Hidden History -- In The Making

YOUR SOCIETY IS NOT FREE IF YOU’RE NOT FREE TO OPPOSE A GENOCIDE

If The Right To Free Speech Does Not Include The Right To Oppose An Active Genocide Using Strong And Unmitigated Language, Then There Is No Freedom Of Speech.

This is exactly the sort of thing that freedom of speech is intended for: times when the government is doing something wrong which needs to be ferociously opposed. That’s the primary reason it’s an enshrined value in our society. Freedom of speech is for holding the powerful to account.

If you only have freedom of speech when you’re agreeing with your government and saying nothing which inconveniences the powerful, then Saudi Arabia has free speech. Every tyrannical regime that has ever existed has had freedom of speech by those standards. You don’t measure a society’s freedom by how much its citizenry are allowed to agree with their government, you measure it by how much they’re allowed to disagree.

And right now we are being told we’re not allowed to disagree. We’re being told the protests need to stop, the anti-genocide chants need to be criminalized, and everyone needs to shut up and obey — all justified by the completely baseless narrative that the words and actions of pro-Palestinian activists were somehow responsible a terrible massacre that was committed in Sydney last week.

And these policies just so happen to serve the interests of the very same western powers whose genocide-enabling actions were being forcefully opposed these last two years. Government officials constantly being protested and questioned about their facilitation of Israel’s genocidal atrocities. Politicians who are consistently confronted by anti-genocide demonstrators during their public appearances. Wealthy arms manufacturers whose profit margins are being harmed by direct action from activist groups. Plutocratic media institutions who are becoming more and more discredited in the public eye as the Gaza holocaust exposes them all. Billionaires whose empires are built upon the political status quo that gave rise to the genocide in question.

If the powerful are shutting down speech rights to advance their own interests in your society, then your society is not meaningfully different than the dictatorships the western world tries to contrast itself with. All the stories about living in a free society have been just that: stories. Fairy tales.

That’s what they’re telling us with this mad rush to stomp out freedom of speech this past week. They are telling us that we do not live in the kind of society we were taught about in school. They are telling us that the only reason we were allowed to speak as we pleased in the years leading up to the Gaza genocide is because we were a bunch of compliant sheep who were not meaningfully challenging the interests of the powerful, and now that we are meaningfully challenging them the facade of freedom and democracy is falling away.

As Frank Zappa once said, “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

THE GAZA PROXY STRATEGY OF ISRAEL IS COLLAPSING

The Killing Of Gang Leader Yasser Abu Shabab, A Known Felon And Druglord, By One Of His Own Men Has Exposed The Bankruptcy Of Israel’s Vision For The Strip.

The assassination last week of Yasser Abu Shabab — the 32-year-old leader of the Israeli-backed “Popular Forces,” a militia operating in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip — is more than a lurid gangland hit. His killing at the hands of his own disgruntled militiamen is a clear representation of a policy coming undone.

For months, Israel stitched together a sordid alliance of convicted felons, former ISIS affiliates, and opportunistic collaborators, presenting them as the embryo of a local governance alternative to Hamas in Gaza, while using them to orchestrate starvation and carry out attacks on Israel’s behalf. Now, this attempt to cultivate a network of criminal proxy gangs as subcontractors of its occupation is collapsing into paranoid infighting and bloody chaos.

Abu Shabab himself was a convicted drug trafficker with documented links to ISIS in Sinai. Sentenced by a Gazan court in 2015 to 25 years in prison, he served eight before fleeing amid the chaos following October 7^th. He then emerged in Gaza under the protection of the Israeli army to lead a gang of 120 fighters, part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted was an explicit strategy to arm powerful clans in Gaza to counter Hamas.

According to the Gazan investigative journalist Mohammed Othman, Abu Shabab’s death was set in motion when the Israeli army discovered food it had supplied to his gang inside a Hamas tunnel last month. Israel quickly imposed restrictions on the group’s members, limiting their movements in Rafah, reducing their food rations, and blocking their most trusted leaders from traveling in and out of Israel.

Tensions inside the gang boiled over. Within days, after an internal investigation, the gang’s deputy and de facto ruler Ghassan Duhaini detained Jum’aa Abu Sunaima, whose brother Mahmoud oversaw the distribution of food to Abu Shabab’s gang and other families in the area, under suspicion that Jum’aa was diverting food to Hamas militants.

Mahmoud went to Abu Shabab’s home to demand the release of his brother, but was told Jum’aa faced three options: remain detained, be handed over to the Israeli army, or execution. The confrontation escalated until Mahmoud pulled out an automatic rifle and opened fire; Abu Shabab was gravely injured and succumbed to his wounds after reportedly being evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, and both Mahmoud and Jum’aa were killed in the clashes.

