By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | June 11, 2026
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth likes to be referred to by the title secretary of war. Given his answer to a question at a Wednesday press conference at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, it may make sense for Hegseth to add a word to his preferred title so that he can be referred to instead by the title secretary of war crimes.
Asked at the press conference how the US military “hitting bridges, electrical infrastructure” in Iran “would not be a war crime potentially targeting civilian infrastructure,” Hegseth did not answer the query. Instead, he complained that the query was “precisely the kind of disingenuous question that I’m used to from the media, impugning the motives of folks on our side who are incredibly professional and incredibly effective.” Continuing, stated Hegseth, “We will hit them hard on our terms on the targets that improve the environment for us to operate in and undermine the capabilities that Iran wants to have.”
This answer suggests that the US secretary of defense does not think that avoiding war crimes is a significant part of deciding how to engage in military actions. Instead of explaining how war crimes would be avoided or how the questioner is misinterpreting what would constitute war crimes in the situation, Hegseth just declared that everyone involved in the US government’s war effort is beyond reproach and that any actions they take that advance the US position in the war relative to the position of Iran is fine.
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 10, 2026
From 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2025, Israeli settlers killed 61 Palestinians and injured 3,778. The findings of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, which partly discusses settler violence, note that “Israeli authorities have consistently acknowledged settler violence as a problem, while promoting structural conditions that enable it.”
The recently published report details the overt nature of Israeli settler violence – the claiming of responsibility for settler attacks on Palestinians as part of the process to ‘Greater Israel’, the unequivocal assertion that attacks are unprovoked, and the indoctrination of settler children by family members and settler organisations. Supporting the entire spectrum of settler-colonial violence is the Israeli government, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplaying the attacks against Palestinians as attributed to “a small group of unruly youth”. The report notes how government settlement expansion policy contributes to settler violence, and provides the framework for settler impunity. Mentioning prominent Israeli ministers and settler leaders, the report states, “They [the officials] have explicitly permitted or condoned settler violence as an instrument to achieve a broader agenda.”
As the UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway imposed sanctions on networks that collaborate with settler violence in the occupied West Bank, the Commission of Inquiry’s report details the structure that supports settler violence against Palestinians. Reacting to the sanctions, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Oren Marmorstein declared, “The real essence of these steps is the attempt to impose a political stance regarding the right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – camouflaged as measures against violence.”
Of course the decision is political. However, as the report shows, the six countries’ decision to impose sanctions does not even scratch the surface of the politics and policies that support Israel’s settler-colonial expansion. Israel and its institutions have created a protective structure for settler violence, and Marmorstein’s statement illustrates how central settler violence is to completing the process of Greater Israel.
Without settler violence contributing to the forced displacement of the Palestinian people, Israel would have a difficult time maintaining its structure.
The discrepancy, however lies in world leaders’ decision to target entities and individuals rather than Israel itself. For example, the report highlights that the line between settlers and soldiers has blurred since regional brigades were formed and gun licenses were handed out by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Settlers are being given power by Israel’s colonial structure, therefore sanctioning settlers is unlikely to make a difference in halting colonial expansion.
International diplomacy is still viewing Israeli settler-colonialism in manageable sections, and detached from Israel’s expansionist policies.
Targeting settlers with sanctions simply encourages Israel to provide more impunity for those doing its work on the ground, while the Israeli government continues with settlement construction.
As the Commission of Inquiry’s report shows, Israel cannot be discussed separately from settler violence. Sanctions, therefore, need to appropriately target the colonial framework itself, which would then have an impact on the settler-colonial society in its entirety.
The Cradle | June 10, 2026
On June 9, extremist Israeli settler groups launched a coordinated arson attack on the historic Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank, torching agricultural fields east of Ramallah as part of a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The violence against the 3,000-year-old village intensified following the establishment of an illegal settlement outpost in the immediate vicinity, as local residents of Taybeh face persistent encroachment and assaults by Israeli settlers whose stated objective is to seize the area’s rich pastoral lands.
This ongoing attempted annexation has placed the community under significant pressure as it attempts to maintain its agricultural and pastoral way of life under constant violent harassment.
This latest assault follows previous instances of settler-led violence specifically targeting the historic Church of Saint George, a landmark of significant religious and cultural importance within the village.
Despite international attention and the historical status of the site, the campaign of intimidation has continued.
The torching of the fields on Tuesday is a direct hit on the economic and territorial integrity of the village, with the proximity of the illegal Israeli settlement outpost serving as a primary launch point for these repeated incursions.
The Christian Palestinian community now finds itself at the center of an escalating cycle of land seizures and property destruction in the occupied West Bank.
The attack comes as part of a systematic, state-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, and gradual annexation of occupied Palestinian territories.
It represents a microcosm of the broader settler campaign to render Palestinian territory uninhabitable, marked by the systematic displacement of residents and the destruction and seizure of agricultural resources.
A UN Commission of Inquiry published on Tuesday has concluded that Israeli authorities are directly involved in facilitating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, providing financial and military support within a climate of impunity.
Attacks on Palestinian villages have surged by 130 percent since 2023, according to the report, and frequently involve masked assailants directly shielded by Israeli military forces.
These documented assaults include the abduction and abuse of children and the use of sexual violence to instill fear, and are identified as tools for advancing state policies of territorial annexation and unlawful displacement.
The inquiry describes a “de facto collapse” of the distinction between soldiers and settlers, noting that at least seven Palestinians were killed and 832 injured last year amid near-daily attacks.
On 3 June, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced a major illegal settlement project involving the construction of approximately 2,000 houses on seized Palestinian land.
This plan includes 1,006 units near Jerusalem, 920 near Nablus, and 234 near Hebron.
Smotrich, who has held substantial authority over the West Bank Civil Administration since 2023, plainly states that these developments are intended to “establish clear facts on the ground” to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
Smotrich’s administrative powers effectively granted him free rein to use the military body governing the occupied territory to accelerate the de facto annexation of the West Bank through calculated land seizures.
