“If We Have To Kill People” TERRIFYING Leaked Audio EXPOSES Israeli Interference in Latin America

Indexado: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]This week on Doubledown News Watch, a shocking story of American and Israeli political meddling in Latin America. If we have to kill people, you can rest assured we will do it.

[00:00:11]>> New audio recordings appear to reveal a former president of Honduras in jail in the US for drug trafficking was freed by Donald Trump as a result of payments by Israeli aligned groups.

[00:00:23]>> The Israeli prime minister is going to back us. We're very grateful to him. The pardon money didn't even come from you.

[00:00:30]It came from a council of rabbis, from people who back Israel.

[00:00:33]>> The labor together spying scandal spreads to the heart of the Labour party and may now implicate the prime minister.

[00:00:40]>> I can't conceive a situation where at the very least hasn't been told about it verbally. This went to the absolute top levels of the Labour Party.

[00:00:48]>> And we do a deep dive into the Iranian group supposedly behind recent arson attacks on Jewish sites in London. It's also possible that it's complete nonsense that Iran was not behind this at all. It's really murky. I mean, that's the reality. We speak to a former undercover agent for the FBI.

[00:01:07]>> It seems more fictitious. Not fictional, but fictitious. We know who the fear narrative originates from. I'm Richard Saunders, and this is your weekly look at the world through independent eyes.

[00:01:26]On April the 30th, anonymous Honduran journalists working with the Spanish TV station Canal Red began releasing 37 audio recordings of voice notes and telephone conversations between senior Honduran politicians. They revealed an extraordinary story of American and Israeli interference in the country's internal affairs. A story which has been almost entirely ignored by English-speaking media. The tapes feature the country's president Nasri Asphora and former president Juan Orlando Ernnandez who was imprisoned in the United States for drug trafficking and then controversially pardoned by President Trump just before last November's elections in Honduras which were marred by allegations of corruption. Both Asphoda and Hernandez belong to the right-wing National Party.

[00:02:13]Shortly before the election, President Trump issued a blunt warning to Honduran voters to vote for the National Party or face a cutoff of aid. As the votes were counted with the results on a knife edge, Trump warned there would be hell to pay if the left-wing Liberal Party emerged triumphant. A swaller duly won.

[00:02:34]The tapes appear to show that the release of former President Hernandez from prison in the US was the result of a financial transaction and was facilitated by Israeli interests.

[00:02:46]>> The Israeli prime minister is going to back us. We're very grateful to him.

[00:02:51]They had a lot to do with it. In fact, they had everything to do with my release and my negotiation. The pardon money didn't even come from you. It came from a council of rabbis, from people who back Israel.

[00:03:05]The recordings reveal a plot to reinstall Ernnandez as president after Asphora has served his four-year term and to turn Honduras into a hub of American and Israeli interests in the region. Hernandez denies it's his voice on the recordings. President Asora has not yet made a formal public statement.

[00:03:24]Canal Red says it authenticated the tapes. Earshot, an independent sonic investigation company, has examined them and concluded they're likely to be genuine, though the poor quality of the recordings means this evaluation was made with what it calls a moderate degree of confidence. I spoke to one of the journalists behind the story.

[00:03:45]Valeria Dwarte from Canal read. Her words are translated from Spanish.

[00:03:52]First, I'd like to ask, what interest does Israel have in a small Central American country like Honduras?

[00:03:58]Honduras?

[00:04:00]>> While the Israel factor in the Honduras gate expose has been one of the things that has caught our attention the most because Latin America does have a history of political interference by the United States. But what has raised alarm bells is what interest Israel has in a country like Honduras.

[00:04:19]and not just Honduras, but in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[00:04:23]Listen to what they say regarding Israel's interest.

[00:04:27]They describe it in terms of artificial intelligence. In this case, special economic zones where Honduras sees sovereignty so there can be artificial intelligence investment.

[00:04:39]So we are talking about a network of money that seeks to implement these zones that are protected or rather unprotected by legislation.

[00:04:49]so they can operate in Latin America and the Caribbean. So what the Honduras Gay Expose revealed are precisely these economic and military interests.

[00:05:02]The recordings appear to show that the release of Juan Orlando Fernandez from prison was the result of financial arrangement. Is that right?

[00:05:12]>> Yes. Exactly. What Juan Orlando Hernandez says is that the pardon was paid for by people from Israel. He says the pardon was paid for by them, not even by you. He tells current president Nasri Fura.

[00:05:27]>> But we don't know for sure it was the government of Israel. Is that right?

[00:05:32]>> No. The audio clips say that Israelis are the ones who paid for this and we have to thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for everything. The audio says it explicitly. Juan Orlando says the one who has been in charge of all of this has been Benjamin Netanyahu.

[00:05:50]>> Do we know who or what organization received the money?

[00:05:56]>> No, we don't have information on that.

[00:05:57]The audio clips don't reveal this type of information.

[00:06:04]>> What's the interest of President Trump in having a friendly government in Honduras? in particular in having Juan Orlando Hernandez as president in four years time.

[00:06:17]>> Well, for Donald Trump, Juan Orlando Hernandez is a bargaining chip to have control over Honduras, absolute control over the country.

[00:06:26]When we talk about absolute control, we are talking about economic and military force. Because in the audio clips of Nasri Fura, the current president of Honduras speaking to Juan Orlando Hernandez, he says, "We have already spoken with the ambassadors. We have already spoken with those we had contact with before and in these negotiations we had agreed.

