Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

What has Guterres supported in Gaza?

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | May 7, 2026

In March this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had stated that the UN is “cooperating actively with structures created by the Board of Peace.” By the time Guterres made his statement, US Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov had already warned, in February this year, that Hamas bears the burden of Israel’s full resumption of genocide in Gaza if it fails to disarm.

In a letter that was quoted yesterday in Israeli media, Mladenov and senior US official Aryeh Lightstone warned the Palestinian technocratic government, “Failure by Hamas to accept the framework within a reasonable timeframe, as determined by the Board of Peace and after consultation with the parties, shall render such commitments null and void.”

Two days before Mladenov’s warning was made public, a senior military official said that it was inevitable that Israel would resume “fighting” in Gaza if Hamas refuses to disarm. Israel has in fact not stopped colonising Gaza through violence – what we are seeing now is a slower form of genocide in the aftermath of a very visible genocide which world leaders and diplomats preferred to watch rather than stop.

Mladenov is aware that Israel kept killing Palestinians in Gaza after the ceasefire came into effect, that more buildings were detonated, that the Yellow Line keeps expanding in Gaza besides already occupying more than half of its shrinking territory.

Therefore, the pretence of a before and after the ceasefire does not hold. It is merely a convenient veneer for the Board of Peace’s next rhetorical step that asserts its agreement with genocide.

Israel violated the October 2025 ceasefire multiple times, so in a way the letter is not a warning of novelty. However, the text of the October ceasefire does not stipulate that Hamas should disarm for the ceasefire to hold; that was a clause for the second phase of the ceasefire. The US Board of Peace is therefore saying that Israel is exempt from upholding its obligations stipulated in Phase One if Hamas does not agree to a clause from Phase Two.

In the entire Western narrative of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Mladenov is not employing a new tactic when blaming Hamas for refusing to disarm. However, exploiting the ceasefire text, which was based on the resumption of humanitarian aid and the return of Israeli hostages, is insightful in terms of how institutions hold the power to manipulate the parameters of international law, accountability and impunity. The October 2025 ceasefire text, which was not dependent on Hamas disarming, can now be discarded simply because the focus is on Phase Two and diplomacy will not check the specific stipulations of Phase One.

Mladenov and Lightstone, therefore, are legitimising institutional complicity with genocide.

This is one clear admission in which a body supposedly tasked with rebuilding Gaza and its governance will not hold Israel accountable for continuing to commit genocide.

By stepping back, the spectator tactic has now been fully employed by Mladenov and the so-called Board of Peace.

When has genocide even been advocated for so smoothly among diplomats? Guterres should take note of what he and the UN have supported.

May 7, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Comments Off on What has Guterres supported in Gaza?

The FCC Wants Your ID Before You Get a Phone Number

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | May 6, 2026

The era of the anonymous phone number could be ending. On April 30, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved a proposal requiring telecom providers to verify customers’ identities before activating service.

Government-issued ID, physical address, legal name, and existing phone numbers would all be included. The stated goal is stopping robocalls. The result would be an identity-verification regime covering one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools available to ordinary Americans.

The proposal applies to nearly every voice provider in the country, from traditional carriers and mobile operators to VoIP services. The FCC is seeking public comment on specifics, but the direction is clear.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed it around negligent carriers. “As we have continued to investigate the problem of illegal robocalls over the last year, it has become clear that some originating providers are not doing enough to vet their customers, allowing bad actors to infiltrate our U.S. phone networks,” he said. Some providers, he added, “do the bare minimum (or worse) and have become complicit in illegal robocalling schemes.”

That language targets telecom companies and the surveillance targets everyone else.

The framework borrows from banking’s anti-money-laundering rules. The FCC is also asking whether carriers should retain identity documentation for at least four years after a customer leaves and whether they should check customers against law enforcement watchlists. Penalties would shift to a per-call basis, meaning fines of $1,000 to $15,000 for every illegal call a poorly verified customer places.

The real privacy stakes sit in the proposal’s section on prepaid service. Right now, you can pay cash for a prepaid phone and SIM card without showing identification. Journalists use prepaid phones to protect sources, domestic violence survivors use them to avoid being traced, and whistleblowers, activists, or anyone with a reason to separate phone activity from legal identity relies on this.

May 6, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on The FCC Wants Your ID Before You Get a Phone Number

Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction

Press TV – May 5, 2026

Israeli forces have threatened two Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla activists, seized in international waters last week, with death or long prison terms, according to a rights group representing them.

The two pro-Palestinian activists, Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Avila, were among dozens detained during an Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off Greece on April 30.

On Tuesday, an Israeli court extended their detention until Sunday, May 10.

The legal rights centre Adalah, which represents the pair, said they have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement. According to the group, Israeli officers threatened to kill them or imprison them “for 100 years.”

Both men remain in “total isolation,” subjected to 24/7 high-intensity lighting in their cells and kept blindfolded whenever they are moved, including during medical examinations. They are also being held in very low temperatures, the group added.

Adalah said the court’s decision to prolong the detention “amounts to judicial validation of the regime’s lawlessness.” No charges have been filed, but the two face accusations including affiliation with a “terrorist organisation” and contact with “foreign agents,” which the legal centre described as “baseless.”

According to the group, the activists are continuing their hunger strike, consuming only water since their abduction.

Meanwhile, the flotilla’s organisers demanded their release in a post on X, urging the international community to intervene.

They said the activists were “forcefully brought against their will to occupied Palestine, where they have been subjected to interrogations, death threats, sleep deprivation and medical neglect.”

The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday describing the detention of Avila and Abu Keshek as illegal.

During the raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla, Israeli forces attacked 22 of the 58 aid boats heading toward the besieged Gaza Strip and detained 175 activists.

Testimonies indicate that the activists were tortured while in Israeli custody following their abduction.

May 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Comments Off on Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction

UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report

Press TV – May 5, 2026

Authorities in the UAE are conducting a sweeping deportation campaign targeting tens of thousands of Pakistani workers, freezing their bank accounts and stripping them of their life savings amid growing regional fallout from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

While initial reports from New Lines Magazine placed the number of expelled individuals at 15,000, Pakistani sources recently confirmed to Press TV that the deportations are continuing at a rapid pace and now affect tens of thousands of workers.

The expulsions target Shia Muslims or individuals who have publicly expressed solidarity with Tehran following the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

Those targeted are being expelled without formal charges or legal recourse. The systematic removals involve sudden arrests, phone confiscations, and transfers between various detention facilities before the workers are forced onto flights back to Pakistan.

Crucially, deportees are being sent back “without being given the opportunity to withdraw their funds” from Emirati banks, according to a Shia cleric cited by New Lines Magazine.

