The criminal elite exposed in the Epstein files are burying the truth

Jonathan Cook

5 February 2026

A handful of figures will be sacrificed - but only to protect a wider culture that believes rules don't apply to the ruling elite

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/criminal-elite-exposed-epstein-files-burying-truth

If you struggle to cope with the endless pressure to communicate in an ever-more connected world, spare a thought for the late serial paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 

The flood of three million documents released by the US Department of Justice over the weekend confirm that Epstein spent an inordinate amount of time corresponding with the huge network of powerful acquaintances he had developed. 

Emailing alone looks to have been almost a full-time job for him - and in a real sense, it was.

The personal attention he devoted to billionaires, royalty, political leaders, statesmen, celebrities, academics and media elites was how he kept himself at the heart of this vast network of power. 

His address book was a who’s who of those who shape our sense of how the world ought to be run. But it was also critical to how he drew some of these same powerful figures deeper into his orbit, and into a world of debauched and exploitative private parties in New York and on his Caribbean island. 

Apparently there are another three million documents still being withheld. Their contents, we must presume, are even more damning to the global elite cultivated by Epstein. 

The more documents that come to light, the more a picture emerges of how Epstein was shielded from the consequences of his own depravity by this network of allies who either indulged his crimes, or actively participated in them.

Epstein’s modus operandi looked suspiciously like that of a gangland boss, who requires initiates to take part in a hit before they become fully fledged members of the mob. Complicity is the safest way to guarantee a conspiracy of silence. 

Network of power

It is not just that the late paedophile financier was for decades hiding in plain sight. His network of friends and acquaintances were hiding with him, all assuming they were untouchable. 

His abuse of young women and girls was not just a personal crime. After all, for whom were he and his procurer-in-chief, Ghislaine Maxwell, doing all this sex trafficking?

This is precisely why so many of the millions of documents released have been carefully redacted - not chiefly to protect his victims, who are apparently too often identified, but to protect the predatory circles he serviced. 

What is notable about the latest tranche of Epstein files is how suggestive they are of a worldview associated with “conspiracy theorists”. Epstein was at the centre of a global network of powerful figures from both sides of a supposed - but in reality, largely performative - political divide between the left and right. 

The glue that appears to have bound many of these figures together was their abusive treatment of vulnerable young women and girls. 

Similarly, the photos of rich men with young women suggest that Epstein accumulated, either formally or informally, kompromat - incriminating evidence - that presumably served as potential leverage over them. 

In true Masonic style, his circle of peers appear to have protected each other. Epstein himself certainly benefited from a “sweetheart deal” in Florida in 2008. He ended up being jailed on only two charges of soliciting prostitution - the least serious among a raft of sex trafficking charges - and served a short term, much of it on work release. 

And the mystery of how Epstein, a glorified accountant, financed his fantastically lavish lifestyle - when his schedule seems to have been dominated by emailing chores and hosting sex parties - grows a little less mysterious with every fresh disclosure. 

His cultivation of the super-wealthy and their hangers-on, and the invitations to come to his island to spend time with young women, all smack of the traditional honeytrap famously employed by spy agencies. Most likely, Epstein wasn’t financing all of this himself.

Israel's fingerprints

That should be no surprise. Once again, the fingerprints of intelligence services - particularly Israel’s - are to be found in the latest dump of files. But the clues were there long before. 

There was, of course, his intimate, preternatural bond with Maxwell, whose media tycoon father was exposed after his death as an Israeli agent. And Epstein’s long-standing best buddy, Ehud Barak, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who later served as prime minister, should have been another red flag. 

That partnership featured prominently in a flurry of stories published by Drop Site News last autumn, from an earlier release of the Epstein files. They showed Epstein helping Israel to broker security deals with countries such as Mongolia, Cote d’Ivoire and Russia. 

An active Israeli military intelligence officer, Yoni Koren, was a repeated houseguest at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment between 2013 and 2015. An email also shows Barak asking Epstein to wire funds to Koren’s account.

But the latest release offers additional clues. A declassified FBI document quotes a confidential source as saying Epstein was “close” to Barak and “trained as a spy under him”. 

In an email exchange between the pair in 2018, ahead of a meeting with a Qatari investment fund, Epstein asks Barak to allay potential concerns about their relationship: “you should make clear that i dont work for mossad. :)” 

And in newly released, undated audio, Epstein advises Barak to find out more about US data analysis firm Palantir and meet its founder, Peter Thiel. In 2024, Israel signed a deal with Palantir for AI services to help the Israeli military select targets in Gaza. 

Predictably, these revelations are gaining almost no traction in the establishment media - the very same media whose billionaire owners and career-minded editors once courted Epstein. 

