Max Blumenthal: Charlie Kirk Update – Middle East Plan Just BLEW UP
Dialogue Works | October 29, 2025
Constructing chaos: Tel Aviv’s hand in Syria’s sectarian slaughter
The Cradle | October 29, 2025
On 7 March, Syrian security forces and affiliated armed factions perpetrated the massacre of more than 1,500 Alawite civilians, including many elderly, women, and children, in 58 separate locations on the Syrian coast.
Though the killings were executed by sectarian forces loyal to Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Julani), a former Al-Qaeda commander, the path to the massacre was paved by a covert Israeli strategy aimed at inciting an Alawite uprising.
Israel’s plan hinged on pushing Alawites into the “trap” of launching an armed rebellion, with false promises of external support, only to give Sharaa’s forces the pretext to carry out the mass slaughter of Alawite civilians in “response.”
Israel’s goal was consistent with its long-standing aim, articulated in the infamous Yinon Plan: to dismantle Syria and reshape it into “weak, decentralized ethnic regions,” following former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s fall.
Netanyahu goes to Washington
After 14 years of sustained support from the US, Israel, and regional allies, the extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – formerly the Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front – seized control of Damascus in December 2024. Its leader, Julani, rebranded as Ahmad al-Sharaa, swiftly assumed the presidency.
On the very day of this power shift, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for Assad’s fall and began a mass bombing campaign to destroy what was left of the country’s military capabilities.
However, toppling Syria’s government and destroying its army was not the end of Israel’s plan for Syria.
On 9 January, Netanyahu’s cabinet met to discuss organizing an international conference to “divide Syria into cantons,” Israeli news outlet i24 News reported.
“Any proposal deemed Israeli will be viewed unfavorably in Syria, which necessitates an international conference to advance the matter,” the outlet noted.
In other words, to be successful, Israel’s project to divide Syria needed to originate, or seem to originate, from Syrians themselves.
Less than a month later, on 2 February, Netanyahu visited Washington to present a “white paper” regarding Syria to US officials.
After Netanyahu’s visit, Reuters reported that “Israel is lobbying the United States to keep Syria weak and decentralized, including by letting Russia keep its military bases there to counter Turkey’s influence.”
The Times of Israel later commented that Israel was lobbying the “US to buck Sharaa’s fledgling government in favor of establishing a decentralized series of autonomous ethnic regions, with the southern one bordering Israel being demilitarized.”
Reports later leaked into political circles about a meeting two days later, on 4 February, between US officials and a representative of the most influential Druze religious leader in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, in Washington, DC.
Al-Jumhuriya reported that according to Syrian and American sources with direct knowledge of the meetings, discussions revolved around “a plan for an armed rebellion against the government of Ahmad al-Sharaa.”
The rebellion would reportedly include Hijri’s Druze forces from Suwayda, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from northeast Syria, and Alawite groups from the Syrian coast, but with “Israeli support.”
When asked about the meeting, Hijri’s representative confirmed to Al-Jumhuriya that it had taken place but stated that the proposal for a rebellion had not come from the Druze.
“The proposal originated from a state, not from any Syrian faction,” Hijri’s representative clarified, in a likely reference to Israel.
Inventing the insurgency: Meqdad Fatiha
Just two days later, on 6 February, an Alawite resistance group, the “Coastal Shield Brigade,” was allegedly formed.
A video announcing the group’s establishment claimed its fighters would respond to sectarian massacres carried out by HTS-led security forces against Alawites since December, including in the village of Fahel, where 15 former officers in the Syrian army were killed, and the village of Arzeh, where 15 people were killed as well, including a child and an elderly woman.
In both villages, former officers in Assad’s army had given up their weapons and completed a reconciliation process with the new authorities in Damascus, but were nevertheless murdered in their homes by militants linked to Syria’s new extremist-led security forces.
The Coastal Shield Brigades was allegedly led by Meqdad Fatiha, a former member of the 25th Special Forces and the Republican Guard of the Assad government.
Activists on social media circulated the video, which allegedly showed Fatiha declaring the establishment of the brigade from a base in the Latakia Mountains.
However, there was no evidence that the group was real. Fatiha’s face was covered by a black balaclava in the video, making it impossible to verify whether he was really the person speaking. This was odd, given that his appearance was already known from his Facebook profile.
The theatrics pointed to an intelligence fabrication – likely Israeli – designed to present the illusion of an organic Alawite insurgency.
A meeting in Najaf?
Just five days later, the narrative of an organized Alawite insurgency was reinforced by reports in Turkiye Gazetesi, an Islamist-leaning pro-government newspaper in Turkiye.
The report claimed that Iranian generals and former commanders in the Syrian army under Assad had met in the Shia holy city of Najaf in Iraq to plan a major uprising against Sharaa in Syria.
The scheme reportedly involved Druze factions, the Kurdish-led SDF, Alawite insurgents on the coast, Lebanese Hezbollah, and, improbably, ISIS.
Large amounts of weapons were allegedly being sent by land from Iraq and by sea from Lebanon to the Syrian coast, the report added.
“Some surprising events were expected to occur in Syria in the near future,” the Iranian generals allegedly in attendance said.
While “surprising events” did occur one month later with the massacre of Alawites on 7 March, the reports of the Najaf meeting are likely fabricated.
It is unlikely that a Turkish newspaper would have access to a detailed account of a secret meeting taking place between top Iranian generals and former Syrian officers.
It is also unlikely, and even ridiculous, that Iran and Hezbollah would be coordinating with their long-time enemy, ISIS, or with the US-backed SDF.
Kurdish-Syrian commentator Samir Matini amplified the narrative through widely viewed livestreams, pushing the idea of “surprising events” to come. The aim: to pin Israel’s plan on Iran and Hezbollah and create a smokescreen of chaos.
Sectarian killings fuel resistance
Amid the propaganda claiming a foreign-backed Alawite insurgency was being organized, Julani’s security forces stepped up attacks against Alawite civilians in the coastal region.
Syrian journalist Ammar Dayoub reported in Al-Araby al-Jadeed that Alawites were often targeted solely based on their religious identity, rather than because they were “remnants of the regime.”
Dayoub observed that “these violations have targeted people who opposed the previous regime, and young people who were only children in that period, as well as academics and women.”
In response to the sectarian killings, Alawites began to defend themselves.
One key event occurred on 8 January, when armed men linked to the Damascus government killed three Alawite farmers in the village of Ain al-Sharqiyah in the coastal region of Jableh. The men were working their lands across from the Brigade 107 base when they were killed.
In response, a local man named Bassam Hossam al-Din gathered a group of local men, arming them with light weapons. They attacked members of Julani’s internal security forces, known as General Security, killing one and abducting seven more, before barricading themselves in an Alawite religious shrine.
The General Security launched a campaign against them, swiftly killing Hossam al-Din and his group.
A former intelligence officer of the Assad government, speaking with The Cradle, says these killings motivated him and others to fight back:
“All this fueled enormous resentment in the area, which grew worse day by day. After Bassam Hossam al-Din’s death, some people here – including former government military personnel and civilians – began to gather.”
Crucially, they were “encouraged by reports and promises [of help] they received from outside.”
They were told they would receive support, including by sea, from the US-led international coalition, in coordination with the Druze in Suwayda and Kurds in northeastern Syria.
“They were given hope of escaping this miserable situation,” the former intelligence officer tells The Cradle.
In the following weeks, Alawites continued to clash with Syrian security forces in an effort to defend themselves from raids and arrests.
