radiofree.asia

Category: Genocide

  • Israel Defends Its Right to Commit Genocide

    Protesters in Australia urge the government to back South Africa’s court case against Israel. (AAP Photo)

    Israel maintains its deniability, but is there any doubt that it was behind the drone attack against a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza on May 2, 2025 off the coast of Malta? Israel was delivering a statement to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and the defenders of human rights everywhere, that Israel will not be denied the territory of Gaza, emptied of the more than 2 million Palestinian inhabitants living there on October 8, 2023. The current plan clearly is to dispose of them through starvation, disease and exposure, which will make the tens of thousands killed directly by bombs, drones, bullets and other weapons pale by comparison.

    The contents of the ship, if it had delivered its cargo, would have made only the smallest dent in Israel’s plan. But Israel stands on principle – namely that it has the right to slaughter as many Palestinians and other non-Jews as it wants in order to grab the territory it covets (and, not incidentally, the vast oil and gas fields off its coast), and to assure a demographically Jewish result in that territory. Never mind how many men, women and children are eradicated, or how horribly they die.

    Of course, Israel has always expressed the willingness to have the Palestinians shipped elsewhere: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Somalia…who cares, but preferably away from Israel’s borders. But whatever country participates in such a plan will be forever stigmatized for collaborating in genocide. And what country or countries would welcome the forcible entry of such a population? That’s why there are no takers. In any case, Israel seems content to wipe them off the face of the earth, which is more permanent. Furthermore, the United States is a powerful partner in this project, with few if any apparent qualms.

    Is there anything the international community can do to stop the crime of the century? Of course. But no amount of UN resolutions, ICJ injunctions or other legal actions will be obeyed. Neither will suspension of diplomatic or economic relations, as long as Israel’s big brother, the US, provides them with everything they need, especially the weaponry. The entire world can completely isolate Israel, as long as that isolation does not include the United States, and as long as the people of the United States do no more than demonstrate, write letters, make phone calls and vote in elections for two parties that compete with each other for how much support they can give to Israel.

    What can be done to change the outcome? The aid ship is the right idea, but it would require a thousand aid ships or more. Another would be a national general strike in the US, but neither the consensus nor the organization exists for such an effort in a country that has never seen a national general strike. A vote boycott directed against the two major parties might have the desired effect, but that also is exceedingly unlikely, and in any case too slow. How about attacks against Israeli interests abroad, such as the ones against the Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit, in the UK and the blocking of Israeli ships in Oakland, California? Perhaps, but it would have to be carried out worldwide and be nearly seamless, which is also difficult to imagine.

    I do not have the answer, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that humanity seems doomed to place the worst among us into positions of leadership. How else do we explain that nearly the entire voting public in the US and most Western countries voted for candidates that supported the military and economic aid to Israel, even as it was conducting its genocide?

    In the years to come, how will we answer the question “What did you do to stop the Gaza genocide, Grandma?”

    The post Israel Defends Its Right to Commit Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I Am In Malta With The Gaza Flotilla Ship ‘Conscience’ Bombed By Israel

    I am in Malta with the group ready to board the Gaza flotilla ship “Conscience” which was bombed by Israel yesterday. As one of the organizers of the US Boats to Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla coalition, we have been working for months to bring activists from 22 countries to board the next ship to challenge the Israeli genocide of Gaza and break the illegal Israeli Siege of Gaza.

    As an American citizen, and a retired US Army Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in opposition to the US war on Iraq in 2003, I have been horrified in the blatant complicity of the United States in providing bombs, weapons and targeting information to the Israeli military.

    The post I Am In Malta With The Gaza Flotilla Ship ‘Conscience’ Bombed By Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Jewish Settler-Colonialists


    The straightforward responses in the documentary The Settlers by Louis Theroux will not surprise anyone who has kept abreast of the long-running Zionist plan to create facts-on-the-ground in Palestine. What is surprising is that this documentary was produced and broadcast by the BBC, a broadcaster that is usually inimical to Palestinian suffering. The documentary (currently viewable at Rumble.com) has been noticed. [Editor’s Note: The documentary has been blown away already. And Rumble has posted no explanation. See 404 notice below.]

    Zionist-triggered Western censorship at its best.

    The Independent considers The Settlers to be a “masterpiece.”

    The Middle East Eye hails the documentary as “an unflinching look at the Israelis [sic] intent on stealing the West Bank.”

    The Islam Channel praises Theroux for “highlight[ing] the horrifying influence of the illegal Israeli settler movement.”

    The title of the Spectator’s review was rather enigmatic: “How come the only Palestinians Louis Theroux met were non-violent sweeties?” The Spectator granted, “In a program called The Settlers, it’s perhaps fair enough that the focus should be so squarely on these people and their intransigence.”

    And what about the documentary’s title?

    Dictionary.com defines settler innocuously as “a person who settles in a new region or colony.” Is this the proper appellation? Others would argue that the term settler-colonialist is more accurate. The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School states, “Settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population.”

    The documentary begins with the lanky, bespectacled Theroux asking a settler whether they are “deep inside the Palestinian territories”? The settler-colonialist Ari Abramowitz objected, calling it “the heart of Judea.” He further objected to a “jihadist Palestinian state” being located in the heart of Israel.

    Abramowitz is forthright in saying he aspires to win territory from Palestinians.

    The settler-colonialists are described as “religionist nationalists.” A young Jewish woman Ovi says, “I believe Gaza is ours … The Bible says this place was given to the Jews. This place is ours.”

    Throughout the documentary, the Zionist goal is clear: to remove Palestinians and repopulate the land with Jews.

    Theroux spends much time interviewing Daniella Weiss, the “godmother of the settler movement,” an unabashed Zionist, who claimed: “We do for governments what they cannot do for themselves… Netanyahu is very happy at what we do but he cannot say it.”

    Gaza fits what Netanyahu cannot say, Weiss states the goal of “the practical idea of establishing Jewish settlements in the entire Gaza Strip. We very much encourage and enable the population in Gaza to go to other countries. You will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs disappear from Gaza. They lost their right to stay in this holy place.”

    But Jews are not a pure monolith. Theroux interviews a protesting Israeli man who says, “The question is: what kind of country do we want to be? Do we want to be a colonizing country or do we want to be a country that at least offers peace and wants to live in peace with Palestinians?”

    What can Gazans expect if settler-colonialists create outposts in Gaza? The documentary examines the situation in the West Bank where outposts are set up to expand and become communities with the aim of becoming recognized as settlements by the Israeli government. These outposts and settlements are under the protection of the Israeli military.

    The Texan-raised Abramowitz denies Palestinians exist. When pressed by Theroux on this, Abramowitz replies, “They are Arabs.”

    The illegality of settlements is disregarded by Abramowitz. This is echoed by Weiss who shrugs off the commission of war crimes as a “lighter felony.”

    Such Zionist views point to the impunity of settler colonialists in dealing with the indigenous Palestinians. One common war crime is preventing Palestinian farmers from harvesting their produce, particularly olives. Israeli soldiers will arrive, demand identification, and send the farmers away from their land. And if a farmer is lucky, he will still be alive after the encounter.

    The filmmaker spoke of an “ideology of superiority of one group over another.” This even has rabbinical support.

    Rabbi Dove Leor said, “To my mind, there was never peace with these [Palestinian] savages. There is no peace and never will be…. This land belongs only to the people of Israel. All of Gaza, all of Lebanon should be cleansed of these ‘camel riders.’”

