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benjamin netanyahu
Iran Is Just the Latest in a Long Line of US Mideast Failures
Washington’s present predicament cannot be explained solely through depleted arsenals, poor military planning, Trump’s impulsiveness, or Netanyahu’s manipulation. Nor can it be understood simply as the result of underestimating Iran.
Sep 12, 2026
The US government continues to double down, even as its stubbornness costs it dearly—not only in material terms, but also in geopolitical influence. Washington is rapidly losing power and status in the Middle East, a decline that could produce a wider domino effect, reverberating around the world.
The latest expression of this hubris came from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Speaking at a G20 gathering of finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina on September 1, Bessent declared that within two years, the Strait of Hormuz would become “a worthless piece of water,” as oil would instead be transported through overland pipelines.
Bessent is now promoting a new narrative that shifts the emphasis from the military war to an economic one. In an August 23 article for the Financial Times, he announced that “an economic D-Day is coming for Iran,” threatening countries that continue to trade with Tehran with severe economic consequences.
This sounds less like a serious foreign-policy strategy than an admission of Washington’s inability to alter the course of the ongoing war.
The deeper failure lies in Washington’s attempt to impose an outdated model of regional domination on a Middle East—and a world—that has fundamentally changed.
Two dominant schools of thought have emerged to explain how Washington found itself in this position.
The first, promoted largely by sections of the US media, former officials, and retired military commanders, argues that the war on Iran was a mistake from the outset and that Washington lacked the military and logistical preparedness necessary to wage it.
The second explanation places Iran at the center. It argues that Washington fundamentally underestimated Iran’s military capabilities, political resilience, and regional reach, treating the country as though it were another Venezuela that could be subdued through sanctions, threats, and limited military pressure.
Both explanations contain elements of truth. Neither, however, provides the deeper, less defensive, and more historically grounded understanding required to explain the scale of the present American failure.
John J. Mearsheimer, the prominent American political scientist and international relations scholar, has been among the boldest critics of the US war.
“Trump is trapped and has no way out,” Mearsheimer said on July 15, reiterating an argument he had advanced repeatedly since the beginning of the war. “All of this is to say that the decision to attack Iran on 28 February 2026 is one of the greatest blunders in the history of US foreign policy,” he added.
Mearsheimer, like Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Ritter, and other critical American voices, often—and understandably—analyzes these “great blunders” from a US-centered perspective. For millions of people in the Middle East, however, this collective analysis is not an intellectual or strategic exercise. It describes their everyday reality. They have lived through these catastrophic miscalculations and paid the human cost of US intransigence, militarism, and political failure.
The history of US foreign policy in the Middle East offers countless examples of this destructive pattern. Washington’s support for Israel—the region’s greatest destabilizing force—remains the most enduring example.
Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and other peoples of the region require no new strategic framework to reach a conclusion similar to Mearsheimer’s. They have experienced the consequences of US power directly: wars, invasions, occupations, sanctions, political interference, and unconditional support for Israel.
The United States also established a disastrous record through its invasion and occupation of Iraq. It succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, but failed catastrophically to govern the country, stabilize it, or restructure the Middle East according to the "vision" it had proclaimed.
The outcome was not a new American order, but the devastation of Iraq, prolonged instability, and the rise of political forces Washington had neither anticipated nor controlled.
Washington’s Western allies were also drawn into what became known as the Iraq quagmire, paying considerable political, military and financial costs for a war whose premises proved false and whose consequences remain unresolved.
Naturally, those former partners have little appetite for participating in a much larger and potentially more destructive war against Iran for an indefinite period—particularly when the crisis is being managed by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, two deeply unpopular, impulsive, and widely distrusted leaders.
But the Middle East has changed. Regional states now possess greater political agency, more diversified alliances, and far more at stake than they did in 2003. They are no longer operating within a regional order in which Washington represents the only meaningful center of global power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Egypt provides one of numerous examples. “We must uphold the principle that the people of the Middle East are the masters of their own affairs,” Xi said during his September 2 meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He also urged countries to oppose “external interference” and strengthen regional dialogue on peace and security.
Like Egypt, other regional powers are similarly diversifying their partnerships rather than relying exclusively on Washington.
Key Middle Eastern leaders understand that a prolonged war against Iran would not remain confined to Iran. It could destabilize the entire region, devastate economies and infrastructure, threaten vital energy routes and generate interconnected wars whose consequences could endure for decades.
