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Israel’s Rafael to produce missile parts at Volkswagen factory in Germany

The Cradle | September 7, 2026

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems plans to begin manufacturing parts for Israel’s Iron Dome missile systems at the Volkswagen factory in Osnabrueck, Germany, WirtschaftsWoche reported on 7 September.

According to the German business magazine, Volkswagen will sell the plant to a consortium which will include the German federal state of Lower Saxony and a Bavarian investment fund.

Volkswagen is streamlining its operations in Germany as industrial production in the country slows following the loss of cheap Russian natural gas after the start of the Russia–Ukraine war and the destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline in 2022.

The German automaker will also close four factories, laying off up to 50,000 employees.

Olef Lies, minister-president of Lower Saxony, participated in the negotiations and will announce the new partnership on Monday.

The Financial ​Times (FT) first reported in March that Volkswagen and Rafael were in talks to shift production at the Osnabrueck ​plant from cars to missile components.

Rafael had planned to build missile parts and motors, rather ​than explosives, which would be manufactured at a separate facility, ​the sources speaking with FT said.

A deal between Volkswagen and Rafael for the sale of the plant was reached in April.

However, it was blocked by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which holds 10 percent of Volkswagen shares and 17 percent of its voting rights.

To bypass Qatari opposition, Lower Saxony was brought in to help purchase the factory alongside Rafael and Aurelius Capital, a Munich-based investment fund.

The Osnabrueck plant currently employs 2,300 employees. It is unclear whether employees will retain their jobs or what employment protections they will receive.

Volkswagen reportedly plans to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Aurelius Capital to protect workers’ rights at the factory.

The Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling missile defense systems have helped Israel wage the genocide in Gaza and wars on Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen by shielding Israel from retaliatory missile and drone attacks.

A shift from automobile to missile production would mark Germany’s renewed focus on manufacturing weapons amid the ongoing wars between the US and Iran, and Ukraine and Russia.

Germany and NATO are strong supporters of Ukraine and say they are preparing for a direct conflict with Russia in the coming years.

Support for Israel’s security is at the core of Berlin’s foreign policy, German leaders have stated, citing as justification the country’s Nazi past.

Der Spiegel revealed last week that despite the genocide in Gaza, Berlin has approved nearly $930 million in military equipment exports to Israel during the first half of this year alone.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Israel’s Rafael to produce missile parts at Volkswagen factory in Germany

After historic German election, will the AfD rule Saxony-Anhalt?

Remix News | September 7, 2026

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) just won the largest share of any party in a German state election in the party’s history. Despite the historic result, which has sent shockwaves through the German political establishment, lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund in Saxony-Anhalt still fell short of an absolute majority needed to govern.

That gap, three seats in an 83-member Saxony-Anhalt Landtag, is now the focal point of unfolding drama in the capital city of Magdeburg, where the future direction of the state, and perhaps even of the country, will be decided. AfD has a political mandate and a number of options that could produce dramatic results. Here are three possible scenarios.

An AfD and BSW coalition?

On the preliminary official count, the AfD took 43.8 percent and 39 seats. The threshold for an absolute majority is 42. The BSW scraped in with 5.3 percent and five seats. Together they would have 44. Everyone else together also has 44. Without the BSW, the chamber splits 39–39.

The BSW has already been open that it is willing to pursue a coalition with the AfD, but this is not a comfortable coalition for the AfD.

Siegmund spent the campaign insisting he would not take office without a stable majority of his own. After election night he kept the hard line in one respect and loosened it in another. He still rejected the BSW’s preferred model, a non-partisan minister-president governing with shifting majorities, as messy power politics.

Siegmund called the offer “nonsense” and said he did not want to give up the AfD’s goals and values in the face of “power games.”

He still said the AfD would not trade away its program for power, but he also said he would extend a hand to anyone prepared to deliver a “fundamental political change,” including, if necessary, individual deputies rather than whole parties.

If that fails?

“In an emergency, there will simply be new elections.,” he said. In such a scenario, he predicts the AfD would score “50 to 55%.”

The question is whether cooperation with the BSW on some level is possible. Sahra Wagenknecht framed the result as a chance for a change of course on energy, Russia sanctions, education, and public broadcasting. State-level BSW figures say they will not join a “firewall” coalition against the AfD. They also say they will not elect Siegmund. Their offer is a third way, involving a new leader both parties can agree on, plus issue-by-issue majorities that could include the AfD.

However, the BSW is already hinting they may be willing to give up even more for an AfD government.

BSW’s lead candidate, Thomas Schulze, suggested that in the third ballot for minister-president, the BSW may abstain from the vote, which in theory, could let Siegmund through to become the state leader.

What the BSW would obtain in return remains to be seen.

However, despite the differences between the AfD and BSW, the two parties have much in common. The overlap involves a strict crackdown on migration, tackling energy costs, shifting policy on Ukraine, and hostility to the public broadcasters.

At the same time, BSW politicians have already flagged education policy and parts of the AfD’s economic and social agenda as unacceptable. A formal coalition was ruled out by Wagenknecht before the vote. What remains is only a quasi gray zone where both parties can exist together a vote a time.

For Siegmund, the political costs of that gray zone are obvious. He ran as the man who would reshape the state standing alone. Accepting a non-AfD premier, or even a minority premiership propped up only with the support of Wagenknecht’s left-wing party, would look like the opposite. However, stepping back from the deal would leave his party out of the halls of power once again.

AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel both appear eager for Siegmund to take the deal. Chrupalla has already talked up the possibility of a minority government that would seek majorities case by case.

Peel off CDU MPs?

Siegmund’s second option may prove even more explosive for German politics. He spoke of not working with parties, but with individuals from the parties. He suggested individual deputies could “support an AfD government.” Some in the AfD’s federal circle even talk about CDU members crossing the floor to the AfD camp, and there are even suggestions that some MPs may defect.

