Tag: israel

Trump orders Israel to stop Gaza strikes after Hamas agrees to release Israeli hostages

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered Israel to stop bombing the Gaza Strip after Hamas said it accepted some elements of the president’s plan to end the nearly two-year war and return all remaining hostages who were taken during the deadly attack.

Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump said. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly … this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.”

In a video Trump later posted on social media, he thanked multiple countries that helped him achieve the deal, including Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, among others.

So many people fought so hard,” he said in the footage. “This is a big day. We’ll see how it all turns out. We have to get the final word down and concrete. Very importantly, I look forward to having the hostages come home to their parents and having some of the hostages, unfortunately, you know the condition they’re in, come home likewise to their parents because their parents wanted them just as much as though that young man or young woman were alive.”

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New Bill Would Extend US Military Benefits to Americans Serving in the IDF

n May 17, legislation was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Cosponsored by Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) and U.S. Representative Max Miller (R-OH), H.R. 8445 went largely under the radar, a strange outcome given the real effect it will have on furthering U.S. support for the Zionist project — in this case through direct support for those wishing to serve in the Israeli Occupational Military.

What H.R. 8445 aims to do is make a series of amendments to programs that are ordinarily only available to members of the U.S. military — the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). These amendments would do something unprecedented: Extend these programs to American citizens serving in the Israel Occupational Forces.

The SCRA, the result of the Bush administration’s efforts to update the 1940 Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act (SSCRA), was passed in 2003. Its primary focus is granting active duty U.S. servicemembers legal and financial protections so that they can do the bidding of U.S. empire a little more worry-free. This act’s benefits include protections against default judgments in civil legal cases, reduced interest rates on any pre-service loans to a maximum of 6 percent, protections against home foreclosure, and more.

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Turkey arrests alleged Israeli Mossad spy

Turkey’s intelligence service announced the arrest of an alleged Israeli spy in Istanbul during a joint operation, state media reported on Friday.

“Serkan Cicek, who was identified as working for the Israeli secret service Mossad, was detained as a result of a joint operation carried out by the MIT [Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization], the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Istanbul Provincial Police Department’s Counter-Terrorism Branch,” Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. 

Cicek, a detective, had reportedly worked with Musa Kus and lawyer Tugrulhan Dip in the past, both “arrested for spying for Israel” and accused of providing personal data from public records to detectives “in exchange for financial gain,” Anadolu added.

The report further claimed that Cicek had been in contact with a member of Israel’s Online Operations Center named Faysal Rasheed, and had admitted to allegedly conducting surveillance on a Palestinian activist.

The statement accused Cicek of being contacted on July 31 by Rasheed, who reportedly was posing as a member of a foreign law firm. Rasheed then allegedly hired Cicek to surveil a Palestinian activist in Basaksehir, paying $4,000 in cryptocurrency; an offer which Cicek accepted “despite knowing his associate Kus had been jailed for spying for Israel.”

Turkey frequently arrests individuals on charges of espionage, particularly those involving foreign intelligence agencies such as Israel’s Mossad. Authorities have detained dozens of suspects over the past year.

Relations between Turkey and Israel have soured in recent years in light of Ankara’s condemnation of Israel’s extensive military campaign in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 incursion.

In November 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan announced that Turkey has cut all ties with Israel.

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MTG Demands Israel-Linked Influencers Register as Foreign Agents Amid $7,000 Per Post Scandal

The “Esther Project,” as detailed in Cleveland-Stout’s investigation, was coordinated through US-based PR firm Bridge Partners and managed in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It reportedly allocated more than half a million dollars for influencer payments between June and September 2025, all with the goal of quietly shaping American public opinion and policy using paid social content—without transparent disclosure of foreign sponsorship.

Cleveland-Stout reports:

“In a meeting dedicated to harnessing pro-Israel media energy on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to a cohort of Israel’s influencers. ‘We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers. I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance, to that community, they are very important.’
Being paid by Israel to post on social media is also very lucrative. According to previously unreported recent documents, these influencers are likely being paid around $7,000 per post on social media such as TikTok and Instagram on behalf of Israel.”

Citing the legal backbone behind her demand, MTG quoted the Foreign Agents Registration Act:

“Foreign governments routinely engage in efforts to influence our domestic and foreign policies, legislation, democratic processes, and public opinion. These governments sometimes exert this influence by employing lobbyists, public relations professionals, prominent businesspeople, or former U.S. government officials on their behalf. Such efforts are legal—if they are transparent. Originally enacted in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act—known as FARA—helps the American people and their elected officials understand who is really behind such influence activity. The statute requires persons working on behalf of foreign governments or other foreign principals (including Americans) to disclose their relationships to foreign principals and information about their activities. Agents who fail to register are violating federal law, and they can be prosecuted if their failure is deliberate.”

Greene emphasized that her position is not directed at any particular group, but is strictly about legal compliance and transparency for foreign-influenced political messaging in the United States.

