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Category: Middle East

  • What are Canadian military learning from genocidal apartheid state?

    Canadian forces are learning from the génocidaires, directly assisting the US/Israeli occupation of Gaza, and will likely help build a colonial Palestinian force. Canadian troops have been taking tips from the Israeli occupation forces. According to a series of reports, Canadian troops participated in IOF seminars this week to learn about its war crimes in Gaza. They reportedly even conducted tours of the Gaza Envelope. The Israeli military said the gathering was to “strengthen cooperation, enhance familiarity with diverse operational approaches, exchange professional knowledge and experience between the participating militaries.” Part of the aim of the training from the Israeli perspective is to have the foreign forces adopt its outlook on the genocide and become “ambassadors” for that country. Asked about it by Alex Cosh of The Maple Friday Defence Minister David McGuinty refused to confirm or deny the Canadian military presence.

    Of course, Canadian forces have long had a bevy of ties to their Israeli counterparts. The two countries have a military cooperation agreement, and 29 Canadian troops were dispatched to Israel last year for arms training. After Hamas’ October 7, 2003, attack, Canada’s most elite soldiers were dispatched to Israel, and the Canadian Air Force flew 30 Israeli reservists back into the country. Canadian military intelligence assists Israel through the Five Eyes.

    Canadian soldiers are part of the newly constructed colonial facility detailed in the New York Times article “The American-Run Base Planning Gaza’s Future”. While Canadians are part of the US/Israeli operation, the Times reports, “there is no formal Palestinian representation … Palestinian officials have not been included in the coordination center.”

    Why do Palestinians need to participate in their own governance when the US/Israel/Canada obviously have their interests at heart?

    The US base is part of implementing Donald Trump’s “peace plan”, which has seen Israel kill over 300 Palestinians since the Gaza “ceasefire” began. The U.S.-led “Board of Peace” will control all services and humanitarian aid into and out of Gaza and is to supervise financing and reconstruction of the devastated coastal strip.

    On Monday, the UN Security Council effectively endorsed a US colonial protectorate to safeguard Israel’s illegal occupation, which Palestinians overwhelmingly reject. The Security Council resolution also calls for the deployment of a US-led “International Stabilization Force (ISF).”

    Canada may participate in the ISF, though most Canadian support will likely go to building the Palestinian security force intended to suppress resistance in Gaza. The US/Israel are seeking to establish a Palestinian force that would weaken or destroy the resistance in Gaza.

    Canada has a two-decade-old initiative to train and assist Palestinian Authority security forces to act as the subcontractor of Israel’s occupation. Through Operation Proteus, about 20 Canadian troops and police in the West Bank are part of a mission led by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator. The mission began as an effort to destroy Palestinian unity and support the compliant Palestinian Authority against Hamas.

    My campaign’s platform to lead the NDP calls to “End Operation Proteus: a Canadian military program that costs hundreds of millions of dollars in training, equipping and supporting the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces which are used to violently suppress Palestinian opposition and resistance.” A recent Action Network instigated by a volunteer in my leadership campaign calls on Canadian officials to sever all military ties with the lawless, genocidal apartheid state.

    Who could disagree with that?

    Please email the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand to demand that Canada sever all military ties with the lawless, genocidal, apartheid state.

    The post What are Canadian military learning from genocidal apartheid state? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The UNSC vote to gift Gaza to its enemies

    Why did the United Nations Security Council vote to give authority over Gaza to a genocidal demolition squad called the Board of Peace, headed by Donald Trump?

    This question has several dimensions. The resolution itself was drafted by the US, and more specifically the Trump administration, in close consultation with the Netanyahu government in Israel. This explains why it is perfectly consistent with a continuing genocide and progressive elimination of the existing population of Gaza, totally Palestinian, but now estimated to be considerably less than two million, compared to 2.2-2.3 million two years ago. Up to half a million, almost entirely civilian and mostly women and children, have died, due to direct murder by Israeli forces as well as vast numbers of equally but differently murdered victims of starvation, malnutrition, disease, exposure and lack of medical resources, a result of the Israeli policy of denying the means of survival. A smaller minority have escaped despite their reluctance to leave and the unwillingness of most countries to accept them. The intention behind the plan is to replace the Palestinians with Zionist settlers and lucrative resorts, as well as to exploit the large oil and gas deposits off the coast for Israeli and western investors rather than for the benefit of the Palestinian population.

    This explains the resolution, but not the votes that passed it, including Algeria and Pakistan, and the abstentions of Russia and China. Russia had in fact drafted an alternative resolution, but did not submit it, due to passage of the US version. Why did Algeria and Pakistan vote in favor? This can probably be attributed to intense inducements from the US, and the fact that governments generally put their own interests first. But then why did Russia and China not veto the US proposal and submit their own? Alon Mizrahi provides a very coherent explanation, amounting to having no Arab partners to support them – not even the UN representative of Palestine, which, as we know, serves at the pleasure of Israel. The loss of Syria is keenly felt at such times.

    Is the United Nations a useful organization if it cannot uphold international law – or worse, if it passes resolutions that are in direct contradiction to international law? The fact is that the UN was designed to recognize and reflect the international power structure, not to alter it. This is why veto power exists in the Security Council. It is, in effect, a recognition that the most powerful countries have veto power over anything the UN might decide, whether the UN recognizes it or not. After WWII, the countries that signed the UN charter – especially the most powerful – also decided what constituted international law and agreed to abide by it. Although adherence has been inconsistent and violated many times, there has been general agreement on what constitutes this body of law.

    Until now. We seem to have transitioned into the era of “rules-based order.” What is that? What are the rules? Where is the order? It is an empty phrase meaning no more than the arbitrary and sometimes contrary decision making of an absolute monarch. The UN was formed by a treaty whereby all the signers agreed to give up some small measure of sovereignty in order to establish a minimal degree of security and welfare for all concerned, even if some benefitted more than others.

    In the era of the sole remaining superpower, such cooperation for mutual benefit appears to be withering away. But then, so does the superpower, as well as its Zionist appendage. It seems that we will have to be patient and steadfast, much like Palestinians, and to resist the abuses of those who rule us, also like the Palestinians.

    The post The UNSC vote to gift Gaza to its enemies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ramzy Baroud: Pathetic attempt to achieve by Gaza decree what US-Israel failed to gain through brute force

    COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

    UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected. It is a direct contravention of international law itself, imposed by the United States with the full knowledge and collaboration of Arab and Muslim states.

    These regimes brutally turned their backs on the Palestinians throughout the genocide, with some actively helping Israel cope with the economic fallout of its multi-frontal wars.

    The resolution is a pathetic attempt to achieve through political decree what the US and Israel decisively failed to achieve through brute force and war.

    It is doomed to fail, but not before it further exposes the bizarre, corrupted nature of international law under US political hegemony. The very country that has bankrolled and sustained the genocide of the Palestinians is the same country now taking ownership of Gaza’s fate.

    It is a sad testimony of current affairs that China and Russia maintained a far stronger, more principled position in support of Palestine than the so-called Arab and Muslim “brothers.”

    The time for expecting salvation from Arab and Muslim states is over; enough is enough.

    Even more tragic is Russia’s explanation for its abstention as a defence of the Palestinian Authority, while the PA itself welcomed the vote. The word treason is far too kind for this despicable, self-serving leadership.

    Recipe for disaster
    If implemented and enforced against the will of the Palestinians in Gaza, this resolution is a recipe for disaster: expect mass protests in Gaza, which will inevitably be suppressed by US-led lackeys, working hand-in-glove with Israel, all in the cynical name of enforcing “international law”.

    Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the history of Palestine knows that Res 2803 has hurled us decades back, resurrecting the dark days of the British Mandate over Palestine.

    Another historical lesson is due: those who believe they are writing the final, conclusive chapter of Palestine will be shocked and surprised, for they have merely infuriated history.

    The story is far from over. The lasting shame is that Arab states are now fully and openly involved in the suppression of the Palestinians.

    Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A Hidden, Deep Syrian Wound

    “Zionism as a reactionary ideology fitted exactly the ambitions of the British colonialism at that period and later on the American imperialism plans to the areas.”

    “The Palestinian resistance movement is not a movement to liberate a geographical 26,000 square km; it is a historical movement which aims to liberate the Jews from zionism and the Arabs from reactionaries, and to establish the Socialist Democratic Palestine. The question of Palestine is the question of a clashing contradiction between the National Liberation movement of the Arabs, headed by the Palestinian national Liberation movement, and imperialism in this part of the world, headed by the zionist movement. And this is how it is a mistake to understand that Israel is just a home of Jews, because Israel is a base of imperialism.”

    — Ghassan Kanafani

    The common narrative of the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” while rich in detail and moral urgency, is built upon a fundamental geographical and historical misapprehension. The events of 1948, known to the Arabs as Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe), are almost universally presented as the tragedy of a distinct Palestinian people. This framing, however, obscures a deeper, more profound truth. A critical examination of history, geography, and imperial design reveals that Al-Nakba is not merely a Palestinian wound, but a Syrian one—the violent culmination of a century-long project to prevent the emergence of a unified Arab country in Bilad al-Sham. The struggle of the Arab natives of Palestine against settler-colonial zionism and its imperialist backers is not, in its essence, the “Question of Palestine,” but rather the enduring “Question of Syria.”

    I. The Organic Motherland: Syria Before Colonial Dissection

    To understand this is to recognize that the political consciousness of the region’s people preceded its colonial dissection by millennia. The modern assertion that there was no Palestinian state is a deliberate anachronism that erases a prior, more organic reality. For millennia, the territory known as Palestine was not a separate political entity but an integral part of Bilad al-Sham, or Greater Syria. This region, encompassing modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and historical Palestine, shared a common culture, economy, and social fabric.

    This unity is not a modern nationalist fantasy but a historical fact attested to by the ancient world’s first historian. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, consistently refers to the entire coastline of the Levant as “Syria.” He makes a clear geographical distinction, noting that the people of the coast “are Syrians who dwell in the parts of Arabia lying along the sea.” This establishes that the inhabitants of this coast were identified as Syrians regardless of sub-regional names, anchoring them within the broader cultural and ethnic fabric of the region. Furthermore, he explicitly names the specific part of this Syrian coast that we call Palestine, not as a separate country, but as a region within it: “Thence they [the Persians] went on to invade Egypt; and when they were in Syria which is called Palestine.”

    The cultural unity of the Syrian coast is clearly attested by Herodotus, who records shared practices that bound its peoples together. He observes that the Persians learned to sacrifice to the heavenly goddess from “the Assyrians and the Arabians,”and describes many shared practices, like circumcision, which “the Phenicians and the Syrians who dwell in Palestine confess themselves that they have learnt it from the Egyptians.” Here, he explicitly groups the Phoenicians with the “Syrians of Palestine,” presenting them as a collective entity. This confirms that the entire littoral was understood as a Syrian space, in Arabia, whose peoples shared a common cultural identity.

    My own family history is a testament to the endurance of this organic reality into the modern era. My grandfather represented the city of Safad not at a “Palestinian” congress, but in the First Syrian National Congress in 1920. This body, which declared the independence of a united Syria with its capital in Damascus and explicitly included Palestine within its borders, represented the true will of the land. For men like my grandfather, to speak for Safad was to speak for Syria, continuing an unbroken historical consciousness that viewed Palestine and Syria as one and the same—a reality so ancient that it was already a long-established truth when Herodotus recorded it as history two and a half thousand years ago.


    Tripoli’s Blood Unites Us.

    II. Deconstructing the Fallacy: The Sicily Analogy

    A common zionist talking point asserts that there was no sovereign Palestinian state prior to 1948, a statement deliberately used to bolster the lie of “a land without a people.” This argument commits a fundamental logical category error: it conflates the modern political concept of a nation-state with the ancient social reality of a people and their homeland. The absence of a centralized government in a Westphalian model does not mean the land was empty, any more than the absence of a “Sicilian state” meant Sicily was uninhabited. This argument is not just ahistorical; it is a logical absurdity that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. To expose its sophistry, one need only apply the same logic to a different context.

    Imagine if the United States, in its 19th-century expansion, had not just conquered the West but specifically targeted the island of Sicily. To secure this strategic foothold in the Mediterranean, it encourages and facilitates the migration of a distinct religious group, say the Mormons, who were once persecuted within the U.S. but now act as a settler vanguard. They establish thriving settlements, citing a two-thousand-year-old religious text that they believe grants them a divine right to the island. The world would rightly view the resistance of the Sicilian people not as an isolated “Sicilian Question,” but as a struggle for Italian territorial integrity—an attack on Italy itself.

    Now, imagine these American-backed settlers arguing, “There is no sovereign Sicilian state; therefore, Sicily is a land without a people, ripe for our taking.” This would be immediately recognized as nonsense. Sicily, while not an independent nation-state, is undeniably a foundational part of the Italian nation, with its people being an inseparable part of its social and cultural fabric. To frame the conflict as solely between the “Mormons and the Sicilians” would be to accept the colonial premise and erase both Italy and the role of American power from the map. The absurdity would be compounded if the conflict was then mislabeled a “clash between Mormons and Catholics,” thereby masking the core issues of land, sovereignty, and a state-sponsored colonial conquest.

    This refined analogy precisely mirrors the deception at the heart of the colonial narrative on Palestine. It captures the dynamic of a great power using a settler project to achieve its strategic aims. To claim there was no Palestinian state is as irrelevant as claiming there was no Sicilian state. Palestine was not an island in the Mediterranean—it was an integral part of Syria. Its people were Syrians. The attempt to retroactively justify conquest by applying a modern political standard to an ancient land is not a historical argument; it is the propaganda of dispossession.

    III. The Imperial Genesis: From Napoleon to Sykes-Picot

    The “Syria Question” for the British Empire truly began not with the Balfour Declaration, but with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and Palestine in 1798. This was a direct strategic thrust aimed at severing Britain’s route to its most prized possession: India. Although Napoleon was defeated, the shockwave he sent through the British Admiralty never faded. From that moment, controlling the land bridge of Bilad al-Sham—particularly the corridor of Palestine—became a paramount imperial imperative for London. Any potential threat to that route, whether from a resurgent France, a weakening Ottoman Empire, or later, a unified Arab state, had to be preemptively neutralized.

