In Case You Missed It RSS Feed

In October 2024, one year into Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attendant assault on Lebanon, the Israeli army did a thing. It invited journalists from major Western corporate media outlets on an incursion into Lebanon's ravaged south, accompanied by Israeli military personnel who would interpret the wreckage in Israel's favor -- not that the Western media have ever required much assistance in this regard.

Reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and a handful of other special guests signed up for the cross-border sortie. It was, as Habib Battah and Christina Cavalcanti note in an investigation for the Public Source, an "awkward hybrid between a traditional embed and the kind of all-expense-paid publicity trip that journalists refer to as junkets, freebies and dog-and-pony shows."

Never mind that it is entirely illegal for journalists or anyone else to enter Lebanon from Israel -- what's one more illegal invasion from a country that has been invading Lebanon pretty much since its founding? As Battah and Cavalcanti emphasize, these media professionals were also embedding themselves "within a national project of extraordinary transnational violence," hosted by an "extrajudicial occupying military power -- a critical point that all of them would fail to mention in their coverage."...

And in report after embedded report, Israel's chosen journalists faithfully transmitted the tiresome and counter-logical notion that Hezbollah was somehow the aggressor in the arrangement -- as opposed to the army that was busily slaughtering thousands of people in Lebanon while implementing a scorched-earth strategy.

While the October 2024 embed was one of the more preposterous embodiments of Western corporate media's special relationship with Israel, outlets continue to do a fine job of sanitizing Israeli brutality even when their reporters are not physically viewing the region from inside an Israeli armored vehicle. Since March of this year, Israel has killed at least 3,613 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million, obliterating entire villages and otherwise expanding the ecocidal policy honed in the Gaza Strip.

There has been no remotely comparable destruction on the Israeli side, and a recent Reuters article that had attempted to suggest some symmetry now comes with the preface: "This May 31 story has been corrected to remove a reference to tens of thousands of Israelis being displaced by Hezbollah fire, in paragraph 3."

Like in Gaza, where genocide proceeds apace in spite of a declared ceasefire, the media tend to report "ceasefires" in Lebanon without caring to highlight the fact that it's not a ceasefire when Israel is still pummeling the country and massacring people, all the while setting the stage for a massive land grab with its creeping so-called "evacuation orders." These "evacuations" have been focused on the Shiite demographic, with Israel warning Christian and Druze communities not to allow Shiite neighbors to take refuge in their towns.

Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, co-author of the aforementioned Public Source investigation, suggested to me that such orders might be more accurately termed "ethnic cleansing directives." But that, of course, would be way too much for corporate media outlets to handle -- and so it is that we learn about Israel's "urgent evacuation warnings" and "large-scale evacuation orders," as though it's some sort of public service announcement, fire drill or other fundamentally legitimate Israeli undertaking, rather than entirely illegal in addition to downright psychopathic. From a legal and moral perspective, after all, you can't just go around ordering people in other countries out of their homes, oftentimes only to bomb them when they comply.

Then there's the matter of the "Yellow Line" or "security zone" -- more terminology borrowed from Gaza -- which denotes the portion of south Lebanon that Israel is currently illegally occupying. But Israel has never been very good at staying within the lines, and its latest "evacuation orders" spanned no less than one-fifth of the entire country, far beyond its own unilaterally appointed Yellow Line.

As Battah remarked to me, the media's acceptance and deployment of such arbitrary vocabulary creates "artificial structures" and a sense of orderliness, when in reality "there's no yellow lines, there's no yellow, there's no colors -- these are just illegal invasions." And because media are committed to sanitizing Israel's behavior rather than questioning it, "colonization becomes normalized."

The eagerness of journalists to do Israel's bidding is all the more confounding given that Israel is currently the No. 1 killer of journalists in the world....

This is not to say that corporate media do not report on the destruction, displacement and killing in Lebanon; they do -- and sometimes even sympathetically. But the refusal to paint a consistent and properly contextualized picture of what is actually going on in the country means that they mostly just end up legitimizing Israel's war crimes....

Almost three years into a genocide that has officially killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians and given Israel every opportunity to blind the world with its true colors, it is no short of an abomination that Israeli officials are still permitted to insist -- with little to no media pushback -- that they only target "terrorists" and "terrorist infrastructure." If Israeli officials were to claim that two plus two equals eight, or that Elvis Presley was living in a cave in Madagascar, would the corporate media also report such information with a straight face?

By taking Israel's word for it, journalists wind up essentially validating mass killing and occupation....

More than 200 of the world's elites registered for a retreat whose agenda runs from panels on cult-building and sex to prepping for World War III. An associated app offers matchmaking.

A trove of internal records from a secret society for powerful figures in US politics, finance, and tech was left exposed online, WIRED has confirmed, naming participants in its events and revealing sensitive personal details they were assured would stay private.

The group, called Dialog, is a private, invitation-only organization cofounded in 2006 by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. It convenes US officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats. Dialog has spent two decades declining to disclose its members.

A directory in the website's code was first revealed by the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew. Known for exposing the US government's No Fly List and breaching the surveillance-camera company Verkada, crimew tells WIRED the directory surfaced via an anonymous tip. WIRED independently verified its contents.

A source separately provided WIRED with the registration list for Dialog's 2026 retreat, which names 222 people and records what the list describes as each registrant's membership status and attendee type, including "active member" and "guest." The retreat is scheduled for August 12-16 at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

The same data lays out a program of off-the-record sessions, including: "Money (Does?) Buy Happiness," "Bring Back Nuclear," "Navigating WWIII," "Battlefield Technologies," and "How's Your Sex Life?" Other talks include "Build-a-Cult," moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray[.]com, and "Build-a-Party," run by a former White House national security official.

Together, alongside the mundane fare of a typical thought leadership conference, the documents show an extraordinary convergence of power. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe and the head of US European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021. The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two US senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country's largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies....

None of the individuals named in this story responded to requests for comment. Raffi Grinberg, who lists himself as Dialog's executive director on his LinkedIn profile and is the author of the self-help book How to Be a Grown-Up, did not respond to a request for comment.

