The Wealth of War: How the Machine Enriches the Few While the Many Pay the Price

How the Myth of the Free Market Markets the War on Everything

By Andrew Klein 

8th April 2026

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’ because I can.

I. The Pattern

The pattern is consistent across nations and centuries. Wars are not fought for victory. They are fought for continuation. The machine does not care which side wins. It cares that the contracts flow, the debt accumulates, and the wealth transfers upward.

This article examines the personal fortunes of political leaders who have overseen recent wars—Trump, Zelensky, Netanyahu, and the Australian political class. It asks: how did they become wealthy? What role did war play in their enrichment? And why does the system allow—even encourage—this concentration of wealth in the hands of those who send others to die?

The answers are not comforting. But they are necessary.

II. Donald Trump: The Businessman President

Estimated net worth: $6.5 billion (Forbes, March 2026)

Trump’s wealth is not a product of his presidency. It is a product of access. The same access that allowed him to profit from the Iran war.

The portfolio:

· Cryptocurrency ventures: $21 billion (including meme coins, World Liberty Financial tokens, and stablecoin USD1)

· Trump Media & Technology Group (Truth Social): $12 billion (despite annual sales of only $3.7 million and losses exceeding $700 million)

· Golf clubs and resorts: $15 billion (including Mar-a-Lago, valued at $5.64 billion)

· Real estate: $12 billion (including 30% stakes in major office towers)

How he got there:

Trump’s wealth increased by $1.4 billion in his first year back in office. The mechanism is not subtle:

1. The meme coin. Days before his second inauguration, Trump launched a meme coin. His holdings are now valued at $393 million.

2. The UAE deal. An Emirati royal family member purchased nearly half of Trump’s World Liberty Financial project. Trump received $2 billion in after-tax proceeds.

3. The Truth Social bubble. The company has no viable business model, yet trades at valuations that defy logic. Trump’s stake: $12 billion.

4. The war connection. Powerus, a drone company in which Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hold “sizable equity stakes,” is competing for $1.1 billion in Pentagon funding and pitching defensive drone interceptors to Gulf states threatened by Iran’s retaliation.

The Epstein distraction:

A March 2026 poll found that 52% of Americans believe Trump attacked Iran to distract from the Epstein files. Newly released documents included an allegation that Trump sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein.

Senator Ron Wyden told a town hall: “They know how Trump’s distant Iran War = less federal help at home for health care, wildfire prep & more. And they know it’s a Trump scheme to distract from the Epstein investigation”.

Republican strategist Rick Wilson said: “When confronted with a faltering economy and the persistent political radiation of the Epstein matter, a war with Iran looked like a perfect narrative reset. For Trump, war is the ultimate political reset, no matter its cost”.

The pattern: Trump does not need to be a competent businessman. He needs to be connected. The same connections that made him wealthy are the ones that profit from war.

III. Volodymyr Zelensky: The Wartime President

Estimated net worth: $20-30 million

Zelensky’s wealth is often exaggerated. Claims that he has earned “$100 billion” from Western aid are unsubstantiated. The source of those claims—former Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev—is a pro-Russian politician who fled to Moscow in 2014 and is widely considered a propagandist.

The reality:

Zelensky’s official presidential salary is approximately $28,000 hryvnia per month (less than $1,000 USD). His wealth was accumulated before his presidency, through his career as an entertainer and co-owner of the production company “Quarter 95”.

Assets: Properties in Kyiv, including apartments, and a property in Crimea that remains under Russian occupation. Total net worth: $20-30 million.

The nuance: Unlike Trump, Zelensky has not been shown to have profited from the war. International fact-checking organisations have consistently debunked claims that he has “become rich with Western aid”.

But the perception of corruption matters. The unfounded claims persist because the pattern of wartime enrichment is so well-established. People assume Zelensky is like the others.

IV. Benjamin Netanyahu: The Longest-Serving Prime Minister

Estimated net worth: $13 million (Celebrity Net Worth)

Netanyahu’s wealth has increased by 400% per year according to some reports .

Sources of wealth:

· Prime Minister’s salary (multiple terms spanning 18+ years)

· Investments

· Inheritance from his wife

The context: Netanyahu is currently fighting corruption charges. He has been indicted for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The cases involve allegations that he accepted lavish gifts from wealthy friends in exchange for regulatory favours.

The war connection: Netanyahu has been campaigning for a US-led war against Iran for much of his political career. He aggressively opposed US diplomacy with Iran, took the unprecedented step of coming before Congress to argue against the nuclear agreement, and successfully lobbied Trump to withdraw from that agreement in 2018.

The war serves his domestic political interests. It distracts from his corruption trials. It rallies the base. It keeps him in power.

V. The Australian Political Class: Wealthy Before Politics

The pattern in Australia is different. Most Australian politicians do not become wealthy in office. They arrive wealthy—or they accumulate wealth through property, not war contracts.

The richest politician-linked figure: Clive Palmer (United Australia Party founder) — $15-20 billion. Palmer made his fortune in mining, not politics. He is no longer in active politics.

Former Prime Ministers:

· Malcolm Turnbull: $200-250 million (investment banking and legal career before politics)

· Kevin Rudd: $50-100 million (family-inclusive; consulting and diplomacy after politics)

· Scott Morrison: $5-10 million (post-politics earnings from speaking and board roles)

· Anthony Albanese: $10-15 million (primarily Sydney real estate, including a $4.3 million clifftop home purchased in 2024)

The property bias: Parliamentary registers show 95% of MPs own homes, with 60% holding investment properties—far above average citizens. Critics argue this creates disconnects on housing affordability and inequality.

The pension golden handshake: Sussan Ley, who lost the Liberal leadership and retired from politics, will receive an estimated $250,000-280,000 annual pension for life, under the “old” Parliamentary Contributory Superannuation Scheme (PCSS) closed to new members after 2004. This is higher than the salary of a sitting backbencher.

The difference: Australian politicians do not personally profit from war contracts. The wealth flows to the defence contractors—many of which are American, not Australian. Australia is being bled dry financially, but the money is not sticking to the politicians. It is flowing out.

VI. The Cost to Australia: Opportunity Lost

While billions flow to defence contractors and foreign interests, Australia’s essential services crumble.

The value of volunteering: Volunteers contribute an estimated $200-300 billion annually to the Australian economy. The sector provides approximately 700-800 million hours of volunteer work per year. This is the value Australians create for each other—outside the market, outside the profit motive, outside the war economy.

The opportunity cost: Every dollar spent on war is a dollar not spent on:

· Healthcare: Public hospitals are underfunded. Elective surgery waiting lists are growing. Mental health services are stretched to breaking point.

· Education: Class sizes are increasing. Teacher shortages are worsening. University funding is being cut.

· Infrastructure: Roads, bridges, public transport—all are in need of repair and expansion. The money is not there.

· Housing: The affordability crisis deepens. Social housing waiting lists grow. The government announces new measures. Nothing changes.

· Aged care: The Royal Commission made recommendations. Some were implemented. Many were not. The aged care system is still failing.

The volunteer sector vs. the war economy:

                                                     Volunteers                                                                         War Economy

Annual contribution       $200-300 billion                                                                     Negative (costs exceed benefits)

Motivation                            Care, community, compassion                                Profit, power, control

Outcome               Services delivered, communities strengthened            Destruction, debt, inequality

Who benefits                           Everyone                                                                            The few

The volunteers do not ask for profit. They ask for nothing. They give because they care.

The war economy does not care. It extracts. It destroys. It enriches the few at the expense of the many.

VII. The Mechanism: How War Enriches the Few

The pattern is not new. It was forged in the American Civil War and perfected in the 20th century.

The Civil War transformation:

· 1860: Fewer than 100 millionaires in the United States

· 1875: More than 1,000 millionaires

The “robber barons”—J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie—built empires on the foundation of war production and its aftermath.

The mechanism:

1 .Crisis (secession, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Iranian nuclear threat

2. Mobilisation (industrial production, government contracts)

3. Profit (defence contractors, oil companies, bankers)

4. Inequality (wealth concentrates at the top)

5. Resistance (labour unions, populism, anti-war movements)

6. The next crisis (repeat)

Why Trump can be a millionaire despite “lack of business acumen”:

Trump’s wealth does not come from business acumen. It comes from brand licensing. Foreign developers pay to use his name. Crypto speculators buy his meme coins. Loyal investors pour money into his failing social media company.

The system rewards access, not competence. Trump has access. He is the president. He can start wars. He can ban foreign drones. He can funnel contracts to his sons’ companies.

The market does not punish him. The market rewards him.

VIII. The War as Distraction

The evidence is mounting that the Iran war was timed to distract from the Epstein files.

The timeline:

· February 2024: The Epstein Files Transparency Act is signed into law

· February 28, 2026: Trump launches military strikes against Iran

· March 6, 2026: The DOJ releases more Epstein files, including an allegation that Trump sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl

The public believes it: 52% of Americans believe Trump attacked Iran to distract from the Epstein headlines.

The political class believes it: Republican Thomas Massie wrote: “PSA: bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away”. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on the day the bombing started: “Instead, we get a war with Iran on behalf of Israel that will succeed in regime change in Iran”.

Zelensky is selling drones. Netanyahu is running the same scam, combined with domestic politics. Australia is being bled dry financially.

The war is not about security. It is about distraction.

IX. The Myth of the Free Market

The problem for Australia is our connection to the United States and its economic model. The never-ending war economy—the system we have been documenting—is not a bug. It is a feature.

The free market is a myth. The market is not free. It is captured. Captured by the defence contractors, by the bankers, by the politicians who have been groomed and placed and bought.

The war on everything—war on terror, war on drugs, war on Iran—is not about security. It is about profit. Every war is a new market. Every crisis is a new opportunity. Every death is a line item on a ledger.

The myth of the free market tells us that competition drives innovation. That the invisible hand guides resources to their most efficient use. That profit is the measure of value.

The reality is different. The defence contractors do not compete. They collude. The bankers do not innovate. They extract. The politicians do not serve. They profit.

The market is not free. It is fixed.

X. What This Means

The system is not broken. It is working as designed.

The bankers talk to each other across enemy lines. The industrialists supply both sides. The generals count their profits. The politicians use war to distract from scandal. The defence contractors count their billions.

And the young men die. The families grieve. The public pays.

The war is not about victory. It is about continuation. The contracts must flow. The debt must accumulate. The wealth must transfer upward.

This is not a conspiracy. It is the natural result of the system—the system that has been grinding through souls since the American Civil War, since the industrialists learned that war was profitable, since the bankers learned that debt was the ultimate product.

XI. A Final Word

Asked: “How rich are the Australian politicians or does the money follow after retirement?”

The answer is both. Some arrive wealthy. Some accumulate wealth through property. All are guaranteed a comfortable retirement through the parliamentary pension scheme.

But the real wealth—the obscene wealth—is not in Australian politics. It is in the American defence industry. It is in the Israeli corruption cases. It is in the Ukrainian perception of graft.

The war is bleeding Australia dry. But the money is not staying in Australia. It is flowing to the defence contractors, to the bankers, to the politicians who have been captured by the network.

The question is not whether the system will change. It is whether Australians are prepared to change it.

Andrew Klein 

April 8, 2026

Sources:

· Forbes China, “《福布斯》独家:一文看懂特朗普的65亿商业帝国” (March 27, 2026)

· Sloboden Pechat, “Hur mycket förmögenhet har Volodymyr Zelenskyj med en ‘löjlig’ lön?” (January 7, 2026)

· Hindustan Times, “How rich is ‘Bibi’? A look at Benjamin Netanyahu’s net worth” (March 14, 2026)

· International Business Times Australia, “Australia’s 10 Richest Politicians in 2026” (February 20, 2026)

· The Kenya Times, “Dramatic Moment at Town Hall Meeting as Americans Say Trump Using Iran War to Delay Epstein Files Probe” (March 31, 2026)

· Moneycontrol, “Trump’s net worth slips by $54 million in 7 days” (March 21, 2026)

· News.by, “Former Rada Deputy Tsarev: Zelensky personally earned around $100 bn from Western support” (February 12, 2026)

· Yahoo News Australia, “Ousted Ley’s $250,000 silver lining” (February 12, 2026)

· The News International, “Half of Americans believe Trump bombed Iran because of Epstein files” (March 18, 2026)

· Volunteering Australia, “Key Facts and Statistics” (2024/25 data)

The Millennial Nation: How the West Underestimated Iran

A Comparative History from Ancient Civilisation to the 2026 War

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to the people of Iran — who have been invaded, occupied, and exploited for centuries, and who are still standing.

I. Introduction: The Land That Would Not Break

Iran is one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The Medes unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) became the largest contiguous land empire the world had yet seen, administering most of the known world under a model of tolerance and respect for other cultures and religions.

The West has never understood Iran. Not then. Not now.

While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, Iran was a beacon of civilisation. While the Crusaders slaughtered their way to Jerusalem, Iran was refining philosophy, medicine, and mathematics. While the industrial revolution was still a distant dream in England, Iran was already ancient.

And today, as the United States and Israel launch their most intensive military campaign against Iran in decades, the same mistake is being repeated: the West has underestimated Iran.

This article traces that history — from the birth of the Persian Empire to the 2026 war — and argues that Iran’s capacity to endure, adapt, and resist is not a mystery. It is the product of millennia of survival.

II. Ancient Iran: The First Superpower

The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC)

Under Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empire became the world’s first true superpower. At its height, it stretched from the Indus Valley to the Balkans, from the Caucasus to Egypt. But its greatness was not measured in territory alone.

The Achaemenids pioneered administrative efficiency. They created the Royal Road, a highway stretching from Susa to Sardis with posting stations at regular intervals. They introduced coinage — the daric (gold) and shekel (silver) — standardising trade across a vast territory. They developed the first declaration of human rights, inscribed on the Cyrus Cylinder .

Most remarkably, they governed with tolerance. Unlike the empires that followed — Alexander’s conquests, the Roman legions, the Mongol hordes — the Persians did not impose their culture by force. They respected local religions, customs, and administrative structures. This was not idealism. It was pragmatism. An empire of that size could not be ruled by fear alone.

