By Trita Parsi | June 7, 2026
A fragile arrangement had been reached in Lebanon. Iran had made clear that if Israel continued to strike Lebanon, it would strike at Israel.
The US/Israeli side says that overnight, Hezbollah killed 15 Israeli soldiers. A violation of the arrangement in their view, and a sign that Iran either didn’t or couldn’t control Hezbollah.
At the same time, Israel knew that renewed attacks on Beirut, particularly Dahieh, would either force Tehran to attack or back down, while having the added benefit of further weakening US-Iran diplomacy.
Iran did not back down. An attack on Dahieh, according to the Iranians, is designed to kill as many senior Hezbollah and Iranian officials as possible. So a response was inevitable, in their view.
By now, four waves of missiles have been fired at northern Israel, Haifa, and other areas. Some of the missiles are of higher quality than the ones Iran used during the war.
Israel will strike Iran within the next few hours, and the Iranians don’t have any other expectation.
Whether the US enters the fighting actively as well, or only provides support for Israel, is the big question mark right now.
The US side is deeply frustrated that the MOU has not been signed yet and accuses the Iranians of either playing for time, overnegotiating, or being incapable of getting to yes.
The Iranians, in turn, accuse the US of constantly changing the parameters while being unwilling to release a portion of Iran’s frozen assets at the outset of the MOU as a way to prove their seriousness.
If Trump doesn’t enter the war, he will be accused of abandoning Israel. If he enters the war, he will validate that Israel has an effective veto on the negotiations and on whether the US is at war or not.
A true America First policy would have worked to extricate the US from the Israeli-Iranian rivalry.
Now more than ever, it should be clear why such an exit serves US interest.
A primary loss to the Israel Lobby seems to have only emboldened the Kentucky congressman
By Jack Hunter | The American Conservative | June 6, 2026
Thomas Massie isn’t acting like a defeated man.
After losing the most expensive primary race in American history last month, largely thanks to pro-Israel figures and groups spending millions to defeat him (according to the Federal Election Commission, Massie received donations from 1,119 individuals actually living in Kentucky, compared to only 98 for his opponent Ed Gallrein), Massie announced just days later, “I filed with FEC for the 2028 House race.”
He explained, “This allows me to raise funds to continue my political operations supporting my position as a current office holder and as a potential candidate for federal office.”
A run for the White House isn’t out of the question. “I haven’t made a final decision about which office to seek, if I run,” Massie teased.
As one of the most antiwar congressional Republicans in history this side of Ron Paul, Massie has offered consistent and vocal opposition to foreign aid including to Israel. His opposition to U.S. backing and participation in Israel’s wars in Gaza and Iran was seen as a significant factor in why he lost his primary, angering President Donald Trump and, of course, one of the country’s most powerful foreign lobbying groups.
Rather than backing down, Massie is calling these people out more than ever.
On Sunday, after the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition boasted of the $5 million his group had spent to unseat Massie, the Kentucky congressman replied, “Matt Brooks bragging that the Republican Jewish Coalition spent millions to buy a congressional seat in Kentucky… but if you observe the same thing, you’re antisemitic.”
Massie was noting that any opposition to—or mere acknowledgement of—Israel’s outsized influence in American politics is almost always labeled as antisemitism by pro-Israel advocates. Yet here was Brooks openly touting it. Neoconservative veteran John Podhoretz even celebrated the role of “Jewish money” in defeating Massie.
When Axios reported this week that Trump had reportedly unloaded on Netanyahu in an expletive-laden call, Massie weighed in with his own reality check, writing,
It’s all talk. Just withhold foreign aid to Israel for a month and they’ll stop bombing their neighbors—instant peace, the Strait of Hormuz can be opened, and gas drops $2 a gallon. Israel has been, and continues to be, the biggest welfare recipient from American tax payers.
The libertarian-leaning Kentuckian added on Tuesday, “The more Netanyahu prevents the war with Iran from ending, the more obvious it becomes that he convinced Trump to start it.”
Massie isn’t the only prominent conservative who has stuck his neck out by vocally opposing the Iran War. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh launched a tirade against it this week, writing on Monday, “This whole sh—show has been an enormous waste of time and resources and our country has not benefited from it at all.”
Of course, the Daily Wire is home to Ben Shapiro, one of the most pro-Israel voices on the American right. Replying to Walsh, Massie chimed in, “I hope you get to keep your job after this post.”
