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By Habib Siddiqui

In October 1973, Arab oil producers led by Saudi Arabia imposed an oil embargo on the United States and other nations backing Israel during the Yom Kippur War. That bold move triggered a global energy crisis and helped bring about a ceasefire. It was a rare moment of Arab assertiveness on the world stage.

Fast forward to today: Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 65,000 people—mostly women and children—according to humanitarian sources. A recent UN commission has even accused Israel of committing genocide. Yet, the Arab response has been largely symbolic. Statements of condemnation, calls for restraint, and summits filled with rhetoric have replaced meaningful action. The contrast with 1973 could not be starker.

Since that pivotal year, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman—have spent close to half a trillion dollars on Western weapons. According to estimates from the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database:

• Saudi Arabia: $150–200+ billion
• UAE: $50–80+ billion
• Qatar: $30–50+ billion
• Kuwait: $20–30+ billion
• Bahrain & Oman: $10–20+ billion (combined)

Yet, despite this massive investment, not a single GCC country has fired a weapon at Israel since 1973. The only direct military involvement by a Gulf state was a small Saudi contingent in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War—before the GCC even existed.

Meanwhile, Israel has not hesitated to strike targets in GCC countries. In September 2025, Israeli warplanes bombed a location in Doha, Qatar, targeting Hamas leaders and killing several Qatari citizens. This brazen act exposed the vulnerability of even the most well-armed Arab states and the hollowness of their strategic alliances.

So why do GCC countries continue to spend billions on weapons they never use against the region’s most aggressive actor? The answer lies in the geopolitical narrative shaped by Western powers. The USA and its allies have long portrayed Iran, Iraq, and other Shi’a-majority nations as the primary threats to Gulf stability. Western arms sales are marketed not just as tools of defense but as symbols of prestige and political alignment.

Citizens are rarely told that these contracts often include restrictions on how and where the weapons can be used—especially against Israel. Using Western-supplied arms against Israel would likely trigger sanctions, loss of military support, and diplomatic fallout. GCC leaders are reminded of Iran’s fate since the fall of the Shah in 1979—a cautionary tale of defiance punished by isolation.

Even more troubling is the lack of protection these alliances offer. The United States, which maintains military bases across the Gulf, did not warn Qatari leaders about the impending Israeli strike in Doha. The so-called safety net proved worthless. The U.S. response was muted, and no action was taken against Israel. The message was clear: when Israel attacks, even America’s closest Arab allies are left exposed.

President Joe Biden has openly called Israel a “God-send” for the United States. He once remarked that if Israel didn’t exist, America would have to invent it. President Donald Trump is even more unabashed in his support for Israel. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner—a deeply connected Orthodox Jewish real estate mogul—played a central role in shaping Trump’s Middle East policy. Trump’s designation of Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally in 2022 did little to shield it from Israeli aggression. Qatari officials were informed of the airstrike only ten minutes after it occurred.

So what good are trillions of dollars in weapons if GCC countries won’t defend their own sovereignty, let alone protect Palestinians from Israeli aggression? Qatar didn’t retaliate. Instead, it convened a summit in Doha to discuss the attack.

The result? A familiar spectacle of unity and impotence.

Leaders from the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), joined by representatives from Indonesia to Senegal, gathered in Doha to express solidarity. The summit concluded with a strongly worded communique condemning Israel and reaffirming support for Qatar. But beyond the rhetoric, there were no sanctions, no diplomatic breaks, no economic pressure—just words.

It was a stark reminder that 0 + 0 + 0 + … + 0 still equals 0.

At the summit, Gulf leaders called on the United States to rein in Israel. Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, Secretary General of the GCC, urged Washington to use its “leverage and influence” to stop Israeli aggression. But such appeals are increasingly disconnected from reality. Trump’s recent comment—“it’s up to Israel what it does in Gaza”—underscored the futility of expecting restraint from Washington.

Hours after the summit ended, Israeli forces launched a new ground offensive in Gaza City, undeterred by regional condemnation.

When will Arab leaders learn that they cannot rely on a fox to guard a henhouse? Appeasing and paying protection money to those who enable mass murder is not diplomacy—it’s complicity.

The Doha summit laid bare the limits of Arab diplomacy. Despite their oil wealth, modern infrastructure, and global investments, Gulf states have failed to convert economic power into political leverage. This impotence is not just a failure of strategy—it reflects a deeper structural weakness. Without the will or ability to challenge U.S. policy or impose costs on Israel, Arab states are left issuing statements that carry little weight.

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens and international outrage grows, the Arab world faces a moment of reckoning. Will it continue to rely on symbolic gestures and appeals to Western powers? Or will it rediscover the assertiveness it once wielded in 1973?

For now, the answer seems clear. The communique from Doha may have expressed solidarity—but it did nothing to stop the bombs from falling.

Habib Siddiqui is a peace and human rights activist.

21 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The current Israeli military onslaught on Gaza is so fierce that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian have already left the downtrodden city. It is a ramshackle place that is once again becoming a ghost town of debris as once-plush residential towers are now beaten down by Israeli bombs with the stench of gun-powder and sick human flesh that lies hidden below the rubble.

