EU surrenders sovereignty to US coercion, becomes accessory to economic terrorism: Iran FM spokesman
Press TV – August 31, 2026
The European Union has surrendered its sovereignty, laws, values and ethics to American coercion and turned itself into an accessory to Washington’s lawless economic war against Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has said.
In a statement posted on his official X account on Monday night, Baghaei pointed to the EU’s own Blocking Statute, which prohibits European operators from complying with extraterritorial laws of third countries and treats such measures as contrary to international law.
“How, then, can the Union now support the most predatory and unlawful unilateral coercive measures against Iran?” he asked.
Baghaei contrasted today’s posture with 1996, when the EU resolved to act independently in defense of its sovereignty against the American sanctions regime and adopted the Blocking Statute.
“Today it has become an accessory to Washington’s lawless conduct,” he said.
The Union’s endorsement of America’s unlawful economic war constitutes a grave violation of international law, the spokesman added. Every EU member state will be held accountable for the consequences of its contribution to this wrongful act.
“The European Union cannot endorse Washington’s economic terrorism against Iran while claiming to seek de-escalation and regional stability. The two positions are mutually exclusive,” Baghaei stated. “This irresponsible stance is evidence of the EU’s moral decay and political incompetence.”
Iranian officials have repeatedly described US secondary sanctions and naval blockade measures as economic terrorism and a violation of the UN Charter’s principles of sovereign equality.
Tehran has long maintained that Europe’s failure to enforce its own Blocking Statute against Washington’s extraterritorial dictates exposes the gap between Brussels’ rhetoric on a rules-based order and its actual conduct.
The statement comes as the Islamic Republic continues to reject any attempt to impose terms of settlement through coercion and insists that the only viable path out of the current crisis is a return by the United States to the commitments it signed in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.
The Islamabad MoU, brokered with Pakistani mediation and signed in June, provided for an immediate halt to military operations, the lifting of the US naval blockade, Iranian arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz, a path toward sanctions relief, and a $300 billion reconstruction framework.
However, the US violated the deal by conducting deadly aerial assaults on Iran and imposing a naval blockade of the country.
Pakistan had previously played a pivotal role in securing the April 8 ceasefire that brought an end to the 40-day criminal US-Israeli aggression against Iran.
Washington sanctions regime reaches its breaking point
By Samuel Geddes | Al Mayadeen | September 1, 2026
Trump’s desperate bid to crush Iran’s economy without military escalation places the US’ sanctions regime against Iran, Russia, China and all its other adversaries at existential risk.
So far, 2026 has been the most sobering year in living memory for the American self-image. Having at long last achieved the war against Tehran that has been sought since 1979, the Washington establishment is confronted not with the Islamic Republic’s collapse but its solidification.
Far from regaining its unquestioned dominion over the Persian Gulf region, it must now accept perpetual management by Tehran of the most critical waterway on Earth, or else face a global economic calamity. Instead of weakening Iranian leverage, the US-Israeli aggression has magnified it exponentially, needlessly handing it a level of global power and influence undreamt of in the more than five centuries of the Western world’s dominance.
As the administration flails ahead of the midterms and the imminent exhaustion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which cushioned the true magnitude of the energy shock, it is soon to witness yet another previously unchallenged instrument of its power vaporize alongside its dwindling munitions stocks. That instrument is its economic sanctions policy.
This week ushered in the so-called “Operation Economic Outcast”, through which Washington hopes to throttle every avenue of economic contact between Iran and the outside world. Announced by the hapless Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who, along with his bemusement at the rising price of oil in response to the US’ actions, is also contending with the failure of the naval blockade of Iran’s southern coast, which has still not caused either Tehran’s collapse or capitulation. By switching back to tactics of blunt economic coercion, the Trump administration signaled an unprecedented escalation in the intensity of its secondary sanctions policy, namely that any company or state engaging in economic activity of any kind with Iran will share in its exclusion from the economic and financial system underpinned by the US dollar.
This threat, in addition to being levelled against regional and small-to-medium-sized economic partners of the Islamic Republic, is also explicitly aimed at China and Russia. In its desperation to force Iranian submission, Washington is escalating the war to the level of global economic blackmail, including against its only near-peer economy and potential challenger. Even Bessent, by his own admission, acknowledged that actual imposition of such sanctions would “blow up” the global financial system.