This sudden seizure of assets has left many families in financial ruin, stripping workers—some of whom spent decades contributing to the Emirati economy—of their entire life savings.

Mohammad Amin Shaheedi, chief of Ummat-e-Wahida Pakistan, told the magazine that following the outbreak of the war, the UAE government launched “what appears to be an organized campaign to deport Shia individuals from the country.”

The US-Israeli aggression began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. In response, Iranian armed forces launched daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories and US military bases and assets, including those in the UAE.

The ensuing war sparked immense public solidarity with Iran across the region, particularly in Pakistan.

Sources indicate the UAE’s mass expulsions are deeply tied to Islamabad’s clear stance against the Israeli regime’s aggression on Iran and Lebanon, as well as Pakistan’s prominent role as a mediator.

On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US finally took effect. However, subsequent peace negotiations in Islamabad ultimately stalled amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.

May 5, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report

Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value

RT | May 4, 2026

Palantir Technologies reported a blowout first quarter, saying revenue rose 85% year on year to $1.63 billion as its US business more than doubled, driven by rapid growth across both commercial and government customers.

The company said in its Q1 report, published Monday, that US revenue jumped 104% to $1.28 billion, with commercial revenue up 133% to $595 million and government revenue up 84% to $687 million. The results beat Wall Street estimates, and the company also raised its full-year guidance, saying it now expects 2026 revenue of up to $7.66 billion, implying annual growth of about 71%.

CEO Alex Karp, who has increasingly framed Palantir’s AI tools as central to Western military and industrial power, said the “twin pistons of our US business are now firing in sync.”

“We believe it is not hyperbolic to say that nearly all AI workflows that actually create value – especially on the battlefield – are built on Palantir,” Karp wrote in an accompanying letter to shareholders, stating that the company “was founded to strengthen US national security, to protect Americans and their freedom.”

Palantir – named after the obsidian seeing-stones from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, through which the dark lord Sauron keeps watch on his underlings – is a software firm primarily serving the defense and intelligence sectors.

Palantir’s flagship product is a system called Gotham, which pulls together and analyzes satellite footage, human intelligence from the CIA, signals intelligence from the NSA, and other data that might otherwise take days to sift through. Gotham and MOSAIC – another Palantir target-identification program that pulls digital data, including surveillance footage and IP addresses, from a target area – use AI to label the most effective targets for military strikes.

The US has acknowledged using these programs to select targets during its ongoing war on Iran, but insists that humans make the final decision to fire. Abroad, Palantir’s technology is used by the British Ministry of Defence, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The company’s earnings update came weeks after Palantir drew criticism for a 22-point manifesto summarizing themes from Karp’s book The Technological Republic. The manifesto argued that Silicon Valley has an “obligation” to participate in national defense, that “hard power” will be built on software, and that AI weapons are inevitable. Critics labeled it a blueprint for “technofascism.”

May 4, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value

Israeli telecom networks used for mass surveillance across countries

Al Mayadeen | May 4, 2026

A probe by the digital research group Citizen Lab has uncovered that telecommunications infrastructure owned by Israeli companies has been weaponized to track citizens in more than 10 countries over the past three years, exploiting decades-old network protocols and modern 5G systems to transform them into sophisticated tracking devices.

According to a report published by the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, the investigation revealed that infrastructure ranging from legacy networks built in the 1970s to the latest 5G systems has been repurposed into surveillance tools using advanced spyware programs. Since November 2022, over 15,700 attempts to pinpoint phone locations have been detected across numerous countries, including Thailand, South Africa, Norway, Bangladesh and Malaysia, all routed through the networks of “Israel”-based telecommunications firms.

The findings raise serious questions about “Israel’s” role in the global surveillance industry, as the very infrastructure designed to connect people has been turned into a mechanism for tracking them without their knowledge or consent.

Internal documents cited by Haaretz revealed that Verint, the parent company of Cognyte, sold an SS7-based location tracking system called SkyLock to a government client in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The SS7 protocol, originally developed to route calls and texts, support international roaming, and enable interoperability between mobile operators, has been systematically exploited for surveillance purposes.

The investigation also found that Fink, a Swiss telecommunications company, enabled Israeli surveillance firms such as Rayzone to impersonate legitimate cellular carriers and connect to older mobile networks. This allowed the firms to track users worldwide by abusing the SS7 signaling protocol.

The exploitation was not limited to legacy systems. Next-generation Diameter protocols, which manage 4G and 5G networks, were also compromised, according to the findings. One particularly notable method identified was SIMjacking, where a hidden text message sent to a target device forces the SIM card to reveal its location without the user ever seeing the message.

The phone-tracking operations were carried out through the networks of Israeli telecom companies 019Mobile and Partner Communications. 019Mobile responded by stating that it is a virtual operator and that its identity may have been impersonated, denying any involvement in tracking activities.

No immediate responses were received from Fink, Partner Communications, Exelera Telecom, Cognyte, or Verint.

The investigation exposes a disturbing reality: Israeli telecommunications technology, sold and deployed around the world, is not merely passive infrastructure but has been deliberately weaponized for mass surveillance.

The involvement of major Israeli firms in selling tracking systems to authoritarian governments, and the exploitation of global telecom networks by Israeli surveillance companies, points to a systematic pattern rather than isolated incidents.

As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to dominate headlines, the international community has once again turned a blind eye to “Israel’s” role as a global leader in surveillance and cyber-weapons. From Pegasus spyware to SS7 exploits, Israeli technology has been used to track journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens across multiple continents.

May 4, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on Israeli telecom networks used for mass surveillance across countries

House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech

Legislation introduced by two AIPAC funded representatives

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | May 2, 2026

This one slipped under the wire. Tucker Carlson talked about it the other day, but beyond that, it is flying sans transponder. On February 29, New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer and New York Republican Mike Lawler introduced “a bipartisan resolution condemning the rise of antisemitic, hate-filled rhetoric disseminated by prominent online personalities, including Hasan Piker and Candace Owens, and calling on social media platforms and public leaders to take stronger action against hate,” according to Gottheimer’s taxpayer funded website.

Watch at Rumble

“The resolution highlights the growing influence of online personalities and the alarming surge in antisemitism driven, in part, by disinformation and extremist rhetoric… When influential voices spread conspiracy theories, promote terrorism, or dehumanize Jewish people, it fuels real-world violence and intimidation. We must stand up and speak out.”

Owens, Gottheimer’s post continues, “has trafficked in vile conspiracy theories, promoted blood libels, and platformed Holocaust deniers,” and Piker has “dehumanized Orthodox Jews” The post continues with debunked lies concerning the Hamas al-Aqsa Flood open-air prison breakout on October 7, 2023.

