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By Richard Falk

My name is Richard Falk, a retired professor of international law at Princeton University. I speak here as the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a civil society organization based in Geneva, that reports on human rights throughout the Middle East and North African region with a special focus on violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people. I am most proud to be associated with Euro-Med due to the fearless dedication it has displayed in its on the ground documenting and reporting upon human rights abuses since 2011 when it was founded by its current inspirational leader Ramy Abdu who has served throughout its existence as its Chair. Through my contacts with Ramy Abdu I came to appreciate his leadership, admiring how much was achieved by Euro-Med despite its modest budget. Ramy together with his small staff arranged the collection of evidence and documentation of huma rights allegations by the recruitment of unpaid volunteers from the region, mostly young persons committed to the promotion of human rights willing to accept the risks of this dangerous work.

What has impressed and moved me most about Euro-Med is the indispensable work done over the 15 years since 2011 in the most difficult of circumstances. I make this statement affirming the quality and integrity of Euro-Med’s work now in response to the intensification of defamatory attacks on the organization as biased and supposedly linked to Hamas. These charges have been made by the government of Israel and by pro-Israel media and Zionist zealots in Western countries, particularly the United States. These attacks that are intended to be discrediting have included vicious media diatribes leading to threats of violence against Euro-Med staff members that have forced the organization to divert attention from its crucial substantive priorities to use precious resources and valuable time to take prudential precautions to protect its staff.

This recent escalation of defamatory attacks on Euro-Med and its leadership has been prompted by the publication on May 11, 2026 in the New York Times of an opinion column written by Nicholas Kristof, a prize-winning regular contributor to the NYT. This carefully reasoned and sourced article explicitly relied on Euro-Med Reports to ground Kristof’s confirmation of severe forms of sexual violence engaged in by Israeli prison officials and IDF soldiers in dealing with Palestinian civilians, and particularly detainees, including women and children. It was not unusual for influential media, NGOs, and activists to rely on Euro- Met reports given its reputation for trustworthy information. In this instance, Kristof’s eminence as a journalist, and even more because the NYT enjoyed had a long record of being a pro-Israeli news source that self-censored itself with respect to the most incriminating abuses by Israel that defied its legal and moral responsibilities in relation to the Palestinian people. As a result when even the NYT took seriously such dramatic allegations it could not easily be refuted or brushed aside.Actually, Kristof’s reference to Euro-Med’s documentation of sexual violence against Palestinians should have enhanced the credibility and demonstrated the effectiveness of Euro-Med instead of serving as a launching pad for a smear campaign that is characteristic Israeli behavior whenever accused the state is accused in a persuasive manner. Israel employs the practice of shifting the conversation to the credibility of the messenger as a means of ignoring the message, especially when its veracity is beyond a reasonable doubt.

These charges of sexual violence, shocking as they were, came as no surprise to close observers of Israel’s behavior in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The surprise was that the NYT had finally broken its habitual silence about Israeli atrocities that it had maintained for so long. The. NYT had been silent in the past whenever evidence of systematically and flagrantly violations of human rights principles by Israel was irrefutable.

This pattern of Israel’s sexual abuse in the aftermath of the October 7 Gaza attack became more extreme and notorious. This development was a major theme of the detailed report in March 2025 by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory established by the UN Human Rights Council. Additional to the description of instances of human rights abuses was the extremely damning assessment that ‘sexual and gender-based violence’ had become for Israel a ‘method of war.’ It was acknowledged that there was lacking convincing evidence that this practice was explicitly adopted by the Israeli government. Yet the Commission believed this behavior was implicitly endorsed by Israeli officialdom that responded to even the most extreme abuses by granting governmental impunity to the wrongdoers however serious the international crimes.

It is of utmost importance to support the integrity of Euro-Med and other objective human rights organizations and not allow state propaganda and extremist support groups of Israel to shut down or defame courageous efforts to expose human rights abuses. This attack on Euro-Med should be understood as part of a wider campaign of punitive response to truth-tellers (in contrast to impunity for wrongdoers) who are risking not only their reputations but their lives by devoting their efforts to the dissemination of inconvenient truths. The United States sanctioning of UN Special Rapporteur of Israeli Violation of Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, Francesca Albanese, is a similar disgraceful attack on an exceptionally brave truth-teller that should be seen as at one with these vicious attacks on Ramy Abdo and Euro-Watch.

Voices of global conscience need to accept and act upon the ancient wisdom that when truth prevails, justice is served, human dignity and moral decency upheld. Likewise, when truth is suppressed and evidence of atrocities is filtered or ignored, evil flourishes.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

28 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Geneva — Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has taken exceptional and involuntary measures in response to a systematic Israeli campaign of disinformation, defamation, incitement, and direct and indirect threats targeting the organisation, its chairman, and members of its team. The campaign escalated after false accusations linked the organisation to a New York Times investigation into systematic sexual violence against Palestinians inside Israeli prisons.

Following an intense wave of incitement and threats, a restructuring of field and institutional operations has become necessary. These measures include downsizing the team and reducing activities across the occupied Palestinian territory and the wider region, suspending operations at the central Geneva office, closing offices in the occupied Palestinian territory and Lebanon, and shifting toward virtual and essential field-based work as circumstances require.

Among the latest repressive measures documented is an agreement concluded by Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli with Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority to bar nearly 40 staff members and affiliates from entering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, including founder and chairman Ramy Abdu, senior officials, board members, and employees.

