Head of the “Loyalty to Resistance” Parliamentary Bloc, Hajj Mohammad Raad, visited on Thursday the Presidential Palace in Baabda to meet President Joseph Aoun.
The presidency press office posted via X, “President Joseph Aoun received the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, MP Mohammad Raad, where they discussed a number of national issues and entitlements. An agreement was reached to address the differences with a keenness to achieve the supreme national interest.”
Al-Manar correspondent said that the meeting between the two men was positive, adding that the normal relations between Hezbollah and the presidency are being restored.
Moreover, MP Raad also discussed the general situations with the Lebanese Army Chief Major General Rodolph Haykal in Yarze.
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Syrians occupy Al-Rawcheh: Send them to the Sharia. Who prevented May Chidiac from wearing a swimsuit? The Shiites were with the Sunni Abdel Nasser. سوريون يحتلون الروشة:ابعتوهم عند الشـ ـرع..من منع مي شدياق تلبس مايو؟الشيعة كانوا مع عبدالناصر السني
Hellish scenarios: a major air escalation and a ground advance from Mount Hermon toward the western Bekaa… we’re after Gaza. السيناريوهات الجهنـ ـمية: تصعيد جوي كبير وتقدم بري من جبل الشيخ نحو البقاع الغربي.. نحن بعد غـ ـزة
Footage of Israeli occupation forces raiding boats with activists onboard has sparked global outrage and protests as the flotilla presses on.
Organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla have pledged to press ahead with their mission to deliver aid to Gaza, despite Israeli occupation forces storming and abducting several vessels in the Mediterranean.
By early Thursday, at least 13 boats had been raided or forced to stop, according to flotilla tracking data. But in a statement, organisers insisted the campaign “will continue undeterred.”
Posting on Telegram, the flotilla said that 30 boats carrying activists, parliamentarians, and supplies remained on course, just 46 nautical miles from Gaza. The convoy, comprising more than 40 civilian vessels and some 500 passengers, is one of the largest efforts in years to break “Israel’s” blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Carrying food and medicine, the mission has become a high-profile symbol of international opposition to the siege.
Wider context
On Wednesday, Israeli naval forces raided several of the flotilla’s boats, forcibly taking them and those on board to an Israeli port. The operation drew global attention after footage emerged of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg sitting on a deck surrounded by armed Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed the interception, posting on X: “Several vessels of the Hamas-Sumud flotilla have been safely stopped and their passengers are being transferred to an Israeli port. Greta and her friends are safe and healthy.”
Flotilla organizers condemned the Israeli raid, calling it “illegal” and a “war crime”. They stressed that water cannons and other aggressive tactics were used. No injuries were reported so far.
Passengers shared videos on Telegram, holding up passports and declaring they had been “abducted” and taken to “Israel” against their will. They reiterated the mission’s non-violent, humanitarian character.
Organisers also emphasized that their communications had been disrupted, including live video feeds from some boats.
The flotilla reported that at least three vessels, Spectre, Alma, and Sirius, had been boarded in international waters. The fate of their passengers remained unclear late Wednesday.
International reaction
The raid drew swift condemnation abroad. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry described the interception as “an act of terror” that endangered civilians. Ankara said it had begun steps to secure the release of Turkish nationals and others detained.
In a video circulating online, #ThiagoAvila, a member of the #GlobalSumudFlotilla, is heard as he confronts the Israeli occupation naval forces, invoking international law and demanding they not commit another war crime against a peaceful humanitarian mission to #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/osHfYYk9uG
Palestinians in central Gaza have voiced strong rejection of US President Donald Trump’s proposed ceasefire plan, warning it “serves Trump’s and Israel’s interests.” One displaced resident highlighted that Trump is self-serving as he wants “Gaza’s gas’ and to “transform it into Trump resorts.” “Everything seems designed to serve Israeli interests. Today, the world is devoted to Israel’s service,” he added. Others highlighted the plan’s impact on Palestinian rights, describing it as “a complete undermining of the rights of the Palestinian people, spelling the end of the Palestinian cause, and destroying what remains of the Palestinian people.” Questioning the international community’s role, another citizen asked, “Trump promised to bring peace…But where do we, ordinary Palestinian citizens stand? Who will save us from this Zionist aggression?”
Thousands of protesters rallied outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City on September 26 as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his General Assembly address. Inside the chamber, more than 100 delegates from over 50 countries staged a silent walkout in protest as he approached the podium. His visit came just over a week after the UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israel has committed genocide. In his remarks, Netanyahu rejected international criticism and vowed to press ahead with military assaults on Gaza and elsewhere. Report by Khadija Quadri Al-Jilani.
From Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, Al Mayadeen English’s Lea Akil reports on the commemoration marking one year since the martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, remembered by many as the leader of martyrs and a symbol of resistance. Thousands of Iraqis joined in the memorial, carrying sorrow yet affirming their devotion to his path. Participants described Sayyed Hassan as a man of truth, courage, and unwavering commitment to the oppressed, vowing to protect his legacy and continue the resistance he embodied. His absence, they said, weighs heavily, but his spirit endures in the hearts of free people worldwide.
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated near Times Square, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop the genocide” as he delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Protesters chanted for a ceasefire in Gaza, waved Palestine flags, among other banners, and rejected allowing Netanyahu to speak at the UNGA. “One of the war criminals is coming here. That’s a shame,” one protester said, while another protester stated, “I would tell him that the Zionist occupation is nearing its end, that the Palestinian people will be free.” In this context, scores of UN delegates also walked out during Netanyahu’s address, underscoring the diplomatic fallout and the intensity of protests both inside and outside the UN.
cores of delegates walked out of the UN General Assembly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium. Reuters reported that Netanyahu’s office had ordered agencies, in cooperation with the Israeli occupation army, to place loudspeakers on trucks at the Gaza border to broadcast the speech into Gaza. Netanyahu used the address to urge Hamas to release the captives, saying “we will not rest until we bring all of you home”, rather than just agreeing to a ceasefire agreement. He further addressed the Resistance, threatening, “Lay down your arms, free all hostages now,” adding, “If you do, you will live; if you don’t, Israel will hunt you down.”
Head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council Sheikh Ali Daamoush stressed on Wednesday that the Lebanese resistance group is ready for all scenarios and that it won’t accept that Lebanon would become a weak country.
Sheikh Daamoush warned against a US scheme to push the Lebanese Army into a confrontation with the resistance.
Sheikh Daamoush remarks came during a ceremony marking first martyrdom anniversary of late Hezbollah leaders Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine for the party’s Women Organizations Unit.
“Recent statements by US envoy Tom Barrack clearly incite the Lebanese authorities to use force to disarm the resistance. Barrack’s remarks constitute a direct threat to Lebanon and the resistance, and provide full American cover for expanding the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.”
In this context, the senior Hezbollah official stressed that the resistance group is “ready for all scenarios.”
Ceremony organized by Hezbollah’s Women Organizations Unit marking first martyrdom anniversary of S. Nasrallah and S. Safieddine (October 1, 2025).
“There is an American-Israeli push to make the army a partner in the war on the resistance,” Sheikh Daamoush warned.
“We will not accept that the army be a tool used in the confrontation to disarm the resistance. It’s the Lebanese people’s responsibility to foil such a scheme.”
Lebanese Army soldiers operating in south Lebanon (image from May 2025).
“We will not accept that our strength and the most important elements of defense for our existence and the existence of Lebanon be taken away from us in favor of US and Israel,” the senior Hezbollah official affirmed.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Daamoush said: “We extend hand to our partners in the country in a bid to confront threats and pressure exerted by the enemies.”
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Al-Manar Website’s exclusive interviews on the first martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah secretaries general Sayyed Nasrallah and Sayyed Safieddine (Oct 1st, 2025)
In the wake of a moment that shook the conscience of the region and beyond, Al-Manar English Website had the privilege of witnessing a wave of deeply personal and powerful reflections through a special project, “Where Were You?” — a video tribute marking the first martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah’s martyred Secretary General, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah.
From Lebanon and the diaspora individuals from all walks of life — academics, journalists, activists, and media professionals — responded with striking passion and sincerity, as if they had long awaited the chance to express their feelings for Sayyed Nasralla on this historic occasion. Al-Manar English Website is proud to share these voices in part II:
In the wake of a moment that shook the conscience of the region and beyond, Al-Manar English Website had the privilege of witnessing a wave of deeply personal and powerful reflections through a special project, “Where Were You?” — a video tribute marking the first martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah’s martyred Secretary General, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah.
From Lebanon and the diaspora individuals from all walks of life — academics, journalists, activists, and media professionals — responded with striking passion and sincerity, as if they had long awaited the chance to express their feelings for Sayyed Nasralla on this historic occasion. Al-Manar English Website is proud to share these voices in part I:
“The surprises I promised you will begin now. At sea, opposite Beirut, lies the Israeli warship that bombarded our infrastructure, our people’s homes, and our civilians. Look at it—burning and sinking, along with dozens of Zionist Israeli soldiers.”
That night, our hearts beat as one, and our throats chanted, as we always did in both victory and hardship: “At your service, O Nasrallah!”
Nineteen years later, we remember that historic moment—one among many—shaped by what the renowned Egyptian journalist Muhammad Hassanein Heikal once described as their “media value.” He made this observation in an interview with the martyred Hezbollah media relations official, Muhammad Afif. Even the enemy acknowledged this power. In Newsweek (October 18, 2017), Colonel (res.) Gabi Siboni, director of the Military and Strategic Affairs Program at Israel’s INSS, wrote about the reality of “fighting against Israel without fire,” pointing to the impact of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s words on perception—“a hallmark of his rhetoric.” Zvi Barel, Middle East commentator for Haaretz, noted: “In short, Hasan Nasrallah shattered a rule long accepted by the Israeli public and media: he is an Arab leader who does not boast, does not lie, and whose words are precise.” It was this innate gift—the bond of honesty, love, and trust between His Eminence and the people—that allowed his words to transcend borders. His speeches carved themselves into collective memory, serving as the cornerstone of a resistance media apparatus that grew, adapted, and fought side by side with the military front in the eternal war of truth against falsehood. ________________________________________ The Beginning “This is a channel that does not sway with every wind, nor croak with every croaker. It does not change its skin or shift a rifle from one shoulder to another. It is not for rent—to a state, a regime, or a financier. This is the channel of the sacrificial mujahideen, the families of martyrs, the wounded, the prisoners who endured. This is the channel of the afflicted in times of sacrifice, and the smiles of the victorious in times of triumph.” —Speech of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, June 8, 2021, on the 30th anniversary of Al-Manar TV For thirty-two years, the Master of the Nation’s Martyrs embodied in politics, military action, culture, faith, and society the very spirit of Ashura. He reminded us that Imam Hussein’s stance (peace be upon him) would have been silenced had it not been carried forth by Lady Zainab and Imam Ali ibn al-Hussein (peace be upon them). Without their voices, Yazid’s lies would have buried the truth. From the very beginning, he understood that resistance could never achieve full victory without a media outlet bearing Hezbollah’s identity, countering the vast resources of the enemy. Thus came Al-Ahed newspaper in the mid-1980s, Al-Nour Radio in 1988, and, despite scarce means, Al-Manar TV in 1991. By 2000, it reached the satellites—broadcasting, for the entire region to see, the liberation of the South. ________________________________________ Confrontation “Today, we are called upon to innovate, to create, and to support each other intellectually. We need stronger arguments to win public opinion, given the power of the opposing media and the weakness of their logic.” —Speech at the Arab Conference in Support of the Resistance, Bristol, March 30, 2006 Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah knew that the media battlefield was no less dangerous than the military one. He oversaw it directly, allocating resources and demanding credibility and unity above all. By the early 2000s, Israel realized it had lost its monopoly over the conflict’s narrative. Abdullah Qassir, then general manager of Al-Manar, explained: “Before Al-Manar, Israel’s narrative dominated Arab and international media. But with our presence, the falsity of that narrative was exposed.” During the July 2006 war, this credibility drew even Israelis away from their own media. Qassir recalled: “I received a remarkable report titled ‘Israelis Abandon Fox News and Follow Al-Manar,’ because they discovered the lies of their own outlets and the credibility of ours.” Meanwhile, the Arab world’s streets fell silent during the Sayyed’s speeches. Cairo, Amman, Damascus—whole capitals froze to hear his words. These addresses were distilled into precise, visual messages, often backed with maps and coordinates. When he vowed to strike Haifa and beyond, the enemy trembled. After 2006, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah pushed the resistance media into new realms, encouraging drama productions such as Al-Ghaliboun. He urged that the struggles of the South be told not just through news, but through culture and art. He also championed the establishment of the Union of Islamic Radios and Channels in 2008, which grew into a hub for training, program exchange, and joint initiatives. ________________________________________ A Different Kind of Confrontation The so-called “Arab Spring” brought new plots against the resistance. Al-Manar faced bans on Arabsat (2015), Nilesat (2016), and earlier on European satellites (2005). Yet our beloved Sayyed had long foreseen this. On September 17, 2003, at a media conference in support of the Palestinian Intifada, he warned against U.S. attempts to intimidate Arab outlets: “Stand firm. Do not submit to American pressure labeling resistance channels as those that incite terrorism.” ________________________________________ The Threat that Became an Opportunity “Today, the most dangerous and important thing is social media. It is both a threat and an opportunity. We must not fall prey to the threat but rather turn it into an opportunity—use it, and not waste it.” —Speech at the Central Ashura Commemoration, August 11, 2021 By 2010, social media had transformed the media landscape. His Eminence Sayyed Nasrallah recognized it as a double-edged sword: controlled by the West, yet a weapon for the oppressed to reach the world. He insisted on carrying into this new space the same principles that guided his entire media philosophy: clarity, truthfulness, evidence, and respect, even for adversaries. Ali Hajj Youssef, Hezbollah’s social media manager, recounted how our Sayyed demanded discipline: “He wanted every activist to inform, explain, and prove—with honesty, without slander, and using the latest tools. He believed every man, woman, and child of the resistance should be capable of analyzing events as leaders do.” described how meetings were held with hundreds of influencers, guided by senior Hezbollah figures, to ensure this arena never descended into chaos. Reports from his office tracked online trends daily, often reviewed directly by His Eminence. At the 2021 Media Discourse Renewal Conference, he declared: “This is a great opportunity where every individual, not just elites or intellectuals, can transform into a messenger to the entire world—conveying images, facts, and positions.” ________________________________________ The Cornerstone “The battle for awareness rages fiercely between Israeli propaganda and Hezbollah’s media wizard, Hassan Nasrallah. This war involves no bombs or fighter planes—it is fought on Twitter.” —Hebrew Channel 10, July 25, 2021 The Master of the Nation’s Martyrs, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah knew the enemy’s material superiority in both arms and media. Yet, he wielded what could not be bought: truth, sincerity, and the love of his people. Even Netanyahu, who labeled him “the axis of the axis,” failed to silence him with 80 tons of explosive ordinance. His very presence became a media constitution—his speeches the architecture of resistance media. Journalist Ghassan Ben Jeddou recalled: “He enters with one cameraman, one director, one sound engineer. Smiling, calm, radiant. He doesn’t care for his own image—only that his message honors the people and respects the viewer.” His meticulous care extended to all details. Hajj Qassir remembered how he would call Al-Manar to correct spelling errors on the news ticker. Ali Hajj Youssef recounted his playful demand to swap an official photo for a “more beautiful one” during a broadcast, to which he replied: “All your photos are beautiful, Sayyed.” ________________________________________ A Voice Etched in History Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah was not only the commander of a resistance, but also the poet of its soul. His voice carried the weight of history, stitching together sacrifice and victory, grief and triumph. He stood like his grandfather Imam Hussein (peace be upon him) at Karbala, knowing that truth must be spoken even if the world stands ready to silence it; either with swords and spears, or bombs and bullets. His speeches were not mere words but living testaments—etched into memory, carried in the tears of martyrs’ mothers and the pride of the victorious. Even now, after his departure, his voice does not fade; it flows like a river through the veins of the resistance, whispering guidance, fortitude, and faith. And so, when history writes of our time, it will say that a man stood before the might of armies and empires, armed only with truth and the love of his people, and he prevailed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Israel” pushed for changes in Trump’s Gaza plan that aligned it closely with its interests.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that “Israel” played a key role in shaping US President Donald Trump’s plan for a settlement in the Gaza Strip. According to unnamed officials, “Israel” insisted on several amendments to the draft, which were ultimately included in the final version presented to Arab mediators.
On Monday, the White House unveiled Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan. The proposal was handed to Hamas through Egypt and Qatar, with the movement saying it would review the document before providing a formal response.
The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all captives within 72 hours of its acceptance. In exchange, “Israel” would release 250 Palestinians serving life sentences, along with more than 1,700 others who have been detained since October 7, 2023. It further stipulates the suspension of all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardments, to allow the agreement to take effect.
As US President #DonaldTrump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House to discuss a ceasefire plan for #Gaza, the White House revealed #Trump’s plan to end the war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/nhYcVSxnVh
Governance of Gaza would be transferred to a technocratic and apolitical Palestinian committee, supervised by an international body headed by Trump and could include international figures such as former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The transitional authority would remain in place until the Palestinian Authority carries out a series of reforms.
‘Israel’ pushed for changes that align with its interests
While the document leaves vague references to Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, it does not explicitly guarantee a sovereign Palestinian state.
The plan also envisions Gaza being transformed into what Trump described as a “deradicalized, terror-free zone,” with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces tied to demilitarization milestones. He has promoted his vision of turning Gaza into an economic hub, which he has referred to as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” through large-scale redevelopment projects.
The WSJ report confirms that “Israel” pushed for changes that aligned the plan closely with its interests. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the proposal, describing it as potentially historic. However, divisions remain within the Israeli government, particularly over the prospect of granting the Palestinian Authority any role in Gaza.
As US President Donald Trump announced his plan to end the war on Gaza from the #WhiteHouse, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Trump's plan.
Netanyahu, restating his regional greedy ambitions near the close of the press conference, thanked #Trump, saying,… pic.twitter.com/TProiKQBLL
Hamas has adopted a cautious but engaged position, stating that it will study the plan in good faith after being briefed by Qatar and Egypt. The movement has not issued a rejection but continues to stress that Palestinian rights and sovereignty must remain central to any agreement.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), however, dismissed the proposal outright. Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah described Trump’s plan as “nothing but a full American-Israeli agreement,” calling it a recipe for the continuation of aggression against the Palestinian people and a means of imposing new realities that “Israel” had failed to achieve through war.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Secretary-General, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, said that the announcement by #US President #DonaldTrump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an American-Israeli agreement, and it mirrors "Israel’s" position in full.
Displaced Palestinian civilians in Gaza have also voiced skepticism, describing the plan as detached from reality and accusing Washington of manipulation.
Additionally, Saudi Arabia has signaled reluctance to finance the initiative unless it includes a clear path toward a “two-state solution”. Egypt and Qatar, meanwhile, continue to serve as mediators, passing messages between Hamas and Washington while seeking to prevent further escalation.
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Sayyed Jawad highlights that his father’s kindness, guidance, and piousness are traits that defined his character as a leader, father, and husband.
In an interview for Al Mayadeen’s “Misk Al-Kalam”, Sayyed Jawad, the son of the Ummah’s Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, spoke about the human legacy of his martyred father.
Opening his remarks, Sayyed Jawad Nasrallah affirmed that the Master of the Ummah’s Martyr is not really gone; rather, his presence has become more vibrant and evident.
“He is present in every thought, in every movement and stillness, not only at home or within the family, but also beyond,” Sayyed Jawad said, highlighting his father’s enduring influence.
Drawing on a religious perspective, Sayyed Jawad explained that some people’s denial and refusal to accept that Sayyed Nasrallah was martyred is merely an emotional reaction that detaches them from logic. However, he said, people will gradually return to accepting the reality in due time.
His martyrdom, ceremonial funeral wash
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s son recalled that he received the news of his father’s martyrdom the same way everyone else did, that is, through television, when Hezbollah’s official statement was broadcast on Al Mayadeen’s screen, even though this was “a scenario I never liked, and I always prayed that he would live long.”
Reflecting on the early emotions upon learning that Sayyed Nasrallah was targeted, Sayyed Jawad described them as “nothing more than a shock. We were somewhat mentally prepared for the force of the strike, for the scale of the blow, for the Israeli announcement, for some of the details we began talking about that night: could it really be him or not? Could he be in that place or not?”
He added that “the nature of the security apparatus responsible for the Sayyed’s protection was compartmentalized, meaning that not everyone knew each other. So, informing us of the news was somewhat difficult, especially since we were isolated from any such contact.”
Sayyed Jawad recounted the thoughts that ran through his mind the moment he knew of his father’s martyrdom: “Where is he? Did they pull him out? Is he still in the facility?”
