US lawmakers introduce ‘thought police’ bill to strip citizens of passports over Israel criticism
The Cradle | September 13, 2025
A US congressman is introducing a bill that could potentially be used to deny US citizens the right to travel based solely on their speech, including for criticism of Israel, the Intercept reported on 13 September.
Introduced by Florida Congressman Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the bill would grant Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to revoke the passports of US citizens in the same way he has revoked the green cards and visas of foreign nationals in the US for criticizing Israel.
In March, Secretary of State Rubio revoked the visa of Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk after she wrote an opinion piece critical of Israel in the Tufts University student newspaper in 2024.
The op-ed did not mention Hamas, but called for boycotting and divesting from Israel.
One section of the bill grants the Secretary of State the ability to deny passports to people determined to have “knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”
The reference to “material support” disturbs civil liberties advocates because it is vague and can be interpreted to include speech and anti-war activism.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which functions as a front for Israeli intelligence in the US, and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law suggested in a letter last year that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was providing “material support” for Hamas by organizing campus protests against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The provision regarding material support to terrorism poses a threat specifically to journalists, The Intercept noted.
In 2023, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas demanded a Justice Department “national security investigation” of AP, CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters after they published photos taken by freelance photographers during the Hamas attack on Israeli settlements and military bases on 7 October 2023.
Gaza Inc: Where genocide is battle-tested and market-ready
A scalable model of industrial genocide sold to allies across the globe
By Aymun Moosavi | The Cradle | September 12, 2025
The Israeli occupation state has turned its war on Palestinians into a privatized killing industry. Gaza is where tech firms, mercenaries, and consultancy giants orchestrate surveillance, displacement, and mass death for profit. Apart from being colonial warfare, it is also a prototype for the global export of industrial-scale extermination, repackaged as security innovation. Data-driven and profit-focused, this model, being tested on Palestinians today, will be deployed elsewhere tomorrow. A growing list of private firms now operate as the invisible hand of genocide. Their services range from identifying targets for airstrikes to engineering famine and facilitating mass displacement.
Gaza is where genocide meets capitalism
Since the early 2000s, private military companies (PMCs) have wedged themselves deeply into the economy of war. Firms like Blackwater (now Academi) and Dyncorp International marked a pivotal shift, stepping into roles traditionally held by national militaries.
Initially focused on security and logistics in Iraq and Afghanistan, these companies have expanded their operations, providing combat support and acting as key players in warzones worldwide, including in parts of Africa, Yemen, and Haiti. The irony is evident: The UAE has become a new hub for these private military companies, which find refuge in the Gulf state, where mercenaries receive special privileges from local authorities.
Private companies evolved from distant contractors to active agents of war, operating with impunity. This laid the groundwork for the current model, where non-military personnel influence political outcomes without limits or regulation. Another layer of support comes from private nonprofits. A recent Drop Site News report reveals how US organizations like American Friends of Judea and Samaria (AFJS) and Friends of Israel leverage their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to funnel donations directly to Israeli military operations and settlements. These groups supply equipment such as thermal drones, helmets, vests, and first aid kits to units like the 646 Paratrooper Brigade, even inside Gaza. Beyond logistics, they back settlement projects, lobby for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, run educational campaigns promoting Israeli sovereignty, and support military efforts in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) broadened the scope of acceptable actors of war, opening new, lucrative opportunities in surveillance and intelligence gathering. Israel has embraced this model but applied it with chilling precision. Its elite Unit 8200, the digital brain of the occupation state, has fused military surveillance with corporate tech to create the world’s first AI-assisted genocide. Tools like Lavender and The Gospel now scan Palestinian communications, using dialect recognition and metadata to auto-generate kill lists.
These tools, primarily focused on Arabic dialects, were designed to monitor Palestinians and other Arabic-speaking populations. Companies like Palantir, Google, Meta, and Microsoft Azure have reportedly facilitated these projects, assisting in the development of Lavender and other surveillance systems. Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, invest in global surveillance tech firms that fuel the machinery of genocide.
With AI systems deciding who lives and dies, the line between military command and corporate algorithm has all but vanished. The very infrastructure of Israel’s occupation, from surveillance to assassination, has been outsourced, streamlined, and sold.
From battle-tested weapons to algorithmic apartheid
Israel’s economy is built on militarized capitalism. Its $14.8 billion in weapons sales this year alone are propped up by a marketing line as cynical as it is effective: “battle-tested” on Palestinians. A prime example is Smartshooter’s weaponry, an Israeli firm, being stocked by the UK military since June 2023 in a £4.6-million ($5.7 million) deal. Smartshooter’s technology has been used by the occupation army’s elite Maglan Unit and Golani Brigade during the assault on Gaza.
Journalist Antony Loewenstein was quoted by Declassified as saying:
“Smartshooter is just one of many Israeli companies testing equipment on occupied Palestinians. It’s a highly profitable business and the slaughter in Gaza isn’t slowing down the trade. If anything, it’s increasing due to many nations attracted to the Israeli model of subjugation and control.”
Today, Israel’s arms and tech sectors are indistinguishable. Surveillance software, AI-driven kill lists, and automated targeting systems are packaged alongside rifles and drones. Warfare has become a sandbox for tech innovation, turning Gaza into a lab where privatized genocide is perfected. This fusion has allowed Tel Aviv to industrialize its occupation, creating a modular system of subjugation that can be exported globally. What began as the militarization of tech has become something far more dangerous: the technologization of genocide.
McGenocide
Israel’s model for genocide has international buyers. A recent headline in Haaretz, “Why the future of Israeli defense lies in India,” highlighted the mutual benefits of the Israel–India defense partnership. For Tel Aviv, it reduces reliance on the west, while India gains some strategic leverage in West Asia. Between 2001 and 2021, India imported $4.2 billion worth of Israeli defense technology, including advanced drones and military components.
More recently, Europe became Israel’s biggest arms purchaser, making up to 54 percent of total exports in 2024. In the wake of Brexit and the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s administration, Britain, in particular, has strengthened its defense coordination with Israel in an attempt to reposition itself as a key, relevant player in a multipolar order. Reports indicate London is preparing a $2.69-billion deal with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, to train 60,000 British soldiers annually.
This relationship deepened earlier this year when it was revealed that a British military academy was training occupation army soldiers, many of whom have been implicated in war crimes during the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts. That same Elbit provides 85 percent of the occupation army’s drones and has been repeatedly targeted by the proscribed Palestine Action for its direct role in war crimes. London has not only shielded the company but also ramped up joint operations.
Britain also produces 15 percent of all F-35 fighter jet components. These jets have been used relentlessly in the Gaza genocide, yet their manufacture continues, upheld by British courts despite protests. Far from neutrality, Britain is a stakeholder in Tel Aviv’s genocidal infrastructure. The arms industry has now become a global business, intertwining defense, technology, and systemic oppression. Israel’s model for genocide, which profits directly from this intersection, has spread beyond its borders, with international partners complicit in its success.
