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By Rima Najjar

Syria honors its indigenous majority; Israel manufactured one at gunpoint

The debate surrounding the possible removal of “Arab” from the official name of the Syrian state — Syrian Arab Republic — has reignited foundational questions about national identity, ethnic plurality, and historical justice.

While some actors in the Trump-era negotiations have expressed support for retaining the term, Israel’s involvement and commentary on this issue are rife with hypocrisy. For a state that engineered its own demographic transformation through violence and terror — benignly termed “settler colonialism” — and continues to deny national recognition to millions of Palestinians, Israeli pronouncements on Syria’s naming appear not only politically untenable but ethically incoherent.

Syria’s Arab-majority identity is a demographic and cultural reality, rooted in centuries of indigenous continuity. The inclusion of “Arab” in its national name reflects this foundation — not an imposed fiction.

While Ba’athist ideology may have elevated Arab nationalism in exclusionary ways, this should not be conflated with Syria’s legitimate identity as an Arab-majority nation. Minority communities such as Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, and Turkmen have contributed richly to Syria’s cultural mosaic, yet their presence does not dilute the centrality of its Arab character. The notion that Syria must alter its name to reflect a form of symbolic inclusion is both conceptually flawed and disproportionate to demographic truth.

Indeed, the call to drop “Arab” from Syria’s name collapses under comparative scrutiny. Should France abandon “French Republic” because of Algerian or Vietnamese minorities? Should Japan reconsider its national identity to account for Ainu and Korean residents? Would Turkey drop its name due to a substantial Kurdish population? In each of these cases, the answer is clearly no.

The nation-state reflects its majority identity while safeguarding minority rights through institutions — not through semantic erasure. Syria’s case is no different. Arabs constitute approximately 80–90% of the population, with Kurds around 10%, and other minorities each comprising far smaller proportions. To suggest that Syria’s name must be changed based on these demographics is an argument that fails both empirically and ethically.

“Syria will always remain the beating heart of Arabism and will never give up its national identity.”
 — Bashar al-Assad

Though spoken by a leader whose regime distorted Arab nationalism into authoritarian control, the statement inadvertently affirms a deeper truth: Syria’s Arab identity is not a Ba’athist invention but a reflection of historical continuity rooted in its indigenous majority. The irony is that even the machinery of exclusion had to invoke the undeniable legitimacy of Arabism to justify its grip.

By contrast, it is Israel’s national identity that warrants scrutiny. Unlike Syria’s organic majority, Israel’s Jewish majority was manufactured through a settler colonial enterprise that reconfigured land and population, through a campaign of terror, to suit an exclusivist project.

The Zionist movement, backed by British imperial policy and galvanized through the Balfour Declaration, orchestrated immigration waves that displaced indigenous Palestinians and reshaped the region’s demographic fabric. The 1948 Nakba, the Absentee Property Law, and the Alia process institutionalized mechanisms of exclusion and erasure, transforming a historically Arab-majority land into a Jewish-majority state through violence and legal manipulation.

Even today, Israel demands recognition as a “Jewish state,” despite the fact that millions of Palestinians — whether citizens within its borders, subjects under occupation, or refugees exiled to neighboring countries — remain politically unacknowledged and excluded from the national framework. When the full geography of historic Palestine is considered — including Gaza, the West Bank, and the refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria — Palestinian Arabs comprise a demographic majority. This enduring reality dismantles the myth of Jewish national dominance and exposes the artificiality of a state narrative built on displacement and denial.

This demographic reality exposes not only the ethical contradictions in Israel’s national claims, but the historical misrepresentation on which they rest. It stands in stark contrast to the foundational myth of Israel as a Jewish homeland, which was established when Jews were a small minority in the region. The persistence of this majority — despite decades of displacement, occupation, and demographic engineering — renders Israel’s claim to exclusive national identity not only untenable, but deeply at odds with the lived geography of the land.

Naming a nation isn’t cosmetic — it encodes sovereignty, legitimacy, and moral vision. Syria’s Arab designation reflects what is. Israel’s demands reflect what was forcibly made. One name stands with history. The other stands in its way.

Naming a nation is never merely symbolic — it carries the weight of history, sovereignty, and moral vision. Syria has held that line. It is Israel that must now confront the truth it has long refused to name.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

This article is based on excerpts from a talk by Prof. Gideon Polya at the third KP  Sasi Webinar on ‘Israel: The last outpost of White European Colonialism’ held on 22 June 2025. Dr Polya’s presentation is from 7.47 minutes to 29.10 minutes

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKA2Pyj04os&t=42s]

Firstly, I want to address the theme of Israel as the last European settler-colonial project by going right back to about 10,000 BCE, with the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, which involved cereal crops, animal husbandry, and permanent settlements. Settled agriculture created the need to protect agricultural surpluses and settlements. It led to male militarism, patriarchy, wars, the evolution of military technology, cities, city-states, nation-states, and empires. Ultimately, it has led to the nuclear weapons of our time that can decimate humanity and the biosphere—a fact we are very conscious of today.

The Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and Muslim dominance of North Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia prevented Western European expansion in those areas. As explained by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, in expanding elsewhere, Europeans especially prized lands that could support European-type agriculture (i.e., wheat, sheep, and cattle). Diamond also makes the fundamental point about the historical technical superiority of Europeans, which was derived from the east-west axis of Eurasia. This meant that an advance in agronomy or technology, say in China, would be rapidly transmitted along this axis to Western Europe, but not so for the north-south axes of Africa and the Americas. In seizing land and expelling or killing the indigenous inhabitants, European invaders adopted the lie of terra nullius, which means “an empty land” in Latin.

This racist lie was adopted by the European settler-colonials in the Americas, Australia, and Southern Africa. Terra nullius was also adopted by the genocidally racist Apartheid Israel, the last settler-colonial project that wants all of Palestine plus other lands between the Nile and the Euphrates, with the indigenous inhabitants to be killed, expelled, or confined to ghettos and concentration camps.

It is useful to look at the deaths from European settler-colonialism, something the West does not want to acknowledge. About 100 million Indigenous Americans died from violence, deprivation, and especially from introduced diseases like smallpox. In the Pacific Islands, there was mass mortality due to European colonists introducing novel diseases such as measles. In Australia, about 1 million Indigenous Australians died from violence, deprivation, and introduced diseases in the first century after the British invasion in 1788. Overall, about 2 million Indigenous Australians have died from violence, dispossession, deprivation, and disease since 1788. Of the 350 to 700 Indigenous Australian languages and dialects present in 1788, only about 120 survive today, of which over 20 are endangered.

In India, the vastly outnumbered British adopted a deliberate strategy of keeping the conquered population—about 300 million in 1860—at a bare subsistence level, controlled by British forces and a large body of British-led and well-fed Indian sepoys. It is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from imposed deprivation over two centuries. For example, despite a very high birth rate, the Indian population was about 300 million in 1860 and was still 300 million in 1930. There were many man-made famines in India between the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million killed) and the World War II 1942-1945 Bengal Famine (six to seven million killed). Indeed, in 1935, Winston Churchill, an architect of the Bengal Famine, told the British Parliament, quote: “in the standard of life they have nothing to spare. The slightest fall from the present standard of life in India means slow starvation and the actual squeezing out of life, not only of millions but of scores of millions of people.” India needed to import one to two million tonnes of grain annually before World War II, but the average yearly importation of grain in 1942-1945 was about 0.5 million tonnes, barely enough to feed the 2.5 million-strong Indian army.

In China and the Congo, the populations also exceeded those of the colonial invaders. Nevertheless, an estimated 20 to 100 million Chinese died in the British Opium Wars and the connected Taiping Rebellion. In the Congo, the Belgian colonizers killed about 10 million Congolese while maximizing the extraction of rubber and ivory; hands were chopped off if there was insufficient delivery. An estimated 35 to 40 million Chinese died under the Japanese occupation from 1937-1945.

By way of comparison, we can then turn to deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the Gaza genocide and the broader Palestinian genocide. The Palestinian breakout from the Gaza concentration camp and the 57-year Zionist Israeli occupation was associated with the deaths of 1,139 Israelis. However, prize-winning Western journalists have disputed the official Zionist Israeli narrative, and it seems extremely likely that the October 7, 2023, breakout was enabled by the Zionist Israelis to provide a 9/11-style excuse for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Many of the Israelis killed on October 7 were victims of the IDF’s high-explosive firepower, operating under the Hannibal Directive to prevent hostage-taking, even if it meant killing the hostages.

From data published in the leading medical journal, The Lancet, it is estimated that by April 25, 2025, Gaza deaths from violence will be 136,000 and from imposed deprivation will be 544,000, for a total of 680,000. This is based on the conservative assumption that indirect deaths from deprivation are four times the number of violent deaths. Exhaustive analysis of avoidable deaths from deprivation in all countries since 1950 reveals that under-five infant deaths constitute about 70% of such avoidable deaths in impoverished countries, as detailed in my book, Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950. Infants are highly vulnerable, as we all know. Accordingly, the 544,000 Gaza deaths from forced deprivation include about 380,000 infants under five years old. This horrendous death toll can be further broken down into 380,000 infants, 479,000 children, 63,000 women, and 18,000 men.

However, the Zionist-perverted mainstream media ignores the notion of deaths from deprivation and, at the moment, reports only around 50,500 deaths from violence, ignoring the huge number of indirect deaths. Presently, Gaza deaths from violence and deprivation total about 0.7 million, as opposed to the 50,000 you will read in the newspapers. Interestingly, the NSA advisor to Trump has repeatedly indicated that of the pre-war population of 2.4 million, 1.7 million surviving Gazans will have to be moved to make Gaza a nice, Riviera-style luxury resort. This implies that 0.7 million Gazans are missing (2.4 million minus 1.7 million). We know that about 0.1 million managed to escape to Egypt, which suggests that about 0.6 million Gazans have died from violence and deprivation—a shocking figure. What Trump has said is actually in accord with what top British epidemiologists are saying, but what is reported is the 50,000.

