Germany’s leading newspaper calls murdered Al Jazeera reporter ‘terrorist posing as journalist’

The Cradle | August 11, 2025
German newspaper Bild has parroted the Israeli army’s claims that slain Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was “terrorist disguised as a journalist,” hours after the prominent reporter was targeted and killed in a strike on Gaza City.
Bild is Germany’s highest-circulation newspaper. It had approximately 6.93 million readers per issue in 2023 – and sells around 1.02 million copies a day.
The article cited documents published by Israel claiming Sharif was a member of the Qassam Brigades’ Jabalia battalion.
“The IDF attacked terrorist Anas al-Sharif in the Gaza City area. The terrorist was operating under the guise of an Al Jazeera journalist. The terrorist Anas al-Sharif served as a cell leader in Hamas and promoted rocket fire against citizens of the State of Israel and IDF,” the Israeli army said.
The army points to previously published, unverified documents, including salary documentations, personnel spreadsheets, and a list of training courses, which it says “unequivocally” prove Sharif’s involvement with Hamas.
The documents claim Sharif was recruited into Hamas at the age of 17, despite membership in the group officially requiring a minimum age of 18 years.
Another inconsistency is that joining the Qassam Brigades takes years of training.
Sharif had been covering Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza since it started in October 2023. He was given the 2024 Human Rights Defender award by Amnesty International Australia for his coverage.
Tel Aviv had been inciting against him for months.
A headline by The Telegraph on Monday also referred to Sharif as a “journalist accused of leading a Hamas terror cell.” Israeli news site i24’s headline called him a “Hamas-affiliated Al Jazeera journalist” who was “eliminated.”
The documents cited by Israel also listed Hosam Shabat, an Al Jazeera reporter accused of Hamas ties, who was killed in an Israeli strike in March.
Several other journalists are listed as either members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement.
“I, Anas al-Sharif, am a journalist with no political affiliations. My only mission is to report the truth from the ground – as it is, without bias. At a time when a deadly famine is ravaging Gaza, speaking the truth has become, in the eyes of the occupation, a threat,” Sharif wrote weeks before his assassination.
Since the start of the war, 238 Palestinian journalists have been targeted and killed by the Israeli army.
AfD files legal challenge after mayoral candidate barred in Ludwigshafen
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | August 7, 2025
Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Joachim Paul has confirmed he will pursue legal action after being barred from running for mayor of Ludwigshafen.
The city’s electoral committee cited doubts about the state parliament member’s loyalty to the constitution in its decision, which Paul believes to be politically motivated due to the rising popularity of the right-wing anti-immigration party.
Speaking to Junge Freiheit, Paul said, “We no longer live in a democracy. A promising candidate is being eliminated from the race.” He added that “the will of the voters is being trampled on.”
Paul pointed out that the AfD had emerged as the second-strongest party in Ludwigshafen during the last federal election. He emphasized that elections must include genuine choice for voters.
The decision was made by a six-member electoral committee composed of representatives from the SPD, CDU, Free Voters, and FDP. Demonstrations against Paul, including by left-wing extremists, were held in the run-up to the decision.
Sebastian Münzenmaier, deputy leader of the AfD in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, called the ruling “a clear violation of the constitutionally guaranteed equal treatment of parties and thus an attack on democracy.”
“Interior Minister [Michael] Ebling has learned absolutely nothing from his recent slap in the face, when he attempted, unlawfully and unconstitutionally, to prevent AfD members from entering government service,” he added.
Münzenmaier accused Ebling of political interference, stating: “Because the AfD finished ahead of the SPD in the second vote in the federal election in Ludwigshafen, Ebling is now in panic mode, trying to rid himself of a direct and successful competitor by making fabricated and untenable accusations of right-wing extremism.”
He warned that Ebling and those conspiring to exclude the AfD candidate “will pay the price for this transparent maneuver twice: through legal action and on election day.”
This is not the first time AfD candidates have been excluded from elections. Most recently, the electoral committee in Lippe district, North Rhine-Westphalia, denied the AfD a mayoral candidacy at the request of the Green Party, also citing concerns about loyalty to the constitution.
Ironically, it was actually a Social Democrat politician who was most recently “disloyal” to the constitution; Daniel Born, a then-MP in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, was forced to resign last month for drawing a swastika on a ballot paper next to the AfD candidate.
