Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Gates

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Trump's Crackdown on Anti-War Activists (w/ CODEPINK's Medea Benjamin)
by Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel
Sep 24, 2025

Trump's threatening to bring RICO charges against CODEPINK for their nonviolent, anti-war activism is only a symptom of the administration's broader attack on freedom of speech and dissent.

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07: U.S. President Donald Trump takes a question from a member of the media during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump is meeting with Netanyahu to discuss ongoing efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza and newly imposed U.S. tariffs. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)



Transcript

Earlier this month, activists from the nonviolent anti-war group Code Pink confronted Donald Trump and his cabinet,
including J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegsith at a Washington DC
restaurant. They shouted, "Free DC, free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our
time." Trump angrily ordered his security to quote get them out of here.
Trump issued threats later against the activists. He claimed one of the activists was a quote paid agitator.
Instead, he is looking into having US Attorney General Pam Bondi bring RICO
charges against the protesters quote because they should be put in jail. End quote. What they are doing, he said, to
this country is really subversive. RICO charges or charges under the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act were originally designed to combat organized crime. The campaign against
dissident or those whom Trump refers to as quote unquote the radical left has
intensified since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, elevated immediately after
his death to the status of a martyr. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch told
CNN the Justice Department may investigate groups that have protested Trump, also referencing the protesters
who interrupted the dinner. Is it again sheer happen stance that individuals
show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington in a costume with vile words
and vile anger? She said on CNN, "Does it mean it's just completely random that
they showed up? Maybe, maybe. But to the extent that it's part of an organized
effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there's
potential potential investigations. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told Axios in an email,
quote, "Left-win organ left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against the law,
enforcement officers, and coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop
points for weapons and riot materials, and more. The Trump administration will get to the bottom of this vast network,
inciting violence in American communities," she went on. This effort will target those committing criminal
acts and hold them accountable. Joining me to discuss the drive to silence all disscent is the activist and code pink
co-founder media Benjamin. Media, who has protested with Code Pink against
wars, whether waged by Democratic or Republican political leaders, was
arrested inside the US capital a few days ago when she asked Representative
Daryl Isa about Israel's attack on Qatar. Isa refused to answer. His staff
attempted to seize her phone and called police. She was charged with quote impeding a congressperson.
As a veteran anti-war activist, we're now talking decades.
How does this moment compare with other moments of resistance?
Well, thank you for having me on, Chris. It's always good to be on with you. Um, this moment is a very dark moment, a
very scary moment. Uh we've certainly had moments in my lifetime where uh
people that went up against administrations uh were uh charged with all kinds of
ridiculous uh lawsuits and during the Iraq war we received a lot of threats as
code pink when it was US soldiers who were fighting and dying there. Uh but
this is a much more wholesale attack on uh free speech much more than I have
seen before. Well, we've also and it's not hypothetical.
So we have seen uh a series of measures I mean law firms for instance that
defended uh people who were critical of Trump or Trump opponents. Uh of course
the assault on universities. uh the purging of comedians such as Coar
and Kimmel. Um it it there's an a kind of institutional dismantling that uh
perhaps is unlike anything we've seen since I don't know maybe the 1960s with
the rise of the anti-war movement. We certainly haven't seen this level of attack on us says Code Pink. Uh and
we're part of a much larger constellation of organizations that have been the victim of lawfare with all
kinds of ridiculous lawsuits against us. In the case of Code Pink, uh that we are
somehow connected to Hamas, which is crazy, but it uh it takes a lot of time
and resources to uh fight these lawsuits. And then we've had a series of
members of Congress and high level members of Congress like Tom Cotton who is the head of the Senate Intelligence
Committee say before a hearing of all of the heads of the intelligence
communities uh in the country that Code Pink was funded by the Chinese Communist
Party. Uh we've had uh the head of the judiciary committee, Senator Grassley,
say that the FBI and the Department of Justice should investigate us for
violations of FAR, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, uh as if we were some
foreign agent. We've been accused of being foreign agents of Iran, of being foreign agents of China. Um, we've had
members of Congress say that we should be barred from coming into Congress. Uh,
we have had members of Congress, one of my favorite was the, uh, in the Natural Resources Committee, uh, a letter that
included as proof that we were representing the Chinese government was that we wanted the Pentagon to have to
measure its carbon emissions. And who but the Chinese government would want to see that happen? So all kinds of attacks
and uh as I said we are one of many many organizations and it's harassment it's
uh sapping of our time and energy and it certainly does uh make people feel very
nervous about standing up to this administration. But I must say, Chris,
that we have found more and more volunteers coming us with us in Congress
as we go around every single day trying to get our members of Congress to represent us and not Israel.
I want to ask about Antifa. So, uh, Trump, uh, sent out on Truth Social that
he was declaring Antifa to be a terrorist organization. Antifa is an
amorphous group with no hierarchy or real organizational
structure. But it uh and then of course in the same breath he's talking about
going after uh funders uh of groups that he doesn't like like George Soros. Did
you see that declaration uh that Antifa was a terrorist group as a way
essentially to uh tar all resistance groups by tying them I mean however
absurdly to Antifa? I mean I read that quote from uh Blanch which talked about
stockpiling weapons and I mean just complete fantasy but I just wondered what your reaction was to declaring
Antifa a terrorist organization. Well, luckily I was able to read your column very quickly after
and I felt uh very much reassured in my own thinking because over the years I
too have been uh the uh victim of attacks by groups related to Antifa like
the the black block. Uh in fact I got a pie in my face one time that might sound
funny but it felt very aggressive and I was followed around as I toured the
country on a book tour. uh by people who said that I was a um I think they called
it a a uh part of the uh NGO industrial complex that was trying to destroy the
revolution. So like you, I have had my run-ins with groups like Antifa and uh
yet when I see that that kind of uh um
designation to a group as you well know that is so amorphous uh it is the
beginnings of saying if you can go after this group and nobody stands up then you can go after the next one and the next
one. What I really have been heartened by is seeing how the reaction has been
in the UK to the designation of Palestine Action as a proscribed group
as they call it there. Here I guess it would be a terrorist group. And it has really been heartening to see the
hundreds and hundreds of people who have been arrested uh in standing up to
Palestine action and showing the how ridiculous the state is when it arrests
people in their 80s, people who are blind, professors uh merely for wearing
a shirt that says I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action. So I think we
have to be ready in the US to do that kind of collective support uh in uh as
this administration takes swipes at group after group person after person um
whether it's Makmoud Khalil and we see the tremendous support that he has gotten uh or groups that we might not
like. Let's before we talk about your arrest, let's talk a little bit about what
Codepink does. I love your confrontations. I don't actually do them myself. I let you do them and then I
watch them. Um, but uh, talk about Codepink's tactics, what you do. You
call people out in committee hearings. You, uh, and I don't know how many
committee hearings you've been dragged out of. But let's talk about what you do, what CodePink does, and why you do
it. And then perhaps we can talk about your recent arrest. Well, first let me say the things that people don't see
because it's more behind the scenes and that is all the chapters that we have across the United States that are doing
work both on boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns uh that are doing work to try to uh stop bad laws from
being uh passed in their state level or their city level or get good ones passed
calling for an end to weapon sales uh or putting pressure on their local officials. as well as their
representative in Congress. And those of us who are in DC and go around week
after week inside Congress were also doing that kind of uh daytoday
uh le uh less visible work of going to offices. Remember, there's 435 members
of the House and 100 in the Senate. That's a lot of offices that we visit on a regular basis, including all of the
Republican offices because we're just waiting for the dyke to break there and for it not to just be Marjgery Taylor
Green and Tom Massie and the Republicans, but for a new flood of Republicans who start seeing the the
light in terms of where their base is. So, we go around from office to office and what we have been focusing on lately
is this piece of legislation called Block the Bombs because it's a specific bill that allows us to focus on one
member of Congress after another and pressure them both in their constituency and in DC to sign on to that. And we've
been doing that methodically so that now there are 50 members of Congress who've signed on to that. And every week we get
a few more uh and we do a similar kind of thing in the Senate. Now what you see
is when I go and and bird dog or other members of Code Pink uh what we call bird dogging uh members of the uh the
House and the Senate as they're walking through the halls or in the hearings or
when they're coming in or out of a hearing or when they're walking outside over to the Capitol. That's our time for
one-on-one with them. And if they're people that we like, we don't video them. We talk to them. We have good
conversations and we say, "What else can we do to stop this genocide, to get the food in, to stop the slaughter?" Uh and
when there are people we know that uh continue to support sending weapons to
Israel, continue to say things like there is no starvation in Gaza, which is
something that we hear quite often, or the only reason that food is not getting in is because Hamas steals it all. Uh
then we record those and we put them out for everyone to see. And I think it's
been quite revoly to people not only in this country but in other places because
as I've traveled around in other countries, they said, "Wow, I didn't know how undemocratic your country was
until I started seeing those videos and seeing how these members of Congress don't represent the people. They just
represent their donors, whether it's the Apac donors or the weapons industry, uh,
and certainly don't re represent what's in the national security interest even of the United States, much less uh,
showing that they have some heart for the people who are suffering so much in Gaza. So, that's really been a a very
important thing, I think, that we've gotten out to show people exactly who some of these members of Congress are.
Well, you call out their hypocrisy. Uh there was a video of you at a it was
some kind of Republican Christian convention where you asked people the simple question, will you pray for the
children of Gaza? And they ran from you as if you had leprosy and then of course
dragged you out. Uh yes. I often go to these Christian gatherings and say, "Let's hold hands
together and pray for the children of Gaza." And when I say, "Let's hold hands and pray," they take my hand. and
they're ready to pray and then I when I say for the children of Gotha they're like oh no we can't possibly do that. So
yes calling out their hypocrisy in so many different ways and also when we put
out the videos we often put a tag of how much money they are getting from Apac
because that's important for people to know as well. you've been uh you know a
staunch foe of Apac that's uh consumed a lot of
your time and energy when Apac meets you've I've attended some you've held kind of rival uh gatherings talk a
little bit about the Apac uh lobby its power in the genocide
it's funny Chris because if you remember in past years Apac used to have these
enormous conference ences with like 10,000 people would come and they'd take
over the whole convention center and uh the members of Congress and the
administration they would fight with each other over who would get top billing. They all wanted to be seen and
heard there and that has changed tremendously. I mean since October 7th
uh they and uh and the the genocide um many of them are embarrassed to be seen
at these Apac gatherings. Uh they the Apac gatherings are a lot smaller. Um
the what's uh really interesting to me, Chris, is that we're now seeing people
who are not necessarily progressive Democrats, very middle of the road. uh
two of them from North Carolina, Valerie Fuche and Deborah Ross recently coming out and saying publicly they wouldn't
take money from Apac uh as well as Kevin McCarthy from uh Kentucky who said he
wouldn't take money from Apac. So I'm not saying Apac is not a tremendous force and has so skewed the policies of
our government. But I'm saying that there are starting to be cracks and that there are members of Congress who are
starting to be embarrassed by their uh affiliation with Apac. Embarrassed uh
that the public knows how much money they've taken from Apac. And Chris, I think it's important for your viewers to
understand it's not just the money that Apac gives to them. It really is the
fear they have of being targeted by Apac because, you know, when we put out these
videos and show the amounts of money, sometimes it's a huge amount of money. You know, some have taken a million
dollars over the course of their career, but some have only gotten about $30,000 and yet they tow the AP pack line. Maybe
because they're Christian Zionists and they have some misguided belief that God told them to support Israel. Um, but
oftentimes it's because they don't want to be on Apac's hit list. We have seen
through the years, not just the recent uh way that Apac has taken out Corey
Bush and Jamal Bowman, but it goes back and it goes back even to Jewish members
of Congress like Andy Lean who is taken out by Apac. So, they want to keep their
heads down. They don't want to be targeted by Apac. But yet uh as more and
more constituents are confronting their members of Congress in the town halls and their uh local offices uh we are
seeing more members saying that they don't want to be affiliated or seen as
Apac puppets. Can you juxtapose and you've been outspoken about this uh the proxy war in
Ukraine and what's happening in Gaza and the US response?
Well, it was so interesting in the during the war in Ukraine how we were
pushing members of Congress to come out and call for negotiations. And you probably recall, Chris, the 18 members
of Congress, the progressive Democrats who soon after the war began came out
with that letter that said, "Thank you, uh, Biden for all the money that you're
giving to Ukraine and we've got to support Ukraine in this war." Uh, but negotiations might be a good thing. And
they were so pillaried by their own uh by their own Democrats, by the higherups
in the party that within 24 hours they withdrew that letter. And ever since
then, they don't talk about it. And so it's only been the Republicans who have
said, "Why are we fueling a foreign war when the American people don't want
that?" And I mentioned Marjorie Taylor Green. That's how we first began a relationship with her because she was so
outspoken about that. And um so we see that there are still members of the
Republican party who say we don't want to keep spending our money on foreign
wars, but when they say foreign wars, they're talking about Ukraine. They're not talking about Israel. And when we
use the same logic to say, well, what about Israel? and you call yourselves America first, but are you America first
when you are allocating all of this money to Israel that could be used here in America and they don't want to hear
that. But that's why I say the dyke is about to break because as you well know, Chris, there are so many influencers in
the Republican party um who have changed their position on Israel that I am just
waiting to see some more consistency among the Republicans when they say we don't want to fuel foreign wars. They're
not just talking about Ukraine. Let's talk about your arrest. Um, was
that the first time that you were uh attempting to converse with a member
of Congress? I think you were in the just in the hallway, right? That was that the first time that you were
arrested for that activity? Yes, we've been arrested many times in the hearings and we know when we speak
up in the hearings that we're at risk of arrest. Uh and there are many groups
that come to the capital that stage beautiful acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. We've seen Jewish voice
for peace. We've seen Christians for a ceasefire. Wonderful actions that the Menanites have done and they know they
will be arrested. Uh but in this case, I was doing what I do on a regular basis,
which is walk down the halls. I find a member of Congress and I run after them and ask them will they comment on some
issue of the day. This was the day after the Israelis had attacked the Hamas
negotiators in Qatar. And I thought it was important. You know, there are journalists all over Congress who are
constantly putting their microphones in the faces of members of Congress. I wasn't even near him. I was following
behind him or aside uh him. And I asked him what he thought of Israel's attack
on Qatar. And he was so nasty. and went into his office and I just gently
touched the door opening a public place in the office. I mean anybody can walk into his office and he immediately told
his staff person to grab my phone and he said that I was uh violating the law by
entering his office. First I wasn't in his office and second it's no violation to enter a congressperson's office.
Well, I just thought I said you're out of your mind and you're nasty and if you touch me it's an assault. And I went
away thinking, "What a nasty guy." And then about 15 minutes later, these uh
not very nice police officers came up and said that Daryl Isa had lodged a
complaint against me and wanted me arrested. I showed them the video and they looked at the video and they said,
"There's nothing there. You didn't do anything wrong." And so I was there for a long time while they were debating
whether to let me go, which I thought would happen, uh or to arrest me. But it turns out the inspector general got
involved. Uh ISA wouldn't drop it and so he had me arrested and I have to go back
to court on October 9th. And I think this is part of an attempt by members of
Congress to give me a stayaway order, which means a judge in the interim
between your case coming up and being adjudicated, they can tell you you can't go back into Congress. And given that
there are members of Congress like this uh very right-wing woman Anna Palina Luna who has asked the speaker to keep
Code Pink out of Congress. I think this is part of uh that activity. I am hoping
that um the judge will see how ridiculous it is and will drop the case
but you never know. Let's talk about Trump and Rico and his statements in the Oval Office about Code
Pink. And a woman in many cases, women. You can see they're professional agitators.
I had one the other night. I had four the other night all in one group. Total phonies. I started to scream when I got
into a restaurant. Oh, you know, something with Palestine. I said, well, I'm doing a great job for
peace in the Middle East. I should get lots of awards for that, right? with the Abraham Accords and everything else, but
a woman just stood up and started screaming and she got booed out of the place, too. The people, there were a lot
of people in the restaurant. I went there to show how safe and it was safe. I mean, the woman is just a mouthpiece
all she was. She was a paid she was a paid agitator and you have a lot of them. And I've asked Pam to look into
that in terms of RICO bringing RICO cases against criminal RICO because they should be put in jail. what they're
doing to this country is really subversive. Uh yes, there were a a group of code
pink women for women who had uh gone into a restaurant where Trump ended up
having dinner and they were able to be very close to him and uh shouted out uh
their opposition to US troops, the the the National Guard troops in Washington
DC as well as the occupation of Palestine. and they were um told to
leave and they were escorted out and it was all very civil actually. Uh and then
after that we hear him talking about these horrible people, you know, he calls these leftists lunatics and uh
maybe they should be arrested for RICO. I mean, I think that's just him uh mouththing off just like he said Soros
should be arrested and everybody should be arrested. um because really it was just a prime example of the use of our
first amendment rights. And why is that activity important? Uh
you know confronting figures in power which is uh of course one of the primary
activities of code pink. Code pink since our founding and it's over 20 years now we've confronted every
single president in power. We've confronted the vice presidents. We've confronted the secretaries of state um
just like we confront the members of Congress in Congress because we think they need to hear from us and so often
they isolate themselves. Uh they have press conference but oftentimes it's very selective who gets to ask a
question and how they're asked. Um we think that they need to be uh they need
to be confronted when they are doing horrible things like making wars and every single one of our presidents has
made war. uh whether it's Bush during the terrible invasion of Iraq or it was
Obama when we confronted him about the use of drones for uh killing anybody he
wanted to anywhere he wanted to and the continuation of holding people in Guantanamo. Uh it's up to us and I feel
that it's a duty of citizens to confront our officials when they are doing such
horrible things, war, torture, extra extrajudicial killings. We have to speak
up. Do you think that direct confrontation has an effect on power? I think it does. I remember when I
confronted uh Barack Obama and it was actually kind of a conversation that we
were having and they were trying to arrest me and I remember saying to the uh officers, "Shh, you better not arrest
me. I'm having a conversation with the president." Which gave me more time. Uh and we had a back and forth. And when I
was finally dragged out, he said, uh, the the issues that that woman brings
up, it's funny you said young young woman because I'm 10 years older than him, uh, are are issues that are worth
listening to. And those were the issues of how can we be holding people in Guantanamo that never had a trial, that
never were convicted of anything. How can we be killing US citizens like Abdul
Rakman al- Awaki, a 16-year-old US citizen killed by US drone strike? And
also um about the uh the US um
involvement in war that we shouldn't be in. So, uh I think yes, um that was an
example where uh we did have a real conversation and we see how those kinds
of interactions uh those kinds of interruptions of power
also inspire other people. And it might not inspire them to do that kind of
direct confrontation of somebody like a president, but it does inspire them to directly confront their member of
Congress. And I don't know if you saw during the August recess, Chris, all the different people who confronted their
members of Congress at the town hall meetings. It was just beautiful to see. And so I think those direct
confrontations do have an impact. But I can't see Trump or Steven Miller
or J. D. Vance having a conversation with you. Well, you never know. I think you have
to try it. I mean, we have had conversations with Marco Rubio when he was a senator. Uh, and yes, sometimes
it's just yelling back and forth. Um, but I think we need to, uh, try to have
whether it's a conversation or whether it's a what we call strategic interruption. We have to keep doing
that. And that's part of defending our right to free speech. You know, uh, better than anyone, Chris, how it's
being assaulted in so many different ways. But if we don't keep using it and keep pushing it, um, we will definitely
see it taken away. Where do you see us going, especially after the kind of deification of Charlie
Kirk as a martyr? I mean, I listen to the rally in Arizona. Um, I mean,
especially Miller, it was kind of fullon fascism. Where are we headed? What do you see coming?
I see that we're in for a very very dangerous times. I think this administration is using everything that
it has uh including the courts uh to uh take away our basic rights. I think uh
whether it's going after immigrants uh the uh way that ICE is just acting like
Gestapos on our streets and kidnapping our neighbors. I live in Washington DC
and it pains me when I walk out of my house around the block and I see armed
National Guard in my community. It is horrific. And uh then to see the way
that our um free speech rights are being violated on a daily basis. uh the way
the police have cracked down so much on the poor university students who were the moral center of this movement
against genocide and have been uh so harassed and intimidated. Um we see it
on all sides and uh the way that our universities are so attacked. You know, this is basic core issues that we will
be dealing with for decades to come when they take away our right to study certain issues or they impose the way
that even in uh in our elementary and high schools um we are allowed to talk
about things like what is a genocide and is it only a genocide when it relates to
something that um the uh uh the uh Jewish community wants us to talk about.
Um, this is this is stuff that's going to take decades to unravel, but I think it's cyclical. I think it will um we've
got to hold on to our seats and go through a very very hellish uh period ahead. Uh, but we're going to come out
on the other side. Let's talk about the weaponization of anti-semitism that of course was used by
the Trump administration to go after the universities which capitulated and from the beginning uh acknowledged I think
with no basis in fact that these campuses had a problem with anti-semitism. I have taught at
Colombia. I went to Harvard. I've taught at Princeton. That the idea not not that anti-semitism doesn't exist, but the
idea that these institutions fumented anti-semitism was uh nuts. Uh and uh and
then of course the demonization of uh undocumented workers or migrants to
justify uh this explosion of uh ICE uh
and the building of detention centers. And now of course uh the idea that there
was an organized group uh responsible for the assassination
of Charlie Kirk which is called the radical left. I mean, all of these
things are completely fictitious, but they've been used very effectively
uh to uh you know, close the iron doors to shut down what's left of our very
anemic open society. Yes. And I see that it is um also
happening so much on the local and statewide levels. I see that the last
week there were about 250 members of uh locally elected officials
who were in Israel during a time of a genocide and they were being indoctrinated so that they would go home
and reinforce or impose new legislation against boycott divestment and sanctions
that they would impose new restrictions on what can be taught in the schools. Um
this has seeped into so many areas of our lives um that uh it is uh uh very
hard to see how we can move forward uh as the the news keeps tightening. On the
other hand, uh when I am in Congress, you know, I I I've seen 14 hearings
already on anti-semitism and so many of them are just ridiculous.
as you say, you know, somebody had a poster in their room that offended
somebody or, you know, things that are like, "I'm sorry." You know, you could have just asked somebody to apologize
for a comment that they made and it would be over. Um, but instead they're making it out like this is more
important than the genocide that is actually going on. And it of course is a distraction from the genocide that's
going on. And um I uh my one of my hopes is that um the
younger generation is not falling into this trap. That the younger generation
is a generation that is opposed to US policy in Israel. Um that they have
during things like the encampments. I mean you saw Chris the beauty of these encampments when they were Muslims and
Jewish students praying together and uh it was like a vision of the society we
want to see in the future. Well, these students are not going to let go of that. You know, that's going to be with
them uh as they move forward. And uh so there are uh there's a new generation of
young people. We see it when we go into Congress and you see these Congress people that hold on to their uh vision
of Israel that they're going to keep giving our money to and the staff people nodding in support of us when we go in
or running after us in the hallways to say thank you for coming in. We're working hard to try to change our boss's
mind. Um there is a huge generational gap and that generational gap is what
will save us. Well, you see it with mom Donnie. Absolutely. I mean, how beautiful is
that? I mean, I'm in New York City right now and it just feels so good being here
knowing that he will be the next mayor. I'm pretty sure he will be the next mayor and that will change things and it
has already changed things. You see people around the country who are now excited about running for office who
know exactly how they should portray themselves as they went for office because he's such a wonderful role model
of that. So yes, that is that is so hopeful. Although not endorsed by Schumer or
Jeff. Uh and I just want to close by having you reflect a little bit on the
Democratic Party. I mean in many ways the Democratic Party transformed itself into the war party. Uh but talk a little
bit about the Democratic Party and whether you believe it's uh reformable from within.
It's pathetic. It's disgusting. It was disgusting under Biden. It's disgusting under Trump when you'd think now would
be the time for them to be the party of opposition and really be out there. Um, it's irredeemable. Uh, you and I have
been supporters of third parties for a long time. Both worked on Ralph Nater's campaign. uh been uh always uh trying to
get a strong third party going because I don't see uh any way that the Democratic
party can lead us into the kind of future we want. On the other hand, uh as
we are trying to build and look for leaders of a new uh third party, we have
to uh move and support those Democrats who are trying to change the party from
within. I support groups like Progressive Democrats of America. I support the progressive democrats like
Rashida Talib and uh Delia Ramirez and Ilhan Omar. And you know there are a
number of good ones. Uh so we work with what we have but we build for something much better in the future.
Great. Thanks media. Uh and I want to thank uh Diego and Victor uh Thomas
Sophia and Max who produce the show. You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com.
[Music]

