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Bipin Joshi was in Israel for 23 days before Oct. 7. This week, he was buried in his native Nepal.
This story was excerpted and adapted from the book “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” winner of the National Jewish Book Awards’ 2024 Jewish Book of the Year and The Natan Fund’s 2025 Notable Book Award.
Bipin Joshi wasn’t supposed to be sent to the Gaza border.
At 23, the tall young man carried his family’s aspirations on his shoulders — he was their firstborn son, their vessel of promise.
Home was Kanchanpur in Nepal’s fertile westernmost reaches, where the Mahakali River nourishes borderlands renowned for abundant harvests. There, Bipin first envisioned transforming agricultural knowledge into prosperity — he dreamed of a banana plantation that would secure his family’s future.
Israel was meant to be just a brief detour on his path to building something lasting back home.
When he enrolled in the Learn and Earn program that purported to offer students from Africa and Asia the opportunity of earning relatively high wages while taking classes in high-tech agriculture. Bipin had been assured placement in Israel’s heartland. But his assignment was changed at the last moment, and he was placed at Kibbutz Alumim, two miles from the Gaza border. Yet any disappointment he felt gave way to relief: He would be working with Himachal Kattel, his best friend and roommate from college in Nepal. In Alumim, the two Nepali young men resumed their familiar schooldays routine, sharing a modest room where, after exhausting days of fieldwork, they would unwind with cold beers and songs from home.
A month later, Himachal and Bipin were some of the only students left alive from their cohort, nearly 3,000 miles from their home in Nepal, when Hamas attacked Alumim.Through the lemon and orange orchards, dozens of Hamas terrorists rampaged the Kibbutz, shooting indiscriminately. They killed 22 Thai and Nepali citizens, kidnapped eight, and injured a few more.
Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu | Sept. 13, 2023
Himachal, a 25-year-old from a small village in the mountains of Gorkha, sported a large red Tika on his forehead at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. This was a blessing from his older sister, Niruta. He was the youngest of four siblings.
All 17 students awaiting their midnight flight were adorned with Tikas, a token of pride and blessing from their families.
In Nepali culture, they serve as good-luck charms and vouchsafes for significant journeys. Many parents had come to the airport, some in tears, others bearing gifts. It was a long goodbye — their children were leaving for 11 months.
They were making the trip for the money, and the education: they were supposed to earn more in a year in Israel than they’d earn in a few in Nepal, as well as gain skills that would advance their careers.
Aged between 22 and 25, most of the students had been raised in poverty.
Prabin Dangi, 24, was hoping to support his chronically ill mother back home, but found that despite his education, good jobs in Nepal were scarce. This was a common dilemma in his family, as one of his brothers was working in Dubai and another in Saudi Arabia for the same reason. His mother pleaded with him, her youngest son, not to leave, but he was determined to provide her with the best possible care.
Students take part in a candlelight vigil in Lalitpur, Nepal, on Oct. 9, 2023, in memory of Nepali citizens who were killed in Kibbutz Alumim, in Israel. (Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images)
Ananda Sah, 25, had promised his grandmother that he’d build a house for her. Dipesh Raj Bista, 24, planned to finance his younger brother’s medical studies, being the sole supporter of his family after the death of his father.
And Joshi traded his musical ambitions and writing talent for practical skill: He wanted to learn advanced agricultural techniques that he could apply back home.
The group was sent to a classic “old-style” kibbutz named Alumim, where they shared responsibilities and lived communally. The kibbutz population — a community of 500 — was a mixture of religious jewish immigrants from Arab countries, members of the U.K.’s largest Orthodox Jewish youth movement, agricultural workers from Thailand and now, them as well.
Thai labor, along with Nepali labor, became Israel’s agricultural backbone after Palestinians (who had previously replaced Israeli farmers) were restricted from working in Israel in large numbers following the first intifada in the 1980s. Security concerns about terror attacks led Israel to seek an inexpensive workforce sourced from countries uninvolved in the conflict.
Kibbutz Alumim | Sept. 14-Oct. 6
The students arrived in Israel in mid-September: warm, sunny days.