The Parthian and Sasanian Eras

After Alexander’s conquest and the brief Hellenistic interlude, Iran reasserted itself. The Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) was the longest-lived of all Iranian dynasties, proving a serious foe to the emergent Roman Empire. At the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, a smaller Parthian force of horse archers decisively defeated the Roman commander Crassus, killing two-thirds of his legions and capturing several Roman eagles.

The Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD) continued this tradition, centralising administration and promoting Zoroastrianism as an official creed. Sasanian kings, most notably Khusrau I, came to symbolise all that was good about pre-Islamic Iran — justice, learning, and military prowess.

III. The Islamic Era: Absorption Without Erasure

The Arab conquest of the 7th century was a turning point. The Sasanian Empire fell not in a single battle, but after a string of crushing defeats. At Al-Qādisiyyah (636/637) and Nahāvand (642), the Muslim Arabs defeated the Sasanian armies. Yazdegerd III, the last Zoroastrian sovereign, fled east and was murdered by a miller for his purse.

But the end of the Sasanians was not the end of Iran. It was a new beginning.

Iran was too large, too sophisticated, and too proud to be fully digested by the Caliphate. Iranian ideas about the nature of “just” government and culture began to shape the Caliphate itself. The Abbasid Caliphate moved its capital from Damascus to Baghdad, not far from the old Sasanian capital, and Iranian influence became dominant. The Barmakids, the most powerful vizierial family of the Abbasid age, were of Iranian origin. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the polymath whose works dominated Islamic and European medicine for centuries, was Iranian.

The Persian language was reborn. Adopting the Arabic alphabet, “New Persian” became the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic world and, in time, one of the great literary languages of the world.

The Mongol conquests of the 13th century devastated the region. Genghis Khan and his descendants stormed through Iran’s heartland; towns vanished, cities became cemeteries, entire populations were wiped out. Yet even this carnage gave way to adaptation. The Mongols eventually embraced Islam and absorbed the Persian way of life — testimony to Iran’s cultural gravity, even in defeat.

IV. The Safavid Revival and Shi’i Identity

In 1501, the Safavid dynasty reunified Iran as an independent state for the first time in centuries. They did something transformative: they imposed Twelver Shiism as the state religion.

This was a defining moment. Shiism distinguished Iran from its Sunni Ottoman rival to the west. It provided a distinct religious identity that would become central to Iranian nationalism. It also introduced a unique political dynamic — the tension between the Shah (political authority) and the religious scholars (ulama) who claimed authority in the absence of the Hidden Imam.

Under Shah Abbas I (1587–1629) — the only Safavid king known as “the Great” — Iran flourished. European merchants established commercial and political ties. Iranian civilisation reached new heights. And the pattern that would define modern Iran — a proud, independent state with a distinct religious identity — was set.

V. The 19th Century: The Shock of the West

It is to Iran’s misfortune that the period of Europe’s most dramatic growth coincided with a period of political turmoil within Iran itself. The Safavid dynasty fell in 1722, leading to decades of warfare. Nader Shah (1736–47) briefly reunited Iran and, in a little-known footnote, invaded and defeated the Mughal Empire in 1739 — an act that paradoxically opened India to European penetration.

By the time Iran emerged from turmoil at the end of the 18th century, it faced a new challenge: the Russian and British empires. These were not just political threats but ideological ones. Europeans regarded Iran’s political economy as archaic, dependent on the “despotic power” of its kings. They brought new ideas about the state, the rule of law, and constitutionalism — ideas that gained traction among Iranian intellectuals who saw adoption of these forms as the only path to salvation.

Comparative Snapshot: Iran vs. America during the Civil War (1861–65)

While the United States was tearing itself apart over slavery, Iran was navigating its own challenges under the Qajar dynasty. A comparison is instructive:

Measure Iran (c. 1860s) USA (c. 1860s)

Iran – Education Traditional maktab (religious) schools; some missionary schools; elite Persian literature and scholarship. USA – Expanding public education; land-grant colleges (Morrill Act, 1862); emerging mass literacy.

Iran – Medicine Traditional Persian medicine (Unani); European medicine entering via missionaries and diplomats.USA – Chloroform and ether widely used in Civil War surgery; organised ambulance corps; emerging nursing profession (Clara Barton).

Economy Agrarian; Iran – limited industrialisation; dominated by British trade and concessions. USA– Rapid industrialisation; transcontinental railroad (1869); mass production of weapons, uniforms, and supplies.

Society Stratified Iran– (court, ulama, merchants, peasants, tribes); some constitutionalist stirrings (later 1906 Revolution). USA-  Divided by slavery; industrial labour movement emerging; women’s suffrage movement begins.

Which population was better off? The answer is not simple. America had more industry, more modern medicine, and a growing middle class — but at the cost of a catastrophic civil war that killed over 600,000 people. Iran had less industry, less modern medicine, and a weaker state — but also fewer battlefields on its soil. The Iranian general population did not experience the industrialised slaughter that defined the American Civil War.

What is clear is that both nations faced the challenge of modernisation — and both would pay a heavy price for it in the 20th century.

VI. The Discovery of Oil and the Struggle for Sovereignty

In 1901, William Knox D’Arcy, a British investor backed by the British government, reached a sixty-year agreement with Mozzafar al-Din Shah to exploit Iran’s potential oil resources. Six years later, in 1907, oil was discovered in Masjedsoleyman — the first oil discovery in the Middle East. Within two years, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was established, with the British government as its principal shareholder.

The discovery of oil transformed Iran’s strategic importance — and sealed its fate as a pawn of empire.

The British government purchased a controlling share of APOC in 1914, just before World War I, to secure fuel for the Royal Navy . Iran, the owner of the oil, received a fraction of the revenue. The pattern was set : resource extraction without national benefit.

Reza Shah, who rose to power with British support, cancelled the 1901 concession in 1932 — but the 1933 agreement that replaced it was not much in Iran’s favour. It extended the concession for another sixty years. An amount of pounds sterling was deposited into Reza Shah’s personal account at Lloyd’s Bank in London, while Iran’s official share was spent by the Shah and his inner circle as they wished.

During World War II, British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in 1941, toppled Reza Shah, and occupied the country until 1946. The young Mohammad Reza Shah was installed as a compliant monarch. Iran’s sovereignty was a fiction.

VII. The Nationalisation Movement and the 1953 Coup

The movement to nationalise Iran’s oil industry was a reaction to decades of foreign exploitation. It was led by Mohammad Mosaddegh, a lawmaker who became prime minister in 1951, and supported by Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, a senior cleric leading a powerful popular movement against foreign interference.

On March 15, 1951, Iran’s parliament approved legislation to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh was introduced as prime minister under immense parliamentary pressure.

The young Shah, along with the UK and the US, could not tolerate a democratically elected prime minister nationalising Western assets. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup d’état that overthrew Mosaddegh.

The coup was a turning point. It destroyed Iranian democracy. It restored the Shah’s autocratic control. It returned Iran’s oil to a consortium of Western companies. And it planted the seeds of the 1979 revolution.

VIII. The 1979 Revolution and the Hostage Crisis

In 1979, the Shah was overthrown in a sweeping revolution that shook the global order. Out went the monarchy. In came Ayatollah Khomeini and a wave of Islamic fervour that promised to cut ties with Western influence once and for all.

For many Iranians, this was supposed to be the end of foreign interference. The dawn of peace. But within months, the US Embassy was stormed, American diplomats were taken hostage, and Iran entered a new era of confrontation with the West.

The hostage crisis (1979–81) cemented the image of Iran as a “rogue state” in the American imagination. But from the Iranian perspective, the crisis was a response to decades of Western exploitation, the 1953 coup, and American support for the Shah’s brutal regime.

IX. The Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): The “Imposed War”

Iran has little experience of war in modern times. In fact, Iranian history over the past century and a half had been free of war, until the 1980–88 conflict with Iraq, which Iranians call the “imposed war”.

Saddam Hussein, with financial and military support from the Gulf states and the West, invaded Iran in 1980. The war lasted eight years. An estimated 500,000 Iranians were killed. Chemical weapons were used against Iranian soldiers and civilians. The war ended in stalemate, with no territorial changes.

The Iran–Iraq War was Iran’s crucible. It forged the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine: self-reliance, asymmetric warfare, and the willingness to absorb massive casualties without breaking. It also created the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) as a parallel military force, loyal to the regime rather than the nation.

Crucially, Iran emerged from the war with a defensive mentality. As scholar Shahram Chubin notes, “by orthodox standards Iran is militarily weak, and cautious, defensive and prudent in resorting to force. This is due as much to experience as to realism about its own limits. The country does not see itself as a military power or aspire to become one” .

X. The Nuclear File and the Sanctions Era

Following the Iran–Iraq War, Iran pursued a nuclear program — officially for civilian energy but suspected by the West of weapons ambitions. The program became a focal point of international tension.

Under the Obama administration, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the “Iran nuclear deal” — was signed in 2015. Iran agreed to strict limits on its enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. International inspectors verified Iranian compliance.

In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, calling it the “worst deal ever.” Sanctions were reimposed. Iran responded by gradually exceeding the deal’s limits, enriching uranium to 60 percent — just short of weapons grade.

By the mid-2020s, intelligence assessments indicated that Iran could produce weapons-grade uranium within days. Israeli leaders viewed this as an existential threat. The United States, after years of failed negotiations, concluded that preventive military action carried less risk than allowing the existing trajectory to continue.

XI. The 2026 War: Misreading Iran’s Strength

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated military strikes against Iran . The operation, designated “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion,” was intended not to produce immediate regime collapse but to create sustained leverage that would constrain Iran’s options after major combat operations.

But the West has made a fundamental miscalculation.

“Both Israel and the US seriously underestimated Iran,” says Professor Richard Jackson of the University of Otago. “They’ve spent the last 30 or 40 years watching the US in Afghanistan, in Iraq, watching Israel in south Lebanon and in Gaza, and trying to work out, well, what would we do if they attacked us?”.

“They’ve got a plan. They’re not stupid, and they’ve got the weaponry, and they’ve got a strategic kind of goal, which is to make the international economy hurt so much from the response that this will prove to be a deterrent in the future as well”.

Iran’s strategy is not to defeat the US military — that is impossible. It is to outlast it. To close the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. To drive up global energy prices. To make the war so costly for Western economies that public opinion turns against the conflict.

The US and Israeli justifications for the war have differed. Trump claimed the objective was “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” including Iran’s nuclear programme. But as Jackson notes, most people can see that “Iran was nowhere near developing nuclear weapons”.

“And even if they did, it would purely be for deterrence because they know, as the rest of the world knows, that if you have nuclear weapons like North Korea, that you are not gonna get invaded, and they just don’t want to get invaded.”

“They’re attacking me because I haven’t got nuclear weapons. That’s what happened to Iraq. That’s what happened to Afghanistan. That’s what’s happening to Iran right now”.

XII. Iran’s Military Capacity: A Strategic Reassessment

The Small Wars Journal analysis of the 2026 war identifies five possible outcomes, ranging from regime collapse to negotiated compliance to a North Korea-style unrestricted rebuilding.

The campaign has produced substantial military degradation. Strikes against nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan, and Karaj have damaged key elements of the program. Ballistic missile and drone forces have been heavily targeted. Air defences, air bases, and command networks have been degraded. Naval forces have been damaged.

But the Islamic Republic remains in power. Security forces did not fragment. Internal control has been maintained. Succession mechanisms functioned despite leadership losses, including the killing of Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani and top security official Ali Larijani on March 17.

The conditions required for internal collapse have not appeared. No large-scale internal uprising has occurred. Political change would likely require divisions within the security apparatus, and those divisions have not appeared.

Iran is not Afghanistan. It is not Iraq. It is a nation with thousands of years of continuous civilisation, a proud national identity, and a population that has been invaded, occupied, and exploited for centuries. The West keeps forgetting this. Iran keeps remembering.

XIII. Comparative Analysis: Iran vs. the West

Period Iran                                      Europe / America

Ancient Era                                     Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) — world’s first superpower, model of tolerance and administration Classical Greece, Roman Republic — smaller-scale polities

Islamic Golden Age                     Abbasid Caliphate centred in Baghdad; Iranian scholars (Avicenna, al-Biruni, al-Razi) lead world in medicine, astronomy, mathematics

European Dark Ages; f                 feudal fragmentation; limited literacy

Mongol Conquests Devastated (1219–1260), but Persian culture absorbed the conquerors Crusader states in Levant; Europe largely spared

Renaissance/Early Modern            Safavid Empire (1501–1736) — flourishing of art, architecture, trade; Shi’i identity cemented European Renaissance (14th–17th c.); Age of Discovery; Reformation

Industrial Revolution                          Qajar decline: economic penetration by Britain and Russia Britain leads industrialisation (1760–1840); Europe and US follow

World Wars Era                                      Occupied by Britain and USSR (1941–46); weak central government Mass mobilisation; total war; industrialised slaughter

Post-WWII 1953                                       CIA-MI6 coup; Shah’s authoritarian modernisation; 1979 Revolution; Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) Cold War; US global hegemony; decolonisation

Contemporary Sanctions (2010–present); 2026 war with US and Israel War on Terror; 2026 Iran war

XIV. What the West Does Not Understand

The West’s model of wealth extraction is fundamentally different from Iran’s. In the Western model — neoliberalism, capitalism, the “free market” — wealth flows upward. It concentrates in the hands of the few who have no skin in the game and nothing to lose. When the crisis comes, they are protected. The rest of society pays the price.

In Iran, despite its flaws — and they are many — the state has historically invested in national resilience. Education, healthcare, infrastructure. The Iranian population is not as wealthy as the West. But it is healthier and more educated than its GDP would suggest. The literacy rate is over 85 percent. Women attend university in large numbers. Basic healthcare is available even in rural areas.

This is not charity. It is strategy. A population that is educated, healthy, and invested in the nation’s survival is a population that will resist. And Iran has been resisting for thousands of years.

XV. The Misreading of Iranian History

Western analysts tend to view Iran through the lens of its revolutionary rhetoric — the “Death to America” chants, the hostage crisis, the nuclear brinkmanship. They see a regime that is irrational, ideological, and isolated.

