Tag: israel

The Israeli media is reporting on a ‘secret clause’ in the Gaza ceasefire deal that no one is talking about

The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas could collapse due to an alleged “secret clause” in the agreement that would allow Israel to resume the war, according to reports in the Arab and Hebrew-language Israeli media. That so-called clause would reportedly be “activated” in the event that Hamas is unable to locate all the Israeli captives within the 72-hour window allotted to the Palestinian resistance group during the first part of the deal’s implementation.

On Friday, Al Jazeera’s Palestine Bureau Chief Walid al-Omary pointed out on the network’s live broadcast that the second article of the deal concerning the release of Israeli captives included a phrase in the Hebrew version about an undisclosed annex. According to al-Omary, if Hamas fails to release all Israeli captives, dead and alive, a “secret clause in appendix B” would be “activated.”

Israel’s Kan TV was the first to report on the clause, which was subsequently covered by other Israeli media outlets. According to Kan, an unnamed source who had been exposed to the content of the secret clause said that it was “jumbles of words.” Israel’s Channel 13 also reported that an Israeli court dismissed a petition to disclose the “secret contents” of the deal, citing security considerations.

Although the alleged clause implies punitive consequences on Hamas in the event of failing to meet the 72-hour deadline, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview hours after the deal was first announced that the time needed to find, gather, and release Israeli captives would depend on “field conditions.” Hamdan added that locating the captives might take longer. U.S. President Donald Trump also admitted that finding the dead bodies of Israeli captives might take longer than anticipated.

Hamas has officially denied the existence of such a clause. A Hamas official told Al Jazeera that “the reported rumors concerning the presence of ‘secret clauses’ in the agreement to end the war on Gaza are completely untrue.”

The potential existence of such a secret clause has reinforced already-existing Palestinian concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would seek to find a way to sabotage the deal. Already in March, Israel broke the first ceasefire after the release of all civilian Israeli captives in the first phase of the deal. Last July, Hamas accepted a proposed deal following talks through Egyptian and Qatari mediators, while Netanyahu completely ignored it as mediators waited for Israel’s response.

Moreover, the lack of any additional terms within the deal for the end of the war, known as Trump’s “20-Point Plan,” has contributed to the spread of such reports in Arab media outlets. Issues relating to disarmament, Gaza’s postwar administration, and Israel’s withdrawal have all been relegated until after the prisoner exchange.

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Israeli OnlyFans model allegedly robbed older men in Los Angeles — she says she’s the victim of a conspiracy theory

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has issued a bulletin with a request from the public for alleged victims of an Israeli OnlyFans model to come forward.

The bulletin said Adva Lavie is suspected to be involved in a “series of residential burglaries” of the homes of older men in Los Angeles County.

She allegedly posed as a girlfriend or companion on social media apps and platforms, according to the bulletin posted on Facebook.

“They’re invited into the home, and then this person ends up burglarizing their home by stealing their personal belongings, and so that would kind of be the scenario we’re looking at,” Captain Dustin Carr said to KTTV-TV.

The sheriff’s department said Lavie had been arrested previously for a similar crime in a different jurisdiction but had been released from custody.

“We want to make sure that all victims are identified, they come forward and help prosecute this case,” Carr added. “We have some information that there may be other victims as well.”

Police said there may be as many as 10 victims in the alleged scheme.

However, when Lavie spoke to the Daily Mail via telephone about the allegations, she said she was the victim of a conspiracy before she hung up the phone.

“I think when you probably hang out with someone really powerful and someone really connected, if you piss them off, it’s problematic because they can really f**k you over,” she said.

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US depleted its missiles in Ukraine, Israel. Now it wants more fast.

Citing low munitions stockpiles, the Pentagon is urging weapons contractors to accelerate missile production, doubling or even quadrupling production rates, to prepare for possible war with China.

Namely, it hopes to boost production rates for 12 types of missiles it wants on-hand, including Patriot interceptor missiles, Standard Missile-6, THAAD interceptors, and joint air-surface standoff missiles.

