Gaza’s anti-Hamas militias

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 August 2026

        Hamas's internal security and counter-intelligence apparatus in Gaza includes a specialized unit known as the Radaa Force.  It is focused on monitoring threats to Hamas from rival factions, and in identifying dissidents, suspected informants and “collaborators” working with Israel.

The size, command structure, and exact responsibilities of the Radaa Force are uncertain; Hamas has revealed few details about it. Its name derives from an Arabic root meaning “deterrence” or “prevention”.

On August 6 Radaa issued an appeal to the Gazan public in general, and to members of anti-Hamas militia groups in particular, urging them to assassinate the leaders of those bodies.

“We say to all members of the collaborator gangs,” ran the Radaa Force statement, “that assassinating senior collaborators in these groups will be your salvation – before us, and before your people.”

What are these anti-Hamas militia groups, and who are their leaders?

The most internationally visible, and arguably most consequential, of the anti-Hamas armed network in Gaza is known as the “Popular Forces”.   Originally led by Yasser Abu Shabab until his death in December 2025, it is now under the leadership of Ghassan Duhine, his deputy.  It is the only anti-Hamas force that appears to have reached battalion-scale strength. Estimates in open sources range up to 700 fighters.  

The Popular Forces emerged in southern Gaza, especially around Rafah.  On June 5, 2025, in a video statement responding to allegations by former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel had "activated" and supported clans in Gaza opposed to Hamas. Subsequent reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets identified Abu Shabab's Popular Forces as one of the groups receiving such support.

Reported assistance included weapons, intelligence, logistical support, access to Israeli-controlled areas, and protection from Hamas.  The reported activities of the Popular Forces include an attack on a Hamas facility near Khan Younis that the group alleged was being used to store aid confiscated by Hamas.  They also participate in intelligence gathering against Hamas, securing aid convoys and routes near Israeli-controlled areas, and protecting access routes to aid distribution points.

Unlike Fatah, the Popular Forces do not prioritize Palestinian nationalism or a state-building ideology.  Abu Shabab publicly condemned the brutal onslaught on October 7, 2023 and argued Hamas had brought catastrophe on Gaza.

Politically, this group is the least clearly ideological of the major formations. Its motivations seem to combine anti-Hamas hostility, tribal autonomy, economic interests, personal power, and dependence upon Israeli patronage. Its principal political proposition is effectively that Hamas must be removed and that local Palestinian actors should assume control.

The Popular Forces’ politics are moved partly by clan interests.  The Abu Shabab clan is a large family network in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, connected to the larger transborder Tarabin tribal network, which extends into Sinai. Its priorities are protecting its local influence, its territory, economic resources, and clan autonomy.

Hamas has traditionally sought to subordinate armed groups and local power brokers to its own authority.  During periods when Hamas's control has weakened because of war, some clans – the Popular Forces among them – have sought to expand their own security and political roles.

The second particularly important anti-Hamas organization in Gaza is the Counter-Terrorism Strike Force (CTSF), centered on Khan Younis and commanded by Hussam al-Astal. Al-Astal has a security service background within the Palestinian Authority, and his opposition to Hamas is more political and institutional than purely tribal.

The declared objective of the CTSF (sometimes known simply as the Anti-Terror Force), is the removal of Hamas and the establishment of an alternative security authority.  Al-Astal portrays his organization as an independent Palestinian anti-Hamas force, though there is significant evidence of operational cooperation with Israel. 

The group crossed an important threshold on January 12, 2026, when gunmen killed Mahmoud al-Astal, a senior Hamas police officer.  Hussam al-Astal's organization publicly claimed responsibility.  Hamas described the perpetrators as Israeli collaborators.

The common surname is almost certainly not accidental. Mahmoud al-Astal and Hussam al-Astal appear to have belonged to the same extended al-Astal clan, but they were aligned with opposing political-military camps.  Publicly available sources do not identify their precise familial relationship.

The Hellis clan represents a third category of anti-Hamas groupings.

The Hellis family, long associated with Fatah, has opposed Hamas's rule ever since the terrorist organization seized control of Gaza in 2007.  Its most important contemporary figure is Rami Hellis, who has reportedly formed an armed network with Ahmed Jundeya, another prominent local figure from Shejaiya, a large neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City.

Their forces have operated in areas under Israeli control, and have resisted Hamas attempts to re-establish its authority in the area.  Reuters describes the Hellis/Jundeya network as one of the principal armed challenges to Hamas following the 2025 ceasefire.

The al-Majayda clan is based around Khan Younis and it, too, has become involved in the struggle over postwar authority.  Members have clashed with Hamas during attempts by Hamas security forces to arrest suspects.  Although the clan has criticized Hamas's use of extrajudicial violence, its political position is notably ambiguous. At least one senior al-Majayda figure subsequently expressed support for Hamas's efforts to restore order.

The al-Majayda clan has been linked to the CTSF through local alliances and cooperation, although the clan and the militia are distinct entities.

The Doghmosh clan is somewhat different from the others. It is not primarily an Israeli-backed militia. It is one of Gaza's longstanding armed families and has historically shifted between relationships with Hamas, Fatah, Salafist groups, and independent activity.

Back in October 2025 armed members of the clan fought Hamas forces in Gaza City and it  was described as a significant armed rival to Hamas. Currently there does not seem to be a formal Doghmosh militia. 

As for the 20-point Trump peace plan for Gaza, there is no evidence that any major anti-Hamas militia has formally adopted the plan as its platform.  Some – especially the Popular Forces – have objectives that do overlap with key parts of the plan, particularly supporting a post-Hamas administration after ending Hamas rule.  Others – anti-Hamas though they are – seem more intent on pursuing their own more narrow interests.