Action against the AfD is also being taken at a federal level, with constant speculation over a potential wholesale ban of the party. Such a move could edge closer with the possible appointment of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a lawyer described as far-left, to the Federal Constitutional Court.
Her appointment would increase the chances that a ban on the AfD party passes through the court.
How Germany is coercing immigrants into normalising ‘Israel’
By Timo Al-Farooq | Al Mayadeen | August 6, 2025
With a prerequisite residency period of five years, Germany boasts one of the fastest pathways to EU citizenship. But what seems like a gracious timeline comes at a high moral price, depending on where in Germany you live.
In June, Brandenburg, which surrounds the capital Berlin, became the second state in Germany after neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt to make it mandatory for citizenship applicants to recognise “the security and right to exist of the state of Israel”, as the state capital Potsdam’s oath of loyalty form phrases it.
Yes, the same “Israel” that came into existence by ethnically cleansing 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their land, is responsible for the longest-running military occupation in modern history, and for the past 21 months has been waging a genocidal war of unvarnished savagery on Gaza, where an entire civilian population is also deliberately being starved to death since March.
“To say that our country is turning into a banana republic with its pro-Israel fanaticism would be a trivialisation of this insanity,” commented Tarek Baé, a German journalist and content creator of Arab descent, on Germany’s latest ploy to silence dissent in the service of a foreign, rogue entity.
Signing over one’s conscience
Brandenburg’s governing centrist Social Democrats (SPD) pressed ahead with the controversial move with neither knowledge nor consent of their left-wing coalition partner, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which lambasted the SPD’s solo run as “a direct attack on the heart of our democracy.”
The “Israel” caveat to the state’s naturalisation process now requires applicants who wish to become German citizens to sign over their conscience, with the text of the pre-formulated pledge exhibiting the boilerplate false equivalencies inherent to Western Palestine/”Israel” discourse.
Predictably, the form follows the oppressive practice of equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It also posits that two supremacist wrongs, Nazism and the Zionism, make a right when it says that Germany’s “national socialist genocide” against European Jews justifies its “special and close relationship with Israel,” the rationale behind Germany’s infamous Staatsräson.
“Israel’s” “repressive hybrid regime of settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid” and “Zionism’s urge to Judaize Palestine”, to quote from Israeli activist scholar Jeff Halper’s book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, is not mentioned, of course.
Unsurprisingly so, as telling the truth about “Israel” would raise uncomfortable questions about why a democratic country like Germany would want to have a “special and close relationship” with such an ostensibly anti-democratic entity in the first place, let alone force prospective Germans to have one too.
Weaponising migration law
Following October 7, 2023, the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is Germany immediately began cracking down on Palestine advocacy in an hitherto unprecedented manner.
By doing so, it used the Hamas-led attacks on thar day as an excuse to do away with basic democratic rights, at long last shedding the snakeskin of play-acted sympathy for the decades-long plight of the Palestinian people to reveal a deep-seated, racist hatred of them.
Last month, a coalition of prominent Palestine solidarity groups released a landmark report which meticulously details Germany’s expedited metamorphosis from a democracy to “one of the most repressive EU states in relation to Palestine advocacy.”
Among the wide array of authoritarian measures, the report highlights Germany’s “use of migration law as a punitive stick” against “non-citizens involved in Palestine activism.” In this context, the weaponisation of naturalisation law against long-term immigrants has emerged as a creative way to coerce a significant demographic bloc of racialised people into normalising the Zionist project.
Brandenburg’s controversial move is already having an undesirable bandwagon effect in Berlin, home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe and Germany’s epicentre of police brutality against anti-genocide protesters.
Kai Wegner, the city’s Zionist mayor, has voiced strong sympathies for adding a pro-“Israel” Nibelungentreue to citizenship applications in Berlin. He has repeatedly defamed peaceful anti-war protests as violent and antisemitic and spread mendacious copaganda that paints lawless hooligans in uniform who treat Palestine solidarity rallies as beat ’em up video games as victims.
State-sponsored blackmail
Compulsory oaths of loyalty, however controversial the practice, are nothing new in the context of citizenship applications in Western democracies. But they normally require the applicant to profess fealty to the country whose citizenship they wish to acquire.
