In his uncompromising address to the world on Thursday, April 2nd, Trump repeated the same claims that he and his administration have been saying for weeks regarding the war in Iran: The U.S. will win, gas prices will lower, everything is just fine, in fact, things are better than ever!

The reality, of course, was starkly different. With continuing escalations and rejected peace deals, Trump was no sooner to ending the war on Thursday than he was the night he and Israel started it. And with Iran refusing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices weren’t going to lower anytime soon. As a matter of fact, Trump’s address actually led to an increase in the cost of oil (Chia and Hoskins 2026).1

On Tuesday night, the night of Trump’s promise that “a whole civilization will die” was set to possibly be fulfilled, Iran saw no massive bombing campaign as was threatened. Instead, Trump had backed down once again, continuing his pattern of major threats and deadlines that ultimately go unfulfilled (Bedayn 2026).2

In a rather lengthy, though non-specific, statement, Trump stated that a “double sided ceasefire” had been agreed to with Iran which would see the suspension of strikes for two weeks.

While Trump claimed in his statement that the reason for the ceasefire was because the U.S. military had “already met and exceeded all military objectives,” a study of recent events and analysis reveals something quite different. Contrary to everything Trump had claimed about the war just a week prior, the president was getting backed into a corner. The complete lack of support from European and other allies, the inability to complete military objectives and impose demands on Iran, and rapidly deteriorating popularity back home ultimately forced Trump to capitulate.

“…just take it.”

During his address on Thursday, Trump took the opportunity to admonish and incite action from other countries who are reliant on oil coming and going through the Strait of Hormuz, stating that “those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran… build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait and just take it” (as quoted in Chia and Hoskins 2026).

It would appear that many of those countries did heed Trump’s message to open up the strait, though perhaps not quite in the way the president was hoping. As of now, several countries have managed to get their ships through the strait after engaging in negotiations with Iran. On the same day of Trump’s address, a French container ship successfully and peacefully crossed the strait, being the first Western vessel to do so since Iran closed it in March. France joins several other countries who have already had vessels pass through the Straight of Hormuz or are currently in negotiations to do so including China, Pakistan, India, Italy, Turkey, Oman, Russia, Thailand, Iraq, Malaysia, and Japan (AFP, AP, and Reuters 2026) (Jeyaretnam 2026).34

While many European countries were, at best, nominally and hesitantly complicit in Trump’s war with Iran, many others drew a hardline stance. Soon after the first U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez swiftly condemned the strikes as “reckless and illegal” and that Spain would “not be complicit in something that is bad for the world – and that is also contrary to our values and interests – simply out of fear of reprisals from someone.” He further accused the U.S. of playing “Russian roulette with the destiny of millions” (as quoted in Lister 2026).5

Sánchez has also refused to praise Trump in the least for agreeing to a ceasefire, stating that his government would “not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket” (as quoted in Meredith 2026).6

Italy’s far-right Prime Minister, Giorgio Meloni, once seen as Trump’s favorite European leader, has since attempted to distance herself from the president whom she once called a “brilliant man” with whom she could “make the West great again” (Pietromarchi 2026).7

Faced with poor polling numbers at home (a solid majority of Italians are against the war on Iran) and a worsening economic crisis (Italy is the EU’s second biggest consumer of natural gas), Meloni has been forced to finally say no to Trump. Last week, Meloni stated that “When we don’t agree, we must say it. And this time, we do not agree,” during her visit to the Gulf. On top of this, Meloni fell in line with other European leaders when she refused to send the warships Trump requested to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Italy also refused to allow U.S. bombers to refuel at an airbase in Southern Italy a week prior (Pietromarchi 2026).

Trump’s second term has seen the growing rift between him and the U.S.’s NATO allies. The alliance’s resistance to his attempts to take control of Greenland, as well as their lack of support for his war with Iran would lead to Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming that the alliance was at risk of becoming “not a very good arrangement” for the U.S. Trump would himself state that he has strongly considered removing the U.S. from NATO, the “paper tiger,” entirely (Wälde 2026) (Stringer 2026).89

Trump would find himself repeatedly frustrated by a lack of assistance and significant support from NATO, which he claimed would be a “mark” which would “never disappear.” With several NATO countries declining to send warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz at Trump’s insistence and several others not allowing the U.S. to make use of local airbases and/or airspace in the war against Iran, Trump found himself at odds with key allies and without the support of the broader international community (Wälde 2026) (Stringer 2026) (Meyjes 2026) (Bodkin and Titcomb 2026).1011

“…met and exceeded…”

At the outset of Operation Epic Fury, one of the Trump administration’s stated goals was to “destroy the regime’s deadly ballistic missiles and completely raze their missile industry to the ground.”

With Trump’s claim of military objectives having been “met and exceeded,” it would be expected that Iranian missile reserves and capabilities have been completely and permanently decimated. An analysis of the facts, however, would reveal quite the opposite.

According to an intel brief by The Soufan Center, an analysis of U.S. intelligence sources and media investigations have revealed that Iran’s arsenal of missiles and drones “has been only partially depleted.” They cite U.S. intelligence assessments which estimate that “the U.S. and Israel have degraded only about half of Iran’s arsenal of missiles and drones” (The Soufan Center 2026).12

A CNN investigation making use of multiple sources familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments determined that “roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal,” and that Iran’s ability to quickly fire and move missile launchers made tracking and targeting them difficult for the U.S. military (Britzky, Bertrand, and Sclutto 2026).13

Of particular note is the fact that Iran’s “missile cities,” underground structures designed for the storage of drones and missiles, were often ineffectively targeted by U.S. and Israeli strikes. The Soufan Center cites U.S. intelligence assessments that state that strikes on these sites targeted only the entrances and ventilation shafts, and that they do not necessarily destroy the missiles and drones directly. They further state:

According to U.S intelligence reports, Iran has been able to dig out the bombed entrances and return the sites to full operation hours after an attack. A recent CNN investigation found that while 77 percent of visible tunnel entrances had been hit, activity at those sites resumed quickly.

(The Soufan Center 2026)

While Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might argue that Iran’s capabilities have been crippled, the intel report from The Soufan Center notes that this is possibly because the administration cites the number of drones and missile attacks launched by Iran, rather than what remains. And as the report points out, while it is true that the number of attacks had reduced since earlier in the war, “Iran’s missile and drone strikes are increasingly precise and lethal, and able to avoid interception, particularly against the Gulf states, which are a short distance away from Iran” (The Soufan Center 2026).

The previously mentioned CNN investigation also makes note of the U.S.’s difficulty in “annihilating” the Iranian Navy, another stated objective of the war. While much of Iran’s Navy has been decimated, the separate naval forces of the IRGC, responsible for harassing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, are still very much intact. According to sources familiar with U.S. intelligence, about half of the IRGC’s navy still remains, with “hundreds, if not thousands, of small boats and unmanned surface vessels left” (Britzky, Bertrand, and Sclutto 2026).

When the U.S. reports that Iranian vessels have been destroyed, it is entirely unclear which Navy they’re referring to, according to Annika Ganzeveld, the Middle East Portfolio Manager for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute (Britzky, Bertrand, and Sclutto 2026).

All in all, it would appear that, far from being “met and exceeded,” Trump’s key military objectives in his war remain unaccomplished.

Meanwhile, as The Palestine Chronicle has pointed out, the effectiveness of a possible ground invasion of Iran involving U.S. troops, repeatedly floated by Trump, has also been called into question following a reportedly messy and difficult operation to extract a crashed U.S. pilot out of Iranian territory (Palestine Chronicle Editors 2026).14

Trump’s attempts to end the war were also coming up short, with repeated attempts at threatening and negotiating with Iran being consistently met with stubborn defiance and counters from the Iranian government (as well as some mockery and sarcasm from Iranian embassies, see below) (Mansour 2026).15

Iran rejected Trump’s 15-point peace proposal, sent through Pakistani intermediaries, and instead proposed their own ten-point peace proposal, put forward on April 6th. It insists on guarantees of no future aggression, as well as an end to Israeli aggression in Lebanon against Hezbollah. The plan also included the lifting of sanctions on Iran. The transformation of the Strait of Hormuz into a toll-based passage was also proposed, with $2 million dollars being charged per ship, a charge which would be split with Oman and would be used by Iran to rebuild damaged and destroyed infrastructure (Bearak, Fassihi, Hakim, and Solomon 2026).16

The ceasefire that Trump has accepted appears to be based on making use of, or a variation of, this 10-point plan in future negotiations, as he describes it in his statement announcing the ceasefire: The Trump administration “received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis from which to negotiate.”

And according to a Pakistani source familiar with the talks leading to the ceasefire, it was Iran that was least interested in accepting a ceasefire deal without preconditions, and had to be repeatedly pleaded with to agree:

‘Until the last hours, Iran acted as a hardliner. The Iranians were not ready to budge without first putting their demands forward. We told them the demands ⁠can wait for the ​talks to happen,’ the source said.

(Shahzad, Cornwell, and Shahid 2026)17

“not well at all”

Trump’s war had failed to win hearts and minds back home as well. According to a poll conducted in March by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 33%, the lowest it has ever been in his second term in office. According to the co-director of the poll, UMass Amherst’s Professor Raymond LaRaja, Trump’s war with Iran has proven immensely unpopular: “Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Americans say the president is handling Iran poorly, including 52% who say ‘not well at all’” (University of Massachusetts Amherst 2026).18

While the majority of strong MAGA hardliners overwhelmingly approve of Trump’s handling of the war, “that support drops sharply among other Trump voters, revealing a clear divide within the Republican coalition. Strong MAGA voters appear to rally behind the president, while more conditional supporters are far more skeptical, suggesting potential cracks beneath the surface” (University of Massachusetts Amherst 2026).

This lack of approval from more moderate Trump supporters is likely to be concerning to the Trump administration. As these are the very demographics that helped Trump reclaim the office in 2024, and are expected to be key constituents in the upcoming midterm elections.

‘What is surprising, and of likely grave concern to the White House, are the dips in support from the very groups that helped Trump take back the presidency in 2024. Among men, working class Americans and African Americans, Trump’s approval ratings have dropped by close to 20 points since April 2025. Similar drops in support are also seen among moderates (down 18 points) and independents (down 13 points), key constituencies in Trump’s victory and in the upcoming midterm election.’

(University of Massachusetts Amherst 2026)

And this midterm is of major concern to Republicans, as it could determine whether or not they maintain their majority in the House and Senate, and could spell disaster for Trump if Democratic candidates take a majority in Congress.

The Republican coalition which sent Trump to the Oval Office in 2024 showed cracks as the Iran war persisted and escalated. Trump notably did not make an appearance at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the first time in a decade. Natalie Allison, a reporter for The Washington Post, noted that many present at the conference were skeptical or outright critical of Trump’s war with Iran. While many supported the objectives of the war, there were few who wanted to see it escalate.

Most expressed a desire for the president to wrap up U.S. involvement in Iran, even those who were supportive of his actions so far. Some said that despite wanting a swift exit, they support Trump’s professed desire to free Iranians from an oppressive regime and trust his ability to handle the situation. Other young voters here were dismayed that a president who ran on ending wars has launched the U.S. into a new one.

(Allison 2026)19

She quotes one prospective voter who voted for Trump in 2024 but has since become disillusioned with the president and the Republican party as a whole.

‘He ran on ‘no new wars.’ There’s a new war,’ said 19-year-old Razi Marshall, who cast his first vote for Trump in 2024 soon after becoming eligible to vote. ‘He ran on making stuff more affordable. Stuff’s less affordable. So in my life, I would say overall, I’m less than pleased.’

Popular conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec noted the general disapproval of the war among younger Trump supporters, noting that they felt that “if this war takes place, it’ll take precedence over their issues,” Posobiec stated (as quoted in Allison 2026).

Many prominent conservatives have split with Trump on the issue of the war in Iran, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, former Georgia congresswoman Marjorie-Taylor Greene, and now most notably Alex Jones, who has called for the president to be impeached, though this was after the ceasefire was announced.

These are all notable conservative influencers with large audiences who at one point served the promotional interests of the administration, only to now split quite emphatically with Trump.

Both the quantitative and qualitative data made it clear: If Trump wanted to maintain the Republican majority in Congress after the midterms, he needed to make a change, and fast. That change was the ceasefire with Iran. An attempt at saving face with his more skeptical supporters, picking up his rock bottom poll numbers, and claiming a hollow victory in the Middle East.