In late February, Alawite insurgents attacked a police station in Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, located in the mountains overlooking the coastal town of Latakia.
According to Qardaha residents and activists who spoke to Reuters, “the incident began when members of security forces tried to enter a house without permission, sparking opposition from residents.”
“One person was killed by gunfire, with locals accusing the security forces of the shooting,” Reuters added, further suggesting that local Alawite men were acting in self-defense.
What happened in Datour?
The simmering conflict escalated further on 4 March. Reuters reported that, according to Syrian state media, two members of the Defense Ministry had been killed in the Datour neighborhood in Latakia city by “groups of Assad militia remnants,” and that security forces had mounted a campaign to arrest them.
One Datour resident told Reuters there had been heavy gunfire in the early hours and that security forces in numerous vehicles had surrounded the neighborhood.
A security source speaking with the news agency blamed the violence on a “proliferation of arms” among former security and army personnel who had refused to enter into reconciliation agreements with the new authorities.
The source said that local Alawite leaders had, in some cases, cooperated with security forces to hand over former personnel suspected of committing crimes during the period of Assad’s rule in hopes of staving off “crack downs and potential civil unrest.”
Testimonies from residents of Datour collected by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) indicated that security forces carried out random arrests in Datour and indiscriminately fired at civilian homes, resulting in several deaths, including that of a child.
The campaign was “marked by sectarian rhetoric and intense hate speech directed against the Alawite sect,” STJ added.
A source from Datour speaking with The Cradle reveals that Julani’s government used a prominent local Alawite family to create the proliferation of weapons needed to justify a crackdown.
The Aslan family had previously been close to Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s brother and commander of the army’s elite 4th Division, but quickly established good relations with the new government after it came to power in December.
It became common to see General Security members from Idlib spending time at the Aslan-owned businesses on Thawra Street at the entrance to Datour.
When residents complained to the General Security about criminal activity by the Aslan family, such as stealing money and confiscating homes, the General Security took no action against the family.
The source speaking with The Cradle says that on 4 and 5 March, members of the Aslan family distributed weapons to Alawite men in the neighborhood, encouraging them to take up arms against the General Security.
This was, of course, strange given the close relationship between the Aslans and the General Security, as well as because such a rebellion had little chance of success.
“Why would the Aslan family distribute weapons to fellow Alawites in Datour while knowing a rebellion would fail?” the source asks.
What happened in Daliyah?
On 6 March, a major clash erupted in the Alawite villages of Daliyah and Beit Ana, which lie adjacent to one another in the mountains of the Jableh countryside.
Sources from Daliyah speaking with The Cradle confirm that a large General Security convoy entered the village that morning to arrest a local man, Ali Ahmad, who had written posts against the Julani government on Facebook.
General Security members took Ahmad from his work at the local mini bus station and executed him at the entrance of the village.
The General Security members then entered the nearby house of a retired army officer, Taha Saad, in the adjacent village of Beit Ana, killing his two adult sons.
In response to the killings, local men from the village gathered light weapons and attacked the General Security members. After the General Security called for reinforcements, a convoy of 20 vehicles arrived to assist the government forces in the fight.
The sources in Daliyah speaking with The Cradle state that around 20 members of the General Security and 17 men from the village were killed in the gun battle.
As the clashes continued, Damascus sent helicopters to drop bombs on Daliyah and Beit Ana until a Russian plane forced the helicopters to withdraw.
Julani’s army escalated further by firing artillery at multiple Alawite villages in the mountain areas from the military academy in Rumaylah on the coast, near Jableh city.
A source from Jableh speaking to The Cradle says that the bombings made Alawites “go crazy,” especially because Daliyah is home to an important Alawite religious shrine.
The massacre and its beneficiaries
When the Russian plane appeared over Daliyah and Beit Ana, “People thought that this was ‘the moment,’ so they rose up on that basis,” stated the former intelligence officer speaking with The Cradle.
Alawite insurgents attacked General Security and army positions in various areas across the coast, including Brigade 107 near Ayn al-Sharqiyah, where Bassam Hossam al-Din’s group abducted the General Security members before being killed in January.
“There was no Meqdad Fatiha or anyone else from outside, no Iranians or any others. It was purely a popular force rising up against this situation,” the former intelligence officer explains.
However, they were emboldened by promises of outside help from the US-led coalition, the Druze, and the Kurds.
The clashes at the Brigade 107 base lasted all night, but the Alawite insurgents paused the attack early the next morning, on 7 March, thinking that coalition forces would come to their aid and bomb the brigade.
“They waited two hours, but no strikes came, no support arrived. Their morale collapsed, they realized it was all lies, just a trap,” the source goes on to say.
After the fighting stopped, disillusionment spread, and the Alawite insurgents attacking the base withdrew and returned to their villages.
Al Jazeera’s role
As the fighting still raged on 6 March, Al Jazeera repeated the false reports from Turkish media claiming Alawite insurgents were receiving massive external support from Iran, Hezbollah, the Kurdish SDF, and even Assad.
The news outlet’s propaganda gave Damascus the pretext to mobilize not only formal members of military units from the Ministry of Defense, but also many informal armed factions who responded to calls from mosques to fight “jihad” against Alawites.
On the morning of 7 March, convoys of military vehicles filled with tens of thousands of Sharaa’s extremist fighters began arriving at the coast.
Because the Alawite insurgency was weak and disorganized, with no help from abroad, it was not able to provide any protection to Alawite civilians as the massacres unfolded.
Facing no resistance, Julani’s forces began systematically slaughtering any Alawite men they could find, as well as many women and children, in cities, towns, and villages across the coast, including in Jableh, Al-Mukhtariyah, Snobar, Al-Shir, and the neighborhoods of Al-Qusour in Baniyas and Datour in Latakia.
The massive scope and systematic nature of the massacres, involving such large numbers of armed men in so many locations, suggests pre-planning by Julani and his Defense Minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra – a former commander-in-chief of the HTS military wing.
A media creation
The mobilization of Julani’s forces was also aided on 6 March by new videos appearing online claiming to show Meqdad Fatiha and members of the Coastal Shield Brigade vowing to fight against the new government.
In one video, the man claiming to be Fatiha was masked (this time dressed like a character from the popular video game, Mortal Kombat, and standing against a blank background), making it impossible to know who he was and whether he was in the mountains of Latakia or in a television studio in Tel Aviv or Doha.
In a separate video, Fatiha was masked and dressed just like an ISIS militant beheading Christians on video in Libya in 2015, leading to speculation the video was fake and had been created using artificial intelligence (AI).
Another video was later released in which Fatiha appeared without a mask, saying that previous videos of him were indeed real, and not created using AI. However, the new video also appeared fake, his face, shoulders, and eyes moving in an unnatural way as he spoke.
During multiple visits to the Syrian coast, The Cradle was not able to find any Alawites who expressed support for Fatiha or believed his group was real.
The source from Daliyah states that, “No one here supports Meqdad Fatiha. We all believe he works for Julani. The Coastal Shield Brigade is fabricated.”
A former Alawite officer in Assad’s army from the Syrian coast tells The Cradle, “We only see videos of Meqdad Fatiha online. We believe he is just a media creation.”
After showing The Cradle his rotting teeth, the former officer remarks, “Do you think we are getting help from Iran or Hezbollah? I don’t even have money to fix my teeth.”
An Alawite woman whose husband and two grown sons were murdered on 7 March suggests to The Cradle that Fatiha is a fictitious person, only existing on Facebook and created by the authorities to justify the massacres.
