German journalist says she was sexually assaulted in Israeli custody
ILKA | December 26, 2025
A German journalist detained by Israeli forces following the interception of a Gaza-bound aid vessel has accused Israeli prison authorities of sexually assaulting her while in custody, triggering renewed outrage over Israel’s treatment of international activists and detainees.
Anna Liedtke, who was aboard the humanitarian ship Conscience as part of the Freedom Flotilla initiative, said she was raped during a strip search while being transferred between Israeli detention facilities. The flotilla was attempting to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, which human rights groups have long described as illegal and collectively punitive.
Liedtke was held for five days after Israeli forces seized the vessel in late 2025. In her first public testimony, she said the alleged assault did not occur in isolation but was part of repeated abuses during multiple prison transfers.
“We were transferred from one prison to another, and during the strip searches I was raped,” Liedtke said, describing the experience as deeply traumatic and humiliating.
Her account has sparked condemnation from prisoner rights organisations and human rights advocates, who say the allegations fit a long-established pattern of abuse, sexual violence, and mistreatment within Israel’s detention system. Advocacy groups argue that such practices have been systematically used to intimidate, degrade, and silence Palestinians and international solidarity activists alike.
Rights organisations stressed that while Palestinians have for years reported sexual violence, invasive searches, and torture in Israeli prisons, cases involving foreign nationals underscore that Israel’s abusive detention practices extend beyond occupied populations to anyone who challenges its policies.
“The testimony of Anna Liedtke reinforces what Palestinian prisoners, especially women, have been saying for decades,” one rights advocate said. “Israeli detention facilities operate with near-total impunity.”
Calls are now growing for an independent international investigation into the allegations, with activists urging the United Nations and international human rights bodies to intervene. They argue that Israel’s internal investigative mechanisms lack credibility and routinely fail to hold perpetrators accountable.
The Freedom Flotilla coalition said the assault allegation highlights the risks faced by activists attempting to break the siege on Gaza and accused Israel of using violence and sexual abuse as tools of repression. The coalition renewed its demand for an end to the blockade, which has devastated Gaza’s civilian population for more than a decade.
Human rights groups say the case exposes the broader reality of Israel’s detention regime, where activists, journalists, and Palestinians are subjected to violence with little oversight. They warn that without sustained international pressure, such abuses will continue unchecked, further eroding international law and basic human dignity.
The Rebirth of ISIS, Israel and the Continuation of Syria’s Civil War
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | December 25, 2025
The chaotic predicament in which Syria now finds itself was, in many ways, predictable, yet this makes it nonetheless tragic. Despite the recent removal of the US’s crushing Caesar Act sanctions, the challenges ahead are so numerous as to render this a minor victory for the country.
In order to begin to understand what is happening inside Syria, we first have to begin to comprehend what happened following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Although the moment that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Damascus, and Ahmed al-Shara’a declared himself leader, was dubbed a liberation of the country, thus interpreted as the end to the nation’s civil war, what had really happened was the birth of a new chapter in the Syrian war.
On December 8, 2024, the Israeli air force saw its opportunity and hatched a long-planned strategy to destroy Syria’s strategic arsenal and occupy key portions of territory in the south of the nation. That day, however, much of the Arabic language world’s media completely ignored the historic event and refused to cover its ramifications.
Another key point was that, beyond Israel’s land grab, the country’s territory still remained divided, as the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) maintained its control over the northeast of the country. This movement believes that the territory it controls, with Washington’s backing, is called Rojava and is part of the land of Kurdistan.
Türkiye, to the north, views the Kurdish movement as a strategic threat and treats the SDF as an extension of other Kurdish organizations it deems terrorist groups. The majority of the people living inside SDF-controlled territory are Arabs, an issue that can also not be overlooked.
HTS Ascendant and the Collapse of the State
Then we have the HTS government that took over Damascus, which originally pledged to rule for all Syrians and not just the Sunni majority. However, HTS is a rebranding of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot. Understanding this fact is key, because HTS was the de facto government in the territory called Idlib, in northwestern Syria; although a secular leadership was on paper, supposed to be the ruling authority.
In 2018, when Bashar al-Assad’s forces halted their offensive and sent all the armed groups opposing them on “Green Buses” to the Idlib enclave, Ahmed al-Shara’a, who called himself Abu Mohammed al-Jolani at the time, had started to consolidate power. This led to HTS establishing its own prisons and undergoing a process whereby it managed to control various al-Qaeda-affiliated Salafist armed groups inside the territory.
When HTS took Damascus, it did so with a ragtag army composed of militants from dozens of armed groups from inside Idlib, including many former ISIS fighters and others from different groups that were given the options to join forces with HTS, lay down their weapons, or face fierce crackdowns.
The way these crackdowns on dissidents were carried out, along with corruption in the governance of Idlib, even led to protests inside the province against HTS. Many hardline militants had also accused al-Shara’a of providing the US with details on the whereabouts of former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Keep in mind now that when HTS took over Damascus, they did so without a fight and the former regime simply collapsed in on itself. So here was HTS, now tasked with managing the majority of Syria and had to do so without any army, because the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) had been disbanded.
Many elements of the former government, intelligence, and military under Bashar al-Assad were told they had been granted amnesty, yet forces aligned with HTS, and in some cases those within it, decided to take the law into their own hands through brutal field executions.
This eventually led to a group of former SAA fighters in the coastal region taking up arms against the new HTS security forces, triggering a response from a broad range of sectarian groups and others who were seeking “revenge” in blood feuds. The result was the mass murder of Alawite civilians across the coast.
Israel, the Druze File, and Syria’s External Fronts
Earlier this year, Israel also took advantage of tensions between Syria’s Druze community and sectarian militants aligned with Damascus, backing Druze separatist militias. This had been a strategy that Tel Aviv attempted to implement all the way back in 2013, when Israel began backing some dozen opposition groups, including al-Qaeda- and ISIS-linked militants that were committing massacres against the Druze.
The Syrian Druze population is primarily situated in the Sweida province in southern Syria. Israel long sought to create a Druze rump state there, which would serve as a land bridge to the Euphrates and allow for the total Israeli domination of the south. The Israelis are also allied with the SDF, although not as overtly as the Americans are, meaning that if their strategy works, then they have secured their domination all the way through to the Iraqi border.
This Monday, tensions again flared up between the Syrian forces aligned with Damascus and HTS in eastern Aleppo, with both sides blaming each other for the violence. Periodically, tensions continue to escalate in Sweida, yet come short of the large-scale sectarian battles we saw earlier this year.
Meanwhile, US forces have now expanded their footprint throughout Syria and have taken over more military air bases, even working alongside Damascus as a partner in the “fight against ISIS,” or “Operation Inherent Resolve.”
On December 13, an attack that killed three US servicemembers was blamed on a lone-wolf ISIS fighter. In response, the US then declared it was launching a retaliatory bombing campaign across the country.
The narratives of both Washington and Damascus make little sense, regarding this being a lone-wolf ISIS attack. Instead, the evidence suggests that the attack was carried out by a member of the HTS security forces, but this is perhaps a story for another day.
Now we hear report after report about the rise of ISIS. And while it is certainly true that ISIS is on its way back, even if in a weaker state, the context is never mentioned.
Internal Fractures, ISIS, and an Unstable Future
Not only has the current Syrian administration managed to play right into Israel’s hands with the management of the situation in Sweida, set up a shadow governance model that is even more corrupt than the previous regime, while isolating all of Syria’s minority communities in one way or another, but it has also effectively turned many of its own allies against it.
There is no actual “Syrian Army” to be spoken of right now, at least there isn’t one that is professionally trained or big enough to handle any major war. Instead, the Syrian state will rely on its allies, like major tribes and a range of militant groups. However, as time goes on, more and more of HTS’s allies and even many who now fill the ranks of its own security forces are growing tired of the government’s antics.
A large component of their anger comes from issues concerning tight Syrian relations with the US, leading to the hunting down of Sunni militants across the country, but particularly in and around Idlib. As mentioned above, HTS had integrated many ISIS fighters and those belonging to other hardline Salafist Takfiri fighting groups, but many of these militants have never been willing to sacrifice their core beliefs for a secular state.
For years, the man they knew as Jolani had preached against the United States and Israel, yet, after taking power, he began cozying up with them and targeting Sunni militants alongside the US military. In addition to this, the large number of foreign fighters inside the country have not been granted citizenship and feel as if their futures are threatened.
In other words, the conditions are ripe for some kind of revolt, and Ahmed al-Shara’a is surrounded by countless threats. If ISIS were to begin gaining traction, there is a good chance many of these fighters, currently allying themselves with the Damascus government, will switch sides. In fact, this is something that has already been happening, although in small numbers and isolated cases.
What we see is a recipe for disaster, one which could explode in any direction, triggering a much larger chain of events in its wake. So far, it appears as if there are four primary threats to the stability of the HTS government. These are the Sweida front, the Israel front, the SDF front, and the potential for an internal insurgency.
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, recently gave an interview during which he commented that Ahmed al-Shara’a “does know that any pathway for stability in Syria, his pathway for survival, is that he has to be able to have peace with Israel.”
It is important to understand that the two most powerful influences on Damascus are Washington and Ankara, yet it is clear that the US has the edge and could quickly overthrow the HTS regime at any time of its choosing.