    To accomplish the disappearance of Palestinians, Weiss advocates using “the magic system of Zionism” to take over the land and repopulate it with Jews. “This will bring light instead of darkness,” says Weiss.

    Issa Amrou, a Palestinian activist, guides Theroux around occupied Hebron and explains the life of Palestinians under occupation. The system of encouraging Palestinians to leave is through fear of the Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, closing Palestinian businesses, making life intolerable, and fragmentation of Palestinian towns, leading to Jews taking more land.

    Near the end of the documentary, Theroux speaks again with the Texan-cum-settler-colonialist Abramowitz who makes known his feelings for Palestinians: “I don’t have tremendous compassion for a society that has an unquenchable genocidal, theological, bloodlust. It’s like a death cult.”

    Says Abramowitz, “I reject the real premise that these people [Palestinians] are actually a real nation for a lot of reasons.”

    “We know the righteousness of our cause. That’s what it means to be a Hebrew, what it means to be a Jew…”

    The Israeli government’s recognition of the Evyatar settlement in the lands of the Palestinian town of Beita spurred a celebration, and Weiss arrived to speak to a jubilating crowd.

    Theroux catches up with the settler-colonial godmother after her speech to the festive gathering. He asks what is wrong with a two-state solution?

    Says Weiss, “We want to have a Jewish state based on Jewish rules, on Jewish values. It is not a relationship of neighbors.”

    “Why not?” asks Theroux.

    “Because we are two nations.” At least Weiss admits to there being a Palestinian nation.

    Weiss makes clear that her overarching aim is Aliyah, bringing more settler-colonialists to the land. She does not think about the Palestinians because she is a Jew.

    Theroux says, “That seems sociopathic.”

    Weiss rejects this, saying, “It is normal.”

    In the settler-colonialist Zionist mindset, othering is normal.

    *****

    People who care about humans elsewhere and are unfamiliar or uninformed about the plight of Palestinians ought to watch The Settlers and become familiar and informed. Theroux probably presents the situation as close to the line as one could hope to have broadcast. Through the narrative, the viewer will hear that there is anti-Palestinian racism and violence against them, but the discussion will not be graphic, and visually the violence is downplayed.

    The post Jewish Settler-Colonialists first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On the Pro-Israel Use and Abuse of Holocaust Remembrance

    Twenty-five years ago, Norman Finkelstein detailed how Hitler’s destruction of European Jewry was weaponized against Palestinians. In his 2000 book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein, whose grandparents perished in Nazi death camps, argued the US Jewish establishment exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for economic and political gain and to further the interests of Israel. Since the book was written, Israel lobbyists’ reliance on antisemitism/Nazi Holocaust claims to undermine Palestine solidarity has grown substantially.

    As Israel’s genocide in Gaza, land theft in West Bank and violence across the region grows, supporters turn to evermore more distant Nazi crimes to defend the indefensible. A recent issue of the Montreal Gazette highlights the city’s “Holocaust Industry”.

    Across the top of the front of the April 23 paper there was a photo of a 98-year-old survivor of the Nazis next to concentration camp garb. The article headlined “Antisemitism begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews, Cotler says” promoted Federation Combined Jewish Appeal’s (CJA) “Remembrance to Celebration” campaign, which also marks Israel’s Memorial Day and Israel’s Independence Day. Ostensibly about Nazi crimes, the article largely quoted leading Zionist Irwin Cotler justifying Israeli brutality. The initiator of Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism was quoted saying, “We’re also in the shadow and continuing pain of the unspeakable mass atrocities of Oct. 7, perpetrated, as you know, by a terrorist organization, Hamas, under Canadian law, but (also) an antisemitic genocidal terrorist group, not because I say so, but because Hamas has said so in its founding charter of 1988. And since Oct. 7, Hamas has committed itself — and I’m quoting them again — to commit Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel’s annihilation… Iran is the sleeper, the elephant in the antisemitic room, where Iran is not only a leading state sponsor of international terrorism, including that of Hamas and Hezbollah, not only a leading exporter of transnational repression and assassination targeting Jews, but where Iran itself is a leading architect of what has come to be known — and I first called it as such 25 years ago — genocidal antisemitism.”

    On the opinion page of that day’s paper the communications director of the Montreal Holocaust Museum (MHM) complained about groups backing away from partnerships with the museum amidst Israel’s horrors. In the wildly contradictory “Anti­semit­ism, loss of ally­ship are con­nec­ted” Sarah Fogg noted, “Holocaust museums do not have to pass a litmus test on the Middle East to do their crucial work… If a Holocaust museum’s commemoration inspires individuals to publicly question where its Gaza exhibit is, this demonstration of solidarity with Palestinian civilians is clouded by an antisemitic trope. For the record, it is valid and perfectly reasonable for Canadian Jews to care about Israel, worry about the hostages and to define as Zionists, meaning they support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral land.”

    Two days later the Gazette reported on the MHM/CJA holocaust event. The story included a photo of an old man holding a sign saying “We will not be silent” above Israeli and Canadian flags. The caption read, “Holocaust survivor Andrew Fuchs, 89, attended a solemn Yom HaShoah event at the Montreal Holocaust Museum on Wednesday.”

    The story quoted Cotler, Anthony Housefather, Neil Oberman and MHM president Jacques Saada, who compared Palestinians to Nazis. “One of the phrases we use is ‘never again,’” Saada told the crowd. “Unfortunately, on Oct. 7, 2023, it was the Holocaust all over again.”

    Over the past year and a half Saada has repeatedly used Holocaust commemoration events to promote Israel’s genocide. In a speech to the Montreal Mayor’s Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony last year Saada declared: “We live in an upside down world…. A world where women sing the praises of Hamas, while it wants to enslave them. A world where members of the LGBTQ communities sing the praises of Hamas, while in Gaza it sentences them to death. … All this is also happening in the streets and on the campuses of Montreal. A world where university professors treat their Jewish students as prostitutes.”

    Over the past eighteen months Saada has opposed a ceasefire in Gaza and has attended Israel rallies and events. When South Africa brought a case against Israel’s genocide to the International Court of Justice, Saada signed a message on behalf of the MHM labeling the legal effort a “revolting accusation” akin to “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Saada claimed, “The current war is the result of a pogrom deliberately carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians. This pogrom directly meets the definition of genocide. Hamas makes no secret of its intent, its genocidal goals, even in its charter.”

    After over 10,000 Palestinians had been killed in the latest round of Israeli barbarism directed at the besieged coastal strip, MHM released their position “on the continuing conflict in Israel”. The November 15 statement noted: “We have seen the worst terrorist attack committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, an escalating war in a place that many of us call a second home, images of extreme violence, the proliferation of hate propaganda, and the terrorizing of Jews around the world. We share the pain of the Israeli and Palestinian families, equally victimized by the cruelty of Hamas. We are heartbroken thinking of the innocent hostages being held by these ISIS emulators, and we pray for their immediate release back to the loving arms of their Israeli families.”

    The MHM works with the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) to promote its Holocaust Education Program. They and other pro-Israel forces convinced the EMSB to make holocaust education mandatory. As part of the EMSB’s holocaust education program prominent Nazi hunter Steven Rambam told Westmount high school students in January 2023 that people say “Israel is a terrible country, [that] they’re abusing the Palestinians – which is a bunch of crap. I lived in Israel. Trust me they’re doing everything but abusing the Palestinians.”