In addition to threatening every state that engages in any way with the Iranian economy, the Trump administration has, at “Israel’s” encouragement, also taken to the idea of imposing a total land blockade as well. This would require strong-arming systemically important regional actors such as Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan into sacrificing their own natural economic ties with their neighbor, to achieve the objectives of the very foreign power that has thrown their economic present and future into chaos.
Before the so-called “Economic D-Day” was even launched, Beijing called Trump and Bessent’s bluffs, assuring that any US sanctions against entities facilitating Chinese-Iranian exchange would trigger “all necessary measures” in response. The effects of increasing Chinese-US decoupling, the accumulating poison of the US tariff war against the rest of the world and now the apparent collapse of the North American economic bloc (formerly NAFTA), leave Washington in no position to incur the true costs of such retaliation, let alone the simultaneous countersanctions from the likes of Russia, Turkey, India, Pakistan and any other country that depends more on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz than on trade with the US.
Neither are the Iranians anywhere near as bereft of economic weapons of their own, certainly not in comparison to the first Trump administration’s economic strangulation. Tehran has correctly greeted the US economic campaign as the desperate gamble that it is- and met it with an ultimatum of its own: that any participating state in this economic siege will be treated as an enemy.
Trump may believe that the US’ relative lesser exposure to the Strait gives him some sort of leverage. In fact, for the majority of states in the world whose economies run in whole or part due to the 20 percent of oil and natural gas, 30 percent of industrial helium, 40 percent of sulfur and 50 percent of fertilizer inputs that annually transit Hormuz, this reality gives them far more reason to accommodate the Islamic Republic than to join Washington and Tel-Aviv’s attempts to bring it to its knees.
This stunning level of economic hubris, if acted upon, will either fail and demonstrate the economic limits of US power along with those of its military, or it will succeed and split the globe into separate economic world-systems. Like almost every gambit of this unhinged presidency, success would be more damaging than failure. Washington will have so antagonized even its closest partners that whatever remains of the “global economy” centered around the Dollar will be very much less than “global” in its scope, compared to the parallel world economy its hostility will have birthed through sheer obstinate stupidity.
New US ‘precision’ missiles responsible for multiple civilian deaths in Iran – report
RT | September 1, 2026
The US killed multiple civilians in southern Iran using new “precision” missiles with a wide damage radius, conflict monitoring group Airwars has found. Tehran has repeatedly accused Washington of war crimes since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran which has killed up to 3,000 civilians.
In an investigation published on Monday, the London-based watchdog examined three February 28 strikes in the city of Lamerd that killed at least 21 civilians, including seven children. It concluded that the weapons used were likely Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), which made their combat debut during the opening phase of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The PrSM is designed to explode above the ground, spraying tens of thousands of dense tungsten pellets in all directions rather than relying primarily on the blast itself.
Airwars found that civilians were killed at least 50 meters from the estimated detonation points, while damage extended as far as 150 meters. The three missiles exploded over two residential neighborhoods and a sports center.
Among those killed was a two-year-old girl struck while playing outside her home around 50 meters from one blast. Another strike over a sports hall killed seven civilians, most of them children.
No military personnel were reported killed, and Airwars found no evidence that military infrastructure had been hit. A nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound appeared undamaged.
The Associated Press separately reviewed the evidence and consulted six weapons experts, including two former military officials, who also assessed that PrSMs were responsible for the strikes.
“You would be hard-pressed to find a reason to use the PrSM in a densely populated area,” former US Army adviser Michael Meier told AP.
US Central Command has acknowledged deploying PrSMs against Iran, describing their use as a “historic first,” but has denied firing any weapons at Lamerd. It has instead suggested that an Iranian cruise missile was to blame, although weapons experts cited by AP and Airwars disputed that assessment.
The PrSM had only recently completed its prototype phase and had not completed operational testing before its combat debut in Iran. A US Army official later said a deployed unit exhausted its entire stock of the missiles early in the war. Washington has since committed billions of dollars to expanding production.
Tehran has repeatedly accused Washington of war crimes over strikes on civilian areas. The Lamerd attack came on the same day as the US bombing of an elementary school in Minab, which killed 175 people, most of them children.
The Airwars findings come as direct US-Iran hostilities resumed over the weekend after a month-long lull. Washington struck Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday, prompting Tehran to launch missiles and drones at US military facilities in Jordan.
US President Donald Trump has since threatened another round of attacks, saying Washington would “hit Iran hard.”
