Tag: israel

Israel Carpet Bombs Lebanon After Announcement of Iran Ceasefire

sraeli forces launched some of the most intense bombardments of Lebanon in recent years on Wednesday, striking Beirut and towns and cities across the country just hours after a ceasefire deal that reportedly includes Lebanon was announced.

The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that it targeted over 100 sites with strikes over just the course of 10 minutes in Lebanon. The UN also reported that it has recorded over 60 locations struck. The intensity of the strikes was unprecedented in recent times, one Al Jazeera reporter said, reminiscent of the scale of Israel’s invasion of Beirut in 1982 or Israel’s beeper attack in 2024.

Video of the strikes circulated online. One showed a massive fire in the wreckage of destroyed buildings in Beirut, sending plumes of dark smoke into the air. Another video purportedly taken in Beirut showed the top floors of a building completely destroyed and smoking, while the streets below were covered in flaming debris.

Another video from Tyre, in southern Lebanon, showed an Israeli strike hitting a building in the city center, with the explosion spreading horizontally across what appeared to be several city blocks and sending a plume into the air that shot higher than the hills in the background.

The death toll is unclear, but early reports have said that hundreds have been killed by the strikes.

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Iran Launches Missiles at Israel, U.S. Installation Amid Ceasefire Announcement

Just after the United States announced a ceasefire with the Iranian regime, that regime launched ballistic missiles at civilian targets in Israel. Another missile salvo reportedly targeted a U.S. base or diplomatic installation in Iraq, though that strike might have occurred just before the ceasefire. In any case, I think the Iranian regime achieved a new record for a shortest ceasefire ever, even outdoing its terror proxy Hamas, which is stunning.

Of course Donald Trump wants the war to end — who outside of crazed jihad-lovers in America would not rather have peace? — but the question is whether we can trust the Iranian regime. Trump did indicate the ceasefire was temporary, up to two weeks, likely as a test, and it seems the Iranian regime couldn’t wait to illustrate for the president just how temporary the ceasefire was to be. 

Fox News reported that an Iranian barrage bombarded Israel just after the ceasefire announcement. An Iranian media account called The Hormuz Letter claimed Iranian missiles were targeting Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and a U.S. base in Baghdad as well, and that the missile launch occurred just after the ceasefire announcement. Just yesterday, Iranian missiles killed two generations of the same family in Haifa, Israel.

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Israel excludes Lebanon from ceasefire, oil prices dive as Iran signals Hormuz green light

US President Donald Trump has announced a two-week suspension of bombing of Iranian energy infrastructure, agreeing to a “double sided ceasefire” contingent on Tehran agreeing to the “complete” and “immediate” opening of the Strait of Hormuz. The news prompted oil prices to drop by around 13% and shares to rise in early trading in Asia.

Israel has refused to include Lebanon, which it is currently invading, in the ceasefire.

Trump said Iran’s 10-point proposal delivered via Pakistan offers a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” He warned, however, that he would order devastating new airstrikes if no final deal is reached by the new deadline.

Tehran said the move represents a “historic and crushing defeat” for the US, claiming Washington has been forced to accept Tehran’s 10‑point plan as the basis for talks.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has announced that negotiations with the US will begin on Friday, April 10, in Islamabad, allocating a two‑week period that may be extended by mutual agreement.

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The US and Israel Are Making Gaza-Style War The New Normal

One of the most appalling aspects of the Gaza genocide — besides its near-unprecedented slaughter of children and other innocents and its near-obliteration from existence of an entire society, unpparalleled in the modern era — is that officials in both the United States and Israel were overtly hoping to make it the new, horrifying standard for modern war. As we’re seeing right now in Iran and Lebanon, they’re not wasting any time applying that standard elsewhere.

Last year, as Gaza lay in ruins with more than 10 percent of its population killed or injured, the New Yorker ran a chilling story related to the Gaza genocide. The magazine reported that a variety of US military lawyers and legal experts viewed Israel’s spree of murder and destruction in Gaza as not just a completely acceptable way to prosecute a war but as “a dress rehearsal” for a future conflict with a US adversary like China: namely, one free of restraint, adherence to international law, and squeamishness about killing civilians.

What Israel did with full US backing in Gaza, in other words, should be the new normal for war, at least when “our side” does it.

