A New Low: Western Media Promotes ISIS-Linked Gangsters In Gaza
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 29, 2025
Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian collaborator. A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his own experience as a Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide.
On October 27, the Washington Post published an article entitled “The ceasefire created two Gazas. One will consume the other.” The author argues that “My Gaza is ready for peace” and that “Hamas is trying to destroy it”, promoting the fictitious Israeli narrative that a utopian Gaza is being made possible inside the portion of the enclave where the occupation forces remain, behind the so-called “Yellow Line”.
The article works to promote the Israeli scheme in Gaza, which has been openly endorsed by US officials, and argues in favor of only allowing reconstruction in the territory operated by Israel, alongside four primary ISIS-linked militias.
Evidently, the article makes no mention of the Israeli armed and controlled Palestinian death squads – composed of convicted drug traffickers, rapists, murderers, ISIS-linked Salafists and aid looters.
The piece is purportedly written by one Moumen al-Natour, which makes even more sense out of why there is no mention of the ISIS-linked death squads, because he himself is an armed member of one such death squad.
Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian collaborator. A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his own experience as a Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide and lies about every detail to turn himself into a “peace activist” opposed to armed resistance, while simultaneously partaking in activities designed to further the extermination of his own people.
Take, for example, the following excerpt from the ISIS-linked death squad collaborator’s alleged opinion piece:
“My Gaza, where I wish to live, exists between Israel and the yellow line. There, the war is over and change buzzes in the air. People have access to food, medicine and electricity. And other signs of normality are beginning to return, such as some children going back to school. This is the Gaza that is waiting with anticipation to work with a new civil administration and an international protection force that will keep the peace as Israel withdraws. Few there speak of Hamas with any warmth or positivity. For once they no longer have to.”
The territory spoken of here is the area of Gaza where Israel and four ISIS-linked collaborator gangs operate; the only civilians there are the families of the death squads. Any other Palestinians attempting to reach their homes inside this area are bombed or gunned down by Israeli forces.
This territory, on the other side of Israel’s “Yellow Line,” is supposed to be 53% of Gaza, yet in reality is anywhere between 54-58% of the territory, due to Israel violating the ceasefire agreement and operating deeper than agreed upon inside the supposed withdrawal zone.
In addition to this, Israel continues its daily demolition operations against the remaining Palestinian civilian infrastructure inside the territory, again in violation of the ceasefire agreement. The proof of this has been openly published by Israeli soldiers who post videos of their demolition work on social media.
As for access to food, medicine, and electricity, these are provided to the collaborator gangs by Israel and are something they have not lacked during the war. While the people of Gaza were being starved for three months straight earlier this year, al-Natour’s militia friends were living lives of relative luxury.
Not only were al-Natour’s collaborator gang not starved, the so-called “Popular Forces” that he is part of, led by ISIS-linked convicted drug trafficker Yasser Abu Shabab, were living off of the supplies they stole from humanitarian aid trucks and looted from Gaza’s civilian population.
That is what these militant organizations began receiving Israeli backing to do – before being repurposed, armed and given direct combat missions by the IDF and Shin Bet – to rob humanitarian aid trucks and help enforce Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza. All of these collaborator gangs were tasked with involvement in such activities, and many of their militants continue to loot.
Meanwhile, in the Western corporate media and its allied Arab publications, al-Natour and his ilk are portrayed as the peace activists opposed to Hamas tyranny. For al-Natour’s part, he was one of the founders of the “We Want To Live” movement, which claimed its mission was to improve living conditions inside the besieged coastal enclave, described by UN experts as “unlivable” back in 2020.
As an activist, he was accused of working on behalf of Israel and spreading a message critical of Hamas, leading to his arrest. Whether he was a collaborator back then is under dispute, yet, during the genocide, he and his anti-Hamas message were picked up by a media outlet called Jasoor News.
This media outlet’s editor-in-chief is a Washington based journalist, named Hadeel Oueis, who routinely shares anti-Hamas content, including from the Center for Peace Communications (CPC). Oueis also expresses support for the current Syrian leadership of Ahmed al-Shara’a.
The CPC has received considerable donations from the Adelson Family Foundation of Israel’s richest billionaire and top Trump campaign donor, Miriam Adelson. For Jasoor News’ part, it is explicitly anti-Hamas, anti-Hezbollah, anti-Ansarallah, while publishing pieces in favor of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Western Media Support For ISIS-linked Groups
The recent propaganda opinion piece published by the Washington Post comes as little surprise, as it was the first Western publication to publish an interview with ISIS-linked militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab in November of 2024, when Israel began to give the aid looting gang a facelift and begin promoting them as a “grassroots” anti-Hamas resistance force.
In that WP piece, Abu Shabab claims victim status and that he looted aid out of necessity, expressing that “Hamas has left us with nothing”, despite his gang of collaborators clearly being the only group of Gazans who actually did have something during the genocide. Abu Shabab was used to do Israel’s bidding, blocking the flow of aid to civilians and lived under the protection of the Israeli military while doing so.
Back in July, the Wall Street Journal then published an opinion piece entitled “Gazans are finished with Hamas”, which it claimed was written by Yasser Abu Shabab himself. This was despite the fact that local sources in Gaza attest to Abu Shabab not only being unable to write in English, but also being illiterate and incapable of writing such a piece in Arabic too.
According to anonymous sources belonging to Palestinian journalist Muhammad Shehada, the latest Washington Post piece was published as explicit Israeli propaganda. “Journalists told me a pro-Israeli PR firm in DC is the one that pushed for this propaganda article to be published,” he wrote on X [formerly Twitter], adding that “my sources said there’s a chance the firm is the one that even wrote the op-ed”.
All of this works as part of an Israeli propaganda campaign aimed at legitimizing the agenda to create two separate systems of rule in Gaza, through spreading lies about Hamas and egregiously exaggerating the brutality of its Security Force crackdown on collaborators.
Israel is currently violating the Gaza ceasefire, not only through its daily bombings and sniping of civilians, but also through its refusal to allow sufficient aid to reach the civilian population. The Israelis had committed to allowing 400 aid trucks into Gaza for the first five days of the ceasefire before an unlimited amount afterward, later committing to permit 600 a day to enter, yet have allowed in a daily average of less than 90.
