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When the coloniser calls resistance terrorism

By Sayid Marcos Tenorio | MEMO | August 8, 2026

Throughout history, almost every national liberation struggle has been labelled “terrorism” by the powers exercising colonial rule or foreign occupation. This strategy is nothing new.

The British Empire branded IRA fighters in Ireland and EOKA guerrillas in Cyprus as terrorists. France portrayed Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) as a criminal organisation. The same happened to the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Namibia, and even Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC).

History, however, vindicated these movements and condemned the colonial regimes that sought to perpetuate their domination.

This pattern reveals a constant: those who occupy a territory seek to strip the occupied people of any legitimacy to resist.

The dehumanisation of resistance is a colonial strategy. By labelling every resistance fighter a “terrorist”, attention is shifted away from illegal occupation, apartheid and the denial of self-determination, and redirected towards the reaction of the occupied people.

This narrative, however, encounters clear limits within international law itself.

From the United Nations Charter to Resolution 1514 (XV) on decolonisation and Resolution 2625 (XXV), which reaffirms the principle of peoples’ self-determination, the understanding has been consolidated that peoples subjected to colonial domination, foreign occupation or racist regimes have the right to struggle for their liberation.

Several subsequent resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly recognised the legitimacy of national liberation movements and acknowledged that such resistance may take the form of armed struggle, provided that it remains subject to the rules of international humanitarian law.

This is precisely why the international community has never automatically equated national liberation movements with terrorist organisations.

International humanitarian law regulates the manner in which armed conflicts must be conducted and imposes obligations on all belligerents, including resistance movements.

However, it does not eliminate the political and legal right of a people to resist occupation. Confusing these two dimensions serves only the interests of occupying powers, because it transforms a conflict of a political and legal nature into a mere policing matter.

The history of the so-called “State of Israel” itself exposes this contradiction.

Before 1948, Irgun and Lehi were regarded as terrorist organisations by the British government because of attacks such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and the assassination of UN mediator Folke Bernadotte.

Years later, their leaders reached the highest levels of government, and Menachem Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize. This demonstrates that the label “terrorist” often reflects political circumstances more than any permanent legal definition.

In the contemporary context, this debate remains highly relevant. Palestine continues to be recognised by the United Nations as a territory under occupation, while Western Sahara remains on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, awaiting the fulfilment of its people’s right to self-determination.

In this context, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which emerged during the First Intifada, and the Polisario Front, recognised by the United Nations as the representative of the Sahrawi people in the Western Sahara peace process, belong to the historical tradition of national liberation movements.

As with South Africa’s ANC, Algeria’s FLN, Namibia’s SWAPO, Mozambique’s FRELIMO and many other movements, both base their struggle on their peoples’ claim to the right of self-determination in the face of occupation or foreign domination.

This does not mean that every military action carried out by resistance organisations is automatically legitimate under international law.

The rules of international humanitarian law apply to all parties to a conflict and prohibit deliberate attacks against civilians, regardless of the cause being defended.

However, possible violations of these rules do not, in themselves, invalidate the legal legitimacy of the struggle for self-determination, nor do they automatically transform a national liberation movement into a terrorist organisation under international law. These are distinct questions, frequently conflated for political convenience.

There is no colonialism without resistance. There never has been.

The French Resistance against Nazi occupation, Vietnamese guerrillas, Algerian fighters, South Africans who confronted apartheid, African liberation movements, the Polisario Front and the Palestinian resistance all demonstrate that no people will indefinitely accept the loss of their land, sovereignty and dignity.

The real question, therefore, is not why resistance exists.

The question the world should be asking is why military occupations, colonial processes and regimes that deny entire peoples the right to determine their own destiny continue to exist.

As long as there is colonisation, apartheid, illegal annexation and denial of self-determination, there will be armed resistance movements.

And international law, despite political pressure and attempts to criminalise liberation movements, continues to uphold the fundamental principle that the freedom of peoples is not an act of terrorism, but a fundamental right of humanity.

August 8, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , | Comments Off on When the coloniser calls resistance terrorism

Inside Israel’s pyramid of spies

The Cradle | August 7, 2026

No state or security body offers a single, systematic account of how Israeli agents are used, why they are recruited, or what services they ultimately provide. Outside experienced state institutions, universities and research centers rarely undertake such scrutiny. Israeli academia is the notable exception.

Israeli universities form part of the wider intelligence ecosystem through research, graduates, and seminars conducted with the security services and military. They produce personnel, assess institutional performance – as they have done since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood – and examine intelligence work in detail.

The Second Annual Israeli Conference on Intelligence Studies, held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 28–29 October 2025 under the title “Intelligence Transformations After Failure,” is one open example. No comparable body of work has emerged from Arab and Islamic institutions.

Accounts from current and former security practitioners, alongside cases involving agents both living and dead, reveal an intelligence pyramid: a layered system of recruitment, cultivation, and deployment built around the value of the intelligence sought and the risks demanded of each spy.

Level one: Building the picture

At the base of the pyramid is information gathering, a task common to almost every category of recruited agent, though the value and type of information vary widely. Israeli services generally separate the agent or cell collecting intelligence from the cell carrying out an operation. The roles sometimes overlap, but collection remains the gateway to action.