What followed Abu Shabab’s killing was a cascade of retaliatory violence. According to Othman and other local sources, Duhaini, wounded in his left leg during the confrontation, was treated in Israel and returned to carry out a number of executions — killing Abu Shabab’s bodyguards for failing to intervene, as well as the gunman, his detained brother, and several others. He also launched attacks on the Abu Sunaima clan’s homes, wounding several residents, confiscating phones, assaulting women, and placing families under lockdown. The clan later issued a public statement confirming the deaths of Jum’aa and Mahmoud and implicitly suggesting that the two were responsible for Abu Shabab’s death.

This implosion captures a profound truth about Israel’s proxy experiment in Gaza: By outsourcing its occupation of a besieged population to the most violent and opportunistic collaborators, Israel will not produce a stable alternative to Hamas’ governance. Rather, such a strategy only fosters a miniature warlord economy, setting the stage for endless cycles of retributive violence.

DESPITE THE CEASEFIRE ISRAEL HAS CONTINUED ITS ASSASSINATION CAMPAIGN IN GAZA

Israel Has Carried Out An Assassination Campaign In Gaza On Resistance Leaders. Israel Is Trying To Cause A Direct Confrontation To Avoid Fulfilling Its Ceasefire Obligations.

On December 13^th, the Israeli army assassinated Raed Saad, a senior commander in the Qassam Brigades and head of its weapons production. It was not the first strike deep into Hamas’s military wing or that of other resistance factions in Gaza. In fact, it was a continuation of Israel’s policy in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement was signed in October 2025.

Since the first days of the ceasefire, Palestinian civilians have been targeted for crossing the “yellow line,” which demarcates Israeli-controlled areas but is not clearly delineated. Later, beginning in mid-October, a clear pattern of assassinations began to emerge. The assassination of five fighters from the Qassam Brigades’ elite unit on October 17^th marked the beginning of Israel’s assassination campaign during the ceasefire, which has not eased since.

On October 19^th, Yahya Al-Mabhouh, the commander of an elite unit, and Ahmad Abu Mutair, a broadcast engineer, were assassinated. Both were affiliated with the Qassam Brigades.

On October 29^th, several Qassam commanders were assassinated, including Hatem Al-Qudra, along with other martyrs.

On November 17^th, a field commander in Gaza City, Wisam Abdelhadi, a commander in the Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, was assassinated.

On November 20^th, five senior leaders in Hamas were assassinated, including Ahmed Abu Shammala, head of the naval unit, Nihad Abu Shahla, head of intelligence, Fadi Abu Mustafa, and others.

Likewise, on November 22^nd, the Israeli army announced the assassination of five additional commanders.

And then, on December 13^th, Raed Saad.

Sa’ad was one of the last remaining veteran senior militants in the Gaza Strip and a close associate of Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing. He held several senior positions and was a central figure within the organization’s military leadership,” the Israeli army said in a statement following the assassination, making no mention of its violation of the ceasefire.

During the ceasefire, the Israeli army has targeted all Palestinians in Gaza engaged in resistance activities, regardless of their political affiliations—whether with Hamas or other factions—just as they had during the war. These assassinations have been in addition to the 386 civilians whom Israel has killed in Gaza during this period as well.

INSTIGATING THE RESISTANCE

The resistance in Gaza believes that the Israeli army is trying to fabricate pretexts in order to target Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, especially political and military figures. It is also attempting to push the resistance back into direct confrontation to evade the ceasefire, using all available means to achieve its objectives in Gaza.

“The Israeli occupation army is working to create pretexts in the areas under its control classified as yellow zones in order to target our people, particularly political and military leaders, and to drag the resistance into a new confrontation that would lead to the resumption of the war and evasion of the ceasefire agreement, as well as international and American pressure to adhere to the agreement,” a security source in the resistance in Gaza City said.

“We have monitored new methods for tracking military leaders at both the technological and human levels,” he said. “The occupation is using highly advanced technology and spying devices planted in various areas of the strip, as well as human intelligence through cooperation with armed militias allied to the Israeli army. It also assigns these groups the task of targeting security leaders inside the Gaza Strip.” Investigations taken by the resistance have revealed links between cells inside Gaza and the occupation, whose main mission is to carry out assassinations. As for the assassination of senior leaders, they were carried out directly by the occupation, according to the same source.

The source noted that the pretexts cited by the army are flimsy and unfounded excuses to carry out assassinations, most notably claims that its soldiers were subjected to gunfire and military operations in areas fully under its control.

