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By Hugh Curran

PM Benjamin Netanyahu has alienated many in Israel and the U.S.,  some of whom revile his leadership: “The Times of Israel” reported on a Pew Survey finding that in April, 2025, 53% Of Americans had an unfavorable view of Israel compared to 42% in 2022, and “over half don’t trust PM Benjamin Netanyahu to do the right thing”. 

Haaretz News reported that “200 students at Cheltenham High School in suburban Philadelphia have petitioned for the school’s alumni hall of fame to eject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who graduated from the school in 1967.”

A writer for the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv noted: “The dangers of diminished US support, particularly as it reflects long-term and deeply rooted trends, cannot be overstated…Israel needs the support of the [American] superpower for the foreseeable future.

Dr Guy Shalev, Director of Israel’s “Physicians for Human Rights” commented: “We must be committed to the truth. That truth lies [not only] in the details [but also] the bigger picture…we published a report on Israel’s actions in Gaza and [after] analyzing those actions, [came to the conclusion that they] led to the destruction of the living conditions necessary for the survival of Palestinians in Gaza. The ”destruction of the healthcare system, the…starvation [and], blockade, the weaponization of humanitarian aid, [the] displacement, destruction of homes and sanitation infrastructure, the spread of communicable diseases …are all contributing factors. When examining all these together, we identify a clear pattern that indicates [an] intent [to destroy the living conditions necessary for the survival of Palestinians in Gaza”]

Five Israeli university presidents called on PM Netanyahu to tell the IDF to ramp up efforts to “solve the horrible hunger issue in Gaza,” adding that … we have a special duty to act using all available measures to avoid and avert cruel and indiscriminate harm to innocent men, women and children.”

The most powerful repudiation of Netanyahu’s leadership has come from Ehud Barak, former PM of Israel who recently declared that “Israel is becoming a pariah state. We need massive “Nonviolent Civil Disobedience” until Netanyahu is ousted. “This is an emergency call asking people to courageously confront reality and take action to stop the landslide [of worldwide condemnation]. Barak continued: “The Israel of the Declaration of Independence and the Zionist vision is collapsing. The present emergency [which needs to be faced] requires us to answer key questions [beginning with]: What is happening to us? Who is responsible for this?… Barak accuses the current regime of “attempting to transform Israel into a non-democratic entity and…that the protests, including general strikes, [appear to have] reached a level  …preceding government collapse”. 

The use of overwhelming power in the destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza by Israel’s military makes full use of American weaponry during their onslaughts. Despite this lethal and indiscriminate use of power there are alternative movements involving peace activists marching, organizing demonstrations and strikes by means of “Nonviolent Civil Disobedience”. This coalition of 160 peace groups, (ALLMEPS) are demanding a ceasing of violence and the creation of a more just system for all people in Palestine and Israel.  .

The Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University,Omer Bartov, has asserted publicly that the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the continuing attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, constitute Genocide. Fifty-five other Genocide Studies scholars have signed a letter expressing similar sentiments. Bartov, who served in the Israeli military for four years, noted in an interview on NPR, that the systematic destruction of schools and universities and hospitals, convinced him that the Israeli government, with its authoritarian proclivities may eventually turn its violence upon its own internal critics.

In “Jewish News” the Israeli historian Yuval Harari, in a discussion in front of a London audience, warns that a “spiritual catastrophe for Judaism” is taking place in its “ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank”. He states that “the intention is to create a new Israel based on an ideology of Jewish supremacy”. Such intentions, Harari states, are the result of “anti-Jewish values” and are taking place in the framework of an even “wider collapse of the global world order”. This “global world order” was originally conceived by the U.S. but, ironically, is now being destroyed by the U.S., a paradoxical happening that few in American leadership positions seem able to grasp. The reality is that the moral underpinning that provided U.S. leadership in the creation of “the global world order” has become badly fractured and this is happening while most Americans are oblivious. One of Yuval’s observations about Israel, and other nations, is  “that history is carried out by only five or ten percent of the population, the rest sit at home” [perhaps uncomprehending the full significance of events taking place in their name].

Hugh Curran teaches in the Peace Studies Program at University of Maine

30 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Salim Nazzal 

Losing Ziad Rahbani, for us the dreamers of the left in 1970s Beirut was not just the departure of a brilliant artist. It felt like a light going out, a light that had walked with us through the darkness. It was as if we had lost a friend whose soul we had known long before we shook his hand, a companion who walked the same streets, carried the same dream, and believed, as we did, that art could shake the pillars of this crumbling world.

Maybe I’m exaggerating or maybe not. Ziad didn’t belong to one generation or one movement, but we felt he was “one of us,” one of those who believed that a song could be a political manifesto, and that theater could be an arena of struggle, not just a luxury.

I remember him at the beginning of his journey, the day I saw him by chance at a café in Hamra alone, lost in his thoughts, as if traveling deep inside himself. My friend said, “That’s Ziad, Fairuz’s son.” We approached him, greeted him, and he responded with a faint smile.

Not long after, I attended his play Nazl Al-Sourour. I walked out of the hall feeling as though I had returned from a revolutionary voyage. I turned to the friend who was with me and said, with excitement: “This young man is a genius.” I don’t know where she is now life that brings people together also tears them apart. But if she reads these words, perhaps she will remember my awe that night, and how I spoke to her about it as if it were a prophecy.

That was just before the outbreak of the civil war, when Beirut was still Beirut the city of culture and beautiful noise. Around that time, I read The Mills of Beirut by Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad, a copy I had bought from the Lebanese University bookstore in UNESCO. And just like with Nazl Al-Sourour, I felt something cracking beneath the surface as if both the novel and the play were early warnings of the storm to come.

I lived then in Sin El Fil, in a small room with a garden, and we would spend our evenings listening to Joseph Sakr’s songs. I remember well when that same friend and I first listened to Al-Haleh Taabaneh Ya Layla, before Ziad himself would sing it later with his tender, angry voice. The voice, the lyrics, the melody all were a soft cry against everything.

During that period, the stage of Shoushou was thriving, and I would laugh with a heavy heart watching his plays. But my heart remained tied to Nazl Al-Sourour. Perhaps because it was about a group of friends dreaming of revolution and I was one of them. Not on stage, but in life. I was a dreamy communist, convinced that change was inevitable, and that Beirut could be reborn to the rhythm of songs, manifestos, and words.

But time is merciless. It slowly trimmed down our certainties. I later visited the Soviet Union, and that was the beginning of the fracture in my conviction. There, I started to piece myself back together. I never fully abandoned the dream, but I no longer saw it with the same innocence.

Still, Ziad remained a constant presence in my soul. I followed his works from A Long American Film to Bel Nesbeh La Bokra Shou. He remained, for me, that rare state of being on the edge: a rebel who didn’t raise slogans, an artist who didn’t compromise.

Ziad was defiance made music, rejection spoken in bittersweet satire. He lived through the era of great Arab defeats, yet tried to redefine the pulse of life. He wasn’t a preacher, but a lover of honest phrases, of melodies that said what newspapers could not.

And despite his communist background, he was never a prisoner of ideology. I saw him as naturally liberal free in spirit and thought, flitting between ideas like a bird that never settles in a cage, never repeating itself. That’s what made his art so expansive, so full of fresh rhythm.