Iran’s last effective proxy

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11 August 2026

With Hamas and Hezbollah substantially weakened, Iran is increasingly relying on the Houthis as its principal remaining proxy capable of exerting sustained military and economic pressure on the US and its regional partners.  Currently, as a complement to Iran's campaign in the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis are attempting to exploit their control of the Bab al-Mandab strait, situated at the foot of the Red Sea and controlling access to the Suez Canal. 

Simultaneously with harrying the shipping in the strait, they are striking targets in Saudi Arabia in conjunction with Iran, whose 2023 pact with Saudi has been consigned to the trash. 

On February 28, 2026, in response to the US-Israeli attack, Iran launched missiles and armed drones against Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, mainly because they harbored US bases, but also to punish and deter both Saudi and other governments for their close connection to the US.

Iranian strikes were reported to have hit energy facilities in Saudi, including igniting a fire at the Ras Tanura oil refinery. The Prince Sultan Air Base was also targeted by drone attacks, then and later.

On July 16, Reuters, citing multiple regional and Iranian sources, reported that Iran had instructed the Houthis to prepare to close the Bab al-Mandab strait.  The directive to do so would be given if the US struck Iran's power grid or energy infrastructure.

Although the order was described as a contingency directive, the Houthis reportedly began positioning missiles and drones near the strait while awaiting any further authorization.

Four days later, on July 20, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree appeared on television to announce that "a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy" would be imposed immediately.

He described it as an "eye for an eye" measure, in response to what the Houthis called Saudi Arabia's long-running blockade of Yemen, and a recent attack on Sanaa’s International Airport.

The result is a second maritime chokepoint, augmenting Iran’s pressure on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.  The Houthis are targeting Saudi oil exports and commercial tankers using Saudi ports, thus attempting to close off the principal alternative export route available after disruptions in Hormuz.  The operation as a whole is, in effect, a joint effort by Iran and its Yemeni ally to exert maximum pressure on global oil markets.

A few days later, in response, the Saudi-led coalition struck Houthi targets in Yemen.

In short, Iran-Saudi rivalry is being fought out mainly on the Houthi front, the crisis is being sustained by Houthi military action, and the Saudi coalition clearly regards the Houthis as part of Iran’s regional leverage network.

But Saree’s TV address clearly revealed that, from the Houthi’s point of view, two wars are overlapping, and in taking up the fight, the Houthis are killing two birds with one stone.  Saree referred to Saudi Arabia’s “blockade” of Yemen, and its strike against the airport at Sanaa, once Yemen’s capital.  So in attacking Saudi Arabia the Houthis are not only acting in direct support of Iran, but they are also striking at the ally of their main opponent in Yemen’s long-running civil war – the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

Since 2014 the Houthis, having overthrown the official government, have controlled Sanaa and much of north-western Yemen. That government – now based principally in Aden – continues to be recognized by the UN and receives military and financial backing from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was alarmed at the prospect of Iran gaining a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula, and in 2015, with the civil war at its height, intervened militarily.  He formed a coalition whose declared objective was to restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government, and prevent the emergence of an Iranian-aligned regime on his country’s southern border.

Although a UN-brokered truce in 2022 substantially reduced cross-border fighting, it never resolved the underlying political conflict. The Houthis retained control of the capital and most of Yemen's population centers in the northwest, while the recognized government retained international legitimacy but exercised authority over only part of the country.

Accordingly, from the Houthi perspective, Saudi Arabia remains not merely a regional rival, but the principal foreign military supporter of its domestic enemy.  Conversely, from Riyadh's perspective, the Houthis are an armed insurgent movement backed by Iran that displaced Yemen's legitimate government.

Most intelligence services and academic experts now reject earlier characterizations of the Houthis as merely "Iranian puppets."  They are currently seen more as partners with overlapping interests but independent agendas.  Iran provides support because the Houthis advance Tehran's regional interests, while the Houthis, retaining significant autonomy in decision-making, accept support because it enhances their military and political position.  Both sides derive substantial benefits.

Particularly since October 7, Iran has reportedly supplied the Houthis with missile and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology, including training, intelligence and financial support, and diplomatic backing.  The Houthis, meanwhile, provide Iran with pressure on Saudi Arabia and on Red Sea shipping, leverage against Israel and a relatively inexpensive means of projecting regional influence.

            Two possible developments might cause the mutually beneficial partnership to disintegrate. The first, and perhaps the more plausible, would be a decisive weakening or collapse of the Iranian regime following a renewed US military campaign, should the Trump administration in the future conclude that Tehran remained irredeemably hostile and that diplomatic options had been exhausted. Such an outcome could deprive the Houthis of their principal source of advanced military technology, training, and political backing, forcing them to pursue a more independent course.

          A second, less likely possibility would arise if sustained efforts by Hans Grundberg, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, succeeded in bringing the principal parties to the civil war into meaningful negotiations, securing a durable ceasefire and a comprehensive political settlement. Were the Houthis to become stakeholders in a recognized governing arrangement, their incentives could shift toward economic reconstruction, international legitimacy, and stable regional relations, reducing the strategic value of close alignment with Iran.