Weaponizing aid, redesigning Gaza
Private contractors are now embedded in every layer of Israel’s war machine, including its cynical manipulation of humanitarian aid. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly set up to facilitate aid, has been exposed for colluding with occupation forces, storing intelligence, and deploying private security firms with zero humanitarian credentials. The role of private companies extends far beyond distant surveillance assistance, infiltrating the mechanisms of humanitarian aid. The GHF has repeatedly come under fire for violating the core principles of aid delivery, such as impartiality and independence. It has been found to fire into crowds, store intelligence, and collaborate with Israeli authorities, while outsourcing private security firms like Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions (UGS), two private security firms led by personnel with no humanitarian expertise. UGS has recently been exposed as having recruited members of a notorious anti-Islam biker gang from the US. In total, 2,465 Palestinians have been killed and over 17,948 injured while waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The key issue lies in the fact that private companies are not bound by the same ethical standards as traditional humanitarian organisations. This lack of regulation enables them to function as extensions of the occupation, advancing Israel’s goals under the guise of aid with little to no accountability. Privatized aid is therefore not a secondary detail, but a central component of Israel’s genocide model, which transforms humanitarian aid to another tool of occupation.
Scorching the Earth
US President Donald Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision of mass expulsion both hinge on a complete reimagining of Gaza. Trump’s post-war plan requires a population willing to turn into subjects of an economic hub, while Netanyahu envisions a land cleansed of Palestinians, on which he can erect new illegal settlements. Unlike the imperial model, the genocide model requires the cleansing of a population, as it is easier – and more efficient – to eliminate a population than to make it servile. This makes the privatization of a post-war Gaza not just an option, but a necessity.
According to the Financial Times (FT), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the US consultancy partly responsible for the establishment of GHF, was reportedly tasked with estimating the cost of Gazan relocation as part of a wider post-war reconstruction plan. Reports also point to the greater reliance on US mercenaries to manage the post-war environment and control the movement of arms, showing how both the imperial model and Israel’s genocide model rely on each other to sustain themselves.
Humanitarian aid has been instrumental in realizing this vision. The four ‘aid distribution’ sites, described by the UN officials as “death traps,” have become militarized zones, driving Palestinians into even smaller enclaves in southern Gaza, directly contributing to Israel’s displacement objective. This is not the future of war. It is the present. And it is being built, tested, and sold in Gaza.
Western media’s pre-existing condition? Gaza atrocity denialism
By Rebecca Ruth Gold | The New Arab | September 10, 2025
In August 2025, for the first time in its 20 year history, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) classified Gaza as having reached phase 5, the most acute phase in its system. This classification meant that Gaza was deep into a famine, and many of the starving have already suffered irreversible damage.
The IPC locates Gaza City as being fully within phase 5. The same level of food scarcity is expected to reach Deir al Balah and Khan Younis by late September.
Never before has the IPC made a full phase 5 famine classification outside Africa. It had certainly never reached this classification for a location that was just a few kilometres from world class restaurants. As UN Under-Secretary General Tom Fetcher put it in a memorable speech, the Gaza famine is taking place “within a few hundred meters of food, within a fertile land.”
The Gaza famine has been engineered in a manner that is without precedent in world history. People have described Israel’s siege as medieval, but the famine is backed by the full force of modern technology. Rather than looking to early history for analogies, what is happening in Gaza is best understood as a grotesquely futuristic iteration of modern biopolitics.
“Pre-existing conditions”
Within days of report’s release, Israel immediately called for its retraction. There is nothing unusual about a state that has created a famine pulling all the levers at its disposal to deny it. What makes Israel different from the average perpetrator is the eagerness of US and European media outlets to spread the perpetrator’s denialist narrative.
Already in July, the groundwork had been laid in mainstream outlets like the New York Times, which ran a “correction” to the caption it provided on an image of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child dying of starvation in Gaza. When the cover image of his emaciated body was used for the story on Gazans dying of starvation, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which controls the entry of food and medicine into Gaza, informed the Times that al-Mutawaq was born with cerebral palsy.
Israeli media, including I24 and The Jerusalem Post set to work spreading this misinformation and suggesting that vulnerable individuals dying of starvation could not be treated as evidence of a famine.
Soon after, the Times stated that al-Mutawaq had “pre-existing health problems.” But what they failed to disclose is that this “correction” was made in response to Israeli pressure and that all famines target the vulnerable first. While cerebral palsy is a lifelong condition, it is not typically fatal for young children absent conditions of siege and famine. Had the victims of starvation not been Palestinian, common sense would have prevailed. No one would have found it necessary to make the obvious point that death by starvation combined with co-morbidities is still death by starvation.
Other media outlets soon followed, adjusting their captions to reflect, even in the abstract and untethered from specific cases, the possibility that children dying of starvation were suffering from “preexisting conditions.”
The Associated Press captioned the images on a photo essay by Palestinian photojournalist Jehad Alshrafi documenting how starvation is attacking children’s bodies with the following disclaimer: “In Gaza, malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care and poor sanitation, largely the result of the ongoing war.”
Perhaps the Associated Press thought that they were mitigating the harm done by such captions by acknowledging that these so-called “preexisting conditions” that Israel and its defenders are using to deny evidence of famine are in fact “the result of the ongoing war.” But they should not be excused so easily for their complicity in famine denial.
The “pre-existing conditions” discourse has a dark history in the US, where it was introduced during the 1940s to deny healthcare to ailing patients. Even more ominously in Gaza, the “pre-existing conditions” that the media uses to whitewash famine are themselves the direct result of two decades of siege.
Legitimising Israel’s narratives
The right-wing US media company Free Press further disseminated the Israeli narrative when it published a story claiming that the “symbols of Gazan starvation […] suffer from other health problems.” Once again, ableism was used to deny the Gaza famine.
If the sick were made sicker by Israel’s engineered famine, it was implied that it was their own fault, and Israel could not be blamed for Gaza’s starvation. Yet the “preexisting conditions” cited by the Free Press journalists—rickets and cystic fibrosis—are not typically fatal for young children.
The fact that children in Gaza afflicted with these diseases are at a much higher risk of imminent death only confirms the severity of the famine, as well as its wider impact on conditions of life and mortality rates. Yet some media outlets downplayed the famine by focusing on the medical challenges faced by children who are dying of starvation.
On the very day the IPC released its famine report, CNN redacted its own story on starvation in Gaza by “updating” its captions to “reflect new information regarding the condition of some of the subjects.”
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu—himself a war criminal whom the International Criminal Court has indicted with “crimes of starvation,” marking the first time it had ever charged any leader with that crime—endorsed the Free Press story. He did not acknowledge all that his own government had done to undermine accurate reporting and to block data collection on starvation in Gaza.
The Gaza famine is an atrocity, a war crime, and evidence for genocide not just because it leads to deaths from starvation. No less fundamentally, it contributes to the breakdown of a social order. Famine tears communities apart. Mothers are forced to watch their children starve, and children watch their parents risk their lives—sometimes getting shot and killed—while searching for food to keep them alive.
Having normalised famine denialism through a eugenicist discourse in July, Israel was well-prepared to escalate its information warfare when the IPC issued its landmark report in August.
Israel attacked the report on two fronts. First, by falsely claiming that the data was biased. Second, by smearing the report authors due to their alleged political biases. As for the data-related dispute, the official X account for the state of Israel falsely insisted that the IPC had “forged” a famine by lowering the threshold to 15% malnutrition among the general population, as measured by upper-arm circumference. Yet the 15% malnutrition standard, measured according to upper arm circumference, was also relied on for previous IPC reports for other locations that reached a phase 5 famine assessment, including Sudan in 2024 and South Sudan in 2020.
As Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International concludes, Israel’s misrepresentation “is not a good-faith misread. It is a campaign of concerted disinfo[rmation].” The IPC quickly refuted Israel’s false claims.