    EMSB’s holocaust education program was set up in conjunction with the Azrieli Foundation. The Azrieli Foundation has also been a major financier of the MHM and the lead private donor for its $120 million move and upgrade to a large new centrally located facility. (Federal, municipal and provincial governments have given tens of millions of dollars in grants — while subsidizing tens of millions of dollars more through donations to charities — to the MHM expansion.)

    Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. A Montrealer who also owned property in Israel, Azrieli paid for an amphitheatre to be built in the occupied Golan Heights to commemorate his Haganah brigade and made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, which an Israeli court deemed a “fascist” group. In 2011 Azrieli gave Concordia University $5 million to establish the first minor in Israel Studies at a Canadian university. After attending an Association for Israel Studies’ conference organized by the Azrieli Institute, prominent anti-Palestinian activist Gerald Steinberg described the institute as part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.

    The MHM has many ties to Montreal’s main apartheid and genocide lobby organizations. The museum lists Federation CJA as its “Beneficiary” and has co-sponsored initiatives with B’nai Brith, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and other anti-Palestinian groups.

    Interestingly, the use and abuse of holocaust remembrance dates back primarily to 1967, not to the time Nazis were in power or once the death camps were liberated. Finkelstein shows how discussion of the Nazi Holocaust grew exponentially after the June 1967 Six Day war. Prior to that war, which provided a decisive service to US geopolitical aims in the Middle East, the genocide of European Jewry was a topic largely relegated to private forums and among left wing intellectuals. Paralleling the US, the Nazi Holocaust was not widely discussed in Canada in the two decades after World War II. In fact, the Canadian Jewish Congress consciously avoided the subject.

    Numerous other commentators also trace the established Jewish community’s interest in Nazi crimes to the Six Day War. “The 1967 war,” explained Professor Cyril Leavitt, “alarmed Canadian Jews. Increasingly, the Holocaust was invoked as a reminder of the need to support the Jewish state.” President of the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, Sam Rothstein concurred. “The 1967 war … was the one development that led to a commitment by community organizations to become more involved in Holocaust commemoration. … Stephen Cummings, the founder of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center, said that ‘consciousness [of the Holocaust] has changed. Jews are much more proud, and that’s a post-1967 [phenomenon]. It was the event that gave Jews around the world confidence.’”

    Holocaust memorials proliferated after Israel smashed Egyptian-led pan-Arabism in six days of fighting. Nearly three decades after World War II, in 1972, the Canadian Jewish Congress and its local federations began to establish standing committees on the Nazi Holocaust. The first Canadian Holocaust memorial was established in Montreal in 1977.

    Over the past 50 years a slew of holocaust museums and monuments have been established across the country. Canada now has a Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and many institutions and governments have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism.

    The lesson? Knowledge production and dissemination is not apolitical. Even if it makes many uncomfortable, it’s imperative to challenge a “holocaust industry” enabling genocide and apartheid.

    The post On the Pro-Israel Use and Abuse of Holocaust Remembrance first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Drip-drip of Slanted Gaza Reporting Erodes Our Sense of Right and Wrong

    It is quite possible to take apart virtually any report in the Guardian on Gaza – as I have done with a story in today’s paper – and identify the same kinds of journalistic malpractice.

    Further, I could have taken any paragraph in the article and parsed it in much the same way as I do below. But for the sake of brevity, I have selected four paragraphs (each in bold) that illustrate the abysmal state of reporting about Gaza by Britain’s supposedly most serious, liberal newspaper.

    Note that these misrepresentations are included in a story that is ostensibly critical of Israel. A new report by the United Nations accuses Israel of physically abusing and torturing its staff, including teachers, doctors, and social workers, and of using others as human shields.

    The language and framing used by the Guardian below serve to dilute the impact of the UN report, and thereby give Israel’s behaviour far more legitimacy than it deserves.

    “The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Tuesday that Israel had released a medic held since a deadly and hugely controversial attack by Israeli troops on ambulances in southern Gaza on 23 March.”

    “Hugely controversial” is the Guardian’s cowardly way of referring to an indisputable atrocity. Israel murdered 15 paramedics and fire crew members in a three-and-a-half-minute hail of bullets on clearly marked emergency vehicles. Israel then crushed the vehicles, and buried them and the crews’ bodies to hide the evidence.

    In what world is that only “controversial”?

     

    “Controversy” implies two sides to an issue. It suggests room for doubt. There is no debate or doubt about what happened, apart from one perpetuated by the Western media. Had Russia done the same to Ukrainian medics, the Guardian would be calling it what it is: a war crime.

    War crimes aren’t “controversial”. They are war crimes.

    “Israel banned all cooperation with UNRWA’s activities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank earlier this year, and claims the [United Nations] agency has been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation that has been fiercely contested.”

    Again, “fiercely contested” is the Guardian’s weaselly way of giving credence to an obvious Israeli lie. Israel has had many, many months to produce even a sliver of evidence to support its claim that Hamas infiltrated the UN refugee agency, UNRWA – and they have signally failed to do so.

    To call the smear an “allegation” and claim it is “contested” is to suggest that someone apart from Israel takes the smear seriously. They don’t. That is why it is a smear.

    “Rights groups accuse Israel of using a ‘starvation tactic’ that endangers the whole population, potentially making it a war crime.”

    It is not just “rights groups”, and it’s not just an “accusation”. The International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, and one of those crimes is for starving Gaza’s population. Israel’s starvation policy has actually intensified since Israel broke the ceasefire agreement last month. Israeli leaders even proudly admit they are starving the population. So, how is that just an “accusation”?

    And starving the population isn’t just “potentially” a war crime. It is a war crime. It is a prime example in international law of “collective punishment” – collectively punishing civilians for the actions of their leaders. And in this case, “punishment” is starving them to death – the gravest kind of collective punishment and the gravest kind of war crime.

    “Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to continue the offensive until all the hostages are returned and Hamas is either destroyed or agrees to disarm and leave the territory.”

    Journalists usually use the word “vow” to indicate a positive view of a proposed action. A more neutral word here would be “threatened”. Even the conservative International Court of Justice suspects Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. How does “Netanyahu vowed to continue the genocide until all the hostages are returned” sound? Strange? Outrageous? Then, you understand the point.

    Further, why is the Guardian parroting only the most self-serving of Netanyahu’s claims about the aims of Israel’s war crimes (while giving Israel the benefit of the doubt about whether they are war crimes)? There are a whole host of other, far more plausible reasons for Israel destroying all of Gaza’s infrastructure, including its hospitals, and killing and maiming 100,000s of Palestinians, than “getting the hostages back” or “disarming Hamas”.

    They include an aim stated by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that they wish to “encourage” Palestinians to leave their homeland. The wanton death and destruction spread by Israel seem to be what they all mean by “encouragement”.

    The constant drip-drip of skewed language, slanted reporting, and prejudicial framing by the Western media has a purpose. It is intended to erode the reader’s sense of right and wrong, fact and fiction, victim and oppressor.

    It is there to disorientate us, leaving us more open to disbelieving what we can see with our own eyes: that there is a genocide going on, and our own leaders are actively assisting it.