Soon after arriving, the students’ expectations collided with reality. The communal socialist principles they’d heard about didn’t seem to apply to them.
Their accommodation consisted of small cramped rooms equipped with bunk beds to maximize space.
Their days began around 4 a.m., when they’d gather in the cramped, gray kitchen to cook the lunch they’d bring with them to the fields, before heading out to do arduous physical labor under the sun, which typically lasted until approximately 4 p.m.
Prabin, Padam and Rajan were responsible for managing the kibbutz’s irrigation system. Their duties included carrying heavy pipes out to the fields, assembling the pipes and connecting them to the irrigation system, and fixing malfunctions.
Himachal and Bipin worked together in the orchards, trimming trees, and picking and packing pomelos and oranges. The work was simple, not technically advanced; it was difficult for them to ignore a sense of disappointment.
Each evening of the three weeks the Nepalese cohort spent there, many students called home, reassuring their families that their time in Israel, though it was draining, was a wise investment in their future.
They clung to the hope that their situation would improve once the university opened in October – the “Learn” portion of the program, which involved attending classes at Ben Gurion Negev University once a week.
On Oct. 3, an earthquake struck Nepal, and many were concerned for their families. Padam Thapa called home anxious on October 6. His sister-in-law, Mekhu Adhikari, told him about the frightening aftershocks. Ganesh Nepali urged his elder brother to look after their parents and stay safe, as their family home had sustained structural damage.
Kibbutz Alumin, the Foreign Workers Zone | Oct. 7
Himachal had stayed up until 3 a.m., engrossed in the final season of “Vikings” on Netflix. Saturdays offered the only chance for sleeping in.
Drifting off with his earphones in, he didn’t hear the sirens. At 6:30 a.m., Bipin woke him, urging, “We need to get to the shelter quickly.”
In the other room, Prabin, still half-dressed, rushed to the bunker, witnessing rockets slicing through the sky.
Padma (screen) and Pushpa (podium) Joshi, the mother and sister of Nepalese national Bipin Joshi held hostage by Palestinian militants in Gaza since 2023, address a demonstration organized by the families of hostages calling for action to secure their release in Tel Aviv on Aug. 16, 2025. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
The 17 students were confined in the open-door shelter for more than an hour, waiting for instructions. This was the first missile attack they’d ever experienced. They’d been reassured before that rocket attacks from Gaza were common but rarely harmful, and told that staying inside a shelter would keep them safe. To pass the time, they divided into teams, playing Ludo on their phones.
Meanwhile, Rafi Babian, a kibbutz member and the security officer of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, was worried: The sheer number of missiles being fired was unusual. He headed to the council’s headquarters to activate the emergency center. En route, he was warned at the Reim intersection about the presence of terrorists nearby and soon after received an alert about terrorists approaching the gate of his home, Kibbutz Alumim. He notified the kibbutz a few minutes before Hamas arrived. By 6:45 a.m., the entire kibbutz emergency response squad, comprising a dozen members, was armed and ready. Fifteen minutes later, about 20 terrorists were at the kibbutz gate.
The Nepali students didn’t know any of this. They assumed the noises they heard were from missiles. They didn’t know that terrorists riding motorcycles and mopeds were already firing RPGs.
The emergency squad prevented the terrorist from reaching the kibbutz’s residential area — a few civilian-volunteers and soldiers were killed in the battle — but no kibbutz members were harmed.
The terrorists, having been repelled, went looking for another target. They found the workers’ quarters, near the cows and orchards.
From their shelter, the students heard loud Arabic being spoken by the approaching terrorists. Thinking the Arabic was Hebrew, they were relieved: someone had come to help them.
Dipesh Raj Bista stepped out of the shelter, followed by Ganesh Nepali, who just needed to use the restroom.
Outside the shelter, they were met by two men in black, pointing guns at them. Realizing these weren’t kibbutz-members, Dipesh Raj Bista yelled, “We are Nepalese!”
Gunfire was the response.
Dipesh and Ganesh were killed on the spot.