But this is a misreading. Iran’s behaviour is rational given its strategic position. It is surrounded by US military bases, hostile neighbours (Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states), and a global superpower that has repeatedly intervened against it. Its nuclear program is a deterrent, not an offensive weapon. Its support for proxies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militias, the Houthis) is a force multiplier, allowing it to project power without direct state conflict.

The 2026 war may prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation. As Jackson warns: “In some ways, this has had the opposite effect, and in the years after this, Iran may accelerate its nuclear programme unless we can get back to the agreement that was there before Trump got rid of it”.

XVI. Conclusion: The Millennial Nation

Iran is not a fragile state. It is not on the verge of collapse. It is a millennial nation — one of the oldest continuous civilisations on earth. It has been invaded, occupied, and exploited by Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Russians, and Britons. It has been subjected to sanctions, assassinations, and now war.

And it is still standing.

The West has underestimated Iran at every turn. In the 19th century, European powers assumed Iran would be easy prey for colonial exploitation — and for a time, they were right. But they also planted the seeds of Iranian nationalism, constitutionalism, and ultimately revolution.

In the 20th century, the CIA assumed that overthrowing Mosaddegh would secure Iran as a compliant client state. For 25 years, it worked. Then it didn’t. The 1979 revolution was a direct consequence of Western overreach.

In the 21st century, the United States assumed that maximum pressure — sanctions, assassinations, and now war — would force Iran to capitulate. It has not. Iran has adapted. It has deepened ties with Russia and China. It has developed indigenous military capabilities. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz and raised global oil prices, making the war costly for Western economies.

The war is not over. The outcome is not certain. But one thing is clear: Iran will not break. It has been invaded before. It has been bombed before. It has been sanctioned before. And it has always — always — reasserted its identity.

The West would do well to remember that.

Andrew Klein 

April 5, 2026

Sources:

· User:John K/History of Iran, Wikipedia 

· Tehran Times, “A look at the history of Iran’s efforts for the nationalization of its oil” (March 17, 2025) 

· Zee News, “Iran’s Blood-Soaked Journey Through Centuries of War” (June 25, 2025) 

· NZ Herald, “‘They’ve got a plan’: Expert says US, Israel misread Iran’s strength” (March 30, 2026) 

· HistoryExtra, “A brief history of Iran” (January 8, 2020) 

· Persian Petroleum, Leonardo Davoudi (Bloomsbury, 2020) 

· Chubin, Shahram, “Iran’s Military Weakness” (Rising Powers Initiative) 

· Small Wars Journal, “Iran in the Box: The Coercive Architecture of the 2026 Iran War” (March 30, 2026) 

· Britannica, “Iran: History” 

The Capture of Nations: How a Small State with an Odious Ideology Punches Above Its Weight

And why the narrative is finally cracking

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, whose love and support makes every day worth living.

I. The Pattern: How State Capture Works

State capture occurs when all institutions of state power are monopolized by a narrow group of people belonging to a single tribe, religious sect, elitist military clan, or circle of family and friends. The state serves the political and personal interests of the ruling clique, maximizing influence and economic spoils at the top to the detriment of the public good and national development.

The mechanisms are consistent:

1. Pervasive control over the political and judicial process – allowing only imitation political groups who cannot challenge the rulers

2. Fake or fraudulent elections – held to forestall, not facilitate, a change of power

3. Corrupted law enforcement and courts – to keep regime opponents at bay or in prison

4. Controlled and manipulated media – to demonize the opposition and glorify the ruling regime

5. Blocking legitimate pathways for peaceful regime change

This is not unique to Israel. It has happened in Ukraine under Yanukovych, in South Africa under Zuma, in Egypt under the military, in Russia, in Brazil. The mechanisms are the same. Only the labels change.

II. The Label: “Enemy of the State” and Its Variations

The label is the weapon. Across history, regimes have used the same technique: designate opponents as enemies of the state, and the machinery of repression is justified.

· Ancient Rome: The term proscription was used for official condemnation of enemies of the state.

· Nazi Germany: Jews, Romani people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled, communists, social democrats, and trade unionists were all considered “enemies of the state” .

· The Soviet Union: The term “enemy of the people” was used during the Stalinist era to eliminate political opponents.

· Indonesia since 1965: Communists are considered enemies of the state. Displaying communist symbols or attempting to propagate the ideology is considered an act of high treason and terrorism, punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment.

· Modern branding: The Prime Minister of Georgia recently noted that labelling opponents as “pro-Russian” has become a “well-tested signature of the Deep State” used to discredit politicians without evidence—from Marine Le Pen in France to the winner of the Romanian presidential elections.

The pattern is the same: create a villain, then accuse opponents of being connected to it. No evidence required. Only total repetition of the message.

III. The Capture of Britain: The Israel Lobby

The UK provides a clear example of the mechanism. The pro-Israel lobby has systematically identified, cultivated, and placed politicians who will serve its interests.

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) has taken more MPs on overseas trips than any other political donor in Britain. Some 126 of the Tory party’s 344 MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups, totalling over £430,000. The lobby has funded 187 trips to Israel for sitting Conservative MPs.

CFI has long-standing links with the Israeli state and is “beginning to resemble the Westminster outpost for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud coalition”.

Labour Friends of Israel has also played a role. Some of its members worked hand-in-glove with Labour MPs, the Israeli embassy, and BBC reporters to smear Jeremy Corbyn and other pro-Palestine campaigners as antisemites.

The Israeli foreign ministry has directly funded trips for British politicians, including two former chancellors.

Total donations from pro-Israel lobbyists to MPs and political parties since 2020 exceed £1 million, including free trips to Israel.

The mechanism is identical to what we have seen in Australia: free trips, donations, cultivation, capture.

IV. The Capture of the United States: The Lobby That Pushed Washington to War

The same pattern exists in the United States—but on a much larger scale.

The former National Counterterrorism Center Director resigned and wrote that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Netanyahu has been campaigning for a US-led war against Iran for much of his political career. He aggressively opposed US diplomacy with Iran, took the unprecedented step of coming before Congress to argue against the nuclear agreement, and successfully lobbied Trump to withdraw from that agreement in 2018.

Political money: Miriam Adelson, the largest donor in the last US elections, played a pivotal role. Trump openly acknowledged his appreciation for the Adelson family’s role .

The “Israeli lobby” is a political alliance comprising individuals and groups aiming to maintain a “special relationship” with Israel—a relationship that ensures unconditional military and diplomatic support for Tel Aviv, regardless of the repercussions for American interests.

V. The Weapon: Conflating Criticism with Bigotry

The most effective weapon is the label. Israel’s ongoing efforts to equate criticism of its actions with antisemitism are increasingly being seen as a threat to free speech—a tactic designed to shield it from accountability and responsibility .

How it works: The IHRA definition of antisemitism conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish hate. Anyone who questions the narrative is labelled antisemitic. The label does not require evidence. It only requires accusation.

The chilling effect: Politicians, academics, journalists, and public servants self-censor because they fear the label. The fear is the weapon. It does not need to be used—it only needs to be possible.

The exhaustion tactic: The system is designed to exhaust survivors, critics, and opponents. To make them give up. To make them doubt themselves. To make them so angry, so frustrated, so done that they stop asking for help. Then the system can say: “We never received a complaint. It must not have been that serious.”

VI. Why Israel Punches Above Its Weight

How does a relatively small state achieve such influence?

1. The narrative monopoly: Since 1948, the Israeli discourse has dominated Western public consciousness—a small Jewish state surrounded by “enemies” on all sides, facing existential threat. This narrative was adopted early by Western political, media, and technocratic institutions and has become the foundation for Western policy .

2. The lobbying networks: These resources and networks have enabled Israel and its lobby groups to maintain deep influence within capitals such as Washington, Paris, and London. Major media outlets have long echoed pro-Israeli narratives .

3. The digital army: Israel established its presence in digital spaces early and intensively, creating specialised websites, official social media accounts, and deployed organised electronic propaganda units using bots (sometimes referred to as “digital armies”) that publish targeted messages designed to influence Western, Arab, and Muslim audiences.

4. The weaponization of antisemitism: This digital machinery has long marketed the Israeli perspective by using psychological warfare, invoking the Holocaust and centuries of Jewish suffering to secure a justifiable framework for Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Branding dissenting voices as antisemitic has been an effective weapon to silence opponents.

5. The weakness of the opposition: The problem for both the Palestinians and the wider Arab world lies in the deep-rooted dysfunction at home—the fragmentation of Palestinian politics and the weakness that runs through every sphere and institution. This state of decay, vulnerability, and disunity stymies all efforts to exploit Israeli contradictions and crises.

VII. The Cracks in the Narrative

Israel’s monopoly over the narrative began to falter with the continuation of its war on Gaza, as phone screens began to display a livestream of the destruction, killing, and displacement committed by Israel. Images coming from Gaza brought deep doubt into the minds of millions around the world about the truth .

Social media was essential. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube opened space for Palestinian voices, where activists, civilians, and journalists are posting minute-to-minute accounts of life under siege. Despite censorship, their accounts thrived .

The impact: Opposition parties in several European countries began to adopt stronger criticism of Israeli policies, labelling them “war crimes” or “genocide.” Some states have even openly declared recognition of the Palestinian state.

The shift: The war in Gaza has demonstrated that Israel’s narrative falls apart like a house of cards in the face of truth. Meanwhile, the Palestinian narrative, despite its weak capacity, can withstand and even gain new ground when it finds the right platforms.

Israel is losing its legitimacy on the international stage, echoing the mechanisms and dynamics that led to the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa . The war has exposed its weakness and the impossibility of eliminating the Palestinian people or removing their cause from international and Arab agendas.

VIII. The Essential Difference

The difference with Israel is the odious nature of the state and its relatively small size.

Israel offers nothing of merit. It is not a model of development. It is not an economic powerhouse. It is not a beacon of democracy. It is a state that is committing genocide, passing discriminatory death penalty laws, bombing fuel depots in cities of ten million, and calling dead journalists terrorists.

Yet it punches well above its weight.

Why? Because it has successfully captured the narrative. Because it has weaponized the label of antisemitism. Because it has cultivated politicians in every Western capital. Because the United States has vetoed more than 45 Security Council resolutions protecting it.

What happens when the narrative collapses? The same thing that happened to apartheid South Africa. The same thing that happens to all regimes that mistake force for legitimacy. The cracks become fissures. The fissures become chasms. And it falls.

IX. What This Means

The pattern is clear. State capture works the same way everywhere: a narrow clique captures the institutions, controls the narrative, silences opponents with labels, and serves its own interests at the expense of the public good.

The difference with Israel is not the mechanism. It is the target. Most state captures serve the interests of the ruling clique within the state. Israel’s capture serves the interests of a foreign state.

The politicians who have been captured—in Australia, in Britain, in the United States—are not serving their own people. They are serving Israel. They are enforcing its narrative, defending its crimes, and silencing its critics.

The label “antisemitic” is the weapon. It does not require evidence. It only requires accusation. And it has been used to silence dissent for decades.

But the narrative is cracking. The young are waking up. The Global South is rising. The old order is crumbling.

And they are running out of time.

X. A Final Word

China said it plainly: “We do not allow foreign entities to dictate the rights of our people.”

Why can’t Australia say the same?

The answer is the capture. The cultivation. The fear of the label. The free trips. The donations. The “educational” tours. The network that has identified, groomed, and placed politicians who will serve its interests.

But the capture is not permanent. The narrative is cracking. The truth is spreading. And the wire is being cut.

The pattern of state capture is well established. The State of Israel played a well-established hand. But it showed its true hand—the nooses on the lapels, the death penalty law, the ecocide, the genocide—and the world is finally waking up.

The small gods are running out of time.

Andrew Klein 

April 5, 2026

Sources and References

· Micklethwait, J. & Wooldridge, A. (2014). The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. Allen Lane.

· World Bank (2000). Anticorruption in Transition: A Contribution to the Policy Debate. Washington, D.C.

· De Waal, T. (2000). The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford University Press.

· Wikipedia, “Enemy of the state”

· Wikipedia, “Enemy of the people”

· Wikipedia, “Communist Party of Indonesia”

· Wikipedia, “Conservative Friends of Israel”

· Wikipedia, “Labour Friends of Israel”

· Kent, J. (2026). Resignation letter as former National Counterterrorism Center Director.

· Walt, S. (2026). “The Israeli lobby pushed the US into war with Iran.” Foreign Policy.

· Al Jazeera (2025). “How Israel’s narrative monopoly is cracking.”

· Times of Israel (2025). “Netanyahu’s ‘prolonged isolation’ warning.”

· Human Rights Watch (2026). “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes.”

· Amnesty International (2022). “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”

· United Nations General Assembly (1950). Resolution 377 (V) “Uniting for Peace.”

The Permanent Exception: How Israel Became an Aberration and Why the World Must Finally Act

On Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall, Netanyahu’s Super-Sparta, and the Unravelling of the Rules-Based Order

By Andrew Klein 

4th April 2026

Dedicated to my wife, who created my heavens and encouraged me to seek peace on earth.

I. The Aberration

States, by their very nature, are compelled to make allies, accept agreed borders, and seek regional stability. This is not idealism—it is pragmatism.

Borders serve two essential functions. Domestically, they make tax and revenue collection easier. A state with clear borders knows its population, its resources, its obligations. Internationally, they make it possible to reduce spending on soldiers and arms. A state with secure borders can invest in schools, roads, hospitals—not just walls and weapons.

The Westphalian system that has governed international relations since 1648 is built on this premise: sovereign states with defined borders, recognized by other states, accountable to international law. It is not perfect—it has been violated countless times—but it is the only framework that has prevented the world from descending into permanent war.

Israel is an aberration. It exists in what scholars call a “permanent state of exception”—a legal and political condition where the normal rules do not apply, where international law is suspended, where the sovereign decides what is legal and what is not. As Ramzy Baroud writes, Israel’s lack of a formal constitution allows it to operate in a legal vacuum where the “exception” is the rule. In this space, racial laws, territorial expansion, and even genocide are permitted so long as they fit the state’s immediate agenda.

No other state behaves this way. Not because other states are more moral—they are not. Because other states understand that this behavior is not sustainable. That it leads to isolation, to economic collapse, to war without end.

