Barnes Against the Blackout
By Spencer J. Quinn | The Occidental Observer | January 2, 2026
In short, there is no unique or special case against Nazi barbarism and horrors unless one assumes that it is far more wicked to exterminate Jews than to massacre Gentiles. While this latter value judgment appears to have become rather generally accepted in the Western world since 1945, I am personally still quaint enough to hold it to be reprehensible to exterminate either Jews or Gentiles.”
—Harry Elmer Barnes
INTRODUCTION
Anyone still questioning the relevance of World War II revisionism to politics today should realize how often our liberal, globalist elites not only invoke World War II, but also ignore, suppress, or besmirch revisionism. Whenever a mainstream personality invites a revisionist on his program, he gets swiftly rebuked and called a Nazi not only by the Left but also by people presumably on the Right. Recently, Jewish commentator Mark Levin invoked the massacre of German civilians during World War II to justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Clearly, whenever someone questions the authority of our liberal elites, they fire back with World War II. Since Adolf Hitler and the Nazis represent the most extreme form of evil and since globalist liberalism is the ideological opposite of Nazism, any form of oppression and aggression by globalist liberals is justifiable—as long as it is aimed against so-called “Nazis.” And if you happen to be against liberalism or globalism these days, it’s only a matter of time before you get dubbed a “Nazi.”
Historian Harry Elmer Barnes understood this perfectly over seventy years ago and promoted revisionism in the face of eerily similar oppression and backlash. Nine of his most incisive essays on the topic—written between 1951 and 1962—are collected in Barnes Against the Blackout, which was published by the Institute for Historical Review in 1991. Several important themes run through these essays. First, Barnes wishes to proselytize revisionism, and does so by constantly referencing and summarizing the great American works of revisionism of his day. These include:
- American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948) by Charles Beard
- America’s Second Crusade (1950) by William Chamberlin
- The Roosevelt Myth (1948) by John T. Flynn
- Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (1947) by George Morgenstern
- The Tragedy of Europe (1940-1945) and Makers of War (1950) by Francis Neilson
- Design for War (1951) by Frederic Sanborn
- Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941 (1952) by Charles Tansill
Given the suffocating interventionist hysteria of the time, major publishers declined to publish these volumes despite how many of them had been written by prominent, well-respected historians. Either the publishers were ardent interventionists themselves, or they feared backlash from anti-revisionists who wielded great power in America, just as they do today. Except for the Neilson volumes, which were self-published, these works found only two small publishing houses brave enough to publish them: Regnery and Devin-Adair.
Two later volumes which Barnes discusses often are The Origins of the Second World War (1961) by AJP Taylor and The Forced War (1961) by David Hoggan. (See part one of my three-part review of Hoggan here.) These prove to be slight exceptions to Barnes’ America-centric approach since Taylor was British, and, although Hoggan was American, his work was only available in German at the time.
Another crucial theme running through Barnes Against the Blackout is the presentation of the evidence for revisionism. How do we know the official war narratives are less correct than what the revisionists offer? Barnes is never shy about sharing this information—and there is a lot of it. As with many essay collections from a single author about a single topic, there’s much overlap. And that’s okay. It’s never too much of a good thing revealing how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “lied the United States into war.”
Describing exactly how the establishment suppressed revisionism in Barnes’ day emerges as another important theme. Barnes focuses on it most in his first two essays, both published in 1953: “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” (which also serves as the first chapter in his collection Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace from the same year) and “The Court Historians Versus Revisionism.”
Barnes’ final theme is also his most speculative: extending revisionism into the Cold War and postulating how it might avert a nuclear Armageddon. Here is where we find Barnes at his most stunningly prescient but also were he winds up, in spots, to be somewhat dated. Through it all, he utilizes George Orwell’s 1984, which never fails to produce a parallel for whatever point Barnes wishes to make. He explores this novel’s uncanny mirroring of reality in the book’s final essay, 1952’s “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity.”
Barnes Against the Blackout is also interesting for its seemingly negligible treatment of the Jews. Barnes says very little about them directly. However, this amounts to what I call an anti-theme because any reader familiar with Jewish power and supremacy can fill in the blanks where Barnes could have opined about the Jews, but didn’t—or at least didn’t seem to. This adds an extra layer of meaning to Barnes Against the Blackout.
THE EVIDENCE
The evidence for World War II revisionism which Barnes compiles appears in two distinct yet related branches of history: Pearl Harbor revisionism and Western European revisionism. For the former, he relies greatly on Tansill, Sanborn, and Morgenstern, and demonstrates how the U.S. not only goaded the Japanese into attacking as a “back door to war” against Japan’s ally Nazi Germany, but also knew where the attack would occur and approximately when, thereby outraging the American public into supporting military intervention. Barnes believes this “constituted one of the major public crimes of human history.”
The major facts line up as so:
- Roosevelt floated war with the Japanese as early as 1933 during one of his first cabinet meetings.
- The U.S. aided and encouraged Chiang Kai Shek to fight against the Japanese in China during the 1930s.
- Days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Roosevelt ignored Japanese Prince Fumimaro Konoye’s peace overtures which proposed humiliating concessions for Japan in return for “a little time and a face-saving formula.”
- In early 1941 Ambassador Joseph Grew had clearly warned that Pearl Harbor would be the likeliest point of attack. Despite agreements from Washington, US forces at Pearl Harbor remained unprepared for it.
- Secretary of War Henry Stimson stated on November 25, 1941 that, “the question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves.”
- The US had intercepted the “East Wind Rain” message three days before the attack, which clearly signaled Japanese intentions. Yet Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, who were responsible for Pearl Harbor, were kept in the dark about it.
Barnes presents most of this information while piercing holes in the specious logic of pro-interventionist works written by what he calls “court historians.” The two most relevant to Pearl Harbor are Herbert Feis, who wrote The Road to Pearl Harbor (1950), and Basil Rouch, who wrote Roosevelt from Munich to Pearl Harbor (1950). Barnes demonstrates how these historians either ignored, distorted, or misconstrued the above evidence. His point is clear: if the notions of Pearl Harbor being a surprise attack and Roosevelt’s naïve innocence about it were lies, there’s no telling what other lies had been told. It turns out there were many.
As for Western Europe, the facts are equally damning, if perhaps more voluminous. All of them cannot be included a single review, but the points Barnes most often bangs home include:
- The diplomatic history of the 1930s, as collected by Taylor and Hoggan, shows that Adolf Hitler did not want war and did what he could to avoid it.
- The diplomatic history also reveals that Hitler had made reasonable requests to Poland regarding the “international” (yet very German) city of Danzig; yet Polish leaders refused to negotiate at the urging of Lord Halifax in England who had given Poland a “blank check” assurance of English military support against Germany.
- In his last report as Chief of Staff in 1945, General George Marshall had claimed that Hitler “far from having any plan of world domination, did not even have any well-worked-out plan for collaborating with his Axis allies in limited wars, to say nothing of the gigantic task of conquering Russia.”
- Hitler had allowed tens of thousands of British troops to escape at Dunkirk “to promote peace sentiments in Britain.”
- Hitler had excellent reasons to invade the Soviet Union since the Soviets had “practiced sabotage, terrorism, and espionage against Germany, had resisted German attempts to establish a stable order in Europe, had conspired with Great Britain in the Balkans, and had menaced the Third Reich with troop concentrations.”
- Documentary evidence, such as “The German White Paper” found by the Germans after their conquest of Poland, demonstrates the extent to which American ambassador William Bullitt had assured Poland of American military support in the event of war with Germany. This was corroborated by Czechoslovak president Eduard Benés who claimed in his autobiography that on May 29th, 1939 Roosevelt himself had assured him that if war broke out in Europe, America would join the fight against Germany.
- The Lend-Lease program, the “Destroyer Deal” between Britain and the United States, the secret Tyler Kent documents, and Roosevelt’s 1941 meeting with Winston Churchill in Newfoundland offer circumstantial evidence that Roosevelt had clear belligerent intentions well before war was declared.
As with Pearl Harbor, Barnes often presents this evidence while reviewing books written by court historians. The most prominent of these is The Struggle Against Isolation, 1937–1940 (1952) by William Langer and SE Gleason. Despite never proclaiming Hitler’s innocence, Barnes repeatedly stresses that the man’s sole responsibility for starting the war is a complete falsehood—a falsehood which is the foundation of all post-1945 politics. In his 1962 essay “Revisionism and Brainwashing,” he states with characteristic flourish:
It is unlikely that there has been any vested interest in dogma, opinion, and politics since the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ equal in intensity to that built up around the allegation that Hitler was solely responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.
