Tag: israel

Trump is turning Gaza into a brutal colonial protection racket

The West has spent two years partnering Israel in its campaign of wanton destruction in Gaza. Now the United States – with the permission of a cowed United Nations Security Council – has appointed Donald Trump to preside over the ruins.

Like a Roman emperor, the US president will be able to dictate the fate of Gaza’s people with a simple gesture. Whatever he decides – whether the thumb turns up or down – it will be called “peace”.

Trump’s most likely side-kick in this depraved charade will be Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. He won his war-crime spurs more than 20 years ago, when he joined one of Trump’s predecessors, George W Bush, in launching an illegal invasion of Iraq and a subsequent, catastrophic occupation that left that country in ruins too.

Satire cannot do justice to this moment.

The eradication of Gaza could be achieved only with the complete hollowing out of international law – the legal global order that was established many decades ago to prevent a third world war and the horrors of the Holocaust.

Marking the demise of that era, the Security Council voted 13-0 this week to endorse Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza, with only Russia and China daring to abstain.

The dissenting representatives of the crumbling legal order – from the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Francesca Albanese, the UN’s legal expert for the occupied territories – have been isolated, vilified and sanctioned by the Trump administration. No one appears to be willing to come to their defence.

Quite the contrary. Germany, whose own genocidal rampage across Europe more than 80 years ago once left it a pariah state and drove the creation of the new legal order, now confidently leads the way in flouting those very rules.

It has resumed supplying Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the slaughter, justifying the decision on the grounds that Israel is murdering fewer Palestinians during Trump’s duplicitous “ceasefire”.

On Wednesday, Israel broke the ceasefire once again, killing more than 30 people in a series of air strikes, including 20 women and children.

Even the current “peace” allows Israel to occupy some 58 percent of Gaza in a depopulated “Green Zone”, effectively partitioning the territory for the forseeable future. Daily, Israel bombs families sheltering in the wreckage of the enclave’s interior, declared a “Red Zone”. And Israel continues to block the entry of food and medicines, including the temporary housing needed as winter rains deluge the territory.

Is this what, 19 years ago, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state, meant when she spoke of the coming, painful “birth pangs of a new Middle East”?

Now, it seems, they have arrived in full force – and the region has never looked more terrifying.

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Trump Ambassador Mike Huckabee Held Secret Meeting With Traitor Who Sold American Secrets to Israel

President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, held a secret meeting in July with traitor Jonathan Pollard, who served 30 years in prison for selling American secrets to Israel.

According to a report from the New York Times, Pollard met with Huckabee at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July for a discussion that was “kept off Mr. Huckabee’s official schedule,” and revealed for the first time on Thursday.

Pollard confirmed the rendezvous in an interview with the Times, telling the newspaper “it was a friendly meeting” and that “a lot of things that came up in conversation.”

In his interview with the Times, Pollard also attacked President Trump, calling him a “madman who has literally sold us down the drain, for Saudi gold.”

Huckabee’s senior advisor David Milstein – the stepson of Fox News host Mike Levin – was reportedly present at the meeting.

Three unnamed officials told the New York Times that the meeting “alarmed the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Israel.” The White House was also reportedly unaware that the secret meeting was taking place.

“The White House was not aware of the meeting in advance, according to a White House official and two people briefed on the matter,” reported the Times. “The White House official also said that senior officials there were alarmed when they learned it had taken place.”

Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after it was discovered that he had been selling American secrets to Israel, including the names of thousands of U.S. intelligence agency sources.

Pollard was released from prison in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020 – flying on a private jet owned by top Trump donor Sheldon Adelson to Tel Aviv, where he was given a hero’s welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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U.S. Mercenary Firm Tied to Notorious Aid Scheme Is Recruiting for New Gaza Deployment

UG Solutions, a leading U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is stepping up its recruitment efforts amid possible plans for several aid distribution sites to be set up in Gaza by next month, Drop Site has learned.