The ongoing campaign constitutes a systematic attempt to silence independent human rights voices and undermine efforts aimed at exposing the truth and ensuring accountability for grave crimes and violations committed against Palestinians.

The campaign has included the distortion and manipulation of public statements, the fabrication of false allegations regarding political or organisational affiliations, and widespread incitement campaigns accompanied by threats that have extended to calls for the physical assassination of the organisation’s president and several staff members.

This escalation would not have reached such a dangerous level without the continued international silence surrounding Israeli crimes and the persistent failure to take meaningful action to hold perpetrators accountable for grave violations committed against Palestinian civilians, including the targeting of journalists, human rights defenders, and humanitarian workers.

What Euro-Med Monitor is facing today forms part of a broader policy targeting anyone who documents crimes or approaches the truth. Palestinian and international human rights organisations, humanitarian institutions, and UN mechanisms have all faced restrictions, delegitimisation efforts, and incitement campaigns, while journalists in Gaza have been systematically targeted and killed.

These precautionary measures reflect the seriousness with which the threats are being treated. The risks posed by this campaign are being raised before the United Nations, states, and relevant international mechanisms, as confronting such attacks is essential to protecting independent human rights work, professional journalism, and the public’s right to truth and justice.

Despite these dangerous circumstances, human rights and humanitarian work will continue through every possible means. Documentation of violations, advocacy for victims, and efforts to ensure accountability and prevent impunity remain ongoing responsibilities grounded in the conviction that protecting truth and defending human dignity are not optional, but fundamental obligations and moral duties.

Our work and documentation efforts did not begin because conditions were safe or easy, and they will not end because Israel has decided to raise their cost. Retreating in the face of intimidation would mean leaving victims without a voice, crimes without a record, and perpetrators without accountability. At the same time, Euro-Med Monitor is aware that these efforts confront a power that exercises force without restraint while benefiting from impunity and international indifference.

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

28 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

New York (QNN)- The United Nations has added Israel to its blacklist for sexual violence against Palestinians amid mounting reports of sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, which have sharply increased since the start of Israel’s Gaza genocide.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon announced on Thursday the decision, describing it as “blood libel” and a “political decision.”

According to Israeli media, the Israeli Prison Service will be included on the 2026 list, along with other Israeli entities that have entered a monitoring framework for the possibility of future inclusion.

In August, UN Secretary General António Guterres put Israel on notice that it might be included on the list in the 2026 annual report if it doesn’t take a series of steps.

“I urge the Government of Israel to release Palestinians who were arbitrarily detained, ensure that Palestinian prisoners are released in a dignified way, investigate and prosecute all allegations of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees, ensure humane treatment for all those held and implement prevention measures, including granting unhindered humanitarian access to detention facilities.”

In January 2025, it was reported that Israel was preventing Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, from carrying out a comprehensive examination of war crimes allegedly committed by Hamas on October 7, because it would have required Israel to also allow the UN to investigate sexuap violence against Palestinians being held in Israel.

As a condition to an examination of Hamas’ alleged crimes, Patten had demanded that her staff be given access to the Israeli detention facilities where Palestinians are being held so they could also look into reports that soldiers sexually assaulted them. Israel, however, refused.

The UN move comes after the New York Times published a column by Nicholas Kristof detailing sexual violence by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians.

The report said Israeli forces train combat dogs to rape Palestinian detianees on the command of their handlers; Kristof said that “other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have cited reports of dogs sexually assaulting prisoners.”

The testimony in the article was based on a report published last month by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which is based in Geneva, as well as interviews conducted by Kristof himself.

The report adds to a growing body of evidence documenting systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces, particularly since the start of the genocide in Gaza. Rights groups and media outlets have documented these abuses amid a sharp rise in the deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody, alongside widespread reports of torture, mistreatment, and medical negligence.

Kristof’s article cited a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, presented to the UN Human Rights Council last year that Israel’s security apparatus had become a system under which sexual violence is “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians”.

It also pointed to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report that found nearly a third of Palestinian journalists detained by Israel had faced sexual violence.

In March, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in her report to the UN Human Rights Council that “the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty” with acts that include rape of Palestinians with bottles, metal rods and knives.

“For skeptics, why not agree on Red Cross and lawyer visits for the 9,000 Palestinian ‘security’ prisoners?” Kristof wrote about X. “If you think these abuse allegations are false, such monitoring visits would be protective. So why not?”

The Israeli occupation government has not allowed the Red Cross to inspect the conditions of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons for years.

Recently, the Israeli military authorized five soldiers who sexually assaulted and raped a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility to return to reserve service after the charges against them were dropped. In 2024, a video was leaked showing the gang rape of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza by Israeli guards at Sde Teiman. The footage shows the detainee being selected from a larger group of bound detainees lying on the floor.

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The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him. The video was aired by Israel’s Channel 11. The attack is believed to have been so brutal that, after he was transferred to hospital, Israeli media reported that the victim was unable to walk.

According to a recent released report by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI), based on data obtained from the Israeli army and Israel Prison Service (IPS), 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons and military detention centers since October 2023, in many cases seemingly as a direct result of torture, medical neglect, and food deprivation by soldiers and prison officers.

28 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Ten Palestinians, including women, children, and elderly people, were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City on the first day of Eid, in one of the deadliest attacks on Gaza since the so-called US-backed ceasefire took effect.