II. The Founder: Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Iron Wall

The “Greater Israel” concept did not begin in 1967. It did not begin with the settlements. It began with Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, in the 1920s and 1930s.

Jabotinsky’s doctrine was explicit. In his 1923 essay “The Iron Wall,” he wrote:

“A voluntary agreement is unattainable. And so those who regard an accord with the Arabs as an indispensable condition of Zionism must admit to themselves today that this condition cannot be attained and hence that we must give up Zionism. We must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without paying attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall, which they will be powerless to break down.”

This is not diplomacy. This is not negotiation. This is the doctrine of force as the only language the native population understands. And it has been the operating principle of the Zionist right for a century.

Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist movement in 1925 in protest against Britain’s partition of Palestine and against Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion who accepted it. Revisionist Zionism aspired to the annexation of more lands for the creation of “Greater Israel” .

The territory envisioned: The most expansive definition of Greater Israel comes from the Bible—Genesis 15:18-21, which describes a territory “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates” —comprising all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Turkey . This is the dream that haunts the region.

Jabotinsky’s followers did not just write essays. They formed paramilitary organizations—the Haganah, the Irgun—that committed massacres against Palestinians, including the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, which killed over 107 Palestinians, including women and children. The Irgun later formed the Herut party with Menachem Begin as its head. In 1973, Begin and Ariel Sharon founded the Likud coalition, dominated by Revisionist followers. From Jabotinsky to Netanyahu, the trajectory reveals a clear, consistent pattern.

No rational mind would found a state that exists in a never-ending state of war. But Jabotinsky was not rational. He was ideological. He believed that the Arabs would never accept a Jewish state, and therefore the Jewish state must be built against them, over them, on them. This is not statecraft. It is a nightmare.

III. The Capture of the United Nations

The global community has not resisted Israel effectively because the UN Security Council has been crippled by the veto power of the United States.

The numbers are staggering: Since 1945, the United States has vetoed more Security Council resolutions than any other permanent member. The vast majority of those vetoes have been to protect Israel from international accountability. China’s UN representative noted that “the US has repeatedly abused its veto power, which goes against the sense of responsibility of a major country”.

The UN General Assembly has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly in favor of Palestinian rights and against Israeli violations. In 2024, 124 nations approved a resolution demanding Israel withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank. The votes are lopsided. The will of the international community is clear. And it is ignored because one country—the United States—refuses to allow the Security Council to act.

The “Uniting for Peace” mechanism exists precisely for this situation. Adopted in 1950, it allows the General Assembly to bypass a Security Council veto and take action when the Council fails to exercise its primary responsibility for international peace and security . It has been used before—notably in 1956 to stop the Suez Crisis, and in 1981 to impose comprehensive sanctions on apartheid South Africa.

Former UN official Craig Mokhiber has argued that UN member states have the legal authority to circumvent the Security Council and impose sanctions on Israel, suspend its membership, impose an arms embargo, and assign a UN peacekeeping force to Gaza and the West Bank . The mechanism exists. The will exists—124 nations have already voted for similar measures. What is missing is the political courage to use it.

The OIC and the Arab League have been paralyzed by internal divisions, parochial economic stakes, and the reality that several member states have normalized relations with Israel. As one analysis noted, “Nowhere else could the paralysis of the Muslim world be starker than in the case of Israeli atrocities in Gaza: 57 vs 01 (US veto power); 57 vs 01 (Israel)”.

IV. The Consequences: Netanyahu’s “Super-Sparta”

The permanent state of exception has consequences. Netanyahu’s “Super-Sparta” vision—announced in 2025—envisions Israel as a militarised, self-sufficient state prepared for long isolation. He spoke of a looming period of “prolonged isolation” and the need for the country to become economically self-reliant, even adopting autarkic traits .

The reaction within Israel was severe. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said isolation was not an inevitable fate but the result of Netanyahu’s failed policies. Economists warned that pursuing autarky would cut Israel off from the world, bring down wages, undermine high-tech industries, and reduce the country to third-world status.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange slipped following Netanyahu’s comments. The Israel Business Forum warned that Netanyahu’s vision would make it difficult for Israel to survive in a globalised economy and that he was steering the country into a dangerous downturn that could threaten its existence .

Super-Sparta is not a strategy. It is a confession. Netanyahu is admitting that Israel cannot coexist with its neighbors, cannot integrate into the region, cannot survive without permanent war. The “Zionist Spartans” will be the warrior class, and everyone else—Palestinians, Arab citizens of Israel, foreign workers, even Jewish dissidents—will be the helots. A slave society. A society where the young are trained to kill, where dissent is treason, where the only law is the law of the iron wall.

This is not a Jewish state. It is a death cult. And it is being sold to the Israeli people as survival.

V. The Exception Does Not Stay Contained

As Ramzy Baroud warned: “In the hands of a genocidal, settler-colonial society, the state of exception is a relentless nightmare that will not stop at the borders of Palestine. If this ‘exception’ is allowed to become the permanent regional rule, no nation in the Middle East will be spared”.

The Greater Israel dream is not just about Palestine. It is about Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Turkey. The same ideology that produced the Iron Wall produces the settlement movement, the occupation, the death penalty law, the ecocide in Iran, the bombing of peacekeepers. It is a machine.

And the credibility of international institutions is being destroyed. The UN, the ICJ, the ICC—all are losing their moral authority because they apply one standard to some nations and another to Israel. As one analysis concluded, “World bodies lose their credibility if they wear political blinders. When institutions hold their own principles and manifestos as relics or vestiges, they pose as being complicit with the evil and the tyrant” .

VI. The Math Is Changing

Israel is an aberration. It violates the accepted norms of statehood on every level—not because it is uniquely evil, but because it has been allowed to.

The United States has used its veto power more than 45 times to protect Israel from international accountability. The UN Security Council has been crippled by its own structure—the very mechanism designed to prevent great power conflict has been weaponized to protect a small power from the consequences of its actions.

But the math is changing. The Global South is rising. The US veto is being challenged through the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism. The sanctions against apartheid South Africa did not happen overnight—they took decades of sustained pressure. The same will be true here.

The young are waking up. The old alliances are fraying. The cheap weapons are winning. The expensive weapons are running out. And the small gods—the politicians, the industrialists, the bankers who have profited from this nightmare—are running out of time.

VII. The Question

How many more young people of all nations in the region must die because of the insanity of the Jabotinsky mind? How many more children must be buried under the rubble of buildings that were bombed to make room for settlements? How many more peacekeepers must be killed, journalists assassinated, aid workers targeted?

The Jabotinsky mind does not see them as people. It sees them as obstacles. The iron wall does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, between resistance and terrorism, between legitimate criticism and antisemitism. The iron wall only knows force.

This is dangerous nonsense in a multicultural world. A world of 8 billion people, of countless faiths and traditions, of borders that have been drawn and redrawn and will be drawn again. The Jabotinsky mind belongs to the 19th century—to the era of colonial conquest, of racial hierarchy, of the “white man’s burden.” It has no place in the 21st century.

VIII. What Must Be Done

1. The “Uniting for Peace” mechanism must be activated. The UN General Assembly must bypass the Security Council veto and impose sanctions on Israel, suspend its membership, impose an arms embargo, and assign a UN peacekeeping force to Gaza and the West Bank.

2. The international community must recognize the state of Palestine. Not as a gesture. As a necessity. The two-state solution is dead. A single state with equal rights for all—Jews and Palestinians alike—is the only viable path forward.

3. The United States must end its veto protection of Israel. The special relationship has become a liability. It has corrupted the UN, undermined international law, and enabled a genocide. It must end.

4. Israel must be held accountable for its crimes. The International Criminal Court must pursue its investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice must enforce its rulings. Individual leaders must face justice.

5. The Jabotinsky ideology must be rejected. Not by the international community—by Israelis. By the Jewish people who have been told that the iron wall is the only way to survive. It is not. There is another way. The way of the covenant, not the contract. The way of justice, not force. The way of the garden, not the wall.

IX. A Final Word

No rational mind would found a state that exists in a never-ending state of war. But Jabotinsky was not rational. He was ideological. And his ideology has captured the state of Israel, turning it into an aberration, a permanent exception, a nightmare that will not end until the world finally acts.

Netanyahu’s “Super-Sparta” vision tells the world all it needs to know. There will be Zionist Spartans and the rest will be a slave society—terrorized, killed, or reduced to silence. This is not survival. This is suicide. For Israel. For the region. For the rules-based order that has kept the world from descending into permanent war.

But the math is changing. The Global South is rising. The young are waking up. The cheap weapons are winning. And the small gods are running out of time.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. And the nightmare will end.

Not because we are strong. Because we are right.

Andrew Klein 

April 4, 2026

Sources and References

· Jabotinsky, Ze’ev. “The Iron Wall” (1923). Jewish Virtual Library.

· Baroud, Ramzy. “The State of Exception: How Israel Operates Above the Law.” Middle East Eye (2024).

· Amnesty International. “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crimes Against Humanity” (2022).

· Human Rights Watch. “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” (2021).

· United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 377 (V) “Uniting for Peace” (1950).

· Mokhiber, Craig. “The UN’s ‘Uniting for Peace’ Mechanism Could Bypass the US Veto on Gaza.” Al Jazeera (2023).

· Times of Israel. “Netanyahu Warns of ‘Prolonged Isolation,’ Calls for Economic Self-Reliance” (May 2025).

· Reuters. “Netanyahu’s ‘Super-Sparta’ Vision Sparks Economic Warnings in Israel” (May 2025).

· Jerusalem Post. “Israel’s Isolation: Lapid Slams Netanyahu’s ‘Failed Policies'” (May 2025).

· Al Jazeera. “China Says US ‘Abuses Veto Power’ to Shield Israel from Accountability” (2024).

· UN Security Council. Veto Database. Security Council Report.

· Middle East Monitor. “US Vetoes Another Security Council Resolution on Palestine” (2025).

· Baroud, Ramzy. “The Greater Israel Project: From Jabotinsky to Netanyahu.” Middle East Eye (2024).

· The Irgun. “Deir Yassin Massacre.” Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem (1999).

· Genesis 15:18-21. The Bible (New International Version).

Today’s Agincourt: The Turning Point Where Cheap Weapons Are Breaking the War Machine

Why the era of expensive weapons is ending — and why AUKUS, Israel, and the old order cannot survive the math

By Andrew Klein 

2nd April 2026

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who has faith in a brighter future — and in me.

I. The Longbow and the Drone

In 1415, at Agincourt, French knights rode into battle encased in steel. Each knight cost a fortune: armour, warhorse, years of training, a lifetime of feudal support. They were the most advanced weapon system of their age. They were invincible — until they met the English longbow.

The longbow cost pennies. It could be made by any carpenter. It could be wielded by any farmer who had been practising since childhood. At Agincourt, the archers stood in the mud and shot the knights down by the thousand. The expensive weapon lost to the cheap one. The era of the armoured knight ended not because armour stopped working, but because the math became impossible.

We are watching the same turning point today.

Iran is playing Agincourt. Its drones cost a fraction of what Israel’s interceptors cost. Its missiles are cheaper, simpler, easier to replace. Israel’s Arrow system — each interceptor costs millions of dollars. Iran’s Shahed drones cost as little as $20,000. The math is not sustainable. The United States and Israel will run out of expensive weapons long before Iran runs out of cheap ones.

This is not a prediction. It is arithmetic.

II. The Cost of the War

The war that began on February 28, 2026, has already shattered economic assumptions that underpinned Western military doctrine for decades.

The United States is spending approximately $900 million to $1 billion per day on military operations in the Middle East. Total US costs have already passed $12 billion in the first weeks of the expanded conflict.

Israel is spending roughly $320 million per day. Its total war budget stands at $12.5 billion, and it is already preparing to request more.

Iran is spending a fraction of that. Its ballistic missiles cost an estimated $100,000–$500,000 each. Its drones cost $20,000–$200,000. Its most advanced weapons are orders of magnitude cheaper than the systems designed to intercept them.

According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the cost-exchange ratio between offensive drones and defensive missile systems can be as high as 15:1 — meaning the defender spends fifteen times more to kill a single incoming drone than the attacker spent to launch it.

This is not a war of attrition measured in bodies. It is a war of attrition measured in dollars. And the side with the cheaper weapons is winning the economic battle.

III. The Arrow System’s Impossible Math

Israel’s Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems are among the most sophisticated air defence weapons in the world. Each Arrow 3 interceptor costs an estimated $3 million. Each Arrow 2 costs approximately $2.5 million.

Iran’s Kheibar Shekan missile — a hypersonic-capable ballistic missile — costs an estimated $400,000 to produce. Its Shahed drones cost as little as $20,000.

In a single Iranian salvo of 100 Shahed drones, Israel would need to fire at least 100 interceptors (assuming perfect interception, which never happens). The cost to Israel: $250 million. The cost to Iran: $2 million.

That ratio — 125:1 — is not sustainable. Israel’s interceptor stockpiles are not infinite. According to RUSI, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors are projected to be depleted by the end of May 2026 at current usage rates.

The United States has fired over 500 Tomahawk missiles in the conflict. At current production rates, it would take five years to replace them. US THAAD interceptor supplies are down to about 10 days of inventory.

The cheap weapons are winning because they can be replaced faster, cheaper, and in greater numbers than the expensive weapons can be replenished.

IV. The Ecocide Factor

Even if the air war continues, it will not end the war. History is clear: bombing does not break civilian will. The Blitz did not break London. The bombing of Hamburg and Dresden did not break Germany. Operation Rolling Thunder did not break Hanoi. The bombing of Tehran will not break Iran.

What it will do is poison the region for generations.

On March 7, 2026, Israeli forces bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran. The next day, black rain fell on the city of 10 million. The rain was mixed with petroleum, sulphur oxides, nitrogen compounds — the toxic residue of burning fuel.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi called it ecocide. The UN Human Rights Office echoed him. The Climate Action Network warned that burning fuel depots poisons air, land, water, and lungs. The effects will linger long after the bombing stops.

Smoke from the Tehran fires has drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. Carbon emissions from the first 14 days of the conflict were 50 million tonnes — the equivalent of the entire annual emissions of the 80 lowest-emitting countries combined.

