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The Bishkek Declaration: What the SCO Signed, and Why India’s Name on It Matters

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | September 2, 2026 

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation closed its 26th heads-of-state summit in Bishkek on September 1 with a joint statement — the Bishkek Declaration — timed to the bloc’s 25th anniversary and signed by the leaders of all ten member states: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and the host, Kyrgyzstan. It is a long anniversary text, adopted alongside some 28 other outcome documents and amendments to the SCO Charter, and its language on the war in Iran is unambiguous. But the single most consequential fact about the declaration is not what it says. It is whose signature sits on it. Narendra Modi’s India — a Quad member, a US strategic partner, and a country the same declaration implicitly defends against Washington’s tariffs — put its name to a text condemning American and Israeli military action, mourning a dead Iranian supreme leader, and rejecting the sanctions architecture the United States has built. That signature is the story.

What the declaration says

On the war, the SCO condemned the military strikes on Iranian territory that it said caused numerous civilian casualties and significant damage to Iran’s economy, characterizing those strikes as violations of international law and the UN Charter that created serious risks to international peace and security. It expressed condolences on the death of Supreme Leader Seyyed Ali Khamenei — killed earlier in the war — reaffirmed support for Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and called for the conflict to be resolved solely through political and diplomatic means. It extended the point to Gaza, calling a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian question the only path to stability in the region.

On sanctions, without naming the United States, the members opposed “unilateral coercive measures” inconsistent with UN and WTO rules and damaging to the global economy — language that simultaneously covers US sanctions on Iran, Western sanctions on Russia, and the tariff pressure on India. On the nuclear question, they upheld Iran’s position directly, affirming every member’s “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear energy and declaring that measures restricting that right are contrary to international law.

The rest is familiar SCO scaffolding, weightier for the anniversary: an open, non-discriminatory multilateral trading system; implementation of the SCO economic and energy cooperation strategies to 2030; a push to reform global governance toward a multipolar order that “excludes bloc-based and confrontational” methods; responsible use of artificial intelligence; and the ritual condemnation of the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and extremism, with a pointed line that “double standards” in counterterrorism are unacceptable. Pakistan takes the rotating chairmanship for 2026–27 and will host the 2027 summit in Islamabad.

From the Knesset to Bishkek: the anatomy of a reversal

To read India’s signature as simple hedging understates it. Six months earlier, Modi had planted India firmly in the opposite camp — and the Bishkek text reverses, almost line for line, the position he took in February.

On February 25–26, 2026, Modi made a state visit to Israel: the first Indian prime minister to address the Knesset, honored with the Speaker’s Medal as the first foreign leader to receive it, presiding over the elevation of the India–Israel relationship to a “special strategic partnership” with 27 bilateral outcomes and a defense co-production track. Two days after he left, on February 28, the US and Israel opened their war on Iran. India’s response was conspicuous silence: it did not condemn the strikes on Iranian sovereignty, and it did not condole the killing of Iran’s supreme leader. New Delhi zeroed out its Chabahar port funding in the 2026–27 budget under US pressure, let bilateral trade with Iran collapse, and offered only a muted, “humanitarian” reaction when an Iranian frigate returning from joint exercises with India was sunk near Sri Lanka. Commentators summarized the moment cleanly — Modi had put India firmly in the Israel–US camp — while critics at home called it a strategic surrender. Among India’s BRICS and SCO partners, Russia, China, and Iran above all, the tilt bred real distrust.

What turned India back was oil. India imports roughly 85 percent of its fuel and draws a large share of its crude and LNG through the Strait of Hormuz. Under the 50 percent US tariff wall — half of it levied explicitly to punish Russian-crude purchases — New Delhi had spent early 2026 trimming Russian imports and leaning on Gulf suppliers, a quiet alignment with Washington. The Iran war detonated that arrangement: Hormuz disruption tightened supply, prices surged, the rupee came under pressure, and Modi was reduced to urging citizens to conserve fuel. With Gulf barrels suddenly unreliable and Washington’s tariffs making the alignment costly anyway, India turned back to discounted Russian crude out of straightforward energy necessity. As one analysis put it, the energy shock reordered India’s alignments — the tilt toward Washington of a few weeks earlier giving way to a familiar, interest-driven return to Moscow.

Modi was working two constituencies at once, and they pulled opposite ways. The influential Indian-American diaspora he has assiduously courted aligns comfortably with a pro-US, pro-Israel posture; against it stood the roughly ten million Indians in the Gulf and a domestic opinion for whom the image of India embracing Israel mid-war became a live political liability the opposition worked hard. Energy security and the Gulf-and-domestic pull won.

Seen against that arc, the Bishkek signature is the visible completion of a U-turn. The declaration made India condemn the strikes it had refused to condemn in February and mourn the supreme leader it had refused to mourn. The signature therefore reads less as conversion than as correction — an interest-driven snap back to the multi-aligned center after a six-month experiment in the Israel–US camp proved too expensive.

This is where strategic autonomy, not alignment, becomes the only coherent description, and the distinction matters for anyone tempted to call the SCO a consolidated anti-US front. India will lean toward Washington and Jerusalem when the terms are right and swing back toward Moscow and the Global South when its energy and standing require it, bending each forum to its own positions rather than adopting anyone’s line. Modi spent the Bishkek summit proving the point even as he signed the consensus: he demanded an end to “double standards” on terrorism in language every observer read as aimed at Pakistan, then sitting at the same table and about to take the SCO chair; he insisted connectivity projects respect sovereignty and territorial integrity, India’s standing refusal to bless China’s Belt and Road and the corridor it runs through territory India claims; and he pressed Putin directly to move from endless war toward a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine rather than echo Moscow.

And the timing is not incidental. India hosts the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12–13 — ten days after Bishkek — as BRICS chair for 2026, with Putin confirmed and Xi and Pezeshkian expected. A chair cannot antagonize the leaders it is about to receive, so part of the Bishkek signature is simply the housekeeping of a host keeping its room intact before its own showcase. Yet India deliberately themed its BRICS presidency around resilience and cooperation — a framing chosen to keep the focus on delivery rather than confrontation. The tell is in the gap: India signed a confrontational SCO text while steering its own BRICS summit deliberately away from confrontation. The New Delhi declaration on September 13 will be the better test of where India actually stands, and whether the correction that began at Bishkek holds.

The energy weight behind the declaration

A bloc’s communiqué is worth as much as the material power behind it, and on oil the SCO’s ten members carry more weight than the “regional talking shop” framing suggests. Taken together, and using the most recent 2026 figures, the member states produce on the order of 21 to 23 million barrels per day of crude and condensate — roughly a fifth of world output. Set against OPEC’s crude production of about 27 to 28 million barrels per day, the SCO membership produces somewhere near 80 percent of what the entire OPEC cartel pumps.