Lawler received $1,069,875 and Gottheimer $2,062,601 from the Israel lobby. Both are essentially paid operatives for the Likud government of Israel. Furthermore, both “representatives” are traitors to the the Bill of Rights and have violated their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The Democrat Gottheimer, sounding like a staunch MAGA Republican, declared the “relationship with Israel is key to our national security. Terrorists hate the United States more than they hate Israel.” Lawler voted for a budget “that cut Medicaid and raised the cost of healthcare for millions of Americans, while saying US taxpayer funding for Israel should be ‘unconditional’ and voted for over $18 billion in weapons to Israel in 2024,” thus revealing his priorities (and making sure AIPAC sweetens his pot for the next election).

Last August, Israeli PM Netanyahu directly inserted himself in domestic American politics by demanding “the algorithms and the social networks” be censored to eliminate criticism of Israel.

In April, Zionist podcaster and self-proclaimed constitutionalist Mark Levin denounced critics of Israeli apartheid and genocide as “Nazis” and “jihadis” and said they are “inciting” violence with their speech. He argued the freedom of speech, once considered god-given and natural in America, is “overprotected.” Carlson said “Mark Levin, the right wing MAGA guy, is saying those people [critics of Israel] should be silenced by the tech companies.”

Another podcaster, Ben Shapiro, told the Palm Beach Gardens Chabad synagogue that X is an “unusable” and “vile stream of trash.” He admitted reaching out “to Elon’s people about” the criticism of Zionism he considers contemptible. “The algorithms are destroying America,” he said.

“We will monitor social media, and check your bank accounts,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the leader of the ADL, threatened in January. He said the ADL “shares the information with the FBI” gathered on anti-Zionist “extremists.” In June, he demanded companies “knock the anti-Zionists off the platform once and for all.” Research from the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society posted to X “shows that five major platforms are still failing to enforce” the removal of content critical of Israel and Zionists.

Israel-born Chabadnik Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s czar of antisemitism, announced in December the State Department will establish a “whole division” to combat criticism of Israel and is working to develop social media algorithms that exclude “misinformation.”

“From YouTube to X, Wikipedia, and TikTok, Zionists are capturing all means of communication to erase the evidence of its genocide, reshape the historical record, and censor those critical of it,” writes Robert Inlakesh for the Palestine Chronicle. “Those who are critical of Israel are being censored or arrested.”

Tucker Carlson warns full-blown censorship will soon arrive in America through legislation forcing technology corporations to remove content deemed antisemitic by Israel and Zionists in America. “Criticizing the behavior of a foreign government is a hate crime and can get you censored in your own country,” he said.

So what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, the first takeaway is censorship is coming, and it will work unless people exercise their God-given and First Amendment-guaranteed right to push back against it with words and do so at high volume without any shame at all. It’s going to need a refusal to be intimidated by false claims of, quote, hate.

May 2, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , | Comments Off on House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech

Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 1, 2026

How control of the Mediterranean works

On the night of April 29–30, the Zionist entity Israel attacked the 22 ships of the Global Sumud Flotilla 600 kilometers off the Italian coast, from where the group had set sail. All of this took place unhindered, constituting yet another act of bullying, piracy, and barbarism. But how does the Mediterranean work?

The Mediterranean, often referred to as “Mare Nostrum” in European political culture, is one of the most complex maritime theaters in the world: a crossroads of trade routes, a setting for migration crises, regional conflicts, and the strategic interests of major powers. The management of international waters, military control of shipping lanes, and initiatives by civilian vessels such as the Global Sumud Flotilla constitute three facets of the same dynamic: the attempt to regulate and control the use of the sea in the name of state interests, security, and humanitarian solidarity.

The basic legal framework for the management of international waters is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), adopted in 1982 and in force since 1994, which regulates the mapping, use, and responsibilities of states regarding various maritime zones. In the Mediterranean, which is a nearly enclosed sea, this convention applies in a particular way, because the distance between the coasts is often less than 400 nautical miles—that is, the sum of the maximum EEZs of two opposing states.

The main zones recognized by UNCLOS are: the territorial sea (up to 12 miles from the baseline), where the coastal state has full sovereignty but is obligated to guarantee “innocent passage” to foreign vessels; the contiguous zone (up to 24 miles), with limited control for customs, tax, health, and immigration laws; The exclusive economic zone (up to 200 miles), for the rights to exploit biological and mineral resources, balanced by the freedom of navigation and overflight for other nations. Finally, the so-called High Seas (beyond the EEZs), a space open to all states, governed by the principle of freedom of navigation, fishing, scientific research, and the laying of cables and pipelines, provided this is done peacefully and with respect for environmental protection. In the Mediterranean, the scarcity of “true” high seas makes the delimitation of exclusive economic zones between coastal states—such as Italy–Greece, Greece–Turkey, or Cyprus–Turkey—a delicate matter, often linked to gas and oil resources and political-military disputes.

The management of international waters therefore takes place through: bilateral and multilateral delimitation agreements; regional cooperation measures (for example, under the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management); and institutions such as the UNCLOS Authority for resources beyond EEZs, which also regulate the use of the seabed “beyond national jurisdiction.” Alongside the law of the sea, the Mediterranean is subject to intense military surveillance that reflects the overlapping interests of major global and regional powers.

The “management” of international waters is therefore not merely a matter of rules, but also of operational capabilities, intelligence infrastructure, and military alliances.

Furthermore, there are various key actors and spheres of influence. First and foremost, NATO and the U.S.: the U.S. Sixth Fleet has its main base in Gaeta (Italy) and projects power throughout the Mediterranean, with particular attention to the routes connecting the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea to European economies. The United States uses the Mediterranean as a hub to control energy supply routes and to project power toward the Middle East and North Africa. Then there is Russia, though numerically less present, which has a task force in the Mediterranean, with logistical bases in Syria and a strategic focus on the passages between the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Obviously, the EU and individual member states, such as Italy, France, Greece, and Spain, maintain a strong naval presence, serving both national interests and EU and NATO operations. Then there are Israel and Turkey, which have advanced navies and conduct patrols and maritime traffic control around their coasts—Israel primarily regarding the Gaza Strip, and Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean in relation to energy resources.