“Who is he? Julani created him. It’s a lie,” she explains.
General Security fatalities
The mobilization of Sharaa’s extremist forces from across the country was also aided by claims that Alawite insurgents had killed 236 members of the General Security in attacks on 6 April.
Some General Security members were certainly killed, but Syrian authorities never provided any evidence for this large number, suggesting it was vastly inflated to heighten sectarian anger. When Reuters requested the names or an updated tally, Syrian officials refused to provide them.
In one case, the pro-HTS “Euphrates Shield” Telegram channel published a photo collage allegedly showing General Security members killed by “regime remnants” during the fighting.
However, one of the fighters shown in the photos quickly posted a story on his Instagram with a “laugh out loud” emoji to show he was still alive, the Syrian Democratic Observatory showed.
Israeli ambitions
On 10 March, before the victims of the massacres had been buried, i24 News published a letter claiming to be written by Alawite leaders, asking Netanyahu to send his military to protect them.
“If you come to the Syrian coast, which is predominantly Alawite, you will be greeted with songs and flowers,” the letter stated.
It also called on Israel to unite against the “Islamic tide led by Turkiye,” while asking for help in separating from “this extremist state.”
When Israel secretly “greenlit” Julani’s massacre of Druze in Suwayda in July, the goal of dividing Syria was further advanced. Many Druze are aware of the covert relationship between Damascus and Tel Aviv, but, fearing extermination, feel they have little choice but to call on Israel for protection and to establish an autonomous region in south Syria.
Three weeks after the massacres of Alawites in March, an Israeli general quietly admitted that sectarian violence in Syria benefits Tel Aviv.
“This thing where everyone is fighting everyone, and there’s an agreement with the Kurds one day, and a massacre of the Alawites the second day, and a threat to the Druze on the third day, and Israeli strikes in the south. All this chaos is, to some extent, actually good for Israel,” stated Tamir Hayman while speaking with Israeli Army Radio.
“Wish all sides good luck (but) do it quietly. Don’t talk about it,” the general added.
A New Low: Western Media Promotes ISIS-Linked Gangsters In Gaza
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 29, 2025
Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian collaborator. A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his own experience as a Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide.
On October 27, the Washington Post published an article entitled “The ceasefire created two Gazas. One will consume the other.” The author argues that “My Gaza is ready for peace” and that “Hamas is trying to destroy it”, promoting the fictitious Israeli narrative that a utopian Gaza is being made possible inside the portion of the enclave where the occupation forces remain, behind the so-called “Yellow Line”.
The article works to promote the Israeli scheme in Gaza, which has been openly endorsed by US officials, and argues in favor of only allowing reconstruction in the territory operated by Israel, alongside four primary ISIS-linked militias.
Evidently, the article makes no mention of the Israeli armed and controlled Palestinian death squads – composed of convicted drug traffickers, rapists, murderers, ISIS-linked Salafists and aid looters.
The piece is purportedly written by one Moumen al-Natour, which makes even more sense out of why there is no mention of the ISIS-linked death squads, because he himself is an armed member of one such death squad.
Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian collaborator. A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his own experience as a Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide and lies about every detail to turn himself into a “peace activist” opposed to armed resistance, while simultaneously partaking in activities designed to further the extermination of his own people.
Take, for example, the following excerpt from the ISIS-linked death squad collaborator’s alleged opinion piece:
“My Gaza, where I wish to live, exists between Israel and the yellow line. There, the war is over and change buzzes in the air. People have access to food, medicine and electricity. And other signs of normality are beginning to return, such as some children going back to school. This is the Gaza that is waiting with anticipation to work with a new civil administration and an international protection force that will keep the peace as Israel withdraws. Few there speak of Hamas with any warmth or positivity. For once they no longer have to.”
The territory spoken of here is the area of Gaza where Israel and four ISIS-linked collaborator gangs operate; the only civilians there are the families of the death squads. Any other Palestinians attempting to reach their homes inside this area are bombed or gunned down by Israeli forces.
This territory, on the other side of Israel’s “Yellow Line,” is supposed to be 53% of Gaza, yet in reality is anywhere between 54-58% of the territory, due to Israel violating the ceasefire agreement and operating deeper than agreed upon inside the supposed withdrawal zone.
In addition to this, Israel continues its daily demolition operations against the remaining Palestinian civilian infrastructure inside the territory, again in violation of the ceasefire agreement. The proof of this has been openly published by Israeli soldiers who post videos of their demolition work on social media.
As for access to food, medicine, and electricity, these are provided to the collaborator gangs by Israel and are something they have not lacked during the war. While the people of Gaza were being starved for three months straight earlier this year, al-Natour’s militia friends were living lives of relative luxury.
Not only were al-Natour’s collaborator gang not starved, the so-called “Popular Forces” that he is part of, led by ISIS-linked convicted drug trafficker Yasser Abu Shabab, were living off of the supplies they stole from humanitarian aid trucks and looted from Gaza’s civilian population.
That is what these militant organizations began receiving Israeli backing to do – before being repurposed, armed and given direct combat missions by the IDF and Shin Bet – to rob humanitarian aid trucks and help enforce Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza. All of these collaborator gangs were tasked with involvement in such activities, and many of their militants continue to loot.
Meanwhile, in the Western corporate media and its allied Arab publications, al-Natour and his ilk are portrayed as the peace activists opposed to Hamas tyranny. For al-Natour’s part, he was one of the founders of the “We Want To Live” movement, which claimed its mission was to improve living conditions inside the besieged coastal enclave, described by UN experts as “unlivable” back in 2020.
As an activist, he was accused of working on behalf of Israel and spreading a message critical of Hamas, leading to his arrest. Whether he was a collaborator back then is under dispute, yet, during the genocide, he and his anti-Hamas message were picked up by a media outlet called Jasoor News.
This media outlet’s editor-in-chief is a Washington based journalist, named Hadeel Oueis, who routinely shares anti-Hamas content, including from the Center for Peace Communications (CPC). Oueis also expresses support for the current Syrian leadership of Ahmed al-Shara’a.
The CPC has received considerable donations from the Adelson Family Foundation of Israel’s richest billionaire and top Trump campaign donor, Miriam Adelson. For Jasoor News’ part, it is explicitly anti-Hamas, anti-Hezbollah, anti-Ansarallah, while publishing pieces in favor of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Western Media Support For ISIS-linked Groups
The recent propaganda opinion piece published by the Washington Post comes as little surprise, as it was the first Western publication to publish an interview with ISIS-linked militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab in November of 2024, when Israel began to give the aid looting gang a facelift and begin promoting them as a “grassroots” anti-Hamas resistance force.
In that WP piece, Abu Shabab claims victim status and that he looted aid out of necessity, expressing that “Hamas has left us with nothing”, despite his gang of collaborators clearly being the only group of Gazans who actually did have something during the genocide. Abu Shabab was used to do Israel’s bidding, blocking the flow of aid to civilians and lived under the protection of the Israeli military while doing so.
Back in July, the Wall Street Journal then published an opinion piece entitled “Gazans are finished with Hamas”, which it claimed was written by Yasser Abu Shabab himself. This was despite the fact that local sources in Gaza attest to Abu Shabab not only being unable to write in English, but also being illiterate and incapable of writing such a piece in Arabic too.
According to anonymous sources belonging to Palestinian journalist Muhammad Shehada, the latest Washington Post piece was published as explicit Israeli propaganda. “Journalists told me a pro-Israeli PR firm in DC is the one that pushed for this propaganda article to be published,” he wrote on X [formerly Twitter], adding that “my sources said there’s a chance the firm is the one that even wrote the op-ed”.