Israel’s latest attempt to invade Gaza City started on 16 September, 2025 and since then it has been bombing the once-dazzling urban conurbation from the air, land, and sea, causing widespread destruction and significant civilian casualties, whilst creating yet another mad wave of displacement to the south of the Strip.

Figures of forced displacement are not precise but the city a, conglomerate of 1.3 million people, has been reduced by much less. The Israeli army likes to boost of its handiwork. After the first week of ariel bombardment, it said 40 percent of the population has left, and today it says that 450,000 people have gone. The Gaza Media Office puts the number at only 270,000.

Despite the Israeli leaflets dropped from the air telling people to leave Palestinian sources still say that around 900,000 are staying put. Many say they are not going anywhere because of the limited space down in the south, and the fact it costs $3000 dollars to get down there, something which they don’t have.

One put it bluntly and callously, accepting fate as it comes. “Since, we are going to die anyway through Israeli bombs, it’s better to die here,” he added. The acceptance of fate however may be related to the fact that some of the people may have moved up to 20 times since the war started on Gaza soon after 7 October, 2023.  

Last Thursday, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the Israeli assault, currently centred on Gaza City, is “driving new waves of displacement, forcing traumatised families into an ever-shrinking area unfit for human dignity”.

“The injured and people with disabilities cannot move to safety, which puts their lives in grave danger,” Tedros said. “We call for an immediate end to these inhumane conditions. “We call for an immediate end to these inhumane conditions. We call for a ceasefire.”

Case stories of thick swarves of displaced people speak of hellish conditions as they can be seen on the Al Rasheed Road connecting the north of the Gaza Strip to its southern side. If people can afford they can use transport but many, including whole families of men, women and children  are moving on foot, hungry, with no water and many collapsing on the road as some have been moving for hours on end. For night rest, they make do with resting their limbs, again with no food on the sides of the road.

The social media have been rife with stories about forcibly displaced Palestinians on the road. Many of them say they don’t know where they are going, although the end of the road is to Al Mowasi, an area to the southwest of Khan Younis and which the Israeli has designated as a “safe” place but which it keeps bombing from the air whenever it feels like it.

One elderly man called Abu Nader Siam, walks slowly holding a cane in his right hand with his wife, Zakia Siam, at his left.  He is exhausted as reported in the UN News.

“I come from the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. They [Israelis] have left no house or neighbourhood except to bomb it,” he said. “The shelling continues, and they have dropped leaflets ordering us to evacuate. We walked for six hours because we couldn’t find a car or any transportation.”

Zakia Siam spoke about their non-stop journey after the shelling reduced their house to rubble. “We went to the Shujaiya neighbourhood, and then we were displaced to the Sha’af neighbourhood in Gaza City before it was bombed,” his wife said. 

“Afterwards, we went to the seashore west of Gaza City and my husband and I stayed there for two nights without a tent. We sat on the sidewalk next to the tents and hid next to one of them, then continued walking.”

Another civilian, Mrs. Um Shadi al-Ashkar, carried a bag of belongings as she headed for southern Gaza.  “There is death, shelling, bombing and destruction of houses (in Gaza City),” she said.

“Even if they had dropped leaflets, if there had been no shelling, no one would have left Gaza City, they would have stayed in their homes. But there is death and devastation.”

The fight for Gaza city is in full-swing. The Israeli army knows what its up against, adding it could take months, or even up to a year to completely take over the city from Palestinian resistance groups. Meanwhile, they know the city is a Hamas stronghold which they can’t railroad through their tanks. That is why for the time being they put the ground invasion on hold and bombing the city from the air and sea.

Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman, Jordan and blogs at crossfirearabia.com

21 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- The last remaining lifelines for civilians in Gaza City, including shelters and aid crossings, are collapsing as Israel intensifies its assault, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned, amid plans to occupy the city and forcibly displace more than one million residents.

In five days, 11 UNRWA shelters housing 11,000 people were hit by Israel, OCHA said. More than one million people have been displaced since Israel broke the March ceasefire, including 200,000 in the last month and 56,000 since Sunday alone, OCHA added.

Aid agencies are delivering wheat flour, food parcels, and nearly 560,000 meals daily, but OCHA confirmed that Israel of “systematically blocking” efforts, citing Israel’s closure of the Zikim crossing in northen Gaza and bans on certain food items.

“Opportunities to support starving people are being systematically blocked. Every week, new restrictions are imposed,” the agency said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also warned that Gaza’s hospitals are on the “brink of collapse”.

On Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the Israeli assault, currently centred on Gaza City, is “driving new waves of displacement, forcing traumatised families into an ever-shrinking area unfit for human dignity”.

“The injured and people with disabilities cannot move to safety, which puts their lives in grave danger,” Tedros said. “We call for an immediate end to these inhumane conditions. We call for a ceasefire.”

According to reports, only two hospitals in the enclave’s largest city, al-Shifa and al-Ahli, remain partially functional.

What Is Happening in Gaza City?

Hundreds of Palestinians are being forcibly displaced each day by Israel’s ongoing, indiscriminate bombing of Gaza City, which is killing dozens of civilians daily.

Families are fleeing south, following Israeli threats to head to the so-called ‘safe zone’ of al-Mawasi, an area that is overcrowded and has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces.

