How Israel is censoring reporting on the war

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the full story.
Outside of wartime, Israeli law already gives the military censor the authority to prevent certain information from being published, even retroactively. This can include aspects of Israel’s arms deals or intelligence activities, among other security-related topics.
But just as it did during the “12-Day War” last June, the censor has tightened its restrictions amid the current U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The police have already detained several journalists it deemed to be violating these censorship regulations.
In an unclassified document published on March 5, Kula instructed journalists to submit anything related to the following topics to the censor for review prior to publication: operational matters, intelligence, defensive preparedness, impact sites in Israel, armament management (including munitions and interceptor stockpiles, aircraft and air defense systems readiness, and the employment and use of unique and classified weaponry), and operational vulnerabilities in defense and offense.
These restrictions have created some absurd situations for journalists. In one case known to +972 Magazine, an Iranian missile hit its target while fragments struck a nearby educational facility. Yet the media was only allowed to report on the latter, without being able to even mention the former or inspect the damage.
In another case, journalists were documenting damage to a residential building when a man who likely worked for a security agency told police to instruct the journalists there not to film the actual target of the strike, which was behind them. The officer replied that the journalists would not have noticed it if they were not told, since most of the damage was to the civilian building.
“It’s hard to understand what is actually happening,” a senior manager at a foreign media outlet working in Israel explained. “In a lot of cases, we have official reports that there were no strikes or damage only to discover later that a target was hit. We can’t report or confirm so we don’t know if it happened or not.
“Our coverage of the war is not truthful.”
“This is exactly the problem with this conduct,” he continued. “Instead of residents of the State of Israel receiving real-time information that could help them prepare and get ready in a basic way, the information was censored, and the Israeli public finds itself once again getting updated by American media outlets. An absurd situation.”
Two journalists from CNN Türk were briefly detained while broadcasting live near the Kirya, Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The commander acknowledged, however, that they have no control over ordinary citizens filming on their phones and spreading footage on social media.
During the war last summer, the right-wing activist known as “The Shadow” and members of his civilian security squad unlawfully detained foreign and Palestinian journalists at an impact site in Tel Aviv. Authorities later instructed them not to interfere with journalists.
A view of the damage caused to a satellite station in the Elah Valley by a missile fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon the previous day, March 10, 2026. (Jonathan Shaul/Flash90)
“So now, when I arrive at the scene of a missile impact, almost automatically I document and report only what I know is allowed.”
As a result of the restrictions, journalists are having to find creative ways to get information out to the public. On the evening of March 10, Hezbollah fired two rockets into Israel; while media outlets were barred from publishing the locations of the impacts, some, including Ynet, quoted a statement by Hezbollah saying they had targeted a satellite station near Beit Shemesh, and included a video that Hezbollah shared which had been taken from social media.

13 more annotations...

I stopped watching YouTube the old way after trying this Gemini feature

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

But after finally trying it, I realized it worked very differently from what I expected. Instead of passively watching on my phone, I can ask questions about the video as it plays.
Gemini can summarize what the video is about, explain confusing parts, or extract key takeaways without needing to jump between apps.
You can access the Ask feature while watching a video on the YouTube mobile app (Android or iPhone) as well as on the YouTube website on desktop.
When available, the Ask button is located below the video player, typically between the Share and Download buttons. Tapping it opens a chat panel where you can type questions about the video or choose suggested prompts, like “Summarize the video.”
Using the Ask button on YouTube changes that. Instead of scrubbing through the timeline, I can ask, “What are the main points of this section?”
Gemini provides a summary of the video’s content with timestamps, allowing me to stay focused without having to rewatch the entire thing.
Using the Ask button on YouTube makes this easier. I can ask it to summarize the video or highlight the main points before I commit to watching the whole thing.
Turning tutorials into step-by-step instructions
For example, I might ask it to “list the steps shown in this video” or “turn this tutorial into step-by-step instructions.” Gemini summarizes the process into a simple list that’s much easier to follow.
You can copy the instructions and paste them into a document if you want to save or reference them later.
I can ask questions like, “When does the creator talk about battery life?” or “Where do they explain the camera settings?”
But when I’m trying to learn something, follow a tutorial, or understand a long video, the Ask feature has become something I now rely on regularly.

