This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
United States President Donald Trump walks toward the White House upon his arrival in Washington, DC, from Memphis, Tennessee, United States, on March 23, 2026. [Celal Güneş – Anadolu Agency]
President Donald Trump said Sunday that the US rescued a military officer, identified as a colonel, in “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US history,” Anadolu reports.
Trump said on his Truth Social media platform that the officer was trapped behind enemy lines in Iran’s mountainous terrain and was being pursued by hostile forces before being safely recovered in a major military operation involving dozens of aircraft.
Noting that the officer suffered injuries, Trump said he “will be just fine.”
He said the mission followed the separate rescue of another US pilot on Friday, which was not announced earlier to avoid jeopardizing the second operation.
“At my direction, the US Military sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him,” he said. “This is the first time in military memory that two U.S. Pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in Enemy Territory.”
He also claimed the operations were completed without any Americans killed or wounded.
Calling the missions proof of US air superiority over Iran, Trump praised the armed forces as “the best, most professional, and lethal military in the history of the World.”
He said the rescues were a moment for all Americans to take pride in.
Fox News later reported that while the rescued officer is in critical condition, several US service members were also injured in the rescue, but all are now safe.
The weapon systems officer also reportedly hid on an elevated ridge after hiking away from the wreckage and put out an emergency beacon.
US aircraft struck Iranian convoys to keep them away from the airman’s location, as US forces converged on the downed airman, and a firefight erupted, two former senior military officials briefed on the operation told The New York Times.
Reports differed on whether a major firefight took place on the ground during the mission.
According to Fox News, there was a massive firefight, as well as a number of aircraft that had to be destroyed, and a A-10 Warthog that crashed on Friday in Kuwait was part of the rescue mission, while a lot of the details will not be coming out because it was such a complex mission.
Dozens of aircraft were involved in the rescue, with specialized commando forces and major air cover supporting the mission. The operation involved hundreds of special operations troops, helicopters, warplanes, and cyber, space, and other intelligence capabilities, The New York Times reported.
Two US Special Operations MC-130J aircraft were destroyed on the ground during the rescue mission after becoming stranded at a remote base in Iran, with commanders opting to detonate the disabled planes to prevent capture, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Pope Leo XIV delivers his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the City of Rome, and to the World) message from the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after celebrating the Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, on April 05, 2026. [Isabella Bonotto – Anadolu Agency]
In his first Easter Sunday message since assuming the papacy, Pope Leo XIV urged world leaders to choose peace and lay down their weapons instead of unleashing wars, Anadolu reports.
“Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!” said the pontiff, speaking from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
He said the world is growing accustomed to violence, with people resigned to it and becoming “indifferent” to the deaths of thousands of people, to the “repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow,” and their economic and social consequences.
“There is an ever-increasing ‘’globalization of indifference’,” Leo said. “We cannot continue to be indifferent! And we cannot resign ourselves to evil!”
“Let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil,” he added.
Leo assumed the helm of the Catholic Church last May.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Smoke rises from the targeted sites after the Israeli army carried out eight airstrikes on the Dahieh district in the south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on April 05, 2026. [Ethem Emre Özcan – Anadolu Agency]
More than 1,460 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israeli attacks began on March 2, the country’s Health Ministry said Sunday, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, the ministry said the death toll has reached 1,461, with 4,430 others wounded over the same period.
It added that 39 people were killed and 136 injured in the past 24 hours alone.
The ministry also mentioned that 129 of those who lost their lives were children and 97 were women.
At least 54 health care workers were killed, and 145 others were injured in Israeli attacks, added the ministry.
Israel has carried out airstrikes and a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since a cross-border attack by the Lebanese group Hezbollah on March 2, despite a ceasefire that took effect in November 2024.
Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets into Israel since early March, saying the attacks are in response to continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon, as well as the killing of Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli forces, raid the Old City of Hebron in the southern West Bank on January 31, 2026. [Amer Shallodi – Anadolu Agency]
“A people that oppresses another cannot itself be free” -Friedrich Engels –
Zionism is racism. I state this plainly, not as a slogan designed to provoke, but as a conclusion drawn from history, lived reality, and the political structure that has emerged in what is now called Israel. I am not interested in diluting this claim to make it more comfortable, nor in softening its edges to invite polite debate. Some ideas demand clarity, not compromise.
Zionism presents itself as a movement for Jewish self-determination. In isolation, that principle sounds reasonable—every people should have the right to shape their political future. But no political project exists in isolation.
Zionism did not emerge in an empty land, and it did not unfold without consequence. It took root in a place where another people already lived, and its realization required their displacement, their fragmentation, and their continued subordination.
The events of 1948 are not a tragic misunderstanding or an unfortunate byproduct of state-building. They are central. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes, entire villages were destroyed, and a society that had existed for generations was systematically dismantled. Palestinians remember this as the Nakba – “the catastrophe”—and that name is not rhetorical exaggeration. It is an accurate description of a foundational rupture that continues to shape every aspect of Palestinian life.