Press TV – June 10, 2026
The managing director of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company says pre-dawn US strikes have completely destroyed critical water infrastructure in the eastern part of the province, leaving more than 20,000 residents without access to drinking water as summer temperatures soar.
Abdolhamid Hamzehpour told local media Wednesday that American terrorist attacks hit the water supply facilities in Sirik county, targeting the distribution network for the town of Kuhestak and 10 villages in the Bemani district.
Hamzehpour detailed that two concrete reservoirs, with capacities of 500 and 2,000 cubic meters, along with their associated mechanical equipment, were demolished in the strikes. The destruction of the facilities has led to a complete halt in water distribution for the affected areas.
“The enemy has precisely targeted the infrastructure linked to the daily livelihood and health of the people,” Hamzehpour said, describing the act as “flagrant terrorism.”
The outage comes as the region endures peak summer temperatures, with reports that local weather hovers between 45 and 50 degrees Celsius. Officials stated that the area lacks sufficient groundwater reserves to compensate for the loss of the reservoirs, creating a critical situation for the population.
Hamzehpour condemned the loss of water access as a “clear instance of a crime against humanity,” noting that operational teams are on-site but face significant challenges due to the scale of the destruction.
The strikes on Sirik, as well as on the cities of Jask and Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, occurred in the early hours of Wednesday. They followed Washington’s accusation that Iran downed a US Army Apache helicopter over Persian Gulf waters.
While the United States has stated its strikes targeted military infrastructure, including air defense systems and radar installations near the Strait of Hormuz, provincial Iranian officials maintain that civilian water facilities in Sirik were directly hit.
Hamzehpour confirmed that mobile water tankers have been deployed to the region as an emergency measure. However, he warned that fully restoring the destroyed pumping and storage systems will require “time and extensive technical actions.”
“The deprivation of a large population of people from water in these weather conditions is carried out under the shadow of false claims of humanitarian aid,” Hamzehpour added, according to IRNA.
In response to the acts of aggression, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) launched a series of drone and missile strikes against US military assets across the region.
In one instance, the IRGC targeted the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet with missile and drone attacks, as part of its broader retaliatory campaign.
Iranian armed forces also carried out strikes against US military facilities in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait during the early hours of Wednesday.
Palestinian Information Center – June 9, 2026
GAZA – Gaza’s health ministry has denounced the arrest of seven Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics by the Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday morning while they were carrying out their humanitarian duties in the Gaza Strip.
The incident occurred as the medical team was passing through a military checkpoint set up by Israeli forces on Salahuddin road, the main artery connecting central and southern Gaza.
The health ministry explained that the arrests took place while the paramedics were carrying out their usual humanitarian duties of rescuing the wounded and transporting patients.
The ministry noted that the seven paramedics were detained and subjected to harsh on-site interrogations before five were later released, adding that two of them remain in custody at an undisclosed location.
The ministry called for immediate international intervention to secure the release of the remaining paramedics and guarantee their safety.
Corralling millions of Palestinians into 30% of the former strip is making life there untenable. This is all part of the plan.
By Omar Shaban Ismail | Responsible Statecraft | June 8, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month that he had ordered the Israeli military to seize 70% of the Gaza Strip.
Under President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, Israeli forces were required to withdraw to a zone encompassing roughly 50% of Gaza’s territory, demarcated by the so-called Yellow Line, ahead of further withdrawals in the future. Instead of retreating, however, the Israeli army has steadily expanded its area of control, which now stands at roughly 60% of Gaza, while leveling the areas under its occupation to the ground.
Indeed, despite a so-called ceasefire, Israel continues to carry out near daily attacks on Gaza — at least 932 people have been called since the ceasefire was announced — while heavily restricting the entry of aid.
So what does it mean to squeeze more than two million people into 30% of the already tiny Gaza Strip? It is a direct and deliberate policy of slow death, one that forces the population into an overcrowded and ever-shrinking open-air prison that lacks even the most basic conditions to sustain life. The plan Israel is implementing in Gaza is not the Trump Plan but a plan to make Gaza permanently uninhabitable.
Prior to the war, the Gaza Strip had an area of about 140 square miles and a population of roughly 2.2 million people, making it one of the most densely populated territories in the world. If around 2 million people are squeezed into only 30% of the territory, density rises to more than 46,000 people per square mile; if the full pre-war population is counted, it approaches 52,000. These basic figures are consistent with the World Bank’s latest rapid damage and needs assessment (RDNA) and with the wider demographic reality of Gaza before the war.
For comparison, population density per square mile is about 230 people in Morocco, 320 in Egypt, 100 in the United States, 390 in China, 750 in the United Kingdom, around 1300 in India, and about 1000 in Belgium. Even before the war, Gaza’s population density already exceeded any of these at 16,000 people per square mile. What is being imposed now is the compression of an entire society into a space that can no longer support life, services, dignity, or social order. This is nothing short of demographic suffocation.
The Israeli plan for controlling 70% of the territory — up from 50% in October 2025 — will turn the remaining 30% into a pressure cooker. The occupied and inaccessible areas include much of Gaza’s agricultural land, especially around Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah. These lands are Gaza’s food basket. They also include water wells, desalination projects, wastewater facilities, roads, warehouses and open public land needed for future expansion.
The U.N. summary of the RDNA estimates recovery and reconstruction needs at $71.4 billion, including major needs in agriculture, health, education and sanitation. But without land, even the best-funded reconstruction plan becomes a spreadsheet without geography.
The humanitarian reality is already catastrophic. According to the RDNA, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been internally displaced, many several times, and more than 1.2 million people have lost their homes. Fewer than half of hospitals and less than 38% of primary healthcare centers are even partially functional. Around 728,000 school-aged children and youth have been out of formal education for more than two years. At least 41,844 people are estimated to be living with life-changing injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation, and over 68 million metric tonnes of debris must be removed.
