There Is No Pride in Genocide: Rome Pride Rejects Pinkwashing as Israel’s Slaughter Continues

Michael Leonardi

June 12, 2026

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Photograph by Matteo Nardone

In late May 2026, Rome Pride organizers delivered a clear and courageous message: there will be no platform for complicity with genocide. Italy’s only Jewish LGBTQ+ organization, Keshet Italia, was barred from marching with its own float in the upcoming June 20 parade. The reason was straightforward and principled—Keshet refused to endorse Rome Pride’s political manifesto, which explicitly condemns Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and demands a clear break from the Zionist state’s policies of occupation, apartheid, and extermination.

This decision has triggered predictable outrage from Zionist quarters, who immediately cried antisemitism. But the real issue here is not prejudice—it is accountability. Pride was born as a radical act of resistance against oppression, not as a rainbow-washed corporate parade where war criminals get to fly rainbow flags while bombing children.

The Abomination of Pinkwashing

Israel has spent decades perfecting the art of pinkwashing—cynically parading Tel Aviv’s vibrant (and heavily subsidized) Pride scene as proof of its “liberal democracy” while maintaining the most brutal settler-colonial regime on earth. Queer Israelis may serve openly in the occupation forces, but Palestinian queers live under a double nightmare: the daily violence of military occupation and the conservative social pressures exacerbated by decades of dispossession and siege.

In Gaza and the West Bank, survival itself is precarious. Israeli authorities have a documented history of blackmailing vulnerable queer Palestinians into collaboration, using their sexuality as a weapon of control and betrayal. The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, the deliberate targeting of civilians, and the starvation campaign have made any semblance of safe queer existence impossible. Families are wiped out in entire neighborhoods, hospitals reduced to rubble, and children maimed or orphaned with no access to basic care.

Over 70,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered since October 2023, with thousands more maimed, orphaned, and starved. Israel’s genocidal campaign is now spreading into Lebanon, with relentless bombing campaigns and ground incursions driving up the death toll and pushing the region toward a wider, catastrophic war. When entire families are erased and entire communities are shattered, waving a rainbow flag over the carnage is not progress—it is moral obscenity.

A Necessary Stand

Rome Pride’s organizers understood this reality. They made participation conditional on alignment with opposition to the “ongoing genocide in Gaza by the State of Israel.” This is not discrimination against Jews—it is a rejection of any normalization of Israeli state crimes. Jewish individuals remain welcome to march as part of the broader community, but not as representatives of a regime carrying out live-streamed mass murder while claiming moral superiority through selective LGBT visibility.

The exclusion of Keshet Italia exposes the fault line running through global queer movements: Will solidarity be consistent and principled, or will it bend to the pressures of Zionist lobbying and pinkwashing propaganda? True liberation politics cannot selectively ignore the oppression of Palestinians—queer or otherwise—while celebrating rainbow imagery in Tel Aviv. This decision forces a long-overdue reckoning with the limits of identity politics detached from anti-imperialist struggle.

The human cost makes the hypocrisy unbearable. Pinkwashing does not save lives; it launders blood and distracts from the systematic violence that makes daily life a hell for Palestinians under occupation.

Photograph by Matteo Nardone

The Roots of Pride and the Test of Our Time

Pride emerged from the Stonewall riots and decades of militant struggle against police violence, societal exclusion, and state repression. It was never meant to be neutered into feel-good consumerism or geopolitical branding that serves powerful interests. Today’s test is whether the movement will stand against the greatest moral atrocity of our generation or allow itself to be co-opted by those who profit from endless war and ethnic cleansing.

The Rome decision, however controversial, reaffirms that genuine Pride must be anti-imperialist and anti-colonial at its core. It cannot make peace with a settler state that practices apartheid and genocide. As the Gaza Generation continues to mobilize across Italy and beyond—pressuring governments, blockading ports, disrupting arms shipments, and building real solidarity from below—this stand in Rome sends a powerful signal that the days of unchallenged pinkwashing are coming to an end.

There can be no pride without justice. No rainbow flags over mass graves. No celebration of “LGBTQ rights” while Palestinian children are bombed and starved—and while Israeli aggression expands into Lebanon with utter impunity.

From the river to the sea, liberation must be for all—or it is for none. Rome Pride has drawn a necessary line in the sand. The rest of the global queer movement should take note and follow suit.