He noted that Martyr Sayyed Hashem Safieddine did not announce Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s martyrdom until after the body had been retrieved from the site. “Someone came, saw him with his own eyes, and called him (Sayyed Hashem) and told him: ‘I saw him.’ So he prepared the statement.”
Sayyed Jawad continued, explaining that after Sayyed Safieddine called him, a young man, whom Sayyed Safieddine had mentioned, got in touch and told him that the body was either at a certain Hussainiya or in a nearby funeral facility. Sayyed Jawad said he went to the first location but found it empty, realizing they had likely moved to the mortuary. When he arrived there, he found his father and saw him lying out on the mortuary washing table.
Describing the first moments upon seeing the body of the Ummah’s Martyr, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on the mortuary washing table, Sayyed Jawad said, “The first thing I looked at was his hands, to see whether it was asphyxiation or pressure. When I saw that they were relaxed, it eased my heart.”
Sayyed Jawad recalls how he remained calm and composed, telling himself, “I am my father’s son. When martyrdom hits us, we do not fall apart, never.”
Son of martyr Sayyed #HassanNasrallah offers a firsthand look at the moment of his father’s martyrdom, narrating the story that led him to Sayyed Hassan's body.
Sayyed Jawad Nasrallah also highlighted the security measures taken by the Resistance following the assassination as… pic.twitter.com/N419jYrvRO
Sayyed Jawad revealed that in the final year leading up to his ascension as a martyr, Sayyed Nasrallah became increasingly aware that he was “on the path to martyrdom,” so he prepared him and his siblings for it. He remarked that the Sayyed chose not to speak of his premonition publicly, “not wanting to burden anyone with his concerns.” Stressing that from the beginning of the Al-Aqsa flood and up until the martyrdom of Fouad Shukr, his father carried the certainty of martyrdom.
Reflecting on what many considered a clear farewell from Sayyed during Martyr Fouad Shukr’s funeral, when he said, addressing the resistance leader, “For our martyr, we do not say goodbye, but rather see you soon, see you when blood triumphs over the sword, see you in martyrdom, see you alongside the beloved, Sayyed Jawad explained, “He had made up his mind. Those who know the Sayyed know that he never speaks merely for morale; he means every word he says.”
Regarding his father’s final meeting with his mother before his martyrdom, Sayyed Jawad recalled him telling her, “‘Here is where we part.’ She asked, ‘Will I see you again, God willing?’ He answered, ‘No, this is the last time we meet.’ And three months before his martyrdom, he told my mother, ‘I feel this is the final period.'”
As for his last family gathering with his father, Sayyed Jawad said it took place in June 2024, in the presence of his grandfather and uncles, where the conversation was intimate, recollecting family moments and memories.
Sayyed Jawad recounted a story his father had shared with him about his childhood in the Sharshabouk neighborhood in the Karantina area in Beirut. He recalled his father telling him that when the neighborhood kids wanted to play football, they had no money to buy numbered jerseys. So they would get a can of paint, put on white undershirts, and paint the numbers themselves. Then the neighborhood kids would pray to God to help them survive the beating they’d get at home for ruining their shirts. Sayyed Jawad added that his father, alongside all the boys in the neighborhood, did this, and they were only 5 or 6 years old and played barefoot.
Speaking about winters in this neighborhood, Sayyed Jawad explained that his father loved the sound of rain on zinc roofing because it brought back memories of his childhood in Sharshabouk.
Sayyed Jawad came to cherish this same sound as it connected him to his father. “Whenever I’m somewhere and it starts raining, if there’s a hangar nearby, the sound of winter reminds me of him, that distinctive sound my father so loved,” he said.
He further emphasized that these humble beginnings became the foundation of the Sayyed’s character and shaped his compassion for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.
As for his religious influences, Sayyed Jawad said that his father “often sat under the pulpits of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah and Sheikh Mohammad Mahdi Shamseddine, may God have mercy on them.”
Adding that, in his youth, Sayyed Nasrallah was initially drawn to the character of Sayyed Moussa al-Sadr, explaining, “If you want to understand how someone built his character, you have to see from who he drew his love, inspiration, and influence.”
The Sayyed, the avid reader
Sayyed Jawad described his father as “an excellent, voracious reader,” with an exceptional ability to retain information, so much so that you can ask him about the book he was reading as soon as he puts it down, and he will be able to answer your question immediately.
Despite his responsibilities, Sayyed Nasrallah would read at least one book every two days, on top of reports, correspondence, and news updates.
He pointed out another trait in him, saying, “For him, nothing was off-limits in reading or in questioning. He believed that knowledge, dialogue, and openness expand horizons. He even read his sister’s finance and management textbooks from university, along with literature, politics, memoirs of presidents, and even the writings of Zionist and American intelligence officials, because he wanted to understand their mindset. To him, no subject was forbidden.”
Sayyed Nasrallah was a “true democrat,” according to Sayyed Jawad, whereby you could talk to him about anything, ask him anything, disagree with him on anything, and he would explain. He was never authoritarian; on the contrary, he would always clarify and guide. He added that he used to guide him in selecting books, especially theological and doctrinal texts.
Sayyed Jawad underscored the great reverence Sayyed Hassan had for the Holy Quran, as he would encourage everyone to let the Quran be the first book they read, recalling, “He taught us that reading the Quran with certainty is different from merely reciting it beautifully. For him, the Quran was a guide for action, a way of life.” Another book Sayyed Hassan used to recommend was Imam Khomeini’s “Forty Hadiths”.
Sayyed Jawad also highlighted his father’s commitment to the movement pertaining to Imam Mahdi, saying that when they sat with Sayyed Nasrallah, they often “left politics aside to ask about the movement of [Imam Mahdi].”
Sayyed Jawad spoke about his father, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, as a father. He said that when firmness was needed, he was decisive without ever resorting to physical punishment. “It was known that with one look from my father, we would freeze in place. For example, if he said, ‘that’s enough, Jawad,’ he never had to repeat himself.”
Sayyed Jawad described the kindness, guidance, and explanation that were dominant traits in the Sayyed’s parenting. “He never said no just to say no. Sometimes we would ask, ‘why not?’ in the sense that we’d agreed on what he said but demanded an explanation, which he would offer. This is one successful teaching technique, because even if you’re far from it, you would understand his reasoning. He’d explain why something was forbidden, inappropriate, or off-limits. That teaches you more.”
In an interview with #AlMayadeen, #JawadNasrallah remembers his father, Sayyed Hassan, revealing the core principles that guided the martyred Secretary-General.
On the relentless smears and insults from online campaigns and agencies, Sayyed Jawad said, “He would simply put those… pic.twitter.com/8YTwrrUvsg
He emphasized that with his father, “there were no such things as forbidden topics, for any question we asked, he would answer. Sometimes we’d ask him why others consider certain questions inappropriate. He would say, ‘they’re mistaken. There’s a difference: some people ask to learn and understand, and others ask out of defiance.’”
Regarding the siblings’ relationships with the Sayyed, Sayyed Jawad noted that each had their distinct place, adding, however, that his sister Zeinab shared a special bond with him.
Sayyed Hassan's daughter talks about his resilience and patience during his lifetime, particularly in trying times.
Zeinab #Nasrallah discussed Sayyed Hassan's ability to persevere amid hardships and his acceptance of his son's choice of struggle and martyrdom. pic.twitter.com/cUb3wFTPJw
Sayyed Jawad recalled how his father would say, “I pampered all of you, each according to their age,” explaining that they never felt jealous of each other, “because he gave each of us enough affection and attention.”
Sayyed Jawad emphasized that his father had a cheerful spirit, but even in his humor, he never lost composure or self-esteem. “His words always fell perfectly into place, whether he was being serious or joking,” he said.
What distinguished him as a father, Sayyed Jawad added, was that “he taught us generosity and forgiveness, how to be tolerant, and how to deal with others, disciplining us on the basis of clarity and evidence.”
On the martyrdom of his brother, Sayyed Hadi, Sayyed Jawad said, “I don’t recall ever seeing him cry over Hadi, except when he first received the news and he secluded himself for some time,” adding, however, that whenever he came across anything related to the families of martyrs, “he would break down in tears. His tears and emotions flowed easily for them.”
Sayyed Jawad emphasized that at home, the Sayyed never brought up sectarian issues and that he would be deeply troubled whenever such matters were brought into public discourse.
On his parents’ relationship, Sayyed Jawad said, “We learned from him and my mother how to treat our wives. He embodied the height of ethics, kindness, and courtesy. We never once heard raised voices at home.”
“At the same time, my mother carried a heavy burden. She was his backbone and his haven, so he could stay mentally and intellectually focused on his mission,” he added.
Ultimate dream, Gaza Support Front
The biggest dream of the Ummah’s Martyr, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was the liberation of al-Quds. Sayyed Jawad said that if someone does not devote their life, soul, blood, wealth, and children to this cause, then what is worth living for? He added that Sayyed Nasrallah was “truly Lebanese” because he sacrificed his son on the frontlines for the sake of the country.
When asked what he would say about those who wish the Sayyed had not opened the Gaza support front, thinking that perhaps he might still be alive otherwise, Sayyed Jawad replied that those who supported him in 2000, before that, and in 2006 should be with him in every battlefield he entered and every choice he made.
“Whoever truly supports him stands with him till the very end,” he asserted.
Remembering martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The voice that refused to bow to tyranny. 40 days since his martyrdom, #Lebanon and the region honor not just a leader but a legacy of steadfast resistance.
Bridging the people, politics, and historical influence
Sayyed Jawad emphasized that by constantly being among the people and on social media, he worked to convey messages from the public to his father, especially on sensitive topics. On other matters, to ease the burden on him, he would relay messages to the martyr Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
Regarding his father’s view of Lebanon’s political class, Sayyed Jawad said that his father always considered that “the one who knows them [the politicians] the best is Speaker Nabih Berri; he is experienced in dealing with them and knows the keys to them.”
Sayyed Jawad also highlighted that Sayyed Nasrallah greatly loved and respected the late Salim Hoss, [the former Prime Minister of Lebanon].
On historical figures who influenced Sayyed Nasrallah besides Imam Musa al-Sadr, Sayyed Abbas al-Mousawi, and Imam Khomeini, and whose biographies he was keen to read, Sayyed Jawad confirmed that his father was deeply influenced by Ahl ul-Bayt.
“He was on a mountain and then left.” Sayyed’s son reveals new secrets about his father’s life: “He prayed for Speaker Berri.” “كان في جبل وراح”.. نجل السيد يكشف خفايا جديدة عن حياة والده: “كان يدعو للرئيس بري”
Mr. Nation | Narrative of the Brave – Interview with Brigadier General Mounir Shehadeh | 2025-09-28 السيد الأمّة | سردية أولي البأس – مقابلة مع العميد منير شحادة | 2025-09-28
In a speech broadcast across Lebanon, addressing the nation, Sheikh Naim honored Hezbollah’s fallen leaders, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
In a voice at once mournful and unbowed, Sheikh Naim Qassem, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, immortalized the path and legacy of the Ummah’s Martyrs, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, one year after their martyrdom.
Sayyed Hassan: The Ummah and the world’s martyr
In a speech broadcast across Lebanon, addressing the nation, particularly the hundreds of thousands who have gathered to honor their fallen leaders, Sheikh Naim remembered Sayyed Hassan’s martyrdom as a heartwrenching departure, but asserted that his presence radiates over the world, and that he has transcended as a leader who inspires leaders.
Sheikh Naim Qassem emphasized that Sayyed Nasrallah’s martyrdom was not an end, but the eternal beginning of a path carved in blood and faith. “You firmly held the rope of salvation and extended it to generations,” he said.
“The journey of Hezbollah was molded with your thought, your spirit, and your blood, and it is destined to triumph,” Hezbollah’s leader stated, highlighting how Sayyed Nasrallah’s guardianship became the wellspring of love among his community.
Sayyed Nasrallah, Sheikh Qassem said, engraved Palestine into the hearts of the people. Through his leadership, the Resistance ushered in an era of victories:
The confrontations of 1993 and 1996,
The liberation of 2000,
The steadfastness of July 2006,
And the liberation of the border heights in 2017.
“You were the one whose word was renowned — the era of defeats has passed and the era of victories has begun; we live the era of victories in our souls and before our enemies.”
His legacy, Sheikh Naim Qassem affirmed, transcends Lebanon, and his light radiates across the world: “You are the Sayyed of the Ummah’s martyrs and the world, a universal resistance leader who inspires the free people at every corner.”
He also emphasized how Sayyed Hassan’s Hezbollah is not confined by religion or borders, but relates to every human on this earth, ascertaining that it is the “fighter and the struggle, the weapon and the strength, the child growing in dignity and the family drawing from a spring of purity.”
In an emotional vow, Sheikh Naim Qassem declared, “You loved the people and the people loved you. I tell you in my name, in the name of my brothers, and in the name of this crowd and all the crowds who loved you: We are True to the pledge, O Nasrallah.”
He pledged to eternalize Sayyed Nasrallah’s path and principles. vowing never to relinquish Hezbollah’s arms or struggle.
He revealed that Sayyed Hashem profoundly cared for the fighters, their mobilization, and affairs, as well as those of the people, whom he cherished deeply.
“The educational field is a testament to your giving and to all the fields in which you served the people, especially the families of the martyrs.”
Although Sayyed Hashem’s departure came earlier, his legacy is enshrined and will endure, Sheikh Qassem pledged, to the “noble and beloved Hashemite Sayyed.”
Commander Abu Al-Fadl fought in Syria and was present on every front, ultimately becoming Chief of Staff after the martyrdom of Sayyed Fouad Shukr.
Sheikh Naim further revealed that the worthy Martyr Karaki was Sayyed Nasrallah’s companion, who wanted him at the front management of the battles. “You received the badge of martyrdom with him,” Sheikh Qassem said.
A global war, and a Resistance that endured
Sheikh Naim said the war waged by “Israel”, with the unconditional support of the US and Europe, aimed to annihilate the Resistance to impose “Greater Israel” on the region.
However, he dismissed what the enemies consider victories and asserted that Hezbollah holds the initiative and endures regardless of the assassinations. “The enemy failed to break Hezbollah, not through assassinations, not through warfare, and not through politics.”
According to the Resistance leader, Hezbollah was able to foil the enemy’s plots, and the Resistance lives on.
Discussing the current situation, Sheikh Qassem said Israeli violations persist despite the ceasefire agreement, brokered on November 27, 2024. This, Sheikh Naim said, is an Israeli-US attempt to achieve through politics what they could not achieve on the battlefield.
People of Resistance defiant, unshakeable
The aftermath of Operation People of Might was marked by defiant solidarity: “Certain scenes reflected the strength of the Resistance, among them the million-man funeral procession for the Ummah’s Martyrs.”
Sheikh Naim Qassem reaffirmed that the people of the Resistance remain unshaken in their defiance of Israeli aggression, standing strong in their villages in southern Lebanon and upholding the legacy of the martyrs.
He underscored that the steadfastness of the Resistance is visible not only on the battlefield but also in civilian life, citing the reconstruction of 400,000 homes, the successful organization of municipal elections, and the movement’s continued political presence as evidence of resilience.
“We have achieved military recovery and are ready to defend Lebanon against the Israeli enemy at any time,” he added.
Resistance unbroken despite odds
Sheikh Naim Qassem stressed that the Resistance has remained in the confrontation arena, preventing its enemies from achieving through politics what they could not secure through war.
Referring to recent US positions, he said, “Barak’s statements clearly say that Washington wants to disarm Hezbollah and that it will not arm the army to face Israel.”
Rejecting such pressure outright, he pledged that the disarmament of the Resistance will not be allowed, vowing to confront any project that ultimately serves the Israeli entity, “even if it is dressed in a national guise.”
Government must uphold its duties
Turning to the Lebanese state, Sheikh Naim Qassem called on the government to assume its responsibilities to allocate a budget for reconstruction and go through with the initiative.
He insisted that national sovereignty must top the government’s agenda, which is realized only by preventing “Israel” from remaining in Lebanese territory.
“We insist on internal unity and work for Lebanon’s revival in all fields; Lebanon must be strong and the Resistance must be the foundation of that strength.”
Rejecting any notion of surrender, he cautioned that “We must not submit to threats of aggression; we must confront them by preparing for confrontation, not by surrendering.”
On the Taif Agreement and elections
Sheikh Naim Qassem reiterated his call for the implementation of the Taif Agreement, stressing that it provides for liberation and recognizes the role of the Resistance in achieving it. He also urged political reforms envisioned in Taif, including abolishing confessional quotas and creating a Senate.
“We demand application of the Taif provision regarding holding elections on the basis of abolishing the confessional quota and electing a Senate. We support holding parliamentary elections on schedule.”
Criticizing recent government actions, called its two decisions regarding Hezbollah’s arms a “grave sin,” warning against attempts to pit the Lebanese Army against its own people.
“They want the Lebanese Army to fight its own people; we stand firmly behind the Army to face the real enemy, and we will always stand by it.”
Palestine: The central cause
Concluding his address, Sheikh Naim Qassem reaffirmed that Palestine remains the core of the Resistance’s struggle, honoring the Resistance in Gaza and Palestine, which is “confronting the occupation on behalf of the whole world.”
With these words, Sheikh Naim Qassem tied Lebanon’s steadfastness to the wider axis of resistance, pledging that the martyrs’ sacrifices would remain alive through a people who will neither yield their weapons nor abandon the cause of liberation.
On September 27 last year, Lebanon stood witness to a moment that shook its soul. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the voice of resistance, the guardian of dignity, was martyred under the weight of fire and steel. But from beneath the rubble, his legacy rose stronger. His silence did not break the nation; it bound it tighter. His words did not fade; they echoed louder. In every tear, a vow. In every shattered block, a seed of defiance. His martyrdom was not the end; it was the beginning of something deeper.
Naim Qassem on the anniversary of Nasrallah’s assassination: We will not give up our weapons. نعيم قاسم في ذكرى اغتيال نصر الله: لن نتخلى عن السلاح
Mr. Nation | Lebanon commemorates the first anniversary of the martyrdom of the two leaders, Nasrallah and Safi al-Din | السيد الأمّة | لبنان يحيي الذكرى السنوية الأولى لارتقاء القائدين الشهيدين نصر الله وصفي الدين |
Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri addresses the martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on the first anniversary of his martyrdom. رئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري يخاطب الشـ.ـهيد السيد حسن نصـ.ـرالله في الذكرى السنوية الأولى لاستشـ.ـهاده
Massive popular turnout commemorates the martyrdom of Sayyed Nasrallah, Larijani visits Beirut | September 27, 2025 المسائية | مشاركة شعبية حاشدة في ذكرى استشهاد السيد نصر الله ولاريجاني يزور بيروت | 27-09-2025
Britain’s Keir Starmer is already pulling the rug from under his own grudging declaration. The only hope of change is of the unintended consequences variety
The reluctant recognition of Palestinian statehood by Britain, France, Australia, Canada this week is a con – it is the same switch and bait that has been blocking the creation of a Palestinian state for three decades now.
Imagine that these four leading western countries had recognised Palestine not in late 2025, when Palestine is in the final stages of being eradicated, but in the late 1990s, during a period of supposed Palestinian state-building.
That was when the Oslo accords were signed with western backing. The Palestinian Authority was established under Yasser Arafat with the apparent aim that Israel would gradually withdraw from the territories it still occupies in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and begin ruling an emergent Palestinian state.
At Israel’s insistence, let us note, the Oslo accords carefully avoided any mention of the ultimate destination of this process. Nonetheless, the message from western politicians and media was the same: this was heading towards a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel.
Looking back, it is evident why that did not happen when it still looked feasible.
The Israeli leader of the time, Yitzhak Rabin, told the Israeli parliament that his vision was not of a state but of “an entity which is less than a state”: a glorified Palestinian local authority utterly dependent on its bigger neighbour, Israel, for its security and economic survival.
After Rabin was assassinated by a far-right Israeli gunman, his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, was propelled into power by a majority of the Israeli public on a mandate to stop the Oslo process in its tracks.
He repeatedly reneged on commitments to withdraw Israeli soldiers and Jewish settler-militias from the occupied West Bank. In fact, in this period of supposed “peace-making”, Israel colonised Palestinian land at the fastest rate ever.
In 2001, during his time in opposition, Netanyahu was secretly caught on camera, explaining how he achieved this reversal.
He said he had held on to Palestinian territory, in violation of the Oslo accords, by imposing “my own interpretation to the agreements” so that vast swaths could continue to be defined as “security zones”. He added: “I halted the fulfilment of the Oslo accords.”
Was there not pushback from western powers, he was asked. “America is something that you can easily manoeuvre and move in the right direction,” he replied.
Sabotaging peace
What that meant in practice, since the effective end of the Oslo process a few years later, was a series of US presidential initiatives ever-less favourable to the Palestinians.
In 2000, Bill Clinton’s Camp David summits between Israeli and Palestinian leaders failed to hammer out even a minimalist Palestinian state that Israel was willing to accept.
