Tag: israel

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Epstein Files Likely Destroyed, Claims Israel and UK Still Hold Remaining Evidence — Believes ‘He Didn’t Kill Himself’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) drops a bombshell about the Epstein files during an interview with far-left blowhard Cenk Uygur on his show The Young Turks.

Greene raised serious questions about the fate of the elusive Jeffrey Epstein files and the decades-long cover-up protecting the powerful elite.

Greene didn’t mince words when asked about the Epstein case — asserting that the vast majority of the evidence has likely been destroyed and suggesting that foreign governments like Israel and the United Kingdom may be sitting on crucial information.

Cenk Uygur: Okay, so, one more thing here, along these lines — Epstein files. How disappointed are you that they have not come out yet? And do you have a theory as to why they haven’t?

Rep. MTG: Yeah, I’m glad you asked me about that. You know what I’ve been saying for quite a few years now — I guarantee you, most of that information has already been destroyed. I can’t imagine that it still exists. And I would like—of course, we want to see all the information—but I just think it’s been destroyed. That’s my own personal opinion. But I think there are other foreign countries that probably have information on that as well, and it would be nice if they would release the information that they have.

Cenk Uygur: Oh, that’s interesting. Which foreign countries do you think might have information about that?

Rep. MTG: I would guess some of our greatest allies. Israel probably has information there. I would not be surprised at all if they did. The UK, I bet, would have information. I’m not sure who else, but I would suspect those countries.

Cenk Uygur: Are you disappointed that the Trump administration has not put it out yet?

Rep. MTG: I’m disappointed that many administrations haven’t put it out. The Biden administration should have put it out. I think a lot of people should have put it out. But again, I’ll go back to this: I—I have a hard time believing that it all still is there.

Cenk Uygur: Yeah. Any theories on what happened?

Rep. MTG: I have no idea. I couldn’t even tell you. Do I think he committed suicide? Nope. I don’t think so. But again, that’s just my opinion.

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Rumors Swirl After Prediction That Trump Will Recognize Palestinian State, Fundamentally Change Balance of Power in Middle East

Could President Donald Trump officially recognize Palestine as an independent state on his trip to the Middle East? That’s what some analysts are predicting as a lively debate rages in the Arab media sphere over just how far the U.S. president will go while abroad.

There had already been some writing on the wall that Trump’s Middle East tour — which includes visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — was not coming in the midst of a period of unalloyed harmony between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hebrew-language Israeli media reported Thursday that “the U.S. president is disappointed with Prime Minister Netanyahu” after he pressured now-former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to sign off on an all-out military action by Israel against Iran.

The Washington Post also reported that, prior to a White House meeting between Trump and Netanyahu in March, Waltz looked to be “engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran,” something Trump opposed.

A source said Waltz “wanted to take U.S. policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the U.S. hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution … It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it.”

That makes many wonder if Trump will use the occasion to join the 147 U.N. members which consider Palestine to be a legitimate state, albeit with some conditions.

The closest report we’ve seen to something like this comes from an unnamed “Gulf diplomatic source” who talked anonymously with American-based Middle East-centric news outlet The Media Line — who said he felt confident in predicting that outcome.

“President Donald Trump will issue a declaration regarding the State of Palestine and American recognition of it, and that there will be the establishment of a Palestinian state without the presence of Hamas,” he said in an article published Friday evening.

“If an announcement of American recognition of the state of Palestine is made, it will be the most important declaration that will change the balance of power in the Middle East, and more countries will join the Abraham Accords.”

Other sources disagreed — including a former Gulf diplomat willing to go on record, unlike the anonymous source predicting U.S. endorsement of Palestinian statehood.

Ahmed Al-Ibrahim, a former diplomat, said he thought this would be about tariffs and trade.

“I don’t expect it to be about Palestine,” the source said.

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Israeli Government Approves Plan for Full Military Occupation of Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said once the new offensive begins, it will not end until the Strip is ‘conquered’

The Israeli government has approved plans to expand the genocidal war on Gaza that Israeli officials say will lead to the full Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territory.

The plan involves capturing more territory in Gaza, expanding the so-called “buffer zone” where the IDF has demolished virtually every structure, and forcibly displacing Palestinian civilians to move them all to a small area of southern Gaza.

Axios later reported that the Israeli plan involves flattening every single building that remains in Gaza, forcing the entire civilian population into one single area, and pressuring them to leave as part of an ethnic cleansing plan, though it’s unclear what countries are willing to take them.

An Israeli official told Haaretz that the plan is different from previous Israeli military operations because it will lead to “the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel is “finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip” and that it was “no longer afraid of the word ‘occupation.’”

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Dying in ‘Hell’: The fate of Palestinian medics jailed by Israel

The head of orthopaedics at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital was working at the al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in December when he and other medics were arrested by the Israeli army for, they said, “national security reasons”.

Four months later, Ofer Prison guards dragged Al-Bursh and dumped him in the prison yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand, according to a statement provided by Israeli human rights organisation, HaMoked.

Recognising him, some of the other prisoners carried Al-Bursh to a nearby room, and he died moments later.

