The Israel Lobby’s Changing Fortunes

A follow-up to Mearsheimer and Walt shows a project in flux.

Scott McConnell

Oct 17, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-israel-lobbys-changing-fortunes/

A natural question to ask about Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick’s Israel’s Lobby is how it differs from the magisterial work of similar name published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt nearly 20 years ago. Certainly its entry into the American debate is less dramatic: Mearsheimer and Walt’s work had behind it the force of taboo-breaking, taking on a subject which had been more whispered about than debated for two generations. Despite a massive campaign to denigrate their work by the lobby’s many allies in the mainstream media (I believe The American Conservative was the only American print publication to give it a positive review), Mearsheimer and Walt’s book became not only a best-seller but a genuine international publishing sensation. 

Though it wasn’t obvious at the time, Mearsheimer and Walt’s book appeared at a moment when there was still a clear open path towards a moderate future, sanctioned by a strong international consensus. This was true both for the American-Israeli relationship (they urged that America treat Israel like a normal country, while maintaining a moral commitment to defend it) and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (they favored a two-state solution). The Iraq War, pushed relentlessly by Benjamin Netanhayu and other Israeli officials, and in great part the project of small group of passionately pro-Israel neoconservatives in American journalism and government, was already in the rearview mirror. The two authors cheered the birth of new liberal Zionist institutions like J Street, created to encourage United States support for a more moderate Israel at peace with its neighbors. 

Clifton and Lustick’s impressive follow-up does not, to say the least,  arrive at such a propitious time. Lustick is an accomplished Ivy-League political scientist who has produced important work on how ethnically driven conflicts can be managed or resolved. Clifton is a Quincy Institute co-founder and journalist who belongs to the cohort of American millennials who grew up when it was no longer outlandish to question the moral correctness of Zionism. Their book arrives as an erratic American president has started, at Israel’s behest, a war against the largest and most highly educated country in the Mideast, and oscillates between uttering threats of genocide and claims that the war is already won. On the home front it has become almost shockingly commonplace for entertainers and college students alike to shout slogans that call implicitly or explicitly for the destruction of Israel, something unimaginable 20 years ago.  Meanwhile Israel, in response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, has conducted a brutal campaign against Gaza’s defenseless civilians that is often described as a genocide and is indisputably a project of ethnic cleansing. Israel’s lobby today is both similar and quite different from the one Walt and Mearsheimer described. Is it stronger or weaker? Some of both certainly, and while it may be weaker overall, it is clearly dangerous the way all wounded creatures are. 

Of the many elements which have changed since 2007, three stand out. The main institutions of the lobby, always wealthy relative to their opponents and competitors, are far richer. Israel itself has changed. Its commitment to peace with the Palestinians, if in the past more advertised than actual, has been completely submerged; no Israeli leader of consequence even pretends to want a settlement with the people who inhabit the land Israel now controls, and the country’s policy of seeking outright military domination of its entire region, though challenged by many Israeli former officials and scholars, faces no substantial political opposition. And finally, in a point emphasized by Clifton and Lustick, its lobby has more or less abandoned efforts to explain or justify Israeli policies, to convince Americans of their necessity and appropriateness. Instead increasingly Israel’s supporters in the United States seek to conflate any opposition to Israel and American support for it with antisemitism. 

That is to say, to challenge seriously  Washington’s special relationship with Israel is presented as a major moral failing, the kind of mark which would place one beyond the pale of respectable discourse. And while these three developments make Israel as influential as ever in  Washington and particularly within the Trump administration, its actual popularity among voters, particularly among Democrats and the young of both parties, has sunk like a stone.  

In a key section, the authors document how in the last generation America has seen  the greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich. The percentage share of national wealth held by the top 0.1 percent rose by two-thirds. Meanwhile, two court decisions from 2010 have made it much easier for billionaires to buy national policies to their liking. 

