It’s made to order. First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering. Then, kill, starve, vanquish, and displace those in need of that aid. Finally, give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place.
As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients. Since May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaque entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency. The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarized, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity. Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious. When they do open, they do so for short spells.
Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites. In a June 27 piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.” Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.” Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”
The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire. “There’s no enemy, no weapons.” IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran. In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’ like they used to say.”
An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centers was full of understatement. “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.” It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”
Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example. While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter, and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.
On July 4, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centers. In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children, and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.” Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd. “A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”
The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “If you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.” No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules. “Do what you want” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives. And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.
The GHF, in time-honored fashion, has denied these allegations. Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law. It is, therefore, left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen. As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight. In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction. “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.
If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scraps any pretense of being humanitarian in its title and admits to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population.
A new joint report from Declassified UK and the National has accused the British mainstream media of a ‘cover-up‘. It says establishment outlets have refused to challenge RAF Akrotiri’s involvement in the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. This is despite almost 600 UK spy flights having flown over the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2023, and this being “a story of clear public interest” as critics fear British complicity in Israeli war crimes.
On a visit to RAF Akrotiri last year, genocide–denying prime minister Keir Starmer said “we can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here”. Supposed media professionals in the mainstream media apparently took that as an order. And accordingly, they have avoided questioning what the activities of a base the British Palestinian Committee (BPC) has called “a foundational asset for genocide”.
Minutes of the latest D-Notice Committee (which can "ask" news outlets not to run a story) refer to discussion about "other UK operations & deployed force elements". Would be interesting to know whether the spy flights have been discussed but then no journalist wants to tell us pic.twitter.com/1pcCuZahtA
Of the 1,359 pieces in UK-based media between 2/12/23 and 24/6/25 referencing “Akrotiri”, none in the mainstream media have focused specifically on the spy flights.
“Britain’s obedient defence correspondents”, it insists, “have no appetite to challenge” the government’s claim that flights simply focus on finding Israeli hostages in Gaza. Nor do they have the professional integrity to:
raise the slightest concern about the legal or ethical implications of providing intelligence support to Israel in the middle of a genocide.
It adds that most mainstream stories relate to other uses of RAF Akrotiri.
Analysis has shown the BBC consistently engaging in pro-Israelpropaganda. Indeed, its own staff have just accused the outlet of “performing PR for the Israeli government and military”. But its refusal to question RAF Akrotiri’s role in Israel’s genocide, or provide other essential context, isn’t just about the apartheid state. It’s about the broadcaster fulfilling its role as a mouthpiece for the Britishstate. That’s why, on Akrotiri in particular:
It has utterly failed to follow up the story.
As BBC news content director Richard Burgess ominously toldDeclassified:
I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel.
The Guardian isn’t much better, either. And you’d expect no less considering the key role it played in the 2015-2019 media smear campaign that severely underminedcriticism of Israeli crimes in mainstream politics. “In hard news”, the Declassified/National report notes, “the Guardian has barely acknowledged the existence of the flights” from RAF Akrotiri.
Britain's national media are doing a wonderful job covering up the extent of British support for Israel during a genocide. It's their most impressive performance since destroying the prospects of a decent government under Jeremy Corbyn in 2015-19. https://t.co/PNb6q6X1Pr
Other than one mention from the i paper, the rest of Britain’s mainstream media has faithfully maintained radio silence in order to avoid attracting too much attention to what journalist Matt Kennard has called Britain’s ‘direct participation’ in Israel’s genocide.
RAF Akrotiri is a unique colonial relic on Cyprus. The occupied Cypriot territory is part of the “largest Royal Air Force base outside the United Kingdom”. As Declassified UK has reported, covert US flights have been leaving from the base throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Dozens of British warplanes, meanwhile, have flown to both Israel and Lebanon. British spy flights and intelligence officers on the ground have also been passing information to Israel.
Establishment journalists ‘abdicating their professional responsibility’
Prof Des Freedman, a media reform campaigner and author of the Declassified/National report, said:
the mainstream media’s continuing silence on RAF spy flights over Gaza is a flagrant abdication of their stated responsibility to ask tough questions of military planners.
Far from doing this, he stressed:
Leading news organisations are amplifying MoD [Ministry of Defence] talking points and Foreign Office priorities but then remaining quiet and toeing the line when it comes to identifying potential military support for Israel’s genocide.
And he added that:
mainstream media – through their silence and meekness – are allowing the government to get away with murder in Gaza.
I’m running to lead the New Democratic Party. Canada needs a mainstream voice willing to challenge capitalism and imperialism while promoting decolonization, degrowth, and economic democracy.
Initially, my reaction to the NDP Socialist Caucus’ request to run was to reject it. But there are two crucial issues before us that I am particularly well placed to challenge: Canadian complicity in Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and the unprecedented growth in military spending.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are revolted by this country enabling Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza. They can trust that I’ll stand up to the genocide lobby. As student union vice-president, I was expelled from Concordia University in the aftermath of the 2002 protest against Benjamin Netanyahu, and fifteen years ago, I wrote Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. I understand the scope of Canada’s complicity. I will push to jail anyone in this country who has participated in war crimes in Gaza, and to investigate institutions “inducing” young Canadians to join the Israeli military. I’ll seek to outlaw government-subsidized donations to Israel, de-list the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, and end Canada’s assistance to a security force overseeing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
We need to politicize the popular uprising against Israel’s holocaust by “Canadianizing” it. But we also need to move those politicized by Gaza towards broader critiques of Canadian foreign policy, militarism, and the unequal, ecologically damaging status quo. The left has not done well in turning the Palestine mobilizations into a broader systemic challenge. Might an insurgent NDP candidacy assist?
Anyone appalled by the Liberals’ and Conservatives’ support for the holocaust in Gaza should be terrified by the prospect of giving these monsters greater means to wage violence.
But that is exactly what is taking place. Prime Minister Mark Carney has committed to the largest military expansion in seventy years. In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Michael Wernick explained, “It’s a mistake to think of this as a short-term issue. It’s going to bedevil finance ministers for the next six or seven budgets and probably be relevant to the next two federal election campaigns.” To pay for Carney’s massive military boost, the former head of Canada’s public service is calling for a new 2-per-cent “defense and security tax” in addition to the GST.
Wernick’s proposal should spur a backlash. So should the slashing of the civil service and social programs to pay for more war spending. Even before the massive military boost, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has concluded that Carney’s campaign promises would likely lead to the “worst cuts to the public service in modern history.”
While it’s bad enough that Mark Carney’s war spending plan will lead to major cuts in social programs and bolster an authoritarian, racist, and patriarchal institution, more soldiers and weapons will also lead to more international killing and subjugation campaigns. It’s beyond reckless to strengthen the killing hand of politicians who’ve enabled Israel’s holocaust.
However, the current NDP leadership is unable to say as much or even seriously push back on boosting military spending, as they’ve promoted the institution, US foreign policy, and the belligerent NATO alliance. Establishment leadership candidate Heather McPherson is part of the NATO Parliamentary Association, and she called for Canada to promote Ukraine’s membership in the alliance (even former Prime Minister Jean Chretien recognizes that NATO expansion contributed to provoking Russia’s illegal invasion). As I detail in Stand on Guard for Whom: A People’s History of the Canadian Military, we should withdraw from NATO, lessen US military ties, and cut military spending.
Although my knowledge and credentials in other areas of public policy may not be as strong, over the past 25 years, I’ve assisted environmental, indigenous, feminist, and other social movements.
As part of protecting political speech, I’ll push to end state surveillance of activists, weaken the intelligence agencies, and abolish Canada’s terrorism list. As part of promoting Land Back, I’ll seek to expand Indigenous jurisdiction. As part of significantly reducing Canada’s ecological footprint, I’ll push to immediately phase out Alberta’s tar sands.
Capitalism’s need for endless consumption and profit maximization is imperiling humanity’s long-term survival. We must build an alternative that rejects its war on the earth, human psyche, and democracy.
In Economic Democracy: The Working Class Alternative to Capitalism, my late uncle, Al Engler, proposed an egalitarian, democratic vision for replacing a capitalist economic system based on one dollar, one vote with an economic democracy based on one person, one vote. When I worked for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (now Unifor), I successfully promoted measures that led to economic democracy. I crafted a widely circulated call to set up a publicly owned national telecommunications company, promoted an eco-socialist vision for a union representing tar sands workers, and published mainstream commentary questioning why we have democracy in the political arena but not in the workplace.
The aim of running is to win the party leadership, but that’s obviously a long shot. The more realistic objective is to drive the debate away from the mushy middle. To do so will require the support of many volunteers and registering a few thousand new members to ensure the other candidates know the campaign is serious. To win, we’d need to persuade 25,000 individuals to purchase NDP memberships and convince a significant portion of current members to support bold change. This is a steep hill to climb, but half of Canadians believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and many tens of thousands are appalled by Canada’s complicity.
Two months ago, I spoke before 20,000 at an anti-genocide demonstration in Ottawa, and six weeks into Israel’s holocaust at a march in Montreal of 50,000.
As Sean Orr’s victory for Vancouver city council and Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York Democratic primary attest, there’s an appetite for change out there. Let’s see what happens.
A prominent academic has criticised the New Zealand coalition government for compromising the country’s traditional commitment to upholding an international rules-based order due to a “desire not to offend” the Trump administration.
Professor Robert Patman, an inaugural sesquicentennial distinguished chair and a specialist in international relations at the University of Otago, has argued in a contributed article to The Spinoff that while distant in geographic terms, “brutal violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Iran marks the latest stage in the unravelling of an international rules-based order on which New Zealand depends for its prosperity and security”.
Dr Patman wrote that New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation at home, and, after 1945, helped inspire a New Zealand worldview enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism.
Professor Robert Patman . . . “Even more striking was the government’s silence on President Trump’s proposal to own Gaza with a view to evicting two million Palestinian residents.” Image: University of Otago
“In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the National-led coalition government has in principle emphasised its support for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote.
However, Dr Patman said, in practice this New Zealand stance had not translated into firm diplomatic opposition to the Netanyahu government’s quest to control Gaza and annex the West Bank.
“Nor has it been a condemnation of the Trump administration for prioritising its support for Israel’s security goals over international law,” he said.
Foreign minister Winston Peters had described the situation in Gaza as “simply intolerable” but the National-led coalition had little specific to say as the Netanyahu government “resumed its cruel blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza in March and restarted military operations there”.
Silence on Trump’s ‘Gaza ownership’
“Even more striking was the government’s silence on President Trump’s proposal to own Gaza with a view to evicting two million Palestinian residents from the territory and the US-Israeli venture to start the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in late May in a move which sidelined the UN in aid distribution and has led to the killing of more than 600 Palestinians while seeking food aid,” Dr Patman said.
While New Zealand, along with the UK, Australia, Canada and Norway, had imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir, in June for “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians — a move that was criticised by the Trump administration — it was arguably a case of very little very late.
“The Hamas terror attacks on October 7 killed around 1200 Israelis, but the Netanyahu government’s retaliation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) against Hamas has resulted in the deaths of more than 56,000 Palestinians — nearly 70 percent of whom were women or children — in Gaza.
Over the same period, more than 1000 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank as Israel accelerated its programme of illegal settlements there.
‘Strangely ambivalent’
In addition, the responses of the New Zealand government to “pre-emptive attacks” by Israel (13-25 June) and Trump’s United States (June 22) against Iran to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities were strangely ambivalent.
Despite indications from US intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran had not produced nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Peters had said New Zealand was not prepared to take a position on that issue.
Confronted with Trump’s “might is right” approach, the National-led coalition faced stark choices, Dr Patman said.
The New Zealand government could continue to fudge fundamental moral and legal issues in the Middle East and risk complicity in the further weakening of an international rules-based order it purportedly supports, “or it can get off the fence, stand up for the country’s values, and insist that respect for international law must be observed in the region and elsewhere without exception”.
At the 17th BRICS Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from July 6 to 7, 2025, the bloc’s leaders issued a declaration reaffirming the bloc’s central role as a representative voice of the Global South.
However, the declaration does not mention the word “genocide” when referring to the Israeli massacre of the Palestinian population, and despite condemning unilateral sanctions, it fails to mention one of the countries that has suffered the greatest impact from them: Venezuela, a strategic ally of China and Russia, two of the founding countries of the BRICS.
In this regard, the final declaration condemns “the imposition of unilateral coercive measures contrary to international law” and denounces that such measures “have far-reaching negative implications for human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security of the general population of the affected states.”
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) has said it will attempt to break the Israeli siege of Gaza with another ship. Last month, the FFC vessel ‘Madleen’ was seized by Israeli forces before it could reach the starving people of the Strip.
A statement on the organization’s X account announced that the next ship will set sail from Italy next week: “We are setting sail again. On July 13, 2025, our boat Handala will depart from Siracusa [Syracuse], Italy, to break Israel’s illegal blockade. This mission is for the children of Gaza.” It continued, “Just weeks ago, Israeli forces illegally seized our boat Madleen and abducted 12 unarmed civilians aboard her in international waters.”
Lien Arits stepped off a plane in Cairo on a sweltering June evening. The Belgian politician wore heels and make-up at border control to avoid looking like an activist. It was a sensible precaution: the previous day, 40 members of the Dutch delegation to the Global March to Gaza had been denied entry to Egypt.
Arits was travelling to the action with three fellow members of the Belgian Green party – but to avoid being identified as a group, they agreed to act like strangers. No talking at the airport; no eye contact on the plane.
Weeks earlier, Arits and over 4,000 others from more than 80 countries had signed up for the march, which planned to take participants just 30 miles from El Arish to Rafah over three days between 15 and 19 June.
After being abducted from his New York apartment building by plainclothes agents and locked away in an ICE jail in Louisiana for over 100 days, Mahmoud Khalil has been freed and reunited with his family. A federal judge ruled that Khalil’s detention was unconstitutional and that he was neither a flight risk nor a threat to the public, and the Syrian-born Palestinian activist, husband, father, and former Columbia University graduate student was finally released on June 20, 2025. But the fight for Khalil’s freedom is not over, and we have by no means seen the last of the Trump administration’s authoritarian attacks on immigrants, universities, and the movement to stop Israel’s US-backed genocide of Palestinians. In this exclusive interview, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Amy Greer, an associate attorney at Dratel & Lewis and a member of Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team, about the epic legal battle to free Khalil.