Türkiye now has enormous influence inside Syria, where it is competing with the Israelis and attempting to set red lines, yet has failed to impose any equations as of yet. Perhaps the only way that the Turkish state could deter the Israelis is through backing a resistance front in the south of the country, yet it is clear that the US will not allow such a scenario to develop.
Even if a rather weak resistance group, or collection of groups, were to be formed and pose little strategic threat to Israel, this could also end up presenting a challenge to the rule of HTS in the long run. This is because such a resistance organization would enjoy enormous popular support and likely encourage other armed actors inside the country to join forces, creating a Lebanon-style system, whereby the forces of the state are incapable of confronting the occupier, and instead a resistance group would handle security.
The United States and Israel would never permit something like this to evolve, likely moving to commit regime change before such a plot is even conceived.
This leaves Ahmed al-Shara’a in an impossible position. He has no confidence in him as a ruler from the country’s minorities, growing anguish amongst the majority Sunni population, and no real army to be spoken of. Instead of resisting the Israelis, as his men and population at large seek, he sends his officials to sit around the table with them, while Syria’s official social media pages publish images of Syria without including the occupied Golan Heights.
Since 1967, most of the Syrian Druze living in the occupied Golan Heights had refused to take Israeli citizenship. After the sectarian bloodshed that occurred earlier this year, these Syrian Druze began applying for Israeli citizenship en masse. This is the impact that the rulers in Damascus have had on their own people; they have pushed Syrians who resisted Israeli citizenship for decades to switch sides, playing right into Tel Aviv’s hands.
Meanwhile, little is being done to reassure the disillusioned militants who had fought alongside HTS and believed they were fighting for a liberation cause and/or Islamic Caliphate, only to realize that they fought for a regime that negotiates with Israel and bows to the White House. Therefore, it is no wonder that when a group like ISIS appeals to them through its propaganda, it manages to convince them to join the organization’s fight.
What’s more is that this outcome was barely difficult to predict; only days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, militants from Idlib were posting photos on Facebook of themselves holding up pictures of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Umayyad Mosque, the most important mosque to Sunni Muslims in Syria.
Not only this, while ISIS networks on social media were, in the past, blocked almost instantly, they began popping up in the open on places like Facebook again. This begs the question as to why such obvious ISIS glorification and supporters were permitted to begin operating so openly online during this period.
When it comes to Takfiri Salafist doctrine, whether someone is affiliated with ISIS or al-Qaeda offshoots, they do not simply abandon this ideology overnight because of changing political circumstances.
Now, Takfiri militants idolize a man named Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which is why these Salafi groups are often referred to as Wahhabis. Historically speaking, this ideology was the bedrock on which the Saudi family launched their offensives to conquer Arabia, declaring the Ottomans kafir (disbelievers) and justifying their alliance with Britain, against other Muslims, on this basis. Therefore, some may justify the actions of al-Shara’a on the basis of their doctrine, but only to a certain extent.
When HTS began killing fellow Sunni Muslims, alongside the United States and cozying up to individuals responsible for the mass murder of their co-religionists, this started to become a major problem. It could no longer be branded an “alliance with the people of the book,” especially when fellow Salafists were kidnapped and killed by HTS government forces.
Some attention has recently been placed on the comments of the US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, who remarked that Syria should not be a democracy and instead a monarchy, even explicitly stating that this plan could include merging Syria with Lebanon. Such a system would certainly please many allies of al-Shara’a, and comments like these could be made in the interest of restoring faith in the leader.
Nonetheless, the current system is still operating on a knife-edge and is far from achieving a monarchy that rules the northern Sham region. In the distance, the Israelis are watching on and simply waiting for the next opportunity to achieve even more of their goals.
This is all because the war in Syria never truly ended; the only thing that changed is that Bashar al-Assad’s government fell, and perhaps if that had occurred during the first years of the war, there wouldn’t have been so many issues.
As is normally the case with human psychology, we seek to frame things in a favorable way to our worldview, meaning that we simply ignore evidence to the contrary. Yet, the case of Syria is really not all that dissimilar from the post-US-backed regime change realities currently existing in Libya, although there are key differences, of course.
So long as Syria remains without an effective resistance front against the Israelis, it will never recover and remain trapped. In Lebanon, it took years before such a resistance force truly took off in the south, and even then, it took decades to expel and then deter the Israelis. Syria is a much more complex picture, which makes predicting outcomes even more difficult.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
How reporting facts can now land you in jail for 14 years as a terrorist
By Jonathan Cook – December 22, 2025
Starmer’s government has set the most dangerous of precedents: it can now outlaw any political group it chooses as a terrorist organisation – and thereby make it impossible to defend it.
The moment the British government began proscribing political movements as terrorist organisations, rather than just militant groups, it was inevitable that saying factual things, making truthful statements, would become a crime.
And lo behold, here we are.
The Terrorism Act 2000 has a series of provisions that make it difficult to voice or show any kind of support for an organisation proscribed under the legislation, whether it is writing an article or wearing a T-shirt.
Recent attention has focused on Section 13, which is being used to hound thousands of mostly elderly people who have held signs saying: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” They now face a terrorism conviction and up to six months in jail.
But an amendment introduced in 2019 to Section 12 of the Act has been largely overlooked, even though it is even more repressive. It makes it a terrorism offence for a person to express “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation” and in doing so be “reckless” about whether anyone else might be “encouraged to support” the organisation.
It is hard to believe this clause was not inserted specifically to target the watchdog professions: journalists, human rights groups and lawyers. They now face up to 14 years in jail for contravening this provision.
When it was introduced, six years ago, Section 12 made it impossible to write or speak in ways that might encourage support for groups whose central aim was using violence against people to achieve their aims.
The law effectively required journalists and others to adopt a blanket condemnatory approach to proscribed militant groups. That had its own drawbacks. It made it difficult, and possibly a terrorist offence, to discuss or analyse these organisations and their goals in relation to international law, which, for example, allows armed resistance – violence – against an occupying army.
But these problems have grown exponentially since the Conservatives proscribed Hamas’ political wing in 2021 and the government of Keir Starmer proscribed Palestine Action in 2025, the first time in British history a direction-action group targeting property had been declared a terrorist group.
Now journalists, human rights activists and lawyers face a legal minefield every time they try to talk about the Gaza genocide, the trials of people accused of belonging to Palestine Action, or the hunger strikes of those on remand over attacks on weapons factories supplying killer drones to Israel.
Why? Because saying truthful things about any of these matters – if they could lead a reader or listener to take a more favourable view of Palestine Action or the political wing of Hamas – are now a terrorist offence. Any journalist, human rights activist or lawyer making factual observations risks 14 years behind bars.
Few seem to have understood quite what impact this is having on public coverage of these major issues.
A month and a half into the hunger strike by eight members of Palestine Action – the point at which people are likely to start dying – the BBC News at Ten finally broke its silence on the matter. That was despite the hunger strike being the largest in UK history in nearly half a century.
There are clear political reasons why the BBC had avoided this topic for so long. It prefers not to deal with matters that directly confront the legitimacy of the government, which funds it. The BBC is effectively the British state broadcaster.
But in a naturally spineless organisation like the BBC, the legal consequences have clearly weighed heavily too. In a recent short segment on the hunger strike, BBC correspondent Dominic Casciani carefully hedged his words and admitted to facing legal difficulties reporting on the strike.
In these circumstances, news organisations make one of two choices. They simply ignore factual things because it is legally too dangerous to speak truthfully about them. Or they lie about factual things because it is legally safe – and politically opportune – to speak untruthfully about them.
The so-called “liberal” parts of the media, including the BBC, tend to opt for the former; the red-tops usually opt for the latter.
The government itself is taking full advantage of this lacuna in reporting, injecting its own self-serving deceptions into the coverage, knowing that there will be – can be – no meaningful pushback.
Take just one example. The government has proscribed Palestine Action on the grounds that it is a terrorist organisation. It has justified its decision by implying, without producing a shred of evidence, that the group is funded by Iran, and that its real agenda is not just criminal damage against arms factories but against individuals.
Any effort to counter this government disinformation, by definition, violates Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and risks 14 years’ imprisonment.
Were I to conduct an investigation, for example, definitively showing that Palestine Action was not funded by Iran – proving that the government was lying – it would be a terror offence to publish that truthful information. Why? Because it would almost certainly “encourage support” for Palestine Action. There is no fact or truth exemption in the legislation.
Similarly, the government has suggested that the current “Filton Trial” – which includes discussions of events in which a police officer was injured during a struggle over the sledgehammers being used to destroy the Elbit factory’s weapons-producing machinery – demonstrates that Palestine Action was not just targeting property but individuals too.
Were I to try to make the case that the alleged actions of one individual – only one person is charged with assault – prove nothing about the aims of the organisation as a whole, I would be risking a terrorism conviction and 14 years’ imprisonment. Which is one, very strong reason not to make such an argument.
But in the absence of such arguments, the reality is that social media is awash with posts from people echoing outrageous official disinformation. This spreads unchallenged because to challenge it is now cast as a terrorism offence.
In truth, since proscription, any statements about the political aims of a deeply political organisation like Palestine Action occupy a grey area of the law.
Is it a terrorism offence to point out the fact, as I have done above, that Palestine Action targeted Elbit factories that send killer drones to Israel for use in Gaza. In doing so, may I have “recklessly” encouraged you to support Palestine Action?