One interesting side note: Barnes implies more than once that it was Hitler’s actions in East Asia rather than Europe which truly antagonized Roosevelt. This contradicts some of Barnes’ other claims about Roosevelt’s opposition to Hitler vis-à-vis Europe. Take, for example, this paragraph from the essay “Rauch on Roosevelt”:
Indeed, it was only in 1938, when Hitler recalled his military mission from China, where Nazi officers had been directing the forces of Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese, that Roosevelt became actually hostile to Hitler in his policies, whatever the previous rhetoric. Right down through the Spanish Civil War, Mr. Roosevelt condoned when he did not favor, most of Hitler’s policies. Even as late as August, 1939, it appears from the Nazi Soviet Relations that Roosevelt was inclined to put nothing in the way of Hitler if he abandoned support of Japan, sent his military back to help Chiang, and delivered arms to the Chinese.
This is an interesting conundrum considering that Barnes brings up Benés’ recollection from May 1939 in the same essay.
THE BLACKOUT
Barnes spills a lot of ink outlining the ways in which revisionism was suppressed and marginalized after 1945. This often resulted from mainstream historians either having vested professional interests in perpetuating the “good war” myth of World War II—since they themselves promoted it while it was happening—or they sought the wealth, fame, and opportunity afforded to academics who adhered to the official narrative of the war.
In “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” Barnes enumerates the following methods of suppression:
- Excluding revisionists from official documents, while allowing state-approved court historians free access to them
Barnes describes how revisionist historians had been barred from viewing many sensitive documents and in some cases had had their own notes confiscated after viewing the ones they were allowed to see. Barnes concedes that Charles Tansill did ultimately view more documents than other revisionists, but Tansill did not enjoy the free reign of information afforded to court historians like Langer and Feis.
- Intimidating publishers into not publishing revisionism
Barnes describes how political pressure groups not only ensured that revisionist volumes would not sell, but made it clear that publishers releasing such material would face business-crippling backlash. Barnes recalls how a major publisher explained this to him despite his personal sympathies towards revisionism. Libraries, book clubs, and nationwide periodicals also contributed to this blackout. Barnes mordantly notes that the post-1945 “Blackout Boys” outdid the Nazis in suppressing honest intellectual inquiry.
- Ignoring revisionist works that do get published
Barnes demonstrates how the majority of revisionist works simply did not get reviewed in important mainstream publications—or when they did, as with the case of Charles Beard, they received either cursory attention or were maliciously panned. It almost goes without saying that this silent treatment was not afforded to court historians, whose works received ample praise everywhere. Barnes relays the following recollection from journalist Oswald Garrison Villard to illustrate his point:
I myself rang up a magazine which some months previously had asked me to review a book for them and asked if they would accept another review from me. The answer was, “Yes, of course. What book had you in mind?” I replied, “Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor.”
“Oh, that’s that new book attacking F.D.R. and the war, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how do you stand on it?”
“I believe, since his book is based on the records of the Pearl Harbor inquiry, he is right.”
“Oh, we don’t handle books of that type. It is against our policy.”
- Smearing revisionists personally
Barnes offers several examples of ad hominem attacks upon revisionist historians by the “Smearbund,” as he calls them. Often “isolationism” itself became a slur, as if labeling a person thusly were reason enough to dismiss him. More often, however, reviewers would attempt to ruin a revisionist’s reputation by imputing some evil or underhanded motive rather than argue the facts. Barnes notes how reviewers used phrases such as “bitterly partisan” or “blind anger” when describing Morgenstern while ignoring their own partisan anger. He also notes how one reviewer attempted to discredit Beard because he was hard of hearing and lived on a farm. One reviewer freely admitted to lambasting The Forced War without having read a word of it.
THE COLD WAR AND BEYOND
In his 1954 essay “The Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Have Come Home to Roost,” Harry Elmer Barnes introduces the idea of the “totalitarian liberal.” Such men (as exemplified by Arthur Schlessinger Jr.) distinguished themselves from pre-World-War-II liberals in their lust for power and abandonment of principled anti-interventionism. Such men make up James Burnham’s managerial elite as described in his 1941 work The Managerial Revolution, which Barnes discusses. Such people reject “the coexistence of conflicting political and economic systems,” and in so doing promote a “we or they psychosis” which enables elites to wage war in the name of “collective security,” a notion which Barnes finds utterly spurious. This is how it was during World War II and it was no different during the Cold War, according to Barnes, except that both sides were mutually deterred by nuclear weapons.
Barnes further extends revisionism into the Cold War in his 1958 essay “Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace.” He remembers how despite standing against World-War-II intervention, patriotic political organizations like America First later fell in line with Cold War intervention “because of the business advantages in industry, trade and finance which an extravagant armament program provided.” President Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex,” in other words. In light of this, Barnes’ passionate belief in the critical importance of revisionism becomes crystal clear. If standing against intervention in 1939 could have spared tens of millions of lives, standing against it during the Cold War could spare humanity a nuclear Armageddon. Indeed, the specter of World War III haunts much of Barnes Against the Blackout.
The final essay in the collection, “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity” takes the Cold War comparison even further. The “we or they psychosis” becomes the “war psychology,” which led to the absurdity of “perpetual war through perpetual peace.” This is straight out of Orwell’s 1984, which Barnes calls “the keenest and most penetrating work produced in this generation on the current trends in national policy and world affairs.” In the novel, Big Brother (whom Barnes considers a totalitarian liberal) manufactures phony outrages to prolong phony wars designed ultimately to consolidate very real power for himself and the elite classes. And the masses are either hypnotized enough by propaganda, intimidated enough by government, or distracted enough by entertainment to go along with it. Meanwhile, all reliable historical material is destroyed to disconnect the people from their past—just like what the Blackout Boys tried to do with revisionist accounts of World War II. Barnes sees 1984 as a direct mirror to reality.
And there is much truth to this, as shown by how Barnes uses his “Orwell Formula” to predict the Vietnam War as early as 1952:
The declining public interest in the Korean War has made President Truman and his associates the more willing to accept Churchill’s proposal to shift the main psychological impact of the cold war to Indochina, where it may both revive flagging American fear and excitement and also more directly protect adjacent British interests. The Orwell formula has been faithfully worked out in first directing fear and hatred against Nazi Germany, then against Soviet Russia, next shifting antagonism more toward Communist China, and then moving the chief center of interest in the struggle against the latter from Korea to Indochina.
Despite the clarity and prescience of this essay, Barnes makes a few questionable calls. In keeping with his aversion to the Orwellian doublethink of Cold War psychology and hysteria, he impugns the Truman Doctrine as a sham meant to “rehabilitate Mr. Truman’s fast-fading political prospects.” He also paints the USSR in a more benign light than it deserves—as if the United States were the aggressor during the Cold War and had no legitimate reason to employ deterrence or containment strategies against Communism. And in 1952, perhaps the Soviets did seem to some as unlikely to pose a real threat to American interests. But this was before they detonated their first hydrogen bomb in 1953. This was before their invasion of Hungary, and the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a host of other threatening actions. While Barnes makes excellent points about the injustice of blacking out revisionism, this was nothing compared to the psychological warfare the Soviets waged for decades against its own people which culminated in the terror famines, the Great Terror, and the gulags.
It seems that the Soviet Union during the Cold War made for a much more appropriate nemesis than did Nazi Germany. That Barnes seems to disagree, however, is not my bone of contention here. For all I know, Barnes is correct. However, the time he should have spent dispensing with counterarguments from seasoned cold warriors like George Kennan (who barely gets a mention in Barnes Against the Blackout) was instead spent admiring the life-imitating-art impact of 1984. Interesting and enlightening for sure, but hardly the final word on the subject.
THE JEWS
Direct treatment of the Jews in Barnes Against the Blackout rarely rises above incidental. Many of the “court historians” and “Blackout Boys” Barnes mentions do happen to be Jewish—Herbert Feis, Max Lerner, and Selig Adler are some obvious examples. However, just as many if not more are gentiles, such as William Langer, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Samuel Flagg Bemis. In his essays, Barnes never singles a person out as being Jewish. This certainly protects him from the charge of Jew-baiting, but it also prevents him from drawing conclusions from the fact that while a substantial proportion of anti-revisionists were Jews, none of the nine major revisionists mentioned in Part 1 were—clearly a meaningful data point.
