SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
mossad
Former Mossad Chief Compares West Bank Israeli Settler Violence to That of Nazis During Holocaust
“What I saw today made me feel ashamed to be Jewish," said Tamir Pardo after touring Occupied West Bank.
Apr 28, 2026
Tamir Pardo, the former chief of Israel's powerful Mossad intelligence agency, drew international attention on Monday by saying that what he witnessed during a tour of the Occupied West Bank reminded him of the treatment of the Jewish people during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany in the 1930s ad 40s.
Pardo, who served as Mossad director from 2011 to 2016, expressed sorrow and shame over what he saw, invoking his Jewish family's history.
“My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century,” Pardo told Channel 13 news. “What I saw today made me feel ashamed to be Jewish.”
Tamir Pardo, former Mossad head, on a tour documenting Jewish settler terror in the West Bank: “My mother is a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw here reminded me of the events of the previous century against the Jews.“ pic.twitter.com/o1eJ9vkhDi
— Etan Nechin (@Etanetan23) April 28, 2026
Observers noted that Pardo's statements—which echo, at least in certain key ways, those of experts and humanitarian advocates who have documented the abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)—would come under harsh rebuke by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) or other pro-Israel hardliners in the United States if spoken by others.
"The former head of the Mossad is comparing the actions of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank to Nazis in the Holocaust," said journalist Mehdi Hasan. "If someone said that in the West they'd be accused of antisemitism under the IHRA definition."
The IHRA definition refers to how the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance articulates antisemitism, a more sweeping definition—one adopted by the ADL and many Zionist political forces in the United States—that equates criticism of the state of Israel or its policies with animus toward or discrimination of the Jewish people. Critics of the IHRA definition, including Jewish scholars and holocaust experts, have said its deployment undermines efforts to confront the real scourge of antisemitism while also insulating Israel from honest and necessary criticism.
“My mother is a Holocaust survivor. What I saw here today recalled the events that happened in the last century”
Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, during a tour tracing illegal settler violence in the occupied West Bank, compared the scenes he witnessed to the Holocaust.
Pardo… pic.twitter.com/rrsQx2CvpW
— TRT World (@trtworld) April 28, 2026
Pardo has spoken out previously about what he regards is an apartheid system in the OPT, including in 2023 prior to the October 7 attacks, but his warnings to curb the mistreatment of the Palestinian population were dismissed by the ruling coalition. In the time since, the situation in the West Bank for Palestinians has deteriorated significantly.
Touring the region with other former members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Pardo warned that the conditions on the ground, where Palestinians live under armed occupation and the near constant threat of settler violence, is setting the stage for a violent reaction similar to what occurred on October 7, 2023 when Gaza militant factions staged a violent assault on Israel.
“To my great regret, what we are seeing today,” said Pardo, “is the next October 7. It will be in a different format, much more painful, because the region is much more complicated."
While he said that Israeli authorities know full well the extent of the settler violence, they choose to ignore it. "The state has chosen to sow the seeds for the next October 7," he said.
Pardo said that what he witnessed in the OPT on Monday "is the existential threat to the State of Israel,” but warned that confronting settler violence, given the amount of backing the far-right settlers have in the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, could tear the country apart.
As the Times of Israel reports on his comments:
“If we want, we can correct this, but the price will be very high,” Pardo said. “It can drag the entire country to a place” like the situation in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the civil and political strife in that country, where the Hezbollah terror group uses its military means to assert authority on the country.
“It is very much worth our while not to get there,” he said.
Pardo recalled the late Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who controversially warned that control over millions of Palestinians in the territories would ultimately corrupt Israeli society.
The former spy chief said he used to think that Leibowitz was misguided in his comments, but after witnessing the actions of settler extremists in recent months, he now believes “there was a lot of truth” to what the Israeli philosopher said.
Human rights group have said the intensified assault on Palestinians by settlers and IDF soldiers in the Occupied West Bank since October of 2023 have unleashed a widespread humanitarian crisis and called on the international community to intervene to halt Israel's continued settlement expansion and the abuses on the ground.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Mainstream Media Still Won't Follow Up on the Epstein-Israel Connection
On top of the grotesque and horrifying photos and emails that appear to offer more evidence of systemic and widespread child abuse, the Epstein files revealed further allegations of his ties to Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad.
