Earlier this month, Anti-War Committee Chicago organizer Shabbir Rizvi was filmed teaching a group of 80 activists in Chicago to chant ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America’ in Farsi. Rivzi has a troubling background when it comes to his documented support for Iran and anti-Israel views.

The Free Press first broke the story about Rizvi’s chants that occurred during a breakout session of an event in which 300 activists countrywide gathered to plan protests to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in August. The crowd reportedly burst into applause hours later when another activist shared the news that the Islamic Republic of Iran had attacked Israel, launching more than 300 bomb-bearing Shahed drones and ballistic missiles into its airspace.

In the video shown by the Free Press, Rivzi said that ‘marg barg’ could either mean ‘death to, or down with,’ while previously stating to laughter ‘depending on who’s asking.’

Before videos of Rizvi’s ‘Death to America’ chant made their way around the internet, the self-professed anti-war activist was a regular contributor to Iran’s Press TV and an outlet called Al Mayadeen. David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spoke to Fox News Digital about these outlets’ links to Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

‘Press TV is a known Iranian mouthpiece,’ Daoud said, noting that its U.S. website was seized in June 2021 alongside 32 other sites by the U.S. Justice Department. He said it ‘targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations.’ 

Rizvi propelled this anti-Israel, anti-U.S. ideology while writing for Al Mayadeen on Jan. 19, explaining that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 incursion into Israel, had ‘called the Axis of Resistance into action.’ Rizvi specifically cites Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as groups that ‘harmonized in action while maintaining their own sovereignty to assist their Palestinian allies.’ The IRGC is also a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

Rizvi’s Press TV reports also show an alleged pro-terror bias. In a Dec. 9 Press TV article, Rizvi writes not of terror attacks on innocents on Oct. 7 but of ‘the severity of the humiliation the Zionist regime was dealt on October 7 by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas.’

Ties between Al Mayadeen and Hezbollah are ‘a little bit more complicated,’ Daoud said. While the Lebanon-based outlet calls itself ‘an independent Arab satellite news channel,’ Daoud said it is ‘at times it’s virtually indistinguishable from Al-Manar,’ a Lebanese outlet owned by Hezbollah. ‘In both content and in terms of access to Hezbollah officials,’ Daoud said he ‘considers Al Mayadeen a Hezbollah-linked media outlet,’ though the site’s funding sources ‘have always been shrouded in a little bit of mystery.’

Daoud said both channels ‘take the ‘Resistance Axis’ ideology’ and ‘spread it as far and wide in the Arab world as possible.’ 

Though Rizvi may portray these actors as part of a ‘resistance,’ Daoud says these groups merely use the term ‘to gain legitimacy’ while seeking the annihilation of the state of Israel. ‘Their objectives are not defensive,’ Daoud said. ‘The elimination and destruction of a country is not a defensive action. The idea of resisting Israel’s very right to exist is not resistance. This is propaganda’ designed to ‘make the objectives more palatable,’ Daoud said.

When discussing Iran’s April 13 strike on Israel for Press TV, Rizvi said the ‘Iranian retaliation is within the scope of international law’ and that Iran’s response ‘is proportional and just and comes after much patience in dealing with the rogue regime [Israel].’ He continued, ‘The morale of the Islamic world is being restored as Iran acts as the harbinger of regional stability.’

On the contrary, the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner notes that both Israel’s April 1 attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, and Iran’s April 13 aerial attack on Israel ‘may … constitute the international crime of aggression.’

After videos of his anti-American chants spread, Rizvi appears to have scrubbed his social media presence on the internet. The Powerless Podcast set an episode with Rizvi to private on April 16. In the episode, discussing so-called Western and Israeli propaganda, Rizvi suggested that ‘no politician, no business person, no corporation should be allowed to enjoy any peace until there’s justice.’

Rizvi’s ‘abolishnato’ handle on X, formerly known as Twitter, no longer exists. The internet and several concerned groups, however, have a long memory of the hate he espoused there.

On April 14, the Anti-Defamation League shared a tweet in which Rizvi wrote, ‘God bless Iran and the heroes of the IRGC,’ in response to a tweet from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Canary Mission, which highlights U.S. entities and individuals spreading anti-Israel or antisemitic hate, shared several of Rizvi’s archived tweets and press appearances with Fox News Digital. They demonstrate what they claim is Rizvi’s anger toward Israel and its supporters.