Guest:
Amy Greer is an associate attorney at Dratel & Lewis, and a member of Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team. Greer is a lawyer and archivist by training, and an advocate and storyteller by nature. As an attorney at Dratel & Lewis, she works on a variety of cases, including international extradition, RICO, terrorism, and drug trafficking. She previously served as an assistant public defender on a remote island in Alaska, defending people charged with misdemeanors, and as a research and writing attorney on capital habeas cases with clients who have been sentenced to death.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
After being abducted from his New York apartment building by plain clothes agents and then locked away in an ice jail in Louisiana. For over a hundred days, Mahmud Khalil has been freed and reunited with his family. The Syrian born husband, father Palestinian activists and former Columbia University graduate student played a key role in the 2024 Columbia University Palestine solidarity protests mediating between student protestors and the university administration after a federal judge ruled that Khalil’s detention was unconstitutional and that he was neither a flight risk nor a threat to the public. Khalil was finally released on June 20th, but the fight for Khalil’s freedom is not over, and we have by no means seen the last of the Trump administration’s authoritarian attacks on immigrants universities and the movement to stop Israel’s US backed genocide of Palestinians. The country watched in horror as Khalil and other international students and scholars like Ru Meza Ozturk at Tufts and Bader Kuri at Georgetown were openly targeted, traumatized, and persecuted by the Trump administration for their political speech and beliefs. Here’s a clip from the Chilling video of Khalil’s abduction in March taken by Khalil’s wife, no Abdullah that we republished here at the Real News Network.
Amy Greer:
You guys really don’t need to be doing all of that. It’s fine. It’s fine. The opposite. Take Amy. Call Amy, she’ll be fine. Okay. Hi Amy. Yeah, they just handcuffed him and took him. I don’t know what to do.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Okay, I, what should I do? I don’t know. Now as Mahmud is being dragged away in handcuffs by those plain clothes agents, in that video, he turns to his wife noir and he says, call Amy. And you can actually hear in that video no’s terrified voice saying over the phone to Amy that she just doesn’t know what to do as her husband is being dragged away. Joining us on The Real News Network today is the Amy who was on the other end of that phone call on the fateful day when Mahmud Khalil was abducted from his apartment building on March 8th. Amy Greer is an associate attorney at DRA and Lewis and a member of Mahmud Khalil’s legal team. Amy is a lawyer and archivist by training and an advocate and storyteller by nature as an attorney at DRA and Lewis. She works on a variety of cases including international extradition, Rico, terrorism and drug trafficking. She previously served as an assistant public defender on a remote island in Alaska, defending people charged with misdemeanors and as a research and writing attorney on capital habeas cases with clients who have been sentenced to death. Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the Real News Network today. I really, really appreciate it. And I just wanted to kind of start by asking how is Mahmud Khalil doing? How is his family doing? How are you and the rest of the legal team doing after this long, terrifying saga?
Amy Greer:
Yeah. Well, I think for many of us, including Mahmud and Ur, the reunion and knowing that Mahmood is free was just a huge relief. Seeing him detained, watching that experience of that family being separated from each other was incredibly challenging to watch as attorneys, and I can only begin to imagine what that felt like for Mahmud and nor themselves. So having them be together is so critical, and you’ll see every time you see photos of them in public, they’re holding hands or Mahmud’s arm is around North. So just that physical proximity I think has just been really powerful and important for the two of them, the legal team. The fight continues, but I know for many of us, the relief that course through our own bodies, our own hearts as people who love and have loved ones bearing witness to their reunification was really special, really important. And now it’s galvanizing for the fight to continue.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and good news is in short supply these days, and I can genuinely only imagine what it is like for you and folks in the legal world to be navigating the reality of this new administration. I mean, because the law fair that is unfolding, the fights over the future of this country and the Trump agenda, so many of those fights are happening in the courts, and the law system itself is a key player in how the Trump administration is trying to execute its authoritarian excesses. So it is, I think, gratifying and energizing for so many people. And we’ve heard that from our own audience that amidst all this darkness and these onslaughts from the administration to have a victory, like seeing Mahmud, Khalil walk free from the ice detention facility in Louisiana reminds people that the fight is not over. And we are going to talk in a little bit about where things stand now with Mahmud’s legal standing in the case that he’s fighting for his freedom. But I wanted to ask if we could go back to that fateful day in March when you got that call from No Abdullah. Can you talk us through what it’s even like to get a call like that? Is this a call that you’re used to getting? And what was the process of responding to that call? What were you guys doing in the hours after Khalil was abducted?
Amy Greer:
Sure. So actually the first call I got was from Mahmood himself, and that wasn’t on video. Mahmud called me at around eight 30 ish on March 8th, and I was embarrassingly, I just poured a glass of wine and was sitting down to a Ted Lasso episode, which is what I watched. It’s like the equivalent of sucking my thumb. It’s like how I chill out sometimes. I have some episodes that I like to rewatch, and it was a Saturday night, and so I was relaxing and the phone rang and I saw that it was Mahmud, and it’s very unusual. Even though we’d been working together for a few months, it’s pretty unusual that he would call me outside of business hours. So I knew that something must be going on, and I picked up the phone and he told me he was surrounded by ice and that ice agents in plain clothes and that they told him that his student visa had been revoked.
We knew that he was not on a student visa, he was a green card holder or lawful permanent resident. And so the agent asked to speak with me because Mahmud introduced me as his attorney. I had some words with the ice agent asking him if he had a warrant, what the basis for the arrest was, which again, they repeated that the Secretary of State had revoked Mahmud’s student visa. When I informed the agent that Mahmud was actually a lawful permanent resident, he said, well, they revoked that too, which is not a thing actually. There needs to be some due process that happens in order to revoke somebody’s lawful permanent residency. And when I demanded again to have the agent show Mahmood or to send me a warrant, the agent hung up on me. And that’s when Nora’s video picks up because no had gone upstairs to get the green card to show ice that Mahmood was a lawful permanent resident.
And so when she came back down, that’s when the filming began that that has become so famous now. And so nor then called me back. However, I will say there was about a five minute or three to five minute gap between when Mahmood hung up or when the agent hung up on me and when Nora called. And that’s the thing, I am an attorney. I am cool head in a crisis, but even people like me have human feelings. And Mahmud is a student that I had been working with along with numerous other students for protecting their speech rights on campus protests regarding Palestine when it became clear what was happening, that he was being taken by ice. And it seemed to me that that was not going to be stopped. You know what I mean? That showing the green card wasn’t going to stop that process.
I cried. I mean, when that phone hung up, I’ve never felt so helpless because, and we can get into this a little bit, but the reality is that law enforcement takes people, ice takes people, police take people, many in our communities, many that are connected to your network know this, and then lawyers have to undo it, right? We can’t prevent it from happening always. We have to undo it on the other side. And that revelation and that realization really struck me and I burst into tear as if I’m being totally honest. And then I called my colleague who was on the phone with me when no called back, and then we talked nor through, and you can hear no in that video, you can hear her asking, what’s your name? Where are you taking him? And you can hear her speaking to us as we’re asking her, telling her what to ask and how to gather that information.
I mean, it’s one of those situations where you have to suppress all your natural human reactions, which is fear and anxiety, and where are they taking him and deep sadness and all of those things. And so between Lindsay, my colleague and myself, we tried to stay calm for no, who I had not met yet. So she’s also talking to a stranger as this horror is unfolding in front of her. And she was eight months pregnant at the time as well. So there was a lot happening there, both what you can see, which was you can hear the fear in her voice, although she is remarkable. And while you hear the fear, you can also hear her strength. She spoke with such clarity, her voice shook. But like Rashida Taleb said, I’m speaking even as my voice shakes and that has been nor through this entire ordeal is speaking even as her voice shakes. And so that’s what you hear in that video. And I’m sure my voice was shaking as well as I was listening to this beautiful woman trying to fight for her partner, her husband, who’s being taken away right in front of her. So it was a pretty intense experience, and it’s not one that I’ve typically experienced even as a criminal defense attorney. I’m more used to the call from the jail as opposed to the call happening during the taking itself. So that was a first for me.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, my God, I can really only imagine what it’s like, but sadly in this country I find myself imagining it a lot more frequently than I used to worrying about my own family being abducted by immigration, being racially profiled and disappeared from the streets, and then having to begin that process that you just described of figuring out where my loved ones are and how I get them back. Like you said, this is what law enforcement does in this country, and the taking of people from their homes, from their job sites, from their campuses did not begin with the second Donald Trump administration. But I wanted to ask, what about this case and this call and this fight is new. Can you impress upon folks watching why this is such a marked escalation of what law enforcement and immigration enforcement typically do in this country?
Amy Greer:
Sure. I mean, I think there’s a few layers on a very sort of visceral, tangible layer. These people are showing up masked, they’re not identifying themselves. And so in the case of Mahmood, and this is also true with Rusa Ozturk, both of them have spoken on the record in court or publicly about they thought they were being abducted and then taken somewhere to potentially be executed. I mean, I know that I am sure that that’s not original to many people in communities around this country, indigenous communities, communities of color. And also I do think that there is a little masked men in plain clothes arriving on college campuses or their surrounding housing may be new. I think it’s new, it’s my understanding that it’s new where, this sounds like a strange example, but a very amazing advocate around the heroin and oxycodone crisis that it was talked about as a crisis, a public health crisis a number of years ago spoke about how it’s been a crisis for many, many years, but when it started impacting middle class white folks, then it became a public health crisis, not a criminal issue that needed to be prosecuted through the courts, but something that needed to be mediated through mental health care, addiction services and other public health framing.
I think what’s happening here is college students, graduate students, people who have no criminal records or no even association or affiliation with anything that we would necessarily conceptualize as criminalized. And again, I’m not saying that any of those labelings are okay, are being taken by masked people who refuse to identify themselves and basically disappeared for 24, 36, 48 hours where nobody knows where they are and even their families aren’t entirely sure who is taking them. And where Rua was on the phone with her mother in Turkey when she was taken and the phone was cut off, the phone call was cut off, and nobody heard from Rua again for quite some time. And similar in Mahmud’s case, we didn’t hear from him from Saturday night until Monday morning. And so these things I think are escalations because of who the people are that are being taken and the attention given to college and graduate students as unlikely people to be abducted in this way.
Again, not agreeing with any of the framing of people having been taken previously, that they deserve any less of an innocent explanation of who they are and where they’re from and what they’re about. But that’s not the narrative that’s coming out. In this particular case, it’s students speaking against a genocide taken by masked men and then detained. I think that’s the other piece is immigration detention has been an issue for a very long time. There is no question particularly around the border, but I think internal, internal to the United States, the access to parole and having to do regular check-ins, but being able to live out in the community has been general practice for a long time according to many of my immigration lawyer colleagues. So this is also new, is the actual detention of people as opposed to processing them and then allowing them to be free in the community while their case is processed in the administrative immigration side.
So that’s also a new aspect to all of this. The last thing I’ll point out is the statute that’s being used and weaponized against the students like Mahmud and Rusa and others, is an old statute where these students for speaking out against a genocide have been determined by the Secretary of State. Their presence in the United States is adverse to American foreign policy and American foreign interests. And I think that’s a statute from the 1950s that was actually weaponized against people who were accused of being associated with communism and in particular Jewish Americans who are accused of being associated with communism. And it’s being weaponized now again for people speaking against genocide. So these are some of the layers of things that are at play here that make it different, but I think what it is is it’s just they’re going for people in the United States that they assumed many people with power, with money, with privilege would not speak against, they would not speak against their taking. But what they’ve discovered is actually people have been really horrified by these abductions in a way that we should be for everybody else who’s abducted but haven’t been.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that’s beautifully and powerfully put. It’s not national news in years prior when immigrants from Latin America who raise issues on a farm that they’re working on about unsafe working conditions, and then they get abducted and disappeared by ice. No one bats an eye, but when graduate students are targeted, and then it gets a little more real for a lot more people. And of course, our aim and the necessity here for everyone watching is to care equally about both and to care about the rights of all humans. That’s why we call them human rights. And to tug on that thread a little more, talking about the sort of intricacies and the vagaries of immigration detention, can you tell us a little bit about what it was like trying to free Mahmud from this ice detention center in Louisiana for over a hundred days?
Amy Greer:
Right. Well, and I think this is where I get a little nerdy for people because I think it’s really critical, and this is where our lack of civics education in the United States is really coming back to bite us in so many ways. But I think what’s really critical to point out here is immigration court, as it’s called immigration judges, as they’re called, are actually administrative employees of the Attorney General of the United States. They are not. When you think of a judge, most people I would think of the people that they see in Maryland State Court or even the Supreme, the US Supreme Court, that people who have been vetted by the Senate or even voted into office in certain parts of the country by their constituents, they are typically lawyers. They are people who have some experience and then rise and get promoted into judicial roles.
And most of them think the people we’re thinking of are Article three, meaning in the Constitution, article three judges that were conceptualized at the framing of the Constitution, but immigration court and immigration judges, that’s actually a misnomer. They’re administrative employees. And this is an administrative process. And what that means is, for example, the immigration judge in this case said this exactly on the record, the rules of evidence, the rules of civil procedure and certain other protections and due process protections that would exist in a constitutional Article III court do not exist in the immigration process. And so really, immigration court per se, and that process is an administrative process. So for example, people have watched the procedural shows where they talk about hearsay. And in a regular court, for example, if something can’t be substantiated or corroborated in some way, it’s considered hearsay and it may not be allowed into the court in immigration proceedings, it can.
So in mahmud’s case, the government could use a New York Post article with anonymous sources as evidence against Mahmud, right? So we don’t know who the speakers were, we don’t know who the sources were. We have no way to verify that. But because the rules aren’t the same in immigration proceedings, things like that are allowed in. And so I think I say all of that just to say that people undergoing these immigration proceedings do not have, if you hear the term due process in regard to immigration, it doesn’t mean the same thing that it does in a criminal court, for example, where we already know that that’s a struggle. We already know that that’s a struggle over on that side. But believe it or not, the protections are significantly greater. So people like Mahmud and that the thousands of men that he was incarcerated with in Gina, Louisiana are going through these administrative processes.
What happens a lot of the time, and this has been so important to Mahmud highlight whenever he speaks out, is also a lot of people don’t have access to attorneys through this process, don’t even know how to reach an attorney and don’t know what their rights are. They don’t know if they can speak or not speak what they’re allowed to say or not say. And so they’re flying blind through an administrative process with very few and rights. And that’s been the case with Mahmood as well. But the difference for him is that he had access to me initially to hunt down where he was, to figure out how to find him to call attorneys in the Department of Homeland Security in the Department of Justice to find him. But so many other people don’t have that. And so people are being disappeared. The inmate locator as it’s called, or the detention locator that ICE has isn’t being updated and people don’t know where their loved ones are.
And then they also don’t have access to phone calls necessarily to be able to even find or locate an attorney. And they imper in front of these employees of the Attorney General who have clear directives from the Trump administration that people are not welcome here. This is a great sort of white supremacist project that’s being undertaken to make America white again, and therefore these processes are being truncated. Some people aren’t even seen by a judge at all or an immigration administrator at all. In Mahmood’s case, we have been able to litigate a case, but it’s been on an extremely expedited schedule. We had very little time to prepare. And so even though he’s had really good legal support, the case has been jammed through as fast as possible. And one thing that I think is really critical is the immigration administrator determined that she does not actually have the authority under the Constitution to question the Secretary of State.
And his determination that Mahmud is his presence in the United States is adverse to American foreign policy. And as a result, his case could have fallen into no man’s land, so to speak, where nobody really had authority to question the Secretary of State. But that’s where the federal habeas case comes in, the Article III constitutional court, which we can get into if you want. So that immigration case is proceeding rapidly in an administrative process. It will eventually potentially rise to the Fifth Circuit, which is an Article three appellate court, but by then the record that that court will be reviewing will be complete, and what they’re allowed to review is actually quite limited. So the process is really very remarkable on many levels, and I think it’s important for Americans or people residing in the United States, however they choose to identify, are aware that this is truly an administrative process without bumper guards or some of those procedural rights that people associate with terms court and judge,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I really appreciate you breaking that down for us. Get nerdy sis, because we need your nerdiness to educate us. And I want to end on talking about where things stand now, but I guess by way of getting there, like you said, civics education in this country has failed us and to the point where so many of us don’t even fully know or appreciate what something like due process is. But I have this terrifying feeling that we’re going to know what due process is because we’re going to remember what it was. And I wanted to ask if just really quickly, you could talk to our audience about just clarify what is due process and why should you care about it.
Amy Greer:
Sure, yeah. And yeah, there’s a couple of layers to that, but I, I’ll keep it short. I mean, the idea of due processes is chronicled in the United States Constitution, and the idea is that you cannot have your rights infringed upon your property taken, et cetera, without being heard by a neutral arbiter and having some procedural opportunity to be heard, to present evidence in a criminal situation. If somebody’s testifying against you, you have the right to cross examine that person. These are the types of things that are due process and that are associated with that. The parameters of due process have largely been carved out by case law through the United States Supreme Court. And what’ll be interesting for your listeners, because I know that a lot of people, the genesis of the Real News Network and other things that you’re covering, labor, et cetera, is that there were all these push for rights in the early part of late part of the 19th century, early part of the 20th century that became codified into law and then also codified through the United States Supreme Court.
And due process was part of that do process, procedural and substantive. These ideas of what kinds of processes have to happen for your rights to be taken away, your liberty to be taken away, and also what the standards are that the government has to meet in order to do those kinds of things. All of that has been litigated for many, many years. And what we’ve seen since the Earl Warren Court of the 1950s and sixties is an erosion of those things over time, to your point, which is what we’re seeing now are actually the fruits of that erosion that has already been taking place. And so what I want to make a plug for people is lawyers in law school, people in law school and citizens in general. I think laws are talked about as if there’s something that are static that come down from above are carved into stone, and that’s that.
But what I want to really leave us with is laws are made by humans to protect wealth and power and as a reaction to fear and anger. And so we, as the people in this country, we can be part of crafting those laws or blocking laws that are very harmful to our communities and encouraging that our systems adhere to our values and not to values of protecting wealth and power and racial privilege as well. And so what we’re seeing here are the fruits of 50 plus years of erosion of rights, 50 plus years of white supremacist structures, really taking root in the law in new shape shifting ways because obviously it’s always been the law. That’s how the law was made in the United States, starting with the doctrine of discovery, et cetera. But we are moving into that space where we are really seeing the harms and the pervasive harms that these laws have in that now everybody’s vulnerable.
It doesn’t matter who you are now, you’re vulnerable unless you’re like Elon Musk or somebody like that. And so this erosion, because many of us have remained silent as these erosions have taken place because it’s not been us who’ve been directly impacted many people who look like me. This is the case now. We’re seeing that people like us can actually be impacted as naturalized citizenship is being challenged. I wouldn’t be surprised if even native born citizenship gets challenged in some ways depending on what your speech is. And so we’re really learning that these erosions will come for all of us eventually, and so we should speak up sooner. But what we’re seeing now, unfortunately, I think is the fruits of many years of the hard right labor to erode due process, to erode free speech rights, to erode citizenship rights, to erode the amendments that were passed after during reconstruction after the Civil War, to the extent that we’re moving into and are experiencing authoritarianism.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I guess on that heavy, but I important note, I wanted to remind people, like I said in the intro, this fight is not over for Mahmud Khalil and for all of us and our rights as such. And I wanted to ask if in the final minutes that I’ve got you, if you could just let us know where things stand right now with Mahmud Khalil’s case. I know there are multiple cases, some that you can talk about and others you can’t. But I guess for folks watching just where do things stand now and what can they do to be part of that change that you talked about, to ensure that the law is not weaponized against us, but in fact is serving us and our needs, the people’s
Amy Greer:
Needs? Sure. Yeah. So for Mahmud’s case, what’s happening now is in the federal District court of New Jersey, we have a habeas petition, habeas just means of the body. So we’re basically challenging his detention and deportation as a retaliatory move by the administration for Mahmud’s speech against genocide, and that they’re trying to remove him from this country as a retaliation that that’s the retaliation. And so the fight continues there where we will continue to litigate that habeas claim and to try to, the judge has so far found that Marco Rubio’s determination that it is likely unconstitutional the use of this statute as applied to Mahmud, and that it is likely retaliatory or likely it’s vague that people can’t really know what standard is being applied here and therefore it’s chilling speech because nobody really knows what the standard is. So that fight continues and will continue litigating for the first Amendment rights and against the retaliatory actions of the administration there.
And the immigration proceedings, the court on April 11th did find that Mahmud was removable from the United States, and an order of removal has been issued. However, because people panic at that, the federal district court has said that he cannot be removed from this country unless, and until that judge says that it’s okay. And so there is a court order in place to the extent that the administration adheres to that is a whole other thing, but there is a court order in place. So basically these two lanes are being litigated now, and we are trying to basically say that this government, this administration, should not be able to detain or remove Mahmud from this country for his protected speech rights. And that’s the fight that continues. What people can do is, it’s challenging because I think the public support for Mahmood and saying that we as a nation are not afraid of him, that no matter how they frame him or try narrate him as somebody to be feared, I think we can choose to not fear each other.
We can choose not to fear Mahmud, and we can choose to speak as one voice that the weapon, the murdering of women and children and men and women, Palestinian people in Gaza is not something that we support, that that is a mainstream position, not a dissident one. And while it may be adverse to this administration’s foreign policy, it is adverse to our moral compass as a nation and making that very clear that we do not stand for genocide as a nation. And even if we are on the border about whether Israel has the right to defend itself or not, or wherever people stand there, I think it’s important for them to also say that we refuse to see our immigration laws weaponized to shut down an important debate of great public concern, that we refuse to do that. So people, wherever they are on their spectrum, I think all of us should be against what’s happening here.
And the last plug that I’ll just make is on a local level, I think that a lot of us pay attention to the federal structures, and that’s certainly important, but where we can really start to make a difference is in our city halls and in our city councils and in our state legislatures, because over the last 15 to 20 years, we have seen really damaging laws against boycott, divestment, and sanction, adopting very restrictive definitions of antisemitism that encompass any criticism of Israel at all, or any engagement in questioning us, involvement in providing financial and financial support and weapons to Israel. And these are being weaponized now in these other, in immigration, et cetera. And so from a local perspective, we can say no to laws like that. We can ask our cities to be sanctuary cities. We can ask our cities to not allow, there are police forces to be used to aid and abbet ICE and NDHS abductions.
I mean, there’s a lot of ways, and Baltimore, of course, is being really proactive on that front. So I know this work is already happening in Baltimore and in Maryland and have had the honor and privilege of working with and talking with a lot of people doing that work. So keep doing that. I mean, I think that really matters. I do think that these kinds of policy shifts trickle up and then our national delegation, here’s what’s happening on the local level and brings that up to the national level. So I think we just have to stay engaged even when it’s overwhelming and we have to step away for a few minutes to do something that’s beautiful, that’s joyful, that laughter refilling our tanks is necessary, but we cannot afford to turn away right now. And people like Mahmud, people from our own communities who are being disappeared, they need us to show up now and in these varying ways. And I think we are, and we need to continue to do that.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has transformed donkeys from an outdated mode of transportation — once seen mostly in impoverished or agricultural areas — into the only remaining means of transportation for many. With most vehicles destroyed and fuel prices soaring, people have been left with no choice but to rely on donkeys to access basic services and transport their belongings when Israeli forces…
“He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Isaiah 44:20”
My maternal family, being Jews in 1930s Germany, were forced to affix yellow stars upon their clothing and were subject to daily public harassment. Finally, my mother and her sister, a few small family valuables sown by their mother into the lining of their clothes, escaped the madness on a Kindertransport, their father arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
At present, and since the inception of the Zionist state, in the name of those who survived Nazi inflicted brutality and blood lust, Palestinians suffer the Zionist’s version of crimes against humanity — that includes a type of Final Solution being enacted upon the inhabitants of Gaza.
War, in general, should be as outmoded among people possessed of heart, mind, and soul as is cannibalism, incest, and public lynching. Yet the political elite of the West not only permit Israel to perpetrate genocide but supply the weaponry that enable mass slaughter.
While, in the US, ICE thugs, with jackboots for minds, come for blameless human beings, as the Gestapo did my grandfather, as the worst among us cheer them on. The concept of Alligator Alcatraz (and the fact MAGA miscreants find it all so amusing) seems like a comic book version of Nazi evil. Himmel might have averred, “Das ist ein bisschen stark! Ist das eine Art Witz”! (“That’s a bit much! Is this some kind of a joke?”). The joke would have gone over like a flaming zeppelin at a Berghof dinner party.
Treblinka, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee and the US government-planned mass starvation of people of the American Great Plains, and Gaza are regarded as aberrations in human events. Yet, on closer examination, the demarcation point between civilization and human barbarity is nebulous at best.
Which side, one should ask oneself, again and again, of the tattered and torn divide are you on?
(Pictured: My son and I, in Berlin, in 2019, standing in front of the house stolen from our family by the Nazis. Palestinians, throughout Israel, could stage their version of the scene.)
Every action nations commit in war would be a crime in times of peace in a just society. Israeli actions, committed, by the IDF and the Zionist settler class, even before the Gaza genocide campaign, transgressed the boundaries of human decency. It is known, abused people, long after their horrible experiences, can become abusers. But whole societies? A cultural mythos of perpetual victimhood, it seems, can lead a people, once wronged, to become convinced they can do no wrong. Hence, the tragedy of a culture of grievance creates a compassion-bereft position towards outsiders.
A late uncle of mine, when a Jewish boy growing up in The Bronx in the 1920s, he and his brothers had to cross through treacherous-to-outsiders Irish, Black, and Italian city blocks when returning from school and other daily rounds. Often, they had to dodge barrages of thrown rocks and other threats to bodily safety. In adulthood, the European Holocaust re-enforced his animus toward the other and he conflated the survival of global Jewry with the existence of Israel.
Uncle Sol would pace the house and he was given to fulminate, even sans context, “an Arab is a Jew with his brains knocked out. Bomb them, that is all they understand.”
As a middle aged and elderly man, he was still dodging stones. His younger brother’s, an orthodox Jew by conviction, children became Israeli citizens and joined the ethnocentric ranks of the Zionist settler class. From the Bronx to Ramallah, through the generations, the madness perpetuates.
Uncle Sol, in his last years, as he descended into Alzheimer’s related dementia, hallucinated Palestinians marauders moved in stealth through his house; a stone-throwing Intifada of the mind shook the old man to his very core. There were peaceful days when he minded an imaginary nursery (he had attended to the care of his younger brother). He was prone to shouting, “Leave the children alone! Let them play!” How is it possible, by his bunker mentality worldview, that Palestinian children could not be viewed as human and that they were deserving of a homeland and a childhood?
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me…” — Exodus 20:5.
Problematic passage, to say the least. How does one transform the rage and concomitant tragedy that seems to be passed forward by consanguinity. Furies rule the blood. Is there anything under heaven that will end the blood-drenched madness inherent to generational trauma turned by-reflex into animus?
My DNA reveals, my ancestors were European e.g., Spanish, French, Germanic, with four percent coming from Northern Iraq and Iran. This is crucial: nada from ancient Israel. How is it I have a “right to return” to a land where my ancestors never dwelled but Palestinians, whose blood states that they are descendants of the original Jews of the Old Testament are forbidden to return to the land stolen from them?
Whenever the concept of a One State Solution is suggested to Zionists, they are stricken by the thought that Palestinians, now a majority of the population, would inflict the same brutal, dehumanizing treatment on Jewish citizens that they suffered during Zionist rule. In the childhood city of my birth, Birmingham, Alabama, the White overclass, during the civil rights era, expressed similar trepidation thus resisted granting African-Americans equal rights and protection under the law. The same mindset ruled Apartheid South Africa. The psychological projection is a de facto admission of guilt.
Israel is bleeding population. A new Exodus is extant. Jews, in large numbers, are leaving the Zionist state. Perpetrating Genocide and other acts of perpetual aggression have bankrupted Israeli society, both economically and morally. As the Ashkenazi elite exit the country, the zealots remain, and like my Uncle Sol, in his decline, they are dwelling in an hallucinated, and, in steep decline, version of the world.
Regarding a related false and death-besotted cultural mythos:
It is all over but Trump’s et al. palaver in public declaration and SHOUTING in pixel
Independence Day in the US… the lie of the mind of it all. More than two and a half centuries of the lie. Independence from the crown; then subservience to the moneyed class. Life (taking the lives of the original people of the land). Liberty (being at liberty to be exploited by those whose idea of liberty is enslavement and land theft). The pursuit of happiness (perhaps the most profound delusion promulgated there is manic pursuit – but scant happiness is on display. Only the micro frauds that maintain the macro fraud).
An imposter culture instructs – coerces the individual – to manufacture an imposter self – a social mask so that the culture itself does not destroy you.
Result: The grifter, the predator capitalist, the hollow to the core politician, and the anxious and depressed. Do you want to drive yourself even crazier and make the world even worse in its madness. Refuse to admit your own madness and the madness of simply being human unlooses upon the world.
When you face the abyss – that is, the realization we, all of us, are alone. When you are devoured by it – that is where and when you gain the company of others who feel and grieve for the sadness of the earth; of those who transform mortification witnessing human folly into humor and poetry. Then welcome home, lost and weary traveler. You have gained independence. You have shaken off dependence on the American lie.
In the macro sense; The lies promote nationalism in general; of Zionism; of militarism; of earth decimating, soul-defying cultures of greed and exploitation.
Once, the rancid lies have gone to compost, the green of the novel can rise and bloom. A dreams, yes. But so are the nightmares that are self-resonate feedback loops of past and ongoing tragedy. The legacy of violence begetting violent reprisal is as human and tragic as human and tragic can be. Moving forward, we have a choice: implement a just peace or else be plagued, in perpetuity, by endless torment inflicted by grievance-maddened furies.
“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man by Salvador Dalí
I do not write from comfort. I write from the salt of grief. From the agony of watching the world orchestrate its distractions while an entire people are burned, buried, and erased.
The world has failed the Palestinian people. Utterly and entirely.
This is not a political crisis—it is a moral apocalypse.
Since October 2023, more than 64,000 Palestinians—the vast majority women and children—have been killed in Gaza. That figure, cited by the Watson Institute, only scratches the surface. A 2024 Lancet study estimated that up to 186,000 deaths may be attributable to the ongoing conflict—caused not only by direct violence but by famine, trauma, disease, and a shattered healthcare system. At that time, Ralph Nader placed the number closer to 200,000.
These are not numbers. These are obliterated lineages. Neighborhoods razed. Babies recovered from beneath rubble in what were meant to be shelters—not graves. Hospitals bombed. Schools incinerated. Families starved. Children turned to ash inside classrooms. Elders murdered in wards they once trusted as safe.
And how has the world responded? With silence. With vague “regrets.” With weapons shipments.
Where is the United Nations and its so-called peacekeeping mandate? Where is the Arab League? Where are the global faith leaders who quote “Thou shalt not kill” from the pulpit—but seem deaf to the cries from Gaza?
“Thou shalt not kill.” Inscribed in the Bible, Qur’an, Torah, Gita—yes. But also enshrined in international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the charters of the United Nations. It is sacred. It is legal. It is universal. And it has been violated. Repeatedly. Brazenly. Unforgivably.
Those who sponsor this genocide sleep beside holy texts while investing in weapons and war stocks. They pray with one hand and push missile buttons with the other.
Yet those sponsoring this genocide sleep beside these holy texts while investing in war stocks and boasting defense profits. They pray with one hand and press missile buttons with the other.
This is not just genocide—it is infanticide, ecocide, scholacide, culturecide, and medicide.
Let us name it fully:
Infanticide: Babies buried under bombed maternity wards.
Scholacide: Teachers and students turned to ash inside classrooms.
Ecocide: Farmland poisoned, aquifers drained, trees reduced to cinders.
Medicide: The annihilation of healthcare, as ambulances are shelled and doctors are slaughtered in their scrubs.
These are not metaphors. They are facts. And the so-called international community is not watching helplessly—it is watching profitably.
Let us not be deceived: silence is not neutrality. Silence is a moral alignment with power.
A carpenter does not build chairs to store under the bed. A tailor does not sew garments just to hide them away. And the arms industry does not make weapons for decoration. These machines of death must be sold. And sold they are—through wars.
The children of Gaza were not accidental casualties. They were sacrificed at the altar of empire, profit, and political cowardice.
So I ask:
To the architects of this violence: What crime did the Palestinian children commit? What sin warranted this obliteration?
To the silent majority: When does neutrality become complicity? What will you tell your children when they read of this— —or will even that history be erased?
This is not only about Gaza. It is about all of us. About what we become when we no longer act. About the future we construct through our indifference.
I offer this piece not just as protest, but as lament. Not just as lament, but as sacred indictment.
In the name of every holy book used to bless bombs, In memory of every mother whose child was stolen by missiles, In the name of all prophets who warned us against such evil: Let it be known—The world has failed the Palestinians.
We are called not only to pray but to protest. Not only to mourn but to move. Not only to witness, but to refuse— Refuse to accept that this is the world we inherit or pass down.
But we, the people of conscience, will not be silent.
And to my fellow activists, faith leaders, citizens of truth and resistance, I say this:
The silence of the world is not passive.It is participation.And it will be remembered that the entire world stood by while Palestinians were genocided—generation after generation.
A major US consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), was tasked by Israeli backers to model the costs of “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza as part of a project “imagining” post-war Gaza reconstruction, a Financial Times (FT) investigation published on 5 July revealed.
The complex financial model for the reconstruction of Gaza “included cost estimates for relocating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the strip and the economic impact of such a mass displacement.”
In one scenario, Palestinians would be provided “voluntary relocation” packages valued at $9,000 per person, or $5 billion total. Each person would reportedly receive $5,000 in cash, subsidized rent for four years, and subsidized food for a year.
Metropolitan Police arrested at least 27 protesters who gathered in central London on Saturday to publicly support Palestine Action, a nonviolent direct action group now officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.K. government. According to Middle East Eye, Palestine defenders including 83-year-old Rev. Sue Parfitt, a former government attorney, an emeritus professor…
The hearts of the people of Gaza can no longer bear the scenes and stories they experienced during Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza, written in the blood of their children and the rubble of their homes, and witnessed by the sky, after the earth became too small for them during the hundreds of days they lived in pain and suffering.
The occupation stole the lives and dreams of the people of Gaza and turned them into hell during the days of war, which were filled with scenes and human stories that the people of Gaza cannot forget, even if the whole world forgets them. In this report, we review some of the stories that remain as witnesses to history during the war that has lasted 638 days and continues.
Displacement from Gaza
A simple word that began to appear and be repeated from the first day of the war on Gaza. Simple in its pronunciation, but in reality it means the soul leaving the body. It was not a one-time occurrence, but rather the people of Gaza experienced the bitterness of displacement many times until it became a painful reality:
Displacement under fire: you head east and are bombed, you return west and are bombed, you try to escape carrying your children and a few belongings, you walk long distances on foot, then spending long hours looking for a place to shelter, only to find the street or empty land to sit and sleep at night without a jacket or a place to sleep. Those who find a tent to sleep in are lucky.
What you hear and what you don’t hear, no writer can use the letters, words, and dictionaries of language to describe the pain of displacement, as they would be unable to convey its pain and suffering to someone who has not actually experienced it. However, the repeated horrific scenes of displacement can tell you 1% of the true meaning of displacement if you think deeply or imagine the scene as reality.
Writing children’s names on their bodies
In the midst of Israeli massacres and slaughter, targeting hundreds of people and children in their homes, some parents were forced to write their children’s names on their limbs or bodies, so that even if they were martyred, torn to pieces, or disfigured, they could gather their remains in a single shroud:
Mothers forced to leave their premature babies to face their fate
In a dark moment that defies description, the occupation forced mothers and families to leave their premature babies and not transfer them to other places from Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, which was stormed by the Israeli occupation and whose medical staff was expelled. After a while, the occupation withdrew from the hospital, and the parents returned to find the bodies of their premature babies decomposed on the hospital beds:
The spirit of the spirit
In a scene that resonated with the whole world, Grandfather Khaled Nabhan appeared in a video carrying the body of his granddaughter, Reem, and addressing the people, saying, “This is the spirit of the spirit.” This phrase became so popular that not a day went by without people around the world repeating it.
No sooner had people begun to forget this scene and the phrase “the soul of souls” than the occupation assassinated Grandfather Khaled Nabhan, who became a martyr, and his soul ascended to join “the soul of souls,” causing the world to react once again to this unforgettable event.
Dogs eat the bodies of martyrs
From the body of Muhammad Bahar, a patient with Down syndrome, whom the occupation soldiers set a trained dog on, which began to eat him while he was still alive in a room alone, far from his mother, who was in another room and could hear him crying out in a language that only his mother understood, until Muhammad’s voice faded and his life ended after the dog ate him:
The bodies of dozens of martyrs were left in the streets and roads, where they were eaten by dogs on live television and in front of the whole world, until some eyewitnesses said that they could see the skeletons of the martyrs, whom no one was able to reach and recover.
The children died of hunger in Gaza
The mother screamed at the top of her voice in the hospital courtyard, “The children died without eating.” She repeated it, her heart breaking, tears filling her eyes.
A video clip of this woman, who lost her children during the war, went viral. In it, she says, “My son disappeared from my arms and died. Where are my children? Someone reassure me about my children.” The clip was widely shared, and her story was etched in people’s memories and became unforgettable.
Hind Rajab, “the child who was killed among the bodies of her family”
In a tragic scene that captured the world’s attention for 12 days, the fate of 6-year-old Hind Rajab remained unknown after the occupation executed four members of her family who were with her in a car with a barrage of bullets. She was left alone and called out to her mother, who communicated with her before the connection was cut off. The whole world heard the recorded call in which the child asked for help.
Hind’s cries as she called out to her mother, “Come, Mom, take me with you,” echoed around the world until the Palestinian Red Crescent found her body after all the organizations that tried to save her failed:
Tala and her skates
Tala Abu Ajwa wore pink skates to distract herself a little from the pressures of war and try to play for a while after convincing her mother, who had refused out of fear for her safety.
Tala was enjoying the last moment of joy in her life when the occupation’s missiles struck her and ended her childhood. Tala appeared in a video clip when her body arrived at the hospital, still wearing her pink roller skates, her image immortalized in the sad stories of genocide:
Torture, rape, and murder of prisoners
In the most heinous crimes imaginable, were committed against Palestinian prisoners arrested by the occupation forces in Gaza during the war. Israeli media circulated a leaked video from internal cameras in the Sde Timan detention center documenting the sexual assault of a Palestinian prisoner from Gaza by Israeli soldiers inside the prison, which witnessed unbearable torture, according to the testimonies of some prisoners who were released after a period of detention.
The occupation carried out the most severe torture to death against a number of prisoners, especially some doctors who died in prison as a result of torture and rape. The occupation prevents the United Nations from investigating sexual crimes in its detention centers, to the extent that the occupation prevented the United Nations from investigating sexual crimes in its detention centers.
O Lord, stop the rain
Don’t be surprised that this is the cry of the people of Gaza when it rains in winter, simply because their tents are flooded by rainwater without any protection.
At a time when the people of Gaza used to enjoy winter and its atmosphere, they now cry out and pray that it will not rain, for fear of drowning while they sleep at night.
The sight of the tents of the displaced in Gaza flooded with rainwater cannot be overlooked without reflection, at a time when their lives lack the minimum requirements for human life, and what can be imagined in that scene is more than can be written.
Life in tents in Gaza
Between the scorching summer heat and the bitter cold of winter, life in tents has become another face of death in Gaza, after families reduced every detail of their lives to a canvas tent no larger than 10 square meters, where they spend every moment of their lives. It is where they sleep, sit, cook, and keep all their belongings.
They sit inside the “tattered” tent, scorched by the summer heat and suffocated by the stifling atmosphere. When they leave, they are exposed to the scorching sun or the cold winter rain, which the tattered tent fabric and a few pieces of nylon tied together with string to protect them from drowning cannot shield them from.
Children dying of hunger and cold
“The children died of hunger and their blood froze in their veins from the cold.” This is a fact that perhaps not everyone believes, but it happened in Gaza in front of a world that was unable to protect the children and provide them with the necessary heating and shelter.
What I have read is not a figment of the imagination, but a reality that happened in Gaza. Yes, in the 21st century, children in Gaza died of starvation and froze to death.
The occupation deliberately used starvation as a weapon, spreading it and intensifying it in all areas of the Gaza Strip during months of war, This has led to a shortage of milk and other essential nutrients for children, while the cold has killed eight children and continues to do so, due to the severe cold that prevails in Gaza and ravages the tents of displaced persons scattered in the open and on the coast, without the world being able to provide shelter to protect them from the severe cold and heavy rains.
The fierce famine
“No one dies of hunger” is a saying that has remained steadfast for decades across the world, but it has fallen in Gaza, where people have been forced to grind animal feed to use instead of flour and uproot tree leaves to cook for food.
The occupation did not stop there, but deliberately bombed and killed hundreds of citizens who gathered in front of aid distribution points to obtain flour during the darkest times of the famine, which did not spare a single area but spread to all areas of the Gaza Strip, north and south, to the point that people lost a lot of weight due to starvation.
The inverted red triangle
The inverted red triangle became a historical symbol of the events of the war on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance used it in videos showing resistance operations against the Israeli occupation, until it became the most widely circulated symbol in the world, especially on social media platforms, and became known to signify the Gaza war and resistance operations. and a slogan for those in solidarity with the Palestinians around the world.
The widespread use of the red triangle symbol and its association with the Palestinian resistance prompted Meta to restrict the inverted red triangle symbol on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
The American who set himself on fire for Gaza
On 25 February 2024, Aaron Buschnell, a 25-year-old soldier in the US Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the front gate of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. He did so in a live video broadcast, saying he was protesting “what the people of Palestine are suffering at the hands of their colonizers.” He declared that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide,” then doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire, sustaining severe injuries that led to his death the following day:
Animal-drawn carts transport the martyrs
Fuel has completely run out in Gaza, and ambulances have stopped working, but the massacres, killings, and shelling continue unabated, forcing citizens to transport the bodies of the martyrs and the wounded on animal-drawn carts to cover the long distance to hospitals
In addition to the lack of ambulances for medical teams and medical supplies for hospitals, the wounded are crying out for help with no one to respond. The bodies of the martyrs lie in the streets and roads, with no one able to retrieve them unless an animal-drawn cart is available to transport the bodies to hospitals, and then to use the animals to transport the bodies of the martyrs to the cemetery for burial:
20 months without electricity
Can you believe the headline? Yes, since 7 October Gaza has been living without electricity, in complete darkness, to the point that after such a long period, some people have said, “Is it possible that we will see electricity again?”
The constant power outages have completely paralyzed life in Gaza, especially hospitals, many of which have shut down due to the lack of electricity and fuel for generators.
Imagine that for more than 630 days, the only light came from a mobile phone flashlight, and those who were lucky enough to be able to charge their phones could use them to illuminate the darkness of night for their young children.
Drinking unsafe water in Gaza
In a civilized world that has long advocated for human rights, the situation in Gaza has reached the point where people are forced to drink unsafe water. At times, they have been forced to desalinate seawater because they could not find fresh water suitable for drinking and were forced to drink regular water.
During months of war, the Israeli occupation deliberately destroyed water wells throughout the Gaza Strip and prevented aid from crossing into Gaza, causing Gaza to suffer a major crisis in the availability of drinking water, which contributed to the spread of disease.
People stand in long queues to obtain drinking water, which is a daily routine for everyone, some of whom return to their tents without bringing their children a drink of water to protect them from saltwater-related diseases.
A stick against a plane
He tried to shoot down the plane and threw a stick at it. This was the final scene in the life of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar after he was killed in a ground battle with the occupation forces in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The scene became a symbol of steadfastness, resistance, and defiance, and an icon that spread throughout the world, in thought, image, and influence.
The doctor who was left alone, just as Gaza was left alone
Another scene that almost everyone in the world reacted to was when Dr. Husam Abu Safiya walked with tired feet toward the occupation tank that was waiting for him on the ground and under the drone that was following his steps in the air. The scene ended quickly when the doctor entered the occupation tank and disappeared, bringing down the curtain on a story full of patience and defiance after he had endured long months providing medical services to the wounded at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza:
Activists and Twitter users reacted to this scene under the hashtag “The doctor who was left alone,” just as Gaza was left alone during 15 months of relentless war against the people of Gaza, who suffered the horrors of occupation and deliberate attempts to make Gaza uninhabitable by destroying all health, education, and sports sectors, as well as hundreds of thousands of homes and residences.
Featured image and additional images via the Canary
Call me cynical, but I think Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and their gaggle of featherweight co-defendants would’ve been absolutely delighted if the OTT furore surrounding Glastonbury punk act Bob Vylanmanaged to stretch out beyond his government’s diabolical assault on the sick, disabled, poor, and vulnerable people of the UK.
But what of Vylan? Ditched by their agents, banned from entering the US, and their career lying in tatters – quite a heavy price to pay for denouncing a state-sponsored terrorist entity, don’t you think?
Bob Vylan: a fuss over nothing
Vylan’s choice of words were unsavoury, I think most people would agree. But there’s something seriously wrong when a controversial punk act faces considerably heavier criticism from the political and media class than the perpetrators of genocide.
Has Vylan’s outburst done anything to aid the victims of Israeli atrocities? Some, but very few pro-Palestinian voices claim the move was counterproductive, but it certainly isn’t going to make the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people any worse, is it?
Perhaps the whole point of the “death, death to the IDF” chant was to cause enough controversy for the see-no-evil world to sit up and pay attention? If that was the point, it was a resounding success. I would also argue that Vylan’s form of protest was entirely in keeping with the punk ethos.
But what must be said is Vylan’s anti-military chant wasn’t an antisemitic attack on the Jewish faith, and anyone claiming otherwise is being grotesquely deceitful.
This was a huge cry of outrage, directly aimed at a murderous, barbaric military superpower. This was a legitimate use of free speech to highlight the greatest injustice of our times.
You might not approve of the method, or the brutality of the message, but there is no argument that the actions of a genocidal child-killing military cannot be compared to the slightly-controversial words of an artist on stage amidst a colourful sea of Palestinian flags.
We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine.
If you think that simple statement is controversial in any way, I don’t think we would get on particularly well.
A Middle East that is free from death and destruction may seem like an impossible dream, but I believe that peace will only have the opportunity to bloom when justice takes root and vengeance and division is replaced by compassion and tolerance.
Hark at me, going all Mandela.
Rachel from Accounts: save me the crocodile tears
I’m afraid I also won’t be joining in with the liberal media’s mass outpouring of sympathy for a tearful Rachel from accounts.
One hack went as far as to suggest our hearts should go out to Reeves because she is a woman. Unless I’m mistaken, so was Margaret Thatcher and so is Suella Braverman. Save that “girl power” nonsense for someone else.
If the last line of defence for these metropolitan clowns is to plead with us to feel sorry for Rachel Reeves because of her gender, this Labour government is well and truly dead and buried within a year of it fluking its way into power.
Perhaps they are hoping a focus on Reeves’ tearful episode is exactly what is needed to distract from substantive critique of her actions?
Reeves hasn’t ever shown any compassion towards the victims of her political choices, has she? Policy decisions come with impact.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has supported policies that disproportionately harm vulnerable groups. These “difficult decisions” have exasperated poverty and inequality, particularly for disabled people and low-income households.
You want me to feel sorry for a woman that didn’t have an issue with freezing thousands of pensioners to death?
Really?
Ruthless
Starmer and Reeves have ruthlessly dragged the Labour Party away from its traditional left-wing roots. It’s been a genuinely painful ordeal to witness. We changed so much in such a short time, but that Labour Party has undoubtedly gone forever.
Political choices such as not reintroducing a cap on bankers’ bonuses and halving Labour’s £28 billion climate investment plan, are the sort of concessions to corporate interests that became synonymous with fourteen years of Tory failure.
Labour’s tragic departure from socialist principles and alignment with establishment interests has never been so apparent as it is today, and that is why I would wholeheartedly support a new unashamedly left-wing political party at the drop of a hat.
And it doesn’t look like we will have to wait very long for one to come along.
Australian solidarity activists today marked the 27th anniversary of the Biak massacre in West Papua and have warned the human rights crisis in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region is deteriorating.
No Indonesian security force member has ever been charged or brought to justice for the human rights abuses committed against peaceful West Papuan demonstrators.
According to Elsham Papua, a local human rights organisation, eight people were killed and a further 32 bodies were found near Biak in the following days. However, some human rights sources put the death toll at about 150.
“Twenty seven years later, the human rights situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate,” said Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) in a statement today.
“West Papuan people continue to be arrested, intimidated and killed by the Indonesian security forces.
“There are ongoing clashes between the TPNPB [West Papua National Liberation Army] and the Indonesian security forces with casualties on both sides.
“As a result of these clashes, the Indonesian security forces carry out sweeps in the area, causing local people to flee in fear for their lives.
‘Bearing the brunt’
“It’s the internal refugees bearing the brunt of the conflict.”
According to the AWPA statement, 6 July 1998 marked the Biak massacre when the Indonesian security forces killed scores of people in Biak, West Papua.
The victims included women and children who had gathered for a peaceful rally. They were killed at the base of a water tower flying the Morning Star flag of independence.
The Citizens’ Tribunal . . . a people’s documentation and record of the Biak atrocities. Image: Citizens’ Tribunal
As the rally continued, many more people in the area joined in with numbers reaching up to about 500 people.
The statement said that from July 2 that year, activists and local people started gathering beneath the water tower, singing songs and holding traditional dances.
“On July 6 the Indonesian security forces attacked the demonstrators, massacring scores of people,” said the statement.
Internally displaced
Human Rights Monitor reported in its June update that more than 97,721 people in West Papua were internally displaced as a result of armed conflict between Indonesian security forces and the TPNPB.
Human Rights Watch in a media statement in May 2025 reported that renewed fighting between the security forces and the TPNPB was threatening West Papua civilians.
“As the West Papuan people struggle for their right to self-determination, they face great challenges, from the ongoing human rights abuses to the destruction of their environment,” said Collins in the statement.
“However, support/knowledge for the West Papuan struggle continues to grow, particularly in the Pacific region,” he said.
“If some governments in the region are wavering in their support, the people of the Pacific are not.
Pacific support ‘unwavering’ Jakarta has been targeting Pacific leaders with aid in a bid to convince them to stop supporting the West Papuan struggle.
Civil society and church groups continue to raise awareness of the West Papuan situation at the UN and at international human rights conferences.
“The West Papuan people are not going to give up their struggle for self-determination,” Collins said.
“Time for the countries in the region, including Australia, to take the issue seriously. Raising the ongoing human rights abuses with Jakarta would be a small start”.
He has made it his bread and butter for years: finding society’s kooky representatives, the marginal, the crazed and the touched. But what makes Louis Theroux’s The Settlers troubling is its examination of a seemingly inexorable process in the West Bank, one that has, at its core, a religious, nationalist goal of cleansing and violent purification. The documentary captures Israel’s modern colonial project in real time, and it is one most ugly.
The target of the cleansing and eradication – the Palestinians in the West Bank – is awesomely horrific, rationalised by suffocating checkpoints, brooding military posts and endless harassing points of invigilation. Having already made The Ultra Zionists, a documentary on the same subject in 2011, Theroux finds, notably after the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, a missionary project of hardened purpose. The edge on the “ultra” has been taken off. The fringe has moved to the centre.
Sanitised areas (the language of ethnic scrubbing) pullulate with armed settlers holding forth with pious defiance in outposts of a land seen as promised to them. One figure interviewed, the gun-toting Texas-born settler Ari Abramowitz, sees the Bible as supplying Jews “a land deed to the West Bank.” Palestinian shopfronts remain closed for security reasons, and Palestinians barred from visiting designated areas without appropriate approval. Theroux’s guide and local peace activist Issa Amro is unable to accompany him to areas in Hebron where settlers are offered continuous military protection.
When Theroux and his guides visit a ruined Palestinian home in Tuwuni in the night, an IDF patrol with laser sights is not far behind. At one checkpoint, Theroux is accosted by a balaclava-wearing Israeli soldier, provoking him to bark “Don’t touch me”. They are solid reminders to Palestinians living in the West Bank that they are living on borrowed time, a measure that diminishes with each day.
Daniella Weiss emerges as a central character, a figure who has led the Israeli settler movement for half a century. She reveals being clandestinely escorted by the sympathetic soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza to scout for possible future settlements. (800 families, goes the proud claim, await moving into them.) She grins, mocks and scorns, but does, at some point, demonstrate to Theroux her view about settler violence. For her, it does not exist. In that familiar pattern, even if it did exist, it would be justifiable because of Palestinian violence. When Theroux says he had seen a video of a Palestinian being shot, Weiss retorts that the Israel shooter was merely retaliating. She proceeds to shove him, hoping he returns the serve. He considers the display sociopathic. Yet sociopathy and the limitless well of self-defence are firm friends for Weiss and any number of IDF personnel and lawyers who see their cause as worthy. All are incapable of violence, incapable of genocide.
Critics have taken issue with the lens of the documentary, suggesting that the camera can deceive because of its sharp focus. The sampling of settlers shows them as almost comically villainous, their fanaticism icy and cruelty assured. The British-Palestinian writer and activist John Aziz was frustrated by the “selection of nasty extremists who lurched between denying the existence of Palestinians and expressing the desire to conquer more land and drive out the Arab inhabitants.” He even takes issue with the keen interest in Weiss, curious given that any program about Israeli settlements would look bare without her starring role.
Aziz misses the point in his demand for an elusive nuance. People once seen as marginalised pioneers seeking land in the West Bank have become the spear of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After October 7, 2023, it has become modish to entertain notions of expulsion, dispossession and seizure, to finally bury Palestinian notions of self-determination. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and follower of the teachings of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who, after moving to Israel, declared “the idea of a democratic Jewish state [a] nonsense”, is symptomatic of this shift. Convicted on eight charges, among them supporting a terrorist organisation and incitement to racism, Ben-Gvir regularly advocates ethnic cleansing of both the West Bank and Gaza.
In May this year, the Israeli Security Cabinet initiated the land registration process in Area C in the West Bank, a process which determines final ownership of land and extinguishes other claims. The Ministry of Defense was unequivocal about the goal of this move in a statement: “to strengthen, consolidate, and expand Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”
While the Israeli settlers seem to fail to see the Palestinians as human beings with valid territorial claims, international law has little time for the legality of the settlements. They are structures of a colonising project, and one regarded as unlawful. In its advisory opinion from July 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was “a wrongful act of a continuing character which has been brought about by Israel’s violations, through its policies and practices, of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.”
The settler project can also count on abundant support from the private sector. In her report to the UN Human Rights Council From economy of occupation to economy of genocide Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, lashes “corporate entities” international and local who have been enriched by “the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.” This includes heavy investments in the West Bank colonising enterprise, be it through supplying logistics, construction equipment and building materials. With the Israeli settlers being the shock troops of the Israeli State, Weiss’s boast captured by Theroux is being realised: “We do for governments what they can’t do for themselves.”
At lunchtime on July 1, as the Senate prepared to vote on Trump’s deeply unpopular “Big Beautiful Bill,” the cafeteria line at the Rayburn House Office Building ground to a halt. Where lobbyists and staffers usually rushed through the midday crush, over 100 clergy and faith leaders had gathered in solemn resistance. They linked arms and broke into song with the message: “Congress doesn’t eat ‘til Gaza eats.” At the other end of Capitol Hill, the Dirksen Senate Office Building cafeteria filled with chants and prayerful silence. Within minutes, Capitol Police arrested over 65 people.
Approximately one month ago — after years of harassment and intermittent demolitions — Israeli occupation forces arrived in the Palestinian village of Khallet al-Dabe’, one of the 12 communities that make up Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. They proceeded to demolish the village almost entirely. In just two and a half hours, Israeli occupation forces reduced…
In the last few months, we witnessed two violent attacks on pro-Israel events organized by American Jewish groups, by perpetrators who shouted “Free Palestine!” as they acted. The attacks — which killed two young Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., and severely burned participants in a “Run for Their Lives” event in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages — have been roundly…
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman today recalled New Zealand’s heyday as a Pacific nuclear free champion in the 1980s, and challenged the country to again become a leading voice for “peace and justice”, this time for the Palestinian people.
He told the weekly Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland’s central Te Komititanga Square that it was time for New Zealand to take action and recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel over its Gaza atrocities.
“From 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons were exploded across the Pacific and consistently the New Zealand government spoke out against it,” he said.
“It took cases to the International Court of Justice, supported by Australia and Fiji, against the nuclear testing across the Pacific.
“Aotearoa New Zealand was a voice for peace, it was a voice for justice, and when the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior here and killed Fernando Pereira, it spoke out and took action against France.”
New Zealand will this week be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
Dawn vigil on Greenpeace III
Greenpeace plans a dawn vigil on board their current flagship Rainbow Warrior III at Halsey Wharf.
He spoke about the Gaza war crimes, saying it was time for New Zealand to take serious action to help end this 20 months of settler colonial genocide.
“There are millions of people [around the world] who are trying to end this colonial occupation of Palestinian land,” Norman said.
“And millions of people who are trying to stop people simply standing to get food who are hungry who are being shelled and killed by the Israeli military simply for the ‘crime’ of being born in the land that Israel wants to occupy.”
Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests this week against the Gaza genocide. Image: David Robie/APR
Norman’s message echoed an open letter that he wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier this week criticising the government for its “ongoing failure … to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel”.
He cited the recent UN Human Rights Office report that said the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli military while trying to fetch food from the controversial new “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid hubs was a ‘likely war crime”.
“Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza has placed over 2 million people on the precipice of famine. Malnutrition and starvation are rife,” he said.
Israel ‘weaponising aid’
“Israel is weaponising aid, using starvation as a tool of genocide and is now shooting at civilians trying to access the scraps of aid that are available.”
He said this was “catastrophic”, quoting Luxon’s own words, and the human suffering was “unacceptable”.
Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford also spoke at the rally and march today, saying the Labour Party was calling for sanctions and accountability.
He condemned the failure to hold “the people who have been enabling the genocide in Gaza”.
“It’s been going on for too long. Not just the last [20 months], but actually the last 77 years.
“And it is time the Western world snapped out of the spell that the Zionists have had on the Western imagination — at least on the political classes, government MPs, the policy makers in Western countries, who for so long have enabled, have stayed quiet in the face of the US who have armed and funded the genocide”
For the Palestinian solidarity movement in New Zealand it has been a big week with four politicians — including Prime Minister Luxon — and two business leaders, the chief executives of Rocket Lab and Rakon, who have been referred by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation over allegations of complicity with the Israeli war crimes.
This unprecedented legal development has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.
On Friday, protesters picketed a Rocket Lab manufacturing site in Warkworth, the head office in Mount Wellington and the Māhia peninsula where satellites are launched.
Approximately one month ago — after years of harassment and intermittent demolitions — Israeli occupation forces arrived in the Palestinian village of Khallet al-Dabe’, one of the 12 communities that make up Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. They proceeded to demolish the village almost entirely. In just two and a half hours, Israeli occupation forces reduced almost the entire village to rubble.
Like Khallet al-Dabe’, all of the Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta are now under threat of permanent expulsion after the Civil Administration — the Israeli military body in charge of governing the West Bank — issued an order allowing what it calls “live-fire training” in Masafer Yatta, an action taken to reinforce its designation of the area as “Firing Zone 918.”
In this episode, we explore the week in Australian politics and international affairs, starting with the media’s breathless fixation on whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will secure a face-to-face with US President Donald Trump.
We examine how the Canberra press gallery and commercial breakfast TV – “When are you meeting Trump, Prime Minister?” – turn diplomacy into reality-show theatre.
As Washington’s unpredictable trade war threatens Australian exporters, we argue that “Albo-meets-Don” photo-ops won’t protect the economy and that Canberra must diversify beyond the United States toward larger markets such as China and India. Along the way we revisit Kevin Rudd’s famous “village idiot” spray at Trump, JD Vance’s Hitler comparison, showing how partisan spin obscures the fundamentals of Australia–US relations.
Then we go to Belmore in Sydney’s west, where police brutally assaulted former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas during an anti-war protest outside SEC Plating – one of at least twenty local contractors supplying F-35 fighter-jet parts used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. Using the draconian NSW “Places of Worship” laws, officers fractured Thomas’s eye socket, proving our long-held warning that expanded police powers crush dissent and protect weapons manufacturers. We connect this incident to Australia’s $4.1 billion stake in the F-35 program, ask why Canberra denies any military link to Israel, and highlight how protest rights are being selectively policed to silence pro-Palestine voices.
We then explore the Liberal Party’s gender crisis: just six women in the House of Representatives and 32 per cent female representation nationwide. While deputy leader Sussan Ley talks “quotas, merit lists, anything that works,” Angus Taylor and WA Liberals dig in against reform. Drawing on Labor’s 31-year journey to gender parity, we propose a radical but simple fix – women-only preselections for the next two elections – arguing that genuine democracy needs a parliament that reflects Australia’s diversity.
Finally, we analyse the landmark Yoorrook Justice Commission report, which labels Victoria’s post-1834 treatment of First Nations peoples an act of genocide. With 100 recommendations spanning compensation, land returns and curriculum reform, Yoorrook sets a blueprint for truth-telling, treaty and justice – if governments stop dragging their feet. We explain why acknowledging genocide under UN definitions is essential, how similar truth commissions elsewhere have driven change, and why Australia can no longer afford selective amnesia about its colonial past.
We don’t plead, beseech, beg, guilt-trip, or gaslight you and claim the end of the world of journalism is coming soon. We keep it simple: If you like our work and would like to support it, send a donation, from as little as $5. Or purchase one of our books! It helps to keep our commitment to independent journalism ticking over! Go to our supporter page to see the many ways you can support New Politics.
It would be over now. This Holocaust would be over now if all of you who privately claim to care publicly chose to do something – anything. If you could bring yourself to march and chant. If you could fly a flag. If you could wear a badge. If you could post a poster or stick a sticker. If you could just turn up.
The polls say that most of you are on our side. Why do you leave us feeling alone? Why do you let the people who hate and murder feel so normal and accepted?
You came out of the woodwork to tell me I was brave for going to the other side of the world for the Global March to Gaza. I wasn’t brave, I was privileged. Millions would have joined if they could. They would have joined because we are all desperate to find ways of breaking through. Millions of people pour their hearts and souls and time and money beyond measure into this – this desperate screaming attempt to raise the alarm over things that can never be undone. The dead will never not be dead. Each day the number grows and these indelible violent acts will live in memory for generations of sorrow and generations of guilt. We are all sick of banging our heads against the brick wall of public immobility.
Oceans of tears are shed by a those brave enough to open their eyes and hearts to the sorrow. Many feel that they must bear witness to the graphic horrors even if it rips them to shreds. And you wont even click on a post, like a post, or share a post, let alone make a comment. Some force themselves to face nightmares, and you literally will not raise a finger for what you claim to believe in.
It has been so long and so lonely. The argument was won over a year ago, but the cruelty, the killing, the maiming, the starving, the destruction goes on. The polls show that most people know this is wrong, you just don’t care enough to do anything.
I was asked what I did over the summer for the work newsletter. I told them that I did Palestine solidarity activism. They told me it couldn’t be included in the newsletter because they didn’t want to be political. You asked what I did and I told you. Do you think censoring that is not political? Do you think your silence is not political? Do you think your inaction is not political? Do you think avoiding learning more because it might make you sad and angry isn’t a fucking political choice? Do you think history will look kindly on this generation of Western genocide enablers? It will not.
If everyone who tells pollsters that they are against the killing in Gaza took that tiny step further and said that they support Palestinian freedom because Palestinians are humans with human rights; and if every one of those people just wore that on a badge or put that on a bumper sticker it would change everything. It is such a small thing for each individual, but together the visual signal of where people stand would radically change the crucial presumptions of journalism and politics.
A ceasefire in Gaza will not end the genocide, it will merely lead to slow killing through deprivation and broken aid promises peppered with the violent ceasefire violations that Israel always practices. If Palestine is not liberated then in a few years another pretext will be found for another major massacre. This issue is not going away. It is time to choose to stand with what you believe, or to continue being a traitor to yourself.
Taking action is not hard. Facing reality is hard. Finding out that everything is worse than you thought. Finding out that the news media has to censor most of the newsworthy stories so they can maintain “balance”. Finding out that your leaders aren’t merely selfish and myopic, they are actively working to make the world safe for mass murder. Taking action ends the horrible tension of guilt, but it must be real action.
Don’t give money to seek some facile absolution. Money to people in Gaza does not make one morsel of food enter. Money fuels inflation, and inequality. Money pays bandits and profiteers. Real action means becoming active. Real action means taking on an identity and owning it.
No one can ever do enough. The small enjoyments and large privileges we have in life will always create dissonance and discomfort, but a clear conscience doesn’t require perfection, it requires earnest and vulnerable commitment. It requires that you make it part of who you are and deal with the social consequences as best you can. Once you do a burden will fall from you.
And for those who already are taking a stand it is time we stop making excuses for others. Our low expectations are not kindness nor humility, they are a type of arrogance. We are letting our society fall into an evil that demeans the individual and increases the tyranny of the state. Their choice to be silent now will lead to the end of choice for all of us in the future.
Surprisingly, it all comes down to Oscar Romero for Dan who voted for or supported Ronald Ray-Gun the first terrorist go-around:
Coming of age, he stated, at age 19 when he traveled to Nicaragua, and he’s been on that socialist and communist path since, now at age 57 with kiddos living the life in Pittsburgh.
He’s written books that will get anyone in trouble if they showed up at a mixed company event , or No Kings rally staffing a table with his books piled up high.
We talked about the Syria book, for sure, but then the case of regime change, well, Vietnam, anyone? El Salvador, folks?
Reagan’s legacy: President Ronald Reagan in 1982; Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in March 1980, and the four American Catholic missionaries murdered in the same year by the Salvadoran National Guard: Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel. (Reagan: Michael Evans / The White House / Getty Images; Romero: Bettmann; bottom: courtesy of the Maryknoll Sisters.)
Dan told me he has a lifesized statue of Saint Oscar Romero in his house, and the Catholic kid from Pittsburgh transformed into a Columbia University graduate of law and running into the Belly of the Beast of one of Many Proxy Chaos countries of the Monroe Doctrine variety — Colombia.
From the CIA pages of Wikipedia: He/Kovalik worked on the Alien Tort Claims Act cases against The Coca-Cola Company, Drummond Company and Occidental Petroleum over human rights abuses in Colombia.[3] Kovalik accused the United States of intervention in Colombia, saying it has threatened peaceful actors there so it may “make Colombian land secure for massive appropriation and exploitation”.[6] He also accused the Colombian and United States governments of overseeing mass killings in Colombia between 2002 and 2009.[7]
Oh, remember those days, no, when I was young teaching college at age 25: Oh yeah, BDS CocaCola? Right brothers, right sisters:
“If we lose this fight against Coke,
First we will lose our union,
Next we will lose our jobs,
And then we will all lose our lives!”
“If it weren’t for international solidarity,
We would have been eliminated long ago. That is the truth.”
We are the world’s supreme terrorists, Dan and I agree. And, while we have BDS for Israel, think about it = BDS for UnUnited Snake$ of AmeriKKKa? How’s that Coke doing for you? Boycotting Walmart, Starbucks, Exxon, BP, Coke, etc. Ain’t going to have a revolution boycotting plastic bottles of water.
Ahh, one company, and it’s all about killer sweetened soft drinks, and the outsized influence on politics locally and nationally and internationally.
Almost Thirty Years ago, this book, School of Assassins, was published: The atrocities perpetrated on hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans by graduates of the US Army’s School of the Americas will not come as a surprise to many. For the uninitiated, however, this book is sure to be an eye-opener. How many of us remember, every time we read of plunder, torture, and murder by corrupt military regimes in Central and South America, that almost all of them employ officers trained in these “arts” at Fort Benning’s SOA, and that their clandestine education is funded by our tax dollars? In School of Assassins — vital reading for anyone who still harbors delusions about America’s role abroad — the author records the history of the school and its graduates. More important, he shows how the school’s very existence is a hidden consequence of the imperialistic foreign policy shamelessly pursued by our government for decades, all with the express purpose of maintaining world dominance. Nelson-Pallmeyer offers ideas for ways to work toward closing the school, but he suggests that the true task ahead of us is continual, active opposition to the death-bringing hunger for power and control — not only in the public arena, but in our personal lives.
*****
Moving back into Dan’s new book, with coauthor Jeremy Kuzmarov.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Oliver Stone
Introduction
Chapter 1: The First U.S. Regime Change in Syria—The Early Cold War
Chapter 2: Back to the Future: Long-Term U.S. Regime-Change Strategy
Chapter 3: The Arab Spring and U.S. Interference in Syria
Chapter 4: Voices from Syria
Chapter 5: Charlie Wilson’s War Redux? Operation Timber Sycamore and Other Covert Operations in Syria
Chapter 6: Strange Bedfellows: The Multi-National Alliance Against Syria
Chapter 7: Shades of the Gulf of Tonkin: Chemical Weapons False Flag
Chapter 8: A War by Other Means: Sanctions and the U.S. Regime-Change Operation
Chapter 9: The White Helmets: Al Qaeda’s Partner in Crime
Chapter 10: The Liberal Intelligentsia Plays Its Role
Chapter 11: Syria After the Western-backed Al Qaeda Triumph—As Witnessed by Dan Kovalik
Epilogue
Here’s the first paragraphs of Oliver Stone’s forward:
Foreword by Oliver Stone
Another nation has fallen to the predations of Western interventionism. This time, it is Syria, a once beautiful and prosperous country, which has been home to peoples of different religions and ethnicities who lived together peacefully for centuries. That peaceful coexistence was purposefully destroyed by the U.S. and its allies who decided to effectuate regime change by inciting sectarian violence and supporting terrorist groups whose explicit plan was to set up an extremist religious Caliphate intolerant of all other religions.
Quite tragically, the terrorist group Al Qaeda, now named HTS, has taken over Syria and is now in the process of setting up such a Caliphate. Part of this process entails the mass slaughter of religious minorities, such as Alawites and Christians, and the kidnapping of young women from these groups who are raped and enslaved.
It would be shocking to know that this is all happening with the full connivance of modern, Western nations, except for the fact that we have seen this all before—most notably, in Afghanistan where the U.S. supported religious extremists to overthrow a secular, socialist government and to lure the USSR into the “Afghan trap,” in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Years later, the Soviet Union is gone, Afghanistan is now being ruled by the Taliban, and the offspring of the terrorist groups the U.S. supported in Afghanistan—namely, Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda—is now flourishing more than ever as the ruling group of a major country.
Oil oil oil, and anti-USSR and anti-socialist fervor, man: Here, those 9 steps toward regime change deployed in Syria — bloody sanctions kill more than physical bombs.
From Dan and Jeremy’s first chapter:
Direct Quoting: The U.S. State Department actually took credit for Assad’s overthrow. Spokesman Matthew Miller stated on December 9, 2024 that U.S. policy had “led to the situation we’re in today.” It “developed during the latter stages of the Obama administration” and “has largely carried through to this day.”[1] The regime-change operation in Syria was openly advertised even earlier, when General Wesley Clark was told during a visit at the Pentagon after 9/11 that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”[2]
The methods that were utilized to oust Assad fit a long-standing regime-change playbook that had been applied in many of the countries listed by Clark. This playbook involves:
a) a protracted demonization campaign that spotlights the dastardly human rights abuses allegedly committed by the target of U.S. regime change. This demonization campaign enlists journalists and academics and highlights the viewpoint of pro-Western dissidents while maligning politicians, journalists or academics who voice criticism of U.S. foreign policy or who are against the regime-change operation (the latter being derided as “dictator lovers” or “apologists”).[3]
b) National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency of international Development (USAID) funding of civil society and opposition groups and opposition media with the aim of mobilizing support of students and young people against the government.
c) a program of economic warfare designed to weaken the economy and facilitate hardship for the population that will push them to turn against their leader.
d) CIA financing of rebel groups and fomenting of protests or an uprising that aims to elicit a heavy-handed government response that can be used to further turn domestic and world opinion against the government.
e) a false flag is often necessary in which paid snipers dressed up in army or police uniforms fire on protesters. Blame is cast on the targeted government when it urges restraint. Chemical or biological warfare attacks are also staged in order to rally Western opinion in support of “humanitarian” military intervention.
f) drone warfare, bombing, and clandestine Special Forces operations using Navy Seals and private mercenaries. The light U.S. footprint approach will avert antiwar dissent at home.
g) enlisting third country nationals and proxy forces to carry out a lot of the heavy lifting and many of the military or bombing operations to ensure plausible deniability.
g) enlistment of disaffected minority groups who are paid to fight against government forces.
h) whitewashing of the background of rebel forces who are presented in the media as “freedom fighters” or “moderate rebels” and not the terrorists and Islamic extremists or fascists that they usually are.
i) accusing the government of enlisting foreigners to put down the rebellion when the rebellion itself has been triggered by foreign mercenaries financed by MI6/CIA/Mossad.
The targets for U.S. regime change are inevitably leaders who are independent nationalists intent on resisting U.S. corporate penetration of their countries and challenging U.S. global hegemony. Bashar al-Assad fit the bill for the latter because he backed Palestinian resistance groups and stood up to Israel, aligned closely with Iran and Russia, and adopted nationalistic economic policies.[4] Assad was also growing economic relations with China and refused to construct the Trans-Arabian Qatari pipeline through Syria, endorsing instead a Russian approved “Islamic” pipeline running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this latter pipeline would make “Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market” and “dramatically increase Iran’s influence in the Middle East and world”—which the U.S. and Israel would not allow.[5]
Oh, that dude who pushed cancer sticks onto women:
Edward Bernays and the Guatemalan Coup:
In the early 1950s, the UFC, facing land reform policies in Guatemala that threatened their interests, hired Bernays to counter the government’s actions.
Bernays led a “fact-finding” trip to Guatemala, cherry-picking information to portray the Guatemalan government as communist and a threat to American interests.
He launched a misinformation campaign to discredit the Guatemalan government, framing the UFC as the victim of a “communist” regime.
This campaign helped to create a climate of fear and suspicion about communism in Guatemala, which was used to justify the CIA-orchestrated coup.
The coup, known as Operation PBSuccess, involved the CIA, the UFC, and the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza, according to Wikipedia.
President Árbenz was overthrown and replaced by a military regime led by Carlos Castillo Armas, backed by the US.
On March 10, 2014, Chiquita Brands International announced that it was merging with the Irish fruit company, Fyffes. After the merger, Chiquita-Fyffes would control over 29% of the banana market; more than any one company in the world today. However, this is not the first time in history these companies have been under the same name. Chiquita Brands and Fyffes were both owned by United Fruit Company until 1986. The modern merger marks their reunion and continued takeover of the banana market [1]. United Fruit Company was known for its cruelty in the workplace and the racist social order they perpetuated. Though Chiquita and Fyffes are more subtle in their autocratic tendencies, they continue many of the same practices of political and social manipulation as their parent company once did [2].
Advertising has been one of the most prominent forms of manipulation conducted by both the two modern companies and United Fruit. In the mid-twentieth century, United Fruit Company embarked on a series of advertising campaigns designed to exploit the emotions and sense of adventure of a growing American middle class and furthered the racial polarization and political tension between the U.S. and Central America, all for the sake of selling their bananas.
United Fruit initiated its first advertising campaign in 1917. By this time the company had well establish plantations in various countries in Central and South America. All they needed now was to interest the American people in trying new, exotic things in order to sell the bananas they were producing. At this time in American history, it was thought that advertisements should target consumers’ rationale, not their emotions, so United Fruit hired scientists to author positive reviews about bananas whether they were true or not. One of these publications, Food Value of the Banana: Opinions of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities, offered a collection of articles by prominent scientists that promoted the nutrition value, health benefits, and even taste of the banana [3]. Today we know that bananas are good for us, but in the early 1900s, there was no way for these scientists to determine the nutrition value and other properties they claimed to have researched. However, Americans appear to have believed the scientists, for United Fruit’s banana sales began to soar.
Beginning in the 1920s, everything began to change. A successful young propagandist named Edward Bernays changed American advertising forever [4]. Bernays discovered that targeting people’s emotions instead of their logic caused people to flock to a product. His first experiment in this type of advertising was for the American Tobacco Company. Bernays thought that cigarette sales would sky rocket if it was socially acceptable for women to smoke, so at an important women’s rights march in New York City, Bernays had a woman light a cigarette in front of reporters and call it a “Torch of Freedom” [5]. Soon, women all over the United States were smoking cigarettes. After this initial public relations stunt, companies all over America began using emotionally-loaded advertising. United Fruit was no different. They launched an advertising campaign revolving around their new cruise liner called “The Great White Fleet” [6]. This cruise liner sailed civilians to the United Fruit-controlled countries in Central and South America to appeal to Americans’ sense of adventure and foster a good corporate reputation with the American people. When the cruise liner docked in a country, cruisers often toured one of United Fruit’s plantations. During this tour, the tourists would only be shown small areas of the banana plantations, theatrically set up to present the plantation as a harmonious place to work, when, in reality, it was a place of harsh conditions and corruption [7]. Their advertisements were key in swaying the American people to set out on an exotic adventure with the Great White Fleet. The flyer to the right (Fig. 1) describes Central America as a land of pirates and romance. The advertisement even portrays it as the place where “Pirates hid their Gold.” By giving the American tourists a false sense of the romanticism of Central America, they sold more cruise tickets, and through association, more bananas.
United Fruit’s unethical practices extended far beyond their manipulative advertising. They were also well known for their extremely racial politics in the workplace. They had employees from many different racial groups, and they would pit them against one another to control revolts that would otherwise be aimed at the company [8]. American whites would get the most prestigious jobs, like managers and financial advisers, while people of color got the hard labor. The company made a rigid distinction between Hispanics and West Indian workers. They administered different privileges and punishments to each ethnic group , and if one group were rewarded, the managers told them it was because they worked harder than the other group. If a punishment was administered, management would say it was the other group’s fault [9]. This gave the two groups something to focus their anger on, so they didn’t revolt against the company due to poor working conditions. United Fruit used the Great White Fleet to further these racial tensions. If the name was not obvious enough, all the ships were painted bright white and all the crew members wore pristine white uniforms [10]. The Fleet went so far as to encourage the passengers to wear white. The advertisement to the left (Fig. 2) further embodies the racial tensions experienced by the Americans and the United Fruit laborers. The large, white, American ship dwarfed the small, run-down, brown ship, symbolizing the power and prestige the whites had over the locals. The Central Americans in the corner of the picture are looking in awe of the massive ship, and are dressed in tropical garb to satisfy the need to appeal to the American people’s idealized version of the tropics. This is not only an advertisement, but a work of propaganda.
The United Fruit Company continued to advertise throughout the mid twentieth century until they found a new use for their public relations skills. A politician named Jacobo Arbenz was elected president in Guatemala, one of the Central American countries occupied by United Fruit [11]. Arbenz was a strict nationalist, and all he wanted was for his people to stop suffering in poverty. One of the most prominent issues in Guatemala, at the time, was scarcity of land. When United Fruit invaded Guatemala, they bought out many of the local farmers to acquire land for their plantations. This did not leave room for the peasants, who relied on farming as the sole source of their income. Arbenz created an agrarian reform that took land from the company and gave it back to the poor farmers that needed it [12]. United Fruit was outraged by this reform. They immediately launched a propaganda campaign led by Edward Bernays to convince the United States government and its people that Arbenz was a communist dictator [13]. In a 1953 article by the New York Times, Guatemala was described as “operating under increasingly severe Communist-inspired pressure to rid the country of United States companies” [14]. United Fruit was manipulating the media to make it sound like the agrarian reform was only created because Arbenz was being influenced by the Soviet government to sabotage America’s economic imperialism in Central America. Since it was during the Cold War, association with communists was a serious accusation. The United States’ aggressive stance toward communism encouraged them to take immediate action. The CIA hired civilian militias from Honduras to come into Guatemala and start a war against Arbenz and his followers. United Fruit also convinced U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to threaten Arbenz because Eisenhower and many other prominent American government officials had stock in United Fruit [15]. With these pressures, Arbenz feared for his life and submitted his resignation.
However, this did not satisfy United Fruit. They wished to make an example of Guatamala, so their other host nations wouldn’t dare oppose them. They had the CIA pay off the Guatemalan military so they would let the Honduras militia win [16]. After the victory, the leader of the Honduran militia, Castillo Armas, was appointed as president of Guatemala and Armas was a puppet of United Fruit Company for the rest of his term [17]. He returned all of United Fruit’s confiscated land, and gave them preferential treatment in all Guatemalan ports and railways. The company continued to influence the media of North and Central America to justify what they had done. They called Armas the “Liberator” and told the inspiring tale of how he freed Guatemala from its communist ties. They also destroyed what was left of Arbez’s reputation by calling him “Red Jacobo,” further tying him to the Soviets [18]. A New York Times article written in 1954 states that, “President Castillo Armas is continuing to act with moderation and common sense,” and “Jacobo Arbenz, anyway, is a deflated balloon, hardly likely to cause any more trouble” [19]. The media praised Armas for his good policy making, yet most of his policies were proposed by United Fruit or the American government. United Fruit and American controlled media also made Armas into a war hero to increase his acceptance and popularity with the Guatemalan people. Arbenz was made to look like an easy defeat to give the American people confidence in the ability of their government to eliminate communist threats.
*****
Back on track with Dan and Haeder. And so we discussed the genocide, the mass murder, the shifting baseline of acceptance, and how Israel and their Jewish Project for a Greater Tyrannical Israel has set down a new set of abnormalities in the aspect of guys like Dan and Jeremy having to bear witness, research the roots of these tyrannical empire building plots, and then write about it and publish books, which for all intents and purposes might be read by the choir.
Again, Dan lost his faculty job at the University of Pittsburg, why?
Russia. Putin Stoogery.
Dan and I talked off the mic about adjunct faculty organizing: He was interviewed 13 years ago on that accord: Interview with an Adjunct Organizer: “People Are Tired of the Hypocrisy”
The debate over the working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a longtime adjunct professor at Duquesne University who was fired in the last year of her life and died penniless. Moshe Marvit talks to Dan Kovalik, a labor lawyer who knew Votjko and has helped to publicize her story.
The debate over working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko on September 1. Vojtko, who had a long career as an adjunct professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died penniless after being fired from the university in the last year of her life. Her story served as a reminder of what has become a massive underclass of underpaid contingent labor in academia.
Dan Kovalik, senior associate general counsel of the United Steelworkers, wrote an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that brought news of Votjko’s death to a wider audience. Kovalik has been working with Duquesne adjunct faculty for several years, helping them organize a union and fight for better working conditions. At the time of Votjko’s death, he was assisting her in a legal fight to keep her job and her independence. I spoke with Kovalik in his office in the United Steelworkers building in Pittsburgh. The interview has been edited for clarity.
Moshe Marvit: Can you describe the working conditions of adjunct faculty?
Dan Kovalik:As I’ve come to learn, and I didn’t realize it until about a year and a half ago when adjuncts approached us to organize, the conditions are just abysmal. The folks that came to me at that time were making $3,000 for a three-credit course. So say you teach a load of two courses a semester, and you have two semesters a year, then that’s $12,000 right there. No benefits. Maybe you get a summer course in there, so maybe you make $15,000 per year. That’s barely enough to live on, especially if you have a family. I know a guy who teaches seven courses per semester to make ends meet at three different universities. They call it a “milk run.”
It had always been my perception that going into the academy would be a great life. You would get a good salary; you would get benefits; you would get the benefit where your kids could go to school for free there or at a reduced rate. Adjuncts don’t get that. I’ve come to learn that 75 percent of all faculty around the country are adjuncts. It’s this kind of dirty secret of the academy.
Meanwhile there are just a few at the top who are doing well. It looks a lot more like the corporate world than like nonprofit education. — DK
I knew about Mary before her firing and her death, and alas, Dan and I are brothers in arms when it comes to freeway fliers, just-in-time adjunct faculty, precarious teachers, 11th hour appointed non-tenure track and non-contracted instructors.
I will use one chapter from their book, about a person Dan met in Syria, who is a journalist and is emblematic of the power of being Syrian, and in fact, Dan stated that the best and friendliest folk in the world are Syrians, and Lebanese and Palestinian. My experience that the Diaspora of those same folk for me absolutely resonates the same over my 6.6 decades. He dedicated the book to Yara:
In 2021, I twice visited both Lebanon and Syria. What I learned there was quite at variance with what we were being told in the mainstream press. One of the first people I met in Damascus, Syria, was Yara Saleh, a lovely and affable woman who was serving as a reporter and anchor for the Syrian News Channel, an official state news agency.
Yara, while working for this channel back in 2012, was kidnapped by the Free Syria Army (FSA) just outside Damascus, and held for six days until rescued in a daring mission by the Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAA). Yara’s kidnapping and rescue became the subject of a movie which the delegation I was with were invited to watch for its premier. I contacted Yara afterwards to hear her story in her words.
Yara still seemed shaken by her abduction years before. She was thin, almost to the point of emaciation, ate nothing, but chain smoked as she told her story. As Yara explained, she was traveling with a driver (Hussam Imad), a camera man (Abdullah Tabreh) and an assistant (Hatem Abu Yehya) to do a report on the clashes between the SAA and forces which she described as “armed terrorist groups.” She specifically wanted to report on the impact of the burgeoning war and terrorist threats upon the civilian population.
However, while traveling on the road to their destination (a Damascus suburb known as al-Tell), they were stopped by armed men. These armed men detained them, took their possessions, including their phones and money, and beat all of them, including Yara. Yara, a quite small woman, explains that the beatings upon her were quite hurtful. Yara said they decided to kidnap them after discovering that they were with the Syrian News Channel.
They were driven into town and to a location with hundreds of other armed militants. While en route, one of the armed captors held Yara’s head down between her legs.
One of the first questions Yara and her colleagues were asked was about their religious background. All of them were of “mixed” traditions in Yara’s words, and Yara stood out because she wore makeup and did not wear any head covering. I just found out recently that Yara is an Alawite. Yara, like many of her fellow Syrians, sees herself as a Syrian first and that is more important to her identity than being an Alawite. Before the sectarian violence brought to Syria from the outside, Syrians did not wear their religions on their sleeve and didn’t go around asking others what their religion is; that would be considered rude.
The sheikh told them that they all were to be executed because they worked with the Syrian government and because of their mixed religious affiliations. In response to the sheikh’s words, two of Yara’s colleagues, Hussam and Hatem, were taken away to a nearby location. Yara then heard the sound of gun fire. She believed that both of her associates were killed at that time. However, Hussam was shortly brought back, and he told Yara, with tears in his eyes, that he witnessed Hatem murdered in a spray of bullets.
Notably, Yara explained that the fighters who held them openly told them that they were taking orders from someone in Turkey and that they had been told to move them to Turkey. The fighters explained that the plan was to negotiate their freedom with the Syrian Arab Army, and that if the SAA did not give in to their demands, they would kill them. However, when Yara asked one of the fighters if they would be released if the SAA gave them what they wanted, he answered in the negative, saying that they would continue to hold them for leverage to gain more concessions.
In addition, according to Yara, a significant number of the fighters were not Syrian. They were not certain where they all were from, but they could tell by their accents that some were from Saudi Arabia and Libya. (from the unpublished manuscript, Syria: An Anatomy of Regime Change.)
*****
Listen to the interview I had with Dan. He fielded my more unconventional questions, with an open mind and grace and in the end this radio interview is an organic discussion, or in Dan the Lawyer’s words, “I have no problem with stream of consciousness.”
In this miserable country love stories end too soon and families fall apart in the blink of an eye.
This is how Marah Kamal begins her life story and if you know anyone from Gaza, you know how much they love the land they live on. They literally ‘worship the ground they walk upon.’ Only God is loved more than the land. So, for Marah to call her country miserable, is to admit that after a year and a half of war, there is nothing left. Even pregnancy is a curse.
Here, in Gaza, a woman becomes pregnant and rejoices, endures the pain of labor and gives birth, then breastfeeds, cares for her baby and loses sleep. She pours her life into raising her children, all so she can watch them grow up. Then the Occupation decides to bomb a house and it’s as if a mother’s son never even existed. There isn’t even a body left for burial. This country is not fit for marriage, pregnancy or childbirth. Ditto education and work. It’s a land of orphans and widows, of the dead and the wounded, of tarps and tents and shattered streets.
These are the dilemmas we will never have to face. How long does it take you to recall all the names of loved ones who have been murdered? How many of us have watched our children die? Or our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, husbands or wives? This is how Israel practices birth control on Palestinians. All we worry about is Roe vs. Wade.
I want the world to hear my story and stand by me however it can. I want to find a glimmer of hope for a simple, peaceful life filled with the warmth of family and friends. I want to live like the simplest of people. I want my children to be able to do what they wish, eat what they crave and play whenever they like. I just want to live a life free from death and destruction. Am I asking for too much?
Simple requests from a widowed young woman who studied genetic engineering and IVF fertilization in college. Now, she raises her orphaned children, three-year-old Sana and baby Adam, as they play games of dodging bullets from the sky. No one needs fertility help in Gaza anymore. They’re all waiting to die instead.
Marah’s Husband Bahaa
This war has devastated my life. It stole my name, my life, my hope—everything. First and foremost, I lost my husband Bahaa. Just a week before the war started, on October 1st, Bahaa bought a car. He had recently gotten a degree in accounting but finding work is hard in Gaza, so he decided to become a taxi-driver. Even after October 7th, after we fled our home, he kept working, driving anyone who needed to be evacuated from northern Gaza to the south. There were infants, the elderly, people with disabilities, the wounded and the sick. He helped many people evacuate to safer areas without charging them a single shekel. He said to me, “This is all I can offer to people… how could I withhold it?” I remember him once saying, “A man once rode with me all the way from the far north to the far south. He had no money for the fare and was ashamed. He had a bag of lemons, and I told him, ‘Give me a lemon, so you don’t feel embarrassed.’”
Have you grown tired of my story, or shall I go on? Marah asks me.
To me, Bahaa was a hero who stood by his people until the very last moment with everything he had. He didn’t lock himself away in fear. He lived his life with courage, and to this day, I feel pride every time someone tells me how kind and humane Bahaa was. Now, I have to be everything for my two small children. I have to bury this heavy sorrow deep in my heart and keep on living, even with a knife pressed against it…for the sake of these two little hopes, to secure a life for them.
Marah’s tragedy is not unique. As you probably already know, it is commonplace in Gaza. With every good turn comes bad news. After nearly three months of blockading humanitarian aid, the embargo was lifted, only for the Occupation to massacre hundreds of people waiting to be fed. Marah thinks of her children when she feels like giving up.
I remember one time, my daughter Sana told me after waking up at dawn that she had dreamt of her father. He came to her and gave her red jelly with sugar. Sugar has become so expensive in Gaza, and she refuses to drink milk without it. I’m sorry, my love, on behalf of this entire world. And my baby Adam, who lost his father before he ever got to hear him say “Baba” has now started saying it to his grandfather instead.
As I finish Marah’s story on July 1st, 2025 I hear, yet again, there is talk of another cease-fire deal. Will it ever be over? Or is this the new way of war? Designed to string us along because the people in power don’t want it to end?
In a scene that transcends the limits of humanitarian disaster, Gaza has issued a heartbreaking appeal, not for medicine or food, but for the world to provide it with enough graves to bury its martyrs who fall every day under the Israeli bombardment that has been ongoing for nearly two years.
“No more graves in Gaza”
“There are no more graves in Gaza,” the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs said in its latest statement, confirming that the cemeteries are full, the land is running out, and there is no place left to bury the bodies that are piling up in hospitals, on the streets, and in the arms of mothers.
The Israeli aggression that began in October 2023 has left nothing but destruction in its wake: people, trees, stones, and even cemeteries. More than 40 cemeteries have been completely or partially destroyed, while the occupation forces prevent access to other cemeteries located within what they call “security zones,” leaving almost no burial options and forcing residents to resort to schoolyards, homes, and even the outskirts of camps to bury their loved ones.
Gaza: dignity violated even in death
Everywhere in the Gaza Strip today, there are endless stories of pain, but the most cruel story is that of a person who dies and cannot find a grave. The family of a martyr searches for a grave to lay him to rest, but finds none. The body is wrapped in a rough cloth shroud and buried in the rubble of a house or behind a school wall, simply because “there are no more graves.”
The Ministry of Awqaf spoke about the cost of burying a martyr, which now exceeds 1,000 shekels (equivalent to $250), given the scarcity of basic materials and the high prices of alternatives, such as stones extracted from destroyed buildings and mud as a substitute for cement. But even these solutions are no longer sufficient.
Multiple campaigns
In light of this disaster, the ministry launched the “Ikram” campaign, which aims to build free graves worthy of the victims of this long war. It is a sincere appeal to the Arab and Islamic world, to countries, charitable institutions, and to those with compassionate hearts: help Gaza bury its martyrs.
As the battle intensifies and the sky lights up with shelling, Gaza has become a city fighting for the right to a grave. A city that does not ask for life, but asks for what preserves the dignity of its dead.
Voices from under the rubble
In the midst of this crisis, some initiatives have emerged that offer a glimmer of hope, such as the “Algerian Waqf Cemetery” built by the Algerian Al-Baraka Association, which contains more than a thousand free graves in Khan Yunis, in addition to local donations from generous men who have provided graves for those in need. However, despite their greatness, these efforts are not enough in the face of the magnitude of the tragedy.
In Gaza today, life is no longer the only hope. The simple dream has become for the martyr to be buried with dignity, and for his body not to remain in the open or on a cold bed in a besieged hospital.
Protesters against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and occupied West Bank targeted three business sites accused of being “complicit” in Aotearoa New Zealand today.
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s “End Rocket Lab Genocide Complicity” themed protest picketed Rocket Lab’s New Zealand head office in Mt Wellington.
Simultaneously, protesters also picketed a site in Warkworth where Rocket Lab equipment is built and Mahia peninsula where satellites are launched.
In a statement on the PSNA website, it was revealed this week that the advocacy group’s lawyers have prepared a 103-page “indictment” against two business leaders, including the head of Rocket Lab, along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
They have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for investigation on an accusation of complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Rocket Lab chief executive Sir Peter Beck is one of the six people named in the legal brief.
“Rocket Lab has recently launched geospatial intelligence satellites for BlackSky Technology,” said PSNA co-chair John Minto in a statement.
High resolution images
“These satellites provide high resolution images to Israel which are very likely used to assist with striking civilians in Gaza. Sir Peter has proceeded with these launches in full knowledge of these circumstances”
A “Genocide Lab” protest against Rocket Lab in Mt Wellington today. Image: PSNA
“When governments and business leaders can’t even condemn a genocide then civil society groups must act.”
The other business leader named is Rakon Limited chief executive officer Dr Sinan Altug.
“Despite vast weapons transfers from the United States to Israel since the beginning of its war on Gaza, Rakon has continued with its longstanding supply of crystal oscillators to US arms manufacturers for use in guided missiles which are then available to Israel for the bombing of Gaza, as well as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran with consequential massive loss of life,” Minto said.
“Rakon’s claims that it has no responsibility over how these ‘dual-use’ technologies are used are not credible.”
Rocket Lab and Rakon have in the past rejected claims over their responsibility.
Speakers at Mount Wellington included the Green Party spokesperson for foreign affairs Teanau Tuiono; Dr Arama Rata, a researcher and lecturer from Victoria University; and Sam Vincent, the legal team leader for the ICC referral.
Law academic Professor Jane Kelsey spoke at the Warkworth picket.
MPs proudly posed for photos with suffragette-style sashes on exactly the same day most of them voted to approve a shameful attack on direct action group Palestine Action. Apparently, it’s a lot cheaper and easier to cosplay as direct-actionists from the past than it is to oppose state repression of direct-actionists in the present.
GET A LOAD OF THIS
MPs cosplayed as infamous direct actionists for women’s suffrage ON THE SAME DAY that they voted to proscribe anti-genocide direct action group @Pal_action for spraying paint…
— Defend our Juries (@DefendourJuries) July 2, 2025
Centenary Action – which a member of the Pankhurst family founded – helped to organise the handcrafting of white sashes for female MPs. The politicians received them on 2 July, the same day that most of them voted to ban direct-action group Palestine Action.
The most famous Pankhursts, Sylvia and Emmeline, were (in the words of the BBC) “trailblazing women who founded the suffragettes and campaigned for women’s right to vote”. Even the British parliament’s website honours them, saying:
The Pankhurst family is closely associated with the militant campaign for the vote. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and others, frustrated by the lack of progress, decided more direct action was required and founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto ‘Deeds not words’… Under her leadership the WSPU was a highly organised group and like other members she was imprisoned and went on hunger strike protests.
It adds:
the lack of Government action led the WSPU to undertake… attacks on property and law-breaking, which resulted in imprisonment and hunger strikes… These tactics attracted a great deal of attention to the campaign for votes for women.
So it’s ok to cosplay as direct actionists from the past, but we shouldn’t dare to use direct action today? Gotcha.
The British establishment has clearly felt uncomfortable about heroising the suffragettes. Because they represent a rich national tradition of active resistance to injustice – usually at the hands of the state. While trying to share the glory of the suffragettes in public by wearing their colours, politicians have long continued to treat them as extremists behind the scenes. They know full well the dangers of normalising direct action too much, because it could – and does – inspire others in the present day to resist injustice in similar ways.
Most of Britain’s MPs are not Jeremy Corbyn, though, unfortunately. They seem happy to cosplay as direct-actionists from the past, because it costs them nothing. But when it comes to actually defending the public’s brave resistance to injustice, they run and hide. Or more accurately, they vote to set the whole repressive power of the state against direct-actionists by labelling them as terrorists.
Before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, many people in Britain perhaps believed that we live in a democratic country with civil rights. But with Tory-Labour governments’ open participation in that genocide, the state has forced ordinary people to test how true that idea is. And as journalist Matt Kennard, it turns out it was just a facade:
The whole facade of our supposed civil rights in Britain is predicated on us never using them
As soon as you start taking them too seriously, they evaporate
The struggle against injustice is just as alive and necessary as it was in the time of the suffragettes. And just as it was morally right to support their cause in the past, it is morally right to support Palestine Action’s today.