“The resistance has no contact with those present in these areas, does not carry out any military operations there at the present time, and does not issue any instructions to any of its members to carry out such operations,” the source said.

The source described what is happening as a blatant violation by the occupation of the ceasefire, a disregard for regional and international mediators, and an attempt to evade the obligations of the agreement and delay the start of the second phase of the ceasefire. “For our part,” the source said, “we will not give the occupation any pretext to achieve its objectives.”

The source indicated that the resistance in Gaza will not accept the occupation imposing its equations and rules on Gaza, its population, and its resistance. “The Netanyahu government is seeking to do so, but we have sent several messages to the mediators, from whom we received assurances that such rules would not be imposed under any circumstances, especially from the United States, which confirmed to all parties its determination to implement the ceasefire in all its stages.”

He also pointed out that the political leadership remains in constant communication with the mediators to compel the Israeli occupation to adhere to the ceasefire agreement, and that “we continuously affirm our right to respond in the manner and at the time we deem appropriate to the occupation’s violations and breaches, and that we will not remain silent for long in the face of the occupation’s aggression and violations.”

A STRATEGY TO AVOID THE SECOND PHASE OF THE CEASEFIRE

The Israeli pattern of assassinating leaders and turning the Gaza Strip into an open area for Israeli military operations has been clear to any observer of the situation on the ground in Gaza. The assassinations, bombardments, seizure and destruction of large areas inside what are referred to as the “yellow line” zones are all taking place as negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire agreement are being carried out. These actions appear to be Israel’s attempt to create a new reality on the ground while it can.

Political analyst and writer Ahed Farwana said that “the occupation is attempting to establish new tactics through clear assassination operations or armed actions, through which it seeks to perpetuate a state of tension in Gaza and make it the prevailing condition.”

Farwana says Israel is periodically increasing the pace of assassinations and trying to normalize the situation, similar to what it has done in Lebanon, but is now carrying out this strategy on a much larger scale in the Gaza Strip.

He says the Israeli government wants to avoid the second phase of the ceasefire agreement because of the obligations it would carry with it.

“These include the withdrawal of the army, the opening of crossings, and reconstruction, and Netanyahu does not want to pay their political cost—especially as the coming year is an election year in Israel. Accordingly, they are doing everything possible to maintain the status quo,” he says. Farwana confirms Israel is expanding the yellow zone and destroying everything east of the yellow line on a daily basis, stressing that “the Israeli government is not prepared at all to move to the second phase.”

Farwana believes that international pressure—particularly from President Donald Trump—is what could make a difference. He says that if Trump wants to pressure Netanyahu to move to the second phase, he will do so. However, if there is no real pressure on Netanyahu, he will continue to do as he has during the first phase – grabbing land in Gaza, and killing any Palestinian who stands in their way.

GAZA IS BEING CARVED UP. PALESTINIANS ARE BEING WRITTEN OUT.

As governments and billionaires design a “new Gaza,” most corporate media treat it as a technical project, not a colonial mandate that denies Palestinians the right to govern themselves. The basic fact of Palestinian self-determination is pushed to the margins or erased.

A MILITARY BUILD UP FOR A WAR WITH CHINA IS WANTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

As America Hits Its First Official Trillion-Dollar Annual Military Budget, The New York Times Argues That It Is Going To Need More Money To Prepare For A Major War With China.

Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that America is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.

The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.

The article opens with graphics one commenter describes as “Mussolini-core” because of their conspicuously fascistic aesthetic, accompanied by three lines of text in all-caps which reads as follows:

“AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS DEFENDED THE FREE WORLD FOR 80 YEARS.

OUR DOMINANCE IS FADING.

RIVALS KNOW THIS AND ARE BUILDING TO DEFEAT US.”

The narrative that the American war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. Washington has abused, tyrannized and starved the world at levels unrivaled by any other power during that period while spearheading the theft of hundreds of trillions of dollars from the global south via imperialist extraction. The American empire has not been defending any “free world”, it has been actively obstructing its emergence.

The actual text of the article opens with another whopper, with the first sentence reading, “President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.”

This is straight-up state propaganda. The New York Times editorial board is here uncritically parroting a completely unsubstantiated claim the American intelligence cartel has been making for years, which Xi Jinping explicitly denies. While it is Beijing’s official position that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with the mainland, not one shred of evidence has ever been presented to the public for the 2027 timeline. It’s a American government assertion being reported as verified fact by the nation’s “paper of record”.