As pro-Israel think tank and advocacy money rose, so did Israel-related campaign and advocacy group contributions. When Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was decided in 2010, no one anticipated it would weigh critically on American Mideast policy. The decision struck down limitations on campaign spending by unions and corporations, and in conjunction with the consequences of the SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision, opened the gates for increased spending by the super rich. Individual campaign spending limitations, $1,000 until 2003, later raised to roughly $3,000, suddenly became almost irrelevant as ultra wealthy individual donors began to dispense virtually unlimited funds to support or oppose  candidates through so-called superPACs. 

In principle this enhanced capacity of billionaires to buy policies of their choosing was available to anyone; in practice those passionate about supporting Israel used it the most effectively. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, virtually unknown before 2012, became the most important donors in the Republican Party. They spent more than $100 million on mostly losing candidates in 2012, but “forced the relatively niche issue of Israel into the Republican primary and general election discourse and normalized the idea of political megadonors across party lines, no longer restricted by campaign finance laws, largely underwriting campaigns.” 

It wasn’t just the Adelsons of course; scores of Israel-First billionaires joined them with more power to shape American policy than ever before. As Clifton and Lustick put it, “These donors form the backbone of an Israel First movement which crosses party lines…. The donors are funding both the election of politicians as well as shaping the world view of these same elected officials, creating an echo chamber of pro-Israel talking points and policy recommendations for politicians already indebted to pro-Israel donors.” To give a sense of the rising volume of the echo chamber, the authors track the exponential rise in the budgets of pro-Israel advocacy groups. AIPAC had $19.5 million in assets in 2000, nine times that amount in 2023. Similar advances were made by the Washington Institute for Mideast Policy and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the most influential Beltway group pushing for war with Iran, increased its revenues 16-fold from 2011 to 2022. 

As its American lobby has grown richer, Israel too has changed considerably. Until the last 15 years, most Israeli leaders at least paid lip-service to making a durable peace with the Palestinians, and some believed peace as necessary for Israel’s own flourishing. But no Israeli prime minister since Ehud Olmert has breathed a word about trying to accommodate Palestinian national aspirations. The authors consider this a profound shift; Israel, they claim with a borrowed phrase from an Israeli political scientist, has become a “crazy state,” increasingly dismissive of the legitimate interests and opinions of other countries. 

Along the way they  provide an unexpected, quite complimentary digression about  Vladimir Jabotinsky, an early right-wing Zionist leader and popularizer of the so-called Iron Wall strategy; its point was to win battles so forcefully as make Arabs realize they had no hope of destroying Israel and would have to accept it in the region. But such acceptance by Arabs was actually a goal, and a corollary of the Iron Wall doctrine was that Israel should not go out of its way to kill Arab civilians. Many times ignored, such scruples did exist in principle. 

Today they do not. Replacing them is a near hysteric view of Palestinian resistance. As Clifton and Lustick put it, “Palestinian resistance was understood as illegitimate, evidence of intransigence, and often as akin to Nazi antisemitism.” This justified a ramp-up in the brutality of Israeli tactics, as Palestinian enmity came to be understood as “pathological and ineradicable” and such Israeli measures as mass imprisonment, breaking the bones of protesting children, and torture of prisoners became commonplace.

This transformation in Israel had a parallel shift in the lobby’s accelerating efforts to police Israel-related discourse in the United States. In the early 2000s, the former Soviet dissident and right wing Israeli politician Natan Sharansky began to push the idea of a “new antisemitism” which would include any statement which “demonized” or “delegitimized” Israel or held it to a “double standard.” Activists following his lead soon persuaded a minor organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, to adopt a definition of antisemitism incorporating these notions, and then pressed governments and institutions to embrace the “widely accepted” IHRA working definition. In a campaign that unfolded over years, Israel advocates eventually got the Obama State Department to incorporate the definition in an annual report. By 2018 the Trump Department of Education had adopted it, and would eventually use it as a weapon to punish pro-Palestinian academics and students at American universities. The authors provide a detailed account of the new definition’s rise and codification, a fascinating window into the nuts and bolts and high stakes of what might at first glance have seemed a somewhat niche academic debate. 