Economy will withstand US sanctions, Iran Central Bank governor says
Al Mayadeen| September 1, 2026
Claims suggesting Iran is heading toward an economic collapse are unfounded, said the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Abdolnaser Hemmati, on Tuesday, stressing that the country’s economic system continues to operate robustly despite new sanctions imposed by its adversaries every week.
Hemmati said Iran’s collection of its foreign-currency receivables remains ongoing and that its resources continue to flow, alongside domestic reserves. He added that Iran has financial resources whose details cannot be disclosed, noting that the Central Bank is fully prepared to inject $2 billion in foreign currency into the market.
In a message addressed to US President Donald Trump, Hemmati said, “I say to Trump: Iran has enough foreign-currency reserves”.
Regarding developments in the foreign-exchange market, the Central Bank governor said conditions in the currency market would stabilize in the coming period, attributing the recent rise in exchange rates more to psychological warfare than to underlying economic factors.
US economic pressure fails
This comes after the United States announced “Operation Economic Outcast” earlier this week as part of its campaign to isolate Iran economically. The US Treasury has described the initiative as an effort to target Iran’s financial links and pressure foreign entities conducting business with Tehran.
The sanctions, like previous packages aimed at choking Iran economically, have evidently failed. Chinese refiners are still importing about 1.2 million barrels of Iranian oil a day this year, a figure barely below last year’s pace.
Real volumes could be higher, since ships carrying Iranian crude have gotten better at avoiding detection. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) revealed that Iranian commercial and financial activity continues across Dubai despite Washington’s push to sharply restrict Tehran’s access to regional markets and financial networks.
According to the newspaper, Iranian banks, airlines, restaurants, and businesses remain active in the United Arab Emirates.
At one Bank Melli branch in Dubai’s old city, around a dozen tellers were continuing to serve Farsi-speaking customers, according to the report. Employees said they had received no instructions ordering the branch to cease operations. “We put our trust in God on what happens next,” an Iranian bank employee said.
India’s anti-terror agency to question jailed Ukrainian mercenary
RT | September 1, 2026
India’s federal anti-terror agency will interrogate a Ukrainian and an American who were arrested in March for allegedly entering the country’s restricted areas without permits, and crossing over into neighboring Myanmar to provide training to armed groups.
A Delhi court on Monday allowed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to interrogate Ukrainian Viktor Kaminskyi and American Matthew VanDyke on September 2 and 3.
Both men are currently in Delhi’s Tihar jail. The two, along with five other Ukrainians – Petro Hurba, Taras Slyviak, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Marian Stefankiv, and Maksim Honcharuk – were arrested from three different cities while trying to fly out of the country.
It is not immediately clear why the NIA is interrogating only two from the group. The agency earlier recorded voice samples of all the arrested individuals.
Soon after their arrest, Ukraine rejected “any insinuations regarding the possible involvement of the Ukrainian State in supporting terrorist activities” and demanded that India release its nationals.
The NIA earlier reportedly found evidence that multiple consignments of drones from Europe were delivered by the accused to individuals and groups in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, where they crossed into Myanmar.
Myanmar insurgent groups are reportedly linked to rebel outfits in India’s northeast region – drawing the attention of Indian agencies to the group’s activities.
VanDyke is the founder of Sons of Liberty International, which provides military training in conflict zones. He has reportedly been involved in conflicts in the past, including fighting with Libyan rebels in 2011.
His family and lawyers said on Sunday that a Delhi court rejected their request – citing his deteriorating health – to allow him treatment at a private hospital, and to communicate with his family in the US. In July, the court allowed him special food items and a cook after he complained that the “spicy and oily” prison meals affected his health.
The family said the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, briefed Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Van Dyke in May.
In a statement posted on X, Sons of Liberty demanded “urgent US diplomatic intervention” to bring VanDyke home.
Trump Censorship Machine Loses Again in Court
By James Bovard | Mises Wire | August 31, 2026
The Trump administration’s crusade to crush campus criticism took another wallop on Friday in a California courtroom. Federal judge Noël Wise ruled that the Trump administration’s “ideological-deportation policy” brazenly violated the US Constitution.
The Stanford Daily—one of the best-known college student newspapers in the nation—sued the Trump administration for changing its “immigration policy and pattern of enforcement, namely by arresting, detaining, and deporting students with F-1 visas when those students use their freedom of speech to express opinions that the government does not like.” It asserted that the Trump administration’s “actions have specifically impacted Stanford Daily by decreasing the quantity and diversity of opinion pieces The Stanford Daily is able to publish on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” Foreign students who had written on the issue requested that their previous articles be deleted, and other foreign students were no longer willing to comment on hot issues.
