The Israeli government this week stripped Nile crocodiles of their protected status in order to advance a proposal that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said was inspired by the Trump administration’s now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz to build a prison for Palestinians surrounded by a moat full of the ravenous reptiles.
“You read that right,” the liberal US Jewish group J Street said in response to the news. “When cruelty becomes a governing principle instead of an aberration within the Israeli government, something has gone deeply wrong.”
Israeli Environmental Minister Idit Silman signed a directive Wednesday reclassifying Nile crocodiles as “specially managed wild animals,” a novel legal category enabling the government to keep them for security purposes.
Ben-Gvir, who heads the Israel Prison Service (IPS), said he was inspired by the Trump administration’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Florida. He is seeking to first introduce crocodiles into a moat around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel.
While it is not certain that the plan will come to fruition, Ben-Gvir celebrated Silman’s decree in a social media post showing him petting a crocodile, with the caption: “Cursed terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again.”
Palestinians have occasionally escaped from Israeli lockups, such as in September 2021, when six men used improvised tools, including spoons, to tunnel out of the high-security Gilboa Prison. All six escapees were caught within weeks.
(Photo by Itamar Ben-Gvir/Facebook)
The move by Silman—who gained international notoriety by calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—came despite objections from her own ministry’s legal adviser and the Nature and Parks Authority.
IPS, which sent a fact-finding mission to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January, argued that its employees could handle the animals, citing the agency’s experience working with the attack dogs that Palestinian prisoners and human rights groups have claimed were used to maul and even sexually abuse detainees.
Silman’s approval is contingent upon IPS meeting animal welfare requirements and appropriate holding conditions.
Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has openly boasted about the dramatic deterioration in conditions endured by Palestinian prisoners since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory obliteration of Gaza, which United Nations and other experts describe as a genocide.
“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves,” Ben-Gvir said of Palestinian prisoners during a speech on Friday. “I’m not joking. They’re afraid. Fear rules them, and that’s how it should be.”
The human rights groups’ suit came as the Trump administration vowed to destroy the International Criminal Court entirely.
Noah Hurowitz, The Intercept, July 15 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET
Human rights groups sued the Trump administration and cited U.S. sanctions against U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, seen speaking at a summit in Brussels on April 22, 2026. Photo: Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
Two pro-Palestine groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday that takes aim at U.S. sanctions against international human rights groups linked to efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes.
The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court by Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, seeks to reverse sanctions brought under Executive Order 14203.
The order, which President Donald Trump made in February 2025, grants the administration power to issue penalties against any person or group seeking to bring a case against the U.S. or its allies — namely Israel — before the International Criminal Court.
The plaintiffs, both of whom coordinate with international NGOs in an effort to hold the U.S. and Israel accountable for war crimes, are seeking a declaration that the ICC sanctions are in violation of their First Amendment rights because they create obstacles to free association. The lawsuit also asks for an injunction barring the Trump administration from using sanctions to stymie free speech.
Trump’s assault on the ICC — most recently including a vow to “dismantle” the court — has focused mostly on efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Israeli official, and an official with the armed Palestinian group Hamas for activities during the time period of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The White House executive order came down shortly after the arrest warrants were issued.
The rights groups’ lawsuit specifically highlights sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the U.N. official tasked with probing human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and three Palestinian nongovernmental organizations. According to the plaintiffs, the sanctions impinge on their First Amendment rights by preventing them from engaging in protected speech activities with Albanese and the NGOs.
“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, the executive director of DAWN, which was founded by journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination by the Saudi government. “The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide.”
The defendants named in the suit are Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Brad Smith, the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. (None of the American government officials immediately responded to requests for comment.)
Trump and his allies’ war on the international human rights community goes back years: In 2020, Trump issued sanctions against an ICC prosecutor after she called for an investigation into U.S. human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
Shortly after retaking the White House, Trump lifted Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in violence against Palestinians and destruction of their property. Trump then issued Executive Order 14203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” which placed visa restrictions and financial penalties on individuals and groups seeking to help the ICC in any potential case against the U.S., Israel, or other allies.
Months later, the administration issued sanctions against Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur. Albanese was briefly removed from the sanctions list in May after a federal judge ruled that the sanctions violated her rights, but the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers U.S. sanctions, added her to the list again days later, according to Al Jazeera.
The Albanese sanctions were followed in September 2025 with an edict sanctioning three NGOs: Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
In addition to penalizing Albanese and the NGOs, the sanctions bar any U.S. people or groups from engaging with them and make it a federal offense to receive or provide any “service” related to designated groups and people — an action the plaintiffs argue is in violation of their First Amendment rights.
The lawsuit comes at a moment of heightened attention to the sanctions against the ICC. Days before the lawsuit was filed, Rubio launched a broadside against the ICC in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece laying out a case for “dismantling” the court. Rubio specifically cited calls by DAWN for an investigation into potential war crimes in the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran.
“The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” Rubio wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”
The timing of Rubio’s renewed attack on the ICC alongside the lawsuit appears to be a coincidence, but only serves to further underscore the stakes, according to Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, a spokesperson for DAWN.
