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1. “Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever

On April 13, Iran, alongside Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Ansar Allah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on Israel, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv's criminal bombing of Tehran's Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Iranian generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – particularly West Asia – will never be the same again.

"This action was hugely significant. Now, the Israelis will have to be extremely careful about what they do in Syria against Tehran. The regional balance of power has permanently shifted away from the Zionists. Tel Aviv will never recover at all. It is the end of them. They have destroyed themselves. They are seen as a regime that has no place in the civilized world, a Nazi state, across the entire globe," geopolitical expert Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells MintPress News.

Iran's first-ever strike on Israel, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. Israel claimed a 99% interception rate.

However, extensive photo and video material shows that most missiles hit their targets and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top-tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.

This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills through Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message—Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature but didn't do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv's to decide whether—and how—to retaliate. A response came on April 19 in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.

Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality, a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran's air defenses but ultimately couldn't. An Iranian spokesperson referred to the effort as "failed and humiliating." This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced following Operation True Promise's seismic success. As we shall see, Israel now has little time remaining and no good choices left to make.

 

'New Equation'

Despite its astonishing optics and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn't a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook Iran's longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran's Syrian embassy was without historical parallel and concerned with Israel eliciting a major escalation to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred a broader response while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards Israel. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:

We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point, we will attack against them."

Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike Israel directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities and vulnerabilities of Israel and the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.

Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13, and the data yield was surely enormous. Since Russia's "Special Military Operation" began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev "become redundant very quickly because they're quickly countered by the Russians":

We used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don't give us a second chance. And they're successful in this."

If there's a next time, too, Iran's missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles were fired at Israel during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general.

"One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones," they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs "were enormous," comparable to what Israel burned through during the entire 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.

Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly a great many orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. Dr. Marandi tells MintPress News that "most" of the initial "decoy" barrage, including drones, were collecting dust. "Tehran was looking for an excuse to get rid of them," he says.

"Most of the heavy-duty work attempting to counter Iran's strike was done by the Americans anyway, not the Israelis. The Iron Dome barely factored in. The two places hit hardest – the southern airbase where F35s are based and Tel Aviv's Golan Heights intelligence base resulted in significant damage and casualties. Of course, the Zionists don't admit this," Dr. Marandi adds.

This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for Israel, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end Ansar Allah's anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast at squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 Ansar Allah drones. A CIA officer lamented:

That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor. We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us."

 

'Israel Goes Under'

There is no sign yet of Washington having publicly rectified this concern, which may account for why U.S. officials at the start of April offered Ansar Allah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade. This was summarily rejected. No business as usual – no commerce, no trade – on Yemen's watch while Palestinians are slaughtered. In the event of any subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, too, Tehran's drones will not be used to deter shipping either, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust Israeli air defenses.

This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause battlefield collapse and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries and states trying to keep Kiev's lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.

That conclusion is supported by an April 22 Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran's barrage. It "matched worst-case scenarios" outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, "this was on the high end…of what we were anticipating." White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn't.

On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st-century Holocaust, Israel's genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation published on November 6 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself.

Thousands" of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.

One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn't yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah could completely paralyze the country economically, render entire areas uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran's crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a terrifying scale.

Resultantly, Israel's "Samson Option," under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, "We have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under." But Tehran's hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological payload of their own.

 

'Whoever Moves'

Israel's Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster in every conceivable way. The fiasco's consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent they could be fatal. This may account for Netanyahu's flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of the Israeli Defense Forces' defeat is such that in a scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11, Zionist "journalist" Chaim Levinson lamented:

We've lost. Truth must be told… It's unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel's northern border…No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership's weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we're a shtetl with an airforce, and that's on the condition it's awakened in time."

Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv's battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IDF, has condemned the Forces' "military and moral failures" and how "its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down":

[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound…Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza, and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left…Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible."

The Economist went on to slam a "lack of enforcement" of already virtually non-existent "rules of engagement" under which the IDF operates. A "veteran reserve officer" was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily "decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed." A sapper in another unit admitted, "The only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza":

"Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalizing Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20, the IDF's chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, 'to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn't ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.' Four months into the war, this was too little, too late."

That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far Israel has fallen since October 7, 2023. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world's citizenry. Adversaries do not fear its once-vaunted military and its ability to unilaterally strike neighboring countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv's claim to "defense" and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.

Meanwhile, Israel has suffered population collapse, with simultaneous mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs. The trauma of perpetrating genocide and living under the daily threat of attack, as Palestinians have since 1948, has ravaged soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads and likely won't return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.

"I don't think 10 years from now Israel will exist. Zionism will die. The only solution is equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout Palestine. This war will continue, but direct engagement with Iran would be totally destructive, militarily. So the Israelis now target Rafah, but they will be defeated there, and they know that. As long as Netanyahu is leader, we will have a continuation of this tragedy. The only way out is a coup in Tel Aviv," Dr. Marandi concludes.

For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, Israel as we know it is on the brink of extinction, which wasn't the case before Hamas breached Gaza's concentration camp walls. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel's creation. And there is no going back to "normal."

Time is now and forever on the side of the tenacious, undefeated Resistance – so, too, justice and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanizing words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023:

If I must die, let it bring hope."

Feature photo | A passerby, taking on his cellphone, walks past a banner showing missiles being launched from Iranian map in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

The post "Military and Moral Failures": How Iran's Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever appeared first on MintPress News.

2. How Jewish Extremists Became the New Face of Israel

Throughout history, fringe religious Zionist parties have had limited success in achieving the kind of electoral victories that would allow them an actual share in the country's political decision-making.

The impressive 17 seats won by Israel's extremist religious party, Shas, in the 1999 elections was a watershed moment in the history of these parties, whose ideological roots go back to Avraham Itzhak Kook and his son Zvi Yehuda Hacohen.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé referred to the Kooks' ideological influence as a "fusion of dogmatic messianism and violence."

Throughout the years, these religious parties struggled on several fronts: their inability to unify their ranks, their failure to appeal to mainstream Israeli society and their inability to strike the balance between their messianic political discourse and the kind of language – not necessarily behavior – that Israel's western allies expect.

Though much of the financial support and political backing of Israel's extremists originate in the United States and, to a lesser extent, other European countries, Washington has been clear regarding its public perception of Israel's religious extremists.