Feb 25, 2026
Late last month, the US Department of Justice published 3.5 million pages about convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
On top of the grotesque and horrifying photos and emails that appear to offer more evidence of systemic and widespread child abuse, the Epstein files revealed further allegations of his ties to Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad.
The Epstein-Israel revelations have been covered at length by independent and overseas media outlets:
- “The Israeli government installed security equipment and controlled access to a Manhattan apartment building” that Epstein managed (Drop Site News, 2/18/26). Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli spy Yoni Koren were frequent guests at the apartment, and Rafi Shlomo, then-director of protective service at the Israeli mission to the United Nations, “controlled access to the apartment for guests, and even conducted background checks on cleaners and Epstein’s employees.”
- An informant told the FBI he “became convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent” (Middle East Monitor, 2/8/26).
- Epstein emailed Barak in December 2018: “You should make clear that I don’t work for Mossad :)” (Dissident, 2/2/26). Barak responded, “You or I?” Epstein replied, “That I don’t :).”
- Epstein emailed Barak twice in November 2017 (London Times, 2/8/26): “Did Boies ask you to help obtain former Mossad agents to do dirty investigations?” and “Boies said he got to the Mossad guys through you? True? This is getting a lot of press.” Barak responded, “Call me. [Redacted] in Paris.” (Epstein was likely referring to attorney David Boies, who was facing scrutiny at the time for hiring a private firm, run largely by former Mossad officers, to investigate women who accused his client Harvey Weinstein of rape, and journalists trying to expose the allegations—New Yorker, 11/6/17.)
- Epstein’s foundation backed pro-Israel projects like Friends of Israel Defense Forces and the Jewish National Fund, which buys land in Palestine to build settlements (Middle East Eye, 2/7/26).
Adding to Existing Evidence
It is important to note that the Epstein emails contain allegations and intimations, and don’t prove that Epstein was an Israeli agent, formally or informally. However, they do add to the existing evidence that Epstein used his considerable connections and wealth to assist the Israeli state.
The Epstein-Israel ties were reported before the latest DOJ release by various independent media outlets, particularly Drop Site News. Drop Site’s reporting received scant coverage by US corporate media, as I documented at the time (FAIR.org. 11/14/25).
Drop Site based its reporting on a hack purportedly emanating from Iran’s government. The hack’s source seemed to have explained—at least in part—the lack of US corporate media coverage. The latest Epstein-Mossad ties, on the other hand, were uncovered in a release by the DOJ—a more acceptable source by US corporate media standards. (The Justice release confirmed some of the details in Drop Site‘s reporting based on the Iranian hack, such as Epstein’s close ties to the Israeli spy Yoni Koren—Drop Site, 11/11/25; Al Jazeera, 2/9/26.)
And yet only a few US corporate media outlets—most notably Axios, New York magazine, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Atlantic—have referenced the latest Epstein-Israel revelations.
Even then, these outlets cast doubt on the legitimacy of the connections by framing them as conspiracy theories, or conspiracy-adjacent—hardly a surprise, given previous US corporate media coverage.
‘Ample Fodder for Speculation’
Axios (2/3/26) wrote:
FBI source reports and internal emails contain unverified claims and secondhand suspicions about Epstein’s possible ties to Mossad and other intelligence services—material that stops well short of proof, but offers ample fodder for speculation.
A week later, Axios (2/10/26) acknowledged that Barak and his wife “stayed at Epstein’s apartment multiple times from 2015 to 2019,” citing Israeli media reports. Axios‘ Rebecca Falconer wrote that Barak “has said he ‘deeply regrets’ his past relationship with Epstein, and that he never saw nor participated in any inappropriate behavior during their meetings.” Falconer added:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected conspiracy theories peddled online that his longtime political rival Barak’s “unusual close relationship” indicated that Epstein was an Israeli spy.
Although New York features writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood (2/6/26) mentioned “former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak” as one of the “seemingly endless list of VIPs” corresponding with Epstein, it warned against looking too hard at Epstein’s ties to the Israeli state by linking an interest in the issue to antisemitism:
The horseshoe nature of the scandal makes it hard to untangle speculation about, say, Epstein’s intelligence ties from the antisemitism that is pervasive in Epstein discourse. “Yes, we are ruled by Satanic pedophiles who work for Israel,” announced the YouTuber Candace Owens, who may have been reading the same emails that prompted the left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur to post, “To my knowledge no one in legacy media has ever even discussed the possibility that Epstein was Mossad when it is all over the files.”