George W Bush’s Road Map for Peace in 2003 half-heartedly tried to resuscitate Palestinian statehood but was stymied by the US accepting 14 impossible Israeli “preconditions” for negotiations, including continuing settlement expansion.
Barack Obama entered office with a grand vision of peace that was quickly sunk by Israel’s refusal to stop expanding its illegal settlements and stealing more land in the West Bank needed for a Palestinian state.
Donald Trump’s 2020 hyped “deal of the century” plan – conducted over the heads of the Palestinian leadership – dressed up annexation of large parts of the West Bank as Palestinian statehood.
Trump’s team also considered a plan to economically incentivise – on the most charitable interpretation – Gaza’s Palestinians to relocate to Egypt’s Sinai desert.
In reality, these two decades of time-wasting while Israel carried on brutalising the Palestinians and taking their land, incentivised not peace but greater Palestinian resistance, culminating in Hamas’ one-day break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023.
Israel’s response was a genocide in Gaza – one in which Joe Biden became an active partner from the outset, sending bombs to help level the enclave and providing diplomatic cover. Meanwhile, Israel accelerated its de facto annexation of the West Bank undisturbed.
Trump’s latest contribution has been unveiling a “Gaza Riviera Plan“, in which whoever survives of the 2.3 million Palestinians there is “cleaned out” and the enclave rebuilt with Gulf money as a playground for the rich.
Reports this week of a watered-down version of the plan suggest Tony Blair, the war criminal who oversaw the destruction of Iraq two decades ago with George W Bush, may be appointed effective “governor” of a Gaza in ruins.
Hollowed out
So why now, after 30 years of the West conspiring in this slow-motion eradication of Palestine – a state long recognised by the rest of the world – have several western capitals broken ranks with the US and recognised Palestinian statehood?
The short answer is that such recognition is now relatively cost-free.
In typical fashion, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made the announcement as he pulled the rug from under his own act of recognition by dictating what kind of state Palestine would have to be.
Not a sovereign one, in which the Palestinian people made their own decisions, but one that echoed Rabin’s “entity less than a state”.
Starmer insisted Hamas – Gaza’s elected government and one of Palestine’s two main political factions – could play no part in running this state. The Palestinian state would also, of course, have no military to defend itself from the genocidal state next door.
A report this week in the Telegraph indicates that, even after formal recognition, Starmer is still imposing new conditions designed to hollow out his declaration. They include:
demands for new Palestinian elections – elections that can only take place with Israel’s permission, which it will not give;
an overhaul of any latent Palestinian nationalism Israel objects to in the Palestinian education system, even as Israel’s own education system has long been laced with genocidal incitement;
a requirement that the Palestinian Authority not compensate families of anyone Israel declares a “terrorist” – which pretty much covers any Palestinian killed or jailed by Israel.
In other words, the Palestinian state “recognised” by Starmer is envisioned as the same sham, completely dependent “entity” Israel has been abusing for 30 years.
That was always the West’s two-state “vision”.
‘Reward for terror’
But the deeper truth Starmer’s recognition is intended to obscure is that, if there is no Palestinian territory left – Gaza is razed and its population dead or cleansed, and the West Bank annexed – statehood becomes moot.
That is what is meant when the media talk about recognition being chiefly “symbolic”. Starmer and others see it as amounting to little more than a retrospective rap on knuckles for Israel not playing fair.
It is a cost-free exercise because, while Israel feigns indignation about recognition serving as a supposed “reward for terrorism”, it and its patron in Washington know nothing tangible is really at stake.
If the Trump administration were vehemently opposed even to symbolic recognition – as earlier administrations appear to have been, when statehood might have been realisable – who really imagines Starmer or Canada’s Mark Carney would have dared step out of line?
Further, recognition sends an entirely false message to their own publics that these western capitals are “doing something” for the Palestinians. That they are standing up to Israel, and behind it the US.
Starmer is especially keen to send such a message when he is about to face an annual Labour party conference two years into a genocide he has been openly backing.
Recognition is a giant deflection exercise, an image-laundering operation, that ignores the substantive reality: that, aside from this “symbolic” act, these western states continue to arm Israel, train Israeli soldiers, provide Israel with intelligence, trade with it, give it diplomatic support.
Starmer still warmly greets in Downing Street the Israeli president, Yitzhak Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for genocide, arguing that no one in Gaza – not even its 1 million children – were innocent.
Not only will recognition of Palestine not improve the situation of Palestinians but it will not demand any change of behaviours from Israel and its western patrons either. It will continue to be business as usual.
Complicity in occupation
But there is a final reason why some western governments are now raising their voices in support of Palestinian statehood. To save their own skins.
Unlike Washington, which treats with open contempt international law and the international courts invested with upholding it, many US allies fear their vulnerability.
Unlike the US, they have ratified the Convention Against Genocide and they are subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which can put their officials on trial for complicity in war crimes.
This month was marked not just by the recognition of Palestine by Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Portugal and a handful of small states.
Far less noticed, 18 September was the deadline set by the United Nations General Assembly for Israel to honour a ruling last year from the International Court of Justice that it withdraw its “unlawful presence” from the occupied territories.
It is not just that Israel is flouting this resolution – the international community’s attempt to implement the World Court’s ruling. Over the past year Israel has headed in exactly the opposite direction: it has intensified its destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and is poised to annex the West Bank.
Entirely separate from the issue of genocide, the UN resolution also requires states to end arms transfers to Israel and enforce sanctions until it ends the occupation.
Britain and the others presumably hope that they can cook the books to argue that they did not understand there was a genocide in Gaza until it was all but over – at the point, a year or two down the road, when the ICJ issues its ruling.
But they cannot make that same argument – “We did not know”– about the World Court ruling on the illegality of the occupation.
It should hardly need pointing out that dismantling the occupation of the Palestinian territories is the flip side of establishing a Palestinian state. They go hand in hand.
Britain and others need an alibi – feeble as it is – to argue that they are respecting the ICJ ruling and not complicit in aiding the occupation, even as their actions prove the precise opposite.
They are not only helping to prop up the genocide in Gaza. Their trade ties, arms sales, intelligence-sharing and diplomatic manoeuvres are also essential to the maintenance of Israel’s illegal occupation.
Pariah status
If there is a small hope to be derived from these western states’ grudging recognition of Palestinian statehood, it is of the unintended consequences variety.
Recognition may yet force on their leaders linguistic and legal gymnastics so extreme that they are further discredited with their publics and pressure grows inexorably for more meaningful change.
But no one should take Starmer, Macron, Carney and the others at their word. If the establishment of a “viable” Palestinian state were really their goal, these leaders would already have imposed on Israel sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
They would be shunning visits from Israeli officials, not welcoming them. They would be vowing to uphold the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, not allowing him, as France did in July, to use its air space to travel to the US.
They would not be turning a blind eye to Israel’s repeated attacks on aid flotillas to Gaza on the high seas. Rather, like Spain and Italy, they would at the very least be seeking to protect their own citizens. Better still, they would have set up by now their own naval armadas to bring food to a starving population in Gaza.
They would be drawing parallels with Russia – and impose a trade embargo on Israel, ending its economic privileges, to echo the more than a dozen EU rounds of measures against Moscow.
Instead, they are still aiding Israel as it demolishes the last buildings in Gaza, while it starves the population and ethnically cleanses them.
Don’t believe a word Starmer and the rest tell you. There is as much chance of Palestinian recognition tempering their complicity in Israel’s crimes as the Oslo “peace” process – celebrated by their predecessors – did a generation ago.
In fact, the evidence suggests that, as happened with Oslo, Israel will use this latest “concession” from the West to the Palestinians as the pretext for expanding and intensifying its atrocities, with Washington’s blessing. Already, Israel is reported to have shut the main crossing into the West Bank from Jordan, to further strangle what little aid is reaching Gaza and heighten the West Bank’s isolation.
Starmer, Macron and the rest are war criminals who in a rightly ordered world – one where international law had clout – would already be in the dock. Their current manoeuvrings must not be allowed to let them off the hook.
Every day, grave questions and deeply concerning mysteries surrounding the September 10th murder of Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk multiply. Per the FBI, the case is open and shut. College dropout Tyler Robinson, an apparent political radical who despised the right-wing activist and influencer for “spreading hate”, seized the opportunity of Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University to take him out permanently. While the Bureau and mainstream media have worked overtime to convict Robinson in the court of public opinion, many are unconvinced.
Their doubt is understandable. Robinson turned himself in to police, as publicly-released photos of an individual wanted for questioning in relation to Kirk’s murder resembled him and he feared being killed in a SWAT raid on his home. Nonetheless, he denies responsibility, and the assassination scenario posited by authorities – including multiple clothing changes, Robinson twice leaving his rifle wrapped in a towel in nearby woods for police to find, while dawdling around UVU campus for hours after the shooting despite having the means to immediately flee afterwards in his car – is patently absurd.
What evidence has been released supporting his guilt ranges from woeful, to literally non-existent. For example, FBI Director Kash Patel has claimed Robinson wrote a letter confessing to the killing, only for it to be destroyed in uncertain circumstances by persons unknown. Still, unspecified “forensic evidence” apparently somehow confirms its contents. This letter was authored despite Robinson stating in private messages purportedly sent to his roommate and lover he “had hoped to keep this secret ‘till I died of old age.”
Those exchanges, contained in a publicly-available charging document against Robinson, have been subject to widespread allegations of fakery, and outright mockery. The texts are not replete with time stamps, and appear incongruously self-incriminating for a shooter who allegedly undertook extensive measures to cover his tracks – to the extent the communications effectively make a water-tight case against Robinson on behalf of authorities. Robinson is also quoted using terms such as “squad car” and “drop point”, among other language it seems highly improbable a 22-year-old left-winger would employ.
More sinisterly, there is the open question of whether Israel was in any way involved in Kirk’s slaying. While an ardent Zionist for much of his time in the public eye, in the last months of Kirk’s life he began to voice criticism of Tel Aviv’s influence over US politicians, and the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu dragging Washington into war with Iran. In July, a TPUSA conference featured several speakers deeply critical of Israel.
Knowledgeable sources have informedThe Grayzone this summit prompted numerous wealthy allies of Netanyahu to bombard Kirk with threatening phone calls and text messages, demanding he correct course and cease platforming anti-Zionist voices. The backlash reportedly left the TPUSA chief feeling “frightened”, and he publicly bemoaned the malign pressure to which he was being subjected in an August 6th interview. Weeks before Kirk’s assassination too, hardline Zionist billionaire Robert Shillman ended his longstanding financial sponsorship of TPUSA.
Concrete proof of Tel Aviv’s culpability for Kirk’s murder is unforthcoming, although one might reasonably enquire why Netanyahu has felt it necessary to issue multiple statements denying the charge. Even hardcore Zionists have cautioned his determination to prove Israel’s innocence smacks of protesting too much. It’s also vital to ask why TPUSA security apparatchiks were responsible for a little-examined litany of catastrophic professional failures on September 10th, leaving Kirk an open, easy target for execution.
‘So Impressive’
The only vaguely substantive documentation implicating Tyler Robinson in the shooting is video footage of an individual leaping from the roof of a UVU building directly facing the central campus area where Kirk’s event was held, before making a run for it while lugging a backpack. The FBI and prosecutors charge it was from here Kirk was shot, and the mainstream media has universally accepted this account. A screwdriver, reportedly used to construct then deconstruct the murder weapon, bearing Robinson’s DNA was allegedly found there.
An individual, allegedly Tyler Robinson, flees a UVU building roof
However, the clip isn’t proof the individual pictured was Robinson, or they were carrying a rifle. Even more suspiciously, this footage was captured by a static CCTV camera trained directly on the area from where Robinson supposedly targeted Kirk. It was thus perfectly positioned to record him arriving, setting up, assembling the rifle, calibrating its sights, taking the shot, disassembling and camouflaging his weapon, then starting his escape. Bizarrely, no images of this chain of far more incriminating and noteworthy events have emerged.
This deficit can hardly be regarded as inconsequential, given the UVU building’s roof serving as Robinson’s sniper nest is absolutely fundamental to the conclusion Kirk was shot from the front. There are other significant problems with this core component of the official narrative. For one, the hole spurting blood that erupted in Kirk’s neck far more resembles an exit rather than entry wound, strongly suggesting the bullet was fired from elsewhere.
Moreover, if that gory spurt was an entry wound, there should’ve been a massive eruption of blood behind him emanating from an even bigger exit wound – but there was none. Authorities have failed to address or even acknowledge this glaring issue. On September 21st TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet attempted to offer an explanation. He relayed how a surgeon who tended to Kirk told him the bullet “absolutely should have gone through,” and such a shot “would have taken a moose or two down.”
Yet, in a medically unprecedented “miracle”, Kirk’s “body stopped it”. Kolvet claimed his “bone was [sic] so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel.” More unbelievably still, a coroner conveniently found the bullet that claimed Kirk’s life lodged “just beneath [his] skin”. This bullet has not to date been presented publicly. There was a camera mounted behind Kirk during the event, which might confirm from which direction he was shot. But what it captured remains another mystery.
‘Main Threat’
In the days following Kirk’s murder, smartphone footage of the shooting’s immediate aftermath began to circulate widely. The video shows while the crowd had almost fully dispersed, there was virtually zero visible police presence on the ground, or indication of any efforts being undertaken by law enforcement or TPUSA’s security detail to isolate the scene of Kirk’s shooting to prevent evidence being contaminated, degraded or tampered with – the reverse, in fact.
An individual wearing sunglasses is seen in the clip standing Kirk’s bloodspattered chair upright, then using it as a makeshift stool to remove a camera situated behind where Kirk was sitting. He steps away and removes its memory card, hands it to another person, who then appears to stuff the device into his baseball cap before walking away. The primary individual in question, confirmed to be a TPUSA operative, also removed the memory card from a camera directly facing Kirk.
Both moving Kirk’s chair and removing the camera memory cards represent unambiguous evidence tampering, a serious crime under US federal and state law, for which perpetrators can face prison time and financial penalties. Why capturing those cards was considered an urgent priority for Kirk’s associates isn’t remotely clear. There is no indication the TPUSA operative responsible is wanted for questioning by authorities, let alone will be punished for his actions. This is despite even more suspect footage of the as yet unnamed individual subsequently emerging.
The clip shows Kirk’s security team rushing him to an SUV parked behind his speaking spot following the shooting, and bystanders racing after them to safety. Incredibly, the TPUSA operative who subsequently interfered with the crime scene can be spotted perched on a wall filming the chaos below, as if he was already in position before Kirk was shot, and knew precisely what was about to happen. He then retrieved the memory cards.
The degree of professionalism exhibited by the TPUSA operative in both seemingly situating himself preemptively to ideally before video the dramatic scenes instantly following Kirk’s assassination, and swiftly moving to seize and spirit away crucial evidence before police investigators arrived on the scene, starkly contrasts with the apparent incompetence of TPUSA’s security detail, and UVU’s own. Just six campus police officers were deployed to oversee the event, which attracted approximately 3,000 people.
Attendees testify UVU implemented no formal entry gates for the event, their bags weren’t searched, and there was no indication nearby rooftops or buildings were being monitored for suspicious activity. These literally fatal failings have been harshly condemned by US Secret Service veterans, with particular criticism reserved for the decision to hold the event outdoors – which UVU claims was specifically requested by TPUSA representatives. Kirk’s prior public appearances had invariably been subject to intensive security measures.
On September 2nd, Kirk gave his penultimate rally in Visilia, California. Held indoors, 60 officers were deployed for a crowd of 2,000. Clear restrictions were in place on what attendees could have in their possession, including signs. Over preceding days, local law enforcement conducted wide-ranging reconnaissance in preparation, researching spots of interest to prospective shooters, and identifying locals ill-disposed to Kirk. On the day itself, both police drones and officers closely monitored his movements to and from the venue, scouting nearby rooftops.
Commenting on the rank professional blunders that supposedly facilitated Kirk’s assassination, Greg Shaffer, who headed TPUSA’s protection detail 2015 – 2022, suggested Kirk’s security team may have erroneously focused exclusively “on threats coming from a much closer distance” rather than a sniper, as “the main threat” had “always” been “somebody getting in the inner circle and attacking Charlie.” Shaffer’s remarks might be more illuminating than he intended – for “somebody” certainly could have infiltrated Kirk’s “inner circle”, explicitly to clear a path for his murder.
Kit Klarenberg is a British investigative journalist whose work explores the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
On September 19th, the UN Security Council voted to reimpose savage economic restrictions on Iran over its nuclear program. European leaders have in recent months repeatedly accused Tehran of refusing to abide by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s terms. A core, repeated claim is the Islamic Republic has collated a uranium stock over 40 times the level permitted under that deal. No supporting evidence for the charge has been provided, and the source of this information isn’t clear.
It may nonetheless be highly significant London has taken the lead in calling for the restoration of sanctions, independently imposed punitive measures on Iranian individuals and commercial entities, and employed relentlessly bellicose rhetoric about the Islamic Republic’s purported breaches of its JCPOA commitments. In August, then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared Tehran had “consistently failed to provide credible assurances on the nature of its nuclear programme.” In the wake of the UNSC vote, British ambassador Barbara Woodward proclaimed, “we urge [Iran] to act now.”
As this journalist has previously exposed, the JCPOA resulted from a long-running MI6 black propaganda campaign to falsely frame the Islamic Republic as possessing nuclear weapon ambitions, if not nukes outright. Under the Agreement’s terms, Tehran received sanctions relief in return for granting the International Atomic Energy Agency virtually unhindered access to its secret nuclear complexes. Despite the IAEA consistently certifying Iran’s compliance, the Trump administration shredded the Agreement in May 2018, and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign to cripple the country.
Information gathered by the IAEA under the Agreement appears to have assisted Israel’s criminal 12 Day War in June, raising the obvious question of whether the Agreement was always intended as an espionage operation, in preparation for future conflict with Tehran. This interpretation is amply reinforced by leaked documents, indicating the IAEA provided Zionist entity intelligence with names of Iranian nuclear scientists who were subsequently assassinated. Meanwhile, the papers show Agency chief Rafael Grossi enjoys an intimate, covert relationship with officials in Tel Aviv.
The aftermath of an Iranian ballistic missile strike on Tel Aviv, June 2025
These disclosures understandably motivated Iranian lawmakers and President Masoud Pezeshkian to halt any and all cooperation with the Agency. The sanctions eased by the JCPOA being the product of an MI6 black propaganda effort, to falsely convince the West and its overseas proxies and puppets Tehran posed a global nuclear weapon threat, provides the Republic with even more urgent justification for ignoring the Agreement’s terms. Iran’s grounds for rejecting any accommodation with the same countries now seeking to sanction her are inarguable.
‘Supportive Relations’
At the centre of MI6’s black propaganda war on Iran was longtime British intelligence officer Nicholas Langman, a veteran dark arts specialist who has been repeatedly publicly exposed perpetrating the dirtiest imaginable deeds for London’s foreign spying agency the world over. He was for example intimately implicated in Britain’s contribution to the CIA’s global post-9/11 torture program. However, rather than being penalised or defenestrated for his actions and unmasking, he appears to have been richly rewarded, and consistently failed upwards.
A leaked CV shows 2006 – 2008, Langman led MI6’s Iran Department. Here, he oversaw a team seeking to “develop understanding” of Iran’s “nuclear program”. Then, 2010 – 2012, he led an “inter-agency” effort to infiltrate the IAEA, while “[building] highly effective and mutually supportive relations across government and with senior US, European, Middle and Far Eastern colleagues for strategy which enabled major diplomatic success [sic] of Iranian nuclear and sanctions agreement.”
Nicholas Langman’s leaked CV
It was during the latter period that public and governmental attitudes across the West – and in vassal states – towards the Islamic Republic became highly belligerent, and negative. One by one, governments and international bodies – including the EU and UN – imposed ravaging sanctions against Tehran, devastating its economy, influence, and standing. MI6 journeyman Langman triumphed in his mission to foment concerted global hostility against Iran, based on the bogus spectre of the country posing a nuclear threat.
The question of whether British ‘intelligence’ on Iran’s nuclear program was the product of torture is an open and obvious one. Langman moved straight to leading MI6’s Iran Department from running the agency’s station in Athens, Greece. There, in late 2005, he was exposed by local media as having overseen an operation to abduct and ferociously mistreat 28 Pakistani guestworkers, wrongfully suspected of having had contact with individuals accused of perpetrating the 7/7 bombings in London in July that year.
That Langman wasn’t reprimanded over the incident strongly suggests he enjoyed a high level of protection, and London approved of his vicious intelligence-gathering methods – known to invariably produce false testimony from detainees. MI6 was not only an enthusiastic collaborator in the CIA’s global extraordinary rendition program, but led its own operations. Markedly, in at least one case, the British sought to sideline the CIA and ensure exclusive access to “intelligence” from a detainee in which Langley also had an interest.