As for his compositions for Fairuz they are collective memory. They’re not just music, but windows we open onto ourselves, onto days that weren’t perfect, but were real. They hold as much pain as they do longing, and just enough dream to help us endure what’s still to come.

Dr. Salim Nazzal is President of the European-Palestinian Cultural Forum

30 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sally Dugman

Back in 2009, I wrote an article in which I mentioned:

“The taxpayers of Mississippi, whether they condoned the action or not, bought their current or a former governor an eight seat plane for 3.7 million dollars. The state’s authorizing fiscal managers, obviously, must have deemed it an essential for his office and ratified its purchase order. In addition, it costs approximately $1,200 to operate for each hour in use for trips by the present governor’s family, associates and himself.”

I, also, wrote in the same piece:

“Then again, Nancy Pelosi, from a state in which towns and counties are, one after another, publicly declaring bankruptcy, seems possibly much worse than her Mississippi counterparts in her choices pertaining to flagrantly self-indulgent behaviors. Indeed, it is outrageous that many of our government representatives have the arrogant gall to blithely continue in their assumption that they are entitled to extraordinary perks and privileges at taxpayers’ expense despite the economic downturn, along with related homelessness, joblessness and other serious hardships being faced by many citizens who voted them into office.

“Meanwhile, her excess is particularly evident in that she has spent an exorbitant amount for frequently jetting back and forth between California and Washington, D.C., along with requesting special stipulations relative to her numerous flights. Indeed, according to Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, “On Feb. 1 [2007], unnamed administration and congressional sources leaked to the Washington Times that Pelosi was ‘seeking regular military flights not only for herself and her staff but also for relatives and for other members of the California delegation [1].’” 

“At the same time, one can assume that, while many politicians are encouraging fossil fuel curtailment for the public at large, she is aware that her carbon footprint is blatantly high due to an unrestrained desire to flit back and forth across the American terrain whenever the inclination strikes.”

Now in the present day, I’ll add that I’m very sorry that a mentally ill criminal broke into her home and repeatedly thudded her elderly husband in the head with a hammer as a retribution since he hates her so much. How bizarre and truly awful!

Meanwhile, I wonder about from where her $261.90 million derived. No, I don’t really any more than the money that the rest of most wealthy politicians obtain in their vast stores of lucre, including Presidents such as Obama who hired a private cook for his household.

The answer, actually,  is simple in the end. Moneyed private citizens and corporate heads try to bribe and influence government decisions in their favor. So because of the Citizen United ruling (Citizens United v. FEC), they load millions upon millions in gifts like a jet and vacations, other lavish and expensive favors and financial donations  onto rulers whose special treatment that they want to curry.

This happening even impacts the Supreme Court. For example, some of its members, most notably Clarence Thomas, have taken millions of dollars in bribes, vacations, jet and ship trips, expensive private school tuition for a young relative and more. It’s all well documented. 1 2

Meanwhile, others like Donald Trump sue corporations like Paramount and get away with the gained loot since the company, Paramount or whichever other one it is, wants favors in return for capitulating. Further, he gets to sell all sorts of products while in office such as cryptocurrency, guitars, watches, hats, talking clocks, pictures and much, much more. So, it’s a real cash cow in the final reckoning.. along with other business ventures in operation that he pursues.

So aside from Supreme Court and POTUS gains, what more financially slimy, actually,  involves Congress, itself ? It’s this in my view: Over half of Congress are at least millionaires and their lucre more often than not is largely ill gotten gain. 4 5

The way that one of the major scams is used by some Senators and House Representatives is really easy to note. It goes like this:

Let’s say that I’m on a defense committee and the group members have decided to give more bombs and cash to Israel to kill Palestinian citizens and to the Ukraine leaders to slaughter  Russian  and South Korean troops. I, then, know that once my committee Director announces this being so, the stock of the weapon and war machine manufacturers involved in this butchery will wildly rise in value. So I will buy stocks in these companies in advance of the public announcement to make illicit profits for myself.

In fact and according to Craig Holman and Savannah Wooten, who wrote the Federal Times article,  Lawmakers still benefitting from share trading in defense stocks: “In starker terms, nearly one in five members of Congress traded stocks in businesses to which they are privy to inside information and for which they can affect the value of those stocks through official actions.

“This does not reflect well on Congress.

“The problem is particularly bad in the defense industry. Congressional stock trading can arguably be seen as “war profiteering” – members of cashing in on defense industry stocks at the same time Congress receives updates on the wars in Ukraine and Israel and sets the Pentagon’s annual budget, half of which goes to military contractors every year.

“The potential for unethical stock trading may be worse for military corporations than any other. With the onslaught of new wars, Congress added $70 billion over the last two years to an already bloated Pentagon budget, much of which is funneled directly into the coffers of defense contractors like Palatir, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The stock values in these companies have since experienced double-digitgrowth – a lucrative business opportunity not overlooked by lawmakers calling the shots.

“At least 25 members of Congress sitting on national security committees have simultaneously purchased stock in these very same companies. The majority of these members sit on the Senate and House Armed Services committees, the entities responsible for overseeing the Defense Department budget and contracts. Stocks are held by both Republicans and Democrats. Reaping the benefits of the military-industrial-complex is thoroughly bipartisan.”

Moreover, we citizens should not for a moment naively think that other industries are also not involved in this seamy graft by many corrupt and sleazy political operatives who are put into office by innocent and well meaning voters excluding me as I, as a matter of conscience, absolutely refuse to elect into office a lesser of two evils like a Bombs Away Biden over the alternative murderous monster who also gives hard earned taxpayer money to blow up, starve and delimb or bury alive in building rubble elders, mothers, fathers, older children and babies alike, as well as others such as some soldiers.

Meanwhile, please don’t imagine for a moment that many (not all) of our politicians don’t have their greedy piggy noses in insider trading involving other industries besides murderous warring and genocidal related ones. Of course, they do — such as with pharmaceuticals like the lucrative Covid-19 actions,  gain of function actions and much, much more!

1. U.S. Supreme Court justices take lavish gifts — then raise the bar for bribery prosecutions

2  Legal scholar: Clarence Thomas “corruption” almost “certainly unlawful and ethically reprehensible”

3 Paramount, President Trump reach $16 million settlement over “60 Minutes” lawsuit

4 Majority In Congress Are Millionaires : It’s All Politics

5 List of current members of the United States Congress by wealth

6. Members of Congress Investing In Defense Revealed

7. Politician Trading: If You Can’t Stop Them, Join Them | Alerts and Articles | Insights

Sally Dugman lives in and writes from Massachusetts, USA where she is represented by two good Senators and a House Congressman, who all try to stymie corruption and uplift society … unlike some other creepy pigs in Washington, D.C.

29 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It’s been almost an article of faith among Israeli officials: the state they represent is incapable of genocide, their actions always spurred by the noblest, necessary motivations of self-defence against satanic enemies who wish genocide upon Jews.  Over time, as Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov writes, “Ethical concerns and moral qualms were brushed aside as either marginal or distracting in the face of the ultimate cataclysm that is the genocide of the Jews.” 

This form of reasoning, known otherwise as “Holocaust-ism” or “Shoah-tiyut”, is a moral conceit left bare in the war of annihilation being waged in Gaza against the Palestinian populace.  Israeli human rights groups have taken note of this, despite the drained reserves of empathy evident in the Israel proper. (A Pew Research Center poll conducted last month found that a mere 16% of Jewish Israelis thought peaceful coexistence with Palestinians was possible.)

