Monday, March 16, 2026
■ Today's Top News
“After you make us lose $900,000, we will invest no less than that to finish you.”
By Stephen Prager
An Israeli journalist said he’s received death threats from gamblers demanding he change an accurate report about an Iranian missile strike in order to help them win a bet on the prediction app Polymarket.
On Monday, Emanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for The Times of Israel, wrote that he was confused when he suddenly received several requests to correct a report on March 10 that an Iranian missile had struck Israeli territory.
Fabian said he’d based his report on information from “rescue services” as well as “footage that emerged showing the massive explosion caused by the missile’s warhead.” No injuries were reported from the impact, as the missile struck an empty area outside the city of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem.
“What I thought was a seemingly minor incident during the war has turned into days of harassment and death threats against me,” Fabian said.
Hours after posting the report to the paper’s live blog, Fabian said he received an email, from a user identifying as Aviv, claiming that what had hit the ground was not a missile, but an interceptor fragment.
Fabian contended military sources had confirmed it was a missile and that the impact was far too large to have been from only an interceptor.
He then received another email from a user named Daniel with the exact same gripe. Daniel described having an “urgent request” for the report to be changed and told Fabian that by changing it, “you would be helping me, many others, and, of course, the state of Israel.”
Daniel sent Fabian several more emails over the next couple of days demanding a correction, and the tone continued to grow more urgent.
“I ask again, if you could handle this as soon as possible, it would help us a lot,” Daniel said on Thursday. “It’s really important, if possible, still this morning.”
Other users messaged him with the same complaint over email and the messaging app Discord. It was only when Fabian received more angry replies from two more users on X that he realized what was going on.
“Checking those X accounts, both appeared to be involved in gambling on the Polymarket betting site,” he explained. “As far as I now understand, the emails I received were intended to confirm whether or not a missile had hit Israel on March 10 in order to resolve a prediction on Polymarket.”
Polymarket is a cryptocurrency-based prediction market where users buy and sell shares tied to real‑world events, enabling them to bet on the likelihood of future events, including those in wartime.
Fabian found that the people clamoring for his attention had put money on whether Iran would strike Israel on March 10. “This market will resolve to ‘Yes’ if Iran initiates a drone, missile, or air strike on Israel’s soil on the listed date in Israel Time (GMT+2). Otherwise, this market will resolve to ‘No’,” the website explained. However, it stipulates that intercepted missiles would not receive a “yes” verdict.
As of March 16, gamblers had wagered more than $14 million on the event.
Over the next several days, requests continued to roll in from people demanding a correction to the story.
One user presented a fabricated email, purportedly from Fabian to Daniel, stating that the Israel Defense Forces had confirmed the missiles were intercepted and that he planned to correct the story.
Fabian was later approached by a colleague at another publication, who said his friend had asked him to reach out for the story to be changed. After being confronted, the friend admitted that he had money on the wager too, and offered some of his winnings to Fabian’s colleague if he could persuade the journalist to change the story.
By the weekend, the messages had become violent. Fabian said a user identified as Haim accosted him with several threatening messages in Hebrew over WhatsApp:
“You have exactly half an hour to correct your attempt at influence,” Haim wrote. “Despite the fact that you received countless inquiries—you insist on leaving it that way.”
“If you do not correct this by 01:00 Israel time today, March 15, you are bringing upon yourself damage you have never imagined you would suffer,” he threatened, in a very lengthy message.
Haim also attempted to call me via WhatsApp multiple times during the night, before sending me more messages.
“You have no idea how much you’ve put yourself at risk. Today is the most significant day of your career. You have two choices: either believe that we have the capabilities, and after you make us lose $900,000 we will invest no less than that to finish you.”
Haim also threatened Fabian by referring “with specific details” to his home address, his parents, and family.
After receiving several more threats and being contacted by someone purporting to be a “lawyer,” Fabian went to the police, who he said are now investigating the situation.
The threats continued into Monday, after Fabian ran into a bomb shelter amid another Iranian missile attack.