This brings us to Israel. Historically the cornerstone of US strategy in the region, Israel is itself considerably weaker. It is militarily overstretched, politically fragmented, socially divided, and unable to decisively conclude any of the wars it has opened, despite Netanyahu’s repeated declarations of victory.
Washington’s present predicament, therefore, cannot be explained solely through depleted arsenals, poor military planning, Trump’s impulsiveness, or Netanyahu’s manipulation. Nor can it be understood simply as the result of underestimating Iran.
The deeper failure lies in Washington’s attempt to impose an outdated model of regional domination on a Middle East—and a world—that has fundamentally changed.
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As Netanyahu Threatens Libel Suit, Haaretz ‘Stands By Its Reporting’ on 10/7 Attack
"As always when a story really hits home, Netanyahu threatens to sue," said one researcher.
Sep 09, 2026
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz did not appear alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threat on Wednesday to sue the outlet over its new reporting that Netanyahu was explicitly warned about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the Israel Defense Forces' destruction of Gaza.
After Netanyahu sent a "warning letter" saying he would file a libel lawsuit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval over their Tuesday report, the newspaper said simply in a post on social media, "Haaretz stands by its reporting."
The newspaper based its reporting on accounts from three senior foreign sources, reporting that in September 2023, now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had told an intermediary trusted by both Hamas and Israeli intelligence agencies that an "earthquake" would be coming to Israel.
The warning reportedly came after Sinwar had grown frustrated with deadlocked talks over an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners.
Sinwar told the intermediary to convey a message to the United Arab Emirates, with whom Netanyahu had developed close ties, "that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary."
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed then gave a warning to Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call weeks before the attack, according to Haaretz.
Netanyahu lashed out at the newspaper in a social media post, saying the reporters "fabricated a false story against the prime minister that never happened and was never created."
"The Prime Minister's Office, the National Security Council, and the military secretary meticulously reviewed the prime minister's call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever," said Netanyahu, who is behind his top opponent, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, in polls ahead of legislative elections set for October 27.
Netanyahu's official social media account also confirmed he had instructed his lawyers to file the libel lawsuit. He blamed security officials for failing to alert him to the October 7 attack early enough after it had begun, repeating a recent claim that they feared he would launch an aggressive response to the attack and set off a war.
"If, instead of fearing a miscalculation, they had instructed the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the standby units to preempt the blow, and if they had updated Prime Minister Netanyahu in time, the terrible massacre could have been prevented," said Netanyahu's official account.
Netanyahu has been attempting to account for his actions on October 7 recently, releasing his full schedule from the day of the attacks last week. The log showed he did not speak to IDF officials until several hours after the attack began.
Researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim compared Netanyahu's threat to sue Haaretz to his angry response earlier this year to a report by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which included testimony from 14 Palestinians who said they had been sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons or during attacks by the IDF or Israeli settlers.
Netanyahu claimed the Times' reporting was "blood libel" as he threatened to take legal action in May. Thus far, he has not followed through on the threat.
"This will likely end up just like the time he threatened to sue The New York Times," said Ben-Ephraim, "and didn't because every word was true."
On Tuesday, four Israeli opposition leaders called for an independent commission to investigate the October 7 attacks, citing a "series" of revelations about Netanyahu's actions and reported inaction ahead of the assault.
“Netanyahu and his partners in the October 7 government are unfit to continue in office,” they wrote. “We will work in coordination and with the required responsibility to prevent them from leading to another disaster.”
The prime minister has long resisted calls for an independent investigation, agreeing earlier this year only to a proposal in which half of the commission's members would be selected by Netanyahu's own government, in violation of Israeli law—a suggestion that one opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called a "shameful farce" that was meant to "help the prime minister duck responsibility."
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'Bombshell' Report Says UAE Explicitly Warned Netanyahu of October 7 Attack
Haaretz also reported that Hamas immediately offered to release all the Israeli hostages it had taken in the attack, demanding nothing in return, but Israel refused the deal.
Sep 08, 2026
Policy experts in the US and Middle East on Tuesday were among those responding to an "astonishing" new investigation from Haaretz, which detailed how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was alerted weeks before the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that a "major event" was being planned by the Palestinian group—an assault that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and which Israel has responded to by slaughtering more than 73,000 Palestinians so far in Gaza.
Highlighting revelations contained in an upcoming book called Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, the Israeli newspaper reported that Netanayahu dismissed a warning about the attack from United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed, which came in a phone call in September 2023.
An adviser to bin Zayed said that according to the president, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar "was preparing for a major event" and "Israel should be ready."