SCO member Crude + condensate (approx., 2026)
Russia ~10.9 million bbl/d
China ~4.3–5.0 million bbl/d
Iran ~3.3 million bbl/d (war-depressed)
Kazakhstan ~1.8 million bbl/d
India ~0.7 million bbl/d
Others (Uzbekistan, etc.) ~0.2 million bbl/d
SCO total ~21–23 million bbl/d

Four caveats sharpen rather than soften the picture. First, Iran sits in both camps — it is the only country that is both an SCO member and an OPEC member — so the two blocs are not cleanly separable; strip Iran out to avoid double-counting and the SCO membership still produces roughly two-thirds of OPEC’s volume. Second, Russia alone, at nearly 11 million barrels per day, produces about 40 percent as much as all of OPEC combined and is the gravitational center of the SCO’s energy weight. Third, the figures are unusually soft this year because the war has curtailed Iranian output and repeatedly throttled Gulf flows through Hormuz — crude and liquids transiting the strait fell from about 21.6 million barrels per day before the conflict to under 5 million in the second quarter of 2026 — so actual regional production has swung well below capacity. Fourth, and most telling, several of OPEC’s Gulf heavyweights — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait — are not SCO members but SCO dialogue partners, drawn into the organization’s orbit since 2023. The bloc that just defended Iran and condemned the US-Iran war is steadily accreting the very Gulf producers on whom OPEC depends.

The deeper asymmetry is that OPEC is a supply cartel, while the SCO spans both ends of the oil market. Its members include not only Russia, Iran, and Kazakhstan on the production side but China and India — the world’s largest and third-largest crude importers — on the demand side. No other grouping contains both the sellers and the biggest buyers of oil under one roof, and the declaration’s commitments to an SCO energy cooperation strategy to 2030, a proposed SCO Energy Consortium, and expanded settlement in national currencies are early scaffolding for exactly that: a producer-consumer bloc that could, over time, price and clear a meaningful share of Eurasian energy trade outside the dollar and outside OPEC’s writ. That ambition is nowhere near realized. But it is the material fact that gives an anniversary communiqué more heft than its boilerplate would suggest.

The Bishkek Declaration is, on its face, a predictable statement of Eurasian grievance: condemn the strikes on Iran, defend Iran’s nuclear rights, reject Western sanctions, call for a multipolar order. What lifts it above boilerplate is the combination of the signatory and the substance behind it. India signed a text that condemns the very strikes on Iran it pointedly declined to condemn in February, when Modi was in the Knesset — not because it has changed sides, but because a six-month tilt toward Israel and Washington collided with an energy shock and a tariff wall, and snapping back to the multi-aligned center became the rational course. The anti-coercion language now shields India too, and a BRICS summit India must host in ten days makes keeping the room intact its own necessity. And the bloc doing the signing controls something close to four-fifths of OPEC’s oil output, both of Asia’s giant import markets, and a growing roster of Gulf dialogue partners. The declaration’s rhetoric is cheap. The energy and demographic weight standing behind it is not.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Comments Off on The Bishkek Declaration: What the SCO Signed, and Why India’s Name on It Matters

Blair directed PA to eliminate mention of ‘Palestine’ from textbooks, former UK envoy reveals

Press TV – September 2, 2026

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been tasked by a body set up by US President Donald Trump to approach the Palestinian Authority (PA) and propose removing the term “Palestine” from school textbooks, replacing it with the Jewish name “Samaria.”

Jeremy Greenstock, who served as Britain’s ambassador to the UN from 1998 to 2003, said on Wednesday that Blair sought to influence the Palestinian Authority.

He stated that if the PA wished to be recognized by the so-called Board of Peace as a legitimate partner capable of negotiating a resolution with Israel to conclude the genocidal war in Gaza, the term “Palestine” should be removed from educational materials.

Greenstock said in an extensive interview on the David Hearst Podcast that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the request.

Greenstock further noted that his former superior was facing “challenges” in his new position managing the postwar administration of Gaza for the board.

“He recently, I understand, was asked by the Board of Peace to go to Ramallah and ask to remove from the Palestinian curriculum any mention of the word Palestine if they were to be treated by the Board of Peace as capable of coming to an agreement with Israel to end the current conflict that had stemmed from October 7 onwards,” Greenstock said, adding that the information was obtained from a source at the ministerial level.

“President Mahmoud Abbas said he would do no such thing,” he said.

“But the very fact that the Board of Peace could ask for that to be done in the Palestinian educational curriculum makes me wonder what principles the Board of Peace is working on, and what understanding they have of justice, of the sense of fairness, of the history of all of this,” Greenstock added.

A spokesperson for Blair refuted the claim that the former UK prime minister made such a request. “This is not true and a complete fabrication.”

Blair is known to have travelled to the Israeli-occupied territories in mid-August alongside Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the so-called Board of Peace.

The trio engaged in intense discussions with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dismissed the proposed roadmap for Gaza. They then proceeded to Cairo, where they met with a Palestinian technocratic group expected to assume control of Gaza, along with representatives from the Hamas resistance movement.

During the interview, Greenstock was critical of Blair’s current role in the Board of Peace, saying he did not think Blair could engage with both sides with the same level of respect.

“Because of his record on Iraq and on Palestine since he left government, he will be seen as prejudiced. So I think he will have, and is having, difficulties.”

Greenstock, who left government service in March 2004, called the Board of Peace an “abstract and arbitrary committee” whose composition would not have any real effect on the ground with either Israel or the Arab side to the question of Palestine.

“I don’t think the Board of Peace is a strong enough construct to bear the weight of the difficult decisions that are going to have to be made about the future of the Palestinian territories.”

As part of an international campaign, Israel and its allies have been amplifying their endeavors to remove the word Palestine from educational materials and museums.

On Tuesday, Israeli authorities began imposing their curriculum on more than 45,000 Palestinian students in state-run schools in East al-Quds, as part of a wider crackdown on education in the occupied territory.

A revised curriculum is reported to be circulating privately for consultation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Comments Off on Blair directed PA to eliminate mention of ‘Palestine’ from textbooks, former UK envoy reveals

Is Israel paving streets with Gaza rubble containing bodies – and is the Board of Peace funding it?

By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | September 2, 2026

Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) – the journalist at the center of this story – is an accomplished reporter and political analyst, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and contributing writer to the London Review of Books, Newsweek, Al Jazeera English, Zeteo, The New Arab, Israeli media 972Mag and Ha’aretz, and others.

Shehada tweeted on August 26 and 27:

EU diplomats told me last week Israel has been quietly moving hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble mixed with dead bodies out of Gaza to bury evidence of its genocide.

When the EU asked Israel why or whether they filter human remains out of the rubble, no answer ever came!

I’ve been informed Trump’s Board of Peace is paying the expenses of the IDF’s covert transfer of rubble (mixed with dead bodies) out of Gaza. The money is taken from Gaza’s reconstruction funds!

The Board of Peace official X account replied on August 28:

This is categorically farcical and unfounded — total fake news. At a minimum, we would expect such an “intrepid” reporter to reach out to us for comment or clarification before recklessly spreading lies based on anonymous sources who have erroneously “informed” you.