Instead, the media seem much more engrossed by weaker leads that suggest Epstein might have also had connections with Russian security services. 

Faustian pact

There is a reason why the demand for the Epstein files has been so clamorous that even US President Donald Trump had to give in, despite embarrassing revelations for him too. Much of what we see happening in our ever-more debased, corrupt politics appears to defy rational, let alone moral, explanation. 

Western elites have spent two years actively colluding in mass slaughter in Gaza - widely identified by experts as a genocide - and then labelling any opposition to it as antisemitism or terrorism.

Those same elites twiddle their thumbs as the planet burns, refusing to give up their enriching addiction to fossil fuels, even as survey after survey shows global temperatures relentlessly climbing to the point where climate breakdown is inevitable. 

A series of reckless, illegal western wars of aggression in the Middle East, as well as Nato’s long-term goading of Russia into invading Ukraine, have not only destabilised the world, but risk provoking nuclear conflagration.

And despite expert warnings, artificial intelligence is being rushed out with apparently barely a thought given to the unpredictable and likely massive costs to our societies, from eviscerating much of the job market to upending our ability to assess truth. 

The Epstein files proffer an answer. What feels like a conspiracy, they suggest, is indeed a conspiracy - one driven by greed. What was always staring us in the face might actually be correct: there is a steep entry price for being accepted into the West’s tiny power elite, and it involves putting to one side any sense of morality. It requires discarding empathy for anyone outside the in-group.

Maybe a soulless, flesh-eating elite in charge of our societies is less of a caricature than it appears. Maybe the Epstein files have such purchase on our imaginations because they teach us a lesson we already knew, confirming a cautionary tale that predates even the West’s literary canon.

More than 400 years ago, English writer Christopher Marlowe - a contemporary of William Shakespeare - drew on German folk stories to write his play Doctor Faustus, about a scholar who, through the intermediary Mephistopheles, agrees to sell his soul to the devil in return for magical powers. 

Thus was born the Faustian pact, mediated by the Epstein-like figure of Mephistopheles. The great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would revisit this tale 200 years later in his two-part masterwork Faust.

Degenerate logic

Perhaps not surprisingly, however, the media noise over the Epstein files is serving chiefly to drown out a more truthful story struggling to emerge. 

The same elite that once prized Epstein as its ringmaster is now trying to draw our attention away from its complicity in his crimes, to direct it to a few select individuals - notably in the UK, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson. 

The pair hardly count as sacrificial lambs. Nonetheless, they serve the same purpose: to satiate the growing public appetite for retribution.

Meanwhile, the rest of his circle either deny the well-established evidence of their friendships with Epstein or, if cornered, hastily apologise for a brief lapse in judgment - before scurrying for cover.

This is a false reckoning. The Epstein files don’t just show us the dark choices of a few powerful individuals. More significantly, they highlight the degenerate logic of the power structures behind these individuals.

The powerful figures who took Epstein’s Lolita Express to his island; who got “massages” from young, trafficked women and girls; and who casually joked about the abuse these youngsters suffered, are the very same people who quietly helped Israel commit mass slaughter in Gaza - and in some cases, noisily defended its right to do so. 

Are we surprised that those who raised not a whisper of opposition to the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children, and the starvation of hundreds of thousands more, were also those who connived in rituals of abuse against children - or condoned such rituals - far closer to home?

These are the people who required anyone hoping to raise their voice in defence of Gaza’s children to spend their time instead condemning Hamas. These are the people who sought at every turn to discredit the mounting death toll of children by attributing it to Gaza’s “Hamas-run health ministry”. 

These are the people who denied Israel’s targeting of hospitals needed to treat Gaza’s wounded and sick children - and ignored Israel’s mass starvation of the entire population. And these are the people now pretending that Israel’s continuing murder and torture of Gaza’s children amounts to a “peace plan”. 

Neoliberalism and Zionism

Set aside his paedophilia for a moment. Epstein was the ultimate personification of the twin corrupting ideologies of neoliberalism and Zionism, which dominate western societies. That is reason enough why he excelled for so long in their upper reaches.

The ultimate destinations of those ideologies were always going to lead to a genocide in Gaza, and in the years or decades ahead - unless stopped - to a planet-wide nuclear holocaust or climate collapse.

Epstein could serve as a salutary warning of what is so deeply amiss with the West’s political and financial culture. But the wake-up call he represents is now being smothered in his absence as much as it was in his lifetime. 

Neoliberalism is the pursuit of money and power for its own sake, divorced from any higher purpose or social good. Over the last half century, western societies have been encouraged to venerate the billionaire - soon to be trillionaire - class as the ultimate signifier of economic growth and progress, rather than the ultimate marker of a system that has rotted from within. 