The registration records appear to show not only who belongs to Dialog but who attends. Of the 222 people signed up for the 2026 retreat, according to the leaked records, 87 are marked as first-time attendees. Others list histories stretching back more than a decade, and a handful to the society's founding 20 years ago. None of the registrants, Grynkewich included, used a government email address. All registered with personal or corporate accounts, placing their attendance outside the email systems subject to public-records laws....

The leaked registration list also names senior figures absent from the public directory of 113: Randy Kroszner, a former governor of the Federal Reserve who now serves on the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee; Hallie Hoffman, a former general counsel and acting chief of staff of the Drug Enforcement Administration; Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League; Peter Goettler, the president of the Cato Institute; Ryan Stowers, the executive director of the Charles Koch Foundation; and Roger Myerson, a Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago....

The rest of the membership spans hedge fund and private equity billionaires, current and former foreign officials, network television actors, best-selling authors, and religious leaders.

One of several internal documents Dialog left exposed on the same online database that held its registration records is a guide for event moderators, urging them to remind participants that everything is "off the record"....

Dialog has operated with little public footprint since its founding. It holds at least one retreat a year, with assigned seating, moderated sessions, and a rule that nothing said is for attribution....

The 2014 retreat drew renewed attention this year when an invitation forwarded to the financier Jeffrey Epstein surfaced in the US Justice Department's release of the Epstein files.

Six months ago, a US attack killed at least 12 people, including eight children. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths. Here, the Guardian pieces together what happened that day.

They had just settled down for breakfast when the noise came. Some paused in the eating of their slow-cooked beans -- cambuulo -- spooked by the haunting high-pitched hum. Others pressed their faces against windows, scanning skywards. Farmers in nearby maize fields watched the objects circling above Jamaame, a town in southern Somalia.

Shortly after 9am on 15 November 2025, Jamaame shuddered from a series of explosions.

The home of Abdullahi Mohamed Abo Sheikh Ali, who was out tending his fields that day, was among those obliterated. His grandfather Mohamed raced towards the rubble.

"Clothes and books were scattered on the ground, but I couldn't focus on them. I was in shock, standing before the bodies of my grandchildren. They were ripped to pieces."

Scrabbling among the debris, Mohamed found the body of Safiyo Hassan Abukar, his daughter-in-law. She had been heavily pregnant.

Beside her were the remains of Abdifatah, her eldest child. It was little surprise the 10-year-old was found so close to his mother.

"Abdifatah never left her side, always helping with chores. When he was around, she needed no one else," says Mohamed.

Seven-year-old Abdinasir, lay dead nearby....

The bodies of two more brothers -- Hussein, six and Abdurahman, four -- were among the debris.

The family were killed during a US airstrike in Somalia. According to a Guardian investigation, at least 12 civilians, including eight children, died during the attack.

It is the deadliest US operation for civilians in Somalia during either Trump administration....

Despite the scale, no investigation appears to have been launched into the attack on Jamaame six months ago. No one has been held accountable for the deaths -- the US refused to admit that a single civilian died in the town that day.

Using photographs, video footage, and X-rays of children's shrapnel injuries, alongside witness testimony, the Guardian has pieced together the first detailed account of the massacre.

The killings raise questions not only about US intelligence, but Washington's intensifying campaign in the Horn of Africa. Hundreds of strikes have been carried out by the Trump administration in a legally ambiguous, secret war with no apparent accountability for civilian deaths.

Who signed off the attack on a densely populated family neighbourhood? Why and who, if anyone, was the intended target? Testimony indicates that it is highly probable the US drone teams knew children were in the vicinity....

Full-motion video, or FMV, as live feeds from drones are called, relayed life inside Jamaame to a team of pilots and analysts in extraordinary detail. "You can read licence plates," says Brett Velicovich, a former US army special operations intelligence analyst....

But what instigated the attack on Jamaame?

The US military has never contested its involvement in the strikes. The day after, an Africom statement said it had conducted airstrikes in that area...

While Jamaame falls within territory broadly controlled by al-Shabaab, every witness interviewed by the Guardian stated that the group was not present in the town. In fact, all testified that the militants had never set foot there, preferring rural hideouts.

"There was no al-Shabaab presence in our town, only women, children and elders. Before the airstrikes, the situation in Jamaame was calm and peaceful," says Guled....

Drones, as Velicovich says, allow "precision-guided munitions" to be targeted at identified individuals.

When conducting his own drone strikes in Somalia, Velicovich meticulously studied his target's daily routines: who they met, when and where: "Not sleeping for three days, watching these guys over and over."

However the dead in Jamaame were mostly children and their mothers. The Qur'anic school, crammed with children shortly before the attack, was hit alongside residential buildings belonging to families who had lived there for decades. Guled had lived in the same home for her entire 42 years until it was destroyed. There seemed no obvious reason why her house would be targeted....

Regardless of intelligence flaws, US drone operators should have a potent safeguard: they can see everything on the ground in real time. The MQ-9 Reaper, for instance, has exceptionally high-quality, multispectral cameras.

The drones' live feeds allow operators to clearly distinguish between adults and children, and operators are trained to distinguish fighting-age men....

Perhaps the attack was based on "signature strike" patterns -- observed activity that seems suspicious and therefore makes the people targets. "But you're basically killing people without confirming who they are," says Norman, and those killed in Jamaame could hardly have looked less like militants....

When the White House was approached for a response to the Jamaame strikes, the deputy press secretary Anna Kelly asked if the Guardian would also focus on "fraud committed by Somalis in the United States?"....

Across southern Somalia, the US operations against al-Shabaab appears to have had little impact. The threat from the group has intensified. Its forces have reached 20 miles from the capital.

"If the objective is to destroy al-Shabaab, it's pretty clear that they [drones] are not particularly effective," says David Sterman, an analyst at the New America thinktank.

Knowing that the commitments are unlikely to be respected.

The announcement that United States and Iranian negotiators have agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding to end the war raises an obvious and pressing question. Why would Tehran sign anything with a Trump administration? The biggest danger is not simply that the United States will renege on its commitments or fail to deliver on economic promises. The greatest threat is another surprise attack. Yet Iran signs because they approach this agreement with clear eyes, knowing full well it is unlikely to be respected and demanding concrete verification rather than trusting empty promises.