The Palestinian genocide essentially commenced in 1908 with the discovery of oil in Iran. Britain invaded the Ottoman Empire in 1914, occupying Iraq, which eventually led to the French and British invasion of the Middle East. One should also consider the European backing of Israel in what it has been doing for 77 years, and in particular, over the last 20 months. Before the bombing of Iran, the G7—all of whom possess, host, or endorse nuclear weapons (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the US)—responded to the Israeli bombing of Iran by falsely declaring, “We, the leaders of the G7, reiterate our commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. In this context, we affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel. Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” Australia, which is not a member of the G7 but was invited to the recent conference, falsely agrees with the G7.

The reality is dramatically otherwise. The US-backed Israeli attack was unprovoked and violates international law. Israel has 90 nuclear weapons, but Iran has none. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but Israel is not. For 50 years, Iran, other Muslim countries, and the UN General Assembly have demanded a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has invaded no country for millennia, but Israel bombed five countries in 2025 and has attacked 14 in its 77 years of existence. And of course, if Iran actually did have nuclear weapons, why would it use them against Israel when half of its subjects are Palestinians? And why would it commit suicide by using nuclear weapons against the West? The same flawed argument was used, you may remember, when weapons of mass destruction was the excuse to destroy Iraq.

The question has been asked why the former genocidal colonial powers of the G7 support genocidal apartheid Israel. The truth is, except for Japan, they are all European. That is a simple proposition. The United Kingdom has managed to invade 123 countries over the last thousand years. The United States has invaded or otherwise had a military presence in all but three countries in the world. All 32 countries of NATO, all European, firmly support Israel. Many of them belong to the Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which fervently supports Israel with propaganda.

To summarize the European complicity in the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked, war-criminal devastation of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen:

First, overwhelmingly, European countries are allied with the serially war-criminal and Zionist-perverted America, which, since Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1960s, has become the dog being wagged by the Zionist Israeli tail.

Second, all G7 members were involved in the US and NATO-imposed Afghan Holocaust that killed 7 million Afghans through violence and deprivation. The G7 countries and many of their non-G7 associates have further records of involvement in war, imperialism, and the genocide of Indigenous people.

Third, all G7 countries and many of the non-G7 European countries have a prior record of racist settler-colonialism and genocide. The genocidally complicit racism of the European supporters of Israel persists, as revealed by their sustained pro-apartheid Israel conduct for 77 years and by their political rhetoric. This is borne out by how they vote at the United Nations General Assembly.

The 1.7 million surviving Gazans are forced to choose between starvation or risking being shot by Zionist Israelis when seeking food. This is what I see as I eat my dinner each night and watch the television news. Gaza, the 4,000-year-old city that trans-shipped the perfumes of Arabia to the Roman Empire, has been demolished. William Dalrymple’s marvellous book, The Golden Road, details how India had a massive effect on human civilization from Indonesia and Japan to Spain. He argues that Gaza, when it was conquered by the Crusaders, was a key place for the transmission of the wonderful Indian-Arabic flowering culture of the Middle Ages to Europe. The Crusaders took this Arabic-Indian learning and mathematics back to Western Europe.

The world must immediately act with draconian sanctions against US-backed apartheid Israel and all its supporters, notably the US, UK, Australia, the G7, and the EU. The genocidal oppression of the Muslim world by the racist West must end immediately. The US could end it by simply abstaining at the UN Security Council. The century-long suffering of the Palestinian people would end if the world simply insisted, under pain of draconian sanctions, that Palestinians are accorded all the human rights enjoyed in the West and elsewhere.

After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where 69 Africans were killed, the world imposed ultimately successful sanctions on apartheid South Africa. It should do likewise over genocidal apartheid Israel. This toll of 680,000 Gazans killed by April 25, 2025, is nearly 10,000 times the number killed at Sharpeville.

Thank you for your attention.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). He has also published “Body Count.

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestine, stands as a testament to the notion of speaking truth to power. This “power” is not solely embodied by Israel or even the United States, but by an international community whose collective relevance has tragically failed to stem the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Her latest report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on July 3, marks a seismic intervention. It unflinchingly names and implicates companies that have not only allowed Israel to sustain its war and genocide against Palestinians, but also confronts those who have remained silent in the face of this unfolding horror.

Albanese’s ‘Economy of Genocide’ is far more than an academic exercise or a mere moral statement in a world whose collective conscience is being brutally tested in Gaza. The report is significant for multiple, interlocking reasons. Crucially, it offers practical pathways to accountability that transcend mere diplomatic and legal rhetoric. It also presents a novel approach to international law, positioning it not as a delicate political balancing act, but as a potent tool to confront complicity in war crimes and expose the profound failures of existing international mechanisms in Gaza.

Two vital contexts are important to understanding the significance of this report, considered a searing indictment of direct corporate involvement, not only in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel’s overall settler-colonial project.

First, in February 2020, following years of delay, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a database that listed 112 companies involved in business activities within illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The database exposes several corporate giants – including Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola Solutions, JCB, and Expedia – for helping Israel maintain its military occupation and apartheid.