There Is No Pride in Genocide.

This article was inspired by the suggestion and interest of my LBGTQ+ offspring Val(Gaia) Leonardi who thought a more profound look at Pride and the pinkwashing of genocide was necessary after the controversy and zionist uproar surrounding Roma Pride and their principled positition.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com

Legal Profession Revolt Against the UK Judge Whose Job is to Protect Israel’s Genocide

Judge Johnson so rigged the trial of anti-genocide activists that 1000s of legal professionals have urged him to step down from the sentencing hearing. But Johnson's dirty work is not yet complete

By Jonathan Cook

June 12, 2026

Source: jonathancook.substack.com

The trial of the Filton Four reaches its climax on Friday. Judge Jeremy Johnson will decide the sentences of four Palestine Action activists found guilty of criminal damage – after two juries refused to convict them of far more serious charges brought by the British government, via the Crown Prosecution Service.

Keir Starmer’s government failed to secure the convictions for aggravated burglary and violent disorder it so desperately needed. They would have helped retroactively justify its decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation – the first time in British history that a direct action group, which targets property, has been proscribed.

Starmer’s hostility towards Palestine Action is personal. It has been a massive thorn in his side during Israel’s near three-year genocide in Gaza.

From the outset, Starmer suggested that Israel had the “right” to withhold food, water and power from the 2 million Palestinian residents of Gaza – a crime against humanity for which the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Starmer’s complicity in the genocide has only been underscored by Palestine Action, which has targeted Israeli factories operating in the UK run by Elbit Systems that supply Israel’s genocidal army with killer drones for use in Gaza.

The so-called Filton trial derives its name from an Elbit factory in the Filton neighbourhood of Bristol that Palestine Action targeted in August 2024. Efforts to destroy these Israeli drones came at a time when Starmer was under enormous popular – if little political – pressure to end British arms sales to Israel.

Proscription, however, has not worked out well for Starmer. It has entangled him in a self-inflicted public relations crisis of almighty proportions.

Palestine Action activists have been held in remand without trial for an unprecedented period of time, far in excess of the normal maximums, and in especially harsh conditions that have treated them as if they were terrorism suspects, even though their arrests long precede the group’s proscription last year.

These sustained abuses led to a prolonged hunger strike, and a desperate government and media campaign to justify their mistreatment.

Proscription has led to thousands of people, most of them elderly and including upstanding members of British society – from magistrates and doctors to army veterans – facing convictions for “supporting terrorism” for holding up placards stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

This popular backlash cornered the High Court into declaring the proscription unlawful – a decision the government is appealing. That has led to another unprecedented situation: police are still arresting people for holding the placards, despite the courts ruling that the basis for such arrests is unlawful.

The law has never looked more of an ass.

Which is why the government is pinning its hopes on Judge Johnson riding to the rescue on Friday.

Judge Johnson has not been shy about showing where his loyalties lie. Not to the law, but to the British security state.

Which should hardly come as a surprise, given his background.

Judge Johnson made it to the bench after years serving as the most favoured barrister of the “secret state”, representing the intelligence services, the ministry of defence and the police. His working environment of choice as a lawyer was behind-closed-doors prosecutions held out of view of the public or proper legal scrutiny.

Judge Johnson has done precisely nothing to counter the overwhelming impression that the Filton activists’ prosecutions were entirely political. He quite openly rigged both trials in manifold ways, as former British ambassador Craig Murray has set out.

Let me quote from him at length the ways Judge Johnson flagrantly skewed the hearings to the detriment of the activists and justice:

Judge Johnson ruled that the defendants were not permitted to refer to their motives.

He ruled that the jury may not be informed of their absolute right to acquit.

He attempted to have the leading defence barrister, Rajiv Menon KC, prosecuted for contempt of court for informing the jury of their rights.

He ruled that terms including ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ may not be used in court.

He ordered that the notebooks and other writings of the accused be redacted to withhold from the jury any information related to Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel.

He enforced the concealment from the jury of the nature of the weapons and equipment that had been damaged.

He granted anonymity to senior Elbit staff and admitted their evidence without the defence being able to cross-examine.

He ruled that the trial had *not* been prejudiced by the Secretary of State [Yvette Cooper] and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police [Sir Mark Rowley] stating the offences as fact throughout national media.