Medical sources confirmed that ten Palestinians were killed after an Israeli strike targeted a residential building in a densely populated area of central Gaza City overnight.

The attack occurred on the first day of Eid Al-Adha as many Palestinians gathered in the streets and in public spaces in an attempt to celebrate despite ongoing Israeli attacks and the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/2059887877849248183]

The victims included women, elderly people, and children. The youngest was nine years old, while the oldest was 81. Among those killed were two 12-year-old girls and a 17-year-old girl. Among the killed were twelve-year-old Nour and 13-year-old Yamen who were siblings.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/2059896531604357311]

There has been a spike in Israeli attacks in the war-torn Strip despite the ceasefire.

Israel has violated the ceasefire which took effect in October more than 3,000 times, killing hundreds and blocking the entry of much-needed aid.

Israeli forces have killed more than 870 Palestinians since the ceasefire, including over 300 children, women, and the elderly.

Over 72,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began on October 7, 2023.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk condemned Israel’s recent attacks in the Gaza Strip, saying that “the unrelenting pattern of killings” reflects Israel’s “sweeping impunity”.

“Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and a classroom,” Turk said.

28 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

There is a strange and revealing theatre in the politics of the Muslim world: Gaza burns, capitals convene, communiqués appear, banquets proceed, Jerusalem is invoked, alliances are announced, and somehow the great machinery of “resistance” keeps moving without ever quite arriving where the oppressed need it most. It is not simple hypocrisy; that would be too easy, too crude, too morally lazy an explanation. It is something more intricate and more consequential: a polished choreography of grief and caution, sympathy and restraint, sacred language and strategic hesitation — a politics in which Palestine is loved sincerely by the people, honored ceremonially by the state, and too often left waiting at the gates of power.

Into this theatre came Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a man whose life is inseparable from sacrifice for Palestine. Few have paid more dearly in the belly of the American empire for refusing to treat Palestinian freedom as an unspeakable cause. He was persecuted, imprisoned, separated from his family, and ultimately deported because Palestine, in Washington’s catechism, is not a cause but a crime scene whose witnesses must be punished.[1]

For that reason, Dr. Sami deserves not casual criticism but serious, grateful, and respectful engagement. He is not a tourist of resistance, nor a professional flatterer passing through Islamabad for ceremonial applause. He is a Palestinian intellectual and activist who has endured the machinery he denounces. His moral capital is real. His sacrifices are real. His place in the history of Palestine solidarity is secure. Precisely because of that, his words in Pakistan matter.

When Dr. Sami addresses “Pakistan’s elite” and describes Pakistan as a source of strength for Palestine, one wants desperately to believe him.[2] Pakistan is nuclear-armed. Pakistan refuses formal recognition of Israel. Pakistan’s people carry Palestine not as a diplomatic slogan but as a wound. Its mosques, campuses, streets, homes, and hearts have carried Gaza with an intensity no foreign ministry could manufacture. Ordinary Pakistanis understand, with greater moral clarity than those who govern them, that Palestine is not a file in international relations. It is a test of the soul.

But here is the necessary distinction: Pakistan’s elite is not Pakistan. Pakistan’s rulers are not Pakistan’s conscience. Pakistan’s people may indeed be a source of strength for Palestine; its ruling establishment has yet to prove the same. That difference is not semantic. It is the whole matter.

The emerging dream of an “Islamic NATO” suffers from precisely this confusion. Its advocates speak as if Muslim regimes have suddenly discovered sovereignty because Israel has become too reckless even for its quiet partners and anxious neighbors. But Gaza already tested this proposition. Gaza did not happen in darkness. Its hospitals were destroyed in public. Its children were starved in public. Its universities, journalists, doctors, families, and neighborhoods were erased before the eyes of the world. If a meaningful Muslim security bloc existed in substance, Gaza would not have been left to plead with a world order engineered to ignore it.

The reality is more complicated, and more sobering. These states may now be organizing not primarily to protect the masses of the region from Zionism, empire, and domestic repression, but to protect themselves from the widening consequences of Zionist war. Gaza was a catastrophe. Qatar was a warning. Iran is a strategic panic. Saudi recalibration, Pakistan’s renewed military relevance, Turkiye’s possible inclusion, Qatar’s anxiety — all of this may be geopolitically significant. But significance is not the same as emancipation.

A Muslim bloc that defends palaces but not prisoners, borders but not bodies, regimes but not citizens, cannot yet be called a liberation project. At best, it is an unstable experiment in regional self-preservation. At worst, it is containment dressed in civilizational language.

That is why Dr. Sami’s Pakistan remarks are so delicate, and so painful. Not because he praised the Pakistani people; they deserve praise. Not because he imagined Pakistan could matter; it can, and perhaps must. But because he spoke to and through an elite whose domestic conduct sits uneasily beside the prophetic politics that Palestine demands.

Just down the road from where Pakistan’s powerful could be addressed as custodians of Palestine, former Prime Minister Imran Khan remains confined in conditions described by supporters and international advocates as punitive, isolating, and dangerous.[3] One need not be uncritical of Khan, or blind to his contradictions, to grasp the symbolism. One of the most popular political figures in one of the world’s most consequential Muslim countries is imprisoned while the same power structure receives praise for its supposed moral utility abroad.

This is not a side issue. It is the central contradiction.

