German journalist says Israeli prison guards raped her to ‘break our will’
Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke
Press TV – July 16, 2026
Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke says Israeli prison guards rape detainees with the systemic intention to “break” their will.
Anna Liedtke, 25, who in September had set sail for the Gaza Strip with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel Conscience, was raped by Israeli prison guards during detention.
“There is no reason for me to be ashamed,” Liedtke said, in her first interview about a legal case filed against the perpetrators.
“It’s clear they want to break our will and silence us, making this so traumatic that we will never talk about Palestine again,” she said in an interview with The Guardian. “Whenever we are silent, they will do it to another person.”
In the meantime, Liedtke’s lawyers have filed a complaint, demanding Israeli authorities investigate the case. Israeli law defines any kind of non-consensual penetration as rape.
Liedtke’s lawyer, Muna Haddad, said her client wanted justice, and that she also aims to raise awareness about the Israelis’ response.
“It is Anna’s wish to seek justice and exhaust all avenues to hold the perpetrators of these acts accountable. We also want to raise awareness and see how the Israeli system responds when faced with our demand to open an investigation,” Haddad said.
“Sexual violence and rape are recurring violations that have been perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners,” Haddad pointed out, noting that the West’s blind support for Tel Aviv has given the Israeli prison guards impunity for sexualized violence and rape against international solidarity activists, as well.
The complaint, sent to the Israeli attorney general, the Israel prison service’s legal adviser, the department for the investigation of prison guards, and the commander of Givon prison, was a challenge to a “culture of impunity” for abuse of prisoners by Israeli forces, Haddad said.
After Liedtke revealed the matter in late December, two other Freedom Flotilla members spoke of sexualized violence performed on them by Israeli prison guards.
Vincenzo Fullone, an Italian journalist, revealed that “on three separate occasions, I was ordered to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches… During the third search, the pain became unbearable and was compounded by mockery, verbal abuse – including the words, ‘Don’t you like it, Hamas whore?’ – and the photographing of my body.”
Australian activist Surya McEwen said he “was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully.”
He said Israeli soldiers dislocated his arm, forcing him to kneel with other flotilla members while the notorious Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir verbally abused them.
According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Israeli forces employ sexualized violence against Palestinians.
The Center said that increasing systemic violence against Palestinians has continued for decades and includes “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.”
Rahm & Bibi: Opposing Pillars of Jewish Thought
By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg |
“Emanuel… has long been seen as a strong supporter of Israel within the Democratic party. His evolving position is unquestionably a reaction to increasing anti-Israel public sentiment, particularly on the American Left.” — Blaise Malley, Responsible Statecraft (Jul. 9, 2026)
After witnessing a nearly three-years-long holocaust perpetrated by the Israeli Defense Forces against women and children in Gaza, virtually the entire world is beginning to harbor feelings of revulsion towards the Zionist state and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Not since Israel’s founding in 1948 have Americans had a more negative view of their ‘gallant little democratic ally in the Middle East,’ to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. William Pierce. Gallup, the American multinational analytics company known for conducting public opinion polls, recently commented on the drastic shift in American sympathies vis a vis Israel/Palestine while analyzing polling data from the past few years:
“From 2001 to 2005, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. The cumulative effect of gradual changes in U.S. attitudes since then has led to the Israelis no longer being viewed more sympathetically.”
Not oblivious to the changing tides of public opinion, clever intriguers like Rahm Emanuel are right now hard at work levelling the land for the development of a centrist plantation upon which criticism of Netanyahu and aspects of his Likud regime — and US support for it — are tolerated in the hope of reclaiming the support of disillusioned voters by affixing a more palatable face to the pro-Israel cause. (Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Israel’s favorability rating at 22% among Democrats.)
On pp. 156-157 of his 2008 textbook Judaism Discovered, revisionist historian Michael Hoffman provides a crucial insight into the complex system of deceit known as Judaism:
“The Kabbalistic temple is supported by the pillar of chesed (mercy) and the pillar of gevurah (severity), both are required to support Judaism’s supremacy. These two seemingly opposing pillars offer two ways of relating to the world depending on the spirit of the age in which Judaism finds itself situated. Judaism’s Temple is the synthesis of these two forces. The Temple cannot be sustained only by presenting a lenient or merciful face, or only by severe or judgmental means. …’pairs’ produce the synthesis that is Judaism in all of its indissolubly connected, subterranean minutiae.”
Widely considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Emanuel recently travelled to Israel to deliver a speech to a packed hall at Tel Aviv University, addressing, among other topics, an end to unconditional US support for Israel. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that during the course of his speech — in which he referred to Israel as a “pariah” — Emanuel put forth a “proposal for U.S. sanctions targeting Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, Israeli officials who voice support for that violence, and companies and banks that support ‘illegal settlements.”‘
The speech, titled “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, Where it Stands Today and the Road Ahead,” is an obvious attempt by the prominent Democrat to repair the fractured Israel/Washington alliance, while rehabilitating his image as a “vocal Zionist” in anticipation of the 2028 presidential election. Some rather gullible commentators have already fallen for the ruse, like the Lebanese-Australian Mario Nawfal, who triumphantly tweeted:
“The era of unconditional U.S. support for Israel just ended. And Rahm Emanuel flew to Tel Aviv to say it to their faces. His speech is designed to land like a thunderclap, and the messenger guarantees it does. Emanuel is not a progressive activist. He’s a centrist.”
A more cynical person might ask: If Rahm Emanuel cares so deeply about the plight of Palestinian civilians and ending unconditional foreign aid to Israel, why has he failed to raise either of these issues until now, when Netanyahu’s government is losing the support of the entire world? 1 The answer resides in the fact that Emanuel is a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist who doesn’t actually care about the aforementioned issues. Rather, his lofty political ambitions within the Democratic Party coupled with historically low support for Israel, has made it necessary for Emanuel to present himself as the light square of leniency juxtaposed with Netanyahu’s dark square of severity on the checkered floor of the Jewish Temple.
Rahm Israel Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959 to Dr. Benjamin Emanuel and Marsha Smulevitz. He attended Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s Anshe Emet Day School, a private Jewish school, until 1968, when the family moved to Wilmette, Illinois, whereupon he was enrolled in public school and graduated from New Trier West High School in 1977. 2 Throughout his youth, Rahm would attend annual summer camps in Israel –including the summer following the 1967 Six-Day War — which no doubt amplified the already passionate ethnic sentiments inherited via his family’s close ties to Israel and political activism.
Emanuel’s father, Benjamin Auerbach, was a pediatrician born in Jerusalem in 1927. His parents, having fled to Palestine from Odessa in 1905, changed the family name to Emanuel in honor of Benjamin’s older brother Emanuel Auerbach, who died after being struck by a bullet fragment during a conflict between Jews, Arabs and police during the British occupation of Palestine in 1933. No doubt influenced by this event, Benjamin would later be persuaded by his cousin to join the underground Zionist terror organization Irgun to, in his own words, “sabotage the British Empire, to send letters with bombs in them to England.” 3 Emanuel was operating as a weapons smuggler for the Irgun (a forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party) when the group bombed the King David Hotel, Britain’s administrative headquarters, in 1946, and was very much involved in supplying weapons to Menachem Begin’s militants during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
In 1953, Benjamin immigrated to Chicago where he met his wife Marsha Smulevitz, an X-ray technician at Mount Sinai Hospital and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1957 and 1961, the couple had three sons, Ezekiel, Rahm and Ari, who have all achieved high levels of success in their respective careers. 4 After Benjamin’s death, Rahm remembered his father as the quintessential Israeli:
“There was no sweetness. No softness around the edges. It’s how Israelis are. This was a guy who said he loved you by calling you a schmuck and hitting you in the back of the head. A lot of people call you a schmuck, but not a lot of people say it with a hit, then say ‘I love you.’ That’s who he was.”