Shehada responded the same day:

Dear Board of Peace,

1- I have a tender issued under your name on 20 May 2026 that includes “leveling & compacting” work in occupied Gaza, do you deny that document?

2- Is the Israeli company Terra Firma NOT doing “rubble clearance” in Gaza allegedly with machines that take rubble & spit out dust while the IDF is doing road-paving work (specifically near Erez)?

3- Are you NOT in any way paying, compensating, subsidizing or aiding Israeli companies, contractors, individuals, the Israeli army or government for rubble removal & road paving in Gaza?

4- If you are involved, can you explain whether any effort is being made to separate human remains from rubble or detect potential mass graves under the roads being paved? The Israeli government is silent on this.

5- I have satellite images that show clear & significant rubble removal work in East Gaza in the months of May & June. Do you deny any involvement in this?

6- Do you have anything to say on Israel killing over 1,200 Palestinians under your watch since your ceasefire started?

How about Israel restricting humanitarian aid and preventing prosthetic limbs from going to largest cohort of child amputees in modern history?

How about Israel preventing repairs of basic infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage, hospitals, bakeries), or releasing all children & women still in detention without trial or charges?

All of those unfulfilled commitments were part of phase one of President Trump’s 20-point plan!

Remarkable how none of Israel’s violations of your ceasefire ever caught your attention once in 323 days, but my sole tweet did in mere hours.

The Board of Peace account has yet to reply.

Excavation equipment for me, but not for thee

United Nations figures indicate that about 200,000 buildings – 82% of the structures in Gaza – are damaged or destroyed. Buried beneath these buildings, thousands of Palestinians await retrieval and dignified burial.

Israel has hundreds of pieces of heavy engineering machinery, and is spending a fortune demolishing what is left in the roughly 70% of Gaza under its control. Ha’aretz reports that a single piece of equipment may be rented for $1,500 a day; the operator may collect $400 a day. Nearly $1 million a day is spent on fuel.

But while part of Gaza is being demolished with massive quantities of equipment, at unprecedented speed and cost, the rest is moving slowly with primitive tools. Only a handful of excavators in Gaza are working at all – the rest were targeted by Israel, or in some cases simply wore out – Israel has blocked the entrance of spare parts. Fuel costs are prohibitive anyway.

Palestinians work long hours with shovels, wheelbarrows, and their hands to dig out the remains of their loved ones, or clear debris from what is left of the roads or their homes as legions of bulldozers demolish neighborhoods nearby.

(The IDF said, in response to the Ha’aretz report cited above, “According to army orders, property destruction is only carried out when there is an operational basis that requires it, and the IDF has never had a policy that allows for the deliberate destruction of civilian property.” It added, “The IDF is taking various measures to minimize damage to civilian structures as much as possible.” The reader can decide whether the IDF’s statement rings true.)

The Wall Street Journal placed the quantity of rubble in Gaza at 68 million tons, and the number of dead bodies buried beneath the rubble at 10,000.

EuroMed Human Rights Monitor estimates that Israeli civilian companies are operating “400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery” to demolish remaining structures, crush the rubble, and load the debris onto trucks.

The rubble is reportedly taken to “undisclosed sites” in Israel and the West Bank. Israeli authorities have neither revealed details nor permitted independent groups to observe the procedure. This lack of transparency does not imply innocence.

If the Israeli company Terra Firma is indeed doing “rubble clearance” in Gaza as Muhammad Shehada alleges, in the same areas where the IDF is paving roads, the similarity to accusations against the Nazis is eerie, to say the least.

If the Board of Peace is indeed bankrolling an effort to hide incriminating evidence about genocide, it would be no exaggeration to say Trump and the rest of the board are covering up a genocide.

What do we know about the Board of Peace?

The so-called Board of Peace is a pay-to-play group of wealthy and powerful Israel supporters, dictators, and authoritarians, as well as Israeli prime minister and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and two Israeli real estate tycoons – but no Palestinians. In fact, the organization’s charter makes no reference to Gaza.

The lower-tier technocratic committee, made up of Palestinians, will do the grunt work in Gaza – if and when Israel allows the group to enter the Strip.

BoP is problematic in multiple ways, not the least of which is its tendency to view the world through a real estate lens, rather than human rights, justice, or humanitarianism.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Is Israel paving streets with Gaza rubble containing bodies – and is the Board of Peace funding it?

Palestinian Resistance and the Politics of Disarmament: A Historical Perspective

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | August 30, 2026

Gaza’s resistance factions recently agreed to a US-backed disarmament roadmap. Despite having consistently demanded this step be taken over the course of nearly three years, as a prerequisite to ending its invasion, Israel flatly rejected the proposal. In order to properly understand this renewed disarmament campaign, it is essential to consider the historic context that makes true disarmament impossible.

“If Hamas just gave up its weapons…” and “Hamas cannot control Gaza after their attacks on Israel…” have been popular arguments featured in the English-language media, not only since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, but for decades now. On July 6, Hamas declared that it had agreed to hand over control of Gaza’s civil administration to a technocratic governing committee and by July 30 the movement had pledged to implement a disarmament plan. Both of these agreements, reached through the US’s Board of Peace (BoP), provoked nothing more than pledges of further violence from the Israeli authorities.

The reason for this is that Israel will accept only a disarmament process that leaves the Palestinian people completely defenseless and at the full mercy of their occupying army. Therefore, the Hamas movement and its armed allies, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have stressed that a disarmament plan must be sequential, not a surrender agreement as the Israelis are demanding.

While the Fatah Party is the only major Palestinian political Party that is not currently a proscribed terrorist organization in the US, UK and most EU nations, it was once considered to be one of the leading global terrorist organizations by the Israelis and their allies. In order to destroy the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Besieging Beirut, where the PLO had established itself in exile, the Israelis killed around 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese before eventually offering the Palestinians an ultimatum: continue fighting until the last drop of blood, or the organization give up their resistance and flee. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat chose to flee to Tunisia and accepted defeat.

Yet, Israel did not live up to its word. Following this agreement, horrifying massacres would be inflicted against the Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon. On September 16, 1982, with no resistance to even attempt to aid them, the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre occurred. Israeli forces watched on as their fascist Lebanese allied militia force, Kataeb, mass murdered up to 3,500 civilians over a 43-hour period. Almost all of the victims were women and children, because many of the men previously living there were involved in the resistance and had fled as part of the agreement.

Israel also refused to leave southern Lebanon, establishing an illegal occupation of the south of the country despite signing a withdrawal agreement, formally securing its role as an occupier in 1985. This ended up triggering the founding of the Party Israel today blames for its current war against Lebanon, Hezbollah.

The lessons of 1982 have never been forgotten. In fact, the aftershocks of the PLO’s retreat are still being felt today, as the trauma of the setback triggered a chain of events that resulted in a major ideological sea change.

Although it has often been argued that the developments that emerged off the back of the Post World War II global order – oriented around the United Nations system, concepts of Human Rights and International Law – had ushered in changes that rendered old models of armed struggle null and void, the predicament of Palestine today has largely discredited this argument.

