Will Trump Succeed in Jailing Don Lemon? A Legal Explainer *Don Lemon on Feb. 7, 2026, in New York City. Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Human Rights Campaign* Just days after former CNN anchor Don Lemon went live – as a journalist – on his YouTube show inside a Twin Cities church while anti-ICE activists disrupted a worship service, President Donald Trump amplified a post calling for the reporter’s prosecution. “A small group of elderly ladies were protesting at an abortion clinic and were given 40 years in prison for violating the FACE Act. I would like to see the same kind of sentence of Don Lemon and the people that broke into the church and did that during services,” read the post that Trump reshared on his social media site. [Subscribe now][1] The protesters apparently chose the church because one of its pastors, [David Easterwood][2], is a high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official. Setting aside the glaring factual issues raised by the post Trump shared, that call to prosecute Lemon under the FACE Act is exactly what his Department of Justice is now doing. Late last month, federal agents [arrested][3] Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort, and seven others on federal charges of conspiring to interfere with “religious freedom at a place of worship” under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. It’s an obscure 1994 law that has historically been used to clamp down on protests outside of abortion clinics. But now the Justice Department is using it to go after two journalists, flying in the face of the First Amendment, on the implicit theory that media coverage of the incident somehow interfered with the religious rights of the churchgoers (which by the way are also protected from government oppression by the First Amendment). If this seems head-spinning, it’s because it is. Trump, once again, is torturing a law enacted for legitimate reasons to shore up his own monarchical power. So what is the FACE Act, what does it have to do with Don Lemon, and does the Trump administration have a case against the former CNN anchor? [ Read more ][4] [1]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/don-lemon-arrest-minnesota-church-protest.html [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/cities-church-arrests-minnesota-ice.html [4]: https://zeteo.com/p/will-trump-succeed-in-jailing-don https://zeteo.com/p/will-trump-succeed-in-jailing-don

Can the Courts Rein Trump In? Fmr. White House Special Counsel Weighs In The midterm elections in the US are still nine months away but President Donald Trump is already giving voters new reasons to worry about voter intimidation and election integrity. The question hovering over all this – will the courts be able to stop Trump’s election interference again, like they did back in 2020? [Subscribe now][1] In this Substack Live conversation, **Zeteo** contributor **John Harwood** speaks with former Obama White House Special Counsel for Ethics **Norm Eisen**, who says Trump’s rapacious authoritarianism has improved the odds that legal and public pressure can halt his lawlessness. Instead of slowly **“boiling the frog” **like subtler autocrats, Eisen says, Trump has **“microwaved the frog” **and ignited a potent backlash. The conversation between Harwood and Eisen was live on [Zeteo.com][2] and the Substack app, and both took questions from subscribers in the live audience. Share your thoughts on the discussion in the comments below, and be sure to keep an eye out for the next Substack Live. [Share][3] Norm Eisen can also be found on the Substack, [The Contrarian.][4] *Paid subscribers can watch the full video above. Free subscribers can watch a 4-minute preview. Consider [upgrading to a paid subscription][5] to support the work **Zeteo** does, and to never hit a paywall again.* ***Check out more from Zeteo:*** [ Read more ][6] [1]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [2]: http://zeteo.com/ [3]: https://zeteo.com/p/norm-eisen-trump-midterms?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share [4]: https://contrarian.substack.com/ [5]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe [6]: https://zeteo.com/p/norm-eisen-trump-midterms https://zeteo.com/p/norm-eisen-trump-midterms

Why Is the World Silent When the Gaza Genocide Is Not Over? *A Palestinian man sits on the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Jan. 31, 2026. Photo by Omar al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images* As I was scrolling through social media the other day, I came across a Facebook post showing a picture of an Israeli car with a yellow sticker reading, “Bring Them Home Now” in English. The author of the post asked a question: “Advice as to how to remove? Soapy water?” For the author, just like that – poof – their life had returned to normal: no more caring about Gaza. The person was now preoccupied with ways to remove a bright yellow sticker – crowdsourcing advice in a Facebook group. This single post shows the vast