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By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja

Leaders Who could not Lead

“Trump claimed that God supports the United States’ actions in the war against Iran” noted Manilo Dinucci (https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-god-united-states/5922063):“I believe that, because God is good,” he said, “and God wants us to take care of people.”…. Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth, referring to Iran: “An entire civilisation will perish, never to return; 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally come to an end. God bless the great people of Iran!” Although the Pope did not mention Trump by name, he stated that “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”

Discarding the creed of optimism when most hated and feared intervene to twist the logic and truth of reality and act like Pharaoh of the 21st century. An ill-informed conscience is embedded in the triviality of actions and reactions in war against Iran. All actions have consequences as if President Trump and Netanyahu think of extended impunity. Most pernicious consequences are waiting to grab them as it happened to Pharaoh at the Red Sea.Their warmongering is to entrap humanity at large in social, political, legal and economic consequences and tyranny of conclusion to terminate on its own as the process of the Law of Nature. They plan to maximize shortsighted glory and political triumph. Every beginning has its own end without an escape. We, the People, realize there is much evil and much good in our encompassing imagination of the world. Our expectations turned sour that responsible institutions such as the UNO, Western leadership and other global institutions of peace and security would flout their role-play with distressed timidness and ignorance of prevalent reality in global humanitarian affairs.

In a recent article (“How Egomaniac Leaders Call to End Civilized Humanity?” The Ovi Magazine, Sweden: 4/9/25,https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/how-egomaniac-leaders-call-to-end-civilized-mankind-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/), this author described President Trump and PM Netanyahu as mindless anarchists having ignored the voices of reason and subjected mankind to genocide and crimes against humanity. They behave in arrogance and insolently like the Pharaoh. Do they not stand to meet the same ending as did Pharaoh? Most Israelis protesting at Tel Aviv blame Netanyahu as egoistic and waging war on Iran for personal glory and triumph. The leaders prey on people who elected them whereas the people seem to pray for them to end their fallacy of claims. God created human beings as moral beings unlike other animals and beasts, with a Divine Trust and Accountability for actions on this planet? Leaders enriched with moral, intellectual and spiritual values know life has a purpose, trust and meaning and act responsibly but the 21st century Western leaders are steeped in their own folly and perpetuated ignorance. Insanity is powerless and transitory.

Mike Adams (“Dystopian Nightmare: Ten Unbelievable Things that Will Happen Soon if We Don’t Stop the March of Tyranny and the Enslavement of Humanity.” Transcend Media: 6/16/2023 ), warns of dire consequences tomankind.(https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/06/dystopian-nightmare-10-unbelievable-things-that-will-happen-soon-if-we-dont-stop-the-march-of-tyranny-and-the-enslavement-of Humanity now faces a critical choice: We either choose the path of total enslavement under an authoritarian, techno-fascist dictatorship, or we choose to instead embrace decentralized finance, free speech, rationality and the rule of law. https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-06-16-dystopian-nightmare-10-things-that-will-happen-soon.html

Does President Trump want to Annihilate Civilizations for Israel?

Political tyranny is powerless and transitory.Acroos the globe, people are resilient to understand the sadistic political endeavors of few mindless leaders. President Trump, enticed by Netanyahu, wanted to see Iran and Arabs engaged in fighting and self-destruction. The Strait of Hormuz is blocked unilaterally to shipping as if they own the water of the sea and the possessions of earth. Their sinister plans deny the truth of diplomacy and terms of current ceasefire to give reason a chance for peace and conflict resolution. Remember! Those challenging the Laws of God are chastised by the Laws of God without exception. Are they waiting to meet the same end as did Pharaoh at the Red Sea? The aggression and insanity of war has no logic and sense of morality as human beings. To comprehend immutable reasoning, there is no international law and no Geneva Conventions to safeguard the victims of imperialist war, it is a joke, a rhetoric against Arab-Muslim people across the globe. What have the Arab-Muslim leaders done to stop the killing fields of Gaza and occupied West Bank (Palestine), and the on-going war between Iran and the US, absolutely nothing.

For a long time, most oil exporting Arab leaders lost moral and intellectual values of Islam, appearing too occupied in sports and entertainment away from the pains and horrors of cruelty inflicted by Israel-American policies and practices – the authoritarian Arab leaders learnt nothing from living history. Do the Leaders Live in Hell or with Normal Masses to know the reality? Irresponsible and impotant Arab-Muslim leaders claiming to be mediators for peace and ceasefire are liars, nothing more than puppets of the Western imperialism not to challenge Israel for its planned onslaught of Palestinian masses. The Egyptians, Qataris, Saudis and others carry no values in global context and appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrentof naive puppets and discredited leaders. Please see more:https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/howarab-muslim-leaders-betrayed-the-people-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

The End-Game to Continued the War against Iran and Arabs

Amir Nour and Laala Bechetoula (“What Bombs Cannot Kill. Part III: The World That Burns and the Questions That Remain: https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-bombs-cannot-kill-part-iii-world-burns-questions-remain/5922049) Iran is winning the strategic war. Not because its missiles are more precise than the adversary’s. But because Iran possesses what we call civilizational endurance: the capacity of an ancient civilization, forged over 5,000 years of history, to absorb blows without dissolving. The US and European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world while wagingwar against Iran and the Arabian Gulf region. We, the People reject the violent assumptions of militarization and egoistic triumphs by acts of genocidal plans across Palestine, Iran and humanity. Eric Bogle (1976) sung “The Green Fields of France” a soul searching reminder to humanity:…….But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here, know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you ‘The Cause?’
You really believe that this war would end wars?
The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again!

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution 2019; and Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025

14 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ashraf Zainabi

From open hormuz for oil to I am blocking Hormuz for no oil, a brutal power at play

When a leader says, “keep the strait of hormuz open,” it sounds like a call for global stability. When the same voice shifts to “I am blocking Hormuz,” it stops sounding like policy and starts sounding like power speaking without restraint.

This is where the politics of Donald Trump becomes impossible to ignore. His style does not move gradually; it swings. It does not persuade; it pressures. It does not always explain; it declares.

To many, this looks like instability. Statements come fast, positions shift, and the line between warning and action often feels blurred. In global politics, such behavior carries weight. Markets react, allies hesitate, and adversaries calculate risks differently. Uncertainty becomes the first consequence.