Extorting signed pledges of allegiance to a third-party entity, particularly one whose “most cruel and machiavellian scheme to kill, with total impunity” has turned Gaza into “a graveyard of children and starving people”, to quote UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, is an unprecedented anomaly and further cements Germany’s deplorable outlier status even among “Israel’s” most devoted allies.
As a result of Germany’s latest instance of state-sponsored blackmail in the service of legitimising “Israel”, citizenship applicants in Brandenburg will now be forced to make a Sophie’s-choice-like decision between their moral integrity and the secure legal status, political rights, and global mobility that a German nationality provides.
This dehumanising sadism reflects Germany’s overall post-October 7 authoritarianism which is leaving principled people trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place: either speak out against genocide and risk being brutalised by the police, persecuted by the legal system or fired from your job, or be silent and forced to live with the corrosive effects of a guilty conscience.
Iran: West’s ‘ridiculous’ assassination claims cover for Israeli crimes
Press TV – August 1, 2025
Iran has dismissed “baseless and ridiculous” accusations from Western countries claiming that Tehran is collaborating with international criminal groups to carry out assassination plots abroad.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei condemned on Friday the anti-Iran claims made by the United States, Canada and a dozen European states in their joint statement released the previous day.
He said the “blatant blame game” is an attempt to divert public attention from the most pressing issue of the day, which is the Israeli genocide in the occupied Palestine.
“The United States, France, and other signatories to the anti-Iran statement must themselves be held accountable for actions that violate international law, as they support and host terrorist and violent elements and groups,” he added.
Baghaei touched on the unprovoked US-Israeli aggression against Iran in June and Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip against the backdrop of active support or approving silence of the 14 Western countries that signed the statement against the Islamic Republic.
He further denounced the accusations as “blatant lies and an escape forward, designed as part of a malicious Iranophobia campaign aimed at exerting pressure on the great Iranian nation.”
The 14 states must be held accountable for their “disgraceful and irresponsible” behavior that violates the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, the spokesman noted.
Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US alleged in their statement that Iranian intelligence agencies are engaged in attempts to “kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America.”
Germany blocks EU effort to impose sanctions on Israel over Gaza
MEMO | July 30, 2025
Germany and several other European countries are blocking a proposal to impose sanctions on Israel over its role in worsening the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, according to diplomats.
EU member states’ permanent representatives convened in Brussels but failed to reach a consensus to initiate the formal decision-making process.
Diplomats said countries, including Germany, called for more time and further analysis of the situation on the ground.
Some delegations also raised concerns that sanctions might harm essential dialogue with the Israeli authorities.
Under EU rules, any proposal must be backed by at least 15 of the 27-member states, representing at least 65 per cent of the EU population, to proceed.
Germany and Italy are considered key players in the talks, while all other major European countries, along with several smaller ones, have shown openness to the idea of imposing sanctions.
Germany steps up arms race and targets Russia by acquiring Tomahawk missiles
US also scrambles to produce more Tomahawk missiles for its own Navy and Army
By Ahmed Adel | July 29, 2025
Germany wants Tomahawk cruise missiles and Typhon missile launchers to attack Moscow, writes Military Watch Magazine. The magazine highlights that Germany, which is actively militarizing, considers Russia its main adversary and target of a potential missile attack, so Berlin wants to have such weapons.
“The Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile’s 1600 kilometre range allows Typhon units to strike targets in the Russian capital Moscow from German territory, with Russia considered the primary target of such a procurement plan,” the publication highlighted.
According to the magazine, on May 22, the German Army inaugurated the 45th Armored Brigade in Vilnius, Lithuania. This militaristic step by Berlin reinforced its advanced mechanized warfare capabilities, just 150 km from Minsk and less than 800 km from Moscow.
Furthermore, in early 2022, the German Ministry of Defense selected the US F-35A stealth fighter to upgrade its nuclear strike capabilities while maintaining wartime access to US B61 nuclear warheads through a sharing agreement.
“Russia and Belarus are considered the primary potential targets of this improved nuclear strike capability, of the major new ground force procurements and deployments, and of the new mobile cruise missile launch vehicles being procured, ensuring that Berlin makes a far greater contribution to NATO’s collective military pressure on Moscow that was previously the case,” the article noted.