An agent may gather information during a probationary phase, without knowing what it will be used for or whether others are working alongside him, simultaneously or in sequence, inside or outside the same organization.

Then come the “mosaic collectors,” who move beyond isolated fragments. They, too, may not see the complete picture, but their assignments are more complex. Instead of passing a single detail or photograph, they may track a person’s movements and relationships in depth, or map an entire process, such as an organization’s purchase of motorcycles or communications equipment.

One recent Lebanese case involved a detainee later released by the judiciary despite the sensitivity of his alleged mission. According to security sources familiar with the file, he was instructed to mount specialized equipment on a vehicle and drive through selected areas, harvesting data from internet routers in homes and institutions and attempting to penetrate them.

A second, recurring example comes from Palestine: the penetration of external training chains. Trainees sent to courses in Lebanon, Syria before the government’s fall, and Iran before the war on Gaza were exposed.

At times, the training bodies themselves were compromised and discovered concealed cameras in equipment covers. The breach then operated at three levels – inside the organization, along the training chain, and within the host institution.

Higher up are agents with access to sensitive files or influence inside a faction’s military or security apparatus. Their task may be to construct a picture of a company, battalion, brigade, division, or specialist unit. No single member normally sees an entire arena or organization; that degree of access is usually confined to a political bureau, military, or jihadi council.

One battalion in northern Gaza was penetrated before the current war, specifically in 2021. The agent held considerable authority and ranked roughly third in its command structure, yet still lacked a complete map of the battalion’s tunnels.

Israeli handlers therefore supplied him with military boots resembling those worn by resistance fighters. A tracking device was hidden inside, and he was told only to walk through the tunnels, allowing Israel to chart the network.

After the breach was discovered – having paralyzed operations in that area during the Sword of Jerusalem battle – the agent fled to Europe. A counterintelligence operation later lured him back to Gaza by making him believe suspicion had passed.

He was arrested, and the source of the breach was exposed. Security sources inform The Cradle that the discovery spared the battalion from destruction in the latest war and helped turn the border area into a persistent problem for Israeli forces until the final stages.

The battalion commander responded through trial and error, creating separate tunnel routes and branches and preventing any one fighter from moving through all of them or taking part in the entire excavation process.

Yet the same agent escaped prison shortly before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. That extraordinary story lies beyond the scope of this investigation, though one detail is telling: another agent facilitated his escape.

At the top of this first level stands the source of “golden information” – intelligence decisive to a major operation, particularly an assassination. It may reveal a figure who has never been photographed, identify a safe house, or confirm a target’s presence during the final moments before a strike.

Some such agents have been killed by mistake; others, sources say, were deliberately abandoned when Israel judged that they had nothing more to offer or could not be extracted.

Technology has made field agents harder to detect and reduced the need for some older practices. At the beginning of the Second Intifada, for example, agents could be ordered to mark a building with a laser before an airstrike.

Such tasks are less necessary today because Israel already possesses extensive maps of public bodies – municipalities, governorates, and ministries – as well as many overt and covert resistance sites.

Israeli military publications openly use the Hebrew term yediat zahav – “golden information” – for decisive, current intelligence extracted from a mass of raw data. In resistance environments, invoking such intelligence can also fuel suspicion that a senior agent exists, even when the information was obtained through technical surveillance.

Where the source is human, investigations repeatedly show that an Israeli service may spend years and large sums cultivating one person for a single disclosure. The assassination of Yahya Ayyash is a prominent example.

The collaborator who enabled the operation was bound to be exposed because he supplied both the identifying information and the instrument of assassination – a booby-trapped mobile phone. With no plausible alternative suspect, an escape or extraction plan had to be prepared in advance.

Level two: Agents in the field

Information gathering already demands work on the ground – photography, surveillance, communications, and impersonation among them. Direct field missions require a different class of agent. Security sources estimate that nearly all must meet their handlers inside Israel or abroad and receive either task-specific instruction or broader operational training.

At the bottom are what security practitioners describe as “cheap missions”: assignments carrying minimal risk, with exposure more likely to result from chance or a basic mistake than from the work itself. These include leaving communications devices, messages, or cash at “dead drops.” Such tasks usually require little training and are assigned gradually.

A dead drop is selected after studying a country’s geography and population patterns. One agent leaves the material; another retrieves it without knowing the first and sometimes for an entirely different operation. Many recruits with reasonable collection skills can perform these tasks. They remain below the risk threshold reserved for more experienced and intensively trained agents.

The next rung involves logistics. This involves obtaining communications equipment, buying or renting homes and vehicles, or securing other tools later used by operational cells.

From there, the work can become far more dangerous. Agents may tamper with resistance weapons or insert tracking chips into them, including RPG and Kornet anti-armor rounds and even missiles or their explosive warheads. Others plant surveillance devices. At this point, the agent generally understands exactly what the mission entails.

In one prominent example, a single agent working in a manufacturing workshop belonging to an Islamic organization in Gaza was responsible for the deaths of at least 30 operatives between 2008 and 2012 by planting tracking devices in the rockets they launched, as well as weakening the explosive material in the warheads.

Having joined from another organization, he cultivated an image of exceptional devotion to deflect suspicion, even carrying wounded comrades on his shoulders while performing tawaf around the Kaaba.

