Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted this week that Israel’s goal for Gaza is the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in “every way possible,” despite denying allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.

“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference hosted by Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday, per a translation by France 24. Israel “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”

This plan would amount to ethnic cleansing, something that Palestinians and human rights advocates have long said Israel is carrying out in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a report earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Office warned that Israel was carrying out policies consistent with ethnic cleansing between 2024 and 2025, including famine, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and overall imposing conditions “incompatible with [Palestinians’] continued existence in Gaza as a group.”

Katz said that Israel is “seeking Trump’s support” for the idea because no country will take in Palestinians without the approval of the U.S.

The White House has not commented on the plan. When Donald Trump took office last year, he proposed a plan for forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza, dubiously framing it as “voluntary.”

The administration’s stance has since evolved, however. In July, Trump’s “Board of Peace” announced a plan that would still implement colonial control over Gaza, but that would transition power over the Strip to a Palestinian board and demand Israel withdraw its troops from the Strip.

In a rare break with the U.S. last month, Netanyahu announced that he would not be supporting that plan. Keeping with his usual practice of introducing unworkable provisions into negotiations, he said that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas was totally disarmed.

Disarmament — which critics say would still give Israel massive power over Gaza — was already included in the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan. But Netanyahu seems determined to ensure Israel can still carry out its genocide and occupation in Gaza, pledging again on Wednesday that Israel is “not retreating.”

“We control 60 percent of the Strip, and we are not stopping, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us, day in and day out,” he reportedly said.

Trump also previously vowed to end aid to Israel if it annexed the West Bank, however, despite Israel’s ongoing annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Israeli officials’ remarks were made just weeks before critical Israeli elections in October, in which Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are hoping to retain far right control of the state.

Politicians in Netanyahu’s caucus have been openly calling for cruelty toward Palestinians as a campaign strategy. This week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted then deleted an AI-generated video that showed a line of Palestinians on a conveyor belt being loaded into a detention facility operated by Ben-Gvir. The Palestinians are then shown leaving the facility emaciated, with the politician seemingly showing off Israel’s systematized policy of starvation of Palestinians.

Israeli officials have denied allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.

“The charge of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Israel is false and dangerous. It is not a legal definition but a political label, used to inflame tensions, spread hate, and fuel antisemitism,” said Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, last year. “Israel does not deport Palestinians because of their identity. Israel has, rather, temporarily removed non-combatant populations from war-zones in order to guarantee their safety.”

The statement was made in response to a September 2025 report released by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) saying that Israel was deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure and starving Palestinians with the goal of ethnic cleansing.

“After our trip to the Gaza-Egypt border last year, [Merkley] & I released a report entitled, ‘The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.’ Now the Israeli Min[ister] of Defense confirmed that’s the goal,” said Van Hollen on Wednesday. “We must end our complicity.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) issued a stark warning this week about a congressional measure that would merge the U.S. and Israel’s military technology industrial complexes, saying that it represents an “existential threat” to U.S. democracy.

The provision — called the “U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” or Section 219 — is included in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed the House in a 216 to 212 vote on Wednesday. Six Democrats broke from the party to vote “yes,” and seven Republicans voted “no.” The bill is still stalled in the Senate, however, after Democrats voted against its advancement last week.

The NDAA “includes a provision to merge parts of our military with the [Israeli military],” Ocasio-Cortez said in a post on social media on Tuesday. “This [provision] is an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy. Every member of Congress must vote NO.”

The provision, if included in the final bill, would entrench Israel’s enmeshment with the U.S. military, mandating cooperation with regard to technology and intelligence with Israeli forces even when the U.S. gets little in return. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has advocated for the measure as public scrutiny over the U.S.’s monetary military aid to Israel has increased amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Some lawmakers in Congress have waged a bipartisan effort for Section 219 to be stripped from the NDAA. Representatives Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) have introduced an amendment to the bill to remove Section 219.

However, these efforts have been quashed by pro-Israel lawmakers, who make up the vast majority of Congress. When it published its list of proposed amendments to the bill this week, the House Rules Committee didn’t even include the Khanna/Massie proposal — barring it from being considered by the full chamber.

In a video posted to social media on Tuesday, Khanna pledged to continue to advocate for the proposal. He said that the lawmakers will now seek to fight against Section 219’s inclusion in the bill during the conference between the House and Senate, during which the two chambers reconcile differences in their versions of the legislation.