When talk host and rabid Zionist Mark Levin insisted on Sunday, “I make NO apologies for my support of Israel, the Persian people, Ukraine, and Taiwan! Period!”, America First Massie had this response: “Great! Write a personal check. Americans are tired of sending them tax dollars while our own infrastructure crumbles and prices soar.”
This kind of banter with neocons is nothing new for Massie, but there does seem to be something extra in his standard fearlessness now, including with regard to his efforts to declassify the controversial files of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, files which the administration would strongly prefer to bury. The president, under intense pressure, signed off on their release in November.
After the podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked podcaster Shawn Ryan what “core MAGA” was now, Ryan replied, “I have no idea. Pedophiles Supporting Israeli Lobby?”
Massie shared that clip, asking “What’s MAGA now?”
He’s not just striking a new pose online. After Responsible Statecraft last Friday revealed a shocking plan to integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries, Massie and his frequent Democratic ally Rep. Ro Khanna of California pounced. Massie posted, “If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor.”
“We are a sovereign country,” Massie insisted.
Khanna shared Massie’s post, writing, “And I will be offering an amendment in the committee itself to strip section 224 out.” The California congressman added, “Trump can’t kill the Massie/Khanna partnership no matter how much he posts on Truth Social.”
Two weeks since a Trump-endorsed and AIPAC-backed candidate defeated Massie, the president still seems obsessed with him—and with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Tucker Carlson, and other America Firsters—something that could get even more interesting given that Massie still has seven more months in office. Greene was pressured out of her Georgia House seat by the president, but in retirement has remained a force in politics, arguably even a greater one than she was in office.
Massie, for his part, is using his remaining time in Congress to advance an America First agenda. He even introduced legislation to block U.S. bombs from being sent to Israel. “Israel has used American-supplied munitions to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians,” Massie observed. “America is morally obligated to end support of Israel’s devastation of Gaza and its people. I’m cosponsoring the Block the Bombs Act to limit the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel.”
As if that wasn’t enough, on Wednesday Massie again broke party ranks, along with three other Republicans, by joining Democrats to pass the Iran War Powers Resolution, which he cosponsored. “The People’s House is sending a message: end this war,” he wrote.
The hits keep coming. On Thursday, Massie announced that he will address a controversial attack by Israeli forces on an American ship on the event’s 59th anniversary. Massie wrote, “On June 8, 2026, I’ll speak on the floor of the House to honor and memorialize the brave crew of the USS Liberty who died and were wounded in an unprovoked attack by Israel on June 8, 1967.”
He’s obviously not cowering or giving an inch to the figures and groups that worked so hard and spent so much to beat him.
Megyn Kelly has reported that an estimated $30 million was spent by pro-Israel forces to defeat Massie. What dollar amount would that lobby be willing to cough up should Massie decide to run for president?
Again, Thomas Massie doesn’t look or talk like someone who just lost. He acts more like someone who’s just getting started.
He just might be.
The Cradle | June 6, 2026
An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on the morning of 6 June killed Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Brigadier General Martyr Wassim Sabra, Captain Martyr Eli Khoury, and enlisted soldier Hussein Abdul Ali Ghazal.
The LAF issued a statement condemning the “barbaric” attack and said continued Israeli violations will “only increase our steadfastness … to confront these aggressive attempts aimed at thwarting all efforts to reach a solution that allows for the restoration of stability.”
After the attack, the LAF released images showing the aftermath, revealing that the military vehicle was completely destroyed.
The Israeli military claimed the vehicle was “moving suspiciously” in a “combat zone” without “coordination” with Tel Aviv.
“Following the identification, and due to the warning information and the danger to the forces, the vehicle was struck,” the Israeli army said, adding that the operation is “under review.”
Over 30 LAF soldiers have been killed by Israel since 2 March. At least six other people were killed in Israeli strikes across south Lebanon on Saturday
Hezbollah condemned the strike on the Lebanese military vehicle, calling it a “deliberate crime.”
“This is a natural outcome of the state’s disregard for the country’s sovereignty and the blood of its people, alongside its gratuitous concessions—the latest of which was its complete surrender to the enemy’s conditions in Washington,” the Lebanese resistance group stated, extending condolences to the families of the soldiers.