[admin]

Italy, Spain Deploy Naval Ships After Drones Repeatedly Attack Gaza-Bound Flotilla
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
September 25, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/25/ ... transcript



"We are sailing to Gaza. Here's why"

Spain and Italy are sending naval vessels to protect the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla after activists said drones repeatedly attacked their boats near Greece on Wednesday. Activists said the most recent strikes marked the seventh attack on the solidarity movement’s vessels. The Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest humanitarian convoy in history to traverse the Mediterranean Sea, says David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, who joins Democracy Now! from the flotilla. “We are not here to drop the aid and go home and pat ourselves on the back. We are here to establish a humanitarian corridor for states themselves to assume their responsibilities and to deliver the aid at the scale that Gaza requires.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Spain and Italy are sending naval vessels to protect the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla after activists said that drones repeatedly attacked their boats near Greece on Wednesday. In a statement, the flotilla organizers said, quote, “Multiple drones, unidentified objects dropped, communications jammed and explosions heard from a number of boats.” Activists also said the strikes on Wednesday marked the seventh attack on the flotilla. The Global Sumud Flotilla set sail after Israel blocked two earlier attempts by activists to reach Gaza by sea.

AMY GOODMAN: Passengers aboard the flotilla — there are many boats — include the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, the South African MP Mandla Mandela.

We’re going now to the flotilla to speak with David Adler, the co-general coordinator of the Progressive International. He has a new piece in The Guardian headlined “We Are Sailing to Gaza. Here’s Why.”

David, we see your hair blowing. We see you’re on the ship. Can you explain what has taken place? For people who haven’t followed this flotilla, what is it? And the significance of Italy and Spain sending their naval ships to protect you?

DAVID ADLER: This Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest humanitarian convoy in history to traverse the Mediterranean Sea, from Barcelona to Tunis to Sicily to here in Crete and onward to Gaza, with a mission that’s very simple, but very urgent, which is to break the siege and to establish a permanent humanitarian corridor at sea to deliver critical aid to the starving people of Palestine.

It is not an exaggeration, Amy, to say that this unprecedented mission, whose vessels number greater than the sum of all previous efforts, from 2008 forward, of Freedom Flotilla and its affiliates to try to reach Gaza, has faced bureaucratic sabotage, has suffered from drone attacks in the port of Tunis when we were on the boats and we were attacked with incendiary devices. But most terrifyingly, just here at sea, before we entered near Tikrit, was two nights ago, when for several hours there were bombardments. I mean, you have to imagine, under the cover of darkness, we can’t see these drones. We can hear them, but there’s no lights on them, and all we can hear are the sounds of explosions. All we have is CCTV footage of the bombs being dropped onto the boats, with an obvious intent to damage beyond repair these sailboats, and therefore to deter the mission from going forward. In many cases, that was successful. Some of the boats were damaged beyond repair. And others, we were able to repair them.

I think there’s one little detail that your listeners and your viewers might be interested in, which is, as they’re deploying this illegal, deeply criminal act of violence against a civilian humanitarian mission like ours, they also jammed our communication channels. With what? With ABBA, with “Lay Your Love on Me,” which, of course, is a reference, a not-so-subtle reference, to the Swedish activist aboard, Greta Thunberg, as you mentioned in the introduction to the segment, Amy.

So, it is in the wake of those really terrifying attacks, that kept us up all night and put our lives at risk, that we put out a message to the world, in particular, a message to the governments of the Mediterranean, not just to send a declaration in support of the flotilla or in recognition of our diplomatic or humanitarian ambitions, to witness, to send boats [inaudible] not to protect our lives, but to ensure the success of our mission, which is a [inaudible] one, is to set up a new corridor to reach the people of Gaza, when the points on land have been so famously, so infamously blocked from access.

AMY GOODMAN: How many boats are there, David?

DAVID ADLER: Right now we’re about 40 boats that have joined together from the three fleets — Barcelona; Tunis, or the Maghreb, fleet; and Italian fleet. And we’re meeting six more boats that are now coming from Greece. We should be between 40 and 50 boats — again, unprecedented number of humanitarian vessels, that is now setting sail on the final leg to reach the shores of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: David, you’re breaking up a little, so we’re going to fix that sound. And while we do, we’re going to go to who you just referenced, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. This is Greta speaking when the flotilla stopped in Tunisia.

GRETA THUNBERG: The messages we have to Palestinians in Gaza are many, first that I’m absolutely disgusted and appalled to live in a world where our people in power every day are betraying Palestinians, and how there are so many people who can seemingly just accept the extreme injustice and the mass slaughtering of people without doing anything. So, for that, I am heartbroken. And this is not about me or my feelings at all, but I’m heartbroken to live in that world. …

What is happening now, for example, in Gaza City, should not come as a surprise, because Israel have been very clear from the beginning that this is their intent. They have genocidal intent that they want to take over the Gaza Strip, which is such a serious war crime. And the world has not listened. Right now people are more and more waking up, but at what cost? …

What is happening is, of course, an attack on Palestinians, the Palestinian identity and the Palestinian nation and all the countless of people whose suffering is being reduced to numbers and U.N. resolutions. But this is also an attack on humanity, on international law, on every sense of humanity we have left. And that is a huge, huge risk. Of course, all right, “risk” is not the right word. It is a threat to everything we hold dear. …

What we are claiming to do is to act in line with international law. We are hearing the calls from Palestinians, who are urging the people of the world to step up, to end our complicity. And we are doing a very small part of that, the bare minimum, to act to uphold international law, human rights. …

Any risk we could be subjected to is, of course, nothing to what Palestinians are risking every day just trying to survive. For example, the extremely brave Palestinian journalists, who we are all in debt for, for them reporting about what is happening on the ground, they risk their lives every single day to tell the story. And the biggest risk is how we have allowed fascism and racism to escalate to such an extent that history keeps repeating itself.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the climate activist Greta Thunberg. She’s one of many activists on board some 40 ships in the Sumud Flotilla that have [been] hit by drones. Drop Site News is reporting Trump envoy Tom Barrack admits Israel bombed the Global Sumud Flotilla ships in Tunisia earlier this month. That’s where Greta was speaking. We’re talking to, live on the ship, David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, David Adler, just before we finish, if you could say, what exactly are you carrying on the ship to Gaza, and what are you calling for now?

DAVID ADLER: We are carrying — these ships — some of them are humble motor cruisers, like the family boat where I’m stationed, the lead vessel of the broader fleet; some of them are even humbler sailing boats — are packed to gills with basic and critical humanitarian aid, baby formula, medicine, food and water.

However, we’re not naive about the scale of the suffering in Gaza and the scale of the humanitarian crisis, that requires a much larger and more ambitious response by the states, whose good-faith obligations under international law require them to respond, on the Genocide Convention. So, that’s why I put so much emphasis on this infrastructural element of our mission. We are not here to drop the aid and go home and pat ourselves on the back.

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, David.

DAVID ADLER: We are here to establish a humanitarian corridor for states themselves to assume their responsibilities and to deliver the aid at the scale that Gaza requires.

AMY GOODMAN: David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, one of the people on board the Sumud Flotilla headed to break the siege in Gaza. Spanish and Italian naval ships have gone to protect them. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, for another edition of Democracy Now!

[admin]

Spain SHOCKS Netanyahu! Warship FIRES on Israeli Drones Over Gaza Flotilla! | OpenmindedThinker
OpenmindedThinker Show
Sep 26, 2025 #Spain #Israel #Gaza

Tension Boils as Spanish Warship Fires Missile at Israeli Drones Attacking Gaza Flotilla
For the first time in history, Spain has deployed military power to protect a Gaza aid flotilla, firing at Israeli drones in international waters off Greece. This unprecedented move is a direct blow to war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and exposes the changing tide in Europe against Israel’s impunity.

In this video, we break down:
How a Spanish warship confronted Israeli drones over the flotilla.
Why this marks a historic turning point in the fight to break the Gaza blockade.
Italy’s surprising naval deployment under Giorgia Meloni and what it signals.
Pedro Sánchez’s bold defiance of Netanyahu and his legacy of recognizing Palestine.
Growing calls inside the EU for sanctions against Israel despite German and Hungarian resistance.
Britain’s failure to act, as Keir Starmer refuses to send ships to protect 13 British citizens aboard.