If any CDU politician defected to the AfD, there would be a national firestorm. While if only one vote was needed, this might be in the realm of possibility, but finding three such MPs may prove a very tall order. The CDU has tried to build the firewall into its DNA, and if three CDU members helped bring the AfD to power in a state, it may be enough to collapse the federal government and end the chancellorship of Friedrich Merz.

Regardless of whether the AfD can peel off three CDU votes, the pressure on the party is tremendous after it collapsed to a mere 17.2 percent, effectively halving its support. The CDU is almost assured to continue facing a political reckoning in the future, which means the dam may break at some point, and CDU politicians may be more and more willing to jump ship to the AfD.

A repeat election possible?

An anti-AfD government is mathematically possible but politically? It would be a total mess.

It would need the CDU, SPD, Greens, Left, and BSW — five parties, two of which spent the campaign treating each other as the problem. The CDU already ruled out coalitions with both the AfD and the Left Party. The BSW campaigned to push the CDU out, with Wagenknecht also calling another firewall coalition an affront to voters.

That does not mean it cannot be attempted, and it very well might be, even despite the potential consequences for all the parties involved. If that project forms and then staggers, Siegmund’s threat of new elections stops being a far-fetched scenario. A second vote in such a scenario could indeed catapult the AfD above the 50 percent mark.

Procedurally, the clock is already running, as the new Landtag must convene by Oct. 6. The strongest group proposes the Landtag president in the first round. The minister-president is elected by secret ballot, with no fixed deadline once nominations begin. While the first ballot requires a majority of all votes, in the final round, a simple majority of votes cast can suffice to elect a new minister-president.

As far as the best outcome for the AfD, it is hard to argue against CDU defectors handing the AfD the keys to victory. It would allow the AfD to take control with a like-minded party on paper while sparking a major crisis for the ruling CDU.

However, remaining outside government also comes with plenty of bonuses, and as Remix News previously wrote, avoids serious pitfalls that the federal government and even the EU can put up against an AfD government.

Despite falling short of an absolute majority, the AfD appears to be in the driver’s seat.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Russophobia | | Comments Off on After historic German election, will the AfD rule Saxony-Anhalt?

‘Russophobia a national sport’ – Polish party rallies against push to war

RT | September 7, 2026

Polish protesters have accused Warsaw of whipping up anti-Russian hostility and dragging the country toward war as the government continues to arm Ukraine and deepen confrontation with Moscow.

Supporters of the Confederation of the Polish Crown party marched through Gniezno on Sunday behind a banner reading “Poland for Peace,” carrying Polish and party flags.

“They’re trying to turn Russophobia into our national sport. But we won’t give in,” activist Marta Czech told the crowd, urging “prudence” as tensions with Russia continue to rise.

Another speaker, Lukasz Pakulski, accused the authorities of frightening Poles with talk of tanks, nuclear weapons, and a wider conflict. “They are pushing us into war,” he said, declaring that “Poles stand for peace.”

The Crown is a traditionalist, Euroskeptic party founded by MEP Grzegorz Braun. It campaigns for tighter immigration controls, less power for Brussels, and Poland’s withdrawal from the EU, while opposing deeper Polish involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

The protest comes as Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government has continued to support Kiev, arguing that Ukraine’s security is inseparable from Poland’s own. Warsaw has provided around $6.8 billion in aid to Kiev since 2022, including more than $5 billion in military assistance. Poland also hosts around 961,000 Ukrainians under temporary protection.

However, public enthusiasm for the policy has been fading, with a July poll finding that 52% of Poles opposed accepting more Ukrainian refugees, while another survey showed 67% backed deporting unemployed Ukrainian men of military age.

Another survey found 27% believed Western aid to Ukraine was too large, compared with 22% who wanted more, while opposition to Ukrainian EU membership reached a record 40%.

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have also recently deteriorated over historical grievances after Vladimir Zelensky named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which Poland holds responsible for massacring up to 100,000 ethnic Poles during World War II.

President Karol Nawrocki later stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest state honor, while other politicians have called for an end to free weapons deliveries to Kiev.

Moscow has consistently accused Warsaw of deliberately stoking anti-Russian sentiment while supporting Kiev’s war effort.

Russian officials have also highlighted the Kiev-Warsaw UPA dispute, arguing that even one of Ukraine’s strongest backers can no longer ignore Kiev’s embrace of neo-Nazi ideology and glorification of figures linked to wartime atrocities.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on ‘Russophobia a national sport’ – Polish party rallies against push to war

US Placing Missiles in Europe to Cancel Strategic Stability Talks Prerequisites – Russian MFA

Sputnik – 07.09.2026

MOSCOW – The deployment of US ground‑based US intermediate-range and shorter-range missile systems in Europe, in particular in Norway, will nullify the prerequisites for a constructive dialogue with the United States on strategic stability, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

“Steps such as the deployment of US ground‑based US intermediate-range and shorter-range missile systems in Europe, which threaten Russia, will, to put it mildly, nullify the prerequisites for a constructive conversation with the United States on strategic issues,” Zakharova said in a statement.

Russia views the deployment of systems in Norway capable of launching medium- and short-range missiles as yet another step in a series of highly destabilizing actions by NATO, the statement read.

“As part of Russia’s response measures, the locations where US systems are deployed and controlled, as well as the infrastructure supporting them, are becoming the focus of special attention from Russia’s strategic deterrence forces, which includes planning the combat use of the relevant strike assets in the event of an armed conflict,” Zakharova said.