In 2004, the United States banned the Kach party, which could be seen as the modern manifestation of the Kooks and Israel's early religious Zionist ideologues.

The founder of the group, Meir Kahane, was assassinated in November 1990 while the extremist rabbi – responsible for much violence against innocent Palestinians throughout the years – was giving another hate-filled speech in Manhattan.

Kahane's death was only the start of much violence meted out by his followers, lead among them an American doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down on February 25, 1994, dozens of Palestinian Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers while protesting the massacre was nearly as many as those killed by Goldstein earlier in the day, a tragic but perfect representation of the relationship between the Israeli state and the violent settlers who operate as part of a larger state agenda.

That massacre was a watershed moment in the history of religious Zionism. Instead of serving as an opportunity to marginalize their growing influence by the supposedly more liberal Zionists, they grew in power and, ultimately, political influence within the Israeli state.

Goldstein himself became a hero, whose grave, in Israel's most extremist illegal settlement in the West Bank, Kiryat Arba, is now a famous shrine, a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Israelis.

It is particularly telling that Goldstein's shrine was built opposite Meir Kahane's Memorial Park, which indicates the clear ideological connections between these individuals, groups, and funders.

In recent years, however, the traditional role played by Israel's religious Zionists began to shift, leading to the election of Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Israeli Knesset in 2021 and, ultimately, to his role as the country's National Security Minister in December 2022.

Ben-Gvir is a follower of Kahane. "It seems to me that, ultimately, Rabbi Kahane was about love. Love for Israel without compromise, without any other consideration," he said in November 2022.

But, unlike Kahane, Ben-Gvir was not satisfied with the role of religious Zionists as cheerleaders for the settlement movement, almost daily raids of Al-Aqsa and the occasional attacks on Palestinians. He wanted to be at the center of Israeli political power.

It is an interesting debate whether Ben-Gvir achieved his status as a direct result of the successful grassroots work of religious Zionism or because the political circumstances of Israel itself have changed in his favor. The truth, however, might be somewhere in the middle. Israel's historic failure of its so-called political left—namely the Labor Party—has, in recent years, propelled a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon—the political center.

Meanwhile, Israel's traditional right, the Likud party, grew weaker, partly because it failed to appeal to the growing, more youthful religious Zionism constituency and also because of the series of splits that occurred after Ariel Sharon's breaking up of the party and the founding of Kadima in 2005 – a party that has been long disbanded.

To survive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has redefined his party to its most extremist version of all time and, thus, began to attract religious Zionists with the hope of filling the gaps created because of internal infighting within the Likud.

By doing so, Netanyahu has granted religious Zionists the opportunity of a lifetime.

Soon, following the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood operation, and in the early days of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Ben-Gvir launched his National Guard, a group which he tried, but failed, to compose before the war.

Thanks to Ben-Gvir, Israel, now, per the words of opposition leader Yair, has become a country with a "private militia."

By March 19, Ben-Gvir announced that 100,000 gun permits had been handed over to his supporters. It is within this period that the US began imposing 'sanctions' on a few individuals affiliated with Israel's settler extremist movement, a slight slap on the wrist considering the massive damage that has already been done and the tremendous violence that is likely to follow in the coming months and years.

Unlike Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir's thinking is not limited to his desire to reach a specific position within the government. Israel's religious extremists are seeking a fundamental and irreversible shift in Israeli politics.

The recent push to change the relationship between the judicial and exclusive branches of government was as crucial to those extremists as it was to Netanyahu himself. However, the latter has championed such an initiative to shield himself against legal accountability. Ben-Gvir's supporters have a different reason in mind: they want to dominate the government and the military with no responsibility or oversight.

Israel's religious Zionists are playing a long game, which is not linked to a particular election, individual or government coalition. They are redefining the state, along with its ideology. And they are winning.

Ben-Gvir and his threats to topple Netanyahu's coalition government have been the main driving force behind the genocide in Gaza.

If Meir Kahane were still alive, he would have been proud of his followers. The ideology of the once marginalized and loathed extremist rabbi is now the backbone of Israeli politics.

Feature photo | An Israeli hardline nationalist supporter of Israeli army medic Sgt. Elor Azaria, wears a t-shirt with a drawing of Rabbi Meir Kahana, who founded extreme right wing Jewish movements, the Jewish Defense League and the ultranationalist Kach political party, outside the Israeli military court in Tel Aviv. Oded Balilty | AP

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is 'Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.' His other books include 'My Father Was a Freedom Fighter' and 'The Last Earth.' Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net 

The post How Jewish Extremists Became the New Face of Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

3. Shockwaves to Shattered Defenses: The Myth of Israeli Supremacy Crumbles

It's difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, which forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army. Yet the strikes launched by Iran on April 13 and 14 are also truly historic.

For the first time, the backbone of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one as all the taboos have now been broken, and new equations have been established.

Israel's deterrence capacity no longer exists. Since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah and the Iraqi Resistance have shattered it. Still, these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose. This direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while Iran very quickly carried out its threats.

Iran launched its strike despite U.S. and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war and directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of interference. This audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance.

Iran's military prowess was clearly demonstrated. Despite the fact that this attack was known in advance and that the capabilities – both aviation and anti-missile defenses of no less than five military powers directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) were unable to stop Iran from striking Israeli territory. Israel's defense systems were saturated, sirens sounded from north to south for hours, and yet at least twenty direct hits were recorded.

Iran demonstrated its moral superiority. It strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (two air bases that were destroyed according to Iran and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the countries affected to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region.

Finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel's five layers of defense was compensated for by a sixth layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles. Given the impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the Western data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to allow Israel to save face and enable it to claim victory as it supposedly was able to intercept 99% of the projectiles.

Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said in 2007,

"Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions."

While his statement has been mocked many times, particularly given the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion. When its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, stated following Iran's attack, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution,

"We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy."

This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence. Those who play down the importance of the attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran's vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran, the Campaign Director of Avaaz, pointed out following the attack,

"The scale of Iran's attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the U.S. and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn't know it had; it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel's missile defense system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the U.S. has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds…etc.

This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes are now being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the U.S. and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly."

