Crooked Bough News Round-up

— From the United States to Europe, Criticizing Israel Is Becoming a Crime

 

at 4/29/25 12:11pm

Across the United States and much of the West, criticism of Israel and solidarity with Palestine are increasingly being criminalized—a project long championed by Israel’s government and its powerful lobbying networks. In February 2020, Israeli leader and internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu proudly declared that Tel Aviv had “promoted laws in most U.S. states” to punish those who boycott Israel, offering a rare glimpse into the foreign forces eroding free speech in the American heartland. Since then, anti-boycott laws have quietly spread to dozens of states, forcing public institutions, businesses, and even individual contractors to pledge loyalty to Israel—or risk losing jobs, contracts, and funding. What began as a niche effort to shield Tel Aviv from grassroots criticism has rapidly escalated into a sweeping assault on free speech across the Western world. The overwhelming majority of states now boast laws making it illegal for local entities, including hospitals and schools, to work with individuals or companies that boycott Israel. For example, in 2016, Indiana’s Senate unanimously passed a law calling for mandatory divestment by state agencies, commercial enterprises, and nonprofit organizations—including universities—from any firm involved in “the promotion of activities to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel.” The legislation branded boycotts against Israel as “antithetical and deeply damaging to the cause of peace, justice, equality, democracy and human rights for all people in the Middle East.” Several states have adopted comparable laws via governors signing administrative and executive orders. In some cases, state contractors—be they individuals or organizations—are legally obligated to demonstrate their anti-BDS credentials by signing contractual affirmations of non-support for BDS, which critics argue is essentially a loyalty oath to Israel. State employees, including teachers, have lost their jobs for refusing to do so. In May 2021, a federal judge ruled such legislation in Georgia to be “unconstitutional compelled speech.” Undeterred, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reintroduced the requirement just months later with slight amendments. Israel’s extraordinary and ever-growing influence over domestic U.S. laws in recent years, and the devastating consequences for Palestinian solidarity at home and abroad, have passed without much critical mainstream acknowledgement, let alone censure. Since October 7, the push to criminalize pro-Palestinian sentiment Stateside and the media’s mass omertà (code of silence) on this disturbing crusade have both intensified significantly. However, such disquieting developments aren’t restricted to the U.S., but eagerly embraced by an ever-growing number of countries intimately complicit in the Gaza genocide.   ‘Drastic Rise’ In a grave testament to the speed with which U.S.-based pro-Israel organizations, including several prominent Jewish advocacy groups, sought to capitalize on October 7 for their own purposes, two-and-a-half weeks after Palestinian fighters breached Gaza’s infamous apartheid walls, Republican lawmaker Mike Lawler proposed H.R. 6090, also known as the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Lawler is a major recipient of Israeli lobby funds, with the influential lobbying group AIPAC gifting him $392,669 in 2023 and 2024 alone, his largest donor by some margin. His bill would require the Department of Education to consider the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism (which critics argue conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism) when determining if cases of harassment are motivated by antisemitism, raising concerns that it would violate the intent of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This, its proponents argue, “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance,” including colleges and universities. H.R. 6090 is openly supported by nearly all influential pro-Israel organizations, including the ADL. The IHRA definition has been condemned by many, including attorney Kenneth Stern, who helped draft it, for falsely conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The ACLU warns that H.R. 6090 raises the clear risk that U.S. educational facilities will “restrict student and faculty speech critical of the Israeli government and its military operations,” for fear of “losing federal funding.” Longstanding U.S. law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities, making the proposed legislation completely unnecessary. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters face off during a rally in Washington, D.C., April 5, 2025. Allison Bailey | AP Despite the obvious and dire threats to fundamental freedoms posed by the bill, and even harsh criticisms from major Jewish groups (such as J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace), it received barely any mention by major news outlets. Still, Congress supported it by an overwhelming majority, voting 320 to 91 in its favor. Senators nonetheless failed to consider the legislation, prompting Congressman Josh Gottheimer, who received $797,189 from AIPAC in 2023 and 2024, to reintroduce the bill in February. In the meantime, U.S. lawmakers again took a deeply worrying step in Israel’s clear favor. On November 28, 2023, Congressman David Kustoff—another AIPAC beneficiary—introduced a House Resolution “strongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism” in the U.S. and “around the world” following October 7. Citing the IHRA’s antisemitism definition, it declared that popular Palestine solidarity chants—protected by the First Amendment—“From the River to the Sea,” “Palestine Will Be Free,” and “Gaza Will Win” to be genocidal, and claimed that a candlelit vigil at the Democratic National Committee that month had endangered lives. It concluded by calling on Congress to “clearly and firmly [state] that anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” which they did inordinately. In all, 311 lawmakers voted for the Resolution, with just 14 against. Niko House, a media personality and activist specializing in civil rights and anti-imperialist issues, believes that these efforts are desperate attempts to justify legal measures that threaten civil liberties and would be unthinkable if any other country were in the crosshairs—including the U.S. itself. “If enacted, these laws will give authorities broad license to persecute anyone and everyone who calls attention to the unprecedented levels of discrimination Palestinians experience today, and have done for over 75 years,” House tells MintPress. He reserves particular contempt for H.R. 6090: As a Black man, I find it deeply insulting [that] Congress would exploit the Civil Rights Act to silence, if not criminalize, pro-Palestine sentiment. Whether it be segregation, freedom to attend whatever educational institution or pursue whatever career you choose, or equal and indiscriminate access to facilities and basic sustenance like food and water, Palestinians have been suffering from the very forms of discrimination the Act was created to protect against ever since Israel’s creation. And the Gaza genocide has made all of this even worse.”   ‘Targeting Critics’ Such brazen pro-Israeli lawfare is a longstanding tradition in modern American politics. In 1977, two amendments to the Export Administration Act and the U.S. Tax Code were passed. In theory, they prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from complying with foreign boycotts against any country considered “friendly” to Washington. In reality, it was specifically intended to counteract the long-running embargo of Israel by the Arab League. Most U.S. allies adopted the prohibition, in some cases ironically damaging their relations with Israel. Then in 1987, Ronald Reagan designated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—at the time recognized almost universally as the Palestinian people’s legitimate representatives—a terrorist entity, but enacted a waiver the next year permitting “contact” between White House officials and the group. This fudge meant the Organization was forced to shut down its D.C. office and cease most of its formal international diplomatic and fundraising initiatives, but allowed U.S. authorities to continue to engage with its leadership without legal repercussions. There are sinister historical echoes, too, in yet another post-October 7 Congressional move in the U.S. On December 12, 2023, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a fervently pro-Israel lawmaker who has received vast sums from the Israeli lobby while cosponsoring and voting in favor of multiple pro-Israel measures that critics argue suppress Palestinian rights and run afoul of the First Amendment, proposed H.R. 6578. It calls for the creation of an official “Commission to Study Acts of Antisemitism” in the U.S. The legislation’s clauses exclusively refer to “antisemitism” in the context of criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza after October 7. Its accompanying press release clearly shows that Palestine solidarity activists are its intended targets, particularly college and university students. Under its auspices, a formal Congressional investigation into opposition to Israel among U.S. citizens and organizations would be instigated, and any witness subpoenaed to give evidence would be barred from invoking their constitutional right to remain silent under questioning. Lara Friedman, Middle East Forum for Peace President, slammed the proposal as a malign attempt to construct a modern equivalent to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (which investigated suspected supporters of communism during the Cold War). Established by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1938, the Committee probed the political leanings of private citizens, state employees, and public and government organizations. In the process, countless careers and lives were destroyed. Friedman charges H. R. 6578 will, by design, do the same—“but this time targeting critics of Israel.”   ‘Disruptive Policies’ It would be wrongheaded to view this wave of repressive laws as unique or isolated to the U.S., or exclusively a product of the Gaza genocide. In the wake of October 7, authorities in Germany, which quietly supported Israel’s illicit nuclear weapons program for years, unleashed an unprecedented crackdown against Palestine solidarity activists and groups. The repression came in the form of brutal assaults on protest attendees of all ages and genders, city and state courts convicting people for leading pro-Palestinian chants, and restrictions on speaking foreign languages at public demonstrations. German city and state governments have banned or are considering banning displays of red triangles (a symbol adopted by some Palestinian resistance fighters). As of June 2024, applicants for German citizenship are now tested on their knowledge of Judaism and Jewish life. They must declare their belief in Israel’s right to exist to prove their commitment to “German values.” Legal experts and rights advocates have widely questioned the constitutionality of requiring political support for a foreign state as a condition for citizenship. This wave of legal repression is not confined to Germany. Across the English Channel, British authorities have similarly intensified their crackdown on dissent. In February 2024, three individuals were convicted of terror offenses in Britain after displaying images of paragliders at a Palestine solidarity protest on the controversial grounds that it amounted to “glorification of the actions” of Hamas. Since then, multiple British pro-Palestinian activists and journalists have been arrested, raided, and prosecuted over allegations of “supporting” Hamas. In December 2024, the UN sounded an alarm over London’s “vague and over-broad” counter-terror legislation. These laws do not define the term ‘support,’ which the UN believes raises the risk of dissenting individuals who cannot plausibly be accused of endorsing “violent terrorist acts” by proscribed groups, including their political wings, being caught up in the legislation’s sweeping dragnet. Undeterred, authorities have only intensified their harassment of Palestine solidarity voices since. Naila Kauser, an activist currently wanted for questioning by counter-terror police in London for pro-Palestinian statements she purportedly made on social media, tells MintPress News: Attacks against activists and journalists who speak out against the genocide in Palestine can only be described as an abuse of law, in service of fascism. It is the British state that is violating multiple world laws, including the Genocide Convention, by continuing to support Israel through intelligence-sharing, arms trade, and diplomatic protection of Israeli war criminals, as we saw recently with the Israeli Foreign Minister’s not-so-secret visit to London. Britain proscribing those who fight occupation also undermines their internationally recognised legal right to resist.” Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley, whose London home was raided and digital devices seized by counter-terror police at dawn in October 2024, suggests to MintPress News that the British government’s December 2016 adoption of the IHRA’s misdefinition of antisemitism may have played a role in the wave of repression targeting “legitimate dissent, protest, and political action” against crimes committed by the Israeli state. He says that the controversial definition, reportedly influenced by Israeli intelligence, “does nothing to protect Jews or anyone else — its primary aim is to criminalize Palestinians and their supporters.” Winstanley cites the striking example of a London council in 2019 using the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism to ban a local pro-Palestinian bike ride seeking to raise money for sports equipment for Gazan children from traveling through its parks. “This wasn’t a direct action, it wasn’t anything to do with Jewish people, it wasn’t discrimination, it was pure solidarity of the fluffiest kind, and even this was officially found to fall foul of the IHRA definition,” Winstanley warned.   ‘Moral Authority’ In June 2023, the ponderously titled Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill began making its way through British Parliament. Its purpose is to ban any public bodies conducting their investments and procurement “in a way that indicates political or moral disapproval of a foreign state.” An accompanying press release made clear the legislation’s explicit purpose was protecting “businesses and organizations” affiliated with Israel. Michael Gove, the then-government minister who introduced the law, said of BDS efforts: These campaigns not only undermine the UK’s foreign policy but lead to appalling antisemitic rhetoric and abuse. That is why we have taken this decisive action to stop these disruptive policies once and for all.” The array of organizations affected is gargantuan, ranging from local councils to universities, and the implications are grave in every way. Institutions can be investigated solely at the personal discretion of government officials and face voluminous fines for breaches. During the 1980s, when the British government refused to sanction or condemn South Africa, the very entities targeted by this legislation boycotted the Apartheid state. If the new law were in effect at the time, such activities would have been entirely illegal. Exacerbating matters further, the anti-BDS Act violates multiple UN rulings and contradicts the British governments own stated positions. London’s official stance for decades has been that Israeli settlements “are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” As such, Britain’s private sector is actively discouraged by authorities from conducting business there. Yet, public bodies may now be legally prohibited from following this very precept. Still, there remains one potential legal avenue of resistance. As MintPress News has previously reported, multiple legal findings and precedents indicate countries party to the Genocide Convention, as Britain is, must “employ all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide. What’s more, failing to stop providing aid or assistance to a state engaged in genocide could violate Article I of the Convention. This could provide legal protection from London’s new anti-BDS law. As activist Naila Kauser, herself a target of London’s latest measures, concludes: Laws that defend genocide have no legitimacy, and states enforcing them and enabling the genocide have no moral authority. They want us to shut up, but we must continue to resist these attacks, as well as the ongoing genocide, in any way we can until Palestine is liberated.” Feature photo | NYPD officers arrest a woman as pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters clash outside Baruch College in New York, June 5, 2024. Melissa Bender | AP Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg. The post From the United States to Europe, Criticizing Israel Is Becoming a Crime appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, anti-BDS laws, antisemitism legislation, civil liberties, Criticism of Israel, free speech, global crackdown, ihra definition, october 7, Palestine solidarity]

— Defections Rock UAE-Backed Forces in Yemen as Trump’s War Plan Falters

 

at 4/28/25 12:34pm

Around 100 officers from the UAE-backed National Resistance Forces (NRF) in Yemen have defected to join Ansar Allah, delivering a major blow to U.S. and Gulf-backed efforts inside the country. The development comes amid threats of a U.S.-supported ground offensive and intensified American airstrikes against civilian targets. On Sunday, approximately 100 officers from Yemen’s United Arab Emirates-backed forces defected to Ansar Allah in the capital, Sanaa. Although the defectors identities have not been publicly disclosed, initial reports suggest that much of the groups high command was among them. The defections mark a serious setback for the NRF, led by Brigadier General Tareq Saleh, who holds territory along Yemen’s northwestern coast near Taiz. Hundreds of officers from the UAE-backed force controlling Yemen’s western coast have defected to the Yemeni government and Ansarallah. The group saw nearly its entire high command switch sides. The defectors gathered in Sanaa for a briefing. This is a serious blow to Zionists. pic.twitter.com/CmoE79vezE — Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) April 28, 2025 Tareq Saleh, the nephew of deposed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, sits on the Emirati-Saudi backed Presidential Leadership Council, often referred to as Yemen’s internationally recognized government. His NRF forces are aligned with Saudi and U.S.-backed groups that control southern Yemen, headquartered in the port city of Aden. Meanwhile, protests have erupted across southern Yemen, where residents are demanding the removal of the pro-coalition government over worsening economic conditions, collapsing basic services, and 20-hour rolling blackouts. In Aden, the demonstrations against the Saudi-Emirati coalition continue to grow, with citizens accusing local authorities of failing to implement emergency measures to stabilize energy supplies. Despite backing from wealthy Gulf states and U.S. support, areas under the Presidential Leadership Council’s control suffer from higher poverty rates than the 70% of Yemenis living under Ansar Allah’s Sanaa-based government. Shortly after U.S. strikes began on March 15, President Trump claimed that Ansar Allah had been decimated, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asserted that the military campaign was “devastatingly effective.” Six weeks later, U.S. officials have quietly admitted that the strikes have had limited impact, raising concerns over cost effectiveness and ammunition depletion. Despite Washingtons early rhetoric, the Yemeni Armed Forces continue to target U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, fire missiles and drones at Israel, and enjoy mass displays of public support across Yemen. In Washington, leading think tanks are now scrambling for alternatives. The Atlantic Council recently suggested that assassinating key leaders like Abdul Malik al-Houthi could collapse the Sanaa government. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) argued that “only a ground operation can oust the Houthis.” Around a week ago, reports emerged that an 80,000-strong Saudi-UAE backed force was preparing to cooperate with U.S. troops to seize Yemen’s strategic Red Sea port city of Hodeidah. However, the NRF defections could significantly complicate those plans. Growing public discontent in southern Yemen could further jeopardize any ground operation. Massive weekly demonstrations show strong popular support for Ansar Allah’s blockade of the Red Sea and its missile attacks on Israel, actions that many in southern Yemen view as retaliation against U.S. intervention. Instead of destroying Ansar Allah, Trump’s military escalation may be achieving the opposite: unifying a nation torn by nearly a decade of civil war. Feature photo | Ansar Allah supporters chant slogans during an anti-U.S. and anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, April 18, 2025. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Defections Rock UAE-Backed Forces in Yemen as Trumps War Plan Falters appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: News, Ansar Allah, ground invasion, humanitarian crisis, officer defections, Saudi coalition, Trump, U.S. airstrikes, UAE-backed forces, Yemen, Yemen war]

— Trump’s Yemen Surge: How Policy from DC Think Tanks Brought Famine Roaring Back