[00:06:52]Among the special economic zones that operate outside of Honduran law is the construction of military bases.

[00:07:00]They say they are going to build a military base that will be larger than the one they already have. And note that the American military base located in Honduras is the largest in the region.

[00:07:12]>> In the geopolitical war of influence between the US and China, whatever we call it.

[00:07:19]They explain how they will no longer have any relationship with China. This aligns exactly with the US security doctrine.

[00:07:31]This is a scandal that extends throughout Latin America. In the recordings, they talk about creating a secret information unit to attack other governments in Latin America.

[00:07:43]In Latin America, I'm going to play you a couple of clips of Juan Orlando.

[00:07:51]It's necessary for me to have these funds because we are going to open an office here with the help of some Republicans to be able to attack and remove the cancer of the left from Honduras and all of Latin America. We can do great things for all of Latin America. There will be actions against Mexico. There will be actions against Colombia and most importantly against Honduras, against the Zlaya family.

[00:08:18]Well, it is made explicit that there is a need to strike at progressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean that are not aligned with US economic interests.

[00:08:29]We are talking especially about Colombia and Mexico whose governments are on the left and are somewhat independent and both countries have leaders who have rejected US interference in this period of right-wing governments.

[00:08:44]What Juan Orlando Hernandez says is that he is going to build a communication cell in the US that will also be coordinated by Donald Trump's presidential team to strike and exterminate the cancer of the left. That is to influence public opinion through media warfare. So what is the specific interest of the United States? To overthrow sovereign countries so they can also be aligned with US foreign policy.

[00:09:14]The name of President Javier Mille of Argentina also appears in the recordings. What's his role?

[00:09:22]>> Yes, that is truly striking. Juan Orlando Hernandez confirms it that Javier Mle has already contributed $350,000 in this fight against the left. I say that in quotes because they view everything as a war. There is a war unfolding in the region and they have provided $350,000 to help fund this communication cell based in the United States.

[00:09:48]>> Some of the clips are chilling. I'm going to play you the voice of again.

[00:09:54]If we have to kill people, you can rest assured we will do it.

[00:10:00]>> If we have to return to repression to control the country, we'll do it. We have to do everything we can to hold on to power. Everything that happens, deaths, assassinations, kidnappings, we should blame it all on the communists.

[00:10:17]>> I'm also going to play you the voice of retired general Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, who was the leader of a coup in Honduras in 2009.

[00:10:30]I have a group that are more or less ready in the armed forces, including the administrator.

[00:10:35]They're all on board to begin the hunt.

[00:10:38]I also have a list of people that we have to hit hard to clean out, to disappear in some way.

[00:10:46]A hunt? What are they talking about here?

[00:10:51]Well, we are talking about a doctrine of terror. A doctrine of terror that takes us back to Operation Condor of the last century in Latin America and the Caribbean when the military with complete impunity had the power to persecute opponents, opposition leaders, social organizations, and people on the left in the name of the fight against communism. Right now, we are seeing history repeating itself. There's time being justified by the fight against drug trafficking. Today specifically, the President of Congress, Thomas Sbrano, has officially granted his full approval for the deployment of the military onto the streets throughout Honduras. We're talking about a process of territorial militarization, not just in Honduras, but in various countries across Latin America. In other audio clips, Juan Orlando Hernandez says it doesn't matter how much blood is shed. They will be in government forever and have to do whatever it takes to stay in power.

[00:11:54]>> What's been the international reaction to your report, especially in the United States?

[00:12:02]Well, there hasn't been much coverage in the United States regarding the Honduras Gay Expose, but in Latin America, it has really caught our attention. But this story will only get bigger because today Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, said he is going to initiate the international trial of Juan Orlando Hernandez for his actions, which should also include other actors heard in the audio recordings, the ones that are actually funding it or who pushed for the pardon.

[00:12:33]>> A postcript to this story. This week, the BBC published a lengthy interview with former President Juan Orlando Ernandez. They failed to ask him about any of this.

[00:12:47]>> Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Bengavir, has posted footage on social media showing the abuse of detained Gaza flotilla activists. These images provoked outrage in the West and Israeli officials rushed to scold Ben Wave for taking a sledgehammer to their propaganda machine, including a rare rebuke from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said that they were not in line with Israel's values and norms, as if Bengavir were an extremist outlier and not the Minister of National Security, ignoring the rampant abuse, including sexual, reported by previously detained flirtillaa activists, and that this is just a snapshot of the inhumane treatment Palestinians are regularly subject ed to with no international push back at all. Also in Israel, thousands of ultraists marched through Jerusalem's old city last week.

[00:13:36]The annual dance of the flags commemorates Israel's conquest of Jerusalem in 1967.

[00:13:43]It's a day of terror and intimidation for Palestinians who still constitute the majority of the population in East Jerusalem.

[00:13:50]The police and army do little to protect them and even children it seems have learned impunity.

[00:13:56]>> So what would you do to the Palestinians living here?

[00:13:58]>> Here like in the old city leave or we'll kill you. I think Islam is cancer and you don't transfer cancer to another patient. That's not moral. You have to destroy cancer. Only the purple vested volunteers of we stand together a voluntary organization comprising of Jews and Palestinians stand between local people and the mob. This is Alan Lee Green, the co-director of We Stand Together.