Transcript

A Spanish warship has reportedly fired
at an Israeli drone in a dramatic
escalation of tensions in international
waters off the coast of Greece. Many see
this as a historic setback for war
criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, whose
military arrogance is now facing push
back from unexpected corners. Israeli
media and social media bots are already
scrambling to spin the incident with
some mocking Spain for allegedly using
Israeli weapons against Israel, an
attempt to ridicule Spain's reliance on
foreign defense systems. Others even
dragged up the dark shadow of the
Spanish Inquisition to smear President
Pedro Sanchez. Yet, despite the noise,
the Spanish Navy made its move, marking
the first time in history that a
European state has deployed military
power to protect a Gaza aid flotillaa on
its way to break the siege. That alone
is a huge message to Netanyahu. The
world is changing and the days of a free
pass to kill and destroy Palestine
without consequences may be slipping
away. Uh but I I want to point out that
even though this flutella is a
humanitarian mission, um this should be
in no way be seen as us coming to the
rescue of the Palestinians. Palestinians
do not anyone do not need anyone to come
and save them. um Palestinians
um are calling for us who can act to
speak up to to do everything in our
power to apply pressure on our
governments, our institutions and our
companies who are enabling and fueling
this genocide to take place and to end
our complicity. And that is what we are
doing. We are listening and acting upon
the calls of Palestinians to take
action. Um, the idea of having a
flotilla with dozens of boats coming to
Gaza was initiated by Palestinians. So,
listen to what Palestinians are are
calling for you to do. Um, step out of
your comfort zone. Realize that you are
not risking anything by speaking up
compared to what Palestinians are facing
every day. Just trying to make ends
meet, just trying to survive. especially
those who are risking their lives every
day trying to report on the situation.
So there are so many things that you can
do locally, whether it is um occupying
the Israeli embassy, whether it is
putting pressure on companies, whether
it is uh doing events to raise awareness
and create opinion about
Italy. Then added its own twist to the
story, deploying two naval vessels to
back the flotilla. Now, I've been
skeptical of Georgia Maloney's
government because of her seemingly
pro-Israel stance, but this action
signals a possible shift combined with
her recent anti-Israel remarks at the UN
General Assembly. It suggests that some
European leaders are starting to push
back against Tel Aviv's unchecked
aggression in Brussels. There are even
whispers of sanctions being considered
against Israel. While I don't have much
faith in the EU system, unonymity is
required. And Germany and Hungary remain
strong allies of Netanyahu. fact that
sanctions are being discussed at all is
a warning sign that the impunity of the
past may be crumbling.
It's a very very um tense moment really
because we don't actually know for
certain that the Israelis will attack
the flatillaa once the flatillaa enters
um Gaz and or Israeli territorial
waters. Then of course the Italians will
have to decide how to respond. Will they
protect Italian citizens? And obviously
the Spaniards are also now sending a
ship, but the Italians are much closer.
Will the Italians actually protect the
flatillaa or will they allow the
Israelis to attack the flatillaa and
then just save whoever they can save in
the water? So, if you like, this is a
game of of of poker really. Um, who's
going to blink first? Are the Israelis
really going to be foolish enough to
attack the flatillaa and risk the
Italians retaliating? I I I'm not sure
that that would be very wise of Israel,
though, as we've discovered uh Israel
seems to be a law unto itself, supported
by Mr. Trump.
The prime minister Maloney is caught
between a rock and a hard place. She
clearly does not want to displease uh
Mr. Trump. But uh Italian public opinion
is overwhelmingly for across political
boundaries by the way both right,
center, and left. It's only a few uh
interesting characters on uh the far
right who who um are opposed to
recognizing Israel. Uh so Maloney is
caught between a rock and a hard place.
As I say, her domestic opinion is
basically for the recognition of
Palestine and her domestic opinion is
for the Italian Navy to intervene to
protect Italian citizens. Now,
Maloney, of course, has had to be
dragged, kicking and screaming to say,
"Okay, uh we'll recognize Palestine as
long as they release uh the hostages and
as long as Hamas has got nothing to do
with with this." Now, that's one heck of
a shift.
Pedro Sanchez, as I've said in earlier
videos, is already writing himself into
history. He recognized Palestine when
others hesitated. He sanctioned Israel
when most governments sat on the fence.
and he openly defied the EU by targeting
Israeli officials responsible for the
genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu himself
fears Sanchez so much that on his way to
Washington, he deliberately avoided
Spanish airspace after Sanchez vowed to
have him arrested if he dared to cross
it. That is the measure of leadership.
Let me show you a clip of Sanchez
acknowledging his Navy's actions. And
before I do, make sure to hit like and
subscribe so the algorithm can't bury
this video.
Sanchez has made it clear his army is
prepared for all scenarios and will not
bow to Israeli intimidation. This
unprecedented move to support a
humanitarian flotilla comes after
repeated Israeli attacks, including the
drone strike on the Sumud Flotilla,
which most observers agree was carried
out by Israel despite its refusal to
comment. Tel Aviv's rhetoric against the
flotilla has escalated in recent days,
and analysts warned that this does not
bode well for its safety as it edges
closer to Gaza's waters. while two of
the boats, including the boat I'm
standing on, were harbored in Tunis. Uh,
since then, it's been quieter in terms
of physical attacks. Um, however,
there's been a steady trickle of
propaganda coming from Israel defining
the flatillaa as a terrorist operation
with direct links to Hamas. These are
false claims. Um but they were a quite
clear indication of what came um
afterwards which was late on Tuesday
night and into the early hours of
Wednesday we had five hours of drone
attacks across several boats on the
flatillaa. There were 14 attacks in
total 11 explosions and in three
instances items were dropped by drones
onto boats. These included chemical
substances that harmed participants. Um
and assessment the next day demonstrated
the drones used in these attacks were
specifically designed to damage sailing
vessels. So the indication is that it
was an attempt to render the vessels in
this flatilla unseaorthy and the risk to
passengers lives definitely was
definitely real. Um however there were
no casualties. There was one burn injury
and the flatillaa intends to sail on. So
speaking of those risks to activist
lives, as you mentioned, they're
alleging links to Hamas. There's been
increased drone activity as your
flotilla gets closer to its destination.
What has the discussion been among the
flotilla's leadership uh surrounding
concerns that they may be detained, they
may be charged with terrorism? What has
what have those conversations looked
like?
While the flatilla that we're looking at
now does have different projections,
different risk assessment to the two
previous flatilla attempts that had
quite a lot of media profile, the Madlin
ship, the Handella ship. The projections
from the start have been that the risk
is higher. Um, and so in that respect,
the conversation actually hasn't changed
as much internally as it has changed
externally. Before I even departed
Fortunis, I saw a statement by Ben Gir
in Israel saying that or proposing plans
to treat uh the passengers of under
anti-terrorism law and to penalize them
and detain them as such. He was
advocating for a period of detention
much longer than the couple of days of
detention that the previous two
flatillaa operations experienced. Um,
however, it's one thing to anticipate
danger and it's another thing to
experience danger. And I would say that
the attacks the other night certainly
rattled people. Um, they came with
elements of clear psychological warfare.
you know before the devices were
dropped.
Meanwhile, the biggest disappointment
comes from here in Britain. K Starmmer,
despite recently recognizing the state
of Palestine, has refused to deploy any
Royal Navy ships to safeguard the
flatillaa or the 13 British citizens
aboard who could become targets of
Israeli persecution. Outlets like Middle
East Eye have already highlighted this
contradiction, and many here in the UK
see it as a betrayal.
[Music]
[Applause]
As a US citizen on this platilla, do you
think it's fair to say that one of the
reasons the British government has been
so slow to act in the protection of its
citizens is to do with the USA?
Absolutely. I mean, I think sadly, uh,
the US and Britain are the two largest
proponents and and the most complicit
governments in this genocide. And the
people, you know, Kier Thurmer and
Donald Trump and quite frankly also Joe
Biden are are the reasons that we've
seen this horrific genocide happen. And
it's so depressing like I and it and it
really makes me wonder like you know
thinking back hundreds of years ago did
we even need the Revolutionary War
because we're basically the we're a
we're a group. We're uh we're doing the
same awful things that we've always done
for centuries and it's uh it's
depressing.
Greece has also promised to guarantee
safe passage while the flotillaa sails
in its waters openly acknowledging that
Greek nationals are on board. This puts
Israel in a tighter corner. It can't
simply storm in with commandos kill
activists as it did on the Marvi Mara in
2010 and hope the backlash will fade.
This time the presence of European naval
vessels nearby and heavy global media
coverage means every move Israel makes
will be judged in real time. The
activists, for their part, are not
naive. They know Israel will never
willingly let them through. Their real
weapon is visibility live streams, media
exposure, European politicians on board,
so that when the inevitable interception
happens, the world sees it for what it
is, a state using its military against
unarmed civilians delivering aid. And
the more Israel lashes out, the more it
exposes the cruelty of a blockade that
has already turned Gaza into an open air
prison. The big question now is whether
the presence of European ships will
deter Israel from unleashing the full
brutality it showed in 2010 or whether
Netanyahu's government will once again
prove it is ready to trample over
international law. Either way, the
confrontation is coming and it will be
another moment where Israel shows the
world that it fears peace and
humanitarian relief more than it fears
global condemnation. Thank you for
watching this far. From the bottom of my
heart, I appreciate you immensely. Keep
supporting me by subscribing and until I
see you in the next one, God bless

[admin]

Hegseth Orders Urgent Meeting of Top Generals and Admirals
by Chris Gordon
Air & Space Forces Magazine
Sept. 25, 2025
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/hegse ... -admirals/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered generals and admirals from around the world to gather for an urgent meeting near Washington on Sept. 30. The purpose and timing of the meeting is unclear, even to attendees, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The directive was sent earlier this week and the meeting is set for Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., south of the Pentagon, next Tuesday morning.

“The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed in a statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine on Sept. 25, referring to Hegseth’s new secondary title under an executive order issued earlier this month by the Trump administration.

Officers from across the armed services ordered to the meeting indicated they were not told whether or how to prepare for the meeting.

Speculation about the purpose of the meeting ranges from the unveiling of a new National Defense Strategy to some sort of Pentagon overhaul.

In May, Hegseth issued a memo directing the Pentagon to slash the number of senior generals and admirals. At least 20 percent of four-star positions would be eliminated under the move, while the number of generals and admirals at all levels—one star and above—would decrease by 10 percent, according to the plan.

Hegseth also said at the time he was directing a sweeping review of U.S. military commands and staffs, signaling a likely consolidation.

Large gatherings of senior military leaders are not unusual. The Air Force’s periodic CORONA meetings, for example, call together the top generals from across the service to confer on future strategies and policies; a weeklong CORONA meeting was held in June at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., led by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink.

But most such meetings are scheduled well in advance. Hegseth’s planned Sept. 30 meeting was not, catching admirals and generals by surprise and scrambling schedules.

Hegseth has already had a large impact on top leaders. Since taking office, he has replaced Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chief of Naval Operations Lisa M. Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency director Air Force Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced last month he would retire around the start of November, just two years into what is normally a four-year term. Officials have not publicly offered a rationale for that move, and a replacement had yet to be nominated Sept. 25.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon offered no details about the Sept. 30 meeting, and did not indicate whether any of the gathering might be broadcast or open to the press.

[admin]

Alastair Crooke: Israel is DONE, Charlie Kirk Leak BACKFIRES on Netanyahu
by Danny Haiphong and Alastair Crooke
Sep 20, 2025

Max Blumenthal's latest revelation on Charlie Kirk just humiliated Israel, and Netanyahu is paying the ultimate price says former British Diplomat Alastair Crooke. In this video, Crooke exposes the collapsing Netanyahu regime and why the Charlie Kirk backlash is an ominous warning sign of what's unfolding.



Transcript

Lots of damning journalism, including by
Max Blumenthal himself on the Charlie Kirk
situation implicating Israel, including harsh meetings from Bill
Ackman, a huge Israel lobbyist based in the
United States, multi-billionaire.
This case of Charlie Kirk is reflecting
something much bigger given the
widespread speculation, and now
investigations leading to damning
possible points of inquiry. So,
what what's your reaction to this given
your following and analysis of the
region and your experience doing
diplomacy, because Israel has also had
many problems of late in this arena.

Well, first of all, it comes against a
background. There was the National
Conservative Conference held very
recently in the United States of
Conservatives. I mean, they are quite a
divided group at the moment. And
they became more divided at this meeting,
and they divided sharply along the
lines of those that support Israel
and complained bitterly about those that
thought you could be America first, and not support Israel,
and then a very vituperous group, very striking language coming out
from the editor of the American
conservative saying, "What the hell do
you mean? I mean, why should support of
Israel be part of a America first
agenda?" And so there was already a
fracture, quite a big fissure opening up
in the Republican side. And you had
others and there were attacks made,
of course, on those who supported
it.

Tucker Carlson and Steve
Bannon were there and we
still don't have much of the details of what
actually happened with this killing. I
mean surprisingly, after so long, it
remains an enigma wrapped in a
a riddle. It gets more bizarre as
it goes on.

So it's difficult
to be categoric about this. But the
schism that was already shaping
up amongst the Republican
conservatives was seemingly reflected
also with Charlie Kirk and his
supporters. So
that has been the center of
attention.

Now, whether there is any
connection
with his killing, this schism in
the Conservative party, we don't
know. There's no telling exactly, but we
do know there was tension building up.
And we've seen reports, and we've had
reports from people like Max Blumenthal
and others that there was a big row
about his seeming drift away from
support for Israel. And
others say that isn't necessarily so.

And then important younger
members of the MAGA group, like Nick
Fuentes, has been raising lots of
questions about why we don't have
some details, why the case is so
obscured, and demanding that they should
be put forward. And there's a lot
of anger, and there's a lot of
polarization
taking place. Real anger on both sides
of it, from the liberal
world, but also from the
conservatives.

And I think what it is
going to do is two things.
One is, whatever the circumstances,
whatever transpires about this killing
of Charlie Kirk, whatever comes out from
it, nonetheless, it has opened out in a
huge way this question of is it America
first or Israeli first?
And whether that's connected or not is
not, you know, immaterial. What is
material is that this debate has really
come to the fore because
commentators have produced
more and more background
to events. So even if it transpires
to produce nothing very much, and that
unfortunately is the history of many of
the things that you think some evidence,
or some information, or some new facts
are going to materialize. Nonetheless,
this is changing. And it's no wonder
that some Israelis might have been very
worried about this because
these younger Americans have wide
support on the ground. And they are
also people who come from a
background of tradition and church,
and have strong feelings about this.
And they are deeply angry.

So I would say the first thing is that the
genie is out of the bottle, this issue,
which was sort of kept undercover, which
was not in the public domain, very much
has come out of the bottle, and
is not going to be put
back into the bottle very easily.
So that is one of the
most important things.

I think the second
thing is that in a way. if you look back
at that national conservative conference
a little while ago, there was a sense
that the Republicans needed to redefine
themselves, the young Republicans. I
mean, I'm not talking about the
pro-Israeli section, but the young Republicans
wanted to find a way of defining
themselves. And so those like
Nick Fuentes, who seems to have
huge support amongst MAGA
were saying ,very clearly, listen this
is not the time to take up weapons. It's
the time to stay cool. And he said
maybe there's small
room for consensus. Maybe not. It depends what happens.
But he said what is very clear is we
have to destroy the
people that have been antagonistic, the
people that have pushed this
war. And I think this is the big thing that is coming
out of it, that is going to become a new enemy. They have
defined the new enemy, which is the very
radical violent leaning left that they see as
threatening, the ones in the left that have
been calling them fascists, and calling
them names for this period. Not all of the
left, and they're very clear about that.
But the ones that have taken this
radical aggressive line, I would call it
a manichean line in the sense of it
is all black or light, dark or light, and
there's nothing in between. And I think
we're going to see a much more sort of
manichean
approach from the Republicans,
and this is going to
have a profound effect.

Why is it so important? So what if the young are
changing? No, it means a lot, because
we've heard about all of those others who were at the
National Conservative Convention, some
of the big Jewish donors
there, calling for support, saying it's
crazy to cut ourselves off from what's
happening in the Middle
East. But the point is that
Israel depends on the
United States. It is utterly dependent
on the United States. Its identity is
the United States. I mean greater Israel
is the United States in
many respects as they see
things.

So I think that what
we'll see is that at some point,
Netanyahu, and some of those others in
power in Israel, a very divided Israel,
will start peering up from below
and will see that those young Americans are about
to assume positions of some power in the
United states, and they already assume
positions of great
influence in some cases, but they're
going to assume positions of
power. And when that happens, it's
over, because Netanyahu will discover that Israel has
lost America.

In the domestic political situation in the
United States on the Democratic party
side, you have a big base of people that
aren't even really with the Democrats
anymore. Their approval ratings
are so low, and the Israel question is a
huge one that has fueled that. It's a
big reason why Donald Trump won in 2024.
That base is inaccessible now to
Israel because the vast majority of them
see Israel as genocidal, and they
oppose what Israel is doing in Gaza and
elsewhere.

But to have this
happen now in the GOP side, the
Republican side, means that the vast body
politic in the United States is now
opposed to Israel. And it seems
that this is literally going to lead to isolation, and
is going to have consequences. What kind
of consequences do you believe those
will be, Alastair? Because right now
many people see Israel as
out of control, and doing as
much as it can to commit as much brutality to achieve its
erstwhile ends, or at least its so-called
stated ends.

Well, yes. I would just like to add, before I
leave the subject, that one of the things that's quite
striking is that the young are very religious, and so
in a sense we're seeing something of an
eschatological conflict coming out, the
eschatology of Israel, and of
the Talmud and Torah, and on the other
side that of the New Testament. And
it's giving it a slightly different identity,
when you ask what is going to happen. I think
it's pretty clear. Israel is
deeply deeply divided. I mean, it's
on the edge of civil war.
For many Israelis, particularly the
more secular European
liberal Israelis, the people you'd meet
more in Tel Aviv and Herzelia, those
people came to Israel
not to take part in what Smotrich
called "a war of conquest,"
and restoring Israel,
they came there for safety, they left Europe because they
didn't feel safe. They came to Israel
as a place of safety, a place where they felt
protected, and now that's gone completely. It went actually
on the 7th of October, or two years
ago, and now it's like, how are they going to
protect themselves when they are at war
with most of the Middle East?
Israel has attacked, I think, six countries,
or six places at least in the last few
weeks. It was not just
Gaza and the West Bank, but it was also
Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Tunis.
It is a sort of maestro approach to the law of
the jungle.

And what I think we're seeing,
which is so important, is that Israel is
abandoning all the norms of
politics, not just the
norms, but the laws, the institutions
that regulate international politics,
and also of course dismissing the UN
charter. It is a really deliberate tearing up of the
international
structure, a deliberate
tearing up, to give them room
to do whatever they choose, wherever they
want, and whenever they want, by military
force. So it's been quite deliberate. You can see
a breach of norms in every area.