Predictably, the super-rich and their hangers-on have been drawn to the advocates of “longtermism”, a movement that justifies the world’s current gross inequalities and injustices - and is resigned to a coming climate and environmental apocalypse as the world’s resources are used up. 

Longtermism argues that humanity’s salvation lies not with reorganising our societies politically and economically in the here and now, but with intensifying those inequalities to achieve longer-term success via a class of Nietzschean Ubermensch, or superior beings. 

A tiny financial elite needs absolute freedom to amass more wealth in search of the solutions - via tech innovations, of course - to overcome the difficulties of surviving on our fragile planet. The rest of us are an impediment to the super-rich’s ability to steer a course to safety.

Ordinary men, women and children must be left on the sinking ship, while the billionaires requisition the lifeboats. In the words of one of longtermism’s gurus, Nick Bostrom, an Oxford University philosopher, what lies ahead is “a giant massacre for man, a small misstep for mankind”. 

To borrow a term from video-gaming, members of the neoliberal elite view the rest of us as non-player characters, or NPCs - the filler characters generated in a game to serve as the background for the actual players. Seen in this larger frame, what does it matter if children suffer, either in Gaza or in the mansions of a billionaire? 

No moral outlier

If this sounds a lot like traditional, “white man’s burden” colonialism, updated for a supposedly post-colonial era, that’s because it is. This helps to explain why neoliberalism pairs so comfortably with another depraved colonial ideology, Zionism. 

Zionism gained ever-more legitimacy in the aftermath of the Second World War, even as it brashly preserved through the postwar era the depraved logic of the very European ethnic nationalisms that had earlier culminated in Nazism. 

Israel, Zionism’s bastard child, not only mirrored Aryan supremacy, but made its own version - Jewish supremacy - respectable. Zionism, like other ugly ethnic nationalisms, demands tribal unity against the Other, values militarism above all else, and constantly seeks territorial expansion, or Lebensraum. 

Is it any surprise that it was Israel that, over many decades, reversed the advances of an international legal system set up precisely to prevent a return to the horrors of the Second World War?

Is it any surprise that it was Israel that carried out a genocide in full view of the world - and that the West not only failed to stop it, but actively colluded in the mass slaughter? 

Is it any surprise that, as Israel has found it harder to conceal the criminal nature of its enterprise, the West has grown more repressive, more authoritarian in crushing opposition to its project?

Is it any surprise that the weapons systems, surveillance innovations and population-control mechanisms that Israel developed and refined for use against Palestinians make it such a prized ally for a western billionaire class looking to use the same technological innovations at home? 

That is why the home secretary of a UK government that threw its weight behind the genocide in Gaza, and defined opposition to it as terrorism, now wants to revive the 18th-century idea of the Panopticon prison, an all-seeing form of incarceration, but in an AI version. In Shabana Mahmood’s words, her Panopticon would ensure that "the eyes of the state can be on you at all times”.

Nearly two decades ago, it became clear that Jeffrey Epstein was a predator. In recent years, it has become impossible to maintain the idea that he was a moral outlier. He distilled and channelled - through depraved forms of sexual gratification - a wider corrupt culture that believes rules don’t apply to special people, to the chosen, to the Ubermensch.

A handful of his most disposable allies will now be sacrificed to satisfy our hunger for accountability. But don’t be fooled: the Epstein culture is still going strong. 

Iran’s Despair Is U.S. Policy

Western sanctions helped kill Iranians’ earlier hopes of their country’s transformation from within.

By Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

February 4, 2026

https://archive.ph/7BoV7#selection-3469.0-3487.82

Something unexpected has begun to surface in the familiar rhythm of Iranian protests: Alongside the chants for freedom and an end to clerical rule, there is now a growing call for U.S. military intervention. What only a year ago would have been considered by many as treason can now openly be heard not only among exiled opposition figures but also from inside the country itself. Whether this sentiment represents a desperate minority, a growing plurality, or merely the loudest echo of despair is difficult to measure. But its very emergence marks a profound shift, suggesting that for some Iranians, desperation now runs so deep that the fear of foreign bombs is being eclipsed by the hopelessness of life in the Islamic Republic.

Perhaps, at first glance, this isn’t surprising. When thousands of people are killed in the span of three days, while the state pulls the plug on the internet and seals the country off from the world’s gaze, calls for outside military intervention may be the natural response to a system that both has grown ever more ruthless and is the root of the Iranian people’s misery.

But if desperation is the obvious answer, it only sharpens the harder question: How, and by whom, were Iranians pushed to a point where they began to look with envy at the fates of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—the prime examples of the disastrous track record of U.S. military interventions?