Under the model of a “rules-based order” and “Western liberal democracy”, nations are supposed to behave rationally. Under this understanding, Israel, which is assumed to live up to the definition of a modern State, is therefore argued to behave rationally.

Prior to October 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance factions argued that their armed struggle was necessary and that they were not fighting a rational enemy. Nearly three years later, they have been vindicated. The former leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, challenged this concept of Israel’s assumed rational nature, arguing that through armed struggle the reaction of his people’s occupiers would lead them to two options: An all-out regional war or a negotiated Two-state settlement.

The Algerian revolutionary philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote that “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”

Although written with Algeria’s struggle against the French as its key reference point, this exact reasoning can be seen to have heavily inspired the Fatah Party’s foundational doctrine, which argued the necessity of armed struggle as a means of national liberation. The expulsion of between 800,000 to 900,000 Pieds-noirs settlers, along with France’s occupying forces, from Algeria in 1962, long served as a major inspiration for the Palestinian resistance, in particular the Fatah Party.

In the immediate aftermath of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, the abovementioned quote from Fanon’s seminal work ‘The Wretched of the Earth ’ was once again popularised as a defense of the October 7, 2023, attack, masterminded by the Qassam Brigades of Hamas. A popular critique of this line of thinking was that the violence witnessed that day could not overcome Israel’s violence and that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is too different to that of the French occupation of Algeria for the analogy to work.

As is the case with analogies, they are not perfect, nor are they meant to be. What Yahya Sinwar, the head of the Qassam Brigades, Mohammed al-Deif, and others who engineered the October 7 offensive were doing was challenging the occupier in an unprecedented manner. Whether they understood the full extent to which Israel was willing to go in response is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation at hand; instead, what is important is the way things have played out.

With modern weapons and technology, Israel has put on display the colonial mindset. There is no argument to present that the genocide in Gaza is rational; it is indiscriminate, it has been an extermination, and as we have seen, there has been no carefully calibrated plan. Instead, the Zionists have lashed out on every conceivable front, and as a result, the global public has rallied against them. As Sinwar predicted, Tel Aviv’s totally irrational behavior has led to regional confrontation, and before it is his ultimatum.

‘Greater Violence’ and Abandoning Resistance

For those who have familiarised themselves with Frantz Fanon’s work, another concept he introduces is the concept of the native wrestling back his humanity through the use of armed struggle. In the Palestinian experience, this certainly applies.

The origin of the modern Palestinian liberation movement is often traced back to around 1918. The Urban Palestinian population evidently contributed in the early stages of the national movement to its concepts and demands, with the likes of the Muslim-Christian Associations that were established as political clubs contributing towards this. As influential Palestinian journalist, writer, and PFLP official Ghassan Kanafani discussed, the semi-feudal and religious nature of Palestine’s leadership had its various fallbacks, but would eventually contribute to encouraging a series of revolts.

Palestine’s masses, during the formative days of its national movement under the British Mandate, were not the urban communities; instead, they were the Fellaheen (farmers and agricultural workers). These workers would form the backbone of each revolt against the British and Zionists between 1921 and 1933.

During the early 1930s, one of the central figures in the history of Palestinian resistance, Sheikh Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam, would begin training workers he recruited in Haifa and carrying out armed attacks against British-Zionist targets. “It is a Jihad of victory of martyrdom” was the slogan that the Sheikh developed, one that the spokesperson for Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida, would repeat in every televised speech following October 7, 2023.

The most iconic artwork, literature and songs representing Palestinian national identity have long been centered around the Fellaheen, the people of the countryside, taking specific pride in those who resisted with whatever means were available. A gun, hand grenade, or stone- whatever tools were available- it didn’t matter; the theme was struggle.

In the Palestinian experience, an entire culture of resistance was forged through generations of armed revolt and accompanying forms of struggle, shaping an identity, centering the concept of standing up for oneself against all odds. Palestine’s movement for national liberation has been predominantly led, post-1948, by the refugee population, whether they be the internally displaced in Gaza, the people of the camps in the occupied West Bank, or the diaspora who live in exile in neighboring nations.

Whether we look to the Arab Revolt between 1936-39, the resistance to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine 1947-49, the historic battle of Karameh in 1968 or even the 1982 war, none of these represented victories and yet each ended up representing a means to an end. Palestinian resistance fighters have employed a large range of tactics throughout different eras of their struggle, some in order to raise awareness for their cause, some to achieve tactical victories and oftentimes as a means of reacting to the violence inflicted against themselves.

Israel’s obsession with disarmament, which currently fits into a larger regional push from Washington and Tel Aviv, is not about conflict resolution; it is about domination and submission. The idea is to remove the means of the Palestinians to fight back, so that they are totally at the mercy of the occupying regime.

Hamas, along with almost a dozen other resistance factions in Gaza, seeks to achieve a resolution through a phased disarmament scheme, where their weapons will be stored and only obtained by a future Palestinian State. They will not accept Israel’s demands that they surrender.

There is no nation on earth that is disarmed and is forbidden from having its own military. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly stated that his government’s intent is to prevent a Palestinian State at all costs, while his opposition also opposes any deal that will lead to a State of Palestine. Disarmament is a means to destroy the national struggle of the land’s indigenous inhabitants, which the people understand well.

“Your steadfastness, despite abandonment. Your patience, your sacrifice, and your defiance of oppression and deprivation are what enrages your enemy the most. The night will inevitably come to an end. Victory comes with patience, and relief with hardship. And with every hardship there is ease.” – Huthaifa Samir al-Kahlout (Abu Obeida), the former spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, addressing the people of Gaza in a final speech prior to his assassination.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on Palestinian Resistance and the Politics of Disarmament: A Historical Perspective

Trump Censorship Machine Loses Again in Court

By James Bovard | Mises Wire | August 31, 2026

The Trump administration’s crusade to crush campus criticism took another wallop on Friday in a California courtroom. Federal judge Noël Wise ruled that the Trump administration’s “ideological-deportation policy” brazenly violated the US Constitution.

The Stanford Daily—one of the best-known college student newspapers in the nation—sued the Trump administration for changing its “immigration policy and pattern of enforcement, namely by arresting, detaining, and deporting students with F-1 visas when those students use their freedom of speech to express opinions that the government does not like.” It asserted that the Trump administration’s “actions have specifically impacted Stanford Daily by decreasing the quantity and diversity of opinion pieces The Stanford Daily is able to publish on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” Foreign students who had written on the issue requested that their previous articles be deleted, and other foreign students were no longer willing to comment on hot issues.

