Tag: israel

AIPAC-Funded Reps Put Forward Bill to Transfer American B-2 Bombers and Bunker Busters to Israel

AIPAC-funded congressmen Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler have put forward a bill to transfer American B-2 stealth bombers and bunker busters to Israel.

From Fox News, “Trump could arm Israel with US B-2s and bunker busters if Iran tries to go nuclear under new proposal”:

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers has proposed authorizing President Donald Trump to transfer B-2 stealth bombers and 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs to Israel if Iran is found to still be developing a nuclear weapon after last week’s strikes.

Proposed by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., the Bunker Buster Act would allow Trump to “take actions to ensure Israel is prepared for all contingencies if Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon.”

[…] [Israel] doesn’t possess the 30,000-pound GBU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, precision-guided munition bombs developed for the U.S. Air Force. The 20-foot-long weapons can travel 200 feet deep inside a target before exploding.

As of 2024, the U.S. had 19 B-2s in operation. It does not transfer custody of its B-2 stealth bombers to any of its allies.

Keep reading

The Best-Selling Apps Made By Israeli Spies

The developers behind hundreds of Android and iPhone apps with billions of downloads are former Israeli spies whose apps are generating significant revenues for Israel’s genocidal war economy.

The apps I’ve identified range from innocuous image and video editing apps to casual games, and most users won’t be aware they’re installing Israeli products on their phones. Many of these app developers operate under the radar, their ownership structures are opaque and the identity of their owners isn’t commonly known.

The identification of these apps should add another frontier to the boycott, divest, sanctions movement, as it provides a straightforward way for ordinary people to avoid Israeli products that contribute to apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The proliferation of these apps on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store also raises questions over privacy and the harvesting of personal data, given the reputation of Israeli technology and past scandals involving spyware being smuggled onto devices by apps made in Israel.

One of the most significant Israeli app holding companies and developers is ZipoApps, whose model is to buy-out and monetise apps at a large scale. The apps owned by Zipo (which also goes by the name Rounds.com) include a suite of photo and video editing apps that have received hundreds of millions of total installs. Individual apps include Collage Maker Photo Editor and Instasquare Photo Editor: Neon, both of which have received more than 50 million downloads from the Google Play Store. Other ZipoApps products include baby photo editing and retouching tools. In 2022, the founder and CEO of Zipo, Gal Avidor, told an interviewer (in his only interview to date), that all the founders of the company are former Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence personnel. On Reddit, users have complained about ZipoApps approach to privacy and data mining. One popular group of tools known as Simple Gallery went from free and open source to a paid product with ads and trackers just one week after ZipoApps acquired it.

Another Israeli-owned photo editing app on the Play Store is the AI-powered Bazaart, which was founded by Dror Yaffe and Stas Goferman, two former IDF intelligence officers. Goferman far exceeded his mandatory service, spending a decade in the IDF up to 2011.

Keep reading

Media Celebrate International Aggression Against Iran

Aggression is widely understood as the most serious form of the illegal use of force under international law. At the post–World War II Nuremberg Trials, British Judge Norman Birkett said:

To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 lists seven acts that constitute aggression, including:

  • The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a state of the territory of another State….
  • Bombardment by the armed forces of a state against the territory of another state, or the use of any weapons by a state against the territory of another state.

In a clear instance of such aggression, 125 US military aircraft (along with a submarine) unleashed 75 weapons against Iran on June 21, including 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), each of which weighs 30,000 pounds (BBC, 6/23/25). The MOPs are the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the US arsenal (Democracy Now!, 6/23/25).

Rather than condemning this blatant violation of international law, US corporate media commentators gushed over what the Boston Globe (6/24/25) called a “brilliant military operation.” The Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) gave President Donald Trump “credit…for meeting the moment.”

To the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/22/25), Trump made “a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect.” “The president acted before it was too late,” he wrote. “It is the essence of statesmanship.

Keep reading

Likud ministers urge Netanyahu to annex West Bank by the end of the month

Senior lawmakers and ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party launched a push on Wednesday urging the premier to annex the West Bank before the end of the Knesset’s summer session on July 27, claiming that he must ride the “historic achievements” of the war against Iran.

In a letter signed by 15 Likud ministers currently in government as well as Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the lawmakers wrote that “after the State of Israel’s historic achievements in the face of Iran’s axis of evil and its sympathizers, the task must be completed and the existential threat from within must be eliminated, to prevent another massacre in the heart of the country.”