10 more annotations...

U.S. intelligence shows Iran's late supreme leader was wary of his son taking power, sources say - CBS News

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

The federal government on Friday offered up to $10 million for information on the location of Mojtaba Khamenei and nine other key Iranian officials.

Re: (Fwd) "BRICS is in a deep, deep coma... expel India!" (Pepe Escobar); India the new 'running dog of imperialism' (Arundhati Roy) Re: "BRICS at the moment is in tatters, is in shambles"

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

I hope we can keep debating because it's terribly important to consider rare anti-imperial politics (closing the Strait of Hormuz or banning exports of rare earth minerals to the U.S.) and contrasting these moments with the more durable features of global capitalism's reproduction, in which BRICS corporates and parastatals are increasingly vital.
If indeed we have seen the BRICS set up nothing worthwhile, and in the process misguiding activists first with hype, then hope, then helplessness, then we need to move on, right? That's my take.
In 2023 at the Johannesburg summit, new BRICS were added: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with Saudi Arabia an ambiguous invitee (Riyadh has never formally accepted). In early 2025 another new full member joined: Indonesia.
And at the Kazan Summit in 2024 hosted by Vladimir Putin, there were more ‘partner’ invitations – a category reflecting the bloc’s indigestion after the 2023 expansion – offered to Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, all of which were accepted. (Only Algeria and Turkiye turned down partner status.)
So, BRICS is now bringing back this anti-colonial mantle. They’ve picked up the anti-colonial mantle and they’re fighting against US dollar hegemony which is a which is a form of imperialism. They’re fighting against western imperialism.”
But the BRICS bloc is not up for this fight, it is now apparent. In a March 9 Johannesburg discussion with leading local political broadcaster Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, Tricontinental director Vijay Prashad warned, “If the BRICS countries don't wake up to the reality of trying to stop this conflict by any means possible, trying to stop this conflict now, if they don't recognize this reality, the entire project of peace and development is in jeopardy.”
Likewise, just after Trumpanyahu began bombing Iran, ambitious hopes for BRICS were promoted by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs on March 2:
This ‘only standing bulwark’ is, in reality breaking up, or ‘spalling,’ i.e. (as I’ve mentioned before), a construction-industry term referring to a process in which – mainly due to the freezing-thawing cycle – “a wall’s masonry and bricks crack, crumble, flake, and even pop out of the wall.”
Thailand-based Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar,
(Iran was forgiving: on March 14 two tankers carrying liquefied natural gas to India were allowed through the Strait of Hormuz.)
And obviously, don’t expect anything coming from Brazil or South Africa.”
But sadly, it’s not so ‘unthinkable’: the reality of economic alignment can be discerned when BRICS hucksters open their minds – and finally question – the actual content of supposedly-multipolar ‘thinking’, which is merely profiteering.