These actors effectively define several areas of influence:

  • The Western Mediterranean (Gibraltar–Tunisia): a strong EU–NATO presence, with control over migration routes and maritime traffic toward the port of Gibraltar, the sole strategic access point to the Mediterranean.
  • The Central Mediterranean (Sicily–Libya): a frontline zone for Italian surveillance, rescue, and migration control operations, with Operation Safe Mediterranean expanding Italy’s naval presence to over 2 million km².
  • The Eastern Mediterranean (Greece–Turkey–Cyprus–Israel): a theater of conflict over EEZs and energy sovereignty, with the deployment of military ships and specialized units monitoring natural gas fields.

The operational management of maritime control relies on coastal radar networks, which monitor naval and air traffic hundreds of miles from the coast, command and control systems (such as the MCCIS, Maritime Command and Control Information System) that link radars, ships, and aircraft into a single real-time “maritime picture,” and, of course, international cooperation coordinates maritime surveillance among the navies of some twenty European countries, as well as the information-sharing network with NATO and the southern Mediterranean.

This “situational awareness” apparatus allows for the monitoring not only of commercial traffic but also of migration flows, illicit activities (drug trafficking, arms trafficking, illegal fishing), intelligence operations on undersea cable communications, and, in general, any attempt to cross the Mediterranean without coming to the attention of the states concerned.

The Global Sumud Flotilla challenges the Mediterranean blockade

What happened with the Global Sumud Flotilla is yet another act demonstrating that there is an aggressor and a victim. A civilian flotilla organized by activists, humanitarian organizations, NGOs, and citizens from dozens of countries, with the stated goal of breaking the maritime blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and delivering humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population, is attacked and seized—all while the other states operating in the Mediterranean stand by, subjugated to Israel’s authority.

The Sumud Flotilla is not a single vessel, but an international coordination of dozens of ships that set sail from various Mediterranean ports to converge in international waters and head toward the Palestinian coast. Thousands of activists and volunteers board the ships, often under conditions of high risk, yet fully aware of the great symbolic value of their action for the Palestinian people, while the elites continue to profit from their suffering.

The ships of the Sumud Flotilla primarily carry essential humanitarian aid, such as food, medicines, medical supplies, equipment for rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, and medical support—all items that Israel has banned for years, demonstrating the most atrocious barbarity that recent human history has ever witnessed. The presence of a dedicated medical fleet, with more than 1,000 healthcare professionals, has been explicitly linked to the effort to alleviate the crisis in Gaza’s healthcare system, devastated by years of war and blockade.

It is an act of symbolic and perfectly legal nonviolent resistance, where the use of dozens of boats, multiple flags, and symbols of peace, the LGBTQ+ community, anti-fascist movements, and international solidarity aims to create a “visible presence” that makes it more difficult for Israeli naval forces to use force, as coercion against unarmed civilians generates significant media and political backlash. One may or may not agree with the methods and nature of this initiative, but the fact remains that the social impact is extremely high and that, above all, Israel has committed an act of piracy involving numerous countries.

The Israeli Navy maintains a reinforced naval blockade, with naval patrols, frigates, and underwater vessels operating near Israeli and Gaza territorial waters. In previous missions, the flotilla was intercepted in international waters and the ships were escorted or stopped, on charges of violating security measures imposed by Tel Aviv. The events of the past few hours, unfortunately, are part of an operational practice that the terrorist state of Israel continues to employ.

Certainly, while the Sumud Flotilla relies on the law of the sea (freedom of navigation and the duty to assist human life at sea), it must nonetheless factor in the risk of interception, violence, arrests, or accidents. At the same time, the media and political dimensions of the mission compel states to balance security rigor with concerns over excessive force that could generate further international pressure on Israel.

The story of the Sumud Flotilla also highlights how the management of international waters in the Mediterranean is a realm of unstable conflict. And, above all, how there is no balance: there is a sovereign, Israel, which is free to do as it pleases, and a series of subordinate states that obey in silence, bound by a code of silence. Israel’s action against the Flotilla demands that we take a stand and take decisive action against those who have transformed the Mediterranean—a sea that should symbolize peace among three continents—into a space of raids and unjustifiable violence.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents

Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech

By Jack Hunter | The Libertarian Institute | May 1, 2026

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right to free speech. This right has long differentiated the United States from other Western nations like the United Kingdom and Canada where laws against so-called “hate speech” laws exist and are enforced.

Thankfully, America is different. In our country, even alleged hate speech is protected speech to ensure democratic principles and debate.

In a 1929 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the Constitution secured “freedom for the thought that we hate.” In 2011, Chief Justice John Roberts said in a ruling that the First Amendment serves “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

This constitutional protection has been increasingly threatened recently, particularly by pro-Israeli forces that have tried to frame any criticism of that government as “anti-Semitism” and thus hate speech punishable by law. This has included everything from arrests, to squashing campus debate to buying TikTok to an attempt to cover up human rights absuses in Gaza. President Donald Trump has even issued executive orders that use vague definitions of what constitutes “anti-Semitism” that comes with criminal penalties.

Mark Levin is an American-born Zionist radio host who is an outspoken advocate for Israel’s government, regularly calling anyone who criticizes the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and conflict in Gaza “Nazis.”

Toward this agenda, Levin recently appeared to not agree with his own country’s free speech rights. On his latest Sunday Fox News program, unironically called Life, Liberty and Levin, the neoconservative pundit explained why free speech liberties in the U.S. have gone too far.

Seemingly worried that certain speech is protected in the United States, Levin said in the wake of the Secret Service taking down a shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Friday, “First time things like this have happened, but it really is problematic because so much of it is protected.”

“And you hear people say, don’t you believe in the First Amendment?” Levin said. “They don’t even know what the First Amendment believes.”

Certain “speech” is “problematic” because “so much of it is protected.” You could see where this was headed.

Levin then explained what he believes “the First Amendment believes.” “Do you want to de-platform people?” he ranted. “You know, the libs do that. I don’t have any problem with de-platforming Nazis or jihadis.”

“Nazis,” Levin says. Levin uses this term loosely, all the time, and that’s putting it mildly.

