Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner went to Moscow today (Saturday 5th September 2026) on an urgent basis with another peace proposal for Mr Putin.
Lets time out a little. The western media is hyping the false news that Russia is LOSING the war in Ukraine.
Yet two weird things are repeating again and again. No. 1 are the multiple visits by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow with yet another peace proposal. If Russia is LOSING the war then why travel all the way to Moscow so many times - and only to be turned down one more time by the LOSING side?
No. 2 is the propaganda campaign by Britain and German Reichskanzellor Mein Herr Friedrich Merz that Russia (the LOSING side) will soon (like tomorrow morning) launch attacks on the NATO countries. If Russia is LOSING the war it will be because they have inferior weapons, their supply of weapons and ammunition have run out, they are losing territory at the battle front etc. In other words they are LOSING the war. How can such a LOSER have the capacity to attack the NATO countries? Its like saying when Germany was losing the Second World War on both the western and eastern fronts, they decided to turn north and attack the North Pole. When a country is losing a war they tend to do weird things like that.
After visiting Moscow on Saturday (today) Witkoff and Kushner will then visit Ukraine tomorrow Sunday the 6th Sept. Ukraine has declared a four day ceasefire during this peace delegation's visit. (To avoid accidentally shooting down their airplane). However the Russians have not indicated any ceasefire. I believe this will double the risk for Witkoff and Kushner because the Ukrainians can still shoot down their airplane and then blame it on Russia.
Russia does not want a ceasefire because being the LOSING side, they like getting pounded. Why agree to a ceasefire when you are LOSING the war?
The Ukrainians have absolutely no say in this war. The war is being conducted by the Brits, the European Union and NATO. Ursula Van Der Lyin the president of the European Union, Kaja Kallas the current EU foreign-policy chief and Mark Rutte the secretary general of NATO are the main instigators for the war against Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian people are at their wits ends. No power, no fuel, supermarket shelves are empty. The Ukrainian people have absolutely no say about this war. There are no more elections allowed in 'democratic' Ukraine.
From Day 1 the Russians have not changed their demands for any ceasefire:
The four Russian speaking regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are recognised as Russian territory.
Ukraine abandons NATO membership ambitions.
Ukraine becomes fully demilitarised and neutral.
All Western sanctions on Russia are lifted.
No Nazi ideology parties must be allowed in Ukraine.
The latest U.S. bombing of a civilian wedding celebration follows a sordid history of America bombing weddings, writes Medea Benjamin.
The aftermath of the US strike on a wedding gathering in Kuhestak, Sirik County, Iran, Sept. 1, 2026. (Masoud Mohammadi / Mehr News Agency / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)
On Sept. 1, an American missile slammed into a home in the small Iranian fishing town of Kuhestak, along the Strait of Hormuz, where dozens of people had gathered to celebrate the wedding of a fisherman’s daughter.
At least four people were killed, including 4-year-old Amirali Karimi and 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi. More than 60 people were wounded.
Videos from the scene showed a gaping hole in the roof, concrete walls punctured, doors shattered, ceilings collapsed and women’s and children’s shoes scattered among the debris. The bomb struck the section of the wedding set aside for women, which is why most of those injured are women and children. Iranian media showed terribly wounded children being treated at a hospital in nearby Minab, the same city where the U.S. bombed an elementary school on the first day of the war, killing 168 people, most of them children.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the U.S. strike, saying that if the wedding venue was civilian and the attack failed to respect the laws of war, it could constitute a war crime.
Questioned about the strike, U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins responded that: “The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC.” But the U.S. military also insists that it is using precision weapons — weapons supposedly capable of hitting exactly what the military intends to hit.
The U.S. military has yet to explain why its missile hit the wedding party. But we already know something about what went wrong in the bombing of the Minab elementary school. That strike apparently wasn’t a failure of America’s “precision” weaponry. It was a failure of American intelligence: CENTCOM reportedly used outdated targeting data that still treated a school — separated from an IRGC compound for roughly a decade — as a military target.