A former army officer who applied for a position as an “International Humanitarian Security Officer” at UG Solutions told Drop Site that a company official told him in a job interview at the end of October that 12 to 15 sites were being planned to open in Gaza and that the company was “going to need a lot more guys.” The former army officer spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns.

The future of Gaza is at a critical juncture following this week’s Security Council vote to approve a U.S.-sponsored resolution authorizing an international stabilization force in Gaza, which would not fall under the command of the UN, but rather a so-called Board of Peace chaired by President Donald Trump. This committee would have sweeping authority over Gaza, including overseeing reconstruction, security, economic recovery, and coordinating the distribution of humanitarian aid.

The use of private military contractors in aid distribution in Gaza first began in May with GHF opening four distribution sites in Gaza guarded by security contractors, many of whom were U.S. military veterans recruited by UG Solutions. For the four and half months that GHF operated in Gaza, more than 2,600 Palestinians seeking food were killed and over 19,000 wounded by Israeli forces or security contractors at or near aid distribution sites. The sites were dismantled after a U.S.-brokered “ceasefire” agreement went into effect in Gaza on October 10.

The UG Solutions official who conducted the phone interview, Joel Reyes, told the former officer that deployment to Gaza was expected by early to mid December with deployments lasting 90 days. The officer was told the salary would be $800 per day for a “static guard” and $1,000 per day for “mobile guard” duty, plus a $180 per diem. When asked what the job entailed, Reyes told the recruit it was “pulling security.”

In response to inquiries about whether the claims of new aid sites in Gaza with a planned deployment for December were accurate, UG Solutions senior vice president of government affairs Jennifer Counter told Drop Site in an email that “UG Solutions is preparing for a wide range of potential scenarios in Gaza, ranging from an advisory role based on our experience from January 2025 to the present day, to a robust security presence in support of humanitarian aid delivery and possible technical assistance to the International Security Force.”

There are other indications of ramped up U.S. presence being planned in Gaza. On September 25, just one day after the $30 million GHF contract officially ended, a new U.S. contract with a company called Q2IMPACT was initiated, amounting to $7 million over five years to “monitor the efficacy of humanitarian aid in Palestine and Lebanon.” Rob Jenkins, the former head of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, and Sean Jones, a former USAID mission manager to Egypt, are senior advisers, according to Q2’s press releases.

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‘More Horrific Than Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo’: The Unsalvageable Depravity of Israel’s Prisons for Palestinians

On June 19, 2024, Khaled Mahajneh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, became the first lawyer to visit a notorious detention facility for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, located inside the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev Desert, one of several detention facilities established after October 7, 2023 to hold Palestinians seized in Gaza.

Speaking to +972 Magazine a week after his visit, Mahanjeh drew a pertinent comparison with the treatment of Muslim prisoners in the US’s post-9/11 “war on terror”, but concluded that Israel’s behavior was even worse.

“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo”, he said, adding, “I have been visiting political and security detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails for years, including since October 7. I know that the conditions of detention have become much harsher, and that the prisoners are abused on a daily basis. But Sde Teiman was unlike anything I’ve seen or heard before.”

Mahajneh “was initially approached by Al Araby TV, which was seeking information about Muhammad Arab”, also identified as Mohammed Saber Arab, “a reporter for the network who was arrested in March while covering the Israeli siege of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.”

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Epstein enlisted Rothschild-run bank to fund Israel’s cyberweapons development: Report

Deceased US financier and notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein attempted to use a Swiss, Rothschild-run private bank to raise money for Israeli cyberweapons development, according to leaked emails from the inbox of former Israeli premier Ehud Barak. 

The emails were obtained from a hack carried out by non-profit whistleblower Distributed Denial of Secrets, and cited in a report released by Drop Site News. 

In 2019, Bloomberg revealed that Ariane de Rothschild, CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Group (then vice chairman), visited Epstein’s New York mansion in 2015. Epstein was found dead in his prison cell less than two weeks later. 