“The fact that he mentioned DAWN in his Wall Street Journal op-ed shows that the risk [of prosecution] to Americans is real,” Schaeffer Omer-Man told The Intercept. “But our primary goal is to get legal clarity that we can continue to have a working relationship with Francesca Albanese, and, equally if not more importantly, that we can resume working shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian civil society and human rights groups.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that the Israeli military won’t withdraw from Gaza even if Hamas disarms and that he plans to establish three settlements in the area of northern Gaza that the IDF has destroyed.
“We are not retreating from the Yellow Line,” Katz said on Monday during a visit to northern Gaza with reporters from Israel’s Channel 14. “Unequivocally, as long as Hamas does not truly disarm, and even after that, we remain inside of Gaza to bring up three Nahal outposts (military settlements).”
Nahal settlements are a type of Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied territory that are established by Israeli soldiers with the goal of transitioning them to permanent civilian communities. Katz first vowed in December 2025 that Israel would “never leave” Gaza and would establish Nahala settlements, though he has remained quiet about the plan since then, likely due to international backlash.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a report aired on Monday that the destruction in Gaza, which he described as “the result of a deliberate policy”, “feels good”. pic.twitter.com/4bfytEmzYN— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 14, 2026
In his remarks on Monday, Katz said that a permanent Israeli presence was needed in Gaza to “improve the hold and defense of the communities,” referring to Israeli towns near the Gaza border.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also recently said that plans have been drawn up for the establishment of three Jewish settlements inside Gaza and that he is just waiting on approval from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Katz also boasted of the destruction of Gaza cities during his visit to the northern part of the Strip. When asked how the view of the destruction made him feel, the Israeli minister said, “I feel good. Thank God. This is all the result of a deliberate policy aimed at removing threats. Instead of the raid method—going in and out—the IDF is inside, the terrorists are outside, and the houses are destroyed.”
Katz’s plans for Gaza go against the US-backed outline for a peace plan for Gaza that was approved by the UN Security Council, and the US has remained silent as Israel continues to constantly violate the ceasefire deal signed in October 2025, which was meant to lead to the implementation of the full peace plan.
Now that Hamas has released all Israeli captives and recovered the bodies of the deceased, Israeli officials try to justify the continued occupation and attacks in Gaza by demanding that Hamas disarm, but the comments from Katz and other Israeli officials reveal that the real goal is permanent occupation.
A group of extremist Jewish settlers equipped with US-made M4 rifles detained US lawmaker Ro Khanna and his group during their visit this week to the southern occupied West Bank, the Democratic representative disclosed on 9 July.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed; they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” Khanna told Reuters on Thursday.
“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road.” Khanna said, adding, “And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”
Khanna’s aide, Cameron Kasky, said the delegation was held for over an hour near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers in 2023, before appealing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem to free them.
Khanna’s visit to the occupied West Bank comes as support for Israel splits Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections in November, with the issue contributing to primary defeats for incumbent lawmakers financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Israel’s favorability rating among Democratic voters has fallen from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026, according to recent polls.
The US lawmaker’s confrontation with extremist settler groups occurs amid a broader campaign of state-supported settler violence that, by mid-2026, has escalated into systematic ethnic cleansing and land theft in the occupied West Bank.
As of July 2026, illegal settler outposts effectively control 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, following an “unprecedented” expansion directly backed by the Israeli government.
Former Israeli officials have characterized the current escalation as a “systematic campaign” of “Jewish terrorism” intended to facilitate de facto annexation of the Palestinian territories.
An Oxfam analysis based on UN data revealed that since 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,244 Palestinians, exceeding the total from the previous 17 years combined, and forcibly displaced nearly 46,000 people.
Over 540 settler attacks were reported in the first quarter of 2026 alone, alongside a record 925 movement obstacles that restrict Palestinian life.
Amnesty International concluded, based on independent investigations, that the Israeli government is implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing, supported by digital evidence, satellite imagery, and field investigations.
The failed Iran war presents costly proof that global dominance was always beyond Washington’s grasp
People wait to re-enter the event site after being evacuated due to storms during Independence Day celebrations in Washington, DC, on 4 July 2026 (Amid Farahi/AFP)
On the fourth of July, the United States turned 250 – an event that summoned the founders who spoke of a republic seeking “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind”, rather than dominion over them.
Yet the story that matters most for our own moment does not begin in 1776. It begins 35 years ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union – the moment the US mistook the disappearance of its main rival for a mandate to remake the world in its own image.
What followed was an overdrive of hubris. Washington read the unipolar moment of 1991 as a global manifest destiny, and set about entrenching its primacy in every region of the globe.
The mood was captured with startling candour by political scientist and former American national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard (1997), a meditation on how the US might dominate the Eurasian landmass and forestall the rise of any power capable of challenging it.
Primacy ceased to be a momentary fact and hardened into a doctrine – and, for a generation of US policymakers, an obsession that no defeat seemed able to shake.
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Strangely, much of the Arab world embraced it too. Time and again, Arab governments acceded to American designs on the premise that only the US could supply what they wanted: security above all, but also advanced weaponry, technology and finance.