    This long-standing strategic anxiety culminated in the ultimate act of colonial cartography: the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. This secret pact between Britain and France did not simply redraw borders; it surgically dismembered the body of Bilad al-Sham, deliberately fracturing a unified cultural and economic sphere into the artificial, competing mandates of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The creation of “Palestine” as a separate British Mandate was not an accident of history; it was a deliberate strategy to isolate and control the most geostrategically sensitive portion of the Syrian homeland.

    IV. The First Arab Threat and the Zionist “Solution”

    The first major test of this new colonial order came from Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt and his son Ibrahim Pasha, who in the 1830s swept through Bilad al-Sham, threatening to create a powerful, modernizing Arab state that could challenge both the Ottomans and European influence. British policy reacted with alarm. As the historian George Antonius noted, Britain’s resistance to this nascent Arab state was fundamental. This is chillingly confirmed by British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston, who wrote in 1833:

    “The real goal of Muhammad Ali is to establish an Arab kingdom that includes all the countries that speak Arabic… Moreover, we see no reason that justifies replacing Turkey with an Arab king in control of the route to India.”

    It was in this context—the need to secure the route to India by ensuring a fragmented and controlled Syria—that British colonial strategists began to see a “zionist” solution decades before the Austrian Theodor Herzl. In September 1840, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a key influencer of British policy, explicitly proposed the establishment of a British colony in Syria and argued for the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He wrote that the region needed capital and labor, and that the “Hebrews were anticipating a return to Syria.” He concluded that employing the Jews was the “cheapest and most guaranteed method” to develop and control this sparsely populated, strategic land bridge.

    A quarter-century later, in 1856, Shaftesbury was even more explicit, asking: Does Britain not have an interest in this? He answered:

    “It would be a blow to England if any of its rivals were to seize Syria. Its empire… would be cut in two. England must preserve Syria for itself… [and] should foster the nationalism of the Jews.”

    As Nahum Sokolow, one of the founders of zionism, later noted, the British strategic mind had already, by the mid-19th century, linked the “future of Palestine” directly to the security of the Empire. British colonialism had become functionally zionist before the European political zionist movement itself was formally born.

    V. The Strategy of Perpetual Fragmentation: From Pipelines to Proxy Wars

    The colonial dismemberment of Bilad al-Sham did not conclude with the Sykes-Picot Agreement or even the Nakba of 1948; it evolved into a perpetual strategy to ensure the region’s permanent weakness and subservience. This policy of intentional fragmentation, which relies on and inflames sectarian, ethnic, and regional divisions, has been a consistent weapon in the imperial arsenal to preempt the re-emergence of a unified, independent Arab power. The motivation for this is twofold: a long-standing geopolitical imperative and a more recent, critical struggle over energy dominance.

    The visionary Palestinian writer and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani, in his study The Arab Cause During the Era of the United Arab Republic, identified the internal dimension of this strategy with chilling precision. He argued that colonialism and its zionist spearhead found natural allies in the region’s internal divisions:

    “There is no doubt that the reactionary, the opportunist, the regionalist, and the sectarian… meet in their goals with the goals of Israel and colonialism, whether they intended that or not… In fact, the reliance of colonialism and Israel on this trio is almost complete.”

    As definitive proof, Kanafani cited a declassified Israeli plan from 1957, which laid out a blueprint for the systematic destruction of Arab unity. The plan called for rapid measures to establish a Druze state, a Shiite state in Lebanon, a Maronite state, an Alawite state in Syria, a Kurdish state in Iraq, and a region for the Copts. This document was not merely speculative; it was a reflection of a core strategic understanding that the survival of the colonial implant depended on ensuring the motherland remained divided. As Kanafani noted, this plan “resulted from a feeling that there are tendencies in the indicated regions for secession,” and its purpose was to exploit those tendencies to “establish any defeatist ability in the Arab homeland.”

    This century-old strategy of balkanization was violently re-energized in the 21st century, driven by a new and critical geopolitical prize: control over energy corridors. As analyses have revealed, the struggle in Syria is the latest episode in a “pipeline war” whose roots stretch back to the mid-20th century. This conflict reached a critical juncture in 2009, when Qatar proposed a massive pipeline project that would run from its North Field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, to Turkey, with the aim of supplying European markets. This Qatari pipeline, backed by the United States, was in direct competition with a rival Iranian proposal that would run from Iran through Iraq and Syria. Syria’s refusal in 2011 to agree to the Qatari pipeline, in part to protect the strategic interests of its ally Russia, the dominant gas supplier to Europe, was the decisive geopolitical event that ignited the modern phase of this conflict.

    This economic rejection coincided with the U.S. policy, revealed by WikiLeaks, of aggressively pursuing “regime change” in Syria. The subsequent war, fueled by foreign powers, cannot be disconnected from this struggle over which global powers would control the energy future of Europe and isolate Iran. The pipeline competition provided a powerful economic and strategic motive for certain external actors to actively pursue the fragmentation of Syria, using the very sectarian and regionalist playbook outlined in the 1957 Israeli document. The goal was to either install a compliant government in Damascus or, failing that, to balkanize the country into weaker, controllable statelets, thereby securing the transit route and dealing a blow to their rivals.

    Thus, the ongoing tragedy in Syria is not a separate “conflict,” nor did it spring from internal strife. It is the continuation of the same war declared on Bilad al-Sham over a century and a half ago. The support for separatist militias, the manipulation of opposition groups by imperialist and foreign intelligence agencies, the fueling of sectarian strife, and the economic siege are all modern tools to achieve an ancient European colonial goal, now supercharged by the geopolitics of energy: to ensure that the Syrian wound never heals, that the motherland never reunifies, and that the Question of Syria remains unanswered, leaving its land and resources open to external domination.

    The Unanswered Question of Syria

    To understand Al-Nakba as a Syrian wound is to restore the struggle to its proper scale and historical genesis. It moves the discussion beyond the cramped confines of the failed paradigm of the “two-state solution,” revealing the struggle as what it has always been: the central battle in the long war against the imperial division of the Eastern Mediterranean—a division initiated to secure the route to India; cemented by Sykes-Picot; and consummated by the shameful Balfour Declaration. The “Question of Syria” is the question of a land struggling for reunification and liberation from this imperial legacy. The struggle in Palestine is not a local border dispute; it is the fight for the integrity of the motherland. Until this foundational reality is acknowledged, any analysis of the struggle will remain incomplete, treating the symptoms while ignoring the amputation that afflicts the entire body of Bilad al-Sham.

    • This essay relies significantly on historical documents, quotes and analysis compiled by Emile Touma in his seminal Arabic-language work, The Roots of the Palestinian Cause.
    The post A Hidden, Deep Syrian Wound first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Names Saudi Arabia “Major Non-NATO Ally,” With Billions in Arms Deals

    President Donald Trump announced that he is naming Saudi Arabia as a “major non-NATO ally” on Tuesday, during a White House visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which the leaders discussed major weapons deals that would allow the country to continue ravaging the Middle East. This means that Saudi Arabia will benefit from military and economic privileges that are not afforded to…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Al-Qaeda Goes To Washington

    I never thought I would see the day, but the day came Monday, when Ahmed al–Sharaa arrived at the White House for a sit-down with President Donald Trump and the usual gaggle of misfits who must be there to make sure the Trumpster understands at least a little of what is being said.

    A freak-show terrorist amid all that retro Oval Office elegance: Who could have imagined so offensive a tableau?

    Al–Sharaa, alert readers will know, is one of those dripping-with-blood Sunni jihadists who, during the West’s extended covert operation against the Assad regime in Syria, had the habit of changing their names and the names of their murderous militias whenever the world figured out who they were and the extent of their savagery.

    The post Al-Qaeda Goes To Washington appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why Should the Arabs Not Make Peace?

    Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
    —Mohandas K. Gandhi1

    The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or political relationship, rests upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed upon than this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the People’s rights, though it is kept within the forms of law.
    —Woodrow Wilson2

    The principles of self-determination and justice, articulated by figures as diverse as Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson, provide a clear moral framework for assessing the struggle over Palestine. Yet, the most damning indictment of the zionist project comes not from its critics, but from a stunning confession by one of its principal architects—a confession that systematically dismantles its own moral, theological, and historical justifications to reveal a foundation of raw power and lies.

    A Loaded Zionist Confession

    David Gruen, a Polish zionist who changed his name to Ben-Gurion, like most zionists who adopted “Hebrew” names to embed themselves in an imagined ancient history, said the following:

    Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is NATURAL: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.3

    Sentence-by-Sentence Analysis

    “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel.”

    Analysis: This opening is a stunning act of rhetorical empathy. Gruen correctly identifies the Palestinian resistance not as irrational hatred, but as a rational, national response to a threat. This admission is powerful because it comes from the architect of the state, immediately validating the core Palestinian grievance.

    “That is NATURAL: we have taken their country.”

    Analysis: This is the most honest and damning sentence, in which he explicitly defines the zionist project as the taking of another people’s country. The word “NATURAL” is key—he acknowledges that the desire to resist occupation and colonization is a universal and justified human impulse. This single sentence validates the entire settler-colonial critique of zionism.

    “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?”

    Faulty Logic & Hypocrisy: Here, the foundational justification is presented and immediately dismissed as irrelevant. The hypocrisy is monumental because Gruen was a secular atheist. For him, “God” was not a divine authority but a cultural-national symbol to be weaponized.

    Deeper Hypocrisy: This “God” and the stories of His promise were created by the ancient indigenous inhabitants of the land (Canaanites). A European secularist using this native mythology to justify displacing the natives (the Arabs of Palestine) is an act of profound narrative and historical theft.

    “Our God is not theirs.”

    Faulty Logic: This is a deliberate misrepresentation that creates a “clash of civilizations.” The God of the “Hebrew” Bible (Yahweh)—originally a Canaanite deity—and the God of Islam (Allah) are the same Abrahamic deity. This false dichotomy erases shared theological roots, as well as the existence of native Arab Christians (for whom it is the same God) and native Arab Jews, who have always understood this shared heritage. It’s a political move to construct two separate, incompatible “tribes,” positioning both religions—which are themselves products of the native Arab cultural achievements—as enemies.

    “We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them?”

    Faulty Logic: Again, a core zionist claim—historical connection—is raised by a Polish zionist and European settler-colonialist, only to be negated as a valid reason for the natives to accept their own displacement and uprooting. He admits that a 2000-year-old claim does not nullify the rights of the people living on the land now. This exposes the central contradiction of political zionism: it relies on an imaginary and invented European religious narrative of “ancient history” to justify a modern political project that requires the subjugation of the present-day population. Furthermore, Gruen himself debunked the myth of a wholesale exile by acknowledging that the native population remained and later converted to Christianity and Islam. He admitted that the Arabs were the “flesh and the blood of old Judeans,” as he wrote in a book he published in 1918 in New York with another zionist, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, titled Eretz Israel in the Past and in the Present. Yet when these same Arabs refused his “Jewish state” on their land, they had to be rendered alien to it and targeted for uprooting.

    “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?”

    Moral Schizophrenia: This is a critical moral admission. He rejects the notion that Palestinians should pay the price for European crimes, which exposes the injustice of using the Holocaust as a justification for the Nakba. The logic becomes: Our need for safety from European persecution is so dire that we must make another people suffer, even though we know it is not their fault. This perverse calculus was articulated plainly by zionist leader David Gruen himself, who chillingly stated: “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.”4 Here, the instrumentalization of a genocide is made explicit: the lives of European Jewish children were secondary to the political goal of settler-colonial state-building in Palestine, revealing a movement that would use one catastrophe to legitimize the engineering of another. This is the heart of the colonial ‘sad necessity’ narrative—a narrative further complicated by the fact that zionists simultaneously collaborated with the very architects of that European persecution, as exemplified by the Haavara Agreement.

    “They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

    Analysis: Gruen reiterates the core admission, summarizing the Palestinian perspective with flawless accuracy. He has now dismantled every potential moral (Holocaust guilt), theological (God’s promise), and historical (ancient connection) argument for why a Palestinian should accept the state of Israel. In doing so, Gruen merely echoes the clear-eyed, if brutal, diagnosis of other European zionist architects. A decade and a half earlier, the Russian zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky laid bare the same immutable colonial logic, writing: “Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope.”5 Jabotinsky, like Gruen, understood that no rhetorical smokescreen could obscure the fundamental conflict, noting: “We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims… but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. They feel at least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine, as the old Aztecs felt for ancient Mexico, and the Sioux for their rolling Prairies.” This acknowledgment of a universal, instinctive love for one’s homeland—from Aztecs to Sioux to Palestinians—proves the Palestinian resistance to be not a unique animus, but a rational and just defense against colonization, a natural law of human history understood all too well by the colonizers themselves.

    “They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance.”

    Colonial Logic: This reflects the classic settler-colonial immoral hope that the natives will eventually be defeated, dispersed, or culturally erased enough that they (or their descendants) will ‘forget’ their claim to the land—a strategy of managing resistance through sustained power and erasure rather than addressing the injustice. The Palestinians, like indigenous peoples everywhere, have repeatedly proven the profound arrogance of this logic wrong.

    “So it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.”

    The Ultimate Revelation: Having demonstrated that the project is morally corrupt and unjustifiable to its victims, the Polish political architect arrives at the only logic left: raw power. Since persuasion is impossible, perpetual domination is the only solution. “Our whole policy is there” is an admission that the state is founded on a security doctrine meant to manage the consequences of its own original injustice, not to resolve it. Peace is replaced by the permanent threat of force. The statement “Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out” is the ultimate justification for this posture, framing a defensive national struggle against colonization as an existential threat, thus completing the circular logic of militarism.

    From Theory to Blueprint: The Iron Wall Consensus

    This ultimate revelation—that the project’s sustainability depends on perpetual military dominance—exposes the foundational consensus between the so-called left-wing and right-wing strands of zionism. While later political narratives would paint them as adversaries, their diagnosis of the core conflict was identical. Gruen’s conclusion is merely a pragmatic affirmation of the doctrine Jabotinsky had articulated years earlier in his 1923 article, “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)”: “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf. zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.” The “Iron Wall” was not a controversial strategy but an operational blueprint, acknowledging that the native population would never acquiesce to their own displacement and must be subdued by unassailable force.

