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Mondoweiss: ‘I couldn’t watch my children cry from hunger’: Inside the ‘displacement economy’ Gazans built to survive the genocide

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‘I couldn’t watch my children cry from hunger’: Inside the ‘displacement economy’ Gazans built to survive the genocide

In Gaza’s displacement camps, survival has bred a new economy: a gym owner forges weights from empty cans, a supermarket owner turns baker, a housewife becomes a street vendor — each person rebuilding a livelihood from the wreckage of genocide.
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Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)Palestinian Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)

Iman Mughira had spent months and up to $250,000 building a gym in Rafah with several partners before Israel destroyed it during the genocide. Displaced to al-Mawasi in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, she tracked satellite images of her city until she was certain the gym was gone.

“When I realized it had been destroyed, I felt that my future had also been destroyed,” Mughira, 33, told Mondoweiss.

Mughira is one of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who lost their livelihoods to what a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report has called the “most severe economic crisis on record” in Gaza, erasing 22 years of development progress in less than two years.” Cut off from what they built before the genocide, many displaced Palestinians in the Strip have improvised new trades and businesses from what has been left behind, trying to continue what they once built in entirely different forms.

“When I was displaced, I left behind my life’s dream, something I had spent years building, and came to al-Mawasi, where there is neither safety nor stability,” Mughira told Mondoweiss. After fleeing Rafah for al-Mawasi, Mughira says that her biggest concern was what would become of her business. She had followed news from her city through satellite imagery, trying to determine what had happened to it, until one day, she received confirmation that it had been completely wiped out by the Israeli army, much like the rest of Rafah.

After the initial shock of losing her business, Mughira began looking for a way out of the grief that had overtaken her. She noticed what was piling up around every tent in the camp: empty cans from food aid and discarded cooking-oil containers.

Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)
Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)

“These materials are available in every tent, because every tent receives aid and then throws the empty cans into the garbage,” Mughira said. “That is when I had the idea of using these cans again for something new and positive for displaced people.”

“We filled them with sand and used pieces of wood as makeshift bars and lifted the cans, which became weights,” she explained.

Mughira began sharing her experience on social media, receiving messages from women in the camps telling her that they had carved out an hour to themselves each day to exercise and move their bodies again, without having to travel anywhere or pay money they didn’t have.

Other women told her that the exercises had helped them regain their fitness and flexibility, making it easier to cope with the physical demands of displacement, such as carrying water, hauling belongings by hand, sleeping on the sand, and washing clothes.

Eventually, women began coming personally to her tent to train with her. Mughira says she found that many of them were suffering from illnesses or physical problems, including muscle pain caused by sleeping on sand inside tents and by the tasks they were required to perform, such as washing clothes by hand and carrying and cleaning their belongings.

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Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)
Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, August 11, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)

‘I have no choice’

Ayman Abu Muhareb, 44, spends his days in front of an oven his family built out of mud and straw near a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, baking bread for a small income to support his family of eight, including a daughter with a heart defect.

“Doctors have repeatedly warned me about sitting for long hours in front of the smoke coming from the oven because I burn wood, plastic, and fabric to keep it going,” Abu Muhareb told Mondoweiss. “I started this work a year ago, and since then, my health and physical condition have deteriorated noticeably. But I have no choice. I have to work to bring food home for my family and provide for my sick daughter.”

Before the war, Abu Muhareb says, he owned a supermarket and lived with his family in relative stability. Since then, the supermarket has been bombed, and the remaining goods in it were looted. His entire livelihood was destroyed, forcing him to find alternative work to provide food for his family.

“I never expected that I would one day work as a baker for people and displaced families,” he said. “But circumstances forced me to do it, just as they forced many people to take up jobs that do not suit them to meet their daily needs.”

But despite working those long hours, ignoring the doctors’ advice, he says that there are still days he can’t provide everything his family needs from this work.

A displaced Palestinian family prepares and bakes traditional Eid cakes in a makeshift clay oven at a shelter center in Khan Younis, May 26, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)
A displaced Palestinian family prepares and bakes traditional Eid cakes in a makeshift clay oven at a shelter center in Khan Younis, May 26, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)

Muhareb isn’t the only person who has been forced into a profession not of his own choosing. Across Gaza, women who had previously never been a family’s sole breadwinner were suddenly forced to seek out work to provide for their families, especially in households where the husband or father was injured or killed.

Zeinab al-Najjar, 50, is a mother of eight. Her husband was injured during the war and became confined to a wheelchair, leaving her responsible for supporting their large family by whatever means possible.

After they were displaced to the seafront in Deir al-Balah, al-Najjar found herself facing a heavy responsibility. She started selling lupini beans, a common snack in Gaza, among the tents of displaced families.

She had once been a mother who prepared food for her children and cared for them while her husband worked. Now the roles have been reversed, and she is the one responsible for putting food on the family’s table.