The Trump administration claims unlimited discretion to silence foreign students by deporting those whose opinions it disapproves of. Judge Wise wrote, “The language of the [First] Amendment makes clear that it is not the government that gives freedom of speech to the people. Instead, that freedom is imbued in the people. . . . It is not the government’s to take.” This is a notion that conservatives instinctively understand when it comes to the Second Amendment and the right of self-defense. But many people fail to recognize the same right for freedom of speech. Conor Fitzpatrick—the chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—which represented the student newspaper, declared, “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.” FIRE president Greg Lukianoff clarified the scope of the ruling:
This ruling does NOT say the government must admit anyone, issue anyone a visa, or grant anyone citizenship. It says that once a person is lawfully here, the government cannot deport them because they engaged in protected speech. The government cannot tell a legal immigrant: An American is free to say this, but if you say it, you’re out.
George Porteous—Editor in Chief of Stanford Daily—hailed the decision: “The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to.” But it remains to be seen whether this latest judicial rebuff slows the Trump censorship juggernaut.
When former president Donald Trump was campaigning to get elected as president in 2024, he openly promised at a campaign event, “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” This was a linchpin of the promise on Trump’s campaign website to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”
Trump presumed that non-citizens have zero right to free speech and his appointees have enforced that policy with an iron fist. On March 25, 2025, masked ICE agents seized Rumeysa Ozturk—a Turkish graduate student—off the streets outside Boston. Ozturk was locked up for 45 days and her student visa covertly canceled because she co-authored an op-ed criticizing Tufts University for failing to divest from Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio vilified her as a “lunatic” and implied that the feds had ample evidence of her crimes and abuses. Rubio later justified targeting Ozturk because she met the standard of “people that are supportive of movements that run counter to the foreign policy of the United States.” (Ironically, a large majority of Americans now oppose Trump’s foreign policy regarding his war on Iran). A leak to the Washington Post revealed that the feds had nothing on her—except that op-ed. Federal Judge William Sessions ordered Ozturk released because her arrest “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.” But that was the whole point.
Last September, in a case similar to the Stanford Daily case, federal judge William Young ruled that the Trump’s administration’s implementation of the Executive Orders (on foreign students),
. . . was targeted intentionally at specific viewpoints in order to chill speech. The evidence presented at trial included the Public Officials’ many public statements suggesting that they wished to staunch public protest related to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including the President’s campaign promise that he would put an end to the student protests on this issue by kicking out protestors.
A Trump Executive Order interpreted “support” for terrorists “to be centered on core First Amendment speech and expressive conduct, such as attending public protests, leading such protests, or even publishing op-eds.” Judge Young declared that he “saw virtually no evidence that anyone along the way [any Trump official] seriously questioned whether pure political speech in support of Palestine or against Israel could be construed as support for terrorism.” Instead, that was the self-evident truth driving the crackdown.
The Stanford Daily case vivified how far the Trump administration will go to snuff dissent. A New York Times headline captured the essence of the case: “Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Foreign Students Who Criticized Israel.” If a foreign student engaged in violence at a protest, that would be sufficient to deport them regardless of their opinions. But the Trump administration cast a far wider net, relying heavily on a list of 5,000 foreign students provided by the Canary Mission, which, according to Wikipedia, is “an Israel-based anonymously-run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations that it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic.”
Judge Wise’s decision included stunning examples of how far the Trump administration stretched its definition of terrorist support or antisemitism to justify deporting aliens. John Armstrong—the chief of the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs—carried out Secretary Rubio’s crackdown on non-citizens. During legal proceedings, Armstrong was asked if a “statement calling for limiting military aid to Israel could be covered” (i.e., sufficient to deport). He answered, “[i]n my opinion, yes.” When did foreign aid become sacred?
Judge Wise concluded her 90-page ruling by declaring that the strength of American democracy,
. . . is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and “behave” or suffer the government’s retaliation. In March 2025, that retaliation was directed at those engaged in pro-Palestine and anti-Israel speech. In September 2025, caught in the government’s net were people critical of Charlie Kirk. In May 2026, it potentially included “weighing in on a peace deal that’s being negotiated” in Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like.