All of this works as part of an Israeli propaganda campaign aimed at legitimizing the agenda to create two separate systems of rule in Gaza, through spreading lies about Hamas and egregiously exaggerating the brutality of its Security Force crackdown on collaborators.
Israel is currently violating the Gaza ceasefire, not only through its daily bombings and sniping of civilians, but also through its refusal to allow sufficient aid to reach the civilian population. The Israelis had committed to allowing 400 aid trucks into Gaza for the first five days of the ceasefire before an unlimited amount afterward, later committing to permit 600 a day to enter, yet have allowed in a daily average of less than 90.
The idea, endorsed by the United States, is to deploy an international invasion force in the Gaza Strip, which will work alongside the ISIS-linked death squads to disarm Hamas. Once the Israelis withhold construction materials and equipment from entering the populated areas of the territory, where Hamas remains in power, they will then offer the civilian population a choice between entering their version of Gaza under occupation, or remaining where they are to starve and rot.
Hamas, along with all the other Palestinian factions, has agreed to hand Gaza over to an interim administration of technocratic governance, but will not disarm until the creation of a Palestinian State. Israel will not allow for this and instead uses its collaborators to fight for its own agenda, depending on its propaganda that is being prominently spread by its Palestinian media allies as a means of justifying this approach.
Inside Gaza, these ISIS-linked gangsters have no popular support. In fact, the vast preponderance of the population supports the Security Forces campaign to stamp out these groups. Despite the propagandists and militia members claiming that they are fighting a tyrannical regime that is killing its own people, the population of Gaza do not believe this narrative and hence will not support such a scheme.
The current round of propaganda against Hamas mirrors the regime change rhetoric used to overthrow countless governments in the region, beginning with Iraq. For example, during the campaign to justify the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Western governments and Washington-based think-tanks paid Iraqi “experts” and “peace activists” to justify the invasion of their own country.
Every time, the regime change script is the same. Except in this case, it is unlikely to succeed due to the grievances of Gazans with Hamas not matching those of their regional neighbors. This, however, will not stop the constant chorus of lies, exaggerations, and distortions from Washington and Tel Aviv’s “peace activists” who turn out to be armed members of ISIS-linked gangs and “Palestinian analysts” who just so happen to work for Zionist think-tanks.
These individuals speak with the language of “peace”, “reconciliation,” and “forgiving Israel”, but are ultimately soulless propagandists who weaponize their identity to serve an agenda aimed at destroying their own people. They value nothing more than status, power, and financial gain.
In the pro-genocide Western corporate media, these voices will continue to be elevated and their claims will never be fact-checked, because these outlets function as stenographers for the US and Israeli governments.
Who Are the US Candidates Refusing AIPAC Money?
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 28, 2025
The litmus test for whether a politician is truly interested in representing the people who elect them to power is becoming their stance on Palestine, more specifically, Gaza.
As American public opinion continues to shift against Israel, the US political landscape is also undergoing a dramatic transformation. AIPAC, once viewed as an asset to aid in election races, is now becoming a liability, giving birth to a new generation of politicians who are demonstrating their sincerity through a refusal to be bought by the Israel Lobby.
While New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has perhaps received the most attention for his pro-Palestinian stances, he is in no way alone. In fact, he is joined by countless others who use their anti-genocide stances as a means of connecting with their voter bases.
All authoritative polling data suggests the majority of Democratic Party supporters currently hold a more favorable view of the Palestinians than Israel. According to a recent Gallup poll, 92 percent of all Democrats said they oppose the war in Gaza. Yet, the ability of candidates to reject funding from the Israel Lobby and freely speak their mind on the issue transcends a simple agreement with constituents on a single foreign policy issue.
Instead, refusing to take AIPAC money is rapidly becoming a prerequisite in order to be viewed as authentic, and it drives belief amongst the public that any given candidate will actually work to achieve key campaign promises. In other words, AIPAC equals corruption, and being pro-Palestinian equates to authenticity.
One of the most successful campaigns, coming from this new generation of politicians, is that of Graham Platner, who is a Democrat running for a seat in the US Senate for Maine. In his campaign ads, he promotes a “Mainers First” mentality, centering the working class and also explicitly opposing Washington’s support for the genocide in Gaza. He has publicly rejected funds from AIPAC, as opposed to Senator Susan Collins, who has taken at least $647,758 from the Israel Lobby.
Platner is a Marine Corps veteran who did four combat tours and also worked as an Oysterman. Despite countless attempts, from within the Democratic Party establishment and the Israel Lobby, to stir up controversies and undermine his campaign, the progressive candidate is still polling above his Democratic primary opponent and Maine Governor, Janet Mills.
Although the uptick in pro-Palestinian sentiment is more prominent amongst Democrats, there is also a notable shift amongst Republicans. Pew Research polling data shows that, while unfavorable views amongst Republicans overall stand at around 23 percent, amongst those aged 18-49, a whopping 50 percent said they viewed Israel unfavorably.
Harnessing the energy of the shift, the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Thomas Massie, and Rep. Matt Gaetz have all explicitly come out in opposition to AIPAC. Their messaging around the issue is to assert that they are “America First”, as opposed to their Republican colleagues, whom they accuse of being “Israel First”. These representatives align themselves with popular conservative commentators like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, amongst others, who also carry the same rhetoric.
Ultimately, the idea of America First and slogans like Mainers First transcend partisan lines. The idea of prioritizing Americans above the interests of Israel has long been taboo, yet we saw this collapse during the Democratic primary campaign for the Mayor of New York.
When Zohran Mamdani was asked where he would first visit as Mayor, he answered calmly that “I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on them.” Although he was then challenged repeatedly and asked to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, which he refused to do based upon opposition to systems of ethnic or religious hierarchy, the clip of his answer went viral, receiving broad agreement amongst both Democrats and Republicans.
Other politicians running for Congress, who are explicitly anti-AIPAC, include the following candidates:
Robb Ryerse for Arkansas’s Third District, who is seeking to unseat Steve Womack, funded to the tune of $142,030 by the Israel Lobby. In California, there is Chris Bennet running for the Sixth District, Mai Vang for the Seventh District, Saikat Chakrabarti for the Eleventh District, Chris Ahuja for the Thirty-Second District, as well as Angela Gonzales-Torres for the Thirty-Fourth District.
In Colorado, there is Melat Kiros for the First District, as well as John Padora for the Fourth District. Within Florida, there is also Bernard Taylor running for the Twenty-First District, Elijah Manley for the Twentieth District, Marialana Kinter for the Seventh District, and Oliver Larkin for the Twenty-Third District.
Running in Illinois, there is Robert Peters for the Second District, Junaid Ahmed for the Eighth District, Morgan Coghill for the Tenth District and Dylan Blaha for the Thirteenth District. Meanwhile, in Indiana, there is Jackson Franklin, who is running for Congressional District Five and, in Massachusetts, Jeromie Whalen is running for the First District.
Seeking to win Maryland’s Fourth District is Jakeya Johnson, while Donavan McKinney is running for Michigan’s Thirteenth District and Kyle Blomquist is competing for its First District. Crossing over to Missouri, there is a well-known progressive candidate, Cori Bush, for its First District and Hartzell Gray for Missouri’s Fourth District.
For New Hampshire’s First District, Heath Howard is in the running, while, in New Jersey, Katie Bansil is running for the Sixth District. Meanwhile, there is James Lally running for Nevada’s Third District, Aftyn Behn for Tennessee’s Seventh District and Zeefshan Hafeez for Texas’s Thirty-Third District.
