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By Vijay Prashad

In countries like Senegal, the IMF has been complicit with irregular debt practices and fraudulent accounting in order to undermine sovereignty and favour multinational corporations.

9 Oct 2025 – In February 2025, Senegal’s Court of Auditors released a report that found ‘anomalies’ in the management of public finances between 2019 and 2024, during the presidency of Macky Sall (2012–2024). For instance, the court found that while Sall’s government had suggested that the budget deficit for 2023 was 4.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it was in fact 12.3%. The court went to work on this reconstruction of public finances because of a very significant accusation made by Senegal’s new prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, at a press conference in Dakar in September 2024. What the auditors found, and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) validated, was that the actual debt ratio in 2023 was 99.7% of GDP – not 74.7% – and that the deficit had been underestimated by 5.6% of GDP (in August 2025, the debt ratio was revised to 111% of GDP).

The financial situation in Senegal, Prime Minister Sonko said, is ‘catastrophic’ because of three problems inherited from the decade of Sall’s rule:

1. An ‘unbridled debt policy’ that increased the country’s public debt while erasing the possibility of any growth to pay off that debt.
2. An administration that hid this indebtedness and the deep problems in the economy from the Senegalese people (who nonetheless rejected Sall’s chosen successor, Amadou Ba, in the March 2024 presidential elections and chose Bassirou Diomaye Faye instead).
3. ‘Widespread corruption’, including the defrauding of the country’s COVID fund by four ministers.

The evidence that Sall’s government knowingly bankrupted their country and stole from its exchequer is slowly being amassed by President Faye and Prime Minister Sonko. Faye (born in 1980) and Sonko (born in 1974) are both former tax officials who went into politics frustrated by the levels of incompetence, fraud, and corruption in Senegal’s politics and bureaucracy. As young men with patriotic ideals, Faye and Sonko studied at the École nationale d’administration (National School of Administration) and then met in the Directorate General of Taxes and Estates (DGID), where Sonko had created the Autonomous Union of Tax and Estate Agents.

In 2011, the Canadian company SNC-Lavalin won a $50 million contract to build a mineral sands processing plant in Grande Côte. However, it was later revealed in the Paradise Papers that the Senegalese government had signed the contract with an entity known as SNC-Lavalin Mauritius. In other words, the Canadian company had become a Mauritian company (conveniently, there was a tax treaty between Senegal and Mauritius that exempted companies registered in Mauritius from paying taxes in Senegal). Due to this shift in jurisdiction, SNC-Lavalin was able to avoid paying at least $8.9 million in taxes to Senegal (SNC-Lavalin’s annual revenues are about $6 billion – a third the size of the GDP of Senegal, which has a population of 18 million).

Prime Minister Sonko was a vocal opponent of this project and, in January 2014, formed a political party called African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF) to carry on the fight. In 2017, he won a seat in the National Assembly, where he raised the issue of tax havens and corporate theft. ‘A tax haven can be a paradise for multinationals that want to avoid paying taxes’, he said in 2018. ‘But for the country, it is hell’. In 2019, Sonko won nearly 16% of the vote in a contentious presidential election. In the 2022 municipal and parliamentary elections, there were major gains for a PASTEF-led coalition called Yewwi Askan Wi (Free the People), with the Socialist Party of Senegal’s candidate Barthélémy Dias elected mayor of Dakar. Then-President Sall was furious with these former tax officials and sought to ban their party and silence Sonko. This led to major demonstrations in 2023–2024 that culminated in the electoral victory of Faye and Sonko. It is no surprise that these former tax officials dug into the accountants’ ledgers and uncovered evidence of fraud.

But are Sall and his government the only ones guilty of fraud? After all, the entire bureaucracy in Senegal, including the Court of Auditors, did not seem to act on the complaints made by Sonko and others, nor on the revelations from the Paradise Papers.

Perhaps the most striking act of malfeasance is not by the Senegalese government but by the IMF. Since Sonko began to raise this issue in 2017, the IMF has published at least seven staff reports on Senegal, none of which indicated that there was any problem with the reporting arrangements on debt or on finances. The IMF’s 2019 staff report, for instance, noted that Senegal’s audit arrangements conformed to the International Financial Reporting Standards and that the country had subscribed to the IMF’s own Special Data Dissemination Standard in 2017. If the IMF signed off on the data being provided by Senegal, then it is just as liable for fraud as the Sall government and should be held to account.

In October 2024, following revelations of budgetary misreporting, the IMF suspended Senegal’s lending programme. In March 2025, the IMF’s staff report noted the ‘need for urgent reforms’ in Senegal’s bureaucracy and institutions (but not of the IMF itself). Around the same time, IMF spokesperson Juli Kozack said that Senegal might not need to return the fraudulent borrowings of the Sall government because of the good faith with which the Faye-Sonko government conducted an audit to unravel these irregularities. However, this waiver came with strings attached, as it was to be part of the negotiations between the IMF and Senegal.