Right-wing conspiracy theories based in antisemitism (like Owens’) are a toxic form of discourse. But the latest batch of files—and Drop Site’s previous coverage, which Uygur has previously covered—is not hard to distinguish from antisemitism, and does more than just offer “ample fodder for speculation.”
‘Dark Workings of Cabals’
Still, pundits like the Wall Street Journal‘s Barton Swaim (2/11/26) treated questions of Epstein and Israel as necessarily conspiratorial, heaping scorn on “influencers and politicos determined to attribute all bad things to the dark workings of cabals,” and citing how “Tucker Carlson conjectured that Epstein worked with the Mossad to blackmail its enemies.”
And the Atlantic (2/7/26) wrote that, “in death, Epstein has taken on far more significance than he did in life”:
Some Americans were already primed to believe in international pedophilia rings. Bonus points if they were run by wealthy Jews—Jews who were perhaps on the Mossad payroll, as many conspiracists have insisted Epstein was.
Jacob Shamsian of Business Insider (2/14/26) asked whether “there were any truth to the rumored connections to the CIA or the Mossad,” only to hand wave away those connections by citing anonymous sources. Shamsian pointed to “four people who had access to the Justice Department’s files,” who “said there was no trace of intelligence material, which would have been the case if Epstein or Maxwell’s crimes were tied to the CIA or Mossad.”
To Compact editor Matthew Schmitz (Washington Post, 2/12/26), the “scourge of rising antisemitism in recent years has found its latest manifestation in the government’s release of millions of files about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” Schmitz referenced “antiestablishment voices” that “have advanced the claim that Jewish networks and interests are corrupting American society.” He lumped together “antisemites on the left and right,” linking Owens and Tucker Carlson with “progressive influencers” Ana Kasparian and Briahna Joy Gray. But Schmitz omitted any mention of Epstein and Barak’s very real relationship.
A Selective List of ‘Powerful Men’
The New York Times, for its part, largely downplayed the relationship between Epstein and Barak, and omitted key context. A Times article (2/5/26) on Epstein’s ties with tech start-ups briefly mentioned that Epstein “suggested to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, that he speak with Mr. Thiel about an advisory role” at Palantir.
The Times quoted a Palantir spokesperson as denying “Epstein ever investing in or being a shareholder in Palantir,” and asserting that Palantir “has never had a business relationship with Ehud Barak.” They failed to mention that Palantir signed its first contract with the Israeli government a year after the Epstein-Barak conversation.
Less than a week later, the Times (2/11/26) wrote that “political score-settling has played a part in the reaction in other countries,” including in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “played up disclosures of emails” between Epstein and Barak.
The Times noted in that piece that “India’s foreign ministry dismissed an email from Mr. Epstein, in which he appeared to take credit for the ingratiating approach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a landmark state visit to Israel in 2017.”
The paper omitted the detail that Epstein had connected Barak to Anil Ambani, an Indian billionaire close to Modi, ahead of the trip. Drop Site (1/31/26) reported that the introduction “helped accelerate the burgeoning relationship” between Israel, India, and the US.
More Tangible Ties
The sparse US corporate media coverage of the Epstein-Israel angle sharply contrasts with the extensive reporting of Epstein’s alleged ties to Russia.
Epstein visited Russia at least three times during the 2000s. He maintained a network of recruiters in Eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, whom he tasked with finding “girls”—often using modeling agencies as a front to traffic them to the US or Europe. He maintained Russian bank accounts and sought investments in Russia.
Although Russia was referenced somewhat more often than Israel in the files—about 5,400 to 4,800 times—Epstein’s connections to Barak were far more tangible than his ties to Russian government figures.
Epstein tried to meet with Putin multiple times, but there is no evidence that he ever succeeded (Washington Post, 2/7/26). Epstein maintained relationships with Russian oligarchs, tech investors, and former Russian government officials, but there isn’t a Russian equivalent to Barak, with whom Epstein shared over 4,000 email messages.
Indeed, Epstein and Barak arranged to meet face-to-face more than 60 times between September 2010 to March 2019. At least seven of these meetings took place while Barak was serving as minister of Defense for Israel (Jacobin, 2/6/26).
‘Might Replace Putin’
At least one email thread even connected Epstein to an anti-Putin dissident. Politician Ilya Ponomarev sent an email in 2011 to Bill Gates’ adviser Boris Nikolic, asking how he could gain access to the World Economic Forum in Davos “to communicate what is going on, so that not only official Putin’s voice is heard.” His email came as Ponomarev was participating in mass protests against Putin and his reelection during the 2011 Russian presidential election.
