Do Palantir’s bosses have blood on their hands over the Starobelsk massacre?
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 2, 2026
The murder of 21 Russian students at a college dormitory on May 22 has yet to be fully understood in terms of the exact involvement of NATO states.
The university building in Starobelsk, Lugansk, was attacked in the early hours of the morning with 16 drones in three consecutive waves of assault. The targeting of the dormitory was deliberate. There were no Russian military installations in the vicinity.
NATO’s involvement in this act of terrorism is on multiple levels. Ukraine’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles has ramped up in recent months, in line with the massive financial support provided by the European Union in the form of a €90 billion loan, most of which is dedicated to boosting Ukraine’s drone arsenal, with European manufacturing companies working in partnership.
At another level, the Western corporate news media have largely ignored the Starobelsk atrocity and NATO’s involvement. The Western media have distorted the de facto war crime by highlighting implausible denials from the Ukrainian regime. In short, covering up.
At yet another level is the new and remarkable efficiency of Ukrainian-launched drones to evade Russian air defenses. Since the conflict in Ukraine escalated in 2022, NATO intelligence from satellite surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft has been supplying the Kiev regime with targeting data to attack Russian units.
But in recent months, NATO information flow and data analysis have taken a quantum leap regarding targeting range and lethality. Thus, the close partnership between Ukrainian and NATO drone manufacturing is amplified by the involvement of U.S.-based Palantir Technologies in operating systems.
Palantir was cofounded in 2003 by German-U.S. billionaire Peter Thiel. It has grown to become the “brains” behind operating weapon systems for the Pentagon, as well as the Israelis in their genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, and aggression towards Iran.
Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp visited Kiev on May 12, where he met with the regime leadership to firm up military partnerships for using Artificial Intelligence in attack drones. Karp was ecstatic about the global business opportunities accruing to Palantir by using the Ukraine war as a laboratory for developing technology.
He boasted that his company’s software was the “operating system” for Ukraine’s military deploying against Russia. Significantly, the Palantir boss remarked that the real-time learning and development of his company’s systems were giving Palantir a huge commercial advantage that could not be achieved in peacetime laboratories. In other words, the killing fields of Ukraine are plugging into Palantir’s profitability and global status as a company.
“It’s our software primitives or infrastructure and your people building things that are completely different from what we would have ever built on top of this,” Karp said in an interview with Ukrainian media.
“You’re doing it on the battlefield with a very small number of people and then showing the world how these things work.”
This strategic collaboration between the Kiev regime and Silicon Valley’s hottest company was also revealed in an exclusive report this week by CNN. The CNN report did not mention Palantir by name, but screenshots reposted clearly showed that the Ukrainian drone operators were using the company’s PRISMA software. As reported, the software allows the processing of vast amounts of aviation and radar data in seconds, which is then used to deploy drones that evade Russian air defense systems and hit deep inside Russia.
The success of Ukrainian-NATO drones to strike deep inside pre-war Russian territory has improved dramatically. The air strikes have reportedly damaged 24 out of a total of 33 of Russia’s top oil refineries. Last month alone, it was reported that six refineries were hit, as well as major fuel depots. The installations, such as at Saratov and Volgograd, are hundreds of kilometers inside Russia. The disruption in fuel supplies has necessitated the Kremlin’s imposition of rationing on public purchases.
Palantir’s data processing and AI are such that interception of Ukrainian drones by Russian air defenses is incorporated into the targeting programs, which permits subsequent drone waves to circumnavigate anti-aircraft systems. This feedback loop brings new challenges for defense systems.
The increase in EU and NATO drone funding and technology would account for the quantitative surge in attacks on Russian territory. The complicity of NATO states, primarily the Baltic states, in lending their territories as launch sites is also a factor. The NATO propaganda machine, too, plays a role in minimizing the civilian deaths and thereby blindsiding European and American public opposition to a dangerous provocation and escalation of war with Russia.
But the involvement of Palantir in increasing the kill machine is another crucial qualitative dimension in the escalation, whereby Ukrainian-NATO drones are evading Russian defenses and increasing their capability at hitting its deep interior and vital infrastructure.
The massacre at the Starobelsk college in Lugansk points to the systematic involvement of Palantir in executing such a deadly attack.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov (2010-14) expressed his astonishment at how 16 drones were able to penetrate Russian air defenses and hit the college in three waves. Azarov told Tass, the Russian news agency: “I think [NATO countries] are involved. Because, first, the drones that were sent flew right past all Russian air-defense systems, which means that someone guided them through. And you can only guide them if you have space reconnaissance data – it was a whole wave of 16 drones, and they passed by air-defense systems. It means they were guided through, solely thanks to the intervention of Western intelligence agencies. I think that, strictly speaking, they [NATO states] were behind this provocation,” he said.
Azarov did not mention Palantir per se. But the complex navigation ability of the NATO drones to thread through layers of Russian defense is the very kind of qualitative edge that the American software company is giving to the Ukrainian operators.