“The attempt by these gamblers to pressure me to change my reporting so that they would win their bet did not and will not succeed,” Fabian said. “But I do worry that other journalists may not be as ethical if they are promised some of the winnings.”
He said that journalists are in a unique position to “exploit their knowledge for insider trading on the platform.”
Polymarket and other similar “prediction market” apps like Kalshi have come under similar scrutiny in the United States for allowing users to place suspiciously timed bets on military actions taken by the Trump administration.
Earlier this month, the watchdog group Public Citizen sent a letter to the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates prediction markets, outlining a series of “highly suspicious” bets made just before President Donald Trump launched strikes against Iran on February 28. Among the big winners were what the Wall Street Journal described as “six suspected insiders,” whose immaculately timed wagers netted them a $1.2 million profit.
In January, another trader made more than $436,000 after betting that Veneuzelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from power just hours before Trump launched an operation to remove him.
In the face of state regulations, the Trump administration has sought to ease restrictions on betting apps. The Trump family’s media company offers access to prediction markets on its Truth Social platform via Crypto.com. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi.
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has emerged as a leading critic of prediction markets, described Fabian’s account as a “bone-chilling story.”
The senator said: “We need to end prediction markets for government action. NOW.”
"While US servicemembers die in another forever war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s 'peace envoy' is raising money for his private equity firm," wrote US Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
By Jake Johnson
Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is reportedly trying to entice governments in the Middle East to invest billions in his private equity firm while he simultaneously works as “a special envoy for peace”—a role he appears to have used to help convince Trump to wage war on Iran.
The New York Times reported late last week that Kushner “has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm.”
Citing five unnamed people with knowledge of the talks, the Times reported that “Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund,” Affinity’s largest investor. Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reportedly played a significant role in the behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign urging Trump to attack Iran—Saudi Arabia’s top regional rival.
Bin Salman controls the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which pumped $2 billion into Kushner’s firm in 2022.
“Mr. Kushner’s fundraising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year,” the Times added. “The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s ‘peace envoy,’ Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The US and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.”
Last week, Trump said he decided to attack Iran in coordination with Israel—whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a personal friend of Kushner’s—because the president “thought they were going to attack us,” a view he claimed to have reached after listening to “what Steve [Witkoff] and Jared and Pete [Hegseth] and others were telling me.”
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in response to the Times reporting that “while US servicemembers die in another forever war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s ‘peace envoy’ is raising money for his private equity firm.”
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, wrote in a social media post on Sunday that a “fair and equitable deal” between the US and Iran “was within reach” before Trump and Netanyahu started bombing.
“Those providing poor advice to POTUS are responsible for bloodshed,” Araghchi wrote, attaching a screenshot of the Times story on Kushner’s fundraising efforts. “This war is imposed on both Americans and Iranians.”
Judd Legum, founder and author of the Popular Information newsletter, noted last week that Kushner’s participation in the Geneva diplomatic talks that preceded the US-Israeli assault on Iran “violated his pledge not to be involved in foreign policy in a second Trump administration.”
On Monday, Legum observed that Kushner also said in December 2024 that his private equity firm would not “have to raise capital for the next four years,” allowing him to “avoid any conflicts” of interest.
Trump formally named Kushner a “special envoy for peace” last month, a move that means the president’s son-in-law is now required by law to file a financial disclosure report. Kushner has just days left before the 30-day deadline to file the disclosure.
Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in a letter to the White House last week that “Mr. Kushner’s history of financial gains resulting from his time as a White House advisor during President Trump’s first term raises serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest that must be addressed before Mr. Kushner participates in any additional matters that may relate to his own financial interests or those of his investors.”
“The risk of Mr. Kushner’s potential conflicts is particularly concerning because his private investment firm has very publicly done significant business with foreign partners who also have interests in the conflicts on which he has been assigned to work,” Sherman noted.
"This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict."
