Tag: palestine

Trump ambassador vows NATO-like reforms to UN after terror scandal: ‘Clean this place up’

President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations is vowing to force a massive reform at the global agency, pledging to slim it down through privatization and create more accountability in the wake of revelations that one of its relief agencies in Gaza funded employees who participated in the 2023 terrorist attack in Israel.

“The charge from the president is to clean this place up and get it working for the American people,” U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz said Thursday night in a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show that focused on ending abuses and fraud in American foreign aid.

“What President Trump has done with NATO, we’re looking to do to the United Nations,” he added.

Waltz sharply criticized the Biden administration for turning a blind eye to fraud across America’s multibillion foreign aid system and specifically for re-funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) despite evidence of close ties to the terror group Hamas.

Trump ended funding for UNRWA after taking office in 2025, and the USAID inspector general revealed last month that more than 100 workers funded by UNRWA have been identified as having participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities in Israel.

Waltz said those revelations are a wakeup call for the world that the U.N. is not serving its charter, and the Trump administration has already forced significant changes in recent months.

“We forced them to take their first budget cut ever in their 80-year history. They are going to fire 3,000 U.N. bureaucrats out of the headquarters building in New York. We’re going to get more of our aid dollars,” he said. “…And then there’s 90,000 U.N. peacekeepers around the world. We’ve cut 25% of them. So we put the U.N. on a diet.”

Waltz said the next round of reforms that the U.S. will force as the largest contributor to the U.N. will be modeled after Trump’s effort to make European allies pick up a greater share of the NATO burden.

“The American people are generous people when it comes to tsunamis or earthquakes, like we just had in Venezuela, or other types of famine. But we need to know that it’s not filtering through a bloated bureaucracy; that it’s actually getting to people in need,” he said. “We’re making it leaner and more focused.”

“I think people rightly ask why we’re even involved at all. I say two things. Number one, you need one place in the world where everyone can talk, and if we just walk out, I don’t want to see the U.N. in Beijing or Brussels or somewhere else, we need to get in there and fight and win for American interests,” Waltz added. “And then number two, there’s a burden sharing component to it. I don’t want to see U.S. troops in places like Gaza or, you know, dealing with the gangs in Haiti when the U.N. is willing to go in there and we can push that agenda. I think that’s something that’s in line with the president’s America First foreign policy.”

Waltz succinctly summarized Trump’s policy toward the U.N.

“So, diplomacy first, words before bullets, and burden sharing are two of the reasons we’re still trying to keep this place up. But ultimately, that’s the charge from President Trump: Help it realize its potential, and the U.N. should be helping him craft these peace deals around the world,” he said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer agreed during the show on Thursday that the U.S. should continue to cut funding for the U.N., particularly as it relates to USAID funding, which has already seen cuts under the Trump administration.

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The Zionist Attention Corral

For valid reasons, Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the corruption of their government by Zionists and the Zionist lobby.

The concern that their government does not represent them, but rather the Zionist element within both the US and the Israeli governments, is squarely based upon evidence and, for the overwhelming part, is not born of antisemitism.

Zionism is a racist nationalist political movement, not a religious movement. It is purely for political reasons that the World Jewish Congress (WJC) declares Zionism to be synonymous with Judaism. It is this baseless claim that supposedly justifies accusing anyone who opposes Zionism of being antisemitic.

The idea that Zionism is a core feature of Jewish identity is nonsense. Many Jews resoundingly reject Zionism. Anti-Zionism is not, by any definition, a form of antisemitism. Regardless of the WJC’s groundless assertions.

Illustrating the absurdity of maintaining that Zionism and Jewish identity are synonymous, the WJC openly concedes that Zionism’s primary objective was defined at the First Zionist Congress, or Basel Congress, in 1869.

That objective is:

To secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally assured homeland in Palestine.

The creation and expansion of a Jewish nation state “in Palestine” is an overtly ethno-nationalist political ambition.