While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself, at an exorbitant cost of over a billion dollars no less, against an attack that was limited in scope, lacked the element of surprise and cost Iran a measly 35 million dollars, there is little doubt in anyone's mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel's defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the depopulation process that has already cost it hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.

For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the world and Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite. Gaza experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the hearts of those responsible for their mass slaughter.

Not unlike the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 will forever be engraved in people's consciences. It will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of "reverse migration" of Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them.

With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the inevitable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite six months of genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel's illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what he likely expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever.

Israel now has only one choice: to end the war in Gaza or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the region ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire. The question now is whether Netanyahu's instinct for self-preservation (his political survival) will take over the general interest. This scenario would put the very existence of Israel at risk.

Editor's Note: The author of this article has chosen to publish under a pseudonym. This decision stems from residing in a European country where expressing criticism of Israel has become increasingly challenging. Sadly, governmental crackdowns on activism have compelled the author and others to take this precaution to safeguard their ability to contribute to public discourse. We believe it is crucial to respect their decision while valuing the insights and perspectives they offer in their writing.

Feature photo | A woman walks past a banner showing missiles being launched, in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP

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4. A Tale of Two Genocides: Namibia’s Stand Against Israeli Aggression

The distance between Gaza and Namibia is measured in the thousands of kilometers. But the historical distance is much closer. This is precisely why Namibia was one of the first countries to take a strong stance against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Namibia was colonized by the Germans in 1884, while the British colonized Palestine in the 1920s, handing the territory to the Zionist colonizers in 1948.

Though the ethnic and religious fabric of Palestine and Namibia differ, the historical experiences are similar.

It is easy, however, to assume that the history that unifies many countries in the Global South is only that of Western exploitation and victimization. It is also a history of collective struggle and resistance.

Namibia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. This long-rooted history has allowed Namibians, over thousands of years, to establish a sense of belonging to the land and to one another, something that the Germans did not understand or appreciate.

When the Germans colonized Namibia, giving it the name of 'German Southwest Africa,'' they did what all other Western colonialists have done, from Palestine to South Africa to Algeria, to virtually all Global South countries. They attempted to divide the people, exploited their resources and butchered those who resisted.

Although a country with a small population, Namibians resisted their colonizers, resulting in the German decision to simply exterminate the natives, literally killing the majority of the population.

Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Namibia answered the call of solidarity with the Palestinians, along with many African and South American countries, including Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, South Africa, Brazil, China and many others.

Namibia rejects Germany's Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza

On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most… pic.twitter.com/ZxwWxLv8yt

— Namibian Presidency (@NamPresidency) January 13, 2024

Though intersectionality is a much-celebrated notion in Western academia, no academic theory is needed for oppressed, colonized nations in the Global South to exhibit solidarity with one another.

So when Namibia took a strong stance against Israel's largest military supporter in Europe – Germany – it did so based on Namibia's total awareness of its history.

The German genocide of the Nama and Herero people (1904-1907) is known as the "first genocide of the 20th century". The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza is the first genocide of the 21st century. The unity between Palestine and Namibia is now cemented through mutual suffering.

However, Namibia did not launch a legal case against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); it was Nicaragua, a Central American country thousands of miles away from Palestine and Namibia.

The Nicaraguan case accuses Germany of violating the 'Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.' It rightly sees Germany as a partner in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.

This accusation alone should terrify the German people, in fact, the whole world, as Germany has been affiliated with genocides from its early days as a colonial power. The horrific crime of the Holocaust and other mass killings carried out by the German government against Jews and other minority groups in Europe during WWII is a continuation of other German crimes committed against Africans decades earlier.

The typical analysis of why Germany continues to support Israel is explained based on German guilt over the Holocaust. This explanation, however, is partly illogical and partly erroneous.

It is illogical because if Germany has, indeed, internalized any guilt from its previous mass killings, it would make no sense for Berlin to add yet more guilt by allowing Palestinians to be butchered en masse. If guilt indeed exists, it is not genuine. It is erroneous because it completely overlooks the German genocide in Namibia. It took the German government until 2021 to acknowledge the horrific butchery in that poor African country, ultimately agreeing to pay merely one billion euros in 'community aid,' which will be allocated over three decades.

The German government's support of the Israeli war on Gaza is not motivated by guilt but by a power paradigm that governs the relations among colonial countries. Many countries in the Global South understand this logic very well, thus the growing solidarity with Palestine.

The Israeli brutality in Gaza, but also the Palestinian sumud, resilience and resistance, are inspiring the Global South to reclaim its centrality in anti-colonial liberation struggles.

The revolution in the Global South's outlook—culminating in South Africa's case at the ICJ and the Nicaraguan lawsuit against Germany—indicates that change is not the outcome of a collective emotional reaction. Instead, it is part and parcel of the shifting relationship between the Global South and the Global North.

Africa has been undergoing a process of geopolitical restructuring for years. The anti-French rebellions in West Africa, demanding true independence from the continent's former colonial masters, and the intense geopolitical competition involving Russia, China and others are all signs of changing times. And with this rapid rearrangement, a new political discourse and popular rhetoric are emerging, often expressed in the revolutionary language emanating from Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and others.

But the shift is not happening only on the rhetorical front. The rise of BRICS as a powerful new platform for economic integration between Asia and the rest of the Global South has opened up the possibility of alternatives to Western financial and political institutions.

In 2023, it was revealed that BRICS countries hold 32 percent of the world's total GDP, compared to 30 percent held by the G7 countries. This has much political value, as four of the five original founders of BRICS are strong and unapologetic supporters of the Palestinians.

While South Africa has been championing the legal front against Israel, Russia and China are battling the US at the UN Security Council to institute a ceasefire. Beijing's Ambassador to The Hague defended the Palestinian armed struggle as legitimate under international law.

Now that global dynamics are working in favor of Palestinians, it is time for the Palestinian struggle to return to the embrace of the Global South, where shared histories will always serve as a foundation for meaningful solidarity.

Feature photo | Hon. Yvonne Dausab, Minister of Justice of Namibia, joined representatives of over 50 nations in presenting testimony to the International Court of Justice on the legality of the Israeli occupation. Photo | International Court of Justice

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is 'Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.' His other books include 'My Father Was a Freedom Fighter' and 'The Last Earth.' Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

The post A Tale of Two Genocides: Namibia's Stand Against Israeli Aggression appeared first on MintPress News.