The other grave implication is that the extensive mapping of Russian targets, from oil refinery installations to fuel depots, suggests that the information supplied by the NATO “brains” has a detailed picture of what is being targeted. There is no way that the air strikes on a college dormitory could be confused with military installations that are not even present in the area.
That means Palantir and its multi-billionaire bosses like Alex Karp and Peter Thiel have blood on their hands, no matter how much they scrub their hands at their company’s newly opened office in Kiev.
In a perverse sidenote, Thiel, who was a friend of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has a personal interest in the topic of the Anti-Christ, traveling the globe delivering exclusive lectures to wealthy audiences about Armageddon and the end of times. It’s not clear what his exact views are on manifestations of the Anti-Christ. But the murder of teenage student girls sleeping in their beds should surely be relevant to his lectures.
Russia Raises Alarm Over Ukraine’s Surging Black Sea Terrorist Activity
Sputnik – 02.06.2026
MOSCOW – Russia is concerned about Ukraine’s mounting terrorist activity in the Black Sea, which is raising risks for civilian shipping, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday.
“We are concerned about the noticeable escalation of terrorist activity in the Black Sea by Ukraine, which leads to a deterioration of conditions and an increase in risks to civilian shipping,” Zakharova said in a statement.
On May 29, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that a drone had attacked a Turkish-owned vessel in the Black Sea, injuring two people. Ankara said it had conveyed its concern to all parties about a possible escalation in the region.
Ukraine’s military stages bandit raids on Black Sea ships with drones and unmanned boats — then pins the attacks on Russia, the spokeswoman said.
“These attacks on civilian commercial vessels have once again shown that the Kiev junta has complete disregard for the principles and norms of international law — preferring instead to deny any involvement in the incidents,” Zakharova said.
The spokeswoman branded Ukraine’s Black Sea provocations outright banditry — and warned that organizers and perpetrators alike will have to answer for these criminal acts.
“We believe such provocations — which are nothing but terrorist acts — must be the subject of a thorough, impartial investigation, receive a clear public response, and face condemnation from all coastal states that bear special responsibility for navigation safety in the Black Sea,” Zakharova stressed.
Neutralizing Black Sea security threats is crucial to any full crisis settlement, the diplomat noted.
“We confirm our readiness for close cooperation with Ankara in the interests of finding optimal ways to stabilize the Black Sea’s maritime space and exert effective influence on Kiev,” Zakharova added.
Russia accuses France and the UK of piracy over cargo ship seizure
RT | June 1, 2026
Moscow accused France and the UK of engaging in an act of “piracy” after French and British naval forces intercepted and diverted a cargo ship sailing from Russia’s Murmansk to Cameroon in international waters.
The vessel, Tagor, was stopped on Sunday, more than 400 nautical miles off the coast of Brittany, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. French authorities claim the ship was operating under a “false” flag.
In a statement on Tueday, Zakharova said the Russian Embassy in Paris has demanded full information concerning the circumstances of the detention, warning that the operation violated international maritime law. She also stated that Moscow is taking measures to protect Russian crew members aboard the vessel.
The spokeswoman rejected France’s justification for the operation, which cited Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The provision allows warships to board and inspect vessels on the high seas under limited circumstances, including when a ship is suspected of having no nationality.
However, international maritime law does not permit a warship to compel a vessel to alter course and escort it from international waters to a national port, according to Moscow.
Zakharova also dismissed French President Emmanuel Macron’s insinuation that the ship was violating “international sanctions,” arguing that only restrictions approved by the UN Security Council qualify as international sanctions. Unilateral measures imposed by European states cannot be considered international under law, she said.
The spokeswoman accused European governments of selectively interpreting legal norms to suit their interests, while cautioning that attempts to enforce sanctions in areas governed by freedom of navigation could have broader consequences for global shipping.
She added that many vessels operating in the interests of European countries sail under so-called flags of convenience, cautioning that extending such enforcement practices to the high seas could prove costly for international maritime trade.
AIPAC concealing support for candidates as its brand becomes ‘toxic’ in Democratic primaries: Report
Press TV – June 1, 2026
The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has adopted fundraising methods that obscure its role in directing campaign contributions to political candidates, as support for the Israeli regime declines among Democratic voters in the United States, according to a report.
AIPAC has traditionally highlighted its success in helping elect candidates committed to supporting the regime, including backing billions of dollars in annual US military aid.
Reporting on Sunday, however, Israeli paper Ha’aretz said growing criticism of the regime among Democratic voters has made public association with the lobbying group a potential political liability.
“But as the Israel-boosting organization’s brand becomes toxic in many Democratic primaries, [AIPAC] has adopted a new fundraising method that hides its involvement in steering funds to favored contenders,” it wrote.
According to the report, AIPAC has encouraged donors to contribute through online portals it controls that direct funds straight to candidates’ campaigns, thereby “erasing AIPAC’s fingerprints in public data.”
