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On Tuesday, Israel announced that it assassinated Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani and the head of Irani’s internal security force and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling on Iranians to begin preparing to overthrow the government in Tehran. President Donald Trump and his senior aides claim that Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capacity has largely been decimated and that Iran is begging to negotiate an end to the war. Yet Iran continues to dominate access to the Strait of Hormuz and to launch strikes against both Israel and U.S. military outposts and bases across the Persian Gulf—and Iranian leaders say they will determine when the war ends.On Drop Site’s weekly livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the latest developments on the 18th day of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, including yesterday’s reporting on how special envoy Steve Witkoff has been texting Iranian officials asking to resume talks, messages Iranian officials told Scahill they have ignored. The White House responded angrily to Scahill’s report, calling Drop Site “abhorrent,” and denouncing the publication as engaging in “America Last behavior.”Scahill then speaks to Dr. Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran about Larijani’s reported assassination, Iran’s current position in the war and the prospects for civil unrest or armed battles inside Iran.Finally, Grim speaks to Emran Feroz, a journalist and contributor to Drop Site, about the growing conflict on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and last night’s raid on a hospital in Kabul that killed 400 people and wounded about 250 others. Residents in the area told Drop Site News contributor Feroz that the hospital itself was struck during the attack. Pakistan has not immediately commented on the allegation.Follow Drop Site on X for breaking news updates.Read and subscribe at dropsitenews.com. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

In an exclusive interview with Drop Site News, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Esmail Baghaei rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that he launched the war because Iran was “going to attack first,” calling it a “big lie.”“There was no intention on the part of Iran to attack the United States,” he said. “They claim that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” Baghaei added. “Did we come to the Gulf of Mexico to target Los Angeles and other U.S. cities? Or did they come 6,500 miles away to Iranian shores?”On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. decided to preemptively attack Iran because the White House knew Israel was going to begin bombing Iran and that Iran would strike back. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”On Tuesday, Trump sought to recast the U.S. rationale and said that he believed Iran was going to launch an attack first. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first—I felt strongly about that,” Trump said, charging that the Iranians “were getting ready to attack Israel. They were gonna attack others.”Rubio subsequently tried to walk his initial remarks back, saying that the media had mischaracterized his comments and—regardless of whether Israel was going to strike—Trump had already made a decision to attack Iran’s ballistic missile capability and go to war. “We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” Rubio said. “If you tell the president of the United States that if we don’t go first, we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the president’s going to go first. That’s what he did.”Baghaei called all of these claims by U.S. officials, “Lies after lies.”“I think the American people deserve to know, to understand what their government is doing,” Baghaie, who is also the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said. “How their government is abusing their money, their tax money, their image in the Middle East, in the Islamic world, just in furtherance of the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is by the way, wanted by the ICC [International Criminal Court], who is a genocidal killer in Palestine.”Baghaei denied claims by some U.S. officials, including Trump, that Iran had asked to resume talks with the U.S. “They are killing our citizens. Municipalities, schools, hospitals, medical centers, sports clubs—everywhere is being bombarded and targeted by missiles by [the] Israeli and American war machine. Do you think any Iranian with common sense would be really in a position to reach out to the United States under these circumstances?” Baghaei asked. “We were negotiating with the United States,” he said, pointing out that another round of talks was scheduled for Monday, March 2. “Just two days before that, the United States and Israel attacked Iran,” he added. “We were betrayed. Diplomacy was betrayed.”Follow Drop Site on X for breaking news updates.Read and subscribe at dropsitenews.com. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the latest developments in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran with Karim Makdisi, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut and a co-host, with his brothers, of the Makdisi Street podcast. With Hezbollah entering the war and Israel slowly moving troops into Lebanon, they discuss the spreading conflict in the context of Israel’s broader agenda in the region. "If you go back to the question of resistance, if you go to the question of Hezbollah, I think their calculation now is to say, look, if Iran falls, we're doomed, Hezbollah's doomed, Lebanon is doomed. So this is a situation where we need to enter in whatever capacity possible and support this particular attack or do whatever they can do in order to support this larger regional war, because otherwise the Israelis with the Americas are going to just pick off each of these entities one at a time in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, et