On Oct. 25, Rizvi said on Press TV that Israel is ‘actively flaunting’ plans to create ‘a greater Israel’ that ‘extends into Egypt, extents into Syria, extends into Saudi Arabia.’ He further said that if Israel were to ‘execute these grand plans of maybe even invading Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan … it would have the full political and military backing of the United States.’ He noted that Israel ‘is actively admitting that they have plans to kill’ those they conquer.

Daoud says the idea that Israel seeks to expand its territory to create a ‘greater Israel’ is ‘a conspiracy theory usually espoused by the most feverish of antisemitic minds.’ Furthermore, Daoud explained that Rizvi’s belief that ‘Israel wants to conquer most of the Middle East and slaughter its inhabitants goes a step further, showing that his worldview is based in the demonization and dehumanization of Israelis.’

On Nov. 1, Rizvi addressed Press TV once more, stating that ‘the Zionist lobby has a huge influence on the American political system and spends millions and millions of dollars, sometimes per congressional representative, to make sure that everybody follows suit with what the Zionist political line is.’ Rizvi also said in the interview that he did not believe you could ‘call [the conflict between Hamas and Israel] a war when one side is annihilating an entire people.’

In a series of archived Tweets that Canary Mission uncovered, Rizvi’s fervor against Israel is further revealed. On Nov. 15, 2023, Rizvi decried The Guardian newspaper’s decision to remove Usama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America,’ explaining that bin Laden had ‘correctly blamed America for its role in ethnic cleansing of Palestine by arming Israel.’

On Jan. 6, 2024, Rizvi wrote, ‘Love waking up to news that Hezbollah put these Zionists in a blender.’ A month later, on Feb. 11, he tweeted that the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism’s Super Bowl ad, which he wrongly attributes to the state of Israel, was proof that ‘from sports to Hollywood, the entire entertainment industry is complicit in genocide.’

Though Rizvi and numerous protesters from Saturday’s activist gathering allege that Israel is committing genocide, the International Court of Justice ruled on Jan. 26 that there has not been a genocide in Gaza.

Fox News Digital attempted to contact Rizvi for comment about his online statements and writings and for context behind his chanting on Saturday. Rizvi did not respond.

Saturday’sassembly in Chicago was the start of a greater initiative to protest against Israel at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson rejected protesters’ initial request to march in the vicinity of the convention. Fight Back News reported that a coalition of protesters sued the city to march in a location where President Biden ‘can hear us and see us.’ Calling the president ‘Genocide Joe Biden,’ the spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC told Fight Back News that ‘Biden could stop the war with one phone call. He refuses to take action, and so we must protest.’

According to Axios, the city must respond to protesters’ request for a permit to protest closer to the convention by April 21. One protester told Axios that the group will be ‘marching with or without a permit’ because of the ‘genocide happening in Gaza.’

While anti-Israel fervor rises in Chicago, where the mayor cast the deciding vote on a controversial cease-fire resolution in January, the Jewish population in Illinois has faced increased hate. On April 16, the ADL released its findings that antisemitic incidents in Illinois rose 74% between 2022 and 2023. Of the 211 recorded incidents of vandalism, harassment and assault, 68% occurred after Oct. 7.

An April 11 edition of the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights’ NGO Action News, which provides updates about civil society organizations worldwide ‘relevant to the Palestine issue,’ linked readers to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) list of ‘5 Ways to Take Action for Tax Day.’

Included within the list were instructions about how protesters who did not ‘want [their] tax dollars to fund genocide’ could ‘disrupt for a free Palestine.’ 

The second item on USCPR’s list was a hyperlink for protesters seeking to engage in a ‘coordinated multi-city economic blockade to free Palestine,’ an effort organizers noted was ‘not affiliated with USCPR.’ 

In the destination page, blockade organizers A15 describe efforts to ‘identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact,’ effectively ‘blocking the arteries of capitalism and jamming the wheels of production.’ 

Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of the Touro University Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital ‘the U.N. has been caught red-handed aiding and abetting pro-Hamas anarchists in American cities and streets’ by ‘distributing a newsletter, in multiple languages and to a worldwide network, that contains links to radical anti-American and anti-Israel agitators, their agendas and plans.’