The bank denied it at the time, but admitted four years later that de Rothschild met Epstein as part of her “duties” at the institution – coming after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) released the sex offender’s meeting calendars. 

Epstein provided introductions to US finance leaders and law firms and provided tax and risk consulting, the bank said, while also assisting de Rothschild personally on “a couple of occasions” with estate management advice.

However, emails released by the US House Oversight Committee earlier this month revealed a closer relationship between Epstein and de Rothschild. Epstein had arranged to see a play with her, and had also planned a trip to Montreal with her. 

The Barak emails obtained by Handala show that Epstein tried to use his friendship with de Rothschild to fundraise for Israeli cyberweapons development. After retiring from government in 2013, Barak worked with Pavel Gurvich – a graduate of the Israeli army’s Unit 81 technology unit – to find cyberweapons startups linked to the Israeli intelligence community. 

Conversations between Barak and Gurvich included a variety of cyberweapons concepts and ideas derived from Israeli army research and inspired by the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) vast surveillance network. 

Epstein also pushed plans to finance these cyberweapons companies and sought to get support from de Rothschild. 

The emails show Epstein played the role of middleman between the former Israeli prime minister and de Rothschild.

“If Ehud wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me. Take time so that we can truly understand one another,” said a message from de Rothschild relayed to Barak by Epstein. 

“I’m ready. But I need your advice re HOW? (ladies is your forté),” Barak responded to Epstein.

“It’s not clear whether the Rothschild bank ultimately participated directly in Epstein and Barak’s cyberweapons efforts – but in October 2015, de Rothschild negotiated a $25 million contract with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company, the same entity Epstein used to fund Barak’s intelligence-linked security startup Reporty Homeland Security (now known as Carbyne) earlier that year,” Drop Site News revealed. 

Earlier this month, Drop Site News also revealed via leaked emails that Epstein and Barak helped Israeli intelligence shape the security apparatuses of several African nations, most notably in Cote d’Ivoire.

The new US House Oversight Committee disclosures from earlier in November show that de Rothschild and Epstein remained close over the years. 

Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution but was given a non-prosecution plea deal by the Miami US attorney, Alexander Acosta, who stated that he was warned to “back off” because the convict was connected to an unnamed intelligence agency.

The sex offender was again arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. He died while in prison awaiting his trial, under mysterious circumstances. 

Prison authorities claim he committed suicide, yet this is disputed.

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Israel bombs Lebanon using banned cluster munitions

The Israeli military has used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war on Lebanon last year, The Guardian reported on 19 November, citing photos of munition remnants found in the south of the country.

The British paper commissioned six different arms experts to view the photos, which appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions, the 155mm M999 Barak Eitan cluster munition and 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missiles.

The M999 Barak Eitan releases nine submunitions, which explode into 1,200 tungsten shards, while Ra’am Eitan-guided missiles each hold 64 bomblets.

The cluster munitions were found in three locations in southern Lebanon, where Israeli bombing has been most deadly: the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz, and Wadi Deir Siryan.

Cluster munitions are container bombs that release many smaller submunitions, or “bomblets,” over an area several hundred meters wide, killing anyone within the range.

However, up to 40 percent of the bomblets fail to explode, killing and maiming civilians accidentally encountering them for years or even decades after a war is over.

As a result, 124 nations have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which forbids their use, production, and transfer. Israel is not a signatory to the convention.

“We believe the use of cluster munitions is always in conflict with a military’s duty to respect international humanitarian law because of their indiscriminate nature at the time of use and afterwards,” stated Tamar Gabelnick, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition.

During the 2006 June war, Israel dropped four million cluster bombs on Lebanon in the final days before a ceasefire was reached. An estimated one million unexploded bomblets remained, killing 400 people since that time.