The international appeal over Khan’s detention drew striking support from Palestinians and South Africans.[3] That is not an accident, nor is it evidence of some exotic “cult” of Khan. Palestinians and South Africans know something about the relationship between sovereignty and humiliation. They know that a people denied political agency are not merely misgoverned; they are disciplined. They recognize in Khan, whatever his limits, a figure through whom tens of millions of Pakistanis have articulated dignity, refusal, and the desire not to live as tenants in their own republic.

Here the contrast becomes unavoidable. The deepest moral pulse of Pakistan’s Palestine solidarity has not come from officialdom. It has come from figures like Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, from the Pak-Palestine Forum, from the Pakistan Rights Movement, from the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party, from students, workers, religious activists, left organizers, and ordinary citizens who see no contradiction between opposing Zionism abroad and authoritarianism at home.[4] Many come from the Islamic movement, yet have rejected the collaborationist Islam of power for a liberation theology of the oppressed: Islam not as courtly perfume, not as protocol language, but as a vocabulary of justice.

If Dr. Sami is to strengthen Pakistan’s role for Palestine, these are the people who most deserve his attention. Not because officials must never be engaged. Politics is not a purity seminar, and Palestinians have often had to speak in difficult rooms with imperfect actors. But there is a difference between tactical engagement and moral endorsement. There is a difference between saying Pakistan could become a source of strength and implying that its present rulers have already behaved as one.

The danger of the current Islamic alliance discourse is that it can allow Muslim rulers to purchase anti-Zionist legitimacy on credit. They need not democratize. They need not release prisoners. They need not address grotesque inequality. They need only speak the language of Palestine with sufficient solemnity, and suddenly the moral ledger appears balanced.

Dr. Sami Al-Arian’s own life is a profound testimony to a better politics. He knows what empire does to those who refuse silence. That is why many who admire him hope his words in Pakistan become sharper, not harsher; more prophetic, not less respectful; more attuned to the people beneath the state. Respecting him means taking him seriously enough to offer a careful and principled challenge.

The Muslim world does not suffer from a shortage of alliances. It suffers from a shortage of justice. Until any “Islamic NATO” can defend not only states from Israel, but peoples from the states that rule them, it will remain what too much official Muslim politics already is: a procession of flags, summits, uniforms, slogans, and sacred vocabulary marching with great ceremony toward the nearest safe compromise.

Endnotes

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_vs._Al-Arian
[2] https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2026/05/20/pakistan-source-of-strength-for-palestine-says-palestinian-prof-dr-sami
[3] https://muslimviews.co.za/imran-khan-global-coalition-demands-medical-transparency/
[4] https://muslimviews.co.za/from-pakistan-to-gaza-why-senator-mushtaq-ahmad-khan-terrifies-power-and-zionism/

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

26 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Francisco Dominguez and Roger D Harris

In response to recent developments in Venezuela under imperialist siege, international solidarity activists should adopt a stance that does not inadvertently reinforce Washington’s drive for domination. Our central responsibility is not to adjudicate every tactical decision made under siege conditions, but to oppose the imperialist aggression that creates those conditions.

The overwhelming structure of US hybrid warfare against Venezuela remains intact, continuing to suffocate the country’s economic recovery and undermine its sovereignty. Washington continues to exert decisive pressure over the country’s principal source of national revenue, the oil sector. It uses sanctions, financial coercion, and domination of global banking systems, as it has against other targeted states such as Iraq and Syria.

At the same time, the threat of direct military escalation remains ever present, a danger underscored by continuing military deployments, aggressive rhetoric, and repeated threats.

What some may regard as unjustifiable compromises by the Venezuelan government pale in comparison to our obligations as international solidarity activists: defending Venezuela and Cuba against the policies of imperialism. The US continues to intensify blockades, sanctions, destabilization efforts, and military threats against these revolutionary processes while simultaneously waging disinformation campaigns against the Chavista leadership and the Cuban Revolution.

Both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez identified US imperialism as the principal enemy of humanity. Our primary political focus should therefore remain opposition to imperialist domination, rather than allowing secondary disagreements to obscure the central contradiction.

The responsibilities of internationalists

First and foremost, the main blow must be directed against US imperialism. Any discussion of shortcomings, compromises, or concessions should be understood within the context of relentless external aggression, destabilization efforts, and military threats.

That is why internationals vigorously campaign both for the safe return to Venezuela of President Nicolá s Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and for the immediate and unconditional lifting of all sanctions.

The political choices made by the Venezuelan leadership must ultimately be resolved within Venezuela itself. The role of internationalists is to oppose imperialism at home, not to instruct Venezuelans on how to defend their revolution.

Support for Venezuela against US imperialism does not require agreement with every decision taken under conditions of coercion. Understanding political decisions made under such circumstances is to situate them within the realities imposed by imperialist military power. This includes the extradition of Alex Saab.

A longstanding objective of US policy has been to fracture the unity of the Chavista leadership, military, and popular base. Despite immense pressure, that unity has largely held. Attempts to counterpose solidarity with the popular base against solidarity with the leadership, however well intentioned, objectively strengthen imperialist aims.

The conditions facing Venezuela

We do not know the full extent of the pressures exerted on the Venezuelan government, nor the range of alternatives realistically available under present conditions. The Venezuelan leadership operates under severe geopolitical constraints. The US openly threatens Libya- or Iran-style retaliation. Another major military escalation remains entirely possible.

Unlike in earlier periods, Venezuela today lacks strong regional allies, while in the context of the ongoing Gaza genocide, so-called “international law” offers little meaningful restraint on US power.