In its latest report pointedly titled Our Genocide, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem offers a blunt assessment: “Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.  In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” 

The infliction of genocide, the organisation acknowledges, is a matter of “multiple and parallel practices” applied over a period of time, with killing being merely one component.  Living conditions can be destroyed, concentration camps and zones created, populations expelled and policies to systematically prevent reproduction enacted. “Accordingly, genocidal acts are various actions intended to bring about the destruction of a distinct group, as part of a deliberate, coordinated effort by a ruling authority.”

Our Genocide suggests that certain conditions often precede the sparking of a genocide.  Israel’s relations with Palestinians had been characterised by “broader patterns of settler-colonialism”, with the intention of ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians – economically, politically, socially, and culturally.”

B’Tselem draws upon three crucial elements centred on ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians”: “life under an apartheid regime that imposes separation, demographic engineering, and ethnic cleansing; systemic and institutionalized use of violence against Palestinians, while the perpetrators enjoy impunity; and institutionalized mechanisms of dehumanization and framing Palestinians as an existential threat.”  The attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7, 2023 was a violent event that created a “sense of existential threat among the perpetrating group” enabling the “ruling system to carry out genocide.”  As B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak notes, this sense of threat was promoted by an “extremist, far-right messianic government” to pursue “an agenda of destruction and expulsion.”

Israeli policy in the Strip since October 2023 could not be rationalised as a focused, targeted attempt to destroy the rule of Hamas or its military efficacy.  “Statements by senior Israeli decision-makers about the nature and assault in Gaza have expressed genocidal intent throughout.”  Ditto Israeli military officers of all ranks.  Gaza’s residents had been dehumanised, with many Jewish-Israelis believing “that their lives are of negligible value compared to Israel’s national goals, if not worthless altogether.”

The report also notes the use of certain terminology that haunts the literature of genocidal euphemism: the creation of “humanitarian zones” that would still be bombed despite supposedly providing protection for displaced civilians; the use of “kill zones” by the Israeli military and the absence of any standardised rules of engagement through the Strip, often “determined at the discretion of commanders on the ground or based on arbitrary criteria.”

Wishing to be comprehensive, the authors of the report do not ignore Israel’s actions in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.  Airstrikes regularly take place against refugee camps in the northern part of the territory since October 2023.  Even more lethal open-fire policies have been used in the West Bank, with the use of kill zones suggesting “the broader ‘Gazafication’ of Israel’s methods of warfare.”

Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), has also published a legal-medical appraisal on the intentional destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, finding that the Israeli campaign in Gaza “constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.”  The evidence examined by the group “shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system and other vital systems necessary for the population’s survival.”  The evolving nature of the campaign suggested a “deliberate progression” from the initial bombing and forced evacuation of hospitals in the northern part of the Strip to calculated collapse of the healthcare system across the entire enclave.  The dismantling of the health system involved rendering hospitals “non-functional”, the blocking of medical evaluations and the elimination of such vital services as trauma care, surgery, dialysis and maternal health. 

Added to this has been the direct targeting of health care workers, involving the death and detention of over 1,800 members “including many senior specialists” and the deliberate restriction of humanitarian relief through militarised distribution points that pose lethal risks to aid recipients.  “This coordinated assault has produced a cascading failure of health and humanitarian infrastructure, compounded by policies leading to starvation, disease and the breakdown of sanitation, housing, and education systems.”

PHRI contends that, at the very least, three core elements of Article II of the Genocide Convention are met: the killing of members of a group (identified by nationality, ethnicity, race or religion); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group and deliberately inflicting on the group those conditions of life to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.

In accepting that genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinians, Our Genocide makes that most pertinent of points: the dry legal analysis of genocide tends to be distanced from a historical perspective.  “The legal definition is narrow, having been shaped in large part by the political interests of the states whose representatives drafted it.”  The high threshold of identifying genocide, and the international jurisprudence on the subject, had produced a disturbing paradox: genocide tends to be recognised “only after a significant portion of the targeted group has already been destroyed and the group as such has suffered irreparable harm.”  The thrust of these clarion calls from B’Tselem and PHRI is urgently clear: end this state of affairs before the Palestinians become yet another historical victim of such harm.

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

29 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

The series of lying statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there is “no starvation” in Gaza has produced a powerful backlash by masses of people around the world who are horrified by the evidence that more than 100 Palestinians—the majority children—have died from lack of food and nutrition.

On Sunday, Netanyahu denied the starvation in Gaza while speaking at a Christian conference in Jerusalem. Speaking at an event hosted by Trump supporter and prominent evangelical pastor Paula White, Netanyahu declared:

There is no starvation in Gaza—and there is no policy of starvation in Gaza. We facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the conflict. If not, there would be no Gazans left. The sole entity obstructing the flow of humanitarian aid is Hamas. They are reversing the truth.

After 20 months of mass death caused by continuous Israeli bombings, drone missile strikes and ground assaults, Netanyahu also falsely stated that Israel “has provided humanitarian corridors and promoted airdrops of aid,” and called reports of starvation “a blatant falsehood.” He even went so far as to assert that images being circulated around the world of Palestinian children starved to death are fake.

Netanyahu said, “a campaign … distributing false pictures, creating an image of starvation which doesn’t exist.” His comments came on the heels of reports and viral images documenting skeletal children, desperate families and hospitals overwhelmed by malnutrition, which Israeli officials have tried to dismiss as “fake, distributed by Hamas.”

These denials by the fascist Israeli prime minister are directly contradicted by Gaza health authorities and international agencies who track hunger deaths daily. As of Monday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports at least 147 Palestinians—including 88 children—have died from malnutrition and starvation since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023.

Al Jazeera reported Monday that in the last 24 hours, 14 more people, including two children, perished from hunger and malnutrition. Health officials warn the true toll is likely far higher due to communication breakdowns and the isolating chaos imposed by ongoing strikes.

Global organizations, including the World Health Organization, have described the growing mortality toll as “mass starvation,” with over 2 million still at risk as food supplies remain throttled by the Israeli blockade and bureaucratic hurdles. Testimonies from Gaza highlight desperate families unable to find food, with malnourished mothers unable to produce breastmilk and fatal shortages of baby formula.

Netanyahu’s assertions have unleashed a wave of international condemnation. The United Nations, numerous governments and more than 100 humanitarian aid organizations have decried the Israeli policy as “orchestrated famine” and “genocide,” emphasizing that the starvation in Gaza is not accidental but a product of deliberate deprivation and the systematic obstruction of overland aid.

Protests have erupted in major cities across the US, Europe and the Middle East, where demonstrators have filled streets demanding an immediate end to the blockade and the free flow of aid into Gaza.

In New York City, hundreds marched through Manhattan during a mass “Day of Action,” chanting for justice for Palestine and decrying US complicity in what they described as genocide and collective punishment. Outside the White House in Washington, protesters banged pots and carried signs reading “Let the food trucks in” and “Israel stop starving Gaza,” calling on the American administration to halt its support for Israel and enforce urgent humanitarian access.

European capitals have seen similar scenes. In Berlin, hundreds gathered, banging kitchenware and carrying banners such as “Stop the genocide” and “Yes to bread, no to bombs,” urging the international community, and especially Germany, to intervene and end the famine. In addition, protests and public outrages were reported across the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Greece, with actions ranging from large marches to direct blockades of businesses linked to Israeli trade and arms shipments.