And it doesn’t get any better from there. The Times cites a Pentagon assessment that the American regime would lose a hot war with China over Taiwan as evidence of “a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power,” arguing that this is a major problem because “a strong America has been crucial to a world in which freedom and prosperity are far more common than at nearly any other point in human history.”

“This is the first of a series of editorials examining what’s gone wrong with the U.S. military — technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically and strategically — and how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary,” The New York Times tells us.

The Times argues that the American regime needs to reshape its military to defeat China in a war, or to win a war with Russia if they attack a NATO member, saying “Evidence suggests that Moscow may already be testing ways to do this, including by cutting the undersea cables on which NATO forces depend.”

The “evidence” the Times cites for this claim is a hyperlink to a January article titled “Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable,” completely ignoring the fact that Norway released that ship shortly thereafter when it was unable to find any evidence linking it to the event, and completely ignoring reports that American and European intelligence had concluded that the undersea cable damage was the result of an accident rather than sabotage.

And then, of course, comes the call for more military funding.

“In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base. As a share of the economy, defense spending today — about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. — remains near its lowest level in more than 80 years, even after Mr. Trump’s recent increases,” the Times writes, adding that America’s allies should also be pressured to ramp up spending on the war machine.

“A more secure world will almost certainly require more military commitment from allies like Canada, Japan and Europe, which have long relied on American taxpayers to bankroll their protection,” the authors write, saying “China’s industrial capacity can only be met by pooling the resources of allies and partners around the world to balance and contain Beijing’s increasing influence.”

Of course the idea that perhaps the United States should avoid fighting a hot war with China right off the coast of its own mainland never enters the discussion. The suggestion that it’s insane to support waging full-scale wars with nuclear-armed great powers to secure American planetary domination never comes up. It’s just taken as a given that pouring wealth and resources into preparations for a nuclear-age world war is the only normal option on the table.

But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.

THE AMERICAN REGIME SENT 22 CUBAN MIGRANTS TO GUANTANAMO DESPITE A COURT A RULING

The Transfer Marks The First Arrival Of Cuban Nationals At The Naval Base In Months, Reigniting Legal And Human Rights Concerns. It Defied A Recent Federal Court Ruling.

The American regime has transferred 22 Cuban migrants to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defying a recent federal court ruling that found the administration exceeded its authority by holding migrants at the facility, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The men arrived on Sunday aboard an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter flight from Louisiana, The New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. They are believed to be the first Cuban citizens sent to Guantanamo since January.

ICE has detained roughly 730 men at the base, most from Latin American countries including El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela, the report said.

According to a Department of Defense official quoted anonymously by the Times, five of the newly transferred Cubans were labeled “high-threat illegal aliens,” while the remaining detainees are being housed in dormitory-style facilities typically used for Caribbean migrants seeking asylum.

Guantanamo Bay is best known for its military prison, where detainees captured after the September 11^th 2001 attacks were held for years, often without charge, and subjected to what rights groups have described as torture and abuse.

President Donald Trump announced in January plans to expand the use of the detention center to hold undocumented migrants, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties organizations.

A federal judge in Washington recently ruled that the Trump administration lacked legal authority to detain migrants at Guantanamo, raising questions about the legality of continued transfers.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other advocacy groups have warned that holding migrants at the offshore base risks serious human rights violations and have demanded immediate access for legal counsel to ensure due process and transparency.

A PALESTINIAN SECURITY GUARD AT FOOTBALL MATCH IS BEATEN BY ISRAELI POLICE

Qays Haddad Was Repeatedly Attacked By Three Plainclothes Detectives And Around 10 Uniformed Officers, He Said. He Was Told “An Arab Won’t Check Me.”

A Palestinian citizen of Israel working as a security guard at a football match was brutally beaten by 13 police officers while on shift earlier this month, he said on Wednesday.

Qays Haddad, 21, works as the head of a security team at events in Jerusalem, mainly at Pais Arena and Teddy Stadium.

On December 8^th, he told Haaretz, he was working at the latter during a derby between Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Jerusalem.

Haddad said that while he was at the entrance, overseeing the scanning of tickets, three plainclothes detectives were among those entering the stadium. They did not initially introduce themselves, as required, Haddad recounted.

He told them to slow down, and put his hand out to block their passage.

Haddad recounted that one of them said: “Who are you to put your hand up like that?” and pushed him. “An Arab won’t check me.”

That plainclothes detective then identified himself as a police officer.

The three detectives then began beating up the Palestinian security guard, and took him to one side.

“One of them held me by the head, took me to the police officers who were standing on the side and told them, ‘I’m the police.’ I thought to myself, ‘Maybe they came to help me,’ but about 13 police officers started beating me all over my body,” he said.

