Weekly Briefing: Israel attacks Iran as Gaza genocide reaches new depths

Thursday night, Israel launched a major military strike inside Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and high-ranking officials. At least twenty senior Iranian military leaders were killed, and some damage was inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program facilities. We do not yet know the full scope of the Israeli government’s goals, but the timing is important. The attacks came just two days before the U.S. was set to resume direct negotiations with Iran. For weeks, Donald Trump has offered conflicting rhetoric about Israel and Iran, alternating between saber-rattling and calls for restraint. It’s tempting to read some grand strategy into this, but more likely, Trump’s incoherence and his flailing foreign policy left space for Israel to act without consequence. Regardless, this is extraordinarily dangerous, and it is further proof that the international community’s failure to address Israel’s expansionist, destabilizing agenda is allowing it to push the region toward catastrophe.

It is hard to believe, but Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is reaching new depths. The territory’s medical infrastructure has collapsed. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Palestinians face starvation. Israel continues to restrict aid, and the so-called distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are chaotic, deadly scenes where hungry people are attacked for trying to survive. As Navi Pillay, chair of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, put it: “We are seeing more and more signs that Israel is carrying out a systematic campaign to eliminate Palestinian life in Gaza.” The commission’s new report will be released soon, but reports alone will not stop the carnage.

Here in the U.S., Trump’s political crackdown is growing more severe. His administration has deployed military troops in Los Angeles. Palestinian and pro-immigrant protestors there are being violently repressed. The same imperial logic links it all together, from Gaza to L.A., from the Madleen to Mahmoud Khalil: challenges to injustice are now met with militarized force. But resistance is rising, too. Court victories, hunger strikes, student actions, and civil society organizing continue to challenge the machinery of violence. This week’s reporting documents it all—please read and share it widely.

In solidarity,
Dave Reed, Publisher

Must read: Israel attacks Iran

Israel launches unprecedented attack on Iranian nuclear sites: The Israeli army launched a series of wide-ranging overnight strikes on Iran, targeting nuclear facilities, top military leaders, and nuclear scientists. Israel says these attacks are just the beginning. – Qassam Muaddi

How Israel and the U.S. manufactured a fake crisis with Iran that could lead to all-out war: The long-dreaded war in the Persian Gulf between a U.S.-backed Israel and Iran appears imminent, and it is all based on a manufactured crisis aimed at undermining the Iran nuclear negotiations. – Mitchell Plitnick

Catch-up

🇵🇸 Qassam Muaddi: The Israeli government has effectively legalized the annexation of over 60% of the West Bank, but no one’s talking about it. Here’s what this means for Palestinians.

🇵🇸 Abdaljawad Omar: Israel has long used undercover forces posing as Palestinians to sow strife. Today, it is using this strategy again in Gaza in the form of the gangs taking control over humanitarian aid. The goal is to fragment and dismember Palestinian society.

🫏 Michael Arria in The Shift: In a new Quinnipiac poll, just 12% of Democratic voters say they sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians.

🪖 Ahmad Ibsais: Israel’s attacks on the Madleen aid mission to Gaza and the repression of the anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles represent the same imperial logic: any challenge to injustice will be met with state violence.

🇺🇸 Michael Arria: A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Mahmoud Khalil based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination, in a decision hailed by his legal team as “a huge win.”

🇮🇱 Qassam Muaddi: Israeli forces killed two brothers and injured more than 30 in a large-scale military invasion in Nablus. According to witnesses, one brother was killed in a confrontation with soldiers after they ordered him to pull his pants down, and he refused.

🐺 Mitchell Plitnick: ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s vile and racist rant to a group of Republican DAs last week showed the man and the organization he leads for what they really are – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

🇺🇸 Michael Arria: The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Addameer, a leading Palestinian prisoner rights group, and five other charities for alleged links to Palestinian political factions deemed by the U.S. and Israel as “terrorist organizations.”

🧑‍🦽 Dom Kelly: I am a disabled, anti-Zionist Jew, and I believe we will see a free Palestine. But I also believe this: anyone claiming to do the work of disability rights or justice while remaining silent on Gaza is actually doing no such thing.

🇨🇦 Marion Kawas: For almost two years, activists across Canada have been demanding that Scotiabank divest from Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Despite an ‘incremental divestment’, the bank has slowly been reinvesting in Elbit.

✊🏼 Michael Arria: Students at Dartmouth College have launched a hunger strike to demand that the school divest from Israel and lift the suspension of a student activist.