The United States shot down more drones and missiles than Israel did on Saturday night during Iran’s attack, The Intercept can report.

More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.

The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.

In calculating the size of Iran’s attack and the overwhelming role of the United States, U.S. military sources say that the preliminary estimate is that half of Iran’s weapons experienced technical failures of some sort.

“U.S. intelligence estimates that half of the weapons fired by Iran failed upon launch or in flight due to technical issues,” a U.S. Air Force senior officer told The Intercept. Of the remaining 160 or so, the U.S. shot down the majority, the officer said. The officer was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive operational matters.

Asked to comment on the United States shooting down half of Iran’s drones and missiles, the Israel Defense Forces and the White House National Security Council did not respond at the time of publication. The Pentagon referred The Intercept to U.S. Central Command, which pointed to a press release saying CENTCOM forces supported by U.S. European Command destroyers “successfully engaged and destroyed more than 80 one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and at least six ballistic missiles intended to strike Israel from Iran and Yemen.”

Israel says that more than 330 drones, low-flying cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were launched by Iran, including some 30 Paveh-type cruise missiles, 180 or so Shahed drones, and 120 Emad intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as other types of weapons. All of the drones and cruise missiles were launched from Iranian territory, Israel says. Some additional missiles were also launched from inside Yemen, according to IDF data.

Most media reports say that none of the cruise missiles or drones ever entered Israeli airspace. According to a statement by IDF spokesperson Adm. Daniel Hagari, some 25 cruise missiles “were intercepted by IAF [Israeli Air Force] fighter jets outside the country’s borders,” most likely over Jordanian territory.

Israel’s statement that it shot down the majority of Iranian “cruise missiles” is probably an exaggeration. According to U.S. military sources and preliminary reporting, U.S. and allied aircraft shot down the majority of drones and cruise missiles. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the Royal Air Force Typhoons intercepted “a number” of Iranian weapons over Iraqi and Syrian airspace.

The Jordanian government has also hinted that its aircraft downed some Iranian weapons. “We will intercept every drone or missile that violates Jordan’s airspace to avert any danger. Anything posing a threat to Jordan and the security of Jordanians, we will confront it with all our capabilities and resources,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said during an interview on the Al-Mamlaka news channel.

French fighters also shot down some drones and possibly cruise missiles.

U.S. aircraft, however, shot down “more than” 80 Iranian weapons, according to U.S. military sources. President Joe Biden spoke with members of two F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft squadrons to “commend them for their exceptional airmanship and skill in defending Israel from an unprecedented aerial attack by Iran.” Two F-15 squadrons — the 494th Fighter Squadron based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, and the 335th Fighter Squadron from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina — are forward deployed to the Middle East, at least half of the planes at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Two U.S. warships stationed in the Mediterranean — the USS Carney (DDG 64) and the USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) — shot down at least six ballistic missiles, the Pentagon says. The War Zone is reporting that those ships may have fired Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) interceptors in combat for the first time. A U.S. Army Patriot surface-to-air missile battery in Erbil, Iraq, shot down at least one ballistic missile. Wreckage of an Iranian missile was also found outside Erbil, as well as in an open area outside the province of Najaf.

Iran’s attack marks the first time since 1991 that a nation state has attacked Israel directly. Contending with extremely long distances and utilizing scores of decoys and swarm tactics to attempt to overwhelm Middle East air defenses, Iran managed to hit two military targets on the ground in Israel, including Nevatim Air Base. According to the IDF, five missiles hit Nevatim Air Base and four hit another base. Despite the low number of munitions successfully landing, the dramatic spectacle of hundreds of rockets streaking across the night sky in Syria, Iraq, and Iran has left Tehran contented with its show of force.

Iran “has achieved all its goals, and in our view the operation has ended, and we do not intend to continue,” Iranian President Mohammad Bagheri said over the weekend. Still, he cautioned, “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response.”

The U.S. coordinated the overall operation from the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where the overall commander was Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the air commander of CENTCOM. “We take whatever assets we have that are in theater … under our tactical control or in a direct support role across the joint force and the coalition, and we stitch them together so that we can synchronize the fires and effects when we get into that air defense fight,” Grynkewich told Air & Space Forces Magazine after the Iran attack. “We’re trying to stitch together partners in the region who share a perspective of a threat, share concern of the threats to stability in the region — which primarily emanate from Iran with a large number of ballistic missiles — and be in a position where we’re able to share information, share threat warning. And the ultimate goal is to get to a much deeper and fuller integration. We’ve made tremendous progress.”

In a call immediately following Iran’s attack, Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange” and warned of the “risks of escalation” — as if that hadn’t already happened.

The post U.S. Shot Down Most Iran Drones and Missiles Launched at Israel appeared first on The Intercept .

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik heads to Washington, D.C., this week, to testify in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce — the same committee whose previous hearings on antisemitism helped force the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania to resign.

While the Wednesday hearing is titled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism,” Shafik’s testimony may illustrate how her administration has cracked down on pro-Palestine speech. Since October 7, the university has suspended student groups that advocate for Palestine, created an amorphous “ task force on anti-semitism ” that students and faculty worry will serve to punish criticism of Israel, dragged its feet on an investigation into reports that students were sprayed with a chemical during an on-campus rally for Gaza, and more.

Columbia’s readiness to severely discipline students advocating for Palestinian rights is not singular. It is one of multiple schools, including California’s Pomona College and Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, that suspended, evicted, or even expelled students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza in recent weeks.

The escalation by university administrators across the country shows that even as mainstream discourse around Israel shifts — particularly in the wake of Israel’s April 1 fatal strike against seven World Central Kitchen aid workers — those in positions of power are working hard to maintain the status quo of unfettered U.S. support for Israel, said Kouross Esmaeli, visiting professor of media studies at Pomona.