“Eternal Darkness”

Trump has a tendency to speak in very absolutist, maximalist terms. Everything he does is “the most,” or “the biggest,” or “the greatest in history.” We heard that kind of rhetoric being used in every interview, press conference, and update on the war. The narrative the administration wanted enmeshed into the public mind was a simple but theatrical one: Iran posed the greatest threat, but Trump responded with an overwhelmingly powerful counter, the greatest in history, without any setbacks or difficulties.

But the funny thing about narratives is that they don’t simply become true because you want them to be, or because you repeat them ad nauseum. Reality has a cold and brutal way of bringing the delusional back down to the hard Earth. Trump’s narrative was a lie. His reasons for launching this war alongside Israel were always questionable and unclear. His attempts at gaslighting the public into believing that the fight would be a quick and easy affair crashed into the brick wall of real logistical and material issues. And his recent attempts at framing this ceasefire as a total victory fall flat when confronted by the facts. Trump took a defeat in his illegal, hasty, and frankly naive Middle East venture.

Now the ceasefire hangs on by a thread after Israel conducted “one of the worst mass-killings in Lebanon since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990.” Launching 100 strikes in just 10 minutes in “Operation Eternal Darkness,” Israel has killed roughly 300 people and wounded over a thousand. Casualties are expected to rise as more bodies are found under the rubble (Christou 2026).20

Netanyahu and Vice President JD Vance have both claimed that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire, despite Iran, Hezbollah, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister and key intermediary in the talks, Shehbaz Sharif, stating otherwise:

Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israel’s attacks against Lebanon, and Trump seems unwilling to reign in Netanyahu as he seeks to undermine the entire peace.

Trump was forced to swallow a tough pill in his defeat to Iran. His relationship with European allies has been marred, his aggressive and militaristic approach to international relations has been thoroughly rebuffed, and his popularity back home has plummeted to the point of potentially costing his party its cherished majority position. The only question that remains is, is he willing to throw it all aside and send the world into chaos and death again?

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When the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iranian soil in the early morning hours of March 1, the most immediate question on everyone’s mind was a straightforward one: Why?

Why did the United States and Israel find it pertinent to strike Iran and launch yet another war in the Middle East? What possible justification could be provided, especially to the American public which has grown weary and highly skeptical of its government initiating military action abroad, especially in the Middle East.

Well Trump was quick to provide his justifications for launching a war without congressional approval. In a broadcast on Saturday, Trump claimed that the strikes were “preemptive” in nature and meant to “eliminate imminent threats from the Iranian regime” which, according to Trump, was getting close to attaining a nuclear weapon.

Trump also claimed that the war will provide the Iranian people with the chance to “take over” their government and remove the regime. In other words, it is yet another regime-change war which Trump and members of his administration had sworn off and criticized prior to getting elected (Team Zeteo 2026).1

The Unlikely Uprising

However as the war expanded and more and more lives were lost, it became increasingly clear that a popular uprising in the Islamic Republic was unlikely, even after a US strike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, Trump and his administration had already known that this would likely be the case. Two weeks prior to the strikes, a CIA assessment stated that even if Khamenei were to be killed, he could simply be replaced by hardliners of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (Banco 2026).2

Furthermore, a separate U.S. intelligence agency had, prior to the CIA assessment, reported that no IRGC defections had occurred in the midst of massive anti-government protests in January, which would be a vital precondition to a successful revolution. Several high ranking officials and sources familiar with U.S. intelligence say there is serious skepticism as to whether a popular revolution is at all possible (Slattery and Banco 2026).3

So given that Trump was already aware by the advice of senior officials and two government intelligence agencies that a successful popular uprising in Iran was far from likely, it strikes one as bizarre that he would repeatedly claim it as a reasonable justification for launching a war.

Preemptive to Nothing

That leads one to another of Trump’s justifications: that the strikes were preemptive in nature, meant to strike Iran before they struck the U.S. But this claim too, begins to falter under scrutiny. White House spokesperson Dylan Johnson stated that both Democratic and Republican members of several national security committees, comprised of members of both the Senate and House of Representatives, were briefed by Pentagon officials regarding Trump’s strikes on Iran.

While in the meeting officials stated that Iranian ballistic missiles and proxy forces posed an imminent threat to U.S. forces in the region, two sources familiar with the matter informed Reuters that there was absolutely no intelligence which would suggest that Iran would attack U.S. forces first (Stewart and Pamuk 2026).4

Thus, according to Trump’s own administration, the strikes against Iran could not be “preemptive” as there was nothing to preempt.

As a last note on this particular matter, I’d like to quote Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Esmail Baghaei, who, when speaking to Drop Site News, stated:

5

So it would appear that prior to the US-Israeli strikes against Iran, President Trump was well-aware that a popular uprising in the country was highly unlikely, as was the possibility of an initial Iranian attack. That leaves his final stated justification: to prevent Iran from attaining the nuclear weapons that, according to Trump, they are very close to.

“The absence of evidence…”

On Tuesday March 3, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff claimed in an interview with Fox News that Iranian diplomats had bragged to him about the country’s nuclear capabilities. According to Witkoff, the diplomats claimed to possess 460 kilograms of uranium at a 60% level of enrichment. And that “they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance” (Sherwood and Rohde 2026).6

Witkoff further stated that the negotiators “were proud of it.” Claiming that they were “proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs” (Sherwood and Rohde 2026).

What undermines Witkoff’s claim is a statement given to MS Now by a Persian Gulf diplomat who had direct knowledge of the negotiations. According to the diplomat, Witkoff had grossly misrepresented what had actually been said in the talks. That in reality the Iranians had informed Witkoff that they would be willing to get rid of their enriched uranium should sanctions be lifted and a deal be reached. The Iranian negotiators also explained to Witkoff that Iran had enriched the uranium after Trump pulled out of a 2015 deal reached by the Obama administration (Sherwood and Rohde 2026).

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly referred to the diplomat’s statements to MS Now as “false, anti-American propaganda” spread by “the evil Iranian regime” (Sherwood and Rohde 2026).

But it’s not only an anonymous diplomat’s statements that undermine the Trump administration’s narrative of a looming nuclear Iran, experts and U.S. intelligence services also contradict the claim.

The Center for International Policy Board of Directors Vice Chair Joe Cirincione, who is a nuclear security expert, spoke to MS Now regarding Trump’s claim that Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. Regarding Trump’s claim, Cirincione stated:

That is simply not true… the administration has presented no evidence to back up their claims of an imminent threat. Not the missiles, and certainly not the nuclear weapon.

(Alex Witt Reports 2026)7

Asked about whether he thinks the US would again bomb Iranian nuclear sites next year, Cirincione responded:

Almost certainly. That’s why we’ve argued for years there is no military solution to this problem. You cannot bomb away another country’s program. It’s never worked even though we’ve attempted to do it in many circumstances.

(Alex Witt Reports 2026)

Cirincione is not alone in disputing Trump’s claim of an imminent Iranian nuclear/missile threat. Sources within U.S. intelligence services have informed Reuters that, while they might be unaware of new intelligence reports, they are entirely unaware of any U.S. assessment indicating that Iran is close to developing a missile that could reach the American homeland, despite Trump’s claim in his State of the Union address that Iran was “working on missiles that will soon reach” the United States (Landay, Pamuk, and Slattery 2026).8

Two sources told Reuters that there had been no changes to an unclassified 2025 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment stating that Iran could take until 2035 to develop a militarily viable Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) (Landay, Pamuk, and Slattery 2026).

One source stated that even if China or North Korea were to provide technological assistance to Iran, it would still take the Islamic Republic eight years at the earliest to develop “something that is actually ICBM level and operational” (Landay, Pamuk, and Slattery 2026).

Therefore, by the testimony of a Persian Gulf diplomat, a nuclear security expert, and several sources from within the U.S. intelligence services, the Trump administration’s claims of a nuclear Iran fall apart. Thus, under even light scrutiny, we find that all of the president’s justifications for launching an illegal war against Iran alongside Israel come up short.

Even more bizarrely, it would appear that within the Trump administration itself there exists some confusion about why exactly the president has attacked Iran. On Monday March 2, following the previously mentioned briefing between Pentagon officials and congressional members, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that the president was left with a “very difficult decision” as Israel had already decided to launch strikes against Iran “with or without American support.” And since, according to Johnson, Iran would retaliate against American assets in the region, Trump decided to strike first. Johnson referred to the war as a “defensive operation” (Mascaro 2026a).9

The president’s own Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided this very same justification which was never expressed by Trump. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio stated. “And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” Rubio would also contradict Trump’s initial claim that the war was meant to lead to an overthrow of the Iranian government, stating that while the administration would “love to see this regime be replaced,” it is “not the objective,” which is actually to “make sure they don’t have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region” (Mascaro 2026a).

Trump insisted that the decision to strike Iran between the U.S. and Israel was the other way around, stating that “I might have forced their hand.” Rubio would later go back on his previous comments, bringing them more in line with the president’s (Mascaro 2026b).10

Many Democratic lawmakers expressed their outrage with the decision making process. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, said: “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel.” Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) exclaimed: “Are we now such an enfeebled nation that Israel decides when we go to war?” (Mascaro 2026a).

An Everlasting War

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has insisted to the American public that the war with Iran “is not endless.” Despite this assurance, Trump and members of his administration have declined to give a timeline or any expectation of when the conflict might come to an end.

Hegseth himself stated that “President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks.” Trump has said that he expects the war to last four to five weeks, but said that he would engage in the war for “far longer” if he deemed it necessary. “I don’t get bored,” he explained. “There’s nothing boring about this” (Price and Toropin 2026) (Glasser 2026).1112

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the U.S. “will do this as long as it takes to achieve” its objectives. The problem of course is that, as has been clearly demonstrated above, the Trump administration has no clear and justifiable objectives, at least none that can be presented to the American public, for this sudden and illegal new war in the Middle East.

Hegseth insists that “this is not Iraq,” making reference to the many wars of intervention and invasion the United States has engaged in throughout the years. Wars in not Iraq alone but also in Libya and Afghanistan that dragged Americans into conflicts thousands of miles away from home which lasted for decades at a time, often leading ultimately to failed states. While Trump’s administration may insist such a fate does not await the war against Iran, one must ask the question: how does a war begun without reason find a reason to end?

If there are no clear objectives for this war, how can we know when to end it? It should come as no great surprise to anyone that the conflict has escalated so dramatically, day by day, hour by hour. For how can it possibly deescalate when the aggressor has no understanding as to why he is fighting in the first place?

It should also not be surprising that the Trump administration has refused to give a clear timeline for their bizarre project in the Middle East. Nor should it be surprising that Trump has also refused to rule out sending boots-on-the-ground in Iran. He keeps his options open because he has not been able to explain to anyone, perhaps not even to himself, what he hopes to achieve with this war.

And yet despite all of this, two measures that would have reigned in Trump’s war with Iran failed to pass in the Senate and House respectively. Thus allowing the president to carry on his ambiguous crusade unabated.

So that at last begs the desperate question: When will this war end?

Will it be when Trump feels he can claim victory in a way that will boost his depressing polling figures? Will it be when Israel decides it’s done? Or maybe it, like the rest of America’s foreign wars in the Middle East, will stretch on and on, leaving in its wake; scars everlasting.

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1

Team Zeteo. 2026. “Team Trump Opposed War With Iran. Then They Started One.” Zeteo, February 28.

Zeteo

Team Trump Opposed War With Iran. Then They Started One

Donald Trump has launched an illegal and baseless war on Iran in hopes of bringing about regime change – the exact type of Middle East conflict that the president and his top officials claimed he would never start…

Read more

3 months ago · 397 likes · 14 comments · Team Zeteo

5

Scahill, Jeremy. 2026. “EXCLUSIVE: Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Rejects Trump’s “Big Lie” About Why He Went to War.” Drop Site News, March 4.

Drop Site News

EXCLUSIVE: Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Rejects Trump’s “Big Lie” About Why He Went to War

In an exclusive interview with Drop Site News, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Esmail Baghaei rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that he launched the war because Iran was “going to attack first,” calling it a “big lie…

Listen now

3 months ago · 787 likes · 30 comments · Jeremy Scahill

From the outside looking in, it can be easy to think that Donald Trump is a far-right, ultra-patriotic American president catering to the most far-right, hyper-nationalist circles of American society, and he is. The only error in this judgement is the idea that Trump himself is a patriot, a nationalist, or even a relatively proud American; he’s not.

In fact, his actions throughout his presidency seem to suggest that, far from being a proud American, the president actually revels in desecrating the idealized image of America, and humiliating his fellow countrymen.