The IMF showed its hand in the August 2025 staff report – it wanted to use the possibility of a waiver to extract concessions from the new government, including structural changes to erode whatever remained of Senegalese sovereignty. The Faye-Sonko government won a popular mandate to strengthen sovereignty. The IMF is using the Faye-Sonko government’s honesty about the previous government’s fraud to undermine it. What the IMF seeks is greater access to ‘strategic sectors’ (such as energy and agriculture) via multinational corporations, tighter fiscal discipline by the government (i.e., less social spending for the working class and peasantry), and a continuation of Sall’s 2014 Plan Senegal Émergent, which uses technocratic buzzwords to mask the drain of wealth into the hands of foreign multinationals and the Senegalese elite. The waiver will hang over Faye-Sonko’s government to coerce them to exchange their agenda of sovereignty for the IMF’s agenda of subservience.

The case of Senegal is not unusual. In the 1980s, US-backed military governments in Latin America conducted off-budget borrowings, which the IMF took seriously in word but not in action. In 2000, the IMF identified misreporting by Pakistan’s military government but again did nothing, particularly after Pakistan enthusiastically joined the US War on Terror in 2001. Around the same time, the IMF forgave Ukraine for debt misreporting, once again acting under pressure from the US government as it sought to maintain President Leonid Kuchma’s pro-Western orientation. Much the same happened to Congo-Brazzaville in 2002 and Gambia in 2003. In 2006, the IMF released a paper on how to make the misreporting policies ‘less onerous’ so as not to burden countries with heavy penalties. This attitude informed the IMF’s treatment of Mozambique in 2016, when the energy exporter faced challenges from hidden debts.

Governments favoured by Washington are slapped on the wrist while governments eager to develop a sovereign policy are punished.

In September, the great Senegalese musician Cheikh Lô (born 1955) released a new album called Maame (2025). The album features a reggae track called ‘African Development’ that starts with Cheikh Lô intoning the names of Cheikh Anta Diop, Thomas Sankara, and Nelson Mandela before he riffs on the words ‘Free, free, free Africa… Africa must go be free’. This song is a return to the source, to the hopes and aspirations when Senegal won its independence in 1960 and raised its flag under the leadership of its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. ‘Health first’, sings Cheikh Lô, who goes on to list a number of demands:

Agriculture, livestock farming, fishing.
Education: temple of knowledge.
Vocational training.
Job creation for youth.
Public security.
Preserve natural resources.
Fight poverty.
Fight corruption.
Independent and fair justice.
Develop democracy.

Freedom for Africa is far from guaranteed by the fifty-four flags that fly in in the fifty-four capitals on the continent. Freedom can only come when the people of Africa assert sovereign control over their own resources and emancipate themselves from the indignities of capitalism and imperialism.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. 

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By William D. Hartung

7 Oct 2025 – The United States has provided at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the Gaza genocide on 7 Oct 2023. However, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, additional tens of billions of dollars in arms sales agreements have been committed for weapons and services that will be paid for in the years to come. This report covers the spending streams that have gone into that $21.7 billion, as well as detailing the billions in commitments that the U.S. government has promised for arms to be supplied in the future, much or all of which will be paid for by additional appropriations for military aid to Israel.

Given the scale of current and future spending, it is clear the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza or escalated their military activities throughout the region without U.S. financing, weapons, and political support.

According to a companion report by Linda J. Bilmes, the U.S. has spent an additional $9.65 – $12.07 billion on military operations in Yemen and the wider region sparked by or in support of Israeli military operations since 7 Oct 2023, for a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting in U.S. spending on two years of war.

Conclusion

Without U.S. money, weapons and political support, the Israeli military could not have committed such rapid, widespread destruction of human lives and infrastructure in Gaza, or escalated its warfare so easily to the regional level by bombing Syria, Lebanon, Qatar and Iran.

Without U.S. support, the Israeli government would have no combat aircraft to drop bombs and many fewer bombs. An increasing share of Israel’s arsenal would be down for maintenance without U.S. government or U.S. contractor mechanics and spare parts. In addition, Israel’s government could not have built a military of its current size and sophistication without U.S. financial backing.

Thus far, the U.S. government has not acted to stop the killing by cutting off military aid, weapons sales and deliveries, or assistance with maintenance and spare parts.

TO READ FULL TEXT, DOWNLOAD THE 10-PAGE PDF FILE: 

U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, Oct 2023-Sep 2025

William D. Hartung William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Leopoldo Tartaglia,

9 Oct 2025 – More than 2 million people filled public squares across Italy on October 3 during a one-day general strike in support of the people of Gaza and against the ongoing genocide there. The strike, called by the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) and grassroots unions, drew extraordinary participation from workers, students, families, and dozens of secular and religious associations.

The strike was part of a week of massive actions that began on October 1, when the Israeli navy blocked the Global Sumud Flotilla that was carrying aid to Gaza. The flotilla, launched in August, aimed to break the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid and end the devastating attack on the people of Gaza. Among the hundreds of volunteers on board the boats were 40 Italians, including four legislators and some rank-and-file members of CGIL and the Grassroots Base Union (USB).