The tactic was reportedly used in Michigan, where Congresswoman Haley Stevens is running for an open Senate seat against Abdul el-Sayed. During the campaign, el-Sayed criticized Stevens for accepting AIPAC-linked funding, saying the money had “bought” her support for continued US military aid for Tel Aviv.
The Detroit News reported that AIPAC raised several million dollars for Stevens through a fundraising page hosted on its website. Ha’aretz also said the group previously emailed donors directing them to candidate-specific donation pages on the “Pro-Israel Network” website rather than to AIPAC itself.
The report added that these portals allow AIPAC to gather donor information and share it with candidates, while working on their behalf and “shielding” the process from public view. According to Ha’aretz, the strategy helps candidates avoid criticism for accepting AIPAC support at a time when only 13 percent of Democratic voters reportedly view the regime favorably.
In March, Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said, “I wouldn’t take AIPAC money because you have to basically be endorsing what’s happening right now, and it’s not good.”
Ha’aretz also reported that AIPAC has increasingly operated through political action committees whose names do not reference either the organization or the regime.
The issue has also surfaced among Republicans. Earlier this month, AIPAC spent $16 million in efforts to defeat Representative Thomas Massie, a prominent critic of Tel Aviv, in a Republican primary. Following his defeat, Massie said, “It’s turned into a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”
Hamas: EU hits Gaza leaders with sanctions but ‘turns blind eye’ to Israel’s atrocities
Press TV – May 30, 2026
Hamas has condemned the European Union’s sanctions, slamming the bloc for “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s violations of international law while targeting Palestinian resistance groups and leaders.
“We condemn the decision by the European Union Council to broaden sanctions against the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements and to include a number of their political leaders on its lists,” the Gaza-based resistance group said in a statement on Saturday.
Hamas added the sanctions are unjust and entirely biased in favor of the occupation’s narrative, reflecting a policy of double standards in dealing with the Palestinian cause.
“This decision comes as [Israel] continues to commit crimes of genocide, starvation, and forced displacement against our people and violates the ceasefire agreement, while the European Union turns a blind eye to these documented violations of international law and chooses to sanction political leaders who defend their people’s legitimate rights,” read the statement
“The attempt to criminalize the Palestinian resistance will not change the fact that our people are under occupation, their resistance is a legitimate right guaranteed by all laws and humanitarian norms,” the group highlighted.
Hamas noted that the targeting of political leaders confirms that these sanctions come as a response to pressure from the occupation and are not based on standards of justice.
The movement called on the EU to review its biased policies, cease providing political cover for Israel, and work to hold its leaders accountable instead of prosecuting the victims.
“We affirm that these measures will not undermine the will of our Palestinian people or their commitment to their legitimate national rights, especially freedom, self-determination, ending the occupation, and establishing the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the group stated.
The EU on Friday said that it had listed ten members of Hamas’ top political leadership body as subject to a travel ban and asset freeze, prohibiting making funds or economic resources available to those named, either directly or indirectly.
Since launching its genocidal assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 172,000 others, the majority of them women and children.
The Israeli war has also devastated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, sports facilities, power plants, water networks and residential neighborhoods across the besieged territory.
The widespread destruction and continuing blockade have displaced much of Gaza’s population, leaving Palestinians trapped in the besieged territory and heavily dependent on humanitarian aid that enters only in limited quantities.
Ukraine ‘deliberately’ struck Europe’s largest nuclear plant – Rosatom
RT | May 30, 2026
The Ukrainian military attacked Russia’s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), puncturing a hole in the machine hall of one of the facility’s units, Aleksey Likhachev, CEO of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, has said.
The ZNPP – which has repeatedly been attacked by Kiev forces over the past years – came under a new attack on Saturday, with a fiber-optics-guided drone making it to the machine hall of the sixth power unit of the plant. Given that such munitions are guided by their operators until the impact, the strike was carried out deliberately, and any “theories of an accidental hit” can be ruled out, Likhachev stated.
“One could, if I may put it this way, ‘congratulate’ the entire international community – this is the first-ever deliberate attack on the nuclear power plant’s main equipment, with a penetrative explosion and damage to the machine hall,” he said.
“The Ukrainian armed forces repeatedly cross not just red lines, but the very boundaries of common sense. What to expect next? Strikes directly on the turbine? The reactor hall? The reactor and its safety systems?”
Russia has repeatedly drawn the attention of the international community to the “extremely dangerous behavior” on Kiev’s part, the nuclear chief added. Many appear not to take the continuing attacks on the ZNPP “seriously,” while a potential nuclear incident at the plant could spread well beyond Russia and Ukraine, affecting those believing themselves to be “completely safe,” Likhachev warned.
Radiation levels remain normal at the site, the ZNPP said in a statement. The attack caused no casualties or “critical damage” to the facility, it added. Emergency teams are currently accessing the damage sustained by the machine hall, with the situation remaining under “full control,” the ZNPP stressed.
