killed and 44,143 children injured since that date, while 5,160 children are still buried under the rubble of what used to be their homes.
The UN report details systematic sexual violence against children. It describes Israel hunting children with drones and rifles, and deliberately blowing up whole apartment buildings and city blocks full of civilians, using the excuse that someone in the area had a tenuous link to Hamas. Israel’s wide-impact blasts are intended to disproportionately target children: “Research indicates that children are seven times more likely to die than adults from the impact of explosive weapons due to their physiological vulnerability, that is, proportionally larger body surface area, pliable bones, smaller limbs and thinner skin. Due to their smaller size and lighter weight, children are also at a greater risk of being thrown from the impact of blasts.”
The horrific descriptions of maimed and murdered kids make this UN report unpleasant reading. But Americans need to face the truth—and stop funding genocide.
India to collect voice samples of arrested Ukrainian and US mercenaries
RT | July 3, 2026
India will collect the voice samples of six mercenaries – five Ukrainians and a US national – who were arrested in March by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), New Delhi’s anti-terror agency.
Together with another Ukrainian, they were arrested in March; all have been charged with aiding insurgent groups in neighboring Myanmar and providing them with weaponry.
The six were presented before a Delhi court on Friday amid heavy security, and were told they would remain in custody until August 1. They consented to have their voices recorded.
The court will decide the date for collecting voice samples on Saturday, when the remaining Ukrainian will be presented before it.
The NIA is also seeking an extension of the investigation period to 180 days under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, India’s primary anti-terrorism legislation.
The probe focuses on the alleged illegal entry of the mercenaries into the Indian border state of Mizoram, where foreign nationals are required to obtain a special permit, as well as their subsequent illegal crossing into Myanmar.
The Ukrainian men in custody are Petro Hurba, Taras Slyviak, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Marian Stefankiv, Maksim Honcharuk, and Viktor Kaminskyi; three were detained at Delhi’s airport, while the others were taken in by the NIA in Lucknow. Matthew Aaron VanDyke, the US citizen, was arrested at an airport in the coastal city of Kolkata.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, at the time of their arrest, demanded the immediate release of its citizens and access to them, claiming there were no “established facts proving the involvement of the said Ukrainian citizens in unlawful activities on the territory of India or Myanmar.”
It also accused Indian and Russian media of publishing “distorted interpretations of the available facts.”
But reports at the time indicated that the Indian intelligence agencies were on the trail of the suspects after gathering significant inputs, likely from Interpol or with help from foreign intelligence agencies.
Mizoram’s chief minister, Lalduhoma, alleged last year that “thousands” of Western mercenaries linked to Kiev had crossed over to Myanmar via his state.
The chief minister of the neighboring state of Manipur, N. Biren Singh, suggested in 2024 that authorities suspected the involvement of foreign mercenaries in the violence in the state, referring to combat forces linked to Myanmar. At that time, New Delhi announced it would fence the entire 1,643 kilometer (1,020-mile) border with its neighbor to the east.
Latin American media, businessman rebut US’ claim of China ‘taking over’ Panama Canal
By Tang Luyi and Tao Mingyang – Global Times – July 3, 2026
The US’ latest claim that China is trying to take control over Panama Canal has drawn rebuttals from Spanish-language media outlets, while a Chinese businessman based in Panama told the Global Times that the canal’s core operations rest entirely in the hands of the Panamanian authorities, making the claim of the so-called Chinese pursuit of control of the canal completely groundless.
US President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that the US will not let China take over the Panama Canal, Reuters reported. In delivering remarks at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Trump claimed “China is trying to take over the Panama Canal, and we’re not going to let that happen,” according to the NBC.
The remarks quickly drew criticism from Spanish-language media. Colombian news magazine Semana cited a statement from the Chinese Embassy in Panama, which said that China has never participated in the management or operation of the Panama Canal, nor has it ever interfered in the canal’s affairs. The embassy said China has always respected Panama’s sovereignty over the canal and recognizes it as a permanently neutral international waterway.