Prominent libertarian personality Josie Glabach, known most popularly as “The Libertarian Redhead,” made a telling list of the many people and groups Levin has called Nazis since 2024:

  • The Democrats
  • The Democrat media
  • An Australian bakery
  • The Pakistani defense minister
  • Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton
  • The entire Libertarian Party
  • College students
  • MMA fighter Jake Shields
  • Nick Fuentes
  • Putin’s buddies
  • Influencer Dan Bilzarian
  • The Houthis
  • Comedian and libertarian personality Dave Smith
  • Anyone who associates with Dave Smith
  • Tucker Carlson
  • Beirut
  • Hezbollah
  • A veteran who asked Mark to be more tolerant
  • Influencer Myron Gaines
  • The city of London
  • Hamas
  • The New York Times
  • New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
  • A New York Times correspondent
  • Terrorists;
  • The “woke reich”
  • Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner
  • The United Nations
  • Harvard University
  • The city of Amsterdam
  • Columbia University students
  • Iterations of the “Iranian Nazi regime,” the “Islamic Nazi regime,” the “Islamo Nazi regime,” the “Islamist Nazi regime,” and “All of Iran (the new Nazis)”
  • The Ayatollah (presumably of Iran)
  • Former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi
  • A protestor on a subway
  • Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
  • President Joe Biden’s entire State Department
  • Turkish Preisdent Recep Erdoğan
  • College basketball analyst Bruce Pearl
  • Certain Arab, liberals and journalists
  • Reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro
  • ISIS
  • Seventeen random Twitter users

This eclectic group of entities great and small, many of whom are regular critics of Israel’s government, are “Nazis” in Levin’s view. As Libertarian Institute Senior Fellow Tom Woods succinctly put it, “Nazis’ includes everyone who mocks Levin.”

Levin continued his Sunday rant against “Nazis”:

“I don’t have any problem with de-platforming them. What does that mean, de-platforming them? A government law? No. It means that X or Twitter or Facebook or Amazon with Twitch and someone says you know what? You’re a low life we’re not paying, you know, get off our platform. What’s wrong with that?”

The neocon pundit appeared to say that private platforms should police speech according to the political views of Mark Levin. He is right that this is no violation of the First Amendment. Private companies can allow or restrict speech as they please. “It’s called private enterprise,” he said. “I got no problem with that.”

Then Levin basically said such speech was no different than pornography, which is not protected under the First Amendment. Levin continued, “I mean, what if they have this horrific pornography on? Is that okay? No, it’s not okay.”

“Because our kids have access to it,” he said. “People who are impressionable have access to it. “What if they had people screaming at the top of the lungs saying, assassinate this guy and assassinate that guy? Well, they shouldn’t do that.”

“Why? What’s the standard?” Levin went on. “You need to have a standard. What should the law be? What does the Constitution say?”

The Constitution says that all speech is protected, but “true threats” and obscenity are not.

But political opinions about Israel that go against Levin’s views are protected, whether he likes it or not.

That’s when Levin basically outright said that speech that criticizes Israel should be forbidden just like pornography. “I just think we’ve taken this too far because we’re not even talking about political speech, which is the most protected of all speech,” Levin said.

“We do limit speech,” he insisted. “We limit speech, pornography. We limit speech.”

What Levin, like so many other Zionists, truly want is for the First Amendment to be amended itself. They believe, whether they say it forthright or not (and Levin appears to be doing just that), that this legal provision designed by the Founders precisely to protect political speech should no longer protect speech that is critical of Israel’s government.

Americans have historically valued their free speech. American Zionists like Levin now want a carve out.

But the free speech guarantee enshrined in the United States’s governing charter is so integral to the American experience, to gut it for any reason would be to drastically alter the DNA of the soon to be 250-year-old country.

As an American, Mark Levin doesn’t seem to have a problem with doing just that—all in the service of a foreign country.

It might be better for Americans to instead wish other nations well, yet solely concentrate on our own affairs at home, and perhaps just as important, to stop listening to American pundits whose primary allegiance seems to be countries other than their own.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech

What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say

By Jasim Al-Azzawi | MEMO | April 27, 2026

Richard Nixon was not a man given to moral clarity. But in the privacy of the Oval Office, away from the choreography of statecraft, he spoke with a bluntness that history rarely forgives and seldom forge “Let me explain something about the Jewish lobby in this country. They believe that being for Israel first does not mean that you’re putting America second. But an American president”, he insisted, “has to approach it differently. He’s always got to think first of what is best for America. An American president must make a decision that does not, in effect, give the Israelis a blank check”.

Nixon went further. “Every Jewish prime minister that I have known has enlisted American Jews to bring as much pressure as possible in the political process on American presidents”. These were not the words of a fringe voice or a conspiracy theorist. They were the words of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, speaking in the calculated, unsentimental register of realpolitik.

Marlon Brando, the greatest actor of his generation, arrived at similar conclusions through a different door, not the back corridors of power, but the front lots of Hollywood. When asked why he refused to accept the coveted Oscar award, he was unsparing: “Because of the increasing control of Zionists in Hollywood. They own the studios”, he said. “They shape the stories. They decide who gets heard and who doesn’t. I saw it clearly, and I couldn’t be part of that system anymore”. The actor who had made the whole world feel the weight of a man’s grief or ambition had looked behind the curtain and refused, on grounds of conscience, to keep performing.

Then there is Paul Findley, a Republican congressman from Illinois who served twenty-two years in the House of Representatives and, upon losing his seat, did the thing that defeated politicians rarely do: he told the truth about why. In his landmark 1985 book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, Findley documented with meticulous and damning precision how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — AIPAC — had become the dominant force shaping Washington’s posture toward the Middle East. The lobby, Findley wrote, had developed a near-perfect system for punishing those who deviated and rewarding those who complied. His conclusion was stark: what passed for American policy toward Israel and the Palestinians was not policy at all. It was capitulation, dressed in the language of alliance.

A president. A superstar. A congressman. Three men from entirely different worlds, operating across five decades, arriving at the same uncomfortable coordinate on the map of American power.

For nearly eighty years, that coordinate remained a forbidden zone in mainstream political discourse. The machinery that enforced the silence was formidable: campaign finance, editorial gatekeeping, and the constant threat of the career-ending accusation of anti-semitism.

Legacy media were not merely complicit in the silence; they were, in many ways, its architecture. What Nixon, Brando, and Findley observed about concentrated influence in studios, newsrooms, and legislative chambers was not paranoia. It was a structural description of how certain narratives achieved dominance, and others were quietly buried.

And then came Gaza. And then came the cell phone

No editorial board approved the footage. No network anchor contextualized it before broadcast. No studio executive decided what the audience was ready to see. The images came directly from the rubble of Jabalia, from the corridors of Al-Shifa, from the faces of mothers carrying children in plastic bags. Small children were buried alive under the rubble. Older people are torn limb from limb. Hospitals destroyed. Starvation renders human beings mere bones and skin. The International Criminal Court issued two arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had threatened to cut off food, electricity, and water to an entire civilian population.

The military has a phrase for what happened next: “quantity has a quality all of its own”. The sheer, relentless, unmediated volume of images from Gaza did something that decades of scholarship, congressional testimony, and presidential recordings had failed to do. It broke the monopoly of narrative. The tsunami of images horrified the world and compelled people, especially across Europe and in a growing segment of the American public, to say what had long been considered unsayable: enough. Not in our names. No more arms. No more blank cheques. No more diplomatic cover at the United Nations and in every international forum where Israeli impunity had been shielded from consequence.

