Just International

Fragmenting a Nation: Israel’s Enduring Pursuit of Palestinian Disunity

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Israel is aggressively implementing plans to shape Palestine’s future and the broader region, sculpting its vision for the ‘day after’ its genocide in Gaza.

The latest, bizarre iteration of this strategy proposes fragmenting the occupied West Bank into so-called ’emirates,’ starting with the ’emirate of Hebron.’

This unexpected twist in Israel’s protracted search for alternative Palestinian leadership first surfaced in the staunchly pro-Israeli US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. It then quickly dominated all Israeli media.

The report details a letter from a person identified by the WSJ as “the leader of Hebron’s most influential clan.” Addressed to Nir Barakat, Jerusalem’s former Israeli mayor, the letter from Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari appeals for “cooperation with Israel” in the name of “co-existence.”

This “co-existence,” according to the “clan leader”, would materialize in the “Emirate of Hebron.” This “emirate” would “recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” in exchange for reciprocal recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.”

The story may seem perplexing. This is because Palestinian discourse, regardless of geography or political affiliation, has never entertained such an absurd concept as united West Bank “emirates.”

Another element of absurdity is that Palestinian national identity and pride in their people’s unwavering resilience, especially in Gaza, are at an unprecedented apex. To float such clan-based alternatives to legitimate Palestinian leadership seems ill-conceived and is destined to fail.

Israel’s desperation is palpable. In Gaza, it cannot defeat Hamas and other Palestinian factions who have resisted the Israeli takeover of the Strip for 21 months. All attempts to engineer an alternative Palestinian leadership there have utterly collapsed.

This failure has compelled Israel to arm and fund a criminal gang that operated before October 7, 2023, in Gaza. This gang functions under the command of Yasser Abu Shabab.

The gang has been implicated in a litany of violent activities. These include hijacking humanitarian aid to perpetuate famine in Gaza and orchestrating violence associated with aid distribution, among other egregious crimes.

Like the clan leader of Hebron, the Abu Shabab criminal gang possesses no legitimacy and no public support among Palestinians. But why would Israel resort to such disreputable figures when the Palestinian Authority (PA), already engaged in “security coordination” with Israel in the West Bank, is ostensibly willing to comply?

The answer lies in the current Israeli extremist government’s adamant refusal to acknowledge Palestinians as a nation. Thus, even a collaborating Palestinian nationalist entity would be deemed problematic from an Israeli perspective.

While Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not the first Israeli leadership to explore clan-based alternatives among Palestinians, the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies are exceptionally determined to dismantle any Palestinian claim to nationhood. This was explicitly stated by extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He famously declared in Paris, in March 2023, that a Palestinian nation is an “invention.”

Thus, despite the PA’s willingness to cooperate with Israel in controlling Gaza, Israel remains apprehensive. Empowering the PA as a nationalist model fundamentally contravenes Israel’s overarching objectives of denying the Palestinian people their very claim to nationhood and, consequently, statehood and sovereignty.

Though Israel has consistently failed to establish and sustain its own alternative Palestinian leadership, its repeated efforts have invariably proven disruptive and violent.

Prior to the Nakba of 1948, the Zionist movement, alongside British authorities colonizing Palestine, heavily invested in undermining the Arab Higher Committee, a nationalist body comprising several political parties. They achieved this by empowering collaborating clans, hoping to dilute the Palestinian nationalist movement.

When Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine in 1967, it reverted to the same divide-and-conquer tactics. For instance, it established a Palestinian police force directly commanded by Israeli military administrations, in addition to creating an underground network of collaborators.

Following the overwhelming victory of nationalist candidates in the 1976 elections in occupied Palestine, Israel responded by cracking down on PLO-affiliated politicians, arresting, deporting, and assassinating some.

Two years later, in 1978, it launched its ‘Village Leagues’ project. It hand-picked compliant traditional figures, designating them as the legitimate representatives of Palestinians.

These individuals, armed, protected and financed by the Israeli occupation army, were positioned to represent their respective clans in Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Gaza and elsewhere.

Palestinians immediately denounced them as collaborators. They were widely boycotted and socially ostracized. 

Eventually, it became evident that Israel had no alternative but to engage directly with the PLO. This culminated in the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the subsequent formation of the PA.

The fundamental problem, however, persisted: the PA’s insistence on a Palestinian state remains anathema to an Israel that has shifted dramatically to the right.

This explains the Netanyahu’s government’s unwavering insistence that the PA has no role in Gaza in any ‘day after’ scenario. While the PA could serve Israel’s interest in containing the rebellious Strip, such a triumph would inevitably recenter the discussion of a Palestinian state—a concept repugnant to most Israelis.

There is no doubt that neither the Abu Shabab gang nor the Hebron emirate will govern Palestinians, either in Gaza or the West Bank. Israel’s insistence on fabricating these alternatives, however, underscores its historic determination to deny Palestinians any sense of nationhood.

Israel’s persistent fantasies of control invariably fail. Despite their profound wounds, Palestinians are more unified than ever, their collective identity and nationhood hardened by relentless resistance and countless sacrifices.

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

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Shackled and Unbowed: How Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Became A Universal Emblem of Resistance

By Rima Najjar

Four Decades of Zionist–US Containment, Transnational Solidarity, and the Unwritten Epilogue in Lebanon

Caption: Top:People march towards Lannemezan prison to call for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Oct 26 2024. Bottom: A poster reading “Freedom for Georges Abdallah” outside the prison.

If you don’t know who Georges Abdallah is, you’re unfamiliar with one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners — a defiant symbol standing at the crossroads of Palestinian liberation and the sprawling machinery of Zionist–U.S. influence where “anti-terror” laws are weaponized.

Who is this Man?

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is a Lebanese Christian militant and founding leader of the Marxist-Leninist Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). Arrested in France in 1984 and convicted in 1987 for the 1982 assassinations of a U.S. military attaché and an Israeli diplomat in Paris, he was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 with a minimum term of 15 years, and has now served 41 years behind bars. He completed the required minimum portion of his sentence in 1999 but has been kept imprisoned for 26 years beyond that term, making him one of Europe’s longest-held political prisoners.

Originally a Christian militant fighting for a predominantly Muslim cause, Abdallah defies sectarian categories. In prison, his identity has been reshaped by movements as varied as the Gaza Great March of Return and the French Yellow Vests, reflecting solidarity that crosses religious, national, and class lines.

Like Nelson Mandela, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has become emblematic of resistance far beyond the confines of their incarceration. Their cases illuminate the political nature of imprisonment when state power seeks to suppress movements for justice, sovereignty, or liberation. Abdallah’s prolonged captivity aligns with these figures whose imprisonment catalyzed broader struggles: Mandela’s moral authority, Abu-Jamal’s critique of racial injustice, Davis’s abolitionist vision, and Sa’adat’s and Barghouti’s embodiment of Palestinian resistance all reflect how the prison cell can become a platform for defiance and a symbol of collective resolve.