The ministry added that favorable conditions for a substantive and productive dialogue with the United States on strategic stability had not been established now.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Comments Off on US Placing Missiles in Europe to Cancel Strategic Stability Talks Prerequisites – Russian MFA

Analysts warn of ‘colonization’ as US ‘saturates’ Australia with 110 bases

Press TV – September 7, 2026

The United States reportedly wields control over, or has access to, 110 military facilities belonging to Australia — a presence so extensive that analysts now describe it as a “saturation” and even a “colonization” of the Australian continent.

The Guardian, citing information gathered from the database of the Nautilus Institute, reported that the US military or US defense corporations have access to more than half of Australia’s military facilities.

According to the database, the United States controls 17 military facilities on mainland Australia, has access to 75 more Australian-run military installations elsewhere, while US defense corporations have access to an additional 18 facilities.

“This is not a matter of penetration, it’s a matter of saturation,” said Prof Richard Tanter, the database’s author.

“Over half of the defense facilities that we have looked at have some level of American access: that means American personnel, it means American corporations, some of the biggest armaments companies in the world.”

The US military in Australia engages in gathering intelligence, accessing satellite data for targeting information, and communications intercepts.

Other military activities include training for some 2,500 marines on dry-season rotation in the Northern Territory, as well as the pre-positioning of warfighting assets, weapons, munitions, and fuel, stored in case of a regional war in the Pacific.

The US now practically owns Australia’s human, soil, and mineral resources through its control of the nation’s military, according to critics.

The US military presence will continue to expand. From next year up to 1,200 uniformed military personnel will operate from the HMAS Stirling submarine base just off Fremantle.

The government insists that technically this will not be a US base — rather a “rotation” — but there is little contestation of its actual implication.

The AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement, described by former defense minister Christopher Pyne as “a lot more than the submarine procurement,” effectively establishes a new United States submarine base in the Indian Ocean.

“For the Americans, being able to have a submarine base in the Indian Ocean is a massive strategic advantage,” Pyne told a public inquiry.

Dr Vince Scappatura, author of The US Lobby and Australian Defense Policy, described US base access across Australia as a kind of “second wave of colonization.”

“Today we are shaping up to be the ‘tip of the spear’ for US power projection into the region — that’s what the sprawling US base access represents,” he said.

“Each one of those dots on the map represents a point of leverage Washington has over Canberra when it comes to matters of defense and foreign policy.”

Scappatura noted that the phrase “empire by invitation” was originally coined to describe US hegemony over western Europe “but it is applicable equally here. I sometimes describe it as ‘voluntary subordination’.”

The United States has been escalating militarization in the Pacific by resetting ties with regional countries in an attempt to form a coalition against China.

Beyond Australia, US bases and military access points are expanding across Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other regional nations, effectively drawing them into Washington’s orbit.

Critics say this is a desperate bid by Washington to arrest the rise of China, with Australia and other regional countries being used as forward operating bases in what could become a larger confrontation.

Tanter says that the acceptance of the US military presence has become so ingrained within the government and defense that unwinding Australia’s enmeshment within the world’s most powerful military is increasingly difficult.

“This is a massive institutional failure in Australia, a kind of learned incapacity at a political, parliamentary and bureaucratic level,” he said. “We’ve learned how not to ask those questions.”

Dr Emma Shortis, director of international and security affairs at the Australia Institute, says Australia’s increasing integration with the US military has resulted in “an accelerating erosion of Australia’s independent, sovereign, decision-making power.”

“Instead of having the option of saying ‘no’ to involvement in United States wars, involvement becomes the default position,” she said.

She cited the March attack by a US nuclear-powered submarine on an Iranian frigate, sinking it and killing more than 100 people. Three Australian naval personnel were onboard, part of the submarine’s crew: the US did not forewarn Australia of the attack.

“Australia might maintain the pretense of sovereign decision-making power, but that’s not the reality,” Shortis said.

Dr Albert Palazzo, an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra and formerly the director of war studies for the Australian army, told the Guardian the US military’s accelerating buildup carries danger for Australian security.

“The Australian government seems to be waltzing its way into a war between the United States and China, by allowing this country to become an outpost or bastion of the US military, and as a platform from which they will launch military force against China,” he said.

Australians’ faith in the US is fragile and fracturing. A Lowy Institute poll showed Australians’ “trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world” has fallen to 31%, the lowest level in its polling history.

Just 21% of Australians have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, the lowest level of confidence in a US president yet.

More than twice as many Australians (59%) now believe Australia’s interests are best served by a more independent foreign policy rather than a closer alliance with the US (23%). Just 13% of Australians believe the US is a “very reliable” security ally.

This represents, Shortis says, a “seismic shift” in Australia’s perception of its once-great and powerful friend.

“After following the US into nearly every war since World War II, Australians have had enough. They see tangible risks in being so close to President Trump’s bleak and violent version of America.”

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on Analysts warn of ‘colonization’ as US ‘saturates’ Australia with 110 bases

Inside America’s deadly war on suspected drug boats | Fault Lines Documentary

Since September 2025, the US military has carried out more than 60 strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 220 people.

In a military campaign called Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump’s administration has claimed to wage war against “narcoterrorism”. Yet the government has released little information about who was killed, the evidence against them or how targets were selected.

In Killing at Sea, Fault Lines investigates the administration’s claims about Operation Southern Spear by uncovering the stories of those targeted and the evidence used to justify lethal military force.

Through the stories of families left searching for answers, alongside witness accounts, physical evidence and interviews with legal experts, Fault Lines asks whether the strikes are lawful, whether they have disrupted the drug trade and what accountability exists for those killed.

From fishing communities in the Caribbean to Washington, DC, Killing at Sea examines a military campaign conducted largely beyond public view—and asks who is being killed in the US’s new war at sea, and why.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Video, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Inside America’s deadly war on suspected drug boats | Fault Lines Documentary

Babies Whose Mothers Drank Fluoridated Water During Pregnancy Scored Lower in Problem-Solving

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 3, 2026

Babies whose mothers drank fluoridated water during pregnancy at and slightly below concentrations currently recommended by U.S. public health agencies scored lower on tests that measure fluid cognition — the ability to think logically and solve problems in new situations.