Can I express any kind of positive view about the hunger strikers or their actions without violating the law?
The truth is that the law’s greyness is its very point. It maximises the chilling effect on those who are supposed to serve as the public’s watchdogs on power: journalists, human rights groups, lawyers.
It allows the government – through compliant police forces – to selectively pick off those dissenting individuals it doesn’t like, those without institutional backing, to make examples of them. This is not conjecture. It is already happening.
The abuse of the Terrorism Act discourages research, analysis and critical thinking. It forces all journalists, human rights activists and lawyers to become lapdogs of the government. It creates a void into which the government can spin events to its own advantage, in which it can avoid accountability and in which it can punish those who dissent. It is the very antithesis of democratic behaviour.
This ought to appall anyone who cares about the truth, about public debate, about scrutiny. Because they have all been thrown out of the window.
And in proscribing Palestine Action, the government has set the most dangerous of precedents: it can outlaw any political group it chooses as a terrorist organisation and thereby make it impossible to defend that group.
That is what authoritarian governments do. That is exactly where Britain is now.
Victoria Moves to Force Online Platforms to ID Users and Expand State Powers to Curb “Hate Speech”
Victoria’s push to unmask online users marks a turning point where the rhetoric of safety begins to eclipse the right to speak without fear
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 23, 2025
Victoria is preparing to introduce some of the most far-reaching online censorship and surveillance powers ever proposed in an Australian state, following the Bondi Beach terror attack.
Premier Jacinta Allan’s new five-point plan, presented as a response to antisemitism, includes measures that would compel social media platforms to identify users accused of “hate speech” and make companies legally liable if they cannot.
Presented as a defense against hate, the plan’s mechanisms cut directly into long-standing principles of privacy and freedom of expression. It positions anonymity online as a form of protection for “cowards,” creating a precedent for government-mandated identity disclosure that could chill lawful speech and dissent.
During her announcement, Premier Allan said:
“That’s why Victoria will spearhead new laws to hold social media companies and their anonymous users to account – and we’ll commission a respected jurist to unlock the legislative path forward.”
Under the proposal, if a user accused of “vilification” cannot be identified, the platform itself could be held responsible for damages. This effectively converts private platforms into instruments of state enforcement, obligating them to expose user data or face financial risk.
The Premier also announced plans to accelerate the introduction of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Act 2024, which had been due to take effect in mid-2026. It will now be brought forward to April 2026.
The law allows individuals to sue others for public conduct, including online speech, that a “reasonable person” might find “hateful, contemptuous, reviling or severely ridiculing” toward someone with a protected attribute. These protected categories include religion, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability, among others.
This framework gives the state and private citizens broad interpretive power to determine what speech is “hateful.” As many civil liberties experts note, such wording opens the door to legal action based on subjective offense rather than clear, objective harm.
Weakening Oversight of Speech Prosecutions
Premier Allan also intends to remove a major procedural safeguard from Victoria’s criminal vilification laws: the requirement that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) consent to police prosecutions. Without that check, police could independently pursue speech-based offenses, bypassing higher legal oversight.
This change would hand significant discretion to law enforcement in determining which speech crosses into criminality. Once enacted, it would mean that a person’s online comments could be prosecuted directly, without review from the state’s top legal office.
The “anti-hate” package extends beyond censorship. It proposes new powers for police to shut down protests in the aftermath of “designated terrorist events” and establishes a Commissioner for Preventing and Countering Violent Political Extremism to coordinate programs across schools, clubs, and religious institutions.
These measures, combined with the online anonymity restrictions, represent a substantial consolidation of state power over communication, movement, and association, all justified in the name of combating hate and maintaining safety.
Requiring companies to unmask users fundamentally undermines the principle of anonymous participation, a cornerstone of free expression, whistleblowing, and political organizing. Anonymity has historically protected vulnerable groups, dissidents, and small voices from retaliation.
Under Victoria’s proposal, those protections could erode rapidly as platforms are pressured to reveal identities or face litigation.
Laws targeting “hate speech” often extend far beyond their original purpose, evolving into broad speech controls that deter public criticism, satire, and unpopular opinions. Once enacted, such powers rarely contract.
More: Chris Minns Defends NSW “Hate Speech” Laws Linking Censorship to Terror Prevention
Who is the Pro-Israel Clique behind TikTok’s US Takeover?
By Romana Rubeo – The Palestine Chronicle – December 20, 2025
The short-form video social media platform TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the United States and has become a central space for political discourse, journalism, and youth activism, finalized an agreement on Thursday to transfer control of its US operations to a newly created joint venture dominated by American and allied investors.
The deal, reported by multiple US media outlets including CNBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press, follows years of bipartisan efforts to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from the app or face an outright ban under US national security legislation. The agreement is expected to close in January 2026.
Under the terms of the deal, TikTok’s US business will be placed under a new entity, commonly referred to as TikTok USDS, with majority ownership held by a consortium led by Oracle Corporation and the private equity firm Silver Lake, alongside MGX, an investment vehicle based in Abu Dhabi. ByteDance will retain a minority stake of just under 20 percent, the maximum allowed under US law, while existing ByteDance-linked investors will collectively hold a further share of the company.
Oracle will play a central role not only as an investor but also as TikTok’s so-called “trusted technology partner.” US officials have stated that Oracle will be responsible for hosting American user data and overseeing key aspects of the platform’s algorithm, an arrangement presented by the administration as a safeguard against foreign influence.
Is Israel Involved?
While no Israeli company or state-linked entity is formally involved in the ownership structure of the new TikTok US venture, the deal has sparked debate over the political affiliations and ideological positions of some of the corporate figures associated with the transaction.
Oracle, one of the principal investors, has long-standing ties to Israel through its leadership. The company’s chief executive, Safra Catz, is Israeli-American and has previously made public statements expressing strong support for Israel.
According to TRT, an email sent by former Oracle CEO Safra Catz to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was disclosed following a hack of Barak’s email account.
“We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college. We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way they can consume it,” Catz reportedly wrote in February 2015.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has also been widely reported to have close political and personal relationships with Israeli leaders and to have donated to pro-Israel causes over many years.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ellison is among the largest private donors to the Israeli army. Reporting on a Beverly Hills gala organized by The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2017, the JTA wrote: “Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle and its executive chairman, gave $16.6 million — the largest single gift in FIDF history.”
Ellison has also publicly described Israel as his own state.
According to Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute, Ellison holds extensive interests across major news, television, and Hollywood media companies, largely through the recent takeover of Paramount by Skydance Media, a group now led by his son, David Ellison. The report also noted that David Ellison is considering appointing openly pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss to a senior executive role at the newly acquired CBS network.
The report also mentioned that David Ellison is considering appointing openly pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss to a senior executive role at the newly acquired CBS network.
Limitations on Freedom of Expression
Civil liberties groups and pro-Palestinian advocates have repeatedly warned that the restructuring of TikTok’s ownership could have consequences for freedom of expression, particularly regarding content related to Palestine and Israel.
These concerns come against the backdrop of repeated complaints from activists and journalists about the suppression or downranking of pro-Palestinian content across major social media platforms since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Pro-Israel Organizations Welcome the Deal
At the same time, pro-Israel organizations in the US have publicly welcomed the sale, framing it as an opportunity to address what they describe as antisemitism and hostile narratives on TikTok.
For example, leaders of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), one of the largest umbrella groups representing Jewish communities in the US, issued a public statement framing the proposed TikTok deal as an opportunity to tackle what they described as the “antisemitism” on the platform.
Israeli officials and commentators have also emphasized the strategic importance of social media platforms in shaping public opinion, particularly among younger audiences.
Even former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently claimed that young Americans, including young Jewish Americans, hold increasingly critical views of Israel because they are being misled by “pure propaganda” and “totally made up” videos on TikTok and other social media platforms.
Speaking at a summit in New York hosted by Israel Hayom on December 2, Clinton repeatedly suggested that widely documented information circulating online about Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza is fabricated, and expressed concern that students “don’t know the history and don’t understand.”
Clinton described it as “a serious problem” that young people rely heavily on social media for their information, despite the fact that the videos, documentation, and reporting she dismissed have been independently verified by journalists, human rights organizations, UN bodies, and legal experts investigating Israeli war crimes and genocide.
Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals.
German politicians and police on lobby trips to Israel
By Leon Wystrychowski | MEMO | December 23, 2025
Several recent investigative reports in Germany’s alternative media have revealed that Israel has been stepping up efforts to invite German decision-makers in order to exert influence and initiate business deals. The focus is primarily on senior politicians and high-ranking officials within Germany’s security apparatus.
Propaganda trips for politicians
Mondoweiss and Declassified UK recently highlighted that trips to Israel are among the “less well-known” yet widely used tools of the Israel lobby to influence senior politicians. The same appears to be true of Germany, as the left-wing daily Neues Deutschland has now exposed. According to the paper, as recently as last November some 160 politicians from across Germany and from a wide range of parties were invited to Israel as part of what was described as an “influence operation”, where they took part in a five-day programme.