What was the attack on
Iran about? There were many reasons,
but one of them was that they
could break that norm, as well as
others. The attack on Doha is
another case where they said, "Nope,
none of those old understandings exist
anymore. They're broken. We don't accept
them. We don't abide by them. It's the
war of the jungle we are engaged in now.
And we will win, because we are clever,
and we have an effective military force
that we can impose on other
states." And that's where they have gone in the
assumption that they can ultimately win.

There is one piece missing to this
winning and we all know what that is.
It's Iran. That is the piece that they
feel is missing. Iran has to be, if you
like, normalized one way or the other, or
balkanized, and turned into a Syria of
competing desperate groups killing each
other, and fighting amongst themselves. That was always the norm a long
time ago. Even Ben Gurion talked about the
desire to have
the region fighting amongst itself,
because then it's weak compared with
Israel. So that was always the prospect.
That is the missing part.
So I think we will see a doubling down of that.

Now what is quite apparent, and there was an article about
this just recently, that Netanyahu, and [inaudible] know the bad press
that Israel is getting. They know what's
said in the international press. They
know that they've lost
international support quite widely. But
what was said in this article, which
I think is written by someone who's well
informed, was they don't care. Netanyahu
and [inaudible] are not bothered. Why are
they not bothered? They should be. Why
are they not bothered? For one reason,
and that one reason is known as Mr.
Trump. And they make this very clear. So
long as we have Trump, we don't give a damn what the world
is saying about us. "We have Trump," and that's
their answer to this question. But this means we're going to see it doubling
down, and they will continue to double
down and push the boundaries
as hard as they can, and as far as they
can in this period.

So it opens up other big questions
that we have avoided, questions of why is it that
the United States has not sought
either to criticize or restrain
Israel's military actions that are
clearly illegal, and against all
humanitarian laws. Why has that
happened? And why is it that we see
the United States moving
not just to avoid criticism of Israel,
but actually moving to adopt many of Israel's ways
of war. It's the United States that
used guile to lure Hezbollah, and then
Iran, and then Hamas in
in Doha into a situation where they were
all together for "decapitation", for
collective decapitation of it's
leadership. It is the United
States that has supported decapitation itself in Yemen. It was
America saying that they
wanted, I think it was Hegseth who said
that our aim in Yemen
is to decapitate the leadership. These are changes in
the global foreign policy sphere which
are very significant, and looking now at what's
happening offshore in Venezuela, these boats that are being
attacked, and everyone on board being vaporized. So
what's going on? I don't know, but it looks as if Mr.
Trump is very frustrated
by the situation he's in of
not having the foreign policy successes,
or financial war successes he hoped. And he
seems to be turning toward, following, and emulating
Mr. Netanyahu, and emulating his
military strategies.

And the
background to this, the reason why
Trump seems unable to move away
from this complete support of Israel, we don't
know. There is an unknown reason
in this, and it's a very important point one.

This also puts him in direct tension with his
own base, because he is continuing to
support Israel. Look what's happening these
days while we're talking In Gaza,
the sheer destruction, the killing,
everything is putting him
directly at odds with his own base.
And we know that Trump said to
Netanyahu that "we are losing the
young. "And he acknowledged the vibe.
saying "we are losing Congress too." And [inaudible] and
Netanyahu just smile, and say, "Yes, that's
right," in the knowledge that they have
Trump by some reason or another. So it's
changing western, European policies,
shaping it in a different world outside of
the charter of the United Nations,
international law, and the old
conventions, the Vienna convention,
and the other treaties that that have
regulated life.

But the thing that
Netanyahu said, which has shocked the
public, is "actually, we are little Sparta now. And everyone has
to get used to the fact that we are under siege.
We will not be able to live off
other states, to trade with other states
as we used to." And indeed, the
Europeans have begun moving in
that direction, slowly as usual, but they
are tentatively moving in that
direction.

So he says, "We are going to
become an autarchy [A condition of absolute power; self-government; a condition of economic self-sufficiency or national independence.] and we are
going to become self-sufficient in
military equipment." I mean, I don't think it's
even possible to become self-sufficient in
air defenses. I know they regard
themselves as very technically
innovative, but the air defenses they have now
are not really very great.

So what's going to happen is of
course, we are going to move to the next
thing which is war with Iran. And this is
going to be a really major, major affair.
And that is going to change
the course of the Middle East.

[admin]

Max Blumenthal: Charlie Kirk, Israel, and war with Iran
by Community Church of Boston
Sep 25 2025



Transcript

Friends, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a very important
and special evening because we have a very important and special guest joining us today. Max Blumenthal is here to talk
about his significant and groundbreaking investigative journalism.
Max Blumenthal is a legendary investigative journalist.
He has met with and interviewed world leaders. He is a published author
of multiple books, including this one, "The Management of Savagery," and others,
such as "Goliath" and "Republican Gamora." He's a documentary filmmaker,
and the editor-in-chief of the Greyzone News.

And most important of all, he's my friend. So, Max, welcome.
Thank you so much for being here.

Good to see you, Omar.

There's so much to talk about and not
that much time, so let's get right into it. You've produced some investigative journalism, which I don't think it's a hyperbole to say it's been earth shaking. That's how I describe it. I
hold here in my hand an article from your website, and it's titled
"Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu funding offer, was quote "frightened" by pro-Israel
forces before death his friend reveals. The sub headline says, "A Trump insider
and longtime friend of Charlie Kirk tells the Greyzone how the assassinated conservative leaders, turning point on Israeli influence, provoked a private backlash from Netanyahu's allies
that left him angry and afraid." The source said anxiety spread within the Trump administration after an apparent Israeli spying operation was uncovered. Max,
could you speak to us more about this reporting?

Well, there are different angles to
explore with this reporting, and I'm still doing more. I think everyone watching this who follows US politics
closely, was familiar with Charlie Kirk's retrograde views on race,
and so many other social issues, and the role that he played was very
divisive by design. He was backed by industry, by finance, by the 1%
essentially, to register voters for the Republican party, to ram through more
laws, reducing their tax burden, and pitting people against each other so
they could basically run away with what's left of our public assets. That was the role he always played. That's how I always understood him. I saw him as sort of like the
youth voice of Conservative Incorporated, which was an astroturfed movement
backed by industry.

Then something changed. Basically, our
country is changing. But Charlie Kirk started to change, at least on this one issue, because of the branding of the movement that he had become a leader within
America first to make America great again. Donald Trump comes to the fore, and is
representing this backlash of anger about not just
the predominance of liberalism within established institutions, but also anger
at the economic crisis, the housing collapse which went unredressed in the
Obama administration with the bankers bailed out, and the Iraq war. There were a lot of populist elements
within the Trump coalition. And once it became clear, especially
after October 7th, that Israel was playing a malign role, not only within
our country, but through its cutouts in Washington, and
across the country, to dictate policy decisions, including decisions that
counteracted American interests, that undermined American interests, a
new movement started to emerge during Donald Trump's first term within the conservative right-wing
grassroots, who took it directly to Charlie Kirk. This first played out
through the TPUSA campus tours that Charlie Kirk ran with an $80 million budget to
propagandize college students under the guise of debate, and
right-wing activists from a group called the Gruypers would line up at the microphone to challenge Charlie Kirk from the right on the US relationship with Israel, bringing up things like the Israeli's
deliberate attack on the USS Liberty, which was basically a spy ship the US Navy deployed
in the Suez crisis in 1967, killing over 60 US sailors. At which point, Charlie Kirk would shut down the debate immediately. At one point he actually brought up the fact that Israel
allows gay pride parades in Tel Aviv as a point of defending Israel, which I mean, he's not pro-gay, so it really exposed him as kind of a phony in front of his own base, and it wasn't popular.

After October 7th the bottom starts to fall out among people under 35 in the US
for supporting Israel. It wasn't just the genocide, although that was a major factor on the Left in the progressive grassroots, but on the Right, it was really the spectacle of Netanyahu just
dominating the United States, and being welcomed as the real leader every time he came to Washington, getting more standing ovations than the president, and clearly trying to drive the US into a war with Iran. And Charlie Kirk had to finally address that. And he would swing back and forth. He would make disgusting statements denying famine in Gaza, and then the next thing you know, he's platforming the most popular critics of Israel within the conservative movement: Tucker Carlson; Marjorie Taylor Greene; comic Dave Smith, a libertarian anti-Zionist Jewish comedian, who debated on stage at TPUSA's student
action summit in Tampa, Florida last July; and Megan Kelly, the former Fox News host, speculated that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset.

And following that summit, Charlie Kirk fell under enormous pressure from the donors who had been funding him ever since he founded TPUSA in 2012. Donors like Robert Schillman, who is one of the most extreme pro-Israel donors in the US., donates simply so he can make sure that the
United States, and particularly Republican oriented institutions, do whatever Netanyahu and Israel wants. And Schillman grew outraged that Charlie Kirk was allowing this to take place at
his events. Also other donors, like Bill Ackman, were worried, and wanted to make sure that Tucker Carlson didn't speak at another Charlie Kirk event. Bill Ackman was mocked on stage. He is one of the key billionaire Zionist cutouts for Netanyahu in the United States, a sort of financial manager. He was mocked on stage at a TPUSA event by Tucker Carlson as a scam artist, who basically made his money out
of nothing, and had no talents, and contributed nothing to society. And Ackman wanted Charlie Kirk to block Tucker Carlson from being his keynote speaker at this upcoming December summit.

So all this is something I've been following closely. And I was thrilled by the reaction from the crowd at TPUSA to everything that was being said on stage, because it showed there was a rebellion taking place in the last bastion of grassroots support that Israel enjoyed. And I understood that Israel was already throwing as much money as it could at the problem to basically pay influencers. And they were very focused on America first, the anti-woke influencers. They were flying them all to Israel, and we could see it all unfolding. They were trying to buy as many young, attractive, women, or black influencers, Latino
influencers, in an all-out exploitation fest. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had ponied up $150 million per year for this.

So I knew that the pressure would be coming down on Charlie Kirk and his organization, but I didn't understand the full extent of it until he was killed. After he was killed, Netanyahu came out and tried to claim Charlie Kirk's name, his legacy, and claim him as a very close friend. Netanyahu, in a Fox News
interview soon after the killing, blamed Islam and the Left, before we even knew who the suspect was. He was also trying to direct Americans' rage against Netanyahu's enemies, the enemies of
Israel. And speaking to a longtime friend of Charlie Kirk, I knew these sources through the grapevine, because the Trump world is actually more accessible than the world of Biden, Obama, or the Clintons, who are much more cut off from alternative media, they told me that he hated Netanyahu, that he considered Netanyahu a bully, that he considered him a manipulator. And when Netanyahu invited him to Israel two weeks before his death, as Netanyahu said in one of his many videos about Charlie Kirk's death, Charlie Kirk refused. But Netanyahu never said if Kirk accepted or not, and he was holding a letter that I think Charlie Kirk wrote to him, but he didn't read the entire thing.

So that was the first part of my reporting. I wrote three installments of this investigation. The first one, within a few hours, had gone viral. It had like 100,000 views just on our website alone. It was clear I was really speaking to something real. And I started to get approached by more sources on the right, people I'd never talked to before, who were just wanting to pour their hearts out to me about their experiences in right-wing media, and conservative MAGA activist circles like TPUSA, how controlled it was by this Zionist donor class that was answering to Israel, and how there was no space for them to speak out about it.

I produced a second investigation based on rumors I was hearing that I was exploring. I managed to nail down this influencer summit convened by Bill Ackman in the Hamptons, working with Charlie Kirk, where things got even more uncomfortable, in early August. And Charlie Kirk, at some point he was screamed at by some of the Zionist influencers who were there questioning the Netanyahu imposed line.
And he complained of "moral blackmail" happening in this summit. Bill Ackman
called this a complete lie, but he actually covered up the fact that the summit ever took place. And what was the real agenda of this summit? It was to buy impressions, and millions of clicks for Israel among very avaricious, vapid young conservative influencers, who
are basically actors, or political prostitutes, for whoever will buy them. And Charlie Kirk was supposed to preside over the whole thing.

So he comes out of that summit and goes on Megan Kelly's podcast where he vents, and is clearly very angry. He's basically in a state of psychological agony. And he complains that he has less ability to criticize Israel than an Israeli does. And it's because of what he calls "stakeholders," referring to the big Jewish Zionist donors that made him who he was. He basically signed up for that.

It kind of reminds me of the plot of this early 90s pulp book, "The Firm," which was made into a film starring Tom Cruz, where once you join the Firm, you are not allowed to leave, or you will be eliminated. Do I think Charlie Kirk was eliminated by Israel? I have no evidence of that. But they were moving towards
a political attack on him which was already playing out through Netanyahu's cutouts in the media. Ben Shapiro was attacking him. Mark Levin was attacking him. Laura Loomer was attacking him, who is someone making personnel and policy decisions inside the White House. That's more like the Israeli MO. It was already playing out, and he was complaining about it in public.

And subsequent to the second part of my investigation, I learned that Robert Schillman is the key funder of the Islamophobia industry in the US, as well as the most anti-Palestinian organizations across the Atlantic. He's also funding the anti-Islam hooligan Tommy Robinson, who's leading a race war in the UK. He funds Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who has called to ban the Quran. And he's funded Laura Loomer. And Bob Schillman defunds Charlie Kirk. I heard he donated over $6 million to TPUSA. He cancelled, according to sources, a plaque that was going to be erected honoring him inside TPUSA's office complex in Phoenix.

I also learned that Charlie Kirk was being managed on a daily level by a right-wing, Israeli funded, rabbi from the US named Chaim Ben Pesach (also known as Chaim Ben Yosef), [American activist and leader of the Kahanist group Jewish Task Force.] And there were small Zoom sessions that Charlie Kirk had to call into with Bill Ackman, a fanatically anti-Palestinian venture capitalist from Sequoia Capital named Shawn Maguire, and Joshua Hammer, who's one of Netanyahu's key voices in the media, and his editor at large at
Newsweek. He's the guy who debated Dave Smith at TPUSA for Israel. And they were explicitly feeding him talking points, and telling him what to say, because they were afraid of what was going to take place on his upcoming campus tour which began September 10th at Utah Valley University. And Pesach, the self-appointed Zionist manager, said that Charlie Kirk was pushing back on a lot of the things they were telling him to say, that he had fallen under the influence of the media, and of people close to him, who were pushing him in another direction, which probably refers to people like Tucker Carlson. And they so they were deeply concerned, and they were trying to make a WhatsApp group with him so he could be fed talking points minute by minute. I mean, that's not something you do to someone you feel comfortable with as an Israel advocate, because they were not able to get access to him just through personal bon ami. And it wasn't clear that Charlie Kirk particularly liked them. They were just kicking down a lot of money to his organization, and holding money over his head.

So he's killed on September 10th at this event under very strange circumstances. Anyone who's extremely online is not believing the official story. And it's increasingly unclear what the official story is when the FBI director himself says they're exploring different angles that the sniper might have taken, as well as multiple accomplices. And a conspiracy theory develops online, which I was not responsible for. In my first installment of this investigative series, I explicitly said there is no evidence the Israeli government played a role in Charlie Kirk's killing. I called it "an unsubstantiated theory." But others just ran with it. And it seemed to make sense to them, considering that Netanyahu is at the helm of an historically unparalleled global assassination apparatus that even weaponizes household communication goods to kill people, referring to pagers. So for them it seemed to add up. Charlie Kirk was leaving the Firm. Israel has the ability to kill people anywhere. They weren't being told the truth. And that just exploded online to the point where Netanyahu has had to come out twice and deny assassinating Charlie Kirk. Once out of his own volition; he wasn't even asked during an interview. He decided to make a video on his personal channel denying killing Charlie Kirk. I've never seen it happen where a foreign leader denies killing an American public figure. And it could only be Netanyahu, because no other foreign leader enjoys that level
of influence over not just American politics, but over American life itself, over American entertainment, over American finance. Netanyahu is the embodiment of Zionist occupied territory.

So he came out and felt compelled to deny it. My theory is that for once Netanyahu was innocent, and he just wanted everyone to know. But who knows?

The takeaway is that my investigative reporting has given the conservative grassroots, who are sick of being bossed around by the cutouts of a foreign country, one that also happens to be an occupying genocidal entity, given them a voice, and they're more emboldened to speak out now. And this rebellion in the conservative grassroots is only going to grow. And why is this such a problem for Netanyahu, and why are they throwing so much money at this particular constituency and demographic in the US? Two reasons. One is obviously because Trump is President. And in order to influence the President, they need to keep his base on his side. The other reason, which is more of a long-term problem, is that Israel needs white Christian conservative men, who increasingly make up a disproportionate portion of the enlisted military ranks, as well as military leadership, needs them to fight their wars. They have to go to war for Israel. They have to go fight Iran. And if the next round of conflict with Iran doesn't go well, Netanyahu wants US boots on the ground. It's the only way he believes regime change can take place in Iran. And that is his endgame. That is the ultimate endgame of Netanyahu, and everyone who will come in his wake.

So this is such a significant pivotal moment. I guess you could call it a turning point in the USA, where not only the traditional bases of opposition to Israeli apartheid, and Israeli control, are more mobilized than
ever, but a rebellion is taking place within the traditional base of pro-Israel support. And it's
only growing and accelerating.