For since the outset of the BRICS bloc in the late 2000s, and even more so since the genocide began in late 2023, its capitalists and state agencies have been lucratively linked to Israel’s apartheid economy:
South African coal is sent from mines owned jointly by Glencore and by the richest black South African, Patrice Motsepe (President Cyril Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law and potentially, his replacement in spite of recent denials) – resulting in the primary supply for 15% of Israel’s grid electricity by late 2025, after Colombia finally imposed a boycott mid-year – and yet while the National Union of Metalworkers of SA and SA Transport and Allied Workers Union are both rhetorically opposed to genocide and some staff do protest with Palestine-solidarity activists, their members facilitate the supply by digging and transporting the coal, just as the rhetorically-solidaristic Hague Group has repeatedly turned a blind eye to co-chair Pretoria’s fuelling of the Israeli military;
Russian-speakers in Israel, estimated at from 1.5 million to ‘nearly two million’ (according to Putin), provide the genocidal military with 15% of its soldiers (around 30,000), and in addition to wheat and metals, Russia sells coal and – in just the two years since the genocide began in 2023 – made 105 oil transfers comprising 30% of the total crude and 45% of refined imported, via Novorossiysk, originating from BRICS-partner Kazakhstan;
Chinese drones (tens of thousands by now) made by DJI and Autel buzz Gaza and the West Bank, in spite of activist and human-rights NGO demands their supply be halted (even before one helped kill Yahya Sinwar), and moreover, a Chinese parastatal owns the new Haifa Bayport and another built the ‘union-busting’ Ashdod harbour, which together have facilitated a 5% annual increase in bilateral trade since 2021, confirming Netanyahu’s 2017 term for the two economies, namely, a “marriage made in heaven”;
Brazilian parastatal Petrobras supplies oil (at one point meeting 9% of Israeli needs directly, and from 2024 operating via Italian middlemen);
New Delhi assures a strengthened Israeli-Indian military alliance, the September 2025 Bilateral Investment Treaty, and Modi’s ‘Special Strategic Partnership’ solidaristic visit to the Knesset featuring ‘immense progress’ in ‘defence, security, and more’;
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has since the 2020 Abraham Accords support – with trade – led by UAE exports including oil and diamonds – soaring to more than $2 billion;
Egypt has done recent oil deals with Israel, agreed in 2025 to facilitate $35 billion worth of Leviathan gas field exports, opposes Iran’s firing on U.S. bases in the region, and offers U.S.-German military logistical support for the genocidaires;
Given extremely warm Addis-Tel Aviv relations, Ethiopia abstained in 2024 and 2025 UN votes condemning Israeli’s occupation of Palestine, while 170,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent serve as IDF soldiers – losing lives at more than double their rate of residency (4.5 to 2%) – not to mention their role as low-paid workers suffering systemic racism;
After the genocide began, there was rising Indonesian-Israeli trade, especially huge recent palm oil and electronics exports from Indonesia.
So they should all be expelled from the BRICS, by Escobar’s logic of banishing ‘unthinkable’ alliances with Israeli genocide-capitalism, especially since nearly all such relations have intensified since 2023, leaving only Iran in the bloc. The very idea of Boycott Divestment Sanctions against the genocidaires, has been expelled by the BRICS elites.
Even more unthinkable would be formally joining Trump’s sordid new ‘Board of Peace,’ a network of 28 imperialist, subimperialist and peripheral rightwing-ruled states, all of which are guilty of substantial human rights violations, according to The Intercept’s Nick Turse. Yet six of these are BRICS members and partners.
As Naomi Klein observed, the Board of Peace is a ‘parody of a colonial body’ and a form of ‘disaster capitalism.’ It’s obvious why the Board of Peace was invented: “They don't want there to be a UN, because the UN represents as weak and disappointing as it is, it represents the possibility of accountability, whether it's on a climate change, whether it's on genocide.”
Pretoria found very limited support from the other 19 BRICS members and partners: only Brazil, Cuba, Egypt and Malaysia made official submissions backing the genocide charge.
In contrast to offering Palestine solidarity, a half-dozen BRICS members and partners joined Trump at the Board of Peace inaugural February 19 conference at the ‘Trump Institute of Peace’ in Washington: Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, UAE, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. (On March 2, Indonesia temporarily paused its participation, yet in late February Jakarta’s nationalist-populist leader Prabowo Subianto had offered 8000 troops to enforce Trump’s ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ vision requiring massive forced displacements of Gazans.)

India was also a formal observer at that Board of Peace session, whereas – unlike European countries which turned down membership – Brazil, China and Russia were invited by Trump but did not immediately reject his overtures. Moscow even appeared open to spending Trump’s requested $1 billion membership fee – ‘to support the Palestinian people’ – using funds frozen after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Worse, Russia and China had let the malignant Board of Peace notion fester last November 17 at the Security Council, by failing to veto the re-colonisation strategy Trump imposed, on grounds the deal was then actively supported by BRICS members Egypt, Indonesia and UAE (and other Arab tyrannies) as well as by the quisling Palestinian Authority.

(Three other BRICS members – South Africa, Ethiopia and Iran – did not receive invitations. Here, we are not counting as a BRICS member Saudi Arabia – which if included would increase the weight of the running-dog case – because it has an in-again out-again posture.)
All this leaves an extremely complicated, contradiction-riddled political terrain on which the BRICS as a whole appears to have simply slipped from the earlier ‘alternative-to-Western-imperialism’ rhetorical foothold.