Given the vast military asymmetry between the two countries, the consequences of direct military confrontation would be catastrophic for Venezuela, potentially including the destruction of vital infrastructure and long-term devastation of the oil industry upon which the country depends.

If the US succeeds in placing the extreme right-wing opposition in power, the likely result would be devastating political repression directed against Chavismo and the popular sectors.

Strategic realities and political continuity

While continuing to rely upon the Chavista base, the government also recognizes the necessity of building a broader patriotic bloc capable of resisting imperialist pressure more effectively.

Even amid forced compromises, the central achievements of the Bolivarian process remain significant: preservation of the revolutionary leadership, survival against destabilization efforts, and avoidance of a full-scale invasion.

Years of sanctions and economic warfare severely degraded Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Restoring productive capacity, reestablishing trade, and attracting investment have therefore become vital imperatives.

The political transitions from Chávez to Maduro to Rodríguez largely reflect changes in the international geopolitical landscape. Yet there has remained substantial political continuity within Chavismo, evident in continued solidarity with Cuba, the vitality of the communal system, and the endurance of the revolutionary mass movement.

In conclusion, under conditions of economic warfare, military threat, diplomatic isolation, and perpetual destabilization efforts, Venezuela’s contradictions cannot be analyzed abstractly or outside the realities of imperialist power. The primary task of solidarity movements within the imperial centers remains what it has always been: opposing the aggression of our own ruling classes.

Roger D. Harris is a co-founder of the North American-based Venezuela Solidarity Network.

Francisco Dominguez is the national secretary of the UK-based Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.

26 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Revealing a steely yet erratic contempt of the law, the US Department of Justice is showing, again, how it became the spear carrier for kooky ideas and vengeful projects. No leader is seemingly safe from an indictment if the personal interest of President Donald Trump is invested. It need not matter if the legal foundations are shoddy to the point of sheer absurdity – the more absurd, the more likely the paperwork will be filed.

The May 20 unsealing of a superseding indictment by the DOJ against Raúl Castro bulks that pile. As brother to the late Fidel Castro and Cuban president from 2008 to 2019, participant in the legendary assault on the Moncada Barracks in July 1953 and founding member of the M-26-7 guerilla outfit, he has been a persistent reminder of failures by the United States to subjugate the island and its government since the revolutionary overthrow of the blood basted regime of Fulgencio Batista. In April 1961, for instance, the Castro brothers ensured the survival of the revolution by defeating the CIA-backed attack at the Bay of Pigs, consisting of 1,400 Cuban exiles. The ill-conceived, error-plagued operation took much lustre off the Camelot that was the Kennedy administration.

The indictment, which also nets five Cuban air force pilots, alleges that aircraft of the ostensibly humanitarian organisation BTTR (Brothers to the Rescue) were fired upon by Cuban MiG aircraft on February 24, 1996. Three had taken off from South Florida heading to Cuba that day. Two unarmed civilian Cessna aircraft were destroyed, allegedly flying outside Cuban territory. Three American citizens and one resident of the US were killed.

The charges include one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals, two counts of destruction of an aircraft and four counts of murder. At the time, Castro was the Minister of Defence overseeing the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defence Force (DAAFAR). He is said to have ordered the five pilots to follow and eliminate the three BTTR aircraft.

The indictment does a superb job in making glaring omissions. There is no mention of the nervous mood of US officials at the time, notably those at the Federal Aviation Administration, State Department and White House. No mention, either, of the compounding recklessness of the BTTR missions. The flights were intended to seek and assist Cubans sailing to the US and imperilled at sea. They were, however, unauthorised and deemed provocative to the Cuban government, not least because they also pursued a propaganda campaign in Cuban airspace. FAA records made available by the invaluable offices of the National Security Archive and used in William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh’s Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (2014) are not exactly glowing about the BTTR, led by its obstinate founder, José Basulto.

The book usefully, and rather damningly, reveals the backchannel efforts by the Cuban government, including Fidel Castro, to convince the Clinton administration to ground the BTTR flights. In 1995, protests had been filed by the Civil Aeronautics Institute of Cuba claiming that BTTR aircraft had violated Cuban airspace by overflying populated zones and dropping propaganda material inciting an overthrow of the government. (Hardly a humanitarian enterprise.) The FAA commenced an investigation into the matter, warning Basulto numerous times to cease these “taunting” provocations. On January 11, 1995, for instance, representatives of the Miami Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) met with Basulto, advising him of the consequences arising from the unauthorised penetration of Cuban airspace. He was also warned that any violation of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) or any pertinent international regulations would be investigated, prosecuted and adjudicated. Despite taking steps to suspend his flying license, the agency showed a sufficient degree of weak will in permitting him to fly, despite his persistent habit of filing false flight plans.

On January 22, 1996, FAA official Cecelia Capestany informed her superiors of yet another unauthorised flight that took place two days prior. The State Department was “increasingly concerned about Cuban reactions to these flagrant violations. They are also asking from the FAA what is this agency doing to prevent/deter these actions.” She notes a call made the previous week by Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff to Transportation Secretary Federico Peña “to check on our case against Basulto. Worse case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row.”

That same month, Fidel Castro reached an agreement, or so he thought, with Democratic Rep. Bill Richardson of New Mexico for the release of certain political prisoners in exchange of a promise from President Bill Clinton that the BTTR planes would cease their operations. Richardson’s superficially rich offering, however, was not based on executive fiat but conservations with White House aides who then pressured Secretary Peña to chase up the FAA.

