A later statement by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” Yet, she added: “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Qatar hosts al-Udeid air base, headquarters for US Central Command’s regional operations and host to some 8,000 US troops.

Hamas said six people were killed in the strikes, including Abdullah Abdul Wahid (Abu Khalil), the son of the organization’s acting chief, Khalil al-Hayya. The statement said the top leadership, including the negotiations team, had survived.

The key targets in the operation were named as Khalil al-Hayya; veteran top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who was replaced by Ismail Haniyeh in 2017; and Zaher Jabarin, leader of the Hamas financial bureau. Their fates remain unknown at this time. (JP, ToI, LWJ, BBC News, Al Jazeera, NewsHour)

Was Hamas’ Qatar leadership responible for October 7?
Israel of course portrayed the targeted leaders as responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, as well as the previous day’s deadly militant attack in Jerusalem. However, an Arabic-language account in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, cited by the Jerusalem Post on Jan. 10, 2024, said that only five Hamas leaders made the decision for the Oct. 7 attack—all based in Gaza, and not inlcuding any of those named as targeted in the Qatar raid.

The report, based on Palestinian sources close to the leadership of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, named the decision-makers as Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza (now believed to be dead); Muhammed Deif, leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, Muhammed Sinwar (Yahya’s brother); Rouhi Mushtaha, a figure close to Sinwar; and Ayman Nofal, former head of intelligence for al-Qassam Brigades; assassinated by Israel shortly after the October 2023 attacks. The account portrays the decision to launch the attacks as a coup by Sinwar against the Qatar-exiled leadership.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of the Hamas foreign-relations office in Qatar, said earlier this year that if he knew what the consequences would be from the October 2023 attacks, he would have not have supported them. “If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been Oct. 7,” Marzouk was quoted in the New York Times on Feb. 24, 2025. This statement does imply that he had been aware of the attacks beforehand. Two weeks after the attacks, in a seeming bid for international legitimacy, Marzouk led a Hamas delegation to Moscow, where they met with Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov. (NYT, Oct. 26, 2023)

Drone terror targets flotilla in Tunis?
On the same day as the Qatar strikes, organizers of a flotilla carrying aid for Gaza said their lead ship, the Familia Madeira, was hit by a drone while anchored at the port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. A video that was posted by the Global Sumud Flotilla appears to show a lit projectile falling from the sky onto the vessel before flames erupt on the front deck. The ship sustained some damage to the top deck and a storage area below, according to later footage posted on social media.

“The boat is sailing under the Portuguese flag and all six passengers and crew are safe,” the group said in a statement. “Fire damage was caused to the main deck and below deck storage. Acts of aggression aimed at intimidating and derailing our mission will not deter us. Our peaceful mission to break the siege on Gaza and stand in solidarity with its people continues with determination and resolve.”

The statement said the vessel “was struck by a drone.” Tunisia’s Interior Ministry said reports of a drone strike “have no basis in truth,” Reuters reported.

Yet just hours later, on the morning of Sept. 10, the Flotilla reported that a second vessel was struck by a drone. The group said the British-flagged Alma sustained fire damage to its top deck

United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who lives in Tunisia, (and is now facing US sanctions), said in a video after the first apparent strike: “If it’s confirmed that this is a drone attack, it will be an assault, an aggression against Tunisia and against Tunisian sovereignty. Again, we cannot keep on tolerating this and normalizing the illegal.”

The Global Sumud Flotilla’s most prominent member is Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, internationally known for her climate advocacy and now a leading figure in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. (The Hill, Politico, The Independent, The Guardian)

Two days before the apparent strike, more than 1,000 people gathered at the Sidi Bou Said harbor to welcome the flotilla, which had just arrived from Barcelona. “We all know why we’re are here,” Thunberg told the crowd. “Just across the water there’s a genocide going on, a mass starvation by Israel’s murder machine.” (ToI)

The dramatic developments of Sept. 9 came hours after Israel’s military warned all of Gaza City’s residents to evacuate before a planned offensive to take full control of the city, where hundreds of thousands of people are living under famine conditions. (The Guardian)

Photo: FreeGaza via Wikimedia Commons

But the conference, hosted by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs & Combating Antisemitism, revealed a systemic alliance between Netanyahu’s Revisionist Zionism and the neo-fascist right. Even Anti-Defamation League leader Jonathan Greenblatt (whose organization faced criticism over its exoneration of Elon Musk’s Inauguration Day Nazi salute as an “awkward” gesture) and the increasingly Islamophobic French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy boycotted the event in protest of the prominent place given to far-right figures. To his credit, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis also cancelled.

Jordan Bardella, president of the French National Rally party, gave a keynote address at the confab, in which he blamed rising anti-Semitism in Europe on migration, and more specifically Muslim migration, saying: “Islamism is the totalitarianism of the 21st century.” This formulation (and especially use of the article “the”), of course, seeks to dismiss the threat still posed by the totalitarianism of the 20th century—fascism.

Panels had predictable names like “How Progressivism Fell Captive to Antisemitism” and “How Radical Islam Fuels Antisemitism in the West.”

Also on hand was Marion Maréchal, grand-daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Rally’s predecessor party the National Front—and a notorious Holocaust revisionist. This of course comes as Marine Le Pen, the old man’s daughter and (alarmingly) frontrunner in the 2027 French presidential race, has been barred from running upon her conviction on charges of embezzling EU funds for her campaign. (Yet another case of a European country taking pre-emptive legal action to prevent a far-right authoritarian from coming to power, which the United States so dramatically failed to do last year.) Unless she prevails on appeal, Bardella is likely to take her place as the National Rally candidate.

Also prominently featured was David Friedman, US ambassador to Israel during Trump’s first term. Asked by the moderator about Trump’s plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza, Friedman said: “I love it! I love it. And I think it’s doable.”

Other figures from the European far right attended from the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Hungary. Most telling was the appearance by Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian Serb Republic—just after a Bosnian court requested an international arrest warrant for him over his separatist policies and defying orders of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia’s central government.

During the conference, Dodik spoke out defiantly against the warrant, telling reporters: “The Muslims from Sarajevo, they want to punish me because I came here to Israel, supporting Israel. They are misusing the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office…”

True to fascistic form, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli demonized internal dissent to the conference, calling Israel’s center-left Haaretz newspaper a “beacon of lies and anti-Zionist propaganda,” adding that “Haaretz and others like them do not represent the Jewish people.”

Even former ADL head Abe Foxman, for whom criticism of Israel has been heretofore virtually verboten, said: “I don’t think it is appropriate to have representatives of far-right parties in Europe coming to Jerusalem to meet with the Jewish community and together develop a strategy to fight anti-Semitism when they are part and parcel of the problem of anti-Semitism.” (Reuters, NBC, The Media Line, ToI)

In an attempt to appease criticism of the conference, President Isaac Herzog offered a compromise—a private meeting with world Jewish leaders at his home the night before the main event, without the far-right figures. Fortunately, this failed to mollify the boycotters. (ToI)

Is it necessary to point out the multiple converging ironies here? The Islamophobic anti-immigrant invective spewed forth by Bardella perfectly mirrors that employed against Jews in Western Europe and the US yestercentury. Friedman’s enthusiasm for forced relocation of the Palestinians has obvious echoes in what was inflicted on the European Jews in World War II and its prelude. And have we really already forgotten how Serb “ethnic cleansing,” forced internment and massacre of the Bosnian Muslims in the war of the 1990s was at the time assailed as redolent of the Holocaust?

Dodik presumably didn’t even return to Bosnia from Israel before arriving in Moscow to seek Putin’s shelter from the arrest warrant against him in his own country. (This was reported by Radio Free Europe, which the Trump regime is now conveniently seeking to shut down.)

And Netanyahu himself immediately after the conference flew to Budapest to meet with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, darling of Putin, Trump and the re-emergent forces of international fascism (yes). Orban hosted Bibi over the protests of both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which urged that the Hungarian leader have his guest arrested, in compliance with the warrant against him issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza. (DW)

Image via frgdr Blog. Hebrew lettering in background spells names of places in Europe where Jews were exterminated.

Just days before the new incident, Sweden and other NATO allies were conducting naval exercises in the area as part of the annual Baltic Operations drill (BALTOPS). This was the first time Sweden had taken part in the exercises. Sweden became NATO’s newest member in March of this year, the 32nd country to join the alliance. It initially applied for membership along with Finland in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, ending over two centuries of military non-alignment and neutrality. (Jurist)

Photo: NATO

The protest, organized by Extinction Rebellion, was part of an international campaign against fossil fuel subsidies in Europe. The “United for Climate Justice” campaign brings together 30 organizations from 15 countries. Simultaneous demonstrations also took place as part of the campaign in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the UK.

From Jurist, Apri 6. Used with permission.

See our last reports on Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the European climate protests.

Photo: Extinction Rebellion

Advocacy group Trial International initially filed a complaint against al-Assad in Switzerland in 2013, and the OAG initiated criminal proceedings soon after. Al-Assad, who was residing in France, refused to testify before authorities in Switzerland, and fled to Syria in October 2021 after receiving a four-year prison sentence by French courts for embezzlement. The OAG issued an international arrest warrant for him in November 2021.

Rifaat al-Assad, who is the uncle of current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has been called the “Butcher of Hama” for his involvement in the 1982 massacre.

Survivors of the Hama massacre have hailed the indictment as progress amid their long wait for justice. One of the three plaintiffs in the case said:

At the beginning, I could not even dream about…Rifaat al-Assad being brought to trial. The indictment shows that such powerful persons can be brought to justice and I want everyone to know what the al-Assad regime did to the Syrian people. My fight is for all the Syrians.

While the acts in question took place over 40 years ago, there is no statute of limitations for war crimes. The case was brought under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of serious offenses against international law, even when those crimes were committed in another country. Al-Assad’s lawyers stated in response to the indictment that al-Assad “has always denied any involvement in the acts of which he is accused in these proceedings.”

From Jurist, March 13. Used with permission.

See our last reports on Rifaat al-Assad, the Hama Massacre, and efforts to bring war crimes charges against Bashar Assad.

Photo of Hama via TRIAL International

In blocking Sweden’s NATO membership bid, Turkey had accused Stockholm of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”—meaning prominent supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara officially labels a “terrorist” group. Last November, Sweden amended its constitution to strengthen its “anti-terrorism” laws—clearly in deference to Turkey. The amendment, which passed with 278 votes in Sweden’s 349-seat parliament, makes it possible to introduce new laws to “limit freedom of association when it comes to associations that engage in or support terrorism.”

The Swedish Supreme Court in June also ruled to allow extradition of the accused PKK figures to Turkey. And the rallies held in Stockholm against the extraditions by Kurdish immigrants and exiles may now be criminalized. (EKurd Daily, EKurd Daily, Rudaw, EuroNews, DW)

The US and EU both also designate the PKK a “terrorist organization,” despite growing legal challenges to this in Europe.

Photo of F-16: USAF via Wikimedia Commons

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Photo of Finnish defensive line in Winter War via Wikipedia

A roundtable on the revelations on France24 reveals how the lines are predictably drawn. A panel of mainstream journalists and wonks are all fairly noncommittal on the thesis of a Ukrainian hand in the attack, while also raising the alternative theory of a Russian covert operation against their own pipeline as a provocation. The panel’s one dissident is Georges Kuzmanovic of the Sovereign Republic party, a new populist formation in France, whose page on Conspiracy Watch makes clear his pro-Russian proclivities. Kuzmanovic harps on a third thesis: that the attack was a covert operation by the United States. In defense of this accusation, he cites a recent piece by the increasingly questionable Seymour Hersh, with the slightly dishonest title “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”

We say “dishonest” because the headline strongly implies concrete evidence—but there is none, only (exactly as with the NY Times piece) anonymous and therefore uverifiable sources. The piece is nonetheless getting much wide-eyed circulation from online partisans of both the left and right. While Kuzmanovic and his Sovereign Republic appear to be a vague left-right amalgam, the Hersh piece is also credulously plugged in a Feb. 16 editorial in The Nation magazine (supposedly America’s foremost “progressive” voice), which we had to call out on the CounterVortex podcast for its cynical pro-Russian slant.

Hersh’s distortions are deftly exposed by the British blog Bartholomew’s Notes, which keeps a very sharp eye on conspiracy theory and the culture wars. We take the liberty of quoting blogger Richard Bartholomew at length:

Several months on, the suggestion that the pipelines were bombed by the US rather than Russia has now received a boost from Seymour Hersh, who has made his case in a much-discussed 5000-word Substack post. Hersh’s account relies on “a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning”; as added context, he dredges up American controversies from the 1970s (the period appears to be his interpretative filter half a century later), and he includes public quotes from Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland as supposed gotchas. The story has been taken at face value by many, with coverage from [Tucker] Carlson, and pro-Russian Irish MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly raising the matter in the European Parliament. Donald Trump Jr suggests that recent the train derailment in Ohio may be Russian retaliation for the bombing.

The UK’s Daily Mail has also gone all-in, with an article headlined “Did Biden give the order to destroy Putin’s Nord Stream pipeline after Ukraine invasion? Bombshell report claims Navy divers carried out mission to kill Russia’s gas stranglehold on Europe in audacious mission overseen by president”, complete with graphics and maps. One wonders why the word “report” was chosen over “article” – “report” has connotations of formal findings at the end of an investigative process. The Mail‘s hack, one Lewis Pennock, describes Hersh’s essay as “compelling”, and only near the end does he mention that Hersh’s “reporting has previously been criticized for its heavy reliance on unnamed and anonymous sources”.

However, Hersh’s article does not fare well under scrutiny. An OSINT [Open Source Intelligence] analysis of specific details of the supposed “operation” has been published by Oliver Alexander, while Hersh’s underlying assumptions and narrative framing have been picked apart by the historian and energy researcher Simon Pirani. One small detail spotted by the military affairs reporter Wesley Morgan is that Hersh’s source describes the attack planning as a “goat fuck” – an unusual expression that just happens to have appeared previously in Hersh’s reporting. Norway is supposed to have been part of the US conspiracy, and Harald S. Klungtveit, an editor at Filter Nyheter, has further criticisms.

As regards the two “gotcha” quotes, Pirani deals with one:

Hersh refers to a press conference by US president Joe Biden and German chancellor Olaf Scholz on 7 February 2022, where Biden said: “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to it.”

…Biden was answering the question, “did you receive assurances from chancellor Scholz that Germany will pull the plug on this project if Russia invades Ukraine?” Everyone in the room understood, and anyone who views the clip will see, that this is a conversation about whether the United States could convince Germany to nix the project.

And on 22 February, that’s what happened. The Kremlin formally recognised the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk – the clearest signal yet that it intended to invade Ukraine – and Scholz announced that German approval for Nord Stream was withdrawn. That meant the pipeline could not be used for the foreseeable future.

Any serious account of what led up to the explosions would have to explain this vital reversal of German policy. Hersh does not mention it.

Hersh similarly misleads on Nuland:

More recently, Victoria Nuland expressed satisfaction at the demise of the newest of the pipelines. Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January she told Senator Ted Cruz, “Like you, I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

This echoes Sergei Lavrov’s interpretation of her comment, which had already been addressed by Newsweek:

Her comment clearly meant that the Biden administration was pleased that the $11 billion Russian-owned pipeline—which the U.S. had opposed for years on the grounds that it increased European reliance on Russian energy—is not being used. Germany halted the recently finished project just before the invasion last February after Russia formally recognized two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

The magazine also notes that she previously used the phrase in January 2022, and there’s also an example from March 2022 – in other words, the US administration already regarded Nord Stream as useless and defunct months before the bombings. If something that basic falls apart after a moment’s investigation, why should we believe anything else in Hersh’s piece? And why didn’t the Daily Mail spot this?

It’s doubtful that criticisms or calls for caution will have any effect – one of the best ways to con someone is to flatter them into thinking that they’ve seen through a con, and American denials will feed into this tendency. This may apply to Hersh himself – has he simply made up his source, or is he being manipulated by someone who has come to him with a tall tale that he was predisposed to accept?

The willingness to believe anonymous, unverifiable sources by boosters of ether Hersh or the New York Times indicates that propaganda partisans are deciding what to believe on the basis of political convenience. And while a US, Ukrainian or even Norwegian motive in the sabotage may seem obvious, there are plausible Russian motives too. As Barthomew notes:

In fact, there are several reasons why Russia might have done it, and an analyst named Emma Ashford came up with several suggestions: (1) Putin signaling that he can damage European energy infrastructure at will; (2) Putin “was tying his own hands and that of any future Russian leader by making it harder to back down from the war in Ukraine”; and (3) a “force majeure” basis to counter lawsuits against Gazprom for failure to supply. A further possibility was (4) Russian hawks acting independently of Putin, although Ashford regarded this as “improbable”.

No matter whose “side” you are on here, we counsel: cool your jets and don’t believe the hype.

Map: Wikipedia

Three days after the Istanbul attack, Sweden acceded to Turkish demands that it stiffen “anti-terrorist” measures as a precondition for joining NATO. The Swedish Riksdag adopted a constitutional amendment facilitating passage of laws to limit the freedom of association for those who engage in or support “terrorism.” Turkey has long accused Sweden of giving harbor to exiled PKK sympathizers. (Jurist, Daily Sabah, AP)

Photo via ANF

Last November, Schneiter and Lundin’s board chairman Ian Lundin were formally charged with aiding and abetting war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003. The Swedish investigation began after a 2010 report by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan. The report alleged that the operations of Lundin Oil sparked a local civil war that led to the deaths of thousands of people, the forced displacement of almost 200,000, and numerous cases of rape, torture and abduction. Lundin Oil vehemently rejects any grounds for allegations of wrongdoing.

From Jurist, Nov. 11. Used with permission.

Note: The case concerns an area called Block 5A in what was then southern Sudan, at that time wracked by a pro-independence insurgency. Lundin requested in 1999 that government forces and allied militias provide for the company’s security in the area, knowing that this would entail deadly force and enflame the conflict, according to the indictment. Since the country split in 2011, the area has been in South Sudan. (OCCRP) Lundin, currently in the process of reorganizing as Orrön Energy, maintains a website asserting its innocence in the case.

The oil blocs in the area are still under production, but the pipeline that brings the oil to market now passes across the border between South Sudan and Sudan, which has been a point of contention between the two countries.

Map via Rixstep