That warning reverberates as the Trump administration further decimates the privacy of Americans returning from abroad, claiming the right to seize and copy all the contents on their cell phones. The Trump administration proposed that foreign visitors will have to surrender their social media passwords before getting a visa to visit here. How long will it be until the same policy is imposed on American citizens?
Judge Wise declared, “Free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength.” But is that “strength” increasingly a mirage in the United States? And how many other illegal actions has the Trump administration taken to suppress dissent that Americans have not yet heard about?
Final question: Is the Trump administration seeking to vindicate every leftist stereotype about conservatives and Republicans being intolerant authoritarians?
James Bovard is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist and is a frequent contributor to The Hill.
Trump Claims 100k Protestors Killed /Suliaman Ahmed & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – August 31, 2026
YouTube’s Account Enforcement Practices Face Possible FTC Lawsuit
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 31, 2026
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating YouTube’s (Google’s) controversial moderation and account-enforcement policies, a probe that is now in its final stages, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The agency is reportedly considering a potential lawsuit, but no decision has been made. YouTube has not been accused of wrongdoing, and the inquiry may end without enforcement action.
The FTC’s inquiry, which began in 2025, is said to be looking into whether the video giant’s suspension of accounts and removal of content, as well as the way it informs users about these decisions, violates consumer protection laws.
The agency is also reportedly examining whether YouTube broke its own rules when it took down content or reduced its visibility.
Another question the FTC is reportedly trying to answer is if YouTube’s publicly available community guidelines are in line with how content is actually treated on the platform.
In other words, the probe may be looking into the difference between what YouTube says it does, and what it actually does, regarding content policing and censorship.
If the FTC decides to sue Google, it would test whether YouTube’s published rules and its actual enforcement practices diverged in ways that violated consumer-protection law.
But even if the FTC were to find that YouTube had in fact violated consumer-protection laws, the case would not necessarily be about restoring content or accounts that were taken down or giving a particular group of users the right to remain on the platform.
Rather, it would be about making sure that YouTube’s public rules and the way it enforces those rules are in sync. But this could give the government leverage to influence how YouTube does its content policing.
YouTube already has complete control over who can publish on the platform, what content is allowed to stay up, what is made less visible and which creators are allowed to reach their audiences and earn money.
This would not necessarily be good news for free speech on YouTube, as the changes could go either way – the company could be forced to censor more, or less, or censor differently.
The reported YouTube probe is separate from a public inquiry the FTC launched in February 2025. That inquiry asked for information about how social media and video platforms engage in censorship.
This request for information sought public comment on how platforms deny or degrade access to content or users based on speech or affiliations, including through bans, shadow bans, and demonetization, as well as “opaque or unpredictable” procedures, limited notice, and weak appeals.
The public was also asked to comment on whether this type of conduct may violate platforms’ own policies or users’ reasonable expectations, and whether it may constitute unfair or deceptive acts or practices, unfair methods of competition, or other forms of consumer harm.
Greece inks $3.5bn arms deal with Israel for ‘multi-layered’ air defenses
The Cradle | August 31, 2026
Israel and Greece signed on 31 August an air defense agreement worth $3.5 billion, which will see Tel Aviv beef up Athens’ defenses and build a “multi-layered” system for the country.
According to the Israeli War Ministry, it is the largest-ever defense export deal with Greece and one of the biggest in Israeli history.
It has been dubbed the “Achilles Shield” agreement, referencing the Greek mythological figure Achilles.
It will see Israel export several air defense systems, including its David Sling, SPYDER, and BARAK MX, the War Ministry said.
It is the “largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the War Ministry statement added, while also declaring that this marked the first time Israel supplied another state with a “complete defense array against a wide range of threats.”
These threats include ballistic missiles and drones, according to the Israeli ministry.
The agreement was signed at the War Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv by Ministry Director General Amir Baram and his Greek counterpart Ioannis Bouras.
“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war,” the Israeli War Ministry stressed.
Greece said the deal marked the “greatest reform of its armed forces in its history.”
Security and economic cooperation between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel continues to expand.
Earlier this month, the Israeli military announced a meeting between army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and his Greek counterpart, Dimitrios Choupis.
The meeting “highlights the strategic importance and relevance of the military relationship already in place between Israel and Greece,” the Israeli army announced.
A private diplomatic conference held in Athens in May laid bare Greek, Cypriot, and Israeli plans to capitalize on the Iran war by deepening their ties into a “formal strategic alignment.”