There is a pattern beneath the noise. It is the belief that power does not just enforce rules; it creates them. When the United States demands open sea lanes, it speaks the language of global order. When it hints at controlling those same lanes, it speaks the language of dominance. The contradiction is not accidental. It is structural. Trump did not create this contradiction. He exposed it.

Where earlier leaders used careful diplomacy, he uses blunt assertion. Where others softened their intent with layered language, he often states it directly. This makes his politics feel raw, even unsettling, because it removes the comfort of ambiguity. What was once implied is now said aloud.

For supporters, this is clarity. They see a leader who does not hide behind words, who acts decisively, and who prioritizes national interest without apology. For critics, it is dangerous. They see a leadership style that replaces stability with unpredictability and risks turning pressure into provocation. Both views hold a part of the truth.

Trump’s approach is not random. It is high-risk, high-impact politics. It relies on surprise, pressure, and the constant shifting of ground beneath opponents. Sometimes, this forces quick concessions. At other times, it pushes situations closer to the edge.

In regions already tense, especially involving Iran, such a style does not just influence events, it accelerates them. The margin for miscalculation becomes smaller. The cost of error becomes larger.

What makes this deeply concerning is not a single statement or decision. It is the normalization of contradiction. If one power can say “open” today and “blocked” tomorrow, then consistency itself loses meaning. Rules begin to depend not on principle, but on position. And once that happens, others will follow.

This is how global order quietly erodes, not through one dramatic collapse, but through repeated exceptions. Each contradiction becomes easier to justify. Each shift becomes easier to accept. Over time, the line between strategy and impulse fades. So the question is not whether this style is shocking. It clearly is. The real question is whether the world can remain stable under a leadership approach that thrives on unpredictability.

Because when the message changes from keep it open to I am blocking Hormuz, it is no longer just a statement. It is a signal, that power is no longer interested in appearing consistent, only in remaining dominant. And that is where unease begins.

Dr. Ashraf Zainabi is a teacher and researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora J&K

14 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies

After the breakdown of talks in Pakistan, the ceasefire between the US and Iran is more fragile than ever, and now seems likely to give way to a new phase of the war. The ceasefire and talks have failed to end Israel’s devastating attacks on Lebanon or to negotiate international access to the Strait of Hormuz, now under Iran’s control.

The world must use this pause in the war to push for a permanent ceasefire and peace agreement, but we must also start to assess the true human cost of the war–something the US is always reluctant to do in its wars, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. While we always know the exact number of Americans killed in these wars, we never have an accurate tally of how many people we have killed–not only because it is often hard to get the data, but also because the US systematically downplays civilian casualties and treats their lives as less valuable.

We saw this from the very first day of this war. The US carried out a double-tap strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing 175, mostly young girls. Trump’s response was to blame Iran: “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he said, and later suggested that Iran might have gotten hold of a Tomahawk missile and used it to kill its own people.

Minab is not an isolated case—it is a window into a much broader failure by the US government and media, as well as the Iranian government and international media, to honestly reveal the human toll of this 40-day war.

The Iran Health Ministry’s casualty figures have not been updated in any detail since March 29, when it put Iranian casualties at 2,076 killed and 26,500 wounded, and there is an obvious mismatch between these two numbers. The ratio between them is much higher than in other wars, or even when compared with the Israeli assault on Lebanon in this war, where Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported 1,830 people killed and 4.927 wounded by April 10, a ratio of 2.7 to 1 between the wounded and the dead.

For further comparison, UN figures for civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine are 15,172 and 41,378 wounded, which is also a ratio of 2.7 to 1. These are certainly under-estimates, like civilian casualty counts in every war, but the ratio between deaths and injuries is realistic, unlike that in Tehran’s casualty figures.

If the Iran Health Ministry’s casualty figures were accurate, it would mean that only one person is being killed for every 13 people wounded. But if the figure of 26,500 people wounded was accurate, and the ratio between dead and wounded was similar to what is found in other wars, we would expect that around 10,000 people have probably been killed.

Looking at other sources, the UK-based Iran International website, on March 31, reported Iranian military, militia and police casualties of 4,770 killed and 20,880 wounded, but did not divulge its sources.

Two human rights groups, HRANA and Hengaw, have also published mortality estimates. HRANA, based in Fairfax, Virginia, in the US, is partly funded by the US government, the aggressor in this war. So its data on war casualties are as suspect as its data for casualties during protests in Iran in December and January that the US used as a pretext for the war.

The other human rights group, Hengaw, is based in Norway and Iranian Kurdistan. It reports a total of at least 7,650 people killed by the time of the ceasefire on April 8, of whom 6,620 were military personnel and 1,030 were civilians.

If the Iranian government’s figure of 26,500 people wounded is correct, Hengaw’s count of 7,650 war deaths would amount to a ratio of 3.5 people wounded for each person killed, which would be closer to what one would expect by comparison with other wars.

But the Health Ministry’s figure of 26,500 wounded is also suspect. The Pentagon claims that US and Israeli airstrikes have hit more than 13,000 “targets,” so 26,500 injuries would amount to only two people wounded for each target attacked. This suggests that the count of 26,500 people wounded is itself an undercount, and that the true numbers of casualties in Iran, killed and wounded, military and civilian, are therefore likely to be much higher than any of the numbers reported so far.

While it is easy to understand why the US government doesn’t want to talk about casualties, it seems that the Iranian government doesn’t want to either. If, as we suspect, the true casualty figures are much higher than the health ministry has reported, it may be hiding and downplaying them to prevent panic among the population and keep up the country’s morale, especially in light of the recent large protests in the country. That could also explain why it has not updated its casualty report since March 29.

We would encourage all sides, and independent groups, to cooperate in efforts to accurately count the dead and wounded. Why does this matter? In an illegal war, every death is a crime, while every person killed or maimed is somebody’s husband, wife, father, mother, son or daughter. They should all still be alive and whole. The US armed forces should not be killing or wounding any of them. So some might ask what difference it makes whether they’ve killed 2,000 people, 7,000 or even 70,000.