The Obama administration was during its first year in office formally committed to non-interference in the Islamic Republic’s affairs, to the extent State Department apparatchik Jared Cohen was almost fired for publicly demanding Twitter halt planned maintenance during June 2009 protests in Iran, to ensure demonstrators could continue posting. It’s therefore unknown whether Washington was in on MI6’s Iran nuke con. If not, it wouldn’t be the first time British intelligence has misled the international community, with catastrophic results.
‘Possible Manipulation’
In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a scathing report on “the US intelligence community’s prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq.” It reserved particular disdain for how the CIA et al had “[relied] too heavily on foreign government services and third party reporting, thereby increasing the potential for manipulationof U.S. policy by foreign interests [emphasis added].” This was a reference to MI6’s central role in gathering – or concocting – intelligence on Baghdad’s purported WMD capabilities:
“Due to the lack of unilateral sources on Iraq’s links to terrorist groups like al-Qaida [redacted], the [US] Intelligence Community (IC) relied too heavily on foreign government service reporting and sources to whom it did not have direct access to determine the relationship between Iraq and [redacted] terrorist groups…The IC left itself open to possible manipulation by foreign governments and other parties interested in influencing US policy.”
As far back as the late 1990s, Britain’s foreign spying agency took the lead on sourcing dud ‘intelligence’ to manufacture consent for the against Baghdad. Under the auspices of a psychological warfare effort dubbed Operation Mass Appeal, MI6 black propaganda specialists circulated false information to foreign editors and reporters on its payroll “to help shape public opinion about Iraq and the threat posed by WMD,” which was then recycled by Western leaders and news outlets to reinforce its credibility.
In September 2002, then-MI6 chief Richard Dearlove personally approached British Prime Minister Tony Blair, claiming his agency had cultivated a source inside Iraq with “phenomenal access”, who could provide the “key to unlock” Iraq’s purported WMD program. Their assorted claims subsequently formed the basis of a dossier, which made a number of wild charges about Baghdad’s chemical and biological weapon capabilities. A prominently reported allegation was that Iraq could deploy WMD against Western countries within just 45 minutes. Its source was an Iraqi taxi driver.
This claim was repeated in a radio address by George W. Bush that month. In January the next year, as the invasion of Iraq rapidly loomed, the President declared in his State of the Union address, “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” That December, then-CIA chief George Tenet admitted this assertion was completely fallacious, and “these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President.”
The Zionist entity justified its unprovoked assault against Iran in June in large part on an intelligence dossier, which concluded the Islamic Republic had reached the “point of no return” in acquiring nukes. Its findings relied heavily on a May IAEA report that provided zero fresh information, but concluded Tehran supposedly maintained “undeclared nuclear material” until the early 2000s. While intended to trigger regime change, Tel Aviv’s broadside ended promptly in embarrassing failure, despite extensive foreign support, including US airstrikes.
Undeterred by the fiasco, Benjamin Netanyahu remains determined to crush the “Iranian axis”, while Trump has declared he would bomb Tehran “without a question” in response to indications the Islamic Republic has enriched uranium beyond agreed levels. We could be on the precipice of another war. As with the Iraq invasion, the perilous trail that brought us to this grave point could lead back to London. Yet again, MI6 may have taken the lead in concocting ‘intelligence’, justifying further US-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.
They thought they buried a man, but they laid to rest a mountain. One year on, Sayyed Hassan still dwells in our hearts.
The day the world rumbled and then went eerily silent, silence only broken by the sounds of tears, cries, and sighs echoing through souls that went instantly hollow…
The day 84 tonnes of bunker-buster bombs rocked a tiny neighborhood in Dahieh with the aim of killing one man, and one man only…
The day entire blocks of residential buildings were flattened, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the afternoon sky, seen from miles and miles away…
The day the Israeli enemy poured out its anger, frustration, desperation, and years of being leashed on the very man who had reined it in for so long…
The day Lebanon saw the killing of its protector and liberator, leaving the country vulnerable to the winds of malice and a sleeping grudge…
The day I experienced the loss of my icon, my symbol, my role model, my beloved Sayyed, leaving me shattered and changed as a person until this very day…
At 6:18, Dahieh’s skies split: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was struck
On the evening of September 27, at 6:18 pm, the skies over Dahieh split open with thunder: Israeli warplanes, like lurking vultures, approached as the sun’s light was fading away and unleashed their deadly cargo tearing through the earth into an underground facility; precision-guided weapons, silent until their final roar as they made impact, had carved paths of fire through the clouds and struck the country at the heart. The place that once brimmed with purpose, determination, and sounds of prayer and supplications fell silent.
The target? None other than the leader of the Resistance. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a towering symbol of steadfastness, resistance, honor, and defiance, was assassinated in an insolent act of cowardice that sent shockwaves across the world.
Sayyed Hassan, who stood for decades as the voice of the oppressed, the pulse of resistance, and the unwavering guardian of Lebanon’s dignity, was now gone, leaving the nation under the weight of grief as heavy as the mountains holding the earth as pegs.
Remembering martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The voice that refused to bow to tyranny. 40 days since his martyrdom, #Lebanon and the region honor not just a leader but a legacy of steadfast resistance.
From the narrow alleys of Dahieh to the quiet villages in South Lebanon, people sat glued to screens, holding phones with trembling hands, waiting for a denial that unfortunately never came.
Some wept before they knew what had happened. Others held their breath, waiting for a voice they had long cherished. Had he survived? Was this just another chapter in a long story of evasion and endurance? Or had the enemy succeeded not only in hitting a facility but in shaking the soul of Lebanon’s resistance?
The Secretary-General of #Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, offered his condolences to the families of those who were martyred or wounded in the pager attack.
He thanked the Lebanese government, hospitals, civil defense, and everyone who contributed to treating the wounded,… pic.twitter.com/CIU4TLE0xS
When the news finally broke, it did not come with sirens or speeches; it came accompanied by melancholy, a kind of solemness that choked the breath and froze the blood in the veins. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader, the father, the icon, was indeed gone.
Mothers wept as though mourning their own sons, young men who once listened to his speeches before heading to the front sat together stunned, quiet, their eyes filling with tears; their hands shaking in dismay… their guardian had fallen.
The night that followed felt infinite, with ache and grief hitting hard.
The very man who was the calm in the storm, the defiance in the face of ruin,his voice had left this realm through the rubble and had now departed. But from amid the sorrow rose a raw, aching pride. His people had not buried a man; they had laid to rest a mountain. He had yearned for martyrdom so greatly that his death felt not like the end, but the fulfillment of a lifelong yearning.
In an exclusive interview with #AlMayadeen, the daughter of martyr Sayyed Hassan #Nasrallah, Zeinab, discussed the side of him that was still unknown to many.
She describes Sayyed Hassan as the 'ideal husband' in how he treated his family, reflecting this profound love for the… pic.twitter.com/IO7ryCi8oZ
In his words, many had found direction, in his vows, many had found valor, and in his silence, even more had found protection.
Belief, trust, legacy: The enduring bond with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
Al Mayadeen English visited Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s shrine to speak with visitors marking the first anniversary of his martyrdom.
The following testimonies capture the raw, immediate reactions of people from different ages, places, and circumstances upon learning of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s martyrdom. Some received the news while bedridden in hospitals or displaced from their homes; others heard it amid crowds, in quiet rooms, or through screens, but they all describe the same shock, disbelief, and deep sorrow. Together, these answers trace a shared emotional arc: an initial numbness or denial, the acute pain of loss, and beneath it a steady current of reverence for his decades of leadership and the resolve his life instilled in his supporters. What emerges is not only grief, but also a sense that his legacy continues to shape people’s courage, patience, and commitment.
Beyond death: The enduring bond between Sayyed Nasrallah, the people
There was a consensus among all those interviewed that they did not believe the news of Sayyed Nasrallah’s martyrdom.
It was a disbelief not rooted in denial of mortality, but in the very essence of who he was. For decades, he embodied steadfastness, wisdom, and resilience to such an extent that his presence felt inseparable from the fabric of their lives. His voice, guidance, and unwavering stance against oppression had become a constant: a moral compass and a source of strength that seemed beyond the reach of time or the enemy’s treachery. To them, imagining a world without him was almost inconceivable, not because they thought he could not die, but because his spirit, leadership, and sacrifice had transcended the ordinary limits of human life, leaving an impression of permanence that death could not erase.
"They cannot take away the legitimacy that the Lebanese people recognized more than 35 years ago… with a mere stroke of a pen," declared Mohammad Raad, Head of #Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Loyalty to the Resistance in an exclusive interview for #AlMayadeen.
It was too difficult for them to accept that he won’t be making any new appearances, too difficult to comprehend that they won’t be hearing his voice live, too difficult to understand that he won’t be analyzing controversial issues, explaining to people the situation to soothe them. After all, they believed him, and only him, and what he said.
The bond between Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the people was built first and foremost on trust. They saw in him a man of rare honesty, one who never spoke a word he did not mean and whose promises were consistently fulfilled. His sincerity gave weight to every statement he made, so much so that people believed him without hesitation, certain that his words stemmed from integrity and responsibility, not rhetoric. This unwavering credibility forged a relationship of loyalty and faith, where his voice became a source of assurance and truth in times of both hardship and hope.
Shock and sorrow: Voices across the region, ages
We asked them the following question:
How did you receive the news of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s martyrdom?
For some, the news arrived while they were already enduring hardship. One victim, recovering from injuries sustained in the pager attack on September 17, recalled, “I received the news of the Sayyed’s martyrdom while in hospital undergoing treatment. The news was deeply distressing and difficult to bear, especially since we were still at the hospital, unable to do anything, unable to see.”
#Hezbollah's Secretary-General, Sheikh Naim paid tribute to martyrs Sayyed Hassan #Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem during a speech today describing Sayyed Hassan as "a historic, exceptional, patriotic, Arab, Islamic leader, the model of the free people of the world."
The grief was felt far beyond Lebanon. One man from Iraq said, “It is with utmost sadness that we received the news of the Sayyed’s martyrdom. We felt bereaved. The moment I learned of the news, I felt like my eyes were filled with blood, not tears. We mourned the loss of a man whose legacy is etched in history, being the leader of the Resistance for almost 40 years, going from one victory to another, until he was martyred.”
Another Iraqi visitor described the scale of the tragedy, saying, “Our world came crashing down, it was a tragedy that befell the entire Islamic world and every honorable person, not just the Islamic world, every honorable person, defender of righteousness, and those who safeguard their honor and sanctities.”
The disbelief was echoed by a Lebanese youth who was performing prayers there: “It was such an indescribable shock upon hearing the news that the Sayyed was martyred, the shock of our lives. Upon receiving the news, no one believed it at first, until we saw his shrine. Even after seeing it, still no one would believe it because he is forever alive in our hearts and minds.”
Personal bereavement, symbolic loss
Many mourned the loss on a personal level, the loss of this symbol. One youth said, “Many people’s hearts ached upon hearing the Sayyed’s martyrdom news. Sadness dwelt in the hearts of people across the world. Everyone was shocked… Sayyed Hassan… left such an immense void. The Sayyed is irreplaceable. Were our parents martyred, I would have felt sorrow, but not as much as I was saddened by the Sayyed’s departure.”
Others framed the loss within a broader perspective of leadership. A Lebanese man noted, “It was devastating news, but praise be to God. It is true that our leaders are martyred, but leadership only produces leadership, and the leaders who are martyred in front of their men bring the glad tidings of revolution.”
‘It felt like a part of my heart was gone’
For some, the loss felt like personal bereavement. A Lebanese woman said, “It felt like a part of my heart was gone, it felt like I had lost a homeland. After it happened, I cried like I had just lost a father, as if I had just lost my homeland, such a huge loss, a loss beyond remedy.”
Many admitted to struggling with the reality of his absence. Another woman explained, after breaking down in tears, “It was a real shock, and no one believed the news. Sadly, I, and many others, still… I know that he was martyred, but I live on the hope that he wasn’t, because we’re really in need of him.”
Acceptance needed time
For others, acceptance took time. A young woman, who had just come out of the shrine, said, “It was terrifying. I didn’t believe it at first. Still now, sometimes I go through the events in my mind and say to myself that it is impossible, but eventually, we have to accept reality.”
The depth of sorrow was palpable. An elderly woman remarked, “The news struck us like thunder. We felt so sad and heartbroken. He’s irreplaceable. What can we say?”
Alleviating a martyred father’s loss
A martyr’s daughter reflected on Sayyed Nasrallah’s role as a symbol in sustaining hope in the middle of tragedy. “The news of the Secretary-General’s martyrdom struck us with the force of a storm… He is the soul of our homeland. After my father was martyred, the Sayyed was the medicine that helped soothe our pain,” she said.
“We tell him that we are more than willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his soul,” she added.
People of different ages, regions, and circumstances shared a common reaction: shock, disbelief, and a profound reverence for a leader whose decades of guidance and steadfastness had left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of his supporters.
A year after his martyrdom: Voices from the people
Al Mayadeen English also posed the following question:
What is your message for Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah one year later?
One visitor, still bearing wounds from the terrorist pager attack, expressed that their pain had not weakened their commitment: “To the Sayyed we say that our injuries have not hindered or weakened us; on the contrary, we grew more determined and resolute to continue treading this path.”
“We shall forever uphold our pledge [to you],” they added.
Pledges across borders
Supporters from outside Lebanon echoed similar sentiments. An Iraqi man declared, “I say to the Sayyed, we shall forever uphold our pledge [to you], committed to the Resistance and supporting it, and committed to supporting the Lebanese people, the Palestinian people, and all the downtrodden peoples in the world.”
Many emphasized that Sayyed Hassan’s influence persists through the leaders he inspired. “You are not really gone,” another Iraqi visitor said. “Because there are thousands, no, millions and millions of leaders whom Sayyed Hassan left behind… and we shall forever uphold our pledge [to you], undeterred by anything.”
‘We will never forget you’
Young scouts came to the shrine to lay a wreath where the Sayyed was laid to rest. Speaking with Al Mayadeen English, they highlighted their dedication to pursuing the Sayyed’s mission.
One scout said simply, “We will always follow his path. We will forever uphold our pledge [to you].” Another added, “The Sayyed has offered a lot and helped us abundantly. A lot of people were saddened by his martyrdom. It left a deep wound in our hearts.”
A young man added, “One year after his martyrdom, I tell him: We will never forget you Sayyed Hassan. You will forever be etched in our hearts for as long as we live.”
Even the younger generation reflected on the Sayyed’s encouragement for education and knowledge. A recent graduate said, “Being new high school graduates, we dedicate our graduation to him, which he had always encouraged, pursuing an education and acquiring knowledge, which the path [of Resistance] is in need of nowadays, to be educated to be of benefit to this path.”
You leave behind ‘heroic warriors’
Visitors underscored the enduring power of his leadership. One visitor said, “Your memory shall forever dwell in our hearts. You are etched deep in our hearts. We will never forget you or abandon your freedom-fighting path… we shall forever stand by you.”
The sentiment of continuity and resilience was echoed across the shrine. “Our message to the Sayyed: a group of great and heroic warriors remains in the wake of your departure. You, O Sayyed, were the guardian of this Ummah… we will forever uphold our pledge [to you], and it is your path that we will tread until the ultimate victory is achieved, God willing.”
A promise to remember
Others highlighted the spiritual and moral inspiration of Sayyed Hassan. “May he be under the watch of God and the Ahlul Bayt. God willing, all the people will always stand by him, and we will forever tread his path,” an elderly lady said.
A martyr’s daughter added, “You remain alive within us. We have not forgotten you, one year on. Your memory will remain etched in our souls, and you will continue to inspire our generation and many generations to come… You will be immortalized for the remainder of time.”
Even the youngest voices expressed unwavering loyalty, “We will continue to tread the path that you paved. Whatever happens, we’ll stay by your side, now and forever.”
Despite the sorrow, the message from all visitors was clear: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah may be gone, but his vision, leadership, and inspiration live on.
They may have taken Sayyed Hassan, and a year on, grief remains heavy, yet loyalty remains heavier still, and his supporters and followers stand strong and remain unbroken, under the eternal slogan:
Al-Masaiyya | The first anniversary of the martyrdom of Sayyed Nasrallah and Sayyed Safieddine.. Their images illuminate the Rock of Raouche | المسائية | الذكرى الأولى لاستشهاد السيّدين نصرالله وصفي الدين.. صورتهما تُضيءُ صخرة الروشة |
The Sayyed’s photo provoked Beirut’s representatives more than it provoked Netanyahu. Sahar Ghaddar: Salam may announce the arrest of the Raouche Rock. صورة السـ ـيد استفزت نواب بيروت اكثر من ما استفزت نتنياهو..سحر غدار: سلام قد يعلن اعتقال صخرة الروشة
From Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, Al Mayadeen English’s Lea Akil reports on the commemoration marking one year since the martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, remembered by many as the leader of martyrs and a symbol of resistance. Thousands of Iraqis joined in the memorial, carrying sorrow yet affirming their devotion to his path. Participants described Sayyed Hassan as a man of truth, courage, and unwavering commitment to the oppressed, vowing to protect his legacy and continue the resistance he embodied. His absence, they said, weighs heavily, but his spirit endures in the hearts of free people worldwide.
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated near Times Square, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop the genocide” as he delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Protesters chanted for a ceasefire in Gaza, waved Palestine flags, among other banners, and rejected allowing Netanyahu to speak at the UNGA. “One of the war criminals is coming here. That’s a shame,” one protester said, while another protester stated, “I would tell him that the Zionist occupation is nearing its end, that the Palestinian people will be free.” In this context, scores of UN delegates also walked out during Netanyahu’s address, underscoring the diplomatic fallout and the intensity of protests both inside and outside the UN.
Scores of delegates walked out of the UN General Assembly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium. Reuters reported that Netanyahu’s office had ordered agencies, in cooperation with the Israeli occupation army, to place loudspeakers on trucks at the Gaza border to broadcast the speech into Gaza. Netanyahu used the address to urge Hamas to release the captives, saying “we will not rest until we bring all of you home”, rather than just agreeing to a ceasefire agreement. He further addressed the Resistance, threatening, “Lay down your arms, free all hostages now,” adding, “If you do, you will live; if you don’t, Israel will hunt you down.”
Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence on Wednesday evening released what it described as secret photographs of nuclear facilities in “Israel”, alongside classified documents related to American and European scientists. According to Iranian media, the materials were obtained through a complex intelligence operation carried out months ago, marking what officials hailed as a major security achievement against the Israeli occupation. What did they reveal? Take a look here.
Hundreds of PAOK football club supporters and demonstrators marched through central Thessaloniki, Greece, on September 24, waving Palestine’s flags and chanting slogans against a UEFA Europa League match with “Israel’s” Maccabi Tel Aviv. Protesters held signs reading “Your pitch, your choice. Boycott Israel” and “No to displacement and genocide,” denouncing what they called the “legalization of Israeli policies through sport.” One demonstrator criticized the inclusion of Israeli teams in European competitions, arguing that “Israel” doesn’t “geographically belong to Europe” and that football should remain a game of joy, which cannot be shared “with representatives of a genocide”.
At least 24 Israelis were injured after a Yemeni drone exploded in Eilat. The injuries include two in serious condition, as reported by the Israeli Magen David Adom.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speeches shaped a narrative of global resistance, blending faith, strategy, and defiance against imperialism, from Lebanon to Gaza, Yemen, and beyond.
Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the late Secretary-General of Hezbollah, epitomizes the archetype of a revolutionary leader whose influence exceeds national boundaries.
Through a combination of religious legitimacy, political insight, and media mastery, Sayyed Nasrallah transformed Hezbollah from a local resistance group into a regional and global actor capable of navigating complex geopolitical challenges.
Delving into Nasrallah’s art of speech
“Now … in the middle of the sea opposite Beirut, the Israeli military warship that assaulted our infrastructure, look at it … burning.”
— Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, 2006
With these words in 2006, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah etched an image into history: not only of defiance but of a leader whose words could ignite the collective imagination for generations to come.
In his speeches, which laid out strategic doctrines from “beyond Haifa” deterrence to “calculated retaliation”, he reshaped “Israel’s” security calculus and expanded Hezbollah’s presence.
Beyond the battlefield, he cultivated an axis of resistance that united Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, linking together multifarious movements under a consolidated anti-imperialist vision.
“If you strike Beirut, we will strike Haifa – and beyond Haifa.” — Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, 2006
At home in Lebanon, his philosophy balanced centralized leadership with decentralized execution, a framework that allowed the movement to withstand shifting political and military hurdles with resilience and adaptability. This strategic patience became a defining trait of his tenure.
“Our responsibility, steadfastness, and patience will, God willing, result in absolute victory,” affirming, “Gaza will be victorious, and Palestine will come out triumphant.”
— Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, 2003
Spiritually grounded leadership
At the core of Sayyed Nasrallah’s oratory lay his spiritual genealogy, with Prophet Muhammad, Imam Ali, Imam Hussein, and Sayyeda Zaynab being his enduring models of eloquence, courage, and sacrifice. His speeches, grounded in scripture and moral tradition, acquired a permanence that outlasted the cruelty of the West and its allies in West Asia.
“Islam survived, spread and expanded because of sacrifices of Imam Hussein.” — Sayyed Nasrallah, October 2016
His legacy was also shaped by those of Imam Moussa al-Sadr and Iranian leader Sayyed Rouhollah Khamenei. His image of moral integrity and personal sacrifice gave Hezbollah credibility not only among Shiites but also across Lebanon’s complex sectarian landscape.
Oratory as a weapon of resistance
Few leaders matched Sayyed Nasrallah’s mastery of communication. His speeches, broadcast live to millions, blended sober political analysis with emotional appeal and resistance rhetoric. He translated complex realities into accessible language, often anchoring current struggles in a broader historical narrative.
“While Sayyed Nasrallah’s addresses naturally included metaphors and analogies, his wide reach and broad appeal are grounded in his significance as an intelligent, charismatic, and honest character who has represented a just cause that many people in and beyond Lebanon have identified with,” Dr. Denijal Jegić of the Lebanese American University told Al Mayadeen English.
“We affirm the solidity of our position and our readiness to continue this historic, humanitarian, and moral stance until victory.” — Sayyed Nasrallah, June 2024
Symbolism was central to his rhetoric: honoring martyrs, celebrating resilience, and asserting sovereignty in the face of US and Israeli hegemony. His words were so closely monitored by “Israel” that they became part of the strategic battlefield.
Defining victories, enduring achievements
Sayyed Nasrallah presided over three defining moments: the liberation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah’s victory in the 2006 Israeli aggression on Lebanon, and his support for Gaza amid the Israeli genocide until he was martyred.
It has been 40 days since the martyrdom of #Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Sayyed Hassan's life was dedicated to resisting the Israeli occupation.
Despite his martyrdom, his words are eternal, carried by us as long as we live and passed on for generations.… pic.twitter.com/lhCOfBpwlh
These milestones redefined deterrence in the region, cementing his status as a transnational figure.
His influence extended beyond Lebanon, as he supported resistance efforts in Gaza, Yemen, and elsewhere, while simultaneously investing in humanitarian programs for refugees, forcibly displaced families, and the underprivileged. For his supporters, this dual emphasis on armed struggle and social development underscored his vision of resistance as both strategy and identity.
Leadership beyond the battlefield
Sayyed Nasrallah’s persona was a blend of human warmth and strategic acumen. He could express sorrow, anger, joy, and humor in the same speech and in ways that resonated with ordinary people while maintaining composure and discipline. His leadership style reflected intellectual flexibility, empathy tempered by firmness, and a commitment to education and cultural enrichment.
Mustafa al-Saray, an Iraqi academic, described his speeches as “never aimless”. Each address carried a clear trajectory with defined goals, a mix of reflection and defiance, spiritual guidance, and political critique. His delivery, tone, cadence, and gestures created a presence that enthralled audiences and metamorphosed his words into guiding texts for supporters and viewers alike.
Global revolutionary archetype
In his strategic vision, charismatic presence, and ideological clarity, Sayyed Nasrallah was among the global icons of anti-Western hegemony, such as Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara, Kozo Okamoto, and Jamal Abdel Nasser.
-Like Mandela, Nasrallah saw legitimacy in principled resistance. -Like Gandhi, he embodied humility and moral authority. -Like Che Guevara and Kōzō Okamoto, his struggle transcended national boundaries, as noted by The Lebanese Union Center for Research and Development.
For Yemeni journalist Ahmad Yabari, he represented “a school of honesty in an era overflowing with empty slogans … a leader of victories and dignity whose explanations revealed truths and anticipated what lay ahead.”
Yabari told Al Mayadeen English that Sayyed Nasrallah’s authenticity lay not only in rhetoric but in sacrifice. His words became slogans of resistance, while his leadership embodied courage in the face of overwhelming odds.
Voice of humanity
In October 2023, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered his first address amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza, vowing that Hezbollah would never abandon the people of Gaza, no matter the consequences.
“What happens on the Lebanese front will depend on what happens in Gaza.”
— Sayyed Nasrallah, November 3, 2023.
He drew a clear and decisive red line, making a pledge that reverberated across the world: The resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting and standing by the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
Despite “Israel’s” attacks, assassinations, and intimidations, Sayyed Nasrallah responded to Israeli threats with defiance, declaring that Hezbollah “fears nothing and will fight without limits and without borders” in his speech on June 19, 2024.
His words were unambiguous: the resistance would not cease its operations until a durable ceasefire was secured in Gaza.
Final speech after pager attack
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was not only a strategist and leader, but also a man whose heart beat with the pain and hopes of his people. His humanity shone through in the way he spoke to the wounded, the bereaved, and the steadfast, blessing their sacrifices and honoring their resilience. In his final speech after the terrorist Israeli pager attack, he addressed them with words that carried both love and reverence:
“Blessed are your martyrs, blessed are the families of your martyrs, blessed are the wounded in hospitals, blessed are those who lost their eyes and hands, blessed are the patient, steadfast and loyal people, blessed are all those who have taken on the responsibility of performing this moral, humanitarian and religious duty in supporting Gaza, which is being subjected to genocide, mass killing, hunger, thirst, disease and siege.”
In the same speech, he reiterated the unshakable promise: Hezbollah will not abandon the people of Gaza. This steadfastness was not new. Throughout his leadership, Sayyed Nasrallah had consistently echoed in his speeches an unwavering support for the Palestinian cause, even in his final address, delivered in the immediate aftermath of “Israel’s” devastating booby-trapped pager attack on Lebanon, which killed and wounded thousands, many of them civilians.
Alluring humaneness
Yet, what set these speeches apart was not only their strategic clarity but their profound humanity. In addressing Gaza’s suffering, Sayyed Nasrallah put aside allpolitical calculations, speaking with the raw weight of a father rather than a distant political figure. When he spoke of Gaza’s slain children, his voice shifted from the tone of a strategist to that of a man deeply moved by atrocities.
There has always been an alluring humaneness in his speeches, the kind that emerges only when confronting a colossal obligation. By invoking the names and faces of Gaza’s children, Sayyed Nasrallah transformed his rhetoric into a vessel for shared grief, resonating far beyond political divides.
His words on the massacred children of Gaza were not mere political rhetoric; they carried compassion and sorrow that cut through the usual language of war and pierced the hearts. In those moments, his speech rose above the battlefield, carrying a voice that bore the profound weight of humanity, even amid the most harrowing genocide in modern history.
“To all the blind and ignorant: the shredded bodies of Gaza’s children scream into your ears, smear your faces with their blood, and speak to you through their severed heads: Only your strength, your unity, your resistance, and the sacrifices of your martyrs can protect you. Submission and surrender at the gates of a powerless international community will save you nothing.”
— Sayyed Nasrallah said on May 28, 2024.
A compass beyond martyrdom
It all comes down to the fact that Sayyed Nasrallah’s voice became more than a political instrument. It was a moral compass, a unifying force, and a source of defiance that inspired oppressed peoples worldwide. In short, “Israel” failed to assassinate him.
“The worst our enemy can do is kill us. We do not accept defeat. When we prevail, we prevail; and when we are martyred, we still prevail. Martyrdom is one of the two honorable outcomes , victory or martyrdom , and the highest we can aspire to is to die in the name of God.”
— Sayyed Nasrallah said on August 25, 2024
He is, in every sense, immortal; his 33-year journey leaving an indelible mark across generations and beyond. His words, forged through action, faith, courage, and resistance, continue to live on in the hearts and minds of free people around the world. Through his speeches, he charted a path for Hezbollah and all Resistance movements around the globe, offering a roadmap to liberate occupied lands, to uphold one’s dignity, and to reject every form of oppression.
“This is a momentous, long battle with this entity. But its horizon and its end are clear. The soldiers of God, the faithful, the steadfast, the resolute, for the sake of God, and the martyrs in heaven, all of them can already see how it ends.”
— Sayyed Nasrallah said on Sepember 9, 2024
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Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence on Wednesday evening released what it described as secret photographs of nuclear facilities in “Israel,” alongside classified documents related to American and European scientists.
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Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib said the operation involved cooperation from insiders within Israeli nuclear and security organizations who transferred the documents to Tehran. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should “address the living conditions of his employees who continue to cooperate with us for money.”
Millions of pages of sensitive material
Khatib stated that the archive delivered to Iran contains “millions of pages of diverse and valuable information” on the Israeli regime, including details of past and present weapons projects, programs for upgrading old nuclear arms, and joint initiatives with the United States and several European countries.
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After reaching an agreement with President Trump, David Ellison—the son of the second-richest man in the world, Larry Ellison—has acquired Paramount Global, the media giant that owns CBS News.
Larry Ellison, the largest private funder of the Israel Defense Forces, is deeply tied to the Israeli national security state and counts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among his closest friends.
David has already announced significant changes at CBS, promising “unbiased” news coverage and “varied ideological perspectives,” which are widely understood to signal a shift toward right-wing, pro-Trump coverage. Worse still, Bari Weiss, a journalist with a long history of zealous pro-Israel advocacy, is being considered as the network’s new ombudsman, shaping its political direction, precisely because of her “pro-Israel stance.”
MintPress News examines Ellison’s close ties to both Trump and Israel, Weiss’s extensive career as Israel’s most vocal supporter in the U.S., and what this means for the future of free and diverse speech in America.
Israel’s Man In Silicon Valley
Although Skydance, Ellison’s media empire, is officially headed by David, it is well understood that father Larry holds both the purse strings and the reins of power. With a net worth of $301 billion, placing him second on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires Rankings, Larry made his fortune by founding tech giant Oracle.
Oracle started as a project for the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, it is named after Project Oracle, a 1970s CIA operation on which Ellison worked. For some time, the CIA was Oracle’s only customer, until it began to win contracts with other agencies of the U.S. national security state. Today, although Oracle’s customer base is much wider, it maintains its role as the privatized face of the CIA.
Yet if Oracle is close to Washington and Langley, it is perhaps even more intimately tied to the State of Israel. An avowed Zionist, Ellison has worked tirelessly to advance Israel’s political project. Among his closest personal friends is Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed on his private island in Hawaii. Ellison was so impressed and confident in the Israeli prime minister that he offered him a seat on his company’s board, replete with a salary of $450,000.
While Oracle has signed multiple lucrative contracts with the Israeli national security state, Ellison himself has personally bankrolled the Israeli Defense Forces, giving tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF, an organization that purchases equipment for the Israeli military. This included a $16.6 million pledge (the largest single donation the group has received) to build a new training facility for soldiers defending what he called “our home.” As Ellison explained:
In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.
Oracle sees itself as an activist organization, one whose goal is the advancement of the Israeli colonization project. Safra Catz, the company’s Israeli-American CEO, bluntly explained that any employees uncomfortable with supporting a genocide should simply quit. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:
This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.
For a deep dive into Oracle and its connections to both U.S. and Israeli power, read the MintPress News investigation, “Openly Pro-Israel Tech Group Now Has Control over UK’s Most Sensitive National Security Data.”
CBS’s New Censor
Thus, the news that the son of the world’s second-richest man – one with such close connections to U.S. and Israeli state power – is purchasing one of America’s most influential news outlets should already worry anyone who cares about a free and independent press.
However, the news that the Ellisons are planning to buy out Bari Weiss’ publication, The Free Press, and give her control over the newsroom at CBS is even more startling. As part of the package to rubber-stamp the deal, Skydance had promised to hire Weiss as an ombudsman to address political bias and stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.
Weiss is a highly controversial figure in the media world, known primarily for her stridently pro-Israel views and for attempts to popularize reactionary, anti-woke thinkers and opinions into the American mainstream. Her positions on the Middle East appear to have landed her the job. As The Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Weiss will be a “key voice” at CBS News, with one insider source telling The New York Times that she will have “an influential role in shaping the editorial sensibilities” at the outlet.
The news of what some fear will amount to a pro-Israel censor mirrors recent events at TikTok. The social media giant has recently hired former IDF soldier and Israel lobbyist, Erica Mindel, to oversee its online hate speech policy, with particular regard to antisemitism.
Mindel is far from the first former Israeli official parachuted into a position of power at the company, however. A MintPress News investigation revealed that in November 2023, TikTok hired Reut Medalion, a former Israeli intelligence commander, as its global incident manager. Considering what Israel was doing at that time in Gaza, it is fair to wonder what sorts of “global incidents” the ex-spy was working on.
These moves appear to be attempts to placate the Trump administration, which banned TikTok in no small part due to the effect viral videos of Israeli war crimes were having on public support for Palestine. Trump himself tried to force through a sale of TikTok to an American buyer. His close friend, Larry Ellison, was his preferred candidate. “I’d like Larry to buy it,” he said.
Bari Weiss’s Long, Controversial Career
Weiss first came to notoriety while still in college, where she founded an organization that accused Muslim and Arab professors of anti-Jewish racism, attempting to have them fired. Chief among these was renowned Jordanian scholar Joseph Massad, whom Weiss accused of intimidating her and other pro-Israel students during classes. The attempt failed, but it put Weiss’ name on the map. After finishing college, she secured prestigious jobs in Israeli media and managed to parlay those into columnist positions at The Wall Street Journal and, later, The New York Times.
It was at The Times where Weiss introduced reactionary academics to a broader, liberal audience. In an influential article entitled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” she profiled a number of individuals, including Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Douglas Murray, and Bret Weinstein, all of whom have pushed conservative or even far-right ideas, and nearly all of whom have been passionate supporters of Israel’s actions in Gaza and beyond.
In 2020, however, she spectacularly left her New York Times sinecure, claiming that the organization was an echo chamber of leftist views. The following year, she started a Substack blog that would later be renamed “The Free Press.”
Since its beginnings, journalist Branko Marcetic has noted, The Free Press has been among the loudest supporters of Israeli actions, spreading what he calls “insidious propaganda” and “outright disinformation.”
In 2021, Weiss defended the slaughter of over 50 Palestinian civilians, including children, as “Zionism’s dream turned into the reality of self-determination,” by a state “surrounded by enemies making hard decisions about how to protect its citizens.” She had previously blamed rising antisemitism in Europe on Muslim immigration.
In May 2024, The Free Press falsely reported that the United Nations had “admitted” that Gaza’s civilian death toll was vastly lower than previously claimed. It wrote that mass starvation is “pro-Hamas propaganda,” despite even President Trump acknowledging the reality. And it claimed that an Israeli massacre of Palestinian aid seekers did not happen.
It has also repeatedly attempted to shield Israel from blame over its attacks on health centers, claiming that Hamas itself might have destroyed the al-Ahli Hospital. Yet Weiss herself appeared to justify attacks on other Gaza clinics.
“Every Palestinian knows [the al-Shifa hospital] is full of [armed militants], but nobody can talk,” she wrote on Twitter, referencing a Free Press interview purporting to be with an anonymous Gaza resident.
“Every Palestinian knows Shifa is full of them, but nobody can talk.” https://t.co/9EUmUq6Yxs
It is even possible that Weiss’s actions resulted in deaths. In October 2023, Weiss singled out a joke from Gazan writer and educator Refaat Alareer made in response to the outlandish (and debunked) claim that Palestinian militants had burned an Israeli baby alive during the October 7 attacks.
“Here is Refaat Alareer joking about whether or not an Israeli baby, burned alive in an oven, was cooked ‘with or without baking powder,’” Weiss wrote.
Alareer was subject to a torrent of abuse and stated that Weiss’s words had put a target on his back. “If I get killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss,” he said, adding, “Many maniacal Israeli soldiers already bombing Gaza take these lies and smears seriously and act upon them.” Barely one month later, Alareer was assassinated in a deliberate Israeli airstrike.
Another target in Weiss’s sights is Wikipedia. Since the online encyclopedia labeled the pro-Israel pressure group the Anti-Defamation League as an unreliable source, The Free Press has been on a campaign against it. Calling it a “propaganda site,” The Free Press has joined forces with Trump’s Department of Justice to remove Wikipedia’s nonprofit status to pressure it into becoming more pro-Israel.
“Bari could not have chosen a more Orwellian term for her authoritarian news outlet taking a wrecking ball to Western institutions on behalf of Israel,” wrote journalist Ryan Grim.
The Free Press certainly has many powerful backers, having drawn investment from venture capitalists such as Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, as well as from former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Yet the price being quoted to Skydance for the sale of what remains little more than a Substack blog is remarkable: between $200 million and $250 million. For context, in 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for The Washington Post, one of the world’s most widely read and most influential news outlets.
Major Changes at CBS
While Weiss’s mission at CBS News appears straightforward, the organization is far from a hotbed of pro-Palestine sentiment. The network repeated highly dubious Anti-Defamation League claims of a supposed wave of antisemitism sweeping across America, and constantlyusesIsraeli talkingpoints, such as adding the label “Hamas-run” when describing the Gaza Health Ministry.
A MintPress News investigation found that it has also hired a myriad of former Israeli soldiers and lobbyists to produce its news. Gili Malinsky, for example, was a commander in the IDF’s public relations department, leading a unit dedicated to communicating the Israeli military’s story with the outside world. She also worked at the Friends of the IDF before accepting a job as a staff writer at CBS.
Malinsky is not alone. Erica Scott, CBS News’ editorial producer, was formerly the Anti-Defamation League’s media and communications specialist. Betsy Shuller, another CBS News producer, previously worked as a public relations associate at Hillel International, a pro-Israel group.
Nevertheless, it appears that placating Trump by promising a more right-wing editorial line was part of the deal to secure the administration’s approval of the gigantic media acquisition. In addition to Weiss, Skydance has vowed to end all DEI policies at the company. Furthermore, it agreed to pay Trump a $16 million settlement regarding a defamation lawsuit he launched last October against its flagship news and politics show, “60 Minutes.” Many have seen this action as little more than a payoff. Liberal comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert described the move as a “big fat bribe.” Just days afterward, Paramount announced it was canceling Colbert’s long-running CBS show.
Others have chosen to jump before they were pushed. Citing a loss of journalistic independence, “60 Minutes” editor Bill Owens stepped down in April. More recently, CBS News chief, Wendy McMahon, left, citing an impossible work environment and a changing political outlook.
“Resistance” Media Embrace MAGA
The Ellison CBS acquisition reflects broader developments in a rapidly changing U.S. media ecosystem, as the Trump administration’s hardline tactics prompt the press to bow to its demands. Earlier this year, CNN executives announced they would shift their political outlook from pro-Democrat to more centrist, explicitly instructing their employees not to criticize Trump. In January, the network’s CEO, Mark Thompson, held multiple meetings with editors, instructing them to be “fair-minded” with Trump and not to “pre-judge” his second term in office. Anchors were also told not to “express outrage” during Trump’s inauguration. Several key CNN faces, including anchor Jim Acosta (who lost his White House press credentials after a spat with Trump), left the network.
MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, often seen as the faces of the Democratic “resistance” to Trump during his first term in office, publicly stated that they were changing their editorial stance towards the president. “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,” Brzezinski explained to their viewers. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” she added, revealing that the pair had traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the incoming president personally.
Other networks that have not adapted have perished. Earlier this week, the Trump administration cut its funding to NPR and PBS, with both networks facing closure in the near future. A similar Trump power play also led to the shutdown of Voice of America, only for it to be reborn in June under different leadership and a new political outlook.
Likewise, social media has gone through a similar transformation. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platforms (Facebook and Instagram) would be “prioritizing free speech,” and would move their content moderation operations from California to Texas, where there is less concern about “the bias of our teams.”
He also noted that former U.K. Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was being replaced as the company’s President of Global Affairs by Trump loyalist and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan. Close Trump confidant Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, was appointed to Meta’s board of directors, a move that was almost universallyseen as a very public bending of the knee to the MAGA movement.
Facebook’s transformation into a more overtly right-wing platform mirrors that of Twitter, which was acquired in 2022 by Elon Musk, a top Trump supporter and unofficial cabinet member. Musk’s moves, including openly encouraging far-right and other racist sentiment on the platform, led to millions of liberal users leaving it, migrating to smaller sites, such as Bluesky or Mastodon.
TikTok, meanwhile, despite hiring State Department officials and Israeli spies and soldiers to run its internal affairs, continues to be in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
Ultimately, the news that the son of the world’s second-richest billionaire is hiring such a zealously pro-Israel provocateur – one who has built a career advancing dubious narratives and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment–to help steer one of the country’s most influential newsrooms should raise serious concerns for anyone who values independent journalism.
The CBS News/Bari Weiss saga underscores the twin threats of oligarchic media control and the expanding influence of pro-Israel lobbying on public discourse. It marks a troubling point in the broader decline of journalistic independence in the U.S., as state-aligned interests work to suppress dissent and sustain support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In a remarkable development, Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counter-Terrorism (NCTV) has designated the Zionist entity a “state threat”. The agency’s annual assessment of “threat actors” for 2025 takes damning aim at malign “attempts to influence Dutch politics and society” by the Israeli government and its local lobbying apparatus. It’s the first time a Western intelligence service has acknowledged the grave hazard posed by Tel Aviv’s global Hasbara network. Will others now follow NCTV’s lead?