Aid agencies have called continuously for the opening of all land crossings, a halt to the siege and immediate ceasefire, warning that “starvation as a method of warfare is a war crime.” Even within Israel, opposition has grown as hundreds of Israelis have joined demonstrations criticizing their government including prominent academics and writers denouncing the policies as beyond the pale of morality.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, called the trickle of aid allowed by Israel “a drop in the ocean,” warning that 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours without immediate intervention.

The severity of the public outrage over the starvation of Palestinian babies has also forced hypocritical statements from leading representatives of the imperialist countries who have backed the genocide in Gaza since it began.

While visiting Scotland, President Donald Trump unconvincingly said, “Those children look very hungry. That’s real starvation, and you can’t fake that. The kids need to be fed.” Vice President JD Vance also feigned sympathy saying, “the United States aims to ensure that starving children receive nourishment.”

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron jointly referred to the “egregious” actions in Gaza but took no action to stop them. Starmer’s government has even claimed in court that there is “no serious risk of genocide in Gaza.”

In its own public relations maneuver, Israel announced on Sunday a “tactical pause” in its military campaign. The army said it would suspend combat operations for 10 hours each day in three areas—Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Muwasi—to “facilitate” aid delivery.

However, even as a trickle of aid was let into Gaza, Israeli strikes killed dozens, including those waiting for food in “safe zones,” illustrating once again that the real aim of the Zionist regime is to terrorize the Palestinian people in advance of their permanent removal from the Strip.

On Monday, Israeli military actions in Gaza resulted in the deaths of at least 78 Palestinians, according to health officials in the territory. Strikes were reported across multiple locations, with some of the deadliest air and artillery attacks occurring outside the designated 10-hour daily “pause.”

Among those killed were a pregnant woman and her newborn baby, who both died after an Israeli airstrike hit a house and nearby tents in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis. The newborn had been delivered via emergency surgery but did not survive long after birth.

Other strikes targeted homes in Khan Younis and additional sites across the enclave. Reports confirm at least 11 people, including more than half women and children, were killed in a separate attack on a residential building, while additional casualties occurred elsewhere in Gaza as attacks continued amid the humanitarian crisis.

Aid organizations quickly condemned the deceptive “pauses” as inadequate and cynical diversions from any real solution. Numerous truckloads of food remain stuck at Gaza’s periphery, while children continue to die of starvation inside, as Israel blames others for the lack of food distribution.

All the stated humanitarian concerns by the imperialist powers and Israel are exposed by ongoing military operations and the real plans for mass displacement of Palestinians. Israel’s preparations for a “humanitarian city” in Rafah—a concentration camp near the Egyptian border—are still in the works.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) are working toward the corralling of as many as 2 million Palestinians into a tightly guarded camp in Rafah, intending to “deradicalize and reintegrate” residents and later “prepare them for relocation,” that is, permanent expulsion from Gaza.

Under this plan, camp residents would be cut off from the outside world, forbidden to leave and exposed to further deprivation and violence. It is to this end of ethnic cleansing that the starvation of the Palestinian population is aimed.

As images and reports of starvation in Gaza continue to circulate, the world’s population is becoming aware of these events which recall the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the 20th century during World War II. The crimes against humanity now being committed by Israel in Gaza, with the complicity of leaders like Trump, Starmer and Macron, will be remembered as harbingers of revolutionary struggles by the working class that will overthrow the world capitalist system.

29 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By William D. Hartung

When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence wielded by a partnership between the military and a growing cohort of U.S. weapons contractors and came up with the ominous term “military-industrial complex,” he could never have imagined quite how large and powerful that complex would become.  In fact, in recent years, one firm — Lockheed Martin — has normally gotten more Pentagon funding than the entire U.S. State Department. And mind you, that was before the Trump administration moved to sharply slash spending on diplomacy and jack up the Pentagon budget to an astonishing $1 trillion per year.

In a new study issued by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, Stephen Semler and I lay out just how powerful those arms makers and their allies have become, as Pentagon budgets simply never stop rising. And consider this: in the five years from 2020 to 2024, 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending went to private firms and $791 billion went to just five companies: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). And mind you, that was before Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget bill landed on planet Earth, drastically slashing spending on diplomacy and domestic programs to make room for major tax cuts and near-record Pentagon outlays.

In short, the “garrison state” Eisenhower warned of has arrived, with negative consequences for nearly everyone but the executives and shareholders of those giant weapons conglomerates and their competitors in the emerging military tech sector who are now hot on their trail. High-tech militarists like Peter Thiel of Palantir, Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey of Anduril have promised a new, more affordable, more nimble, and supposedly more effective version of the military-industrial complex, as set out in Anduril’s “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” an ode to the supposed value of those emerging tech firms. 

Curiously enough, that Anduril essay is actually a remarkably apt critique of the Big Five contractors and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon, pointing out their unswerving penchant for cost overruns, delays in scheduling, and pork-barrel politics to preserve weapons systems that all too often no longer serve any useful military purpose. That document goes on to say that, while the Lockheed Martins of the world served a useful function in the ancient days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, today they are incapable of building the next-generation of weaponry.  The reason: their archaic business model and their inability to master the software at the heart of a coming new generation of semi-autonomous, pilotless weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing.  For their part, the new titans of tech boldly claim that they can provide exactly such a futuristic generation of weaponry far more effectively and at far less cost, and that their weapons systems will preserve or even extend American global military dominance into the distant future by outpacing China in the development of next generation technologies.

War and a Possible Coming Techno-Autocracy

Could there indeed be a new, improved military-industrial complex just waiting in the wings, one aligned with this country’s actual defense needs that doesn’t gouge taxpayers in the process? 

Don’t count on it, not at least if it’s premised on the development of “miracle weapons” that will cost so much less and do so much more than current systems. Such a notion, it seems, arises in every generation, only to routinely fall flat. From the “electronic battlefield” that was supposed to pinpoint and destroy Viet Cong forces in the jungles of Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War years to Ronald Reagan’s failed vision of an impenetrable “Star Wars” missile shield, to the failure of precision-guided munitions and networked warfare to bring victory in Iraq and Afghanistan during this country’s Global War on Terror, the notion that superior military technology is the key to winning America’s wars and expanding U.S. power and influence has been routinely marked by failure. And that’s been true even if the weapons work as advertised (which all too often they don’t).

And while you’re at it, don’t forget, for example, that, nearly 30 years later, the highly touted, high-tech F-35 combat aircraft — once hailed as a technological marvel-in-the-making that would usher in a revolution in both warfare and military procurement — still isn’t ready for prime time. Designed for multiple war-fighting tasks, including winning aerial dogfights, supporting troops on the ground, and bombing enemy targets, the F-35 has turned out to be able to do none of those things particularly well. And to add insult to injury, the plane is so complex that it spends almost as much time being maintained or repaired as being ready to do battle.

That history of technological hubris and strategic failure should be kept in mind when listening to the — so far unproven — claims of the leaders of this country’s military-tech sector about the value of their latest gadgets. For one thing, everything they propose to build — from swarms of drones to unpiloted aircraft, land vehicles, and ships — will rely on extremely complex software that is bound to fail somewhere along the way. And even if, by some miracle, their systems, including artificial intelligence, work as advertised, they may not only not prove decisive in the wars of the future but make wars of aggression that much more likely. After all, countries that master new technologies are tempted to go on the attack, putting fewer of their own people at immediate risk while doing devastating harm to targeted populations. The use of Palantir’s technology by the Israeli Defense Forces to increase the number of targets devastated in a given time frame in their campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza could foreshadow the new age of warfare if emerging military technologies aren’t brought under some system of control and accountability.