Although eventually exposed, he escaped Gaza and, according to the same sources, still holds an official post in a Muslim-majority country.

At the summit are the hardest assignments: planting explosives or carrying out assassinations directly. Israel embraced this route only more extensively during the past decade. For years, a basic assumption among Palestinian and Lebanese investigators held that Israel killed only by Israeli hands. That premise often led inquiries to discount a local perpetrator from the outset.

The 2010 assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai reinforced that belief. The large team seen on Emirati surveillance footage used foreign passports; many were believed to be Jewish. But subsequent cases in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran indicate that Israel has sought to reduce the risks borne by Jewish operatives, Arabic-speaking Israeli agents, and Druze or Bedouin recruits by transferring more of the execution phase to local assets.

The March 2017 assassination of freed prisoner Mazen Fuqaha in Gaza exposed the limits of the old assumption. Fuqaha, a commander in the Qassam Brigades, was responsible for supporting military activity in the occupied West Bank. Investigators faced a missing link. Even after a Palestinian agent confessed, some remained convinced that an Israeli special unit must have entered Gaza to carry out the shooting.

Nearly nine years later, on 5 February 2026, Netanyahu publicly acknowledged Israel’s responsibility for Fuqaha’s assassination. He confirmed that the killing was carried out through recruitment of a Palestinian collaborator, Ashraf Abu Leila, who shot Fuqaha outside his home in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City.

The disclosure was unlikely to have been casual. Its timing came as Palestinian resistance movements were conducting sweeping reviews of their security and military performance after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

The following day, Al Jazeera broadcast an investigation into armed groups in Gaza accused of serving Israel.

The program included material on local militia members used to track targets and carry out armed tasks. One case involved two men assigned to kill a wanted figure with a suppressed weapon. One was captured despite having received little training and not being a long-serving recruit – another departure from the model that prevailed before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

During Israel’s June 2025 war on Iran, Israeli messaging sought to portray every ground operation as the work of Mossad officers. Field investigations and sources following the cases point to a different picture. Iranian Jews living abroad, migrants, and their descendants accounted for only a small share of those allegedly involved.

Many of the operatives proved to be residents of Iran, meaning Mossad personnel had not acted alone as Israeli accounts implied. Some people who helped smuggle equipment into the country reportedly did not know it would be used in military or intelligence operations, believing they were moving civilian goods for profit.

Level three: Re-engineering the enemy

At the highest level, the selection, conduct, and mission of an agent change fundamentally. Israel studies a target organization strategically, seeking to dismantle it or redirect its course. The work demands highly placed, carefully cultivated recruits. An assignment may involve reading a leader’s behavior or tracing ideological currents across an entire movement.

One agent admitted during interrogation that his task had been limited to observing a leader’s social life and political language. He was required to remain close to a figure in an Islamic organization in Gaza who was assassinated in 2003, mapping his community relationships, recording what he said away from the media, and assessing whether he belonged to the movement’s “hawk” or “dove” camp. The findings helped determine Israel’s targeting priorities.

Past Israeli statements and signals support the view that assassinations, particularly of political figures, are not always ordered for immediate military reasons. A killing can create a vacancy in a movement’s hierarchy.

Israeli planners then anticipate who will fill it and whether that successor better suits their objectives. In effect, an organization’s political trajectory can be re-engineered while its members believe they are responding to internal circumstances.

The practice is old. It dates at least to the rivalry between Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This was a time when Israeli services sought to exploit disputes within and between Palestinian factions and used agents to deepen them.

During periods of intense military escalation, anyone who appears on the radar may be killed as Israel pursues the largest possible number of assassinations. The campaign unleashed after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood marked the largest exception of all.

The US has played a comparable game, sometimes without recruiting a conventional agent. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou described one such method in a podcast released on 29 January 2026, explaining how the agency helped fragment the Abu Nidal Organization.

Unable to penetrate the group directly, the CIA instead planted suspicion. Through direct and indirect contacts, it suggested that a senior member had been recruited. One cadre then killed another on suspicion of betrayal, setting off further internal bloodletting.

The organization was thus driven to destroy itself without the recruitment of a single agent. Its founder, Sabri Khalil al-Banna, better known as Abu Nidal, died in Baghdad in 2002. The author’s security sources maintain that Saddam Hussein had him killed after years of using his organization in external and internal operations, though the circumstances remain disputed and other accounts describe suicide.

A different strategic path requires elevating an agent into the leadership. That person needs achievements to build credibility, even if Israel must allow an operation to appear successful – or announce casualties in its own ranks – to manufacture the necessary record.

A source in Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades reveals to The Cradle that an operative identified as A.N. rose rapidly after an Israeli jeep was apparently destroyed by an explosive along the boundary and Israel announced one death and several injuries. A later transaction involving night-vision equipment exposed him, and he fled into the territories occupied in 1948.

The subsequent investigation found that the jeep had been remotely driven to the site of a bomb reported in advance. The explosion created a filmed “achievement,” giving the agent credibility, quicker access, and a degree of trust that was difficult to challenge.