“This cooperation must deepen into a formal strategic alignment focusing on energy, infrastructure, joint defense efforts, and economic innovation – acting as a crucial pillar of stability in the region,” said Averof Neophytou, a prominent Cypriot MP and former president of the Democratic Rally of Cyprus, during that conference.
He also called on Israel to “finish the job” in Iran.
Israeli, Greek, and Cypriot ties have accelerated in recent years. According to reports from last year, the three states have considered the formation of a joint “rapid-response” military force in the eastern Mediterranean.
In late 2025, Tel Aviv, Athens, and Nicosia signed a trilateral military “action plan” for 2026, said to be aimed at confronting Turkish influence and strengthening defense cooperation.
The exodus Israel cannot afford
New data: Israelis heading for the exits include doctors, engineers, tech workers, and high-income taxpayers on whom the occupation’s war economy depends.
By Kamran Yeganegi | The Cradle | August 31, 2026
In the early hours of 7 October 2023, an Israeli journalist identified only as Asaf booked flights for himself, his wife, and their two daughters. The next day, carrying only hand luggage, the family boarded a flight to Berlin. What began as an emergency exit became permanent. Two years later, they had not returned.
Asaf told +972 Magazine that he already believed Israel’s education and healthcare systems were deteriorating. But that morning destroyed his remaining confidence in the state and its military: “By the afternoon of 7 October, we understood that even this wasn’t true.”
His story reflects a larger structural trend. Israel is disproportionately losing the doctors who staff its hospitals, the engineers who sustain its technology sector, the academics who reproduce its scientific capabilities, and the taxpayers who finance its wars.
The numbers Israel struggles to define
Emigration cuts against the Zionist claim that Israel offers Jews security and permanence. Hebrew itself reflects the tension: immigration is aliyah, or “ascent,” while emigration is yerida – “descent.”
An August 2026 Tel Aviv University study, based on Central Bureau of Statistics data, found that 90,922 Israeli citizens remained abroad for at least three consecutive months in 2025, following 91,499 in 2024 and 86,509 in 2023. In total, 268,509 Israelis left for at least three months between 2023 and 2025 – 47 percent more than during 2013–2015.
The three-month measure is not equivalent to permanent migration. But the researchers found a correlation of 0.96 between three-month departures and remaining abroad for at least one year. On that basis, they estimated that 45,000–50,000 Israelis became long-term emigrants in 2025 alone.
Citing official and research data, +972 Magazine put the long-term total above 150,000 over two years and suggested it may have surpassed 200,000 since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government was formed.
Israel’s National Insurance Institute reported 35,625 residency terminations in 2025; 6,651 were requested voluntarily. This administrative measure is neither a count of citizenship loss nor a clean measure of permanent emigration, but it shows that thousands were formally loosening their ties to the state.
Follow the taxpayers
The Israeli Tax Authority has documented a deeper demographic and fiscal shift. Until 2019, emigrants earned approximately the national average. By 2024, their average pre-departure income had reached around 200,000 shekels – 50 percent above the national average and 60 percent higher in real terms than before the pandemic.
As the study’s authors put it: “The pace of emigration among the strong and affluent strata increased, while among the weaker strata it remained almost unchanged.”
According to the Hebrew-language economic daily Calcalist, the departure rate among Israel’s highest income decile rose from approximately 0.3 percent in 2015–2019 to more than 0.5 percent in 2023–2024 – an increase of around 80 percent. That decile accounted for 67 percent of emigrants’ combined income and 86 percent of the income tax they had paid before leaving.
Compared with the 2015–2019 period, the number of people leaving high-tech increased by approximately 150 percent in 2023–2024, while the number departing healthcare more than doubled. Among people aged 40–50, the share of adult emigrants rose from 13 to 20 percent, and their combined pre-departure income tripled to 2.7 billion shekels.
Established professionals, rather than mainly younger workers at the outset of their careers, are increasingly taking their skills, families, savings, and capital abroad. The number reporting overseas transfers exceeding 500,000 shekels quadrupled in 2023–2024.
A new geography of exit
Official statistics record absence more reliably than destination, but a new geography is visible. A Haaretz investigation found a growing demand for relocation to Portugal, Cyprus, and other European states. Cyprus has become a contingency base for some: in the first days after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, Reuters reported that more than 2,500 Israelis sought refuge there.