A further risk posed by AI-driven warfare is the possibility that the new weapons could choose their targets without human intervention.  Current Pentagon policy promises to keep a human “in the loop” in the use of such systems, but military logic runs counter to such claims. As Anduril President and Chief Strategy Officer Christian Brose has written in his seminal book Kill Chain, the high-tech wars of the future will hinge on which side can identify and destroy its targets most quickly — an imperative that would ensure slow-moving humans were left out of the process.

In short, two possibilities arise if the U.S. military transitions to the “new improved” military-industrial complex espoused by the denizens of Silicon Valley: complex systems that don’t perform as advertised, or new capabilities that may make war both more likely and more deadly. And such dystopian outcomes will only be reinforced by the ideology of the new Silicon Valley militarists. They see themselves as both the “founders” of a new form of warfare and “the new patriots” poised to restore American greatness without the need for a democratic government in the war-making mix. Their ideal, in fact, would be to ensure that the government got out of the way and let them solve the myriad problems we face alone. Ayn Rand would be proud.

Such a techno-autocracy would be far more likely to serve the interests of a relatively small elite than aid the average American in any way. From Peter Thiel’s quest for a way to live forever to Elon Musk’s desire to enable the mass colonization of space, it’s not at all clear that, if such goals could even be achieved, they would be generally available. It’s more likely that such opportunities would be restricted to the species of superior beings that the techno-militarists see themselves as being.

The Ultimate Brawl Between the Big Five and the Emerging Tech Firms?

Still, the techno-militarists face serious obstacles in their quest to reach the top rungs of power and influence, not least among them, the continued clout of old-school weapons makers. After all, they still receive the vast bulk of Pentagon weapons spending, based in part on their millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign expenditures and their ability to spread jobs to almost every state and district in the country. These tools of influence give the Big Five far deeper roots in and influence over Congress than the new tech firms. These large, legacy companies also influence government policy through their funding of hawkish think tanks that help shape government policies designed to regulate their conduct, and so much more. 

Of course, one way to prevent the ultimate brawl between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms would be to feed them both with ample funding — but that would require a Pentagon budget that would soar well beyond the present trillion-dollar mark. There are, of course, some projects that could benefit both factions, ranging from Donald Trump’s pet Golden Dome missile defense scheme, which could incorporate hardware from the Big Five with software from the emerging tech firms, to Boeing’s new F-47 combat aircraft program, which calls for unpiloted “wing men” likely to be produced by Anduril or another military tech firm. So, the question of confrontation versus cooperation between the new and old guard in the military sector has yet to be settled.  If the rival firms end up turning their lobbying resources against each other and going for each other’s proverbial throats, it could weaken their grip on the rest of us and perhaps reveal useful information that might undermine the authority and credibility of both sides. 

But count on one thing: neither sector has the best interests of the public in mind, so we need to prepare to fight back ourselves regardless of how their battle plays out.

Okay, then, what could we possibly do to head off the nightmare scenario of a world run by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and crew? First, we’ll need the kind of “alert and knowledgeable” citizenry that Dwight D. Eisenhower pointed to so long ago as the only antidote to an ever more militarized society. That would mean concerted efforts by both the public and the government (which would, of course, have to be run by someone unlike Donald J. Trump — already a project in itself!). 

At the moment, the tech sector is indeed increasingly embedded in the Trump administration and he owes a number of them a distinct debt of gratitude for helping him over the top in the 2024 election. Despite his very public and bitter falling out with fellow narcissist Elon Musk, the influence of the tech sector within his administration remains all too strong, starting with Vice President J.D. Vance, who owes his career to the employment, mentoring, and financial support of Silicon Valley militarist Peter Thiel. And don’t forget that a substantial cohort of former employees of Palantir and Anduril have already been given key posts in this administration. 

Creating a counterweight to those new-age militarists will require a full-scale societal effort, including educators, scientists, and technologists, the labor movement, non-tech business leaders, and activists of all stripes. Silicon Valley workers did, in fact, organize a number of protests against the militarization of their handiwork before being beaten back. Now, a new wave of such activism is all too desperately needed. 

Just as many of the scientists who helped build the atomic bomb spent their post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki lives trying to rein in or abolish nuclear weapons, a cohort of scientists and engineers in the tech sector needs to play a leading role in beginning to craft guardrails to limit the military uses of the technologies they helped develop. Meanwhile, the student movement against the use of U.S. weapons in Gaza has begun to expand its horizons to target the militarization of universities writ large. In addition, environmentalists need to double down on criticisms of the immense energy requirements needed to power AI and crypto, while labor leaders need to reckon with the consequences of AI destroying jobs in the military and civilian sectors alike. And all of this has to happen in the context of a far greater technological literacy, including among congressional representatives and workers in government agencies charged with regulating the suppliers of new military technologies.

None of that is, of course, likely to happen except in the context of a resurgence of democracy and a committed effort to fulfill the unmet rhetorical promises that undergird the myth of the American dream. And speaking of contexts, here’s one that anybody preparing to protest the further militarization of this society should take into account: contrary to the belief of many key figures from the Pentagon to Wall Street to Main Street, the peak of American military and economic power has indeed passed, never to return. The only rational course is to craft policies that maintain American influence in the context of a world where power has been defused and cooperation is all too essential. 

Such a view, of course, is the polar opposite of the bombastic, bullying approach of the Trump administration, which, if it persists, will only accelerate American decline. And in that context, the key question is whether the widespread harm inherent in the new budget bill — which will only continue to wildly enrich the Pentagon and big arms firms of both kinds, while hitting the rest of us across the political spectrum — could prompt a new surge of public engagement and a genuine debate about what kind of world we want to live in and how this country could play a constructive (rather than destructive) role in bringing it about.

Featured image: Pentagon by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC B-NC 2.0 / Flickr

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author, with Ben Freeman, of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home (forthcoming from Bold Type Books). 

28 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Shariq Us Sabah

“He is not a believer whose stomach is filled while his neighbour goes hungry.”
— Prophet Muhammad

In October 2023, images emerged from Gaza of a mother boiling grass to feed her children. Weeks later, in India’s Jharkhand state, news quietly surfaced of a nine-year-old tribal boy who collapsed in his classroom from chronic undernourishment. Separated by 4,000 kilometers and vastly different political contexts, both children were victims of the same structural violence. Hunger is not a misfortune. It is policy.

In both Gaza and India, hunger is not about the unavailability of food. It is about access. Who gets food, who is denied it, and why. This is not a failure of logistics or nature. It is a failure of politics. And in both cases, the children suffering are mostly poor, racialized, and forgotten.

India: Hunger as Bureaucratic Neglect

India is no stranger to malnutrition. In fact, it ranks 111th out of 125 countries in the 2023 Global Hunger Index, below neighboring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. According to the National Family Health Survey 5 (2019 to 2021):

• 35.5% of children under five are stunted (low height for age)
• 32.1% are underweight
• 19.3% are wasted (low weight for height)

These figures are not the result of famine or war. They are the outcome of chronic governmental apathy. The country’s two major child nutrition programs, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Midday Meal Scheme, have seen massive underfunding. ICDS funding was cut by nearly 27% between 2019 and 2022, and in many rural districts, anganwadi workers go unpaid or deliver services with no food stock.