    The post The Drip-drip of Slanted Gaza Reporting Erodes Our Sense of Right and Wrong first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Is The Symptom, US Imperialism Is The Disease

    Popular resistance to the Trump administration’s erratic, anti-people, and dangerous domestic and foreign policies is growing every day as seen with the massive demonstrations held throughout the country on and after April 5. We welcome these protests and the popular demands raised by them, but we must criticize significant flaws that block the political changes we desperately need.

    Criticism is personalized against President Trump, Elon Musk, and the “billionaires” for actions that have been the hallmark of bipartisan policies for decades.

    The post Trump Is The Symptom, US Imperialism Is The Disease appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ben-Gvir Returns To Israel After A Violent Trip To The US

    The Israeli far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has wrapped up his weeklong visit to the United States.

    The settler leader’s trip drew protests and generated violence, but these developments didn’t stop Ben-Gvir from meeting with Republican lawmakers at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and the U.S. Capitol.

    Ben-Gvir has previously been convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism. Before running for office, he kept a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli religious extremist who murdered 29 Palestinian people in a Mosque, hanging in his living room.

    The post Ben-Gvir Returns To Israel After A Violent Trip To The US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The ICJ, Israel, and the Gaza Blockade

    The murder and starvation of populations in real time, subject to rolling coverage and commentary, is not usually the done thing.  These are the sorts of activities kept quiet and secluded in their vicious execution.  In the Gaza Strip, these actions are taking place with a confident, almost brazen assuredness.

    Israel has the means, the weapons and the sheer gumption to do so, and Palestinians in Gaza find themselves with few options for survival.  The strategic objectives of the Jewish state, involving, for instance, the elimination of Hamas, have been shown to be nonsensically irrelevant, given that they are unattainable.  Failed policies of de facto annexation and occupation are re-entering the national security argot.

    In yet another round of proceedings, this time initiated by a UN General Assembly resolution, the International Court of Justice is hearing from an array of nations and bodies (40 states and four international organisations) regarding Israel’s complete blockade of Gaza since March 2.  Also featuring prominently are Israel’s efforts to attack the United Nations itself, notably UNRWA, the relief agency charged with aiding Palestinians.

    As counsel for the Palestinians, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh outlined the central grievances.  The restrictions on “the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, [Israel’s] attacks on the United Nations and on UN officials, property and premises, its deliberate obstruction of the organisation’s work and its attempt to destroy an entire UN subsidiary organ” lacked precedent “in the history of the organisation”.  Being not only “antithetical to a peace-loving state”, such actions were “a fundamental repudiation by Israel of its charter obligations owed both to the organisation and to all UN members and of the international rule of law”.

    Israel had further closed all relevant crossings into the Strip and seemingly planned “to annex 75 square kilometres of Rafah, one-fifth of Gaza, to [its] so-called buffer zone, permanently.  This, together with Israel’s continuing maritime blockade, cuts Gaza and its people off from direct aid and assistance and from the rest of the world”.

    The submission by Ní Ghrálaigh went on to document the plight of Palestinian children, 15,600 of whom had perished, with tens of thousands more injured, missing or traumatised.  Gaza had become “home to the largest cohort of child amputees in the world, the largest orphan crisis in modern history, and a whole generation in danger of suffering from stunting, causing irreparable physical and cognitive impairments”.

    South Africa, which already has an application before the Court accusing Israel of violating the UN Genocide Convention, pointed to the international prohibition against “starvation as a method of warfare, including under siege or blockade”. Its representative Jaymion Hendricks insisted that Israel had “deployed the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation” against “the protected Palestinian population, which it holds under unlawful occupation.”  The decision to expel UNRWA and relevant UN agencies should be reversed, and access to food, medicine and humanitarian aid resumed.

    In a chilling submission to the Court, Zane Dangor, director general of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation, detected a scheme in the cruelty.  “The humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse.  This collapse is by design.”

    Israel’s response, one increasingly rabid to the obligations of humanitarian and international law, was best stated by its Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar.  In announcing that Israel would not participate in oral proceedings derided as a “circus”, he restated the long held position that UNRWA was “an organisation infiltrated beyond repair by terrorism.”  Courts were once again being abused “to try and force Israel to cooperate with an organisation that is infested with Hamas terrorists, and it won’t happen”.

    Then came an agitated flurry of accusations shamelessly evoking the message from Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse” note of 1898, penned during the convulsions of the Dreyfus Affair: “I accuse UNRWA. I accuse the UN.  I accuse the Secretary General, I accuse all those that weaponize international law and its institutions in order to deprive the most attacked country in the world, Israel, of its most basic right to defend itself.”

    The continuing blackening of UNRWA was also assured by Amir Weissbrod of Israel’s foreign ministry, who reiterated the claims that the organisation had employed 1,400 Palestinians with militant links.  Furthermore, some had taken part in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.  That such a small number had participated was itself striking and should have spared the organisation the savaging it received.  But Israel has longed for the expulsion of an entity that is an accusing reminder of an ongoing, profane policy of oppression and dispossession.

    In her moving address to the Court, Ní Ghrálaigh urged the justices to direct Israel to allow aid to enter Gaza and re-engage the offices of UNRWA.  Doing so might permit the re-mooring of international law, a ship increasingly put off course by the savage war in Gaza.  The cold, somewhat fanatical reaction to these proceedings in The Hague by Israel’s officials suggest that anchoring international obligations, notably concerning Palestinian civilians, is off the list.

    The post The ICJ, Israel, and the Gaza Blockade first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 7 in 10 Democrats Say US Should Restrict Aid to Israel, Poll Finds

    Democratic voters overwhelmingly say that the U.S. should restrict military assistance to Israel until it stops its assault on civilians in Gaza and respects the rights of Palestinians, new polling finds. According to a Data for Progress-Zeteo poll released last week, 71 percent of likely Democratic primary voters say that the U.S. should end its arms transfers to Israel until it “stops…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UK’s Continued Designation of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Makes It Complicit in Genocide

    ‘In a historic, groundbreaking legal challenge The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) have instructed British lawyers to submit a formal application to the British Secretary of State, requesting that the movement be de-proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’. The several hundred page application is supported by leading experts in law, international relations, politics, academia and journalism.’ (Hamas Legal Team.)

    In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

    During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

    The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

    Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

    After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

    People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

  • See also “How Fair Was it to Label Hamas ‘Terrorists’?How Fair Was it to Label Hamas ‘Terrorists’?“
    • The post UK’s Continued Designation of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Makes It Complicit in Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Baby Gaza

    I am a pregnant seventeen-year-old Gaza refugee, and I have to deal with messages like these sent to those who want to help me:

    “You’re getting scammed for money. Makes sense now. Preying on your good will and good intentions to soak money from you and those around you.

    Guaranteed these accounts are being run in China or Africa somewhere. I recognize this form of ‘poor English’ anywhere, and the emoji spam is classic feminine appeal to masculine savior complex.

    This woman is also a man by the way. Because men know how to tug the heartstrings of men better than women by appealing to you in this manner.”

    This comment was addressed to my American friend Eros Salvatore who I have known for almost a year. He had posted my DM of gratitude to him to one of his social media accounts. He had just gotten $90 in donations for me and offered to edit my writing for publication. So I thanked him:

    “I am so very proud of you, you are the best person I have ever known, you are truly a human being, thank you very much and forever, I have not settled yet, but I promise you that I will send you the story very very soon!”