Clearly, the Iranian theocracy bears primary responsibility for the despair. Even limited demands for reform have been treated as existential threats. The regime has systematically narrowed the space for incremental change, criminalized dissent, and hollowed out the economy through corruption, patronage, and chronic mismanagement.

Yet, while the clerical government is the main culprit, this depth of despair was not produced by it alone. Exiled opposition groups and Western governments have also pursued strategies with the explicit intent to foreclose alternative paths to change and push Iran’s internal political and economic conditions toward collapse. Their pressure campaign helped pauperize the country’s traditional engine of peaceful change: the middle class, particularly middle-class women. In doing so, they have—hand in hand with the most repressive elements of the theocracy—helped transform pressure into paralysis, sabotaging possibilities for peaceful change while betting on rupture instead.

For more than two decades, Iranians have sought—repeatedly and at significant personal risk—to transform the system from within. They turned out in large numbers at the ballot box, organized peacefully, elevated reformist candidates, and mobilized in the streets when those efforts were thwarted. Yet this reform project has failed to register meaningful gains for most Iranians, especially the younger generation. The economy is weaker, political space has contracted, and the atmosphere today is more restrictive than it was under Mohammad Khatami’s presidency. By nearly every measure that matters to daily life, Iran has moved backward rather than forward.

Thus, when the Mahsa Amini protests erupted in 2022, they carried no language of reform. The demand was regime change, and the imagined path to it was revolution. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement did achieve a profound cultural shift, effectively forcing the state to scale back enforcement of the mandatory hijab. But it fell short of regime change, leaving many of its supporters disillusioned.

By 2026, though the protests initially focused on economic grievances, a segment of the population immediately demanded regime change—not through revolution but rather through foreign military intervention. The Islamic Republic is too entrenched to be removed by the Iranian people alone, whether through reform or revolution, the argument went. It can only be removed through the intervention of the United States or Israel.

Consequently, an option that would have been unthinkable only months earlier is now presented by its advocates as the sole remaining path to change. An advisor to the son of the former Shah—the exiled would-be prince who now openly calls for U.S. military intervention, despite years of professed opposition to war with Iran—has written confidently, and approvingly, that military action under Donald Trump is now “inevitable.”

This point was not reached by accident. Though the hard-liners always were intent on stymying reform, the question was never whether they would allow it but whether society would grow so strong that the hard-liners would have no choice but to acquiesce to it—just as they acceded to the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Here, U.S. sanctions played a key role in helping the hard-liners.

While Tehran’s mismanagement and incompetence created a corrupt and inherently unhealthy economic system, U.S. sanctions were deliberately designed to crush that economy and push the population into a state of utter despair. When Trump imposed sweeping sanctions under his “maximum pressure” campaign, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told BBC Persian that if the Iranians “want[ed] their people to eat,” they would have to heed U.S. demands. Trump’s current treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, publicly credited Iran’s protest movements to the effects of U.S. sanctions, citing economic collapse, bank failures, currency shortages, and import disruptions as evidence that pressure was “working”—and describing the resulting unrest as a “very positive” development.

For years, a false debate has persisted over whether sanctions or domestic mismanagement bears primary responsibility for Iran’s economic crisis. The latest research places the weight of that responsibility squarely on sanctions, showing that absent their impact, Iran’s middle class would have expanded by an estimated 17 percent. But the debate misses the deeper point. The intent of the sanctions was to drive the economy into the ground, decimate the Iranian middle class (between 2011 and 2019, 9 million middle-class Iranians were pushed into poverty), and generate the kind of mass desperation that makes rupture—rather than reform, elections, or gradual change—appear to be the only remaining option.

Iranian reformists long understood that without sanctions relief, meaningful reform was impossible and the economy unsalvageable. And without an agreement with Washington on the nuclear issue, sanctions relief was unattainable. This recognition drove President Hassan Rouhani’s heavy political investment in the JCPOA. Against considerable odds, the agreement was reached, and during the two years it remained in force, Iran’s economy grew by roughly 6 to 7 percent annually. That opening was short-lived. When Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, he removed the single condition most essential for reform to take hold: sustained economic growth and a strengthened middle class capable of exerting pressure on the state. In the eyes of many Iranians, the entire reform project was delegitimized by this failed investment in a deal with the United States—and the weak response of the Rouhani government once the state unleashed new waves of repression against the population.

Had the United States remained in the JCPOA, Iran’s economy would likely have continued to grow, expanding the middle class that has historically served as the engine of political change. A larger and more confident middle class would have strengthened civil society and enabled sustained pressure on the state from a position of leverage—rather than demand revolution or military intervention born of desperation.