Fox News Digital reported on the April 15 blockades when anti-Israel protesters stopped traffic outside Washington’s Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, California’s Golden Gate Bridge and on the I-5 in Eugene, Ore. Gatherings also took place outside the New York Stock Exchange and Philadelphia’s City Hall, at San Antonio’s Valero headquarters and in Los Angeles, Oakland, Tampa and Miami. 

At an attempted traffic disruption in Detroit, police told Fox 2 Detroit protesting vehicles ‘ignored multiple traffic control signals,’ which led to ‘traffic obstructions’ and ‘nearly caus[ed] accidents.’

During the day’s events, dozens around the country were arrested. 

The UN’s NGO Action News site contains a disclaimer warning that third-party links ‘are not under the control of the United Nations and the United Nations is not responsible for the content of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site.’ 

Bayefsky says the U.N. disclaimer ‘is totally bogus.’ She claims ‘it is U.N. staff who produce summaries of activist plans,’ and that ‘the inclusion of any announcement or link to a third party must receive prior approval from the U.N.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Ambassador Cheikh Niang of Senegal, for comment about whether U.N. staff approve items within and author summaries for NGO Action News. He did not immediately respond.

The USCPR’s protest guide contains other inflammatory remarks, including referencing President Biden as ‘Genocide Joe,’ and alleging that ‘Israel is mass murdering Palestinian families with [U.S.] tax dollars.’ To summarize USCPR’s messaging, NGO Action News pulls from the more measured tones within its guide for action, explaining USCPR ‘urged the public to pressure for the end of U.S. military funding to Israel’s massive violence.’

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told Fox News Digital ‘the secretary-general does not have the legal authority to label an event as ‘genocide.’ For the United Nations, that determination needs to be made by a competent court.’

In its Jan. 26 preliminary ruling, the International Court of Justice did not rule that Israel had committed genocide but urged Israel to allow Gazans access to humanitarian aid and attempt to assist Palestinian civilians.

When asked whether the secretary-general supports NGO Action News’ instructions in an official U.N. publication that protesters engage in civil disobedience, Dujarric stated that NGO Action News ‘is compiled in accordance with a mandate conferred by the member states of the U.N. General Assembly’ and ‘does not fall under the authority or direction of the Secretary-General.’ 

‘You have all this anarchy on the streets of the U.S.,’ Bayefsky said, which ‘ought to be a major wake-up call for American lawmakers and the criminal justice system since we are talking about an operation based in New York City itself. It is also a stunning reminder of the U.N.’s history of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias and its vicious post-Oct. 7 campaign to deny Israel its lawful right of self-defense.’

On April 16, the Anti-Defamation League released its annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, which found that antisemitic incidents rose 140% between 2022 and 2023. This included a 45% increase in assaults, a 69% increase in vandalism and a 184% increase in harassment. The ADL noted it ‘observed explicitly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric at 1,352 anti-Israel rallies across the United States’ after Oct. 7.

When asked if he recognized that anti-Israel protests are among the reasons for the rise in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. following Oct. 7, Dujarric said ‘the Secretary-General has publicly, and repeatedly, raised his voice against what he believes is the rise of antisemitism in many of our societies, whether that be in Europe, North America and other parts of the world.  

‘In addition, the secretary-general has also stated publicly that those that call for the destruction of the state of Israel is a form of modern antisemitism.’ 

Both Israel’s foreign minister and the United Nations ambassador have called for Guterres to resign over his treatment of Israel.

The United States needs to maintain its global focus and efforts to stymie the growing cooperation and ambition of ‘axis of evil states,’ according to historian and journalist Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Roberts sits in the British House of Lords.

‘When it comes to the axis of evil states, frankly, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have a forever war, especially if you will not actually fight,’ Roberts, a biographer of several British leaders, including Winston Churchill, told Fox News Digital. ‘It can be done for an amount which is a really very impressive return on investment.’ 

Roberts, along with retired Gen. David Petraeus, wrote ‘Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,’ an assessment of U.S. foreign conflict involvement examined through the lens of successful strategic leadership. Roberts is currently working on new chapters for the paperback release, which will focus on the war in Gaza and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions for Taiwan. 