“I think the more the ruling establishment loses control of the narrative, the more they realize that the world, and even their own constituencies … are beginning to question their narrative,” Esmaeli said. “As that happens, they need to make sure that they silence the people who are actually pushing for real change in policy.”

Private Investigators

Earlier this month, Columbia suspended and evicted four students for hosting an unauthorized event about Palestine. The university’s action against the students who held the “Resistance 101” event — during which at least one guest speaker praised Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel — was aided by “an outside firm led by experienced former law enforcement investigators.”

Within 10 days of the March 24 event, the suspended students were evicted from campus housing and prohibited from accessing university buildings, dining halls, and health care services.

“I did not become a university president to punish students. At the same time, actions like this on our campus must have consequences,” Shafik wrote in a statement. “That I would ever have to declare the following is in itself surprising, but I want to make clear that it is absolutely unacceptable for any member of this community to promote the use of terror or violence.”

The punishments, according to the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, were doled out without due process. The group said in a statement that a private investigator visited a Palestinian student at their home, rattling the doorknob “as if trying to break in,” and that investigators “demanded to see the private text messages of students in order to ‘comply’ with the investigation.”

“Columbia is endangering students to boost their public image before President Shafik’s testimony at the April 17th Congressional hearing,” the student group said .

In her statement, Shafik also promised to discipline people who were involved with a separate unauthorized event on campus on April 4. That event was a solidarity protest organized in response to Israeli forces’ siege and destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

A Columbia spokesperson did not respond to questions about the school’s investigation into that protest, including what policies the participants violated and whether the school is pursuing every single participant.

The expediency with which Columbia dealt with the March event, meanwhile, stands in stark contrast to its handling of student protesters reportedly being sprayed with a noxious chemical on campus — the investigation for which is still “ongoing” nearly three months later.

“Students received no assistance with medical bills, nor with the emotional trauma of such a direct attack on our bodies,” said Daria Mateescu, president of Columbia Law Students for Palestine and member of Columbia University Apartheid Divestment, about the school’s response to the January 19 on-campus demonstration. “Yet, it is more than willing to suspend and evict students, just while they are investigated regarding speech at an event. It now goes so far as to hire private investigators to show up to students’ homes, which to our knowledge it has never done before.”

The school deferred questions about the investigation into the January incident to the New York Police Department. An NYPD spokesperson told The Intercept that the investigation remains “ongoing,” and that while there was a person of interest, the spokesperson “didn’t know what happened with that,” and now the suspects’ identities are “unknown.” (In January, a few days after the protest, the university said it banned the suspected perpetrators from campus, a claim it has maintained since, while otherwise continually deferring to the NYPD.)

Students and faculty have charged on in their advocacy. Last week, Columbia’s Arts & Sciences Graduate Council and Law School Student Senate both voted in favor of a resolution that would have the university divest from “companies profiting from or engaging in Israeli apartheid.” Meanwhile, 23 Jewish university faculty members sent a letter to Shafik, urging her “to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.”

A Canceled BDS Vote

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, meanwhile, expelled three students, suspended one, and placed another 22 on disciplinary probation earlier this month. The disciplinary action came in response to a recent campus protest over the administration’s cancellation of a vote to boycott certain companies entangled with Israel’s violence in Palestine.

Students at the school had organized an amendment to prevent the Vanderbilt Student Government from purchasing goods or services from companies identified as “complicit” in Israel’s violence in Gaza and Palestine. During spring break in March, the university unilaterally canceled the referendum, citing “federal and state laws” that punish boycotts of “countries friendly to the United States.”

In response, the nonprofit law center Palestine Legal sent the school a cease-and-desist letter , accusing it of violating students’ rights to free speech and association. Meanwhile, some two dozen students protested the decision by staging a nearly 24-hour sit-in inside a campus building on March 26. The school doled out interim suspensions to 16 students, with three students arrested for assault and bodily injury. After preliminary hearings, the school issued disciplinary measures on April 5.

The charges relating to assault stem from the students’ entry into the campus building. The school released a video that shows students making physical contact with an officer as they attempt to walk past him. Students have countered that the blurred video doesn’t fully show the officer dragging one of the students by their neck. The university has also accused students of making physical contact with a staff member inside the building; students refute this, and the university has refused to release video corroborating this charge.

Vanderbilt police also arrested Eli Motycka, a reporter for the Nashville Scene who was covering the protest, for alleged trespassing. The university and police have claimed that the journalist was warned multiple times not to enter the building where the sit-in was taking place. Motycka, for his part, maintained both during and after the incident that he did not hear any warning by any officer about such a thing; he was also arrested while outside the building. Motycka was later released and not charged.

Through an open letter, over 150 faculty members have criticized the administration’s actions. The university did not respond to questions about the letter, nor on whether it could provide video corroborating the charge that a student physically confronted a staff member, instead referring The Intercept to a log of its public statements on the incident. Vanderbilt also did not respond to questions about the laws it cited in canceling the referendum.

Tennessee’s law that punishes boycotts — known as an anti-BDS law , part of a wave of legislation targeting the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction entities that participate in Israel’s occupation of Palestine — applies to state contracts valued at at least $250,000. The Vanderbilt Student Government, however, only has a grand total budget of some $200,000.

Students call on Pomona College to divest from Israel and protest over the recent arrest of 20 students, at a campus rally in Claremont, Calif., on April 11, 2024. Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Police Response

In southern California, Pomona College this month deployed 25 vehicles’ worth of riot police to a Palestine solidarity demonstration, where police arrested 20 students from Pomona, Scripps, and Pitzer — schools all under the Claremont Colleges consortium. Pomona immediately suspended its seven students who were arrested and kicked them off campus. The school did not respond to The Intercept’s questions but said in a public statement it has “provided alternative options for housing and food.”