cetera. ... This is for them an existential situation, as it is in Iran."Attempting to weaken or overthrow Iran, they note, is a means to support Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Palestine and beyond.Stay INFORMED on our latest reporting: DropSiteNews.comWATCH our weekly live show, streaming every TUESDAY morning, on Substack, YouTube, and FacebookLISTEN to the show as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.SUBSCRIBE to Drop Site News. Our reporting is FREE, and we are committed to keeping it that way.To help support our work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, it’s what fuels our reporting:DONATE to support Drop Site's independent journalism. Help us continue our work with a tax-deductible contribution at donate.dropsitenews.com.Follow us on X for breaking news:Drop Site News:   / dropsitenews  Ryan Grim:   / ryangrim  Jeremy Scahill:   / jeremyscahill  Instagram:   / dropsitenews  Facebook:   / dropsitenews  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dropsitenews...WhatsApp channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb6V... Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The U.S. and Israel continue to attack Iran in a massive bombing campaign that President Donald Trump characterized as the start of a regime change war. Tehran has launched an unprecedented series of retaliatory attacks at U.S. military bases and other targets across the region and has hit Israel with a series of intense missile strikes. There are widespread reports that the US-led attacks have killed senior Iranian leadership. In this special Drop Site News broadcast, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim speak with Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American analyst and author who served as an advisor to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, and Ali Abunimah, one of the founders of Electronic Intifada, who is in Amman, Jordan.Read all of Drop Site’s coverage of Iran here. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, there is a flurry of activity taking place inside the White House and Pentagon as Trump continues to deliberate whether he will authorize military strikes on Iran. A new round of talks between the U.S. and Iran are scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.Iranian officials tell Drop Site they are showing an “almost unbelievable level of flexibility” in talks with the U.S. to avert war, saying Tehran has “decided to exercise maximum flexibility on the nuclear issue, but only on the strict condition that it would genuinely prevent the outbreak of war.”Officials said Iran is directly addressing U.S. concerns on the nuclear issue with concrete proposals, and asserting a willingness to expand talks to other issues once a deal to avert imminent conflict has been concluded. Although talks are scheduled for Thursday, the prospects for a deal that would halt the U.S. drive to war remain fragile.Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain join Ryan Grim to discuss the latest.In the second half of the broadcast, Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous discusses a new joint investigation by the independent research groups Earshot and Forensic Architecture on the Israeli military’s massacre of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza on March 23, 2025. The report, based on eyewitness testimony and audio and visual analysis, found that Israeli soldiers fired nearly a thousand bullets at the aid workers—with at least eight shots fired at point blank range in execution-style killings.Read all of Drop Site’s coverage of Iran here.Read about the 2025 massacre of Palestinian aid workers here. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

With a U.S. military build-up unprecedented since the 2003 Iraq invasion underway in the Middle East, Iran may soon find itself in the cross-hairs of a massive military onslaught.President Donald Trump has publicly said that diplomatic channels with Iran remain open and Iranian diplomats say they are in the process of drafting a document responding to U.S. demands recently presented in the indirect talks in Geneva, Switzerland. But several former senior U.S. officials have told Drop Site that the size and scope of the military deployment indicate a high likelihood of a U.S. attack. One former senior intelligence official who informally advises the Trump administration put the chances of a strike at 80-90 percent.Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to former senior U.S. Middle East diplomat Robert Malley, a lead negotiator of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Malley has served under three U.S. presidents and has extensive experience negotiating with Iranian officials. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and author, with Hussein Agha, of “Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” Scahill and Malley also discuss the first meeting of the so-called Board of Peace and the ongoing Israeli war against Gaza.Read Drop Site’s coverage of the U.S. buildup here.Subscribe to Drop Site: https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