Soon after, a grenade was thrown into the shelter where the 15 other students were hiding. Bipin immediately realized what happened and threw the grenade back out. But he couldn’t catch the grenade that followed, and five of the students were injured. Ananda Shah was severely bleeding, clutching a pillow to stifle his screams. Lokendra Singh Dhami, bleeding too, was whispering about his wife, his 5-year old daughter, and his 2-year-old son.
Prabin, Himachal and Bipin weren’t hurt. They had huddled in a corner of the room, squeezing so tight together that it was hard to breathe. Together, they called one of their bosses, pleading, “Please help us, we’re in trouble.”
The response was short: “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you. There are terrorists attacking all over, I’m hiding too.”
Narayan Prasad Neupane wasn’t as gravely injured as the others: despite having lost three toes, he could still walk. He happened to have remembered the number of the Israeli emergency medical services and called for an ambulance. The operator, speaking English, assured him that help would arrive.
Soon after, two men in blue uniforms entered the shelter. “Please don’t hurt us,” the few students still alive begged.
“We’re the police, the Israeli police,” the men assured them.
“Please, take us to a hospital … these people are dying … get us out of here.”
“There are still terrorists outside,” the police said. “It’s impossible to move you now, but we’ll be back. Everyone who can walk, you need to move to a different place; it’s not safe in the shelter. Go to the kitchen or to your room.”
“And leave the wounded here?”
They had no choice.
Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki pays respects after draping the country’s national flag over the coffin of Bipin Joshi at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Oct. 20, 2025. (Prakash Mathema / AFP via Getty Images)
Bipin, Himachal, Rajan, Prabin, Prabesh and Padam, leaping over the corpses and injured bodies of their friends, made their way into the dining room.
There, a few Thai workers were also hiding. Some of their friends had been murdered while sleeping in their beds.
Narayan, Lokendra and Dhan decided to move to the residency area. Upon hearing a car outside, Narayan went out to check if it was the ambulance he was waiting for. He was shot twice by a passing terrorist.
Crawling back into the room, covered in blood, water was his last request.
Kibbutz Alumim, Kitchen | Oct. 7
A defensive wall of Persian rice sacks — that’s what they constructed to shield themselves from further grenade attacks. Prabin came up with the idea, and they quickly stacked the sacks on top of each other.
It was a small kitchen; options for shelter were limited. Most of the Nepalese and Thai workers crouched behind the “rice wall,” under a wooden table, with Parmod hiding under the sink. Bipin, positioned in the middle and not shielded at all, grew increasingly worried about their friends left in the shelter.
As time passed without any sign of rescue, Bipin considered going back to help them. “We need to think about our next steps. Will you come with me and help bring our friends here?” he asked Himachal.
They sought the opinion of a Thai worker who’d been hiding in the kitchen before them. His name was Phonsawan Pinakalo, a 30-year-old tractor driver who’d arrived in Israel four years earlier, to earn a salary that was four times what he would’ve earned in Thailand. They communicated using Google Translate, going back and forth between Nepali and Thai.
Phonsawan’s response was unequivocal: “Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll die. We’ve heard the terrorists walking around here for hours.”
On the other side of the table, Rajan tried to reassure his roommates Prabin, Prabesh, and Padam. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. Help will come soon.”
Exhausted by their ordeal in Israel, Prabesh declared, “If we survive, we’re heading back to Nepal as soon as possible.”
An hour and a half later, Hamas terrorists broke down the kitchen door, shouting “Allah-hu Akbar” and shooting indiscriminately. The makeshift wall of rice sacks offered no protection.
The bullets pierced the sacks and hit them. Blood and rice was spilled on the floor.
“Prabin, how bad is your leg?”
“It’s bad. I can’t feel much of it. And you, Himachal?”
“You see the holes in my chest and shoulder, right? It’s getting harder to breathe.”
“We need water. I can’t bear this.”
Struggling, Himachal rose from their hiding spot under a cheap wooden table to fetch water. As he moved, he aggravated his chest wound and lost more blood. He managed to collect some water in a shallow plate, but half of it spilled as he returned to Prabin on the kitchen floor.