The Trump administration claims unlimited discretion to silence foreign students by deporting those whose opinions it disapproves of. Judge Wise wrote, “The language of the [First] Amendment makes clear that it is not the government that gives freedom of speech to the people. Instead, that freedom is imbued in the people. . . . It is not the government’s to take.” This is a notion that conservatives instinctively understand when it comes to the Second Amendment and the right of self-defense. But many people fail to recognize the same right for freedom of speech. Conor Fitzpatrick—the chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—which represented the student newspaper, declared, “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.” FIRE president Greg Lukianoff clarified the scope of the ruling:

This ruling does NOT say the government must admit anyone, issue anyone a visa, or grant anyone citizenship. It says that once a person is lawfully here, the government cannot deport them because they engaged in protected speech. The government cannot tell a legal immigrant: An American is free to say this, but if you say it, you’re out.

George Porteous—Editor in Chief of Stanford Daily—hailed the decision: “The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to.” But it remains to be seen whether this latest judicial rebuff slows the Trump censorship juggernaut.

When former president Donald Trump was campaigning to get elected as president in 2024, he openly promised at a campaign event, “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” This was a linchpin of the promise on Trump’s campaign website to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”

Trump presumed that non-citizens have zero right to free speech and his appointees have enforced that policy with an iron fist. On March 25, 2025, masked ICE agents seized Rumeysa Ozturk—a Turkish graduate student—off the streets outside Boston. Ozturk was locked up for 45 days and her student visa covertly canceled because she co-authored an op-ed criticizing Tufts University for failing to divest from Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio vilified her as a “lunatic” and implied that the feds had ample evidence of her crimes and abuses. Rubio later justified targeting Ozturk because she met the standard of “people that are supportive of movements that run counter to the foreign policy of the United States.” (Ironically, a large majority of Americans now oppose Trump’s foreign policy regarding his war on Iran). A leak to the Washington Post revealed that the feds had nothing on her—except that op-ed. Federal Judge William Sessions ordered Ozturk released because her arrest “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.” But that was the whole point.

Last September, in a case similar to the Stanford Daily case, federal judge William Young ruled that the Trump’s administration’s implementation of the Executive Orders (on foreign students),

. . . was targeted intentionally at specific viewpoints in order to chill speech. The evidence presented at trial included the Public Officials’ many public statements suggesting that they wished to staunch public protest related to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including the President’s campaign promise that he would put an end to the student protests on this issue by kicking out protestors.

A Trump Executive Order interpreted “support” for terrorists “to be centered on core First Amendment speech and expressive conduct, such as attending public protests, leading such protests, or even publishing op-eds.” Judge Young declared that he “saw virtually no evidence that anyone along the way [any Trump official] seriously questioned whether pure political speech in support of Palestine or against Israel could be construed as support for terrorism.” Instead, that was the self-evident truth driving the crackdown.

The Stanford Daily case vivified how far the Trump administration will go to snuff dissent. A New York Times headline captured the essence of the case: “Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Foreign Students Who Criticized Israel.” If a foreign student engaged in violence at a protest, that would be sufficient to deport them regardless of their opinions. But the Trump administration cast a far wider net, relying heavily on a list of 5,000 foreign students provided by the Canary Mission, which, according to Wikipedia, is “an Israel-based anonymously-run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations that it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic.”

Judge Wise’s decision included stunning examples of how far the Trump administration stretched its definition of terrorist support or antisemitism to justify deporting aliens. John Armstrong—the chief of the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs—carried out Secretary Rubio’s crackdown on non-citizens. During legal proceedings, Armstrong was asked if a “statement calling for limiting military aid to Israel could be covered” (i.e., sufficient to deport). He answered, “[i]n my opinion, yes.” When did foreign aid become sacred?

Judge Wise concluded her 90-page ruling by declaring that the strength of American democracy,

. . . is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and “behave” or suffer the government’s retaliation. In March 2025, that retaliation was directed at those engaged in pro-Palestine and anti-Israel speech. In September 2025, caught in the government’s net were people critical of Charlie Kirk. In May 2026, it potentially included “weighing in on a peace deal that’s being negotiated” in Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like.

That warning reverberates as the Trump administration further decimates the privacy of Americans returning from abroad, claiming the right to seize and copy all the contents on their cell phones. The Trump administration proposed that foreign visitors will have to surrender their social media passwords before getting a visa to visit here. How long will it be until the same policy is imposed on American citizens?

Judge Wise declared, “Free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength.” But is that “strength” increasingly a mirage in the United States? And how many other illegal actions has the Trump administration taken to suppress dissent that Americans have not yet heard about?

Final question: Is the Trump administration seeking to vindicate every leftist stereotype about conservatives and Republicans being intolerant authoritarians?

James Bovard is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist and is a frequent contributor to The Hill.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Censorship Machine Loses Again in Court

Trump Claims 100k Protestors Killed /Suliaman Ahmed & Lt Col Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – August 31, 2026

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Trump Claims 100k Protestors Killed /Suliaman Ahmed & Lt Col Daniel Davis

Greece inks $3.5bn arms deal with Israel for ‘multi-layered’ air defenses

The Cradle | August 31, 2026

Israel and Greece signed on 31 August an air defense agreement worth $3.5 billion, which will see Tel Aviv beef up Athens’ defenses and build a “multi-layered” system for the country.

According to the Israeli War Ministry, it is the largest-ever defense export deal with Greece and one of the biggest in Israeli history.

It has been dubbed the “Achilles Shield” agreement, referencing the Greek mythological figure Achilles.

It will see Israel export several air defense systems, including its David Sling, SPYDER, and BARAK MX, the War Ministry said.

It is the “largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the War Ministry statement added, while also declaring that this marked the first time Israel supplied another state with a “complete defense array against a wide range of threats.”

These threats include ballistic missiles and drones, according to the Israeli ministry.

The agreement was signed at the War Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv by Ministry Director General Amir Baram and his Greek counterpart Ioannis Bouras.

“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war,” the Israeli War Ministry stressed.

Greece said the deal marked the “greatest reform of its armed forces in its history.”

Security and economic cooperation between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel continues to expand.

Earlier this month, the Israeli military announced a meeting between army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and his Greek counterpart, Dimitrios Choupis.

The meeting “highlights the strategic importance and relevance of the military relationship already in place between Israel and Greece,” the Israeli army announced.

A private diplomatic conference held in Athens in May laid bare Greek, Cypriot, and Israeli plans to capitalize on the Iran war by deepening their ties into a “formal strategic alignment.”

“This cooperation must deepen into a formal strategic alignment focusing on energy, infrastructure, joint defense efforts, and economic innovation – acting as a crucial pillar of stability in the region,” said Averof Neophytou, a prominent Cypriot MP and former president of the Democratic Rally of Cyprus, during that conference.

He also called on Israel to “finish the job” in Iran.

Israeli, Greek, and Cypriot ties have accelerated in recent years. According to reports from last year, the three states have considered the formation of a joint “rapid-response” military force in the eastern Mediterranean.

In late 2025, Tel Aviv, Athens, and Nicosia signed a trilateral military “action plan” for 2026, said to be aimed at confronting Turkish influence and strengthening defense cooperation.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Comments Off on Greece inks $3.5bn arms deal with Israel for ‘multi-layered’ air defenses

The exodus Israel cannot afford

New data: Israelis heading for the exits include doctors, engineers, tech workers, and high-income taxpayers on whom the occupation’s war economy depends.