He allowed the release to the media of highly edited and selective prosecution video footage during the trial which gave a false impression of events.

He permitted the admission of Metropolitan Police video evidence which they had given over to Elbit’s sole custody for an entire year.

In a trial with so many extraordinary anomalous moments, perhaps the most glaring was Judge Johnson’s efforts to get the main defence barrister in the first trial, Rajiv Menon KC, jailed for contempt of court simply for noting to the jury in his summing up speech that they had a hundreds-of-years-old right in law to acquit.

Judge Johnson’s behaviour was so unprecedented and certain to have a chilling effect on the ability of defence barristers to represent their clients – the Filton defendants decided to dismiss their barristers from summing up in their second trial to avoid their lawyers facing prison for doing their job and defending them – that the Court of Appeal had no choice but to overrule Judge Johnson’s contempt proceedings against Menon.

Murray rightly concludes: “That is an astonishing list of nefarious actions by Judge Johnson. Read it again. Many people will surely conclude, it is Judge Johnson who should be in jail.”

But even with the convictions for criminal damage secured under these rigged conditions, Judge Johnson is still in a position to cause more harm to the rule of law. He is due to sentence the Filton Four on Friday.

Judge Johnson has reserved to himself the right to sentence the four anti-genocide activists not just for the relatively minor criminal damage charge they were convicted of after his rigged trial, but – once again in an unprecedented move – treat those criminal convictions as if they were for terrorism offences.

That means he can impose a longer sentence, more draconian prison conditions and more onerous, life-long conditions after their release.

The jury knew none of this when they were considering whether to convict. Judge Johnson placed a gagging order on his decision during the trial which meant the information was withheld from the jury and could not be reported until after the verdict. The gag was broken only by foreign media and Zarah Sultana, who used her parliamentary privilege to reveal Judge Johnson’s government-friendly, anti-justice machinations.

In yet another unprecedented feature to the trial, this will be the first time in British history that someone accused of criminal damage is sentenced as a terrorist. Judges were only given these extraordinary powers in a highly controversial amendment in 2021 to counter-terrorism legislation.

Judge Johnson’s logic for taking advantage of his extra powers in this case is quite extraordinary too. He argues that, in destroying Elbit’s killer drones, the activists were seeking to “influence” the Israeli government to change its policy in Gaza – that is, to stop committing a genocide.

Putting pressure on governments is what terrorists try to do, he argues, so this must mean the anti-genocide activists are terrorists.

Opposition to the genocide, in Judge Johnson’s view, has to be treated as an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one.

It is all the more astounding that Judge Johnson is using this argument when he refused to allow the jury to hear any evidence of the activists’ larger political motivations: that they wanted to stop British complicity in Israel’s genocide by targeting a factory that made the drones for use in that genocide.

Remember, all this is happening as Starmer’s government makes unprecedented moves to end many jury trials in Britain, leaving us to the mercy of judges like Jeremy Johnson.

As Defend Our Juries notes, the government is looking to create “an extraordinary and deeply authoritarian precedent, allowing countless more protesters to be tried for an ordinary offence, but secretly sentenced as terrorists, without juries knowing this when they convict”.

Judge Johnson’s rogue manoeuvrings have so incensed the legal profession that thousands signed a petition demanding that he take the chance last Monday to recuse himself from the sentencing hearing. He, of course, refused to do so.

They call his behaviour during the trial “biased” and “discriminatory conduct” and have referred him to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

Here is David Whyte, professor of law at Queen Mary’s University of London, who handed the petition to the JCIO explaining another reason why so many legal professionals are outraged by Judge Johnson’s actions: he has shown exceptional “cruelty and vindictiveness” in holding the activists in remand for more than three times the normal maximums, even when the prosecution was not asking for them to be remanded, and for refusing them bail between their convictions and sentencing.

The Court of Appeal is due to issue its ruling on the government’s appeal against the earlier High Court decision declaring Palestine Action’s proscription unlawful this coming Monday, days after Judge Johnson’s sentencing of the Filton activists.

If this is all starting to look like theatre, that is because it is. In dictatorships, these are called show trials. Everyone understands that the outcome is predetermined. Everyone understands that justice is non-existent. The verdict is entirely political. It is a faux-legal rationalisation of what the security state wants.

Judge Johnson is the perfect judge to play that part.

The courts will do exactly what is expected of them unless they are worried that public revulsion will discredit their decision. Now is the time to raise our voices.