The uniformed officers handcuffed him, punched him repeatedly and swore at him, calling him an “Arab son of a bitch”.

“All the policemen’s hands were bloody from the beatings,” Haddad said. “I wasn’t breathing, I couldn’t see where I was. I was dizzy, and I passed out for a few minutes.”

Haddad said that although ambulances are supposed to have access to all areas of the stadium, there was a delay in one arriving at the scene.

“We waited for half an hour,” he said. “My face was all bloody, I was vomiting blood, I couldn’t breathe, they were choking me. I have marks on my neck. I couldn’t breathe.”

He went to file a police complaint the day after the incident, but a policewoman told him: “There’s no way a brother can file a complaint for another brother.”

Several days later, a complaint was eventually filed, and an investigation was opened.

Over a week on from the attack, Haddad said he struggles to eat due to his injuries. He is also traumatized.

“I wake up in the morning, and my head hurts. I can’t sleep. But more than the head, my heart hurts. On Thursday… I heard an ambulance or police siren from the window. I jumped, thinking, ‘What happened to me? This doesn’t make sense.’ I thought they were coming for me.”

Haddad said that he would struggle to go back to work alongside police officers. He said that he is in a WhatsApp group with a large number of security guards who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are also afraid to work.

“Because of this incident, there won’t be any security guards left. There’s already been a shortage since the war,” he said.

Haddad said that he has many police officer friends, including Jewish Israelis, who told him not to be silent and to speak up about what happened.

Israeli police said in a statement: “During preparations for a football game, a bouncer at the scene began to confront the police. If there are any complaints about the conduct of the police at the scene, they should be referred to the relevant authorities.”

THE AMERICAN REGIME SHOULDN’T PROVIDE SECURITY GUARANTEES TO UKRAINE

Fighting Russia Over Ukraine Isn’t Remotely In America’s Interests. Despite Trump’s Claim To Put The United States First, His Ukraine Peace Plans Risk Putting America Last.

For years, even before he became president, Donald Trump criticized the Europeans for free riding on America. Today he has apparently proposed adding Ukraine as another defense dependent, with a possible trigger for war against nuclear-armed Russia.

The administration’s recent 28-point plan, criticized for leaning toward Russia, bars Kiev from joining NATO but offers “reliable security guarantees” instead. Although Trump officials did not detail the American role, they promised “a decisive coordinated military response” in response to renewed Russian military action. The European response added a “U.S. guarantee that mirrors Article 5.”

French president Emmanuel Macron has been particularly insistent that Washington put American wealth and lives on the line, stating that “the absolute condition for good peace is a set of very robust security guarantees and not paper guarantees,” including from America. The 19-point America-Ukraine draft has not been published but likely moves toward the latter. Presumably these issues were discussed in Monday’s Moscow meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and American emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which revealed continuing disagreements on major issues.

For America, the details of a guarantee are the most important provision in any agreement. Not even Trump’s predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, whom the president regularly accuses of weakness, were willing to make such a needless concession to the feckless Europeans.

That Kiev wants the American people to be ready to fight and die on its behalf is no surprise. Ukrainians have suffered greatly in a terrible war. Continuing combat is prodigiously consuming Ukrainian lives and wealth. However, alliances should be based on security, not charity. Although the conflict is a humanitarian tragedy, Ukraine’s future, and especially the details of any settlement, such as who controls the Donbas, are not vital American concerns.

Of course, Kiev is not alone in its desire for support. Much of the known world—almost every European nation, most of the Middle Eastern royals, and the richest Asian states—remains on the American defense dole. The wealthiest, most advanced foreign states continue to mimic suckling babies years, even decades, after the initial crises in which they first became reliant on Washington. America’s defense of Europe is at 80 years and counting.

Although the early American republic aggressively overspread the North American continent, it was initially reluctant to risk its citizens’ lives and wealth in other nations’ wars. That barrier was breached by President Woodrow Wilson, more delusional megalomaniac than charismatic idealist, as he has been typically portrayed. World War I was an idiotic imperialist war in which the American regime had no stake. However, Wilson was determined to remake the world. Which, unfortunately, he did, disastrously. His intervention wasted more than 117,000 American lives and resulted in another, even greater conflict. As Ferdinand Foch, the French general who served as supreme allied commander, described the botched Versailles Treaty ending the war: “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.”

Successive American administrations avoided the continent, soon wracked by communism, fascism, and Nazism. Even the Europeans were ultimately unwilling to defend Wilson’s and his allied compatriots’ handiwork, hence “appeasement.” World War II was the tragic but predictable outcome. America was dragged into the resulting imbroglio. After dispatching the horrific Third Reich, what remained of Europe faced the triumphant Soviet Union, headed by dictator.