Despite these efforts, the lobby has clearly become less able to police the American discourse than it was 20 or 40 years ago. Israel’s poll numbers are bad, particularly among younger Americans. The lobby hopes that by gaining control of such internet platforms as TikTok, such opinion shifts can be reversed. (Oracle’s CEO is quoted in a hacked email telling an Israeli leader, “We have to embed the love and respect for Israel in American culture.”) It is difficult to see that happening; a great part of pro-Israeli argument now increasingly rests on such claims as “God Gave Us This Land,” which is likely to be less persuasive to a diverse and fairly secular America than snappy catchphrases popular in the 1950s like “a land without a people for a people without a land.” 

Meanwhile, in genuinely stunning political developments, candidates far more anti-Zionist than Walt and Mearsheimer have been able to win major elections in New York City and potentially in Michigan. 

At the same time, the last several months have been a very cold shower for people who thought the Israel lobby was no longer an extremely consequential voice when Washington decided matters of war and peace. No one seriously expected that President Donald Trump would try to deliver a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, which he clearly had no real interest in, and which relatively few Palestinians or Israelis seemed ready for. But it was also assumed that assuring, with American military might, Israel’s  complete dominance of the Mideast was not part of an America First agenda. Trump had displayed a great deal of bravado in 2015, mocking the Adelsons’ lavish support of Marco Rubio while boasting that he didn’t need their money. In 2024, it turned out that he did. 

The man who had famously denounced the Iraq war in a Republican debate and campaigned explicitly against more stupid wars would, in office a second time, turn to Benjamin Netanyahu as his most consequential foreign policy advisor and satisfy the yearnings for an American war against Iran which Netanyahu—and all the voices in the Israel lobby echo chamber—had sought for a generation. It is this unexpected and calamitous development, this demonstration that even an America First candidate could be maneuvered into a costly war by Israel and its lobby, that has rendered the more extreme slogans of the anti-Israel left—“Free Palestine” etc.—less noxious than they seemed a  generation ago. 

Clifton and Lustick have written an important, extremely well-researched book, which tries to capture in motion a vast and complex phenomenon which is very much in flux, and whose fortunes are changing nearly month to month. They are to some degree men of the left, and some of their formulations—putting “woke” in scare quotes or describing the AfD, the German anti-immigration party that is one of the largest antiwar parties in Europe,  as “Nazi adjacent”—will seem lazy, at best, to most TAC readers. And perhaps a less progressive treatment would have noted the irony of both the lobby and the Trump administration borrowing heavily from tropes of the woke era in their efforts to portray Jewish college students as made to “feel uncomfortable” and “unsafe” by student protests against Israeli brutalities. 

But it cannot be denied that it is the American Left, not the Right, that has taken the lead in trying to free the United States from, as the authors call it in their book’s subtitle, “the grip of a foreign power.”  For that  it, and the authors, deserve commendation.

US Ambassador Holds Secret Opposition Meeting as Poll Shows Netanyahu Trailing

October 15, 2026

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-ambassador-holds-secret-opposition-meeting-as-poll-shows-netanyahu-trailing/

Secret Meeting With Eisenkot

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee held a previously undisclosed meeting with Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot in the run-up to the October 27 Knesset elections, Israel’s public broadcaster reported Thursday.

The meeting took place in recent days and was the first and only encounter between Huckabee and the Yashar party leader, according to the broadcaster. It did not disclose the location or date.

Citing a source familiar with the discussion, the report said the two addressed security issues, including tensions in the occupied West Bank, violence by illegal Israeli Jewish settlers and the situation in Gaza.

Neither Huckabee nor Eisenkot’s office publicly announced the meeting. Yashar declined to comment, according to the broadcaster.

Netanyahu Meeting Canceled

The broadcaster separately reported that a scheduled meeting between Huckabee and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was canceled at the last minute.

An informed source attributed the cancellation to Netanyahu but provided no explanation. No new date has been set.

The disclosures come amid scrutiny of Washington’s position ahead of the closely contested election.

Netanyahu has repeatedly promoted his relationship with President Donald Trump, who has praised him over the years. Trump, however, had not announced support for either Netanyahu or Eisenkot in the upcoming vote.

Poll Shows Opposition Ahead

A Channel 12 poll published Monday projected 67 seats for the opposition bloc in the 120-member Knesset, compared with 49 for Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

A minimum of 61 seats is needed to form a government.