Iranians have been trapped between a repressive theocracy and external actors whose policies were deliberately designed to create despondency. The irony is stark: The same voices who helped close off avenues for peaceful dismantlement of the theocracy now present themselves as saviors, offering foreign military intervention as the only path to deliverance—an offer that would have found no buyers had the population not been driven to despair in the first place.

 

Pro-Israel lobby group pressures ‘moderate’ US Democrat in new strategy

Critics claim AIPAC spending aims to intimidate candidates questioning unconditional US support for Israeli policies.

ByJoseph Stepansky

Published On 4 Feb 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/4/aipac-linked-pac-ups-pressure-on-moderate-us-democrat-in-new-strategy

Washington, DC – A super PAC linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has made its first major venture into the United States midterm elections.

But this time around, the pro-Israel lobby group is not targeting a progressive candidate pushing to reset US-Israel policy, but a so-called “moderate” Democrat who tepidly questioned Washington’s unconditional military support amid the genocidal war on Gaza.

The $2.2m spending by the United Democracy Project (UDP) targeting former US Representative Tom Malinowski in advance of the Democratic primary in New Jersey on Thursday comes as polls have consistently shown surging dismay among Democratic voters over unwavering US support for Israel.

Amid shifting views, critics see the spending strategy as a wider message to candidates as they prepare for party primaries in the months in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, which will determine the makeup of the US Senate and House of Representatives.

“It shows that they are very concerned, obviously, about the shifting perspective of especially Democrats on funding for Israel, and they’re very, very keen to keep Democrats elected who are out of touch with the Democratic electorate more broadly,” Sadaf Jaffer, a former member of the New Jersey General Assembly, who has herself been a critic of Malinowski’s past refusal to take a harder line on Israel, told Al Jazeera.

Candidates in the 11-way primary are running to represent a largely suburban district in central New Jersey considered increasingly Democratic-leaning. The special election is scheduled for April 16.

However, UDP’s strategy appears focused on Malinowski; neither AIPAC nor its super PAC has explicitly endorsed candidate Tahesha Way, the former lieutenant governor of New Jersey, although she has won the endorsement of another pro-Israel lobby group, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI).

“It may be [AIPAC’s] sense is that this is a way to scare those in the middle of the road, who have started to express some concerns about what’s going on and the funding that’s being sent to Israel,” Jaffer said.

“It seems very excessive … but it may be an investment in trying to intimidate others who are watching,” she said.

A familiar strategy

Parts of the strategy have become familiar. In the US elections in 2024, the UDP poured about $35m into party primaries, with the biggest buys aimed at scuttling Democratic candidates who called for cutting off aid to Israel.

That included a combined $24m against progressive congressmembers Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, who both lost their races to opponents running to their right.

Like the messaging targeting those candidates, the advertisement campaign against Malinowski has not specifically referenced Israel; instead, it focuses on more domestic issues, including Malinowski’s past stock trades and his 2019 vote in support of an annual Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill.

The line of criticism comes as support for US immigration, and the DHS sub-agency ICE, has tanked among Democratic voters amid the administration of US President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive.

Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats, an organisation that supports progressive candidates regularly targeted by AIPAC, called the approach particularly disingenuous, noting that AIPAC had previously endorsed Malinowski despite the DHS funding vote.

During his previous three runs for Congress, Malinowski received more than $378,000 from pro-Israel groups, including those affiliated with AIPAC.

“It’s interesting, as always, to see that again you’re not going to see a single television ad actually talking about their, quote ‘single issue’: Israel,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Tom Malinowski is no champion for progressive values or for the Palestinian people, but he is not going to ask ‘how high?’ when they say, ‘jump’,” Andrabi told Al Jazeera. “And that’s not enough for AIPAC. They truly demand unconditional support for their policies.”

Malinowski had previously served as Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which, during his tenure, lobbied for US aid not to be used in Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights.

But as a congressman from 2019 to 2023, Malinowski took a distinctly divergent path in Congress, including petitioning against conditioning US aid to Israel.

Malinowski, who also served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labour under former President Barack Obama, has further enraged pro-Palestine advocates by suggesting that using the terms “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s approach towards Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank fuels anti-Jewish sentiment in the US.

Nevertheless, the candidate has become a vocal critic of AIPAC’s approach in advance of Thursday’s vote, condemning the “dark-money” influence on the race.

“I committed one sin in their minds,” Malinowski told a small group of supporters in mid-January, as reported by the New Jersey Globe news site.

“I was not willing to tell them that I would unconditionally, unquestionably, blindly support any request for assistance that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu of Israel might make. That position puts me in the mainstream, not just of all Americans, but of the Jewish and pro-Israel community in this country,” he said.