According to local sources on the ground, Gaza City is being systematically emptied, building by building, family by family.

Sources added that Israeli forces have intensified their attacks on Gaza City, destroying dozens of residential buildings and shelters.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Sunday Israel has carried out “systematic bombing of towers, residential buildings, schools and civilian institutions with the aim of extermination and forced displacement” as its offensive on Gaza City continues.

“While it claims to be targeting the resistance, the field realities prove beyond doubt that the occupation deliberately and according to a clear methodology bombs schools, mosques, hospitals and medical centres, destroys towers and residential buildings, destroys displaced persons’ tents, and targets the headquarters of various institutions including international institutions working in the humanitarian field,” it said in a statement.

Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, “What is falling on Gaza is not just missiles, but barrels of fire and destructive volcanic lava that burn the land and everything on it.”

This comes amid Israeli plans to occupy Gaza City and ethnically cleansing the northern city of its residents by forcibly displacing them.

Heavy bombardment pounded the city, and forces began moving in from the outskirts after weeks of deadly strikes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the launch of “a powerful operation in Gaza” that began on Tuesday, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots 2.

The deadly assault on Gaza City was met with celebration in Israel, as Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “Gaza [City] is burning.”

The offensive began the same day that independent experts commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“Cataclysmic”

The United Nations said the offensive has forced hundreds of Palestinians south, deepening an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that conditions are “nothing short of cataclysmic”.

“There is a constant stream of people making their way from the north, with many walking the 22km [14 miles] to the al-Mawasi ‘humanitarian zone’ – as labelled by Israel – on foot,” she said.

“The hygiene conditions are so dire that, of course, they lead to a massive spread of diseases, skin rashes and all sorts of public health crises.”

Rooted to Their Land

Despite repeated Israeli forced displacement threats and relentless bombardment, Gaza’s Government Media Office confirmed on Tuesday that more than one million Palestinians in the north of the enclave remain “rooted” to their land.

The Office said out of 1.3 million people in Gaza City and towns to its north, about 190,000 have fled to the south while 15,000 returned to the north due to the dire conditions in the areas that the Israeli military had designated as “safe zones”.

The local authorities noted that Israel has been regularly attacking Rafah and al-Mawasi near Khan Younis, where it told people to flee.

“These areas completely lack the basic necessities of life, with no hospitals, no infrastructure, and no essential services such as water, food, shelter, electricity or education, making living there almost impossible,” the Office said in a statement.

This area amounts to no more than 12 percent of the total area of the Gaza Strip, it added, noting Israeli occupation is “trying to forcibly confine over 1.7 million people within this limited space, as part of a broader plan to establish what are effectively ‘concentration camps.’”

“This is part of a systematic policy of forced displacement aimed at emptying northern Gaza and Gaza City of their residents, a clear war crime and a crime against humanity, in blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”

19 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Stephen Prager

Israel’s airstrikes on a media complex in Yemen last week resulted in the largest single attack on journalists the world has seen in 16 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In a report released Friday, the group said that 31 journalists from two government-run newspapers based in Sana’a were killed in the strikes on September 10, along with four others, including one child.

Nasser Al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of the newspaper 26 September, called the attack on his newsroom an “unprecedented massacre of journalists.”

“It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words,” Al-Khadri told the CPJ.

According to CPJ, it was the second-largest attack on the press they’ve ever recorded, and the worst since 2009, when 32 journalists were massacred as part of a political ambush in the Philippines.

The Israeli government has often defended its attacks on civilian infrastructure by claiming that it houses militants. But in these strikes, the IDF’s media desk acknowledged that it was targeting what it referred to as the “Public Relations Department” for the Houthis, also known as Ansar-Allah.

Shortly after Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in 2023, the militant group, which controls large parts of Yemen, began to launch drone and missile strikes against shipping vessels in the Red Sea and directly against Israel in what they have described as an effort to support Palestinians under fire. They have said they will stop these attacks when Israel reaches an agreement with Hamas to end the war in Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly bombed Yemen in recent weeks, including launching a strike on its main airport and large amounts of civilian infrastructure. On the same day it bombed the media complex, it also hit residential areas in Sana’a as well as a medical facility.

In a post on X, the official account for the Israel Defense Forces justified striking the newspapers by saying that they are “responsible for distributing and disseminating propaganda messages in the media, including speeches by Houthi leader Abdul-Malik and statements from spokesman Yahya Saree.” For this reason, Israel described the journalists as “military targets.”

But the CPJ says that “as civilians, journalists are protected under international law, including those working for state-run or armed group-affiliated outlets, unless they take direct part in hostilities.”

Niku Jafarnia, a Bahrain and Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, explained in more detail on Monday:

Radio and television facilities are civilian objects and cannot be targeted. They are legitimate targets only if they are used in a way that makes an “effective contribution to military action.” However, civilian broadcasting facilities are not rendered legitimate military targets simply because they are pro-Houthi or anti-Israel, or report on the laws of war violations by one side or the other, as this does not directly contribute to military operations.

Al-Khadri said that Israel’s strikes hit his newsroom around 4:45 pm, right when staff were finishing up the publication of the weekly paper.