          For the moment, though, the liaison is firm, and the Houthis have become Iran's only major proxy capable of exercising direct international pressure by threatening world oil supplies.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Are the Houthis Iran's last gaming card?", 11 August 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-905067

Published in Eurasia Review, 14 August 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/14082026-irans-last-effective-proxy-oped/

 

 

Israel on Trial

My review of "Israel on Trial:  Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law" 

by Roy K Altman

Published in the Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine, 7 August 2026

   Roy K. Altman, a graduate of Columbia University, served as a federal prosecutor for the US Court of Appeals before being appointed a US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida – at the time the youngest district judge ever so appointed.

In his new book, Israel on Trial, he takes the six accusations most widely levied against Israel and subjects them to what he calls “the legal methodology judges, juries and lawyers have used for centuries.”  He sets out the evidence for and against each of the crimes that Israel is charged with, and scrutinizes it forensically, using the time-honored rules of evidence that he applies consistently in his own courtroom.

The six allegations that he subjects to this scrupulous analysis are first that Jews are colonists in the Land of Israel; then that the founding of the State of Israel was illegitimate; that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state;  that Israel was occupying Gaza before October 7, 2023 and had turned it into an “open-air prison”; that Israel is an apartheid state; and that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Using factual, historical, archeological, even the latest genealogical evidence, he demonstrates the shaky, unreliable, often illogical nature of the charges that have become routine among those who reject Israel’s right to exist. 

Why is Altman’s book so important, indeed vital?  After all, his conclusions, solidly based though they are, will certainly not convince committed anti-Zionists, while pro-Israel advocates will already be familiar with them.

No, it is the ordinary every-day Jew faced with irrational antisemitic hatred – the person in the workplace, shopping center or social setting, the young person in the classroom or campus – that needs, and will surely welcome, Israel on Trial.   In these pages Altman provides a convincing fact-based rebuttal to the anti-Israel tropes that are so casually tossed around these days.

There are also vast numbers of largely uncommitted people across the globe who are subject to a constant flood of false narratives about Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people.  If only some could be enticed to open the pages of Israel on Trial, they would discover that there is an antidote for the poison they are perpetually fed.

To the charge that Jews are colonists, he begins with the accepted definition of “colonist” – “an outsider with no historical, linguistic, cultural or religious connection to the land he is conquering.”   Then he demonstrates that “the Jews were living in (and often governing) the Land of Israel thousands of years before Islam existed, hundreds of years before the Roman emperor Hadrian invented the word Palaestina…and long before Arab Muslims first invaded the land in AD 636.”

As for Israel’s legitimacy, Altman rebuts the assertion that the “biblical promise is Israel’s only claim to legitimacy”.  He asserts that the criteria set out in the 1933 Montevideo treaty are universally accepted as international law on the subject of legitimate statehood.  A nascent state has to fulfil four requirements:  have a permanent population, have a defined territory, be governed by a single effective government, and have the capacity to conduct foreign relations.

Altman points out that when Israel declared independence in May 1948, it met all four criteria.

As to the claim that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state, Altman cites the six occasions that Israel (or the international community with Israeli acquiescence), “has offered the Arabs a Palestinian state – and, each time, the Arabs have rejected that offer.”

Each of those attempts, says Altman, was thwarted “by the Palestinians’ own demand for an Arab state that stretches ‘from the river to the sea’.”  

To the charge that Israel was occupying Gaza on October 7, 2023 and had turned it into an “open-air prison” or a concentration camp, Altman sets out the irrefutable historic facts, linked to the commonly understood meaning of both “prison” and “concentration camp, which prove the reverse. 

His Chapter 5 is concerned with the widely-voiced charge that Israel is an apartheid state. In addition to setting out the irrefutable facts concerning the equal status and rights of the 20% of Israel’s Arab citizens, Altman lays bare a inherent illogicality in the extreme anti-Israel position. 

“True,” he writes, “the Palestinians who live in Gaza and in parts of Judea and Samaria enjoy none of these rights in Israel. But that’s because they don’t live in Israel, don’t want to live in Israel, and thus aren’t Israeli citizens at all.” 

More than 140 countries around the world, he notes, as well as many of the organizations and individuals asserting the apartheid claim recognize the State of Palestine.

 “Israel cannot be practicing apartheid by refusing to afford citizenship rights to the citizens of another country,” writes Altman,”…but that’s exactly what Amnesty International, for instance, is suggesting when, on the one hand, it recognizes the existence of a “State of Palestine,” while on the other, it claims that Israel is an apartheid state for refusing to afford full citizenship rights to the citizens of that Palestinian state.”

And so Altman reaches the assertion repeated ad nauseam – that Israel committed, and continues to commit, genocide against the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza.  It is an accusation, as Altman demonstrates, that relies on re-interpreting the meaning of the word “genocide”.  It is used by many as a measure of their antipathy to the loss of civilian life during Israel’s fight against Hamas.  But the term “genocide” has a very specific meaning.

Altman makes it abundantly clear that he regards the loss of a single civilian life in war as a tragedy.  However, “the question in a genocide case isn’t whether innocent civilians have died in Gaza. They unquestionably have—just as they have in every war that’s ever been fought.”

The essence of the crime of genocide is the specific “intent to destroy” the victim group’s existence. To be guilty of genocide, the State of Israel must have intended to wipe out the population of Gaza.  Altman demonstrates, with irrefutable facts and figures, that Israel did not have, and never has had, any such intention.

In Israel on Trial Altman provides all who love Israel with sound evidence-based arguments to counter the disinformation that clogs the social media platforms and so often the official news media as well. It is a book entirely in tune with the times, and is highly recommended.