The ongoing Israeli violations of Lebanon’s state institutions are taking place simultaneously with direct negotiations between Beirut and Tel Aviv, facilitated by Washington.
On Wednesday, both sides issued a statement declaring “no hostile intent” toward one another and agreed to extend the so-called “ceasefire.”
Beirut also agreed to a deal requiring Hezbollah to withdraw from the south Litani area amid ongoing Israeli bombardment and occupation, while not demanding an Israeli withdrawal from the south.
The proposal calls on Hezbollah to end resistance operations in exchange for Israel refraining from strikes on the capital only.
On Friday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun both issued public statements accusing Iran of “destroying” southern Lebanon and declaring that the war, which has killed more than 3,500 Lebanese and displaced over 1.2 million, is “not ours.”
“If I may address a word to Iran … Have mercy on our south, stop treating it … as merely a bargaining chip to improve the terms of your negotiations … Iran was the very first to reject the ceasefire. This confirms that this war is not ours, it is not being fought for our sake, but rather on our land and at the expense of our people,” Salam said.
“It’s not your country, it’s our country,” Aoun said hours later on 5 June, addressing Iran during an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN.
“You are not trying to help us … the people of Lebanon are paying the price … for the sake of your own interest … Our interests … do not coincide with your interests,” he added, claiming that displaced Lebanese Shias have told him they are “fed up” with “Hezbollah’s war.”
For its part, Hezbollah has vowed to continue fighting until Israel ends its attacks, withdraws from Lebanon, and releases all Lebanese prisoners.
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | June 6, 2026
The Israel government has done a lot to earn dislike through bringing death and destruction on a vast scale. People are seeing Israel’s attacks in the last few years on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and beyond as using destructive force that is not just defensive and focused on military targets. General annihilation is seen as a clear objective.
Americans have had special reason to become aware of reasons to dislike Israel given that the United States government has been working as a coconspirator, funding and otherwise assisting Israel’s mayhem. Indeed, a new Pew Research Center poll of the views of people across 36 countries found that in America 60 percent of queried individuals have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of Israel, while only 37 percent have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of Israel.
Still, Americans, compared with other people questioned across the world, come in as less critical of Israel than most. The figures for median views of people in the 36 surveyed countries came in at a 67 percent unfavorable view of Israel and a 25 percent favorable view.
In each of the 36 surveyed countries where people were questioned, the opinion regarding Israel tilted negative except for in India and three African nations — Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria — where the positive opinion regarding Israel came in on top.
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 6, 2026
How will the Trump years in office play out in the history books? Recently, a number of unthinkable scenarios have taken place which will mark Trump and 2026 out as a seismic watershed moment in America’s history which will change the country’s identity and standing in the world forever. The decision by Trump to strike Iran on February 28th was remarkable in that it was a decision that Trump more or less took while disregarding his chief of staff and most of the cabal of decision makers around him, in preference for what Israel was insisting was a quick, winnable weekend war.
If we are to believe the explosive expletives though which were delivered by Trump to Netanyahu in a telephone call, it would appear that the greatest nightmare the world has about America – that it is run entirely these days by Israel – has come true. The anger and frustration by Trump might be real, even though what was reported might have been exaggerated for political purposes but the reality is that Israel is blocking any deal that Trump might believe he can pull off with Iran. And worse than just blocking it, based on Netanyahu’s statement about Lebanon, Bibi has not “turned back” IDF troops from making the south of Lebanon a new Gaza. The killing goes on, the systematic destruction of property and the war with Hezbollah has not been halted which puts Trump in an even tighter corner than he might have imagined he was in just a couple of weeks ago. He himself is unable to strike Iran as GCC partners have critically denied his military the support it would need, but in reality those governments and their elites – in particular MbS of Saudi Arabia – have played the safety lever role on Trump’s madness that Washington couldn’t pull off itself. Trump’s firing of all chiefs of staff from Biden’s days and surrounding himself with under qualified yes men has resulted in Trump himself being able to cultivate the maddest ideas and it is only leaders of the middle east who can tell him no. Enough is enough.
Presently, what we are witnessing in the region is the division of GCC countries – those who are allied to Israel via the Abraham Accords – and those who have formed a new anti Israel alliance with its own nuclear deterrent, a group made up of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan which doesn’t have a name but is now an informal pact.