Once an agent reaches the intended leadership tier, he may be ordered to identify additional cadres for recruitment. Another recurring task is to cultivate financial and moral corruption. The aim is to convince members that their sacrifices are being exploited for private gain. Such tactics work precisely because corruption already exists, to varying degrees, within the structures of several organizations.

One of the starkest cases uncovered by the Palestinian resistance involved a historic leader identified as M.N. He was reportedly not asked to transmit operational intelligence. Instead, his assignment was to magnify organizational failures and obstruct successful work.

Other agents were instructed to arrange commercial deals and partnerships that implicated people who were not directly recruited, widening the perception – and sometimes the reality – of corruption and exploitation.

The effort to create a negative example belongs to the same strategy. Israeli handlers may target the children of leaders whom they have failed to recruit or assassinate. Security pressures and the prolonged absence of a father who once acted as protector and disciplinarian can make those children more vulnerable. Families of martyrs face the same danger.

Palestinian and Lebanese files contain many such examples. The most politically embarrassing involve the sons of a well-known West Bank leader in an Islamic movement, one of whom publicly converted to Judaism and repeatedly entered Israel.

Whether he settled there permanently remains unclear. Such cases are rare, but Israel amplifies them to discredit the movements concerned, dishonor prominent families, and weaken their standing within Palestinian society.

The most dangerous outcome combines two tracks: assassinations designed to reorder an organization and the promotion of an agent into its senior leadership. Together, they open the way to direct influence over decisions and strategy. The danger is greatest after the killing of historic figures who cannot easily be replaced.

Israel’s intelligence services invest for the long term. They study the remaining leaders, their histories of disagreement, and the character of each relationship, then seek to create friction inside the organization. As sources familiar with these files put it, the intended result is to weaken effectiveness, waste effort, and expose structures.

That investment can consume enormous human resources. Specialists may spend a decade or more building a single subject’s biography – from his waking hour and favorite foods to his relationships and most closely guarded secrets.

In several cases, such intimate knowledge has ended in assassination. The spy’s service to Israel is therefore measured by more than the secret he steals or the device he plants. At its highest level, it lies in helping the occupation reshape an adversary from within, long before the target recognizes that its choices are no longer entirely its own.

August 8, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on Inside Israel’s pyramid of spies

Israel orders uprooting of trees on 316 dunums in West Bank for settlement expansion

MEMO | August 7, 2026

The Israeli military has issued eight orders to uproot trees and remove vegetation from 316 dunums of land across the occupied West Bank for settlement-related purposes, the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC) said on Thursday.

A dunum is equivalent to 1,000 square metres.

In a statement issued on Thursday evening, the Palestinian government body said the orders require the removal of wild vegetation and olive trees from land identified in attached maps.

The eight orders cover a total of 316.636 dunums. Six of them target about 311 dunums in the northern governorate of Jenin, while the remaining two apply to the Nablus governorate and occupied East Jerusalem.

The commission said the vegetation clearance does not target isolated farmland but areas alongside main roads, expanding Israeli control on both sides of the roads and causing direct damage to olive trees and neighbouring agricultural land.

It warned that the Israeli authorities are using the orders to facilitate the establishment of settlements, saying the measures are intended to prepare the land for settlement infrastructure while restricting landowners’ access to and use of their property.

According to the commission, Israel has issued 59 orders since the beginning of 2026 to remove tree cover from 2,480 dunums of Palestinian-owned land. It added that around 60,000 dunums of Palestinian land have been seized during the 1,000 days of the Gaza war, which began on 8th October 2023.

Palestinians warn that such measures are paving the way for Israel to formally annex the occupied West Bank, which they say would undermine the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state as envisaged in relevant United Nations resolutions.

August 7, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel orders uprooting of trees on 316 dunums in West Bank for settlement expansion

US lawmakers seek terror designation for Polisario Front over alleged ‘Iran ties’

The Cradle | August 6, 2026

Two US lawmakers introduced a bill on 30 July calling on the State Department to consider designating the Polisario Front, a group fighting for independence for Western Sahara from Morocco, as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

US Congressmen Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Ronny Jackson of Texas introduced the Polisario Front Terrorist Designation Act, claiming the group is receiving assistance from Iran and poses a threat to US national security.

“The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies are working overtime to open a new front against the United States and our allies, and the Polisario Front has become one of their instruments,” claimed Congressman Gottheimer.

However, the congressman acknowledged that no such link between Iran and the Polisario Front has been confirmed.

“This bipartisan bill makes sure that once that cooperation is confirmed, we can bring the full weight of America’s counterterrorism sanctions down on the Polisario Front,” Gottheimer added.

The Polisario Front seeks to make Western Sahara an independent country free from Moroccan control. The front was founded in May 1973 to fight Spanish colonial rule in Western Sahara. After the Spanish left the region in 1976, it proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) with a government-in-exile in Algeria.

However, Morocco quickly occupied much of Western Sahara, claiming it as part of its territory.

The name Polisario Front comes from Spanish words for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro.

This bill follows similar initiatives introduced in Congress during 2025, including one by Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

In 2020, US President Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of a deal for the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords.

France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain followed Washington’s lead in recognizing Morocco’s claim.

Morocco is a major non-NATO ally of the US. According to the Hudson Institute, “designating the Polisario Front as a foreign terrorist organization would solidify the US-Morocco alliance.”