To the president, the nation holds no sacrality, and he appears to enjoy enacting a deliberate policy of constant humiliation against Americans and their country. Whether that means shutting down historic institutions, transforming sites of national importance into decadent monuments to himself and his friends, or even slandering murdered Americans at every opportunity, Trump just can’t stop himself from shredding the nation of its dignity.

“…an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

The National Cultural Center was established in 1955 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as his vision for an “artistic mecca” in the nation’s capital. Following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the center was renamed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 1964 President Johnson turned the first shovelful at the Center’s construction site, making use of the same historic gold-plated spade that had been used at the construction of the Jefferson Memorial in 1938 and the Lincoln Memorial in 1914, exactly half a century prior.

Throughout the years, the non-profit center has been operating without partisan alignment, managing to mostly remain free of abuse from, and maintaining a purely collaborative and non-political relationship with ten separate presidential administrations, right in the political heart of the country. It bore the same mission, and the same name, since its establishment (del Barco 2025).1

On February 7, 2025, Trump made a post on Truth Social proudly declaring:

At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP! Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

(Trump 2025).2

In its 54 years of operation, the Kennedy Center Board had never once been so blatantly overtaken by a president. Trump quickly removed several members of the board and replaced them with loyalists, with himself acting as chairman. He also fired the Center’s president Deborah Rutter, who had been in her position for over a decade, and replaced her with former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and longtime foreign policy advisor Ric Grenell, who has zero prior experience in arts administration (del Barco 2025) (Smith 2026).3

The Center was also given a new name to go along with its newly politicized nature: The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a move which was met with a lawsuit by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, arguing that renaming a memorial site that was dedicated to an assassinated president required congressional approval (Washington Litigation Group 2025).4

The takeover was immediately met with widespread dissent and unrest. More than two dozen scheduled performers cancelled their shows in protest, including the Washington National Opera (which had performed at the Kennedy Center for 70 years), Lin Manuel Miranda, Stephen Schwartz, and the Brentano Spring Quartet. One performer, violinist Mark Steinberg of the Brentano String Quartet, stated that he would have felt “ashamed” to perform on stage, and lamented that it “would be such a luxury to make art in a vacuum… but that’s not possible right now.” His sentiment of not wanting to perform at a venue that had lost its decades-long apolitical nature was shared by many of the cancelling performers (Towfighi 2026) (Smith 2026).5

Following these cancellations and a screening of Melania, Trump announced that the Center would be entirely shut down for two years, apparently for some much-needed renovations.

Many of those long-associated with the Center have complained that such a long and complete shut down risks the support networks which have kept the not-for-profit going and have taken decades to build. As well as jeopardizing the institutional knowledge, experience, and expertise which has accumulated around the institution. Their complaints and fears have gone unheard (Smith 2026).

The date Trump chose to begin the shut down could not have been more of a message: Independence Day, 2026.

Having sullied the Center’s decades-old reputation for non-partisanship, gutted and stuffed its staff and board, added his name to its face, and hastily shutting it down after being met with well-deserved protests, Trump has openly and intentionally taken an American cultural institution built on the backs of three presidencies and decades of public work, and utterly ruined it in the course of a single year.

I think that Charlotte Canning, a drama professor at the University of Texas at Austin, describes the humiliation best:

“A real dump”

Designed by Irish immigrant James Hoban in 1792, and constructed by immigrants with the quarried stone collected by African slaves, the White House is by far the most iconic structure in American history.

It has served as the official residence and work place of the President of the United States since John Adams first occupied it on November 1, 1800. It was burned down along with much of the capital by the British during the War of 1812 only to be rebuilt once again, and it has since undergone numerous construction and reconstruction efforts.

During the course of these efforts, public outcry was very much the norm. People hated to see any parts of the White House added to or removed. It happened when Theodore Roosevelt removed several Victorian-era greenhouses during his construction of the East and West Wings, the latter of which was much despised, being referred to as “an awful blot on the landscape,” by one 1902 article from The Washington Times (Ghosts of DC 2012).6

The White House would also undergo drastic changes during Coolidge’s presidency, when he replaced the roof (as it was in danger of collapsing) and added a third floor. This reconstruction was also met with controversy. The White House also underwent major changes during FDR’s presidency, and would then go through the most expensive and severe reconstruction effort in its history under Harry S. Truman. A $5.5 million grant (roughly $70 million today) from an often antagonistic Congress was agreed upon after it became clear that the entire structure was at risk of imploding in on itself (Brown 2025).7

Despite the fact that almost all of these projects were vitally necessary for the basic functioning, operation, and structural stability of the White House, they were all subjects of major controversy. While many might view this as an act of “pearl clutching,” one might also recognize in it the American peoples’ long held love for the “People’s House,” as a structure representing not just an office or a living area, but the nation’s democratic principles and history at large. A symbol of the country as a whole.

But Trump’s originally estimated $200 million (now updated to $400 million) plan to add a massive ballroom and completely “modernize” the East Wing is very different. Typically, presidents could not simply go ahead with whatever construction efforts they wanted as they required funding from an approving Congress. But Trump has decided to seek the funds elsewhere: big business.

The list of corporate donors include, but is certainly not limited to, Microsoft, Palantir, Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Comcast, and Meta. While the Trump administration may claim the big bucks paid out for the project will save taxpayer money, the ethical ramifications of such fundraising methods are clear. As many have already pointed out, donating large sums to Trump’s project serves as the perfect opportunity for massive corporate entities to get in the good graces of the president. Effectively buying the president’s favoritism. As Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer for the Bush administration puts it, “It’s using access to the White House to raise money… These corporations all want something from the government” (Debusmann Jr 2025).8

A pledge form seen by CBS News suggests that donors may be eligible for “recognition” in exchange for their donations, potentially including having their names etched into the structure (Debusmann Jr 2025).

Outside of the fundraising for it, there are major ethical issues associated with the project itself. Despite the fact that Trump initially claimed the project would not affect the White House itself, the administration has since gone back on this statement and decided to completely demolish the historic East Wing. Bizarrely, the Trump administration then attempted to claim that the East Wing of the White House is in fact, not a part of the White House. Thus, in mid-October 2025, Secret Service agents kept onlookers away as demolition of the East Wing suddenly began, to the surprise of several official commissions and organizations that the Trump administration was meant to receive approval from before altering the White House (Broadwater 2025) (Brown 2025) (Diamond, Schwartzman, and Edwards 2025).910

Moving on from sheer destruction, Trump’s construction of a massive 1000-person ballroom invites, as Painter states, the “enormous temptation” to engage in a “pay to play” game with billionaire donors on a scale that the White House has never been subjected to before. While it is true that presidents from both parties have routinely invited supporters to White House dinners, the limited space meant that the “game” was severely limited. But now? A 1000 billionaires, media moguls, and tech giants can all sit together, and easily curry favor with the leader of the free world right in the People’s Mansion (Debusmann Jr 2025).

So to recap: Trump is using “donations” from mega-corporations to effectively bypass Congress and destroy historically significant parts of the White House in order to make way for an entirely unnecessary new part of the White House that will ultimately be used in an ever-expanding “pay-to-play” game that benefits those same mega-corporations. And also, they might get their names etched onto this new structure, so long as they contribute to the president’s personal passion project.

But truthfully, such blatant disrespect for the most iconic structure in America should hardly come as a surprise from the president who, as of August 2025, spent nearly a third of his presidency residing in his numerous personal properties, and allegedly called the White House “a real dump” (Alexander and Forbes Staff 2025) (Wagner 2017).1112

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But it appears that literally tearing down the White House isn’t enough for Trump. He’s eager to subject Americans to further humiliation by turning the White House into the site of a major entertainment and television spectacle.

“…legitimate, ultimate, American badass of all time.”

It’s one thing to change the physical structure of the White House, it’s another thing entirely to alter its very purpose and symbolism. While presidents in the past have had shows, performances, and other such displays at the White House, they never went much further than a small event or exhibition (Lincoln’s opera show, Roosevelt’s judo exhibitions, etc.). None were of the size, scale, and downright debauchery as the planned UFC White House card.

Just to be clear, this is not an attack on mixed martial arts itself, it’s an attack on Trump’s continued practice of mixing business, pleasure, and politics, and doing so in such a way that further humiliates Americans and their symbols.

Donald Trump and UFC president Dana White have had a longstanding friendship dating back to at least 2000. Back then, the UFC and MMA as a whole was struggling to find a wider audience and marketability in the states, desperately fighting the much maligned label of “human cockfighting.” MMA was illegal in many states, and the UFC was struggling to find venues that would host their events. However, after the sport was legalized in New Jersey, Donald Trump invited Dana to host a UFC event at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. The venue subsequently hosted both UFC 31 and 32, with Trump personally in attendance (Cabral 2024).14

Many years later, White would become vital in assisting Trump in appealing to the UFC’s central demographic: young men in their twenties. White hosted Trump at several UFC events, both during his first presidential term and during his second presidential campaign. White would also notably assist Trump’s presidential campaigns when he delivered fiery speeches during the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Conventions.

White promoted Trump as a “hard worker” with “great business instincts.” He also went to great lengths to promote a masculine, “fighter” image of Trump. At the 2016 RNC, White stated “I know fighters. Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump is a fighter, and I know he will fight for this country” (PBS NewsHour 2016).15

On several other occasions White remarked that Trump is “the toughest, most resilient guy I’ve ever met in my life.” and “the legitimate, ultimate American badass of all time.” (Adler 2024).16

White also hasn’t been shy in making use of the UFC itself as a tool in promoting a fighteresque image of Trump. At UFC 302, Trump made his first public appearance since being convicted of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels. Between fights, Trump and White walked out side by side to a cheering crowd, conducting the same exact walk-out ceremony that has traditionally been exclusive to fighters and their teams (Samano 2024).17

(Video courtesy of the UFC on TNT Sports X page [@ufcontnt])18

Despite this, White continues to insist that the UFC, his friendship with Trump, and the White House Card are entirely apolitical.

Asked on Bloomberg whether the White House event would make the sport political, Dana argued,

I don’t know how it would be too political other than it’s at the White House. If you look back throughout history, I think George Bush was a big baseball fan, Obama was an NBA fan, and Trump is a UFC fan. I don’t think that any of those guys being fans made any sport too political.

(as quoted in Krishnamurthy 2026).19

What Dana’s argument fails to recognize, however, is that neither Bush, Obama, nor any other president in history has ever made use of the White House South Lawn to host an exclusive sporting event with the help of their billionaire friend who helped them secure votes by promoting a hyper-masculine image of strength.

But learning of this relationship does beg the question: If Trump benefits from the relationship by having an easy way to promote himself to a particular demographic, what exactly does Dana gain from making himself and the UFC such a vocal advocate for the president? Well it would appear that Dana, just like any other billionaire, has a lot to gain by cozying up to the President of the United States.

In July 2016, the UFC was sold to Endeavor LLC, a massive media and talent management company led by CEO Ari Emanuel (former Hollywood agent for Trump during The Apprentice) for $4 billion. This coincides with White and the UFC’s promotion of Trump. In recent years, TKO Holdings, the UFC’s parent company underneath Endeavor has been attempting to branch out of MMA into other areas of combat sports entertainment. Most notably in boxing. The trouble is, unlike MMA, boxing is an old sport, and the boxing business has been present in the United States for hundreds of years. Thus, Dana and TKO are finding themselves in a new world of old rules, institutions, standards, and, most importantly for our purposes; laws.

The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act is a federal law that was passed in 2000 and is designed to protect the rights and welfare of boxers in a sport long known for its internal corruption, anti-competitive practices, and exploitation of athletes. The law has remained in place for over 25 years and is considered a landmark piece of legislation in the world of American boxing.

TKO Holdings, however, finding it difficult to break into the boxing world with its well-established sanctioning bodies such as the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO, has been subtly attempting to amend the act to provide them with an easy road to monopolization of the boxing market.

In July of last year, House representatives Brian Jack (R-GA) and Sharice Davids (D-KA) introduced the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act (MAABRA), touting it as a bill designed to improve fighter pay, provide fighters with better opportunities, and encourage new investment in the sport.

The act seeks to undermine existing boxing organizations who are constrained by the current Ali Act by establishing “Unified Boxing Organizations,” or “UBOs.” Under the proposed bill, any boxing promotion can become a UBO by providing fighters with certain benefits, such as expanded health insurance and mandatory medical examinations.