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has ramped up attacks on the plant, repeatedly striking structures within its perimeter and targeting the facility’s employees. The ZNPP came under Moscow’s control early in the conflict and has been operated by Rosatom after the Zaporozhye Region voted to join Russia in a referendum in the fall of 2022.
The Collective West, U.S., EU, and NATO, has morphed into a terrorist network
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 29, 2026
The murder of 21 Russian teenage students at a teacher-training college last week was an abominable moment of truth with far-reaching, grievous implications.
A grim, consequential watershed in the West’s conflict with Russia has arrived.
The victims were mainly girls aged between 14 and 18 who were killed when their university dormitory in Starobelsk, Lugansk, was attacked overnight on May 22.
What is absolutely revealing is how the Collective West has shown no remorse or restraint about the crime, going as far as denying responsibility and adding insult to the memory of the dead. The perpetrators have an obscene sense of impunity and inhumane entitlement.
The attack involved 16 drones that targeted the college in a wave of three assaults. There can be no doubt that the air strike was a deliberate act. That makes it an act of cold-blooded mass murder; an act of terrorism.
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, stated: “The blood of the children from Starobelsk is on the hands of the West whose nations are supplying the terrorist regime [in Ukraine] with money, intelligence, weapons, and ammunition for years, inspiring it to commit new crimes against the civilian population, and then covering it up by presenting the Kiev regime as a victim.”
The corrupt NeoNazi regime in Kiev under Vladimir Zelensky and his cronies is only a bit player in this crime. The regime, which, by the way, gave burial honors to a World War Two Nazi collaborator this week, is merely the scum atop the Western criminal organizations behind this and other atrocities, and indeed the entire conflict with Russia.
Several respected international authorities have repeatedly pointed out that the nearly five-year war in Ukraine that erupted in February 2022 is the culmination of a long-term policy to embattle Russia with NATO aggression. Professors John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Alfred de Zayas, among others, have cogently explained how this conflict in Europe – the biggest since WWII – has come about.
The Kiev regime has been armed to the teeth by the United States and its Western partners, bankrolled by Washington and the European Union, and directed by NATO military intelligence. The attacks on Russian civilian centers could not happen without the direct support of the “Collective West”.
More recently, the European Union, which has emerged as the de facto political and fundraising wing of NATO, has stepped up its funding and coordination of drone armaments for the Kiev regime. Britain has also become an important supplier of Ukrainian drone technology, while the Baltic states and Finland are acting as launch sites for deeper strikes into Russia.
A drone crash in Romania this week elicited much theatrical condemnation of Russia as the perpetrator. More likely, given the surge in drones operating from NATO states, the Romanian incident was an own goal or a Ukrainian false-flag provocation. Telling, too, was the paroxysm of Western media coverage blaming Russia for the “reckless” drone, compared with the negligible reporting by these same media on the massacre in Starobelsk only days before.
The European NATO states are in effect becoming the Luftwaffe of the Kiev regime. As Russia’s envoy, Dmitry Polyansk, to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, warned this week, the drums of war are beating louder across the continent. European politicians like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are calling for more NATO forces to build up along Russia’s borders, while the EU’s so-called top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, disparages peace diplomacy with Russia as a “Kremlin trap.”
Alfred de Zayas, professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and a former UN independent expert, gave the following assessment to Strategic Culture Foundation regarding the NATO alliance. He said that it is now urgent to recognize that “it is a criminal organization” within the meaning of the Nuremberg rulings delivered in 1946 against Nazi war criminals, when aggression was defined as the supreme war crime.
De Zayas notes that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded nearly eight decades ago, in 1949, supposedly to defend the West from the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, along with its Warsaw Pact military bloc, NATO should have also disbanded at that time.
“NATO has morphed from being a defensive alliance into a war coalition that has committed heinous crimes since the 1990s in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere,” he said. “While NATO forces, since the 1990s, have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, what is important today is that world public opinion recognizes NATO as a threat to the peace and security of humankind.”
From the end of the Cold War, the United States-led military alliance has more than doubled its member states to the current 32, several of which border Russia. Under the UN Charter, regional security organizations are supposed to be subordinate to the UN Security Council. But the NATO bloc presumes to be above the law. It is a rogue force that attacks other nations at will, as we are seeing currently with Russia.
Says de Zayas: “It is not a legitimate regional organization under article 52 of the UN Charter, because it acts against the purposes and principles of the UN and has relentlessly committed the crimes of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
The mass murder of college students in Starobelsk and numerous other civilian casualties of NATO drone attacks on Russian territory are a testament to the terrorist nature of NATO.
De Zayas adds that it is also important to identify the sinister role of the Western corporate-controlled news media. The media have systematically distorted the conflict in Ukraine as “unprovoked Russian aggression” while whitewashing NATO and the NeoNazi regime for their litany of crimes, the latest being the atrocity at Starobelsk.