Denialism
Food security experts criticise the IPC for being too conservative in its metrics. The general consensus is that the IPC places the bar for phase 5 famine classification too high. By the time famine is assessed by the IPC, mortality rates will have sharply escalated (as happened in Gaza during the second half of July 2025), and for many of those who are starving it will be too late to save them.
Unlike most European countries, the US did not issue any official response to the IPC famine report. On 27 August, during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council which had been convened to address the famine in Gaza, US Ambassador Dorothy Shea to the UN rejected the report by alleging that one of the authors was biased against Israel. Shea’s critique was based on guilt-by-association and did not engage with the substance of the report’s claims.
The US’s denialist stance was explicitly rejected by all other 14 of the 15 Security Council members, who issued a statement affirming that they “trust the IPC’s work and methodology.” However, this consensus will be meaningless unless further measures are taken in defiance of the US.
Indeed, denialism is a core feature of Israel’s information war and is one reason why the genocide persists. In October 2023, less than three weeks into the Gaza genocide, U.S. President Joe Biden stated that he doubted the veracity of the casualty reports provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. In a classic case of denying Palestinians the right to narrate their own extermination, he said “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
These same reports that Biden cast doubt on had been deemed reliable by the United Nations, human rights groups, and mainstream—even the Israeli—media, not to mention Biden’s own State Department.
It was the first time a US President cast doubt on the validity of the figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Subsequent reporting and scholarship has shown that the Ministry of Health’s numbers are likely to be a drastic undercount; importantly, they don’t include indirect deaths from Palestinians who died due to lack of food, water, medicine, and medical care. Yet, mainstream US media started to refer to Gaza’s Ministry of Health as “Hamas-run” in order to undermine the source.
Around the same time, Israel launched a campaign questioning the casualty figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN uncritically absorbed Israel’s messaging and began attaching “Hamas-run” to every reference to casualty figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
For no other nation does the media find it necessary to preface every reference to a civilian agency with the name of the political faction governing that country. Civilian agencies ought to be respected for the work they do, wherever they happen to be located.
Ending impunity, sanctions now
The crime of famine often converges in practice with the crime of genocide. For this reason, both kind of denialist narratives often flourish together. Just as complicity in genocide is a crime under international law, so should complicity in famine bring criminal sanctions.
In the first days of September 2025, as the famine and mass murder of civilians in Gaza continued to spiral out of control, Belgium announced that it would formally sanction Israel. The following day, Scotland announced similar measures. The majority of European states have maintained full complicity in this genocide, but the impunity that has been granted to Israel for decades is finally beginning to fray.
Famine expert Alex de Waal has compared famine to torture at the societal level. Systematic forced starvation creates a system in which “the biological imperative of survival turns against every impulse that makes us humans—compassion, solidarity, and love.”
The people of Gaza have pooled all their resources to resist this stage of social breakdown. That they have been able to withstand the pressures of famine for so long attests to the strong social and familial bonds that pre-existed the genocide.
However, no community can survive intact when their starvation becomes so acute that their bodies begin to consume themselves. Mass death by starvation awaits the people of Gaza unless we take action to stop the blockade and force Israel to open its borders and let aid flood Gaza.
Rebecca Ruth Gould is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Download for Free: ‘Forbidden Facts,’ Gavin de Becker’s New Book About Childhood Vaccines
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 12, 2025
The link between vaccines and autism has been “debunked, debunked, debunked,” said New York Times bestselling author Gavin de Becker, in an interview with Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland on “Good Morning CHD.”
However, that “debunking” relied on a private organization and a behind-the-scenes meeting where the conclusion was set before the discussion began. De Becker told viewers:
“Out of that closed-door meeting and closed-mind meeting comes one of the most significant damages done to the American public, which is the cessation of … any full-hearted and authentic government-funded research into vaccines and brain damage.”
The transcripts of those Simpsonwood meetings were leaked, giving outsiders an inside look into how scientific concerns and evidence were suppressed, de Becker said.
In his new book, “Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression about Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines,” de Becker details how private organizations and public health agencies have buried negative information and touted false claims to propagate the lie that vaccines are unquestionably “safe and effective.”
CHD is offering the book as a free download.
“Forbidden Facts,” aimed at a broad audience that may be reluctant to question vaccine orthodoxy, addresses a heartbreaking topic, but also manages to weave in some humor.
“What’s such an amazing facet of this book about something very tragic, about brain injury to children, is that you’ve actually made it funny,” Holland said. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
De Becker detailed his key findings in the interview with Holland.
The link between vaccines and autism was “debunked” by the Institute of Medicine — now known as the National Academy of Medicine, he said.
The private organization also “debunked” the dangers of Agent Orange, the link between baby powder and cancer, the cause of Gulf War Syndrome, the dangers of silicone breast implants and the dangers of the anthrax vaccines.
But all of those claims were later revealed to be wrong.
“If you can accept that they do it once, then hopefully you can accept that they do it in other areas, and be … skeptical,” de Becker said.
Public health agencies altered definitions of key terms
The book also explains how agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confuse public health issues by changing the definitions of key terms.
For example, a vaccine used to be defined as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease,” de Becker said.
Today, it is defined as “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune system against diseases.” That means vaccines no longer have to protect people from a disease, he said.
A similar change was made to the word “pandemic.” It used to mean an outbreak that killed large numbers of people, but now it just means the appearance of a new virus to which people don’t have prior immunity.
“That terminology of what we used to think a vaccine meant, and what we used to think a pandemic meant, both of those died of COVID in 2020 and 2021,” de Becker said.
A similar move had been made with autism, as the definition has expanded to include people who don’t suffer from severe disability, according to de Becker. This benefits the pharmaceutical companies, he said. They can claim there is a disorder, with no clear definition, that is definitely not linked to vaccines — which also are not, which also have no clear definition.
“I encourage people to use the term ‘brain damage,’ because that, we know, is caused by vaccines,” he said.
No evidence childhood vaccines saved more than 150 million lives
Over the last year, scientific papers, studies and reports have confirmed that vaccines saved over 150 million lives, de Becker said.
However, all of the reports rely on the same flawed data — published in The Lancet — from a modeling study conducted by Imperial College London, which has produced many incorrect modeling studies, according to de Becker.
The modeling study doesn’t account for any vaccine injuries, de Becker said:
“Words that never appear inside that 7,000-word report …: adverse event, side effect, injury, harm, reaction, autism, myocarditis, brain damage, seizure, blood clot, neurological, simian virus 40, autoimmune, heart, heart failure, cardiac arrest, sudden death, stroke, fatality, convulsions. You get the idea.”
That manipulation is pervasive among vaccine manufacturers, vaccine supporters and much of the medical community, Holland said:
“This is why we talk about gaslighting. [Vaccines are] lifesaving, but if you’re injured or if you die — which they acknowledge can happen, but it’s ‘so rare’ — it’s completely ignored in the numbers, in the narrative. It’s not something that’s acceptable in polite conversation.”
The studies touting vaccine successes also fail to address questions such as why people vaccinated against tetanus have the same, very low tetanus death rate as those who aren’t vaccinated against it, de Becker said.
And the numbers are similar for other diseases among healthy people, he added.
When you look at the claim that vaccines saved more than 150 million lives, you have to believe one of two things, de Becker said:
“One is that 154 million lives saved is a headline-grabbing claim bought and paid for and amplified by biased stakeholders in order to affirm and encourage and expand mass vaccination. In other words, the claim is propaganda and promotion, not science.