By Kamran Yeganegi | The Cradle | August 31, 2026

In the early hours of 7 October 2023, an Israeli journalist identified only as Asaf booked flights for himself, his wife, and their two daughters. The next day, carrying only hand luggage, the family boarded a flight to Berlin. What began as an emergency exit became permanent. Two years later, they had not returned.

Asaf told +972 Magazine that he already believed Israel’s education and healthcare systems were deteriorating. But that morning destroyed his remaining confidence in the state and its military: “By the afternoon of 7 October, we understood that even this wasn’t true.”

His story reflects a larger structural trend. Israel is disproportionately losing the doctors who staff its hospitals, the engineers who sustain its technology sector, the academics who reproduce its scientific capabilities, and the taxpayers who finance its wars.

The numbers Israel struggles to define

Emigration cuts against the Zionist claim that Israel offers Jews security and permanence. Hebrew itself reflects the tension: immigration is aliyah, or “ascent,” while emigration is yerida – “descent.”

An August 2026 Tel Aviv University study, based on Central Bureau of Statistics data, found that 90,922 Israeli citizens remained abroad for at least three consecutive months in 2025, following 91,499 in 2024 and 86,509 in 2023. In total, 268,509 Israelis left for at least three months between 2023 and 2025 – 47 percent more than during 2013–2015.

The three-month measure is not equivalent to permanent migration. But the researchers found a correlation of 0.96 between three-month departures and remaining abroad for at least one year. On that basis, they estimated that 45,000–50,000 Israelis became long-term emigrants in 2025 alone.

Citing official and research data, +972 Magazine put the long-term total above 150,000 over two years and suggested it may have surpassed 200,000 since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government was formed.

Israel’s National Insurance Institute reported 35,625 residency terminations in 2025; 6,651 were requested voluntarily. This administrative measure is neither a count of citizenship loss nor a clean measure of permanent emigration, but it shows that thousands were formally loosening their ties to the state.

Follow the taxpayers

The Israeli Tax Authority has documented a deeper demographic and fiscal shift. Until 2019, emigrants earned approximately the national average. By 2024, their average pre-departure income had reached around 200,000 shekels – 50 percent above the national average and 60 percent higher in real terms than before the pandemic.

As the study’s authors put it: “The pace of emigration among the strong and affluent strata increased, while among the weaker strata it remained almost unchanged.”

According to the Hebrew-language economic daily Calcalist, the departure rate among Israel’s highest income decile rose from approximately 0.3 percent in 2015–2019 to more than 0.5 percent in 2023–2024 – an increase of around 80 percent. That decile accounted for 67 percent of emigrants’ combined income and 86 percent of the income tax they had paid before leaving.

Compared with the 2015–2019 period, the number of people leaving high-tech increased by approximately 150 percent in 2023–2024, while the number departing healthcare more than doubled. Among people aged 40–50, the share of adult emigrants rose from 13 to 20 percent, and their combined pre-departure income tripled to 2.7 billion shekels.

Established professionals, rather than mainly younger workers at the outset of their careers, are increasingly taking their skills, families, savings, and capital abroad. The number reporting overseas transfers exceeding 500,000 shekels quadrupled in 2023–2024.

A new geography of exit

Official statistics record absence more reliably than destination, but a new geography is visible. A Haaretz investigation found a growing demand for relocation to Portugal, Cyprus, and other European states. Cyprus has become a contingency base for some: in the first days after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, Reuters reported that more than 2,500 Israelis sought refuge there.

Greece is another destination. According to Le Monde, Greek authorities reported an approximately 70-percent rise in “golden visas” issued to Israelis after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Not every visa or property purchase becomes permanent migration, but each relocation lowers the informational, social, and financial barriers facing the next family considering departure.

The fiscal cost of a shrinking base

Each annual cohort that emigrated in 2023 and 2024 had paid approximately 1.2 billion shekels in income tax before departure, compared with around 500 million shekels for cohorts before 2019. The Tax Authority estimates a potential loss of about 700 million shekels per cohort. Some emigrants retain Israeli tax residency, but if similar cohorts accumulate, annual revenue at risk could approach 3.5 billion shekels within five years.

Israel’s high-tech sector produces roughly one-fifth of GDP, more than half of exports, and about one-third of salaried income tax. It also provides expertise in cyberintelligence and military technology. Sustained outflow could weaken both commercial innovation and capabilities central to Israel’s security doctrine.

Israel’s war economy rests heavily on a relatively small, highly productive section of the population, even as its policies push more of these workers and taxpayers abroad. Their departure leaves fewer people to shoulder a growing fiscal and military burden.

The Bank of Israel has separately warned that low labor-force participation among Haredi men and the need to broaden military service remain structural challenges.

For some, relocation is a silent political withdrawal – a vote with their feet against a state increasingly defined by religious polarization and permanent mobilization. Economist Itai Ater warns: “If there is no change, emigration could increase in a way that endangers Israel’s security and economy.”

The state’s attempt to buy time

In March 2026, the Knesset Finance Committee approved a graduated five-year income-tax exemption for qualifying immigrants and long-term returning residents. The ceiling reaches one million shekels in 2027 and 2028; the Finance Ministry initially estimated the five-year cost at 560 million shekels.

Officially, the measure promotes immigration and growth. In practice, it also reveals the scale of the concern: Israel is losing some of those it can least afford to lose and must pay a premium to recover or replace them.

Tax incentives cannot easily compensate for prolonged war, repeated reserve mobilization, political instability, institutional polarization, or an increasingly militarized future.

Physical war damage can be repaired with money. Buildings can be reconstructed and weapons replenished. But when a state loses the people who generate its technology, operate its hospitals, staff its universities, and finance its military, the damage becomes cumulative and structural.

Israel’s most consequential wartime losses may ultimately be the people who quietly conclude that their future lies elsewhere.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Comments Off on The exodus Israel cannot afford

Why Israel Can Brag About Murdering Western Aid Workers

Killed aid workers (top): James Henderson, James Kirby and John Chapman; (bottom): Damian Sobol, Lalzawmi Zomi Frankcom, Jacob Flickinger and Saif Issam Abu Taha
By Nate Bear | ¡Do Not Panic! | August 28, 2026

The Israeli commander who gave the order to bomb the World Central Kitchen convoy in April 2024 which killed six aid workers – three Britons, an American-Canadian, a Pole, an Australian and a Palestinian – said yesterday he’s not sorry for ordering the strike and that the aid workers were “not innocent.”

Last week Israel (which originally lied and said the bombing was a mistake) said no one would be prosecuted for the murders.

The episode is astonishing.

Israel murdered the citizens of five of its supposed allies, using weapons and intelligence supplied by those countries, has refused to prosecute anyone, and the commander who ordered the bombing is now bragging about it.

This is Zionism.