While this may seem beneficial to fighters at first, it’s important to note that many of the well-established boxing organizations will struggle to attain this UBO status, and new promotions will find it virtually impossible. All except for one: TKO Holdings’ new promotion, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and headed by Dana White: Zuffa Boxing (Luke Thomas 2025) (Zidan 2025).2021

Under the proposed bill, UBOs will not be constrained by many of the old measures of the Ali Act. What this means is that a UBO will be able to establish its own ranking systems, and determine who will fight for the title. It means that a UBO will be able to hold fighters in exclusive contracts preventing cross-promotion. It means fighters will have much more limited negotiation power when negotiating contracts. Ultimately, it means the monopolization of the industry by one massive organization. And if you didn’t know, that’s effectively the role the UFC currently fills in the sport of MMA. It’s the same role that Dana White, Ari Emanuel, and head of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, Turki al-Sheikh, wish to attain with Zuffa Boxing and the new bill (Zidan 2025) (Luke Thomas 2025).

As combat sports regulatory lawyer Erik Magraken puts it, the bill “guts the key protections from the Ali Act for promoters that choose to use the ‘unified boxing organization’ model. It allows a promoter to control rank and title… and achieve a stranglehold on the sport” (as quoted in Zidan 2025).

The two House representatives who initially proposed the bill, Brian Jack and Sharice Davids, have been close with White and Emanuel for several years. Jack, Trump, and White met at Mar-A-Lago several months before the MAAGRA was ever even proposed, with Trump telling White that Jack is “the go-to-guy” for any fighting-related legislation (Robinson 2025).22

As for Sharice Davids, her congressional campaign in Kansas received several thousands in donations from Endeavor PAC, Dana White, and Ari Emanuel. Investigative journalist Karim Zidan has referred to her and others’ involvement as a “masterstroke of lobbying tactics by TKO and Emanuel” (O’Reilly 2025) (Zidan 2025).23

There is far more to be discussed when it comes to the MAABRA and the underhanded tactics used by White, Emanuel, and al-Sheikh to get it, but that could take up an entire essay in its own right. If you’d like to learn more (and I highly recommended you do), I would suggest the content produced by well-known MMA analyst and political commentator Luke Thomas, and the articles by Karim Zidan and Seán O’Reilly.

With this information, Trump and White’s UFC White House card takes on a new, more symbolic, more sinister image. Far from being merely a bizarre spectacle on the grounds of the People’s Mansion, the event symbolizes the celebration of years of quid-pro-quo relationships, corporate-backed political propaganda, foreign interference, and aggressive political lobbying on the part of Donald Trump, Dana White, and Ari Emanuel.

It is an in-your-face exclusive party celebrating the triumph of corporate manipulation and elitist friendship circles over public interest and representative democracy. Trump doesn’t have to hold a UFC event at the White House, he wants to. He enjoys putting on a personal spectacle with his friends, as they quietly manipulate the American political system to better serve their own appetites. And there’s no better place to do it than the very spot meant to symbolize the supposed power of the American people over their government.

“He was not an angel, and she was not an angel…”

When Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti were shot and killed by ICE agents on January 7th and January 24th respectively, the first news to come out weren’t DHS statements or mournful pleas from family members, they were videos.

Videos which clearly portrayed federal agents shooting and killing the two civilians in acts that could hardly be deemed “self-defense.” I won’t go through a breakdown of any videos, though I will link unedited videos of both shootings as I believe they are enough:

Despite the video evidence, both the Department of Homeland Security and Donald Trump still claimed the shootings were justified. Both Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed the agents were acting in self-defense and that both 37-year old mother of three Renee Nicole Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti were “domestic terrorists.”

This was not the first time the “domestic terrorist” label was used in such a manner. In October, Marimar Martinez, a teaching assistant and American citizen, was shot five times by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum, who bragged about his shooting and received personal praise from Gregory Bovino. In this case, the DHS also labelled Martinez a “domestic terrorist” and federal prosecutors claimed without providing evidence that she had attempted to ram agents with her vehicle and had a history of “doxxing federal agents.” Charges against Martinez were dropped by a federal judge in mid-November when it was discovered that, in fact, it was a Border Patrol agent who had steered their vehicle into Martinez’s. Following Renee Nicole Good’s shooting, Martinez’s lawyers have pushed to make the evidence in their client’s case public (Tareen 2026).24

Slandering the victims of shootings by federal agents appears to be a frequent pattern of the Trump administration. On January 14th, Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa Celis were arrested by ICE, with Celis being shot in the leg by an ICE officer. The agents involved claimed that both Aljorna and Solis had attacked them with a broom and a shovel. Secretary Kristi Noem claimed the agents were fending off an “attempted murder” and had shot Celis in self-defense. The two men were ordered by a federal judge to be released from pre-trial detainment at which point ICE immediately detained them in immigration custody. They were then ordered to be released once again by Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, as was Aljorna’s partner, who was transferred from Minnesota to El Paso and then to New Mexico before finally being released by a New Mexico judge. Celis’ attorney claimed that the entire case was based on “lies” from an ICE agent. Despite attempts from Secretary Kristi Noem to frame the shooting as “self-defense” and accuse the two defendants of “attempted murder,” it would be ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons himself who would admit to the false testimony of the officers. Lyons admitted, the day after federal charges were dropped, that a review of “video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” and that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is “actively investigating these false statements” (Cheney and Gerstein 2026a) (Cheney and Gerstein 2026b).2526

In all these cases, the pattern remains the same: Victims of violence by ICE and other federal agents are eventually vindicated and acquitted of any wrongdoing, but not before being slandered, accused, and defamed by the Trump administration. And while the government’s victims are forced to undergo extensive detainment, court appearances, and trials, their attackers are often able to carry on without any significant consequences. As we saw in the case of Marimar Martinez, they may even be awarded praise by their superiors and colleagues.

In the cases of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the Trump administration once again made use of their strategy of slander and lies, even when speaking of the victims posthumously.

Attempting to convince people to trust their government over their eyes, the president and his administration repeatedly made false claims regarding Good and Pretti.

Speaking to The New York Times, Trump claimed that Good had “behaved horribly,” was “highly disrespectful” of law enforcement and that she “didn’t try to run [the agent] over. She ran him over.” Though Trump would later call the killing a “tragedy” and stated that sometimes immigration agents were “going to make a mistake” after he had learned that Good’s father was reportedly a “tremendous Trump fan” (Patil 2026) (Kanno-Youngs 2026).2728

Regardless, Secretary Kristi Noem labelled Good a “domestic terrorist” and claimed that she had “weaponized her vehicle” (Wertheimer 2026).29

DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLoughlin justified the killing in an email, stating:

If you impede law enforcement operations, ignore law commands, and use a deadly weapon to kill or cause bodily harm to a federal law enforcement office there are dangerous, and in this case deadly, consequences…

(As quoted in Stelloh 2026).30

With all the controversy surrounding Good’s death (and the videos showing obvious officer misconduct), you would think that a federal investigation by the Department of Justice would be warranted, just like it was when police officers killed George Floyd seven years prior, less than a mile away from the site of Good’s killing. However, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, former personal lawyer to Trump, confirmed that an investigation was not and would not be conducted. Speaking to Fox News, Blanche stated that the Department of Justice investigates “when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here” (Mackey 2026).31

However, allegedly, there is an investigation being conducted, just not into Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good. The investigation that federal officials are allegedly conducting is into Good’s partner, Becca, to determine whether or not she had impeded a federal officer moments before he killed Renee (Reilly, Ainsley, and Schuppe 2026).32

As for the case of Alex Pretti’s killing, the Trump administration continued their established pattern and slandered and attacked Pretti, desperately trying to justify the shooting in the face of clear video evidence.

Immediately after videos of the killing went viral and the news broke out, Secretary Noem claimed, without providing evidence, that Pretti was invited by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to “resist” and “perpetuate violence,” and claimed that Pretti’s actions fit the definition of “domestic terrorism.” The DHS claimed that Pretti had “approached officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.” Noem additionally stated that Pretti was intent on inflicting “maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Video evidence shows Pretti was not holding a gun, but rather his cell phone (Gibson 2026) (Houghtaling 2026) (Kim 2026).333435

Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, widely regarded as the mastermind behind Trump’s immigration policy, stated that Pretti was an “assassin” who attempted to “murder federal agents.” Although Miller would later backtrack his comments in the face of controversy, contradicting evidence, and internal confusion at the White House and suggest that federal agents, prior to killing Pretti, “may not have been following protocol” (Miller 2026) (Caputo 2026) (Kim 2026).3637

While Trump would later say that he was “not happy” with the killings of Pretti and Good, that hasn’t stopped him from slandering them. Telling NBC News that “he was not an angel, and she was not an angel. You know, you look at some tapes going back” (Rupar 2026).38

With regards to Pretti specifically, after a previously unseen video emerged showing Pretti, eleven days prior to his killing, yelling at federal agents and kicking out the taillight of a government SUV, before being apprehended by the agents, Trump claimed that “Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down,” while Donald Trump Jr. posted the clip on Instagram with the caption “Just a peaceful legal observer?!?!? 🤔” (Trump 2026) (Trump Jr 2026).3940

Aside from the obvious fact that any prior altercations between Pretti and federal agents do not by any means justify his killing, these are obvious and shameless attempts by Trump and his administration to slander Good and Pretti even weeks after their deaths.

It is clear that the Trump administration has no issues at all with lying about and slandering their victims at every possible turn. It is also clear that they simply do not respect Americans’ basic intelligence enough to resist lying about what everyone can clearly see.

It reveals a wider pattern of humiliation inflicted not just on the victims of the federal government, but on the wider American people. The fact that Trump and his administration can so comfortably lie about the most basic facts, throw dirt on the names of innocent Americans, and insist that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they are somehow doing all this for your benefit, displays a need to not just control the narrative, but to induce utter humiliation on the American people.

It’s yet another way for the Trump administration to show the American people that nothing is sacred to them. Nothing is too far, and there is no point too low. Major cultural and artistic institutions are overtaken and sacked, major landmarks are converted into monuments for corruption and the corporate elite, and innocent Americans are arrested, imprisoned, and shot down in the street only to be labelled terrorists and threats by their government.

These are not merely incompetent political decisions or mismanaged public relations debacles, these are indicative of a pattern. A pattern of humiliation against Americans and their country. A pattern of messages all telling the American people that no part of their country belongs to them anymore, only to Trump and his friends.

Trump frames himself and his supporters as patriots, as the true Americans. But it reminds me of a line from the great American satirist Mark Twain: “…the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”

Trump does not hold any loyalty or love for the nation, and neither does his government. Trump doesn’t believe his government deserves the nation’s loyalty, he believes he deserves the nation. It is his to do with as he pleases, and he intends to make that painfully clear.

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O’Reilly, Seán. 2026. “Inside Dana White and TKO’s Lobbying Effort to Reshape Boxing.” Sports Politika, February 12.

Sports Politika

Inside Dana White and TKO’s Lobbying Effort to Reshape Boxing

Welcome to Sports Politika, a media venture founded by investigative journalist and researcher Karim Zidan that strives to help you understand how sports and politics shape the world around us. My mission is to offer an independent platform for accessible journalism that raises awareness and empowers understanding…

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4 months ago · 17 likes · 2 comments · Seán O’Reilly

The attack was immediately met with international condemnations coming from governments around the world. The operation has been lambasted as a reckless escalation which violated Latin American sovereignty, breached international law, and sets, as Brazilian president Lula da Silva put it, “yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community” (as quoted in Evans 2026).2

The outrage only increased as Trump announced the United States would “run” Venezuela until elections could be held, not providing any further details as to exactly what this would mean or entail. He also very openly discussed further U.S. involvement with Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. Declaring that the United States would be given 30 to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil by Venezuela, the income from which he would control to “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” (McGraw, Morenne, and Linskey 2026).3

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He also stated that former VP and current Venezuelan president Delcy Rodríguez would need to comply with his plans or else she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” who now resides in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (Scherer 2026).5

The whole affair left many decrying the violations of both international and U.S. law. The world once again decried the vital threat to the “rules-based order” that actions such as this one posed. The “rules-based order” of course being one that restricts the world’s governments on the basis of international law. It is this very order that many commentators have bemoaned as now being effectively “dead,” having witnessed over the course of the past few years both Israel’s unrestrained genocide in Gaza and the United States’ illegal kidnapping of Maduro.

Though of course those with a historical bent might point out the vital flaw in this claim. Not because such cases were in any way acceptable under international law, but because for the rules-based order to have “died,” it must at one point have been alive.