We would say that it is precisely because each life is precious, and because the pain and horror each person suffers in these violent deaths and injuries is so unacceptable, that each one deserves to be counted and considered. Americans, and our neighbors around the world, need to fully grasp the scale of the mass murder that the US government is committing, so that we can all respond appropriately.

The fact that our government and institutional media downplay the importance of accurate casualty figures and make no effort to discover them only makes it more urgent to find them, as we and others have tried to do during previous US wars.

In 2006, three years into the extraordinarily violent US military occupation of Iraq, public health experts from Johns Hopkins University in the US and Mustansiriya University in Baghdad conducted the second of two epidemiological studies of mortality in Iraq since the US invasion.

The study was published in the Lancet medical journal, and it estimated that, during just the first three years of war and occupation in Iraq, they had caused about 650,000 deaths, including 600,000 violent killings. That was more than ten times higher than previously published figures, which were based on compilations of western news reports and reports from the occupation government’s health ministry.

The study’s results were disputed by those responsible for the war and the mass casualties it caused, including US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But leaked emails revealed that the British government’s chief scientific adviser described the study’s methodology as “close to best practice,” and its design as “robust.” Emails from panicking British officials asked, “Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies,” and “…the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished. It is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”

In 2015, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning groups Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) published a report titled Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the War on Terror. In discussing the widely varying mortality estimates for the war in Iraq, the report noted, “Despite the furious criticism it attracted, most experts see the second Lancet study of October 2006 as the most solid estimate of the number of casualties, up to the period of its publication.”

No such comprehensive studies were ever conducted in Afghanistan. The UN published annual civilian casualty figures, but these were only compilations of civilian casualties confirmed by the UN Human Rights Office as it followed up on reports of war crimes and human rights violations reported to its office in Kabul, which excluded any deaths not reported to its office, or that it did not have time to fully investigate.

As is happening with the Iran Health Ministry reports today, the UN’s fragmentary reports were uncritically repeated by the world’s media as if they were realistic estimates of total war deaths in Afghanistan.

Finally, in 2019, after 18 years of war and military occupation, Fiona Frazer, the head of the UN Human Rights office in Kabul, admitted to the BBC that the UN’s reports were not providing a full picture of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

“United Nations data strongly indicates that more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth,” Frazer said, but then added, “Although the number of recorded civilian casualties are disturbingly high, due to rigorous methods of verification, the published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm.”

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were also killed fighting as combatants on both sides in that war. The world’s media were surprised when President Ghani revealed in January 2019 that 45,000 Afghan government troops had been killed since he took office in September 2014. But the US relied on Afghans to fight other Afghans throughout its failed 20-year war in their country.

Whatever the result of the current ceasefire and negotiations, and for however long the US and Israel keep waging war on Iran, the people of the United States and the world must demand a complete and truthful accounting for the human costs of this war, for which Americans and their government bear the prime moral and legal responsibility. At best, that should include the same kind of independent, scientifically-based epidemiological study conducted in Iraq in 2006.

But the demand for accountability starts with a skeptical public and media who can tell the difference between partial, fragmentary casualty reports and serious estimates of total deaths in a violent war zone, and who care enough to want to know how many people their armed forces are really killing and maiming in this illegal war.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

14 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Junaid S. Ahmad

The most revealing feature of Pakistan’s current political discourse is not what is being argued, but what is being deliberately buried — buried under noise, spectacle, and a suffocating cloud of manufactured urgency. Scroll long enough and you will see it: the same hypnotic fixation, repeated with almost ritualistic discipline — is Pakistan’s recent “geopolitical moment,” its role in facilitating backchannel communication between Donald Trump’s Washington and Tehran, a masterstroke or a mirage?

The debate is loud. It is theatrical. It is addictive.

And it is a distraction — a carefully constructed one.

Let us state, without hedging and without qualification: Pakistan is playing its geopolitical hand well. It is not guessing. It is not stumbling. It is inserting itself, deliberately and effectively, into spaces where access is scarce and stakes are high. It is brokering, facilitating, positioning — and doing so with competence. Its geography, networks, and institutional instincts are being deployed with clarity.

On the global board, Pakistan is not peripheral. It is present. It is active. It is, in moments that matter, effective.

Full stop.

And yet this success is not the story. It is the cover story.

Because this is not, in any serious sense, a debate about geopolitics. It is a diversion — a gleaming, seductive decoy designed to pull attention away from the only question that matters: what is actually happening inside Pakistan?

Watch the performance. Regime loyalists elevate Shehbaz Sharif into a statesman of global consequence. Critics roll their eyes and call it theater. But both camps — despite their noise, their posture, their supposed opposition — are orbiting the same dead center: a discourse that ensures the real question is never confronted.

Because the real story is not subtle. It is not ambiguous. It is savage.

A state that locks away a former prime minister — Imran Khan — not through credible justice but through a blizzard of engineered cases, is not governing. It is purging. A system that hunts lawyers like Imaan Mazari through revolving-door arrests, that terrorizes academics such as Hamza Ahmed Khan for speech, that weaponizes courts, codes, and cops to criminalize thought itself — this is not overreach. This is organized repression.

Let us drop the polite vocabulary entirely.

This is a state that devours dissent. It surveils, intimidates, abducts, prosecutes, and, when necessary, erases. It converts law into a blunt instrument, due process into theater, and accusation into punishment. It does not simply suppress opposition — it seeks to break it, publicly and systematically, as a warning to everyone else.

This is not governance.

This is domination enforced with paperwork.

And this is where geopolitics becomes invaluable — not as policy, but as camouflage.

Geopolitics dazzles. It floods the conversation with abstractions — mediation, leverage, alignment — until the brutality of domestic reality is pushed out of frame. It invites citizens to obsess over proximity to power while quietly stripping them of power altogether. It replaces legitimacy with optics, consent with choreography, accountability with applause.

This is not accidental. It is a method honed over decades.

Pakistan’s ruling elite has perfected a cynical exchange: external usefulness in return for internal impunity. From Cold War patronage to the War on Terror — where sovereignty was bartered and figures like Aafia Siddiqui became enduring symbols of that bargain — geopolitical relevance has repeatedly been used to launder domestic repression.

That transaction is alive and well.

What has changed is the desperation behind it.