[00:14:22]>> These police officers are removing us and they see so many settlers serving death to all arms, lay your village burn, they see them try to hurt Palestinian businesses, but as they try to remove the people that come here to try and protect Palestinians as they're trying to remove and they are getting protection.

[00:14:40]>> Meanwhile, the UK saw its own hate march. The Unite the Kingdom rally descended upon London at the weekend led by far-right activist Steven Yaxley Lennon aka Tommy Robinson. While organizers claimed that this would be the biggest patriotic rally so far, it saw less than half of the turnout of their previous march in September. Here are some lowlights.

[00:15:01]>> Shut up.

[00:15:02]>> What's that?

[00:15:03]>> Are you sick?

[00:15:05]>> What's your language?

[00:15:07]>> This is my little girlfriend.

[00:15:10]>> What's your name? Hey. Hey. She ain't no child ride.

[00:15:13]>> How old is she?

[00:15:15]>> She's 15.

[00:15:16]>> Are you [ __ ] hell?

[00:15:19]>> Please, I'm going to go to jail in a minute.

[00:15:25]>> No, I'm good, bro. I'm good. prove that you ain't losing smoke that come back over you.

[00:15:41]>> The Robinson rally propelled this man to fame. Evangelical pastor and would be rock star Ricky Doulan.

[00:16:08]A version of this clip that went viral was manipulated by AI to be more out of tune. Dulan says, "What's far more interesting is Dulan's previous appearance in an undercover series called Gold Mafia by Alazer's investigative unit broadcast in 2023.

[00:16:24]The series exposed gold smuggling and money laundering in southern Africa.

[00:16:28]Dulan is a pastor in the Good News Church run by this man, Yubert Angel.

[00:16:33]Angel is a senior envoy for the Zimbabwean government and according to Alazer, a key figure in smuggling and moneyaundering networks." Ricky Dulan is part of his show.

[00:16:46]>> You were born in September.

[00:16:49]>> September.

[00:16:51]>> As well as holding the mic for him, Dulan acts as Angel's sidekick in business deals.

[00:16:57]>> Dulan denies wrongdoing and has not faced any criminal prosecution. But here are some of the highlights from his appearance in the Alazer series.

[00:17:06]>> We are excellent.

[00:17:08]>> It's It's embarrassing. It's not very good. I like embarrassing cash.

[00:17:13]>> The problem is, and we want to all be clear, >> absolutely.

[00:17:15]>> This is black money. This is money which cannot be declined.

[00:17:18]>> Okay.

[00:17:19]>> I understand.

[00:17:20]>> As long as you grease the wheels in Africa, you grease the wheels, there is no issue. There can't be no issue.

[00:17:26]>> It's a good washing machine, right?

[00:17:28]>> Yeah.

[00:17:33]In February, news broke that Labor Together, the think tank that propelled Kstama to power, had been spying on British journalists. Labor Together hired PR firm APCO to dig for dirt on Paul Holden, author of the fraud, which exposed the fact Labor Together had failed to declare threearters of a million pounds in donations. The APCO investigation extended to Gabriel Pogrand of the Sunday Times who collaborated with Holden on an article about Labor Together in the autumn of 2023. Josh Simons, the director of Labor Together, resigned in disgrace at the end of February and has since resigned as an MP. Now, new evidence has emerged which shows knowledge of the APCO investigation into Paul Holden extended to the very highest levels of the Labour Party and that Kia Star himself may be implicated. Paul Holden joined us in the studio. Well, uh just this past week um I received information out of the think tank labor together. Um the story has been breaking for a while. It's been very much focused on the idea this was a bit of a rogue operation that was being led by labor together with Josh Simons who was a director sort of playing a key role but the documents show that actually this was effectively a joint labor party labor together appco strategy is the reputation management firm that was hired um and this went to the absolute top levels of the labor party um we have emails showing that Josh Simons and a very senior employer at at EPCO worldwide um were meeting were were corresponding with Morgan Mcweeny and Paul Overden to discuss the reporting to me >> here that's Morgan Mweeny who at that time was head of campaigns later became chief of staff after they got got into power and Paul Evan Ovunden who was um head of communications at that time and later became head of strategy in town >> so this is the email that's um that you've uncovered and and you can see absolutely in this sort of receipt column there's Morgan Mcweeny and there's Paul Oendon it establishes absolutely beyond doubt that they are communicating with Josh Simon and labor together about what is a smear campaign against you.

[00:19:38]>> And it's very clear from the context of the email as well because it says Tom Tom Harper has just finalized his report into Paul Holden who'll be delivering it on a certain date. Please can we arrange a meeting to discuss this very clear from the context of the email that he's not having to explain who Tom Harper is.

[00:19:54]He's not having to explain who APCO are.

[00:19:55]He's not having to explain that there's a report into me plainly people know about it already from the context of the email. This is a long-term discussion and they're expecting to receive it. And now we can see in the order trail is that basically within days of them being informed of this report, APCO then encourages Labor together to report me to security services. It's a pretty disturbing story because what it shows is that actually this this this really despicable and is a genuinely despicable campaign um to investigate me and my family and I've seen the report that lists my home address, for example, identifies my family members. So, this is a a very conventional straightforward smear campaign designed to undermine your profession and effectively ruin your life. Um, you that's what it would have done and in which they they seek to bring the security services on board.