The burden falls disproportionately on Dalit, Adivasi, and Muslim children, who are systematically marginalized in the healthcare and food distribution systems. In Bihar’s Kaimur district, nearly 45% of Adivasi children under five are stunted. In Delhi’s informal settlements, unregistered Muslim children often lack access to ration cards, effectively rendering them stateless in the eyes of welfare policy.

What makes India’s hunger crisis insidious is its normalization. Children are dying of malnutrition not in camps or conflict zones, but in classrooms and homes. Their deaths do not spark outrage. Only paperwork.

Gaza: Hunger as a Weapon of War

In Gaza, hunger is not a consequence of failed policy. It is a military strategy. Since October 2023, when Israel launched its most extensive military campaign in the enclave, food, water, and medical aid have been systematically blocked from entering. UN agencies have warned of famine-like conditions, particularly in northern Gaza.

• 100% of the population is food insecure (World Food Programme, April 2024)
• More than 90% of children under five are acutely malnourished
• Multiple hospitals have reported child deaths due to starvation and dehydration

The destruction is not collateral. It is calculated. Israeli forces have bombed bakeries, destroyed irrigation systems, and targeted fishing boats and agricultural warehouses. According to Save the Children (March 2024), this amounts to the deliberate destruction of food infrastructure, which is a direct violation of international humanitarian law under Article 54 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.

The use of starvation as a weapon is a war crime. In Gaza, it is enforced with diplomatic immunity.

Between Neglect and Siege: A Shared Devaluation of Life

To compare Gaza’s siege to India’s systemic neglect would be to flatten crucial political distinctions. One is an occupied territory subjected to military blockade. The other is a postcolonial democracy with institutional failings. And yet, both crises converge at a moral junction: the deliberate abandonment of poor children.

In both cases, hunger is not accidental. It is the end result of decisions. Funding cuts, policy paralysis, militarized border control, caste exclusions, and settler colonialism. The structures differ, but the outcome is the same. Children dying because their lives have been politically devalued.

What unites these crises is global complicity. Gaza’s siege is debated in UN chambers while aid trucks are denied entry. India’s malnutrition crisis is buried in appendices of government reports, rarely surfacing in headlines unless it coincides with an election.

This is not merely a failure of governance. It is a collapse of empathy. A world that spends trillions on surveillance, war, and artificial intelligence cannot ensure that children do not go to bed hungry.

Solidarity Must Be Consistent

For Indian Muslims, Gaza rightfully evokes outrage, grief, and solidarity. Its suffering resonates across centuries of shared faith and colonization. But solidarity, if it is to mean anything, must be consistent. The same ethical energy that fuels protests for Rafah must extend to the malnourished child in Godda or Gadchiroli.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ did not call believers to care only for their co-religionists. He called them to care for their neighbors. That neighbor may be a Palestinian orphan or a starving Dalit girl. Justice does not ask us to rank their pain. It asks us to refuse all of it.

To speak out against starvation in Gaza while ignoring chronic hunger in Assam’s detention camps is not justice. It is compartmentalized compassion.

Hunger Is a Political Choice

There is enough food in the world. There is enough grain in India. What is missing is the will to prioritize the lives of the most vulnerable.

In India, that means restoring ICDS funding, universalizing food ration access, and ending caste and religion-based exclusions.
In Gaza, that means lifting the siege, ensuring humanitarian corridors, and holding Israel accountable for starvation warfare.
Globally, that means ending the system where some lives are rationed while others are armored.

The child boiling leaves in Gaza and the one fainting in a classroom in Bihar do not know each other. But their hunger speaks the same language. And their survival should not be a matter of politics. It should be a matter of principle.

Shariq Us Sabah is a writer and researcher. He is a graduate of the National Law School of India University and his work focuses on humanitarian law, statelessness, and the politics of relief.

27 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The airdrop of aid into the Gaza Strip is yet another act of humiliation and degradation against Palestinians. It endangers civilians crowded into less than 15 per cent of the enclave and serves a graver purpose: enabling Israel’s policy of mass starvation, deliberately used as a tool of genocide in its systematic effort to eliminate Palestinians in Gaza.

The resumption of aid airdrops, following months of widespread starvation, neither meets the minimum humanitarian needs nor alleviates the catastrophe caused by Israel’s deliberate policy of starvation. Instead, it perpetuates the illusion of relief while starvation continues to be used as a weapon against civilians.

This step, approved by Israel and implemented on Saturday evening, does not reflect a genuine shift in the humanitarian response. Rather, it aims to mislead international public opinion and downplay the severity of the crime, diverting attention from Israel’s systematic starvation policy in the Gaza Strip, which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. This catastrophe is marked by widespread famine, denial of food, water and medicine, destruction of supply chains, obstruction of land-based aid delivery, and continued attacks on those seeking food. These actions reveal Israel’s persistent use of starvation as a primary tool to decimate the population and undermine their means of survival.

The catastrophic conditions on the ground underscore the severity of Israel’s starvation policy, especially after 55 people were officially declared dead from starvation and malnutrition in just one week. It is also estimated that around 1,200 elderly people have died in the past two months due to a lack of food and medical care, amid the total collapse of the healthcare system and the continuing blockade.

The airdrops do not constitute a genuine humanitarian response but rather mark a new chapter in the ongoing humiliation of civilians in the Gaza Strip, following the public degradation and repeated killings at distribution centres operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation under Israel’s direction.

Instead of opening safe and organised land corridors, residents are forced to crowd into dangerous areas under bombardment to retrieve parcels dropped randomly from the air, in conditions that compromise their dignity and endanger their lives, as has occurred repeatedly. Such practices strip relief of its humanitarian purpose and reproduce a colonial dynamic based on subjugation and control, reducing the right to survival to a humiliating favour instead of a fundamental human right.

With 2.3 million Palestinians displaced into less than 15 per cent of the Gaza Strip due to Israeli control and forced evacuation orders, airdropped aid poses a serious risk to civilian lives amid severe overcrowding and the absence of safe areas.

Euro-Med Monitor recalls that when airdrops were first introduced several months ago, even while the accessible area was relatively larger, they led to the deaths of 18 Palestinians and injuries to dozens more.

Last night’s airdrops injured at least 11 civilians, further highlighting the failure of this mechanism to ensure safe and orderly access to aid. It also reinforces serious concerns that civilians are being placed in harm’s way rather than protected, especially amid severe overcrowding and the shrinking of safe areas due to Israeli-imposed policies of forced annexation and displacement.

The reality on the ground demonstrates that airdropped aid is scarce, randomly distributed, and poses serious risks. It frequently lands in densely populated areas, on displaced people’s tents, in evacuated zones, in areas under Israeli control, or in the sea, making it an unsafe and ineffective method from a humanitarian perspective.

The extreme starvation civilians are enduring has, for weeks, driven them to seek aid along delivery routes and at distribution centres, despite knowing these places are humiliating and have become death traps. Their desperate search for aid has turned into a daily scene of collective humiliation, exposing them to immediate danger and fuelling tension and conflict among the population over access to scarce food supplies.