Fluid cognition is considered the “cornerstone of human cognition, both during development and in adulthood.”

A new study led by Columbia University researchers found that prenatal fluoride exposure resulted in reduced fluid cognition at levels as low as 0.675 milligrams per liter (mg/L).

That’s slightly below the U.S. Public Health Service’s recommended concentration of 0.7 mg/L for fluoridated drinking water and far below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level of 4 mg/L and the World Health Organization’s guideline of 1.5 mg/L, according to the study.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and accepted for publication in the American Journal of Epidemiology, analyzed outcomes among 2,514 children born between 2006 and 2019 at 17 sites spanning 23 U.S. states that are part of the Environmental influences on Child Health Cohort (ECHO).

The authors concluded that more research is needed to identify the risky prenatal, postnatal and childhood window when fluoride exposure can harm cognitive development.

Higher fluoride linked to lower fluid cognition

To estimate prenatal water fluoride exposure, the researchers linked publicly available drinking water fluoride measurements to residential address information collected during pregnancy. The study focused only on fluoride from drinking water and did not account for any other sources.

The researchers then compared estimated fluoride intake with children’s cognitive abilities, evaluated using the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery.

Researchers separately examined “fluid cognition,” which included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, attention and memory, and “crystallized cognition,” assessed through a vocabulary test.

Crystallized cognition is “the breadth and depth of knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal skill a person has acquired through education, experience, and cultural exposure — what has been learned and can be retrieved and applied later.”

The children whose mothers were exposed to higher fluoride levels during pregnancy tended to score lower on the fluid cognition tests.

They found children’s cognition was affected when mothers were exposed to water fluoride levels at and above 0.675 mg/L, or 675 micrograms per liter. That’s below the federally recommended level for water fluoridation.

They also found that every 500 microgram-per-liter increase in water fluoride was linked to an average 3.36-point drop in IQ.

The outcomes were substantially worse among children whose cognitive abilities were assessed before age 7. Their IQ scores dropped up to 13.5 points for the same increase in water fluoride content.

The researchers cautioned, however, that the apparent difference by age requires further study.

“This study adds to a large body of work that looks at how early exposure to environmental contaminants may be associated with the development of the thinking and learning processes that are important for children’s developmental outcomes,” co-senior author Amy Margolis, Ph.D., of The Ohio State University College of Medicine said in a Columbia University press release about the study.

“Continuing to study fluoride and other exposures will be integral in best supporting children’s environmental health and well-being.”

Malin and Thiessen both noted that a limitation of the study was that they didn’t measure individual fluoride intake. Because intake can vary across individuals, failure to measure individual exposure can lead to exposure misclassification.

“Despite this, the authors still observed quite sizable associations between prenatal public water fluoride exposure and child fluid cognition, particularly for children younger than 7,” Malin said.

“Nevertheless, true associations between prenatal fluoride exposure and child cognition may in fact be larger than what this study was able to detect,” she added. “Future individual-level research will be needed to further investigate that question.”

Findings add to evidence in contested court ruling

Water fluoridation in the U.S. has been a political flashpoint since a landmark 2024 federal court ruling concluded that current levels of fluoride added to water at 0.7 mg/L posed a risk to children’s health. The ruling directed the EPA to regulate the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The ruling was largely based on the federal National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) six-year assessment of all existing literature on fluoride and neurotoxicity, along with testimony from leading experts at top universities across the world who study the issue.

The NTP concluded that water fluoridation at 1.5 mg/L was linked to lower IQ in children. It also found that people exposed to water fluoridation below 1.5 mg/L could have high fluoride levels in their systems, in part because people can be exposed to fluoride from other sources and/or may drink different amounts of water.

The NTP researchers said their findings about water fluoridation and neurotoxicity were based on studies of water fluoridation at or above current U.S. fluoridation levels.

The groups that sued the EPA also argued that EPA regulations for other toxic chemicals don’t allow exposure at known toxicity levels. For other chemicals, exposure is allowed only at levels that are at least 10 times [lower than] the known toxic exposure level to ensure safety.

An appeals court later overturned the fluoride verdict on a procedural issue, but the court did not disagree with the lower court ruling that fluoridation at current levels poses an unreasonable risk to human health.

The American Dental Association, mainstream media and others have attempted to publicly discount the NTP’s findings, arguing that its data were weak at current levels, or that studies showing the neurological effects of water fluoridation happened in other countries that weren’t similar to the U.S.

The new Columbia University study — conducted in the U.S. at current fluoridation levels — confirmed the NTP’s conclusions and offered findings in line with other recent studies in the U.S.

Ashley Malin, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, and lead author of a U.S. study that linked fluoride exposure during pregnancy to neurobehavioral problems in children, told The Defender that the Columbia University study is “significant” because it includes a relatively recent cohort of children from multiple U.S. states.

She said the findings were consistent with other major cohort studies in Mexico and Canada that observed an inverse association between early life fluoride exposure and non-verbal IQ.

Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who co-authored the 2006 National Research Council study on fluoride toxicity, also said the study was consistent with many recent findings.

“Importantly, they see an adverse effect at lower levels of water fluoride than many previous studies have used, and these are U.S. children,” she said.


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.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on Babies Whose Mothers Drank Fluoridated Water During Pregnancy Scored Lower in Problem-Solving

Vaccination Data on Amish Children Screened for 2010 Autism Study Was Never Made Public

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 2, 2026

Controversy is swirling around a 2010 study on autism rates among the Amish, after President Donald Trump on Monday posted a graphic citing the study.

