By Harrison Berger – Responsible Statecraft – October 13, 2026

In August, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) publicly took credit for shaping “multiple provisions” now in this year’s defense policy bill, stating that many were “impacted by prior JINSA policy recommendations,” including “proposals to strengthen U.S.-Israel defense industrial base integration” and “renew pre-existing joint U.S.-Israel programs.”

Among the provisions JINSA takes credit for is the controversial Section 219. In the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), this section mandates the creation of a single executive agent tasked with “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the U.S. and Israel across nine basket categories, including AI, quantum technology, biotechnology, and virtually every category of weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that such provisions would transition the U.S.-Israel security relationship from aid to partnership. But pro-Israel advocates have emphasized the leverage it would provide over Washington’s military policy.

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies, appeared to reference this provision in an article arguing that the U.S. and Israel must “deepen their military, technological, intelligence and economic integration to such an extent that inflicting financial harm on Israel would also carry a significant cost for Washington.”

Other initiatives JINSA has advocated for likewise read like an Israeli government wishlist. They include a pending provision to “extend the existing War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel,” which provides a secretive and high-speed pathway for funneling weapons to Israel, as well as Abraham Accords provisions including “Improvements to Air and Missile Defense Acquisition” and a “United States-Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Initiative.”

The policy wins JINSA is trumpeting are a result of its strong foothold within the military-industrial complex, and are perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of the pro-Israel lobby. The group says it achieves these goals “by conducting both educational programs that build ties among American, Israeli and other Middle Eastern partner military leaders, along with in-depth research and actionable recommendations to influence U.S. policy.” JINSA’s “Our People” webpage includes a long roster of retired U.S. military officials.

One of JINSA’s most important programs, which has existed for more than four decades, is its “Generals and Admirals Program.” The initiative involves flying recently retired U.S. military officials to Israel. Many of the trip’s participants were already sitting on defense-industry boards when they went, while others joined soon afterward. At least 55 of the 83 alumni from the 2019–2026 G&A program cohorts (about 66%) have held or currently hold positions in the defense industry spanning board seats, executive jobs or advisory roles at defense contractors and defense-tech firms, or posts at defense-focused investment funds, consultancies and lobbying shops.

JINSA hopes that, when these former military officials return from Israel, they will use their credentials and defense industry power to become Israel’s advocates.

JINSA describes the program, founded in 1981, as “designed to ensure that the delegation is well briefed on the security concerns of Israel, as well as the key role Israel plays as a friend and ally of the United States.” The Helmsley Charitable Trust, which provided a 13 month grant for the program in 2017 worth $237,846, similarly says the purpose of the program is in part for participants to “return home to share publicly what they learned.”

The itinerary for the Generals and Admirals program includes meetings with Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, IDF chief of staff and the Director of Mossad. According to JINSA, after completing the program, “participants often engage on important policy initiatives through JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy that strengthen…the U.S.-Israel security relationship.” JINSA CEO Michael Makovsky highlighted the program’s influence in 2014, calling U.S. generals and admirals “America’s most admired leaders, who remain very influential even after retirement.”

The JINSA program trains retired military leaders, many of whom go on to work in the defense industry, to be advocates for Israeli interests, both in their public writing and in their work behind the scenes.

A 2023 Quincy Institute report found that 80% of four-star officers who retired between June 2018 and July 2023 went on to work for the defense industry. Of the 32 officers tracked in the report, nine appear on JINSA’s participant lists, and seven of those nine retired officers hold industry lobbying or defense-tech roles. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Lockheed Martin’s board five months after leaving the military and went on JINSA’s Israel junket the following year, 2021. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, retired in 2018, became a senior adviser at the lobbying and public relations firm Brunswick Group in 2019 and went on the JINSA trip in 2021.