Rahm Israel Emanuel with his father, a former operative of Menachem Begin’s Irgun terror group, a forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
Emanuel became involved in politics in the early 1980s while enrolled at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech and communication. His first job in politics — as spokesman for the Illinois Public Action Council — brought him into contact with an ambitious Jew named David Axelrod, and the pair became close friends two years later while working on the victorious Senate campaign of Paul Simon. The success of the Simon campaign helped launch the political careers of Axelrod and Emanuel who would both one day occupy key positions within the administration of President Obama.
In early 1991, Emanuel volunteered for a short stint in the IDF as part of Israel’s Sar-el program, where he worked as a tank mechanic at one of Israel’s northern bases during the Gulf War. He relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas upon his return to the United States to serve as the chief fundraiser for Governor Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, helping to raise over $120 million for the degenerate 42nd President of the United States. Clinton would appoint the crafty dual-loyalist political director of the new administration following his election victory in November 1992, before reassigning him the position of Deputy Communications Director and Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy, from where Emanuel was instrumental in the destruction of nearly one million US jobs as the primary architect of the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The pillar of power behind the president
After the Clinton administration came to an end, Emanuel went to work at the Chicago office of the investment firm Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he mysteriously made $16 million in two years before deciding to run for Congress in 2002. He was elected and represented Illinois’s 5th district from 2003 – 2009, burnishing his reputation as a pro-Israel hardliner almost immediately upon taking office by signing a letter to then-President George W. Bush defending the Jewish state’s controversial policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders and criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel! For many years afterwards, he defended Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, even after joining the Obama administration and criticizing certain aspects of the war.
When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States he plucked Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod out of the Chicago political cesspit to accompany him to the White House as his Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor, respectively. Just days after Obama’s election, Benjamin Emanuel caused a commotion when he boasted to a reporter from Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that his son was now in a position to influence the newly elected president’s stance towards Israel: “Obviously, he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
The younger Emanuel left his post as White House Chief of Staff towards the end of 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago. He received overwhelming support from Jewish and LGBT voters and ultimately raised over $10 million dollars, in part through large contributions from people like Steven Spielberg and Donald Trump, close friends of his brother Ari Emanuel. Emanuel’s controversy-plagued two terms as Mayor of Chicago earned him the sobriquet “Mayor 1%” for his economic policies favoring the wealthy, and by the time the “attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew” was out of office in 2019, Chicago was a financial basket case with a surging murder rate driven by gang-related violence.
Catholic scholar Dr. E. Michael Jones often points out that “existence calls forth a new essence.” In explaining the maxim, Jones has cited the story of the Pilgrims, who landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay as Calvinists before being mugged by the reality of the frontier, leading to the Halfway Covenant and a continuous modification of their Calvinist essence as Western expansion progressed. There’s no question that on some level a similar process is taking place today with Jews who are facing the uncomfortable realities of a post-October 7th world, though the authenticity of Rahm Emanuel’s conversion is called into question by the fundamental principles of the Orthodox Jewish religion to which he and his family are dedicated devotees. 5
In his book The Talmud Tested (first published as The Old Paths in 1854), Irish Hebraist and missionary Alexander McCaul devotes a number of pages to analyzing a section of the Talmud called Hilchoth Accum, part of which captures the duplicity found throughout Jewish teaching:
“The poor of the idolators (non-Jews) are to be fed with the poor of Israel for the sake of the ways of peace. They are also permitted to have part of the gleaning, the forgotten sheaf, and the corner of the field, for the sake of the ways of the peace. It is also lawful to ask after their health, even on their feast-day, for the sake of the ways of the peace; but never to return the salutation, nor to enter the house of an idolator on the day of his festival to salute him. If he be met in the street, he is to be saluted in a low tone of voice, and with a heavy head. But all these things are said only of the time that Israel is in captivity among the nations, or that the hand of the idolators is strong upon Israel. But when the hand of Israel is strong upon them, we are forbidden to suffer an idolator among us, even so much as to sojourn incidentally, or to pass from place to place with merchandise.” [Italics in original]
Commenting on the passage, Dr. McCaul states
“… the reader may now judge whether the words, ‘For the sake of the ways of peace,’ can be interpreted as… ‘for the good of society.’ If so, then ‘the good of society’ is to be consulted only whilst the Jews are in captivity, and the Gentiles have got the power: but as soon as the Jews get the power, ‘the good of society’ may safely be disregarded. The meaning plainly is, that in the present position of affairs it is advisable to keep the peace between Jews and Gentiles, inasmuch as the Gentiles are at present the strongest.”
The outrage towards Israel felt by millions of Americans on both sides of the political divide since the Gaza ‘War’ began in October 2023, has made it necessary for any aspiring candidate for higher office to publicly adopt a more measured tone on Israel/Palestine and US support for the genocidal regime. Because Rahm Emanuel and the Jewish oligarchs have yet to achieve complete mastery over the United States, certain concessions must be made “for the sake of the ways of the peace.”
The concept of ‘pairs’ is foundational in Judaism and is expressed through several traditional ideas and customs. During the Second Temple period (170 BC – 30 AD) there were five successive pairs of rabbis whose role it was to preserve and transmit the Oral Law that would one day be committed to writing as the Talmud. These pairs are known in Hebrew as zugot, the most famous of which are Hillel and Shammai, who laid the framework for rabbinic debate with their opposing schools of thought. Michael Hoffman, in his book Judaism’s Strange Gods, describes the pair within the context of mystical Judaism:
“Hillel serves his purpose within the rabbinic semiotic by acting as poster boy for the Kabbalistic pillar of chesed. But the rule of Shammai, the pillar of gevurah, also forms a significant part of the reality of Orthodox Judaism… In truth they are complimentary, as the mystical Kabbalah compliments the bureaucratic Talmud, thesis and antithesis; yin and yang — the “zugot” who symbolize the subterranean synthesis that is Judaism in its indissolubly interconnected esoteric reconciliation of apparent opposites.”
When considering Rahm Emanuel’s Zionist pedigree and professional trajectory, it’s fair to wonder whether some variation of the ancient ‘opposing pairs’ theater is being performed right now with Benjamin Netanyahu.6 A July 6 article in Politico hints at this theme while pondering Emanuel’s presidential prospects:
“Emanuel’s presidential ambitions so far are defined by two pillars. One is the essential plausibility of his resume… There’s no one in the gathering field who has such a diverse range of experiences and personal associations, or moves as confidently or as restlessly in policy debates. The other pillar is the essential implausibility, amid prevailing political currents, of his nascent candidacy: He is an establishment centrist who is deeply mistrusted by many of the more left-leaning, insurgent and increasingly Israel-skeptical activists who reasonably believe their energy will power the party’s next generation.
Netanyahu is a useful foil, and a potential bridge between the two pillars. Emanuel can accurately tell younger Democrats: Trust me, I have been at this fight longer than you have, and I have the enemies to show for it.”