Zionist–US Containment and Transnational Repression

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s decades-long detention in France exemplifies how Zionism’s security doctrine operates transnationally, extending its reach beyond Israeli borders to suppress Palestinian resistance through legal, diplomatic, and security networks. This doctrine mobilizes allied states to criminalize dissent, neutralize activists, and insulate Zionist interests from challenges abroad.

From the earliest stages of his trial, Abdallah’s fate was sealed by U.S. intervention. The Reagan administration, keen to delegitimize Palestinian armed struggle, petitioned to join the French proceedings as a civil party, effectively outsourcing Israel’s security concerns to American hands. Behind closed doors, U.S. diplomats warned of “retaliatory measures” against American and Israeli interests if France showed leniency. This alliance ensured that every glimpse of judicial relief — parole hearings in 1999, a release order in 2003, conditional rulings in 2013 and 2023 — was met with immediate appeals from anti-terror prosecutors, muted by the specter of U.S. pressure.

France’s adoption of “recidivism” statutes in 2008, the repeated executive vetoes on deportation orders, and the endless legal gamesmanship illustrate how Zionist–U.S. methods of control mimic Israel’s own domestic containment strategies — administrative detention, exile requirements, and the criminalization of thought. By treating Abdallah’s unyielding Marxist-Arabist convictions as proof of perpetual danger, these Western partners have turned the French judicial system into an extension of Israel’s counter-insurgency toolkit, criminalizing solidarity and dissent under the rubric of “anti-terrorism.”

This containment apparatus reaches far beyond Abdallah himself. In Toulouse, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra was dissolved in 2022 for “apology of terrorism,” its members raided and bank accounts frozen. In Paris, planned rallies are banned, banners confiscated, demonstrators dispersed under CRS threat. Even student activists bearing simple signs at Sciences Po Toulouse found themselves hauled into court and threatened with prison. Across Europe — in Girona, Hamburg, Berlin — plain-clothes officers shadow, photograph, and intimidate anyone daring to invoke “Liberté pour Abdallah.” These crackdowns mirror Israel’s crackdown on international solidarity with Gaza, showing how legal repression is exported in tandem with military hardware and surveillance technologies.

Abdallah’s case has mobilized leftist movements across continents, yet each act of solidarity provokes escalated containment, revealing the exportation of Israel’s counterinsurgency blueprint into European jurisdictions. What emerges is not merely a national case of political imprisonment, but a study in how Zionist geopolitics weaponizes allied legal systems to silence Palestinian advocacy worldwide. Abdallah’s continued detention thus serves as a prism through which we can examine the architecture of extraterritorial repression — a doctrine designed not only to confine a single revolutionary, but to stifle the possibilities of global dissent.

Transnational Solidarity: A Counterweight to Repression

Yet from this sustained pressure has emerged an equally transnational solidarity. Abdallah’s name now adorns protests from the Basque Country to Beirut, from the South African Students Congress to Latin American decolonial seminars. Human-rights groups in France, Jewish peace activists in Montréal, and Arab networks from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur have woven his struggle into a tapestry of anti-colonial resistance. His decades in Lannemezan inspired clandestine communiqués linking European underground movements — Action Directe, Red Brigades, GRAPO — with Palestinian detainees, forging bonds that outlasted prison bars.

This dialectic of containment and solidarity has reshaped global politics. On one hand, it has normalized ever-stricter “anti-terror” laws — banning speech, dissolving organizations, erasing the line between protest and violence. On the other, it has taught a new generation to see beyond the Israeli–Palestinian theater, recognizing how security pacts, tech transfers, and lobbying networks erect barriers to all forms of dissent. In this crucible, Abdallah transcends his Marxist and Arab-nationalist origins to become a universal emblem against state overreach.

Each denial of parole, each suspended release order, each political veto is an index of how Israel and Washington project their security doctrine across borders. His story is not simply one of a lone revolutionary; it is the story of how global alliances, legal architectures, and diplomatic pressures have conspired to contain a symbol rather than to resolve a conflict.

Legal and Political Obstacles

On July 17, 2025, the Paris Appeals Court ruled for his conditional release after nearly 41 years, on the proviso he leave French territory. The U.S. Department of Justice and France’s general prosecutor have signaled further appeals, maintaining that his release poses risks to U.S. diplomats and regional stability. This happened after multiple legal and political interventions that prevented Abdallah’s release, from his parole eligibility through to the recent 2025 ruling.

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s path to release has been obstructed for over two decades by a series of legal setbacks and political interventions, despite repeated findings that he met the basic criteria for parole. In 1999, Abdallah became eligible under French law, and by 2003, a provincial court authorized his release — provided he leave France. This order was immediately suspended following a prosecutorial appeal. Concerns over diplomatic fallout and the optics of freeing a convicted militant further shaped the state’s resistance throughout the mid-2000s; in 2005 and 2006, authorities explicitly warned that Abdallah’s release would harm France’s standing with U.S. allies and doubted that deportation would prevent him from resuming activism.

His seventh parole request in 2007 was denied after protracted deliberation, and although an eighth request was approved in 2013, it too was suspended under pressure from France’s anti-terror prosecutors. In 2014, a ninth request was rejected over Abdallah’s refusal to provide proof of compensation to victims’ families, a condition that became central to future rulings. In November 2023, a French court again ruled for conditional release, citing exile as a sufficient safeguard, but the decision was frozen pending appeals that emphasized Abdallah’s unrepentant political stance.

The debate intensified in February 2025, when a Paris court demanded further evidence of financial compensation. Although Abdallah’s lawyer cited a €16,000 prison deposit intended for the families of the slain diplomats, prosecutors questioned both its origin and sufficiency. These concerns stalled progress until July 17, 2025, when the Paris Appeals Court finally ordered his conditional release after 41 years — again contingent on his departure from French territory. The U.S. Department of Justice and France’s general prosecutor swiftly signaled further appeals, citing ongoing risks to diplomatic security and regional stability. Abdallah’s release, while judicially authorized, remains politically fragile and legally contested.

Abdallah’s hoped-for release, even with a favorable court ruling, faces a dense network of diplomatic, security, and political obstacles. U.S. officials pressure Lebanon to avoid involvement, linking cooperation to aid and security deals. Israel lobbies against Abdallah’s return, citing national security concerns, while France’s anti-terror prosecutor may challenge the release through legal appeals. Lebanon itself, caught between Western alliances and Hezbollah’s influence, may hesitate to act decisively, fearing international fallout or internal discord. Additional hurdles — ranging from unmet legal conditions to complex transfer logistics — further complicate the process. Together, these forces create a layered blockade that risks converting judicial approval into symbolic rather than substantive liberation. As Che Guevara noted, a struggle’s legacy hinges not on its inception but on how it concludes.

Abdallah’s Legacy

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s legacy inside French prisons exceeds the mere endurance of a life sentence — it charts an expansive, insurgent form of solidarity that defies isolation. His writings, often smuggled to revolutionary journals and republished in mainstream outlets, marked a deliberate departure from the confines of party affiliation toward a more universal front: anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and uncompromising in its opposition to state-sponsored violence.