On the penultimate night of February 23, 1996, Richard Nuccio, the White House official overseeing Cuban matters, sent an email to National Security Advisor Sandy Berger informing him that Basulto would be flying the next day. “Previous overflights by Jose Basulto of the Brothers have been met with restraint by Cuban authorities,” he reported. The prescient warning follows. “Tensions are sufficiently high within Cuba, however, that we fear this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the plane.” When Nuccio pursued the matter with FAA officials in Miami, instructing them to block the flights, they flatly refused. A tepid warning to Basulto was deemed sufficient.

Despite some concerns voiced by functionaries within the FAA and the agitated airings of the State Department, it took the death of four pilots to force the “cease and desist” order directed at BTTR and Basulto barring “the operation of any civil aircraft within the territorial airspace of the Republic of Cuba without prior authorization from the Cuban Traffic Control Authority.”

This context is excised in the indictment, exonerating the criminal recklessness of Basulto and the conduct of officials in the FAA whose forcefulness was found wanting. BTTR’s flights are described as supporting “anti-Castro, pro-democracy movements in Cuba”, a description that ennobles them. The Castro government is taken to task for infiltrating the BTTR with the La Red Avispa (the Wasp Network) to report on its activities, while much is made about Cuban dissident groups keen on a “peaceful transition”. Surprise that the Cuban military should actually retaliate for threats to the country’s airspace is palpable and puerile. In a statement pouring cold water on the indictment, the Cuban embassy in Washington noted “more than 25 serious, deliberate and systematic violations of the country’s airspace” between 1994 and 1996. “These were not miscalculations, but rather a continuous campaign that jeopardized aeronautical safety.”

The stress from the Trump administration, instead, is on murder. As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explained, “Over three decades later, we are committed to holding those accountable for the murders of four brave Americans: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales.” Far from being brave, they were reckless, indifferent to warnings, waging a version of aerial politics that ended in predictable bloodshed.

The indictment is part of a series of coarse measures intended to wear down the regime and turn the island into a simpering client state. It is an extension of the Maduro-Venezuela formula drawn from gangster politics: ignore the leaders and, if necessary, kidnap them.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, taking liberties with the factual record on Cuba’s economic miseries (he blithely ignores the effects of the US blockade that has prevented oil shipments from Venezuela and other states on pain of crushing tariffs), is offering relief in the form of a US$100 million Trojan Horse: We will provide aid but only to American agents and entities we trust. Blackmail is in the offing. “We in the US are offering to help you not only alleviate the current crisis, but to also build a better future.” The insurgency virus is being readied, and Batista’s ghost rejoicing.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

26 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

There is something profoundly barbaric about preventing a besieged people from reaching God. Israel’s blockade of Gaza has now denied Palestinians the Hajj pilgrimage for the third consecutive year – turning one of Islam’s holiest obligations into another casualty of occupation, siege, and war. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been barred from undertaking the sacred journey to Mecca.

Elderly believers who waited decades for this moment now face the possibility of dying without fulfilling one of the central pillars of their faith. More than 70 selected pilgrims already have. This is not merely a restriction on movement. It is the deliberate humiliation of a people’s spiritual existence. They died waiting – not because of fate alone, but because siege and war transformed worship into an impossibility. Some had saved for decades. Others waited years for their names to emerge through the official Hajj selection process. They died carrying unfulfilled prayers.

Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing and other border points has completely halted religious travel from Gaza, severing Palestinians from one of the deepest expressions of Muslim spiritual life. Families who spent years saving for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage now find themselves trapped amid ruins, displacement camps, starvation, and grief. For many elderly Palestinians, Hajj is not tourism or leisure. It is the culmination of a lifetime of faith, sacrifice, and hope. Many dream their entire lives of standing before the Kaaba even once before death. Today, that dream is dying under siege.

The suffering extends beyond the pilgrimage itself. Gazans have also been unable to perform the traditional Udhiyah sacrifice during Eid al-Adha because Israel’s military assault has devastated the livestock sector while restrictions on imports continue to suffocate civilian life. Sacred seasons that ordinarily bring prayer, charity, communal gathering, and spiritual renewal now arrive amid hunger, displacement, mourning, and fear. Even the rituals through which communities’ express gratitude, remembrance, and solidarity have been shattered by war.

According to Palestinian religious authorities and humanitarian organizations, more than 10,000 Palestinians have now been prevented from performing Hajj over the course of three consecutive years because of Israel’s closure of crossings and its continuing military assault on Gaza. The blockade has effectively imprisoned an entire civilian population, denying them not only freedom of movement but access to one of the holiest obligations in Islam.

A May 2026 study by the Palestinian Center for Political Studies (PCPS), authored by Khaled Abu Amer, describes the destruction of Gaza’s Hajj and Umrah sector as a form of “structural economic genocide.” The report documents the collapse of all 78 licensed Hajj and Umrah travel companies operating in Gaza. Most offices were damaged or destroyed during Israel’s assault, according to Mohammed al-Astal, head of the Association of Hajj and Umrah Companies in Gaza. What has been destroyed is not simply an economic sector, but an entire social and spiritual infrastructure that connected Palestinians to the wider Muslim world.

Yet what is unfolding cannot be understood only in economic or administrative terms. The denial of Hajj represents something deeper: an assault on spiritual dignity, emotional survival, and collective identity. It strikes at the deepest layers of human longing – the desire to stand before God in prayer, repentance, equality, and peace alongside millions of believers from across the world.