By Brett Wilkins
Amnesty International on Monday published an investigation that found the United States violated international humanitarian law by failing to take measures to avoid harming civilians before bombing a girls’ school in southern Iran last month and killing around 175 people, most of them children.
Evidence gathered by Amnesty “indicates that the school building was directly struck, alongside 12 other structures in an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound, with guided weapons,” the group said. “This points to a failure by US forces to take feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out the attack, which is a serious breach of international humanitarian law.”
“The fact that the school building was directly targeted and was previously part of the IRGC compound raises concerns that US forces may have relied on outdated intelligence and failed in their obligation to do everything feasible to verify that the intended target was a military objective,” Amnesty added.
Satellite imagery analyses confirmed eyewitness accounts that the February 28 attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab was a “triple-tap” airstrike, in which an initial bombing was followed up with two additional strikes meant to kill survivors and rescue workers.
Fragments of a Tomahawk cruise missile found at the school and marked with the names of US weapons companies, a Pentagon contract number, and “Made in USA” added to the body of evidence pointing to the United States as the perpetrator of what numerous experts have called a likely war crime.
President Donald Trump, who initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he is “willing to live with” whatever the military’s investigation concludes.
“US authorities must ensure that the investigation they have announced is impartial, independent, and transparent,” Amnesty said. “Investigations into the strike must consider the intelligence gathering and assessments, targeting decisions, and precautions taken, as well as how artificial intelligence may have been employed in each of these steps, to evaluate how targeting decisions were made. The results of the investigation should be made public.”
Both the US and Israel have increasingly relied upon artificial intelligence systems to select bombing targets, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) having first used Gaza as what on expert called “a live-fire, live-ordnance lab experiment on people.” Proponents of these systems note that they can select targets and approve strikes exponentially faster than humans, enabling more strikes, but critics warn such targeting methods are inherently more dangerous, pointing to higher error rates which translate to more civilian casualties and less accountability.
In the case of the Minab strike, Amnesty said, “Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities should prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility. Victims and their families have the right to truth and justice and should receive full reparation, including restitution, rehabilitation, and compensation for civilian harm.”
Erika Guevara-Rosas—Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns—said in a statement Monday that “this harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict.”
“Schools must be places of safety and learning for children,” she said. “Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
“If the attackers failed to identify the building as a school and nevertheless proceeded with the attack, this would indicate gross negligence in the planning of the attack and would point to a shameful intelligence failure on the part of the US military and a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Guevara-Rosas continued.
“On the other hand,” she said, “if the US was aware that the school was adjacent to the IRGC compound and proceeded to attack without taking all feasible precautions, such as striking at night when the school would have been empty, or giving effective advance warning to civilians likely to be affected, this would amount to recklessly launching an indiscriminate attack which killed and injured civilians and must be investigated as a war crime.”
“For their part, Iranian authorities must immediately remove, to the extent feasible, civilians from the vicinity of military objectives and allow independent monitors into the country,” Guevara-Rosas added. “They must also restore internet access to ensure that the 92 million people in Iran have access to life-saving information and be able to contact their loved ones.”
Amnesty joins other organizations—including the United Nations Human Rights Office, Human Rights Watch, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—in urging accountability for the officials responsible for planning and executing the school strike.
One conservation campaigner said that "the cynical misuse of a national security law" for the oil company that owns the system and "has repeatedly broken the law is a shocking development, even from this administration."
By Jessica Corbett
As Sable Offshore Corp. on Monday confirmed that oil is flowing again thanks to a war-related order from President Donald Trump, the Center for Biological Diversity renewed warnings about reviving a pipeline that “caused one of California’s largest oil spills on the Santa Barbara coast” over a decade ago.
“I’m distressed and saddened that California’s coast now faces the threat of another oil disaster from this unsafe pipeline,” said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the center, a US nonprofit focused on conservation, in a statement.
“For the sake of the incredible Pacific Ocean and all of its wildlife, the community has worked so hard to make sure we’d never see oil flowing through this defective pipeline again,” noted Bradshaw, whose group is involved in some related lawsuits.