Replenishing now-depleted missile stockpiles is important for U.S. military preparedness. But experts tell RS that this ambitious missile production ramp-up is a time-intensive, costly, and logistically challenging endeavor that may ultimately fail without substantive financial commitment from the DoD.

Moreover, Washington needs to assess its current foreign commitments, primarily in Ukraine and Israel, before it depletes its current stores further, requiring more money, more industry, and more time to get back up to fighting shape. In other words, say experts, put the much needed focus back on the U.S. national interest even if that means turning off the spigot for other countries.

Ramping up missile production: what does it take?

Experts told RS that ramping up missile production, in the way the Pentagon wants, could take years, and likely new weapons manufacturing facilities and infrastructure.

Ret. Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RS that, if the necessary funding was available, the U.S. defense industrial base could double the production of many missiles over about two years, merely by having existing weapons factories double-up on production shifts and workers.

However, production times would vary by missile type, and higher production rates would likely require new facilities that would take time to build, Cancian noted.

Defense writer Mike Fredenburg was a bit more pessimistic. “Even with a new contract firmly in place, I could easily see it taking four years or more to double production.”

“My gut is — to try to quadruple production? [It is] not going to happen — at least not quickly,” he said.

“We do need to replenish our missiles. We burnt through them,” he explained.

Indeed, Fredenburg estimated in August that Israel’s wars on Gaza and Iran, together with the U.S. campaign on Yemen’s Houthis earlier this year, consumed 33% of the U.S. stock of Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), and 17% of the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), since 2023. The U.S. used a quarter of its THAAD missile interceptors during the Israel-Iran war alone. And the Guardian reported in July that the U.S. only had 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it would need for the Pentagon’s military plans — having sent many to Ukraine, which still often lacks them.

But, the current defense industrial infrastructure is not well suited to take on the rapid missile production rates the Pentagon wants to pursue.

“We have a peacetime defense industrial base, and we’ve had that for decades…we’re not really set up to quickly produce things,” Fredenburg said. “We don’t know how much more capacity they can squeeze out of existing facilities.”

Cost is another roadblock. The “Big Beautiful Bill” passed earlier this year allocated $25 billion over the next five years toward munitions funding; the Pentagon’s new missile production targets may well cost tens of billions more.

“This is a lot of money…many tens of billions of dollars, ultimately, to get to these kinds of [missile production] numbers” the Pentagon wants, Fredenburg told RS.

To his point, the price of individual missiles can be staggering. For example, in September, the Army awarded Lockheed Martin nearly $10 billion to make nearly 2,000 PAC-3 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile interceptors — putting the cost of just one missile interceptor at several million dollars. The SM-6 (Standard Missile-6), which the Pentagon also wants to ramp up, costs about $4.3 million each.

And it’s not just about putting the missiles together but testing them and that can take months and cost hundreds of millions.

As a point, experts say less complicated munitions production like 155 millimeter shells, have already fallen behind.

“They’ve been trying to build-up 155 millimeter shell production, which is…relatively simple compared to missiles. And they’ve been having trouble doing that,” Fredenburg said. “What makes us think that they’re going to be able to ramp this production up massively for much more sophisticated, more complex, more expensive weapon systems?”

Experts say that the Pentagon’s intentions to double or quadruple missile production will likely remain aspirational — unless they are matched with substantive contracts to actually support the process.

“All we’re saying so far is that we want to urge the defense industrial base to make these new capabilities, build new factories, get new weapons, equipment,” Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis said on his Deep Dive podcast. “You need a lot more than just ‘we should,’ or, we ‘urge you to,’ if you really want anything to happen.”

Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, told RS that while increasing missile production was important for U.S. military readiness, what the Pentagon is asking for is a “reach.”

“It is not clear that contractors can meet [the Pentagon’s] targets, especially without additional federal funding to expand production and some way to find and train more workers,” she explained.

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The Wall Street Journal Has Many Ways to Deny Genocide

As more and more scholars, and one rights group after another, confirm that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, it’s becoming ever more obvious that those who deny the genocide are the intellectual and moral equivalents of people who deny other genocides, such as the ones inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide.