News of Israel’s action, and its arrest of those aboard the flotilla, sent people into the streets in dozens of cities across Italy. The next day, crowds gathered in front of the Colosseum in Rome, and in main squares and government buildings throughout the country. The CGIL, Italy’s largest labor confederation, then called a general strike for October 3 “in defense of the Global Sumud Flotilla, constitutional values, to stop the genocide, and in support of the people of Gaza.”

Another enormous wave of protest came on October 4, when a million people poured into the center of Rome chanting “Free Palestine.” It was a level of participation unmatched in recent history. Young people, families, and ordinary citizens joined members of unions and civic organizations in the river of people filling the streets of Italy’s capital. “We wanted to liberate Palestine, and instead Palestine is liberating us,” read one brilliant sign. The protest was organized by the Palestinian Student Movement and the Palestinian Arab Democratic Union, and included the CGIL, the USB, student and university groups, the National Association of Partisans, and the Arci (the Italian Cultural and Recreational Association).

In a statement, CGIL called the October 3 general strike a success. According to CGIL, 300,000 people marched in Rome that day. About 100,000 marched in each of the Italian cities of Milan, Bologna, Florence, and Turin. Naples, Genoa, Palermo, and Venice also held huge protests. In all, over 100 cities participated.

The day was characterized by a peaceful and democratic atmosphere. CGIL General Secretary Maurizio Landini emphasized “the extraordinary and unprecedented participation of young people, who are demanding a future of peace and social justice, with stable employment and a fight against precarious employment.”

BIGGER PICTURE

October 3 was not the first general strike for Gaza. The CGIL, with over 5.1 million members and affiliated with the ITUC, called a national strike on September 16, the day after the Netanyahu government decided to launch the final invasion of Gaza City. Most trade unions—except public sector workers, who are barred from striking—called a four-hour strike. But in some areas the strike lasted eight hours. Everywhere, in hundreds of cities, the protests and demonstrations were packed.

The grassroots union USB had already called a general strike for September 22, and that day too was characterized by enormous participation, especially since it involved schools and gave tens of thousands of students, from middle school to college, a chance to join protests in cities across the country.

Separately, in their governing bodies, the CGIL, the USB, and other grassroots unions announced that they would call a “political strike” in defense of the Italian Constitution, whose Article 11 “repudiates war,” if the Global Sumud Flotilla was attacked by Israeli armed forces. A press conference was held on the eve of the October 3 general strike, coordinated by the Italian spokespersons of the Global Sumud Flotilla, to explain what was behind the general strike, with the joint participation of CGIL, USB, and other grassroots unions.

In recent months, awareness has grown within the CGIL and among Italian workers of the connection between the genocide in Palestine and the larger political picture in Italy and Europe. In the face of the war in Ukraine, tariffs, and growing anti-immigrant sentiment, many European governments are pushing for rearmament and taking a more authoritarian stance—to the detriment of working people. The Italian government, led by neo-fascist Giorgia Meloni, has become more subservient to both President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The peaceful and nonviolent action of the Global Sumud Flotilla has served as a catalyst for a growing opposition movement in Italy, including a campaign to boycott and blockade weapons and goods destined for Israel. Meanwhile, the CGIL is organizing a national demonstration, “Democracy at Work,” in Rome on October 25 that will stand against rearmament, against genocide, and for peace, the welfare state, and the rights of young people, workers, and pensioners.

_______________________________________

Leopoldo Tartaglia, a former official of CGIL’s International Department, is now a member of the National Pensioners’ Union’s national assembly.

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Chris Hedges

There will be no peace in Gaza. Only the temporary absence of war.

10 Oct 2025 – There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.

It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.

Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.

Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.

Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”

Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”

Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?

How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?

How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?

Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?

By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?

Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?

How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?

How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?

Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?

What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?

And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?

“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”

Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.

Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”

Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.+

This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.

The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.

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.

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.

6 Oct 2025 – It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.

Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.

Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.

Right, use Zionist oligarchs and influence operations to manipulate governments and institutions into crushing free speech which opposes a genocidal apartheid state. That’ll get everyone supporting the genocidal apartheid state.

Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.

[https://twitter.com/iamjourjean/status/1974753536228696086]

In order to successfully propagandize people you need to first get them to trust you, and then you need to feed them narratives which appeal to the cognitive biases they already hold. Nobody trusts Israel apologia anymore, and people’s biases are now stacked squarely against the Zionist entity. They’ve got nothing to work with and nowhere to start from.

If a coworker you hate came up to you and started stealing stuff off your desk while telling you he’s your friend and that he would never steal from you, you’re not going to believe him no matter how many words he says to you. No matter how skillful a manipulator he is, no matter how eloquent his words are, nothing he says will trump your first hand observations of your material reality.

That’s what it’s like at this point. They’re trying to throw a bunch of language at us in order to convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen, haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, and don’t know what we know. And they assume it will work because the language they’re throwing at us is being circulated in high volumes and costs a lot of money.

It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.

