Hamas: EU hits Gaza leaders with sanctions but ‘turns blind eye’ to Israel’s atrocities
Press TV – May 30, 2026
Hamas has condemned the European Union’s sanctions, slamming the bloc for “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s violations of international law while targeting Palestinian resistance groups and leaders.
“We condemn the decision by the European Union Council to broaden sanctions against the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements and to include a number of their political leaders on its lists,” the Gaza-based resistance group said in a statement on Saturday.
Hamas added the sanctions are unjust and entirely biased in favor of the occupation’s narrative, reflecting a policy of double standards in dealing with the Palestinian cause.
“This decision comes as [Israel] continues to commit crimes of genocide, starvation, and forced displacement against our people and violates the ceasefire agreement, while the European Union turns a blind eye to these documented violations of international law and chooses to sanction political leaders who defend their people’s legitimate rights,” read the statement
“The attempt to criminalize the Palestinian resistance will not change the fact that our people are under occupation, their resistance is a legitimate right guaranteed by all laws and humanitarian norms,” the group highlighted.
Hamas noted that the targeting of political leaders confirms that these sanctions come as a response to pressure from the occupation and are not based on standards of justice.
The movement called on the EU to review its biased policies, cease providing political cover for Israel, and work to hold its leaders accountable instead of prosecuting the victims.
“We affirm that these measures will not undermine the will of our Palestinian people or their commitment to their legitimate national rights, especially freedom, self-determination, ending the occupation, and establishing the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the group stated.
The EU on Friday said that it had listed ten members of Hamas’ top political leadership body as subject to a travel ban and asset freeze, prohibiting making funds or economic resources available to those named, either directly or indirectly.
Since launching its genocidal assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 172,000 others, the majority of them women and children.
The Israeli war has also devastated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, sports facilities, power plants, water networks and residential neighborhoods across the besieged territory.
The widespread destruction and continuing blockade have displaced much of Gaza’s population, leaving Palestinians trapped in the besieged territory and heavily dependent on humanitarian aid that enters only in limited quantities.
“Balancing” Act at the New York Times
Nicholas Kristof Wrote About Israel’s Sexual Torture of Prisoners, the Next Day Isabel Kershner Penned More Unverified Rape Allegations Against Hamas
By Robin Andersen | ScheerPost | May 30, 2026
The New York Times attempted to ‘balance’ Nicholas Kristof’s documentation of the systematic rape of Palestinians by Israeli forces with yet another unverified rape ‘investigation’ claiming that Hamas had weaponized sexual violence on October 7. It was written by the paper’s pro-Israel Jerusalem-based reporter, Isabel Kershner.
Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Op-ed piece titled The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, published on May 11, was based on documentation and grueling victim testimonies of rapes that Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Israeli security forces. Brutal and sadistic acts of sexual torture are described in a piece that triggered enormous attention even though human rights organizations have been documenting these same crimes for years now.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented Israel’s sexual torture of Palestinian men, women and children calling the “Israeli prison system a network of torture camps.” Save the Children reported in July 2024 that Palestinian children in Israeli detention were facing “disease, increasing starvation, [and] abuse including sexual violence.” A Palestinian women’s rights organization warned that their documented 75 cases of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women amounted to about 1% of what was actually happening in Israeli detention. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s extensive report published on April 13, 2026, emphasized that the sexual torture was so bad it amounted to “another genocide behind walls.” They identified its purpose as a “systematic destruction of the body and identity.” The report emphasized the scope of “criminal responsibility,” by the collusion of state institutions that were creating impunity.
In a discussion about Kristof’s piece, Francesca Albanese, who has also documented brutal Israeli torture sites, told Al Jazeera’s UpFront that she had given a long interview about sexual torture to the New York Times as early as February 2024, but nothing came of it. Albanese went on to say she didn’t understand why the Times piece should have been “more important” than the extensive documentation of human rights monitors. But when Kristof finally acknowledged that Palestinians were being tortured and raped by trained dogs, (corroborated by a soldier) in Israeli prisons, it made headlines in the US and sent shock waves through Israel’s hasbara apparatus.
The agenda setting New York Times is a “paper of record,” with a journalism staff of 3000, about 7 percent of all journalists working in the US. The paper has also been a reliable source of pro-Israel messaging for years, especially after October 7, so when a well-respected human rights journalist wrote such an op-ed in its pages it was a public relations disaster for Israel and its propaganda machine went into high gear to counter the bad press. Zionists and genocide supporters protested in front of the Times building. Netanyahu was so outraged that he threatened to bring a defamation lawsuit against the paper. The Israel Foreign Ministry called the piece “blood liable” and accused Nicholas Kristof of writing “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda” that turned the “victims into the accused.”
It should come then, as no surprise that the paper attempted to “balance” Kristof’s essay by publishing a piece the very next day, on May 12, about another “two-year investigation” by Israel, that “concluded” that sexual violence by Hamas was widespread on October 7. Isabel Kirshner’s piece attempted to breathe new life into the thoroughly discredited and debunked original Times’ front-page ‘investigation’ titled Screams Without Words. Screams was first published on December 28, 2023, just as the South African legal case against Israel’s genocide was being presented to the International Court of Justice, and it served as a significant denial and justification for Israel’s genocidal violence at the time. Screams without Words can be described accurately (and has been) with the same words used by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to falsely describe Kristof’s piece; “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda.”
The timing of the now infamous rape story of 2023, along with its extravagant claims to evidence not found in the front-page article, had much to do with why, almost immediately, the piece drew critical attention from media analysts, independent investigative reporters, and human rights organizations. Withering criticisms of the story included an essay in Medium, calling it “crappy journalism,” saying it offered a “lesson on selection, slanting, and charged language, and why using words in these ways constitutes a poor substitute for solid evidence and reasoning.” An Egyptian feminist non-governmental organization (NGO) Speak Up, called the article a “disgraceful investigation,” and shamed the Times for claiming to provide readers with definitive evidence, while actually offering no evidence at all. Independent US investigators such as Electronic Intifada, The Grayzone, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and others, roundly debunked the fictionesque inventions continued within it. Sixty journalism professors wrote to the New York Times calling on the paper to commission an independent review of the article. It was “troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation,” Professor Deepa Kumar told Democracy Now!
The timing, the definitive assertions without evidence, the reliance on already discredited sources, the sensational writing replete with lurid content, the omissions, half-truths, misdirections, and the way the paper manipulated the family of a young Israeli female victim killed at the rave, all point to a case of journalism malpractice at the New York Times. “Screams Without Words” is an example, not of journalism, but of the power of persuasive myths and war propaganda.