Also contending for Washington’s Ninth District is Kshama Sawant, while Aaron Wojchiechowski is running for Wisconsin’s Fifth District and Brit Aguirre is contesting for West Virginia’s First District.
Meanwhile, Abdul El-Sayed is running for Senate in Michigan, and Karishma Manzur is a Senate Candidate in New Hampshire, both of whom reject AIPAC funding and oppose the ongoing genocide.
It is important to note that new projects, like AIPAC Tracker, are also now promoting candidates who refuse to take funding from the Israel Lobby and have set up a page whereby citizens can donate to these anti-AIPAC politicians. AIPAC Tracker has played a particularly important role in educating the public, through graphics, showing how much the Israel Lobby has given to individual politicians.
Despite the majority of the anti-AIPAC campaigns being led by progressive Democrats, it is clear that the infamy of the Israel Lobby is having a major impact on mainstream Democrats, too.
For example, earlier this month, AIPAC appeared to be experiencing an existential crisis following an announcement from prominent lawmaker, Seth Moulton, who declared he would not receive funds from the Lobby group and would even be returning their contributions.
In an official statement, Moulton claimed to be making his move due to AIPAC’s alignment with the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular. For such a right-leaning Democrat, on foreign affairs, to be publicly disavowing AIPAC, it signaled the toxicity of its brand more than anything.
Back in 2024, AIPAC claimed victory after it managed to unseat progressive Democratic Party Representative, Jamaal Bowman, over his pro-Palestinian stances, in the “most expensive House primary ever” in US history. At the time, AIPAC had spent at least $14.5 million on anti-Bowman ads through its PAC, United Democracy Project, alone.
Just over a year later, it appears as if the Israel Lobby had forked out tens of millions for what can be labeled, in hindsight, as a pyrrhic victory. Although the Zionist Lobby groups have injected unprecedented funding into continuing their purchase of American elected officials, their strategy appears to be collapsing.
Over time, more and more Americans from across the aisle are beginning to correlate support for Israel with political corruption. The litmus test for whether a politician is truly interested in representing the people who elect them to power is becoming their stance on Palestine, more specifically, Gaza.
The more Israel interferes in American domestic affairs, demands free speech crackdowns, unconstitutional legislation, billions in taxpayer dollars to fund their wars of aggression, unlawful deportations of Israel critics and drags the US into more conflict overseas, the more the American opposition to the Israel Lobby grows.
Recently, Illinois-based journalist Matthew Eadie uncovered that AIPAC is now employing new tactics to get around its own toxic brand, by “driving donations without any transparency” through Unique ID campaigns.
One series of “AIPAC secret campaigns” has been in support of Minority Leader of the US House, Hakeem Jeffries, nicknamed “AIPAC Shakur” by popular radio-show host, ‘Charlamagne tha god’, whereby certain links to donate were shared and will not pop up as direct AIPAC contributions, yet are still traceable by the Israel Lobby and directed by them.
Social media activists are not letting these tactics slip and are actively pointing out what they claim to be deceptive tactics, only fuelling more anger at the Lobby, in general. Yet, such tactics appear to prove desperation on AIPAC’s behalf, especially amidst growing calls for them to register as a foreign agent.
Damning Evidence Proves Keir Starmer Lied About UK Role in Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
21st Century News Wire | October 28, 2025
British journalist Matt Kennard reveals the criminal role of the British military as an accomplice to Israel’s brutal genocide of native Palestinian population in Gaza. Kennard reveals how the Royal Air Force (RAF) has flown hundreds, if not thousands, of surveillance flights over Gaza since October 7, 2023. It is believed that the British flights supplied the Israelis with targeting intelligence used to slaughter countless Palestinians—including thousands of unarmed men, women and children. Despite the exposure, the Starmer government refused to give any details about these flights which amount to war crimes.
Watch this incredibly damning video report from Double Down News:
BIRTH CONTROL BACKLASH
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 23, 2025
Pfizer faces over a thousand lawsuits from women after its popular birth control drug, Depo-Provera, was linked to brain tumors. As the UN releases a report on the global fertility crisis, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is moving to allow pharmacists to dispense birth control without a doctor’s prescription.
‘Israel’s Digital Iron Dome: Weaponizing the web against Palestine
By Rasha Reslan | Al Mayadeen | October 24, 2025
“Israel” has long invested in shaping its image online, but its latest initiative, the Digital Iron Dome, represents a new level of sophistication in information warfare. Marketed as a “civilian defense initiative,” the platform (lp.digitalirondome.com) invites users worldwide to join a “digital army” tasked with countering what it describes as “disinformation” and “defending Israel online.”
A closer look, however, reveals a different reality. The initiative functions less as a neutral fact-checking tool and more as a coordinated influence operation. Users are encouraged to register and access pre-scripted posts, hashtags, and visual content optimized for viral sharing across X, Instagram, and TikTok. By centralizing narrative control in this way, the platform effectively outsources public diplomacy to civilians while framing entity-aligned messaging as grassroots activism.
The platform’s design mirrors modern marketing technology, with embedded tracking scripts and analytics monitoring engagement in real time. The Digital Iron Dome turns seemingly spontaneous online support into a highly engineered content amplification system aimed at shaping global perceptions of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and countering criticism through algorithmic dominance.
Claims vs. reality
The Digital Iron Dome markets itself as a “24/7 digital defense system” and “the world’s first pro-Israel influence engine,” claiming to monitor the web for anti-“Israel” narratives, produce “fact-based” countercontent, and place targeted ads alongside material it deems “biased” or “antisemitic”. Its landing page cites impressive metrics – “300M+ targeted ads delivered” and “200K+ websites reached” and solicits donations.
Independent inspection, however, raises questions about transparency and actual scope:
- Advocacy over journalism: The platform functions more like an advertising campaign than a newsroom, blending campaign branding and donation solicitation with AI-driven narrative detection claims.
- Unverified metrics: Reach and engagement numbers are presented without a third-party audit, leaving scale unconfirmed.
- Financial opacity: While donations are solicited via PayPal, there is no clear legal structure, charity registration, or financial reporting.
- Limited founder transparency: The founders’ professional backgrounds are only partially documented, and potential conflicts of interest remain unclear.
- Marketing masks technology claims: References to AI-driven monitoring and ad injection resemble product marketing rather than verifiable functionality.
- Coordinated outreach: Multiple domains and social media promotion suggest systematic campaign efforts, though claims of ad placement on mainstream sites require independent verification.
Digital Iron Dome exploits bias to silence Palestinian voices online
AI Engineer and the head of AI Department in a consultation company, Ali Hadi Zeineddine, speaking to Al Mayadeen English, warned that focusing solely on the technical mechanics of the Digital Iron Dome risks obscuring a much deeper issue.
“Discussing the technical aspects of the Digital Iron Dome,” he noted, “may lead to misleading conclusions, especially when filtered through Western slogans of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of speech.’”
“The real story lies not in its code, but in the unequal terrain of the digital battlefield where it operates,” he asserted.
In an age where frontlines are increasingly digital, Zeineddine argues that the Digital Iron Dome enters a space already distorted by entrenched inequalities, from algorithmic bias to economic exclusion and platform moderation practices that disproportionately silence Palestinian voices. “These imbalances don’t just create opportunities for such campaigns, they amplify them,” he explained.
Mounting evidence supports his concerns. Independent investigations have shown that major platforms, including those owned by Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, apply double standards to content relating to Palestine.