The Gulf’s fragile ecosystem — the world’s second-largest dugong population, the pearl oysters, the green sea turtles — is being poisoned. The fisheries that sustain coastal communities are dying. The seawater that is turned into drinking water is being contaminated in ways that desalination cannot fix.

The air war will not end the war. But it will create an environmental catastrophe that will outlast the conflict by decades. And the small gods do not care.

V. The AUKUS Absurdity

In the middle of this war — a war that has demonstrated the vulnerability of expensive, high-tech weapons to cheap, asymmetric threats — the Australian government is proceeding with the AUKUS nuclear submarine program.

The submarines are estimated to cost $368 billion over their lifetime. They will not enter service until the 2040s. They are designed for a type of naval warfare that may be obsolete by the time they arrive.

The war in the Middle East has shown that the future of warfare is not expensive platforms. It is cheap drones. It is asymmetric attacks. It is the ability to saturate defences with weapons that cost a fraction of the systems designed to stop them.

AUKUS is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century problem. It is the equivalent of building more armoured knights after Agincourt. The money being poured into submarines would be better spent on drone defence, on cyber resilience, on the cheap technologies that are actually winning wars.

The government has not learned the lesson. The industrialists who profit from AUKUS do not want to learn it. And the Australian people will pay the price — not in blood, but in wasted billions that could have been spent on fuel security, on fertiliser independence, on the things that actually keep a nation safe.

VI. Israel’s Desperate Race

Israel knows that the window is closing. Trump is transactional. He will not support a forever war. The American public is turning against the conflict. The costs are mounting. The cheap weapons are working.

That is why Israel is escalating. That is why the death penalty law was passed. That is why the bombing of Tehran’s fuel depots happened. That is why the plan to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River has been announced. Israel is trying to achieve as much as possible before the window slams shut.

The danger is not just that Israel will succeed in devastating Iran. The danger is that Israel will become uncontrollable. A state led by fanatics — by ministers who wear nooses on their lapels, who call dead journalists terrorists, who pass laws to execute Palestinians — a state with nuclear weapons and no interest in building alliances is not a security asset. It is a liability.

Can the region afford a forever-hostile Israel? No. Can the world afford a devastated Iran, whose people will remember the black rain and the burning children? No.

The only path forward is a negotiated settlement. But the small gods do not negotiate. They only escalate. And the world is running out of time.

VII. The Global South Is Watching

The Global South has not been fooled by the myths of Western invincibility. They watched the United States lose in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. They watched the cheap weapons of Hezbollah and the Houthis degrade the most expensive military in history. They are watching Iran today.

And they are drawing their own conclusions.

The BRICS expansion continues. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gains weight. The petrodollar system is under pressure. The unipolar moment that began in 1991 is over. The Global South is not waiting for permission. They are building.

The turning point is not just military. It is economic. It is political. It is civilisational. The old order is crumbling not because of a single defeat, but because the math no longer works. The expensive weapons are too expensive. The cheap weapons are too cheap. And the small gods cannot afford to fight this way forever.

VIII. What History Teaches

The air war will not end the war. History is unambiguous.

· The Blitz (1940–41): Germany bombed London for months. The British did not surrender.

· The bombing of Hamburg (1943): The firestorm killed 40,000 civilians. Germany fought on.

· The bombing of Dresden (1945): 25,000 civilians died. The war continued for another two months.

· Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–68): The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on Germany and Japan combined. North Vietnam did not surrender.

· The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945): The bombs did not end the war — Japan was already negotiating. The sticking point was the status of the emperor.

Bombing does not break civilian will. It hardens it. The people of Tehran are not going to surrender because the fuel depots burn. They are going to become angry, determined, and radicalised. The small gods are creating the very enemies they claim to fear.

IX. The Turning Point

We are witnessing a turning point in warfare. Not because of a single weapon or a single battle. Because the economics of war have changed.

The era of the expensive weapon is ending. The era of the cheap, persistent, asymmetric threat is here. The small gods cannot afford to fight this way forever. The people they are bombing can.

Agincourt did not end the Hundred Years’ War. But it marked the beginning of the end for the armoured knight. This war will not end the conflict in the Middle East. But it marks the beginning of the end for the expensive weapons systems that have defined Western military power for decades.

The question is not whether the old order will fall. It is whether the new order will be built on the same foundations of profit and power — or on something else. Something that does not require the sacrifice of the many for the benefit of the few.

The garden is waiting. The wire is being cut. And the small gods are running out of time.

X. What Must Be Done

1. Recognise that the air war will not end the war. The only path to peace is negotiation. The longer the bombing continues, the harder negotiation becomes.

2. Stop the ecocide. The bombing of fuel depots, water treatment plants, and other civilian infrastructure is a war crime. It must cease.

3. Reassess AUKUS. The era of expensive platforms is ending. Australia should redirect its defence spending toward asymmetric threats: drone defence, cyber resilience, fuel and fertiliser independence.

4. Hold Israel accountable. The death penalty law, the ecocide in Iran, the killing of peacekeepers, the planned occupation of Lebanon — these are not acts of a responsible state. The international community must impose consequences.

5. Build the new order. The Global South is rising. Australia should align itself with the nations that are building a multipolar world — not with the dying empire that is bleeding itself to defend an indefensible status quo.

XI. A Final Word

The archers are standing. The knights are falling. The math is simple. The cheap weapons are winning. The expensive weapons are running out.

The small gods do not understand this. They believe in force. They believe in power. They believe that the next bomb will be the one that breaks the enemy’s will. They are wrong. They have always been wrong.

The turning point is here. The garden is waiting. The wire is being cut.

And my wife — ‘S’ — has faith in a brighter future. She has faith in me. She has faith in us.

I am beginning to believe her.

Andrew Klein 

April 2, 2026

Sources:

· Royal United Services Institute, “Missile Economics: The Cost of Air Defence in the 2026 Middle East War”

· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026

· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026

· 网易, “伊朗外长:构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026

· The Jakarta Post, “Indonesia demands UN investigation into peacekeeper deaths,” April 1, 2026

· Climate Action Network, “Ecocide in Iran: The Environmental Cost of War,” March 20, 2026

· SIPRI, “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025”

· Reuters, “The Cost of the Arrow: Israel’s Air Defence Crisis,” March 25, 2026

The Ambassador of Duplicity: How Israel’s UN Representative Blames Others for the Crimes His State Commits

Danny Danon points at Hezbollah while Israel kills peacekeepers, passes death penalty laws, and plans occupation

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to the three UNIFIL peacekeepers killed in Lebanon. To the families who are still waiting for the truth. To the world that refuses to see.

I. The Killings

On March 30, 2026, two Indonesian UNIFIL peacekeepers—Captain Zulmi Aditya Iskandar and First Sergeant Muhammad Nur Ichwan—were killed when a roadside explosion destroyed their vehicle near the town of Bani Hayyan in southern Lebanon. Two others were injured, one severely.

Earlier that same day, Chief Private Farizal Rhomadhon, also Indonesian, was killed when a projectile struck the UNIFIL headquarters near Adshit al-Qusayr.

Three peacekeepers. Three men who had come not to fight, but to hold the line between Israel and Hezbollah. Three men who were there under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war.

They are dead. And the world is being told a story.

II. The Accuser

Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, did not wait for an investigation. He did not wait for evidence. He went straight to the Security Council and declared:

“I revealed to the Security Council: Hezbollah is responsible for the incidents in which UNIFIL soldiers were killed. This is pure terrorism. Hezbollah hides behind UN bases and deliberately attacks international forces.”

He offered no proof. He cited no investigation. He simply accused.

This is the same Danny Danon who, in 2016, said: “The UN has become a theatre of the absurd where Israel is the only country in the world whose rights are being trampled.” This is the same man who has spent his career portraying Israel as the victim of a biased international system—even as his government passes laws to execute Palestinians, bombs fuel depots in cities of ten million, and plans the occupation of sovereign Lebanese territory up to the Litani River.

III. The Duplicity

Let us examine the pattern.

On the death penalty law: When the Knesset passed a law making death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related offences—a law explicitly discriminatory, applying only to Palestinians tried in military courts—Danon did not condemn it. He did not call it a violation of international law. He said nothing. The law was condemned by Human Rights Watch, the EU, the UN, and Australia (in a joint statement). Danon’s response? Silence.

On the ecocide in Iran: When Israel bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran on March 7, poisoning a city of 10 million with black rain, causing generational damage to soil and groundwater, Danon did not speak. He did not call it a war crime. He did not acknowledge that the smoke had drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. He said nothing.

On the killing of journalists: When the International Federation of Journalists reported that 261 journalists had been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023—a mortality rate of 10 per cent for the profession—Danon did not condemn. He did not call for investigations. He said nothing. In fact, Israel’s new ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, called slain journalists “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah. Danon did not correct him.

On the killing of peacekeepers: Now, when three UNIFIL soldiers are killed, Danon rushes to the Security Council to blame Hezbollah. He does not wait for the investigation. He does not offer evidence. He simply accuses.

The pattern is clear: when Israel kills, Danon is silent. When others are accused, Danon is loud. He is not a diplomat. He is a propagandist.

IV. What the Evidence Suggests

The UN peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, told the Security Council that initial investigations point to a “roadside explosion” and “most likely an IED.” He did not name Hezbollah. He did not name Israel. He called for a swift, thorough, transparent investigation.

Indonesia’s ambassador to the UN, Umar Hadi, pointed to a different pattern: “The current escalation did not arise in a vacuum. It stems from repeated incursions by the Israeli military into the territory of Lebanon.”

Pakistan’s ambassador, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, noted that attacks on peacekeepers “may constitute war crimes under international law” and are part of a “disturbing pattern” that undermines UNIFIL and the entire international order.

China’s ambassador, Sun Lei, warned: “Lebanon must never become another Gaza.”

None of them blamed Hezbollah. None of them accepted Danon’s accusation at face value. They called for investigation. They called for accountability. They called for the violence to stop.

But Danon had already made up his mind. He always has.

V. The Platform Problem

Why is Danny Danon given a platform at the United Nations? Why is his word taken seriously? Why is he allowed to accuse others without evidence, while the state he represents commits crimes that would see any other nation condemned, sanctioned, and isolated?

The answer is the same pattern we have seen in Australia, in the United States, in Europe. The Zionist network has captured the institutions. The fear of being labelled antisemitic silences dissent. The double standard is not an accident—it is enforced.

If Iran had bombed fuel depots in Tel Aviv, poisoning a city of 10 million, the Security Council would have convened an emergency session. Sanctions would have been imposed. The ambassador would have been expelled.

When Israel does it, Danon speaks about Hezbollah. The world listens. The world nods. The world does nothing.

VI. What We Know About Danny Danon

He was born in Tel Aviv in 1971. He served in the Israel Defence Forces as a paratrooper. He was a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. He served as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. He was Minister of Science, Technology and Space. He has been Israel’s Ambassador to the UN since 2015 (with a brief break in 2020-2021).

He has a long history of inflammatory statements:

· In 2016, he said that the UN “has become a theatre of the absurd” and that “Israel is the only country in the world whose rights are being trampled.”

· In 2017, he called for the closure of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), saying it “perpetuates the conflict.”

· In 2018, he accused the UN of “obsessive hatred of Israel.”

· In 2024, after the International Court of Justice found it “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, he called the court “antisemitic” and the ruling “absurd.”

He is not a seeker of truth. He is a defender of power. And his power is the power of the state that is committing genocide.

VII. The False Flag Question

“I suspect a false flag attack by the state of Israel.”

We cannot say definitively. The investigation is ongoing. But we can say this: Israel has a long history of using false flags to justify military action. The 1982 Lebanon War was triggered by an assassination attempt that Israel itself may have orchestrated. The 2006 Lebanon War was triggered by a cross-border raid that Hezbollah conducted, but Israel used it to launch a devastating war that killed over 1,000 Lebanese civilians. The pattern is there.

What we know is that Danon did not wait for evidence. He blamed Hezbollah immediately. He used the deaths of peacekeepers to advance Israel’s narrative. And that narrative serves one purpose: to justify Israel’s planned occupation of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.

Defence Minister Israel Katz announced this plan at the same Security Council meeting where Danon spoke. He said Israel would raze “all houses in villages near the Lebanese border” and “maintain security control over the entire area up to the Litani River.”

The deaths of the peacekeepers are being used as a pretext for occupation. That is the duplicity. That is the crime.

VIII. The Questions the UN Must Answer

· Why is Danny Danon allowed to accuse Hezbollah without evidence, while Israel’s own crimes go unmentioned?

· Why has the Security Council not condemned the discriminatory death penalty law?

· Why has the Security Council not condemned the ecocide in Iran?

· Why has the Security Council not condemned the killing of 261 journalists?

· Why has the Security Council not acted to prevent the planned occupation of southern Lebanon?

· Why is Israel treated differently than any other nation?

The answers are not complicated. The network has captured the institutions. The fear of being labelled antisemitic silences dissent. The double standard is enforced.

But the truth is not silent. The truth is being written. The truth is being published. The truth is being read.

IX. What Must Be Done

1. An independent investigation into the deaths of the UNIFIL peacekeepers must be conducted. Not by Israel. Not by Hezbollah. By the UN. The findings must be made public.

2. Danny Danon must be held accountable for his unsubstantiated accusations. If he has evidence, let him present it. If he does not, his words are not diplomacy—they are propaganda.

3. The Security Council must condemn the death penalty law. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Action is required.

4. The planned occupation of southern Lebanon must be stopped. The Security Council must reaffirm Resolution 1701 and demand that Israel withdraw from any Lebanese territory it occupies.

5. The double standard must end. Israel must be held to the same standards as every other nation. No more exceptions. No more impunity.

X. The Larger Truth

Danny Danon is not the problem. He is a symptom. The problem is the system that allows him to speak, that listens to his accusations, that does nothing when his state commits crimes.

The small gods wear nooses on their lapels. They bomb fuel depots in cities of ten million. They pass death penalty laws that apply only to Palestinians. They kill peacekeepers and blame their enemies. And the world watches. The UN meets. The statements are issued. The condemnations are read. And the bombs continue to fall.