The idea, endorsed by the United States, is to deploy an international invasion force in the Gaza Strip, which will work alongside the ISIS-linked death squads to disarm Hamas. Once the Israelis withhold construction materials and equipment from entering the populated areas of the territory, where Hamas remains in power, they will then offer the civilian population a choice between entering their version of Gaza under occupation, or remaining where they are to starve and rot.
Hamas, along with all the other Palestinian factions, has agreed to hand Gaza over to an interim administration of technocratic governance, but will not disarm until the creation of a Palestinian State. Israel will not allow for this and instead uses its collaborators to fight for its own agenda, depending on its propaganda that is being prominently spread by its Palestinian media allies as a means of justifying this approach.
Inside Gaza, these ISIS-linked gangsters have no popular support. In fact, the vast preponderance of the population supports the Security Forces campaign to stamp out these groups. Despite the propagandists and militia members claiming that they are fighting a tyrannical regime that is killing its own people, the population of Gaza do not believe this narrative and hence will not support such a scheme.
The current round of propaganda against Hamas mirrors the regime change rhetoric used to overthrow countless governments in the region, beginning with Iraq. For example, during the campaign to justify the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Western governments and Washington-based think-tanks paid Iraqi “experts” and “peace activists” to justify the invasion of their own country.
Every time, the regime change script is the same. Except in this case, it is unlikely to succeed due to the grievances of Gazans with Hamas not matching those of their regional neighbors. This, however, will not stop the constant chorus of lies, exaggerations, and distortions from Washington and Tel Aviv’s “peace activists” who turn out to be armed members of ISIS-linked gangs and “Palestinian analysts” who just so happen to work for Zionist think-tanks.
These individuals speak with the language of “peace”, “reconciliation,” and “forgiving Israel”, but are ultimately soulless propagandists who weaponize their identity to serve an agenda aimed at destroying their own people. They value nothing more than status, power, and financial gain.
In the pro-genocide Western corporate media, these voices will continue to be elevated and their claims will never be fact-checked, because these outlets function as stenographers for the US and Israeli governments.
Francesca Albanese names over 60 states complicit in Gaza genocide
The Cradle | October 29, 2025
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told the General Assembly on 28 October that 63 countries, including key western and Arab states, have fueled or were complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza.
Speaking remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, Albanese presented her 24-page report, ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime,’ which she said documents how states armed, financed, and politically protected Tel Aviv as Gaza’s population was “bombed, starved, and erased” for over two years.
Her findings place the US at the center of Israel’s war economy, accounting for two-thirds of its weapons imports and providing diplomatic cover through seven UN Security Council vetoes.
The report cited Germany, Britain, and a number of other European powers for continuing arms transfers “even as evidence of genocide mounted,” and condemned the EU for sanctioning Russia over the war in Ukraine while remaining Israel’s top trading partner.
Albanese accused global powers of having “harmed, founded, and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid,” allowing its settler-colonial project “to metastasize into genocide – the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine.”
She said the genocide was enabled through “diplomatic protection in international fora meant to preserve peace,” military cooperation that “fed the genocidal machinery,” and the “unchallenged weaponization of aid.”
The report also identified complicity among Arab states, including the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Morocco, which normalized ties with Tel Aviv.
Egypt, she noted, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing,” tightening the siege on Gaza’s last humanitarian route.
Albanese warned that the international system now stands “on a knife-edge between the collapse of the rule of law and hope for renewal,” urging states to suspend all military and trade agreements with Tel Aviv and build “a living framework of rights and dignity, not for the few, but for the many.”
Her presentation provoked an outburst from Israel’s envoy Danny Danon, who called her a “wicked witch.”
Frascnesca fired back, saying, “If the worst thing you can accuse me of is witchcraft, I’ll take it. But if I had the power to make spells, I would use it to stop your crimes once and for all and to ensure those responsible end up behind bars.”
Human rights experts described the report as the UN’s most damning indictment yet of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Albanese had previously been sanctioned by the US in July, after releasing a report that exposed western corporations profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The 27-page report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ named over 60 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Palantir, and Hyundai, for aiding and profiting from Israel’s settlements and military operations, and called for their prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Albanese of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel,” announcing the sanctions as part of Washington’s effort to counter what he called “lawfare.”
The move drew sharp condemnation from UN officials and rights groups, who warned that it threatened global accountability mechanisms.
Israel moves to seize Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem: Report
MEMO | October 29, 2025
The Israeli government has taken new measures to assert its control over the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem and evict Palestinian residents, an Israeli organization said Wednesday, Anadolu reports.
In a report titled “Strangling Sheikh Jarrah: New Tools for Israeli Control and Palestinian Displacement,” the Ir Amim organization said the Israeli government has entered a “new and dangerous phase” in its efforts to dominate one of East Jerusalem’s most symbolic neighborhoods.
“Israel is now using unprecedented legal, planning, and administrative tools to achieve the same goal: displacing Palestinian residents and consolidating the settlement presence at the heart of the neighborhood,” it said.
Among these measures, the report cited “large-scale urban renewal projects, including some 2,000 housing units for illegal Israeli settlers, entirely excluding Palestinian residents.”
It also noted “land registration efforts in certain plots, allowing government bodies and settlers to register them in their names, as well as confiscation and reallocation of public spaces for Jewish religious institutions and national-religious projects.”
Ir Amim called these mechanisms a “coordinated strategy to turn Sheikh Jarrah from a vibrant Palestinian neighborhood into a fragmented area dominated by Israeli settlements.”
Israeli researcher Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim said the government measures are part of Tel Aviv’s efforts to assert its control over the neighborhood.
“What we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah represents a new stage in Israel’s efforts to cement control over East Jerusalem,” he said.
“After years of failed attempts by settler groups to evict residents, Israel itself now leads the effort using new legal, administrative, and planning tools to solidify Israeli presence and push Palestinians to leave.
“What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is not limited to one neighborhood; it reflects a government-wide policy to reshape the entire city.”