Under these conditions, the absence of cemeteries is one of the cruelest indicators of social collapse. Families in Gaza have already been forced to bury their dead in informal graveyards, empty lots and makeshift spaces because major cemeteries were damaged, inaccessible or full. A society that cannot find space to bury its dead cannot be expected to build schools, clinics, playgrounds, water tanks, greenhouses, factories or homes. Even death becomes displaced.
This is why the question of land cannot be separated from health, education and social behavior. Gaza’s population grows by roughly 60,000 people each year. Under normal circumstances, the territory would need dozens of new schools annually, additional hospitals and clinics, more cemeteries, more sports facilities, more wastewater treatment capacity, and more public space. Today, Gaza must do all of that while rebuilding hundreds of destroyed or damaged schools and hospitals, tens of thousands of homes, and the economic base that once allowed families to survive without total dependence on aid.
The loss of schools is not only an educational problem. Schools regulate time, protect children, transmit civic norms, and give adolescents a reason to imagine a future. When schools disappear, the street, the shelter, the armed group, the black market and the phone screen become alternative institutions.
This environment is fertile ground for violence, hatred and extremism — not because Gazans are naturally violent, but because engineered deprivation produces social pathologies. Overcrowded shelters and informal camps concentrate exhausted families in spaces where privacy is absent and resources are scarce. PalThink’s research on displacement and survival in Gaza describes how mass displacement has torn family and neighborhood bonds and replaced many patterns of solidarity. When this condition continues for months and years, it becomes very difficult to contain.
The most dangerous outcome is not only humanitarian collapse, but the formation of a generation raised without school, reliable health care, employment, public space, justice institutions, or a credible political horizon. Such a generation will not simply wait patiently for reconstruction conferences. Some will withdraw into despair. Some will search for revenge. Some will be recruited by radical actors. Some will turn against their own society. Others will try to leave. These are the predictable outcomes of compressing life until it becomes unlivable.
It is in this light that one should read Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s recent calls for “voluntary migration” from Gaza, to be implemented “at the proper time and in the proper manner.” Indeed, Israeli authorities have created an official government agency to advance such departures. The sequencing of Israeli actions suggests clear intent: first make return impossible, then make life unbearable, then present departure as voluntary.
If two million people are denied land, water, schools, hospitals, jobs, safe homes and even cemeteries, the final destination will be a mass exodus.
The policy conclusion is straightforward. Preventing mass displacement begins with ending the policy of territorial compression inside Gaza. Palestinians must regain access to their land, including agricultural areas, public land and infrastructure sites. Reconstruction must be allowed where people actually lived, not only in overcrowded containment zones. Schools, hospitals, cemeteries, water systems and municipal services must be treated as security infrastructure, because without them no society can remain governable.
In 2012, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become unlivable by 2020. That warning now reads like an understatement. Amid the destruction of war, the loss of homes, the collapse of services and the shrinking of available land and resources, Gaza is not merely facing a humanitarian catastrophe but an imposed and politically engineered geography of non-life.
The occupation of 70% of the already tiny Gaza Strip is not merely the occupation of land. It is a policy aimed at the destruction of all means of life within a confined enclave. If this continues, the question will not be whether people leave but how many will be forced to choose the sea.
Omar Shaban Ismail is a senior analyst at PalThink and a development expert. He holds Master’s of Entrepreneurial studies from University of Stirling, Scotland, and a 2nd Master’s in Development from Geneva Graduate Institute. Omar was born in Gaza in 1962; he exited to Cairo in October 2023. Omar has published tens of article and policy paper in well recognized international magazines.
Press TV – June 9, 2026
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fanatic Israeli minister for security affairs, says the Lebanese women and youth must be kidnapped as a means of exerting pressure on the resistance movement Hezbollah.
He made his proposal during a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday, urging officials to adopt more aggressive measures against the Lebanese group as discussions focused on expanding Israel’s military invasion in Lebanon.
“Let’s start thinking outside the box about Hezbollah,” Ben-Gvir said, adding that conquering territory and killing many Hezbollah fighters, but also abducting their women and youth and taking them to prisons is “what hurts them the most.”
Israeli forces continue to suffer casualties and equipment losses in southern Lebanon.
Several cabinet members reportedly voiced support for intensifying military raids in Lebanon despite a ceasefire announced by the United States earlier this year.
Israeli forces have already kidnapped Lebanese civilians during the aggression, although the exact number remains unclear.
The abductees are believed to be among the 1,316 individuals currently held under Israel’s “unlawful combatant” law, a measure that includes Palestinians from Gaza and Syrian nationals.
The legislation, first enacted in 2002, allows authorities to hold individuals for indefinite and renewable periods without formal charges.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized the law, arguing that it violates international legal standards by permitting detention without court orders, limiting access to legal counsel, and withholding information about detainees’ whereabouts and conditions.
Calls for escalation were echoed by other Israeli officials during the cabinet meeting. Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf urged finance minister Bezalel Smotrich to increase military funding, saying he should “open his pockets” for the armed forces and artillery units.
Israel’s minister of military affairs, Israel Katz, also backed expanding military operations, saying “the prime minister made an important decision to attack, and we must expand the armaments even further.”
The discussions come amid continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon despite a US-brokered ceasefire.
Lebanese Defense Minister Michel Menassa said earlier this week that Israeli forces had carried out approximately 3,500 attacks and hundreds of controlled explosions since the ceasefire was announced on April 17.
According to Lebanese authorities, around 1.2 million people have been displaced nationwide as a result of the ongoing hostilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least 3,637 people have been killed since the latest phase of the conflict began in March, including more than 800 deaths recorded after the April ceasefire announcement.
Israeli officials say Hezbollah attacks have also caused casualties on the Israeli side. At least 34 Israelis, most of them soldiers, have been killed since March, including 18 deaths reported since April 17.