Trump’s claim that the Panama Canal was sold to Panama “for one dollar” in 1977 has been widely questioned by historians, Panama-based newspaper La Estrella de Panamá reported.
The Torrijos-Carter Treaties were signed by the Panamanian and US governments in 1977, establishing that the Panama Canal would be turned over to Panamanian control on Dec 31, 1999, and the treaties were the outcome of bilateral negotiations between the two countries, according to the report.
The report noted that this is not the first time the US has used the Panama Canal as a political bargaining chip, and that the Panamanian government has repeatedly reaffirmed that sovereignty over the canal belongs to Panama, and that it is a permanently neutral international shipping waterway.
Refuting the false narrative that “China is controlling the Panama Canal”, a Chinese businessman surnamed Xu, who has been engaged in trade in Panama for a long time, told the Global Times on Friday that core functions of the canal – including channel scheduling, transit approval and the setting of toll rules – are entirely in the hands of the Panamanian authorities.
Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison only obtained commercial operating rights for cargo handling and warehousing at terminals on both ends of the canal through open bidding, which constitutes market-based supporting investment and by no means amounts to overall control of the canal, Xu said, noting that all Chinese vessels transiting the canal pay tolls in full under the same standards applied to shipping companies worldwide, and the claim that China seeks control of the canal is completely untenable.
In the eyes of the Panamanian public, it is the US that has long and deeply shaped the geopolitical security landscape surrounding the canal, Xu said. Relying on historical treaties, the US retains the power to send troops to Panama if it unilaterally determines a security risk exists, and has repeatedly exerted pressure on the country through various means. By hyping the “China threat” narrative, the US is in fact seeking a pretext to maintain its hegemony over the waterway, he said.
Panama’s public and business communities widely recognize the value of cooperation with China, Xu noted. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Panama in 2017, China has helped resume local infrastructure projects and supported the development of Panama’s coffee industry through the platform of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, with the practical cooperation winning broad recognition from various sectors in the country, he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on April 29 that it is the US that has framed normal affairs concerning relevant terminals as issues of politics and security, and it is the US that has been making pretenses and slandering others with rumors.
“China’s position on the Panamanian ports issue is clear and [China] will firmly defend its legitimate rights and interests. We urge relevant countries not to be blinded and utilized by those with ill intention,” Lin said.
Canada unveils new pipeline plan to cut US oil dependence
Al Mayadeen | July 3, 2026
Canada has moved forward with plans for a major new oil pipeline aimed at reducing its reliance on the United States and positioning itself as a supplier to Asian energy markets.
Alberta has formally submitted proposals to the federal Major Projects Office for a pipeline exceeding 1,000 kilometers, intended to carry as much as one million barrels of crude per day to the British Columbia coast, with construction slated to begin by September 2027.
Prime Minister Mark Carney described the initiative as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the country, announcing that the new line would largely trace the path of the existing Trans Mountain corridor.
The project would be built by Trans Mountain Corp, a federal Crown corporation, in partnership with Pembina Pipeline Corp.
Billions in investment
Carney tied the pipeline to a broader economic strategy, projecting that Thursday’s announcements would spur more than C$200 billion (US$141 billion) in fresh investment.
Alongside the pipeline, the plan includes nearly tripling Canada’s liquefied natural gas capacity through five new terminals over the next ten years, as well as a C$10 billion upgrade to the Port of Vancouver.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith further called for the province’s oil production to double and for the pipeline to be operational by 2035.
Washington’s shadow looms over decision
The push comes as Canada seeks to loosen its economic dependence on Washington.
The US currently absorbs about three-quarters of Canadian exports and roughly 60 percent of its oil imports, some 4 million barrels a day, nearly all of it drawn from Alberta’s oil sands, among the largest crude reserves in the world.
Carney has vowed to double Canada’s non-US trade as President Donald Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 100 percent on Canadian goods and repeated calls for Canada to become the “51st state.”
Trump also declined this week to commit to a long-term renewal of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he signed in his first term.