Government-backed settler organizations are seeking to evict hundreds of Palestinians from homes they have lived in since the 1950s. The settlers claim the land belonged to Jews before 1948, which Palestinian residents deny.
In recent years, illegal settlers have seized homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and continue to pursue additional properties to establish settlements.
Palestinians insist that East Jerusalem is the capital of a future Palestinian state, while Israel maintains that the entire city is its capital.
The Sheikh Jarrah measures form part of a broader wave of Israeli escalation in the occupied West Bank, where 1,062 Palestinians have been killed, around 10,000 injured, and over 20,000 others detained, including 1,600 children, over the past two years.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli strikes violated Gaza ceasefire, Resistance will respond: Hamas
Al Mayadeen | October 29, 2025
Hamas affirmed that the Resistance will not allow the Israeli enemy to impose new realities under fire, warning that recent attacks represent a grave breach of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
In an official statement on Wednesday, the movement stressed that the ongoing Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip clearly reveals an intention to sabotage the ceasefire agreement signed in Sharm el-Sheikh under the auspices of US President Donald Trump.
Hamas held the occupation fully responsible for the dangerous escalation and its consequences, warning that continued aggression threatens to collapse the fragile ceasefire. The movement added that the Resistance factions in Gaza remain unified and fully committed to the terms of the agreement, while vowing not to allow “Israel” to shift the status quo through military force.
“The world must realize that the blood of our children and women is not cheap,” the statement read, emphasizing the resistance’s readiness to respond to violations.
Hamas denies involvement in Rafah incident
Hamas also confirmed it had no connection to the shooting incident in Rafah, southern Gaza, reiterating its commitment to the ceasefire and accusing the occupation of fabricating pretexts to justify continued aggression.
The movement described the Israeli army’s bombing of civilian areas in Gaza as a flagrant violation of the agreement, warning that the occupation’s actions could lead to an uncontrollable escalation.
Hamas strongly criticized the US administration’s ongoing support for the occupation, describing it as an active partnership in the bloodshed of the Palestinian people. The statement condemned Washington’s silence and complicity, saying it directly encourages the continuation of attacks on Gaza.
As the situation on the ground deteriorates, Hamas warned that the ceasefire agreement, brokered under President Donald Trump, is at serious risk of collapse. The Resistance movement reaffirmed that while it remains committed to the agreement, it will not remain passive in the face of continued aggression and violations.
This comes after the Israeli occupation carried out a series of attacks against the Gaza Strip, violating the ceasefire agreement and killing at least 100 Palestinians.
Kyiv wants land, not people: former US State Department adviser warns
By Uriel Araujo | October 29, 2025
James Carden, former US State Department Russia Policy Adviser has faced criticism in certain circles over his otherwise underreported comments during a recent interview to Australian Sky News — especially for mentioning some hard truths about the ethnopolitics of Ukraine.
In that interview, Mr. Carden noted that, like HIMARS or F-16s, Tomahawks won’t be a gamechanger, and argued that Putin’s proposal — EU but not NATO membership — was a fair enough bargain. When the host replied that, in this case, that would involve land concessions as part of a land-for-peace deal, the former State Department Adviser argued that the land Kyiv would be ceding is a land that: “they themselves have been attacking since 2014. The Ukrainians are being a bit disingenuous here… They claim to want the land in the Donbass, Eastern Ukraine. But they don’t want the ethnic Russian citizens on that land. So they’ve been doing everything that they can to disenfranchise those people.”
These comments are not ill-informed or dishonest and they merit some attention. In fact, they are quite accurate.
For years, Kyiv’s policies have systematically sidelined a significant chunk of Ukraine’s population. According to the country’s last census in 2001 — the only one since independence in 1991 — “ethnic Russians” accounted for 17.3 percent of the populace, which is over 8 million people. The numbers don’t catch all the nuance here: Ukraine is, pure and simple, a deeply bilingual society, with Russian as the native language (in other surveys) for at least 29 percent nationwide, a percentage that gets far higher in the east and south.
It is true that a 2024 study by linguist Volodymyr Kulyk shows a decline in everyday Russian use in Ukraine since 2022, with streets renamed, statues of Russians taken down and “Russian literature taken off the shelves of bookshops”, as Lancaster University PhD researcher Oleksandra Osypenko puts it. While in 2012 only 44% Ukrainians primarily spoke Ukrainian and 34% Russian, by December 2022 Ukrainian had risen to 57.4% and Russian had fallen to 14.8%, with the remaining 27.8 percent reporting employing both. This means that 42.6% of Ukrainians (that is 14.8 plus 27.8) still use the Russian language routinely, even after three years of open war, with censored media, and all “pro-Russian” parties having been banned; and after at least 11 years of Ukrainization policies.
High rates of intermarriage blur the lines even further; and, from a social science perspective, many folks toggle between “Russian” and “Ukrainian” identities depending on the context, as I’ve noticed myself during fieldwork in 2019.
Yet, back in August 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Donbass residents who ‘feel russkiye [ethnic Russians]’ to move to Russia. At the time, I argued that this was one of the most russophobic statements from a high-ranking Ukrainian official since World War II; which is an ironic enough twist, considering the fact that in 2019 Zelensky (a Russian speaker himself) was widely described as a candidate courting the Russian and pro-Russian minority, and rode to power on promises to protect precisely these Russian-identifying folks in the east.
The 2014 ultranationalist Maidan revolution, backed by Washington (despite its far-right elements), has ushered in a surge of Ukrainian chauvinism that verges on negationism about the country’s pluri-ethnic realities. Language laws tell part of the tale. The 2017 education reform made Ukrainian the sole public-school language; by March 2023, Ukraine expanded media censorship and raised TV Ukrainian-language quotas to 90% by 2024, while banning non-Ukrainian languages in key areas.
Oleksiy Danilov, then secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, put it starkly in a 2023 interview: “The Russian language must completely disappear from our territory.” No wonder Ukrainian philosopher Sergei Datsyuk warned that such moves could spark an “internal civil war” worse than the external one, and even Oleksiy Arestovich, Zelensky’s former adviser, echoed the alarm.