The agency’s report focuses on Israel’s “attempts to influence political and public opinion” around the riots that engulfed Amsterdam in November 2024, prior to a UEFA Europa League football match between Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch club AFC Ajax. Initially, local and international media, and politicians, condemned the clashes as unprovoked attacks on Israelis and Jews. The city’s mayor Femke Halsema described the incident as evocative of “Nazi pogroms”. Benjamin Netanyahu similarly likened the violence to Kristallnacht.
Rapidly however, it became clear that thuggish, far-right Maccabi supporters had purposefully sought to cause maximum mayhem. Upon entering Amsterdam, they tore down Palestinian flags flying from private homes, chanted repulsive slogans such as “death to Arabs”, assaulted Muslim residents of the city – including women – and vandalised state and public property. Despite CCTV footage of these incidents being mysteriously erased, and Western media deliberately concealing the crimes of Israeli fans, public figures who’d initially shrieked “antisemitism” over the upheaval were forced to issue embarrassing retractions.
Maccabi Tel Aviv ultras prepare for trouble
The NCTV report states the Zionist entity’s mephitic influence in the Netherlands is “illustrated” by Tel Aviv’s manipulative, deceitful shaping of media and political narratives around the Amsterdam riots. Almost instantly upon their eruption, the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora and Countering Antisemitism circulated a report “directly to specific politicians and journalists.” It libelously claimed the unrest was instigated by individuals and organisations possessed of antisemitic animus, supportive of Hamas. The initial impact was grave.
Among the recipients were Dutch lawmakers who attended a parliamentary session discussing the riots. There, one MP proposed a motion to designate Netherlands entities listed in the report as terrorist organisations, and sanction them accordingly. Fortunately, this didn’t come to pass, but individuals named by Israeli authorities – including prominent peace activists – have received death threats. Accordingly, NCTV’s assessment notes:
“The Dutch Ministers of Justice and Security and Foreign Affairs deemed the distribution method unusual and, due to the potential negative consequences for Dutch citizens, undesirable. For example, the individuals mentioned could be intimidated or threatened, or in the most serious cases, attacked.”
Perception management around the November 2024 Amsterdam riots is relatively small fry. Yet, NCTV’s appraisal remains seismic. It follows Dutch authorities – historically highly sympathetic to Tel Aviv – leading calls for the EU to review its relationship with Israel and investigate abuses committed during the Gaza genocide, while banning Netanyahu’s ministers from entering their territory. Given Amsterdam’s centrality to Israel’s pan-European influence nexus, NCTV labelling the entity a “state threat” could kickstart the unravelling of a ruthless Zionist conspiracy menacing the entire continent.
‘Common Tactics’
Over decades, the Dutch Israeli lobby – spanning NGOs and faith organisations, and many media outlets, ‘think tanks’ and political parties that amplify them – has systematically sought to create a hostile environment for Palestine solidarity in the Netherlands. Along the way, intimidation tactics including defamation campaigns, vexatious lawfare, and physical threats have been widely deployed to devastating effect against dissenting citizens, academics, journalists, politicians, and rights groups. Countless careers, livelihoods and reputations have been threatened if not destroyed in the process.
Palestine solidarity protesters in Amsterdam
The Netherlands is far from an isolated case in this regard, but it is a country of enormous geopolitical significance to Tel Aviv, which has long-served as a key nucleus for the entity’s lobbying efforts across Europe and beyond. Amsterdam is home to a large number of powerful EU, NATO, and UN institutions, and a ‘friendly’ political environment locally grants Israel potential access to and leverage over them all. This includes the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.
The NCTV assessment notes “international institutions present in the Netherlands” are “well-known targets of state interference” by the Zionist entity and its Anglo-American puppetmasters. When Amsterdam “provides information to such institutions”, it can subsequently “[reach] state actors through clandestine channels.” As such, it is unsurprising Tel Aviv seeks to comprehensively neutralise any and all neighbourhood opposition. A 2021 report by the European Legal Support Center documents in stark detail standard strategies deployed by Dutch lobby entities to stifle criticism of Israeli actions, and Palestine solidarity.
ELSC found between 2015 – 2020, almost 60 Dutch organizations and groups, and 23 individuals, ended up in the Israel lobby’s crosshairs. Nine “common tactics” to “silence Palestinian rights advocates in the Netherlands” were identified, the most prevalent being “smear campaigns”. This typically takes the form of “inflammatory and unfounded allegations of antisemitism or support of terrorism.” Government ministers have been victims. Attempts to defund Palestine solidarity organisations, via “pressure” applied to their donors, or deny them use of public spaces for events, are similarly routine.
ELSC also identified mercifully isolated, but nonetheless deeply disquieting, incidents of individuals being targeted via criminal means. For example, in March 2018, Dutch-Palestinian Ismail Ziada launched landmark legal action against high-ranking Israeli military officers for the murder of his family members in Gaza four years earlier. The case received global media attention. Less well-reported was Ziada subsequently discovering the brake cable of his family car had been slashed, while the vehicle was parked outside their home. Local police investigated, but no perpetrator was ever found.
Meanwhile, a longtime Dutch anti-apartheid and Palestine solidarity activist received a flurry of death threats, before falling victim to a series of cyberattacks. First, her email was hacked, “and hundreds of false mails” sent to her contacts using her address. Subsequently, her Facebook and LinkedIn accounts were broken into. While Netherlands authorities opened a formal investigation, they claimed to lack resources for tracing the culprits. Again, the crimes remain unsolved – although considering the Zionist entity’s cyberwarfare mastery, the trail could well lead back to Israel.
‘At Odds’
ELSC found the Netherlands-based Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) was behind a staggering 60% of the attacks on Dutch Palestine solidarity it documented. However, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Zionist Occupation Force-linked, Tel Aviv-based NGO Monitor also played significant roles. The latter has an extensive, deplorable history of perpetuating slanderous allegations against all Western organisations – including mainstream darlings Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – remotely critical of Israel, and demanding they be defunded by state authorities, if not outright shuttered.
Dutch officials are well-aware of NGO Monitor’s lack of credibility. In January 2020, then-Foreign Minister Stef Blok responded to a parliamentary question by citing research by Policy Working Group – an organisation led by former Israeli diplomats – which found NGO Monitor’s “accusations are based on selective citations, half-facts and insinuations.” These false charges were said to contribute “to a climate in which human rights organisations have come under increasing pressure.” Blok added, “NGO Monitor…focuses exclusively on organisations and donors who are critical of Israeli policy.”
Despite this high-level cognisance, later that year NGO Monitor and fellow Zionist lobby agitator UK Lawyers for Israel successfully pressured Amsterdam to cease funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. Founded in 1986, the organisation helps Palestinian farmers in Gaza and the West Bank to cultivate and retain their land, market produce locally and internationally, and develop water infrastructure. The Netherlands was among many overseas donors, which had contributed to UAWC’s activities for decades.
The Union is an aggravating barrier to the Zionist entity’s rapacious, illegal settlement expansion, so has since inception been in Tel Aviv’s firing line. For years, allegations UAWC is somehow tied to proscribed militant groups have widely-proliferated via a rogue’s gallery of Israeli lobby elements, a well-honed manoeuvre that has cut off access to online payment platforms and other financing sources for multiple Palestinian advocacy groups globally. CIDI, NGO Monitor, and UKLFI pulled this precise stunt in the Netherlands, with ruinous impact.
In July 2020, the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry announced it was freezing a $1 million grant to UAWC, pending a review that would likely “take several months”. A year-and-a-half later, Amsterdam permanently ended all funding for the Union. In the meantime, UAWC’s operations were severely disrupted, with hundreds of employees laid off, scores of farmers left unable to perform basic duties, and vast swaths of Palestinian land under threat of confiscation by Zionist authorities and settlers.
UAWC members display a sign: “[We] will remain a staunch defender and faithful protector of our land, our farmers, our fishermen, and their rights, and will not retreat.”
Given authorities in the Netherlands had no doubts NGO Monitor couldn’t be trusted, it begs the obvious question of why the government caved to the organisation’s demands. An obvious answer is certain lobby-influenced officials in Amsterdam wanted a pretext to end UAWC’s funding on Tel Aviv’s behalf, and NGO Monitor et al handily provided cover. An identical story played out in Britain in respect of Palestine Action, a civil disobedience movement proscribed as a terrorist group by London on July 1st.
Ever since PA’s 2020 founding, British authorities had clandestinely been in close contact with Elbit Systems – a major Israeli weapons manufacturer PA targeted for destruction – and Tel Aviv’s London embassy about the group’s wrecking campaign, which was severely damaging Elbit’s profits and public image. In secret meetings, British officials lamented PA did not “meet the threshold for proscription” as a terrorist group under British law. The group’s recent ban was avowedly inspired by “research” provided by local Zionist lobby group WeBelieve In Israel.
The proscription has been condemned as “at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law” by the UN’s human rights chief, internal documents indicate British officials and security services struggled to identify any legal grounds whatsoever to ban the group, and a judicial review of the move is ongoing. London has seemingly not caught up to the fact that a worldwide majority consider Israel to be the true threat – as NCTV, and by extension the Dutch government, has now finally acknowledged.
Staša is a widely published author and analyst focusing on West Asia and Europe who has provided in-depth analysis of the region’s most pertinent issues for various think tanks and media outlets, including Al Jazeera Center for Studies, Middle East Monitor, The New Arab, Gulf News, Qatar Today, Qantara, Inside Arabia and others. Staša focuses primarily on Persian Gulf affairs, trade and political relations, the oil and gas sector, terrorism, and the defense industry. He graduated from the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Social Science (International Relations) where he received the prestigious Klinar’s prize from his Faculty, and has worked on numerous humanitarian projects in post-war Balkans with his research appearing in Slovenian expert publications.
After the Ansarallah-aligned Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) announced that it would resume attacks on merchant ships linked to companies operating with Israeli ports, tensions in the Red Sea and beyond have reignited, as Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in Gaza fuels instability across West Asia.
As part of the fourth phase of the blockade, the Yemeni army sank two commercial vessels earlier this month, showcasing not only its enduring capabilities but also the failure of US-led strikes to curb its maritime campaign.
On 6 May, US President Donald Trump claimed, “The Houthis have declared they no longer want to fight. They simply don’t want to fight anymore. And we will honor that. We will stop the bombings, and they have surrendered.”
Yemeni officials immediately dismissed the claim, reiterating that Sanaa had not negotiated with Washington nor agreed to halt operations in support of Gaza. The Sanaa government’s naval campaign resumed soon after, with fresh attacks targeting Israeli-linked vessels – undermining Trump’s attempt to declare victory.
New red lines in the Red Sea
In a statement on Sunday, explaining the latest phase of the naval operations, YAF spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said:
“This escalation includes targeting all ships belonging to any company that deals with Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality and wherever they may be, within our forces’ reach. We warn all companies to cease their dealings with Israeli ports, starting the hour this statement is issued.”
The new escalation comes just several weeks after the sinking of two Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carriers – the Magic Seas and the Eternity C. In the latter attack, four sailors were killed and two others wounded, while 11 other crew members were taken captive. Following the sinking of the two ships, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi revealed that the YAF had carried out over 1,679 attacks since November 2023 using missiles, drones, and warships in support of Gaza, warning of further escalation if the war does not end.
Although the Sanaa government agreed in May to a ceasefire with Washington, halting attacks on US warships, it maintains that this truce does not apply to vessels linked to the occupation state. These ships, Sanaa argues, continue to serve Israeli ports, part of “occupied Palestine.”
Contrary to western media narratives of indiscriminate aggression, maritime data from Lloyd’s List confirmed that both targeted vessels had routinely docked in Israeli ports over the past year.
The ongoing attacks have prompted international concern. The UN Security Council recently approved continued reporting on Red Sea maritime assaults. Twelve members of the 15-member council voted in favor, while Russia, China, and Algeria abstained over concerns about breaches of Yemen’s sovereignty.
China’s deputy UN Ambassador Geng Shuang called tensions in the Red Sea “a major manifestation of the spillover from the Gaza conflict.” At the same time, the Russian UN representative also stressed the link between normalizing the situation in the Red Sea and the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Challenging naval supremacy
Despite the presence of five major foreign military bases in Djibouti – home to US, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian forces – the Ansarallah-aligned army has continued to strike commercial vessels with precision. This raises uncomfortable questions about western and allied naval efficacy.
Speaking to The Cradle, Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center, Colin P. Clarke – who also teaches at Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Politics and Strategy – says Yemen ranks among the most potent forces within the Axis of Resistance and shows no sign of retreat:
“Out of all the ‘Axis’ proxies, the Houthis are among the most potent and also have a lot to prove. I don’t expect them to wind down their military campaign at any point soon.”
Nicholas Brumfield, a Washington-based analyst on Yemen and maritime security, concurs. He tells The Cradle that Yemen’s campaign has remained largely undiminished despite nearly two years of US and Israeli airstrikes:
“The Houthi attacks since early July have thus far been limited to areas of the Red Sea where they have attacked before, so it’s unclear if there’s been any increase in their range. As for Trump’s claims of capitulation, that was always viewed by most researchers focused on Yemen as a bit of hot air. The US–Houthi ceasefire was a limited de-escalation between two parties, and the Houthis have more or less been continuing what they were doing before the truce in terms of attacking Israel directly.”
Clarke adds that Trump’s reluctance to escalate against Yemen stemmed from electoral optics and strategic caution against bogging the US down in “endless wars,” which is one of the reasons why the US involvement in bombing Iran was so circumscribed. “Trump believes, perhaps correctly so, that it would be extremely difficult to engage with the Houthis without being sucked into a quagmire from which it would be difficult to escape from. And the results would be hard to measure.”
According to Mohamed Aliriani of the Yemen Policy Center, the May ceasefire secured safe passage for US, UK, Chinese, and Russian vessels – thanks to the latter two’s ties with Iran. But ships from other nations remain exposed. European-led operations, he argues, are largely ineffectual in safeguarding their cargoes.
Aliriani tells The Cradle that “the current situation has created a two-tiered, protectionist system that benefits powerful states while driving up global insurance and shipping costs, setting a dangerous precedent for other strategic chokepoints.”
Persistently high insurance premiums reflect the enduring risk. “Had the threat been perceived as eliminated, traffic would have resumed, and rates would have dropped,” he explains. The Yemeni army’s targeting of oil and chemical carriers has introduced environmental and financial perils that keep insurers wary.
Redefining control at sea
These facts point to a stark reality: The Ansarallah-led naval campaign has largely succeeded in imposing an effective blockade on Israeli-linked maritime traffic.
Still, Aliriani cautions against overstating the extent of Sanaa’s control. “The Houthis do not exercise Sea Control over the Red Sea, as they lack a surface fleet capable of patrolling and commanding the waterways. What they have successfully achieved is Area Denial.” By demonstrating a credible capability to hold any vessel transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait at risk, they have made passage through this critical chokepoint prohibitively dangerous for any vessel:
“Their strike range has proven to extend for hundreds of kilometers and given the information available about the weapons used, range likely exceeds 1,000 kilometers, effectively denying the use of a vast area without needing to control it physically.”
Independent force, not Iranian proxy
Western narratives often depict Ansarallah as mere Iranian proxies. Yet, there is scant evidence that Tehran directed these maritime attacks.
Brumfield points out that while Iran continues to supply advanced weaponry to its ally – as evidenced by a 750-ton arms shipment intercepted en route to Yemen – there is no indication of Iranian command over Ansarallah operations.
Former UN envoy to Yemen Jamal Benomar has consistently emphasized Sanaa’s autonomous decision-making, noting that they “have their own agendas and decision-making mechanisms.”
Palestine remains the compass
The timing of recent Yemeni operations suggests a clear link to developments in Gaza. Brumfield observes that Sanaa was notably quiet during last month’s 12-day war between Iran and Israel, only to escalate following reports of worsening conditions in the besieged enclave:
“When there was a ceasefire in Gaza, the Houthis completely stopped their maritime attacks. Recent reports of deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza may have contributed to the group’s decision to re-escalate in this file.”
While some analysts suggest that Ansarallah’s pro-Palestinian rhetoric is a political maneuver to boost legitimacy amid domestic challenges, Benomar insists their stance on Palestine is ideologically embedded. “They’re not just being opportunistic as Palestine is a core part of their ideology.”
Although Tel Aviv has urged Washington to relaunch strikes on Yemen, most experts, including Aliriani, believe the US is unlikely to escalate unless the Ansarallah-allied military crosses a significant red line. So far, the YAF has targeted only vessels tied to Israeli trade.
However, Ansarallah’s recent decision to strike all ships linked to Israeli ports, regardless of nationality, may drag new actors – such as Egypt – into the fray. Cairo’s deepening logistical ties to Israeli trade may soon make it a target of Yemen’s expanding campaign.
“The Houthis” may not control the seas, but they have undeniably changed the rules of engagement.
It’s no wonder Washington is all in. This is now the Circus Ringmaster War.
Let’s cut to the chase. The devastating attack on Iran by the psychopathological genocidal “chosen” ethno-supremacist set up in Tel Aviv – a de facto declaration of war – was coordinated in detail with the President of the United States, Circus Ringmaster Donald Trump.
This infantilism-afflicted Narcissus Drowned in the Pool of his Own Image gave away the game, himself, in a rambling post. Selected highlights:
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal”. No “deal”; actually his unilateral demands. After all, he torpedoed the original deal, the JCPOA, because it was not his “deal”.
“I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.” The decision to strike had already been made.
“Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but (…) they are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” Gloating comes with the territory.
“The next already planned attacks being even more brutal.” Total alignment with the trademark Israeli “decapitation” strategy.
“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire”. It was Persian (italics mine) Empire – but after all this is a man who doesn’t read, or study. Notice the Art of Diplomacy: Take my deal, or drop dead.
This – incandescent – decade was launched by an assassination, of Gen. Soleimani in Baghdad, as I emphasized in my 2021 book Raging Twenties. He was on a diplomatic mission. The green light personally came from then President of the United States, Donald Trump.
The mid-Raging Twenties is now hurled to the brink of a devastating war in West Asia, with global repercussions, by the serial assassination of the IRGC leadership, in Tehran, by the psycho-genocidal Zionist entity. After an elaborate kabuki of deception, the green light to Tel Aviv – go ahead and do it – also came from the President of the United States, Trump 2.0 (who claimed he was “aware’’ of the attacks).
A pre-emptive war against the BRICS
The psycho-pathological genocidal masterplan is to force Tehran to capitulate – without even putting up a fight. The preamble kabuki was masterfully executed. The indirect nuclear negotiations in Oman were taken seriously in Tehran, lulling the Iranian leadership, civilian and military, to sleep. They fell into the trap and were caught, literally, in their sleep.
Ayatollah Khamenei – who himself is in physical danger, as Israel is applying the same decapitation model it unleashed on Hezbollah – has a very tough decision to make: capitulation or total war. It will be total war – and with the U.S. as a direct participant.
The Iranian leadership – actually more the Pezeshkian presidency, crammed with proponents of an “accommodation” with the West – was induced into a false sense of security, forgetting that serial killers don’t do diplomacy.
So the price to pay now, for Iran, will be even more unbearable. Tehran will respond – assuming capabilities are still in place. In this case its oil industry runs the risk of being destroyed. It’s an open question whether two other top BRICS members alongside Iran – Russia and China -, for different reasons, will allow that to happen.
And were we about to enter this particular dangerous territory, Iran can play the ultimate card: shut down the Strait of Hormuz and collapse the global economy.
The attack on Iran, fully endorsed by the Empire of Chaos, is above all a pre-emptive attack on the BRICS energy core. It’s part and parcel of the imperial war against BRICS, especially Russia-China. Moscow and Beijing must be drawing the necessary conclusions in real time.
Iran, China and Russia are linked by interlocked strategic partnerships. Last month, I was in Iran tracking the progress of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links Russia, Iran and India. This is only one among a series of key strategic infrastructure projects that will solidify even more Eurasian economic connectivity. A devastating war in West Asia, and a collapsing Iran, will represent a killer blow to increased Eurasia integration.
That’s exactly what suits the Empire’s designs.
So it’s no wonder Washington is all in. This is now the Circus Ringmaster War.
A devastating response; a nuclear weapon; or capitulation
Tehran’s message is, “We did not start the war, but Iran will determine how it ends.”
The burning question is whether they still retain a significant deterrent – and offensive – capacity.
The genocidals are hitting ballistic missile storage systems at will in Iran’s northwest and even civilian Mehrabad airport in Tehran. Air defenses are nowhere to be seen. It’s immensely painful to watch.