“Relentless propaganda and public relations have convinced the Western public that NATO is a good organization, legitimate, respectable, interested in peace and defense. This is total brainwashing,” said de Zayas.
“When the media indoctrination and propaganda about NATO is exposed as false, when the perception in Western countries moves from positive to negative, when people realize that NATO is a criminal institution, it will be possible to wind it down. Ultimately, NATO must be recognized not only as a criminal organization, a blustering vestige of a moribund Western imperialism, but as a mortal danger to the survival of civilization on Earth.”
All this confers on our editorial to draw several inescapable implications: the political leaders of the United States and the European Union, who make this NATO aggression happen through deliberate policies, must also face the same indictment. They are war criminals.
The Western media that propagandize for war and war crimes are also indictable as complicit in these crimes.
Furthermore, it is now clearer than ever that Russia is at war with an aggressive Collective West, and its manifestations, including the United States, the EU, NATO, and the Kiev regime. Therefore, Moscow has the legal and moral right to hit the decision-making centers that have Russian blood on their hands. All the more so because these Western decision-making centers presume impunity and the ghoulish right to drench their hands with even more Russian blood.
Israel Is Arming ISIS Linked Gangs With Military Drones To Help Carry Out Further Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza
The Dissident | May 28, 2026
Israel is going forward with its plan to force Gaza’s Palestinian population to flee to make way for Israeli annexation.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said last week, “the voluntary emigration plan from Gaza will be implemented” , “everything at the right timing and in the right manner”, “voluntary emigration” being a euphemism for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu has since stated that he ordered IDF militants to occupy 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, in violation of the so-called “ceasefire”.
Benjamin Netanyahu said , “At this point, we are fully in control of 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip… and my directive is to get to… 70%”.
Netanyahu implied the end Israeli goal is to occupy all of Gaza, saying, “First 70%. We’ll start with that” in response to calls from audience members to occupy “100 percent”.
To aid in this genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing and annexation, Israel has again tasked its criminal proxies in Gaza.
The Times of Israel reported that:
In the remainder, some armed groups backed by Israel continue to challenge Hamas’s dominance as the territory’s governing power.
A militia led by Ashraf al-Mansi, which works against Hamas in northern Gaza with Israeli backing, published footage on Thursday showing one of its members operating a heavy military drone.
The footage appeared to be the first of its kind released by an anti-Hamas militia, which until now have primarily been seen using light weapons.
It added:
A statement published on al-Mansi’s Facebook page said that “the People’s Army led by Ashraf al-Mansi in northern Gaza announces the successful introduction of advanced drones into operational use.”
Brig. Gen. Ghassan Dehini, who is considered the commander of various militias in Gaza, announced that “several successful operations” had been carried out using the new drones.
Referring to the drones, the Times of Israel noted “given Israel’s military and logistical support for the militias, it is likely they were transferred from Israel”.
For context, the so-called “popular forces”, currently led by Ghassan Dehini and which Ashraf al-Mansi is a part of, is a group of ISIS-linked criminals who became Israeli proxies after the start of the Gaza genocide.
These criminal gangs during the Genocide in Gaza, looted humanitarian aid in Gaza with support from Israel.
This was carried out both to continue the genocidal blockade on Gaza, and as a false flag to falsely blame Hamas.
By tasking its proxy gangs to carry out false flag aid lootings, Israel falsely accused Hamas of being behind the aid lootings, in order to justify the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” sites, the U.S./Israeli backed fake aid sites used to lure and massacre starving Palestinians.
The former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman revealed in early 2025 that “Israel is providing weapons to a Jihadist group in the Gaza Strip affiliated with ISIS,” referring to the Israeli-backed criminal gangs behind the false flag aid lootings led by Yasser Abu Shabab, who the Financial Times described as “Gaza’s most notorious gangster”.
Soon after, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “The IDF and Shin Bet security service are using Gaza-based militias to carry out military operations in exchange for pay and control over territory in the enclave,” adding, “Each militia consists of dozens of armed men, most from prominent Gaza clans, including the Abu Shabab family.”
One IDF official told the paper, “They’re given more missions in densely populated zones. It’s no longer just the menial work we gave them in the beginning. Now they’re conducting major operations,” and another said, “They train for missions right in front of us, We’ve seen them in groups of five to ten armed men. Sometimes it even alarms our forces because no one bothers to update us.”
The so-called “popular forces” last year faced an internal coup, with militant members killing Yasser Abu Shabab and replacing him with Ghassan al-Duhaini, who similarly previously joined the Army of Islam, or Jaysh al-Islam, “a Gaza-based Salafi jihadist group with a similar ideology to al-Qaeda that declared its allegiance to ISIS in 2015”.
The Jerusalem Post noted that Ghassan al-Duhaini “was a commander in a terrorist group in Gaza that was associated with al-Qaeda”.