If two parties are engaged in a debate or in a conflict,
if either of those parties feels confident in their position,
there's really no need to engage in censorship or coercion. So this meeting
you reported on with Charlie Kirk and the H Hamptons being pressured by Bill
Aman or even this bigger story in the media about
uh the guy from Oracle Larry Ellison buying CBS News and also trying to buy
CNN. Doesn't that indicate a lack of confidence in their own position?
Yeah, completely. Because I mean, what was CBS? What has C they're going to
make a bid on CNN as well. What has CNN been? They've been reliably
propagandizing and manufacturing consent for Israel's genocide since October 7th.
Um, and now they cannot even be depended on these legacy media assets which are
mostly watched by older Americans over the age of 60.
So they're moving in to buy every media asset possible. And then there's Tik Tok. Tik Tok played a democratizing or
some would say radicalizing factor after October 7th because it gave so many talented young content creators the
ability to educate people about Palestine. And pe so many young people were seeing the images we all see of
children being shredded, neighborhoods being destroyed. And it was having an impact to the point
where Ted Cruz from his Senate committee demanded it be shut down because it was
simply too pro Palestine because it gave a voice to young people. You just can't
let the youth have a voice. Jonathan Greenblat, the ADL director, went to
testify in the Israeli Knesset and declared that ad the ADL should be
the the way to stop it is to basically buy it. He said just find some billionaires to buy it. We need to
embrace the same spirit that led to the pager operation in Lebanon in order to
stop anti-Israel media. That's almost word for word what he said in the
Knesset. So, it fell to one of the richest Americans who is a longtime CIA
contractor whose company was spawned out of the CIA. Larry Ellison at Oracle.
someone who is an ultra- Zionist who's hosted Netanyahu on his private Hawaiian island, Ellison's Island, whose son,
David Ellison, was recently exposed through leaked emails by the journalist
Jack Pollson for coordinating against the Palestine Solidarity Movement with
the Israeli leadership and who now plans to oversee the purchase of CBS News from
Viacom and install Barry Weiss the key voice and media denmother of the
Zionist.1% in the United States as executive editor. So, it's just going to
be naked unshathed Zionist propaganda plus lots of anti-woke content. And the
way that I a lot of Democrats see this media takeover is that they they think they call it a
proTrump takeover, but they're only seeing the clouds and not they're not
able to see the the sky behind the clouds or the
you know they they they're being myopic here. Israel has taken over Trump
and so any proTrump content is being managed by Netanyahu's cutouts
Ellison Barry Weiss. Uh CBS just had a a
uh ombbudsman installed who's a veteran is Israel lobbyist named David Weissman from the Hudson Institute. So proTrump
is basically Israeli controlled and that's what this is about. And they're
not going to stop there. They're basically trying to retrench control because they have lost the PR battle.
They've lost the political battle after October 7th. Even though they believe that they've won the military battle,
but I think uh they may have won a pirick victory there.
I'm going to read a sentence or two from your article.
According to Kirk's friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly
warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel's behalf. Charlie was the
only person who did that. Uh the source said, recalling how Trump quote barked
at him in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes that the incident
confirmed in Kirk's mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign
foreign power and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous
conflicts. Max, when you spoke with us in June in the middle of the so-called 12-day war,
you said to us at that time and you said elsewhere that you think that Trump is
afraid of Israel. Since then, since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you've
doubled down on that claim. Can you please explain to our audience again why
you say that? Well, first of all, that those lines you read were corroborated days after I
reported them by Vice President J. Dance, who was seated in Charlie Kirk's
chair hosting his show uh after his death. He said that Charlie
Kirk did go to the White House and lobbyed against striking Iran.
He didn't have the details I had on Trump, but he probably was there, but didn't want to embarrass Trump. But of
course, Trump was afraid. Of course, Trump is completely controlled and cowed and cucked by Netanyahu. That's why
Netanyahu, according to Tucker Carlson, someone who's much more
connected than I am to Trump world, said that Netanyahu is running around the region bragging about controlling
uh Donald Trump. I mean, Netanyahu has said this openly about the US before, or
at least he said it in private, and the video was leaked in 2001. He was bragging to a small group of settlers
uh in a sort of h and he didn't I don't think he knew he was being filmed. He
said the US is a thing you can move easily. So this is textbook Netanyahu.
How does he control Washington? Through Apac. They control the Congress.
They control media through assets cutouts like Larry Ellison. They're controlling Trump through Miriam Ad.
They're controlling Marco Rubio through Paul Singer, his largest donor, who is a
just a neocon representing Israel. Ike Pearlmutter, longtime donor to TPUSA,
also big donor to Trump. He's another pro-Netanyahu donor. Ron Lauder, there
are so many of them. Actually, if you're watching this now, you can look up Netanyahu's millionaire and billionaire list, and you can find online a
handwritten list of millionaires and billionaires inside the United States that Netanyahu uses personally. He he
personally wrote this list up to exert control over US politicians. But then
there's the assassination factor. Donald Trump has faced two assassination attempts. The trial of one of his
would-be assassins, Ryan Ralph, just wrapped up. And with very little fanfare or media
interest, Ralph was sentenced to life in prison. Tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen before he went to
prison. None of his links, direct links to Ukraine were mentioned. Ryan Ralph was
recruiting for Ukraine's international brigade in Kiev. He had had meetings
with the Helsinki Commission on Capitol Hill. He I mean this this is strange and
none of it is mentioned today. And we scarcely ever hear about the first
assassination attempt which missed Trump's head by a few millimeters in Pennsylvania.
And now there is a third major assassination that took down Trump's
top I would say like his top activist operating in the field. Someone who is on his way on a trajectory towards
running for the presidency probably would have gone into the Senate or been a governor at some point.
And you don't think that Trump is frightened? I mean the whole con the whole 1% right now is frightened of the
adventurous violence that's unfolding. Luigi Manion scared the
financial elite. Steve Bannon actually gave a speech or you know participated
in a panel speaking to some Silicon Valley I think a Silicon Valley audience or it might
have been in Aspen but I think it was in Silicon Valley and he basically said this guy Luigi Manion just walked up and
killed some healthc care executive and they're just going to come for you and MAGA will protect you from them. That's
why you need to support Donald Trump because we will protect the rich from the violence of the left. And so that
was their message for months. And then I mean they can't even protect their own guy. He's like hunted in public.
Shot down it in the most dramatic way possible. His security team seemed to
have no way of preventing it. Imagine a US president
angering a figure as powerful as Netanyahu who
commands assassins around the globe.
What what would go through your head if you decided to withhold weapons to
Israel and adamantly refused any of their lobbying minations? What would
they do? How would they stop you? And what would
happen if the weapons stopped coming? For them, it would be existential. They would no longer they believe they would
no longer be able to survive. So, I think Donald Trump understands this. But this is also something that I've been
told by people who know Trump, who've been close to him, and I've known for
years that he believed there would be assassination attempts on him, not necessarily from Israel. So, I believe
this is in his mind. And I also heard from someone who has very good access into
the White House, inside the White House, and I've talked about this for the past week or so, I've been talking about it
for like two weeks, that during one of Netanyahu's visits to Washington, or
possibly during two earlier this year, agents of Israel placed electronic
devices on the emergency mergency response vehicles of the C secret
service which would presumably respond to an attempt on the president's life
and the Secret Service found them. I thought, you know, this could be crazy
and I should consider whether I'm just being like fed some kind of conjecture,
some hearsay. But there's a clear precedent there when in 2019,
three former senior US officials who had been Trump officials,
one of them might have even been like John Bolton, you know, it wasn't Bolton, but three
like national security officials went to Politico and said that Israel had placed Stingray devices, these are cell phone
surveillance devices in and around the White House to spy on Donald Trump's cell phone communications.
The NSA has concluded that Israel is the greatest spying threat to the US. In
2017, British former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, sorry, Brit in his well, he he
was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his memoir wrote that Benjamin Netanyahu had used his personal toilet
and afterwards his security detail found a listening device placed in the bathroom by
Netanyahu personally. And you have to start wondering based on the political report who could get access to the White
House to place Stingray devices. It's not just any random Israeli agent. There
are people who get access through Netanyahu or through highlevel Israeli visitors.
So that's that's what Donald Trump and any US president are dealing with. And they're all cowed. They all just
completely crumble in front of Netanyahu who is absolutely ruthless. So I started
reporting this weeks ago, two weeks ago about these listening devices on the Secret Service vehicles. I was just in
New York and we can talk about this for the UNGA, the UN General Assembly, and it was the most militarized I've ever
seen New York probably since 911, but period. I've been around several UNGAAS
and I've never seen it that militarized. Like Amnesty International had a meeting and there were snipers on the roof
outside. Um the meeting I was in yesterday was just teeming with security, which we'll
talk about. But leading up to the UNGA, the Secret Service found thousands of
SIM cards containing spying devices in order to spy on diplomats phones as well
as listening devices placed around the area. Now, who would have been responsible for that? Could it have been
the Israeli government and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu who just a week
before speaking to state lawmakers from the US in Jerusalem said Israel is
inside your phone. Of course, he meant it in a different way that Israeli technology has revolutionized a cell
phone, but there was a strong tinge of irony to his comments considering how
much surveillance he's applying to a government that claims to be Israel's most unshakable ally. Israel's not an
ally. It's ruling through manipulation and fear inside the United States.
It's exerting power through manipulation and fear inside the United States and inside the Oval Office. And it's
surviving through continuous genocide in its own region.
It's it's amazing. It's incredible that Boris Johnson wrote in his memoir that
Netanyahu himself placed a listening device in his bathroom and that also the Secret Service found tracking devices on
vehicles. Max, you were in New York yesterday and
among other things, you also met with the president of Iran. Yeah. Talk to us about that meeting.
Yeah. I've been doing so many of these interviews about Charlie Kirk. I haven't gotten a chance to write up this meeting
which was at a hotel on the sidelines of the UNGA immediately after Iranian
President Masud Peshkan met with Emanuel Mcronone to discuss the looming and very
hypocritical snapback sanctions that France, the UK, and Germany are planning to impose on Iran for supposedly
violating an Iranian a P5 5 plus1
nuclear deal which the United States shredded in 2018.
Um it's funny how only Iran has to comply with the deal that no one else complies with. And so he was late for
the meeting and I gathered in a hotel lobby passing through airport style
security very militarized setting. And in the lobby, I saw many of the people that we
would recognize as sort of the voices and faces of the anti-war movement in
the US, including people more on the conservative side who would get branded
like isolationists, but you know, it couldn't be more fairly described as like restrainers or
realists. Uh there were several analysts there from think tanks and
u very but it was but it was a very good crowd that was of of all people who were
opposed for various reasons to a US war with Iran. Now, last year I met with
Peskan at the UNGA in a similar setting, but the meeting was composed mostly of
mainstream media bigwigs including like Lester Holt, Andrea Mitchell, Robin
Wright from the New Yorker, uh, figures from the Washington Post. Iran
was speaking to a different audience this time because it recognized that the mainstream media would not had had
delivered nothing for it and that it was seeking uh a voice a direct channel to
the Biden administration then. But now there's no one to talk to in Washington
because Donald Trump had potentially set them up for the unprovoked Israeli assault last June in which their
commanding generals, their nuclear scientists, and their
civilians were slaughtered in their beds in again an unprovoked attack, including
by Mossad agents inside the country. And Israel did it with the knowledge that Donald Trump would come in in the end
and quote unquote finish this round of the conflict by bombing Natans and Fordo
and supposedly wiping out Iran's nuclear facilities and ending its uranium
stockpile. Of course, it failed to do that and now another round is inevitable. And so this meeting was
convened under the premise that Iran would be attacked again by Israel with
the expectation that the U US under Trump who Israel controls will
come in and finish the job when Israel gets in trouble which it will and it will get into military trouble again.
And Miss Peshkan said openly, "War is coming back to Iran for sure, and if
they assassinate me, there are five people ready to stand in my wake and
fill my shoes." It was a very grim and disturbing comment. He slammed Steve
Witoff, the negotiator who had been overseeing nuclear talks that Iran's
government got involved in the um last spring and summer under a
deadline or a sort of damocles declared by Donald Trump but imposed by Israel. And he said that Wickoff would
sit there in Doha and make all these positive statements about how much he cared about um peace and that he would
abide by all of these um uh you know he he would restore
essentially restore the the the nuclear deal that had been signed in 2015 and then he would go back to Washington and
say the exact opposite and basically echo the Apac line. He said, "I wish
someone had recorded these meetings." He was a complete liar. I mean, he just basically said, "Whitkoff can't be
trusted." I asked Peskan directly about a speech that Iran's leader Ayatollah
Alame made on September 23rd, which was last Tuesday, where he slammed
negotiations, said that they are a declaration of surrender, that if we negotiate again by the US, we might as
well just surrender and that it would be complete folly. Jame warned last time that negotiations
would lead to more sanctions and war, but the Iranian government, the reformist government went into them
anyway. And Peskan didn't address my question directly when I asked if the
leader's statement is reflective of his position. But you can clearly see that
he does not trust the Americans and expects war to come. Whether he
negotiates or not, he's under enormous pressure back home from the principalist
elements uh those who are regarded in the west as hardliners
and doesn't have a lot of political space I think to to u re-enter
negotiations and so
there's a tight window for Isra within which Isra Israel can attack. That's
what I get from talking to analysts in the US and Iran that I trust who've been
generally right about things. And the window may have been expanded by
Israel's insane assault on inside Qatar, a US
ally that hosts the largest US military base in the region to wipe out the
negotiating team and end negotiations with Hamas. But it probably will close around
December because of congressional midterms and because Israel fears that
Iran has uh begun repairing its multi-layered air defense system and
restoring its ballistic missile capacity. In other words, its deterrence. And so Israel is going to
just attack again. And we can see the writing on the wall.
Marco Rubio was just summoned to Jerusalem by his masters. Kissed the
wall or aipa alongside reciprocal Israeli US ambassador and Christian
Zionist fanatic Mike Huckabe. I wonder what was being discussed there. are now Netanyahu,
a wanted I a wanted war criminal under ICC indictment, flew over most European
countries, circumvented Portugal and Spain, and is in New York now, and he's
going to be pushing for more war. So, what we're witnessing right now, I think, is the beginning of another Israeli push for war with Iran that will
necessarily involve the US. and Iran's president was sending the message to the
American people through us, the part of the American public that understands the stakes
from on the left and the right. Um that
we we need we can't allow this to happen. That's that that was his agenda. And uh he also spoke about his desire
for a more progressive social environment in Iran that provides
women and um ethnic and religious minorities with more rights. Of course,
ethnic and religious minorities in Iran have rights under the constitution, which they don't have in Israel, which
actually has no constitution. And I'll be releasing a documentary fairly soon about my interactions with
Iranian Jews while I was there. But this was the sort of reformist side of Peskan. He was also speaking about
friendly relations with neighbors like Azarbaijan, which was used as a base for Israeli attacks on Iran.
overall a a meeting that uh didn't contain the most substantial
I mean from from Peskian standpoint the comments weren't especially substantial
or concrete but the general tone of the meeting was dire because of the
imminence of war. This isn't the story that we'll hear on
the corporate media, but you and others who've spoken with us such as Chaz
Freeman, Muhammad Mandi, many other credible voices, they said that in this
last round of fighting, the so-called 12-day war between Israel and Iran, it's pretty much a consensus among these
credible voices that it was Israel who tapped out because Iran was penetrating
their air defense and they were having trouble withstanding Iran's targeted attacks on their military
institutions. So, if the last round of fighting between Israel and Iran didn't
go as Israel expected, who's to say that the next round will? Yeah, it won't. Um, and many many if not