The trip was so clearly a propaganda exercise that even hardline Zionists among the hand-picked guests later complained to the Israeli daily Haaretz that it had amounted to a “one-sided PR operation”. The itinerary included sites where fighting with the Palestinian resistance had taken place on 7 October 2023, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, a guided tour of a factory belonging to the Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael, and the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, under illegal Israeli control since 1967. Representatives of the Israeli government also reportedly made use of the opportunity to rail against the establishment of a Palestinian state and against a “two-state solution”.
As the authors point out, although the November delegation was the largest of its kind to date, it was by no means the first. Since 2014, politicians from all German parties – with the exception of the far-right AfD – have regularly been invited on similar trips. While such visits in the United States are organised by AIPAC and its affiliates, in the UK and Germany they are handled by organisations such as the European Leadership Network (ELNET) or the so-called Nahost Friedensforum (Middle East Peace Forum). In all three countries, these trips and their funding are frequently obscured, using a mix of legal and legally questionable methods. In 2024, for example, a senior Green Party politician in Germany resigned after it emerged that he had failed to declare such a trip as a donation.
German police on a “study visit” to an apartheid state
These trips are by no means limited to politicians. As reported by the German online outlet Itidal, Berlin’s police chief and newly appointed head of the “Association of Police Presidents in Germany”, Barbara Slowik Meisel, recently travelled to Tel Aviv at the invitation of the Israeli police. She was accompanied by senior officials from across Germany and from various police institutions. The Israeli side covered accommodation and meals, while the travel costs themselves were paid by German taxpayers.
The occasion was reportedly a “Multidisciplinary Emergency Management Commissioner’s Conference”. The visit had been preceded by a trip to Berlin in October by Israel’s police chief, Daniel Levi, during which he extended the invitation. According to Itidal, the conference featured extensive propaganda against the Palestine solidarity movement, which was portrayed as an extension of Hamas. There were also calls for increased repression of dissenting views and information online. In addition, no fewer than twelve arms manufacturers presented their products.
In this case too, the trip was not made public. As Itidal explains, this is not illegal, but it is highly unusual. Despite the frequently proclaimed “German Staatsräson” (reason of state), under which Berlin declares its firm and unconditional support for Israel, there appears to be a clear awareness of the moral and legal problems this entails. There is endless rhetoric about “Israel-related antisemitism” and “solidarity with Israel”; weapons are supplied for a genocide; the illegal occupation and apartheid condemned by the International Court of Justice are financially supported; Israeli expertise in surveillance, crowd control and warfare is utilised; and lobby trips are eagerly undertaken. Yet speaking about all this openly and transparently is something Germany’s political and security elites evidently prefer to avoid.
Israeli military superiority undermines US interests: Report
Al Mayadeen | December 23, 2025
When US President Donald Trump announced in November 2025 that he would approve selling advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately sought assurances from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The US was quick to affirm an unwavering commitment to preserving “Israel’s qualitative military edge” over all countries in West Asia.
And this commitment is not merely political; it’s the law. According to an analysis by Josh Paul, a former State Department director who spent over 11 years in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs before resigning over Gaza policy in 2023, this legal requirement is producing outcomes that directly contradict US strategic interests in the region.
Writing in Responsible Statecraft, Paul draws on his insider experience to argue that what was intended as a tool for maintaining regional order aligned with American interests may now be fueling instability.
Cold war era policy
The concept of “Israel’s” “qualitative military edge” (QME) emerged in the 1970s as a mechanism to ensure a regional balance of power favorable to US interests by guaranteeing Israeli military superiority. Paul traces how this informal policy became codified in 2008 legislation that defines QME as “Israel’s” ability to “counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.”
The law requires the State Department to assess every major US arms transfer to West Asian and North African countries, from Morocco to Iran, to ensure it doesn’t threaten “Israel’s” military dominance. In practice, since Iran has not purchased US weapons since 1979, this applies exclusively to Arab states, effectively institutionalizing a regional hierarchy with “Israel” at its apex.
Paul describes a classified process involving multiple agencies and Israeli input: “At the annual Department of Defense Joint Political Military Group meeting, the Israelis typically make a presentation that includes a list of systems they deem threatening to their QME.”
Three options, three problems
When Arab countries seek advanced US weapons, Paul explains, the US government is faced with three choices, each with significant drawbacks.
The first is compensating “Israel” with superior technology. When the Obama administration proposed selling F-16s to the UAE in 2013, it had to simultaneously offer “Israel” advanced radars to detect those very aircraft. But this approach, Paul argues, directly fuels regional arms races, potentially violating other US laws that explicitly aim to “discourage arms races.”
The second option involves limiting sales through quantity restrictions, geographical constraints, or technological downgrades. But these limitations, Paul notes, can strain relationships with Arab partners who face genuine security threats.
The third option, denying sales outright to preserve “Israel’s” edge, may produce what Paul calls “perverse incentives.” Arab governments denied US weapons often turn to China, Russia, or France instead, reducing US influence over their defense capabilities and potentially introducing systems Washington cannot monitor or constrain.
This shift threatens the very regional order the QME policy was designed to maintain, as it allows competing powers to establish military footholds in West Asia.
The diplomatic cost of military dominance
Beyond arms sales logistics, Paul identifies a more fundamental problem: guaranteed military superiority may discourage Israeli affairs. “Because Israel remains assured that the United States will help it retain military superiority over the entire region, Tel Aviv may feel able to rely on such superiority rather than engaging in diplomacy,” he writes.
He argues that “Israel’s” recurring reliance on military force “arguably contributes to instability across the Middle East as a whole,” creating a paradox where the policy designed to enhance Israeli security and maintain a “stable” regional order may actually generate the very threats it aims to prevent.
An outdated framework?
Paul questions whether the QME framework still makes sense given recent diplomatic developments. Israeli officials themselves argued during the 2020 F-35 sale to the UAE that the country had become “an ally in confronting Iran” and the sale wouldn’t violate US commitments. Yet Paul notes from his government experience that pro-“Israel” advocacy groups like AIPAC continued opposing such sales “behind closed doors,” regardless of intensifying normalization efforts between Arab states and the entity.
More fundamentally, Paul argues that military technology is evolving in ways that may make the QME unsustainable. Military analysts increasingly suggest the world faces a revolution characterized by “low-cost weapons systems capable of overcoming high-tech capabilities,” a shift that could render “Israel’s” technological edge less decisive and the entire framework obsolete.
Paul concludes that US and Israeli policymakers should explore alternatives to what he calls “Israeli military hegemony and the inherent fragility that it brings to the region.” He argues that “diplomacy and compromise, including the need for real progress on Palestinian self-determination, promises the only real exit from the isolation that the QME has allowed Israel to impose on itself.”
For Paul, who left his State Department career over these very contradictions, the message is clear: a policy conceived to ensure a regional order favorable to US interests through military dominance may now be achieving the opposite, undermining both regional peace and American strategic influence in the process.
Australia evaluates purchase of Israeli AI-powered weapons used in Gaza: Report
The Cradle | December 22, 2025
Australia’s Department of Defense has begun a live assessment of Israeli-made, “combat-proven” AI-powered weaponry tested during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, according to a report by Australia Declassified published on 21 December.
The Australian Defence Force is currently trialing the SMASH 3000 AI-assisted targeting system, produced by Israeli arms firm Smartshooter Ltd., and openly advertised as battle-tested, a label arms manufacturers use to demand a higher price for their product.
Under a four-month contract worth approximately $495,910.49, signed for equipment provision and training, the ADF has acquired multiple units of the rifle-mounted electro-optical fire control system and has been evaluating its operational suitability for Australian forces since 25 August, with the trial scheduled to conclude on 25 December.
The SMASH 3000 uses artificial intelligence to detect, track, and lock onto targets, dramatically increasing hit probability for existing firearms, and while it is marketed primarily as a counter-drone system, it is also capable of engaging ground targets with lethal effect.
Smartshooter openly advertises the system as “combat-proven,” explicitly citing its deployment by Israeli armed forces in Gaza, and has repeatedly emphasized that its battlefield use forms a core part of its commercial appeal.
Despite the system’s documented use by Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza, Canberra has proceeded with the evaluation, with no indication that Tel Aviv’s conduct in the besieged enclave has altered Australia’s engagement with the Israeli arms industry.
Smartshooter claims the SMASH 3000 is already operational with armed forces in Europe, the UK, and the US, framing the Australian trial as part of a broader expansion strategy.
On 11 December, Smartshooter’s Australia and New Zealand director Lachlan Mercer said the delivery marked a “strategic breakthrough” after extensive ADF evaluation, pointing to possible later purchases and wider uptake across Australian defense programs.
The Israeli firm is already expanding its Asia-Pacific presence, having supplied India in 2020, with hundreds more units reportedly destined for another Asian state. Singapore is the only other regional country publicly known to have assessed the system.
UK doctor arrested under pressure from Israel lobby over ‘anti-genocide posts’
Press TV – December 21, 2025
British police have arrested a senior doctor under pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups over social media posts condemning the regime’s genocide against Palestinians.
Ellen Kriesels, a consultant paediatrician with more than 15 years of service at London’s Whittington Hospital, was arrested at her home on Saturday by officers from the Metropolitan Police.
According to a colleague of Kriesels, she was arrested in front of her children.
“The Israeli lobby began hunting her in September because of her sign at a national Palestine demonstration,” Doctor Rahmeh Aladwan wrote in a post on X.
“Britain is doing this to our NHS doctors for Israel. Britain is occupied,” she added.