Because a system that commands genuine legitimacy does not behave like this. It does not panic at criticism. It does not criminalize speech. It does not turn courts into conveyor belts of punishment. It does not need foreign acknowledgment to simulate authority at home. These are not signs of strength. They are the reflexes of a regime that knows, with quiet certainty, that it cannot win consent — only enforce compliance.

And so the contradiction becomes grotesque.

Pakistan is cast as a mediator, a stabilizer, a diplomatic asset — and in geopolitical terms, it is succeeding. But mediation rests on credibility, on trust, on perceived independence. These are not qualities that coexist comfortably with a domestic order built on coercion, fear, and institutionalized intimidation.

Inside the country, the pattern is relentless: political imprisonment as routine, media suffocation as policy, dissent as a prosecutable offense, law as a weapon. This is not background noise. This is the system’s core logic.

Which brings us to the question that the entire spectacle is designed to avoid.

Do Pakistanis live under a system that derives authority from consent? Or under one that manufactures obedience through fear, spectacle, and force?

Everything else — the summits, the mediation, the carefully staged visibility — is secondary.

The real tragedy is not that Pakistan is geopolitically effective. It is. The tragedy is that this effectiveness is being deployed as a shield — a polished surface to deflect attention from a political order that is, at its core, coercive and extractive.

A state can broker dialogue abroad while strangling it at home. It can facilitate conversation in one arena while criminalizing it in another. These are not contradictions. They are the operating principles of a system that performs strength externally while practicing repression internally.

The real test is not whether one applauds Pakistan’s geopolitical success.

It is whether one refuses to be distracted by it.

Until that refusal becomes unavoidable, Pakistan’s geopolitical debate will remain exactly what it has been engineered to be: not an inquiry into power, but an escape from it.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.

11 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

War and peace are no longer opposites but points along a continuous field of strategic contestation. At critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, power is exercised not through open conflict, but through the capacity to sustain pressure without escalation. It is within this deliberately maintained ambiguity that states secure advantage, shaping outcomes without declaring war or conceding peace. In April 2026, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev described the Strait of Hormuz as “Iran’s nuclear weapons“ due to its immense potential to disrupt global oil supply and influence international economies. He labelled the strait’s power as “inexhaustible” following a ceasefire between the US and Iran.

In contemporary geopolitical discourse, power continues to be measured through visible and quantifiable instruments – military expenditure, nuclear capability, and the reach of economic sanctions. This framework, deeply rooted in Western strategic thinking, assumes that dominance emerges from accumulation: more weapons, more capital, more alliances. Yet, such an understanding proves inadequate when confronted with the case of Iran. The country’s most consequential leverage does not lie in its nuclear programme or even its conventional military strength, but in its geographic position astride the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime corridor through which nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a significant share of liquefied natural gas must pass.

The political principle at work is that control over critical economic chokepoints generates systemic power that exceeds the utility of absolute force. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a passage; it is a structural dependency of the global economy. Industrial production, transportation systems, and financial markets across continents are tethered to the uninterrupted flow of energy through this corridor. Iran’s position along this route transforms geography into strategy. It does not need to dominate the global system; it only needs to hold at risk a point upon which the system depends.

This is why the comparison between Hormuz and nuclear capability must be understood analytically rather than rhetorically. Nuclear weapons represent total destruction but limited usability, constrained by doctrines of deterrence and the inevitability of catastrophic retaliation. By contrast, the leverage embedded in Hormuz operates within a spectrum of calibrated disruption. Iran does not need to close the strait entirely to exercise power. The mere capacity to disrupt, delay, or render passage uncertain is sufficient to trigger global consequences. This reflects a broader shift in political power: the ability to manipulate risk and uncertainty has become more consequential than the capacity to unleash absolute force.

The Strait of Hormuz, at approximately 21 miles in its narrowest navigable width, is inherently vulnerable to disruption. Its shallow waters, confined channels, and heavy traffic density create conditions where even minor disturbances can have disproportionate effects. Iran has built its entire maritime doctrine around this reality. It has developed an asymmetric warfare strategy that does not seek parity with superior naval forces but instead exploits their limitations within constrained geography. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, particularly its naval arm, has institutionalized this approach by privileging agility, dispersion, and volume over conventional strength.

This doctrine rests on a clear political logic: weaker states can offset structural disadvantages by increasing the cost of control for stronger adversaries. Iran’s use of fast patrol boats, maritime mines, and coastal anti-ship missile systems exemplifies this logic. These tools do not require large-scale deployment to be effective; their mere presence introduces uncertainty into maritime navigation. Tanker traffic becomes risk-laden, insurance premiums surge, and shipping routes are reconsidered. In this way, economic consequences unfold without the need for decisive military engagement. The objective is not destruction but disruption, not victory in battle but the imposition of systemic cost.

Within this framework, tactics such as coordinated swarm operations take on particular significance. Rather than engaging in direct confrontation, Iran’s forces deploy numerous small, high-speed vessels capable of approaching targets from multiple directions simultaneously. This approach is designed to overwhelm surveillance and defence systems that are optimized for tracking limited threats. The emphasis is on saturation rather than precision, on creating an environment in which even technologically superior naval platforms are forced into defensive postures. The principle underlying such tactics is that complexity and volume can neutralize technological advantage, especially in confined operational spaces like Hormuz.

These maritime strategies are not executed in isolation but are embedded within a carefully constructed territorial network. Islands such as Qeshm Island and Larak Island function as critical nodes in what can be described as an “arch defence” system. Qeshm, the largest island in the Persian Gulf, serves as a logistical and operational hub, housing underground missile installations, drone facilities, and fast-attack craft. Its proximity to the main shipping lanes allows Iran to project force rapidly while retaining the protection of hardened, often subterranean infrastructure. This reflects a principle of modern warfare: survivability and concealment enhance deterrence by ensuring that capabilities cannot be easily neutralized.

Larak Island complements this offensive potential with surveillance and control. Equipped with radar systems, electronic monitoring infrastructure, and observational capabilities, it enables Iran to track and, when necessary, regulate maritime traffic. During periods of heightened tension, such monitoring can translate into active management of shipping routes, effectively transforming open waters into controlled corridors. This introduces a new dimension of power: the ability not merely to threaten disruption but to selectively administer access. In such scenarios, the strait begins to function less as an international waterway and more as a regulated passage under implicit Iranian oversight.