After the Minab bombing, 46 Democratic senators demanded answers from Defense Secretary Hegseth: What was the intended target? Why did the strike hit the school? Who authorized it? What weapons were used? What intelligence was used to determine what the building was? What precautions were taken to prevent civilian casualties? They gave him a March 18 deadline. He never responded. The Pentagon reportedly completed its own investigation in April, but it still has not released its findings to Congress or the American public.
U.S, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during a Pentagon press briefing on the U.S. unauthorized war on Iran, March 4. (DoW/Alexander Kubitza)
Now, with a U.S. missile hitting an Iranian wedding just six months later, the same questions about targeting, intelligence and civilian protection are being asked all over again. And the tragedy in Kuhestak is part of an even longer and more disturbing pattern: the United States has repeatedly turned wedding celebrations into scenes of carnage.
In fact, American forces have bombed at least eight other wedding parties or wedding processions since 2001.
A historical review published back in 2013 by The Nation identified at least eight U.S. attacks on wedding parties or wedding processions between 2001 and 2013 — six in Afghanistan, one in Iraq and one in Yemen. The estimated death toll from those eight attacks approached 300 people.
One of the most notorious attacks occurred in Afghanistan in July 2002, when U.S. aircraft attacked a wedding celebration in Uruzgan province. Afghan officials said dozens of civilians were killed. Another Afghan wedding was devastated in 2008 when an airstrike reportedly killed 47 civilians, including the bride.
The U.S. has also hit wedding parties in Yemen. On Dec. 12, 2013, a U.S. drone fired four Hellfire missiles at an 11-vehicle wedding procession near the city of Rad’a. At least 15 people were killed and 15 wounded. The bride herself was struck by shrapnel.
Human Rights Watch investigated the attack extensively. Witnesses described a festive convoy of 50 to 60 people accompanying the newlyweds when missiles suddenly struck the vehicles. One survivor summed up the horror simply: “We were in a wedding, but all of a sudden it became a funeral.”
At the time, CODEPINK launched a campaign to get answers and to press the U.S. government to apologize to and compensate the victims. We even staged a mock wedding in front of the White House, dressed in wedding clothes, and reenacted a drone strike to show Americans what it meant for a joyous family celebration to suddenly become a scene of carnage.
The U.S. military insists it does not target civilians. But when a country that possesses the most sophisticated surveillance systems and precision-guided weapons on Earth repeatedly kills families at weddings and children in schools, these incidents cannot simply be dismissed as the inevitable fog of war.
If the U.S. military knew precisely what it was targeting in Kuhestak, it should tell us. Was the nearby telecommunications tower the target? Was something else nearby considered a military objective? Why was a missile fired so close to a house packed with wedding guests? What surveillance was conducted beforehand? And did commanders know civilians were gathered there?
Just as in the case of the Minab school strike, there should be an independent investigation — and the Pentagon should release whatever surveillance footage and targeting information it has.
Because after Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Iran, Americans should be asking: How many wedding parties have to be turned into funerals before we demand that our country stop killing civilians? And there is an even bigger question: Why is our military waging war, again and again, against people who never posed a threat to us in the first place?
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. She is the author of 10 books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection; and Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as Znet, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet and The Hill.
Seven aid workers killed in an airstrike in Gaza were marked as targets under an Israeli military practice of establishing guilt by association, a Guardian investigation shows.
A top Israeli military prosecutor announced last month that he would not pursue criminal proceedings for the April 2024 incident in which drones fired missiles at three clearly marked World Central Kitchen (WCK) cars soon after they had escorted a food aid delivery to Gaza. Three British humanitarian workers along with an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a dual US-Canadian national were killed.
The official Israel Defense Forces (IDF) version of events pointed to specific mistakes made by a handful of officers. The victims of the strike were also blamed for hiring armed guards to protect a food aid convoy and for allegedly “deviating” from their agreed route.
However, interviews with senior Israeli officers involved in the incident or familiar with the official Israel investigation suggest it glossed over the role played in the killings by a common IDF practice used to designate targets, which endangers aid workers and civilians in general, especially when combined with the army’s open-ended mission to end Hamas’s civil control in Gaza.
More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in the three years of the Gaza war. The army’s own internal data suggests more than three-quarters of the dead have been civilians.
The reserve colonel who ordered the strikes, Nochi Mendel, said the WCK workers became potential targets after they had a brief encounter, lasting just minutes, with armed guards assumed to be from Hamas (an assumption later shown to be groundless).
He deemed them to have “mixed together” with alleged Hamas militants, where mixing together was defined as being “near them, talking, playing, hanging out and so on”. Asked whether the presence of armed men made the entire convoy a target, Mendel replied: “Certainly.”
He concluded: “They were not innocent because they were connected to Hamas.”
The aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza. Military prosecutors have ruled out criminal charges over the attack that claimed seven lives. Photograph: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters
Mendel was referring to a general policy of haflala, “incrimination”, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a “terrorist”, including those “incriminated” by association. The manner in which haflala is to be applied in a given sector is often conveyed in a commander’s mission brief delivered verbally to other officers.
He said his unit had been commended by the army hierarchy for its involvement in several strikes on what were deemed to be Hamas's attempted commandeering of aid. “They applauded us and were pleased with our action,” he said. The difference in the WCK incident was that foreign nationals were killed, he said. “That’s the whole difference. Not a substantive difference.”
When the WCK convoy was destroyed, it was nowhere near Israeli troops. Several Israeli officers familiar with the incident said the strikes were not ordered on the basis of an imminent threat to Israeli lives, but to fulfil the mission to thwart Hamas attempts to control aid deliveries.
An IDF statement said the airstrikes were a result of an “erroneous assessment that Hamas military operatives were present in the vehicles, rather than from an intention to target the organisation’s personnel”.
The statement added that “this assessment was compounded by serious failures to comply with applicable orders and procedures”. However, it said: “Following an in-depth examination of the findings and in light of the standards applicable under criminal law, it was determined that, despite the aforementioned failures, the circumstances of the incident did not give rise to a reasonable suspicion of a criminal offence warranting the opening of a criminal investigation.”
The WCK said the Israeli decision not to pursue criminal proceedings was “inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive”. “At the time of the lethal attacks, our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody,” the WCK said. “The IDF had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple airstrikes. It knew our team’s movements, identities and activities in advance.”
Britain, Australia and Canada denounced the prosecutor’s decision as “shameful”, saying they would “continue to seek answers” on behalf of the slain aid workers. The UK opened an inquest in 2024 into the deaths of the three British team members: James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman.
Saifeddin Abutaha, a Palestinian, Australian Zomi Frankcom, Damian Sobol, a Pole, and a dual Canadian-US citizen, Jacob Flickinger, were the other victims. The UK inquest was adjourned pending the outcome of the Israeli investigation.
The funeral in Bristol of James Kirby, 47, in May 2024. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
Mendel, who is the only officer of such high rank to have been dismissed for his actions in the Gaza war, has been portrayed in army command briefings as a rogue operator. Questions have been raised about a political motive. Mendel is a settler who is reported to have been one of the 130 signatories of a 20 January 2024 letter to the IDF calling for the flow of aid to Gaza to be restricted.
However, the way the Israeli army operates in Gaza – rules of engagement are made contingent on local circumstances and passed on, often verbally, down the chain of command – gives officers at Mendel’s level wide discretion in subjective judgments as to who is a “terrorist” and therefore a target.
The IDF statement said its activity in the Gaza Strip was “regulated by a broad range of binding written orders and standing directives governing the use of force, the approval processes for strikes, strikes against sensitive sites, and other matters” and that these incorporated “the rules of the laws of armed conflict, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”.
The statement said that “a person does not become a lawful target merely because they are in the vicinity of an armed individual, come into contact with them, or travel alongside them”.
The IDF said: “Carrying a weapon may be a relevant factor in such an assessment, but is not sufficient on its own without meeting the definitions described above. In particular, and in the context of the incident in question, security personnel hired to protect a humanitarian convoy from looting do not become lawful targets merely because they are armed.”
An IDF officer familiar with the WCK killings said that given the circumstances and the standing IDF procedures, the overwhelming majority of officers would have acted in the same way. “There were armed men next to them,” the officer said. “If you took qualified people and put them on the call, in 90% of cases this is what would have happened,” the officer said. “In my guess, 99% of the time the first bomb would have been dropped; 90% of the time the second; 80% of the time the third.”
Reserve Brigadier General Oren Solomon, the battle manager of Gaza Division, said that a mistake had been made in determining that an armed man had entered one of the vehicles, but added that once that error had been committed, the incrimination procedure led inevitably to the three missile strikes.
“If I incriminated this vehicle beforehand as Hamas – anyone who escapes from it and enters another vehicle: death comes,” Brig Gen Solomon said. “Together with him they will die. That meets the incrimination rules, no problem.”
A senior officer involved in the initial Israeli military investigation into the WCK case, argued Mendel overstepped in interpreting the rules of incrimination.
“You can’t incriminate 20 people if there’s one armed,” he said. The officer argued that the first strike could have been justified by the initial misidentification, even at the cost of civilian casualties, but not the subsequent missiles.
“You struck someone you suspected, a vehicle you suspected had an armed man in it. The moment two people came out, nobody with a weapon, the second and third strikes are contrary to orders because you don’t know whom you’re striking,” he said.
The other systemic factor that contributed to the deaths of the seven aid workers, and potentially countless more civilians, was one of the missions given to the army in Gaza by Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government: to destroy Hamas’s influence and control. That meant anyone deemed to be involved in – or assisting – the Hamas administration, including by distributing aid, could find themselves in the sights of an Israeli drone operator.
“I remind you that part of our mission was to crush Hamas’s ability to govern,” Mendel said. “Part of the mission was to hit that [Hamas-controlled aid deliveries], and we hit it.”
Interviews with IDF officers suggest there was a widespread belief in the ranks that Hamas had wrested control of the bulk of aid deliveries into Gaza. That assumption was unfounded, later analysis showed. It was a period of widespread hunger caused by an Israeli blockade, when food convoys were being mobbed by desperate civilians, criminal gangs and Hamas militia.
The belief that Hamas hijacks were widespread meant that the appearance of armed men in proximity to the WCK vehicle in April 2024 fitted a “pattern of activity” that helped incriminate the whole convoy in the eyes of Mendel and his unit.
The IDF officer familiar with the incident said it was common practice to designate any armed man in Gaza as Hamas or a “terrorist”, as Mendel did. The officer added: “How you define that it’s Hamas – he’s in proximity to weapons, and because he touches the trucks, and because he does all sorts of things that look as if he’s going to take over the trucks.”
The role of the incrimination principle in the WCK killings shows how it has become a factor in the historically high proportion of civilians killed in the Gaza war. This sits alongside the routine acceptance of high “collateral damage” in the targeting of Hamas militants, the designation of large and shifting areas as free-fire zones, and the deliberate levelling of neighbourhoods to prevent the return of Palestinian communities.
The common factor is that constraints on targeting were minimised in the interests of an open-ended mission. Since the start of the war in 2023, no Israeli soldier has been convicted of wrongful death or war crimes in Gaza operations.
“I came to defeat Hamas,” Mendel said. “If such an event came before me again, I would do exactly the same thing.”
He also dismissed the significance of the killings. “I think it’s an idiotic side event,” Mendel said. “It really isn’t a serious event.”