Kriesels was first targeted after appearing at a pro-Palestine protest holding a placard opposing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Within days, she was suspended from Whittington Hospital.
She was subsequently reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) and later to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), which suspended her medical license for nine months.
Healthcare workers’ group HCWs Against Censorship also condemned Kriesels’ arrest, which it said was followed by a coordinated campaign against her after she participated in a national pro-Palestine demonstration in September.
“The Israeli lobby strikes again,” the group said, adding that police acted following complaints from pro-Israel lobbying organisations, including UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
The arrest was carried out “on behalf of a foreign-aligned lobby,” the group said, describing it as “an absolute outrage.”
“This is what Britain now does to NHS doctors for speaking about Palestine,” one supporter said. “It is repression, plain and simple.”
No formal charges have been publicly confirmed yet. The Metropolitan Police have not released details of the specific offences under investigation.
In a post on X dated September 17, Kriesels criticized the NHS for reporting her to the police over her “anti-genocide posts and placards.”
“Leaving the front door ajar so the police don’t have to use force when they come and get me,” she wrote at the time.
Her arrest comes as British police have threatened a renewed crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, warning they will arrest anyone chanting the phrase “globalize the intifada” or displaying it on placards.
Intifada, an Arabic word meaning uprising, is used by Palestinians to describe resistance to Israel’s occupation of their land.
The Metropolitan Police made their first arrests linked to the chant at a pro-Palestine demonstration in London on Sunday, claiming the slogan constitutes “a call for violence against Jewish people.”
Pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing for a harsher crackdown on demonstrations and have even suggested that chants such as “Free, free Palestine” inherently incite violence.
Pro-Palestinian protests have surged across London over the past two years, amid Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and in response to the UK government’s military and diplomatic support for Israel.
Whistleblowers accuse CPJ of ‘shielding’ Israel to appease donors
The Cradle | December 20, 2025
Current and former staff at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have accused the organization of deliberately downplaying Israel’s war crimes in Gaza to placate pro-Israel donors, according to a report by Electronic Intifada published on 18 December.
The whistleblowers claim CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg personally controls all Gaza-related research, blocking work that would reveal that the Israeli army deliberately targets journalists.
One research piece backed by military experts reportedly concluded Israel knowingly kills journalists, but Ginsberg shelved it.
An employee was reportedly fired after disputing Ginsberg’s refusal to classify journalist killings as targeted murders—a war crime under international law.
Despite an internal memo stating CPJ should call Israel’s actions “genocide,” whistleblowers say this is misleading.
The memo instructs staff to use qualified language like “what human rights groups deem a genocide” to talk about the mass murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
A website review found that in only two of 15 Gaza-related items does CPJ use “genocide” without attribution, with the first appearing in October 2025, two years into Israel’s genocidal war.
The CPJ denied the allegations, saying staff were never told to avoid “genocide” and could use any language on personal social media, citing examples of Ginsberg publicly using the term and accusing Israel of war crimes.
The annual CPJ fundraising dinner draws major media donors, including five Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets, which contributed $250,000 total.
Rupert Murdoch is a longtime supporter of Israel who has routinely advanced pro-Israel positions via his platforms.
He previously described Israel as a front-line defender of “western democratic civilization” at the peak of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
This year’s awards honored journalists from China, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan, and Tunisia, with no Palestinian nominees.
Ginsberg explained CPJ doesn’t award journalists from the same country consecutively, noting last year’s recipient was Palestinian journalist Shrouq Al Aila.
Whistleblowers called Al Aila a “safe choice” whose background was extensively vetted, and said proposals to honor slain Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif were ignored.
Since the genocide began over two years ago, nearly 300 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has declared Israel the world’s leading cause of death of journalists for three years in a row. Forty-three percent of the 67 journalists killed globally between December 2024 and December 2025 were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The organization condemned the murders and designated them as targeted killings by state militaries.
Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham recently revealed that military intelligence created a “Legitimization Cell” to justify killing Palestinian journalists by falsely portraying them as Hamas operatives.
Lebanese Detainees in Israeli Prisons: When Silence Becomes Surrender
Al-Manar | December 18, 2025
This is no longer a humanitarian file delayed by bureaucracy. It is a national test that Lebanon is failing in slow motion. Lebanese detainees remain locked inside Israeli prisons while their names circulate in press statements, their families count months without news, and the state responds with restraint that borders on abdication. When citizens are taken, hidden, denied Red Cross visits, and subjected to abuse, silence is not prudence. It is complicity by omission.
For an audience that understands the cost of confrontation and the meaning of deterrence, the facts are unmistakable: “Israel” is not holding detainees because it must, but because it can—because the political cost remains low.
File That Refuses to Close
The number of Lebanese detainees currently held by the occupation stands at 19 to 20, based on the latest confirmations from released Palestinian prisoners who encountered Lebanese captives previously listed as missing. The uncertainty itself is revealing. It is the result of deliberate Israeli obstruction, including the ongoing ban on Red Cross visits and the refusal to provide any official accounting. A large group of civilians—fishermen, a shepherd, and workers arrested in their fields—some of whom were detained after the ceasefire was declared.
These are not arrests justified by war. They are acts of abduction, carried out under the cover of “security,” and sustained by international inaction and local hesitation.
The ceasefire of November 27, 2024, was supposed to mark an end. Instead, it marked a shift in method.
Ali Younes was detained after the so-called cessation of hostilities.
Ali Tarhini was arrested inside the Lebanese town of Odeisseh on January 28, 2025.
Mohammad Ali Jheir—a fisherman from Naqoura—was shot with a rubber bullet and taken from his boat by Israeli naval forces, then transferred to Ofer Prison and placed in solitary confinement.
These are not isolated incidents. They form a pattern: ‘Israel’ exploits calm to seize civilians, converting ceasefires into opportunities for leverage. Months later, families still have no official information. The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed that Israeli authorities are blocking access to Lebanese detainees. This is not procedural delay—it is policy.
Testimonies from released prisoners speak of severe beatings, humiliation, and sexual abuse—violations that meet the definition of war crimes. The denial of visits is meant to do one thing: keep these crimes out of sight. A prison without witnesses is not detention. It is a black site.
Families Carrying What the State Will Not
With the state moving cautiously, families stepped forward forcefully. From protests outside ESCWA to meetings in Baabda, they have said what officials have not: This is not a humanitarian appeal. It is a demand.
Former detainee Abbas Qabalan spoke of civilians arrested while farming their land.
The mother of Mohammad Abdul Karim Jawad—a civilian nurse—has waited more than a year without a single official update. The wife of Ali Younes called for action “through every legal, diplomatic, and political means.” The mother of Ali Tarhini named the date and place of her son’s arrest—inside Lebanon.
These families are not guessing. They are documenting publicly because the file has been left on their shoulders. Officials have called the detainee file a “priority.” But priorities are measured by action, not vocabulary. So far, the issue has been confined to the so-called mechanism committee, a framework chaired and constrained by U.S. oversight—hardly a venue known for pressuring ‘Israel.’ Rather than securing releases, it has allowed the occupation to freeze the issue while continuing violations.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which should have escalated the file internationally, remains largely absent. No sustained UN campaign. No legal offensive. No international naming and shaming.
This is not incapacity. It is a political choice.
Human rights researcher Ghina Ribaai was direct: Lebanese detainees are paying the price for a state that wasted leverage. The handover of an Israeli detainee without any reciprocal release sent a dangerous message—that ‘Israel’ can detain Lebanese citizens without consequence. That message still stands.
Detainees as Bargaining Chips ‘Israel’ has made its strategy clear. Lebanese detainees are not prisoners—they are hostages, to be traded against unrelated political files: borders, negotiations, “working groups.” Lebanon has rejected this logic rhetorically. But rejection without pressure is empty. ‘Israel’ responds only to cost—political, legal, and strategic.
What Must Change—Now
This file cannot remain seasonal. It requires:
• A clear sovereign decision
• An aggressive diplomatic and legal campaign
• International escalation, not quiet mediation
• Continuous media pressure that keeps the issue alive
For an audience that understands resistance, this truth is familiar: rights are not returned through patience alone. The detainee file is not a test of sympathy. It is a test of statehood.
‘Israel’ does not release prisoners because it is reminded of morality. It releases them when detention becomes expensive. As long as Lebanese detainees remain an afterthought—raised in speeches but not imposed as a cost—’Israel’ will continue to detain, abuse, and bargain.
The families have said it plainly, and history confirms it:
A nation that does not fight for its detainees forfeits a core element of its sovereignty.
In a country whose modern identity was shaped by the principle that prisoners are never abandoned, failure here is not neutrality. It is surrender by silence.
How Israel hijacked US politics, media and tech – without Americans even realizing
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | December 20, 2025
When tech billionaire Larry Ellison was tapped to help oversee TikTok’s US operations, the move immediately drew scrutiny over the Oracle co-founder’s longstanding ties with the Israeli regime and how it could sharpen censorship of pro-Palestinian content on the platform.
Oracle’s ascendance came after the US Supreme Court upheld a law banning TikTok earlier this year, positioning the company as the frontrunner to take control of the Chinese-owned app.
Under the arrangement, Oracle would serve as the “secure cloud provider,” storing US user data and controlling the recommendation algorithm, an authority Washington framed as necessary to counter alleged Chinese “manipulation.”