And in the middle of all this madness, comes more. Now we are hearing plans for Israel to move ahead with plans which would guarantee its annual 3.8 bn USD military gift from the U.S. for the next 20 years, shrouded in even more secrecy through a bill in congress which would essentially merge the Israeli government with the Washington apparatus making the IDF one with the U.S. military.
This fusion of the IDF and U.S. forces comes when Israel is sensing that future governments and congress will demand more accountability of how the annual defence gratuity is spent and Israel’s intentions in future wars. It also comes when public opinion seems to be against America’s support for Israel and its regional goals.
For example, according to Al Jazeera, a survey this month from The New York Times and Siena College found that 57 percent of U.S. voters opposed providing Israel with additional economic and military support.
Moreover, 62 percent said they disapproved of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, which started in 2023, has killed more than 75,000 people, prompting widespread condemnation, Al Jazeera claims.
There is some kickback from both houses against the so called Section 244 although those who have opposed it have predictably been called ‘anti semitic’.
But the very fact that Israel is using its leverage with congressmen which it has on its payroll to push through a bill which would ‘co-ordinate’ all military action that both the U.S. and Israel are involved in shows just how advanced Israel is with its absolute control of Washington. We’ve reached a new high-water mark of servility and it’s the Trump second term which has been a catalyst to this new world order which is going to make any deal with Iran even harder – first of all to get signed, but more importantly to implement, which of course the Iranians know, which explains their lethargic pace in the negotiations compared to Trump’s panicky buffoonery.
To Trump’s credit, he at least presented some resistance to U.S. forces being sent to their deaths when Israel turned up the heat and insisted on getting dug into a longer, drawn out deeper conflict with Iran. Sceptics rush to point out that Israel will only use a closer union to sell on the open market all of America’s military secrets, the bigger point is being over looked. If this article 244 gets through, it will only be a matter of time before an Israeli PM can simply order U.S. troops to fight any battle it wants. The days of heated arguments, threats or even blackmail will be looked back upon almost nostalgically as a golden era where a U.S. president still had the final call on whether to send in American troops. Netanyahu’s identity for three decades has been built on him bragging that he and Israel have been running America but the claim has been largely uncontested until now. Are we now about to enter a new phase?
By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – June 5, 2026
Netanyahu and Trump are conditioning the end of the war in Iran on the condition that all countries in the region sign the Abraham Accords, a tacit submission to Israel. Drawing on Daniel Levy, Omer Bartov, and the Pew Survey, I address the reasons, the urgency, and the limits of Netanyahu’s simultaneous battles on several fronts in the quest for a Greater Israel project.
When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich talks about expanding Israel’s reach “to Damascus,” or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses personal attachment to broad territorial ambitions or Israel being not only a “regional superpower” but “in some respects, a global superpower,” these are not just messianic daydreams. They reflect a deliberate, and deeply destabilizing strategic doctrine. For years, the idea of Greater Israel was dismissed by Western analysts as the rhetoric of a few Israeli hardliners. Sustaining this dismissive position is no longer possible.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and now head of the U.S./Middle East Project, offers a sharp analytical lens for understanding today’s events. He suggests that Greater Israel isn’t just about land—it’s about Israel aiming to establish itself as the dominant hard-power player across the Middle East. As Levy puts it, this is about seeing how far Israel can extend its reach and consolidate its role as the region’s unrivaled hegemon.
Territorial control—occupying the Golan, reasserting presence in southern Lebanon, pushing forward with West Bank annexation, and the continuation of the genocide in Gaza—is only the most visible layer. The deeper game is about forging new regional alliances, as the one with the UAE, systematically weakening rival states, and building webs of hard-power dependency that lock neighboring governments into Israel’s orbit.
The ideological consolidation of this project was the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which constitutionally defined Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people.” For many, including the PLO’s Saeb Erekat, this law was the moment when a Zionist aspiration became a formal legal reality, and for critics, a codification of a system of apartheid. What was once an ambition is now written into the legal foundations of the state.
Omer Bartov, a leading scholar on genocide and Israeli history, traces this shift with a heavy sense of loss. In his book Israel: What Went Wrong?, he shows how Zionism, once rooted in the humanitarian ideals of 19th-century Jewish emancipation, has been transformed into a state project of ethno-nationalism, exclusion, and, in the end, violence. As Bartov puts it, what began as a struggle for Jewish liberation has become a machinery for dominating Palestinians, with all the tragedy that implies.
