Israeli war chief praises devastation of Gaza as ‘deliberate policy’
The Cradle | July 17, 2026
A report aired on Channel 14 on 12 July shows Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and other senior officials openly celebrating the apocalyptic destruction of Gaza and the mass killing of Palestinians and their forced displacement to tent cities near the beach.
“The important thing: those neighborhoods like Jabaliya, Shujaiyya, which we only controlled a part of – are destroyed. In ruins,” stated Katz while touring the strip with military officials and journalists.
“When you see Gaza destroyed like this, how do you feel?” a journalist asked him.
“What do I feel? Feel good. What, this is all the result of a deliberate policy that [was designed] to remove threats,” Katz responded.
“Instead of the method of raids – enter, exit, and Hamas returns – the IDF is inside, the residents are outside, and the houses are destroyed.”
Since the start of the genocide in 2023, Israel has destroyed most of Gaza through airstrikes and demolitions, making at least half of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians homeless and forcing them to live in makeshift tent cities near the sea.
Israel has publicly tried to justify its mass killing of Palestinians and occupation of Gaza by saying it is fighting Hamas. However, Katz stressed that even if Hamas is disarmed, Israel will not end its occupation of Gaza.
“We are not retreating from the Yellow Line, unequivocally, as long as Hamas does not truly disarm. And even after that, we will remain in Gaza!”
One senior officer described all 70,000 Palestinians killed by Israel as “terrorists.”
“I don’t know how to describe this [situation] other than victory … When you control 65 percent of the territory [of the Gaza Strip], when 70,000 terrorists have been killed here, when the majority of the population is on the beach since,” stated Tamir Yadai, deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military
Israel acknowledges the tally of the dead kept by Gaza’s Health Ministry, which has now reached over 73,000, the majority women and children. However, independent estimates suggest the real toll of Palestinians killed by Israel since the start of the genocide is likely much higher, reaching into the hundreds of thousands.
Yadai celebrated the Israeli military’s occupation of Gaza for a “second summer,” saying its troops enjoy “full freedom of operation.”
Yaniv Assor, commander of the Israeli military’s southern command, celebrated Israel’s ongoing killing of Palestinians.
He boasted that since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February, Israel had carried out 300 targeted assassinations in the strip.
Since a so-called ceasefire was reached in Gaza in October, Israel has killed over 1,100 Palestinians in the strip in near-daily strikes, including on tent encampments housing displaced Palestinians.
Katz has also celebrated Israel’s ongoing destruction of villages in southern Lebanon, saying Israel is now doing to Lebanon what it had previously done in Gaza.
In March, Katz announced that Israel intended to demolish the Lebanese border villages in its newly occupied zone.
“All the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be destroyed, in accordance with the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza,” he declared.
Is the West looking for a new relationship with Israel?
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 18, 2026
Is Britain’s new prime minister about to stand up to the hugely powerful Israeli lobby? A recent glimpse of his views about Israel and its genocide carried out in Gaza might have been a clue for things to come. The interview itself was carried out not with a journalist but with a sports celebrity whom most Brits associate with a brand of potato chips – which is indicative of how Andy Burnham is going to deal with media: in other words, ignore it altogether.
Burnham has at least done the impossible and steered the debate and the narrative away from Keir Starmer’s all-out pro-Israel stance, and has at least started calling the war in Gaza what it really is – which is not a war at all but a genocide. His appointment as PM may well reduce the mad simmer of blind, dogmatic support for Israel and play into the hands of minority groups in the UK who feel politically lost over Downing Street’s Middle East policies, which have seen U.S. bombers leave the country’s military bases to bomb children in Gaza. Burnham’s interview with Gary Lineker – his first interview – before formally taking office gives a clue to where he wants to take the Labour party before the country goes to the polls in three years’ time.
Yet how long will it take before Israel’s cash and influence get to him? The real test of this new strategy is not the narrative but the endurance of it, especially given that there are so many Labour MPs around him who are on Israel’s payroll – which recently, we presume, extended to even Reform officials who recently returned from an all-expenses-paid trip to Gaza, magically converted to Zionists spouting IDF talking points.
Money is everywhere now in UK politics, as the country has succumbed to the American system. The scandals piling up against Nigel Farage have shocked a nation, although in reality most people in the UK are still very naïve about cash in politics. Indeed, Farage’s scandal is merely prompting a new debate as to even how much money is involved in luring conservative politicians to jump ship to Reform, with Liz Truss taking some media oxygen as many speculate that she’s about to make the leap – when the numbers make sense.
But Britain is only doing what the U.S. is doing, on all levels, even when it comes to Israel. Recently, three primaries were lost to Democratic candidates in the U.S. who had strong anti-Israel views, shocking many in the U.S. who believed until now that Israel’s cash always wins at the end of the day within the political system. In fact, over 100 Democrats recently voted in Congress to end Israel’s $3.3 billion USD military aid which U.S. taxpayers hand over each year, while most Americans can’t afford basic healthcare. Yet it’s hard to see if this is a political initiative as such by the Dems or whether this is people power at the ballot. Many Americans are very troubled by the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and it took the recent Iran war for many of them to even educate themselves as to the extent of the relationship and how far Israel went to manipulate Trump. The post-February 28th campaign that Trump got tricked into going ahead with at least served one purpose, in that it threw a spotlight on this subject like never before. But this came at such a high price, which is what many Americans are waking up to – especially given that Israel as a country is doomed by its history and cursed by its present leaders, and that it can only drag the U.S. down with it.