Nikolic forwarded Ponomarev’s email to Epstein, writing: “We should go soon to Russia and you should meet my friend Ilya Ponomarev,” who he described as the “main organizer of the uprising against Putin.” He “might replace Putin and become a president by himself” if “he does not get killed before,” Nikolic said. He asked how Epstein could help, “not with Davos but with the other stuff in general.”
Epstein replied: “I can do end of March.”
It’s not clear from the files whether Epstein ever met with Ponomarev, but the email thread was noteworthy, showing Epstein’s willingness to meet with an anti-Putin dissident.
Yet it received only one mention in the US corporate media—from Yahoo (2/5/26), which republished an article from the Kyiv Independent (2/5/26), a Ukraine-based news outlet that receives funding from the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy.
Beyond including the email in the article, the Kyiv Independent didn’t bother expanding on its significance. Instead, the outlet wrote:
The documents do not prove that Epstein worked for Russian intelligence.
They do, however, reveal sustained, multi-year efforts by Epstein to embed himself in Russia’s political, financial, and diplomatic circles—efforts marked by persistence, access-seeking, and repeated attempts to present himself as useful to the Kremlin.
‘Whom Epstein Was Really Working For’
Among the US corporate media outlets to cover the Epstein-Russia connection in-depth are the New York Post, Washington Post, and New York Times.
A headline in the New York Post (2/2/26) read: “Emails Reveal New Theory About Whom Jeffrey Epstein Was Really Working For.”
The right-wing outlet relied on two anonymous sources—”people close to the Russian tyrant” and “US security officials”—and an article by the British tabloid Daily Mail (1/31/26), which based its reporting on “intelligence sources.”
In the final four paragraphs of the article, the New York Post acknowledged Epstein’s well-established connections to Israel—noting that his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was the daughter of British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, widely reported to be a Mossad agent—but excluded any mention of the recent revelations.
Two days later, the New York Post ran an article (2/4/26) that detailed how Poland was launching a probe into whether Epstein was working as a Russian spy.
The right-wing outlet also published an article (2/7/26) about Epstein’s ties to “key Russian government figures.” These figures included Sergey Belyakov, who the Post described as “Russia’s deputy economic minister at the time, and a Kremlin secret service-trained spy who Epstein often appeared to use as his personal fixer in Moscow,” as well as Vitaly Churkin, “Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, between 2015 and his 2017 death.” The New York Post did not mention that Epstein introduced Belyakov to Barak in April 2015 (Reason, 8/27/25; Drop Site, 10/30/25; Washington Post, 2/7/26).
‘Added Momentum to Previous Suspicions’
The Washington Post (2/7/26) similarly hyped up a Russia connection under the headline “Epstein Built Ties to Russians and Sought to Meet Putin, Files Show.”
Jeff Bezos’ Post—which recently largely gutted its foreign reporting desk—wrote that the files “show repeated attempts in the 2010s to arrange a meeting” with Putin, but added that there was “no evidence in the Justice Department files that such a meeting ever took place.”
The Post (2/6/26) ran another article about the Russia ties, this time about “Russian expatriate tech investors who have drawn scrutiny from US intelligence agencies over their past ties with the Kremlin.”
The Post speculated:
The newly revealed extent of Epstein’s Russian connections, which also include senior Russian government officials, has added momentum to previous suspicions that he worked with or was targeted by intelligence agencies because of his personal connections to international elites.
In its own long-form article on the Epstein-Russia connection, the New York Times (2/10/26) similarly wrote that the latest batch of files have “raised new questions among Russia’s critics about whether the relationships opened the door to Russian intelligence activity.”
It is possible that Epstein was a Russian intelligence asset. However, there is no good reason for the US corporate media to frame these allegations as a real possibility, while ignoring the Epstein-Israel ties, or continuing to paint them as a far-fetched conspiracy theory.
The latest batch of files deepens the evidence, documented by Drop Site and others, that Epstein was engaged in assisting the Israeli state, serving as a go-between on commercial, diplomatic, and intelligence matters. Although Epstein maintained relationships with Russian oligarchs, tech investors, and former Russian government officials, no evidence has yet surfaced that he advocated on behalf of Russian interests. The only reasons to think that the former is more newsworthy than the latter are purely political.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Evidence of Epstein Ties to Mossad Grow, But Corporate Media Doesn't Seem to Care
There has been wall-to-wall US corporate media coverage of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files and the battle over its release. So why has new reporting about hacked materials largely been ignored by US corporate media?