Exactly 36 years prior to Maduro’s capture in Operation Absolute Resolve, Panamanian dictator and former U.S. ally Manuel Noriega was captured by U.S. forces on January 3rd, 1990, a year after they invaded the Central American country in 1989 under Operation Just Cause. Noriega was also accused of drug trafficking, and was convicted as such in a Miami courthouse in 1992. He was extradited to France in 2010, then to Panama in 2011 where he would die in May 2017.

At the time, the U.S. invasion of Panama and capture of Noriega was also condemned internationally as a violation of international law. The Organization of American States (a regional organization comprising countries across South America, North America, and the Caribbean) denounced the invasion as having disrespected state sovereignty and causing the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of Panamanian civilians (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 2008).6

But then-U.S. president George H.W. Bush was benefited by a crafty piece of legal justification signed by Assistant Attorney General William Barr (later AG during Trump’s first term). The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) produced a memo, now commonly referred to as the “Override Opinion,” which states that the president does not need to heed international law when directing the FBI to investigate and arrest criminals abroad. It also states that “as a matter of domestic law, the Executive has the power to authorize actions inconsistent with Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter” (U.S. Department of Justice 1989).7

The Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter it is referring to states that “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations” (UN Charter, art. 2(4)).8

With this opinion, POTUS could now affectively dismiss one of the “principal legal limits” preventing him from engaging in a unilateral strike against another sovereign state (Finucane 2020).9

The Override Opinion has been argued against and criticized repeatedly by experts ever since it became public knowledge. One of the many contentions is that since the U.N. Charter is a multilateral treaty that has been ratified by the Senate, it operates as a domestic law which the president must enforce (Lowell 2026).10

Regardless, it was used by Bush in 1989 and has been referenced to justify actions by the Executive that contradict international law. Most recently, in a memorandum produced by the OLC’s top lawyer T. Elliot Gaiser. Produced last month at the behest of the Trump administration and recently released to the public, the memo argues, rather bizarrely, that the OLC has made no determination as to whether or not Operation Absolute Resolve is in violation of any international law. In regards to this question, Gaiser states that “it is unnecessary to address the issue,” as long as the president possesses the authority to conduct such an operation under domestic law (which, as earlier demonstrated, he does not).

As an aside, the memo also openly acknowledges that in conducting the operation, the United States has initiated an armed conflict under international law (U.S. Department of Justice 2025).11

Thus, one can see how, far from killing international law in Venezuela, the United States, and much of the Global North, had never given it life in the first place. Far from acting as a deterrent to international abuses of power, international law and the “rules-based order” we have come to mourn have only functioned to enable the United States to attack whoever refuses to bend the knee to American interests. All the while, leaving the U.S. free from consequence, outside of global public disdain and some strongly-worded condemnations.

We saw it in clear effect in Iraq when, under the guise of reestablishing regional stability, combatting terrorism, and securing alleged WMDs, George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Bush argued that Saddam Hussein had violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, which required Iraq to readmit inspectors for WMDs and to comply with all previous resolutions. Despite apparent Iraqi cooperation, Bush and British PM Tony Blair claimed that Iraq was hindering UN inspectors and was still harboring WMDs.

And so, through the use of “international law,” Iraq was faced with a destructive multinational invasion which took hundreds of thousands of lives and from which the country remains in recovery. The “rules-based order” did not merely fail to prevent the invasion of Iraq, it was actively used to enable it. By way of Bush and Blair, the invasion, however destructive, duplicitous, and avoidable, was legal.

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Recently, Trump has announced the start of phase two of his 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza. A plan which he insists is working and in effect despite near-daily violations of the ceasefire on the part of the Israeli government (Haddad and Mansour 2026)13, and the plan being lambasted by several Palestinian groups as lacking proper Palestinian input (Gjevori 2025).14

Prior to its acceptance, the ridiculousness and inherent oppression of Trump’s proposed plan was known and labelled as such by journalists and activists the world over, and yet was officially, legally, adopted by the U.N. Security Council on November 17, 2025 with 13 yes votes and 2 abstentions.

And today, the same governments which conduct and fund an ongoing genocide in Gaza, express their consideration for military intervention to “secure the safety” of the Iranian people.

To say that there has ever been such a thing as true “international law” would be to ignore history. For the “law” must apply to all regardless of standing, wealth, or nationality. Nor has there ever been a “rules-based order,” for the “rules” in question are used only selectively, and the “order” has been non-existent for those whom have been subjected to the consequences of these “rules.”

These things, “international law” and the “rules-based order,” has only ever served as rhetoric to be used in political language and only actually applies to the Global South, whoever amongst them that does not comply with the will of the United States hegemon.

These things did not “die” in Panama. They did not “die” in Iraq. They did not “die” in Gaza. They did not “die” in Venezuela. They were never there. They had never been born, and they have not yet lived.

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1

In the previous two essays in this series on Israeli society, we discussed the Israeli political leadership across the spectrum, analyzing and exposing how the genocidal and ethnocentric rhetoric expressed by Netanyahu and his administration is far from a political anomaly, but is rather the expected norm.

We also took a closer look at the Israeli military establishment, and how it is, on every level and at every stage, deeply corrupted with a bloodthirsty, ethnocentric, and genocidal ideology, which not only permits but actively encourages crimes against innocent Palestinians.

In this final essay, we will be discussing the civilian populace of Israel. I hope to break any hopeful but misguided ideas of the Israeli peoples’ general disgust at their government’s actions. It is an idealistic but wholly untrue notion that the Israeli people do not agree or condone the actions of their government or military. In truth, they are almost entirely guilty of the same genocidal, ethnocentric sentiment, and do not in any way condemn their government’s actions.

“This was my home, with no electricity or gas.”

Those who read my previous essay on the Israeli military will likely recall the imagery that was featured prominently therein. That being the many online posts from IDF soldiers posing with the lingerie and toys of displaced or killed Palestinian women and children.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the trend did not stop at the military level. Immediately after the start of the genocide, Israeli social media influencers started and participated in several online trends focused on mocking the suffering of the Palestinians in a variety of cruel ways. From TikTok dances, to dressing up as dying Palestinians, to showing off their own easy access to water and electricity, Israeli social media became a breeding ground of not just dehumanization but of an unrelenting celebration of death and suffering.

Below is a brief mashup video shared by the Quds News Network’s X page (@QudsNen):

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As can be seen above (Quds News Network 2023), the posts involve Israelis donning what they likely perceive as traditional Palestinian dress and dancing along to the lyrics of a song that states: “This was my home, with no electricity or gas, was my home, and Ahmad’s & Fatma’s & Abed’s & Salim’s,” taken from a 2005 late night comedy show (Atalay 2023).3 In some of the videos, lights flash on and off, as a way of mocking the shut down of water and electricity in Gaza by Israel.

What is especially disturbing about this trend (and there is a lot to be disturbed by) is the particular animosity that is shown to Palestinian women. You might have taken note that in nearly all of the videos, the dancers are wearing hijabs.

This abhorrent trait is found in one of, if not the single most viral video out of these trends, a bizarre make-up tutorial by Israeli SFX artist Eve Cohen, she dresses up as a Palestinian woman with a dead baby and claims that the suffering of such Palestinians is Hamas propaganda.

The video below was shared on X by Rafael Shimunov (@rafaelshimunov):

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Other than mothers, Israeli influencers also like to mock a particular aspect of the Gazans’ suffering: their lack of access to basic essentials such as food, water, and electricity.

The video below is a TikTok shared on twitter by Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) and originally posted by Israeli TikTok user @danaraz_makeup:

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The Hebrew caption states,

No one:

Me when Gaza’s water and electricity were cut off:

This is another viral post by Israeli influencer Matanel Laiany, wherein he brags about his home’s water and electricity, shared by the TRT World Facebook page:

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Caption reads:

This is just the beginning.

“Come join the blockade!”

It would appear that for some Israelis, it is not enough to enjoy the suffering of Palestinians, and to mock their lack of basic essentials. They would much rather cause the suffering themselves.

Throughout the genocide, Israel has repeatedly shut down all access to humanitarian aid, blocking thousands of trucks carrying life-saving supplies at the Gaza border.

If aid is ever let in, it is always in small trickles, just a few trucks at a time, far less than necessary to prevent the worsening famine and the skyrocketing death count. But this is where some more extreme Israeli civilians come in. Organizing on road sides and gathering near the border to block the few trucks that were being allowed in by the government.

According to a UN dossier of publicly available evidence prepared by South Africa, in just the two months of January and February 2024, Israeli protesters at the border area of Kerem Shalom were able to prevent the crossing of aid trucks on several occasions. Including stopping 130 trucks in one case, and then an additional 51 out of 60 in another (South Africa 2025, 26).7

The dossier further mentions several other incidents in other areas:

Israeli protesters also protested the entry of aid trucks through Nitzana, resulting in aid trucks turning back, despite the area around that crossing also being declared a restricted military zone. The protests against life-saving aid also extended to Ashdod Port. In March 2024, Israeli officials were reported to have “tipped off” protesters about the location of aid trucks, facilitating their interception.

(South Africa 2025, 26).

In many cases, the protesters didn’t just stop aid from entering Gaza, they setup checkpoints, interrogated and assaulted Palestinian drivers, hijacked and torched trucks, and destroyed supplies (Morris 2024).8

These groups of settlers often communicate through WhatsApp channels, at least one of which numbers over 800 members, all of whom work to locate and launch attacks against aid trucks. In one such channel, Yosef de Bresser, a prominent figure in the radical “We Won’t Forget!” movement, outed the location of an aid truck and enthusiastically invited, “Come join the blockade!” The truck, which was actually bound for the Palestinian village of Salfit, not in Gaza, was ransacked by the civilian protesters. According to whom, were assisted in removing the aid by the Israeli Police (Morris 2024).

When asked about his group burning trucks, De Bresser denied it, but said he would not condemn it.

“I’m happy for every truck that doesn’t enter Gaza, and I’m also happy to see it catch fire,” he stated (Morris 2024).

(Israeli protesters destroying aid bound for Gaza at the Tarqumiya checkpoint. Video shared on X by NoComment, a feature program of EuroNews).9

These protesters seem to be convinced that these trucks will ultimately serve to assist Hamas, despite the mass reporting otherwise. Their sentiments and actions likely seem to be justified to them due in some part to the endorsement of many Knesset members, some of whom are known to join the protesters in blocking trucks.

In fact, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir is reported to have told the Deputy Commissioner of Police not to provide security for aid trucks (South Africa 2025, 26-27), and has, along with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, described the allowance of humanitarian aid into the enclave as a “gift to Hamas” (AlTaher 2025).10

“Jericho under Joshua’s command”

Seeing the above spectacles of utter hate and sadism, one is still inclined to believe (or more accurately, to hope) that those who participate in such activities are merely a loud minority. An extreme on the fringes of society, and thus do not represent, in neither action nor in views, the wider Israeli populace.

This was the general view of the world until certain alarming statistics began emerging. Commissioned in March and conducted by Pennsylvania State University professor Tamir Sorek, a survey for the Israeli polling firm Geocartography Knowledge Group revealed that 82% of Jewish Israelis support the mass forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. And that about half, 56%, favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel.

As Haaretz reporter Dahlia Scheindlin experienced personally, many were shocked and felt whiplashed by the data.

Within days I began receiving anguished inquiries about the results. Friends, colleagues, peace activists, journalists and strangers wrote in from Australia to Uruguay to down the block, asking if it could possibly be true that 82 percent of Israeli Jews support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries?”

(Sheindlin 2025).11

While many attempted to dismiss the data on a methodological basis, after conducting her own deep dive and reaching out to Professor Sorek, Scheindlin concluded, almost tragically, that “the findings can’t be dismissed on technical grounds” (Scheindlin 2025).

But the 82% figure is perhaps not even the most troubling statistic to come out of the survey. Out of all the respondents, 47%, nearly half, agreed that “when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua’s command – killing all its inhabitants” (Hazkani and Sorek 2025).12

The survey also made reference to the biblical nation of Amalek, the enemy of the Israelites whose very name and memory God commanded to be “blot out… from under heaven!” (Deut. 25:19, NIV) Among the respondents, 65% said that they “believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek… Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today” (Hazkani and Sorek 2025).

Things seem to arguably worsen when we look at a March - April 2024 survey conducted by the well-acclaimed Pew Research Center. When asked how they felt about their government’s military response to Hamas in Gaza, 19% of Israelis said it had gone too far, 39% said it had been “about right,” and 34% had shockingly said that it had “not gone far enough” (Pew Research Center 2024).13

This means that, despite widespread reports of civilian deaths, famine, and the destruction of Gazans’ homes, schools, and hospitals, 73% of Israelis with an opinion did not agree that the military had gone too far.