The article opines that the effectiveness of the Tomahawk cruise missile for deep strikes into Russia is uncertain, as its Cold War-era subsonic design relies on navigation over close terrain to avoid long-range detection.
“Modern Russian air defence systems, and the country’s fighter and interceptor aircraft such as the MiG-31BM, are considered highly capable of shooting down such targets over significant distances,” the publication said.
Thus, the magazine concluded that the high efficiency of these complexes that Berlin aims to achieve is doubtful due to modern Russian anti-aircraft defense systems and interceptors.
Germany’s quest for more Tomahawks is amid the US’s struggles to attain the long-range missiles.
The US military is running out of Tomahawk missiles, and the country’s military industry is struggling to produce enough of these missiles to meet the demand of the US Armed Forces, according to 19FortyFive.
The portal highlighted that the US Navy was consuming missiles faster than the defense sector could replace them.
“But for more than two years, the US Navy had been firing the missiles faster than the defense industry can replace them. According to the Navy, the opening strikes in 2024 of the escalating conflict in Yemen expended more than 80 Tomahawks to hit 30 targets,” the article highlighted.
It is noted that the production lines for Tomahawk missiles, one of the most important weapons in the US Army’s arsenal, have been maintaining the lowest possible production rate for some time. The publication noted that the minimum sustainment rate required to keep production lines running is 90 Tomahawks per year, but this rate is not being achieved.
“The Army and Marine Corps are barely sustaining that production with their buys of experimental land-launched versions of the missile,” the portal emphasized.
Thus, the article concluded that only five Tomahawk missiles will be produced per month in the near future, due to a shortage of essential components, such as rocket engines, which makes it difficult to increase production.
Yet, despite struggles to attain more Tomahawk missiles, Germany also wants to send Patriot missile systems to Kiev, even though the US can only replace the system in 2026. Germany will receive the first Patriot air defense system from the US to replace those transferred to Ukraine within a maximum of eight months, as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius insists on accelerating the delivery of the systems, German media reported, citing sources.
According to Der Spiegel, it will take even longer for the US to deliver all other systems to its partners. According to the media outlet, the US plans to put the countries that transferred the Patriot to Kiev at the top of the list of candidates for new systems from the US company RTX Corporation.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told the inquiry that he is negotiating with the manufacturer to expedite production and deliveries, and that he may also discuss the matter with his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth. The minister reportedly noted that delivery times for the new systems should be “months, not years.”
In this way, Germany maintains grand ambitions against Russia, but its industrial capacity does not match this. No country has been more affected by the anti-Russia sanctions than Germany, with the sanctions having completely backfired as cheap Russian energy is no longer powering German factories. Yet, it appears that decision-makers in Germany are yet to accept this reality and still want to support Ukraine’s futile attempts to roll back Russian forces.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
German foreign minister makes new threat against Russia
RT | July 24, 2025
Ukraine will soon have the capability to strike targets inside Russia, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Wednesday, raising the prospect of Berlin supplying long-range weapons that Moscow has warned could escalate the conflict.
Speaking to Die Zeit, Wadephul did not name specific systems, but appeared to reference the Taurus missile – a long-range weapon capable of hitting targets up to 500km away, including inside Russian territory.
”Ukraine will also have the means to strike back into Russian territory,” he said. “However, we will not reveal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin… which weapons systems we are providing to Ukraine.”
Wadephul added that he had been cautious about weighing in on the Taurus debate, citing the missile’s technical complexity as the reason for the delay in coming to a decision.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that supplying Taurus missiles would make Germany a direct party to the conflict. Russian officials have long criticized Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying they prolong hostilities and risk a broader confrontation.
Berlin has resisted supplying the Taurus system to Kiev for months. Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeatedly blocked the transfer, citing a risk of escalation. His successor, Friedrich Merz, has since stated that no decision has been taken on the matter.