disparity between Israeli and Palestinian life – not just since October 2023, but since Israel was created, on the ruins of our country and by devastating our nation and people. While the post’s author was concerned with sticker residue, we are forced to contend with trying to survive (a still ongoing) genocide. Every day, we see Israel killing Palestinians – an additional [586 added to the 72,000 death][1] toll since the unveiling of the Trump Plan – with little attention paid to any of these killings. Israeli soldiers continue to gleefully blow up and raze Palestinian schools, buildings, and homes, while slowly squeezing Palestinians into even smaller spaces to shrink the area inside the “[yellow line][2]” beyond which Palestinians live in a death trap. Palestinians are contending with little humanitarian aid entering Gaza due to Israel’s continued blockade. Palestinians continue to languish in tents, with absolutely no clear prospects that Gaza will ever be rebuilt after Israel bombed more than [81% ][3]of all buildings in Gaza. We are still digging through the rubble to find our dead. For Israelis, of course, they can breathe a sigh of relief: the last of the dead Israelis was returned, so they can go back to ignoring Gaza. They paid no price for committing genocide; no price for ethnic cleansing; no price for eviscerating Gaza. Accountability looks like a joke. It didn’t matter to them that they killed four Palestinians and bulldozed a mass grave in order to get the last Israeli dead body back. Who cares about dead Palestinian bodies strewn all over the streets of Gaza? And who cares about how dead Palestinian bodies are returned to Gaza? Certainly not Israelis. This is why when the Israelis returned the bodies of [54 Palestinians and skull samples,][4] they were returned mutilated and unidentifiable, and not a word from the Israeli media or the Israeli public. But it isn’t just Israeli media that has been silent. [ Read more ][5] [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/2/10/live-israeli-attack-on-gaza-building-kills-four-palestinians [2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-moved-its-yellow-line-deeper-into-shattered-gaza-city-neighbourhood-2026-01-22/ [3]: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-4-february-2026 [4]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/8/families-inconsolable-in-gaza-as-israel-returns-more-unidentified-bodies [5]: https://zeteo.com/p/why-is-the-world-silent-when-the https://zeteo.com/p/why-is-the-world-silent-when-the

📉 It’s The Economy, (You) Stupid (Fascist) *On this day in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. Unfortunately, in 2026, the president has now turned the federal government into the National Association for the Advancement of White Supremacists.* Good morning! **Swin** here. For **Zeteo** subscribers who, like me, are older millennials, news of actor **James Van Der Beek’s** death – gone at age 48 – might’ve hit you hard. [Click here][1] for a scene from the ABC sitcom ‘Don’t Trust the B in Apt. 23,’ in which James does a *very good* job dancing to a **Joss Stone** song and showing up [wannabe ICE agent][2] **Dean Cain**. R.I.P., James 💐💐. Now, in today’s ‘**First Draft**,’ Donald **Trump** tries to spin his way out of a garbage economy, his anti-immigration morons reportedly shot a laser at a party balloon, and **Prem** has Capitol Hill reactions from **Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez**, **Jamie Raskin**, **Nancy Mace** and **Pramila Jayapal** – to **Pam Bondi’s** “screaming” and “thrashing” attempts to evade questions on Jeffrey Epstein. [Subscribe now][3] # ‘The Greatest Economy Actually Ever’ *Trump at the White House on Feb. 11, 2026. Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images.* Ever since Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the popular vote, one thing was entirely predictable: The Joe Biden economy would quickly become the Donald Trump economy – and if Trump got his way with his orgy of tariffs and other policies, he would make America’s capitalist economy even more brutal for working families. *A lot *of savvy Republican operatives and Trumpland figures (read: smug sociopaths) who I spoke to in late 2024 seemed to be in denial about this, *insisting *that Biden’s baggage was Biden’s baggage and Trump had a golden opportunity to remake the country [and the culture][4]. I would ask them each the same question, in the same way: “**Are you guys gonna fuck this up**?” I can count the number of times on one hand that I got what I deemed a clear-eyed, credible, self-reflective answer from any of these elite Republicans. It’s been a year. [They’re fucking this up royally][5]. Poll, after poll, after [high-quality poll shows][6] that the American people really didn’t like the Biden economy – and that everything they really didn’t like about the Biden-Harris economy, they *reeeeeeeealllly *do not like about the Trump-Vance economy. “**Et tu, Rasmussen**?” a White House official messaged me, regarding