5. Revealed: Israel’s Hidden History Of Attacks On Iran

Iran's retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality,  Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.

As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media's timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel's conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a "shadow war," the details of which are pretty shocking.

While the international media's attention was riveted on Iran's retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel's strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran's embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.

Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn't respond continues to dominate the airways.

This is as Iran's IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company's role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.

However, the Israel-Iran "Shadow War" did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.

As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.

In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran's Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel's doing.

The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.

More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.

In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world's top cheerleader for the West's crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran's civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration's assassination of Iran's top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.

Yet, despite Israel's long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show 'Palestine Files'. Director of 'Steal of the Century: Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe'. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

The post Revealed: Israel's Hidden History Of Attacks On Iran appeared first on MintPress News.

6. Amal Clooney’s Silence on Gaza Shows the Limits Of Liberalism

Amal Clooney, the internationally acclaimed lawyer, is a liberal icon. She and her organization, the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), never shrink from pronouncing their global verdicts on human rights matters. And yet, despite being Lebanese and of Palestinian descent herself, Time magazine's 2022 Woman of the Year has maintained complete silence on Israel's continued bombardment of those very countries – a crime other human rights experts have labeled a genocide.

It has now been six months since the October 7 attack, Israel's wholesale destruction of Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon, yet Clooney has made no public statement on the matter, either in public or on social media, despite mounting calls for her to do so.

 

Condemning Enemy Nations, Ignoring Crimes of Friends

Born in Lebanon to a Druze Lebanese father and a Sunni Muslim mother of Palestinian descent, Clooney's family sought refuge in the United Kingdom after the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. After practicing law for many years in the U.K. and U.S. in 2016, she founded the CFJ alongside her film star husband, George. "​​We founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice to hold perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable for their crimes and to help victims in their fight for justice," the pair explain on their website.

Today, the CFJ works in over 40 countries. This includes many countries the U.S. treats as enemy nations or candidates for regime change. Clooney and her foundation have taken strong stances against many of those nations. She has demanded that Russia be prosecuted for war crimes. "Ukraine is, today, a slaughterhouse. Right in the heart of Europe," she told the U.N. Security Council in 2022. The following year, the CFJ filed three cases in Germany. The cases accused Russia of many war crimes, including leveling a civilian building in a missile strike on Odesa, killing 40 people, unlawfully detaining, torturing and killing four Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region, and sexual violence and looting in the Kiev region. The CFJ is also suing the Venezuelan government over alleged human rights abuses.

In 2016, Clooney condemned Iran and North Korea for serially abusing their citizens' human rights. She did this at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, attended by the country's ruler, Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi. Far from criticizing the UAE's dismal human rights record, she praised the government and merely offered friendly "advice" to the emirate on how it could improve.

And yet, the Clooney Foundation has been entirely silent regarding arguably the dominant human rights issue of our time. A search for the words "Israel," "Gaza," and "Palestine" on both its website and its Twitter account elicits zero relevant results.

While we cannot expect either Clooney or her organization to work on every country simultaneously, it has disappointed many of Clooney's admirers that neither has even put out a statement about the country of her birth and the country of her ancestry being torn apart by a Western-backed power.

Even when directly questioned about it, George Clooney appeared to dodge the question, stating:

The whole area [the Middle East] is just on fire, and it is heartbreaking all the way around. All you can do is pray that there is some version of this that comes to some peaceful end soon. But I don't see it happening in the very near future, and I don't think anybody does." 

This relative silence on Gaza contrasts with other major Western human rights organizations, who have vociferously condemned the state of Israel. Amnesty International, for example, wrote that "there are alarming warning signs of Genocide given the staggering scale of death and destruction" and that "The collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population by Israeli authorities is a war crime – it is cruel and inhumane." This sentiment was shared by Human Rights Watch, which noted that "The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime."

 

Friends in High Places

Why have Clooney and her foundation shown little to no interest in Palestine (or Lebanon)? Firstly, the CFJ is sponsored primarily by large liberal institutions, such as the Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and foreign sources like the German and Swedish Postcode Lotteries, none of whom have shown any interest in pro-Palestine activism.

Moreover, Clooney herself has close connections to many in the Democratic Party establishment, including some of the most hardcore pro-Israel zealots anywhere. In 2016, she and her husband hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton with Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban at their mansion. Tickets for the event cost $34,000 each.

Saban is one of America's most influential political donors but considers himself a "one-issue guy." "And my issue is Israel," he once said. He has also called for "higher scrutiny" of Muslim Americans, suggesting they are a threat to the country's security, and branded Muslim-American Democrats such as Keith Ellison "anti-semites." Clinton, who describes herself as an "emphatic, unwavering supporter" of Israel, wrote Saban an open letter promising to stamp out the spread of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement by any means necessary.

Moreover, Clooney has accepted a number of U.K. government posts – positions that rarely go to radical outsiders but rather to those firmly inside the establishment beltway. Those posts include being appointed to the Attorney General's Office Public International Law Panel, meaning she represented the British government in domestic and international courts. The government also appointed her the U.K. Special Envoy on Media Freedom and the Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom.

One senior position Clooney publicly rejected, however, was to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry looking into Israeli war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2014). When pressed to explain her decision, she simply cited a scheduling conflict (while refusing to condemn Israel), stating:

I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed… I am honored to have received the offer, but given existing commitments – including eight ongoing cases – unfortunately could not accept this role. I wish my colleagues who will serve on the commission courage and strength in their endeavors."

 

"Moral Mercenary"

The refusal to investigate Israeli war crimes is especially notable, given that Clooney has made her career taking controversial posts concerning the Middle East. She previously served as an advisor on Syria to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She currently represents hundreds of Yazidi survivors of ISIS massacres and is in the process of suing cement maker Lafarge. The lawsuit alleges that the French company provided material support to the terrorist group, which kept many Yazidi women as slaves.

In 2014, she defended Abdullah al Senussi, the Former Chief of Intelligence under Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. The International Criminal Court charged Senussi with crimes against humanity, who was alleged to have overseen torture, assassinations and public executions.