When he does mention American Jews directly, it’s only to let them off the hook for pushing Roosevelt into war. In 1962’s “Blasting the Historical Blackout,” he states flatly that:
Roosevelt did not need any pressure from the Jews to create his interventionism and war policy. There is little evidence that he was deeply disturbed by Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy; he was much more annoyed by the fact that Hitler’s “New Deal” had succeeded in spectacular fashion while his own had failed to bring prosperity to the United States.
Maybe this is true, but it does not mean that influential Jews in media, finance, academia, and politics were not enthusiastic if not crucial facilitators of Roosevelt’s war policy. In his 2013 work How the Jews Defeated Hitler Benjamin Ginsburg describes how American Jews professed fierce loyalty to Roosevelt and did what they could to embroil the United States in a war with Germany. As I stated in my review:
Ginsburg describes how Jews in the private sector also war mongered during this time. The heavily Jewish Century Group called for a declaration of war against Germany following the surrender of France in 1940. The press also aided Jewish belligerence through its pro-Jewish bias. For example, when Lindbergh and the Century Group’s General John Pershing were giving speeches around the same time, the Jewish-owned New York Times gave Pershing front-page coverage and relegated Lindbergh to the back pages.
The Fight For Freedom Committee was more “all out” in its pro-war activities than the Century Group.
The FFF organized a nationwide effort –with the tacit support of the White House and the behind-the-scenes support of the British Embassy—to discredit isolationists and to mobilize public opinion against Germany and in support of American participation in the war.
And by “discredit,” of course, Ginsburg means ruthlessly slander and smear. The FFF thought nothing of labeling leading isolationists and America-Firsters like Lindbergh as Nazis, fascists, or dupes of the Axis. Ironically, they would often question the patriotism of such people as a form of intimidation which preceded the McCarthy era by over a decade. For example, because Senator Burton Wheeler wished to prevent the slaughter of American lives in an unnecessary war, the FFF declared that he was a “twentieth century Benedict Arnold.” The FFF also spied upon and collected compromising information on isolationists in Congress, such as Hamilton Fish. As it turned out, the FFF discovered that Fish’s people were distributing pro-German literature and were in contact with German agents. One of Fish’s secretaries went to prison for that. At the same time, however, Ginsburg informs us that the FFF was in constant contact with British agents. Just as insidiously, the FFF and other groups planted moles at isolationist rallies in order to disrupt them.
So perhaps President Roosevelt didn’t need Jews to change his mind, but he certainly needed them to change the minds of the millions of Americans he tried to deceive. Unfortunately, Barnes entirely avoids this point. His minimal treatment of the Jewish Holocaust in Barnes Versus the Black also deserves comment. He exerts almost no effort in placing it within his blackout vs. revisionists framework. Instead, he brushes it aside by saying that the Germans ultimately suffered more than the Jews did. He’s also skeptical that the Jewish Holocaust was the enormous atrocity it was purported to be:
There is little in the history of mankind more horrible than the sufferings of the Germans expelled from their eastern provinces, the Sudeten area, and other regions, some four to six millions perishing from butchery, starvation, exposure, and disease in the process. Their sufferings were obviously far more hideous and prolonged than those of the Jews said to have been exterminated in great numbers by the Nazis. The tragedy of Lidice was re-enacted by the Czechs hundreds of times at the expense of the Sudeten Germans during the expulsion. The Morgenthau Plan, which was inspired by Stalin and his associates and passed on to Henry Morgenthau by Harry Dexter White and other Soviet sympathizers, envisaged the starvation of between twenty and thirty million Germans in the process of turning Germany into a purely agricultural and pastoral nation.
Barnes never voices any support or approval of Adolf Hitler. He admits the man was at times cruel and erratic; then again so were Churchill and Roosevelt. As far as honest statesmanship goes, however, Hitler was actually on a higher plane than any of the Allied leaders. This is a demonstrable fact, one that is borne out by the diplomatic history of the 1930s as revealed by Hoggan. One does not have to love or even like Hitler to see that of all the major world leaders of the time, he was the least responsible for war. Barnes also refuses to demonize Hitler, and actually gives space for arguments claiming that Hitler had been too soft while conducting the war. To Hitler haters, this may sound like apologism, but it really isn’t. In “Blasting the Historical Blackout” Barnes dismisses Hitler’s Jewish policy as “folly” and correctly notes that it was this, rather than any foreign policy, which engendered anti-German hatred in Allied countries. He also recalls proudly how Rabbi Stephen Wise—the rabid, Hitler-hating Jew who led the worldwide Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany—once reprinted articles by him decrying Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Barnes even states that for a decade after 1945—which is smack dab in the middle of the Barnes Against the Blackout timeline—he had wished that Hitler had been assassinated in 1938 or early 1939, which would have avoided the catastrophe of a second world war.
In light of this, it cannot be said that within the pages of Barnes Against the Blackout Harry Elmer Barnes is anti-Semitic. He’s not philo-Semitic either. Instead, like any true historian, he’s anti-Falsehood and pro-Truth. Of course, he may be right or wrong, but never does he relinquish the discipline and objectivity required of great historians to keep civilization tethered to its past so it cannot go astray in its future.
CONCLUSION
There are many minor themes running through Barnes Against the Blackout which contribute to its value. Most notable is the topic of World War I revisionism, for which Barnes was an outright champion. His 1926 work Genesis of World War made him famous in this regard. Barnes often compares and contrasts revisionism from both World Wars and demonstrates how suppression and groupthink after the latter was much more insidious and comprehensive. He also offers examples of revisionism going back to antiquity.
Like Orwell, Barnes likes to invent neologisms and slogans. My favorites are “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” “globaloney,” the “Blackout Boys,” and the “Smearbund.” His 1962 essay “Revisionism and Brainwashing” is especially poignant in its descriptions of how modern Germans had been brainwashed into accepting their own culpability and shame. Some of the most ardent anti-revisionists of Barnes’ day were post-war Germans themselves, whom, Barnes suspects, feared the equivalent of a third Punic War. Barnes also drops historical Easter eggs everywhere. Did you know that the Roman theologian Paulus Orosius smeared the ancient pagans just as outrageously as court historian Herbert Feis smeared the Japanese? Or how about how Renaissance Scholar Lorenzo Valla proved that the 4th-century Donation of Constantine decree, which solidified the secular power of the Pope, was in fact an 8th-century forgery? It took Europe 350 years to come around to this fact. Barnes hopes it won’t take Europeans nearly as long to come around to the forged history of World War II.
If Harry Elmer Barnes has any personal bias in Barnes Against the Blackout it’s one that favors peace and an honest accounting of history. Because the so-called leaders of the free world gave us neither in the 1930s and 1940s, tens of millions needlessly perished. And with globalist liberalism still supreme today, being the root cause for mass third-world immigration into America and Europe, we continue to suffer from the effects of the catastrophe of World War II. Barnes himself said it best: “Revisionism is not only the major issue in the field of historical writing today but also the supreme moral and intellectual concern of our era.”
Blood Passover, English Version (Free Book)
The Bloody Satanic Sacrifice Rituals of the Jewish Race
Ariel Toaff | 2016
The following translation was performed free of charge to protest an injustice: the destruction by the ADL of Ariel Toaff’s Blood Passover on Jewish ritual murder. The author is the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, just outside Tel Aviv.
Dr. Toaff is uniquely qualified to write this book, being thoroughly familiar with the derivative literature in English, French, German and Italian, as well as the original documentary sources in Latin, Medieval Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish. This is not something he worked on in secret. On the contrary, he worked on it openly with his university students and colleagues in Israel for several years; one of his students was even going to publish a paper on the subject. The author is extremely careful about what he says, and his conclusions must be taken seriously. It reads like a detective story.
If it had been published in Israel, in Hebrew, no one would have cared. There are large bodies of literature in Hebrew that Jews do not wish Gentiles to know about. But Dr. Toaff’s announcement of its publication in Italy, in Italian, raised a worldwide firestorm of fury.
Under unbearable pressure, the book was withdrawn from publication. Come in out of the darkness, and strike a blow for the light.
How Intelligence, Politics, and Foreign Interests Shaped America’s Religious Movements
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | December 30, 2025
Christianity is back at the centre of American life, but not necessarily in the way most believers imagine. Churches are fuller, Christian language saturates politics, and faith-based identity has become a mobilising force once again. Yet beneath this revival lies a more unsettling reality: for decades, U.S. government agencies have treated religion not as sacred ground, but as strategic terrain.