“Or the other alternative is that the number is perfectly accurate and verifiable, discovered by an unbiased, unconflicted group of geniuses.”
Drug industry uses ‘threats, intimidation’ against people who question them
De Becker, a criminologist, said he believes the pharmaceutical industry is violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, or RICO.
Industry insiders “use bribery, all variety of deceit, threats, intimidation to do damage to the reputation of people who question the orthodoxy that they’ve created,” he said.
It isn’t surprising, as most product launches involve some element of conspiracy, de Becker said:
“They’re going to discredit or harm their competitive products. They’re often going to overvalue and exaggerate the value and benefit of the product they’re rolling out, and they’re not doing it alone. That is a conspiracy. And conspiracies happen every day, all day. There is nothing dark or special about it.”
So the question that remains is: Who can you trust?
“And I say, ‘trust yourself,’” de Becker said, adding that people should look into the recommended vaccines, become informed and make their own decisions.
Just by reading his book, people will know more about how vaccine harms were “debunked” than most doctors, he said.
Watch the interview here.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
THE “661 TRIALS” LIE: WHAT AARON SIRI REVEALED IN CONGRESS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 11, 2025
Del sits down with ICAN’s lead attorney, Aaron Siri, Esq., for a hard-hitting conversation following his explosive Senate testimony. Siri takes aim at the false narrative of “661 placebo-controlled vaccine trials,” dismantling it point by point. He also exposes the buried Henry Ford study featured in the upcoming documentary “An Inconvenient Study,” and opens up about his powerful new book, “Vaccines. Amen.” Together, they make the case for why true transparency in vaccine science can no longer be delayed.
‘A Form of Bribery’: FDA, HHS Crack Down on Misleading Drug Ads
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 10, 2025
Pharmaceutical companies will be required to provide full safety disclosures in direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisements of their products, according to a new policy HHS and the FDA announced Tuesday.
DTC advertisements “can mislead the public about the risks and benefits” and “encourage medications over lifestyle changes,” according to a memorandum by President Donald Trump outlining the policy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will send nearly 100 “enforcement action letters” and thousands of warning letters to pharmaceutical companies and drug retailers who have “increasingly been promoting drugs with no mention of side effects at all,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in a post on X.
The policy also addresses online pharmacies that promote drugs with “no mention of side effects, and paid social media influencers advertising drugs,” Makary wrote.
Administration officials told ABC News that drugmakers often market their products on social media using influencers who are not clearly identified as paid spokespeople.
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, called the new policy “a major victory” that will “dramatically increase the price of pharma advertising, discourage uptake because of side effects and make Big Pharma‘s lawyers stay up at night worrying that they may not have adequately disclosed risks.”
“This will greatly contribute to making America healthy again because it will start to dismantle Pharma’s grip on Big Media,” Holland said.
‘Pharmaceutical ads hooked this country on prescription drugs’
In announcing the new policy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the ads have “distorted physician prescribing habits and patient decisions.”
The advertisements use positive emotional appeals to encourage people to get those medications, HHS said.
The new policy stops short of an outright ban on the advertising. Instead, the policy will require DTC advertisements to “report full contraindications, boxed warnings, and common precautions” — a return to regulations in effect until 1997.
HHS said the loosened regulations in place since that year created an “explosion of DTC pharmaceutical advertising,” which led to “public deception from patient confusion” and “patient harm via inappropriate demand for medications and misalignment of therapeutic choices with actual patient needs.”
Administration officials told ABC News the new policy “is the strongest, boldest action we can take to make sure that patients have adequate safety information on pharmaceutical ads.”
They said no additional steps are planned to regulate such ads.
“Pharmaceutical ads hooked this country on prescription drugs,” U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. He added:
“We will shut down that pipeline of deception and require drug companies to disclose all critical safety facts in their advertising.
“Only radical transparency will break the cycle of overmedicalization that drives America’s chronic disease epidemic.”
The new policy was announced on the same day the White House released its Make Our Children Healthy Again strategy report, which states that the federal government “will increase oversight and enforcement under current authorities for violations” of DTC drug advertising laws.
Time reported that the U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that permit DTC drug ads. According to Digiday, Big Pharma spent $30 billion on advertising in 2024. According to HHS, drugmakers spent $369.8 million in social media advertising in 2020.
Relaxed advertising rules had ‘clear negative impact on public health’
According to the White House memo, the U.S. Congress granted the FDA authority to regulate prescription drug advertising in 1962. DTC drug advertising in the U.S. began in 1981, but regulations were loosened in 1997, resulting in a 330% increase in drug advertising by 2005.
According to HHS, the relaxed regulations permitted drugmakers to direct the public to websites, toll-free phone numbers and package inserts for details on contraindications and common precautions.
An HHS fact sheet states that this “loophole … had a clear negative impact on public health,” contributing to about 31% of the rise in U.S. drug spending since 1997.
According to HHS:
- Patients who consulted with their physician about a DTC-advertised drug were about 17 times more likely to receive a prescription than those who didn’t — the result of persuasive marketing techniques.
- 91% of direct-to-consumer drug ad claims featured social approval as a result of product use and 94% employed positive emotional appeals.
- Prescription drug use among Americans increased from 39% (1988-1994) to 49.9% (2017-2020) in the last 30 years.
Following the FDA’s loosening of its regulations in 1997, the agency’s enforcement actions also decreased. “Enforcement letters plummeted from over 130 annually in the late 1990s to just three in 2023,” according to the fact sheet.
HHS said enforcement actions will intensify, with the issuing of “dozens of enforcement letters related to false and misleading advertising, which makes the drug at issue misbranded.”
The FDA will also “send a letter to every single sponsor of an approved drug or biologic … warning them that the Agency is no longer asleep at the wheel, putting them on notice that FDA will be actively enforcing violations of the law, and directing them to remove all non-compliant promotional materials from the market.”
Drug advertising ‘a form of bribery’
Attempts by the federal government to enact a full ban on DTC drug advertisements are likely to face legal challenges, some legal experts say.
A report by The Lever in January states that it is “relatively unlikely” the federal government will be able to ban DTC pharmaceutical ads, partly because courts have previously rejected such attempts on First Amendment grounds.
Attorney Rick Jaffe wrote last year that while legal precedent exists through the 1970 ban on cigarette advertising in broadcast media in the U.S., “An advertising ban on the entire Pharma industry would be a much heavier lift.”
Despite such obstacles, the End Prescription Drugs Now Act, introduced in June and pending before Congress, would ban DTC prescription drug advertising entirely if passed.
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said the Trump administration’s new policy is “entirely consistent with the First Amendment but will very likely make vast amounts of existing DTC advertising too arduous for it to continue as is.” He said:
“An outright ban would be easily overturned by the courts on First Amendment grounds. On the other hand, in a free society, every seller of products and services has an obligation to warn of risks. This normal practice has been neglected for a long time. This is what has allowed Pharma to spread its wings without accountability and without ensuring informed consent.
“This is an excellent step, not only to protect the public but to curb Pharma capture of the major media.”
According to CNN, the healthcare and drug industry is fourth among all industries in television advertising expenditure, accounting for 11.1% of the market. Prescription drugs accounted for 30.7% of ad minutes across evening news programs on ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to a 2019 Forbes report, Pfizer spent twice as much on marketing its products as it did on research.
Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a 10% increase in DTC advertising results in a 1% to 2.3% increase in consumer drug spending.
Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D., a professor of media studies at New York University whose research and teaching focus on propaganda, said such expenditures have enabled Big Pharma to exercise significant editorial control over the legacy news media.
Miller said:
“Drug advertising, like all commercial advertising, is a form of bribery that corrupts all media that carry it. This development has been the most destructive of them all. Nothing on TV, radio and/or the Internet should be ‘brought to you by Pfizer’ or any other corporate poisoner.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu funding offer, was ‘frightened’ by pro-Israel forces before death, friend reveals
By Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil | The Grayzone | September 12, 2025
A Trump insider and longtime friend of Charlie Kirk tells The Grayzone how the assassinated conservative leader’s turning point on Israeli influence provoked a private backlash from Netanyahu’s allies that left him angry and afraid.
The source said anxiety spread within the Trump administration after an apparent Israeli spying operation was uncovered.
Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.
In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.
According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.
By the following month, Kirk had become the target of a sustained private campaign of intimidation and free-floating fury by wealthy and powerful allies of Netanyahu – figures he described in an interview as Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders.”
“He was afraid of them,” the source emphasized.
At TPUSA, the rift with Israel widens
Kirk was 18 years old when he launched TPUSA in 2012. From its inception, his career was propelled by Zionist donors, who showered his young organization with money through neoconservative outfits like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He repaid his wealthy backers over the years by unleashing a relentless firehose of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic diatribes, accepting propaganda trips to Israel, and sternly shutting down nationalist forces challenging his support for Israel during TPUSA events. In the Trump era, few American gentiles had proved more valuable to the self-proclaimed Jewish state than Charlie Kirk.
But as Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip drove an unprecedented backlash within grassroots right-wing circles, where only 24% of younger Republicans now sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, Kirk began to shift. At times, he toed the Israeli line, spreading disinformation about babies beheaded by Hamas on October 7, and denying the famine imposed on the population of Gaza. Yet he simultaneously ceded to his base, wondering aloud if Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset, questioning whether the Israeli government allowed the October 7 attacks to proceed in order to advance long-term political goals, and parroting narratives familiar to his most vociferous critic on the right, streamer Nick Fuentes.
This July, at his TPUSA Student Action Summit, Kirk provided a forum for the right-wing grassroots to vent its fury about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. There, speakers from former Fox News stalwarts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith, denounced Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Bill Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”
Following the confab, Kirk was bombarded with infuriated text messages and phone calls from Netanyahu’s wealthy allies in the US, including many who had funded TPUSA. According to his longtime friend, the Zionist donors treated Kirk with outright contempt, essentially ordering him to fall back into line.
“He was being told what you’re not allowed to do, and it was driving him crazy,” Kirk’s friend recalled. The conservative youth leader was not only alienated by the hostile nature of the interactions, but “frightened” by the backlash.
The friend’s account dovetails with those of multiple right-wing commentators with access to Kirk.
“I think, in the end, Charlie was going through a spiritual transformation,” Candace Owens, a conservative influencer who shifted decisively against Israel after October 7, reflected after her friend’s killing. “I know it, he was going through a lot. There was a lot of pressure, and it’s hard for me to watch the people who were pressuring him just say the things that they’re saying.”
She continued: “They wanted him to lose everything for changing or even slightly modifying an opinion. It’s very hurtful to me.”
Kirk appeared visibly outraged during an August 6 interview with conservative host Megyn Kelly, as he discussed the menacing messages he was receiving from pro-Israel bigwigs.
“It’s all of the sudden: ‘oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” he explained, before addressing the powerful Zionist interests harassing him.
“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”
He went on to complain to Kelly, “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”
In one of his final interviews, conducted with Israel’s premier influencer in the United States, Ben Shapiro, Kirk once again tried to raise the issue of censorship of Israel critics.
“A friend said to me, interestingly: ‘Charlie, okay, we’ve pushed back against the media on COVID, on lockdowns, on Ukraine, on the border,’” Kirk told Shapiro on September 9. “Maybe we should also ask the question: is the media totally presenting the truth when it comes to Israel? Just a question!”
According to Kirk’s longtime friend, Kirk’s resentment of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby was spreading within Trump’s inner circle. In fact, they said, the president himself was terrified of Netanyahu’s wrath, and feared the consequences of defying him.
During the past year, the Trump insider was told by contacts in the White House that the Secret Service had caught Israeli government personnel placing electronic devices on its emergency response vehicles on two separate occasions.
While The Grayzone was unable to confirm the story with the Secret Service or White House, such an incident would not have been unprecedented. Indeed, according to a report in Politico citing three former senior US officials, a cellphone spying device was placed by Israeli agents “near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington” toward the end of Trump’s first term in 2019.
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recounted a similar incident in his memoir, writing that his security team found a listening device in his bathroom soon after Netanyahu used his personal toilet.
The Israel-did-it theory
Kirk was killed this September 10 with a single shot fired by a sniper apparently positioned on a rooftop 200 meters away. He was shot while seated before a crowd of thousands at Utah State University in Orem, Utah on the first leg of his American Comeback Tour. The scene of Kirk collapsing from the impact of a gunshot to his neck just as he began answering a question about transgender mass shooters was perhaps the most shockingly vivid spectacle of assassination – and certainly the most viral – in human history.
There is currently no evidence of an Israeli government role in Kirk’s assassination. However, that has not stopped thousands of social media users from speculating that the pro-Trump operative’s shifting views on the issue contributed in some way to his death. By the time of publication, over 100,000 Twitter/X users have liked a September 11 post by libertarian influencer Ian Carroll declaring about Kirk, “He was their friend. He basically dedicated his life to them. And they murdered him in front of his family. Israel just shot themselves.”
Many advancing the unsubstantiated theory have pointed to a Twitter/X post by Harrison Smith, a personality at the pro-Trump Infowars network, stating on August 13 – almost a month before Kirk’s assassination – that he was told by “someone close to Charlie Kirk that Kirk thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against Israel.”
The frenzied speculation has set off shockwaves in Tel Aviv, where Netanyahu was compelled to explicitly deny that his government killed Kirk during a September 11 interview with NewsMax.
Netanyahu and his allies bury the Kirk crisis as “big tent” collapses
That appearance was just one of several interviews and statements the Prime Minister dedicated to Kirk in the wake of his killing in an effort to frame the late conservative leader’s legacy in a uniformly pro-Israel light. The major public relations push has occurred while Netanyahu wages a military campaign on seven fronts, punctuated by a regional assassination spree that most recently reached into the heart of Qatar, a US ally.
Netanyahu first tweeted prayers for Kirk at 3:02 PM in the afternoon on September 10, minutes after news of the shooting broke. He has since authored three additional posts about Kirk, even breaking away from the Israeli war cabinet to spend the afternoon of September 11 memorializing the conservative leader on Fox News.
During that interview, Netanyahu did his best to insinuate that Israel’s enemies were responsible for murdering Kirk, despite the fact no suspect was named or in custody at the time:
“The radical Islamists and their union with the ultra-progressives—they often speak about ‘human rights,’ they speak about ‘free speech’—but they use violence to try to take down their enemies,” the Prime Minister told Harris Faulkner.
In a September 10 Twitter/X post eulogizing the conservative leader, the Israeli Prime Minister described a recent phone conversation with Kirk.