IDF spin – nothing verified so far – claims that some missile silos and mobile complexes were destroyed even before they were placed on combat alert. Yet the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Iran’s vast arsenal of ballistic missiles is stored in deep, deep underground silos and tunnels, capable of withstanding massive air strikes and overloaded air defenses.
For the moment, Tehran is eerily silent. That makes sense, because they need, in record time, to re-establish a unified chain of command which was smashed by the attacks; make sure that missile launchers can be deployed and not be neutralized by Israeli air supremacy; reorganize the True Promise 3 operation, which was ready to go, as some of us learned in Tehran last month, but now adapted to the new situation (losses included); and plan how to deliver painful blows to Israel’s economic infrastructure.
There is no evidence that the attacks destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – which is buried deep underground. As it stands, the leadership in Tehran is learning the hard way that diplomacy – committees, letters to the UN, statements to the IAEA, ministerial meetings – all that is eviscerated when it comes to the law of the jungle.
Iranians were naïve enough to let the IAEA visit their strategic sites, when proverbial spies collected all the info they needed to facilitate Israeli strikes. The DPRK would have never fall into such a trap.
The elimination of a top figure such as Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s key advisor, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, with decades of influence across the IRGC and intelligence apparatus, is a serious blow.
Systematically erasing Iran’s military and diplomatic leadership in a matter of hours fits the rationale of smashing Khamenei’s close circle. That has started long ago with the Trump-ordered killing of Soleimani and certainly includes the mysterious death of former President Raisi and FM Abdollahian in that dodgy helicopter “accident”. It’s all about creating the conditions for regime change.
On a rare auspicious note, the IRGC let it be known, before the attacks, that they have been developing a secret technology to intensify the impact of its missiles on Israel.
We are all riders on the storm now. Once again, there’s no way out: either a devastating blow to the psycho genocidals, or Iran assembles a nuclear weapon in no time. The third option is capitulation, emasculation, and regime change.
Meanwhile, the whole planet is hostage to a lethal threat. Andrea Zhok is professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Milan, and apart from his brilliant analyses, he wrote the preface of the Italian edition of my book Raging Twenties, published last year.
Prof. Zhok has succinctly pointed out how no political construction in modern history has amassed a toxic combination of messianic ethnic supremacism; supreme disregard for human life (everyone else, not “chosen”, is “amalek” anyway); supreme disregard for international law; and unlimited access to lethal firepower.
So what is to be done with such a voracious, out of control death cult?
Gaza’s youngest social media influencer has been killed by Israeli forces after touching tens of thousands of lives with her stories of survival in the besieged Palestinian territory. Her name was Yaqeen Hammad. She was 11 years old.
Israeli forces fired upon starving civilians in Gaza on Tuesday when they rushed inside a facility holding aid, reportedly killing three and wounding dozens more. The facility was operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the latest US-Israeli scheme to bypass normal UN aid distribution and lure Gaza’s population into specific concentrated locations.
A new report from the Associated Press confirms that Israeli forces have been using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza as a matter of policy. This is actually using human shields in the very real sense of deliberately forcing civilians between yourself and potential enemy fire, not in the fake sense of being somewhere near civilians as per the made-up “human shields” narrative that Israel uses to blame its daily massacres on Hamas.
A survey of Jewish Israelis conducted by an Israeli polling firm has found that 82 percent of respondents support the total ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and 47 percent believe Israeli forces should kill every man, woman and child in every city they capture there.
Haaretz reports on the poll’s findings:
“Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today.”
These are just a few reports from the past few days, on top of all the other staggeringly evil things that Israel has been doing this whole time.
If this is Israel, then Israel should not exist. If what we are seeing in Gaza is what it means for Israel to exist, then it shouldn’t.
People scream bloody murder when you say this, but it shouldn’t be a controversial position. I’m not saying Jews shouldn’t exist, I’m saying a genocidal apartheid state should not exist. A state is an artificial construct of the human mind, held together by human actions. If the actions we are witnessing in Gaza are the product of the artificial construct of the Israeli state, then that artificial construct should be dismantled, and those actions should cease.
I would say this about any other man-made construct that is doing the things Israel is doing. If some scientists built a robot that spends all day every day massacring children, then I would say the robot should be unmade. If you drew a Star of David on the robot’s head, it wouldn’t suddenly make me an evil antisemite to say that the child-murdering robot should be dismantled.
Dismantling the apartheid state of Israel would mean granting everyone citizenship and equal rights, allowing right of return, denazifying apartheid culture, paying extensive reparations, and righting the wrongs of the past. You could still call what remains “Israel” if you wanted to, but it would be nothing like the state that presently exists under that name.
Would this upset the feelings of some Jewish people? Yes. Would it inconvenience the lives of some Jewish people? Certainly. But that would be infinitely preferable to the daily massacres, genocidal atrocities and reckless regional warmongering we are witnessing from the state of Israel. Advocating the end of this genocidal state doesn’t make someone a monster, advocating its continuation does. The only way to believe otherwise is to take it as a given that Palestinian lives are worth less than Jewish feelings.
Israel is currently presenting nonstop arguments for its own cessation. Every video that comes out showing Israelis acting in monstrous ways and innocent Palestinians being murdered, tortured and abused in the most horrific ways imaginable is an argument for which there is no verbal counter-argument. Every day that goes by, the genocidal apartheid state of Israel is proving to the world that it should not exist.
After Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Ahmad al-Sharaa), self-declared president of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led authority in Syria, shook hands with US President Donald Trump in Riyadh on 14 May, a storm of questions erupted over the future of the extremist Islamist coalition he commands.
Among the five conditions Trump presented for lifting sanctions was the removal of foreign militants from Syria. This demand carries the potential to challenge Julani’s leadership within the militant ranks.
This, however, is not Julani’s first test. His strategic pivot from Al-Qaeda and ISIS militancy to ‘moderate’ Islamism – under the tutelage of Turkish, American, and British intelligence – has already fractured Salafist extremist cohesion.
For foreign regime-change strategists, HTS’s appeal lay in its ability to form a governing structure, maintain internal discipline, and neutralize or assimilate rival factions in Idlib.
An example of this is Julani’s forcible dismantling of Hurras al-Din, formed by Al-Qaeda loyalists, which prompted western backers to proclaim, “This is our man.”
Al-Qaeda-linked outfits, including Ansar al-Tawhid, Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Din, Jaish al-Izza, and the National Liberation Front, aligned under HTS’s leadership in the Fatah al-Mubin Operations Room. They were joined by foreign fighters from the Turkistan Islamic Party (Uyghurs), Ajnad al-Kavkaz (Caucasians), Ajnad al-Sham (Chechens), Jaish al-Muhajirin wal-Ansar (Caucasians), and the Imam Bukhari Brigade (Uzbeks).
The fate of these foreign fighters in the “new Syria” has now become a central dilemma.
What made HTS palatable to western actors was Julani’s likely-scripted 2013 departure from ISIS and 2016 break with Al-Qaeda, narrowing his focus solely on Syria, targeting only the government of former president Bashar al-Assad, and redirecting foreign militants to this nationalist agenda. Critics of Trump’s condition argue that these foreign fighters had long since embraced this “near enemy” jihad and posed no external threat.
Trump’s framework – which tolerates Syrian extremist factions, excluding ISIS, while demanding the expulsion of foreign fighters – exceeds the boundaries set by the foreign intervention bloc after the 2015 fall of Idlib.
The strategic aim was to absorb these militants into the Syrian context, not repatriate or disperse them. HTS became both a bulwark and an antidote to global ‘jihadism’. Washington’s primary concern was directed at “the ISIS brand,” not the extremist Islamists controlling Idlib. Meanwhile, European governments, reluctant to take back foreign fighters, preferred paying the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to act as their jailers.
Western-Persian Gulf media narratives claiming these groups “supported the Syrian revolution,” “integrated into society,” and “pose no threat outside Syria” reflect this geopolitical calculus. Others downplay atrocities committed against Alawites, framing deportation as destabilizing.
Not like expelling Palestinians
Following former president Assad’s ouster on 8 December, Julani offered citizenship to foreign fighters to both reward their loyalty and deter defections. He granted the rank of major general or colonel to select commanders from Jordan, Egypt, Dagestan, Turkiye, East Turkestan, Tajikistan, and Albania.
These moves, while controversial, aimed to sidestep punitive measures against foreign militants. Although Damascus reportedly warned against these appointments, HTS has kept the issue ambiguous.
Deporting foreign fighters is not akin to expelling Palestinian resistance leaders. Within Salafist Islamist circles, such a move would be seen as a betrayal, risking division and violent backlash. Repatriated fighters face imprisonment or execution in their native countries.
Hence, HTS is exploring compromises: foreign extremist fighters could be sidelined from leadership roles, refrain from targeting other countries – especially Israel – and align with the new government. Those who threaten the emerging order may be quietly relocated to third countries.
In such scenarios, Turkiye remains the preferred destination, offering cover, mobility, and integration. If ISIS escapees from Mosul and Raqqa could find shelter in Turkish cities like Ankara and Bursa, then HTS-aligned factions can too.
The limits of pragmatism
Yet pragmatism has boundaries. ISIS has reemerged as a magnet for the disillusioned militants, branding Julani and HTS as apostates who betrayed Islam for political gain. On 29 May, ISIS claimed its first attack on Syria’s new government forces since the fall of Assad’s government.
In a statement, ISIS claimed it had planted an explosive device on a Syrian forces’ vehicle in the southern province of Suwayda. Given the bloodshed between HTS and ISIS since 2014, Julani’s alliance with the international coalition against ISIS is unsurprising – and perhaps essential for survival.
HTS’s display of weapons allegedly seized from ISIS in western Ghouta serves as a message to coalition backers: HTS can be your partner.
But if Julani fails to broaden government support while ISIS regains influence, HTS could be vulnerable. This requires bringing all militant factions under a unified army. Yet the HTS-led government’s Defense Minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, though claiming success after a 17 May ultimatum to fighters to dissolve their factions and integrate within the new national army, has shown little substantive progress.
The disputes between militants are less ideological than material – over positions, ranks, and control. Some groups like Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Jaish al-Izza, and the Turkiye-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) units have joined the new structure. But the scale of this integration remains opaque, with no central command established.
During the same ultimatum period, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) was rumored to have joined the new 84th Division – claims local sources denied. TIP remains crucial for Julani, even reportedly involved in his personal protection.
Beyond ISIS, other factions reject HTS’s legitimacy. Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, a hardline group invoking Ibn Taymiyya, claimed responsibility for anti-minority massacres and threatens to ignite new fronts.
Although leader Abu Aisha al-Shami remains obscure, the group accuses HTS of apostasy but has not yet directly attacked them. Their message: “The struggle for Syria’s future is not over.”
Another group, Sayf al-Bahr, has vanished after claiming multiple attacks.
Fractures
HTS faces growing opposition within Salafist-extremist circles. ISIS declared war on HTS on 12 December, while Hurras al-Din, Al-Qaeda’s sleeper cell network, dissolved itself on 28 January but called on Sunnis to retain arms against tyrants and foreign threats.
These rifts sharpened with two key events: Julani’s 13 March constitutional declaration and his Trump meeting. While critics saw betrayal, pragmatists advised patience.
But the backlash has been fierce. Salafist cleric Abu Qatada al-Filistini, though previously lenient on religious dissimulation (taqiyya), warned Julani that even minor deviation from sharia constitutes apostasy.
Jordanian ideologue Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi went further, denouncing Julani as a kafir for adopting secular laws and branding his defenders as apostates.
While Maqdisi denounced Julani as an apostate, an HTS founding member, Saudi cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Muhaysini praised the HTS leader as a ‘rare phenomenon in history’:
“He is saving his country from sanctions, lifting it from the abyss and internal wars, and raising it to stand among the great nations. He has not abandoned his brothers or his principles.“
ISIS, too, lambasted Julani as a traitor and urged foreign fighters to abandon HTS.
Amid the intra-Salafi battles, Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and swathes of southern Syria remains a low-priority issue. Yet reports have surfaced of Julani negotiating a “security pact” with Tel Aviv, facilitated by Turkiye and the UAE. Alleged joint operations against HTS hardliners in Homs suggest an internal purge aligned with normalization efforts.
Despite divergent extremist Islamist strategies, pragmatism currently outweighs radicalism due to the allure of power, statehood, and resources – and the fantasy of reviving the Umayyad caliphate.
In the context of the events held to mark the first martyrdom anniversary of its two Secretaries General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, Hezbollah held in Beirut the event of illuminating the images of the two great martyrs on Raouche Rock.
Crowds gathered hours before the start of the event and a naval show was performed with the participation of dozens of ships and boats.
Lebanon’s national flag was the first image to be displayed on the Rock.
The images of the Master of the Ummah’s Martyrs Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Martyr Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, House Speaker Nabih Berri, the late premier Rafik Hariri, and the former prime minister Saad Rafik Hariri were illuminated.
Image of Martyr Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah and House Speaker Nabih Berri
Image of Martyr Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Late PM Rafik Hariri, and Former PM Saad Hariri
Image of Martyr Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s threatening hand
On September 27, 2024, a massive Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s Dahieh claimed Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Two weeks later, Hezbollah announced its Secretary General Sayyed Hashem Safieddine in another Israeli attack on Beirut’s raid.
Resistance supporters lights Raouche Rock to honor Sayyed Nasrallah
Hezbollah illuminated Beirut’s Raouche Rock with images of martyrs Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine as crowds marked the first anniversary of their martyrdom.
Lebanese Resistance Hezbollah’s supporters lit up Beirut’s iconic Raouche Rock on Thursday evening with the images of the movement’s two fallen secretary-generals, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, remembered by supporters as the “leaders of the martyrs of the nation,” and his successor Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
According to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent, large crowds from across Lebanon gathered along the capital’s western coastline to commemorate the anniversary of their martyrdom. The annual remembrance comes nearly one year after Sayyed Nasrallah was assassinated on September 27, 2024, and just days before Sayyed Safieddine was assassinated on October 3, 2024.
Hezbollah’s Media Relations Department had earlier called for a gathering at Beirut’s Raouche area, which included a maritime display, the lighting of the Lebanese flag, and the projection of the martyrs’ images on the towering seaside landmark. The rock, a natural and touristic symbol of the capital, became the backdrop for a moment of collective remembrance.
حشود غفيرة اجتمعت في الروشة – بيروت، وما زالت تتوافد استجابةً لدعوة حزب الله في الذكرى السنوية الأولى لاستشهاد السيد #حسن_نصرالله
Crowds chanted in unison and waved flags as the illumination turned Raouche Rock into a glowing tribute.
Resistance remains steadfast
In a landmark address commemorating the first anniversary of the martyrdom of senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and his comrades in the Radwan Force, Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem reaffirmed the steadfastness of the Resistance and called on the entire region, from governments to peoples, to recognize the existential threat posed by the Israeli entity.
Sheikh Qassem began his speech by paying tribute to the martyred commander Hajj Abdul Qader, eulogizing him as a pivotal figure in the Islamic Resistance. “Martyr Abdul Qader stood against the 1982 invasion, was in charge of central training in the early 1990s, fought in the Ansariya operation, and was one of the leaders of the 2006 war,” he said.
He also recalled martyr Aqil’s participation in the Syrian front, particularly in Qusayr and Qalamoun, and highlighted his long-standing role as deputy to the Ummah’s martyr, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, since 2008. “We draw lessons from the stances of martyr Abdul Qader and recognize his great sacrifices for the liberation of land, sovereignty, and independence,” Qassem noted.
The Resistance will stand tall against all odds
He concluded with a reaffirmation of the Resistance’s path: “This Resistance will remain steadfast with its head held high, despite Israel, despite America, because it is the Resistance of martyrs, of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, of Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, of Abdul Qader, and many others.”
“The Resistance’s supporters remain firm in their commitment to its weapons because they have seen with their own eyes the fruits of liberation, deterrence, and national presence.”
“We engage in dialogue from a position of strength,” he said, adding that the Resistance’s stance is rooted in sacrifice and unwavering faith in the right to confront and expel the occupier. He emphasized that Hezbollah would accept nothing short of full liberation and is ready to face all challenges to maintain its honor and independence.
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In an exclusive interview with Al Mayadeen, Advisor to Iran’s Leader, Ali Akbar Velayati rejects European sanctions on Iran, condemns Israeli crimes in the region, and reaffirms Iran’s support for the Resistance and Muslim nations.
In an exclusive interview with Al Mayadeen during Iran’s Sacred Defense Week, Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei, addressed a wide range of pressing regional and international issues.
Velayati rejected Europe’s decision to revive nuclear sanctions on Iran, condemned the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza and attacks on Qatar, and reaffirmed Tehran’s unwavering support for the Axis of Resistance, Palestinian self-determination, and the rights of oppressed peoples across the region.
“This hostile move once again reveals the true face of the historic animosity rooted in Western colonial and hegemonic policies,” he stated.
He blasted the move as a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and a desperate attempt to hinder Iran’s scientific and defense advancements, as well as an attempt to exert pressure on the Resistance Axis.
“These measures will do nothing but deepen Europe’s isolation on the world stage. Iran, grounded in faith, science, and the unity of its people, will continue progressing at full speed,” he stressed.
Trump reminiscent of Hitler
Additionally, Velayati drew parallels between the United States under President Donald Trump and the rise of Nazi Germany, comparing Trump’s behavior to Hitler’s at the start of the Second World War.
“Trump’s behavior is reminiscent of Hitler’s actions at the start of World War II. Just as Hitler intimidated Western powers into submission in 1939, Trump has followed a similarly dangerous path: one that will not end well for him or his allies.”
Condemning “Israel’s” attack on Qatar, the top Iranian official said it represented a broader campaign that exclusively targets the Muslim world, further likening the Israeli entity’s actions to the atrocities committed during the medieval era.
“What happened in Qatar reveals the same crusader mentality, where Muslims are slaughtered simply for being Muslim. Today, a rogue entity, ejected even by followers of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him), commits unspeakable crimes against innocent civilians.”
He referenced historical accounts of the Crusades, quoting Richard the Lionheart’s notorious letter detailing the bloodshed in al-Quds, “In Jerusalem, the blood of Muslims ran up to our knees.”
Velayati asserted that modern Zionism is a radical offshoot of extremist evangelical movements, the same ideology that orchestrated the post-9/11 wars in the region. “They are the same ones who, after the attack on the World Trade Center towers, prompted Bush to declare that the crusades have returned. Later, it became clear that the same current had orchestrated the attack to provide a pretext for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
He also criticized the duplicity of Western powers, particularly the US and UK, whom he condemned for openly supporting “Israel” at the start of the attack on Qatar, only to distance themselves later when their objectives failed.
“Despite Qatar’s support for the US, Washington initially backed the aggression. After failing to eliminate Hamas’s leaders, it eased its tone. As for Britain, evidence suggests one of its refueling aircraft supported Israeli fighter jets under the guise of joint drills with Qatari forces.”
Therefore, Velayati expressed hope that the Islamic and Arab nations would learn from these experiences and acknowledge the effective achievements of the Resistance in confronting their fierce enemies. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is sincerely ready to provide all necessary support to Islamic countries in defending their sovereignty and interests,” he stressed.
Resistance strong despite all odds
As for the efforts to weaken Resistance movements in the region, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, Velayati affirmed that such conspiracies are not new and have consistently failed.
“For over four decades, I’ve witnessed Western and Zionist plots in Lebanon and Iraq. Today, the Resistance is stronger, more experienced, and more determined than ever. These new conspiracies will fail just like those before them.”
In this context, he praised the resilience of the Lebanese and Iraqi people, as well as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), stating they continue to stand firm against US and Israeli interference.
Condemnations insufficient, action needed
Velayati also explored the situation in Gaza, denouncing “Israel’s” crimes as “monstrous”, as the occupation continues burying children alive, targeting pregnant women, assassinating Palestinian elites and intellectuals, and pulverizing vital infrastructure.
“These are not just war crimes, they are acts of genocide, cultural erasure, and demographic annihilation,” he said.
Velayati stressed that condemnation alone is not enough, and outlined urgent measures the international community must take, including:
Exerting international pressure to open humanitarian crossings and break the siege on Gaza.
Establish a special international tribunal to prosecute Israeli war criminals.
Impose sweeping economic, political, and military sanctions on “Israel”.
Ensure uncensored media coverage of the crimes committed in Gaza.
Nasser Qandil: The occupation is too weak to win, and the resistance’s only steadfastness is its only resistance. Can the impasse be broken? ناصر قنديل: الاحتلال اضعف من ان ينتصر والمقاومة سقفها الثابت الصمود فهل يمكن كسر الاستعصاء؟
Lebanese revolutionary Georges Abdallah visited on Monday the shrine of Sayyed Hassan. Abdallah stated that the path of Resistance will continue its path which was paved with the blood of its martyrs. The Revolutionary icon added that the arrogant will not be successful in changing anything, no matter how loud they get.