Gen. Hawk Carlisle participated in the 2019 delegation while serving as president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, the war lobby’s leading trade group, and has served on the board of the U.S. subsidiary of Israel’s largest defense contractor, Elbit Systems of America, which was renamed Twenty-Six Defense in September. Some participants, such as retired Gen. Robert Magnus and Gen. Duncan McNabb, joined the board of Elbit America after their JINSA trips.

Embedded within the highest levels of the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, JINSA’s roster of retired generals and admirals often use their credentials to advocate for pro-Israel policy in Washington.

In 2010, when then-head of U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israel-Palestine conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” which is used to “mobilize support” for various militant groups in the region, JINSA’s G&A participants rushed to Israel’s defense. Responding to Petraeus, 30 ex-military leaders associated with the program put out an ad claiming that “a strong, secure Israel is an asset,” labeling the country, which has been deemed an apartheid state by numerous human rights groups, as “a democracy” that “shares our commitment to freedom, personal liberty and rule of law.”

In May 2018, a JINSA task force of retired senior officers chaired by Adm. James Stavridis released “Atlas Supported,” urging Washington to elevate Israel to “a top-tier ally” and invest jointly in next-generation military technology — the latter now a central purpose of Section 219. JINSA says the report was also the first to recommend moving Israel from the U.S. European Command to U.S. Central Command, which Trump then ordered on January 15, 2021. JINSA celebrated the fifth anniversary of Israel’s shift into CENTCOM this January by noting that the “Wall Street Journal recognized” it as “the only organization promoting this move,” and by featuring glowing tributes from JINSA G&A participants.

JINSA’s roster of retired military officials was once again mobilized in October 2026 to deny the findings of a trifecta of human rights groups and the U.N. that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, praising what it called a “pattern of law-abiding IDF conduct in Gaza.”

JINSA’s delegates routinely appear on cable news, often without disclosures of their affiliation with the pro-Israel lobby group: Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who commanded CENTCOM from 2019 to 2022 and traveled with JINSA’s 2023 delegation, and became a “distinguished fellow” at JINSA in 2024, is now a CBS News contributor. In July, McKenzie appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, who introduced McKenzie as a retired CENTCOM commander but omitted his fellowship with JINSA. In that appearance, McKenzie recommended Washington consider seizing Kharg Island. Ret. Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a member of JINSA’s “Iran Policy Project,” frequently appears on Fox News too, though his affiliation is generally disclosed.

One of the group’s most consequential efforts was to push the Trump administration to start a war with Iran, with a group of JINSA-aligned military leaders writing a March 2025 letter arguing that “U.S. support for Israeli action to prevent a nuclear Iran should be a top priority,” adding that “time is running out to stop its march to the bomb.” Sixty-six of the 79 signers of that letter appear on JINSA’s Generals and Admirals participant lists. Members of JINSA’s roster of retired military officials subsequently wrote open letters of support for the 12-Day War and the current months-long Iran War.

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Harrison Berger is an independent journalist who has contributed to Drop Site News, The American Conservative, and The Nation. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He holds a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies from Union College (NY).

The horrors deliverable by Israel that might come next

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 14, 2026

Speculation is growing over the sustainability of the United States’ model of global dominance which emerged as Washington ended the Second World War as plausibly the sole superpower. That role was first tested in the Korean War, which produced something of a stalemate in a confrontation that included China, and led to a Ceasefire Agreement which is still in place to this day. More recently the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, even given the disastrous and pointless war in Vietnam, confirmed the US’s superior military, political and financial status, leading to an affirmation of American dominance as an essential element in global political stability in several initiated and mandated policy documents including in the statement of principles spelled out in 1990’s which was later published in September 2000 as the Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century: a Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The final elaboration of the policy was derived from the so-called “Wolfowitz Doctrine” which was the common referral to national defense guidance developed when Paul Wolfowitz, working for Vice President Dick Cheney, was Associate Secretary of Defense. The term is an informal version of the US Department of Defense’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for the years 1994-9 dated February 18, 1992.