 

at 4/24/25 1:58pm

President Donald Trump’s new Yemen campaign is driving what experts call a spiraling humanitarian disaster, nearly doubling the previous administration’s costs while slashing aid and intensifying airstrikes. Under pressure from powerful Washington think tanks, Trump has sharply increased airstrikes, cut $107 million in aid, and designated Yemen’s Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO )—all steps that experts and aid groups say are deepening famine, displacement, and collective punishment. The latest moves target Ansar Allah-controlled northern Yemen, home to roughly 70% of the population and 80% dependent on food imports. April’s cuts to humanitarian aid, along with a deliberate U.S. campaign to bomb ports and airports, are putting millions at risk. Humanitarian organizations—including Action Against Hunger and the World Food Program—warn that aid restrictions and destroyed infrastructure have left at least 19.5 million Yemenis in urgent need, with 64% of households unable to meet basic food needs and children facing malnutrition rates among the highest in the world. These policies mirror the siege tactics imposed by Israel on Gaza, and, according to Washington-based NGOs and experts, go even further. Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) cautions that Trump’s escalation “might also plunge the country into famine.” Trump’s January decision to designate Ansar Allah as an FTO reversed the Biden administration’s more cautious approach. Biden, reacting to Ansar Allah’s actions against Israel, had classified the group as a “specially designated global terrorist” in early 2024, but stopped short of the FTO label to avoid cutting off lifesaving aid. As Anne Garella of Action Against Hunger warned, “The FTO designation could lead to restrictions or delays on imports of essential commodities, as well as higher prices. In a country where 49% of the population is food insecure and 55% of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, this could have devastating consequences.” Since the escalation, more than 531,000 people have been newly displaced, and another 1.3 million have slipped below the poverty line. The cumulative effect of U.S. actions, along with a U.S.-backed Saudi blockade in place since 2015, has been catastrophic. The blockade alone has driven famine, a cholera outbreak, and mass starvation—especially among children. Of the estimated 400,000 civilians killed during the U.S.-backed war, most died due to blockade-induced deprivation. Behind the scenes, major Washington think tanks are encouraging the White House to intensify the siege. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a key player in the build-up to the Iraq War, justified recent U.S. airstrikes that killed 80 civilians at Yemen’s Ras Issa port, claiming such attacks degrade “the economic source of power” for Ansar Allah. The Heritage Foundation, one of Trump’s chief policy influencers, has argued in its “Government by Injunction” commentary that aid organizations—groups humanitarian officials fear could be blocked from conducting life-saving missions—could “turn out to be fronts for the Iran-backed Houthis, who are trying to sink ships that traverse the Red Sea, as well as kill Israelis with their rockets. (Or terrorists could wind up stealing the money from the needy. It’s happened before.)” Dana Stroul, director of research at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former top Biden Defense Department official, has publicly advocated “increasing maritime and overland interdiction efforts” to block Iranian resupply of Ansar Allah—an approach that would further tighten the blockade. While Stroul recommends mitigating civilian harm and supporting aid efforts, her “maximum pressure” strategy would effectively deepen the suffering of Yemen’s already vulnerable, starving civilian population. The severity of the crisis is starkly illustrated in the World Organisation Against Torture’s “Torture in Slow Motion” report, which found that the U.S.-backed blockade has “substantially contributed to pushing Yemeni civilians into starvation and can be considered torture.” With U.S. military attacks ramping up and think tanks calling for harsher collective punishment, aid agencies and human rights advocates warn that Yemen is spiraling into deeper catastrophe. If Trump continues down this path—halting aid, bombing infrastructure, and tightening import restrictions—the result will be a man-made famine and a yet another stain on U.S. foreign policy. Feature photo | Crowds gather at Al Mashhad cemetery in Sanaa, Yemen, on April 23, 2025, to bury victims of recent U.S. airstrikes. The mass funeral highlights the mounting civilian toll of the ongoing conflict and deepening humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Photo by Osamah Abdulrahman | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Trumps Yemen Surge: How Policy from DC Think Tanks Brought Famine Roaring Back appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, airstrikes, Ansar Allah, blockade, collective punishment, food insecurity, humanitarian crisis, think-tanks, Trump, U.S. foreign policy, Yemen famine]

— What Do Congo’s Minerals and a Shadowy Prison Deal Have in Common? Erik Prince

 

at 4/22/25 10:44am

Erik Prince, the controversial founder of Blackwater and longtime ally of Donald Trump, is mounting a major comeback. He has secured a new deal to “protect” the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) lucrative mineral sector and is pitching a privatized prison complex in El Salvador that critics say echoes Guantanamo Bay. In a letter dated Feb. 8, 2025, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi proposed that, in exchange for U.S. military support to combat a rebel insurgency, the Democratic Republic of Congo would grant lucrative mining contracts to the United States. This proposal aligned with the Trump administrations recent initiative to establish a sovereign wealth fund aimed at investing in strategic sectors, including critical minerals. Tshisekedi was simultaneously holding negotiations with Princ aimed at allowing his private firm to tax and “secure” the DRC’s mineral wealth. Reuters recently confirmed that a deal has been reached. While the letter did not specify the type of military support Tshisekedi was seeking, the exchange on offer would open up Congolese reserves of cobalt, lithium, copper, and tantalum—critical components in high-tech manufacturing—to U.S. firms. The proposal aligned closely with Trump’s “Stargate” initiative, a $500 billion joint high-tech investment launched at the start of his new term. On his podcast “Off Leash” earlier this year, Prince declared: “It’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries.” He added, “You can say that about pretty much all of Africa; they’re incapable of governing themselves.”   A Legacy of Violence Prince rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration, when his firm Blackwater became a central part of U.S. military operations in Iraq. The company was so deeply embedded that it was sometimes called the private wing of the U.S. military. Blackwater was later implicated in a CIA assassination program. But the firm’s reputation was irreparably damaged after the 2007 Nisour Square massacre, in which Blackwater personnel killed 17 Iraqi civilians. The incident stands as one of the grimmest examples of the Iraq War’s failures. A federal jury found several of the mercenaries guilty of murder in 2014. Trump pardoned them in 2020. Through the Obama years, Prince faded from public view. Tainted by Blackwater’s legacy and the fallout from the Nisour Square massacre, he struggled to regain his former influence. But his alignment with Donald Trump and the Republican Party opened the door to a new round of ambitious proposals. That resurgence was soon complicated by a fresh scandal. In 2021, Prince was accused of violating a United Nations arms embargo by aiding Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar—a scandal that derailed his efforts to regain a foothold in Washington. A U.N. report alleges that Prince provided military support to Haftar, including weapons, aircraft, and proposals for a mercenary operation known as “Project Opus.” Despite the setback, Prince is forging ahead, emboldened by Trump’s return to power. A 26-page plan he pitched to the Trump team outlines a $25 billion private deportation force capable of deporting up to 600,000 people per month. Another recently leaked proposal reveals Prince’s plans to build a mega-prison in El Salvador, partially under U.S. jurisdiction and shielded from legal oversight. Though framed as a tool for deporting undocumented immigrants, concerns grew after Trump was caught on a hot mic telling President Bukele, “The homegrowns are next.” Around the same time, the Trump administration began instructing immigration officers to flag “antisemitic” social media content as grounds for denial or removal. Civil liberties groups warn that such policies are already being used to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. Taken together, Prince’s prison and Trump’s crackdown suggest a terrifying possibility: that political expression—particularly criticism of Israel—could land people in offshore detention. Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince wants US taxpayers to fund privately run deportation camps in El Salvador. No legal challenges, no due process, no accountability. Hiring private companies is a key way the US evades oversight and accountability for human rights abuses. pic.twitter.com/BBuDKrkp36 — CODEPINK (@codepink) April 18, 2025 Human rights groups have already raised concerns about potential violence, overcrowding, and abuse at the proposed facility. The comparisons to Guantanamo Bay have sparked widespread alarm online, though no official announcement has indicated that the plan will move forward. Meanwhile, the agreement with the DRC is already underway. Prince has previously voiced frustration that U.S. military intervention did not come sooner during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were massacred. That conflict ended with the fall of Rwanda’s Hutu-led government and the rise of President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi. Now, as the Tutsi-led M23 rebel group advances across eastern Congo—a movement the United Nations accuses Rwanda of supporting—Prince finds himself profiting from a crisis rooted in the very conflict he once lamented. Feature photo | Erik Prince meets with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in Quito, Ecuador, on March 11, 2025. The image was shared on Noboa’s official X account. Daniel Noboa | X Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post What Do Congo’s Minerals and a Shadowy Prison Deal Have in Common? Erik Prince appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: National, News, Blackwater, Congo mining deal, El Salvador deportation, Erik Prince, M23 rebels, offshore prisons, political targeting, privatized detention, speech crackdown, Trump immigration]

— Facing Prison Time in Germany for Criticizing an Israeli Journalist: The Case of Hüseyin Dogru

 

at 4/18/25 6:19am

Amid a crackdown on pro-Palestine voices in Germany, a journalist regularly attacked as a Russian operative is facing up to three years in prison for defamation of an Israel-based journalist. Hüseyin Dogru, founder of red. media, has been charged with defamation for actions relating to a spat with Nicholas Potter, a German state-funded reporter working for the Israeli outlet, The Jerusalem Post. In December, Potter, a self-styled counter-extremism expert, published a lengthy exposé in The Jerusalem Post, claiming that red. media, MintPress News, and The Grayzone were part of a network of far-left outlets promoting extremism and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Worse still, he strongly insinuated that all three were promoted and funded by the governments of Russia, Syria, and Iran. The charges are false (see MintPress’ rebuttal here), and are particularly ironic, coming as they do from a journalist who is funded by the German Foreign Office. One who, amid a genocide, moved to Israel to work for an outlet headed by a former Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson. Moreover, Potter himself arguably holds extreme views on the subject. Just weeks after attacking us for our journalism, he penned an article titled “Can Journalists Be Terrorists,” which attempted to justify many of Israel’s killings of Palestinian media workers. Both red. and MintPress immediately highlighted much of this important context, and our content went viral.   From Viral Criticism to Criminal Charges A sticker about Potter, based on a red. media graphic, was spotted in Berlin. The sticker took the outlet’s criticism of him, and plastered the phrase, “The German Hurensohn” — “The German Son of a Bitch” —  over the top. That sticker is the centerpiece of the prosecution’s allegation of a coordinated “hate campaign” against Potter led by red. media. Potter claims that he has suffered harassment and threats to his life, and some have tried to link this back to Dogru’s graphic. The accusations provoked a storm of articles in German media, all supportive of Potter. Many echoed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claims that red. media is a Russian government-controlled influence operation. A Red Media post criticizing journalist Nicholas Potter, left, appears as a modified sticker in Germany, right. Photo provided to MintPress Dogru denies these allegations, although he was previously a key part of Red Fish, a platform financed by Ruptly, a Germany-based outlet partially funded by the Russian state-controlled network, RT. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dogru closed Red Fish and started his own independent outlet. He insists it has no connection to Russia and is dedicated to making revolutionary and educational content. He also denies having any information or involvement in producing anti-Potter stickers.   Germany Criminalized Palestinian Solidarity Potter’s support for Israeli policies has certainly drawn the ire of many in the pro-Palestine movement in Germany. Yet he is far from alone. The German government has offered its full support to Israel and has gone so far as to ban pro-Palestine demonstrations and lock up countless activists, including Jewish people. The phrase “From the River to the Sea” has effectively been criminalized, with Berlin announcing that it would deny citizenship to anyone using it. New German citizenship laws require all applicants to sign what is, in effect, a loyalty oath to the State of Israel, declaring that it has a “right to exist.” Berlin is currently deporting foreign residents for their participation in lawful protests supporting Palestinian rights. Dogru’s legal team has advised him that his wife and son could be deported as well. Commentators have warned that, with these actions, Germany is lurching towards the authoritarian right. With the far-right AfD Party surging in the polls (a recent survey found they are now the most popular party in Germany), many inside the country are ringing the alarm bells. “For decades, Germany has stuck with Israel and its narratives in the Middle East,” Dogru told MintPress, adding: “Since October 7, we see that the German government is violently repressing activists to make sure there are no voices in Germany critical of Israel. Activists here have paid a high price to make sure that they can protest.” According to Dogru, this is a test case. Ultimately, the suppression of speech is not about Israel, but an attack on its own society. Germany is preparing to assert itself as a leading military and political force in NATO and the EU. To do that, it must eliminate resistance — not just abroad, but at home. This isn’t driven by historical guilt or solidarity. It’s about silencing dissent and disciplining society. By targeting the most marginalized, the German state is disciplining its population — silencing opposition before it grows.” The message from the German government is clear, Dogru claims: “fall in line, or be crushed.” Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post Facing Prison Time in Germany for Criticizing an Israeli Journalist: The Case of Hüseyin Dogru appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, News, Top Story, censorship of dissent, german journalist arrested, Hüseyin Dogru, idf influence western media, Israeli military propaganda, journalist criminalized germany, media repression germany, Nicholas Potter, press freedom europe, red media germany]

— Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence In Charge of Your Google Data

 

at 4/17/25 1:26pm

Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The price tag — 65 times Wiz’s annual revenue — has raised eyebrows and further solidified the close relationship between Google and the Israeli military. In its press release, the Silicon Valley giant claimed that the purchase will “vastly improve how security is designed, operated and automated—providing an end-to-end security platform for customers, of all types and sizes, in the AI era.” Yet it has also raised fears about the security of user data, particularly of those who oppose Israeli actions against its neighbors, given Unit 8200’s long history of using tech to spy on opponents, gather intelligence, and use that knowledge for extortion and blackmail.   Israel’s Global Spy Network Wiz was established only five years ago, and all four co-founders — Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik — were leaders in Israel’s elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200. Like many Israeli tech companies, Wiz is a direct outgrowth of the military intelligence outfit. A recent study found that almost fifty of its current employees are Unit 8200 veterans. “That experience showed me the impact you can make when you combine great talent with amazing technology,” Rappaport said of his time in the military. Former Unit 8200 agents, working hand-in-glove with the Israeli national security state, have gone on to produce many of the world’s most infamous malware and hacking tools. Perhaps the most well-known of these is Pegasus, spyware used by governments around the world to surveil and harass political opponents. These include India, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which used the tool to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was assassinated by Saudi agents in Türkiye. In total, more than 50,000 journalists, human rights defenders, diplomats, business leaders and politicians are known to have been secretly surveilled. That includes heads of state such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Iraqi President Barham Salih. All Pegasus sales had to be approved by the Israeli government, which reportedly had access to the data Pegasus’ foreign customers were accruing. Unit 8200 also spies on Americans. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency regularly shared the data and communications of U.S. citizens with the Israeli intelligence group. “I think that’s amazing…It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen,” he said. For the Israeli government, the utility of these private spying firms filled with former IDF intelligence figures is that it allows it some measure of plausible deniability when confronted with spying attacks. As Haaretz explained: “Who owns [these spying companies] isn’t clear, but their employees aren’t soldiers. Consequently, they may solve the army’s problem, even if the solution they provide is imperfect.” Today, former Unit 8200 agents not only create much of the world’s spyware, but also the security features that claim to protect against unwanted surveillance. A MintPress investigation found that three of the six largest VPN companies in the world are owned and controlled by an Israeli company co-founded by a Unit 8200 veteran.   How Unit 8200 Controls Palestinians It is in Palestine, however, that Unit 8200 has been most active. The unit serves as the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech repressive state apparatus. Using gigantic amounts of data compiled on Palestinians by tracking their every move through facial recognition cameras, monitoring their calls, messages, emails and personal data, Unit 8200 has created a digital dragnet that it uses to snoop on, harass, and suppress Palestinians. It compiles dossiers on virtually every Gaza resident, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, so that this information can be used for extortion or blackmail later. If, for example, an individual is cheating on their spouse, desperately needs a medical operation, or is secretly homosexual, this can be used as leverage to turn civilians into informants and spies for Israel. One former Unit 8200 operative said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen for them in phone conversations he was eavesdropping on. Unit 8200 is also reportedly behind the even more controversial Project Lavender, a giant, AI-generated kill list of tens of thousands of Gazans that the IDF uses to target the densely populated strip’s civilian population. Palestanian workers cross the Eyal checkpoint into Israel under the watchful eye of IDF cameras, January 10, 2021. Keren Manor | Activestills Every Gazan (including children) is assigned a score of 1-100, based on their perceived proximity to Hamas. A wide range of characteristics will increase an individuals score, including living or working in the same building or being in a WhatsApp group with a known or suspected Hamas member. If a person’s number reaches a certain threshold, they are automatically added to a Unit 8200 kill list. This, one IDF commander explained, solved Israel’s perennial targeting “human bottleneck,” allowing them to carry out tens of thousands of strikes into Gaza during the first few weeks of the post-October 7 attack alone. Unit 8200 is also widely reported to have carried out the Lebanon Pager Attack, exploding thousands of electronic devices at the same time, killing dozens and injuring thousands more. The operation was widely described, even by former CIA director Leon Panetta, as an act of terrorism. This long history of violence, skulduggery, and spying raises troubling questions about whether a corporation founded and staffed by dozens of individuals from such an organization can be trusted with billions of users’ private and personal data.   Google’s Ties to Israeli Intelligence Google’s purchase of Wiz deepens its already close ties to Unit 8200. In 2013, the tech giant acquired Waze, an online maps service founded by three Unit 8200 veterans, for $1.3 billion. It has also directly hired dozens of former spooks and spies to fill its ranks; a 2022 MintPress News investigation found at least 99 former Unit 8200 agents working at the Silicon Valley behemoth. Among these figures is Gavriel Goidel, Head of Strategy and Operations for Google Research. Goidel joined Google in 2022 after a six-year career in military intelligence, during which he rose to become Head of Learning at Unit 8200. There, he led a large team of operatives who sifted through intelligence data to “understand patterns of hostile activists,” according to his own account. Google is far from an outlier when it comes to hiring former Israeli spies to carry out its operations. Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have all hired a significant number of ex-Unit 8200 agents. Even TikTok, supposedly a hotbed of anti-Semitism, employs a considerable number of ex-spooks. Perhaps most surprisingly, a number of top U.S. media outlets, including CNN and Axios, have recruited former Unit 8200 spies and analysts to write and produce America’s news about the Middle East. Google has invested heavily in Israel, first opening offices there in 2006. Longtime CEO Eric Schmidt is known to be a vocal supporter of the controversial state. In a 2012 meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he declared that “the decision to invest in Israel was one of the best that Google has ever made.” But the Wiz deal is undoubtedly the company’s biggest Israeli investment yet. The all-cash acquisition represents a massive injection of money into Israel’s flailing and war-weary economy, equivalent to 0.6% of the country’s GDP. The money, the Israeli press excitedly reports, will allow the government to continue without enacting major austerity measures, reduce the nation’s deficit, and enable Israel to continue on a wartime footing for longer. As such, it represents a move critics say amounts to a financial intervention on behalf of Israel. Moreover, it also sends a message to the rest of the business world to invest in the country, boosting investor sentiment at a time when it is most needed. The size of the deal also surprised many. The price is similar to that of the sale of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo in 2008, Visa Europe in 2017, and Twitter in 2022. Yet Wiz is a new and relatively unknown company, raising questions about its valuation. Ultimately, though, these considerations are secondary to the main issue that such a group will now be charged with providing security for the data of billions of users worldwide. Given Unit 8200’s role in monitoring and targeting the Palestinian population, many will be wondering if, going forward, Google products are at all safe to use. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence In Charge of Your Google Data appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, cloud security firm, encrypted security platforms, global data deal, Google acquisition, Israeli tech sector, military-to-startup pipeline, multinational tech control, private data risk, U8200, Wiz deal]