The UAE leader advised Netanyahu to "find an economic solution" for Gaza and to calm tensions in the West Bank to "prevent escalation."
At the time, Hamas had been holding talks for months with intermediaries in hopes of pushing Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza, which it had imposed at varying levels of intensity for nearly two decades, since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. Before the 2023 attack and Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza—which has been called a genocide by human rights groups and Holocaust experts—Israel's blockade had left 80% of Palestinians in Gaza dependent on aid and had raised the poverty rate from 40% in 2005 to 61.6% in 2023.
Hamas' talks had also focused on exchanging four Israeli prisoners who had been held in Gaza for several years for Palestinian prisoners, more than 5,200 of whom were being held in Israel at the time.
Haaretz reported that an intermediary known as "coal eyes," a member of the Fatah political party in Palestine who was trusted by both Hamas and the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, was told by Sinwar: "Convey a message to them that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary."
The intermediary then conveyed the message to bin Zayed, who spoke directly to Netanyahu.
The Israeli prime minister, who is facing several opponents as he aims to hold onto power in Israel's upcoming elections, scheduled for October 27, reportedly told the UAE president that Israel was prepared for any attack and that the government believed Hamas was planning to operate in the West Bank.
He did not inform security or intelligence leaders about the information he received from the bin Zayed, Haaretz reported.
Netanyahu called the Haaretz report an "absolute lie" on Tuesday, while his top rival in the elections, former military commander Gadi Eisenkot, said on social media that the prime minister "received dozens of warnings for October 7 and ignored them all."
"His is unfit," said Eisenkot.
As Middle East Eye noted Tuesday, it has previously been reported by media outlets in Israel and elsewhere that Netanyahu had received a warning from Egyptian intelligence in the days before the Hamas-led attack.
Haaretz also reported that Hamas offered to release all the civilians it had taken captive during the October 7 attack, in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The group did not demand anything in return, but Israeli officials reportedly rejected the offer.
The Israel Defense Forces have bombed schools, hospitals, and refugee camps and have killed thousands of children as well as journalists and aid workers in Gaza—all while claiming to be targeting Hamas. Attacks have continued, killing hundreds of Palestinians, even after a ceasefire deal was reached last October.
Settler attacks have also ramped up in the West Bank as Israeli officials have pushed to further annex the territory and make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
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The Best Propaganda Money Can Buy Can't Convince Americans to Like Trump's Iran War
Only about a quarter of respondents to a new poll think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
Sep 01, 2026
A new University of Massachusetts-Amherst opinion poll, conducted August 21-26, finds profound American disillusionment with President Donald Trump, with his Iran War, and with its economic fallout in their lives.
Apparently the Ellison family’s attempt to drum up support for Donald Trump and his Iran War by buying up CBS News and gutting it as a respected news organization was a costly failure. Likewise, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and his various pro-Trump organs, from Fox Cable News to The Wall Street Journal, have not pulled the wool over the public’s eyes in the ways that Murdoch hoped. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the effort he expended convincing the American people to go to war with Iran, saying he had a thousand hours on US television , but while he may have prevailed on the gullible and avaricious Trump to fall on that country like a ravenous wolf, he did not succeed in altering the views of the American public on the desirability of such a war. The only significant impact of Netanyahu on most Americans has been to convince them that the Israeli government is a combination of genocidal maniacs and welfare queens that Americans should cut off economically and perhaps even militarily.
The UMass poll asked a weighted sample of respondents how well Trump has handled his Iran War. The response of 55% of those asked this question was “not well at all.” Ouch. Another 13% replied “not too well.” So 68%, over two-thirds, think he has done a piss-poor job on his Iran War, which was his war of choice. Two-thirds is the percentage needed in the Senate to impeach and remove a president, so if our representatives actually mirrored public opinion, Trump would be toast.
That question had to do with Trump’s handling of the war. Asked whether they approved of the war on Iran, a majority, 54%, said they strongly or somewhat disapproved, and another 20% were noncommittal, which I would interpret as not actively supporting the war even if they didn’t particularly oppose it. Those statistics yield a picture of a war that nearly three-fourths of Americans either oppose or about which they just don’t care. It isn’t what the commander of a war would want to hear from his own public.
Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well.
A majority think the war was a mistake and question whether it has made the US safer or forestalled an Iranian bomb.