[https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1974585480479228255]

Now that everyone’s aware that Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post to churn out propaganda on its behalf, whenever you see a video online of some young social media-savvy personality promoting pro-Israel narratives you see their replies flooded with memes and jokes about their $7k jackpot. From now on whenever some sunglasses-wearing zillennial shows up going “Israel is surrounded on all sides by Islamofascists and you think JEWS are the problem? Uhh, no babe. Walk with me,” everyone’s going to go “Found one of those $7k posts.”

It just doesn’t work. Psychological manipulation only goes so far. There’s only so much that clever language can do to decouple someone’s mind from their direct experience of material reality.

This is where Israel went wrong in alienating the liberal Zionists. They needed people at the table who understood how normal human beings think, who could help the Israel project walk the delicate line between apartheid abuses papered over with propaganda and full-scale atrocities which would alienate the world. Instead they decided to go all in with the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, trusting that the propaganda machine which had served them so well all those decades would continue to carry them through any international upset they might cause.

It hasn’t turned out that way. The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Michel Chossudovsky

Using Artificial Intelligence: this is the “political simulation” of  “what Gaza will look like in the future.”

This was an initiative of Gila Gamliel-Demri, who was Israel’s Minister of Intelligence in 2023-2024. The last sentence pertains to a Ministry of Intelligence “Secret” Memorandum pertaining to “Voluntary Immigration” for Gaza, which was submitted to the Netanyahu Cabinet on 13 Oct 2023.

[https://x.com/GilaGamliel/status/1947629456127869012]

Translation of the video above on X:

‘Exposure: This is what Gaza will look like in the future.

Voluntary Gazan migration only with Trump and Netanyahu.

It’s us or them!

Link to the voluntary immigration plan from Gaza that I submitted to the cabinet in the first week of the ‘Iron Swords’ war on 13.10.23 in the first comment.”

******************

10 Oct 2025 – There is one statement in this video production which is not based on Artificial Intelligence. It’s the so-called. “Voluntary Immigration Plan”, namely Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “Secret” Memorandum  which was released on October 13, 2023 and adopted by the Netanyahu Cabinet.

What this entails is the admission that there was a detailed intelligence and military agenda to “Wipe Gaza off the Map”, planned well in advance on October 7, 2023.

See also our Video production below entitled  Secret Plan to Commit Genocide against the People of Palestine (video with subtitles in 11 languages, in English below)

Video: Secret Plan to Commit Genocide against the People of Palestine. Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic

[https://rumble.com/v6wxq6a-secret-plan-to-commit-genocide-against-the-people-of-palestine-michel-choss.html]

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. 

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Hermann Ploppa

An international group of investors is planning to create a state-of-the-art special economic zone in the Gaza Strip. The plan has reportedly already been approved by US President Trump.

“Gaza is described less as a society than as a distressed asset to be flipped. This is disaster capitalism at its sharpest. It is devastation reframed as the precondition for speculative profit.”  —Rafeef Ziadah

2 Oct 2025 – At the end of August, President Donald Trump met at the White House with his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Wittkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair <1>. The gentlemen cordially discussed the 38-page exposé from an investor group. The document is titled “The GREAT Trust – From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally” <2>. “GREAT” is capitalized. It is an abbreviation for “Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation.”

A brief note on the Abraham Accords: in 2020, in the wake of the Corona campaign, Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates signed a treaty that de facto stipulated close cooperation between the three countries in the areas of economics, military affairs, and foreign policy.

According to this plan, the Gaza Strip, formally still a separate state under Hamas control, is to be completely leveled in order to build an ultramodern special economic zone modeled on Singapore. A supranational trust company is to administer the Gaza Strip for ten years. Current residents of Gaza are to be given the choice of emigrating or staying and being housed in special complexes. Those who emigrate “voluntarily” will receive a cash advance of $5,000, as well as a four-year rental subsidy as a start-up aid. The investors expect that a quarter of the Palestinians will accept the offer of emigration.

Six to eight smart cities are to be built on the territory of the Gaza Strip. A circular railway bears the name of the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A massive factory complex bears the name of Tesla entrepreneur and oligarch Elon Musk. The associated leisure and hotel resort, already familiar to us from a promotional video released by the White House, bears the name of the incumbent US President Donald Trump <3>. This futuristic conglomerate, managed by artificial intelligence, will be connected to the Saudi Arabian test-tube city of Neom <4>. The newly constructed port facilities are intended to significantly facilitate trade between India, the Arab world, and Europe.

These plans are cynical and inhumane. Even considering such plans when, at the same time, over 60,000 defenseless civilians are being murdered in Gaza, the civilian infrastructure has been almost completely destroyed, and people are starving, is situated in the worst colonial tradition. Those responsible for these perversities claim to belong to a rules-based community of Western nations that respects human values. Such plans cannot really be presented to the public without completely destroying one’s credibility.

