Footage shows the moment Israel bombed Corniche Al-Mazraa in Beirut, Lebanon. Initial reports of more than 300 Lebanese civilians killed and wounded from Israeli strikes across Lebanon in 10 minutes.

The manufactured meltdown over Rula Jebreal's "AIPAC monkey" gaffe is a cynical psy-op designed to bury the grassroots rebellion against one of the Israel lobby's most critical assets. Grassroots Democrats are in open revolt against Israel, AIPAC and the Gaza genocide, and there is no one more poised to stomp on their faces than Hakeem Jeffries. As the recipient of over $1.4 million in Israel lobby donations, he's one of AIPAC's most important investments. Under no circumstances can he afford to defy the all-White cast of Jewish supremacist millionaires and billionaires who fueled his rise. Jeffries is so thoroughly controlled by Zionist forces that he once paid tribute to apartheid Israel by paraphrasing George Wallace's infamous "segregation forever" inaugural address. He knew exactly what he was doing, and which elements he was pandering to. For her part, Rula Jebreal has no formal role in the Democratic Party, and negligible influence. She's a Palestinian pundit who made her now-notorious comments on the podcast of Wajahat Ali, a Muslim Democratic operative who's generally parotted the pro-war positions of party leadership, but who's drawn the line at the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The two instantly became punching bags for the most opportunistic factions of Black misleadership, who depend on AIPAC and corporate America to sustain their positions. This includes much of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has traditionally functioned as a mechanism for elite control of Black politics. (Browse the corporate advisory council on the CBC Foundation's website for a quick look at who pulls its strings). If and when Jeffries becomes House Speaker after November, he will present his rise as a landmark of racial progress, and the ratification of his personal vision. But like Barack Obama, whose career was propelled by a pair of wealthy pro-Israel Chicagoland families, Jeffries owes the Zionist billionaire class for his place in history. As Speaker, Jeffries will therefore be expected to ram through wildly unpopular bills supplying arms and aid to Israel's genocide machine, cancelling free speech on campus, and further integrating Israel's military-intelligence apparatus with America's. By making road kill out of Rula and Waj, Jeffries' backers hope to terrify his grassroots opposition into silence. If you even refer to him as AIPAC Shakur, or describe him as a servant of AIPAC, the toxic remnants of KHive will brand you as the bastard love child of Strom Thurmond and Eva Braun, and the CBC and Neera Tanden will boost their attacks in tandem with the NY Post. The DSA, Abdul Seyed, Zohran, and everyone in between have been delivered with marching orders: fall back on the whole Gaza genocide thing, stay in your lane, and most importantly, don't knock the hustle.

Many "pro-Palestinians" believe or pretend to believe that "Hamas didn't commit any rape on 7 October." Yet there is plenty of testimonial evidence for rapes. And rape is a common feature of massacre. The idea that it's implausible or unlikely that Shani Louk for example - whose murderers stripped her, paraded her body in the streets, and shattered her legs - was sexually assaulted by her killers is childish. The "rape denial" is also cowardly. One should simply support the Palestinian cause and oppose the Israeli genocide irrespective of the outrageous 7 October atrocities. (Monstrous as 7 October was, massacre is hardly unique in the history of anti-colonial struggles.) Yet clearly people feel afraid to do this, and feel obliged to make lunatic whitewashing claims about 7 October, a massacre which also featured, among other things, the attempted beheading of a Thai migrant worker, filmed by the murderer. Of course, on the subject of rape, IDF/ISF rapes/sexual assaults, which have almost certainly taken place at a much larger scale than those endured by Israelis at the hands of Palestinian militants, must be emphasized. But the "pro-Palestine" movement doesn't want to talk about a core reason this is covered up and shoved under the rug: toxic "honor culture" norms, which shame women and girls especially, but also men, into not coming forward. ("Pro-Palestine" Leftists compare honor culture to the stigma against rape survivors in the West; I of course don't deny that such a stigma exists, but the comparison is ludicrous.)

🚨 BREAKING: UK warship HMS Dragon has been forced to withdraw in order to be repaired at port after experiencing issues with its fresh water supplies