‘A sour taste’

The UDP’s spending has also been condemned by other pro-Israel lobbying groups, including J Street, which supports Israel, but has staunchly criticised providing a “blank cheque” to the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“It weakens bipartisan support, alienates the next generation – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – and ties Israel’s fate to the most corrosive elements of American politics,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the group, which has endorsed Malinowski, said in a January post on Substack.

AIPAC and UDP did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on the spending initiative’s objectives.

But Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which advocates for Palestinian justice through US policy, saw the attack on Malinowski as in line with AIPAC’s increasing embrace of the Republican Party, which remains staunchly pro-Israel. She pointed to UDP’s history of relying on donations from wealthy conservatives to influence Democratic primaries.

Former assembly member Jaffer noted that the super PAC had not targeted Analilia Mejia, a progressive in the race who has won endorsements from US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Some analysts have suggested AIPAC may see a win-win approach in targeting Malinowski, either leading to the success of a candidate like Way, who led the New Jersey-Israel Commission and has been embraced by many right-wing Israeli news outlets, or a candidate like Mejia, who could be seen as more vulnerable against a Republican in the general election.

Miller said the spending “should show every other candidate that there is no middle or centrist lane that will protect them from AIPAC spending attacks”.

“Democratic candidates watching the [New Jersey] special election should learn that the politically and morally correct move is to fully embrace Palestinian rights and demand an end to US complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide,” she told Al Jazeera.

Both Justice Democrats’ Andrabi and Jaffer, meanwhile, saw potential for the approach to backfire, particularly as AIPAC has become an increasingly toxic brand in some segments of the Democratic Party.

“It’s definitely the most I’ve heard people who are not particularly interested in Israel-Palestine talking about AIPAC,” Jaffer told Al Jazeera, adding that outside spending in the race has left a “sour taste” for some New Jersey residents.

Andrabi added that it was “interesting to see the moderates of the world and the corporate Dems becoming willing to comment on [AIPAC] now that one of their own is getting eaten alive by this spending”.

That comes as AIPAC and UDP have amassed a $100m war chest heading into 2026.

“What [AIPAC] is really doing is expanding the base of people who don’t like AIPAC and who will vote against candidates for being supported by AIPAC,” he said.

Israel kills 21 Palestinians in Gaza bombing, including infants

Meanwhile, Palestinian patients and wounded preparing to leave Gaza via Rafah are told their trips have been cancelled

By Elis Gjevori

Published date: 4 February 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-kills-nine-gaza-including-three-children-and-kills-man-west-bank-raid-0

Israeli fighter jets bombed the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least 21 Palestinians, including three children, according to local hospitals.

At least 14 people were killed in Gaza City after Israeli forces shelled the eastern neighbourhoods of Zaytoun and Tuffah at dawn. 

Al Jazeera reported that at least two baby girls were among those killed in the attacks.

In the south, the Nasser Medical Complex said an Israeli strike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, killing three people, including a child.

The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to a Palestinian shooting at soldiers overnight that seriously wounded an officer.

Middle East Eye could not independently verify the claim.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas or other armed groups in Gaza.

Since the October agreement to end the war on Gaza, Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire, carrying out dozens of air strikes and demolitions and opening fire on civilians.

The Israeli army often says its troops have come under attack to justify wide-scale bombing, though it rarely provides evidence to support such claims.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli forces have killed at least 529 people since the ceasefire was announced and wounded around 1,500 others.

The ceasefire was intended to halt the two-year genocide in Gaza, during which Israeli forces killed at least 71,000 Palestinians, wound around 170,000, and destroyed or damaged roughly 90 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure.

Patients denied exit via Rafah crossing 

After the attacks on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent said that they were informed that coordination for the travel of patients and wounded through the Rafah crossing had been cancelled. 

The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was reopened earlier this week on a limited basis for the first time in nearly two years, operating under strict Israeli controls.

Under the new arrangement, 50 Palestinians were expected to return to Gaza daily, while 50 patients - each with two companions - were expected to leave for Egypt.  

The Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson said preparations were under way for a third group of wounded people to leave on Wednesday before the trip was cancelled. 

The Israeli military denied that the Rafah crossing had been closed on Wednesday, blaming the delay in departures on the World Health Organization (WHO) for allegedly failing to submit the “required coordination details” for procedural reasons.

It said that once the necessary details are provided, the exit of travellers “will be facilitated”.

There was no immediate comment from WHO. 

The UN agency’s spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier, said on Tuesday that it began facilitating the exit of wounded people after the Rafah crossing reopened on Monday.

However, only five patients and seven of their companions were able to leave that day, far below the agreed daily quota.