Eisenkot’s Yashar party led the poll with 23 projected seats, ahead of Likud’s 20. Asked whom they preferred as prime minister, 45% chose Eisenkot and 35% chose Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has led the current government since December 2022, heading a coalition widely described as the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

He also faces a domestic trial involving charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Separately, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024 over suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s genocide in Gaza since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures cited in the report.

How the Red Sea came to the brink of a new regional war

A war between Ethiopia and Eritrea would not be isolated this time, and would likely draw in regional powers

Sean Mathews

Published date: 9 October 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-red-sea-came-brink-new-regional-war

Overconfident.

That is how best to describe the mood in the capitals of Ethiopia and Eritrea as the two neighbours slide to the verge of an all-out war that risks dragging in outside powers and destabilising the Red Sea, which is already convulsed by wars in Sudan and Yemen. 

The chances of a regional war are higher than containing the conflict because people close to decision-makers on both sides are making calculations based on their foes' perceived weaknesses and discounting their own vulnerabilities. 

“All the leaders in the region say ‘we don’t want a regional war’, but that doesn’t prevent us from walking backwards into one,” Cameron Hudson, an Africa analyst and former CIA official, told Middle East Eye.

There are three levels to this conflict: Ethiopia's internal fissures, historic tensions with Eritrea, and the enabling role Middle Eastern powers are playing. 

From Ethiopia, to Eritrea and the Middle East

The core issue is a fight among Ethiopia’s ethnic groups over their country’s government. This is complex because Ethiopia has 80 ethnic groups. The main ones are Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan, Somali, and Afar. Some of them have their own well-armed militias.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is trying to change Ethiopia's government from one based on ethnic federalism to a more centralised system of rule. 

The hostilities began after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an Ethiopian rebel group, went on the offensive in September, vowing to topple Prime Minister Ahmed's government. TPLF’s early gains included taking control of the Tigray capital Mekelle. But they were quickly reversed by Ethiopia's government forces. 

The second level of the conflict is a longstanding rivalry between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

After WWII, Eritrea, once an Italian colony, was federated with Ethiopia, and in 1962, it was unilaterally annexed by Addis Ababa. After a three-decade-long insurgency, Eritrea became independent in 1993 under a United Nations referendum.

The two neighbours actually joined forces to fight against the TPLF in Ethiopia’s 2020-2022 civil war, but have generally had hostile relations. Ethiopia has made revisionist claims about acquiring Eritrea’s Red Sea coast, and Eritrea has supported militias inside Ethiopia opposed to the federal government.

Addis Ababa this week accused Eritrea of sending thousands of troops across the border to support the TPLF.

Multiple current and former US, EU and African officials tell MEE that Eritrean troops have entered Tigray where they are partaking in fighting. Ethiopia launched drone strikes on the Eritrean troops on Wednesday and Thursday, according to monitoring group ACLED.

Eritrea and Ethiopia last fought a war from 1998 to 2000. The conflict was bloody but largely contained. Now, a war between the two would likely pull in regional powers that did not have a stake in the fighting two decades ago.

Ethiopia is close to the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Addis Ababa has received drones and weapons systems from the UAE. Eritrea suspects Israel and the UAE would back a push by Addis Ababa to take its Red Sea coastline, hoping to gain access to a strategic sliver of that territory.

Eritrea has forged close ties with Somalia, Egypt and the Sudanese Armed Forces. All these countries oppose Abiy Ahmed’s government. Eritrea has also been moving closer to Saudi Arabia, which has diverged with the UAE over African hotspots such as Sudan and Somaliland.

Formal declaration of war anticipated 

Ethiopia and Eritrea have shuttered their respective embassies this week.

Ethiopia may issue a formal declaration of war against Eritrea in the coming days, a former senior European official with knowledge of the matter told MEE.

In a letter sent to the UN on Thursday, Ethiopia accused Eritrea of “a blatant act of aggression that engages Ethiopia’s inherent right to self-defense”.

“Eritrea is the aggressor, Ethiopia is the victim. Eritrea is violating Ethiopia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Addis Ababa said.

For its part, Eritrea has shot back.

“Ethiopia has in essence declared a war of aggression against Eritrea when its prime minister announced to his Parliament on 13 October 2023 that his regime will acquire ‘sovereign access to the sea’, through negotiations if possible and by force if necessary,” Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said on Friday.

Tekeda Alemu, a career Ethiopian diplomat and former ambassador to the UN, told MEE that the two countries were already effectively at war.

“It’s very clear Eritreans have penetrated deep into Ethiopian territory. We are in the midst of war, even though it hasn’t been declared. The war is going on,” he said.

So far, Ethiopian Federal troops have performed well in the conflict. But the TPLF has shown it has the ability to regenerate, as it effectively forced federal forces out of Tigray in 2020 after being driven into the mountains by them. 

'Formidable alliance'

One twist to the conflict is the internal situation in Ethiopia. In September, the TPLF announced an alliance with six other armed Ethiopian groups that say their goal is to overthrow Abiy’s Ahmed government.

This alliance includes Fano, a militia made up of Amharas. This group has long seen themselves as the custodians of Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic state. The last emperor of Ethiopia, US-ally Haile Selassie, was Amhara, as were the main leaders of the Derg, the Soviet Union-backed Marxist junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1975-1991. The TPLF ruled Ethiopia from the collapse of the Derg until 2018, when Abiy Ahmed took office. 

Not all members of these ethnic groups back the alliance to overthrow Abiy Ahmed, who has tapped into Oromo nationalism, his own ethnic group. But Oromos also oppose Abiy Ahmed. The Oromo Liberation Army is part of the alliance to topple his government.

Alemu said that this alliance can’t be discounted.

“What is not clear is what the alliance is intending to do. They haven’t begun to start a full-scale war. The alliance can not be brushed aside. It is formidable, as is the government side,” he told MEE.

Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of orchestrating the alliance to oust Abiy Ahmed. While Asmara denies this, Eritrean officials who spoke to MEE warned of the dangers the alliance poses to Abiy Ahmed.

But analysts say the alliance might be over-hyped.

“The TPLF has overestimated themselves. They also overestimated the support they’d receive from Amharas and Oromos in this alliance,” an analyst in Addis Ababa, who spoke with MEE on condition of anonymity, said.

The former senior western official told MEE that Abiy Ahmed may have welcomed the TPLF’s uprising in September because it brought simmering tensions with Eritrea to a head, giving him the opportunity to finally push towards the Red Sea. A US official in the region familiar with the decision-making in the Horn of Africa concurred with that assessment.

“The Eritreans have moved preemptively. The question is, have they fallen into a trap?” The former western official said. “Ethiopia will not only confront the Eritreans with ground forces, but they will launch aerial attacks on Eritrea. If the Ethiopian army moves, it will be in order to go to Asmara and Assab. They will not stop at the frontier."

Sirak Kifle, an Eritrean analyst who regularly speaks with officials in Asmara, told MEE that Ethiopia has long wanted an excuse to push towards the Red Sea. “Abiy is aiming at the ports of Eritrea,” he told MEE.

He added that the TPLF was still an effective fighting force that can’t be discounted. “Addis Ababa has brought around 400,000 soldiers into Tigray. So, it’s not difficult to fight the TPLF in the short term but is that sustainable?” he asked.

Cameron Hudson said Ethiopian federal forces are in better condition now than they were during the last conflict.

“Ethiopia has a ripping economy, a ton of money and deep-pocketed allies in the UAE and Israel. Abiy Ahmed has learned from the last war in Tigray and the numbers are on his side,” he said.

The regional actors

This is where the regional alliances come back into play. If Ethiopia moves out of Tigray and attempts to capture Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline, it will hit the Horn of Africa like a tsunami. 

Ethiopia and Egypt are long-time rivals. Cairo has grown more concerned about Ethiopia since it completed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Addis Ababa is now moving to build new dams on the Nile River that Cairo says threaten its national security. Egypt is also wary of Ethiopia acquiring a naval presence in the Red Sea.

Somalia and Ethiopia also have a difficult relationship. Mogadishu was unnerved by Ethiopia’s flirtation with recognising the Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway state acknowledged only by Israel.

Ethiopia is also deeply intertwined in Sudan’s civil war. Addis Ababa supports the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia backed by the UAE that has been accused of committing genocide. Eritrea and Ethiopia both back the Sudanese Armed Forces. The TPLF is also fighting alongside the Sudanese army against the RSF.

The network of states that would oppose an Ethiopian advance towards the Red Sea - Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea - all met in the Egyptian city of El Alamein on Sunday. The countries agreed to coordinate military and intelligence efforts if the war in Tigray expands, Reuters reported.

“This war is still a tussle over Tigray. It is one step away from becoming a war over the Red Sea,” the former senior western official said.

Thousands rally across Colombia against West Jerusalem embassy move

Students and activists marched through Bogota waving Palestinian flags, condemning President Abelardo de la Espriella's decision to restore diplomatic ties with Israel.

October 14, 2026

https://www.trtworld.com/article/df1376201369

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Colombia to condemn Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and the government's decision to open an embassy in West Jerusalem, marking a major shift in the country's foreign policy.

In the capital, Bogota, hundreds of students, social movement activists and other demonstrators marched through the streets waving Palestinian flags and denouncing President Abelardo de la Espriella's decision to restore diplomatic relations with Israel.

The demonstrations were part of a nationwide mobilisation against the conservative president's foreign and domestic policies, particularly his efforts to strengthen ties with Israel.

Protesters carried banners reading "We are not your backyard" and chanted slogans including "Zionists out, Abelardo out."

The protests coincided with the official opening of Colombia's embassy in West Jerusalem on Wednesday, reversing the previous administration's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Israel.

De la Espriella, who took office in August, restored ties that former President Gustavo Petro had cut in 2024 over Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.

His administration also reinstated a free trade agreement with Israel that had been suspended under Petro.

Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula attended the embassy's inauguration ceremony in West Jerusalem, describing the move as a step towards strengthening bilateral relations.

Bula said diplomatic relations between the two countries "should never have been broken."

"Israel is a strategic partner. It always has been, and from now on, it will be an even stronger one," he said.

The embassy opening represented "a concrete step towards fully restoring bilateral relations," he added.

Palestinian officials condemned the inauguration, warning that the decision undermined international law and damaged Colombia's longstanding diplomatic position on the Palestinian cause.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry also condemned the move, calling it a “blatant violation of international law and relevant international resolutions.”

 

THEY WILL NOT SILENCE CRITICISM AND THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL AND THE UNITED STATES

Google has announced a “new content policy” for Blogger—that is, for the millions of us who use the platform to disseminate ideas and information, and to criticize the powerful figures of the world who seek to continue exploiting it for their own benefit.

In this new “policy,” Google states that it will censor anyone who distributes “misleading content related to harmful conspiracy theories”—content which, according to Google, “has been debunked with solid evidence and has caused or incites violence.”

This is clearly aimed at the evidence suggesting that Israel and its intelligence services were behind the “false flag” attacks of 9/11; at the increasingly well-documented hypotheses regarding a conspiracy behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy; and even at the questions surrounding the Israeli “hero plumber” who supposedly “saved” passengers on a Fly Dubai flight from a “terrorist attack.”

Google will also censor “known violent movements and non-governmental organizations”—that is, any groups that Israel or the United States deem too critical, or that challenge the genocidal and expansionist policies of those two nations.

Google intends to establish various other restrictions, many of which align with existing international laws and regulations concerning copyright, child sexual exploitation and abuse, dangerous or illegal activities, and so on.

The reality, however, is that Israel and the United States have lost the battle over the narrative—and have lost the support of the global public—due to the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing it is carrying out in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its war crimes against the Lebanese people. In the context of the illegal war waged by Israel and the United States against Iran, both Tel Aviv and Washington are seeking ways to control—and, above all, censor—social media, to prevent the discrediting of Israel and the United States from becoming absolute.

Consider the acquisition of TikTok and Warner by the Zionist Ellisons; consider the statements by the criminal Netanyahu, who pointed out that the “eighth front”—perhaps the most important one for Israel to fight—is that of social media and the mass media; consider Trump, who attacks every media outlet and journalist that calls out his excesses, corruption, and war crimes.