“Cluster munitions are banned internationally for a reason. They are inherently indiscriminate, and there is no way to employ them lawfully or responsibly, and civilians bear the brunt of the risk as these weapons stay deadly for decades to come,” said Brian Castner, the head of crisis research at Amnesty International.

During its war on Lebanon that began in October 2023, Israel has killed almost 4,000 people.

Israel continues to carry out near-daily strikes, in particular in Lebanon’s south, killing both civilians and Hezbollah members.

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Australia’s weapons programs exposed in defence industry cyber attacks

A series of cyber attacks on defence industry supply chain contractors has exposed threats to Australia’s weapons programs, security analysts say.

Over the past week, it was revealed that a hacker group shared material about Australia’s $7 billion Land 400 military program after allegedly breaching several Israeli defence companies.

The Cyber Toufan group posted images and details on Telegram about the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) next-generation Redback infantry fighting vehicle.

Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems is involved in the project, supplying the vehicle’s high-tech turrets.

Another group claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on IKAD Engineering, a key player in the Australian defence industry.

The J Group ransomware gang alleges it infiltrated the company’s systems for five months in what it described as a “staycation in the defence supply chain”.

The hackers claimed they obtained information relating to Australian naval contracts, including the Hunter Class frigate and Collins Class submarine programs.

IKAD Engineering chief executive Gerard Dyson confirmed the incident, saying an “external third party” had gained unauthorised access to a portion of its internal IT systems

He said so far only “non-sensitive project information” had been impacted, along with employee files, adding that IKAD did not have direct connections into ADF systems. 

Cybersecurity experts warned even non-sensitive data could have strategic value, and the attacks should be a “wake-up call”.

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Behind Israel’s Wars Lies a Global Spy Machine

In the aftermath of the devastating Twelve-Day War in June 2025, Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib made a striking claim that captured international attention: more than fifty foreign intelligence services had provided direct support to Israel during the conflict. Speaking during an official visit to Iran’s southwestern Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in October 2025, Khatib characterized this coalition as an “intelligence NATO” that coordinated efforts to destabilize Iran through hybrid warfare encompassing military attacks, psychological operations, cyber warfare, and media campaigns.

His statement came against the backdrop of the Twelve Day War that began on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing over 1,000 Iranians. Iran responded with “Operation True Promise 3,” involving twenty-two waves of missile strikes and over 550 ballistic missiles targeting Israeli territory. The United States intervened on June 22 with B-2 bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites before a ceasefire was brokered on June 24.

Khatib’s claims, while potentially inflated, align remarkably well with patterns this author previously documented in “The Illusion of Israeli Self-Sufficiency in Intelligence,” which exposed how Israel’s most celebrated operations relied on cooperation with the CIA, NSA cyberwarfare expertise, European intelligence networks, and covert collaboration with Arab regimes. As that analysis demonstrated, Israel’s intelligence empire survives not through independence but through reliance on Western logistics, intelligence sharing, and political approval.

The foundation of this multinational intelligence cooperation traces back decades. According to research covered by Israeli investigative journalists, the Berne Club—a secret European intelligence alliance founded in 1969—provided crucial support for Israel’s assassination campaign following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Through an encrypted communication system called “Kilowatt,” thousands of cables were exchanged among eighteen Western intelligence services, functioning as a secret clearinghouse for raw intelligence containing the locations of safe houses, vehicle registrations, the movements of high-value targets, and analytical assessments.

The core of Israel’s intelligence support network begins with the United States and extends through the Five Eyes alliance. The CIA-Mossad relationship dates to the early 1950s, with leaked documents revealing that the NSA shares intelligence with Israel’s Unit 8200 through a formal agreement. Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, “US intelligence dispatched a special unit to assist the IDF in the war in Gaza and established intelligence-sharing channels with Israel to help locate top Hamas commanders,” according to a report by The Conversation. During Israel’s June 2025 strikes on Iran, the United States joined the operation directly with B-2 bomber strikes.