A report by the Middle East Institute revealed that Meta had quietly lowered the certainty threshold required to remove Arabic or Palestinian content from 80% to as low as 25%. In effect, Palestinian posts are far more likely to be taken down or shadow-banned with minimal justification. Human Rights Watch also documented over 1,050 incidents of peaceful pro-Palestine content being removed or suppressed on Meta platforms during October and November 2023, of which 1,049 were in support of Palestine, and only one favored “Israel.”
“In today’s conflicts, algorithms and ad policies have replaced tanks and trenches,” Zeineddine stressed. “When platform moderation already disfavors Palestinian voices, projects like the Digital Iron Dome don’t create imbalance; they exploit one.”
Weaponization of algorithmic asymmetry
Economic exclusion further compounds this digital marginalization. A Wired investigation spotlighted the case of Bilal Tamimi, a content creator from the occupied West Bank whose viral videos on YouTube have amassed millions of views. Yet, despite his reach, Tamimi remains barred from monetization through the YouTube Partner Program, not because of content violations, but because “the program is not available in [his] current location, Palestine.” This systemic restriction denies Palestinian creators not only potential income but also algorithmic reach, reducing the visibility of their narratives before they can even enter the global conversation.
Zeineddine stressed that what is unfolding is more than a clash of perspectives. “What we’re witnessing isn’t merely a battle of narratives,” he said. “It’s the weaponization of algorithmic asymmetry. The very systems designed to ensure fairness, moderation rules, monetization access, and ad transparency are reinforcing geopolitical hierarchies online.”
“When Palestinian creators are excluded from monetization programs or flagged for benign content,” he added, “they’re not just denied income, they’re denied visibility. You cannot challenge disinformation when you’re structurally silenced.”
In such a landscape, the Digital Iron Dome thrives not due to technological innovation, Zeineddine contended, but because it is designed to exploit an already tilted playing field. “The Digital Iron Dome does not succeed because it’s more advanced; it succeeds because the digital game is already rigged in its favor. Without meaningful transparency, parity, and accountability from the platforms themselves, this imbalance will remain the invisible architecture of modern information warfare.”
His conclusion is clear: the future of digital freedom and of global narrative equity hinges not only on dismantling influence operations, but also on confronting and reforming the systems that allow them to flourish in the first place.
Limits of the Digital Iron Dome
In a similar vein, Dr. Hassan Younes, a university professor and consultant, told Al Mayadeen English that after October 7, the digital space became more than a platform for news; it became a frontline.
In response, “Israel” and its allies deployed a highly organized narrative machine: coordinated talking points, PR campaigns, bot networks, sudden surges in “security justification” rhetoric, and attempts to flood timelines with distraction content.
Analysts dubbed this a digital “Iron Dome”, not designed to intercept rockets but to intercept sympathy, neutralize outrage, and sow doubt about what people were seeing.
“You cannot hide starvation. You cannot algorithmically blur the image of a mother holding her child under the rubble,” Dr. Younes explained.
“You cannot label every voice ‘extremist’ when millions say the same thing: this is not self-defense, it is mass punishment.” Influence engines, he warned, can distort timelines, amplify one narrative, and bury alternative perspectives. Yet, in this instance, they could not fully succeed.
These operations contributed to polarization and narrative suppression by design, seeking to isolate voices and make anger seem like a minority opinion. But the opposite occurred: millions aligned organically around a clear message, enough. Even those previously neutral began questioning why “context” is demanded from the oppressed but never from the occupier. “Israel” lost moral credibility online as well as on the ground.
Human voice refuses to be formatted
Attempts to control the narrative, shadow-banned posts, removed videos, and algorithmic friction triggered by words like “Gaza”, “occupation”, and “Palestine” were circumvented by users. People misspelled words to bypass AI filters, coordinated captions, and redistributed content through smaller accounts. What was meant to be silenced became a trending narrative, a form of digital civil disobedience driven by ordinary users, not institutions.
Do influence campaigns still matter? Absolutely. They can delay outrage, shape political responses, and sanitize the language of international discourse. They can reframe genocide as a “conflict” or forced famine as a “humanitarian logistics issue.”
Yet Dr. Younes highlighted a boundary: data manipulation cannot withstand stark reality. Live images of children under attack cannot be spun into comforting narratives.
This moment accentuates the need for transparency. When states or political actors provide talking points, monitor engagement, and mobilize users through dashboards and data, the process is no longer organic; it is manufactured consent. Citizens deserve to know who is speaking to them and why.
The events following October 7 proved a simple truth: distribution can be automated, but humanity cannot. The digital Iron Dome attempted to contain the story, and it failed because the people refused to look away. In an age dominated by AI, the most potent technology remains the human voice that refuses to be formatted.
How Israel Killed Its Own Soldiers, Blamed Hamas and Violated the Ceasefire again
By Robert Inlakesh – The Palestine Chronicle – October 21, 2025
After routinely violating the Gaza ceasefire on a daily basis since its implementation, killing dozens of civilians in the process, this Sunday, Israel decided to temporarily abandon the agreement altogether, before later deciding to re-implement it. Despite the entire incident being Israel’s design, the Western corporate media labeled the Israeli violations as a “test”.
This Sunday, reports suddenly emerged that a group of Israeli soldiers had been ambushed by Palestinian fighters in Rafah, located behind what is being called the “Yellow Line,” where the Israeli army is refusing to withdraw from. The incident almost immediately triggered Israel to begin launching a new wave of intense air raids across the besieged coastal enclave.
In total, it was declared that at least 100 airstrikes were committed against Gaza. Israel’s Walla News and others had reported on the “collapse” of the ceasefire at the time, claiming that the occupying military decided to attack tunnel infrastructure previously untouched throughout the two-year-long genocide.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to boast about dropping “153 tons of bombs” on sites throughout Gaza, which had killed at least 44 civilians. He also announced the closure of all entry points to the besieged territory and total blocking of humanitarian aid, before suddenly reversing these measures. All of this supposedly in response to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.
Yet, reports from on the ground suggesting a very different picture from what Israel has presented had emerged throughout the day on Sunday. Initially, Hamas had released a statement denying any involvement in the killing of the Israeli soldiers.
Then, a range of Israeli, Palestinian, and American journalists, all citing their own sources, began reporting that what had actually occurred was that the two Israeli soldiers who were killed had accidentally run over an unexploded ordnance. It was admitted that at least three other Israelis were injured in the incident, one whose condition was considered serious.
As of now, it is unclear whether the unexploded ordnance had been repurposed as an IED and previously left behind by Palestinian fighters, or if it was one of tens of thousands of such bombs that had failed to explode upon impact when it was initially dropped. On Israel’s part, its “military censor” has placed a gag order on reporting about the incident internally, only releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the incident.
According to Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi, the reason for such tight censorship over the incident was due to the remaining injured Israelis being non-military and, instead, civilian contractors stationed in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza in order to help carry out demolition work. The Israeli authorities, therefore, want to cover this up.
Tirawi’s assessment, based upon his own anonymous sources, would indeed align with the facts on the ground.
Although the issue has gone largely under-reported, the Israeli Defense Ministry has enlisted private contractors to aid in their demolition efforts in what was previously referred to as Israel’s Gaza buffer zone. Ads posted on Facebook had even advertised jobs to Israelis that pay up to $882 per day to drive bulldozers and aid in the demolition efforts. The Israeli military is also working alongside Israeli companies to hire their heavy excavation equipment.