In July, Morocco became the first Arab and African nation to deploy its military to the International Stabilization Force (ISF), which is set to occupy Gaza under the direction of Trump’s “Board of Peace.”

Morocco signed an agreement in Rabat on 15 July to formalize its participation in the ISF, which will work in collaboration with the Israeli military.

Commenting on Morocco’s role in the ISF, a pro-Palestine Moroccan activist stated that “I don’t know what Morocco’s role will be [in the ISF] other than perhaps disarming the resistance [Hamas] and even supervising a new colonization of the Gaza Strip by the American-Zionist entity.”

Since signing the Abraham Accords, Morocco has continued to expand military and security ties with Israel.

In May 2025, Israeli forces publicly participated in the kingdom’s annual “African Lion” military drill, which brought together 10,000 troops from more than 40 participating countries.

During the opening ceremonies of the yearly exercise, jointly organized by Rabat and the US Africa Command, the Israeli flag was openly displayed for the first time.

Last week, the Moroccan government organized tens of thousands of Moroccan migrant men to storm the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the coast of North Africa.

In July, a budget report approved by the US Congress for the first time described Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish-administered cities “located in Moroccan territory” that “remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for Spain to be punished for trying to prevent the US military from delivering weapons to the Israeli military for use in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israelis widely celebrated the storming of Ceuta by Moroccan men on social media.

Responsible Statecraft wrote that the Moroccan government may have been deploying “migration blackmail” to punish European nations. “But this time, Israel and the United States appear to be the principal beneficiaries.”

August 6, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on US lawmakers seek terror designation for Polisario Front over alleged ‘Iran ties’

60-DAY HORMUZ ARRANGEMENT CONFIRMED BY TEHRAN & OMAN — w/ Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi

Mario Nawfal | August 5, 2026

August 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on 60-DAY HORMUZ ARRANGEMENT CONFIRMED BY TEHRAN & OMAN — w/ Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi

Abdul el-Sayed defeats AIPAC-backed rival in Michigan primary, defying millions in lobby spending

The Cradle | August 5, 2026

Abdul el-Sayed, a former public health official, has won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, defeating AIPAC-backed Representative Haley Stevens in a close race, NBC News reported on 5 August.

Sayed won despite being heavily outfunded, with outside groups pouring close to $65 million into the race to stop him.

More than $30 million of the television advertising behind Stevens came from a group affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.

Taken together, Stevens and her allies outspent Sayed and the groups supporting him on advertising by a factor of nine to one, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Sayed pointed to the imbalance in his closing argument, saying during a debate, “If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can’t be elected on your own terms.”

He also went after Stevens’ support for aid to Israel, and stated outright that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a position that carries particular weight in Michigan, home to large Muslim and Arab communities.

Sayed made Stevens’ backing from AIPAC and corporate political action committees a central charge against her, attacking both the funds she accepted directly and the advertising her big-spending allies bought on her behalf.

Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, ran with the backing of the Democratic establishment, positioning her campaign squarely within the party leadership alongside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer endorsed her on 24 July in a late move seen as an attempt to stifle Sayed’s rise. Outgoing Senator Gary Peters, whose seat is at stake, also endorsed her after deciding not to seek a third term.

Despite the cumulative hurdles, Sayed’s victory follows a run of defeats for AIPAC-funded candidates in Democratic primaries this cycle.

On 30 June, Democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated Diana DeGette in Colorado’s 1st congressional district by nearly 10 percentage points, ending a 30-year congressional career built in part on well over $1.6 million from AIPAC.

A week earlier, in New York, Brad Lander defeated Dan Goldman after attacking his refusal to call the assault on Gaza a genocide or to back restrictions on arms sales to Israel, while Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Adriano Espaillat in a campaign centered on his acceptance of AIPAC money.

A senior House Democrat called the Colorado result a wake-up call, with support for Israel turning from an asset into a liability. Strategist Jon Paul Lupo told POLITICO that candidates opposing the war on Gaza held a massive political advantage this cycle.

Pew Research Center polling released in April found 60 percent of US citizens now view Israel unfavorably, with very unfavorable sentiment nearly tripling since 2022, while a Gallup poll in February recorded more US citizens sympathizing with Palestinians, at 41 percent, than with Israelis, at 36 percent – the first such result in US history.

August 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Abdul el-Sayed defeats AIPAC-backed rival in Michigan primary, defying millions in lobby spending

When Palestinian injuries are dubbed “fake”

By Eva Karene Bartlett | August 5, 2026

I followed up on this story, because some were sceptical and didn’t believe it was real or possible, and loudly insisted it was fake. One man who fancied himself an expert because he likes to shoot a gun now or then claimed this was fake, impossible.

First, I will say that Palestinians don’t need to create fake stories, Israel is doing the impossible to them every day and has been doing so for not only the last 3 years—even when I lived in Gaza, we’d see injured Palestinians and situations that didn’t seem possible but were very real—but certainly in the last three years of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, we’ve seen things that seemed impossible but were very, brutally, bloodily, real for Palestinians.

Second, a good friend of mine from Jabaliya told me he knew the man who filmed the video. I have no reason to believe he lied to me.

But for clarity on logistics of the situation— how this youth came to have a bullet in his hand when others said his hand would have been blown off (though I already guessed the answer)—I reached out to a couple of others I knew in Gaza. Dr. Ihab replied to me:

“This is a fallen shot, that is, it was fired from a long distance and fell. These shots caused the killing of many people: when the bullet settled in their neck and chest, it may be fatal. But in this case, it is easily removed by a short surgery. We hope that it has not caused fractures in the palm of the hand or tears in the tissues and nerves.”

He went on to say that his own friend was killed by such a stray bullet fired by an Israeli soldier, hitting the friend in his neck as he sat in a chair, killing him. “These may be from the Zionist machine gun or from drones, or the launches carried out by the army randomly.”

A journalist who had shared the initial photo also replied to me: “This child was sitting in a learning tent west of Gaza City. The bullet fell from the sky after being fired from the eastern part of Gaza City, where Israeli forces were positioned. Although it came from a considerable distance, it struck the tent and hit the child while he was seated at his school desk. Yes, it’s unbelievable, but in Gaza anything is possible.”

I refer back to Dr. Mimi Syed, who I interviewed a year ago. She went twice to Gaza as an emergency doctor, and one of the patients she was able to save, a young girl named Mira, had a bullet lodged in her head. “When I showed the CT image to the world, I was accused of fabricating it.”

Dr. Tarek Loubani, who I’ve known from Canada since before I first went to Gaza in 2008, likewise faced accusations that he had lied or forged an x-ray of one of his patients.

He didn’t lie or manipulate, of course, but people couldn’t accept that what it showed was real.

Israel has long treated Gaza as its testing ground for new weapons and technology and also for how much Israel can get away with while the world watches. If your immediate reaction at seeing an injury or seemingly impossible photo or video from Gaza is to accuse Palestinians (or non-Palestinians who managed to enter Gaza) of fabricating footage or x-rays, etc, then you are the problem. Your life experience shooting a gun in your back yard does not equip you to understand the circumstances in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza don’t have the luxury of debating this, they’re living in truly unreal circumstances.

August 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on When Palestinian injuries are dubbed “fake”

Mainstream Western institutions view Jewish lives as more important than Palestinian Lives

By Caitlin Johnstone | August 3, 2026

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorizing a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth ten million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s ten million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank. And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.

I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has colored every aspect of Western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.

[IAK notes: See this]

That’s why the Western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed. It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.

On the 26th of March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the 14th of December that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.

Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.

Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.

The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalize the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the Western world. Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.

Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26th of March, 2025. As far as the Western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.

This is because all mainstream Western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon. So do all mainstream Western political parties. So do all other mainstream Western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.

The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant. They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system. She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.

August 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Comments Off on Mainstream Western institutions view Jewish lives as more important than Palestinian Lives

The Problem Is Israel, Not Netanyahu

By Kevin Barrett | American Free Press | August 2, 2026

Israel, and its wanted-for-genocide Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are increasingly unpopular. Gemini estimates that about 80% of the world’s soccer fans cheered for Spain over Argentina in the World Cup, and the primary reason was that Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez is pro-Palestine while Argentina’s president Javier Milei is a rabid Zionist.

Even the United States, laboring under the weight of a pro-Israel media and political donor class, is turning against the Zionists. Recent polls show an astonishing 70-point collapse in support for Israel over the past eight years. During Trump’s first term, Israel’s net favorability hovered at over plus 50. Today it has dropped to minus 20 according to Marquette University Law School and minus 23 according to Pew Research Center.

Even AIPAC-money-loving politicians can sense which way the wind is blowing. Thomas Massie’s bill to end US military support for Israel, which a few years ago would have struggled to find two or three brave supporters, garnered 103 Democratic “yes” votes against only 98 “no” votes. (Massie was the only Republican voting in favor.)

Even many of Israel’s strongest supporters agree that their “chosen nation” needs a facelift. In June, Donald Trump, huddling with his Israel-loyal Jewish handlers Witkoff and Kushner, screamed at Netanyahu on the phone: “Everyone hates you now! Everyone hates Israel!”

As Trump’s outburst implied, many people identify the things they hate about Israel with one man, Benjamin Netanyahu. Swapping Bibi for a prettier face, or at least one that is not on the world’s most wanted list, is on the Zionist agenda.

At some point, the ancient Jewish ritual of scapegoating will likely be applied to Netanyahu. The term “scapegoat” (Azazel) originates from the ancient Hebrew ritual of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Every year, on that high holiday—the holiest single day on the Jewish calendar—the ancient Jews ritually transferred the collective sins, guilt, and impurities of their community onto a goat, and then expelled or destroyed it to achieve symbolic purification.

Soon the scapegoated Netanyahu will be removed from office. Perhaps he will die suddenly or go to prison. His replacement will be celebrated by the Epstein class media as a reasonable man, a moderate, someone who will restore Israel to its pre-Netanyahu status as “a light unto the nations” and “the only democracy in the Middle East.” But will that really solve the problem?

Consider who is likely to replace Netanyahu. Until recently, his main rival was Naftali Bennett, who, like Netanyahu, is a fanatical Zionist extremist. Bennett cut his teeth in Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and served as Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff from 2005 to 2008. His positions haven’t shifted since then. Bennett is every bit as genocidal—and as committed to dragging the US into endless war on Iran—as Netanyahu himself.