This event was particularly earth-shattering, considering the United Nations’ consistent failure at reining in Israel, or holding accountable those who sustain its war crimes in Palestine. The database was an important step that allowed civil societies to mobilize around a specific set of priorities, thus pressuring corporations and individual governments to take morally guided positions. The effectiveness of that strategy was clearly detected through the exaggerated and angry reactions of the US and Israel. The US said it was an attempt by “the discredited” Council “to fuel economic retaliation,” while Israel called it a “shameful capitulation” to pressure.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza, starting on October 7, 2023, however, served as a stark reminder of the utter failure of all existing UN mechanisms to achieve even the most modest expectations of feeding a starving population during a time of genocide. Tellingly, this was the same conclusion offered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who, in September 2024, stated that the world had “failed the people of Gaza.”

This failure continued for many more months and was highlighted in the UN’s inability to even manage the aid distribution in the Strip, entrusting the job to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a mercenary-run violent apparatus that has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians. Albanese herself, of course, had already reached a similar conclusion when, in November 2023, she confronted the international community for “epically failing” to stop the war and to end the “senseless slaughtering of innocent civilians.”

Albanese’s new report goes a step further, this time appealing to the whole of humanity to take a moral stance and to confront those who made the genocide possible. “Commercial endeavors enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease,” the report declares, pointedly demanding that “corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.”

According to the report, categories of complicity in the genocide are divided into arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities, and charities.

These include Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, IBM, and even Danish shipping giant Maersk, among nearly 1,000 other firms. It was their collective technological know-how, machinery, and data collection that allowed Israel to kill, to date, over 57,000 and wound over 134,000 in Gaza, let alone maintain the apartheid regime in the West Bank.

What Albanese’s report tries to do is not merely name and shame Israel’s genocide partners but to tell us, as civil society, that we now have a comprehensive frame of reference that would allow us to make responsible decisions, put pressure on, and hold accountable these corporate giants.

“The ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture,” Albanese writes, citing Israel’s massive surge in military spending, estimated at 65 percent from 2023 to 2024 — reaching $46.5 billion.

Israel’s seemingly infinite military budget is a strange loop of money, originally provided by the US government, then recycled back through US corporations, thus spreading the wealth between governments, politicians, corporations, and numerous contractors. As bank accounts swell, more Palestinian bodies are piled up in morgues, mass graves, or are scattered in the streets of Jabaliya and Khan Yunis.

This madness needs to stop, and, since the UN is incapable of stopping it, then individual governments, civil society organizations, and ordinary people must do the job, because the lives of Palestinians should be of far greater value than corporate profits and greed.

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

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin

The Israeli government has just put forward one of the most brazenly genocidal schemes in modern memory—and unless we act immediately, the world will once again let it happen.

As reported in Haaretz, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is proposing to force some 600,000 Palestinians—and eventually the entire population of Gaza—into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan is to “screen” the population, separate out alleged Hamas members, and then pressure the remaining civilians—men, women, and children—to “voluntarily” leave Gaza for another country. Which country? That hasn’t even been determined. The point isn’t relocation—it’s erasure. This reflects a long-standing goal among many Israelis, especially on the right, to take full control of Gaza and clear it of Palestinians. 

The UN has warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory’s civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

While all eyes are focused on a possible ceasefire, Gallant is not interested in peace—he’s interested in a “final solution.” A speeding up of the second Nakba we have been witnessing for the past 20 months. In fact, he has  stated that construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire. So what’s the point of a ceasefire, if it’s used to build a concentration camp?

Once Palestinians are herded into this camp, they will not be allowed to leave for other parts of Gaza. They won’t be allowed to return to what’s left of their homes, their neighborhoods, their farms, their schools. They will be trapped inside this militarized zone, under constant surveillance, held at gunpoint until Israel can arrange their deportation. 

Just think of the tragic, unbearable irony: the Israeli government—founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust—is now building a massive concentration camp for an entire population.

If that sounds unthinkable, look at what Israel has already gotten away with.

For the past 20 months, the world has watched—and largely enabled—a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Over 55,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, the majority of them women and children. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques. It has flattened entire neighborhoods with AI-generated kill lists. It has assassinated journalists, targeted ambulances, destroyed bakeries and water systems. 

It has used hunger as a weapon of war, deliberately blocking aid trucks, attacking convoys, and starving the population into desperation. And in a cruel twist, it has created the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—a scheme to funnel aid through Israeli-controlled routes and sideline the UN and experienced NGOs. Its so-called “distribution points” are really death traps, where desperate people have been shot day after day as they risk their lives to get a bit of food.

This engineered starvation is not an accident. It is a strategy—a form of collective punishment on a scale rarely seen in modern times.

We have already failed the people of Gaza—again and again. We failed when we looked the other way as children were buried in rubble. We failed when we allowed our tax dollars to fund the very bombs that wiped out refugee camps. We failed when we kept pretending there was still a line Israel wouldn’t cross.

Now Katz is telling us—explicitly—what comes next: mass internment and forced expulsion. And unless we rise up with every ounce of outrage we have, we will fail again.

Let’s be absolutely clear: the infrastructure for this plan is already being built. Netanyahu and Trump are lobbying corrupt governments in the Global South to accept the deported. This is not a negotiating tactic to strengthen Israel’s position in ceasefire talks—it is the next phase of a genocide we’ve been watching in real time for nearly two years.