His gestures of collective defiance were not limited to the page. In 2019, Abdallah joined Basque, Corsican, and Arab inmates in a rare cross-national protest action — refusing lunch trays in solidarity with Palestinian hunger-striker Bilal Kayed. It was, as prison solidarity sites noted, one of few coordinated inmate demonstrations inside French jails, demonstrating Abdallah’s ability to inspire relational resistance across linguistic, ethnic, and ideological divides. In 2023, amid Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza, a Lebanese delegation delivered an official message to Hamas demanding Abdallah’s inclusion in any future prisoner-exchange deal — an assertion of his symbolic stature within Arab liberation circles that transcends both borders and decades.

Yet his resistance often took creative, sardonic, and intimate forms: origami doves folded from prison laundry tags and distributed as tokens of welcome to new inmates; percussion instruments smuggled in for an improvised birthday drum-circle, later photographed and shared on international solidarity feeds. Inmates recall quips that captured his dark humor, “the bars are imaginary, our walls do the real work”, while underground newsletters report he once presided over a mock trial in the prison yard, chalk in hand, meting out satirical justice to the warden for denying recreational time.

Despite over four decades of confinement, Abdallah’s record remains, paradoxically, “irreproachable,” according to French courts: no solitary confinement, no violent infractions. And yet, release continues to stall.

In February 2025, prosecutors challenged a €16,000 deposit meant to compensate families of the assassinated diplomats, citing its murky provenance. Judges leaned on this unresolved financial dispute to suspend conditional-release rulings, echoing years of political interference. Palestinian solidarity network Samidoun recounts how U.S. officials privately pressured France to keep him locked up so “no one catches the revolutionary disease” — a phrase that Arabic blogs proudly recycled as a sardonic badge of honor, dubbing Abdallah “the genie of revolt.”

That genie, if anything, has multiplied — not through escape, but through acts of imaginative and militant presence. Abdallah remains not just a prisoner but a connective thread between movements, a quiet architect of transnational resistance whose wit disarms and whose legacy endures far beyond the prison yard.

Media Coverage

The media coverage of his possible release is also telling. Across Lebanon and the wider Arab world, the airwaves have treated Abdallah’s impending release as a repudiation of colonial-era injustices and Western “anti-terror” overreach. State networks like Al-Manar celebrated “Freedom at Last,” casting his decades in French prisons as proof that sustained Palestinian and Arab solidarity can crack the façade of Zionist–U.S. hegemony. Pan-Arab satellite channels have looped footage of mass rallies from Beirut to Cairo, while call-in programs buzz with voices hailing his vindication as a collective triumph over political incarceration.

In France, the United States, and much of Europe, coverage has been conspicuously procedural — an almost clinical account of appeals court rulings and exile conditions that obscures the deeper power plays at work. BFM TV and France 24 dutifully summarize the Paris court’s decision, noting only that Abdallah must depart French territory. American outlets from Reuters to USA Today foreground Department of Justice warnings about threats to U.S. diplomats and remind readers that eight previous parole bids fell victim to “anti-terror” statutes. This neutral, juridical framing mirrors how Western governments have weaponized legalities to contain dissent and curry favor with Israeli security interests.

Elsewhere — in major African and Australian press — the story barely registers beyond wire-service briefs, reflecting a manufactured apathy toward struggles that challenge entrenched power structures. Only niche campus bulletins and solidarity newsletters in South Africa and Australia have amplified Abdallah’s cause, underscoring how selective coverage and geopolitical convenience conspire to erase inconvenient narratives from mainstream discourse.

By contrast, Israeli outlets such as The Times of Israel and Ynet cast Abdallah strictly as an unrepentant terrorist, their headlines warning that his return could embolden Iran-backed militias on the northern border. Security analysts quoted by these papers frame his release as a dangerous precedent, revealing how Zionist-aligned media channels wield fear to justify perpetual detention and extend Israel’s domestic containment tactics onto foreign soil.

Lebanon’s Role

Successive Lebanese administrations have treated Abdallah’s case with studied indifference: despite his unqualified Lebanese citizenship, no government has ever formally petitioned Paris for his repatriation. By refusing to activate the bilateral transfer agreements that France requires, Beirut has signaled its unwillingness to antagonize its primary patrons in Washington and Brussels, trading solidarity with a veteran of the Palestinian struggle for continued financial aid and diplomatic cover. At home, pro-Hezbollah and Lebanese Communist Party deputies have tabled parliamentary motions and staged sit-ins demanding his return, but each cabinet — from Hariri’s Sunni-led coalitions to the stalemated unity governments — has declined to align state policy with those demands. In practice, Beirut’s reticence served the political currents of Western leverage and internal sectarian balancing, sacrificing a potent symbol of anti-imperialist resistance to preserve fragile alliances and stave off deeper domestic fissures.

But behind the high-stakes legal wrangling and diplomatic vetoes lies a man whose days in Lannemezan have been marked by small, courageous acts that speak to his character: staging a days-long hunger strike to protest another inmate’s mistreatment, folding dozens of origami doves out of prison-laundered tags as symbols of hope, and smuggling handwritten poems in the margins of library books — all under constant threat of solitary confinement. These gestures of solidarity and defiance offer a window into the serious risks Abdallah has willingly shouldered, reminding us that his story is as much about the human will to resist as it is about geopolitics.

Conclusion

Che Guevara’s assertion that a struggle is measured by its conclusion rather than its inception provides a compelling lens through which to view Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s decades-long resistance. While Abdallah emerged from the chaos of Lebanon’s civil war as a determined fedayee, the defining feature of his legacy lies not in his militant origins but in his prolonged defiance within the confines of French imprisonment. Refusing to barter his release through ideological compromise, he has embodied Guevara’s archetype of principled resistance.

Yet his unfinished struggle poses unresolved questions about what constitutes victory. If Abdallah is eventually freed, the conditions and symbolism of that release will determine whether he is remembered as an uncompromising revolutionary or as a figure whose cause was eclipsed by geopolitical paralysis. The final chapter, not the first, will ultimately define his legacy.

Here is how I imagine the beginning of that final chapter:

The moment Abdallah steps off the plane at Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, the air will crackle with emotion. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of supporters will line the tarmac: veterans of the Lebanese Communist Party and Hezbollah delegations standing shoulder-to-shoulder with young activists draped in Palestinian keffiyehs. As the crowd breaks into a spontaneous chant of “Abo Danny,” his first steps onto Lebanese soil will be a balm for families who’ve wept for him in exile, and a vindication for decades of tireless solidarity work.

On a personal level, Abdallah will be frail — his gait slowed by forty years in prison, his voice raspy from days spent shouting slogans through cell bars. Yet when he embraces elderly comrades and greets children whose parents once organized his defense, you’ll see in his eyes a mix of relief and steely resolve. Expect him to slip away from the official platform for a private reunion with cousins in Zahle or Chateau Ksara, savoring home-cooked labneh and freshly baked man’oushe — small pleasures denied to him for too long.