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen analyst, noted that “Since it is a weekly publication, not a daily one, staff were gathered at the publishing house to prepare for distribution, significantly increasing the number of people present in the compound.”

The CPJ classified the 31 journalists killed in the strike as having been “murdered” by Israel, meaning that they were deliberately targeted specifically for their work. Over the past decade, the group says, 1 in 6 of the world’s murdered journalists have been killed by Israel.

While estimates from different groups vary, Israel’s war in Gaza is considered by far the deadliest conflict in the world for journalists, with more killed than any other conflict in the world combined. In August, the CPJ reported that 192 journalists, nearly all Palestinians, have been killed since October 7, 2023, while other groups put the death toll even higher.

In attacks last month that drew similar worldwide condemnation, Israel conducted what was described as a “double tap” strike on Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital aimed at killing first responders who arrived after the first strike. Twenty people were killed in total, including rescue workers and at least five journalists.

Not long before, Israel carried out the targeted assassination of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists, claiming without evidence that they were part of “a Hamas terrorist cell.”

“Since October 7, 2023, Israel has emerged as a regional killer of journalists, with repeated incidents in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and now Yemen confirming Israel’s longstanding pattern of labeling journalists as terrorists or propagandists to justify their killings,” said CPJ regional program leaderSara Qudah.

“Israel’s September 10 strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen marks an alarming escalation, extending Israel’s war on journalism far beyond the genocide in Gaza,” Qudah said. “This latest killing spree is not only a grave violation of international law, but also a terrifying warning to journalists across the region: no place is safe.”

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

20 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud 

In several influential European countries, solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people is finally translating into action. Though such action may seem belated to the tens of thousands of lives lost in the genocide-stricken Strip, it is, nonetheless, critical for the future of the Palestinian cause. 

The political shift underway in Europe is a development of strategic importance. This is not because Europe’s voice carries a higher value on the scale of global solidarity, but because of the central role the continent has historically played in the inception of Israel, as well as the sustained political and financial support for its settler-colonial project.

For decades, this support has provided a political and economic shield, allowing Israel to operate outside the bounds of international law. As Europe forms a core part of the Western political, legal, and economic landscape, any fundamental shift in perception here, coupled with the deeply embedded solidarity in the Global South, could finally serve as the catalysts needed to isolate Israel on the international stage—a critical prerequisite for badly needed accountability.

Though Ireland has historically served as a model of sensible and ethical politics on Palestine, other examples cannot be overlooked. They include Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and Slovenia. These countries’ positions, especially since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, have been largely shaped by the degree of popular protests and civil society mobilization. Their actions, though varied, signal a growing chasm between European public opinion and the traditional pro-Israel policies of many governments.

Spain, however, represents a critical and comprehensive case. The change underway in Madrid is a near-ideal model because it is built on three interconnected pillars: a vibrant and well-organized, civil-society-based solidarity; a fundamental change in official political discourse and, most importantly, meaningful, quantifiable action.  

On June 6, 2024, Spain made a bold and historic move by formally deciding to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people. That step, though moral and logical, was particularly significant when compared to the positions of other major European powers. Germany, for instance, has labored to defend Israel against such an accusation, while Britain, through its Foreign Minister David Lammy, argued that the UK was not yet convinced Israel’s actions constituted genocide.

Spain’s current position was not entirely a surprise. It was a culmination of a shifting political attitude that had been building for some time. In November 2023, then-Minister for Social Rights, Ione Belarra, openly accused Israel of “planned genocide” in a powerful speech. This public declaration marked a significant shift in official discourse, moving beyond polite diplomatic platitudes to a language of moral clarity.

This new discourse ultimately led to Madrid’s recognition of Palestine as a state, a joint declaration that included Ireland and Norway. The decision not only added to the growing list of nations recognizing Palestinian statehood but also opened the stage for yet more similar recognitions. While some countries are using their position on a Palestinian state as a distracting tactic from their failure to take any punitive action, Spain’s actions appear to be on a different political wavelength. Indeed, on September 8, Spain declared a set of new sanctions against Israel, including a ban on weapons sales and a prohibition on military ships carrying equipment from using Spanish ports.

For many in Spain, even these steps are seen as too paltry and insignificant in the face of a war that has wiped out more than 20,000 children. The Spanish people are right to expect more meaningful steps from their government, and their demands are rooted in a history specific to Spain’s collective experience.

In 1974, Spain joined many countries in the Global South in voting in favor of UN General Assembly Resolutions 3236 and 3237, which recognized Palestinian self-determination. A few years later, Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez made a historic gesture by receiving PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Madrid. These initial gestures of support continued for a time. However, following the Madrid Talks, Spain slowly rebranded itself as a neutral intermediary, eventually repeating the same European rhetoric about Israel’s “right to defend itself” and the like.

Spain’s ability to maintain this position was made possible, in part, by the fact that the Palestinian Authority was far more concerned about maintaining its status as the official representative of the Palestinian people — and the international funds and legitimacy that came with it — than with holding Israel accountable to international law. Then, it seemed impractical for civil society to try to hold its government to higher standards than those demanded by the Palestinian leadership itself.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, shattered that dynamic. The unceasing Israeli extermination campaign in Gaza, and the Palestinian resistance in the Strip, rendered the PA virtually irrelevant on the global stage and recentered Gaza as the true representative of the Palestinian collective experience and the full extent of Israel’s criminal actions.