Underlining the separation between the Zionist state project, Judaism, and the Jewish people, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) working definition of antisemitism clearly determines that “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” is antisemitic. Reciprocally, therefore, claiming that the state of Israel embodies the will of Jews is equally antisemitic, according to the IHRA definition.

In the UK—from the legal perspective—anti-Zionism is definitely not antisemitism. Professor David Miller has won his employment tribunal and defeated the subsequent appeal by his employer. Miller’s tribunal finding has established in UK law that anti-Zionism is a protected philisophical belief for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act.

There are, of course, antisemitic anti-Zionists, but anti-Zionism is not antisemitic. Opposition to the political ideology of Zionism and revulsion at the horrors inflicted by the Israeli state and its international partners in pursuit of the political ideology of Zionism is not to blame all Jews.

For example, the Israeli state, heavily influenced by Zionism, has committed genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. This observation does not imply that Jews, as a whole people, are collectively responsible for this abhorrent war crime.

From a rational perspective, genocide is obviously incomprehensible. To perpetrate a genocide, even if ordered, requires a deeply unfathomable, heinous malevolence. Burning children alive in their beds, blowing infants’ brains out, sniping pregnant women (and their unborn children), beating the elderly to death with rifle butts, and using anal rape as part of your torture regimen—then writing songs about your exploits and celebrating your depravity as if it were a virtue—are not the actions of morally defensible human beings: Jewish or otherwise.

As discussed in my recent piece for Unlimited Hangout, aside from the obscene brutality—recorded, filmed, and shown around the world—just from a statistical or even an official report perspective, the Israeli government’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is blatantly obvious.

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All Christian schools in Jerusalem shut after Israel refuses entry to Palestinian teachers

Christian schools in Jerusalem have been forced to indefinitely delay the start of the new academic year after Israeli authorities failed to renew entry permits for more than 70 teachers and staff living in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians holding West Bank IDs generally require Israeli-issued permits to cross checkpoints into East Jerusalem. But Israeli authorities failed to renew entry permits for more than 70 teachers and staff “suddenly and without prior notice,” the General Secretariat for Christian Educational Institutions in Jerusalem said in a press statement shared with the media on Monday.

“Accordingly… it has been decided to suspend school attendance in the schools of the city of Jerusalem beginning Tuesday morning, 1 September 2026, until the necessary permits for teachers and staff are reissued and renewed,” the Secretariat said.

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DOJ Seizes Over $560,000 in Cryptocurrency Donations for Hamas

The FBI has seized more than $560,000 in cryptocurrency donations intended for Hamas, the Justice Department said Tuesday in announcing a disruption of financing for the militant group.

In addition to seizing cryptocurrency meant to support Hamas’ military wing, the department said that it had taken control of website domains and communication platforms used for fundraising and recruitment, and had obtained information about thousands of people who had contacted Hamas with a goal of giving money to the group.

“My message to Hamas is clear: your networks are not secure, your crypto is vulnerable, and we will not stop until your ability to wage war is defeated,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a video statement announcing the operation.

According to FBI affidavits filed in connection with the seizures, Hamas began testing virtual currency fundraising in or around early 2019 through its Qassam Brigades, or military wing, and solicited donations on its Telegram channel and also used direct online fundraising. Hamas officials bragged that the currency would be untraceable and their websites offered instructions for how to make anonymous donations, the affidavits say.

A major investigative break arrived last year when FBI officials identified a financing network soliciting donations to the Qassam Brigades via virtual currency and a confidential source located in the United States alerted law enforcement to a Telegram post asking for contributions to an email address associated with Hamas.

Brett Leatherman, an FBI assistant director in charge of its cyber division, said the bureau would “continue to use its authorities to intercept illicit funds and prevent terrorist organizations from exploiting digital networks to finance their operations.”

Hamas officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The West Bank’s Ultra-Apartheid (and the Collusive International Silence)

Gaza showed the genocidal face of Israel’s expulsive strategy. In the West Bank, the same objective is realized with incremental escalation. The ultimate goal is the same – the final expulsion of the Palestinians.

by Dan Steinbock | Sep 3, 2026 | 1 Comment

Today, the West Bank is a nightmare of vicious settlement expansion, land seizure, economic strangulation, settler violence and forced displacement.