This is what happens when you have swallowed the logic of an ethno-supremacist ideology that enables and forgives any action, no matter how heinous, because the action was undertaken by the most indulged and protected state in modern history. And obviously, this indulgence and protection flows directly from the fact that Israel is the so-called “Jewish state.” And Jewishness, objectively, is the most protected characteristic in the modern world. Grannies are prosecuted as terrorists not because they oppose genocide, but very specifically because they oppose the genocide committed by the Jewish state. Through cultural brainwashing, political infiltration, and using the shield of antisemitism to guard against all criticism, Israel can kill whoever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants. And it can kill them in whatever quantities it desires. Because the killers are Jews, and we can’t criticise Jews because of antisemitism and the holocaust, which, through deep cultural programming has been instrumentalised to make Jews morally untouchable. Through this weaponisation of memory and elevation of unimpeachable Jewishness we end up with an inverted political morality: genocide is moral, anti-genocide is immoral.

Bring all this together and you get an ethno-supremacist apartheid state which commits genocide and kills westerners without consequence.

You get the mass murder of children for years on end. Murders which continue DAILY.

You get a state able to commit wanton acts of terror in Gaza and the West Bank without reproach.

You get Gaza and the West Bank, you get Israel, but you don’t get Palestine. You don’t get the state that the 1947 UN vote also authorised because the Jewish state was the only one that mattered to the “international community.”

You get Israel but not Palestine because the ability of Jews to commit ethnic cleansing and move to piece of land promised to them in a book matters more than the right of Palestinians to live in their ancestral homelands.

You get seventy-eight years of ethnic cleansing.

You get a state able to kill the citizens of its supposed allies, and the weapons and intelligence keep flowing, even when that intelligence kills your own citizens. The RAF has surveillance tape from a spy plane that was circling above Gaza on the day Israel bombed the aid convoy and killed three Brits, as it was almost every day during the genocide, but the British government has refused to publish or disclose what the tape shows.

It can feel like you’re going mad when analysing the role of Israel in the world, and its place within empire. You can sound like a conspiracy theorist. But then, sooner or later, the operatives of the Jewish state come out and in their own words confirm everything you know and everything you believe about Zionism.

To add to the fuckery of the World Central Kitchen murders, the boss of the organisation, Jose Andres, went on Israeli TV after the attack and repeated all the propaganda that enabled the murders in the first place, saying Israel has a right to defend itself. In the midst of a genocide, with the blood of his own employees barely dry, he tried to morally exculpate Israel by tearfully claiming the country is “better than this.” He simply couldn’t conceive that the murders were not an aberration but a perfect reflection of Israel. His organisation still cooks meals for the IDF because, like many, Andres has internalised the logic of Zionism which would mean that to not cook food for the Jewish murderers of his employees would be antisemitic.

It’s fucking disgusting, almost unbelievable.

This of course wasn’t the first time Israel has murdered citizens of western countries without consequence. It wasn’t the second, third or even the tenth time. In the last twenty-odd years Israel has killed scores of westerners in Palestine.

In November 2002, Iain Hook, a British UNRWA project manager, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, in the West Bank. In March 2003 American Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, while protecting local families as IDF troops moved in to destroy their homes. Two months later, James Henry Miller, from Wales, was shot and killed by Israeli troops in Rafah while filming a documentary. In early 2004, British aid worker Tom Hurndall was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli sniper in Rafah while attempting to shield Palestinian children. In 2022, Al Jazeera journalist and US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh, was sniped in the head and killed on camera while reporting in the West Bank. In September 2024, a few months after the World Central Kitchen murders, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American, was murdered by the IDF in the West Bank.

There were ZERO consequences for any of these murders. How many average western mainstream media consuming adults EVEN KNOW about these murders?

Palestinians, by contrast, have housed and homed westerners in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas often welcomed western aid workers to Gaza with some, such as the Italian Vittorio Arrigoni, staying years, and after whom Hamas named a street in Gaza. The only people that kill westerners in Palestine are Jewish Israelis.

My depth of contempt for the Jewish state and for the system that sustains it knows no bounds and we should consider illegitimate any government that supports this colonial monstrosity.

Fuck Israel.

Free Palestine.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Comments Off on Why Israel Can Brag About Murdering Western Aid Workers

Araghchi accuses Netanyahu of deceiving US over war on Iran

Al Mayadeen | August 31, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of practicing deception and duplicity, describing him as a “serpent.”

Araghchi stated that Netanyahu openly boasts in Hebrew about having deceived the US administration and pushed it into waging a war on Iran on behalf of “Israel”.

In a post on X, the Iranian foreign minister also pointed to Netanyahu’s contempt toward Washington, noting that “Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he ‘influenced’ America through 1,000 hours of airtime on U.S. networks”.

Araghchi added, highlighting what he called a stark contradiction in Netanyahu’s positions: “In English, he praises POTUS’ leadership.”

Araghchi’s statement comes as concerns within the “America First” wing of the Republican Party are rising regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to influence President Trump to deepen the war against Iran, as Politico revealed in July 2026.

The report, published ahead of a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu at the White House, noted that the Israeli leader had reportedly sold the president on starting the war with Iran during a previous in-person meeting.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon expressed strong opposition to the meeting, stating that “Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II, with every one of them a disaster for America First.”

The report noted that these concerns come at a time when new polling indicates that a growing segment of the president’s base no longer believes the war is worth its economic costs, with Republicans increasingly resigned to the war continuing through the November midterm elections.

Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative magazine, described the meeting as “DEFCON 1” and said Netanyahu would “argue for the essential logic of escalation” during the talks.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Araghchi accuses Netanyahu of deceiving US over war on Iran

No Matter Who Is In Power, Israel Will Stay Genocidal.

By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 29, 2026

There is a possibility that Benjamin Netanyahu will no longer be Prime Minister of Israel following the upcoming elections in October, with the opposition party Yashar led by former IDF Chief of the General Staff Gadi Eisenkot leading in many polls.

But removing Netanyahu and replacing him with Gadi Eisenkot will not change Israel’s genocidal nature.

In fact, it was Gadi Eisenkot who invented the Israeli military doctrine that functioned as the blueprint for the Genocide in Gaza, called the Dahiya Doctrine.

This Doctrine was invented by Eisenkot when he was Chief of Northern Command during the Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006.

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved”, Eisenkot said, referring to the doctrine in 2008.

It was exactly this doctrine of collective civilian punishment which was used during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008, which killed 1,400 Palestinians, including 300 children, and Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, which killed more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, including 500 children.

This doctrine was eventually applied during the Israeli genocide in Gaza starting in October of 2023.

Gadi Eisenkot was also responsible for the mass slaughter of peaceful Palestinian protestors during the Great March of Return in 2018.

As the Institute for Middle East Understanding documented:

  • Eisenkot was chief of staff of the Israeli military in 2018 when Israeli snipers killed at least 189 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, including 35 children, three paramedics, and two journalists, and wounded more than 6,000 others, during the Great March of Return. As noted by the Israeli rights group, B’Tselem.
  • “Over the course of the protests, the Israeli military implemented an open-fire policy of using live fire against unarmed protestors who posed no threat to the well-armored soldiers on the other side of the fence or to anyone else.”
  • An independent U.N. commission of inquiry into the protests concluded there were: “reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.”