“Israel is a highly traumatized country. It exists in a sociopsychological bubble built around victimhood, relying on a government system dominated by the military,” argue Dr Andreas Krieg recently. “In such a militarized society, there is no room for political strategy. It is a system built for perpetual war… Military leaders are terrible rulers and terrible at strategic decision-making outside the battlefield. This is why Israel has never strategically won a war – because it is still fighting 80 years on.”
And so any backlash from voters or renegade politicians on both sides of the Atlantic might be the beginning of a new way of thinking about Israel and the region, as Western leaders are realising that the closer they get to Israel, the more they suffer if not ultimately perish. The EU’s plans to block settlers’ land grabs in the West Bank is encouraging, but too little, too late to be taken seriously. The Norwegian national football team’s donation of its collective salaries to a Palestinian charity got more media coverage, although FIFA seems to be an organisation breaking all records on corruption, so perhaps it sent mixed messages. Trump’s war in Iran has confirmed wholesale that Israel owns him and the U.S. taxpayer, as Netanyahu’s ruse paid off big time. What can stop the madness?
State Department Offering Quarter-Million Dollar Grants to Groups in Lebanon that Promote US Image
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | July 15, 2026
The US Embassy in Lebanon announced that the State Department is offering grants of up to $250,000 to groups that help promote American propaganda.
“The US Embassy in Beirut is opening a new Notice of Funding Opportunity for 2026,” a statement published on Tuesday explained. “We’re looking for partners to implement programs that strengthen ties between the US and Lebanon, with a focus on highlighting US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and advancing digital literacy to help people identify and push back on false, adversarial narratives.”
The State Department website says the program is expected to award $500,000 to at least two groups to promote US propaganda in Lebanon. It adds that the program’s goal is to “strengthen local public understanding of US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and its role as a partner committed to security, economic opportunity, and responsible regional leadership.”
Washington is attempting to broker a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut. However, Israel is at war with Hezbollah, a non-state military that operates outside of the control of the Lebanese government.
While Beirut and Tel Aviv inked a deal last month, Hezbollah rejected the agreement because it allowed the IDF to occupy Lebanon until the militia is dismantled.
The attempt to negotiate a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut is making it more difficult for President Donald Trump to end the war against Iran. Iran has linked any ceasefire and peace agreement with Israel ending its war against Lebanon.
Judge rules US violated Palestinian American’s rights in phone search
The Cradle | July 17, 2026
A federal judge has ruled that the US government violated the constitutional rights of Palestinian American Osama Abu Irshaid after customs officials seized and searched his cellphone during two separate encounters at a US international airport in 2024.
In a ruling filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff determined that the phone searches violated Irshaid’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable government searches and seizures.
CAIR welcomes the court’s decision
Irshaid serves as the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine and is a US citizen of Palestinian descent.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which filed the lawsuit on Irshaid’s behalf two years ago, welcomed the court’s decision on Thursday.
The Muslim civil rights organization said in its lawsuit that the federal government had placed Irshaid on a watch list that was discriminatory and racist.
CBP agents conducted advanced phone searches
According to CAIR, US Customs and Border Protection agents twice seized Irshaid’s cellphone and carried out “advanced” searches when he returned to the United States from international travel in 2024.
At the time, the government denied adding individuals to any such watch list based on race, religion, or protected speech activities.
Rights groups have raised growing concerns in recent years over increased scrutiny of Americans with Middle Eastern, Arab, and Palestinian backgrounds, particularly over their political views, following Israeli genocide in Gaza, which started in October 2023.
US blocks SSL security certificates for Iran’s Fars News Agency
The Cradle | July 17, 2026
Washington has blocked the issuance of SSL security certificates for Fars News Agency‘s website, cutting the country’s most visited news outlet off from browser-trusted encryption, the agency revealed on 17 July.
Without valid certificates, visitors to the site face security warnings and restricted access, while the agency’s content has been removed from Google search results.
Technical assessments confirm that all major internationally recognized Certificate Authorities – including Let’s Encrypt, DigiCert, and Sectigo – have rejected certificate requests for the agency’s domains, citing US sanctions pressure.
The measure is the latest in a series of US actions against the outlet. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control seized the agency’s .com domain in 2020, and in September 2023 added Fars and its CEO to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanctions list.
The EU and Canada have since imposed sanctions of their own.
Fars has faced repeated efforts to restrict its reach, including the removal of its Instagram account, which had nearly three million followers.
Iran’s Computer Emergency Response and Coordination Center (MAHER) says the agency has been the primary target of sustained cyberattacks aimed at disrupting the country’s domestic media infrastructure.
The block forms part of a broader western campaign to dominate the media narrative against its geopolitical adversaries by suppressing opposing voices while artificially amplifying its own.
Western governments are simultaneously dismantling online anonymity at home through identity verification laws that, under the pretext of child protection, tie every post to a legal identity – backed by biometric verification requirements, VPN restrictions, and the scanning of private messages.
The measures tighten control over expression both abroad and within their own borders, amid ongoing crackdowns on pro-Palestine and pro-Iran speech.
An investigation by TIME revealed that Israel has been paying $1.5 million per month to Clock Tower X, a firm owned by US President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale, to run a covert influence campaign targeting young US conservatives through paid influencer networks, coordinated messaging in private group chats, and websites designed to shape how AI chatbots characterize Israel.