The bargain seemed prudent, since the Arab world would accept US leadership and enjoy American protection. Nowhere was this clearer than in the network of US bases strung across the Gulf, from the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and Al Udeid in Qatar, to Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, Al Dhafra in the UAE and Ali Al Salem in Kuwait.
All those bases, and yet the question remained: who were these bases really serving?
Myth demolished
Some governments went further, entering what became, in effect, a strategic alliance with the US and Israel, on the old assumption that one should always back the strongest side. The myth of the indispensable protector became the organising principle of the Arab region’s diplomacy.
The Iran war has demolished that myth. On 28 February, the US and Israel attacked Iran, assassinating the supreme leader and many senior officials, all in brazen defiance of the United Nations Charter and with the declared aim of regime change.
And then the mightiest military on earth ran headlong into the limits of its power, military and political alike. Iran did not collapse. It named a successor to the supreme leader, struck back across the region, and closed the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a fuel crisis and wrecking the global economy.
After months of US and Israeli bombardment, billions of dollars wasted, thousands of lives squandered, and a region set aflame – from Lebanon to the Gulf – Washington settled not for the regime change that it had promised, but for a fragile and repeatedly broken truce.
The only choice left for the US is whether to accommodate a world it can still help to shape but no longer command, or to spend its remaining strength resisting the irreversible
The American-Israeli war failed, conclusively. It neither toppled the Iranian state nor subdued it; it enriched the arms industries but no one else; and it left every Gulf capital that had sheltered under the American umbrella more exposed, not less.
In failing, it taught two lessons at once about the limits of American power, and the folly of the Arab states staking their national security upon it. Every government that built its strategy on the permanence of American dominance now has reason to think again.
On this national birthday, two awakenings are overdue: one in Washington, and one in the Arab capitals that trusted it.
For the US, the lesson is that the age of forcing American and Israeli solutions on the region is over. No arsenal can any longer impose the outcomes that American power once asserted.
The honest course for the US would be to pursue, at last, what international law and justice have always required, which is a genuine solution for Palestine. This can be a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living in peace side by side, or a single bi-national democratic state.
In either case, it must be the end of the Greater Israel project, which aims for Israel’s permanent occupation of Palestinian lands and territories in neighbouring countries. The Greater Israel project has been the main source of the region’s perpetual wars.
The path forward
For the Arab world, the subservience to US power should end as well. There is no rational reason for the Arab world to outsource its security to a distant, unreliable and biased patron.
The path forward is Arab unity, rather than competition for Washington’s favour; to make peace with Iran, recognising that Arabs and Iranians are permanent neighbours and not proxies in someone else’s contest; and to build genuine strategic autonomy in a multipolar world, dealing with the US, China, Russia, and every power on equal terms and according to the region’s own interests.
How a regional defence pact could deal the final blow to Israel’s violent expansionism
A security architecture designed in the region, rather than in Washington, is now both possible and necessary. The Gulf states in particular command the capital, the energy, and the human talent to shape their own future – and, in the coming age of clean power, to help lead it.
We live in the age of multipolarity, and that is the Arab world’s surest road to dignity, security and peace.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the American republic announced itself to the world as a member of the human family, not as its master. The Iran war is the costly proof that global primacy was always beyond its grasp.
The unipolar moment that Washington mistook for a permanent world order has ended. The only choice left for the US is whether to accommodate a world it can still help to shape but no longer command, or to spend its remaining strength resisting the irreversible.
The wisest gift the US could give itself at 250 is to recognise multipolarity at last, and to rejoin the community of nations as one cooperative power among many.
The wisest gift the Arab world could give itself is to stop waiting for a patron – and to stand, at last, in unison, on its own feet.
Happy birthday to the United States, and for all of us, may this be a new birth of realism and peace.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Co-Chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, and Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. He spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees
Even as frustrations mount over Israeli military campaigns across the Middle East, governments keep buying weapons from Israel — making it one of the world’s largest arms exporters.
As experts tell Responsible Statecraft, Tel Aviv uses these weapons sales to lock countries into long-term, strategic relationships that make recipients less likely to hold Israel accountable for their behavior in Gaza and Lebanon or in its West Bank policies. They stress that sustained U.S. support, including billions in military grant aid each year and the co-development of many Israeli weapons systems, helps make this all possible.
A weapons exports boom
Following October 7, Israel’s defense industry has exploded: the number of startups there nearly doubled, from 160 in July 2024 to 312 in April 2025. Its arms exports, which account for 75% to 80% of all Israeli weapons production, have grown in tandem. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data published in March, Israel was the world’s seventh-largest arms exporter between 2021 and 2025, surpassing the United Kingdom.
Tel Aviv raked in a record $19.2 billion from arms exports in 2025, a jump up from the $14.8 billion it made the previous year.
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Arms sales as political leverage
As Seth Binder of the American Committee for Middle East Rights (ACMER) told RS, “arms deals are expensive and often create a long tail to negotiate, complete, and fulfill over the life of [a given] contract.”
Over time, these contracts provide Israel a way to build relationships that other governments have strong incentives to preserve. Exports can “entrench relationships that constrain others’ ability to hold [Israel] accountable,” Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), said.