“Displacement forces people to change their ways and change their professions,” al-Najjar explained. I start working in the afternoon, when the heat of the sun becomes less intense,” she said. “I work for long hours, and sometimes I return to my tent after midnight, when I know I have earned enough to take care of my family.”

“I couldn’t sit by and watch my children, especially the younger ones, cry from hunger. I know this work may not be suitable for me, but I have no other choice. I am not seeking profit or wealth. All I want is to feed my children, nothing more. This is what displacement has forced us to do, day after day,” she added.

Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.

Mark Wauck: Debasification Exposes Trump’s Folly

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Debasification Exposes Trump’s Folly

Yesterday afternoon, as usual with Fridays during this Trump war, featured the usual absurdities from Trump. Pronouncements that Hormuz would become a US territory—presumably the Strait of Trump, although a POTUS has no constitutional authority to create territories of the US. Another pronouncement that the hapless service personnel aboard the USS Abe hadn’t been stranded at sea long enough. All in all it was an unusually disgraceful performance.

Today the NYT is reporting that Iran’s strategy of targeting US bases in the region has been directly responsible for the resupply problems facing the USN. Now, we have long been aware of the great stresses placed on the US force projection into the region that the destruction of US radars and bases have posed. It was always a sort of domino strategy. Iran first systematically destroyed early warning radars near the Persian Gulf, which left US bases utterly vulnerable. Then the bases themselves were effectively dismantiled. That forced the US to withdraw westward to places like Jordan, but Iranian missiles followed them. US planes are now largely based in Israel or other similarly distant points. Amerikanets ably summarized the situation back on July 19:

Debasification

Iranian air war strategy

The US force in the region losing access to both the first and second lines of airbases available to it at the start of the conflict is a development with profound strategic and operational consequences. Depending on how you slice it, the number of airbases from which the US would likely conduct operations against Iran prewar was around 20. Without access to bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, KSA, and Jordan, that number will be cut to around five. This will compress hundreds of airframes into just a handful of tarmacs and runways, making it impossible to get those assets into the air in the time between early warning radars detecting an Iranian MRBM launch and that missile impacting its target in Israel. With more assets on the tarmac, the Iranians are much more likely to score hits. As the Pentagon moves more assets into the region to stage for a potential ramp-up in attacks on Iran, this issue will compound.

Enter a second asymmetry: the US Axis depends on aerial refueling to generate combat power, and the distance that makes Israeli bases safer to conduct operations from undercuts refueling missions. Tankers that could have met attack aircraft for refueling missions directly over their takeoff point at Al Udeid in Qatar, for example, will now have to fly over a thousand miles to reach the southern border of Iran, and even farther if they want to avoid dangerous airspace over Iraq. This puts stress on airframes, sucks up fuel, and reduces the number of refueling missions that can be flown. These distances become extreme when considering that tankers may have to meet attack aircraft launched from carriers operating as much as 1,700 miles away from Israel in the Arabian Sea. The retreat to Israel effectively divides the US forces in the region in two, splitting USAF assets in Israel from USN assets off the coast of Oman.

The key to the American air campaign has always been to degrade Iranian air defenses to the point that cheap and plentiful glide or even gravity bombs can be used against targets in Iran. Dwindling stocks of long-range cruise missiles make this a necessity. To accomplish this, American air forces have to conduct Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (S/DEAD) operations, which require long loiter times with aircraft remaining in the air to respond to ISR and emissions from air defense radars. These missions are exceptionally dependent on tanker support, so any degradation of US tanker operations in turn degrades American S/DEAD capabilities.

By all available evidence, the Iranian debasification campaign appears to be working. The US force in the region is likely incapable of generating the same combat power in its air operations against Iran as it could when the war started, and things are trending ever further in a negative direction. Even worse, there’s no clear solution on the horizon. The most obvious lever for American planners to pull is to accept more casualties and losses of personnel and airframes, but this is an unprecedented step the modern incarnation of the US military has never faced.

So nearly a month ago Trump’s empty threats had been exposed. Yes, the US was still able to launch strikes, but they were unsustainable beyond a few days, while Iranian retaliation is sustainable indefinitely. No doubt the military command has been telling Trump all of this, and Trump’s public pronunciamentos are empty gaslighting. All his eggs are now in the sanctions basket. Count on that to backfire against the US and its allies. Iran, backed by Russia and China (and other countries acting discretely) will outlast Trump—perhaps to 2029. But Iran is now shifting to an offensive posture, so Trump may find himself if an even tighter box.