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Israel declares 600,000 in Gaza City ‘military targets,’ cuts off lifeline from south

At least 600,000 Palestinians are currently under siege in Gaza City amid the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment, encirclement, and expulsion campaign, the New Arab reported on 2 October. 

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that all Palestinians remaining in the city must abandon their homes, pass Israeli checkpoints, and move to tent encampments in the south, stressing that anyone who stays will be considered a “terrorist” or “terrorist supporter” and targeted by invading Israeli forces.

Now is the “last opportunity for Gaza residents” to move south, Katz said. 

Israeli forces have currently blocked all travel northward on the Rashid coastal road, cutting off the city’s last surviving lifeline for humanitarian aid and preventing Palestinians who had moved south temporarily in search of food and shelter from returning.

“The only safe road for bringing in food and medicine has been cut. Announcements and speeches mean nothing if aid cannot reach civilians,” stated Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson of the Gaza civil defense, in a press statement.

While the Israeli military expected a mass exodus to the south, between 600,000 and 700,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, the UN estimated.

Those remaining are either unwilling or unable to leave their homes.

“We are not leaving. Yesterday, a drone dropped grenades on the rooftop of our building, but we are not leaving,” said 24-year-old Hani while speaking to Reuters.

“We are afraid that if we leave, we will never see Gaza City again.”

The closure of Rashid Street to northward travel is part of an effort to cleanse the northern strip, according to Ramallah-based political analyst Hani al-Masri. 

“Turning the road into a one-way corridor south is a tool of collective pressure, a strategy to forcibly reshape Gaza’s population,” Masri told the New Arab.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud reported Thursday that the Israeli military was creating “mayhem and panic” by ordering people to leave their homes, but then pursuing them on the Rashid Road south with helicopters, drones, and tanks. 

“A big part of the reason that people are not now leaving Gaza City is because of the fear and the intimidation created by the Israeli military,” he said.

Al-Akhbar reported on Thursday that Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes on Gaza City, including in the neighborhoods of Al-Nasr, Sheikh Radwan, and Al-Shati in the city’s northwest, as well as Al-Daraj, Al-Tuffah, and Al-Nafaq in the northeast, and Al-Sabra in the south.

Gaza’s Health Ministry continues to record an average of 100 Palestinians killed per day, Al-Akhbar added, not including the dozens missing whose bodies rescuers are not able to retrieve due to Israeli fire. 

One strike on Wednesday killed the son of Gaza’s civil defense commander and injured several other rescue officers.

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Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel, Hacked Emails Reveal

Everything is coming together for Larry Ellison. The billionaire co-founder of tech giant Oracle, on-and-off-again the richest man in the world and a staunch supporter of Israel, is set to take a lead role in reshaping TikTok in the United States. His son, David Ellison, is moving to take over large swaths of the media, including CBS News, CNN, Warner Brothers, and Paramount, reportedly bringing in the Free Press’s Bari Weiss to shape editorial direction.

“The Ellison family is cornering the market on attention and data the same way the Vanderbilts did railroads and the Rockefellers did oil,” as Wired recently characterized it. How they plan to operate that monopoly is on course to be tested out in what President Donald Trump is calling “New Gaza,” the techno-dystopian free trade zone that is to be administered by a Board of Peace led by Trump and Ellison’s longtime political and business vehicle, Tony Blair. Ellison has given or pledged more than $350 million to the Tony Blair Institute, which Blair has used to advance Ellison’s vision of a marriage between government, corporate power, and tech surveillance. Oracle, by providing database infrastructure and cloud-computing services to other huge enterprises like FedEx and NVIDIA, has quietly become one of the most powerful companies in the world.

As the nation’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also played a role in the TikTok talks that steered the company toward Ellison, after playing a lead role as a senator in demonizing the app; he was also closely involved in the rollout of Trump’s plan for Gaza’s future, which hands the enclave to Blair. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner tasked the Blair Institute in the spring with coming up with a post-war plan for Gaza, which was recently completed, the Times of Israel reported.

That Rubio finds himself in such a central position is in part thanks to Ellison, who has been a major patron of the Cuban-American former senator from Florida. Ellison first vetted Rubio for his fealty toward Israel back in early 2015, according to previously unreported email correspondence reviewed by Drop Site. Rubio rose to prominence as a Tea Party-backed conservative Senate upstart in 2010, launching a presidential campaign in the 2016 cycle. As secretary of state, Rubio launched an unprecedented crackdown on speech, detaining and attempting to deport critics of Israel precisely for the crime of their criticism of Israel.

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Exposed: How Qatar Bankrolled America’s Campus Chaos

In the wake of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel, Western nations saw an explosion in anti-Israel, antisemitic encampments on colleges and universities.

The protest at Columbia, which lasted throughout the spring of 2024, often turned violent and destructive, with students vowing to “defend” their encampment from police. At California Polytechnic University, student rioters took over a building and barricaded it against police.