Greece is another destination. According to Le Monde, Greek authorities reported an approximately 70-percent rise in “golden visas” issued to Israelis after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Not every visa or property purchase becomes permanent migration, but each relocation lowers the informational, social, and financial barriers facing the next family considering departure.
The fiscal cost of a shrinking base
Each annual cohort that emigrated in 2023 and 2024 had paid approximately 1.2 billion shekels in income tax before departure, compared with around 500 million shekels for cohorts before 2019. The Tax Authority estimates a potential loss of about 700 million shekels per cohort. Some emigrants retain Israeli tax residency, but if similar cohorts accumulate, annual revenue at risk could approach 3.5 billion shekels within five years.
Israel’s high-tech sector produces roughly one-fifth of GDP, more than half of exports, and about one-third of salaried income tax. It also provides expertise in cyberintelligence and military technology. Sustained outflow could weaken both commercial innovation and capabilities central to Israel’s security doctrine.
Israel’s war economy rests heavily on a relatively small, highly productive section of the population, even as its policies push more of these workers and taxpayers abroad. Their departure leaves fewer people to shoulder a growing fiscal and military burden.
The Bank of Israel has separately warned that low labor-force participation among Haredi men and the need to broaden military service remain structural challenges.
For some, relocation is a silent political withdrawal – a vote with their feet against a state increasingly defined by religious polarization and permanent mobilization. Economist Itai Ater warns: “If there is no change, emigration could increase in a way that endangers Israel’s security and economy.”
The state’s attempt to buy time
In March 2026, the Knesset Finance Committee approved a graduated five-year income-tax exemption for qualifying immigrants and long-term returning residents. The ceiling reaches one million shekels in 2027 and 2028; the Finance Ministry initially estimated the five-year cost at 560 million shekels.
Officially, the measure promotes immigration and growth. In practice, it also reveals the scale of the concern: Israel is losing some of those it can least afford to lose and must pay a premium to recover or replace them.
Tax incentives cannot easily compensate for prolonged war, repeated reserve mobilization, political instability, institutional polarization, or an increasingly militarized future.
Physical war damage can be repaired with money. Buildings can be reconstructed and weapons replenished. But when a state loses the people who generate its technology, operate its hospitals, staff its universities, and finance its military, the damage becomes cumulative and structural.
Israel’s most consequential wartime losses may ultimately be the people who quietly conclude that their future lies elsewhere.
Why Israel Can Brag About Murdering Western Aid Workers
Killed aid workers (top): James Henderson, James Kirby and John Chapman; (bottom): Damian Sobol, Lalzawmi Zomi Frankcom, Jacob Flickinger and Saif Issam Abu Taha
By Nate Bear | ¡Do Not Panic! | August 28, 2026
The Israeli commander who gave the order to bomb the World Central Kitchen convoy in April 2024 which killed six aid workers – three Britons, an American-Canadian, a Pole, an Australian and a Palestinian – said yesterday he’s not sorry for ordering the strike and that the aid workers were “not innocent.”
Last week Israel (which originally lied and said the bombing was a mistake) said no one would be prosecuted for the murders.
The episode is astonishing.
Israel murdered the citizens of five of its supposed allies, using weapons and intelligence supplied by those countries, has refused to prosecute anyone, and the commander who ordered the bombing is now bragging about it.
This is Zionism.
This is what happens when you have swallowed the logic of an ethno-supremacist ideology that enables and forgives any action, no matter how heinous, because the action was undertaken by the most indulged and protected state in modern history. And obviously, this indulgence and protection flows directly from the fact that Israel is the so-called “Jewish state.” And Jewishness, objectively, is the most protected characteristic in the modern world. Grannies are prosecuted as terrorists not because they oppose genocide, but very specifically because they oppose the genocide committed by the Jewish state. Through cultural brainwashing, political infiltration, and using the shield of antisemitism to guard against all criticism, Israel can kill whoever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants. And it can kill them in whatever quantities it desires. Because the killers are Jews, and we can’t criticise Jews because of antisemitism and the holocaust, which, through deep cultural programming has been instrumentalised to make Jews morally untouchable. Through this weaponisation of memory and elevation of unimpeachable Jewishness we end up with an inverted political morality: genocide is moral, anti-genocide is immoral.
Bring all this together and you get an ethno-supremacist apartheid state which commits genocide and kills westerners without consequence.
You get the mass murder of children for years on end. Murders which continue DAILY.
You get a state able to commit wanton acts of terror in Gaza and the West Bank without reproach.