And what is the U.S. government doing? Still issuing meaningless statements about “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Still shipping weapons. Still blocking accountability at the United Nations—and even sanctioning officials like UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for daring to speak out.

President Trump could stop this today—by cutting off military aid, backing the International Criminal Court’s investigations, and declaring that forced displacement of Palestinians will not be tolerated. But instead, he’s still dreaming of turning Gaza into a Middle Eastern resort for the ultra-rich.

Meanwhile, more Arab governments stand ready to normalize ties with Israel, making deals with war criminals while their fellow Arabs are starved, bombed, and now threatened with mass exile. Where is the outcry from Cairo, Riyadh, Amman? Is there absolutely no red line?

One bright spot on the international scene is the Hague group, which will convene an emergency meeting in Colombia on July 15–16. This growing bloc of nations has joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. These countries are taking a courageous stand to uphold international law and defend Palestinian life. Every nation that claims to value justice must join them—immediately.

And here in the United States, every member of Congress must be pushed—loudly, relentlessly—to take a public stand. No more vague language. No more hiding behind mealy-mouthed scripts. We demand immediate, public opposition to this “humanitarian city” plan—and a full cutoff of military support to Israel. This is a moment of moral reckoning. Choose a side.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking this can’t happen. It is happening. The groundwork is being laid. The walls are going up. The deportation flights are being negotiated.

There is no neutral ground. This is not a policy debate. This is genocide—on camera, with diplomatic cover, and with our tax dollars.

The time to stop Israel’s dystopian plan is not tomorrow. It is now.

Rise up. Speak out. Flood the streets. Bombard Congress. Demand accountability.

Stop the plan. Save Gaza. Before it’s too late.

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. 

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- UNICEF has revealed a shocking toll: an average of 27 children are being killed every day in Gaza since October 7.

The agency’s spokesperson in Palestine told Al Jazeera that children are paying the highest price in Israel’s genocide in the Strip. “There is no explanation for this level of killing,” he said.

So far, over 17,000 children have been killed, out of more than 57,000 Palestinians Israel has killed during its genocide.

The Ministry of Health had reported a growing malnutrition crisis. In May alone, more than 5,000 children in Gaza became acutely malnourished due to food shortages and the collapse of aid services.

Since March 2, Israel has enforced a full blockade. Crossings remain closed. Most food kitchens have shut down. Famine is now widespread, threatening over 2 million people.

Israel still bans baby formula from entering Gaza. Foreign doctors confirmed that Israeli soldiers confiscate infant milk at the borders, even from medical teams trying to deliver it.

Gaza’s hospitals have issued urgent warnings. Thousands of newborns and infants in neonatal units face death as milk supplies, both regular and therapeutic, have run out.

Doctors say without immediate aid, many babies will not survive the coming days.

UNICEF has called for global action. But as the world watches, Gaza’s children continue to die by Israeli airstrikes, by hunger, and by deliberate neglect.

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of starving civilians seeking aid near a US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution site in southern Gaza, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more.

Local and medical sources confirmed at least 30 people were killed and 180 others injured while waiting for food after Israeli forces directly opened fire at a crowd seeking aid near the GHF aid site, north of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 788 aid seekers have been killed and over 5,199 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry on Friday.

Additionally, 41 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinains.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”

“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the “lethal” US-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza. In a post on X, Lazzarini indicated that Palestinian lives “have been so devalued”.

“It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” he said.

“Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible of this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.

Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

According to a Haaretz report, conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered forces to shoot at crowds waiting for food near or at the US-backed GHF aid sites to drive them away or disperse them, despite posing no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

In a recent statement, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinian civilians at US-Israeli aid distribution centers in Gaza. The army claimed new field instructions were issued based on “lessons learned.”

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Geneva – The US State Department’s decision to sanction UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, is deeply alarming. It reflects the official US stance against any independent effort to expose the genocide and systematic violations committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

This decision marks a dangerous shift away from the core principles of international law and human rights. It directly targets the United Nations and its mechanisms, undermining the independence of special rapporteurs, who should be protected and supported in carrying out their impartial mandates, not punished for fulfilling them or for recognising crimes as such.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on Wednesday evening against the Special Rapporteur, citing her efforts to “prompt action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”

Euro-Med Monitor stresses that Francesca Albanese was among the few who demonstrated the moral and professional courage to call events in Gaza what they truly are: a genocide unfolding in full view of the world. She spoke openly about the complicity of major powers, led by the United States, in arming and covering up this crime, and criticised states that failed to act on the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he transited through their territory or airspace.

Albanese’s work is legitimate and fully aligned with her official mandate from the Human Rights Council, which tasks her with monitoring violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Her documentation efforts and calls for accountability lie at the heart of that mandate. Calling for accountability is not “warfare,” as Rubio claimed, but an act of upholding international law.

Furthermore, recommending sanctions or an arms embargo is consistent with the peaceful measures permitted under international law to address international crimes. It is entirely unreasonable to treat advocacy for upholding international law as a crime.

The US sanctions violate the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which grants UN officials, including special rapporteurs, immunity from legal or administrative action for acts or statements made in their official capacity.

Albanese’s reports and statements fall squarely within her official duties and mandate, making her legally protected from any retaliatory or punitive measures, including economic or political sanctions imposed in response to her official work.