The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
The paper’s 2026 version of the Hamas rape story was penned by one of the Times’ most reliably pro-Israeli reporters, Isabel Kershner, and this new ‘investigation’ once again takes seriously, discredited Israeli sources that Kershner claims to be independent and reliable. At the center of the piece is Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a key Israeli source after October 7. Elkayam-Levy and her organization were central to Western media coverage after October 7, when she repeatedly presented the rape allegations against Hamas. However, as MintPress News reported, Israeli media later reported that “Elkayam-Levy and her commission had misled donors, exaggerated evidence collection efforts, and spread misinformation related to October 7 claims. The controversy surfaced shortly after she received the prestigious Israel Prize.” In Kersner’s new piece, extravagant claims are made about the thorough nature of the investigation, describing all the visual evidence now assembled. But Kershner isn’t allowed to publish the evidence. She writes; “The commission’s archive is closed to the public because of the graphic nature of much of the material, it said, and to protect the privacy of victims and their families.” The Times is asking its readers to trust the Israelis, Isabel Kershner, and the paper itself with its abysmal track record on this topic. Kershner does not mention the fact that early last year, Israel blocked a UN probe into possible Hamas sexual crimes of October 7, because according to Haaretz, they wanted to avoid an inquiry into the abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Isabell Kershner at the New York Times
Kershner has been providing positive reporting for Israeli Security Force for years now. With Kirshner, polishing the image of the IDF is a family affair. The Jerusalem-based correspondent whose husband worked with the Israeli military complex says on her Times’ profile page, that says she “strives to be accurate, honest and fair.” Yet she failed to mention that her husband Hirsh Goodman, was working as a senior research associate at a national security think-tank, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). INSS’s website boasted about the group’s “strong association with the political and military establishment.” Goodman’s job, at least in part, entailed “shaping a positive image of Israel in the media.” An examination of articles that Kershner wrote or contributed to from 2009 to 2012 by FAIR revealed that she overwhelmingly relied “on the INSS for think tank analysis about events in the region.” The Times has not disclosed Kershner’s connections to INSS.
Reporting on INSS, Haaretz cited published papers that backed the “Dahiyah Doctrine,” an Israeli military doctrine that called for disproportionate force to be used on civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon during operations against Hamas and Hezbollah. Since Ovtober 7, this doctrine has been extensively followed. Writing for FAIR, Alex Kane reported that the Dahiyah Doctrine was applied in 2008–09 during Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and goes on to explain that “Goodman’s job within that context was spin.” Because disproportionate violence resulting in many civilian casualties could lead to charges of war crimes, Goodman understood that “Israel must devise a strategy to impact positively on international and Arab public opinion and overall disseminate its message more effectively.” INSS messaging was certainly disseminated effectively in the New York Times, “From 2009–12, Kershner wrote or contributed to 17 articles that quoted officials from the INSS, far more than other comparable think tanks.
Though Kershner never used her husband as a direct source, as a Society for Professional Journalism (SPJ) ethics expert Kevin Smith, told FAIR, this is basic ethics 101, these relationships are not healthy for unbiased news coverage. “You cannot expect trust or to maintain credibility from the public when, before they read a word of your copy, you have engaged in an act of deception by not disclosing your potential conflicts.”
In her post-October 7 coverage, Kershner’s hand in promoting the Israeli military can be easily detected in her writing. In an article from January 2024, well into Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza, Kersner wrote; “Israeli Women Fight on Front Line in Gaza, a First.” Kershner continued, “After a long struggle for acceptance, Israel’s female combat soldiers are pushing new boundaries after rushing into battle on Oct. 7.” We learn that a woman now “commands a company of 83 soldiers, nearly half of them men. It is one of several mixed-gender units fighting in Gaza, where female combat soldiers and officers are serving on the front line for the first time since the war surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.” There are also two all-women tank crews on the ground in Gaza. Kershner calls women’s new role in the military, a progressive victory over “ultraconservative rabbis and religiously observant soldiers” by “feminists, secularists and critics of the country’s traditionally macho culture.”
Even as she writes the story, she seems to acknowledge that it serves a PR role for the military, by bolstering the new positive image of the IDF. She asserts that women “combat soldiers have become symbols of progress and equality, appearing on magazine covers and featured in television news profiles.”
Writing from a feminist peace perspective, Joyce Chediac notes that Palestinian women’s groups have called the genocide a feminist issue and are urging all those who value women’s rights to support a ceasefire. As Kershner lauded women in Israel’s army, Joyce Chediac questioned their role in the violence:
Are the two tanks operated by women among those involved in the storming of Al-Khair hospital in Khan Yunis, arresting their staff, and preventing ambulances from rescuing the wounded? Are the women in combat for the first time among the snipers shooting Palestinians dead as they search for food or water for their families? Are they guarding the bulldozers now flattening huge swarths of Khan Yunis, forcing pregnant women to give birth in freezing tents because their homes were destroyed and they are blocked from hospitals?
Chediac concludes that, “equal gender opportunity to commit genocide is a cruel and obscene mockery of women’s rights.” Providing cover for Israel’s military does not advance the rights of women, it sets them back. The concept that female military power is progressive has helped sugarcoat the genocidal violence and atrocities carried out by the Israeli military.
Testimony gathered by B’Tselem in 2024, confirms that female soldiers have been involved in mistreating detained prisoners in Israel’s system of torture camps. A 39-year-old mother of five from Gaza City told B’Tselem, “On December 31st we were taken out of the cage and dragged to a bus, like animals. The bus started driving and the whole way, the female soldiers guarding us wouldn’t let us lift our heads. They swore at us, hit us on our hands, and took pictures of us. After some time, the bus stopped. We were taken off of it… A female soldier grabbed us by the head and ordered us to kiss the Israeli flag. Another female soldier bashed my head against the side of the bus.”
Balancing legitimate reporting that includes reliable witness testimony confirmed by multiple human rights investigations over a period of years cannot be not done by publishing unverified allegations from discredited sources. Alan MacLeod noted a recuring media pattern here that applies to the New York Times’ reporting on Israel; “whenever scrutiny intensifies around Israeli abuses against Palestinians, major Western outlets redirect attention toward unverified claims against Hamas to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Balancing Kristof’s rare acknowledgment of Israeli war crimes with reporting by a pro-Israel, biased journalist citing discredited sources repeating unverifiable allegations was a shameful, and failed, attempt to appease the state of Israeli as it expands its crimes of war and occupation into Lebanon for a Greater Isreal. The Times would do better to simply report the truth and stop catering to hasbara and the false narratives that facilitate Israel’s on-going genocidal violence.
Material in this piece was drawn from Chapter 4, “A Compromised Media Landscape,” and from Chapter 8, “The New York Times Rape Story: War Propaganda and Trauma Porn,” in The Complect Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, by Robin Andersen
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.
The Guardian Runs A Smear Piece Against Anti-War Journalist For Exposing The U.S./Israeli War On Iran
The MI6 Media Is Again Smearing An Anti-War Journalist
The Dissident | May 30, 2026
Of all the media around the world, there is no country’s media that is more controlled and infiltrated by its security state than the British media.
This is best underscored by a recent smear piece published in the Guardian by tech reporter Aisha Down, which slanders British journalist Bushra Shaikh, who has reported on the U.S./Israeli war on Iran from the ground.
The article alleges Bushra Shaikh “went on two state-sponsored tours of Iran this spring where she met senior officials and was ‘active’ in spreading the regime’s message” only to later admit to having no evidence to back up this claim, writing, “It is unclear whether Shaikh and others covered their own expenses or were paid to do the trip”.
The Entire Piece Is Based On A Blog Post Smear Piece
The entire smear is based on a “report”, in reality a blog post, by a shady outfit which claims to be a “fact-checking” organisation called “Factnameh”.