Since taking office in May, Merz has adopted a hardline stance toward Russia. Earlier this month, he declared that diplomatic options in the Ukraine conflict had been “exhausted” and reaffirmed his commitment to arming Ukraine. In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused him of fueling escalation by abandoning diplomacy.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius reiterated earlier this month that Berlin would not send Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Senior German General Christian Freuding said recently, however, that Ukraine would receive its first batch of long-range missiles financed by Berlin before the end of July. He did not specify the type, but suggested that Ukrainian forces consider striking Russian airfields and weapons factories to relieve pressure at the front.
West Doubles Down on Failed Wars in Ukraine & Middle East
Glenn Diesen | July 22, 2025
Larry Johnson is a former intelligence analyst at the CIA, who also worked at the US State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. Johnson discusses why the West is doubling down on the failed wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
German opposition slams Ukraine aid
RT | July 21, 2025
Frustration is growing in Germany over increased aid to Ukraine while domestic spending lags, co-chair of opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) Alice Weidel has said.
Berlin has been one of Kiev’s largest military backers since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Earlier this year, the German Defense Ministry announced that it would provide €5 billion ($5.6 billion) to finance long-range weapons production in Ukraine.
In an interview with the broadcaster ARD on Sunday, Weidel criticized the allocation of funds to Kiev, citing unmet domestic needs. Asked about alternative uses for public funds, she pointed to a shelved proposal to abolish electricity taxes, which would have cost the state €5.4 billion – comparable to what Berlin is spending on weapons for Ukraine, she argued.
“And then our government, the Friedrich Merz government, gives Ukraine nine billion in German tax money and now wants to buy Patriot missiles for Ukraine for five billion. Nobody understands that anymore,” Weidel said.
She was referencing a US-backed plan to funnel Patriot air defense systems to Kiev via NATO members, with Germany covering the costs. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said after meeting US counterpart Pete Hegseth in Washington last week that the terms of the arrangement could be finalized “within days or weeks,” though the actual transfer of the missile systems to Ukraine might take months. Berlin has indicated its readiness to cover the cost of at least two Patriot batteries to Ukraine – estimated at approximately $1 billion each.
Since taking office in May, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pursued a hardline stance against Russia. Earlier this month, he declared that diplomatic options in the Ukraine conflict were “exhausted” and doubled down on his policy of providing weapons to Kiev. In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Merz of choosing escalation by abandoning diplomacy.
Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that European nations are funding the “death” of Ukraine by paying for weapons sent to Kiev. Russia has consistently denounced Western weapons deliveries, saying they do not change the overall course of the conflict and merely serve to prolong the bloodshed and risk further escalation.
E3 violated JCPOA, lost right to reinstate UN sanctions against Iran: Russian envoy
Press TV – July 21, 2025
A senior Russian diplomat says Britain, France, and Germany, known as the E3, have repeatedly violated the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, and thus forfeited their right to trigger the snapback mechanism that would re-impose all UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, made the remarks in an interview with Izvestia newspaper on Monday, days after the E3, in coordination with the US, threatened to initiate the 30-day snapback process if there is no progress on Iran’s nuclear talks by the end of August.
“As for the threats of Westerners to initiate a mechanism for restoring sanctions, it is quite rightly noted that this idea is illegitimate,” Ulyanov said.
“The Americans themselves withdrew from the JCPOA, renouncing the rights and obligations of a participant in the nuclear deal, and the United Kingdom, Germany and France are violators of both the JCPOA and UN Security Council resolution 2231. This means that they have also deprived themselves of the right to initiate a ‘snapback.’”
He was referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official name of the Iran nuclear accord, which the US ditched in 2018 before returning the illegal sanctions that it had lifted against Iran and launching the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign.
Following the US withdrawal, the European signatories to the JCPOA failed to uphold their commitments and made no efforts to save the agreement.
Also in his remarks, the Russian envoy criticized the Europeans and Americans for using “the tactics of forceful pressure” against Tehran, saying such an approach has no chance of success.
“The habit of Europeans and Americans to set certain deadlines all the time is quite counterproductive,” he said, citing the negotiations aimed at restoring the JCPOA in 2021-2022 as an example.
In an X post on Sunday, Ulyanov emphasized that the E3 “has no legal or moral right” to activate the snapback procedure.
Earlier, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent a letter to the UN chief, the Security Council president, and the top EU diplomat, saying the E3 have relinquished their role as “participants” in the JCPOA, rendering any attempt to trigger the snapback mechanism “null and void.”