Israelis attend a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi at Ben Gurion Airport on Oct. 19, 2025. One holds a sign that says, “Sorry you got caught up in our disaster.” (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
It wasn’t enough. Prabin’s throat was parched and he was writhing in agony.
“Pramod, do you have any water to give me? I beg you.”
Pramod didn’t respond. Hidden under the sink in a small plumbing cabinet, he was the only student unharmed, unseen by the Hamas shooters.
“Pramod, there’s water in the sink above. I beg you, I can’t move to get it. I’m so thirsty, I might scream, and they’ll come again and finish us off.”
He pleaded again and again, until Pramod made a small hole in the sink pipe and collected some of the murky water in a pot. Extending his hand from the cabinet, Pramod whispered, “Here, this is all we have.”
Prabin lapped up the mixture of water and urine. His roommates, Rajan and Prabesh, lay under the table as well: They were dead, killed immediately.
Padam, a fourth roommate, took longer to die. “I am dying, bhauju,” he managed to send a short text-message to his sister-in-law, then plead with his friends to help him: “Kill me. I can’t stand this anymore, kill me with a knife if you can.”
“Please, friend, bear this pain. The police will come for us,” Himachal said, though he believed they were all doomed. Beneath the table, he noticed his own breathing growing heavier and heavier, matching the heavy breathing of Padam and Parbin.
Oct. 8 – The Present
The men who arrived in Israel as “neutral” replacements for Palestinian workers ultimately returned to their home countries either empty-handed or in coffins.
Out of the 17 Nepalese students at Alumim, 10 were killed, four injured, two survived unharmed — and Bipin was taken hostage alongside Phonsawan.
From their hiding spot in the kitchen, Himachal and Prabin overheard one of the terrorists questioning the two hostages about their religion, to which Phonsawan responded, “Buddhist, Buddhist, Thailand, Thailand.”
Two hours later, Bipin and Phonsawan were seen with their captors being pushed into a-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
With the onset of war, the thousands of Thai and Nepalese workers in Israel left the country, causing the collapse of the Israeli agricultural sector.
In the midst of harvest season, Israel was once again in desperate need of guest workers. In December 2023, the government of Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, announced it would send about five thousand young people to work in Israeli agriculture. Hundreds of Sri Lankans also joined, putting money over safety.
Men take the coffin of Bipin Joshi, to a car after a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi, a young Nepalese man who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023 and later died in captivity in Gaza, at Ben Gurion airport on Oct. 19, 2025. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Himachal and Prabin spent several months in Israeli hospitals, lonely, unable to communicate adequately, facing a range of complex surgeries and medical procedures. Eventually, they managed to recover and even continue their studies, earning their master’s degree from Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot last month.
At some point, Phonsawan was added to the list of dead; his body was returned and flown to Thailand this week. But Bipin’s fate remained unknown.
During two years of war, Bipin’s family lived in agonizing uncertainty, not knowing whether their son was alive or dead. They were disappointed through two ceasefires, when Thai citizens who’d been taken hostage were released, and as government officials expressed “grave concern” for his life. Clinging to hope, they did everything in their power to raise public awareness about their son, a young man trapped in a foreign conflict.
Their worst fears were confirmed last week when Bipin’s corpse was returned to Israel, on the first day of a new ceasefire that brought with it the release of all 20 living hostages in Gaza.
“With immense pain, we received the worst news imaginable. Our dear son, Bipin — brother and soulmate to our daughter Pushpa — was murdered in Hamas captivity. Bipin left us full of excitement, setting out for a year of study in Israel. We never imagined that the hug we gave him then would be our last,” the Joshi family said in a statement.
Family members mourn during the funeral ceremony of Bipin Joshi at his residence in Kanchanpur, Nepal, on Oct. 21, 2025. Prakash Chandra Timilsena/AFP via Getty Images)
“Before you were taken, you managed to send a message to your cousin, asking him to be strong and always look toward the future. It is hard to imagine a future without you, Bipin,” the statement continued. “Every flower in the garden we planted for you will remind us of you — every orchard, every field. You are part of the landscape of Nepal, and now also part of the landscape of the Land of Israel.”