[00:20:43]They try to get the National Cyber Security Center to investigate you. To their credit, the National Cyber Security Center looks at this and says it's all nonsense and won't. Yeah, it does seem like basically they are the National Cyber Security Center very politely responds to to Labor Together and says, you know, please forward us your concerns and then, you know, effectively nothing happens at that point. You know, the theory behind that that Labor Together and APCO present is that I'm somehow connected to Russia that I'm part of a pro Kremlin network of journalists. An absolutely mad allegation, not least because me and my colleague Andrew have investigated Russian oligarchs. We've been, you know, we face legal extra legal threats from Russian oligarchs. It's a mad allegation. Until now, what's happened is essentially Labour together and Josh Simons who headed have been cordoned off. Josh Simons was thrown thrown to the wolves and he he was thrown under the bus and and he was the one who took responsibility for it which is presumably why Josh Simons stabbed Star in the back in Makerfield by standing down in Makerfield and and letting Burnham stand. I would imagine >> I mean he's given his own reasons for why he's done it. He believes he's now become a true Andy Bernham believer according to his version. But what's very clear, absolutely clear, is this is not like Josh Simons on his own endeavor pursuing some rogue crazy scheme of his own, which is sort of the way it's been presented. This is a a a a response that is that involves the absolute highest levels of the Labour Party, people who become the highest levels of the Star number 10 operation. And really I've got to believe looking at this material and looking now we know the closeness between Morgan Mweeni and Kastama and the centrality of Overden to the Kstarma operation. And also because my book and my work was specifically going to be looking into the relationship between Morgan Mcweeni and Kastama and and serious unlawful misconduct.

[00:22:34]I just cannot see how Stalmer wouldn't know about this. I just do not believe personally in my own mind I can't conceive of a situation where at the very least some hasn't been told about it verbally.

[00:22:45]>> Let's just jump backwards for people who are not completely familiar with this story. You wrote a book called The Fraud. In the fraud you exposed the fact that Labour together the think tank which had propelled Star to Power had received three quarters of a million pounds during the Corbyn era in undeclared funds. And your your big um revelation subsequently in the press was that supposedly this was an error. There is very strong evidence it wasn't an error that Morgan Mcweeny who at that time headed Labour together had been told very clearly that he should be um he should be reading this and then what happened is when you collaborated with the Sunday Times and Gabriel Pogrand and the Sunday Times to to report this um labor together hired this company APCO to do an investigation into yourself and to Andrew Feinstein >> um who you work with um and who also happened to be K star's independent opponent in the in the Hov and Stankra seat.

[00:23:39]>> Yeah. So you have a straight line from they freak out because actually the story I have is so damaging to this this political project because it shows there's like real issues of property and good governance about the most central players in Kostama's government about Kiama himself. He needs to answer these questions and then within within a week there's this scheme. We will undermine this reporting. We will make sure that doesn't have an impact. This is not even nearly finished being investigated where there has to be a proper full inquiry into it possibly through a select committee in parliament. You know, it's it's dirty tricks, it's contractors, it's spies, it's smear campaigns, it's evidence being deleted, it's evidence being withheld, all in the end to disguise and to distract from and to cover up from the original sin. And I've always said this is the original sin of the Stama project is that Morgan Mcweeni for two and a half years ran a covert campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn and stalk's leader with a pot of money he wasn't declaring in violation of the electoral law and when they were investigated by the electoral commission. It looks like they were in cander with them and that is damning >> and the interesting twist here of course is Peter Oon and myself reported um the the the fact that you were being smeared by Labour together last September. No one was interested at that point. It became a big story at the beginning of this year because APCO, somebody on the ground for APCO, had rather misunderstood the job and thought their job was to smear everyone and smeared Gabriel Pogrand at the times. That's the only reason this has become a big story.

[00:25:09]No one gave a damn when it was just you and Andrew.

[00:25:12]>> I think it was two things. The one is that for various reasons obviously we couldn't name the Osapco back at the time. Then of course when it turns out they're actually going after Gabriel Pogran and they've also listed Henry Dyier who's now at the Guardian and Harry York in like a scope of works document then it really breaks free um and there's a sense of like how how dare they go after the establishment journalists.

[00:25:36]>> Am I right in thinking that your book the fraud >> um has still not received a single review in British national media? So the places that have reviewed it, I got a review in politics home um and then a review in I think it's called the is the new European, but nowhere else has reviewed it.

[00:25:54]>> No, it's extraordinary, isn't it? They can't ignore it because you it's now led to the resignation of three senior figures at number 10, including Paul Offendon, the the head of strategy, who is on on the email. Um and it fatally undermined Morgan Mcweeny as well. And and yet even when they're reporting it in news terms, they do everything they can not to mention the actual book.

[00:26:14]>> No, I mean it does seem like a I'm going to use um an unpleasant analogy. I hope you don't mind because I I was Go >> ahead. I was telling telling my partner Jess who, you know, did such great, you know, incredible her own incredible investigative work that that fed into the book. Um was that this is basically like imagine a a polite dinner party where somebody emits a disgusting fart.