And of the 19% that did agree, the vast majority of them were Arab Israelis. Out of all Jewish Israelis, only 4% agreed that Israel’s military had gone too far (Pew Research Center 2024).

Israelis at times seem to fluctuate wildly in their exact justifications. Some insist that all the suffering, famine, and death that we see are just hoaxes designed and produced by Hamas’ “Pallywood.” Never mind the countless investigations by independent news groups, journalists, the UN, and NGOs, all of the Palestinian suffering is simply an illusion that has fooled everyone but them.

Other Israelis are much more direct in their justifications. Yes, Palestinians are suffering, but it is deserved. The belief that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” is one that has been oft repeated by far-right Israelis since even before October 7th. It has found popularity not just with a substantial portion of the civilian population, but also with MKs and government officials. Such a sentiment provides an easy moral justification for the murder and starvation of an entire population, women and children and all. A survey conducted by the Hebrew University’s aChord Center found that 64% of Israelis agree with the statement that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, with the claim finding support across the political spectrum in Israel (Ofir 2025).14

Within Israel, reporting on Gaza’s suffering does exist, but it is presented through a particularly soulless lens. As Haaretz reporter Rachel Fink points out, Israeli media appears to be more focused on how Israel’s international image is being affected by the genocide, than on the actual genocide itself.

She describes a particular Israeli news broadcast from journalist Elad Simchayoff. She describes the broadcast opening with the images of starving Palestinians, begging for food. With such an opening, one would imagine the report to be about the suffering of innocents in Gaza. Instead, it was about protecting Israel’s reputation abroad.

As I watch, I experience a kind of emotional whiplash. Time and again, Simchayoff starts a sentence that sounds like there might be a moral reckoning coming – and ends it with a plea for better PR.

“But it is also possible to wonder if perhaps it is time to improve our …” Simchayoff begins contemplatively.

Humanitarian policies? Accountability?

“...Hasbara efforts with skilled spokespeople, a clear and effective strategy and believable information,” he declares. That’s not a punchline. It’s his game plan.

For much of Simchayoff’s report, as his voice plays off-camera, b-roll footage of starving Palestinians begging for flour and wandering through the rubble of pulverized buildings runs in a loop. When it cuts back to anchorwoman Yonit Levy, she sums up the segment with a single line: “Those are the images being shown to the world,” she says, with clear disdain.

(Fink 2025).15

Many Israelis simply operate under the premise that the suffering of Palestinians is simply an acceptable suffering. Either that, or it’s deserved. This dehumanization has been in process since the start of the Zionist project, but has particularly picked up in the past 25 years or so.

This process can be found in the statements and actions of political leaders, religious teachers, Israeli media, and in the well-documented and infamous course of legislation in the country, pulling it into further radicalization and closer to the end of democratic institutions (Zonszein 2024).16

All these forces serve to dehumanize the Palestinians and to make their suffering, death, and expulsion appear not even as necessary evils, but as necessary goods. And to a growing number of Israeli Jews, it is even considered divinely ordained, with biblical precedent.

Before the early 2000s, while many, if not most, Israeli Jews did not accept any notion of Palestinian independence, self-determination, and in some cases human rights, there still existed amongst the international community the hope that somehow a fair compromise could be met to ensure the peace and well-being of all parties.

Now? What hope is there?

When every aspect of Israel’s society, from it’s political leadership, to it’s military establishment, to the overall populace, views Palestinians as simply inhuman, undeserving of the same basic human dignity as everyone else, how can any legitimate attempts at establishing peace justifiably have Israeli involvement?

Donald Trump’s bizarre plans for peace in Gaza are said to continue on to a second phase, despite near-daily ceasefire violations by Israel (AJLabs 2025).17 Despite the fact that such plans were conceived without Palestinian input, the US positively insists on them.

The National Commission for Palestinian Popular Action has recently rejected the “peace” proposal on the basis that it was conceived without the input of the Palestinian people and will ultimately establish a governing body over Gaza without proper Palestinian representation. In their words, it will only amount to a “new colonialism” (Gjevori 2025).18

The US plan is only continuing what has been the standard practice: denying Palestinian self-determination. A proper solution must have these two things:

1. A lack of Israeli involvement, as the entire society does not accept the basic premise of Palestinian human rights.

2. Palestinians in the driver’s seat, as they possess, along with all peoples, the basic right to self-determination.

I know Israelis would scoff at the idea of Palestinians in such a position, ostensibly because they do not feel they can trust them. To that I would say that while Israelis don’t feel they can trust Palestinians, no one in the world can trust Israelis.

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By putting them in the driver’s seat, Palestinians would at last have the opportunity to determine their own future, something long denied to them since the days of the British Mandate. To do so would be a chance at proper development and prosperity.

To achieve that well-deserved peace and prosperity, they need and deserve the international sympathies and support of the world, and the exclusion of a genocidal ethno-state which does not even consider them to be equal human beings.

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Part Two: The Israeli Military

Immediately after the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza enclave, a series of disturbing images started gaining traction online. These images showed, in the hundreds, IDF soldiers posing with the lingerie of Palestinian women who had fled their homes and their belongings. But what is most disturbing of all about these images, is how they were discovered. Not leaked from group chats or private messages, but shared publicly on the social media accounts of the soldiers themselves, who apparently had no hesitations in portraying themselves in such a way to the entire world.

We have to ask ourselves, why? Why do they feel so comfortable taking such photos and then sharing it so brazenly? And why is the phenomenon so widespread? What could possess these soldiers to behave so barbarically?

In part one of this essay on Israeli society, I showed how the entirety of the Israeli government, and not just Netanyahu and his administration, is guilty of the atrocity of Gaza. Israel’s political leadership, across the political spectrum, openly endorses and encourages a rhetoric and ideology of violent ethnocentrism and shirking of Palestinian human rights.

In this portion, I’m going to show how the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces act on this ideology, encouraged not just by their political leaders, but by their direct superiors and their training. How these acts of total sadism are but a small byproduct of a much larger military culture. I also intend to show how, far from being isolated incidents, the cruelty and ethical recklessness we’ve seen in the above photos is a far-reaching practice and way-of-thinking that is intentionally encouraged by the Israeli state and military.

I. Israeli Military Leadership

We’ve already discussed the genocidal beliefs and rhetoric of the Israeli political leadership, I’d now like to mention their counterparts in the Israeli military, who are just as if not more inhumane in their remarks. As we go through these, I want you to keep in mind that these are not just politicians or political commentators, these are military authorities who had/have a direct control over the actions of Israeli military personnel in Gaza.

We can look at former Israeli intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, who actually headed military intelligence on October 7th. He remained head of military intelligence until April 2024. In a secret tape recording broadcasted by Channel 12, Haliva can be heard saying:

The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations…

For everything that happened on October 7th, for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now if they are children.

(Haliva, as cited in Graham-Harrison, 2025)3

Or how about former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who served in his position from 2022 to 2024? Immediately after October 7th, Gallant declared a '“complete siege” on Gaza, stating that no food, water, or electricity would be allowed. He also stated that:

“We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” (Al Jazeera 2023, 0:01-0:11)4

Gallant is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

A particularly eye-opening testimony comes from former IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi, who served as a general in the first 17 months of the war, who openly admitted that Israeli military lawyers are essentially powerless and are usually totally ignored by the actual commanders.

‘Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once. Not the military AG [advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] who, by the way, hasn’t the authority to restrict me,’ he said.

In a quote that was not on the recording but was cited by Ynet, Halevi appeared to suggest that the main importance of Israel’s military lawyers was to convince the outside world of the legality of the IDF’s actions.

‘There are legal advisers who say: We will know how to defend this legally in the world, and this is very important for the state of Israel,’ he is quoted as saying. (Borger, 2025)5

Israel has frequently claimed that military and human rights lawyers are involved in the decision making process for military operations, and yet it would appear that there is something of a culture of Israeli generals, not just Halevi, totally ignoring these lawyers and their legal advice.

To quote Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard,

“The generals see them as ‘regular’ advisers whose advice one can adopt or dismiss, not as professional lawyers whose legal positions present the boundaries of what is permissible and what is prohibited.” (Sfard, as cited in Borger, 2025)

This last point is particularly shocking. It’s clear that these are not just a “few bad apples,” but rather indications of a larger systemic problem within Israeli high command. The shirking of humanitarian law and the powerless, even sycophantic nature of the touted Israeli military lawyers shows that these are not isolated generals, but living exposés.

There is a lot more that we can quote from these IDF generals and commanders, letting their own words expose the propaganda of them and their government, but now let’s take a look at what their rhetoric and view of Palestinians means in terms of on-the-ground action.

II. Israeli Leadership on the Ground

Breaking the Silence is an Israeli non-governmental organization that documents the IDF’s transgressions against Palestinian human rights by taking direct testimony from both former and currently serving IDF soldiers on their tactics, commands, and actual practice.

They have been working and collecting testimonies for years, which vary from being, at best, disturbing and, at worst, utterly inconceivable for human practice. We can start by pointing out some direct quotes, like this one from an IDF First Sergeant who said in 2015:

‘The briefing on rules of engagement was [to open fire at], ‘Anything you think you should [open fire at]… Anyone you spot that you can be positive is not the IDF.’ The only emphasis regarding rules of engagement was to make sure you weren’t firing at IDF forces, but other than that, ‘Any person you see.’ From the very start they told us, ‘Shoot to kill.’ As far as the IDF was concerned, there wasn’t supposed to be any civilian population there.’ (Breaking the Silence, as cited in Dawber 2015)6

Or maybe this other First Sergeant’s testimony as to what he was told the rules of engagement were:

‘if it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: You’re in a motherf***ing combat zone. A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.’ (Breaking the Silence, as cited in Dawber 2015)

There’s also this testimony from an Armored Corp member, also in 2015:

Meanwhile, an Armored Corps soldier said that after the death of a fellow platoon member, the platoon commander announced they would fire a volley of shells in his memory. ‘Fire like they do at funerals, but with shells and at houses. It wasn’t [firing] in the air. You just chose [where to fire]. The tank commander said, ‘Choose the house that’s furthest away, it will hurt them the most.’ It was a type of revenge,’ he said. (Breaking the Silence, as cited in WAFA News Agency 2015)7

All of these testimonies show not just the war crimes of individual soldiers, but the explicit endorsement and encouragement by their commanders and leaders. And I only included three in the interest of brevity. You can read the full reports from Breaking the Silence which literally span hundreds upon hundreds of pages, and countless testimonies of IDF soldiers, all exposing not just the viciousness perpetrated by individuals, but the intentionally induced military culture that encourages them.

But one may point out that the quotes I used were from several years ago, during Israel’s military operations in 2015, the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge. So to preempt any arguments of irrelevancy, here are some IDF testimonies from October 7th onwards.

If we continue with Breaking the Silence, their report on the expansion of the buffer zone that stretches the whole length of the Israel-Gaza border, entitled “The Perimeter” is a harrowing collection of IDF testimonies from October 7th onwards that illustrates the cold-hearted ideology and dehumanizing lens that the soldiers and commanders view the Palestinians with.

The report details how the buffer zone expansion destroyed about 55-58 square kilometers (roughly 16% of the Gaza Strip) of neighborhoods, mosques, public buildings, offices, agricultural land, cemeteries, and industrial areas. Nearly all structures were entirely razed. The destruction not only displaced many Palestinians, but the destruction of agricultural land in particular significantly worsened the already deepening hunger crisis, as the area was previously home to 35% of Gaza’s agricultural areas. (Breaking the Silence 2025)8

But the focus for our purposes is not the destructive expansion of the buffer zone, but the report’s testimonies from IDF soldiers engaged in the zone’s expansion. The statements of the soldiers reveal a vicious ideology that is not just prevalent in the average soldier but encouraged and in many ways even directly ordered by senior military officers. Let’s go through just a few:

During briefings, is there talk about civilians who might be in the area?

There is no civilian population. They’re terrorists, all of them.

I understand that this is the general vibe, but is this what guides the unit on a systemic level?

Yes. There are no innocents. What business does he have coming within 500 meters of my tank?

What do they (the commander)s say?