Addressing the famine in Gaza cannot be achieved through superficial or gaudy measures but requires an immediate end to the blockade and the opening of safe, stable land corridors to enable the regular and sufficient delivery of food, medicine, and fuel. This must be done through official UN mechanisms that previously managed aid distribution through approximately 400 centres, before Israel deliberately dismantled them. Only the restoration of this system can ensure that aid reaches all those in need fairly, safely, and transparently, without discrimination or subjugation.

Operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation must be halted. Established by Israeli authorities, the foundation functions as a mechanism of collective humiliation and military control over aid, operating outside any recognised legal or humanitarian framework. Rather than ensuring fair and safe access to aid, it enables Israel to manipulate distribution in line with its own objectives. Under this system, distribution centres have become sites of mass killing, managed directly under Israeli supervision.

The continued operation of this foundation obstructs any genuine humanitarian response and reinforces Israel’s full control over relief channels. This is evident in the airdrops conducted under Israeli supervision, driven by a colonial logic rooted in genocide, deliberately stripping the besieged population of both humanitarian aid and human dignity.

States must urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade, as this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid, given the imminent threat of famine.

The establishment of safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision is vital to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip, with independent international monitors deployed to verify compliance.

All states, individually and collectively, must urgently fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms. This includes taking concrete measures to protect Palestinian civilians in the enclave, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and the International Court of Justice rulings, and guarantee full accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor also calls for the enforcement of the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, and for their swift surrender to international justice without regard to immunity.

The international community is urged to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their grave and systematic breaches of international law; these sanctions should include comprehensive arms embargoes and the suspension of all forms of political, financial, military, and intelligence cooperation. In addition, Euro-Med Monitor calls for freezing the assets of responsible Israeli, US, and any complicit EU officials, banning their travel, halting their military and security companies’ access to international markets, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that facilitate Israel’s ongoing Western-backed crimes against the Palestinian people.

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

28 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza’s Government Media Office warned that an extreme shortage of baby formula could lead to the slow death of tens of thousands of malnourished infants, as Israel has blocked aid, including baby formula, from entering the Palestinian enclave for more than four months.

“There are over 40,000 infants under one year old in Gaza currently at risk of slow death due to this brutal and suffocating blockade,” the Office said, accusing Israel of blocking entry of the product for 150 days.

“We urgently demand the immediate and unconditional opening of all crossings and the swift entry of baby formula and humanitarian aid,” the office continued.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Gaza City has been the area “worst-hit” by malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, with nearly one in five children under five there now acutely malnourished.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, a total of 147, including 88 children, have died due to hunger and malnutrition since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

“This is a silent massacre. The Ministry of Health holds the Israeli occupation and the international community fully responsible. We urgently call for the immediate opening of all crossings to allow the entry of food and medicine,” it added.

Over 100 humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and Oxfam, warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” is spreading across Gaza, with their colleagues in the enclave wasting away from hunger as Israel continues to block the entry of aid for more than four months.

“Doctors report record rates of acute malnutrition, especially among children and older people,” they said in a statement.

“Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”

“Distributions in Gaza average just 28 trucks a day, far from enough for over two million people, many of whom have gone weeks without assistance,” they said.

“The UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning.”

The NGOs said governments must stop waiting for permission to act.

“It is time to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; ensure access to everyone in all of Gaza; reject military-controlled distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund principled and impartial humanitarian organisations,” they said.

“States must pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.”

On Sunday, at least one Palestinian died of hunger every 80 minutes in Gaza as “Israel maintains a systematic starvation policy against 2 million residents,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

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 Palestinians.

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.

Moreover, 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”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 900 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 60,000 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Additionally, 49 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

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.

28 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Juan Cole

The United States has focused on the Middle East since World War II, seeking its oil, gas, and other mineral resources and coveting control of its strategic waterways. The old colonial powers and the superpowers of the Cold War era most often backed dictatorial regimes there, because they were easier to control than democracies, and this country also supported the Israeli settler colony as a bulwark of Western interests. President George W. Bush was the first president to depart (at least rhetorically) from America’s romance with regional authoritarians, pledging to “democratize” the Middle East, though he left office with little to show for it. Now, you have to wonder whether, in some strange sense, the shoe is on the other foot and the pathological U.S. support for dictatorships there is now spreading across the Atlantic Ocean, just as the trade winds blow Saharan sand and dust toward the American Southwest.

Democratic Backsliding

Here’s something that should sound familiar in the United States today: Qais Saied of Tunisia, elected president in 2019, campaigned against homosexuality and — yes! — African immigrants. In 2021, he lawlessly dismissed his prime minister and parliament and went on to rewrite the country’s constitution so that he could appoint yes-men to its Supreme Court. Then he began jailing his political opponents. In four short years, Saied undid all the political progress Tunisia had made in the previous decade, creating a dictatorship arguably worse than that of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in January 2011 in the first of several major Arab Spring youth revolts.

Worse yet — and this should sound familiar, too — Tunisia seemed to sleepwalk into authoritarianism. Trade unionists hoped the president would reject the neoliberalism of the International Monetary Fund, while civil society organizations hoped he would curb the Interior Ministry’s past repressiveness. No such luck. Europe declined to punish the newly developing dictatorship by cutting off aid, instead rewarding Saied with an economic deal in return for his willingness to crack down on African emigration. Of course, such democratic backsliding has been a feature of the Middle East for decades, since local civil society remains weak, pro-regime billionaires have proliferated, and Western governments have seldom reacted negatively to (and all too often rewarded) any move toward dictatorship.

Now, you might say that the shoe is on the other foot. What Saied did to Tunisia might as well have been a blueprint for Donald Trump. Although he hasn’t yet actually tried to rewrite the constitution, the MAGA leader has been the beneficiary of a decades-long $250 million dark-money plot, led by obscure Federalist Society apparatchik Leonard Leo, to reshape the Supreme Court. The result: a set of justices who are distinctly inclined to let Trump do his damnedest — even expel undocumented residents of the United States to gulags in third-world countries with no court process. Meanwhile, labor union members have too often placed faith in Trump’s pledges to bring back industry by using tariffs to reduce competition. And the centrists of the Democratic Party are the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights, too paralyzed to react effectively as he transforms this country into an ever more autocratic state. They also seem all too inclined to let our democracy slip away, while placing their hopes in a 2026 congressional blue wave that, even if it happens, may be too late to stop Trump from creating his version of a one-party state.

Raw Milk and Vitamin A

Consider it typical of our times that Field Marshall Abdelfattah al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against the only freely elected Egyptian government since the country’s monarchy was toppled in 1952 had no significant adverse consequences in Washington. In 2014, a leading officer in the Egyptian army, which receives $1.3 billion a year in American aid, made quixotic health claims. Major General Ibrahim Abdel-Atti announced that he had personally “defeated AIDS with the grace of my God at the rate of 100%. And I defeated hepatitis C.”  In the process, he confused the foundational nucleic acids DNA and RNA, provoking one Egyptian comedian to suggest that the country’s medical schools should never again accept anyone from Abdel-Atti’s village. However, the North Korean-like pall that has blanketed freedom of speech in Egypt was precisely what permitted such bizarre official behavior, since there was little way for the public to respond to even his most absurd claims.