Google—along with Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others—is part of the entire Israeli *hasbara* (propaganda) apparatus, designed to whitewash the image of the rogue, genocidal, apartheid State of Israel.

Yet, they will not succeed, because it is becoming increasingly clear to the world that Israel and its lackey, the United States, are on a path toward the destruction of the international community—all with the aim of maintaining their dominance through terror, intimidation, manipulation, and economic exploitation.

As for this blog, it will continue to disseminate critiques and the TRUTH about those governments and elites—subservient to international Zionism—that seek to maintain global dominance through force, coercion, lies, and deception.

Should this blog be censored for maintaining this editorial stance, we will seek other platforms to continue spreading the TRUTH.

For remember: THE TRUTH SHALL SET US FREE.

Israel’s New – and Terrifying – Security Doctrine

by Trita Parsi | Oct 13, 2026

https://tritaparsi.substack.com/p/israels-new-and-terrifying-security

If you read one thing today, make sure it is this:

In a stunning piece published by the head of one of Israel’s most prominent think tanks, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman describes the reality of Israel’s new security doctrine:

A few crucial principles he describes:

1. The United States is a “declining power” and, given its ongoing social and political shifts, will soon abandon Israel in any event. This is compelling Israel to move toward greater self-reliance in order to avoid “excessive dependence” on the US since it “exposes Israel to the influence of a progressive American value system that is incompatible with Israel’s Jewish character.”

Then he concludes: “Severing ties with the United States is therefore not only inevitable, but essential to Israel’s independence and the resilience of its Jewish national identity.”

2. Primacy of Jewish Identity over Democracy: The state’s Jewish identity takes precedence over its democratic system of government.

3. Peace as a Means Rather Than an End: “A meaningful peace agreement is unattainable in the Middle East, as peace agreements are merely technical and temporary arrangements requiring constant reassessment. According to this view, peace is not an intrinsic value that generates security, but a means of achieving other policy objectives.”

4. “Rejection of the Independent Existence of Arab States: The underlying premise is that most Arab states are not genuine nation-states, but collections of tribes and ethnic groups lacking a shared history and a foundational national vision. Consequently, undermining their stability is viewed as a natural process, one that Israel can manage more effectively than it can contend with strong nation-states, and one that it should even encourage.”

5. “War as a Foundational State: War is essential to national security and cannot be replaced by a state of peace, which, as noted, is merely a means rather than an end…. War is necessary, and preventive war is preferable because it secures a significant achievement at the outset.”

6. “Absolute Priority for Initiative and Offense over Defense: Preemptive, surprise strikes are viewed as the only way to achieve victory, giving offense precedence over defense.”

And there’s more.

Important to note that Hayman does not advocate for this. Rather, he contends that this already is the new security doctrine of Israel.

He is describing reality as he sees it. And that reality simply is not compatible with a US or Western alliance with Israel – unless the West transforms into a similar entity that treats war as a permanent and desirable state of being.

Read the full piece here:

https://www.inss.org.il/publication/new-concept/

Mike Huckabee Should Resign

The Milstein scandal shows the ambassador undercutting American policy and the express wishes of the president.

Jason Jones

Oct 10, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mike-huckabee-must-resign/

The New York Times reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s senior adviser, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report and obstructed efforts by our elected representatives in Congress to obtain information. That in itself is a scandal—but it’s the gravity of the information in question that makes this story rise to the level of demanding immediate and formal accountability to American citizens. 

In March, U.S. senators wrote to Huckabee demanding answers about American citizens killed in the West Bank since January 2022. Among them were the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and Amer Rabee, who was just 14 years old. The senators said no one had been held accountable.

This cannot stand. These bereaved families cannot be asked to accept an embassy accused of actively working against their interests in order to protect the reputation of a foreign government whose soldiers and settlers killed their loved ones. And as their fellow Americans, none of the rest of us will accept it either.

No, Mike Huckabee must resign. And if he refuses, President Donald Trump must remove him from office.