Lindmeier said more than 18,500 patients are awaiting evacuation, including around 3,000 children. Many are suffering from war-related trauma, while others have chronic illnesses such as cancer and diabetes.

At the agreed rate of 50 patients leaving per day, it would take more than a year to evacuate all 18,500 patients.

“We know that patients have died while waiting for evacuation,” Lindmeier said. “That is horrific when you know that just a few kilometres beyond the border, help is available.”

West Bank killing

Separately, Israeli forces shot and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian man during a raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jericho on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Witnesses reported multiple injuries during the incursion.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the man as Saeed Nael Saeed al-Sheikh, saying he died after Israeli troops opened fire during the operation.

Riyad Eid, director of Jericho Governmental Hospital, told Wafa news agency that al-Sheikh suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, causing severe internal damage.

“The young man, Saeed al-Sheikh, died from a gunshot to the abdomen by the occupation forces, which ruptured his liver,” Eid said.

The Ministry of Health said three other Palestinians were injured, with varying degrees of severity.

Trump on Iran: Will He, or Won’t He?

by Ron Paul | Feb 2, 2026 

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2026/02/02/trump-on-iran-will-he-or-wont-he/

For the past month, Americans have been wondering whether President Trump will attack Iran, or whether the massive military build-up in the Middle East is just another bluff. President Trump claims that the decision is his alone to make.

Thus far, President Trump has made little effort to explain to the American people – or to Congress – why launching a war against Iran is in our national interest. Instead, he wanders from one reason to another, hoping something will stick. First it was a “nuclear threat” even though he swore that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last summer. Then, after the CIA, Mossad, and UK’s MI6 launched a regime-change operation in the form of violent protests in late December, the excuse for war became the Iranian government’s crackdown on the insurrection. But before that could be used as the excuse, the Iranian government was able to quash the uprising. So President Trump returned to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, while adding in the presence of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Even by the low threshold for recent US military actions overseas, these arguments are unconvincing. That is why Americans are so skeptical. In a major poll last month, seven in ten Americans said they oppose any US military action against Iran.

When it comes to matters of war, where billions of dollars and countless lives are at stake, “will he, or won’t he” is a terrible question to have to ask. More than 250 years ago we rose up against a system where the king claimed the power to take us to war on his royal decision alone. Our Founding Fathers well understood the folly of concentrating so much power in the hands of one person and placed the power to take the country to war in the hands of the people’s direct representatives, Congress.

This Constitutional obligation has not only been usurped by the Executive Branch. Much blame must be reserved for Congress, which has allowed itself to become a doormat for whoever occupies the White House when it comes to war powers. Members of the president’s own party – regardless of which party it is – are terrified of going against “their” president and members of the opposing party are silent because they don’t want to be accused of not “supporting the troops.”

The media is reporting that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make yet another trip to Washington – his sixth in one year – where he is expected to again pressure President Trump to launch a war on Iran. Last time he was in the US – in December – the regime-change protests in Iran were launched. What does he have up his sleeve this time?

How can it be that a foreign leader has more say on whether we go to war than the US Congress?

Here’s what we do know. Whether Trump launches a war or not, the massive military build-up in the Middle East has already cost us billions of dollars. Those are billions that instead of helping to actually make America great again will only make the military-industrial complex “greater.” All the American people will see is the continuing destruction of the dollar and with it more inflation and a lower standard of living at home. And, of course, we will see a “war supplemental” spending bill on top of the trillion-dollar military budget for the year.

Trump Again Bypasses Congress to Advance Major Weapons Package for Israel

The State Department approved a $6.5 billion billion weapons package that includes Apache helicopters and military vehicles

by Dave DeCamp | February 1, 2026

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/01/trump-again-bypasses-congress-to-advance-major-weapons-package-for-israel/

The Trump administration has approved $6.5 billion in new weapons deals for Israel that include Apache attack helicopters and military vehicles, a step Secretary of State Marco Rubio took without waiting for the normal congressional review process.

According to The New York Times, the approval of the arms deals marks the third time that the Trump administration bypassed Congress to send weapons to Israel.

The arms packages had been under review by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the State Department is supposed to wait until the top two members of each committee approve the deals before advancing them, but Rubio didn’t, drawing a rebuke from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House committee.

“Just one hour ago, the Trump administration informed me it would disregard congressional oversight and years of standing practice, and immediately notify over $6 billion in arms sales to Israel,” Meeks said, according to Haaretz.

“Shamefully, this is now the second time the Trump administration has blatantly ignored long-standing Congressional prerogatives while also refusing to engage Congress on critical questions about the next steps in Gaza and broader US policy,” Meeks added.