With the collusion of the Israeli military and police, the Israeli-occupied territories are effectively ruled by the Messianic far-right settlers who see their mob-like racist pogroms of Palestinians as a divine step to Final Redemption.

The ongoing year has accelerated the process from settlement expansion toward territorial consolidation and displacement. The scale is stark.

Displacement becomes systematic

By August 10, the UN reported 76 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, including 18 children; about 3,800 Palestinians had been displaced during 2026 through settler violence, demolitions and evictions, nearly half children.

More than 1,430 settler incidents had been recorded, affecting roughly 260 Palestinian communities.

The crucial point is not simply Jewish settler violence but its geographical and economic function. Settler attacks increasingly target homes, agricultural land, livestock, water and electricity infrastructure.

In a recent podcast, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right extremist who believes in Jewish racial supremacy, urged Israelis to kill “30 to 40” Palestinians in Gaza every night. He also supports aggressive, lethal actions against Palestinians in the West Bank, applying a similarly hardline approach through legislative, judicial, and security policies.

These statements no longer reflect a “lunatic fringe,” as often portrayed by the media in the West. They reflect the brutal repression of Palestinians that’s now the new normal. OCHA reports that displacement caused by demolitions, settler violence and access restrictions has averaged 17 Palestinians a day in 2026; twice the average of the preceding three years.

Since 2023, 127 communities have experienced full or partial displacement; 47 have been completely emptied.

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Israel Faces Toxic Blowback From Its Genocide in Gaza

Many thanks to Dr. Dianne Woodward, a former lecturer in Biological Sciences, and a manager at the Galilee Foundation, a UK charity empowering Palestinian youth since 2007, for writing a compelling article for Al Jazeera, “Toxic waste of war on Gaza reached Israel”, highlighting how the ecocidal impact of Gaza’s genocidal and ongoing 34-month assault on the Gaza Strip is creating a monstrous public health crisis, not just for the Palestinians, but also for the Israelis themselves.

Typically, Israel’s leadership was blinded by its own genocidal fury and its appalling supremacism to such an extent that it never dawned on them that, by bombarding Gaza, its immediate neighbour, with more deadly weapons than have ever been dropped anywhere on earth on an area of comparable size, and by deliberately destroying its entire infrastructure, including the whole of its sewage system, it was paving the way for the impact of this frenzy of unforgivable depravity to, literally, wash up on its own shores.

As Dr. Woodward explained:

Gaza shares the Mediterranean, coastal ecosystems and coastal aquifers with Israel. The destruction of its electric power and sanitation infrastructure forces over 100,000 cubic metres of raw, untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea or on land every day. Because in this part of the Mediterranean currents move primarily from south to north, this waste is carried straight up the coast into Israeli waters.

The Ashkelon desalination plant in southern Israel has been forced to shut down multiple times due to high faecal bacteria contamination from Gaza’s wastewater. Raw sewage also triggers toxic algae blooms blocking and damaging desalination filtration systems, as well as creating dead zones where fishing would normally happen.

Wastewater toxins, heavy metals and pathogens are absorbed by local marine life. Because fish migrate across maritime boundaries, contaminated seafood poses a direct health hazard to Palestinian as well as Israeli consumers. Raw sewage carries the same pathogens afflicting Gaza into the shared marine environment. Its northward drift directly impacts Israeli coastal cities.

Although pathogens can persist and migrate under certain conditions, pathogen contaminated groundwater is unlikely to feed into Israeli municipal water supplies, but can still affect the shared aquifer and surrounding environment.

Salts and other chemical contaminants can travel much farther and are often a bigger long-term aquifer concern. They can contaminate a shared groundwater system and reduce the quality and usability of the aquifer over time for irrigation, agriculture and drinking.