As a party to the Convention, the United States is legally obligated to respect the functional immunity of special rapporteurs and refrain from taking any action against them in response to their official work.

Instead of reviewing its harmful policies regarding Israeli crimes, the US administration chose to punish those who exposed its complicity. Sanctioning Albanese is a desperate attempt to suppress the truth and a warning to anyone who dares to defend the victims of Israeli crimes.

Beyond the United States’ blatant double standards and constant use of sanctions as a political tool, this move signals explicit and official opposition to the foundations of international law, including the principle of accountability and the mechanisms for its protection and application. It amounts to a direct assault on international law and a systematic effort to undermine its framework, revealing a clear intent to subordinate the legal order to power and hegemony rather than justice.

The US decision is a clear expression of deepening official complicity in the genocide, not only through military and political support, but also by targeting anyone who seeks to expose or stop it, even through speech or legal means, as seen previously with sanctions against International Criminal Court judges who issued arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals.

Euro-Med Monitor fully supports Francesca Albanese and her principled stance based on international law and moral conscience. These sanctions should provoke widespread international condemnation and genuine solidarity, as they aim to intimidate independent voices and silence witnesses to ongoing crimes.

The United Nations, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, all UN Special Rapporteurs, and the international community must act urgently to safeguard the independence of the international human rights system and prevent it from being held hostage to political blackmail by major powers.

Justice is not a crime, and speaking out about the genocide in Gaza is not a crime; silence and complicity are. The world now faces a crucial test of its commitment to values, the rule of law, and justice.

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

11 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formally ordered the Israeli military to create plans for the building of a giant concentration camp on the ruins of Rafah, where the population of Gaza would be moved in preparation for their forcible expulsion, Haaretz reported Wednesday.

The Israeli newspaper reported that Netanyahu made the order at a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet on Saturday, before he left for Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s report by Haaretz adds to the growing mountain of evidence that Israel is actively moving ahead with its ethnic cleansing plan, despite the presentation in the US media that Trump and Netanyahu are seeking “peace” and a “ceasefire.”

Two days after Netanyahu ordered the military to start planning the concentration camp, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced preparations for what he called a “humanitarian city.” Katz stated that the Israeli military would patrol the camp, and that once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave. He also said that the building of the camp would be coordinated with “the emigration plan, which will happen.”

On the same day as the meeting with Trump, Netanyahu said the “relocation plan” was on Israel’s agenda, calling it a “brilliant vision.”

Only last week, Haaretz reported the existence of an internal briefing by the Israeli military that the “concentration and movement of the population” is an official goal of Israel.

In May, Netanyahu named the implementation of the “Trump plan” for ethnic cleansing as one of its official aims of the war.

International human rights organizations have condemned the ethnic cleansing plan. In a statement Wednesday, the Euromed Monitor called it “a deliberate effort to depopulate Gaza and impose a new demographic reality that advances a colonial project to erase the Palestinian presence.”

The camp would be “built on the ruins of a destroyed city lacking even the most basic necessities of life,” the Euro-Med monitor reported. “The zone will be placed under strict security control, with severe restrictions on movement, including a ban on exiting. This effectively constitutes the establishment of a closed mass concentration camp, where the population will be forcibly held outside any legitimate legal framework.”

It added that the move is “an organized act of genocide, involving the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions aimed at the gradual destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip through starvation, humiliation, mass detention, and forced subjugation.”

Last week, the Financial Times reported on a secret strategy document drawn up by the Boston Consulting Group, a major US corporate consulting firm, for “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza. In a front-page article on Sunday, the newspaper revealed that the plan was created with the involvement of staffers of former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—the US- and Israeli-backed organization that purportedly delivers a trickle of aid—has drawn up a proposal for establishing camps, which it calls “Humanitarian Transit Areas,” both inside and outside Gaza.

The involvement in the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing plan by the Boston Consulting Group, one of the largest corporate consultants in the world, has created a political crisis at one of the pillars of the global corporate establishment.

On Thursday, the Boston Consulting Group announced that two of its senior partners were resigning over their role in the project.

Boston Consulting Group’s chief risk officer, Adam Farber, and the head of its social-impact practice, Rich Hutchinson, will be stepping down from their roles but will not be fired by the company.

The firm is clearly attempting to limit the damage to its reputation by claiming its involvement in the scheme was the product of individual bad apples. “An independent investigation confirmed this was the result of individual misconduct coupled with failures in oversight and judgment,” the firm told the Wall Street Journal.

“Even if this was not in any way, shape, or form a formal BCG project, our association with it is real—deeply troubling, and reputationally very damaging,” Boston Consulting Group CEO Christoph Schweizer wrote in a letter obtained by the Journal.

In reality, the firm was clearly complicit in the planning of war crimes and crimes against humanity, putting its executives in legal jeopardy of prosecution.

Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its daily massacres and mass starvation policies in Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a clinic in central Gaza killed 10 children and six adults.

The clinic, which was run by the humanitarian organization Project HOPE, screens children for malnutrition and provides them with nutritional supplements.

“Project HOPE’s health clinics are a place of refuge in Gaza where people bring their small children, women access pregnancy and postpartum care, people receive treatment for malnutrition, and more. Yet, this morning, innocent families were mercilessly attacked as they stood in line waiting for the doors to open,” Project HOPE said in a statement.

Malnutrition is surging in Gaza, with over 5,000 children between six months and five years old diagnosed with acute malnutrition in May, according to UNICEF.

Gaza’s hospitals are on the verge of running out of fuel, with Reuters reporting Thursday that doctors are attempting to preserve scarce energy supplies by cramming multiple premature babies into single incubators.

“Premature babies are now in a very critical condition,” Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Reuters, saying that Israel’s blockade is “depriving these vulnerable people of their basic right to medical care, turning the hospital into a silent graveyard.”

11 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, August 2022

#Srebrenicia.  On the wall of the barracks from where the Dutch Peacekeepers withdrew and let the genocidal killing begin, is a graffiti that reads, “United Nothing”. The United Nations had failed the Bosnian Muslims  30 years ago.  It has failed in Palestine again today.  Srebrenicia was only the best known killing fields of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

Mostar, Sarajevo, Stolac and many other towns & villages witnessed the slaughter and the mass rape as a weapon of genocide.  Thirty years on, what the US-led Western states and the trigger puller Israel, the Jewish Fascist state, are killing is not “just” Palestinians in Gaza as the emerging Auschwitz run by the Jewish Fascists abd their SS – known as the IDF – but also  international law  and all the global governing institutions, above all the UN. 

The West as a community of states are not going to come back from this.  

After German Nazis,  and their genocide on the Continent of THE CIVILIZATION, and WWII, the West or “western civilization” – had a chance to make amends and redeem itself.  

Alas,  the ruling elites of the West have proven utterly incapable of learning from history – something Hagel is said to have observed: “we learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

Worse still, what we call “the West” (as in states and corporations) has been without humanity (compassion & conscience), to belabour the obvious. One thing which colonialists/ imperialists and German Fascists had in common is empty rhetoric of “rights” “freedom” “humanity”. 

In 2025, the Western imperialists & Jewish  Fascists don’t even bother with such pretense as humanity.

Here I was paying my respect to 8,000 Bosniak men, boys and elderly men (Bosnian Muslims of the three generations in many cases)) genocidally executed by the Serbian nationalist killers in July, 1995.

Genocides are a crime against humanity.  It is an affront to us all as humans. 

If you don’t stand up and speak out against such crime your humanity is questionable. 

That is, whatever the name of the victim population – Rohingya, Bosniaks, Cambodians, Palestinians, etc. 

I was there at the Srebrenica  in the fall of  2022

The following year on my travels to Ukraine, I made an effort to pay my homage at the place where the Belarus-born Polish Jewish legal genius  and activist lived and studied law in the now Ukrainian city of Lviv in the 1920’s.

Lemkin died in the US, at 59, destitute and alone having witnessed how the victorious states – themselves criminal states against humanity (such as USA, UK, France, USSR – in particular)  – water-downed his comprehensive conception of GENOCIDE, 3 years after Auschwitz was closed.  

He would be turning in his grave that (liberal) imperialist West and the Jewish Fascist state of Israel have merged into a single criminal spanning across the whole world.  

What a sick and criminal class of men (and women) that are ruling us billions of We the Humans.

I fear the Western Civilization – “Judaeo-Christian now?” –  has as yet to hit its rock bottom. by all indications. 

M Zarni

11 July 2025

New York. July 11, 2025.

With deep reverence for the courageous and fearless souls who laid down their lives so the people of Kashmir could live with dignity and honor, Washington-based ‘World Kashmir Awareness Forum’ arranged digital trucks campaign throughout the New York City to observe the 94th Kashmir ‘Martyrs’ Day. 

The digital trucks displaced the messages: “Blood of martyrs will not go in vain: Freedom from India Kashmiris will attain;” “Voices from martyr’s graveyard are clear and loud: Indian occupation of Kashmir will not be allowed;” “In occupied Kashmir women being raped and children blinded: International community needs to be reminded;” “Voices of freedom in occupied Kashmir being throttled: Freedom of press completely stifled;” “Occupation of Kashmir travesty of justice: United Nations should take the notice;” “United Nations pay the heed: India has turned Kashmir into a killing field;” “Martyrs of Kashmir paid ultimate price: Kashmir beseeches world to rise.”

Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, President, World Kashmir Awareness Forum said that Kashmiris have continuously given immense sacrifices under the post- independence India. Massacre after massacre have continued to take place under Indian occupation, ethnic cleansing and colonization. Indian state under Modi’s Hindutva has abolished even the celebration of Martyrdom from the Kashmiri calendar since annexation of Kashmir on August 5, 2019, but the people of Kashmir have vowed to resist, no matter at what cost. 

Dr. Mir added that freedom is not offered on a platter. The Martyrs Graveyard in Srinagar will always remind us of the sanctity of those who sacrificed their lives for truth, justice and for freedom. 

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, ‘World Forum for Peace & Justice’, reflecting on the tragic day, stated, “It was on July 13, 1931, that foreign occupying Dogra forces cold-bloodedly shot dead 22 Kashmiris in front of Srinagar Central Jail. July 13th remains etched in the collective memory of the Kashmiri people as the day when their call for freedom and justice was met with bullets. Today, ‘Martyrs’ Day’ honors not only those 22 lives lost in 1931, but also the countless innocent victims who have been forcibly silenced by Indian military and paramilitary forces since 1989. “

Dr. Fai stressed that the desire for self-determination is an important factor India should take seriously — yet it continues to present a façade to the world community, pretending it does not exist. Regardless of how long India chooses to ignore the truth, the decades-old movement in Kashmir will not simply fade away.” 

Kashmiris are asking, Dr. Fai pointed out: “Is the lesson of Kashmir to be that a nuclear-armed state, like India with an appealing economic market can defy international law, human rights, and moral accountability with impunity? What message does that send about the global commitment to non-proliferation? What does it mean for the cause of humanity? And what does it say about our collective will to uphold international norms, universal values, and—above all—the authority of United Nations Security Council resolutions?”

Dr. Imtiaz Khan, Kashmiri American scholar said that government of India is living in fool’s paradise by believing that Kashmir can be usurped by brute force. Notwithstanding the fact their forces have unleashed reign of terror, massacred more then 100,000 civilians, gangraped women, blinded youth by pellet guns and buried the bodies in mass graves the voices of freedom have not died down.

Dr. Khan added that the generations of Kashmiris have promised themselves that they will leave no stone unturned unless Kashmir is freed from Indian occupation. The important question is that what price will be paid by the world for Indian hubris and disrespect of international laws.

Dr. Khan warned that the region being sandwiched between three nuclear states is a powder keg that can explode without prior warning. This was recognized by former USA president Bill Clinton and has also been acknowledged by President Donald Trump. Minor skirmishes between India and Pakistan can lead to nuclear conflagration that will engulf half of world population. It will be a major disservice to the human race if international community leaves this protracted problem unattended and allow the continuation of blatant Indian atrocities on the freedom loving people of Kashmir.

Raja Mukhtar, Spokesperson, JKLF North America and organizer of the event stated that “Kashmiris are demanding to exercise their right to self-determination as mandated by the UN and international community. They ask the world powers to stand up and speak up for the freedom of Kashmir.

Raja Mukhtar appealed to Trump Administration to seriously engage India, Pakistan and legitimate representatives of Kashmir, like incarcerated most popular leader of Jammu & Kashmir, Mohammad Yasin Malik in a result-oriented peaceful resolution of this most serious conflict of the world.”

Raja Mukhtar explained that while India, initially, explicitly accepted the Security Council resolutions mandating a free and impartial plebiscite in Kashmir under the auspices of the United Nations, it soon reneged on its own obligation realizing that the people of Kashmir would vote against India in an unfettered plebiscite.

Sardar Taj Khan, Senior Vice Chairman, Kashmir Mission, USA co-organizer of the evert said that the only solution to all major problems in the region lies in the peaceful resolution of Kashmir. And that bilateral talks between India and Pakistan have never taken off and direct involvement of President Donald Trump is needed if we are serious to achieve tangible results. 

Sardar Taj added that we all should ‘hang together’ rather than being hanged separately. Right of Self- Determination is ‘The Only Solution’ for our survival. Freedom of Kashmir is imperative & inevitable.

Sardar Sawar Khan, former Advisor to the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir said that it was the duty of global Kashmiri diaspora to support the people of Kashmir who are struggling for the right to self-determination. Our objective is to draw the attention of the world powers to the situation in Kashmir and to exert pressure on the government of India and to resolve dispute over Kashmir and help stop human right violations there.

Sardar Zarif Khan, Advisor to the President of Azad Kashmir said that the people of Kashmir have suffered long and needlessly because of this brutal conflict. The people of Kashmir deserve peace. Peace in the region of South Asia would remain elusive until the Kashmir dispute is resolved.  

Sardar Zarif emphasized that the brutalities of Indian government cannot and should not go unnoticed. It is the responsibility of the Kashmiri diaspora to be the voice of voiceless people in the corridors of powers all over the world.

Sardar Shoaib Irshad, General Seretary, Kashmir American Welfare Association (KAWA) said that despite claiming to be the largest democracy, India’s policy towards Kashmir has been uniformly colonial, brutal, deceitful and undemocratic. The people of Kashmir will never rest until they achieve their ultimate objective which is the right of self-determination.

Sardar Zubair Khan, Director, ‘Voices of Justice in Kashmir’ made an urgent plea to the world powers, including US government and Congressional leaders to heed the unbearable plight of hundreds of senior Kashmiri political leaders who are suffering from serious health issues. 

Sardar Zubair Khan added that senior political leaders, like Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Masarat Aalam, Aasia Andrabi and internationally known human rights activist, Khurram Parvez must be released unconditionally to create an atmosphere for dialogue and negotiations.

Raja Liaqat Kiyani, President, Kashmir House Washington said that the sacrifices of the people of Kashmir will undoubtedly lead the Kashmiri freedom struggle to its logical conclusion, that is freedom from the occupation and alien subjugation.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness Forum.

He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435. or. gnfai2003@yahoo.com

www.kashmirawareness.org