all Iranians that I spoke to, like all of them who I met on my trip who have different very different perspectives.
Like I got to meet people from all walks of life and very from very different perspectives. They believed that Iran
would have won a war of attrition and they were disappointed that the war ended when it did. And we've since
learned that Israel suffered much more damage financially or economically and structurally than we knew because of
their censorship regime. The
US role in Israel needs to be understood better
because it was deeply damaging to the long-term designs of US empire for the
US to be engaged at that level. And the faction, like you could call it the Vance faction in the Trump
administration that opposed war with Iran and lost the
debate, their motives are different than ours. We just, you know, maybe first and
foremost, we don't we want to save lives uh and we oppose US empire because it's
ruthless and rapacious and violent. They want war with China because China
is emerging not just as a near-per competitor but is moving towards uh
superseding the US as a superpower through much more sophisticated
avenues of trade and economic ties and infrastructure belt and road in other
countries. And Trump has even said that bricks must be stopped. How are you
going to do that when you've wasted onethird of your entire THAAD stock, your stock of your most advanced
anti- your most advanced air defense interceptor missiles in 12 days? And it
takes a long time to repair those. How are you going to defend Taiwan? How are
you going to defend the Philippines or Japan, any of these frontline vassal
states that will do the bulk of the fighting and the dying against China? How can you do that? You cannot. And so
the conflict with China was actually set back. Ukraine was forced to transfer
Patriot batteries to Israel and THAAD systems in advance of the war
and Ukraine has suffered as a result. I mean that the proxy war in Ukraine has
suffered as a result. So from the point of view of just like raw imperial planning, if you're Elbridge Kby,
someone who's opposed the war with Iran because you want to confront China, this is a real drag and Israel is like a ball
and chain on the ankle of American empire and you just can't get them off you. And the war is coming again. you're
going to have to defend them again and and and it's going to be a more as
Peskan himself said, it will be a more violent conflict. And Iran claims they
have weapons that they had not deployed before. And I actually believe them
because of the way that they have staged the series of True Promise operations
with Israel. If you look at the first operation, True Promise,
this was all after October 7th. The targeting was either poor or
deliberately not very destructive. They used their older missile stocks. True Promise 2,
same thing. Although some of the targets that they started to approach were Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, and
they struck fear certainly into the hearts of the civilian population in Tel Aviv. True Promise 3. They broke
Israel's air defense system, which is the most advanced air defense system in the world. They broke through every layer of
it. Exposed the Arrow system as a paper tiger. Forced the US to come in with its
thads, destroyed the Whitesman Institute where Israel does nuclear and drone research. I mean, they were hitting
high-tech targets left and right. And Israel's only hope
uh is to be able to carry out standoff attacks over the Caspian Sea and be able
to take out as many ballistic missile batteries as possible before the
conflict gets too hot. And I think they've lost the advantage with a lot of the Mossad cells that they had
established inside Iran because Iran has found that many of the Mossad agents who
were recruited were poor migrants. I don't know if this is true. They carried out mass deportations of almost the
entire Afghan migrant population and they are in
um like lockdown mode hunting for Mossad
agents. Iran is a is it's not a police state. Like it's a very chaotic society
and it's hard for state security, the IRGC to keep tabs on everything. So, it would be easy to see how agents could be
recruited and they're enticed. I mean, we we published a piece exposing how
Israel, one of the um ways Israel recruits Mossad agents inside Iran and
in Europe, working in sensitive facilities, and they do it openly and offer them loads of money through crypto
channels. Um, they have tons of money to spare for these operations, but I think
they were weakened by the last round of conflict. I don't know what else Iran has up its sleeve, but closing the
straight of Hormuz would strangle the entire global economy and then Israel
would be blamed for wrecking the global economy. And uh this could happen ahead of
midterms and cost Trump dearly because of his close relationship with Netanyahu.
And I think it's almost certainly going to happen. A few minutes ago, you said something
along the lines of that the Israeli influence over the United States needs
to be better understood. That Israeli influence over the United States, that's
something that apparently was very much frustrating Charlie Kirk in the last
days, last weeks of his life. I'm going to read a quote now from his friend and
former colleague, Candace Owens. Candace Owens said, quote, I think in
the end, Charlie was going through a spiritual transformation.
I know he was going through a lot. There was a lot of pressure and it's hard for
me to watch the people who were pressuring him just say the things that they're saying. Uh, she continued, "They
wanted him to lose everything for changing or even slightly modifying an opinion. It's very hurtful to me."
That's what Candace Owens said. I think that's a very profound
statement or observation by her. And I think it's hard to know. I think it's
impossible for people to know what's inside a person's heart and soul. I think as a Muslim, I think only God
knows that. But I think evidence that supports her claim that Charlie Kirk was going through a spiritual transformation. There's evidence to
support that. Such as he was lobbying Trump against going to war with Iran. He was resisting pressure from people like
Bill Aman and Benjamin Netanyahu. That's very significant and important context
to understand in the story of Charlie Kirk for many reasons. One of those reasons I
think is that people like Bill Aman and Benjamin Netanyahu as you've said Max have been
praising Charlie Kirk and talking about their association with him in a very
positive light but they're leaving out the fact that he rejected a recent invitation to visit Netanyahu. He was
resisting pressure from Bill Aman and others.
So, in a way, these people like Aman and Netanyahu, they're perverting the truth.
Well, this was something Candace said right after Charlie Kirk's death. And
so, she hadn't found her voice yet because it just was inappropriate to
launch into a political palemic. But what she said set the stage for everything else and has been proven
correct through my reporting, which is that a lot of these figures who
were many of them who were claiming Charlie Kirk's legacy as their own
from Netanyahu to Bill Aman were simply lying. And she did know that he was undergoing
a change. She was probably pushing him in that direction. She she certainly was
along with other figures. So, we'll never know where he would have led the conservative movement had he lived on. I
think if he had gone undergone a real spiritual transformation, he would have changed all of his views and disbanded
his organization. But that's just how I interpret the world. But on this point, she was also referring to rumors
which she knowing Charlie Kirk has better insight into than I do, that he
was actually getting interested in Catholicism. Charlie Kirk was a Christian Zionist who came out of
Protestant evangelical Christianity, which sees Israel as covenant land given
to the Jews by God to fulfill Revelation, which will eventually be the
landing pad for the Messiah and the basis of the rapture. and he was moving away from that, moving
away from his pastor, Rob McCoy, who's, you know, part of his basically part of
his organization and was beginning to attend Catholic mass with his wife. It's
true that he was attending Catholic mass with his wife and after his death, his
communications director, Andrew Kovit, sort of tried to spin it as they were just enjoying the view inside the
Catholic Church. But had he left Christian Zionism, that would have been a sign. And that was that that he was
moving the conservative seeking to move the conservative movement away
from Christian Zionism as well. There was nothing if he he was a figure that
sort of transcended Israeli influence, but at the same time he depended on the Zionist donor class, but he was a larger
than-l life figure within the conservative grassroots. So he had the capacity to lead them away from Christian Zionism. And again after his
death, Ben Shapiro, one of the leading Israel first voices in sort of
pseudoconservative conservative incorporated media,
co-hosted Charlie Kirk's show and announced that he was making a million dollar donation
to encourage uh more young people to come
to Christ. Very weird statement, especially from someone who doesn't
believe Christ is the is the Messiah because he's Jewish. But also weird because where did Ben
Shapiro get a million dollars? His organization, the Daily Wire, is collapsing. They canceled everyone's
credit cards last year. Their offices are shuttering there. It wasn't working. Ben Shapiro is like an astroturf fake
creation. No one actually likes listening to him. and and so he has a million dollars to
give to TPUSA to encourage people to come to Christ. That's not what's going
on there. Some Zionist billionaire gave him a million dollars to give to them so that they would encourage people to come
to Christian Zionism, which according to Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk was moving away from. So, we can clearly see what's
happening here. And who who's taking over TPUSA?
Charlie Kirk's wife, Erica Kirk, who is said to be a Catholic, who has not come out and shut Candace Owens down yet. I
don't know where she stands, but they are building her up at this point and using her to raise money over Charlie
Kirk's casket and they're basically promising her
political stardom in the future. So, is she going to actually take on the
Zionist donor class? I don't think so. I think they're going to come back in and use TPUSA to retrench their power in the
United States the same way that they did with that they're doing with CBS
and Tik Tok and every other entity that they can buy. And there's really nothing that I can see standing in their way
now. Max, I'm going to ask you two more questions and then we'll wrap up the
program. So, can you you you alluded to this earlier.
Can you talk to us in a little bit more detail about this article you wrote about mega donor to Charlie Kirk's
organization Robert Schillman and how I think I described it in in detail
so I don't have much more to add except that uh you know this was a closely
guarded secret and I'd heard rumors about him losing a big donor but I got a tip from a TPUSA insider and I learned
from a completely separate source who had attended a gala dinner for an
anti-Islam organization in Los Angeles called the American Freedom Alliance
that Bob Schillman had gotten up and given a speech and said he was cutting
Charlie Kirk off and basically grumbled about Charlie Kirk. And so I started
making phone calls to corroborate or confirm what that attendee told me. got
the president of that organization on the line. She wouldn't answer my question and hung up on me. I got the MC
of the event on the line. He wouldn't answer my question. He was at least polite and said he could neither confirm
nor deny. And then I got Bob Schulman himself on the line and he hung up on
me. So it seemed pretty clear that he was the donor and he has a history of doing this to organizations that he
funds. And that was a that cost him a lot of money. a lot of money. I mean, millions. They
have an $80 million budget and he was responsible for a a fairly substantial
portion of it. So, that that's the that's the kind of pressure that any major conservative
leader is under. That's the money they rely on along with industry money. A lot of that industry
money comes from oilmen or financeers who are themselves Christian Zionist.
And there are to my to my knowledge there are no Catholics in leadership positions at TPUSA. Like all of them are
evangelical Christians. It was basically like a Christian nationalist organization.
And Christian nationalism is has been synonymous with Christian
Zionism. But this shift is occurring. The the the the the issue is the
Republican party is so much more responsive to the donor class even more than the Democratic party that someone
like Marjgerie Taylor Green who will still be speaking I think at TPUSA's December conference and is the leading
critic of Israel in Congress, more critical than AOC, making much more substantial statements. She can't get
anything done in the Republican party. Like no one will join her. No one will co-sponsor anything Israel related with
her. And so that's a huge problem. To put it all into perspective,
another election's coming up. The country is more solidly against Israel
than ever before. It may not be pro Palestine, but they're just sick of Israel.
and uh there the the candidates that will be nominated or will v to for the
nomination in both parties will not answer these concerns in any substantial way. And so what we're going to see
increasingly is the lack of democracy in this country
and the how little voice we have. And so we have to force the issue.
We have to find new ways of forcing the issue. and it has to be done outside of
the two-party system. The last question I'll ask you tonight,
Max, is as far as you can tell or as far as you know, what is the current state
of Israel's genocide or ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, too, I'll add.
Well, the West the the the the violence is intensifying in Gaza City Day after day. We're
getting less coverage of it because Israel has killed the top field correspondents, most recently Anasal
Sharif. That was by design, but you can see images of the families who are being
slaughtered in their homes in air strikes. Um, I think 170 were killed in
Gaza City in the in in across the Gaza Strip in the past day.
uh center of the Samir project which was supplying the north with aid. One of the last organizations supplying the north
with aid was struck by an Israeli bombing. And Israel is using these
remotec controlled vehicles to detonate explosives to blow
up entire neighborhoods in Gaza City. And they're doing this for the reason that uh I think it's Israeli housing
minister Leor Livnat stated in an interview in Israeli media which is to
uh destroy the city of Gaza so that they can never come back. She openly said that last May Netanyahu said we will
destroy their homes to force them to leave and ultimately Israel will try to
force them to leave Gaza altogether. That's the next part of the plan after
the the population is forced from the north and placed in biometric concentration camps
where the only source of food is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which is
run from behind the scenes by Israeli intelligence and the Israeli mil military through by the way um American
frontmen like Reverend Johnny Moore who was close to Charlie Kirk's operation
and was a mentor to Charlie Kirk's communications director, Andrew Kulvit.
It's disgusting. The West Bank is a prison. The Allen B Bridge was closed following the recognition of a
Palestinian state by France and the UK
and now no one can go in or out. the Palestinian cities are cut off from
one another and they're block like anyone who wants to travel from Ramla to Bethlehem has to pass through layers of
settler terrorists and military backing up the settler terrorists. So getting out on the road is extremely perilous
and Israel wants to annex the West Bank. It's out in the open that that's their plan right now to gazify the West Bank.
They've been gazifying the North, carrying out mass kidnappings of young men in order to suppress the armed
rebellion against their occupation. This will all continue for as long as a
US president like Donald Trump, who is completely under Netanyahu's thumb, is in power. And at the same time, I'm
seeing um the various civil society actions that are
underway make an impact. The the Simood Flotilla, which has come under attack from Israeli
drones, including with chemical weapons, but also with small explosive charges,
boats filled with citizens from Italy, from Spain, from the UK.
Uh Nelson Mandela's grandson is on one of the boats. I believe Greta Tunberg is on a boat
and they have now compelled the governments of France and France of
Spain and Italy to send naval ships as escorts. So they've basically compelled
something that could lay the groundwork for the Unite for Peace proposal put
forward by the former UN human rights expert Craig Moyber, which is calling
for an armed international or United Nations Protection Force to guarantee
the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip. And I think, you know, that's something that we should be calling for and
campaigning for. What we the what we need is military intervention in Gaza to
end the genocide. And the failure to do it means that
the so-called international community is completely bankrupt and the postworld
war II order was
is gone. Is completely gone. Where where where does it go next?
I don't know. I just think we have to do something every day. Just do something
every day to try to make this stop. That's all we can do. That's all anyone watching this can do is just to do
something every day. Thank you, Max. Thanks for your tireless
efforts. Before you spoke with me right now, you spoke with Matt Gates. You met with the president of Iran yesterday.
you've been tireless and prolific in your efforts to really get to the truth
of these really important issues. Thanks a lot. You can you can see the dark circles under my eyes. I'm
definitely due for some rest, but uh yeah, there's more to do and I should
have uh more juice in this investigation. So, follow the gray zone.
We'll follow it closely and everyone listening, follow the gray zone. Max, thank you also for connecting me with retired Lieutenant Colonel Anthony
Aguular, who will be speaking with the Community Church of Boston on the morning of October 13th, which is
Columbus Day. And I'm also happy to announce that the moderator of that program will be retired Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson, who was the chief of staff to Secretary of State Coen Powell. So, very
much looking forward to that. And again, thank you, Max, for connecting us with that. I'm going to let you go, but hold
on for 30 seconds because I'm going to close with a very quick reading.
This is from the Quran. And I read this because these are the words of the Quran that
Muslims recite during times of death and catastrophe. And it's these words and
words like these that give people in places like Gaza strength to remain
steadfast in the midst of a genocide. In the Quran in chapter 2
ayat 153 it says
you who believe seek help through steadfastness and prayer for God is with
the steadfast. Do not say that those who are killed in God's cause are dead. They are alive
though you do not realize it. We shall we shall certainly test you with fear
and hunger and loss of loss of property, lives and crops.
But give good news to those who are steadfast. Those who say when afflicted with the
calamity, "We belong to God and to him we shall return." These will be given
blessings and mercy from their Lord. and it is they who are rightly guided. And
those are words from the Quran. Thank you again, Max.