So, Washington stayed that time. However, America’s continuing military presence, through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—which would have been more accurately named the North American Treaty Organization—was intended to be only temporary, until Western Europe recovered economically. Dwight Eisenhower, no left-wing peacenik, said in 1951: “If, in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.” Seventy-four years later American forces are still there and, if most Europeans have their way, will still be there in another 74 years, and probably beyond.

At least Washington then treated alliances as serious. They were extended to countries thought to be strategically important. There was Western Europe, which America had just fought to liberate, as well as South Korea and Japan, client states acquired in the aftermath of the same conflict. Security commitments also typically resulted from formal treaties, negotiated with other governments and ratified by the Senate. Multilateral agreements with less important participants, most notably the Baghdad Pact/CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS, were looser and weaker.

In recent years, Washington has treated military commitments like hotel chocolates, to be placed on every guest’s pillow. In recent years NATO has inducted military midgets, such as Albania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, with no strategic significance. Imagine trying to explain why an American soldier, airman, sailor, or Marine died for what amounts to little more than a celebrated movie set. Moreover, presidents have added informal guarantees without congressional approval—to the Mideast monarchies and even quasi-states, such as Rojava, the Kurdish region in Syria. Of late Trump has unilaterally declared America to be the guardian of absolute monarchy in the Middle East, turning the American military into a modern Janissary Corps to serve thousands of dissolute kings, emirs, and princes in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Can the rest of the Persian Gulf be far behind?

DETENTIONS ON THE WEST BANK ARE FAR GREATER THAN REPORTED BY ISRAEL

Israeli Forces Are Detaining And Abusing Hundreds Of Palestinians Across The West Bank Each Week, Far Beyond What The Israeli Army Publicly Reports. Does That Surprise You?

A Palestinian rights organization says Israeli forces are detaining, interrogating and mistreating hundreds of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank every week, far beyond the numbers Israel publicly reports.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society said in a statement on Friday that Israeli troops had carried out widespread detentions during raids, subjecting people to field interrogations, intimidation and abuse.

Most detainees are released after hours or days, meaning they never appear in the army’s official arrest figures.

Emani Serahine, a spokesperson for the group, said Israel only acknowledges Palestinians it transfers to prisons or formal detention centres, while ignoring the many whose homes were stormed, belongings destroyed, or money seized before they were held briefly and released.

She said the scale of recent operations underscores the gap. During the latest raid on Tubas on November 26^th , the group documented 162 detentions in the city alone, despite Israeli claims of only “dozens”.

Serahine added that soldiers routinely beat and threaten Palestinians during interrogations and that raids often involve vandalism and theft.

The Israeli army has been carrying out extensive raids across the northern West Bank.

In Tubas, it dropped leaflets in Arabic warning residents that their area had “become a nest of terror” and threatening the same fate as Jenin and Tulkarem, where more than 42,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced as part of recent operations.

Large sections of both camps have been demolished, and residents are still barred from returning.

AFTER THEY WERE RAPED IN ISRAELI JAILS PALESTINIAN PRISONERS SPEAK OUT

In Exclusive Interviews, Two Palestinians Detained In Separate Israeli Prisons Recount Harrowing Details Of Violent Sexual Assault.

As Sami al-Sai was escorted to a clinic inside an Israeli prison, he could hear screaming from nearby rooms. Prisoners were being tortured.

The Palestinian journalist had heard accounts of abuse in Israeli jails before his arrest in February 2024. But nothing, he said, prepared him for what followed.

After a brief medical examination, a doctor turned to the guards.

“‘Everything is fine. Take him,’ he said,” al-Sai recalled.

Al-Sai was dragged into a separate room, where for nearly an hour he said he was kicked, stamped on, insulted and raped with an object while blindfolded.

Israeli guards watched, laughed and, al-Sai believes, may have filmed the assault.

For more than a year, al-Sai told no one what had happened. Months after his release in June, he decided to speak out.

“It’s difficult to talk about,” he said. “But staying silent is worse.”

Al-Sai said he felt compelled to tell the world what Palestinian prisoners endure in Israeli jails, adding that the sexual assault he suffered was far from an anomaly.

“What I suffered is a drop in the ocean compared with others,” he said.

“It is nothing compared to what I heard from fellow prisoners.”

Al-Sai is now speaking about his experiences as a prisoner on public platforms and to local media in the West Bank. But his interview is the first time he has spoken to international media on camera. Details of his story are being published with his permission.