Perhaps most surprising, however, was her appointment as legal advisor to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain during the Bassiouni Commission – a royal investigation into the events of the Arab Spring. The people of Bahrain briefly participated in their own popular anti-government uprising before the monarchy called in Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti forces to crush the revolt, killing hundreds and injuring or torturing thousands more. In this instance, Clooney worked on behalf not of the oppressed but of the monarchy, presumably attempting to absolve it of any blame or responsibility for the crackdown on civil liberties, leading one commentator to dub her a "moral mercenary."

 

Silent on Genocide

It is barely in doubt that Israel is currently engaged in some of the most egregious crimes against humanity seen anywhere in the 21st century, from genocide to attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and churches to the deliberate targeting of journalists and other civilians, to the leveling of entire cities and the systematic starvation of a people.

And despite this, Amal Clooney, who presents herself as a champion of progressive, liberal values and human rights, has had nothing to say about it. This is doubly noteworthy, given her country of birth and her ancestry. As an ethical leader with a considerable audience, any pronouncement she utters on the issue would likely make a significant impact.

Palestine is so often, however, the rocks on which the moral and ethical underpinnings of liberalism are dashed. While Western liberals constantly speak in the language of human rights, using them as a weapon against enemy states and even justifying the bloodiest military interventions on their basis, they fall silent when allied nations carry out similar barbaric actions.

This "progressive except for Palestine" mentality is pervasive across the Western world and highlights the profound limits of modern liberalism. While foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro or Xi Jinping (or even domestic ones such as Trump) are considered beyond the pale for their transgressions on human rights, beltway politicians like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are held up as heroes. This is despite their crimes, which range from using jihadists to overthrow the most prosperous country in Africa to bombing seven countries simultaneously.

It should, therefore, be of little surprise that Clooney and her foundation have remained tight-lipped about the current slaughter. Those who are shocked by their inaction underestimate the moral bankruptcy of modern liberalism.

Speaking on a panel with Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates (two other liberal icons), Clooney outlined the "real driving force" behind her work.

"My son drew a picture the other day of a prison, and he was like, 'Putin should be here,'" she said before continuing:

I do think about in a few years when they're more than five when they start to learn about some of these issues that we're talking about and what's happening in the world… When they ask us, 'What did you do about this? What did you say about that?' I've thought about what will my answer be, and I hope it will be a good one."

If Clooney's son ever asks her what she was doing as Israel carried out war crimes across the Middle East, she will also have a clear answer: she was silent on genocide.

Feature photo | Amal Clooney speaks during a conference called "Press Behind Bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy" at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Sept. 28, 2018. Craig Ruttle | AP

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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7. MintPress News: Pushing Back Against Atrocity Propaganda

I want to invite you to the fight against media manipulation and censorship to help us break through the propaganda.

For nearly six months, we've witnessed Israel openly commit genocide in Gaza while it was livestreamed right on our smartphones.

For nearly six months, we've witnessed mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and other Western mainstream media organizations provide the cover for Israel's blatant war crimes – crimes that were committed using our taxpayer money.

They've peddled unverified stories of atrocity propaganda – handed to them directly by the Israeli government, justifying Israel's war that has claimed the lives of over 30,000 people.

But in these dark times of manipulation and gaslighting, it falls upon us – independent journalists and media outlets – to break through the fog of war. That's why MintPress has become a target, financially and algorithmically, to silence our decades-long investigative reporting exposing the war profiteers.

We invite you to support us by becoming a member of our Patreon, which costs $10 per month and helps us continue our watchdog reporting.

We want to ensure our investigative journalism is able to reach the public far and wide for free and accessible without a paywall, but we can't do that without your financial support.

MintPress was among the first to question the official narrative of October 7, revealing how an Israeli Apache helicopter killed Israelis. We've conducted numerous investigations into conflicts of interest among authors and media commentators within corporate media that have direct ties to think tanks, lobby groups and weapon manufacturers that directly profit from this war. And we have been at the forefront of exposing how Big Tech works with the national security state, think tanks and lobby groups funded by Israel – that work to stifle free speech and control what we see in our newsfeeds.

Now, MintPress is on the ground in Yemen, providing exclusive interviews with officials directly from the Red Sea and groundbreaking reporting of the humanitarian crisis there as the U.S. continues to bomb the poorest country in the Middle East.

However, our efforts have not gone unnoticed. MintPress was banned from TikTok and PayPal in the past year alone, and our balance was seized. After that, GoFundMe banned us from their platform, taking down two of our fundraisers. Our journalists have been detained, surveilled, and targeted by national security agencies and special interest groups, including directly by the Israel lobby.

But we wear this as a badge of honor. This is just a glimpse of the challenges we've faced as an independent outlet holding the military class accountable, as every journalistic endeavor should.

Journalism is under attack, and we're asking for your support to sustain our watchdog journalism.

While Big Tech attempts to erase our journalism algorithmically, we're ramping up efforts to circumvent censorship and provide hard-hitting reporting that empowers the people. We need your financial support to continue this mission and keep investigative journalism free and accessible without a paywall.

We've launched our annual membership drive on Patreon, and we urge you to join us in the fight against the war machine. You can also become a member directly on our website and donate to MintPress there as well.

 

Our History

MintPress is among the few remaining independent investigative news outlets in the United States, featuring leading journalists and activists. Our team includes investigative journalist Alan MacLeod, whose work has exposed the deep ties between NATO, weapons manufacturers, and Big Tech.

Rapper and activist Lowkey hosts "The Watchdog" podcast, uncovering the Israel lobby's surveillance tactics. Investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg explores the role of intelligence services in shaping policies across NATO nations.

Our Palestine correspondent, Jessica Buxbaum, has exposed Israel's collaboration with Big Tech to surveil Palestinian resistance.

We regularly feature commentary by Dr. Ramzy Baroud and Miko Peled and work with internationally renowned cartoonist Carlos Latuff.

As for myself, Mn​​ar Adley, founder and director of MintPress News, I established MintPress over a decade ago to revive the fourth estate in a post-9/11 world dominated by the military-industrial complex. Having lived under Israeli occupation as a Palestinian-American teen, I witnessed the media's complicity in whitewashing Israel's atrocities. Corporate media act as PR for weapons manufacturers, justifying military adventurism that fuels the war economy.

MintPress was born out of the need to hold the ruling class and military accountable, amplifying voices silenced by mainstream media.

We've been targeted for our commitment to truth, and we need your support to continue our exclusive coverage. Join us in the fight for independent journalism and accountability.

Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.