a survey released this week by the Trump-friendly pollster showing more Americans are starting to see a rosier picture of the Biden presidency compared to Trump’s. “**If an election were held TODAY between Trump and Biden, Biden would win**,” Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell bluntly [stated][7] on Tuesday. There are plenty of reasons why Trump’s job performance is polling on par with the less glamorous STDs. [ Read more ][8] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/Apartment23/videos/dancing-with-the-stars-premieres-monday-on-abc/1030561667114516/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dv2599ZtiI [3]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [4]: https://zeteo.com/p/first-draft-trump-loses-super-bowl [5]: https://zeteo.com/p/gop-freaks-out-at-trumps-awful-numbers [6]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/tamara-keith-and-amy-walter-on-trumps-low-approval-ratings [7]: https://www.nj.com/politics/2026/02/a-gop-friendly-pollster-is-delivering-dire-warnings-to-trump.html [8]: https://zeteo.com/p/first-draft-trump-economy-epstein-bondi https://zeteo.com/p/first-draft-trump-economy-epstein-bondi

The Big Lies at the Heart of Trump’s Mass-Deportation Campaign ### **Don’t Miss It!** **Tune in for my live discussion on** **Thursday at 10:30am (7:30am PT, 3:30pm GMT)** on Substack **with Norm Eisen**, a renowned ethics watchdog and lawyer and co-founder of the [Contrarian][1]. We’ll discuss how the courts can resist Trump’s lawlessness and safeguard free and fair elections, and we’ll take your questions as well. [Sign up to listen here][2] *Donald Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office on Feb. 3, 2026. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.* Watching masked ICE paramilitaries shatter car windows, abuse peaceable immigrants, and shoot protesters dead, millions of Americans wonder: How did we get here? Cratered support for Donald Trump’s immigration policy makes it clear: Most of us do not want to be here. Anxiety about the changing face of America is one thing, dystopian street violence quite another. We got here because of two Big Lies that Trump and MAGA allies tell. One casts immigrants as violent criminals; the other depicts them as welfare chiselers bankrupting the government at the expense of American taxpayers. [Subscribe now][3] Trump has slung the former smear from the day in 2015 when he first infected the body politic by condemning Mexican immigrants as “rapists” who are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime.” By the fall of 2024, he had escalated the demagoguery to cartoonish levels, falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of eating the household pets of their neighbors in Springfield, Ohio. [ Read more ][4] [1]: https://contrarian.substack.com/ [2]: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/113149?r=95c1q&utm_medium=ios [3]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [4]: https://zeteo.com/p/trump-big-lies-immigrants-mass-deportation https://zeteo.com/p/trump-big-lies-immigrants-mass-deportation

AIPAC Has a New Opponent: PAL PAC *Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, and Ayanna Pressley at the US Capitol. Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images.* After spending decades and decades lobbying and intimidating members of Congress into supporting Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has a new counter-weight. The Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC [launched][1] Wednesday, marking its quest to channel the massively shifting US political winds on the issue of Israel and Palestine into the halls of Congress. The political action committee seeks to support elected officials advancing the cause of Palestinian civil rights and liberation from Israel’s violent and illegal occupation. The launch comes the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits President Donald Trump for the sixth time in just the past year (almost as many visits as the [number of Americans killed][2] by Israeli violence in the past two years). [Subscribe now][3] PAL PAC is launching with endorsements for four members of Congress, with more to be announced soon. The initial endorsed four are Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Summer Lee (Pa.), and Ilhan Omar (Minn.). “As the only Palestinian-American working in Congress, I’ve had a front row seat to our government’s complicity in the genocide. I’m committed to human rights for all, and this means an arms embargo and an end to US complicity and support of the Israeli apartheid government, ongoing war crimes and human rights abuses,” Tlaib said in a statement. “The Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC has my full support as the only PAC exclusively committed to justice and accountability for the Palestinian people,” she added. [ Read more ][4] [1]: https://pal.vote/ [2]: https://zeteo.com/p/inside-look-who-matters-congress-israel-americans [3]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [4]: https://zeteo.com/p/pal-pac-aipac-israel-palestine https://zeteo.com/p/pal-pac-aipac-israel-palestine