As the first DPG after the Cold War and first Gulf Wars ended and the draft described the United States as the world’s only superpower it made preventing the emergence (or re-emergence) of a global or regional competitor a top priority. This objective included preventing any hostile power’s dominance of strategically or resource rich important regions that could produce alternative sources of global power. It argued that that the US Military must remain sufficiently strong enough to deter possible competitors, retaining the ability to act unilaterally if necessary. The PNAC declaration called for a continuing global leadership role for the United States which implied the resort to preemptive war against adversaries when needed.

In promoting the new policy, the Project’s Statement of Principles document of June 1997 elaborated how “… America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests… We need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.”

The statement was signed by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Rodman, Elliot Abrams, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Aaron Friedberg, Donald Kagan, I Lewis Libby, and Norman Podhoretz among others. It was considered to be very “Israel friendly” subsequently and it, combined with the awesome and growing political and institutional power of the US Israeli Lobby, was used to justify US interventions in the Middle East during the following decades. Indeed, one might argue that Israel’s form of interaction with its neighbors and even with much of the world today was shaped by the numerous Jews and Israel firsters who participated in the drafting of the critical documents asserting Washington’s need to behave aggressively, to include its participation in conflicts that it would otherwise have been able to avoid such as those occurring in the Middle East which were instigated by Israel’s promotion of its own interests just like is currently taking place with Iran.

What is important to note today is how the documents that were intended to guarantee American military supremacy including interventionism to maintain that edge appear to have taken hold of the President Donald J Trump administration, most particularly in the minds of the president himself and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. So, what went wrong as the United States now appears to be losing on all fronts where it has opted for confrontation instead of negotiation? It is perhaps important to note that the geopolitical missteps are likely the result of a doctrine coming from a different world than 1991 with different means of assessing strength or weakness. Trump and Hegseth might well be perceived as dinosaurs heading for extinction during their own version of the Triassic Period and the country that they have so much abused might be heading for decline and fall. The question becomes “After the US falls, who will be there to pick up the pieces?”

And one might presume that America’s most protected client Israel, which would certainly be joined to the US as the world’s most hated nation, might also be heading in the same direction. The only difference being that Israel has declared that it will use its nuclear arsenal to take much of the world with it if it goes down, the so-called Samson Option. Israel has at least several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions from its submarine delivery capabilities. Most European capitals would certainly be targets for Israeli missiles and warplanes. Former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan served notice of what might come: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” A minority of Israeli leaders might try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible, but those in charge will surely have the capability to take part of the world down with them and that is precisely what will happen as Israel goes under. But before that happens a wave of millions of Jewish “refugees” will roll over the US and Europe primarily. They will insist on creating new nations just like they did to the Palestinians and likely will have their nuclear weapons with them as “insurance.”

Interestingly, Israel is also reported to be developing a biological weapon arsenal which is “ethnically targeting” selective meaning that it will kill only holders of certain DNA or ethnic characteristics, presumably killing those with majority Arab biology while sparing anyone with Jewish traits or characteristics. Interesting. It might be the easy way to “mow the lawn” of objectionable foreigners as Israel’s leaders have frequently carried out in places like Gaza and Lebanon.

But it occurs to me that Israel will follow a slightly different pattern, namely disorienting the playing field by the use of false flag incidents that will encourage Americans and Europeans to support pro-Israel policies that are clearly not in their interest, and applying “Palestinian option” alternatives to reduce and then completely eliminate resistance to its own form of “global dominance.” That means stealing other people’s land while also systematically exterminating them, possibly with the biological bombs. The process of emigrating is already underway among many mostly better educated Israelis who are already rapidly leaving an Israel under threat to recreate their exclusively Jewish ghettos and settlements in places like Crete, Greece and in South America. The local residents frequently complain about the abuse they receive from the newcomers but their governments suffer from the typical Zionist disease, i.e. local governments that are bought or pressured to give way.

