Tag: israel

Rising number of US troops oppose Iran war, refuse to ‘die for Israel’: Report

More and more US troops deployed to West Asia are expressing doubts about fighting in the war against Iran, including having to “die for Israel,” the Huffington Post reported on 23 March.

A veteran and reservist who mentors younger officers told HuffPost that troops she speaks with are expressing a loss of faith after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped push US President Donald Trump to go to war against Iran.

“I’m hearing out of service members’ mouths the words, ’We do not want to die for Israel – we don’t want to be political pawns,” she said.

“I’ve shared conscientious objector information six times in the past two weeks, and I’ve been in the military almost 20 years – I’ve never had people reach out this way,” the first reservist continued.

Interviews with active-duty soldiers, reservists, and advocacy groups conducted by HuffPost found that many US troops expressed feeling vulnerable, overwhelming stress, frustration, and disillusionment to the extent that they wished to leave the military.

Interviews further revealed that troops are worried about inadequate protection from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones targeting US bases in the Gulf region.

“Getting random indirect fire is not the same as watching the entire gym and coffee shop and some dorms get blown up from a door less than 50 meters away,” said one service member.

Thirteen troops have been killed in the war so far, and at least 232 have been wounded.

White House officials are now speaking of launching a limited ground invasion to seize Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf.

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Israeli minister calls for annexation of southern Lebanon

Israel should seize vast swathes of land in southern Lebanon as part of its ongoing campaign against Hezbollah militants, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has stated. The new border should be moved all the way to the Litani River, located nearly 40 kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, he said on Israeli radio on Monday.

West Jerusalem started a military campaign against Hezbollah in early March after the Lebanese-based militant movement launched waves of strikes on the Jewish state in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The attacks followed a joint US-Israeli campaign against Iran launched on February 28.

Israel has since ordered all residents of southern Lebanon to leave the area south of the Litani due to what it called “limited and targeted ground operations against key Hezbollah strongholds.” According to the Lebanese authorities, the Israeli strikes have killed over 880 people over the past two weeks, with more than 2,000 injured and over one million displaced.

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Paleolithic chic: 500,000 years ago, Israel’s ancient toolmakers had a taste for sparkle

Ancient humans who lived in northern Israel around 500,000 years ago intentionally selected special stones with fossilized animals or crystal formations to craft beautiful tools featuring them as decorations, a new study published in the peer-reviewed Tel Aviv Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University (TAU) on Tuesday has shown.

The study presents the results of a survey of the Sakhnin Valley in the Lower Galilee, where hundreds of Lower Paleolithic hand axes have been found, including some 15 that exhibit special features, TAU Prof. Ran Barkai, lead author of the paper, told The Times of Israel in a video interview.

According to Barkai, the number is especially remarkable, since only a handful of individual artifacts with this kind of characteristic had previously been unearthed worldwide.

Barkai believes that these tools prove that those ancient humans were interested in their tools not just for their functionality. Rather, they displayed a sense of aesthetic or symbolic belief system, as the special geological features remain visible in a prominent position at the center of each hand ax, suggesting that the knapping process was carried out in a way to highlight them.

The artifacts were discovered by chance by the co-author of the paper, Muataz Shalata, a resident of the Arab town of Sakhnin in northern Israel.

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NYC’s First Lady Exposed Approving of Suicide Attack Propaganda, Plane Hijackers, and Outrageous Attacks on US Troops

New York City’s First Lady and wife of Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, has a history of glorifying terrorism, as evidenced by her past social media posts.

The Washington Free Beacon investigated Duwaji’s accounts on platforms Tumblr and X, finding posts she made in her teens and 20s that may raise an eyebrow with anyone thinking the Muslim couple now residing in Gracie Mansion are moderate in their politics.

In September 2017, she posted an image on Tumblr of Leila Khaled, captioned, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.”

Khaled is famous for her role as a militant who took part in two plane hijackings. She is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

In 1970, according to The Washington Free Beacon, Khaled threatened to set off a grenade during one of those hijackings if she was not allowed in the cockpit of the plane.

In another post from March 2015, Duwaji praised another terrorist, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, on International Women’s Day. Her post on X read “shadia abu ghazaleh, first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation #InternationalWomensDay.”

Ghazaleh died in 1968 after a bomb that she was making to use on a building in Tel Aviv, Israel, accidentally blew up in her home. She had previously bombed a bus and committed other acts of terrorism.

In June 2015, she reposted an attack on the U.S. military, commenting, “*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom. They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*”

After video sharing platform Snapchat added Tel Aviv to a live story feature allowing users to share footage from the city, Duwaji reposted an account that reacted to the decision in July 2015. “But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. Fuck #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them.”

Another post said, “And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.”

Some are chastising an investigation into Duwaji’s past, noting that it’s a page right out of the left’s playbook.

But there’s a distinction. Destroying someone’s life for calling their friends edgy insults on Facebook does not equate to revealing that the wife of a prominent public official has a love affair with a terrorist organization and downplays the sacrifice of American service members.

Duwaji is Syrian, moving with her family to Dubai in 2006, where she attended Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring to the campus in Richmond, Virginia. She was living in the Middle East, praising Middle Eastern terrorists.

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Western silence allows Israel to get away with killing journalists

On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured by an Israeli strike meters from where they stood in southern Lebanon.

Sweeney was on camera reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure when he heard the sound of an incoming projectile. Ducking and running, he managed to escape the brunt of the impact.

According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near Al-Qasmiya Bridge, where Sweeney was reporting on, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” as he later stated, referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the Jewish State in the late 1940s.

The men were treated for shrapnel injuries. Sweeney said, adding “I’m amazed that we survived. We were incredibly lucky to come away with the injuries we did.”

Just a day prior, Sweeney had posted on X about the Israeli targeted airstrike on Lebanese journalist and Al-Manar TV presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife. Both were killed. Sweeney reposted the news with the words, “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”

The next day, he himself was targeted.

This deliberate targeting of journalists wearing press vests is another Israeli war crime, in a long list of Israeli war crimes which include killing at least 261 Palestinian journalists in Gaza in the past two years alone, as well as previously killing Lebanese journalists and bombing Iranian media repeatedly.

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IDF Iron Dome Operator Arrested, Charged With Spying For Iran

There’s quite obviously been Israeli intelligence inroads into Iran, which at times US and Israeli officials themselves have boasted about, with Tehran recently announcing efforts to round up and arrest “traitors” – and there’s even in some cases been executions of the accused.

Inside Israel, there are also fears of locals spying for Israel – but the phenomenon remains much less common (as far as anyone knows). That’s why the latest headlines are likely a shock to the Israeli establishment. On Friday an Israeli reservist tied to the country’s missile defense network has been charged with serious security offenses after allegedly working with Iranian intelligence.

Police have identified Raz Cohen, a 26-year-old from Jerusalem, who served in the Iron Dome unit, as the alleged culprit. It’s been revealed he was arrested March 1, merely one day after the joint US-Israel war on Iran kicked off. “These included passing sensitive security information to the Iranian agent during December 2025, including details about how Iron Dome works, locations of Israeli Air Force bases, and the locations of Iron Dome batteries,” writes Times of Israel.

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Americans can thank Netanyahu, his lackeys in Congress for $1T ‘Israel First tax,’ Iranian FM says

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s top diplomat, posted a screengrab of a Washington Post article titled, “Pentagon Seeks More Than $200 Billion in Budget Request for Iran War,” and wrote that “ordinary Americans” can thank Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his lackeys in Congress for the new tax bill — that will end up being much, much higher.

“We’re only three weeks into this war of choice, imposed on both Iranians and Americans. This $200b is the tip of the iceberg. Ordinary Americans can thank Benjamin Netanyahu and his lackeys in Congress for the trillion-dollar “Israel First tax” that’s about to hit the U.S. economy,” he posted.

The Iran War continued to escalate before Araghchi’s post, and President Donald Trump appears to be so rattled that he is posting incoherent messages on Truth Social, including one that blamed Israel for bombing Iran’s vital South Pars gas reserve “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East.”

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Iran War Is Putting Israel First

Reagan Carney, a really fine young man with whom we go to church, told me a few days ago that the University of Tennessee Young Republicans had a board on which members could express their opinions about the war in Iran.

The board had only one question: “Is the Iran war putting America first?” At that point, 10 had signed under the Yes; 70 had signed under the  No.

This confirmed a story which ABC News ran on March 7 quoting Jack Posobiec of Turning Point  USA and the conservative publication, Human Events.

Posobiec said: “For the younger end of the spectrum inside MAGA, foreign intervention is just off the radar….They see it as prioritizing foreign interests….” He said MAGA is split by age with more support for the Iran war among older conservatives.

The ABC story led this way: “President Donald Trump’s decision to carry out strikes on Iran has further exposed a fracture among some of the President’s fiercest supporters inside MAGA world—one that many supporters say will only widen with every week the conflict continues.”

Like the Tennessee students, the great majority realize this war is being fought at the insistence of Israel at tremendous expense for U.S. taxpayers. This is Israel’s war. Iran’s total military budget is only a little over one percent of ours. Iran was no threat to us at all.

In 1999, Charley Reese was voted as the most popular columnist in a vote by thousands of C-Span viewers. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2013, but many things he wrote are just as true today.

In 2002, he said in a column: “The truth is this: The terrorist attacks against the United States are a direct result of our one-sided support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.”

He added: “The big pushers for war with Iraq are the usual suspects—Americans with a long record of pretending to speak about America’s interests when in fact they are pushing an Israeli agenda.” Today, switch the word Iran for Iraq.

In 2005, Reese wrote: “Propaganda aside, our actions have created the almost universal hostility toward the United States in the Arab world. Our actions have been to support Israel 100 percent while it kills and brutalizes the Palestinians….” Think Gaza where many thousands of little children were starved and killed.

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Netanyahu Faces Backlash After Citing Historian Will Durant’s Book — Book Suggests “Evil Will Overcome Good” and “Jesus Christ Has No Advantage Over Genghis Khan”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing backlash after invoking a historical analogy that appears to suggest that brute force, not morality, ultimately determines the fate of nations.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke his silence regarding unfounded allegations after former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who quit on Wednesday, stated in his resignation letter that Iran posed no imminent threat to America and asserted we started the war because of “pressure from Israel” and its “powerful American lobby.”

NETANYAHU: “I would like to close these opening remarks with one other (piece of) fake news. And that is that Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran.

Does anyone really think someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.

President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America and what is also good for future generations.”

In the same speech, Netanyahu delivered a message about the nature of global conflict, warning that moral clarity alone is not enough to survive in today’s world.

“You know, if people want to be naive, then they don’t see the kind of world we’re living in. In this world, it’s not enough to be moral. It’s not enough to be just. It’s not enough to be right,” he said.

Netanyahu referenced The Lessons of History, the well-known 1968 work by historian Will Durant (and Ariel Durant), claiming the book proves a grim reality.

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Israel seeking ‘significant change’ in how Canada tackles antisemitism

Israel is pursuing a sweeping diplomatic and public relations campaign to convince Canada to change the way it tackles acts of antisemitism.

From the office of Israel’s president down to its ambassador in Ottawa, the message is the same: Canada must do more to curb threats against Jews.

But while the country’s ambassador is suggesting Ottawa should limit certain “freedoms” in order to deal with threats his government links to Iran, he hasn’t said which freedoms should be limited.

“We have a very clear objective this year, and that is to create a significant change in the way antisemitism is being dealt with here in Canada,” Israeli Ambassador Iddo Moed told a virtual forum last week.

“It is hard for a liberal person to think that we have to limit other people’s freedoms, so that our freedom will be protected. But that’s where we are right now.”

Carleton University political scientist Mira Sucharov, who researches Israeli-Palestinian relations and Jewish politics, said there “are two things happening” — Israel is trying both to improve protection for Jews worldwide and to generate support for the war it has launched with the U.S. against Iran.

Moed spoke after Israel issued a series of high-level statements following shootings at three Toronto-area synagogues.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog convened a call with Toronto-area Jewish community leaders on March 9 — a rare move by a country whose head of government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has refused to speak with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“We must learn the lessons of previous antisemitic attacks, including the horrific Bondi Beach terror attack,” Herzog wrote on social media, citing the mass shooting last December at a Hanukkah event in Australia.

“All eyes are on Canada: it’s time to halt the unprecedented wave of Jew-hatred that has erupted ever since Oct. 7,” Herzog added, referencing the 2023 attack by Hamas and its allies against Israel which started the war in Gaza.

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