Yet, imagine this: Abdel-Atti appears almost sane and sober in comparison with the antics of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has discouraged vaccinations even as a measles outbreak has begun to run wild (and prove fatal in a few cases) 25 years after the U.S. officially eliminated the disease. Kennedy’s proposed treatment for measles?  Raw milk and vitamin A. Sadly, overdoses of the latter have caused liver disease in some children.

Kennedy is also working hard to gut the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The damage he’s doing in the Trump era to America’s vital and effective vaccination infrastructure could unleash serial plagues upon the public. And it’s not likely to get better any time soon, given the irrational demagogue now in the White House, just as Egyptians suffer under megalomaniacal generals.

A Kafala System

And here’s another Middle Eastern peculiarity inherited from Western colonialism that will sound all too familiar in Donald Trump’s America: the large numbers of non-citizens and stateless people who suffer from a lack of basic civil and human rights. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial Great Britain made treaties with small sheikhdoms along the coast of the Persian Gulf to ensure the security of its shipping and check rivals like the Ottoman Empire. When the British finally withdrew completely from the Gulf in 1972, they left behind postage-stamp countries with vast oil and gas wealth, which did not have a sufficient native-born population to work the rigs or staff the energy companies. The British Empire had often brought into its colonies, like Kuwait and Bahrain, subjects from British India.

After decolonization, such workers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were coded as foreigners in the Arab Gulf. They began laboring under a “guarantor” (kafala) system in which a local entrepreneur would take responsibility for migrant laborers who often surrendered their passports to him for as long as they were in the country. The guarantor would then take a cut of their wages or business profits. No matter how long such migrants lived in those countries, they and their children almost never became eligible for citizenship, and they could have their visas revoked at any time. Others now have trouble even getting in. Typically, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January announced a ban on visas (for Afghans, Libyans, Yemenis, Somalians, Lebanese, Bangladeshi, Cameroonians, Sudanis, and Ugandans). And that should sound familiar, since the Trump regime has already implemented a visa ban on 19 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries. In short, the policies toward immigrant labor in the two regions seem to be converging.

Countries like the United Arab Emirates have a little more than a million citizens and 10 million mostly South Asian guest workers, some of whom have lived there all their lives or are even second or third generation residents. Such migrant workers, however, have no right to form unions or strike. Any encounter with law enforcement, even a fender-bender, can result in their expulsion. New York University Professor Andrew Ross was typically banned from the country simply for researching labor conditions. British academic Matthew Hedges was imprisoned on false espionage charges in 2018, tortured, and threatened with deportation to a UAE black site in Yemen before ultimately being released. New York University has a branch in Abu Dhabi, where the students and faculty have had run-ins with the government of President Mohammed Bin Zayed, which surged in the past two years because the country does not permit social media posts criticizing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

And it’s not only migrant laborers in the Middle East who can be denied citizenship despite long residence. Indigenous people, too, sometimes become non-citizens (just as Native Americans were denied U.S. citizenship until 1924). The Arab nationalists of Syria denaturalized some 100,000 Kurdish Syrians in Hasakah Province in 1962 and, over time, that figure grew to several hundred thousand. The Middle East is a patchwork of citizenship hierarchies, where the line can be drawn capriciously by nationalists, fundamentalists, or monarchs.

It does not take much familiarity with Donald Trump’s policies in the past six months to see the ways in which his administration seemingly yearns for similar levels of citizenship and limited residency to be imposed in this country. He has even threatened to deport naturalized American citizens like (can you believe it?) Elon Musk or Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, for their criticisms of him. If his fondest wishes were fulfilled, he might even prefer his country to be more like Israel when it came to anyone he didn’t like living there.

Expelled for Gandhism

An analogy could also be made between the “foreign” migrant workers in the Gulf, who have no local citizenship or rights, and the Palestinians under Israeli rule in the West Bank or Gaza. Like the Syrian Kurds of Hasakah, they have been made stateless in their own country. They lack a national government and the rights and passport it would give them. Palestinians in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank that is directly ruled by the Israeli military, see rights like unionizing or striking routinely curbed. Like Gulf workers, Palestinians are subject to expulsion at the whim of the Israeli military. And keep in mind that, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, some 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from it or, if working abroad, forbidden to return home.

Some of those trapped by the decades-long occupation have also been subject to arbitrary removal. The Israeli authorities illegally expelled Palestinian pacifist Mubarak Awad from his homeland in 1988 for advocating Gandhi-style nonviolent noncooperation. Tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians have been forced from their homes in the past two years, as entire refugee camps have been razed, the Israeli military has destroyed homes, and Israeli squatters on Palestinian land have enacted pogroms.& Since the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023, at least 100,000 Gazans have been forced out of Palestine entirely by Israeli commanders, who have ordered that some 90% of the housing stock there be damaged or destroyed.

Inside the Jewish ethnostate of Israel, the 21% of the population who are of Palestinian heritage are distinctly second-class citizens. Human Rights Organizations like Adalah have identified 65 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian-Israelis. In 2018, the Israeli parliament declared that national sovereignty is invested solely in the country’s Jews. Since October 2023, Palestinian-Israelis have been under strict surveillance and have to be careful about their Internet postings. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that they can be stripped of their citizenship and expelled for breach of loyalty to the Israeli state.

SEVIS Hits

Like the rulers of some Gulf states, Trump and his crew want to treat all noncitizens on visas in the U.S. — and even some naturalized citizens — arbitrarily. Since he returned to power in January, thousands of visas have been revoked for even minor contact with law enforcement, just as happens to hapless migrants in the UAE. Trump officials ran the data in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) against police reports and zeroed in on 6,400 of them, terminating their SEVIS entries without notice. That was, of course, in contravention of government regulations. Most of the hits involved cases where charges had been dropped or were minor. Affected students filed more than 60 lawsuits and consistently prevailed in court, forcing ICE to restore the SEVIS records, at least for now.

In addition, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to revoke the visas of students who had been active in protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza (in precisely the same way and on the same grounds as the Emirati government does). Among such high-profile cases, the State Department targeted figures like Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil, who had permanent resident status in the country but was arrested anyway and sent to a Louisiana prison. Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who had written a mild opinion piece for her student newspaper criticizing her school’s response to events in Gaza, was similarly seized. Apparently, the plan was to avoid letting them appear before a judge and instead summarily deport them, but the courts insisted they be given hearings, upholding the apparently imperiled principle of habeas corpus. Chapters of the American Association of University Professors, along with the Middle East Studies Association, have sued on First Amendment grounds to overturn Rubio’s policy of declaring speech to be a national security emergency, permitting the deportation of visa and green card holders.

In 1945, the case of Bridges v. Wixon established that not just citizens but all people residing in the United States enjoy the protection of the Bill of Rights. As the Cold War heated up in the 1950s, however, the court did allow a few deportations of non-citizens due to their membership in the Communist Party (as in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy in 1952). Eighty years later, in a distinctly new world, Rubio and his colleagues wish to reverse Bridges and make the U.S. a giant version of the United Arab Emirates, functionally an absolute (Trumpian) monarchy. Instead of emulating the best of Middle Eastern values such as generosity to guests and love of learning, Trump and crew seem to admire only Western-imposed authoritarianism.

Ironically, in the second Trump era, America’s billionaires and corporate elites have decided that this country should be ruled with some of the same techniques that they and their Middle Eastern proxies have long used abroad. Instead of America democratizing the Middle East, it’s increasingly clear that Trump and crew have decided to Middle-Easternize the United States.

Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan.

24 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org