The way in which we are slowly being introduced to this neo-colonial perversion is remarkable. It is introduced to us in most digestible bites. The Washington Post allegedly received the entire document and then published it as a “leak,” a leak in the shielded knowledge of the ruling class. What is strange about this, however, is that the Washington Post is owned by none other than Jeff Bezos. With an estimated market value of $200 billion, Jeff Bezos is not only one of the richest men in the world, but also the owner of the global corporation Amazon. However, Amazon is explicitly named in the allegedly leaked exposé as one of the investors involved in the GREAT project. Bezos would likely have vehemently denied that Amazon was involved in this project if this were not untrue. The Swedish company IKEA is also listed as a co-investor in the document, complete with its logo. However, according to the German BILD tabloid, IKEA has issued a denial <5>. Other investors in Techno-Gaza include the notorious “security firm” Academi (formerly known as Blackwater), the defense company Lockheed, and the car company Tesla, to name just a few well-known investors.

Despite the extremely outrageous plans contained in the GREAT paper, the reaction in the Western Hemisphere has been rather muted. In Germany, the BILD tabloid reported on this project in an unusually objective and fact-based manner. This is remarkable, because every prospective editor at Springer Verlag, the parent company of the BILD tabloid, is required upon hiring to commit not only to “transatlantic” understanding, but also to ensure positive reporting on the Israeli government. Here, too, one wonders why, especially from pro-Israeli sources, initial impressions of the bizarre GREAT project are being fed to our intellectual digestion in small bites. Is this a kind of “serum method”? Are we given a small dose of the gruesome truth, only to then no longer rebel when the facts are revealed?

Otherwise, only a single article appeared in the so-called alternative media landscape <6>. Perhaps the full extent to which the GREAT Project is embedded in the larger geopolitical picture is not yet fully realized. But let’s first examine the GREAT Trust Project in detail.

******************

Click below to access the 38 page document: 

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f86dd56a-de7f-4943-af4a-84819111b727.pdf]

******************

Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation

Please note: the GREAT paper is not the half-baked figment of a few crazy daydreamers. The GREAT paper is a serious exposé with which a consortium of investors hopes to bring other potential investors on board. The GREAT paper therefore also makes a tough business case. Interested investors are hyped about how much return they can expect to achieve from the Gaza investment after ten years. A favorable investment climate is, of course, a prerequisite. For this, the governments of Israel and the USA, as guarantors of the trust, are to guarantee a secure investment. For this purpose, Trump and his cronies met at the White House. Graphics, illustrations, and the concept are already taken from a paper by Israeli businessmen from 2024, which was approved by Prime Minister Netanyahu and passed on to the USA <7>.

So, in the first year of the GREAT Plan, Hamas, which still stands in the way, is to be eliminated once and for all by Israeli military forces. During this first year, sovereignty over Gaza will remain with Israel. At the same time, the rubble of old Gaza will be cleared away, and any remaining bodies will be identified and buried.

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Nicolas J. S. Davies

What is wrong with Trump’s Gaza plan and how an Emergency Special Session of the UNGA can pass a binding resolution to recognize Palestine and launch a UN-led arms embargo, economic boycott and other concrete measures to force Israel to end the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. 

8 Oct 2025 – As U.S. President Donald Trump surely intended, his “20-point Gaza plan” succeeded in upstaging calls by many other world leaders at the UN General Assembly for concrete, coordinated UN-led measures to force Israel to end its criminal genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Trump’s White House meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 29th coincided with the last day of the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, where Trump had met with eight Arab and Muslim leaders at the UN and won their support for a proposed plan for Gaza. In a textbook bait-and-switch, Trump then allowed the Israelis to significantly alter his plan before he unveiled it to the world at his meeting with Netanyahu, but pretended it was the same plan that the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and other countries had endorsed.

Trump’s plan was based on cornering Hamas into a series of steps it hadn’t agreed to: freeing all the Israeli prisoners in Gaza without a full Israeli withdrawal; surrendering its weapons and its role in Palestinian politics; and handing Gaza over to a new phase of Israeli occupation. Gaza would be governed by a “board” headed by Trump and former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair, who not only invaded Iraq alongside the U.S. in 2003, but at the same time masterminded a dirty war against Hamas that led to the isolation and blockade of Gaza, and ultimately to the current crisis.

On October 8^th, after unprecedented pressure from Arab and Islamic mediators, Hamas dropped its insistence on a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a precondition for the prisoner exchange. Other details remained to be worked out, but all sides seemed to believe they were close to an agreement. A source close to the negotiators told Drop Site News that Hamas was willing to gamble on Trump’s promise to prevent the Israelis from resuming the genocide once Israel had its prisoners back.

Under Trump’s plan, Israel would agree to end its genocidal assault on Gaza and partially withdraw its forces, but only his word would prevent it relaunching the genocide once it had the Israeli prisoners in Gaza safely back. Israel reportedly agreed to begin allowing 600 truckloads of aid to enter each day, but it would retain control of Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, and could again restrict the entry of food, medicine and rebuilding materials at any point.

Prime minister Netanyahu has said publicly that Israel will not withdraw its forces from Gaza until Hamas and other Palestinian forces have been removed from power and disarmed, while Hamas insists it will not disarm until the occupation of Palestine ends and its fighters can hand over their weapons to the new armed forces of the sovereign nation of Palestine.