On Friday, the High Court in the United Kingdom ruled on Friday that the government’s ban on the pro-Palestine direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was unlawful. The ruling marked a major legal victory for the group, which was founded in 2020 and campaigns against companies complicit in “the occupation, apartheid and genocide of Palestine,” with a focus on Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Huda Ammori, the 31-year old British-Palestinian co-founder of Palestine Action, spoke to Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous about the movement’s strategy, rooted in direct action to physically disrupt and dismantle the war machine that facilitates the genocide and occupation in Palestine. “As a Palestinian, the best moment of my life was being on top of an Israeli weapons factory with a sledgehammer being able to destroy that site. And knowing, that just that by being there and causing damage, they would have to shut down. Not just while I was there, but for weeks after.”Also on the livestream, Ryan Grim spoke with Carrie Prejean Boller on her ouster from Trump’s religious liberty commission. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The so-called Board of Peace that President Donald Trump officially launched in Davos, Switzerland last week is developing sweeping plans for a U.S.-backed administration to rule Gaza. Leaked documents exclusively reported on by Jonathan Whittall show the Board’s bureaucratic plans for total control of Gaza—without Palestinian participation or input.Whittall, who was a senior UN official in Palestine before being expelled by Israel last year, joins Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss the reality on the ground in Gaza, Trump’s installation of himself as the indefinite chair of the Board of Peace, and what Israel is doing to make its presence in Gaza permanent.Jonathan Whittall is a political analyst with two decades of experience in humanitarian work with Médecins Sans Frontières and the UN. He is now executive director of KEYS Initiative.Pieces discussed:https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-board-of-peace-resolution-gaza-trump-ushttps://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-yellow-line-earth-berms-blocks-physical-barrier-israel-palestinianshttps://www.dropsitenews.com/p/cmcc-leaked-documents-gaza-residential-zone-surveillance-checkpoints-rafah Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Documentary photographer and essayist Kaveh Rostamkhani has been on the ground in Tehran throughout the unrest and bloodshed that gripped Iran over the past weeks, and he published an essay on Instagram on Wednesday under the title, “Iran Unrests: A Feast for Vultures.” Rostamkhani describes some of what he observed and raises questions about the events that took place:"In what would become the longest internet blackout in Iran’s history, only a semi-functional nationwide intranet was left available. Not only had the security forces clearly underestimated the mobilisation capabilities of the monarchists and their accomplices, but also observers and ordinary citizens were surprised by the excessive riots. By Saturday, January 10th, the nation would wake up soaked in blood."Over the next days, eye and ear witnesses recounted harrowing atrocities. One told me that in their neighbourhood there had been so many corpses that the authorities had to patrol through the blocks and load them onto pick-ups. The scale of deaths is beyond deniability, thus, the state TV airs scenes from Tehran’s legal medicine morgue, where scores of corpses are piled waiting to be identified by mourning relatives.It might be easy to solely accuse the regime of a massacre of thousands, as many activists quickly did, though the reality seems to be more complex. Whilst there is a high number of deaths apparently as a result of a firm crackdown and the use of live ammunition, among the corpses there are also scores who have died due to wounds from knives, carpet cutters, and other improvised sharp blades. Then there are others who have endured gunshots at close range. Still others have succumbed to burns. And this is not an isolated issue limited to Tehran or a certain area, but all over the country there are also numerous corpses that have succumbed to wounds none of which correspond with a crowd and riot control perspective. It doesn’t make any sense for security forces to risk physical engagement and injury when their units have a de facto carte blanche to use lethal ammunition from a safe distance."Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill spoke with Rostamkhani on Thursday morning. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The U.S. is moving additional military assets into the Middle East amid speculation Trump could green light an attack on Iran at any moment. The sense that an overt war is imminent has abated and the protests, riots, and bloodshed in the streets of Iran that took place earlier this month have, for now, ended, yet the incendiary situation remains liable to develop into wider conflict. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that if Iran sought to assassinate him, “the whole country's going to get blown up.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that any attempt to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.”Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to Dr. Foad Izadi, professor of American studies and international relations at University of Tehran, on Wednesday. They discussed the origins of the protests, the narrative war, how Iran might respond to another military attack by the U.S. and more.“The U.S. wants to repeat the Libya experience, disintegrate Iran, take out the oil-rich southern part, and then the rest of the country would fall apart. This is the ultimate plan they have,” said Izadi. “I don't think they have given up. I think Trump has basically given the Iran portfolio to Netanyahu.  He decides what to do. And then basically Trump implements whatever Netanyahu has decided to do. And Trump is going to be in office for another three years. So I don't think they are done with Iran.”Behind the war of words between the U.S. and Iran are two competing narratives about what took place in early January. Western governments and much of the corporate media have characterized Iran as an authoritarian regime, one facing widespread protests, that carried out a series of bloody massacres. Opponents of the Islamic Republic, including Iranians who participated in the protests, have characterized this moment as one where a dying repressive regime, desperate to keep its grip on power, has violently crushed protests by those who dare to oppose it. Iran has pushed back forcefully on both these allegations and this description, saying that the domestic unrest is nothing short of a U.S.-Israeli sponsored violent infiltration in the country that sought to hijack legitimate protests to pave the way for regime change. Iranian officials have charged that what began as peaceful marches—meeting no violent crackdown from the state—turned deadly when agitators, encouraged and supported by the U.S. and Israel, began attacking government buildings, religious sites, and other infrastructure, while assassinating and executing police and other security personnel, along with ordinary citizens. Iran said the events of the past weeks are a continuation of the 12-day war waged against Iran in June that saw the U.S. and Israel bomb the country for 12 days. For the past 12 days, the government has almost entirely shut down the internet in Iran. The limited internet has made it very difficult to independently verify events on the ground. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