Trump’s post on Truth Social claimed, “No published case has explicitly documented an unvaccinated Amish child with autism.”

The social media post cited a study, conducted in 2008 and 2009 by researchers who screened 1,899 Amish children in Indiana and Ohio for autism. The researchers confirmed seven cases of autism among the children.

The study concluded that among the Amish children in the study, the autism rate was roughly 1 in 271 — far lower than the national rate, which at the time was estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as 1 in 91.

According to Trump’s post, the study authors collected vaccination histories for the children but “did not report any confirmed case” of autism as “completely unvaccinated.”

The post drew a mix of cheers and fact checks, according to health writer Sayer Ji.

Ji called Trump’s post “factually imperfect” but “genuinely important.”

The post contained factual inaccuracies — for instance, it stated that the Amish have been around for 330 years. However, although the Amish broke away from the Mennonites 333 years ago in 1693, Amish settlements in the U.S. didn’t begin until the 1720s.

Trump’s post also drew attention to the verifiable fact that the Amish tend to have lower vaccination rates and lower autism rates, compared to the mainstream.

Ji praised the president for highlighting the 2010 study. “Whatever else you think of the man, he [Trump] pointed at the study,” Ji wrote.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland told The Defender she was pleased that Trump highlighted the relative absence of autism among the Amish, who typically have lower vaccination rates than mainstream communities.

“It’s high time we start dealing with reality — the current vaccine schedule causes brain injury called autism. Let’s be humble enough to learn from the Amish,” Holland said.

What did the 2010 Amish autism study show?

Trump’s post cites a 2010 study conducted by human genomics researchers from the University of Miami and Vanderbilt University, according to a conference abstract about the study.

However, contrary to Trump’s post, the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study’s abstract, dated May 22, 2010, appeared on the website for the International Meeting for Autism Research, a research gathering held by the International Society of Autism Research.

The study authors appeared to have presented the study at the May 2010 meeting. There is no online record of the study’s full report.

The abstract’s methods section states that the researchers collected the children’s vaccination data. However, the results section doesn’t state whether the seven Amish children in the study who were identified as having autism were vaccinated or unvaccinated.

The abstract states:

“Preliminary data have identified the presence of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] in the Amish community at a rate of approximately 1 in 271 children using standard ASD screening and diagnostic tools although some modifications may be in order.”

The authors wrote that “further studies are underway” to address the cultural norms and customs that may affect how parents talk about their children’s behavior when interviewed by researchers.

It is unclear if the study authors looked at whether the seven children with autism had been vaccinated.

The study’s lead author, listed as J. L. Robinson, did not respond to The Defender when asked if the researchers ever ran a vaccination-stratified analysis of the seven confirmed autism cases, and why the researchers never published the study.

The Defender asked Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami and one of the study’s authors, the same questions. However, the inquiry was directed to the university’s public relations director, who did not respond by deadline.

Ji searched online public records to see if the study authors ever spoke again publicly about the study or submitted it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but found nothing.

That is significant, Ji told The Defender. “I searched for and could not find any public statement by any of the six authors, in sixteen years, on why the paper never appeared or what became of the data. That absence is the finding.”

Ji said he isn’t accusing the study authors of intentionally burying their data on the Amish children’s vaccination histories. “I am not alleging that any of the six destroyed data or acted in bad faith — I have no evidence of that.”

But their data were effectively “buried,” in that the data were never published and never appeared in a future study.

Ji acknowledged that even if the study had explicitly linked all seven autism cases to not vaccinating, the study wouldn’t prove that unvaccinated children do not get autism, because seven is too small a number to power a statistical model.

But the data would still be helpful because they “would fill a hole in the record and tell us whether the screening infrastructure can be rebuilt at scale,” he said. “A statistician could do it in weeks if the files exist.”

The study authors did not respond when The Defender asked if they still had the original research files for the study.

Given that the study appeared to use federally funded research dollars, according to the abstract, the public deserves to know what happened to the files, Ji said.

Trump focused on uncovering autism-vaccine link

Trump’s post referencing the 2010 study comes amid a roiling debate about vaccines and autism. In May, Trump pressed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do more to investigate a possible link between vaccines and autism, according to a July 27 Wall Street Journal report.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order calling for sweeping changes to U.S. vaccine policy, including reducing the number of diseases for which kids receive routine childhood vaccines from 18 to 11.

According to The Associated Press, Trump is “fixated on connecting autism to vaccines.”

During a Sept. 22, 2025 press conference, Trump said, “There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills that have no autism. … The Amish, as an example, they have essentially no autism.”

According to Ji, the 2010 Amish study does not prove that vaccines cause autism.

However, the story of what happened to the 2010 study reveals that when data are collected that could potentially contribute to answering the question of whether vaccines cause autism, that data “doesn’t become available,” Ji said.

In Ji’s view, studies looking at Amish autism rates should examine many factors, including vaccination status, exposure to glyphosate, acetaminophen, ultrasound, diet, endogamy and access to healthcare.

The full results should be made public, regardless of what the studies find. “That isn’t anti-vaccine. It’s science.”

The connection between lower vaccination and autism rates among the Amish was something that investigative journalist Dan Olmsted spent years documenting.

Olmsted, founder of Age of Autism, authored “Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic” (2011) and “Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future” (2017) before he passed away in early 2017.

Where did Trump get the graphic he posted?

The Amish continue to be central to ongoing national debate on vaccines. In New York, Amish are threatening to leave the state due to the state’s school-based vaccine mandate, according to an Aug. 26 New York Post report.

Pennsylvania, which is home to the largest Amish population in the U.S., has been making headlines for its current measles outbreak and ongoing investigation of measles-related deaths.