This is not theory. During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA, recognised theology, doctrine, and religious institutions as instruments of influence. Faith was studied, guided, and at times quietly reshaped to serve geopolitical aims. The goal was rarely to destroy belief outright; rather, it was to domesticate it, align it, and render it strategically useful.
DOCUMENT: CIA’s use of journalists and clergy in intelligence operations – Select Committee On Intelligence Of The United States Senate One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, July 17, 1996 (Source to download full pdf: US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)
Initiatives like the Doctrinal Warfare Program illustrate the scale of this engagement. Churches with mass followings, moral authority, and transnational reach were not simply tolerated; they were targeted for influence. Orthodox congregations in the U.S. and abroad were monitored to ensure alignment with Western interests. Catholic seminaries became conduits for doctrinal shaping, funding networks, and leadership development favourable to U.S. objectives. Even Protestant and Evangelical movements, decentralised and spontaneous, were quietly steered through cultural engagement, philanthropic networks, and selective amplification of certain voices.
Sincere people seeking truth, purpose, and transcendence found themselves caught in influence systems they neither designed nor understood. Their worship, community, and faith became tools in a broader psychological and cultural battle they never consented to.
Doctrinal Warfare: When Theology Became a Battlefield
The CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Program, particularly its work with Roman Catholic institutions, offers a rare glimpse into how intelligence agencies approach faith. Unlike cinematic portrayals of spies manipulating events, this program operated through subtler, more effective channels.
Influence was exerted via:
- Funding pipelines and philanthropic foundations, directing resources to seminaries, clergy travel, and publications
- Theological conferences and academic exchanges, creating opportunities to propagate ideas aligned with U.S. interests
- Publishing houses, journals, and media networks, shaping what doctrines and interpretations were elevated
- Selected intermediaries, often clergy or theologians, who could subtly shift discourse without appearing coerced
The program’s goal was not to dictate belief directly but to frame the boundaries of acceptable belief. Anti-communism, Western liberal ideals, and American exceptionalism were integrated into theological narratives. Over time, certain interpretations were elevated while others, particularly liberationist, socialist, or anti-Western emphases, were sidelined.
This structural influence was not limited to Catholics. Orthodox churches in the diaspora, particularly in Eastern Europe and North America, were monitored for political alignment. Protestant and Evangelical networks, decentralised and emotionally charged, presented different challenges. Leaders resisted hierarchical oversight, yet strategic use of media, donor support, and conferences quietly aligned these movements with larger political and global objectives.
The CIA and allied agencies like the Israeli MOSSAD also monitored global religious developments, from Latin America to Africa, mapping networks of clergy, seminaries, and youth movements. Influence became a form of psychological warfare: it did not coerce, but conditioned; it did not command, but subtly steered. And it thrived where people least expected manipulation, within trusted communities, sacred spaces, and moral authority.
VIDEO: David Wemhoff discusses his book John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition: How the CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Changed the Catholic Church. (Source: thkelly67 | Youtube)
Calvary Chapel, Charismatic Leaders, and the Power of Movements
Few movements illustrate both the promise and vulnerability of modern American Christianity like Calvary Chapel.
Founded in the mid‑1960s by Chuck Smith in Costa Mesa, California, Calvary Chapel emerged amidst the counterculture and the Jesus Movement. Smith welcomed surfers, hippies, and spiritual seekers alienated by both secular culture and institutional religion. Informal, emotionally open, culturally adaptive—and extraordinarily successful—it grew from a small congregation into a network of more than 1,800 churches worldwide.
Despite the ongoing debate about whether Calvary Chapel was created by individuals controlled by intelligence agencies or by charismatic individuals, the movement demonstrates a lesson intelligence agencies recognised decades ago: youth-driven religious networks are powerful instruments of social, political and cultural influence.
Figures like Lonnie Frisbee, a magnetic and unconventional evangelist, helped ignite the Jesus Movement and played a decisive role in Calvary Chapel’s early expansion. Frisbee’s countercultural persona, preaching on beaches, leading communal outreaches, and drawing thousands of young converts, was a force institutions could admire, attempt to understand, but never fully control.
Similarly, Paul Cain, a prophetic figure in charismatic networks, influenced theological subcultures with a focus on vision, revelation, and spiritual authority. According to reports, Cain was also a consultant to the Paranormal Division of the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. Like Frisbee, Cain became controversial, not because he was a confirmed intelligence operative, but because charismatic authority challenges hierarchical control, making it both influential and unsettling.
Calvary Chapel and these figures illustrate a key pattern: movements can grow organically, capture attention, and mobilise communities, making them valuable, and sometimes threatening, to political and intelligence structures. While the direct manipulation claims and the CIA militant connection remain debatable, historical examples like the Doctrinal Warfare Program prove that states do seek to shape religious institutions at scale, often through indirect methods rather than overt control, hence the lack of evidence thereof.
From Pews to Power: Evangelical Politics, Israel, TPUSA, and the Cost of Capture
By the late 20th century, Evangelical Christianity had evolved into a political powerhouse. Networks that began as spiritual awakenings now functioned as engines of political mobilisation, with youth-oriented, media-savvy outreach bridging the gap between churches and the political arena.
TPUSA and Charlie Kirk
Organisations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) drew from these ecosystems, churches, conferences, campus ministries, and donor networks that had been shaped by decades of cultural, doctrinal, and ideological influence. Faith-language blended seamlessly with nationalism, free-market rhetoric, and civilizational anxiety, mobilising millions of voters.
The 2024 U.S. presidential election highlighted the real-world impact: Evangelical networks were decisive in returning Donald Trump to the White House. For believers, this was framed as a moral imperative or spiritual duty. For observers, it revealed how religious movements could be strategically leveraged within political frameworks.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, co-founder of TPUSA, shocked the nation and intensified national reflection. While there is no direct evidence ( at least not yet), linking churches or religious movements to the attack, the public reaction underscores a critical truth: powerful social networks rooted in faith become conduits of influence, whether intended or incidental.
As unsettling as it may be for the US government, it is worth noting that an intense social-media rift has emerged between TPUSA and podcaster Candace Owens, with competing narratives and accusations fueling distrust of official accounts surrounding the Charlie Kirk killing at UVU. Interestingly, some critics, Candace Owens among them, contend that the assassination of Charlie Kirk carries the hallmarks of a sophisticated intelligence-style operation, raising uncomfortable questions about whether certain figures within TPUSA may have been more deeply entangled in the events than the public has been led to believe. A decentralised, global network of self-styled citizen journalists is currently crowdsourcing footage, timelines, and open-source data, arguing that gaps and inconsistencies warrant deeper scrutiny beyond mainstream reporting. This phenomenon has amplified public pressure on agencies such as the FBI and on TPUSA to clarify unanswered questions and reconcile discrepancies in their account of the events of September 10, 2022.
Much like the unresolved shadows that followed the JFK assassination, Charlie Kirk’s killing has placed intelligence agencies, the military, the FBI, and even foreign actors like Israel at the center of a fraught public controversy, not through proven culpability (at least not yet), but through the swirl of suspicion and unanswered questions that inevitably surround the death of a defining religious and political figure in the American conservative sphere, leaving many to ask whether this is coincidence or something more troubling left unexplained.
Christian Zionism and Israeli Influence
No discussion of modern Evangelical power is complete without considering the strategic relationship between U.S. Evangelicals and the State of Israel.
This alliance is public and well-documented. Evangelical Christians, especially in the United States, became one of the most reliable pro-Israel voting blocs, influenced not just by policy arguments but by theological frameworks, Christian Zionism, which frames Israel as divinely central to biblical prophecy.
Israeli political leaders and advocacy organisations have cultivated this alignment via:
- Pastors’ conferences in Israel
- Evangelical media networks and tours
- Donor networks and lobbying partnerships
Organisations such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI) mobilise millions of voters, influence Congressional votes, and amplify foreign policy priorities. During the Trump administration, these networks helped drive decisions like the Jerusalem embassy relocation, Iran policy shifts, and strengthened U.S.-Israel alignment.
Yet this partnership is not uncontested. Younger conservatives and Evangelicals, particularly those aligned with independent thinkers like Charlie Kirk, increasingly question whether faith-based loyalty to foreign policy interests undermines America-first priorities. This generational tension highlights a growing divergence within conservative Christianity: between inherited religious-political alliances and emerging calls for national sovereignty, prudence, and domestic priority.
Moreover, the case of Turning Point USA illustrates how foreign influence can intersect with faith-based movements to shape political power. TPUSA’s open alignment with pro-Israel advocacy networks, from educational trips and conferences to donor engagement, demonstrates how theological and ideological commitments can be leveraged to advance strategic interests. This organisational alignment and associated messaging reveal a clear pattern of external actors using popular religious and political networks to sway domestic policy and voter priorities in the United States. This dynamic mirrors broader trends seen in movements like Calvary Chapel, where charismatic leaders and faith communities, intentionally or not, become conduits for shaping societal and political behaviour, highlighting how belief can be instrumentalised as a tool of influence. Believers are constantly reminded by pastors such as Garid Beeler, of VISION Calvary Chapel in Irvine, CA, that they need to unconditionally embrace the so-called God’s plan for Israel, which in their eyes legitimises Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the subsequent genocide, on the basis that the Lord specifically gave the Hebrews the land thousands of years ago.
Believers as Collateral in the Machinery of Influence
The story of institutional capture is not about disloyal Christians or malign churches. It is about power exploiting vulnerability.
The State Department, CIA, and allied actors like Israel did not invent faith crises, but they mastered the art of steering movements. They understood that belief motivates action, doctrine shapes identity, and institutions built on trust are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation.
Jay Dyer’s analysis, which we are featuring today, frames this landscape without demonising believers: faith itself is not the enemy, but it has been treated as a resource, managed, redirected, and at times hollowed out by forces whose goals are strategic, political and financial, rather than spiritual.
If Christianity is to withstand this era with integrity intact, it will require discernment, humility, vigilance, and, of course, the ability to separate the Gospel from the machinery of power. The war was never against believers, but belief, as an institution, has been under attack all the same.
Jay Dyer writes about the historical and geopolitical factors of state and private interference in ecclesial and religious affairs…
Institutional Capture Explained: The State Dept, CIA & Orthodox, Roman Catholic & Protestant Churches
The notion of state interference in the life of the Church is well known to students of Church history: Arian Emperors, Imperial support for iconoclasm, the Frankish and Germanic control of the papacy, as well as the investiture controversy should all come to mind. These famous scandals demonstrate the persistent cunning on the part of the state to install, influence and control religiosity in the realm, and to students of geopolitics this should also come as no surprise. What is odd, however, is that when this concept arises in modern discussions, it is relegated immediately to the domain of “conspiracy theory,” unless of course you are talking about the KGB and NKVD relationship to Russian clerics in the 20th century.
It only turns out to be a “conspiracy theory” when one points to the US State Department, the CIA, various foundations, NGOS and academic institutions (often closely linked to the intelligence apparatus) – all of whom openly seek to alter and change Orthodox theology, as well as the theological positions of the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions. First, it is worth noting that missionary work is a classic espionage cover: Obviously, I don’t mean all missionaries are spies, but that it has famously been a useful cover for espionage work, which is precisely why Russia has recently banned groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology. These entities can be used as a form of soft power or even more covert intelligence operations. Similarly, classic cover for foreign operations of this sort has used aid organisation cover, such as the Red Cross or USAID.
In fact, even mainline publications regularly report this fact, though it seems to be lost on so many, especially among the intelligentsia who pride themselves on grasping the practicality of realpolitik. Christianity Today writes:
“Many of America’s first spies were missionaries or came from missionary backgrounds. Often enough, they were the only Americans who had lived abroad—not just among locals but as locals. While other American spies learned about the world through books and couldn’t really grasp its full range of quirks and complexities—“like tourists who put ketchup on their tacos,” as Sutton puts it—missionaries spoke several languages and knew the subtle differences between local dialects. They understood local cultures and faiths from the ground up and knew intuitively how to navigate between them. They knew, in short, “how to totally immerse themselves in alien societies.” But they always identified first and foremost as Christians and as Americans, and when they were called to serve the nation, they did not hesitate to do so.”
This was not unique or new; Orthodox monastic spies were also used by British intelligence in the infamous case of “Father Dimitrios”:
“The story of Father Dimitrios, or David Balfour, who turned out to be a British spy in pre-World War II Greece, is a fascinating yet relatively little-known chapter in modern Greek history.”
Father Dimitrios, the monk with the voice of an angel, turned out to be a spy for the British Intelligence Service. That’s a shame because the mission and wartime actions of the British priest could make a nail-biting spy novel or film.
From 1937 to 1939, the English spy, wearing his priest’s robes and his long, bifurcated beard, performed his ecclesiastical duties close to Greece’s royal family. His relations with King George II, the successor to King Paul and Princess Frederica, were especially close. His access to the royal palace undoubtedly gave him access to valuable information.
British Intelligence must have learned a great deal about the Greek royal family during these crucial prewar years. King George II was a paternal first cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Members of the royal family often confessed to their beloved priest. At the same time, Balfour, under the cover of Father Demetrios, forged important acquaintances with high-ranking military officers and politicians with the blessings of the palace.
During World War 2, for example, dozens of missionaries were using their clerical cloaks as their espionage cloak, spying for the Allies. Time Magazine explains:
“His [Protestant Missionary Alfred Eddy] most audacious undertaking included a plot to “kill,” as he described it, “all members of the German and Italian Armistice Commission in Morocco and in Algeria the moment the landing takes place.” In a straightforward and matter-of-fact memo, he told OSS head William Donovan that he was targeting dozens of people. He additionally ordered the executions of “all known agents of German and Italian nationality.” Never one to mince words, he called the proposal an “assassination program.”
To orchestrate his bloodthirsty plot, Eddy hired a team of Frenchmen. He planned to frame the executions as a “French revolt against Axis domination.” “In other words,” he explained to Donovan, “it should appear that the dead Germans and Italians were ‘the victims’ of a French ‘reprisal against the shooting of hostages by the Germans and other acts of German terror,” and not an OSS operation.
At about the same time that he was recruiting French hitmen, he wrote to his family about the sacrifices he was making for Lent. He described the Easter season as “abnormal” this year. “I am certainly abstaining from wickedness of the flesh,” he confessed. With his wife thousands of miles away, that was not too difficult. “I haven’t even been to a movie since Lisbon, I don’t overeat anymore, and I allow myself a cocktail at night, but never before work is all done.”
And,
“American intelligence leaders had stumbled upon the fact that missionaries make great spies. They have excellent language skills, they know how to disappear into foreign cultures, and they are masters at effecting change abroad. But while missionary spooks believed that their wartime work was necessary, they also wrestled with the moral ambiguities inherent in their actions.”
This is just one example among countless, but it serves to illustrate the point – in this case, the supposed man of the cloth is engaged in assassination missions. A fortiori, the US Government would also see the power in utilising religion for the promotion of Americanism. During the Cold War this was ramped up to extreme degrees as CIA operatives and strategists like C.D. Jackson allied with media magnate and Skull & Bonesman Henry Luce – of Time Magazine, to recruit various prominent academics and Jesuits like John Courtenay Murray to help ensure the Vatican and in particular the Second Vatican Council, would include in its dogmatic degrees new doctrinal statements that were amenable to Americanism. This unique style of interference was even highlighted by a congressional investigation in 1996 into the CIA’s use of ministers and journalists here (including Peace Corps Volunteers).
This was combined with separate operations from Helliwell, Angleton, Donovan & Colby to utilise Opus Dei, the Vatican Bank and drug running for black operations funding in the now infamous Operation Gladio, which also saw the See of Rome aligning itself with organised crime to supposedly “save the world from communism.” However, as Catholic lawyer David Wemhoff has demonstrated in his masterful and unparalleled 800-page, vastly sourced tome, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life Magazine and the American Proposition, Jackson’s now declassified “Doctrinal Warfare Program” led the Roman Church into the hands of new masters at the US State Department and the CIA.
Indeed, this is precisely why Pre and Post-Vatican 2 popes, from Pius XII to Paul VI to John Paul 2 were meeting with Colby, Kissinger and William Casey on a consistent basis during the Cold War. And, if you are a perceptive reader, you can already piece together the blackmail and compromise operations that the world has seen through the Epstein saga were simply a window into how these institutions were similarly blackmailed and compromised, which is why there have been so many scandals in the Roman Church concerning pedo crimes, and likely relates to why Benedict resigned.
In regard to the Protestant Churches, the Rockefeller family is quite proud of, and openly brags about their influence and dominance of the Protestant religious world, through their donations and tax-free foundation offerings. These offerings, of course, come with strings attached, such as the decision to push the newly formed “social gospel” concept of the early 20th century. Eventually, the Rockefellers were creating entire seminaries and universities dedicated to the promotion of David’s influences from Keynesian/Fabian and Austrian economic theory, as well as Malthusianism and eventually technocracy, through the recruitment of Zbigniew Brzezinski after the publication of his seminal 1970 text, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era.
Few know David Rockefeller himself spent time in intelligence work and transferred this knowledge of networking and banking operations into his business ventures, as he discusses in his Memoirs. In fact, Brzezinski’s book also includes chapters discussing the role of the Post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholic Church in the promotion of Americanism and technocratic hegemony. It should also be noted that the Rockefellers didn’t merely have an interest in steering the Protestant and evangelical churches into liberalism and modernism, but also set their sights on Rome and Orthodoxy, as Wemhoff notes.
For the Orthodox World, the price of siding between two thieves came at a high cost, as the Orthodox England blog notes, concerning the place of the Russian Orthodox Church between the KGB and the CIA. Similarly, it has recently been declassified that the OSS placed pressure on the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the CIA said:
“In an OSS interoffice memo dated March 26, 1942, an intelligence agent named Ulius L. Amoss wrote this to a fellow OSS agent named David Burns:
The Archbishop was extremely pleased at having met and lunched with you. He has told me that the entire facilities of his organisation are at our disposal. He put it in these words: “I have three Bishops, three hundred priests and a large and far-flung organisation. Everyone under my order is under yours. You may command them for any service you require. There will be no questions asked, and your directions will be executed faithfully. Please tell Mr Burns for me that this is so.”
A month later, on April 25, the 56-year-old Greek Archbishop attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He was turned down.
A few weeks after that, on May 14, Ulias Amoss, the same intelligence agent who wrote the March 26 memorandum, wrote a letter to Athenagoras, thanking him for the Greek Archdiocese’s ongoing cooperation, saying, in part, “The care with which your Bishops and Priests have cooperated has impressed everyone and the report that, perhaps, as many as a hundred thousand names will be returned to us is astounding.” On the same day, William J. Donovan himself — the head of the OSS — also wrote to Athenagoras, “The reports and descriptions of Greek-American youth of military age so kindly undertaken by you are coming in in splendid volume. The care with which Your Grace has managed this important service is of great interest to our armed services, and I wish to express my deep appreciation for your loyal and patriotic assistance.”
This special relationship with US intelligence never ended and continues to this day as the backdrop to the actions of the Phanar and GOARCH in the US:
“Archbishop Elpidophoros, the head of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, was the honoured guest at the National Intelligence University in Maryland earlier this week, where he delivered an address to the U.S. intelligence community.
The university brings together faculty and students from all 18 of the nation’s intelligence communities.
As the Greek Archdiocese notes, the Archbishop’s talk on “Russia’s Weaponisation of Religion in the Ukraine Conflict” was the first-ever address from a GOARCH leader to the U.S. intelligence community. At the same time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has a long history of cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community, as detailed in documents released by the CIA.”
While it may seem like a far-off footnote in a dusty history book on Byzantium or the Borgia Papacy, the reality of state and private interference (and control!) in religion is a stark reality. The goal of the state is the maintenance and projection of power, simply put. Religion is a tremendous force for control and power in the world, both good and evil, but for the state, religion is simply another domain of human culture for the projection of power, and in today’s world, that is most often projected as soft power.
If you have not read Joseph Nye’s famous essay on Soft Power, I recommend it here. Understanding soft power gives a window into the attitude of the power elite and their perspective on religions and sects as tools – pawns on the grand chessboard, to use Brzezinski’s terminology. One need only think of Brzezinski’s own recruitment and usage of what would become Al Qaeda in the Soviet War in Afghanistan in Operation Cyclone – the usage of a radical religious sect for US objectives – as a classic example.
Gaza races to preserve what remains of its 5,000-year-old archaeological legacy
Under constant Israeli bombardment, Palestinians dig through rubble to prevent the erasure of a history thousands of years in the making.
Volunteers carry an antique pillar from the ruins of the Guerrara Museum after it was damaged in Israeli bombing [TRT World] / TRT World
By Doaa Shaheen | TRT World | December 29, 2025
For more than five millennia, Gaza has stood at the crossroads of civilisations, an ancient port on the Mediterranean linking Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia.
Long before it became synonymous with siege and war, the narrow coastal strip was a passageway for empires, armies, pilgrims, and traders, each leaving traces still buried beneath its soil.
Today, as Gaza’s cities are reduced to rubble from Israel’s brutal assault, another, quieter destruction is unfolding: the systematic loss of cultural memory embedded in museums, artefacts, textiles, and archives that document thousands of years of human history.
Across the devastated enclave, historians, volunteers, and museum founders are risking their lives to rescue what remains, often with bare hands and improvised tools, believing that preserving heritage is inseparable from preserving identity.
Amid the rubble of bombardment and beneath the ominous hum of drones in the so-called Zero Line area east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Mohammed Abu Lahia and his companions risk their lives.
Their mission is to rescue archaeological and heritage artefacts from the ruins of the Al-Qarara Cultural Heritage Museum, in a desperate attempt to prevent the erasure of Palestinian cultural memory after Israeli forces destroyed the museum during the war.
![Historical artefacts displayed at a Gaza museum before Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023 [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/7a5d28d8c8a428a2c55e5e7b306ce95fd39c83a17770c17f4280cfc7150d3ff0.webp)
Historical artefacts displayed at a Gaza museum before Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023 [TRT World]
The urgency reflects Gaza’s extraordinary historical density. Over centuries, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mamluks, and Ottomans all ruled or passed through the territory.
Legendary figures such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte once stood on its soil. Each era left behind material traces – pottery, mosaics, inscriptions, textiles – many of which ended up in local museums like Al-Qarara.
“The Al-Qarara Cultural Heritage Museum was founded in 2016 in response to the community’s need for a cultural institution to preserve Palestinian heritage from being lost,” says Abu Lahia, the 30-year-old founder.
From its inception, the museum relied on donations from local families who entrusted it with heirlooms and antiquities meant to testify to Palestine’s long history and everyday life across generations.
Before its destruction, “the museum housed about 3,500 pieces narrating 5,000 years of Palestinian history, from Roman, Byzantine, and Mamluk eras to traditional jewellery,” Abu Lahia adds.
“Only about 1,000 pieces have been saved from the destruction through arduous manual search, due to the lack of specialised excavation machinery.”
Gaza’s antiquities are dispersed across public institutions and private museums established by enthusiasts driven by a desire to protect what they see as shared inheritance.
The Israeli war machine has impacted all museums, causing varying degrees of damage and the loss or theft of parts of their collections.
UNESCO has verified damage to at least 110 sites of cultural, historical, and religious significance across Gaza since the war began, including mosques, churches, archaeological sites, museums, and historic buildings, figures that continue to rise as access remains limited.
Abu Lahia explains the rudimentary salvage operation: “We are racing against time to pull out archaeological pieces. Every passing moment is from the lifespan of Palestinian history and these antiquities. We don’t want to lose what remains.”
With no access to modern tools, the team wraps artefacts in cloth and blankets, pads them with plastic and sponge, and stores them in vegetable crates, fruit boxes, or discarded humanitarian aid cartons. Heavy stone columns are dragged out using strong ropes and moved to safer locations.
Twenty-five volunteers, young men and women trained in history, archaeology, architecture, and fine arts, are participating in the effort. They view their work not as cultural preservation alone, but as resistance to erasure.
Alongside physical rescue efforts, the team is building a digital archive, recognising that memory must survive even when objects cannot.
Using a makeshift mobile studio, salvaged items are photographed, catalogued, assigned serial numbers, and uploaded under the museum’s name, ensuring that even if the artefacts are lost, their documentation endures.
![Mohammed Abu Lahia sorting artefacts after they were retrieved from under the rubble of Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/09d39a5f38a4bb205b72586e60c012ee03e9e3259922a7283c4d3f1189d39fe4.webp)
Mohammed Abu Lahia sorting artefacts after they were retrieved from under the rubble of Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]
Abu Lahia emphasises, “The museum has not ended despite the destruction. What survived under the rubble and what was documented digitally confirms that Palestinian memory is still alive.”
Saving the Palestinian Thobe
In another corner of Gaza, Suhaila Shaheen is fighting a parallel battle to preserve a different form of heritage: embroidered Palestinian dress.
The Palestinian thobe, known for its colourful stitches, encodes geography, social history, and identity—distinguishing villages, cities, and even family lineages.
For many Palestinians, it functions as a textile archive passed from one generation to the next.
Founded in December 2022, the Palestinian Thobe Museum in Rafah was both a personal dream and a cultural statement for Dr Shaheen. The university professor specialising in art and technology views safeguarding embroidered dress as preserving stories often excluded from official archives.
The museum, funded entirely by Shaheen and her fundraising efforts, became the first Palestinian museum dedicated to embroidered thobes founded by a woman.
Its collection grew to more than 5,600 heritage items, including around 340 hand-embroidered Palestinian thobes representing villages of the Gaza district, alongside original historical documents, rare photographs, agricultural tools, and a Bedouin tent.
Israeli bombardment on October 10, 2023, erased the museum entirely.
From beneath the rubble, Shaheen was able to recover only 64 thobes, some intact, others torn or eroded by the bombing.
“These are what remain of the museum’s memory,” she says. “I carry them with me wherever I go.”
Unable to save most of the collection physically, Shaheen turned to digital preservation, compiling photographs and records taken by herself, journalists and visitors.
“I’m working on gathering everything available digitally, so the story isn’t completely lost,” she explains.
Looting Gaza’s antiquities
Gaza-based Palestinian heritage expert Hammoud Al-Dahdhar describes the current situation as catastrophic.
In Gaza City’s Old Quarter, the iconic Great Omari Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in the Strip, has been left partially destroyed, its distinctive minaret reduced to a broken stump.
Nearby, the 700-year-old Qasr al-Basha, once a Mamluk palace and later the National Museum, has been struck and bulldozed. Thousands of artefacts it housed are now missing or unaccounted for.
![A broken plaque is all that remains of the Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/f7395cc9d21597d1f1cbc9436ef97861991255a41a2a97f9eec0f63a3d7baf02.webp)
A broken plaque is all that remains of the Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]
Al-Dahdhar points an accusatory finger at the Israeli occupation for looting thousands of archaeological pieces from Gaza’s historical sites, citing the disappearance of more than 17,000 artefacts from Qasr al-Basha alone.
Manual rescue efforts, he says, are carried out amid unexploded ordnance, shortages of equipment, and ongoing bombardment. Digital documentation faces its own risks, including cyberattacks aimed at erasing records.
“These are emergency first-aid operations. We document what is missing, what is looted, and what is destroyed, under impossible conditions,” Al-Dahdhar tells TRT World.
International institutions have also sounded the alarm.
During the war, the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem reported that tens of thousands of archaeological artefacts from Gaza, including material excavated from the UNESCO-listed Byzantine monastery of Saint Hilarion, had been stored in a facility in Gaza City for safekeeping.
The site was managed and secured by Premiere Urgence Internationale, a humanitarian organisation that has worked for years on the protection of Gaza’s historical heritage while providing vocational training and livelihoods for young Palestinians.
Despite the facility’s protected status under the UN’s deconfliction system, the Israeli military ordered its evacuation ahead of an air strike.
![A mannequin on display at the Palestinian Dress Museum before its destruction [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/ae1e5b20d835c73edd4acb9aaed3aa1913cbfd4c24c1db9b8cfbd1b21812a978.webp)
A mannequin on display at the Palestinian Dress Museum before its destruction [TRT World]
Under sustained risk of bombardment and amid severe shortages of time and resources, 70 percent of the collection, representing more than 25 years of archaeological research, was moved before the Israeli attack. The rest, destroyed.
Scholars and heritage experts have warned that the destruction of such material constitutes an irreparable loss, not only to Palestinians but to global understanding of early Christian and ancient Middle Eastern history.
Al-Dahdhar stresses that the stakes extend beyond preservation for its own sake.
“This is about protecting collective memory. Without it, identity itself is endangered.”
Honduras: The Making of a Controlled Democracy
Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA) Praises Honduras’ Opening Diplomatic Mission In Jerusalem & Later Its Embassy. (Source: Zionist Organisation of America | ZOA)
21st Century Wire | December 22, 2025
Tegucigalpa — The streets of Honduras’ capital were tense as the results of the 2025 elections unfolded, a nation holding its breath amid suspicion, polarisation, and uncertainty. Beneath the visible turmoil lies a deeper story: for over a century, foreign powers have shaped Honduran politics, society, and culture, deliberately fracturing communities and weakening democratic institutions. Once a predominantly Catholic country with a cohesive social fabric, Honduras now grapples with divisions along religious, social, and racial lines, leaving its citizens vulnerable to manipulation and its democracy under strain.
Israel’s influence in Honduras extends far beyond diplomacy or military cooperation. Historical ties, dating back to the early 20th century with figures like Samuel Zemurray, established patterns of economic and political leverage to control Honduran leadership while advancing pro-Zionist objectives. In modern times, presidents, including Juan Orlando Hernández, have strengthened these ties through military cooperation, arms purchases, and symbolic gestures, such as relocating the Honduran embassy to Jerusalem in 2021. Israeli influence also penetrates civil society, promoting Zionist ideology, synagogue expansion, and religious conversion programs, including Protestant-to-Judaism conversions, that embed loyalty to Israeli interests within key segments of society. Four figures who held or effectively controlled the Honduran presidency, Juan Lindo, Ricardo Maduro, Juan Orlando Hernández, and Samuel Zemurray, have been Jewish or closely aligned with pro-Zionist interests, highlighting the deep historical roots of Israel’s influence in the country. These interventions reinforced a pro-Israel political bloc, cultivated an environment where dissent is socially penalised, and subtly shaped political allegiances, a dynamic clearly evident in the 2025 elections.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, right, shakes hands with his Honduran counterpart, Lisandro Rosales as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, top right, speaks with Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez during the signing of bilateral agreements at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, June 24, 2021. (Source: Heidi Levine/AFP via Getty Images)
The CIA has complemented Israel’s long-term strategy by employing ostensibly humanitarian or religious NGOs, such as USAID, World Vision, and Church World Service (CWS), to fracture Honduran civil society. By promoting Protestantism over the historically cohesive Catholic majority and supporting programs that exploit divisions along religious, racial, and social lines, including tensions within the Garifuna community influenced by organisations such as OFRANEH, the CIA created fertile ground for ideological manipulation and elite control. Together, the actions of Israel and the CIA have destabilised Honduran society, skewed politics in favour of external interests, and amplified societal divisions. The 2025 elections starkly revealed these dynamics, exposing a democracy heavily shaped by decades of foreign intervention and manipulation.
While Honduras showed some symbolic independence, such as recalling its ambassador from Israel in November 2023, there is a strong case to argue that the deep structural influence of Israel and the U.S, reinforced over decades through military, economic, religious, and civil society channels, created a 2025 electoral landscape strongly favourable to a pro-Israel government, as confirmed by The Times of Israel. Nasry Asfura, promoted by President Trump, embodied this alignment, openly supporting Israeli interests and continuing policies that reinforced the country’s pro-Zionist orientation, making the elections less a contest of domestic politics and more a predictable outcome of long-term foreign influence.
Honduras is a nation under the shadow of powerful foreign influences, where politics, religion, and society have been quietly shaped for decades. The following article investigates how Israeli interests, CIA-backed NGOs, and elite manoeuvring have fractured communities, manipulated loyalties, and set the stage for the tensions that exploded during the 2025 elections…
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, September 1, 2019 (courtesy Western Wall Heritage Foundation)
Hondurans Curiously Ambivalent On Palestinian Genocide
Thomas Tomczyk writes for PÄYÄ Magazine…
Hondurans have been mostly silent regarding the reported genocide taking place in Gaza over the past two years. The question is: Why such silence? Are Hondurans unaware of the massacres and starvation used against Palestinians in the occupied territories? Do they not care, or are they perhaps afraid of something? “To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticise,” the saying goes.
There was one example of Hondurans protesting Israeli crimes against Palestinians during the Gaza war after the Hamas attack and Israeli stand-down operation of October 7. On October 23, 2023, dozens of Honduran Palestinians demonstrated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Since then, the long-established and influential Arab Palestinian community has been mostly silent about the plight of their Palestinian relatives amid Israel’s escalating atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank.
There is certainly a disconnect, as the 300,000 members of Honduras’ Christian Palestinian community are the third and fourth generations to be born outside of Palestine. Their ancestors began arriving in Honduras from Palestine in the 1890s, and today their connection to and knowledge of Palestine and Israel is mostly superficial. Most Honduran Palestinians don’t know the full scale or nature of the barbarism inflicted on their compatriots who stayed behind and continue to face Israeli oppression, violence, discrimination and now genocide. A Honduran Palestinian businessman told me that many in his community are afraid of being accused of anti-Semitism and facing potential consequences. Simply acknowledging that a systematic genocide may be occurring in Gaza is viewed by some as anti-Semitic.
It is hard not to notice. Since October 2023, Israeli military actions have resulted in the deaths of many Christian civilians in Gaza who have nothing to do with Hamas. In October 2023 Israeli military bombed a Christian orthodox church and murdered 18 Christians. In December 2023, Israeli snipers executed two Palestinian women on the Gaza Holy Family Catholic church property. In July 2025, Israeli soldiers fired a tank shell at a cross of the same church, killing three and wounding a catholic priest. While this all fell on deaf ears in Honduras, it does seem that the Israelis don’t like Christians very much.
One person who spoke with concern about the plight of Palestinians was President Xiomara Castro. In November 2023, the Honduran government recalled its ambassador to Israel for consultations due to escalating massacres of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. President Castro described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide during a U.N. speech in September 2024. Still, words have not turned into actions. Honduras is nowhere near recognising Palestine as an independent state or moving its embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv. In fact, Honduras remains firmly in the pro-Zionist camp as it continues to support Israel’s military by purchasing 15 Black Mamba military vehicles. Pro-Zionist sentiment is strong in Honduras. Israeli flags are flown throughout the country. Hondurans increasingly wear the Star of David around their necks, and taxi drivers display the Israeli emblem on their vehicles. Honduran roots of Zionism and Judeophilia run deep, well over a century.
The country now counts three of its presidents to be Jewish: Juan Lindo, Ricardo Maduro and Juan Orlando Hernández. In fact, you could argue that there was a fourth Jewish president of Honduras who ruled the country from 1911 well into the 1950s. Samuel Zemurray, the Banana King, was responsible for the 1911 Honduran presidential coup that secured land and concessions for his United Fruit banana company. American mercenaries hired by Zemurray deposed President Miguel Dávila and made Honduras his “banana republic.” Zemurray installed his puppet, Manuel Bonilla, as president and received 20,000 acres of land in return. After President Bonilla’s death in 1913, Zemurray continued to be a virtual puppet master of several other Honduran presidents.
In 1947, the World Zionist Organisation tasked Zemurray with delivering Honduras’ U.N. vote in support of the creation of the state of Israel. Reportedly, in a personal phone call, Zemurray tried to bribe then-Honduran President Tiburcio Carías Andino. Because of pressure from the Honduran Palestinian community, Honduras abstained from voting for Israel. Since then, and with plenty of CIA help, Christian Zionism has made many inroads in Honduras. CIA fronts such as World Vision, USAID and Protestant Church World Service for many decades worked to undermine the cohesiveness of Honduran society.
Since the 1950s, the CIA, which some critics considered an Israeli-captured agency, promoted the establishment and expansion of Protestant churches in Latin America. The excuse given was that Protestants were more anti communist and a good alternative to the Liberation Theology preached in many Catholic parishes.
The percentage of Catholics in the country fell from 97% in the 1960s to 47% today. Protestant denominations undermined the Catholic cohesion of Honduran society. Religiously divided Honduras is much easier to manipulate, with one denomination pitted against another. Sixty years later, those Catholic-to-Protestant converts have not only become Zionists, but they are also actually converting to Judaism. According to El Heraldo, 37 families converted to Judaism and, in 2022, established Honduras’ first synagogue. The San Pedro Sula Mishkan Shlomo synagogue members advertise their plans to Judaise and convert thousands of Hondurans.
“The plan is for the expanded synagogue to be a six-story, shaped like a Star of David building and be able to accommodate 456 people. This would make it the biggest synagogue in Latin America.”
Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández was key in the expansion of Judeophilia and Zionism in Honduras. Just in terms of economy, according School of the Americas, between 2013 and 2019, Honduras purchased $342 million in military and surveillance equipment from Israel. Basically, Honduras has been supporting Israel to the tune of around $5 million a month for that period. Road to conversion of Juan Orlando Hernández began in the early 1990s when he completed a one-year Mashav leaders course in Israel. Israel’s investment in JOH obviously paid off as he learned Hebrew, moved Honduras’ embassy to Jerusalem in 2021, and converted to Judaism with his entire family in 2021. The last one, right before going to a US jail for 45 years, was convicted of decade’s long drug and arms smuggling operation.
Honduras is likely getting set up for a rough ride. Israel funded military dictatorships where even the CIA would not venture. Israel trained and supplied arms to many bad actors that destabilised the region: the genocidal regime in Guatemala in the 1980s, Colombian drug smuggling death squads, Los Zetas drug lord Heriberto Lazcano. “Israel has given its soldiers practical training in the art of oppression and in methods of collective punishment. Some of those officers choose to make use of their knowledge in the service of dictators,” said Israeli general Mattityahu Peled.
“Honduras will likely become an increasingly polarized and violent society.”
There is also a growing Israeli pressure on the Honduran public by co-opting its anti-Gaza genocide sentiment into nebulous movements. The normally restrained Honduran Ministry of Foreign Affairs complained that Israeli Ambassador Nadav Goren meddled in internal Honduran affairs by meeting with Protestant church leaders preparing for the August 16 March for Peace and Democracy. “We express to the Honduran people our deep discomfort at their participation in said public event. The involvement of a diplomat not only ignores his limitations,” stated the Honduran ministry. There are plenty of other players seeking discord. Until its recent defunding by the Trump administration, San Pedro Sula was also home to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). The worldwide HIAS organisation does not assist Palestinians, Arabs or Christians in moving to Israel, but uses U.S. tax dollars to help move undocumented migrants through Honduras to the United States.
For decades, certain interest groups have promoted racial resentment —particularly among Black communities— while fostering a sense of guilt among white, European and Christian populations. In Honduras, this strategy is reflected in the 23-year-old movement known as the Fraternal Organisation of Honduran Blacks (OFRANEH), which has received funding from organisations such as American Jewish World Service and the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros. These groups have been involved in fermenting revolutions, protests and underhanded political activism around the world. Just as with organisations such as Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA, which were recently designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organisation, OFRANEH fosters division, racial tension, grievances and expectations of compensation in the historically well-integrated Garifuna community. Honduras, in the second quarter of the 21st century, will likely become an increasingly polarised and violent society. Powerful interest groups are working hard to implement this, and Roatan is increasingly a party to those tensions. In September 2025, OFRANEH conducted demonstrations in Cayos Cochinos, and in March 2025, there were protests in Diamond Rock. Tensions on Roatan are just starting to heat up.
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From the Archives
Sugar: Killing us Sweetly
Staggering Health Consequences of Sugar on Health of Americans
By Dr. Gary Null | Global Research | February 3, 2014
In September 2013, a bombshell report from Credit Suisse’s Research Institute brought into sharp focus the staggering health consequences of sugar on the health of Americans. The group revealed that approximately “30%–40% of healthcare expenditures in the USA go to help address issues that are closely tied to the excess consumption of sugar.”[1]The figures suggest that our national addiction to sugar runs us an incredible $1 trillion in healthcare costs each year. The Credit Suisse report highlighted several health conditions including coronary heart diseases, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which numerous studies have linked to excessive sugar intake.[2]
Just a year earlier in 2012, a report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta appearing on 60 Minutes featured the work of Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist from California who gained national attention after a lecture he gave titled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” went viral in 2009. Lustig’s research has investigated the connection between sugar consumption and the poor health of the American people. He has published twelve articles in peer-reviewed journals identifying sugar as a major factor in the epidemic of degenerative disease that now afflicts our country. The data compiled by Lustig clearly show how excessive sugar consumption plays a key role in the development of many types of cancer, obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. His research has led him to conclude that 75% of all diseases in America today are brought on by the American lifestyle and are entirely preventable.[3]
Until the airing of this program, no one in the “official” world acknowledged anything wrong with sugar, here is a sampling of some the latest research available to them if they chose to look… continue
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