[admin]

[admin]

7 Disturbing Developments in Charlie Kirk's Assassination
Law&Crime Network
Sep 27, 2025 Law&Crime Crime Fix with Angenette Levy

It's been a little more than two weeks since an assassin's bullet took Charlie Kirk's life at Utah Valley University. Now his accused killer, Tyler Robinson, 22, is behind bars and facing the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. The investigation is far from over and FBI Director Kash Patel says every theory and scenario is being investigated as a well-known defense attorney in Utah has been appointed to represent Robinson. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the most shocking developments so far in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.



Transcript

The man accused of murdering Charlie
Kirk now has a lawyer and he'll be back
in court soon as he faces the
possibility of the death penalty if
convicted. And the investigation is far
from over despite the arrest. I look at
the biggest developments in the case.
[Music]
Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anget Levy.
It's been a little more than two weeks
since Charlie Kirk's life was taken by
an assassin's bullet. One minute Kirk
was speaking to a big crowd on the
campus of Utah Valley University in
Oram, Utah, and the next he was gone,
shot in the neck. His wife Erica said
the doctor told her that Charlie Kirk
died instantly. At his memorial service
last weekend, tens of thousands
attended. A video showing Kirk in his
final moments played. First stop.
Wow, look at that.
Beautiful.
And that was just part of that video.
And it wasn't long after that that
Kirk's life ended and a manhunt began.
There were false starts as far as
arrests go, but then a possible shooter
was identified through surveillance
video. Photos were released and a mother
3 hours south of Oram in St. George
believed she recognized the young man in
the photos. She believed it was her son.
Robinson's mother explained that over
the last year or so, Robinson had become
more political
and had started to lean more to the
left, becoming more pro-gay and trans
rights oriented. She stated that
Robinson began to date his roommate, a
biological male who was transi
transitioning genders.
This resulted in several discussions
with family members, but especially
between Robinson and his father who have
very different political views. In one
conversation before the shooting,
Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk
would be holding an event at UVU, which
Robert Robinson said was a stupid venue
for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of
spreading hate. Tyler Robinson's parents
and a family friend convinced him to
turn himself in. The sheriff of
Washington County said there was a
negotiation of sorts because Robinson
was afraid of being shot. Ironically,
the manhunt ended after 33 hours. The
Utah County prosecutor filed information
charging Tyler Robinson with aggravated
murder, tampering with evidence, and
witness tampering. County Attorney Jeff
Gray read the text messages that he said
Robinson sent to his roommate, his
romantic partner, who was transitioning
from male to female.
On September 10th, 2025, the roommate
received a text message from Robinson
which said, "Drop what you're doing.
Look under my keyboard."
The roommate looked under the keyboard
and found a note that stated, quote, "I
had the opportunity to take out Charlie
Kurt and I'm going to take it." Police
found a photograph of this note. The
following exchange, text exchange then
took place. After reading the note, the
roommate responded, "What?
You're joking, right?" Robinson. I am
still okay, my love, but I'm stuck in
Oram for a little while longer yet.
Shouldn't be long until I can come home.
But I got to grab my rifle still. To be
honest, I had hoped to keep this secret
till I died of old age. I am sorry to
involve you.
Roommate, you weren't the one who did
it, right,
Robinson? I am I am I'm sorry.
roommate. I thought they caught the
person. Robinson. No, they grabbed some
crazy old dude, then interrogated
someone in similar clothing. I had
planned to grab my rifle from my drop
point shortly after, but most of that
side of town got locked down. It's
quiet, almost enough to get out, but
there's one vehicle lingering. Roommate,
why? Robinson, why did I do it?
Roommate. Yeah.
Robinson. I had enough of his hatred.
Some hate can't be negotiated out. If I
am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will
have left no evidence.
Think you've seen it all? Think again.
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Nation. The county attorney said that
rifle was a 30 six and had been given to
Robinson by his grandfather. Those text
messages continued. Roommate, how long
have you been planning this? Robinson, a
bit over a week, I believe. I can get
close to it, but there is a squad car
parked right by it. I think they already
swept that spot, but I don't want to
chance it.
Robinson again. I'm wishing I had
circled back and grabbed it as soon as I
got to my vehicle. I'm worried what my
old man would do if I didn't bring back
Grandpa's rifle.
ID EK if it's had a serial number but it
wouldn't trace to me. I worry about
Prince I had to leave it in a bush where
I changed outfits. Didn't have the
ability or time to bring it with I might
have to abandon it and hope they don't
find Prince.
How the f will I explain losing it to my
old man?
Only thing I left was the rapple was the
rifle wrapped in a towel. Remember how I
was engraving bullets? The effing
messages are mostly a big meme. If I see
notice bulge UW on Fox Newing
sucks.
Judging from today, I'd say Grandpa's
Gun does just fine. IDK. I think that
was a two thou a 2K dollar scope.
Wink wink.
Um, Robinson. Robinson again. Delete
this exchange
again. Robinson. My dad wants photos of
the rifle. He says grandpa wants to know
who has what. The feds released a photo
of the rifle and it is very unique. He's
calling me. RN not answering. Robinson,
since Trump got into office, my dad has
been pretty diehard MAGA.
Robinson, I'm going to turn myself in
willingly. One of my neighbors here is a
deputy for the sheriff.
Again, you are all I worry about, love.
That came from Robinson. Roommate, I'm
much more worried about you, Robinson.
Don't talk to the media. Please don't
take any interviews or make any
comments. If any police ask you
questions, ask for a lawyer and stay
silent.
And we're going to talk a little bit
more about those texts later on with Sky
Lazaro. There are still many, many
questions about what could drive a
one-time straight A student and a
college scholarship recipient to want to
take a person's life. An arrest may have
been made, but the investigation is
still ongoing. It's far from over. The
FBI has said that Robinson's roommate is
cooperating. Last Sunday, FBI director
Cash Patel posted on X that every
possibility is being investigated. Patel
wrote, "As the director of the FBI, I am
committed to ensuring the investigation
into Charlie Kirk's assassination is
thorough and exhaustive, pursuing every
lead to its conclusion. The full weight
of America's law enforcement agencies
are actively following the evidence that
has emerged, but our efforts extend
beyond initial findings. We are
examining every facet of this
assassination. We are meticulously
investigating theories and questions
including the location from where the
shot was taken, the possibility of
accompllices, the text message
confession and related conversations,
Discord chats, the angle of the shot and
bullet impact, how the weapon was
transported, hand gestures observed as
potential signals near Charlie at the
time of his assassination, and visitors
to the alleged shooters residence and
the hours days leading up to September
10th, 2025.
Some details are known today, while
others are still being pursued to ensure
every possibility is considered. Our
primary focus is to complete this
investigation and deliver justice. To
protect the integrity of the
investigation and subsequent
prosecution, we cannot release every
piece of information we have to the
public right now. We will ensure every
question is addressed at the appropriate
moment. Regarding specific details, such
as questions about the plane that
allegedly turned off its transponder
after departing from an airport near the
assassination site, we can share updates
when answers are confirmed. After
interviews with the pilot in
consultation with the FAA, we determined
the transponder was not turned off.
Incomplete flight data in rural areas
caused the apparent gap. The entire FBI
mourns the loss of Charlie Kirk. We will
not rest until justice is served and our
investigation into this assassination
will continue until every question is
answered. So right there, Patel is
saying they're investigating every
theory probably just to run down every
lead and every possibility to see what's
true and what's not. Patel testified in
front of Congress last week and said
this about Discord, the messaging
platform, whose spokesperson has said
that Tyler Robinson didn't plan the
crime on the site, but he admitted to
the shooting after the fact. Take a
listen.
Reports have suggested that the FBI is
investigating a broader network of
groups that may have had some knowledge
of the shooters plans. Can you give us
any details on that? Following up what
you've already said in public, how's the
FBI working to find other potential
accompllices, folks who may have known
about the shooter's plans, folks who may
have encouraged him, any any update on
any of that? So, in terms of what we do
for an interrogation um perspective, we
go and reach out to the family and
community immediately and we've
conducted those investigations and
interrogations with local law
enforcement and we're continuing to do
that because those closest to the
suspect are going to hopefully know the
most about the suspect and his beliefs
and his ideology. On top of that, um,
unfortunately, it has been leaked that
there was a uh a Discord chat. And for
those unfamiliar with it, it's a gaming
chat room online, um, that the suspect
participated in. So, what we're doing,
we've already done sort of legal
process, not just on Discord, so that
the information we gathered is sustained
and held in a evidentary posture that we
could use in prosecution should it be
decided to do so. And we're also going
to be investigating anyone and everyone
involved in that Discord chat.
Okay, very good. I see the public
reports that the Discord thread had as
many as 20 additional users. It sounds
like you're you're trying to run down
all of that to see if that's accurate.
Who else may have been on that thread,
what they may have known. Is that fair
to say?
It's a lot more than that. We're running
them all down.
It's a lot more than 20.
Yes, sir.
And you're running all of that to
every single one. Now, Erica Kirk,
Charlie Kirk's widow and now the CEO of
Turning Point USA, the organization that
Charlie Kirk founded when he was just 18
years old, spoke at his memorial service
about the loss of her husband.
On the afternoon of September 10th, I
arrived at a Utah hospital to do the
unthinkable,
to look directly
at my husband's murdered body.
I saw the wound that ended his life.
I felt everything you would expect to
feel.
I felt shock.
I felt horror
and a level of heartache
that I didn't even know existed. And
there was a really unbelievable moment
at this service where Erica Kirk, who's
mourning the loss of her husband
Charlie, and she now has two young
children to raise without their father,
she offered incredible words of mercy
and grace to his alleged assassin. That
young man,
that young man
on the cross, our savior said,
"Father, forgive them for they not know
what they do."
That man,
that young man,
I forgive him.
Now, remember, at Robinson's initial
court appearance, he didn't have an
attorney, but now that's changed. The
county commission has approved hiring
Kathy Netor to represent Robinson. She
has another famous or infamous client,
depending on how you look at it. in
Utah. Nester and her law partner also
represent Corey Richens, the children's
book author accused of murdering her
husband Eric by poisoning him back in
March of 2022. So Kathy Netor and
whichever co-consel she chooses are now
Tyler Robinson's lawyers and he's due
back in court on Monday. So to talk
about the very latest, I want to bring
in Sky Lazaro. She is a criminal defense
attorney in Utah. So Sky, I want your
thoughts first and foremost on the
choice of defense attorney here. You
know, they've they've appointed a public
defender. It is Kathy Netor. And I guess
she has co-consel. Um she's going to
need co-consel. She will need a lot of
help, a mitigation expert. So you are
familiar with her. She she is part of
the team that took over Corey Richen's
defense. So tell us about her taking
this case.
That's correct. Kathy's been uh in Utah
for a long time. She worked for the
federal defenders office doing public
defense work for them for a long time
and now she's out in in private practice
but has taken the appointment and in
both the Richens case and in the
Robinson case uh as courtappointed
counsel. Um I believe what happened is
the Utah County uh public defenders
office basically said we don't have the
resources to do this. you know, you're
going to have to get somebody else
appointed on this case and fund it
separately from what aotment is is given
to us already by the county. And so I I
don't know what that selection process,
you know, looked like, if if they
reached out individually to people. I I
believe that that they were reaching out
to people to see who had interest in it
or who would take it. Uh, and and I
believe Kathy
agreed.
Uh, and they'd have to obviously be
death qualified. They'd have to be, you
know, qualified to handle a case such as
this one. And as a former federal
defender, I'm sure she is. Um, this is a
lot to take on, though. I mean, she's
got the Richens case coming up next
year. This, of course, unless they say,
"Yeah, we want a speedy trial." I I
don't see this going to trial early next
year. Late next year, probably the very
earliest this could could happen, if not
2027.
That's correct. So, Utah, our statute
requires that people be qualified under
rule 8 uh to be death penalty counsel.
The ABA has uh standards out there for
the way these cases need to be defended.
She is definitely going to need
co-consel and mitigation experts in this
case. I think this is going to be a very
costly and timeconsuming case uh on top
of Richens. Uh, but you know, Kathy's
done this a long time and if if she, you
know, has things set up to have
appropriate counsel to help, you know,
because she has another practice as
well, private practice as well, you
know, to help with those cases to afford
the time for the both. I I would assume
she's, you know, looked at that closely
and the county doesn't seem to have any
uh issues with that as well.
So talk to me about what's going to
happen on Monday. Obviously Tyler
Robinson did not have counsel. Uh during
his first court appearance, Greg Scortis
appeared and said, "Look, I'm not
representing him, but I'm assisting and
helping find somebody." So he was kind
of a consultant looking to help find
counsel for Tyler Robinson council that
was qualified that could take this case.
Um maybe they even took bids. Who knows?
I don't know how they did this. but
what's going to happen on Monday when
Tyler Robinson appears.
This will be his first appearance with
his appointed attorney. And so I don't
expect a lot to happen in this case. My
guess is is um or what I would expect to
happen is that the court will put on the
record that uh Miss Netor has uh taken
on the appointment. uh she's willing to
abide by the standards and and the
statutory guidelines in defending him.
And I think they'll just sort of talk
next steps. Do we need to just set
another status conference? What's the
status of discovery? You know, I don't
think we're getting to a preliminary
hearing anytime soon in this case,
although, you know, he may assert some
speedy trial rights and decide that's
how he wants to do it. But I I think
this investigation is ongoing uh on the
on the part of the government as well.
And so there's going to be additional
discovery that continues to come out. So
my guess is is this is really just going
to be a status. This is, you know, you
get to come to court with your lawyer.
Here's the next steps. Yeah, that's what
it that's what I would kind of expect
because we're so early on in this case
and maybe they've turned over some
discovery already, but still the
discovery in this case will be
voluminous and the investigation is
really ongoing. I mean, they may have
some discovery to hand over right now,
but this investigation is far from over
the way the FBI director makes it sound.
I I would agree with that. in Utah, they
have to turn over uh any information
that they relied upon in filing the
information. So any discovery that was
relied upon in in filing the charging
document needs to be provided to the
defense within I believe it's 10 days or
a very short period of time. But in most
major cases or or major felony cases,
especially this case, discovery is
always ongoing. I I think there's always
things that come in late or things the
defense asks to go uh ask the state to
go get for them and and supplemental
discovery requests, things along that
nature.
So, the discovery is going to be
voluminous. And one thing that she is
going to receive in this discovery are
those text messages that the prosecutor
says are between
Tyler Robinson and his roommate who was
his romantic partner. And these things
read like a confession. It's so I mean
it's very weird to me, Sky. I don't
know. I mean, there's just something
about them that don't sit right with me.
And I I don't know if it's because I'm
just have a hard time believing that a
22-year-old texts his significant other
and says all this stuff on text. I I
don't know. There's just something about
it. It just seems very strange. The
roommate seems shocked. Like, what? that
was you on here. And he says, "Remember
when I was engraving bullets? Like
that's just something people sit around
and do. I don't think that's something
people sit around and do." What are your
thoughts on the text message confession?
These texts are different or weird. I I
don't know how to characterize them
either. Uh there also seem to be a
snapshot. I know, you know, we know that
the roommate uh was cooperating with
police and provided these. And so I
think what we saw come out through the
information is just a small snapshot of
these. I I agree with you. I don't think
the roommate, at least based on these
text messages, had no idea that any of
this was going to happen. Uh or even
after it did happen, that it was him
until uh you know, he said that yeah, it
was me and and then reacted with shock.
I would hope that through this discovery
process, they get a full download. Uh
they're at least probably going to get
one of Tyler's phone and they should get
the my guess is they'll go get the full
text string between him and uh the
roommate or anybody else he was
communicating with about this incident
as well because
they seem a little I don't want to say
disjointed, but they don't really make a
lot of sense. uh that that you just all
of a sudden would be, you know, I'm
gonna go do this and and not tell
anybody and not tell the people closest
to me. Um and and there may be other
there may be other communications on
other platforms as well, uh that maybe
they, you know, the state wasn't even
aware of at the time that they filed
charges. So, I think we're going to see
more come out of that to kind of
at least kind of build the picture of of
what it really was. We see we see text
messages and communications used in
cases all the time and it's easy to take
a a snapshot and and make it look maybe
worse than it was or better than it was,
you know, without getting the full
context of a conversation. I mean, but
he lit he literally admits to shooting
Charlie Kirk. I mean,
I think if if those are if those can be
authenticated and those, you know, I
mean, there's still there's still the
rules of evidence, you know, if those
are authenticated and those come in and
you can't keep them out, which I don't
think you can keep them out if they can
authenticate them, those are really,
really damaging text messages. I don't
know how you get past them. it
admission.
Yeah, you're right about those text
messages. Uh because those text messages
are definitely disjointed. The ellipses
on there, you can see that they're
showing, okay, this is one group of text
messages, then we have another group of
text messages, then another. Um it is
concerning
that the roommate I guess you know and
he's 22 years old but it you know the
whole thing about well there's been a
lot made of well he didn't go to the
police or the feds they had to find him
and interview him. Um, but if he's
cooperating, and they've been saying
that the roommate is cooperating,
um, I don't know if I expect really
anything to come of this as far as the
roommate goes, as far as charges go.
Could be just a cooperating witness who
was scared.
And I don't think that they will charge
him
unless something else comes out or they
become aware of more information. And
the fact that he didn't come forward
right away, I don't think that is
abnormal in cases. I see that all the
time. And in cases where boyfriends,
girlfriends, husbands, friends, they
know what people have done and they
don't come forward. Now, as long as they
don't lie, when police come and
interview them and they tell the truth
and cooperate, they're probably not
facing obstruction charges. As long as
they didn't do something to destroy
evidence or somehow impede the
investigation, simply not coming
forward, I don't think would be grounds
to charge someone. Uh although I mean
this case, you know, they they may be
more aggressive in it. But I would say
in most cases, unless there's something
more out there, I don't expect to see
charges on the roommate uh just because
he didn't come forward initially. They
had to go find him. Let's talk about the
possibility of federal charges now. That
that's been discussed. It sounds like
the feds really, really, really would
like to charge him, but Tyler Robinson,
as far as we know, there's no allegation
that he crossed state lines. He he was
from the St. George area. He drives up
north to Utah County and allegedly kills
Charlie Kirk.
there. You know, there's no I don't I'm
trying to see where the federal part of
this comes in. I, you know, it could
have something to do with if they fi
find out that he used an internet
platform to communicate with people
about this. At this point, they're
saying he only said after the fact that
he did it on Discord. Um, I I'm not
seeing anything that could be federal
here just yet. I agree with you and I
think that's why we haven't seen a
federal indictment come forth either or
or even just a charging document. Uh
they're going to have to find something
that's going to trigger federal
jurisdiction, some sort of interstate
commerce uh type movement. Now, if if
they go through his phone and and it
turns out there was a conspiracy or he
was paid by somebody out of state, you
know, maybe then you can start to get
there with individuals. But based on
what we know, I don't see a a federal
murder charge coming. And I don't think
that there's grounds for it based on
what they have or at least what we know
in the press right now uh on this case.
I do know that they would probably
really like to get him charged somehow,
but if the state's going to pursue the
death penalty, and Utah County has has
been very active in filing death penalty
cases,
I I think you're just better to let you
know, let the one prosecution run. if if
you were concerned that the state wasn't
actually going to pursue death penalty
uh or was going to cave on it, maybe
then you find a way to to charge them
federally, too. But, you know, at this
point,
as much as I think they'd like to for
political reasons, I I I agree with you.
I just don't I don't think that they
have the facts to support it right now.
Right now, I'm not seeing it, but
we should just wait and see uh what
comes of it. Uh you never know what they
could turn up. I guess they say it's an
ongoing investigation, but right now I
don't see it. Skylaro will uh we'll stay
tuned. Thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you.
Tyler Robinson is being held in the Utah
County Jail without bail. He'll be back
in court on Monday and Law and Crime
will have that appearance covered for
you, so stay tuned. That's it for this
episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anget Levy.
Thanks so much for being with me. I'll
see you back here next time.