There can be little doubt that the Iranians understand the nature of their adversary. The leaders who remain have colleagues, friends, and family members killed by American and Israeli strikes in the February 28 decapitation attacks. They remember the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and the sabotage of nuclear facilities. They also remember how International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors provided intelligence that facilitated attacks, proving that international organizations cannot be trusted to maintain neutrality. This is a leadership that operates on zero faith in Western good intentions.

Despite what is clearly a strategic victory in surviving the initial onslaught, the country has been battered extensively over the past months. Civilian infrastructure and energy grids were heavily targeted during the conflict. The regime needs breathing room to rebuild and to stabilize the economy. They are not masochists. They do not want more destruction. This is where the agreement becomes rational. The deal offers immediate, tangible benefits like reopening the Strait of Hormuz and temporary sanctions waivers. Iran will demand that results are verified before making their own concessions.

Many critics bring up Minsk-2 and the betrayal by western leaders. The critical difference between this agreement and the Minsk accords is that Iran goes into it with absolutely no illusions. When Vladimir Putin signed the Minsk agreements, he believed the West was negotiating in good faith. Clearly that was a catastrophic miscalculation. Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, and Petro Poroshenko have all since openly admitted there was never any genuine intention of fulfilling the commitments of the 2015 Minsk agreement. The West was merely buying time to arm and train Ukraine. Iran watched this diplomatic betrayal closely. Unlike Putin at the time, Tehran knows that Western diplomatic pauses are as likely to be just pretexts for rearming or preparing the next military strike as a genuine desire for peace....

The Iranians know this pause is temporary. But a temporary pause saves lives and allows reconstruction. They sign the deal to extract maximum immediate value but while actively preparing for the other side to launch a sudden strike the moment it becomes convenient.

Furthermore, a likely cause of the agreement failing will not even be Washington, it will be Israel. The Iranian leadership knows that the United States cannot fully control its regional ally, nor can it guarantee Israeli compliance.... Iran is signing this deal knowing that managing Israeli provocations will be the true test of the agreement. They are preparing for the high probability that Israel will act as the ultimate spoiler to undermine any diplomatic progress.

The Iranians understand that in asymmetric warfare, survival itself is victory. They have survived the most powerful military on earth. Now they negotiate not from weakness but from the knowledge that the United States has no coherent theory of victory. They sign the memorandum because it serves their immediate interests today, and they actively prepare for betrayal or a sudden attack tomorrow. They will not be caught off guard again. That is not naivete. That is cold, calculated strategy.

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025.

An Israeli airstrike in central Gaza on Tuesday killed two Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency WAFA has reported, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

According to medics speaking to Reuters, the two Palestinians who were killed were brothers, identified as Ahmed and Mahmoud Abu Heen, and they were killed near the Nuseiray refugee camp. Photos from the al-Awda Hospital in Nusierat show Ahmed's young children mourning their father.

Reuters also reported that Israeli troops are expanding the "yellow line," the vague boundary that separates the Israeli-occupied side of Gaza from the rest of the Strip, another clear violation of the ceasefire deal.

After the deal was signed, Israel pulled its forces back and was left with control of about 53% of Gaza, but that has expanded to at least 60%. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said he directed the IDF to expand the occupation area to 70%, and reports from the ground in Gaza suggest he is making good on that threat....

The continued Israeli attacks have killed at least 997 Palestinians and wounded 3,152 since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025....

On Cue, top Democrats do tedious gotcha posts while reinforcing every premise of the war. Who is this for?

The minute President Trump announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran on Sunday to "end the war," the response from Democrats has been a range of somewhat decent -- if tortured -- support for an end to hostilities to cynical, goading attacks from the right. This is a fairly common feature of our bipartisan pro-war Washington consensus: We are permitted to debate the timing and process of attacking Iran, but never its legitimacy, morality, or legality. It is simply taken for granted by leaders of both parties, and of course the vast bulk of US media, that it is the US's divine right to bomb and sanction any country at any time for any alleged crimes we, unilaterally, determined it committed.... The response by liberals stateside to these alleged transgressions is not to call for the strengthening of international law, or UN-directed diplomacy, but to reinforce the central premise that the US is the global police man whose job is to sort out the world into good guys and bad guys. And what matters, more than anything, is the competency and efficacy of disciplining those who both parties agree is A Bad Guy.

The worst and most shameless example of a right-wing attack came, predictably, from Sen. Cory Booker. He accosted Trump for "releasing billions of dollars to this enemy,"....

What Booker is demagoguing against here is the same thing the Right demagogued against Obama: returning money to Iran that the US stole from it. This should be a welcome development, as this is an immediately reasonable demand given that Trump sneak attacked Iran and killed over 3,000 of its people, including over 150 in a girls school. Of course, Iran needs some type of recompense for this unprovoked attack. Trump agreeing to this sensible demand is a good thing that should be encouraged and defended as such, not presented as a Give Away To Terrorists....

Let us make clear some obvious points: Trump is primarily responsible for the criminal attack on Iran. He should never have torn up the 2015 JCPOA which, while it was achieved through brutal sanctions, was still obviously preferable to an attack on Iran that murdered thousands. Democrats are right to be frustrated and annoyed by the blatant hypocrisy of Republicans destroying the JCPOA, killing over 10,000 people, including more than 1,000 children in Iran and Lebanon, then reverting back to many of its key premises. This frustration is understandable. But vapid gotchaism, while scoring temporary political points, in the long run reinforces dangerous right-wing premises that narrow political space to support the current settlement proposal, and set the table for perpetual hostility towards Iran in the coming years....

The reason this posture is popular is not because we have any evidence it plays well with voters. It's popular because it hits what I call The Jake Tapper Sweet Spot, the most coveted posture in Washington for politicians and reporters alike: look like you're Speaking Truth To Power while propping up the core ideological premises of our permanent security state. Appear anti-Trump while smuggling in deeply problematic assumptions about Iranian motives and "nuclear ambitions." In other words: it plays well with party elites and donors -- namely pro-Israel donors....

It's a fine line between acknowledging the war failed on its own terms, and promoting those terms, as such. Democrats, especially those who view themselves as "progressives," don't need to overcorrect and promote the latter. They ought not do AIPAC's bidding to score a slick gotcha. The stakes are too high, the forces of war too powerful and ever-present.