For many Americans, this surge in antisemitism and rioting was more proof that Western colleges and universities are nothing more than hotbeds of Leftist radicalism and laces of indoctrination that teach students to hate America and Western values.

However, the problem runs much deeper than woke campus ideology and Leftism. There is a well-funded, coordinated effort by radical Islamists to infiltrate and undermine Western democracies, using religion and “Islamophobia” as a cover for the ultimate goal: the destruction of Western civilization in favor of a global Islamic caliphate.

And much of it, especially the unrest and indoctrination at colleges and universities, is funded by Qatar.

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Trump Signs Order Giving Security Guarantee To Qatar After Israeli Attack

President Trump has signed an executive order pledging to provide Qatar with a security guarantee similar to NATO’s Article 5, a step that came after Israel bombed the country, which is a major regional ally of the US and hosts about 10,000 US troops.

Trump’s order says that the US shall “regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”

It states that the US “shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

The order marks the first time an Arab country is receiving such a strong security guarantee from the US, something that Saudi Arabia has long sought. “Saudi Arabia thought that to get a defense pact with the United States, it would require normalizing relations with Israel. Qatar managed to get a partial defense pact with the United States by getting attacked by Israel,” a former US official told Axios.

According to the White House, the order was signed on Monday, September 29, the same day Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had him apologize to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani for the strikes on Doha, which killed six people, including five low-level Hamas officials and one Qatari security officer.

Trump has claimed that he was unaware of Israel’s plans to bomb, but according to Israeli officials, Trump was notified about the plan beforehand and did not oppose the strikes.

While Trump’s executive order is seen as a response to the Israeli attack on Qatar, it could also be an effort to shore up the alliance with Doha ahead of another potential war with Iran. During the 12-Day War, Iran attacked the US’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation for the US bombing of its nuclear facilities.

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Israel’s Katz Says Civilians in Gaza City Have ‘Last Opportunity to Leave,’ Will Be Treated as ‘Terrorists’

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday issued a threat to Palestinian civilians in famine-stricken Gaza City, warning they have their “last opportunity” to leave the besieged city and that they will be treated as “terrorists” if they remain.

Katz said in a post on X that the IDF has almost encircled Gaza City. “This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza City itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force,” he wrote.

“Those who remain in Gaza will be considered terrorists and terror supporters,” he added.

Israel’s goals for Gaza City involve cleansing it of its Palestinian population and razing every single building to the ground. The IDF has claimed that more than 780,000 civilians have fled, while other estimates put the number around 400,000. Either way, hundreds of thousands of civilians remain for several reasons, including the fact that many are too sick for another displacement.

Among the civilians remaining are the Christians based at the two churches in Gaza City: the Holy Family Catholic Church and the St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church. The clergy have stated they will not leave since they are assisting hundreds of displaced Palestinians sheltering at their facilities.

Palestinians in Gaza City also have reason to believe they will still be targeted in southern Gaza as the IDF continues to bomb the areas it’s telling them to flee to. On Tuesday, Israel bombed a tent in the al-Mawasi camp in the south, killing seven people, including four women and a child, who had fled Gaza City earlier this month.

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Israel Paying US Social Media Influencers $7,000 Per Post As Right-Wing Support Craters

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting in New York on Friday with a group of pro-Israel influencers, we learn that Israel is likely paying them a whopping $7,000 per pro-Israel social-media post in a desperate drive to bolster plummeting support of Israel among America’s young conservatives. 

That’s the conclusion of Responsible Statecraft’s Nick Cleveland-Stout, based on analysis of a disclosure filed with the US Department of Justice as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). While pro-Israel lobbying heavyweight AIPAC is notoriously exempt from FARA registration, the social media operation comes under the transparency law’s provisions because Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is paying for it. 

The influence campaign is being facilitated by Bridge Partners, a DC-based firm owned by founders Yair Levi and Uri Steinberg. “[Bridge Partners] has also enlisted the help of a former major in the IDF spokesperson unit, Nadav Shtrauchler,” writes Cleveland-Stout. “For legal counsel, Levi and Steinberg have turned to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a firm that previously worked for controversial Israeli spyware company NSO Group.”

The current phase of the campaign runs from June to November, with a $900,000 budget for a stable of 14 to 17 influencers turning out pro-Israel content. Taking into account disclosed administrative costs and the campaign’s expectation that the group will produce 75-90 posts, Responsible Statecraft estimates each post will earn the influencers somewhere between $6,143 and $7,373. The individual influencers are not identified in the filings. However, given they are being paid by a foreign government to engage in political activity, the influencers seemingly have a duty to register as individual agents of the State of Israel. 

Netanyahu candid public statements to influencers last week raised eyebrows, as they laid bare Israel’s drive to control social media discourse in the United States in a bid to shore up American support. “We’re going to have to use the tools of battle,” said Netanyahu. “Weapons change over time…the most important ones are in social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is…TikTok.”

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