The truth is that such “internal civil war” kicked off nearly a decade ago in Donbass, as scholar Serhiy Kudelia frames it, under artillery barrages that turned it into Europe’s “forgotten war” until 2022. Kyiv has been bombing Russians (in Donbass) for a decade, while disenfranchising them.
This is no hyperbole: experts like Nicolai N. Petro, a US Fulbright scholar in Ukraine in 2013-2014 and ex-State Department specialist on the Soviet Union, have documented how Ukrainian policies erode civil rights for ethnic minorities, especially Russian speakers.
The Venice Commission, Europe’s go-to body for democratic standards, criticized Ukraine’s 2022 Law on National Minorities for restricting publishing, media, and education in minority languages, urging revisions to meet international standards. Despite this, Deputy PM Olga Stefanishyna dismissed it all by claiming: “there is no Russian minority in Ukraine.”
Moreover, for many, Ukraine’s history is inextricably tied to Russia’s; a 2021 survey, taken six months before the full-scale escalation, found over 40 percent of Ukrainians nationwide — and nearly two-thirds in the east and south — agreeing with Putin that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”.
Yet Ukraine’s rigid unitary state, with its top-down nationalism, clashes hard against Russia’s matryoshka model of multinational autonomy — with 22 ethnic republics within the Russian Federation. Granting Donbass similar autonomy, for instance, could have eased tensions, but it would have demanded a constitutional overhaul.
In the broader post-Soviet mess, Ukraine’s woes look less unique. Frozen conflicts across the region — Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh — show how borders remain volatile. In this context, Crimea and Donbass have been hot topics for decades.
The hard truth is that if Kyiv won militarily (unlikely), more Donbass shelling and displacement would likely follow. Carden’s point stands: without addressing internal ethnopolitics, Ukraine cannot secure peace; for peace means embracing all its people, not just the land they stand on.
Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.
Who Are the US Candidates Refusing AIPAC Money?

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 28, 2025
The litmus test for whether a politician is truly interested in representing the people who elect them to power is becoming their stance on Palestine, more specifically, Gaza.
As American public opinion continues to shift against Israel, the US political landscape is also undergoing a dramatic transformation. AIPAC, once viewed as an asset to aid in election races, is now becoming a liability, giving birth to a new generation of politicians who are demonstrating their sincerity through a refusal to be bought by the Israel Lobby.
While New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has perhaps received the most attention for his pro-Palestinian stances, he is in no way alone. In fact, he is joined by countless others who use their anti-genocide stances as a means of connecting with their voter bases.
All authoritative polling data suggests the majority of Democratic Party supporters currently hold a more favorable view of the Palestinians than Israel. According to a recent Gallup poll, 92 percent of all Democrats said they oppose the war in Gaza. Yet, the ability of candidates to reject funding from the Israel Lobby and freely speak their mind on the issue transcends a simple agreement with constituents on a single foreign policy issue.
Instead, refusing to take AIPAC money is rapidly becoming a prerequisite in order to be viewed as authentic, and it drives belief amongst the public that any given candidate will actually work to achieve key campaign promises. In other words, AIPAC equals corruption, and being pro-Palestinian equates to authenticity.
One of the most successful campaigns, coming from this new generation of politicians, is that of Graham Platner, who is a Democrat running for a seat in the US Senate for Maine. In his campaign ads, he promotes a “Mainers First” mentality, centering the working class and also explicitly opposing Washington’s support for the genocide in Gaza. He has publicly rejected funds from AIPAC, as opposed to Senator Susan Collins, who has taken at least $647,758 from the Israel Lobby.
Platner is a Marine Corps veteran who did four combat tours and also worked as an Oysterman. Despite countless attempts, from within the Democratic Party establishment and the Israel Lobby, to stir up controversies and undermine his campaign, the progressive candidate is still polling above his Democratic primary opponent and Maine Governor, Janet Mills.
Although the uptick in pro-Palestinian sentiment is more prominent amongst Democrats, there is also a notable shift amongst Republicans. Pew Research polling data shows that, while unfavorable views amongst Republicans overall stand at around 23 percent, amongst those aged 18-49, a whopping 50 percent said they viewed Israel unfavorably.
Harnessing the energy of the shift, the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Thomas Massie, and Rep. Matt Gaetz have all explicitly come out in opposition to AIPAC. Their messaging around the issue is to assert that they are “America First”, as opposed to their Republican colleagues, whom they accuse of being “Israel First”. These representatives align themselves with popular conservative commentators like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, amongst others, who also carry the same rhetoric.
Ultimately, the idea of America First and slogans like Mainers First transcend partisan lines. The idea of prioritizing Americans above the interests of Israel has long been taboo, yet we saw this collapse during the Democratic primary campaign for the Mayor of New York.
When Zohran Mamdani was asked where he would first visit as Mayor, he answered calmly that “I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on them.” Although he was then challenged repeatedly and asked to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, which he refused to do based upon opposition to systems of ethnic or religious hierarchy, the clip of his answer went viral, receiving broad agreement amongst both Democrats and Republicans.
Other politicians running for Congress, who are explicitly anti-AIPAC, include the following candidates:
Robb Ryerse for Arkansas’s Third District, who is seeking to unseat Steve Womack, funded to the tune of $142,030 by the Israel Lobby. In California, there is Chris Bennet running for the Sixth District, Mai Vang for the Seventh District, Saikat Chakrabarti for the Eleventh District, Chris Ahuja for the Thirty-Second District, as well as Angela Gonzales-Torres for the Thirty-Fourth District.
In Colorado, there is Melat Kiros for the First District, as well as John Padora for the Fourth District. Within Florida, there is also Bernard Taylor running for the Twenty-First District, Elijah Manley for the Twentieth District, Marialana Kinter for the Seventh District, and Oliver Larkin for the Twenty-Third District.
Running in Illinois, there is Robert Peters for the Second District, Junaid Ahmed for the Eighth District, Morgan Coghill for the Tenth District and Dylan Blaha for the Thirteenth District. Meanwhile, in Indiana, there is Jackson Franklin, who is running for Congressional District Five and, in Massachusetts, Jeromie Whalen is running for the First District.