The politicians added that “the strategic partnership, backing and support of the US and President Donald Trump have made it a propitious time to move forward with it now, and ensure Israel’s security for generations.”

Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967 during the Six Day War, but has never formally annexed it. Israel began moving toward annexation in 2020 as part of a wider so-called peace plan released by Trump during his previous term, but ultimately dropped the idea in exchange for normalization with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Wednesday’s letter was met with praise from the far-right Religious Zionism party chair, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister within the Defense Ministry for matters related to the West Bank. He said that as soon as the prime minister “gives the order,” he will be ready to implement Israeli sovereignty over the territory “immediately.”

Keep reading

New Bill Would Give Israel Access to B-2s, Massive Bombs to Strike Iran

A new bipartisan bill in Congress would give Israel access to US weaponry to conduct strikes on Iran’s nuclear facility, similar to the one ordered by President Donald Trump last month. 

The Bunker Buster Act was introduced by Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Mike Lawler (R-NY). “Iran, the leading state sponsor of terror, and one of America’s top enemies, can never have a nuclear weapon. That’s why I strongly supported our military actions earlier this month,” a statement from Gottheimer said. “Iran has killed scores of Americans, including our service members, and repeatedly attacked our key democratic ally, Israel. Israel must be able to defend herself against Iran, and ensure that Iran cannot rebuild its nuclear capabilities.”

Gottenheimer introduced similar bills in previous Congress sessions. If passed, it would give Israel access to American B-2 bombers and 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs that are currently only used by the US. 

On June 22, Trump deployed B-2s and the massive bombs to strike nuclear facilities in Iran. 

While the legislation would require Iran to be working on a nuclear weapon before having access to American arms, politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv have long asserted that Tehran was building a nuclear weapon without evidence. 

Keep reading

Report Estimates US Used $1.25 Billion Worth of THAAD Interceptors To Defend Israel From Iranian Missiles

A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimates that the US used 93 interceptors from its THAAD missile defense system to defend Israel from Iranian missiles during the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran.

At $13 million per interceptor, that means the US launched an estimated $1.25 billion worth of THAAD munitions during the war. The Israeli military also used its Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors, which are jointly produced with the US. The Haaretz report said that the total cost of the Arrow and THAAD interceptors used was about $1.5 billion.

Haaretz reached its figures using open-source videos that showed 84 interceptors being launched from Israel during eight Iranian missile salvos. Extrapolating from there, the paper estimated that the US and Israel launched an estimated 195 interceptors, including the 93 THAADs, 80 Arrow 3s, and 22 Arrow 2s.

A report from Military Watch Magazine came up with similar numbers, estimating the US used 60 to 80 THAAD interceptors during the war, accounting for 15% to 20% of its global THAAD arsenal. The Biden administration first sent a THAAD system to Israel and about 100 troops to operate it in October 2024, ahead of an Israeli attack on Iran.

In April of this year, reports said the US sent a second THAAD battery to Israel, which would mean that the US has two of its seven THAAD missile defense systems stationed in Israel.

Keep reading

Assessing the Effect of the U.S. Strikes on Iran

There has been much commentary about the U.S. airstrike last weekend against three key nuclear sites deep inside Iran: Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. The attack—President Donald Trump’s boldest use of military force to date—was designed to stunt if not destroy Iran’s nuclear program and bring Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table in a much weaker position. As the dust settles over the American missile and bomb craters, questions continue to swirl about the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes and their impact on the region more broadly.

Operation Midnight Hammer was designed to destroy and degrade the key bottleneck in Iran’s nuclear program: its enrichment capacity, including its most advanced and large-scale centrifuge cascades. The lion’s share of Iran’s operational IR-6 centrifuges were believed to be housed in the three facilities struck by the United States last weekend. Iran’s near nine-hundred pound stockpile of 60 percent enriched Uranium, which can fit in the equivalence of the trunks of ten cars, remains unaccounted for. But this stockpile will be of little use for any Iranian nuclear weapons program in the near term if their enrichment capabilities were wiped out.