In a February 24 podcast introducing his latest book, The Story of Capital, Marxist geographer David Harvey explains why such geopolitical fracturing cannot simply be read off countries’ corporate economic interests:

“The interplay between the capitalist and territorial logics of power is a defining feature of modern geopolitics. Marx noted that the concept of national wealth creeps into the work of the economist and its competition over that national wealth becomes predominant. But under the regime of competing ethnic nationalisms, the production of wealth by capital is primarily put to work to serve national interests rather than those of capital alone. These two logics are not merely competing forces, but ones that are deeply intertwined, influencing how states navigate global and domestic challenges. The dual role of the state-finance nexus becomes particularly evident during crisis. The state as both an enabler and a mediator of accumulation occupies a central political position in capital social formation. However, its dual logics of power, capitalist power and territorial power, create tensions that shape the trajectory of global and domestic politics.”
These incidents of apparent anti-imperialism create genuine antagonisms, to be sure. But the overarching process is cooperation between imperial and subimperial powers, especially when it comes to surplus value extraction from the world’s workers, super-exploitation of the world’s women involved in social reproduction, and the abuse of nature as a ‘free gift,’ to quote Marx.
o those ends, the BRICS elites advance the agenda of corporate imperialism because they are completely committed to strengthening the tools of neoliberal multilateral power on behalf of their largest firms – especially the deadly fossil fuel industries – and banks.

Consider the case of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, so vital for the sake of future generations and potential avoidance of planetary ecocide. But today, the tragic conclusion we must draw is that both G7 Western politicians and BRICS ruling elites continue working closely together to prevent bans on fossil fuels or greenhouse-gas emissions cuts to the extent necessary for fending off climate catastrophe.
“He formed a league of super-polluters, and would-be super-polluters. China, the U.S., and India don’t want anyone controlling their use of coal in any meaningful way. It is a coalition of foxes who will together govern the henhouse.” (South Africa and Brazil were also part of formulating that deal in a secret side room.)
Since then, the G7 and BRICS have also been utterly unwilling to acknowledge polluter-pays climate-debt obligations to poorer countries and to their own internal victims of extreme weather – even after last July’s International Court of Justice advisory opinion insisting on the validity of reparations demands from 27 youth from a sinking Tuvalu.

Indeed, given how much the world’s corporations and banks rely upon the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) for a ‘rules-based order,’ it is no surprise to find BRICS leaders’ annual statements supporting these agencies of imperial power. The BRICS currently lead the calls for their refunding and relegitimization, even at a time Trump’s (occasional) paleo-conservative hatred of ‘globalists’ signals his retreat from climate summits, refusal to boost the Bretton Woods Institutions’ funding, and sabotage of the WTO.
Why, when neoliberal multilateral institutions are more shaky than ever, do the BRICS give them unwavering support? Simply, for the sake of their capitalists’ own accumulation strategies: global value chain exploitation, raw-materials extractivism, Intellectual Property protection, unchecked emissions and fossil fuel exploration, sleazy trade and investment deals, and debt squeezes on poorer economies where BRICS banks stand exposed.
f Mao warned against “domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs,” maybe – in spite of select surface appearances – that epithet “describes the BRICS well,” as Arundhati Roy might also conclude.

Mostly, though, the subimperial BRICS bloc is the rabies-addled ‘dog that didn’t bark,’ when confronted by even Trump’s excesses of imperialism and Netanyahu’s genocide. But occasionally when some in the pack do bark left, we should not be distracted or surprised when – as any Palestinian knows – they simultaneously bite right.

33 more annotations...