Seeking to win Maryland’s Fourth District is Jakeya Johnson, while Donavan McKinney is running for Michigan’s Thirteenth District and Kyle Blomquist is competing for its First District. Crossing over to Missouri, there is a well-known progressive candidate, Cori Bush, for its First District and Hartzell Gray for Missouri’s Fourth District.
For New Hampshire’s First District, Heath Howard is in the running, while, in New Jersey, Katie Bansil is running for the Sixth District. Meanwhile, there is James Lally running for Nevada’s Third District, Aftyn Behn for Tennessee’s Seventh District and Zeefshan Hafeez for Texas’s Thirty-Third District.
Also contending for Washington’s Ninth District is Kshama Sawant, while Aaron Wojchiechowski is running for Wisconsin’s Fifth District and Brit Aguirre is contesting for West Virginia’s First District.
Meanwhile, Abdul El-Sayed is running for Senate in Michigan, and Karishma Manzur is a Senate Candidate in New Hampshire, both of whom reject AIPAC funding and oppose the ongoing genocide.
It is important to note that new projects, like AIPAC Tracker, are also now promoting candidates who refuse to take funding from the Israel Lobby and have set up a page whereby citizens can donate to these anti-AIPAC politicians. AIPAC Tracker has played a particularly important role in educating the public, through graphics, showing how much the Israel Lobby has given to individual politicians.
Despite the majority of the anti-AIPAC campaigns being led by progressive Democrats, it is clear that the infamy of the Israel Lobby is having a major impact on mainstream Democrats, too.
For example, earlier this month, AIPAC appeared to be experiencing an existential crisis following an announcement from prominent lawmaker, Seth Moulton, who declared he would not receive funds from the Lobby group and would even be returning their contributions.
In an official statement, Moulton claimed to be making his move due to AIPAC’s alignment with the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular. For such a right-leaning Democrat, on foreign affairs, to be publicly disavowing AIPAC, it signaled the toxicity of its brand more than anything.
Back in 2024, AIPAC claimed victory after it managed to unseat progressive Democratic Party Representative, Jamaal Bowman, over his pro-Palestinian stances, in the “most expensive House primary ever” in US history. At the time, AIPAC had spent at least $14.5 million on anti-Bowman ads through its PAC, United Democracy Project, alone.
Just over a year later, it appears as if the Israel Lobby had forked out tens of millions for what can be labeled, in hindsight, as a pyrrhic victory. Although the Zionist Lobby groups have injected unprecedented funding into continuing their purchase of American elected officials, their strategy appears to be collapsing.
Over time, more and more Americans from across the aisle are beginning to correlate support for Israel with political corruption. The litmus test for whether a politician is truly interested in representing the people who elect them to power is becoming their stance on Palestine, more specifically, Gaza.
The more Israel interferes in American domestic affairs, demands free speech crackdowns, unconstitutional legislation, billions in taxpayer dollars to fund their wars of aggression, unlawful deportations of Israel critics and drags the US into more conflict overseas, the more the American opposition to the Israel Lobby grows.
Recently, Illinois-based journalist Matthew Eadie uncovered that AIPAC is now employing new tactics to get around its own toxic brand, by “driving donations without any transparency” through Unique ID campaigns.
One series of “AIPAC secret campaigns” has been in support of Minority Leader of the US House, Hakeem Jeffries, nicknamed “AIPAC Shakur” by popular radio-show host, ‘Charlamagne tha god’, whereby certain links to donate were shared and will not pop up as direct AIPAC contributions, yet are still traceable by the Israel Lobby and directed by them.
Social media activists are not letting these tactics slip and are actively pointing out what they claim to be deceptive tactics, only fuelling more anger at the Lobby, in general. Yet, such tactics appear to prove desperation on AIPAC’s behalf, especially amidst growing calls for them to register as a foreign agent.
Damning Evidence Proves Keir Starmer Lied About UK Role in Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
21st Century News Wire | October 28, 2025
British journalist Matt Kennard reveals the criminal role of the British military as an accomplice to Israel’s brutal genocide of native Palestinian population in Gaza. Kennard reveals how the Royal Air Force (RAF) has flown hundreds, if not thousands, of surveillance flights over Gaza since October 7, 2023. It is believed that the British flights supplied the Israelis with targeting intelligence used to slaughter countless Palestinians—including thousands of unarmed men, women and children. Despite the exposure, the Starmer government refused to give any details about these flights which amount to war crimes.
Watch this incredibly damning video report from Double Down News:
What is the Israeli strategy in Gaza?
By Robert Inlakesh | Al-Mayadeen | October 28, 2025
In order to understand the Israeli-US agenda underlying the so-called “peace plan” set forth by US President Donald Trump, it is important to examine the objectives of the Zionist regime and then assess how these aims might be realized. Such an analysis helps reveal what the future may hold and whether the fragile ceasefire is likely to endure.
On October 19, the Gaza ceasefire appeared to have collapsed after the Zionist regime launched over 100 airstrikes, dropping at least 153 tonnes of explosives across the besieged coastal enclave, and killing around 44 civilians. Even Israeli media outlets reported that the ceasefire had broken down and that the war had re-started, before the situation calmed down by the next day.
Initially, the Israeli establishment claimed that two of its soldiers had been killed by Palestinian fighters in an ambush involving RPGs and automatic weapons, asserting that its subsequent attacks were merely a response to this incident—one that Hamas categorically denied any involvement in.
Yet, it wasn’t long until American, Palestinian and even Israeli reporters began to reveal the truth. In reality, while Israeli soldiers, alongside settlers contracted for demolition work, were violating the ceasefire by destroying Palestinian infrastructure, they accidentally drove over an unexploded ordnance. The consistency of reports from multiple sources lent credibility to this account, yet the Zionist military quickly imposed a publication ban on the incident, before later partially admitting to what had truly occurred.
This meant that the Israelis had, in essence, killed their own soldiers by violating the ceasefire and sending their forces to destroy infrastructure within what was effectively an active minefield, then blaming the Palestinians as a pretext to kill more civilians. Up until that point, the Israelis had already committed at least 80 ceasefire violations and killed more than 100 innocent people.