“I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel,” Netanyahu declared. “Sadly, that visit will not take place.”
Left unmentioned was whether Kirk declined the invitation—just as he did with the Prime Minister’s offer to reload TPUSA’s coffers with donations from his coterie of wealthy American Jewish cutouts.
At the time of publication, a 22-year-old resident of Utah has been taken into custody after supposedly confessing to killing Kirk. The public may soon learn the true motives of the alleged assassin. Perhaps they will fuel the narrative which Trump and his allies advanced in the immediate wake of the shooting – that a leftist radical was responsible, and that a wave of draconian repression must follow.
But after the shooter’s initial escape and a series of federal law enforcement mishaps, a large sector of Americans will likely never believe the official story. Nor will they ever know where Kirk’s turning point on Israel would have taken the conservative movement.
Four days before the assassination, frustration among pro-Israel commentators bubbled over in public during a Fox News interview in which Ben Shapiro launched a chilling attack on Kirk without naming him.
“The problem with a ‘big tent’ is that you may end up with many clowns inside,” Shapiro told Fox host and fellow Zionist gatekeeper Mark Levin in an apparent critique of TPUSA.
“Just because you’re saying somebody votes Republican—that doesn’t mean that they ought to be the preacher at the front of the church, they’re not the person that ought to be leading the movement, if they are spending all day criticizing the President of the United States as ‘covering up a Mossad rape ring’ or ‘being a tool of the Israelis for hitting an Iranian nuclear facility.’”
When Kirk took his usual place at the “front of the church” four days later, he was cut down by a sniper’s bullet.
Within 24 hours of Kirk’s death, Shapiro announced that he would be launching his own campus speaking tour, vowing: “We’re gonna pick up that blood stained microphone where Charlie left it.”
UN overwhelmingly endorses declaration on Palestinian state
Press TV – September 12, 2025
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to endorse a declaration outlining “tangible, timebound, and irreversible steps” towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The 142-10 vote on Friday was to endorse the so-called New York declaration, a statement calling for a two-state solution, crafted by France and Saudi Arabia in July.
Joining Israel and the United States in opposing the resolution were Argentina, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Tonga. Twelve countries abstained.
Israel, US isolated
The seven-page declaration is the result of an international conference at the UN on the decades-long Israeli occupation. The United States and Israel boycotted the event.
The declaration, which excludes Hamas, also calls for “collective action to end the Israeli war in Gaza and effective implementation of the two-state solution.”
The declaration, was endorsed by the Arab League and co-signed in July by 17 UN member states, including several Arab countries
Long-time Western allies of Israel, including Belgium, France, the UK, Canada, and Australia, had earlier announced plans to recognize Palestinian statehood during the upcoming UN General Assembly sessions from September 8–23. They would join 147 nations that already formally recognize Palestine.
Around three-quarters of the 193 UN member states recognize the Palestinian state proclaimed in 1988 by the exiled Palestinian leadership.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, insisted on Thursday that Israel would never accept a Palestinian state.
Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, recently threatened that the Europeans’ recognition of Palestinian statehood would push Tel Aviv into “unilateral decisions”.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has announced plans to annex more than 80 percent of the occupied West Bank in a bid to block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On August 14, Smotrich announced his intention to move forward with the highly contentious settlement project across the occupied West Bank that “buries the concept of a Palestinian state”.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds. All mere words.
The recognition of a Palestinian state comes as international pressure was mounting on the regime over its genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Since the Israeli genocide began in October 2023, the death toll has surpassed 64,700, with more than 164,000 others wounded.
Israel’s strike on Qatar exposes the collapse of Arab security assumptions
By Dr Sania Faisal El-Husseini | MEMO | September 12, 2025
The thunder of Israeli warplanes over Doha this week was more than just a military operation, it was a shattering moment for the region. Missiles aimed at residential neighbourhoods in Qatar’s capital, as an attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders, sent a shockwave across the Gulf. The United States, caught between its alliance with Israel and its defence commitments to Qatar and other Arab Gulf states, sought refuge in manoeuvering, distancing itself from the strike while tacitly enabling it. For Arab national security, particularly in the Gulf, the implications are sobering.
The paradox is glaring, Qatar, host to the vast Al-Udeid Air Base, America’s forward headquarters in the region, and dependent on US military systems for its defence, finds itself exposed. The strike underscored what many Arab analysts have long warned, Washington’s strategic loyalty lies firmly with Israel, while Arab allies are seen as expendable partners.
This attack, the first of its kind on Qatari soil, is unlikely to be the last in the region. While framed as part of Israel’s campaign against Hamas, its significance extends far beyond Gaza.
For years, Qatar has hosted indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, offering itself as a diplomatic broker. But Israel, it now appears, used those talks as cover, buying time while pursuing unchanged objectives, the conquest of Gaza, the dismantling of Hamas, and the displacement of its population. As Israel intensified its push into Gaza City, it simultaneously targeted the Hamas delegation in Doha, an unmistakable signal that diplomacy was never the true endgame.
The operation reflects a broader Israeli strategy, expand military dominance step by step, strike beyond borders, and erase red lines that once constrained its reach.
Qatar’s own relationship with Israel has always been a delicate balance. From the opening of an Israeli trade office in Doha in 1996, to intelligence meetings hosted in recent years, to participation in joint air exercises in Greece, the two states have maintained limited yet functional ties. Still, Israel’s decision to strike inside Qatar amounts to a message to the entire Arab Gulf, no country is immune, and restraint will only embolden further violations.
This reality stretches well beyond the Palestinian question. Israel’s ambitions are no longer confined to blocking Palestinian statehood. The Netanyahu government, driven by the most hardline coalition in Israel’s history, has laid bare its intent, redraw the regional map through force, not diplomacy. Its declared expansion goals in the region, military reach backed by nuclear superiority, unmatched intelligence networks, and unwavering US support positions it as a major security threat to the regional countries. From assassinations in Iran to operations in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and now Qatar, Israel acts with impunity. The Gulf, it seems, is simply no longer far from its attacks and ambitions.
The position of the American adminstration towrds the Israeli attack on Qatar has revealed a pivotal thorny issue. Qatar’s partnership with Washington was supposed to offer military and security safeguards. The two countries signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement in 1992, renewed in 2013, and Qatar was designated a Major Non-NATO Ally in 2022. Billions have been invested in Al-Udeid, now central to US operations across the region and Central Asia. Yet when Israel violated Qatari sovereignty, the US response revealed the harsh truth, strategic guarantees for Arab states collapse the moment they clash with Israel’s interests.
For Qatar and for every Arab state relying on US military systems, the lesson is stark. Dependence on Washington offers no shield when it matters most.
Many Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, have built their national defense almost entirely on Western military and security systems. In addition to Qatar, Saudi Arabia relies heavily on U.S. made F15 fighter jets and Patriot missile defence systems, the United Arab Emirates has invested billions in advanced American and French aircraft, as well as the THAAD missile shield, Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet, and Kuwait depends on American logistical and intelligence support. These examples reflect a broader regional reality, the very foundations of Arab security are tied to Western supply chains, training, and decision making structures. Yet the Israeli strike on Qatar laid bare the danger of this dependency. When the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv converge, as they so often do, the security of Arab allies becomes secondary. Israel’s declared ambitions to project power beyond Palestine, coupled with the US’s unambiguous tilt toward Israel, mean that the entire architecture of Arab national security now stands on precarious ground.