As Hell Rains Down on Iran, Western Media averts its Gaze

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

On the first day of the Israel-U.S. bombing, my cousin in Tehran managed to get internet access for a few minutes and send me footage of the first missiles as they flew over her head and the subsequent explosions erupting somewhere in the distance. That was the last video she took from Tehran, as she and her family fled soon after in what was to become a mass exodus. According to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, as many as 3.2 million people are now forcibly displaced in Iran.
But when I spoke on a popular BBC radio show last week, I was not allowed to talk about the reality of the war and instead was asked repeatedly about my feelings as a British Iranian. I felt seen, yes, but I also felt that the topic was being empathy-washed to focus on emotions over substance, garner listeners rather than understanding, and stop me or any of the other guests from talking about the factual reality of this illegal war and those waging it.
The war is illegal under international law — and yet Iran’s retaliation is spoken of more than the illegality of the war itself.
The English-language mainstream media continuously refers to the war as the “conflict in the Middle East,” as if the region just got up one morning and decided to set itself on fire. That is, as if there were no perpetrators, as if Israel didn’t start bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Similarly, the media has centered economics and the Global North and its citizens, with CNN for example, headlining, “Gas is just the start: What else the Iran war could soon cost you,” and the BBC, “Honeymooners’ relief to be home after Dubai hotel hit.” But the BBC did not cover the damage to Chehel Sotoun, and only briefly mentioned the damage to the Golestan Palace.
The dissonance continues with messages from non-Iranian friends who, perhaps influenced by such coverage and wanting to empathize, tell me that they know how I feel because their friends/sister-in-law/colleague is on holiday in Dubai and has been evacuated from their luxury hotel. They mean well, so I resist the urge to shout at them, “An expensive holiday being inconvenienced is not the same as my homeland being laid to waste, my family terrorized and the soil of which I am formed being violated.”

AD
We Iranians in exile are used to the sometimes infuriatingly superficial reactions of our well-meaning non-Iranian friends. They don’t know how it feels to watch the places where you grew up, learned to walk and went to school be turned into hell. They don’t know that we are watching the cradle of civilization, one of the most historic and culturally rich countries in the world, be turned into a fireball wasteland resembling the arid deserts that our aggressors have in their own hearts and minds.
It is telling that when trying to find exact figures of missile numbers, Google’s first page is full of the number of missiles Iran has fired in retaliation, but there are few news stories with the number of missile attacks against it.
It is clear that sanity has long left these particular Iranians. And yet the spokespeople of the more right-wing diaspora — actors and comedians like Shohreh Aghdashloo, Max Amini, Reza Farahan, Omid Djalili, Googoosh and Mahnaz Afshar — are the ones being given a platform on news shows instead of academics, regional and Iranian experts, analysts and journalists. On CNN, actor Sam Asghari talked about the war as “a sign of hope” and Djalili on the BBC discussed the repression in Iran as justification for the U.S.-Israeli strikes. Critical thinking has been the first casualty of this war, and legacy media has supported that.
And yet, despite this grave threat to the health of not just Iranians, but also other countries in the region, mainstream media provided more coverage of Iran’s strikes on Dubai and the rave parties happening in Israeli shelters than of this incident, described by some environmental activists as an ecocide.
anjani concluded months after the Iran-Iraq war ended that when it comes to Iran, “the war taught us that international laws are only drops of ink on paper.”
My own family lived in areas where that war was the worst. The women and children left, but our men had to stay put. And while we didn’t lose anyone directly in the war itself, in subsequent years I have lost five uncles, two cousins and two close family friends to various forms of cancer and brain tumors at a premature age — all men who were obliged to stay and work in the worst-hit areas.
When it comes to Iran, “the war taught us that international laws are only drops of ink on paper.”
In my interviews with the surviving civilian victims of Iraq’s chemical attacks, I saw for myself how wars never end for some — turning into decades of expensive-to-treat ill health that can make the sufferer wish they had died under a bomb after all. Some 7,500 Iranians were killed by Iraqi nerve gas and mustard agents, and an estimated 75,000 people are still being treated for chronic chemical weapons injuries.
I would be remiss not to add here that letters from U.K. ministers at the time show their awareness of what the chemicals they were selling to Saddam Hussein would most likely be used for — in direct contravention of the 1925 Geneva protocol that forbids the use of chemical and biological weapons in war (but not their development, production or possession, the loophole those ministers were exploiting).
As sanctions imposed by the U.S. since 1979 and by the European Union since 2011 make it almost impossible for Iran to access medicine from outside the country, it makes its own. But when factories and pharmacies producing these medicines are destroyed, then all those people who urgently need medicine become the death statistics of the future.The Western media’s framing however, only compounds the long-term effects of the war, ensuring that we may never hear about much of the enormous amounts of suffering.
An alliance between the media, the perpetrators of the illegal war and some of the Iranian diaspora is downplaying the loss of Iranian lives and the environmental harm, thereby also eroding outside solidarity and sanitizing war crimes. They are justifying prolonged attacks.

14 more annotations...

Dahiyeh: the Beirut Suburb at the Heart of a Deadly Israeli Military Doctrine

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

Dahiyeh has been targeted by Israel,
Dahiyeh was bombed by Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah, again in 2014 and yet again in 2024 and 2025. Now the Israel Defense Forces is bombing the area again.
The Dahiyeh doctrine is a military strategy that calls for using overwhelming and disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure in areas controlled by hostile armed groups in order to deter attacks on Israel. It has repeatedly put into practice in Gaza. Now the Dahiyeh doctrine is once again being enacted in the place where it was first conceived.
Dahiyeh is a Hezbollah stronghold. It became the main urban centre of Lebanon’s Shia population in the middle of the last century when poor Shia families from Baalbek and south Lebanon migrated to Beirut’s suburbs.
The doctrine was developed in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel’s military leadership realised that Hezbollah had stalled their advance in urban combat.
This was developed by the IDF into a working strategy. As Gadi Eisenkot, head of the army’s northern division, explained at the time: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”
The primary goal of the doctrine was punishment and deterrence. The idea was to disrupt civilian life and make reconstruction almost impossible to afford. The doctrine’s architects hoped that its outcome would force the civilian population to rebel against the armed groups sheltering among them.
Siboni had made clear in his paper that this strategy was also applicable to Israel’s conflict in Gaza. In 2014, Operation Protective Edge targeted civilian infrastructure, including private houses as well as water, sanitation, electricity and healthcare facilities. Again, after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the IDF has applied the Dahiyeh doctrine in the Gaza Strip, this time destroying between 80% and 90% of its civilian infrastructure.
Critics argue this violates international humanitarian law (IHL). IHL demands that states and groups make a clear distinction between civilians and combatants. It is necessary for armed groups to take all precautions to avoid acts of extreme destruction in heavy civilian residential locations.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has warned that the blanket evacuation orders directed at Dahiyeh’s population risk violating international humanitarian law, saying they risk amounting to “prohibited forced displacement”. While Israeli strategists defend the doctrine as a means to defeat groups like Hezbollah, critics describe it as a template for handing out indiscriminate punishment to combatants and civilians alike.
So far the Lebanese government’s response is to try to pull Hezbollah back from yet another drawn-out war with Israel. On March 2, Aoun formally banned Hezbollah from engaging in military activities and ordered the group to surrender its weapons to the Lebanese army. The government has also postponed the legislative election scheduled for May 2026 by two years.
But the international community seems incapable of applying any pressure to change the situation in Lebanon. As of March 9, by UN estimates, nearly 700,000 people had been forced from their homes, including 200,000 children. Meanwhile, the IDF continues to carry out strikes in Dahiyeh.
The Dahiyeh doctrine is so effective for the IDF because it is designed to move faster than the often glacial workings of international diplomacy. It can accomplish a military objective before the international community can craft an agreed and workable plan. This is not the only time residential districts have been bombed or civilian infrastructure targeted. Far from it. Modern warfare is full of examples of bombing civilian districts and Hezbollah has also launched attacks against residential areas in Israel.
But in the years since the doctrine was first articulated, it has been observed at work in both Lebanon and in Gaza, where Israel’s approach to operating in civilian areas was was criticised by the UN after Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 as an official military strategy “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”. As such, it’s a chilling illustration of the horror of modern warfare as waged in the Middle East today. And once again it appears to have come home to Dahiyeh.

12 more annotations...