Steve Kirsch created the graphic that Trump posted to social media. On Aug. 14, Kirsch posted the graphic on X with the statement, “Baffling, isn’t it? Autism is only found in vaccinated Amish kids. I wonder why?”

Kirsch told The Defender he created the graphic using ChatGPT.

He instructed ChatGPT to create a graphic based on the 2010 study and based on his understanding that there is no evidence that an unvaccinated Amish child has ever been diagnosed with autism.

“Nobody has ever heard of an unvaccinated Amish child with autism,” Kirsch told The Defender.

Kirsch said he referred to the study as “published” in the graphic because the International Society of Autism Research posted the study’s conference abstract online. He acknowledged that the study itself was never published.

The White House did not respond to our comment request by the deadline.


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.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on Vaccination Data on Amish Children Screened for 2010 Autism Study Was Never Made Public

CNAS Wonk Proposes Bombing China’s Artificial Intelligence

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | September 6, 2026

Jacob Stokes, a former White House official, has suggested taking military action against China to prevent it from winning the race for AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. AGI is a hypothetical AI system that could learn, reason, adapt, and solve problems across a broad range of intellectual tasks at roughly human or greater capability.

Stokes served on the White House national-security staff under then–Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration. He is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the CNAS.

Center for a New American Security, established in 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, is associated with the Democratic Party. Flournoy held the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy during President Bill Clinton’s administration and served as under secretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama.

Previously, CNAS was led by CEO Victoria Nuland, who acted as undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2021 to 2024 within the Biden administration’s State Department. According to the Washington Post, CNAS is regarded as Washington’s primary think tank on military matters.

In a CNAS report titled Superpowers and AGI, Stokes argued that Washington should consider extreme scenarios in which China might achieve AGI first, including diplomatic pressure, espionage, cyber operations, sabotage, and military action against data centers.

On September 3, during an online event, Stokes stated that multiple US agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, should evaluate the intelligence required to substantiate such actions, according to the South China Morning Post.

Stokes and other analysts believe conventional bombs may be used to destroy the physical hardware China needs to train future AI models. It is speculated that the destruction of China’s AGI infrastructure would delay Chinese development by a few years, thus giving the US an advantage.

Although China is very advanced in frontier AI, it does not appear to possess AGI. The best current assessment is that China is probably slightly behind the United States in top-end model capability, while matching or exceeding it in some areas, including efficiency, deployment, open models, robotics, and industrial integration.

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war between the two superpowers. William Hartung of the Project on Government Oversight characterized an attack on Chinese data centers as “the height of recklessness.” He warned that it could trigger a war with “tragic consequences for all concerned.”

Others question whether bombing data centers would actually halt Chinese AI development. China’s AI ecosystem is spread across numerous companies, universities, government labs, cloud providers, chip facilities, and research teams.

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s state-backed Global Times, warned that if the United States attacked Chinese data centers, Chinese retaliation would not be limited to US targets in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead, it could include missile strikes on the US mainland. A Global Times editorial described the proposal as a “dangerous delusion” and argued that treating civilian data centers as military targets was “indistinguishable from terrorism.”

There is no indication that the Trump administration has officially supported, accepted, or directly addressed Jacob Stokes’ suggestion to prepare for the dismantling of Chinese AGI infrastructure. As of September 6, 2026, reports suggest that neither the Department of Defense nor the NSA has provided an official response to the proposal.

Nonetheless, the administration has taken the extensive U.S.-China AI rivalry very seriously. Its approach has focused on ensuring American supremacy in AI, military integration, intelligence gathering, cyber defense, technology regulations, and diplomatic efforts – not openly on preemptive strikes or sabotaging Chinese data facilities.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on CNAS Wonk Proposes Bombing China’s Artificial Intelligence

Eight Arab and Muslim states reject Israeli displacement plans for Gaza

Palestinian Information Center – September 6, 2026

GAZA – Eight Arab and Muslim countries have condemned remarks by far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Israel Katz on plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

The foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye and Qatar said in a joint statement released on Sunday that such Israeli plans violate international and humanitarian law and pose a direct threat to the Palestinian people’s legitimate and inalienable rights.

The ministers voiced rejection of any Israeli attempt to displace Palestinians from or within the occupied territory, warning against transforming extremist rhetoric on forced displacement into official state policy.

The ministers warned that the displacement of Gazans would destabilize the region and derail global peace efforts, undermining US president Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war, which clearly rejects forced population transfers.

The ministers stressed that Gaza is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories, calling for preserving the unity of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

They reiterated their countries’ support for a two-state solution establishing an independent Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

They urged the international community and UN Security Council to oppose Israeli attempts to impose a new demographic or geographic reality in the occupied Palestinian territories.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Eight Arab and Muslim states reject Israeli displacement plans for Gaza

Israel’s Game

Anti-Zionist activists protest on 2nd Avenue outside the Israeli Consulate General in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, U.S. on August 21, 2026. [Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency]
By Dr Hassaan Bokhari | MEMO | September 6, 2026

A few days ago, a very interesting article appeared in the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post. It was written by AJ Jaff, whose profile describes him as “a recognised expert in international security, crisis management, and geopolitical risk”. The “expert” began the article by acknowledging that the 6-month-long air war on Iran has failed to defeat Iran. Then, he provided some “out-of-the-box” ideas for the US to consider if it wants to “achieve its objectives” and win the war. According to him, the war will only be won when Iran’s institutional coherence is broken, resulting in its Balkanization.