During the past two months, Gadi Eisenkot has eclipsed Bennett as Netanyahu’s main challenger, and the likely next Prime Minister of Israel. And Eisenkot, like Bennett, is as bad as Netanyahu.

Eisenkot is the man who created the Dahiyeh Doctrine—Israel’s official policy of genocidally mass murdering civilians. Eisenkot created that “Genocide Doctrine” in 2008 when he was head of the Israeli Defense Forces. He named it the Dahiyeh Doctrine after his mass murder of civilians in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut in 2006.

Eisenkot is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel’s mass murder of tens of thousands of children, and additional tens of thousands of women, in its leveling of Gaza. His open support of that mass slaughter makes him one of the most evil political leaders who have ever lived.

Astonishingly, Eisenkot even thinks Netantyahu is too much of a peacenik! The genocidal “moderate” has strongly criticized Netanyahu for being too submissive to US ceasefire demands in the current Israeli-instigated war on Iran. In other words, Eisenkot is even more determined to force the US to destroy itself for Israel than Netanyahu is!

Netanyahu may be evil, but he is not the source of Israel’s problem. Zionism is. That pernicious ideology holds that God “chose” the Jews 3000 years ago and gave them all of the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers in perpetuity. Most Zionists don’t even believe in God, but they believe God gave them the right to steal other people’s property and rape and murder anyone who resists. How crazy is that?

Israelis have made national heroes of prison guards who sodomize people to death, train dogs to rape prisoners, and engage in other unspeakable atrocities. Their soldiers proudly celebrate shooting pregnant women in the belly to get “one shot two kills.” They hunt children for sport, as Chris Hedges detailed in “A Gaza Diary.”

In short, Israel is criminally insane, and Netanyahu is just a symptom.

August 4, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on The Problem Is Israel, Not Netanyahu

Palantir revenue surges 93% amid criticism over support for Israel’s Gaza war

MEMO | August 4, 2026

US artificial intelligence and data analytics company Palantir Technologies reported a 93% year-on-year surge in second-quarter revenue, despite mounting criticism over its support for Israel and the alleged use of its technology in the Gaza war, Anadolu reports.

Revenue reached $1.94 billion in the three months ended June 30, up from $1 billion a year earlier, the company said Monday.

Net income attributable to common shareholders more than tripled to $1.06 billion, while diluted earnings per share rose to $0.41 from $0.13.

Palantir’s US revenue climbed 115% year-on-year to $1.57 billion. US commercial revenue jumped 149% to $764 million, while government revenue increased 90% to $809 million.

“This quarter was otherworldly,” CEO Alex Karp said, citing accelerating demand for what the company calls “AI sovereignty.”

Palantir signed 220 contracts worth at least $1 million during the quarter, including 73 deals valued at $10 million or more.

Total contract value rose 49% to $3.37 billion, while US commercial contract value surged 153% to a record $2.13 billion.

The company raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $8.15 billion and $8.16 billion, from an earlier projection of $7.65 billion to $7.66 billion.

It expects US commercial revenue to exceed $3.42 billion this year, representing growth of at least 134%.

Palantir shares rose more than 14% in after-hours trading following the results.

Founded in 2003, Palantir develops data-analysis software used by companies, intelligence services and military agencies.

The company announced a strategic partnership with Israel’s Defense Ministry in January 2024 to provide technology for war-related missions.

Open Intel, a platform tracking corporate involvement in what it describes as the genocidal war on Gaza, says Palantir has recruited former members of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyberintelligence division.

The group alleges that Palantir’s software combines intercepted communications, satellite imagery and other data to help Israeli forces generate military targeting lists.

August 4, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Palantir revenue surges 93% amid criticism over support for Israel’s Gaza war

Barry Goldwater Exposed the Power of the Israel Lobby in 1988

“When they hear a command from Israel, they jump. And as a result we’re losing friends.” – Barry Goldwater to Pat Buchanan in 1988.

August 3, 2026 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Barry Goldwater Exposed the Power of the Israel Lobby in 1988

‘A Living Hell’: A Gaza Survivor Recalls Torture in Israeli Detention

By Shaimaa Eid | The Palestine Chronicle | August 3, 2026

With trembling hands, faltering words, an emaciated body, and a voice barely audible from the intensity of his pain, S.Th., 38, began recounting the brutal circumstances of his arrest.

What began as an attempt to flee Israeli bombardment through what Israel had designated a “safe corridor” during its ongoing genocide in Gaza ended with months of torture in Israeli interrogation facilities and the Negev Desert Prison.

“After nights of relentless bombardment around our home in Gaza City, my mother, my wife, and I decided to leave,” S.Th. told the Palestine Chronicle. “My wife was in critical condition after miscarrying because of the overwhelming fear and terror.”

The family walked toward Kuwait Roundabout before reaching the so-called safe corridor at the Netzarim checkpoint.

“What awaited us there,” he said, “was even more horrifying than the bombardment itself.”

“My mother leaned on my shoulder the entire way, and all of us held our ID cards high above our heads,” he recalled. “Without any warning, an Israeli officer emerged from behind a sand berm and called out in clear Arabic: ‘Hey, you with the ID who’s fanning your mother, come here.’”