The protest was prompted by campus staff’s removal of an “apartheid wall” art fixture that students constructed, focusing on Palestinian people’s suffering under Israel’s occupation. The move prompted students to gather, chanting in support of Gaza and Palestine. They soon entered a campus building, entering President Gabrielle Starr’s office, with more soon occupying the hallway outside.

The school rallied some two dozen police cars in order to detain the students; all the while, campus safety officers forced out a student reporter and blocked a window, impeding the reporter’s ability to record.

Twenty students were arrested and taken to the Claremont Police Department. An attorney for the students told the Los Angeles Times that he was not allowed to see his student clients and that he was told by both the students and an officer that they weren’t read their Miranda rights.

“We went into the administrative building to reiterate our demands for the college to disclose its investments and divest from weapons manufacturers and all institutions aiding the ongoing occupation of Palestine,” said Amanda Dym, a Jewish student at Scripps College who was arrested and suspended following the protest. “As students we faced jail time, suspension, and anxiety about pending charges and temporary houselessness due to a campus ban. But Palestinians face bombs, starvation, and martyrdom.”

Students at the various Claremont Colleges regularly spend time on the other, nearby campuses, whether to eat or to attend class. Because of her suspension, Dym was barred from doing anything on Pomona’s campus other than attend class — not even visit the school’s dining halls or access campus resources for her classes. As the school continues its investigation, some students have been allowed to return to campus, while it remains off-limits to others, according to a college source familiar with the situation.

The apartheid wall was constructed after students voted by wide margins to approve five demands of the school: “cease all academic support” for the State of Israel; disclose “investments in all companies aiding the ongoing apartheid system within the State of Israel”; divest completely from said companies; disclose investments in weapons manufacturers; and divest completely from those said companies too.

Days before the vote — which garnered some 60 percent voter turnout — Starr said “there are many ways to help heal a broken world,” but the vote was “not one of them.” She went on to criticize the referendum as reductive and as one that “raises the specter of antisemitism.” Each proposal passed with at least 75 percent approval, some up to even 90 percent.

Esmaeli, the visiting professor at Pomona, told The Intercept that the referendum revealed how “it’s not just a small number of activist students” who support boycotting or divesting from the Israeli government, but rather that those activists “represent the majority of the student body.”

He added, “I think that’s why they had to make sure that they quelled the students.”

The post Ahead of Congressional Testimony, Columbia President Cracks Down on Student Advocacy for Palestine appeared first on The Intercept .

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

“It’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”

First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months. It presents an internal window into the thinking of Times international editors as they have faced upheaval within the newsroom surrounding the paper’s Gaza war coverage.

“Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.”

Issues over style guidance have been among a bevy of internal rifts at the Times over its Gaza coverage. In January, The Intercept reported on disputes in the Times newsroom over issues with an investigative story on systematic sexual violence on October 7. The leak gave rise to a highly unusual internal probe . The company faced harsh criticism for allegedly targeting Times workers of Middle East and North African descent, which Times brass denied. On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff that the leak investigation had been concluded unsuccessfully.

WhatsApp Debates

Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.

The debates between reporters on the Jerusalem bureau-led WhatsApp group, which at one point included 90 reporters and editors, became so intense that Pan, the international editor, interceded.

“We need to do a better job communicating with each other as we report the news, so our discussions are more productive and our disagreements less distracting,” Pan wrote in a November 28 WhatsApp message viewed by The Intercept and first reported by the Wall Street Journal. “At its best, this channel has been a quick, transparent and productive space to collaborate on a complex, fast-moving story. At its worst, it’s a tense forum where the questions and comments can feel accusatory and personal.”

Pan bluntly stated: “Do not use this channel for raising concerns about coverage.”

Among the topics of debate in the Jerusalem bureau WhatsApp group and exchanges on Slack, reviewed by The Intercept and verified with multiple newsroom sources, were Israeli attacks on Al-Shifa Hospital , statistics on Palestinian civilian deaths, the allegations of genocidal conduct by Israel, and President Joe Biden’s pattern of promoting unverified allegations from the Israeli government as fact. (Pan did not respond to a request for comment.)

“It’s not unusual for news companies to set style guidelines. But there are unique standards applied to violence perpetrated by Israel.”

Many of the same debates were addressed in the Times’s Gaza-specific style guidance and have been the subject of intense public scrutiny.

“It’s not unusual for news companies to set style guidelines,” said another Times newsroom source, who also asked for anonymity. “But there are unique standards applied to violence perpetrated by Israel. Readers have noticed and I understand their frustration.”

“Words Like ‘Slaughter’”

The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says.

“Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.”

Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.

In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.

The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.

The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months.

Touchy Debates

The Times memo touches on some of the most highly charged — and disputed — language around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The guidance spells out, for instance, usage of the word “terrorist,” which The Intercept previously reported was at the center of a spirited newsroom debate.

“It is accurate to use ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in describing the attacks of Oct. 7, which included the deliberate targeting of civilians in killings and kidnappings,” according to the leaked Times memo. “We should not shy away from that description of the events or the attackers, particularly when we provide context and explanation.”

The guidance also instructs journalists to “Avoid ‘fighters’ when referring to the Oct. 7 attack; the term suggests a conventional war rather than a deliberate attack on civilians. And be cautious in using ‘militants,’ which is interpreted in different ways and may be confusing to readers.”