Another way of putting it is that only about a quarter of respondents think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
The UMass report on the opinion poll noted that Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, said, “Americans are overwhelmingly negative about Trump on the Iran situation.” He continued: “Only 1 in 4 Americans thinks he is handling Iran well. The real divide is increasingly between Trump’s hardcore MAGA base and almost everyone else. Among Republicans who identify very strongly with MAGA, 87% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. But that falls to 58% among Republicans who are ‘somewhat MAGA’ and just 30% among Republicans who say they are ‘not MAGA at all.’ The more loosely attached Republicans are to the MAGA identity, the more skeptical they are of the war.”
Conducting a war in the Middle East, as even the cowboys in the G. W. Bush administration recognized, requires at least some allies. But Americans don’t think Trump plays well with other children. Asked how he has handled working with allies in global affairs, 52% say “not well at all” and 12% say “not too well,” showing that nearly two-thirds view his foreign policy performance negatively.
Based on this sounding, we can further project that Americans are even more angry about the main fallout of the failed war on Iran, which is high inflation. Fully 80% of respondents said that the Iran War has increased the cost of gasoline and groceries. Asked about how Trump has dealt with inflation, 57% responded, “not well at all.” A further 18% said “not too well.” That is 75%, fully three-fourths, who disapprove of his handling of inflation. Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well, and I presume they are wealthy investors in Trump’s casino stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 14-16% so far this year.
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'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': Retired Israeli Generals Decry Settler Terrorism Against West Bank Palestinians
"Once a society behaves this way, that society is doomed."
Aug 31, 2026
Several retired Israel Defense Forces generals are publicly denouncing their own government for permitting settlers living in the illegally occupied West Bank to wage a campaign of violence against the Palestinian population.
As The New York Times reported on Monday, the retired generals have been touring the West Bank in recent days to witness first-hand the damage that has been done to Palestinians' livelihoods by the Israeli settlers, whose violent actions have grown so outrageous that even US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee described them as "terrorists."
Ephraim Sneh, retired brigadier general and former minister of health, did not mince words in describing the settlers' campaign of attacking Palestinian villages.
"This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply," said Sneh.
Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, likened the attacks on Palestinians to the kinds of pogroms once suffered by Jews living in Europe.
Agmon also said that the Israeli government's tacit support of these attacks bodes ill for the future of Israel.
“Once a society behaves this way,” said Agmon, “that society is doomed.”
The tours of the West Bank are being organized by Yaakov Or, a retired Israeli general who spent much of his career working inside the occupied territory.
According to the Times, Or begins every tour with a speech where he emphasizes the importance of speaking out against what he says are indefensible atrocities.
"When I take you to see what is happening in the West Bank, you will have two choices," Or said during the start of a recent tour. "You can stay silent, and be complicit, or you can speak out, and tell everyone you know about what is happening."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend once again downplayed the significance of settler attacks on Palestinians, describing them as rogue actions taken by troubled individuals.
"We are talking about a very small handful of people," Netanyahu said, "usually young people who come with all kinds of distress and problems, often from home, and I am determined to stop this."
The Israeli prime minister also said that attacking Palestinian villages "harms the settlement movement" and "gives us a bad name around the world."
Netanyahu on "settler" terrorism:
We are talking about a very small handful of people, usually young people who come with all kinds of distress and problems, often from home, and I am determined to stop this.
You want to enter a village? You will not enter. That is not your… pic.twitter.com/MlnKxlaxlB
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 30, 2026
Palestinian Christian theologian Munther Isaac pointed out that the Israeli government itself has been actively working to push Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank, pointing to recent Israeli demolitions of homes in the town of Birzeit.
"This is what ethnic cleansing looks like in Palestine," wrote Isaac.
Birzeit: Israeli occupation forces demolished two inhabited residential buildings. Each was four stories high, with every floor covering 250 square meters.
This is what ethnic cleansing looks like in Palestine. pic.twitter.com/XsYu92VUFw
— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) August 31, 2026
Human rights organizations for months have been sounding the alarm about the situation in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have routinely attacked Palestinians at their own homes.
An analysis published by the Carter Center last month found that “settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank,” as “more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks and home demolitions this year—double the daily rate of the previous three years.”
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'Horrific': Masked Israeli Settlers Attack, Injure Palestinian Woman and NBC Crew
Another journalist called the assault "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
Aug 29, 2026
Israeli settlers attacked and wounded a Palestinian woman and four NBC team members who were interviewing her in the West Bank on Saturday, amid ongoing settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The settlers, who were wearing masks, drove up as Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family were telling NBC about how settlers forced them from their home in the town of Jalud.
“They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley told the outlet.