Silence now would be perilous. If Arab governments allow this strike on Doha to pass without response, Israel will take it as a green light to extend its reach even further. The moment demands more than statements of concern. It requires a collective Arab reckoning, not only with Israel’s unchecked aggression, but with the illusion that the US security umbrella offers reliable protection.
The question is simple, if uncomfortable, will Arab states finally learn from experience, or will they continue to build their security on foundations that crumble when tested?
Geopolitical Ripple Effect: How Doha Attack Undermines US Credibility in the Gulf, Empowers BRICS
Sputnik – 12.09.2025
Israel’s aggression against one of America’s key allies in the oil-rich Persian Gulf is a wake-up call for the region’s nations about the hollowness of US security guarantees. The question now is whether they’ll answer, military and regional experts tell Sputnik.
Security
The failure of US and European-made equipment to stop Israel’s assault leaves only one option open: Russia, says defense analyst Igor Korotchenko.
Russian specialists could build Qatar a system that would give the emirate “the keys” to its skies, leaving “no country able to strike with impunity without the risk of losing both the carriers and strike systems” used in the aggression.
A pivot to Russia is fully realistic, given Moscow’s sale of Pantsir-S1s to the UAE, Qatar’s maritime neighbor.
To reliably close the skies to the enemy, Qatar could complement its defenses with Pantsirs, Buk-M3s, and Tor-M2s.
Commerce & Trade
“The Gulf is already engaged with the multipolar world” on economic matters, says Dr. Tamer Qarmout of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
If the political will exists, not just Qatar but the region could “diversify their alliances and engage more with multipolarity.”
The UAE is already in BRICS, and Saudi Arabia has been invited. Gulf states also enjoy strong bilateral economic links with key BRICS powers including Russia (agriculture, IT), India (labor and trade) and China (trade and strategic initiatives like BRI).
Old Chains of Bondage Could Be Hard to Break
For most of their existence, Gulf powers “have never been truly sovereign,” says veteran Mideast expert Isa Blumi. “They’ve always been dependent on the British and the Americans,” and “internal struggles and rivalries” have made them ripe for manipulation.
That means “strategically and from a security and political perspective,” Gulf powers’ “interests are still largely embedded with, or aligned with, the US as a strategic partner,” Qarmout says.
Time for Strategic Self-Reflection
Israel’s attack “introduced significant uncertainties and major questions for Gulf nations regarding the future” of economic, political and military partnerships with the US.
The “difficult and existential” question is whether Gulf nations will “intensify” links to BRICS “to include new sectors like security and defense,” given the US’s abject failure to protect its “ally” “in such a blatant manner,” Qarmout summed up.
If the United States Wants to Survive It Must Free Itself from Israel
Israeli dominance over Washington has gone on for far too long
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 11, 2025
I have university degrees in ancient, medieval and early modern history but search as I may, I cannot find another example of a small, low population state largely devoid of natural resources that has been able to dominate the politics and policies of a much larger great power to the extent that Israel controls many aspects of America’s government, its economy, its education system, its media, and, most of all, its foreign and national security policies. Little Israel commands and the superpower United States obeys, a relationship that has coined the expression “the tail wags the dog.”
To be sure, Israel has resources that might be regarded as unconventional for most nation states around the globe, consisting of a large and astonishingly wealthy network of “diaspora” co-religionists who are prepared to corrupt the governments in the countries where they actually live to benefit the Jewish state in every way possible. Politicians can easily be bought by Jewish billionaires, as in the case of President Donald Trump who reportedly received $100 million as a campaign donation from Israeli Las Vegas casino magnate Miriam Adelson, plausibly in exchange for Israel having a free hand in the West Bank, up to and including total annexation and deportation of the inhabitants to eliminate a possible Palestinian state.
In the United States, this Zionist Lobby power has produced a series of presidents terrified to object to what Israel declares to be its interests, plus a Congress that has been bought and manipulated into total submission to war criminals like Israel’s ghastly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even the US Constitution is no defense against Israel’s interests, with First Amendment free speech rights being abridged through the interpretation that any criticism of the self-described Jewish state is ipso facto a hate crime, which is a felony.
The abuse inherent in the relationship, which is hugely expensive to the US and damaging to its real interests, is fortunately beginning to be so visible that a reaction to the arrangement is beginning to penetrate to the level of the average voters. Opinion polls suggest that most Americans oppose what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, but President Donald Trump and the clowns he has appointed to high office, Zionists all, are unmoved. Hopefully they will see the light if a strong message is sent during elections coming up in November.
In a recent interview, I declared that the only real national security threat against the United States comes from Israel in that it has repeatedly pushed America into bad policy choices to serve its own interests. That means that policymakers, in search of the number one “American enemy” in the world, should look no farther than Israel and they should immediately take steps to distance themselves from Israeli initiatives. In terms of other alleged threats to the US, one must concede that most analyses coming out of Washington are essentially phony, designed to deflect from real problems, including which is what to do about Israel and the all-powerful Israeli Lobby reenforced by the “waiting for a Rapture” Christian Zionists that have taken over so much of the government. Sorry Marco Rubio but Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela do not threaten the United States of America. Continuation of the dance of death with the Israelis will on the contrary be likely to lead to ruin for Americans.
The sad truth is that the United States gains absolutely nothing from its bondage to Israel, quite the contrary. When I was in government in CIA Stations and Bases in Europe and the Middle East I used to hear US politicians proclaiming how Israel (Mossad) shared wonderful intelligence information that made America safer. The truth was quite different as I used to see the Israel-generated reports and they were consistently puff pieces intended to make Arabs and Iranians look bad by inventing “threats.” It was that type of information, i.e. the claimed existence of WMD, promoted by Jewish neocons in the media as well as in the Defense Department and in the Vice President’s office, that led to war against a completely non-threatening Iraq that killed as many as 600,000 Iraqis.
More recent developments illuminate just how poisonous the relationship with Israel is, though one might also dare to mention long ago Jewish state perfidy like the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 that killed 34 sailors and the suspicions about Israeli involvement in both the killing of JFK and 9/11, all of which were subject to deliberate US government cover-ups and bungled investigations. Israel does not hesitate to kill Americans, witness the cases of protester Rachel Corrie and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, both of whom were murdered by the Israeli army. In neither case did the US Embassy demand an explanation from the Israelis.
This past June, Israel decided to attack Iran and convinced Donald Trump to join in the game, with the argument that Iran is secretly building nuclear weapons, which was not true. Israel, of course, has its own secret nuclear arsenal, and has even threatened to use the weapons in the Samson Option, but both Tel Aviv and Washington apparently regard that as perfectly acceptable. So the United States, to oblige Israel, followed on to the Israeli attack and hit selected targets in Iran. This led to a lying or ignorant, you can take your choice, Trump boasting about how he had “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear development sites, which was not true. So what was gained? Again “nothing” but the US went to war, a war crime, solely to appease Israel and spent something like $1 billion to carry out the mission.