A growing global demand for weapons is playing to Israel’s advantage. A case in point is Europe. Spurred by fears of Russia and U.S. pressure to increase defense spending, some European countries are buying Israeli weapons to supplement their fraught rearmament efforts. The purchases continue despite disquiet across the continent over Israel’s actions in the Middle East, which have led some European Union countries to pursue arms embargoes or suspend export licenses to Israel.
Germany signed multi-billion euro deals for the Israeli-made Arrow-3 missile defense system, Heron drones, and Spike anti-tank missiles last year. Greece spent about $740 million on 36 Precise & Universal Launching System (PULS) rocket artillery systems in December. Romania signed a deal worth about $2.3 billion for Spyder air defense systems earlier this week and is now set to acquire its own version of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
Outside the EU, the value of U.K. arms- and ammunition-related imports from Israel skyrocketed from just $508,343 in 2020 to nearly $7.97 million in 2025 — a nearly 1,500% increase. A senior Israeli defense official told Reuters in early June that European countries are expected to order more air and missile defense systems soon.
But depending on Israel for critical defense needs may prove risky. “A government that might otherwise respond to public demands for sanctions or arms embargoes [against Israel] now faces the prospect of degrading its own air defense…if it does so,” Levy told RS.
Similar dynamics are playing out among Abraham Accords nations; Israeli exports to those countries jumped fivefold between 2023 and 2025.
“No one has any illusions that Israel is popular right now in [the Abraham Accords] countries,” an Israeli diplomat told The Economist last fall. “But their governments have made long-term investments in their defense ties with Israel, and they’re not about to change course.”
More broadly, continued prospects for arms sales turn Israel’s controversial military actions — in which Israeli defense technologies are being used against civilians — into a commercial selling point. As Omar Shakir, the executive director of DAWN, told AP last month, Israeli defense and technology companies have been “able to parlay the use of their products in Gaza to attract more business.”
Israel’s arms exports blitz: fueled by Washington
Israel’s weapons industry is booming in part because “the U.S. has long subsidized it,” Binder told RS.
Israel receives Foreign Military Financing from Washington, which provides funds for acquiring American weapons equipment, training, and adjacent services. The support is even more direct through what is called Off-Shore Procurement (OSP), which Binder said allows Israel to “use a portion of its Foreign Military Financing provided by the United States to pay for [its own] arms.”
Although OSP is set to phase out by 2028, Binder told RS that “Israel’s arms industry has arguably established itself as a competitor” to America’s weapons sector through the program.
Meanwhile, Israeli firms have gained a competitive edge, thanks to what former State Department official Josh Paul calls a “larcenous” approach toward U.S. intellectual property. “Many technologies developed by U.S. industry are [simply] re-developed and re-packaged by Israeli companies,” he told RS.
American support is often evident in the export deals themselves, where, for example, the Arrow-3 system Germany bought from Israel was co-developed with the U.S., which helped fund its development. Because of Washington’s role in the program, U.S. approval was required before the initial sale could proceed.
Altogether, the International Trade Administration observed that U.S. assistance has “turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide.”
Currently, a series of congressional proposals under consideration — including one that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed as his “personal plan” — stands to give Israel’s defense sector a deeper foothold in the U.S. market.
Indeed, section 219 (previously section 224) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2027 would move to more closely integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries. The provision would further incorporate Israeli technologies and companies into U.S. supply chains, likely creating more opportunities to sell its weapons.
As Paul told RS, Israel being positioned “to become a supplier to the U.S. military is just a further example of [it] using [its arms] sector as a tool of influence.”
The country that once was the United States of America is now, in its 250th year, led by a president whose ignorance of history and policy is so profound that almost anything goes, including the initiation of wars fought for a foreign nation that is widely regarded as manifestly evil. I am of course speaking of the power that Israel has over US foreign policy in particular, though that leverage has been increasingly also impacting on the running of the economy and the elimination of fundamental liberties like freedom of speech. One has to ask, what kind of independence does America actually have when it allows another country, supported by domestic Jewish and Christian Zionists, to drain resources stolen from taxpayers through endless wars and a managed foreign policy that doesn’t benefit American citizens in any significant way. Above all, it is a “policy” driven by false religious beliefs that the former Palestine should become a wholly Jewish state that is “chosen” to expand and become “Greater” through wars initiated throughout the Middle East.
And pretty much the same elite Zionists that control the White House and Congress largely manage the other elements in the federal government while also controlling central banking through the Federal Reserve, which is privately operated and has less than 5% of money in “Reserve.” Most Americans are unaware that this financial runaway train will soon bring bankruptcy to the nation by way of a current $39.4 trillion in Federal government debt (122.1% of GDP), which amounts to $356,620 per taxpayer.
And there is more bad news! President Donald J Trump might rightly be regarded as the most pro-Israeli in the history of our nation, which is saying quite a lot, and it comes as no surprise that when one of his most ardent Jewish supporters Mark Levin recently described him as the “First Jewish president!” Trump responded “That’s true!” Whether that was confirmation of the reality of the assertion or merely agreement that Levin had said that can perhaps be in dispute, but it does reflect a certain reality. In a speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3rd Trump went on and on about purging the country of its “communists” but what he was really talking about was its liberals who are critics of Israel such as the New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Congressman Ilhan Omar!