He argued that the United States, as a global superpower, can and should ‘walk and chew gum’ – so to speak – and that American isolationism would prove ‘a profoundly dangerous force… not just for the rest of the world but for America as well, ultimately.’ 

‘If the United States decides to essentially shrug off the responsibility of a great global superpower that you’ve been really since the Great White Fleet circumnavigated the world in 1909, a long time ago now… one can understand that any titan gets weary,’ Roberts said. ‘However, if you were to embrace isolationism, the ultimate response would be from the alliance of anti-democratic nations that we are seeing is working closer and closer… ultimately it will rebound terribly on you.’

The desire for an ‘America First’ policy has grown stronger as the U.S. faces down two significant conflicts – first from Russia, now in its third year of invading Ukraine, and from the bubbling tension between Iran and Israel.

Some Republicans particularly have opposed the continued funding of Ukraine without a clear plan as to how the conflict could end, raising fears of another ‘forever war’ like those the U.S. maintained in the Middle East over the past two decades. 

House Republicans have worked to condition aid for Ukraine, which has surpassed $113 billion as of March 2024. Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., called for any funding to Ukraine to be balanced out by spending cuts elsewhere and for it to be paired with U.S. border policy changes. The House finally passed the $60 billion funding bill for Ukraine on Saturday.

‘We cannot continue to borrow and spend money we don’t have for wars overseas while failing to protect Americans from the Biden border invasion here at home,’ Good told Fox News Digital earlier this month. ‘At a bare minimum, any package for military aid to Ukraine should be fully offset and must include H.R. 2 with performance metrics to secure our own border.’

Roberts argued that the U.S., as a ‘great superpower… some might argue the only superpower’ can protect both itself and support allies in a conflict that has proven an ‘extremely impressive’ return on investment. 

‘The Ukrainians have taken out well over half of the Russian tank fleet,’ Roberts noted. ‘Now, at any stage in American post-war history, if you offer the president that deal, he’d have snapped it up.’

‘You’ve got a $825 billion per annum defense budget to spend, [and] less than a 10th of that, take out your opponent’s tank fleet, essentially – at least, over half of it – is an amazing return on investment,’ he added. 

‘After 20 years of the forever war in Afghanistan before Biden’s, in my view, outrageous scuttle from that country, you’d got it down to the situation where no Americans had died for 18 months, and the whole American cost of this conflict was down to about 20 to $25 billion a year,’ he said. ‘That’s an amazing thing, to be able to keep the Taliban out of power.’

However, Roberts stressed that there should remain limits to the U.S. ambitions overseas, dismissing the idea that Washington should seek Russian regime change as ‘not our duty, not our job, not our responsibility, and certainly not a very sensible thing.’ 

‘The obvious reason is that it would just stoke anti-Western nationalism in Russia,’ he explained. ‘No, they can do those things themselves, and I think the point at which they might do that is, as has happened so often in history, when Russian aggression has been shown not to succeed.’

Roberts lamented, though, that Russia has made strides in Ukraine’s easternmost territories, with a breakthrough on the front and potentially bigger gains to come ‘if the West doesn’t help Ukraine more.’

Indeed, more and more analysts and commentators have grown increasingly dismal about Ukraine’s potential successes: The BBC, Politico EU and other outlets in the last week have run articles discussing why and how Ukraine could face defeat this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says any victory hinges on continued funding from allies to keep pace with Russia.

Roberts suggested that such doomsday prophecies may prove premature, stressing that ‘there’s no such thing as inevitability in history.’

‘So many times in history, you’ve seen one thing about to happen and then the opposite happens,’ Roberts mused. ‘These breakthroughs the Russians are having in certain theaters… not major ones so far, but they are fighting with a shell advantage, and that’s because the United States and Europe are not providing the shells.’

‘It’s certainly not inevitable that either the Ukrainians win or lose that war unless, of course, we stopped providing them with the wherewithal to continue to fight,’ he warned. ‘It’s them that are putting up in the blood, huge amounts of it, but simply because Russia is a bigger country does not mean that it’s automatically going to win: If that was the case, you’d have won in Vietnam.’

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

Thousands of Colombians took to the streets Sunday in the latest rebuke of leftist President Gustavo Petro’s reform agenda.

