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Reports: FBI investigating death of Palestinian-American journalist

The new probe comes amid a spike in tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv following the rise of far-right leaders in Israel.

Middle East

Reports say that the FBI has opened an investigation into the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli soldiers last May while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin, a major city in the occupied West Bank.

The revelation, which was first reported by Israel’s Channel 14 and confirmed by Axios, emerged after American officials notified Tel Aviv’s Justice Ministry of the investigation. Neither the Department of Justice nor the FBI have yet confirmed the existence of the probe.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has helped lead the charge for accountability for Abu Akleh’s death, praised the FBI’s decision, calling it “an overdue but necessary and important step in the pursuit of justice and accountability.”

The unprecedented move could open Israeli soldiers to U.S. legal liability for any involvement in the killing, a fact that will surely add to brewing tensions between the Biden administration and the incoming government of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is expected to include several ministers from a far-right, Jewish supremacist party.

One such member, Itamar Ben-Gvir, will likely take over as minister of public security in a Netanyahu government. Ben-Gvir’s likely appointment has drawn significant backlash given his history of support for Jewish extremists, including the perpetrator of a 1994 terrorist attack on a mosque in Hebron that left 29 worshippers dead and 125 injured.

Even Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a strong supporter of U.S.-Israel ties, has reportedly warned Israeli officials that making Ben-Gvir a minister would damage the relationship between the two countries.

The FBI investigation comes after US and Israeli officials separately determined that Abu Akleh had most likely been killed by a stray Israeli bullet. A range of activists and politicians have fought that conclusion, with some arguing that soldiers may have intentionally killed the prominent Palestinian journalist. 

Notably, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has previously threatened that Abu Akleh’s killing could imperil Washington’s massive annual military aid to Tel Aviv. “Unfortunately, there has been no independent, credible investigation,” Leahy said in September, adding that there is “a history of investigations of shootings by IDF soldiers that rarely result in accountability.”

A number of questions remain about the investigation. As Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU noted on Twitter, it remains “unclear if Israeli authorities would fully cooperate with the FBI,” which could complicate efforts to reach a definitive conclusion about why and how Abu Akleh was shot.


Slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (via Al Jazeera/ CC-BY-SA-4.0)
Middle East
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

Why Ecuador went straight to China for relief

Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

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Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

Why does peace cost a trillion dollars?

Washington Politics

As Congress returns from its summer recess, Washington’s attention is turning towards a possible government shutdown.

While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

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Top image credit: Funeral in Sana a for senior Houthi officials killed in Israeli strikes Honor guard hold up a portraits of Houthi government s the Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and other officials killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, 01 September 2025. IMAGO/ via REUTERS

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

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