In an interview with the Middle East Forum, Ghassan al-Duhaini said he “adopted Salafi jihadism” and “affiliated with a faction that was close to Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian Al Qaeda branch) during the war in Syria” .
Now, Israel is yet again backing this ISIS-linked criminal network, even arming it with military drones to help carry out the “final solution”to the Gaza genocide.
Dead Silence: UN, OSCE Ignore Russian Appeals Over Ukraine’s Slaughter at Starobelsk
Sputnik – 28.05.2026
MOSCOW – There has been no response from the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), or other international organizations to Russia’s appeals regarding the Ukrainian strike on Starobelsk, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova told Sputnik.
Lantratova previously reported that she had sent letters to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE Secretary General, the President of the UN Human Rights Council, and other international organizations regarding the Ukrainian strike on a college and dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).
“We sent letters immediately after the tragedy occurred. We have not yet received any response. We are awaiting it, and hope for an objective assessment of these events by the international public… We hope for a response, and moreover, we will send [letters] to all our counterparts in various countries around the world so that people know the truth,” Lantratova said.
On May 22, Ukrainian forces attacked an academic building and a dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College of Lugansk State Pedagogical University. Twenty-one people were killed and 44 others wounded.
The US Military Keeps Blowing Up Small Boats in the Caribbean and Pacific
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | May 28, 2026
Suppose a Latin American nation’s military kept blowing up private American small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing nearly all the United States citizens on them in the process. The Donald Trump administration and a horde of US Congress members would be shouting about terrorism and supporting major responsive military actions. However, the actual perpetrator of the blowing up of small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since early September has been the US government and the victims have been mainly residents of Latin American nations, so the destruction and killing just keeps going on with little pushback from politicians in Washington, DC.
At The Intercept, Nick Turse is keeping a tally of the ongoing slaughter at sea. He counts, relying on information derived from US government sources, 60 strikes killing 197 people. The number of survivors of the strikes is just six.
This is a killing spree, not an ordinary drug interdiction effort.
The blowing up of small boats started in conjunction with the movement toward a regime change war against Venezuela. The small boats were claimed by the Trump administration, though never with convincing argument, to be part of a supposed grand threat of “narco-terrorism” from the South American country. Even if that argument had some credibility, discerning observers asked: Why were the small boats being summarily destroyed and everyone on board killed instead of more typical actions being taken, such as stopping and searching boats and detaining and arresting people on board?
Come January 3, the US military invaded Venezuela and carried off its president to America. The Trump administration has since been imposing demands on the nation’s government. The war justifying rationale for the US government blowing up small boats had thus come to an end. But, the slaughter at sea has continued nonetheless. The latest strike included in Turse’s tally was on Wednesday. It was the fifth such strike this month in the Pacific and Caribbean. The continuation of attacks on boats and the people on them seems to be either a macabre demonstration of the tendency of a government program to continue even after the reason for its creation is gone or part of the preparation for further intervention abroad.
The Popular Scapegoats: How Israel Is Pushing Its New ‘Bad Apples’ Hasbara Strategy
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 28, 2026
A revived attempt to scapegoat a handful of Israeli officials for the crimes of its entire regime structure has again taken off, especially in light of the recent diplomatic fallout over Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s public humiliation of Gaza aid flotilla activists. The idea behind this Hasbara campaign is to normalize Israel’s actions.
When Itamar Ben-Gvir posted the video of him mocking the brutal treatment that foreign activists were being subjected to – after being kidnapped in international waters – entitling it “welcome to Israel”, it understandably triggered a diplomatic firestorm. However, the Western leaders who summoned their envoys in response haven’t dared to address the treatment of the activists, including their own citizens, since.
All of this begs the question as to how much authenticity came along with these stances. One point of note is that even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in with the chorus of condemnation, as did his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and others. Since that time, at least 15 activists who were part of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla have accused the Israeli military of committing different forms of sexual assault against them, including rape.
The widespread weaponization of sexual violence by the Israeli military and security forces is no new phenomenon, yet it has occurred at a markedly higher frequency over the past few years, and it is something that has solely occurred to international peace activists. Instead, the Israelis have been proven to have implemented a systematic campaign of sexual violence against Palestinians, in particular those who are held hostage in military detention centers and civilians who have been detained in Gaza.
UN and human rights reports, eye witness testimonies, victim accounts, even video and photographic evidence, have all been presented to support the conclusion that sexual violence, including rape, has been used in unprecedented ways against the Palestinian civilian population. Despite all of this, the only mainstream corporate media outlet in the West that dared report on the issue was the New York Times, in a piece that addressed the issue years too late.
These same Western governments have not followed up the summoning of their envoys with any solid action, nor have they made a deal about the testimonies of sexual assault against activists who were kidnapped in international waters. Now, a coordinated media push, within which the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, has recently participated, seeks to play the “bad apples” public relations strategy.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have become popular scapegoats, used to hide a society behind them that supports almost everything they do, even if they seek to be more well hidden. The overwhelming majority of the Israeli public supported their military committing genocide.