    I broke down and cried when I read that man’s response. I was married at age fourteen, and I now live alone with my husband, Hasan, in a palace made of rubble. I am pregnant and don’t have enough food to feed myself and my baby. What a waste of life. I have avoided being murdered by the Occupation for eighteen months, only to suffer like this and run out of food and money when I should be celebrating the new life within me. I have no protection from the bombs and bullets, and now this Zionist is harassing me and telling me that I am a liar. Should I stop asking for help and give up?

    I am ready to prove that I am a victim of the Occupation and that I am pregnant too. I have a pregnancy test result from the hospital and an ultrasound that I can send to anyone. I have a photograph of the view from my room in a destroyed apartment tower with the street full of garbage and debris below. I am not lying. I have a video of me reciting poetry when I was a child, and in the video I mention my name and age. Is that not enough?

    Any donation that is given to me, I withdraw it and buy important medicines and vitamins for my daughter. Any amount that comes, I withdraw it and pay the rent. Note that the amount does not arrive in full, but rather comes to me incomplete because of the twenty to thirty percent commission the money changers take—the greedy who rob the poor of what they deserve.

    This is not my first pregnancy. I was three months pregnant on October 7th, 2023 but, because of the lack of prenatal care, loss of sleep and terrible anxiety, I miscarried. I woke up one day during a bombing and found that I had a severe hemorrhage. We went to the nearest hospital and they examined me and told me that the fetus was very weak. They tried to save my baby, but he died. I had lost my first child.

    That was just after my brother Bahaa and my brother-in-law Mohammed were murdered as they tried to rescue Gaza refugees trapped by the fighting. During the winter of 2023-24, when we had few blankets or warm clothes and little food, many of my elders died as well. I lost aunts and uncles on cold nights when tarps and twine were not enough to keep them warm. I can not begin to count the friends and neighbors who have perished, my BFF’s Warda and Malak…the list goes on.

    I love my daughter so much. I have named her Maria. Please pray for me that Maria survives. I need her!

    The post Baby Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US And Israel Gangsterism Has Created A Hobbesian International State Of Nature

    Eighteen months of genocidal horror in Gaza has finally swept away to the dustbin of history the myth that the West was ever committed to so-called enlightenment ideas of human dignity, the rule of law and human rights. And we say good riddance to this mendacious mythology.

    Israel’s daily bombardment accompanies the daily horrific imagery of Israeli attacks on schools, hospitals, tent cities and broken and mangled Palestinian children, images that still fail to move public opinion in the U.S. and Europe to demand an end to the slaughter. Why? Because Gaza has finally stripped away the veil of civilization that masked moral contradictions and rationalized barbarism that has always occupied the heart of European civilizational relations with the non-European world.

    The post US And Israel Gangsterism Has Created A Hobbesian International State Of Nature appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Yale, Ben-Gvir, and Banning Palestinian Groups

    Universities are in a bind. As institutions of learning and teaching, knowledge learnt and taught should, or at the very least could, be put into practice. How unfortunate for rich ideas to linger in cold storage or exist as the mummified status of esoterica. But universities in the United States have taken fright at pro-Palestinian protests since October 7, 2023, becoming battlegrounds for the propaganda emissaries of Israeli public relations and the pro-evangelical, Armageddon lobby that sees the end times taking place in the Holy Land. Higher learning institutions are spooked by notions of Israeli brutality, and they are taking measures.

    These measures have tended to be heavy handed, taking issue with students and academic staff. The policy has reached another level in efforts by amphibian university managers to ban various protest groups who are seen as creating an environment of intimidation for other members of the university tribe. That these protesters merely wish to draw attention to the massacre of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, and the fact that the death toll, notably in the Gaza Strip, now towers at over 50,000, is a matter of inconvenient paperwork.

    Even worse, the same institutions are willing to tolerate individuals who have celebrated their own unalloyed bigotry, lauded their own racial and religious ideology, and deemed various races worthy of extinguishment or expulsion. Such a man is Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who found himself permitted to visit Yale University at the behest of the Jewish society Shabtai, a body founded by Democratic senator and Yale alumnus Cory Booker, along with Rabbi Shmully Hecht.

    Shabtai is acknowledged as having no official affiliation with Yale, though it is stacked with Yale students and faculty members who participate at its weekly dinners. Its beating heart was Hecht, who arrived in New Haven after finishing rabbinical school in Australia in 1996.

    The members of Shabtai were hardly unanimous in approving Ben-Gvir’s invitation. David Vincent Kimel, former coach of the Yale debate team, was one of two to send an email to a Shabtai listserv to express brooding disgruntlement. “Shabtai was founded as a space for fearless, pluralistic Jewish discourse,” the email remarks. “But this event jeopardizes Shabtai’s reputation and every future.” In views expressed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kimel elaborated: “I’m deeply concerned that we’re increasingly treating extreme rhetoric as just another viewpoint, rather than recognizing it as a distortion of constructive discourse.” The headstone for constructive discourse was chiselled sometime ago, though Kimel’s hopes are charming.

    As a convinced, pro-settler fanatic, Ben-Gvir is a fabled-Torah basher who sees Palestinians as needless encumbrances on Israel’s righteous quest to acquire Gaza and the West Bank. Far from being alone, Ben-Gvir is also the member of a government that has endorsed starvation and the deprivation of necessities as laudable tools of conflict, to add to an adventurous interpretation of the laws of war that tolerates the destruction of health and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

    After a dinner at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (the bad will be fed), Ben-Gvir was flushed with confidence. He wrote on social media of how various lawmakers had “expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.” By any other standard, this was an admission to encouraging the commission of a war crime.

    In July last year, Israel’s State Prosecutor Amit Aisman reportedly sought permission from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal investigation into Ben-Gvir for alleged incitement of violence against residents of Gaza. The move was said to be a gesture to placate the International Court of Justice as it considers the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel over the war in Gaza. In a string of increasingly agitated interim orders, the ICJ has asked that Israel comply, as signatory member, with the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention. These include prohibitions against incitement to genocide.

    Incitement has become something of a nervous tic for the minister. In November 2023, for instance, Ben-Gvir remarked that “When we say Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy – they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.” Seeing himself as essentially immune to any form of prosecution, Ben-Gvir gave the State Prosecutor a sound verbal thrashing, claiming that it was “trying to make an Israeli minister stand trial for ‘incitement’ against citizens of an enemy state that danced on the blood our soldiers on the streets of Gaza on October 7.”

    In a statement responding to protests against Ben-Gvir’s visit, Yale stated that the student encampments set up on April 22 on Beinecke Plaza were in violation of the university’s policies on the use of outdoor spaces. Students already on notice for previous protests along similar lines would face “immediate disciplinary action”. With dulling predictability, the university revealed that it was looking into “concerns … about disturbing anti-Semitic conduct at the gathering”.

    University officialdom had also focused on the activities of Yalies4Palestine, a student organisation whose club status was revoked for “sending calls over social media for others to join the event”. The statement makes the claim that the group “flagrantly violated the rules to which the Yale College Dean’s Office holds all registered student organizations”. Consequently, the body cannot receive funding from Yale sources, use the university name, participate in relevant student activities, or book spaces on the campus.

    This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of “offensive” and “unsafe” while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility. Mobilised accordingly, they can eliminate any debate, any discussion and any idea from the campus for merely being stingingly contrarian or causing twinges of intellectual discomfort. The moment the brain aches in debate, the offended howl and the administrators suppress. Play nice, dear university staff and students, or don’t play at all. Besides, Ben-Gvir, by Yale standards, is a half-decent fellow.