Make This Go VIRAL
Masked Israeli Settlers ATTACK Palestinian Woman and NBC News Crew in the West Bank
NBC correspondent Matt Bradley was struck twice pic.twitter.com/EMmWGsNk2X
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 30, 2026
Bradley was hit twice on the arm by the attackers, who carried sticks. They also threw rocks. Abdullah, Bradley, West Bank-based cameraman Khaldoon Eid, producer Producer Lawahez Jabari, and a driver were all injured in the ambush and treated afterword. Abdullah remained in the hospital as of Saturday night.
Both Eid and Jabari also described the assault.
“We didn’t expect that—that they would come to attack,” Eid told NBC. “We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses.”
Jabari said, "Suddenly a car came to us,” adding, "the settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”
Jeremy Diamond, a CNN correspondent in Jerusalem, called the incident "horrific" on social media and said it was "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
The NBC crew and their interviewee were not the only targets of such violence on Saturday, as attacks continued in the town of Qusra, where settlers have been conducting a nearly three-week siege of three Palestinian homes. Settlers pepper sprayed Palestinian workers, threw rocks at a building, and besieged a fourth home with at least four Palestinian residents inside, according to Hareetz and Al Jazeera.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Saturday's attacks, characterizing them as “criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Qusra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in fulfilling its missions, and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”
Yet Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued on social media:
1. The settler wouldn't do this to Americans had they not received a green light from the Israeli gov.
2. Israel's gov would not have given such a green light unless it felt confident that the US gov—and Amb. [Mike] Huckabee—wouldn't lift a finger to defend the Americans.
Journalists trying to report in both Gaza and the West Bank have long been targets of both settlers and the Israeli military. The IDF was found to be the leading killer of journalists worldwide for the third year in a row in 2025, and even before the Gaza genocide began in 2023, there were cases like the IDF killing of Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in 2022.
The attacks on the NBC team also come amid an uptick in setter violence in the West Bank since 2023, which humans rights observers say is enabled by the Israeli government. Netanyahu's government has expanded settlements in the West Bank despite the fact that they are illegal under international law.
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‘Deranged Behavior’: Marco Rubio Slammed for US Sanctions on ICC President
"When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law, and morally bankrupt, you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement," said one critic.
Aug 18, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday drew an outraged reaction from critics after he unveiled sanctions against Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court.
In announcing the sanctions, Rubio described the ICC as "a corrupt and fatally politicized" institution that has supposedly "abused its authority and exceeded its mandate."
Rubio said the ICC "has repeatedly attempt to assert authority over... the United States and other countries that have not consented to its jurisdiction," which he said "sets a dangerous precedent for all nations."
In addition to sanctioning Akane, Rubio said the US would also be sanctioning ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Saye.
While Rubio did not mention what specific actions the ICC has taken to warrant such sanctions, a Tuesday report in The Guardian noted that Saye was charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza.
The Trump administration had previously sanctioned then-ICC prosecutor Karim Khan—who obtained arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—and an additional eight ICC officials.
The social media account of Drop Site News accused Rubio of attacking the court solely to protect Netanyahu from war crimes prosecution, pointing out that "there is currently not a single American citizen under indictment, investigation, or facing an arrest warrant" from the ICC.
The sanctions earned the praise of the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which accused the ICC of conducting "politically motivated investigations and prosecutions targeting America and Israel."
Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque said the ICC sanctions showed the US was acting like a "rogue government" and engaged in "deranged behavior."
Michael Karanicolas, law professor at Dalhousie University, didn't just point fingers at the US over the sanctions, but at US allies who have sat back as international institutions have come under assault.
"I’m no longer surprised by the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy the ICC," wrote Karanicolas. "What I keep waiting for is any response from Canada or the European governments who ostensibly still believe in international law to defend these institutions."
War correspondent and international political analyst Elijah Magnier delivered a withering rebuke of Rubio's announcement.
"When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law, and morally bankrupt," wrote Magnier, "you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement."
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Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir Condemned for Calling to Kill ‘30 to 40’ Palestinians in Gaza Each Day
Some supporters of Israel called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel Ben-Gvir from his government in response to the comments.
Aug 17, 2026
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the most powerful figures in the Israeli government, is facing criticism, including from some strong supporters of Israel, after he called for the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza during an interview that surfaced on Sunday.
The far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet rarely hides his desire to ethnically cleanse the exclave of Palestinians and replace them with Israeli settlers. But these comments, which he made to a former Israeli captive taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, were even more explicit and violent than usual.