Dr. Woodward noted that, earlier this month, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and representatives of the Board of Peace established under Donald Trump to, ostensibly, oversee a new Palestinian-led administration in Gaza, “agreed to set up a working group on sanitation and public health affecting both Israel and Gaza”, although its “membership and detailed operating structure” have not been made public.

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Inside Israel’s Torture Camps: Abuse, Secrecy and Impunity

After October 7, 2023, Israel expanded and reorganized a system of military detention facilities used for people detained in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians passed through facilities under the direct control of the Israel Defense Forces, brought there for registration, interrogation and decisions about further incarceration. But what was officially intended as a temporary stage quickly turned into prolonged detention; the Israeli military itself later acknowledged that, because of the unprecedented number of detainees and overcrowding in regular prisons, many remained in military camps far longer than anticipated.

Behind the barbed wire, accounts of abuse quickly piled up. Released detainees described routine blindfolding, shackling, beatings, dog attacks, starvation, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care and sexual violence. These abuses were independently documented by Amnesty International, the UN human rights office and later UN special mechanisms. In May 2024, the Israeli military conceded that Sde Teiman and Anatot are military lockups where Palestinians are held indefinitely without trial or charges under the “Unlawful Combatants” law. Two years later, the system is still operating.

Geopolitics Prime has assembled a comprehensive picture of this system, drawing on survivor testimonies, legal documents, internal military correspondence and findings from human rights organizations and UN mechanisms.

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How To Cover Up A Genocide — Israel Destroys 10 Million Tons of Evidence

Could you imagine living in a time when erasing 10 million tons of evidence of genocide is barely even newsworthy? Somehow we’re now in such a repulsive era.

There have been a select few articles detailing Israel’s efforts to clear literally millions of tons of evidence of its genocidal acts. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor recently reported on the carting away of 100 trucks per day of debris, pieces of destroyed lives, and human remains. Obviously, no small undertaking.

“This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites.”

As Al Jazeera also reported this month,

“[The Euro-Med report] estimates that there are approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip, much of it the result of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the enclave.”

This means that Israel has already removed/destroyed 15% of the evidence of its genocidal actions. Very exciting. Only 85% left to go.

Plus, they’ve already stolen 60 to 70% of Gaza. So there’s only 30 to 40% left to steal. Also very thrilling.

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Qusra Is Just a Warning: Israel’s Blueprint for the West Bank

If you want to understand the bleak future awaiting the occupied West Bank, do not look away. Just pay attention to the events unfolding in the small Palestinian town of Qusra, south of Nablus.

The story of the future of the West Bank begins here.

While much of the media is treating reports emerging from the area as simply another episode of “settler violence,” it is not. Qusra represents something far more consequential: a glimpse into the new Plan Dalet that Israel has in store for Palestinians.

Plan Dalet was the military blueprint through which Zionist forces conquered much of historic Palestine, village by village, during the Nakba.

The plan did not suddenly emerge in 1948. It built on military schemes dating back to 1945, developing into a strategy for conquering Palestinian towns and villages, destroying communities and expelling their inhabitants.

The significance of this history today is not merely symbolic. The Nakba was a process, implemented in stages. So, too, is the annexation of the West Bank.

Nor is this merely an intellectual argument. Israeli officials have openly invoked a new Nakba as an intended outcome. In November 2023, Avi Dichter declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” adding, “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

True to form, this new Nakba carries many of the characteristics of the old one: coordinated violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and land confiscation.

The genocide in Gaza represents the zenith of this violence – a more devastating manifestation, but a continuation of the original sin upon which the Israeli state was established.

While all eyes were on Gaza beginning on October 7, 2023, the West Bank was largely ignored, allowing Israel the space to escalate violence in all its forms to levels unseen in decades.

The result has been staggering. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 240 children, and wounded thousands more. Tens of thousands have been detained, while more than 33,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps alone.

Now, back to Qusra.

Beginning on August 9, armed Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the outskirts of the town.

They blocked access to the houses, erected tents outside them and cut water and electricity supplies. Families, including young children, were effectively trapped inside.