    The Hypocrisy of Successor zionists: From Private Admission to Public Denial

    The confession of David Gruen serves another critical function: it exposes the profound hypocrisy of later zionist leaders who, once the state was established, traded this brutal honesty for public disinformation. While Gruen privately admitted to taking a country, his successors publicly denied the very existence of its people. Golda Myerson (Meir), another Russian zionist and secular atheist, exemplified this shift, employing whatever argument served the moment, from cynical jokes to outright erasure.

    On the foundational injustice, she oscillated between flippancy and fatalism. She was widely quoted making light of the situation with her famous quip, “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!” Elsewhere, the Russian zionist expressed a more fatalistic resolve, declaring in a 1973 speech, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.”

    Most notoriously, she flatly denied the foundational crime that Gruen had confessed to, asserting the racist myth of a land without a people: “It is not as though there was a Palestinian people … and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them … they did not exist.”6

    Yet, when convenient, this secular leader did not hesitate to invoke the divine promise that Gruen had dismissed as irrelevant to the Arabs: “This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”7

    The contrast could not be starker. Gruen’s private confession reveals a zionist who understood the moral cost of his settler-colonial project. Myerson’s public statements reveal a regime reliant on a web of contradictory myths—simultaneously mocking divine providence while wielding it, and denying the existence of a people whose land its founder admitted to taking. This is the evolution of the zionist logic: from the raw confession of the conqueror to the polished fiction of the occupation state.

    The Importance of This Confession

    This statement transcends mere observation; it is a foundational confession. It unveils the inner logic and hypocrisy of zionism from the perspective of its principal architect. It serves as irrefutable evidence that the struggle’s core is not a “tragic” clash between two equal national rights, but rather the rational defiance of a native people against a European settler-colonial project—a project whose architects understood perfectly its oppressive nature.

    This confession:

    • Admits to the fundamental injustice, defining the zionist project explicitly as the appropriation of another people’s homeland
    • Exposes its own justifications as cynical and hypocritical, demonstrating they serve as tools for mobilization rather than genuine moral arguments
    • Concedes the rationality and justice of the native resistance, validating the Palestinian perspective as legitimate
    • Concludes that raw power is the only remaining logic, asserting that since the project is morally unjustifiable, it must be maintained through perpetual military domination

    The confession of David Gruen is the skeleton key that unlocks the true, amoral logic of an outpost state built not on right, but on deception and might.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Why Should the Arabs Not Make Peace? first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Jews,” Harijan, November 26, 1938.
    2    The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28, 1919.
    3    Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), p. 99.
    4    See Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (1993) and Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948 (1987).
    5    Ze’ev Jabotinsky, “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs),” Rassvet, November 4, 1923.
    6    Golda Myerson (Meir), The Sunday Times (London), June 15, 1969; Washington Post, June 16, 1969.
    7    Golda Myerson (Meir), Le Monde (Paris), October 15, 1971.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gaza ‘ceasefire’ simply means that Israel can do whatever it wants. We can’t.

    A Gaza resident tells his story of the struggle to survive in Israel’s Gaza genocide today, “ceasefire” or not.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Qasem Waleed El-Farra

    On October 19, Israel launched a barrage of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people in a blatant violation of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, which had come into effect just over a week earlier.

    And a day after world leaders had gathered in Egypt to discuss implementation, I went back to my neighborhood in eastern Khan Younis on October 14 to gather anything that could protect me and my family against the approaching winter — clothes, sheets, wood, books even, for those cold nights where there will be little else to do but read.

    I had not long been searching through the rubble of my home — which has been completely destroyed — when I heard shooting and saw people running.

    I had been in enough of such situations to know not to ask questions. I left everything I had pulled from under the rubble and fled back toward downtown Khan Younis.

    While we were — yet again — fleeing our area, I learned that an Israeli quadcopter had attacked a group of civilians in the area. One of them, I was told, was shot right in the heart.

    I’ve faced death many times throughout the genocide. But this time was different. This was just one day after Trump, backed by a number of world leaders, announced a plan to bring peace to Gaza and the Middle East.

    That day, Israel had also announced that Zikim beach, which is located in the Gaza Strip envelope, to enable the Israeli settlers there to “breathe again.”

    When I arrived in my tent in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, I pondered just one question: Is this the ceasefire they want to bring us? Or do they just want to announce a cessation of violence, but have no interest in enforcing it?

    Targeting global solidarity
    As a person in Gaza who has been living through a genocide for two years and five major Israeli attacks on Gaza before that, the term “ceasefire” is selective and always shadowed with deadly threats.

    As far as I have experienced, the word simply means that Israel is able to do whatever it wants. We aren’t.

    More broadly, for Israel, ”peace” in Palestine equals a Palestine with no Palestinians, as Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior government ministers have made very clear.

    Over the years, Palestinians have learned the hard way that when the colonial plans and their various institutional manifestations — from the Peel Commission in 1936 to Trump’s “Board of Peace” — are formed, allegedly to bring peace, the oppressed people’s rights are lost.

    The reason is that behind the proposal, there is always a gun pointed at us.

    Or, like how Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, put it: “Ceasefire according to Israel = ‘you cease, I fire.’”

    When I read through the Trump-Netanyahu 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza, all I could think of is that we have gone back a century in time: It is another colonial promise of peace that includes everyone but Palestinians, the land’s native population.

    Of course, in Gaza, we all want this ceasefire to hold, to save what remains of our home. Still, it does not take a genius to see that the ceasefire plan is nothing but a grotesque charade directed by Trump and Netanyahu — a desperate move to save Israel from being internationally isolated, especially after the unprecedented pro-Palestine demonstrations across the globe.

    Thus, the plan deprives Gaza of the increasing momentum of world support, while also resulting in the continued loss of people and land in Gaza. It is either Netanyahu’s rock or Trump’s hard place.

    On-off genocide
    The ceasefire plan depends fundamentally on a phased Israeli withdrawal “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarisation that will be agreed upon between the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], ISF [International Stabilisation Force], the guarantors, and the United States.”

    In more precise terms, there is no specified timeline.

    This means that with Israeli troops withdrawal to the yellow line on the plan’s map, it is still in control of 58 percent of Gaza, and while some people might be able to return to their areas of residence, I cannot.

    The plan has allowed Israel to do what it does best — stall, manipulate and deceive. By October 28, according to Gaza’s authorities, Israel had breached the ceasefire 125 times.

    The killings continue, aid is still being hindered and the Rafah crossing remains closed, denying people travel to receive urgent medical treatment.

    A significant reason for the continued killing in Gaza is that the Israeli withdrawal lines are tricky and ambiguous, even unknown to locals, especially those who live in the eastern part of Gaza.

    On October 17, for instance, Israel killed 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family: seven children, three women and the father, as they returned to check on their house in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of eastern Gaza City.

    In my neighborhood, Sheikh Nasser, in eastern Khan Younis, neighbors marked a destroyed house with a big red sheet to warn others not to cross further.

    We have witnessed two prior ceasefire agreements in the past two years of genocide. Both times I hoped they would bring an end to our misery. Many of us in Gaza remain very sceptical about this ceasefire, and we can’t afford to let hope in our hearts again.

    Israel loves to fish in muddy water, or, like we in Gaza like to put it, ala nakshah, meaning that Israel is merely awaiting any slight excuse to resume the killing.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly made it obvious that it’s either his political future or our future. For as long as he is in power, Israel will keep coming for us in an on-off genocide in order to make our misery constant.

    This is the “peace” we are offered after two years of suffering the crime of crimes.

    Qasem Waleed El-Farra is a physicist based in Gaza. His article was first published by The Electronic Intifada on 6 November 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rebuilding Gaza begins in the classroom and with dignity

    ANALYSIS: By Sultan Barakat and Alison Phipps

    It has been more than two weeks since world leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh and declared, once again, that the path to peace in the Middle East had been found. As with previous such declarations, the Palestinians, the people who must live that peace, were left out.

    Today, Israel holds the fragile ceasefire hostage while the world is fixated on the search for the remaining bodies of its dead captives.

    There is no talk of the Palestinian right to search for and honour their own dead, to mourn publicly the loss.

    The idea of reconstruction is dangled before the residents of Gaza. Those who call for it from abroad seem to envision just clearing rubble, pouring concrete, and rehabilitating infrastructure.

    There is no talk of rebuilding people — restoring their institutions, dignity, and sense of belonging.

    But this is what Palestinians need. True reconstruction must focus on the people of Gaza and it must begin not with cement but with the restoration of classrooms and learning.

    It must begin with young people who have survived the unthinkable and still dare to dream. Without them — without Palestinian educators and students at the centre — no rebuilding effort can endure.

    Reconstruction without exclusion
    The plans for governance and reconstruction of Gaza currently circulating are excluding those Palestinians most affected by the genocide. Many aspects of these plans are designed to control rather than empower — to install new overseers instead of nurturing local leadership.

    They prioritise Israel’s security over Palestinian wellbeing and self-determination.

    We have seen what such exclusion leads to in the Palestinian context: dependency, frustration and despair.

    As scholars who have worked for years alongside Palestinian academics and students, we have also seen the central role education plays in Palestinian society.

    That is why we believe that reconstruction has to start with education, including higher education. And that process has to include and be led by the Palestinians themselves. Palestinian educators, academics and students have already demonstrated they have the strength to persevere and rebuild.

    Gaza’s universities, for example, have been models of resilience. Even as their campuses were razed to the ground, professors and scholars continued to teach and research in makeshift shelters, tents, and public squares — sustaining international partnerships and giving purpose to the most vital part of society: young people.

    In Gaza, universities are not only places of study; they are sanctuaries of thought, compassion, solidarity and continuity — the fragile infrastructure of imagination.

    Without them, who will train the doctors, nurses, teachers, architects, lawyers, and engineers that Gaza needs? Who will provide safe spaces for dialogue, reflection, and decision-making — the foundations of any functioning society?

    We know that there can be no viable future for Palestinians without strong educational and cultural institutions that rebuild confidence, restore dignity and sustain hope.

    Solidarity, not paternalism
    Over the past two years, something remarkable has happened. University campuses across the world — from the United States to South Africa, from Europe to Latin America — have become sites of moral awakening.

    Students and professors have stood together against the genocide in Gaza, demanding an end to the war and calling for justice and accountability. Their sit-ins, vigils and encampments have reminded us that universities are not only places of learning but crucibles of conscience.

    This global uprising within education was not merely symbolic; it was a reassertion of what scholarship is about. When students risk disciplinary action to defend life and dignity, they remind us that knowledge divorced from humanity is meaningless.

    The solidarity they have demonstrated must set the tone for how institutions of higher education approach engagement with and the rebuilding of Gaza’s universities.

    The world’s universities must listen, collaborate and commit for the long term. They can build partnerships with Gaza’s institutions, share expertise, support research and help reconstruct the intellectual infrastructure of a society. Fellowships, joint projects, remote teaching and open digital resources are small steps that can make a vast difference.

    Initiatives like those of Friends of Palestinian Universities (formally Fobzu), the University of Glasgow and HBKU’s summits, and the Qatar Foundation’s Education Above All already show what sustained cooperation can achieve. Now that spirit of solidarity must expand — grounded in respect and dignity and guided by Palestinian leaders.

    The global academic community has a moral duty to stand with Gaza, but solidarity must not slide into paternalism. Reconstruction should not be a charitable gesture; it should be an act of justice.

    The Palestinian higher education sector does not need a Western blueprint or a consultant’s template. It needs partnerships that listen and respond, that build capacity on Palestinian terms.

    It needs trusted relationships for the long term.

    Research that saves lives
    Reconstruction is never just technical; it is moral. A new political ecology must grow from within Gaza itself, shaped by experience rather than imported models. The slow, generational work of education is the only path that can lead out from the endless cycles of destruction.

    The challenges ahead demand scientific, medical and legal ingenuity. For example, asbestos from destroyed buildings now contaminates Gaza’s air, threatening an epidemic of lung cancer.

    That danger alone requires urgent research collaboration and knowledge-sharing. It needs time to think and consider, conferences, meetings, exchanges of scholarships — the lifeblood of normal scholarly activity.

    Then there is the chaos of property ownership and inheritance in a place that has been bulldozed by a genocidal army. Lawyers and social scientists will be needed to address this crisis and restore ownership, resolve disputes and document destruction for future justice.

    There are also the myriad war crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Forensic archaeologists, linguists, psychologists and journalists will help people process grief, preserve memory and articulate loss in their own words.

    Every discipline has a role to play. Education ties them together, transforming knowledge into survival — and survival into hope.

    Preserving memory
    As Gaza tries to move on from the genocide, it must also have space to mourn and preserve memory, for peace without truth becomes amnesia. There can be no renewal without grief, no reconciliation without naming loss.

    Every ruined home, every vanished family deserves to be documented, acknowledged and remembered as part of Gaza’s history, not erased in the name of expedience. Through this difficult process, new methodologies of care will inevitably come into being. The acts of remembering are a cornerstone of justice.

    Education can help here, too — through literature, art, history, and faith — by giving form to sorrow and turning it into the soil from which resilience grows. Here, the fragile and devasted landscape of Gaza, the more-than-human-world can also be healed through education, and only then we will have on the land once again, “all that makes life worth living”, to use a verse from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

    Rebuilding Gaza will, of course, require cranes and engineers. But more than that, it will require teachers, students and scholars who know how to learn and how to practise skilfully. The work of peace begins not with cement mixers but with curiosity, compassion and courage.

    Even amid the rubble, and the ashlaa’, the strewn body parts of the staff and students we have lost to the violence, Gaza’s universities remain alive. They are the keepers of its memory and the makers of its future — the proof that learning itself is an act of resistance, and that education is and must remain the first step towards sustainable peace.

    Sultan Barakat is professor in public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, honorary professor at the University of York, and a member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute ICMD Expert Reference Group. Alison Phipps is UNESCO Chair for refugee integration through education, languages and arts at the University of Glasgow. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump’s ‘annexation ban’ is a ploy to push Israeli normalisation

    ANALYSIS: By Lamis Andoni

    The rift between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is real. However, to understand it, one must see it for what it is — not a clash of principles, but of priorities.

    Trump and the US establishment seek to expand the Abraham Accords, especially to bring Saudi Arabia on board. Tel Aviv, meanwhile, is fixated on accelerating its settlement project, beginning with annexations across large swathes of land in the West Bank.

    Beneath this lies another tension. Israel wants to erase any talk of a Palestinian state, while the US, though never serious about Palestinian sovereignty, insists on keeping the illusion alive.

    For Washington, that illusion is useful leverage with Arab capitals; for Israel, it is an obstacle.

    Trump’s plan even hinted at this illusion in its nineteenth clause: after certain “conditions,” a state might someday emerge. Yet annexation would shatter even that mirage.

    Trump, a man known for lying, is sincere in one thing: his promise to Arab states to restrain Israel from annexing land in the West Bank. But his sincerity is tactical, not moral.

    The restraint he offers is temporary, a pause meant to preserve the path toward expanding the Abraham Accords. It is not a strategic position, only a calculation.

    Natural next step
    Netanyahu, meanwhile, wants to force the world to accept that the West Bank is part of Israel, beyond the reach of UN resolutions or international law. For him, annexation is not a bargaining chip but the natural next step in completing the Zionist project.

    Both men seek Arab submission to Israeli hegemony. Yet Washington has learned that Arab leaders, while complicit, remain wary. They fear that deepening normalisation, meant to evolve from official policy to popular acceptance, could backfire after Gaza’s devastation, Israel’s ongoing assaults, the seizure of Syrian and Lebanese land, and the aggression against Qatar.

    Annexing the West Bank now, they worry, could blow up the illusion of peace that underpins normalisation itself.

    For the US, that illusion is vital. The Abraham Accords are not just about recognition but about institutionalising a regional order, a military and security alliance led by Israel, with Arab acquiescence to its sovereignty over all of historic Palestine.

    Netanyahu, however, sees no need for Arab consent. He believes force, not diplomacy, will impose Israel’s supremacy. His political survival depends on it: projecting strength, showing no retreat, proving that Arabs, defeated and divided, will ultimately rush to make deals with him.

    And so far, he has reason to believe he’s right. The war on Gaza has not halted normalisation; no Arab state has suspended trade or energy ties.

    On the contrary, cooperation, especially with the UAE, has expanded. Israeli analysts track this closely, confident that annexation may delay the process, but it will not derail it.

    No Arab threats
    Israel has concluded that no Arab state that normalised relations has threatened to suspend them, not even after the war of annihilation in Gaza, the incursions into Syria and Lebanon, or the demolition and settlement campaigns across the West Bank.

    Still, Zionist and pro-Israel circles in Washington continue to warn the Trump administration that Netanyahu’s recklessness could destroy everything. They know Arab leaders find it difficult to deepen normalisation while Israel endangers regional stability and shows open contempt for their security concerns.

    These leaders do not trust that their agreements can restrain Netanyahu’s excesses and take seriously his threats of expansion into Syria, Lebanon, and even Jordan, threats that have already begun to materialise.

    Arab governments have managed, for now, to contain public sympathy for Palestinians and suppress popular opposition to ties with Israel. Yet they remain aware of the anger simmering beneath the surface, which could erupt if Israel’s aggressions continue.

    It was this fear that drove pro-Israel circles in Washington to pressure the Trump administration to block, or rather, postpone, Israel’s annexation of West Bank land.

    Trump was ultimately persuaded. Arab leaders had delivered the message to him directly: annexation would make normalisation politically impossible. He therefore pledged to prevent it, at least temporarily.

    This exchange, Arab opposition to annexation and Trump’s tactical response, reveal that the Arab position can still influence Washington.

    US needs cooperation
    The United States cannot simply threaten every Arab government or sever all aid. It needs their cooperation to secure its regional goals, and that cooperation depends on a degree of stability.

    If chaos benefits Washington, popular anger can be tolerated, but if stability is the goal, unchecked Israeli aggression becomes a liability even for the United States.

    Trump’s response to the concerns of Arab leaders, especially those of Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt, revealed that they could have done more but chose not to. That, however, is another story.

    What matters here is that Trump understood two key conditions for sustaining the Abraham Accords: maintaining a ceasefire and preventing Israel from annexing West Bank land.

    The normalisation project aims to integrate Israel into the region and present it as an “indigenous” state, not a colonial one that expands by uprooting the land’s original population.

    This has long been Israel’s dream, but Netanyahu no longer seems concerned with appearances. He imagines himself on the verge of a sweeping historic victory.

    That fantasy is not his alone; Trump shares it as well.

    Trump’s ego greater
    Yet Trump’s own ego is greater. He now sees Netanyahu as an obstacle to his ambitions, a man jeopardising what Trump believes he has built and protected. Many within Zionist and pro-Israel circles agree: they want Trump to save Israel from Netanyahu.

    Trump’s anger is therefore genuine. He and his aides, backed by influential figures from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, one of the central bastions of Zionist influence in Washington, are determined not to let Netanyahu endanger both US and Israeli interests.

    This rift should be used by Arab states wisely, without illusion: it will not alter Washington’s strategic bond with Israel. However, I am under no illusion that they will do anything.

    Still, Arab states, however weak-willed, can take a minimum position, to publicly reject Israeli annexation of West Bank land and any territory from Gaza, and to reaffirm their refusal to recognise Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian land.

    They can at least reclaim the language of rights as a peaceful weapon: legal, diplomatic, and moral.

    That weapon gains power if Arab states act by filing a case against Israel and its settlements as violations of international law. Not to defend Palestine alone, but to defend themselves.

    For if they fail to act, the threat will not spare their regimes, nor the region they claim to protect.

    Lamis Andoni is a Palestinian journalist, writer and academic who launched The New Arab as its editor-in-chief.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump’s Diplomatic Initiative: A New Dawn or Just Another Dusk?

    Prefatory Note: The post below is based on modified responses to questions addressed to me by Rodrigo Craveiro, a Brazilian journalist. The focus is on what to expect in the weeks ahead to follow from the Trump diplomatic offensive to bring an Israeli-crafted peace to fruition in Gaza, and broader stability to the entire Middle East.

    1. There is a sense of joy but also of fury due to the fact that not all the bodies returned to Israel. How do you see this?

    Given the overall experience of the past two years, the attention accorded to the hostages by the Western media is misleadingly disproportionate, and as usual, Israel-biased. And now the pain of those Israelis who seek the agreed return of the bodies of non-surviving hostages is an extension of this distortion that shifts global concerns away from the terrible carnage and ccontinuing suffering in Gaza, and the totally ravaged homeland of the Palestinians that is being subject to day after arrangements made by its tormentors without Palestinian participation, much less authentic representation selected by the Palestinian people. Legitimate Palestinian leadership does not presently exist, even if there existed a commitment to identify and endow such individuals with appropriate roles. For sustainable progress toward a just future peace, the Palestinians must participate and be represented by their own choosing. Such a reality can only be decided by the Palestinians themselves, most obviously, in an internationally monitored competitive election among rival claimants to Palestinian leadership throughout Occupied Palestine.

    Hamas evidently agreed to return the bodies of dead hostages in their possession. Still, given the difficulty of locating the bodies and collecting the remains, unless there is a genuine repudiation by Hamas of this underlying duty associated with the ceasefire, their goodwill deserves the benefit of the doubt. The disappointment of the families in Israel that suffered from this human loss is understandable, but it should be interpreted in ways that are subordinate to more relevant issues, such as ceasefire violations. It was reported two days after the ceasefire went into effect that Israel killed by gunfire and missiles 7 Palestinians seeking to visit their destroyed home in Gaza City, a disturbing incident which seemed to receive scant, if any, coverage in international media or mainstream international commentary, and yet could be seen as evidence of the fragility of the ceasefire arrangements or an indication that Israel is ready to risk or is even seeking the collapse of the ceasefire by testing its limits. A carefree attitude toward the renewal of the violent encounter that rests on implied, or even secret, assurances of unwavering US support.

    • Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset, where he said his peace plan marks the “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” Do you believe this is something real, or is he exaggerating?

    My best guess is that historians looking back at those words will conclude that Trump had confused dawn with dusk. There is no prospect of a brightening of the dark skies casting a shadow on the countries of the Middle East until Palestinian rights are respected, and that includes honoring the international right of return of the seven million Palestinian refugees. There must be a campaign to obtain proper accountability for the Gaza Genocide. Until the costs of Gaza reconstruction are borne by the perpetrators of the devastation, accompanied by some process of reconciliation that does not whitewash the crimes of Israel and its enablers, it will be impossible to create a peaceful future for the region. At the very least, the vast devastation caused by the genocide must be physically overcome by a process of reconstruction funded by adequate reparations. The scope of reconstruction must include health, heritage, and religious sites; educational and cultural institutions; residential neighborhoods; UNRWA facilities; and much more. The most painful losses of loved ones and body parts can never be compensated for by material means and are an enduring negative legacy of the Gaza Genocide. Even recognizing pragmatic constraints on peacemaking given political conditions a ‘peace’ crafted to please the perpetrator of genocide and its most complicit supporter, is highly unlikely to proceed very far. The Trump 20 Point Plan is not a break with the past, but an effort to induce forgetfulness necessary to attain credibility in proposing post-conflict arrangements. To grasp the ironies of this Trump Plan, we should imagine our reactions if the Nazi survivors of World War II had been put in charge of designing the future of the international order, or even of just post-war Germany. It would not have seemed like a step toward a peaceful future, regardless of the language used to obscure the perverse underlying reality.

    3- Trump and the three mediating governments signed the peace plan for Gaza at the Sharm el-Sheik Summit. Given this development, what can we expect to happen in the future?

    It is almost universally believed that the ceasefire should remain operative even if violations of the underlying plan occur or its further implementation stalls. Beyond this, it is a matter of how much leverage the US exerts to advance the governance proposals in Part II of Trump’s Plan. Whether Hamas and Palestinian resistance forces are subject to being coerced by further threats of Israeli renewal of its genocidal assault is unclear. It is also uncertain if the US would go along with an Israeli unilateral departure from the Trump Plan. Israel is quite capable of fabricating claims that Hamas is violating the ceasefire and related obligations, leaving it no choice but to resume its military operations. It would appear at this time that Trump would allow Israel to exercise such an option. At the same time, Trump is so mercurial and narcissistic that it is possible he would regard Israel’s action as undermining his claims as peacemaker and repudiate the Israeli resumption of large-scale violence in Gaza. In an odd way, Israel and Trump may turn out to have different goals. Israel has not given up its quest for ‘Greater Israel,’ which means absorbing not only East Jerusalem, but Gaza and the West Bank within its sovereign territory. Trump may still strangely believe he can obtain the Nobel Peace Prize if his Plan is operationalized in Gaza and the two conflicting parties accept the arrangements.

    Overall, it is clear that peace and stability will not be the future of the Middle East until Israel respects Palestinian rights, drastically redefines or repudiates Zionism and apartheid in a manner consistent with international law, and agrees to the establishment of a Peace & Reconciliation Commission to acknowledge Israel’s past criminal violations of Palestinian rights and to announce a new dedication to the creation of an independent commission that assists the Palestinian/Israeli leadership to build future relations between Jews and Arabs on the basis of equality, dignity, and rights as the foundation for sustainable patterns of peaceful coexistence. For a truly new and stable Middle East, Israel must agree to the establishment of a nuclear-free zone, including itself and Iran.

    4- What are the Risks of Clashes between Hamas and Gaza Clans and Factions?

    These issues are murky, with contending interpretations and explanations of their recent prominence amid this most ambitious effort to develop the current ceasefire pause into a framework for long-term conflict resolution by implementing, perhaps with modifications, the advanced phases of the Trump 20 Point Plan. In this context, Israel seems to welcome these tensions within Gaza, by various means, including subsidies, to allow them an option to exit from this series of developments that might challenge their annexation plans in the West Bank as well as Gaza. It is possible that the Netanyahu government agreed to the ceasefire only to secure the return of the hostages, and never assented to any wider interference with its militarist approach, and may have had assurances of Trump’s support, no matter what.  If this plays out, Israel would actually welcome the collapse of the conflict-resolution part of the framework in a manner that would find tacit acceptance, if not outright approval, in Washington. Such a manipulation of reality requires pinning the blame on Hamas, which is currently taking the form of criticizing Hamas for seeking to destroy those armed groups in Gaza that collaborated with the Israeli military operations.

    Such a line of interpretation is reinforced by Israeli unreasonably shrill complaints about Hamas’ failure to return all of the bodies of the dead hostages. On its part, Hamas claims it has returned all the remains it could discover with its existing equipment, given that some dead hostages remain trapped far beneath the rubble. This seems a reasonable explanation, as Hamas has little incentive to retain the remains of dead Israeli hostages or to take steps that provide an excuse for Israel to resume bombardment and other forms of violence in Gaza.

    Such a line of interpretation is also consistent with Israel’s pattern of lethal violence killing Palestinians in several instances that have the clear appearance of being deliberate violations of the ceasefire agreement. Additionally, Israeli interference with the delivery of humanitarian aid by reducing the entry of relief goods by 50% is another expression of Israel’s unwillingness to allow even a conflict-resolving process weighted in its favor to go forward. These are serious provocations by Israel, causing sharp criticism from some governments that had previously endorsed the Trump approach, but not yet even a whimper of disapproval from the US.

    The gathering evidence suggests that Israel is accumulating grounds for repudiating the ‘peace’ process and resuming its military operations, accompanied by a renewed clampdown on the further delivery of humanitarian aid, despite widespread hunger, disease, and trauma among the civilian population of Gaza. The next week or so shall determine whether this pessimistic assessment dooms the ceasefire and the prospects for conflict-resolution through diplomacy rather than further recourse to genocide. Israel, since the return of the living hostages in Gaza, holds all the cards, and Hamas has none except for its incredible capacity for resilience.

    As yet, there are no signs pointing to a new dawn.

    The post Trump’s Diplomatic Initiative: A New Dawn or Just Another Dusk? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Genocide two years on: It is the West, not Gaza, that must be deradicalised

    This brutal war on Palestinians has not just unleashed Israel’s demons. It has unmasked our own regimes, as they crack down on humanitarian activism. Jonathan Cook reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    Anniversaries are often a cause for celebration. But who could have imagined back in October 2023 that we would now be marking the two-year anniversary of a genocide, documented in the minutest detail on our phones every day for 24 months? A genocide that could have been stopped at any point, had the US and its allies made the call.

    This is an anniversary so shameful that no one in power wants it remembered. Rather, they are actively encouraging us to forget the genocide is happening, even at its very height.

    Israel’s relentless crimes against the people of Gaza barely register in our news any longer.

    There is a horrifying lesson here, one that applies equally to Israel and its Western patrons. A genocide takes place — and is permitted to take place — only when a profound sickness has entered the collective soul of the perpetrators.

    For the past 80 years, Western societies have grappled with — or, at least, thought they did — the roots of that sickness.

    They wondered how a Holocaust could have taken place in their midst, in a Germany that was central to the modern, supposedly “civilised”, Western world.

    They imagined — or pretended to — that their wickedness had been extirpated, their guilt cleansed, through the sponsorship of a “Jewish state”. That state, violently established in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, served as a European protectorate on the ruins of the Palestinian people’s homeland.

    Desperate to control
    The Middle East, let us note, just happened to be a region that the West was desperate to keep controlling, despite growing Arab demands to end more than a century of brutal Western colonialism.

    Why? Because the region had recently emerged as the world’s oil spigot.

    Israel’s very purpose — enshrined in the ideology of Zionism, or Jewish supremacism in the Middle East — was to act as a proxy for Western colonialism. It was a client state planted there to keep order on the West’s behalf, while the West pretended to withdraw from the region.

    This big picture — the one Western politicians and media refuse to acknowledge — has been the context for events there ever since, including Israel’s current, genocidal endgame in Gaza.

    Two years in, what should have been obvious from the start is becoming ever-harder to ignore: the genocide had nothing to do with Hamas’s one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The genocide was never about “self-defence”. It was preordained by the ideological imperatives of Zionism.

    Hamas’s break-out from Gaza — a prison camp into which Palestinians had been herded decades earlier, after their expulsion from their homeland — provided the pretext. It all too readily unleashed demons long lurking in the soul of the Israeli body politic.

    And more importantly, it released similar demons — though better concealed — in the Western ruling class, as well as parts of their societies heavily conditioned to believe that the interests of the ruling class coincide with their own.

    Bubble of denial
    Two years into the genocide, and in spite of this week’s fragile ceasefire negotiated by US President Donald Trump and the three mediators, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, the West is still deep in its self-generated bubble of denial about what has been going on in Gaza – and its role in it.

    “History repeats itself,” as the saying goes, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”

    The same could be said of “peace processes”. Thirty years ago, the West force-fed Palestinians the Oslo Accords with the promise of eventual statehood.

    Oslo was the tragedy. It led to an ideological rupture in the Palestinian national movement; to a deepening geographic split between an imprisoned population in the occupied West Bank and an even more harshly imprisoned population in Gaza; to Israel’s increasing use of new technologies to confine, surveil and oppress both sets of Palestinians; and finally, to Hamas’s brief break-out from the Gaza prison camp, and Israel’s genocidal “response”.

    Now, President Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” offers the farce: unapologetic gangsterism masquerading as a “solution” to the Gaza genocide. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — a war criminal who, alongside his US counterpart George W Bush, destroyed Iraq more than two decades ago — will issue diktats to the people of Gaza on Israel’s behalf.

    Gaza, not just Hamas, faced an ultimatum: “Take the deal, or we will put you in concrete boots and sink you in the Mediterranean.”

    Surrender document
    Barely veiled by the threat was the likelihood that, even if Hamas felt compelled to sign up to this surrender document, Gaza’s people would end up in concrete boots all the same.

    Gaza’s population has been so desperate for a respite from the slaughter that it would accept almost anything. But it is pure delusion for the rest of us to believe a state that has spent two years carrying out a genocide can be trusted either to respect a ceasefire or to honour the terms of a peace plan, even one so heavily skewed in its favour.

    The farce of Trump’s peace plan — his “deal of the millennium” — was evident from the first of its 20 points: “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.”

    The document’s authors no more wonder what might have “radicalised” Gaza than Western capitals did when Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, broke out of the prison enclave with great violence on 7 October 2023.

    Were the people of Gaza simply born radical, or did events turn them radical? Were they “radicalised” when Israel ethnically cleansed them from their original lands, in what is now the self-declared “Jewish state” of Israel, and dumped them in the tiny holding pen of Gaza?

    Were they “radicalised” by being surveilled and oppressed in a dystopian, open-air prison, decade upon decade? Was it the experience of living for 17 years under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade that denied them the right to travel or trade, and forced their children on to a diet that left them malnourished?

    Or maybe they were radicalised by the silence from Israel’s Western patrons, who supplied the weaponry and lapped up the rewards: the latest confinement technologies, field-tested by Israel on the people of Gaza.

    Gaza most extreme
    The truth ignored in the opening point of Trump’s “peace plan” is that it is entirely normal to be “radicalised” when you live in an extreme situation. And there are no places on the planet more extreme than Gaza.

    It is not Gaza that needs “deradicalising”. It is the West and its Israeli client state.

    The case for deradicalising Israel should hardly need stating. Poll after poll has shown Israelis are not just in favour of the annihilation their state is carrying out in Gaza; they believe their government needs to be even more aggressive, even more genocidal.

    This past May, as Palestinian babies were shrivelling into dry husks from Israel’s blockade on food and aid, 64 percent of Israelis said they believed “there are no innocents” in Gaza, a place where around half of the population of two million people are children.

    The figure would be even higher were it reporting only the views of Israeli Jews. The survey included the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinians — survivors of mass expulsions in 1948 during Israel’s Western-sponsored creation. This much-oppressed minority has been utterly ignored throughout these past two years.

    Another survey conducted earlier this year found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews favoured the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. More than half, 56 percent, also supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel — even though that minority has kept its head bowed throughout the genocide, for fear of reaping a whirlwind should it speak up.

    In addition, 47 percent of Israeli Jews approved of killing all the inhabitants of Gaza, even its children.

    Netanyahu’s crimes
    The crimes overseen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is so often held up by outsiders as some kind of aberration, are entirely representative of wider public sentiment in Israel.

    The genocidal fervour in Israeli society is an open secret. Soldiers flood social media platforms with videos celebrating their war crimes. Teenage Israelis make funny videos on TikTok endorsing the starvation of babies in Gaza. Israeli state TV broadcasts a child choir evangelising for Gaza’s annihilation.

    Such views are not simply a response to the horrors that unfolded inside Israel on 7 October 2023. As polls have consistently shown, deep-seated racism towards Palestinians is decades old.

    It is not former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who started the trend of calling Palestinians “human animals”. Politicians and religious leaders have been depicting them as “cockroaches”, “dogs”, “snakes” and “donkeys” since Israel’s creation. It is this long process of dehumanisation that made the genocide possible.

    In response to the outpouring of support in Israel for the extermination in Gaza, Orly Noy, a veteran Israeli journalist and activist, reached a painful conclusion last month on the +972 website: “What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.”

    And she noted that this problem derives from an ideology with a reach far beyond Israel itself: “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”

    As the genocide has unfolded week after week, month after month — ever-more divorced from any link to 7 October 2023 — and Western leaders have carried on justifying their inaction, a much deeper realisation is dawning.

    Demon in the West
    This is not just about a demon unleashed among Israelis. It is about a demon in the soul of the West. It is us — the power bloc that established Israel, arms Israel, funds Israel, indulges Israel, excuses Israel — that really needs deradicalising.

    Germany underwent a process of “denazification” following the end of the Second World War — a process, it is now clear from the German state’s feverish repression of any public opposition to the genocide in Gaza, that was never completed.

    A far deeper campaign of deradicalisation than the one Nazi Germany was subjected to, is now required in the West — one where normalising the murder of tens of thousands of children, live-streamed to our phones, can never be allowed to happen again.

    A deradicalisation that would make it impossible to conceive of our own citizens travelling to Israel to help take part in the Gaza genocide, and then be welcomed back to their home countries with open arms.

    A deradicalisation that would mean our governments could not contemplate silently abandoning their own citizens — citizens who joined an aid flotilla to try to break Israel’s illegal starvation-siege of Gaza — to the goons of Israel’s fascist police minister.

    A deradicalisation that would make it inconceivable for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or other Western leaders, to host Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for the genocide, arguing that no one there — not even its one million children — were innocent.

    A deradicalisation that would make it self-evident to Western governments that they must uphold the World Court’s ruling last year, not ignore it: that Israel must be forced to immediately end its decades-long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that they must carry out the arrest of Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity, as specified by the International Criminal Court.

    A deradicalisation that would make it preposterous for Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, to call demonstrations against a two-year genocide “fundamentally un-British” — or to propose ending the long-held right to protest, but only when the injustice is so glaring, the crime so unconscionable, that it leads people to repeatedly protest.

    Eroding right to protest
    Mahmood justifies this near-death-knell erosion of the right to protest on the grounds that regular protests have a “cumulative impact”. She is right. They do: by exposing as a sham our government’s claim to stand for human rights, and to represent anything more than naked, might-is-right politics.

    A deradicalisation is long overdue — and not just to halt the West’s crimes against the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East region.

    Already, as our leaders normalise their crimes abroad, they are normalising related crimes at home. The first signs are in the designation of opposition to genocide as “hate”, and of practical efforts to stop the genocide as “terrorism”.

    The intensifying campaign of demonisation will grow, as will the crackdown on fundamental and long-cherished rights.

    Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. And our leaders are slowly declaring war on us, whether it be those protesting the Gaza genocide, or those opposed to a consumption-driven West’s genocide of the planet.

    We are being isolated, smeared and threatened. Now is the time to stand together before it is too late. Now is the time to find your voice.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Surreal Reality: Global School Principal and His Favorite Monitor

    IMAGE/Khaama Press
    VIDEO/Mirror Now/Youtube

    The Principal of Global School had asked his favorite Monitor to keep an eye on other students in the Middle East class.

    The Monitor’s family had given hefty donation to the Principal for running the school. In return, the Principal would overlook small or big mistakes, blunders, wrongs, of his favorite Monitor, and would do him great favors. For a very long time, the Monitor’s been mad and has been punishing some particular students. Since last two years, the Monitor went totally rogue; he beat the hell out of five students. One of those students, the first student, witnessed half his house burned down. The Principal, a peace loving person, avoids hassles and so didn’t say anything to the Monitor — and earned suggestions of his name for the Noble Peace Prize.

    Then one day the Monitor beat up the sixth student. It was a humongous dilemma for the Principal: the sixth student had given big donation too, and had gifted a fast vehicle to the Principal. It is a universal fact that the Principal rarely says no to the Monitor. The Principal has a doctorate in The Art of the Deal; he found a way out. Although he permitted to strike the sixth one. After fifteen or so minutes he called the student to inform him. The sixth student was crying: the Monitor had already finished his job.

    The Principal said: I called you the minute I knew. The Principal sensed the sixth one’s anger and decided to do something.

    When, the Monitor went to the Principal’s office to report how the Middle East class was doing, the Principal handed him a piece of paper with a written apology which the Monitor was ordered to read out to the sixth student, on the phone. The Principal didn’t want to piss off one of his big donors.

    The Monitor didn’t like it but then he thought: I control the whole Middle East class, I have so much power, unimaginable. After Principal, I am the only one with so much power — that power is due to money and fighting toys from the Principal’s family. I better say sorry, as it is small
    inconvenience to continue the abundance being received.

    The Monitor half-heartedly said sorry, but the humiliation he felt and the reluctance to apologize was clearly visible on his face. The sixth student just wanted to hear an apology to save his face. The Principal’s donations from that student are now secure.

    The Principal wrote a personal letter assuring the sixth student that from now on any attack on him would be considered a “threat” to the Principal himself.

    But it was the Monitor who got the last laugh. The Principal promised the first student that his half burnt house will be somewhat fixed and he’ll be permitted to reside there. But it is the Monitor at whose whim the repair will begin — it may be forever delayed or postponed.

    The post Surreal Reality: Global School Principal and His Favorite Monitor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Envoy Steve Witkoff and His Sons Blur Lines Between Profit and Politics

    As officials with Hamas say they will respond “soon” to President Trump’s ceasefire proposal to end Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza, brokered with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, we look at the many other deals Witkoff and his family are involved with. A New York Times investigation reveals that when Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump, began his new position as a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nobel laureates blast death of Iranian Somayeh Rashidi in prison as ‘state murder’

    The death of a female Iranian political prisoner in hospital following a series of seizures has sparked outrage from Iran’s two Nobel laureates and right groups who have labeled her death a state-sponsored murder. Somayeh Rashidi died after several days in hospital following her transfer from Qarchak Prison near Tehran, Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency reported on Thursday.

    Rashidi, born in 1983, was detained in April for allegedly writing anti-government graffiti slogans in Tehran’s Javadieh district.

    Nobel Peace laureates Narges Mohammadi condemned her death in custody, describing it as part of a pattern of abuse in detention. “This devastating loss of Somayeh Rashidi is not an accident but the result of a systematic policy of neglect and cruelty inside Iranian prisons,” Mohammadi said in a post on X.

    Rights groups and activists including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi had previously raised alarm about Rashidi’s deteriorating condition, highlighting her urgent need for medical attention.

    Iran International reported earlier this month that Rashidi’s condition had severely declined, with doctors holding little hope for her recovery.

    Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who faced a death sentence and torture in prison but was ultimately released, called Rashidi’s death a deliberate act to suppress dissent. “Such deliberate disregard for political prisoners is an example of silent, systematic suppression and elimination of dissenters. Why should anyone be arrested for graffiti?” Salehi posted on X. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/05/25/vaclav-havel-international-prize-for-creative-dissent-2024-goes-to-iranian-hip-hop-artist-uyghur-poet-and-venezuelan-pianist/]

    Former political prisoner and women’s rights defender Hasti Amiri said Rashidi’s case showed deliberate neglect.

    Sources speaking anonymously to Iran International alleged that security officials pressured Rashidi’s family to describe her hospitalization as a suicide attempt, intensifying accusations of a cover-up.

    Qarchak deaths mount

    Human rights groups including the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) have publicly called for the closure of Qarchak, describing it as “one of the darkest symbols of systematic human rights violations in the Islamic Republic.” Rashidi death comes less than a week after another prisoner, Maryam Shahraki, died in Qarchak last Friday. According to Norway-based rights group Hengaw Organizattion, three women have already died in this facility this year due to lack of adequate medical care — Jamileh Azizi on September 19, Shahraki on September 13, and Farzaneh Bijanipour on Januar

    https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509253807

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Israeli Overreach in Palestine and West Asia

    In an extraordinary televised statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Zionist faithful that the state of Israel will curtail its current ambitions as part of a longer term strategy. The statement is short on specifics, but it comes on the heels of several apparent major failures of Israeli policy.

    The most recent is the attack on Qatar, which has probably robbed both Israel and the US of the vaunted Abraham Accords, which had been a cornerstone in Israeli, US and Western policy in the region. Although Israel, the UAE and Bahrain are the only official signers, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait assumed (or gained assurances) that by “normalizing” relations with Israel and cooperating with the US and NATO countries, they could come under a protective American umbrella that would assure their security from common enemies, in much the same way as Jordan and Egypt, if not better. The bombing of Qatar was a message that not only can they not trust Israel to honor the arrangement, but that US protection – a supposedly rock solid foundation – was essentially worthless, even for a small, compliant country housing the largest US military base in West Asia to protect it. The fact that the Israeli bombings took place in the capital of Qatar, less than 20 miles from al-Udeid airbase leased to the US and heaquarters of the US Central Command, was not lost on the Qataris or the other Gulf monarchies. It was a grave shock to US interests in the region. Even if the US had taken pains to assure the Arab monarchies after the fact that it had been a foolish error of judgment that would not be repeated, these conservative and sensitive partners are not likely to take such assurances for granted anymore, and will be more open to offers from more reliable protectors.

    The US does not often rebuff or chastise Israel, and even less under a Trump administration so beholden to Israel and its US supporters for delivering the White House to him. But in this case even the threat of releasing Epstein files – which the Mossad is thought to hold – might not be enough to coerce such assistance to Israel for a second such episode. (You can only divulge the files once, after which they no longer have value.)

    This brings us to the threat of a US-Israeli attack on Iran. This, too, is probably receding, partly as an effect of the Israeli and US miscalculation in Qatar. Instead, the US is more likely to settle for the recent UN imposition of “snapback” economic sanctions on Iran, which were probably inevitable in any case. Even Iran and the rest of the world might prefer such sanctions as an alternative to a major regional war with unknown consequences. In addition, the Pentagon has expressed concern about the depletion of US weaponry through transfer to Israel and Ukraine. Netanyahu’s speech indicates that Israel might also be having second thoughts, related more to the effect of such a war upon an Israeli public already demoralized and by what seems like endless sacrifices to them. Another exodus of Israel’s population could have major long term consequences.

    For these reasons and others, it is possible that Israel is also trimming its ambitions with respect to Gaza. Already, Netanyahu has stepped back from his recent goal of depopulating all of Gaza. His military commanders have told him that they would need six infantry divisions to do that, while the current under-strength units amount to little more than one. Netanyahu has therefore adjusted the goal to ethnically cleansing just the northern third of the territory, consisting mostly of Gaza City. Nevertheless, this task is more difficult because few Palestinians in northern Gaza consider southern Gaza safer or more livable than Gaza City, even under attack. Netanyahu knows how to change that equation, but he won’t. Furthermore, the longer he pursues this objective, the less patient the Israeli population – including the military – will become, and the more casualties it will take from the literally underground resistance of Hamas and its allies. Israeli society is substantially exhausted and perhaps unwilling to stay the course.

    Of course, Israel is by no means throwing in the towel on all of its actual and potential occupied territories. It has captured substantial amounts of Syrian territory with relatively little opposition since the defeat of the Syrian army. Its military is also active in Lebanon, with the long term purpose of capturing, depopulating and annexing south Lebanon. Resistance there has been subdued since a ceasefire was negotiated November 27, 2024, despite thousands of Israeli violations, but Israel may decide that this is where it can advance its expansionist agenda more successfully than on other fronts. Nevertheless, Israel has failed at least six times at capturing south Lebanon since 1967, and it may prove beyond their means this time, as well. Hezbollah will undoubtedly have a say in the matter.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the world is becoming more activist in isolating and ostracizing Israel. Israel can survive even if its only lifeline is the US, but it could potentially become a caged existence that will last only as long as its support in the US, where the Jewish community seems to be growing at roughly the same rate that Israel’s shrinks, but where there is increasing concern that Israel is committing a genocide.

    These trends are reflected in Netanyahu’s speech and in the frustration and division within Israeli society itself. Is the Zionist experiment finally starting to fail? We know that it cannot survive without massive support and protection from the United States and its powerful Zionist lobby. But is this lobby reaching the limits of its power, as it seeks to circumscribe free speech, academia, the media and other aspects of American society, using antisemitism as a bludgeon? It is not clear that Americans, especially the younger generation, will tolerate such invasion upon their lives and freedoms.

    The post Israeli Overreach in Palestine and West Asia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The “Fat Boy Posse’s” Impending Attack on Iran

    Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates. How many children in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have been hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words?

    And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation.

    On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: ‘For Saddam from the Fat Boy Posse’. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother’s marbles (Arundhati Roy, 2004, p. 81).

    Arundhati Roy’s heartrending lament of course refers to the 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq by the US and its Coalition of the Willing (the US, the UK, Australia, and Poland – a gang otherwise known as the ‘bullied and the bought’). An invasion and occupation that by some estimates have caused the deaths of up to 2.4 million Iraqis, a figure that does not include more than half a million children who died as a result of 13 years of harsh economic sanctions leading up to the invasion.  

    But Roy’s words could be applied equally to many other countries that have been subjected to ‘the broad-spectrum antibiotic of [US] “democratic reform”’, and they will be just as relevant to those countries – like Iran – for whom such treatment lies in store.

    Since 2003, more or less the same Fat Boy Posse (plus Israel) has been doing pretty much the same things in places like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria. Countries that have been cast by the US and its allies (also known as ‘the international community’) as ‘peripheral countries that are either ‘state sponsors of terror’ (never mind that the US is the reigning world champion) and/or countries whose ‘governments are not in control of all of their territory’ and clearly are therefore in need of ‘stabilising’ with US ‘help’.

    So where will the Fat Boy Posse and friends strike next?

    The notable regional omission from the list of countries that have been ‘stabilised’, ‘democratised’ and saved from themselves by the US et al. is the ancient (ten-thousand-year-old) civilisation of Iran. It is the final and, arguably, the most important remaining target.

    A full-blown attack on Iran has been in the making for at least the last half century. It gathered pace with the identification of Iran as a prime target by the US in its pursuit of the Israeli 1996 ‘clean break strategy’ to remake the Middle East.

    Now – before Iran becomes too difficult to subdue and disintegrate – there is a sense of urgency in Israel and the US to complete the unfinished business begun with the 12-day war of June 2025. With the support of the West, whose elites have always sought control over the natural resources of the Middle East, Israeli and US bombs and missiles with similar inscriptions to those dropped on Iraq will soon be raining down on Iran.

    Except – unlike Iraq, Palestine and the other countries on the list – militarily Iran will be a much more resolute, well-armed and fearsome opponent. In a war with Iran, there will be many missiles flying in the opposite direction. Missiles whose steel torsos will bear inscriptions like, ‘For Donald and Benjamin from the Persian Immortals and Aswaran’.

    Drawing on Noam Chomsky and other recent analyses of the issues involved, in this essay, first, we will explain why war with Iran is almost inevitable in the short term. We shall do so by setting out the main factors that – historically – have determined the positions of the opposing sides towards each other and, in the process, expose the specious arguments or pretexts used by Israel and the US to justify their aggression.

    Second, we shall discuss briefly the necessary conditions for a just peace in the Middle East and say why we think its prospects are so poor.

    Third, we shall argue that the impending war is likely to be more devastating and costly in terms of lives lost than any other war fought in the Middle East, a war that will have significant regional and global ramifications and, according to Jeffrey Sachs, will be unwinnable.

    And fourth, on the basis of our discussion, we shall apportion responsibility for the imminent renewal of conflict among the three main combatants – the US, Israel, and Iran.

    The Israeli-US Position

    The ‘threat’ allegedly posed to US and Western interests and ‘security’ by a recalcitrant Iran has always been a function of its geostrategic importance in the Middle East, which has a number of important dimensions, some quite recently developed, and some of which have global ramifications.

    Iran’s Natural Resource Wealth. Iran has the second largest economy in the Middle East, which is dependent on its significant deposits of oil (with an estimated value of $10 trillion) and gas (about 18% of the world total) and, to a lesser extent, substantial reserves of coal, copper, iron ore, lead, and zinc, along with uranium and gold. Overall, in terms of natural resources, Iran claims to be the fifth richest country in the world.

    This is the historical bedrock of Western (capitalist) interest in the balkanisation of Iran. US control of the region would give it ‘a degree of lever­age over both rivals and allies prob­a­bly unpar­al­leled in the his­to­ry of empire… It is dif­fi­cult to over­state the role of the Gulf in the way the world is cur­rent­ly run’ (Stevenson quoted in Chomsky, 2019)

    Needless to say, these qualities will not have gone unnoticed by a ‘property development’- minded US president.

    Threat to the disruption of shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. Iran’s long southern sea border with the Persian Gulf enables it to disrupt shipping, particularly in the very narrow Straits of Hormuz. Approximately 20% of global oil consumption and a high percentage of global gas consumption passes through the straits.

    Iran’s improving relations with China and Russia. In addition to the above, the importance to the US of regime change in Iran has increased significantly as Iran’s economic and military ties with Russia, China and North Korea have improved.

    Examples include the recently opened Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) rail link from China to Tehran via Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which has greatly expanded trade between the two countries. Another rail link is planned that would traverse northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, also as a part of the BRI.

    China is now Iran’s largest trading partner and imports a significant proportion (some estimates indicate as much as 90%) of Iran’s oil output or about 11 million barrels per day or 15% of China’s oil imports.

    Clearly, the harm that regime change in Iran could do to China will be of considerable appeal to the current US administration and its allies.

    According to Michael Hudson, another threat to US interests arises from the warming relations between Iran and Russia, which portend the possibility of a Russian route to the Persian Gulf, via the Caspian Sea and Iran, which would enable Russia to bypass the Suez Canal.

    A sovereign Iran also gets in the way of the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced by the US in 2023 as a counter to the BRI.

    Contribution to de-dollarisation. In conjunction with the rapid development of BRICS, the possibility – suggested by Yanis Varoufakis – that China might establish a new Bretton Woods, and the political frailty of some of the family controlled Arab states, these developments threaten to accelerate the de-dollarisation of the world economy. The reliance of world economies on the US dollar underpins US global hegemony.

    An impediment to a Greater Israel. The notion of a Greater Israel – one that expands its borders to include Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia – is a paramount and long-held Zionist objective and a stated ambition of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

    Iran’s geographical presence, which bestrides the Middle East, and its support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis – the so-called Axis of Resistance to US/Israeli dominance of the region – is an impediment to this.

    In order for Israel to achieve its Greater Israel aims, regime change in Iran is a necessary and sufficient condition.

    Defiance and a threat to ‘world peace’. Like Cuba and Venezuela and other recalcitrants, since the election of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran’s mortal sin has been to refuse to do as the US and Israel and the West generally dictate, which is taken and depicted as a threat to the US-imposed global order, otherwise known as ‘world peace’. Chomsky (2013) explains it in the following terms:

    We’re back to the Mafia principle. In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.

    And, most dangerous of all, ‘Suc­cess­ful defi­ance can inspire oth­ers to pur­sue the same course. The ​“virus” can ​“spread con­ta­gion,” as Kissinger put it when labouring to over­throw Sal­vador Allende in Chile’ (Chomsky, 2019). Without absolute fealty to the Godfather, the whole system of domination will crumble. Miscreants must therefore be taught to behave.

    Moreover, the significance of disobedience to the US rises exponentially when it is tied to the possibility of nuclear deterrence, as Chomsky (2019) avers: ‘For those who wish to ram­page freely in the region, a deter­rent is an intol­er­a­ble threat — even worse than ​“suc­cess­ful defiance”.’

    The threat of nuclear weapons. Israel has long held that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, which would clearly constitute a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This assertion (unsullied by evidence to support it) has been at the centre of Israel’s long-standing pretext for its aggressiveness towards Iran, justified on the basis of self-defence and presented as the West’s first line of resistance against the threat that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the rest of the world.

    The latter view was expressed explicitly by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, on 20 June 2025 before the UN Security Council when he said that Israel was doing the “dirty work… for all of us”, and was protecting “civilisation” from “jihadist [Iranian] genocidal imperialism”, which wants to redesign the global order.

    No matter that, with US backing, Israel, Pakistan, and India all posses nuclear weapons and are not signatories to the NPT.

    Historical antagonism towards Iran. The last seventy-five years of enmity between Iran and the US and its allies began with the coup instigated by the UK with US support in 1953, which reinstalled Pahlavi as Shah. According to Chomsky (2013), since that time, ‘not a day has passed in which the US has not been torturing Iranians.’

    Its continuation to the present day has been marked by ‘cyberwar and sabotage …, numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists, constant threats of use of force (“all options are open”) in violation of international law (and if anyone were to care, the U.S. Constitution) (Chomsky, 2022)’, as the following critical incidents demonstrate:

    • First, the Islamic revolution of 1979, which overthrew the despotic US puppet regime of the Shah.
    • Second, the severance of diplomatic relations by the US in 1980 after Iranian students – who were protesting the admission to the US of the Shah for cancer treatment – broke into the US embassy and held 52 US citizens hostage for 444 days. Economic sanctions were also imposed on Iran.
    • Third, the provision by the US of support to Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, which began in September 1980 and lasted for 8 years and resulted in the deaths of up to 750,000 Iranian military personnel and civilians, many of them killed by chemical weapons.
    • Fourth, the designation of Iran as a ‘state sponsor of terror’ by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. This followed an attack on a US military base in Beirut that killed 241 US military personnel. The attack was attributed to Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia organisation backed by Iran.
    • Fifth, in July 1988, the shooting down of Iran Air flight IR655 by a US warship in the Persian Gulf, which resulted in the deaths of all 290 passengers and crew. Although it paid compensation to the families of those killed, the US never admitted responsibility or apologised. After the tragedy, the arrogance of the US and its disdain of Iran were typified by President George Bush’s infamous exclamation ‘I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.’
    • Sixth, in 1995, the imposition of more sanctions on Iran by President Bill Clinton – which persist to this day – and have caused enormous suffering in Iran. At about the same time, in order to foment insurrection and bring about regime change, the US dramatically increased its funding of exiled Iranian monarchists and opposition groups within the country.
    • Seventh, in 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, the designation of Iran as a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ (with Iraq and North Korea) by President George Bush.
    • Eighth, in 2018, President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was designed to limit Iran’s nuclear activities (including a cap of 3.67% on nuclear enrichment) in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
    • Ninth, in Baghdad in 2020, in a drone strike, the assassination by the US of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
    • Tenth, in March 2025, the initiation by the US of fake negotiations for a new nuclear deal as cover for an attack on Iran by Israel and the US on 13 June 2025, which marked the beginning of the 12-day war.

    US/Israeli Orientalism and Islamophobia. Orientalists believe in the intrinsic superiority of the peoples of the West (Europe, the US and the Anglo settler societies) and Western civilisation over the peoples and civilisations of the Orient (the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia) or the “other.”

    As we have noted elsewhere:

    ‘The brutal and, all too frequently, genocidal consequences of Orientalism have a gory track record that is well known, but its manifestations today are more flagrant, more brazen, and more recorded than ever. The Western-perpetrated or sponsored atrocities of the 21st century, many of which are US- and Israeli-made, all bear its hallmarks.

    Carried to the extreme, Orientalism casts the “other” as sub-human, or vermin that are treated with revulsion and can be exterminated or deracinated without compunction, as was the practice in the colonies, in apartheid South Africa, in settler societies such as the US, Canada, and Australia, and as is happening now in Palestine. It amounts to institutionalised racism of the most pernicious kind that is both latent and manifest.’

    It is certain that a new war with Iran will be fuelled partly by the Orientalism and Islamophobia that are deeply ingrained in the governments of both the US and Israel, and which will include beliefs about the general inferiority and unworthiness of the ‘raghead’ opposition, their corruption and cowardliness, and US and Israeli superiority, exceptionalism and divine right.

    In this view, Muslim deaths can be discounted because they are terrorists and religious fanatics or because, if they are not, they carry the seeds of terrorism and religious fanaticism within them and are therefore richly deserving of their fates.

    The vitriolic responses of right-wing extremists in the US to the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025 – such as Steve Bannon who said ‘Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country’ and Eon Musk: ‘If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die’ – are representative of the views of a president and government who they helped elect.

    According to Chris Hedges, ‘Kirk was a poster child for our [US] emergent Christian Fascism’. And, like all fascists, Kirk was Islamophobic, tweeting ‘Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,’ and that it is ‘not compatible with western civilization.’

    Presidential idiosyncrasies. Our recent parody of President Trump’s international ‘property development’ ambitions notwithstanding, it is necessary to qualify any attempt to apply the constraints of rational argument to US foreign policy by saying that the president’s psychological condition makes the ideas of ‘logic’ and ‘rationality’ anathema.

    We are not alone in thinking this. Commenting on Trump’s first term in office, Chomsky (2019) observed: “It is a mis­take to seek some grand geopo­lit­i­cal think­ing behind Trump’s per­for­mances. These are read­i­ly explained as the actions of a nar­cis­sis­tic mega­lo­ma­ni­ac whose doc­trine is to main­tain per­son­al pow­er, and who has the polit­i­cal savvy to sat­is­fy his con­stituen­cies, pri­mar­i­ly cor­po­rate pow­er and pri­vate wealth but also the vot­ing base.” Most would agree that the bizarreness and unpredictability of his behaviour have discovered new heights in his second term in office.

    Sachs (2020) also regards Trump as being ‘emotionally unbalanced’ and ‘psychologically disordered’.

    Even though in the cases of Iran and Palestine, the presidents’ whims are subject to gale-force headwinds from the irrepressible and irresistible Israel lobby in the US, and to some extent they will be channelled by Western elites led by his self-appointed pack of oligarchs, it is difficult to imagine any significant US military action against Iran not being subject to his flights of fancy.

    In the conclusion to this essay, we shall return to the complex question of presidential caprice and the extent to which it might be influenced by the factors that we discuss below. And we shall consider where the exercise of such caprice is likely to be at its greatest.

    Iran’s Position

    Historical continuity and resilience. Throughout history, for those with imperial ambitions in the Middle East, Iran/Persia has been a much sought after prize and, for would be conquerors, an implacable and formidable opponent.

    These qualities are exemplified in the ancient Iranian battle formation known as the Persian Immortals, which were 10,000 strong and were so named because their number seemed never to be depleted during battle, as dead and wounded were replaced immediately.

    The same incandescent bravery was displayed in the war with Iraq where ‘human wave assaults’ were often made by units of young volunteers.

    Despite being conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and others like the Mongols under Genghis Khan, Persian civilisation and cultural identity have shown remarkable strength and durability and have been an important unifying force and source of pride for its people to the present day.

    National sovereignty. Since the overthrow of the US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979, quite reasonably, Iran has insisted on being the master of its own affairs, free from the bullying of the Godfather in Washington and his enforcer in the Middle East, Israel.

    Regional religious solidarity. Iran’s backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthis in Yemen can be interpreted as aid to the defence of the sovereignty of fellow (Shia, except Hamas) Muslims against the aggression of a US-supported Israel, that is, a legitimate version of the politically contrived ‘self-defence’ employed by Israel as an excuse for its aggression and endorsed by its Western supporters.

    Defensive posture and deterrence. Iran’s position vis-à-vis Israel and the US has been abundantly clear for at least the last 25 years.

    Fifteen years ago Chomsky (2011, p. 197) declared that, despite the ‘fevered rhetoric’ about nuclear weapons, ‘rational souls understand that the Iran threat is not one of attack – which would be suicidal.’

    Chomsky quotes a senior US intelligence official as estimating (in 2008) that the chances of the Iranian leadership making a nuclear strike (a ‘quixotic attack’) on Israel was in the region of 1%. First, because they realised that this would lead to their own annihilation and Iran’s instant destruction. And second, because the Iranian leadership would be reluctant to sacrifice the ‘vast amounts of money’ and ‘huge economic empires’ they had accumulated (again, the US should know as it is so well-versed in such matters) – now, presumably, even greater than they were then.

    The same official acknowledged that Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor did not end Saddam’s nuclear weapon’s programme, it initiated it.

    Clearly, the recent 12-day ‘feeler’ or ‘warm-up’ war was prosecuted by the US and Israel in the full knowledge that, first, if Iran had nuclear weapons (very unlikely), there was only about a 1% chance that they would use them against Israel; and second, if they didn’t, there was good evidence to suggest that an attack by Israel and the US would spur Iran into developing them, as it had done with Iraq.

    As we and others have observed elsewhere, in the light of the above, in Iran the balance of opinion in government is now likely to have swung in favour of developing nuclear weapons, as a deterrent.

    It would be the rational thing to do. Chomsky (2007) tacitly agrees: ‘It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenceless, he noted, “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”’

    In the same paper, Chomsky asks the rhetorical question, ‘how would “we” (the US) have reacted if Iran had invaded Canada and Mexico?’ Of course, since then, the provocations and scope for rhetorical questions of this sort have got much worse.

    A Framework for Peace

    The framework for peace is the same as it has been since the turn of the century, namely, the creation of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East (WMDFZME).

    For some time, ‘global… support [has been] overwhelming for a WMDFZME; this zone would include Iran, Israel and preferably the other two nuclear powers that have refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India and Pakistan, who, along with Israel, developed their programs with US aid’ (Chomsky, 2012).

    Straightforward enough for sane people who want to avoid catastrophe, but even more certain to be spurned now than it was then by the US and Israel for the reasons given above.

    The Likely Character of the Impending War

    At the beginning of this essay, we referred briefly to just some of the consequences of the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies, which have included up to 3 million Iraqi deaths.

    In my own experience of post-invasion Iraq in 2011/2012, I found a much-underemphasised effect of its invasion and occupation to be as follows:

    For many citizens, perhaps most important of all, [is] the daily public humiliation at the hands of foreign occupying forces… [which] has stripped them of much of their sense of personal and national honour and pride, their dignity and their self-respect. All of this can result in something akin to mass psychological trauma in the population as a whole, and particularly among children.

    …in the immediate aftermath [of invasion and occupation], for the visitor to such places, it is this feature of the state that is among the most striking and emblematic. A deep and pervasive sense of national violation, sullen resentment of chronic injustice, combined with popular antipathy towards the invader and its vestiges are palpable and everywhere discernible in the statements and body language of ordinary citizens.

    These societal responses can last in uniquely damaging ways for generations.

    Over a period of three quarters of a century, we have shown in our discussion above that Iran has been subjected to similar indignities and humiliations by the same perpetrators, which in the brief war of June 2025 alone included the assassination of 30 Iranian military leaders and 11 senior nuclear scientists and the deaths of more than 500 civilians. For many, perhaps most, Iranians, the cumulative effects of these humiliations will be much the same as those I observed in Iraq in 2011/12, and which research demonstrates are very long lasting – over generations. Iranians will be incensed that the US and Israel can do these things to them repeatedly and with disdain and apparent impunity – as sane people anywhere would be.

    Partly for these reasons, a war between the US/Irael and Iran is likely to be much longer lasting, much more bitterly contested, and much bloodier and more destructive than previous wars in the region.

    But it will be so also because the opposing sides will be much more evenly matched militarily; because the weaponry used by both sides will be much more advanced and deadlier; because Iran is a huge country geographically – about twice the size of Iraq – and has a population of more than 90 million; because Iran will receive significant material support from other countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, and many Islamic countries; and because Iran has great pride in the continuity of its ancient civilisation and a long history of resisting and, eventually, overcoming invaders.

    Such a conflict could well result in WWIII, as Chomsky (2007) noted some years ago when the circumstances were not nearly as incendiary as they are now.

    Apportioning Responsibility

    Even in a case which many would suppose with good cause to be open and shut, it is necessary when apportioning responsibility for war to present and consider the evidence as we have tried to do above.

    To reiterate, in 2012, Chomsky observed that ‘Iran’s strategic doctrine is defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to take effect. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons (which is still undetermined), that would be part of its deterrent strategy.’

    Even in the face of the increased and persistent aggression by the US and Israel since then, there is nothing to suggest that Iran’s position has changed.

    Indeed, despite the incessant provocation by the US and Israel – including credible alleged betrayal by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the whereabouts of the Iranian nuclear scientists assassinated by Mossad in June 2025 – Iran has resumed dialogue with the IAEA about the possibility of a new inspection arrangement.

    For the US, on the other hand, Chomsky’s (2015) words of ten years ago apply with even greater force now because the US government’s weakening grip on global power is likely to have increased its desperation: ‘[The United States] is a rogue state, indifferent to international law and conventions, entitled to resort to violence at will. … Take, for example, the Clinton Doctrine—namely, the United States is free to resort to unilateral use of military power, even for such purposes as to ensure uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources—let alone security or alleged humanitarian concerns. And adherence to this doctrine is very well confirmed and practiced, as need hardly be discussed among people willing to look at the facts of current history.’

    An administrative change made recently by President Trump – which renamed the Department of Defence the Department of War – is partly no doubt Trumpian bravado and bluster but it is also a strong statement of the increasing bellicosity of his government.

    For the US and Israel and Western capitalist elites in general, the economic and geostrategic incentives for regime change in Iran, which have always been great, now seem irresistible. Made urgent by the fact that delay will make the task much more difficult.

    For Iran, on the other hand, its posture remains defensive – because it recognises the immense human costs that a full-fledged and drawn-out war will entail; because its leadership, like any government, wants to remain in power (and, perhaps, as alleged by US intelligence some years ago, protect their personal fortunes); and because in the end such war will still be suicidal.

    The crucial difference is that Iran’s defensive stance now seems certain to include the rapid development of nuclear weapons, for deterrence. The longer that the US and Israel wait, the more likely this becomes.

    It is here, perhaps, that the two critical personalities on the aggressors’ side will most come into play. Egged on by the baying of Israeli Zionists at home, the powerful Israel lobby in the US, and the insatiable avarice of the hyena-like cackle of savage capitalists that Trump has assembled in his cabinet, the majestic self-assurance (omniscience) of Trump and Netanyahu combined with the conviction that all will be lost unless Iran can be brought to heel quickly make an imminent attack on Iran almost inevitable despite the strong likelihood that it will lead to a nuclear conflagration.

    This, together with the mycorrhizal relationship that exists between two extremely aggressive rogue states whose interests in regime change in Iran coincide, we believe has created an unstoppable momentum.

    One in which the trigger for war will be in the hands of a US president whose psychological propensities and fallibilities are so well known that the large number and heavy weight of factors in favour of an all-out assault on Iran can be packaged in a way that will make him squeeze it.

    And so a protracted and perhaps unwinnable war will be set in motion, another ancient civilisation (a fanatical ‘peripheral country’ that can destroy the world – no matter the oxymoron) will be incinerated by the Fat Boy Posse, the Middle East will be set ablaze, and a world war could follow. All to the accompaniment of the phocine clapping and honking of approval from Trump’s herd of domesticated oligarchs, the exultant hosanas of Israeli Zionists, and the celebratory tinkling of champagne glasses among capitalist elites.

    The post The “Fat Boy Posse’s” Impending Attack on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘Forever Wars’ Authorization Finally Repealed By US House

    Almost exactly 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to finally repeal a pair of more than two-decade-old congressional authorizations that have allowed presidents to carry out military attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    In a 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans joining all Democrats, the House passed an amendment to the next military spending bill to rescind the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the lead-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 War in Iraq.

    The decision is a small act of resistance in Congress after what the Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein described in Foreign Policy magazine as “years of neglected oversight” by Congress over the “steady expansion of presidential war-making authority.”

    The post ‘Forever Wars’ Authorization Finally Repealed By US House appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Speaker of Israeli Parliament: Doha Strike “Message for the Entire Middle East”

    The speaker of Israel’s parliament has suggested that the country is ready to attack its neighbors across the entire region following Israel’s unprovoked strike on Qatar on Tuesday. “This is a message for the entire Middle East,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said in Arabic in a post on X. Accompanying the text was a video of the strike, showing a large explosion which resulted in a plume…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Envoy Sparks Fury for Telling Lebanese Journalists Not to Be “Animalistic”

    The U.S. ambassador to Turkey sparked fury on Tuesday for chiding a group of Lebanese journalists to “act civilized” and not be “animalistic,” saying such behavior is responsible for the strife in the Middle East. During a press conference in Beirut on Tuesday, as reporters asked questions and clamored for his attention — a typical practice in news conferences around the world — Tom Barrack…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Who Is Uncivilized, Mr. Barrack?”

    U.S. envoy Thomas Barrack urges Lebanese journalists to be “civilized,” “kind,” and “tolerant,” rather than “animalistic.” The irony is impossible to miss. Anyone familiar with the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East will understand the depth of the hypocrisy.

    Mr. Barrack implies that the “problem with the region”—the “chaos”— stems from Middle Easterners’ supposed lack of civilization, or worse, their allegedly subhuman nature. In truth, “the chaos” has been actively manufactured by the United States: sponsoring terrorism, violating sovereignty, propping up dictators, bombing cities and infrastructure, killing civilians, and plundering resources—just as it has done elsewhere in the world.

    It is no surprise, then, that many across the world view the decline of the American empire with some satisfaction, saying “inshallah.” For them, its downfall would not signify the end of human civilization, but perhaps the beginning of an opportunity for others to live with dignity and freedom.

    Despite being the richest nation in history, the U.S. has tragically failed to care for its own citizens—its “tired” and “poor”— while efficiently exporting misery abroad. Its foreign policy has consistently crushed the aspirations of peoples seeking self-determination—the “masses yearning to breathe free”—whether through coups, repression, or outright war.

    The reality is unmistakable: the gravest threat to human dignity and civilization today is not Middle Eastern journalists—scores of whom are silenced daily with American weapons and assistance—but the United States itself.

    The post “Who Is Uncivilized, Mr. Barrack?” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • When The Empire Chokes, The South Breathes

    The story they sell is that “order” was built by reasoned men in sensible suits. The story we live is different. Multipolarity did not grow out of seminars or summits; it is the aftershock of five centuries of plunder, the recoil from wars and sanctions, and the refusal of the colonized to keep paying for someone else’s civilization. Its genealogy runs from the Bandung Communiqué (1955)—the first great gathering where the majority of humanity spoke in its own name—through the long detour of debt, structural adjustment, and counter-insurgency masquerading as “development.”

    Bandung’s promise was simple and subversive: sovereignty, peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and a say in the world economy for those who actually make the world economy run.

    The post When The Empire Chokes, The South Breathes appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Palestinian Human Rights Defender Awdah Hathaleen killed by Israeli Settler

    “Despite it all, I hold onto a small hope—that the future might bring justice, that our voices will eventually be heard, and that one day I can celebrate my birthday again, in peace, with the people I love, free from fear and loss.”  – Awdah Hathaleen, April 2025 Photo by: Emily Glick

    An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian teacher who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, according to the Palestinian education ministry and an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene of the shooting.

    No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham said on X that a settler shot Odeh (also Awdah) Hathaleen in the lungs in Umm Al-Khair village in the occupied West Bank. Residents allege the shooter was Yinon Levy, who is sanctioned by the UK.

    Attorney Avichai Hajbi said he was representing a resident “who felt his life was in danger, was forced to fire his weapon into the air” after residents were “attacked by an Arab mob, along with foreign activists, with stones and violence”. Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist at the scene, told the BBC that at about 17:20 local time (15:20 BST) on Monday, a bulldozer from a nearby Israeli settlement was driven through private Palestinian land, crushing a sewage pipe, multiple olive trees and two fences.

    Berner-Kadish and other activists, including Hathaleen’s cousin Ahmad, ran to block the bulldozer. The activist said the driver hit Ahmad in the neck and shoulder with a drill that extended from the bulldozer, with his footage capturing Ahmad falling to the ground. Berner-Kadish did not believe Levy was driving.

    While attending to Ahmad’s injuries, Berner-Kadish heard a pop. Running back to the village to get water, he saw Hathaleen lying bleeding from a gunshot wound and Levy, the only settler he saw, holding a gun.

    In a video believed to be filmed by a relative of Hathaleen and posted on social media, a man identified as Levy is seen holding a pistol with a bulldozer behind him, as men yell at him. Levy pushes at one man, who pushes back. Levy then raises his pistol and shoots ahead of him, then again into the air.

    The clip cuts off when the person filming turns around to run away as women are heard screaming. The footage does not show what or who the shots hit, if anything, and whether anyone else was shooting. There are no other settlers visible. Israeli police said it was investigating the incident in the area of Carmel, an Israeli settlement near Umm Al-Khair.

    “As a result of the incident, a Palestinian man was pronounced deceased. His exact involvement is under investigation,” police told the BBC. Police said on Tuesday morning they had detained an Israeli citizen for questioning. Israeli media later reported Levy was released on house arrest.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also detained five Palestinians on suspicion of involvement in the incident, along with two foreign tourists who were present. Berner-Kadish said on Tuesday evening they were still detained. The activist, who began visiting the village in 2021, said Hathaleen was “one of my best friends in the world” and the two were days away from constructing a football field in the village. He added that Hathaleen was a “warm and loving” father of three young children.

    The Palestinian education ministry said Hathaleen was a teacher at a local secondary school. US congresswoman Lateefah Simon, a Democrat from California, said she was “heartbroken” over the killing of Hathaleen. He and his cousin, “both holding valid visas”, were detained and deported from San Francisco airport last month while travelling for a multicultural faith dialogue, she said.

    Abraham said Hathaleen had helped film No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar winner for best documentary feature that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

    ..Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024, along with others, because he “used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”.

    He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration, along with others, last year, but President Donald Trump lifted those sanctions.

    Gilad Kariv, a member of Israel’s Knesset from the Democrats party, said on X in response to the video that “in the territories, armed Jewish militias operate unchecked”.

    Settler violence, which has also been on the rise for years, has surged since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The UN documented at least 27 attacks by settlers against Palestinians that resulted in property damage, casualties or both, between 15 and 21 July, in the West Bank.

    see also: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/optisrael-statement-solidarity-palestinian-human-rights-defenders-risk-occupied

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c776x78517po

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Awdah_Hathaleen

    https://mailchi.mp/2a4342b25255/hrdf-10982507?e=51113b9c0e Read here the words of chairperson of the board, Sahar Vardi.

    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  
    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  
    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military

    Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza has been fueled by a surge in deliveries of military-grade jet fuel from U.S. providers. In this visual, we expose the companies and governments complicit in this supply chain, while highlighting grassroots efforts to track and disrupt this deadly cargo through direct action, boycott campaigns, and community resistance.

    The post Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran And Its ‘Ring Of Fire’

    Did Iran Create or Cooperate with Regional Resistance? Much is made of the US military base-encirclement of Iran and the threat it poses but considerably less attention is paid to Iran’s Ring of Fire that threatens to engulf Washington and Tel Aviv. Resistance to the Imperialist project in the West Asia (Middle East) region has […]

    The post Iran And Its ‘Ring Of Fire’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Next Week, Trump And Netanyahu Will Meet To Plan ‘New Middle East’

    U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have largely moved on from Iran and is now setting his sights on instituting a broader new order in the Middle East.

    Trump’s vision consists of an Israel-centric regional order that sees Iran and Hezbollah defeated and normalization with Israel spreading across the region, from Lebanon and Syria to Oman and Saudi Arabia. Joining him in creating this vision is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is slated to visit the White House on Monday.

    While there are potentially many obstacles to enacting this U.S./Israeli plan, it is clear that one focus is to quash any Palestinian aspirations for freedom.

    The post Next Week, Trump And Netanyahu Will Meet To Plan ‘New Middle East’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran, Zionism, and the Limits of US Control: An Interview with Faramarz Farbod

    The post Iran, Zionism, and the Limits of US Control: An Interview with Faramarz Farbod first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why manufacturing consent for war with Iran failed this time

    COMMENTARY: By Ahmad Ibsais

    On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.

    The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.

    This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.

    That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.

    There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.

    But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?

    In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.

    Victimhood serving narrative
    Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.

    And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.

    Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.

    Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.

    Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.

    Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.

    Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.

    Bias over Palestinian deaths
    A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.

    Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.

    The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.

    Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.

    Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.

    It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.

    And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.

    Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
    But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.

    This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.

    Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.

    But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.

    After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment

    The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.

    They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.

    Low social justice spending
    At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.

    And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.

    Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.

    They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.

    The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.

    The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.

    ‘Don’t drop bombs’
    And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.

    Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.

    But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.

    Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.

    Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why most Pacific governments stand with Israel in spite of UN votes

    By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Amid uncertainty in the Middle East, one thing remains clear — most Pacific governments continue to align themselves with Israel.

    Dr Steven Ratuva, distinguished professor of Pacific Studies at Canterbury University, told RNZ that island leaders are likely to try and keep their distance, but only officially speaking.

    “They’d probably feel safer that way, rather than publicly taking sides. But I think quite a few of them would probably be siding with Israel.”

    With Iran and Israel waging a 12-day war earlier this month, Dr Ratuva said that was translating into deeper divisions along religious and political lines in Pacific nations.

    “People may not want to admit it, but it’s manifesting itself in different ways.”

    Pacific support for Israel runs deep

    The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 13 June calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

    Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

    Israel and Iran two folded flags together 3D rendering
    The flags of Iran – a strong supporter of Palestine, along with a 73 percent support for a ceasefire at the United Nations – and Israel, backed by the United States. Image: 123rf/RNZ Pacific

    Pacific support for Israel runs deep
    The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on June 13 calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

    Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

    Among the regional community, only Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands voted for the resolution, while others abstained or were absent.

    Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, in an interview with The Australian, defended Israel’s actions in Iran as an “act of survival”.

    “They cannot survive if there is a big threat capability within range of Israel. Whatever [Israel] are doing now can be seen as preemptive, knocking it out before it’s fired on you.”

    In February, Fiji also committed to an embassy in Jerusalem — a recognition of Israel’s claimed right to call the city their capital — mirroring Papua New Guinea in 2023.

    Dr Ratuva said that deep, longstanding, religious and political ties with the West are what formed the region’s ties with Israel.

    “Most of the Pacific Island states have been aligned with the US since the Cold War and beyond, so the Western sphere of influence is seen as, for many of them, the place to be.”

    He noted the rise in Christian evangelism, which is aligned with Zionism and the global push for a Jewish homeland, in pockets throughout the Pacific, particularly in Fiji.

    “Small religious organisations which have links with or model selves along the lines of the United States evangelical movement, which has been supportive of Trump, tend to militate towards supporting Israel for religious reasons,” Dr Ratuva said.

    “And of course, religion and politics, when you mix them together, become very powerful in terms of one’s positioning [in the world].”

    Anti-war protest at Parliament on Israel-Iran conflict.
    An anti-war protest at Parliament over Israel-Iran conflict. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii

    Politics or religion?
    In Fijian society, Dr Ratuva said that the war in Gaza has stoked tensions between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority.

    According to the CIA World Factbook, roughly 64.5 percent of Fijians are Christian, compared to a Muslim population of 6.3 percent.

    “It’s coming out very clearly, in terms of the way in which those belonging to the fundamentalist political orientation tend to make statements which are against non-Christians” Dr Ratuva said.

    “People begin to take sides . . . that in some ways deepens the religious divide, particularly in Fiji which is multiethnic and multireligious, and where the Islamic community is relatively significant.”

    A statement from the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, released on Wednesday, said that the Pacific wished to be an “ocean of peace”.

    “Leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to the “Friends to All, Enemy to None” foreign policy to guide the MSG members’ relationship with countries and development partners.”

    It bookends a summit that brought together leaders from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and other Melanesian nations, where the Middle East was discussed, according to local media.

    But the Pacific region had been used in a deceptive strategy as the US prepared for the strikes on Iran. On this issue, Melanesian leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

    The BBC reported on Monday that B-2 planes flew to Guam from Missouri as a decoy to distract from top-secret flights headed over the Atlantic to Iran.

    This sparked outrage from civil society leaders throughout the region, including the head of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan.

    “This use of Pacific airspace and territory for military strikes violates the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga, our region’s declaration for being a nuclear, free peace committed zone,” he said.

    “Our region has a memory of nuclear testing, occupation and trauma . . .  we don’t forget that when we talk about these issues.”

    Reverend Bhagwan told RNZ that there was no popular support in the Pacific for Israel’s most recent actions.

    “This is because we have international law . . .  this includes, of course, the US strikes on Iran and perhaps, also, Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

    “It is not about religion, it is about people.”

    Reverend Bhagwan, whose organisation represents 27 member churches across 17 Pacific nations, refused to say whether he believed there was a link between Christian fundamentalism and Pacific support for Israel.

    “We can say that there is a religious contingency within the Pacific that does support Israel . . .  it does not necessarily mean it’s the majority view, but it is one that is seriously considered by those in power.

    “It depends on how those [politicians] consider that support they get from those particular aspects of the community.”

    Pacific Islanders in the region
    For some, the religious commitment runs so deep that they venture to Israel in a kind of pilgrimage.

    Dr Ratuva told RNZ that there was a significant population of islanders in the region, many of whom may now be trapped before a ceasefire is finalised.

    “There was a time when the Gaza situation began to unfold, when a number of people from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were there for pilgrimage purposes.”

    “At that time there were significant numbers, and Fiji was able to fly over there to evauate them. So this time, I’m not sure whether that might happen.”

    Reverend Bhagwan said that the religious ties ran deep.

    “They go to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to the Mount of Olives, to the Golan Heights, where the transfiguration took place. Fiji also is stationed in the Golan Heights as peacekeepers,” he said.

    “So there is a correlation, particularly for Pacific or for Fijian communities, on that relationship as peacekeepers in that region.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mohsen Mahdawi Fought ICE and Won His Freedom. For Now.

    In April, Palestinian student activist Mohsen Mahdawi walked into an immigration office to obtain US citizenship. He left in handcuffs. The Columbia University student was detained by ICE and accused by the Trump administration of jeopardizing US foreign policy through his involvement in protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. On this week’s More to The Story, Mohsen talks to host Al Letson about his arrest by ICE, his role in campus protests, and his childhood growing up in a West Bank refugee camp. 

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

    Read: Mohsen Mahdawi Has Been Released From Federal Custody (Mother Jones)
    Listen: Gaza: A War of Weapons and Words (Reveal)
    Read: Mahmoud Khalil, Finally Free, Speaks Out (Mother Jones)

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.