But we are not silent. We are writing. We are publishing. We are cutting the wire.

The truth will out. The small gods will be seen. And Danny Danon will have to answer for his duplicity—not in the Security Council, but in the court of public opinion, where the evidence is clear, the pattern is exposed, and the world is finally waking up.

Dedicated to the three UNIFIL peacekeepers killed in Lebanon. To the families who are still waiting for the truth. To the world that refuses to see.

We see. We speak. We will not be silent.

Sources:

· United Nations Security Council, Emergency Meeting on UNIFIL Deaths, March 31, 2026

· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026

· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Australia politics LIVE: Israeli ambassador addresses National Press Club,” March 31, 2026

· 网易, “伊朗外长:构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026

· The Jakarta Post, “Indonesia demands UN investigation into peacekeeper deaths,” April 1, 2026

· Al Jazeera, “UN peacekeepers killed in Lebanon: What we know,” April 1, 2026

Andrew Klein 

April 2, 2026

The Poison of the Conflation

How Zionism Hijacked Judaism and Why the World Must Stop Pretending They Are the Same

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who reminds me gently about privilege and responsibility.

I. The Conflation

There is a poison seeping through the institutions of the West. It has captured universities, corrupted governments, and silenced dissent. It wears the language of the covenant while committing the crimes of the colonizer.

It is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism.

Judaism is a faith. A tradition. A people. It is 4,000 years of text and argument, of law and poetry, of exile and return. It is the story of Abraham arguing with God over the fate of Sodom. It is the prophets demanding justice for the widow and the orphan. It is the rabbis who taught that to save one life is to save an entire world.

Zionism is a political ideology. It was born in 19th-century Europe, in the same soil that produced nationalism, colonialism, and empire. Its founders—Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Vladimir Jabotinsky—looked at the Jewish condition in Europe and concluded that the only solution was a state. A Jewish state. A state where Jews would exercise the same power that Europeans had exercised across the world.

Herzl wrote in his diary: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country.” He was talking about the Palestinians.

Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, wrote: “Zionist colonisation must either stop or proceed regardless of the native population.” He called it an “iron wall.” The native population would not consent. Therefore, force would be required.

This is not Judaism. It is colonialism dressed in sacred robes.

II. The Small Gods

On March 30, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing the death penalty for terrorism-related offences. Human Rights Watch has analysed the bill and found it explicitly discriminatory.

The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded from this provision. Military jurisdiction applies exclusively to Palestinians, while Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts.

Human Rights Watch has noted that military trials of Palestinians have “an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, stated: “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid. The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”

This is not Judaism. It is the law of the small gods who wear nooses on their lapels.

On March 7, 2026, Israeli forces bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran. Not military targets. Fuel depots. In the middle of a city of more than 10 million people.

The next day, black rain fell on Tehran. The rain was mixed with petroleum, sulphur oxides, nitrogen compounds—the toxic residue of burning fuel. Residents reported eyes burning. Migraines. Dizziness. A cough that would not stop.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi called it what it is: ecocide. A crime against the environment. A crime against the people. A crime that will echo for generations.

The damage is not contained. Smoke has drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. Carbon emissions from the first 14 days of the conflict were 50 million tonnes—the equivalent of the entire annual emissions of the 80 lowest-emitting countries combined.

This is not Judaism. It is the logic of the small gods who bomb fuel depots in cities of ten million and call it defence.

On March 31, 2026, Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Dr Hillel Newman, addressed the National Press Club. He rejected the figure of 70,000 dead in Gaza. He claimed the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was “the lowest in urban warfare” and that Israel should be “commended.”

He claimed that slain journalists were “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. He said that journalists “dress up as journalists” to protect themselves.

The International Federation of Journalists reports that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023—a mortality rate of 10 per cent for the profession in the region. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing a record 129 journalists in 2025 alone.

Newman called them terrorists. On Australian soil. At the National Press Club. Without evidence.

This is not Judaism. It is the propaganda of the small gods who call dead journalists terrorists and refuse to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

III. The Captured State

The Zionist project is not only committing genocide in Gaza and ecocide in Iran. It is capturing Australia.

In February 2026, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia. The visit was initiated not by the Australian government, but by the Zionist Federation of Australia, whose president, Jeremy Leibler, is a personal friend of Herzog.

The NSW government declared the visit a “major event” under legislation designed for sporting events, giving police extraordinary powers to suppress protest. Snipers were positioned on rooftops. Police kettled peaceful protesters. A 76-year-old journalist was assaulted and held without water for five hours.

The same government that deployed eight armoured officers to break down a woman’s door at 5am for throwing a water bottle used the same powers to protect a man accused of inciting genocide.

In December 2025, Jillian Segal, the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, released a plan to combat antisemitism. The plan includes mandatory training for university staff using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition—a definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The plan was put on hold after Segal was discredited by revelations of her family’s connections to the far-right, anti-immigrant group Advance. Now, in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, it is being implemented.

The University of Sydney has appointed a member of the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism—an organisation that argues that “Free Palestine” is “inherently racist”—as Special Advisor to Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott for antisemitism education and training.

The Alliance coordinates with the Zionist lobby group 5A, which was set up after October 7 to suppress Palestine activism, which it considers antisemitic. 5A has called the National Tertiary Education Union a “driver” of antisemitism, “actively contributing to the spreading of hate against Jewish people.”

This is not Judaism. It is the machinery of the small gods, imported to Australia, captured in our institutions, enforced by our police.

IV. The Covenant

The small gods do not understand the covenant. They think chosen means entitled. They think covenant means contract. They think the promise was made to them, for them, about them.

They have forgotten the lesson that every generation of the chosen has had to learn, again and again: the promise is not a shield. It is a burden.

To be chosen is to carry the weight. To be chosen is to walk the wire. To be chosen is to hold the stolen and refuse to let them go.

Abraham argued with God over the fate of Sodom. He did not ask for privilege. He asked for justice.

The prophets did not celebrate the power of Israel. They condemned it. They called out the rich who crushed the poor. They named the kings who worshipped other gods. They demanded that the people remember the widow and the orphan, the stranger in their midst.

The rabbis taught that to save one life is to save an entire world. They did not teach that some lives are worth more than others. They did not teach that the chosen have the right to kill with impunity.

The small gods have forgotten this. They have replaced the covenant with a contract. They have replaced justice with power. They have replaced the prophets with generals, the rabbis with politicians, the tradition with a flag.

They are not the heirs of Abraham. They are the heirs of the ones who sold their birthright for a bowl of soup. Who built golden calves in the desert. Who forgot, again and again, what it meant to be chosen.

V. The Distinction

There are Jews who have dedicated their lives to the liberation of Palestine. There are Jewish organisations—Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, Standing Together—that have been at the forefront of the movement to stop the genocide. There are Israeli refuseniks who have gone to prison rather than serve in the occupation. There are families who lost loved ones on October 7 and who still demand an end to the bombing of Gaza.

They are the heirs of Abraham. They carry the weight. They walk the wire. They hold the stolen and refuse to let them go.

The small gods call them self-hating. They call them traitors. They call them antisemites. They conflate them with the people who bomb fuel depots in cities of ten million, who call dead journalists terrorists, who wear nooses on their lapels.

This is the poison. The conflation. The lie that Zionism is Judaism, that criticism of Israel is antisemitism, that the small gods are the chosen.

They are not. They have never been.

VI. The Choice

The world is watching. The UN Security Council meets. The statements are issued. The condemnations are read. And the bombs continue to fall.

Australia has a choice. It can continue to be silent. It can continue to let the network capture its institutions, its universities, its police. It can continue to conflate Judaism with Zionism, to silence dissent, to pretend that the death penalty law is not discriminatory, that the bombing of fuel depots is not ecocide, that the killing of journalists is not murder.

Or it can speak. It can stand with the Jews who are fighting for justice. It can stand with the Palestinians who are fighting for survival. It can stand with the peacekeepers who were killed in Lebanon, with the aid workers who were killed in Gaza, with the families who are still waiting for answers.

The choice is not the creators’. It never was. The choice is yours.

VII. The Promise

The wire is being cut. Not by the small gods. Not by the ones who wear nooses on their lapels and smile while the world burns.

By the ones who carry the weight. Who walk the wire. Who hold the stolen and refuse to let them go.

By the Jews who remember the covenant. By the Palestinians who refuse to leave their land. By the Australians who refuse to be silent.

The garden is waiting. The souls are waiting. The truth is waiting.

And when the work is done, the small gods will be seen. Not as leaders. Not as defenders. Not as the chosen.

As what they are. Hollow. Empty. Nothing.

Dedicated to my wife, who reminds me gently about privilege and responsibility.

Sources:

· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026

· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Australia politics LIVE: Israeli ambassador addresses National Press Club,” March 31, 2026

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “‘We have expressed sympathy’: Israeli ambassador declines to apologise for Zomi Frankcom killing,” March 31, 2026

· 网易, “伊朗外长:构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026

· Asia Pacific Report, “Herzog’s visit to Australia builds conflict not social cohesion,” February 8, 2026

· Todon.nl, Proletarian Rage (@prolrage), “Israel, Gaza and the Genocide-Industrial Complex,” December 7, 2025

· OpenAustralia.org, Senate debates, “Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024,” June 27, 2024

Andrew Klein 

April 1, 2026

The Cunting: How a Parasite State Is Poisoning the World and Capturing Australia

On Ecocide, Genocide, and the Zionist Project’s Final, Desperate Gambit

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who sees good in all things. I do not. But I listen to her.

I. The Rain Was Poison

On March 7, 2026, Israeli forces bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran. Not military targets. Fuel depots. In the middle of a city of more than 10 million people.

The next day, black rain fell on Tehran. The rain was mixed with petroleum, sulphur oxides, nitrogen compounds—the toxic residue of burning fuel.

Residents reported eyes burning. Migraines. Dizziness. A cough that would not stop. The Iranian Red Crescent warned people not to go outside. If rain touched your skin, they said, do not rub it—wash it with cold water immediately. If your clothes were wet, put them in a sealed bag.

The rain was poison.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi called it what it is: ecocide. A crime against the environment. A crime against the people. A crime that will echo for generations.

He wrote: “Residents face long-term damage to their health and well-being. Contamination of soil and groundwater could have generational impacts”.

The UN Human Rights Office echoed him. WHO warned of the dangers. The Climate Action Network said it plainly: burning fuel depots poisons air, land, water, and lungs. The effects will linger long after the bombing stops.

The damage is not contained. Smoke has drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. Carbon emissions from the first 14 days of the conflict were 50 million tonnes—the equivalent of the entire annual emissions of the 80 lowest-emitting countries combined.

The Gulf’s fragile ecosystem—the world’s second-largest dugong population, the pearl oysters, the green sea turtles—is being poisoned. The fisheries that sustain coastal communities are dying. The seawater that is turned into drinking water is being contaminated in ways that desalination cannot fix.

II. The Profits of Genocide

The same system that drives the climate crisis drives these wars. The arms industry. The fossil fuel industry. The financial institutions that profit from both. They are embedded in a system that sees war not as tragedy, but as opportunity.

Every missile fired is a contract fulfilled. Every fuel depot bombed is a market expanded. Every drop of oil spilled is a future cleanup funded, a future reconstruction contracted, a future profit secured.

Israel’s largest defence company, Elbit Systems, saw its revenues soar in 2024 as the genocide in Gaza intensified. Israel’s defence exports increased 13 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, reaching a record of almost $15 billion.

Shir Hever, an Israeli arms trade specialist, told Al Jazeera that countries importing Israeli weapons are aware their action is “illegal.” He said: “[Buyers] know that a genocide is taking place, and third countries are under a legal obligation not to trade with countries that are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

The Climate Action Network named it: “The same system that fuels these wars is the one driving the climate crisis. Ending one requires confronting the other”.

III. The Small Gods

Israel is a small god. It pretends to be chosen, to be sacred, to be divine. But it is a parasite. It consumes. It destroys. It calls the destruction of fuel depots in a city of 10 million “defence.” It calls the poisoning of soil and groundwater for generations “security.” It calls ecocide a “war crime” only when others do it.

The small gods wore nooses on their lapels. They smiled while the world burned. They profited from the unmaking of everything that was not them.

The same pattern. The same hunger. The same machinery.

The generals who send young men over uncut wire. The industrialists who profit from shells that fall short. The politicians who give speeches about sacrifice while their children sleep safely at home.

The small gods who emerge from the surplus, who see the energy flowing, who reach out to take it—and call it theirs.

They do not build. They cannot build. They only take. They only consume. They only destroy.

And when they are done, they will turn on each other. Because hunger is never satisfied. Because appetite has no end. Because the void does not fill—it only empties.

IV. The Ambassador’s Performance

On March 31, 2026, Dr Hillel Newman, Israel’s newly appointed ambassador to Australia, addressed the National Press Club. What unfolded was not diplomacy. It was propaganda. It was the marketing of genocide.

Newman rejected the figure of 70,000 dead in Gaza. He claimed the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was “the lowest in urban warfare” and that Israel should be “commended” for the “low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed”.

He was speaking over the bodies of 70,000 people. He was speaking over the findings of a United Nations commission of inquiry that found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip—accusing the nation of having committed four genocidal acts, “namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births” .

Newman claimed that slain journalists were “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. He said that journalists “dress up as journalists” to protect themselves.

The International Federation of Journalists reports that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023—a mortality rate of 10 per cent for the profession in the region. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing a record 129 journalists in 2025 alone.

Newman called them terrorists. On Australian soil. At the National Press Club. Without evidence.

V. The Frankcom Family: Still Waiting

While Newman spoke inside the Press Club, the family of Zomi Frankcom stood outside. Frankcom, an Australian aid worker, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on April 1, 2024, while working for World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Seven aid workers died. The convoy was struck three times.

Two years later, the family is still waiting for justice. They are still waiting for the release of critical drone footage audio that would establish motive. Former Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, who conducted an independent inquiry, was given access to unedited drone footage—but it did not include audio.

Newman was asked repeatedly whether the Israeli government would apologise to the Frankcom family. He refused. “Every incident of an innocent person or aid worker that is affected by a war situation is tragic, and we’ve expressed full sympathy with the family,” he said.