The Times report cites 15 U.S. officials and dozens of documents, collectively pointing to a sustained effort to sanitize reporting about the government of the corrupt and unpopular Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The conspiracy went on despite officials elsewhere in the Trump administration—including the president himself—expressing opposition to Netanyahu’s increasingly radical actions. Milstein allegedly blocked a warning that settlement expansion could violate Trump’s opposition to West Bank annexation. Reporting on Israeli inaction against settler violence was at one point replaced with a propagandistic cable praising a crackdown.

This is much more than office politics. These are matters of life and death. When Washington receives a false picture of violence, the people enduring it lose another chance of protection in a region where time is now of the essence. Whether whole communities will remain in the land where they have lived for centuries can depend on their interests being accurately relayed to the rest of the world. Some of those communities are the ancient Christian towns of the Holy Land, where they have worshiped since the time of Christ’s ministry there. 

But thanks to the corruption and double-dealing of Huckabee’s office, when our elected representatives asked about dead American citizens, we were denied a full accounting. Even more concretely: That means families lost access to justice—and to the rights afforded to us all as American citizens.

Huckabee denies the allegations, of course, expecting far more sympathy than he has any right to expect. While he claims to have no knowledge of the scandal, officials who spoke to the Times described instances when he helped suppress or recast reporting and others when he restrained Milstein—which, far from exonerating the ambassador, only suggests to me that he was that much more familiar with his aide’s mischief.

And “mischief” is hardly the word for some of the downright sinister actions now being revealed to the public. Responsible Statecraft reported last year that an embassy cable warning of looming famine in Gaza never reached Washington; Milstein instead sent favorable reporting about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Consider what that means for a hungry child: His suffering can become invisible to the very officials with the power to intervene.

Milstein, the stepson of neoconservative talk show host Mark Levin, also circulated a wedding invitation seeking cash gifts from a guest list including Israelis. Huckabee’s very mature response to the scrutiny included calling the reporting outlet, POLITICO, “Politicrap.” An ambassador entrusted with American lives should be capable of answering serious questions with the seriousness they deserve.

Perhaps if this were the first mark against Huckabee’s character and competence, I would be writing a different column. But there have been many red flags—failures of judgment that extend far beyond Milstein. 

In July 2025, Huckabee hosted the infamous convicted traitor and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Pollard had served 30 years for his misdeeds. The White House said it had no advance knowledge of the secret meeting. Huckabee later said he personally approved it. An ambassador willing to receive a man who betrayed American intelligence should show at least as much solicitude for the families of Americans killed abroad.

He also regularly lashes out at those—including foreign dignitaries—who oppose Israeli policies. And not just any Israeli policies, but the most contentious Israeli actions of all, including its internationally condemned backing of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

When Irish officials considered restricting trade with Israeli settlements, Huckabee reached for a drunken-Irish stereotype, asked whether they had fallen into a vat of Guinness, and ordered: “Sober up Ireland!” He wanted Ireland to apologize to Israel. American diplomacy had become a vehicle for abusing another country on the settlement movement’s behalf.

Then came his February interview with Tucker Carlson. Asked about a biblical entitlement extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing enormous stretches of neighboring Arab countries, Huckabee said: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

The remark drew a torrent of condemnations from throughout the Arab world, amounting to a serious international diplomatic incident. But Huckabee shrugged it off.

I called for Huckabee’s recall then. The case has only grown stronger.

His posture cannot be excused as loyalty to the administration. Trump has explicitly opposed West Bank annexation, and Vance has reiterated that policy in Israel. An embassy that withholds warnings about violations of that position would be obstructing the president it supposedly serves—to say nothing of the will of the American people, which has increasingly soured on the brutal Netanyahu regime.

The United States needs an ambassador whose concern for Israeli security does not extinguish his concern for everyone else. Huckabee’s tenure has become an obstacle to his own office’s duties. He should go, all records should be preserved, and every allegation should be independently investigated.

The families of nine Palestinian-Americans have already lost someone they love. Neither they nor the rest of us should be asked to sacrifice the truth as well. In order to reassure Americans that our citizenship means something to our government, and that our rights will not be compromised if they run up against the interests of a foreign government, Huckabee must no longer hold any power over the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.