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | June 8, 2026
Iran has fired missiles at Northern Israel after Israel crossed Iran’s red line and began bombing Dahieh in South Beirut .
The Israeli media has claimed that Israel intercepted most Iranian missiles, including missiles fired at Israel’s Nevatim and Tel Nof air bases.
But what Israel and Western media will not tell you is that Israel yet again issued strict censorship orders, barring journalists from covering any damage that Iranian missiles did to Israeli military facilities.
As the Al Jazeera journalist Nida Ibrahim, working in the occupied West Bank, noted :
In general, there is an emphasis in Israel on reporting that the Israeli military has been intercepting all the missiles launched from Iran into the country. Although some Israeli media outlets are reporting damage in certain locations, including yesterday when the first volley was fired from Iran, it remains difficult to fully assess the impact.
We have to remember how Israel works. There is a military censor that ensures information deemed sensitive by the state is not exposed to the media.
So it is hard to assess how much damage these rockets have been causing inside Israel.
Palestinian journalist Abdusalam Fayez revealed that the Israeli military censor issued “strict restrictions on coverage of the ongoing regional war, ordering journalists not to publish information about missiles landing at military sites in the country.”
This included orders from the Israeli military censor saying:
-Do not publish the exact number of missiles launched in each volley. You may use general phrases such as scattered missiles or dozens, but not precise numbers.
-Do not publish reports about missiles that fell before reaching their target or crashed along their path. Instead, say they did not reach their destination
-The censor also ordered journalists not to publish “any information about missiles landing at military or strategic sites, or at sea
-It further instructed them not to publish “any videos showing interceptor missiles hitting targets.”
He added that, “Israel also banned the circulation of visuals related to the sites where missiles and drones landed in Israeli cities, towns and settlements.”
This is a continuation of the Israeli military censorship that was put in place throughout the Iran war to hide the actual damage Iran had done to Israel through retaliatory strikes.
As CNN reported in March of this year:
Every reporter in Israel — and every member of the public — is subject to a military censor. On national security grounds, the regulation authorizes the censor to prohibit reporting or broadcasting any material that could reveal sensitive information or pose a threat to the country’s security interests.
This is particularly sensitive during wartime, where the military censor has made clear that broadcasting any images that reveal the location of interceptor missiles or military sites hit by enemy projectiles is forbidden, especially in live broadcasts.
To ensure military censorship, Israel has imposed harsher penalties for journalists who violate it.
The Committee to Protect Journalists noted in March that “Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi announced stricter enforcement measures against foreign media during the ongoing military operation. Officials said authorities would adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ policy toward violations of military censorship rules, including detaining and arresting journalists suspected of broadcasting information that could endanger operational security”.
Yet again, Israel has barred journalists from reporting on any Iranian strikes on Israeli military sites, and even Israeli military intercepts (suggesting they are not as successful as Israel lets on), in order to hide the damage that Iran’s retaliatory strikes have actually done.
By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | June 8, 2026
When the lights went out inside the Shahid Naimi Sports Complex, Helma, a fourth grader, and Elham, a fifth grader, were still on the volleyball court.
According to teammates and relatives, the two schoolgirls had been training with the Lamerd youth volleyball team on the evening of February 28, 2026, in Lamerd, a county in the southern Iranian province of Fars.
Only moments earlier, the sports hall had echoed with the sharp blasts of whistles, the rhythm of running drills, and the thud of volleyballs striking the floor.
Then, a US-Israeli missile strike outside the complex plunged the facility into darkness. In the confusion, players, coaches, and children began making their way toward the exits. But they never made it out.
According to residents, hospital personnel, and family members, a second US-Israeli missile detonated above the sports hall moments later, tearing through the roof and unleashing thousands of high-velocity fragments across the court below.
Doctors said Elham was already dead before she reached the hospital. Helma, however, managed to walk to the ambulance on her own.
Eyewitnesses say there was not even a visible bloodstain on her body. Helma told her coach, “It feels like something went into my body.”
She lifted her shirt and showed what appeared to be a small, blade-like object. It did not appear to be a serious wound. Helma appeared to be the furthest from death. But according to her uncle, that small black fragment had penetrated her heart, and around 7:00 p.m. on the same day, the efforts of the medical staff failed to save her life.
Later, the hospital staff described cases in which external wounds appeared minor but internal damage was severe.
Iliya Khatami, a sixth-grade boy, and his coach, Mahmoud Najafi, who were playing football on a grass field nearby, were also killed by the same fragments released from the US missile.
Two-year-old Avina Barzegar has been the youngest casualty of this US-Israeli attack. According to her family, she was martyred in an operating room while still having a pacifier in her mouth.
However, the attacks did not end there. A third missile, launched by the United States and Israel, struck the Lamerd ring road, killing three workers.
Two were on duty at the time, one from Lamerd and another from Mamasani, a county in Iran’s Fars Province, while the third was an Afghan national.
The civilian death toll extended far beyond those workers. Among the dead was a homemaker who had been sitting outside her house when the missile struck.
Also killed were a grocery store clerk, a pedestrian visiting from Norway who happened to be inside a pharmacy, the deputy director of customs at the Lamerd Special Economic Zone, and several university students.
The head of the MRI department at Lamerd Hospital instinctively threw herself over her daughter after hearing the blast. Her daughter survived, but she did not.
The attack, carried out on the first day of the 40-day war of aggression against Iran, killed 24 innocent civilians and injured more than 130 others.
Among the injured was a female student who was left blind. One resident said the fragments entered his body “like blades” and, as in Helma’s case, shattered the bone in his leg even though the external wound appeared barely visible.
The tragedy continues to haunt surviving families. The brother of one of the university students killed in the attack suffered a spinal cord injury and has still not been informed of his sister’s death.
Based on the locations where the US-Israeli missiles detonated, it has been confirmed that they struck densely populated civilian areas with heavy daily foot traffic.