The post MintPress News: Pushing Back Against Atrocity Propaganda appeared first on MintPress News.

8. Quds Day Rallies in Yemen Intensify Amid Biden’s Strategic Shift

On International Quds Day, when protests are held around the world to show solidarity with Palestinians, Yemenis are once again at the forefront of worldwide solidarity with Gaza. Yemenis of all stripes took to the streets in unprecedented numbers on Friday to demonstrate their support for Palestine as well as Ansar Allah's (Houthis) Red Sea operation against Israeli, American and British ships until the war in Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted. This year's protests came as the Biden Administration embarked upon new moves aimed at Yemen's Central Bank in a bid to pressure Ansar Allah to stop targeting Israeli ships.

The annual event, which falls annually on the last Friday of every Ramadan and sees rallies held across the globe in support of the Palestinian cause, is especially meaningful this year as Israel's war against Gaza rages on. With the largest rallies taking place in Yemen's capital city of Sana'a, over 130 cities and squares throughout Yemen filled hundreds of thousands on Friday carrying Palestinians, Yemen and Lebanese Hezbollah flags and carrying banners blaming the United States for the ongoing war in Gaza.

The collective voice of the demonstrations was unified to renew their commitment to Palestinians, to stress that the Palestine issue is the most important to Yemen, that Yemen must take the initiative to liberate it whatever the cost and to call on Muslims around the world to boycott Israeli products.

On March 26, the head of Yemen's Supreme Political Council reaffirmed in a ceremony in Sana'a on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the Saudi-led war on Yemen that the country's maritime operations in the Red Sea against Israeli-linked ships will only cease when Tel Aviv's crimes in Gaza stop, "The only way to stop Yemen's operations is to stop genocide and violence against the oppressed people of Gaza," he said.

 

This year, a new significance

Friday's protests were unique as they not only attracted crowds from across Yemen's diverse political and social spectrums: Shafi'i, Zaydi, Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood, but also thousands of former allies of the Saudi-led coalition, who put down arms and joined Ansar Allah following the party's reaction to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and U.S. support for Tel Aviv.

"By God Almighty, it is an honor to be in AlSabeen Square for supporting Gaza. I deeply regret the past days in which I was on the side of the U.S. allies," protester Ahmed Mohamed Binh told MintPress. Binh was one of the leaders of the Saudi-led coalition in Marib and a staunch opponent of Ansar Allah. Yet, he returned to Sana'a after announcing that he had joined Ansar Allah because of their support for Gaza. Today, he is one of the most vocal advocates for commemorating Al-Quds Day in Sana'a.

Ironically, the aggression against Gaza and the American participation in the ongoing massacres have made Yemenis more united than ever while increasing the popularity of Ansar Allah not only in Yemen but across the world. Activists, jurists and politicians have applauded and described them as heroes trying to stop genocide in Gaza. This is despite nine years and billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and the U.S. to contain Ansar Allah.

This year's Quds Day rallies fall three days after a pro-Palestine conference titled "Palestine the Central Cause of the Nation" was held in Sana'a. The four-day conference discussed the Quranic vision of the Palestinian cause, the struggle of Yemenis in Palestine throughout history, the importance of economic boycotts, and Yemen's political, military, and popular role in supporting Gaza.

Participants from around the world who stand in solidarity with Palestine joined the conference remotely. On the first day, televised speeches were delivered by British politician and parliamentarian George Galloway, Russian philosopher and advisor to President Vladimir Putin Aleksandr Dugin, South African parliamentarian Zulivlele Mandela – grandson of late South African leader Nelson Mandela and Indian writer and political activist Tushar Gandhi, grandson of the spiritual leader of India Mahatma Gandhi. Representing Cuba was Elida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara.

The conference comes as Ansar Allah is making preparations to host leaders of Palestinian resistance movements, particularly leaders from Hamas, in the event that they are expelled from Qatar due to American pressure.

 

Taking the war to the bank

The demonstrations were not just aimed at the Palestine issue. They challenged the U.S. role in Yemen, most recently attempts by the Biden Administration to force Yemeni banks to relocate their headquarters from the capital, Sana'a (where Ansar Allah is based), to Aden, home to a number of groups allied with the U.S. On Tuesday, the Central Bank of Aden, run by Washington's allies, issued a decision requiring banks to transfer their headquarters to Aden, threatening to implement the Anti-Terrorist Financing Law against any bank that violates the decision.

The decision used the U.S. classification of Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization to justify the move, which allegedly came in response to a new 100 riyal coin issued by the Sana'a Central Bank to replace damaged 100 riyal bills. However, the justification is inconsistent with the decision of the Central Bank in Aden. The new currency issued by the Central Bank in Sana'a did not affect exchange rates. Economists have confirmed that it is not new money being created, but rather a substitute for damaged banknotes, and therefore, the banking system was not affected.

Abdul-Malik al-Ajr, a negotiator for the Yemeni delegation, said of the move, "What occurred was the normal process of replacing damaged currency, not printing a new one. This is a normal procedure that all governments carry out periodically, but because of the war and the siege, Yemen was unable to replace this damaged currency, and it became a problem for many residents, especially in grocery stores, taxis, public transportation, bakeries and water stations."

Following the announcement of the new coin, citizens flocked to exchange points set up by the Central Bank in Sana'a. The currency was minted according to international standards, and the process of issuing it will not affect the exchange rates because its distribution will depend on replacing the damaged one by replacing each damaged 100 note with a 100 coin," the Central Bank in Sana'a said in a statement.

Ansar Alla's spokesperson, Muhammed Abdul Salam, said of the move, "Printing a one hundred riyal coin is not in vain, but rather a necessary step taken as a substitute for a damaged paper currency. We wonder why America and European countries are upset as a result of what the Central Bank of Yemen has done in partially addressing the situation of the national currency, which has been subjected and is [stll] being subjected to a brutal war by the coalition and by America itself."

Yemeni financial experts told MintPress that the United States Agency for International Development recently supervised the development of new systems for the Central Bank in Aden, including the "Unified National Network," a financial transfer system. The Central Bank in Aden has asked banks, exchange companies, and transfer companies to join that system exclusively. For the U.S., this means that it will be able to access financial and banking data and financial transfers.