Environmental groups
Environmental groups and First Nations communities welcomed Carney’s decision to preserve an existing tanker ban along BC’s northern coast, with Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett calling it “a good day” for efforts to prevent oil spills.
Carney, a former UN climate envoy, has also acknowledged that the fossil-fuel-driven strategy will push Canada’s emissions higher, distancing his government from predecessor Justin Trudeau’s more restrictive approach to the oil sector.
Industry groups, meanwhile, argue that regulatory hurdles and an uncompetitive tax structure continue to discourage investment.
The plan also unfolds against a backdrop of internal strain, with Alberta’s separatist movement gaining traction and a referendum vote on independence set for October 19.
Trump threats fuel patriotism among Canadians
Trump’s confrontational posture toward Canada appears to be reshaping how Canadians see themselves. A new Politico poll found that 52 percent of Canadians now describe themselves as very proud of their nationality, up sharply from 34 percent in December 2024.
Analysts link the surge to Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada and his tariff measures targeting Canadian exports, including a 25 percent tariff imposed by executive order in February 2025 that triggered retaliatory measures from Ottawa.
Those tariffs were later struck down by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose them was unconstitutional.
Even so, the poll suggests the rise in patriotic sentiment has not translated into a sense of national unity, with most respondents saying Canada remains internally divided.
Mother of Twins Who Died 8 Days After Vaccinations Charged With Murder
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 1, 2026
A 23-year-old mother charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her twin toddlers was set to be arraigned later today, after an Idaho grand jury indicted her late Monday, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.
Police arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home in Payette on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.
The Payette Police Department said the arrest follows “a lengthy and thorough investigation” and said it would have no further comment regarding evidence in the case. “Future information will be presented through the judicial process,” officials said.
Shaw alleges that her twins’ deaths were caused by the vaccines they received at a routine doctor’s appointment. She is one of five plaintiffs — along with two other mothers, two physicians and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — in a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The lawsuit accuses the AAP of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule.
Attorney Rick Jaffe, counsel of record for Shaw on two civil matters related to the deaths of her children, including the AAP lawsuit, said he believes “the criminal investigation and now the indictment is the natural consequence of the institutional vaccine program that refuses to admit vaccination carries any risk to infants.”
Jaffe, who is not involved in the criminal investigation, added, “Andrea’s indictment makes all the more urgent that the public health authorities acknowledge and address the harm that vaccination is causing to some infants, rather than just shifting the blame to the parent.”
Nurse Angela Wulbrecht, an advocate for people injured by vaccines and who has been supporting the Shaws, told The Defender she was “ shocked and heartbroken” to learn of Shaw’s arrest.
“Over the past year, I have had the privilege of walking alongside Andrea and her family after the unimaginable loss of her twin babies,” Wulbrecht said. “I have witnessed a mother’s profound grief, unwavering love for her children, and determination to seek answers.”
Andrea gave birth to a new baby, born three weeks prematurely, on June 25, Shaw’s attorney Joseph Filicetti told the local KTVB7 news station. Her husband is caring for the newborn while she is incarcerated.
Shaw told physician of family history of adverse vaccine reaction
The details of the Shaw twins’ story are laid out in court documents that are part of the lawsuit against the AAP. Andrea and her husband Nathaniel also shared their story in May 2025 with CHD.TV.
According to Andrea, she and her mother-in-law say they warned the twins’ pediatrician that there was a family history of adverse reactions to the flu shot.
However, the pediatrician dismissed these concerns. Nurses administered the flu vaccine along with hepatitis A and DTaP shots on April 23, 2025. The twins had previously received most routine childhood vaccinations, including their 1-year shots.
Within hours, Andrea said the toddlers became lethargic and ill. The next morning, their lips were blue, and they struggled to move. Andrea took the twins to the emergency room and told the doctor they had received three vaccines the day before.
The treating physician in the emergency room diagnosed them as suffering from “post-immunization reaction, initial encounter.”
The babies remained symptomatic over the days that followed. A week later, on the morning of May 1, Andrea found both children unresponsive. Police and paramedics were called, and investigators immediately focused on the parents. Andrea and Nathaniel told CHD.TV that the police immediately treated them as suspects.
“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Andrea said. The family filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.
Medical industry ignores vaccines as possible cause of SIDS
When infants under age 1 die suddenly, and a cause can’t be determined, the deaths are typically classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.
But even as the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause of SIDS, numerous studies have reported a plausible association between vaccines and SIDS in peer-reviewed literature for decades.
Researchers theorize, for example, that some children with underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may not be able to process excipients — inactive ingredients used as preservatives or to enhance a vaccine’s efficacy — which can lead to illness or death.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized links between vaccines and infant deaths. Last year the program compensated two families whose babies died. The program determined the deaths were vaccine-induced.
Due to concerns over the link between vaccines and SIDS, some states recently introduced legislation to require that medical examiners document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes.
How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?
In recent years, some parents have been criminally charged when their infants die after sleeping on their stomachs.
Last year, two different sets of Pennsylvania parents were charged with felonies for placing their babies in unsafe sleeping positions. Attorney Daniel Nevins told Spotlight PA that such charges are rare and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.
But some parents have been convicted. In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police did not think that she intended for the baby to die.
She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid a five-year prison term.
Some charges have also been brought against parents in the deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.
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.
EU court backs criminal prosecution for sharing RT videos
RT | July 2, 2026
The EU’s top court has ruled that private individuals can face criminal prosecution for posting RT videos on public websites, widening the bloc’s crackdown on Russian media.
The Court of Justice of the European Union issued the ruling on Thursday in a case from Germany, where three people are being prosecuted for publishing RT DE videos on a freely accessible website.
The site did not charge readers and was financed only through voluntary donations. The CJEU, however, said that made no difference and ruled that all persons who are “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content available to the public can be treated as “operators” under EU sanctions rules.
The judges argued it was irrelevant if the individuals were running a business, how long the content was available, or how widely it was spread.
Under the German law cited in the ruling, violations of EU sanctions-based media bans can carry up to five years in prison.
The ruling effectively pushes the EU ban on RT beyond broadcasters, platforms or media companies, allowing for the criminal prosecution of any individuals accused of making RT content publicly available online.
The EU banned RT and Sputnik, among other Russian media outlets, after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. Brussels said the sanctions would remain in place until the end of the Ukraine conflict and after Moscow ceases to conduct “disinformation and information manipulation actions against the EU.”
The measures were followed by platform blocks, app-store removals, banking restrictions, and personal sanctions against media figures and journalists accused of working with Russian outlets.
Germany had targeted RT even before the bloc-wide ban, with RT DE facing licensing pressure, platform bans, banking problems and regulatory action.
RT has vehemently condemned the restrictions and rejected the EU’s accusations, stressing that the bloc has consistently failed to point to a “a single example, a single grain of evidence” of false reporting.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned the restrictions as censorship and an information war against Russia, accusing EU governments of using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to silence dissent, suppress Russian-language media, and intimidate journalists who challenge the mainstream Western narrative.
Monsters playing victims: Danny Danon’s twisted war on the truth
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 2, 2026
Whether Israelis will ever comprehend the irreparable damage inflicted upon their country’s reputation by their UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, is a moot point. The damage Israel has done to itself through its barbaric practices in occupied Palestine is simply impossible to overcome.
Danon, however, utilises a peculiar approach to defending Israel within international institutions: he relies on bullying, intimidation, and an overt attempt to silence anyone who dares to challenge the official Israeli narrative—particularly women leaders.
Yet, what makes his behaviour most outrageous is his deployment of these abrasive tactics to suppress an issue that demands the utmost sensitivity: the systemic use of sexual violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The confrontation took place during a UN General Assembly session convened to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Senior UN officials were presenting harrowing findings documenting sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
True to form, Danon refused to engage with the substance of the reports. For Israeli diplomacy, the enemy is never merely the armed adversary; it is the judge, the independent human rights observer, and the UN investigator whose sole mandate is to document violations of international law.
The immediate target of Danon’s wrath was Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Instead of reflecting on the grim findings, Danon demanded Patten’s resignation. He accused her and the broader international community of harbouring an “obsession” with targeting Israel.
When Vanessa Frazier, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, attempted to intervene on a point of order per established protocol, Danon unleashed a vitriolic verbal assault. Refusing to yield, he shouted over her, ordering her to “be quiet” and drowning out the chamber with his outbursts. “Shame on you. You are part of this obsession,” Danon bellowed.
While such unruly behaviour should have resulted in Danon’s immediate removal from the chamber, the diplomatic asymmetry of the UN prevailed. It was Frazier who found herself trying to de-escalate, politely clarifying that her procedural request was “not personal.” Danon shot back with typical defiance: “You will not be allowed to bully us.”
Herein lies the supreme irony of Israel’s diplomatic relationship with the UN and international law. Israel stands as one of the most egregious, serial violators of international law in modern history—a decades-long pattern of behaviour left unpunished by Western vetoes, which ultimately emboldened it to carry out an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Yet, Israeli officials persistently claim the mantle of the ultimate victim, alleging they are the targets of antisemitism, unfair bias, and now, “bullying” by the very institutions they defy.
But the mountain of evidence cannot be shouted away. According to an extensive report issued by Patten’s office, there are verified patterns of systemic abuse, sexual degradation, and psychological torture weaponised against Palestinian men, women, and children in Israeli detention camps like Sde Teiman.
The weight of this evidence reached such an undeniable threshold that the UN Secretary-General’s office formally added Israel to the global ‘List of Shame’—the blacklist of states committing grave violations against children in armed conflict.
None of this exposure is enough to convince Danon or the broader Israeli political establishment that Israel does not possess a sovereign right to violate international law. In their view, merely pointing out these crimes constitutes an act of aggression.
This systemic denial extends to every facet of the conflict. A comprehensive UN investigation recently concluded that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza as a core component of its military campaign.
The numbers are staggering: Between 7 October 2023, and 7 October 2025, an estimated 20,179 Palestinian children were killed—about 30 percent of all Palestinian deaths.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” stated commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar, noting that Israeli authorities have systematically continued to commit the crime of genocide.
While these findings provide another layer of ironclad legal proof regarding genocidal intent, the true significance of the report lies in its exposure of the rationale behind targeting youth. Typically, the disproportionate slaughter of children and women is dismissed by Western apologists as “collateral damage”. The UN inquiry shattered this defense, offering a far more consequential conclusion: the targeting of Gaza’s children is part of a calculated strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
As Muralidhar bluntly summarized: “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist.”
It remains a profound disappointment that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—often swift to indict war crimes committed elsewhere—continue to move at a glacial pace regarding Israel.
Tragically, the catastrophe continues unabated because there is still no meaningful international mechanism willing to enforce sanctions or employ genuine pressure to halt it.
This is precisely why Danny Danon wants the world to be quiet. His outbursts are not merely directed at UN diplomats; they are directed at global civil society, ordinary citizens, and anyone refusing to look away. Israel demands absolute silence while Palestinians are starved, raped, and murdered. According to its twisted logic, committing these atrocities is an inherent right, and objecting to them is an act of malice.
If this logic is allowed to prevail, it becomes the blueprint for every future aggressor who wishes to kill, rape, and starve a population for geopolitical gain. Palestinians and Lebanese are already forced to inhabit this dystopian reality. Our collective responsibility is clear: we must refuse to be quiet. We must speak out, ensuring our voices drown out the shouts of Danon and his peers, so that murder and systemic violence are never normalised as tools of military necessity.
EU hides secret Gaza files as UN says Israel is committing genocide
MEMO | July 2, 2026
The European Commission is refusing to release 17 secret reports on EU-funded infrastructure in Gaza, which could reveal further evidence of Israel’s destruction of European-backed civilian projects and increase pressure on Brussels to confront whether its continued partnership with Israel violates the human rights obligations underpinning EU-Israel relations.
The refusal came on the same day that a UN inquiry said Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting Palestinian children, raising questions over whether the EU is concealing evidence that could strengthen calls to suspend or review its agreements with Israel.
According to EUobserver journalist Nikolaj Nielsen, the refusal was signed on 23 June by Michael Karnitschnig, acting head of the Commission department dealing with the Middle East. Nielsen had requested the documents under freedom of information rules in February, seeking reports covering EU-funded infrastructure projects in Gaza from 2020 to the end of 2023.
“We have examined whether there could be an overriding public interest in disclosure, but we have not been able to identify such an interest,” Karnitschnig wrote, according to EUobserver.
The claim is likely to provoke outrage. The documents relate to EU-funded infrastructure in Gaza, including solar panels, water desalination projects, renewable energy schemes and potentially other civilian facilities such as hospitals and schools. Many of these projects are believed to have been destroyed during Israel’s military assault on the besieged enclave.
Their disclosure could reveal not only the financial cost to European taxpayers but also the extent to which Israel has targeted or destroyed civilian infrastructure in Gaza. Such findings would increase pressure on Brussels to act under the human rights clauses which form the basis of EU cooperation with Israel, including the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
The Commission also invoked the protection of international relations as a reason for withholding the documents. EUobserver reported that some of the projects were either suspended or completed, with implementing partners including Germany’s KfW development bank, Oxfam Novib and WE WORLD.
One project cited by the Commission reportedly sought to support water treatment in Khan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza which has suffered widespread devastation following Israel’s ground invasion.
The refusal has raised fresh questions about EU transparency and accountability, especially as EU taxpayers have funded many of the projects damaged or destroyed by Israel. EUobserver has separately estimated that Israel has bombed or bulldozed around €150 million worth of EU-funded buildings in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, without paying compensation.
Earlier this month, EU Commissioner Dubravka Šuica told members of the European Parliament that the bloc has requested Israel to return or compensate for EU-funded assets whenever they are demolished, dismantled or confiscated.
The Commission’s refusal to publish the reports came as UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel concluded that Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children.
“Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank,” the UN report stated.
The UN Commission said the “deliberate targeting of children” forms one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent by Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy Palestinians, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the Commission of Inquiry, said Palestinian children “have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” adding that even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children have continued to be killed and seriously injured.
The report also accused Israeli authorities of arresting Palestinian children and subjecting them to torture and other forms of mistreatment in prisons and detention facilities. It further said Israeli security forces used sexual violence against children as part of a broader pattern of collective oppression under occupation.
The assassination of Iran’s supreme leader: America’s strategic miscalculation under the shadow of Israeli narratives
By Timothy Hopper | MEMO | July 2, 2026
As Iran prepares for the funeral ceremonies of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, the scale of anticipated public participation indicates that they are set to become one of the most significant mass gatherings in contemporary Iranian history. Reports indicate that vast crowds are expected to arrive from across the country, alongside official delegations from numerous states. This moment offers a clear opportunity to assess the U.S. and Israeli decision to assassinate him in February 2026. The operation rested on a flawed assessment of Khamenei’s real role and standing within Iran’s social and political structure. In this regard, the United States was shaped largely by Israeli media narratives and intelligence assessments—accounts that substantially underestimated Ayatollah Khamenei’s popularity, institutional influence, and capacity for social mobilization. The preparations already underway and the expected scale of the turnout make this analytical failure harder to ignore. They show how far American policymakers relied on an incomplete and one-sided picture of Iranian reality.