We go in and if we identify suspects, we shoot them. In the briefing, [they say] we’re here to stand guard and we want them to learn they’re not allowed to come out. The IDF has declared a buffer zone as far as it’s concerned, 1.5 kilometers from the fence inwards (in the direction of Gaza), which is going to be a razed area and civilians won’t be allowed to be there. It’s all farmland. We come back with the tanks [while there are] piles of irrigation pipes in the [tank] tracks. Finished. No more. A building overlooking the fence will be demolished…

What does the area look like after?

Hiroshima. That’s what I’m saying, Hiroshima. (Breaking the Silence 2025, 13-15)

Another soldier, a captain with the reserves - armored corps, described the practice for dealing with anyone, civilian or otherwise, who approaches the area:

There is no proper combat procedure like there is in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Company commanders make all kinds of decisions about this, so it ultimately very much depends on who they are. But there is no system of accountability in general. Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death. That did exist. It was an IDF definition. There was a line. (Breaking the Silence 2025, 22)

Another Captain was asked:

But what do you shoot at?

At... something. It’s not like... sometimes you see people, sometimes there’s a specific ID from the scouts or radar or whatever, and then there could be a specific target to shoot. But sometimes it’s like, I don’t know, we fired. What do you shoot at? Find something relevant and shoot at it. (Breaking the Silence 2025, 28)

According to one soldier, many wondered if the Palestinians had any idea that they would be shot at if they entered the area:

The reservists also always raised questions over whether this was communicated to them (the Palestinians): ‘Do they know such a thing exists?’…

And what do you think the answer was?

There wasn’t really an answer to that.

Is there a marking on the ground they know about?

No, no. Of course not. There’s like, a geographical marking, because the thousand meter [line] can, for example, be on a ridge. But it’s not like they (the Palestinians) were told: The ridge before the border is [the line]. I don’t know. You say: ‘What kind of idiot would enter this area when they know it’s a dead zone (kill zone) other than someone who apparently wants to die or is prepared to risk his life?’ (Breaking the Silence 2025, 26)

One officer described a disturbing incident wherein Palestinians coming to find food were fired upon:

And what happened to them?

They managed to get away, they managed to jump. The thing is that, at that point, the IDF really is fulfilling the public’s wishes, which state: There are no innocents in Gaza. We’ll show them. People were incriminated (labeled a target by the military) for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but [the army says], ‘No, they’re hiding.’ Boom (shells were fired in their direction). That’s considered a miss. They were supposed to shoot (hit) them. (Breaking the Silence 2025, 30)

Keep in mind these are the testimonies of whistleblower soldiers who frequently in the report express their regret and disillusionment with the Israeli cause.

“The Perimeter” is a report focused exclusively on the behavior and procedures of the Israeli army operating along the newly expanded buffer zone. However, the testimonies, though disturbing, appear to be the lighter side of Israeli military procedures.

Israeli website Sicha Mekomit published a report on June 8, 2024 that detailed the actions and testimonies of six IDF soldiers who participated in the ground war in the Gaza Strip. Their testimonies describe highly disturbing accounts of indiscriminate shooting, targeted attacks on civilians, open rules of engagement, and summary executions of innocents, ALL being done with the approval and encouragement of commanders and higher-ups.

Again, for the sake of brevity, I will only quote a few accounts of the many:

The soldiers said in their testimonies that there is no regulated policy for shooting in Gaza, that it is often carried out even without specific targets, including apparently unofficial shooting, and that permission is almost given to fire indiscriminately and randomly, even at buildings. (Misbar’s Editorial Team 2024)9

‘If someone approaches, it is permissible to shoot him in the center of mass (the body) and not in the air, and it is permissible to shoot at everyone, a girl or an old woman.’

He stressed that ‘every man between the ages of 16 and 50 is a suspect terrorist and is not allowed to roam around, and that anyone outside is considered a suspect, and if a man is standing at the window, he will be shot.’

The soldier pointed out that even after soldiers shot and killed three Israeli hostages in Shujaiya last December, even though they were raising the white flag and did not pose a threat to the forces, the instructions for opening fire did not change. (Misbar’s Editorial Team 2024)

Two of the soldiers who gave their testimony to the Sicha Mekomit website considered that burning Palestinian homes after stealing their contents had become a policy among Israeli soldiers since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip. (Misbar’s Editorial Team 2024)

‘We are in the houses not because they belong to Hamas, but because they practically serve us. This is a house for two or three families, and destroying it means that they all will become homeless.’ (Misbar’s Editorial Team 2024)

Finally, I want to cite one last testimony. I chose this one to end off on because it perfectly demonstrates the oft-repeated adage regarding the Israeli government’s official line: “every accusation is a confession.”

Haaretz and Breaking the Silence have both independently taken testimonies from IDF soldiers who have given account of a practice widespread among Israeli units:

Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by Israeli soldiers, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of Israeli forces, soldiers told Haaretz and Breaking the Silence.

Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in. ‘Palestinians are told: “Do one mission of … a [tunnel] shaft and you’re free,”’ Haaretz quoted one soldier saying.

Afterwards, the men are reportedly released to join their families – underlining to the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz and Breaking the Silence that they were civilians who did not pose any military threat and had been detained only for the clearance operations. (Graham-Harrison 2024)10

[Breaking the Silence] has collected testimony describing the practice from veterans of the 10-month war in Gaza. The accounts they have heard match those reported in an investigation by the newspaper Haaretz, which claimed that the chief of staff’s office was aware of the practice.

‘The senior ranks know about it,’ one source said to have taken part in finding civilians to serve as human shields told the paper. ‘Our lives are more important than their lives,’ Haaretz quoted commanders telling their soldiers.

The practice is said to be so routine that Israeli soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier — and the process was described by several witnesses. (Graham-Harrison 2024)

Why do I bring all of these testimonies up? There are already hundreds of reports and articles detailing reports of IDF crimes taken directly from the soldiers themselves. So why do I repeat them here?

I want to point out something in particular regarding the nature of these accounts. In every single account and report mentioned, one pattern remains the same: the endorsement, support, and active encouragement from senior IDF commanders. We’ve already seen how those at the very top of the Israeli military administration view the civilians of Gaza, now we can see that this is the same to horrifying effects with the commanders and officers ordering troops on-the-ground.

Now, finally, the individual soldiers.

III. The Average Soldier

Let’s return to the original question:

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Why do these soldiers feel so comfortable sharing these images publicly?

Younis Tirawi, a Palestinian journalist, has, alongside Eran Maoz, written two excellent investigative articles for Zeteo on this exact topic entitled “EXCLUSIVE: Inside Israel’s Insta-Genocide” and “May Gaza Burn”: The Flood of Genocidal Rhetoric from Israel’s Soldiers. They are valuable resources for those interested in this particular practice of IDF soldiers sharing disturbing images on social media.

In the articles, Tirawi and Maoz make an excellent observation regarding the lack of accountability faced by these soldiers. According to them, the Israeli military “at least publicly, has taken few steps to stop its soldiers from sharing such content” (Tirawi and Maoz 2024a). What they found instead was a “culture of impunity” (Tirawi and Maoz 2024a).15

They juxtapose the statements and the actual practices of the Israeli military:

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari told ABC News earlier this year that the Israeli military is ‘an army of the people. And we follow the core, the values and the international law.’

Several of the posts uncovered in our investigation remain online, despite evidence that the military’s policy on social media has been violated. (Tirawi and Maoz 2024a)

They made note that the posts would either be made private or taken down only after they reached out to the poster or Israeli officials for comment. With regards to one specific case, they show the apparent inability or unwillingness of the Israeli government to effectively crack down on or punish IDF soldiers from posting these images:

In the case of Harush, who in a post said, ‘May you burn alive you sons of whores,’ the Israeli military told us in February that the behavior of the soldier was inappropriate and handled accordingly, without elaborating. Yet, in a post from mid-April, he wrote, ‘Gaza we back,’ without having deleted his other posts. (Tirawi and Maoz 2024a)

Tirawi and Moaz make an excellent display of the total lack of accountability that these soldiers face. There is little to no evidence of effective punishment and in some cases the posts were not even taken down despite Israeli officials being made aware.

It’s clear: these soldiers feel comfortable posting and sharing these depraved images and videos because they operate with total impunity. There is absolutely zero repercussion for their actions. Not on any legal, disciplinary, or even social level.

The widespread nature of the practice perfectly illustrates how these soldiers will not face ridicule or reproach from any in their social circles, especially not from fellow soldiers. Quite the opposite, actually. As Tirawi and Moaz (2024b) point out, the comment sections of these posts are filled with jubilant praise, with some comments reading “King,” “Big Brother,” and “Professional.”16

IV. Pre-Military Indoctrination

Before embarking on this last part, I should mention that the amount that can and has been reported on regarding the indoctrination of the Israeli and Jewish masses is astounding. It is by no means a small or simple topic. The process spans decades and arguably centuries of history, dozens of sects and sub-sects Israeli demographic groups, public and private school systems, political rhetoric, religious rhetoric, and the mass media. It is a tremendous story to recollect here.

My point is that since the soldiers of the IDF come primarily from the Israeli civilian populace (and some from the international Jewish community), to document and explain the origins of their radical, ethnocentric, and genocidal beliefs is difficult to do in its entirety, though it is something I hope to at least mention to some extent in the final part of this essay series.

For now, I want to discuss one specific focus: the government funded pre-military religious schools that these soldiers come from.

A mechina is a religious school that is attended by Jewish Israelis who intend to join military service. At these schools, students are to learn of Zionism, Torah studies, Jewish religious tenets, Jewish identity, and prepare for military service. These schools are government funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Education.

According to the Joint Council of Mechinot (n.d.), there are currently 61 such academies throughout Israel.17 They have been the focus of a large number of controversies and national debates, with many of them being accused of promoting misogyny, religious extremism, anti-democratic ideologies, anti-LBGTQ+ rhetoric, and most importantly for our purposes, ethnocentrism, racism, and genocidal beliefs. Many believe the schools serve as a way for the relatively smaller and highly extreme religious-Zionist community to infiltrate and gain influence over the Israeli military structure. (Beaumont and Kierszenbaum, 2024)18

By far the most famous and influential mechina is B’nei David, located in the Eli settlement in the West Bank. The school was established in 1988 and has since produced hundreds of well-known IDF servicemen who have attained high positions of authority within the Israeli military. The academy also has deep ties with political groups and influential politicians in the Knesset. In 2019, the school became the center of controversy when recordings surfaced of two prominent teachers, Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel and Rabbi Giora Radler making highly disturbing remarks emphasizing the racial and genetic superiority of Jews over goyim, and praising Hitler’s ideology of racial hierarchy. I’d like to quote them both here.

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel:

Abolishing legal slavery has created deficiencies. No one is responsible for that property. With God’s help it will return. The goyim (non-Jews) will want to be our slaves. Being a slave of the Jews is the best. They must be slaves, they want to be slaves. Instead of just wandering the streets, being foolish and harming each other, now he’s a slave, now his life is beginning to come into order…

There are around us people with genetic problems. Ask any average Arab where he wants to be. He wants to be under occupation. Why? Because they have genetic problems, they don’t know how to run a country, they don’t know how to do anything – look at the state of them…

Are we unaware that there are different races? Is it a secret? Is it untrue? What can you do? It’s true. Yes, we are racists, we believe in racism…

Correct, there are races in the world, nations have genetic characteristics, so we [the Jews] must consider how to help them. Racial differences are real, and that’s precisely a reason to offer help.

[The Rabbi is asked], ‘Who put you to decide who is who?’…

I can see that my accomplishments are much more impressive than his.

(Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, as cited in Ofir 2019)19

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel would also state in a public address that it was Israel’s '“duty to conquer,” and that even if “not one bullet was fired at [Israel],” and the Gazans were “constantly offering [Israelis] flowers with love letters and drawing of hearts,” they would still be obliged to “conquer ‘Eretz Israel’” (Middle East Observer 2025, 1:09-1:47).20

Now onto the other teacher at B’nei David, Rabbi Giora Radler:

‘Let’s start with the question whether Hitler was right or not.’

[A student answers], ‘Not.’

[Hitler] is the most righteous person. Of course he is right in every word he utters. In his ideology he is right. There is a male world which fights, which deals with honor and the brotherhood of soldiers. And there is the soft, ethical feminine world [which speaks of] ‘turning the other cheek’. ‘And we [Nazis] believe that the Jews carry on this heritage, trying, in our words, to spoil the whole of humanity, and that’s why they are the real enemy.’ Now, he [Hitler] is 100% correct, aside from the fact that he was on the wrong side.