— Before Trump Bombed Yemen, Biden Displaced Over Half a Million People—And No One Said a Word

 

at 4/17/25 5:59am

In 2024, while all eyes were on Gaza, President Joe Biden launched a bombing campaign in Yemen that displaced more than 531,000 people. Nearly 40,000 were driven from their homes by U.S. bombs alone. It was called Operation Prosperity Guardian, and you probably never heard of it. There was no congressional vote. No White House press conference. And yet by the end of the year, U.S. warplanes had hit schools, mosques, farms, ports, and fuel trucks across Yemen, causing a humanitarian collapse that rivaled the worst years of the Saudi-led war. Two reports issued by Yemen’s National Team for Foreign Outreach (NTFG), reviewed by MintPress News, have revealed staggering statistics about the impacts of Biden’s final military campaign against the war-torn Arab nation. President Biden, in his first foreign policy speech in 2021, declared that ending the “catastrophic” war in Yemen would be a top priority. By then, the U.S.-backed war, primarily carried out by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, had already claimed nearly 400,000 lives since its 2015 launch under Barack Obama’s administration. In October 2023, the Ansar Allah-led government in Sana’a began intervening in the Gaza war, following Israel’s bombing campaign that killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. After launching missiles, the group imposed a blockade in the Red Sea on Israeli-linked ships. Rather than pursuing negotiations, the White House responded by deepening its military intervention in support of Israel. This is peak American foreign policy When asked if the strikes on Yemen are working Biden replies: “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.” Literally saying bombing these folks is useless, but well keep doing it. pic.twitter.com/otzJC6hzpS — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) January 19, 2024 In December 2023, then–Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the launch of a multinational naval mission called Operation Prosperity Guardian. Under this campaign, the Biden administration initiated airstrikes on Ansar Allah in Yemen without congressional approval or popular mandate. According to the first NTFG report, the U.S.-led operation, alongside subsequent Israeli airstrikes, worsened Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, increasing the number of civilians in need of urgent aid from 18.2 million to 19.5 million in 2024 alone. In other words, the U.S.-taxpayer-funded war effort pushed 1.3 million additional people into poverty last year. The report also noted that U.N. officials “warned of the U.S., U.K., and Israeli attempts to disrupt Sana’a International Airport and the ports of Hodeidah to obstruct and suspend international humanitarian aid to Yemen, especially since these vital facilities are crucial humanitarian sites.” That warning highlights what appears to be the intentional collective punishment of the Yemeni people. Nearly 80% of the country’s food is imported. Sites damaged or destroyed in December 2024 included: 23 commercial facilities Eight petrol stations Two tourist facilities Six schools Six mosques 45 roads and bridges Six water tanks and networks Five seaports Four farms 13 food trucks Four fuel trucks 37 agricultural fields The second NTFG report focused on internal displacement and humanitarian fallout. According to U.N. statistics cited in the report, 531,000 people were internally displaced in Yemen during 2024, with at least 38,129 of them forcibly displaced directly by military attacks. In the final month of Biden’s presidency, the U.S. and its allies targeted an alarming number of civilian sites. The report states: Airstrikes targeted power stations in the Capital Secretariat (Sana’a) and Hodeidah, setting fire to critical equipment necessary for electricity production and leaving civilians without power. In addition to crippling Yemen’s electricity supply, the U.S.-U.K.-Zionist coalition launched attacks on key Red Sea ports in Hodeidah, including Al-Salif Port, Hodeidah Port, and Ras Issa Port. These strikes resulted in multiple deaths and injuries among port workers, disrupting vital trade and humanitarian supply lines.” Though the Trump administration has intensified the war since taking office, the U.S. military campaign in Yemen now spans more than a decade. Indeed, until Israel’s assault on Gaza, it was widely considered the world’s worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe. While under Biden, Ansar Allah was designated a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization. The Trump administration has since replaced that label with the more severe “Foreign Terrorist Organization” designation. The new classification drastically impairs the ability of humanitarian groups to deliver aid, effectively criminalizing relief work in large swaths of northern Yemen. Feature photo | Locals inspect a building destroyed by U.S. airstrikes overnight in Sana’a, Yemen, March 20, 2025. Photo | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Before Trump Bombed Yemen, Biden Displaced Over Half a Million People—And No One Said a Word appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, News, 2024 displacement crisis, Ansarallah blockade response, Biden foreign policy legacy, dual administration war policy, Middle East conflict reporting, Red Sea military escalation, U.S. regional operations, unauthorized air campaigns, unreported civilian suffering, Yemen humanitarian impact]

— Iran’s Military Presence in Sudan: UAE-Israel Plot Backfires

 

at 4/15/25 7:00am

The United Arab Emirates and Israel had hoped to extract strategic victories in Sudan, taking advantage of the fall of the nation’s former dictator and the descent into civil war. But newly released satellite images suggest that Tehran’s renewed ties with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) may be unraveling those ambitions. Satellite images, initially reported by Russian state broadcaster RT, reveal an extensive underground tunnel complex under Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control, allegedly constructed with assistance from Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The facility, featuring 12 fortified entrances, is situated within mountainous terrain and mirrors Iranian missile bases designed to withstand aerial bombardments. This has heightened concerns in Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi regarding Irans expanding influence in Sudan.​ Hebrew sources: A huge underground tunnel complex in Sudan, presumably built by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is located at 16.251586° 32.646261° The underground base has 12 different entrances. It is located deep underground and is heavily fortified, modeled… pic.twitter.com/jAUPQeu61l — Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) April 12, 2025 Following al-Bashirs removal in April 2019 via a military coup spurred by widespread popular protests, regional actors, notably the UAE and Israel, moved swiftly to take advantage of a nation undergoing a tumultuous political transformation. Despite diplomatic efforts to prevent open conflict, Sudan slid into civil war. The SAF, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, faced off against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary faction rooted in the notorious Janjaweed militias that once fought on behalf of Bashir’s regime. The RSF is led by billionaire warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. The UAE threw its weight behind Hemedti and the RSF—despite their well-documented war crimes—as part of Abu Dhabi’s broader push for influence in the Horn of Africa. The UAE’s support was so extensive that Hemedti’s official Facebook page was reportedly operated from inside the Emirates. Israel, meanwhile, had worked closely with the Trump administration during his first term to pressure Sudan into normalizing ties with Tel Aviv. In exchange, Washington offered to remove Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, forgive debts and lift sanctions. While normalization talks progressed, Israel deepened its political and intelligence footprint in Sudan. Hemedti signed a $6 million contract with a Canadian lobbying firm founded by ex-Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe. The RSF, in turn, positioned itself as an opponent of “radical Islamists” and openly advocated for normalization with Israel. When the civil war erupted in 2023, Israel moved quickly to cast itself as a potential mediator—citing ties to both sides. The Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed early support for Gen. al-Burhan and the SAF. But in reality, the Mossad was said to favor Hemedti’s RSF and reportedly maintained close contact with him in Khartoum. A 2022 investigative report by Haaretz alleged that “high-end surveillance technology, made in the European Union, with the potential to tip the balance of power in Sudan,” had been delivered to the RSF by private jet. The Predator spyware reportedly originated from the Intellexa consortium, whose parent company Cytrox was founded by former Israeli intelligence officer Tal Dilian. According to Israel Hayom, the country’s most-read daily news outlet, Sudan was seen as Israel’s strategic gateway to Africa—and a possible solution to its domestic dilemma push to deport some 150,000 African asylum seekers. Israel and the UAE also occupy Yemen’s strategic Socotra Island, indicative of a joint agenda in the region. Despite Tehran’s close ties with Khartoum in the 1990s, the Islamic Republic was slowly pushed out of the North-East African nation, leading to a mutual severing of ties in 2016. However, the civil war appears to have breathed new life into Iranian-Sudanese relations. In early 2023, a normalization deal between Sudan and Israel was said to be imminent. But by July 2024, Iran had officially reestablished ties with the SAF—the internationally recognized government—following calls for urgent military support from General al-Burhan, whose forces appeared to be losing the war. By October, the SAF had managed to turn the tide by capturing strategically significant routes and mountain ranges. In September 2024, the Brussels International Center argued that Iran’s delivery of Mohajer-6 and Ababil drones may have changed the course of the war and could deeply affect Israeli-Sudanese relations. The report also noted that the SAF’s rhetoric had taken a sharply anti-Israel turn since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza. Iran’s increasing engagement, it said, “could diversify Iranian security partnerships and promote its ‘drone diplomacy.’” By December, the conservative U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation reported that Iran was aiming to establish a naval base in Sudan and claimed that its drone deliveries to the SAF had already shifted the balance in key battles. In February, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Yusuf and his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi announced an agreement to boost trade, step up diplomatic coordination and involve Iran in post-war reconstruction efforts. In response, Israeli officials began expressing their concerns to local media. Chief among Israel’s fears is that Sudan may again become a hub for weapons transfers by Iran’s IRGC to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. In the past, Sudan had served as a corridor for arms transfers to Palestinian militants. As recently as December 2023, Israel was reported to have carried out a failed intelligence operation to locate a former Sudanese general accused of supplying weapons to Hamas. Following the release of satellite images showing a fortified underground base, new aerial footage surfaced suggesting that Sudan is operating Iranian “Malta AI Fajr-1” VHF radar systems along its Red Sea coast. If confirmed, these developments point to a broader regional realignment—one where Iran, even as it loses ground in Syria, continues building alliances at Israel’s expense. After the discovery of IRGC underground bases in Sudan, new footage shows that Iran has set up Matla Al Fajr-1 radars near Sudan’s Red Sea coast. These radars can detect aircraft up to 300 kms away at altitudevof up to 20 kms and can track around 100 targets at the same time. pic.twitter.com/f3qgVnJGe6 — Current Report (@Currentreport1) April 12, 2025 Feature photo  | Iranian military personnel are shown in an fortified underground base next to a domestically designed drone in Iran. Photo | Iranian Military Press Office Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Irans Military Presence in Sudan: UAE-Israel Plot Backfires appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Iran drone diplomacy, Iran Sudan relations, Iranian military influence Africa, Israel Sudan normalization, Middle East proxy wars, Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), Sudan civil war, UAE foreign policy Horn of Africa, UAE Israel Sudan]

— Chris Hedges: Israel is About to Empty Gaza

 

at 4/14/25 7:31am

Washington — (Scheerpost) — Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions. The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops. On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.” Since Israel’s unilateral ending of the ceasefire on March 18 — which was never honored by Israel — Israel has been carrying out relentless bombing and shelling against civilians, killing over 1,400 Palestinians and wounding over 3,600, according to the Palestinian health ministry. An average of one hundred children are being killed daily according to the United Nations. Israel is, at the same time, inciting tensions with Egypt to lay what I suspect will be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, echoing Katz, said Israel would not lift the total blockade until Hamas was “defeated” and the remaining 59 Israeli hostages were released. “Not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza,” he vowed. But no one in Israel or Gaza expects Hamas, which has weathered the decimation of Gaza and sustained mass slaughter, to surrender or disappear. The question no longer is will the Palestinians be deported from Gaza but when they will be pushed out and where they will go. The Israeli leadership is apparently torn between driving Palestinians over the border into Egypt or shipping them to countries in Africa. The U.S. and Israel have contacted three East African governments – Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland – to discuss the resettlement of ethnically cleansed Palestinians. The consequences of wholesale ethnic cleansing will be catastrophic, jeopardizing the stability of the Arab regimes allied with Washington and setting off firestorms of protests within Arab countries. It will likely mean the severing of diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbors Jordan and Egypt, already close to the breaking point, and push the region closer to war. Diplomatic relations have fallen to their lowest point since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979. The Israeli embassies in Cairo and Amman are largely empty with Israeli staff withdrawn over security concerns following the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions. Egypt has refused to accept the credentials of Uri Rothman, who was appointed to be the Israeli ambassador last September. Egypt did not name a new ambassador to Israel when former ambassador, Khaled Azmi, was recalled last year. Israeli officials are accusing Egypt of violating the Camp David accords by increasing its military presence and building new military installations in the Northern Sinai, charges Egypt says are fabricated. The peace treaty’s annex permits additional Egyptian military hardware in the Sinai. Former Israeli chief of the general staff, Herzi Halevi, warned of what he calls Egypt’s “security threat.” Katz said that Israel would not allow Egypt to “violate the peace treaty” between the two countries signed in 1979. Egyptian officials note that it is Israel that has violated the treaty by occupying the Philadelphi Corridor, also known as the Salahuddin Axis, which runs along the nine mile border between Gaza and Egypt and is supposed to be demilitarized. “Every Israeli action along Gaza’s border with Egypt constitutes hostile behavior against Egypt’s national security,” Egyptian General Mohammed Rashad, a former military intelligence chief, told the Arabic language newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat. “Egypt cannot sit idly by in the face of such threats and must prepare for all possible scenarios.” Israeli officials are openly calling for the “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians to Egypt. Knesset member, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that “displacing most Palestinians from Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai is a practical and effective solution.” He contrasted the high population density — Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet — with the vast “untapped lands” in the Egyptian Northern Sinai and noted that Palestinians share a common culture and language with Egypt, making any deportation “natural.” He also criticized Egypt because it allegedly “benefits economically from the current political situation,” as a mediator between Israel and Hamas and “reaps profits from smuggling operations through the tunnels and the Rafah crossing.” The Israeli think tank Misgav Institute for National Security, staffed by former Israeli military and security officials, published a paper on Oct. 17, 2023, calling on the government to take advantage of the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip,” and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. A leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry proposed resettling Palestinians from Gaza to the Northern Sinai and constructing barriers and buffer zones to prevent their return. Any expulsion would likely happen swiftly with Israeli forces, which are already mercilessly herding Palestinians into containment areas in Gaza, carrying out a sustained bombing campaign against the trapped Palestinians while creating porous evacuation portals along the border with Egypt. It would entail a potentially lethal standoff with the Egyptian military, instantly throwing the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who has described any ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza as a “red line,” into crisis. It would be a short step from there to a regional conflict. Israel has seized territory in Syria and southern Lebanon, part of its vision of “Greater Israel,” which includes occupying land in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It covets the maritime gas fields off Gaza’s coast and has floated plans for a new canal to bypass the Suez Canal, to connect Israel’s bankrupt Eilat Port on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These projects require emptying Gaza of Palestinians and populating it with Jewish colonists. The anger on the Arab street — an anger I witnessed over the past few months during visits to Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Qatar — will explode in a justifiable fury if mass deportation takes place. These regimes, simply to hold on to power, will be forced to act. Terrorist attacks, whether by organized groups or lone wolves, will proliferate against Israeli and western targets, especially the United States. The genocide is a recruitment dream for Islamic militants. Washington and Israel must, on some level, understand the cost of this savagery. But it appears as though they accept it, foolishly trying to obliterate those they have cast out of the community of nations, those they refer to as “human animals.” What do Israel and Washington believe will happen when the Palestinians are expelled from a land they have lived in for centuries? How do they think a people who are desperate, deprived of hope, dignity and a way to make a living, who are being butchered by one of the most technologically advanced armies on the planet, will respond? Do they think creating a Danteesque hell for the Palestinians will blunt terrorism, curb suicide attacks and foster peace? Can they not grasp the rage rippling through the Middle East and how it will implant a hatred towards us that will endure for decades? The genocide in Gaza is the greatest crime of this century. It will come back to haunt Israel. It will come back to haunt us. It will usher to our doorsteps the evil we have perpetrated on the Palestinians. You reap what you sow. We have sown a minefield of hatred and violence. Feature photo | Illustration by Mr. Fish | ScheerPost Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report. The post Chris Hedges: Israel is About to Empty Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Opinion & Analysis, Top Story, Camp David Accords breach, Chris Hedges, Egypt Sinai deportation, forced displacement Palestinians, Gaza blockade famine, Gaza Genocide, Israel Gaza war, Rafah invasion, Smotrich Lieberman transfer plan]