The Logic of Urgency
The pace and simultaneity of Israeli military operations in recent years demand careful analysis. In just two years, Israel has bombed Gaza, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen; it has occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of southern Lebanon. Israel even succeeded in drawing the United States into a direct conflict with Iran, a move that, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio accidentally admitted, was driven more by Israeli rather than American priorities. As for Netanyahu, this is a posture of someone convinced that the window for reshaping the region is closing fast, and determined to act before it closes.
Levy describes the current moment as the “Pax Greater Israel” era, a time when the old constraints of American power, the so-called Pax Americana, have faded. With a more pliable U.S. administration, Israel’s room to maneuver has expanded. Iran still hasn’t rebuilt the deterrence it once had before Israel and America struck last year. The region’s strategic balance is more fluid—and more precarious—than it’s been in a generation.
While there’s international outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, Israel has not suffered any punishment. The European Union, which heralds itself as the guardian of morals and Western values, has seen these values undermined by Israel, yet no single action has been taken. Netanyahu, who has piloted Israeli politics for nearly two decades, is unlikely to let an opportunity like this slip by.
Netanyahu’s sense of urgency isn’t just strategic. It is also deeply personal and political. He faces criminal charges, widespread public disapproval (polls showed most Israelis wanted him out even before the Gaza war), and an election looming in 2026. His personal survival and his political project are now intertwined. History teaches us that war often delays accountability, and Netanyahu knows that he has survived through wars.
By keeping the nation in a constant state of crisis, Netanyahu postpones his own reckoning while pushing forward his broader regional ambitions. There is always a danger when embattled leaders manipulate the machinery of state.
The Collapse of the Impunity Consensus
For decades, Israel benefited from an unspoken Western consensus that gave it extraordinary complacency on international law. UN resolutions could be swept aside, settlements could expand, human rights abuses against Palestinians could be perpetrated, and the memory of the Holocaust—too often used as a diplomatic shield—offered a kind of moral immunity no other state enjoyed. That consensus is now breaking down, even if its institutional traces remain stubbornly in place.
The visibility of the Gaza war and its horrendous violence has triggered a generational break like never before and a breakdown of this consensus. According to an April 2026 Pew survey, 60% of Americans have unfavorable views of Israel and 37% favorable ones. This becomes more important, as it is the first in history. The same survey also showed Netanyahu’s administration with 27% approval and 59% disapproval. In the last Global Country Perceptions Survey, Israel ranked in the last position, several points behind North Korea and Afghanistan.
The generational divide is even sharper among young people, many of whom reject any complicity in what prominent scholars, including Bartov, now formally call genocide. Netanyahu’s act of tearing up the UN Charter at the General Assembly, followed by a mass walkout, was more than symbolism. It marked the end of an era for both Netanyahu and Israel. Criticism of Israel or Zionism is no longer quickly conflated with antisemitism, especially among the younger generations.
And yet the institutional lag is severe. The European Union, bound by Article 2 of its Association Agreement with Israel, which explicitly conditions the relationship on respect for human rights, has consistently refused to act on its own legal framework. The cost of this cowardice is not merely moral. The EU, having lost industrial competitiveness, seeks its international influence as a regulatory and normative superpower. This claim rests on credibility. A bloc that intends to police the digital practices of technology companies but cannot enforce a human rights clause in its own trade agreement with a small state faces difficulties in imposing itself as a normative power, and the Global South has drawn that conclusion because of the lack of moral authority and double standard.
The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, sensing the tide turning, has responded by intensifying rather than moderating. More money is being spent, more countries are being pressured, more political careers are being threatened or terminated, as was the case with Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and more communication and online platforms are being acquired; censorship is being imposed, especially on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, and algorithms are being “re-educated,” as Mr. Larry Ellison said when he acquired TikTok. The main lobby, AIPAC, has, in great measure, turned into a politically toxic brand, according to The Intercept.
But Levy is right to note the structural limits of this approach. Lobbying is most effective when it moves with the current of public opinion or when it operates in the dark. It is least effective when it operates openly against an overwhelming public majority, against a country’s perceived national interest, and against the values of the rising generation. The lobby is fighting a rearguard action — powerful, well-resourced, and increasingly desperate.