Politically, Abdallah will tread a careful line. In a staged press conference under cedar-tree banners, he’ll express gratitude to those who battled for his freedom, but he’ll also issue a sober call for unity — warning Lebanon’s fractured parties that regional crises demand solidarity over sectarian squabbling. He may visit Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, laying a wreath at the monument for fedayeen fighters, and deliver an impassioned appeal for renewed Palestinian self-determination. International media crews will swarm him there — contrasting his grassroots welcome with Beirut’s cool official response, as successive cabinets downplay any state-level accolades to avoid upsetting Western backers.

In the weeks that follow, Abdallah could spearhead a new “Committee for Political Prisoners,” drawing together families of detainees from Syria, Iran, Turkey, and beyond. He’ll offer counsel to younger activists — teaching them how to navigate courtrooms and international tribunals as he once did. But true to his lifelong ethos, he’ll refuse any formal office, insisting instead on being a living bridge between past struggles and the next generation’s fight against imperialism. In that dual role — elder statesman and humble grand-uncle — Georges Abdallah will transform from captive icon into active catalyst, reminding Lebanon and the world that the end of one sentence can spark the beginning of a broader struggle for justice.

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

18 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Superman Isn’t About Gaza—But It Sure Feels Like It

By Medea Benjamin

In Superman, we’re watching something hauntingly familiar: a powerful state waging war on a trapped civilian population, a global superpower choosing complicity over justice, and a narrative war where truth is the first casualty.

Director James Gunn insists the new Superman film isn’t a political allegory, noting the script was completed before the events of October 7, 2023. But art, especially in times of global crisis, often outgrows the intentions of its creators. Whether consciously crafted or not, the world is receiving this film as a lens through which to process grief, rage, and a collective hunger for justice for the Palestinian people.

Watching the film, I couldn’t help but cheer not only for Superman—but for the people of Jarhanpur, a battered, besieged territory subjected to ongoing military assault by its high-tech neighbor, Boravia. Jarhanpur’s residents are depicted as marginalized and vilified, living in ruins under constant threat. The imagery of bombed-out buildings, displaced families, and children pulled from rubble evokes the horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza and the mounting toll on Palestinian civilians. The people of Jarhanpur are also racially coded to align with Arab identity: darker-skinned actors, traditional garments, accents, and names.

Another parallel lies in the politics of narrative. Boravia brands Jarhanpur’s fighters as terrorists—a label the film slowly dismantles by revealing the humanity, grief, and resistance of a people struggling to survive. It’s a powerful reflection of the Palestinian experience, where the word “terrorist” is weaponized to erase history, justify massacres, and delegitimize resistance.

Boravia, portrayed as the aggressor, fits the role of villainous state all too well: overwhelming military superiority, settler-style expansionism, and a narrative of perpetual self-defense. The film’s portrayal of Boravia’s government manipulating facts and weaponizing fear mirrors Israel’s real-world disinformation campaigns—and the Western media’s complicity in amplifying them.

Superman himself initially tries to remain neutral—but neutrality collapses in the face of genocide. He ultimately sides with the oppressed, recognizing that Jarhanpur’s people are fighting for survival, dignity, and freedom. This arc mirrors the global awakening we’re seeing today, as more and more people stand with Palestinians and reject the apartheid policies and war crimes of the Israeli state.

In Superman, we’re watching something hauntingly familiar: a powerful state waging war on a trapped civilian population, a global superpower choosing complicity over justice, and a narrative war where truth is the first casualty.

Those of us who have taken a stand against Israel’s genocide should take advantage of this cultural moment. Distribute flyers at film showings. Write your own reviews. Use this film as an educational tool to expose Israel’s atrocities and uplift the righteous struggle of the Palestinian people.

And maybe—just maybe—Superman can remind us that the world community, united with the Palestinian people, can become the real superpower that defeats Boravia… I mean, Israel.

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

18 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

New attack reaffirms Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s role in killing and starvation, underscores need to stop its operations

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor 

Palestinian Territory – The deaths of 21 Palestinian civilians by suffocation, crowd crush, and live fire from US security forces operating in coordination with the Israeli army at an aid distribution centre in Rafah expose the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as an active instrument of the systematic mass killing and starvation policies imposed on Gaza.

These centres are no longer relief sites but death traps, deliberately used to lure starving crowds in scenes marked by humiliation and genocide, which constitutes a grave violation of international law and requires the immediate suspension of GHF’s operations, an urgent investigation, and full criminal accountability.

Documentation by Euro-Med Monitor’s field team revealed that the attack on Wednesday, 16 July 2025, occurred in two phases. The first happened around 4:00 a.m., when Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of civilians gathered on al-Tina Street, north of Rafah, as food aid trucks were being unloaded, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries. Despite the gunfire and casualties, thousands remained. They had no choice but to wait or starve, especially after a GHF worker told them distribution would begin at 6:00 a.m.

The second phase happened at 6:20 a.m., when crowds surged toward the outer gate of the distribution centre amid severe overcrowding and the closure of the inner gate. This led to a deadly crowd crush, with no safety measures or immediate intervention to prevent or contain the disaster.

Instead of organising the crowds and ensuring their safety, US special forces used pepper spray and fired sound bombs and tear gas at civilians trapped between the outer and inner gates, triggering panic and chaos. Thousands tried to escape, while some attempted to jump into the distribution centre to avoid overcrowding and certain death, only to be met with live fire as well.

The open fire and the resulting violent crowd crush caused the deaths of at least 21 Palestinians, including seven killed by live ammunition and 15 from tear gas inhalation and the crush, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

A review by Euro-Med Monitor of several casualties found no signs of bullet wounds, supporting the conclusion that most victims died from suffocation or being trampled in a closed, overcrowded space with no protective measures in place.

Abdul Rahman B., one of the survivors, told Euro-Med Monitor’s team: “At around 6:15 a.m., a quadcopter arrived and announced that the distribution centre had been opened and required that we head to the gates.”

“People rushed frantically toward the entrances, and when we reached the front gate, we found the inner gate closed and a heavy presence of US forces accompanied by employees speaking Arabic,” said Abdul Rahman. “They asked us to step back 50 metres and enter in groups of no more than 100, but the crowding was so intense that stepping back was impossible.”

He continued: “Minutes later, they began firing sound bombs, followed by tear gas and pepper spray. People were disoriented and suffocating. Some tried to climb the fences to escape, but snipers shot them. Those who fell to the ground could not get up and were trampled. I saw women and children among the victims, and we only managed to escape by stepping over the dead bodies lying there.”

This incident demonstrates that aid distribution centres were deliberately placed in dangerous locations, designed with narrow paths enclosed by barbed-wire fences that can be easily sealed. These routes cannot accommodate the vast numbers of people in need and are fully controlled by the Israeli army, making them resemble elaborate traps for killing and humiliation rather than corridors for humanitarian aid.

GHF, established by Israel to manage its starvation policy, issued a brief statement claiming to have opened an investigation into the incident. This follows a familiar propaganda pattern: whenever starving civilians are killed, an internal investigation is announced, its results are never released, no one is held accountable, and the same crime is repeated without consequence.