Trump has been fighting a totally pointless and extremely unpopular war with a non-threatening Iran due to Israel convincing him to do so and he has tolerated a horrific genocide in what was once Palestine while also making the US complicit in the slaughter by providing the weapons, money and the political cover to permit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get away with the war crimes. And now there are reports that Trump has ordered the US military to begin preparations to engage in Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, which is no threat to American though an enemy of Israel.
That is the current reality. Our America, a victim of the powerful domestic Israel Lobby which has corrupted Congress with money and which controls most of the mainstream media, is truly a slave of what Israel regards as its national security policy. This has led some American critics of what is taking place to begin to refer to the USA as the “Zionization of America to create a Zionocracy” a name that has a certain resonance as it reflects a certain reality in that maintaining Jewish/Israeli dominance of the United States has stripped the nation of what once were basic constitutional rights.
Consider for example what already exists to favor Israel and what is impending that will make the US a virtual client state of the ruthless apartheid entity that has taken control of both the White House and Congress. It is often noted how the US Congress gave war criminal Netanyahu 58 standing ovations when he addressed that body in 2024. And there is already in the State Department a Bureau that exists to counter what it describes as antisemitism worldwide. It is called the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS), which was created to advance US efforts in addressing antisemitism globally. It was established by the Global Antisemitism Review Act of 2004 and is led by a special envoy with ambassador status who reports directly to the Secretary of State. It is currently headed by a Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun. It accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to include verbal or written criticism of the behavior of Jewish groups or of Israel as ipso facto evidence of antisemitism, which it regards as a crime. By way of comparison, no other country except Israel has an office that goes around the world with a mission to root out what it chooses to regard as antisemites.
So all right, let us accept that it is really bad, but there are some new initiatives that have surfaced that are about to make things worse at a time when we have a president who is prepared to give the Israelis and the Jewish domestic lobby anything they ask for. Some of the legislation coming out of Congress will dramatically strengthen Israel’s ability to interfere directly with the policies that might be supported by the US government. There is in fact serious discussion going on concerning several bills passing through the House of Representatives and Senate that will dramatically reshape the relationship with “best friend and greatest ally” Israel. The debate relates to section 224 of the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) for 2027, and section 622 of the National Intelligence Act for the same year. There is also a proposed re-configuration and granting of American military veteran benefits to citizens who choose to fight for the Israel Defense Force, requiring amendment of title 38 of the United States Code as well as of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. All the relevant bills are currently circulating in Congress including the questionable sections and, though there is growing resistance to them, they are at this time expected to pass.
NDAA Section 224, entitled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” reads in part: “The Secretary of Defense shall designate an executive agent, as such term is defined in Department of Defense Directive 5101.01 (relating to 6 DoD Executive Agent, issued February 7, 2022), responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation, by… identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility for potential integration into United States systems and programs of record.”
As one can easily discern, the arrangement is very broadly conceived and exists to greatly benefit Israel. It is already being mooted that the “executive agent” of the program will be an Israeli. If all of the legislation passes into law, which is almost certain, and is signed on by Trump, who has been seeking a “new security cooperation framework” with Israel, it would bind Israel to the United States in a way that is unique. Its broad commitment is not one shared even by NATO allies, and is well-nigh irreversible, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly has been seeking to accomplish. When he is speaking in Hebrew to a Jewish audience, Netanyahu even grins and takes credit for having covertly manipulated an acquiescent White House and Congress to incorporate the sections of the bills on Defense and Intelligence. Netanyahu has said he wants America’s elected officials, whom he largely owns and has even thanked for their subjugation, to ram the broad new “partnership” arrangement through over the next two years before Trump leaves office.
And even worse is being contemplated! In May and June, a bipartisan coalition of 15 House Republicans and 14 Democrats led by Congressman Dan Goldman of New York formally sponsored the Jewish American Security Act (JASA), a piece of legislation that if passed would possible constitute one of the most devastating attacks on the First Amendment in American history. It would also, uniquely, make Jews as a group and the state of Israel deserving of special treatment and protection by the federal government. The bill is supported by nearly all Jewish non-profits and Zionist activist groups and is headed “To strengthen Federal efforts to counter antisemitism in the United States and protect the Jewish community.”
The bill includes the appointment of an Anti-Semitism commissar to run the Department of Education’s already existing program to eliminate pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses, a $1 billion dollar cash fund to “secure” Zionist and Jewish properties, mandatory government monitoring of online social media to compel the censorship of “anti-Semitic” political speech or writing on their platforms, and recasting the law enforcement missions of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center to prioritize the targeting of critics of Jews and Israel as “foreign enemy actors and domestic terrorists.” Ironically, in addition to the $1 billion proposed in the bill to protect Jewish properties, those properties already get more than 90% of the discretionary security spending by the Department of Homeland, amounting to more than $300 million per year!