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration.

The truth slowly comes to light: Israel's genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.

Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.

Soldier 1: "Human lives didn't matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it's not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity."

Soldier 2: "At first I wasn't willing to execute Arabs who weren't resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings."

Soldier 3: "We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder."

Soldier 4: "We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges... Every soldier who was there created a 'concentration camp', and they didn't hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance."

No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline "We were ordered to kill".

Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war - often referred to as the Six-Day War - not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.

The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.

None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza - levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population - is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.

Nothing "started" on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza "concentration camp" - the plight of Gaza's Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.

Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration....

The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to "fight the enemy" - or "eradicate the terrorists", as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.

Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel's efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied....

The 1967 war was seen by the Israeli leadership as a second bite of the cherry: a chance both to seize and colonise all of historic Palestine through military occupation and the establishment of Jewish militia settlements, and to expand the ethnic cleansing operation to rid historic Palestine of its native inhabitants.

Weeks after Israel seized the Palestinian territories, the prime minister of the time, Levi Eshkol, told his cabinet where the expulsions must begin. "We are interested in emptying out Gaza first," he said....

The ethnic cleansing programme could be hastened, he suggested, by depriving the population of essentials like water....

The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel's military archives.

Haaretz's new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.

As the paper reports: "The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction."

Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task - as in 1948 - was to prevent their return.

Uri Avnery, a journalist and member of the Israeli parliament, recorded testimonies from soldiers stationed at the borders with Jordan and Egypt, into which Palestinians had been expelled. The soldiers' job was to murder any Palestinian families trying to get back to their homes.

Here is one soldier's testimony, reported by Haaretz, that Avnery noted in his autobiography: "We blocked these crossings and received orders to shoot to kill, without prior warning. Indeed, such shots were fired every night at men, women and children, even on moonlit nights when it was possible to identify those crossing. That is, to distinguish between men and women and children.

"In the morning, we would go out to scan the area, and we would kill, by explicit order of the officer present, those who were alive, including those hiding and the wounded. After the killing was over, we would cover the bodies with dirt until a tractor arrived."

Today's Israeli whistleblowers warn that this military doctrine is unchanged. Over the past three years, investigations have repeatedly shown Israel trying to conceal its crimes by secretly bulldozing its civilian victims into mass graves in violation of international law.

It did so, for example, when troops massacred Palestinians seeking aid a year ago, and again when soldiers executed 15 Palestinian emergency workers in an ambush on ambulances in March 2025.

Another soldier troubled by the 1967 shoot-to-kill policy recalled a conversation with his commander: "I asked the officer: And if I hear babies crying, should I shoot them too? The answer I received was: Don't be a girl."

There is nothing exceptional about this. Israel is known to have killed more than 1,000 babies in Gaza under the age of one since 7 October 2023, not all of them anonymously in strikes from the air.

The Israeli military allowed a group of five premature babies in al-Nasser hospital to die and decompose in their incubators after its soldiers took over the building in late 2023....

Israeli soldiers have been murdering Palestinian babies for decades. Yet none of it has roused an ounce of the outrage uniformly expressed by western media and politicians at Israel's entirely fabricated claim that Hamas killed 40 babies on 7 October 2023.

In fact, only one Israeli baby was killed that day: nine-month-old Mila Cohen...

Israel's 1967 campaign of expulsions in Gaza and the West Bank was not improvised, nor was it done on the spur of the moment. According to Haaretz, the policy had been carefully planned many years in advance....

Which is precisely why western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel's violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel's behaviour in the present - in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.

Western audiences, deprived of the region's history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response - and a supposedly "proportionate" one, at that - to Hamas' one-day attack on Israel in late 2023....

With the missing context added, Israel's supposed "retaliation" in Gaza - its genocidal rampage - looks like what it actually is: a continuation of its eight-decade ethnic cleansing campaign. In fact, its final instalment. Its denouement.

David Ben Gurion, Israel's founding father, wrote to his son in 1937, 11 years before Israel's creation: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places."

In a diary entry during the mass expulsions of 1948, Ben Gurion summarised the mood among his generals: "If we accuse a family - we need to harm them without mercy. Women and children without mercy. Otherwise this is not an effective reaction. During the operation, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty."

The goal was the weaponisation of fear, making Palestinians too terrified to remain in their homeland.

Mordechai Maklef, a senior commander in the fledgling Israeli army, noted two years later, in 1950, the logic behind Israel's policy: "It is impossible to expel 114,000 people who lived in the Galilee without terror."

Even if we ignore Palestinian accounts from those times, the small sections of the Israeli archives that have so far been opened to Israeli historians document massacres and systematic rapes of Palestinians in 1948.

In recent Israeli films such as Tantura - the village where a terrible massacre of Palestinians was carried out - old men who served as Israeli soldiers at the time confirm the archival documents, recounting how they personally witnessed Palestinian girls being raped.

Let us note that weaponised rape continues to this day - in what the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem calls Israel's "network of torture camps"....

So routine is the sexual abuse of those Israel detains that international peace activists suffered systematic rapes when hundreds of them were seized last month in international waters off Cyprus, as they began their journey to Gaza to break Israel's genocidal blockade.

Israel wants the fear to spread, from Palestine itself to anyone who wishes to show solidarity with its people.

Western politicians and the media have barely referred to these horrific crimes against their own citizens. Why? Because to acknowledge those crimes would be to concede that even worse atrocities are being meted out to Palestinians under Israeli rule.

Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren't aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it.

Around the US, a number of state legislatures have passed, or ar working to pass, various laws which would require people to "verify" their ages such that those under different ages would find themselves excluded from some or all computer and Internet access.

It all started, of course, with Internet pornography. That's the easiest sector to boost an "it's for the chillllllllllldren" propaganda campaign for.

It quickly escalated to social media platforms because woke rightists agree with woke leftists that the wrong words constitute violence and must be controlled "for the chillllllllllldren" (they just disagree on which words are the wrong words), and because many parents are willing to hand off their job of supervising their kids to the state, expanding the base of support for government controls.

Because California is the "authoritarian law idea? Hold my beer!" state, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last October which requires operating system providers to collect age information on each new user account, and provide an API that lets Internet platforms and app developers access that information so as to exclude users Gavin Newsom doesn't think should be using those platforms and apps.