The Next Iran and the Regional Order
It’s no accident that Israeli security officials—from Naftali Bennett to the current establishment—have started designating Türkiye as “the next Iran.” This isn’t just rhetoric; it is also part of “Greater Israel” strategy. Three decades ago, Israel argued that Iran was the existential threat that had to be contained before it led the region. Now, the same logic and language are applied to Türkiye: any regional power capable of building a new security order outside Israeli influence is seen as a threat to be isolated or confronted before it can consolidate.
But Türkiye is a different kind of challenge. As a NATO member with the largest NATO army in Europe, a strong economy, and the anchor of a coalition with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, Türkiye is not easily marginalized. Recent agreements point to a regional bloc that aims to build security frameworks explicitly outside Israeli (and, by extension, Western) dominance. This coalition news has not pleased Israel and soon reached the EU, with Ursula von der Leyen declaring, “We do not want to live under the influence of China, Russia, or Türkiye.”
The regional threat map has changed. For much of the Arab world and for Türkiye’s Erdoğan, Israel—not Iran—is now seen as the chief destabilizer. This shift in perception has real geopolitical consequences, and it’s not something American air power can easily undo.
Are we at the point of no return? In some ways, yes. The two-state solution, no matter how often it’s invoked in diplomatic statements, is functionally dead. It wasn’t killed by a single act, but by decades of illegal settlements, legal discrimination, disproportionate violence, and the systematic fragmentation of Palestinian territory. The ethnostate is already a reality on the ground. Bartov’s assessment is sobering but direct: unless there is sustained, structural pressure and actions from the international community, a real course correction is unlikely, and so far, that pressure hasn’t materialized.
But in another sense, we’re not quite past the point of no return for Netanyahu’s grand project. The conditions that have enabled the Greater Israel strategy are starting to slip away. American public opinion is shifting faster than the country’s political leaders; the support for Palestine is now higher than the support for Israel. A new regional bloc—with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt—offers a real counterweight. Iran, for all its setbacks, still possesses significant strategic resources and has the backing of China and Russia. And inside Israel, recent polling shows that a large majority (71%) support replacing the current Basic Laws with a formal constitution. Beneath the surface noise of hardline politics, there’s evidence that Israeli society hasn’t wholly given in to the ethnonationalist vision Bartov describes.
One thing is clear: this current trajectory of forever war and continued violence and humiliation of Palestinians can’t last forever. As Levy notes, Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game of “use it or lose it.” The real question isn’t whether this moment will end — sure it will — but what the aftermath will look like. Will the region be forcibly remade in the image of Greater Israel, or will a new order, forged through painful resistance, emerge in its place? The stakes for Israelis, Palestinians, and the broader Middle East couldn’t be higher.
Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
Your tax dollars at work
By Kevin Barrett | American Free Press | June 5, 2026
On May 18, Israeli commandos attacked 54 civilian boats carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza. The boats were near Cypress, nearly 300 miles from Gaza, in international waters.
The Israelis fired at the boats and kidnapped 428 unarmed humanitarian activists. Those people were never charged with any crime. How could they be? When kidnapped, they were exercising their right to sail in international waters. It was the Israelis who were committing the crime of maritime piracy, which carries a penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment.
But piracy and kidnapping were just the initial crimes. Sexual assault, rape, and torture followed. It began almost as soon as the Israeli pirates boarded the victims’ boats. According to Dropsite News, “The flotilla says at least 12 sexual assaults were documented aboard the vessel alone, including anal rape and forcible penetration with a handgun.”
The kidnapping victims were subjected to sadistic sexual abuse in the form of strip-searches accompanied by sexual taunting and groping. Many were raped. Participants described “rubber bullets fired at close range, tasers used on the face and upper body, stun grenades thrown into groups of detainees (and) prolonged stress positions under permanent bright light.” The activists were brutally beaten, emerging with “broken ribs (and) fractures to the torso, shoulders, and back.”
The kidnappers took their victims to the Israeli port of Ashdod for “further beatings, sexual humiliation, prolonged interrogations, and torture.” Israel responded to the media outcry and formal diplomatic protests from twelve governments, including Spain and Italy, by having extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir film himself participating in the abuse of the kidnapped civilians. After Ben-Gvir proudly posted his torture selfies on social media, even the US, UK, and Canada protested. Facing universal condemnation, the Israelis finally released their victims four days after the kidnapping, sending most of them on deportation flights to Turkey.