This meant that the Spanish people themselves became partly in charge of their government’s position on Palestine. In September 2024, over 200 trade unions and NGOs called for a 24-hour general strike, raising the ceiling of their demands to the complete severance of all political, economic, and military ties with Israel. Every step taken by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government since has been a direct response to, and an attempt to satisfy, these demands.

What is taking place in Spain is true grassroots solidarity, unburdened by doublespeak or political bravado. It is a genuine civil society action centered on a shared historical experience and struggle against state-sponsored violence and fascism. While every nation has a unique story, the Spanish experience is proving to be a model worthy of study, emulation, and certainly of deep respect.

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

19 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Claudia Aranda

20 Sep 2025 – Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has issued one of the most severe and painful denunciations in recent years: the real number of deaths in Gaza exceeds 680,000, more than ten times the officially reported figure. Of those victims, roughly half would be children and 75% women and minors. These figures are staggering, yet they represent a cruel truth that demands to be heard and fully understood.

How can one explain this abyssal gap between official figures and what appears to be reality? The answer is simple and devastating: Gaza is almost entirely destroyed. More than 66% of its infrastructure lies in ruins, and in Gaza City, that destruction reaches 70–75%. Homes, buildings, hospitals, schools, roads—the essential service network has been shattered by bombings that reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. With the strip hermetically sealed, with no access for international observers or technically trained and calm rescue teams to remove remains, a physical count of corpses is impossible.

Thus, the figure of 65,000 dead that circulates officially corresponds only to those recovered and registered in hospitals or morgues. What is missing—what truly hurts—are those left beneath the rubble, bodies the world has not yet been able to count or even bury with dignity. And when comparing that figure with the 1.5 million internally displaced persons out of the 2.2 million who inhabited Gaza at the start of the siege, whose movement can be tracked, the conclusion is chilling: we are missing 680,000 souls.

Violence has struck mercilessly even those who work to save lives and tell the story. Albanese details that 1,581 health workers, 346 UN employees—mainly from UNRWA—and 252 journalists attempting to document the tragedy have died in Gaza, a record figure in any conflict. These numbers reveal a systematic campaign not only of civilian extermination but also of silencing and erasing those able to bear witness.

Despite all this, the international community has failed to act with the urgency needed to stop the tragedy. Albanese highlights three countries that, far from condemning or suspending support, continue backing Israel, particularly with weapons: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. These states not only maintain military trade but also enable the constant replenishment of the arsenal used to carry out this genocide.

In addition, the rapporteur warns that more than 10,000 Palestinians are being arbitrarily detained under inhumane conditions, subjected to torture and starvation, and that 75 prisoners have died in Israeli custody over the past 710 days. The level of dehumanization is total: deaths in the West Bank also continue to rise, alongside forced expulsions and the advance of Israeli annexations, which further exacerbate the Palestinian crisis regionally.

It is impossible to imagine that these people have simply fled; Gaza is sealed off like a concentration and extermination camp, where the population has no safe routes and no possible escape. Children, women, and men, all trapped under a genocide that cannot be concealed and yet is systematically denied by its perpetrators and their international allies.

Not even the most horrific natural disasters, such as the Southeast Asian tsunami, exemplify this scale of mass human destruction under constant exclusion, blockade, and oppression. Comparing the numbers with that natural tragedy provides clarity: in both cases, victims disappeared under rubble or waters made it impossible to physically count each victim, yet the demographic devastation remains glaring.

With 710 days of accumulated horror, and those more than 1,500 humanitarian workers dead—let me underline this point—the 252 journalists killed while trying to recount the catastrophe, and the thousands of prisoners tortured or killed in detention, Francesca Albanese stresses that this is a story that can no longer be ignored or minimized.

As an editorialist, I dare to say there is no possible neutrality in the face of this human catastrophe. We are missing 680,000 souls, and their names must be spoken, their lives honored with justice, not with an imposed silence. The international community bears the urgent responsibility to act not merely with words but with decisive measures to stop this genocide and repair, insofar as possible, the damage inflicted.

Today, Gaza speaks to us not only with numbers and statistics, but with the absence of its dead—mothers, children, the elderly who still have no rest. And it is that call for memory and justice that must echo in every corner of the world.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN News

16 Sep 2025 – Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council alleged today that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Tel Aviv.

In a new report published against the backdrop of intensifying Israeli military operations in Gaza City, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, urged Israel and all countries to fulfil their obligations under international law “to end the genocide” and punish those responsible.

“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” insisted Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Danny Meron, dismissed the Commission’s “cherry-picked” findings outright, maintaining that the 70-plus page report “promotes a narrative serving Hamas and its supporters in attempting to delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel. The report falsely accuses Israel of genocidal intent, an allegation it cannot substantiate.”