The demonstrations took place in several cities, including the capital. Protesters filled Bolivar Plaza outside the presidential palace in Bogotá.

While protests have been constant since the former leftist guerrilla took office in 2022, they’ve gained momentum of late. Petro has floated the possibility of rewriting the constitution to spur social reforms that he’s been unable to advance in the face of opposition by a hostile congress and conservative business groups.

Petro recently suffered an important defeat when Colombia’s congress refused to pass legislation to boost state control of the country’s health care system aimed at improving and lowering the cost of medical care.

In response to the defeat, Petro ordered by decree the takeover of two of the country’s top medical insurers, on which millions of Colombians depend.

Leaders in Israel criticized potential sanctions that are expected to be imposed by the U.S. as early as this week against an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military battalion accused of violating human rights back in 2022.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken could announce sanctions against IDF battalion ‘Netzah Yehuda’ within days, marking the first time the U.S. will have placed sanctions on military units operated by Israel. If Blinken follows through with the sanctions, it could further strain relationships between the allies, which have already become tense as Israel continues its war in Gaza.

U.S. officials have not identified the sanctioned unit, though Israeli leaders and local media identified it as Netzah Yehuda, a battalion established nearly 25 years ago.

Israeli officials have condemned the expected sanctions, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he would oppose them.

‘If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit in the IDF, I will fight it with all my might,’ Netanyahu said.

Some of the battalion’s members have been linked to abuse of Palestinians. The group faced harsh criticism from the U.S. in 2022 after a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, was found dead after being detained at a West Bank checkpoint.

An autopsy conducted by Palestinian officials found Assad suffered a heart attack caused by ‘external violence,’ adding he had underlying health conditions.

The autopsy also noted that Assad had bruises on his head, redness on his wrists caused by being bound, and bleeding in his eyelids after being tightly blindfolded.

The country’s military also investigated and found Israeli soldiers assumed Assad was sleeping when they cut off the cables binding his hands. When the soldiers saw Assad was unresponsive, they failed to offer medical help and left the scene.

The Israeli military said at the time that one officer was reprimanded, and two others were reassigned to non-commanding roles because of the incident.

The uproar from the U.S. resulted in Israel relocating Netzah Yehuda to northern Israel in 2022, after it had been stationed in the West Bank. After the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led terrorists, the battalion was relocated again to the southern border near Gaza. The battalion is now reportedly helping with the war effort in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli military.

‘The battalion is professionally and bravely conducting operations in accordance to the IDF Code of Ethics and with full commitment to international law,’ it said. It said that if the unit is sanctioned, ‘its consequences will be reviewed.’

Axios reported that if sanctions were imposed, the battalion and its members would no longer receive any type of training or assistance from the U.S. military, according to sources.

The U.S. is prohibited under the Leahy Law, from providing any sort of foreign aid or defense department training to countries responsible for alleged human rights violations based on credible information.

While speaking to reporters on Friday, Blinken was asked about Israel’s violations of human rights in the West Bank and recommendations made by his department to cut military aid to certain Israeli units.

Blinken started by saying the Leahy Law was important and applied across the board.

‘When we’re doing these investigations, these inquiries, it’s something that takes time, that has to be done very carefully both in collecting the facts and analyzing them – and that’s exactly what we’ve done,’ he said. ‘And I think it’s fair to say that you’ll see results very soon. I’ve made determinations; you can expect to see them in the days ahead.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment.

The Associated Press reported that Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, issued a statement saying he spoke with Blinken on Sunday and told him the decision is a ‘mistake.’ Gantz added that sanctions would hurt the country’s legitimacy during a time of war.

The wire service also learned from two U.S. officials familiar with the sanctions that the announcement could come as early as Monday.

The officials reportedly said five units were investigated, and of the five, four acted to remedy violations they were accused of committing.

On Friday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on an ally of Israel’s national security minister and two entities that raised money for Israeli men who allegedly committed settler violence. The new sanctions came in addition to others placed on five settlers and two unauthorized outposts earlier this year. 

Friday’s sanctions will reportedly freeze U.S. assets held by those targeted, while also barring American forces from dealing with them.

Fox News Digital’s Andrea Vacchiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report.