    The post Yale, Ben-Gvir, and Banning Palestinian Groups first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Pope Francis Refused to Be Silent on Gaza. Will His Successor Follow Suit?

    Pope Francis, who died on April 21, was a rare beacon of hope for many Palestinians in the long months of the Gaza genocide. The pope refused to be silent on Gaza. For 18 months, he made nearly daily video calls in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, including recent calls he made from his hospital bed. He rang the Holy Family Church in Gaza City every night, speaking with church leaders and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Food Agency Runs Out of Stock in Gaza as Famine Looms

    The UN’s food agency announced on Friday that it has run out of all food stock in Gaza after eight weeks of Israel’s humanitarian aid blockade, which has left the entire territory on the brink of — or in the depths of — famine. The World Food Programme (WFP) distributed its last food stocks to kitchens serving hot meals on Friday. These kitchens have served as “the only consistent source of…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Cultural Genocide’: Ukrainian Teenager Escapes Russian ‘Reeducation Camp’ In Crimea


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human Blockaders Shut Down Holloman Air Force Base

    Alamogordo, NM – Holloman (Drone Training) AFB –  Anti-drone activists from across the U.S. shut down the West Gate entrance here at Holloman AFB early Wednesday morning – with one arrest – for nearly an hour in the 3rd annual “week of resistance” to the covert U.S. Drone Warfare Program. 

    Activists donned signs with names and ages of young Gazan children’s killed, and blocked traffic while chanting “15 thousand children killed in Gaza. No drones for genocide.”

    One protester, Toby Blomé, was arrested after lying down on pavement in front of a stalled car when military police threatened to arrest her.

    The post Human Blockaders Shut Down Holloman Air Force Base appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Human Blockaders Shut Down Holloman Air Force Base

    Alamogordo, NM – Holloman (Drone Training) AFB –  Anti-drone activists from across the U.S. shut down the West Gate entrance here at Holloman AFB early Wednesday morning – with one arrest – for nearly an hour in the 3rd annual “week of resistance” to the covert U.S. Drone Warfare Program. 

    Activists donned signs with names and ages of young Gazan children’s killed, and blocked traffic while chanting “15 thousand children killed in Gaza. No drones for genocide.”

    One protester, Toby Blomé, was arrested after lying down on pavement in front of a stalled car when military police threatened to arrest her.

    The post Human Blockaders Shut Down Holloman Air Force Base appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Maura Finkelstein on Academic Freedom, Jewish, Zionism, and Palestine

    Host Faramarz Farbod talks with Dr. Maura Finkelstein, writer, ethnographer, anthropologist, and author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (DUP 2019). Dr. Finkelstein was falsely accused of antisemitism and fired last May (2024) from her teaching position at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. We talk about the state of academic freedom, classrooms as ethnographic spaces, decanonization, being Jewish and anti-Zionist in the US, Zionism, Israel, misuses of antisemitism, Islamophobia, empire, and the present moment in history.

    The post Maura Finkelstein on Academic Freedom, Jewish, Zionism, and Palestine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel’s Expanding Ground Invasion in Gaza Is a Nightmare I Can’t Wake Up From

    In Gaza, every neighborhood carries traits that foster pride and unity among its residents, each one boasting its own unique qualities, cherished and known by all. One such neighborhood is Shujaiya, which means “courage” in Arabic. It is a place where the people are celebrated for their strength, resilience, patience and an unwavering love for their land. This love runs so deep that they would…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli Minister Says GOP Leaders Agree That Gaza “Aid Depots Should Be Bombed”

    Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and top Republican leaders at Mar-a-Lago agreed in a meeting that Israel should continue bombing humanitarian aid in Gaza, Ben-Gvir has said — effectively admitting that he is getting express support from top U.S. leaders to commit what experts have deemed as war crimes and genocidal acts. Ben-Gvir is visiting the U.S. this week for the first…

    Source

  • Israel stalls and the International Court of Justice complies

    One year ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel had fifteen months to prepare their defense (“counter memorial”) against the charges of genocide filed by South Africa. They were told to present their arguments by 28 July 2025.

    That seems like a very long time in a case involving the daily killing of many people, including children. But it was not enough time for Israel, which on 27 March 2025 filed a request to extend the time.

    In a very recent decision, the International Court of Justice has obliged and extended the time by six months. Israel can continue killing with impunity, and their defense to the International Court of Justice is not required until 28 January 2026.

    There has been very little news of this decision.  The ICJ did not issue a press release, despite this being their most sensational case. Accordingly, the decision has not been reported in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian.  Meanwhile, Israeli media reported, “EXCLUSIVE: Israel secures six month delay in Hague Court proceedings.”

    Another important story that has been largely ignored by Western media is regarding the sole Judge who voted in favor of Israel in every single decision so far in this case. That person, Judge Julia Sebutinde, has been revealed to have grossly plagiarized the writings of two ultra-zionists:  Douglas Feith and David Brog. Feith is a co-author of the infamous Netanyahu plan, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” and part of the Bush/Cheney team that campaigned for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.   Brog is Jewish but helped to found Christians United for Israel. He is currently the head of Miriam Adelson’s “Maccabee Task Force”.  Anti-zionist scholar Norman Finkelstein has discovered that 32% of the ICJ judge’s pro-Israel dissenting opinion was plagiarized from Feith, Brog, and others.

    As the saying goes, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” And if nobody reports or knows about it, did it really happen?  Along with dead Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is trying and perhaps succeeding in killing the International Court of Justice.

    The post Israel stalls and the International Court of Justice complies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel stalls and the International Court of Justice complies

    One year ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel had fifteen months to prepare their defense (“counter memorial”) against the charges of genocide filed by South Africa. They were told to present their arguments by 28 July 2025.

    That seems like a very long time in a case involving the daily killing of many people, including children. But it was not enough time for Israel, which on 27 March 2025 filed a request to extend the time.

    In a very recent decision, the International Court of Justice has obliged and extended the time by six months. Israel can continue killing with impunity, and their defense to the International Court of Justice is not required until 28 January 2026.

    There has been very little news of this decision.  The ICJ did not issue a press release, despite this being their most sensational case. Accordingly, the decision has not been reported in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian.  Meanwhile, Israeli media reported, “EXCLUSIVE: Israel secures six month delay in Hague Court proceedings.”

    Another important story that has been largely ignored by Western media is regarding the sole Judge who voted in favor of Israel in every single decision so far in this case. That person, Judge Julia Sebutinde, has been revealed to have grossly plagiarized the writings of two ultra-zionists:  Douglas Feith and David Brog. Feith is a co-author of the infamous Netanyahu plan, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” and part of the Bush/Cheney team that campaigned for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.   Brog is Jewish but helped to found Christians United for Israel. He is currently the head of Miriam Adelson’s “Maccabee Task Force”.  Anti-zionist scholar Norman Finkelstein has discovered that 32% of the ICJ judge’s pro-Israel dissenting opinion was plagiarized from Feith, Brog, and others.

    As the saying goes, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” And if nobody reports or knows about it, did it really happen?  Along with dead Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is trying and perhaps succeeding in killing the International Court of Justice.

    The post Israel stalls and the International Court of Justice complies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Palestine Solidarity Protests In Morocco Delay Maersk Ship

    Over 1,000 protesters took to the streets of Tangier, Morocco, on April 20, protesting the docking of the ship Nexoe Maersk in the Moroccan port city. This comes the same week that the same ship was delayed at the port of Casablanca for 39 hours due to similar protests. This comes after Moroccan dockworkers issued a call to action to boycott the Nexoe Maersk ship, following reports that the vessel would be carrying military equipment to Israel.

    Demonstrators in Tangier chanted slogans such as “No genocidal weapons in Moroccan waters” and “the people want the ship banned.”

    Across the world, organizations in solidarity with Palestine have called for a boycott of Danish shipping giant Maersk for its role in bringing weapons to Israeli forces carrying out genocide in Gaza.

    The post Palestine Solidarity Protests In Morocco Delay Maersk Ship appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Green Party Has “Hands On” Indigenous Rights

    Following the massive “Hands Off” demonstration on April 5, the Green Party asked its leaders to describe what the Green Party had its “Hands On.”

    During the 2024 presidential election, I, like thousands of committed voters, decided to take a stand. When I was much younger, I believed that the American government was not for the people. I was confused by politics, but I knew what I saw in my community — poverty, police brutality, public schools with inadequate supplies, and markets offering unhealthy products that contributed to the chronic diseases plaguing neighborhood children and elders. I was convinced that the people in charge did not care about us, so I opted out of participating in the voting process.

    Eventually, my associates convinced me that no politician would ever truly put our needs first, but that I was obligated to vote regardless. After all, many people had fought and died for the privilege so that I would have the opportunity to do what our ancestors had been denied. The trick, I was told, was to vote for the lesser evil and to then pray to God that the smaller demon would do something, even if just a little. Where I am from, the more trusted option was always a Democrat, so for twenty-five years I dutifully darkened the bubbles next to every Democrat running, without ever having heard of them or the principles upon which they were running. I wanted to know, but quite frankly, it all seemed too overwhelming to comprehend.

    Then, on October 7, 2023, Palestinians decided to fight back. I watched in real time with millions of others worldwide as the impending slaughter fell upon them. Video after video forced us to witness infants with detached limbs, shell-shocked children surviving collapsed buildings, and parents on the brink of insanity carrying salvaged body parts of their children in bags. We also witnessed how our politicians — Democrats included — dug in their heels in support of the perpetrators.

    I was appalled and distressed. There was absolutely no way that I was going to vote in an election where there was no “lesser evil.” As the campaigns surged on, I became more and more convinced that I needed to sit this one out. It did not matter whether a Republican or a Democrat won. As far as I could tell, both candidates were boastful, condescending, and committed to their billionaire base above all else.

    I told my young daughters, who I noticed were becoming increasingly politically involved, what I was planning. They were supportive yet suggested, “You should check out third party candidates though. There are some who you may like.” It turned out that they both were leaning towards the Green Party.

    I had heard of the Green Party in passing and even briefly considered voting Green during the 2016 presidential election, but it was too little, too late. This go-around, I had time and a little more confidence to learn so I could make a much more informed decision. I read the Jill Stein/Butch Ware Campaign platform and was immediately on board.

    What hooked me were a few things: their stance on the genocide in Gaza and all proxy wars that America is involved in; cash reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans who were imprisoned here for centuries; and most of all, allyship with Indigenous people who continue to be regarded as subhuman by this government.

    My family is Afro-Indigenous. My son, Muriyd “Two Clouds” Williams, was an extremely successful water protector and land defender, instrumental in halting a 150-plus-mile oil pipeline which threatened water sources and the environment, and in winning back dozens of acres of stolen land for his people through litigation. Due to his superb leadership, he was targeted, kidnapped, and murdered, and I immediately started two organizations to continue and expand his work.

    The Green Party’s platform on honoring Native American lives, rights, and treaties pulled me in. Frankly, Jill and Butch had me at “sovereignty.” I was fighting tooth and nail to convince as many people as possible that this was the party to roll with, because they were promising to act for all citizens and immigrants, too.

    Unfortunately, the 2024 election went to a usual suspect, and as we all know, it has all been downhill from there. One would hope that we would learn from this as a nation and finally try another route which would benefit all the people, not just some. Yet sadly we have not. It is politics as usual, with millionaire Democrats ramping up fear tactics through anti-Trump verbiage and a bogus “hands off” campaign.

    In the interim, we all are suffering, and none as much as Indigenous people. Therefore, we proclaim: Hands ON regarding all Indigenous people and Nations as sovereign entities! Hands ON honoring all treaty rights and the return of stolen Indigenous lands! Hands ON establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States! Hands ON working toward an absolute end to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons crisis! Hands ON expanding funding for health/mental health clinics and Tribal Compact Schools! Hands ON ensuring assistance, safety, and justice to all Indigenous people regardless of government recognition status!

    If the United States has a chance of turning itself on its heels to become the “Great” society most of us claim we want it to be, it must fully honor First Nations people, from the inside out. I believe the Green Party is the only political party ready and willing to do so.

    The Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA), is an independent political party which stands in opposition to the two corporate parties. GPPA candidates promote public policy based on the Green Party’s Four Pillars: grassroots democracy, nonviolence, ecological wisdom, and social justice/equal opportunity.

    For More Information Please See:

    Stein/Ware 2024 Platform, Social Justice, Tribal/Indigenous Sovereignty.

    Green Party of the United States Platform, II. Social Justice, 4. Indigenous Peoples.

    The post Green Party Has “Hands On” Indigenous Rights first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • PSNA calls on NZ govt to initiate global plea for ‘no fly’ zone over Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has appealed to Foreign Minister Winston Peters askingto  New Zealand initiate a call for an internationally enforced “no-fly” zone over Gaza.

    PSNA co-chairs John Minto and Maher Nazzal said in a statement this would be a small but practicable step to “blunt Israel’s continuing genocidal attacks” on Palestinians.

    “Gaza is recognised under international law, and by the New Zealand government, as part of the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territory,” they said.

    “As such, Israel’s intrusion into Gaza airspace is illegal, and is elevated to a war crime when its aircraft attack Palestinian civilians there to further what the International Court of Justice has described as a ‘plausible genocide”.”

    Minto and Maher said the United Nations had repeatedly said there were no safe places in Gaza for Palestinian civilians, where even so-called “safe zones” were systematically attacked as Israel “terrorised the population to flee from the territory”.

    “Suggestions for a no-fly zone have been made in the past but there has never been a better time for a concerted international effort to enforce such a zone over Gaza,” said Minto.

    “In the week leading up to Anzac Day there is no better time for New Zealand to stand up and be counted.

    “New Zealanders from past conflicts, including in that very region in 1917 and 1918, have died in vain if today’s politicians refuse to speak out to end the death and destruction in Gaza.”


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Massacres Yemenis so Israel can Massacre Palestinians

    On April 17, US airstrikes on Yemen killed 74 people and injured 171 in a dangerous escalation of US President Donald Trump’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East. A resident of the area around Yemen’s Ras Issa fuel port told Chinese media that “among the victims were employees, truck drivers, contracted workers, and civilian trainees of the port,” and “rescue teams recovering bodies and extinguishing fires were also targeted in [US] subsequent strikes.”

    Trump’s attack targeted Ras Issa a vital lifeline connecting the isolated, bombarded country to outside supply shipments. For its part, the US administration claimed that the bombing intended to prevent Iranian fuel from reaching “the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” in order to “deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.”

    While it is US policy to delegitimize Ansar Allah (also known as “the Houthis”) as “Iran-backed terrorists,” in fact, 80 percent of Yemenis live under the Sanaa-based Supreme Political Council led by Ansar Allah, making them Yemen’s de facto government. They have a huge degree of public support, as evidenced by the regular protests of tens of even hundreds of thousands of Yemenis opposing US aggression and supporting Ansar Allah’s armed support for Palestinian liberation.

    Ansar Allah survived eight years of Saudi-led attacks on Yemen, a war of aggression (backed militarily and diplomatically by governments of the US, Canada, and Europe) that levelled civilian infrastructure and killed almost 400,000 Yemenis. Trump’s bombings will not destroy the vilified “Houthi rebels,” but that is not their goal. What Washington wants is to force Yemen to withdraw its armed support for Palestinians resisting Israel’s genocide.

    After Israel launched its onslaught against Gaza in October 2023, Yemen imposed a blockade on Red Sea shipping to Israel. As Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza reached genocidal proportions, Yemen launched drone and missile attacks against Israeli targets. From the beginning, Ansar Allah was very forthright: they stated that the attacks on Red Sea ships and Israeli targets would stop once Israel ceased its genocidal assault on Gaza. During the Gaza ceasefire of January 19 to March 18, 2025, Ansar Allah did cease its military actions in the Red Sea (even as Israel violated the ceasefire 962 times), clearly demonstrating the connection between Israel’s genocide and Yemeni military activity.

    US efforts to paint the Yemenis as puppets of Iran, mindless terrorists, and maritime pirates are part of a concerted effort by Washington to obfuscate the just, defensive, and humanitarian motivations behind Ansar Allah’s actions. The recent phase of US attacks on Yemen began in January 2024 under former president Joe Biden, and these bombings received logistical support from, among other countries, Canada and the United Kingdom. After coming to office, Trump intensified the US war on Yemen. Since March, his attacks have killed more than 50 Yemenis, not counting the recent bombardment of civilians at the Ras Issa port. Reportedly, his administration is mulling a ground invasion of Yemen.

    One must always keep in mind why America is upping its attacks on the Yemeni people. It is because Yemen is trying to prevent Israel, an outpost of US power in the Middle East, from carrying out a genocide. That’s it. International and humanitarian law mean nothing to Washington. US efforts to paint Ansar Allah as illegitimate, criminal, or aggressors are transparent attempts to rhetorically discredit a regional resistance movement in order to make the massacre of Yemenis palatable to Western audiences.

    In the US empire’s eyes, the reason Yemenis need to be massacred is obvious: they are opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Trump is massacring Yemenis so that Israel can continue massacring Palestinians. It really is that simple.

    The post Trump Massacres Yemenis so Israel can Massacre Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Pope Francis Dies After Easter Plea to End War in Gaza

    The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, hours after he appeared at an Easter mass and appealed for an end to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. The pope’s Easter address, read aloud by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, decried the “terrible conflict” in Gaza that “continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation.”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pope Francis Dies After Easter Plea to End War in Gaza

    The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, hours after he appeared at an Easter mass and appealed for an end to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. The pope’s Easter address, read aloud by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, decried the “terrible conflict” in Gaza that “continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation.”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bad Math

    The bombed remains of automobiles with the bombed Federal Building in the background, April 19, 1995.

    Sometimes we see pictures of ourselves from a decade or three back and think, what was going through their head?

    In other circumstances, we don’t have to wonder. We know.

    It happens to writers a lot. It’s often our and stock-in-trade.

    I know exactly what I was thinking after the Oklahoma City bombing thirty years ago today, and it was not popular. But I recorded it in the April 25, 1995 edition of The Shorthorn at the University of Texas-Arlington. And the math sucks. It’s aged much better than the author.

    In the Aftermath

    To terrorize is to dominate or coerce by intimidation, the threat of violence, or the calculated perpetration of destruction, catastrophe, assassination, murder, etc. In the popular mind, terrorism is qualified by additional connotations. People recognize it as a vicious, cold-blooded attack on defenseless civilians or bystanding innocents. Few crimes are judged with such an unchallenged sense of vehement righteousness. Perpetrators of terrorism are hounded with unparalleled sanctimony and fanatic zeal. I read President Clinton’s pledge in the newspaper: “Nobody can hide any place in this country; nobody can hide any place in this world from the terrible consequences of what has been done.”

    Indeed, I think . . . unless they are American.

    Reports of the Oklahoma City bombing shock, enrage, and sadden me, but an ancient adage haunts my conscience: Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

    For the last four decades, the United States has perpetrated terrorist activities around the world. Our remorseless work in Vietnam, before and during the war, provided a chilling catalogue of American terrorism. The CIA-planned and CIA-executed assassination of the democratically-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, evidenced a harrowing propensity for terrorist realpolitik. And the United States has repeatedly installed and/or subsidized puppet dictators around the world who perform terrorist acts on their own constituencies.

    On a subtler level, in cases such as Israel and, until recently, South Africa, we support governments that permit, if not directly sanction, terrorist enterprises against their own indigenous populations, ranging from summary executions to simple violations of the most basic human rights.

    I see tattered infant-victims of the bombing in Oklahoma City and cringe, rueful and angry.

    But my jaw also stiffens as I recall the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran “Death Squads,” the genocidal military wings of regimes we encouraged and assisted in rises to power in Central America.

    In Guatemala, we supported the coup against and eventual overthrow of democratically elected president Jacob Arbenz. The faction we bet on—and invested in—began an incomprehensible reign of terror, decimating over 440 indigenous villages, conducting an estimated 100,000 political killings (more than 40,000 termed “disappearances”), and leaving over 200,000 children orphaned. And our man in Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, upstaged his Guatemalan counterparts, employing tortures that included inserting sabers in vaginas and disemboweling female victims while their families watched.

    And who can forget the “fraidy-Eighties” under Ronnie Reagan?

    No one in Nicaragua can.

    Men, women and children no different than the citizens of Oklahoma City were afraid all the time, and not just over one incident, but several every week. Besides funding and arming the Contras, we also published and distributed a terrorist handbook for their training. The CIA called it a “Freedom Fighters Manual,” but it included, among other things, detailed instructions (with illustrations) for making and utilizing Molotov cocktails.

    And these are just are just a few of the examples where U.S. involvement in terrorist activities actually became public. There were no doubt countless others. In fact, by popular definition, the largest single terrorist atrocity in human history was the allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany in World War II. Although it occurred during wartime, it was a vicious, calculated attack on a virtually defenseless civilian community.

    The second and third largest terrorist atrocities in world history were probably our nuclear strikes in Japan. These incidents pale in comparison to the widespread pogroms of Hitler, Belgium’s King Leopold, and the Catholic Church, but genocide is not a single act or terrorism—it constitutes a regimen of terrorism (of which our nation could be accused of domestically regarding indigenous people and Blacks and also in much of the Third World in general).

    As Americans, we are largely and more recently unaccustomed to displays of first-hand terrorist bloodshed, but, for much of the rest of the world, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. They live with it every day.

    I shudder at the scenes from Oklahoma City; but I also quake at our bloody ignorance. Did we think our acts of terror would never be reciprocated? Or that our fellow citizens were incapable of them?

    Did we really think we could be immune from terrorism after having so long been one of its chief contagions?!

    American terrorism has, however, evolved. Now, it’s openly encouraged and sanctioned by our commander-and-chief.

    The post Bad Math first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.