— US Has No Real Targets in Yemen, and It’s Costing Taxpayers Billions

 

at 4/11/25 1:06pm

Just three weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump’s air campaign against Yemen, reports emerged that the operation was nearing $1 billion in costs—a figure likely underestimated. More striking, however, is the volume of civilian infrastructure hit, indicating a lack of military targets. The U.S. has killed at least 130 civilians in Yemen since launching its offensive in mid-March, including massacres in residential areas that left hundreds more injured. Despite Trump’s claim—just two weeks in—that Ansar Allah had already been “decimated,” airstrikes have continued for over a month with no tangible progress. Frustration has bubbled to the surface. Trump administration officials, speaking anonymously to corporate media, have voiced concerns. Three sources briefed on “Operation Rough Rider” told CNN that nearly $1 billion had been spent in under three weeks on airstrikes, including costly B-2 stealth bomber deployments—with minimal results. We just went to the place where the US bombed a Residential building last night in Sanaa Yemen killing 5 civilians and injuring 15 others. This is totally against International Law, its Barbarian, its Terrorism. Will any European State condemn this US Terrorism..? pic.twitter.com/CDMnpljVeo — Mick Wallace (@wallacemick) March 24, 2025 The recent deployment of nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to the U.S. military base in Diego Garcia was perceived as a major threat to Yemen. Yet, in October 2024, American B-2 bombers failed to destroy an Ansar Allah military facility. Pentagon officials have also warned that the campaign risks depleting weapons stockpiles meant to deter China. They reported that hundreds of millions of dollars in high-tech munitions are being rapidly burned through with “limited success.” Meanwhile, Yemen’s Ansar Allah-led government continues to engage U.S. warships and vows to escalate in defense of Gaza. Since Sana’a imposed a blockade on the Red Sea in November 2023—effectively halting Israeli shipping for 16 months—U.S., Israeli, and British airstrikes have inflicted at least 964 civilian casualties across Yemen. Washington claims the Ansar Allah leadership has suffered heavy losses, asserting that numerous senior figures have been assassinated—though no list of names has been provided to substantiate the claims. Instead, the U.S. is escalating its bombardment of densely populated areas, including a water facility in Hodeidah, which cut off access to clean water for 50,000 villagers. Despite the mounting civilian toll, pro-Israel Washington-based think tanks continue to justify the campaign. The Atlantic Council recently published a piece dismissing claims that Iran had abandoned Ansar Allah—asserting it was a ruse to stall Trump’s offensive—despite the fact that Ansar Allah has never publicly pushed such a narrative. In a Truth Social post, Trump published video of an airstrike on a tribal gathering in a Yemeni village, boasting it was a leadership meeting. In doing so, he appeared to confirm for the first time that a U.S. vessel had been sunk by Ansar Allah. This isn’t the first time Trump officials have glorified deadly strikes. An airstrike that killed a newborn baby was described as “excellent” by Vice President J.D. Vance in a leaked Signal group chat reported by The Atlantic. With no congressional mandate, little legal justification, and costs exceeding $1 billion, the war in Yemen remains unpopular and strategically unclear. Israel’s own strikes on Yemen—often targeting civilian infrastructure such as gas stations and Hodeidah Port—offer a grim precedent. U.S. officials have attempted to frame their military campaign as a defense of international shipping. Yet Yemen’s actions in the Red Sea have targeted Israel specifically, while neutral nations continue to navigate freely. Trump’s full-scale assault now threatens to eclipse the Biden administration’s own Yemen campaign, which cost taxpayers roughly $600 million per month. Feature photo | A Yemeni walks over the debris of a building destroyed in US airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, March 24, 2025. Photo | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post US Has No Real Targets in Yemen, and Its Costing Taxpayers Billions appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, News, Ansarallah, B-2 bombers, civilian casualties, Gaza War, Hodeidah bombing, Red Sea blockade, Trump airstrikes, Trump foreign policy, U.S. Military Spending, Yemen war]

— With Yemen Attack, US Continues Long History of Deliberately Bombing Hospitals

 

at 4/11/25 11:58am

In repeatedly targeting and destroying a cancer center in Yemen, the United States has carried on a long pattern of bombing hospitals. On March 24, the United States carried out a premeditated attack on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada, Yemen, turning it into rubble. At least two people were killed and 13 more injured. This was not an isolated incident. Eight days previously, on March 16, Washington launched 13 separate airstrikes against the building, systematically destroying the hospitals five blocks. The Anti-Cancer Fund, a local government medical organization, described the events as a clear “war crime.” “These attacks are not just airstrikes, but systematic executions, intended to eliminate hope and wipe out life amid a suffocating blockade,” it said in a statement. The Yemeni Cancer Control Fund, a government body tasked with overseeing the country’s healthcare system, agreed, alleging that they were part of what it called: A systematic American policy that has targeted the Yemeni people for years through bombings and a suffocating blockade, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and spreading deadly diseases, including cancer, which has surged due to the use of internationally banned weapons since 2015.” The newly built Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital was the centerpiece of the region’s healthcare network. Costing over $7.5 million, the center provided crucial treatment to hundreds of cancer patients who previously went without any care at all or faced an eight-and-a-half-hour round trip to the capital, Sanaa, for therapy. The repeated strikes on healthcare facilities in Yemen have received virtually zero attention in the United States. Indeed, Washington’s attacks on Yemen have elicited almost no critical coverage, with corporate media seemingly more outraged that senior Trump officials used a Signal group chat to plan their operations than those deeds leading to the deaths of dozens of civilians. The United States returned to bombing Yemen because its government, in an effort to halt the Israeli assault on Gaza, stopped Israeli ships traveling through the Red Sea. And like Palestine, Yemen is under an international blockade, depriving its people of basic necessities.   Post-9/11 Hospital Attacks The destruction of the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Center was far from a unique occurrence. In fact, the attack carries on an extremely long and well-documented tradition of the United States targeting hospitals. In August 2017, the Trump administration itself not only bombed a hospital in Raqqa, Syria but reportedly used white phosphorous munitions to do so. Officials from the Red Crescent reported that the U.S. carried out 20 separate attacks on the hospital, systematically targeting its power generators, vehicles and wards, turning the site into rubble. At least 30 civilians were killed, some likely due to the effects of the white phosphorous, which causes respiratory damage and organ failure. A highly controversial and widely-banned weapon, white phosphorous instantly ignites upon contact with oxygen, sticks to clothes and skin, and burns at an extremely high temperature. It cannot be extinguished by water, leaving those affected to suffer excruciating – and deadly – injuries. In 2015, the U.S. Air Force carried out a bombing campaign against a Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The trauma center, one of the newest, largest, and most recognizable buildings in the city, was deliberately targeted; Doctors Without Borders had already supplied the military with its precise coordinates. The aftermath of US airstrikes on the MSF Trauma Centre in Kunduz, Afghanistan in October 2015. Photo | MSF An internal inquiry revealed that the airmen aboard the AC-130 gunship that carried out the operation pushed back against their superiors, questioning the strike’s legality. However, they were overruled and ordered to bomb the hospital regardless of their concerns. A Doctors Without Borders report concluded that the U.S. knew where the hospital was and that it did not hide any Taliban fighters and targeted it anyway. At least 42 people are known to have been killed in the incident. The 2015 Kunduz bombing was a unique moment in history, as it was the first time that one Nobel Peace Prize winner (Barack Obama) bombed another one (Doctors Without Borders). During his time in office, Obama bombed seven countries, including Libya. In July 2011, as part of its mission to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi, NATO planes bombed Zliten, destroying the city’s hospital. Eighty-five people were killed, including at least 11 at the medical center. The event helped turn what was once Africa’s most prosperous and stable country into a failed state replete with open-air slave markets. Libya’s downfall has, in turn, helped to destabilize the entire Sahel region. Perhaps no country in the 21st century has felt the wrath of Washington as much as Iraq. U.S. strikes on civilian infrastructure were a frequent occurrence, and hospitals were no different. Arguably, the most notable example is the April 2003 bombing of the Red Crescent Maternity Hospital in Baghdad. American missiles struck the city center complex housing the hospital, killing several and wounding at least 25 people, including doctors. The charitable hospital was crucial to providing affordable healthcare to working-class Iraqis, charging ten times less than the city’s private clinics. It developed a reputation as a first-class maternity hospital, delivering an average of 35 babies per day before the invasion. UNICEF noted a sharp rise in maternal mortality after the bombing, partially due to the lack of obstetric care in Baghdad.   Clinton’s War on Hospitals Four years earlier, in May 1999, U.S.-led NATO planes dropped cluster munitions on an outdoor market and hospital in the Yugoslav city of Nis, killing at least 15 people and injuring 60 more, according to the hospital’s director. Cluster munitions are now banned under international law. Regardless, between 2023 and 2024, the United States transferred large quantities to Ukraine for use against Russian forces. Two weeks after the Nis bombing, NATO targeted a hospital in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. The missile strike destroyed much of the maternity ward, with rescuers pulling infants and mothers from the rubble in the dead of night. At least three people were reported killed. The Yugoslav attacks were not the Clinton administration’s only attacks on medical facilities. In 1998, in response to Osama bin Laden’s recent bombings of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton ordered an attack on the Al-Shifa medicine factory in Sudan. Fourteen cruise missiles hit the plant, turning what had been the largest producer of medicine in the country into a pile of twisted metal. The factory had produced over half of Sudan’s pharmaceuticals, including crucial antibiotics and antimalarial and diarrhea medications. While not a hospital, the destruction of Al-Shifa was vastly more lethal than any other attack listed. The event led to a collapse in the availability of drugs in one of Africa’s poorest countries. The German Ambassador to Sudan estimated that the death toll reached into the “tens of thousands.” The Clinton administration publicly insisted that the plant was actually bin Laden’s chemical weapons factory. Privately, however, Secretary of State Madeline Albright worked hard to suppress a government report, noting this was not true. Sudan was Clinton’s second attack on Africa. In June 1993, U.S. soldiers (under U.N. auspices) carried out a mortar attack against Digfer Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. The bombs destroyed the main reception area, blew a gaping hole in the wall of the recovery room, and shattered glass across the building. “It probably will never be known how many Somalis died in the U.N. [U.S.] onslaught,” wrote The Chicago Tribune. One reason for this is that helicopter-borne soldiers attacked reporters and photographers attempting to cover the attack, throwing stun grenades at them and chasing them away from the scene.   Latin American Dirty Wars During the 1980s, Latin America and the Caribbean were the sites of intense U.S. interest. In October 1983, during the U.S. invasion of the island, American warplanes hit the Richmond Hill Mental Hospital in Grenada. The Reagan administration initially attempted to deny the attack before finally conceding their culpability. Dozens of people were injured, and at least 20 were killed, although The New York Times suggested an actual death toll of over twice that number. The U.S. invaded Grenada in order to crush the island’s socialist revolution. In Central America, however, it relied on funding, training and arming proxy forces to do its bidding. These death squads would wreak destruction across the region and continue to shape its politics and society to this day. In El Salvador, U.S.-trained forces waged a dirty war against the population in order to crush leftist FMLN guerilla forces. Hospitals were among their preferred targets. On April 15, 1989, for instance, pilots flying U.S.-made A-37 jets and UH 1M and Hughes-500 helicopters bombed an FMLN hospital in San Ildefonso, killing five people. A hospital staff member is videotaped as he talks with US military personnel outside the bomb-damaged mental hospital in Grenada. Photo | DVIDS Paratroopers armed with M-16 rifles arrived on U.S. helicopters and attacked and abducted the medical staff, including French nurse Madeleine Lagadec. Before executing her, the soldiers spent eight hours raping and torturing her. Images of the remains of her mutilated body caused outrage in France, which issued an international arrest warrant for the four U.S.-backed officers overseeing the operation. In Nicaragua, meanwhile, throughout the 1980s, U.S.-trained paramilitaries intentionally attacked “soft targets” such as hospitals in an effort to terrorize the population into dropping their support for the country’s socialist government. A study by Richard M. Garfield, Professor of Nursing at Columbia University, found that, between 1981 and 1984, at least 63 health centers were forced to close due to attacks from the U.S.-backed “Contra” death squads. These operations were carefully planned for maximum effect, with the Contras leaving behind graffiti at the crime scenes, announcing that the “Lion Cubs of Reagan” had visited the area. Throughout their campaign, President Reagan supported the Contras, labeling them “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.” Dr. Michael Gray, Chairman of Occupational Medicine at Kino Community Hospital in Tucson, AZ., a doctor who visited Nicaragua, held a different opinion, describing them and their actions as “no different than the SS at the end of the Second World War.”   Cold War Killing Machine During the American wars in Indochina, the bombing of hospitals was official – if unstated – U.S. policy. Alan Stevenson, a former Army intelligence specialist, testified that, while on duty in Quang Tri province in Vietnam, he regularly identified hospitals to be struck by U.S. fighter jets. “The bigger the hospital, the better it was,” he said, explaining the military’s thought process. “This wasnt something that was hush‐hush,” he added. “We really didnt consider it that nasty an item.” Former Air Force captain Gerald Greven corroborated Stevenson’s allegations, noting that he personally ordered bombing raids against medical centers. It was official policy to “look for hospitals as targets,” he said. Perhaps the most notorious and well-documented case of this in Vietnam occurred on December 22, 1972, when American planes dropped over 100 bombs on the 1000-bed Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, nearly obliterating the building, in the process killing 28 medical staff and an unconfirmed number of patients. The U.S. military justified the strike by claiming that the hospital “frequently housed antiaircraft positions” and noted its proximity to a military airbase. During the Congressional hearings on clandestine U.S. activities in Laos and Cambodia, meanwhile, lawmakers were told that the bombing of hospitals was “routine.” Indeed, the former remains the most bombed country, per capita, in world history. Like in Vietnam, the targeting of hospitals was not only commonplace but deliberate. In 1973, former Army captain Rowan Malphurs testified that, while serving with the Combined Intelligence Center of Vietnam, he helped orchestrate attacks on Cambodian health centers. “We were planning bombings of hospitals,” he said. Yet Malphurs was unrepentant. “I think it was a good thing because the North Vietnamese Army had a privileged sanctuary in Cambodia,” he added. Thus, as this brief rundown of the past five decades has shown, last month’s attacks on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Yemen are far from an aberration. As these examples from 13 different countries show, Washington, in fact, has a longstanding history of targeting medical centers. Going further back, the government of North Korea estimates that the U.S. military destroyed some 1,000 hospitals during the Korean War. These numbers are entirely plausible, given the gigantic bombing campaign that the country faced. Entire cities were leveled or flooded after American planes targeted dams. Professor Bruce Cummings, America’s foremost expert on Korea, estimates that the U.S. killed around 25% of the entire North Korean population between 1950 and 1953.   Radio Silence Article 8 of the Rome Statute, one of the fundamental texts of international law, explicitly identifies “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives,” as war crimes. That the Trump administration repeatedly struck a well-known and easily identifiable hospital in Yemen is an extremely important story. But it has, in fact, received zero coverage in corporate media. Searches for “Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital” and “Yemen Hospital” in the Dow Jones Factiva news database, a tool that records the content from more than 32,000 U.S. and international media outlets, show that no mainstream American publication has even mentioned this grave war crime. This is not because the information is particularly hard to find. Well-known media figures such as Pepe Escobar and Jackson Hinkle visited Saada and recorded viral videos from the wreckage where the hospital once stood. The information has been all over social media for weeks and has been covered widely in alternative media, including Drop Site News, AntiWar.com, Truthout, Common Dreams, and foreign outlets such as Al-Jazeera, RT (formerly Russia Today), and The Cradle. Thus, every single editor in every newsroom and television studio in the United States has access to this information and made the decision not to cover the story – a fact that suggests a lot about the diversity of opinion and freedom of our press. This complete disinterest in U.S. misdeeds sits in stark contrast to when official enemy states do the same thing. When Russia hit hospitals in Ukraine and Syria, those incidents became front page news and led television news bulletins. Moreover, corporate media regularly explicitly framed the events as war crimes (see PBS, Politico, Foreign Policy, CNN, Newsweek, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times). Talking heads waxed lyrical about how Russian President Vladimir Putin must be brought to justice. And yet, when the United States does the same, that cacophony falls to complete silence – even when it is carried out by a president that many in corporate media appear desperate to attack at any opportunity. What the recent attack on the cancer center in Yemen underlines is that it is dangerous to be a healthcare worker. The United States has a longstanding history of targeting hospitals in nations it selects for regime change. This is true of both Democratic and Republican administrations. Therefore, the sad truth is that if you are in a country targeted by the United States, you are often safer away from a hospital than inside one. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post With Yemen Attack, US Continues Long History of Deliberately Bombing Hospitals appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Al-Rasool Hospital, American imperialism, humanitarian law, Kunduz hospital attack, US bombing hospitals, US military crimes, US war history, War Crimes, war on terror, Yemen airstrikes]