(Rabbi Giora Radler, as cited in Ofir 2019)

Please keep in mind as you read these that these are the prominent teachers of students at a school for those entering military service. B’nei David and other mechinot of similar ideologies continue to operate with government funding in Israel. B’nei David never made apologies, and Rabbis Eliezer Kashtiel and Giora Radler remain prominent in the religious-Zionist communities of Israel.

V. “The Most Moral Army in the World”

It’s been made clear: The Israeli military is deeply infested with ethnocentrism, racism, genocidal ideology, and a general disregard for the human rights of Palestinians. This thinking exists not just in the highest administrative levels, but all throughout the military structure, from high-ranking officers to newly-recruited soldiers. This is not just a way of thinking that exists in their minds or on their tongues alone, but heavily affects their policies and actions. It is intentionally induced and enforced. All this has been demonstrated above.

The common label of the IDF being the “most moral army in the world” has always been nothing more than a cheap catchphrase, meant to reinforce delusion in the minds of Western audiences in the face of overwhelming evidence. The common defense tactics, other than sloganeering, often involve clinging onto the same tired talking points and repeating them ad nauseum in the hopes of drowning out substantial criticism. Let’s be unflinchingly clear in stating what should be an obvious point: It does not matter what leaflets you drop when you use their recipients as human shields and target practice. It does not matter what your official line is when your generals relish in killing scores of children. And it does not matter what you say your values are when your soldiers are donning the lingerie of bombed women.

You do not get to use being drafted at 18 as an excuse when you film yourself with a young girl’s dolls and her mother’s undergarments. You cannot claim a holy connection with any God when your religious elders advocate for the enslavement of the masses. And you most certainly cannot clasp and weep upon the alter of victimhood when you declare children guilty.

But the Israeli military for years had the world made a fool by way of slogans and crocodile tears. Today, at last, the world understands the depravity that is so prevalent in this institution. And the world now recognizes the cruelty that it committed by leaving such an institution in control of the Palestinian territories and the people that inhabit them.

Going forward, if the world is truly interested in a lasting peace, we need to come to the only rational conclusion: That an organization so prolific in its terror and so extreme in its zeitgeist cannot continue to exist nor its remnants be allowed to hold any influence in any capacity whatsoever. Thus the question should not be what role the IDF and Israeli government play in the “Palestine question”; rather, the main focus should be on their complete and total removal from it.

There is, as always, much more that can be said on this issue. But I’d like to conclude part two here and carry on to end our essay series with the third and final part: the wider Israeli populace.

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Let’s get this much clear first: History will not be kind to the State of Israel. For decades the Western world and media has, by default, sided with the now-pariah state. Depicting its relentless persecution of the indigenous Palestinian population as justified for national security, its position in the Middle East as one of a peaceful underdog keeping the tide against virulent and bloodthirsty neighbors, and its constant meddling in American and Western politics as just another special interest group. Of course, the rest of the world always saw Israel for what it is: a Western-backed colonial state with ambitions for sole hegemony over the Middle East, painting the nations in its way as being somehow security threats to the powers of the west.

But now, even the popular opinion of the Western nations is one of fierce animosity to this blatantly genocidal state. Favorable opinion for Israel has reached record lows in Europe, with sympathy for the Palestinian cause increasing day-by-day. The same appears to be growing in the United States and South America as well.

The main figure heads who have become targets of this new global turn of opinion, aside from the western governments and leaders who stubbornly refuse to abandon their support for Israel, are three men: Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich.

These three, along with anyone else involved with the sitting Israeli government, have rightly drawn the world’s ire and contempt. They, in the eyes of much of the world, are the symbols of far-right Israeli politics and the genocide being perpetrated in its name. They represent the deep-seated hate, blatant ethnocentrism, and warmongering that can be pointed to as the ultimate cause of the Palestinians’ suffering.

History will not be kind to them, nor should it be. They will go down in history as the second coming of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels.

Their victims, the innocent men, women, and children of Palestine, as reminders of the international community’s collective failure.

Both of these things are true, but there is another piece missing. It is all too easy to paint what we see in Gaza as the actions and policies of a few men in suits. It makes things easier to digest. “These are the actions of a few powerful tyrants.”

But that doesn’t cover it. In reality, these men have not been acting alone. They are in fact representative of their environments, of their nation. Israeli society is horribly morally bankrupt, not just at the top, but all throughout. History should portray the perpetrators as being the evil which they are, but we should not neglect to portray their nation as what it is: their biggest supporter.

In this essay, we’re going to be going from top down. I want to discuss the blatant racism, ethnocentrism, and support for the genocide as it exists in three levels of Israeli society:

1. Israel’s government in its entirety, not just Netanyahu and his supporters

2. The Israeli military

3. The Israeli populace

Part One: The Other Politicians

As I said, many would read the news and make the mistake of assuming the fault for this genocide lies squarely in the hands of Netanyahu and his cabinet. However, when looking into the members of the Knesset, we find that the rhetoric and positions of even those outside of Netanyahu’s administration are no less genocidal and hateful.

As one example we can look at one Tally Gotlive, a Knesset member who gained notoriety in September 2024 when she gave her reaction to Biden stating that he would be putting a pause on U.S. arms transfers to Israel after Israel began its offensive in Rafah. Here’s what Gotlive had to say about it:

“‘The US is threatening not to give us precise missiles. Oh, yeah? Well, I got news for the US. We have imprecise missiles, and we have the right to defend ourselves,’ Tally Gotlive, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, told Israeli Channel 7.

‘So, maybe instead of using a precise missile and take down a specific room, or a specific building, I'll use my imprecise missiles, and I'll just destroy ten buildings. That's what I'll do.’

The far-right Knesset member claimed that Israel has the right to defend itself, and ‘will use what we possess.’”2

Keep in mind, Tally Gotlive is not a member of Netanyahu’s administration.

Neither is Amit Halevi, who has repeatedly made dehumanizing and genocidal statements regarding Gazans. His statements regarding the children of Gaza are particularly disturbing:

In an interview, Halevi claimed, "In the Al-Shifa Hospital, they caught 150 terrorists and killed them. At the same time, 300 terrorists were born in the maternity ward," implying that children born in Al-Shifa would inevitably become terrorists.

In the same interview, he defended that “There is nothing called Palestinian people, never was, and will never be.” and that “From the river to the sea, the national rights are only for one people, the nation of Israel”.3

There are countless other statements from other MKs, all espousing genocidal and dehumanizing rhetoric. To name a few:

• Nissim Vaturi (Said Gazans are ‘subhuman’ and that the civilians are scum)4

• Ariel Kallner (Called for a second Nakba that would “overshadow the Nakba of ‘48”)5

• Moshe Saada (Supports the starvation of Gaza, claimed it is “our obligation”)6

Now, you might notice that all of the MKs quoted so far are members of Netanyahu’s far-right Likud party. This highly influential political party is known to espouse a highly ethnocentric and genocidal rhetoric. But one may object that quoting MKs of this party is focusing in on one political group that does not represent the Knesset as a whole.

This is a fair objection, which is why I’d now like to reference statements from Knesset members outside of the Likud party. In fact, I’d like to focus on one MK in particular who many would consider Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest political rival: Naftali Bennett.

Bennett, the co-founder of the New Right political party, is generally viewed by the other right-wing parties7 in the Knesset as the alternative to Netanyahu and Likud. In fact, in 2021, Bennett was chosen by a coalition of eight diverse political parties to become the new Prime Minister after no clear winner was found in the year’s election. Though Netanyahu reclaimed his old position in 2022, it can be said that many still view Bennett as the most obvious alternative to the long-running dominance of Netanyahu and Likud’s leadership.

Bennett and Netanyahu’s rivalry is well-documented. Bennett has challenged and criticized Netanyahu on a wide range of issues. He has criticized Netanyahu for his corruption charges, poor leadership, indecisiveness in military matters, and overly-long time in office. Netanyahu has responded in turn by saying Bennett is seeking to disunite the country and offers no practical solutions to the nation’s problems.

My point is, it is clear that Bennett and Netanyahu not only dislike each other, not only do they criticize one another’s policies, but they view one another as genuine political threats. If we don’t have Netanyahu, we have Naftali Bennett.

And yet despite the numerous and ceaseless crimes Netanyahu is guilty of committing against the people of Gaza, Bennett doesn’t seem to care to criticize these policies.

“Melbourne asked: ‘What about those Palestinians in hospital(s) who are on life support and babies in incubators whose life support will have to be turned off because the Israelis have cut off the power?’

‘Are you seriously keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What's wrong with you?’ [Bennett] said, stressing that they don't target civilians and are not responsible for them.”8

In 2013:

“Bennett stated that, ‘If you catch a terrorist, then you just have to kill him.’ Amidror reportedly replied that what Bennett was espousing was illegal, but Bennett disagreed, adding that, ‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – there’s no problem with that.

He has also heavily and emphatically criticized the possibility of an independent Palestinian state and advocated for Israeli annexation of the West Bank:

“In an interview with the Guardian, Bennett said he did not intend to waste the next four years ‘babbling about Israel and the Palestinians’, and defended his plan to annex most of the West Bank in the face of international opposition, which was the ‘result of ignorance’.

‘There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel,’ he said, referring to the area from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean. ‘It's just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years.’9

In an October 2023 interview with Sky News, Bennett justified cutting off power to the entirety of Gaza, and claimed that Hamas using human shields was “their responsibility.”10

And most recently, Bennet had an interview on CBS wherein he rejected a report from a UN genocide commission on the basis that it was “full of mistakes,” and is a “sloppy, slanted report” that would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.” He also repeated several Israeli claims defending/justifying the genocide that have long since been disproven on numerous occasions.11

I say all this to say that, despite being his biggest opponent, the greatest threat to his political supremacy, Naftali Bennett does not, has not, and will not admit to Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, or to the complete disregard that the Israeli government and its military shows for the innocent men, women, and children that it slaughters.

Bennett will criticize Netanyahu on absolutely everything. From his corruption charges, to his long reign as PM, to his military mismanagement. But the ONE THING that he will never speak on, the one thing he will defend to his end, is a genocide.

But even if we were to talk about MKs outside of Netanyahu and Bennett’s right-wing camps, we find a disturbing and perhaps duplicitous trend. Among center and left-leaning members of the Knesset, criticism regarding the government’s actions in Gaza focus heavily on one particular aspect, and no, it’s not the genocide. Instead, center and left wing opponents focus on the war’s military and political mismanagement, as well as the cost to Israel’s international reputation.1213

They often mention the plights of the Israeli hostages and spare no words of sympathy for the Palestinians being slaughtered by their political opposition. In fact, they do not hesitate to deny any accusations, evidence, and reports of genocide:

“This report is a moral low and an unforgivable blindness. Those who wrote and signed the report are not only lying, but they are also harming global security and giving support to terrorism, antisemitism, and blood libels.” (Benny Gantz, Blue and White Israel Resilience Party, referring to a UN report on the genocide)14

These Israeli MKs, despite identifying as the political “left” or “center”, openly endorse genocide denial and rarely, if ever, express serious concern over the ceaseless and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians.

However there have been, believe it or not, several MKs who have condemned Israel’s actions in strong and unfiltered words. Sadly, they are often immediately met with immense retaliation.

For example, take Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the primarily Arab Hadash-Ta’al political alliance, who complained to the Knesset Ethics Committee regarding the virulent statements of Nissim Vaturi, who was briefly mentioned earlier. The committee refused to hit Vaturi with any punishments or condemnations, citing free speech concerns.

And yet, when Cassif called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza a “genocidal campaign,” he was suspended from parliamentary activity and denied two weeks pay. He was also hit with the harsh penalty of six months suspension when he joined ICJ proceedings and accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza.15

Arab MKs are also frequently punished for expressing their opinions against Israel’s genocidal campaign. In November 2023, Aida Touma-Sliman was suspended for two months by the Knesset Ethics Committee for condemning the Israeli military’s attack on Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.16

The Knesset Ethics Committee has shown time and time again that it is unwilling to hold the far-right pro-genocide MKs to the same standard that it wrongfully uses to punish the anti-genocide MKs. It would appear that the Knesset Ethics Committee’s definition of appropriate free speech is truly anything that does not call out the government’s genocidal and criminal actions.

So I’d say it is now painfully clear how the blame for this genocide, on a governmental level, lies far beyond just Netanyahu and his cabinet. It also extends past his Likud supporters and is deep within the hearts, actions, and rhetoric of even his biggest opponents. It even lies in the very functioning of the Knesset as a body.

There is far more that can be said about this particular issue, but for now I want to close this part of the essay off here. In part two, I hope to discuss the Israeli military and the civilian population.

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