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Category: Massacres

  • The Admonishment of China by Governments in Glass Houses

    As I was reading Gareth Evans’s recent piece on what a ‘mature’ relationship with China should comprise, I was reminded of the photograph set out below, which was taken in December 1989. It depicts the then foreign ministers, Gareth Evans of Australia and Ali Alatas of Indonesia, on an aeroplane toasting their signing of the Timor Gap Treaty, which divided the vast oil and gas resources discovered in the Timor Sea between the two countries they represented.

    National Archives of Australia, A8746 KN19/12/89/69.

    The date of the photograph is important because it was smack bang in the middle of Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor, which began in 1975 and ended in 1999, and which the Australian and US governments supported. Without any objection from Australia (or the US), the Indonesian occupiers killed about one quarter of the East Timorese population, or the equivalent of about 7 million Australians, and committed other atrocities.

    Pictures, as they say, are worth a thousand words. This one, because it expresses so vividly the essence of one of the ‘moral’ (capitalist) guiding principles of Australian governments. It goes something like this: ‘never let the slaughter of tens of thousands of brown people “over there” ever interfere with maximising profit or pleasing our corporate benefactors and the Godfather in Washington DC’.

    As we have suggested briefly elsewhere, Australia’s short history since its invasion by white settlers, and particularly since the rise of the US after WWII, is drenched with bloody examples that demonstrate the adherence to this principle by successive Australian governments. The latest and most egregious illustration is Australia’s provision of different types of support to Israel for all of its dirty work in Palestine and in other parts of the Middle East.

    You can therefore imagine the wry smiles in Beijing when they read the advice given to the current Australian government by the very same Mr Evans on the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of relations with China, particularly the following:

    But Australia should never back away from respectfully making clear its own concerns on political and economic issues.

    Geopolitically, Australia’s concerns include China’s territorial ambition in and militarisation of the South China Sea, its repeatedly stated determination to unify Taiwan with the mainland not just by persuasion but by force if necessary, and its dramatically increasing military capability, including nuclear arsenal. Politically, they extend to China’s intolerance of any form of real or perceived dissent, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, with some of its activity extending to the attempted suppression of dissenting voices in the diaspora community in Australia.

    Are we really expected to believe that the likes of Mr Evans and his successors care more about the people of Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang (the Uyghurs) and Taiwan than they have ever shown that they did about other brown people in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Libya, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam?

    Or is Mr Evans soon going to write another piece urging Ms Wong and Mr Albanese to raise (‘respectfully’ of course) in their next ‘mature’ conversation with the ‘daddy’ in Washington DC Australia’s ‘concerns’ regarding the US desire to rule the world by force and its slaughter of people in wars that it has instigated, perpetrated or supported just (so as not to overdo it) since the turn of the century (by some estimates between 4.5 and 4.7 million), starting with Palestine?

    Or, more likely, is it that, despite the trade benefits (and money and profit) involved in Australia’s interactions with China, government is unwilling to turn its well-practised money-grubbing blind eye to China’s internal transgressions because Mr Trump might take it as a sign that Australia is ‘cosying up’ to China and impose a tariff or two as he did recently to India because of its trade with Russia?

    An Alternative Approach

    Dear President Xi,

    We have had a clean-out down here in Australia and now have a government that actually represents the views of its electorate.

    One of the first things we did was to eliminate all the US military bases we had. We are no longer, as one wag put it, a US military base with marsupials.

    I have to say that I am not sure that we and the US would have continued to trade with a country that housed, on behalf of a sworn enemy, numerous military bases targeted at us. More likely, we would have simply bombed the shit out of them (excuse the language). We are therefore very grateful for the restraint that you have shown us in that regard. I honestly cannot imagine what my predecessors were thinking.

    We have also been working hard to right some of the wrongs we have committed against our own indigenous people and against others in the region and further afield. We won’t be able to cover them all – there are simply too many – but we strongly believe that the first step is to admit our culpability and then to follow that up with substantive and substantial reparations.

    And we are trying to get over the idea that Anglo-Celts are superior to everyone else and can do pretty much anything they like, particularly if they are a member of the US-led ‘Anglo club’ – from which we are now barred. That should do wonders for a genuinely rule-based global order, don’t you think?

    There is much more to explain in a similar vein, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling on a relationship with your great and ancient civilisation that is based on honesty, consistency, humility, and mutual respect.

    Yours sincerely

    Conclusion

    Clearly, cooperation with China should be at the top of Australia’s foreign policy agenda.

    But, please, it can do without the white superiority, the obsequiousness to the US, the counterfeit compassion, and the holier-than-thou nonsense! They’re either wrong or hypocritical, and they’re all embarrassing.

    The post The Admonishment of China by Governments in Glass Houses first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “We Will Not Be Silent:” Hearing Stilled Voices of the Gaza Genocide

    In his last minutes of freedom before Israeli Defense Forces arrested him, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, clad in a medic’s white coat, walked alone toward two Israeli tanks. His captors awaited him amid the rubble of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital. An artist swiftly created a dramatic poster showing Dr. Safiya striding through the ruins of the hospital he directed. The artist, David Solnit, recently updated the poster’s caption. It now reads:   Free Dr. Abu Safiya   Eight months in prison Dec. 27, 2024 – August 27, 2025.

    Dr. Safiya had already endured agonizing losses at the Kamal Adwan hospital. In late October 2024, an Israeli drone attack killed his son, also a doctor. In a November 2024 attack on the hospital, Dr. Safiya was wounded by shrapnel, but continued working, insisting he would not close the hospital. He witnessed his colleagues being humiliated, beaten, and marched off to prison. By December 27, 2024, when Dr. Safia’s ordeal as a prisoner began, most hospitals in Gaza were non-functional.

    On August 28, 2025, Dr. Safiya’s lawyer, Ghaid Ghanem Qassem, visited him in the Ofer Prison. She reports he has lost one-third of his body weight. While imprisoned in the Sde Teiman military Detention Center, located in an Israeli military base in the Negev desert, he showed signs of torture. Subjected to beating with electric shocks and batons, he sustained blows that may also cause him to lose his right eye. Yet his message remains intact:

    “I entered in the name of humanity, and I will leave in the name of humanity… We will remain on our land and continue to provide healthcare services to the people, God willing, even from a tent.”

    Regimes conducting a genocide have more than one reason to eliminate brave professionals attempting, life by precious life, to undo their inhuman work: doctors not only seek to slow down the dying, but they, like the journalists the Israeli regime so frantically targets, are specially positioned and specially qualified to accurately report on the intensity and nature of Israel’s extermination campaign. Silencing the citizens most capable of reporting on genocidal savagery is a key objective of genocide.

    In one of the most egregious efforts to eliminate a key eyewitness, Israeli naval forces, on May 9, 2025, killed twelve-year-old Mohammed Saeed al-Bardawil, who, as a passerby alongside his father, had witnessed Israel’s March 23rd pre-dawn execution of 15 unarmed emergency rescue workers. The murdered paramedics had driven their clearly marked ambulances to a spot where they intended to retrieve victims of an earlier attack. The bullets that killed them were fired over six minutes as Israeli soldiers advanced to shoot directly into the survivors’ heads and torsos, afterwards using earth-moving equipment to bury their corpses and vehicles. On that day, Mohammed and his father were detained and made to lie face down near a burning ambulance. He is listed as a source in a well-documented NYT video on the massacre, dated May 2nd. Eleven days later, an Israeli gunboat fired on his father’s fishing boat, killing Muhammed in his father’s presence off the coast of Gaza’s southern Rafah governate.

    It was less than two weeks ago, on August 25th, that Israel killed Reuters camera operator Hussam Al Masri and nineteen others, four of them also journalists, in a series of double-tap precision-guided aerial attacks on buildings and a stairway of the Al Nasser Hospital. Al Masri was easily targetable as he broadcast a live video feed from a Reuters outpost on a top floor of the hospital. Describing the second wave of the attack,  Jonathan Cook writes:  “And when Israel struck 10 minutes later with two coordinated missiles, it knew that the main victims would be the emergency workers who went to rescue survivors from the first strike and journalists — al-Masri’s friends—who were nearby and rushed to the scene … Nothing was a “mishap.” It was planned down to the minutest detail.”

    Snipers and weaponized drone operators routinely kill Palestinians who courageously continue to don bulletproof press jackets, set up cameras, and report on Israel’s atrocities. Israel refuses entry to foreign journalists, and when brave, grieving, impassioned young Palestinians insist on carefully documenting their people’s agony for Western news outlets, Israel carefully targets them using the traceable phone and broadcasting equipment necessary to their work, before posthumously branding them Hamas operatives. Craven Western officials watch from within Israel’s patron states, discounting brown lives on whatever flimsy pretexts white authorities offer them. Almost daily, new faces appear in an assemblage of photos showing hundreds of journalists Israel has killed.

    Health care workers and journalists who are still alive do their work amid struggles to prevent their families, their colleagues, their neighbors, and, of course, themselves from deaths not just by direct massacre but by militarily imposed starvation and its handmaiden, epidemic disease. Surgeons speak of being too weak to stand throughout an operation. Reporters document their own starvation.

    Palestinians long for protection, but even the prospect of UN-mandated protective forces carries terrifying possibilities. What if “peacekeepers” assigned to monitor Palestinians collect data that the Israelis will use to control them? Weaponized “stabilizing forces,” equipped with U.S. surveillance technology, could be used to target, imprison, assassinate, and starve even more Palestinians.

    In the summer of 1942, in Munich, Germany, five students and one professor summoned astonishing courage to defy a genocidal regime to which we, reluctantly, have to look if we want to find a racist cruelty comparable to that currently seizing not just Israel’s leadership but, in poll after poll, strong majorities of its non-native population. The students’ collective, called The White Rose, distributed leaflets denouncing Nazi atrocities. “We will not be silent” was the final line of each leaflet. Hans Scholl, age 24, and his sister, Sophie Scholl, age 21, hand-delivered the leaflets to their university campus in February 1943. The Gestapo arrested them after a janitor spotted them disseminating the leaflets. Four days later, Hans and Sophie, as well as their colleague Christopher Probst, were executed by guillotine.

    With Israel’s nuclear arsenal capable of out-killing the Nazi regime over the course of a few minutes, and in the process inciting humanity’s final war; and with its leadership and populace radicalized through decades of fascist impunity to the point of endorsing not just a genocide but multiple, preemptive military strikes upon most of its neighbors at once, we may well be arriving at the moment when, as a result of our having let Israel assassinate, with impunity, the reporters of its crimes, there will be no-one in the outside world left to receive reports.

    The silence we allow ourselves today may soon be involuntary and absolute. Let us summon up a fraction of Dr. Safiya’s, of young Mohammad’s, of Sophie Scholl’s, and Hussam al-Masri’s courage and speak while we can.

    The post “We Will Not Be Silent:” Hearing Stilled Voices of the Gaza Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Deja vu-Lebanon

    In 1982 the world watched as Israeli troops invaded Lebanon, taking over the capital city of Beirut. The Americans and International Community made a deal with Israel that if the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) withdrew from Lebanon, Israel would retreat from Beirut.

    Under a guarantee that the women, children and elderly would be protected by an International peace keeping force, all Palestinian men of fighting age left Lebanon for foreign shores. What happened after the PLO left is well documented. September 1982, Israeli forces surrounded Sabra/Shatilla allowing their proxy Christian Phalange militia to massacre over three thousand civilians.