Nov 15, 2025
For years, there have been whispers that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to key officials in the US and foreign governments, was involved with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.
However, the Epstein/Mossad ties were often labeled by US corporate media as “unfounded” (New York Times, 8/24/25), dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” (New York Times, 7/16/25), or said to have been “largely manufactured by paranoiacs and attention seekers and credulous believers” (New York Times, 9/9/25). Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has claimed that “Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel.”
It’s true that far-right antisemites like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have promoted a conspiratorial version of the Epstein/Israel connection as part of their bigoted, attention-seeking narratives. But recent investigations by Drop Site News—the nonprofit investigative outlet founded in July 2024—into a major hack targeting Israel revealed that Epstein did play a significant role in brokering multiple deals for Israeli intelligence. Despite the hack’s significant revelations, US corporate media coverage remains scant.
‘Knack for steering the superpowers’
Since 2024, a hacking group called “Handala” with reported ties to the Iranian government (Committee to Protect Journalists, 7/9/25) has carried out a series of cyberattacks targeting Israeli government officials and facilities (Press TV, 12/1/24; CyberDaily, 6/16/25).Aspects of the Handala hack were published on the website of nonprofit whistleblower Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), including hundreds of thousands of emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, one of Epstein’s closest connections.
Since the hacked information was released, numerous independent media outlets—including Reason (8/27/25), All-Source Intelligence (9/17/25, 9/29/25, 10/13/25), Grayzone (10/6/25, 10/9/25, 10/13/25), the (b)(7)(D) (10/16/25, 10/21/25) and DeClassified UK (9/1/25, 11/3/25)—have published investigations on its contents. Among the independent media outlets, Drop Site’s coverage stands out for its in-depth research and broad scope.
Drop Site’s investigations into the Handala hack have included six major stories since late September, four of which have centered around “Epstein’s work on behalf of Israeli military interests, particularly as it relates to his role in the development of Israel’s cyber warfare industry.”
Drop Site reporters Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim (9/28/25) detailed how Epstein wielded his influence to expand Israel’s cyber warfare industry into Mongolia. Drop Site wrote:
Jeffrey Epstein…exploited his network of political and financial elites to help Barak, and ultimately the Israeli government itself, to increase the penetration of Israel’s spy-tech firms into foreign countries.
In their next piece, Drop Site revealed (10/30/25) that Epstein created an Israel/Russia backchannel to attempt to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hussain and Grim reported that Epstein also worked with Barak and Russian elites to pressure the Obama administration into approving strikes on Iran, demonstrating his “knack for steering the superpowers toward Israel’s interests by leveraging a social network that intersected the Israeli, American and Russian intelligence communities.”
In the same piece, Hussain and Grim quoted Epstein asking Barak to “wait until they could speak privately before Barak notified intelligence leaders of a deal” with Russian-Israeli oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, and to “not go to number 1 too quickly.” Number 1 has long been a nickname for the head of the Mossad, DropSite noted.
Another article (11/7/25) recounted that Epstein sold surveillance technology to Côte d’Ivoire: “Epstein helped Barak deliver a proposal for mass surveillance of Ivorian phone and internet communications, crafted by former Israeli intelligence officials.”
Most recently, Grim and Hussain (11/11/25) reported that an Israeli spy regularly stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment. The spy, Yoni Koren, “made his intelligence career working in covert operations alongside the Mossad.”
Failing to cover the Handala hack
Hacked information must be handled ethically by journalists—including by verifying the files, considering public interest, concealing identities when necessary, and noting its origins. This is what Drop Site has done. And its reporting has significant public interest, revealing the ways in which Epstein served Israel’s interests.
Yet in a search of ProQuest’s US Newsstream collection for “Handala,” as well as a supplementary Google search, the only US corporate media outlet found to have covered the Handala hack is the New York Post (8/31/25). Its single 700-word story, drawing from Reason (8/27/25) and the Times of London (8/30/25), focused on how Prince Andrew stayed in contact with Epstein for five years longer than previously stated—sidestepping the revelations from Drop Site about Epstein’s ties to Mossad.
Hussain, who had not seen the New York Post story, said US corporate media is “deliberately ignoring” the story:
It’s such a goldmine of stories. They’re not going through it, they don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s very difficult for them to conceive what these emails refer to because they’ve spent so much time talking about it as a conspiracy theory. And now contravening evidence is emerging, or well-substantiated evidence, showing that it’s really not a conspiracy theory.
Indeed, recent mentions of Epstein’s ties to Israeli government officials have continued to dismiss them as conspiracy theories, ignoring the hack and Drop Site‘s work. For instance, an LA Times op-ed (10/10/25) on antisemitism in the GOP listed Tucker Carlson’s suggestion that “Epstein was a Mossad agent” (and accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza) as evidence of “appalling behavior,” alongside things like “entertaining Hitler/Nazi apologia” and suggesting that “Jews had something to do with [Charlie] Kirk’s death.”
The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang (10/10/25) asserted in his weekly column:
On Planet Epstein, everything that happens—the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the war in Gaza, the suppression of speech by the Trump Administration—proves the country is run by blackmail, pedophilia and fealty to Israel.
While it is of course absurd to blame “everything” on Epstein or Israel—and right-wing conspiracy theories that incorporate antisemitism are very real and dangerous—is it really unreasonable to blame “the war in Gaza” on too much “fealty to Israel”? After all, from October 7, 2023 to September 2025, the US sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project—more than a quarter of Israel’s total post–October 7 military expenditures. Epstein’s evident connections to Mossad do raise the question of whether there is more to that “fealty” than the $100 million the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC spent on both parties during the 2024 election cycle (Common Dreams, 8/28/24).
By using the “conspiracy theory” frame, Kang not only overlooked the recently revealed files from Drop Site, but also failed to convey the full scope of Epstein’s influence, leaving the actions of associates and key government officials unscrutinized.
Other Handala revelations
Other aspects of the Handala hack have also been well-covered by independent media, including reports of billionaires funding an Israeli cyber campaign against anti-apartheid activists (All-Source Intelligence, 9/17/25). Other stories describe Iran striking a secret Israeli military site near a Tel Aviv tower (All-Source Intelligence, 10/13/25; Grayzone, 10/13/25), and Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison, meeting with a top Israeli general to plan spying on Americans (Grayzone, 10/6/25). The Grayzone (10/9/25) also reported that a former US ambassador secretly worked with a top Israeli diplomat to help Israel access several prestigious UN committees.
In Israeli media, Haaretz (3/9/25) reported that thousands of Israeli gun owners were exposed in an Iranian hack-and-leak operation. The paper (7/9/25) also revealed the leak of a database containing thousands of résumés belonging to Israelis who served in classified and sensitive positions within the Israel Defense Forces and other military and security agencies.
These details, like those about Epstein, have also been met with silence in US corporate media.
There has been wall-to-wall US corporate media coverage of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files and the battle over its release. So why has the hack largely been ignored by US corporate media? One possible reason is the hack’s likely origin. It has been reportedly attributed to Banished Kitten, a cyber unit within Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (Committee to Protect Journalists, 7/9/25). Hacks purportedly emanating from Iran are rarely covered in US corporate media—and when they are, the origin of the hack, not its content, becomes the focus.
Look no further than media coverage of the 271-page official dossier of then–Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, which revealed that the Trump campaign believed Vance “embraced noninterventionism,” among other purported vulnerabilities (Ken Klippenstein, 9/26/24). The US government alleged the Vance dossier was leaked through Iranian hacking (FAIR.org, 9/30/24). While the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico possessed the Vance dossier for weeks, they declined to publish it (Popular Information, 9/9/24).
The contents of the Vance dossier were eventually revealed by independent reporter Ken Klippenstein, as well-documented by FAIR contributor Ari Paul (9/30/24). Paul noted that while Klippenstein’s reporting pushed the story into the legacy media, “most of the reporting about this dossier has been on the intrigue revolving around Iranian hacking rather than the content itself” (Daily Beast, 8/10/24; Politico, 8/10/24; Forbes, 8/11/24).
Today, despite Drop Site‘s thorough and revealing reporting, the Handala hack has been almost completely ignored by US corporate media. Said Drop Site‘s Hussain:
A lot of these [media] organizations, it’s kind of not a secret, they have sympathies or ties to Israel, so it’s not a story which is appealing to them, it’s not politically convenient for these organizations, for the most part.
I think when something’s in the public interest, you report on it, and you’re transparent about where it came from. But in this case, [US corporate] media chose not to.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular