Archives: Articles

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Al Jazeera has aired exclusive footage revealing the direct involvement of Israeli intelligence in the assassination of a senior security official in the Gaza Strip, using armed local collaborators operating under real-time supervision.

According to the investigative report, Israeli intelligence directed an assassination attempt on the morning of December 14, targeting a prominent security leader in Gaza. The operation relied on gunmen affiliated with a local militia and was carried out under live audio and visual supervision from Israeli intelligence officers.

The investigation identified the target as Ahmad Abdul Bari Zamzam, known as Abu al-Majd, the deputy director of the Internal Security Service in Gaza’s central governorate.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/2019862765201215829]

Two gunmen from a militia led by Shawqi Abu Nuseira, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority, carried out the operation. Israeli intelligence selected and trained the assailants, according to testimony and video evidence obtained by Al Jazeera.

The investigation revealed that Abu al-Majd directly supervised efforts to dismantle Israeli-founded armed groups during and after the genocide. He successfully infiltrated several of these groups inside the so-called “Yellow Line” and persuaded multiple members to surrender.

The video recordings were obtained from a camera worn by one of the gunmen during the attack. The footage shows that the assailants received training in areas under Israeli military control, beyond the Yellow Line.

One image placed the second gunman inside the militia’s headquarters at al-Azmi School in al-Mazraa area of central Gaza. Investigators said this confirmed that both men entered Gaza from zones still controlled by Israeli forces.

The detained gunman stated that on December 10 he met Abu Adham Nuseira, who selected him and another gunman for the mission. Israeli forces then transported them through the Kissufim crossing to meet an Israeli intelligence officer identified as “Abu Omar.”

Inside an Israeli military site, the officer trained them to use a Glock pistol and a suppressor. Israeli quadcopter drones later scanned the route and guided the attackers toward the victim.

During the attack, the Israeli intelligence officer monitored a live video feed transmitted from a camera attached to one of the gunmen’s clothing.

The investigation revealed that a technical malfunction nearly caused the mission to fail. Despite the disruption, the assassination proceeded. Communication then collapsed between the attackers and the Israeli officer during their escape.

After contact was lost, the resistance arrested the gunman carrying the camera. He had been recruited only one month earlier. The second gunman escaped to areas under Israeli military control.

The detained gunman admitted his membership in the militia. He said the group includes around 50 armed members and works to locate resistance tunnels, carry out assassinations, and hand over Palestinians to Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet.

He also admitted that the militia raids aid trucks, lures targeted individuals, and abducts the bodies of slain Palestinians, subjecting them to abuse. According to the investigation, Israeli forces and drones provide protection during these operations.

Israeli and international media reports have confirmed Israel’s involvement in funding and arming armed groups inside Gaza. These efforts aim to create local alternatives to the resistance and impose control over specific areas after Israel failed to achieve decisive military dominance.

Haaretz reported that the Israeli army and Shin Bet coordinated directly with Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, providing money, weapons, and intelligence. Israeli military analyst Ronen Bergman described the project as “full of problems,” warning of weak oversight and the risk that these groups could become future threats to Israel.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Israel funneled tens of millions of shekels into these militias. Israeli outlets, including Yedioth Ahronoth, cited the report, which said Israel supplied weapons, military equipment, medical treatment in Israeli hospitals, and armed protection when the groups came under attack.

According to the report, Israel focused in southern Gaza, especially in Rafah, on recruiting individuals with criminal backgrounds. In other areas, Israeli intelligence attempted to engage large clans to manufacture a local security alternative.

7 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Beirut – The Israeli army’s spraying of chemical substances over vast agricultural areas in southern Lebanon and Syria is deeply alarming. The deliberate targeting of civilian farmland violates international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition on attacking or destroying objects indispensable to civilian survival. Large-scale destruction of private property without specific military necessity amounts to a war crime and undermines food security and basic livelihoods in the affected areas.

On the morning of Sunday, 1 February 2026, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) received notice from the Israeli army of planned aerial activity near the Blue Line and was asked to remain inside shelters. The alert disrupted the mission, leading to the cancellation of more than 10 field activities and the suspension of routine patrols along one-third of the line for over nine hours.

During the period in which international forces were forced to remain inactive, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documented Israeli aircraft spraying chemical substances over extensive agricultural areas, particularly in the town of Ayta ash-Shaab and its vicinity in southern Lebanon. This raises the risk of consequences beyond immediate crop damage, posing a serious threat to the rights to health and a safe environment through potential long-term contamination of soil and water resources.

The announcement by Lebanese Environment Minister Tamara Elzein that specialised teams had been dispatched to collect samples from the targeted sites for laboratory analysis reflects official concern about the possible use of internationally prohibited or highly toxic substances.

This incident cannot be viewed in isolation from the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Israeli army. It forms part of a pattern of systematic destruction of agricultural land, including the burning of approximately 9,000 hectares during recent military operations using white phosphorus and incendiary munitions.

The deliberate targeting of the means of life violates the laws of war and appears intended to undermine the living security of residents in the south and render their areas uninhabitable, thereby forcibly displacing them.

Euro-Med Monitor also documented Israeli aircraft spraying pesticides of unknown composition over farmland in the countryside of Quneitra in southern Syria on Monday and Tuesday, 26 and 27 January 2026. The direct targeting of civilian objects caused widespread crop destruction, posing a serious threat to economic and food security and violating farmers’ rights to work and to an adequate standard of living by destroying their primary sources of income without military justification.

The breach of territorial sovereignty and cross-border targeting of agricultural land constitute violations of the United Nations Charter and the principles of international law. The use of chemical substances of unknown composition, given their destructive effects on vegetation and their direct threat to public health, constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law, which prohibits methods or means of warfare that cause indiscriminate harm, unnecessary suffering, or widespread, long-term damage to the natural environment.

Such practices expose their perpetrators to international criminal accountability. Under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, intentionally attacking civilian objects or destroying property without imperative military necessity constitutes a war crime. The use of chemical substances to devastate agricultural land satisfies the material elements of these crimes by inflicting widespread, long-term harm on the natural environment and the foundations of civilian life.

This conduct reflects a systematic operational pattern long implemented by Israel in border areas east and north of the Gaza Strip, where aerial spraying of lethal chemicals has been used to enforce buffer zones by destroying vegetation and dismantling the food basket, despite repeated international warnings about the catastrophic consequences for food security and public health.

Euro-Med Monitor previously documented similar attacks through a comprehensive evidentiary archive supported by laboratory analyses and expert testimony. The findings showed that the substances used were not conventional pesticides but highly toxic chemical compounds with destructive effects that are difficult to contain. The harm extended beyond seasonal crop loss to long-term contamination of soil and groundwater, damage to livestock, and the dismantling of environmental infrastructure, rendering the restoration of agricultural activity nearly impossible. Such conduct constitutes a compounded violation that strikes at the core of the rights to life and to a healthy environment.

Read within the broader context of continued military targeting of agricultural land with various munitions, these incidents reveal a systematic policy of destruction that exceeds any legitimate military objective. The approach appears intended to render agricultural areas uninhabitable by dismantling economic infrastructure and depriving residents of their fundamental means of livelihood. It amounts to collective punishment prohibited under international law and constitutes an unlawful method of pressure designed to create a coercive environment that drives forced displacement by stripping populations of the means necessary for stability and survival.

The international community, particularly the United Nations, must act immediately by establishing an independent fact-finding mission to collect samples from affected soil and crops in southern Lebanon and the countryside of Quneitra, subject them to thorough laboratory analysis, determine the chemical composition of the substances used, assess their toxicity, and evaluate any potential violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention or relevant international environmental protocols, thereby removing doubt about the nature of this targeting.

States Parties to the Geneva Conventions whose national legislation permits the exercise of universal jurisdiction must fulfil their legal obligations by initiating criminal investigations and prosecuting Israeli officials responsible for ordering environmental destruction and the use of weapons with indiscriminate effects. Such acts constitute war crimes and grave breaches not subject to statutes of limitation and require the activation of individual accountability mechanisms against those responsible, wherever they may be found.

The UN Security Council must issue a binding resolution condemning the grave Israeli crimes and consider the obstruction of UNIFIL’s work and its forced withdrawal during the violations a flagrant breach of Resolution 1701. Euro-Med Monitor stresses the need to guarantee farmers and landowners the right to fair compensation for the economic and environmental losses they have sustained, and to obligate Israel, as the aggressor, to bear the costs of land rehabilitation and the remediation of any long-term ecological damage resulting from this contamination.

The Lebanese and Syrian governments should submit formal declarations to the Registry of the International Criminal Court (ICC) under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, thereby accepting the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on their territories.

Euro-Med Monitor emphasises that this step is now an urgent necessity to halt the continued policy of impunity and enable the ICC Prosecutor to initiate independent investigations into Israel’s attacks on civilian objects as war crimes whose consequences transcend national borders and threaten human security across the region.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

5 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Julia Norman

While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP) might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.

Last week, Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk—Trump’s on-again, off-again ally—when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of “p-i-e-c-e,” a venture devoted to claiming “a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer: “We got one.” Only a room filled with the world’s tech and business elite could find this funny.

In the week since, people of conscience around the world have been left to reckon with what may come of this brazen proclamation of a Trumpified world order. In particular, the BoP’s presentation of plans for “New Gaza” offered stark clarity about the greed-driven intentions Trump, his inner circle, and their Israeli billionaire partners seek to pursue, while raising a fundamental question as to how such a project of colonization and land theft could claim any legal basis at all, let alone a moral one.

As it stands, the BoP charter elevates Trump to a position akin to a global dictator for life, unchecked—on paper— by any external mechanisms of accountability or transparency. Acting as permanent chairman, chief executive, and controlling shareholder of the organization, Trump has declared that he holds absolute veto power, while retaining complete discretion over the potential multibillion-dollar slush fund generated through permanent member fees. In keeping with his long record of felonies and fraud, all budgets, financial accounts, or disbursements the BoP deems “necessary” to carry out its sweeping mission are subject only to the so-called “institutions of controls or oversight mechanisms” designed by the very same Executive Board.

A few invited world leaders, mostly from the EU, have done little more than politely decline their invitations. While they have not yet bent the knee to Trump in this mobster’s reality-show version of U.S. imperial power in action, this has not stopped those same governments from endorsing the other “peaceful actions” Trump is poised to pursue under the guise of BoP authority. These include the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the seizure of Venezuelan oil; the execution of dozens of extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed more than one hundred people in the Caribbean; threats of war and the promotion of dangerous regime-change fantasies in Iran and Cuba; and support for his complete takeover of occupied Palestine through U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803. That resolution effectively granted Trump authority in Gaza by endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and welcoming the BoP as a transitional governing body. Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.

Despite some rejections, other governments have gone ahead and accepted their invitations for a free three-year membership. The participation of Israel’s wanted genocidaire-in-chief, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should serve as the clearest red flag that this organization has no interest in even pretending to care about the lives of the Palestinian people or any standard of international law. Netanyahu could not even fly to Davos to attend the BoP’s self-appointed pomp and circumstance for fear of being arrested as a wanted war criminal.

Other beacons of democracy and world peace, eager to lend legitimacy to the BoP, include Trump’s own “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Argentina’s scandal-prone, right-wing President Javier Milei; “Europe’s last dictator,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko; Netanyahu’s idea of a “moral conscience,” Albanian President Edi Rama; and Hungary’s model in authoritarianism, Viktor Orbán. Leaders from Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Qatar—have also joined, and will presumably stand alongside Trump and the Executive Board to help oversee, and quietly endorse, “New Gaza.”

Their participation set the stage for Davos, where none other than Jared Kushner delivered the first public presentation of an investment plan contingent upon the ethnic cleansing and erasure of a national Palestinian identity. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a member of the BoP “Executive Board,” has long served as the self-styled “master planner” of transforming Gaza into a prime real estate opportunity. He has a track record of articulating his absolute disregard for Palestinian life, describing the besieged Gaza Strip in February 2024 as “very valuable…waterfront property.”

Kushner began his chilling slideshow by urging skeptical investors to “just calm down for 30 days,” declaring, “the war is over. Let’s work together.” Eager to move on to their real business of “peace,” Kushner appeared wholly willing to ignore the ongoing forced starvation, imprisonment, systemic torture, murder, and displacement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. Since the supposed “ceasefire” in October 2025, the Israeli military has killed at least 477 Palestinians in Gaza.

Trump has also failed to address Israel’s continued ban on dozens of international humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, a policy that has deliberately denied life-saving aid and medical care to the region while newborn babies continue to die of hypothermia. Instead, Kushner outright lied about the current scale of Israel’s designed humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that “100% of the food needs are met” and that “the cost of needs has gone down,” before unironically describing the administration’s role as “the largest humanitarian effort into a war zone that anyone’s been able to tell us about.” Meanwhile, as the conference unfolded, Israeli forces bulldozed the UN Refugee headquarters in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli

Knesset voted by an overwhelming majority to annex the entirety of the West Bank.

Amid the distortions and denials of reality, Kushner did allow the logic of the project to surface when he identified the architect behind the purported $25 billion master plan for Gaza: Yakir Gabay, whom he described as “one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.” Gabay is an Israeli billionaire and international real estate tycoon with close familial ties to the Israeli government. Reports also indicate that he has participated in efforts to pressure Columbia University administrators to suppress student protests.

Much like Kushner, a recent article by the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, described Gabay as having been eager to craft a plan for “New Gaza” from the very first weeks of Israel’s prolonged assault on the densely populated region:

“October 7, [Gabay] tends to say, woke him to action. [Gabay] thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality…Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue.”

On the whole, Kushner’s “New Gaza” presentation made no attempt to acknowledge a Palestinian state, recognize Palestinian self-determination, nor address Israeli occupation or the implications of Gaza’s ‘reconstruction’ for the other occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, the eerily bizarre AI-generated slideshow of skyscrapers, oil rigs, and industrial complexes offered only a glimpse into the twisted billionaire fantasy that Kushner’s inner circle—including figures like Gabay—has sought to merge with Zionist imaginaries.

The only part of Kushner’s presentation that even acknowledged Palestinians was a single slide on “Palestinian-led demilitarization.” Beyond this ominous token reference, the narrative repeatedly circled back to framing Gaza as “an amazing investment opportunity” to the room full of multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Recent reporting from Drop Site News has confirmed and expanded upon this language, revealing “Resolution No. 2026/1,” an unsigned State Department document from December 2025 that declares the Board of Peace aims to transform Gaza into a “deradicalized and demilitarized terror-free zone.”

Here, “deradicalization” functions as a catch-all term to delegitimize resistance and criminalize opposition to Israeli occupation—a legal right under international law. Palestinians who maintain their political consciousness, national identity, or will for self-determination, and who refuse to normalize occupation, are almost certain to be labeled “terrorists” or deemed insufficiently “deradicalized.” Those who take up arms to defend their people against some of the world’s most heavily armed and nuclear powers risk being denied existence in their own lands—murdered or turned away by the very architects of genocide who now claim to bring “peace.” Access to basic rights is made contingent on surrendering political and economic agency, including abandoning a historically rooted cultural identity of resistance under occupation, forsaking traditional livelihoods, and subordinating the desire to shape the future of the land to whatever ‘economic opportunities’ BoP members deem investible.

The document further states that only those who “support and act consistently” to establish a “deradicalized, terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” may participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance. It also bars any individuals or organizations the Board deems to have “supported or demonstrated a history of collaboration, infiltration, or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups”—a sweeping allegation Israel has long weaponized without evidence.

In practice, such standards mean that anyone who stands in firm solidarity with Palestinians, including international NGOs that seek to hold Israel to even minimal standards of accountability, will likely be barred from operating in Gaza. This has already become an entrenched and worsening reality since October 2023. What the BoP presents as a security framework is, in essence, a blueprint for controlling Palestinian movement, erasing any viable possibility of a Palestinian state, and ultimately, advancing ethnic cleansing, while preventing humanitarian organizations from participating in any meaningful process of reconstruction or the delivery of aid. A framework that insists “no one will be forced to leave Gaza”—as if forced removal were ever legitimate—while simultaneously conditioning access to aid, resources, and even limited political participation on compliance with what Trump and his confidants dictate, is not a framework in which any meaningful shred of freedom or dignity can exist.

In essence, Trump now supposedly wields full legislative, executive, and judicial control over the future of Gaza. He alone, along with his board of resort profiteers—who would hastily clear away the rubble burying the bodies of erased bloodlines and the remnants of mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools—will have complete authority over how surviving Palestinians live, how they are governed, and who may participate in decision-making. Only at the very bottom of the BoP’s tyrannical hierarchy sits a so-called “technocratic committee,” nominally including members of the Palestinian Authority. Its role appears purely advisory, permitted to exist only insofar as it appeases Trump and aligns with his agenda. There is little indication that it will serve, or even slightly represent, the people it claims to speak for.

The development is ultimately so jarring, so rooted in supremacist ideologies, and so flagrantly opposed to basic principles of sovereignty and human rights that it has few historical parallels. The closest comparison seems to be the gruesome reign of Belgian King Leopold II.

Those who participate in this process, including figures such as World Bank President Ajay Banga, lend legitimacy to a project that advances a perverse vision and a chapter of history that is not inevitable. Collaboration in the name of “reconstruction and development of Gaza” for a project so morally and legally corrupt is not a pragmatic compromise—it is active participation in a plan that has no place in the world. The human cost of this complicity is impossible to ignore.

The BoP plan also offers no conception of justice, reparations, or accountability for Israeli terror. Its version of “peace” is imposed through state violence to silence, control, and force Palestinians into submission. It is a project that raises skyscrapers for Western elites atop mass graves, without including, or even acknowledging, the Palestinians, its architects have killed and displaced. It relies too on the pathetic inaction of the overwhelming majority of UN member states.

Much remains unknown about what is immediately required to take a single step toward “peace” in the region: if and when Palestinians may finally find reprieve from Israeli bombardment, whether the Rafah crossing will actually open, what will become of finding and returning the bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble, whether human rights organizations or journalists will even be permitted to document the reality–and work safely–on the ground, if displaced Palestinians will ever be allowed to return to Gaza, and crucially, whether other states will intervene. What is clear, however, is the sheer evil of this project.

Following Kushner’s presentation, many have rightfully said that if this BoP monstrosity were fictional, it would be so dark it would border on being unbelievable. And yet it is profoundly real: a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.

World leaders have long entrenched impunity and rewarded the most atrocious US-Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially over the past two and a half years. Yet the Board’s ambitions—laid out in a charter that mirrors the UN and spans what Trump calls “the whole region of the world”—reveal a danger that stretches far beyond Palestine. The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity. And still—precisely because of the chaos, confusion, and sheer audacity of their plans—this dystopian vision for “New Gaza” is not inevitable. Those with political and economic power must firmly reject and actively work to rein in this Orwellian BoP. If any entity requires immediate disarmament and deradicalization, it is Trump and his so-called Executive Board.

Julia Norman is a member of the CODEPINK Community. She is an independent writer and researcher from Los Angeles, California

5 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Israel has violated Trump’s Gaza ceasefire agreement 1,520 times since it entered into force on October 10, 2025, according to a new statement issued by the Government Media Office.

The violations span a period of 115 days, ending on Wednesday, and have resulted in 556 Palestinians killed and at least 1,500 injured.

The Government Media Office said the continued violations represent a systematic breach of the ceasefire and a clear violation of international humanitarian law. It added that Israeli actions have undermined both the spirit and the humanitarian provisions of the agreement.

According to official data, Israeli forces carried out 522 shooting incidents during the ceasefire period. They also conducted 73 military incursions into residential neighborhoods. In addition, authorities documented 704 bombardments and targeted attacks, alongside 221 demolitions of homes and civilian buildings.

The human toll remains overwhelmingly civilian. Of the 556 Palestinians killed, 288 were children, women, and elderly people. Another 268 were adult men. The Government Media Office said 99 percent of those killed were civilians.

Injuries reached 1,500 during the same period. More than 900 of the wounded were children, women, and elderly people. Civilian casualties accounted for 99.2 percent of all injuries. Officials stressed that all injured individuals were targeted inside residential areas and far from the so-called “yellow line” designated in the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli forces also kidnapped 50 Palestinians during the ceasefire period. Authorities said every abductiin took place inside residential neighborhoods and not near the designated buffer zones outlined in the agreement.

The statement also highlighted major restrictions on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies entering Gaza. Out of 69,000 aid, commercial, and fuel trucks that should have entered under the agreement, only 29,603 were allowed in. This represents a compliance rate of just 43 percent.

Aid trucks made up 17,153 of the total, or 58 percent. Commercial trucks accounted for 11,642, or 39 percent. Fuel deliveries remained especially limited. Only 808 fuel trucks entered Gaza, out of 5,750 required, reflecting a compliance rate of 14 percent. The daily average stood at 257 trucks, far below the agreed target.

Under the humanitarian protocol, 600 trucks should enter Gaza every day, including 50 fuel trucks carrying diesel, gasoline, and cooking gas. The Government Media Office said Israel failed to meet these requirements throughout the ceasefire period.

Officials also stated that Israel failed to withdraw to agreed lines, blocking materials needed to repair infrastructure, and preventing the entry of heavy equipment required to clear rubble and recover bodies. They said Israel restricted medical supplies, medicines, and health equipment, and failed to open the Rafah Crossing as agreed.

The statement further noted restrictions on tents, mobile homes, and shelter materials, as well as continued obstruction of Gaza’s power generation plant. It also stated that Israeli forces are expanding control beyond the agreed “yellow line” and seizing additional areas across the Strip.

The Government Media Office warned that these actions amount to an attempt to impose a humanitarian reality based on starvation, coercion, and political pressure. It held Israel fully responsible for the worsening humanitarian crisis and for the loss of life and property during a period meant to guarantee calm.

The office called on US President Donald Trump, mediators, guarantors, and the United Nations to enforce the ceasefire without exceptions. It urged immediate protection for civilians and the unrestricted flow of humanitarian aid, fuel, and shelter materials to Gaza.

The statement concluded by warning that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will deepen further unless all ceasefire obligations are implemented in full and without delay.

5 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Laala Bechetoula

The Epstein affair is often treated as an isolated scandal, a moral deviation within an otherwise functional system. This essay argues the opposite. It reads Epstein as a structural revelation—an entry point into understanding how Western moral authority operates through organized exception, selective outrage, and managed impunity. From Epstein to Trump, and culminating in Gaza, the text exposes a single moral architecture at work.

For a long time, the West spoke with the certainty of a judge.

It claimed the authority to define humanity, to distribute moral grades, to certify virtue and condemn deviation. Entire societies were summoned to account—classified as unstable, immature, or ethically deficient—while the West reserved for itself the role of instructor and arbiter.

The Epstein affair did not interrupt this posture.

It invalidated it.

Epstein was not a marginal figure hiding in the shadows. He operated in plain sight, moving comfortably through financial elites, political circles, elite universities, media environments, and philanthropic institutions that routinely lecture the world on ethics and human rights. He was not merely tolerated. He was integrated.

That integration is the key.

Because what defines the Epstein affair is not only the horror of the crimes, but their duration, their networked protection, and the discipline of silence that surrounded them. Warnings existed. Testimonies circulated. Judicial irregularities accumulated. Yet nothing decisive occurred—because decisive action would have endangered institutions, reputations, and hierarchies.

This was not a failure of the system.

It was the system functioning exactly as designed.

When Epstein finally fell, the response confirmed it. The priority was not truth or reckoning. It was containment: containing the narrative, containing the damage, containing the risk that the moral mirror might remain turned inward. The crime was isolated; the structure was preserved.

This reflex alone should have disqualified the West from any further moral instruction.

Yet the lectures continued.

They continued toward societies habitually described as “developing,” “unstable,” or “Third World”—labels that function less as descriptions than as permissions to lecture. These societies were told they lacked democratic maturity, institutional culture, moral discipline. They were instructed on how to protect children, how to respect life, how to behave ethically.

The Epstein affair exposed the fraud behind this posture.

What it revealed was a moral economy of exception, in which power dilutes guilt, wealth anesthetizes conscience, and institutional prestige shields crime. A system where wrongdoing is not eliminated but managed, where scandal is not rupture but operational cost, where morality is not principle but instrument.

This is why the figure of Donald Trump matters—not as an anomaly, but as a clarification.

Trump did not corrupt Western values. He stripped them of ceremonial language and applied them without pretense. Transaction replaced principle. Loyalty replaced law. Power replaced accountability. What disturbed many was not his excess, but his refusal to disguise it.

He did not betray the system.

He articulated it openly.

The discomfort he generated was not moral; it was aesthetic. He made explicit what others preferred to administer quietly. And the fact that such a figure could rise, normalize, and persist is not incidental. It is evidence that the crisis is not one of leadership, but of moral coherence.

The Epstein affair and the Trump era share the same grammar: entitlement without limit, immunity without responsibility, domination reframed as freedom. The belief that influence nullifies consequence, that law is flexible, that truth can be bent until it no longer threatens.

When abuse emerges within such a system, the first question is never who suffered.

It is what is at risk.

Language softens. Time stretches. Files disappear. Settlements replace justice. Memory is delegated to oblivion. Euphemisms proliferate: “allegations” instead of crimes, “complexity” instead of clarity, “procedure” instead of moral urgency. Legitimate concepts, emptied of purpose—used as protective fog.

At its core, this is not a crisis of sexuality.

It is a crisis of limits.

A civilization that dissolves all limits in the name of freedom loses the capacity to distinguish emancipation from predation. When desire becomes sovereign and restraint is pathologized, the vulnerable are no longer protected by principle—only by circumstance.

The obsession with youth, pleasure, transgression, and longevity reflects a deeper void. A world that abandoned transcendence sought meaning in sensation. A world that no longer recognizes the sacred transformed the body into object, then into commodity, then into terrain of domination.

In such a world, innocence is not inviolable by default.

It is inviolable only when the system decides so.

This is the lesson of Epstein.

And this is why Epstein is not an isolated scandal, but a template.

Because once a system learns how to organize moral exception internally, it applies the same logic externally.

This is where Gaza enters—not as a separate issue, but as the final proof.

What is unfolding in Gaza is not a humanitarian crisis.

It is a long-lasting genocide—cumulative, methodical, normalized—rendered sustainable by Western power structures that preach human rights while organizing their exception.

The same architecture that protected Epstein now operates at scale. The same management of outrage, the same softening of language, the same suspension of law, the same hierarchy of lives. Here too, the question is not whether civilians should be protected, but how the consequences can be politically managed.

Gaza does not contradict the Epstein affair.

It completes it.

Because a civilization that claims universal values while systematically suspending them has not merely failed its ethics—it has voided its authority.

The Sin World is not collapsing.

It has been revealed.

And history, unlike power, does not negotiate memory.

Laala Bechetoula is an independent Algerian writer and analyst.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ghassan Shahrour

Some crimes are not dangerous because they are hidden, but because they unfold in plain sight—within systems designed to protect, yet collapsing silently when confronted with power. The case of Jeffrey Epstein is not merely the story of a predatory individual or a deviant network. It is the exposure of a double betrayal: a child-protection system that abandoned its moral and legal mandate, and elites who transformed wealth and influence into a shield for exploitation.

Epstein’s acts—trafficking minors, systematic sexual exploitation, coercive recruitment, and cross-border transportation of victims—constitute clear violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly Articles 34, 35, and 36, as well as the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography. These are not legal grey zones. They are explicitly defined crimes that impose binding obligations on states to prevent, investigate, and prosecute, and to assist and protect children who have been abused.

For decades, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been celebrated as one of humanity’s most significant moral achievements. Yet the Epstein case reveals not merely a failure of implementation, but a profound ethical regression. The system faltered when confronted with privilege. It hesitated when courage was required. The law was not simply violated—it was neutralized, reduced to a decorative façade that collapsed under the weight of power.

What makes this case even more damning is that the crimes did not occur in secrecy. They unfolded within a social, financial, and media ecosystem that knew—or should have known. Political, financial, and cultural elites were not passive bystanders. They formed part of a wider architecture of complicity: those who facilitated, those who remained silent, those who used influence to shield, and those who participated. These were not isolated lapses; they were a betrayal of the responsibility that accompanies power.

Behind this architecture stood girls whose safety—and sense of meaning—were stolen. Childhoods were interrupted. Trust in the world was shattered before it had fully formed. Lives were forced into survival rather than discovery. Their names are rarely spoken, their faces rarely seen, yet their absence is the most enduring evidence of the crime. This story is not about Epstein alone; it is about a world that failed those it was morally and legally bound to protect.

The failure extended further. Much of the media—and even segments of the activist sphere—reduced the case to celebrity intrigue rather than human suffering. Exploitation became spectacle; victims were pushed to the margins of their own story. The girls at the center were treated as footnotes to scandal, not as children whose lives were reshaped by trauma. This erasure reflects a deeper cultural failure: when abuse is sensationalized, responsibility dissolves.

While survivor-led groups and some advocates demanded accountability, the broader institutional response remained timid. Following the unsealing of Epstein-related files, UN human-rights experts warned that no person or institution should be beyond the reach of justice and called for full, transparent investigations into the wider network. Their message was clear: accountability requires independent inquiries into institutional complicity, stronger due-diligence obligations under child-rights law, and media standards that recognize child exploitation as a structural human-rights crisis—not entertainment.

Yet major human-rights organizations largely fell silent. There was no sustained pressure for independent investigations, no insistence on dismantling enabling networks, no accountability for institutions that ignored or normalized abuse. Once again, children’s rights proved easier to celebrate in principle than to defend in practice—especially when power demanded discomfort.

The victims were not only stripped of dignity; they were forced into silence in a world that should have listened first. What is often described as a “legal failure” is, in reality, a life burdened with the cost of a silence never chosen.

The Epstein case is not a closed chapter sealed by the perpetrator’s death. It is a mirror held up to a system that retreated before power and allowed the exploitation of children in full view. Silence, hesitation, and premature closure are not neutral acts—they are extensions of the crime the system protected. If human-rights institutions are serious about their mission, they must press for independent investigations, expose enabling networks, and demand reforms that place children’s safety above elites’ comfort. Until those networks are fully uncovered and held to account, the world remains complicit in an injustice it prefers to forget rather than confront.

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, Coordinator of Arab Human Security Network, is a medical doctor, prolific writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, disarmament, and human security.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdul Bari Atwan

The fact that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared three times recently in open and public meetings—chatting with ordinary Iranians—has sent a shocking message to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It demonstrates that Khamenei still has the first and final word in Iran and is not hiding in an underground bunker out of fear of assassination. Nor has he relinquished his leadership or spiritual authority, despite deliberate leaks and claims circulated by some Arab and Western media outlets as part of a psychological warfare campaign against Iran, coinciding with the U.S. military buildup in the region.

In contrast, top Israeli politicians and military officials are rushing to Washington, fearing that President Trump may back down from his aggressive threats and replace the military option with a peaceful, negotiated one—possibly reaching an accord that excludes Israeli demands and conditions. Israeli Chief of Staff General Eyal Zamir recently made a surprise visit to Washington, meeting senior U.S. military leaders and accompanied by top commanders, including the Israeli Air Force chief.

Frankly, Trump may have already lost this war—just as he lost face and credibility by failing to follow through on his threats or translate them into aggressive action on Iranian soil. Instead, he has resorted to sending mediators, the latest being his friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to reopen negotiations with Iran. This comes after realizing that naval buildups and aircraft carrier deployments have failed to yield results or intimidate the Iranian leadership into surrender. Thus, he may be defeated either way: whether he goes to war or resorts to a political and diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The key to understanding this confusion—and perhaps the American retreat and postponement of military strikes—lies in the threatening message delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his meetings with large crowds of Iranians on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Most notably, he asserted that “Iran does not initiate wars, but if it is subjected to aggression, it will confront it with all its might and inflict devastating blows on the enemy.” More importantly, he warned that any such war would be a broad regional conflict—neither swift nor decisive nor short-lived, nor “clean,” meaning free of casualties.

A “regional war” would mean the participation of all countries, movements, and military factions aligned with the so-called “axis of resistance,” beginning with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and Ansar Allah in Yemen. American bases across the region—particularly on the Arabian side of the Gulf—would become legitimate targets, as would the more than 70,000 American soldiers stationed there.

What terrifies Israel most is not only Trump’s failure to proceed with aggression against Iran, but also the possibility of an agreement that contradicts Israel’s three core objectives.

First, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by halting all high-level uranium enrichment and compelling Tehran to surrender its existing stockpile—estimated at 480 kilograms—to a neutral country.
Second, stopping the development and deployment of Iranian missiles and dismantling all long-range systems, including hypersonic and multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching deep into Israeli territory, particularly Haifa and Tel Aviv, as demonstrated during the 12-day war last June.
Third, completely ending all financial and missile support for resistance movements, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces such as Harakat al-Nujaba, and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

A Reminder

It is worth recalling that the return of 5,000 American soldiers in coffins to Washington—killed by Iraqi resistance forces after the 2003 invasion—forced then-President Barack Obama to acknowledge defeat and withdraw 160,000 U.S. troops from Iraq in November 2011 in order to minimize losses. It is therefore no exaggeration to suggest that any aggression against Iran today could result in four times that number of American casualties, if not more, in the initial days alone. This is due to Iran’s resolve, advanced missile and drone capabilities, and other secret weapons that could deliver the biggest surprises of any future war.

Perhaps the recent decline in oil prices, the collapse of gold and silver values, and the dollar’s sharp depreciation in global financial markets are among the clearest indicators confirming this reality: the diminishing likelihood of war, Trump’s reluctant tilt toward diplomacy and negotiations, and his tacit admission of the impossibility of achieving a military victory without catastrophic losses or a prolonged regional war, as warned by Iran’s Supreme Leader. Time will tell.

This article is written by Abdul Bari Atwan, chief editor of the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website, on 2 February 2026, on the eve of the increasing US military presence surrounding Iran. It is reprinted in Crossfirearabia.com.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Gerry Condon

“Peace at Home, Peace Abroad” is the vision that has inspired Veterans For Peace for many years. We have watched as the racist violence we witnessed in US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq has been reproduced in U.S. cities by militarized police using gestapo tactics. We are currently seeing simultaneous US wars abroad and at home.

Even as the US has attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its president and threatened to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Iran, thousands of “Homeland Security” troops have invaded and terrorized a major U.S. city, Minneapolis, even murdering two nonviolent protesters. Thousands of people, including veterans, are resisting these racist, violent attacks.

“The silver lining is that the community defense has brought everybody together,” says Dave Logsdon of Minneapolis Veterans For Peace. “People who never protested before are in the streets organizing, with yellow vests, whistles, and first aid kits. People are finding the camaraderie contagious and the community resistance fulfilling.”

City of Heroes Celebrated in Song
The community resistance in Minneapolis is being celebrated in song by leading singer/songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Jim Page, Scared Ketchup (AI), Jesse Welles, Midnight Republic, Michael Shynes, and Billy Bragg.

In his song “City of Heroes,’ Billy Bragg sings:

When they came for the immigrants, I got in their face
When they came for the refugees, I got in their face
When they came for the five-year-olds, I got in their face
When they came to my neighborhood, I just got in their face
When they killed my sister, I got in their face!
When they killed my brother, I got in their face!

Minneapolis is definitely a City of Heroes, and that is exactly what they have been doing – getting in the face of heavily armed, masked, white supremacist storm troopers. Older folks and younger folks have stood together in the streets every day in the hundreds and in the thousands, in sub-zero weather!

Veterans Resisting Fascism
Veterans For Peace has also been in the streets of Minneapolis, standing with the most vulnerable communities. Younger Post-9/11 veterans have taken the lead. They have been patrolling in at-risk neighborhoods, monitoring for agitators, de-escalating situations at protests, and training people how to stop bleeding. At least four veterans have been arrested while peacefully protesting, but have been released without charges.

The heroic sustained resistance in Minneapolis has exposed the true nature of these ICE attacks before the entire world. They have put the Trump administration on the defensive. The calls to abolish ICE are now heard in many quarters. The War at Home will be a long one, however. Similar community resistance is taking place in many US cities that are also being subjected to racist ICE attacks, or who are preparing to defend their communities from the anticipated assaults of an increasingly fascist federal government.

To make matters that much worse, we are now bracing for the Trump Administration’s threatened war against Iran, one that could be a catastrophic for the region and possibly for the entire planet, causing global economic chaos and even risking nuclear war.

From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror
San Francisco Veterans For Peace has teamed up with the ANSWER Coalition for an indoor rally titled From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror. The rally will be on Saturday afternoon, Feb. 7, 3 pm at the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. Room 210.

Refuse Illegal Orders
Veterans For Peace is currently putting up billboards with the message “Refuse Illegal Orders” near military bases around the U.S. We are reminding our brothers and sisters, sons and daughter and grandchildren who have joined the military that they have the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders, and that we will support them when they do.

Illegal Order would include:

Orders to unconstitutionally deploy to US cities in support of racist ICE attacks or to suppress peaceful protests;
Orders to participate in illegal regime-change wars, such as against Venezuela and Iran;
Orders to ship weapons to Israel while it is conducting a genocide.
Order to attack civilians or to torture and kill prisoners of war.
Trained counselors who can speak to concerned military members about their legal options can be reached by going to the Veterans For Peace website, www.veteransforpeace.org.

Veterans For Peace is welcoming new members – younger veterans, older veterans, active-duty members, family members and supporters. The Veterans For Peace eNews showcases the many ways that Veterans For Peace is organizing for Peace at Home and Peace Abroad.

Gerry Condon is Vietnam-era veteran and war resister who serves on the Veterans For Peace Board of Directors.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Salim Nazzal

We in the East possess a religious mind, and even the most secular among us carries something of this mindset. Our everyday expressions Inshallah (God willing) and if God wills reflect this mentality. For this reason, many of our interpretations of events come from a religious perspective. What the criminal Zionist Jews are doing in Palestine, for example, we often explain as a test from God.

I believe this kind of interpretation also existed in medieval Europe .My grandmother used to say, whenever she heard news that contradicted traditions and what was considered normal:
“We are living in the end of times.”

My grandmother died in 1988. That means she did not live to see the age of the internet, or the globalization that came with it, and the limitless moral decline we now witness and hear about.

My grandmother passed away, and with her passed her simple world.

And I remember something a retired Danish doctor once told me. He was sitting next to me on the train to Copenhagen. As I spoke about freedom and scientific progress in the West, he said:
“All of this has come at a very high price.”

I asked him: What price?

He answered:
“Our value system is collapsing, and it has become difficult to stop this collapse.”

Then he gave me a sincere piece of advice:
“Remain Eastern, and do not imitate us.”

I explained to him that I do believe in progress, but through Eastern cultural references, not necessarily Western ones.

At the beginning of the Arab Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, the idea of progress became closely linked to adopting all Western values and models. This, in turn, contributed to the failure and abortion of the project of genuine progress in the Arab world, because modernization was detached from its own cultural and civilizational foundations.

I do not agree with this interpretation, because it is necessary to understand the causes of weakness and to confront and address them.

Absolute fatalistic belief, although I can understand the historical and social reasons behind its emergence, does not help in building inner strength or restoring the capacity for independent action.

Surrendering to the idea that everything is an unavoidable destiny may provide a certain psychological comfort, but at the same time it paralyzes the will, weakens responsibility, and postpones a true engagement with reality.

The real path toward renewal and progress lies in recognizing the sources of failure and working consciously to overcome them through knowledge, action, and confidence in one’s own strength.

I believe that one of the most important reasons behind the moral and civilizational collapse we are witnessing in the West today lies in the fact that Western Christianity was built upon the Christianity of the Roman Empire a form of Christianity that became almost completely separated from the original Palestinian Christianity.

That early Christianity was a simple, spiritual faith, born among peasants and ordinary people in Palestine, before it was transferred to the West and transformed into an imperial institution, far removed from its initial roots.

Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Arun Srivastava

The “New India” of the saffron ecosystem, particularly shaped by Narendra Modi, has virtually become the newest colony of imperialist USA in South Asia. Modi has exuberantly accepted the trade deal offered by his “best friend,” Donald Trump, the American President whose name prominently features in the infamous Epstein files. Undeniably, Trump—the modern face of global imperialism—has succeeded in his mission. Earlier, he reinforced the role of US imperialism by forcing Venezuela, home to the world’s richest known oil reserves, and Greenland, rich in rare earths, to fall in line. On February 2, he compelled Modi to compromise by accepting the Indo-US trade deal.

Trump’s design is reminiscent of the strategy of the East India Company, which transitioned from a trading body to a ruling power in India between 1757 and 1858. Initially entering India for commerce in 1600, the EIC gradually seized political control. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region—initially with the East Indies (including the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia.

That Modi’s “New India” is turning into a new American colony is ratified by the statement of US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who announced that India had agreed to open its market to American farm products. Rollins wrote:

“Thank you @POTUS for ONCE AGAIN delivering for our American farmers. New US-India deal will export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices and pumping cash into rural America. In 2024, America’s agricultural trade deficit with India was $1.3 billion. India’s growing population is an important market for American agricultural products, and today’s deal will go a long way toward reducing this deficit. America First victory… #FarmersWin #USIndiaTrade #RuralAmerica.”

Historically, when an imperialist power conquered a country in Asia, Africa, or the Caribbean, it completely dominated that nation—altering its administrative, social, and economic structures for imperial benefit. Imperialism led to the acquisition of colonies and colonial rivalries that ultimately resulted in the First World War (1914–1918) and the Second World War (1939–1945).

Imperialist nations amassed enormous profits by exploiting the resources of their colonies. Their primary target was the agrarian economy: forcing colonies to grow commercial crops and destroying rural self-sufficiency. Colonial rule rests on the complete domination of one country over another, leading to systematic exploitation of resources and labour, and often the suppression of indigenous cultures. Under colonialism, people lose sovereignty over land, resources, and political destiny.

Trump has explicitly directed Modi to commit to buying more than $500 billion worth of American goods. Indian government officials confirmed that these purchases would span multiple sectors, including defence and energy. India has reportedly agreed to stop buying Russian oil and reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to zero, while Trump continues to impose an 18 percent tariff on Indian goods. This asymmetry reveals the coercive nature of the deal.

Rollins further clarified the commercial motive:

“India’s massive market will reduce America’s agricultural trade deficit.”

Clearly, it is not India’s interests but India’s market that matters to Trump and the US.

Seventy-nine years after liberation from British imperialism, it is uncertain how long India will take to free itself from US-led colonisation imposed by Modi. His audacity is evident in his statement:

“Big thanks to President Trump on behalf of the 1.4 billion people of India…”

How Modi could thank Trump on behalf of the Indian people is beyond comprehension.

As if this were not enough, Modi described himself as “delighted” by reduced tariffs and praised Trump’s leadership, despite Trump later stating that the tariff reduction was granted “out of friendship” and “at Modi’s request.” This exposes the hollowness of Modi’s claims of diplomatic strength—he could not even persuade Trump to waive tariffs entirely.

With US agricultural products entering India at lower prices, how can Indian farmers compete—especially when their produce is burdened by an 18 percent tariff? Trump’s insistence that India purchase $500 billion worth of US goods—when India’s total import bill itself is around $700 billion—amounts to blatant arm-twisting aimed at preventing India from trading with other nations.

Trump also announced the halt to Operation Sindoor on May 10, 2025, and later announced India’s acceptance of the US trade deal—on both occasions Modi maintained silence. The deal will make rice and wheat production costlier, forcing farmers toward cash crops and worsening rural distress.

Agriculture in India is already largely unprofitable, particularly for small and marginal farmers, due to rising input costs, climate uncertainty, low market prices, lack of storage, and exploitative intermediaries. Had agriculture been profitable, farmers would not have been driven to suicide.

Around 70 percent of India’s rural population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. It contributed about 15 percent to GDP in 2023. According to NSSO, 45.5 percent of India’s labour force was engaged in agriculture in 2022. NCRB data shows that between 1995 and 2014, 296,438 farmers died by suicide. During Modi’s tenure (2014–2022), the figure stands at 100,474. In 2022 alone, 11,290 people from the farming sector died by suicide.

Yet these deaths have failed to move Modi. Farmers staged a year-long protest at Delhi’s borders from November 2020 to December 2021 demanding repeal of the three farm laws and legal MSP. While Modi repealed the laws, MSP remains unimplemented. Budget allocations for agriculture have steadily declined.

In the Union Budget 2026-27, allocation for Agriculture and Allied Activities fell to 3.04 percent from 3.38 percent the previous year. Even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana saw reduced funding. These priorities reflect the government’s distancing from farmers.

While Rollins claims Modi promised not to compromise farmers’ interests, America simultaneously announces a massive surge in agricultural exports to India. How can these claims coexist?

The discriminatory nature of the deal explains why Modi avoided placing it before Parliament. Had Parliament been consulted, the truth would have been exposed. In this context, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation that Modi “compromised” India’s interests—possibly under pressure related to the Adani case in the US—appears politically valid.

Agriculture has long been the most contentious issue in trade negotiations, especially US demands to open India’s market to genetically modified crops. Modi’s sudden capitulation is deeply suspicious. The so-called “Mother of all deals,” signed after two decades of negotiations, threatens to further devastate India’s rural economy, which remains starved of meaningful revival.

Arun Srivastava is a senior journalist

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org