But while the campaign against TikTok was outwardly led by China hawks, pro-Israel contractors, and the powerful Zionist lobby in Washington, played a central role in shaping the political pressure that made Oracle an obvious choice for the takeover.
Pro-Palestine advocates point out that a deeper motivation has been to silence the overwhelming pro-Palestinian opinions and sentiments on TikTok, where users have in great detail documented Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and challenged American-Israeli narratives about it.
The platform has become a key outlet for unfiltered footage from Gaza, including scenes of devastation, civilian casualties, and global solidarity campaigns.
Research from Northeastern University has consistently shown that pro-Palestinian posts dwarf pro-Israel content—most recently, in September 2025, by a ratio of roughly 17 to 1.
This imbalance reflects TikTok’s younger user base—Gen Z and millennials—who increasingly reject Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s deceptive and deeply manipulative positions.
Israel’s leadership understands the stakes. Benjamin Netanyahu recently described social media as a decisive “weapon” in modern warfare, calling the TikTok sale “the most important purchase” for securing influence over US public opinion.
Oracle’s deep alignment with Israeli interests has only heightened concerns. The company had already tightened its grip over aspects of TikTok’s operations while openly embracing a pro-Israel agenda and, as an Intercept investigation revealed, suppressing pro-Palestine activism within its own ranks.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz, an Israeli-American and longtime supporter of the Zionist project, made her stance bluntly clear, telling an Israeli business outlet: “For employees, it’s clear: if you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here—this is a free country.”
Ellison, a major funder of Israeli causes and a close ally of Donald Trump, has long been celebrated by the US political establishment.
Trump—who placed him in the front row at his inauguration—famously hailed him as “one of the most serious players in the world.”
In 2017, Ellison made the largest single donation in the history of the so-called “Friends of the Israel Forces,” a US-based organization tied to the Israeli military responsible for genocidal attacks across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Oracle’s material support for Israel extends far beyond philanthropy. In 2021, the company opened a $319 million data center in occupied al-Quds, providing cloud services to Israeli banks, health institutions, and military units.
Immediately after Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Oracle publicly declared its support for the regime even as hospitals and schools were bombed.
Catz instructed that the message “Oracle Stands with Israel” be displayed across all company screens in more than 180 countries.
The company has also actively participated in Israel’s digital propaganda efforts. Following the outbreak of the war on Gaza, Oracle and the Israeli regime officials developed “Words of Iron,” a project designed to amplify pro-Israel content while whitewashing horrendous war crimes and countering critical narratives on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
In February 2024, Oracle collaborated with the Israeli military’s cyber department on a hackathon seeking “tech solutions” for rehabilitating illegal settlements near Gaza.
Around the same time, Oracle donated medical and environmental supply bags worth half a million dollars to Israeli occupation forces.
Oracle’s political lobbying worked in tandem with its technological support. Last summer, Catz joined a closed-door meeting with US senators to push for continued weapons shipments to Israeli-occupied territories.
Later that year, Oracle partnered with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems—one of Israel’s major weapons manufacturers—on an AI program to provide “warfighters with quick, actionable insights in the battlespace.”
While Israel escalated its bombing and invasion of Gaza, some Oracle employees reported that the company was actively curtailing internal support for Palestinians.
Oracle’s charitable matching program quietly removed organizations such as Medical Aid for Palestinians and UNRWA from its list of eligible beneficiaries, effectively blocking workers from directing matched funds toward humanitarian relief.
Ellison and Catz are hardly outliers; they are part of a broader pattern of influential Zionist figures holding disproportionate power across US political, financial, media, academic, tech, and cultural institutions.
Although only about 2 percent of the US population identifies as Jewish, Jewish and Zionist representation among American elites is significantly higher—a trend that has shaped US foreign policy, cultural production, and the sustained alignment with Israel’s violent occupation.
Below is a list of influential Zionist figures who occupy key positions across these sectors.
Jews in American politics
In February 2021, less than a month after former US President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post celebrated the new president’s appointments of 15 Jewish politicians.
“US President Joe Biden has appointed a strong, experienced team for his new administration. Among them are a minyan and a half of Jews. Indeed, I wonder if there has ever been a more Jewish US administration,” columnist Shlomo Maital wrote in the article.
The article added that “a vigorous American presence in world affairs, spearheaded by the Jewish A-Team, is in Israel’s long-term interest, more than an ‘America first’ administration that made the US largely irrelevant in global affairs.”
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines were among the Jewish members of Biden’s administration holding influential positions.
The list also included Chief of Staff Ronald Klain, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander, Deputy Health Secretary Rachel Levine, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Other key figures were NSA Cybersecurity Director Anne Neuberger, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, COVID-19 Coordinator Jeff Zients, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
Also serving in senior economic and political roles were Jared Bernstein, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris.
As Secretary of State, Blinken was a central public and diplomatic defender of US support for Israel during the initial phase of the Gaza genocide — pressing allies, coordinating arms transfers, and publicly backing negotiations framed to protect the Israeli regime while offering limited humanitarian concessions for the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
According to rights groups and activists, his steady diplomatic backing helped shield Israeli genocidal actions from stronger, public US rebukes.
Yellen’s Treasury enforced and expanded financial pressure instruments, such as sanctions that the US uses against Iran and other supporters of the Palestinian resistance.
The Treasury under Yellen issued targeted sanctions on Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors.
Cohen, as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (Treasury), also designed and executed sanctions that targeted Iran’s oil, petrochemical, and financial sectors.
He is widely described in reporting and policy bios as the administration’s “sanctions guru.”
As Deputy Director of the CIA (and acting director briefly), Cohen brought his sanctions experience into targeting work against Iran — shaping covert disruption tools in addition to Treasury levers.
These unilateral sanctions form a core non-military lever in the US hawkish toolkit.
A Lancet study in August found a significant link between sanctions and higher mortality. The US and EU sanctions were associated with over 564,000 deaths annually from 1971 to 2021 in 152 countries.
It is similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.
Children under 5 years faced about an 8-9 percent higher death risk, and adults aged 60-80 years had about a 2-3 percent higher risk.
The study found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, but none from UN sanctions.
Trump’s first term also included many Jewish officials in senior roles. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior advisor, was among the most influential, alongside Elliot Abrams, Special Representative for Venezuela and later Iran, and David Friedman, Ambassador to the Israeli-occupied territories.
Other key figures included Jason Greenblatt, Special Representative for International Negotiations on Palestine; Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury; Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor for Policy; Gary Cohn, Director of the White House National Economic Council; Reed Cordish, Assistant to the President for Intragovernmental and Technology Initiatives; and Avrahm Berkowitz, Deputy Advisor to the President.
Additional senior officials were Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General; Elan Carr, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism; Ellie Cohanim, Deputy Special Envoy for the same office; Jeffrey Rosen, Attorney General; Morgan Ortagus, State Department spokesperson; David Shulkin, Secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Lawrence Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council.
Also serving in high-level positions were Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and advisor, who was raised Christian but converted to Orthodox Judaism to marry Kushner in 2009; John Eisenberg, National Security Council Legal Counsel; Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Len Khodorkovsky, Deputy Secretary of State and Senior Advisor to the US Special Representative for Iran.
Several senior Jewish members of the Trump administration played central roles in reshaping US policy in ways strongly favorable to the Israeli regime.
Kushner was the architect of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states — including the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
Kushner also helped push forward the administration’s West Asia so-called “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which embraced long-standing Israeli positions on expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, and occupation of Palestine.
David Friedman, the Ambassador to Israeli-occupied territories, used his position and strongly supported recognizing occupied al-Quds as Israel’s capital, encouraged the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to al-Quds, and backed Israel’s claim to West Bank settlements.
His diplomatic messaging consistently pushed Washington toward formally accepting Israeli control over the occupied territories.
Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, worked closely with Friedman and Kushner.
He was one of the primary US officials promoting the idea that settlement expansion was not an obstacle to peace. His role helped shift the State Department’s language away from the traditional American view of settlements as “illegitimate,” aligning it more closely with Israeli regime positions.
Lawrence Kudlow and Gary Cohn, who headed the National Economic Council at different times, supported the administration’s economic components of West Asia policy, including aid packages tied to normalization and economic incentives designed to complement Kushner’s diplomatic agenda.
Elan Carr and Ellie Cohanim, from the State Department’s antisemitism office, advanced aggressive messaging on global antisemitism that often intertwined with defending the Israeli regime’s genocidal and apartheid policies. Their public diplomacy helped cast any criticisms of Israel in terms of antisemitism, influencing international discussions.
After re-entering the White House for a second term in January, Trump once again packed his inner circle with vocal Jewish and Zionist loyalists, many of whom stand out for their unprecedented hostility toward the Palestinian people and their basic rights.
Trump stacked his advisory ranks with a mix of familiar figures and newer faces who exert outsized influence over his relationship with the Jewish community in the US and in the occupied territories.
Among them are Will Scharf, White House staff secretary; Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser; Steve Witkoff, US special envoy to West Asia; Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce; Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s personal senior counsel; Elizabeth Pipko, national spokesperson for the Republican Party; Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Laura Loomer, an extremist influencer who operates as an unofficial loyalty enforcer within Trump’s political orbit.