— Weaponizing DEI: Inside the Trump-Backed Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity

 

at 4/9/25 1:23pm

Under the pretext of dismantling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs—widely unpopular among American conservatives—the powerful Heritage Foundation has begun to extend its campaign to anti-war activism and leftist causes on university campuses. The Trump administration appears to be enacting this agenda step by step. DEI initiatives have become a fault line in America’s ever-deepening culture war. While many liberals support them, a March NBC poll found that 85 percent of conservative respondents favored terminating all DEI programs. Keenly attuned to the political climate, President Donald Trump wasted no time. Immediately after taking office, he signed executive actions designed to purge DEI from the federal bureaucracy. For years, prominent conservative voices have railed against DEI. But since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, many of them have taken a novel turn—linking DEI to criticism of Israel. On November 29, Ben Shapiro tweeted: “Destroy DEI. It is the rationale for the entire toxic intersectionality that has radically exacerbated antisemitism in the first place.” The following day, he aired an episode of his online show titled “Musk Is Right: Kill DEI To Fight Anti-Semitism.” On January 20, 2024, Shapiro and Elon Musk spoke for more than 40 minutes at an event hosted by the European Jewish Association, discussing DEI and antisemitism. The conversation was laced with straw man arguments that fused the two issues. Shapiro went so far as to claim that DEI is inherently linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews.   From Campus to Congress This rhetorical linkage hasn’t been limited to influencers or tech billionaires. For years, influential think tanks have been laying ideological groundwork to conflate DEI initiatives with pro-Palestinian sentiment. In December 2021, the Heritage Foundation released a study claiming that DEI staff on college campuses disproportionately hold anti-Israel views. The study argued that many of these staffers displayed attitudes “so out of proportion and imbalanced as to constitute antisemitism.” In effect, it equated anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism outright. In April 2024, the Heritage Foundation published a follow-up titled “Harvard and DEI: An Expensive Lesson.” It referred to pro-Palestinian student protesters as “pro-Hamas students” while accusing DEI of discriminating against Jews. The piece also examined how the Trump administration has suspended $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University and local affiliates, including Boston-area hospitals, pending the university’s compliance with specific demands. Chief among them: a crackdown on DEI and alleged campus antisemitism. Soon after, on April 25, the Goldwater Institute published a piece titled “To Combat Campus Anti-Semitism, End DEI.” It drew comparisons between student protests—many of which were led by Jewish anti-war students—and scenes from Nazi Germany, echoing rhetoric from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The issue reached Capitol Hill on July 3. At a hearing titled “Divisive, Excessive, Ineffective: The Real Impact of DEI on College Campuses,” lawmakers were told that DEI programs have directly caused a rise in anti-Israel sentiment, conflated once again with antisemitism. As at Columbia University—where the Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants—Harvard has also been asked to comply with additional federal demands. These extend beyond limiting pro-Palestinian activity. The administration has requested “full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security and other regulatory bodies. Columbia, under pressure, restructured control of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies departments, placing them under federal review. It also increased campus securitys authority to suppress anti-war demonstrations. Across the country, at least 60 universities now face similar threats.   The Blueprint Behind the Crackdown Such measures, which encroach upon academic freedom, are being directed by the Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism—a body established shortly after Trump’s return to office. But this initiative did not arise in a vacuum. The guiding framework was laid out in Project Esther, a 33-page report released by the Heritage Foundation on October 7, 2024. Its summary describes the “pro-Palestinian movement” in the United States as a “global Hamas Support Network (HSN)” that aims to sever U.S. support for Israel. In leaked emails on Columbia’s “Task Force on Antisemitism,” James Schamus calls out the task forces refusal to define the very term they formed around: it is called the “Task Force on Antisemitism” not “The Task Force on, Like, Campus Vibes.” 1/2https://t.co/rEay8v4Pn2 pic.twitter.com/D4Td81WjUY — Eli Meyerhoff (@EliMeye) February 28, 2024 The report’s language openly conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and opposition to Israeli or U.S. foreign policy with extremism. The messaging mirrors that of Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir—a firm with well-known links to the CIA—who once warned, “If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.” Project Esther also spells out a broader ideological mission. It states: Supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency. This rhetoric has filtered directly into government policy. The administration has accused pro-Palestine activists, such as detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, of supporting Hamas. Similar tactics have surfaced in the smear campaign against children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel, whom the organization Stop Antisemitism linked to alleged foreign funding and Hamas support. Claims that foreign actors are financing the student protest movement have circulated among Washington think tanks since mid-2023. However, these accusations only appeared in official government communications after Trump returned to office. Despite numerous investigations and legal challenges, no credible evidence has been provided to substantiate claims of foreign funding. Feature photo | Donald Trump, center, visits the grave site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson at Ohel Chabad-Lubavitch, Oct. 7, 2024, in New York. Yuki Iwamura | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Weaponizing DEI: Inside the Trump-Backed Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: National, News, academic freedom, antisemitism, campus protests, DEI programs, Heritage Foundation, Palestine activism, Project Esther, student dissent, Trump Administration, zionism]

— Leaked Files Reveal the Steele Dossier Was Discredited in 2017 — But Sold to the Public Anyway

 

at 4/8/25 11:49am

On March 25, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying all documentation related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The order has unexpectedly resurrected buried documents that cast new light on the Steele dossier — and when it was known to be false. It is unclear what new information will be revealed, given substantial previous declassifications, two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, several civil lawsuits, and a scathing Justice Department internal review. It has long been confirmed the FBI relied heavily on Steele’s discredited dossier to secure warrants against Trump aide Carter Page, despite grave internal concerns about its origins and reliability, and Steele’s sole “subsource” for all its lurid allegations openly admitted in interviews with the Bureau he could offer no corroboration for any of the dossier’s claims. Such inconvenient facts and damning disclosures were nonetheless concealed from the public for several years following the dossier’s January 2017 publication by BuzzFeed News, now defunct. In the intervening time, it became the central component of the Russiagate narrative, a conspiracy theory that was a major rallying point for countless mainstream journalists, pundits, public figures, Western intelligence officials, and elected lawmakers. In the process, Steele attained mythological status. For example, NBC News dubbed the former MI6 operative “a real-life James Bond.” Primetime news networks dedicated countless hours to the topic, while leading media outlets invested enormous time, energy and money into verifying the dossier’s claims without success. Undeterred, legacy reporters relied on a roster of mainstream “Russia experts,” including prominent British and U.S. military and intelligence veterans, and briefings from anonymous officials to reinforce Steele’s credibility and the likely veracity of his dossier. As award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Maté told MintPress News: Media outlets served as unquestioning stenographers for Steele. If his dossier’s claims themselves weren’t sufficient to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the dossier chronologically, a clear pattern emerges many of its most explosive claims are influenced by contemporary media reporting. For instance, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC emails in July 2016 that the dossier mentioned them. This is just one example demonstrating the dossier’s true sources were overactive imaginations and mainstream news outlets.” Even more damningly, leaked documents reviewed by MintPress News reveal that while Western journalists were hard at work attempting to validate Steele’s dossier and elevating the MI6 spy to wholly undeserved pillars of probity, the now-defunct private investigations firm GPW Group was, in early 2017, secretly unearthing vast amounts of damaging material that fatally undermined the dossier’s content, and comprehensively dismantling Steele’s previously unimpeachable public persona. It remains speculative what impact the firm’s findings might have had if they had been released publicly at the time.   ‘Financial Incentives’ GPW’s probe of Steele and his dossier was commissioned by Carter Ledyard & Milburn, a law firm representing Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan — owners of Alfa Bank. The dossier leveled several serious allegations against them. The trio purportedly possessed a “kompromat” on Vladimir Putin, delivered “illicit cash” to him throughout the 1990s, and routinely provided the Kremlin with “informal advice” on foreign policy — “especially about the U.S.” Meanwhile, Alfa Bank supposedly served as a clandestine back channel between Trump and Moscow. “In order to build a profile of Christopher Steele…as well as the broader operations of both Orbis Business Intelligence and Fusion GPS,” which commissioned the dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, GPW consulted “a variety of sources.” This included “U.S. intelligence figures,” various journalists, “private intelligence subcontractors” who had previously worked with Steele and Orbis, and “contacts who knew the man from his time with [MI6]and, in one instance, directly oversaw his work.” The picture that emerged of Steele sharply contrasted with his mainstream portrayal as a “superstar.” One operative who “acted as Steele’s manager when he began working with [MI6] and later supervised him at two further points” described him as “average, middle of the road,” stating he had never “shined” in any of his postings. Another suggested Steele’s founding of Orbis “was the source of some incredulity” within MI6 due to his underwhelming professional history and perceived lack of “commercial nous.” Yet another suggested Steele’s production of the dossier reflected his lack of “big picture judgment.” Sources consulted by GPW were even more critical of Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson. One journalist described him as a “hack” without “a license or the contacts to do…actual investigations,” instead outsourcing “all” work ostensibly conducted by his firm to others while skimming commissions. They also “openly admitted” to disliking Simpson, described by GPW as “not an uncommon attitude amongst those to whom we spoke.” Glenn Simpson arrives at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 14, 2019. Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP Editing by MintPress GPW also scrutinized “credibility and perceptions of the dossier in Russia,” specifically whether Steele‘s claims that high-ranking Kremlin-linked sources in Moscow provided him with information had any merit. The firm consulted “Western and Russian journalists, former officials from the FSB and the Russian security services more broadly, a former high-ranking official at the CIA who oversaw the agency’s Russian operations, and several private-sector intelligence practitioners operating in Moscow” for this purpose: The prevailing sentiment from our contacts was one of extreme skepticism as to the accuracy of…the [dossier]. Most found it unimaginable…senior Russian officials would risk life imprisonment (or worse) by speaking to a former foreign intelligence official about such sensitive issues. At the very least…it would have cost Steele a great deal more…than he could afford…Former intelligence operatives (from both the U.S. and Russian services) seriously doubted Steele would have been able to retain Russian sources from his time in MI6.” GPW also examined “possible sources for the dossier” that had been hypothesized in the media to date. Among them was former FSB General Oleg Erovinkin, who was found dead in his car in Moscow in December 2016. After the dossier’s release, the Daily Telegraph suggested his death was “mysterious” and could have resulted from providing information to Steele. A former high-ranking official in U.S. intelligence mockingly dismissed the proposition, noting that career security and intelligence officer Erovinkin was “unlikely to have needed the money.” While conceding that financial incentives could encourage such a breach…[if] Steele had offered Erovinkin £100,000, the mooted budget for the entire project, ‘Erovinkin would have said he needed to see three more zeros before opening his mouth. It’s just a ridiculous proposition to think he would speak to a former intelligence officer from the UK, or anyone else for that matter, for such a paltry sum of money.’” Overall, GPW concluded: “The quality and level of the sourcing was greatly exaggerated in order to give the dossier and its allegations more credibility.” This impression was reinforced by “informed sources from both government and the private sector” in Russia who were “very dismissive” of the dossier’s content. Many pointed to “woeful inaccuracies” contained therein “and its author’s general lack of understanding around Russian politics and business.” This “deficiency was particularly acute with respect to the dossier’s coverage of Alfa Bank.”   ‘Reputational Damage’ GPW’s investigation also proved prescient in other areas. For example, several knowledgeable sources the company consulted — including former senior Russian and U.S. intelligence officials — suggested the dossier’s “most likely sources” were Russian émigrés, “providing…their own views.” They also noted the Steele dossier’s “hyperbole and inaccuracies” were “typical of the hyperactive imaginations of the subcontractors widely used in the business intelligence sector.” This was not confirmed until July 2020. That month, the Senate Judiciary Committee released notes taken by FBI agents during February 2017 interviews with Igor Danchenko, Steele’s “subsource” and the dossier’s effective author. A Washington think tank journeyman jailed years earlier on multiple public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges and investigated by the FBI for potentially serving as a Kremlin agent, Danchenko admitted he had been fed much of the dossier’s salacious content by his Russian drinking buddies, who lacked any high-level access. Steele then embroidered their dud information further. Other striking passages in the leaks refer to a conversation between GPW and “a source from within the business intelligence sector in London [who] knows Christopher Steele well, both socially and professionally, and is familiar with his company.” They relayed various details and “commentary” gleaned “directly from speaking to Steele.” For example, they noted that contrary to its self-description as a “leading corporate intelligence consultancy,” Orbis was “not a major operation” and seemed to employ just two junior analysts “who looked like recent graduates.” The source revealed that “other, larger firms in the sector were approached before Steele and turned the work down before he took it on,” and the dossier was his solo project. “The rest of the company wasn’t involved at all, either to help on the research side of things or to look through the product before it went out,” and “Steele basically collated the information himself.” They further suggested the dossier’s sources let their imaginations run wild, believing their claims would never see the light of day: I think they got carried away — they didn’t think the material would ever be made public because at that point it was very unlikely that Trump was going to get into power…Steele was rather naive about the whole thing. He didn’t think that it would get exposed in the way it did.” Igor Danchenko leaves Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse Alexandria, Va., Nov. 4, 2021. Manuel Balce Ceneta | AP Editing by MintPress In other investigative briefs, GPW noted it was unusual that “Steele would have permitted (or indeed facilitated) the distribution of such questionable material under his name,” given the dossier’s apparent falsity. The firm postulated that “in sharing the material with U.S. government figures,” the former MI6 operative “may have thought he was currying favor with them by doing so,” but ultimately, “he never intended for the dossier to be made public in the manner it was.” One possible answer to this question is found in a defamation case brought against Orbis by Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, and German Khan in Britain in May 2018. In July 2020, a British court ruled that the dossier’s allegations against them and Alfa Bank were “inaccurate and misleading,” awarding damages “for the loss of autonomy, distress and reputational damage.” During the trial, Steele made a notable disclosure: Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie…it engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and [“Hillary for America”] could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.” In essence, the dossier was commissioned by Clinton’s campaign as a contingency in the event she lost the election. However, as GPW’s source close to Steele noted, when the MI6 operative took on the work, the prevailing perception was that “it was very unlikely” Trump would win. As a result, Steele may have had the motivation to fill the dossier with unverified material, believing it would never be used for its intended purpose. He also had a commercial incentive to exaggerate his high-level access. A serving CIA official told GPW: Steele was known to have been ‘up and down the alley’ pitching for business a reference to the major defense firms, such as Lockheed Martin, which are located close to one another in Arlington, Virginia. She did not know which firms Steele had worked for in particular, if any, but he has visited several of them in person at their headquarters.”   ‘Supposedly Unaware’ A core mystery at the heart of the Steele dossier saga has never been satisfactorily resolved — one that Trump’s latest declassification order could help illuminate. In his December 2019 report on Crossfire Hurricane, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the FBI’s use of the dossier to obtain warrants against Carter Page but insisted Steele’s assorted claims “played no role” in the bureau opening its investigation of Trump’s campaign, reportedly on July 31, 2016. As extensively documented by Aaron Maté, this claim is difficult to reconcile with the numerous contacts and meetings between Steele and senior FBI and Justice Department officials in the weeks leading up to that date. The former MI6 officer provided material that would later comprise the dossier to senior U.S. government officials, including Victoria Nuland, prior to the official opening of Crossfire Hurricane. Nuland reportedly encouraged the bureau to investigate the contents. According to the FBI’s electronic communications that initiated Crossfire Hurricane, the probe’s founding predicate was a vague tip provided to the bureau by Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. He claimed that low-level Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos had “suggested” to him over drinks in London that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion [emphasis added] from Russia that it could assistwith the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging” to Clinton. The EC further acknowledged that “It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.” As Maté told MintPress News, this was an “extraordinarily thin basis upon which to investigate an entire presidential campaign.” He added that “upon officially opening Crossfire Hurricane, FBI officials immediately took investigative steps that mirrored the claims in the Steele dossier, even though they were supposedly unaware of it.” The FBI’s first probes into individual Trump campaign figures — Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort — began in August 2016. All are mentioned in the dossier. Maté concludes: To accept the official timeline, one has to stipulate that the FBI investigated a Presidential campaign, and then a President, based on a low-level volunteer having ‘suggested’ Trump’s campaign had received ‘some kind of suggestion’ of assistance from Russia. One would also have to accept that the Bureau was not influenced by the far more detailed claims of direct Trump-Russia connections an alleged conspiracy that would form the heart of the investigation advanced in the widely-circulating Steele dossier.” Editor’s note | This article is based on publicly available court filings, government reports, leaked investigative documents, and interviews with sources familiar with the matter. All allegations presented here are reported as claims made by those entities or individuals and have not been independently verified by MintPress News unless otherwise stated. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg. The post Leaked Files Reveal the Steele Dossier Was Discredited in 2017 — But Sold to the Public Anyway appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, News, Top Story, Aaron Mate, Alfa Bank, Christopher Steele, FBI Crossfire Hurricane, Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Igor Danchenko, Kit Klarenberg, Russiagate, Trump dossier]