From day one of the ceasefire, the Israelis had also adopted a strategy of outsourcing the Gaza front’s combat operations to three ISIS-linked proxy militias – each stationed in different areas behind the Israeli imposed ‘Yellow Line’ – instead of engaging Hamas directly. The Zionist regime began pursuing a policy of using these proxy forces to carry out assassinations and ambushes against prominent figures and members of Gaza’s security apparatus.
The Israeli strategy, backed by the United States – according to anonymous sources who spoke to Axios – is to begin using reconstruction funds, to build structures behind the Yellow Line, which represents around 54-58% of Gaza’s territory where the occupation refuses to withdraw and works alongside its proxies to control the enclave. At the same time, the Israelis sought to strangle the civilian population living in areas under the Hamas-led civil authority, while offering them the alternative of living under the joint Israeli-collaborator occupation.
This strategy has already begun to crumble, as many of the families which the Zionist Entity sought to co-opt have sided with the resistance and rejected the collaborators in the midst. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Resistance continues to pursue these collaborator death squads and prosecutes them for their various crimes, including acts like murder and aid theft.
Like other similar strategies proposed by the Israeli regime and greenlit by their subservient American backers, this one is likely to fail under pressure and does not make logical sense given the realities on the ground and the fact that the Zionist proxies have no popular support.
So, then, what do the US-Israeli alliance have in store? It is quite simple, they are seeking to achieve some of their goals under the guise of a ceasefire, which they only partially respect by allowing in limited aid supplies and killing less people than they did prior to the so-called “peace deal”.
Similarly, in Southern Lebanon, the Israelis hatched a scheme after the ceasefire was imposed to seize control of more territory than they managed to capture during the war, all while committing daily ceasefire violations. carefully calibrated to stop short of triggering a return to an all-out war.
If they fail to achieve their aims through limited military measures and aggressive maneuvers dressed up as diplomacy, they will resort to full-scale force, because “peace” is not an option.
In order to understand this line of thinking, you first must conclude that the Israelis have pursued their policies up until this point as a means of collapsing the regional resistance against them, eliminating each and every threat posed to their rule.
To the Zionist regime, there is a perceived imperative to produce an “answer to the Gaza question”, a formulation that, in their view, amounts to the elimination of the people of Gaza: an ethnic cleansing campaign and genocide accompanied by the destruction of the entire territory’s infrastructure. This is not only the objective of the Israeli leadership, but a project implicating Israeli society as a whole, a national project of elimination.
October 7, 2023, represented a major blow to the Zionist project, one that collapsed the illusion of its military superiority and shook its ideology to the core. So, it has since pursued a project to teach its adversaries a lesson and to destroy the ability of regional actors to resist them. Gaza is a statement, rise up against us, and we will pulverize you.
To a certain extent, this strategy has so far succeeded to deter any Arab population from rising up. Immediately after October 7, the Jordanians and Egyptians, for example, had started to join mass demonstrations, attempted to breach the border, and clashed with regime forces. Yet the daily scenes of devastation in Gaza, along with the propaganda pushed by the Arab Regimes, crushed their pride, determination, and willingness to continue resisting, at least for now.
The regional resistance, however, remained undeterred, which is why the US-Israeli alliance now seeks to destroy it, or at least to weaken it so severely that it no longer poses a significant threat.
If the Israelis experience another October 7-style military defeat that includes the penetration of its defensive lines, this will represent a decisive, even mortal, blow to the project, and the Zionist regime is well aware of that.
What occurred on October 7 irrevocably transformed the regime and set in motion a series of irreversible changes. Senior Zionist leaders now view current events in stark binary terms: either the re-birth of “Israel” or its gradual demise. If the former is achieved, the regime would secure de-facto control over the region and bury its security issues; if it fails to eliminate Gaza, to break the Lebanese resistance, and to sufficiently weaken Iran, it will be one step away from a crushing defeat.
In the Zionist regime’s thinking, now is a historic opportunity to exterminate all those who resist it, eliminate Gaza entirely, and impose uncontested dominance over the region. Although it has so far failed to achieve these goals, it perceives any inability to secure a “total defeat” as an existential threat to its own survival. Therefore, if “Israel” does not accomplish during the ceasefire what it set out to do, it is likely to pursue those objectives through renewed military action, with Lebanon and Iran expected to become the principal fronts in the future.
US detains British commentator Sami Hamdi amid pro-‘Israel’ pressure

Al Mayadeen | October 27, 2025
British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday.
The detention occurred during his ongoing speaking tour organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), raising alarms over the influence of pro-Israeli lobbying groups.
Hamdi had entered the US legally on October 19 to participate in events addressing US foreign policy and the Israeli war on Gaza. He had recently spoken at CAIR’s annual gala in Sacramento and was scheduled to speak at another event in Florida. On October 24, he was informed that his visa had been revoked, and ICE agents detained him upon his arrival at San Francisco International Airport.
DHS says Hamdi is a national security threat
US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Hamdi’s detention, stating that he posed a national security threat.
“This individual’s visa was revoked, and he is in ICE custody pending removal,” McLaughlin wrote on X.
Reactions from Civil Rights Groups
Friends of Hamdi and civil rights organizations have condemned the detention as an infringement on free speech. A statement from his supporters described the arrest as “a deeply troubling precedent for freedom of expression and the safety of British citizens abroad.”
They called for the United Kingdom Foreign Office to demand urgent clarification from US authorities regarding the grounds for Hamdi’s detention.
CAIR criticized pro-Israeli lobbying groups’ influence on US authorities that led to Hamdi’s arrest. In a statement, CAIR accused “unhinged Israel First bigots” of pressuring the US government to detain Hamdi, labeling the action as an “Israel First policy, not an America First policy.”
Hamdi’s father, Mohamed El-Hachmi Hamdi, expressed concern over his son’s detention, stating that Sami “has no affiliation with any political or religious group.” He emphasized that his son’s stance on Palestine is centered on the people’s right to security, peace, freedom, and dignity, describing him as “one of the young dreamers of this generation, yearning for a world with more compassion, justice, and solidarity.”
Israel blocks winter essentials for Palestinian prisoners for third year

Palestinian Information Center – October 27, 2025
GAZA – Lina al-Tawil, director of the Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy, said that Israeli prison service (IPS) prevents the entry of blankets and winter clothing to thousands of Palestinian detainees for the third consecutive year.
“Prisoners from Gaza are the most affected by this policy, especially those arrested after October 7, 2023,” Tawil said in a statement on Sunday, noting that those detainees from Gaza had received only one set of prison clothes, a shirt and trousers, since they were kidnaped from the Strip.
Tawil also pointed out that most of the Israeli prisons are located in desert areas, which makes winter harsher and worsens the humanitarian situation inside them, particularly for sick prisoners who suffer from the cold and face serious complications due to the lack of protective and heating means.
Tawil highlighted the spread of infectious diseases among Palestinian prisoners during the winter, attributing it to overcrowded cells and the sharing of personal items, describing such harsh incarceration conditions as a “formula used by the Israeli authorities to increase the number of sick detainees.”
She urged international organizations, especially the International Committee of the Red Cross, to take swift action to address what she called “this critical crisis” in Israeli jails and to pressure the Israeli authorities to end the suffering it deliberately inflicts on Palestinian prisoners.
Bowing to Zionist lobby pressure, UK medical regulator hounds British-Palestinian medic

By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | October 26, 2025
Yielding to pressure from pro-Israel lobbying groups, the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) has reopened a politically motivated case against British-Palestinian doctor Rahmeh Aladwan over her outspoken criticism of UK-backed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The renewed proceedings aim to suspend the 31-year-old medic from the UK medical register over social media posts condemning the genocide in Gaza and the complicity of the British government.
The move comes less than a month after the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that the complaints against her were not “sufficient to establish that there may be a real risk to patients” and refused to impose any restrictions on her licence.
That September 25 decision had appeared to close the case.
However, under pressure from Zionist lobbying groups — led by the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and the Jewish Medical Association (UK) — the GMC has now reversed course.
Both groups, backed by Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting, have spearheaded a smear campaign to punish Dr. Aladwan for her vocal and strong pro-Palestine stance.
For nearly two years, she has been the target of online smears and defamation for exposing Israel’s slaughter of more than 68,000 Palestinians and the near-total destruction of Gaza.
Earlier this month, the CAA escalated its rhetoric, claiming that Aladwan was conducting a “campaign of hatred against British Jews” and threatened to legally challenge the MPTS for clearing her name.
Streeting — who has publicly vowed to overhaul the way medical regulators handle so-called “anti-Semitism” cases — has openly pushed for harsher measures against critics of Israel.
In practice, his proposal would mean prosecuting anyone who denounces the Zionist regime’s genocidal actions.
Investigations by Declassified UK revealed that Streeting received almost £30,000 from Britain’s pro-Israel lobby, and in 2022, he became the first member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet to visit the Israeli-occupied territories — in a move designed to signal a break with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Palestine position.
Under this political pressure, a GMC case examiner compiled a new dossier of Aladwan’s social-media posts from late September to early October and referred her again to the Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT).
The CAA quickly boasted that its legal threat had forced the regulator to act.
At Thursday’s hearing, the MPTS agreed to convene a second tribunal — a move that could ultimately strip Dr. Aladwan, a National Health Service (NHS) doctor with seven years of service, of her right to practice medicine in the country where she grew up.
Speaking before the hearing, Dr. Aladwan told reporters she had been “summoned by what is now more accurately called the Genocide Medical Council.”
“It is only four weeks since I was summoned here for exactly these allegations, it is my social media postings, it is my support for the Palestinians to resist under international law,” she said.
“Mostly really, it’s the GMC buckling to the pressure of the Israeli lobby and the MPs such as Wesley Streeting who are funded by them and who are making comments.”
She described the ordeal as a coordinated effort to silence voices of dissent.
“There’s been a huge media smear campaign, corruption, and collusions between all these institutions that have been subverted by the Israeli lobby to just take my license away or silence me.”
Inside the tribunal, Aladwan was even denied the right to address the panel directly. Representing the GMC, Emma Gilsenan said that only her legal representative could pose questions — a privilege she had been granted in the earlier hearing.
Her counsel, Kevin Saunders, instructed by Zillur Rahman of Rahman Lowe Solicitors, denounced the proceedings as a response to “external pressure.”
He highlighted Streeting’s public condemnation of the previous tribunal’s ruling, calling it “an attempt to undermine the rule of law and the determination of an independent body.”
Saunders pointed out that the 12-page dossier presented by the GMC contained nothing new to justify reopening the case.
He stressed that Aladwan’s social media posts were separate from her clinical practice, which has been exemplary, noting that she was expressing solidarity with her own people under siege.
No evidence has ever shown that her posts affected patient safety or her duties as a doctor, he said.
When Saunders requested a stay of proceedings on grounds of “abuse of process,” the tribunal rejected the motion.
‘Surrender to political pressure’
On Friday, after the second tribunal, Dr. Aladwan took to X (formerly Twitter) to condemn what she described as the MPTS’s “surrender to political pressure.”
“They chose to trample on their own ruling from the 25th of September and allow the GMC to resubmit the same evidence—effectively perverting our British legal system on behalf of the ‘Israeli’ Jewish lobby and their funded MP Streeting,” she wrote.
“If a foreign lobby can force our panels to backtrack on a ruling, the finality of British justice is dead.”
She called it “a dark day for Britain,” vowing to continue her fight.
“They picked the wrong British Palestinian. I will fight this — not just for me, but for our sovereignty and fundamental rights in Britain. If the process is the punishment, then bring it on.”
Ahead of the hearing, she had warned that the GMC was determined to destroy her livelihood “to please its masters in the Israeli lobby.”
“Let’s be clear,” she posted. “A British Jewish or ‘Israeli’ doctor could … bomb hospitals and kill patients in Palestine — and keep their license and freely treat British patients. I’m being persecuted for speech. They would be protected for murder. This is Jewish supremacy.”
By Tuesday, Aladwan revealed that the GMC was now seeking her suspension for being “unrepentant.”