Notes:
- As Obama’s chief of staff in 2009, Emanuel momentarily incurred Netanyahu’s wrath after suggesting that Israel should halt its settlements in the West Bank; although this had more to do with maintaining Israel’s relationship with America than any humanitarian considerations. ↩︎
- Goldman, a member of the Zionist Organization of America and the World Zionist Congress, was “especially known for helping to popularize the cause of Zionism in the United States.” ↩︎
- Benjamin Emanuel claimed that he refused to mail letter bombs to the British. ↩︎
- Hollywood producer Ari Emanuel once called on people in the movie industry to blackball Mel Gibson over his movie The Passion of the Christ. ↩︎
- Emanuel’s longtime rabbi, Asher Lopatin, is a Rhodes Scholar and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. ↩︎
- Similarly, suspected 9/11 conspirators Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert are often presented as reasonable voices of opposition to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and the fanatical Israeli settlers. ↩︎
The not-so-secret Israeli strategy: This is the real Gaza plan
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 15, 2026
Here is the bottom line: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of leaving Gaza, either before Israel’s general elections—likely to be held in October—or after. Conceding an inch from the roughly 70 percent of the territory his army currently occupies in Gaza will be considered a weakness by the majority of Israeli voters and would result in an open revolt within his extremist coalition.
He has made his intentions clear time and again. Recent statements by Israel’s political leadership have only reinforced that reality, with officials insisting that Israel must maintain indefinite military dominance over the Strip and explicitly rejecting any framework that requires a full withdrawal of troops. To Netanyahu, the military footprint in Gaza is a permanent fixture, not a temporary bargaining chip.
Some may argue that Netanyahu’s statements are merely political fodder aimed at prolonging his career and avoiding the disastrous outcomes awaiting him—in terms of state investigations and court trials—should he be ejected from power. However, his extremist policies throughout his entire career at the helm of Israeli politics say otherwise.
There has never been a period in Netanyahu’s history in which he showed a genuine willingness to compromise or engage in an authentic political process with the Palestinians.
This reduces the point of the Washington-led Board of Peace and its subsequent administrative bodies to near irrelevance. These entities—including the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) and a multinational International Stabilization Force (ISF)—were supposedly assembled with the sole aim of managing a transitional phase, delivering humanitarian aid, and deploying a peacekeeping buffer to facilitate a gradual Israeli military withdrawal.
It seems that two separate, irreconcilable tracks are taking shape. One is the Israeli track of continued war, entrenched military occupation, and prolonged genocide. The other is an international track, controlled firmly by Washington, aimed largely at finding alternative ways to manage Gaza on behalf of Israel.
Yet even with its obvious limitations, the Gaza plan’s first phase theoretically promises a phased Israeli military repositioning, a sustainable ceasefire, a massive influx of reconstruction aid, and the gradual handover of civil administration to a non-factional Palestinian authority.
Little of that has actually been delivered. While the United States and international envoys claim the ceasefire hinges on disarmament, Israel has used the diplomatic deadlock to advance its troops further into the Strip rather than withdrawing them. Aid remains choked at the borders, and the promised reconstruction has not even begun.
Indirect talks are ongoing in Cairo, though it seems that only Palestinians are being held accountable or expected to carry out heavy concessions. Moreover, after 19 years of Hamas governing Gaza, the movement announced on 6th July that it has officially dissolved the Emergency Committee that has been administering the Strip. The movement declared its full readiness to transfer governance to the National Committee, intended to administer Gaza under the framework of the US-brokered plan.
On paper, this suggests that a political transition is finally underway. In reality, no such transition is taking place.
Israel is actively preventing this technocratic government from assuming any real duties. Rather than facilitating a civil handover, the Israeli political security cabinet has completely dismissed the transition.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar openly labeled the move a “trick,” arguing that a technocratic administration would merely be responsible for municipal tasks like garbage collection while allowing resistance networks to persist.
Instead, Israel’s military strategy continues to fuel conditions that undermine any possibility of stabilizing the devastated Strip. Its objective is not merely to reject an alternative Palestinian administration, but to ensure that no functioning Palestinian governing authority can emerge at all. By doing so, Tel Aviv wants to create a permanent governance vacuum, sowing further chaos and fragmentation.
If no alternative Palestinian political body is permitted to stabilize Gaza, the default collapse will inevitably force local factions to reassert control over daily survival, thus giving Israel yet more pretenses to exact more punishment on a helpless population.
Following the Hamas political move, Israel simply responded with its standard currency: immediate violence. This was starkly illustrated on 9th July, when Israeli forces carried out a targeted airstrike on a vehicle in Gaza City in a failed attempt to assassinate Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem. Though the assassination attempt failed, the strike sent a clear message that Israel has no intention of respecting political transformations or ceasefires.
While no houses are being built, no schools are being constructed, and no hospitals are being revived, the only numbers that keep growing are those of the dead and wounded.
The human cost has reached unfathomable proportions: the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 73,000, with the number of wounded exceeding 173,200. Tragically, these numbers continue to climb daily: over 1,098 Palestinians have been killed since the so-called ceasefire framework was initially agreed upon, proving that the truce exists only in media rhetoric, not on the ground.
This leaves us with a single, inescapable conclusion: the political track aimed at reconstructing Gaza and ending the Israeli military presence has little bearing on the grim realities unfolding on the ground.
The only way out is a stronger, independent international will that wrestles the future of Gaza from the grip of Netanyahu, translating political agreements into immediate humanitarian outcomes and a definitive end to the Israeli occupation.
Until Israel is compelled to relinquish its military control over Gaza, every new committee, reconstruction mechanism, or diplomatic initiative risks becoming little more than political theatre.
Hamas had no option but to govern Gaza and repeatedly tried to find solutions
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | July 14, 2026
Hamas’ decision to dissolve its committee governing the Gaza Strip was not a trick or simple gesture; the movement has long sought to hand over control of the territory’s civil administration. While the Zionists have claimed that Hamas governing the territory has long been the key impediment to “peace”, nothing could be further from the truth.
Despite the Israeli-US refusal to implement the agreed-upon terms of the Gaza ceasefire, never entering into the second phase of the agreement and remaining in limbo instead, Hamas recently took a measure that aimed to show the international community that it was willing to take the initiative in good faith. Immediately, the Israelis and their defenders began to invent narratives arguing that Hamas had engaged in some kind of trick, while asserting that the Palestinian group needed to disarm for the second phase of the agreement to begin.
The United States and its so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP) have put little to no effort into the ceasefire, despite having been authorised to exist by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). When there have been any measures taken, they usually come in the form of guarding the Israelis from criticism, despite the fact that they have killed over 1,000 Palestinians since the ceasefire began and blocked many basic goods from crossing into the territory inhabited by the internally displaced.
As a measure to try and get the process jump-started once again, Hamas announced the dissolution of the temporary committee set up to govern the people after they had suffered an all-out genocide. The critics of this move claim that Hamas-affiliated individuals could be involved in the future technocratic body that the movement has just made way for, which is simply an excuse to prevent further progress.
Unfortunately, even if a technocratic Gaza governing body can be achieved, the Israelis are likely to point to its members as agents of Hamas. This could come in the form of pointing to these technocrats previously working for the civil administration in Gaza, which evidently has been run by Hamas. The same would be the case if you sought to dismantle the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s civil administration in the occupied West Bank; inevitably, the people most qualified to assume positions under a technocratic administration would likely have had some job role under the PA in the past and may even have Party affiliations to Fatah or the PFLP. This wouldn’t mean they are agents of those organisations, it just means that all the available jobs in their field require being employed with the PA.
Hamas did not simply seize control of the civil administration in Gaza as a power-hungry movement that was desperate for control. They were pressured into running in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative elections, which, to their own surprise, they won in a landslide. Immediately upon their election to power, the United States, their EU partners, and “Israel” sought to punish them for daring to engage in democracy.