Published in the Jerusalem Post online:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-904749

The new US-Syria-Iraq connection

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 4 August 2026

On July 8, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, US President Donald Trump had a face-to-face meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

According to the official Syrian read-out and US reporting, they discussed strengthening US-Syrian relations, Syria’s economic recovery, and foreign investment. Following their meeting Trump announced he was removing Syria from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, a designation Syria had borne since 1979.

Reuters reported that Trump handed Sharaa a personal letter during the meeting. The key passages were: "I promised to remove all barriers stopping you from rebuilding your country, and very soon, you will finally be able to do so," and "We have US companies ready to invest in Syria and help make your country greater and more prosperous than ever before."

Speaking to the media after their meeting, Trump praised Sharaa in unusually strong terms.  He’s: “doing an unbelievable job in unifying Syria….Syria was a mess…now it's just come together….He's done a fantastic job."  All the indications are that Trump has decided to adopt post-Assad Syria as a working partner in developing a reinvigorated Middle East.

One week later, Trump was entertaining Iraq’s prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, at the White House. 

Once again the meeting was notable for its tone. Trump repeatedly praised Zaidi and spoke of their "tremendous chemistry."  He made it clear that he regarded Iraq’s new prime minister also as a partner with whom Washington could build a stronger long-term relationship.

The discussion covered expanding economic relations between the two countries, while both sides endorsed a series of memoranda of understanding (MoU) involving US participation in Iraq's oil and gas sector.  Zaidi reiterated his government's intention of bringing all armed groups, including Iran-backed militias, under state control, while confirming that the remaining US forces in Iraq are expected to complete their withdrawal by September 30, 2026.

What was not specifically referred to by either party – and not mentioned either following Trump’s discussion with Sharaa – was the US-Syria-Iraq plan to revive the historic 500-mile pipeline from the oilfields of Kirkuk in northern Iraq to the town of Baniyas, on Syria's Mediterranean coast – a determined effort to reduce Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria and Iraq, had been working on the details of the agreement before Zaidi’s visit. 

The pipeline was completed in 1952 by Iraq’s Petroleum Company with a capacity of around 300,000 barrels per day.  Baghdad shut the pipeline in the 1980s after Syria sided with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

The pipeline will almost certainly have to be wholly replaced – a project calculated to last up to three years.  ​

A glance at the map shows that reviving the pipeline would give Iraq a strategic alternative to exporting oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike Gulf exports, shipments through the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline would avoid the Persian Gulf altogether.  It would spare tankers the need to negotiate the strategic Hormuz chokepoint on both their outbound and return voyages. Oil reaching Syria's Mediterranean coast via the pipeline could be shipped directly to European markets.

Routing Iraqi oil this way could cut a tanker's voyage to European refineries by roughly 3,000 nautical miles and more than a week at sea, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in normal shipping costs while avoiding the war-risk insurance and disruption associated with the Strait of Hormuz.

Although it has clearly been agreed between the parties to keep the resurrection of the historic pipeline low-key, Reuters and other media outlets indicate that the project has advanced well beyond the conceptual stage. It is claimed that the US is officially backing restoration of the 891 km (about 550 mile) long pipeline, and that the US expects American firms to take part in rebuilding the line. Chevron has been widely mentioned as a potential participant, although the company has declined to comment publicly. 

Other pipeline projects with outlets on Syria’s Mediterranean coast are also under consideration, and could link major energy producers in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, directly to Syria’s ports.  ​Indeed, with Syria shorn of its sanctions and established as a fully-fledged partner, it ​has the potential to become a​ major energy transit hub. ​ It has about 2.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, ​but some geological estimates suggest its undiscovered onshore and offshore petroleum resources could ultimately exceed 20 billion barrels.

In February 2026, Chevron signed a memorandum of understanding with Syria's state-owned petroleum company and Qatar's Power International Holding to develop the country's first offshore oil and gas field. Days later, Saudi and American energy companies formed a consortium to explore four or five oil and gas blocks and rebuild energy infrastructure in north-east Syria. 

Finding gas is, of course, only the beginning. Syria would ultimately need to sell it. Trump's decision to remove Syria from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism signals that Washington now regards Sharaa's government as a legitimate partner. That political endorsement encourages investors who might otherwise have stayed away, and it makes it much easier to construct pipelines, use Mediterranean export terminals, attract investment and conclude long-term gas sales contracts with foreign buyers.

Were Israel to follow Trump’s lead in considering Syria's potential as a commercial partner, several hazards would need to be overcome.  One is the strong influence that Turkey, no friend of Israel, exercises on Sharaa.  

Then there is the fact that Russia has retained a significant military and commercial presence in Syria.  President Vladimir Putin has preserved his strategic foothold on the eastern Mediterranean, having negotiated continued access to Russia’s naval facility at Tartus and its Khmeimim air base near Latakia.​  At the same time, according to reliable media reports, a Russian commercial logistics hub is expected to become operational at Tartus very soon, handling Russian cargo and providing a maritime link between the Syrian coast and Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Trump seems determined to enfold both Syria’s Sharaa and Iraq’s al-Zaidi into a close commercial and economic embrace.  In Israel, however, both are viewed rather more cautiously.  Trust cannot simply be bestowed; it will have to be earned.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled "Trump’s Syria-Iraq pipeline plan aims to weaken Iran’s leverage", 4 August 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-904406

Published in Eurasia Review, 13 August 2026

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08082026-the-new-us-syria-iraq-connection-oped/

 

"Queers for Palestine" and the intersectionality trap

 Published in the Jerusalem Report, and the Jerusalem Post online, 28 July 2026

          A tidal wave of antisemitism has swept across the Western world in recent years. One of its more puzzling aspects is the bizarrely incompatible alliances it has fostered.