The act will also reinforce and make permanent Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism”), which included making Israelis a “protected class above criticism” under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Eric Striker observes how “Under executive orders signed by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this interpretation of the law has been used to weaponize access to federal subsidies to American higher learning institutions in order to shut down pro-Palestinian and anti-war activism among students. In addition to having an ‘Antisemitism Coordinator’ micro-manage this ongoing war on dissent, JASA calls for a ‘public awareness campaign’ that will plaster propaganda posters in ‘high-traffic public places, such as a cafeteria, gymnasium, or student center, and digital posting on 1 or more high-traffic institution web pages, such as a web page for a student services department’ warning students and professors about the consequences of partaking in speech and activism that offends Jews or singles out Israel.”
Interestingly, 37 states already have laws or rules that deny jobs or services to anyone who supports boycotts or otherwise seeks to damage Israeli interests, so the concept of punishing presumed “antisemites” is already on the table. But a federal mandate takes it to a new and much higher level. Striker comments how “Such a law, if passed, would treat figures as prominent as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Thomas Massie, Ana Kasparian, Ilhan Omar and Candace Owens, as well as many smaller critics that have arisen in recent years, as terrorists and enemies of the state.” The move to criminalize any criticism of Israel or the collective behavior of Jewish groups, if pursued aggressively at a national level, would have a devastating impact on the freedom of Americans to speak openly and honestly on issues like war and peace, for example. And of course that it what it is intended to do and you can count on the Jewish billionaires who have corrupted congress and bought the media to do what is wanted by monsters like Netanyahu to bring about that result. And it is all also just one part of the deliberate murder of American democracy. It is a major step to arrive at the “Zionocracy.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Successive United Nations investigations have documented Israel’s genocide, yet western regimes still refuse to name it or deliver the accountability their own institutions demand
Chris Sidoti of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory speaks at a press conference in Geneva on 16 September 2025 (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)
Once again, the United Nations reminds us that genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip.
A report issued on 23 June 2026 by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.
This followed an earlier report from the same commission on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was taking place, as well as the report of the UN special rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.
But what can meticulously documented international reports do in the face of those who have insisted on averting their eyes from declared Israeli intentions to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, comprehensive destruction and horrific starvation – not to mention the torrent of live images transmitted around the clock to mobile devices from the field of atrocities over the course of two full years?
Specialised UN reports, testimonies by international rapporteurs and experts, assessments by the most prominent global human rights organisations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide committed by Israel under the eyes of the world since October 2023.
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In contrast, most European and western states have clung to a rigid position that ignores this glaring truth, despite genocidal intentions being openly expressed in advance by senior Israeli leaders, who continued to boast of what their army and authorities were doing on the ground.
Official western comments on those reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases
Official western comments on those published reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases.
Is it not worthy of condemnation that senior European and western officials have persistently avoided using the term “genocide” in relation to these systematic and horrific Israeli practices?
It is as though the word were a firmly established taboo in European and western political, media and cultural discourse whenever Israel is concerned.
This taboo exerts its power over those officials and commentators who, in this way, give reason to suspect that acknowledging genocide depends on the identity of the perpetrator and the status of the victims.
Double standards
It is entirely understandable that the allies of a regime of occupation and genocide, or those who consider themselves Israel’s partners and friends, would avoid issuing a clear condemnation of conduct they themselves helped support and encourage, directly or indirectly, even if only through silence and denial of its atrocities.
Throughout this prolonged season of horrors, the Israeli side has enjoyed military and political backing, as well as propagandistic cover, through carefully crafted formulas uttered by senior European and western officials.
These amounted to evasive justifications for whatever war crimes and grave violations an occupying authority and its military forces might commit against a population left utterly exposed to continuous bombardment.
Those who still deny the Gaza genocide are complicit in Israel’s atrocities
This may be inferred from the phrase that has become a staple of western speeches: “Israel has every right to defend itself” – words that Israeli leaders understand simply as advance legitimation for a policy of mass killing and comprehensive destruction on the ground.
Naturally, no mention is made in this context of any right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves, for example, or of their right under international humanitarian law to resist the military occupation entrenched on their land.
States, governments and political leaderships – joined by elites in the fields of thought, culture and media – insist on ignoring the reality of genocide against the Palestinian people, or conceal it through a tendency toward genocide denial, as though all the serious international efforts of documentation and investigation had no value for them.
Denying a genocide that has unfolded before everyone’s ears and eyes simply means minimising its confirmed atrocities. It also entails direct or indirect encouragement of this pattern of horrific violations, so long as they are met with such shocking laxity.
Moreover, clinging to outright denial encourages the perpetrators to resume committing appalling war crimes, so long as these crimes are not named as such. Which western leaders – apart from a handful, such as Spain – have described what the Israeli leadership and its army have committed as “genocide” or “war crimes”?
It must be recalled that the centres of western decision-making, including the European Union and its leading bodies crowned with slogans of noble values and human rights, became implicated in a sweeping display of bias when they chose very mild or evasive terms to describe Israeli war crimes that the entire world followed in images, sound and live broadcasts.
Leaders and spokespersons resorted to cold expressions such as the ploy of “expressing concern” and voicing “sorrow” over the victims, often without naming the perpetrator, because the perpetrator was the Israeli leadership and its army, whose brutal policies and measures were visible to all.
Observers around the world have noted how the charge of “double standards” clings to European and western political discourse.