US officials now believe the operation turned against Trump himself, as paid influencers attacked the now broken ceasefire with Iran.
In May, Israel allocated roughly $730 million to its 2026 Hasbara propaganda budget, more than four times the previous year’s allocation, even as polling shows 60 percent of US respondents now view Israel unfavorably, with experts dismissing the spending as unable to offset the impact of its genocide in Gaza.
The Cradle analyst Mohamad Hasan Sweidan previously detailed how Israel operates a “Digital Iron Dome,” a system combining mass reporting campaigns to take down content exposing its crimes in Gaza, algorithmic ad warfare that floods timelines with state propaganda, and hundreds of millions of dollars in influencer contracts and AI-targeted campaigns to manipulate global perceptions.
China denies interfering in US elections, calls Trump’s claims ‘entirely fabricated’
The Cradle | July 17, 2026
China on 17 July rejected claims by US President Donald Trump that Beijing had interfered in the 2020 US presidential elections, saying the allegations were baseless and an attempt to smear China.
“The relevant allegations by the US are entirely fabricated and aimed at vilifying China,” stated Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian. “We have no interest in interfering in US elections and have never done so.”
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson made the remarks at a press conference in response to Trump’s comments during a speech at the White House on Thursday.
Lin said China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs and has never influenced, or had a reason to influence US elections.
“On the contrary, the international community sees all too clearly who routinely interferes in the internal affairs of other nations, conducts long-term, indiscriminate surveillance of governments, businesses, and ordinary citizens worldwide, and steals the data of other countries’ citizens on a massive scale,” the spokesman said.
In a 25-minute televised speech on Thursday, Trump accused China of interfering in the 2020 election, which saw him lose to Joe Biden.
Trump said the US electoral process was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers.
“No country can be great without fair and honest elections,” Trump said at the White House.
“If there can be no trust, there can be no greatness. Unfortunately, the system we have falls catastrophically short of that standard.”
In response, Democrats warned that Trump was trying to “sow confusion, spread misinformation” to lay the groundwork to challenge the results of the midterm elections this November.
Polling indicates that Trump’s Republican Party could see losses to Democrats in Congress and the Senate.
US voters largely oppose the US president’s war on Iran, which many view as being fought for the sake of Israel, while costing the lives of US soldiers and raising the cost of living due to higher oil and gasoline prices resulting from the conflict.
During the 2016 US presidential elections, Democrats and former members of the intelligence community accused Russia of intervening to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The allegations were eventually shown to be baseless.
Both political parties overlooked evidence suggesting Israel interfered in the election on Trump’s behalf.
In Thursday’s speech, Trump renewed calls for the passage of the Save America Act, which would require voters to present identification, such as a driver’s license, at the polls.
“Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act,” he said. “How easy is that to do? Unless you want to cheat.”
Trump made his comments hostile to China following a cordial visit to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping in May.
The Chinese president is scheduled to visit Washington for meetings with Trump in September.
German journalist says Israeli prison guards raped her to ‘break our will’

Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke
Press TV – July 16, 2026
Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke says Israeli prison guards rape detainees with the systemic intention to “break” their will.
Anna Liedtke, 25, who in September had set sail for the Gaza Strip with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel Conscience, was raped by Israeli prison guards during detention.
“There is no reason for me to be ashamed,” Liedtke said, in her first interview about a legal case filed against the perpetrators.
“It’s clear they want to break our will and silence us, making this so traumatic that we will never talk about Palestine again,” she said in an interview with The Guardian. “Whenever we are silent, they will do it to another person.”
In the meantime, Liedtke’s lawyers have filed a complaint, demanding Israeli authorities investigate the case. Israeli law defines any kind of non-consensual penetration as rape.
Liedtke’s lawyer, Muna Haddad, said her client wanted justice, and that she also aims to raise awareness about the Israelis’ response.
“It is Anna’s wish to seek justice and exhaust all avenues to hold the perpetrators of these acts accountable. We also want to raise awareness and see how the Israeli system responds when faced with our demand to open an investigation,” Haddad said.
“Sexual violence and rape are recurring violations that have been perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners,” Haddad pointed out, noting that the West’s blind support for Tel Aviv has given the Israeli prison guards impunity for sexualized violence and rape against international solidarity activists, as well.
The complaint, sent to the Israeli attorney general, the Israel prison service’s legal adviser, the department for the investigation of prison guards, and the commander of Givon prison, was a challenge to a “culture of impunity” for abuse of prisoners by Israeli forces, Haddad said.
After Liedtke revealed the matter in late December, two other Freedom Flotilla members spoke of sexualized violence performed on them by Israeli prison guards.
Vincenzo Fullone, an Italian journalist, revealed that “on three separate occasions, I was ordered to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches… During the third search, the pain became unbearable and was compounded by mockery, verbal abuse – including the words, ‘Don’t you like it, Hamas whore?’ – and the photographing of my body.”
Australian activist Surya McEwen said he “was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully.”
He said Israeli soldiers dislocated his arm, forcing him to kneel with other flotilla members while the notorious Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir verbally abused them.
According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Israeli forces employ sexualized violence against Palestinians.
The Center said that increasing systemic violence against Palestinians has continued for decades and includes “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.”