“The first tribunal found no need for any order. Now, the GMC demands suspension because I refused to ‘moderate’ speech that was already deemed acceptable,” she said.
“This is not about safety. It’s about punishment. They are explicitly seeking what the ‘Israeli’ lobby demanded: my removal from practice for my political views. This is the weaponisation of medical regulation. This is political persecution.”
Arrest before tribunal: A ‘political theatre’
Only two days before facing her second tribunal, Aladwan was arrested by British police — a move many saw as part of a broader campaign to silence and intimidate her.
In a video posted on social media, the British-Palestinian doctor could be seen confronting police officers as they informed her she was under arrest for “three malicious communications and one offence of inciting racial hatred.”
According to the officer, the charges stem from Aladwan’s posts on October 7 — marking the second anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Hamas-led operation launched in response to over seven decades of Israeli apartheid — and from a July 21 speech at a pro-Palestine rally outside the Foreign Office, where police claimed she had called for “the eradication of Israel.”
Aladwan, who in her posts described the historic resistance operation as the day Israel was “humiliated,” immediately challenged the officer’s motives.
“You are doing this for the Israeli Jewish lobby so you can get an arrest on me before my tribunal on Thursday,” she said in the video. “This is what the UK does to its doctors.”
After her release, Aladwan denounced the arrest as “political theatre, not policing.”
In a detailed social media post, she described harsh and degrading conditions during her detention — denied water for six hours, refused essential medication, left in a freezing cell without a blanket, and isolated with a broken intercom.
“These are not standard procedures. They are punitive measures,” she wrote.
Aladwan also revealed the political motive behind the arrest.
“An officer explicitly informed me the police would be ‘reporting the arrest to the GMC.’ This is a non-reportable event. This admission reveals the direct channel of communication between the police and my regulator,” she said.
She further noted that the arrest was part of a coordinated campaign of intimidation aimed at influencing the medical tribunal and shaping public perception.
“It reveals a seamless network: lobby groups, politicians (Streeting), police, regulator (GMC),” she wrote. “They are not following due process. They are executing a strategy. Our British institutions have become enforcement tools for a foreign, hostile agenda—for the Israeli Jewish lobby—and the entire world can see it.”
Her post ended with a defiant declaration: “Free Britain and Palestine from Jewish supremacy (Zionism).”
Later, Aladwan published her bail conditions, which she said were a form of “house arrest.”
She is banned from attending any public event or protest related to Palestine or the Israeli regime in London, placed under curfew at a specified address, and required to notify police if she leaves home for more than 48 hours.
‘Losing grip over the narrative’
The arrest sparked outrage among pro-Palestine activists and supporters online, who harshly criticized British authorities for weaponizing law enforcement to suppress dissent.
A social media activist, Thomas Keith, wrote that the state’s reaction only exposes its weakness.
“The irony is that every time they try to silence a Rahmeh Aladwan, they just spotlight the hollowness of their so-called freedoms,” he said. “The more aggressive and coordinated the repression, the more obvious it is that the state is panicking, losing its grip over the narrative as more and more people refuse to look away from Gaza.”
“What you’re seeing is Britain showing the world it’s still an empire at heart, propping up colonialism abroad and silencing dissent at home. The cost of speaking the truth has never been higher, but the mask is off, and more people than ever see exactly who benefits from the machinery of state repression.”
Ellen Kriesels, another user on X, highlighted the hypocrisy of reopening a cleared case under lobby pressure and condemned the GMC’s renewed action as a blatant act of political persecution.
“This doctor was cleared by a tribunal three weeks ago. Now she is going back there on Thursday after intense media and political pressure at the behest of pro-Israel lobby groups. No new material. Political persecution is what this is. Shame on the GMC,” she wrote.
Aladwan herself has long maintained that silence is complicity. After her first tribunal in September, she posted a message urging others to resist fear and speak truth.
“We must operate without fear. We must name the root cause and identify the criminals. Palestinians are bravely resisting with their lives. The least we can do is resist with our words, uphold the principles of liberation (thawabet), and speak the full truth.”
She condemned Zionist supremacist structures behind the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the extermination of Palestinians across the occupied territories.
“The Jewish lobby and Jewish supremacists need to have some shame,” she wrote. “While Palestinians are being kidnapped, tortured, murdered, starved, raped, and burned alive by Israeli Jews, they continue to play victim and cry over our words and activism that are rooted in justice, morality, and humanity.”
In her message, she made clear what this struggle is really about.
“This is not about Jewish feelings or tears. This is about genocide caused by Jewish supremacy, extremism, and unadulterated terrorism.”
Netanyahu: Israel Does Not Need US Approval to Strike Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 26, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that he can order strikes in Israel at his discretion and that he is not controlled by the US.
Haaretz reports that the Israeli leader said Sunday that Israel “does not seek anyone’s approval” for strikes in Gaza. The remarks follow a report on Thursday that top US officials told Netanyahu that Washington expects to be informed before Tel Aviv attacks Gaza.
He says the US approves of Tel Aviv having full decision-making over striking Gaza. “Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable. The US agrees to this,” he said.
Last week, Israel bombed Gaza dozens of times, claiming it was reacting to a Hamas attack in Rafah. However, the White House knew there was no Hamas attack. When Washington informed Tel Aviv, it was aware that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer hitting an unexploded munition.
While the reporting said that Washington’s expectations did not amount to Netanyahu needing Trump’s permission to bomb Gaza, the President has sent a number of high-level officials to Israel to keep the Prime Minister from breaking the ceasefire. Trump’s policy has been dubbed “Bibi-sitting.”
Some Israeli officials said that Israel is struggling to dictate policy to the US. Israeli officials told Haaretz that they “have the impression that American scrutiny of Israel has reached a point that usurps Israel’s military and diplomatic power.” They added, “Netanyahu continues to deny this new reality because it contradicts his attempts to create a narrative of victory in the war, at least in the eyes of his political supporters.”
In his remarks, Netanyahu argued he has been able to violate the ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah and Hamas at his discretion. “I want to make one thing clear – our security policy is in our own hands. We are not willing to tolerate attacks against us, we respond at our discretion against attacks, as we saw in Lebanon and recently in Gaza,” he said.