          A striking case is the common sight of LGBTQ+ activists and “Queers for Palestine” marching in solidarity with Palestinian movements such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They either do not know, or they choose to ignore, that according to the law and norms of their fellow campaigners homosexuality is a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment or even death.

          A similar pattern appears among some women’s rights activists. They proclaim their solidarity with regimes or movements such as Iran or its proxy Hamas, whose gender policies are starkly anti‑feminist. Iran’s legal system fuses patriarchal culture with rigid Sharia‑based rules, producing discrimination and state‑sanctioned violence against women, including lethal force over dress‑code violations. In this strange alliance, some left‑wing feminist elements in the West are prepared to turn a blind eye to extreme misogyny, just as long as it is embedded in forces opposed to “Western imperialism” and Israel, condemned as a “white, colonial, patriarchal” oppressor.

          This unnatural conjunction of progressive, left-wing activists with narrow-minded, homophobic, misogynistic entities is glued together by a doctrine that mesmerized feminist and critical race theorists in the late 1980s, and rapidly captivated large parts of the social sciences world. It is called “intersectionality”.

          The term was coined in 1989 by the American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. She invented it to explain how Black women’s lives were adversely affected by discrimination not only of race but also of gender, and that the two impacted on each another.

          This basic idea – that one form of oppression actually influences another – appealed to sociologists. It quickly became an obsession, mushrooming to encompass the concept that every form of discrimination within a society against oppressed or disenfranchised groups is interlinked.

          It did not require much effort to incorporate into these intersecting forms of oppression the old chestnut that – despite all the evidence to the contrary – Israel was an apartheid state dedicated to oppressing Palestinians. As a result, the groups that considered themselves oppressed were led to embrace the Palestinians as fellow victims, and to perceive Israel as part of the oppressive global power structure. In short, intersectionality soon offered anti-Israel organizations a fashionable and acceptable way of wielding the ultimate antisemitic weapon – linking every perceived evil in the world to the Jews or the Jewish state.

          From the 2010s, intersectionality became mainstream in progressive NGOs, campus politics, social justice and anti-fascist campaigns. Movements increasingly adopted an “intersectional” language of overlapping systems. In left-wing circles it became both fashionable and a matter of self-preservation to maintain, for example, that equal pay for women is related to Black Lives Matter, or that climate change activism is inseparable from the struggle against colonialism. And since left-wing opinion has decreed that Palestinians are quintessential victims and their villainous oppressors are Israel, dogma dictated that in opposing any form of discrimination you must oppose Israel.

          Your opposition must, of course, extend to all those who support Israel – which means the vast majority of diaspora Jewry. And then, by a further extension, to all Israelis. You must deny them a voice, ban them from public life, cut them off from academic interchange, boycott or disrupt their artistic performances. It is on the basis of intersectionality that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement operates its anti-Israel and anti-Israeli campaigns.

          Pride Month events in the US and Europe supply clear examples of this frankly antisemitic thinking. LGBTQ+ organizations regularly accuse Israel – the only state in the Middle East with a liberal approach to sexual issues – of “pinkwashing”, that is of cynically using its advanced LGBTQ+ rights to distract the world’s attention from its alleged human rights violations. In other words, nothing that Israel can do – even demonstrate its open-hearted support for liberal sexual politics – can outweigh the underlying antipathy toward the Jewish state.

          As a result Jewish and pro‑Israel LGBTQ+ groups have been harassed or excluded from Pride marches, while organizations which support Palestinian factions with deeply homophobic ideologies are welcomed in the name of solidarity with the “oppressed.”

         Groups and movements intent on putting intersectional theory into practice simply fail, or refuse, to perceive antisemitism as a rampant form of oppression. None take into account that for centuries Jews across the world were subject to discrimination and persecution. Nor do they acknowledge that Zionism was the political reaction – a movement aimed at restoring to the Jewish people the right to determine their own future in their ancestral homeland.

          It is heartening, however, to note that the intersectionality tide is beginning to turn. Some scholars have started to argue that intersectionality sidelines antisemitism.

          Sociologist Karin Stogner writes that intersectionality as usually practiced shows a “tendency to exclude global antisemitism from its understanding of oppression.” She notes that movements guided by this exclusion—she names the Women’s March, Chicago Dyke March, and parts of Black Lives Matter—have “excluded Jewish organizations and individuals from participation and take a vehement anti‑Israel stance.”

          In one paper she describes “strange alliances that occur between queer and intersectional feminism on the one hand and global antisemitism on the other.”

          Professor Christina Hoff Sommers has written: “Of course, intersectionality theory is a confused muddle.  It fights racism and sexism by classifying everyone according to race and sex.  It views race and gender privilege as the root of all evil, while ignoring the role played by dogmatic ideologies held by all genders."

         Even Kimberlé Crenshaw herself, some twenty years after devising the idea of intersectionality, complained that her concept had been stretched beyond what she intended. She wrote that intersectionality was “originally meant to be a tool used to understand and frame the discrimination faced by black women in the United States,” but that it had been “contorted” to become something that she never intended it to be.

         No-one could speak with greater authority.  She has asserted that intersectionality as she conceived it has burst its banks and flooded out of control. Are its proponents at last beginning to perceive that the misguided application of its theories to Israel and the Jewish people is in part responsible for the uncontrolled expansion of antisemitism in the West?