What followed was not a temporary injustice but the consolidation of a system. Land laws, citizenship structures, and state policies were crafted in ways that privileged Jewish identity while marginalizing Palestinians, whether they remained within the borders of Israel or lived under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. This is not incidental. It is the logical outcome of a state built to maintain a demographic and political majority for one group over others.
Supporters of Zionism often argue that it is not racism but national liberation—a response to centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. That history is undeniable and horrific.
The genocide of European Jews stands as one of the greatest crimes in human history. But historical suffering does not grant moral exemption. It does not justify the dispossession of another people, nor does it transform inequality into justice.
If anything, it should deepen the commitment to universal rights, not narrow them.
To point this out is not to deny Jewish history or identity. It is to reject the idea that safety for one people must be built on the exclusion or subjugation of another. A political ideology that enshrines ethnic or religious preference into law – especially in a land shared by multiple communities—cannot be reconciled with genuine equality. When rights are distributed based on identity, discrimination is not a flaw in the system; it is the system.
This reality is visible not only in historical events but in present-day structures. Palestinians in the occupied territories live under military rule, subject to restrictions on movement, access to resources, and basic civil liberties. Within Israel itself, Palestinian citizens face systemic inequalities in areas such as land allocation, housing, and political power. The fragmentation of Palestinian identity – into citizens, residents, refugees, and those under occupation – is not accidental. It is a method of control.
Language often obscures these realities. Terms like “security,” “conflict,” and “disputed territories” create the impression of symmetry, as though two equal sides are engaged in a balanced struggle. But the lived experience tells a different story: one of power and dispossession, of a state with overwhelming military and political dominance over a stateless people. Naming that imbalance matters, because without it, injustice can be reframed as inevitability.
There are those who challenge this system from within. Voices like Miko Peled—an Israeli raised within the Zionist establishment—have come to reject the ideology precisely because they see its consequences. Their critiques are not born of ignorance or hostility but of proximity and reflection. They demonstrate that opposition to Zionism is not synonymous with hostility toward Jews; it is a political and ethical stance against a specific system of power.
Critics of this position often respond by labelling it extreme or unfair. They argue that Zionism has multiple interpretations, that it can be reformed, or that it simply expresses the desire of a people to live in safety. But the question is not what Zionism claims to be in theory. The question is what it has produced in practice. And in practice, it has created and maintained a reality in which one group’s rights and freedoms are structurally elevated above another’s.
If we apply the same moral standards we claim to uphold elsewhere – opposition to segregation, to ethno-national supremacy, to systems that privilege one group over another—then the conclusion becomes difficult to avoid.
When a state defines itself in ways that systematically advantage one identity while disadvantaging others, it enters the realm of discrimination. When that discrimination is entrenched in law, policy, and daily life, it is not incidental. It is foundational.
This is why I say that Zionism is racism. Not as an insult, but as a description. It names a system in which identity determines rights, in which history is used to justify inequality, and in which the pursuit of one group’s security has come at the cost of another’s freedom.
There is a tendency to treat such statements as beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse, to insist that they are too harsh, too absolute, too divisive. But discomfort is not the same as inaccuracy. If anything, the resistance to naming the problem reflects how deeply normalized the system has become.
Conclusion: No system built on inequality can endure without resistance, and no injustice has ever been resolved by refusing to name it. If we believe in dignity, equality, and freedom as universal principles, then they cannot stop at the borders of Palestine, nor be conditional on identity. The choice is not between politeness and truth – it is between maintaining a system of domination or confronting it honestly. I choose honesty. And honesty demands that we say it without hesitation, without dilution, and without apology: Zionism is racism.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
Around 20 boats preparing to join the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “Spring Mission 2026” are set to depart from the southern port city of Marseille, France, as part of an initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenging the ongoing Israeli policy, with vessels readied for weeks at L’Estaque Port by the France Campaign coalition, including the Thousand Madleens to Gaza movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, on April 03, 2026. [Esra Taşkın – Anadolu Agency]
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran, Iran on November 30, 2025. [Ahmet Serdar Eser – Anadolu Agency]
The Iranian foreign minister said Saturday that “radioactive fallout will end life in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) capitals, not Tehran,” following the US-Israeli airstrikes that hit Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, Anadolu reports.
“Remember the Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine?
“Israel-U.S. have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now. Radioactive fallout will end life in GCC capitals, not Tehran,” Abbas Araghchi said through US social media company X.
Attacks on Iranian petrochemical facilities also reveal “real objectives,” Araghchi argued.
Earlier in the day, US and Israeli strikes hit Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, killing one person.
The attack came as regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched a joint offensive on Iran on Feb. 28, killing over 1,340 people to date, including then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, as well as Jordan, Iraq, and Gulf countries hosting US military assets.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
Around 20 boats preparing to join the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “Spring Mission 2026” are set to depart from the southern port city of Marseille, France, as part of an initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenging the ongoing Israeli policy, with vessels readied for weeks at L’Estaque Port by the France Campaign coalition, including the Thousand Madleens to Gaza movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, on April 03, 2026. [Esra Taşkın – Anadolu Agency]