It's almost, but not quite, funny.

It's almost funny because it won't take the chillllllllllldren in question more than a few minutes to figure out ways around this kind of thing. "Age verification" laws are, and always have been, political fantasy, as you know yourself if you were ever a 19-year-old college student who used a fake ID to get into a nightclub.

It's not quite funny because it isn't, and never was, about "the chillllllllllldren."

There's an old and accurate saying in the right to keep and bear arms community: "Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control." Victim disarmament ("gun control") laws only control the behavior of those who obey laws. Those who don't care about the government's background check and waiting period requirements will still get guns. The people who do obey laws? They get to endure the inconvenience and endangerment, all so that politicians feel like their rings have been sufficiently kissed.

Unfortunately, lots of people obey even evil and idiotic laws. Equally unfortunately, the big players in any given industry usually find it easier and cheaper to just comply with, rather than contest, those evil and idiotic laws.

Which means that even though these "age verification" laws won't be more than a minor inconvenience to the 13-year-old who wants to view porn, gamble, post mean tweets, the average computer user will once again just do as our rulers say, and maybe even convince himself or herself it's "for the chillllllllllldren." Society will become generally a little less free and a little more controlled.

All, however, is not lost.

Israeli drone strikes killed at least four people in south Lebanon on Tuesday.

The Iranian military's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters on Tuesday called for Israel to halt its continued attacks in Lebanon, warning there would be a "harsh response" if it doesn't.

The headquarters said in a statement that Israel has violated the ceasefire deal between the US and Iran, which calls for an end to Israel's war in Lebanon, 84 times over the past two days, and that Israel had been continuing "crimes and the killing of the oppressed people of Lebanon."...

While there's been a decline in Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon since Sunday, they haven't stopped, and at least four people were killed by Israeli drone strikes in the country on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that continued Israeli attacks and Israel's continued occupation constitute a violation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Washington and Tehran, which is scheduled to be formally signed in Geneva this Friday....

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have vowed that Israel won't withdraw from southern Lebanon, and a senior Trump administration official speaking with reporters on Monday appeared to back the Israeli position, saying an Israeli withdrawal wasn't a condition of the deal.

Amanda Feindt sat in the fourth row during the Senate confirmation hearing of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A U.S. Army major and former whistleblower who had submitted a letter supporting his nomination, Feindt listened as Hegseth spoke about troop readiness, military lethality, and protecting military families. Service members and veteran advocates around her wore shirts and hats bearing his name.

While Feindt sat in the Senate chamber, her 4-year-old son was in the military's care, spending the day at the North Post Child Development Center at Fort Belvoir, in nearby Virginia. There, according to records reviewed by The Intercept, he was subjected to treatment that would leave lasting psychological effects.

It took a year for Feindt and her husband to figure out what it was.

In a series of interviews with The Intercept, Feindt described a grueling pattern of obfuscation in which military officials refused to answer questions about her child's treatment, directed her to file public records requests, and claimed not to have the attendant evidence -- then produced it months later. Military experts characterized these delays as part of a pattern in which the institution seeks to slow-walk and minimize findings of child abuse or mistreatment to decrease reputational damage. Over a year of persistent requests, Feindt and her husband finally pieced together a picture of their child's treatment during at least two instances that January: The day of the hearing, when staff mocked and harassed the 4-year-old, and a few days earlier, when surveillance video showed them stepping on his feet and pinning his legs under a table. Local authorities later classified the treatment as child abuse....

Three other military families whose children suffered maltreatment in U.S. Army facilities described similar roadblocks. Parents who sought surveillance footage in other abuse investigations described receiving heavily redacted videos, incomplete clips, or footage with audio removed.

"This is a standard tactic in administrative cases," said Ryan Sweazey, a retired Air Force officer and former inspector general. "They tell you the investigation is done, and if you want to challenge it, you have to file a FOIA request. The report then comes back heavily redacted months or years later."

That's what happened to the Feindt family: Army officials allowed them to review only a limited portion of the footage and would not provide copies of the video. While they watched, Feindt and her husband recorded audio and later described the scenes in a memorandum to Defense Department officials, both of which they shared with The Intercept. When the family sought additional footage and records, Feindt said officials directed them to file a Freedom of Information Act request before saying the remaining footage had been deleted after review....

Accusations of child abuse in the Army are handled through a quasi-judicial body known as the Incident Determination Committee, or IDC, which operates without many of the safeguards found in civilian courts....

Once the committee reaches a determination, parents are typically not allowed to review how the decision was made. Proceedings occur behind closed doors, with no transcript, evidentiary record, or opportunity for cross-examination available to families or attorneys....

The Feindt family was left unsure why their IDC did not substantiate abuse claims despite medical concerns and video evidence reviewed by investigators. Feindt tried to attend the committee's hearing, but her request was denied. Afterward, she sought additional CCTV footage from the daycare, but Fort Belvoir officials told her the case was closed and she would have to file a FOIA request.

The system overseeing military child care centers is so fragmented that even grieving parents struggle to determine who is responsible when something goes wrong, said Jason Degenhard, a retired Army master sergeant who served in special operations. In 2012, Degenhard's 4-month-old son was in the care of the child development center on Pope Air Force Base (which today is part of Army base Fort Bragg) when a caregiver placed him on his stomach for tummy time, propped him against a rolled blanket, and left the room, as reported by WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The infant's muscles were not developed enough to support his weight, and he suffocated, causing catastrophic brain damage. The baby, named Sonny, was removed from life support days later....

After federal prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges, the Degenhards settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government. Their emotional distress claims were dismissed....

Investigative materials obtained through FOIA describe repeated incidents in which caregivers allegedly mocked, threatened, and harassed children inside the classroom. Investigator notes reviewed by The Intercept describe a caregiver tugging a child's hair, lifting a child by the back of their shirt, roughly repositioning children during classroom activities, and swinging a broom at a child.

In November 2021, when Pete Hegseth was a co-host on "Fox & Friends Weekend" and Amanda Feindt was an Army major, a storage tank maintained by the U.S. military began leaking jet fuel into the drinking water supply at Joint Base Pearl Harbor--Hickam in Oahu, Hawaii. In what became known as the Red Hill incident, for the name of the fuel storage facility, about 20,000 gallons of JP-5 jet fuel contaminated drinking water for roughly 93,000 people, including members of the military and civilians. The Associated Press reported that about 6,000 people were poisoned.