Despite the various legal battles, with oil prices surging due to Trump’s unlawful war on Iran, the president on Friday signed an executive order delegating certain authorities under the Defense Production Act to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who subsequently told Sable to restore operations of the Santa Ynez unit and pipeline system.
The unit has been shut down since May 2015, when the pipeline ruptured and spilled about 450,000 gallons of oil around Refugio State Beach, killing local animals and impacting beaches and fisheries. A federal investigation found that the pipeline failed due to corrosion. Still, Sable bought the unit from ExxonMobil in 2024, and has been trying to resume operations.
Last April, the Center for Biological Diversity and Wishtoyo Foundation sued the California Office of the State Fire Marshal for waiving safety rules for the pipeline. Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the center, said at the time that “it is inexcusable to waive safety standards for an old, fatally flawed pipeline system that already failed catastrophically once.”
“Exempting this pipeline from basic corrosion prevention requirements is a mindbogglingly shortsighted move that puts our incredible coastline at risk of yet another massive spill,” the lawyer continued. “The State Fire Marshal pushed out these waivers without even taking a hard look at all the environmental and public safety risks, and our marine wildlife and coastal communities could wind up once again covered in toxic crude.”
Just months later, in December, “the Trump administration moved to seize control of the pipeline system from the State Fire Marshal and issued Sable an emergency special permit that enables a restart despite the pipelines’ design defects,” the center noted Monday.
Then, under the cover of war, the president—who returned to office with help from Big Oil’s campaign cash and promised to “drill, baby, drill”—and Wright took their latest steps to revive the flawed pipeline.
Sable said in a Monday statement that it “immediately complied” with the Trump administration’s new orders and on Saturday began transporting oil produced at the unit through the pipeline system from Las Flores Canyon to Pentland Station. The company is planning for sales by April 1 at an expected gross oil rate of 50,000 barrels per day.
“This is a dark day for California, and I urge state officials to keep standing up to Trump’s bullying,” Bradshaw said Monday. “We’ll keep fighting as hard as we can to protect Santa Barbara’s coast and end offshore drilling in the state once and for all.”
“The cynical misuse of a national security law for the benefit [of] an oil company that has repeatedly broken the law is a shocking development, even from this administration,” added Bradshaw. “The courts shouldn’t put up with this brazen abuse of power.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom—one of several Democrats expected to run for president in 2028—joined the center in criticizing the resumption and has also vowed to fight back.
“California will not stand by while the Trump administration attempts to sacrifice our coastal communities, our environment, and our $51 billion coastal economy,” he said. “The Trump administration and Sable are defying multiple court orders, and we will see them back in court.”
A new survey shows just 32% of US voters view Israel positively—down from 47% in 2023.
By Brad Reed
Support for Israel has dropped across the board among US voters over the last three years, with particularly steep declines among Democrats and independents, according to a poll commissioned by NBC News.
Overall, the poll conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that 32% of registered US voters view Israel positively, while 39% see the country in a negative light. This is a drastic shift from 2023, when the same poll found that 47% of US voters viewed Israel positively, versus just 24% who viewed it negatively.
Democratic voters have been leading the shift away from Israel, as the percentage of Democrats who view Israel positively has fallen from 34% in 2024 to 13% in 2026, while negative views of the country have spiked from 35% to 57% over the last three years.
The shift among independent voters has been almost as dramatic, as just 21% of independents said they now have a positive view of Israel, compared to 40% of independents who viewed Israel positively in 2023. This has similarly correlated with a dramatic spike in negative views of Israel, with 48% of independents rating the country negatively, versus 22% who rated it negatively in 2023.
Republicans overall remained much more supportive of Israel than Democrats and independents, but the poll still showed that GOP support for Israel fell by nine percentage points over the last three years.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC News that the shift in opinion against Israel was a direct result of its assault on Gaza that has killed at least 70,000 Palestinian civilians.