Al-Tadamum Bank, the Bank of Yemen and Kuwait, the Al-Amal Microfinance Bank, the Shamil Bank of Yemen and Bahrain, and the Al-Kuraimi Islamic Microfinance Bank, which together comprise over 80% of Yemen's bank accounts, have already joined the Unified National Network.

The decision by the Biden administration to designate Ansar Allah as a "Global Terrorist group" has already harmed thousands of Yemeni families, as many international banks, exchange shops, and firms have already ceased participating in commercial or financial transactions with Yemenis due to the fear of triggering U.S. sanctions. Nearly 80% of Yemenis live in areas under AnsarAllah's control, including the country's capital, Sana'a'a and the major port of al-Hodeida. Consequently, the U.S. economic pressure will inevitably push more Yemeni civilians closer to famine.

Feature photo | A Yemeni man holds a poster of Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas, during a protest marking Quds Day in support of Palestinians in Gaza, Sanaa, Yemen, April 05, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana'a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

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9. Israel’s Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips

Since Israel launched a war on Gaza in October, it's been accused of genocide, been on trial for war crimes, and seen allies stop approving weapons shipments. Yet amid the storm of negative press and genocidal war, some organizations are attempting to shift the narrative in Israel's favor by taking celebrities and social media influencers on propaganda-fueled trips to Israel.

According to the Israeli newspaper Globes, the Maccabee Task Force (MTF) and Rova Media are the organizations working to send celebrities to Israel. Israeli television production company Eight Productions helps document the trips for media purposes.

"We're in contact with the IDF [Israeli military] and the hostage families, and also with the president of Israel and former prime minister Naftali Bennett. We simply produce the content together with the visiting celebrities, the whole goal being for them to come here and be our ambassadors to the world," Eight Productions' owner,  Dafna Danenberg, told Globes.

Eight Productions confirmed to MintPress News that MTF and Rova Media fund the trips.

It turns out the organization that has been bringing celebrities such as Noah Schnapp, Nikita Dragun, Michael Rapaport, Scooter Braun, Tiffany Haddish, and Debra Messing on propaganda trips to Israel is the Maccabee Task Force, a right-wing Israel advocacy group.

— Josh Kadish (@kadish_josh) March 18, 2024

 

Who is going on these trips?

The list of celebrities who've toured with MTF includes Nathaniel Buzolic, Michael Rapaport, Debra Messing, Scooter Braun, James Maslow, Montana Tucker, Guy Nattiv, Eve Barlow, Lee Kern, Kosha Dillz and Matisyahu.

Even before the war, MTF was sending celebrities to Israel, but according to one of MTF's media directors, Uriel Dison, these trips were less politically charged.

"But now we don't bring people to travel around," Dison told Globes. "They have to come and see with their own eyes the results of the war and become sort of wartime ambassadors."

Dison added that it was challenging to convince high-profile individuals to come to Israel, but after a few trips, his "phone is bursting with requests from people. Influencers connect us to other influencers and celebrities to other celebrities, so it's self-perpetuating."

Rova Media hasn't disclosed who it's sending to Israel, only mentioning to Globes that "there are journalists, social media influencers, artists, and more."

However, according to their social media accounts, they've partnered with social media influencer Caroline D'Amore to produce content in Israel and hosted Aboriginal Australian athlete and former politician Nova Peris and social media influencer Brooke Bello in Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the agency documented American singer Tucker's trip.

 

MTF and Rova Media didn't respond to requests for comment on these tours.

 

Who is behind the campaign?

Rova Media was founded in October 2023 by Dan Luxenberg and actor Buzolic with support from BZ Media to shape Israel's image as the war began. The organization's Facebook page was created on October 27, 2023.

Buzolic, who is a born-again Christian, has frequently traveled to Israel throughout the years and explained to the Times of Israel his mission with Rova Media:

My next-door neighbors, who are Lebanese and Palestinian, tell me how deluded I am. I speak to the people in the middle, I'm trying to shift them," Buzolic said. "One thing I've learned about the pro-Palestinian narrative is they just have content, no context. We want to provide context for the content we're providing."

The company has partnered with entertainment firm Roc Nation, founded by rapper Jay-Z, and the Hostage and Missing Families Forum ("Bring Them Home"), the Israeli movement to free hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on October 7, 2023.

Rabbi Ari Lamm and Justin Hayet run the New York-based BZ Media and produce pro-Israel content targeting a Gen Z audience. Lamm founded SoulShop, a faith-focused entertainment company, where Rova's Luxenberg is CEO. Hayet was a university campus fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog often targeting journalists for perceived anti-Israel coverage and paying students to write articles smearing pro-Palestine activists. He also worked for Danny Danon, a lawmaker with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, during his term as the ambassador to the United Nations.

MTF was founded by the late pro-Israel billionaire donor, Sheldon Adelson, in 2015 to combat the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses, harassing activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and leading smear campaigns against pro-Palestine students and faculty.

A DEI program coordinator at the @UofMaryland DEFENDED Hamas terrorists and justified October 7. How are Jewish students supposed to lodge antisemitism complaints to the DEI office when the program coordinator is a hateful antisemite? pic.twitter.com/nIcIp2lmZk

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024

Former Manhattan College professor Shellyne Rodriguez has made vile and dehumanizing propaganda targeting Jews and Zionists. And yet @Columbia invited her for a panel. https://t.co/G9eVIbUXyc

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024

Instead of taking accountability for creating a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel student groups at @Columbia have chosen to gaslight Jewish students, claiming that the university is "silencing" pro-Palestine voices. pic.twitter.com/ALvzKEbdhE

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 11, 2024

@Columbia supposedly one of the best Universities on the planet, allows a professor to falsely paint Israel as a "Settler Colonial State."

Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, and rhetoric like this increases antisemitism on campus. pic.twitter.com/cLaOMjQBna

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 5, 2024

Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson's wife, currently serves as MTF's president, while infamous pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the organization's directors. Miriam Adelson's son-in-law and new owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, Patrick Dumont, serves as treasurer. David Brog, former head of Christians United for Israel, an evangelistic Israel lobby group, is the current executive director. The Adelson family primarily funds the organization, pumping over $10 million into MTF in 2022. Joseph Fisch, founder of United States Beverage, has also contributed to the organization.

MTF funds Hillels, Jewish student groups, and other Jewish life institutions on college campuses to find students for its tours. According to its most recent tax filings, it funds Jewish campus life groups at the following universities in the U.S. and Canada: American University, Arizona State University, Binghamton University, Boston University, Brandeis University, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, Florida International University, Florida State University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Hunter College, Indiana University, Kent State University, Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Syracuse University, Temple University, University of Arizona, University of British Columbia, University of California Los Angeles, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Michigan, University of Missouri, University of Southern California, University of Vermont, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, Washington University, Wayne State University and Yale.

Its largest contribution in 2022 was to Chabad on Campus International, the campus educational arm of the Chabad Lubovitch movement. This movement consists of ultra-Orthodox radicals who often carry out revenge attacks on Palestinians. It also supports Jewish student unions in Australia, New Zealand, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. In 2022, it spent over $5 million on Jewish student groups and other related organizations.

While touting itself as a campus educational program, behind the scenes, MTF is financing several Israeli propaganda campaigns. The organization was one of the primary funders of Act.il, the now-defunct app set on creating an anti-BDS, pro-Israel troll army. MTF currently supports Students Supporting Israel, a pro-Israel movement working to pass university initiatives favoring Israel, like investment resolutions and stopping Israel divestment acts. MTF also funds Prager University, a billionaire-bankrolled media empire attempting to turn today's youth into right-wing extremists.

The organization is notorious for taking non-Jewish university students on trips to Israel and returning them as brand ambassadors for Israel at their schools. MTF specifically targets student "influencers," which often translates to individuals of color and those involved in Black and Asian student unions.

"They say they're targeting 'student leaders' who they hope to convince to vote no on potential divestment resolutions," University of Minnesota student Josh Spencer-Resnik told Jewish Currents in 2019. "[And it's], especially leaders of minority student groups."

According to MTF's donation page, it sends 25 students to Israel yearly and has boosted its efforts amid the war, saying they've reached thousands of students since October 7, 2023. These trips are generously subsidized.

"[W]e are working to make sure campus anti-Israel groups face consequences for openly endorsing Hamas' terror, and we are arranging a special Wartime Fact-Finding mission to Israel for some of our most influential non-Jewish MTF trip alumni," MTF wrote on its website.

In January, the Times of Israel profiled a recent MTF student trip. According to the publication, the trip consisted of meeting with Israelis — but not Palestinians — on the current situation. The group visited bomb shelters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot and toured Kfar Aza, a kibbutz (Jewish commune) Hamas militants attacked in October. They met with Miri Eisin, a retired colonel and former political adviser, Jonathan Elkhoury, who uses his Lebanese-Israeli nationality to advocate for Israel on U.S. college campuses, survivors of the Hamas attacks at the Nova Music Festival, and a volunteer medic about sexual assault allegedly committed by Hamas militants during the October attacks.

"Campuses have become battlegrounds. We wanted students who document what life in Israel has been like since October 7 and who could make a difference on campus when they return," MTF national director Ben Sweetwood told the Times of Israel.

MTF appears to be succeeding in its campaign — churning out Israeli propaganda puppets at universities while genocide rages in Gaza. Many of its recent wartime alums are now acting as Israeli state mouthpieces on social media.

 

 

 

Following his MTF trip, USC student Logan Barth wrote on Instagram, "[E]very IDF soldier I spoke to emphasized that the last thing they want are innocent Palestinians dead – they want peace. But that is difficult when the people who killed his family members are hiding behind Palestinian civilians."

"This is NOT genocide," Barth added.

Feature photo | Colombian singer Shakira visits the the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City.
Oded Balilty | AP

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

The post Israel's Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips appeared first on MintPress News.

10. Presidential Candidate Jill Stein On Gaza, The Two-Party System and US Militarism

Gaza is the "key issue of our era," Green Party presidential hopeful Jill Stein told the MintCast today. "Every international law in the books is being broken," she said, "This is not something that began on October 7. This is the continuation of ethnic cleansing and displacement that began in 1947 and 1948 with the displacement of 750,000 people."

While Stein condemned Israel for its actions, she placed ultimate responsibility for much of the violence on Washington, telling MintCast host Mnar Adley that:

Quite simply, Joe Biden needs to pick up the phone and tell Israel to cease and desist from this war being conducted on Gaza, the blockade, the use of starvation as a weapon, the total violation of international law and the conduct of a genocide, which is going on. There is enormous agency that the United States has here: we are paying for this. We are supplying 80% of the weapons [to Israel]!"

Stein, a physician by trade, has been involved in the Green movement for decades. She first ran for office in 2002, attempting to become the governor of her native Massachusetts. In 2012 and 2016, she was selected as the Green Party's presidential candidate. Running against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, she received over 1% of the national vote. She is the overwhelming favorite to represent the Green Party in the 2024 presidential election.

Congress, Stein noted, has just approved $3.8 billion in aid to Israel, with another $17 billion pending for "not only continu[ing] its genocide but to expand its wars in the Middle East."

Global public opinion is increasingly turning against the U.S., Stein warned, turning both Washington and Israel into "pariahs." Even inside the United States, recent polling shows that a majority of Democratic voters consider Israeli actions to constitute genocide. And President Biden continues to offer unconditional support.

It seems this is pushing millions of voters to consider the Green Party as an alternative. Stein described the Democratic establishment as in a state of "panic" over the "widespread revolt" among its voter base, which could destroy the party's chances of winning elections. She said they are fielding "an army of corporate lawyers to try to dirty trick us, to find little technicalities to throw us off the ballot."

This is not a new phenomenon, as the Green Party has long dealt with the Democrats' attempts to suppress them. However, what has changed, Stein said, is the party's willingness to announce their intentions to limit democracy openly. As she told Adley:

There is such a heavy hand of censorship and political repression in this country that it is a struggle to simply participate in our democracy. Voters a clamoring for more voices and more choices. People revile the two zombie candidates that are being rammed down our throats and are very hungry for other options on the ballot."

Watch or Listen to the full interview, in which the pair discuss Gaza, the military-industrial complex, and what a Jill Stein presidency would mean for the United States.

MintPress News is a fiercely independent media company. You can support us by becoming a member of Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and subscribing to our social media channels, including YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.

Also, check out rapper Lowkey's video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.

The post Presidential Candidate Jill Stein On Gaza, The Two-Party System and US Militarism appeared first on MintPress News.