In the memo, the editors tell Times journalists: “We do not need to assign a single label or to refer to the Oct. 7 assault as a ‘terrorist attack’ in every reference; the word is best used when specifically describing attacks on civilians. We should exercise restraint and can vary the language with other accurate terms and descriptions: an attack, an assault, an incursion, the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, etc. Similarly, in addition to ‘terrorists,’ we can vary the terms used to describe the Hamas members who carried out the assault: attackers, assailants, gunmen.”

The Times does not characterize Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinian civilians as “terrorism,” even when civilians have been targeted. This is also true of Israel’s assaults on protected civilian sites , including hospitals .

In a section with the headline “‘Genocide’ and Other Incendiary Language,” the guidance says, “‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law. In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”

Regarding “ethnic cleansing,” the document calls it “another historically charged term,” instructing reporters: “If someone is making such an accusation, we should press for specifics or supply proper context.”

Bucking International Norms

In the cases of describing “occupied territory” and the status of refugees in Gaza, the Times style guidelines run counter to norms established by the United Nations and international humanitarian law.

On the term “Palestine” — a widely used name for both the territory and the U.N.-recognized state — the Times memo contains blunt instructions: “Do not use in datelines, routine text or headlines, except in very rare cases such as when the United Nations General Assembly elevated Palestine to a nonmember observer state, or references to historic Palestine.” The Times guidance resembles that of the Associated Press Stylebook .

The memo directs journalists not to use the phrase “refugee camps” to describe long-standing refugee settlements in Gaza. “While termed refugee camps, the refugee centers in Gaza are developed and densely populated neighborhoods dating to the 1948 war. Refer to them as neighborhoods, or areas, and if further context is necessary, explain how they have historically been called refugee camps.”

The United Nations recognizes eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. As of last year, before the war started, the areas were home to more than 600,000 registered refugees. Many are descendants of those who fled to Gaza after being forcibly expelled from their homes in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which marked the founding of the Jewish state and mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The Israeli government has long been hostile to the historical fact that Palestinians maintain refugee status, because it signifies that they were displaced from lands they have a right to return to.

“It’s like, ‘Oh let’s not say occupation because it might make it look like we’re justifying a terrorist attack.’”

Since October 7, Israel has repeatedly bombed refugee camps in Gaza, including Jabaliya, Al Shati, Al Maghazi, and Nuseirat.

The memo’s instructions on the use of “occupied territories” says, “When possible, avoid the term and be specific (e.g. Gaza, the West Bank, etc.) as each has a slightly different status.” The United Nations, along with much of the world, considers Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to be occupied Palestinian territories, seized by Israel in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war.

The admonition against the use of the term “occupied territories,” said a Times staffer, obscures the reality of the conflict, feeding into the U.S. and Israeli insistence that the conflict began on October 7.

“You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict,” said the newsroom source. “It’s like, ‘Oh let’s not say occupation because it might make it look like we’re justifying a terrorist attack.’”

The post Leaked NYT Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory” appeared first on The Intercept .

No Labels abandoned its presidential primary bid last week after failing to recruit a centrist candidate to challenge President Joe Biden. Though it had been unable to recruit anyone, the group had already raised tens of millions of dollars — money that, despite its self-proclaimed centrism , ultimately would have gone toward trying to unseat a sitting Democratic president. The group has, for years, raised cash from Republican billionaires in service of its purportedly middle-of-the-road politics.

Now, one of No Labels’s founders is receiving Democratic support to take a congressional seat in New York. John Avlon, who helped found No Labels in 2010, is two months out from the Democratic primary in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Avlon’s website doesn’t list many specifics, and his media appearances have focused mostly on calls for “defending democracy.”

Aside from running against Donald Trump, Avlon’s stated purpose is to flip the district, which has spent nearly a decade in Republican hands, and help Democrats win the House back after losing the 2022 midterms. To do so, Avlon is turning to a Democrat who has received some blame for losing the House in the first place: On Friday, New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs endorsed Avlon.

Democrats are still digging out from the damage done in the 2022 midterms. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., at the time blamed Jacobs and called for his resignation , but Jacobs denied any responsibility for the losses that likely cost the party its majority in Congress.

Jacobs is, in some ways, a good match for Avlon’s campaign. The state party chair, who did not respond to a request for comment, has long clashed with party progressives and staunchly backed the state’s centrist and conservative Democrats. The approach roughly aligns with Avlon’s primary campaign , as well as his political positions in years as a media commentator and founder of No Labels, which he says he hasn’t been involved with since 2013.

“There is a reason why John has energized Democratic voters in Suffolk County and why he has by far the most local support from Democratic activists, elected officials, and organizations,” Avlon campaign manager Bryan Sokolowski said in a statement to The Intercept. “They want to take back NY-1 from MAGA extremist Republican Nick LaLota so that Democrats can flip the House and get to work protecting a woman’s right to an abortion, defending democracy and rebuilding the middle class.”

“There is a reason why John has energized Democratic voters in Suffolk County.”

Democrats vying for the Long Island seat, which encompasses parts of Southampton, East Hampton and Riverhead, have come close in recent cycles. Considered a swing seat, the district has a slight Republican bent, according to polls, and the largest share of independents in the state. Trump won the district in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential races.

Avlon, a former political operative and journalist, is hoping to appeal to the large share of independent voters in the district. He first registered as a Democrat in Sag Harbor in 2020. Prior to that, he was registered as “blank” and had not voted in a Democratic primary in New York.

The Republican in the race, first-term incumbent Rep. Nick LaLota, criticized Avlon for entering the district by purchasing a vacation home in the Hamptons in 2020 and making inroads with the district’s elite. LaLota took office last year after former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin held the seat for eight years.

At least five Democrats are running in the June 25 primary, including Avlon and Nancy Goroff, a candidate in the 2020 race against Zeldin. Avlon may have an edge in name recognition, but Goroff is currently leading the primacy race has and has led fundraising with $610,000 so far, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. EMILY’s List endorsed Goroff in March. Avlon’s campaign has not yet filed disclosures with the FEC but said he had raised more than $1.1 million so far.

Centrist Stalwart

Avlon is running as a centrist who can combat Trump’s influence in the district. Mainstream media have portrayed him as candidate who can help Democrats finally win the seat with little scrutiny of his policy positions.

The longtime advocate for centrism used to be a Republican operative, working as a policy adviser and speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor and then for his presidential run in the 2008 election. Avlon now dismisses his role with Giuliani by saying that, at the time, Giuliani was “sane” — a reference to the mayor’s ties to Trump, strong advocacy for election denial, and erratic behavior.

Today, Avlon’s campaign is focused on attacking Trump. His website says he’s running against “unhinged extremism and poisonous polarization,” including veiled warnings about Trump without mentioning him by name, but throughout his decadeslong career, Avlon has voiced more conservative opinions on issues from abortion to labor rights.

“Now is one of those times in our nation’s history when we’re all called to stand up for something bigger than ourselves,” his website reads. “ We can’t afford to pretend that a presidential nominee who praises dictators and threatens democracy is normal. We need to confront lies with facts and darkness with light.”

When No Labels sought to mount its presidential run this year, Avalon said the effort was an “ extraordinarily reckless risk .”

Avlon has said, without any specific policy proposals, that he supports federal investment in mitigating climate change, improving transportation, expanding the child tax credit, and reducing the cost of living for working families.

In previous comments, including several articles in the Daily Beast, Avlon has praised Republicans , including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie , former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush , and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott , for taking positions that range from confronting unions to restricting abortions.

In an interview that was recently removed from his campaign website, Avlon compared unions to the religious right. He criticized opponents of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attacks on Disney over its to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Avlon previously suggested that there are “reasonable restrictions” on abortion access and that it was “an honorable goal” to reduce the number of abortions in the country, though “it should be a matter of persuasion, not legislation.” He also wrote that he didn’t believe that positions on abortion should be a litmus test for candidates. (Avlon’s campaign pointed to his keynote speech at a 2011 Planned Parenthood event as an example of his longtime support of abortion rights.)

Along with support from Jacobs, the Democratic state party chair, Avlon has also been endorsed by several state and local officials and regional Democratic groups .

The post Remember the Centrists Who Lost the House in 2022? They’re Back! appeared first on The Intercept .

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets U.S. President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on October 18, 2023. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Israeli bombing of an Iranian consular office in Damascus on April 1 was the first salvo in a new phase of a regional conflict between the two countries. The attack, which killed several senior Iranian military officials, took the conflict from proxy warfare to direct confrontation.

On Saturday night, Iran launched its long-expected response to Israel, targeting the country with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles. The attacks, reportedly telegraphed in the days beforehand as part of backchannel negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, were mostly intercepted on route to Israel.

The first direct attack by a state military against Israel since Iraq’s Scud missile launches during 1991’s Gulf War, the Iranian salvo — slow, deliberate, and forewarned — appeared calculated not to escalate the situation. The same cannot be said of Israel’s strike against the Iranians in Syria.

While Israeli officials, not least Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have sought to portray the Jewish state as the victims of an unprovoked Iranian attack, it was their own deadly strike on the Damascus consulate that triggered the new phase of the conflict. Though the U.S. created the conditions that may have encouraged Netanyahu’s gambit, it was reportedly Israel, acting on its own behalf, without coordination with its allies, that precipitated the latest grave escalation.

Even Israel’s patron and closest partner, the U.S., indicated it had not been involved or aware of planning for the consulate attack. Following this weekend’s Iranian response, which did very limited damage, the U.S. cautioned patience and encouraged Israel to see the barrage as an end to the current standoff.

The reciprocal blows between Israel and Iran have now pushed the Middle East into dangerously uncharted waters, at a time when many U.S. policymakers are seeking to leave the region and refocus attention on Europe and east Asia.

Despite reported pleading from the Biden administration to seek a diplomatic off-ramp, Israeli officials are promising an escalated response to Iran. They are threatening to target of military sites inside Iran, as well as sites tied to the country’s nuclear program, a longtime Israeli obsession.

The Iranians have said continuing this cycle of strikes would trigger another reciprocal attack against Israel, far broader in scope and less likely to be coordinated with the U.S. or other regional powers to minimize damage. The result could be a full-scale war between two powerful states, including one whose security is all but politically guaranteed by the U.S. military. In that light, the prospect of the U.S. “pivoting to Asia,” or even recommitting fully to the defense of Ukraine would likely become farcical.

The potential handcuffing of U.S. policy has not gone unnoticed in Washington. A report by NBC News on the morning after Iran’s strikes quoted three individuals close to Joe Biden as saying that the president “privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag Washington into a broader conflict.”

President Joe Biden meets with members of his national security team on April 13, 2024, regarding the unfolding missile attacks on Israel from Iran, in the White House Situation Room. Photo: Adam Schultz/White House

Reaping What is Sown

Despite Biden’s concerns, the U.S. is the one that created a moral hazard by encouraging Israel to act more recklessly. Israel’s decision to attack Iran’s consulate building, where it killed a number of top officials from the elite Quds Force, itself was unlikely to have happened without Netanyahu’s belief that he could count on U.S. support no matter what Israel does .

Who could blame him? There have been sudden U.S. shifts on the war in Gaza and Biden apparently rejected further Israeli strikes against Iran, but American officials including the president have by and large struck a tone of total, unflinching support for Israel. Though this support has not always extended to Netanyahu himself, the strike against Damascus seemed to be a test of that distinction.

And the violent exchange with Iran also highlights a much wider chasm between the interests of the U.S. and Israel — and the countries’ leaders. The U.S. has material incentives to draw down its focus on the Middle East and does not want to fight another major war in the region, but for Israel and for Netanyahu personally there are strong reasons to start a direct confrontation with Iran and its allies.

Since the start of its post-October 7 assault on Gaza, Israeli civilians have mostly abandoned the northern are of the country due to the nearby presence, across the Lebanese border, of fighters from the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Many Israeli security officials feel that a war with Hezbollah and by extension Iran is inevitable . They prefer a strategy of initiating one now on Israel’s terms while the U.S. still has a military presence in the region that could be forced into the fight.

From Netanyahu’s perspective, once the current war ends, he is likely to face serious political and legal problems inside Israel. Expanding the conflict to a regional one could delay his day of reckoning — or even change his personally fortunes entirely.

Israeli incentives for war with Iran should logically put it on a crash course with the U.S. political establishment. Yet the deep ideological, economic, and political ties that supporters of Israel have cultivated with U.S. politicians and security elites, make it possible that the U.S. may wind up in a war with Iran whether they like it or not.

It would not be a cakewalk. Iran is larger than Iraq, boasting vastly more sophisticated defenses and a huge web of regional military assets. A major war would not be limited in time or scope. At a moment when the U.S. is running short of munitions and funding to support Ukraine and is nervously eyeing China’s military buildup in east Asia, it is hard to think of worse timing for such a conflict, regardless of how opportune it may be for Israel.

Israeli officials are now reportedly debating whether to “go big” with strikes against Iran, or take a more measured response. Iran meanwhile has said that if Israel lashes out, it will hit back harder — ostensibly in a manner calculated to overwhelm Israeli air defenses. If that happens, Biden will have to confront the contradictions of a policy of embracing Israel and enabling its most extreme tendencies, while at the same time trying to do what is best for the U.S.

Contrary to the words of some sycophantic U.S. politicians, the interests of the two countries are not identical, and, today, do not even appear to be aligned.

The post Israel and Israel Alone Kicked Off This Escalation — In a Bid to Drag U.S. Into War With Iran appeared first on The Intercept .

The regional war in the Middle East now involves at least 16 different countries and includes the first strikes from Iranian territory on Israel, but the United States continues to insist that there is no broader war, hiding the extent of American military involvement. And yet in response to Iran’s drone and missile attacks Saturday, the U.S. flew aircraft and launched air defense missiles from at least eight countries, while Iran and its proxies fired weapons from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

The news media has been complicit in its portrayal of the regional war as nonexistent. “Biden Seeks to Head Off Escalation After Israel’s Successful Defense,” the New York Times blared this morning, ignoring that the conflict had already spread. “Iran attacks Israel, risking a full-blown regional war,” says The Economist. “Some top U.S. officials are worried that Israel may respond hastily to Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attacks and provoke a wider regional conflict that the U.S. could get dragged into,” says NBC, parroting the White House’s deception.

The Washington-based reporting follows repeated Biden administration statements that none of this amounts to a regional war. “So far, there is not … a wider regional conflict,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Thursday, in response to a question about Israel’s strike on the Iranian Embassy. Ryder’s statement followed repeated assertions by Iranian leadership that retaliation would follow — and even a private message from the Iranians to the U.S . that if it helped defend Israel, the U.S. would also be a viable target — after which the White House reiterated its “ironclad” support for Israel.

While the world has been focused on — and the Pentagon has been stressing — the comings and goings of aircraft carriers and fighter jets to serve as a “deterrent” against Iran, the U.S. has quietly built a network of air defenses to fight its regional war. “At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

As part of that network, Army long-range Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense surface-to-air missile batteries have been deployed in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and at the secretive Site 512 base in Israel. These assets — plus American aircraft based in Kuwait, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — are knitted together in order to communicate and cooperate with each other to provide a dome over Israel (and its own regional bases). The United Kingdom is also intimately tied into the regional war network, while additional countries such as Bahrain have purchased Patriot missiles to be part of the network.

Despite this unambiguous regional network, and even after Israel’s attack on Iran’s embassy in Syria earlier this month, the Biden administration has consistently denied that the Hamas war has spread beyond Gaza. It is a policy stance — and a deception — that has held since Hamas’s October 7 attack. “The Middle East region is quieter than it has been in two decades,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an ill-timed remark eight days before October 7. “We don’t see this conflict widening as it still remains contained to Gaza,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the day after three U.S. troops were killed by a kamikaze drone launched by an Iran-backed militia at a U.S. base in Jordan . Since then (and even before this weekend), the fighting has spread to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen.

As part of the regional war network, four American ships, part of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) battle group, have played a central role in thwarting Iran-backed attacks. The ships are equipped with long-range Standard surface-to-air missiles and the Phalanx close-in weapon system, a Gatling gun that serves as the ship’s last lines of defense against attack. All of the ships have been conducting offensive and defensive operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, focused on Houthi attacks (they all shot Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles at targets in Yemen on January 12).

According to maritime spotters and the Navy, the destroyer USS Gravely (DDG 107) has been conducting defensive and offensive operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since mid-March. It has been engaging Houthi drones and missiles fired from inside Yemen toward Israel and toward maritime traffic. The destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) has also been operating in the Red Sea. Just on Tuesday, it targeted a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile that was targeting the U.S. commercial ship M/V Yorktown, according to the Navy. The destroyer USS Laboon (DDG 58) arrived in the region in December and has been operating mostly in the Gulf of Aden. The guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) arrived around Christmas and has served as the main air defense command-and-control hub.

American ships have quietly called at ports in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Djibouti (the port of Duqm in Oman has been the most often visited foreign port). Lebanon is also involved in the conflict as Israel and Hezbollah have traded attacks.

The White House has also said that U.S. fighter jets were involved in some of the shootdowns of Iranian missiles. Flight trackers noticed a U.S. Air Force refueling plane, stationed in Qatar, flying missions over Iraq during the Iranian attack. In total, according to CNN , around 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles were launched at Israel overnight Saturday. All told, US forces were responsible for over 100 interceptions of Iranian drones and missiles, according to Israeli officials.

The post As Israel Conflict Spreads to 16 Nations, Biden Administration Says There’s No War appeared first on The Intercept .

Units on alert, naval ships repositioning, bombers postured to fly, Marines ready to storm the beaches. These are all of the routines of a crisis that signals U.S. military readiness for war. But there’s another routine that often eludes Washington’s acknowledgment: the military’s own deployment schedule when it comes to units venturing out there into the real world. The schedule is sacrosanct. So while some might think the potential for war with Iran — right now — is high and the U.S. military is on high alert, the reality is that it’s business as usual.

On Friday, the Pentagon made vague statements that it is moving assets to the Middle East to express American displeasure and readiness should Iran attack Israel. President Joe Biden made a public threat toward Iran: “Don’t,” referring to any Iranian strike. And the administration trumpeted the presence of Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of Central Command, or CENTCOM, in Israel, there to “consult” with America’s ironclad partner.

But as Washington hawks and the news media hold their breath for what they call an “imminent” strike overseen by Tehran on Israeli soil, the U.S. military in the Middle East is sticking to its regular schedule of soldier comings and goings, including the redeployment of a high-profile Marine battle group that returned to the U.S. after an eight-month voyage.

In fact, thousands of Marines, Navy sailors, Army troops, and Air Force war fighters have cycled back stateside over the past few weeks and even since the Israeli attack on the Iranian Embassy compound in Syria on April 1. In a purely routine way, in accordance with existing plans, some half-dozen deployments to the Middle East have come to an end. For the armed services, maintaining soldier schedules is more important than geopolitics. And indeed, there’s no evidence that the military services take much notice of the contradiction between their schedules and a brewing escalation. They are more focused on trying to please service members, wives, and parents in their bids to recruit and retain enlisted people than they are on the Pentagon’s war game machinations.

Even the Army’s undertakers are calling it quits. According to a recent announcement , Army body-bag handlers returned from the Middle East this month. “The 54th Quartermaster Company is the Army’s only active-duty mortuary affairs unit,” the announcement reads. “The unit sent 29 Soldiers to Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates in support of a wide array of operations in the region. Today, we get to welcome back detachment number one, 29 of our best from CENTCOM,” the company commander Capt. Peter Kase said.

Meanwhile, service members overseeing rescue operations relating to air and naval attacks by Yemen returned home this month . An announcement celebrating the accomplishments and return of the U.S. Air Force Capt. Araceli Saunders last week details her efforts while deployed in Saudi Arabia, including “providing airborne alert for Operation POSEIDON ARCHER enabling thirty-one coalition strikes on Yemeni bases” and “reducing the threat to international maritime shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”

Despite Houthi attacks from Yemen and Iran-backed militia strikes from Syria and Iraq, U.S. forces routinely cycle in and out of the Middle East. On March 16, more than 4,000 Marines and sailors with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit began their journey home from a deployment that was reoriented from pure training to direct support for American diplomacy and military readiness after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Meanwhile, soldiers tasked with strengthening deterrence on land, according to the Army, have also ended their deployments. On February 8, artillery gunners with the Michigan Army National Guard returned from a deployment to Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. According to the press release , the soldiers supported Operation Inherent Resolve, the military’s ongoing war against ISIS.

“Alpha Battery’s accomplishments during their deployment underscore the Michigan National Guard’s commitment to ensuring the safety and security of our nation,” a spokespeople said. “Their dedication and proficiency in operating the HIMARS [long-range missile] system have significantly advanced our strategic objectives in the region.”

The return of soldiers from CENTCOM follows an announcement this past week that the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, based out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, is reorganizing to better meet its own internal deployment requirements. There’s no mention of strategic reshuffling to meet imminent plans for war, but rather “to provide predictability for Airmen” in future deployments and rotations, in other words, to meet quality-of-life objectives.

As intelligence officials give dire predictions to the New York Times about Iran’s threat, and Israeli military officials warn citizens against hoarding in preparation for a volley of cruise missiles, Iran continues to go to great lengths to avoid an out-of-control conflict with its sworn adversary, and its hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Financial Times report from this week details Iran’s efforts to convey through diplomatic channels that it does not wish to see an escalation that stokes all-out war with Israel and the United States. This and other news media reports say that Iran is engaging the United States through diplomatic channels to find a response that both demonstrates deterrence in response to the April 1 strike, without starting a war. (The U.S. and Iran have been talking through Oman to avoid an appearance of direct negotiations.)

In a subtle nod to its view that it’s business as usual, the U.S. Navy quietly relinquished command of the Red Sea Combined Task Force 153, handing it over to an Italian counterpart at the beginning of April. “I am incredibly proud of all the hard work and dedication by CTF 153 staff and units at-sea in support of Operation Prosperity Guardian,” outgoing U.S. Navy commander Capt. David Coles said. “Their efforts have directly contributed to regional maritime security and freedom of navigation in the CTF 153 area of operations. … It is a true honor to hand over command to an incredibly strong maritime partner like Italy. I know the Task Force is in good hands, and look forward to celebrating CTF 153’s future accomplishments under Capt. Messina’s stewardship.”