The “report” that the article entirely bases its claim on is in reality a blog post on Substack, which baselessly smears the few Western journalists who reported on the ground on the U.S./Israeli war crimes committed in Iran.
The blog post claims that Bushra Shaikh’s on-the-ground reporting on Iran “demonstrates how the (Iranian) state utilises these figures to manipulate Western algorithms” without giving a shred of evidence to back this up.
In the most bizarre section of the blog post, Factnameh claimed that Bushra Shaikh was engaging in “a highly calculated pattern of social media manipulation” because she tweeted about Iran, “almost exclusively during critical events, such as the intensification of military conflicts, ceasefires, and nationwide protests.”
In other words, she engaged in “social media manipulation” because she covered news topics while they were happening.
The blog post also claimed she achieved a high social media following “by routinely targeting controversial topics and engaging in confrontational discussions that drew attention to her videos” (in other words, using social media the same way anyone else would).
It also complained that “Her online narrative consistently framed Western media and elites as hypocritical and corrupt, while portraying Iran as a rational, restrained country merely defending itself against Western aggression” a.k.a the truth.
The rest of the blog post simply complained that her reporting on the ground in Iran did not match up with CIA/Mossad narratives, such as when “she filmed herself walking unveiled through the bazaars of Tabriz and Tajrish”, “visited an Armenian monastery in Isfahan” and reporting from protests which showed “that the crowds did not want war”.
In other words, debunking the cartoonish Western portrayal of Iran’s treatment of women and religious minorities, and showing that maybe Iranians aren’t cheering to have their country carpet bombed by the U.S. and Israel.
Inside ‘Factnameh’
Factnameh, the shady organisation that the Guardian based its article on, was created by a Canadian organization called ASL19.
ASL19, according to the outlet the Verge, was created in 2009 – by Ali Karimzadeh Bangi, who came from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab project – in order to “promote a free Iranian internet” during the “Green Revolution” protests in Iran of 2009.
At the time, the Verge noted, “the US, Canada, and private donors were offering tens of millions of dollars in grant money for anyone who could build digital tools and give Iranians a reliable way to access them”.
The outlet also added that “Bangi’s connections at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs gave him an early line on (U.S. and Canadian) government-funded projects like the multimillion-dollar Digital Public Square initiative, which funded digital tools for political opposition groups around the world.”
Along with being a tool of Western government to destabilise Iran, ASL19 has been plagued with allegations of sexual assault within the organisation.
Ali Karimzadeh Bangi, the Verge noted, “appeared in court on charges of sexual assault and forcible imprisonment” and was “forced to cut ties with ASL19 entirely”.
The outlet added, “In early 2009, separate charges of sexual assault were filed against Bangi, although they were withdrawn before reaching court. The Verge has also learned of at least one separate incident in which Bangi used a nondisclosure agreement to silence a staff member in the wake of their romantic relationship”.
According to the article, written in 2018, “Many former employees of ASL19 see the charges as part of a larger pattern.”
As for Factnameh, the subsidiary of ASL19, it is edited by Farhad Souzanchi, who has baselessly claimed that Iran was behind protests against the genocide in Gaza on college campuses, claiming that “Over the years, Iranian media, officials, and the country’s Supreme Leader himself have repeatedly tried to influence international public opinion against Israel”.
Factnameh has published lies to cover up Mossad infiltration in Iran. In one blog post, the outfit claimed that a New York Times report which heavily implied Mossad infiltration of the protests in Iran in January does not make “any reference to the January 8th and 9th protests being a Mossad plan to encourage Trump to attack Iran” adding, “Iran’s state media has repeatedly misrepresented international news coverage and reports”.
In reality, the article heavily implied that there was Mossad involvement in the January protests, without explicitly saying it, writing:
As the United States and Israel prepared to go to war with Iran, the head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, went to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a plan.
Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.
Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war.
The Israeli newspaper Ynet, however, directly confirmed that the Mossad had infiltrated the protests, writing, “David Barnea was appointed head of the Mossad in 2021. Iran had been the organization’s main arena of operations for years. Barnea ordered a dramatic change in an area that had been marginal until then – driving influence within the general Iranian public. Under him, this area became central to the campaign against Iran … faced with a regime that is all poison, Israel has set up its own poison machine. The organization began four years ago and reached operational maturity two and a half years ago. This is a weapons system that, if activated at full power, could be deadly far beyond the boundaries of the social network … in January of this year, tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, at their own pace. The enormous work that Israel had put in was behind the demonstrations”. (Emphasis: Mine)
Factnameh has even gone as far as to defend U.S/Israeli war crimes against Iranian civilians.
In one blog post, the outfit claimed that “In Iran, mosques and other religious sites function not only as places of worship but also as components of the country’s security infrastructure. Many host local bases of the Basij, a paramilitary force operating under the IRGC, with numerous neighbourhood units co-located in or around these mosques. This overlap embeds security and military activity within civilian neighbourhoods, effectively extending the battlefield into residential areas. As a result, when aerial strikes target elements of the country’s security apparatus, they often occur in densely populated areas, increasing the risk to surrounding civilians”, blatant propaganda to justify U.S./Israeli bombings of civilians.
The Guardian Wants Bushra Shaikh Investigated By The Security State
The real purpose of the Guardian hit piece becomes clear when it writes, “Earlier this year, Shaikh’s tours sparked criticism from Iranian digital rights activists, who noticed she appeared to have access to the internet that ordinary people did not, suggesting her trips were at the invitation of the regime. Iranian activists, some affiliated with the Women, Life, Freedom movement, circulated an online petition suggesting Shaikh should be investigated for sanctions violations.” (Emphasis:Mine).
To back up calls for Bushra Shaikh to be investigated by the British security state, the Guardian links to a petition started by zionist Nicholas Lissack which says, “We demand that the UK Government, OFSI, HMRC, and FCDO immediately investigate UK citizen Bushra Shaikh for potential breaches of the Iran (Sanctions) Regulations 2023 and the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS).”
Nicholas Lissack, a self-described “Western Civilisationist” with a British and Israeli flag in his Instagram bio, has publicly agitated for a war with Iran to install the son of the U.S. backed Shah of Iran, posting only a day ago:
This is it. Our last chance to crush the terrorist Mullahs and liberate Iran.
President Trump: Choose humanity. Free the Iranian people from this Islamist nightmare and enter history as a hero.
Abandon them—and be remembered as its greatest traitor.
Make the call.
Free Iran. King Reza Pahlavi. Javid Shah!
He has also written :
President Trump, the time to strike Iran is now.
They’ve repeatedly broken the ceasefire, rejected nuclear negotiations, and tried to assassinate your daughter Ivanka.
Honour your promise to the tens of thousands of slaughtered Iranians: Free Iran now.
Pictured Above: Instagram profile of Nicholas Lissack, who started the petition cited in the Guardian.
Yet again, instead of investigating actual power, the MI6 media in the UK instead spends its time slandering an anti-war reporter and attempting to get her investigated.