The United Kingdom maintains similarly close cooperation. GCHQ documents reveal Britain “cooperating very closely with Israel.’ DeClassified UK reported that between 2023-2024, “the RAF conducted 518 surveillance flights over Gaza from Cyprus’s RAF Akrotiri, supplying real-time intelligence to Israeli forces.”

European nations have provided extensive intelligence infrastructure supporting Israeli operations. Germany announced this past summer plans to strengthen cooperation on cyber defense, with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt outlining a five-point plan for establishing a “Cyber Dome” including “establishing a joint German-Israel cyber research center.”

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Trump’s Ploy at the UN Is American Imperialism Masquerading as a Peace Process

The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine. The resolution does three things. It establishes US political control over Gaza. It separates Gaza from the rest of Palestine. And it allows the US, and therefore Israel, to determine the timeline for Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza – which would mean: never.

This is imperialism masquerading as a peace process. In and of itself it’s no surprise. Israel runs US foreign policy in the Middle East. What is a surprise is that the US and Israel might just get away with this travesty unless the world speaks up with urgency and indignation.

The draft UNSC resolution would establish a US-UK-dominated Board of Peace, chaired by none other than Donald Trump himself, and endowed with sweeping powers over Gaza’s governance, borders, reconstruction, and security. This resolution would sideline the State of Palestine and condition any transfer of authority to the Palestinians on the indulgence of the Board of Peace.

This would be an overt return to the British Mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than Britain. If it weren’t so utterly tragic, it would be laughable. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Yes, the proposal is farce, yet Israel’s genocide is not. It is tragedy of the first order.

Incredibly, according to the draft resolution, the Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the Board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are “ready” to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years? Even military security is subordinated to the Board, and the envisioned forces would answer not to the UN Security Council or to the Palestinian people, but to the Board’s “strategic guidance.”

The US-Israel resolution is being put forward precisely because the rest of the world – other than Israel and the US – has woken up to two facts. First, Israel is committing genocide, a reality witnessed every day in Gaza and the West Bank, where innocent Palestinians are murdered to the satisfaction of the Israel Defense Forces and the illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Second, Palestine is a state, albeit one whose sovereignty remains obstructed by the US, which uses its veto in the UNSC to block Palestine’s permanent UN membership. At the UN this past July and then again in September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Palestine’s statehood, a fact that put the Israel-US Zionist lobby into overdrive, resulting in the current draft resolution.

For Israel to accomplish its goal of Greater Israel, the US is pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, squeezing Arab and Islamic states with threats and inducements. When other countries resist the US-Israel demands, they are cut off from critical technologies, lose access to World Bank and IMF financing, and suffer Israeli bombing, even in countries with US military bases present. The US offers no real protection; rather, it orchestrates a protection racket, extracting concessions from countries wherever US leverage exists. This extortion will continue until the global community stands up to such tactics and insists upon genuine Palestinian sovereignty and US and Israeli adherence to international law.

Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli maneuvers. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond. Israel and the US are currently at war, overtly or covertly, across the Horn of Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia), the Eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Syria), the Gulf region (Yemen), and Western Asia (Iraq, Iran).

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Palestinian people don’t exist – Israeli security minister

The Palestinian people do not exist, Israel’s hardline security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said ahead of the UN Security Council vote on implementing the next stage of the US-brokered peace plan for Gaza.

The Security Council will vote Monday on a resolution drafted by the US and backed by several Arab and Muslim countries, which they said “offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

In a lengthy X post on Saturday, Ben-Gvir, who is also the leader of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, claimed that “there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian people,’” arguing that the nation was “an invention without any historical, archaeological, or factual basis.”

“The collection of immigrants from Arab countries to the Land of Israel does not constitute a nation, and they certainly do not deserve a reward for the terrorism, murder, and atrocities they have spread everywhere, especially in Gaza,” he wrote, adding that the only “real” solution to the conflict was “encouraging voluntary emigration.”

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