You get Gaza and the West Bank, you get Israel, but you don’t get Palestine. You don’t get the state that the 1947 UN vote also authorised because the Jewish state was the only one that mattered to the “international community.”
You get Israel but not Palestine because the ability of Jews to commit ethnic cleansing and move to piece of land promised to them in a book matters more than the right of Palestinians to live in their ancestral homelands.
You get seventy-eight years of ethnic cleansing.
You get a state able to kill the citizens of its supposed allies, and the weapons and intelligence keep flowing, even when that intelligence kills your own citizens. The RAF has surveillance tape from a spy plane that was circling above Gaza on the day Israel bombed the aid convoy and killed three Brits, as it was almost every day during the genocide, but the British government has refused to publish or disclose what the tape shows.
It can feel like you’re going mad when analysing the role of Israel in the world, and its place within empire. You can sound like a conspiracy theorist. But then, sooner or later, the operatives of the Jewish state come out and in their own words confirm everything you know and everything you believe about Zionism.
To add to the fuckery of the World Central Kitchen murders, the boss of the organisation, Jose Andres, went on Israeli TV after the attack and repeated all the propaganda that enabled the murders in the first place, saying Israel has a right to defend itself. In the midst of a genocide, with the blood of his own employees barely dry, he tried to morally exculpate Israel by tearfully claiming the country is “better than this.” He simply couldn’t conceive that the murders were not an aberration but a perfect reflection of Israel. His organisation still cooks meals for the IDF because, like many, Andres has internalised the logic of Zionism which would mean that to not cook food for the Jewish murderers of his employees would be antisemitic.
It’s fucking disgusting, almost unbelievable.
This of course wasn’t the first time Israel has murdered citizens of western countries without consequence. It wasn’t the second, third or even the tenth time. In the last twenty-odd years Israel has killed scores of westerners in Palestine.
In November 2002, Iain Hook, a British UNRWA project manager, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, in the West Bank. In March 2003 American Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, while protecting local families as IDF troops moved in to destroy their homes. Two months later, James Henry Miller, from Wales, was shot and killed by Israeli troops in Rafah while filming a documentary. In early 2004, British aid worker Tom Hurndall was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli sniper in Rafah while attempting to shield Palestinian children. In 2022, Al Jazeera journalist and US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh, was sniped in the head and killed on camera while reporting in the West Bank. In September 2024, a few months after the World Central Kitchen murders, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American, was murdered by the IDF in the West Bank.
There were ZERO consequences for any of these murders. How many average western mainstream media consuming adults EVEN KNOW about these murders?
Palestinians, by contrast, have housed and homed westerners in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas often welcomed western aid workers to Gaza with some, such as the Italian Vittorio Arrigoni, staying years, and after whom Hamas named a street in Gaza. The only people that kill westerners in Palestine are Jewish Israelis.
My depth of contempt for the Jewish state and for the system that sustains it knows no bounds and we should consider illegitimate any government that supports this colonial monstrosity.
Fuck Israel.
Free Palestine.
Araghchi accuses Netanyahu of deceiving US over war on Iran
Al Mayadeen | August 31, 2026
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of practicing deception and duplicity, describing him as a “serpent.”
Araghchi stated that Netanyahu openly boasts in Hebrew about having deceived the US administration and pushed it into waging a war on Iran on behalf of “Israel”.
In a post on X, the Iranian foreign minister also pointed to Netanyahu’s contempt toward Washington, noting that “Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he ‘influenced’ America through 1,000 hours of airtime on U.S. networks”.
Araghchi added, highlighting what he called a stark contradiction in Netanyahu’s positions: “In English, he praises POTUS’ leadership.”
Araghchi’s statement comes as concerns within the “America First” wing of the Republican Party are rising regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to influence President Trump to deepen the war against Iran, as Politico revealed in July 2026.
The report, published ahead of a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu at the White House, noted that the Israeli leader had reportedly sold the president on starting the war with Iran during a previous in-person meeting.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon expressed strong opposition to the meeting, stating that “Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II, with every one of them a disaster for America First.”
The report noted that these concerns come at a time when new polling indicates that a growing segment of the president’s base no longer believes the war is worth its economic costs, with Republicans increasingly resigned to the war continuing through the November midterm elections.
Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative magazine, described the meeting as “DEFCON 1” and said Netanyahu would “argue for the essential logic of escalation” during the talks.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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