Ivanka Trump and her husband were notably absent from much of Trump’s 2024 campaign and announced two years ago that they had stepped back to support Trump “outside the political arena.”
However, as one of Trump’s former top aides alongside Kushner—who played a central role in brokering the Abraham Accords and now runs a multibillion-dollar private equity fund bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—many speculate that the couple’s influence, particularly Kushner’s, will persist throughout Trump’s presidency.
This influence is expected to be especially pronounced in shaping the administration’s interference in West Asian affairs, as has already witnessed during the so-called Gaza “truce deal.”
Miller, one of Trump’s most hardline advisers on immigration during his first term, was instrumental in shaping some of the administration’s controversial policies, including the travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries and the policy that separated the children of undocumented migrants from their parents at the border.
Pipko is an avowed Zionist and stated following her appointment that “supporting Israel is in the best interest of the United States.”
She has also attacked pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses, singling out demonstrations at her alma mater, Harvard.
In an interview with Ynet News, she dismissed the protests as “awful” and “disgusting.”
Loomer, who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe,” ran an online campaign in August that pressured the US State Department into halting visa issuance for children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care amid Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Strip.
Zionist donors heavily underwrote Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Miriam Adelson, a casino magnate with an estimated net worth of $35 billion and a prominent Zionist mega-donor, spent more than $100 million to propel Trump back into the White House.
She is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, one of the most prolific financiers of illegal Israeli settlements in history.
Miriam Adelson is herself a settler, born and raised in the occupied Palestinian territories, and has been a vocal champion of the regime’s settler-colonialism.
She is closely associated with the ideology of neo-Zionism, which advocates not only the permanent retention of occupied Palestinian land but also the expansion of the occupation through annexation of Palestine and neighboring countries.
Ivy League presidents
The Ivy League is a group of eight elite private universities located in the northeastern United States. They include Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale.
At present, five of these institutions are led by Jewish presidents.
Their Jewish and Zionist identities have become most visible amid the wave of pro-Palestine university encampments that swept campuses across the United States.
Beginning at Columbia University on April 17, 2024, pro-Palestinian students established encampments on at least 80 college and university campuses nationwide, demanding that their institutions disclose investments tied to Israeli-occupied territories and divest from financial and cultural entities that support Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
These demands were raised in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians—most of them women and children—and the continuation of the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.
The protests echoed a call from Palestinian civil society for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.
The largely peaceful demonstrations, however, were met overwhelmingly with force. Police crackdowns resulted in mass arrests and injuries, actions frequently ordered by the students’ own university administrators and, in some cases, backed by faculty members.
After taking office in January, Donald Trump signed an executive order to “combat antisemitism,” directing federal agencies to explore avenues for deporting pro-Palestinian activists, including student protesters—a demand to which many universities, including Ivy League institutions, readily capitulated.
Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber, a Jewish-American who has served as Princeton University’s 20th president since July 2013, ordered the removal of a major pro-Palestinian encampment on Cannon Green, citing preparations for commencement, and has repeatedly resisted demands that Princeton divest from the Israeli regime.
In April 2024, when police—acting on authorization from university administrators—arrested dozens of students during pro-Palestinian protests, including at Princeton, Eisgruber warned that those students would face disciplinary action that could “extend to suspension or expulsion.”
Alan Garber, another Jewish academic leader, was appointed president of Harvard University in August 2024 after serving as interim president since January 2 of that year.
He succeeded Claudine Gay, who was forced to resign after being accused by members of Congress of failing to adequately condemn and combat “anti-Semitism” on Harvard’s campus during pro-Palestine encampments.
Under Garber’s leadership, Harvard shared information with the US Department of Homeland Security in response to its request for the disciplinary records of international students and records of pro-Palestinian activity.
Sian Leah Beilock, the president of Dartmouth College, is another Jewish leader within the Ivy League.
She faced sharp criticism for her decision to call in police to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus on May 1 of last year.
Mike Kotlikoff, who is also Jewish, assumed permanent leadership of Cornell University in March, as universities faced unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration over pro-Palestinian student protests.
In November 2024, while serving as Cornell’s interim president, a leak revealed that Kotlikoff had suppressed academic freedom after criticizing a pro-Palestinian professor’s planned course on the Gaza genocide in an internal email.
The course, Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance, was set to be taught by Eric Cheyfitz, who is also Jewish.
Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters and a scholar of Indigenous studies, wrote in the course description that it would examine how Indigenous peoples have been engaged “in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism.”
He further stated that the course would “present a specific case” of the ongoing genocidal war as “settler colonialism in Palestine with a particular emphasis on the International Court of Justice finding ‘plausible’ the South African assertion of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.”
Kotlikoff wrote in an email to another professor that he “personally finds the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of […] Israel and the ongoing conflict.”
Kotlikoff replaced Martha Pollack, who is also Jewish, and stepped down amid sweeping pro-Palestinian protests across US college campuses.
During the protests, Pollack expressed disappointment with student demonstrators and warned that if they refused to dismantle their encampments, “more temporary suspensions… are forthcoming.”
Christina Paxson, who converted to Judaism after marriage, serves as president of Brown University.
Last year, for the second time during her tenure, Paxson rejected divestment from 10 companies identified by a student-led pro-Palestine initiative as facilitating “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory.”
Hollywood
It is widely documented that Jewish people are overrepresented in Hollywood relative to their share of the overall population.
Jews account for roughly 2 percent of the American population, yet various estimates suggest they have historically comprised a far higher proportion of key industry roles, including studio executives, writers, and actors.
Some discussions cite figures of 20 percent or higher in certain sectors of the entertainment industry.
Jewish entrepreneurs were instrumental in founding most of the major film studios during Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age.
These figures include Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures; William Fox, founder of the Fox Film Corporation; Louis B. Mayer and Marcus Loew, co-founders of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM); Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, the brothers behind Warner Bros; Carl Laemmle, a founder of Universal Pictures; and Harry and Jack Cohn, founders of Columbia Pictures.
In more recent decades, prominent Jewish executives have continued to occupy influential positions in the entertainment industry.
They include Bob Iger, chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company; Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Entertainment; Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate; Shari Redstone, president and CEO of National Amusements; David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery; and influential film producer and former Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal.
For years, activists and some academics have warned that this concentration of power has helped shape an industry culture that frequently aligns with pro-Israel narratives, whitewashing Zionist crimes while marginalizing or excluding Palestinian perspectives.
Jewish Hollywood power brokers, they say, used their influence in the mid-20th century to mobilize cultural support for the Zionist project, portraying settler violence as “Jewish self-defense” in early films and theatrical productions.
By contrast, Palestinian narratives are routinely sidelined. Palestinian films are often excluded from major festivals and streaming platforms, while Israeli atrocities are frequently framed in ways that downplay or obscure Palestinian suffering.
Even films and documentaries that seek to center Palestinian humanity and lived experience have become a subject of sustained controversy within the industry.
Finding mainstream Hollywood productions that portray Palestinians in a balanced, non-dehumanizing manner remains difficult, as decades of output have either perpetuated negative stereotypes or erased Palestinian perspectives altogether.
The few films that do offer more nuanced or humanizing depictions of Palestinians are typically independent productions or international co-productions, often directed by Palestinian filmmakers working outside the Hollywood studio system.
Meanwhile, public support for Palestinian rights or criticism of the Israeli regime or its backers has increasingly carried professional consequences in Hollywood.
Actors and industry professionals—both Jewish and non-Jewish—have faced reprisals ranging from being dropped by agents to losing roles, contributing to a pervasive “silencing effect.”
In December 2023, two months into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, actress Melissa Barrera, a star of the Scream franchise, was fired from the next installment after posting on social media about Israel’s real-life horror show in the Gaza Strip.
Barrera was not alone. In November of the same year, actress Susan Sarandon was dropped by United Talent Agency (UTA) after speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally.
Actor Mark Ruffalo also faced backlash during Israel’s May 2021 assault on Gaza, when he was pressured to apologize for using the term “genocide.”
Top 50 Billionaires
The latest rankings of the world’s wealthiest individuals highlight a notable trend: of the top 50 billionaires globally, at least 12 are Jewish, showcasing their considerable influence across technology, finance, and investments.
Leading the pack is Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, whose fortune stands at $213.7 billion, making him the third richest person in the world.
Close behind is Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with a net worth of $202.4 billion and a world rank of 4.
The search engine giants Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, are ranked 6th and 7th, respectively, with fortunes of $157.8 billion and $150.7 billion.
Other prominent Jewish billionaires in the top 50 include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft ($127.7 billion, rank 9), Michael Dell of Dell Technologies ($113.5 billion, rank 12), and media mogul Michael Bloomberg of Bloomberg LP ($104.7 billion, rank 16).
Stephen Schwarzman, a major figure in investments, ranks 28th with $50.4 billion, while Jeff Yass, active in trading and investments, holds $49.6 billion at rank 29.
Luxury fashion also sees Jewish representation through Gerard Wertheimer and Alain Wertheimer, owners of Chanel, both holding $41.5 billion and sharing world rank 38.
The Miriam Adelson & family, tied to the casino industry, are valued at $34.9 billion, ranking 49.
The overwhelming majority are based in the United States, dominating technology and investment sectors, and heading companies that shape global information flows.
But beyond wealth, their power has had devastating consequences for Palestinians.