Taken together with other nearby islands—including Hormuz, Hengam, Abu Musa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs—this network creates overlapping zones of surveillance and firepower. The result is a layered battlespace in which control cannot be easily asserted by external forces without direct confrontation with entrenched and fortified positions. The political implication is significant: securing the strait would require not just naval presence but sustained military engagement against geographically embedded defences, thereby raising the threshold and cost of intervention.

This structural reality also underpins Iran’s broader strategy of deterrence. The threat of disrupting the Strait of Hormuz operates as a reciprocal mechanism: if Iran’s own oil exports are constrained through sanctions or military pressure, it retains the capacity to impose comparable costs on the global system. This is not an abstract proposition but a calculated alignment of vulnerability. Major exporters such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates depend on this route for access to international markets, while major importers—including India and China—rely on its stability for economic continuity. The strait thus becomes a point where regional tensions translate into global stakes.

In this context, assertions that figures such as Donald Trump “hold the cards” reflect a misunderstanding of how power operates within interconnected systems. Economic sanctions and military threats remain potent tools, but they encounter limits when confronted with structural dependencies that cannot be easily bypassed. The global economy’s reliance on Hormuz constrains the range of viable actions available to all actors, including the most powerful. The principle here is that interdependence redistributes power by embedding vulnerability within the system itself.

Iran’s approach also extends into what is often described as “grey-zone warfare,” a domain in which actions fall below the threshold of full-scale conflict while still producing tangible strategic effects. By intermittently threatening shipping, selectively targeting vessels associated with particular states, or demonstrating military capability without escalation, Iran maintains a persistent state of controlled tension. This strategy allows it to exert influence without triggering overwhelming retaliation, thereby sustaining leverage over time. The underlying logic is that ambiguity and restraint can be as effective as overt confrontation in shaping outcomes.

The cumulative effect of these dynamics is to transform the Strait of Hormuz into more than a geographic feature. It becomes an instrument of economic coercion, a site of strategic negotiation, and a mechanism through which Iran projects power disproportionate to its conventional capabilities. Control here does not require occupation or closure; it requires credible disruption. A complete blockade would constitute war and invite decisive response. Partial, intermittent interference, however, operates within a space where consequences are severe yet escalation remains uncertain.

This distinction is crucial. It reveals that Iran’s strength lies not in its ability to act absolutely, but in its capacity to act selectively. By keeping the strait perpetually within reach of disruption, Iran ensures that every calculation involving the region must account for its presence. The cost of maintaining stability falls on those who depend on it most, while Iran’s role is to maintain the credibility of instability.

In a world increasingly defined by multipolarity, this model of power carries broader implications. It demonstrates that influence is no longer derived solely from scale but from position within networks of dependency. Geography, when aligned with strategy, becomes a force multiplier capable of reshaping global dynamics.

The Strait of Hormuz, therefore, is not simply a point of transit. It is a locus of power where the limits of coercion, the realities of interdependence, and the strategic use of geography converge. To understand Iran’s position in the global order is to recognize that its most potent asset is not a weapon that can be deployed, but a passage that can be controlled.

And in that control lies a form of power that the world cannot ignore.

Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age.

11 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Satya Sagar

On 6th April US and Israeli fighter jets sliced through the sky above Tehran, not to strike missile silos or military convoys, but a university campus with laboratories, lecture halls, a mosque, and an AI research centre. Sharif University of Technology, often called the “MIT of Iran,” was reduced to rubble in the attack.

This strike, alongside the reported systematic degradation of over 30 other Iranian universities, 763 schools nationwide and the prior levelling of educational institutions in Gaza, reveals a diabolical shift in the strategy of the “Enlightened West.” It is no longer enough to contain a rival militarily or economically; the new front is the total erasure of their capacity to read, write, think, innovate, and compete.

The justification, when offered, tends to follow a familiar script and the logic borders on the psychotic. A university is not merely a university; it is a “dual-use” facility. A physics department might someday produce a weapons designer. An AI lab might contribute to military systems. A chemistry lab might become something darker. Therefore so the argument goes the institution itself becomes a legitimate target.

If the mere potential for an Iranian student to use mathematics for a weapon justifies their elimination, then the logic of the empire demands the slaughter of every Iranian child with a high IQ.

Perhaps that is exactly what we are witnessing. When a school is bombed and over 170 girl students are killed at the very start of a conflict, it isn’t a “mistake.” It is a demographic and intellectual culling. It is the realization that a girl who learns calculus in Tehran today is a woman who disrupts the technological hegemony of the West tomorrow.

This is a perverse form of reasoning. It treats knowledge not as a universal human endeavour, but as a latent threat when possessed by the “wrong” people. It is not the existence of knowledge that is dangerous, but its distribution.

There is a second, deeper contradiction at play, that borders on the grotesque. On the one hand, Iran is frequently described in Western discourse as “backward,” “regressive,” governed by a clerical establishment hostile to modernity. On the other hand, its universities are treated as sites of dangerous sophistication – places where cutting-edge research in engineering, artificial intelligence, and science could pose a threat.

If the Iranian leadership were truly the Luddites the Western media portrays them to be, they would be no threat. One does not bomb a country because its leaders are “backward”; one bombs a country because its students are too forward-thinking.

The reality is that Iran has, for decades, invested heavily in higher education. Its universities produce engineers, scientists, and researchers at scale. Female literacy rates are remarkably high – indeed, by some measures, near-universal. Women constitute a significant proportion of university students in many disciplines.

This does not neatly fit the caricature.

And so the contradiction must be managed. Iran must be portrayed as backward enough to justify Western intervention, yet advanced enough to justify fear. Its people must be depicted as oppressed, yet its intellectuals as dangerous. Its society must be both pitied and policed.

The result is a narrative that collapses under its own weight.

None of this is new. The fear of knowledge in the hands of the “other” is as old as empire itself. The Roman Empire tightly controlled the spread of certain forms of learning among its provinces. Colonial regimes across Asia and Africa established education systems designed not to empower, but to produce clerks – useful, but not threatening. The British in India famously debated how much education was “too much” for the colonized population. Knowledge was to be rationed.