Another former prisoner, who described how soldiers used a dog to rape him and other instances of violent sexual assault, also agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

This reporting adds further weight to widespread serious concerns about Israel’s systematic mistreatment and use of sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners.

Earlier this year, a United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has described the Israeli prison system as a “network of torture camps” within which prisoners were subjected to “repeated use of sexual violence” including “gang sexual violence and assault committed by a group of prison guards or soldiers”.

Last year, Israel’s Channel 12 published a leaked video which appeared to show Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee.

In response to questions, the Israeli Prison Service said it “categorically rejected” the allegations of abuse described by the prisoners.

‘WE WANT TO KILL YOU’

On February 23^rd 2024, Israeli forces raided his home during an intensive arrest campaign in the West Bank following the October 2023 war on Gaza. He was taken from his home and spent the next 16 months in Israeli custody under administrative detention.

Under the controversial practice, detainees are held without charge or trial based on secret evidence they are not permitted to see.

‘The pain was overwhelming. But I still didn’t know what they were going to do. Why did they remove my trousers?’

– Sami al-Sai, Palestinian journalist and former prisoner

After an initial 19 days in military custody, al-Sai was transferred to Megiddo Prison. Upon arrival, he said he was handcuffed and blindfolded.

His first stop was the prison clinic. On the way, he could hear screams from other rooms.

“‘Say long live the Israeli flag,’” he recalls hearing a guard, speaking fluent Arabic, shout at a prisoner. “’We want to kill you. We want to make you die.’

“At that moment, I knew I was entering a stage I had never experienced before,” said al-Sai, who had been arrested by Israeli forces three times before.

Inside the clinic, guards and medical staff accused him of being a member of Hamas, repeatedly threatening him that they “fuck, fuck, fuck” anyone associated with the group. He denied the accusation.

After an electrocardiogram and a brief examination, the doctor told the guards he was fit.

Al-Sai said he was blindfolded again and escorted by four to six guards, including a woman, through a series of corridors. Doors opened and closed. He was finally thrown to the ground.

At this point, al-Sai said, his trousers and underwear were pulled down, and he was ordered onto his knees. The beating began, with the guards striking him repeatedly on the head, back and legs.

“I felt close to death,” he said. “The pain was overwhelming. But I still didn’t know what they were going to do. Why did they remove my trousers?”

‘RECEPTION PARTY’

Moments later, he said, a solid object was forced into his rectum.

“I tried to resist. I clenched my body to stop it. That only made the pain worse. Eventually, I surrendered.”

The object was pushed deeper and twisted deliberately, he said. When he began screaming, a guard squeezed his testicles and pulled his penis.

“I screamed so loudly I thought my voice would leave the prison walls,” he said.

“I wanted to die at that moment. I couldn’t take it. I reached a point where I couldn’t comprehend what was happening.”

Throughout the assault, guards laughed. One addressed him directly.

“You are a journalist,” the guard said, according to al-Sai.

“We will bring all the journalists and do this to them. We will bring your wife, your sisters, your mother, and your son.”

‘I wanted to die at that moment. I couldn’t take it’

– Sami al-Sai, former Palestinian prisoner

At one point, he heard a guard say: “Bring me a carrot.” Another object was inserted.

Later, he learned from other detainees that vegetables, sticks and other objects were commonly used during such assaults.

A guard stood on his head with full body weight. Al-Sai feared his skull would burst. He also heard one guard tell another to “stop filming”, suggesting the assault may have been recorded.

“They said they were taking revenge for October 7^th,” he said. “But I am not from Gaza. I am a journalist.”

The assault lasted about 25 minutes, he estimates. He was held in the room for nearly an hour.

Among prisoners, this assault is called “the reception party” – a violent attack involving sexual violence that many detainees face upon arrival at the prison.

Al-Sai did not initially tell other prisoners what had happened to him. Instead, he asked them about their experiences.

He was shocked by what he heard, particularly from detainees from Gaza.

“We had never heard of this level of brutality and sadism,” he said. “Not even in stories or in history.”

He said almost all of the abuse was carried out by Israel Prison Service (IPS) guards. He heard accounts of prisoners raped directly by guards and others sexually assaulted by dogs.

“EXPLAIN TO US WHY WE KILL PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ARMED”

Sen. Rand Paul Gets To The Moral Heart Of The Venezuela Pressure Campaign. In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Ordered A Strike On A Vessel Suspected Of Carrying Drugs From Venezuela.

So a second strike was ordered—one that Hegseth says didn’t come from him, and that President Trump says he wouldn’t have ordered—that killed the surviving men.