This is precisely what the former vice-president of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, warned his EU colleagues against – in full view of a world that notices the grave moral gap between European positions on Ukraine and Palestine. He issued that warning days into the war, at a Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 23 October 2023.
One would not be exaggerating to conclude from these contradictory positions that they place some human beings above others in status, degree of concern and human dignity, so that the lives, safety and security of Palestinians are placed lower in rank than those of others.
Thus comes the tolerance of the crushing of children, mothers, the sick and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, without serious positions being taken to restrain the machinery of genocide.
The margins, not the centre
Those faltering positions gave the strong impression that they were conferring moral immunity on the perpetrator, namely the Israeli leadership and its regular army.
Prevailing European and western criticism was limited to only two reckless ministers from the Israeli government, which amounts to little, since Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are already constantly criticised within Israeli circles.
The narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a ‘humanitarian crisis’, as though the programmed genocide were merely a natural disaster
Meanwhile, the government and the political leadership more broadly continue to escape direct criticism, even after the accumulation of filmed atrocities and the issuance of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
This evasion becomes even clearer when criticism, along with some sanctions of limited effect, has been confined to settler gangs and their leaders, without any verbal reproach or punitive gesture directed toward the Israeli army. The latter not only sponsors and protects settlers on the ground but also directly commits grave violations, appalling war crimes and campaigns of ethnic cleansing within the context of a horrific genocide.
This contradiction betrays a firmly rooted European and western position intent on exempting the state, its leadership and its regular military and security apparatuses from any clear criticism, explicit condemnation or accountability, while merely formal positions are issued concerning the margins rather than the centre: some settlers instead of the army, and only two ministers instead of the government.
Political Europe, and many elites in public life across western states, have even evaded confronting a simple question: does what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people constitute genocide?
Denying the genocide committed in Gaza requires wilful disregard.
It begins by brushing aside these war crimes and behaving as though they merit no attention. The adopted narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a “humanitarian crisis” and “alarming” conditions, or a show of concern for “civilian suffering” – as though the programmed genocide, reinforced by declared intentions to commit it, were merely a natural disaster that befell the place.
Sanctioned ICC judges sue Trump in US over ‘attack on judicial independence’
The states and governments that boast of their commitment to moral positions, human values, international law and human rights were supposed to honour those commitments. They should have warned against the campaign of genocide in its earliest stages, stripped it of political and propagandistic cover, and supported the enforcement of international justice and the cases filed over genocide against the Palestinian people.
Foremost among these is the case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, on the basis of Israel’s violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Instead, campaigns of moral targeting, incitement, intimidation and even the imposition of unjust sanctions on prosecutors have escalated, affecting international justice bodies and their personnel, as well as UN rapporteurs.
Thus, it becomes clear that complicity with the genocide committed against the Palestinian people goes ever further in undermining international law and threatening the foundations of international action and the protection afforded to its institutions and authorities.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe.
From war crimes and genocide abroad to moral, constitutional, and debt crises at home: Why Congress must reject the NDAA’s U.S.-Israel military and intelligence merger.
Against the horrific high- and low-tech butchery of Palestinians and Lebanese by Israeli ethno-nationalist psychopathic killers, this week there will be an effort in Congress to formally merge or integrate the military of Israel and the United States at the most advanced levels.
Section 219 (formerly Section 224) of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act of 2027, provides for an unprecedented unification. The nearly $4 billion in the NDAA for Israel’s offensive efforts pales next to Israel having direct access to determining use of $1.5 trillion in annual military resources of the United States.
Money can be appropriated one year and withdrawn the next. Institutional integration is permanent.
Section 219 creates permanent mechanisms through which military planning, intelligence sharing, weapons development, procurement, research, artificial intelligence, and strategic coordination become increasingly intertwined between the United States and Israel.
It is a proposal to embed another nation’s military establishment within the long-term planning and strategic architecture of the United States government.
Our own government – House, Senate and Administration – is in moral collapse, placing overwhelming emphasis on militarism instead of adequately funding America – housing, education, food, health, safety, and retirement security. Americans are standing at freeway exits, begging for food, while our tax dollars flow to weapons manufacturers.
While carrying a national debt approaching $40 Trillion, the Administration is increasing spending for its newly dedicated Department of War by 67% to upwards of $1.5 TRILLION per year. Simultaneously, with more than 42 million Americans unable to feed themselves, the administration is cutting federal food programs.
The practical implications extend far beyond dollars. With NDAA Section 219, Congress the legislation would create enduring institutional relationships affecting how those extraordinary military resources are developed, coordinated, and potentially employed.
No Congress has ever before considered legislation of this nature with any foreign nation.
If the Administration’s “America First” claim were to mean anything, it must first mean that America’s Constitution comes first. It must mean that American families, farmers, workers, veterans, and children come first. Section 219 turns that claim into a farce.
Section 219 of the NDAA would cause the United States to become dependent upon Israel making decisions about war, peace, military strategy, intelligence, and U. S. national security. This is the consequence of permanent institutional integration.
One week ago, a UN Commission of Inquiry determined that Israeli security forces deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children, sometimes as a game, torturing them, subjecting children to sexual violence resulting in “unprecedented death, injury and trauma.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF has been instrumental in the deaths of as many as 800,000 Palestinians, including children, emergency health care workers, doctors, nurses, journalists, and educators.