    There are credible witness accounts of rapes of young girls, mass slaughter, and incidents of pregnant women having their unborn babies ripped from their wombs. Israel provided bulldozers to scoop up the bodies and bury them in mass graves. Palestinians in Shatilla Refugee Camp, describe night as becoming day, because the IDF fired flares to light up the sky making escape for many Palestinian civilians impossible. The massacre lasted three days before the US and international community ordered a halt.

    Forty three years have passed: the US, along with their allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, are telling the Lebanese they should disarm the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. On this occasion there is no requirement for Israel to stop it’s military attacks in South Lebanon and the Bekka Valley. There is no promise of stopping the Al-Jolani, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) attacks on the northern broader of Lebanon, or the eastern border region. The Lebanese are being told that disarming Hezbollah will be better for them since Israel is an ally of the West, as is Al-Jolani, (formerly ISIS) the newly recognised leader of Syria.

    Western mainstream media reports on the current US demands are deplete of historical context. There is no recognition that Hezbollah represents a third of the Lebanese Government and the role it plays in protecting the sovereignty of Lebanese territory. There is no mention either, of Israel’s expansionist ambitions of establishing its Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael), even though the Israeli political leadership speak openly about it.

    Hezbollah formed as a direct result of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of Palestinian civilians. Ordinary Lebanese citizens – teachers, doctors, builders, tradesmen and so forth, joined Hezbollah in order to create a resistance movement capable of protecting Lebanon from Israel’s recurring attacks on their country.

    Israel’s ambition to expand its territorial borders into all of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, connects the people of these three countries in a bond of brotherhood.

    No American, Saudi or Israeli official has a right to dictate policy to the Lebanese on how they should govern their country. They have no right to interfere on matters relating to security and defence. Only the Lebanese Government, with the full support of the people, have a right to make such decisions.

    Political Zionism, is a fundamentalist doctrine that holds to the belief that historic Palestine and beyond, belongs to the Jews. The implementation of this doctrine has resulted in a settler colonialist enterprise that is supported financially and militarily by the US, Christian Evangelicals and most of the Western Establishment. Missing from this enterprise for it to be legally and morally binding, however was the pre-requisite that the transfer of statehood from Palestine to Israel be ratified by the people whose country was requisitioned.

    Resistance Movements that have grown out of this initial injustice and the humanitarian crimes committed over the last hundred years by modern-day Zionist Israel, have been labelled as terrorist organizations by Israel, US, and its close allies. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Ansarullah and more recently Palestine Action, a U.K. group, all fall within this framework of being a proscribed terrorist organization, hence anyone who speaks out in support of their actions is arrested under section 13 of the terrorism act of 2000.

    It has become evident that International Law, once perceived as a moral law set up to address international war crimes, has, in the case of Israel, been repeatedly undermined. The International Court of Justice in coming to the conclusion that plausible genocide was taking place in Gaza, along with the International Criminal Court at The Hague, have faced enormous political opposition in their attempt to give the proper name to the crime of genocide and serve arrest warrants on those deemed guilty.

    In International Law those who live under occupation- (A they decide – including armed resistance. As a deeply criminal occupying power, Israel does not have the right to defend itself against those under its occupation. Furthermore, in International Law, all states and movements that are aware that a genocide is being committed are obligated to take action to prevent that genocide from continuing.

    In contrast, to the resistance movements that have found themselves listed as terrorist, it is well documented that the US, along with UK and Israeli, have at different times, financed, trained and supported mercenary terrorist militants, such as al-Jolani’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), ISIS, and Al-Qaeda.

    The International infrastructure is geared toward sustaining the ability for Israel to commit genocide and expand into its neighbouring countries . For justice to ever be achieved, the legitimacy of resistance movements needs to be recognised. Lebanon is currently being given the message: ‘go along with our demands to disarm Hezbollah or resist and face the consequences’. In reality, as with the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, there are no guarantees that Lebanon will be safe from Israeli military incursion and occupation.

    Given the current threat posed by Israel’s clear expansionist ambitions, disarming Hezbollah would be akin to leaving the back gate open for the thieves to enter. Most Lebanese support Hezbollah, including non-Shia. Short of an absolute dismantlement of the Zionist Israeli enterprise it is unlikely that Hezbollah will agree to disarm.

    The post Deja vu-Lebanon first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Syria: Nearly 10,000 Killed Since West-Friendly Militants Seized Power

    The SOHR reported on Thursday that “due to ongoing violence by local and foreign militants,” at least 9,889 people had been killed since 8 December 2024, the day Damascus fell under the controversial rule of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group.

    The SORH said that 7,449 civilians were among the victims, including 396 children and 541 women.

    It also stressed that there has been no accountability for killings carried out by members of HTS-affiliated armed factions.

    This is while “in some cases, perpetrators are being covered up and facts are being distorted.”

    The post Syria: Nearly 10,000 Killed Since West-Friendly Militants Seized Power appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Security Contractor: ‘I Saw Israel Commit War Crimes At Gaza Aid Sites’

    A former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says he saw Israeli soldiers commit war crimes at the aid distribution sites being run by the Israeli-backed American agency.

    In a series of interviews, former GHF employee and Green Beret Anthony Aguilar alleged that he saw Israeli soldiers use “indiscriminate” force against civilians at various Gaza aid sites.

    “My most frank assessment — I would say that they are criminal,” said Aguilar. “In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”

    The post US Security Contractor: ‘I Saw Israel Commit War Crimes At Gaza Aid Sites’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Much For Mainstream Voices To Start Speaking Up About Gaza

    Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights. The Israeli organizations join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide in their conclusion.

    The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse.

    Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that “starving people to death is a red line.” This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been.

    MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled “Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit.”, featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC employee, has done a 180 and is now raking Israel over the coals on the air for its deliberately engineered starvation campaign. The New York Times finally overcame its phobia of the g-word with an op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”

    We’re now seeing notoriously Zionist swamp monsters in the Democratic Party like Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar changing their tune and attacking Netanyahu and Trump for their joint genocide project in Gaza, with increasingly forceful pushback from some on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.

    As western pundits, politicians, and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.

    People who’ve been staring at this genocide from the beginning have been asking the entire time, what is it going to take? What will it take for our society to stop sleepwalking through inane trivialities and vapid distractions and start opposing the holocaust of our day?

    Raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp packed full of children wasn’t enough.

    Burning children alive wasn’t enough.

    Systematically destroying Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure — up to and including entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment one by one — wasn’t enough.

    Killing more journalists than were killed in both World Wars, plus the US Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine wasn’t enough.

    The systemic rape and torture of prisoners wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1949587236434931921

    IDF soldiers routinely sharing photos and videos of themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children wasn’t enough.

    Israeli officials openly expressing genocidal intent for the people of Gaza wasn’t enough.

    The US president and Israeli prime minister openly declaring their goal of the complete ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian territory wasn’t enough.

    Field testing new weapons of war on Palestinians like they’re guinea pigs in a laboratory wasn’t enough.

    Leaving countless civilians to slowly suffocate or die of dehydration, trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings, wasn’t enough.

    Creating an AI system to ensure that suspected Hamas fighters are bombed when they’re at home with their children and naming it “Where’s Daddy?” wasn’t enough.

    Using Palestinians as human shields wasn’t enough.

    Burying injured civilians alive with bulldozers wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/GozukaraFurkan/status/1949232008216887774

    The IDF admitting to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins,” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces, wasn’t enough.

    IDF snipers routinely shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip wasn’t enough.

    The IDF flying drones, which play the sounds of crying babies at night in order to lure out hiding civilians to murder them, wasn’t enough.

    IDF troops telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians seeking food from aid sites wasn’t enough.

    Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of starving civilians on designated days — leg day, head day, genitals day, etc — wasn’t enough.

    Far right Israeli citizens setting up blockades to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza while they enjoyed parties and barbecues at the blockade sites wasn’t enough.

    https://x.com/mamoun_linda/status/1949190406211825696

    Using lies and propaganda to dismantle the aid system for bringing essential food and life-supporting supplies into Gaza, to replace it with a US/Israeli op where aid seekers are massacred every single day, wasn’t enough.

    Using siege warfare to starve Gaza for the previous 22 months deliberately wasn’t enough.

    But now that starvation has hit a critical point and deaths from malnutrition are skyrocketing, now that images of dead skeletal children are filling our screens, now that the damage to organs and brains from starvation will be irreversible in many cases — now it’s enough.

    That was the line, apparently. That’s what mainstream Western consciousness has decided is too much. Everything up until that line was fine, but now it’s not fine anymore.

    And the killing is still going on. The sudden awakening of conscience hasn’t translated into any material actions or changes at all yet. If it had come in October or November 2023, like it should have, we might be seeing that opposition translate into actually saving Gaza by now, but the light has only just been switched on. It’s not even guaranteed that those who are speaking up will continue to do so.

    https://x.com/d_boeckner/status/1949137485776265514

    I’m glad people are waking up to the cruel reality of this nightmare. I’m grateful to each and every influential voice who uses their platform to speak out, even at this late date. I truly am.

    But I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.

    We are not living right. We are not thinking right. We are not feeling right. We are warped and twisted. The information we consume and the norms we’ve been conditioned to accept have corrupted our souls.

    We have been made into something bad. Something ugly. Something shameful. Something we need to do everything in our power to change.

    We need to rescue ourselves from what we have become. We need to transform, deeply and radically, into something that could never again allow something like this to occur.

    https://x.com/BlakPantherBabe/status/1949834226343293339

    The way things are clearly isn’t working. The mainstream worldview is clearly a lie. Everything we’ve been taught to believe about our society, our nation, our government, and our world was clearly false.

    We need to fight our way through the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that our entire way of looking at things as a collective has failed, and we need to find a new way of being.

    Otherwise, we’re going to keep being smashed in the face with increasingly horrifying reminders of what we have allowed ourselves to become.

    The lessons will repeat until they are learned.

    We had better start learning them.

    The post It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Much For Mainstream Voices To Start Speaking Up About Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The US And Israel Partnered With Syria’s President To Massacre Druze

    As video after video of horrendous atrocities spreads on social media from the governorate of Suwayda in Syria, evidence indicates that the Syrian government’s sectarian slaughter of the Druze religious minority was orchestrated by the US and Israel.

    The massacres are part of a broader effort to force the Druze to seek protection from Israel and thereby give the Jewish state a pretext to further occupy Syria’s south, establish David’s Corridor, and keep the country weak and divided. Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former ISIS commander long groomed by the US and UK to take power in Damascus, proved a reliable agent in executing the plan.

    The post The US And Israel Partnered With Syria’s President To Massacre Druze appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Surgeon says Israeli forces appear to turn Gaza aid massacres into “a game”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “War on Children”: Doctor in Gaza on Massacres, Starvation and Israel’s Plan for Concentration Camps


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “War on Children”: Doctor in Gaza on Massacres, Starvation and Israel’s Plan for Concentration Camps

    Seg1 tarek gaza 5

    The official death toll in Gaza has topped 58,000, with Israeli forces continuing to shoot at Palestinians seeking aid and talks over a ceasefire agreement stalled in Doha. This morning’s injured were taken to Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning hospital in Gaza, facing fuel shortages and a widening Israeli offensive in the area. Democracy Now! spoke with Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor who has been volunteering in Nasser Hospital in Gaza since June, live from Gaza.

    “Every day seems to be a new exercise in the depths of human depravity in terms of targeting men, boys, women and children, especially in terms of the youngest children,” says Loubani. “I think every doctor who operates and works in Palestine will tell you that that’s the most jarring, the most terrible part of our job, is just the war on children on every level.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Gunfire Communication with “Zombie Hordes”: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF

    It’s made to order. First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering. Then, kill, starve, vanquish, and displace those in need of that aid.  Finally, give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place.