According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the State Department approved a total of four potential arms sales for Israel, which will likely be funded by US military aid. The deals include:

• AH-64E Apache Helicopters and related equipment for an estimated cost of $3.8 billion
• Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and related equipment for an estimated cost of $1.98 billion
• Namer Armored Personnel Carrier Power Packs Less Transmissions and Integrated Logistics Support, and related equipment for an estimated cost of $740 million
• AW119Kx Light Utility Helicopters and related equipment for an estimated cost of $150 million

The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid under a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding, but since October 7, 2023, and the start of the IDF’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, the US has given Israel significantly more.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, in the two years following the October 7 attack, the US government spent at least $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel and another $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion on wars in Yemen, Iran, and other military operations in the region in support of Israel.

The Biden administration also took steps to avoid congressional oversight to arm Israel as it was massacring Palestinians in Gaza by advancing more than 100 arms transfers that didn’t reach the dollar amount requiring a review from Congress.

FBI memo concludes Trump 'compromised' by Israel, new Epstein Files show

The memo alleges that the Chabad Lubavitch movement sought to 'coopt' Trump and that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was the 'real brains' behind the presidency

News Desk

JAN 31, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/fbi-memo-concludes-trump-compromised-by-israel-new-epstein-files-show

A declassified FBI memo released on 30 January states that US President Donald Trump was “compromised by Israel,” that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent, and that a Jewish religious movement, Chabad Lubavitch, had coopted Trump’s presidency. 

The FBI memo was written in 2020 as part of an investigation into improper domestic or foreign influence over the US electoral process. 

It is based on information from a confidential human source (CHS) for the bureau and is among more than three million Epstein-related files released by the Justice Department on Friday.

“CHS advised Chabad is doing everything they can to co-opt the Trump presidency,” the memo states. 

Chabad-Lubavitch is a major worldwide Orthodox Jewish organization founded in the late 18th-century Russia. It promotes Jewish education, outreach, and observance by operating thousands of centers worldwide to serve Jewish communities.

The movement’s most prominent Rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in 1992 and is buried at the movement’s headquarters in New York.

Berel Lazar, a Chabad-Lubavitch member, was formerly the Chief Rabbi of Russia and remains a close advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

“Chabad is basically state-sanctioned Judaism. It is used by Putin to keep tabs on all the Russo-Jewish oligarchs,” the FBI memo adds. 

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is identified as a Chabad supporter.

“On the day Trump was elected President, Ivanka Trump and Jared [Kushner] were at the gravesite of Rabbi Schneersom [sic] who was the most powerful Rabbi in the Chabad network,” the memo states.

The memo adds that Kushner has ties with the Russian government and recommends the FBI investigate his family’s charities for money laundering, a common Chabad practice. 

The source states further that, “Trump has been compromised by Israel. And Kushner is the real brains behind his organization and his Presidency.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has long been a friend of the Kushners, and particularly Jared’s dad, Charles Kushner, a major donor to pro-Israel and Jewish causes.”

The FBI memo also states that, according to the source, Jeffrey Epstein worked both for US and foreign intelligence, including Israel’s Mossad. “CHS became convinced Epstein was a co-opted Mossad Agent,” the memo states, while pointing to previous FBI reporting on the issue.

“Epstein was close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and trained as a spy under him,” the memo adds.

The memo also says that the source identified Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Derschowitz, as the person who told Alex Acosta that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” 

This allegedly led Acosta, Attorney General of the Southern District of Florida at the time, to give Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2008 that led to an extremely light sentence for his conviction on charges of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under 18.

Alex Acosta later became Labor Secretary during Trump’s first term in office.

The memo further states that the source believes that Derschowitz, who taught at Harvard Law School, “was co-opted by Mossad and subscribed to their mission.” 

For example, “Dershowitz told CHS that if he were young again, he would be holding a stun gun as an Israeli Intelligence (Mossad) agent.”

The source learned that Dershowitz influenced many students from wealthy families while teaching at Harvard, including Jared Kushner and his brother.

The memo also references a 2004 news article documenting “the deep ties the Kushner family has with Israel and their history of corrupt business practices and alleged violations of election laws."

Jared Kushner currently has no formal government position but nevertheless serves as Trump’s special advisor, including overseeing the president’s plans for developing Gaza and negotiations with Russia regarding the war in Ukraine.

The memo also discusses Trump’s purchase and sale of a Beverly Hills mansion for $800,000 below market value. The home was sold for cash to a Swiss entity associated with the family of Eka Widjaja, an Indonesian billionaire financier. 

The transaction involved "numerous oddities and red flags,” suggesting the purpose of the deal may have been to launder funds, according to the memo.