This Israeli-Palestinian Couple is Breaking a Huge Taboo What happens when you find love where you’re not supposed to? And how do you keep it alive in one of the most repressive territories in the world? In this fascinating and eye-opening ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, **Mehdi **speaks to Israeli human rights lawyer and executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, **Sari Bashi, **who co-authored a memoir that tries to answer what seem like impossible questions about love under occupation. [Subscribe now][1] ‘*Upside Down Love’* is a joint memoir from Bashi and her Palestinian husband, Osama Fahed. The Israeli human rights lawyer and the Palestinian academic detail what their life has looked like over the past decade, living in the occupied West Bank, under an apartheid system, where one of them has rights that the other does not. **“As an Israeli Jew, falling in love with a Palestinian man, it was overwhelming. And I wanted to write down what I saw,” **Bashi tells Mehdi. She details during their conversation how her young daughter understood the nature of **“apartheid” **in the occupied West Bank simply by watching her parents. **“It took 120 pages for Human Rights Watch to describe something that our daughter, as a five-year-old, thought immediately… Jews can and Palestinians can’t.”** During the course of this rare discussion, Bashi describes the hurdles she and Fahed have to go through to make their relationship work, telling Mehdi, **“most of the time, we can’t drive together, because he [Fahed] can’t go through the checkpoints that I can go through.”** [Share][2] Mehdi asks Bashi about several aspects of her relationship in the occupied territories, including: * The book’s reception among both their Palestinian and Israeli circles. * Life as a non-settler Israeli in the occupied West Bank. * The possibility of coexistence after Israel’s brutal genocide in Gaza. * Why most of her fellow Israelis don’t see Palestinians the way she does. * The involvement of one of Israel’s most famous former prime ministers in the Epstein scandal. **Paid subscribers** can watch the full video above. **Free subscribers** can watch a two-minute preview. Consider [becoming a paid subscriber][3] to access the full interview above and a lot more like it. [Click here][4] to buy a copy of Bashi and Fahed’s book, ‘*Upside Down Love.’* Share your review of the book in the comments below! Looking for more book recommendations? Visit the [Zeteo book club here][5] for inspiration! ***Catch up on some of Zeteo’s latest stories:*** [ Read more ][6] [1]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [2]: https://zeteo.com/p/israel-palestine-occupation-apartheid-upside-down-love-west-bank?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share [3]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe [4]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/upside-down-love-sari-bashi/6b7db8d45024dc23 [5]: https://zeteo.com/t/book-club [6]: https://zeteo.com/p/israel-palestine-occupation-apartheid-upside-down-love-west-bank https://zeteo.com/p/israel-palestine-occupation-apartheid-upside-down-love-west-bank

Reforming Trump's Gestapo? *On this day in 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally [shot and injured][1] his friend Harry Whittington while quail-hunting in Texas. Bizarrely, it was Whittington who later [apologized][2] to Cheney, and not vice versa. * Good morning! **[Andrew Perez][3]**, **Zeteo’s** senior politics editor, here, addressing **‘First Draft’** readers for the first time. I help cover the **Trump administration’s** daily horrors, which happen nonstop, as you know. In Washington, DC, this week, Congress is debating a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security – or weighing what **Donald Trump**’s fascist paramilitary force should look like, and the extent to which it should be reined in, if at all. In today’s **‘First Draft,’** Republicans want **ICE** to continue breaking into people’s homes without real warrants, Trump White House aide **Peter Navarro** encourages Americans to get used to bad jobs numbers, House Republicans can’t keep blocking votes on **Trump’s tariffs**, and **Canada** reels after one of the **deadliest mass shootings** in the country leaves nine dead. [Subscribe now][4] # How Much Fascism Is *Too* Much? *Federal agents face protesters near where Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune.* Less than three weeks ago, masked federal agents were filmed as they executed an ICU nurse and ICE legal observer in the streets of Minneapolis, in what should be the defining image of Trump’s second presidency. Will it be? Will that [gruesome scene][5] change anything at all? [Alex Pretti’s killing][6] last month was the second time in a matter of weeks that the Trump administration’s masked secret police were caught on video [murdering a US citizen][7] in Minnesota. Footage of the incident circulated widely, instantly obliterating the lies the Department of Homeland Security told about the shooting, and further diminishing Americans’ support for Trump’s immigration policies and his violent occupation of Minnesota. In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s murder, Democrats secured a deal in which Congress split off discussions about long-term funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a bill to fund the rest of the government. DHS funding will expire later this week, and Democrats and Republicans are now hashing out what kind of guardrails, if any, should be imposed on Trump’s fascist paramilitary force. There has been little progress on this front. The guardrails proposed by Democrats represent an effort to **“reform,”** rather than eliminate, Trump’s Gestapo. The [10-point plan][8] from Democratic legislative leaders would limit, to an extent, the degree to which the administration can trample over everyone’s rights in the US as guaranteed by the US Constitution. The debate over these’ proposed guardrails only exposes how ill-equipped the opposition party is to challenge Trump’s authoritarian project, the Beltway media’s inability to convey what’s unfolding before their eyes, and how extreme Trump’s actions have already been. [ Read more ][9] [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/dick-cheney-man-shot-bush-b2858480.html [2]: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11409731 [3]: https://bsky.app/profile/andrewperez.bsky.social [4]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-federal-agents-video.html [6]: https://zeteo.com/p/dhs-shooting-victim-in-minneapolis [7]: https://zeteo.com/p/ice-kills-legal-observer-minneapolis-minnesota-trump [8]: https://jeffries.house.gov/2026/02/04/leaders-jeffries-and-schumer-deliver-urgent-ice-reform-demands-to-republican-leadership/ [9]: https://zeteo.com/p/reforming-the-gestapo-trump-dhs-ice-congress https://zeteo.com/p/reforming-the-gestapo-trump-dhs-ice-congress

Why Has This Columbia University Protester Been in ICE Detention for Nearly a Year? *Photo courtesy of Leqaa Kordia’s legal team.* On Friday, after nearly a year in ICE detention, Leqaa Kordia woke up in a hospital. She was sent there after [reportedly][1] fainting and having a seizure. For days, her family and legal team didn’t know where she was or her physical condition. They weren’t even informed about what *exactly *happened that sent her to the hospital. “Not knowing what hospital [Leqaa] was in, what her condition was like, whether she was even alive or dead, was agonizing,” Kordia’s mother said in a statement to **Zeteo **provided by her team. “Like any other mother, I was worried sick.” On Monday, Kordia was discharged from the hospital. And sent back to detention. Her friends and family who spoke to **Zeteo **worry that her health will only continue to deteriorate. She is the last Columbia University protester in ICE detention. Last year, days after the Department of Homeland Security abducted Mahmoud Khalil, they also took Kordia – during what she thought was a routine immigration check-in. She, like Khalil, had protested against Israel’s genocide of Gaza. But unlike Khalil, and others associated with the Columbia student protests, she has remained in detention. [Subscribe now][2] ### **An Ambush** Kordia, 33, is Palestinian. She was born in East Jerusalem. Her parents [divorced][3] when she was young, leaving her and her brother to stay with their father in Ramallah, while her mother moved to the US and remarried, later becoming a citizen. In 2016, Kordia came to the US to visit her mother in New Jersey. She enrolled in English language programs on an F-1 student visa. Her mother then filed a petition to get her permanent residency, which was approved in 2021. As she waited to obtain a green card, Kordia left school, [telling][4] The Barbed Wire: “I dropped out of school thinking that, ‘Now I have a lawful status in the United States.’ I thought that was enough for me to stay legally. Unfortunately, I overstayed, but not intentionally.” Still, in the following years, Kordia lived an American life. She worked as a waitress and took care of her mom and her half-brother, who has autism. Then 2023 came. After Israel’s genocide of Palestine began, Kordia felt she had to stand up for her people. As of today, Israel has [killed][5] nearly 200 members of her extended family. In April 2024, Kordia joined a demonstration outside Columbia University’s gates, in solidarity with the Columbia students who had launched an encampment protest against US universities’ complicity in Israel’s genocide. Kordia was caught up in a police sweep of the demonstration, arrested, and shuttled away to the police station. The charges against her were later dropped. Then came 2025. On March 8, plainclothes DHS agents [detained][6] Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Columbia University protests. Five days later, Kordia went to an ICE field office in Newark, New Jersey, for what she thought was a routine interview. It turned out to be an ambush. She was placed in an unmarked van and shipped over a thousand miles away, to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem [said][7] at the time. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.” The language was notable. [ Read more ][8] [1]: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2026/02/09/leqaa-kordia-released-from-hospital-returned-to-ice-custody-following-seizure/ [2]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [3]: https://thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/27/leqaa-kordia-palestinian-protester-ice-detention/ [4]: https://thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/27/leqaa-kordia-palestinian-protester-ice-detention/ [5]: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/newsletters/ice-is-keeping-leqaa-kordias-family-in-the-dark [6]: https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-dhs-detains-palestinian [7]: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/03/14/video-columbia-university-student-whose-visa-was-revoked-supporting-hamas-and [8]: https://zeteo.com/p/why-has-this-columbia-university https://zeteo.com/p/why-has-this-columbia-university

Israel ‘Evaporated’ Over 2,800 Palestinians With US-Made Bombs: Report *A residential building hit by an Israeli airstrike catches fire in Rafah on March 26, 2024. Photo by Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images* Israeli forces deployed US-made bombs in Gaza that instantly killed and vaporized more than 2,800 Palestinians, according to a new [Al Jazeera investigation][1] published Tuesday. Experts and witnesses attribute the grim killings to Israel’s use of thermal and thermobaric weapons that can reach extreme temperatures. Al Jazeera reported that civil defense teams in Gaza documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the genocide started, leaving behind no remains except blood spray or small pieces of flesh. Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, told [Al Jazeera][2] that the extreme heat produced by the bombs, combined with intense pressure and oxidation, vaporizes tissue. Civil defense calculated the number of missing bodies by cross-referencing the known number of people at a targeted area with the number of bodies recovered. “It is chemically inevitable,” Al-Bursh said. [Subscribe now][3] The Israeli military did not immediately return a request for comment. Al Jazeera identified three specific US-manufactured weapons responsible for the horrific killings. One of them, a BLU-109 bunker buster, instantly killed and vaporized 22 Palestinians in a September 2024 attack on Al-Mawasi in an area that the military had declared a “safe zone.” The report also traced some of the killings to the MK-84, a 2,000-pound unguided bomb first used by the US in the Vietnam War. The bomb generates heat up to 6,332 degrees Fahrenheit, and is capable of flattening buildings and killing dozens of people in one strike. The US has sent Israel thousands of them. Former President Joe Biden [surged][4] shipments of MK-84s to Israel after Oct. 7, 2023, but later suspended them, while continuing to send other weapons. In February 2025, Donald Trump lifted the hold and sent even more, [saying][5] the bombs were “sitting there” and “nobody knew what to do with them.” Israel [destroyed][6] about 90% of Gaza’s infrastructure in the [first two years][7] of its genocide, according to Palestinian officials. The Palestinian Health Ministry estimates that Israel has killed more than 72,000 people in its ongoing genocide – a toll that even the Israeli military [recently admitted][8] to be true after sowing doubt for over two years. Experts say the [true toll][9] is even higher. [Share][10] *Have a tip for Minnah? Reach out on Signal at minnahfarshad.94.* ***Check out more for Zeteo:*** [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/10/israel-used-weapons-in-gaza-that-made-thousands-of-palestinians-evaporate [2]: https://www.aljazeera.net/video/rest-of-the-story/2026/2/10/%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85-%D8%AA%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%89-%D8%A2%D8%AB%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%87%D9%84-%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%AA-%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84 [3]: https://zeteo.com/subscribe? [4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/ [5]: https://www.reuters.com/world/israel-receives-shipment-heavy-bombs-cleared-by-trump-2025-02-16/ [6]: https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/163527 [7]: https://zeteo.com/p/these-horrific-numbers-show-the-scale [8]: https://zeteo.com/p/israels-military-now-accepts-70000 [9]: https://zeteo.com/p/truth-about-gaza-death-toll-part-3 [10]: https://zeteo.com/p/israel-evaporated-over-2800-palestinians-gaza?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share https://zeteo.com/p/israel-evaporated-over-2800-palestinians-gaza