I will discuss Mr Jaff’s “out of the box” ideas in a bit, but first, I want to analyse the “expert” himself a little. Two things quickly popped up. First is how he began his article. The first sentence is: “The Pentagon reportedly asked outside analysts this month for creative ideas on Iran.” The hyperlink in this sentence redirects the reader to another article in The Jerusalem Post that cites a CNN report saying that the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, has been privately looking for an off-ramp in the Iran War. How quaint! While the Pentagon is asking for ideas to wrap up the war, Mr Jaff, the expert, stepped up with ideas to escalate the war! It appears that Mr Jaff (and the Zionists) have very different ideas and even objectives than US Generals about the same war. No wonder Pete Hegseth (a committed Zionist) has been firing so many of them!

Secondly, one is amused to see that in March, 10 days after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, the same Mr Jaff was declaring a resounding victory and claiming that “the data tells a decisive and irreversible story” and “Iran’s missile fire rate has collapsed by 92 percent”! After reading that article now, most readers might laugh heartily and dismiss Mr Jaff, the “expert,” as an idiot. However, that would be an incorrect assessment. On the same day as Mr Jaff’s gaffe’s appearance in The Jerusalem Post, an article of mine elucidated the Israeli strategy as one giant bluff whose aim was to lure the USA into a destructive war in the Middle East by plunging it into a sunk cost fallacy. The Israeli plan was to lure the USA in with the dreams of an easy victory like the First Gulf War or the Maduro kidnapping, but it knew all along that those dreams would prove to be hollow, and their sole purpose was to bring the USA into the war. Then, in the next phase, with the dreams of victory proving illusory, the USA was to be baited with the sunk cost fallacy trap so that it would blunder into further escalation in pursuit of Israeli objectives. Mr Jaff’s seemingly absurd somersaults follow this pattern perfectly.

Now let’s turn our attention to Mr. Jaff’s “expert recommendations”. There are three of them:

  • The USA should “recognize the sovereign independence of the Iranian Kurdistan, Ahwaz, and Baluchistan people”.
  • To raise the one million troops required for a victorious ground invasion of Iran, the USA should launch an enlistment scheme based on debt forgiveness (estimated at 40,000 to 1,00,000 US Dollars per person) for 24-36 months of service per person.
  • The US should strike a deal with China that would involve softening the US stance on Taiwan and ensuring China that even after Iran’s destruction, China would continue to receive an uninterrupted supply of Iranian oil in exchange for China’s abandonment of Iran.

Before analysing these ideas, one must first take a moment to marvel at the arrogance and ignorance of the Zionists.

The Zionists have played the victim and the superior/invincible race roles simultaneously in a way that lends itself to a diagnosis of severe dissociative disorder.

This pathological psyche has led them to the delusion that the foremost purpose of the world and everything in it is to accommodate their ambitions. As I have argued elsewhere, this psyche is leading them to their self-created and inevitable destruction as well.

Now, let’s take these ideas one by one. The first idea is simply advocating the balkanization of Iran (just the newest version of the Yinon Plan). The implications are very interesting, though. By supporting Kurdish and Baloch (not Baluchi as written by Mr. Jaff, a mistake that only lays bare how little he knows about Balochistan!) separatism, the US could kill three birds with one stone in the service of Israel. Kurdish and Baloch separatism are grave threats to the integrity of Turkiye and Pakistan, respectively. Very cleverly, the Zionist Mr Jaff is pointing the way for the next wars to be launched by the USA in Israel’s service. The Zionists know that Iran’s balkanization wouldn’t ensure Israel’s survival. They are aiming at the complete destruction of the whole region stretching from Morocco to Pakistan, an Israeli goal correctly identified by the Pakistani liberal thinker Eqbal Ahmed more than 40 years ago!

The second idea is about finding the meat for the meat grinder of forever wars envisioned by Israel. With antipathy toward Israel consistently on the rise in the USA, how can American youth be convinced to become cannon fodder in the Wars of Israeli Ambitions? The answer, according to Mr. Jaff, lies in luring them with the promise of debt forgiveness. Most young Americans are riddled with debt in the exploitative capitalistic financial system (run by whom?) of the USA. Mr Jaff wants their debts written off in return for their blood, sweat, and tears spilled on the battlefields of the Middle East. However, the question arises: who will pay the bill of “debt forgiveness” for this indentured slave army? Will the big capitalists pay? Of course not. The state will pay.

In other words, the US taxpayers will pay billions of dollars so that their sons and daughters can be killed or crippled far from home in wars that have nothing to do with the American people’s welfare.

The third idea is the most “brilliant” one. It’s also the one that should ring alarm bells for even the most obtuse section of people in the USA. Mr. Jaff proposes to bribe China with oil and concessions on Taiwan to abandon Iran. It hasn’t occurred to him that for men like General Dan Caine, China represents a much bigger threat to the USA than Iran! It also peddles the fallacy that Iran is another Venezuela! Such a bizarre, arrogantly ignorant notion can only come from Zionists! In his obsession with what the genocide-dependent state of Israel needs to survive, Mr Jaff has ignored the basic fact of geography that Iran lies closer to China than Venezuela is to the USA! He has also conveniently failed to specify what concessions the USA should make on Taiwan. Unfortunately for Mr Jaff and the Zionists, the Chinese leaders (unlike many in the USA) don’t prioritise Israeli interests over their own country’s.

As I am engaged in analyzing Israel’s “game plan”, one other important factor must be mentioned: Gaza. In the last few days, clear statements have come from Israeli ministers showing their intention to depopulate Gaza completely. Israel’s ultimate goal has always been to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that started with the Nakba in 1948. Since the start of the Gaza blockade in 2007, Israel had been following a policy of making Gaza uninhabitable while concurrently using it as a weapons testing laboratory through periodic aggressions/wars. This policy of slow genocide was abandoned after the 7 October attacks. The goal then became to “clear” Gaza through a “fast genocide” within a few months. However, unexpectedly stubborn Palestinian resistance coupled with the categorical refusal of regional countries (especially Egypt) to accept Palestinian refugees has so far prevented this. The recent pressure from Israel on the USA to give it a green light for forcible expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza shows that Israel hasn’t lost sight of its genocidal goals in Palestine for one minute, even during the Iran War. If Palestinian refugees are forced into Egypt, it will provide an added bonus for Israel by destabilising Egypt.