America already has discovered the phenomenon in the communities in New York and New Jersey and elsewhere in the country where often Orthodox Jewish religious ritual restrictions control behavior of all citizens and even visitors who dare to defile the enclaves. If Israel in what was once Palestine goes under will that mean that millions of new immigrants, certainly given free entry with no conditions on their behavior by a US Congress which displays Israeli flags in its office spaces on Capitol Hill? The clowns in Congress and the White House may not be bothered by the Israeli Jewish tendency to despise the other 90% of any country’s inhabitants as subhuman, as they do with the Palestinians currently. Florida (of course!) Congressman Brian Mast, who wears his Israeli army uniform when working in his Congressional office, said : “there is no such thing as innocent Palestinians”! And he is not the only congressman or staffer who embraces that view, which is reiterated by 90% of Israeli Jews who support extermination of all Muslims and Christians!

So what comes next? John Gehan has written about the next moves by Israel emigrants and how they will impact on the rest of the world after their regional genocidal campaign to create Greater (Eretz) Israel is either concluded in failure or otherwise goes down in flames: “Essentially what we’ll have are at least hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of psychotically racist terrorists entering the USA. These are ethnically obsessed monsters who don’t consider anyone outside of their pernicious tribe to be human. They’ll have weapons at their disposal and a cemented nationwide network to commit mass murder. Maybe some of these crazies will seek shelter in Europe or Canada or Argentina, etc. But many will choose the USA as a redoubt. At best, murders and acts of terror will spike dramatically in this country. Israeli Zionists are genocidal psychopaths. As we have all seen.”

For those who need further elucidation of what is going on and what drives it, the head of one of Israel’s most prominent think tanks, Major General Tamir Hayman has described in an article further examined by Trita Parsi the Quincy Institute, the harsh reality of Israel’s current and ongoing new national security doctrine: Hayman describes how “The United States is a ‘declining power’ and, given its ongoing social and political shifts, will soon abandon Israel in any event. This is compelling Israel to move toward greater self-reliance in order to avoid ‘excessive dependence’ on the US since it ‘exposes Israel to the influence of a progressive American value system that is incompatible with Israel’s Jewish character.’ He concludes: ‘Severing ties with the United States is therefore not only inevitable, but essential to Israel’s independence and the resilience of its Jewish national identity.’” Why is that? “Because of the Primacy of Jewish Identity over Democracy: The state’s Jewish identity takes precedence over its democratic system of government.” And it takes precedence over the constitutional rights of any nation that Jews should wind up settling in!

So, we Americans and presumably lots of other people have something to look forward to from an Israel whose leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon have often bragged about how they control “America,” and now it it boasting how it has taken its pound of flesh and then will discard the US donor after it is bled white! It presumes the end of nations as we know them that try to function decently to be replaced by an ethno-religious state armed with nukes and bio weapons that will begin its process of extermination just as it is already carrying out in the Middle East! Mazel Tov to y’all!

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 14, 2026

It’s hard to know whether to break the TV set or throw up when listening to the European governments rushing to condemn the air strike by Yemeni forces on Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid international airport.

The blast from a ballistic missile that slammed into the airport at the weekend, October 12, killed at least 13 civilians and injured scores of other travellers. Horrific video footage shows the moment the missile explosion ripped through a terminal lounge.

European leaders immediately in a coordinated fashion trotted out condemnations of Yemeni “terrorism” and vowed solidarity and support for Saudi Arabia. U.S. President Donald Trump called it “a terrible thing.” (As if bombing schoolchildren is not quite a terrible thing.)

Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, and Spain all issued strident denunciations of the Yemeni attack.

The strike on the Saudi capital came after the Ansar Allah-led Yemen Armed Forces had given ample warning to the Saudis that their airports would be targeted and for civilians to avoid the areas. The airports were kept open for business as usual. The Yemenis have said that the attack on Riyadh and other Saudi airports are retaliation for weeks of multiple air strikes by the Saudis on Yemeni civilian centers.