The kidnapped and tortured activists pointed out that the four days of hell they experienced were nothing compared to what Palestinian prisoners endure every single day. They called attention to the fact that Israel is currently imprisoning more than 400 Palestinian children, and that almost three-quarters of the children kidnapped by Israel report experiencing sexual violence or abuse.
Israel’s crimes against the flotilla activists were shocking but not surprising. Israel, after all, is a nation that trains dogs to rape prisoners, as reported by The New York Times. It is a nation with a “right to rape” movement that makes national heroes of prison guards who sodomize people to death. In his article “Israel Is the Global Rape Capital” Elias Akleh describes how “Sadistic sexual rape seems to be an endemic character of the whole Israeli society, making Israel the rape capital of the world, where sexual abuse and rape are not restricted against Palestinians only, but against Jewish Israeli girls in general.”
In 2011 psychologist Avigail Moor of Tel-Hai College conducted a scientific poll on whether it’s okay to rape your acquaintances. She found that 61% of Israeli men and 41% of women did not consider forced sex with an acquaintance to be rape.
All of this is just the proverbial tip of an iceberg of evidence that Israel is a nation of sadistic sex criminals. Depraved, violent, sadistic sexual abuse is even part of Israeli Orthodox Jewish religious rituals, as reported by the Jerusalem Post (6/3/2025). Social media is full of pictures posted by Israeli soldiers who murder Palestinian women, dress up in their victims’ bras and underwear, and take selfies.
In relatively normal societies, it is estimated that two per cent or less of the population consists of clinical psychopaths, while 98% are non-psychopathic. Among the Israeli Jewish population, it seems, that ratio is reversed. Polls show that the vast majority of Israeli Jews support the genocide of Gaza, which has featured the murders of tens of thousands of innocent women and children, most of whom have been slowly crushed to death beneath the rubble of their own houses.
None of these crimes could happen without the roughly ten trillion dollars of support Israel has received from American taxpayers. That money has been bestowed on the Dog Rape Nation by our politicians, who are bribed or blackmailed by Israeli agents like Jeffrey Epstein, himself a shining example of Jewish-Israeli sexual psychopathy.
Epstein described himself as “Donald (Trump’s) closest friend for ten years.” But it gets worse. In his 20s, Trump was the protegé of Jewish-Zionist gangster Roy Cohn, a sadistic homosexual pedophile who, according to journalist Anthony Summers, ran an Epstein-style blackmail operation that filmed powerful men, including J. Edgar Hoover, abusing little boys.
And it isn’t just Trump. Our whole political class is compromised. Just look at how they vote on Israel-related issues.
The USA desperately needs a serious, French Revolution style housecleaning.
See Also:
Al Mayadeen | June 5, 2026
Thousands of people took to the streets of Tirana on Thursday for a fourth consecutive day of protests against a controversial coastal tourism project reportedly linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
Demonstrators gathered in the Albanian capital carrying banners demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama, while others displayed images depicting Rama handing keys to Ivanka Trump, Kushner’s wife, and the US president’s daughter.
The protests center on a proposed $1.2 billion tourism development in the protected Vjosa-Narta area along Albania’s southern coast. Opponents argue that the project, which includes plans for luxury hotels and tourism infrastructure, would cause significant environmental damage to one of the country’s most sensitive ecosystems.
According to the development plan presented two years ago, Kushner intended to transform Sazan Island, a former secret communist-era military base, into a high-end tourist destination. The proposal also included the construction of a luxury hotel in the Vjosa-Narta area, with an estimated project value of around 1.4 billion euros ($1.2 billion).
Protesters demand legal changes
Public anger intensified after footage emerged showing bulldozers and preparatory construction work near the protected area, while reports circulated of security guards assaulting a man close to the project site.
Protesters are demanding the repeal of Albania’s Strategic Investor Act, which facilitates major investment projects, as well as amendments to the Protected Areas Act that permit tourism developments within conservation zones.
Albania currently designates approximately 22% of its territory as protected land.
Speaking at the demonstration, human rights activist Luciana Kokaj said concerns extended beyond individual property disputes and focused on preserving the country’s natural heritage for future generations.
Another protester, Etleva Merko, rejected government claims that demonstrators oppose economic development, saying protesters support investment but object to construction projects in protected environmental areas and are demanding greater transparency.