A summary of the comprehensive Israeli strategic plan is as follows: Israel wants a massive US ground invasion of Iran with more than a million soldiers to destroy the Iranian State and balkanize the country with the help of Kurdish and Baloch separatists. This will, in turn, bring the “Grand Israeli War” to its next phase: the destruction of Turkiye and Pakistan. The latter will be denuclearized after internal instability brought upon by economic, political, and military crises resulting in an implosion of the State, leaving Israel’s ally India as the sole power in the subcontinent. Simultaneously, Israel plans to depopulate Gaza and South Lebanon while destabilising both Syria and Egypt to an extent that new civil wars erupt there. To achieve these lofty aims, Israel wants the USA to put its strategic tussle with China on hold and offer significant concessions on vital issues like Taiwan to keep China neutral. This will free up the USA to deploy its full military might in fighting Israel’s wars and divert limited but critical military resources in bulk to the Middle East from the Pacific. With the whole of the Middle East in ashes, Israel can replace the USA as Saudi Arabia’s “security guarantor”, gain control over all 3 Muslim Holy Mosques (in Makkah, Medina, and Al-Quds) to be used as blackmail against any future attempt by Muslims to confront it, and create a Greater Israel that is not dependent on US aid. Afterwards, Israel can easily discard the USA in favor of a modus vivendi with the new global hegemon (China) as the former’s power wanes through wars and strategic overextension.

This Israeli “game plan” is clearly fantastic, unrealistic, and wildly overambitious. However, like the Nazis, Israelis see themselves as an embattled and desperate “superior race” that has to risk it all on a grand throw of the dice. In its post-7 October psychosis, Israel has lost whatever rationality or sense of proportion it previously possessed. Like Hitler, Israel’s leaders fail to see their predicament: they might win some victories in this war, but each victory will open up new threats, which will result in fatigue as the costs of war mount and geographic and demographic factors overstretch both Israel and the USA. In his seminal work, “Israeli Exceptionalism – The Destabilising Logic of Zionism”, Professor Shahid Alam explained this brilliantly: “The tragedy of Israel is not fortuitous. Driven by history, chance, and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength of the first against the second, they have produced a conflict that can only grow deeper over time. In this conflict, Israel’s triumphs are temporary, are indeed illusory, since they evoke a deeper, wider response from the societies that suffer the devastation of its triumphs. In the long run, in the time scale of history, by relentlessly pressing its advantages, Israel only ensures that its adversaries will slowly build the defenses that will eventually rise to match Israel’s military might and its expansionist ambitions.”

Blinded by the imperatives of genocidal Zionist ideology, it would be foolish to expect the recognition of this reality from the Israelis.

However, the USA and the Muslim World urgently need to recognize “Israel’s Game” to minimize the damage to be suffered by them. Had Hitler been stopped at Munich, the Second World War might never have happened. Had Israel’s genocide in Gaza been stopped in November 2023, we wouldn’t be seeing the Iran War and the Hormuz crisis today. If Israel isn’t stopped now, we will see not just Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon, but Turkiye, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf countries engulfed in flames of war as well.

As Israel plans to fight this war to the last US soldier, it would behoove the USA to realize that playing Israel’s game will result in polarization and decimation of American society (just like the Vietnam War put an end to Lyndon Johnson’s vision of “Great Society), the loss of its military dominance in the Pacific, and the loss of its global economic primacy. Today, it is imperative that all of the Muslim World in general and Turkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in particular start squarely backing Iran in thwarting external aggression. The recent Mecca Pact between Pakistan, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia can only be meaningful if it clearly declares Israel as the greatest threat to peace and operationalizes the military and economic power of these countries to combat Israeli aggression in Gaza, West Bank/East Jerusalem, Lebanon, and Iran. Only through the defeat of Israel’s genocidal state and the birth of an independent Palestinian State can peace and security be ensured for the Middle East. If these countries present a united front against Israeli aggression, not only will they be backed by the likes of China and Russia, but they will also compel the USA to recognize Israel for the dangerous strategic liability it is. “America Firsters” will do well to remember Nietzsche’s saying: “The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what one is trying to do.”

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel’s Game

Lebanese man tells RT how Israeli strike killed his bride

Saja Sharara lost her life when a missile struck the couple’s home just 48 hours after their wedding

RT | September 6, 2026

The husband of a 28-year-old Lebanese woman killed in an Israeli airstrike just two days after their wedding has told RT how he was speaking to his wife on the phone moments before their home was hit.

Saja Sharara was killed at the couple’s home in Arabsalim, southern Lebanon, on August 27. Six other people, including a child, were wounded.

Hussein said he called Saja after hearing about an Israeli strike nearby. Minutes later, she called him back and suddenly said: “A rocket, a rocket is coming towards us, Hussein.”

The connection was lost. “The rocket fell on her,” Hussein recalled. “And then I realized that it was over.”

Israel has not said specifically what it was targeting at the house. It said its wider attacks in the Nabatieh area targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in response to drones launched at IDF troops. No Israeli casualties were reported.

Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon have continued despite a US-mediated ceasefire. More than 4,000 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March, according to Lebanese authorities.

Hussein said the continuing Israeli military presence and air operations mean there is no ceasefire in practice.

“There is no ceasefire as long as this enemy is on our land and the aviation is flying above us,” he told RT.

RT’s Steve Sweeney spoke exclusively with Hussein in southern Lebanon about the future he and Saja had planned together.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Lebanese man tells RT how Israeli strike killed his bride