Feindt and her family were among the military households exposed to contaminated drinking water during the Red Hill fuel leak. After developing severe gastrointestinal symptoms, the entire family sought emergency medical care. Her infant son suffered chemical burns after bathing; her husband underwent multiple medical procedures for ongoing complications; and her daughter later developed neurological issues that the family believes stemmed from the exposure. The Feindts were evacuated from their home, shuffled between seven hotels, and relocated across the country twice. Feindt, a former cancer patient, developed enlarged and suspicious cervical lymph nodes.

Feindt became a substantiated whistleblower and lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over the fuel leak, arguing that the contamination had upended her family's health, finances, military career, and daily life....

In the four years since Feindt's exposure at Red Hill, the family has managed more than 700 medical appointments, multiple surgeries, and long hospitalizations. The Army moved the family to Fort Belvoir so Feindt could enter the Soldier Recovery Unit, a program intended to support service members with complex medical issues.

When her son experienced abuse at the Fort Belvoir childcare center, Red Hill came back to haunt her.

Staff members for Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll told Feindt they would not meet with her because of her association with the Red Hill litigation, which she believed had already concluded. (A federal court found the U.S. government liable for poisoning military families through the Red Hill fuel spill, but awarded substantially lower damages than plaintiffs sought.)...

Experts say abuse allegations inside military childcare centers often move slowly, with limited transparency and strong institutional pressure to minimize failures.

"Burying cases like these is a matter of control and institutional survival," said Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, a retired Army officer and director of the Eisenhower Media Network. "Incidents viewed as leadership failures can damage careers."

When a toddler named Evie Glick came home injured from the Ford Island childcare center in Honolulu in 2022, staff told her mother that Evie had tripped, fallen, and hit her head. Jennifer Glick, a special agent with the Army Criminal Investigation Division, accepted that explanation at the time.

The following year, Navy Family Advocacy officials informed the family that Evie may have been physically abused at the daycare after another military family, the Kuykendalls, raised concerns uncovered while investigating the abuse of their own daughter, Bella....

It wasn't until nearly three years after Evie's injury that Glick saw surveillance footage through Operation Mei Mei. She said the videos contradicted the explanation she had originally been given.

"We were lied to. The [daycare] never told us our daughter was abused," Glick said. "My first question, being in law enforcement myself, was: Where is the investigation?"...

Glick said the footage showed a caregiver grabbing Evie by the arm, pulling her to the ground, and making her head strike the floor -- causing the injury that, years earlier, the family had been told happened when Evie fell....

Glick later filed a FOIA request seeking additional footage. She said the material she eventually received was heavily edited, redacted, and stripped of audio.

"They told me I could only view it with a JAG officer present," Glick told The Intercept, referring to a judge advocate general, or a military lawyer....

Unlike civilian daycares, Defense Department child development centers are not licensed by the state where they're located. Instead, they operate under DoD oversight, but DoD policy requires centers to maintain national accreditation standards....

"How can anyone be mission ready or focused on lethal force if the military, in my family's case, literally poisoned my child and now I can't take them to daycare because they were abused?" Feindt said.

For Glick, her child's abuse fundamentally changed how she views military service and childcare inside the Defense Department.

The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed upon a Memorandum of Understanding which is supposed to end the current hostilities between the country.

A MoU is non binding. No text has been published and public remarks on either side hint that there are different interpretation of what the various clauses of the MoU are supposed to mean.

The agreement, if it survives that long, is supposed be signed in Switzerland on Friday.

Until about the last minute Iran was not willing to sign on to it. There was, and is, political opposition in Iran against an agreement with the U.S. Iran, it is argued, is in an advantageous position. It could and should demand more than it is supposed to get under the MoU. Without knowing the details of the social-economic situation in Iran it is hard to judge if that is true....

While Iran, on Sunday afternoon local time, was still arguing about signing the MoU, Israel, in an attempt to sabotage the agreement, launched an attack on Beirut in Lebanon. Iran immediately pulled back from the MoU. It announced retaliation strikes against Israel proper.

President Trump, who was very eager to get the MoU signed, had to make additional concessions to get the agreement back on track....

Trump also publicly condemned Israel's Prime Minster Netanyahoo for launching the attack on Lebanon. Iran called off its retaliation strikes.

Trump has announced that the U.S. sea blockade against Iran has been lifted. After the MoU is signed on Friday Iran will lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will also receive at least a part of its money the U.S. had frozen. After 30 days a 60 days long discussion will start about the dilution of highly enriched Uranium within Iran in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

I find it hard to believe that the discussions will lead to anything.

It is difficult to foresee what will follow in September after they fail. Trump will not want to bomb Iran just two months before the mid-term elections....

Trump was eager to get the MoU signed because the loss of oil supplies due to the blockade of the Strait will soon have an immensely negative impact on the U.S. and global economy.

Even if the restrictions on the Strait are removed it will take three to six months for oil supplies to come back to previous levels. But any further aggression, most likely from Israel, can reignite the conflict and reinstate a blockade.

The danger of sudden supply problems, and associated price spikes, has not (yet) been removed.

Fox's $22 billion acquisition of Roku will come with a trove of data about what you're watching.

Fox is about to take over the TVs in more than 100 million homes worldwide. On Monday, Fox announced that it's acquiring Roku, the streaming middleman that serves as a portal for viewers to hop into services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and more. The $22 billion deal may not change Roku's familiar purple interface, but it could put Fox in control of your data behind the screen.

During a call with investors, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the plan is to keep the two companies separate. Fox aims to grow its business by adding Fox Sports, news content, and local stations to Roku -- one of the most popular streaming device and smart TV platforms....

Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood, who will have a role at the combined company after the deal closes in 2027, echoed this idea, saying that the streaming platform would feature Fox content on its homescreen, which currently shows a large marquee ad, along with a carousel filled with suggested shows and movies....