Yemen to confront Saudi blockade militarily, official to Al Mayadeen
Al Mayadeen| July 16, 2026
Sanaa’s Deputy Information Minister Mohammed Mansour told Al Mayadeen on Thursday that the positions laid out by Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi effectively amount to a formal declaration that Yemen has decided to end the US-Saudi blockade imposed on it.
He said Yemen will see massive demonstrations tomorrow in response to Sayyed al-Houthi’s call, giving the Yemeni people a chance to make their position on lifting the Saudi blockade unmistakably clear.
“The Yemenis have grown tired of negotiations. Either the blockade is lifted in practice, or we move to break it by force,” he said.
Yemen moving toward confronting Saudi blockade militarily
Mansour told Al Mayadeen that Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa International Airport just nine minutes before an Iranian aircraft was due to land. “By striking Sanaa International Airport, Saudi Arabia made clear that this blockade is its own doing, and that it has no intention of lifting it,” he said.
He added that Yemen is preparing, within days, to confront the Saudi economic blockade through military action. “If political channels fail to force Saudi Arabia to lift the economic blockade, we will confront it militarily,” he said.
He stressed that Yemen never raises a slogan it doesn’t have the means to back up. “Today, we have what it takes to dismantle this economic aggression,” he asserted.
On mediation, Mansour told Al Mayadeen, “We’ve grown tired of mediation, though we do appreciate Oman’s role, since it has not been party to the aggression against our country.”
“This is a matter between Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” he stressed.
He also said Saudi Arabia would do well to take note of Yemen’s positions on Palestine and reconsider the blockade it has imposed.
Yemen will not leave Hezbollah to face the enemy alone
Mansour also voiced regret over the Lebanese government’s stance toward the Lebanese Resistance, insisting that Hezbollah is an asset Lebanon cannot afford to squander.
He affirmed that no party within the Axis of Resistance will ever be left to face the enemy alone, and that Yemen will not abandon Hezbollah.
He recalled that the loudest voice in support of Yemen once belonged to the martyred Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, affirming that Yemen will never forget it.
Sayyed al-Houthi: Saudi escalation will be met in kind
Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen has dragged on for years with no legal basis, framing it as an extension of Riyadh’s subservience to Washington and Tel Aviv.
In his weekly speech, Sayyed al-Houthi confirmed that “surrender is not an option in Yemen,” warning that if Saudi Arabia moves toward full-scale escalation, Yemen will respond in kind, “and blockade for blockade.”
Sayyed al-Houthi accused Riyadh of stalling and evading responsibility over the past several years, depriving Yemen’s people of their sovereign wealth and subjecting them to suffering under a severe blockade, and revealing that Saudi Arabia has cooperated with “Israel” against Yemen throughout that entire period.
“Saudi Arabia is reneging on all the obligations arising from the de-escalation phase, which are, above all, humanitarian obligations and inalienable rights of our people,” he said, accusing Riyadh of seeking to control every aspect of Yemenis’ lives, down to deciding who may travel abroad for medical treatment and who may not.
He added that no one, regardless of position or capacity, has the right to deprive the Yemeni people of their oil rights or freedom of movement.
He said Saudi Arabia wants Yemen’s people to remain trapped in an economic crisis, with betraying their homeland presented as their only means of earning money.
“Saudi Arabia should not imagine that this is a picnic,” he concluded. “It will be something else entirely.”
‘Israel’ aided Saudi interception efforts
Israeli aircraft assisted Saudi forces in their attempts to intercept Yemen’s retaliatory strike, which was launched in response to the Saudi bombardment of Sanaa Airport, a senior military source within the Yemeni Ministry of Defense revealed to Al Mayadeen.
According to the Yemeni source, the Israeli deployment consisted of specialized Gulfstream intelligence-gathering aircraft equipped for communications interception, wiretapping, and reconnaissance.
The aircraft took off from “Israel’s” Nevatim Airbase and operated primarily along a flight path over the Red Sea, where they actively participated in tracking and mapping the trajectories of incoming Yemeni missiles and drones, the source said.
Preparing for Regional Escalation: Iran Appears to Be Pre-Empting the US’ Attack Strategy
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | July 15, 2026
The US Trump administration sought to weaponize diplomacy once again against the Islamic Republic of Iran and implement a surprise attack strategy – this time, Tehran appears to have preempted the American-Israeli plot.
The Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) officially died this week, but in reality it was terminated on June 26 with the Lebanon-Israel deal that Washington brokered. The reason why was simple: the United States decided to print on paper a new deal that violated the former by granting Israel de facto permission to maintain a belligerent occupation of southern Lebanese lands.
Throughout the month that the MoU technically held, the US committed various violations of a number of clauses of the agreement, including by direct threats from Donald Trump himself to assassinate the entire Iranian negotiating team. But the Lebanon issue was far more indicative of where things were heading than the limited skirmishes in the Persian Gulf and threats to commit war crimes.
Clause 1 of the MoU concerned the ensuring of the war’s termination on all fronts, with Lebanon being explicitly mentioned. Tehran made it clear that this meant a full withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon and the protection of Lebanese sovereignty.