This brings us back to the resupply problems facing the USN out in the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Iran’s debasification strategy wasn’t confined to actual US bases in the Persian Gulf and westward. While radar was the priority target early on, they later struck at resupply facilities on the Gulf of Oman controlled by the UAE and Oman. That has forced US logistics to be pushed back all the way to Diego Garcia out in the Indian Ocean, 2200 miles distant from the Strait of Hormuz. But, Iran does have missiles that can reach Diego Garcia. The next phase of war may feature Iran’s new offensive posture may include determined attacks on USN ships—not just warning or harassing shots—as well as on Diego Garcia.

The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter

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BREAKING: The US Navy has shifted its main regional logistics hub 2,200 miles to Diego Garcia after Iran struck and fully destroyed the US Navy base in Bahrain early in the Iran war, directly contributing to the supply problems aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, per NYT.

Iran subsequently struck Diego Garcia on March 20 with 2 medium-range ballistic missiles, with 1 falling short into the Indian Ocean and the other shot down by a US Navy warship, with a senior Iranian source familiar with the matter saying “more is to come” regarding strikes on the island. Both US carrier liberty ports (Bahrain + Emirati Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman) are within Iranian missile range.

Because of this logistics disruption, the carrier has set a historic record for time at sea, with sailors facing exhaustion, food shortages, water contamination, deteriorating conditions, supply shortages, lack of basic hygiene products, and poor-quality rations. Multiple sailors have tried jumping overboard and attempted suicide.

The USS Lincoln crew is also eligible for 5 “beer days” under Navy tradition, given time at sea, but no beer is available due to the shortages.

Now, the debasification strategy has been effective and well within Iranian capabilities largely because US bases are stationary targets. In that sense, the USN carrier groups have a signficant advantage because they are moving targets. That advantage is effective against both cruise missiles as well as ballistic missiles—for different reasons, in both cases. That doesn’t mean that USN ships are immune from attack, which is why they operate outside the range of Iranian coastal based cruise missiles. Probably the only country today that could plausibly—but still speculatively—present a real threat to USN carriers is China. The reason is that effective strike systems against these mobile and highly defended targets require very expensive and sophisticated spaced based ISR satellite systems. My take from these considerations, and those that follow in the limited quotes, is that Iran is probably best served by targeting the USN logistics chain—now including Diego Garcia—since these are stationary targets.

For a deep dive into the question of the feasibility of missile attacks against naval assets, Amerikanets has a very recent article. Here I quote only his conclusions, so follow the link if this subject interests you:

Why Hasn’t Iran Sunk an American Aircraft Carrier?

And what’s up with anti-ship ballistic missiles?

Before getting into the meat of this question, let’s get some caveats out of the way. The only thing we truly know, because it’s been confirmed in official statements by both sides, is that the Iranians have targeted US Navy assets. We don’t know if they’ve managed to hit an American ship, and there’s no strong evidence that they have, but we can be certain they haven’t sunk one. We don’t know how many anti-ship missiles and drones the Iranians have expended in their targeting efforts. We’ll avoid speculating on the possibility of American cover-ups of damage to naval vessels in this piece.

We can’t rule out that the Iranians are deliberately withholding a catastrophic strike. In this view, they could be limiting themselves to what are effectively warning shots to keep the American naval force in the Arabian Sea at a distance. This could make sense from a strategic perspective, as it would control the rate of escalation. Striking American bases in Jordan, for example, could plausibly be construed as lower on the Iranian escalation ladder than striking an American aircraft carrier, which is the enduring symbol of American military power. It’s long been speculated that the American government would be forced to respond to the sinking of an aircraft carrier with a retaliatory nuclear strike, though there is no evidence this is US military doctrine.

…

It’s plausible that the Chinese possess a reliable, operational carrier killer today, and that they’re the only nation to ever have one. But this should be regarded as a holistic system, rather than just a particular missile. All the components in a highly sophisticated and staggeringly expensive chain reaching from the launcher on the ground to ISR satellites in space must work together.

So where does this leave the Iranians? First, none of this proves Iran hasn’t chosen restraint. What it does establish is that restraint is a more logical choice than it may at first appear. The Iranians don’t have the resources to create an integrated space-based ISR system like the Chinese have. Their coastal radars have suffered attrition. They’ve made massive leaps in missile technology, but this is just one link in a lengthy chain. Their best bet for the moment is attriting American naval defenses with cruise missiles and drones, but this is a tall and expensive order. A single CSG has hundreds of interceptors capable of shooting down slower aerial threats. Its radars, unlike the terrestrial ones the Iranians have already destroyed, are mobile. And American naval forces are intentionally operating at the edge of Iranian cruise missile range. The Iranians could expend hundreds of cruise missiles without much to show for it. Perhaps the most realistic possibility for the Iranians to get an edge on American naval forces would be getting a little help from their friends. Chinese and Russian ISR could greatly diminish Iran’s disadvantages in targeting, but it remains to be seen if either state would be willing to take that risk.

Rabbi: The West must bend the knee to Israel or else

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Jews have a long memory…

NYT has an Identity Crisis Over Gun Slinger’s Identity

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The media’s latest morality play

The New York Times, normally so squeamish about the use of firearms, recently published a highly sympathetic account of a woman using a gun to defend herself in Wyoming.

Unfortunately, the woman wasn’t a woman, but a man claiming to be a woman. And “she” wasn’t defending herself, she was the aggressor. (Pronouns translated into British under order of the Crown Court.)

The Times’ video of the incident shows the transgender, who goes by “Rihanna” but dresses like a man, walking, right hand on her holstered gun, directly into the path of three men crossing the street in the opposite direction. It wasn’t a short walk; she must have gone at least 50 feet to reach them.

The first man steps around Rihanna. The second, Scott Durham, also veers well out of the crosswalk to avoid her, but she veers too, positioning herself directly in front of him, at which point he pushes her, without breaking stride. Rihanna collapses like a house of cards, practically bouncing off the pavement.

So far, the video could be a Charles Atlas ad for his program to turn weaklings into real men.

But then the transgender whips out a firearm and points it at the men, as they continue on their way, with barely a glance back at her. This is the case that turned the Times into an NRA-loving, gun rights enthusiast.

According to the Times, the question in Rihanna’s case is whether “Stand Your Ground” laws apply “when the person holding the gun is transgender.” After all, the Times notes, this happened in “gun-friendly, staunchly Republican” Wyoming. So, it asks, “why is a trans woman being prosecuted after being shoved to the ground?”

As a newbie firearms supporter, the Times may be unaware of this, but there isn’t a state in the union where pointing a gun at these guys would be remotely justified. Rihanna was the aggressor. You can’t initiate a fight, get brushed aside, then point a gun at your victim’s back as he calmly walks away.

But in the Times’ version of events, the incident didn’t begin with Rihanna confronting the men, but when “Ms. Kelver” — as the paper deadnames her; her name is “Ríhanna Novalee ChasingStars” (I’m guessing the Times didn’t think this would help her case) — “drew her gun after she had been pushed down in the street.”

No, it began when Ms. ChasingStars strode across the street, stood in front of the men, and, by her own account, hectored them for allegedly using a “homophobic slur.” (They deny it — and they’ve been more honest with the police than she has.)

The Times’ report on the trans gun-slinger is only the latest example of the media taking sides on news events, then lying about what happened. No matter the truth, the facts must be doctored to ensure that it’s always the same story: White Man Viciously Attacks Angelic Black Child/Black Man/Gay Man/Black Woman/White Woman/Asian Woman/Muslim Woman/Trans Woman.

For the media, every story has to be Emmett Till 2.

Remember a certain “Stand Your Ground” case out of Florida a decade ago? It got a fair amount of attention. In the first six months after George Zimmerman fatally shot a black 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin, the Times alone ran 254 articles on the case.

The entire media wanted Zimmerman tried for murder. They were unimpressed with his argument that he was flat on his back, screaming for help, having his head pounded into the pavement by Martin before he fired.

Zimmerman was Hispanic, but, because he was the villain in this set piece, he had to be called “white.” For this, the media invented an all-new category: “White Hispanic.” I had never heard of such a designation, nor had anyone else, nor was it ever heard again.

Although contemporary photos of Martin existed — smoking pot and brandishing a gun, for example — we got nothing but adolescent pictures of him. (I began to suspect the Times was taking sides in Rihanna’s case based on the paper’s failure to include any prepubescent photos of Mr. Durham.)

The gated community where Zimmerman lived was 49% non-Hispanic white, 23% Hispanic, 20% black, and 5% Asian, or — the Times called it — “predominantly white.” The Zimmerman jury was composed of five white women and one Puerto Rican woman. Here’s the Times’ description, all from a single news story: “none of them black.. all but one of the jurors is white… jury without any black jurors… a jury that includes no blacks.”

NBC News intentionally edited Zimmerman’s call to emergency services to make him sound racist. What Zimmerman actually said was: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.” In response to the dispatcher asking him, “is he black, white, or Hispanic?” Zimmerman replied, “He looks black.”

But the version NBC ran repeatedly, including on the “Today” show, had him saying: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good…. He looks black.” Hmmm, why would NBC choose that particular way to edit it?

Usually the media slip in whoppers by quoting the victim’s family members or lawyer, without mentioning that these are people who stand to make millions in extorted settlements with local governments. Thus, the Times quoted Martin’s father saying Trayvon was “murdered by someone who weighs more than 100 pounds than him.” Zimmerman was 27 pounds heavier, only because he was overweight. Martin was four inches taller and in considerably better shape.

Similarly, in the Wyoming case, Ms. ChasingStars’s lawyer is quoted by the Times — without correction — claiming, “She doesn’t pull a gun till she’s on her back with three guys around her.” There were no guys around her. As the video proves, but the article hides, the men were walking away from her when she pulled a gun.

Every one of the media’s morality plays modeled on the murder of Emmett Till is invariably a concoction of monumental lies. If they keep it up, how long before people start doubting the original?

COPYRIGHT 2026 ANN COULTER

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi saying why it’s permissible to kill non-Jewish children

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Mark Wauck: The Israel Lobby compromises American freedom

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Terrific, especially the material on the power of the Israel Lobby.

Puntland To Polling

Mark Wauck

To tie our topics together, we turn first to a brief video by Ian Lustick, co-author with Eli Clifton of the new book, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. In the video Lustick simply explains the main point of the book:

Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power

The point of this book is to tell the American people that they have faced and are facing a danger from the Israel Lobby in the United States that doesn’t just compromise American interests abroad, but threatens American freedoms at home. The extremism that has marked Israeli politics, an increasing extremism for the last 20 years, has made it virtually impossible even for The Lobby to defend Israeli policies on their own terms in front of an American audience of any consequence. Put another way, the Lobby has found that it can’t win any actual arguments in public about whether Israeli policies are good or bad. So they only want to prevent arguments from being made. That in turn has resulted in Lobby activities which threaten the freedoms of Americans. What they’re fundamentally trying to do, those people in the Israel Lobby now, is to prevent debate about what is happening in Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians. That way they don’t have to defend Israeli policies because there is no discussion of them substantively. The United States over decades provided Israel with virtually unconditional political and economic support. The power of the Israel Lobby in the United States prevented presidents over and over again from pursuing policies toward Israel and the Palestinians and the Arabs that could have resulted in a reasonable two-state solution. In other words, the entire trajectory of Israeli democracy was powerfully shaped by the unintended consequences of the Israel Lobby’s overweening influence in the United States. That’s why I say that the major problem in the Middle East is an American domestic politics problem.

The great virtue of what Lustick is saying is that he counters those who like to say that our problem is with the Israeli government—as if it’s the Israeli government—the government of a small country thousands of miles away—that somehow controls the American government. No, this is a problem of American domestic politics. The Israel Lobby is an American lobby that controls the US government on behalf of their own perceptions of the goals of Jewish Nationalism. It is Jewish Nationalists right here in America who control our government, and they do it with money.

Yesterday Doug Macgregor made a similar point, including the important point that the same people are behind the war on Russia.

Col Doug Macgregor – Iran War: THE ART OF DEFEAT / We Have No Influence Over Iran

I think that Donald Trump should consider writing a new book. I think his last book was The Art of the Deal. He’s an expert now. He should sit down and write a book called The Art of Defeat because that’s what he’s mastered. We are defeated and nothing he does at this point is going to make any difference. The Iranians have made that very clear. That’s why they’ve said they have no intention of negotiating with this administration. They’ll wait until he leaves office presumably in 2029. I think he might go earlier. But having said that, they know that we are not governed per se by Donald Trump or the voice of the American people. These institutions and the people in them have all been purchased by the Zionist Jewish billionaires who are actually in control. And there’s no point in talking to them. You might as well try to talk to Netanyahu. And I think they know that’s a waste of time.

Well, Hoffman [former CIA] and Feinberg [current top DoD official] are both Israeli firsters. So, they’re going to find an excuse to do whatever is possible to pour more money into this war against Iran and for that matter into any conflict that is either anti-Russian, anti-Iranian, and for the most part anti-Muslim in anti-Islamic, let’s put it that way, in the region. We have no interest in that as a country. There’s no reason why we should be engaged in any of those things. So, let’s get that straight.

We’re watching this slow global fracturing and meltdown in the Western financial system. So, everybody will say, well, when’s it really going to break? Nobody really knows, but … people that I trust, … say it’s coming and it’s coming soon. I would think that President Trump is increasingly aware of that. If he wasn’t, he would never have said what he did in Paris. “I’m not going to end up like Herbert Hoover. I know the global economy could go into a depression. That’s why we must open the strait.” Well, obviously, he gets it. He understands.

So, we’re back to the critical question. Why isn’t Trump responding appropriately? Why is he essentially dragging us into a protracted war? Because people like Hoffman and Feinberg and others in the White House and on the Hill, want a protracted conflict. They don’t understand the consequences for us as a country, let alone the rest of the world. They’re only thinking about their interests and Israel’s, and their interests and Israel’s demand a protracted war. But we can’t do it. That’s the bottom line. I wonder how long it’s going to take before President Trump figures that out. Because you and I know there’s a lot of evidence for a lot of unhappy people in the armed forces right now who’ve had to live under miserable conditions at sea for months and months and months. You get at some point revolts, rebellions.