The Israeli military subsequently declared the surrounding area a closed military zone, restricting access by Palestinians, activists and journalists.

What emerged was not simply settler violence but a division of labor: settlers create the crisis; the army imposes the restrictions; Palestinian movement is curtailed; and the victims themselves are pressured to leave.

And the siege continued. As I write these words, the siege of the Qusra homes has concluded its second week.

Qusra is not incidental to this strategy. Israel has already confiscated its land for the settlement of Migdalim, while nearby outposts including Esh Kodesh have long been associated with attacks and attempts to seize Palestinian agricultural land.

Control of such areas is essential to the larger project of connecting settlement blocs, fragmenting Palestinian territory and transforming Palestinian communities into isolated enclaves.

A few years ago, the Israeli government behaved as though its plan to formally annex large swathes of the West Bank had been placed on hold. Yet, since October 7, annexation has moved from aspiration to obsession – in both words and action.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir oversaw the mass distribution of weapons after October 7, arming thousands of civilian security-squad members with rifles amid an already heavily armed settler population.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has systematically worked to transfer powers over the West Bank from military administration to Israeli civilian authorities – one of the clearest institutional mechanisms of annexation.

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How the Media Sells Genocide

The Western media manufactures consent for genocide. It normalizes Israel’s decades-long military occupation and apartheid. It erases Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. It perpetuates the fallacy of Israeli victimhood. It betrays, discredits and demonizes the work of Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, at least 220 of whom have been killed by Israel between Oct. 7, 2023, and August 2025. It supinely accepts draconian Israeli censorship. It acquiesces with tepid letters of protest at Israel’s refusal to allow foreign reporters in Gaza — an effort by Israel to mask its war crimes. It amplifies Israeli lies, from beheaded babies to widespread sexual assault of Israeli women on Oct. 7, to obfuscate the truth.

When writing about Gaza, verbs are in the passive tense. There is no subject. No one is accountable. Genocide, it seems, is an act of God. No different from an earthquake or tsunami. Clichés and opaque adjectives such as the “cycle of violence” or “clashes” distort and falsify reality.

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” George Orwell warned.

Terms such as “genocide,” “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territories” magically disappear from media reports on Palestinians, whose resistance is routinely described as “savage” and “barbaric.” New York Times reporters are instructed by editors to avoid terms such as “Palestine,” “genocide,” “carnage,” “refugee camp,” “slaughter” and “massacre,” when referencing Palestinians.

The media slavishly regurgitates what Israel feeds it. Saturation bombing becomes “surgical air strikes.” Israel’s weaponization of famine becomes a “food shortage.” The killing of unarmed civilians — including children — becomes “clashes.” The hilltop fortress-like compounds of Jewish colonists becomes “neighborhoods.” Extrajudicial assassination of a journalist or a doctor becomes “died.”

Genocide, referred to as the “Israel-Hamas war” is justified as “self-defense,” part of the mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, churches and other civilian targets are obliterated, they are labeled “Hamas command centers” or targeted because Hamas is “using civilians as human shields” — something Israel does routinely, when the army binds detained Palestinians and forces them to enter potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels ahead of Israeli troops.

When Israelis are held by Hamas, they are “hostages,” even if they serve in the military. When Palestinians — including children — are held without charges or trial and disappeared into Israeli detention centers, where torture is “widespread” and “systematic,” they are “prisoners.”

Missile attacks on tent cities or hospitals are blamed on Palestinian armed groups firing errant rockets. If Israel acknowledges the attacks — which very rarely happens — they are described as a “tragic mistake.”

Civil institutions in Gaza are characterized as “Hamas-run” to cast doubt on the veracity of what they report. The New York Times routinely qualifies announcements from the Gaza Health Ministry by noting it “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” masking the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.

The result is some of the most convoluted writing in the history of journalism, including the Nov. 5, 2023 New York Times headline that reads: “Explosions Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.”

“When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?” I asked in my column The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.

“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

The camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

“When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif and three other journalists were killed on Aug. 10 in their media tent near Al Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?” I asked.

“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

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