An investigation by an organisation established within a framework designed to perpetuate starvation can hardly be considered credible. Given its direct role in managing starvation, GHF must be immediately dismantled and its mandate withdrawn. It operates under the guise of humanitarian work, failing as a neutral intermediary for aid delivery.

GHF functions as a field instrument of blockade, starvation, and killing by operating distribution centres designed to humiliate civilians and gather them in tightly controlled locations under the pretext of “organising” crowds. Rather than protecting those in need, it facilitates the implementation of engineered starvation and creates a closed environment where civilians are killed in the name of humanitarian aid.

Even when a threat is alleged, international law requires security forces to apply force in a proportionate and graduated manner, using lethal force only as a last resort and in response to an imminent and real threat to life. This standard was not met in the documented cases, making the killings a grave and flagrant violation of international law.

The deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians as they seek food, along with the use of starvation as a weapon, is a clear violation of international humanitarian and criminal law. These acts constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute, including wilful killing, targeting civilians, and using starvation as a method of warfare, all of which are strictly prohibited in armed conflicts.

The widespread and systematic nature of these violations against the civilian population fulfils the elements of crimes against humanity, particularly killing, persecution, and inhumane acts causing severe suffering or serious physical or mental harm, when committed as part of a systematic attack targeting civilians.

Placing these crimes in their broader context, including the systematic destruction of means of survival, the denial of aid access, and the imposition of deadly living conditions on the civilian population, along with public incitement by Israeli political and military figures, reveals a clear and deliberate intent to destroy the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. According to Article II of the Genocide Convention, these acts constitute genocide, specifically through the intentional killing of members of the group and the imposition of living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part.

The international community and complicit governments bear responsibility for the continued crimes against starving civilians at GHF-run aid distribution centres in the Gaza Strip. An immediate halt to GHF operations is essential, along with the launch of an independent international investigation leading to the prosecution of its officials before international and national courts for their involvement in systematic mass killings at distribution sites imposed by the Israeli army as a replacement for the UN mechanism that had operated in the enclave for nearly a year and a half.

International and national judicial bodies must move to hold US President Donald Trump criminally accountable for his complicity in the genocide in the Gaza Strip. This includes his adoption and direct support of the Israeli aid distribution mechanism, imposed by force and transformed into arenas of mass slaughter against starving civilians, as well as his administration’s full-scale provision of military, financial, political, and diplomatic backing that enabled Israel to commit and expand the crime for over 21 months.

The United States, through this organisation and other instruments, continues to provide political, logistical, financial, and military cover for Israel’s crimes, rendering current and former American officials, foremost among them President Donald Trump, subject to international criminal accountability.

Euro-Med Monitor calls for holding all state leaders involved in the genocide committed in the Gaza Strip accountable, whether through direct or indirect participation, by providing political, military, or financial support, or by facilitating its commission in any form. Such acts constitute criminal complicity under Article 25 of the Rome Statute. It holds states that failed to take serious measures to prevent or stop the crime legally responsible under their international obligations, particularly under the Genocide Convention.

A comprehensive and independent international investigation must be launched into the role of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in facilitating and executing serious crimes committed against Palestinian civilians. These investigations should address the individual responsibility of the organisation’s founders, directors, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any other staff members, whether through planning, facilitating, directly contributing, or knowingly failing to prevent the commission of crimes.

We urge all states with territorial or universal jurisdiction to open immediate criminal investigations against all individuals affiliated with the GHF and its contracted private security firms, in order to hold them accountable for their role in crimes committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, particularly including wilful killings, starvation, and cruel or degrading treatment.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

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

18 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel Strikes Catholic Church in Gaza, Killing three and Injuring Others

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- An Israeli strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church killed three persons, including two Christian women and injured several others, including the priest, on Thursday.

The Israeli strike on the Holy Family Church, Gaza’s only Catholic church, injured six, including the priest and a child.

The priest was seen with his right leg bandaged but otherwise in good condition. Father Gabriele Romanelli was very close with the late Pope Francis.

The church was sheltering both Christians and Muslims, including several children with disabilities, according to Fadel Naem, the acting director of al-Ahli Hospital that received those wounded in the attack.

Naem told AP that at least two people were in critical condition.

The church is a short distance from the al-Ahli Hospital and the area has been repeatedly struck for more than a week, he said.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem condemned the Israeli attack on the Holy Family Church in Gaza this morning, which claimed the lives of two Palestinians. In a press release, they stated: “With deep sorrow the Latin Patriarchate can now confirm that two persons were killed as a result of an apparent strike by the Israeli army that hit the Holy Family Compound this morning. We pray for the rest of their souls and for the end of this barbaric war. Nothing can justify the targeting of innocent civilians.”

The two victims were identified as Saad Issa Kostandi Salameh and Foumia Issa Latif Ayyad.

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The Israeli military admitted attacking the church and said they are aware of the “claim” regarding damage to the church and injuries at the site.

The incident is “under investigation”, the spokesman added.

Since the start of the war on Gaza, Israel has repeatedly attacked religious sites, including mosques and churches.

In October 2023, just days after the war began, Israeli forces bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Gaza Strip’s oldest, killing at least 18 people.

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

New Israeli corridor dividing Khan Yunis, a colonial strategy to fragment and reshape Gaza

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli army’s announcement of a new corridor dividing eastern and western Khan Yunis marks a dangerous escalation in a broader colonial project to fragment Palestinian territory.

This move paves the way for geographic and demographic restructuring in line with Israel’s long-term objectives. It serves as an additional tool to isolate areas, dismantle unity within the Gaza Strip, and reengineer realities on the ground. The aim is to entrench military control and forcibly confine the population to a narrow coastal area under inhumane conditions, functioning as a direct method of their deliberate destruction.

The Israeli army announced today the establishment of the Magen Oz corridor, a 15-kilometre military road separating eastern and western Khan Yunis. The corridor reinforces Israel’s policy of isolation and the fragmentation of Gaza’s territorial integrity. It also revives traditional colonial tools in modern form, aiming to impose a permanent reality that undermines the Palestinian presence and paves the way for depopulation.

This corridor is part of Israel’s effort to establish a permanent military presence in the Gaza Strip and reflects its disregard for any de-escalation efforts that could lead to an end to its military operations or its illegal occupation of the enclave.

The areas isolated by the new Israeli corridor cover approximately 45 per cent of Khan Yunis Governorate, equivalent to around 12 per cent of the total area of the Gaza Strip. The corridor begins at the Morag corridor south of Khan Yunis, which Israel announced in April, and extends north along Salah al-Din Street. It completely isolates the areas of Jouret Allout and Ma’an, as well as the towns of Al-Fukhari, Khuza’a, Bani Suheila, Abasan al-Kabira, Abasan al-Jadida, and the eastern parts of Al-Qarara north of Khan Yunis.