Did the US and Israel use new lethal weapon in these deadly strikes?
The walls, doors, and windows of the city are riddled with large and small pellet holes. Reports suggest that a new missile called the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) was tested for the first time over the people of Lamerd by the US-Israeli war machine.
The PrSM is a surface-to-surface weapon system capable of striking targets from 60 to 500 kilometres away, far beyond the range of any artillery or conventional missile system.
The missiles are rocket-powered, guided by a GPS-supported inertial navigation system.
PrSM is produced by Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, an American weapons manufacturer. The company describes PrSM as a “next-generation, long-range precision-strike missile.”
Sharing an image of text on X, Max Blumenthal, the editor and founder of The Grayzone website, wrote, “Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet tells investors the US-Israeli war on Iran and assaults across the region are a ‘golden opportunity’,” as “Lockheed tested its new Precision Strike Missile on a girl’s volleyball game in Lamerd, Iran, on Feb 28, killing and wounding dozens.”
Describing the lethal weapon, US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper said that the PrSM provides the American military with “an unrivalled deep strike capability”.
Each PrSM missile carries 180,000 tungsten pellets. Four missiles mean 720,000 projectiles dispersed over just a small section of Lamerd, a city of only 30,000 people.
That’s the equivalent of 24 tungsten pellets for every man, woman, and child in the city, suggesting that a staggering concentration of firepower was unleashed by the US and Israel on a civilian area.
The first missile exploded over the residential neighbourhood of Isar, the second a little farther away in the residential area of Tolkhandaq, the third again over Isar, and the fourth above an elementary school and the Shahid Naeimi sports hall. The reported impact extended beyond the sheer volume of munitions used.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, stated that the “American forces fired PrSM at a residential neighbourhood in Lamerd, directly hitting a sports hall filled with civilians, including teenage volleyball players, women, men, and a helpless two-year-old girl.”
“There is no longer any doubt that this was not an accident, not ‘collateral damage,’ but a premeditated decision by the US regime to test its new weapon system on Iranian civilians in a residential area. Such a cold-blooded act constitutes a clear and despicable war crime,” he said in a social media post on May 25.
McKenzie Intelligence also said that Lamerd was “within the extended range” of the missile and “US Central Command has admitted to using PrSM in strikes from the desert of an unnamed Gulf country against Iran in the early phases of the conflict.”
Western media analysis of PrSM
Subsequent reporting and analyses, including by Western media outlets, have also identified the munition used in Lamerd as the PrSM. These findings have drawn further attention to the weapon’s deadly airburst design and its effects in populated civilian areas.
The Times, a British daily, ran an investigation stating that it verified videos of two strikes in Lamerd, as well as aftermath footage from the US-Israeli attacks.
The reporters of the daily and munitions experts found that the “weapon features, explosions and damage are consistent with a short-range PrSM ballistic missile, which is designed to detonate just above its target and blast small tungsten pellets outward.”
The New York Times reported that it examined video and satellite imagery from Lamerd and assessed the characteristics of the strikes.
The analysis concluded that a PrSM missile, an airburst capable weapon designed to detonate above its target and disperse tungsten fragments across a wide area, was “likely” used in Lamerd.
Post-strike imagery showed distributed pockmark patterns rather than large crater formation, a characteristic attributed in the analysis to fragmentation dispersal.
Separate video analysis by the Washington Post reviewed satellite imagery and ground-level footage, concluding that observed damage patterns were consistent with airburst detonation rather than direct-impact high-explosive warheads.
Mapping the targets of the US-Israeli attack
The Shahid Naimi Sports Complex was hosting routine evening training sessions on February 28, when multiple youth teams and school groups were present inside the facility.
According to residents, the indoor hall was being used by a girls’ volleyball team while a separate section of the complex and the adjacent open field were occupied by a boys’ football group.
At the time of the strike, the complex was hosting a girls’ volleyball practice session alongside a boys’ football training activity in adjacent areas of the facility.
Coaches and school staff were supervising regular pre-competition training activities for students preparing for provincial tournaments.
The facility, identified in local mapping platforms and municipal records as a civilian recreational and educational facility, was used regularly by school sports programs and youth training teams before the US-Israeli strike.
It was located within a broader residential zone of Lamerd, with pedestrian access routes connecting nearby homes, small commercial units, and a ring road within a short distance of the complex.
According to accounts from survivor testimonies, the first US-Israeli strike occurred in proximity to a nearby installation or open area outside the immediate sports hall structure.
This initial blast was described by witnesses as causing a sudden power disruption inside the gymnasium, resulting in immediate darkness and confusion among those present. Training activities were abruptly halted as athletes and coaches attempted to locate exits.
The second US-Israeli strike, which occurred shortly thereafter, is reported to have detonated above or immediately adjacent to the sports hall structure.
Eyewitness descriptions suggest an airburst pattern, with fragments dispersing across the roof and interior space of the facility. Panic ensued inside the hall, with children attempting to evacuate through limited exits in low-visibility conditions.
The speed of the sequence of US-Israeli strikes, according to residents, left almost no time for evacuation.
A third impact was reported in the Lamerd ring road area, approximately a short distance from the sports complex, affecting a separate cluster of civilian movement and vehicles.
This third US-Israeli strike has been described by eyewitnesses as having caused widespread destruction over a populated roadside zone.
Medical and municipal sources said the fragmentation injuries were so widespread that they affected individuals inside vehicles, outside shops, and within nearby residential courtyards.
After more than three months, the fragments of the US PrSM remain visible in shattered homes, perforated walls, and lives permanently altered by loss.
For the families of Helma, Elham, Avina, and the other victims, the United States and Israel killed their children in places where they should have been the safest, sports halls, neighbourhoods, and family spaces where ordinary life was unfolding.
By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – June 5, 2026
Netanyahu and Trump are conditioning the end of the war in Iran on the condition that all countries in the region sign the Abraham Accords, a tacit submission to Israel. Drawing on Daniel Levy, Omer Bartov, and the Pew Survey, I address the reasons, the urgency, and the limits of Netanyahu’s simultaneous battles on several fronts in the quest for a Greater Israel project.
When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich talks about expanding Israel’s reach “to Damascus,” or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses personal attachment to broad territorial ambitions or Israel being not only a “regional superpower” but “in some respects, a global superpower,” these are not just messianic daydreams. They reflect a deliberate, and deeply destabilizing strategic doctrine. For years, the idea of Greater Israel was dismissed by Western analysts as the rhetoric of a few Israeli hardliners. Sustaining this dismissive position is no longer possible.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and now head of the U.S./Middle East Project, offers a sharp analytical lens for understanding today’s events. He suggests that Greater Israel isn’t just about land—it’s about Israel aiming to establish itself as the dominant hard-power player across the Middle East. As Levy puts it, this is about seeing how far Israel can extend its reach and consolidate its role as the region’s unrivaled hegemon.
Territorial control—occupying the Golan, reasserting presence in southern Lebanon, pushing forward with West Bank annexation, and the continuation of the genocide in Gaza—is only the most visible layer. The deeper game is about forging new regional alliances, as the one with the UAE, systematically weakening rival states, and building webs of hard-power dependency that lock neighboring governments into Israel’s orbit.
The ideological consolidation of this project was the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which constitutionally defined Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people.” For many, including the PLO’s Saeb Erekat, this law was the moment when a Zionist aspiration became a formal legal reality, and for critics, a codification of a system of apartheid. What was once an ambition is now written into the legal foundations of the state.
Omer Bartov, a leading scholar on genocide and Israeli history, traces this shift with a heavy sense of loss. In his book Israel: What Went Wrong?, he shows how Zionism, once rooted in the humanitarian ideals of 19th-century Jewish emancipation, has been transformed into a state project of ethno-nationalism, exclusion, and, in the end, violence. As Bartov puts it, what began as a struggle for Jewish liberation has become a machinery for dominating Palestinians, with all the tragedy that implies.
The Logic of Urgency
The pace and simultaneity of Israeli military operations in recent years demand careful analysis. In just two years, Israel has bombed Gaza, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen; it has occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of southern Lebanon. Israel even succeeded in drawing the United States into a direct conflict with Iran, a move that, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio accidentally admitted, was driven more by Israeli rather than American priorities. As for Netanyahu, this is a posture of someone convinced that the window for reshaping the region is closing fast, and determined to act before it closes.
Levy describes the current moment as the “Pax Greater Israel” era, a time when the old constraints of American power, the so-called Pax Americana, have faded. With a more pliable U.S. administration, Israel’s room to maneuver has expanded. Iran still hasn’t rebuilt the deterrence it once had before Israel and America struck last year. The region’s strategic balance is more fluid—and more precarious—than it’s been in a generation.
While there’s international outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, Israel has not suffered any punishment. The European Union, which heralds itself as the guardian of morals and Western values, has seen these values undermined by Israel, yet no single action has been taken. Netanyahu, who has piloted Israeli politics for nearly two decades, is unlikely to let an opportunity like this slip by.
Netanyahu’s sense of urgency isn’t just strategic. It is also deeply personal and political. He faces criminal charges, widespread public disapproval (polls showed most Israelis wanted him out even before the Gaza war), and an election looming in 2026. His personal survival and his political project are now intertwined. History teaches us that war often delays accountability, and Netanyahu knows that he has survived through wars.
By keeping the nation in a constant state of crisis, Netanyahu postpones his own reckoning while pushing forward his broader regional ambitions. There is always a danger when embattled leaders manipulate the machinery of state.
The Collapse of the Impunity Consensus
For decades, Israel benefited from an unspoken Western consensus that gave it extraordinary complacency on international law. UN resolutions could be swept aside, settlements could expand, human rights abuses against Palestinians could be perpetrated, and the memory of the Holocaust—too often used as a diplomatic shield—offered a kind of moral immunity no other state enjoyed. That consensus is now breaking down, even if its institutional traces remain stubbornly in place.
The visibility of the Gaza war and its horrendous violence has triggered a generational break like never before and a breakdown of this consensus. According to an April 2026 Pew survey, 60% of Americans have unfavorable views of Israel and 37% favorable ones. This becomes more important, as it is the first in history. The same survey also showed Netanyahu’s administration with 27% approval and 59% disapproval. In the last Global Country Perceptions Survey, Israel ranked in the last position, several points behind North Korea and Afghanistan.
The generational divide is even sharper among young people, many of whom reject any complicity in what prominent scholars, including Bartov, now formally call genocide. Netanyahu’s act of tearing up the UN Charter at the General Assembly, followed by a mass walkout, was more than symbolism. It marked the end of an era for both Netanyahu and Israel. Criticism of Israel or Zionism is no longer quickly conflated with antisemitism, especially among the younger generations.
And yet the institutional lag is severe. The European Union, bound by Article 2 of its Association Agreement with Israel, which explicitly conditions the relationship on respect for human rights, has consistently refused to act on its own legal framework. The cost of this cowardice is not merely moral. The EU, having lost industrial competitiveness, seeks its international influence as a regulatory and normative superpower. This claim rests on credibility. A bloc that intends to police the digital practices of technology companies but cannot enforce a human rights clause in its own trade agreement with a small state faces difficulties in imposing itself as a normative power, and the Global South has drawn that conclusion because of the lack of moral authority and double standard.
The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, sensing the tide turning, has responded by intensifying rather than moderating. More money is being spent, more countries are being pressured, more political careers are being threatened or terminated, as was the case with Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and more communication and online platforms are being acquired; censorship is being imposed, especially on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, and algorithms are being “re-educated,” as Mr. Larry Ellison said when he acquired TikTok. The main lobby, AIPAC, has, in great measure, turned into a politically toxic brand, according to The Intercept.
But Levy is right to note the structural limits of this approach. Lobbying is most effective when it moves with the current of public opinion or when it operates in the dark. It is least effective when it operates openly against an overwhelming public majority, against a country’s perceived national interest, and against the values of the rising generation. The lobby is fighting a rearguard action — powerful, well-resourced, and increasingly desperate.
The Next Iran and the Regional Order
It’s no accident that Israeli security officials—from Naftali Bennett to the current establishment—have started designating Türkiye as “the next Iran.” This isn’t just rhetoric; it is also part of “Greater Israel” strategy. Three decades ago, Israel argued that Iran was the existential threat that had to be contained before it led the region. Now, the same logic and language are applied to Türkiye: any regional power capable of building a new security order outside Israeli influence is seen as a threat to be isolated or confronted before it can consolidate.
But Türkiye is a different kind of challenge. As a NATO member with the largest NATO army in Europe, a strong economy, and the anchor of a coalition with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, Türkiye is not easily marginalized. Recent agreements point to a regional bloc that aims to build security frameworks explicitly outside Israeli (and, by extension, Western) dominance. This coalition news has not pleased Israel and soon reached the EU, with Ursula von der Leyen declaring, “We do not want to live under the influence of China, Russia, or Türkiye.”
The regional threat map has changed. For much of the Arab world and for Türkiye’s Erdoğan, Israel—not Iran—is now seen as the chief destabilizer. This shift in perception has real geopolitical consequences, and it’s not something American air power can easily undo.
Are we at the point of no return? In some ways, yes. The two-state solution, no matter how often it’s invoked in diplomatic statements, is functionally dead. It wasn’t killed by a single act, but by decades of illegal settlements, legal discrimination, disproportionate violence, and the systematic fragmentation of Palestinian territory. The ethnostate is already a reality on the ground. Bartov’s assessment is sobering but direct: unless there is sustained, structural pressure and actions from the international community, a real course correction is unlikely, and so far, that pressure hasn’t materialized.
But in another sense, we’re not quite past the point of no return for Netanyahu’s grand project. The conditions that have enabled the Greater Israel strategy are starting to slip away. American public opinion is shifting faster than the country’s political leaders; the support for Palestine is now higher than the support for Israel. A new regional bloc—with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt—offers a real counterweight. Iran, for all its setbacks, still possesses significant strategic resources and has the backing of China and Russia. And inside Israel, recent polling shows that a large majority (71%) support replacing the current Basic Laws with a formal constitution. Beneath the surface noise of hardline politics, there’s evidence that Israeli society hasn’t wholly given in to the ethnonationalist vision Bartov describes.
One thing is clear: this current trajectory of forever war and continued violence and humiliation of Palestinians can’t last forever. As Levy notes, Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game of “use it or lose it.” The real question isn’t whether this moment will end — sure it will — but what the aftermath will look like. Will the region be forcibly remade in the image of Greater Israel, or will a new order, forged through painful resistance, emerge in its place? The stakes for Israelis, Palestinians, and the broader Middle East couldn’t be higher.
Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
Your tax dollars at work
By Kevin Barrett | American Free Press | June 5, 2026
On May 18, Israeli commandos attacked 54 civilian boats carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza. The boats were near Cypress, nearly 300 miles from Gaza, in international waters.
The Israelis fired at the boats and kidnapped 428 unarmed humanitarian activists. Those people were never charged with any crime. How could they be? When kidnapped, they were exercising their right to sail in international waters. It was the Israelis who were committing the crime of maritime piracy, which carries a penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment.
But piracy and kidnapping were just the initial crimes. Sexual assault, rape, and torture followed. It began almost as soon as the Israeli pirates boarded the victims’ boats. According to Dropsite News, “The flotilla says at least 12 sexual assaults were documented aboard the vessel alone, including anal rape and forcible penetration with a handgun.”
The kidnapping victims were subjected to sadistic sexual abuse in the form of strip-searches accompanied by sexual taunting and groping. Many were raped. Participants described “rubber bullets fired at close range, tasers used on the face and upper body, stun grenades thrown into groups of detainees (and) prolonged stress positions under permanent bright light.” The activists were brutally beaten, emerging with “broken ribs (and) fractures to the torso, shoulders, and back.”
The kidnappers took their victims to the Israeli port of Ashdod for “further beatings, sexual humiliation, prolonged interrogations, and torture.” Israel responded to the media outcry and formal diplomatic protests from twelve governments, including Spain and Italy, by having extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir film himself participating in the abuse of the kidnapped civilians. After Ben-Gvir proudly posted his torture selfies on social media, even the US, UK, and Canada protested. Facing universal condemnation, the Israelis finally released their victims four days after the kidnapping, sending most of them on deportation flights to Turkey.
The kidnapped and tortured activists pointed out that the four days of hell they experienced were nothing compared to what Palestinian prisoners endure every single day. They called attention to the fact that Israel is currently imprisoning more than 400 Palestinian children, and that almost three-quarters of the children kidnapped by Israel report experiencing sexual violence or abuse.
Israel’s crimes against the flotilla activists were shocking but not surprising. Israel, after all, is a nation that trains dogs to rape prisoners, as reported by The New York Times. It is a nation with a “right to rape” movement that makes national heroes of prison guards who sodomize people to death. In his article “Israel Is the Global Rape Capital” Elias Akleh describes how “Sadistic sexual rape seems to be an endemic character of the whole Israeli society, making Israel the rape capital of the world, where sexual abuse and rape are not restricted against Palestinians only, but against Jewish Israeli girls in general.”
In 2011 psychologist Avigail Moor of Tel-Hai College conducted a scientific poll on whether it’s okay to rape your acquaintances. She found that 61% of Israeli men and 41% of women did not consider forced sex with an acquaintance to be rape.
All of this is just the proverbial tip of an iceberg of evidence that Israel is a nation of sadistic sex criminals. Depraved, violent, sadistic sexual abuse is even part of Israeli Orthodox Jewish religious rituals, as reported by the Jerusalem Post (6/3/2025). Social media is full of pictures posted by Israeli soldiers who murder Palestinian women, dress up in their victims’ bras and underwear, and take selfies.
In relatively normal societies, it is estimated that two per cent or less of the population consists of clinical psychopaths, while 98% are non-psychopathic. Among the Israeli Jewish population, it seems, that ratio is reversed. Polls show that the vast majority of Israeli Jews support the genocide of Gaza, which has featured the murders of tens of thousands of innocent women and children, most of whom have been slowly crushed to death beneath the rubble of their own houses.
None of these crimes could happen without the roughly ten trillion dollars of support Israel has received from American taxpayers. That money has been bestowed on the Dog Rape Nation by our politicians, who are bribed or blackmailed by Israeli agents like Jeffrey Epstein, himself a shining example of Jewish-Israeli sexual psychopathy.
Epstein described himself as “Donald (Trump’s) closest friend for ten years.” But it gets worse. In his 20s, Trump was the protegé of Jewish-Zionist gangster Roy Cohn, a sadistic homosexual pedophile who, according to journalist Anthony Summers, ran an Epstein-style blackmail operation that filmed powerful men, including J. Edgar Hoover, abusing little boys.
And it isn’t just Trump. Our whole political class is compromised. Just look at how they vote on Israel-related issues.
The USA desperately needs a serious, French Revolution style housecleaning.
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By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | June 4, 2026
America’s longest current criminal prosecution is in its 15th year, on its fifth judge, and still has no trial date.
The defendants are Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged mass murder co-conspirators. Mohammed is the second person that the government has characterized as the ringleader of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Originally, the feds had labeled Osama bin Laden as the ringleader. Yet, rather than charging and arresting bin Laden, in order to keep him quiet it sent a team of Navy Seals to his home in Pakistan to murder him and his wife and their children.
After that, the feds labeled Mohammed as the orchestrator of 9/11 even though that, by the time of bin Laden’s death, Mohammed had been in US custody for eight years. During that time, he was brutally tortured by CIA officers and other US civilian agents.
His torture was truly repellant. He was waterboarded 183 times. He was hanged by his wrists while naked and in well-lit walk-in refrigerators such that he was freezing and denied sleep for days. His head was smashed repeatedly against wooden walls. His rectum, through which he was fed, was so brutalized that he bled for months, often ingesting into his intestines his own blood and fecal material.
At the end of three years of these criminal attacks at foreign sites operated by cooperating intelligence agencies with the torture administered by Americans, he told his torturers what he thought they wanted to hear. Then he was transferred to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has remained since 2007.
Upon his arrival at Gitmo, a different set of interrogators took over. The video tapes of his hundreds of torture sessions were destroyed but not the transcripts of his confession. The purpose of the second round of interrogations was to elicit another confession by agents who could testify to a judge that they did not torture him, and that his confession to them was not coerced.
Though some of these interrogators at Gitmo were FBI agents, no one read him his Miranda warnings, advising him of his right to silence, to counsel and to the legal implications of anything he told his new interrogators. Mohammed made admissions to this second group of interrogators substantially similar to those he made to his torturers.
The government, which once denied but now admits to the torture, nevertheless was prepared to argue that his second confession was voluntary. Then, the feds had a change of heart. And, two years ago, his lawyers entered into plea negotiations, at the request of the government because the military lawyers and their Department of Justice legal colleagues concluded that they could not ethically defend torture in an American courtroom.
Federal law, the federal rules of criminal procedure, the canons of legal ethics and state bar licensing authorities all prohibit lawyers from using coerced testimony in a courtroom.
The government and all defense lawyers entered into a plea agreement that provided for full public confessions, a public confrontation by family members of 9/11 victims during which the defendants agreed to reply truthfully to their questions, and, of course, life in prison at Gitmo.
The Army general in the Pentagon in charge of all Gitmo prosecutions — herself a former military judge — approved the plea agreement, as did the military trial judge, and all five defendants.
Then, the Biden administration Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin fired the general who approved the plea agreement and revoked the Pentagon’s approval. A federal appeals court upheld his revocation. At that point, Mohammed was on his fourth military judge and his fifth team of prosecutors.
After the court affirmed the Pentagon’s change of heart, the military judge who had approved the plea agreement retired. The current and fifth judge has presumably read the 44,000 pages of documents and transcripts that 15 years of litigation has generated as he announced last week that he will rule on the admissibility of the second round of confessions this summer.
The present judge, who did not preside over any of the hundreds of hours of proceedings in the case, including those during which the horrific tortures described above were related in an American courtroom, must now decide if the second confession was voluntary. Though the government now admits that the first confession was not voluntary, its relevance here is not the words Mohammed told his torturers but the degradation of his mental faculties due to the egregious tortures such that the second confession was also not voluntary.
Was Mohammed so conditioned to the power of his interrogators that his will was attenuated?
The standard of proof that the government must meet to get the second confession admitted is voluntariness beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. That’s the same high standard for proving guilt in all American courts. If the feds fail to meet this standard to the satisfaction of the judge, the case will proceed to trial without the jury hearing the confession.
This is a two-edged sword for the government. If the confession is read to the jury, then the defendants and their experts can relate to the jury all the horrific things the government did in order to produce the confessions. But if the confession does not come into evidence, then the jury will not hear of the tortures unless there is a conviction and the torture testimony is presented in mitigation of punishment.
What we have here is a lawless system of brutality. Torture and all it produces is a profound violation of natural rights, the Constitution’s guarantee of due process, as well as federal law. Even practitioners of this medieval behavior have acknowledged it produces unreliable statements. It is the tool of monsters.
On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, we are asked to accept government at its worst; one that the Framers thought they had prohibited and one to which the governed never consented.
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2026 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran. … continue
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