He said he's pushed for Israeli forces to carry out operations every day that “kill 30 or 40” people in Gaza and go beyond “those who pose a danger… at that particular moment."
"There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people," Ben-Gvir said, criticizing a recent drawdown of Israeli attacks.
Ben-Gvir, who runs Israel's prisons and police, said killing Palestinians in greater numbers would "encourage" civilians in Gaza to leave so that Israel can fully conquer the strip, allowing it to be colonized by Jewish settlers.
“I see all of Gaza as ours," the minister said. He said that Israel, which has already pushed past last October's ceasefire line to occupy nearly 70% of Gaza, should move "as fast as possible" to take over the rest of the territory.
Ben-Gvir said, "We enter all of Gaza, settle all of Gaza, encourage migration."
The comments were met with condemnation in the West, including from some strong defenders of Israel.
Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who has consistently voted to provide weapons to Israel despite growing calls within her party to block some arms sales, said Ben-Gvir’s comments were “horrific and completely indefensible.”
“Anyone advocating for acts of violence against innocent civilians should not be in an official government position,” Rosen said. “I believe Ben-Gvir must resign, and I urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to denounce these remarks and reaffirm to the world that this is not the government’s position.”
Democratic Majority for Israel, a group focused on maintaining support for Israel within the US Democratic Party, stated similarly that Ben-Gvir's comments were "heinous and indefensible" and called for him to be expelled from Netanyahu's government. However, the group also stressed that Ben-Gvir's position "is not Israeli government policy."
Technically, this is true, but only in the sense that the Israeli government's actions toward Gaza have actually been considerably more violent than the kill quota of "30 to 40" per day prescribed by Ben-Gvir. Since the genocidal war began in October 2023, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Based on the ministry's official tallies, which independent expert analyses have found to be an undercount, around 92 people were killed on average per day between October 2023 and the ceasefire in October 2025.
Data from the Israeli army, analyzed in 2025 by +972 magazine, suggests that more than 80% of those killed were civilians. During the first two years of the conflict, the Government Media Office in Gaza reported that more than 20,000 children had been killed, more than one every hour.
While some called on Netanyahu to stand against Ben-Gvir's especially violent rhetoric, the prime minister himself has also explicitly pushed for genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza, at one point invoking the Israelites' ancient foe, the Amalekites, and God's demand in the Hebrew Bible that the Israelites exterminate them.
Along with the similarly extreme finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, Ben-Gvir regularly draws criticism among liberal supporters of Israel for his particularly explicit comments advocating violence against Palestinians and other enemies of Israel and for enacting policies that have accelerated their displacement in the West Bank and allowed violent Israeli settlers to act with impunity.
But as critics pointed out, there is little evidence that Netanyahu will heed the calls from liberal Zionists to boot Ben-Gvir out of his coalition or discipline him in any way.
"And if he doesn’t, which he won’t, of course, does DFMI then support sanctions on Israel and restrictions on US arms sales?" asked commentator Mehdi Hasan in response to the statement from Democratic Majority for Israel. "If not, why not?"
Noting that the group has consistently opposed proposals to cut off weapons aid to Israel, he asked, "Why would you want to sell weapons to ‘heinous’ people?"
Political analyst Omar Baddar suggested that the problem many pro-Israel critics have with Ben-Gvir is not the policy he espouses, but the public relations headaches he creates.
Baddar said, "What’s 'extremist' about Ben Gvir is that he says out loud what Israel’s mainstream political establishment prefers to do quietly under the false pretense of 'fighting terrorism.'"
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The Gaza Peace Trump Announced, and the Rejection Netanyahu Delivered
Netanyahu’s arrogant message is unmistakable: Israel can defy Washington, and Washington will absorb the political cost.
Aug 15, 2026
President Donald Trump took to social media Thursday, July 30 to announce what he called a breakthrough: a phased agreement under the Board of Peace requiring the Palestinian Resistance to disarm and Israel to withdraw. The optics were of a president closing out a genocide he, and his predecessor, enabled for two years.
The Palestinian Resistance agreed to the plan. Israel rejected it.
Imagine if the Resistance had rejected the 15 points by reasonably conditioning disarmament on an end to Israeli occupation. We don't have to imagine Trump's reaction. He'd have condemned them by nightfall and held them responsible for killing the peace plan.
Israel gets a different standard. On Sunday, August 9, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet, “I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document.”
Trump's Gaza legacy does not differ from his predecessor former President Joe Biden's. Both stood impotent before Netanyahu's rejection.