Euro-Med Monitor’s field team has documented a sharp escalation in bombing and systematic destruction in the areas east of Khan Yunis, now isolated by the new corridor. Israeli forces carried out aerial and artillery strikes, used explosive-laden robots, and then deployed heavy machinery to conceal the destruction and transport rubble to unknown locations inside Israel. The team estimates that at least 90 per cent of the buildings in these areas have been destroyed.

In its statements on operations in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army deliberately misrepresented the construction of the new corridor, concealing the fact that it is being built over the ruins of thousands of destroyed buildings and residential homes that once stood in the area.

The destruction is not confined to buildings along the corridor but extends in all directions to surrounding areas covering several kilometres. This operation aims to erase the urban environment entirely under a false military pretext.

Similarly, when the Israeli army announces the clearing of militants from an area, it is in fact declaring its complete obliteration: total destruction, forced displacement, and the uprooting of all forms of life. This pattern was evident in the northern Gaza Strip and in Rafah, where misleading military rhetoric was used to mask mass killings, widespread displacement, and the systematic destruction of urban infrastructure, all in an attempt to conceal acts of genocide behind deceptive terminology.

This behaviour reflects an Israeli military doctrine that treats civilian presence as a threat to be eliminated. It designates homes, hospitals, and schools as “terrorist” infrastructure and considers civilians legitimate targets simply for remaining in targeted areas, in a flagrant and unprecedented breach of the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

Such practices are part of a systematic process that began with the onset of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, characterised by the deliberate and wide-scale destruction of entire cities and neighbourhoods. This is a direct manifestation of the ongoing genocide, now in its twenty-first month, where demolition, devastation, and forced displacement serve as primary tools of execution.

In addition to killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians and systematically destroying the lives of approximately 2.3 million people by eliminating their basic means of survival, Israeli forces are actively working to annihilate Palestinian cities, including their architectural and cultural fabric. This is accompanied by the erasure of Palestinian national and cultural identity, the uprooting of people from their land, permanent forced displacement, denial of return, dismantling of communities, and the obliteration of collective memory, all as part of a systematic attempt to eliminate their physical and human presence and to destroy their past, present, and future.

Residential areas across the Gaza Strip are being subjected to daily destruction and repeated bombing by Israeli forces, reducing them to rubble. Heavy machinery then arrives to clear the debris and transport it into Israel, completely altering the landscape of these areas.

The ongoing pattern of comprehensive destruction targeting Palestinian towns and neighbourhoods, including homes, civilian and economic facilities, and infrastructure, clearly shows that this devastation is not driven by military necessity. Instead, it is aimed at erasing Palestinian material and cultural heritage, in grave violation of international law.

This behaviour is part of Israel’s policy of urbicide, targeting not only the Palestinian population and their properties, but also their cultural and civilisational existence. It involves erasing physical and historical traces of their connection to the land, weakening their ability to remain, and ultimately eliminating their social and physical presence to pave the way for illegal settlement projects in the Gaza Strip.

The forced displacement of Palestinians is a direct extension of Israel’s decades-long settler-colonial project, rooted in the erasure of Palestinian existence and the seizure of their land. What sets this phase apart is its unprecedented scale and severity, demonstrated by the comprehensive targeting of all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 through genocide and the denial of people’s most basic human rights. The conditions of extreme coercion and deprivation forced upon the Palestinian people represent a deliberate effort to push them out of their homeland, not by choice but as a condition for their very survival. This stands as one of the most blatant cases of planned mass displacement in modern history.

All states must fulfil their international obligations by pressuring Israel to halt the genocide and other serious crimes in the Gaza Strip. This includes protecting civilians, ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, imposing sanctions, ending all forms of military, financial, and political support, and immediately suspending arms sales, transfers, purchases, and related export licences and military aid. Israel must be held accountable at all levels, both domestically and internationally.

States and relevant entities must also pursue accountability of countries complicit in or supportive of Israel’s crimes, most notably the United States, along with other governments that provide Israel with any form of assistance connected to these violations. This includes military, intelligence, political, legal, financial, and media support, as well as any contractual engagements that contribute to the continuation of these crimes.

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

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Gendered Genocide: Every Hour, Israel Kills a Woman or Girl in Gaza

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- More than 20,000 Palestinian women and girls have been killed in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, according to a new report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. That’s more than one woman or girl every hour since the genocide began in October 2023.

These victims were not just numbers. They were mothers, daughters, doctors, teachers, workers, students, and leaders. Each played a vital role in holding their families and communities together.

Among the 42,620 children who lost at least one parent, around 6,500 lost their mothers.

“It’s a wound no child can truly heal from,” the report said.

Over 1 million women and girls in Gaza have been forcibly displaced. Among them are 150,000 pregnant women and new mothers. Many are giving birth in tents, bombed homes, or what’s left of destroyed hospitals, often without clean water, medical staff, or safety.

Giving birth in Gaza has become a life-threatening act, according to the report.

More than 80% of Gaza’s health facilities have been destroyed. Only five hospitals offer partial maternity services. One in every three pregnancies is now considered high-risk. One in five babies is born preterm or underweight.

Thousands of women have died from preventable causes, including childbirth complications, infections, and untreated chronic illnesses, due to Israel’s blockade and repeated targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system.

These deaths are rarely counted in the official toll. “Their absence is one of the genocide’s many hidden tolls,” Euro-Med Monitor warned.

Starvation has become a weapon. Over 95% of pregnant and breastfeeding women suffer from severe malnutrition. Families go days without food as Israel continues to block basic supplies including baby formula.

“Starving fetuses and newborns isn’t military strategy. It’s annihilation,” the group said.

Inside Israeli prisons, Palestinian women face sexual and reproductive violence. Reports describe female detainees being raped or threatened with rape, subjected to invasive strip searches, genital kicking, breast grabbing, and being denied menstrual hygiene products. Pregnant detainees are denied food and medical care.

Outside prison walls, evidence continues to mount of Israeli soldiers looting Palestinian homes and humiliating women. Hundreds of verified photos and videos show soldiers flaunting and wearing women’s underwear, desecrating personal belongings, and mocking the dead and displaced.

“This violation defiles what is sacred in our culture and faith,” said the report. “It haunts the collective memory of the Palestinian people.”

Euro-Med Monitor, along with UN investigators, says this is not accidental. Gender-based violence in Gaza is being used as a weapon of war; a systematic strategy to break, humiliate, and erase the Palestinian people.

It meets the legal definitions of genocide under the Rome Statute, including acts intended to prevent births and inflict conditions of destruction.

Gaza also now holds the world’s highest rate of child amputees. Between 3,000 and 4,000 children, many of them girls, have lost limbs in Israeli attacks. At least 10 children a day become amputees.

These girls now face lifelong trauma, without proper treatment or prosthetics. Many cannot walk, play, or even sleep without pain.

The report ends with a warning: the world must not ignore the targeted destruction of women and girls in Gaza. Their erasure is not collateral damage. It is a central feature of what human rights groups are calling a gendered genocide.