The report sat uncomfortably alongside a pattern of US and Israeli officials incessantly invoking the Allies’ carpet bombing campaigns during World War II to justify the genocide they carried out. For almost the entire period after the war, those bombing campaigns were universally understood to be war crimes and a moral horror — including by Curtis LeMay himself, the psychotic general who led the firebombing of Japan and later itched for nuclear war with the Soviet Union — and one that the civilized world immediately outlawed after that war, when it created the system of international law that today clings on by its fingernails.

It was so appalling that even Richard Nixon felt the need to pretend to the press in 1972 that the Dresden firebombing had gone too far and that he would never do such a thing to Vietnam, even though he would be totally justified if he did. (He did do it, for the record). Yet for the past three years, American and Israeli hawks have no longer even bothered to pretend.

What is now playing out in Iran and Lebanon is this doctrine in action.

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Israel bombs Tehran as Iranians taunt Trump

Israel has conducted yet another wave of strikes against infrastructure targets including an airport in Tehran, after striking at least two petrochemical facilities in Iran the day before.

In the meantime, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense claimed the debris from a successful “interception and destruction” of at least seven ballistic missiles fell in the vicinity of its energy facilities, with the damage still being “assessed.”

Israeli forces attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical facility in the South Pars natural gas field and a petrochemical complex in the city of Marvdasht earlier on Monday – as US President Donald Trump has stepped up threats to strike Iran’s infrastructure if American and Israel-linked shipping is not allowed through the Strait of Hormuz by Wednesday.

“It is Trump who has about 20 hours to either surrender to Iran or see his allies return to the Stone Age. We will not back down!” Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, claimed.

Tehran has reportedly rejected a US ceasefire proposal, circulated by Egyptian, Pakistani, and Turkish mediators, instead offering a ten‑clause plan that calls for a permanent end to the war. The demands reportedly include an end to conflicts across the region, protocols to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions, and provisions for reconstruction.

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IDF Issues Chilling Nationwide Warning to Iranian Civilians — “Stay Off Trains” Ahead of Suspected Rail Strikes

The situation inside Iran is rapidly escalating.

On Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a rare and highly specific warning directly to Iranian civilians, urging them to avoid all train travel and railway infrastructure for roughly 12 hours.

According to reports, the warning was delivered in Farsi on social media and explicitly stated:

Urgent Warning to Users and Train Passengers in the Country of Iran.

Dear Citizens, for the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment until 21:00 Iran time, you refrain from using and traveling by train throughout Iran.

Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.

The directive remains in effect until approximately 9:00 PM local time in Iran.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Monday that Iran would face its heaviest round of US strikes ahead of Trump’s deadline for Iran to make a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face “complete demolition.”

He further revealed that the President had ordered “the largest volume of strikes since day one of this operation” before tomorrow’s deadline, where bombs will rain down “even more than today.”

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Middle East is ‘on fire’ – Kremlin

The US-Israeli war against Iran has set the Middle East “on fire,” reflecting Russia’s warning about the dangerous consequences of the move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump escalated the tensions by issuing an expletive-laden demand to Tehran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, which has remained effectively shut since the conflict began on February 28.
“Open the f**king strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell,” he wrote on social media, threatening to demolish the Iranian power plants and bridges if it doesn’t happen by Tuesday. Tehran maintains that the key waterway is only closed for oil shipments by the US and its allies.

When asked by journalists about Trump’s rant on Monday, Peskov said that “we have seen those statements, but we prefer not to comment on them.”

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Prominent New York synagogue hosts presentation on why U.S. Jews should support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza

The American press does its best not to cover savage Israeli views of Palestinians, but a leading New York synagogue gave an honored platform to those views ten days ago. It hosted an Israeli advocate with connections in its government who argued for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and said American Jews need to support that operation.  

Benjamin Anthony said that all “Palestinian Arabs” in Gaza pose such a threat to Israel that the international community should use “muscular diplomacy” with Egypt so as force the population out of Gaza into an “enclave” in the Sinai peninsula. 

“I believe the international community would very handily be able to create some sort of enclave for the…Gazans in the Sinai peninsula. And then we might have the breathing room to think about long-term solutions.” 

Though those two million Gazans would likely be displaced again, into African countries, said Anthony, the leader of an Israeli think tank called the MirYam Institute. 