Meta and Oracle, for example, have been implicated in censoring Palestinian voices online, shaping narratives in favor of Israeli policies while silencing dissent.
Google, Microsoft, and Dell Technologies have enabled the Israeli military’s genocidal war on Gaza over the past two years, providing cloud infrastructure, AI, and technology services that the regime has used to target Palestinian civilians.
This concentration of wealth and technological control underscores not only the disproportionate influence of Jewish billionaires in the US tech world but also raises profound questions about the ways these platforms and services are weaponized in geopolitics—always aligning with US and Israeli agendas to the detriment of human rights.
Sport teams owners
Ownership patterns across major US professional sports leagues reveal a striking concentration of power among a small group of ultra-wealthy Jewish stakeholders, many of whom hold openly pro-Zionist political positions or have backed policies hostile to Palestinian advocacy.
In the National Basketball Association (NBA), estimates indicate that roughly 40 percent of franchises are majority-owned by individuals or groups with Jewish backgrounds—far exceeding their approximate 2 percent share of the US population.
An additional five teams include Jewish minority stakeholders, underscoring a level of influence that extends well beyond ownership into league governance and political positioning.
Out of 30 NBA teams, 12 are majority-owned by Jewish stakeholders.
These include Anthony Ressler (Atlanta Hawks); Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall (Charlotte Hornets); Jerry Reinsdorf (Chicago Bulls); Dan Gilbert (Cleveland Cavaliers); Miriam Adelson (Dallas Mavericks); Joe Lacob and Peter Guber (Golden State Warriors); Herbert Simon (Indiana Pacers); Micky Arison (Miami Heat); Marc Lore (Minnesota Timberwolves); Steve Ballmer (Los Angeles Clippers); Joshua Harris and David Blitzer (Philadelphia 76ers); and Mat and Justin Ishbia (Phoenix Suns).
Teams with Jewish minority owners include the Jacobs family (Sacramento Kings), Larry Tannenbaum (Toronto Raptors), George Kaiser (Oklahoma City Thunder), Oliver Weisberg (Brooklyn Nets), and Larry Fink (New York Knicks).
For four decades, the NBA itself has been led by two commissioners—David Stern (1984–2014) and Adam Silver (2014–present)—both of whom presided over eras marked by close alignment with US foreign policy narratives and repeated controversies related to Palestine.
The league has faced sustained criticism for suppressing or sanitizing Palestinian references under political pressure.
In 2017, the NBA removed “Palestine—occupied territory” from an official website list following a complaint from Israel’s sports minister.
A year later, the league apologized after a fan-voting list for the All-Star Game included “Occupied Palestine,” blaming an outsourced firm after Israeli officials demanded its removal.
Senior NBA figures, including Commissioner Adam Silver, along with current and former players, have participated in high-profile trips to Israeli-occupied territories, meeting with Israeli regime officials and engaging in public relations efforts to normalize occupation.
Meanwhile, players who expressed solidarity with Palestinians faced swift backlash.
Former NBA star Dwight Howard said he was pressured to delete a “Free Palestine” tweet in 2014 after receiving multiple calls, including one from the commissioner’s office.
This concentration of ownership and political alignment is not limited to basketball.
In the National Football League (NFL), 11 of the league’s 32 teams are owned by individuals or families with controlling Jewish stakes, including Arthur Blank (Atlanta Falcons), David Tepper (Carolina Panthers), Jim Irsay (Indianapolis Colts), Mark Davis (Las Vegas Raiders), Stephen Ross (Miami Dolphins), the Wilf family (Minnesota Vikings), Robert Kraft (New England Patriots), Steve Tisch (New York Giants), Jeffrey Lurie (Philadelphia Eagles), the Glazer family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and Josh Harris and Mitchell Rales (Washington Commanders).
Major League Baseball (MLB) shows similar patterns.
Eight of its 32 teams are majority-owned by Jewish stakeholders—David Rubenstein (Baltimore Orioles), Jerry Reinsdorf (Chicago White Sox), Bruce Sherman (Miami Marlins), Mark Attanasio (Milwaukee Brewers), Steve Cohen (New York Mets), the Fisher family (Oakland Athletics), Stuart Sternberg (Tampa Bay Rays), and the Lerner family (Washington Nationals).
Six additional teams have Jewish minority owners or executives, including Tom Werner (Boston Red Sox), David Blitzer (Cleveland Guardians), Stan Kasten and Peter Guber (Los Angeles Dodgers), and Lester Crown (New York Yankees).
Several teams without Jewish majority owners—including the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Toronto Blue Jays—are run by Jewish presidents or senior executives.
Across leagues, Jewish owners and executives with strong pro-Israel views have helped shape institutional responses that activists warn would marginalize Palestinian voices while reinforcing US and Israeli political narratives.
Federal Reserve
Beyond sports and entertainment, Jewish financiers have played central roles in US monetary power structures.
Paul Moritz Warburg, a German-Jewish banker from Kuhn, Loeb & Co., was a key architect of the US Federal Reserve System.
From 1987 to 2014, the Federal Reserve was chaired consecutively by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Janet Yellen— three Jewish individuals overseeing periods of aggressive financial intervention that disproportionately benefited Wall Street while entrenching US global dominance.
Other influential Jewish figures include Emmanuel Goldenweiser, who supervised early Federal Reserve Board operations, and Stanley Fischer, who later served as vice chair.
Media, advertising, adult entertainment
Jewish Americans have also been influential across a wide spectrum of media, advertising, and public relations industries, sectors that play a decisive role in shaping political narratives, as well as adult entertainment businesses.
In the advertising and public relations world, influential Jewish executives include Richard Edelman, CEO of the global PR firm Edelman; Carl Spielvogel, co-founder of the major agency Backer & Spielvogel; Ronn Torossian, founder of 5W Public Relations; and Marian Salzman, a senior advertising and communications executive and trend expert.
Torossian, an American public relations executive, is a prominent and controversial figure in the far-right Zionist movement, known for his leadership of the recently re-launched Betar USA organization.
Betar USA, under Torossian’s leadership, has been using inflammatory rhetoric and calling for violence. In response to a social media post about Palestinian children killed in the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, the group’s account commented, “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!”
Betar has been involved in identifying and circulating lists of pro-Palestinian protesters for deportation.
Digital media platforms have also been dominated by Jews with allegiance to the Tel Aviv regime.
Susan Wojcicki was an American business executive who was the chief executive officer of YouTube from 2014 to 2023.
Human rights and digital media advocacy groups, such as the organization 7amleh, have denounced YouTube’s policies and blatant bias against Palestinian voices and in favor of Israeli narratives.
In November 2015, Wojcicki and other Google representatives met with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely to establish a mechanism for monitoring and removing Palestinian content deemed “inflammatory” by the apartheid regime in Tel Aviv.
In adult entertainment, prominent founders and executives include Michael Lucas, the founder and CEO of Lucas Entertainment, one of Manhattan’s largest gay adult film companies.
Last year, the adult film producer faced intense backlash after bragging about writing his name on a missile to be dropped in Gaza in a post on social media.
Several adult entertainment stars have since vowed to boycott working with Lucas and his company over the “reprehensible” post.
Taken together, the American landscape reveals not a coincidence but a pattern: a dense web of political power, corporate control, cultural influence, and financial leverage that consistently converges to protect Israel from accountability while suppressing Palestinian voices.
Disguised under the language of “security,” “shared values,” and “combating antisemitism,” US institutions have been mobilized by the powerful Zionist lobby to normalize occupation, whitewash mass killings, and criminalize solidarity with the oppressed.
The result, according to activists, is a manufactured consensus in which Israel’s crimes are laundered through American power centers, and dissent is treated as a threat.
As Gaza is starved, bombed, and erased in real time, this alignment exposes the moral bankruptcy of an order that privileges loyalty to a settler-colonial regime over international law, human rights, and basic human life, they warn.
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From the Archives
The Biggest Threat to Peace in Middle East
By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | May 24, 2010
A build up of heightened tension in the Middle East is escalating in the last few weeks. American and Israeli postures towards Lebanon, Syria, and Iran have become more threatening. Listening to speeches of political leaders one hears talks only about war not peace. Iranians and Israelis are continuously training hard for a possible showdown. Both sides are conducting extensive war games every month. This led Syrians to claim that Israel is preparing for a soon-to-come another war. The Jordanians also are warning that current stalemate of the peace process is an indication of a war breaking out this summer. The Russian President and his army chief hinted, a few months ago, that the US and Israel were planning for an attack on Iran.
Indeed Iran is, as it has been for last few years, the target of most of the threats and accusations of supporting terrorism. Escalating incitement against Iran the American Defense Department sent last month (April) to Congress a report on Iran’s military claiming Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US by 2015.
Ignoring the fact that N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are proven to have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose in her speech, to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN, to focus on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions putting the whole world at risk as she put it. According to Clinton Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than Israel’s more than 200 nuclear bombs, is destabilizing the Middle East. She called on the world’s nations to rally around US efforts to hold Iran, not other nuclear countries, to account.
The accusation that Usama Bin Laden is living comfortably in Iran had received a boost after the broadcast of a documentary called “Feathered Cocaine”. This echoed the June 2003 claims of the Italian newspaper Corre de la Sierra that Bin Laden was in Iran according to some intelligence report, and according to Richard Miniter’s book “Shadow War”. … continue
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