Yet the Wall Street Journal persists in running genocide denial. Looking at how the paper does so enables us to not only refute their falsehoods, but also to gain insight into the tactics Gaza genocide denialists, and genocide deniers in general, employ. These include:

  • Hand-waving: brushing off the cataclysmic damage Israel and the US have done to Palestinians as merely the unavoidable byproducts of war;
  • Victim-blaming: saying that Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas are to blame for the suffering in Gaza;
  • Inverting perpetrator and victim: presenting Palestinians, and not Israelis, as genocidal, with Israelis, rather than Palestinians, cast as the targets;
  • Obscurantism: offering dubious pieces of information, usually in a decontextualized manner, as if they showed that Israel has pursued its military objectives humanely;
  • Repudiation: flatly rejecting well-documented facts while offering little or no counter-evidence.

Ami Magazine columnist Avi Shafran’s Journal piece (7/22/25) utilized both hand-waving and victim-blaming. He asserted:

When critics distort Israel’s goal of self-preservation into a desire for genocide, the accusers have gone from righteous protesters to ignorant haters…. Civilians suffer and die in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. That tragedy is intensified when you are fighting an enemy who hides behind human shields. Eradicating the engines of terror in Gaza requires attacking the places from which they operate: hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel’s supposedly “justifiable, even necessary” war has entailed such policies (as Human Rights Watch—12/19/24—notes) as

intentionally depriv[ing] Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water since October 2023, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths and thus committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.

Rather than offering a reasoned, evidence-based defense of such Israeli conduct, Shafran blithely wrote as if consciously withholding drinking water from a civilian population were as natural and inevitable as water boiling at a hundred degrees Celsius.

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The Charlie Kirk Case Just Took a Shocking Turn

Charlie Kirk’s leaked texts prove Candace Owens was right all along—he refused to be silenced by powerful pro-Israel donors.

Less than 48 hours before his assassination, Kirk confided that major donors were abandoning him after he refused to cancel Tucker Carlson. In those same messages, he admitted he could no longer support the pro-Israel cause while facing relentless pressure to censor dissenting voices.

TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet has now confirmed the texts are authentic, exposing weeks of denial and a coordinated campaign to discredit Owens. Her investigation wasn’t reckless—it was righteous.

The smear campaign against her, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly wasn’t about “unity.” It was about hiding the truth that Charlie’s refusal to bow made him a threat to those who depend on control.

Candace never backed down—and now the receipts confirm she was telling the truth.

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How Much U.S. Has Given Israel and How Much U.S. Military Has Spent to Protect It, Since the Gaza War Began

Since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, the United States has poured massive financial and military support into Israel, marking one of the largest aid efforts in modern U.S. history. According to recent studies, Washington has provided an estimated $21.7 billion in military assistance to Israel over the past two years — about $17.9 billion during the first year of fighting and roughly $3.8 billion in the following months. These figures represent a combination of direct arms transfers, financial aid, and replenishment of Israel’s missile defense systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling.

Much of this funding came from emergency appropriations and presidential drawdowns, which allowed the U.S. to deliver weapons and ammunition directly from its own stockpiles without waiting for new contracts to be approved. Within weeks of the October 2023 attacks, U.S. aircraft were flying shipments of artillery shells, precision-guided bombs, and interceptors to Israeli bases. Congress later formalized these actions through a $14.1 billion supplemental package in early 2024 that reimbursed the Pentagon and expanded Israel’s access to advanced defense systems. In early 2025, the U.S. approved another $8 billion in arms sales, ensuring a steady flow of weaponry in the years ahead.

But beyond financial aid, the U.S. has spent billions more on its own military operations in the Middle East to shield Israel from regional threats. Analysts at Brown University’s Costs of War project estimate that between October 2023 and September 2025, American military operations related to the Gaza war cost between $9.6 and $12 billion. These expenses cover the deployment of aircraft carriers, fighter jets, missile-defense batteries, and surveillance assets in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea. The U.S. Navy maintained carrier strike groups, such as the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, near Israel’s coast for months, acting as a visible deterrent to Iran-backed militias and providing rapid-response capabilities if the conflict spread.

American forces also launched limited air and missile strikes on groups like the Houthis in Yemen, who had been targeting Red Sea shipping routes in protest of the Gaza war. These actions, while not directly part of Israel’s operations, were considered essential to protect Israel and maintain regional stability, according to U.S. defense officials. Together with increased patrols, intelligence flights, and logistics costs, they formed a significant share of Washington’s wartime spending.

The overall U.S. investment — both in aid to Israel and in its own regional missions — now totals between $30 billion and $35 billion since the start of the conflict. This figure represents not only direct support for Israel’s military campaign but also the cost of sustaining America’s wider strategic presence in the Middle East. Officials argue that such support is necessary to deter Iran and maintain the balance of power, while critics point out that it deepens U.S. involvement in a war that has caused widespread civilian suffering in Gaza and strained Washington’s global image.

Even as the fighting enters its third year, shipments of U.S. arms and funds continue, and naval assets remain stationed near the conflict zone. The financial and operational commitment underscores the depth of Washington’s alliance with Israel — one that now extends far beyond arms sales, involving continuous military engagement, strategic cover, and billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain a war that shows few signs of ending soon.

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Israel Ignores Trump Demand To Stop Bombing During Peace Discussions

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has ignored President Trump’s request to stop the bombing of Gaza during negotiations with the leaders of Hamas over the latest peace proposal. It appears that Trump may be changing some of his views and slowly beginning to realize that, as the Jewish New York Times Columnist, Tom Friedman, wrote last May 9, “Netanyahu is not our friend.”

In just the last few days, Trump has said emphatically that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, criticized Israel’s bombing of Qatar, and has publicly called for Israel to stop bombing Gaza during the peace discussions.

In addition, Axios reported this past weekend that Trump expressed his frustration in a phone call with Netanyahu telling him “You are always so f——ing negative.” Hopefully, Trump was not fooled by Netanyahu’s showy flattery nominating him for the Nobel peace prize at a White House dinner. AI defines flattery as “excessive or dishonest praise given to further one’s interest rather than to genuinely admire another person.” That is exactly what Netanyahu was doing, and everyone knew it.

Several former presidents have been angered by Netanyahu or by actions or demands by earlier Israeli leaders. According to a 2024 CNN story “Netanyahu earned the undying enmity of former President Barack Obama for trying to tank the Iran nuclear deal” and that former President Bill Clinton “exploded” after his first meeting with Netanyahu saying “Who’s the f——ing Superpower here?”

In fact, according to AI and several news reports, almost every U.S. President since Eisenhower, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed anger or frustration with Israel’s demands, wars, and settlement policies.

Eisenhower went the furthest. According to AI, he was “furious” with Israel for its demand for the U.S. to go with it to war with Egypt over the Suez Canal. “Eisenhower threatened to impose economic sanctions and cut off all aid to force Israel to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula. The pressure worked and Israel pulled back its forces.” What is most amazing is that Eisenhower did this on national television just one week before the 1956 Presidential election.

A recent Washington Post poll revealed that, “Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61% saying Israel has committed war crimes….and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians….”

This poll of 815 American Jews also said 68% gave “negative marks to Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel.” The same report said hundreds of thousands had turned out for pro Palestinian demonstrations across Europe, including 250,000 in Rome.

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has now been condemned by huge majorities in 95% of the countries in this world in both street protests and official actions by national governments and the United Nations.

The U.S. has stood as Israel’s only significant ally, along with a very few tiny countries afraid of losing American foreign aid. It is obvious that our Congress would have led the condemnation of what has gone on in Gaza if it had happened in any other country than Israel. In this situation, the silence by members of Congress has been deafening, apparently because of fear of money directed by the Israel Lobby.

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Boston Police Officers Hospitalized With Broken Bones After Being Attacked by Hamas Supporters During Students for Justice in Palestine March to Celebrate October 7 Attack on Israel

Two Boston police officers suffered broken bones and were hospitalized and two other officers were also injured after being attacked by Hamas supporting rioters during a march by Students for Justice in Palestine celebrating the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.

None of the injuries were reported to be life threatening. Thirteen rioters were reported arrested.

Police also reported “equipment being forcibly removed or damaged, including body-worn cameras, radios, bicycles, and other duty gear” by the pro-Hamas rioters.

The attack came two days after the torching of a Boston police cruiser during a street takeover early Sunday morning.

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Maryland State University Student Government Excludes Jewish Students From Vote On Boycotting Israel

On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, the University of Maryland (UMD) Student Government Association (SGA) passed a boycott, sanctions, and divestment resolution against the state of Israel, 29-0 with one abstention. 

Because Jews fast, pray, and abstain from work on Yom Kippur, Jewish students, who comprise 20 percent of UMD’s student body, were not able to participate in the voting process. The bill was initially scheduled for a few days prior on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Only two SGA members supported a motion that would have pushed the vote after the Jewish holidays. 

One SGA member claimed, in a statement to UMD’s student newspaper, The Diamondback, “The priority for us was to make sure that there was [sic] accommodations, and I believe SGA did provide them,” referring to proxy voting measures. 

This does not take into consideration the fact that observant Jews do not work or use electronics on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. 

“The timing denied our community the opportunity to engage in a fair and meaningful discussion,” said Meirav Solomon, a junior at UMD on the pre-law track. “This decision adds to the growing sense that Jewish students are not safe or heard on campus. SGA is meant to represent the entire student body, and that means ensuring that every community has a voice in decisions that impact them.”

The Trump administration has opened Title VI investigations into various universities, including Harvard and Columbia, for campus antisemitism. Given how Jewish students are being treated on UMD’s campus, there may very well be a case against the university, so long as leadership allows open hatred to continue unfettered.    

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Van Jones found out: Gaza dead baby jokes aren’t funny

On Friday, Van Jones joked about kids dying in Gaza.

“If you open your phone, and all you see is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy,” Jones said on Bill Maher’s ‘Real Time’ HBO program.

“That’s basically your whole feed,” Jones said.

The audience laughed and applauded.

The CNN host came off as dismissive of these deaths, calling it a “disinformation campaign” on behalf of Iran and Qatar.

The backlash on social media was fierce, where users made clear that the bloodshed in Gaza was very real and not mere “disinformation.”

Progressive pundit Briahna Joy Reid wrote, “Turning ‘dead Gaza baby’ into a punchline is such an evil choice that I’m struggling to even engage with the outrageous lie that we only care about Gazan deaths because of an Iranian social media campaign.”

The Yaqeen Institute’s Omar Suleiman shot back, “Truly disgraceful and vile (Van Jones). I’m sorry dead Gaza babies bother you so much. Maybe tell the people paying you to put lipstick on a genocide to stop killing them.”

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi said Jones’ comments were a blueprint for how pro-Israel elites try to censor “what is actually happening in Gaza: A genocide of children conducted by Israel and defended by plenty of folks in the US, many of them on Israel’s payroll.”

NBC News’s Hola Gorani reacted in a post, “I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Gaza videos in the last 2 years, including content filmed by our brave teams inside the strip, and can confirm that the ‘dead Gaza baby’ images are quite real, not the product of a ‘disinformation campaign’ and that there is nothing funny about them.”

Media critic Sana Saeed might have summed it up best, “The reason Van Jones can get up, use ‘dead Gaza babies’ so crassly, toss in a joke about Diddy mid-sentence, and have an audience erupt in laughter – without hesitation for either context or content – is because of the depth and breadth of dehumanization that’s been permitted toward Palestinians…There is no America in which ‘dead Jewish babies’ could ever be invoked in such a vulgar way on such a platform.”

On Sunday, Jones apologized. Twice. Jones also turned off X replies to his apology.

This did not stop people from replying.

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