Costly and Depleting: The Growing Problems of Operation Epic Fury | Countercurrents

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

This has compelled the Pentagon to pay greater attention to its own Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), which is now seeing service in some instances against Iranian attacks. But the department is also set to seek more cash, expecting to ask $50 billion in additional funding from Congress. Given the sheer unpopularity of the war, some lawmakers have reservations. “You’ve got to be able to provide us with more information as […] justification,” insists Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Don’t just take it for granted that the Congress’s role is basically to write the cheque.”
US military power is now being drawn from other theatres of interest to feed the Moloch of war. In a recent cabinet meeting, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed that Washington might relocate air defence material to the Middle East. Multiple launchers of the THAAD system have been or are in the process of being moved to Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, roughly 70km south of Seoul, with the interceptor missiles destined for the Middle East.
This shifting of pieces has not been without consequence. The THAAD batteries had been sent to South Korea in 2017 to assure it against threats from its nuclear-armed neighbour to the north. Depriving them of projectiles has gotten tongues wagging about increasing vulnerability. Besides, the ostensible security provided by US power for its allies and partners has been shown to be something of a dud, as Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states has so convincingly demonstrated.
That may well be what he hopes for, but it is clear that Washington is battling through the another malady Trump had once campaigned against: the debilitating entanglement of a foreign war with ill-defined objectives involving a resourceful, obstinate foe.

2 more annotations...

Re: What we get wrong about how Germany has reckoned with its Nazi past

"A few days ago the Israeli Haaretz paper published an investigative piece about the financing of the Israeli nuclear project by Germany under the code name "Aktion Geschäftsfreund". Part of the deal was that Israel won't mention high ranking Nazis in the Adenauer's administration during the Eichmann trial. The article (in Hebrew) attached. "

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

A few days ago the Israeli Haaretz paper published an investigative piece about the financing of the Israeli nuclear project by Germany under the code name "Aktion Geschäftsfreund". Part of the deal was that Israel won't mention high ranking Nazis in the Adenauer's administration during the Eichmann trial.

Internet censorship vs hegemony

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

During the 2025 US/Zionist attack, Iran selectively shut down targeted services to disrupt protest organizing. This year, however, Iran forced a complete Internet blackout, according to Schneier, who views this as part of an Iranian strategy to promote two-tiered access to the Internet, one tier would be unfettered access for the regime officials and reliable supporters; everyone else gets highly-restricted access. According to the article:
The implementation includes such things as “white SIM cards“: special mobile lines issued to government officials, security forces, and approved journalists that bypass the state’s filtering apparatus entirely.'
Unfortunately, the left has learned to substitute social media for democratically-operated coalitions. Most left organization today cannot function without Internet apps and services.

1 more annotation...

How aligned are the U.S. and Israel’s goals in Iran? – Mondoweiss

UJS heeft niks te winnen, Tethan alles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shared by dan maertens, like and 1 save total