The journalist and war correspondent Sebastian Junger once observed that war is always a story told by survivors about the dead. For decades, in the American telling of the Israel-Palestine story, the dead were abstractions, statistics, footnotes, and regrettable collateral. The cell phone abolished that abstraction. It put a face, a name, a cry on every casualty. It made the dead impossible to manage.

We aren’t just seeing a shift in opinion; we’re seeing a shift in the architecture of permission. It’s a rewrite of who can speak, in which spaces, without risking their entire career. The young are leading it. The streets of London, Paris, and Chicago are leading it.

Even within the American political class, there is a whispered consensus that Findley described. We’re hearing the literal break in the silence. The unspoken rule that you must censor yourself before you speak is falling apart.

Nixon feared giving Israel a blank check. Brando feared a culture in which certain stories could not be told. Findley documented the machinery by which both fears were, for decades, well-founded. What they could not have foreseen was the device in every pocket that would, finally, make the silencing incomplete.

The cell phone did not create the suffering in Gaza. But it denied the world the comfort of not knowing.

That denial, it turns out, was what justice needed most.

April 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Comments Off on What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say

Court Forces German Chancellor Merz to Open Files on 300 “Insult the Chancellor” Cases

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | April 25, 2026

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has used the German state to pursue around 300 criminal investigations against people accused of insulting him, and his Chancellery spent months trying to keep the public from finding out which prosecutors were handling the cases. That wall has now come down.

The Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg has ordered the Bundeskanzleramt to identify every prosecutor’s office running a Merz-insult investigation, along with the file number for each one.

The ruling, which rejected the Chancellery’s appeal against an earlier decision of the Berlin Administrative Court, came after a legal challenge by Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. Until the judgment, roughly 300 criminal proceedings over alleged slights against the sitting head of government had been shielded from any journalistic scrutiny.

The legal hook for all of it is Section 188 of Germany’s criminal code, a special provision that gives people in political life reinforced protection against insult. The official English translation of the statute states that anyone who “insults a person who exercises a political office in relation to their office or in connection with their office shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to five years.”

A politician gets to sit at the center of a prosecution aimed at a citizen who said something unpleasant about them, and the punishment on the table is years in prison.

How cases enter the pipeline is itself revealing. Citizens are encouraged by NGOs and state-run reporting portals to flag supposed insults, sometimes anonymously.

Those reports travel to the Federal Criminal Police Office, which routes them to the relevant regional prosecutor’s office. The targeted politician is then notified and decides whether to file a formal criminal complaint or whether to leave the prosecution to run without objection. The Chancellery alone receives between 20 and 30 such files every month.

Merz has said he does not sign complaints himself, but also does not block the prosecutions that have been opened in his name. Whether that account holds up against the actual paperwork is precisely what the Chancellery was trying to prevent anyone from checking.

The Chancellery’s argument in court was that no heightened public interest justified handing the information over, and that merely naming the prosecutor’s offices and file numbers could violate the rights of accused individuals. The court did not accept it. The judges held that the Chancellor’s distinctive role in these proceedings made disclosure necessary, and that neither jurisdictional objections nor the absence of urgency stood in the way.

The scale alone deserves attention. A head of government who has triggered roughly 300 criminal investigations over things people said about him is using the machinery of the state against ordinary speech at a volume that does not look like an occasional recourse to legal remedy. It looks like a policy. And the instinct, once the numbers started circulating, was to hide the details rather than defend them.

The chilling effect of a regime like this does not depend on convictions. It depends on the knowledge that a critical Facebook post, a rude placard, or a sharp comment can summon the Bundeskriminalamt, a prosecutor, and potentially a house search. A Stuttgart man who called Merz a “Suffkopf,” roughly a drunkard, saw his home searched after Merz signed a complaint against him.

The lesson lands well beyond the individuals actually charged. Self-censorship becomes the rational response, which is the real product of the law.

Section 188’s defenders describe it as protection for democratic institutions against targeted harassment of officials. The practical architecture of the provision tells a different story.

The category of “insult” is elastic. German courts have struggled for years with where sharp political commentary ends and punishable disrespect begins, and individual judges have reached wildly different conclusions on facts that look almost identical. Into that vagueness steps a provision that hands the sitting Chancellor and his office a direct line to prosecutors considering whether to put a citizen through a criminal process.

The deeper question sits where it has always sat. A democracy that lets its head of government send police to the homes of citizens who call him names has already made a choice about which it values more, the dignity of the office or the tongue of the citizen. The court has forced some sunlight into the process. The provision that makes the process possible in the first place is still waiting for someone to deal with it.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Court Forces German Chancellor Merz to Open Files on 300 “Insult the Chancellor” Cases

How Israel moved Hermes 900 drone production to Serbia to hide from Iranian missiles

By Ivan Kesic – Press TV – April 25, 2026

The Israeli regime has quietly embarked on an effort to relocate production of its most important long-range strike drone – the Hermes 900- outside the occupied territories.

In Serbia, it has found its latest and most controversial partner. The strategy is simple: protect Tel Aviv’s supply chain from Iranian ballistic missiles.

On March 7, 2026, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a cryptic announcement. Serbia, he said, would soon open a factory for “the most serious drones in the world” with a foreign partner from the Israeli regime.

By early April, reports had uncovered the full scope of the deal. Elbit Systems – the largest military company in the occupied territories and a firm repeatedly named by UN experts as profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza – had agreed to establish a joint drone production facility in Šimanovci, just thirty kilometers west of Belgrade.

The factory, which could begin operations as early as late April 2026, is designed to produce two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, including a long-range model capable of flying at altitudes exceeding six kilometers.

While most media attention has focused on the emerging arms race between Serbia and Croatia, a far more consequential story has gone largely unreported.

What makes this deal particularly significant is not merely the technology transfer or the financial terms, but the strategic logic driving it.

The Israeli regime, having suffered devastating losses of its Hermes 900 fleet during the recent US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, is desperately seeking to diversify its production base – outside the reach of Iranian retaliation.

Serbian factory: Details of the 2026 agreement

The joint venture agreement between Elbit Systems and Serbia’s state-owned Yugoimport SDPR gives the notorious Israeli arms company a controlling 51 percent stake, while the Serbian partner holds the remaining 49 percent.

According to documents obtained by some journalists and confirmed by two independent sources close to the military industry, the factory will produce two distinct drone types.