At first, S.Th. was unsure the soldier was addressing him.

“I looked around to make sure he was talking to me,” he said. “Then the officer gestured for me to come behind the sand embankment.”

The moment he reached the soldiers, the man said, he was ordered to strip naked.

“They bound my hands and forced me to sit on sharp seashell-covered stones for three consecutive days.”

Used as Human Shields

For three days, S.Th. said he endured beatings with rifle butts and constant verbal abuse. He and a group of other young men were then forced to sit beneath the barrel of an Israeli tank, where they were used as human shields.

“The tank kept firing shells while we were directly beneath it,” he recalled. “After every single shot, we waited for our souls to leave our bodies, believing death had finally come.”

He never had the opportunity to say goodbye to his family.

“I never had the chance to say goodbye to my mother or my wife,” he said. “Anyone who stopped or even turned around risked being shot dead.”

As they walked in large groups, bodies lay scattered along both sides of the road.

“It was as if the occupation wanted to send us a clear message,” S.Th. said. “‘This is what happens to anyone who disobeys our orders.’”

His voice faltered as he described what happened next.

“They tied our hands and loaded us into the bucket of a bulldozer used to carry sand,” he said. “Then they covered us with a large tarpaulin. After driving only a short distance, they suddenly dumped us into a massive sand pit.”

The detainees believed they were about to be executed.

Instead, Israeli soldiers returned, gathered them again, and loaded them into a military vehicle. From conversations they overheard, they understood they were being transferred to an interrogation center.

“We had no idea where they were taking us,” S.Th. said. “When we arrived, I heard one of the soldiers say, ‘Zikim, Zikim,’ before signaling the driver to stop. At the time, we had no idea that a living hell awaited us there.”

‘A Living Hell’

Recalling his arrival at the facility, S.Th.’s hands began to shake.

“The moment we arrived, dozens of soldiers greeted us with savage beatings all over our bodies using metal batons and electric sticks,” he said. “They then forced us to remain kneeling for five consecutive days.”

During that period, he said, detainees survived on little more than a small piece of bread each day. “It was nowhere near enough to satisfy our hunger.”

According to S.Th., Israeli forces identify Palestinians attempting to cross the so-called “safe corridor” through an advanced facial-recognition system while they hold their identity cards above their heads.

“Those five days felt endless,” he recalled. “After that, they marched us away with our hands and feet shackled and our eyes blindfolded to a large barracks.”

The detainees, he said, were permitted to use the bathroom only once each day.

“They also deprived us of sleep by blasting deafening music through loudspeakers around the clock,” S.Th. said

Interrogation and Torture

Speaking quietly, S.Th. paused before describing the interrogations.

“All the way to the interrogation room, the soldiers kicked us repeatedly,” he said. “They dragged us along by our bound hands and forced us into painful stress positions until we were completely exhausted.”

Only then, he said, would the interrogating officer ask a single question: “Do you want to talk?”

According to S.Th., the interrogations focused largely on political affiliation.

“He accused me of things that had absolutely nothing to do with me,” he said. “When I denied them, he ordered that I be taken back to the torture room.”

There, he said, two soldiers subjected him to severe abuse. “They beat the most sensitive nerve centers in my body and struck my genitals.”

Sleep, S.Th. said, became almost impossible.

“Whenever I drifted off, a soldier standing behind me would repeatedly strike a metal sheet with a hammer while shouting, ‘Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.’”

Eventually, exhaustion overwhelmed him.

“I collapsed unconscious onto the ground,” he recalled. “A soldier lifted me from behind and immediately began kicking me with both feet to prevent me from resting or even taking a brief nap.”

Two weeks later, S.Th. was returned to the interrogating officer.

“He leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘How was your visit? Was it a long one? If you had confessed from the beginning, you could have spared yourself all this suffering,’” he said.

The officer then repeated the same accusations and questions.

When the interrogation concluded, S.Th. said the interrogator wrote words on his back that he could not understand before soldiers returned him to a barracks holding dozens of detainees from Gaza.

“There we sat with our hands tied, forced to kneel from morning until evening without moving or even turning our heads,” he said. “We were given only ten minutes to eat our meals.”

Negev Prison

S.Th. said he was later transferred with approximately 50 other detainees to the Negev Desert Prison.

“As soon as we arrived, a large group of soldiers was waiting for us,” he recalled. “They beat us mercilessly before throwing us into freezing cells without blankets while we were dressed only in light clothing.”

Soldiers deliberately targeted the prisoners’ shackled hands during the beatings: “They concentrated their blows on our hands, which were already tightly bound in iron shackles.”

After nearly two months of torture and starvation in interrogation centers and later in Negev Prison, Israeli authorities released S.Th. and a group of detainees through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.

They were subsequently transferred to a hospital for medical examinations and treatment.

Reflecting on his imprisonment, S.Th. said he and the other detainees endured severe physical and psychological torture throughout their detention.

He stressed that they had been arbitrarily detained, held for an extended period without charge, and never brought before a court.

– Shaimaa Eid is a Gaza-based writer. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.

August 3, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on ‘A Living Hell’: A Gaza Survivor Recalls Torture in Israeli Detention

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