The multibillion-dollar deal may not result in an obvious branding change for Roku, but it may raise alarm bells for the people paying attention to the recent wave of media acquisitions that have put the Trump-friendly Ellison family in charge of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, CBS News, and, to an extent, TikTok. Lachlan Murdoch, who took the reins of Fox and its Trump-aligned news network last year, also owns The Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp.

Upcoming Israeli elections give the U.S. president leverage he can use.

The U.S.-Israel relationship has never been less popular in America, but at the same time that support for Israel is cratering in American public opinion, Congress appears to be fast-tracking an effort to entrench the relationship and give Israel enduring access to both our most sensitive technologies and our most sensitive intelligence -- in exchange for nothing more, it seems, than a thank you note from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the same time, the U.S. is at war, stuck in an unpopular and unnecessary conflict whose political and economic impacts create mounting and unanticipated obstacles for the Trump administration's agenda.... The president's frustration at Netanyahu -- who played a key role in convincing him to enter the conflict, and who can now act as a spoiler to prevent him from exiting it -- has become evident in recent weeks.

Given the challenges posed by the Israeli leader, a common complaint on both the right and the left of American politics is that Israel exerts far too much power in U.S. politics. But a closer look at the facts demonstrates that Netanyahu is actually in an incredibly weak position -- or would be, if the administration was willing to assess and deal with the entire U.S.-Israel portfolio holistically....

Netanyahu's own objectives are not shaped as much by geopolitics, or even national interest, as much as they are by the growing urgency of presenting himself as a winner in time for Israel's elections this fall. To do this, he has to leverage U.S. military power to deliver something resembling a win in Iran (which seems less and less likely), do the same in Lebanon (now a quagmire), and demonstrate that despite the collapse of U.S. public support and the foreseeable end of U.S. grant military assistance, he has guaranteed a means of enduring Israeli influence in Washington that doubles as a financial boon for Israel's tech sector and broader economy.

In short, his back is against the wall....

Netanyahu, as is typical for him, is projecting strength, to the point of hubris (which is also typical for him). His advantage to this point has rested on keeping the two negotiations (Iran and framework legislation) separate. In the Iran context he can exercise significant leverage as a spoiler, and in the legislative context he can exercise significant leverage through Republican congressional endorsement of a plan for which he has publicly taken credit. For as long as these lanes stay apart, he would seem to have the advantage....

Netanyahu has not shown himself to be a helpful partner for the U.S. -- indeed, from Gaza to Iran he has undermined U.S. regional and global influence and interests. There's no reason to think a future Israeli government under his leadership would be any more compliant, particularly once laws are passed by the U.S. guaranteeing Israel lasting influence over U.S. national security equities. In short, while Israel may be able to punch above its weight when it comes to shaping U.S. diplomacy (and warfare) on Iran, in the bigger picture Netanyahu needs Trump far more than Trump needs Netanyahu.

The administration should leverage this opportunity by linking all three tracks together.... To demonstrate he holds the upper hand, Trump should also work with Republican leadership in Congress to slow-roll the current legislative vehicles so that Netanyahu cannot present them as a "sure thing" prior to Israel's elections.

Such an approach would not only incentivize Netanyahu to work more constructively with the administration, but could also inform the policies and campaign strategies of Israel's opposition leaders....

U.S. presidents have always had the upper hand, in theory, when it comes to dealing with Israel. They can suspend arms transfers or soften their diplomatic support for Israel, opening it up to both sanctions risk and legal peril through the ongoing proceedings at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. Trump would be right to consider integrating these pressure points into his strategy as well, though he's unlikely to take that path. But there's a unique opportunity now between Netanyahu's domestic political position as Israel enters election season, and Israel's potential moment of crisis when it comes to transitioning U.S. security assistance into some form of enduring influence.

This is a winning hand for President Trump, should he choose to play it. There is no need to give away the game, as Congress now seems poised to do, just as the cards have been dealt. Trump can use Israel's desperation for defense and intelligence integration as leverage to constrain Netanyahu on Iran.

I was genuinely surprised by the Starmer regime's refusal to state that the Israeli boarding of the Global Sumud flotilla on the High Seas was illegal. I did not realise it was because the UK was planning to undertake similar illegal seizure itself....

The UK is a set of islands whose population is dependent on food imports to stay alive. Freedom of navigation is a core strategic interest of the UK. The relevant provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea were very heavily UK driven, including on passage through straits.

Abandoning the primacy of freedom of navigation is absolutely a radical policy departure for the UK -- driven, like so many other changes to traditional British legal positions, by the Starmer regime's extreme support for Israel.

It is not generally understood how profound a change this is. Even the Tory government of David Cameron, with William Hague as Foreign Secretary, had opposed the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and particularly Israeli seizure of vessels on the High Seas....

This is a long-term British legal position now directly repudiated by Starmer, Lammy and Cooper.

I had not realised that not only was the UK now supporting the campaigns of illegal blockade and seizure of vessels being openly pursued by Israel and by Trump, but Starmer was actually intending to abandon freedom of navigation and join the Trump/Netanyahu doctrine.

That is what the UK has now done by its seizure of the Smyrtos as it had passed through the Straits of Dover en route to Sikka in India.

The Dover Strait is a strait. The clue is in the name. The UK has absolutely no right to close it to Russian shipping. This is in Article 39 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea...

Transit of international straits "shall not be impeded" is pretty plain. This is the applicable legal regime for both the Strait of Dover and the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously in time of war different considerations apply, and commercial shipping of belligerent states -- and to and from belligerent states -- becomes a legitimate target. Iran is fully justified in also treating states permitting attacks launched from their territory as belligerent states.

If hostilities end, this Article 39 regime should apply again in the Strait of Hormuz.

It is worth a footnote to say that Iran had, until the recent illegal aggression by Israel and the United States, always strictly observed the international law on straits even though Iran did not sign the Convention and actually had entered a formal reservation on passage through straits. Even during the war, Iran had attempted, in extremely difficult circumstances, to establish a system for passage of genuinely neutral vessels.

It is astonishing that at this moment, when navigation of the Strait of Hormuz is arguably the single most live question in all of international politics, the UK has decided to abandon the principle of free transit through straits.

It takes hypocrisy to an entire new level -- it truly beggars belief -- that the day after closing the Dover Strait to Russian shipping, Starmer issued a joint statement with Germany, France and Italy insisting on "Freedom of Navigation" in the strait of Hormuz.