The first is a short-range model with a high payload and rotary wings, designed for tactical reconnaissance and strike missions in confined operational environments.

The second is far more advanced: a long-range model, faster and capable of operating at altitudes exceeding six kilometers, making it suitable for deep-penetration surveillance missions well beyond Serbian borders.

A source familiar with the deal described the long-range drone as “more advanced” than the Pegasus, a combat reconnaissance drone that Serbia already produces domestically.

“It has a higher flight altitude and greater operational autonomy,” the source explained. “The essence of the whole story is the transfer of technology, because our engineers will also work on it. This drone is actually the crowning glory of the entire project.”

Experts from Utva, an aircraft factory owned by the SDPR, will also be involved in the production process, a clear indication of significant investment in local technical expertise.

The planned site of the factory has itself become a source of controversy: a facility owned by Pink Media Group, the media empire of Željko Mitrović, a businessman with close ties to Vučić’s ruling party.

Following the publication of investigative reports, Pink Media Group issued a denial, claiming that neither Mitrović nor any entity associated with him had participated in negotiations or leased any facility for the project.

However, the denial did not address the documentary evidence or the two independent sources that confirmed the arrangement. The question of the factory’s precise location remains unresolved.

Serbian-Israeli cooperation: Weapons, spyware, and political connections

The drone factory agreement is merely the latest chapter in a rapidly deepening relationship between Belgrade and Tel Aviv that encompasses weapons trade, intelligence technology, political consulting, and diplomatic alignment.

The value of ammunition and weapons exports from Serbia to the Israeli regime has increased by an astonishing 42 times since 2023, reaching 114 million euros by the end of 2025, according to available evidence.

The vast majority of these exports were conducted through Yugoimport SDPR, the same state-owned company now partnering with Elbit on the drone factory.

Beyond conventional weapons, the partnership extends into the shadowy realm of surveillance and espionage technology.

Serbian authorities have used forensic products purchased from the Israeli company Cellebrite to unlock and extract data from mobile devices belonging to journalists and social media activists.

A new spyware tool designated “NoviSpy” has been deployed to infect these devices, enabling the Serbian internal security service to monitor and suppress critical voices.

The methods employed bear the unmistakable signature of Israeli technology and training. The personal connections between the two regimes run deep.

Asaf Eisin, an Israeli consultant, has been described as the main architect of Vučić’s victorious election campaigns.

His role extends beyond mere political consulting; he is widely considered Vučić’s secretive strategist, providing the Serbian president with the kind of sophisticated campaign management techniques developed in the occupied territories.

The Serbian opposition has characterized Eisin as an “agency for winning elections,” and his track record across multiple political campaigns in the Balkans supports this assessment.

In September 2024, while the Israeli regime faced increasing international isolation over its genocidal actions in Gaza, the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, paid an official visit to Belgrade, meeting with top Serbian officials.

The timing was significant: the Israeli regime was under diplomatic pressure worldwide, yet Vučić welcomed Herzog as a gesture of solidarity.

Foreign policy analysts noted that Serbia saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate its alignment with Washington’s closest West Asian ally, a calculated move to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.

This alignment was formalized in September 2020 through the Washington Agreement, in which Serbia committed to opening a chamber of commerce office and a state office in Jerusalem al-Quds.

The move was hailed in Tel Aviv as “an important and courageous step,” while critics noted that it placed Serbia firmly on the side of the occupation and against Palestinian sovereignty.

The United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with the Israeli regime in 2020, has emerged as a significant investor in Serbia, while also serving as a conduit for technology transfer and military cooperation.

The connection to the UAE, brokered through the same Washington Agreement, has created an axis that runs from Abu Dhabi through Tel Aviv to Belgrade.

This triangular relationship has allowed Serbia to access advanced defense technologies while providing the Israeli regime with a European production and logistics hub.

Elbit Systems: A company surrounded by global controversy

Elbit Systems, the Israeli military firm at the center of the Serbian drone factory deal, has accumulated a staggering record of international controversies spanning human rights violations, financial divestment campaigns, grassroots activism, and legal challenges.

The company generates approximately 90 percent of its revenue from military activities and is deeply integrated into the Israeli regime’s military apparatus, making it a focal point of criticism amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

One of the longest-running controversies concerns Elbit’s involvement in infrastructure tied to the Israeli occupation, particularly the surveillance systems installed along the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion in 2004 declaring the wall contrary to international law, yet Elbit continued to supply technology for its operation.

This triggered early international backlash. In 2009, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from Elbit, with the finance minister stating at the time: “We do not want to finance companies that contribute so directly to violations of international humanitarian law.”

Similar decisions followed from Danish and Swedish financial institutions.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made Elbit a primary target, noting that the company’s technology contributes directly to horrendous human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories.

These campaigns have achieved tangible results. HSBC withdrew its investment from Elbit in 2018 after the company acquired IMI Systems, which manufactures cluster munitions.

In 2026, a major Canadian investment arm divested from Elbit following sustained protests over its role in supplying equipment used in the Gaza genocide.

A UN Special Rapporteur report published in June 2025 listed Elbit among companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza. The report specifically mentioned drones developed and supplied by Elbit, describing how they operate alongside warplanes during bombing campaigns, used to monitor Palestinians and gather intelligence on targets.

The report concluded that “drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have become ubiquitous killing machines in the skies over Gaza.”

Direct action activism has targeted Elbit facilities worldwide. In the United Kingdom, groups such as Palestine Action have broken into and occupied Elbit-linked sites. The 2024 Filton facility break-in caused significant damage and led to arrests and high-profile court cases.

In 2025, Elbit closed a UK facility after sustained protests, a symbolic victory for activists demonstrating that reputational and military costs can affect even large arms firms.

In Spain, a steel shipment linked to Elbit’s subsidiary IMI Systems was canceled following protests. In France, the government barred Israeli military firms, including Elbit, from displaying offensive weapons at the Paris Air Show in 2025, citing the genocide in Gaza.

In 2025, a NATO-affiliated procurement agency barred Elbit from contracts due to a corruption investigation, suggesting that the company’s liabilities extend beyond activist campaigns into formal military-sector governance.

Meanwhile, in North Macedonia, Elbit’s involvement in “Safe City” surveillance systems has raised concerns about mass surveillance, transparency, and potential misuse, extending the ethical debate beyond armed conflict into civil liberties and digital rights.

Hermes 900: Capabilities and role in the aggression against Iran

The Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle, produced by Elbit Systems, has proven to be the most important drone in the Israeli regime’s inventory for long-range strikes, and its performance during the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran demonstrated both its strategic value and its acute vulnerabilities.