    As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients. Since May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaque entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency. The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarized, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity. Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious. When they do open, they do so for short spells.

    Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites. In a June 27 piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.”  Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.” Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

    The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire. “There’s no enemy, no weapons.” IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran. In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’ like they used to say.”

    An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centers was full of understatement. “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.” It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”

    Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example. While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter, and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.

    On July 4, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centers. In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children, and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.” Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd. “A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”

    The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “If you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.” No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules. “Do what you want” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives. And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.

    The GHF, in time-honored fashion, has denied these allegations. Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law. It is, therefore, left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen. As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight. In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction. “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.

    If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scraps any pretense of being humanitarian in its title and admits to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population.

    The post Gunfire Communication with “Zombie Hordes”: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • “Trying to Find Food Is a Death Sentence”: Palestinian Writer Muhammad Shehada on Gaza Aid Massacres


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  • “Trying to Find Food Is a Death Sentence”: Palestinian Writer Muhammad Shehada on Gaza Aid Massacres

    Booksplitv22

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States next week to meet with President Donald Trump and other top officials in the U.S. administration, supposedly to “capitalize on the success” of the 12-day war against Iran. This comes after nearly 21 months of Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed at least 56,000 Palestinians, with daily violence only increasing. “There’s basically an airstrike every other minute,” says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada. “There’s nonstop artillery fire, gunfire, machine gunfire, as well as Israeli quadcopter drones that are swarming Gaza and shooting people at random.” While there have been news reports of a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, Shehada says “there are no negotiations,” and therefore no end in sight to the daily bloodshed.


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  • “One Mass Casualty After Another”: U.S. Doctor in Gaza on Ongoing Israeli Massacres at Aid Sites


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  • “One Mass Casualty After Another”: U.S. Doctor in Gaza on Ongoing Israeli Massacres at Aid Sites

    Seg2 gaza4

    In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since midnight, including more Palestinians targeted by Israeli forces while seeking food and humanitarian aid. This comes as UNICEF is warning Gaza is facing what amounts to a “man-made drought” with children at risk of dying from thirst due to Israel’s blockade. We go to Dr. Mark Brauner, an emergency medicine physician who is currently volunteering at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza. He describes “execution-style” killings of Palestinians at food distribution sites and the desperate lack of baby formula leading to the deaths of children suffering from malnutrition and starvation.


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  • Thou shalt protect Israel: The West’s first and only commandment

    COMMENTARY: By Daniel Lindley

    As I sit down to write this article, I’m reading another update on the Israeli army killing 27 more starving Palestinian civilians waiting to receive food at a “humanitarian hub”. The death toll at these hubs over the last eight days is now 102.

    We’re at the point now that Israel doesn’t even bother putting out the usual statements claiming how Hamas militants were using the civilians as human shields.

    They just put out brazen denials that these events even happened, or report that the gunfire was “in response to the threat perceived by IDF troops.” You don’t get much flimsier justifications for massacring civilians than that.

    It’s important to remember that these events have only happened because Israel has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip since March, blocking all food, fuel and medicine from entering the territory to starve the civilian population.

    Meanwhile, Netanyahu has made clear that the only way to end the war is for the civilian population of Gaza to be moved to third countries.

    The UN has effectively been banned from operating in Gaza, so the only way Palestinians in Gaza can get food is to go to these “humanitarian hubs” run by the Israeli army, who might just shoot them dead.

    Ordinarily, one might expect serious consequences for a state which openly declares that it is attempting ethnic cleansing, massacres civilians seeking food, and then lies about it.

    No fundamental change
    If we do live in a world governed by “international law” and “human rights”, then that would be natural. But I’m sure everyone reading this article understands that it’s unlikely that anything is going to fundamentally change because of this latest crime.

    This gets to the heart of the issue, the real reason why Palestine is so important and takes up so much international attention.

    It’s not just that it’s in a strategically important area of the world, or that there are religious holy sites at stake; as important as those things are to know. The real crux of the matter is that Palestine is the central contradiction from which the existing international order unravels.

    In 1974, John Pilger produced the film Palestine Is Still The Issue, which educated many Western audiences for the first time that a great injustice inflicted upon an entire nation had been left unresolved for decades.

    The post-Second World War order created institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), rendered colonialism an illegal holdover from a previous era and established the principle that it was illegal to acquire territory by war. The film asked the question, how can anyone, especially Western liberals, really say they believe in this new order while also supporting the state of Israel, a polity which appears to reject these ideals in favour of a brute “might equals right” ideal.

    In 2002, John Pilger released a new film, also titled Palestine Is Still The Issue.

    By 2025, we’re now approaching the end game of the post-Second World War international order, and a big reason for that is Western liberal leaders increasingly having to choose between maintaining it and maintaining their support for Israel, and going for the latter.

    To give a recent example, when Israel invaded Syria in December with zero provocation, the UK government’s response was simply to state that Israel “is making sure its position in the Golan is secure”.

    Bear in mind that the Golan is also Syrian territory; the UK government is explicitly endorsing an act of aggression to protect illegally occupied land. It makes little sense unless you think international law doesn’t apply to Israel.

    A blind eye to Israel’s war crimes
    But the problem with that kind of thinking is that international law doesn’t work unless there’s a collective agreement to respect it. There isn’t a world police force that can enforce these laws, they’re just a mutually agreed set of rules that everyone agrees to work within, as history has taught us that it ends badly for everyone if we don’t.

    To make a rough analogy, the system is like the early days of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) when there were very few enforced rules, but in reality, fighters had handshake agreements not to, e.g. pull each other’s hair out, because nobody wants that happening.

    If Fighter A were to start pulling the opponent’s hair out, can he act outraged when other fighters start doing it as well?

    Likewise, if the Western powers decide to support Israel in illegally occupying other countries’ territories for decades, can they really act outraged when Russia decides it’s going to occupy part of Ukraine?

    By allowing Israel to acquire territory by war, what they’ve essentially done is change the international system from one where acquiring territory by war is simply illegal, to one where acquiring territory by war is ok so long as you say it’s in your national security interests.

    Those are the new rules.

    Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

    International consensus
    Specifically, to answer allegations that they committed “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare”. After the Nazi atrocities in the Second World War such as the Siege of Leningrad (not strictly “illegal” at the time), there emerged an international consensus that such inhumane actions must never happen again.

    Well, on March 2, Israel announced that it was banning the entry of all goods and aid into Gaza, a blatant war crime. Meanwhile, Western governments such as Germany openly state that they intend to find “ways and means” to avoid having to arrest Netanyahu if he were to enter their territory.

    The UK, in particular, continues to provide direct military assistance to Israel in the form of surveillance flights over Gaza. Declassified UK has documented at least 518 RAF surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023, carried out from the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus.

    The UK government is, of course, aware that it’s assisting a government whose leaders are wanted by the ICC for war crimes. This would explain why when Keir Starmer visited the airbase in December, he gave a strange speech saying, “I recognise it’s been a really important, busy, busy year . . .

    “I’m also aware that some or quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about . . .  Although we’re really proud of what you’re doing, we can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here.”

    The UK is legally obligated under the Geneva Conventions to ensure its military intelligence is not used to facilitate war crimes. In fact, the UK government has stated itself that Israel is “not committed” to following international law, but says it must continue providing military assistance to Israel as to stop doing so “would undermine US confidence in the UK and NATO at a critical juncture in our collective history and set back relations”.

    If the post-Secind World War international order had any ideology affixed to it, it’s the belief in concepts such as individual freedoms, human rights, international humanitarian law and the legitimacy of institutions established to enforce them.

    Every order needs some kind of organising principle; it might not strictly be “true”, but the real purpose is that the population needs to believe in it.

    Many young adults in countries like the USA and UK were brought up with the ideals that waging war for cold national interests/enforcing racial supremacy were barbaric practices that were no longer permitted.

    Palestine is the final frontier
    For Palestine, though, there is no longer any window dressing that can be done. Netanyahu is now making it explicit that even if Hamas were to “lay down its weapons” and its leaders leave, Israel will then ethnically cleanse the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza.

    This is a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide rationalised by a militaristic, racist ideology — the fundamental reason, after all, why the Palestinians of Gaza are being ethnically cleansed is that they are not Jewish.

    Israel’s supporters in the West have abandoned trying to convince anyone of the morality of their positions and are just resorting to repression of dissent. In the United States, for example, we’ve seen unprecedented crackdowns on solidarity groups.

    For example, international students are being deported simply for attending Palestine solidarity demonstrations. These people aren’t even being accused of committing crimes, but of undefined offences such as “un-American activity.” If unconditional Western support for Israel is to continue, more repression at universities is going to be necessary.

    The UK government was correct in saying we’re at “a critical juncture in our collective history” and that Israel is at the heart of it. The international order is unravelling, and whatever new order we move into is largely dependent on what happens in Palestine.

    If Israel succeeds in its long-term goal of genocide against the Palestinians and establishes a lawless militarised ethnostate that grants/strips citizenship on racial grounds and invades and occupies other countries at will, that will be the model the rest of the world will follow. Even if you don’t particularly care about Palestine personally, you will not escape the consequences of this new might equals right world.

    Anyone who doesn’t wish to live in such a world must recognise that Palestine solidarity is the central issue which cannot be abandoned.

    Israel and its supporters certainly recognise this, or else they wouldn’t be so willing to forsake any other purported principle when Israel is at stake.

    Although the levels of repression at the moment can be dismaying, we should also take heart in the fact that if Israel’s supporters were feeling secure in their ultimate victory, they wouldn’t be behaving so aggressively.

    We’re witnessing the destructive rampage of a fragile project, whose designers fear could collapse at any moment should opposition manage to organise themselves effectively.

    Daniel Lindley is a writer, socialist and trade union activist in the UK. This article was first published by The New Arab and is republished under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel is Fully Integrating its Gaza “Food Aid Hubs” into the Genocide

    It is entirely unsurprising that Israel has yet again been caught out in a lie – a lie that the BBC once again spread far and wide on its news services.

    Israel claimed that it had not fired at starving Palestinians queuing on Sunday morning to get food from one of its highly militarised “aid distribution hubs” – a system Israel imposed on Gaza in place of a long-established and successful aid network run by the United Nations.

    More than 30 Palestinians are known to have been killed and dozens more injured in the weekend incident.

    Israel blamed Hamas fighters for shooting Palestinian civilians, saying they were trying to stop the crowds from taking food boxes. The Israeli military dished up a video, taken by one of its drones, as supposed proof.

    The BBC broadcast that video on its main shows, and then did one of its standard “Israel said, the Palestinians said. Who can really know the truth?” reports of the incident.

    https://x.com/IDF/status/1929228247834730988

    The BBC should never have taken Israel’s disinformation seriously, not least because Israeli claims are always shown to be lies when subjected to any serious independent scrutiny. The default position should be that Israel is lying until it can demonstrate convincingly that it is not.

    Doctors treating the dead and wounded immediately pointed out that their injuries were consistent with Israeli gunfire. The victims had single shots to the head or chest, in line with targeting by Israeli snipers. Others suffered shrapnel wounds from tank shells. Hamas has no tanks.

    Now, expert analysis of the video itself – paradoxically confirmed by BBC Verify – shows that the footage was filmed in Khan Younis, far from Rafah, where the Palestinian aid seekers were killed. It is also apparent from the shadows that the video was taken in the evening, not in the morning when the Palestinians in Rafah were shot.

    Despite this, the BBC still writes: “The circumstances of this strike are unclear.”

    No, it is entirely clear that the Israeli army disseminated lies, and that the BBC lapped up those lies and spread them to its audiences via its main news shows, before tentatively retracting the lies quietly on a live feed on its website.

    The reality is that the video doesn’t show Hamas fighters shooting Palestinians to stop them from getting aid. Rather, it shows a criminal Palestinian gang – of the kind Israel has been cultivating and allying with – looting aid so that it can be sold back to Palestinians on the open market, where Israel’s blockade on food has massively inflated prices.

    There are no police in Gaza maintaining law and order because Israel kills any Palestinian seen wearing a police uniform.

    It was not even chiefly about weaponising aid to lure Palestinians into what are effectively Israeli military bases so that soldiers can use biometric data to snatch any Palestinians they want, disappearing them into Israel’s torture camps, as they have been doing.

    Rather, it is about giving the appearance of providing food, most of it useless because it is dried staples that need cooking, when there is almost no water or fuel available, while continuing to starve the vast majority of Palestinians. And it is about using the aid hubs as another front for killing Palestinians.

    In other words, after taking the aid system out of the UN’s hands, Israel is successfully enfolding the so-called “humanitarian effort” into its genocide.

    If that sounds too cynical, mark this. Israel again shot at crowds gathering on Tuesday morning to get aid from one of its “distribution hubs”, killing at least 27 Palestinians and wounding more than 180.

    Several witnesses say there was no aid available when they arrived.

    There is no way to be too cynical about what Israel is doing. Israel is utterly committed to its genocide, and a genocidal state has no red lines.

    The post Israel is Fully Integrating its Gaza “Food Aid Hubs” into the Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Humanitarian Camouflage: The Debut of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

    What a nasty thing it has turned out to be. It involved subversion – Israel’s desire to ignore international tenets of humanitarian aid in favour of expediency and security – and the naked show of violent desperation. Via the shoddy US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation company, distribution of necessaries in the Gaza Strip through the organisation’s delivery arm, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has been inadequate and selective.

    SRS is a disreputable outfit, one lacking a résumé in humanitarian aid. Its prowess, rather, lies in the realm of military intelligence. A report from Ynet News describes its functions as “operating roadblocks, processing visual data from cameras, drones and satellites and using it to identify Hamas operatives and armed individuals.” In both practice and spirit, this seedy, cynical enterprise violates the four essential principles of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

    The four sites of distribution, located in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor south of Gaza City, have been picked for reasons of control, surveillance and forced displacement. The official reason is that doing so ensures that no aid ends up in the eager hands of Hamas. “The establishment of the distribution centres,” went the first official comment on the distribution points by the IDF, “took place over the last few months, facilitated by the Israeli political echelon and in coordination with the US government.” Saliently and devastatingly, the system is intended to exclude the role of experienced aid agencies, notably that of the long abominated United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

    A vicious example of this new model of aid delivery was given on May 27, with thousands of starving Palestinians descending on a distribution point in Rafah. Herded and harassed, strife duly broke out. The compound was stormed. Those working for GHF retreated after claiming to have distributed 8,000 food boxes.

    Israeli troops duly opened fire. According to the enclave’s Government Media Office, the IDF “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid”, leaving 10 dead and 62 wounded. Locations for distribution were subsequently “transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire”. While there is some dispute about the figures, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that staff at its Red Cross Field Hospital did receive “a mass casualty influx of 48 patients, including women and children. All were suffering from gunshot wounds.”

    This bloody lapse was dismissed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a minor blemish – there had been a “loss of control momentarily” at the distribution point. An IDF official, however, preferred to see the overall operation as a success. In keeping with standard practice, the IDF had initially denied ever firing at the desperate throng, merely letting off warning shots outside the compound.

    In remarks to reporters at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, expressed alarm at “the shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.” Crucially, this was “a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities”. The whole affair was particularly galling given the pre-existing networks of humanitarian aid that UNRWA has mastered over the years. The agency, at one point, had as many as 400 distribution centres in Gaza. But Israel has made the removal and elimination of the agency’s influence a vital part of its policy, one that ties in with the agenda of crushing aspirations for Palestinian statehood.

    Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, was also in no mood to accept Israel’s novel slant on providing aid. “We continue to witness a brutal humanitarian camouflage, where the red lines have led to massive atrocities.” This was part of “a deliberate strategy – aimed at masking atrocities, displacing the displaced, bombing the bombarded, burning Palestinians alive and maiming survivors.” The “language of aid” had been used to “divert international attention from legal accountability, in Israel’s attempt to dismantle the very principles upon which humanitarian law was built.”

    The latest turn of events also prompted the rapporteur to reiterate her view that nothing short of a full arms embargo and the suspension of all trade with Israel would do. “The time for sanctions is now, as Israeli politicians continue to call for the extermination of babies while over 80 percent of the Israeli society, according to Israeli media, ask for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.”

    The disgraceful deployment of select humanitarian services by GHF has already seen its head resign. In a statement, the now former executive director, Jake Wood, claimed that the Foundation had failed to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” Middle management wonks at the GHF, despite being disappointed at the resignation, expressed readiness with the boisterous assertion that “Our trucks are loaded and ready to go”. The body planned “to scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead.” Much more humanitarian camouflage is in the offing.

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  • The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza: Israel’s Operation Gideon’s Chariots

    The latest phase of slaughter and seizure on the part of Israeli forces in Gaza has commenced. Following relentless airstrikes that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is now in full swing, begun even as Israel and Hamas concluded a second day of ceasefire talks in Doha. The intention, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, is to expand “operational control” in the Strip while seeking to free the remaining Israeli hostages. In the process, it hopes to achieve what has, to date, been much pie in the sky: defeating Hamas and seizing control of the enclave.

    The mendacious pattern of the IDF and Netanyahu government has become clearer than ever. It comes in instalments, much like a distasteful fashion show. The opening begins with unequivocal, hot denial: famine is not taking place, and any aid to Gaza has been looted by the Hamas authorities; civilians were not targeted, let alone massacred; aid workers were not butchered but legitimately killed as they had Hamas militants among them. And there is no ethnic cleansing and genocide to speak of. To claim otherwise was antisemitic.

    Then comes the large dollop of corrective, inconvenient reality, be it a film, a blatant statement, or some item of damning evidence. The next stage is one of quibbles and qualifications: Gaza will receive some necessaries; there is a humanitarian crisis, because we were told by the United States, our main sponsor, that this was the case; and there might have been some cases where civilians were killed, a problem easily rectified by an internal investigation by the military.

    Just prior to the latest assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in leaked quotes, revealed another dark purpose of the new military operation.  “We are destroying more and more homes. They have nowhere to return to,” he said in testimony before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.  “The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate outside the Gaza Strip.”  Here was a state official’s declaration of intent to ethnically cleanse a population.

    Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was even blunter, something praised by Netanyahu.  Israel’s objective, he revealed in a statement on March 19, was to destroy “everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip”.  What was currently underway involved “conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed”.

    The Netanyahu government has also added another twist to the ghastly performance. On March 18, the provision of various “basic” forms of humanitarian aid into Gaza was announced. The measure was approved by a security cabinet meeting pressed by concerns from military officials warning that food supplies from UN sources and other aid groups had run out. The pressure had also come from, in Netanyahu’s words in a March 19 video address, Israel’s “greatest friends in the world”, the trying sort who claimed that there was “‘one thing we cannot stand. We cannot accept images of hunger, mass hunger. We cannot stand that. We will not be able to support you’”. How inconveniently squeamish of them.

    That same day, United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said nine aid trucks had been cleared by Israeli authorities to enter Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem crossing.  This was an absurd, ineffectual number, given the 500 trucks or more that entered Gaza prior to October 2023.

    Fanatics who subscribe to the ethnic cleansing, rid-of-Palestine school were understandably disappointed, even at this obscenely modest provision of aid. “Any humanitarian aid that enters the Strip… will fuel Hamas and give it oxygen while our hostages languish in tunnels,” moaned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “We must crush Hamas, not simultaneously give it oxygen.” He also wished that Netanyahu “explain to our friends in the White House the implications of this ‘aid’, which only prolongs the war and delays our victory and the return of all our hostages.”

    Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, also of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, was in a similar mood, making the farcical resumption of aid sound like criminal salvation for a savage people. “This is our tragedy with Netanyahu’s approach. A leader who could have led to a clear victory and been remembered as the one who defeated radical Islam, but who, time after time, let this historic opportunity slip away. Letting humanitarian aid in now directly harms the war effort to achieve victory and is another obstacle to the release of the hostages.”

    The picture emerging from Israel’s latest mission of carnage is one of murderous dysfunction. It made little sense to Knesset member Moshe Saada, for instance, that a broader, ever more lethal offensive was in the offing with five new IDF divisions even as aid was being provided.  This was implicitly telling.  Did Palestinian civilians matter insofar as they should be fed, even as they were being butchered and encouraged into fleeing?

    The extent of the horror has now reached the point where it is being acknowledged in the capitals of Israel’s close allies. A joint statement from the UK, France, and Canada affirmed opposition to “the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.” Israel’s permission of “a basic quantity of food into Gaza” was wholly inadequate in the face of “intolerable” human suffering. Denying essential humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population in the Strip “is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate.”

    For a long time, the notion of consciously eliminating the Palestinian presence in Gaza, through starvation, massacre, and displacement, was confined to the racial, ethnoreligious fringes of purist lunacy typified by Smotrich and Ben Gvir.  Their vocal presence and frank advocacy have now made that ambition a grotesque, ongoing reality.

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  • The One State

    Israel and the Palestinian Authority are each convinced that the long reach of history is on their side; the Israelis believe that future generations throughout the world will be detached from the illegal and oppressive acts committed against the Palestinians and only be aware of their present situations; the Palestinians believe that a Jewish Israel has no place in an Arab world, will constantly face enemies and hostility from Arab and Muslim nations, and these nations will one day achieve sufficient power to force their dictates on the Zionist regime.

    With its historical view, Israel proceeds to ignore Palestinian and international pleas to halt its oppression and continues with plans to fulfill the mission proposed by the Zionist Organization at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference — gain control of the land, obtain the aquifers, and create a greater Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and maybe further.

    The Palestinian Authority proceeds with continuous compromises, with hope that an Israeli government will recognize the Authority’s efforts to achieve an arrangement that satisfies Israel’s wants and preserves the Palestinian community within the former British Mandate. The stoic nature of the Palestinian people, after decades of violent aggression against them, is remarkable. Observing the Palestinians enduring the daily criminal, scheming, vicious, brutal, and violent attacks and still maintaining their presence is a tribute to human resourcefulness, a remarkable achievement that deserves praise from the entire world.

    Stoicism and commendable behavior do not move oppressive regimes that have the tools and forces to control the agenda. Israel remains recalcitrant. Nothing left for the Palestinians but to prove that Israel’s recalcitrance will work against its goals; with several millions of Palestinians within its borders, Israel will be a de facto binational state. Why not make it official and in accord with an agreeable plan?

    With that in mind, Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of Nonviolence International, offers a thoughtful, provocative, and commendable proposal, outlined in a book, Beyond The Two-State Solution. A brief summary of Jonathan Kuttab’s propositions:

    Essential Elements of the New Order

    1. Right of Return
    The availability of this right is a serious requirement for Zionists, which Palestinians must accept. On the other hand, Palestinians, who have been forcibly denied access to their homeland, also must have a recognized right of return.

    2. Equality and Non-discrimination
    Public institutions, lands, funds, and resources must be utilized in the interest of all citizens, and discrimination must not be tolerated. Arabic, which is currently formally recognized as an official language in Israel, will need to be deliberately incorporated into public life, on a par with Hebrew.

    3. Freedom of Movement
    Restrictions of travel between the West Bank, Gaza, the settlements, Jerusalem and pre ’67 Israel must be removed, as well as the Wall and the checkpoints

    4. Relations with the Arab world
    Palestinians need to reevaluate their pan-Arab identity, and adjust it to reflect the reality that their state now is both Jewish and Arab to its very core.

    5. Defense
    The new State may require that the Minister of Defense, as well as a majority of the top brass in the army be Jewish as a matter of permanent constitutional law. Palestinians, however, must be free to join the army on the basis of equality, while all citizens who wish, must be free to demand exemption from military service for reasons of conscience.

    6. Legal Protections
    In addition to a constitution that embodies strict guarantees that safeguard the interest of either group, the “Protection Clauses” must be safeguarded from alteration by requiring that they can only be altered by high majorities “Protection Clauses” will remove the ‘demographic threat’ and ensure that a group which has numerical majority will not be able to oppress a numerical minority, or that a future change in the numerical balance between the two communities will not make the minority vulnerable to oppression by the majority.

    7. Ministry of Cooperation and Coexistence.
    This ministry will promote understanding of the history, culture, and language of each community by the other. It will also promote joint activities and programs intended to heal the hurts of the past and build understanding and tolerance between the two communities.

    8. Civil Law
    New civil laws must be promulgated that will ensure the rights of secular individuals, mixed couples, and religious communities that are not currently recognized. These include Reform and Conservative Jews, as well as Evangelicals. Without derogation from the existing rights of religious courts, individuals who choose not to be so governed should be allowed to follow their conscience and not be forced to submit to religious courts of their particular religious community.

    9. Name, Character, Public Holidays, Symbols and Flags
    Careful thought and creativity with input from both sides are required to have these elements of national identity reflect the desires of both communities without exclusivity or discrimination against the others.

    Aware that the One-state is a contentious issue and no plan will satisfy a majority of contenders, Jonathan Kuttab solicited comments to his book’s proposals. Here they are:

    Only an Israel government that believes in political, economic and social equality for all persons, regardless of religion or ethnicity, that is guided by principles of peaceful coexistence, human rights, inclusion, and social awareness can implement Jonathan Kuttab’s design. That Israel does not exist, has never existed, and is unlikely to come into existence in the future.

    Jonathan Kuttab has been idealistic and careless in expecting that this Israel will give attention to his well-formulated plan. Idealism is excusable. He has been careless by agreeing with nonsensical, spurious, and ahistorical statements consistently made by Israel’s promoters as a deceptive and supportive mechanism for the Zionist incursion. Jonathan Kuttab may not believe these deceptive narratives and felt it wise to appease those who could react angrily and scuttle the entire plan if the narratives were contradicted. Big mistake. It is dangerous to agree to anything with Israel, when agreement is not warranted. Affirm a narrative and Zionist supporters cite the acceptance as a valid appraisal of their mission. It is important to highlight these disagreements in detail, and have my responses serve as thoughtful retorts to others who express similar beliefs. Jonathan Kuttab writes:

    The whole purpose of creating the Zionist movement and the state of Israel was the perceived need to create a country that can act as a safe haven where any Jew, anywhere and at any time, can feel free to go and live there, as of right in a state of his/her own.

    During Herzl’s time, Jews were being emancipated, becoming integrated citizens of western nations, acquiring educational benefits, and achieving economic success in many countries. The principal reason for Zionism was not as Jonathan Kuttab suggests – just the opposite – due to their rapid advancements, Zionists felt that Jews would lose their attachment to Judaism and the Jewish community would wither. Few Jews at that time expressed sympathy with Zionism and most viewed Zionism as convincing their native nations that Jews had divided loyalties .

    No questions asked. Israel currently has such an ironclad law (Right of Return), which it considers to be a Basic Law of constitutional stature. It also has a publicly supported network of institutions supporting this right. This seems to be one irreducible requirement for Zionists and Israeli Jews.

    Nations that have a Right of Return give that right to previous nationals and usually their children. The Israeli Right of Return permits Jews from any nation to immigrate freely to a state that has no borders and from which neither they nor ancestors had any previous citizenship. Arabs who were previous Israeli nationals in the last decades, and whose children can claim direct descendant from an Israeli, have no right of return.

    Immigration quotas that favor entry from certain nations and restrict entry from other nations are considered discriminatory. Israel goes full length, not allowing anyone from any country to immigrate, except a Jewish person. Israel’s self-absorbed and patronizing attitude of being the official protector of world Jewry imposes problems for Jews in other nations and violates the sovereignty of their home countries.

    Given the experience of the Holocaust as well as millennia of antisemitic behavior in Christian Europe, including periodic pogroms and the Inquisition, security is an overriding consideration.

    This is an exaggeration used by the Israeli government to convince the world that its oppressive attitude has a defensive reason. The inquisition, which affected other non-Catholics more grievously than it affected Jews, occurred 600 years ago in a primitive Europe. Why relate those ancient happenings to today? Anti-Semitic Christianity and pogroms were also happenings of the past. These specially originated words could apply to hundreds of other minorities, many of who have been treated magnitudes more viciously. I never met or ever knew any Jewish person who felt insecure because of the Holocaust or other occurrences. Do African-Americans fear being returned to slavery? Do British Catholics fear the United Kingdom and American South will return to persecute Catholics again? Security is Israel’s excuse for rationalizing every oppressive and offensive action.

    Even secular Jews who resent restrictions imposed by the ultra-Orthodox, nonetheless have expressed a desire to live in a country where Saturday is the official Shabbat, life comes to a standstill on Yom Kippur, and where religious holidays are recognized and respected. They want a place where their tribal identity is recognized and where they can experience and develop Jewish communal life. To them, Zionism means a Jewish state, and a Jewish state reflects in some fashion a Jewish calendar, Jewish culture and a Jewish rhythm to public life.

    Jonathan Kuttab is talking about a small segment of the Jewish community. Half of world Jewry lives in nations that do not have an official Shabbat, and more than half of Israeli Jews do not need or want to have their weekend activities restricted.

    In addition to culture, tribe, and rhythm of life, the Hebrew language is of vital importance. This has taken on much more importance than a hundred years ago when Hebrew was more of a liturgical language, and very few spoke it as a first language.

    Linguists debate if Israeli Hebrew is a continuation of an ancient language or is a new language called Modern Hebrew that contains some Hebrew syntax. Because there was not extensive literature, poetry, philosophy, and history in a Hebrew language, the necessity for mass knowledge of the Hebrew language did not exist. English, which had become the international language, sufficed and was preferable. Creating a new language, Modern Hebrew, suits nationalist, chauvinist, and propaganda mechanisms.

    Many Israelis have publicly expressed willingness, within the framework of a genuine peace along the lines of a two-state solution, to abandon some or all of the Jewish settlements in areas occupied in 1967. At the same time, the reality on the ground, with over 700,000 settlers living in those areas, as well as the historic and religious connection to such places as Hebron and Jerusalem indicate that no major displacement of settlers can take place. An unspoken requirement therefore is to permit Jews to have the same right to live in all parts of Eretz Yisrael as Palestinian Arabs.

    Although Jews lived in the Levant and controlled a portion of the area during the short reigns of the Hasmonean kings, ancient Hebrew contributions to civilization and verifiable history are sparse and biblically contrived. For contemporary Jews, a proven relation to an Eretz Israel is “zero.” Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds and ritual baths can be found, but few, if any, major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist within the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The oft-cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of that Temple have been located. Archaeologist William G Dever, in his book, What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and when Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel, writes, “By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible historical figures.” Jewish connection to Hebron remains a mythical story.

    The Zionist movement and the State of Israel was formulated as a response to worldwide antisemitism. It was promoted as a refuge and potential champion and rescuer for Jews worldwide. It also fully depended on support of all forms from this diaspora. Jews insist that they are full and loyal citizens of whatever country they reside in, and correctly reject as antisemitic charges of dual loyalty.

    Despite extensive recitations , no evidence exists of world wide anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, during the era of incipient Zionism. A few isolated groups in France and Germany accused Jews of attempting to dominate the economy and culture. Some attacks, organized to halt Jewish emancipation and combat Jewish competition, occurred early in the century in Germany (Hep-Hep riots) and others, related to exaggeration of acts by Jews and the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, happened later in Russia. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, an English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is an objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work, which can be found at https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pogroms, show that “anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa,” and were “linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities.” A later 1871 attack on the Jewish community was due “in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church.”

    The pogroms of 1881 and 1882, which occurred in waves throughout the southwestern provinces of the Russian Empire, were the first to assume the nature of a mass movement. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

    In all of Europe, from what I have been able to confirm, less than 100 Jews were killed and possibly a few thousand were injured in anti-Jewish riots during the 100 years of the 19th century that witnessed the establishment of political Zionism. For context, compare those figures to other atrocities during that time, all of which are rarely mentioned.

    California, United States: During 1846-1873, 9,492 – 120,000 perished or deported.
    Amerindian population in California declined by 80% during the period.

    Queensland, Australia: During 1840-1897, 10,000-65,180 perished.
    3.3% to over 50% of the aboriginal population was killed.

    Circassia, Caucasus: During 1864-1867, 400,000-1,500,000 perished or deported.
    90% to 97% of total Circassian population perished or deported by Russian forces.

    Ottoman Empire: During 1894 –1896, 100,000 killed.
    Massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Empire.

    Statistics on casualties to Israeli Jews in the Zionist/Palestinian conflict from 1920 to 2022, compared to casualties to 19th European Jews at the time of the Zionist movement, demonstrate that the gathering of the Jews has not made them more secure or safe in Israel.

    From the start of the British mandate in 1919 until the year 2022, 74 years after the founding of Israel, 24,060 Jews have been killed and 36,260 have been wounded in the Levant. Due to identification of the Jews with Israel, attacks on Jews in the western world are increasing. Sheltered by high walls and a strong military, Israeli Jews have been able to defend themselves against embittered enemies.

    Safety from persecution.
    Extensive reports demonstrate prejudices by Israeli authorities and citizens against the Middle East and North African Jews, Yemenite Jews, and Ethiopian Jews.

    In the year 2013, 60 years after the Middle East and North African Jews came to Israel, government studies conducted in conjunction with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that “a job applicant with an Ashkenazi-sounding name has a 34 percent higher chance of being hired by an employer than a person with a Sephardi-sounding name applying for the same position, [and also that] over 22% of employers openly stated that they actively discriminate against applicants with Arab-sounding names.”

    The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were European; the Beta Israel were Ethiopians; and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jews. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before they could integrate into the Israel community.

    A variety of Jewish groups, considered religious terrorist organizations in Israel, have committed disturbing and violent acts against Jews, more in Israel than the rest of the world combined, including the murder of Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin,

    Brit HaKanaim was a radical religious Jewish underground organization, which operated in Israel between 1950 and 1953.The movement’s ultimate goal – establish a state run by Jewish religious law.
    The Kingdom of Israel group was active in Israel in the 1950s. Members of the group were caught trying to bomb the Israeli Ministry of Education in May 1953, because they saw the secularization of Jewish North African immigrants as a direct assault on the religious Jews way of life and a threat to the ultra-Orthodox community.
    Keshet (1981-1989), an anti-Zionist Haredi group, focused on bombing property without loss of life.
    Sicarii, an Israeli terrorist group founded in 1989, plotted arson and graffiti attacks on leftist Jewish politicians who proposed rapprochement with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
    Lehava, an extreme religious minority, used terror to implement their views of how the society should look. Former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni stated, “This organization works from hatred, racism, and nationalism, and its goal is to bring an escalation of violence within us.”
    Sikrikim, an anti-Zionist group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, committed acts of violence against Orthodox Jewish institutions and individuals who would not comply with their demands.
    The Revolt terror group claimed the secular State of Israel has no right to existence; they hope to create a Jewish Kingdom in Israel. Arabs will be killed if they refuse to leave.

    Today, Israel has its orthodox settlers daily committing crimes against the Palestinian population, continuous pogroms that the Israeli government and media treat as happenings that are part of daily life.

    Conclusion
    One-state for all is a correct concept, but not a strategy. Until there is an effective strategy, the proposition is dubious. Transferring the dubious two-states to a dubious one-state occupies time and energy in futility, of which the Israeli government heartily approves, especially because its own strategy is to have a “no-state” – an assemblage of people in a land without borders, without a constitution, without a fixed set of laws, and without a nationality that is described by the state. Easy to expand and incorporate Jews from other nations when the land of Israel is a “no-state.”

    Having one-state returns the area to the British Mandate and to what would have been the eventual outcome of the Partition Plan. To achieve that arrangement, either the Israeli legal and administrative systems will have to be changed, or the characteristics that defined the Zionist mission will have to be deposed. The one-state is a proper goal; overcoming the reality of the Zionist vision of a “no-state” is the principal priority.

    The post The One State first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Global Charade: Israel, Palestine and the “Rules-Based Order”

    The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.

    Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place.

    In practice, only some massacres matter, whether threatened or actual: namely, those that can be exploited by Western powers to further their own geostrategic interests (for example, see our media alerts here and here). The Nato-led attack on Libya in 2011 is a textbook example. Western politicians and their cheerleaders across the media ‘spectrum’ declared that the world had to act to prevent a ‘bloodbath’ in Benghazi when Gaddafi’s forces there were allegedly threatening to massacre civilians.

    In fact, the public were subjected to a propaganda blitz to promote the Perpetual War that had already wreaked havoc in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of over one million people, the virtual destruction of the Iraqi state and the proliferation of Al-Qaeda and other militia groups.

    In 2016, a report from the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee summarised the destructive consequences of Nato’s 2011 intervention in Libya:

    ‘The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL [Islamic State] in North Africa.’

    As for the supposed threat of a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi, the alleged motivation for Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’, the report concluded that this ‘was not supported by the available evidence’. Likewise, claims that Gaddafi used African mercenaries and employed Viagra-fuelled mass rape as a weapon of war were invented.

    Nato’s actual goals were regime change and Libya’s oil, long pursued by the UK. After years of the West cosying up to Gaddafi, including by Tony Blair, the Libyan leader had become a hindrance to Western interests.

    As historian Mark Curtis observed:

    ‘three weeks after [then UK prime minister David] Cameron assured parliament in March 2011 that the object of the intervention was not regime change, he signed a joint letter with President Obama and French President Sarkozy committing to “a future without Gaddafi”.’

    Curtis added:

    ‘That these policies were illegal is confirmed by Cameron himself. He told Parliament on 21 March 2011 that the UN resolution “explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means”.’

    Like Blair, Cameron should have ended up in The Hague facing charges of war crimes.

    ‘Unapologetic Genocide’

    If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children.

    It took Amnesty International 14 months after the attacks of 7 October 2023 to publish a finding of genocide against Israel on 5 December 2024. A further four months have passed. In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire it never intended to keep, killing almost 1,600 Palestinians since then. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, around 51,000 people have been killed by Israel since October 2023. The actual death toll is likely much higher. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware.

    BBC News, no doubt aware of public scrutiny and perhaps also under internal pressure from some of their own journalists, set its ‘BBC Verify’ team to work. This followed the publication of harrowing video footage of Israel’s attack found on the mobile phone of Rifaat Radwan, one of the victims. Heartbreakingly, he could be heard saying moments before his killing:

    ‘Forgive me mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people. Accept my martyrdom, God, and forgive me.’

    The 19-minute clip revealed that the vehicles in the convoy of the Palestinian Red Crescent had their headlights and emergency lights on, with high-vis jackets being worn, flatly contradicting Israel’s dishonest statements of the convoy behaving ‘suspiciously’ and constituting a ‘threat’.

    Early BBC reports carried the headline: ‘Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza.’

    This was the BBC once again bending over backwards to minimise Israel’s crimes.

    The headline was later updated to a more accurate, but still soft-pedalling:

    ‘Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack’

    Notably, BBC News did not use the word ‘massacre’ in its reports, which it plainly was. Nor did they spell out that Israel’s spokespeople had been deceitful in their statements. In fact, Israel has a long history of spreading disinformation and even outright lies: a crucial fact that is routinely missing from ‘mainstream’ news reports.

    Instead, the BBC said that Israel had merely ‘changed its account’ of what had happened. Likewise, the Guardian went with:

    ‘Israeli military changes account of Gaza paramedics’ killing after video of attack’

    The 15 victims were but statistics, with little or no attempt to name or humanise them; no interviews with grieving relatives or account of their lives, their hopes, their ambitions.

    Owen Jones put it well via X and, at greater length, in a video:

    ‘Imagine Russia executed 15 Red Cross medics and first responders, burying them in a mass grave.

    ‘Imagine it lied about this grave war crime. Imagine footage then proved this.

    ‘Would the BBC frame that as “Russia admits mistakes over medic killings in Ukraine”?

    ‘No it would not.’

    On BBC News at Six on 7 April, international editor Jeremy Bowen concluded his account of Israel’s massacre of the 15 medics and emergency workers with a shameful piece of bothsidesism:

    ‘Israel now admits that its soldiers made mistakes when they attacked the convoy. It consistently denies it commits war crimes in Gaza. The evidence indicates that all the warring parties have done so.’ [Bowen’s own emphasis]

    The egregious false balance, the failure to point out Israel’s long and disreputable record of lying, and the BBC’s refusal to use words such as ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’ are all glaringly obvious to the public.

    Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’.

    As mentioned, it is possible that both public and internal pressure on BBC News are occasionally having an impact on the broadcaster. As trade unionist Howard Beckett pointed out, the BBC initially reported the appalling Israeli attack on 13 April on the al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City, with the headline:

    ‘Gaza hospital hit by Israeli strike, Hamas-run healthy ministry says’

    BBC News systematically includes the phrase ‘Hamas-run healthy ministry says’ in its headlines, implying that the source may not be trustworthy. The headline was later updated to:

    ‘Israeli air strike destroys part of last functioning hospital in Gaza City’

    As ever with BBC News, Israel’s excuse for the attack appeared near the top of the article:

    ‘The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted the hospital because it contained a “command and control centre used by Hamas”.’

    Richard Sanders, an experienced journalist and filmmaker, noted via X:

    ‘BBC again reports the Israeli claim the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital was a “command and control centre used by Hamas” without caveats – despite the fact such claims in the past have proved to be entirely untrue again and again. Bad, bad journalism.’

    ‘Bad, bad journalism’; namely, propaganda. But entirely standard for BBC News and much of what passes for ‘mainstream’ news.

    Readers may recall that this is the same hospital where a devastating explosion occurred on 17 October 2023, killing 471 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel mounted a huge propaganda operation to try to convince the world that the cause was a ‘misfiring’ Palestinian rocket. However, detailed analysis by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which investigates human rights violations, revealed that a more likely conclusion is that the cause was an exploding Israeli interceptor rocket.

    In the hours after the explosion, doctors who treated the wounded held a news conference at nearby al-Shifa Hospital. There, the British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, currently Rector of the University of Glasgow, said that: ‘This is a massacre’, predicting that ‘more hospitals will be targeted’.

    Dr Abu-Sittah would later say that the blast at al Ahli hospital was the moment when it seemed clear to him that Israel’s military campaign ‘stopped being a war, and became a genocide’.

    Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford pointed out that this was the fifth time the hospital had been bombed by Israeli military forces since October 2023.

    As investigative journalist Dan Cohen noted of the latest attack:

    ‘This is the same hospital Israel bombed in October 2023 and waged a massive media disinformation campaign to blame a Palestinian rocket. Now they don’t even pretend. Unapologetic genocide.’

    Does Italy Have A Right To Exist?

    Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’

    Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:

    ‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’

    A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine? Instead of discussing how best to protect the Palestinian people and, more importantly, taking immediate decisive action to do so, the West continues to support the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel: arming it, providing diplomatic cover, colluding with the Israeli air forces with RAF spy flights over Gaza and war operations, including the secret supply of weapons to Israel, being conducted from the RAF base in Cyprus.

    As is well known by now, the International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently deliberating over a case of genocide against Israel. Last year, the ICJ declared that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories – Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – is illegal. And the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. And yet, Netanyahu was recently welcomed with open arms in Washington, DC, having flown through airspace in France and other European countries which, under their ICC obligations, should have denied him that privilege.

    Palestinian journalist Lubna Masarwa, Middle East Eye’s Palestine and Israel bureau chief, observed that:

    ‘To western leaders, there are no red lines for Israel’s slaughter. Emboldened by the US and other western powers, Israel feels it can get away with unleashing hell on all Palestinians.’

    She added: ‘The inhumanity of these times scares me, as a journalist and as a person.’

    Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.

    As Andrew Feinstein, the author, activist and former South African MP, stated in a recent powerful video for Double Down News:

    ‘The West has a choice: stop supporting genocide or mutate their own democracies and destroy international law forever. The West has chosen the latter.’

    The post Global Charade: Israel, Palestine and the “Rules-Based Order” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Stolen Steps

    When they shelled us with the second missile, I woke up and was surrounded by rubble. I realized that my leg had been cut off…. My father and mother were martyred. My brother Mohammad and my sister Dalia, too. I only want one thing: for the war to end.

    — Dunia, 12 years old, in an interview with Defense for Children-International. Read her story in our most recent visual, Stolen Steps.

    The ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians has made Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” For every child Israel kills, many more are wounded or maimed, causing mass amputations and disablement that amount to a direct assault on the collective Palestinian body. Our latest visual, created in partnership with Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), tells the stories of children whose lives and limbs have been stolen by Israel, and how Israel’s targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system makes it impossible for them to access much-needed medical supplies and rehabilitation services.

    https://visualizingpalestine.org/visual/stolen-steps/








    From forced starvation, to scholasticide, to mass displacement, to mass disablement, to mass killing, to separation from caregivers and loved ones, children in Gaza are facing conditions that no child should ever face anywhere in the world.

    The post Stolen Steps first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War on Palestinian Health

    It was a massacre. Fifteen emergency workers, butchered in cold blood by personnel from the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Gaza on March 23. It all came to light from a video that the IDF did not intend anyone to see, filmed by Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan in the last minutes of his life. Caught red handed, the wires and levers of justification, mendacity and qualification began to move.

    The pattern of institutional response is a well-rehearsed one. First came the official claim that the troops only opened fire because the convoy approached them “suspiciously”, enshrouded in darkness, with no headlights or evidence of flashing lights. The movement of the convoy had not, it was said, been cleared and coordinated with the IDF, which had been alerted by operators of an overhead UAV. Soldiers had previously fired on a car containing, according to the Israeli account, three Hamas members. When that vehicle was approached by the ambulances, IDF personnel assumed they were threatened, despite lacking any evidence that the emergency workers were armed. On exiting the vehicles, gunfire ensues. Radwan’s final words: “The Israelis are coming, the Israeli soldiers are coming.”

    Then comes the qualification, the “hand in the cookie jar” retort. With the video now very public, the IDF was forced to admit that they had been mistaken in the initial assessment that the lights of the ambulance convoy had been switched off, blaming it on the sketchy testimony of soldiers. Also evident are clear markings on the vehicles, with the paramedics wearing hi-vis uniforms.

    After being shot, the bodies of the 15 dead workers were unceremoniously buried in sand (“in a brutal and disregarding manner that violates human dignity,” according to the Red Crescent) – supposedly to protect them from the ravages of wildlife – with the vehicles crushed by an armoured D9 bulldozer to clear the road. Allegations have been made that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were shot at close range, suggesting a willingness on the part of the military to conceal their misdeeds. The IDF has countered by claiming that the UN was informed on the location of the bodies.

    The Palestinian Red Crescent society is adamant: the paramedics were shot with the clear intention of slaying them. “We cannot disclose everything we know,” stated Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, “but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”

    The IDF, after a breezy inquiry, claimed that it “revealed that the force opened fire due to a sense of threat following a previous exchange of fire in the area. Also, six Hamas terrorists were identified among those killed in the incident.” This hardly dispels the reality that those shot were unarmed and showed no hostile intent. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Palestinian rescuers have offered a breakdown of those killed: eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Palestinian Civil Defence, and one employee from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

    The OCHA insists that the first team comprised rescuers rather than Hamas operatives. On being sought by additional paramedic and emergency personnel, they, too, were attacked by the IDF.

    The findings of the probe into the killings were presented on April 7 to the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir by the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor. On doing so, Zamir then ordered that the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism be used to “deepen and complete” the effort. That particular fact-finding body is risibly described as independent, despite being an extension of the IDF. Self-investigation remains a standard norm for allegations of impropriety.

    Since October 7, 2023, the death toll of health workers in the Gaza Strip has been impressively grim, reaching 1,060. Health facilities have been destroyed, with hundreds of attacks launched on health services. The World Health Organization update in February found that a mere 50% of hospitals were partially functional. Primary health care facilities were found to be 41% functional. Medical personnel have been harassed, arbitrarily detained and subjected to mistreatment. A report from Healthcare Workers Watch published in February identified 384 cases of unlawful detention since October 7, 2023, with 339 coming from the Gaza Strip and 45 from the West Bank.

    In the opinion of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967, Francesca Albanese, “This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza.”

    The IDF, which claims to be fastidious in observing the canons of international law, continues to dispel such notions in killing civilians and health workers. It also continues to insist that its soldiers could never be guilty of a conscious massacre, culpable for a blatant crime. The bodies of fifteen health workers suggest otherwise.

    The post Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War on Palestinian Health first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Hamas Succeeded in Exposing the True Face of the Empire

    One thing October 7 did accomplish was getting Israel and its allies to show the world their true face. Getting them to stand before all of humanity to say, “If you resist us, we’ll kill your babies. We’ll deliberately shoot your kids in the head. We’ll massacre medical workers. We’ll systematically destroy all your hospitals. We’ll rape you and torture you as a matter of policy. We’ll lay siege to the entire civilian population. We’ll make your entire land uninhabitable and then we’ll kick you all out and take it for ourselves. We’ll assassinate all your journalists and block foreign journalists from entry so that nobody can see what we’re doing to you. We’ll lie about all of these things the entire time, and you’ll know we’re lying, and we’ll know you know we’re lying, and you’ll know we know you know we’re lying. And we’ll get away with it anyway, because we hold all the cards.”

    Sometimes I’ll run into people who say “What did Hamas expect to happen? They had to know Israel would do this!” They say this in an effort to lay the blame for Israel’s genocidal atrocities at the feet of Hamas, as though Israel is some kind of wild animal who can’t be held accountable for its actions if someone gets too close to its mouth.

    But of course Hamas knew Israel and its allies would react this way. Of course they did. They knew they were dealing with a murderous and tyrannical civilization who is capable of limitless evil and doesn’t see Palestinians as human beings. They knew it because they’d lived under it all their lives. That is the problem they were trying to address with their actions on October 7.

    https://x.com/Rahmazeinegypt/status/1908895485114413512

    You can disagree with the decisions Hamas made on that day. You can say they should have used other means to pursue justice. You can denounce them, hate them, do the whole public ritual necessary for mainstream acceptance in western society. But one thing you can’t do is deny that Israel and its allies have been revealing their true face to the world every day since, at levels they previously were not.

    It’s all fully visible now. It’s all right there on the surface. We can try to continue pretending we live in a free society that believes in truth and justice and regards all people as equal, but we’ll all know it’s a lie. What we are, first and foremost, is a civilization that will actively support history’s first live-streamed genocide. That’s the single most relevant fact about the western world at this point in history. It’s staring us right in the face every day.

    October 7 certainly didn’t make life any easier for the Palestinians, but one thing it did do was take away our ability to hide from ourselves. Hamas reached thousands of miles around the world and permanently destroyed our ability to avoid the truth about the kind of dystopia we are really living in. Our rulers may succeed in eliminating the Palestinians as a people, but one thing they will never be able to do is put those blinders back on our eyes.

    What has been seen cannot be unseen.

    The post Hamas Succeeded in Exposing the True Face of the Empire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Stolen Steps

    When they shelled us with the second missile, I woke up and was surrounded by rubble. I realized that my leg had been cut off…. My father and mother were martyred. My brother Mohammad and my sister Dalia, too. I only want one thing: for the war to end.

    — Dunia, 12 years old, in an interview with Defense for Children-International.

    The ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians has made Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” For every child Israel kills, many more are wounded or maimed, causing mass amputations and disablement that amount to a direct assault on the collective Palestinian body. Our latest visual, created in partnership with Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), tells the stories of children whose lives and limbs have been stolen by Israel, and how Israel’s targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system makes it impossible for them to access much-needed medical supplies and rehabilitation services.

    https://visualizingpalestine.org/visual/stolen-steps/

    From forced starvation, to scholasticide, to mass displacement, to mass disablement, to mass killing, to separation from caregivers and loved ones, children in Gaza are facing conditions that no child should ever face anywhere in the world.

    The post Stolen Steps first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukraine Guilty of Human Rights Violations in Trade Union Massacre, Top European Court Finds

    By Kit Klarenberg

    The court condemned Ukrainian authorities for failing to prevent a fiery 2014 massacre in which dozens of anti-Nazi activists were burned alive – but the judges’ political bias meant victims were implicitly blamed for their fate, and their families received a paltry 15,000 euro payout.

    The European Court of Human Rights has found the Ukrainian government guilty of committing human rights violations during the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of Russian-speaking demonstrators were forced into the city’s Trade Unions House and burned alive by ultranationalist thugs.

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    Citing the “relevant authorities’ failure to do everything that could reasonably be expected of them to prevent the violence in Odessa,” the court ruled unanimously that Ukraine violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life. The judges also condemned the Ukrainian government’s failure “to stop that violence after its outbreak, to ensure timely rescue measures for people trapped in the fire, and to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events.”

    42 people were killed as a result of the fire, a bloody bookend to the so-called “Maidan revolution” that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president deposed in a Western-backed coup in 2014. Ukrainian officials and legacy media outlets have consistently framed the deaths as a tragic accident, with some figures even blaming anti-Maidan protesters themselves for starting the blaze. That notion is thoroughly discredited by the verdict, which was delivered by a team of seven judges including a Ukrainian justice.

    As dozens of anti-Maidan activists burned to death, the ECHR found deployment of fire engines to the site was “deliberately delayed for 40 minutes,” even though the local fire station was just one kilometer away.

    In the end, the judicial body determined there was nothing which indicated Ukrainian authorities “had done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to avert” the violence. Officials in Kiev, they said, made “no efforts whatsoever” to prevent skirmishes between pro- and anti-Maidan activists that led to the deadly inferno, despite knowing in advance such clashes were likely to break out. Their “negligence… went beyond an error of judgment or carelessness.”

    The case was brought by 25 people who lost family members in the Neo-Nazi arson attack and clashes that preceded it, and three who survived the fire with various injuries. Though the ECHR found Ukraine violated their human rights, the court demanded Ukraine pay them just 15,000 euros each in damages.

    The ruling also stopped short of acknowledging the full reality of the Odessa slaughter, as it largely overlooked the role played by Western-supported neo-Nazi elements and their intimate ties to the sniper massacre in February 2014 in Maidan Square which has been conclusively determined to have been a false flag. In the judges’ decision, they downplayed or justified violence by the violent Ukrainian football fans and skinheads, charitably describing them as “pro-unity activists.”

    Russians burned alive while Ukrainian officials looked away

    Ukraine’s Maidan protests commenced in November 2013 after President Yanukovych declined to form a trade agreement with Europe and renewed dialogue with Russia, and tensions quickly began to escalate between Odessa’s sizable Russian-speaking population and Ukrainian nationalists. As the ECHR ruling noted, “while violent incidents had overall remained rare… the situation was volatile and implied a constant risk of escalation.” In March 2014, anti-Maidan activists set up a tent camp in Kulykove Pole Square, and began calling for a referendum on the establishment of an “Odessa Autonomous Republic.”

    The next month, supporters of Odesa Chornomorets and Kharkiv Metalist football clubs announced a rally “For a United Ukraine” on May 2. According to the ECHR, that’s when “anti-Maidan posts began to appear on social media describing the event as a Nazi march and calling for people to prevent it.” Though the European court branded the description Russian “disinformation,” there’s extensive evidence that hooligans associated with both clubs had overt Neo-Nazi sympathies and associations, and well-established reputations for violence. The football clubs involved later went on to form the notorious Azov Battalion.

    Fearing their tent encampment would be attacked, anti-Maidan activists resolved to disrupt the “pro-unity” march before it reached them. The ECHR revealed Ukraine’s security services and cybercrime unit had substantive intelligence indicating “violence, clashes and disorder” were certain on the day. However, authorities “ignored the available intelligence and the relevant warning signs,” and failed to take the “proper measures” to “stamp out any provocation.”

    On May 2, 2014, anti-Nazi activists confronted the demonstrators as the march began, and violent clashes immediately erupted. At roughly 5:45 PM, in the precise manner of the Maidan Square sniper false flag massacre three months earlier, multiple anti-Maidan activists were fatally shot “by someone standing on a nearby balcony” using “a hunting gun,” the ruling states. Subsequently, “pro-unity protesters… gained the upper hand in the clashes,” and charged towards Kulykove Pole square.

    Anti-Maidan activists took refuge in the Trade Unions House, a five-story building overlooking the square, while their ultranationalist adversaries “started setting fire to the tents,” according to the ruling. Gunfire and Molotov cocktails were exchanged by both sides, and before long, the building was ablaze. “Numerous calls” were made to the local fire brigade, including by police, “to no avail.” The court noted that the fire chief had “instructed his staff not to send any fire engines to Kulykove Pole without his explicit order,” so none were dispatched.

    Many of those trapped in the building died when attempting to escape by jumping from its upper windows, and those that survived were treated to more ‘unity’ by the violent demonstrators outside. “Video footage shows pro-unity protesters attacking people who had jumped or had fallen,” the ECHR notes. It was not until 8:30 PM that firefighters finally entered the building and extinguished the blaze. Police then arrested 63 surviving activists they found remaining in the building or on the roof. Those detained weren’t released until two days later, when a several hundred-strong group of anti-Maidan protesters stormed the police station holding them.

    The litany of security failures and industrial scale negligence by authorities that day was greatly aggravated by “local prosecutors, law enforcement, and military officers” not being “contactable for a large part or all of [the] time,” as they were coincidentally attending a meeting with Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor General. The ECHR “found the attitude and passivity of those officials inexplicable” – apparently unwilling to consider the obvious possibility that Ukrainian authorities purposefully made themselves incommunicado to ensure maximum mayhem and bloodshed, while insulating themselves from legal repercussions.

    Because Ukrainian authorities “had not done everything they reasonably could to prevent the violence,” nor even “what could reasonably be expected of them to save people’s lives,” the ECHR found Kiev violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court also concluded authorities “failed to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events in Odessa,” a violation of the “procedural aspect” of Article 2.

    Anatomy of a Kiev coverup

    Though left unstated, the ECHR’s appraisal of the Odessa massacre, and the officials who failed in their most basic duties points to a deliberate state-level coverup.

    For example, no effort was made to seal off “affected areas of the city centre” in the event’s aftermath. Instead, “the first thing” local authorities did “was to send cleaning and maintenance services to those areas,” meaning invaluable evidence was almost inevitably eradicated.

    Unsurprisingly, when on-site inspections were finally carried out two weeks later, the probes “produced no meaningful results,” the ECHR noted. The Trade Unions House likewise “remained freely accessible to the public for 17 days after the events,” giving malicious actors plentiful time to manipulate, remove, or plant incriminating evidence at the site. Meanwhile, “many of the suspects absconded,” the court noted. Several criminal investigations were opened, only to go nowhere, left to expire under Ukraine’s statute of limitations.

    Other cases that reached trial “remained pending for years,” before being dropped, despite “extensive photographic and video evidence regarding both the clashes in the city centre and the fire,” from which culprits’ identities could be easily discerned. The ECHR expressed no confidence that Ukrainian authorities “made genuine efforts to identify all the perpetrators,” and several forensic reports weren’t released for many years, in breach of basic protocols. Elsewhere, the Court noted a criminal investigation of an individual suspected of having shot at anti-Maidan activists was inexplicably discontinued on four separate occasions, on identical grounds.

    The court also noted “serious defects” in investigations into Ukrainian officials’ role in the massacre. Primarily, this took the form of “prohibitive delays” and “significant periods of unexplained inactivity and stagnation” in opening cases. For instance, “although it had never been disputed that the fire service regional head had been responsible for the delayed deployment of fire engines to Kulykove Pole,” it took nearly two years for the Ukrainian government to officially investigate.

    Similarly, Odessa’s regional police chief not only failed to implement any “contingency plan in the event of mass disorder,” as required, but internal documents claiming that security measures had in fact been undertaken were found to have been forged. A criminal investigation into the chief took nearly a year to materialize, then remained pending “for about eight years,” when it was closed after the statute of limitations expired.

    The Georgian connection

    The notion that the incineration of anti-Maidan activists in May 2014 was an intentional and premeditated act of mass murder, conceived and directed by Kiev’s US-installed far-right government, was apparently not considered by the ECHR. But testimonies from a Ukrainian parliamentary commission which was instituted in the massacre’s immediate aftermath indicate the violence was not a freak twist of fate spontaneously produced by two hostile factions clashing in Odessa, as the ruling suggests.

    That parliamentary commission found Ukrainian national and regional officials explicitly planned to use far-right activists drawn from the fascist Maidan Self-Defence to violently suppress Odessa’s would-be separatists, and disperse all those camped by the Trade Unions House. Moreover, the notorious ultra-nationalist Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy and 500 of its armed members of Maidan Self-Defense were dispatched to the city from Kiev on the eve of the massacre.

    From 1998 – 2004, Parubiy served as founder and leader of Neo-Nazi paramilitary faction Patriot of Ukraine. He also headed Kiev’s National Security and Defence Council at the time of the Odessa massacre. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations immediately began scrutinizing Parubiy’s role in the May 2014 events after he was replaced as lead parliamentary speaker, following the country’s 2019 general election. This probe has seemingly come to nothing since, although a year prior a Georgian militant testified to Israeli documentarians that he engaged in “provocations” in the Odessa massacre under the command of Parubiy, who told him to attack anti-Maidan activists and “burn everything.”

    That militant was one of several Georgian fighters who has admitted they were personally responsible for the February 2014 Maidan Square false flag sniper massacre, under the command of ultranationalist Ukrainian figures like Parubiy, and Mikhael Saakashvili, the founder of infamous mercenary brigade Georgian Legion. The slaughter in Maidan brought about the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, and sent Ukraine hurtling towards war with Russia.

    The Odessa massacre was another chapter in that morbid saga – and Europe’s foremost human rights court has now formally laid responsibility for the horror at Kiev’s feet.

    The post Ukraine Guilty of Human Rights Violations in Trade Union Massacre, Top European Court Finds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Thousands Of Syrian Alawites Shelter At Russian Base

    Thousands of Syrian Alawites continue to seek sanctuary at a Russian air base, fearing for their lives in the wake of a series of horrific sectarian massacres carried out by Syrian government-affiliated extremist armed groups.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that about 9,000 people were seeking refuge at Hmeimim, an air base established by Russia as part of its 2015 intervention in the US-backed war that began in 2011 to topple the Syrian government of former president Bashar al-Assad.

    Thousands of people have been sheltering at the Hmeimim Air Base near the coastal city of Jablah since 7 March, when extremist militants went from house to house in predominantly Alawite towns and villages, killing residents and looting and burning their homes.

    The post Thousands Of Syrian Alawites Shelter At Russian Base appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Parachinar: A Forgotten Tragedy in the Shadow of Sectarian Violence

    Amid its beautiful and quite vales of Parachinar lying between the two neighbouring countries, Pakistan, the echoing of muffled screams can be heard far too often as families lose their dear ones to sectarian terrorism. Once surrounded by the natural beauty and orderly with friendly neighbours and kin folk, this town can now boast about appearing to be hell on earth—the manifestation of an entrenched conflict that has taken so many lives. It is not a story of just a small town named Parachinar but also a testimony of hatred between two sects of a religion that has not come to its lowest even today in Pakistan and so in the world.

    Hence, Parachinar is perhaps the habitual site of this systematic genocide of the Shia community, which is not just shocking but has become normal in the region. The last act of violence happened on November 21, 2024, when armed men targeted and attacked two convoys of Shia pilgrims in Kurram district; at least 42 people were killed, including women and children. Such attacks, which occurred while under police escort, are proof that insecurity remains a major problem in the region. The violence is however new in the region since July this year, and most recurrent conflicts are due to land issues between the Shia and Sunni militias. The retaliatory violence that followed led to over 80 fatalities within days. That is Shane’s argument, and he blamed most of the carnage on the Sunni insurgents: all but 28 of the dead were Shia. This cycle of violence, fanned by ethnic and tribal animosities as well as historical enmities, highlights longstanding social tension in Kurram that makes the region rather sensitive because of the mixed population.

    This incidence of violence is not an isolated event but is part and parcel of a sectarian problem in Pakistan. That such violence cannot be controlled by the Pakistani government shows that the problem is a failure of governance. Conflict and fighting between different Shia and Sunni groups in Kurram has become almost an annual event over the years; in the period between 2007 and 2011, more than 2,000 people died in Kurram. At a governmental and societal level, the recent increase in deaths and tears of families is a clear indication that intervention is required.

    The tragedy in Parachinar occurred in November 2024, in particular on November 21, a brutal attack on Shia pilgrims. Gunmen pumped bullets on two convoys accompanied by the police, in which 42 persons lost their lives, including women and children. What happened is not unique, but it fits into a dark trend—a growing cycle of violence that has only amplified since the summer. This conflict arose basically from land disagreement between the Shia and Sunni; this led to acts of revenge killing over eighty persons, of which sixty-six were from Shia. These occurrences cannot be just viewed as skirmishes but point to the incessant bitter ethnic enmity and past resentments that still exist in Kurram.

    The government response has been quite poor. Although Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed his anger against the violence in the country, this was done very late and with insufficient actions and words of the victims’ families mourning in Pakistan. Demonstrations across Pakistan have protested about inaction against what is regarded as the genocide of Shia Muslims. However, unsurprisingly, the government is yet to suggest clear courses of action. This passivity is symptomatic of a larger social and governmental negligence in shielding its people from sectarian militant aggression.

    This violence in Kurram has deeper seeds, compounded by regional and political factors and perhaps bad governance. More than 2,000 people have died due to sectarian clashes in this region between the periods of 2007 and 2011. The recent steps were provoked by local concerns and the Shia-Sunni strife that emerged during the Syrian civil war, which was used by radicals. This unfortunate phenomenon of sectarian violence in Pakistan, especially against Shai Muslims, has led to several critical questions concerning security and relationships within and between groups in a country that has well-rooted sectarian tension.

    Inability to address these problems continues to perpetrate violence in Pakistan and brings discredit to the government at the international level. It is symptomatic of a broader problem of governance in which policing or security does not suffice. There is another important factor of the situation: violence against women, which during the conflict intensified due to the constant impunity of the actions of those who use violence and general disregard for the rights of minorities.

    Opposition parties in Pakistan have joined people in the streets to make their condemnation of the attack in Parachinar very loud and clear. The protesters have demanded that the government provide security for its people against cultists’ aggression. Such attacks need to be condemned by the government, and such condemnation, as laudable as it is, falls short of what is required. Increased security measures, identification, arrest, and prosecution of those persons responsible for such attacks, and sustainable solutions to looking into the grievances of these sects are called for.

    While the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has rightly condemned the violence, it is extremely necessary to move towards practical politics and take strong actions against the culprits. The establishment should define the type of security it has in store for everyone, including non-Muslims. Thus, international pressure is important in compelling the government to implement mechanisms that would ensure such incidences are not repeated. It is high time global society stood up and demanded that Pakistan should do something to address the unenviable situation of vulnerable groups in the country.

    For this reason, it is now the responsibility of the international community to bring the plight of Parachinar to the limelight so as to apply pressure to Pakistan to perform its primary function of protecting its citizens. Various stakeholders should continue putting pressure on governments to enhance law enforcement, implement security measures, and promote entities that vigorously respect religious and ethnic diversity. Fatima and other victims’ voices must be escalated to create empathy towards the terrible acts witnessed happening in Parachinar and areas like this.

    It is important to support organisations that are actively combating extremism and building healing and unity as a result. These organisations are at the centre of the problem, helping the victims, fighting for their rights, and seeking reconciliation. In this respect, NGOs are of immense help to women because, through providing assistance of various kinds, increasing the public’s visibility towards such issues, as well as initiating and supporting changes in the law, they help to halt the violence. It is not only for the reason to save lives of Shia Muslims under attack in Parachinar but to enhance the status of any minority across Pakistan and other countries as well.

    This pain of Parachinar needs to go to remind the world how much it requires the values of empathy and togetherness. This is evidenced by the constant fear experienced or persecution, suffering that pervades the lives of its people, therefore the need to pay attention and act. Let us not forget the lives lost, and let us try to make the valleys of Parachinar do not ring with pains instead with the animation of tomorrow’s smile. Parachinar catastrophe is a test for humanity; it is the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil—violation of human rights. It becomes possible only when we recognise these conflicts and work to eradicate them in order to have a society where sectarian violence has no room.

    The post Parachinar: A Forgotten Tragedy in the Shadow of Sectarian Violence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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