The EU and US immediately placed sanctions upon the Gaza Strip, the Israelis imposed a blockade, and then the Bush Jr. administration covertly armed a coup plot that sought to violently overthrow Hamas. The coup plot was ultimately foiled by the Qassam Brigades (armed wing of Hamas) in 2007, which is when the Israelis tightened their blockade on Gaza.
Following this, the Palestinian civil war between Hamas and Fatah raged on. Despite countless attempts to mend ties, both Gaza and the West Bank were split from one another. This was a scenario brought about by US-Israel-EU interference, not the Palestinians alone.
After years of failed unity attempts, in 2014, there appeared to be a diplomatic breakthrough between Hamas and Fatah, which is when the Israelis found a convenient pretext to launch a massive assault on the Gaza Strip. Not only did the Zionist regime murder over 2,300 Palestinians, but their allies in Washington helped to ensure that the Palestinian Authority would back away from any unity agreement.
Again, in 2017, there was a unity agreement that was almost reached between Hamas and the PA. Hamas was on the verge of handing over control of the civil administration to the Palestinian Authority (PA). On November 1, Hamas dissolved its governing committee and handed over control of the Rafah border crossing to the PA, an event which was celebrated across the Gaza Strip. However, the US and Israel again intervened to pressure the PA to collapse the agreement.
Control over the civil administration in Gaza has never been the demonstrated or publicly stated goal of the Hamas movement. Time and time again, they have made strides towards relinquishing governance. The reason why the US, EU, and Israelis don’t allow it is for two reasons:
They don’t want the PA to govern both Gaza and the West Bank, because they fear this will give legitimacy to the idea of a Palestinian State.
Hamas and allied resistance movements refuse to disarm as a part of any such agreement.
The problem was never that Hamas was clinging to power; it was that the Israelis and their complicit Western partners sought to prevent the formation of a Palestinian State and to rob the people of Palestine of their ability to defend themselves.
TIME Magazine Reveals Israeli Influence Campaign Targeting Americans To Restart Iran War
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | July 14, 2026
Have you ever noticed how so many Zionist social media influencers often post the exact same messaging, at the exact same time?
It turns out, according to a new investigation in Time Magazine, that these messages are part of a coordinated Israeli influence campaign targeting Americans.
The investigation profiled Brad Parscale, the former Trump campaign manager and current registered Israeli agent, whose firm, Clock Tower X, was hired last year “to conduct a digital campaign on behalf of the State of Israel”.
Parscale was paid by the Israeli government to “produce 100 original pieces of content each month, with at least 80% aimed at Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts” and to “amplify the campaign across social media and through ‘integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels,’ referring to the Christian conservative broadcasting and publishing company where he serves as Chief Strategy Officer” and to “produce at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini characterized Israel and the war”.
Brad Parscale admitted to Time that “the operation was intended to prevent young conservatives from drifting away from Israel”.
Trump administration officials speaking to Time Magazine revealed that Brad Parscale’s paid influencers were attempting to undermine the MoU with Iran.
The investigation wrote:
Online influencers in Trump’s MAGA movement were excoriating it (the MoU) on social media. One shared an Israeli op-ed titled, “You Could Have Been the Greatest President of All—But You Failed.” Several posted the same video of Qatar’s prime minister appearing to snub Vice President J.D. Vance in Israel, arguing it showed regional powers dismissing the Trump Administration’s “naivete.” Others accused Trump of surrendering before achieving his stated objective of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Many of the posts appeared almost simultaneously, with similarities in language and tone.
The official began collecting screenshots, and came to believe it wasn’t a coincidence. Tracing tweets by prominent members of the online right, the official came to believe there was an unlikely figure at the centerof all this criticism: Trump’s former presidential campaign manager and digital guru, Brad Parscale.
The investigation added:
Inside the White House, some officials were frustrated for a different reason. What had begun as an effort to keep the American right supportive of Israel, they believed, had evolved into an influence campaign that was colliding with the President’s political interests as Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war aims diverged, led by a figure trading on the perception that he remained close to Trump. They believed the very media ecosystem Parscale had promised to activate was now helping to circulate arguments that undercut Trump’s effort to end the war. “We’re talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the President’s view, or the views of others around him,” says a senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “It can’t be dismissed as inconsequential by any means.”
Looking more closely at the conversation about the deal unfolding across the conservative internet, the official began noticing the same patterns: similar language appearing across seemingly independent accounts in rapid succession. “You have a person who is farming out this influencing task, who is being paid by a foreign element to the social media space,” the official tells TIME. “To me, this is a very, very dangerous thing.”
Describing the campaign, Time Magazine wrote, “Three people familiar with the campaign describe a messaging operation run through a network of interconnected firms overseen by Parscale or other firms he owns or created, such as Campaign Nucleus and Influenceable, in which he now owns a minority stake. Through private group chats, they say, conservative influencers receive suggested language for posts on social media sites such as X, Instagram and TikTok. They were then compensated based on the impressions and engagement their content generated. On its website, Clock Tower X says it has developed an ‘influencer ecosystem’ that includes ‘managed networks that amplify narratives through credible, distributed voices.’”
It identified the Zionist propagandist X account of “Eyal Yakoby” as one of the accounts on Parscale and Israel’s payroll, writing, “One of the conservative figures associated with the campaign was Eyal Yakoby, a recent college grad with a popular X account who began working with one of Parscale’s firms about a year ago, he says, after testifying before a House committee about antisemitism on college campuses. Yakoby confirms he was paid by Influenceable to fight antisemitism online.”
It added, “Another component involved a sprawling network of conservative influencers. According to a former participant, they received coordinated messaging through private group chats, synchronized the timing of their posts, and were compensated based on the reach they generated.”
This is just one of the many influence campaigns targeting Americans that was paid for by Israel.
Most recently O’Dwyer’s reported that :
Havas Media Germany has hired Piro Inc. to further the digital efforts of the Israel Government Advertising Agency to sway US public opinion.
Founded by Daniel Rosenberg and Tim Piper, New York-based Piro has produced branded entertainment for film, TV and digital media.
Rosenberg has collaborated with actors such as Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Robert DeNiro, Steve Martin, Al Pacino, Kevin Bacon and Jodie Foster.
Piper was called “one of the most influential people on the planet” by Time for for his branded content work. He is executive producer on “Odd Mom Out” for Bravo and “Farmed and Dangerous” on Hulu.
According to its June 2 Justice Dept. filing, Piro is engaged to provide digital content strategy, creative development, video production oversight, and campaign advisory services in connection with a pilot digital communications program.
Services include audience research, content architecture, scriptwriting, asset production, distribution planning, iterative performance analysis, and final program evaluation. Al content is developed for distribution via digital and social media platforms in the US.
Piro has received $900K for its effort.
At the time of Israel’s contract with Brad Parscale, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that it was only one of several firms hired by Israel through Havas Media Germany to influence American public opinion.
Harretz reported that Israel also hired “Show Faith by Works, owned by Republican consultant Chad Schnitger, an evangelical operative connected to the Christian right” to “focus on ‘churches and Christian organizations in the western United States’ aimed at countering ‘declining support for Israel among evangelical Christians’ and ‘raising awareness of Palestinian ties to Hamas and support for terrorism’” and to advance, “‘biblically based arguments highlighting the importance of Israel and the Jewish people to Christians,’ while spreading messages that ‘the Palestinians chose Hamas… they murder Christian aid workers… they celebrated the October 7 massacre and shelter terrorists… Palestinians and Iran share genocidal intentions toward Israel’”.
It added, “The filings for the proposed campaign explain that the messages will reach their audience through ‘the largest geofencing campaign in U.S. history’ – a pitch to map the physical perimeters of every major church and Christian college in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado during worship hours; identifying attendees using commercial data, tracking them, and continuing to target them with relevant ads.”