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This article was originally published by jonathancook.substack.com; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is a British independent journalist, who has covered issues of Palestine and Israel for much of his over 20-year career. He formerly wrote for the Guardian and Observer newspapers and is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

Needham, Adelson Family Foundation-Trump Connection Revisited

By Bob Feldman

June 10, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by The White House, public domain

Most antiwar voters in Massachusetts don’t believe that the GOP’s Trump administration should be using the U.S. power elite’s permanent war machine to continue a U.S.-Israeli war of aggression against people in Iran in 2026. And most antiwar voters in Massachusetts don’t believe that the GOP’s Trump administration should continue to authorize U.S. munitions shipments to an Israeli government that continues to wage genocidal war against people in Gaza and Lebanon in 2026.

Yet one of the trustees of the Needham, Massachusetts-based and registered Adelson Family Foundation–an Israeli-born multibillionaire named Miriam Farbstein Adelson–donated $106 million in 2024 in support of the GOP’s campaign to provide  Donald Trump with the dictatorial presidential power he needed to use the U.S. power elite’s permanent war machine to join a U.S.-Israeli war of aggression against people in Iran in 2026 and to continue to authorize U.S. munitions shipments to an Israeli government that continues to wage genocidal war against people in Gaza and Lebanon in 2026?

Trump campaign financial backer Miriam Adelson, the daughter of a Zionist movement settler-colonialist who, during the 20th-century, owned a chain of movie theaters, historically, in Palestine, was born in 1945, graduated from the now-Columbia University-affiliated Tel Aviv University, served in the Israeli Army, and–after being given a fellowship by Rockefeller University and hired by Rockefeller University to do research on “drug addiction”–eventually migrated to New York City in 1989, when she was 44 years-old. And, by marrying the then-58 year-old Sheldon Adelson two years later in 1991, when she was 46 years-old, Miriam Adelson was able to eventually become the  53rd-richest individual in the USA in 2021, following Multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson’s death, at the age of nearly 88 years old, in January 2021.

According to David Clay’s 2017-published book, titled “Gangsters to Governor: The New Bosses of Gambling in America”, Miriam Adelson’s now-deceased husband was born in 1933 to a “mother who ran a knitting shop;” and he grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

During the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, according to Jeff Burbank’s 2000-published book, “License to Steal: Nevada’s Gaming Control System in the Megaresort Age”, Sheldon Adelson “studied corporate finance and real estate at City College of New York,” was “a court stenographer for the U.S. Army” and made his first million dollars by “charging small companies a finders fee to help them go public and sell stock.”

Then, during the Vietnam War Era of the 1960s, according to the same book, Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson’s now-deceased husband apparently became a “venture capitalist in Boston, eventually buying up 75 companies”; and by the late 1960s, Sheldon Adelson also “owned a condominium building.”

Yet, according to the “License to Steal” book, by 1969  Sheldon “Adelson and the other partners” of his venture capitalist firm “were in trouble” because they had used value of their” by 1969 now less valuable partnership “shares as security for bank loans.”

But, according to the same 2000-published book, “it was at this point that” a former owner of Boston,, Massachusetts’s pre-1980s gay bars named Henry “Vara entered the picture and loaned” Sheldon Adelson’s then-business partner, Irwin Chafete “about $10,000 [equal to around $82,000 in 2026 U.S. dollars] without interest or notes.” In the early 1970s, according to the “License to Steal” book:

‘

“Vara owned a pair of gay bars in the Bay Village area of Boston. The businesses were then the largest gay-oriented bars in the city.”

After the formerly low-income Bay Village neighborhood became gentrified, Vara apparently gave up his ownership of his two Bay Village gay bars in Boston, but “later bought gay bars in other cities, including Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale, Florida,” according to the same book.

Following the financial rescue of his venture capitalist firm in 1971 by the former Boston, Massachusetts gay bars owner’s no-interest loan,” Miriam Adelson’s now-deceased husband’s firm purchased a majority interest in a publishing company in the early 1970s, produced a high-tech industry trade show in Dallas in 1973 and sold its share of the publishing firm in 1975.

But around 1975, Sheldon Adelson’s real estate license was apparently suspended for 6 months by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s state government. In addition, during the 1960s and 1970s the name of Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson’s later husband was “attached to about 100 civil suits” and “many of the lawsuits came from companies or people to whom Adelson owed money, including bills for utility and gas station charges, hospital service, private prep school tuition, American express charges, and service at a restaurant,” according to Jeff Burbank’s “License to Steal: Nevada’s Gaming Control System in Megaresort Age” book.

Yet “with money raised from the sale of his condominium building,”  former longtime Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Sheldon Adelson was still able to legally set up a then- Needham, Massachusetts-based company called Interface Group Inc.. in the 1970s, which became a lucrative cash cow for the  now-deceased, later husband of Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson, in 1979; when it began producing the annual Computer Dealer Expo, known as COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, according to the same book.

As the “License to Steal” book recalled, historically, in 2000:

“By 1984, Interface was producing some 40 trade shows…COMDEX soon became the largest trade show in Las Vegas…Adelson’s company saw its net income reach…$250 million [equal to over $700 million in 2026 U.S. dollars] [in 1988]. Interface also put on COMDEX shows in Chicago, Atlanta and Anaheim and in Europe and Japan…Adelson, assessed only 15 cents per square foot by the Las Vegas Convention Center for exhibit space, charged his show customers as much as $50 per square foot for the same space.

“Interface guaranteed itself a…cash flow by requiring COMDEX exhibitors to sign contracts for exhibit space and then pay up front for it a year in advance of the show.”

And when the by-then 65-year-old husband of Miriam Adelson sold off Interface’s COMDEX shows and other exhibition business entities to a Japanese techie capitalist software industry investment company called Softbank for $860 million [equal to over $1.8 billion in 2026 U.S. dollars] in 1995, his personal wealth continued to increase dramatically; during a decade when the Democratic Clinton administration’s policy of continuing to economically sanction Iraq led to the doubling of the death rate for Iraqi children under five in southern and Central Iraq, according to an August 1999 UNICEF report.

By 1988, Sheldon Adelson’s Interface Group Inc. had also now owned the convention-meetings firm in Las Vegas, two travel and tour companies and an airline; and Adelson had decided he wanted his Interface firm to start making more money directly from Las Vegas’s gaming industry by buying the Sands Hotel in that city to use as its tour and travel companies’ customers’ destination.

So Sheldon Adelson then hired a former Nevada governor named Robert List to represent him before the Gaming Commission of Nevada as an attorney, when Miriam Adelson’s later husband applied for the license he needed to buy and operate the Sands Hotel.

But despite then winning the Nevada Gaming Commission’s approval for his Interface firm to spend $128 million in 1989 to purchase the Sands Hotel and establish a Nevada-based Las Vegas Sands Inc. corporate entity 58.8 percent owned by Sheldon Adelson, that would now own and operate the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, between 1989 and 1996 Adelson’s Sands Hotel lost money for 5 straight years.

So in 1996, Adelson imploded his Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and in 1997 obtained over $520 million [equal to over $1 billion in 2026 U.S. dollars] from two Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, to construct the Venetian Casino Resort on the Las Vegas lander where his Sands Hotel had previously been.

But the largest source of the personal wealth that  Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson and her now-deceased husband accumulated and then used to promote support for the Zionist movement’s Israeli government war machine and the presidential office-seeking and political dictatorial aspirations of GOP President Donald Trump in the 21st-century was derived, not from the Adelson family’s business operations in Las Vegas, but, ironically, from Sheldon Adelson’s business operations within territory controlled by the government of China. As David Clay’s 2017-published book, “Gangsters to Governor: The New Bosses of Gambling in America” recalled:

“Adelson…turned his focus to China, specifically…Macau, the…part of the…country where authorities permit casino gambling. Adelson’s political connections allowed him in as the first non-Chinese casino operator when he opened the Sands Macau in 2004. He earned back his initial investment within a year and became a multibillionaire overnight when he took his company public later that year…Adelson…added 3 more gigantic resorts to his portfolio in Macau, which has surpassed Las Vegas as the world’s gambling capital.”

According to the 2025 edition of “The World Almanac And Book Of Facts”:

“Macau, area of 11 sq. mi. is a peninsula and 2 small islands at the mouth of the Xi (Pearl) R. in China. It was established as a Portuguese trading colony in 1557…Under a 1987 agreement, Macau reverted to China Dec. 20, 1999. The Chinese government guaranteed Macau it would not interfere in its way of life for a period of 50 years. Tourism, including casino gambling is a mainstay of the economy. ($32.6 billion in international receipts in 2023); most tourists are from mainland China…”

And the big money that the trustee of the Needham, Massachusetts-based Adelson and Massachusetts-registered Adelson Family Foundation and her now-deceased husband obtained from doing business in Macao was used to increase their special influence over the political direction of U.S. and Israeli government politics in the 21st-century, even before they began funding current U.S. Dictator Trump’s post-2015 presidential campaigns. As the “Gangsters to Governor” book noted in 2017, four years before Multibillionaire and former Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Sheldon Adelson’s death in 2021:

“After cashing in his golden ticket in Macau, Adelson asserted his authority in the political realm. The billionaire is a hawkish backer of Israel and lavishly contributes to Republican and Israeli politicians…Adelson has also written sizable checks to…causes such as…Taglit-Birthright Israel…In the 2012 presidential race Adelson and his wife, Miriam, single handedly kept alive Newt Gingrich’s…bid for the Republican nomination with $15 million in contributions to a pro-Gingrich super PAC during the primaries. In all, the Adelsons spent $93 million (and reportedly many millions more in unreported `dark money’), making them the election cycle’s biggest donors. Adelson clearly revels in his…role as kingmaker, hosting events where candidates fly in to…pay homage in…hope of winning the mogul’s financial backing. He secretly purchased the “Las Vegas Review Journal” in 2015 and has shaped the newspaper into a megaphone for his views…”

And before purchasing the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team during this decade, after her husband’s death, Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson also donated $82.5 million in campaign contributions to the GOP candidates in the 2016 election cycle and $123.25 million in campaign contributions to GOP candidates in the 2018 election cycle.

With an address at 300 First Avenue in Needham, Massachusetts, the Adelson Family Foundation also gave $123 million in “charitable grants” to the Zionist movement’s Birthright Israel group between 2007 and 2013, $2.3 million in “charitable grants” to the “American-Israel Foundation” arm of AIPAC between 2006 and 2013, and a $400,000 “charitable grant” to the Zionist movement’s Anti-Defamation League [ADL] organization between 2006 and 2013.

In addition, according to the Needham, Massachusetts-based and Massachusetts-registered Adelson Family Foundation’s Form 990-PF financial filings, between 2015 and 2025, Adelson Family Foundation Trustee and U.S. Dictator Trump Presidential Campaign Contributor Miriam Adelson’s foundation gave:

1. Six “charitable grants”, totaling over $37 million, to the Friends of Israel Defense Forces group;
2.  Nine “charitable grants”, totaling $170 million to the Birthright Israel Foundation;
3.  Nine “charitable grants”, totaling over $87 million, to the Israeli American Council;
4.  Eight “charitable grants”, totaling $778,000, to the Students Supporting Israel group;
5.  Four “charitable grants”, totaling $1,910,000 to the Christians United For Israel group; and
6.  Nine “charitable grants”, totaling $2.3 million, to The Rockefeller University.

Yet on its Form 990-PF financial filings, Adelson Family Foundation Trustee Miriam Adelson’s Needham, Massachusetts-based and Massachusetts-registered foundation still claims it does not attempt “to influence any national, state or local legislation,” does not “participate or intervene in any political campaigns” and does not “spend more than $100 during the year (either directly or indirectly) for political purposes”?

The Mladenov Distraction

By Ramzy Baroud

June 12, 2026

Source: Al Jazeera

President.az, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Gaza requires urgent international attention. 

What is happening in the besieged and devastated Strip at the moment by far exceeds an unfolding humanitarian disaster; it is a calculated geopolitical reshaping. Israel is actively executing a plan to permanently occupy the vast majority of Gaza, with consequences that require little elaboration considering what we already know about the ongoing genocide.  

Currently, much of the international debate centers on a single official: Bulgarian diplomat . The former United Nations Special Coordinator has been designated by the United States as the Executive Director of the Trump administration’s newly established ‘Board of Peace’—an international council founded to oversee the implementation of Washington’s 20-point Gaza roadmap.  

The issue, however, is much bigger than a single Washington-backed bureaucrat. A growing number of Palestinians and political analysts Mladenov of manufacturing the very conditions that continue to obstruct progress on the agreement’s transition to its second phase. 