Published by the Jerusalem Post online, 28 July 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-903414

Trump’s nuclear deal and Saudi Vision 2030

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 28 July 2026

            It was on July 22 that a new Saudi civil nuclear agreement was signed between the US and Saudi Arabia.  First reports indicated that the agreement assured Saudi Arabia of a 30-year cooperation with the US on civil nuclear development with no reference to the requirements laid down in the past by the US as essential to such a deal – such as joining the Abraham Accords or a ban on enriching uranium domestically.

Within 24 hours US President Donald Trump had posted clarifications on both issues on his Truth Social platform.  He endorsed the nuclear agreement – which, incidentally, still requires a 90-day congressional review, and could face opposition – but, he wrote, it “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Saudi Arabia joining the Accords “would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East.”

Since no international inspection process had been built into the deal, there were immediate fears that Saudi Arabia would be able to enrich uranium, leading eventually to a nuclear weapons program. 

            Trump was intent on quashing that assumption as well.

“The Civil Nuclear Deal,” he wrote, adding in brackets “(there will be no enrichment of material)…pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have.”

Little attention has been paid to how the new arrangement will impact on the ambitious plan, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in April 2016, aimed at  revitalizing the kingdom – Saudi Vision 2030.     

            The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is less than a hundred years old. It was only in 1932 that Abdul Aziz ibn Saud emerged from many years of political and military struggle against the Ottoman empire and other local chieftains, and was able to name the area he had conquered “Saudi Arabia”, and proclaim himself its monarch. 

  No doubt MBS had an eye on the eventual centenary celebrations in 2032 of the monarchy and the kingdom when he launched the Vision 2030 program. If it succeeds, by the centenary year Saudi Arabia will have been transformed from virtual total dependence on oil revenues into a modern, liberalized, thriving society, its prosperity underpinned by flourishing industrial, financial, economic and commercial sectors.

 When first announced, Saudi Vision 2030 envisaged, among hundreds of initiatives, privatizing entire sectors of the economy, cutting subsidies, courting investors at home and abroad, streamlining government services, and going public with the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer and most profitable company.  

  This last step was achieved in 2019, when Aramco’s initial public offering (IPO) raised $29.4 billion, the largest in history,   Yet it was only 1.5% of the company that was sold to the public; the Saudi state and its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, still own 98.5% of Aramco. 

A key objective of the program is to achieve economic diversification not by diminishing oil production, but by reducing the kingdom’s dependency on oil.  Ten years after the launch of Vision 2030, in April 2026, the government published a new progress report.  It reveals a rapid expansion and diversification of non-oil economic activity, employment, investment and government revenue sources.

The report states that by the end of 2025,  non-oil GDP was contributing 55% to the economy – the first time that non-oil sectors have made up a clear majority of the kingdom’s real  economic output.

To reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil, Saudi Arabia is also investing heavily in renewable energy projects. The kingdom has become the fastest-growing renewables market outside China.  

Vision 2030 includes nearly 50 large-scale construction and development projects aimed at transforming the nation's infrastructure.  A cornerstone of the program is Neom, a $500 billion futuristic city sited in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.

Envisioned as a hub for innovation and sustainability, it aims to incorporate smart city technologies and renewable energy sources. Recent reports indicate that Neom is facing significant financial challenges, with rising costs and delays leading to concerns about the project's feasibility.  This is one obvious area where Israeli hi-tech know-how, under an Abraham Accords umbrella, could help the development. 

The Red Sea Project is an initiative focused on developing a luxury tourist destination along Saudi Arabia's west coast. With environmental conservation built into the concept, it features resorts across an archipelago of pristine islands and inland sites.  When all phases are completed it will comprise 50 resorts offering 10,000 hotel rooms in addition to more than 1,000 residential properties.  Saudi Arabia hosts millions of Muslims each year on their Hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, but inside an Abraham Accords partnership Israeli expertise in global, as opposed to Islamic, tourism could be of invaluable assistance in realizing the project.

The Red Sea Project is a 28,000-square-kilometer tourism masterplan on the northern Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, developed in collaboration with the Red Sea Development Company under Saudi Vision 2030. Covering more than 90 islands, two coastal village hubs, and inland development across a planned 10,000 hotel keys and residential units, the masterplan is designed to generate 100% of its required power on-site through photovoltaic panels and solar roads.

Positioned near Riyadh, Qiddiya is envisioned as a vast entertainment city, encompassing theme parks, sports facilities, and cultural venues. It aims to become a major tourist destination, contributing to the diversification of the economy. Construction of a variety of parks, performing arts centers. sports stadiums and other projects is forging ahead, with several attractions planned to open well before 2030.  

Recently announced, the Mukaab is set to be the largest building in the world, featuring a unique cube-shaped design. It is part of the New Murabba development in Riyadh and aims to offer a mix of residential, commercial, and entertainment spaces. Construction has commenced, with the first phase expected to be completed by 2030.

Ever since the idea was mooted of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, their prequisite has been a clear path to Palestinian sovereignty.  They may decide that Phase 3 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza provides that assurance.

Now a multi-billion dollar US-partnered investment program in civil nuclear development is to be added to the immensely challenging program already under way. It presages a partnership way into the future, allowing US companies to help Saudi Arabia not only develop a civilian nuclear power program, but also realize MBS’s ambitious Vision 2030 project.