The bottom line is that it’s in the interests of the Jewish Nationalist agenda to control the foreign policy of the world’s Superpower. Most people imagine that Jewish Nationalists only care about Israel and Israel’s neighborhood—West Asia. Not true. Jewish Nationalists are interested in everything that can maintain their proxy—the United States—as a Superpower. So they’re interested in their Jewish war of revenge against Russia. They’re interested in seemingly insignificant countries like Honduras:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

8h

What’s going on in Colombia is a continuation of “Operation Condor 2.0.”

Below is our episode on Honduras and the drug trafficking president pardoned by Trump after a request from a “group of rabbis.”

And Columbia:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

Brad Parscale and Israel are also helping to create chaos in Latin America. We covered this yesterday with Larry Johnson.

They’re very interested in a country many (most?) readers have never heard of: Puntland. Puntland is the tip of the horn of the Horn of Africa. Until March of 2024 Puntland was part of Somalia, but then it refused to recognize the Somali government. Unlike Somaliland to its west, Puntland has so far not sought international recognition as an independent state:

Until March of 2024 Puntland was part of Somalia, but then it refused to recognize the Somali government. Unlike Somaliland, to its west, Puntland has so far not sought international recognition as an independent state. Somaliland’s efforts in that regard have been signally unsuccessful—it is only recognized by the rogue state of Israel. Not exactly a surprise.

The point of Puntland is that, as of August, the US is expanding it’s base at Bosaso, without a by your leave from the Somali government. Responsible Statecraft has two recent articles on this development. In the first of them, they note that this action appears not to be aimed at Somalia:

US military marching into Puntland as Red Sea tensions escalate

Though the agreement itself is vague, it signals a potential new direction in the Trump administration’s Horn of Africa policy. Experts say the driving force is the expansion of the Iran war into the Red Sea, not a reaction to events inside Somalia itself. But the move also risks deepening a rift between Mogadishu and the federal states it has long struggled to hold together.

American engagement with these states is not entirely new. Cameron Hudson, an analyst who previously served as director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told RS that the U.S. has used Puntland as a staging ground for operations inside Somalia for years, largely via an Emirati-run base in the port city of Bosaso.

“The United States probably now sees a longer term need to have a kind of wholly owned, wholly operated U.S. base in the region,” Hudson said, a move that likely indicates either an increase in military strikes within Somalia or part of a larger effort to combat growing threats in the wider region.

So, in other words, this development, long advocated by Neocons, is a repositioning of US resources in the long term war on Iran and Yemen. It also risks involvement in other regional wars in this very violent and turbulent area. That’s what the second article gets into:

How the Egypt-Ethiopia feud could upend Trump’s plans in Africa

The US has no plan for dealing with the complex rivalries that threaten its strategy in the region

What’s going on here—and it is complicated—is that the Neocons are trying to gain control over the west coast of the Red Sea, especially around the Bab el Mandab strait. But in doing this, by courting relatively small breakaway parts of countries, the Neocons are putting the US at odds with major countries that are also involved in the disputes—countries like Egypt (pop. 107 million) and Ethiopia (pop. 140 million). Again, the bottom line is that the Trump regime may be repositioning out of the Persian Gulf, but it is absolutely not giving up military operations in the region. It’s a question of finding more secure bases. Djibouti is probably considered uncomfortably close to Yemen, so Puntland it is. Neocons remain firmly in control of US foreign policy.

And that brings us to polling, because normal Americans are unhappy with Trump’s Jewish Nationalist inspired focus on foreign policy. In fact, (h/t Ray SoCa) Robert Barnes has demonstrated via polling data that Americans have never been enthusiastic about foreign adventuring.

Israel Now A Political Pariah In America

History of American Public Opinion of Israel

Yesterday Danny Davis did an interview with a close associate of Barnes, pollster Rich Baris. I’ve done an edited transcript of excerpts from that interview, which bear on the political impact of Trump’s betrayal of the Americans who voted for him. As you’ll see, it’s all very much tied together with Jewish Nationalist control over American politics and, especially, foreign policy. One thing that really fascinated me was Baris’ contention that Trump was blackmailed by “the Senate” (i.e., Senate leadership?) into the war on Iran. If true, I have to believe that that means the Senate was given its marching orders—including, no vote on war—by their Jewish Nationalist controllers. Think about that.

War & Americans What the Polls Reveal /Pollster Rich Baris & Lt Col Daniel Davis

We’ve hit a civilizational shakeup. Young people believe that institutions are hollow and systems are rigged. The old order feeds itself first and calls it governance while citizens get shafted. The youth have noticed and they aren’t going to take it anymore. If the right does not position itself for when this generational realignment happens, if they don’t position themselves to be the champion of this new majority, then they will be wiped out.

The anti-war component of the MAGA platform, the America First platform, is not just a throw in or a talking point. It is central to how Donald Trump put together his coalition and it is central to how Donald Trump wins states that other Republicans cannot win. And maybe, even if they do win, it’s a squeaker [for those other Republicans] when Donald Trump will win those states by 13 plus points.

