This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Yasser Abu Shabab. [Quds Press]
A source close to the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, has said that the killing of Yasser Abu Shabab; the Israeli- backed gang leader, on Thursday was carried out through a carefully planned ambush inside the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to the source, the operation was executed by a young man from the Abu Shabab clan who pretended he wished to join the armed group led by Abu Shabab. He later carried out the plan with precision, killing the group’s leader along with several of his associates.
The source stated that the ambush came as a complete surprise. Israeli-backed militias in Rafah reportedly expected any attack by the Qassam Brigades to come from above ground, possibly by an elite unit, which would have prompted them to shelter near Israeli tanks. Instead, the infiltration came from within the group itself, allowing the attack to succeed.
He added that the irony was that Abu Shabab had recently appeared in a video declaring his intention to launch a campaign to “cleanse” Rafah, only to be killed days later along with his men in what the source described as “a real cleansing of the city from the gang”.
The source said the operation represents a major breakthrough for the resistance and a significant blow to the Israeli security apparatus, undermining a strategic plan to impose Israeli- backed militia control over parts of Gaza.
Abu Shabab reportedly commanded a group of around 100 fighters who were armed and supported by Israel in eastern Rafah, with the aim of establishing a so-called “safe zone” to serve Israeli interests and weaken the resistance.
According to resistance sources, the group also carried out activities against Palestinians, including searching homes, dismantling explosive devices planted by resistance members, killing fighters, and seizing weapons, all in coordination with the Israeli occupation.
Abu Shabab had previously appeared in a video claiming his group controlled areas “liberated from Hamas” and that it was working with the Palestinian Authority to distribute aid and “protect civilians”. Multiple reports indicated that the group was in fact responsible for the looting of humanitarian aid that had entered the besieged enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.
Yet another example of Israel support of ISIS terrorists …
The assassination of far-right podcaster and political activist Charlie Kirk in Utah was truly shocking in every sense. It happened in the open, at a college campus in broad daylight with 3,000 onlookers. Graphic and close-up video footage of his final moment, showing a bullet placed precisely at his carotid artery at the very second Kirk was questioned about mass shootings, seemed out of a movie. The man who once said gun deaths were worth the price of the Second Amendment (Newsweek, 4/6/23) became an illustration of what that price looks like before our eyes.
Flags at half mast. A moment of silence at Yankee Stadium. The vice president skipped a 9/11 memorial event to be with Kirk’s family (USA Today, 9/11/25), and Kirk’s body was transported back to his home state on the vice president’s aircraft (CBS, 9/11/25). He was no mere pundit or activist, but a valued capo in the Trump political machine.
“Charlie Kirk’s murder was one of the worst moments in recent American history,” read the subhead of an Atlantic piece (9/11/25) by Graeme Wood. (It was apparently much worse than US support for killing thousands of children in Gaza, about which Wood shrugged, “war is ugly,” arguing that it’s “possible to kill children legally”—Atlantic, 5/17/24.)
Wood was not alone in the press, as much of the coverage has framed the murder as a moment where the United States crossed the Rubicon when it comes to political violence. While Kirk’s murder was bad news for democracy—as no one ever deserves to be killed for their speech—the media reaction glossed over the role that President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement, and Kirk himself, as a prominent supporter of that movement, have helped to legitimize the kind of political violence that Kirk apparently fell victim to.
‘Epidemic of leftist violence’
The assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman in June 2025 was one of several right-wing attacks that New York Post columnist Miranda Divine (9/11/25) ignored in order to claim that “political violence is almost exclusively from the left.”
The right-wing press, as expected, has whipped itself into a frenzy over a wave of domestic terrorism that is only coming from the left, though the motives of the killer at the time were unknown. “We are suffering through an epidemic of leftist violence,” said Miranda Divine of the New York Post (9/11/25), adding that Kirk’s killing is “the latest manifestation of the hateful rhetoric aimed at President Trump and his MAGA movement.”