[00:26:36]Everybody has to leave the room. It changes all their behavior, but none of them can mention it. And I feel like that's what it is. Like I've changed everybody's behavior, but nobody for various polite reasons, none of them can acknowledge that that's what's actually caused it to happen. So this this weird situation where often I'll have a story which I'm reading and because the story is actually about me and my experience of the things are broken, things done to me, and a I've never been approached for comment and b they don't even acknowledge me. There's such a weird experience. I'm like a ghost in the machine that's making it move around and have all these effects and nobody will acknowledge it. It's very weird. Paul Holden, the disgusting fart. Thank you very much for joining us again.

[00:27:12]Paul Holden's new revelations were published in the Financial Times and the website Democracy for Sale on Wednesday afternoon. As I record this, they've received limited pickup, but they're important. The revelations Labor Together has been spying on Times journalists caused a media storm. The fact that Starmer's inner circle were implicated takes the scandal to a whole new level. Perhaps the fact the new emails mention Paul Holden, but not mainstream media journalists is the explanation. To anyone who's followed this story, Morgan Mcween's involvement will come as no surprise. Dodgy dossier have been the modus operandi of the labor right for at least a decade.

[00:27:52]Countless perfectly decent, ordinary Labour Party members have their lives and reputations ruined as a result of anonymous accusations against which they had no comeback. The targets were people on the left and disproportionately Jews and Muslims. The East Ham and West Ham constituency labor parties in East London were suspended as a result of a secret dossier local members were not even aware existed until researchers from the Alazer series the Labour files obtained it and showed it to them. An ethnic audit of Labour's disciplinary procedures is desperately needed. Paul Holden would have been just another victim. his life and career destroyed but for three factors. Firstly, he's a very good journalist and through contacts obtained copies of the reports on him. Secondly, the National Cyber Security Center proved conscientious and professional and saw through Labor Together's crude attempts to frame him.

[00:28:50]Thirdly, incompetent researchers at the PR firm APco included mainstream media journalists in their smears, prompting a backlash.

[00:29:00]Even so, the Guardian was initially quite prepared to be a vehicle for smears against Paul and only backed off when he threatened legal action. The Star McWeeny project never had the confidence to charm, cajol, or persuade.

[00:29:14]Instead, it relied on the clunking fist of the party's disciplinary unit and a compliant, complicit media prepared to swallow any smear against the left, no matter how absurd. Today, it stands exposed as an empty, soulless husk of a political movement, visibly withering and dying before our eyes. Its end can't come soon enough. Next up, Lorna with the news in brief from independent media.

[00:29:44]The Israeli newspaper Herets reports that Israeli soldiers stationed in southern Lebanon are complaining about an erosion of operational discipline with commanders ordering unnecessary daytime missions that expose troops to Hezbollah's explosive drones. Israeli operations in southern Lebanon have largely focused on the systematic destruction of buildings, replicating Israeli activity in Gaza. Military personnel told Harets that these missions violate existing safety directives designed to mitigate the evolving drone threat by favoring nighttime movement and signal a prioritization of infrastructure demolition over troop safety. A special report for Scotland's national newspaper exposes a neo-Nazi fight club that is increasingly targeting Scottish teens for recruitment. The Calonia Club, as it's known, forms part of a wider international white supremacist network.

[00:30:36]First promoted in 2017 by American extremist Robert Rondo, the club model is described as a wolf in sheep's clothing, promising disillusioned young men, fitness, brotherhood, identity, and self-improvement while delivering extremist indoctrination and militia style training. Middle East eye reports that a Palestine action prisoner with muscular distrophe is being forced to crawl like a wounded dog in a London prison. Muhammad Umar Khaled has been held on Ramand since July 2025 with his mobility deteriorating significantly to the point where he can no longer walk.

[00:31:10]Khaled missed several neurology appointments after the prison failed to supply a wheelchair and the one eventually provided was too big to fit in his cell. During a fire evacuation in April, he was left alone, locked up in his cell. Khaled says, "They're quite literally treating me as if I am just some wounded animal." Sources have told Middle East I that last month the International Criminal Court filed a secret arrest warrant application for Israel's finance minister Bezel Smatridge for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Smottridge lives in a West Bank settlement considered illegal under international law and is a loud proponent of annexing the territory and for the return of Israeli settlers to Gaza. The ICC already has arrest warrants out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister for Defense Yo.

[00:32:13]Arsenal may have won the title, but it's Liverpool who are on top of a league that no one should want to win. War on Want has produced a report listing Premier League football clubs by the degree of complicity of their sponsors in Israeli apartheid and war crimes.

[00:32:27]Liverpool comes top because of its association with Alphabet, a cloud service provider for Israeli surveillance systems and Expedia, which offers rentals in illegal Israeli settlements. The report calls on clubs to adopt clear ethical sponsorship standards.

[00:32:46]In recent months, London's Jewish community has been traumatized by a series of arson attacks. The best known was the burning of four ambulances belonging to the Jewish charity Hatzah at the end of March. The attacks have been claimed by an organization called Harakat Ashab alyamin al-Islamia, which means Islamic movement of the companions of the righteous, which police say is linked to Iranian intelligence. A number of those arrested were petty paid criminals. Combined with the lethal attack on a synagogue in Manchester last October and the stabbing of two Jewish men in Gold's Green 3 weeks ago, the attacks have caused very real fear and distress. It's a subject that requires the most serious journalism. Instead, we get this. We've been offered money to commit crimes in the UK, apparently on behalf of Iran. Our undercover team has been speaking to a man on Telegram who claims to be linked to Iran's intelligence service. And within just 15 messages, we were given a job. Print out a photo of Trump and Netanyahu, they said. Set it on fire in one of London's famous streets and send a video of it.

[00:33:56]This is the first step in building trust and I will pay for it.

[00:34:00]>> That's from the radio station LBC. Now, if you're perhaps skeptical that you can actually contact Iran's intelligence services through a telegram page and they'll pay you a fiverr to carry out attacks in London, LPC had experts lined up. First of all, the Henry Jackson Society.

[00:34:18]>> What you found at LBC is uh completely part of a a pattern that has existed for a number of years now. Iranian the RGC in general um forces have shifted to using proxy by hire um methods to recruit locals.

[00:34:37]>> The Henry Jackson Society is a right-wing security think tank which advocates aggressively for an interventionist foreign policy. It is not a respected source of counterterrorism analysis. It gets worse. Next, the campaign against anti-semitism. It's quite something now to see it in black and white. If anyone ever doubted it, it's incontrovertible proof that this country is being subverted subverted by foreign influence.

[00:35:06]>> Okay, let's just dwell for a moment on the campaign against anti-semitism. It recently brought a court case against the comedian Reginald Hunter for anti-semitism, which was thrown out by the judge in extraordinarily contemptuous terms. The true and sole motive in seeking to prosecute Regginal Hunter is to have him cancelled, the judge ruled. I have no doubt that the prosecution is abusive. He also described it as misleading and vexacious. He concluded, I direct that a copy of this judgment must be disclosed by the campaign against anti-semitism and attached by it in all future applications. In other words, the judge found the campaign against anti-semitism's behaviors so dishonest, he actually ruled that a health warning be attached to any future legal actions brought by them. Incredibly, the BBC continues to interview the campaign against anti-semitism as representative of the broader Jewish community. It's quite absurd that LBC uses them as counterterrorism experts. We decided it might be a good idea to speak to someone who actually knows what they're talking about. We invited in an independent American investigator with a fascinating backstory. So James, thank you for joining us.

[00:36:18]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:36:19]>> How is it you became involved in the world of radical Islamic groups originally?

[00:36:23]>> Well, I converted to Islam in uh 1997 in Chicago, Illinois, and uh ended up moving to Houston, Texas, where I became a media representative for the Islamic Circle of North America. also creating a law enforcement program on uh diversity and um hate crimes. In the course of these training programs that I would do monthly, I came across a uh a plot by my own friends uh who were working closely with me on these programs um to join al-Qaeda in Iraq. I had a contact in the FBI at that time. I was concerned. I didn't really want to uh tell on my friends or anything like that, but I brought it to them as a concern and um they obviously picked that up and thought it was a real a real threat. And so I eventually decided to um try to head that off and um worked with the FBI.

[00:37:20]>> So you you were effectively undercover within this organization for >> Yes, I was undercover for 3 years.

[00:37:26]>> You now live in Britain. You've lived in Britain for some years. These attacks that have happened in North London, they've been claimed by a group. It's Harakat Ashab alyamin. They are supposedly according to press reports Iranian aligned. What do you make of them? Does it seem like an authentic group to you?

[00:37:43]>> To me, uh, it seems more fictitious, not fictional, but fictitious. They are presenting themselves as something that they're not. They produce their statements in three languages um Arabic, English and Hebrew but they do not produce in Persian um >> in far in the language of Iran. Yeah, >> that that's right. That's right.

[00:38:04]>> You feel there's a problem with the Arabic as well that they use.

[00:38:07]>> Yes. Particularly the Arabic and I looked at their uh their foundational statement which has a Quran verse on it and in that Quran verse the word jahidu is misspelled. Jahidu meaning means to strive which is a command. Religious Muslim groups certainly would not um misspell the Quran.

[00:38:29]>> There's an issue as well as I understand it that they use the term the land of Israel eritz Israel.

[00:38:34]>> This is something that I found very striking. So the land of Israel or Erits Israel is something very dear to the heart of a Zion a religious Zionist. Um a Muslim group particularly axis of resistance is not going to say the land of Israel. They might say Zionist entity or they might say the occupation.

[00:38:52]>> Also the idea that they're Iranian aligned. Now this has been repeated again and again across the media. They themselves don't claim that in any way do they? You've written about this and identified what you call a pipeline by which this story emerged and which connected this group to talk talk me through that.

[00:39:08]>> Yes. I discovered this pipeline what I call a um a laundering of information pipeline. It first appears in an article in the long journal by the Federation of the Defense of Democracies, which is a pro-Israel group, pro-Israel special interest group. And that is the very first suggestion of it, but it is picked up by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. And what they did is formalize this piece by creating a report, publishing it on their website. It's quite a detailed report from that uh source. Um it it is picked up by the uh international center for counterterrorism which is in and of itself an independent organization but based on the Israeli information um it suddenly became uh laundered. It became something that our media can pick up and uh and publish themselves. I've read through these reports. Their evidence for this this group being Iranian linked is that the statement put out by the group is picked up initially by pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq.

[00:40:17]They may simply have picked it up. I mean they they may have seen this video or had it pushed towards them and this is the sort of thing they publicized. So they publicized it.

[00:40:25]>> Exactly. That's that's very possible.

[00:40:27]>> In this context I I want to show you another video here.

[00:40:43]That is a video that's being shot within 5 minutes of the attack happening. The the voice you can hear is speaking in Yiddish. Um so almost certainly a member of the local Orthodox community. They're there within sort of five minutes of of the attack happening. Um the voice is saying there's no one else here. I'm the only one here. There's no one from the um from the emergency services. Now, what's fascinating about that video is that it is reproduced on the the X feed of a man called Moshi Schvartz who works for a well-known um news outlet, media outlet in New York, which services the Orthodox community. And it's reproduced by and and he reproduces he posts identifying it as an anti-semitic attack. Okay? and he posted within 24 minutes of it happening which is very very fast. Now to be very clear here I'm not saying that that means they must have had prior knowledge and are complicit. All I'm pointing out and you know orthodox communities are very close-knit. This man was a very well-known journalist. You know it's perfectly possible that that the information does transmit itself that quickly. I'm just comparing it with this evidence of the Iraqi Shia groups and pointing out that the speed with which something is reported by an outlet does not mean necessarily that they are complicit.

[00:41:59]>> Right? And I think that we should be very careful about who we say um is who is this group? Uh and we know who it isn't, right? It is not likely not an Islamic group is likely not a Shia group that is linked to Iran. Um, but we don't know who the group is and I think that we know who uh the uh fear narrative originates from.

[00:42:26]>> James, thank you very much for joining us.

[00:42:29]>> Thank you for having me, Richard. Events in London are following a very similar pattern to a series of attacks on Jewish property in Australia in 2024 and 2025.

[00:42:39]I spoke to a Jewish Australian journalist I enormously admire. His name is Anthony Loenstein. He's the author of a superb book on how Israel achieved preeminence in the fields of security and surveillance called the Palestine Laboratory. He's also presented a number of documentaries on Al Jazzer. So Anthony, talk me through what happened in Australia last year with these arson attacks and so on. So really since October 7, 2023, there was pretty soon after the attack in uh Israel, there was a I wouldn't say explosion, but there was a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, apparently anti-Semitic attacks, graffiti dorbed on synagogues, on buildings, on cars. There were fire bombings of synagogues. There were other attacks across Sydney and Melbourne. No one in those attacks were killed, but it understandably caused disqu in the Jewish community.

[00:43:37]>> The thing that caught my eye about the Australian attacks is, as I understand it, it emerged that many of the people who were subsequently arrested, and there were arrests and trials and so on, >> they turned out to be petty criminals who are being paid. Is that right?

[00:43:49]>> Correct. So, essentially, there's been a number of arrests in the last about 6 to 12 months. There's been number of trials. And I think I'm confident in saying in every single case it was shown and this was shown by the prosecution rather than the defense. None of these were ideological people. They were not haters of Israel. They were not haters of Jews. They were not anti-ic they weren't I'm not defending their actions but I'm saying it wasn't based on a you know fanatical anti-semitism. It wasn't that at all. They were being paid by criminal groups that was established and that in some ways added to the confusion of people of wondering well what the hell is going on here? Why is this being done and who who's whose agenda is being served by these kinds of attacks?

[00:44:37]>> Well, it begs the question who who was at the end of the chain who was paying them. So what emerged in the end?

[00:44:41]Because I think in the end the Australian government did point the finger at Iran, didn't they?

[00:44:45]>> Indeed. So in the end there was a hastily called press conference last year by Anthony Albani our prime minister the head of AIO our intelligence services essentially saying that after a lot of investigation it was established that Iran was behind this this is this is what they said they didn't present any hard evidence for this but Iran was blamed within a matter of days the Iranian ambassador to Australia was kicked out of the country and when this was announced I think a lot of people including colleagues of mine journalistic colleagues were on the one hand fascinated by what was being alleged, but also slightly baffled when still to this day. There's been no evidence. Hard evidence showing the government says we can't release evidence. We've been told that the Israelis did provide some assistance in the investigation, which obviously did ring a few alarm bells. Doesn't automatically mean it's suspect, but certainly it rings alarm bells. So, here we are months and months after the prime minister makes this pretty startling allegation and we're not really any closer to understanding why did Iran do this. I am still left with a lot more questions than answers as many of my colleagues are.

[00:45:55]>> Now, the Iranian foreign minister at the time that the Iranian ambassador was kicked out said well he denied that it was Iran behind it and said why would we do this? what what what possible interest does it serve? Hasn't he got a point? I mean, how does this serve Iran's interest?

[00:46:10]>> It's a good question. The so-called logic would be that these kinds of attacks create insecurity for Australia, insecurity for Jews, and therefore it creates disqu.

[00:46:24]It's a different it's a form of warfare without launching an official war. Now, is it credible? Um, I don't think it's impossible that's the case. It's also possible that it's complete nonsense that Iran was not behind this at all.

[00:46:42]And the only group in some ways that really have benefited from these attacks, when I say benefited, I'm not talking in a financial sense, but benefited in a maybe ideological sense actually in a way are the so-called pro-Israel community here in Australia.

[00:47:00]I don't want to dismiss it entirely, but I think it's a mistake to automatically presume that it was definitely Iran as the Australian government has claimed.

[00:47:08]It's really murky. I mean, that's the reality. And there is a long history of various false flag attacks that have happened in the past historically committed by not just Israel, but certainly Israel in the last nearly 70 years in various countries in the Middle East and beyond. Is it conceivable that the Israelis would do this? Because if you look at who who benefits, it's very hard to see how the Iranians benefit, but certainly here the attacks are instantly used to drive the narrative, the political narrative that there needs to be a crackdown on pro Palestinian demonstrations. Was that the same in Australia?

[00:47:45]>> Absolutely. Indeed. I mean, Australia has had like the UK, of course, they're a smaller country, but very, very large pro Palestine protests for week after week after week. the numbers are a bit smaller than your country, of course, cuz we're a lot small population. And there's no doubt that it was used by pro-Israel forces, conservative politicians, and frankly, even elements of the Labor government here. And the impact, I think, has been to some extent had a bit of a chilling effect on many people who would normally have protested in the past. Does Israel have any sort of a track record of launching false flags in the past, doing attacks which it sought to blame on its enemies? I mean the short answer is yes. This is not conjecture or my opinion. There's strong evidence that for example in the early 1950s soon after the establishment of Israel there was a desire to get more Jews essentially in the Jewish state.

[00:48:38]And there were Israeli intelligence officers who committed terrorist acts in for example Baghdad which now has very few Jews but at the time had far more.

[00:48:47]that's been wouldn't say 100% proven but pretty likely that it was committed by um Israeli intelligence officers in the idea that it would scare Jews to leave and come to Israel to be uh new arrivals. Ari Ben Manasha who was a former Israeli intelligence officer who is currently a businessman in Canada. He wrote a book a number of years ago talking about these issues about Israel and yes he's a controversial figure and some people contest what he says but he has alleged in a number of cases over the years particularly in the 70s and 80s that Israel was directly involved in paying certain Palestinian groups to commit terrorism rather than so not necessarily the attacks don't happen but they're actually being paid to commit terrorism against various interests which are then used by Israel to support its agenda.

[00:49:45]So has this happened in the past? Yes.

[00:49:48]Is it conceivable it's happening again?

[00:49:50]Yes. Doesn't necessarily mean that what's happening in the UK or Australia is that. And it's worth saying that in the last year and a half since these attacks have happened in Australia, myself as a journalist and many others have tried to do a lot of investigation to find out any evidence to back up whether Iran is behind it or Israel is behind it or you know Vanuatu is behind it. God knows who. And the short answer is we found very little or sorry but with Israel zero.

[00:50:24]Even with Iran, there's not much publicly available evidence beyond what the government intelligence services say. So you're left with a as someone who's, as you have, Richard, written about intelligence services for a long time. Do they lie? Yes. Is it also possible it's true? Yes. So you're kind of left in the middle, right? It's very hard to know. Now, we should be very clear here that we're talking about attacks in Australia or in Britain in the last couple of years, which are attacks of vandalism on Jewish properties, synagogues, and so on. There are attacks against property. We're not talking here about the the terrible shootings at Bondai Beach, the murders indeed Manchester. It's very important to make that distinction. We're not talking about those attacks.

[00:51:05]>> No. And the attacks on Bondi, which happened on the 14th of December last year, were from what we now know was almost certainly ISIS inspired ISIS backed attacks by two men, the father and the son. The father was shot, the son is facing trial and will be on trial in the next couple of years. But no, there is which is a very different case.

[00:51:25]And also, it's important to say it's not necessarily binary that it's either the Iranians or the Israelis. I mean, there have been a number of very strange and murky cases in recent years. There was a case in 2017, wasn't there, when there was a whole wave of threats uh against synagogues and so on. It turned out to be a sort of rogue Israeli who wasn't working for the Israeli state. In fact, he was eventually imprisoned in Israel.

[00:51:46]So, there's that third option, isn't there?

[00:51:48]>> Yes. Someone who is mentally unstable, someone who is sick, someone who might have a certain feeling about what's happening in the Middle East, but not necessarily ideological. I think that is worth saying, but I think it does play into that narrative that says that it's unsafe for Jews and therefore governments and media have a supposed responsibility to almost cushion the Jewish community in cotton wool and not ask the legitimate serious questions that exist. And in Australia at least and I know in the UK with some exceptions those kind of questions are not being asked deliberately.

[00:52:24]>> As you say, it's all extremely murky.

[00:52:27]Um, thank you very much for joining us Anthony. Thanks for having me, Richard.

[00:52:31]>> We thought long and hard before exploring this subject because it inevitably opens you up to charges of being an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. If you think that, just do the research, do the leg work, and take a look at the trials arising from attacks on Jewish property over the last few years. It's extraordinary how often it turns out not to have been an anti-semite. In contrast, the far more numerous, but far less reported attacks on mosques and other Muslim sites have invariably turned out to be precisely what you would expect, right-wing racists. The reporting of these stories is causing very real distress to the Jewish community. They're also patently being used to drive anti-Palestinian political agendas. To simply swallow unquestioningly what you're being fed by the government, the police, and the security services is journalistically unprofessional and irresponsible. In fact, it's not journalism at all. We'll see you next week.

[00:53:35]Here at Doubledown News Watch, we depend on you. We have no billionaire owners or sugar daddies. It's that which enables us to be fearless and independent in our coverage. If you value independent media and the alternative perspective it provides, please do sign up to Doubledown News on Patreon and support us in any way that you can.