Israel also used Havas to hire SKDKnickerbocker, a firm close to the Democratic Party, to, “develop a ‘bot-based program on various social media channels that that `floods the zone` with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ pro-Israel message.”
Along with this, it noted that Israel hired “Bridges Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm owned by Yair Levi and Uri Steinberg” to “fund social-media influencers promoting Israel”.
Revolutionary Guard Calls on Jordanians to Expel US Forces
Al-Manar | July 14, 2026
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Tuesday that it has targeted a major US military facility and site inside an airbase in Jordan with ballistic missiles.
In its ninth statement, the Guard directly addressed the Jordanian people, saying: “You know very well that we harbor no animosity towards your country; on the contrary, we hold you in the highest regard and affection. You are also aware of the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
The Guard added that “the Jordanian people, more than any other people, are aware of the crimes committed by the Israeli entity in the Gaza Strip – crimes carried out with the direct intervention of the United States.”
The IRGC called on Jordanians to demand “the removal of American military bases from the region,” describing this as “a significant contribution to saving the Palestinian people and restoring security and stability to the region.”
Earlier in the day, the Guard announced that it had targeted several American military installations in Bahrain as part of the second phase of Operation “Victory 2.”
The Guard stated that its naval forces, using missiles and drones, struck weapons supply depots, a satellite communications center, and a residential building for American forces at the Juffair base, confirming the complete destruction of these targets.
It added that the operation came in response to American aggression that targeted coastal stations and multiple military centers in Bahrain, as well as the southern regions of Iran, following Washington’s defeat in the Strait of Hormuz.
In a separate statement, the Revolutionary Guard also announced that two supertankers were damaged and disabled in the Strait of Hormuz after they ignored warnings from the strait’s security control center and crossed a mine-strewn waterway.
The Guard stated that the two tankers were “deceived by the United States” after they switched off their navigation systems and attempted to transit through an illegal route, thereby endangering maritime traffic.
These strikes follow American attacks over the past two days that targeted sites in Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Sirik, Qeshm, Jask, Konarak, and Chabahar – attacks which, according to the Guard, mostly struck civilian sites and economic facilities.
Omani FM says ‘gravest threat to Gulf security’ stems from Israel, not Iran
The Cradle | July 14, 2026
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi said on 13 July that the most dangerous threats in the region come not from Iran but from Israel, while lambasting the “myth” of the policy of “containment” that has for years targeted the Islamic Republic.
“The gravest threats to Gulf security do not originate within the region itself. Rather, they stem from decisions taken outside it – above all, in Tel Aviv. That conclusion is now difficult to dispute,” the foreign minister wrote in an opinion piece released by Le Monde on Monday.
Al-Busaidi added that Tehran “did not constitute an existential threat.”
He criticized the expansion of the US military presence across the region, saying it did not provide protection or benefit the countries of the Gulf.
“The enormous military expenditures across the region, the expansion of US military bases in the Gulf, and the maintenance of an extensive US military presence – intended to provide protection from afar – were all built and sustained at tremendous cost, yet without providing any real benefit,” the top Omani diplomat went on to say.
He added that the latest war proved that the US, Israeli, and Arab “policy of containment was little more than a myth – a fact that is now acknowledged even by those who, until recently, believed that more than 45 years of costly containment represented a necessary evil.”
The minister emphasized that reaching an arrangement to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz was a “priority.”
He stressed the importance of Iran’s role in such an arrangement.
“The Gulf coastline is shared by eight states. Alongside Oman and its five partners in the GCC – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar – stand Iran and Iraq, both of which have, at different times, been subjected to containment policies and military intervention,” he wrote.
Al-Busaidi said these “eight states all have vital interests to protect and each bears responsibility, according to its capabilities and priorities, for safeguarding this shared strategic” waterway.
“For that reason, none of them can be excluded from any future regional security architecture. Every one of them must participate in designing it, implementing it, and sharing the responsibilities that come with it,” he added.
Al-Busaidi also said complex discussions on the matter were ongoing.
The US has backtracked on several clauses of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached between Washington and Tehran, including joint Omani-Iranian management of Hormuz.
This week, US President Donald Trump declared Washington the “Guardian of the Strait.”
The Omani foreign minister’s article coincides with a major escalation between Washington and Tehran.
Iran launched numerous missile and drone operations on US assets in the Gulf over the past few days in response to a violent and deadly US campaign of strikes. Washington has not stopped attacking Iran, in violation of the MoU.
Trump has declared that the ceasefire is “over” and is vowing harsher attacks on Iran in the near future.
Early on Tuesday, Iranian drones and missiles targeted US bases and military infrastructure in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.
A few days earlier, Tehran responded to US strikes with attacks on Washington’s assets in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, as well as Oman – which Tehran had largely refrained from targeting during the first 40 days of the war that began in February.
Iran has been holding direct talks with Oman on the future management of Hormuz, but recently condemned the activation of a US-Omani shipping corridor, calling it a violation of the MoU.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that “our effort, in consultation with Oman, was to establish a mechanism to ensure the safe passage of ships,” adding that “because of [US] pressure exerted on Oman, this objective was not achieved.”
Earlier this year, Iran established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) as part of plans to oversee future management of the waterway.
“Before the recent provocative actions by US forces in the region, which led to the [renewed] closure of the Strait of Hormuz, more than 200 non-Iranian vessels coordinated with [Iran] during the three weeks following the signing of the MoU, and most of them received transit permits and insurance coverage,” the PGSA said on Tuesday.
US aggression again targets Iranian water infrastructure amid summer heat
Press TV – July 13, 2026
The United States has struck two water pumping stations in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan and southern Bushehr provinces, temporarily disrupting water supply to Kharg Island, Iranian officials say.
One person was killed and four others injured after a US projectile struck an agricultural water pumping station in Mahshahr, Khuzestan province, according to a provincial official on Monday.
Abbas Sadrianfar, managing director of the Khuzestan Water and Electricity Organization, said the RMD drainage pumping station in Hendijan, located between the cities of Mahshahr and Hendijan, was targeted by “the American-Zionist enemy” in the early hours of Monday.
Shaker Mohseni, an employee of the Zohreh and Jarrahi irrigation network operation company, was killed in the attack, Sadrianfar said. Another worker was wounded and is receiving medical treatment, he added.
The facility plays a key role in managing and draining agricultural wastewater in the region, and its continued operation is essential for maintaining the efficiency of irrigation and drainage networks, the official said.
A senior Iranian water industry official condemned the U.S. strike on the pumping station as a “clear example of a war crime.”
Issa Bozorgzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s water industry, said the early morning strike on the RMD drainage pumping station in Hendijan was an attack on “life, health and people’s livelihoods.”
“Water holds a sacred place in all international documents and rules, as well as in Eastern and Iranian culture and civilization, and aggression against it is an aggression against the fundamental rights of human beings,” Bozorgzadeh said in a statement.
“The martyrdom of this servant of the water industry is another testament to the nature of this act – an act that targeted not only civilian infrastructure but also those serving the people,” he said.
Bozorgzadeh described the attack as a sign of “helplessness and desperation in thought and action,” adding: “When the enemy targets water facilities, it is in fact displaying its own inability. This behavior is neither honorable nor a military achievement; it is a manifestation of wickedness in thought and action.”
He said the strike was aimed at disrupting operations at the facility, but that water industry personnel had been working since the early hours to manage the situation and minimize damage.
“Targeting water facilities and the guardians of water is a clear example of a war crime,” Bozorgzadeh said. “The international community and responsible bodies must react seriously to these actions and hold the perpetrators of this crime accountable.”
Several locations across Khuzestan province—including Ahvaz, Omidiyeh, Mahshahr, Behbahan, Dezful, Andimeshk, Abadan, and areas around Shadegan—were targeted by U.S. projectiles in the early hours of Monday, authorities said, adding that assessments of the damage are ongoing.
Iranian media also reported that two sites on the outskirts of Ahvaz were hit, while rejecting reports that Ahvaz International Airport had been struck.
In a statement, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) cited the attack on the water pump, saying that military infrastructure belonging to the US Army in Bahrain, along with an FPS long-range air surveillance radar and a maritime surveillance radar in the Sultanate of Oman, had been destroyed in retaliation.
“Beloved and resilient people of Iran, the decisive and powerful operations carried out by your sons in the Armed Forces have driven the child-killing US military into desperation. The American aggressors, in their latest acts of aggression, once again demonstrated their anti-people nature by targeting an agricultural water pump in Mahshahr County,” the IRGC statement said.
“Your courageous sons in the heroic Naval Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, in addition to targeting US military facilities and infrastructure in Juffair, Bahrain, where towering flames are rising, struck and destroyed an FPS long-range air surveillance radar and a maritime surveillance radar in the Sultanate of Oman with powerful missile and drone attacks during the fifth phase of the retaliatory operation.”
The strikes on water infrastructure follow last month’s US attacks on water supply facilities in Sirik County, Hormozgan Province, which left more than 20,000 residents without access to drinking water amid scorching summer temperatures. Those attacks targeted the distribution network for the town of Kuhestak and 10 villages in the Bemani district.
The United States escalated tensions after Iran’s Navy foiled illegal vessel movements in the Strait of Hormuz that violated a previously signed memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington. Iranian authorities subsequently announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all transit following US military movements in the region.
Lindsey Graham was a monster, but not exceptional
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | July 12, 2026
Lindsey Graham is dead. And if we were to apply the old Spartan and then Roman adage “about the dead, nothing but the good,” then this is where this text would have to end.
Some readers may find this shocking or unkind. But it is a fact that there is no way to write about the intriguingly sudden end of the long-term US senator from South Carolina in a ‘balanced’ manner and stay honest.
Graham was an almost cartoonishly evil man and since he was also very powerful, his moral depravity made a big difference to the lives of all too many. Downplaying that fact out of misplaced piety would be perverse; it would mean to disrespect the many victims of perfidious and brutal US and, in fact, Israeli policies of vicious violence and outrageous injustice that Graham promoted with every fiber of his being for his whole political life.
During the Gaza genocide, when challenged specifically about the Israeli mass killings of civilians, including women and children, Graham launched into what can only be called a psychopathic rant comparing the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians with American warfare against Germany in Japan in World War II (an intriguing comparison in and of itself, but that is another matter) and drawing the conclusion that Gaza should be flattened, including with nuclear weapons. Gaza has been flattened, and to his dying day, Graham never showed an ounce of compassion for those slaughtered by his Israeli friends and did everything he could to support that slaughter.
That is, of course, also why internationally wanted war criminal – really genocidaire – Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to offer his public condolences.
Speaking of Graham’s obvious subservience to Israel, the senator was, unsurprisingly, also a great fan of going to war with Iran, tirelessly calling for attacking it as violently as possible. He spread the Orwellian lies that Iran was about to pose a nuclear threat to the US and that its ballistic missile arsenal was a tool of reckless aggression, all to produce domestic support for yet another criminal American war. Himself addicted to hiding his foul character behind a bigoted and utterly fake Christian piety, Graham compared Iran’s leaders to Hitler and called them “religious Nazis,” thereby not merely offending brave men towering above him in moral and intellectual terms, but also helping to drum up propaganda for murdering them.
It is an irony of history or, maybe, divine justice that he lived just long enough to see the US follow his insane and corrupt advice and suffer a geopolitically catastrophic defeat for it.
Yet Graham was a monster long before the Gaza Genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran. He was obsessed with brutalizing as many other countries and societies as possible. He could not see an opportunity for a war and not do his worst to make it happen. Graham’s record of warmongering is so extensive that it is hard to reproduce it in its entirety. Just shortly before his end, he had been calling for more US violence in Cuba, Lebanon, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen – apart, obviously, from his eternal compulsion to scream for, in effect, more dead Palestinians and Iranians.
In true American fashion, if being Graham’s target was terrible, being his ‘friend’ was no better. Ukraine has come to stand for that experience. Even while pretending to be its ardent supporter, Graham was always among those most brutally open about using Ukraine and its people for the geopolitical and commercial interests of the US. He praised opportunities to rob Ukraine of crucial raw materials and he clearly considered pumping money into its ultra-corrupt Zelensky regime a great deal as it produced dead Russians (and, he failed to mention, Ukrainians, too, of course).
There is no other way of putting it. Lindsey Graham was an infernally bad man. And he was a revolting man: his viciousness was glaringly obvious. Graham was not a complicated case, a conflicted character, a man of light and dark. He was among the closest to pure, unadulterated, and shamelessly brazen evil many of us will ever lay eyes on.
That is why it is telling – but not surprising – to see who is lining up to let us know how much they’ll miss him, that they were buddies with him, or what a wonderful person he was. Apart from Netanyahu, for instance, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO’s Trump bellboy Mark Rutte, Ukraine’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and, of course, AIPAC.
What these often abject condolences show is not merely the moral failure – polite term – of those who offer them. There is a more general and, in its way, worse point: Horrible as Graham was, he was also representative of the elites of the US and the West. Normal people would be ashamed to be seen with Graham, dead or alive; Western elites are boasting of their intimacy with him.
Graham was explicit in displaying his genuine, sick joy in inflicting pain and misery on as much of the world as he could. Indeed, one way to describe him would be as an openly, enthusiastically sadistic imperialist. Graham was a depraved pervert of power who let it all hang out. But apart from his lack of filter, he was not an exception but typical.
Graham was the ugly and all too realistic face of much of the West and its leaders in Washington. He is gone, everyone and everything else is still in place.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Rahm Emanuel’s Critique of Israel: Signs of Change or a Desperate Plea?
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | July 11, 2026
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s recent address at Tel Aviv University, delivering a sternly worded warning to the Israeli public, has captured a lot of attention. Although it has been interpreted otherwise, the speech was an appeal to strategic moderation and not a signal of fundamental change amongst an element of Washington’s establishment – the context behind his words will explain precisely why.
What Rahm Emanuel said to an audience in Tel Aviv has largely been consumed on social media in the form of short soundbites, thus triggering many to draw various conclusions about a decline in the Democratic Party establishment’s support for Israel. While it is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of Democratic voters do hold unfavorable views of the Israeli government, a trend that has clearly also taken hold amongst American Jews, this is not the conclusion that the likes of Emanuel have drawn.
The most viral clips from his 33-minute address feature the former White House official bluntly outlining just how isolated the Israelis are on the world stage, noting that Tel Aviv has become a global pariah and that as a result the US-Israel relationship itself is at a crossroads. Another key moment was a call for an end to US unconditional aid to Israel.
In its full context, it is blindingly obvious that Emanuel is not expressing his own negative views towards Israel, as he repeatedly makes the point of noting his Zionist credentials, including his own family’s involvement in building the Israeli State. Understanding where he is coming from and what he is getting at is the most important element of the speech, because it grants the viewer an insight into the mindset within the Democratic Party establishment.
A direct criticism of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is offered, yet it is not one that you would most likely hear expressed from the average American democrat, but rather Israeli Labor Party old-timers. He builds upon a narrative that blames Hamas for causing division between Palestinians and Israelis, arguing that the movement’s goal has been to prevent a peaceful settlement. It then goes on to claim that Netanyahu has bolstered the arguments presented by Hamas and fallen into their trap by implementing a violent solution with no day-after plan in Gaza.
This argument is not new; in fact, it is quite outdated. So too is Emanuel’s proposed solution, which involves Israel simply expanding its normalisation agreements with the Arab World in exchange for halting the Greater Israel Project. He does not, however, even call for a viable Palestinian State, something that makes his position less rational than that of Biden administration officials like Antony Blinken.
For reference, former Secretary of State Blinken made a similar call for Israeli moderation during one of his final speeches in 2024, to the Atlantic Council. The Biden Administration official, like Rahm Emanuel, espoused the typical Zionist talking points during the beginning of his speech, later to assume a more sober line that urged the Israelis to pursue diplomacy and moderation, and warned that a refusal to pursue the path of reaching a two-State settlement would mean inevitable disaster.
Emanuel’s solution is to do precisely what the Biden administration did prior to October 7, 2023, in prioritizing Israeli regional integration, while refusing to respect or hear out the calls for Palestinian sovereignty.
Some would then argue that he has assumed a more radical posture through his call for ending the unconditional military aid and not treating Israel as an interdependent, to which the answer is simple: calling for the end of foreign aid to Israel is no longer a radical position; it is simply a tactic.
The Heritage Foundation – regarded as the most influential think tank over the Trump administration – published a policy blueprint for phasing out aid to Israel over a 19-year period in order to make it fully independent. Netanyahu’s own Likud Party has even advocated this policy themselves. It has been recognized by the Israel Lobby in Washington that the dramatic shift in American public support for the Israelis will eventually make it difficult for pro-Israel bills, especially those approving billions in military aid, to pass through Congress in the future.
A solution to this problem has been a proactive push by the Israel Lobby to use its current support in Congress and the Senate to forward a merger of the US and Israeli defense industries. This, therefore, bypasses the issue of requiring favorable votes on foreign aid handouts. The House version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), under the title “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, aims to do just this.
One way to interpret Rahm Emanuel’s speech is that the pro-Israel Democratic Party establishment is beginning to sober up to the reality facing Tel Aviv. He himself has clearly identified the issue with Israel’s aggressive pursuit of the Greater Israel Project and is arguing for strategic moderation. It is clear desperation. But even in his pursuit to save the Zionist project from itself, his deeply ingrained hatred of Palestinians blinds him from the fact that going back to the pre-October 7 status quo is not going to be Israel’s saving grace.
In other words, he is communicating a failure to recognize that the root of the problem is not Hamas, Netanyahu, or the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, as he claims; it is that the Palestinian people remain Stateless and have now been subjected to a full-scale genocide. If Emanuel was capable of seeing past his own biases, in order to truly pursue a path that could indeed ensure the Zionist project’s longevity, he would be calling for a Palestinian State in the pre-June 1967 borders. That is actually the pro-Israeli solution that could potentially take them off their current trajectory.
At the root of all of this is the US establishment’s inability to see Palestinians as equal human beings. This lies at the core of the Zionist belief system – the idea that it is never Israel’s fault; at best, the Israelis can make mistakes and, in some instances, be equally as liable as the people they are actively annihilating.
There are two competing sides of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States: one that supports the Greater Israel Project and the other that clings to the ideas espoused by the Israeli Labor Party in the 1990s. The Democratic Party is aligned primarily with the latter, while the former has the most sway with the Republican Party establishment.
Times are changing and what the Israelis have done cannot be undone, so this requires a change. But Rahm Emanuel’s fairytale vision of Israel solving all its problems by halting further settlement expansion in the West Bank in exchange for expanding the circle of normalization is a non-starter.
He blames the Arab nations for refusing to hold the Palestinian leadership to account during the Oslo years, claiming that the solution to Israel’s problems is getting a declaration of normalisation from the Arab League. This indicates that he, and many others around him, are simply stuck in the past. Israel has committed genocide; it has failed to defeat its adversaries and must concede defeat by signing a comprehensive deal/s or keep fighting until its inevitable disintegration. We have long passed the point of no return.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Here’s JD: The Unbearable Lightness of VP Vance: A VERY Short Primer
By Ilana Mercer • Unz Review • July 11, 2026
DEVOUTLY AND LOUDLY do various media organs of the establishment—CNN, The War Street Journal, The Hill, Politico or Israel’s Axios—dazzle you with flattering depictions of JD Vance’s foreign-policy stance, almost always based on unnamed sources, which have conveniently slithered out of dank corners, at this point of the election cycle. Experts in untruths, these media tell you that Vance, vice president in the Trump regime, has all-along roared about foreign-policy restraint.
If he has, it’s the least leonine roar ever heard in this neck of the woods.
Or, the most “private” political protest ever, as Politico would counter. “Private” is how this particular Deep-State tool dubs VP Vance’s foreign policy bent.
In short, Vance confines his “subversive” murmurs to carefully leaked and curated after-the-fact comments, credited mostly to unnamed sources.
The following facts need to be stated, too:
Juvenile quips from craven politicians like Vance notwithstanding, the United States of America continues to play planet to Israel’s sun. Israel’s genocides in the Levant are Made-in-America. Not once in the course of Israel’s carnage in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Lebanon, all ongoing, have two genocidal administrations, Democrat and Republican, budged in materially directing resources to the missions of mass murder currently conducted by Israel.
America underwrites Israeli evil financially and diplomatically, running diplomatic cover for the Israeli executioners. To that end, the US even sanctions and persecutes countries and individuals who dare disagree with its Israeli deity’s mass murder; dare agitate for justice, or demand that the laws of the land be levied against the Serial Killer State.
The US has even sanctioned judicial and UN officials tasked with investigating the crimes of U.S. or Israeli nationals. “Sanction” is a weasel way to frame America’s theft of their assets, banning of their travel, and restriction of their rights to trade with American business.
In all, Israel remains the holy of holies for American politicians.
With the reverence reserved for that country, VP Vance’s administration has never stopped the Jewish State from en masse execution of civilians and from the eradication of entire communities who refuse to submit to American and Israeli hegemony.
The next fact probably also bears repeating: Not once has JD Vance ever personally conveyed to his constituents a principled objection to the crimes of his administration and for those of Israel. No revulsion or reservations from VP Vance. His most coruscating critique of genocide has amounted to strategically intoning about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” a synonym for the practice of state-sponsored terrorism. From this stupid line, Vance has not strayed.
To hear VP Vance tell it, Israel has a bad hand to play. You know—nudge-nudge, wink-wink—it must deal with the caprices of the People of the region. “A ceasefire in that region of the world just means they’re shooting a little bit less at each other than they were before,” the jocular, pompous Vance told the presstitutes present at a June 18 presser. There, Vance also boasted about sending the Iranian economy into “a freefall,” and causing “a trillion dollars of damage to their industrial base over the last three months.”
Again, I have never heard JD Vance utter a meaningful, principled word in opposition to any depravity, much less Israeli depravity. I have, however, heard Vance echo Trump, the genocidaire. Without demarcation, Vance has blended into an administration that is terrorizing the world financially, economically and militarily. From Greenland, to Latin America to West Asia to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
Vance should repulse you, down to the garish eyeliner, which only enhances the “degeneracy of manners and morals” he and his administration represent.