Whoever leads the US in 2032 will certainly merit a seat of honor at Saudi Arabia’s  centenary celebrations.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Saudi Arabia-US nuke deal helps MBS realize Saudi Vision 2030", 28 July 2026
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-903756

Published in Eurasia Review, 31 July 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31072026-trumps-nuclear-deal-and-saudi-vision-2030-oped/

Trump, Erdogan and the F-35 enigma

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 21 July 2026

Designed as a multirole combat aircraft, the F-35 combines low-observable (stealth) shaping with advanced sensors, data fusion, and networked communications, enabling it to conduct air-to-air combat, precision strike missions, intelligence gathering, and electronic warfare in contested environments.       

       On July 7, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, US President Donald Trump met the media together with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

       Trump used the occasion to announce that the US would ​be lift​ing the sanctions that had been imposed on Turkey in December 2020 under the CAATS (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions)​ Act.

       Turkey had been sanctioned because Erdogan​​, in defiance of Washington’s express warnings, ​had gone ahead and purchased the Russian S‑400​, a long-range surface‑to‑air missile system​ specifically designed as a defense against aircraft such as the F-35​, the advanced multirole stealth fighter that has become the cornerstone of America’s tactical air power.

       Trump was then asked whether Turkey would be allowed to buy the F-35.
       "Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we thought would be loyal,” he replied “…so it is something we definitely would consider."

       That was an astonishing response, given that Turkey is still deploying the S-400 system, specifically designed as a defense system against aircraft such as the F-35.

       It was Erdogan’s decision to acquire the S-400 that got him ejected from the F-35 program back in 2017. As soon as he announced his intention to do so, Washington made it clear that any attempt to fly US F-35s and simultaneously operate the Russian S-400 defense system was an absolute non-starter. It would effectively turn the S‑400 into a live intelligence‑collection platform on the F‑35’s stealth and mission‑system profile.

The S-400 mobile air defense system is designed to detect, track, and engage aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and certain other aerial targets using a combination of phased-array radars, command vehicles, and multiple types of interceptor missiles operating at different ranges and altitudes.

       What was obvious then remains obvious today. If F-35s routinely flew within range of an operational S-400, the Russian-designed radars could collect enormous quantities of data about the aircraft's radar signature, flight profiles, electronic emissions and tactics. Highly classified information about the F-35's stealth characteristics could be exposed.

       That concern explains why Congress enacted legislation barring the transfer of F-35s to Turkey while it retains the Russian S-400 air defense system.

       It has not prevented continued low-level negotiations between Turkey and the US about the possibility of Turkey rejoining the F-35 program. On December 10, 2025, US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack wrote on social media that the US was in ongoing discussions with Turkey “regarding their desire to rejoin the F-35 program and their possession of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system. As laid out in US law, Türkiye must no longer operate nor possess the S-400 system to return to the F-35 program."

       By April 2026 Barrack’s stance had hardened. Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum he expressed confidence that the long-running dispute over Turkey's Russian-made S-400 air-defense system was nearing resolution. "I think you're going to see the S-400 [problem] solved soon," he said, adding: "From my boss's point of view, acceptance into an F-35 program is fine."

       There may be political and practical reasons for Trump’s change of heart.

       Deteriorating relations with Iran has made Turkey's strategic value to Washington considerably greater. Turkey controls NATO's southeastern flank and borders Iran, Iraq and Syria. Trump may judge that rebuilding the alliance with Ankara is now a priority.

       Moreover a confidential understanding may have been reached over the S-400. Although nothing has been announced publicly, media reports suggest that there have been discussions about deactivating the system. Reuters notes that transferring the system to a third country is another proposal under discussion.

      Congress has not changed the statutory restrictions of the sale of the F-35, meaning that any proposal to do so could face a significant legal and political battle. Trump may be prepared to challenge Congress. But all he may be signaling is intent rather than a settled policy. All he said was that he will lift sanctions and "consider" F-35 sales.

       If Erdogan is ultimately to win the F-35 struggle, then either Turkey has to remove, export or permanently deactivate the S-400; or Congress has to agree to relax or amend the legal restrictions despite the continued presence of the S-400.

       Currently there is no evidence that the first has occurred, while there is substantial evidence of bipartisan resistance in Congress to the second. That is why, despite Trump's dramatic shift in tone, the path to restoring Turkey's F-35 status remains uncertain.

       Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 17, Barrack threw in a casual remark that raised a few eyebrows at the time, but has not been followed up.

       "Greece has S-300s and F-35s," he said.

       Greece, like Turkey, is a member of NATO. Could it possibly be deploying the advanced US fighter and the Russian anti-missile defense system at the same time – the very situation that Washington totally vetoed in the case of Turkey?

       An examination of the facts reveals a complicated but innocuous situation that has little in common with Turkey’s.

       Barrack was entirely accurate when he spoke of ​the S-300​, ​an older​ version with significantly more limited capabilities than the ​S-400. ​Moreover the S-300 system​ operated by Greece was not a Greek purchase.

       In 1997 Glafcos Clerides's government in Cyprus ordered two S-300 PMU-1 batteries from Russia. Turkey threatened military action if the missiles were deployed in Cyprus. After a major diplomatic crisis involving the US, Britain and NATO, Cyprus agreed not to install them. In 1998-99 the missiles were transferred to Greece.

       So Greece inherited the S-300, designed during the late Soviet period and delivered more than 25 years ago.

       US officials have consistently argued that Turkey's case is fundamentally different. Despite repeated US warnings, Turkey deliberately negotiated a major strategic defense contract with Russia in 2017, and it bought the far newer S-400 Triumf, one of Russia's most advanced strategic air-defense systems..

       As for the F-35s, in January 2024 the US State Department approved the sale of 40 Lightning II aircraft to Greece.

       On July 8, following the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told Greek journalists: "Greek pilots will begin training on the Greek F-35s in 2027.”