— Israeli Lawsuits Target Americans: A New Threat to the First Amendment Under Trump

 

at 3/28/25 9:28am

A wave of lawsuits filed by Israeli plaintiffs against pro-Palestinian American citizens, advocacy groups, and media outlets is paving the way for the AIPAC-backed “nonprofit killer bill” to take effect. The claims—largely unsubstantiated—appear designed to justify what critics say could amount to a near-total shutdown of political expression around the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On Monday, the latest in a series of legal actions targeted the prominent New York-based activist group Within Our Lifetime, as well as the Columbia University chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. According to plaintiff Shlomi Ziv, the groups were allegedly funded by Hamas. Ziv, who was previously held captive in Gaza and worked as a security guard on October 7, 2023, claims that his captors told him they were financing student groups at Columbia. The accusation is based entirely on hearsay. Still, the lawsuit’s intent appears clearly aimed at dismantling the student movement at Columbia. The complaint even names Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident and pro-Palestine activist now in detention, who is facing deportation under an order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Khalil’s alleged offense: exercising his First Amendment rights. Despite pro-Israel organizations accusing him of supporting Hamas, the most the Canary Mission—a group notorious for doxxing and smearing college students—could produce was a video showing Khalil standing near someone chanting, “From the river to the sea.” The attacks on free speech and academic freedom at Columbia are not confined to deporting (or expelling) students who protest Israel. Thats a small part of it. The administration is also demanding Columbia adopt the radically expanded definition of "anti-Semitism" that the EU… pic.twitter.com/yXmidTtamh — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 23, 2025 This is not Ziv’s first legal foray. In February, he and two other Israeli former hostages refiled an amended complaint against the U.S.-based media outlet Palestine Chronicle after their original case was dismissed for lack of evidence. The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington state, is backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, led by Mark Goldfeder—a former advisor to Israel’s permanent mission to the United Nations. Goldfeder’s organization has attempted similar lawsuits, including one against the Associated Press for allegedly providing “material support for terrorism,” as well as cases targeting UNRWA-USA and Students for Justice in Palestine. In the suit against Palestine Chronicle, Ziv claims that contributor Abdallah AlJamal was a Hamas operative who held Israeli captives in his home. Based on that allegation, Ziv argues that the outlet provided material support for terrorism by publishing AlJamal’s work. When Israeli forces killed AlJamal and several family members, CNN reported that Israeli officials offered no evidence for their claim that he was a Hamas fighter. Despite the lack of evidence, neoconservative think tanks such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies helped amplify the narrative. Qatar-funded Al Jazeera also came under fire because Al Jamal had contributed articles to its site. In February, Israeli citizen Morris Schnaider filed a separate lawsuit targeting Al Jazeera, alleging the network aided Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in spreading propaganda and inciting violence. The legal action was supported by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy group known for coordinating with the Israeli government on similar efforts. While few of these lawsuits are expected to succeed in court, they align with broader efforts by pro-Israel lobbyists and the Trump-aligned right to clamp down on criticism of Israel. In late 2024, Congress passed House Resolution 9495—dubbed the “nonprofit killer bill”—despite widespread condemnation from civil liberties organizations. For all the legitimate complains that MAGA had about Dems cracking down on free speech, nothing compares to what the Trump admin is doing to put Israel First: https://t.co/jBGap6Y22I — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 26, 2025 The bill empowers the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations based on classified evidence and without filing formal charges. This creates a legal gray area where lawsuits—even those lacking evidence—could be used as a pretext to strip organizations of their legal protections/ Although Students for Justice in Palestine is not a registered nonprofit, it receives funding from American Muslims for Palestine, which is. As Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to detain and deport U.S. residents and student visa holders—many of whom are not accused of any crime but have merely spoken out against Israel’s war in Gaza—critics warn that a coordinated legal and legislative strategy is underway to criminalize dissent. Amid a wave of ICE detentions and deportations targeting U.S. residents and student visa holders—none of whom are accused of any crime beyond speaking out against Israeli actions in Gaza—it is not difficult to imagine an AIPAC-backed bill being weaponized against American citizens. Should that occur, it would mark a dangerous escalation in President Donald Trump’s ongoing assault on the First Amendment. Feature photo | Donald Trump speaks at the 2016 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference at the Verizon Center, March 21, 2016, in Washington. Evan Vucci | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Israeli Lawsuits Target Americans: A New Threat to the First Amendment Under Trump appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: News, Abdallah AlJamal, AIPAC, Ben Shapiro, First Amendment, HR 9495, Israeli lawsuits, Mahmoud Khalil, nonprofit killer bill, Shlomi Ziv, Students For Justice in Palestine]

— Why Ben Shapiro and Pro-Israel Pundits Are Melting Down Over the JFK Files

 

at 3/28/25 8:48am

President Donald Trump’s decision to release previously classified JFK assassination files has sent pro-Israel conservative pundits into damage-control mode as renewed scrutiny falls on a potential Israeli motive in the killing of the 35th U.S. president. On March 18, more than 63,000 pages related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were published by the National Archives following an executive order from Trump. Though heavily redacted and still incomplete, the release has renewed public interest in the events that culminated in the president’s death in Dallas on November 22, 1963. No definitive evidence has yet emerged to confirm alternative theories about who was responsible, and that lack of closure has only added fuel to decades-old suspicions. In the nearly 62 years since the assassination, countless theories have circulated. The most prominent continue to implicate the CIA. Recently, however, attention has shifted to potential motives involving Israeli intelligence—raising politically sensitive questions, particularly on the American right.   American Right Fractures Among the first to respond was conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, a tireless defender of all things Israel. On his talk show, Shapiro dismissed the renewed interest in Israel’s potential role, stating: I don’t care who killed JFK—I mean, I do because it’s interesting—but I noticed that the calendar says 2025 and he was killed in 1963.” He went on to suggest that any speculation that Israel was involved is motivated by anti-Semitism. Doubling down, Shapiro authored a column on March 19, 2025, titled “Does It Really Matter Who Shot John F. Kennedy?” The syndicated columnist soon saw his work picked up and republished by even the most minor local newspapers across America, sometimes with modified headlines.  While acknowledging that some 65% of Americans polled in 2023 believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, Shapiro dismissed the alternative theories outright. He attributed the public’s skepticism not to unresolved evidence but to what he framed as a generalized and growing distrust of government. Ironically, instead of quieting discussion, Shapiro’s remarks appear to have intensified interest—particularly among conservatives who have grown increasingly critical of U.S. support for Israel. That shift reflects broader trends across the political spectrum as public opinion continues to sour on the U.S.-Israel relationship. Candace Owens, a former Daily Wire host who has reportedly eclipsed her ex-colleague Shapiro in monthly viewership since going independent, is one of the most vocal figures driving that narrative. Owens has dedicated multiple episodes of her show to the Kennedy files and Israel’s historical grievances with the president, appearing on other prominent right-leaning platforms to expand the discussion. Rather than engage with the evidence, pro-Israel advocacy groups have sought to discredit the theory by associating it with anti-Semitism. By conflating all discussion of Israeli motives with hate speech, critics argue, these groups are sidestepping the substance of the debate and helping drive further curiosity about the very claims they aim to suppress.   JFK Files: The Israel Connection Theories alleging Israeli involvement in Kennedy’s assassination are not new but have gained traction in recent years. In 2004, Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu—who served 18 years in prison for exposing Israel’s secret weapons program—publicly endorsed the theory. Four years later, in 2008, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi drew international attention to the theory, amplifying its reach even further. A 2016 release from the National Security Archive revealed that Kennedy had expressed deep concerns about Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The U.S. president suspected that Israel’s refusal to allow inspections at the Dimona nuclear facility was a smokescreen designed to conceal a covert weapons program—an issue that has gained legitimacy since the latest document release. In 2023, further revelations suggested Kennedy had attempted to send Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isidor Rabi to inspect the reactor at Dimona. Communications indicate that the trip was to be facilitated through U.S. State Department legal adviser Abram Chayes and his Israeli counterpart, Teddy Kollek. The initiative was ultimately blocked by the Israeli side. Perhaps even more telling is Kennedy’s order to the U.S. Department of Justice to force the American Zionist Council (AZC)—the forerunner to AIPAC—to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The AZC was directly funded by the Israeli government, and Kennedy’s insistence on transparency alarmed Israeli officials. Consistent with long-standing U.S. policy at the time, Kennedy also urged Israel to comply with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which called for the right of return for approximately 750,000 Palestinians displaced between 1947 and 1949. U.S. pressure on this front played a key role in how Israel later recharacterized the expulsion of Palestinians, shifting its narrative to claim they had left voluntarily to avoid the legal obligations entailed by UNGA 194. Proponents of the Israeli involvement theory also note that Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy following the assassination, reversed many of his predecessor’s policies and became one of Israel’s staunchest allies in U.S. history. While this information provides a clear motive and reasonable grounds for questioning an Israeli intelligence role in the JFK assassination, there remains no conclusive evidence implicating Israel in the assassination itself. With additional files still withheld, there is potential for further revelations, but at present, the theory remains unproven. Skeptics of the Israeli angle argue that the nation’s influence in Washington during the early 1960s was marginal compared to what it would become after the 1967 Six-Day War. Even so, there is evidence to suggest that Israel held considerable sway with President Johnson—particularly in the context of the USS Liberty incident, during which Israeli forces killed 34 American sailors in a widely contested attack. Feature photo | Ben Shapiro speaks with press on the red carpet at the Turning Point USA Inaugural Eve Ball held in Washington DC on January 19, 2025. Jason Alpert-Wisnia | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Why Ben Shapiro and Pro-Israel Pundits Are Melting Down Over the JFK Files appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: National, News, American Zionist Council FARA, Ben Shapiro JFK comments, Candace Owens JFK files, Dimona nuclear reactor, Israel JFK conspiracy, JFK AIPAC connection, JFK Assassination Files, JFK assassination theories, Kennedy Israel nuclear weapons, Trump JFK document release]

— Trump Killed Public War Research. Stargate Will Make It Secret—and Far More Dangerous

 

at 3/26/25 10:58am

Days after a Pentagon spokesperson celebrated the work of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Minerva Initiative—a little-known but influential research program—was killed without fanfare. No mainstream outlet covered it. But the reasons behind its demise reveal the next frontier of American war planning: AI, surveillance, and full-spectrum social control. On March 4, chief Department of Defence spokesperson Sean Parnell took to ‘X’ to announce that Elon Musk’s notorious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was hard at work identifying tens of millions of dollars in savings to make the U.S. military “more lethal.” In addition to various DEI programs, several grants provided to universities to investigate climate change-related issues were listed for the chop. Unstated by Parnell, these efforts were funded by Minerva Initiative, a little-known Pentagon project founded in 2008. Under its auspices, the Department of Defense gave grants to researchers at U.S. universities to investigate particular topics, emphasizing social and behavioral sciences. In addition to helping D.C. military apparatchiks better understand foreign cultures and societies in their crosshairs, recent topics of interest have included climate change and “disinformation.” Minerva Initiative was launched with much initial fanfare as a public mechanism for connecting academia and government, but despite operating in the open, its activities typically generated little mainstream interest. Accordingly, no major news outlet reported when, mere days later, the Minerva Initiative was permanently axed in its entirety. It fell to the academic journal Science to break the news, its report quoting several academics—including recipients of Minerva grants—harshly condemning the move as “harmful to U.S. national security.” One warned, “Any savings will be outweighed by new gaps and blind spots in our knowledge about current and emerging threats.” Minerva Initiative’s budget was modest by Pentagon standards in August 2024, under its last funding round, $46.8 million was granted to 19 research projects. Yet, its impact was evidently seismic. “The initiative has helped build up a generation of social science researchers engaged with national security,” Science previously reported, with “many” academics in the field having “cut [their] teeth” with Minerva support. While beneficiaries may mourn its passing, Aaron Goode, host of the political podcast “American Exception” and a critic of U.S. foreign policy, offers MintPress News a less glowing appraisal: Minerva Initiative was yet another example of the U.S. national security state corrupting civil society and academia in order to maintain U.S. global dominance. It was a way to weaponize social science to evolve US battlefield tactics all in service of the grand imperial strategy of ‘full-spectrum dominance.’ This strategy has created the wealthiest and most powerful set of oligarchs in human history, killing untold millions around the world in the process.”   ‘Precarious Moments’ Goode’s view is echoed by Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21st Century Wire and a longtime analyst of military and intelligence operations. Henningsen notes the Minera Initiative’s chilling parallels with Cold War-era U.S. military research and intelligence effort Project Camelot, the codename of a lavishly-financed clandestine academic connivance launched in 1964. It gathered a diverse mix of anthropologists, economists, geographers, psychologists and sociologists to enhance the Pentagon’s ability to predict and influence social developments in foreign countries, particularly regarding counterinsurgency and intelligence operations. Henningsen explains: These types of programs are meant to provide an external academia-based, social sciences research arm for the Department of Defense, a kind of civilian bridge between government, military and academia. Minerva Initiative was just the latest attempt to outsource and steer specific types of granular research and intelligence gathering, along the lines of the type of anthropological, ethnographic and demography-based research, an approach pioneered by CIA forerunner the Office of Strategic Services, during World War II.” Project Camelot’s public exposure elicited significant concerns its research yield may have assisted U.S. covert and overt actions, including coups and invasions, corrupting purportedly independent academics in the process. It was shut down in 1965 ahead of a formal Congressional inquiry into its operations. Evidently, the Pentagon’s appetite for harnessing academic expertise for nefarious purposes was undimmed. Minerva Initiative represented a fresh opportunity to recreate Project Camelot on a grander scale, with openness serving as protection from embarrassing disclosures of covert sponsorship. Alongside benign-sounding grants for “understanding individual and team cognition in support of future space missions” and investigating “social impacts of climate change,” much of Minerva Initiative’s focused on counterinsurgency. This was both in terms of managing potential future military occupations of foreign countries in the manner of Afghanistan and Iraq, but also attempting to win the hearts and minds of target populations during and after conflicts or U.S.-fomented political upheaval. Take, for instance, a 2021 Minerva Initiative grant provided to a team of academics at the Universities of Arizona, California, Florida and Pennsylvania, managed by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. It sought “to understand how to stabilize those precarious moments when the state needs to (re)establish itself as the accepted authority, particularly on the emergence of post-conflict security structures, state reforms, alternative security structures, and citizen buy-in.” Eerily, one context in which the U.S. state itself urgently needed to “establish itself as the accepted authority” and secure “citizen buy-in” for “alternative security structures” was the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, Graphika, a social media analytics firm that has reaped millions in grants from the Pentagon and Minerva Initiative, published a report on “The COVID-19 Infodemic”. It tracked online “disinformation” and dissent around lockdowns, mask mandates, and the virus’ origins. The report noted that Graphika began collating data for the project on December 16, 2019, just four days after COVID-19 symptoms were first detected in patients at a Wuhan hospital. It was not until December 31 that year that the outbreak of this unknown and as yet unnamed ailment was first reported to the World Health Organization. This begs the obvious question of how and why the company began investigating public opposition to pandemic prevention measures widely implemented months later at such an early date.   ‘Algorithmic Personalization’ A February 7 MintPress News investigation delved into the little-acknowledged profusion of individuals and organizations in intimate proximity to the President, including members of his cabinet, with extensive financial, ideological and political interests in artificial intelligence. The Trump administration’s AI fixation is manifested publicly in Stargate, a $500 billion initiative to construct 20 large AI data centers across the U.S. by 2029, managed by a consortium of major tech firms and financial institutions. Oddly, the project dropped off the radar entirely after an initial surge of media and tech sector excitement about Stargate. Details on its progress are stubbornly unforthcoming, and the purposes for which the vast forecast investment will be put remain sketchy. Nonetheless, in a January press release hailing Stargate’s launch, consortium member OpenAI boasted the endeavor would “provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.” Notably, the Minerva Initiative awarded sizable grants to study AI and its applications. On their surface, some of these efforts seem mundane. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was given $2.1 million to develop AI tools to bolster the Pentagon’s “role as a science funder.” Meanwhile, Utah State received $1.49 million to assess the impact of AI surveillance technology on governance systems. Other Minerva-financed AI research appears considerably more sinister. In July 2020, the University of Iowa’s Initiative for Artificial Intelligence was granted an undisclosed sum over three years to investigate “the relationship between algorithmic personalization and online radicalization” and “uncover the technological, psychological, and cultural factors” that can lead individuals to adopt “extremist ideologies.” If the effort concerned public safety, this would be all well and good but its proposal document points to a far darker set of objectives. Iowa researchers surveyed politically engaged U.S. adults for a year, tracking their views on social, cultural, and political topics—and their susceptibility to conspiracy theories. This was intended to determine “psychological factors that make an individual more or less vulnerable to radicalization” and whether “algorithmic personalization” could play a role either way. “Communities vulnerable to future exposure to extremist ideologies” would also be identified. The proposal’s reference to “conspiracy theories” is ominous. The term is nebulous and highly contested so too are “extremist” and “radical.” Critics reasonably charge that these phrases are routinely employed in the mainstream to delegitimize dissenting opinions, inconvenient truths, awkward questions, and those voicing them. The U.S. government has long sought to infiltrate and subvert online spaces in the name of battling “conspiracy theories” and “extremists,” replicating historic covert state attacks on civil society and independent activists such as COINTELPRO in the process. “Minerva Initiative research projects studying the phenomenon of ‘extremism’ in and around conflict zones is ironic,” Patrick Hennigsen believes. The source of that extremism is, in most cases, more than likely the result of covert operations conceived and managed by either the U.S., U.K. or Israel governments, through the CIA, MI6 and Mossad. You can be sure the ‘fat-trimmers’ from DOGE won’t be snooping around the clandestine offices of Langley, Virginia.”   ‘Sock Puppets’ Even more troublingly, the Iowa researchers sought to “predict how people use social media” by “[seeding] online personas” “[building] automated profiles that approximate actual user behavior.” The activities of these “sock puppets” would be informed by “algorithms [incorporating] public interactions of online communities on social media platforms” and “collecting browsing data from actual members of these communities.” In other words, industrial-scale spying on sensitive private user information to create realistic online personas. It seems hardly coincidental that right around the time Iowa University’s Minerva Initiative grant was greenlit, the Pentagon began conducting wide-ranging “clandestine psychological operations” on social media, targeting the Arab and Muslim world. These efforts were highly sophisticated, employing expansive armies of bots and trolls with realistic AI-generated profile photos and accompanying ‘characters.’ In Iran, for instance, Pentagon sock puppets deployed varying narrative approaches to engender engagement and influence perceptions locally. Certain accounts accrued thousands of real-life followers. Some Pentagon-run Iranian bots took hardline positions, accusing the government of being too soft on foreign policy and too liberal at home. Others posed as women opposed to compulsory hijab-wearing and promoted anti-government protests. These accounts dabbled in non-political content, including Iranian poetry and photos of Iranian food and memes, to boost their authenticity. They also regularly engaged with Iranian users in Farsi, joking and making cultural references. It is an obvious question whether Iowa University’s Minerva efforts were ultimately concerned with assisting the Pentagon to identify ideal means of encouraging “extremist ideologies” and “radicalization” among individuals and groups in target countries to the detriment of their own governments. The researchers needn’t have been conscious confederates in this scheme. Under the CIA’s notorious MKULTRA program, unwitting academics routinely carried out seemingly innocuous research that would covertly be put to “psychological warfare purposes” markedly, often “on cultures and countries of interest to the CIA.” Reinforcing this interpretation, the online Pentagon operation, unceremoniously busted very publicly in August 2022, had all the makings of a classic “cognitive” counterinsurgency effort to win hearts and minds in target countries precisely Minerva Initiative’s preponderant beat. For decades, U.S. officials have openly spoken of war with Tehran as an inevitability and engaged in full-spectrum meddling efforts to foment insurrectionary upheaval locally. Notably, in October 2020, there was an Anglo-American coup in Kyrgyzstan, another country in the bot and troll operation’s crosshairs. The U.S. national security state’s obsessive interest in AI specifically in counterinsurgency has been clear for many years. In 2019, the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting published an academic paper on “Artificial Intelligence enhanced systems to augment High Value Target (HVT) location” when conducting such operations. Israel’s deployment of artificial intelligence during the Gaza genocide gruesomely demonstrates the technology’s mass-killing potential, which experts believe marks the beginning of a new phase of warfare entirely. Was the Minerva Initiative shut down to push Pentagon AI research further into secrecy—and profitability—via Stargate? That’s one theory. Another is that the administration wanted to remove external oversight completely. Jeffrey Kaye, an investigative journalist who has extensively documented U.S. psychological warfare operations, tells MintPress News the Initiative’s closure does not spell the end of the abuse of academia by the Department of Defense or other U.S. government agencies: Last I heard, DARPA and RAND Corporation were not shuttered. And CIA and Fort Detrick certainly still engage U.S. universities and professors for a multitude of research projects for the war industry. Minerva’s closure may send a chill through the social science portion of the academic community that supports Washington’s war drive in China and elsewhere, but I expect long-term, there will be very little change in relations between the U.S. national security state and academic world.” Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg. The post Trump Killed Public War Research. Stargate Will Make It Secret—and Far More Dangerous appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, academic surveillance programs, AI in warfare, AI-powered social control, DARPA social science, military surveillance, Minerva Initiative, MKUltra, Pentagon AI research, Stargate, Stargate AI program, Trump AI initiative, U.S. military psychological operations]

— Betar: the Far-Right Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics

 

at 3/25/25 10:25am

A far-right, pro-Israel group with a history of support for terror and genocide is working closely with the Trump administration, preparing dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestine figures it wants deported from the United States. Betar U.S. is known to have had several meetings with senior government officials and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the nationwide anti-genocide student demonstrations that began at Columbia University last year. Ross Glick, the group’s executive director until last month, noted that he met with a diverse set of influential lawmakers, including Democratic senator John Fetterman and aides to the Republican senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford, and that all supported Betar U.S.’ campaign to rid the country of thousands of “terror supporters.” Shortly after Glick’s trip to Washington, D.C., Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that promises “the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation,” and to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” Trump himself announced that Khalil’s arrest, which made worldwide headlines, was “the first of many to come.” “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote on Truth Social. The 45th and 47th president has also stated that he plans to deport “Communists” and “Marxists” from the United States, even those who are citizens. As such, this marks an escalation in government-backed suppression of dissent not seen since the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.   Carrying Out Terror, Supporting Genocide Betar U.S. describes itself as a “loud, proud, aggressive and unapologetically Zionist” movement “dedicated to defending Israels legitimacy and strengthening the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.” This includes “taking action where others won’t” – a rather ominous phrase, considering the aggressive activities of the Jewish organizations it derides as “passive” and weak. Last week, the group appeared to openly attempt to organize an assassination attempt on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “Join us to give Francesca a [pager emoji] in London on Tuesday,” it posted online, an apparent reference to the September pager attack on  Lebanon carried out by the Israeli military. The incident killed dozens of people and injured thousands more civilians, and was widely condemned – even by former CIA Director Leon Panetta – as an act of international terrorism. Last month, Betar U.S. made a similar threat against Jewish-American writer Peter Beinart. After The New York Times published his article criticizing the State of Israel, it put out a statement reading, “We urge all Jews on the Upper West Side to give Peter Beinart a [three pager emojis]. He is a traitor, a kapo, and we must oppose him.” Thus, Betar not only smeared him as a Nazi collaborator (Kapo) and called for his assassination but also appeared to reveal Beinart’s home location. A similar incident occurred to political scientist Norman Finkelstein. In an effort to intimidate him into silence, a Betar member slipped a pager into his coat pocket, filming the incident. After Finkelstein refused to stop speaking out against injustice in the Middle East, last weekend, the group attempted to break up his public event in Washington, D.C. Perhaps most outrageously, Betar has also publicly placed a bounty on the head of Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani, telling her that “You hate America, you hate Jews, and we are here and won’t be silent. $1,800 to anyone who hands that jihadi a beeper,” and later repeating the offer. After worldwide pushback, the organization has deleted its posts calling for political killings of international officials and U.S. citizens. Pretty wild how terrorists are allowed to just openly incite and incentivize acts of terrorism on this platform now. https://t.co/D9aDpMY6yB pic.twitter.com/miBCoMdBKA — Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 23, 2025 In addition, Betar has regularly attempted to intimidate or shut down movements or gatherings protesting Israeli crimes. At a student event at UCLA, Betar publicly stated, “We demand police remove these thugs now and if not we will be forced to organize groups of Jews to do so.” In January, it tried to break up a New York City vigil for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl brutally murdered by Israeli forces. Betar members filmed the event, telling attendees they were with ICE and using facial recognition technology to obtain their identities, which would subsequently be used to deport them. In recent weeks, Betar members have also chanted hate speech outside a Bangladeshi mosque in New York City and attacked people who protested the illegal sale of Occupied West Bank land at an auction in Brooklyn. That Betar is a hate group is barely in question. Even notoriously pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (an organization the FBI once noted was almost certainly being bankrolled by the Israeli government) have included it in its list of extremist hate organizations. The ADL notes that Betar uses the fascist Kahanist slogan, “For every Jew, a .22” (meaning Jews should be armed with .22 rifles) and has indicated it wishes to work with the Proud Boys, a far-right American gang. Betar frequently revels in violence against civilian populations and calls for genocide against Palestinians. “Fuck your ceasefire!!  Turn Gaza to rubble!!” they announced last month. “Betar firmly supports the plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza,” they added. In response to a post detailing the vast numbers of Palestinian babies killed since October 7, 2023, it replied, “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!” Fuck your ceasefire!! Turn Gaza to rubble!! For the Bibas family! They must go! pic.twitter.com/9T5CEDHP2y — Betar Worldwide (@Betar_USA) February 20, 2025   A Fascist Paramilitary – But Jewish Betar traces its origins back over 100 years. The group was founded by early Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky as a far-right paramilitary force, one that explicitly stood against the leftist Jewish groups who dominated at a time when “Jewish” and “socialist” were seen by many as virtually synonymous. Jabotinsky believed that establishing a state in Palestine would require the creation of what he called a “new Jew,” one that would be willing to fight and die for Zionism. To this end, Betar was established as a fighting organization and received generous funding from conservative benefactors. Jabotinsky instructed members to swear an oath to the unborn Israel: “I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan.” The creation of such a state, therefore, would require the mass extermination or expulsion of the region’s native inhabitants. Betar’s formal name was Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, named after a Jewish settler who was killed in 1920 in an early firefight with Palestinians over disputed land. It was exactly men like Trumpeldor who Jabotinsky believed were necessary in order to win, in contrast to the majority of European Jews, who he saw as passive and weak. 1920s Europe was a time of rising antisemitism, and despite their inherent anti-Jewish nature, many conservative Jews admired the discipline and organization of fascist paramilitaries such as Hitler’s Brownshirts. Betar was modeled on these groups, with Jabotinsky believing the Zionist project’s success was dependent on the establishment of such organizations. Because of their anti-communist, anti-worker outlook, conservative money flooded into Betar, helping it become one of the largest and most influential Jewish organizations by the 1930s, with membership rising to around 70,000 people. Betar leaders would go on to become key figures in Israeli politics. These included Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, as well as Benzion Netanyahu, the father of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Members of Betar attend a summer youth camp in the Polish town Zakopane in 1935. Photo | Public Domain While this depiction of Betar as a fascist terrorist group might sound biased or one-sided, much of this information comes directly from the organization itself. On its official website’s “Our History” section, Betar writes (emphasis added): Betar thus became an incubator for the development of right-wing Zionist ideas and its supporters were sometimes referred to as “Jewish Fascists.” In Palestine, Betar members facilitated illegal Jewish immigration and were active instigators of disturbances and violence, frequently bombing Arab civilian areas in response to attacks and waging guerilla [sic] warfare against the British.” Thus, the organization does not shy away from the fascism label, and it proudly notes that it “frequently” carried out terror operations against Arab civilians in Palestine. (At some point in the past week, after it began receiving increased scrutiny for its connections to the Trump administration, Betar has removed both the “fascist” moniker and the boast about bombing Arabs, but the original page can still be viewed via the Internet Archive. Since October 7, 2023, Betar has greatly upped its presence in the United States, thanks to far-right Israeli-American businessman Ronn Torossian and Executive Director Ross Glick. In July 2024, it successfully applied for tax-exempt nonprofit status, meaning it is classified by the government as a charity. “Since our revival in 2024, Betar has made a powerful impact across the U.S. and is just getting started. We are recruiting, developing, and empowering Jews to become unapologetic Zionist leaders—defending Israel on campuses, in communities, and across all platforms,” Betar writes. Yet an investigation by The Electronic Intifada suggests that Betar might have been illegally fundraising. The same report notes that Glick has faced serious allegations of sex crimes. In 2019, his former girlfriend found nude images of herself posted on her company’s official Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Glick was arrested and charged with unlawful use of a computer and unlawfully posting the lewd pictures. He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment, a violation, and paid a fine. Commentators across the political spectrum agree that the Trump administration is pushing the United States in a rightward direction, in the process running roughshod over constitutional protections and guarantees. In doing so, they have found allies in many controversial groups. That such a small and new movement like Betar U.S. already enjoys such influence within the White House has already raised eyebrows. And given Israel’s determination to continue its genocidal campaigns against its neighbors – and Trump’s limitless support for its ally – it appears likely that Betar’s power is expected to grow under the current administration. If this is the case, that is bad news for those who value the right to speak freely and to protest. It is therefore crucial that this group be understood and scrutinized rather than be allowed to operate in the shadows behind closed doors. Feature photo | Illustrative photo | A rally believed to be attended by Betar members in Paris, February 9, 2025 | Credit: Cesar Vilette | Ola News | Sipa via AP Images Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post Betar: the Far-Right Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israels Critics appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, Alan MacLeod investigation, Betar hate group, Betar US, campus activism crackdown, far-right Zionist groups, Mahmoud Khalil deportation, pro-Israel extremism, pro-Palestine repression, Trump anti-Palestinian crackdown, Trump executive order 2025]

— Damascus Targets All but Israel as Border Crisis Deepens

 

at 3/21/25 1:47pm

Since the seizure of Damascus by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Dec. 8, 2024, thousands of Syrians have been killed across the country. Instead of confronting Israeli aggression and further land grabs in the nation’s south, Syria’s de facto President, Ahmed al-Shara’a, has directed his fire at Lebanon instead. On March 17, fighters affiliated with the new Syrian security forces of HTS crossed into the Lebanese border town of al-Qasr, three of whom were captured by a local clan. News quickly spread that two of the militants were executed and a third seriously injured, prompting Syria’s leadership to order shelling and a military buildup on its side of the border. In retaliation, the Lebanese army deployed and responded in kind. Saudi state-funded media outlets Al Arabiya and Al Hadathq quickly began promoting the claim that Hezbollah fighters had crossed the Syrian border, captured three members of Syria’s security forces and stoned them to death. This claim soon became the semi-official narrative out of Damascus. Israeli media outlets echoed the claim, citing the same Riyadh-funded sources and framing the events on the Lebanon-Syria border as clashes between Hezbollah and the Syrian army. While no evidence exists to support these allegations, Hezbollah denied any involvement in what would be a counterintuitive operation that only serves to hinder its rearmament. HTS militants in Syria are launching rockets and firing heavy machine guns at Lebanese border towns, targeting areas with no Hezbollah presence—only Lebanese Army positions and civilian homes. This reckless aggression threatens Lebanon’s sovereignty and the safety of its… pic.twitter.com/DguzhFlb4M — Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) March 17, 2025 That same day, HTS cross-border fire killed seven Lebanese citizens. It injured another 36 in the village of Hosh al-Sayyed Ali, located in the Hermel-Baalbek governorate and populated by Shia Muslims. Following a two-day exchange of fire—between the Lebanese army and local clans on one side and HTS on the other—a truce was reached. However, Syrian fighters again crossed the border, ransacking and occupying homes inside Lebanon. These border clashes have been routine since the fall of the former Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, with the first exchange of fire occurring between the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and HTS. A Lebanese army soldier was injured on Dec. 26 when Syrian militants opened fire on a patrol in the Wadi al-Aswad area. Since then, militants affiliated with the Syrian security forces have routinely crossed into Lebanon and opened fire on predominantly Shia villages, prompting Lebanese clans to engage and expel them. This also comes against the backdrop of ongoing sectarian bloodshed across the country—the most severe case occurring along the Syrian coast, where more than 1,000 civilians, mainly from the Alawite minority group, were reportedly killed within 72 hours, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The UK-based SOHR, historically aligned with the Syrian opposition to Assad, has nonetheless provided the most detailed lists of names for the thousands of Syrians killed from all groups across the country in recent months. On a daily basis, there is a steady stream of reports from Syria of field executions committed against former Syrian army officers who were supposed to have been granted amnesty by the new authorities, as well as indiscriminate gunfire injuring children in the Idlib province. The new HTS-led Syrian security forces have failed to halt the sectarian killings, kidnappings and blood feuds—often participating in the violence themselves. Instead of resisting the ongoing Israeli occupation of southern Syria, Damascus has turned its guns on dissidents, disgruntled minority groups and Lebanese border villages while boasting about preventing weapons from reaching Hezbollah—to the great delight of the Israeli media. BREAKING: HTS and Israel are targeting Lebanon simultaneously. Video footage shows HTS forces targeting border towns in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley from the Syrian city of Al-Qusayr. At least one child has been killed and four others have been injured in the HTS attack. pic.twitter.com/pPdfKp1QVq — red. (@redstreamnet) March 16, 2025 Simultaneously, as HTS mobilized and carried out repeated rocket attacks in the Beka’a Valley, Israeli airstrikes continued to target Lebanese territory. In addition, a series of Israeli raids in the southern Syrian city of Dara’a killed two civilians and injured dozens more, provoking no response from the authorities in Damascus. Feature photo | Syrian troops maneuver in the village of Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali, located 2 km (1.24 miles) from the Lebanon border, Syria, March 17, 2025. Omar Albam | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Damascus Targets All but Israel as Border Crisis Deepens appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Ahmed al-Shara’a, Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, HTS, Israeli airstrikes, Lebanon border clashes, Middle East conflict, Syria, Syrian civil war, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights]

— Fighting For Empire: Conor McGregor’s Far-Right Makeover

 

at 3/20/25 10:41am

Conor McGregor was the Trump administration’s guest of honor at the White House St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. The Irish mixed martial arts champion used the opportunity to promote right-wing, anti-immigration policies for his homeland. “It’s about time that America is made aware of what’s going on in Ireland. What is going on in Ireland is a travesty. Our government is the government of zero action with zero accountability,” he said, adding that the country was being overrun by violent illegal immigrants. “In 10 years, Dublin city center has gone from one of the safest cities in Europe to one of the most dangerous!” he claimed. McGregor, an aspiring politician, clearly came to Washington, D.C., to seek the endorsement of the 45th and 47th president, describing him as “inspiring.” The two chatted in front of a map identifying, in overly large letters, the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” He also laid out a plan to make Ireland great again, one which largely revolved around the “mass deportation of dangerous, criminal, and radicalized imports,” who, he alleged, “are a strain on our welfare system” and have “made no effort to secure employment or assimilate with Irish culture and values.” Clearly, then, the celebrity fighter is positioning himself as a leader in the emerging far-right, anti-immigration movement in Europe and has even announced his intention to run for president of Ireland this year. “I am the only logical choice. 2025 is coming,” he said in September. He has already received the endorsement of several high-profile right-wing figures, including Andrew Tate and Elon Musk. A 2023 poll found, however, that only 8% of Irish voters would cast a ballot for him. Ad hominem style attacks against me coming in hot by Irelands government elite. Classic, and glaringly obvious to everyone, deflection tactics. What is your response / plan of action to the issues I raised? Ireland wants to know. America wants to see! Chip,chop now… pic.twitter.com/EPdsEFnGs9 — Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) March 19, 2025   A History of Racism and Violence Just a few days before the poll was taken, McGregor had helped incite an Islamophobic riot in Dublin. After an Algerian-born Muslim man nonfatally stabbed four people (including three children), a massive, racist mob swept through Ireland’s capital, looting shops, destroying buses and cars, and assaulting more than 60 police officers. McGregor appeared to endorse the violence. “Ireland, we are at war,” he declared to his tens of millions of followers. “There is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place,” he said as Dublin burned. “Make change or make way. Ireland for the victory,” he added. He also took aim at the government, who, he claimed, was downplaying the threat of the Islamization of Ireland. “The Irish PM hates the Irish… The current Irish government clearly cares more about praise from woke media than their own people,” he said. His comments were investigated by the police for incitement to violence. This was not the first time the fighter had attacked the government. Indeed, that same week, he labeled Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar a “disgrace” for failing to adequately condemn Hamas. Reacting to the news of the release of Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand, Varadkar tweeted, “This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.” McGregor, however, was incensed by the message. “She was abducted by an evil terrorist organization,” he replied. “What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children. You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland, NOT ONE PAPER HAD IT ON THEIR FRONT COVER. We will not forget,” he added, referencing the previous Dublin stabbing incident. More recently, he called for protestors demonstrating against Israel’s continuing atrocities to be arrested, noting that some of them were waving Hezbollah flags. “To raise the flag of a terrorist organization on Irish soil must become a major crime in the eyes of our state. It will not be tolerated nor lauded!  Raise a country flag, off your own person, and off of government buildings, yes, no problem. Raise the flag of radicalized terror organizations off of the same.. Big problem,” he wrote, in characteristically poor English. While his pro-Israel stances have earned him plaudits from far-right groups and pro-Israel organizations such as Stop Antisemitism, it has increasingly alienated him from his compatriots, who have come out in strong support of Palestinian liberation. “Conor McGregor has never been elected to anything, he doesn’t represent the Irish people. In fact, we’re all pretty embarrassed by him,” said Colum Eastwood, MP. Last week, McGregor was loudly booed at a Limp Bizkit concert in Dublin. McGregor’s athletic career was littered with racist incidents. In 2015, while fighting against a Brazilian opponent, he assumed the personality of a colonialist: “I own this town. I own Rio de Janeiro. I would invade his favela on horseback, and kill anyone not fit to work,” he said. “But we are in a new time,” he lamented, “so I’ll whoop his ass in July.” Two years later, he told his Black opponent, Floyd Mayweather, to “dance for me, boy” and described his Black bodyguards as “monkeys.” And in 2018, he provocatively offered alcohol to his opponent Khabib Nurmagomedov, a devout Muslim, and called his manager, Ali Abdelaziz, a “mad terrorist.” If Dublin truly is a more dangerous place than it was ten years ago, as McGregor claims, the Irishman himself has played a significant role in its transformation. In 2019, he was convicted of sucker-punching an elderly man in a city bar. And in November, a jury awarded over $250,000 to a woman who said he raped her. The woman in question needed surgery to remove her tampon after the rape.   Ireland Resists the Far-Right Surge McGregor’s antics and actions have earned him a massive online following but have cost him the respect of much of his country. Sponsors have pulled out of deals with the star, and gyms across Ireland have painted over murals depicting him as somebody to look up to. “The one thing that unifies Irish people more than anything else is their hatred for Conor McGregor,” Irish journalist Seán Hickey noted. Although geographically situated in Western Europe, Ireland’s history is that of a colonized nation rather than a colonizer, making it almost unique among its neighbors. As such, the Irish public has always sympathized with the underdog. On Palestine, the country has remained steadfast in its opposition to Israeli actions. Far-right, anti-immigration politics has achieved far less of a foothold on the Emerald Isle than in other parts of Europe. Like McGregor, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) – the body that oversees big-money mixed martial arts contests – has strongly aligned itself with the emerging global far-right movement. UFC CEO Dana White is one of Trump’s most vocal supporters and closest advisors. Recently, Trump appointed former UFC spokesperson Steven Cheung as his new White House Communications Director. One exception to this is UFC champion Nurmagomedov, who defeated McGregor in 2018. At a packed UFC event in January, he told Irish fans: Don’t forget: Ireland is the biggest supporter in the world for Palestine. Don’t forget about this. We love you guys, your government, everybody…We love you guys, because you guys support our brothers in Palestine.” In many ways, then, Nurmagomedov represents the people of Ireland far better than the racist, xenophobic hatred that McGregor and his ilk are trying to sell to the country. Feature photo | White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens as UFC fighter Conor McGregor speaks with reporters in the briefing room of the White House, March 17, 2025, in Washington. Evan Vucci | AP Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post Fighting For Empire: Conor McGregor’s Far-Right Makeover appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Andrew Tate Elon Musk endorsement, Conor McGregor far-right, Conor McGregor Israel support, Conor McGregor presidential campaign, Conor McGregor racism UFC, Dublin Islamophobic riot, Ireland anti-immigration politics, Irish politics Palestine solidarity, Khabib Nurmagomedov Palestine, UFC Dana White Trump]

— Trump’s Attacks on Yemen Will Cost US Taxpayers Billions​

 

at 3/20/25 9:55am

While U.S. President Donald Trump announces that Yemen’s Ansar Allah will be “completely annihilated,” he is racking up costs for the American taxpayer, using a strategy that failed under the Biden administration for more than a year. Instead of pressuring Israel to allow aid to reach Gaza, the White House has declared war. In October 2023, the Ansar Allah-led Yemeni government in Sana’a decided to intervene directly in the conflict between Gaza and Israel, firing more than 100 missiles and drones at the port of Eilat, many of which were shot down by U.S. naval vessels. By November, Yemen declared it would impose a blockade on all Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea. Ansar Allah made it clear it would continue to take action against Israel until a ceasefire was implemented in Gaza, justifying its intervention on humanitarian grounds, claiming an obligation under the Genocide Convention to act. The U.S., under the Biden administration, then decided to attack Yemen directly despite no immediate threat to American interests or vessels. Then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational naval mission that failed to achieve any of its objectives and was conducted primarily in the interest of Israel. The costs of the mission ran into the hundreds of billions, while U.S. taxpayers suffered at least billions in losses with no positive outcomes to show for it. Through 2024 alone, Ansar Allah’s blockade in the Red Sea cost more than $200 billion. Although the U.S. and its British allies repeatedly launched airstrikes on positions across Yemen, they only succeeded in extending the blockade in the Red Sea to their own vessels instead of just Israel’s. Trump began launching airstrikes across Yemen on March 15, which were deadlier to the country’s civilian population than comparable assaults during the Biden administration. Yet, there are no objective indicators that a favorable result has been achieved. All governorates in Yemen under Sanaas control have been bombed, except for Amran Governorate. This man from Amran is deeply upset and feels that his governorate has left alone , so he asked that this message be delivered to Trump pic.twitter.com/QNIsxGwTCX — Ahmed Hassan أحمد حسن زيد (@Ahmed_hassan_za) March 19, 2025 Similar hyperbole that seeks to exaggerate the results of airstrikes was used by Pentagon officials in January 2024, after the former U.S. president ordered a large-scale bombing campaign. We feel very confident about where our ammunition struck, remarked Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the Joint Staffs director for operations at the time. Offering no proof of success, Trump is following in the footsteps of the Biden administration. In the first wave of Trump’s attacks against Yemen, the U.S. used RGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, estimated to cost between $1.4 million and $2 million per unit. In 2018, when Trump launched an attack on Syria with 66 Tomahawk cruise missiles, the estimated cost for munitions alone exceeded $92.4 million. The munitions used by the U.S. Navy to shoot down Yemen’s missiles and drones cost between $1 million and $4.3 million each, provoking Department of Defense officials to voice their discontent. “That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” said Mick Mulroy, a former Defense Department official, in December 2023. A former U.S. naval officer told MintPress News that the cost of Operation Prosperity Guardian was roughly $600 million per month. This appears to be a much more intense and costly operation, so without all the specifics, it’s hard to predict how much this will cost, the officer said. Operating an aircraft carrier alone is estimated to cost between $6 million and $8 million per day. In early 2024, Politico reported worrying signs of an overburdened U.S. Navy struggling to deploy replacement ships to the West Asia region. In addition, Yemen’s air defense units continue to shoot down American drones. So far, Ansar Allah has downed 16 MQ-9 UAVs, each valued at $33 million, costing the U.S. a total of $528 million. Despite the Biden administration deciding to attack Yemen on Israel’s behalf, now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio penned an op-ed last year complaining that the strategy was not aggressive enough. Under the Democratic administration, Ansar Allah was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” organization, a label that Trump replaced with the harsher “Foreign Terrorist Organization” designation upon taking office. On Jan. 19, upon the implementation of a ceasefire in Gaza, Yemen ceased all offensive operations and ended its blockade in the Red Sea. However, just over two weeks ago, Israel violated the terms of the ceasefire and blocked all aid from entering the Gaza Strip, prompting Ansar Allah to issue a four-day deadline for allowing aid before restarting its blockade on Israeli shipping. The immense cost to U.S. taxpayers of Trump’s assault on Yemen, which promises no results and primarily serves Israel’s interests, could easily reach the tens of billions at the current pace, especially considering the intensity of operations is much greater than under his predecessor. All of this could have been avoided had Washington pressured Tel Aviv to allow humanitarian goods to enter Gaza. Feature photo | Locals inspect the site of an overnight U.S. airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, March 20, 2025. Photo | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post Trumps Attacks on Yemen Will Cost US Taxpayers Billions​ appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: News, Ansar Allah Red Sea blockade, Gaza ceasefire violations, Marco Rubio Yemen policy, Operation Prosperity Guardian costs, Tomahawk missile expenses, Trump Yemen airstrikes, U.S. military aid Israel, U.S. Navy drone losses, U.S. taxpayer burden Yemen, Yemen humanitarian intervention]

— New Conservative Argument: Cut US Aid to Protect Israel’s Reputation

 

at 3/18/25 8:44am

In the early hours of March 18, 2025, Israeli airstrikes shattered a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, resulting in over 400 Palestinian deaths, including many children. This tragic escalation will likely intensify global scrutiny of U.S. military aid to Israel, especially as conservative voices within the United States are already beginning to question the longstanding policy of unconditional support.​ The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank renowned for its role in crafting Project 2025, recently published a report titled From Special Relationship to Strategic Partnership, 2029–2047. The report advocates for a phased reduction in American military assistance to Israel, citing the nations economic and military self-reliance.​ This proposal was swiftly condemned by the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a leading pro-Israel lobbying organization. In a statement, DMFI asserted, This proposal represents a betrayal of Americas longstanding, mutually beneficial commitment to Israels security that has been a cornerstone of U.S.-Israel relations for more than 75 years.​ House Democrat Steny Hoyer, a staunch advocate for Israel, also criticized the report, labeling it both wrong and dangerous. Hoyer, who has received at least $1.82 million from pro-Israel donors, has been instrumental in securing substantial taxpayer-funded aid for Israel. In November 2023, he issued a press release demanding that Congress Must Immediately and Unconditionally Fund Israel Aid—a demand that was subsequently met.​ To be clear @RepStenyHoyer considers a plan giving Israel $76B+ in direct aid alone through 2047—the longest, most generous aid package in U.S. history—cutting off military assistance and a wrong and dangerous move that would endanger Israel, America, and the entire region. https://t.co/yrqzOB1rU1 — The United States of Israel (@IsraeliLobby) March 13, 2025 Despite its new stance on aid, the Heritage Foundation has historically been a strong supporter of Israel. The think tank has collaborated with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to counter criticism of Israel on U.S. college campuses and was instrumental in developing Project Esther, a strategy aimed at curbing criticism of Israel on college campuses. The Trump administration maintains a close relationship with Heritage, implementing many of its proposals since returning to power. However, this recent stance on aid to Israel follows a notable visit to Washington by Israeli lawmaker Amit Halevi, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud Party.​ During his 10-day visit, Halevi advocated for reducing U.S. military aid, arguing that such assistance portrays Israel as weak and overly dependent. He met with Heritage leadership accompanied by Gideon Israel, head of the Jerusalem-Washington Center, an organization that advises Republican lawmakers on Israel policy.​ While Democratic-aligned pro-Israel groups like DMFI have vocally opposed the Heritage Foundations report, Republican-aligned elements of the Israel Lobby have remained notably silent. This silence suggests a potential divide centered around Netanyahus leadership, with some Israeli conservatives, including Halevi, acknowledging that overreliance on U.S. aid may harm Israels global image.​ Israeli warplanes are conducting airstrikes on civilian homes and IDP camps in Gaza, using U.S.-made bombs, resulting in the deaths of women and children as they sleep. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has said at least 232 people were martyred in the wave of Israeli… pic.twitter.com/saWUjAqPpc — INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) March 18, 2025 The debate over U.S. military assistance to Israel has also attracted attention from fiscal conservatives. Congressman Thomas Massie, the sole Republican to vote against a $14 billion Israel aid package in 2023, has consistently advocated for ending foreign aid across the board. He recently reiterated his stance: We should not be borrowing money from China to send it to other countries.​ Massies views resonate with a growing segment of right-wing populists who question Americas financial commitments abroad. Recent polling indicates that younger Republican voters are increasingly skeptical of unconditional military aid to Israel.​ Despite this emerging skepticism, President Trump has thus far dismissed Heritages recommendations. Since resuming office, he has approved $12 billion in military assistance to Israel, including a $4 billion package expedited by bypassing Congress. Concurrently, the U.S. has reduced foreign aid to numerous other allies, including the Lebanese military and key West Asian partners, while maintaining unwavering support to cover Israels financial needs. While their goals are likely not benevolent, the Heritage Foundations report represents one of the first significant conservative challenges to Washingtons longstanding pro-Israel stance. As right-wing disapproval of foreign aid grows, and with a notable shift in American public opinion—especially among younger Republicans— previously unassailable U.S. aid to Israel may finally face scrutiny.​ Feature photo | People gather in the yard of the Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital, to mourn and bid farewell to the bodies of victims killed in Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, on March 18, 2025. Majdi Fathi | AP Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 The post New Conservative Argument: Cut US Aid to Protect Israels Reputation appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, News, Amit Halevi Likud Party, Democratic Majority for Israel criticism, fiscal conservatives foreign aid, Heritage Foundation Israel aid, Project 2025 Israel policy, Steny Hoyer pro-Israel lobbying, Trump administration Israel funding, U.S. military aid reduction, U.S.-Israel strategic partnership, younger Republicans Israel skepticism]

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