From the capital of the Balfour Declaration to the heart of Palestinian recognition. Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission in London, marks the UK’s historic step in recognizing the state of Palestine. As the Palestinian flag is raised, this moment affirms justice, dignity, and the unbreakable truth: Palestine exists and Palestine will be free.
At UNGA 2025, Trump ignited fresh controversy: Rejecting recognition of a Palestinian state, demanding captives be freed without mentioning Gaza’s devastation, boasting about assassinations of Iranian leaders, and warning of new sanctions on Russia while blaming China, India, and even NATO allies for funding the war in Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen, MP Mohammad Raad reflects on Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s martyrdom, Hezbollah’s support for Gaza, and the Resistance’s resilience amid Israeli aggression.
In an exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, reflected on the martyrdom of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, spoke of the initial shock and the weight of responsibility that followed, how Hezbollah renewed its commitment to Palestine amid Israeli aggression, and Hezbollah’s recovery.
“The moment was indescribably shocking; it was as if we had crash-landed from space,” said Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad, describing to Al Mayadeen the moment he learned of the martyrdom of former Hezbollah Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
In an exclusive interview for #AlMayadeen, commemorating the first martyrdom anniversary of Sayyed #HassanNasrallah, Mohammad Raad, head of #Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, reflects on the moment Sayyed Hassan was martyred, describing it as a shock that threw… pic.twitter.com/z969FQtJ5p
Raad stated that for hours after the attack, the question of whether Sayyed Nasrallah had been targeted and martyred remained unresolved.
He explained that due to the late leader’s strict principle of never announcing any fate without visual confirmation, they endured a painful wait until the bitter truth was confirmed; a realization that immediately impressed upon them the immense responsibilities bequeathed to them.
Remembering martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The voice that refused to bow to tyranny. 40 days since his martyrdom, #Lebanon and the region honor not just a leader but a legacy of steadfast resistance.
The Lebanese MP continued that “the burden Sayyed Nasrallah carried was immense, as he carried the concern of a nation, and the concern of its greatest cause: Palestine. His mind was preoccupied with ensuring factions of the nation did not become distracted from their central objective. We began from the very first moment to focus on moving past grief by taking up responsibility, to then actually shouldering it.”
He recalled martyr Sayyed Nasrallah’s final speech during Ashura, in which he bid farewell to the people by saying, “Until we meet again,” which Raad interpreted as a clear farewell, sensing that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah believed they were heading “into a harsh and brutal confrontation against an enemy that would reveal its full brutality and the deep-seated hostility it holds for all of humanity.”
“We were shocked to lose him at that moment, but I said at the time that he chose the right moment to depart, because it would have been too painful for him to see tears from an oppressed, aggrieved, or persecuted person without being able to do anything about it,” he added.
Targeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah equal to targeting all of Hezbollah
The Israeli occupation intended for the martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to mark the end of Hezbollah and break the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, which had built up its achievements over decades. However, as Raad confirmed when questioned on this matter, the target was in fact the entire party, a fact he described as crystal clear.
Raad clarified that Hezbollah understood from the very beginning, following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, that the confrontation would be decisive, critical, and harsh.
He stated that this was demonstrated by “what we saw and monitored in terms of preparations, and the intelligence we gathered about developments by the enemy, their implementation of recommendations from the Winograd Committee, and the direct involvement of the colonizing West, led by the United States, in the war against the Gaza Strip and against all those who resist for the cause of Palestine.”
Despite “Israel’s” measures, Raad stressed that from a human, moral, and national perspective, Hezbollah had no choice but to engage, at the very least, in supporting and backing the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip to the best of its ability.
He explained that by providing consistent support, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon aimed to send a clear message to the world: failing to help Gaza and Palestine would have consequences for every capital in the region and expose every force that claims to support freedom but does nothing to help those actually fighting for it.
However, the issue was not limited to just the ideological or humanitarian aspect, as Raad confirmed, stating that “Hezbollah was aware that it, as a Resistance, even though it is on another front adjacent to Gaza, was a target from the very first moment the decision was made to target the resistance in Gaza.”
Supporting Gaza remains best decision
In the same context, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc emphasized that supporting Gaza was the most correct decision Hezbollah ever made, as it represents a victory for humanity, freedom, and patriotism, no matter the cost. He affirmed that the Resistance acted in complete harmony with its identity, convictions, and principles, demonstrating the highest level of commitment to the cause.
He asserted that the only people making excuses are the slothful ones and that blame rests entirely on those who are negligent and fail to support Gaza. He characterized the aggression against Gaza as “the most criminal, terrorist,” noting that it far exceeds the brutality of what is historically referred to as the holocaust.
Raad asked, “What do we say to the children of the world when they see their peers starving from a lack of milk? What do we say to the hospitals, their owners, their patients, their doctors, and their nurses? What do we say about the institutions, the cities, the buildings, the neighborhoods? Where are the signs of life that we can live with an enemy that destroys them all?”
Keeping promises to Sayyed Nasrallah motivated the Resistance
Returning to the start of the People of Might battle, Hezbollah’s MP said that the Israeli occupation had imagined this battle was going to be decisive, pointing out that to this end, thinking it might be dealing Hezbollah a knockout, “Israel” committed the Pagers Massacre, then targeted the leaders of the Radwan Force, and later targeted Sayyed Nasrallah.
Head of #Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, #MohammadRaad, reflected on nearly a year since Sayyed Hassan’s martyrdom, recalling the multiple attempts by "Israel" to "defeat" the party, from the terrorist pager massacre to the Radwan Force attacks and the… pic.twitter.com/UQ41gE9h66
Raad explained that the Israeli occupation, convinced it had delivered a knockout blow, was taken completely by surprise when Hezbollah instead demonstrated remarkable resilience and mobilized a significant military force across multiple fronts.
To prove this point, he pointed to the immediate rush of fighters to join the combat fronts against the Israeli occupation in South Lebanon following its ground incursion; a situation that necessitated the erection of checkpoints halfway to the south just to prevent them from proceeding, as the frontlines could not accommodate all of them.
The primary motivation behind this, he explained, was a commitment to the pledge made to Sayyed Nasrallah to remain steadfast on the path he had paved and on which he had ascended as a martyr.
Hezbollah’s cohesion was decisive factor
The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc affirmed that the scale of the assault endured by Hezbollah during the war with the Israeli occupation, throughout its Support Front and the People of Might battle, would typically be enough to destroy a country or defeat an army.
Raad elaborated that what kept the party together and maintained its cohesion was fundamentally driven by a doctrinal loyalty and allegiance that involves an absolute commitment to its principles and a genuine dedication to implementing them, clarifying that positive interaction with the leadership, which itself embodies these principles and constants and sets an example in their application, is paramount.
“Such a party can never be defeated; cohesion was the master of the situation… every person in the party knew their duty from the very first moment they felt the party was without a secretary-general.”
Hezbollah has recovered immensely
Raad also noted that Hezbollah endured a severe blow but has largely recovered from it, explaining that they rebuilt their structure and filled vacant positions rapidly, even during the war, having successively appointed and then elected two secretaries-general within a week to ten days, a feat he asserted no state or army could accomplish.
On a popular level, MP Mohammad Raad noted that people demonstrated their affection, concern, and steadfast support for the Resistance, which he attributed to the foundational role of doctrine and a belief in both the leadership’s just cause and capabilities, as well as the party’s ability to cultivate worthy successors to this exemplary leadership.
Hezbollah transcends immediate interests in its alliances
The Lebanese MP also spoke about Hezbollah’s local alliances, affirming that “every alliance or partnership achieves an interest” and explaining that these interests are divided into two parts: “partial and immediate and major national ones.”
He further explained that in its alliances and relationships, Hezbollah looks beyond immediate, partial gains to achieve larger, strategic national interests, a focus which he stressed is what ultimately strengthens the resilience and solidity of any partnership.
Hezbollah sincere, committed, transparent in its alliances
The MP pointed to a second factor governing Hezbollah’s alliances with other Lebanese parties: clarity, stating, “We hide nothing when we want to reach an agreement with others, and we harbor nothing that we do not present to them openly.”
The third factor, he said, is “sincerity in commitment.” Raad continued, “No ally has ever complained about a lack of honesty on our part; rather, they have complained about our commitment to the constants we do not deviate from, while they, for their own immediate interests, are forced to try and push us to compromise some of these constants.”
According to him, these factors significantly contribute to presenting a different model of conduct in Lebanon compared to other political groups.
Raad pointed out that the party does indeed pay a price for its alliances, describing it as a current and temporary cost that ultimately attracts more supporters, builds greater trust, and provides the momentum to remain steadfast on its path. In transitional phases, he noted, they deal with each stage according to its own specific circumstances.
Hezbollah’s alliance with Amal Movement superior to any others
Continuing his remarks on Hezbollah’s alliances, Raad reaffirmed the party’s position regarding its relationship with the Amal Movement, emphasizing that it is a strategic alliance that surpasses all other alliances.
He clarified that this stems from Hezbollah’s commitment to ensuring that its political environment remains unified and cohesive in its stance, aligning with all those who operate within it.
The Lebanese MP added that this alliance’s strength and strategic nature lie in the fact that “the ability to understand each other is easier, and the common interests are closer.” He added that “the shared doctrinal belonging also contributes to this, and the more credibility there is in achieving what we agree upon, the more solid this alliance becomes.”
Hezbollah willing to ally with other parties on same principles
Regarding alliances with other Lebanese parties, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc stated that Hezbollah has not withdrawn from any alliance with others, noting that these parties are free to make their own decisions following what Hezbollah was subjected to as a result of the Israeli aggression.
Raad continued, expressing Hezbollah’s complete readiness to continue its alliances, provided that they remain based on the same vision and constants, because what has truly changed are the pawns on the chessboard; however, the fundamentals remain in place, and the enemy is still the enemy, except that it has become more savage.
Hezbollah’s commitment to resisting the Israeli occupation and confronting it remains steadfast, he stated, even if some have reversed their position on the Resistance’s legitimacy, as those actors have their own regional, political, and self-interested calculations.
35-year-old legitimacy cannot be effaced
Raad defended the resistance’s legitimacy, stating that its opponents cannot simply erase a recognition granted by the Lebanese people over 35 years ago, accusing them of trying to exploit the aftermath of the recent aggression, which “Israel” believed would finish Hezbollah, to force a change with a single, swift political maneuver.
"They cannot take away the legitimacy that the Lebanese people recognized more than 35 years ago… with a mere stroke of a pen," declared Mohammad Raad, Head of #Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Loyalty to the Resistance in an exclusive interview for #AlMayadeen.
However, Hezbollah’s presence remains strong and undeniable, he added, with its influence being widespread, its institutions still standing tall and developing, and its social and political networks remaining active and vibrant.
All efforts against Hezbollah doomed to fail
In his remarks to Al Mayadeen, Hezbollah’s MP noted that some are banking on support from regional and international actors to alter and manipulate laws. He warned that such interventions are designed to sap determination and create obstacles to their work and momentum.
In the face of this, Raad affirmed that Hezbollah “mocks all these efforts,” asserting that they “are doomed to fail, because the party possesses what the martyr Sayyed Nasrallah once possessed: determination and will.”
Furthermore, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance stated that all parties in Lebanon require serious re-evaluation and reconsideration in light of the vast number of regional and international changes and ambiguities, adding that while Hezbollah has completed its own internal assessment, it is now waiting for the others to finish theirs.
Raad stated that Hezbollah’s internal assessment has defined the potential for political engagement with other parties, and that once a constitutional framework for the elections is agreed upon, specific electoral alliances will be formed.
When asked if he would be a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, MP Mohammad Raad answered that the matter “has not been decided yet, and it is still too early.”
Hezbollah committed to internal stability as national duty
Furthermore, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc addressed the importance Hezbollah places on Lebanon’s internal stability, emphasizing that the party endures much pain for the sake of the nation’s interest and the stability of the Lebanese national community and of serving the greater cause for which it strives to achieve victory.
MP Raad pointed out that Hezbollah has been exercising strategic patience domestically, as both the party and its Secretary-General have been committed to Lebanon’s stability as a national responsibility, adding that this patience is both commendable and distinctive. In addition to this strategic patience, there is also the “principled patience practiced by the individual.” According to him, martyred Sayyed Nasrallah was distinguished by both of these forms of patience.
He continued by explaining that this principled patience was the deterrent factor for martyred Sayyed Nasrallah from acting hastily or rushing a reaction, as he would only take a position after careful study, deliberation, and assessing the benefits and drawbacks.
When asked about efforts to provoke the party and force ot into internal conflict, he suggested that while the situation may not be that extreme, some actors, driven by malice, had indeed intended to bait Hezbollah and drive it into actions that would tarnish its exemplary image in the eyes of the Lebanese people and the world.
“We want to present a lofty, ethical model to the people around us, so that they may rejoice with us and find comfort in our commitments, in order to convince them of the justice of our cause and our faith,” he added.
Reflecting on this issue, he recalled that martyred Sayyed Nasrallah would become furious if anyone associated with Hezbollah committed a disgraceful act that would tarnish the party’s reputation, while simultaneously taking pride in waging battles that might cost a thousand martyrs when they were fought to support a just cause, establish justice, and defend the oppressed.
#AlMayadeen has released never-before-seen footage marking the first martyrdom anniversary of Sayyed #HassanNasrallah.
Regarding Hezbollah’s regional relations, Raad clarified that there is nothing new to report concerning relations with Saudi Arabia, explaining that the party’s core aspiration, both with Saudi Arabia and other regional states, is for them to engage with the Lebanese as equals.
Furthermore, he stated the party’s desire for these countries to cease interfering in Lebanon’s internal affairs and to allow the Lebanese people the autonomy they are entitled to in order to determine their own political choices, alliances, and government programs.
“We are comfortable if all the Lebanese agree on a relationship with a specific regional party, seeing that it achieves common interests for Lebanon and for it, then we are ready to be partners with them,” the Lebanese MP told Al Mayadeen.
Syria situation
On the topic of Syria, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc told Al Mayadeen, “First, the transformation that occurred in Syria is something we are following and monitoring, and our position on it is whatever the Syrian people themselves accept.”
“Our relationship with the former regime in Syria was not at the expense of the Syrian people, but rather for the benefit of both the Syrian and Lebanese peoples in serving the cause of confronting the Israeli aggression that threatens Syria just as it threatens Lebanon,” he added.
In his remarks to Al Mayadeen, MP Raad said the party is monitoring the situation in Syria, expressing hopes that the Syrians achieve stability, restore security, resume their constitutional life, and define Syria’s position regarding the Palestinian cause and the struggle with the Israeli enemy, as well as its stance toward certain international powers that support Zionist aggression.
He stated that only after those conditions are met can they properly examine the matter, emphasizing that, for now, the situation requires more time.
Hezbollah remains in the service of the most honourable of people
Concluding his exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc in the Lebanese Parliament, Mohammad Raad, affirmed that Hezbollah is “in the service of the aspirations of those whom the Supreme Martyr described as the kindest, most generous, and noblest of people,” adding, “We will sacrifice our lives to preserve the interests of these people and defend their rights.”
MP Raad concluded that Hezbollah and its supporters are united, drawing strength from each other, expressing his belief that as commitment to the Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s cause grows, so does their unity, emphasizing that he is confident the people will support those who continue to tread the path Sayyed Nasrallah paved.
Mr. Umma | One year after the assassination of Sayyed Nasrallah… Mohammad Raad discusses Hezbollah’s challenges and ongoing legacy السيد الأمّة | عام على اغتيال السيد نصرالله.. محمد رعد يتحدث عن حزب الله بين التحديات والإرث المستمر
Hezbollah after October 7 | Hassan Fadlallah حزب الله بعد السابع من أكتوبر | حسن فضل الله |
An Israeli drone strike on Bint Jbeil killed five people, including three children, and wounded others, escalating tensions along Lebanon’s southern border.
Five people, including three children, were killed and several others wounded on Sunday after an Israeli drone strike targeted a motorcycle in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, according to a preliminary toll released by the Health Emergency Operations Center at Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
The center said the raid also left multiple injuries, with victims transferred to nearby hospitals as rescue teams continued to search the area around the strike.
Among the martyrs were 3 kids of the Charara family, their father Chadi, while their mother and older sister were heavily wounded and are currently under intensive care.
Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that the drone hit the motorcycle in the town center. At the same time, Israeli forces fired flares over the skies of Aitaroun and launched additional flares between Yaroun and Maroun al-Ras, in a bid to ignite fires in the surrounding groves.
Separately, another drone dropped a bomb in the town of Kfar Kela during the funeral of Hassan Shahrour, who was killed in a Saturday airstrike on the Khardali area.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Saturday that an Israeli strike killed one person in the country’s south, marking the latest deadly attack despite a ceasefire reached months ago.
According to the ministry, the strike targeted a vehicle on the al-Khardali road in the Marjayoun area. An AFP correspondent reported that first responders were seen at the scene next to the charred remains of a white vehicle.
“The Israeli enemy strike on a vehicle on the al-Khardali road killed one person,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli occupation has continued to launch attacks inside Lebanon despite a truce agreed in November aimed at ending more than a year of cross-border hostilities
One Lebanese civilian was martyred, and 11 others were injured in a preliminary toll after an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle in front of Tebnin Government Hospital in South Lebanon, the health ministry disclosed on Friday.
Our correspondent further reported that Israeli occupation forces attempted to commit arson by launching incendiary bombs at the outskirts of Yaroun in South Lebanon.
Across Europe, demonstrators rallied in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, condemning “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has now neared its two years. In Vienna, protesters called for Austrian sanctions, weapons export bans, and transparent reporting on Gaza’s starvation, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent. Meanwhile, our correspondent in London reported activists targeted Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, and Costa, handing out leaflets exposing corporate ties to “Israel” and urging boycotts of Israeli products. In Greece, protesters demanded that their government end military, commercial, and cultural cooperation with “Israel” immediately.
The 2025 Emmy Awards turned into an unprecedented platform for condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with actors and actresses using speeches, fashion statements, and interviews to express solidarity with Palestinians. Award-winner Hannah Einbinder declared “Free Palestine” on stage, later explaining her duty as a Jewish artist to distinguish Judaism from “Israel” and endorsing the Film Workers for Palestine boycott targeting complicit institutions. Javier Bardem echoed her stance, citing the International Association of Genocide Scholars and urging sanctions and boycotts against “Israel” while asserting that he would refuse work to work with institutions that support the genocide in Gaza. Before the ceremony, Einbinder’s co-star Megan Stalter carried a “Ceasefire” pin on her bag on the red carpet, and actors Ruth Negga, Chris Perfetti, and Aimee Lou Wood wore Artists4Ceasefire pins, amplifying calls to end “Israel’s” war on Gaza.
From the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates to kitchens across Iraq, Masgouf is more than a dish; it is a tale of history, hospitality, and unity that continues to bring people together. Al Mayadeen English’s correspondent Lea Akil explores the origins and cultural significance of this iconic Iraqi tradition. Stay tuned for special coverage on Iraq’s rich culture, heritage, and dynamic political scene.
Iraq’s plan to bring in Turkmen gas through Iran fell apart due to US “maximum pressure” sanctions, increasing Baghdad’s reliance on shrinking Iranian supplies and forcing the country to search for other energy options. Although Iraq is the world’s second-largest oil producer within OPEC, it has been unable to meet domestic power demand since the 2003 US-led invasion. Millions of Iraqis still rely on costly private generators, a strain that fuels social unrest.
Al Mayadeen English’s correspondent Lea Akil explores Al-Shorja Market, Baghdad’s oldest and most iconic market, founded during the late Abbasid period around 750 AD. Originally known as Souk al-Rayahin and later Souk al-Attarin, the market earned its current name, Souk al-Shorja, from a historic well called “salty water.” Founded in the Abbasid era around 750 AD, Souk Al-Shorja has survived wars, fires, and economic crises, evolving from a flower and spice square into a bustling marketplace. Its alleys remain alive with merchants selling saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, tea, and seasonal goods, preserving centuries-old traditions. Despite competition from modern malls and supermarkets, Al-Shorja Market continues to be a living monument to Iraq’s heritage, culture, and enduring commercial spirit.
At a Geneva press conference, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese warned that “Israel’s” genocidal war on Gaza is destroying whole neighborhoods using never-before-seen “unconventional” and “newly assembled weapons” to make parts of the territory unlivable. She said the assault appears aimed at “forcibly evacuating the 800,000 Palestinians who were seeking refuge there,” calling it a step toward “advancing the ethnic cleansing” of the area and potentially “moving to the West Bank.” Albanese insisted the Israeli strikes are “unlawful, unlawful and unlawful,” while affirming that the “only legal thing that Israel can do in the occupied Palestinian territory is to move out, dismantling the settlements, withdrawing the troops, and stopping exploiting Palestinian resources.” She further condemned not only “Israel’s crimes” but also “the world’s crime sustained by silence, complicity, and the supply of funds, weapons, and political cover.”
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 