Gadi Eisenkot opposes any kind of sovereignty for Palestinians, recently telling Israel Hayom “The two-state solution is a grave mistake” and “Anyone who thinks about a two-state solution after Oct. 7 is simply delusional.”

As for the West Bank, journalist Séamus Malekafzali noted in the Nation that he has espoused support for “maintaining settlements in the West Bank, opposing full annexation not because it is against international law or morally wrong, but because the new Arab population would endanger the Jewish majority in Israel.”

As for Lebanon, Gadi Eisenkot has positioned himself as more extreme than Netanyahu.

Malekafzali noted that, “In some respects, Eisenkot has gone even further than Netanyahu. He criticized the original ceasefire agreement in Lebanon that still allowed Israel almost total freedom of action, and in March, advocated ‘maximum force in minimum time,’ hoping to cause religious strife in Lebanon by ‘humiliating’ the Shia population by forcing them into Christian areas.”

In reality, Gadi Eisenkot, if he is able to win a majority or minority government in October, will be a more suitable face for the Israeli occupation than Benjamin Netanyahu.

While he likely will shy away from the same genocidal rhetoric as Netanyahu and the Likud coalition, this will only be done for propaganda purposes.

In reality, he is the creator of the doctrine the Gaza genocide is based on, and engineered the slaughter of Palestinian protestors during the Great March of Return.

He will put a more respectable face on Israel, while continuing to deny any kind of sovereignty for Palestinians and pushing forward with an Israeli occupation of South Lebanon.

August 30, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on No Matter Who Is In Power, Israel Will Stay Genocidal.

Israeli terrorism is getting worse because Western leaders are cowards, hypocrites

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | August 30, 2026

Israeli terrorism against civilians across the occupied West Bank has recently triggered condemnation from Western leadership – this shallow rhetoric is overshadowed by their actions, which are driven by a cowardly refusal to push back against the Zionist lobby.

Condemnations and statements of concern have been recently issued by US, UK, and EU officials alike, in what appears at first glance to be pushback against Israeli settler violence and expansionism in the occupied West Bank. In fact, what we are witnessing is the continuation of a decades-long tradition of hollow statements that act to save face by pretending as if the settlers themselves are somehow rogue elements that can be judged independent of the rest of the Zionist project.

In reality, settlement expansion is a regime project, as the violence of the settlers themselves is too. The Zionist armed forces are hand in glove with the settlers, to the point that military units such as the ‘Desert Frontier’ have been set up to integrate the settler militias into the occupation forces.

Even if the settlement movement was separate from the regime itself – as the EU, UK, and US leaderships like to pretend so that they can continue presenting themselves as capable of criticizing the Israelis – there has been a carte blanche granted to the authorities in “Tel Aviv”, instead of meaningful pushback that would coerce them into curtailing the aggressive project of the settlers.

The moves being made in Western capitals represent the exact opposite of genuine opposition to settler colonial violence and expansionism. US President Donald Trump has refused to impose consequences on the Zionist regime for the killings of 11 American citizens at the hands of settlers.

Instead, its latest move has been to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. That means that both Washington and London have designated the activist group as such. This is not a group that engages in armed action; it does not go after targets that are integral to US or UK security, nor has it killed anyone. Palestine Action has been proscribed for the “crime” of organizing actions against weapons factories that supply the components for weapons used to commit genocide.

Interestingly, the news of Palestine Action being added to a US terror list came alongside a declaration from Washington that it was removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. Keep in mind that President Trump has actively acknowledged that the man – whom he claims to have put in power – was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda. In fact, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is now the ruling Party in Damascus, is a rebrand of al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, which was previously known as Jabhat al-Nussra. HTS is no longer considered a terrorist group by the US, as per its recent declaration.

This in itself demonstrates how unserious Western leadership takes the issue of terrorism. Simply put, terrorism is opposing the Zionist settler-colonial project. It can be guaranteed with a degree of certainty that if Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa were to suddenly begin taking measures against the Israelis in southern Syria, or supporting Palestinian Resistance factions, there would be immediate sanctions and proscriptions to follow. But because his administration has signed onto a “joint fusion mechanism” to coordinate with Israeli intelligence, the former face of al-Qaeda in Syria is welcomed across Europe, meets with British officials, and is welcomed with open arms into the White House.

The collective West’s political class is stupefyingly corrupt and has spent nearly three years performing puppet apologetics for a regime committing an active genocide against the people of Gaza. No meaningful action is ever taken. Even Western institutions like FIFA and Eurovision, alongside the International Olympic Committee (IOC), have proven too cowardly to boot out the Israelis, despite FIFA and IOC both taking measures to ban Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Consider the recent threats by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch precision strikes on targets in Gaza because it found kites near the separation barrier, forcing children to no longer enjoy a common hobby for Palestinian children in the besieged territory. Most people have considered this an utter outrage, mocking the mere premise of launching airstrikes over children’s kites being flown.

Yet the Israelis were taken seriously when, back in 2018, they began complaining of “terror balloons” and “terror kites” that young Gazans would attach burning objects to, as retaliation for the mass shootings carried out against unarmed protesters during the Great Return March. It may almost seem comical that the Israelis complained about this and that the words terror and balloon were combined in a serious sentence, yet Western leadership adopted the very same language.

Take, for example, the 2021 designation of the Hamas political wing as a ‘terrorist organization’ in the United Kingdom. In their justification as to why they decided to proscribe the political wing – because the Qassam Brigades had long been on their list – the most in-depth example they cited was the use of these balloons. Yes, balloons were used as the most important example as to why Hamas was designated a “terrorist group” in the United Kingdom.

The double standards are so stark that it beggars belief. At the end of the day, it is the utter cowardice that emboldens the Zionist regime to do whatever it chooses, whenever it likes. These Western governments and institutions have allowed the Israelis to erode the post-WW2 international order, destroyed the concepts of human rights and international law, and normalized genocide, even ignoring domestic law, endangering their own populations and undermining the fight against actual terrorism.

They render the international courts ineffective and take measures to punish them for doing their jobs; they stand by and praise the Zionist entity along with its allies in Washington as an alternative body to the United Nations taking over control of the Gaza Strip. International borders and national sovereignty no longer mean anything; embassies are no longer off limits for airstrikes; and journalists can be mass executed with no pushback.

A world that has been turned completely upside down, all so that a small settler colonial regime whose ethno-supremacist cult following of narcissistic psychopaths can have their way at every single turn. All of this, then they turn around and pretend as if their completely shallow statements about settler violence somehow mean anything. In many ways, it would be better if they just closed their mouths. None of the violence they pretend to condemn, without ever doing anything tangible to stop it, would be possible if they had taken action to stop it.

August 30, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli terrorism is getting worse because Western leaders are cowards, hypocrites

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