Perhaps the most infamous example is that of Nazi Germany. The book burnings of the 1930s were not random acts of vandalism; they were deliberate attempts to purify intellectual life, to eliminate ideas deemed dangerous. Universities were purged. Scholars were exiled. Entire disciplines were reshaped to serve ideology.

The target was not just books, but the very possibility of independent thought.

There is a grim continuity here. When power feels secure, it celebrates knowledge. When it feels threatened, it begins to police it.

What distinguishes the present moment is the nature of knowledge itself. We are no longer speaking only of philosophy or literature, but of technologies that have immediate, tangible power: artificial intelligence, nuclear physics, biotechnology.

These fields blur the line between civilian and military applications. A breakthrough in machine learning can improve healthcare or enhance surveillance systems. A nuclear physicist can work on energy or weapons. The ambiguity is real.

But ambiguity does not justify obliteration. If anything, it demands more nuanced engagement, not less. International cooperation, scientific exchange, and regulatory frameworks have historically been the tools used to manage such risks. The global nuclear order, flawed as it is, emerged not from bombing universities, but from treaties, inspections, and diplomacy.

To abandon these mechanisms in favour of force is to replace complexity with bluntness and to pretend that destruction can substitute for understanding.

The targeting of universities in Iran is not without precedent. In Gaza, educational institutions have repeatedly been damaged in cycles of conflict. Schools, universities, libraries and other spaces of learning have been caught in the crossfire. Two decades ago the invasion of Iraq similarly resulted in the destruction of its educational infrastructure and even the looting of its museums by US soldiers.

The pattern is instructive. When a society is already marginalized, its institutions of knowledge become even more vulnerable. And when those institutions are weakened, the society’s ability to recover, to innovate, to participate in global discourse is correspondingly diminished.

It is a form of long-term incapacitation. One does not need to invoke conspiracy to see the effect: a population deprived not just of infrastructure, but of intellectual infrastructure.

At the heart of this lies a deeper anxiety one that is rarely articulated openly.

What if the “Third World” were to become not merely politically assertive, but intellectually competitive? What if countries long relegated to the periphery began to produce world-class research, technologies, and cultural output? What if they ceased to be markets and became rivals?

This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is already happening. Countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are investing in education, research, and innovation. The global distribution of knowledge is shifting.

For those accustomed to dominance, this shift can feel destabilizing.

And so the temptation arises not necessarily as a conscious conspiracy, but as a structural impulse to slow it down. To frame knowledge as dangerous when it emerges from the “wrong” places.

What makes all this particularly jarring is the moral language often employed. Actions taken in the name of “security” are framed as necessary, even regrettable. Civilian casualties are described as unintended. The destruction of infrastructure is presented as collateral damage.

But when the infrastructure in question is a university, the language begins to ring hollow.

A university is not a weapons depot. It is a place where ideas are formed, debated, contested. It is where a society thinks about itself and its future. To target it – whether directly or through reckless indifference – is to strike at the possibility of thought itself. And to do so while claiming to defend civilization is an inversion so complete it borders on satire.

If the presence of scientific expertise in a country is grounds for suspicion, then the only “safe” world is one in which such expertise is monopolized. If the potential for misuse justifies pre-emptive destruction, then every school becomes a potential target.

It is a logic that, taken seriously, leads to absurdity and, more dangerously, to atrocity.

Perhaps the most unsettling possibility is this: that the fear is not of weapons or “terror”. The US and Israeli elites are fighting a war on parity. A world in which knowledge is widely distributed is a world in which power is less concentrated. It is a world in which narratives can be challenged, technologies developed independently, and cultural influence diversified.

For those at the centre of existing hierarchies, this can feel like loss. And so the temptation is to frame that loss as danger. It arises from fear of a world in which knowledge is no longer the preserve of a few. It tells us that the battle is not only over territory or ideology, but over who gets to think, to innovate, to imagine.

And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous battlefield of all. As the cruel slaughter of little girls at the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab clearly demonstrated to the entire world.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker who can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

10 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By GHADA KARMI

The US-Israel war on Iran that started on 28 February is currently on pause for a two-week ceasefire. Whether it will lead to a permanent peace or break down into hostilities once more is unknown. But when the dust finally settles and it is time to review the lessons learnt from this illegal war, the most important must be that the state of Israel has to be dismantled as an act of political necessity and in pursuit of world peace.

The ferocious US-Israel war on Iran has lasted six weeks, raining death and destruction on its leaders and citizenry. In that time over 2000 Iranians have been killed, at least 20,000 injured, and over 3 million displaced.

Israel has assassinated scores of Iranian officials and Iranian leaders – most prominently, the Supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, the seasoned security chief, Ali Larijani, and the head of intelligence, Esmail Khatib. It is still trying to do so.

Thousands of Iranian targets have been struck, among them, and most irresponsibly, Iran’s nuclear plant. A particularly egregious attack on 8 March targeted Tehran’s oil depots, covering the city with dense clouds of toxic smoke. The environmental damage from this act is incalculable for humans now and into the far future. Tehran’s soil is poisoned, and its water supply contaminated, who knows for how long.

As could easily have been predicted, Iran shut off the Strait of Hormuz to shipping on 2 March. Consequently, this raised the global price of oil, fertiliser, and other essential commodities. Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighbouring Gulf states’ energy infrastructure only aggravated these effects, with oil trading at $110 a barrel at one point, and some forecasters predicting a disastrous future rise to $200 a barrel. On 18 March Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gasfield, the largest in the world, and shared with Qatar. Iran retaliated by attacking Qatar’s vital liquefied gas facility, which will take years to repair, and the energy infrastructure of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

If it restarts, the Iran war has the potential to damage or even destroy the global economy, trigger a nuclear war if Iran refuses to surrender to the attacking powers, and lead to significant political realignments in the Middle East and beyond, which could be irreversible. A recent meeting of the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to discuss Iran may serve as an early indication of this trend.

In the storm of events since the war started Israel’s mischievous role in bringing the world to this pass should not escape attention. By his own admission, Israel’s prime minister has schemed for 40 years to achieve the destruction of Iran. For Israel, Iran’s standing as a strong, independent state with an ancient civilisation, a proud heritage, and a highly educated population, resistant to Western domination, is intolerable.