A new wave of mass protests has erupted across Iran, sparked by deepening economic crisis, and escalating in some areas into a revolt against the ruling government. Human rights monitors say that hundreds of protesters and members of government security forces have been killed amid a sweeping crackdown—with fears mounting over mass arrests, death sentences, and destruction of critical infrastructure. An internet blackout remains in effect over most of Iran, but final death tolls are expected to rise. The unrest has also prompted renewed threats of U.S. military intervention, with President Donald Trump threatening attacks on Iran and cancelling planned talks with Iranian officials. Iranian leaders meanwhile have warned they are prepared for war if the U.S. escalates, including by targeting U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf.Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Narges Bajoghli, an associate professor of anthropology and Middle East Studies at John’s Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Samira Mohyeddin, managing editor for On The Line Media, to break down what’s driving the protests, what we know under conditions of severe information blackout, and why Washington’s talk of intervention carries enormous risks for both Iranians and the broader region.Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the situation in Venezuela with Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America, and Jack Murphy, a journalist and former Army Ranger.Ron says anger and indignation over American aggression has “served to bring together the Venezuelan population,” with mass mobilization in support of the Bolivarian project, and no visible opposition effort to capitalize on the attack. There’s “no fracture” within the governing base, he tells Drop Site, as Caracas gradually returns to daily life.Murphy lays out in detail how the operation to kidnap Maduro unfolded, citing months of preparation, elite U.S. units, and critical local assets, including a CIA source very close to Maduro.Murphy’s reporting can be read here on The High Side: https://thehighside.substack.com/p/bold-delta-force-raid-leads-to-captureSubscribe to Drop Site News: https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

A major new report by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab that reviewed and analyzed satellite imagery has found that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “engaged in widespread and systematic mass killing in El-Fasher, North Darfur upon gaining total control of the city and surrounding area on 26 October 2025.” The report found that the RSF “engaged in a systematic multi-week campaign to destroy evidence of its mass killings through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale. This pattern of body disposal and destruction is ongoing.”Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, joins Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss the findings of the report, the critical role of the United Arab Emirates in funding and arming the RSF, and why he thinks the worst violence is yet to come. Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill joins the livestream to talk about his exclusive interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, what disarmament of the Palestinian resistance really means, the state of negotiations around phase 2 of the so-called “ceasefire,” and more.Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The foreign policy of the Trump administration has followed a similar pattern to past administrations, both Republican and Democrat, despite campaigning as a “peace president.” Past presidents have been influenced by the neoconservative foreign policy establishment that has reigned since the end of the Cold War—and Trump has been no different.Trump has attacked Yemen and Iran, supported Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, and is now targeting Latin America and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.The Trump administration is offering more of what the world is used to from the U.S.—endless wars waged for the benefit of a small elite and largely at the expense of ordinary people.After supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trump is currently pushing forward a plan to transform the Gaza Strip into a protectorate run by Israel and the Gulf Arab states that would potentially eliminate the future sovereignty of the Palestinian people, and is likely to be rejected by Palestinians themselves.This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Erik Sperling, the executive director of the advocacy group Just Foreign Policy. Hussain and Sperling discuss Trump’s foreign policy maneuvers, including the Gaza plan, Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan boats, and more.Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The genocide in Gaza has slowed with the so-called ceasefire but it has not stopped. The Israeli attacks, airstrikes, shelling, shootings continue. More Palestinians are killed in Gaza nearly every day. The demolition and destruction of Gaza continues. The heavy Israeli restrictions on food, fuel, medicine, reconstruction materials entering Gaza continues. The famine continues. The exchange of captives according to the so-called first phase of the deal is nearly over and there is no real substantive agreement on what comes next.As all eyes have been on Gaza, there has been a massive escalation of violence and attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli troops are conducting raids on villages and towns on a daily basis, displacing families, conducting mass arrests and shooting and killing Palestinians. Meanwhile, settlers operate with complete impunity and in collaboration with the Israeli military. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 2023, including over 200 children. Of those 200 children who have been killed, 42 have been killed since the beginning of this year alone. So the violence is only accelerating.October, which marked the start of the olive harvest in Palestine, marked the highest monthly number of recorded Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians by UN OCHA since the agency began documenting such incidents in 2006. OCHA recorded more than 260 attacks in October resulting in casualties, property damage or both—an average of eight incidents per day. Meanwhile, one in every five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces so far in 2025 across the West Bank and Jerusalem is a child.In the month of October alone, 442 Palestinians were arrested in the West Bank, including 33 children. Today, Israel is undergoing a periodic review by the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva and is facing numerous allegations of torture, abuse, starvation, isolation, medical neglect, and more against Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, joins Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain to talk about the accelerating surge of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem; the torture and abuse of Palestinians captives in Israeli prisons and detention centers; and the lack of accountability for the genocide in Gaza. Murtaza also discusses “The Epstein Files”— his exclusive investigative series with Ryan Grim on Jeffrey Epstein’s role in Israeli intelligence operations through his relationship with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Nearly two weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, not a day has gone by without Israel violating the agreement.It has killed Palestinians in shootings, shelling and airstrikes on a routine basis. Last week, in one of the deadliest attacks, Israel killed 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family—including seven children—when it fired a tank shell on their vehicle on October 17 in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City as they were trying to return to their home to check on it. That attack did not make international headlines. Two days later, Israel unleashed a wave of airstrikes on Gaza after two of Israeli soldiers were killed in Rafah in what the Israeli military claimed was an attack by Palestinian fighters, although it appears their vehicle drove over an unexploded IED. Israel’s response was to bomb cafes, tents, school and homes across Gaza killing dozens of Palestinians.In total, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed in direct Israeli attacks since the start of the ceasefire, according to the health ministry, and over 300 wounded. The official recorded death toll has gone up much more than that because nearly 450 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble. As the world focusses its attention on the bodies of the dead Israel captives, not nearly as much attention or focus is put on the estimated 10,000 Palestinians who are missing and buried under the rubble across Gaza as Israel is restricting the equipment and resources needed to begin the difficult task of retrieving them.Israel is also violating the ceasefire by not allowing in the minimum amount of aid Gaza needs—600 trucks a day— as outlined in the agreement, and the famine in Gaza is still ongoing. Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee in Deir al-Balah, joins Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss the latest on the ground. Ryan also discusses the latest in Maine’s Democratic primary, where a new poll shows Senate candidate Graham Platner leading Gov. Janet Mills 58-24. Platner, a former Marine, has faced a torrent of criticism over re-surfaced Reddit posts and a covered-up tattoo from his military days depicting a Nazi skull.Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

The tech industry has undergone a political shift in recent years, pivoting towards greater support for, and acquiescing to, authoritarian governments and movements around the world.One key example has been Israel and Palestine, and how tech platforms are supporting the Israeli state.In previous years, technology platforms offered greater freedom and attention to Palestinian narratives that had been ignored or suppressed by other media.But today, technology and social media platforms are censoring and suppressing pro-Palestinian speech. And, most notably, the technology companies are cozying up to the Israeli government and defense sector, forging close links, even as the genocide in Gaza continues.As Drop Site News reported last year in a special multi-part podcast called “The Palestine Laboratory,” much of this tech is actively used in Israel’s military onslaught on Palestinians.This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Omar Zahzah, an assistant professor at San Francisco State University. Zahzah is also the author of: “Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle.”Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was made in part with support from The Intercept. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Despite the declaration of a Gaza “ceasefire,” Israel has continued to conduct military strikes and refused to allow the agreed-upon number of trucks carrying food, medicine, and other life essentials to the enclave. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, announced Wednesday that it had handed over the remains of all of the deceased Israeli captives it could reach without heavier equipment and international assistance. While Israel understood that it would take time to recover all of these bodies because many are buried under the rubble from its two years of sustained bombing of Gaza, it has falsely accused Hamas of violating the terms of the agreement.Meanwhile, Palestinian captives freed from Israeli prisons have returned to Gaza and the occupied West Bank describing horrific conditions and torture they endured. Health authorities in Gaza also said that the bodies of deceased Palestinians returned to Gaza show signs of torture and abuse with some bodies still having arms or legs cuffed.While Israel’s massive bombing of Gaza has largely ended and aid is beginning to enter the Strip, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are increasingly focused on demands that Gaza be disarmed and demilitarized, terms that Hamas negotiators did not formally agree to as part of the ceasefire deal. This issue will be at the center of the next phase of Gaza talks, which Hamas has said must include the participation of all Palestinian factions and parties.On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill speaks with Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada about the state of the “ceasefire.” They also discuss the actions of local law enforcement and resistance fighters in Gaza aimed, they say, at restoring order, punishing collaborators and war profiteers.Watch on YouTube or listen on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Drop Site News here. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Today, Drop Site presents an episode from our friends at Question Everything, a podcast from KCRW and Placement Theory.The episode, titled “The Film the BBC Wouldn’t Air,” tells the inside story of how the BBC killed an important and timely documentary film into Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.The British network faced relentless criticism for its decision to not air the film. Question Everything’s producer Sophie Kazis tells the story. The episode features Ramita Navai, an award-winning British-Iranian investigative journalist and Ben de Pear, an award-winning British journalist.You can watch the film the BBC wouldn’t air, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,” on Zeteo.com.Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe

Today marks two years of genocide in Gaza. Two years of the most violent episode in the modern history of Palestine.Israel has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children. That number is a bare minimum. Thousands more are missing under the rubble. There have been countless massacres. Flour massacres, aid massacres, Red Crescent massacres. School massacres. The massacres of over a thousand families and bloodlines that have been wiped out forever.We do not even know the number of deaths not caused by bombs or bullets or shells or drones—the number of preventable deaths caused by Israel’s assault. We do know that at least 460 Palestinians, including 154 children have starved to death and more are dying every day from Israel’s campaign of forced starvation and famine.Entire cities have been reduced to dust and broken concrete. Homes, hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries—everything that knits a community and society together has been destroyed. Even color seems to have been obliterated. Everything now covered now in gray dust.92% of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Over 500 schools and every university has been damaged or destroyed. Only 1.5% of cropland is still accessible and suitable for cultivation.Nearly every Palestinian in Gaza —95% of the population—has been displaced, most of them multiple times. Hundreds of thousands now live in tent cities where they are still bombed and shelled and shot.Health care has been devastated. Out of 38 hospitals in Gaza, 25 are completely shut down while the rest are barely functioning. The number of doctors and medical personal killed is over 1,700. Over 360 have been detained.Journalists have been slaughtered. Israel has killed between 250 and 270 journalists and media workers over the past two years. An unprecedented number. There is so much that is unprecedented.Israel’s massive colonial violence is by no means confined just to Gaza. Over the past two years, we’ve seen a huge escalation in daily attacks and dispossession in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been driven from their homes in the largest wave of displacement in the West Bank since 1967. The number of Palestinians arrested in the West Bank and Jerusalem over the past two years has topped 20,000, including over 1,600 children. At least 77 political prisoners have died in custody.And it is not just Palestine. Israel has bombed Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Qatar.All of this has been backed and supported and armed by the United States more than any other country. A new report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that the U.S. has provided Israel with at least 21 billion dollars in military aid over the past two years alone. It concludes with the obvious: Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East without massive US backing.On today’s Drop Site livestream, Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Noura Erakat joins Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss all of this and more. Erakat addressed the UN Security Council on Monday—only the second Palestinian woman to brief the Security Council since October 7, 2023 and the first to present the legal case that Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide.Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe. Get full access to Drop Site News at www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe