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Israel’s Bezalel Smotrich says ICC arrest warrant request is ‘declaration of war’

The simmering legal and political tensions over Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank escalated sharply this week, after far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly denounced a secret International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant application filed against him as a formal declaration of war, threatening immediate, harsh retaliation against Palestinian people and communities.

Smotrich made the inflammatory remarks in a prepared speech on Tuesday, confirming earlier reporting published by Middle East Eye (MEE) one day prior. The far-right minister claimed he had been notified overnight that the ICC Office of the Prosecutor had submitted a secret arrest warrant request naming him, which he dismissed by labeling the Hague-based court ‘Anti-Semitic Tribunal’ in a bid to delegitimize its legal process.

Per MEE’s exclusive reporting, the prosecutor’s office filed the application for Smotrich’s arrest last month, over allegations of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The specific charges listed against Smotrich include forced displacement, which is classified as both a war crime and crime against humanity; the unlawful transfer of Israel’s civilian population into occupied territory, a recognized war crime; and charges of persecution and apartheid, both deemed crimes against humanity under international law. If the ICC pre-trial chamber approves the warrant, it will mark the first time an international court has ever issued an arrest warrant for the crime of apartheid against an Israeli official.

Court records and insider sources indicate the application for Smotrich had been finalized for roughly one year before it was formally submitted to judges on 2 April. If approved, Smotrich will become the third senior Israeli official to be wanted by the ICC, following November 2024 warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In his address, Smotrich doubled down on his hardline stance, arguing that any ICC arrest warrant targeting senior Israeli cabinet members amounts to an act of aggression against the state of Israel. ‘Issuing arrest warrants against the prime minister is a declaration of war. Issuing arrest warrants against the minister of defence and the minister of finance is a declaration of war,’ Smotrich stated. ‘And in the face of a declaration of war, we will fight back with a vengeance.’ He went on to blame the Palestinian Authority for initiating the legal action, accusing it of starting a conflict by cooperating with the ICC to provide evidence supporting the charges.

The minister also reaffirmed he remains unapologetic for his longstanding advocacy for expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are widely deemed illegal under international law. He explicitly announced he would use his executive authority to immediately sign an order for the expulsion of Palestinian residents from the village of Khan al-Ahmar in the central West Bank, a community that has faced repeated expulsion threats from Israeli authorities for more than a decade.

‘From today, any economic or otherwise, anything that I can harm within the framework of my powers … will be attacked. Not talk and gimmicks – actions,’ Smotrich added, confirming he would use all levers of his finance minister role to inflict harm on Palestinian interests in retaliation for the ICC application.

There is currently no clear timeline for when ICC judges will issue a ruling on Smotrich’s warrant application. Pre-trial judges at the court typically require several months to review and rule on warrant requests, though timelines have varied widely: the court processed warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in roughly one month, while the applications for Netanyahu and Gallant took six months to approve. This means a final decision on Smotrich’s application could still be months away, as the request has not yet received formal judicial ratification.

MEE also reported last week that an evidence review was held to assess the viability of two additional arrest warrant applications, including one for far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, though neither has yet been formally submitted to the court. Smotrich and Ben Gvir have already faced coordinated international sanctions over their hardline policies and explicit statements advocating for the displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which date back to June 2024. Both politicians reside in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and both have publicly pushed for full Israeli annexation of the occupied territory and the return of Israeli settlers to the Gaza Strip.

In June 2024, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway announced coordinated sanctions against the two ministers, freezing any assets they hold within their jurisdictions and imposing entry bans. Multiple other Western countries have since implemented their own restrictions: in July 2024, Slovenia became the first European Union member state to declare both ministers persona non grata, while the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have implemented national travel bans, with the Dutch restriction applying across the entire 29-nation Schengen Area.

Efforts to impose EU-wide sanctions on Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been stalled for nearly two years. Then-EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell first proposed the measure in August 2024, describing the pair’s statements as ‘incitement to war crimes’, but the proposal failed to pass due to a lack of required unanimity among EU member states. The proposal was revived by current EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas earlier this year, and in September 2024, the European Commission formally put forward a sanctions package that paired a partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement with targeted sanctions against Hamas leaders, violent Israeli settlers, and the two far-right cabinet ministers. However, when the EU Foreign Affairs Council voted on the package on 11 May 2025, members only agreed to sanction settler organizations and Hamas figures, removing Ben Gvir and Smotrich from the sanctions list after Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary confirmed they would not support adding the pair.

The United States has maintained consistent opposition to all sanctions against the two ministers, and has actively opposed the ICC’s Israel-related investigations overall. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly urged allied nations to reverse their existing sanctions on Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and the current U.S. administration has imposed its own sanctions on ICC officials in a bid to halt the court’s ongoing probes into alleged Israeli war crimes.

19 5 月, 2026
Flotilla activists say Gaza-bound ships still sailing, while UN warns humanitarian situation remains dire

The long-running humanitarian crisis in Gaza has entered a new, more tense phase this week, as organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a major initiative delivering aid to the blockaded Palestinian enclave, confirmed that 10 of their vessels remain en route to Gaza after Israeli naval forces intercepted 41 boats in international waters. According to the flotilla’s coordination team, the closest remaining ship is currently just 145 nautical miles from Gaza’s besieged coastline.

Israeli authorities have made their opposition to the aid mission clear: the country’s Foreign Ministry stated Monday that it would not permit any breach of its long-standing naval blockade of Gaza, and issued an immediate demand for all remaining flotilla vessels to reverse course. Earlier the same day, organizers reported that Israeli troops had surrounded 38 of the original 54-vessel fleet when the convoy was 250 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast, detaining roughly 300 international activists on board. In a formal statement, the Global Sumud Flotilla condemned the interception as unlawful high-seas aggression, accusing Israel of consistent, systematic violation of international maritime law, the right to freedom of high-seas navigation, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This latest interception comes just two weeks after Israeli forces intercepted 22 other flotilla vessels off the Greek coast, detaining 181 humanitarian volunteers in that operation. Among the current detainees are 11 Australian citizens, including medical professionals, students and academics, and the Australian government confirmed Monday it is urgently working to verify their safety and status.

Parallel to the standoff at sea, the catastrophic humanitarian situation inside Gaza continues to deteriorate, according to updates from United Nations and global medical aid groups. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned in its most recent situation report that conditions in the enclave remain dire: the vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with most residents exposed to persistent threats to public health and environmental safety. Israeli military operations across the enclave have intensified in recent days, with reports of sustained air strikes and ground gunfire in major population centers including Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Gaza City. A string of deadly Israeli attacks on civilian areas between May 13 and 17 has killed multiple civilians, including two Palestinian brothers in Jabalia on May 14, one civilian near Jabalia’s Abu Hussein school on May 16, and three community kitchen workers at a food distribution site in Deir al-Balah on May 17. The deadliest of these recent attacks came on May 15 – Nakba Day, the annual commemoration of the 1948 displacement of Palestinians – when an Israeli strike on a Gaza City residential building killed Izz al-Din al-Haddad, leader of Hamas’s armed wing, along with his wife, daughter, and four other civilian residents.

Updated official figures from Palestinian medical sources put the total death toll in Gaza since the start of the conflict on October 7, 2023, at 72,763, with an additional 172,664 people wounded. Thousands more are still missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings. Even after the temporary October ceasefire, violence has continued: at least 871 Palestinians have been killed and 2,562 injured, while recovery teams have recovered 776 bodies from destroyed structures in that period.

Gaza’s already crippled healthcare system is now on the brink of total collapse, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health. Official data shows that 76 percent of Gaza’s medical imaging equipment has been destroyed or rendered unusable by Israeli attacks and strict aid restrictions. All nine MRI machines that previously operated across the enclave have been destroyed, leaving no MRI services available anywhere in Gaza. Just five of 18 existing CT scanners are still functional, and only 33 out of 88 X-ray machines remain operational. This catastrophic loss of diagnostic capacity has severely hampered the ability of medical workers to treat wounded and sick patients, the ministry added.

Overcrowded displacement camps across Gaza are now facing a fast-spreading public health outbreak, according to UN agencies and Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP). Skin infections and other diseases linked to unsanitary conditions and rodent and insect infestations are spreading rapidly, driven by contaminated food supplies, unsafe overcrowded housing, and the total collapse of basic sanitation services. Children are disproportionately affected by the outbreaks. Mohammed Ibrahim Salem, a community health worker with MAP in central Gaza, reported that scabies is particularly widespread among displaced populations, and warned that critical medication supplies are already exhausted. “The current stock is completely inadequate to handle the rising number of skin infections in overcrowded camps, leaving thousands of displaced people without access to essential treatment,” Salem said. The World Health Organization has also warned that Gaza’s rehabilitation services are overwhelmed, with more than 43,000 people across the enclave – one quarter of them children – having sustained permanent, life-changing injuries that require long-term care.

Aid access remains severely constrained, even as needs grow exponentially. OCHA data shows that between May 1 and May 11, only half of all aid trucks arriving from Egypt were able to offload supplies at Israeli-controlled border crossings into Gaza. Severe restrictions on imports of fuel and flour have also driven a catastrophic bread shortage, forcing most local bakeries to close and forcing the World Food Programme to cut back on life-saving food distribution. As of April, WFP data shows that 77 percent of Gaza residents still face extreme levels of acute food insecurity, facing chronic hunger and risk of famine.

The rising violence is not limited to Gaza: in the occupied West Bank, settler violence and Israeli military operations have killed two Palestinian teenagers in recent days. On May 13, 16-year-old Youssef Kaabneh was killed by Israeli fire near the village of Jiljilya, north of Ramallah, during a settler incursion that left another child with a critical chest wound. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society confirmed its medical teams were able to treat the wounded child, but reported increasing restrictions on access for emergency responders. On May 16, a second 16-year-old, Fahd Awais, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, south of Nablus. In that incident, the Red Crescent said Israeli forces blocked ambulances from reaching the wounded teenager before he died.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged in a recent televised address that Israeli military forces now control roughly 60 percent of Gaza’s territory, an area that exceeds the “yellow line” boundary agreed to during the October ceasefire, further escalating tensions over the expanding military operation.

19 5 月, 2026
Secret mission to ship uranium from Venezuela

Declassified satellite photographic evidence has brought to light a previously undisclosed joint operation that moved a shipment of uranium out of Venezuela and into United States territory, according to newly released observational data. The mission, which had been kept entirely under wraps since its execution, was only uncovered when commercial satellite analysts examining recent orbital shots of Venezuelan port facilities identified unusual cargo movement activity that did not match any recorded official shipments. Multiple independent verification checks of the imagery have confirmed that the large cargo containers documented in the shots match the profile of materials transported in cross-border uranium shipments, and the route tracked from Venezuela directly to a receiving facility in the U.S. The revelation of this secret operation has sparked immediate discussion about the undisclosed coordination between U.S. and regional partner agencies, as well as questions surrounding the origins of the Venezuelan uranium and the security protocols that allowed the entire mission to remain hidden from public and diplomatic scrutiny for an extended period. At the time of this reporting, no official government spokesperson from either the U.S. or Venezuela has issued a formal statement confirming or denying the details of the shipment operation.

19 5 月, 2026
Rubio heads to a NATO FMs meeting as European angst over Trump reliability, US troops, Iran grows

Amid growing transatlantic unease over shifting U.S. security commitments and unpredictable leadership from the Trump administration, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to depart this week for a critical NATO foreign ministers gathering in Helsingborg, Sweden. The high-stakes meeting comes as the alliance navigates cascading global crises: ongoing fallout from the Iran war, skyrocketing global energy prices, and deepening uncertainty over Washington’s long-term commitment to collective European defense. This gathering also marks one of the final senior-level diplomatic gatherings ahead of NATO’s full leadership summit scheduled for July in Ankara, Turkey.

Following the Sweden talks, Rubio will embark on a multi-stop tour of India, where he will visit Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur, and New Delhi. In the Indian capital, he is slated to hold bilateral talks with senior Indian government officials and join a gathering of foreign ministers from the Quad, the four-nation Indo-Pacific democratic grouping that also includes Australia, India, and Japan.

In a formal statement released this week, the State Department outlined that Rubio will reiterate longstanding U.S. demands at the NATO meeting: pushing alliance members to boost their national defense spending and take on a larger share of the collective security burden for the bloc. He will also prioritize discussions of Arctic strategy, holding targeted talks with NATO’s Arctic member states to align on shared economic and security interests in the region and reinforce the alliance’s enhanced military posture in the High North.

While the State Department’s statement did not explicitly reference Greenland, the strategically positioned autonomous Danish territory has emerged as a new source of transatlantic friction, after Donald Trump repeatedly drawn international backlash for his open discussion of seeking to acquire the territory for the United States. This week, Trump’s special Greenland envoy, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, traveled to the island for talks with local leadership. Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told Danish broadcaster TV 2 after the meeting that while the discussion was respectful and constructive, he made clear that Greenland’s people are committed to full self-determination. “The Greenlandic people are not for sale. Greenlandic self-determination is not something that can be negotiated,” Nielsen said.

For European allies who have grown increasingly uneasy with Trump’s confrontational approach to the alliance, Rubio’s presence at the gathering is widely seen as a reassuring constant. The secretary of state, known for a less antagonistic style and measured demeanor compared to the president, has been tapped for multiple high-profile transatlantic diplomatic missions this year alone. These included a trip to February’s Munich Security Conference, and a recent visit to Italy where he met with Italian leaders and Pope Francis, shortly after Trump publicly criticized the pontiff over his positions on the Iran war and transnational crime.

In comments ahead of the ministers’ meeting, NATO’s top serving military officer offered partial reassure to anxious allies on Tuesday. U.S. Lieutenant General Alex Grynkewich stated he does not anticipate additional American troop drawdowns in Europe in the near term, beyond the 5,000 troops that Trump previously announced would withdraw from the continent. Grynkewich’s remarks followed Trump’s surprise announcement of the drawdown earlier this month, which caught alliance leadership off guard despite longstanding U.S. pledges to coordinate all major military moves with NATO allies to avoid creating gaps in regional security.

The Pentagon later clarified that the drawdown will be implemented by canceling planned rotating deployments to Poland and Germany, rather than withdrawing thousands of active-duty troops already stationed on the continent. Tensions have run particularly high between Trump and German leadership recently, after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that the United States was being “humiliated” by Iranian leadership and publicly criticized what he called the Trump administration’s “lack of a coherent strategy” for the ongoing Iran war.

Lorne Cook contributed reporting to this article from Brussels, Belgium.

19 5 月, 2026
‘Ebola has tortured us’: Fear grips eastern DR Congo as deadly virus spreads

A rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sparked widespread public fear, triggered an international public health emergency declaration, and left more than 130 people dead as response teams race to contain a virus that spread undetected for weeks.

As of Tuesday, official data counts 513 suspected cases across multiple provinces, with 136 confirmed fatalities in the DRC and one additional death recorded in neighboring Uganda. Cases have already spread beyond the Ituri province epicenter to reach major population centers including Butembo, Goma, and areas of South Kivu, raising alarm among public health authorities about the outbreak’s trajectory.

Local communities in the gold-mining hubs at the center of the outbreak have been gripped by anxiety since the first cases emerged. “Ebola has tortured us,” a 20-something taxi driver in Rwampara told reporters. “I am scared because people are dying very fast… We are really afraid.” Local resident Fred Kiza added that widespread fear is an unavoidable response to the crisis, noting that basic protective supplies like face masks remain scarce for at-risk communities.

Congolese Health Minister Dr Samuel Roger Kamba, who visited the Ituri outbreak epicenter over the weekend, acknowledged that response teams are already playing catch-up against a virus that may have begun circulating long before it was first formally detected on April 24. The presumed index patient, a nurse who died in the provincial capital of Bunia, was buried in Mongwalu, another gold-mining town that has recorded the majority of the outbreak’s suspected cases and deaths alongside neighboring Rwampara.

Official community reporting of unexplained deaths and illness only began on May 8, meaning many early fatalities went unrecorded and uninvestigated. “At community level, this hasn’t been effective,” Dr Kamba explained. “It means someone may have died before him [the presumed index case], or someone else may have been sick before him, but no one reported it. We really need to look within the community to understand what happened – how people became ill and sometimes even died without any report being filed.”

Complicating detection and response is the specific strain of Ebola causing this outbreak: the Bundibugyo variant, which is far less common in the DRC than the more widely known Zaïre strain. The DRC is currently facing its 17th Ebola outbreak, and local health systems were mostly prepared for the Zaïre variant. Before this current event, Bundibugyo had only caused two small outbreaks, in 2007 and 2012, and has a documented mortality rate of around 30 percent.

The Bundibugyo strain also presents more subtle symptoms than many people familiar with Ebola expect, leading to dangerous diagnostic delays. “There is heavy bleeding everywhere, very high fever. But Bundibugyo can show fewer obvious signs, which delays diagnosis because people think, ‘No, this is just malaria,’” Dr Kamba said. In some Mongwalu communities, early deaths were incorrectly attributed to witchcraft rather than a contagious virus, fueling a local belief called the “coffin phenomenon” that anyone who touches an infected person’s coffin will also die.

International aid group Save the Children confirmed that the Bundibugyo strain had never been detected in Ituri before this outbreak, and initial limited testing only screened for the Zaïre strain, returning false negative results. “By the time the Bundibugyo strain was detected, it had already spread quite far. We are in a game of catch-up,” said Greg Ramm, the organization’s DRC representative.

Five days after the outbreak was formally declared, none of the major affected urban centers—Bunia, Butembo, and Goma, each home to hundreds of thousands of residents—have a fully operational Ebola treatment center, leaving local residents frustrated with the slow pace of response. “If there’s no treatment centre here in the capital, then what about other areas?” one Bunia resident asked.

In Goma, eastern DRC’s largest city and a major regional trading hub, basic public health safety measures—including social distancing, limited gatherings, regular handwashing, and mask-wearing—are widely ignored. Many residents say daily survival takes priority over virus prevention rules, while low awareness contributes to low compliance. “It’s too much to ask people struggling to eat to follow these rules,” one local resident explained. Local journalist José Mutanava noted that he wears a mask for work, but barely any other residents in the city do.

The unstable security environment in eastern DRC adds another layer of complexity to response efforts. Four of the five affected administrative areas are in Ituri, while Goma in North Kivu is currently controlled by M23 rebel forces, and Butembo, North Kivu’s second-largest city, faces ongoing militia violence. Hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced in the region, and local healthcare systems were already severely stretched before the outbreak began.

“The Ebola outbreak is a new massive crisis on top of an already difficult situation,” Save the Children said in a statement.

The outbreak has already had international ripple effects: an American doctor working at Nyakunde Hospital in Ituri has tested positive for the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that one American has already been evacuated to Germany for treatment, and the agency is working to evacuate at least six other Americans who had close contact with infected patients.

The U.S. government has announced $13 million in emergency humanitarian assistance for the DRC and Uganda, and is considering additional funding through the United Nations’ pooled humanitarian fund, alongside implementing targeted travel restrictions linked to the outbreak. On May 15, after confirmed community spread was documented, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the highest level of global public health alert.

For now, Congolese authorities say they are drawing on decades of hard-earned experience responding to Ebola outbreaks, relying on tried-and-true public health measures to curb the spread of the 17th Ebola outbreak the country has faced.

19 5 月, 2026
Austria beats Latvia for 3rd straight win at ice hockey worlds, Norway shuts out Italy

The 2025 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship continued its group stage action on Tuesday, delivering two compelling matchups split between host venues in Zurich and Fribourg. In the day’s opening contest in Zurich, Austria notched its third consecutive win, a 3-1 defeat of Latvia that pulls it even on points with co-leaders Switzerland and Finland at the top of the tightly contested Group A standings.

The game remained scoreless through the first period, before Tim Harnisch broke the deadlock in the second frame to put Austria ahead 1-0 heading into the final stanza. Latvia responded quickly after the break, when captain and tournament breakout star Rudolfs Balcers netted his fourth goal of the competition — a mark that still leads all players at the championship — to draw the sides level.
The deadlock held only briefly, as Austria capitalized on a power play opportunity minutes later. Benjamin Nissner buried the go-ahead goal to restore his side’s lead, and with Latvia pulling their goaltender in the final minutes to search for an equalizer, Vinzenz Rohrer sealed the three points with an empty-net goal to lock in the 3-1 final score.

Across the tournament in Group B, hosted in Fribourg, Norway earned a dominant 4-0 shutout victory over Italy, marking the second win and second clean sheet for the Nordic side. All four of Norway’s goals came from different scorers: Eskild Bakke Olsen, Noah Steen, Christian Kaasastul and Tinus Luc Koblar each found the back of the net once. Norwegian goaltender Henrik Haukeland turned away all 30 shots on goal he faced to preserve the shutout. For Italy, a promoted side making its first appearance in the top division of the world championship in recent years, the result leaves the team still searching for its first point of the tournament.

Two more group stage games are scheduled to take place later the same day: Britain will face off against Hungary in Zurich, while Slovakia clashes with Slovenia in Fribourg to round out Tuesday’s match schedule.

19 5 月, 2026
How Palantir is becoming embedded in major newsroom operations

Palantir Technologies has long stood as one of the most polarizing technology firms in the modern digital age. Boasting a client roster that includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Army, and law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies across multiple European nations, the company has drawn global backlash for its ongoing technology supply agreement with the Israeli military amid the latter’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely accused of constituting genocide.

Despite growing international scrutiny over Palantir’s documented ties to alleged human rights violations and accusations of complicity in Israeli war crimes, a number of major global media organizations have maintained active, deep-rooted partnerships with the controversial firm. Among these partners is German publishing giant Axel Springer, the current parent company of prominent British newspaper The Telegraph, which also owns well-known outlets including Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Welt.

Axel Springer currently integrates Palantir’s core Foundry software across all of its global publishing operations. Palantir has publicly stated that Axel Springer leverages Foundry to unify disparate data sets from its dozens of individual publications and multiple revenue streams, enabling the creation of what the tech firm describes as “a more agile, data-driven publishing organisation” that can adapt more quickly to changing consumer habits and evolving audience preferences. Per Palantir’s own description, Foundry gives Axel Springer granular, actionable insights into reader behavior, advertising campaign performance, and the effectiveness of its subscription business models.

But the ties between Axel Springer and Palantir extend far beyond a standard commercial technology partnership. Between 2018 and 2019, Palantir CEO Alexander Karp held a seat on the German publisher’s supervisory board. The personal connection between Karp and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner dates back decades, with the pair first meeting “at a party during Döpfner’s university days,” according to public records.

Close links also extend to Döpfner’s son, Moritz Döpfner, who previously served as chief of staff at Thiel Capital, the private investment firm founded by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. German business publication Manager Magazin has reported that Thiel later invested approximately $50 million in seed funding into a venture capital fund launched by Moritz Döpfner. Focus Online, another prominent German outlet, has additionally documented that Thiel committed several million dollars in funding to a new European defense startup after being introduced to the project by Moritz Döpfner.
That startup, Stark Defence, positions itself as “a technology-oriented defence company that delivers the systems Europe and NATO need now.” It markets its unmanned weapons systems as “AI-enabled, software-defined, and ready for affordable production at scale.”

Axel Springer’s partnership with Palantir also aligns with the publishing giant’s longstanding public stance of unwavering support for Israel. In an official press release issued October 9, 2023, just two days after the 7 October attacks, the company stated: “Axel Springer stands in unconditional solidarity with the State of Israel.” This commitment is formally embedded in Axel Springer’s core corporate principles: one of the five central tenets of its corporate constitution reads, “We support the right of the State of Israel to exist and reject all forms of antisemitism.”
Döpfner reaffirmed this position at a World Jewish Congress event in May 2026, stating: “I’m a goy [non-Jew] and I’m a Zionist. With all my heart, out of conviction, and with passion. We all shall be Zionists.”

Palantir and the Israeli government formally announced a strategic partnership in January 2024, three months after Israel launched its military operation in Gaza. At the time of the announcement, Palantir Executive Vice President Josh Harris told Bloomberg that “both parties agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions” that would “significantly aid the Israeli Ministry of Defense.”

The full scope of Palantir’s technology offerings to Israel remains undisclosed, but the company has built a broad portfolio of AI-powered military tools, including its flagship Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which Palantir says enables faster, more data-informed decision making for frontline military forces. Multiple independent reports have also linked Palantir’s Maven Smart System to Israeli military operations in Gaza. The Maven system aggregates and analyzes battlefield imagery, surveillance data, logistics information and intelligence to identify potential targets for strikes. In a December 2025 interview, Karp confirmed that Maven had been deployed in Ukraine as well as “in recent operations in the Middle East.” The Washington Post reported in March 2026 that both the U.S. and Israel used the Maven system during their joint war on Iran.
Karp has also openly acknowledged that Palantir’s technology is used to carry out lethal strikes. Responding to accusations in April 2025 that the company’s systems were complicit in the deaths of Palestinians, Karp stated: “Mostly terrorists, that’s true.”

Axel Springer has declined to respond to inquiries from Middle East Eye regarding its collaboration with Palantir.

Beyond Axel Springer, another major European media firm, Swiss publisher Ringier – which owns dozens of media and entertainment brands across Europe and Africa – has maintained a partnership with Palantir since 2018. Like Axel Springer, Ringier’s leadership shares deep personal and professional ties with Palantir’s executive team: both Karp and Ringier CEO Marc Walder are involved in Digitalswitzerland, a leading Swiss digital innovation initiative that Walder founded in 2015 and has led as president ever since, with Palantir listed as a core member organization.

Per information posted on Ringier’s official website, the publisher uses Palantir’s Foundry software to “drive Ringier’s digital transformation and accelerate the transition to a data-driven, global media company.” Palantir also confirms that in addition to newsroom uses, Ringier leverages Foundry to boost performance across the advertising departments of all its media properties. In May 2024, several months after Palantir announced its strategic defense partnership with Israel, Ringier published its 2023 annual report revealing that the company had expanded its partnership, launching a five-year agreement to adopt Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform. The report notes that AIP helps Ringier “improve relevant content and better understand user preferences” by integrating and processing large volumes of user and content data, while also enabling “precise targeting and optimization of advertising strategies.”
Ringier has gone beyond just adopting Palantir’s technology, hiring a dedicated in-house Palantir expert. Last winter, the publisher posted a job opening for a “Platform Engineer (Palantir Foundry),” framing the role as “central to the stability, security, and evolution” of Ringier’s enterprise Palantir Foundry and AIP infrastructure. The job posting outlined responsibilities including platform administration, implementing data governance frameworks, collaborating directly with Palantir’s technical teams, and building and maintaining automated monitoring and alert systems using Foundry’s application programming interface. When contacted by Middle East Eye for comment on the partnership, Ringier Chief Communications Officer Johanna Walser said only: “We have communicated the nature of our collaboration with Palantir via press release. Beyond that, there is nothing further to comment.”

Most recently, U.S.-based Fox News Media announced its own partnership with Palantir to develop a custom suite of AI tools for its newsroom, working alongside the outlet’s journalists, according to an Axios report quoting Fox News Digital President and Editor-in-Chief Porter Berry. The collaboration has produced three custom tools that Palantir engineers have integrated directly into the digital newsroom’s daily workflow. One tool is designed to help reporters quickly get up to speed on fast-developing breaking stories, a second fact-checks articles for errors and ensures alignment with Fox News’ internal style guide, and the third analyzes audience engagement to provide insights for optimizing story performance. Fox News Media has also declined to respond to requests for comment on the partnership.

These widespread partnerships between major global newsrooms and Palantir have sparked urgent questions about editorial independence and potential conflicts of interest. While Fox News has framed its agreement as “strictly commercial,” critics have raised concerns that these close financial and institutional ties could shape editorial decision-making, particularly when it comes to coverage of Palantir, its activities, and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Not long after Axel Springer completed its acquisition of The Telegraph, the British newspaper published an opinion piece titled “In defence of Palantir,” followed by a second article headlined “How Palantir became the left’s favourite conspiracy target.” It remains unclear whether these pieces were connected to the broader relationship between the two firms, or whether The Telegraph has begun using Palantir’s technology following the takeover. Axel Springer, The Telegraph, and Palantir all declined to comment on the matter.

Additional critical questions have emerged over whether newsrooms using Palantir’s platforms are unknowingly contributing to training the AI systems the company develops for military use. Fox News has stated that its agreements “are structured to prevent its AI partners from training on or otherwise exploiting its content.” Palantir, however, has not responded to repeated questions about whether, and how, it ensures that civilian uses of its technology – including its deployments at media organizations – are not repurposed to train or inform its defense-focused AI systems.

19 5 月, 2026
What we know about the San Diego mosque attack suspects

On a violent Monday that shattered the peace of a Southern California Muslim community, a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego left five people dead, including the two young suspects who died from self-inflicted wounds after the attack. Law enforcement officials have launched a full investigation into the assault, which they are treating as a likely hate crime rooted in targeted extremism, even as the full scope of the perpetrators’ planning and ideology remains under review.

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl has laid out a clear timeline of the tragedy that unfolded on the day of the attack. Roughly two hours before the first shots were fired at the mosque, at approximately 9:40 a.m. local time, the mother of one of the suspects contacted authorities to make an urgent report. She told police that her 17-year-old son had fled her home, stealing her firearms and her car, and warned that he was potentially suicidal and was accompanied by a friend. She also noted that he was wearing full camouflage clothing, a detail that could have allowed officers to locate the pair earlier if resources had been deployed immediately.

Just over two hours after that initial warning, at 11:43 a.m., local emergency dispatch received the first report of an active shooter at the mosque. Responding officers arrived on the scene within four minutes, a fast response that still came too late for three men who were already fatally shot outside the building. As first responders activated active shooter protocols to secure the area, they received a second report of shots fired from a vehicle nearby: the suspects had opened fire on a local landscaper, who escaped the attack without injury.

Less than a quarter of a mile from the mosque, officers located the suspects’ vehicle and found both young attackers — the 17-year-old and his 18-year-old accomplice — dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Authorities have not officially released the suspects’ identities to the public, though multiple major U.S. media outlets have published their names unofficially.

The three victims of the attack, all regular community members tied to the mosque, have been formally identified by representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations San Diego (CAIR-SD). The first victim, Amin Abdullah, was a veteran security guard at the mosque and a father of eight children who had served the community for more than a decade. Chief Wahl confirmed that Abdullah’s quick, brave intervention stopped the attack from escalating into an even deadlier massacre, saying “It’s fair to say [Abdullah’s] actions were heroic. Undoubtedly, he saved lives today.”

CAIR-SD spokesperson Tazheen Nizam paid tribute to Abdullah, describing him as a beloved, constant presence at the mosque who greeted every visitor and child with a warm smile. “Amin was loved by everybody, he stood there day after day, always smiling, welcoming everybody, welcoming the kids who came to the school,” Nizam told the BBC. “He was a shining light. He is a true hero, a martyr.”

The two other victims were also deeply embedded in the mosque community. Nader Awad raised his children at the center, and his wife works as a teacher at the mosque’s on-site school. The third victim, Mansour Kaziha, supported the community by maintaining the mosque’s grounds and working in its on-site convenience store.

Investigators have uncovered early evidence pointing to the attack being ideologically motivated by hate. Multiple law enforcement sources, speaking on condition of anonymity to CNN, confirmed that hate speech was found scrawled on one of the weapons used in the attack. A suicide note left by the suspects also contained writings promoting racial supremacy, the outlet reported. Chief Wahl confirmed that investigators have identified hate rhetoric as a core component of the attackers’ motivation, cementing the decision to open a hate crime investigation.

19 5 月, 2026
NATO’s top officer doesn’t expect more American drawdowns beyond the 5,000 troops Trump announced

BRUSSELS — Amid lingering uncertainty over U.S. military posture in Europe following a surprise troop cut announcement from former President Donald Trump, America’s senior military official at NATO has moved to calm allied anxiety, confirming Tuesday that no further withdrawals are planned in the near term beyond the 5,000 troops already scheduled to leave the continent.

U.S. Lieutenant General Alex Grynkewich’s public clarification comes two weeks after Trump’s uncoordinated announcement of the drawdown caught NATO alliance leaders off guard, breaking long-standing agreements between Washington and its partners to coordinate all major military adjustments in Europe to prevent dangerous security gaps. The announcement followed a heated public dispute between Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who publicly criticized U.S. strategy amid the ongoing Iran conflict, saying Washington had been “humiliated” by Iranian leadership and lacked a clear plan for the war. The criticism triggered sharp anger from Trump, leading to widespread speculation that the troop cuts were intended as a punitive measure against Berlin.

In the weeks after Trump’s announcement, the Pentagon clarified that the 5,000 troop reduction would not involve recalling service members already permanently stationed in Europe. Instead, the drawdown will be implemented by canceling planned rotational deployments: roughly 4,000 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team will no longer deploy to Poland as scheduled, and a planned deployment of 1,000 long-range missile and rocket specialists to Germany will be scrapped. Specific logistics for the adjusted deployment schedule are still being finalized by military planners.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a gathering of senior military leaders from NATO’s 32 member states at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters, Grynkewich stated clearly, “It will be 5,000 troops coming out of Europe. It’s all that I’m expecting in the near term.”

Before his press briefing, Grynkewich said he held discussions with frontline military commanders from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — NATO member states that share direct borders with Russia and Ukraine, and have been the most vocal about maintaining strong allied deterrence on the alliance’s eastern flank. The talks covered revised force posture options and adjustments to military capabilities in the region.

The general emphasized that the 5,000-person drawdown would not weaken European security or NATO’s deterrence posture against Russian aggression. However, he also warned allies that additional redeployments of U.S. troops should be expected in the coming years, framing the shift as a natural progression as European allies build up their own independent defense capacity. “Over the long term, we absolutely should expect additional redeployments as Europe continues to build capability and capacity and step up to provide more of the conventional defense of Europe,” Grynkewich explained. He added that the adjustment will be a gradual, multi-year process, and that “We’re going to stay well-synchronized with our allies moving forward.”

Compared to the roughly 80,000 U.S. military personnel currently stationed across Europe, the 5,000-person cut is relatively small, and the scale of the reduction has not sparked major alarm among NATO allies. What has caused concern among partners, however, is the lack of prior coordination for the announcement, as well as the widespread perception that the cuts are a punitive measure targeting Germany over its public criticism of Trump’s Iran policy.

19 5 月, 2026
Secrecy surrounds UK foreign secretary’s Middle East talks with Tony Blair

A newly unearthed revelation from independent outlet Middle East Eye has thrown the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) into fresh controversy over government accountability, after confirmation that no official records were retained of a December meeting between Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and former prime minister Tony Blair focused on Middle East affairs. The unminuted meeting occurred at a pivotal moment: Blair was actively lobbying on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza Board of Peace, a body that has sparked global backlash for its structure and mandate. Details of the 4 December gathering first emerged in FCDO documents published on the UK government’s official website in March, but the absence of any documentation of the discussion had not been previously reported. In response to a freedom of information (FOI) request from Middle East Eye, the FCDO confirmed that not only were no meeting minutes created, but there are also no surviving records of pre-meeting briefing materials prepared for Cooper, nor any internal or external correspondence related to scheduling the encounter. The controversy comes against a backdrop of longstanding scrutiny of Blair’s decades-long role in Middle East policy. Blair, who led the UK into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was appointed as a founding member of Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace in September 2025, with his role formally confirmed in January 2026. Internal EU meeting minutes obtained by investigative outlet Follow the Money in February show that just 11 days after the Cooper-Blair meeting, lobbyists from Blair’s own Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) pushed EU officials to formally join the board. The Trump-led body, which grants the U.S. president lifetime chairman status and sweeping authority over post-conflict Gaza, has no Palestinian representatives on its executive committee — a flaw that has drawn widespread condemnation from global rights groups. To date, 28 world leaders have joined the board, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who currently faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The UK has publicly rejected membership, with Cooper citing concerns over Trump’s decision to include Russian President Vladimir Putin on the board’s executive committee. “We won’t be one of the signatories today, because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” Cooper stated publicly on 22 January. Tensions between Cooper and Blair have already surfaced in public: in March, Blair publicly criticized the UK government for hesitating to back full U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran, and Cooper pushed back by referencing the lessons of the 2003 Iraq war. “I also think, having been a minister in the last Labour government, it is important to learn lessons for what went wrong in Iraq … and recognising that all of our decisions need to be about what is right for British citizens,” she told the BBC. Blair has already faced intense scrutiny over his institute’s past involvement in Middle East planning. TBI, which has received massive funding from billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, previously drew widespread condemnation for its so-called “Gaza Riviera” development plan, which critics argued effectively condoned the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from the territory. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, argues that policymakers have long given Blair unearned credibility on Middle East issues despite a consistent track record of failure. “Among many policymakers there’s still this sense that he should be respected because he spent so much time working on the Middle East, rather than a sober assessment of his dire record when dealing with it,” Doyle said. “In terms of the Middle East, it has just been one failure after another for Blair. He is a man who is entrenched in the palace views of the uber-elites of the Middle East, with very little sense of the real trends going on there.” Transparency experts have echoed those concerns, warning that the absence of records for such a high-stakes meeting is unacceptable. Sam Raphael, professor of International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Westminster and director of government transparency research group Unredacted, called the missing documentation “deeply concerning.” “The lack of minutes and other official records in relation to the Foreign Secretary’s meeting – especially with an individual as controversial and consequential for the Middle East, and with such labyrinthine personal interests – is deeply concerning,” Raphael said. This is not the first time the FCDO has faced public criticism over poor record-keeping and lack of transparency. Just last week, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) condemned the department for failing to maintain adequate meeting records during its review of the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the U.S. in December 2024. Raphael noted that the Cooper-Blair meeting perfectly exemplifies the systemic failure the ISC already flagged. “The ISC found that ‘the FCDO stands out as a department failing to produce a necessary audit trail for discussions and decisions,’” Raphael said. “The ISC found this to be ‘unacceptable’, and the Cooper-Blair case is a clear and flagrant example of this.” Adding a layer of historical irony to the controversy, the UK’s freedom of information laws — which enabled this revelation — were introduced by Blair’s own government in 2000. Blair later named the legislation one of his biggest political regrets in his 2010 memoir, and declassified government files released in 2024 revealed he encouraged cabinet ministers to use disposable Post-it notes for official business during his premiership to avoid mandatory public disclosures. Both the FCDO and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have been contacted for comment on the latest revelations, and have not yet issued a response.

19 5 月, 2026