At a press conference in Geneva, the Commission of Inquiry’s members Ms. Pillay and Chris Sidoti – who are not UN staff but instead appointed by the Human Rights Council’s 47 Member States – explained that their investigations into the war in Gaza beginning with Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023 had led to the conclusion that Israeli authorities and security forces “committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

These acts are:

• killing,
• causing serious bodily or mental harm,
• deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians, and
• imposing measures intended to prevent births.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COPqRteUaDI]

Ms. Pillay maintained that responsibility for the atrocity crimes “lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons”, amid “explicit statements” denigrating Palestinians by Israeli civilian and military authorities.

The Commission also analysed conduct of Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces in Gaza, “including imposing starvation and inhumane conditions of life for Palestinians in Gaza…genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be concluded from the nature of their operations”, the panel said.

Methodical examination

The Commission’s assertion follows its review of Israeli military operations in Gaza, “including killing and seriously harming unprecedented numbers of Palestinians” and the imposition of a “total siege, including blocking humanitarian aid leading to starvation”, it said.

According to the UN aid coordination wing, OCHA, nearly one million people remain in Gaza City, famine has been confirmed there, and residents face daily bombardment and “compromised access to means of survival after the Israeli military placed the entire city under a displacement order”.

For its latest report, the panel also examined what it called the “systematic destruction” of healthcare and education in Gaza and “systematic” acts of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians.

Justice call

In addition, the Commission of Inquiry reviewed the alleged “direct targeting” of children and Israel’s “disregarding [of] the orders of the International Court of Justice, which issued an order in March 2024 that Israel should take ‘all necessary and effective measures to ensure…the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians throughout Gaza’”.

“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Ms. Pillay.

“When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she added.

“All States are under a legal obligation to use all means that are reasonably available to them to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Qatari dimension

In a related development on Tuesday, the Human Rights Council shuffled its schedule to make way for an urgent debate on last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar.

The strike targeted a neighbourhood of the Qatari capital, Doha, reportedly killing six people including five members of Hamas and prompting widespread condemnation including from the Security Council and Secretary-General.

In a statement, António Guterres spoke out against what he called a “flagrant violation” of Qatari sovereignty and territorial integrity.

And at a Security Council meeting called in response to the strike, the UN’s political affairs chief told ambassadors the attack in violation of Qatar’s sovereignty was a serious threat to regional peace and security. It also undermined international mediation efforts to end the war in Gaza and return the hostages, said Rosemary DiCarlo.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

I’m beyond disturbed that my alma mater is wiling to destroy its reputation as the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement and put students in danger in the process.

18 Sep 2025 – The University of California, Berkeley, famous for its Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, included the names of 160 faculty, students, and staff in documents it recently turned over to the Trump administration as part of an antisemitism probe. It’s yet another worrying sign in the federal government’s efforts to use allegations of antisemitism to discipline academia and suppress resistance to its agenda, including its support for Israel.

As a graduate of UC Berkeley and as someone who was a student activist there in the 1990s, I was particularly disturbed that the university named names to the government.

Naming names was one of the hallmarks of the paranoid era of the 1950s in the United States, when Americans were hauled before Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and interrogated about their political beliefs and suspected allegiance to communism. For those under the anti-communist spotlight, naming the names of other people was one way to avoid being blacklisted or otherwise punished for their real or alleged political beliefs. The spectacle of McCarthyist shaming and persecution signaled to the rest of American society to religiously embrace anti-communism, a legacy that is still strong today.

The most prominent known name that Berkeley included is Judith Butler, the philosopher who made their reputation through interventions into gender and queer theory, and who also happens to be Jewish and anti-Zionist. In response, Butler wrote:

“Antisemitism must be unequivocally opposed along with every other form of racism, but there are campus protocols for investigating such allegations that ensure fairness and which, in this instance, were suspended by the administration. Moreover, it is important to consider which definition of antisemitism is at work. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which the Trump administration accepts, is overbroad, often equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It acts as a cudgel against freedom of expression and dissent.”

During the McCarthy era, the targeting of suspected communists and sympathizers was inseparable from a general atmosphere of enforced domestic conformity, from patriarchal gender roles to segregation and anti-Blackness. Anti-communist politics also went hand-in-hand with the nation’s post-World War II transformation into the “military-industrial complex” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his 1961 farewell speech. The combination of anti-communist paranoia and an expanding American global hegemony culminated in the American war in Viet Nam (and Laos and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, waged to stop the spread of communism. The war was a disaster for Southeast Asians and for Americans, with over 58,000 Americans dead and approximately 3 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Lao, Hmong, and Cambodians killed.

The imperial and murderous excesses of American power generated the antiwar movement and the countercultural movement, while the concurrent suppression of American minorities led to the rise of domestic uprisings by Black Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, and Native Americans, along with a vigorous resurgence of feminism and a militantly visible movement of queer liberation. The schism within the United States was a civil war in the American soul, which subsided after the end of the war in Viet Nam into 50 years of cultural and political struggle over the meaning of the United States, both for its own citizens and residents, as well as those people of other countries affected by American power.

Butler has been involved with both the domestic and international dimensions of American power. While they became influential with their writing on queer and trans politics, they also spoke out against American wars of the post 9/11 era. The Manichean view of the Cold War, where communists were the enemy, had simply been extended to the Arab and Muslim world, with a fear of “radical Islam” conflating Arabs and Muslims with terrorists. Butler asked a basic question: why do some lives, like those of Americans, Western Europeans, and white people, seem more deserving of grief in Western society than those of Arabs, Muslims, and nonwhite people? That same question could have been asked about Southeast Asian lives during the American war in Viet Nam, and Butler has asked it about Palestinian lives in their condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

That genocide, and the American support for it, has heightened the political and cultural divisions within American society to a pitch not seen since the era of McCarthyism and the American war in Viet Nam. While we remember some of the more famous names who were named in the 1950s, like screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, many more were targeted who were less well-known. So it is with Butler and the 159 others whose names have not yet been revealed, some of whom were included due to anonymous allegations. Their perils are real, as Butler writes: “Will those of us on the list be branded by the government as ‘terrorist sympathizers?’ Will our travel be restricted? Will our email be surveilled? Students on the list are now potentially exposed to abduction, deportation, termination of employment, expulsion from the university, harassment, and detention by a government that has already shown its willingness to do all of the above.”

By naming names, UC Berkeley has eroded its reputation as a stronghold of intellectual independence, cultural nonconformity, and political protest. Its submission is neither inevitable nor rewarding, since every sign of submission has been interpreted by the Trump administration as evidence of weakness that can be further exploited. In the face of this institutional complicity, which stems from the vulnerability of UC Berkeley and many other institutions of higher education to political domination due to their funding being intertwined with the military-industrial complex, the historian Robin D.G. Kelley writes, “We need to create a new university.”

That kind of daring imagination is what Berkeley was supposed to be famous for. But while academic institutions can be and have been corrupted, the ideals that drive certain scholars, from famous philosophers to inquisitive first-year students, still remain. Those ideals include a commitment to recognizing the humanity of those that our society has deemed the enemy, as well as the acknowledgment that our side is as capable of the inhuman behavior with which we charge our enemy. This commitment to mutual humanity, and this troubling understanding of our own inhumanity, reminds us that what we should name in the face of abusive power is not our fellow citizens and residents but the acts of injustice that harm others and – for those of us who remain silent – ourselves.

Pulitzer-Prize Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of several books.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By The Chris Hedges Report 

18 Sep 2025 – Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa — so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”

David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.

I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “Fuck You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”

The state effectively used antifa — I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs — to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.

Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.

Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.

John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.

Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.

“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”

But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.

“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”

“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”

I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.

This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.

We are all antifa now.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Maung Zarni

FORSEA Dialogue strives to foster the bond of humanity, especially among the Oppressed, inform the wider public and reach out to those in the world of global privileges and influence.

21 Sep 2025 – When a group of dissidents and political exiles from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar got together in an old chateau in a French countryside village about an hour drive from Paris in the summer of 2018, our focus was on the collective improvement of Southeast Asian region where our roots were.

But quickly we realized that these regional markers or boundaries are themselves silos that the colonial or imperialist White Man has created for us to stick to “our issues”.

Our own regional leaders, mostly unelected and/or authoritarian populists, both civilian and military men, from the Association of South East Asian Nations, occasionally bark back at the “masters of mankind” in the so-called Global North, built on 500-years of loot, theft, land grab and planetary resource rape. But they generally play along in the Masters’ Game, for the crumbs.

ASEAN as a regional bloc of 11 member states – including Indonesia and Myanmar, which were two founding members of the Bandung Conference of anti-imperialist Asia and African nations from the 1950’s – has neither the humanistic vision nor the intellectual leadership that enables the grouping to punch above its weight.

Out of its utter and complete absence of any ideals or principles or humanistic enlightenment, the ASEAN has chosen to remain quiet in all genocides, both in its Southeast Asian backyard and in other parts of the world.

Beyond legal obligation placed on all UN member states, genocides are an affront to humanity. Alas, for politicians that relegate their humanity to corporate and national profits, it’s all business-as-usual.

Enter the never-acknowledged, CIA-assisted Indonesian genocide of native-born Chinese in 1965 to the American War-induced Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia in 1975, from Myanmar’s slow-burning Rohingya genocide – still ongoing – to Israel-US-joint genocide in Gaza and colonial occupation of the entire Palestine.

Citizens are always intellectually and ideologically ahead of those who run Frankenstein creatures which political scientists and academics call “states”.

Donald Trump, the new Genocidaire-in-Chief, who replaced Genocide Joe in the White House, has reportedly been invited to attend the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur next month. Enlightened Malaysian citizens are gearing up to give him a citizens’ un-welcome, if the Master accepts the invitation from Malaysia as ASEAN Chair.

FORSEA fully understand that We the People are inside the world’s history where the oppressed & the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiter, the colonized and the colonizer inevitably confront one another.

We embrace the Big Struggles, not just stay within our little silos of ethno-national concerns and interests.

Friday’s dialogue was our continual attempt to break from the colonialist silos of “area or geography or national focus”, the activist equivalent of the “area studies” in the White Academy.

For human communities under oppression, the only way to connect with wider global struggles is through universal humanism and principles that value life, liberty and love (of fellow humans), not through interests.