“It’s shocking that this even has to be explained. It’s about American sovereignty,” Khanna said. “We do not even have the chance to vote in the House to stop Israel and the United States from co-producing weapons.”

Last week, the House voted overwhelmingly to kill another Massie amendment to strip a State Department funding bill of $3.3 billion in military assistance to Israel. However, the measure did garner 103 votes from Democrats, marking a shift within the caucus.

Ahead of the House vote on Wednesday, progressive lawmakers vowed to vote against the NDAA due to its inclusion of Section 219.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) said the provision is an “outrageous threat to our country’s security and autonomy.”

“Americans want no part in Netanyahu’s genocidal regime. Congress cannot continue to bankroll Israel’s campaign of terror,” she went on.

“Despite Americans demanding an end to genocide, this bill deeply merges the U.S. and Israeli militaries, fuels Trump’s immoral war on Iran, and enriches billionaire arms dealers,” wrote Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). “Hell no.”

The State Department has released a report that labels Cuba as the “ideological capital” of left-wing politics in a document seemingly imitating Cold War politics published amid the Trump administration’s fascistic crackdown on the left.

The 99-page report is entitled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” It argues that, since the rise of Fidel Castro and left-wing revolutionary thought in the Caribbean country in the 1950s and ‘60s, the country’s brand of left-wing politics “now enjoys something approaching ideological hegemony both within and beyond the West.” Though Cuba itself is a “failed state,” the report says, its political project has still spread to the point of threatening “Western civilization itself.”

The ultimate goal for the small island state is “conquering the neighboring United States,” the report asserts. “Since 1959, Cuba has been — and without fundamental, radical reforms, will always be — less a nation-state than an all-encompassing intelligence and subversion operation, focused around its existential revolution against the United States,” the report says.

In reality, the report comes as the U.S. is seemingly preparing for an invasion of or assault on Cuba. For months, President Donald Trump has threatened that Cuba is “next” on the U.S. military’s hitlist. And CBS reported last week that Pentagon officials have been preparing a “range of options” including an air assault of the country — which is already on the brink after the Trump administration’s months-long total oil blockade has caused wave after wave of nationwide blackouts.

Indeed, the report hits on two of the Trump administration’s goals: the vilification of Cuba ahead of potential military action against the country, as well as the creation of a myth of an organized and violent left that is prepared to destroy the U.S., as administration officials kickstarted last week.

The sprawling document names numerous American left-wing groups, some of which have not been active or prominent in decades, as “front groups and fellow travelers” of Cuba.

This includes groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), National Lawyers Guild, Code Pink, and Cuba solidarity groups The Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples and the National Network on Cuba. The document also ties racial solidarity movements with Cuba, flimsily insinuating that Cuba is the driving force behind much of the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-immigrant, anti-ICE movements.

The report cites “examples” that are often just symbolic declarations of support for the Cuban people, taking them to improbable logical extremes.

DSA, for instance, isn’t under any control of the Cuban government, the report says. Yet, it is still a major part of the “Cuban influence operation,” the State Department claims, solely because its members espouse left-wing ideals and have expressed solidarity with the population of Cuba amid the U.S.’s sanctions regime on the country.

State Department officials also call out individual Americans who have expressed opposition to the U.S.’s policies on Cuba or otherwise participated in the Cuba solidarity movement, including prominent figures like Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, Chris Smalls, Isra Hirsi, and Amy Goodman.

The report does not discuss the U.S.’s decades of meddling and suppression of Cuba’s government. In that context, the report only brings up left-wing groups’ condemnation of the failed Bay of Pigs operation and the sanctions regime as supposed proof that they are controlled by Cuba — rather than motivated by credible human rights concerns such as those raised by the United Nations.

The document is reminiscent of Cold War-era assessments and propaganda against the Soviet Union and other countries vilified by the U.S. at the time, even quoting Cold War-era reports on the supposed threat of “Communist subversion” — a key difference being that the Soviet Union was actually taking substantial action to back political movements in other countries.

At the time, President Harry S. Truman reoriented U.S. foreign policy toward combating the growing influence of the Soviet Union and China, and spoke of the need for the U.S. to combat such “aggression.” This spiraled into decades of proxy wars ranging across the world, from Cuba to Afghanistan to Korea to Vietnam, as well as the McCarthyist campaign to silence and imprison left-wing dissidents at home.