If Iran attacks Israel or the United States, on the ground, the American military posture looks routine, nowhere near matching the feverish vibes coming out of Washington. From his hotel room in Tel Aviv, Kurilla undoubtedly is closer to the action with his cellphone on red alert. But his visit is purely symbolic with regard to Iran. The truth is that the U.S. “mission” in the Middle East right now is as much to dissuade Israel from escalating.

The post U.S. Military Isn’t That Concerned About War With Iran appeared first on The Intercept .

“None of us benefit from a burning planet,” says activist and documentarian Astra Taylor on this week’s Deconstructed. Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix join Ryan Grim to discuss their new book, “ Solidarity: The Past, Present, And Future of a World-Changing Idea .” Delving into the philosophical depths of solidarity, they trace its origins back to ancient Rome and explore its relevance in today’s interconnected world.

Focusing on transformative solidarity, they highlight its potential to bridge diverse experiences and causes, offering a unified approach to address the multifaceted crises we face. Taylor, a co-founder of the Debt Collective , a union of debtors, and Hunt-Hendrix, co-founder of progressive philanthropy networks Solidaire and Way to Win, draw on their experience to underscore the necessity of transformative solidarity in movement building.

Transcript coming soon.

The post Solidarity Forever: Building Movements Amid Today’s Crises appeared first on The Intercept .

Negative experiences during military service are the main drivers of extremist beliefs amongst veterans, a new study from the RAND Corporation concludes. While the Pentagon-funded think tank report cites former President Donald Trump and January 6 as radicalization catalysts, one or more negative experiences in the military was the most consistent attribute for those expressing right- or left-wing extremist views, the study found in a survey of 21 veterans.

Extremist movements supported by RAND’s sample group included QAnon, the Proud Boys, the Five Percent Nation, KKK, Antifa, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panthers.

The 21 veterans interviewed for the study revealed a “considerable presence of negative and traumatic life events for interviewees while in the military and afterward while trying to adapt to civilian life,” the study says. The report is careful to note that it applied a small sample size and the need for further research to bolster correlation between time in the military and radicalization, but its general conclusions mirror other studies.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland conducted a 2022 study that found extremists who plotted or conducted mass casualty extremist attacks were 2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders if they served in the military. “Service members and veterans are not more likely to radicalize to the point of violence than members of the general population,” the study concluded. “However, this research brief illustrates that when service members and veterans do radicalize, they are more likely to plan for, or commit, mass casualty crimes, thus having an outsized impact on public safety.”

A Department of Justice report from 2018 also identified prior military service as a risk factor for violent extremism, alongside other factors including being socially isolated, being single, living alone, and being male.

The RAND study comes as Pentagon leadership and members of Congress on both the left and right have called for greater efforts to root out extremism in the ranks. In the wake of January 6, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tasked the Countering Extremist Activity Working Group to implement steps and provide recommendations addressing the threat posed by extremist activities. The subsequent defense secretary report required the military services to include in-person discussions about extremist activity in periodic training and required counter-extremist activity training engaging senior officers, law enforcement, and legal advisers.

The Pentagon push to root out extremism follows pressure from liberal lawmakers. In 2021, senators including Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Robert Menendez, D-N.J.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., wrote to Austin, “The Department must make every effort to identify service members involved with violent extremist groups to curtail future misconduct and to ensure the maintenance of good order and discipline within the ranks.”

Meanwhile, this month, Republican members of Congress have launched their own effort to root out extremism of the left-wing variety, motivated in part by the self-immolation of Air Force service member Aaron Bushnell in February. In a letter sent to Austin, Reps. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y.; Brian Mast, R-Fla.; Eli Crane, R-Ariz.; Mike Kelly, R-Pa.; Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.; and Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, wrote to demand a right-wing version of Democrats’ earlier demands.

“Your dedication to rooting out extremist behavior within our ranks has been well documented and demonstrates a commitment to maintaining the honor and cohesion of our armed forces,” the representatives wrote . “It is with this shared commitment in mind that we urge your attention toward the equally pressing issue of left-wing extremism among active duty service members and veterans.”

What members of both parties have ignored is the central finding of the RAND report, which identifies veterans with negative military experiences as the demographic at higher risk for radicalization. This suggests that extremism stems from military service rather than a common belief that extremism is infiltrating into the ranks in any significant way. Indeed, a 2023 report commissioned by the Defense Department and conducted by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analyses also found “no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” The report also found that “Extremism in the veterans’ community has peaks and valleys over recent decades, and currently appears to be on the increase,” reflecting more the current political environment nationally than the nature of those driven to military service.

Sexual and psychological abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from recovering corpses, and substance abuse developed during active duty were all listed by veterans as negative experiences that coincided with their radicalization, according to RAND.

These negative experiences, as well as others, are also the cause of the military’s recruiting crisis, in that it has been unable for a number of years to meet its own goals in attracting qualified 18- to 24-year-olds to serve.

As the Defense Department struggles under the demands of liberal lawmakers to add more de-radicalization programs to their docket (and as the GOP accuses the military of acquiescing to a left-wing conspiracy to turn the military woke ), little is being done to evaluate military service itself and its corrosive effects. Bushnell’s death and the spate of suicides prevalent among young soldiers point to a culture crisis for the military itself , in whom it attracts to serve and then how it treats its own service members once they are in the military. The recent RAND report, in addition to the studies preceding it, suggest that programs focused on addressing the hardships soldiers undergo while serving in the military and in reentering civilian life is a most sensical path forward.

The post There’s a Bigger Driver of Veteran Radicalization Than Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept .