The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance and the endurance of a people condemned to silence.
In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity — grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.
At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine.
The U.S. State Department announced on Friday that it is “denying and revoking visas” for Palestinian officials ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York City next month, where several states are expected to recognize a Palestinian state. In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office said that it is denying visas to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)…
As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza City, President Donald Trump met Wednesday to discuss plans for a postwar Gaza with his son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This comes as Israeli business leaders are reportedly involved in developing a postwar Gaza plan that includes the creation of a “Trump Riviera” and a manufacturing zone named…
Israel announced on Friday that it has begun the “initial stages” of its siege on Gaza City, declaring the capital city a “dangerous combat zone” and ending its daytime pauses for the supposed purpose of allowing the passage of humanitarian aid, despite a famine declaration across the area last week. “We have begun the preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack on Gaza City…
Sheik Saeed Al-Amour, 61, is a community leader, and a prominent land rights activist. On August 28, Israeli colonial settlers, all illegal under international law, stormed onto his land near his home in the village of Al-Rakeez, Masafer Yatta, in the Southern occupied West Bank.
They released sheep onto it to destroy his olive trees. Video footage taken at the time, show the settlers brutally pushing Saeed, who is disabled, to the ground:
According to Saeed’s son, Issa Al-Amour, who we spoke with yesterday, the family suffers from almost daily attacks on their land.
He said:
Today, at seven in the morning, a settler came with sheep and brought them into our land and assaulted my father. We called the police but, unfortunately, the settler claimed that my father had beaten him, and the police took my father into investigation. The settler is called Amichai, and is the owner of the sheep, but he usually brings children to bring the sheep onto Palestinian lands.
Saeed was released this afternoon, after being made to pay a fine of 1,500 Shekels – equivalent to more than £330, even though it was him who was attacked, and he has official papers and documentation proving he is the owner of the land.
Israeli settlers running amok
In April, a settler shot Saeed at close range, and because of the delay caused by the occupation’s soldiers preventing the ambulance from reaching him, and also the severity of the injury, doctors ended up amputating his leg- while he was handcuffed to the hospital bed, according to Al Jazeera.
Saeed and his son ended up in court, blamed with attacking the settlers, and had to pay bail money- this time the equivalent of more than £1100- while the violent settler walked free.
These settlers, who carry out systematic assaults on Palestinian farmers, civilians and peace activists, and terror attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, are heavily funded and supported by the occupation’s regime, and their actions are intended not only to intimidate, but to erase Palestinian history and culture, while also destroying livelihoods, and ethnically cleansing the territory.
These intentions have been made loud and clear with Netanyahu, earlier this month, telling Israeli i24NEWS channel that he feels “very much” connected to the “Greater Israel” vision. This encompasses the occupied Palestinian territories, plus significant parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Uprooting trees
For decades, settlers have uprooted, burned, and destroyed Palestinian trees, especially olives, many of which are hundreds of years old. A report by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem states that in 2024 there were more than 150 attacks destroying trees in the occupied West Bank, resulting in the uprooting of more than 21,000, mainly olive trees.
It is now often impossible to tell the difference between settlers and soldiers, who are all armed, often wear the same clothing, and not only provoke the Palestinian population, but also participate in the attacks on them.
The occupation permits these settlers, who are all illegal under international law, to live in illegal settlements and outposts on land belonging to Palestinians, in the West Bank. They can be from any country in the world, the only stipulation being they must be Jewish.
The attacks continue unabated. Saeed again ended up hospitalised, when settlers assaulted him earlier this month. They broke his crutch during the attack, which occurred when they released livestock onto his land. But Saeed and his family are determined to defend their home.
‘We’re afraid’
Issa says:
Of course we are afraid, because the settlers are armed but we will not leave. We will stay here on our land, until our last breath.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal, leading human rights experts to say this reaffirmed that ‘freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable”.
In a special session of the UN Security Council, the 15 members, with the exception of the United States, called for an immediate end to the worsening famine in the Gaza Strip, a halt to the war, and a reversal of Israel’s plan to expand its military operations within the Strip.
UN: deep concern over Israel’s actions in Gaza
In a joint statement issued on Wednesday evening, 14 countries expressed “deep concern” about the humanitarian situation, stressing that the famine officially declared by the United Nations in the Gaza Strip is not a natural disaster but a “man-made crisis.” The countries condemned “the use of starvation as a weapon of war,” considering it a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The statement stressed the need for an immediate, permanent, and unconditional ceasefire, the release of all prisoners, and the urgent flow of humanitarian aid. It also called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the entry of aid and to reverse its military decision to take control of Gaza City.
In contrast, the United States was the only country that refused to join the statement, with its ambassador to the United Nations, Dorothy Shea, rejecting what she described as “the lie of starvation policy” and criticizing the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, claiming that it “failed the test.”
Last Friday, the UN report confirmed that famine has become a reality in the Gaza Strip, affecting more than half a million people, with warnings that it could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis in the coming weeks.
A war of extermination
This comes as the Israeli army continues a large-scale military operation to occupy Gaza City, concentrated in the neighborhoods of Shuja’iyya, Al-Zaytoun, and Al-Sabra in the south and east, and in the Jabalia camp in the north, causing new waves of displacement and migration.
Since October 2023, Israel has been waging a war of extermination against the people of Gaza with US support, including killing, starvation, destruction, and forced displacement, ignoring international appeals and orders from the International Court of Justice to stop the war. As of Wednesday, this war has resulted in 62,895 martyrs and 158,927 wounded, most of them women and children, in addition to 9,000 missing and hundreds of thousands displaced, while starvation alone has claimed the lives of 313 Palestinians, including 119 children.
Former United States secretary and Biden advisor, Jacob Lew, has stumbled into a series of embarrassing admissions in an interview with The New Yorker. Veteran journalist Isaac Chotiner had questions for Lew about the Biden administration’s handling of Israel in the early days of the genocide. Chotiner pressed Lew on America’s relationship to Israel’s internal demands for ethnic cleansing:
This is a war that a former defense minister to Netanyahu has referred to as ethnic cleansing. Whether you agree with this characterization or not, there is a certain point at which the U.S. could choose to stop helping Israel.
Lew describes how the US government at the time advised on not only Israel’s humanitarian obligations as the occupying power, but on their conduct:
We were engaging not just on humanitarian assistance; we were engaging on the conduct of the war. I’m not saying that everything went the way we would’ve advised, and I’m not saying we didn’t call them in the middle of the night many times saying, What on earth happened just now?
So, which is it? Did the US exert its influence over Israel over its conduct on war, or not?
Biden’s abandonment of Palestinians
When asked what was the content of those late night calls, Lew describes:
The general pattern was that in-the-moment stories were inaccurate, and that the Israeli military and government establishment were not in a position to fully explain yet. We could almost never get answers that explained what happened before the story was fully framed in international media, and then when the facts were fully developed, it turned out that the casualties were much lower, the number of civilians was much lower, and, in many cases, the children were children of Hamas fighters, not children taking cover in places.
Here, Lew appears to not realise what he has just said. Namely, that he considers it acceptable for children to be killed if they are “children of Hamas fighters.” Chotiner immediately pulls him up on it:
Sorry, what did you just say?
In many cases, the original number of casualties—
No, I meant the thing about who the children were.
They were often the children of the fighters themselves.
And therefore what follows from that?
What follows is that whether or not it was a legitimate military target flows from the population that’s there.
Hold on, Mr. Secretary. That’s not, in fact, correct, right? Whether it’s a legitimate target has to do with all kinds of things like proportionality. It doesn’t matter if the kids are the kids of—
Lew, remarkably, doubles down:
If you’re the commander of a Hamas unit and you bring your family to a military site, that’s different. I’m not saying everything fits into that, and I’m not saying it’s not a tragedy.
So, according to Biden’s former advisor, it’s not ideal that children are killed. But, it is certainly understandable if they’re the children of Hamas members. Chotiner, again, points out that it doesn’t make a difference who the children are when it comes to international law. However, Lew is adamant that this is the reality of the situation.
That one interaction reveals much about the strategic decisions America takes in its undying support of Israel. There is no situation in which America will oppose Israeli interests. It’s been made heartbreakingly irrelevant by this point, but international law technically forbids the killing and maiming of children during any conflict. Apparently, the exception to that if US strategists believe it’s justified.
‘Blood-soaked demon’
Online commenters saw Lew’s characterisation for what it was:
Writer Pete Forester showed just how cruel and asinine Lew’s remarks were:
According to Jacob Lew, if a foreign country bombed an American base filled with children, those childrens' deaths count less than if they bombed a school down the road. WILD. https://t.co/FB2FTHLtiq
And, writer Tariq Kenney-Shawa pointed out that just because Israel claim someone is in Hamas doesn’t mean they are:
Losing my fucking mind.
Biden’s ambassador to Israel and current @ColumbiaSIPA professor Jacob Lew implies that the 19,000+ children killed by Israel in Gaza had it coming because some of them might have been children of people Israel claims were Hamas members. https://t.co/2PDDF6RHph
Israel have routinely claimed everyone from children, aid seekers, and basically anyone they want to (or have) bombed are Hamas. That includes the “Hamas camera” which apparently was the reason they bombed a hospital just days ago. When combined with the fact that Israel’s own data reveals that a sickening 83% of the people they’ve killed are civilians, Israel’s assertions that Hamas is everywhere is as compelling as international law.
Denial of manufactured famine
Chotiner begins the interview by referencing an article Lew wrote along with former US ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield. In the piece, the two argue that the Biden administration effectively held off famine in Gaza. Instead, it laid the blame for the current famine squarely at Trump’s feet. Chotiner pushes Lew to elaborate on what the Biden administration did differently to the Trump administration in relation to American consultancy with Israel on humanitarian requirements.
And every time there were reports of famine that were not accurate, it made it harder to do the job of getting more aid in. We were trying to make the critique in a balanced way to keep pressure on Hamas—and to not abandon Israel’s just effort to defeat an enemy that attacked it on October 7th, killing twelve hundred people—while still saying that you have an obligation every day, even if it’s at some risk, to keep the aid crossings open to Gaza. It was arduous work.
The risk of strengthening Hamas, if Hamas got hold of the fuel or the food, was a serious question. It wasn’t a made-up concern
Again, the spectre of Hamas rears its head as a boogeyman and scapegoat for the moral failings of the US and Israel. Lew’s remarks suggest that the possibility of Hamas potentially gaining access to aid made the very real threat of starvation an acceptable outcome for civilians.
Chotiner pushes Lew to admit that the Biden administration’s policy was to support Israel in allowing enough trickles of aid through so as to avoid all-out famine, but no more. Lew states:
I think the reports of famine were premature and exaggerated.
Chotiner points out that people were still starving to death in 2024. And, Lew’s remarks are even more galling in light of Lew’s dismissal of reports of famine given that, as journalist Brian Tashman alleges, Lew:
threatened the group that issued the famine alert last year until they withdrew their famine alert.
Chotiner pushes Lew on the assertion that the US government directed its efforts towards allowing Benjamin Netanyahu remain in power. Their next exchange reads:
So when you say that, “Allowing Netanyahu to cite a need to satisfy U.S. demands was crucial then—and remains crucial today,” what do you mean? Netanyahu doesn’t want to piss off the super far-right ministers in his government by having it seem that Israel is delivering aid. So you’re saying that allowing Netanyahu to cite the need to satisfy U.S. demands is crucial to him remaining in power, correct?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m not going to let that happen. What I’m saying is in order to get a decision through his Cabinet, he needed to be armed with positions that he was able and willing to use. And what we would say is, “We need you to do this, and if that is a strategic concern then you do what we need.” I understand that you can see that as political cover, but it’s political cover to get a policy enacted, not to preserve a coalition. Our goal was to get aid in, and we were trying to help drive the decision-making process in a constructive way. I think that’s very different from taking political sides in a domestic context in another country.
It appears to be lost on Lew that his description of a US consideration of Netanyahu’s position amongst his far-right cabinets is “political cover” to preserve an Israeli government propped up by the US itself.
Israeli interests above all
Lew’s quibbling of which administration is responsible for the Israeli manufactured genocide in Gaza, once again, reveals much about America’s relationship with Israel. Lew’s account of his role as a high level advisor to Biden confirms what we have known for some time about America’s role in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Rather than urging Israel to follow its humanitarian obligations, or to stop the relentless bombing and increasing list of war crimes, they leveraged their considerable sway over Israel not to save Palestinian lives, but to preserve Israel’s global standing and obliteration of Palestine.
America have been, and continue to be the shield that protects Israel as they terrorise Palestine. As much as Lew may wish to pretend otherwise, there is no significant break in policy or position when it comes to Israel between the Biden and Trump administrations.
On Wednesday, the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People called for urgent international action to end the worsening Israeli-caused famine in the Gaza Strip, considering that what is happening is not the result of a natural disaster but a systematic policy practiced by Israel against more than two million besieged people.
In a statement published on its website, the committee said that more than half a million people are facing starvation and death in Gaza, noting that the humanitarian situation is deteriorating day by day as the near-total destruction caused by bombing and suffocating siege spreads.
The committee strongly condemned what it described as a policy of “starvation as a weapon of war,” stressing that it constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and calling on states to fulfill their legal obligations and take immediate action to stop this catastrophe. It also stressed the need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, ensuring unimpeded access for humanitarian aid to all areas of the Strip, and holding those responsible for obstructing relief efforts and targeting civilians accountable.
Warnings in the UN Security Council
The same concerns were echoed at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, where Ramez Al-Akbarov, Deputy UN Coordinator for the Peace Process, and Joyce Musoya, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, expressed “grave concern” about the spreading famine and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Al-Akbarov said that the sector was “sinking deeper and deeper into a catastrophic situation” with rising civilian casualties, mass displacement, and severe hunger. He explained that the results of the latest food security analyses confirmed that a famine was indeed underway, while Israel’s decision to take complete control of Gaza on August 8 had led to “another deadly escalation” against the population.
The UN official noted that Israeli shelling is now targeting tents for displaced persons, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings, compounding the suffering of civilians who cannot find shelter or safe food.
For her part, Masuya warned that more than 500,000 people are currently facing severe hunger, destitution, and death, with the number expected to exceed 640,000 by the end of September if the situation continues as it is. She added:
This famine is not the result of drought or natural disaster, but a catastrophe created by a bloody conflict that has left thousands dead and wounded and caused widespread destruction and mass displacement.
Tight siege and deliberate starvation
Since 2 March, Israel has closed all Gaza crossings and allowed only a very small number of trucks loaded with aid to enter, which the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has described as a dangerous acceleration in the pace of famine.
According to the UN committee, what Gaza is experiencing today is a “man-made disaster” that will only end with a political decision to end the siege and bombing and restore civilians’ right to life and dignity.
Shut The System (STS) activists smashed windows and sprayed blood-red paint at the offices of the right-wing think-tank, Policy Exchange, on Old Queen Street in Westminster on Friday 29 August.
Policy Exchange: activists stick it to right-wing think tank
The activists oppose Policy Exchange’s advocacy for increasingly authoritarian restrictions on human rights such as the right to free speech and the right to assemble. These include new laws to clamp down on legitimate climate protest and the proscription of Palestine Action. The direct action organisation has no convictions for violent offences.
A spokesperson from the Palestine faction of STS said:
Policy Exchange’s malign influence suppressing effective protest is unsurprising considering the reported $30k donation to Policy Exchange by ExxonMobil. We have targeted Policy Exchange today not in response to any particular action, but in recognition of the role they have played in making the UK the less tolerant, more unequal, increasingly authoritarian and poorly governed nation it is today.
Policy Exchange has advocated for and assisted the government to draft legislation. In particular, it has influenced elements seeking to restrict the effectiveness of climate-related protest, as revealed by Rishi Sunak while serving as prime minister.
The STS spokesperson continued:
Policy Exchange’s corrupt entanglement with governments and elites directly suppresses the proud tradition that champions women’s suffrage, the end to apartheid in South Africa, toppled the injust Poll Tax and held the government accountable for prosecuting illegal wars.
Anti-protest law à la Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange lobbied for additional anti-protest laws in the Public Order Act 2023. These created new offences enabling easier prosecution for protest tactics such as locking-on, tunnelling, and even peaceful protest marches.
In the Public Order Act, former home secretary Suella Braverman attempted to introduce a vague definition of ‘serious disruption’ as anything that is “more than minor”. When parliament blocked this attempt, the home secretary used obscure powers to introduce this definition by the back door. The Divisional Court subsequently found this unconstitutional, in a case brought by Liberty.
The STS spokesperson explained:
The authoritarian agenda advocated by Policy Exchange and its attempt to equate protest with extremism has emboldened multiple governments to adopt policies which would have been unthinkable in the UK only a decade ago, not least labelling Palestine Action as terrorists. Protest and direct action are not extremist activities, they are an essential aspect of any functioning democracy.
The action contributes to an escalating ‘summer of sabotage’ that Shut The System on Monday declared on 18 August. To launch it, activists cut electric cables and communications at offices of JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, and Allianz, three of the world’s worst financial backers of fossil fuel expansion and arms Israel is using in the genocide in Gaza. Activists took further action at a Barclay’s branch in Oxford, smashing windows.
Mainstream media has been abuzz with the news of five “Hollywood luminaries” throwing their support behind the upcoming film The Voice of Hind Rajab.
Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jonathan Glazer have joined the film as executive producers after previewing a cut of the film ahead of its Venice Film Festival premiere.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is based on real audio recordings of Hind, as she cried for help, saying she was trapped among the bodies of her relatives inside a car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza, before the call was cut off and she was later found dead. This tragic moment, which reverberated around the world as a symbol of humanity’s failure, has been transformed into a 90-minute fictional drama that combines documentary and art, raising questions of memory and justice.
On the face of it then, it seems like a positive thing that Hollywood stars are amplifying Palestinian stories. However, it shouldn’t have taken the Israeli occupation forces firing 355 bullets at a six-year-old to do it. Nor should it come 22 months into a genocide in which Israel has massacred at least 63,000, including 19,000 children, and wounded over 150,000 more Palestinians. It’s a disgrace that Palestinian filmmakers and artists are not being listened to on their own merits. Hollywood have not only dragged their heels on calling out the genocide, but have also silenced the voices and experiences of Palestinians.
The Voice of Hind Rajab: celebrity reputation opportunism
It’s only fair to start by underlining that it’s not the first time some of these celebs have spoken out.
For example, Glazer was the sole exception to a 2024 Oscars that saw otherwise damning silence. In a speech, he decried the instrumentalisation of Jewishness and the Holocaust in justification of Israel’s genocide. It’s worth noting however that Glazer’s spiel was at best, a tentative criticism since it preposterously equated Israel’s brutal genocidal onslaught in Gaza and the murder of more than 50,000 Palestinians, to 7 October.
Meanwhile, Phoenix was among the early names calling on then US president Biden to demand a ceasefire in 2023. He also signed a letter in support of Glazer’s Oscars speech alongside 450+ other celebrities. In May, he followed this up by backing another letter condemning the film industry for its silence on Gaza. Recently, he also went on American podcaster Theo Von’s show and lambasted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and Israel’s engineered famine:
Academy award-winning actor, Joaquin Phoenix calls #Gaza situation “horrible” and questions the use of aid distribution methods over established channels. #news
However, plenty on X felt the move reeked of PR opportunism:
It’s been almost two years since Hind and her family were ruthlessly murdered by the IDF — now these celebrities, many of whom were silent, are coming in to pick up the accolades by exploiting Palestinian trauma. The genocide is *still happening* — talk about it, raise hell about… https://t.co/5JVWz87OWS
I really do think it’s baffling to have Brad Pitt a part of this project, but even more importantly, the genocide is still going and we have filmmakers capitalising on Palestinian trauma. https://t.co/3Hu6j9tZTC
unless they are doing the entire thing for free and donating all proceeds, this shit is the most boycott material i have ever seen DISGUSTING https://t.co/i30rlqtFBK
And to a large extent, it’s hard not to agree. Because let’s be real, a handful of open letters, while welcome, is not what genuine solidarity looks like. Have they thrown their collective billions behind the vital mutual aid efforts – like the Sameer Project – feeding Gaza? Perhaps they have, but it’d be a shock that any celeb hasn’t taken the opportunity to paraded their philanthropy en masse. Have they turned out to protests or taken direct action? Not that I’ve seen – or can find – either.
And, these individuals aren’t even the story. The real story here is that Hollywood is using censorship and silencing to manufacture consent for Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Middle East Eye’s William Johnson wrote:
Free speech once meant everything to the US arts and entertainment industries.
But since Israel declared war on Gaza, artists, actors and production staff have alleged that there is a concerted campaign by industry executives to silence solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians.
Dozens of workers at every level of the arts and entertainment world: from actors and dancers to carpenters, set dressers, animators, composers and screenwriters have told Middle East Eye that they have been punished for speaking out on Israel’s war on Gaza which has claimed more than 57,700 lives since October 2023.
The film industry has a problem. It is all too willing to prop up genocidal Israel and to silence Palestinians. Those in the most powerful positions of this industry have their role to play in this genocide. A few famous producers attaching themselves to a film about Hind Rajab, making themselves the story, is like using a thimble to save a drowning boat.
Hollywood: agitprop for the military industrial complex
Fundamentally, Hollywood complicity in warmongering is as American as apple pie. From it’s very inception, the industry has been pumping out ceaseless soft propaganda for the genocidal war criminals. As I previously wrote:
Hollywood is – and always has been – a vehicle of US imperial hegemony. Films operate as a mechanism of US propaganda for its militaristic colonial expansionism across the globe.
It was only the start of this year that film mega-franchise Marvel put out its propagandistic new Captain America film. This hitched US imperial supremacy to Israel through the introduction of superhero Sabra – in essence, a personification of Israel’s apartheid regime. This was in spite of, and amid, the settler state’s continuing genocide in Gaza.
The Pentagon’s entanglement with Marvel and Hollywood studios more broadly only cements the entertainment industry’s collusion with the US military industrial complex further.
In this way, Hollywood movies serve as a soft power strategy for subtly reinforcing US cultural domination on an international stage. Hollywood promotes the US’s white imperial project through screen. It sanitises the US and West’s militaristic expropriation of foreign territories, and its deliberate programme of destabilisation and domination throughout the globe using glorifying imagery and narratives to seed this in the psyche of international audiences.
Of course, the capitalist entertainment racket has just reinforced its moral vacuity with more of the same imperialism-mongering agitprop. The case of staunch Zionist celeb and de facto Israel ‘cultural ambassador’ Gal Gadot tells you all you need to know about the entertainment biz’s priorities.
That’s also nothing to even speak of these Hollywood names’ particular role in this. Brad Pitt is the obvious offender. His 2014 zombie dystopia World War Z bristled in unbridled Zionist apartheid glorification, Hasbara propaganda, and apologism.
Some have also questioned how a powerful white man with allegations of assault against ex-wife Angela Jolie, and their two children, could possibly be a champion of Hind Rajab and the children of Gaza:
brad pitts physically abused his kids and wife, I highly doubt he cares about the suffering of Palestinian children, evil piece of shit https://t.co/DxrS8bXmM4
And once again, what these five Hollywood heavyweights stepping up – 22 months into a brutal genocide – painfully demonstrate, is not a tide-turning, dam-breaking, watershed moment of shining solidarity. Instead, they show its limits.
It’s a rinse and repeat of the spineless, amoral scoundrels at the Oscars Academy who refused to stand behind No Other Land’s Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdam Ballal after his lynching by far-right Zionist settlers. Less than 10% of the Academy’s membership spoke out then. To their credit though, Cuarón and Glazer were at least among them. Now, the media is rushing to praise five famous faces for throwing their support behind the film. It’s not enough, and it’s frankly not good enough either.
And let’s not forget that since Israeli settlers lynched Ballal, Israel has only continued to escalate its ethnic cleansing of the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank. In other words, Palestinians can win an Oscar, expose Israel’s crimes to the whole damn planet, and the settler war criminals can still get away with it.
There is power and poignancy in projecting Palestinian lives and stories – that isn’t in dispute. Absolutely, stars should be stepping up to support Palestine. Yet stepping up in this instance, should mean stepping aside so Palestinian cultural artists and producers can platform their lived realities in their own words and voices. Any film industry, even the remotest bit committed to anti-racism, to basic human rights and Indigenous agency, would – and should – do that much.
But that’s not what these Hollywood wonders giving major white saviour vibes are actually doing with their support for Hind Rajab.
‘Perfect victims’, like Hind Rajab
It’s that moment when rich white people speak over, after barely speaking up when it would have made a difference. Essentially, all they’ve actually done is throw their weight behind it at the eleventh-hour. They have swooped in for all the gains and glory. The fanfare over them latching onto the film at the last-minute epitomises this problematic paradigm perfectly as well. It took five big names – five white wealthy celebs – for the corporate media to spin into a frenzy over the film. As ever, Palestinian stories are only legitimate when forced through the lens of the white status quo.
Some on X have also underscored how this is the classic ‘perfect victim’ issue all over:
Soooooo beyond disturbing that celebrities who have done and said nothing about the ongoing genocide are about to capitalize off of a little girl deemed the perfect victim for being brutally shot 355 times while surrounded by her dead family. Just so many layers of depravity. https://t.co/g6WfDWuFxV
They’ve got behind Hind Rajab’s story because it’s safe. One poster recounted the poignant words Egyptian-Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad posted in late October 2023:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” https://t.co/f4qc5mO9F1
The Voice of Hind Rajab is a vital retelling of Israel’s abhorrent war crime (one of many). Ultimately though, these Hollywood stars’ backing of the film alone is, at best, hollow handwringing:
PUSH FOR THE GENOCIDE TO STOP FIRST. THESE ARE THEATRICS WHILE PEOPLE ARE STILL BEING KILLED RIGHT NOW. https://t.co/m1plBoGEfH
They’re profiting off of the murder of a child while doing nothing to hold her murderers accountable, as dozens more Palestinian children are slaughtered every single day.
At worst, it’s opportunistic reputation laundering while Israel continues to slaughter more children just like Hind, and they still fail to take concrete action.
At the end of the day, Hollywood is hardly the place for punching up to power. It’s a vehicle to preserve and protect the interests of the elite. What this shows as ever, is that the powerful entertainment institutions will never truly afford Palestinians a voice in their own right. When it comes down to it, alone, Palestinian’s words count for nothing in the eyes of Hollywood, unless filtered through the worldviews of wealth and whiteness.
However, Hind’s story doesn’t need the validation from Hollywood hotshots looking to profit from Palestinian trauma. Hind’s story has already taken on a life of its own. Its eulogised in the hearts and words of Palestinians, bravely, fiercely projecting their own stories out into the world – one that unconscionably continues to fail them. And it’s in their words and voices that Hind’s story will resonate louder than any Hollywood feature ever could.
Ms Rachel has been named by Rolling Stone as one of the top 25 influential creators of 2025. The children’s entertainer has faced a steady stream of attacks from the Zionist lobby after her vociferous support for Palestine. As is now depressingly common, the more Ms Rachel has called for an end to the genocide and starvation in Palestine, particularly for her child audience, she’s been ruthlessly attacked.
However, Rolling Stone said of the creator, real name Rachel Accurso, that:
In a landscape increasingly saturated with e-commerce and milquetoast principles, Accurso has spent the past year embodying what it means to be an influencer who chooses to live in the same reality as her audience, rather than removed from them entirely.
Miss Rachel stands for Palestine
On her Instagram, Ms Rachel made it clear that speaking up during a genocide doesn’t preclude success:
And, Ms Rachel hasn’t flinched away from the reality of what life is like for children in Palestine. Whilst anybody would find it difficult to explain Israel’s genocide in Palestine to children, Miss Rachel has made a point of engaging with children in Palestine. In one clip, Mariam from Gaza is sobbing as she asks why she is being punished with injuries from an airstrike. She says:
I didn’t even do anything…if I had done something, I would say so, but I didn’t.
In response, Ms Rachel shared the clip and said:
Mariam we know you didn’t do anything wrong. The whole world knows that you didn’t do anything wrong. This is not your fault – you’re just a kid. Grow-ups of the world are supposed to protect children and some grown-ups are not doing that. It’s their fault that you were not protected. I am so sorry that you were hurt.
Ms Rachel clearly knows that children from around the world will come to her social media. She could easily have chosen to post a fundraiser for Palestine and kept it moving – even that would have been more than many celebrities have done. But, instead, she’s making the choice to see the humanity of Palestinian children at a time when their lives – and deaths – mean nothing to so many governments. Israel’s settler colonial project is at its most powerful when states and people from around the world believe the lie that Palestinian lives aren’t worth anything. The last couple of years of genocide have shown that for many people, those are their beliefs.
Choices
Another notable choice from Ms Rachel is her insistence that this is a simple situation. A few days ago, she shared a post explaining that the situation is not complex – it’s a clear genocide. In her caption, she wrote:
Your silence or what you said will be remembered.
You can handle being uncomfortable. What matters are their precious lives, not your comfort.
What would you want someone to do for you? Choose to speak for them. I love you!
Her Instagram feed is full of her meeting children from Palestine and Sudan, and being loving and kind towards them. Her heartbreak over inaction and complicity in Gaza is clear to see. And, she’s showing more moral clarity and courage than many elected officials.
The Labour Party government has now confirmed that it has decided to bar Israel’s official delegation from taking part in the UK’s largest arms fair. Israel had been planning to attend the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) in London this September.
While campaigners have welcomed the news, they’ve also slammed the UK government for its “cowardly” handwringing – since it was actually the Israeli government that pulled its country pavilion from the event.
Israel disinvited from DSEI arms fair
The Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) opens at London’s ExCeL centre on 9 September. DSEI takes place biennially. Its website has been indicating the presence of a dedicated Israeli country pavilion.
Now however, the Labour Party government has confirmed that it has barred the Israeli official delegation from attending the event. An AFP news report carried a statement from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) which read:
We can confirm that no Israeli government delegation will be invited to attend DSEI UK 2025.
It continued that:
The Israeli government’s decision to further escalate its military operation in Gaza is wrong.
There must be a diplomatic solution to end this war now, with an immediate ceasefire, the return of the hostages and a surge in humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
Pro-Palestine and anti-arms trade campaigners have been highlighting how allowing an official delegation from the Israeli state to attend DSEI whilst it is committing a genocide and repeated attacks in the West Bank would have been an egregious act of complicity.
However, responding to the news, they’ve also underscored that banning the Israeli government delegation does not go far enough. Notably, the government is still permitting Israeli arms companies to take part in the event.
Israeli arms companies still taking part
Earlier this week, Campaigns Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) had identified a number of arms giants complicit in Israel’s genocide that are planning to attend DSEI.
These included several Israeli companies such as Rafael and Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems, who make 85% of the drones used by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Other Israeli defence companies that have armed and sustained the genocide, such as IAI and Uvision, will still be able to attend. They will be exhibiting and selling their weapons and equipment which they grotesquely market as “battle tested”.
Alongside them are many UK and international companies complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. For instance, this includes F35 manufacturers Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems. Israel is using F35s to drop 2000lb bombs on children in Gaza.
CAAT has lambasted the UK government for continuing to facilitate Israeli arms companies at DSEI:
While CAAT welcomes the government’s decision not to invite an official Israeli delegation to DSEI, it is cowardly and symbolic. It was not the UK government that decided to pull the plug on the Israel country pavilion, but the Israeli government. Meanwhile, it is welcoming companies such as Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defence company who make 85% of the drones used by the Israeli Defence Force, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries to market their genocide tested weapons to a global audience.
This is the government pretending to take action while safeguarding the profits of arms dealers. At the same time it’s banning an official Israeli delegation, it is on the cusp of awarding a £2bn contract to Elbit Systems. These are not the actions of a government committed to taking action against Israel. These are the actions of a government complicit in a genocide.
Israel is committing genocide. It has created a man-made famine. Babies are dying from starvation. Israel is bombing hospitals and killing journalists. These heart breaking atrocities are war crimes. Nothing could be clearer.
It is also clear that our government is not committed to taking any action that disrupts the profits of arms dealers. It is therefore down to campaigners across the country coming together to take action to uphold international law on the streets of East London.
Protesters gearing up to call out DSEI ‘business as usual’
Echoing this, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has also argued that in the midst of a genocide, it is outrageous that these companies attempt to conduct “business as usual”. It is calling for the UK government to cancel DSEI entirely.
The group has called a protest on 10 September at 5pm outside the DSEI fair. It aims to create a wall of noise for the arms dealers profiting and enabling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
PSC deputy director Simon Foster said:
This is a welcome step, and is testament to all those who have campaigned against DSEI’s role in arming Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. It shows our protests and campaigns are having an impact. But it falls far short of the arms embargo and end to all military cooperation that the government should be enacting to fulfil its duties under the Genocide Convention.
The government is continuing to allow Israeli arms companies to exhibit their weapons of ethnic cleansing in London, alongside other arms companies that enable and profit from genocide. DSEI should be cancelled in its entirety.
Chances are, anyone whose family is dying of starvation would not be looking for New Zealand to have a prolonged debate over how they deserve to be defined.
Yet a delay in making even the symbolic gestures seems to be all that we have to offer, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to be systematically starved to death by Israel.
Could be wrong, but I doubt whether anyone in Gaza is waiting anxiously for news that New Zealand government has finally, finally come to the conclusion that Palestine deserves to be recognised as state.
READ MORE:
So far, 147 out of 193 UN member states reached that conclusion ahead of us. Some of the last holdouts — Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Australia — have already said they will do so next month.
So far, none of that diplomatic shuffling of the deck has stopped the Gaza genocide. Only significant economic and diplomatic sanctions and an extensive arms embargo (one that includes military-related software) can force Israel to cease and desist.
You don’t need to recognise statehood before taking those kind of steps. Last week, Germany — which does not recognise the state of Palestine — imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel that forbids sales of any weaponry that might be used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Not much, but a start — given that (after the US) Germany has been the main foreign arms supplier to the IDF.
Meanwhile, the Luxon government has yet to make up its mind on Palestinian statehood. Our government repeatedly insists that this recognition is “complex.” Really? By saying so, we are embarrassing ourselves on the world stage.
Trying to appease Americans
While we still furrow our brows about Palestinian statehood, 76 percent of the UN’s member nations have already figured it out. Surely, our hesitation can’t be because we are as mentally challenged as we are claiming to be.
The more likely explanation is that we are trying to appease the Americans, in the hope of winning a trade concession. Our government must be gambling that an angry Donald Trump will punish Australia for its decision on Palestine, by lifting its tariff rate, thereby erasing the 5 percent advantage over us that Australian exporters currently enjoy.
By keeping our heads down on Palestine, we seem to be hoping we will win brownie points with Trump, at the expense of our ANZAC mates.
This isn’t mere conspiracy talk. Already, the Trump administration is putting pressure on France over its imminent decision to recognise Palestine statehood. A few days ago, Le Monde reported that the US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner — yes, Ivana Trump’s father-in-law — blundered into France’s domestic politics by writing a letter of complaint to French president Emmanuel Marcon.
In it, Kushner claimed that France wasn’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism:
“Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” [Kushner] wrote.
“In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – plain and simple.”
Breaking every civilised rule
Simple-minded is more like it. People who oppose the criminal atrocities being committed in Gaza (and on the West Bank) by the Zionist government of Israel are not doing so on the basis of racial prejudice. They’re doing so because Israel is breaking every rule of a civilised society.
Any number of UN conventions and international laws forbid the targeting of civilian populations, homes, schools, ambulances and hospitals . . . not to mention the deliberate killing of hundreds of medical staff, journalists, aid workers etc.
Not to mention imposing a famine on a captive population. Day after day, the genocide continues.
For Kushner to claim the global revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza is motivated by racism is revealing. To Israel’s apologists within Israel, and in the US (and New Zealand) only Israeli lives really matter.
Footnote: New Zealand continues to bang on about our support for the “two state” solution. Exactly where is the land on which Christopher Luxon thinks a viable Palestinian state can be built, and what makes him think Israel would ever allow it to happen?
Thirty years ago, Israeli settlement expansion fatally undermined the Oslo framework for a Palestinian state situated alongside Israel.
Since then, the fabled “two state solution” has become the tooth fairy of international politics. It gives politicians something to say when they have nothing to say.
Israel struck the Nasser hospital four times on Monday, a BBC investigation has revealed. The strikes on the southern Gaza hospital killed up to twenty people. The death toll includes five journalists.
The BBC’s video analysis showed “the hospital was struck four times in total”.
BBC Verify and expert analysis claims:
that two staircases were hit almost simultaneously in the first wave, and while what was thought to be a single later attack was in fact two separate strikes hitting the same place within a fraction of a second.
Israel’s double-tap strikes hit Nasser hospital four times
BBC Verify has now “identified another previously unreported blast at a northern wing staircase at practically the same time, which was overshadowed by the “double-tap” strike on the eastern staircase”.
New footage shows smoke rising and damage at both staircases, while emergency workers said the hospital’s operating department was hit.
Proportional?
“A reasonable attacker must expect scores of civilian casualties since a hospital is full of protected persons,” Professor Janina Dill of Oxford University, an expert in global security, told the BBC:
She added that the “mere presence of equipment that belongs to an adversary” does not lead a medical facility to lose its ‘protected status’ under the laws governing warfare.
As the Canary has reported, Israel has made a habit of killing Palestinian journalists. As the BBC acknowledges in it’s report, Israeli has banned international journalist from Gaza. This leaves only Palestinian reporters and crew, who have died in considerable numbers.
According to 26 August figures, Israel had killed up to 270 media workers since Israel began its war. You can read their names here.
“Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘lost the plot’ and has condemned attacks on Gaza.
“It is among the strongest language the New Zealand leader has used against Netanyahu and comes amid reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.”
These are the opening two paragraphs of The New Zealand Herald coverage by political reporter Jamie Ensor of Prime Minister Luxon’s public declaration that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the plot.
His comment was in the context of the Israeli government’ genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and their increasing persecution on the Israeli occupied West Bank (August 13): Netanyahu lost the plot says Luxon.
Spectrum of NZ government’s response to genocide The New Zealand government’s response to this ethnic cleansing by genocide strategy in Gaza has ranged on a spectrum between pathetically weak to callous disregard.
Previously I’ve described this spectrum as between limp and deplorable; both have their own validity.
Consequently, the many New Zealanders who were appalled by this response might have been somewhat relieved by Luxon’s frankness.
Perhaps a long overdue change of direction towards humanitarianism? In the interests of confusion avoidance this is a rhetorical question.
However, there is a big problem with Luxon’s conclusion. Quite simply, he is wrong; there is a plot and it is based on a perverse biblical origin.
Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong. Video: RNZ
Just over three weeks from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack across the border in the Israeli occupied former Palestinian land, Netanyahu made the following broadcast, including on You Tube (October 30): Netanyahu’s biblical justification.
The ‘”war criminal” is explicit that there is a plot behind the ethnic cleansing through genocide strategy in Gaza. It is a dogmatically blood thirsty and historically inaccurate biblical centred plot.
In his own words:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember. And we are fighting — our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza, or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes — a chain that started 3000 years ago, from Joshua until the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1948 [sic], the 1973 October War, and all other wars in this country.
“Our heroic troops — they have only one supreme goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”
Netanyahu was referring to the Book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 15, Verse 3) which states:
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Samuel was a prophet through who the Jewish God Yahweh commanded one Saul to conduct a total war of annihilation against the Amalekites.
The Amalekites were a biblical nation who, so biblical history goes, had attacked the Israelites during their “Exodus” from Egypt.
From apartheid to ethnic cleansing to recognition of Palestine Previously I have published four posts on the Gaza genocide. The first (March 15) discussed it in the context of the apartheid in the South Africa of the past and apartheid as continuing defining feature in Israel since its creation in 1948: When apartheid met Zionism.
From Netanyahu to Zelda In the context of the truer number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, my fourth previous post (July 2) was more directly closer to the theme of this post: How to biblically justify 400,000 Palestinian deaths.
I quoted a genocide supporter going by the name of “Zelda” justifying Israel’s war in similar vein to Bejamin Netanyahu:
“Gaza belongs to Israel! This is not just a political claim; it is a sacred, unbreakable decree from Almighty God Himself. If any government from around the world recognises Palestine, the United States needs to declare it part of the Axis of Evil
“The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness. No enemy, no terrorist, no foreign power can wrest it away. Those who reject this truth stand against God’s will and will face His judgment.
“If Palestinians want aid and peace, they must recognise Israel’s God-given right and leave Gaza forever. Only under God’s blessing can this land flourish, and all who defy His plan will be cast down.”
From Zelda to Alfred On July 4, I received the following email from a reader called Alfred. In his words (be warned, at the very least this is a mind-boggling read):
“Accidentally I came across your blog on ‘How To Justify 400,000 Palestinian Deaths In Gaza: Ask ‘Zelda’ (Thursday, 3 July 2025). It was an interesting read.
With all due respect, I would like to place before you my ‘two cents’
Consider this history Mr Ian:
1) Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
2) Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
3) Before the Ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the Ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. Godfrey of Bouillon conquered it in 1099.
5) Before the Ayyubid dynasty there was the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
6) Before the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state. 8. Before the Byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
9) Before the Roman empire there was the Hasmonaean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. 10) Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, Not a Palestinian state.
11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
12) Before the empire of Alexander, the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
In fact, in that corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
Interesting history isn’t it?
Yes, I agree with Zelda’s statement that …
‘The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness.’
Mr Ian, if you go back to the Bible to read the Old Testament history, we see that God declares time and again that they (Israelites) are His chosen people, and He will bring them back to land of Israel. (Which has started to happen, as you observe world events). He also condemns His own chosen that if they turn away from Him, he will turn away His face. And that was what He did to the 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were wiped out. And the sort of genocide that we see today in Gaza, was prevalent in that time, when Gentile nations were even wiped out if they stood between the Israelites and the ‘promised land’ (Israel). Even the lives of His own chosen people were not valuable to Him, and was at stake (holocaust recently) when they turned away from Him, as those many of their enemies (or opponents)!
8000-year-old history is repeating itself now in Gaza, I believe.
Alfred
Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The views of both Zelda and Alfred are not off the planet in terms of supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through genocide.
They are thoroughly consistent with Netanyahu’s well-thought out plot. Both are part of his “echo chamber”.
Who has really lost the plot?
The genocide towards Palestinians will not end in Gaza. All the evidence is that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are next.
Gaza the precursor to West Bank Palestinians.
There the ethnic cleansing is continuing in the form of persecution and repression, including imprisonment (hostage-taking by another name).
But it is escalating and, unless there is a change in direction, it is only a matter of time before persecution and repression morph into genocide.
Benjamin Netanyahu has not lost the plot. However, Christopher Luxon has. His criticism of Netanyahu is a flimsy attempt to avoid doing what a humanitarian government with a “plot” should do. This includes:
Recognising the Palestinian Territories as an official independent state;
Sanctioning Israeli Defence Force (IDF) visitors;
Close the Israel Embassy;
Impose trade and bilateral sanctions; and
Suspend Israel from the United Nations.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
In July 2025, a new international maritime initiative was launched: the Global Sumud Flotilla. It was formed by four major coalitions: the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Maghreb Sumud Convoy, and the Southeast Asian Nusantara Sumud Initiative. The Global Sumud Flotilla is set to depart on August 31, 2025. Its goal is clear: to break Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza, to deliver urgent humanitarian aid, and to expose the genocidal war waged on Palestinians.
The flotilla is composed of dozens of small civilian vessels carrying activists, parliamentarians, doctors, and trade unionists, alongside humanitarian cargo.
A new opinion poll by the Sadat Center at the University of Maryland finds a sea change in the American public on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who say they sympathize with Palestinians (28%) exceeds the percentage who sympathize with Israelis (22%)[!!!] Some one fourth (26%) of Americans say they are equally sympathetic to both. So 54% of Americans now sympathize with Palestinians, either primarily or equally with Israelis. Some 12% don’t like either one, and 13% don’t know. So of the Americans who have an opinion and feel knowledgeable, actually 67.5% either sympathize mainly with the Palestinians or equally with them and Israelis.
All but one of the 15 members of the UN Security Council – the US – declared that the famine in Gaza is a “manmade crisis” and warned that using starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law and constitutes a war crime, during a meeting on 27 August.
The 14 council members announced in a statement that they support an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, a significant surge of aid throughout Gaza, and for Israel to immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on relief deliveries.
“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” the statement read. “Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”
On Sunday, August 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a dramatic announcement: After 674 days of barring foreign media from Gaza, Israel was planning to begin staging guided tours, under Israeli military control, for embedded members of the foreign press.
“We have decided, and have ordered, directed the military, to bring in foreign journalists—more foreign journalists, a lot,” said Israel’s premier, in a rambling, paranoid half-hour press conference—staged, he said, to dispel “the global campaign of lies” against Israel. “There’s a problem with assuring security, but I think it can be done in a way that is responsible and careful to preserve your own safety.
An advocacy group is calling on Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York) to donate to humanitarian efforts in Gaza after newly released disclosures revealed the staunchly pro-Israel politician’s investments in weapons contractors as he’s campaigned for the U.S.’s backing of Israel’s genocide. Sludge reported on Monday that Torres recently filed a financial disclosure revealing investments in Lockheed…
Top Biden administration officials have begun rewriting their ironclad support of Israel throughout the end of President Joe Biden’s term, now claiming to oppose Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza as it’s officially tipped into famine — a famine that they fully laid the groundwork for over the first 16 months of the genocide. In an interview with “The Bulwark” published Wednesday…
New polling finds that opposition to sending more military aid to Israel has hit another record high among U.S. voters, further widening the gap between U.S. policy and American opinion as Israel’s genocide continues without an end in sight. In a poll released Wednesday, Quinnipiac found that 60 percent of voters now say they oppose sending more military assistance to Israel to aid in its…
Killing from the sky has long offered the sort of detachment that warfare on the ground can’t match. Far from its victims, air power remains the height of modernity. And yet, as the monk Thomas Merton concluded in a poem, using the voice of a Nazi commandant, “Do not think yourself better because you burn up friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”…
To the world where children are preparing to open their new books and start the new school year, going to school in safety, I write this story as a journalist accustomed to telling people’s stories, and as a father deprived of the most basic right of fatherhood: to see his five children walk to school in Gaza with peace of mind:
Gaza: no school, broken futures
In Gaza, school is no longer a building with walls and doors, but has become a distant dream, haunted by a childhood threatened with loss.
As I write, I feel that the words are no longer just letters on paper, but tears falling on the page, as if I were writing a personal letter to the world: Take a moment from the luxury of your schools and give it to the children of Gaza, so that they may know the taste of hope, even if only for a day.
I am a journalist from Gaza. I have written a lot about people, about children who lost their schools and dreams in the turmoil of war, about young children who carried their torn notebooks under the rubble, and about eyes searching for a window of light in the darkness. I wrote about all of them, not realizing that I was also writing about my five children.
It was as if I had been writing a mirror of my pain all along, but I hid my children’s faces between the lines. When I look at them and remember their situation, I realize that every story I told about the children of Gaza was nothing but a chapter of our own story.
I dreamed of a distinguished educational future for them. I followed them year after year, waiting for the back-to-school season to prepare for them what they desired: new backpacks, colored pens, neat clothes, and small wishes floating innocently on their faces. But war took us by surprise, tearing their notebooks apart before their dreams were erased, and wasting two whole years of their childhood without education, without classes, without the school bell.
And now I search among them for remnants of that dream, but all that remains are memories of images: a smile with a new pen, or a small hand turning the pages of a book full of promises. Memory alone has become their school, and I alone have become the teacher who can only tell them stories instead of opening the doors of classrooms for them.
Dima: the postponed dream of university
My eldest daughter, Dima (15), I was waiting for her to reach high school, to see her pave her way to university so I could be proud of her like any father in the world. But instead of accompanying her to the classroom, today I see her sitting in a displacement tent, trying to hide her tears as she whispers: “Dad… will I be able to continue my studies?”
I hear her question echoing inside me at night like an absent school bell. I try to smile and tell her, “You will continue,” but my voice betrays me. How can I reassure her when all I have is my pen, while all the roads to school are blocked by rubble?
Ibada: the little support
As for Ibada (13 years old), I saw him as the next support. Every year, he amazed me with his love of learning and his early maturity, as if he were an extension of my heart and mind. Today, he stands before me with confused eyes, asking about his lost books, his school that has been reduced to rubble, and his future that lies lost among the rubble of schools.
As I look at him, I feel that the war has not only stolen his books, but also his certainty about the future. His voice, which used to be full of enthusiasm, has become hoarse with waiting, as if he is growing up before his time, carrying the burdens of adults while still a child.
Salah and Abdullah: innocence lost
Salah (12) and Abdullah (10) were the mirror of childhood in my home. Their laughter on the way to school and their running on the way back gave me the feeling that life was still possible despite the war. Today, that innocence has been stolen from them, and they play in the corridors of displacement instead of schoolyards.
Sometimes I see them making pens out of stones and a small blackboard out of dirt, writing their names on it and then quickly erasing them, as if they are trying to tell the world: “When the school doors are closed, playing becomes a lesson, and dreams become a pen and a blackboard.”
Lina: a child without a seat
What breaks my heart the most is my little girl, Lina (6 years old). She has never been to school, but today she is registered on paper as a second-grade student. She grows up year after year, but she still doesn’t know what a school desk looks like, or what a clean book untouched by war looks like. This alone is enough to leave a father like me in a state of fatal helplessness: how can I write about the children of Gaza when my own child has never been to school?
When I look at her, I feel that her entire childhood is being silently assassinated. She is growing up outside of school, like a flower without water, and her pain alone is enough to fill a thousand news reports. But all I can do is carry her silence and broadcast it to the world.
A father dreams of a school bell
Today, my biggest dream as a father and husband is for my children to return to school. I don’t dream of luxury or a distant future, just to see them carrying their notebooks and backpacks, sitting among their peers, and hearing the bell ring on a normal day instead of sirens.
I dream a dream that seems trivial in the eyes of others: to wake up early to accompany my children to school, to see them running ahead of me with quick steps, arriving a little late for the bell, and returning with beautiful mischief. It is a simple dream, but for me it is a whole life.
I have written a lot about the stories of Gaza’s children, but my story with my five children remains the most painful. In this war, education is no longer a right, but a dream, a dream that swings between the rubble of schools and the sound of planes, a small dream that is worth the whole world.
So, world, take a moment from your children’s laughter and give it to our children, so that their notebooks may be filled with letters again, not dust. In Gaza, education is no longer just a right, it is a whole life. A life we want for our children, and a dream we hope you will wake up with us to achieve.
If hallmarks of economic decline are everywhere apparent, it is Washington’s shameless participation in human genocide that has awakened many an American from their dogmatic slumbers. The United States has been a partner in human slaughter in Gaza, arming and funding, providing intelligence to and political cover for Zionist forces in Israel in their fanatical quest to establish a Greater Israel.
This blatant moral failing is the surest sign yet that the liberal West has failed. Liberalism was once a symbol of progress, bourgeoisie and workers and rural peasants banding together to overthrow feudalism and the divine right of kings.
Now it lists in the winds of modernity, an ethical cipher that maintains—like the artificial distortions of Mannerist art—a rhetorical posture of piety. Conservatives declare themselves part of an unfathomable messianic mission to establish mythical free markets and Christian rule, while liberal politicians repeat their multicultural platitudes in data-poor and poorly constructed sophistry that nobody believes.
Both—through their Republican and Democrat political wings—refuse to acknowledge their culpability, reflecting the absolute arrogance that accrues to those too long in power.
We Knew All Along
As the world comes awake to the sickening tango of death being tapped out on the rooftops of Gaza, statements like the following float through the media sphere, unaddressed and unpunished by the world’s leading states:
Evidently calling for collective punishment outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that is responsible.”
Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi said Israel needs to “erase Gaza”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich transparently disguising ethnic cleansing as “the right humanitarian option”
Revital Gottlieb of the Israeli Knesset said, “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be flattened…We need to stop talking about ‘humanitarian aid’.”
Another member of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, added, “Burn Gaza now. No more excuses.”
The New York Timesreported that American leaders understood that mass civilian casualties were acceptable to Israeli leadership
Israeli lawmaker Moshe Saada justified widespread calls to “destroy Gaza”
Western corporate media has provided extensive cover for Israel’s criminal campaign, often by insisting everyone on air first answer the slighting question, “Do you condemn Hamas?”, as if this is the moral bedrock on which any opinion on Gaza must establish itself. Yet the corporate media deliberately hides the fact that under the Geneva Conventions, an occupied people have every right to resist, including employing violent means. None of the international rulings from 1967 onward are included in discussions that are ahistorical at best, farcical at worst. Gore Vidal was prescient when he called America the United States of Amnesia.
The feigned outrage and disgust by American pundits over the initial Hamas attack, liberal and conservative alike, only illustrates by contrast the utter callousness and emptiness of the public discourse. Seventy five years of oppression, racism, and bloodshed against Palestinians produced no such horror among the corporate intelligentsia.
And as author Chris Hedges rightly pointed out, “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?”
Trump’s Vulgar Sycophancy
Though not the first to support the present ethnic cleansing, President Trump has embraced the Israeli mission with an enthusiasm that betrays his utter subjugation to those that would keep him in power, notably AIPAC. His love for Israel seems to be the means by which he has made a measure of peace with the National Security State, which wanted him imprisoned in his first term for his friendliness with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Now his administration has ratcheted up the vulgarity of American complicity in the Gaza genocide. For instance, he has:
Tied state aid to each state’s stance on Israel. This is a despicable policy that hitches domestic support to support for a foreign power, which no American citizen should be compelled to provide
Lifted a pause on 2,000-lb bombs, and a couple of ‘human rights’-linked oversight procedures, that had been put in place by the Biden administration as part of its feckless PR campaign to pretend to oppose the slaughter
Approved $7B in munitions and $3B in “emergency” bombs in February 2025 alone
Continues the Memorandum of Understanding from the Obama era under which the United States finances weapons procurement by Israel from U.S. defense firms
Congressional Reporting Service (CRS) notes enhanced military intelligence cooperation with Israel
Vetoed another UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire
Conducted “limited” strikes on Yemen Houthis, which are pro-Palestinian allies of Iran
Has floated various real-estate fantasies about turning Gaza into another riviera once all the unwanted Arabs are removed, while children are trampled by tanks, in a kind of breathtaking display of utter callousness
And much else, though he’s only been in office 8 months
Biden’s Liberal Narcissism
Setting aside the current administration, lest we slip into the fanaticism of the liberal, the more important point to remember is that Democrats are also morally bankrupt, if not as crass, and if marginally better in social uplift statistics. Because if we do not recognize this, the electoral pendulum that swings between corrupt neoliberal capitalist Democrat and corrupt neoliberal capitalist Republican will continue, while the majority suffer economic debasement at home and slaughter abroad.
The conservative critique that liberals prefer virtue signaling to principle is correct. It has been ever since Bill Clinton demonstrated that the New Democrats could win corporate money, co-opt business-friendly Republican policies, and sell them with the rhetoric of social empathy with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Coupled with a vigorous identity politics and companion campaign of discrimination against privileged and majority ethnic groups, it was a winning electoral strategy.
Clinton’s triangulation model proved an irresistible rationale for members of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), who claimed to hope to ‘do well by doing good.’ In the end, doing well meant maintaining their class privileges and material advantages while looking askance as their party practiced counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad, and instead hyping token reform at home.
Where has this left the liberal class? With the following:
The Biden administration was Israel’s most important military, financial, and political backer from the beginning of the genocide to the end of his term in office. We should set aside anonymously-sourced reports of Biden’s anger with Bibi and attend to the facts.
Aside from $3.8B in annual military aid, the Democrats sent emergency arms shipments, and provided additional financial and political support, including:
Military Supplies:
14,000 tank shells in an October 2023 shipment
More than 2,000 2,000-pound bombs, great for mass casualty attacks
15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells in a December 2023 shipment, including bunker busters
F-35 fighter jet parts and $1B in new arms shipments approval in March 2024, the second time Biden used the Arms Export Control Act to bypass pesky Congress to arm the genocidaires
Ongoing intelligence sharing, including satellite imagery and location tracking
Military advisors dispatched by the Pentagon to assist in Israeli attacks
Deployed U.S. warships to block regional intervention
Launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Israeli shipping
The Costs of War Project at Brown University, the United States spent nearly $18B in military aid to Israel in a single year
In August 2024, Biden approved a $20B arms shipment to Israel
Political Cover:
Vetoed three UN Security Council Resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and abstained from a fourth despite a death toll of some 30,000
Attacked the ICJ finding on Gaza as meritless and threatened sanctions on ICC officials
Financial Support:
Continued ongoing $3.8B annual military support deal, inked by the Obama administration, with no stoppage or even threat of stoppage
Added $14.5B in a Supplemental Aid Package in April 2024
Cut funding to UNRWA over unproven Israeli claims, devastating aid delivery. This means that the administration was blocking aid to Gaza while arming Israel
All of this despite a death toll exceeding 30,000 people (likely far higher), the vast majority of which were women and children. And despite famine. And despite hundreds of reported potential violations of international law (rendering bootless the token human-rights verifications attached to some aid).
And despite two leading Israeli rights organizations—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel—both released reports declaring Israel’s conduct in the war on Palestinians constitutes genocide.
(Even Grok wasn’t having it: “Israel’s actions in Gaza align with genocide indicators per ICJ’s plausible ruling, the UN’s “Anatomy of a Genocide” report, and Amnesty’s findings on intentional mass killings. US funding enables this horror—stop the slaughter.”)
Coda to a Catastrophe
Whatever the particular violent exploitation, there is bipartisan consensus. Whether participating in genocide in Gaza; sparking a bloody proxy war against nuclear-powered Russia in Ukraine; facilitating the wholesale destruction of Syria and whitewashing its terrorist leaders; aggressively working to disarm Iran while arming Israel; encircling China with military force; sanctioning every country that pursues a different model of economic development than Washington’s hegemonic system; or strip-mining Argentina through the IMF with the help of comprador elite. In any and every case, liberals and conservatives will always side with violent fascist imperialism over peaceful socialist mutualism because fascism doesn’t threaten capitalist profits. Rather it reinforces and amplifies them. Historical examples abound.
Is there a difference, then, between the two electoral fronts for corporate power? Let’s ask Hedges, “Of course, there’s a difference. It’s how you want corporate fascism delivered to you. Do you want it delivered by a Princeton educated, Goldman Sachs criminal or do you want it delivered by racist, nativist, Christian fascist?”
A quote from Noam Chomsky should suffice to close this chat: “I don’t know what word in the English language—I can’t find one—applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly stuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t even begin to approach it.”
“The task is… not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” – Erwin Schrodinger
His TED Talk on how to think “against” war and for “peace” is an elevator speech worth listening to:
But you get 60 minutes with David and Paul on Paul’s Finding Fringe: Voices from the Edge. Oct. 8, but here NOW.
Ahh, the War College: [The National War College mission is to educate joint, interagency, and international leaders and warfighters by conducting a senior-level course of study in national security strategy, preparing graduates to function at the highest levels of strategic leadership in a complex, competitive, and rapidly evolving strategic environment.]
Of course, every college, university and junior college with an ROTC program, any school with a drone tech department, and now ALL tech departments are WAR Colleges.
Note:
There are ROTC programs available at over 1,700 colleges and universities across the United States. The programs are offered through the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.
The breakdown of ROTC programs by military branch is as follows:
Army ROTC: The Army is the largest branch of the ROTC program, with units at over 900 academic institutions. However, it is also affiliated with more than 1,000 colleges and universities, including “crosstown” relationships where students attend a nearby unit.
Air Force ROTC: AFROTC has 145 host detachments and affiliations with over 1,100 other institutions through crosstown agreements. It trains future officers for both the Air Force and the Space Force.
Navy ROTC: The NROTC program has 63 host units/consortiums at 77 schools and has crosstown agreements with over 160 colleges and universities. The Navy ROTC program also handles training for the Marine Corps.
Marine Corps ROTC: The Marine Corps does not have its own separate ROTC program, but a Marine Corps option is available through the Navy ROTC.
Space Force ROTC: The newest military branch trains its officers through the Air Force ROTC program.
The number of programs is greater than the number of host universities due to “crosstown” agreements that allow students from nearby campuses to participate in a host university’s ROTC unit.
Will humans soon be entirely “out of the loop” for certain U.S. military actions in remote parts of the world? Battles Beyond the Horizon, a documentary by two journalism faculty members, poses this question and explores technology, AI and the future of war.
Reynolds School of Journalism Associate Dean and Professor Kari Barber directed the film alongside producer, cinematographer and journalism senior lecturer Nico Colombant.
Battles Beyond the Horizon is set mostly in the Nevada desert at Creech Air Force Base, about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas. The base is used for training and operation of daily overseas operations of remotely piloted drone aircraft systems with missions across the globe.
Yeah, quite a long way, baby:
Monsters. Blithely discussing the bug splat and triple taps of the hired guns, drone pilots:
Subject matter expertise was provided by Dr Lindsay Clark, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex, Major Philippe from the French Air Force currently serving in SHAPE’s Joint Targeting Branch and Mr Ross McKenzie, former Royal Air Force Wing Commander and current Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Officer at NATO’s Defence Investment Division.
Dr. Clark opened the session by sharing her research on the gendered aspects of drone usage and associated discourses. Her research, informed by former US, British, and Australian drone crews, illustrates the implicit gender categorisation in conflict zones. Terms such as “military-aged males” are often used for potential combatants, while “women and children” are assumed to be civilians, influencing targeting decisions and increasing the risk of misidentifying threats. She highlighted that this ingrained assumption underscores a broader thought process affecting how entire campaigns are constructed and how civilian casualties are perceived.
Dr. Clark examined the gendered language around drone warfare, explaining that drone pilots and crews are often viewed differently than fighter pilots. For instance, references to a “PlayStation mentality” or the idea that drone warfare lacks the physical risks of traditional combat subtly diminish the heroism and dedication of drone operators. This language casts drone warfare as “less masculine” and trivialises the emotional toll on operators. Furthermore, she noted that female drone operators are often portrayed as emotionally unstable, a depiction not commonly attributed to their male counterparts. This gendered expectation not only affects perceptions but also impacts the mental health and retention of personnel, as they may feel less inclined to seek psychological support due to a fear of appearing weak.
Next, Maj. Philippe outlined the technical complexities of drone targeting, emphasising that the term “drone” is overly simplistic. These remotely piloted systems can operate at various altitudes and drop munitions similar to fighter aircraft. He outlined processes such as Positive Identification (PID), Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Collateral Damage Estimation (CDE), each designed to minimise harm to civilians. Four guiding principles – distinction, proportionality, military necessity and humanity – help assess whether a strike is justifiable. In this framework, “collateral damage” is considered legally permissible if it is not excessive in relation to military objectives.
Pattern-of-life analysis, a critical tool used by remotely piloted systems, examine a target’s environment and behaviours to prevent misinterpretations that might lead to unnecessary casualties. However, Maj. Philippe noted that the risk of civilian harm remains, especially when women and children are deliberately placed in harm’s way as a tactic of deception. Common factors leading to targeting errors include cultural misunderstandings, poor analysis, psychological biases and behaviour misinterpretation, making it essential to integrate diverse perspectives, including gender, in the decision-making process.
Major Philippe noted that targeting decisions are traditionally made by the Commander and Legal Advisor (LEGAD), but now often include input from a Political Advisor (POLAD) and Gender Advisor (GENAD). GENADs play an increasingly significant role in targeting boards, contributing insights that can help assess the broader effects of military actions on men, women, boys and girls. This expansion of viewpoints helps commanders consider potential secondary effects, such as the impact of disrupted water supplies or other basic resources on vulnerable groups.
Mr McKenzie challenged the media’s use of the term “drone” which he argued implies an autonomous robot, obscuring the fact that a team of humans is operating the system. He noted that the language choice can deflect accountability, as public perception often associates automation with impersonal, robotic decision-making rather than a crew’s calculated judgment. He instead suggested the use of terms like ‘Unmanned Aircraft System’ or ‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems’.
This human aspect introduces psychological challenges. Mr McKenzie highlighted that pilots and analysts often work long, intense shifts followed by an abrupt transition to their civilian lives at home, a pattern that can lead to emotional detachment. This lifestyle imposes a unique psychological toll.
Another area of concern Mr. McKenzie raised is the rise of ‘swarming’ technology, where multiple drones operate together autonomously. These true ‘swarms’ could change combat drastically, allowing for complex collaborative tactics. He suggested that while many Nations prioritise keeping humans “on the loop” in decision-making, the potential shift toward entirely autonomous combat poses ethical questions and gender considerations that should inform policy as technology evolves.
Looking ahead, NATO’s policy indicates that within a decade, human pilots may no longer fly fighter planes. As drone technology advances, so too must the ethical frameworks and societal perceptions that govern its use. The perspectives shared by Dr. Clark, Maj. Philippe, and Mr. McKenzie underscore the urgent need to examine the gendered dimensions of drone warfare. Integrating gender perspectives into both operational planning and public discourse can protect personnel and help them make more informed decisions that recognise the full spectrum of impacts on combatants and civilians.
Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Peter Schaapveld has previously explained how children in the impoverished country are “traumatized and re-traumatized by drones,” and described one young girl whose “dreams are of dead people, planes and people running around scared.”
Kat Craig, Legal Director of UK-based human rights group Reprieve, stated that Yemeni “President Hadi’s agreements with the US are trumping Yemen’s responsibility to protect its children. Instead of allowing the U.S. to bomb his country to pieces and then setting up a recovery center, President Hadi should listen to his Parliament and stop the drone strikes.”
In December, the Yemeni Parliament called for an end to U.S. drone strikes on the country following a strike that targeted a wedding party and killed a dozen people. Evidence gathered by Reprieve has forced the administration to investigate the strike.
2014 has brought a continuation of U.S. drone strikes on Yemen, with a Yemeni farmer the being the first known civilian casualty on Wednesday.
Baraa Shiban, Reprieve’s Yemen project co-ordinator, wrote in an op-ed this week:
Our President may reassure the U.S. of his support for drone strikes, but he does so in complete contradiction to the Yemeni people’s wishes. This year, two of Yemen’s greatest democratic institutions made this clear. Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference — praised by Obama as a “historic” institution — and the Yemeni Parliament have both voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of drones.
For a country so often divided, this unanimity from Yemen’s key democratic bodies shows the strength of public opinion against drones. But the people’s cries have been met only with more missiles raining down from the skies above. How can we in Yemen build our fledgling democracy when our collective will is ignored by Western democracy’s most powerful proponent?
I didn’t get to talk about much of David’s background, growing up back east, even going to school with Ollie North’s daughter. He’s been asked “how did you become a peace activist” a hundred times. You can go read that here:
On November 10, 2024, Swanson was awarded the Real Nobel Peace Prize by the Lay Down Your Arms Foundation in Oslo, Norway. Swanson was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. He was also awarded a Beacon of Peace Award by the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans For Peace in 2011, and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award by New Jersey Peace Action in 2022, and a Global Peace Leadership & Excellence Award in 2024.
The short version of this is: For some reason I don’t like to accept lies and nonsense from figures of authority, and that leaves me seeing war as the worst thing around.
I’ve been asked a number of times to write chapters for books on “how I became a peace activist.” In some cases, I’ve just apologized and said I couldn’t. For one book called Why Peace, edited by Marc Guttman, I wrote a very short chapter called “Why Am I a Peace Activist? Why Aren’t You?” My point was basically to express my outrage that one would have to explain working to end the worst thing in the world, while millions of people not working to end it need offer no explanation for their reprehensible behavior.
Books books books:
NATO What You Need to Know (2024). Medea Benjamin and David Swanson. OR Books.
The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace it With (2023). David Swanson. ISBN 979-8-9869811-0-9
Snippers Saves the World (2021). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783704
Leaving World War II Behind (2021). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783759
20 Dictators Currently Supported by the U.S. (2020). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783797
Curing Exceptionalism (2018). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0998085937
War Is Never Just (2016). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0998085906
War Is A Lie (2010, 2016). Just World Books. ISBN 978-1682570005
Killing Is Not A Way of Life (2014). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083061
War No More: The Case For Abolition (2013). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083054
Tube World (2012). Illustrated by Shane Burke. David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083047
The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2011). Editor and contributor. David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083078
When The World Outlawed War (2011). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083092
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009). Sevent Stories Press. ISBN 978-1583228883
The 35 Articles of Impeachment (2008). Introduction. Feral House. ISBN 978-1932595420
We coursed through many topics tied to economic sanctions being worse in terms of “body counts” than kinetic war.
Today, economic sanctions are generally regarded as an alternative to war. But for most people in the interwar period, the economic weapon was the very essence of total war. The initial intention behind creating the economic weapon was not to use it–economic sanctions were intended to be a form of deterrence. In this excerpt from The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, Nicholas Mulder looks at the history of the use of economic sanctions in wartime and elaborates on their effectiveness and consequences.
Can war be banished from the earth? Throughout modern history, world peace has been a powerful ideal. It has also been one of the most elusive. Each major war produced its share of cynics as well as visionaries. Pessimists saw war as an inescapable part of the human condition. Optimists viewed growing wealth, expanding self-government, and advancing technology as drivers of slow but steady moral progress. This veering between hope and desolation took on a new urgency after the unprecedented destruction of World War I. The victors created a new international organization, the League of Nations, which promised to unite the world’s states and resolve disputes through negotiation. The collapse of the global political and economic order in the 1930s and the outbreak of a second world war have made it easy to dismiss the League as a utopian enterprise. Many at the time and since concluded that the peace treaties were fatally flawed and that the new international institution was too weak to preserve stability. Their view, still widespread today, is that the League lacked the means to bring disturbers of peace to heel. But this was not the view of its founders, who believed they had equipped the organization with a new and powerful kind of coercive instrument for the modern world.
That instrument was sanctions, described in 1919 by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson as
“something more tremendous than war”: the threat was “an absolute isolation . . . that brings a nation to its senses just as suffocation removes from the individual all inclinations to fight . . . Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside of the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon that nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist.”
As a pacifist, David is consistent on why war against Israel would fail humanity, let alone Gazans, on a grand scale:
Here’s David:
But here’s the key question. What the bloody hell would I recommend instead? I would recommend two types of things, both difficult and with no guarantee of success, but with a significant chance of success. One type of thing is stuff that has not been tried yet. The other is vastly more of stuff that has been tried for years now. The war-as-last-resort crowd always rely on the notion that even a token effort, much less a major one, at something other than war makes war the only option. We’re about to hear, for example, that peace negotiations have been tried and failed for Ukraine, even as neither side proposed to ever compromise in the slightest and the neutral arbiter in the White House promised to keep the weapons flowing to one side. People have made heroic efforts for peace in Gaza. People are exhausted from all those efforts. But some of those efforts have worked and could be multiplied a-thousand-fold. Countries and companies have been forced to divest and to stop arming Israel, and more could be. Media outlets have been forced to convey bits of reality, and public opinion has swung dramatically. These facts do not make up a rosy, happy, hopeful picture. They’re sad little semi-wins for a team having a record-bad season. But they are what you can build on. If one dock can block shipments, all docks can. If one pundit can recognize a genocide years too late, all can. If one government can BDS Israel and its suppliers, all can. If a few aid ships can be sent, hundreds can. If some governments can commit to arresting Netanyahu, more can. Nobody’s proposing we give up on the climate struggle and join the people shooting guns at storms; and that struggle has been going a lot longer than this one.
But what hasn’t been tried yet? Of the thousands of tactics of nonviolent activism, most have of course not been tried. But the key tool especially relevant here is UNARMED civilian defense. Here is a leading expert proposing just that. Please read his proposal carefully. One minor point: he quotes Francesca Albanese at greater length than does the pro-militarism paper discussed above, which claims without evidence that she supports “military intervention.”
Has exactly what is needed here been done before with Unarmed Civilian Defense? No. But it has not yet been tried here either. War is NOT the last resort. Unarmed action builds on a stronger success record than armed “interventions” or armed “peacekeeping.” It also has the following interesting advantage over “military intervention.” The more we put into unarmed civilian defense, the more likely it is to succeed (right up to the extreme in which millions of people are involved and success is guaranteed), whereas the more we put into escalating the war with an “intervention,” the more likely the war is to do more damage (right up to the extreme of killing all life on Earth).
Anything countering the genocide and planned starvation and eco/scholastic/frat/culture/ cide of the Jewish State of Israel would be an act of war. They board sailboats with a few provisions in international waters.
But here’s the thought experiment:
Naval boats with a container ship or two just heading to Gaza FILLED with construction equipment, portable hospitals, drip irrigation food growing systems, medicines, and more.
An international force, and if a navy ship is used to escort the supplies, then so be it. Show via video that the cargo is peaceful means cargo, and alas, just head to Gaza.
We need a massive Dunkirk, but way more sophisticated and programmatic and LARGE and all encompassing:
Fuck Israel: Flood the shores of Gaza with AID and AIDES. Flood the shores of Gaza with a thousand ships!
While an exact, precise number is unavailable, maritime traffic analyses suggest over 3,000 vessels of various types are typically in the Mediterranean Sea at any given time. The Mediterranean is a very busy waterway, handling a significant portion of global shipping, but the exact total fluctuates daily and includes commercial cargo ships, ferries, fishing vessels, and yachts.
Key factors and data points:
High Traffic:The Mediterranean Sea is a major international shipping corridor, experiencing high levels of vessel traffic daily.
At Any Given Time:Studies show more than 3,000 vessels are often present, indicating substantial continuous activity.
Diverse Fleet:The vessels include large container ships, tankers, ferries, and smaller recreational yachts, contributing to the overall count.
Yachts:A significant number of yachts, particularly large ones over 30 meters, are also present, with a large concentration on the French Riviera during the summer months.
Make this a peaceful priority, then, World Without War:
Some 700 tons of the aid is from Cyprus, purchased with money donated by the United Arab Emirates to the so-called Amalthea Fund, set up last year for donors to help with seaborne aid. The rest comes from Italy, the Maltese government, a Catholic religious order in Malta and the Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization Al Salam Association.
REPARATIONS!
Resistitution:
This post is the conclusion of a three-part series: What Will Gaza Become After Genocide? Using the Counterfactual Method to Evaluate Three Post-Genocidal Futures. You may access Part 1 here, where I argued that the genocide Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians is central to the zionist ethos which, like other settler-colonial movements, seeks to remove the native from coveted lands. In the second part, available here, I explore a scenario where Europe actually complies with international law. As many have cautioned, even European legal compliance would leave Palestinians at risk, where rights are affirmed without enforcement, and violations recognised but not remedied. I turn now to a Palestinian Freedom Dream.
By August 2025, the world was in agony as Israel engineered the starvation of the people of Gaza, images of backbones and protruding ribs breaking hearts and exposing zionism’s final descent into barbarism. UN agencies confirmed that Gaza faced devastating food scarcity, having breached two of three famine thresholds. Hundreds of thousands of children faced acute malnutrition, their bodies withering, waiting in queues under the scorching sun for hours for a single meal, only to be gunned down by Israeli soldiers posing as humanitarians. At the same time, settlers in the West Bank capitalised on the chaos, burning orchards and poisoning wells, seeking to dismantle Palestinian agriculture destroying, among others, Hebron’s only seed bank. By the end of the year, the grotesque irony was inescapable to everyone, even liberals: the heirs of the people starved in German concentration camps were replicating Nazi tactics with remarkable determination. It was this obscenity—infants dying of thirst and parents boiling weeds to survive—that finally wrecked the myth of zionism as a moral project, with any claims to virtue crushed under the rubble of Gaza’s bombed hospitals, schools, bakeries, and bodies. It was in this breaking moment that two figures plotted an exit.
It began with a balled-up tissue, casually tossed into a prison cell. Marwan Barghouti, entering his third decade in captivity, unfolded the note to find a plea from Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, then a political outcast: “The occupation has poisoned us both. Let us imagine its end.” Olmert, once unapologetic about settlements, led a clandestine coalition of dissidents—historians like Omer Bartov, legal scholactivists like Neve Gordon, and even former Shin Bet agents who’d grown disgusted of their own shadows. Their message was simple: zionism had reached its natural conclusion—a death cult devouring its own. As did others, Olmert recognised that two-state solution was dead and buried. Even the West’s belated push for Palestinian statehood could not resuscitate it; the only viable path that remained was a single state, built on return, restitution, and cohabitation.
Barghouti was rightly sceptical, wondering if this was another ploy, a factional struggle between fascist zionism and (il)liberal zionism. Perhaps the only thing ringing louder than his alarm bells was the requiem playing in the background, heralding the death of Palestine’s present and its future. He decided to take a chance, responding cautiously but hopefully.
What followed were months of encrypted messages, covert meetings in Cape Town and Beijing, and a series of trade offs, each more painful than the last. In August 2026, news of the secret talks broke, striking Palestinian and Israeli societies—and much of the world—like a sledgehammer. Eager for such a moment, a global solidarity movement erupted like wildfire: BDS escalated to full scale embargoes; ports turned away Israeli ships (some dock workers sunk them); Hollywood stars abandoned Marvel. Karim Khan, cleared of all suspicion earlier that year, immediately requested arrest warrants for most of Netanyahu’s cabinet (the investigations into the support offered by Starmer, Macron, and von der Leyen are ongoing). Zionism had become so addicted to land theft that it could no longer hide behind propaganda, swiftly collapsing under the weight of disgrace and shame brought about by the Great Famine of 2025. The number of Israeli deserters multiplied as they sought refuge from accountability for scores of dead children (alas for them, the world would not overlook the brutalities inflicted and many dual citizens ended up in national prisons). In Gaza, ceasefires held not because of diplomacy, but because the Americans, alone, could no longer sustain the armament supply chains.
On the day the walls fell, it was not governments but grandmothers who led the way. Palestinian elders crossed checkpoints clutching rusted keys and deeds from 1948, while Israeli activists used construction cranes—once tools of settlement—to dismantle the wall. Domestic support for the settlers, already on life support, collapsed once they began shooting fellow Israelis. In Haifa and Jaffa, families returned to homes now occupied by third-generation Israelis; some settlers fled to Canada and Australia, much as South Africans did when that state was liberated from their version ethno-chauvinism. Others stayed, forced to vacate the stolen homes they previously claimed as their own. [Some years later, Daniella Weiss was found hiding in a basement in London, and was swiftly extradited to Palestine to stand trial for her instigation of that final massacre.] The Knesset was dissolved, substituted by a transitional council comprised of Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and several Israeli anti-zionists as well (returning Palestinians would be eligible for office once they completed their naturalisation process). Barghouti and Olmert reached a compromise with Meshal: Hamas would disarm in exchange for the proscription of Otzma Yehudit, Hatzionut Hadatit, and Noam and the handover of Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Moaz to the Hague where they would join Netanyahu and Gallant to stand trial for their reign of terror.
The prisoners came next. Raised to the sound of cell doors and fluorescent hum, thousands emerged from Israeli jails, blinking at the sun, their anxiety broken by embraces and endless unspent love. Flags were fleeting, as were anthems and chants—instead, the air was filled with voices and screams and laughter as they discovered one another, some for the first time. Zionism’s greatest fear had been realised: Palestinians survived while zionism was on its last leg.
In al Quds, Palestinian and Jewish youth scrubbed racist graffiti from the Old City walls; in Gaza, fishermen launched boats unchained by naval blockades. The new parliament, when it convened, did not debate “peace” but land rights. Land commissions documented thefts dating back to 1948; reparations were paid in stolen orchards and the rebuilding of demolished villages. The two-state solution was archived as a footnote, replaced by a single democracy stretching from the river to the sea—not as a slogan, but a legal fact. Israeli settlers, at least those who stayed, were granted amnesty if they surrendered their rifles, testified about the crimes they committed (murder, rape, and famine were excluded), and provided adequate reparations. Those who did, now queued for Palestinian passports, their birthright of supremacy dissolved like the passbooks of apartheid South Africa.
Zionism died as all ethno-chauvinist projects die—when the people marked for elimination hold on, when the ideology blushes before it own propaganda, and when the world runs out of excuses to look away. When Barghouti and Olmert signed the new constitution, the latter quoted a Hebrew prophet: “You have been told what is good: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.” Barghouti, for his part, offered a Shona proverb: “The ax forgets; the tree remembers.” Each phrase hung in the air, epitaphs for dead ideologies and its victims, a dual reminder that hierarchies are always on borrowed time.
Today, the checkpoints have been reconstituted as museums, memorials for those who did not see Palestine’s liberation. Settlements, no longer fearsome, have been renamed in honour of martyrs and are now being desegregated. While records of the famine still shock the soul, it is now taught not only as a human tragedy but as both reckoning and turning point. Zionism, you might say, learned a key lesson before its demise: no people can be caged forever.
*****
Listen to David and Me as we course through some sticky questions of peace and peace activism, sanctions, and the limits of war but the power of the war lords, WALL Street, City of London, Brussels and Switzerland and the Emerites.
SCALE this up for 2 million in Gaza and Palestine.
In 2011 a documentary called Remote Area Medical followed Remote Area Medical — RAM® to a clinic in Bristol, Tennessee. The documentary focuses on RAM’s patients and what services they need from the RAM Clinic. This award-winning documentary is now streaming for FREE on Tubi.
The documentary follows many patients on their treatment journey as they attend the clinic. Starting in the patient parking lot, the documentary crew talks to patients that have been sleeping in their cars for days for the opportunity to be seen by medical professionals and receive care for free. Many of these patients brought food and provisions to allow them to stay in the parking lot until the clinic opened at 6 A.M. on Friday morning. They chose to stay in the parking lot to guarantee their place in line because RAM Clinics are first-come, first-served until the clinic reaches capacity.
The cost of healthcare is debilitating for many, and they are forced to go without necessary medical, dental, and vision care. In the documentary patients discuss the difficulties affording the care they need because they do not have health insurance or if they do have insurance, they cannot afford the insurance’s co-pay.
“The thing that weighs on me the most is, we have people in desperate need within our borders. Remote areas and medicine? We don’t have to go too remote,” said one RAM Volunteer.
One older patient said to one of RAM’s volunteer providers that he had not been to a doctor since he was a teenager; this patient did not know that he had been experiencing high blood pressure. Others had not gotten a new pair of glasses in as many as seven years, and their inability to see was impacting their ability to work.
The patient stories in the documentary show how prevalent the need for free healthcare is throughout the country. No matter where RAM goes in the U.S., we find patients in need of our services. The clinic in Bristol, Tennessee served more than 2,000 patients, providing more than $606,000 worth of free care in three days.
“These patients are real. Their needs are real. It’s a reminder of the people in America who have no access to the system,” a RAM Volunteer said.
The documentary also shows the emotional connections that are often formed between the patients and the healthcare professionals at RAM Clinics. One dentist shared that seeing patients crying from the pain relief of having an abscessed tooth removed made her cry as well. For her and many others, it’s hard to hold back tears while witnessing patients finally receive the desperately needed dental care they have gone without. Their relief and gratitude inspire volunteers to return time and again.
This documentary covers a RAM Clinic from waiting in the parking lot to taking down tents and loading them back into the trucks, and nearly everything in between. For a more in-depth look into a RAM Clinic and the impact it has on people’s lives, click here to stream Remote Area Medical for free.
Since the documentary aired RAM has been able to help thousands more patients — read Max’s story to see how RAM Volunteers and community members came together to help a high school student in need.
The father-in-law of the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has personal ties to Israel. Jonathan Hall is responsible for assessing whether groups like Palestine Action qualify as terrorist organisations. On Saturday, Hall wrote for the Observer, which defended the decision to proscribe Palestine Action.
This is despite leaked evidence which showed government intelligence revealing it had no grounds to proscribe Palestine Action.
Another example of how UK politics has been corrupted in the interests of a foreign state. The proscription of Palestine Action was a deeply partisan political act @josephpowellhttps://t.co/wLZ07EkCaK
But Craig Murray, independent journalist and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, recently revealed that Jonathan Hall’s father-in-law is Lord Dyson. He is a patron of UK Lawyers for Israel.
Jonathan Hall KC, the UK’s so-called “Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation”, was on the cttee that approved Palestine Action proscription.
His father in law is Patron of UK Lawyers for Israel.
Jonathan Hall, the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation—whose role includes assessing whether groups like Palestine Action qualify as terrorist organisations—has personal ties to Israel: his father-in-law, Lord Dyson, is… pic.twitter.com/QU8g82Cr7m
This raises questions about the true ‘independence’ of the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism Jonathan Hall.
Does @terrorwatchdog Jonathan Hall KC have clear family ties to Lawyers for Israel? That would make him very much NOT independent, wouldn’t it? https://t.co/CESRdO09KP
Human rights group CAGE has described UK Lawyers for Israel as “Apartheid apologist”. Recently, they caused outrage when their CEO criticised medical experts for not agreeing that Israel’s food blockage was reducing Palestinian obesity.
UKLFI ?
UK Lawyers for Israel have said the ‘War in Gaza’
will help reduce obesity in Children from Palestine
UKLFI have attacked Amnesty Int. for exposing the truth
UKLFI have attacked ‘Medical Aid For Palestine’
UKLFI have attacked NHS hospital staff for showing Gaza support
The Solicitors Regulation Authority received several complaints about UKLFI for alleged “vexatious and baseless” legal threats to silence support for Palestine.
Shocking but not surprising. UK Lawyers for Israel has its fingers in so many pies in an attempt to all pro-Palestine support. It’s currently being investigated for its intimidatory legal threats in this regard https://t.co/PdOCu239cg
The govt’s “independent” reviewer of terror legislation, who defends the proscription of Palestine Action as “novel but acceptable”, because they are “serious saboteurs who have given up on parliamentary democracy”, is a disgracefully compromised Zionist https://t.co/Z0Fxjpqkvuhttps://t.co/bP0VlsgIPS
Ultimately, nothing about the Labour government’s proscription of Palestine Action has been above board from the start. From the UK government’s collusion with the Israeli embassy in the imprisonment of the Filton 18, to Lord Richard Dannatt’s lobbying, and Israel lobby groups’ (extremely) likely influence on the group’s ban, it has been awash with blatant agenda from the word go.
Now, Jonathan Hall’s links to UKLFI solidify what a total stitch-up it all is.
It’s a renowned tactic of Israeli propaganda to accuse those objecting to the fascism of Zionism as actually being anti-Semitic. However, Sultana quickly nipped that shit in the bud.
We examined Sultana’s various criticisms of Corbynism here.
“He refused”
The post in question shows activist Ani Says asking Jeremy Corbyn to follow follow Sultana’s example:
Earlier today, a long-time anti-Zionist supporter of Jeremy Corbyn asked him whether he would follow Zarah Sultana’s lead and openly declare himself an anti-Zionist.
He refused.
The Instagram post said:
When @ani.says2 pressed further, she was pushed aside by Oly Durose, Corbyn’s adviser and former aide to David Lammy, who urged journalists to turn their cameras off.
The post also asks:
Why is Jeremy Corbyn, even after leaving the genocide-supporting Labour Party and setting up a new left-wing alternative, still refusing to oppose Zionism as a Jewish supremacist ideology?
It adds that “another Corbyn adviser, James Schneider” also recently “refused to say he was an anti-Zionist”:
Any anti-racist must by definition be anti-Zionist.
Ani Says later posted further comments on her social media. She said she’d been a fan of Jeremy Corbyn for nearly two decades and had voted or him many times.
Says said that as someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), she saw the world in very black and white ways. And as a committed pro-Palestine activist, she couldn’t understand why Sultana had stated she was anti-Zionist but Corbyn had not yet done so.
She said she felt sad and disappointed about the incident.
Brighton and Hove Albion FC have banned a season ticket holder for wearing a Palestine shirt.
Roger Wade, founder of @Boxfresh, has been banned from Brighton & Hove Albion for 5 games for wearing a Palestine football kit.
A ST holder for 10 years, he was pulled out mid-game with no explanation. Instead of dialogue, the club sent him a ban letter. @OfficialBHAFCpic.twitter.com/onqe2r4L51
At half-time during the Brighton FC v Fulham game on August 16, stewards asked Roger Wade to leave the hospitality section of the stadium, with no explanation.
Social media users initially speculated that stewards removed Wade due to wearing a football shirt in the hospitality section of the stadium, which most clubs ban.
However, he made it clear that he covered the shirt with his jacket, whilst in hospitality. Additionally, when the club responded to his complaint and issued a five-match ban, they did not mention this.
Here is Mr Wade’s formal complaint to Brighton regarding the incident, along with the club’s response — which makes no reference to the required dress code in Hospitality, nor cites it as the reason this fan was removed. pic.twitter.com/B4fyE8TenM
Previously, people had reported Tomer Hemed, a former footballer and academy mentor, for inciting violence against Palestinians online. He posted photos with Israeli soldiers during a genocide.
Back in October, many of us reported to Brighton, @FA, and @kickitout that former footballer & academy mentor Tomer Hemed was inciting violence against Palestinians online, even posting photos with soldiers in the midst of the genocide.
Are the footballing community more triggered by a football shirt than war crimes?
Absolutely baffles me that this guy gets a 5 game ban for wearing a shirt, but the club turns a blind eye to hemed calling Palestinians human animals and that they should die a death of suffering https://t.co/J2FDUMMNXw
Since 2019 – through his foundation alone, he has injected £2.4 million into Israel.
This does not include his support of other Zionist organisations, including @CST_UK, the ‘authority’ on antisemitism in the UK which serves to police pro-Palestinian activists. pic.twitter.com/RJgJ28aLqx
— Scottish Sport for Palestine (@ScotSport4Pal) August 25, 2025
The aims of his foundation, The Bloom Foundation, include:
Creating a more cohesive society in Israel, fostering shared purpose and advocacy that unite diverse segments of society.
In its 2024 annual report, the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Israeli’ is mentioned 19 times. While claiming to promote ‘community cohesion’ for all members of ‘Israeli society’. Yet, there is not one single mention of Palestine or Palestinians.
His foundation clearly prioritises Israeli lives.
The Bloom Foundation makes it clear it prioritises Israeli lives through its mysterious On Guard Initiative – an apparent attempt to eliminate community tensions within Israel – with no mention of how Israel is trying to eliminate generations of Palestinians off their land. pic.twitter.com/jaiOCGw8dC
— Scottish Sport for Palestine (@ScotSport4Pal) August 25, 2025
But it’s not just Brighton FC that are refusing entry to fans wearing Palestine shirts. A few weeks ago, a similar thing happened to an Everton fan.
A mother was stopped at the entrance to Bramley-Moore stadium and told she had to cover her Palestine football kit if she wanted to take her kids in.
This is what football is teaching our kids these days: solidarity with genocide victims is not okay.
Care to comment, @Everton? pic.twitter.com/VQUfNw4y56
The Palestine national football team is represented by the Palestinian Football Association and is a member of FIFA.
What muppets Brighton are. It’s the shirt of a FIFA member nation, that was recently playing in AFC World Cup qualifiers. Would he get banned for wearing an Italy shirt, or a Brazil shirt, or any other FIFA member shirt?
Unless FIFA and Premier League clubs are about to ban all international shirts, then this is a clear case of discrimination.
Back in 2021, Brighton FC released a kit in solidarity with Ukraine after Russia launched their attacks. But now, the very same club has issued a 5 match ban to a lifelong supporter for simply wearing a Palestine shirt.
Billionaire Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to American footballer Travis Kelce. And, Swifties are flooding the internet with their comments and takes on Tay Tay’s latest relationship. However, as ever with Swift, there’s something more than a little off with her public persona.
As a left-wing news outlet, she isn’t our usual fodder. But, the image that Swift has curated throughout her long career is rife with controversies that just won’t go away. And, for many people. she’s become a symbol of what’s wrong with our societies.
Taylor’s Version
For many of her fans, Taylor Swift is a powerful woman overcoming misogyny from the music industry and the press to become a glass-ceiling-busting billionaire. She’s an apparent inspiration to young girls, and has toured the world in record-breaking tour after record-breaking tour. But, Swift’s experiences of misogyny certainly doesn’t exempt her from the racist spats she’s created. And, a billionaire girlboss is still a billionaire. Last I checked around here, it’s simply not possible to become a billionaire without exploitation.
At a time when people around the world are struggling to feed themselves, to afford suitable housing, and see their pay checks swallowed up instantly, Swift’s billionaire status is less girlboss done good, and more parasite rights in action. Swifties often point to her billionaire status as a sign of her success. The thing is, it’s not a sign of success. It’s a sign of how limited collective understandings of success are. Why should girls have role models whose success is built on capitalist exploitation?
Taylor Swift is notorious for her gigantic carbon footprint. Carbon Market Watch reported that:
Her private jet usage amounted to an estimated 8,300 tonnes of carbon emissions in 2022 – that’s about 1,800 times the average human’s annual emissions, or 576 times that of the average American and about 1,000 times that of the average European.
Undoubtedly, the climate crisis is a product of global capitalism. It’s not going to be solved by individuals washing out yoghurt pots that their councils may or may not recycle. But, when one individual – no matter how super duper sparkly she is – is generating such a massive carbon footprint, there’s an obvious answer: fucking stop it.
In 2024, after years of criticism and pleading, Swift’s representatives claimed that she had “offset” her carbon footprint. Unfortunately, they didn’t provide any details as to how she had done so. And, of course, there wasn’t any acknowledgement that offsetting isn’t a magic wand that undoes the damage to the planet caused by private jet usage. Obviously, it’s better to not fly as much in the same way that it’s better to use less plastic than to buy more plastic shit that can be recycled.
Taylor Swift: a white supremacist barbie?
However, logic has nothing to do with Swift’s public image. For a 35 year old, she’s amassed a remarkable number of accusations of racism. Perhaps the most prominent, or at least the one that just won’t go away, is the allegation that Swift is an alt-right white supremacist darling. During Donald Trump’s first term in office when Nazi marches became a thing again (….yes, really), white supremacist rallied around Swift. The founder of a neo-Nazi site said:
The entire alt-right patiently awaits the day when we can lay down our swords and kneel before her throne […] as she commands us to go forth and slaughter the subhuman enemies of the Aryan race.
There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.
And, a then-28 year old Taylor Swift claimed she was learning as much as she could. The sheer luxury of such a pronouncement isn’t lost on those of us who are not insulated from the real world by whiteness. Since her fanbase’s flirtation with white supremacists, Swift has remained largely tight lipped about her political affiliations. However, that same silence has spoken volumes when it comes to Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
Swift can’t control who her fans are. But, she can control what she says about a genocide documented in real time. And here is the thing that’s most grating about her public persona. She luxuriates in the insulation that being an unfathomably rich, skinny, white woman affords her. She’s free to be on a learning journey, to date scumbags, to blunder around being clumsily racist, and ultimately to be defended by hordes of white women.
Nuanced hating on Taylor Swift
In 2015, Taylor Swift stated that misogyny was “ingrained” from birth. How long until a similar realisation about racism? There are much more serious people than Swift unlearning their internalised racism, but apparently we’re supposed to believe she isn’t a racist.
Don’t get me wrong – I am absolutely being a hater here. Swift is far from the only fucked up billionaire singer. She doesn’t have to be – and nor is she expected to be – perfect. But, it’s just not realistic to expect everyone to like her with rabid fervour. To some people, she’s a feminist success story. And to some people, she’s a symbolic marker of how crushing and invalidating white women can be. The standards for white women are entirely different than for women of colour. White women are afforded more grace, space, and time to be themselves. Women of colour are policed socially, culturally, and economically. Having lived, so far, 33 years of it myself, white supremacy shapes how white women are perceived, how they conceive of themselves, and it touches every possible aspect of modern life.
So, why do white women have such allegiance to Taylor? White supremacy isn’t just the preserve of men in KKK hoods. After all, someone has to make the KKK hoods: the handmaidens of white supremacy. Just as misogyny is ingrained into people at birth, so too is white supremacy. Even for nice white people, and even internalised white supremacy for people of colour. The impulse white women feel as a group to defend Swift is perhaps rooted in far uglier roots than they would like to admit. And, ultimately, they’re not reaching for a defence of Taylor as much as they are a defence of the racial capitalist status quo.
Every possible permutation of identity – class, disability, sexuality, gender – moves through the prism of white supremacy. The mediocre lyricist that is Taylor Swift isn’t immune from that.
𓂆 (@ndsnas) 
egghead
☭ (@notronmexicuh) 
Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong. Video: RNZ
Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
(@SomesCharlton) 
Roger Heywood 
all pro-Palestine support. It’s currently being investigated for its intimidatory legal threats in this regard 
(@AyariGoat) 