In fact, things are so bad that the 10 Israeli soldiers who were accused of gang raping a Palestinian hostage have now become celebrities in their society. Israeli comedians make jokes about the rape of Palestinians with dogs, Israeli politicians openly defend such despicable behavior, and there were even the infamous “right to rape” protests when soldiers were temporarily detained for the acts they committed.
The gang rape incident was not just alleged; it was caught on film and leaked. In the end, all of the Israeli soldiers who committed the violent rape got off scot free. The Israeli military’s top lawyer, who had leaked the video of the incident, something that forced the arrest of the perpetrators, ended up getting arrested herself, resigning from her job, and then made at least two suicide attempts following a string of death threats.
Itamar Ben-Gvir did not sexually assault those 15 activists; it wasn’t Bezalel Smotrich who convinced Israeli society to turn gang rapists into heroes and place them on public television shows. Israel has a citizen army and is a society built around a military culture.
When others try to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu, something that you will hear from Western liberals and mainstream Democrats, this, too, is disingenuous. According to polling data, a plurality of Israelis dislike the current Premier, which means it isn’t him that is to blame for the vast majority of Israeli citizens supporting the genocide in Gaza, or even worse, advocating publicly for even harsher means of dealing with Palestinian civilians.
It’s also not only Netanyahu that has openly supported the notion of achieving the “Greater Israel” project, his so-called “moderate” opponent, Yair Lapid, has himself publicly advocated the exact same policy– the only difference is that the opposition leader seeks to be more strategic about stealing territory all the way up to and including Iraq.
The reality is, these Western leaders are fully complicit with the Israelis. They only withdrew their summoned diplomatic envoys because Ben-Gvir’s video embarrassed them, robbing them of the ability to lie and cover up Israel’s blatant crimes against the international activists. It took no courage and it would have been more genuine of them to have endorsed the Israeli Security Minister’s actions.
Why? Because many of these nations that summoned their envoys are openly part of the so-called “Civil Military Coordination Center” (CMCC) that was set up to enforce the Gaza ceasefire and prevent violations of it. Instead, these nations have joined a center that watches Israeli war crimes – including the mass murder of over 900 Palestinians during the ceasefire – in real time, refusing to even leave the center in protest, let alone take any action. They are all directly complicit in the genocide.
What this whole ordeal has proven is just how low Western governments and their stenographers in the media will go in order to cover up the crimes of the Israeli regime. No matter what, they refuse to take a stand. If they had grown a backbone, it could have deterred many of the horrors we see playing out today.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
How Israel’s Resettlement Demands Shifted Toward Europe
By Jose Nino | Occidental Observer | May 25, 2026
Long before Israel declared independence, Zionist leaders openly discussed what they termed “transfer,” the organized removal of the Palestinian Arab population. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister, stated as early as 1937, “The compulsory transfer of the Palestinians from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something we never had.” He added, “With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
These pre-state declarations established the ideological foundation that would resurface throughout Israeli political history, eventually extending from proposals to relocate Palestinians within the Middle East to explicit demands that Western nations absorb them.
The 1948 war resulted in the displacement of 750,000 to 1 million Palestinians. Ben-Gurion’s government directed and facilitated this displacement as part of constructing a Jewish-majority state. While the primary expulsion pushed Palestinians into neighboring Arab countries, Western resettlement schemes also emerged during this period.
While serving as Deputy Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu spoke at Bar-Ilan University on November 16, 1989 and called for mass expulsions of Palestinians: “Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China [Tiananmen Square], when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.” He told the students the government had failed to exploit “politically favourable situations in order to carry out ‘large-scale’ expulsions at times when ‘the damage would have been relatively small.’” He added: “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people.” Netanyahu denied the remarks on November 21, claiming he had been misunderstood.
Avigdor Lieberman, then leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, first proposed his “Populated-Area Exchange Plan” in 2004. The plan would redraw Israel’s borders to transfer hundreds of thousands of Arab-Israeli citizens, particularly those in the Galilee Triangle region, out of Israel and into a Palestinian state, stripping them of Israeli citizenship. Lieberman reiterated this plan at the UN General Assembly in September 2010, describing it as a “population and territory swap.”
As Foreign Minister in 2014, Lieberman received a classified legal opinion from Foreign Ministry legal adviser Ehud Keinan arguing that a population transfer plan would be legal under international law provided it was consensual. First reported by Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, the document was entitled “Territorial Exchange: Transfer of Sovereignty over Populated Areas” and proposed transferring approximately 300,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the Triangle region—a densely populated area along the Green Line—to Palestinian Authority control in exchange for Israeli annexation of large West Bank settlement blocs.