President Trump has fanned the flames. As the New Yorker (9/11/25) noted:
Trump denounced his perceived enemies. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said, and vowed to find those he deemed responsible for “political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”… Trump made no gesture toward common national feeling; he limited his litany of victims to those with whom he is aligned.
Elsewhere, coverage didn’t blame the left, but did suggest that Kirk’s killing had brought US society to an inflection point. The New York Times (9/11/25) said that before Kirk’s killing, “there were signs of a looming political crisis” and increased “polarization and the coarsening of public discourse.” While there have been other acts of political violence, reporters Richard Fausset, Ken Bensinger and Alan Feuer wrote, the “killing of Mr. Kirk on a Utah college campus…raises the possibility that the country has entered an even more perilous phase.”
The Times quoted Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, saying “I think that you have a cultural civil war underway.” (Gingrich has been waging cultural civil war for a long time now; in 1990, he put out a memo urging Republican candidates to tar their opponents with words like “sick…pathetic…traitors”—Extra! Update, 2/95).
The Washington Post editorial board (9/10/25) noted, while listing off other instances of political violence:
Months before Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, the conservative activist warned about the spread of “assassination culture.” He cited the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, as well as the killing of a healthcare CEO. And now it seems all too likely that he himself became a victim of that violent fervor while speaking on Wednesday at Utah Valley University.
The Post’s news side featured a report (9/11/25) claiming that the nation is “facing a new era of political violence reminiscent of some of its most bitter, tumultuous eras, including the 1960s.” The paper summoned memories of the “assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.”
CNN’s Stephen Collinson (9/10/25) said Kirk’s murder “will unleash unknown consequences in a nation that is angry and already confronting a fractured political future.”
‘More frequent and deadly’
Donald Trump posted an image of himself as an Apocalypse Now character as he declared war on Chicago.
Most of these pieces rightly situated Kirk’s murder with other acts of political violence that targeted both Democrats and Republicans. But what these pieces miss—or actively try to hide—is how much this dangerous era escalated when Trump came into the White House. The president and his allies in right-wing media not only provided the rhetoric that inspired an enormous amount of political violence, but worked actively to normalize it.
From Trump’s calls for violence against protesters who disrupted his rallies (FAIR.org, 3/12/16) to official presidential social media posts depicting Trump as Robert Duvall’s napalm-loving colonel from Apocalypse Now, MAGA is a political agenda that celebrates violence (FAIR.org, 11/1/19).
“We’ve seen a rising tide of attacks by far-right extremists in recent years,” Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Frontline. “The threat is coming from a host of ideologies, from white supremacists to incels, to everything in between. Unfortunately, the attacks are becoming both more frequent and deadly.”
To track that change, Frontline analyzed data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. CSIS defines terrorism as the “deliberate use—or threat— of violence by non-state actors in order to achieve political goals and create a broad psychological impact,” a similar definition to the one used by the FBI.
According to a CSIS database, there were 405 such terror attacks or plots in the US from 2015 through 2020—more than double the total number in the previous decade. And in the last five years, those attacks or plots were predominantly carried out by white supremacists, militias and other far-right extremists: 63% and increasing. Far-left incidents are also on the rise but made up a smaller portion of the whole, 13% from 2015 to 2020, according to Frontline’s analysis. Religious extremists accounted for 19%, with the remaining 5% linked to “ethnonationalist” or “other” ideologies, per CSIS categorizations.
Political violence is of course nothing new in American culture; deadly extremism, coming mainly though not exclusively from the right, was rampant both before (Extra!, 3–4/95, 7–8/95; Extra! Update, 10/96) and after September 11, 2001 (FAIR.org, 4/16/13, 6/13/14). But MAGA has moved what was once far-right rhetoric and tactics to the center of the US right. As the Brookings Institution (3/12/21) pointed out, many right-wing tactics of the Trump era were pioneered by self-styled militia groups that have operated along the US’s southern border since the 1980s:
Many of the right-wing armed groups’ tactics exhibited during Trump’s presidency—harassment of minorities, purposeful recruitment of military veterans, cultivation of allies in law enforcement forces and among politicians, and efforts to influence elections—had years of beta testing at the US/Mexico border.