That widely reviled Nuremberg-worthy American criminal, Dr Henry Kissinger, was dead wrong when he promoted the view that “no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

Interests keep changing, only values, ideals and principles give a revolutionary movement(s) a stable moral anchor. In fact, ideals that guide liberation struggles and anti-dictatorship revolts are both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity.

Myanmar’s anti-dictatorship movements have become a lamentable example of multiple-revolts adrift without any inspirational moral ideals, shared empathy or a strategic map, from the now ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and the current political leadership of the opposition National Unity Government to most of the ethnic identity-based armed organizations fighting the repressive military junta.

FORSEA is sharing the transcript of the opening address by our Palestinian sister in struggle Rula Shadeed of Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, which captured the essence of what FORSEA stands for and what we strive – a fundamental change in the relations between the oppressed and the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiter, and the humanists and the anti-human corporate imperialist “masters of the mankind”.

As Rula Shadeed observed, “the only solution (for freedom from colonial repression and genocidal corporate profiteering) is intersectional struggle. Together we are far more powerful than the global minority regimes that survive only by oppressing others.”

Watch the full video below

Resistance and uprisings in Indonesia, Nepal, Malaysia, Myanmar and occupied Palestine Territories

Transcript – Rula Shadeed | 19 Sep 2025

Thank you very much, Zarni. I am very honoured and privileged to be part of this important call about struggles across Asia. What we try to focus on is the importance of intersectional struggles – how we can work together in solidarity, share knowledge, and resist the oppressor. Unfortunately, we see that oppressors learn from each other and apply similar oppressive regimes on people.

Even when facing existential threats, as we are in Palestine and in other countries represented here, we must unite to deal with the situation, and learn from our brothers, sisters, and comrades around the world.

My name is Rula Shadeed, co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy. I am a jurist in international criminal law. Our work focuses on introducing a liberatory narrative on Palestine, and on lobbying and mobilising states and movements worldwide to fight oppression in Palestine, while connecting with other struggles globally.

I was asked to comment briefly on the UN General Assembly decision yesterday, and on the US veto in the Security Council. Of course, this came as no surprise – we knew the US would veto. What’s striking is that the language of the resolution did not mention genocide or the ongoing killings, but instead focused mainly on forced famine – the man-made famine imposed by Israel – and the catastrophic humanitarian situation. It avoided addressing genocide, accountability, or sanctions, which are the only meaningful way forward.

Israel is waging what looks like a war against the world, with the United States playing a central role not only in Palestine but across the region and globally.

To explain what is happening in Palestine: the struggle has been ongoing for more than eight decades. Palestinians first resisted British colonial rule, then the Zionist colonial regime established in the aftermath of the world wars. For the past 80+years, Palestinians have been fighting against colonisation.

The discourse has been distorted, especially by US and Israeli propaganda, which reduces the issue to a “conflict.” This frames it as a two-sided dispute rather than colonisation. But the Palestinian situation is clearly one of colonisation. If we misdiagnose it as a conflict, we cannot address it correctly. Colonisation ends only with liberation.

All of Israel’s practices – displacement, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid, occupation, theft of natural resources, and transfer of the population – fall under colonisation. The current genocide is a continuation of the Nakba. The Nakba began in 1948 when, with British support, Zionist militias took over Palestinian towns and villages and expelled more than 80% of the population – around 800,000 people – who remain refugees to this day. This is why Palestinians form one of the largest refugee exoduses in the world. Even before 1948, Palestinians rose up – notably in 1936 against the British presence and its atrocities. Since then, Palestinians have continued to fight for liberation.

It’s easy to despair today. Perhaps we only see 1% of the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank. But we must remember: Palestinians have fought for 100 years against the most powerful forces globally, and they are still surviving. Despite unimaginable atrocities, despite Israeli colonisation, US hegemony, global crackdowns, and hostile media narratives, Palestinians remain steadfast in bringing dignity and freedom to their people.

Just last week, the United States even sanctioned Palestinian human rights organisations – an unprecedented move. They are treating us like a superpower, sanctioning NGOs as though they were Russia. This shows the extreme levels of control and dominance aimed at breaking Palestinians and preventing liberation.

I would end by saying two things:

The coloniser is brutal – among the most dangerous oppressors in the world –exporting oppression globally. The only solution is intersectional struggle. Together we are far more powerful than the global minority regimes that survive only by oppressing others.

At the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, we focus on alternative diplomacy in the Global South. We have a presence in Latin America and will soon expand into East Asia. From our work in Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina with indigenous movements, we’ve seen how their oppression is often directly fuelled or financed by Israeli companies and the Israeli state.

For example, in Patagonia, Argentina, the Mapuche people are being ethnically cleansed from their land because an Israeli-linked water company signed an agreement with the Argentine government to extract resources. The Mapuche have now been designated as a terrorist organisation by the state.

This pattern is global: Israel exports intelligence, weaponry, and oppressive technology everywhere, including Asia. The oppressor is one.

So the only way forward is for us also to unite, coordinate efforts, identify common targets, and pool our resources to support each other in times of need – and to show people everywhere that liberation is possible.

Thank you, Zarni, and apologies if I went longer than expected.

A Buddhist humanist from Burma (Myanmar), Maung Zarni, nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org