To understand this miscalculation, it is necessary to return to the framework that had cast a long shadow over analyses of Iran before the attack. For years, Israeli media outlets and a number of research institutions close to Israel’s political and security establishment portrayed Khamenei as a leader with limited social backing, governing a society marked by deep divisions, economic discontent, and generational distance. These narratives repeatedly suggested that removing him could trigger serious instability, or even a fundamental transformation of Iran’s political system. Such an image aligned with the stated purpose of the joint U.S.-Israeli operation: weakening and destabilizing Iran’s political order. Yet this analysis ignored the more complex realities of Iranian society and politics. In assessing Khamenei’s structural position and the attachment of significant parts of society to ideas such as independence, security, and resistance to external pressure, Washington effectively accepted a narrative that minimized decisive factors. The result was an expectation that his removal would rapidly expose internal fractures. Developments since then—including a relatively orderly leadership transition and the continued functioning of core institutions—have pointed in the opposite direction.
Khamenei’s position in Iran went far beyond that of a conventional head of government. For more than three decades, he stressed national self-reliance, scientific and technological development despite external constraints, and sustained resistance in foreign policy against outside pressure.
These priorities helped produce a measure of institutional resilience and measurable progress in certain sectors. Iran has, of course, faced genuine social discontent, economic pressure, and political divisions. But that did not mean Khamenei’s role had been reduced to personal isolation, nor that his removal would necessarily paralyze the country’s political machinery. Israeli media coverage generally emphasized critical currents and visible signs of dissatisfaction while downplaying evidence of broader attachment to ideas such as independence, national sovereignty, and security. This selective emphasis produced an image of fragility and isolation that did not correspond to the durability of Iranian structures after his assassination. America’s acceptance of that image represented a serious intelligence and analytical failure in understanding the depth of Khamenei’s place within Iran’s political structure.
The February attack was accompanied by public statements from American and Israeli officials describing it as a decisive blow. The initial expectation appears to have rested on the assumption that the vacuum created by eliminating the leader would intensify internal divisions or create opportunities for greater outside leverage.
In practice, Iran preserved the functional continuity of its core institutions and its broad policy direction. This outcome showed that Khamenei’s influence was not merely personal. It had taken root in institutions, political networks, security structures, and the political culture of the Islamic Republic.
Washington’s error was to imagine that the base of support around him was narrower and more brittle than events ultimately showed it to be. The upcoming funeral ceremonies, scheduled to unfold over several days and across major cities, are set to draw exceptionally large crowds and will provide further tangible evidence against those earlier assumptions. The anticipated presence of mourners and foreign delegations will demonstrate a degree of recognition, respect, and social connection that earlier reporting and assessments had treated as marginal.
From a broader policy perspective, this episode reveals the dangers of excessive reliance on particular intelligence and media sources. In Iran’s case, cultural, religious, and historical forces shape political loyalties and behavior in ways that demand a more precise understanding of the country’s internal realities—not broad, externally produced narratives. Analyses that overlook these factors are vulnerable to strategic error. What was supposed to weaken Iran’s political structure instead reinforced commitment to established principles, heightened sensitivity to foreign intervention, and underscored the perceived necessity of institutional continuity. The forthcoming ceremonies, with their extensive organization, will serve as a visible corrective to assessments shaped by one-sided reporting.
By relying on Israeli media narratives and intelligence assessments of Khamenei’s position and the level of support surrounding him, American decision-makers arrived at a conclusion that developments since the assassination have not borne out.
In conclusion, the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei and the domestic and international response to it expose the limits of policymaking built on incomplete information and politically shaped interpretations. The forthcoming funeral ceremonies and the anticipated exceptional public turnout will offer a vivid illustration of social cohesion in Iran—one that stands in clear contrast to earlier predictions of rapid collapse or internal rupture. This expected turnout suggests that America’s assessment of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the degree of public support he commanded was significantly influenced by Israeli media and intelligence narratives, and ultimately proved mistaken. Rather than producing the disruption that had been anticipated, the process has highlighted Iran’s institutional continuity and social resilience.
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Evidence for the German Euthanasia Program Compared to the Holocaust
NS Euthanasia Propaganda Poster, around 1938. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
By John Wear | Inconvenient History | August 31, 2017
I have been asked the question: Why do you think the German euthanasia program happened during World War II, but not the Holocaust? This article will show that the evidence for the German euthanasia program is overwhelming, while the evidence to support the Holocaust story is severely lacking. … continue
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