Five years ago, the Guardian (3/18/20) also painted a frightening picture:
White nationalist hate groups in the US have increased 55% throughout the Trump era, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and a “surging” racist movement continues to be driven by “a deep fear of demographic change.” Nationally, there were 155 such groups counted last year, and they were present in most states. These groups were counted separately from Ku Klux Klan groups, racist skinheads, Christian Identity groups and neo-Confederate groups, all of which also express some version of white supremacist beliefs.
‘Bring a gun with you’
The New York Times‘ Ezra Klein (9/11/25) wrote admiringly of Kirk’s “moxie and fearlessness.”
Charlie Kirk was a central actor in the right-wing hate machine that fomented violence. He encouraged violence against immigrants (Media Matters, 3/22/24):
At what point is it time to start to at least use rubber bullets, or use some sort of tear gas, to prevent this and quell this invasion?… And at what point do we use real force?. . . Of course you should be able to use whips against foreigners that are coming into your country. Why is that controversial?
He incited partisan division and hatred, and encouraged the purchase and use of weapons in that context (Media Matters, 10/12/23):
You have a government that hates you, you have a traitor as the president. Buy weapons, I keep on saying that. Buy weapons. Buy ammo. if you go into a public place, bring a gun with you…. Thank goodness in Arizona we can carry, and we carry.
Where the New York Times (9/10/25) saw “a charismatic right-wing activist” who “showed a genius for using social media and campus organizing,” those who found themselves targets of Kirk’s “genius” saw something entirely different.
Kirk’s “Professor Watchlist” doxxed academics Kirk claimed “advanced leftist propaganda”; those listed quickly found themselves and their universities subject to a torrent of abuse—including racial slurs and death threats—from Kirk’s followers, at times requiring universities to offer those academics extra security. Journalism professor Stacy Patton, who experienced this harassment firsthand when she was put on the list in 2024, observed:
Kirk’s Watchlist has terrorized legions of professors across this country. Women, Black faculty, queer scholars, basically anyone who challenged white supremacy, gun culture, or Christian nationalism suddenly found themselves targets of coordinated abuse.
This is the activism that the New York Times‘ Ezra Klein (9/11/25) described as “practicing politics in exactly the right way”:
He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion…. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness.
‘Throbbing middle finger to God’
Charlie Kirk (X, 9/11/23): ““The one issue that I think is so against our senses, so against the natural law, and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God is the transgender thing happening in America.”
Kirk referred to LGBTQ identity as a “social contagion,” and called trans people an “abomination” and a “throbbing middle finger to God” (Erin in the Morning, 9/11/23).
He said that Black women like Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson “had to go steal a white person’s slot” through affirmative action, because they “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.” “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” he declared (Wired, 1/12/24).
Upon Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral primary, Kirk posted: “Twenty-four years ago, a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim socialist is on pace to run New York City.” “When we think of what it means to be an American, is [it] someone by the name of Islami Mohamed?” he remarked on another occasion (Media Matters, 8/19/25): “I don’t think so.”
“You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population,” Kirk insisted (Religion News, 1/7/25). He also claimed (Media Matters, 8/19/25) that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
‘Disgracefully ill-timed’
MSNBC‘s Rebecca Cutler said it was ““inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable” to connect Kirk’s murder to his hate speech (Guardian, 9/11/25).
In the wake of Kirk’s murder, it was taboo to point out that his politics, and those of the MAGA movement he embraced, contributed to a culture of hatred and demonization. MSNBC pundit Matthew Dowd was promptly fired by the cable network after he observed:
Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions…. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.
When Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, in condemning violence, remarked that “I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it,” the Washington Post (9/10/25) editorialized that this was “a disgracefully ill-timed comment.”
In fact, there is no better time to point out that the right-wing movement Kirk was a crucial part of has played the leading role in dehumanizing others and normalizing violence. Failure to honestly examine the politics that are driving extremism will steer us away from the kind of analysis and action that are needed to prevent more tragedies.
Slain health CEO Brian Thompson’s tenure was marked by skyrocketing prior authorization denials, leading to increased profits
Brian Thompson, slain CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was responsible for skyrocketing prior authorization denials (Photo: UnitedHealthcare)
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 has sparked a reaction that few may have suspected. The perpetrator has received an outpouring of popular support, and a profound debate on the brutality of the US for-profit healthcare system has been sparked, with many accusing healthcare corporations of reaping their profits directly from human misery.
Thompson was shot and killed while heading to an investors meeting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. Police have arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the crime, who quickly has become a working class hero in the eyes of many in the US public, especially after his alleged manifesto revealed that he was motivated by outrage towards healthcare corporations. “A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy,” reads the alleged manifesto, which law enforcement claim to have found in his backpack. “It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
The reactions to Thompson’s death show that this outrage is echoed by the US public. UnitedHealthcare had to remove a Facebook post mourning Thompson after it received over 42,000 laughing reactions. Comments on social media regarding Thompson’s death made insurance-related quips including “unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network,” and “thoughts and deductibles to the family.”
Health beyond the for-profit system
People in the US are increasingly demanding alternatives to the present for-profit healthcare system. A Gallup poll taken shortly before Thompson’s assassination shows that the highest percentage of US adults in over a decade believe it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that people have healthcare coverage—62%, as opposed to 36% who insist it is not the government’s responsibility. Gallup data also indicates that most in the US have a negative view of the healthcare industry.
Data for Progress polling indicates that people across the political spectrum support policies that make healthcare more equitable, with 75% of both Democrat, Republican, and independent voters opposing allowing insurers to deny coverage or charge more based on pre-existing conditions. Also across party lines, 70% of voters oppose stopping Medicare (US public insurance) from being able to negotiate lower costs for drug prices.
The unpopularity of the healthcare insurance industry becomes obvious when one examines how exactly insurance companies wield their power over the healthcare system to extract profits from working people.
Cost cutting through denial of service
Shortly before Thompson’s killing, another insurance corporation, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, announced that it would not pay for the complete duration of anesthesia for surgical procedures. This move was denounced by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). “This is just the latest in a long line of appalling behavior by commercial health insurers looking to drive their profits up at the expense of patients and physicians providing essential care,” said Dr. Donald E. Arnold of ASA. “It’s a cynical money grab by Anthem, designed to take advantage of the commitment anesthesiologists make thousands of times each day to provide their patients with expert, complete and safe anesthesia care. This egregious policy breaks the trust between Anthem and its policyholders who expect their health insurer to pay physicians for the entirety of the care they need.”
Following Thompson’s assassination and the subsequent outrage over the state of the healthcare industry, Anthem walked back this decision, with a company spokesperson stating that “there has been significant widespread misinformation about an update to our anesthesia policy. As a result, we have decided to not proceed with this policy change.”
Regardless of Anthem’s flip-flopping, the corporation was willing to cut anesthesia for patients mid-surgery simply to cut costs. This is only one example of how health insurance companies are able to reap their enormous profits from policies which maximize human misery.
Under the current privatized healthcare system in the US, working people and their employers pay hundreds of billions of dollars to private insurance companies in the hopes of receiving adequate coverage when most needed. Insurance companies, which under a capitalist system exist only to make a profit, not to actually provide coverage, do whatever they can do to deny coverage to patients in their hour of need—enabling them to pocket the billions they receive from people in the US and increase their revenue.
Companies such as UHC, which is the nation’s largest health insurer with over 15% of the market share, cut costs by denying coverage to patients, including through a process called prior authorization, a process which insurance companies utilize to determine if they will cover a prescribed procedure, service, or medication. Prior to Thompson’s tenure as UHC CEO, which began in 2021, the rate of prior authorization denials was 8%. By 2022, the rate of denial had skyrocketed to 22.7%. According to personal finance platform ValuePenguin, UHC denies Medicare and non-Medicare insurance claims at a rate that is double the rate of the national average.
UHC’s prior authorization denials increased so sharply that they prompted an investigation by media outlet ProPublica as well as the US Senate. ProPublica found that UHC had culled therapy expenses by using an algorithm to restrict mental healthcare coverage. A report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that UHC used artificial intelligence to deny claims at an increasing rate. In November of 2023, UHC was hit by a class action lawsuit filed by the families of two former UHC beneficiaries, which alleged that the company had illegally denied “elderly patients care owed to them under Medicare Advantage Plans” by utilizing an AI algorithm with a 90% error rate.
“The elderly are prematurely kicked out of care facilities nationwide or forced to deplete family savings to continue receiving necessary medical care, all because [UHC’s] AI model ‘disagrees’ with their real live doctors’ determinations,” said the complaint.
These sharp increases in claim denials served a particular purpose: under Thompson’s leadership, UHC profits increased from USD 12 billion in 2021 to USD 16 billion in 2023. UnitedHealthcare Group, of which UHC is a part, is now the largest health insurance company is the US, with an annual revenue of over USD 189 billion.
Hey @UHC. Completed a hysterectomy yesterday afternoon, discharged her home in the evening (saving @UHC and everyone some money). Discharge medications included 12 Vicodin. (retail cost $30). Vicodin DENIED pending prior authorization. Patient in pain all night. Way to go.
As health insurance companies extract their enormous profits from those left without coverage, some are seeking to propose and organize alternatives to the for-profit healthcare system. Progressive demands for Medicare for All, a single-payer healthcare program in which the costs of essential healthcare for all US residents are covered under a public health plan that would replace almost all other existing public and private health plans, have reignited following Thompson’s assassination. Organizations such as Physicians for a National Health Program have advocated for such a policy. As PNHP outlines, under a single-payer program, “over $500 billion in administrative savings would be realized by replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer.”
“There is no justification for violence,” said California Representative Ro Khanna, who supports the policy. “But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.
A man displays blood-stained British, Polish, and Australian passports. [Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo]
In the wake of the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy, which killed seven aid workers, the Green Party have repeated their call for the UK government to cancel all arms export licences to Israel. The Party’s Global Solidarity spokesperson and former Middle East diplomat, Carne Ross, said
“The death of compassionate humanitarian volunteers was an outrageous and avoidable tragedy. The cynical attempts by the Netanyahu government to portray the attack on World Central Kitchen (WCK) as an accident have been dismissed by those agencies trying to feed the starving in Gaza. Under international humanitarian law, this humanitarian aid is the responsibility of the Israeli government, yet they are keeping routes closed and not ensuring that those emergency routes operated by aid agencies are safe.
“It is clear that the Israeli government is violating the terms of the licences under which arms are exported and is failing to abide by basic international humanitarian law. It is a national shame that we are arming the Israel defence forces who are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. It appears that the deadly Israeli strike on the aid workers used a drone produced in the UK. This only strengthens the case for an immediate arms embargo.
“It is hugely disappointing, but sadly predictable, to hear calls to end arms exports coming only after Western lives have been lost. It comes too late for the thousands of Palestinian children slaughtered by western supplied bombs and bullets.
“Foreign Secretary Cameron can show global leadership during his talks with NATO leaders today by first ending UK arms sales and then persuading other NATO countries to follow suit. We cannot allow the humanitarian calamity in Gaza to continue a day longer.”