Dr Al-Bursh had become a fixture in the lives of many through the video diaries he posted before his arrest.

His videos showed him with his colleagues, digging mass graves in the al-Shifa yard to bury people because Israel would not let their bodies be taken to a cemetery, operating on the injured and the dying with little or no equipment, and waiting together for the Israeli assault on a hospital where thousands had sought safety.

The assault came in mid-November when, in scenes captured by Dr Al-Bursh, the Israeli army ordered al-Shifa, its patients, staff and approximately 50,000 displaced people sheltering in the compound to vacate.

Dr Al-Bursh made his way to the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza where he worked until that too came under fire in November and he moved to Al-Awda Hospital.

There he was arrested and entered a prison system that Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem describes as “Hell”.

Israel often detains healthcare workers like Dr Al-Bursh, holding them in horrific conditions for “investigation”.

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Controversial Aid Plan For Gaza Revealed In New Document, Includes American CEOs & Banks

The organization set to administer Israel’s controversial plan to take control of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza will use private contractors to secure hubs where Palestinians will receive 1,750 kcal meals that will cost donors a little more than a dollar each.

Details about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) strategy for Gaza are laid out in a 14-page document circulating amongst aid organizations working on Gaza and seen by Middle East Eye.

The hitherto unknown nonprofit, which was registered in Switzerland in February, has been touted as the umbrella body that will seemingly take over humanitarian operations in Gaza while inviting NGOs to “take advantage” of its “logistics, security and transparency frameworks”.

The pitch-like document offers detailed information about how the foundation, largely led by Americans and involving a mix of disaster relief, security and financial experts, will operate and how it is organized, though some details appear yet to be finalized. The document is undated.

The new details have emerged as UN agencies and international aid organizations, which have roundly rejected the plan that GHF would administer, reportedly coming under pressure from the US government to participate. Earlier this week, Amnesty Switzerland raised concerns that, based on the information available, GHF could be risking contributing to international crimes through its services. 

The Israeli operation appears to already be underway. Israel security cabinet approved its plan on Sunday with satellite evidence emerging on Wednesday suggesting that work has already begun to build the humanitarian hubs from which aid will be distributed.

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I’m an Israeli professor. Why is my work in Harvard’s antisemitism report?

When I first saw the Harvard report on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, I didn’t expect to find myself in it. But I did, albeit without my name, my scholarship, or even my identity as a Jewish Israeli academic being acknowledged.

The report was compiled and published in response to widespread pressure from donors and pro-Israel advocacy groups. It claims to document a crisis of antisemitism on campus. But what it actually reveals is Harvard’s willingness to redefine Jewish identity in narrow, ideological terms: to exclude and erase Jews who dissent from Zionism.

I know this because I am one of them. For several years, I taught in the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative (RCPI) at Harvard Divinity School. Our program approached peacebuilding through deep engagement with histories of structural violence and power, with Palestine/Israel as our central case study. Our students read widely, traveled to the region, and met with a range of voices – including Jewish Israeli veterans from Breaking the Silence, Palestinian artists resisting cultural erasure, and Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jewish activists challenging racism within Israeli society.

It was, by design, intellectually and politically challenging. It exposed students to the complexity of the region and the diverse, often conflicting, ways Jews and Palestinians narrate their pasts and imagine their futures.

But according to the authors of Harvard’s report, this was not legitimate scholarship nor responsible pedagogy; it was, essentially, simply antisemitic ideological indoctrination.

How the report supposedly arrives at and justifies such characterizations of our program illustrates how slanderous distortions are routinely deployed to suppress the arguments and identities of ‘the wrong kind’ of Jews. The report quotes from public events we hosted as part of RCPI, including a webinar on my book about American Jewish activists who engage in Palestinian solidarity work because of—not in spite of—their Jewish identity. Rabbi Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist rabbi and founder of Tzedek Chicago, and Dr Sara Roy, a distinguished scholar of Palestine and daughter of Holocaust survivors, offered thoughtful responses.

Yet the report reduced that event to a vague description of “one speaker” praising “Jewish pro-Palestinian activists,” ignoring that the speaker was me—a Jewish Israeli professor—and that my interlocutors were also Jewish. Rosen’s reflections on his disillusionment with Zionism were dismissed as a “conversion narrative,” as if spiritual or ethical evolution were evidence of antisemitism.

In another webinar I moderated, Rosen and the Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin debated the place of Zionism in synagogue liturgy. Boyarin disagreed with Rosen’s liturgical revisions but affirmed their shared ethical commitments. The report cherry-picked Boyarin’s comment—“I am deeply in sympathy with your political and ethical positions”—to suggest the event lacked “viewpoint diversity.” The irony is hard to miss: a conversation between three Jews, from very different traditions, becomes evidence not of diversity, but of its absence.

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REPORT: Israeli Officials “Shocked” over Trump’s Houthi Truce – Trump Reportedly Upset with Netanyahu for Trying to Get U.S. involved in Military Conflict with Iran Ahead of Nuclear Talks and Visit to Middle East

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are seemingly at odds amid a U.S. truce with Houthis in Yemen and the President seeking to peacefully negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran without plunging the United States into another endless war. 

According to Axios, Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in private on Thursday to discuss upcoming nuclear talks with Iran and Israel’s Gaza campaign. Dremer also met with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on Monday, as Steve Witkoff is expected to hold nuclear talks with Iran on Sunday. Trump reportedly does not plan to visit Israel despite efforts by Israeli officials to host Trump for a visit.

This comes as the U.S. entered a cease-fire with the Houthis this week after stopping their threat against global shipping in the Red Sea and deterring Iranian lethal support to the Houthis. This development left Israeli officials “shocked,” according to an unnamed Israeli official.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump announced on Tuesday that the U.S. “will stop the bombing” against the Houthis in Yemen after the Houthis told the U.S. that “they don’t want to fight anymore,” said Trump. Per the truce, neither side will attack the other, including U.S. vessels in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait.

He further teased a major announcement that he will make before he departs for the Middle East next week. “We’re gonna have a very, very big announcement to make, like, as big as it gets,” the President said.

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‘Gideon’s Chariots’ Aim to Finalize the Genocide

Drunk on impunity, Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing and permanent recolonization of Gaza. 

Israel uses the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction — this, even as many of the Palestinian children who’ve somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. “We are complicit,” says one angry, grieving doctor. “It is an abomination.”

Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, “We are occupying Gaza to stay.”

Unanimously approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Security Cabinet, the new “conquering of Gaza” formalizes Israel’s plan for the indefinite occupation, forced expulsion and incorporation into “sanitized” Israeli zones of an already long-besieged civilian population “for its own protection.”

The expansion of an onslaught that has left more than 185,000 Gazans dead, wounded or missing [according to a 2024 study by The Lancet] and millions homeless, hungry, maimed and traumatized is being ludicrously framed as a final mission to dismantle Hamas and retrieve hostages, even though Israel repeatedly failed at each before breaking a ceasefire that would have accomplished both.

“Gideon’s Chariots will begin with great force and will not end until all its objectives are achieved,” Israel thundered, again virtually ignoring the fact that permanent occupation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing violate international law.

“No more going in and out – this is a war for victory,” said apartheid Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who urged Israelis embrace, not fear the word “occupation … A people that wants to live must occupy its land.”

But the operation’s name, Gideon’s Chariots, Merkavot Gideon, invokes the righteous Biblical warrior who led a chosen few to annihilate the Midianites, an ancient Arabian peninsula tribe. The name “layers this symbolism with menace,” [as the staff of The New Arab write], blending the concepts of divine vengeance with state-sanctioned ethnic violence, the “mythic instruments of war (with) the Israeli Merkava tanks that have long razed homes and lives in Gaza and the West Bank.”

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Trump ‘losing patience’ with Netanyahu, advances US plans without Israeli involvement: Report

US President Donald Trump has lost patience with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will not wait any longer for Israel before advancing initiatives in West Asia, Israel Hayom reported on 8 May.

According to two senior sources in the US President’s entourage, Trump is interested in making decisions that he believes will advance US interests, particularly regarding Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, without waiting for approval from Netanyahu.

Regarding a potential US–Israeli agreement with Saudi Arabia, Trump believes Netanyahu is delaying making the necessary decisions. The president is not willing to wait until Israel does what is expected of it and will move forward without it.

During the presidency of Joe Biden, the US and Israel were involved in talks with Saudi Arabia that would see Washington enter a defense pact with the kingdom, provide it with civilian nuclear technology, and sell it advanced weapons – all in exchange for normalization with Israel.

As part of any agreement to normalize relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia expects an end to the war in Gaza and an Israeli declaration of a “horizon for a Palestinian state.”

However, senior ministers in Israel’s current government have vowed to never allow a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, while promising to “destroy” Gaza, ethnically cleanse its population under the pretext of promoting “voluntary migration,” and to build Jewish settlements there.

The sources added that Trump was furious at what he saw as an attempt by Netanyahu to use US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who has since been dismissed from his position, to push for US military action in Iran.

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Syrian officials visited Israel for secret security talks: Report

Syrian officials visited Israel in April to meet with Israeli defense officials after Tel Aviv opened a direct line of communication with Damascus, Haaretz reported on 8 May, citing Syrian sources.

According to one source speaking with the Hebrew daily, a Syrian delegation, reportedly composed of officials from the Quneitra province and one senior defense official, secretly visited Israel for several days at the end of April.

Syria’s government is led by former Al-Qaeda in Iraq commander Ahmad al-Sharaa. Militants from the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), toppled the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December.

The Israeli military supported HTS, at the time known as the Nusra Front, during the CIA-backed covert war to topple Assad that began in 2011, including by bombing positions of the Syrian army in defense of Nusra fighters.

The April visit of Syrian officials to Israel coincided with the highly publicized visit by Syrian Druze religious leaders to northern Israel to visit Jethro’s Tomb. The Druze identify Jethro with the Prophet Shuayb, the most revered prophet in the Druze faith.

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