The demonstrations come as Albania’s Special Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption and Organized Crime confirmed it had opened an investigation into the project earlier this week, though officials have not disclosed further details.
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | June 5, 2026
While Washington’s media class was loudly hyperventilating over Section 224 of the defense bill, the brazen attempt to weld the U.S. and Israeli militaries into a single high-tech fighting force, a far more consequential power shift was quietly advancing through the Senate with almost no resistance.
Section 622 of S. 4615, the Intelligence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2027, is not some routine bureaucratic tweak. It is a calculated, multi-year project to permanently embed Israeli strategic priorities into the bloodstream of American intelligence.
Where Section 224 focuses on tanks, jets, and joint weapons production and AI, Section 622 targets the invisible nervous system that often matters more: raw intelligence flows, surveillance capabilities, cyber operations, data streams, and regional early-warning networks. And it has moved forward with almost zero public debate.
The bill doesn’t politely encourage closer ties. It mandates them. It orders the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to aggressively expand intelligence sharing with Israel across cyber threats, sanctions evasion, missile and drone attacks, non-state actors, and air-and-space domains. It then extends this integration to the Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords, effectively building a U.S.-backed, Israel-centred intelligence bloc across the region.
This is a five-year strategic lockdown, with Congress demanding annual reports tracking “seamless integration” of Israel into regional air and missile defense architectures, full interoperability of technology networks between the U.S., Israel, and Abraham Accords partners, and detailed catalogs of every remaining legal, technical, policy, counterintelligence, and security barrier still in the way. At this stage, one could assume that lawmakers aren’t overseeing the relationship; they’re issuing marching orders to keep deepening it.
To block any future president tempted to pull back, the bill installs heavy procedural padlocks. Section 622 prohibits any suspension, reduction, or material limitation of intelligence cooperation with Israel except in the narrow case of a “specific and identifiable national security concern,” with mandatory 15-day advance notice to Congress. Another section in the same bill adds a second tripwire, naming Israel (alongside Ukraine and Taiwan) as one of the privileged few countries that trigger immediate congressional alarm bells if support is ever curtailed.
The double standard is glaring. In Section 620, Congress carefully wrote an explicit off-ramp for Ukraine, allowing intelligence support to be limited in cases of human rights violations, atrocities, or breaches of the laws of armed conflict. For Israel, they wrote nothing of the sort. No human-rights conditions. No equivalent brake. Only extra layers of statutory armor. This was not haste or oversight but a deliberate hierarchy in which Israel First is now codified in law.
The bill doubles down on the fusion elsewhere. It expands private-sector intelligence pipelines, shields those exchanges from FOIA and public scrutiny, rolls back reporting requirements on privacy, civil liberties, and oversight risks, and accelerates artificial intelligence tools for targeting and surveillance. All of this while Israel’s notorious private surveillance industry stands ready at the receiving end.
Chief among them is NSO Group and its infamous Pegasus spyware — military-grade malware repeatedly deployed against journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents, and political opponents. The Pegasus Project, Amnesty International, Citizen Lab, and others have documented its use on targets ranging from associates of Jamal Khashoggi to reporters and activists worldwide. In 2025, a U.S. court ordered NSO Group to pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for unlawfully hacking over 1,400 devices. Congress is widening the pipes that feed into this ecosystem while simultaneously weakening transparency and accountability.
The timing sharpens the cynicism. These binding commitments are being locked in just as Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist pulled from housing finance with zero intelligence experience, has been installed as acting Director of National Intelligence. The architecture is being built, the guardrails are being removed, and the keys are handed to someone chosen for loyalty rather than expertise.
Section 224 and Section 622 together reveal the full picture. One noisy fight over military fusion, one stealth operation over intelligence fusion. Both push the same way, tightening integration, raising barriers to reversal, and triggering a tilt that puts Israeli security and regional dominance ahead of independent American judgment.
This is not standard alliance maintenance. It is legislative entrenchment of a one-sided special relationship at a moment when the costs, risks, and moral hazards have never been more urgent. Critics like Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace have sounded the alarm for good reason.
If this is what “America First” looks like in practice, the fine print exposes something much closer to Israel First, hard-coded into U.S. statute, insulated from democratic accountability, and engineered to survive any future attempt at course correction.
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A new Unbekoming paperback
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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