Rather than call out Israel for sabotaging his own plan, Trump waved away Netanyahu's rejection as mere election posturing, as if that were acceptable. Trump’s dismissal didn't go unnoticed. Three days later, Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, doubled down declaring that Israel will not withdraw, not from Gaza, not from Lebanon, and not from Syria
Last May, I wrote an article: “Stop blaming Netanyahu, stupid,” where I argued, it was never one man. It's the Zionist Project itself, and the Israeli public that keeps ratifying it. A poll released last summer found 76% of Israelis believe the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake. Half of all Israelis now say they'd support renewing Jewish settlement inside Gaza itself—a figure that climbs to 83% among the ultra-Orthodox and 67% among religious Jews. And in a finding that goes to the heart of how Israelis have rewritten their own history, 56% now believe that if the 2005 disengagement had never happened, October 7 would have been far less likely.
Withdrawal, in other words, has been recast in the Israeli imagination as the original sin, not occupation, and not Israel’s pre-October 7 starvation siege.
In rejecting Trump’s plan, Netanyahu is pandering to his voting base. He is giving the Israeli Jewish majority exactly what they've told pollsters they want. He's competing against political challengers who reject any withdrawal from Gaza. Trump excuses this as political “posturing,” as if it's temporary, when in fact, it is creating a status quo to be normalized after the election.
As usual, Israel responded to Trump’s plan in two days of intensive strikes across Gaza, murdering 26 Palestinians and wounding 76. The single ugliest strike hit medicine warehouses attached to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, one of the last facilities in central Gaza still able to treat large numbers of patients. Two of four storage buildings were destroyed and two more badly damaged. The target was a “dangerous storage” of intravenous fluid, dialysis supplies, intensive-care medication, in a place where half the dialysis machines didn't work and kidney patients were dying because treatment sessions keep getting cut.
These weren't abstractions. In Gaza City's al-Sousi Tower, a strike killed Abdullah Abu Taif, 33; his pregnant wife, Abeer Anan, 29; their 5-year-old son, Azzam; and where medics recovered the remains of an unborn child from the rubble. Near Khan Younis, a strike murdered Mahmoud al-Hams, 38; his wife, Fatima, 37; and their young daughter. An elderly couple, Kamal and Huda Abu Muailiq, were killed in their home near Deir el-Balah the same night.
This’s how Israel translates Trump’s “breakthrough” on the ground.
It is how Netanyahu sends a message to American presidents, as he did nearly a year ago when he openly defied Trump’s calls to stop bombing Gaza. Palestinian children’s blood becomes the currency of political pressure. With every refusal to heed Washington, Netanyahu demonstrates that he can ignore an American president’s demands without consequence, while the credibility and authority of the US president are diminished in the process. Netanyahu’s arrogant message is unmistakable: Israel can defy Washington, and Washington will absorb the political cost.
In October 2025, Israel secured the release of Israeli captives under a deal conditioned on ending the war. It got what it wanted immediately and did not deliver on its side. Since the ceasefire of October 10, 2025, Israel has violated it more than 4,000 times, murdering 1,300 Palestinians—more than all the Israelis, soldiers and civilians, killed on October 7. This is while food aid deliveries was two-thirds less than what the agreement promised. The territory Israel was supposed to withdraw from has instead expanded from 53% to 70%. Any withdrawal Israel may now negotiate, if any at all, will start from that expanded line of occupation, not the yellow line agreed at the ceasefire.
A president who announces a peace deal to the world has no agency of his own. He is too weak to bring himself to hold Netanyahu to account for rejecting his own plan; a political eunuch, unable to rein in a potentate whose country survives on US political and financial largesse.
Trump's Gaza legacy does not differ from his predecessor former President Joe Biden's. Both stood impotent before Netanyahu's rejection. Two subservient leaders who had shown over again that Israel does not answer to Washington, Washington answers to Israel. They leave behind a legacy of enabling an Israeli genocide and two consecutive Israel-first administrations.
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Solidarity Is Not Enough: Why the World Must Force Accountability for Gaza Now
Israel’s official position leaves the international community with no choice but to take direct, coordinated action across five key fronts.
Aug 14, 2026
It is now official: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected the core conditions of the Board of Peace framework, explicitly stating that Israel will neither adhere to a ceasefire nor withdraw its forces from Gaza.
During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu stated with unambiguous language, "Israel rejects the 15-point document published by the Board of Peace for Gaza."
In a previous conversation with lead envoy Nickolay Mladenov, Netanyahu set conditions—such as demanding unilateral operational freedom for the Israeli military to strike inside Gaza at will—that render a genuine peace agreement structurally impossible.
The Israeli army leadership, under Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, reinforced this posture by outlining three uncompromising "red lines" to the political establishment: complete operational freedom to eliminate perceived threats anywhere in the strip, strict control over all weapons entering or exiting Gaza, and zero military withdrawal unless Hamas is completely disarmed.
We must resolutely reject the premise that the slaughter of the innocent can ever become an accepted routine.
One can fault Netanyahu for many things, including ongoing genocide. But in recent years, he has been remarkably straightforward about his intentions; therefore, no one can claim that Netanyahu has fooled anyone.
Earlier this year, while speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement, Netanyahu explicitly boasted that he had instructed the Israeli military to expand its physical footprint and permanently occupy at least 70% of the Gaza Strip—a massive expansion far beyond the temporary administrative demarcation lines established in previous truce outlines.
Meanwhile, his far-right ministers have pushed the government’s rejectionist stance even further. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock issued a joint demand for an emergency cabinet meeting to roll back authorization for the deployment of the International Stabilization Force (ISF).
The ISF, designed under the Board of Peace framework as a transitional peacekeeping body, was meant to oversee humanitarian security, starting with pilot recovery zones in Rafah.
Yet Smotrich and Strock claimed the security cabinet was "misled" into approving the force, arguing that allowing international personnel into Gaza endangers Israeli operational freedom and directly contradicts their explicit war aims.
These latest moves, along with the military's strict "red lines," confirm what recent months of relentless bombardment have made clear: The Israeli government has no intention of ending its genocide in Gaza or relinquishing control over the besieged and devastated territory.
But highlighting such positions will make no difference, aside from once more accentuating Israel's total lack of desire for peace and its intention to perpetuate conflict.
While true, such realization on its own is worthless considering that what is taking place in Gaza and the West Bank is beyond horrific, and that the daily killing of Palestinians makes the term "ceasefire" a cruel joke.
While diplomats debate frameworks, Israeli strikes continue to claim civilian lives daily—bringing the post-truce death toll to over 1,250 and the total killed since October 2023 to more than 73,000.
Therefore, action is needed, and urgently so. Indeed, Israel’s official position leaves the international community with no choice but to take direct, coordinated action across five key fronts.
First, Arab, Muslim, and allied governments must leverage every available international platform, starting with the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, to formally condemn Israel’s violation of the Gaza peace framework and expose its bad-faith negotiations.
States must move beyond symbolic statements and invoke mechanisms like the "Uniting for Peace" resolution to bypass Western vetoes, push for binding sanctions, and implement a universal arms embargo against Israel.
Second, a renewed global campaign must recenter Gaza and the West Bank, exposing Israel's broader territorial objectives—specifically the systematic ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the quiet, administrative annexation of the West Bank.
Civil society, trade unions, and grassroots organizations worldwide must pressure their respective national governments to sever diplomatic, economic, and military ties with Israel until it complies with international law.
Third, International legal bodies must accelerate their proceedings. Pressure must be renewed on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to execute arrest warrants for senior Israeli leadership, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must enforce provisional measures and issue definitive rulings regarding Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention.
Legal compliance must be treated as a non-negotiable prerequisite for international relations.
Fourth, a unified international media push is necessary to counter state-sponsored propaganda, keeping public focus fixed on Israel's long-term strategic plans: the permanent displacement of Gaza's population and the formal takeover of Palestinian land.
Independent media outlets, journalists, and cultural institutions must challenge official narratives that frame Israeli aggression as self-defense, centering the lived realities and testimonies of Palestinians under siege instead.
Fifth, the international community must bypass Israeli obstruction to ensure massive quantities of food, medical supplies, and shelter materials enter Gaza immediately to prevent widespread starvation and winter exposure.
International aid agencies must establish protected humanitarian corridors by global mandate, refusing to allow Israel to use manufactured famine and humanitarian denial as weapons of war.
With Israel’s intentions fully unmasked, the global community must shift from passive mediation to active enforcement.
Israel wants to normalize genocide, just as it normalized the illegal siege on Gaza before that; the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza before that; and the ongoing displacement of Palestinians since 1948.
We must resolutely reject the premise that the slaughter of the innocent can ever become an accepted routine.
Knowledge of the atrocity is not enough. Expressing solidarity in words alone is not enough. Concrete, decisive action is required today—and holding the perpetrators accountable remains entirely within our power if the world finds the political courage to act.
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