On Monday, Bipin made his journey home. The first stop was a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, where a top government official praised his heroism and addressed him directly, saying, “I am sorry. It shouldn’t have ended this way.”
Then, Bipin’s body was flown to Kathmandu, where Prime Minister Sushila Karki draped Nepal’s flag over it during a brief ceremony at the airport.
And from there, his coffin was taken to his village where on Tuesday morning, after a night in which his family was reportedly accompanied by so many who had provided comfort over the last two years, his body was cremated in a ceremony on the banks of the Mahakali River. Government representatives were present, and the photograph that had become famous in Israel and beyond was on display. Bipin was home in Kanchanpur, the borderland district whose soil nurtured his dreams and now his memory.
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Trump Labels Carlson a ‘Low-IQ Person’ After Criticism on Iran, Says ‘I Don’t Respond to His Calls’
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump on Tuesday lambasted far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson, one of his longtime supporters turned outspoken critic, as the US-Israeli war against the Islamic regime in Iran continued to fragment online discourse among right-wing influencers.
“Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump said in an interview with New York Post national security reporter Caitlin Doornbos when asked about Carlson’s condemnations of his Easter message promising massive destruction on Iran.
“He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him,” Trump said of Carlson. “I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
On Monday, in his continued efforts to frame himself as a devout defender of Christian faith, Carlson released a more than two-hour long podcast on X and YouTube, announcing it by saying that “desecrating Easter was the first step toward nuclear war. Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us.”
Carlson took issue in part with Trump’s social media post the prior day, Easter Sunday, issuing a warning to the Iranian regime.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump posted, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global shipping that Iran has effectively closed amid conflict with the US and Israel.
In addition to attacking the president, Carlson criticized multiple faith traditions and Christian Zionist religious figures including White House senior adviser Paula White and Franklin Graham, CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and of Samaritan’s Purse. Carlson also maligned the megachurch movement and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He has previously called Christian Zionism a heresy and said that he disliked its proponents “more than anybody,” remarks for which he later offered an apology.
Carlson’s 40-minute opening monologue framed his opposition to Trump in theological terms, asserting that Christians should have opposed the president’s effort to seize Venezuela’s oil, saying, “That’s not acceptable for Christians. In fact, that’s unacceptable for Americans or any civilized people because taking other people’s stuff by force cannot be allowed.” Carlson called Trump’s decision wrong “under the American legal code, but it’s also wrong under the Christian legal code.”
Carlson also argued that during Trump’s inauguration, he didn’t take the oath of office with his hand on the Bible.
“That should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about,” the online media personality added, claiming it “became clear that maybe [Trump] didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book. And what’s inside that book are limits on human behavior.”
Carlson condemned Trump’s Truth Social posting on Sunday, calling his words “maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing on every level. It is vile on every level.”
On Sunday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also used religious rhetoric to reject Trump’s use of the phrase “Praise be to Allah,” which appeared to be in jest.
“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” Greene wrote on X in a post that has since received over 9.6 million views. “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit. I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this.”
Greene then referenced the Strait of Hormuz, arguing it’s closed “because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. They are more than capable of defending themselves without the US having to fight their wars, kill innocent people and children, and pay for it.”
Returning to religion, Greene wrote “our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians. Christians in the administration should be pursuing peace.”
On Tuesday, Greene called for members of the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to remove Trump from power following his threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back.”
Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has also advocated Trump’s removal, asking a guest on his Monday InfoWars podcast, “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” On March 31, Jones said that Trump “does look sick … the brain’s not doing too hot. And so, we just cut bait on Trump, and we just mobilize against the Democrats.”
Other influential far-right media figures who previously spent years boosting Trump have also now called for his removal. On Tuesday in response to the same Trump threat, far-right podcaster Candace Owens wrote that “the 25th amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.”
The 25th Amendment states that if key government leaders determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” then the vice president “shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president.”