Under the framework, the official transition to this second phase—which Trump and the Board of Peace declared to have begun in January 2026—demands sweeping, one-sided Palestinian concessions, most notably the total disarmament of armed factions.  

This demand is a recipe for the failure of the entire project, especially given that Israel has completely failed to implement the most basic requirements of the agreement’s first phase. It has refused to halt its routine military incursions, has failed to withdraw its forces to the originally mandated ” demarcation, and continues to deny entry permits to the technocratic committee slated to assume civil governance of the Strip.

Mladenov’s insistence on Palestinian disarmament before the agreement can advance—without a single guarantee of Israeli compliance—conveniently flips the narrative. It cynically reframes systematic starvation and the blockade of medical and construction supplies as a Palestinian failure to honor commitments.

In reality, Mladenov holds no real cards; he is merely a cog in a larger machinery controlled by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister has made it explicitly clear that he has no intention of following any peace roadmap, planning instead for the permanent, incremental takeover of Gaza.

Speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement on May 28, Netanyahu explained his strategy with total clarity, abandoning all diplomatic doublespeak: “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip—you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to…” he said, pausing as an audience member shouted “100!”  

Netanyahu smiled and responded: “Let’s go step by step. First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”  

This is the actual blueprint of the Israeli government, declared openly to domestic audiences. The admission was so brazen that even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed frustration at Netanyahu’s candor. Testifying before Congress on June 2, Rubio remarked, “We have a plan—it doesn’t call for that,” referring to further Israeli territorial expansion. 

Yet, Rubio quickly reverted to Washington’s standard line: “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas entity.” 

While the immediate priority for Palestinians is not governance but life-saving food, clean water, medicine, and basic survival, Netanyahu and Rubio view the entire crisis through a political lens. The US-Israeli plan is predicated on achieving, through diplomatic strangulation and engineered famine, what they failed to fully achieve through military might.

A rare, decisive answer came from United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, who summed up the UN position plainly: “One hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people.” The problem, however, is that the UN’s rhetoric is backed by no real enforcement mechanisms. 

The international community has walked directly into a trap, outsourcing the future of the Gaza Strip to the Trump administration and its Board of Peace. Even the designated technocratic committee has been rendered entirely irrelevant, excluded from a decision-making process left solely to diplomats beholden to the White House.  

The situation on the ground remains catastrophic. Since the fragile, heavily compromised ceasefire took effect on October 10, regular Israeli violations and airstrikes have killed nearly 1,000 Palestinians and wounded thousands more—the vast majority women and children. When added to the horrific toll of the initial two years of war, the official number of Palestinians killed has surpassed 73,000, with over 173,000 injured.  

Furthermore, credible epidemiological studies and medical journals have concluded that the true death toll is vastly higher. 

With nearly the entire population of Gaza living in sub-standard tents and surviving on the meager rations permitted through Israeli checkpoints, it is the highest form of immorality to demand political concessions in exchange for basic sustenance. 

Netanyahu’s “step-by-step” annexation does not hinge on what Palestinian factions decide to do; his expansionist timeline is shaped independently of Palestinian compliance.

Arab, Muslim, and allied nations must fundamentally shift their diplomatic strategy. They must firmly insist on completely delinking humanitarian aid from the future governance or demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. 

Starvation cannot be tolerated as political leverage for war criminals. Netanyahu is emboldened by a history of international impunity, speaking openly of expanding his military footprint regardless of the consequences of such action. 

The international community must remind Israel’s government that the survival of millions of Palestinians cannot be held hostage to the political ambitions of an extremist coalition.

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of eight books. His latest book, ‘Before the Flood,’ was published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include ‘Our Vision for Liberation’, ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net—

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This article was originally published by Al Jazeera; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

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Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud is a US-Palestinian journalist, media consultant, an author, internationally-syndicated columnist, Editor of Palestine Chronicle (1999-present), former Managing Editor of London-based Middle East Eye, former Editor-in-Chief of The Brunei Times and former Deputy Managing Editor of Al Jazeera online. Baroud’s work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, and is the author of six books and a contributor to many others. Baroud is also a regular guest on many television and radio programs including RT, Al Jazeera, CNN International, BBC, ABC Australia, National Public Radio, Press TV, TRT, and many other stations. Baroud was inducted as an Honorary Member into the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, NU OMEGA Chapter of Oakland University, Feb 18, 2020.