[admin]

Israel DISGRACED as UN Shuts Up Netanyahu in Historic Walk Out
by Danny Haiphong
Sep 27 2025



Transcript

Benjamin Netanyahu was visibly shaken by
the extraordinary walkout at the UN
General Assembly that occurred just as
he took the podium to speak. Delegates
from over 50 countries emptied the room
in what was a heroic act that signaled
Israel is more alone now than it has
ever been. And if you listened to
Benjamin Men Netanyahu's words, you
would understand why. He spoke for a
whopping 40 minutes in what was a
stunning denial of the blood soaked war
crimes and genocide committed by his
regime not only in Gaza but the rest of
the region. His address was a mix of war
propaganda, glorification of genocide
and an outright denial of war crimes all
across West Asia. The dozens of empty
seats that were present as Netanyahu
spoke was not exactly random. It was a
rejection, a coordinated one at that, of
a leader, a so-called man defending
genocide in Gaza while portraying Israel
as the perpetual victim. Of course, we
saw the US delegation staying seated,
but the rest of the global south, Arab
nations, African nations, nations in
Latin America, and even many Western
European delegates having left the room
before Netanyahu could even utter a
word. But oh did he utter many words.
And of course his words were entirely
predictable because Netanyahu is every
time he speaks on trial by world public
opinion. He began as always at the UN
General Assembly by holding up a map. He
always does this. This time the map was
of Iran's terror access quote unquote.
Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Bashar al-Assad,
who has since been overthrown, and the
Houthis, better known as Ansarala. He
claimed that Israel has crushed Hamas,
which is just another euphemism for mass
murdering Palestinian civilians.
Because, let's be quite honest, the
Palestinian resistance is fighting back
as we speak in Gaza City, taking out
Israeli tanks and even killing top
commanders of these tanks. He bragged
about crippling Hezbollah, destroying
Assad's arsenal, and even he bragged
about the 12-day war, Operation Rising
Lion, according to Israel, to the point
of victory. Now, this is very
interesting since Israel actually
depleted so much of its air defenses
that the United States had to stage what
was mainly a theatrical B2 bombing
campaign of Iran's nuclear sites and
tell Israel to stand down because it
would not be able to defend itself
longer than those 12 days. But reality,
of course, never gets in the way of
Netanyahu's
uh habit and addiction to lying.
Netanyahu did what he does best at the
UN General Assembly, which is applaud
extrajudicial assassinations, whether it
was through the pager attack in Lebanon,
which killed thousands of civilians and
injured many more, and the Iranian
scientists and leaders that have been
targeted over the years, including
during the 12-day war, by Israeli
intelligence. So, this wasn't a peace
speech at all. It wasn't a speech by a
legitimate leader. It was a war speech.
It was a speech where he bragged about
bombing other countries and killing
civilians. And this is why the delegates
left. This naked triumphalism is no
longer being tolerated. So Netanyahu of
course revisited October 7th describing
atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas
in graphic details. Of course many of
these atrocities have been debunked
whether it was the babies being burned
alive or the beheaded men and the raped
women. All of this has been debunked not
only by independent journalists, for
example, at the gray zone and electronic
antifada, but also confirmed by Israeli
media itself.
While all of this uh it could be seen as
a reason to sympathize with Israel, the
fact of the matter is is that these
lies, no matter whether they were true
or not, are no justification for the
indefinite war on Gaza. He did very
silly things as well. Netanyahu really
did humiliate himself during this
speech. She took out a QR code that
delegates and audience members could
scan to show why Israel fights. He also
spoke on militaryra loudspeakers to send
a loud message to the remaining hostages
in or the prisoners of war we should
call them in Hamas's um care right now
that are currently being held by Hamas
as a way to show how much he cares about
them. But the fact of the matter is is
that thousands upon thousands upon
thousands of Israelis themselves have
protested in Tel Aviv
demanding that the genocide in Gaza end
not because they oppose genocide. We
know that over 80% of Israelis actually
support the violence that occurs against
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank
and the rest of Palestine proper. But uh
they want to see the prisoners of war
released because now it is well known
that the ongoing genocide in Gaza has
actually killed many of these prisoners
of war and that Hamas has outright said
they cannot protect prisoners of war
when Israel is committing its savage and
barbaric bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
So Netanyahu predictably reduced the
entire population of Palestine to the
enemy Hamas uh weaponizing the grief of
people all around the world to
rationalize mass killing. But of course
he never acknowledged the tens of
thousands of Palestinians killed since
and what the Lancet has said is actually
likely hundreds of thousands now given
the impact of the bombing campaign
committed by Israel. So Netanyahu
claimed in his UN General Assembly
remarks uh that they were being
broadcast on these loudspeakers uh in
order to directly address the hostages.
He told Hamas quote unquote free the
hostages now and if you don't Israel
will hunt you down. This was of course a
performative political act because
Israel has not been able to hunt down
Hamas. In fact, every time Israel bombs
Gaza, every time it destroys Palestinian
people's infrastructure, every time it
commits an act of genocide, which is
every second of every day that this
continues, we have more Palestinians
joining the resistance to fight back.
And that will be a reality that Israel
will never be able to stop. And this is
what is known by the delegates at the UN
General Assembly. They know that their
institution is unable to stop what is
going on in Gaza. They want it to stop
because in many ways international law
has been utilized and weaponized to
stifle resistance. And it's only
countries like China who still uphold
many parts of the Geneva Conventions and
uh uh the UN charter which says that
armed resistance is actually a right of
oppressed people especially colonized
people fighting against foreign invaders
which is exactly what the Palestinian
people have been doing for 75 plus years
now. Netanyahu of course mocked the
genocide charge predictably. What a
country, he said, committing genocide,
dropped millions of leaflets to evacuate
civilians. Well, yes, they would do that
because everything that Israel has done
is
and could be considered genocide.
Independent UN reports show mass
civilian slaughter, famine, and systemic
targeting of infrastructure that was not
mentioned by Netanyahu at all. What he
cherrypicked, of course, was the US
military officer John Spencer claiming
that Israel minimizes civilian deaths
better than any army in history. Of
course, there was no proof provided of
these claims. And there is no more
appetite worldwide for listening to a
leader who claims that there is no mass
murder happening when we are all seeing
it on our phones and on our screens
every single day. Now, Netanyahu also
claims that Israel is sending 2 million
tons of food and aid, one ton per
person, and blamed Hamas for stealing
it. This of course negates the many
reports now that we have of the USbacked
uh Gaza humanitarian foundation which
has been shown to actually snipe at and
kill Palestinians waiting for uh food
aid and other medical supplies. This
also negates the fact that the freedom
flotillas, the Samud flotillas that are
sailing toward Gaza have been attacked
by Israel with drone attacks and various
other uh chicannery in order to thwart
them. And we know that the last flotilla
that sailed to Gaza just over a decade
ago was also uh attacked by Israel and
10 people about were killed. And this
isn't even to mention the fact that
thousands upon thousands upon thousands
of tons of aid sit across the border
crossing with Egypt being disallowed by
Israel to get in. This has been the case
since the ongoing genocide began.
So this was really a calculated
inversion. Palestinians who are starving
under siege are being called liars and
agents of Hamas while Israel is casted
as their actual provider. And this
should be seen as a complete and utter
insult to the humanity of everyone. This
is why delegates are walking out of the
UN's general assembly. And this is why
Israel is now more isolated than ever
because no one at this point with any
ounce of humanity can stand to hear
Benjamin Netanyahu and continue to
ingest the hazbara that comes out of
Israel. And this is actually having a
market effect on Israel's capacity to
conduct its affairs for its capacity to
continue its ongoing expansionism.
Because remember it is the greater
Israel project that uh Israel wants to
achieve. Israel wants to expand into
Egypt into Saudi Arabia. It wants to
actually build from the river to the sea
as is often criticized of Palestinian
activists, pro Palestine solidarity
activists and the like. That is actually
what is in the charter of the Lood party
that Netanyahu is a part of. Uh, and
this is why Netanyahu condemns so hard
the recognition of the 1967 borders, the
two-state solution that has now been uh,
in words rhetorically recognized by a
number of countries. The mantra now is
rewarding terrorism and claiming that
nearly 90% of Palestinians supported
October 7th, dismissing the two-state
solution as a Palestinian rejection of a
Jewish state. All of this is meant to
deny Palestine not only their right to
statehood, but their right to existence.
And this is ultimately the plan that
Israel has. He remarked that what giving
Palestine a state would event would
equate to was giving al-Qaeda a state
one mile from New York City after 911.
And we don't have to get into all the
suspicions that people have of Israeli
involvement there. So this was quite
ironic because as the UN General
Assembly was occurring before
Netanyahu's speech, we saw former CIA
director David Petraeus meet with the uh
so-called Syrian president, the puppet
regime leader. He was a leader of
al-Qaeda that Petraeus likely trained.
So this is uh an interesting inversion
of reality that should also demonstrate
just how desperate the regime Israel is.
So Netanyahu's clearest me message of
all was that there will be no
Palestinian statehood as long as Israel
is able to conduct its Juan ton murder.
And this is opposed. This rejection of
Palestinian statehood is actually
opposed by most of the world. If you see
the UN votes, the UNGA votes over the
years, it is overwhelmingly on the side
of respecting the right of Palestinian
people to have a state given that they
were the original leaders, the original
occupants and inhabitants of that land.
Now, Netanyahu not only attacked Hamas
and Hezbollah and Iran and those that he
claims are adversaries to Israel, uh
those that he cannot defeat because, as
you know, Ansarala of Yemen continues
its campaign in the Red Sea and
launching drones that have been actually
successful in piercing Israeli air
defenses. Iran in the 12-day war proved
quite capable of launching ballistic
missiles to the tune of billions of
dollars worth of damage to the Israeli
regime. And of course uh Hamas and the
Palestinian resistance have not quit. So
while he cannot defeat the resistance,
Netanyahu is now turning his attention
to his so-called allies and world
leaders for being weak need including
European leaders as and he called them
appeasers of evil. Accusations of
genocide and starvation were blood
liable he said and he attacked Western
mainstream media as Hamas's propaganda
arm. Imagine, he said as he lectured
leaders whose civilians citizens have
died in Gaza protest, telling them they
were cowards. So no wonder that the
delegates left. Mind you, a US citizen
was killed in an Israeli strike on
Lebanon just the few days before his
speech. So Netanyahu of course did what
an Israeli leader would do when your
back is against the wall. He kissed the
ring of Donald Trump. He kissed the ring
for Donald of Donald Trump for backing
Israel's air strikes on Iran, for
fighting anti-semitism and brokering the
Abraham Accords. Mind you, all of this
is defunct, especially the Abraham
Accords after Israel attacked Qatar in
order to try to kill Hamas negotiators
in the weeks leading up to the UN
General Assembly. Trump understands, he
said better than anyone, that Israel and
America face a common threat. he said.
And we see this and we should see this
as less of a UN speech and more of a
campaign for Donald Trump in order to
win his ongoing support for the genocide
and essentially for anything that Israel
does. And there are also suspicions that
Donald Trump may actually be blackmailed
at this point because of the whole
Epstein debacle. That of course may be
part of the reason why Donald Trump
continues to allow Israel to do what it
is doing and Gaza in the region. But the
fact of the matter is that UN US foreign
policy has every much of a reason to
allow Israel to do what it's doing
because US foreign policy has had for
the last several decades and even longer
than this the goal of destabilizing the
region so that US primacy can continue
without any hitch. And that's why we saw
the US so jovially get involved uh with
Israel against Iran during the 12-day
war back in June. And this is why we
have seen war after war after war by the
United States from Afghanistan to Iraq
occur with Israel's uh explicit
championing so much championing that
Netanyahu himself was lobbying in
Congress for the Iraq invasion just
before it occurred. The alignment is
there. US full spectrum dominance, the
Wolawitz doctrine, all of this is very
much aligned with uh policies like the
Od Yunan plan or the clean break
document which all presuppose that
Israel's very existence is predicated
upon the destabilization and overthrow
of regimes of governments and of course
of any movements resistance or otherwise
that get in the way of Israel's project
to expand into greater
Israel. So the UN General Assembly
showed that all of this is no longer
acceptable. And it's important to note
that this is what makes it important for
the United Nations for uh the
international law system itself as
flawed as it is to be upheld to the
fullest degree because we need more
global displays. We need these
institutions to show that they stand
with the letter of the law that they
have all signed off on. And this has
become more and more difficult by the
day as Israel is given cart blanch with
absolutely no action taken against it by
the very force and entity that claims
that it is an arbiter of international
law in peace. Wink wink, Donald Trump,
who in his UN General Assembly speech
said he was the peacemaker. Well, Donald
Trump is the primary obstacle to peace,
to Palestinian existence, to Palestinian
statethood, and of course to the end to
the wanton mass murder that Israel is
committing in Gaza, in Lebanon, and the
rest of the region. Now, Netanyahu
pivoted pivoted at the end to celebrate
the opening possibilities of peace now
that everyone has been defeated.
Essentially, he claimed that Israel
would expand the Abraham Accords. He
cited encouraging remarks from
Indonesia, even though
uh we saw Indonesia say that it was
going to send 20,000 peacekeepers to uh
enforce an eventual end to this
genocide. But this piece is conditional.
Of course, any opportunities for Israel
to stop its uh wanton massacre is
predicated and dependent upon Israel's
so-called military victory under Israeli
terms with Palestinians not only
completely excluded but likely not even
in existence at all. And so this is why
Netanyahu's speech rang hollow. And this
is why the glorification of endless war
was met with a mass walkout. And so what
is the point of all of this? Well, the
point is that Israel is in big trouble.
No longer is it the case that Israel is
seen as an entity worth protecting. In
fact, this UN General Assembly walk out
shows that the world is fed up with
Israel. And for very good reason. It's
not only that Israel's genocide in Gaza
has committed horrors that are untold
and perhaps not matched at any point in
modern history. It's not that Israel
seeks to expand these crimes ever more
over and over and over again. Whether
it's in Lebanon, in Syria, or of course
against Iran and in Yemen, where Israeli
strikes have killed dozens of
journalists there. Uh it's not only all
of this. It's not just the crimes that
people are sick of. It's the fact that
Israel cannot win. many people in the
collective west, many of these leaders
especially if we're going to exclude
ordinary people because we know most
ordinary people are on the side of
Palestine. But if we just look at the
collective west and the leaders, the US
leaders, the leaders of Western Europe,
we know that they are not opposed to war
and genocide. They have committed
genocide themselves. They are
descendants of genocide in many respects
and then they have committed their own
in many respects. I mean, look at what
has happened in West Asia before uh the
so-called Gaza genocide began because we
call it so-called because it really
didn't begin in October 7th, 2023. It's
been happening for decades upon decades
since the establishment of Israel and
even prior. But the entire region has
been engulfed in flames, mainly by the
collective west. And many of these wars
could be considered genocide themselves.
the million plus Iraqis who were killed
in the US NATO war in invasion and
occupation and then we can go back
further where Europe and the United
States whether it's Vietnam or Korea
committed their own kinds of genocide.
So it's not that war crimes are abhorent
to many now. It's that Israel's efforts
to try to subdue the Palestinian people
and to subdue the resistance in the
region are seen as an abject failure.
And in fact, there is deep fear in the
ruling elites all across the West that
Israel's campaign of genocide and
endless war actually will strengthen the
resistance in the long run. A lot of
people criticize me for making this
assertion, but the fact of the matter is
is that when it comes to trying to deny
an entire people and then deny an entire
region and then to deny the entire world
from achieving their self-determination,
the blowback will be very real and
Israel's blowback has already come. This
UN General Assembly walk out is part and
parcel of the delegitimization of Israel
as a colonial entity. one that is worthy
of existence in the long term. It is
also a an affirmation that the
resistance continues, that the
Palestinian people continue to fight
back, that every Marava tank that is
taken out by the Palestinian resistance
is another reason why people are not
going to be convinced that Israel is not
just winning but worthy of committing
the war and the genocide that Israel is
saying and Netanyahu is saying is
leading to victory. every missile, every
drone fired into Israel by Ensurala and
the Houthis and piercing air defenses or
sending uh millions of Israelis
scrambling into bomb shelters is another
indication to the rest of the world that
people will not tolerate this,
especially people living in the region.
And every single act of protests,
including ones that occurred outside of
the UN General Assembly, the UN building
itself during Netanyahu's speech, is an
affirmation that even people in the
collective West and the United States
are aware of not just Israel's crimes,
but the fact that it cannot win the war
that it has started. So, as we watched
Netanyahu, as we watched this genocide
denying clown show, mocking
international law, as we saw him
apologize, not saying sorry for, but
apologize for the war crimes being
committed by his regime, we now have 50
delegates showing a historic move and
taking part in a historic move that is
part and parcel of the crisis. crisis of
the Zionist regime. This crisis is not
going to let up. The longer that Israel
continues its genocide in Gaza, the
longer that it continues to escalate on
all of these fronts now in what is
essentially an eightfront war, which
some, for example, in the Council of
Foreign Relations say Israel being at
war with itself uh uh as the eighth
front. But now with all of these fronts
open, with uh endless war and genocide
as the endgame goal, there is now no
longer any reason for Netanyahu and
Israel to be considered anything other
than what it has always been. And that
maskoff moment that we are seeing right
now historically will eventually be the
demise of the Israeli regime itself. The
world is no longer tolerating this. The
world stage is now not a place for
Israel to uh feel as if it should be
admired and gratified. Now, Israel will
always be put on trial. Netanyahu will
always be put on trial every single time
that it speaks and that he speaks to the
rest of the world. And this is an
historic moment which indicates that the
resistance is not futile, that the fight
back is not futile, and that the more
push back that occurs, the more likely
we are going to see an end to this
gruesome chapter in history come once
and for all. If you like this video,
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Take care.

[admin]

Walkout of delegates during Netanyahu's U.N. address
Sep 26 2025

Dozens of delegates stood up and walked out of the hall as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.