Instead of implementing the clause, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coordinated a careful approach to the Lebanon war, one that would not result in a withdrawal or end to the war, while simultaneously being careful not to provoke any Iranian retaliatory strikes. Therefore, the US worked with Israel to develop a new conspiracy. This involved the use of the US-proxy regime in Beirut to stir division within Lebanon, an attempt to force the Lebanese army to clash with Hezbollah, combined with an initiative to pressure neighboring Syria to invade the Bekaa Valley region in order to take on Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, as this plot was developing, the Israelis returned to the pre-March 2 status quo more or less in Lebanon – Hezbollah froze its retaliatory operations, while Israel continued to blow up civilian homes, bomb on a lower scale, while maintaining its presence inside south Lebanon.
A US military advisory force is being deployed to Beirut in order to guide the Lebanese army on its newly agreed-upon mission to clash with Hezbollah, the stated goal of which is to disarm the movement. Speculation also has it that the US may even be considering deploying thousands of combat troops into Lebanon in order to help prop up the regime in Beirut if the situation goes sideways, although this assertion is yet to be fully substantiated.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has been documenting the ongoing mobilization and military buildup along the Lebanese-Syria border, as Trump himself has repeatedly stated in public that he seeks to use Syria’s forces to invade Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s sudden silence and lack of operations indicate that it has been taking these threats very seriously. Fighting Israel alone has been a battle that it has proven capable of managing, but preparations to fight US-proxies inside Lebanon, the possible collapse of the Lebanese Army into warring factions, and combating a Syrian invasion all demand new defensive and even perhaps offensive preparations.
Iran, for its part, was clearly also coordinated more heavily with Yemen’s Ansarallah leadership. The Yemen front never fully opened during the war earlier this year. Tehran openly challenged Saudi Arabia’s blockade on Yemen, while Ansarallah was mobilizing its forces and declared that it would fight to break the blockade. When Riyadh took the decision to strike Sana’a International Airport, this reopened the Yemen-Saudi War for the first time since early 2022, collapsing the UN-brokered ceasefire.
Yemen’s role in the renewal of the regional war will add major pressure, especially as it holds the card to shut down the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, imposing a blockade in the Red Sea that will choke the global economy further than it has been under the pressure of the Strait of Hormuz blockade. Ansarallah’s capabilities have also significantly developed since 2022, meaning that they will be able to aid Iran in their war efforts against targets in the Arabian Peninsula.
If the US succeeds in pressuring Damascus to launch an assault on Lebanon, then Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have already threatened to enter the fight on the ground. The PMU would likely seek to seize areas in eastern Syria, like Deir Ezzor, which would open up new supply lines inside Syrian territory and put enormous pressure on its forces.
A US-Israeli plot to collapse the Lebanese State in order to weaken Hezbollah is a major gamble to say the least, one which will inevitably lead to a rise in regional sectarianism. It is also very likely that Arab Gulf media will also act to portray the conflict as a new Sunni-Shia war, as they begin to take more active roles in support of the US-Israeli war effort.
Ultimately, it appears as if the Iranians are not taking any chances and are being proactive, which has been reflected in the scale of their strikes on US assets in the region, including a surprise attack that took out US ATACMS missiles in Kuwait earlier this week.
A return to full-scale war this time around could trigger a series of conflicts that will spiral out of control and thus make any easy off-ramp impossible. The Global economic repercussions will be horrendous, as the only end to the war is total victory or total defeat. The US will be put in a position where it will be forced to withdraw from the region, while Israel is betting on the idea of Iran being significantly weakened as a result of the conflict’s continuation.
No side appears to be backing down, so unless the US suddenly decides to perform a 180-degree pivot in its approach, West Asia is about to erupt into total chaos.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Iran warned Vance that Kushner, Witkoff used peace talks as cover for insider trading: Report
The Cradle | July 16, 2026
Iranian negotiators sent a private warning to US Vice President JD Vance earlier this year, saying that US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were “abusing” their roles in the talks to profit from financial markets, Drop Site News reported on 16 July.
The Iranian negotiators sent the warnings to Vance through an intermediary during the late June talks in Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, telling him the pair cared more about profiting from insider knowledge of the negotiations than reaching a deal to end the war on Iran.
The negotiators also said that Kushner had been repeatedly leaking details of the talks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with one US official telling Axios that Witkoff and Kushner “talk almost every day to Netanyahu” and the head of Mossad.
The Vance outreach came after Tehran had already tried to alert the White House to the pair’s conduct, presenting evidence that “individuals close to [US] President [Donald] Trump” were abusing the war on Iran and diplomatic developments to manipulate financial markets, while warning of Witkoff’s “overall destructive role in the previous negotiation.”
Financial analysts have observed a pattern since the war began in late February of speculative bets and unusually large positions in war-linked markets – oil futures, energy stocks, and prediction markets – often preceded by Trump announcements timed just before Monday trading opens in the US, fueling public suspicion of insider trading.
Iran calculated the profits from these manipulations at around $9 billion by June and formally demanded in writing that half of it, $4.5 billion, be allocated to Tehran.
The official said the exchanged texts “will ultimately become part of the historical record.”
Financial disclosure forms released on 3 July revealed that President Trump’s income soared past $2.2 billion last year, largely built on cryptocurrency ventures that his own administration was regulating.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump made around $1 billion from crypto deals, including a UAE state-linked investment in World Liberty Financial and proceeds from his $TRUMP memecoin, which later crashed in value by 97 percent.
Trump and those close to him have also profited from massive, highly suspicious trading spikes in oil futures and stock indexes occurring just minutes before the president issued major market-moving announcements on social media about the US war on Iran.
Economists, lawmakers, and market analysts have raised alarms over insider trading, data leaks, and market manipulation coming from the White House.
Almost $1 billion in oil futures trades were executed in early May in the minutes before an Axios report revealed a US-Iran memorandum aimed at ending the war.
Market observers noted the White House’s wild swings between war and peace rhetoric appeared to be little more than a vehicle for insiders to profit through coordinated trading on Polymarket and traditional commodities exchanges
Meanwhile, the Financial Times (FT) reported that the president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were behind a $1.04-billion investment network funneling money into sectors championed by the White House, including drone companies pursuing Pentagon contracts.
The report also noted that Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to Polymarket, where insider trading on US military action is reportedly rampant.
Rahm & Bibi: Opposing Pillars of Jewish Thought

By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg |
“Emanuel… has long been seen as a strong supporter of Israel within the Democratic party. His evolving position is unquestionably a reaction to increasing anti-Israel public sentiment, particularly on the American Left.” — Blaise Malley, Responsible Statecraft (Jul. 9, 2026)
After witnessing a nearly three-years-long holocaust perpetrated by the Israeli Defense Forces against women and children in Gaza, virtually the entire world is beginning to harbor feelings of revulsion towards the Zionist state and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Not since Israel’s founding in 1948 have Americans had a more negative view of their ‘gallant little democratic ally in the Middle East,’ to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. William Pierce. Gallup, the American multinational analytics company known for conducting public opinion polls, recently commented on the drastic shift in American sympathies vis a vis Israel/Palestine while analyzing polling data from the past few years:
“From 2001 to 2005, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. The cumulative effect of gradual changes in U.S. attitudes since then has led to the Israelis no longer being viewed more sympathetically.”
Not oblivious to the changing tides of public opinion, clever intriguers like Rahm Emanuel are right now hard at work levelling the land for the development of a centrist plantation upon which criticism of Netanyahu and aspects of his Likud regime — and US support for it — are tolerated in the hope of reclaiming the support of disillusioned voters by affixing a more palatable face to the pro-Israel cause. (Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Israel’s favorability rating at 22% among Democrats.)
On pp. 156-157 of his 2008 textbook Judaism Discovered, revisionist historian Michael Hoffman provides a crucial insight into the complex system of deceit known as Judaism:
“The Kabbalistic temple is supported by the pillar of chesed (mercy) and the pillar of gevurah (severity), both are required to support Judaism’s supremacy. These two seemingly opposing pillars offer two ways of relating to the world depending on the spirit of the age in which Judaism finds itself situated. Judaism’s Temple is the synthesis of these two forces. The Temple cannot be sustained only by presenting a lenient or merciful face, or only by severe or judgmental means. …’pairs’ produce the synthesis that is Judaism in all of its indissolubly connected, subterranean minutiae.”
Widely considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Emanuel recently travelled to Israel to deliver a speech to a packed hall at Tel Aviv University, addressing, among other topics, an end to unconditional US support for Israel. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that during the course of his speech — in which he referred to Israel as a “pariah” — Emanuel put forth a “proposal for U.S. sanctions targeting Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, Israeli officials who voice support for that violence, and companies and banks that support ‘illegal settlements.”‘
The speech, titled “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, Where it Stands Today and the Road Ahead,” is an obvious attempt by the prominent Democrat to repair the fractured Israel/Washington alliance, while rehabilitating his image as a “vocal Zionist” in anticipation of the 2028 presidential election. Some rather gullible commentators have already fallen for the ruse, like the Lebanese-Australian Mario Nawfal, who triumphantly tweeted:
“The era of unconditional U.S. support for Israel just ended. And Rahm Emanuel flew to Tel Aviv to say it to their faces. His speech is designed to land like a thunderclap, and the messenger guarantees it does. Emanuel is not a progressive activist. He’s a centrist.”
A more cynical person might ask: If Rahm Emanuel cares so deeply about the plight of Palestinian civilians and ending unconditional foreign aid to Israel, why has he failed to raise either of these issues until now, when Netanyahu’s government is losing the support of the entire world? 1 The answer resides in the fact that Emanuel is a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist who doesn’t actually care about the aforementioned issues. Rather, his lofty political ambitions within the Democratic Party coupled with historically low support for Israel, has made it necessary for Emanuel to present himself as the light square of leniency juxtaposed with Netanyahu’s dark square of severity on the checkered floor of the Jewish Temple.
Rahm Israel Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959 to Dr. Benjamin Emanuel and Marsha Smulevitz. He attended Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s Anshe Emet Day School, a private Jewish school, until 1968, when the family moved to Wilmette, Illinois, whereupon he was enrolled in public school and graduated from New Trier West High School in 1977. 2 Throughout his youth, Rahm would attend annual summer camps in Israel –including the summer following the 1967 Six-Day War — which no doubt amplified the already passionate ethnic sentiments inherited via his family’s close ties to Israel and political activism.
Emanuel’s father, Benjamin Auerbach, was a pediatrician born in Jerusalem in 1927. His parents, having fled to Palestine from Odessa in 1905, changed the family name to Emanuel in honor of Benjamin’s older brother Emanuel Auerbach, who died after being struck by a bullet fragment during a conflict between Jews, Arabs and police during the British occupation of Palestine in 1933. No doubt influenced by this event, Benjamin would later be persuaded by his cousin to join the underground Zionist terror organization Irgun to, in his own words, “sabotage the British Empire, to send letters with bombs in them to England.” 3 Emanuel was operating as a weapons smuggler for the Irgun (a forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party) when the group bombed the King David Hotel, Britain’s administrative headquarters, in 1946, and was very much involved in supplying weapons to Menachem Begin’s militants during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
In 1953, Benjamin immigrated to Chicago where he met his wife Marsha Smulevitz, an X-ray technician at Mount Sinai Hospital and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1957 and 1961, the couple had three sons, Ezekiel, Rahm and Ari, who have all achieved high levels of success in their respective careers. 4 After Benjamin’s death, Rahm remembered his father as the quintessential Israeli:
“There was no sweetness. No softness around the edges. It’s how Israelis are. This was a guy who said he loved you by calling you a schmuck and hitting you in the back of the head. A lot of people call you a schmuck, but not a lot of people say it with a hit, then say ‘I love you.’ That’s who he was.”

Rahm Israel Emanuel with his father, a former operative of Menachem Begin’s Irgun terror group, a forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
Emanuel became involved in politics in the early 1980s while enrolled at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech and communication. His first job in politics — as spokesman for the Illinois Public Action Council — brought him into contact with an ambitious Jew named David Axelrod, and the pair became close friends two years later while working on the victorious Senate campaign of Paul Simon. The success of the Simon campaign helped launch the political careers of Axelrod and Emanuel who would both one day occupy key positions within the administration of President Obama.
In early 1991, Emanuel volunteered for a short stint in the IDF as part of Israel’s Sar-el program, where he worked as a tank mechanic at one of Israel’s northern bases during the Gulf War. He relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas upon his return to the United States to serve as the chief fundraiser for Governor Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, helping to raise over $120 million for the degenerate 42nd President of the United States. Clinton would appoint the crafty dual-loyalist political director of the new administration following his election victory in November 1992, before reassigning him the position of Deputy Communications Director and Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy, from where Emanuel was instrumental in the destruction of nearly one million US jobs as the primary architect of the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The pillar of power behind the president
After the Clinton administration came to an end, Emanuel went to work at the Chicago office of the investment firm Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he mysteriously made $16 million in two years before deciding to run for Congress in 2002. He was elected and represented Illinois’s 5th district from 2003 – 2009, burnishing his reputation as a pro-Israel hardliner almost immediately upon taking office by signing a letter to then-President George W. Bush defending the Jewish state’s controversial policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders and criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel! For many years afterwards, he defended Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, even after joining the Obama administration and criticizing certain aspects of the war.
When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States he plucked Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod out of the Chicago political cesspit to accompany him to the White House as his Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor, respectively. Just days after Obama’s election, Benjamin Emanuel caused a commotion when he boasted to a reporter from Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that his son was now in a position to influence the newly elected president’s stance towards Israel: “Obviously, he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
The younger Emanuel left his post as White House Chief of Staff towards the end of 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago. He received overwhelming support from Jewish and LGBT voters and ultimately raised over $10 million dollars, in part through large contributions from people like Steven Spielberg and Donald Trump, close friends of his brother Ari Emanuel. Emanuel’s controversy-plagued two terms as Mayor of Chicago earned him the sobriquet “Mayor 1%” for his economic policies favoring the wealthy, and by the time the “attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew” was out of office in 2019, Chicago was a financial basket case with a surging murder rate driven by gang-related violence.
Catholic scholar Dr. E. Michael Jones often points out that “existence calls forth a new essence.” In explaining the maxim, Jones has cited the story of the Pilgrims, who landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay as Calvinists before being mugged by the reality of the frontier, leading to the Halfway Covenant and a continuous modification of their Calvinist essence as Western expansion progressed. There’s no question that on some level a similar process is taking place today with Jews who are facing the uncomfortable realities of a post-October 7th world, though the authenticity of Rahm Emanuel’s conversion is called into question by the fundamental principles of the Orthodox Jewish religion to which he and his family are dedicated devotees. 5
In his book The Talmud Tested (first published as The Old Paths in 1854), Irish Hebraist and missionary Alexander McCaul devotes a number of pages to analyzing a section of the Talmud called Hilchoth Accum, part of which captures the duplicity found throughout Jewish teaching:
“The poor of the idolators (non-Jews) are to be fed with the poor of Israel for the sake of the ways of peace. They are also permitted to have part of the gleaning, the forgotten sheaf, and the corner of the field, for the sake of the ways of the peace. It is also lawful to ask after their health, even on their feast-day, for the sake of the ways of the peace; but never to return the salutation, nor to enter the house of an idolator on the day of his festival to salute him. If he be met in the street, he is to be saluted in a low tone of voice, and with a heavy head. But all these things are said only of the time that Israel is in captivity among the nations, or that the hand of the idolators is strong upon Israel. But when the hand of Israel is strong upon them, we are forbidden to suffer an idolator among us, even so much as to sojourn incidentally, or to pass from place to place with merchandise.” [Italics in original]
Commenting on the passage, Dr. McCaul states
“… the reader may now judge whether the words, ‘For the sake of the ways of peace,’ can be interpreted as… ‘for the good of society.’ If so, then ‘the good of society’ is to be consulted only whilst the Jews are in captivity, and the Gentiles have got the power: but as soon as the Jews get the power, ‘the good of society’ may safely be disregarded. The meaning plainly is, that in the present position of affairs it is advisable to keep the peace between Jews and Gentiles, inasmuch as the Gentiles are at present the strongest.”
The outrage towards Israel felt by millions of Americans on both sides of the political divide since the Gaza ‘War’ began in October 2023, has made it necessary for any aspiring candidate for higher office to publicly adopt a more measured tone on Israel/Palestine and US support for the genocidal regime. Because Rahm Emanuel and the Jewish oligarchs have yet to achieve complete mastery over the United States, certain concessions must be made “for the sake of the ways of the peace.”
The concept of ‘pairs’ is foundational in Judaism and is expressed through several traditional ideas and customs. During the Second Temple period (170 BC – 30 AD) there were five successive pairs of rabbis whose role it was to preserve and transmit the Oral Law that would one day be committed to writing as the Talmud. These pairs are known in Hebrew as zugot, the most famous of which are Hillel and Shammai, who laid the framework for rabbinic debate with their opposing schools of thought. Michael Hoffman, in his book Judaism’s Strange Gods, describes the pair within the context of mystical Judaism:
“Hillel serves his purpose within the rabbinic semiotic by acting as poster boy for the Kabbalistic pillar of chesed. But the rule of Shammai, the pillar of gevurah, also forms a significant part of the reality of Orthodox Judaism… In truth they are complimentary, as the mystical Kabbalah compliments the bureaucratic Talmud, thesis and antithesis; yin and yang — the “zugot” who symbolize the subterranean synthesis that is Judaism in its indissolubly interconnected esoteric reconciliation of apparent opposites.”
When considering Rahm Emanuel’s Zionist pedigree and professional trajectory, it’s fair to wonder whether some variation of the ancient ‘opposing pairs’ theater is being performed right now with Benjamin Netanyahu.6 A July 6 article in Politico hints at this theme while pondering Emanuel’s presidential prospects:
“Emanuel’s presidential ambitions so far are defined by two pillars. One is the essential plausibility of his resume… There’s no one in the gathering field who has such a diverse range of experiences and personal associations, or moves as confidently or as restlessly in policy debates. The other pillar is the essential implausibility, amid prevailing political currents, of his nascent candidacy: He is an establishment centrist who is deeply mistrusted by many of the more left-leaning, insurgent and increasingly Israel-skeptical activists who reasonably believe their energy will power the party’s next generation.
Netanyahu is a useful foil, and a potential bridge between the two pillars. Emanuel can accurately tell younger Democrats: Trust me, I have been at this fight longer than you have, and I have the enemies to show for it.”

Notes:
- As Obama’s chief of staff in 2009, Emanuel momentarily incurred Netanyahu’s wrath after suggesting that Israel should halt its settlements in the West Bank; although this had more to do with maintaining Israel’s relationship with America than any humanitarian considerations. ↩︎
- Goldman, a member of the Zionist Organization of America and the World Zionist Congress, was “especially known for helping to popularize the cause of Zionism in the United States.” ↩︎
- Benjamin Emanuel claimed that he refused to mail letter bombs to the British. ↩︎
- Hollywood producer Ari Emanuel once called on people in the movie industry to blackball Mel Gibson over his movie The Passion of the Christ. ↩︎
- Emanuel’s longtime rabbi, Asher Lopatin, is a Rhodes Scholar and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. ↩︎
- Similarly, suspected 9/11 conspirators Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert are often presented as reasonable voices of opposition to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and the fanatical Israeli settlers. ↩︎
China’s “eyes” and Iran’s “fist”: Iran dumped GPS, switched to Beidou, and won the war
Inside China Business | July 15, 2026
Intelligence analysts note dramatic, and sudden, advances in Iranian missile and drone capabilities.
During last year’s war on Iran, IDF and American forces successfully “spoofed” Iranian drones and missiles, which relied on GPS navigation systems.
But after that conflict, Iran switched to Beidou, a Chinese satnav system that cannot be jammed by Western militaries.
Beidou is also more accurate than GPS in most of the world, including in the Persian Gulf region.
Iranian drones and missiles are now threading through air defenses, and taking down critical, high-value targets across the Gulf States, who also rely on GPS.
Ironically, China’s motivation to build the Beidou system began over thirty years ago, when the Pentagon switched off GPS to a Chinese container ship bound for Iran.
By 2020, Beidou leapt past GPS in coverage and accuracy in most of the world.
Resources and links:
“Breathing Fire” After Yinhe Embarrassment, China’s Pledge To Counter U.S. GPS Reaches Key Milestone https://www.eurasiantimes.com/gps-an-…
The GPS Blackout That Changed Everything for China https://www.bastillepost.com/global/a…
Iran turns to China’s BeiDou satellites to outfox Israeli anti-drone electronic warfare defences https://www.intellinews.com/iran-turn…
Could Iran be using China’s highly accurate BeiDou navigation system? https://www.aljazeera.com/features/20…
China’s Push for Satellite Cooperation in the Middle East https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/p…
In 165 countries, China’s Beidou eclipses American GPS https://asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/cen…
伊朗副部长:正在探索从GPS切换到中国北斗系统 https://m.guancha.cn/internation/2025…
Gulf Countries Confront Questions About Relying on U.S. for Protection https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/wo…
Iran reportedly destroys $300M US missile defence radar in Jordan https://www.trtworld.com/article/6dda…
How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. Recalculation https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east…