Hundreds of Yemeni civilians have been killed since Saudi Arabia broke a four-year truce with an air strike on the international airport in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, on July 13. Saudi warplanes, U.S.-supplied F-15s and European Typhoon jets, have been continously bombing homes across Yemen. This week, two days after the Riyadh strike, at least nine people including five children were killed in air raids on houses in Taiz city and in northern al Jawf province. Al Masirah TV footage showed a distraught father holding up a child’s shredded body amid rubble. There was no condemnation of that atrocity from any European leader.

As Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, former Irish Members of the European Parliament, point out in their podcast this week, the official European reaction is utter hypocrisy and a cynical distortion of the conflict on the Arabian Peninsula.

Britain and France in particular, along with the United States, have backed the Saudi aggression against Yemen beginning in 2015. Over seven years, that aggression killed up to 400,000 Yemenis through air strikes and a blockade on humanitarian needs.

The European Union remained largely silent for seven years. No protests were made to Washington, Paris or London. Ambassadors were not summoned, sanctions were not imposed.

The return to hostilities that began with Saudi air strikes on Sanaa in July have been enabled by U.S. and Britain supplying warplanes, military advisors and intelligence.

None of the European governments have bothered to condemn this recent U.S. and UK-backed slaughter.

So, it is nauseating when one hears British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband saying he is “appalled” by the strike on Riyadh airport. And other European leaders vowing “full solidarity with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul condemned Yemen’s “terrorist act.”

His French counterpart said France stood with Saudi Arabia “in defending its territory and infrastructue.” (No mention of what the Saudis have been doing for years to Yemen’s territory.)

Referring to the strike on Riyadh without any context, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said: “Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are unacceptable and must cease.” (Yes, indeed, so why not tell that to the Saudis who are doing it deliberately on a massive scale with support from Washington and London?)

What is instructive here is not just the sickening hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy. It is the manifestation of a systematic corruption and criminal responsibility. This is not just one more example of a flawed European political class whose judgement is suspect. What is increasingly apparent is the totality of the corruption.

The same European supporters of Saudi monarchs waging a genocidal war on Yemen are also contemporaneously supporting the Israeli Zionist regime in its extermination of Palestinians. They are complicit in enabling the U.S. aggression against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. They are sponsors of the NeoNazi regime in Kiev to keep fighting a proxy war against Russia despite more than one million Ukrainian military casualties and the risk of nuclear conflagration.

The death cult of Western capitalism is on full display in multiple theaters, exposing the organic evil at work. There is sense that all of Western imperialist history is now on display in one final orgy of barbarity.

In previous times, the death cult operated discreetly in seemingly disparate conflict scenarios. Wars on different continents seemed somehow unconnected. The Western media would in the past reliably cover up the crimes by distorting the motives and objectives with false narratives and (laughable) claims of noble purpose. The West was “defending democracy,” “fighting communism,” “protecting human rights,” or “waging war on terrorism,” or some other pretext that in isolation and with loads of media propaganda managed to fool a lot of people as somehow plausible.

What’s happening now, it seems, is a concatenation of wars that ultimately exposes the essential system that drives the violence, and its insatiable lust for human suffering.

It is impossible to work for such a vile system, the death cult of capitalism, without also being oblivious to its evil ways. To remain oblivious necessitates denial or lies. That deception might be tenable for occasional and seemingly disparate scenarios. But not when the system is exposed in its infernal entirety.

American and European wars in the past might have succeeded in being sold to the Western public as one-off wars and misadventures. We think of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Latin American, Africa, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Libya.

In more recent years, as consciousness evolved, the public began discerning and decrying “endless wars”.

But now the world is witnessing a totalizing of the war machine that goes by the name of “Western democracy”.

What’s happening in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and Yemen is not coincidence. It is the death cult on display and unable to hide itself. It manifests too in attacking and locking up Western citizens who condemn genocide or who simply call for peace.

Capitalism, fascism, wars, the Epstein class, endemic poverty and suffering – it’s a death cult in a theater near you.

The politicians, governments, media and pundits who promote it or serve it are seen for what they are.