The ideas Lieberman had spent two decades pushing from the political fringe entered the mainstream of Israeli official discourse after October 7. The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 triggered an unprecedented wave of Israeli official statements calling for the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza, with several explicitly naming Europe and the West as destinations.
In a cross-party op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees,” Danny Danon—the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations—and Ram Ben-Barak—the former deputy director of Mossad—called on “countries around the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate.” They urged Western nations to create “well-structured and internationally coordinated relocation programs” and suggested that “even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis.” The op-ed explicitly invoked European and American precedents of accepting refugees from prior wars.
Responding to the Danon and Ben-Barak op-ed the following day, Finance Minister Smotrich endorsed the idea in a Facebook post, writing: “I welcome the initiative of members of Knesset Ram Ben-Barak and Danny Danon on the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.” He argued that a “cell with a small area like the Gaza Strip without natural resources and independent sources of livelihood has no chance to exist independently, economically and politically in such a high density for a long time.” At the time, the U.S. State Department condemned the statements from both Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, with spokesman Matthew Miller calling them “inflammatory and irresponsible.”
In a similar vein, shortly after October 7, Intelligence Minister Gamliel called on the international community to promote “the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.” She argued, “Instead of funneling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA [The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees], the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries.” She described this as “a win-win solution: a win for those civilians of Gaza who seek a better life and a win for Israel.”
Similar calls came from elsewhere in the Netanyahu cabinet. National Security Minister Ben Gvir called for promoting “a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” calling it “a correct, just, moral, and humane solution.” He stated, “The emigration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow Israeli settlers to return and live in security.”
After the U.S. State Department condemned these statements, Smotrich doubled down, claiming “more than 70 percent of the Israeli public supports” encouraging emigration, and arguing that Israel “cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel.” Pushing back on the US State Department, Ben Gvir posted on X, “The migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the [Gaza] envelope to return home and live in security … with all due respect, we are not another star in the American flag.”
The rhetorical positions soon hardened into operational planning at the highest levels of the Israeli defense establishment. Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on February 6, 2025: “I have instructed the IDF to prepare a plan that will allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so, to any country willing to receive them.” He explicitly named Spain, Ireland, Norway, and Canada as target destinations, stating: “Countries such as Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory. Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse.” He separately singled out Canada, noting that it “has a structured immigration program” and had “previously expressed willingness to take in residents from Gaza.” Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares rejected the suggestion directly, saying “Gaza is the land of Gazan Palestinians and they must stay in Gaza,” and Ireland similarly rejected Katz’s comments.
Despite the European rebuffs, Netanyahu and the Israeli security establishment pressed forward. In February 2025, Netanyahu endorsed the Trump plan to relocate Gaza’s population, calling it a “remarkable idea,” and told Fox News, “The actual idea of allowing first Gazans who want to leave to leave — what is wrong with that?” The following month the Israeli security cabinet formally approved a proposal from Defense Minister Katz to facilitate “voluntary transfer” for Gaza residents.
In July 2025, Mossad Director David Barnea traveled to Washington to meet with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and formally requested US assistance in convincing countries to accept “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians from Gaza. He told Witkoff that Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya had expressed openness, and asked the US to offer incentives to those countries. The White House was described as non-committal and reportedly told Israeli officials that if Netanyahu wanted to pursue the plan, Israel would need to find willing host countries itself. A few months later Netanyahu discussed plans for “voluntary emigration” at a meeting with senior defense officials and cabinet members. A Defense Ministry plan would allow Gazans to leave by air and sea starting in October 2025.
Other figures in the Israeli right pushed the same logic well beyond Gaza. At a vineyard near Ramallah, presenting his “Colonisation 2030” campaign platform ahead of elections, Smotrich declared, “Destroy the idea of an Arab terror state; finally, formally and practically cancel the cursed Oslo Accords and get on the path of sovereignty, while encouraging migration both from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria. There is no other long-term solution.” This marked the first time a senior minister explicitly extended the emigration demand to the West Bank.
These statements have drawn uniform international condemnation. The US State Department explicitly condemned the January 2024 statements by Smotrich and Ben Gvir as “inflammatory and irresponsible,” stating that “Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land.” Saudi Arabia, the EU, Netherlands, Slovenia, and other states joined in that condemnation. Spain, Ireland, and Norway rejected Katz’s February 2025 demand that they accept Gazans. Human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and BADIL have characterized these plans as constituting ethnic cleansing or forced displacement under international law. While the post-2023 statements frame resettlement as “voluntary” and “humanitarian,” critics and legal experts note that mass displacement carried out under conditions of war and siege cannot meaningfully be called voluntary.
Taken together, these resettlement schemes represent the logical culmination of a long-standing Jewish policy designed to make the world safe for Jewish supremacy, where the systematic exploitation of Western capital and influence serves the dual purpose of clearing the land of Palestine while accelerating the permanent transformation and destabilization of the traditional European heartlands.
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Only a Beginning… Charles Malik’s vision of an emergent Pax Judaica
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
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