The legality of any of these strikes is hotly debated. The second strike on the vessel in September in particular has heightened further questions about potential war crimes.

Many in Washington, including some Republicans, are questioning this.

On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had questions: “If they’re armed, show us how they’re armed. If they’re not armed, explain to us why we kill people who are not armed.”

There have been no reports to this writer’s knowledge that the men were armed. The Wall Street Journal reported that military official Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who purportedly gave the order, believed there were other “enemy” vessels nearby and the surviving men were suspected of communicating with them. In his briefing with lawmakers on Thursday, Bradley reportedly said that the survivors did not appear to have radios or means of communication.

Even if they did have radios, might their top concern have been not drowning and calling for rescue?

What kind of “war” is this, exactly?

Paul wondered the same, “So we usually think of war, we think of those people taking up arms and they may kill our soldiers, so we kill them first, that’s war. But these people, we haven’t been told if they have arms. Two of them they killed in the water, but two of them they scooped up, and did they arrest them for drugs and get drugs that were floating around in the sea? Did they look for arms? No, they just released them and said, go back to your home country, which really wasn’t Venezuela, it was Colombia and Ecuador.”

If these two men weren’t taken out by American forces, it is not inconceivable they would be walking around as free men today.

Can this administration or any other simply declare that foreign actors are drug dealers or terrorists—or the combo “narcoterrorists”—and bomb them indiscriminately?

The Obama administration certainly thought so. Is Commander-in-Chief Trump simply doing the same?

Paul emphasized the problem with that: “So I think this whole thing is a terrible situation. But we as a country should not be so easygoing as to say, well, an accusation is enough. We sometimes make mistakes. Even in our country, even when we’re very, very careful, the DNA Innocence Project found that there were people in jail in our country with full due process, but we made a mistake. They’ve been in jail for 20 years.”

“Do we really think blowing up boats without any kind of process?” the senator asked. “We got records from the Coast Guard yesterday that we released, of boats stopped off of Venezuela before we had this new policy. So we’ve had an interdiction policy for 100 years probably, where we interdict people on the open seas, and the Coast Guard does it. The Coast Guard statistics say that of boats off Venezuela, 21 percent of those boats didn’t have drugs.”

This would mean almost a quarter of the suspected drug boats the Coast Guard encounters are not drug boats—a significant number.

Paul was befuddled by others’ reasoning on this. “And it’s amazing to listen to some of the support for this,” he said. “It’s like, well, 79 percent is pretty good. It’s like, really?”

“You’d kill 21 percent innocent people just because, well, the majority of them must be drug dealers, so we’re fine,” he lamented. “No, that’s not very thoughtful. It’s actually an extraordinary, reprehensible position.”

The contrast between the message Paul is trying to convey on this issue versus what some of his MAGA critics perceive about his position was seen through an X exchange over the weekend.

Self-identified “MAGA 100%” X user “Chicago1Ray” shared a video of authorities boarding a boat that definitely looked like drug smuggling. “What do you think (Rand Paul) is gonna say when he sees this.. he’s tagged… there’s only one way to find out…so you know what to do,” he wrote, seeming to want his nearly half million followers to retweet his post.

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf pounced. “I suspect Rand Paul would say that this video illustrates our ability to interdict drugs lawfully without any need to kill anyone and shows that mistake prone extrajudicial killings are not just illegal and immoral but also unnecessary to the mission.”

This September event of so much controversy was one of more than 20 such strikes, which have killed over 80 people, carried out by the Trump administration. The administration and many Republicans are defending these types of attacks, while most Democrats and a minority of Republicans are questioning the legality and morality of the attacks.

Congress has not been consulted on these attacks. Nor do they even necessarily fall under the two decade old AUMF (authorization for the use of military force) that was supposed to apply to the War on Terror after 9/11. As the Republican Congressman Thomas Massie told The American Conservative last week, “Congress hasn’t even declared a Global War on Narco Terrorism, yet, right? That doesn’t exist.”

Ideally, America is supposed to be better than this.

In late October, TAC’s George O’Neill, Jr. noted the naked immorality on display: “Of course, the laws of man are not the only impediment to killing suspected narco-traffickers who may, for all we know, in many cases be simple fishermen.”

“In addition to the aforementioned prohibitions, the killing of people without any due process is completely contrary to the core beliefs of Christianity and the Christian nation in which we grew up,” he wrote. “It should be stopped immediately and completely.”

Does the United States now openly murder foreigners who appear unarmed and don’t seem to be at war with us?

It’s a good question, and an imperative one. Are you still proud to be a “good American”?