Hamas also responded to Trump that it has no authority to act as the sole negotiator in talks on the future of Palestine. It said Palestine must be governed by Palestinians, not Trump or Blair, and that its future must be negotiated between representatives of all Palestinian factions.

So Trump’s plan is still rife with unresolved disagreements, but it may at least lead to a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange, and the ceasefire could possibly become permanent. But in any case, it is clearly designed to perpetuate, not to end, Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. As the Progressive International said in a statement on October 7th:

“Far from paving a path to peace, it offers a blueprint for the further colonisation and subjugation of the Palestinian people — the culmination of decades of dispossession and destruction that reached its dark zenith in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Whatever the result of these negotiations, the UN and the world’s governments should not sit idly by as passive observers. The UN should urgently prepare to take the concrete steps that leaders from around the world called for at the General Assembly in September, to give force to UN General Assembly resolutions calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the unrestricted restoration of life-saving humanitarian aid, and a final end to the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

In July 2025, the UN General Assembly organized a “High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.” The conference was chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, and its goal was “not only to reaffirm international consensus on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine but to catalyze concrete, timebound and coordinated international action toward the implementation of the two-State solution.”

The conference produced a lengthy “New York Declaration,” which was endorsed by the General Assembly in a resolution on September 12th, by a vote of 142 to 10, with 12 abstentions.

But this was a plan for the “day after,” which, by itself, failed to bring that day any closer, because it deliberately avoided taking the “concrete, timebound and coordinated international action” that the conference’s mandate had explicitly called for.

The declaration was based on the deliberations of 8 working groups, co-chaired by representatives of 15 different countries, the Arab League and the European Union, which each drew up plans for the aftermath of a hypothetical permanent ceasefire in Gaza, with topics like “Humanitarian Action and Reconstruction” and “Security for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Three roundtables at the July conference, chaired by former Irish president Mary Robinson, former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid bin Ra’ad of Jordan, agreed that the General Assembly’s first step should be the international recognition of the state of Palestine.

UN recognition requires the approval of both the General Assembly and the UN Security Council. However, with such a large majority of countries supporting recognition, and the United States abusing its veto to sideline the Security Council, the General Assembly can call an Emergency Special Session (ESS) to act alone under the “Uniting for Peace” principle, to officially recognize Palestine and welcome it as a full UN member.

Instead, while several Western countries finally recognized Palestine, bringing the total number who have recognized its independent statehood to 157, the declaration was endorsed in a regular session of the General Assembly that lacked the power to grant formal UN recognition.

But the most serious omission from the July 2025 conference and the September 12th resolution was that they failed to take concrete, coordinated UN action to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, the vital first step to get to the “day after” that the working groups at the conference were tasked with planning for. Trump took advantage of that omission to propose an end to the genocide in Gaza on terms that would perpetuate the Israeli occupation instead of ending it.

It was entirely predictable that Israel would reject and ignore the New York Declaration, and prime minister Netanyahu did just that in his General Assembly speech on September 26th. But after most of the delegates walked out and left Netanyahu ranting to a nearly empty hall, the Hague Group of countries led by Colombia and South Africa hosted a meeting with representatives of 34 countries to plan the coordinated, concrete action the UN must now take to end the genocide and the occupation.

As Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parilla told the General Assembly in his speech the next day, it should convene an Emergency Special Session “without further delay” to take concrete measures for Palestine, including a binding resolution on full UN membership.

If the General Assembly is serious about ending the genocide and the occupation, the Emergency Special Session must also debate and vote on a UN-led arms embargo, economic boycott and other concrete measures designed to force Israel to comply with international law, international court rulings and UN resolutions on Palestine.

The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva already has a database of 158 Israeli and multinational corporations that are complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation, so an international boycott of those companies could take effect immediately.

Israel is a small country, dependent on trade and economic relations with countries all over the world. If the large majority of countries that voted for the New York Declaration are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide in Gaza and its illegal occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, these steps could quickly make Israel’s position very difficult.

Many speakers at the 2025 General Assembly called passionately for this kind of decisive action to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation. King Abdullah of Jordan asked, “How long will we be satisfied with condemnation after condemnation without concrete action?”

President Lula said that Brazil already has an arms embargo against Israel and has cut off all trade with its illegal settlements; Turkiye severed all trade links with Israel in August; Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof called for an arms embargo and the suspension of the EU’s trade agreement with Israel; and Chadian prime minister Allah-Maye Halina declared, “Our duty from this moment on is to transform this strong declaration into concrete acts and make the Palestinian people’s hope a reality.”

The Hague Group of countries was formed by the Progressive International to support South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice and war crimes cases against Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court. In a meeting at Bogota in Colombia in July, twelve of those countries committed to an arms embargo and other concrete measures against the Israeli occupation. In his speech to the General Assembly on September 23rd, Colombian president Gustavo Petro called for an Emergency Special Session on Palestine and for a UN peacekeeping force to “defend Palestine.”