The Strange Case of Ori Solomon
The dismissal of charges against Ori Solomon raises uncomfortable questions about how the US justice system handles Israeli nationals
José Niño Unfiltered | May 29, 2026
On January 31, 2026, FBI agents and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers executed a search warrant at a residence on Sugar Springs Drive in east Las Vegas, near Washington Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. What they found inside triggered one of the strangest criminal cases in recent Nevada history. Authorities discovered what they described as an illegal biological laboratory concealed within the property, complete with a biosafety hood, a biosafety sticker, a centrifuge, multiple refrigerators containing vials of unidentified liquids, red and brown unknown liquids in gallon-sized containers, and over 1,000 containers with unknown substances.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Delzotto described the scene as containing “a bio-safety hood, a bio-safety sticker, a centrifuge, multiple refrigerators, red-brown unknown liquids in gallon-sized containers, and refrigerated vials with unknown liquids.” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill confirmed investigators recovered “evidence of possible biological material, including refrigerators with vials containing unknown liquids” and said the items were “consistent in appearance” with those found in the 2023 Reedley, California case, per a report by ABC30.
A whistleblower reportedly told investigators that people who entered the garage became “deathly ill,” with at least one resident hospitalized for a respiratory illness. Testing of the materials was conducted at both the Southern Nevada Health District laboratory and the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland. Materials were later determined to be consistent with components for medical diagnostic test kits.
The man at the center of this investigation is Ori Solomon, a 55-year-old property manager who had been living in Las Vegas for over 20 years at the time of his arrest. Officers found an Israeli passport in the name “Ori Solomon” and a French passport in the name “Ori Salomon” at his residence. He was present in the United States on a non-immigrant visa. His primary occupation was managing short-term rental properties, and court records indicate he oversaw approximately 37 such properties in the Las Vegas area. He is not a trained biologist, and court documents note no publicly confirmed expertise in biological sciences. In a significant development, federal charges against Solomon were dropped in May 2026, with prosecutors stating “the Government has concluded that the interests of justice require dismissal of the complaint.”
Solomon managed properties for Chinese national Jia Bei Zhu, also known as David He and Jesse Zhu. Investigators described Solomon as an “agent and conspirator” with Zhu, noting that Zhu made 467 calls to Solomon in the weeks leading up to the raid. Zhu was already in federal custody in California linked to a 2023 illegal biolab in Reedley, California—a case that had attracted the attention of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. That committee found the illegal California lab was run by a PRC citizen who was a wanted fugitive from Canada and had evaded a multi-million million Canadian court judgment for stealing American intellectual property.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Elayna Youchah, who is of Sephardic Jewish extraction, presided over the initial federal detention hearing on February 6, 2026. She ordered Solomon’s release on his own recognizance, finding that the allegations were concerning but not severe enough to require detention, noting Solomon had no prior criminal history. She imposed conditions including surrender of all passports, travel restricted to the continental United States, required notification before leaving Clark County, and prohibition on possessing any firearms or weapons.
The federal prosecution was led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada, then headed in practice by Sigal Chattah—an Israeli-born attorney who bore the title of First Assistant U.S. Attorney after a federal judge ruled her interim appointment had been made illegally. A criminal complaint charged Solomon with one count of being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. Multiple firearms were recovered at his residence, including handguns and rifles.
Then came the twist that has fueled speculation. Chattah’s office filed a motion to dismiss without prejudice the federal firearms complaint against Solomon. The motion stated only: “After a careful review of the evidence and additional information provided by defendant, the Government has concluded that the interests of justice require dismissal of the complaint at this time.” A spokesperson declined to explain the rationale. The dismissal was without prejudice, meaning federal prosecutors retain the legal option to re-file.
Solomon still faces the Clark County felony charge for improper disposal of hazardous waste. With the federal case dismissed, there is public concern that Solomon could potentially regain his passports and leave the country before the state case is resolved.
This concern is not hypothetical. The Solomon case mirrors a separate, high-profile case involving an Israeli cybersecurity official charged with child sex crimes in the Las Vegas area in 2025. Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, the Executive Director of the Cyber Defense Division at Israel’s National Cyber Security Authority, was arrested on August 6, 2025, in Henderson, Nevada, as part of a multi-week joint undercover sting operation targeting child sex predators. Alexandrovich was among eight men arrested. He allegedly used WhatsApp and the dating app Pure to communicate with an FBI decoy posing as a 15-year old girl, agreeing to meet for “sexual contact” and bringing a condom to the meeting location.
Alexandrovich was attending the annual Black Hat USA 2025 cybersecurity conference at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas,which ran August 2-7, 2025, at the time of his arrest on August 6. He was booked at the Henderson Detention Center and charged with luring a child with a computer for sex acts, a Class B felony carrying 1 to 10 years in prison.
What happened next sparked immediate international controversy. Alexandrovich posted $10,000 standard bail, set without review by a judge at the time of booking, and flew back to Israel the following day, August 7, 2025. U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah, publicly stated Alexandrovich “should have had his passport confiscated by state authorities” and must be brought back to face justice. The U.S. State Department denied any federal intervention, declaring Alexandrovich “did not claim diplomatic immunity and was released by a state judge pending a court date.”
Alexandrovich’s case proceeded through the Nevada courts. Judge Barbara Schifalacqua, ordered remote appearances after he skipped his initial arraignment. He appeared via Zoom before Judge Schifalacqua in September 2025 and was barred from contact with minors and dating apps. A grand jury indicted him on one count of luring children with technology for sexual conduct. He pleaded not guilty via video before District Judge Tina Talim and a trial was set for March 2026. Judge Talim denied a motion to dismiss in November 2025, ruling the prosecution had established probable cause.
Meanwhile, the man at the center of the original biolab investigation has faced his own reckoning. On May 5 and 6, 2026, Jia Bei Zhu was found guilty on all 12 counts for fraudulently selling COVID-19 tests and lying to the FDA. His sentencing was scheduled for August 24, 2026, with a potential sentence of up to 31 years in prison.
To say that strange things are taking place in Sin City would be an understatement. When the layers of the Las Vegas biolab investigation are peeled back, it becomes evident that the “interests of justice” cited by prosecutors are effectively code for the protection of Jewish interests under the current American regime. Solomon’s immediate release and subsequent dismissal are not aberrations but consistent features of a system that has long been captured by Jewish interests hostile to the Historic American Nation.
The ease with which Solomon, a foreign national holding multiple passports, has navigated federal jeopardy exposes the double standard inherent in our society. While common citizens and those who vehemently oppose the Judeo-American order are relentlessly pursued by the state, those embedded within the trans-national Jewish network enjoy a tacit, systemic immunity. This is the hallmark of Empire Judaica—a framework that treats the security of the American people as secondary to the preservation of a Jewish tribe that acts with the same impunity in Nevada as the state of Israel does on the global stage.
Iran Won’t Back Down, They’ll Endure All Suffering /Nima Alkhorshid
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 29, 2026
Beyond Gaza: The expanding geography of displacement
By Dr Oroub El-Abed | MEMO | May 29, 2026
The War on Gaza continues and has not stopped. It is even expanding to wider geography of displacement and has been unfolding across the Eastern Mediterranean. The Zionists are empowered to widen their gradual restructuring of the land: depopulating borderlands, fragmenting societies, erasing cultural landscapes, and normalising permanent instability across the whole of Palestine, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria.