As a medium-altitude, long-endurance platform, the Hermes 900 can remain airborne for over 30 to 40 hours, operating at high altitudes that allow it to monitor vast areas without requiring frequent refueling.

This endurance is enhanced by satellite communications, enabling beyond-line-of-sight control and real-time data transmission across distances that would be impossible for ground-controlled systems.

The drone’s long-range capability made it particularly suitable for surveillance missions far from Israeli-occupied territories, including monitoring Iranian military infrastructure and tracking the movements of the Axis of Resistance forces throughout the region.

The Hermes 900 is equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems, including electro-optical and infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar, and signals intelligence tools.

These allow it to detect troop movements, missile systems, and communication signals, even at night or in poor weather conditions.

Crucially, the Hermes 900 can designate targets using laser systems and relay precise coordinates, enabling fighter jets or other platforms—including long-range cruise missiles—to conduct strikes based on the intelligence it gathers.

This targeting capability made the drone a critical component of the regime’s aggression against Iranian infrastructure during the war that began on February 28, 2026.

The cost to the Israeli regime was still catastrophic. The largest number of Israeli drones shot down during the recent aggression were of the Hermes 900 type—approximately 20 units, with several more downed in 2025.

No official figure exists for how many Hermes 900 units the Israeli regime originally possessed, but estimates place the number in the dozens, somewhere between 25 and 50.

Some military analysts estimate that the attrition rate for the Hermes 900 fleet may have exceeded 80 percent during the unprovoked war of aggression.

The blow was so severe that the Israeli Air Force reportedly avoided deploying its remaining units over Iran for extended periods, effectively ceding the skies to Iranian air defenses and forcing Tel Aviv to rely on less capable platforms.

This degradation of Israel’s most important long-range surveillance and targeting asset represented a strategic victory for Iran’s air defense network, which had demonstrated the ability to detect, track, and destroy even the most advanced unmanned platforms.

Strategic logic: Foreign production as a hedge against Iranian retaliation

The timing of Serbia’s drone factory agreement with Elbit Systems is not coincidental.

The contract was signed in August 2025, a month and a half after the first US-Israeli aggression against Iran, when it became clear to Tel Aviv that Iranian ballistic missiles could threaten domestic production facilities.

The Israeli regime has since been insisting on peripheral supply chains, offering its clients relatively outdated surveillance technologies while using the arrangement to secure aircraft platforms for new aggressions throughout the region.

This strategy is not new. According to military analysts, the Israeli regime agreed to cooperate with India on Hermes 900 production as early as 2018 through a joint venture between Adani Defence & Aerospace and Elbit Systems, with a dedicated UAV facility in Hyderabad becoming operational in December 2018 for producing components.

By approximately 2020, this facility had expanded to assembling and exporting Hermes 900 units, making India the first production site outside the occupied territories.

Military analysts estimate that India produced approximately 20 of the estimated 50 Hermes 900 drones in the Israeli fleet, meaning that nearly 40 percent of Tel Aviv’s long-range unmanned surveillance capability was manufactured outside the occupied territories, a significant hedge against the vulnerability of domestic production facilities to Iranian retaliation.

In 2024, India formally fielded its own version, the Drishti-10 Starliner, with the first indigenously assembled unit delivered to the Indian Navy in January 2024.

The Swiss experience with Hermes 900 production has been far less successful, offering a cautionary tale for Serbia. Switzerland acquired the drones in 2015 but required extensive modifications through the Swiss partner RUAG to enable safe operation in civilian airspace.

The integration of a detect-and-avoid system proved extremely difficult, leading to repeated delays that pushed full operational capability to around 2029.

Some delivered drones could not meet expected performance standards, and one notable incident involved structural issues that caused a drone to break apart during testing.

The Swiss government was forced to scale back its requirements, abandoning certain advanced features while costs continued to rise.

Parliamentary committees raised doubts about whether RUAG and Elbit could fix ongoing problems, with some officials discussing potential cancellation.

For a neutral country like Switzerland, the deal also sparked debate about whether such partnerships compromise neutrality or align the country too closely with foreign military-industrial interests.

Brazil’s experience offers a different set of challenges. While the Hermes 900 is assembled locally through AEL Sistemas, a Brazilian subsidiary of Elbit, the program has been plagued by technical reliability issues.

Multiple crashes have occurred, including one during the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul when a drone used in rescue operations crashed due to a technical problem.

In March 2026, another Hermes 900 crashed during a military exercise in Mato Grosso do Sul, reportedly leaving the Brazilian Air Force with only one operational unit at the time.

These incidents have raised concerns about fleet fragility and whether Brazil is over-reliant on a complex foreign system that it does not fully control.

Even with local assembly, critical components, software, and maintenance expertise remain tied to Israeli suppliers, creating a structural dependency that critics argue limits Brazil’s technological sovereignty.

Serbian gamble: Risks and domestic opposition

Within Serbia, the drone factory agreement has generated significant controversy.

Military observers point out that Elbit will retain complete control over intellectual property, meaning that while Serbian workers may assemble drones, the country will not gain the ability to independently produce or replicate the systems.

Petar Vojinović, an aviation analyst, explained that the most likely arrangement gives Elbit control over sales and intellectual property, with Yugoimport merely participating in production and collecting revenue percentages from sales.

“It is expected that Elbit will retain complete control over the intellectual property,” he noted.

“Thus, Elbit’s intellectual property will be protected, and Serbia will most likely not be able to produce or replicate the drones that will be manufactured.”

Other analysts emphasized that the key issue is knowledge transfer, arguing that If part of the development and production occurs in Serbia, it means training personnel, access to technology, and the possibility of further development without complete dependence on partners.

The political dimension of the deal has also drawn sharp criticism. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, during a visit to Serbia in March 2026, described Serbia as “one of Israel’s strongest and most determined allies, without any shame.”

Serbian civil society organizations have raised concerns that by hosting an Elbit production facility, Serbia could become a legitimate military target in any future conflict involving the Israeli regime.

Unlike Croatia, which has secured its position through NATO and EU membership, Serbia remains outside both alliances, lacking the protective umbrella that would deter potential retaliation.

The Serbian people are widely critical of their authorities, with many claiming that officials are reaping lucrative commissions from such controversial agreements.

The fact that the factory may be located on property associated with a media mogul closely tied to the ruling party has only intensified suspicions about corruption and self-dealing.

While Vučić has portrayed the deal as a triumph of Serbian diplomacy and technological advancement, critics see it as a risky alignment with a pariah regime that could expose Serbia to diplomatic isolation or worse.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Israel moved Hermes 900 drone production to Serbia to hide from Iranian missiles