       Greece’s situation may indeed be different from Turkey’s, but a convincing case could be made for a precedent having been set. 

       Could this be the chink that leads to opening the door for Turkey’s acquisition of the F-35?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 22 July 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-902969 

Published in Eurasia Review, 24 July 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24072026-trump-erdogan-and-the-f-35-enigma-oped/

Iran’s internal power struggle

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 14 July 2026

 Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been an autocratic theocracy, ruled with an iron fist by the supreme leader – first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini until his death in 1989, and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, until he was killed on February 28, 2026 in an airstrike.

 Today’s Iran is no longer what it has been.  What it has become is the subject of controversial interpretations.

 Some believe that Iran is no longer a republic of any kind but has morphed into a dictatorial, mafia-style oligarchy in military uniform.  The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), they maintain, exercises total control over political, economic and strategic decisions, whilst maintaining a theocratic veneer for the purposes of internal and international legitimacy.

They believe the new supreme leader, Motjaba Khamenei, is a puppet of the IRGC, selected under direct military pressure which bypassed the constitutional process. The new Khamenei certainly lacks religious credentials and public legitimacy, and has yet to demonstrate any independent authority.

         Real power, they say, resides in three IRGC hardliners: IRGC Commander‑in‑Chief Ahmad Vahidi; Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr; and senior military adviser to Khamenei Mohsen Rezaei.  All three rejected the renewed negotiations with the US and want to continue the war.

       They are only too aware that Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president since July 2024, wants a ceasefire, and they act systematically to thwart him.  The IRGC has blocked his ministerial appointments and countered his signals of de-escalation.

On July 6 some source of power within the regime authorized Iranian forces to attack three commercial vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, well aware that this would prompt a US reaction.  In response US Central Command struck more than 80 Iranian military targets.  

This supports those who maintain that Iran is governed today by an IRGC which functions simultaneously as an armed force, an economic empire, an intelligence service, a political party and the effective government.

Yet, while many expert commentators do believe that the IRGC has reached a level of power never previously achieved, others are convinced that the internal struggle for dominance is not over and that the IRGC still has to consolidate the level of control it has acquired. They hold that power in Iran today is heavily contested between the IRGC and a more pragmatic political‑diplomatic camp, while the newly elected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, sits above them as an ambivalent, vulnerable arbiter whose authority is real in law, but fragile in practice.  

On the evening of June 30, Iran’s state news TV channel was broadcasting a pre-recorded interview with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in the ongoing talks with the US over sanctions relief, nuclear constraints and regional de‑escalation. 

Having confirmed that there are “behind‑the‑scenes negotiations” with Washington leading to a possible deal on limiting Iran’s nuclear activity, Ghalibaf was in the middle of a sentence when the screen went blank.  After a second or two, an old speech by Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader, was on the air.

 Iranian hardliners had succeeded in cutting off a television interview with the country’s chief peace negotiator, as he was defending the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

In reporting the incident, the UK’s Daily Telegraph said that the censored sections included Ghalibaf’s response to reports that international inspectors would be allowed to visit Iran’s nuclear sites, his account of how frozen Iranian assets would be released, and details of the agreement’s proposed $300bn fund for post-war reconstruction.

Most importantly, Ghalibaf was about to discuss the new supreme leader’s equivocal message about the deal with the US, in which he had remarked that “in principle I had a different opinion” but had nonetheless authorized the agreement.  Hardliners had seized upon the remark as proof that the supreme leader was basically opposed to the negotiations that his own government was pursuing, even though he had given his approval to do so.

The television blackout prompted Parliament’s media center to issue a rare public protest, accusing state TV of violating normal protocol.  This led to a public debate about who controls the airwaves.  

Vahid Jalili, deputy chief at Iran’s state broadcaster, is the brother of Saeed Jalili, a former negotiator aligned with the Paydari Front, Iran’s most uncompromising conservative bloc, which opposes talks with the country that killed the former supreme leader.  For the Paydari Front and its allies, resistance to the US is the ideological core of the revolution.  

The Ghalibaf TV incident was not the first of its kind.  Just ten days previously, on the evening of June 20, Mahmoud Nabavian, a cleric and former member of Iran’s negotiating team, had gone on the air to allege that in agreeing to the US-Iran MoU,  the Iranian negotiating team had gone way beyond their brief,  and that the terms they had agreed to did not reflect the conditions that the supreme leader had previously set.

In a television interview, he began reading out what he claimed was classified correspondence from the supreme leader.  He claimed Khamenei had written to the negotiating team saying: “What was agreed upon in the Pakistan talks is completely different from what was supposed to happen, and was a condition for the legitimacy of the talks, and the talks must be stopped.”

The TV broadcast was cut off abruptly, and soon afterwards the public relations office of the news network announced that it "accepts the resignation of the relevant director general of the network" and would charge him with "negligence in professional management."

Commentators said Nabavian could not have gained access to the supreme leader’s letters without the complicity of a hardline source.

So what is the true situation within Iran? Evidence from reports in Iranian and international media points to a multi‑layered contest for supremacy being waged within the upper echelons of Iran’s governance.  

Many believe that Iran is currently operating with four overlapping centers of authority: the supreme leader, the IRGC, the president, and senior IRGC-aligned political figures – and that each is vying for supreme power.​  All, however, are probably united behind Khamenei's pledge to avenge his father's death;  the ideology that has driven the revolution since 1979 lives on. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Hardliners in Tehran are running the show while the Iran's supreme leader watches", 15 July 2026: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-902329