Iran forms the last obstacle to Israel’s ambition towards total hegemony in the Middle East, which it is currently imposing by destroying Lebanon, starving the people of Gaza to extinction, and ethnically cleansing the West Bank of its Palestinian population.

It should always have been clear that Israel would seize any chance to attack Iran. The US counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, who recently resigned in protest over American involvement in the Iran war, spilt the beans in his letter to President Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat”, he wrote. The war started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Looking at the list of regional disasters since Israel was created, does anyone seriously believe any of it would have happened if Israel had not existed? Or doubt how differently – and better – the Middle East might have fared if Israel had not been planted in its midst?

Since its inception in 1948, this artificially created settler colony has left a trail of destruction in its wake. Palestine’s indigenous people, who still bear the brunt of Israel’s founding, were transformed from settled communities living peacefully in their homeland into refugees, exiles, or targets of occupation. They are currently victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing. And to this day, their plight remains unresolved.

Because of Israel’s existence, five Arab-Israeli wars erupted between 1948 and 2006, all of them damaging and costly. The Arab world’s rich resources that should have gone to Arab social and economic development in the wake of decolonisation were instead diverted into military spending to defend against Israeli belligerence.

Constant Western interference to protect Israel sowed division among Arab states, often resulting in them fighting each other instead of Israel.

Generations of young Arabs have been reared on an abnormal diet of belligerency and war with Israel, inciting fundamentalism and radicalisation amongst them. Israel’s deliberate early policy of encircling the Arab world by making alliances with hostile regional non-Arab, non-Muslim states further retarded Arab development and has spread to other countries.

Put simply, Israel’s presence has conferred no conceivable benefit on the Arab world, but instead retarded its progress. It has helped maintain Arab dependency on the West and, by acting as a local agent of imperialism, has prevented progress towards Arab emancipation from it.

From the beginning of its existence, Israel has always pursued its own agenda, despite the West’s generous support, and has now inevitably brought the world to the brink. Given this dire situation, isn’t it time for Israel’s Western backers to draw the obvious conclusion and admit that Israel’s creation was a dangerous mistake? The West created a state that is neither capable of reform nor of coexistence. No efforts at accommodation and regional normalisation have succeeded in transforming Israel from a supremacist ethno-religious entity into a friendly, peaceable part of the Middle East.

In 1948, it took a coalition of Western governments to make Israel, and it will take no less than a global coalition to unmake it. That must now be the urgent task of all peace-loving governments and peoples before more blood is spilt.

It will not be easy. Dislodging from the hearts and minds of the West the conventional idea of Israel as a refuge for Jews, a path to atonement for anti-Semitic Europeans, and a local agent for Western interests is a monumental task.

But it must be attempted.

11 April 2026

Source: ghadakarmi.substack.com

By Dennis Small

Panel 1:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RF38nwzZD0]

Panel 2:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b62RFlF3BnE]

On April 6, EIR brought together experts from around the world for an emergency roundtable titled, “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Is There Still Time To Prevent the War Against Iran from Escalating into a Global Nuclear Conflict?” The event was an urgent and dramatic call to action, occurring as the United States is unleashing hell on Iran and U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to bomb that country “back to the Stone Age” and end their entire civilization forever. As speakers made crystal clear during the proceedings, this has the very real potential of triggering a nuclear exchange, which could quickly lead to a global nuclear war, and must be urgently stopped. The dialogue occurred with the presence and participation of a representative of the Iranian government, Dr. Khalil Shirgholami, Iran’s ambassador to Armenia and former director general of the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran, which is affiliated with the country’s Foreign Ministry.

EIR Editor-in-Chief Helga Zepp-LaRouche kicked off the event by warning that the war risks not only a rapid descent into global thermonuclear war, but is also bringing on a global economic collapse, which threatens to destroy economies around the world. Instead of continuing on this “short road to hell,” Zepp-LaRouche said humanity must adopt a sublime, future-oriented perspective by viewing Southwest Asia from the standpoint of what the region could become in 20, 50, or 100 years. She laid out her proposal for an “Extended Oasis Plan,” which would integrate advanced technologies and massive infrastructure corridors, drawing on other successful initiatives, for example, China’s greening of deserts in Xinjiang. Toward this end, Zepp-LaRouche announced the preparation of two maps of proposed rail links, outlining this development potential for Southwest Asia. Along with strenuous diplomatic efforts, this kind of economic development perspective could play a key role in laying the foundation for peace throughout this war-torn region.

Speakers addressed the many aspects of the crisis, as well as their ideas for how to move the world out of it. Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus at MIT, said Washington has become “morally insane,” and warned in the strongest possible terms what the consequences would be if Israel were allowed to use a nuclear weapon against Iran. Chandra Muzaffar, founder and president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), urged elected officials, institutional representatives, and military officers from around the world to contact their counterparts in the United States. and urge them to bring this war to an end. Purnima Anand of India, president of the BRICS International Forum, stressed the significant role the BRICS have in being able to solve this crisis, and spoke of mobilizing member nations “to showcase their unity” in this regard.

The presence of an official representative of the Iranian government gave the event an extra degree of significance, as forces from around the world intent on stopping the trajectory of endless war were able to engage in dialogue on solutions.

The full videos of Panel 1 and Panel 2 are available for viewing.

____________________________________________________

Speakers:
Panel 1 – ‘Can the Iran War Be Stopped Before Nuclear Escalation?‘

• Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), editor-in-chief EIR
• Amb. Dr. Khalil Shirgholami (Iran), ambassador to Armenia and former director-general of Iran’s Institute for Political International Studies
• Zhang Weiwei (China), Professor of International Relations at Fudan University in Shanghai and Director of its China Institute
• Amb. Prof. Dr. Manuel Hassassian (Palestine), Palestinian Authority
• Lt. General (ret.) Ghulam Mustafa (Pakistan), defense analyst, former commander of the Army Strategic Forces Command (ASFC)
• Chas Freeman (United States): former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia
• Purnima Anand (India), President, BRICS International Forum

Panel 2: ‘Global Infrastructure Development Is the New Name of Peace’

• H.E. Donald Ramotar (Guyana), former President of Guyana
• Dr. Theodore Postol (United States), professor emeritus of Science, Technology and International Security at MIT
• Chandra Muzaffar (Malaysia), founder and President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)
• Dennis Small (United States), Ibero-America Editor, EIR

_______________

31 March 2026

Source: eir.news

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

According to Israel’s new death penalty law, Palestinian children, like adults, could, in practice, find themselves facing the gallows. This might take some by surprise, or even be dismissed as an exaggeration. Sadly, it is neither.

The death penalty law, passed by Israel’s Knesset on March 30, mandates capital punishment for Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks. The legislation, often referred to as the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law, requires that executions be carried out swiftly, within 90 days, while sharply limiting avenues for appeal or commutation, according to human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

It resolves a long-standing political demand by Israel’s far-right leadership to formalize execution as a tool of control over Palestinians. As extremist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has repeatedly argued, those accused of such acts “deserve death,” framing the law not as an exception, but as a necessary policy.

Though the law itself does not explicitly mention children, it does not exclude them either. Knowing Israel’s treatment and legal classification of Palestinian children, this distinction is not minor—it is decisive.

Under Israel’s military court system, Palestinian children as young as 12 are prosecuted. In practice, they are often treated as adults within a system that offers few safeguards and operates with an extremely high conviction rate.

Defense for Children International–Palestine reported in its 2023 briefing Arbitrary by Default that the Israeli military detention system subjects Palestinian minors to “systematic”, institutionalized and “widespread ill-treatment.”

Reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other rights organizations describe consistent patterns of abuse, including night arrests, physical violence, threats, and psychological pressure.

Many children, these groups note, are interrogated without adequate legal safeguards, in conditions that facilitate coercion and the extraction of confessions.

Under international law, children are protected persons, entitled to special safeguards under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child—both of which prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Not in Israel, however—a state that has consistently treated international law not as binding, but as an obstacle to its political and military objectives.

For Israel, Palestinian children are often framed not as civilians, but as potential threats. This framing represents a profound assault on basic humanity and fundamental rights—one that goes even further than the cynical language of ‘collateral damage’, by preemptively stripping children of their civilian status.

Israeli officials have made such views unmistakably clear.

In 2015, former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked shared and endorsed a text declaring that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy,” including its children, and that Palestinian mothers should not give birth to “little snakes.” Her statement was not an aberration, but a reflection of a political discourse in which dehumanization is normalized.

This, too, has often been dismissed as routine racism in Israeli politics. It is not.

Since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s children have been killed in staggering numbers: at least 21,289 children among more than 71,800 Palestinians killed, and over 44,500 wounded, according to UNICEF’s February 2026 update.

In the occupied West Bank, the pattern persists, with Palestinian children increasingly killed during Israeli military raids and settler violence.

All of this in mind, it should not be surprising that the death penalty law does not exempt children from the horrific fate it envisions for Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation.

To be clear, the death penalty law is neither about punishment nor deterrence. Israel does not require a law to kill Palestinians—whether those engaged in armed resistance, or, as has often been the case, civilians with no involvement in hostilities.

For decades, Israel has carried out assassinations, extrajudicial killings, and large-scale military operations that have resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths.

The killing of Palestinians in Israeli prisons is no longer incidental, but documented. Since October 2023, at least 98 detainees have died in custody—many under conditions linked to torture, abuse, and medical neglect, according to Physicians for Human Rights–Israel.

The law, therefore, is about something else: the projection of power.

It is not fundamentally different from the performative brutality associated with figures like Ben-Gvir, whose rhetoric and conduct toward Palestinian prisoners have emphasized domination, humiliation, and control.

But within this projection of power lies a deadly consequence: Many people stand to be killed—including children.

Though some voices in the international community have spoken out against the law, these reactions have been limited and short-lived, quickly overshadowed by other developments.

Without sustained pressure, Israel has no reason to refrain from carrying out executions—decisions that will be made by military courts that lack even the most basic standards of fairness or adherence to international law.

Once this, too, is normalized, the threshold will shift again. And children will inevitably be drawn into it.

Israel has already normalized practices once deemed unthinkable. If it now normalizes the execution of children, it will cross a threshold even many colonial regimes did not openly breach.

There must be a limit—because its continuation will not only devastate Palestinians, but reverberate far beyond, eroding the most basic protections of human life itself.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

9 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Occupied West Bank (QNN)- Israeli soldiers beat a 68-year-old Palestinian woman to death during a raid on her home in the town of Jayyous, in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

According to local sources and her husband, Walid Shamasneh, the soldiers stormed the house of Sabriya Shamasneh in the early hours of Tuesday morning, conducting an aggressive search and interrogating the family.

The husband said that shortly before the raid, his daughter-in-law had approached him in fear, believing there were “thieves” outside. She reported hearing unusual noises and noticed that the front garden gate had been forced open.

Israeli forces then broke down the front door, terrifying the family.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/2041769758937288730]

“The Israeli officer began asking me for the names of people I did not know. Then they forced us all into a corner of the room while they searched the other bedrooms,” Walid said.

At one point, Sabriya attempted to move and called out to her son Hassan, fearing he had been arrested. The soldiers responded by shoving her violently with their rifles, knocking her to the ground and shouting at her to be quiet.

The elderly woman’s head struck the wall, causing her to lose consciousness. Her husband panicked, shouting and pleading with the soldiers to help, but they refused.

After the soldiers left, Sabriya’s husband and son rushed her to Darwish Nazzal Governmental Hospital in Qalqilya. A heavy presence of Israeli military vehicles had prevented an ambulance from reaching the scene.

At the hospital, Sabriya was pronounced dead from the injuries she sustained during the raid.

Israeli forces routinely raid Palestinian towns and homes in the occupied West Bank, a practice that has intensified sharply since October 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza. Between January and September 2025, nearly 7,500 such raids and operations were carried out, representing a 37% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

In November, an elderly woman, Haniya Hanoun, died after Israeli soldiers stormed her home in the village of al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya, north of Ramallah, beating her severely in front of her family and arresting her grandson.

According to United Nations data, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, by Israeli forces and settlers since 7 October 2023, one in five of those killed were children.

9 April 2026

Source: countercurrents.org