The battle damage assessment remains murky. Though Trump has repeatedly claimed the country’s nuclear program is “completely and totally obliterated,” comprehensive assessments of the damage take time. Neither the United States nor Israel has released a final assessment on the strikes’ consequences for the nuclear program. It’s still early days. Earlier this week, a preliminary classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, estimated that the program had been delayed, albeit no more than six months. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said that the centrifuges at Fordow are “no longer operational” and that there was “no escaping significant physical damage.” U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan “Razin” Caine also emphasized that the United States had every reason to believe the strike was successful, while adding that the defense department had been preparing to destroy Fordow for more than a decade.

Keep reading

Gaza’s Hunger Games

Israel’s weaponization of starvation is how genocides always end.

I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

Starvation was weaponized by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933.

It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in World War II. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps.

“There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”

And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

The report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise.

It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

Keep reading

What Means ‘Winning’?

At one level, Iran plainly “won.” Trump had wanted to be regaled with a reality-TV style, splendid “Victory.” Sunday’s attack on the three nuclear sites indeed was loudly proclaimed by Trump and Hegseth as such – having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, they claimed. “Destroyed it completely,” they insist.

Only … it didn’t: The strike caused superficial surface damage, perhaps. And seemingly was co-ordinated in advance with Iran via intermediaries to be a “once and done” affair. This is a habitual Trump pattern (advance co-ordination). It was the mode in Syria, Yemen and even with Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani – all intended to give Trump a quick media “victory.”

The so-called “ceasefire” that rapidly followed the US strikes – albeit not without some hiccoughs – was a hastily assembled “cessation of hostilities” (and no ceasefire – as no terms were agreed). It was a “stop-gap.” What this means is that the negotiating impasse between Iran and Witkoff remains unresolved.

The Supreme Leader has forcefully laid down Iran’s position: “No surrender”; Enrichment proceeds; and the US should quit the region and keep its nose out of Iranian affairs.

So, on the positive side of cost-benefit analysis, Iran likely has enough centrifuges and 450 kg of highly enriched uranium – and nobody (except Iran) now knows where the stash is hidden. Iran will resume processing. A second plus for Iran is that the IAEA and its Director-General Grossi have been so egregiously subversive of Iranian sovereignty that the Agency most likely will be expelled from Iran. The Agency failed in its basic responsibility to safeguard sites at which enriched uranium was present.

The US and European intelligence services thus will lose their “eyes” on the ground – as well as forego the IAEA’s Artificial Intelligence data collection (on which Israel’s identification of targets likely was heavily dependent).

On the cost side, militarily, Iran of course suffered physical damage, but retains its missile potency. The US-Israeli narrative of Iranian skies as “open wide” to Israeli aircraft is yet another deception contrived to support the “winning narrative”:

As Simplicius notes: “There remains not a single shred of proof that Israeli (or American, for that matter) planes ever significantly overflew Iran at any time. Claims of “total air superiority” have no grounds. [Footage] up until the final day shows Israel continued relying on their heavy UCAVs [large surveillance and strike drone aircraft] to strike Iranian ground targets.”

Keep reading

How Israel’s ‘Operation Salted Fish’ Turned Gaza Into a Killing Field

An investigation conducted by the Israeli outlet Haaretz has uncovered that Israeli soldiers have received orders to shoot unarmed, starving Palestinians near food aid distribution centers in Gaza, even in the absence of any threat. Soldiers characterised these locations as a “killing field.” Soldiers who spoke with Haaretz indicated that the directives to fire were explicit: “shoot to deter individuals from approaching aid centres both before and after their opening”. One soldier referred to the strategy as “Operation Salted Fish”—the name of the Israeli version of the children’s game “Red light, green light,” where Palestinians are effectively killed while awaiting UN food trucks. Accounts from soldiers disclosed that the IDF employed machine guns, tanks, grenade launchers, and mortars against crowds. (Archived report)

Soldiers have reported the presence of private security contractors near aid sites tasked with demolishing homes, suggesting that individuals were killed to facilitate destruction. The aid at the various distribution centres in the Strip is managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and operated by Israel with assistance from U.S. evangelical allies closely associated with Trump and Netanyahu. The checkpoints are open for only one hour each day. The report indicates that the IDF is actively suppressing evidence, including footage from aid centers, whilst utilising GHF as a front to maintain the facade of humanitarian assistance. The IDF has turned Gaza into a “Killing Field”, said the report—a term already used by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres during a press briefing on April 8, 2025.

Keep reading