But Freilich is right to be worried. Israel’s standing in the American public’s view has soured badly, and now, a second consecutive American president is staring at huge political losses due to his blind support of monstrous, unpopular Israeli policies.
For the U.S., Iran has been a symbol of anti-Americanism, and a global villain since 1979. The so-called “leading state sponsor of terrorism” is a useful political target, but it hardly poses a real threat to the United States from the other side of the world.
Israel sees Iran as the engine that drives opposition to its regional ambitions and provides the backing—and, not incidentally, the weapons—for the Palestinian armed resistance.
The idea that American and Israeli interests are the same withers even further when we examine the different visions for the Middle East region. The U.S. generally wants stability. That keeps markets calm and maintains the flow of Middle Eastern resources out of the region and into western corporate hands.
But Israel seeks regional hegemony, not through partnerships, but through force and threats. This is apparent in its refusal to engage diplomatically with the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (which offered full normalization with entire Arab League in exchange for Israel accepting a deal based on the parameters of the two-state solution), and its refusal to seriously consider accommodation on the issue of its occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians in exchange for a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia. Only when an Arab state essentially makes peace without Israel giving ground on Palestinian rights will Israel accept a peace deal. That was the case with Egypt, Jordan, and the most recent “Abraham Accords” agreements.
Israel does not prioritize regional stability. On the contrary, its entire existence is predicated on the insecurity of its Jewish citizens and the sympathy that insecurity garners from supporters—Jewish and non-Jewish—around the world.
This did not find favor in Washington. Shortly after Lapid’s tweet, Israel tested the American response to an attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure by striking oil refineries in Tehran, filling the air with toxins for dozens of miles around.
The U.S. response was quick and clear. Lindsey Graham, in a rare criticism of Israel, rebuked Tel Aviv, tweeting, “Please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
But Netanyahu and Israeli leadership more broadly are nothing if not tactical. They surely understand that destroying Iran’s oil fields would not only cripple the Islamic Republic, but it would also make it very difficult for any government, no matter how friendly to the west, to rebuild Iran’s economy.
That is not a recipe for the stability that Trump, and his allies in the Gulf monarchies, desire. That’s a recipe for chaos and a failed state. Much smaller states in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq produced some of the most radical groups and an enormous amount of regional conflict as a result of war ripping their governments apart. A failed Iran would be much worse.
That does not serve American interests, and leads to another major divergence of interests. This was on display when Trump discussed finding someone in Iran he considered “a good leader” in Iran while Israeli defense Minister Israel Katz bluntly stated that no matter who Iran chose, Israel would mark them for assassination.
Both countries wanted a regime change war, but the visions for how that would come about were not the same.
Even Netanyahu would surely not want to try to predict where the mercurial, and often confused and ill-informed, American president will land on ending the war. But if it ends soon, whether Israel or the United States want to admit it publicly or not, this war will have been a dismal failure.
But it will also emerge with a leader in Mojtaba Khamenei who will both honor much of his father’s legacy and act in a more hardline manner. Mojtaba is very close to the Revolutionary Guard, and opposes engagement with the west, preferring a more militant stance.
Whatever the merits of his positions may be, Mojtaba Khamenei’s argument has been bolstered by American betrayal in twice launching surprise attacks on Iran when negotiations were not only ongoing but making progress.
lost his wife, one of his children, his mother, and one of his sisters as well as his father in the recent American and Israeli attacks. He is not likely to be inclined toward sympathy for Israeli or American concerns
Iran will rebuild its missile stockpile and will, even more easily, replenish its supply of drones. Under Mojtaba Khamenei it will certainly reinforce its relationships with the various pro-Iran militias in the region.
Finally, much of the support for developing a nuclear weapon came from the IRGC. The fatwa from Ali Khamenei kept this from becoming more than a theoretical debate publicly and it is not known what Mojtaba’s view is on this question. But he now has the power to reverse his father’s fatwa, and the attacks by the nuclear-armed U.S. and Israel strongly bolster the logic that says Iran cannot deter future attacks without nuclear weapons. The example of North Korea, weighed against the examples of Iraq and Libya, are strong arguments.
Thus, from Israel’s point of view, ending the war now is a frightening prospect. The new Supreme Leader would be emboldened as well by the fact that the Iranian state structure remained fully intact throughout this massive bombardment. The anti-government sentiment that led to the massive protests in Iran would still be there, and, given the additional strain on the economy, might even grow. But they will be much more vulnerable to accusations of emboldening the United States to strike Iran, especially given how heavily both Trump and Netanyahu leaned on the “liberate the people of Iran from the Islamic Republic” rhetoric leading up to, and even during the war.
Israel knows they need to destroy the Iranian government to win this war. But they are not going to be able to do it from the air. And they certainly cannot do it without the United States’ direct participation; that is why they had not struck Iran before. But the resistance in the U.S. to a ground invasion is, if anything, even stronger than it was before the war was started.
There was never a good reason for the United States to start this war. There is no outcome, even in the best case scenario for American war planners, that any U.S. interest is enhanced. Even if the regime change operation was successful, the damage to the U.S.’ standing in the world, the impact on the global economy, and the unpredictability in the Gulf will negate whatever staged victory lap Trump can take.
But right now, the trajectory of the war is not what Netanyahu wants. Iran is successfully raising the cost of attacking it, and, if the Islamic Republic weathers this storm, the likelihood of future American military action will be significantly diminished. That’s meaningful, considering how every prior American president refused to engage in this misadventure.
If Trump chooses the exit ramp, whether he claims victory or not, Iran will still have its missiles, its regional partners, its oil, and an even more hardline Supreme Leader who has been given every reason in the world to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Trump can hide much of that and declare victory. But even with the censorship that has gotten much worse in Israel, Netanyahu will not be able to spin this as a win.
American and Israeli interests, contrary to Freilich’s implications, were not the same to start this war. They are even more divergent now.

23 more annotations...

Show more items

Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »

Join Diigo

Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the full story.

Turning tutorials into step-by-step instructions