Trump’s all-time high rating was posted about a month after he came into office and was doing incredible stuff that his coalition wanted him to do. But over time we started to see [chinks?] with the Epstein issue. It wasn’t [so much about] Epstein himself. [The Epstein issue] was a proxy issue for Donald Trump being the people’s retribution, taking that fight. That is what these voters wanted to see. All voters are important, but of course the most key component of that block was millennial men–millennial mind changers and first time voters are the reason Donald Trump won and won easily. What that chart shows is that the Epstein issue was a red flag for them. A flag that something might be going awry here. They didn’t like what they were seeing. “We’re supposed to have accountability. Where’s the retribution? Go after the ruling class.” The reason why Epstein was such a proxy was because he was the figure head of this ruling class that not only commits crimes against humanity, but rigs the system at their expense. It’s not just that the game is rigged in their favor. The game is rigged and they hurt me on purpose.

Trump got very frustrated and committed a serious political miscalculation. [In effect he said]: “If you care about this issue, you’re annoying me and I don’t want your support anymore.” That was more than just something that pissed [his voters] off. I think that’s the easier way to say it. And it’s not totally accurate. It disappointed them. It hurt them. That’s different. Betrayal is a deeper cut. You’re talking about betrayals and there’s something about the wound of a betrayal that just cuts deeper, stings longer, and takes longer to heal. And this was one after another. Right after that [Epstein betrayal], we got Operation Midnight Hammer, which they did not support. I’ve likened it to a one-two punch.

The reason some people were so vocal against Operation Midnight Hammer is because [it told us] The Lobby was in town. So the minute those bombs fell in Operation Midnight Hammer, we knew what this meant. This would eventually lead to a kinetic war. It would completely engulf and encompass the entire agenda of the Trump administration and that would be the end of the coalition. It has been completely wiped and you’re seeing these massive swings–20 to 35 points–away from where Trump was going into 2024.

This is a disaster. It’s an utter obliteration, but I still think had he done well with some of these other issues on accountability and the economy, it would not have fallen apart like this. The central focus on foreign policy instead of on the domestic agenda, which Trump frankly screwed up when he made several mistakes in the beginning of his term. Backing John Thune over Rick Scott, not going after the Senate, instead playing footsy with Lindsey Graham. Well, now Lindsey Graham is dead and so is Trump’s agenda. The Senate is done. They blackmailed him to be able to even pass the BBB. If no Operation Midnight Hammer, no BBB. So he should have taken on the Senate in the very beginning when he had the capital to do it. They would have had no choice but to capitulate to him. He was too popular. Now he’s squandered all of that political capital.

Fauci last week–that just burns voters even more. Republicans think these charades with these congressional hearings earn them points. It doesn’t. People look at a hearing like that and all they can think about is, ‘Damn it Trump! Why did you start this war instead of going after Anthony Fauci? Why did you start this war and not go after all the autopen nonsense? You know, we could have held these guys accountable.’ That’s what they think.

There are consequences for catering to a teeny tiny faction of your coalition at the expense of everybody else. There are consequences for that and, unfortunately, Trump will have to live with those consequences.

The Epstein issue was a complete layup for Trump and for Republicans. This is a candidate and a campaign and a presidency ultimately that had been telling Americans for almost 10 years that he wants to destroy all of your enemies. Destroy the Democratic Party, destroy the corporate media, destroy Wall Street, destroy the Deep State. Well, guess what? One person and one singular issue tied all of them together. Jeffrey Epstein. This was Donald Trump’s way to bludgeon every single one of his political enemies to political death in one fail swoop. And instead, Trump chose to protect people like who? Howard Lutnick?

Operation Midnight Hammer was the singular event that cost Republicans their lead on the generic ballot. It was the beginning of Donald Trump’s approval rating going negative significantly and then getting that resistance that every pollster sees when a president starts to go into that zone where the Strongly Disapprove starts to rise too much. When it gets to 40 it gets increasingly difficult to dig yourself out of your own grave. Operation Midnight Hammer was the beginning of that. Yet people gave him chance after chance after chance to course correct. And I think a big part of that is because they viewed Donald Trump as their last chance. Right before the Iran war, 70% opposed even launching the war and only 20% supported it. It was the most unpopular proposed military action that I’ve ever polled in my career, even during the Iraq war.

There is [another issue]. This is a self-governing society. Every president who wants to go to war must have the blessing of the American people. Why? Because if you get in a situation like we are in now, which Trump was told we would end up in, you can’t rely on a military solution if you don’t have the public on your side. And this is where Donald Trump finds himself because he decided that, unlike every other president in American history, he was going to launch a war without any period of trying or attempting to sell the war to the American public. We did polling on how many American casualties voters would be willing to tolerate in the name of the goals that were set out in the Iran war? Do you know what won? Zero. Zero casualties. Americans were not prepared to kill a single US serviceman or woman for this war. The threat was not there for them. 35% of the American public doesn’t even believe we have a right to tell other nations they can or cannot have a nuclear weapon.