UN investigators and human rights observers have documented the killing of Palestinian children and have accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting the children of Gaza.
These findings are reinforced by dehumanizing statements from Israeli political figures who have portrayed Palestinian children as future terrorists, so children are targets.
Essential civilian infrastructure has been devastated. Water systems, hospitals, schools, electrical networks, and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed, eacerbating a man-made, humanitarian catastrophe.
In the occupied West Bank, armed “settlers” have been widely reported to have attacked Palestinian communities, burned homes, uprooted olive groves and other crops, destroyed property, and killed livestock, further displacing civilian populations.
Israel has used starvation as a weapon, setting food as a trap and, gunning down Gazans as they rush desperately to feed themselves and their children. Water supplies have been poisoned, wells filled with cement.
Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are testing ground sfor increasingly sophisticated military technologies, destroying entire villages with increasingly powerful munitions, and using precision, artificial intelligence-assisted targeting systems. Human rights organizations have raised serious concerns about the speed of targeting decisions, civilian casualty rates, and the implications of delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithmic systems.
White phosphorous and other weapons banned by international treaty are in use.
The conduct of the IDF has earned world-wide condemnation. Twenty-nine UN member states do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The Israel newspaper Haaretz recently reported that the ICC prosecutor is also seeking arrest warrants for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “Gaza must be destroyed entirely.” and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Givr, who has said: “All of Lebanon must burn.” Will these be our new partners? If so, the fundamental question becomes: Who are WE?
What is to be lost further in an Israel-U.S. military merger?
If the U.S. combines our military capabilities with the twisted occupation and expansionist ethic of Israel’s use of military technology against civilian populations, will it be long before our own government militarizes the high -tech surveillance infrastructure already in place to use state violence against our own citizens who protest abuse of basic rights?
The First Amendment has already been taken down on college campuses, and in cities and states where Israel critics are sanctioned.
U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials have trained in Israel. The lessons learned there have come to America in terms of deportation, detention, and in some cases, physical abuse, injury and death at the hands of ICE government agents.
Israel kills Arab children so they will not commit crimes in the future. Will Americans, as in the movie Minority Report be pitched into a dystopian world where predictive algorithms enable Israel-U.S. collaborators to hunt down, prosecute and even punish Americans for crimes not committed?
As a Member of Congress, I questioned Benjamin Netanyahu during a hearing which took place prior to the 2003 Congressional vote on going to war against Iraq. He admitted he wanted not only Iraq to be attacked by the United States, but also Libya and Iran. It is widely known that the Israeli Prime Minister pushed President Trump into the disastrous war against Iran.
It is inevitable that as Israel’s aggression is maximally empowered, once placed inside the U.S. war-making establishment, the U.S. will be dragged into the Zionists’ expansionist designs on Iran, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. A greater Israel means a lesser United States. Congress, heavily influenced by the Israel lobby, is unable to reclaim its constitutionally based war power
Since the merger is to be voted on, this week, before America celebrates the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, let us be reminded by Thomas Jefferson’s July 4, 1776 characterization of George III, King of Great Britain: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws….”
Our forefathers did not fight for freedom and for independence at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown, nor sacrifice American blood and treasure in battles in World War I and World War II to arrive at July 4, 2026, having willingly forfeited our sovereignty to a foreign nation, losing control of our future and putting in doubt “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.”
Call your congressperson today and tell them to stand for America’s independence and vote for the Massie-Khanna Amendment to remove Section 219 from the NDAA.
The Israeli military has intensified its military operations across Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Tuesday, citing its correspondents in the Strip, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.
The report said that the ramped-up activity included the large-scale demolition of homes and civilian infrastructure in the eastern and northeastern areas of the southern city of Khan Younis. In the nearby city of Rafah, WAFA reported heavy artillery shelling and gunfire toward Khan Younis.
In Gaza City, the report said that “Israeli forces detonated a booby-trapped robot loaded with a large quantity of explosives, targeting homes in the Tuffah neighborhood in the northeast of the city” and that there was also “heavy gunfire from military vehicles” in the area and “sporadic explosions.”
Mourners attend the funeral of Palestinian woman Diana Abu Daraz and her one-year-old daughter, Sewar, who were killed in an Israeli strike on tents, according to medics, outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 30, 2026. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The news agency also reported that at least two people were killed by an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis and multiple people were injured by Israeli attacks in Gaza City. Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update that it recorded the Israeli killing of at least eight Palestinians and the injury of 26.
In recent days, Israeli forces have killed multiple children, including a one-year-old girl who was killed alongside her mother in an airstrike targeting a tent in southern Gaza. Palestinians held a funeral for the child and her mother at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday.
The escalation in Israeli attacks comes as the IDF has been taking more territory in Gaza, a clear violation of the ceasefire deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that he ordered the Israeli military to take 70% of Gaza’s territory, up from 60%, and Israeli military officials said last week that the IDF has achieved that goal.
Since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed, the Health Ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,053 Palestinians and the injury of 3,406. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, as ambulance and civil defense crews have been unable to reach them so far,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
(Photo credit: Ammar Awad /Reuters)
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