More recently, Israel bombed a residential building in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in a bid to kill Hamas officials who were in the city to negotiate a cease fire in Gaza with the Israelis. The meeting was allegedly backed and “guaranteed” by Washington but it now appears that, at the same time, Trump or his associates were conniving with Israel to assassinate the Hamas representatives. The US has its largest air base in the Middle East in Qatar at Al Udeid with 10,000 American military on site. Mysteriously, the base’s radar and air defense system appear to have been turned off when the Israeli planes were approaching the target. One wonders who ordered that. And the planes needed to be refueled to return to Israel after the attack. Conveniently, British Royal Air Force tankers were in the area to carry out that task. Sounds like a set-up to end any chance of a ceasefire by killing Hamas envoys in an ostensibly safe country Qatar that was orchestrated by Israel, the US and Britain. And what does the United States of America gain from it? “Nothing!” Or rather, global hatred of Washington due to its groveling support of all things Israeli just crept up by ten points!
And then there is the Genocide in Gaza itself. If there is any remaining confusion about Trump’s true intentions, one might cite Netanyahu, who has asserted that he has complete American support to do whatever he wants in Gaza, “no partial deals with Hamas, go with full force.” It is nevertheless difficult to imagine how average Americans benefit by allowing the crime against humanity to go on and on, something that could be stopped with a phone call if Donald Trump had even a trace of compassion hidden somewhere in that empty head that he bears.
Regrettably, the United States is completely complicit in the atrocity that is taking place in Gaza which is clearly visible to the entire world. And the US is even paying for and providing the arms for the slaughter. There is a certain irony in the fact that Washington funds the war for Israel, which has both free medical care and free higher education for its Jewish citizens, something that many American citizens are reportedly struggling with. One might well describe it as a misplaced priority, but it is in reality yet another symptom of the power that Israel has over the United States government from top to bottom.
Finally, if any additional evidence were required to demonstrate Israel’s power over the United States, the recent block by Washington on visa issuance for Palestinian participation in the United Nations opening session in New York as well as the general ban on accepting passports issued by the Palestine Authority are steps demanded by Israel to make it impossible for Palestinians to argue their own case for statehood and decent treatment in international fora. And what does the US get out of it even though it in theory supports a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine? Nothing.
Such is the level of pure evil emanating from Israel that many have come to believe that it is capable of any crime, which is quite likely true. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday, reportedly had begun to entertain some criticism of Israel which had resulted in threats that led him to employ bodyguards. As a result of that and other developments, momentum is growing to do something about Israel, which is clearly considered a threat to all the world, completely reckless in its behavior, and having “secret” nuclear weapons that it is very likely prepared to use. Suspension from the UN and the insertion of an international protection force in Gaza to stop the genocide are being discussed under the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which empowers the General Assembly to recommend such steps to take when the Security Council is unable to act due to the expected US veto. There are also calls for Israel’s presence and privileges within the UN system to be suspended until a ceasefire in Gaza and full humanitarian access to the strip is restored. But never fear, Donald Trump will receive his orders from Benjamin Netanyahu and the US will do everything in its power as the rogue state it has become to stop any such action, including threats of sanctions and even violence against those promoting those moves, just as the US has done with the International Criminal Court and other bodies seeking an end to Israel’s war crimes. That is the unfortunate reality.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Qatar: an ambiguous agent in the Zionist architecture for the Middle East
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 11, 2025
The recent Israeli attacks on Qatar have brought to public debate an issue long overlooked by analysts during the current Middle East conflict: Qatar’s ambiguous role in the regional security architecture.
In the geopolitical theater of the Middle East, Qatar has played a profoundly ambiguous role—at times portrayed as a regional mediator, at others as a strategic collaborator with the Washington-Tel Aviv axis. This ambivalence is neither accidental nor merely tactical. It is rooted in the very foundations of Gulf monarchies’ foreign policy, notoriously driven by a commercial mentality that prioritizes stability, survival, and diplomatic gains over any consistent ideological alignment. However, in light of the current stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this self-interested neutrality has increasingly morphed into active complicity with the Zionist occupation regime.
Despite hosting the political leadership of Hamas in Doha, Qatar does not finance its military wing—which, in fact, is supported by Iran. The hospitality extended to the political branch of the Palestinian movement serves, in reality, as a diplomatic tool to increase Qatari influence over the resistance and steer it toward behavior less hostile to Israeli and American interests. This strategy has been employed for years under the pretense of “mediation,” but in practice, it functions as a containment mechanism for the Palestinian national movement.
For years, the Al Jazeera network, controlled by Doha, had authorized access to the Gaza Strip, even under the strict control of Israeli security forces. This privilege was not granted out of goodwill by Tel Aviv but was the result of a strategic arrangement: Al Jazeera promoted anti-Iran rhetoric within the occupied territories, reinforcing the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites and distracting Palestinians from their real source of military support. In return, Israel allowed the ideological diffusion of Wahhabism in Gaza, calculating that this doctrine would weaken Palestinian nationalism and inter-Muslim solidarity, replacing them with religious divisions and fractured loyalties.
This pact began to decline as Al Jazeera became a major outlet for exposing the brutal reality of the genocide in Gaza. Once Qatar’s media presence in occupied Palestine started to generate more costs than benefits for Israel, the Zionist regime enacted a censorship law banning Al Jazeera and assassinated several of its journalists during the criminal airstrikes on Gaza.
Qatar is also home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East—Al Udeid Air Base. This facility not only houses American equipment and troops but also serves as an operational platform for Israeli assets in joint missions against Gaza, Hezbollah, and potentially Iran. The Israeli presence on Qatari soil is an open secret and illustrates just how much Qatar has functioned as a logistical hub for the regional security architecture coordinated by Washington and Tel Aviv.
In June, Iran launched precision strikes against this base during its brief direct war with Israel. The message was unequivocal: by allowing its territory to be used by powers hostile to the Axis of Resistance, Qatar had crossed the limits of neutrality. Doha’s response, however, was to remain in a position of complicit silence, ignoring internal protests and maintaining its alignment with Western allies.
This posture exposes the fundamental paradox of Gulf foreign policy: even with populations broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the Wahhabi bloc has repeatedly chosen to accommodate Israeli and American projects, as long as doing so ensures dynastic survival and economic stability. This reflects a deeply rooted rationality in the political culture of desert nations—one shaped by centuries of pragmatic adaptation to scarcity and existential threats. In an environment where taking sides can mean ruin, ambiguity becomes a way of life.
However, in the current context of conflict radicalization, this ambiguity is no longer perceived as strategy but as betrayal. By refusing to break with the occupying powers, Qatar risks being dragged into an escalation it helped to ignite. The Israeli bombs falling on Gaza today do so, directly or indirectly, with American logistical support originating from Qatari territory. This undeniable fact—under any serious analysis—undermines Doha’s attempt to present itself as both bridge and wall, as arbiter and accomplice.
The recent Israeli strikes on Doha have made one thing painfully clear: befriending the Zionists is a deadly mistake.
Featured Video
John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- A Palantir Manifesto
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
- Palantir’s Technological Republic is a blueprint for digital tyranny
- Israeli-backed armed gang kidnaps 25 Palestinians in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighbourhood
- No war crimes in Gaza, says Nigel Farage’s Israel tsar
- IDF Gives Order To Fire On Civilians In Southern Lebanon
- Islamabad’s post-war push: A new Gulf security order takes shape
- IRGC seizes Israeli ship, second vessel for violations in Strait of Hormuz
- US Embargo on Iran Undermined as 34 Tankers Slip Through, Vortexa Says
- Trump’s erratic behavior signals US deadlock: Ansarullah
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- Eyes on Gaza, as trends reveal increased Israeli violence – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- Replay: Israel’s slow ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Holy Land
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 