You are not dealing with the post 911 electorate anymore. And these younger people that were so central to Trump’s coalition and have to be central to any right-wing coalition going forward, they’re very, very different. They don’t take government’s word for it. You tell them someone’s got a WMD, they tell you, “Stuff it. Show me evidence.” The lies over WMDs, the financial crisis, the COVID situation, Donald Trump’s a Russian asset they were told. They have heard one major lie after another that has been completely debunked now. They trust nobody. And I think what the right misunderstood is that just because your guy won doesn’t mean they’re going to trust him if he says that Iran’s going to get a nuke and and blow up Israel. Nobody believes that. Nobody. And just because you put Kash Patel at the FBI doesn’t mean they believe you are holding them accountable for the collusion hoax from Crossfire Hurricane. You have to earn that trust

I can tell you 100% that the president knew this war was unpopular and that the president knew the risks. I don’t think he really wanted to do it. But a couple of things were going on. We brought up before how Trump really did not take on the US Senate. It was a massive critical early term second term mistake—which I thought he would have learned from the first term—and he was more popular than he had ever been when he started the second term. So, he absolutely could have done it. But by that time he was already in this very difficult situation with Republican leadership in the Senate. It frustrated him because he couldn’t get some of his domestic agenda through. Like I said before, Trump gave them the ability to effectively politically blackmail him. And when the president was in this frustrated state, I think he looked at how he handled Venezuela. He’s being totally stroked by The Lobby. They’re telling him he’s great and he’s going to be the greatest president ever. ‘Look at what you did in Venezuela.’ Our intel told him it can’t be done. Our people told him, “We’ve war gamed this a million times. There’s something called the five-finger strategy. They’re going to bomb our allies in the region. The Gulf allies are going to be pissed. They’ll shut down the straight of Hormuz. This will be a complete quagmire.” He listened to the Israeli intel, which was not not even uniform on the Israeli side. That is what happened. And he listened to idiots like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin.

Trump’s relationship with Israel is a whole other level worth looking into about why his coalition is where it is, because a lot of these voters just feel that Trump picked a foreign Lobby over them. He’s still stuck in Iran. It could work if Republicans weren’t a bunch of traitors who just passed the NDAA that effectively gave Israel an even more expanded special status and relationship with the US military. Israel got a much better deal [than foreign aid]. And again, I have to ask, why will Trump not do what seems politically beneficial for him? And he knows it. And the entire Republican Congress knows it. The entire Republican conference was briefed in on a series of polls and trends which included the polling we had talked about–that they had an Israel problem with anyone under 50. Well, guess what? It’s now anyone under like 62. And it just keeps getting worse. And I don’t mean anyone. It’s really right-wing voters. I’m talking about their own voters. Everyone else in the middle and on the left. Israel is a pariah at this point.

So the best thing Trump could do is kick Netanyahu to the curb. Kick the entire wing of that faction to the curb. I am telling you right now, these voters, these millennial voters particularly, will never ever join a coalition and sign up to be in the same coalition with Neocons ever again. Never again. They will never forgive Israel for hijacking their presidency, their last chance to turn their country around. It’s never going to happen. And Israel will just continue to get more unpopular as time goes on–and they effectively are a political pariah right now.

Q: What what does MAGA look like now? What has changed?

It’s shrunk and it basically regressed into older and whiter. You have about five to 7% overall that probably will vote for the Democrat. One out of five reliable Republican midterm voters don’t want to show up and they’re worried that they will just be missing from the electorate. That doesn’t even account for the group of people who never really were Republican, but they just voted for Trump. This is a five alarm fire. They have to wake people up, and just screaming about socialism isn’t going to work for the reasons I said it wouldn’t before they started this war. If you were really afraid of socialism and you plan to resurrect this argument, then your first priority would have been to preserve the integrity of the coalition to ensure it was a winning coalition. And then you could take care of business at home to prevent the socialists from taking over the country and destroying it. You would put that before the needs of a foreign nation. So now you just look like a bunch of inauthentic little liars because everyone can see it.

Nobody cares about Ukraine at all. The Russia scare is over, guys. Move on.

The last time there was a betrayal of this magnitude was in 1992. The “read my lips no new taxes” betrayal fractured the right into the Ross Perot coalition, and he won 20% of the vote. The right better thank god Tucker’s not running. This will make the Ross Perot coalition fracture look like a paper cut. This could be Perot on steroids. Vice President Vance, if he wants to be president, has got to fix this. They cannot sustain this. There’s just there’s no way they can afford to lose that much of their coalition and have any hope to win.

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