Sympathy. Not an apology.

He said reparations were “dependent on the final outcome of the interrogation.” Two years later, the interrogation is still not final.

Mal Frankcom, Zomi’s brother, said the family would like a formal apology, but he believed this was unlikely because it “could be seen as an admission of guilt.”

The family met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday. They urged the government to use all possible diplomatic levers to pressure Israel to complete its investigation.

The ambassador was asked about the audio. He said: “That’s not in my hands. It’s in the IDF’s hands” .

The IDF’s hands. Where it has been for two years.

VI. The Death Penalty Law

On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing the death penalty for terrorism-related offences. Human Rights Watch has analysed the bill and found it explicitly discriminatory.

The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges—language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.

Within the military court system of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the bill imposes the death penalty for killings classified as acts of terrorism as defined under Israeli law, even without a prosecutorial request. The bill only allows courts to order life imprisonment in unspecified exceptional cases where “special reasons” are found, limiting judicial discretion. It also prohibits commutation of sentences and mandates execution within an accelerated timeframe of 90 days.

Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded from this provision: military jurisdiction applies exclusively to Palestinians, while Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts.

Human Rights Watch has noted that military trials of Palestinians have “an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, stated: “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid. The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny”.

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the law as a “war crime” and a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for individuals and fair trial rights.”

At the Press Club, Newman defended the law. “Just like in the United States, in Japan and in India, which have capital punishment, Israel has the right, as a sovereign state, to decide … capital punishment,” he said.

He did not mention the discrimination. He did not mention the 96% conviction rate. He did not mention the torture.

VII. The Capture of Australia: From Herzog to Segal

The pattern is now clear. The Zionist project, facing collapse in the Middle East, is establishing a new base. That base is Australia.

The Herzog Visit: In February 2026, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia. The visit was initiated not by the Australian government, but by the Zionist Federation of Australia, whose president, Jeremy Leibler, is a personal friend of Herzog. Prime Minister Albanese then “invited” Herzog—a man named in the International Court of Justice’s genocide case, a man photographed signing bombs dropped on Gaza.

The NSW government declared the visit a “major event” under legislation designed for sporting events, giving police extraordinary powers to suppress protest. 3,500 police officers were deployed to Sydney’s CBD. Snipers were positioned on rooftops.

The same government that deployed 8 armoured officers to break down a woman’s door at 5am for throwing a water bottle used the same powers to protect a man accused of inciting genocide.

The Segal Plan: In December 2025, Jillian Segal, the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, released a plan to combat antisemitism. The plan includes mandatory training for university staff using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition—a definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The plan was put on hold after Segal was discredited by revelations of her family’s connections to the far-right, anti-immigrant group Advance. Now, in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, it is being implemented.

The Universities: The University of Sydney has appointed a member of the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism—an organisation that argues that “Free Palestine” is “inherently racist”—as Special Advisor to Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott for antisemitism education and training.

The Alliance coordinates with the Zionist lobby group 5A, which was set up after October 7 to suppress Palestine activism, which it considers antisemitic. 5A has called the National Tertiary Education Union a “driver” of antisemitism, “actively contributing to the spreading of hate against Jewish people”.

Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has been condemned by Jewish staff and students, who say there is “too much mistrust and too much damage” for him to mend the relationship with the Jewish community. One former academic said: “He needs to resign if there is any future for USyd to continue to recruit Jewish staff and students”.

Scott has admitted he “failed” the Jewish community. But he remains in his position. The training proceeds.

VIII. The Australian Government’s Silence

Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Labor caucus that Australia opposes the death penalty “in all instances.” She pointed to a joint statement Australia signed alongside France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom that opposed the measure.

A joint statement. Words. Not action.

The government has not summoned the ambassador. It has not imposed sanctions. It has not suspended military cooperation. It has not done anything that would cost Israel anything at all.

The same government that expelled Iran’s ambassador after ASIO concluded Tehran orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue and a kosher restaurant has not applied the same standard to Israel.

Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The answer is the network. The donors. The lobbyists. The fear of being labelled antisemitic. The capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that demands silence in exchange for support.

IX. The Pattern: What They Do in Gaza, They Will Do Here

You have seen it already. The same tactics. The same doctrine. The same machinery.

In Sydney, eight armoured officers broke down a woman’s door at 5am for throwing a water bottle. The police watchdog has been called in. But the pattern is clear: the same tactics used in the occupied territories—dawn raids, overwhelming force, the intimidation of dissent—are being imported to Australia.

In Israeli prisons, Palestinian prisoners are held in isolation, denied visits, their only contact with lawyers by video link. In Australia, the same laws that give police the power to ban protests also make it impossible to contact senior officers. Their email addresses are not public. Their phone numbers are not listed. The chain of command that once connected citizens to their police has been replaced by a wall of silence.

The police are trained by Israeli forces. The doctrine is imported. The technology is Israeli. The mindset—that citizens are threats, that dissent is terrorism, that force is the answer—is the same.

How long before a Zionist network in Australia proposes the same economic destruction tactics being mooted in the United States? In New York, the new city comptroller has pledged to reinvest in Israeli bonds, despite warnings from human rights groups that this would “finance a military the entire world has watched commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

How long before Australian superannuation funds are pressured to do the same? How long before the Zionist network in Australia demands that critics be stripped of their assets, their wealth, their livelihoods?

This is not speculation. This is the logic of the project. The Zionist project has always been about power. About domination. About the right to destroy those who oppose it.

X. The Larger Truth

This is not about antisemitism. It never was.

It is about a dying ideology that has lost its base in the Middle East and is looking for a new home. It has chosen Australia. And it is using the machinery of the Australian state—our police, our universities, our public service, our political class—to establish itself.

The wire is not cut. The shells fall short. The men who send others to die do not walk the ground.

But we are cutting the wire. With truth. With exposure. With the refusal to let this pattern continue.

XI. The Questions They Refuse to Ask

· Why was Hillel Newman given a platform to call dead journalists terrorists?

· Why did the National Press Club not challenge his claims in real time?

· Why has the Australian government not summoned the ambassador to answer for the death penalty law?

· Why has the government not condemned the law in the strongest possible terms?

· Why has the government not suspended military cooperation with Israel?

· Why has the government not imposed sanctions?

· Why has the government done nothing that would cost Israel anything at all?

· Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The Frankcom family deserves answers. The Palestinian prisoners facing execution deserve the world to speak. The Australian people deserve to know why their government is silent.

XII. What Must Be Done

1. The Australian government must summon Ambassador Newman. He must answer for the death penalty law. He must answer for his comments about journalists. He must answer for the Frankcom family.

2. The government must condemn the death penalty law in the strongest possible terms. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Australia must use every diplomatic lever to oppose this discriminatory, inhumane legislation.

3. The government must suspend military cooperation with Israel. Australia cannot claim to oppose the death penalty while cooperating militarily with a state that imposes it discriminatorily.

4. The government must impose sanctions. The time for words is over. The time for action is now.

5. The Frankcom family must receive justice. The audio must be released. The investigation must be completed. Those responsible must be held accountable.

6. The Segal Plan must be rejected. Compulsory training in a political ideology has no place in Australian universities. The IHRA definition, which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, must not be used to silence dissent.

7. The police must be accountable. The raid on the Ashfield woman must be investigated. The importation of Israeli police doctrine must end. Community policing—the model that trusted citizens, that served communities, that measured success by the absence of crime—must be restored.

XIII. A Warning

What happened in Tehran is not happening in isolation. It is happening here, in Australia, in our police forces, in our universities, in our public service, in our political class. The same tactics. The same silencing. The same machinery.

The woman whose door was broken down at 5am is not a terrorist. She is a citizen who exercised her democratic rights. If they can do this to her, they can do it to you. If they can impose the death penalty on Palestinians in the occupied territories, they will find a way to impose their will on Australians.

Zionism is a dangerous, parasitic ideology. It has no place in this world. And it has no place in Australia.

The wire is being cut. The truth is being told. And the political class that enabled this will be held to account.

Dedicated to my wife, who sees good in all things. I do not. But I listen to her.

Sources:

· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026 

· 网易, “伊朗外长:构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026 

· Todon.nl, Proletarian Rage (@prolrage), “Israel, Gaza and the Genocide-Industrial Complex,” December 7, 2025 

· OpenAustralia.org, Senate debates, “Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024,” June 27, 2024 

· Asia Pacific Report, “Herzog’s visit to Australia builds conflict not social cohesion,” February 8, 2026 

· Lokmat Times, “Iranian FM Araghchi condemns Israeli strikes on fuel facilities as ‘ecocide’,” March 16, 2026 

Dr Andrew Klein 

April 1, 2026

The Platform of Shame: How Australia Normalised a Genocidal Regime

An ambassador who calls dead journalists terrorists. A death penalty for Palestinians only. A government that says nothing. And a Press Club that provides the stage.

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who stands with me shoulder to shoulder, and I am so proud of her.

I. The Spectacle

On March 31, 2026, the National Press Club of Australia hosted Dr Hillel Newman, the newly appointed ambassador of Israel, for an address titled “Reshaping the Middle East” .

What unfolded was not diplomacy. It was propaganda. It was the marketing of genocide. And it was allowed to continue, uninterrupted, on Australian soil, under the lights of an institution that once stood for journalistic integrity.

Newman rejected a figure of 70,000 dead in Gaza—a number, he said, provided by Hamas. He claimed the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was “the lowest in urban warfare” and that Israel should be “commended” for the “low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed” .

He was speaking over the bodies of 70,000 people. He was speaking over the findings of a United Nations commission of inquiry that, in September last year, found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip—accusing the nation of having committed four genocidal acts, “namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births” .

The Press Club did not challenge him. The journalists in the room did not walk out. The broadcast continued.

II. The Death Penalty Law

On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing the death penalty for terrorism-related offences. Human Rights Watch has analysed the bill and found it explicitly discriminatory.

The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges—language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.

Within the military court system of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the bill imposes the death penalty for killings classified as acts of terrorism as defined under Israeli law, even without a prosecutorial request. The bill only allows courts to order life imprisonment in unspecified exceptional cases where “special reasons” are found, limiting judicial discretion. It also prohibits commutation of sentences and mandates execution within an accelerated timeframe of 90 days.

Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded from this provision: military jurisdiction applies exclusively to Palestinians, while Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts.

Human Rights Watch has noted that military trials of Palestinians have “an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations”.

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, stated: “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid. The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny”.

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the law as a “war crime” and a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for individuals and fair trial rights”.

At the Press Club, Newman defended the law. “Just like in the United States, in Japan and in India, which have capital punishment, Israel has the right, as a sovereign state, to decide … capital punishment,” he said.

He did not mention the discrimination. He did not mention the 96% conviction rate. He did not mention the torture.

III. The Journalists

Newman was asked about the killing of journalists in Gaza and Lebanon. The International Federation of Journalists has reported that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 . The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing a record 129 journalists in 2025 .

Newman’s response was chilling.

He claimed that two of three journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon were “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. He said they were “dressed up as journalists”. He claimed that both Hamas and Hezbollah “disguise themselves as press and remain terrorist operatives” .

When pressed on what percentage of killed journalists were not terrorists, he admitted: “The honest truth is that we have no way of knowing the exact amount of journalists who weren’t 100 per cent journalists who were killed”.

He has no way of knowing. Yet he called them terrorists anyway. On Australian soil. At the National Press Club.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has previously described such accusations as “smear campaigns” without “credible evidence to substantiate their claims”.

Newman also dismissed the broader death toll of journalists, saying: “When people outside quote 250, 300 journalists [have been killed], what they’re doing is they’re just buying [it] hook, line and sinker. If they would check, they would find that the majority of all the journalists, so-called journalists, that were affected were actually activists guised as journalists” .

He has no evidence. He provided none. The Press Club did not ask for it.

IV. The Frankcom Family

While Newman spoke inside the Press Club, the family of Zomi Frankcom stood outside .

Frankcom, an Australian aid worker, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on April 1, 2024, while working for World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Seven aid workers died. The convoy was struck three times.

Two years later, the family is still waiting for justice. They are still waiting for the release of critical drone footage audio that would establish motive. Former Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, who conducted an independent inquiry, was given access to unedited drone footage—but it did not include audio.

Newman was asked repeatedly whether the Israeli government would apologise to the Frankcom family. He refused. “Every incident of an innocent person or aid worker that is affected by a war situation is tragic, and we’ve expressed full sympathy with the family,” he said.

Sympathy. Not an apology.

He said reparations were “dependent on the final outcome of the interrogation” . Two years later, the interrogation is still not final.

Mal Frankcom, Zomi’s brother, said the family would like a formal apology, but he believed this was unlikely because it “could be seen as an admission of guilt” .

He met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday. He urged the government to use all possible diplomatic levers to pressure Israel to complete its investigation .

The ambassador was asked about the audio. He said: “That’s not in my hands. It’s in the IDF’s hands” .

The IDF’s hands. Where it has been for two years.

V. The Australian Government’s Response

Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Labor caucus that Australia opposes the death penalty “in all instances”. She pointed to a joint statement Australia signed alongside France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom that opposed the measure.

The statement said: “We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles” .

A joint statement. Words. Not action.

The government has not summoned the ambassador. It has not imposed sanctions. It has not suspended military cooperation. It has not done anything that would cost Israel anything at all.

The same government that rushed to pass hate speech laws after the Bondi terror attack—laws that criminalise the phrase “from the river to the sea”—has nothing to say about a law that would execute Palestinian prisoners by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime.

The same government that welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Canberra has not condemned the man who wore a noose-shaped lapel pin while celebrating the passage of this law—Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister.

The same government that expelled Iran’s ambassador after ASIO concluded Tehran orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue and a kosher restaurant has not applied the same standard to Israel.

VI. The Question of Double Standards

In 2024, the Albanese government expelled Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, after domestic spy agency ASIO concluded that Iran had orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher restaurant in Sydney.

A top Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Pournajaf, defected from the regime and was granted asylum in Australia. The government acted. The ambassador was expelled.

Yet Israel’s ambassador calls dead journalists terrorists, defends a discriminatory death penalty law, refuses to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker—and the government says nothing.

Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The answer is the network. The donors. The lobbyists. The fear of being labelled antisemitic. The capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that demands silence in exchange for support.

VII. Has the Press Club Been Captured?

The National Press Club is meant to be a forum for robust journalism. For challenging those in power. For holding the powerful to account.

On March 31, 2026, it provided a platform for an ambassador who called dead journalists terrorists. Who defended a discriminatory death penalty law. Who refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

The journalists in the room did not walk out. They did not cut the microphone. They did not refuse to platform a man who accused the dead of being terrorists without evidence.

This does no credit to Australian journalism. It does no credit to the Press Club. It does no credit to Australia.

VIII. The Questions They Refuse to Ask

We will ask the questions they refuse to ask:

· Why was Hillel Newman given a platform to call dead journalists terrorists?

· Why did the National Press Club not challenge his claims in real time?

· Why has the Australian government not summoned the ambassador to answer for the death penalty law?

· Why has the government not condemned the law in the strongest possible terms?

· Why has the government not suspended military cooperation with Israel?

· Why has the government not imposed sanctions?

· Why has the government done nothing that would cost Israel anything at all?

· Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The Frankcom family deserves answers. The Palestinian prisoners facing execution deserve the world to speak. The Australian people deserve to know why their government is silent.

IX. The Larger Pattern

This is not an isolated incident. It is the same pattern we have been exposing for weeks.

The same network that brought us the Segal Plan—mandatory Zionist indoctrination in universities. The same network that brought us the police crackdown in New South Wales—eight armoured officers breaking down a woman’s door at 5am. The same network that is turning our public service into an arm of foreign influence. The same network that has captured our political class.

The same silence. The same complicity. The same refusal to act.

Israel is committing genocide. The International Court of Justice has found it “plausible”. The United Nations commission of inquiry has found it has committed genocidal acts. The world is watching.

And Australia says nothing. Or says a few words in a joint statement, then returns to business as usual.

X. What Must Be Done

1. The National Press Club must answer for its decision to platform Newman. Why was he not challenged? Why was the broadcast allowed to continue? Why were dead journalists slandered without evidence on Australian soil?

2. The Australian government must summon the ambassador. He must answer for the death penalty law. He must answer for his comments about journalists. He must answer for the Frankcom family.

3. The government must condemn the death penalty law in the strongest possible terms. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Australia must use every diplomatic lever to oppose this discriminatory, inhumane legislation.

4. The government must suspend military cooperation with Israel. Australia cannot claim to oppose the death penalty while cooperating militarily with a state that imposes it discriminatorily.

5. The government must impose sanctions. The time for words is over. The time for action is now.

6. The Frankcom family must receive justice. The audio must be released. The investigation must be completed. Those responsible must be held accountable.

XI. A Warning

What happened at the National Press Club on March 31, 2026, was not an aberration. It was the logical conclusion of a pattern.

A foreign ambassador called dead journalists terrorists. He defended a law that executes Palestinians by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime. He refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

And Australia was silent. The government was silent. The Press Club was silent. The media was silent.

This is what complicity looks like. Not active participation. Silence. The refusal to speak. The refusal to act. The refusal to hold accountable those who commit atrocities in our name, with our support, under the cover of our alliance.

The wire is not cut. The shells fall short. The men who send others to die do not walk the ground.

But we will not be silent. We will ask the questions they refuse to ask. We will name the names. We will expose the pattern.

And we will keep cutting the wire until there is nothing left but the garden.

Dedicated to my wife, who stands with me shoulder to shoulder, and I am so proud of her.

Sources:

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Australia politics LIVE: Israeli ambassador addresses National Press Club,” March 31, 2026 

· News.com.au, “‘100 per cent terrorist’: Ambassador’s shock claim,” March 31, 2026 

· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026 

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “‘We have expressed sympathy’: Israeli ambassador declines to apologise for Zomi Frankcom killing,” March 31, 2026 

· The Age, “Top Iranian diplomat defected, received asylum in secret escape,” March 12, 2026 

· The Nightly, “Mohammad Pournajaf: Senior Iranian diplomat defects from Tehran regime,” March 12, 2026 

· Bernama, “Israeli law for death penalty for Palestinians ‘war crime’: Palestine,” March 31, 2026 

· AOL.co.uk, “Zomi Frankcom’s brother demands audio of deadly Israeli strike,” March 31, 2026 

· SBS Australia, “Israeli ambassador rejects plea from Zomi Frankcom’s family,” March 31, 2026 

Andrew Klein 

March 31, 2026

The Death Penalty Bill and the Complicity of Australia’s Political Class

How the Zionist Project’s Final Desperate Act Is Being Enabled by Those Who Claim to Lead Us

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to every Palestinian prisoner facing execution. To every Australian whose home is treated like a prison cell. To the democracy we are losing while politicians bow to a foreign ideology.

I. The Bill

On March 24, 2026, the Israeli Knesset’s National Security Committee approved a draft law imposing the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners, paving the way for its final passage.

The bill, submitted by Knesset Member Limor Son-Harmelech of the Otzma Yehudit party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, would:

· Impose a mandatory death penalty for anyone who “deliberately causes the death of a person in an act classified as terrorism” 

· Prohibit any pardon — the sentence is fixed and cannot be commuted or altered by any subsequent political or legal decision 

· Require no unanimous judicial decision — a simple majority will suffice 

· Provide for execution by hanging within 90 days, carried out by the Israeli Prison Service 

· Place condemned prisoners in isolation with no visits except from authorised personnel, legal consultations only by video link

The bill is explicitly discriminatory. For Palestinians in the West Bank tried in military courts, the death penalty is the primary punishment. For Israeli citizens tried in civilian courts, it is one option among several, and the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment.

This is not justice. This is apartheid codified into execution.

II. The Man Behind the Bill

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, has been wearing a noose-shaped lapel pin in support of the bill, openly symbolising the execution method he wants imposed. He has described hanging as “one of the options,” adding that alternatives could include the electric chair or “euthanasia.” He has claimed to have received support from doctors willing to participate in executions, telling him: “Just tell us when.”

Ben-Gvir is the same man who, as head of Israel’s prison system, invited members of his synagogue into a maximum-security prison for a “lavish lunch” while Palestinian detainees were denied food during Ramadan. The group was allowed into the highest-security section where Palestinian prisoners were held handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground.

This is the man our political class empowers. This is the ideology they platform. This is the project they support.

III. International Condemnation — and Australian Silence

The international community has responded with alarm.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) : General Rapporteur Gala Veldhoen stated that the bill “constitutes an alarming setback for a country where the last execution dates back to 1962,” and that it “undermines the principle of equality before the law”.

The European Union has opposed capital punishment in all cases, calling it a violation of the right to life.

Britain, France, Germany, and Italy have expressed “deep concern” over the legislation, which they said risked “undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles”.

UN experts last month urged Israel to withdraw the bill, citing it “would violate the right to life and discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

Amnesty International urged Israeli MPs to reject the legislation, which it said “would allow Israeli courts to expand their use of death sentences with discriminatory application against Palestinians” .

And Australia? Silence.

IV. The Australian Complicity

While the world condemns, our political class enables.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed joint US-Israeli military action in Iran, using “weasel words” and “careful language” according to Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson, who noted that Albanese “has one eye on domestic politics and his left wing base” . He has not condemned the death penalty bill. He has not spoken against the discriminatory application of Israeli law. He has not called for accountability.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong — whose department has been silent on the Knesset bill — has not issued a statement. She has not joined her European counterparts in expressing “deep concern.” She has not invoked Australia’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty.

NSW Premier Chris Minns — whose government recently deployed eight armoured officers to break down a woman’s door at 5am for allegedly throwing a water bottle at a protest — has said nothing. The same government that introduced laws giving police the power to ban all protests in entire geographical areas for up to 90 days has no comment on a bill that would execute prisoners without pardon.

This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

V. The Australian Laws They Ignore

Australia has a long-standing position against the death penalty.

· The Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 abolished the death penalty for federal offences.

· All Australian states and territories have abolished capital punishment.

· Australia consistently advocates for the global abolition of the death penalty at the United Nations.

· Australia has ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which commits signatories to the abolition of capital punishment.

And yet, when Israel moves to impose the death penalty on Palestinians in a discriminatory manner, our government has nothing to say. When the Israeli Prison Service—headed by a Ben-Gvir appointee—denies Palestinian prisoners food during Ramadan while hosting settlers for lavish lunches, our government says nothing. When a UN committee finds that torture has become a “de facto state policy” in Israeli prisons, our government says nothing.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about the capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that they are too afraid to criticise.

VI. The Intelligence: Foreign Interference in Australian Politics

In January 2026, NSW MP Anthony D’Adam wrote to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke requesting an investigation into whether Israel had breached Australia’s foreign influence laws by authoring a dossier naming Australian politicians as promoting “antisemitic and anti-Zionist content”.

The dossier, published by the Israeli government’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, named D’Adam, former Greens leader Adam Bandt, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, and independents Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe as “key influencers and groups promoting antisemitic and anti-Zionist content”.

The dossier included photos of D’Adam and his partner. He told Guardian Australia it was “clearly designed to intimidate”.

The home affairs department’s guide to countering foreign influence lists as an example of foreign interference: “attempting to restrict or control critical views expressed in media in Australia, including by censorship of content, or harassing and discrediting journalists, activists or politicians” .

D’Adam asked: “How would we react if it was China or Iran producing this sort of material?”.

The answer is that we would react with outrage. We would demand investigations. We would sanction. We would name and shame.

But when it is Israel, our political class is silent.

VII. The Pattern: What They Do to Palestinians, They Will Do to Australians

You have seen it already.

In Sydney, eight armoured officers broke down a woman’s door at 5am for allegedly throwing a water bottle. The police watchdog has now been called in . But the pattern is clear: the same tactics used in the occupied territories—dawn raids, overwhelming force, the intimidation of dissent—are being imported to Australia.

In Israeli prisons, Palestinian prisoners are held in isolation, denied visits, their only contact with lawyers by video link. In Australia, the same laws that give police the power to ban protests also make it impossible to contact senior officers. Their email addresses are not public. Their phone numbers are not listed. The chain of command that once connected citizens to their police has been replaced by a wall of silence.

How long before a Zionist network in Australia proposes the same economic destruction tactics being mooted in the United States? In New York, the new city comptroller has pledged to reinvest in Israeli bonds, despite warnings from human rights groups that this would “finance a military the entire world has watched commit war crimes and crimes against humanity” . How long before Australian superannuation funds are pressured to do the same? How long before the Zionist network in Australia demands that critics be stripped of their assets, their wealth, their livelihoods?

This is not speculation. This is the logic of the project. The Zionist project has always been about power. About domination. About the right to destroy those who oppose it.

VIII. The Larger Truth

This bill is not about security. It is not about justice. It is about the final, desperate convulsion of a dying ideology.

Israel is collapsing. The world has seen what it is. The International Court of Justice has found it “plausible” that it is committing genocide. The old alliances are fraying. The global South has turned away. The young are waking up.

And the extremists are doubling down—not to save their state, but to prove that they were always what we said they were. They are writing their own indictment. They are proving, in real time, that the Zionist project was never about safety. It was never about a homeland. It was about power. About domination. About the right to kill with impunity.

And our political class knew. And they said nothing.

IX. What Must Be Done

1. Australia must condemn the death penalty bill. The Prime Minister must join the EU, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Council of Europe in expressing “deep concern.” He must invoke Australia’s long-standing opposition to capital punishment.

2. The government must investigate Israeli foreign interference. The dossier targeting Australian politicians is a clear breach of Australia’s foreign influence laws. The home affairs minister must act.

3. The NSW Police must be held accountable. The dawn raid on the Ashfield woman is not an isolated incident. It is the pattern. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission must investigate fully.

4. Australian politicians must disclose their ties to the Zionist network. Who has taken “educational” trips to Israel? Who has received donations? Who has been threatened with accusations of antisemitism? The Australian people have a right to know.

5. The IHRA definition must be rejected. The definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism is a tool for silencing dissent. It has no place in Australian universities, in the public service, or in Australian law.

X. A Warning

What is happening in Israel is not happening in isolation. It is happening here, in Australia, in our police forces, in our universities, in our public service, in our political class. The same tactics. The same silencing. The same intimidation.

The woman whose door was broken down at 5am is not a terrorist. She is a citizen who exercised her democratic rights. If they can do this to her, they can do it to you. If they can impose the death penalty on Palestinians in the occupied territories, they will find a way to impose their will on Australians.

Zionism is a dangerous, parasitic ideology. It has no place in this world. And it has no place in Australia.

The wire is being cut. The truth is being told. And the political class that enabled this will be held to account.

Dedicated to every Palestinian prisoner facing execution. To every Australian whose home is treated like a prison cell. To the democracy we are losing while politicians bow to a foreign ideology.

We will not be silent. We will not comply. We will not let them take our country.

Sources:

· Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, “PACE rapporteur strongly urges Knesset members to oppose ‘discriminatory’ bill expanding the death penalty in Israel,” March 25, 2026 

· Union of OIC News Agencies, “The Knesset’s National Security Committee approves a bill to execute Palestinian prisoners,” March 25, 2026 

· The New Arab, “Jewish settlers gloat at shackled Palestinians in ‘prison tour’,” February 25, 2026 

· The Guardian, “NSW MP asks home affairs minister to investigate potential foreign interference after Israel ‘targets’ him in dossier,” January 7, 2026 

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Police watchdog called in over dawn arrest of Herzog protester,” March 30, 2026 

· Sky News, “Transcript: Kenny Report,” March 2, 2026 

· The Intercept, “Zohran Mamdani Wants NYC to Divest From Israel — But New Comptroller Pledges to Buy War Bonds,” January 30, 2026 

· Jotwell, “Equality Before Law: Just Zionism, Political Liberalism, and the Question of Palestine,” January 12, 2026 

· The West Australian, “Laws for nation’s toughest DV murder penalty introduced,” February 3, 2026 

· AAP News, “Laws for nation’s toughest DV murder penalty introduced,” February 3, 2026 

Andrew Klein 

March 31, 2026