For Palestinians in Gaza, religion is not separate from daily survival. Faith sustains dignity amid siege, bombardment, displacement, and grief. Mosques and churches are not only places of worship; they are spaces of memory, refuge, mourning, solidarity, and hope. To deny a population access to worship while simultaneously destroying homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches is to attack both physical and spiritual existence. The siege enters not only streets and borders, but also memory, ritual, mourning, and hope itself.

The story of an elderly Gazan woman Hanan al-Hams sitting in a tent beside the ruins of her destroyed home while mourning both her son and the loss of her pilgrimage captures this tragedy with painful clarity. Israel’s war has not merely reduced infrastructure to rubble; it has invaded the intimate emotional world of Palestinians, severing their connection to sacred rituals, communal belonging, and spiritual healing.

International law is unambiguous on these matters. Freedom of religion or belief is a fundamental human right protected under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These provisions guarantee every person the right to manifest religion through worship, observance, practice, and teaching. Preventing civilians from undertaking Hajj through prolonged siege and border closures is therefore not a simple administrative restriction. It is the denial of a universally protected religious freedom.

The blockade also raises grave concerns under international humanitarian law. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and measures of intimidation against civilian populations. No protected people may be punished for offences they did not personally commit. Yet Gaza’s entire civilian population continues to endure restrictions imposed through siege, bombardment, closure, displacement, and deprivation. The collective denial of movement for worship, pilgrimage, education, healthcare, and livelihood reveals the architecture of punishment imposed upon an occupied people.

International humanitarian law also prohibits the destruction of civilian infrastructure except where absolutely required by military necessity. The collapse of Gaza’s Hajj and Umrah institutions, the destruction of mosques and churches, the devastation of livestock necessary for Eid sacrifice, and the obstruction of humanitarian and religious movement collectively point toward a wider process of social destruction. The siege has transformed everyday civilian life into a condition of prolonged humiliation.

But beyond legal violations lies an even more profound moral question about the nature of power itself. Israel repeatedly presents itself internationally as a “Jewish State,” invoking religious identity in political discourse and diplomatic justification. Yet the systematic denial of Muslims’ access to one of Islam’s holiest obligations, alongside repeated attacks on churches, mosques, cemeteries, and religious institutions in Gaza and the West Bank, exposes a dangerous contradiction. A state that invokes faith while humiliating another people’s faith risks transforming religion into an instrument of domination rather than a source of ethical responsibility.

Judaism, like Islam and Christianity, contains deep traditions of justice, mercy, and protection for the oppressed. Many Jewish scholars, rabbis, Holocaust survivors, and human rights defenders themselves have condemned the occupation and the siege precisely because they believe such policies betray Jewish ethical teachings. What is unfolding in Gaza is therefore not a defence of religion, but the political weaponization of religious identity to legitimize exclusion, collective punishment, and domination.

Nor are Muslims alone in this suffering. Palestinian Christians have repeatedly faced restrictions on access to Jerusalem and Bethlehem during Easter and Christmas observances. Churches in Gaza have been struck during military operations, and Christian families, like their Muslim neighbours, endure siege, displacement, fear, and grief. The occupation wounds the shared spiritual fabric of an entire people.

The denial of Hajj must therefore be understood as part of a much larger architecture of dehumanization. A people deprived of worship, pilgrimage, sacred gathering, celebration, mourning, and spiritual continuity are not merely being controlled politically; they are being pushed toward cultural and emotional annihilation. The siege seeks not only to dominate territory, but to exhaust the human spirit itself.

What is happening in Gaza today is not simply the destruction of buildings or infrastructure. It is the systematic erosion of the conditions necessary for human dignity. A people unable to bury their dead properly, unable to gather for prayer, unable to celebrate sacred festivals, unable to travel for pilgrimage, and unable even to secure bread or medicine are being stripped of the rhythms through which humanity sustains itself.

No state that systematically humiliates another people’s faith, blocks their access to sacred obligations, destroys places of worship, and weaponizes siege against civilians can credibly claim moral superiority or civilizational virtue. This is not security policy. It is domination hardened into permanent structure.

A state that bombs mosques and churches, starves civilians during sacred seasons, destroys the means for Eid sacrifice, and imprisons an entire population behind military barriers cannot cloak itself in the language of religious morality while violating the ethical foundations common to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity alike.

What is unfolding in Gaza is not the defence of faith, but the weaponization of faith by a militarized state that invokes Jewish identity while violating the sacred principles of justice, mercy, and human dignity.

The denial of Hajj to Palestinians is therefore more than political repression. It is an assault on the sacred itself. It is an attempt to break not only bodies, but belief.

History will remember this siege not simply as a military campaign, but as a war carried out against the human spirit – against prayer, dignity, mourning, memory, and the right of a people to stand before God in peace.

Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned author-researcher and freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local justice struggles.

26 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Marwan Asmar

Israel’s government, soldiers and settlers destroyed between 13,000 and 14000 olive trees in the occupied West Bank in the first five months of 2026. The figures are based on different Palestinian and Israeli sources.

In May 2026 alone Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he had ordered the uprooting and destruction of 3000 trees in northern Palestine. The uprooting of these trees were ordered to be felled in a single day.

In early February, 2006 human rights’ groups reported that over 8000 trees were destroyed and a report by the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Commission (PWSC) released last Mid-May showed that 4,414 had been uprooted, destroyed and/or poisoned.

The uprooting of “Palestinian trees” by Israeli settlers backed by the Zionist army has become a normal state of affairs as it has increased viciously since October 2023 when over 37,200 olive trees were “uprooted”, “broken” and “burned” in conjunction with the Israeli war and slaughter of Gaza.

The situation spelled disaster for Palestinian farmers. In cahoots with Israeli soldiers, settlers would go down on Palestinian villages and towns and start uprooting olive trees out of sheer vandalism.

At the end of last April, this is exactly what happened when settlers from the “Adi Ad” settlement descended on the Turmus Aya village that lies to the north-east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and started to destroy and vandalize 400 olive trees.

As they did this, on Saturday night, they were guarded by the Israeli army. This attack came days after the settlers descended on the village and set fire to a house and a car there.

The attack on Turmus Aya is not an isolated incident. The village has been targeted for the past few years. The PWSC, a monitoring organization of such attacks said the Israeli army had been responsible for 1,322 of such attacks while the settlers involved for 497 acts of vandalism on different Palestinian cities with Hebron topping the list at (321), Nablus (315), Ramallah (292) and Jerusalem (203).

Statistics point out that Israel has destroyed between 800,000 and 1 million olive trees in the occupied Palestinian territories from 1967 till now. However, since that year, when Israel effectively occupied all of the Palestinian territories, it destroyed 2.5 million trees.

Besides olives, they included orange (different varieties), lemon, grapefruit and clementine trees. The Palestinian territories are known for their varieties like almond, figs, apricots, peaches and plums trees.

These trees were destroyed by the Israeli occupation for basic military takeover to expand the Palestinian lands with Israeli settlements – about 147 settlements and 224 outposts – and create the required infrastructure and roads for these since some of them resemble big cities.

In the case of the Smotrich announcement for example, and the uprooting of 3000 trees on Palestinian lands in the north West Bank, the purpose there was to expand the Israeli Shaked Industrial Park which is next to the settlement there that has the same name.

Gaza, another story

Gaza is another sad story for the Israeli genocide has affected the whole of the agricultural sector. During the last war on the Gaza Strip, Israel destroyed 1 million trees according to Fayyad Fayyad, head of the Palestinian Olive Council. The destruction literally decimated the agriculture sector of the enclave.

Prior to 7 October, 2023, Gaza had 1.1 million trees roughly producing 50,000 tons of olives every year but no more. About 98 percent of Gaza’s tree cropland has been destroyed.

Dr Mazen Qumsiyeh, a biologist at Bethlehem University, calls the destruction in Gaza an “ecocide” as statistics show that over the past two years and more, Israel has destroyed between 500,000 to 700,000 non-olive trees.

Today in Gaza everything has been razed to the ground. There had once been 35 olive oil presses in the Strip but most of these have been destroyed with only five left as of the end of last year.

The loss of a million olive trees is a $50-million-plus-loss since the total olive oil sector (West Bank and Gaza) contributed between $160 and $190 million to the Palestinian national economy as a direct result of exports to regional and international markets.

The olive oil sector accounts for roughly five percent of the Palestinian GDP and 20 percent of the agricultural sector. Further olive oil production sustains 100,000 families in the Palestinian territories.

Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman and blogs for crossfirearabia.com

25 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed 42 Palestinian police personnel since the so-called ceasefire took effect, according to the Palestinian Interior Ministry, which added that Israel is waging a “systematic campaign aimed at dismantling civil order and governance structures in the Strip and spreading chaos and insecurity.”

On Saturday, seven people were killed in an Israeli attack on a police post west of Gaza City, including a 13-year-old child and five police officers.

The Interior Ministry confirmed the “massacre” which comes in a “deliberate attempt to spread chaos and undermine public order within Palestinian society.”

It said Israel’s ongoing targeting of the police and civilians in the Gaza Strip “constitutes a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement and a flagrant breach of all international norms and conventions.”

It also blamed the mediators and the international community over their “silence on the ongoing crimes against the police and civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

There has been a spike in Israeli attacks in the war-torn Strip despite the ceasefire, particularly on police.

Israel has violated the ceasefire which took effect in October more than 2,800 times, killing hundreds and blocking the entry of much-needed aid.

Israeli forces have killed more than 870 Palestinians since the ceasefire, including over 300 children, women, and the elderly.

Over 72,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began on October 7, 2023.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk condemned Israel’s recent attacks in the Gaza Strip, saying that “the unrelenting pattern of killings” reflects Israel’s “sweeping impunity”.

“Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and a classroom,” Turk said.

The Interior Ministry noted that the repeated Israeli attacks targeting police facilities and striking police officers and personnel “constitute a war crime and a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, as police facilities are civilian protection institutions safeguarded under international law and must not be targeted.”

Hamas slammed the attacks as a “continuation of the crimes and terrorism against our people to perpetuate the state of lawlessness, sow chaos, and hinder any efforts to recover and restore normalcy to Gaza.”

It called on the international community, mediators, and guarantors of the ceasefire agreement to “impose an end to the occupation’s aggression and daily violations.”

The group also called for “providing the necessary protection and relief to the Palestinian people.”

According to Palestinians and rights groups, such attacks are part of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, as it seeks to dismantle the enclave’s security and justice structures by undermining public order and spreading chaos and insecurity.

25 May 2026

Source: countercurrents.org