On Tuesday, conservative radio host Mark Levin labeled those calling for the 25th Amendment’s use as “the Woke Reich neo-fascists.”
Owens had reposted Carlson’s podcast condemning Trump.
On Sunday in response to Trump’s post, Owens wrote on X in a post seen by at least 3.8 million people that “this is a satanic administration. We all realize that satanic Zionists occupy the White House and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed.” She added, “All of our lives may depend upon other countries realizing that Trump is deeply unwell and surrounded by religious fanatics who have convinced him that he is a messiah. We are in uncharted territory. Leaders worldwide need to act accordingly.”
On Tuesday, Owens accused Trump of involvement in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Resharing an X posting by Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian asserting his willingness to die in defense of the Islamic regime, Owens wrote, “The Iranian President tweets that he is willing [to] sacrifice his own life for his people. Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice Charlie Kirk and is willing to sacrifice every American life and livelihood for Greater Israel. Who is the animal again?”
Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center and a conspiracy theorist ally of Owens, wrote on Tuesday in response to Trump’s threats of civilizational eradication that the president “believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger. If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.”
Kent reposted Carlson’s podcast too and came under fire from CNN’s Jake Tapper for also sharing Iranian propaganda falsely suggesting that the United States intentionally sought to kill its own downed pilot rather than rescue him.
Ann Coulter, the right-wing polemicist who authored 2016’s In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!, has also turned against the president, writing on Tuesday that “Trump is going to set off the wildest rush for nuclear weapons the world has ever seen. Should go well.”
Coulter wrote in response to Trump’s Sunday message: “I really wish ‘legal experts’ hadn’t screamed bloody murder about every little thing Trump did, so they could speak with authority now that he’s actually committing war crimes.”
Antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes has also jumped on board the anti-Trump bandwagon.
“I’ve been saying this for the past couple of days: You have to understand that all Trump does is lie. It’s by design. This is the function of rhetoric from the White House,” Fuentes said on April 1 on his Rumble show. “But that’s the Trump doctrine, which is you flood the zone, you saturate the information space with disinformation or contradictory information, and the purpose of it is to throw your enemies and even your allies off balance.”
Fuentes added, “We are stuck. We made an attempt to destroy the Iranian regime and we failed. We took a shot and we missed. And what this has allowed Iran to do is seize the Strait of Hormuz and take a fifth of the world’s energy hostage. And we have no ability to take it back. Because the regime survived, it is now actually stronger. So, it’s not going anywhere. And what’s more, Iran prepared for exactly this scenario.”
Fuentes’ so-called “Groyper” movement promotes antisemitism, racism, rape, and support for Hamas. Proponents seek to infiltrate the Republican Party and subvert it from within, a tactic Fuentes has instructed. Conservative journalist Rod Dreher reported in The Free Press that his sources have told him that approximately 30-40 percent of Gen-Z Republican staffers sympathized with Groyperism.
While initial polling showed firm Republican support for Trump and Israel’s efforts to crush the Islamic regime in Iran, new research indicates diminished enthusiasm. A poll from YouGov and The Economist released on March 31 showed that while 62 percent of Republicans supported the conflict, that figure divided between pro-MAGA Republicans (79 percent) and non-MAGA Republicans (33 percent.) Self-proclaimed MAGA Republicans comprise roughly twice the number of non-MAGA Republicans.
Polling also shows that a majority of younger Republicans, a cohort more heavily influenced by Owens and Fuentes, now reject the war, with only 49 percent supporting Trump’s actions.
Tuesday wasn’t the first time that Trump blasted Carlson.
“Tucker has lost his way,” the president told ABC’s Jonathan Karl last month. “MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
Carlson told Status News editor Oliver Darcy that “there are times I get annoyed with Trump, right now definitely included. But I’ll always love him no matter what he says about me.”
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Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
President Donald Trump has backed himself into a corner on Iran. His increasingly apocalyptic threats — including a Tuesday morning social media post that warned “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not accede to his terms — make that much clear. Trump is looking for any way out of this war that will let him not just avoid blame, but claim superiority.
One uncomfortable possibility for how he might do so: follow the lead of far-right pundits, and pivot to blame the Jews.
We know how Trump handles failure. The 2019 documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? shows a 20-something Trump learning his strategies at the knee of the late, disgraced titular attorney, who instructed him never to admit error or accept responsibility for his failures. “Donald Trump is Roy Cohn,” Matt Tyrnauer, the documentary’s director, told NPR.
The techniques break down to this: deflect, attack, deny.
Trump has tried a combination of them as the war has defied a quick conclusion. He has denied reality, declaring victory two weeks ago. He has lashed out at the media for supposedly undermining the war effort through clear-eyed reporting, going so far as to have the FCC threaten to revoke broadcast licenses for war coverage he finds objectionable. He promised in an Easter Sunday message to bomb civilian infrastructure if Iran doesn’t “open the f— Strait” of Hormuz to maritime traffic.
But what if ramping up attacks won’t work? What if it becomes impossible to deny reality, as gas prices soar higher, American casualties pile up, and taxpayers see themselves shelling out more billions for a war they don’t understand?
Trump could look into a camera and tell the American people that he miscalculated. That the buck stops with him, and that as commander in chief he and he alone made the decision to go to war, and the war’s successes and failures are on him.
Or he could turn back to the first of those Cohn strategies, and deflect. And the easiest culprit to deflect blame to is, clearly, Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long pushed for a military strike on Iran. And a subset of erstwhile Trump supporters, including commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — both of whom have long records of spreading antisemitism — have been laying the groundwork for Trump to take advantage of that widely known fact for a last, desperate bit of narrative spin. They and their ilk have claimed that Israel and its American Jewish supporters, including, bizarrely, Chabad, pushed Trump into the unpopular war. Trump could easily slide into the nefarious narrative they have prepared for him, and cast himself as the innocent manipulated by a foreign government and its American agents.
The consequences of the president of the United States placing the blame for what could be an unpopular, failed, costly and deadly war on Israel and, by extension, Jewish Americans, are unforeseeable, and existentially frightening. They are also consequences that, given Trump’s track record, we need to consider.
Because here’s what we know about Trump: He has never accepted blame for anything during his presidency.
Confronted in 2020 with the suggestion that his administration had failed to effectively address the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump said, “No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” then blamed former President Barack Obama. When his ill-conceived tariffs sent the stock market into a nosedive, forcing the administration to reverse course and pause the tariff to avoid a market collapse, Trump and his spokespeople said that was the plan all along. “I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said. While 48% of Americans blame Trump for the spike in gas prices since the start of the Iran war, he has deflected, posting that the increase is “a very small price to pay… only fools would think differently!”
If Trump wants to get out of the war without following through on his threats to commit mass war crimes — which, despite his evident glee in playing bully, he may — he will need to cast blame in a way that makes him look like the reasonable party.
To those Jewish Trump supporters who think there is no way Trump would throw Israel, and by extension Jews, under the bus, consider this — he’s already tried.
After Israel’s March attack on an Iranian natural gas facility, which outraged Gulf allies and sent gas prices soaring, Trump claimed the U.S. “knew nothing” about the Israeli plans. But Israeli and American officials later confirmed that was a lie, and that Trump himself “green-lit” the operation.
Trump hung Israel out to dry once, and it’s far from inconceivable that he could try again.
Never mind that blaming Israel would make no sense. Successive administrations, including the first Trump administration, chose not to pursue wars with Iran because, well, the U.S. can freely choose when and when not to go to war — and Trump is the decider. Netanyahu has not been the world leader threatening civilizational destruction on Truth Social. And American Jews, crucially, oppose the current war. According to a GBAO Strategies poll commissioned by J Street, 60% of American Jews opposed U.S. military intervention in Iran.
But think of how easy it would be for Trump to, say, announce that the U.S. has accomplished its goals, then suggest Israel has been holding out for more wins, and that he’s told Netanyahu the U.S. is done fighting on Israel’s behalf?
If Trump were to go there, it wouldn’t be the first time Jews found themselves blamed for an unpopular war. The first Russian-language editions of the antisemitic forgeries The Protocols of the Elders of Zion sought to scapegoat the Jews for the country’s 1905 defeat in the Russo-Japanese war. Following World War I, German antisemites promulgated the “stab-in-the-back” myth that Jews and Communists conspired to undermine the war effort.
American Jews and their institutions, already targeted as a result of the Gaza war and increasingly unhinged right-wing antisemitism, could be put in even greater danger by the president’s lifelong inability to take responsibility for the consequences of his decisions. To quote Trump, only fools would think differently.
The post Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Calls on Children, Civilians to Form Human Shields Around Power Plants Amid Trump Threats
Iranian citizens, including children, form a human chain around a power plant in Tehran on April 7, 2026, as officials urge civilians to protect key infrastructure amid rising tensions with the US and Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Iranian authorities have urged children, teenagers, and civilians to gather around power plants and other sensitive sites to serve as human shields, in an apparent effort to raise the cost of potential US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s infrastructure.
The call came as US President Donald Trump’s deadline of Tuesday night for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept a ceasefire proposal rapidly approached.
Trump previously warned that if Iran refused to reopen the strait — a critical global shipping chokepoint linking the Persian Gulf to international waters, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil flows — US strikes would destroy the country’s key infrastructure, including bridges and energy facilities including power plants.
“We have a plan according to which every bridge in Iran will be destroyed and every power plant will be bombed by midnight. It will happen within 4 hours if we want,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday.
Trump appeared to escalate his threats on Tuesday.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
“However,” he added, “now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
In response, Iranian officials issued stark warnings that, should the strikes on Iranian soil go ahead, Tehran would retaliate by targeting infrastructure and other civilian sites in Gulf states hosting US forces, risking a broader escalation across the region.
Even as negotiations remain formally underway, Iranian officials signaled little change in their stance, insisting that Washington’s demands and tone “have not changed” amid ongoing conflict.
“There are no negotiations with the US, which wants Iran to collapse under pressure. We will show flexibility after we see flexibility from the US,” an Iranian official told Reuters.
“Iran will not open [the Strait of Hormuz] in exchange for empty promises,” he continued.
With tensions now approaching a breaking point, Iranian government and military officials have publicly urged civilians to gather near key infrastructure sites to act as a deterrent against potential airstrikes.
During a televised speech on Monday, Alireza Rahimi, Iran’s deputy minister of youth affairs, urged citizens to join the “Iranian youth’s human chain for a bright tomorrow” by gathering around power plants to serve as human shields.
“I call on all youth, athletes, artists, university students, and professors to gather tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2 pm, and form a circle around our power plants, which are national assets and the nation’s capital,” Rahimi said.
“Come regardless of political views, because these facilities belong to the Iranian youth and their future. Let the world see that targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime,” he continued.
Old habits die hard.
In the Iran-Iraq War, this regime deployed children with plastic keys to heaven against Iraqi machine gun fire and to clear minefields. This is a regime which also deployed Iranian and Afghan children alongside the Basij to fight in the Syrian Civil War. https://t.co/vfR3iqZnG5
— Behnam Ben Taleblu بهنام بن طالب لو (@therealBehnamBT) April 7, 2026
In a separate televised message, Hossein Yekta, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), addressed parents directly and urged them to send their children to sensitive locations and checkpoints.
“Send the children to the checkpoints so they can become men,” he said.
The regime’s use of human shields appears to extend beyond minors, with reports indicating that political prisoners and dual nationals are also being positioned near sensitive sites as part of broader deterrence efforts.
Last month, the IRGC officially lowered the minimum age for war‑related roles to 12 as part of a campaign recruiting children to serve as “Homeland‑Defending Combatants for Iran,” assigning them to patrols, checkpoints, and logistics duties.
For years, Iran has drafted children under 18 into the Basij militia, with Human Rights Watch documenting boys as young as 14 years old killed in combat, revealing a brutal pattern of exploiting children on the battlefield.