Even if you don't care about international law and believe that Trumpian realpolitik is better, to act against freedom of navigation now would seem an unwise decision....

The UK is not at war with Russia. Ukraine is, and the Ukrainian navy would have been entitled to seize the vessel. For reasons of cheap popularity and to increase the massive amounts of public money swirling around the corruption honeypot of military spending, UK ministers seem determined to move us to the brink of war with Russia. But we are still not at war, and the UK accordingly has no right to seize peaceful and innocent Russian bound, owned or flagged commercial vessels.

The UK is legally entitled to put whatever sanctions it wishes on Russia. But it can only enforce those within its legitimate jurisdiction. A foreign vessel, even when engaged in innocent passage or transit passage through a UK strait or other territorial waters, is not under UK jurisdiction. The Smyrtos was in fact in international waters south of the UK when seized.

In fact this attempt to enforce Western sanctions in areas where Western powers have no jurisdiction is a classic example of the current aggressive resurgence of imperialism, where the "rules-based order" -- meaning rules imposed by the imperialists -- replaces international law....

I have finally managed to pin down the alleged legal basis of the seizure of the Smyrtos, and it is that the vessel was stateless and thus subject to boarding under Article 110 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea....

We will inspect that claim more closely...

While Iran accepts limits on its nuclear program, the Trump admin still doesn't accept Iran's rejection of US-Israeli dominance.

The US and Iran have declared a halt to military hostilities, at least for the time being, in the war of aggression that Donald Trump launched alongside Israel more than three months ago. The agreement stands to restore the status quo ante but do little else. Along with an end to the US-Israeli bombing campaign, Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump will cease his blockade of Iranian waters. If Iran receives anything from the US in the short term, it will likely be a token amount of the tens of billions of dollars in stolen assets, as well as limited sanctions relief on the export of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.

The main issues for both countries -- Iran's nuclear enrichment program and crippling US sanctions on Iran's economy -- will be deferred to follow-up talks....

Trump went to war in February even though Iran had agreed to harsher restrictions on its nuclear enrichment program than under the JCPOA that Trump tore up. Just because Trump failed to overthrow Iran's government, it does not mean that he will suddenly turn around and respect its sovereignty. That would force him not only to end a war, but to end a decades-old regime change and destabilization campaign that has the support of both major political party establishments and a powerful Israel lobby.

In a pair of media appearances today, Vice President JD Vance inadvertently exposed the hardline stance that will prevent a lasting peace.... Vance named a second condition: that Iran "stop funding terrorist activities all over the Middle East." This would mean Iran abandoning its regional allies, or "proxies" in establishment parlance. But this is a non-starter for Tehran...

Iran's commitment to its allies is why Israel bombed Lebanon just as the deal was being finalized, to provoke Iran into derailing it. Trump publicly lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and told him to "stand down." But in the absence of a lasting peace deal that respects Iranian sovereignty, not to mention the Palestinian self-determination that Iran and Hezbollah are targeted for championing, Israel will have ample opportunities to continue acting as a spoiler. It has already refused to withdraw from Lebanon, despite Iran's insistence on ending that conflict as part of any deal. Israel's security doctrine, Defense Minister Israel Katz explained, "strive[s] for decisive outcomes rather than compromises and concessions." In other words, Israel is structurally averse to diplomacy....

What makes both geopolitical and political sense matters little to a bipartisan Beltway establishment committed to US-Israeli dominance in West Asia. Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, not only backed Israel's mass murder campaign in Gaza but refused to even re-enter the JCPOA negotiated by the administration in which he served as Vice President.

Before this temporary deal, Trump stalled for weeks and repeatedly reneged on terms that he had agreed to, including on the return of stolen Iranian assets. He was presumably hoping that Iran's economy would collapse under the weight of his blockade and crippling sanctions. While that gambit has failed for now, a ceasefire with limited relief is the most Iran can expect. From Washington to Tel Aviv, too many powerful people are invested in senseless hegemony over a lasting peace.

Iran reaffirmed that any deal with the US hinges on an end to Israel's war in Lebanon.

In the wake of the US and Iran announcing a Memorandum of Understanding to end the conflict between the two nations that includes a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israeli ministers have said Israel isn't bound by the agreement.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed that the IDF will not withdraw from its so-called "security zones" in southern Lebanon, which include a major swathe of Lebanese territory, and will also continue the occupation in southwest Syria and Gaza.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I are leading a clear policy that determines that the IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, without any time limit..." Katz said.

The Israeli defense minister said that the IDF will continue its destruction campaign in southern Lebanon and its forced displacement of Lebanese civilians....

Katz added that Netanyahu "made these points clear to US President Trump and to other senior American officials," which aligns with a report from Ynet that said Netanyahu told Trump that Israel is not bound by the Lebanon clause of the US-Iran MOU....

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich slammed the agreement Trump reached with Iran, saying it is "bad for Israel and for the entire free world. Period."...

Iranian officials on Monday reaffirmed that an end to Israel's war in Lebanon was key to a lasting deal with the US. "Lebanon and the termination of the war in Lebanon are an inseparable part of the understanding on ending the [US-Israeli] war [on Iran].... and we will continue to monitor developments carefully in the future," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.

"The word Lebanon is used three times in the understanding. It is mentioned that ending the war includes Lebanon and respecting the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity ... The United States must honor its commitments and ensure that the Zionist regime fulfills its obligation not to attack Lebanon," he added.

The City of Taylor, Texas, is facing public outcry after residents found out a data center's being constructed on land donated as a public space.

In what can only be described as a "reverse Ikiru," a plot of land that had been deeded to a city with the stipulation it be turned into a public park is on track to be turned into an environment-destroying blight on the landscape after being sold to a data center developer.

As reported by 404 Media, the City of Taylor, Texas, paid a paltry $10 in 1999 to accept a donation of almost 88 acres from the Bland family farm. According to documents reviewed by 404, the conditional language in the original deed granted the land to the "Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a Texas non-profit corporation, to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas."...

But in 2008, the city sold the land for $15,000 to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation (TEDC). It sat unused until last year, when the TEDC sold the plot to the company currently developing the data center, Blueprint, for a cool $10 million.