A previous Emergency Special Session in September 2024 demanded that Israel must end its post-1967 occupation of Palestine within a year. Israel’s refusal to even begin to do so, and its defiant escalation of its genocide in Gaza, increasing repression in the other occupied territories and attacks on other countries provide all the grounds the General Assembly should need to take the concrete, coordinated measures that many countries are calling for.

Tragically, instead of applying the diplomatic and economic pressure it will take to secure a ceasefire and end the occupation, France, Saudi Arabia and their partners instead relied on dangling carrots in front of Israel, such as regional economic integration and recognition by Arab and Muslim countries, to try to seduce or bribe Israel into complying with international law and UN resolutions.

This was never going to work. The toothless New York Declaration, and now Trump’s new occupation plan for Gaza, offer little hope for the future to the besieged, starved, bombed people of Gaza. The UN General Assembly must follow up on these flawed initiatives with decisive UN-led action to ensure a real, permanent end to the genocide and the occupation, by imposing economic sanctions, an arms embargo and other measures to diplomatically and economically isolate Israel.

There is nothing to prevent the UN General Assembly from quickly convening a new meeting of its Emergency Special Session on Palestine. The ESS can finally take the “concrete, time-bound, coordinated international action” that the French- and Saudi-led initiative promised but failed to deliver – what Malaysian foreign minister Mohamad Hasan described to the General Assembly as “concrete action against the occupying force.”

Across the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand that their governments take action, while flotillas of activists set sail to breach the blockade of Gaza that their governments have failed to challenge.

The Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly, meeting under the Uniting for Peace principle, can debate and pass binding resolutions on UN recognition of Palestine, a UN-led international arms embargo, economic boycott and disinvestment campaign, war crimes prosecutions, and other measures to diplomatically isolate Israel.

By responding to calls of conscience from their own people, voting for these measures at the UN and acting quickly to enforce them, the governments of the world have the collective power to end this genocide and the brutal, illegal occupation of Palestine that it is part of. Now they must use it.

__________________________________________

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

13 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

Amidst the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip and the mass forcible displacement across the West Bank, the EU and most of its member states have failed to uphold their obligations to protect Palestinian refugees by protecting UNRWA and ensuring its unhindered presence and operations, in Palestine, and especially Gaza. The EU and its member states must sever ties with the Israeli regime—a serial violator of ceasefires and perpetrator of ongoing international crimes. The EU and member states are duty-bound and to impose sanctions to hold the Israeli regime accountable.

UNRWA has been the target of an ongoing Israeli-US campaign to delegitimize, demonize, defund, dismantle and replace the Agency mandated to provide aid and services to over 5.9 million Palestine refugees. The Israeli regime has directly attacked UNRWA facilities and staff in the Gaza Strip: over 312 UNRWA installations have been destroyed or damaged and over 370 UNRWA personnel have been murdered.

In January 2025, the Israeli regime banned UNRWA in Palestine, in direct violation of its international obligations, with the aim of banning international presence, resulting in:

• The weaponization of aid, famine, and the denial of healthcare and education in the Gaza Strip and exacerbation of the genocide;
• The closure of 16 UNRWA schools in the West Bank, including Jerusalem;
• The violation  of UN privileges and immunities, such as international staff visas, including the Commissioner-General, and Palestinian employees’ permits necessary to enter Jerusalem;
• The Israeli regime is undermining the international legal order by tampering with a UN Agency and its mandate.

The US-Israeli imposed replacement for UNRWA,the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has massacred over 2,340 Palestinians at aid sites and engineered famine and genocide in Gaza. Trump’s 20 Point Plan  masquerades as a “peace plan” to further entrench Israeli colonization in the Gaza Strip while failing to ensure UNRWA’s reinstatement and the lifting of its ban. It has been unequivocally condemned by UN experts for violating the right to self-determination.

Despite famine alerts since February 2024, Austria, Italy, Germany, Sweden have cut or reduced funding to UNRWA, constituting complicity in the Israeli genocide by contributing to the famine and genocide. Despite the finding of UN Commission of Inquiry and the Special Committee that the Israeli regime is committing genocide, states have taken no practical measures and are instead contributing to UNRWA’s dismantlement by turning it into an interim state-building tool tied to Palestinian statehood and the transfer of its services to host states in contravention of  its mandate.

Legal and Moral Obligations of States:

• The Genocide Convention – States are obligated, individually and collectively, to stop, prevent and punish genocide. This obligation overrides national and regional legislation, requiring states to end their complicity, and at minimum impose sanctions and ensure unhindered humanitarian access and provision.
• To uphold international protection through enforcing:
  • UNGA Resolution 194 (1948) – Guarantee Palestinian refugees’ reparations (return, property restitution, compensation, rehabilitation and non-repetition)
  • UNGA Resolution 302 (1949) – Provides the humanitarian component of international protection through UNRWA until the implementation of Res. 194
• International Humanitarian and Criminal Law –  Prohibit and punish the weaponization of aid, starvation, forcible displacement, willful killing, and wanton destruction in the Gaza Strip.
• EU Treaty Law – Requires that all external EU actions adhere to human rights and international law.

BADIL Resource Center and the Global Palestinian Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Network (GPRN) call on the EU and its member states to:

• Affirm UNRWA’s existence and operations are contingent on the full implementation of UNGA Resolution 194, not on the aspiration of Palestinian statehood and reject any measures to replace UNRWA with other agencies or host states;
• Renew UNRWA’s mandate at the UNGA as it currently stands without conditions;
• Provide full, unconditional political and financial support to UNRWA, ensuring the Agency has the means to implement its mandate immediately in its five areas of operations (Gaza, West Bank including Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria);
• Dismantle the GHF and fully restore UN-led operations in Palestine, particularly in Gaza;
• Ban the activities of Israeli and Zionist institutions, organizations and companies within states’ jurisdictions, in response to the banning of UNRWA;
• Impose comprehensive military, economic and political sanctions on the Israeli regime, individually and collectively through UNGA Resolution 377 “Uniting for Peace”, including its suspension from the UN, ensuring accountability for violations and protection of Palestinian refugees.

10 October 2025

Source: badil.org

By Mazim Qumsiyeh

A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner
exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed:
ending colonization, freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in
Israeli gulags (also tortured nearly100 died under torture in the last two
years), return of the milions of refugees, and accountability for genocide,
ethnic cleansing and apartheid. That is why this global uprising (intifada)
will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained. Here are
brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza

1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict? The WB was illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonization and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds f new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).
2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza? It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the beligerant occupier (“Israel”) has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the UN was conditional or respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949. This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0% confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.
3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple
ceasefire attempts? Simply put because colonization can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonization entity is the active face of colonization. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonization with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.
4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken
on Palestinian society? It is now well documented fro UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecoide, scholasticide, medicide, and veriticide. More at ongaza.org
5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
The terrorist organization that deceptively calls itself “IDF” was not
interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got
people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue). The IGF (Israeli
Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
on 7 Oct. 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their
capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonizers (living on stolen
Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the over 11,000 political
prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. Again see ongaza.org
6. How significant was international involvement—particularly from the
U.S.—in reaching the final agreement? This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding. (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda. Under influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save “Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump ws blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!
7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace
deal into a sustainable, lasting solution? Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the International conventions (Geneva convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. For more see bdsmovement.net
8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, botanic
garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and
natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment) for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.
Conflict, colonizations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and
work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background
9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the futurerelationship between Palestinians and Israelis? What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilizing for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice). What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonization and genocide.

8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to
Zionism and western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming
Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and
multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call
International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/19/world-court-findings-israeli-apartheid-wake-call

The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising) and 7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/auschwitz-revolt

2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds
of deserving nominees but given instead to right wing pro genocide María
Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst right-wing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/nobel_peace_prize
https://venezuelanvoices.org/2025/04/02/what-does-maria-corina-machados-alliance-with-the-european-and-israeli-ultra-right-imply-for-the-venezuelan-people/

DEMAND THEIR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Huwaida Arraf (Palestinian/American), Zohar Chamberlain Regev (Israeli/German), and Omer Sharir (Israeli) were interrogated before the Magistrate’s Court in Ashkelon on suspicion of “infiltration into an unauthorized military area.” They are being held separately from the other flotilla volunteers in Shikma Prison for refusing to sign false charges, and are now on hunger strike in protest. Protest outside your local Israeli embassy to demand that all flotilla hostages are freed. Help end Israel’s choke-hold over Palestine’s air, land, sea, and freedom. Mobilize until your government stops enabling, funding, and shielding Israel now!
https://freedomflotilla.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FreedomFlotillaCoalition/
Mandela’s grandson and Jewish American activist on how he was treated by the apartheid regime https://youtu.be/T_pM-ZDaPAA

Message to Arab “leaders”: Please take lessons from what happened to others who collaborated with Israel (e.g. South Lebanon Army leaders) and what will happen to those in Gaza collaborating wihh Israel (Yasser Abu Shabab and Husam Al-Astal). Whether you are a gulf monarch or a Palestinian enjoying five star hotels and Armani suits (Hussain Al-Shaikh and Mohammad Dahlan), only repentance and ending corruption and reconnecting with the people would save you (in this life or the next). And for the 99.9% of humanity not directly profiting financially from genocide and injustice: No one will escape the horrors coming from the greedy. By definition greed will not stop on its own and in this case the Zionistts are
destroying so much in so many countries (even the US).

Brown University’s Cost of War research shows up to $33.77 billion American taxpayers money given to Israel in the period 7 Oct 2023 and 24 Sept 2025.

[https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2025-10/U.S.-Military-Aid-to-Israel_Hartung_Costs-of-War-Quincy_Oct-7-2025.pdf]

Stay Humane, act, and keep hope and Palestine alive

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org

11 October 2025