“I think someone like [Egyptian president] Sisi would likely move the Gazans along from the Sinai peninsula in the event that he didn’t want to build a place for them there, and you would probably see them dispersed through the continent of Africa quite quickly.”

Anthony’s argument is widely shared by Israelis (according to a 2025 poll), and it only received mild push back from Eliot Cosgrove, a leading conservative rabbi in the U.S., who had brought Anthony, his first cousin, onto the synagogue dais.  

Cosgrove called the scheme “very intriguing,” but protested that Anthony was conflating “Hamas with the entire Gaza population.” And that by creating a refugee population with a “narrative”, Israel was practically and morally kicking the can down the road. Speaking “as a proud Zionist,” Cosgrove said the scheme is not in Israel’s interest.

Anthony insisted that no Gazans could be trusted because Gazan civilians cheered the atrocities against Israelis on October 7. Cosgrove folded his hand: “Well, I love you, and I disagree with you, but let’s move on.” 

Cosgrove ended the hour-long dialogue by thanking Anthony “for fighting the good fight” and “for representing our people.”

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The Shift: The Democratic Party battle over AIPAC heats up

A Democratic National Committee member says she will introduce a resolution rejecting AIPAC spending at this month’s DNC meeting.

“At a time when Democratic voters might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict, this could be one step toward bringing those voters back into the party,” the committee member, Allison Minnerly, told The Intercept’s Matt Sledge.

“Given the recent primaries in Illinois, but also what we’ve seen across the country, I think it’s important that we specify that AIPAC as a growing force in our primaries needs to be specifically addressed when we talk about dark money,” she added.

If Minnerly’s name rings a bell, it might be because she introduced Resolution 18 last year. It called for a ceasefire in Gaza, suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, and recognition of Palestinian statehood. Her effort was ultimately watered down, then unceremoniously dismissed at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minnesota.

“The fight over Resolution 18 was more than a simple vote over a symbolic resolution. The story shows how the Israel lobby is doing all it can to prevent Democratic Party leadership from honoring the overwhelming will of party members. It also is a harbinger of fights to come, as support for Palestine only continues to grow in the party in reaction to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” wrote Nadia Ahmad at Mondoweiss at the time.

The same is true this time around.

The new resolution is also symbolic, but it gets Democrats on the record regarding a lobbying group that has already become a hot-button issue among presidential hopefuls.

One such example is Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who is attempting to distance himself from past AIPAC connections based on the direction of the political winds.

“It became an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump,” Pritzker declared after the group spent heavily in Illinois’s recent primaries. “AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.”

A spokesperson for the Governor reiterated that Pritzker “withdrew his support” from the group after it “became a pro-Trump organization.”

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Israel is implementing its Gaza strategy in Lebanon: turning ‘buffer zones’ into permanent borders

While the US-Israeli war on Iran and its economic repercussions on the global economy continues to be at the center of global media attention, Israel is in the process of re-drawing the map of the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon. If successful, Israel’s plans could have regional and global repercussions. And yet, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon has barely made a blip on the Western media’s radar. 

Last week, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said that Israeli forces will not leave the south of Lebanon after the end of the current war. Katz’s statements are in line with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said last weekend that he had instructed the Israeli army to expand its control in the south of Lebanon up to 10 kilometers, to create a “security buffer zone.” These statements come as the Israeli army has deployed four divisions to the Lebanese border, and continues to push into Lebanese territory.

Everything in the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon is repeated from previous invasions; Israeli orders to civilians to leave their villages in the south, the near 1 million Lebanese displaced, the bombing of infrastructure, especially bridges over the Litani river, and the fighting inside and around Lebanese villages. But there is something different this time; Israel’s destruction of infrastructure is not a mere war strategy. It is yet another announcement of Israel’s renewed doctrine: occupying new areas, often depopulating them by force, and permanently controlling them, basically expanding Israel’s de facto borders with “buffer zones.”

Although Israel has implemented elements of this strategy in the past, this time it is significantly different. First, because Israel is explicitly stating that it wants to permanently occupy new Arab territory, against the backdrop of official statements about ‘Greater Israel’ ambitions. Second, because it is happening without any significant international reaction. And lastly, because this new model that Israel is trying to replicate on a second front could have implications for the future of war and border drawing worldwide. 

This reality raises two critical questions: how did this model become an Israeli official policy? And what will this Israeli vision mean for the Middle East and the world, if realized?

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