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

ICC Rejects Israel’s Request to Cancel Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant

By Quds News Network

The Hague (Quds News Network)- The International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected Israel’s attempt to cancel arrest warrants issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision was announced on tod by Pre-Trial Chamber I.

Israel had asked the ICC to withdraw or invalidate the warrants. It also called on the Court to suspend its investigation into crimes committed in Palestine. A senior Israeli legal team submitted the request on May 9, 2025.

But the ICC judges ruled that the arrest warrants remain valid. The judges said the Court had the legal authority to issue them. They rejected Israel’s claim that the warrants violated the suspects’ human rights or international law.

“The warrants include valid jurisdictional findings,” the judges stated. They also said that reversing a procedural ruling earlier this year did not affect the legal foundation of the warrants.

The ruling also clarified another key point. Israel wanted the ICC to pause its investigation until a final decision is made on jurisdiction. The Court refused.

Under Article 19(7) of the Rome Statute, an investigation can be suspended if a state challenges the admissibility of a case. But Israel only challenged the Court’s jurisdiction, not the admissibility. Therefore, the ICC said the investigation will go on.

The Chamber noted that only admissibility challenges can halt investigations. Jurisdictional challenges, it ruled, do not carry the same effect.

Palestine had asked to submit its own observations on Israel’s request. But the Court said it already had enough information and declined to hear additional arguments from the Palestinian side at this stage.

The decision marks a major step in the ICC’s ongoing investigation into Israeli war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Court began the investigation in 2021 and issued the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024.

Israel does not recognize the Court’s jurisdiction. However, the ICC has ruled that it has legal authority over the territories occupied by Israel since 1967; Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

The ICC’s investigation focuses on crimes committed since June 13, 2014.

Despite mounting political pressure, the Court reaffirmed its position. The investigation will move forward, and the arrest warrants remain active.

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

“By Way of Deception”: Mossad’s Duplicity and Washington’s Complicity

By Rima Najjar

How Mossad’s spyware, America’s silence, and the weaponization of loyalty expose a crisis in alliance, narrative, and justice

Despite billions in military aid, cutting-edge technological support, and unflinching diplomatic shielding, the United States is routinely surveilled by the very ally it sustains. Through Mossad, Israel reciprocates not with loyalty but with layered espionage — described by former CIA operative Andrew Bustamante as gifts laced with spyware and collaboration steeped in distrust. For many Americans, this moral asymmetry cuts against the intuitive link between generosity and allegiance.

In a now-viral segment of Julian Dorey’s Podcast #224, Bustamante recounts how Mossad would offer the CIA “presents” — usually tech or intelligence tools — routinely embedded with spyware. The anecdote isn’t exceptional; it’s emblematic. Mossad’s ethos, shaped by a Zionist statecraft that privileges domination over accountability, is unapologetic: deception over transparency, survival over solidarity, interests over alliances. Its guiding credo, “By way of deception, thou shalt do war,” isn’t rhetorical flourish. It’s a tactical doctrine where manipulation is sacred, ethical boundaries expendable, and strategic betrayal, even of benefactors, fully normalized.

While the CIA navigates diplomatic constraint and executive oversight, Mossad operates with doctrinal autonomy. The asymmetry is both operational and philosophical, and it reverberates negatively against Palestinians through policymaking, intelligence norms, and the moral language of alliance.

The asymmetry at the heart of the U.S.–Israel alliance — where unconditional aid meets strategic betrayal — is not a diplomatic fluke. It’s structural. Mossad’s ethos of deception, embedded in Zionist doctrine, offers a blueprint for unaccountable power: surveillance recast as partnership, aggression disguised as preemption. And U.S. policy doesn’t just tolerate this calculus — it amplifies it.

Take the 2021 Iron Dome funding debate. Despite evidence that the system shielded bombing campaigns in Gaza, lawmakers across the aisle framed it as a humanitarian imperative, divorced from on-the-ground realities. U.S.–Israel intelligence collaboration, including joint surveillance tools and biometric databases, has empowered Shin Bet’s predictive policing — marking Palestinian youth as preemptive threats based on algorithmic suspicion.

Mossad’s operations targeting U.S. diplomats or breaching counterintelligence norms are met with silence — not for lack of evidence, but because the alliance is sacrosanct. Within this schema, deception is valorized as strategic brilliance. The result: policy frameworks that privilege impunity over principle, alliance over accountability, and erasure over evidence.

Zionist statecraft doesn’t limit deception to espionage. It encodes it into the very architecture of governance. In Gaza, Israel’s doctrine of “mowing the lawn” — a euphemism for routine mass bombardment — reframes civilian annihilation as counterterrorism. The 2024 ICJ ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank is illegal was met with escalated settlement expansion and settler militia violence, especially in Area C. These militias, often armed and protected, displace Palestinian shepherds and Bedouin communities under the guise of “security zones.” Western diplomatic cover transforms ethnic cleansing into a strategic imperative.

Such logic has precedent. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Ha’avara Agreement with Nazi Germany exemplify how Zionist institutions have historically leveraged imperial power to entrench colonial dominance. Today, the pattern persists — this time through the U.S., enabling Israel’s impunity via normalized apartheid. Land seizures, movement restrictions, and denial of citizenship are branded as defensive maneuvers against a population rendered suspect by design. In this matrix, security is no longer protection — it is pretext. Realpolitik is not pragmatism — it’s the ideological lubricant for a project of erasure.

Israel’s impunity is insulated not just by military superiority or diplomatic muscle, but also by narrative armor. It re-codes transgression as necessity, dominance as defense. This ideological scaffolding leans heavily on Holocaust memory, existential anxiety, and the language of perpetual threat. Israel, as it professes to the world, does not merely defend itself — it defends “civilization” against barbarism. In this schema, preemptive strikes, indefinite detentions, and siege warfare are rebranded as moral imperatives.

Consider Mossad’s extrajudicial assassinations — across sovereign states from Lebanon to Malaysia. Rarely condemned, they’re framed as tactical genius, immortalized in Hollywood, and repackaged as heroic innovation. The logic: Israeli violence is uniquely legible, rooted in historical trauma and the burden of Jewish survival. Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance — regardless of its alignment with international anti-colonial norms — is treated as structurally illegitimate.

More insidiously, Zionist exceptionalism weaponizes the language of liberal democracy to obscure apartheid. Israel brands itself “the only democracy in the Middle East” while imposing dual legal regimes: one for Jewish settlers, another for Palestinians under occupation. Anti-Semitism discourse is instrumentalized to collapse critique of Israeli policy into hatred of Jewish people. This isn’t accidental — it’s tactical. It recasts settler colonialism as a civilizational crusade, where indigenous erasure becomes a sacred necessity.

In intelligence, this logic mirrors Mossad’s playbook: deceive, distort, dominate — not in defiance of moral codes, but in their name. Spyware-laced “gifts,” institutional infiltration, and normalization of double agency are strategic affirmations of a sacred mission. Subversion is sanctified — deception, a birthright.