Haaretz News previously reported that this new demolition industry costs at least 30 million dollars per month. In other words, and considering that some 60,000 businesses have closed, Israel’s tourism industry – especially in the north and south – has taken significant hits, the demolition industry is actually serving as a lucrative business for many Israelis.
Combine this with the evidence posted to social media by Israeli soldiers continuing to demolish remaining civilian infrastructure on their side of the Yellow Line, and it would make sense that civilian contractors are still being used to carry out demolition work. Evidently, this represents not only a violation of the ceasefire, of which the Gaza government’s media office has reported 80 so far, but also a clear issue in terms of the Israeli military actively paying its own people danger money to carry out such operations, putting their lives in danger.
Nevertheless, the Israeli narrative remains that Hamas was responsible for the incident and that they “responded”, despite Israeli media outlets admitting that Israel was the first to violate the ceasefire agreement. As for the claims of the Israeli military that it struck tunnel infrastructure that it had not previously targeted over the past two years, there is no evidence for this, and it appears unlikely, to say the least.
In addition to this, Israel’s Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, spoke to Channel 14 News in order to advocate for “opening the gates of hell” on Gaza after receiving the rest of their captives. This aligns with the rhetoric coming from various other officials who see the return of their prisoners from Gaza as a green light to strike the besieged coastal territory with more force than ever.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Western corporate media demonstrated again that it is nothing more than a contingent of stenographers for their wealthy Zionist funders and Israel’s foreign ministry. The Associated Press even published a story entitled “Israel strikes Gaza in first major test of ceasefire”.
While this may be simply dismissed after two years of similarly atrocious reports on the Gaza genocide, from outlets across the corporate media spectrum, it is important to continue highlighting the racist double standards employed. The Associated Press must be forced to answer for its dreadfully biased reporting.
Israeli soldiers should not have been demolishing Palestinian civilian infrastructure during a ceasefire. If they were not continuing to order their soldiers to carry out such missions and truly adhered to the ceasefire, two of their men would not have died. Then, knowing full well that Hamas had not ordered an attack, it proceeded to violate the ceasefire in a major way, which Israeli media interpreted as a return to war itself. This is not a “test”.
Such violations of the Gaza ceasefire should not come as any surprise. After all, Israel has committed over 5,000 violations of its Lebanon ceasefire agreement and began violating it from the first day it was adopted by the Lebanese side.
Now, nearly a year later, Israel is refusing to leave southern Lebanon, instead deciding to expand the zone it illegally occupies. In neighboring Syria, it also abandoned its previous ceasefire agreement and is currently continuing to occupy more territory there, too.
While both Palestinian and Israeli media have their evident biases – inherent in all media, as objectivity is not a possible standard – the Western corporate media is in a class of its own in terms of public deception.
These corporate media outlets do not represent a Palestinian or an Israeli perspective. They curate a fictional depiction of what is going on that is slanted to deliberately deceive Western audiences by publishing content tailor-made to convince them that Israel is correct.
These media outlets present Israel as both the eternal victim, while also being the hero. In this work of collective fiction, representing a parallel universe, this hero sometimes does wrong, but is always the authority, always deserves the benefit of the doubt and is never capable of being the instigator of war.
City Health Officials Tied to Soros Urge Public to ‘Get Vaccinated,’ Blame Policy Shifts for ‘Deadly Outbreaks’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 22, 2025
A coalition of city public health officials with ties to pharma investor George Soros is urging the public to “get vaccinated.”
In an open letter, the Big Cities Health Coalition accused federal officials of driving down vaccination rates and fueling an increase in dangerous infectious disease outbreaks by making “repeated false claims” about vaccines.
They wrote:
“Vaccines have eradicated devastating diseases and saved millions of lives. They keep classrooms safe and schools open. They allow children to spend time with friends and enjoy their favorite activities. They help parents and caregivers work to support their families.
The letter also addresses recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule for children and adults, though it does not mention U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or President Donald Trump by name.
The coalition, which represents 35 U.S. cities and about a fifth of the U.S. population, “has been working together to exchange ideas and address public health threats for more than two decades,” according to CNN, which first reported on the letter Monday.
Participating cities include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Seattle.
The group’s financial documents reveal support from billionaire financier Soros. Soros has also invested heavily in the pharmaceutical industry, including COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and Gilead Sciences, which produces remdesivir, a controversial antiviral treatment frequently given to COVID-19 patients.
Coalition attempted to scrub funding from Soros- and Gates-linked groups
The Big Cities Health Coalition was founded in 2002, according to a now-deleted webpage. The current version of its website contains little more than the group’s recent letter.
Links to the organization’s 2023 and 2024 annual reports are no longer active, but can be found on the Internet Archive and elsewhere. The reports show that Soros and other major healthcare-related organizations, including groups connected to Bill Gates, finance the coalition.
According to its 2023 annual report, the Open Society Foundations, founded by Soros, funded the coalition. Other funders include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente and the CDC Foundation.
In 2022, the Soros Economic Development Fund, an extension of the Open Society Foundations, partnered with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and MedAccess, a pharma-industry broker connected to the U.K. government, to invest $200 million in developing COVID-19 vaccines.
The Gates Foundation is a major funder of Gavi.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has financially supported FactCheck.org, which previously flagged COVID-19-related “misinformation” for Facebook.
The CDC Foundation’s donor list includes the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson.
According to internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker, the coalition’s annual reports reveal clear conflicts of interest.
“It’s informative to look into the funding of organizations like the Big Cities Health Coalition,” Baker said. He noted that Kaiser Permanente paid patients $50 to get COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic and fired employees who refused the shots, then tried to rehire them later when short-staffed.
According to the coalition’s Form 990 for fiscal year 2023, the organization spent $875,540 on “communications,” including engaging with “media, and federal policymakers about the importance of supporting local public health and health equity.”
The group also spent $433,703 on its “urban health agenda” and $147,397 on “equity/racial justice.”
The coalition’s members “meet periodically with Congressional staff” and “other federal government officials,” the filing states.
The organization’s schedule of contributors is listed as “restricted” in the filing.
Coalition blames unvaccinated for ‘deadly’ and ‘more frequent’ outbreaks
In its letter, the coalition blamed “declining” vaccination rates for “deadly outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio” and claimed that the outbreaks are “becoming more frequent.”
CNN reported that measles exposure at a South Carolina school led authorities to quarantine over 100 unvaccinated students, illustrating “one of the many reasons why Big Cities Health Coalition emphasizes the importance of vaccination.”
Research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said that invoking measles and polio is a “manipulative framing device.” He said:
“Outbreaks of these diseases occur almost exclusively in highly vaccinated populations where immunity has waned, or where sanitation and migration variables are misattributed as ‘vaccine refusal.’
“By portraying every outbreak as proof of anti-vaccine rhetoric, the coalition seeks to recapture moral high ground based on presumptions of safety, without addressing the underlying immunologic and ecological data.”
The coalition’s letter also warned of a potential uptick of COVID-19 and flu infections in the “rapidly approaching” cold and flu season.
However, Baker said the coalition’s letter “contains absolutely zero genuine evidence” to support its claims. He said:
“The coalition’s statement is embarrassingly inane. They say, ‘We are united behind a simple message: get vaccinated.’ Vaccinated with what? They make no distinction between necessary or unnecessary, safe or unsafe, effective or ineffective shots. Just ‘get vaccinated.’ That’s like saying ‘get medicated.’ This is the asinine level of rhetoric to which vaccine fanatics are currently reduced.”
Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismissed the coalition’s concerns.
“HHS is restoring the doctor-patient relationship so people can make informed decisions about their health with their providers,” Hilliard told The Defender.
Letter rooted in data, not ‘political ideology,’ coalition members say
Coalition members told CNN their letter is an attempt to restore public trust in science, not an effort to politicize public health recommendations.
“We have to make our public health decisions based on data and not on political ideology,” Dr. Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department, told CNN. “We have to be the voices for that science and reason.”
Huang said the current CDC administration “seems more driven by political ideology than actual data and science, so it undermines the trust.”
Lyons-Weiler disputed the coalition’s claims, calling the letter “the opening salvo in an attempt to rebuild centralized narrative control over immunization policy.”
“Language such as ‘talk with your doctor’ and ‘tune out political noise’ is designed to sound apolitical while reinstating top-down message discipline,” he said.
CDC changes to vaccine policy spark pushback across U.S.
The coalition “is the latest group to take a strong public stand in support of vaccination as a direct response to concerns that the federal government is limiting access and raising doubts,” CNN reported.
Earlier this month, the CDC updated the childhood immunization schedule to recommend individual-based decision-making regarding COVID-19 vaccination for children 6 months and older, following the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) unanimous vote to adopt the recommendation.
Last month, ACIP also voted to recommend limiting the MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, or chickenpox) vaccine to children ages 4 and older. And in June, the committee voted to stop recommending flu shots containing thimerosal — a preservative linked to neurodevelopmental disorders.
In response, 15 Democratic governors launched the Governors Public Health Alliance last week to coordinate their public health efforts independently of national public health agencies.
Previously, four Western states announced the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance, which aims to issue its own immunization guidelines.
In August, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued “evidence-based” recommendations calling for COVID-19 shots for infants, young children and children in “high-risk” groups. In July, the AAP and five other medical organizations sued Kennedy over new COVID-19 vaccine guidance.
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.
Hungary blasts ‘fake news’ about Putin-Trump meeting
RT | October 22, 2025
The Western media will continue to spread “fake news” aimed at derailing a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has warned.
Several outlets reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed White House officials, that plans for the meeting in the Hungarian capital had been put “on hold.”
Responding to the claims, Szijjarto took to X to warn that from the moment the meeting was announced following a phone call between Putin and Trump last week, “it was obvious that many would do everything possible to stop it from happening.”
“The pro-war political elite and their media always behave this way before events that could prove decisive between war and peace,” he added.
According to the foreign minister, it will be the same in the run-up to the talks in Budapest. “Until the summit actually takes place, expect a wave of leaks, fake news, and statements claiming that it will not happen,” Szijjarto said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov had earlier called the claims “infodumps,” intended to disrupt diplomatic progress on settling the Ukraine conflict. “EU and NATO countries are seeking to torpedo everything,” he said.
EU officials have publicly claimed that they would welcome another Putin-Trump meeting. However, El Pais has reported that behind closed doors, Brussels – which continues to support Ukraine and urge increased pressure on Russia – views the summit as a “political nightmare.”
On Tuesday, the Financial Times cited an unnamed EU diplomat as saying “no one likes it,” and that “we are all grinning through our teeth whilst saying this is fine.”
In the same article, the FT claimed that the talks in the Hungarian capital have been “canceled,” and that a White House official has said there are no plans for a Putin-Trump summit “in the immediate future.”
Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev rejected the report, accusing the FT of “twisting” the comments by its source. “Preparations continue” for the Budapest summit, he wrote on X.
Repeating baseless, meddlesome remarks won’t solve anything: Iran to Poland
Press TV | October 21, 2025
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has hit back at Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski over his “baseless claims and meddlesome remarks” against the Islamic Republic.
Araghchi made the comments in Polish on X, one day after Sikorski alleged that Iran was selling drones to Russia for use in the Ukraine war.
The top Iranian diplomat said that in an earlier X post, he had invited Sikorski to a substantive dialogue and exchange of documents to clarify facts following the display of a drone in the British Parliament, falsely and maliciously attributed to Iran.
“Avoiding responses, repeating baseless claims, and making meddlesome remarks will not solve the problem,” he added.
Araghchi also referred to Iran’s hospitality towards the Poles during the hard times of World War II, with the country providing shelter to over 100,000 Polish people and helping them form their own army.
“The friendship between the people of Iran and Poland was proven in challenging times, and it is our duty to protect this historical and cultural heritage,” he said.
He said the Iranian nation traces its roots to a glorious and significant past and that it will build its future on the path of progress and prosperity.
On October 14, Sikorski participated in an anti-Iran presentation at the UK Parliament in cooperation with a US-Israeli-affiliated group, displaying the wreckage of what they claimed to be an Iranian-made drone used by Russia in its war in Ukraine.
Iran summoned Poland’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest Sikorski’s involvement in the anti-Iran event.
Araghchi also took to X to say that the “pathetic show” was staged by the Israel lobby and its supporters.
He said certain actors opposed to friendly Iran-Europe relations are creating fabricated narratives inconsistent with the long-standing ties between the two sides, including between Tehran and Warsaw.
Both Iran and Russia have repeatedly rejected allegations that Tehran supplied Moscow with drones, ballistic missiles, and related technology for use in the military campaign in Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly warned against the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, saying it prolongs the conflict.
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Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire
Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj
By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025
In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.
But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.
China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.
So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue
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Aletho News- American Academy of Pediatrics Hit With Federal RICO Lawsuit for Vaccine Safety Fraud
- Mom Tells Trump: Dumping Sewage Sludge on Farmland Won’t Make America Healthy Again
- NIAID Funds Gain-of-Function Study Engineering Novel Influenza Viruses
- Villains of Judea: Philip Esformes and the Largest Healthcare Fraud in American History
- US sanctions Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad over alleged Hamas links
- You reap what you sow: Ukraine’s blackout is Zelensky’s failure
- Ukraine Blackouts Caused by Zelensky’s Terrorist Attacks on Russia
- Orban Hits Out at EU Green Light for $1.5 Trillion Ukraine Aid
- World has had enough of confused clowns: Araghchi to Zelensky
- Jordan using Israeli software to monitor journalists, rights defenders: Report
- If Americans Knew
- Oppose Israel’s Abuses While You Still Can
- UNRWA Heads Tell Ha’aretz: ‘We Don’t Radicalize Palestinians – Their Lived Existence Does’
- Plans Call for “New Rafah” Built in Israel’s Image — Without Palestinians
- Posing as priest, reporter is spat at many times, highlighting anti-Christian sentiment in Israel
- Leaked Documents: “Planned Community” in Rafah Would Force Palestinians Into Israeli Panopticon
- ‘Permits of Humiliation’: How Israel Strangles Christian Education in Jerusalem
- “The world sees death, destruction and injustice – and they see dollar signs” – Not a ceasefire Day 105
- War criminal Netanyahu kills 11 in Gaza, joins Board of Peace – Not a ceasefire Day 104
- Another baby dies of cold in Gaza, as Rafah crossing remains locked down – Not a ceasefire Day 103
- Brutal Beatings, Arson, and Impunity: A Palestinian Plant Nursery Becomes a Target for Settler Pogroms
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
- German Media Report That Current Frigid Weather Can Be Explained By Arctic Warming!
- Berlin Blackout Shows Germany’s $5 Trillion Green Scheme Is “Left-Green Ideological Pipe Dream”
- Modeling Error In Estimating How Clouds Affect Climate Is 8700% Larger Than Alleged CO2 Forcing
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