“Israel may have had major military success in its war against Hamas,” Horwitt said, “but its actions have badly damaged its standing among the American people.”
A poll released by Gallup in February found that, for the first time ever, US voters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis, just one year after finding that Americans expressed more sympathy toward Israelis than Palestinians by a margin of 13 percentage points.
Israel’s unpopularity among Democratic primary voters has led to candidates trying to distance themselves from groups such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is spending big in primaries to defeat Democrats who have been critical of the Israeli government.
As reported by CNN on Sunday, even Democrats running as supporters of Israel have taken pains to not be associated with AIPAC, which has become especially toxic among Democratic primary voters.
“From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races told CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail,” the network noted. “Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls. And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC.”
"The Pentagon's law of war manual states unequivocally that such statements are war crimes," said a legal scholar who previously worked in the Pentagon's office of general counsel.
By Jake Johnson
Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statement last week that “no quarter” will be given to “our enemies” in Iran—a declaration, in military parlance, that surrendering combatants will be executed rather than taken prisoner—constituted a clear violation of international law and a war crime.
The International Committee of the Red Cross explains that “the prohibition on declaring that no quarter will be given is a longstanding rule of customary international law already recognized in the Lieber Code, the Brussels Declaration, and the Oxford Manual and codified in the Hague Regulations.” The Hague Convention of 1907, to which the US is a party, says it is “especially forbidden” to “declare that no quarter will be given.”
During a press conference on Friday, Hegseth said that US forces attacking Iran “will keep pushing, keep advancing; no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”
Hegseth’s statement sparked alarm among legal experts and members of Congress, particularly in the context of the Pentagon chief’s ongoing efforts to loosen legal oversight of American forces and roll back rules aimed at protecting civilians.
“'No quarter’ isn’t some wannabe tough guy line—it means something,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy officer. “An order to give no quarter would mean to take no prisoners and kill them instead. That would violate the law of armed conflict. It would be an illegal order. It would also put American service members at greater risk. Pete Hegseth should know better than to throw around terms like this.”
Oona Hathaway, a legal scholar and former special counsel to the Pentagon’s general counsel, wrote in response to Hegseth’s remarks that “declaring that no quarter will be given unequivocally violates international humanitarian law.”
“Indeed, ordering that no quarter will be given, threatening an adversary therewith, or conducting hostilities on this basis is prohibited and constitutes a war crime,” Hathaway added.
Daniel Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate—a profession that Hegseth has treated with contempt—wrote a “hypothetical legal memorandum” advising the Pentagon chief to “publicly retract” his “no quarter” statement, warning that it “may expose you to criminal liability under 18 USC 2441(c)(2), and expose any subordinate servicemembers who carry it out to prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as 18 USC 2441(c)(2).”
Maurer continued:
Given that “no quarter” is a clear violation of the Hague Convention IV and, as a consequence, U.S. federal law, we recommend the following immediate actions:
a. Publicly retract the comments and disavow any intention to induce, inspire, counsel, encourage, incite, order, threaten, tolerate, or give “no quarter” to Iranian combatants.
b. Communicate through the chain-of-command conducting Operation Epic Fury that “no quarter” is a war crime that will be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or 18 USC § 2441.
Hegseth’s declaration of “no quarter” conflicts with US President Donald Trump’s statement late last month announcing the illegal war on Iran, which is now in its third week with no end in sight.
Urging Iranian soldiers to lay down their arms, Trump pledged, “We’ll give you immunity.”
Ryan Goodman, founding co-editor-in-chief of the digital law and policy journal Just Security, told Axios that Hegseth is “putting the American military on a track to lawlessness in which we will lose more and more allies.” Goodman noted that in the wake of the Second World War, the US prosecuted senior German military officials for refusing quarter to enemy soldiers.
“The best thing Secretary Hegseth can do for the country and for the US military is to say he misspoke and to retract the statement,” said Goodman, who previously worked in the Defense Department’s office of general counsel. “The Pentagon’s law of war manual states unequivocally that such statements are war crimes.”
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