The U.S. response to Mossad’s tactics isn’t shaped by ignorance. Americans working in tech are aware that Israeli industrial actors not only conduct corporate espionage frequently, but when suspected and reported, US agencies routinely refuse to investigate and prosecute flagrant incidents happening right under their noses, even when they acknowledge them. Israel’s supposed tech innovations in surveillance, monitoring, and data processing are almost never of Israeli origin.

This is because American foreign policy reflects ideological alignment with Israel guided by beliefs that frame power as virtue. Through exceptionalism, the U.S. views itself as morally superior and selectively applies standards of accountability. Liberal hegemony drives efforts to remake the world in its image, promoting democracy and markets through military and diplomatic dominance. Coupled with a commitment to military primacy, these ideologies filter which actions are condemned, and which are excused. This framework makes criticism of allies like Israel politically off-limits.

These US ideological blinders find a parallel in Zionist exceptionalism, a belief system that frames Israel as uniquely entitled to moral and political legitimacy regardless of its actions. Zionist exceptionalism positions Israeli identity as singularly virtuous or historically burdened, allowing its violence to be rationalized while Palestinian resistance is pathologized. Through this lens, institutions — from media to academia — internalize and reproduce a hierarchy of legitimacy that shields Israeli conduct from scrutiny and casts Palestinian survival as suspect:

· Media Framing

Western news outlets routinely sanitize Israeli violence. Airstrikes on Gaza become “clashes,” settler pogroms morph into “tensions,” and apartheid infrastructure is relabeled as “security measures.” Palestinian death tolls are framed as collateral, not structural. When Pegasus spyware infiltrates journalists’ devices, the story is tech anomaly — not political scandal. This reframing immunizes Israel from the condemnation reserved for other regimes.

· Academic Gatekeeping

In elite institutions, Palestine is cordoned into conflict studies or security modules, where strategy is foregrounded and ethics obscured. Pro-Israel funding shapes hiring, grants, and symposia — curbing inquiry. Palestinian scholars face visa barriers, censorship, and academic isolation. Epistemic sovereignty itself becomes suspect. The unspoken rule: only certain voices may speak on occupation.

· Diplomatic Shielding

Despite mounting documentation — UN reports, ICC investigations, human rights testimonies — Israel evades accountability. U.S. vetoes act as firewall. Joint intelligence agreements elevate Mossad as a strategic partner, even amid exposed deception. The irony is brutal: the very tools of international law and diplomacy are weaponized to preserve Zionist impunity.

The network of global complicity described above doesn’t just excuse asymmetry — it operationalizes it. Mossad’s espionage becomes cleverness; Israeli apartheid is cast as pragmatism; Palestinian survival is treated as threat.

Challenging U.S. indulgence is not an editorial choice — it is a geopolitical imperative. To confront Zionist impunity, we must dismantle the narratives that sustain it. That means building systems where Palestinian testimony, memory, and resistance are treated not as exceptional — but as authoritative. It means decoupling legitimacy from militarized alliances, and redefining security not as domination, but as dignity.

This is a moral reckoning. It demands stripping espionage of glamour, exposing diplomacy’s complicity, and confronting the ideological machinery that enables betrayal. In doing so, we don’t merely name the asymmetry — we reject it. We counter it with frameworks of accountability, transparency, and liberation — rewriting the script that has too long cast domination as Palestine’s destiny. That script is over.

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

16 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

At Hague Group Emergency Summit, 30+ Nations Seek to ‘Halt the Genocide in Gaza’

By Brett Wilkins

Ministerial delegates from more than 30 nations gathered in the Colombian capital Bogotá Tuesday for an emergency summit focused on “concrete measures” to end Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza and other crimes against occupied Palestine.

The two-day Hague Group summit ultimately aims to “halt the genocide in Gaza” and sois led by co-chairs Colombia—which last year severed diplomatic relations with Israel—and South Africa, which filed the ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) joined by around two dozen countries. Progressive International first convened the Hague Group in January in the eponymous Dutch city, which is home to both the ICJ and International Criminal Court (ICC), whose rulings the coalition is dedicated to upholding.

“This summit marks a turning point in the global response to the erosion and violation of international law,” South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola said ahead of the gathering. “No country is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered.”

Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir said before the summit: “The Palestinian genocide threatens the entire international system. Colombia cannot remain indifferent in the face of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. The participating states will not only reaffirm their commitment to opposing genocide, but also formulate concrete steps to move from words to collective action.”

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That action includes enforcement of ICC arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation in a war that has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Hague Group members Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal will attend the summit. Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela will also take part.

Notably, so will NATO members and U.S. allies Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey. Like Israel, the United States denies there is a genocide in Gaza, despite growing international consensus among human rights defenders, jurists, and genocide experts including some of the leading Holocaust scholars in Israel and the United States.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department—which has sanctioned ICC judges and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese for seeking accountability for Israeli crimes—told Jewish News Syndicate Monday that the United States “strongly opposes efforts by so-called ‘multilateral blocs’ to weaponize international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas.”

The spokesperson added that the Trump administration “will aggressively defend our interests, our military, and our allies, including Israel, from such coordinated legal and diplomatic warfare,” even as U.S. allies take part in the summit.

Undaunted by U.S. sanctions, Albanese is among several U.N. experts who spoke at the summit, which she hailed as “the most significant political development in the past 20 months.”

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In prepared remarks, Albanese—who earlier this month said that “Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history”—told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional—applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful.”

“This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order,” she argued. “That era must end.”

According to Albanese:

The world will remember what we, states and individuals, did in this moment—whether we recoiled in fear or rose in defense of human dignity. Here in Bogotá, a growing number of states have the opportunity to break the silence and revert to a path of legality by finally saying: Enough. Enough impunity. Enough empty rhetoric. Enough exceptionalism. Enough complicity. The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace—grounded in rights and freedoms for all, and not mere privileges for some, at the expense of the annihilation of others.

The Israeli Mission to the United Nations told Jewish News Syndicate that “what the event organizers, and perhaps some of the countries attending, forget is what triggered this conflict—namely, the butchering of 1,200 innocent souls on October 7, and how 50 Israelis remain in brutal captivity to this day by Hamas in Gaza.”

“Attempting to exert pressure on Israel—and not Hamas, who initiated and are prolonging this conflict—is a moral travesty,” the mission added. “The war will not end while hostages remain in Gaza.”

In addition to the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICJ—whose ruling in the genocide case is not expected for years—has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, to stop blocking lifesaving humanitarian aid from entering the strip, and to halt its assault on Rafah. Israel has ignored all three orders.

“The choice before us is stark and unforgiving,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week. “We can either stand firm in defense of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

“While we may face threats of retaliation when we stand up for international law—as South Africa discovered when the United States retaliated for its case at the International Court of Justice—the consequences of abdicating our responsibilities will be dire,” Petro continued. “If we fail to act now, we not only betray the Palestinian people, we become complicit in the atrocities committed by Netanyahu’s government.”

“For the billions of people in the Global South who rely on international law for protection, the stakes could not be higher,” he added. “The Palestinian people deserve justice. The moment demands courage.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

16 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org