With respect to the criminal, collaborative assault on Iran, Vance has been a “servile cheerleader for the war his boss … launched alongside Israel,” as more honest comment has characterized the Vance stance. Throughout Trump’s many ceasefire farces—all a fig leaf for US-Israel resolve to slowly dissolve Iran, and with it the Axis of Resistance—Vance has eagerly played his part, seconding Trump’s venomous genocidal threats against the Islamic Republic, as well as aping Trump’s idiotic atavistic aggression against other countries.
The insubstantial JD Vance might direct stale, totem words of warning toward those Israelis who speak ill of the Butcher of DC, Trump. But, for the Butcher of Tel Aviv Vance reserves the velvet glove: He took care to exempt Bibi from this particular wrongdoing, during the same June 18 presser, where Vance assured the presstitutes present that he speaks regularly with Bibi and has good rapport with him.
Essentially, Vance and Bibi are solid partners in vice.
Nonchalantly, VP Vance might opine, as he has, that Israel “can’t kill its way to security.” But that’s the extent of it. The carefully choreographed dance that American and Israeli “leaders” do for the benefit of the perfect American fools who vote for them continues uninterrupted.
A plurality of Israelis, on the other hand, are tickled pink by Bibi’s genocides in Lebanon and Palestine. As the brilliant Diana Buttu gloomily reported, Israeli political candidates are running on a plank of who can inflict more pain on their barely surviving Palestinian victims.
So don’t be swept to sea again, this time by Vance whom the irremediable corporate media (as well as some in the alternative media, regrettably) is portraying as a strident opponent of the war on Iran and wars for Israel. It’s nonsense on stilts.
What the VP is doing now is what he has done since the auspicious start of his political career:
Vance launched his career with a smug, self-aggrandizing book, in which he slimed his hillbilly relatives, even naming names. The book was very badly received by authentic “hillbillies.” The Establishment, however lapped it up and loved its author. Still does.
During the 2024 campaign, and before he was tapped by Trump, Vance did the same. He made the right noises, ones the voters wanted to hear, against “costly and unsuccessful interventions,” as he put it.
Stoutly strategic, in suiting-up for the 2028 race, Vance has dropped a book about his Catholicism. Nothing if not theologically inventive, the triangulating candidate has coopted his Catholic faith as a reason for his fealty to … Israel.
Israel is another exigency of the moment. Vance is reading the room again. America is just not that keen on Israel any longer—although, sadly for their souls, Americans have yet to turn on the Jewish State completely and altogether.
While opinion of Israel has undeniably plummeted in the US, the “bottom line,” sums Gallup soberly, is that “Americans retain a more positive view of Israel, with 46% viewing it favorably, than of the Palestinian Territories, at 37%”:
‘… Americans still have a more favorable view of Israel, as a country, than of the Palestinian Territories, though views of Israel are among the least favorable Gallup has measured historically. Meanwhile, views of the Palestinian Territories are the most positive to date, albeit still negative overall.’ (Gallup, February 26, 2026)
In all, don’t let your imagination run fevered with respect to Vance. Don’t get played again (and again, and again). When the powers that be, their sub-par publications and their strategists, pool their power to portray JD Vance as something other than what (as opposed to who) he is—one would hope your psychological-warfare antennae begin to transmit robust signals.
The reason I say that Vance is a “what”, not a “who”—that “what” is the better syntactic determiner to attach to VP Vance—is because the VP is a political production, not a real person. A production of the worst pedigree.
Vance is a creation of a tech billionaire PAC, a “tech-aligned super political action committee.”
Vance is the personal creation of Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal. Thiel was/is his mentor. Together, the wild-eyed Thiel and the ugly in-and-out Alex Karp founded, still manage, Palantir Technologies. How intimate are the Israel Genocidal Forces and the “CIA-backed” Palantir?
Conjugally intimate.
If the gateway to the internet is Google, and it is; not even Google—algorithmically set to defend Israel at all costs—can conceal the bonds that bind Palantir to the Serial Killer State’s crimes. Put it this way, Google (an aggregator for Zionism) and pro-Palestine sources are in agreement over the Palantir-IDF connection.
Palantir works closely with the IDF’s notorious Unit 8200, which is comprised of a select group of mama’s boys and girls, who snoop, hack, and assassinate in code and in practice. Unit 8200’s killer AI algorithms both calibrate and codify mass murder into the SS IDF’s military’s legal code. They have given themselves imprimatur to Press Kill on locating a single resistance fighter, amid up to 100 non-combatant family members, friends and neighbor. It’s not in violation of Israeli law. The individual is impugned by the flimsiest evidence.
Instead of in the dock, in the Hague, these computer killers, you should know, are also found in Silicon Valley, Boston’s high-tech corridor, and, presumably, in Washington State’s techno-town. These characters will certainly be coming to a community near you, near me, when JD’s friends and sponsors facilitate the assimilation of this human detritus into our communities, as they flee future International Criminal Court subpoenas.
Israel and Unit 8200 are the face of this global death industry. The SS IDF’s Artificial Intelligence products, out of Unit 8200, have, in particular, perfected the auto-kill computer systems known as “Lavender,” Daddy’s Home, and The Gospel, whose killer code has been applied to Gaza and Lebanon.
Palantir works with Unit 8200, on “war-related missions.” Coward Karp, Thiel’s partner, has proudly spoken of his company as being involved in “crucial operations in Israel.”
In backing Vance, co-founder Thiel and CEO Karp are joined by former tech executive and podcaster David Sacks, an influencer in the Vance orbit. Sacks is close, too, to censor-for-Zionism Elon Musk. Both backed Vance. AI-traders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz hobnob too in the Vance hood.
Speaking of Google, Vance’s venture capitalism company, Narya Capital, was sponsored by both Thiel and Google’s Eric Schmidt. So, it’s pointless asking Vance to ease up the Google algorithms.
Vance’s Deep Tech billionaire backers are anathema to human flourishing. Theirs is a system of plunder. They are princes who pauper the universe by their deadly fiat pursuits, financial, technocratic, environmental, military. These people and their necro-industries move humanity further away from community, from the locality; from honest industry, from real knowledge and production and into a consumer, bubble-driven technocracy, anchored in illiteracy, gambling, speculation, buying and selling intangible derivative products.
As if American communities are not already distressed; the infrastructure for AI promises to suck the life out of their natural environment, leaving bereft the communities in whose midst these hideous “data centers” are planted. AI Data centers are an assault-on-the-eye and on ethics. Their stratospheric costs as always are socialized; their profits privatized.
As I say, VP Vance is a slick production. The man is a particularly oleaginous political product, astroturf down to the (alleged) rug on his head.
Lest I forget, in his new book Vance cites Charlie Kirk, a mention that was probably focus-group tested. Metaphorically speaking, Vance is boiling the bones of poor murdered Mr. Kirk to make soup. Mr. Kirk is being exploited posthumously to shape discourse in politically advantageous ways.
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https://ilanamercersfpvresistance.substack.com
Ilana Mercer, paleolibertarian author, essayist and theorist, has been writing up an anti-war, anti-woke storm since 1998, starting in Canada. On arriving in the US, in 2002, her weekly column was right away syndicated. Mercer’s national syndication fell through shortly after due to writing in strident opposition to the war in Iraq. ILANA is described as “a system-builder. Distilled, her modus operandi has been to methodically apply first principles to the day’s events.” She’s Jewish, grew up in Israel ages five to nineteen, and left, at 19, never to return. She had refused to serve in the IDF, Israel’s compulsory military. Ilana’s focus since October of 2023 has been the genocide. A war against civilians is a war on civilization.
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Book Review
New book reveals how the Israel lobby destroyed US diplomacy with Iran
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran. … continue
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