This week, the Israeli military ordered the immediate evacuation of the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre. Tyre A city that carries thousands of years of Mediterranean history, Phoenician heritage, trade, memory, and civilization was suddenly reduced to a military target. Residents were ordered to move north of the Zahrani River as Israeli bombardment intensified across southern Lebanon despite the language of a “ceasefire.” Entire communities were once again placed on the road during Eid, carrying children, blankets, medicine, and fragments of home while others elsewhere exchanged sweets and celebratory visits.
The symbolism of Tyre matters. Cities like Tyre are archives of human civilization. Their ports, neighbourhoods, cemeteries, mosques, churches, markets, and coastal life embody centuries of coexistence and cultural production. When such places are emptied, bombed, or transformed into militarized zones, the damage extends beyond physical destruction. A civilization itself becomes vulnerable to erasure.
The same logic that devastated Gaza is now visibly extending outward. In Gaza, entire archaeological sites were destroyed. Urban landscapes have been flattened under the justification of war. Universities, hospitals, archives, schools, libraries, bakeries, agricultural lands, and refugee camps have been systematically destroyed. The assault has targeted the infrastructure of Palestinian life itself, it has dismantled the social, cultural, and demographic foundations necessary for collective survival.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians continue to face settler violence, military raids, land confiscation, and forced displacement. Villages are emptied through intimidation, checkpoints fragment movement, and economic suffocation deepens dependency and precarity. Yet the expansionist vision articulated through biblical and historical claims is now stretching beyond Palestine.
Now southern Lebanon and southern Syria are being pulled into the same spatial planning.
Reports and online campaigns promoting land acquisition in areas near Daraa and southern Syria reveal a deeply alarming trend: the normalization of territorial expansion beyond internationally recognized borders. References to ancient “Davidic routes” or biblical entitlement are increasingly integrated into public discourse, settlement imaginaries, and strategic military narratives. The danger lies in transforming expansion into something culturally acceptable and politically negotiable.
This is occurring at the very moment Syrian refugees are being pressured to return “home” after years of displacement with many Global North countries issuing deportation regulation letters against them. Governments and international actors increasingly speak of refugee return as though Syria has become stable enough for repatriation. But what does “return” mean if homes are destroyed, lands fragmented, economies collapsed, and territories themselves vulnerable to new forms of Zionist militarization and external control? Refugees are told to go back while the geography they once belonged to is simultaneously being reconfigured.
The contradiction
The publicised initiatives presented under the language of “peace” and “reconstruction” now stand exposed as hollow political theater. Donor fatigue deepens. Funding commitments evaporate. Humanitarian systems are collapsing under both political paralysis, Israeli persist with insolence to continue the attacks against Palestinians and deliberate underfunding. Gaza’s Peace Board, created by Trump remains largely unfunded while displacement spreads regionally. The promise of rebuilding has become another mechanism for managing headlines with peace illusions rather than protecting people.
Meanwhile, millions remain displaced across the region. In Lebanon alone, over a million people have reportedly fled their homes since the escalation intensified. Entire southern communities now live between temporary shelters, schools, relatives’ apartments, or overcrowded Beirut neighbourhoods.
Families displaced during Eid navigate trauma while attempting to preserve dignity amid uncertainty. The contrast is painful: festive tables offering ka’ek and chocolate exist alongside families searching for mattresses, medication, and safety.
This widening geography of displacement reveals a deeper transformation underway in the Middle East. Forced migration is becoming a governing logic of regional order. Populations are uprooted, contained, redistributed, or rendered permanently precarious while territorial realities are reshaped through military violence and demographic engineering.
Tyre should alarm the world not only because people were forced to flee, but because an ancient city carrying human civilization is being drawn into a broader architecture of destruction. Southern Syria should alarm the world not only because of geopolitical tensions, but because territorial expansion is increasingly discussed openly while refugees themselves remain disposable. Gaza should alarm the world not only because of death tolls, but because the destruction of an entire society is unfolding in front of global institutions that are unable or unwilling to stop it.
What is happening today exceeds the boundaries of a single conflict. It is the expansion of a political project that treats land as empty once people are displaced from it, culture as expendable, and civilian existence as negotiable. The fear is that this geography of displacement may continue and widen far beyond Gaza, unless confronted with nationalist power and regional unity.
Israel Is Arming ISIS Linked Gangs With Military Drones To Help Carry Out Further Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza
The Dissident | May 28, 2026
Israel is going forward with its plan to force Gaza’s Palestinian population to flee to make way for Israeli annexation.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said last week, “the voluntary emigration plan from Gaza will be implemented” , “everything at the right timing and in the right manner”, “voluntary emigration” being a euphemism for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu has since stated that he ordered IDF militants to occupy 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, in violation of the so-called “ceasefire”.
Benjamin Netanyahu said , “At this point, we are fully in control of 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip… and my directive is to get to… 70%”.
Netanyahu implied the end Israeli goal is to occupy all of Gaza, saying, “First 70%. We’ll start with that” in response to calls from audience members to occupy “100 percent”.
To aid in this genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing and annexation, Israel has again tasked its criminal proxies in Gaza.
The Times of Israel reported that:
In the remainder, some armed groups backed by Israel continue to challenge Hamas’s dominance as the territory’s governing power.
A militia led by Ashraf al-Mansi, which works against Hamas in northern Gaza with Israeli backing, published footage on Thursday showing one of its members operating a heavy military drone.
The footage appeared to be the first of its kind released by an anti-Hamas militia, which until now have primarily been seen using light weapons.
It added:
A statement published on al-Mansi’s Facebook page said that “the People’s Army led by Ashraf al-Mansi in northern Gaza announces the successful introduction of advanced drones into operational use.”
Brig. Gen. Ghassan Dehini, who is considered the commander of various militias in Gaza, announced that “several successful operations” had been carried out using the new drones.
Referring to the drones, the Times of Israel noted “given Israel’s military and logistical support for the militias, it is likely they were transferred from Israel”.
For context, the so-called “popular forces”, currently led by Ghassan Dehini and which Ashraf al-Mansi is a part of, is a group of ISIS-linked criminals who became Israeli proxies after the start of the Gaza genocide.
These criminal gangs during the Genocide in Gaza, looted humanitarian aid in Gaza with support from Israel.
This was carried out both to continue the genocidal blockade on Gaza, and as a false flag to falsely blame Hamas.
By tasking its proxy gangs to carry out false flag aid lootings, Israel falsely accused Hamas of being behind the aid lootings, in order to justify the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” sites, the U.S./Israeli backed fake aid sites used to lure and massacre starving Palestinians.
The former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman revealed in early 2025 that “Israel is providing weapons to a Jihadist group in the Gaza Strip affiliated with ISIS,” referring to the Israeli-backed criminal gangs behind the false flag aid lootings led by Yasser Abu Shabab, who the Financial Times described as “Gaza’s most notorious gangster”.
Soon after, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “The IDF and Shin Bet security service are using Gaza-based militias to carry out military operations in exchange for pay and control over territory in the enclave,” adding, “Each militia consists of dozens of armed men, most from prominent Gaza clans, including the Abu Shabab family.”
One IDF official told the paper, “They’re given more missions in densely populated zones. It’s no longer just the menial work we gave them in the beginning. Now they’re conducting major operations,” and another said, “They train for missions right in front of us, We’ve seen them in groups of five to ten armed men. Sometimes it even alarms our forces because no one bothers to update us.”
The so-called “popular forces” last year faced an internal coup, with militant members killing Yasser Abu Shabab and replacing him with Ghassan al-Duhaini, who similarly previously joined the Army of Islam, or Jaysh al-Islam, “a Gaza-based Salafi jihadist group with a similar ideology to al-Qaeda that declared its allegiance to ISIS in 2015”.
The Jerusalem Post noted that Ghassan al-Duhaini “was a commander in a terrorist group in Gaza that was associated with al-Qaeda”.
In an interview with the Middle East Forum, Ghassan al-Duhaini said he “adopted Salafi jihadism” and “affiliated with a faction that was close to Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian Al Qaeda branch) during the war in Syria” .
Now, Israel is yet again backing this ISIS-linked criminal network, even arming it with military drones to help carry out the “final solution”to the Gaza genocide.
Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries
By Ben Freeman | Responsible Statecraft | May 29, 2026
At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.
Buried in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.
Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.
If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.
Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.
The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East.
This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by Steven Simon, this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely:
The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.
This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the U.S. itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.
The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored. Just 30% of respondents to a New York Times/Sienna poll from mid-May believe Trump made “the right decision” to go to war with Iran, with 64% saying it was wrong. An Institute for Global Affairs poll released earlier this week dove even deeper into the American psyche when it comes to arming Israel, finding that “Just 16 percent say the United States should keep supplying Israel with weapons without new restrictions. Thirty-eight percent want to stop supplying weapons entirely, and another 24 percent want weapons conditioned on how they’re used.”
Yet, mainstream leadership in both parties remains largely pro-Israel and continues to shape the base legislative text before amendments and broader congressional debate open it to the full body, as is the case with this NDAA provision.
Though slowly, tides within both parties are shifting as more and more members speak out against the growing divide between Israel’s actions and America’s interests. For example, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that, “The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values.” On the Republican side of the aisle, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) have openly decried the Israel lobby’s corrosive influence — a stance that may have, at least partially, cost both of them their seats in Congress.
What can other members of Congress who are concerned about Israel’s destabilizing actions do right now? Stop the Israeli-U.S. military-industrial merger in its tracks. Lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel’s military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in the region.
Ben Freeman is Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute and the author of “The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home” (2025).
Israel Relaunches, Rebrands Online Propaganda Campaign
By Harrison Berger | The American Conservative | May 21, 2026
Israel has relaunched and rebranded Act.IL, an online campaign originally designed by Israeli intelligence officials at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs to harass and intimidate American critics of Israel. Such operations are generally referred to as “troll farming,” though the forces behind Act.IL use softer, more highfalutin language.
Rebranded as RiseApp, the program is operated by Israel’s Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) and, according to the project’s website, aims to mobilize Act.IL’s existing database of more than 40,000 pro-Israel online operatives to counter what it describes as “antisemitism” and “misinformation.”
The Reichman University website describes RiseApp as delivering “fact-checked, expert-led responses” for users to deploy in “social media debates and public forums,” in order to engage in “proactive advocacy” on behalf of Israel. A “dual purpose,” of the app, Reichman says, is that it allows users to flag and “identify emerging adversarial narratives” while “alerting partner organizations” to “develop tailored responses.”
A presentation for the forthcoming app’s interface, posted to the Reichman website, pitches the platform as “empowering and uniting the Jewish community” and includes tabs for “The Useful Idiots” and “Genocide Claims.” The latter would seem to provide users with arguments to combat the consensus of human rights organizations that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
RiseApp’s predecessor Act.IL was launched in 2017 as a joint project of Reichman Institute and the Israeli-American Council (IAC)—the U.S.-based Israel lobby group founded by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and run by Adam Milstein (Tuvia Milsztein), who was convicted in 2008 for his involvement in the Spinka tax fraud ring involving Orthodox Jewish charity fronts—and was operated by Yarden Ben-Yosef alongside other current and former Israeli intelligence officials.
“We work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, consult with them and manage joint projects.” Act.IL director Ben-Yosef said in a 2018 interview with Forbes Israel. In an interview with The Forward a year earlier, he said of Act.IL’s relationship with Israeli spy agencies: “We talk with each other. We work together.”
As The Forward described the app in 2017, Act.IL would gather “high school students and adult mentors” who complete “social media ‘missions’ assigned out of a headquarters in Herzliya, Israel,” including pressuring social media platforms to censor content supportive of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and critical of Israel, with users getting “points” for each mission they complete.
That propaganda and troll campaign was part of a broader Israeli government operation orchestrated by Gilad Erdan’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs called Concert, whose purpose was to create third party-operated surveillance, censorship, and propaganda firms that could hide all Israeli government links to their operations, which at the time were directed against the BDS movement in North America.
“Ambiguity is part of our guidelines,” the Israeli intelligence officer and director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs Sima Vaknin-Gil explained in a leaked 2016 video recording featured in the suppressed Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, telling a private audience of Adelson’s IAC activists that Israel has established “a civil intelligence unit that collects, analyzes, and acts upon” Israel’s enemies, using data from “campuses… and labor unions, and churches,” calling the program “Israel Cyber Shield.”
Israel Cyber Shield was eventually expanded into a much larger Israeli propaganda program which cycled through the names Kela Shlomo (Solomon’s Sling), Concert, and finally Voices of Israel. It is now housed under Amichai Chikli’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.
The rebranding of controversial hasbara operations is a documented pattern of the Israeli government and its intelligence services. Before Act.IL launched, Israeli company Psy-Group , also staffed by former Israeli spies and affiliates of Reichman University, ran “Project Butterfly” to infiltrate and destabilize BDS chapters on college campuses using fake identities, later pitching their social media manipulation services to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Psy-Group founder Joel Zamel met Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in August 2016, along with the businessman Erik Prince and a man named George Nader who presented himself as an emissary of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while a senior campaign aide, Rick Gates, had separately solicited proposals from the Israeli spy-staffed firm for a covert influence campaign targeting Republican convention delegates and Hillary Clinton. When special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate investigators closed in on those meetings, Psy-Group simply shut down and relaunched as Percepto International, while the Israel Lobby insinuated that Mueller was antisemitic for looking into Psy-Group’s Israeli interference efforts.
The relaunch of Act.IL as RiseApp follows the Israeli Knesset’s approval of the country’s largest ever budget for foreign propaganda operations, or hasbara, quintupling funding from 2025 to a total of $730 million. That scaled-up expenditure comes amid surveys showing declining support for Israel across party lines in the United States, a trend Israel correctly perceives as an existential threat to the unconditional funding and diplomatic protection their country depends on.
Harrison Berger is a correspondent at The American Conservative. He has contributed to Drop Site News, The Nation, and Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He studied Political Science and Russian Studies at Union College (NY).
German politician blasts ‘totalitarian madness’ of sanctions on pro-Palestinian journalist
RT | May 29, 2026
Germany’s implementation of EU sanctions against a pro-Palestinian journalist whom Brussels has accused of fueling discord on Russia’s behalf has descended into “totalitarian madness,” German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht has said.
Wagenknecht has called for financial restrictions imposed on Huseyin Dogru and his Berlin-based family to be lifted. On Tuesday, Dogru said Comdirect bank had frozen the assets of his elderly mother, citing what it described as a “control relationship over the funds by [her] son.” His wife’s bank account was targeted in March, while his father is reportedly under investigation by the authorities.
“This is how dictatorships treat opposition figures,” the left-wing BSW party founder told Berliner Zeitung on Thursday.
“The EU’s scandalous overreach against a German journalist and the German government’s complicity in breaking the law and collective punishment must finally stop,” she added. “If the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution were doing its job, this totalitarian government extremism would actually be a case for them.”
EU portrays pro-Palestinian advocacy as serving Russia
Dogru is a Turkish-German journalist who previously worked with the media outlet Redfish, which received funding from Ruptly, a video agency Western governments have labeled as being part of Russia’s “propaganda” infrastructure.
The EU imposed personal sanctions on Dogru in May 2025, accusing him of “systematically spreading false information about politically controversial topics, with the intention of sowing ethnic, political and religious discord” in Germany and claiming that his work aligned with Russian objectives.
Dogru says Brussels and Berlin are targeting him over his pro-Palestinian activism. Even Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O’Flaherty criticized Germany over the issue, warning in April that “freedom of expression has been restricted disproportionately, regarding debates on Palestinian rights or legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.”
‘Civil death’ without charges
The German financial restrictions severely limit what Dogru, a father of three young children, can legally do to support his family. He is barred from carrying out donation-funded journalism or accepting solidarity aid, as the government considers such payments an attempt to circumvent sanctions. His assets have been frozen, with only around €500 ($590) per month permitted for expenses. His travel has also been restricted.
Dogru’s supporters say he has effectively been subjected to a “civil death” despite no formal charges being filed against him. A campaign urging the EU to lift the sanctions was launched last week on the anniversary of their introduction.
Wagenknecht is among the signatories of the petition, which argues that Dogru is facing state censorship in violation of the German constitution and EU laws.
After Western governments made combating what they call “Russian disinformation” a major policy priority, Moscow argued that the campaign reflected an attempt to preserve narrative control amid the rise of alternative online media.
The Popular Scapegoats: How Israel Is Pushing Its New ‘Bad Apples’ Hasbara Strategy
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 28, 2026
A revived attempt to scapegoat a handful of Israeli officials for the crimes of its entire regime structure has again taken off, especially in light of the recent diplomatic fallout over Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s public humiliation of Gaza aid flotilla activists. The idea behind this Hasbara campaign is to normalize Israel’s actions.
When Itamar Ben-Gvir posted the video of him mocking the brutal treatment that foreign activists were being subjected to – after being kidnapped in international waters – entitling it “welcome to Israel”, it understandably triggered a diplomatic firestorm. However, the Western leaders who summoned their envoys in response haven’t dared to address the treatment of the activists, including their own citizens, since.
All of this begs the question as to how much authenticity came along with these stances. One point of note is that even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in with the chorus of condemnation, as did his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and others. Since that time, at least 15 activists who were part of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla have accused the Israeli military of committing different forms of sexual assault against them, including rape.
The widespread weaponization of sexual violence by the Israeli military and security forces is no new phenomenon, yet it has occurred at a markedly higher frequency over the past few years, and it is something that has solely occurred to international peace activists. Instead, the Israelis have been proven to have implemented a systematic campaign of sexual violence against Palestinians, in particular those who are held hostage in military detention centers and civilians who have been detained in Gaza.
UN and human rights reports, eye witness testimonies, victim accounts, even video and photographic evidence, have all been presented to support the conclusion that sexual violence, including rape, has been used in unprecedented ways against the Palestinian civilian population. Despite all of this, the only mainstream corporate media outlet in the West that dared report on the issue was the New York Times, in a piece that addressed the issue years too late.
These same Western governments have not followed up the summoning of their envoys with any solid action, nor have they made a deal about the testimonies of sexual assault against activists who were kidnapped in international waters. Now, a coordinated media push, within which the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, has recently participated, seeks to play the “bad apples” public relations strategy.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have become popular scapegoats, used to hide a society behind them that supports almost everything they do, even if they seek to be more well hidden. The overwhelming majority of the Israeli public supported their military committing genocide.
In fact, things are so bad that the 10 Israeli soldiers who were accused of gang raping a Palestinian hostage have now become celebrities in their society. Israeli comedians make jokes about the rape of Palestinians with dogs, Israeli politicians openly defend such despicable behavior, and there were even the infamous “right to rape” protests when soldiers were temporarily detained for the acts they committed.
The gang rape incident was not just alleged; it was caught on film and leaked. In the end, all of the Israeli soldiers who committed the violent rape got off scot free. The Israeli military’s top lawyer, who had leaked the video of the incident, something that forced the arrest of the perpetrators, ended up getting arrested herself, resigning from her job, and then made at least two suicide attempts following a string of death threats.
Itamar Ben-Gvir did not sexually assault those 15 activists; it wasn’t Bezalel Smotrich who convinced Israeli society to turn gang rapists into heroes and place them on public television shows. Israel has a citizen army and is a society built around a military culture.
When others try to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu, something that you will hear from Western liberals and mainstream Democrats, this, too, is disingenuous. According to polling data, a plurality of Israelis dislike the current Premier, which means it isn’t him that is to blame for the vast majority of Israeli citizens supporting the genocide in Gaza, or even worse, advocating publicly for even harsher means of dealing with Palestinian civilians.
It’s also not only Netanyahu that has openly supported the notion of achieving the “Greater Israel” project, his so-called “moderate” opponent, Yair Lapid, has himself publicly advocated the exact same policy– the only difference is that the opposition leader seeks to be more strategic about stealing territory all the way up to and including Iraq.
The reality is, these Western leaders are fully complicit with the Israelis. They only withdrew their summoned diplomatic envoys because Ben-Gvir’s video embarrassed them, robbing them of the ability to lie and cover up Israel’s blatant crimes against the international activists. It took no courage and it would have been more genuine of them to have endorsed the Israeli Security Minister’s actions.
Why? Because many of these nations that summoned their envoys are openly part of the so-called “Civil Military Coordination Center” (CMCC) that was set up to enforce the Gaza ceasefire and prevent violations of it. Instead, these nations have joined a center that watches Israeli war crimes – including the mass murder of over 900 Palestinians during the ceasefire – in real time, refusing to even leave the center in protest, let alone take any action. They are all directly complicit in the genocide.
What this whole ordeal has proven is just how low Western governments and their stenographers in the media will go in order to cover up the crimes of the Israeli regime. No matter what, they refuse to take a stand. If they had grown a backbone, it could have deterred many of the horrors we see playing out today.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Strategic rebound: How Iran turned military aggression and economic siege into lasting leverage
By Mohammad Molaei | Press TV | May 27, 2026
The US military aggression and economic strangulation ended in a ceasefire, not because of American goodwill, but because the war objectives failed and the aggression backfired.
This outcome reflects a new strategic reality that emerged during the war itself.
Facing the biggest military assault in its history, with Western and Arab countries complicit in arming and supporting the enemy across multiple fronts, Iran not only avoided strategic collapse but imposed a new balance of power on the battlefield.
Against overwhelming odds and coordinated pressure, Iranian resistance transformed what was meant to be a war of submission into a demonstration of enduring national strength.
What has emerged now is far more than the end of a military aggression against the Islamic Republic. It is the failure of a campaign designed to weaken Iran, isolate it from other nations, drain its economic strength, and ultimately force it into strategic retreat.
Military lessons of the war
In terms of the military, the most telling and self-evident lesson from the war is that the idea of “shaping Iran to crumble quickly” was misguided from the outset. Even after multiple claims by the enemy that Iran’s missile infrastructure, command centers, and launch capabilities had been destroyed, Iran continued its regular military activity, hitting the enemy at will.
Missile and drone operations were carried out multiple times every day during the war. The continuity of launch waves will one day become one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that the backbone of Iran’s strategic missile program has remained completely intact.
This revealed a critical wrong assumption made by both Americans and Zionists: the true extent of Iran’s underground military infrastructure, its depth, dispersion, and survivability.
Much of Iran’s arsenal of rockets, along with the necessary underground launching, storage, and escape facilities, is located in hardened bunker networks built over decades to resist common aerial attacks. Some of the most effective US bunker-penetration munitions are thought to be severely restricted by these heavily fortified facilities.
Operational philosophy: Restraint as strength
Also significant was the implementation of Iran’s operational philosophy during the war. Data has shown that Iran was not as aggressive in its use of its most advanced missiles as is often believed. Several systems discussed for years in military circles were either underutilized or not used at all. This has reinforced assessments that Iran deliberately relied more heavily on older missile stockpiles while carefully managing the timing and intensity of launches.
This has led to reports that Iran deliberately kept some of its strategic missiles in reserve while using older arms with calibrated firing patterns. This approach enabled Tehran to maintain its escalation edge while simultaneously proving sustainability.
Moreover, recent reports and analyses of military forces in the region suggest that systems for launching newer solid-fuel ballistic missiles with dual-stage capsules were not widely deployed, though they could greatly boost launch density in future operations.
Iran mounted extended attacks without fully testing its more sophisticated launch architecture. The size and intensity of future attacks could be far greater than anything seen so far.
The naval dimension: Anti-access and area denial
The naval dimension of the war also revealed a major shift in regional deterrence equations. US carrier groups operated well off Iranian waters on opposite shores, a remarkable caution given the overwhelming power of the American navy.
It has become clear that as Iran has matured its anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) doctrine, derived from the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles, long-range cruise weapons, drones, and multi-tiered coastal defense systems, the country has imposed a new caution on American operational decisions.
The Khalij Fars and Hormuz missiles, along with newer generations of anti-ship missiles, pose a serious threat to large naval assets in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Notably, these systems were not used during the recent war, indicating that Iran kept its deterrent capacity largely unused – yet visible enough to alter enemy behavior. This restraint sends its own message: what remains in the arsenal is far more capable than what was shown.
Strategic failure: The unraveling of the pressure campaign
Strategically, the most significant event of the third imposed war has been the complete failure of the original political goal behind the military pressure campaign. What its planners envisioned was a war that would trigger internal instability within Iran’s borders, fracture its command structure, undermine its regional cooperation, and ultimately isolate Tehran as a matter of strategy. Prolonged military pressure, they believed, would achieve what decades of illegal and crippling sanctions could not.
Not a single one of these goals was realized. The Iranian state machinery was not fractured. Continuity of command was maintained. Regional ally networks remained not only intact but operationally effective. In fact, the war produced the opposite effect on multiple fronts.
The war reinforced Iran’s broader strategic narrative across the region that military pressure alone cannot force Tehran into capitulation.
Diplomatic implications: A unified front that never formed
The results carry significant implications for diplomacy as well. Perhaps the most obvious fact to emerge from the war is that Iran successfully thwarted the establishment of any unified international body arrayed against it.
Despite a heavy Western political and military campaign coordinated with Israeli objectives, large portions of the Global South refused to align with the escalation drive against Tehran.
Several regional governments actively worked to defuse the crisis rather than escalate it. Major powers like China and Russia remained opposed to wider international isolation measures. Even among Western allies, growing concerns emerged regarding the risks of uncontrolled regional escalation, energy disruption, and maritime insecurity.
This deep division inhibited Washington from fashioning the kind of new global pressure architecture against Iran that it has typically pursued during past crises – from nuclear non-proliferation to regional security frameworks. The coalition that was meant to isolate Iran found itself isolated instead.
Economic dimension: Sanctions undermined, energy leverage preserved
The economic goal of the unprovoked war was another expected outcome that was not met. During the war, the economic disruption that many external observers had anticipated became totally muted. Iran continued exporting energy and maintaining its internal markets and logistics throughout the war, despite pressure on infrastructure and the weight of sanctions.
Remarkably, the US-Israeli aggression and Iranian retaliation revealed the fragile nature of the global energy system when it comes to instability involving Iran. The mere threat of escalation at the Strait of Hormuz triggered an immediate reaction from the international community, precisely because of the waterway’s critical importance to global oil supply.
Tehran’s inability to be isolated without sparking international ramifications was reaffirmed by the facts, not least of which are Iran’s deep ties to the region’s energy landscape and its central role in maritime security.
Industrial adaptation: War as a catalyst for expansion
The swift pace of the industrial adaptation process was another crucial factor in the recent war. Based on domestic sources and analyses from military-affiliated institutions, the rate of missile production had already dramatically increased after the 12-day war in June last year, and the recent war only accelerated and extended it even further.
Iran possesses a widespread defense industry, and even if aggressors succeed in targeting its production facilities, these are interdependent in such a way that they can localize supply chains and establish underground production lines.
Far from halting production and launch capabilities, the latest war has spurred strategic investments in survivability, redundancy, and high-volume output.
Political triumph: The narrative that collapsed
Among the more significant political considerations, this war represents a significant triumph for Iran, given the failure of the central narrative that Tel Aviv and Washington had been aggressively pushing for decades.
Their premise was that continued military, economic, and diplomatic pressure would eventually bring Tehran to the end of its rope, forcing it to “sit at the table” to negotiate strategic concessions.
Instead, the war proved to be another confirmation of the reverse: Iran under pressure continues to function, possesses the capacity to retaliate, and maintains domestic and governmental strength and unity. Most importantly, it has survived the encounter with its ability to influence regional affairs completely intact.
This is not to suggest that Iran was unaffected or bore no costs. Wars come with severe costs. But strategic results are not determined solely by the scale of damage. They are determined by the ultimate success or failure of political and military objectives.
The new regional reality
In this respect, there is growing evidence that Iran’s opponents found themselves baffled by the outcome. A campaign designed to diminish Iranian deterrence ended up confirming much of it.
A policy aimed at isolating Iran was met by a pressure strategy that ultimately promoted de-escalation with Tehran and prevented tensions from proliferating across the region.
What emerged instead were increased challenges and the risk of direct confrontation with a long-established regional power armed with deep missile stockpiles, rugged supply chains, and a mature asymmetric warfare doctrine.
The lessons that have become clear on the battlefield, in regional negotiations, and in energy calculations leave Iran poised to enter the post-war era with strategic gains and enhanced leverage.
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Truth, History and Integrity
By Gilad Atzmon | March 13, 2010
… As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its ‘factuality’ was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. … Read full article
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