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By Sakai Tanaka:

15 Nov 2025 – In late October 2025, the Primakov Center, a Russian foreign policy research institute, held a conference in Moscow to discuss Russia’s relations with the Middle East, bringing together foreign policy experts from Middle Eastern countries (excluding Israel), including Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey, as well as Russian diplomatic experts. Putin’s foreign policy advisors attended from the Russian side and hinted at the key changes to the Putin administration’s future Middle East strategy. The participants from the Middle East were scholars and former diplomats affiliated with their respective foreign ministries. The conference served as an informal communication of Russia’s strategic shift to Middle Eastern governments. （“Russia – the Middle East”: Five Years of Dialogue and Ideas）[Russia Sidelined In New Middle East After Trump’s Israel-Gaza Deal]

At this conference, Russia conveyed to Middle Eastern countries that the era of relying on Russia to resolve Middle Eastern conflicts is over.

“Russia has previously led conflict resolution in the Middle East (West Asia) and engaged in shaping order through military intervention, but the future of the Middle East is now the sphere of influence of the United States (and Israel, which controls it). It is no longer acceptable for outside powers other than the United States to shape the order. Russia will not compete, but will accept the order established by the United States (Israel) and Middle Eastern countries (which Israel imposed on the United States and Middle Eastern countries). We will fight in Europe, but we will no longer fight in the Middle East.” （‘West Asia is no longer our battle’: Moscow withdraws from the arena）

Russia’s official statement is that “The Middle East is within the US sphere of influence, so Russia will reduce its involvement.” However, over the past 20 years since the Iraq War, the US hegemony in the Middle East has been declining. During the Arab Spring in 2011, when the US hegemony was stronger than it is now, when Syria’s Assad regime was on the verge of being overthrown by the US-Israeli puppet Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, Russia invaded Syria militarily and kept Assad alive. US hegemony is now in decline. Russia doesn’t even rely on dollar settlements for trade. So, is Russia now reducing its involvement in the Middle East out of consideration for the United States? （Russia-China trade almost 100% outside Western currencies）

This question arises because we assume that the past and present US hegemony types are the same. While Obama and Biden’s US hegemony is British, Trump’s is Likud (Israeli). Over the 25 years since 9/11, the intelligence community that controls US hegemony has irreversibly shifted control from British to Likud. Previously, it was “the United States (taken over by Britain),” but in recent years, it has become “the United States (taken over by Israel).” While the British viewed Russia as an enemy in order to maintain their hegemony, the Likud faction accepts a multipolar world (on the promise that they were led by the original multipolar faction in the US upper echelons to take over the Intelligence Community). As promised, the Likud faction started the Ukraine War, giving Russia the upper hand and causing the British faction (UK-EU) to self-destruct. In return for the Likud faction’s defeat of its arch enemy, the British faction, Russia has decided to hand over Middle Eastern hegemony to the United States (Israel). This is what it has announced today.

The “Arab Spring” and Syrian civil war that began in 2011 were started by the Likud faction as a counterattack against the British faction’s attempt to seize the initiative in US hegemony from the Likud faction. In his desperate situation, Obama asked Putin to send Russian air forces and Iran to send ground troops (Shiite militias) to Syria, thereby prolonging the Assad regime’s existence in order to maintain order in the Middle East. For the British faction, it was better to have Russia manage the Middle Eastern order than have Israel destroy it. Russia became the shaper of order in the Middle East at the request of the United States (UK-EU).

Nearly 15 years have passed since then, and the British are accelerating their self-destruction due to the machinations of the Likud faction. Obama’s US Democratic Party self-destructed through the awakening movement, liberal totalitarianism, and extreme leftism (the liberals supporting Mamdani in New York are idiots).

The UK and EU are facing economic and social collapse due to incredibly foolish policies such as the Ukraine war instigated by the Likud faction, climate change countermeasures, welcoming Middle Eastern immigrants, and COVID-19 countermeasures.

With Likud-affiliated Trump’s return to the US presidency this year, Israel is using US intelligence and military power to crush Hezbollah and Assad, a continuation of the Arab Spring, and is carrying out the Gaza massacre, erasing the Palestinian partition (creation of a Palestinian state) plan that the British had prepared to weaken Israel at the time of its founding. (The massacre is destroying the humanitarianism that was the foundation of British-affiliated US hegemony.) [Two-thirds of Israelis support Donald Trump in 2024 election: poll]

Israel and Trump are persuading and pressuring Muslim countries in the Middle East (and indeed the world) to abandon their hostility toward Israel, establish diplomatic relations, and join the Abraham Accords, which call for friendly relations with Israel. The focus going forward will be on the membership of Saudi Arabia, a leader in the Arab and Islamic world. The UAE, Saudi Arabia’s younger brother, was the first to join the Abraham Accords as a pioneer, and has been working for Israel in various areas, including diplomacy and the economy. Saudi Arabia has not joined the Accords not because it is anti-Israel, but because joining would be a loss of face for its leader. Western (British) liberals are reluctant to understand this, but international politics in the Middle East and non-American countries are driven by the logic of the survival of the fittest, not democracy or human rights. （Dugin: War Is Ahead Of Us）

Putin’s Russia supports Israeli-led initiatives. Officially, Russia supports the creation of a Palestinian state and formally opposes Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. At the same time, it also supports Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, which is largely rhetoric (with Israel violating it repeatedly without punishment). With the Likud faction taking over the US Intelligence Community, the system of American sole hegemony maintained by the British faction is collapsing. The former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are coming under the Russian hegemony, and the Middle East is coming under Israeli hegemony. For this reason, Russia has informally informed Middle Eastern countries that it will reduce its involvement in the Middle East in the hegemonic field (military security). （Kremlin ‘Supports & Welcomes’ Trump’s Gaza Plan, But Will Have No Involvement） [How Israel evolved from the Middle East’s David to its Goliath]

In today’s Middle East, Iran (the Islamic Republic regime) remains Israel’s enemy. Israel says it’s only a matter of time before war with Iran resumes. Obama sided with Iran, but Trump, in stark contrast, is part of Israel. Iran has traditionally relied on Russia and China to counter Israel. Now, Russia has unofficially announced a reduction in its involvement in the Middle East. Russia appears to have abandoned Iran. Will Israel overthrow the Iranian regime and turn it into a Syrian-style country (a puppet regime under Israel’s control) or a Libyan-style country (a fragmented, anarchic state)?

Both possibilities are possible. However, Putin also said, “Israel is sending a message to Iran through Russia.” This likely means that Israel is offering conditions that would reduce the Iranian threat, and if Iran implements those conditions, it will not attack and will coexist with Iran. Of course, Israel is known for its lies, so if Iran accepts and implements its stated conditions (such as disarmament) and weakens, it could attack and overthrow them (a “Saddam” or “Gaddafi” approach). (Both leaders were defeated after disarming at the behest of the US). （Israel signaling to Iran via Russia – Putin） [What Does the New Reality in the Middle East Mean for Russia?] [Opinion | America Can’t Do to North Korea What It Just Did to Iran] [Why North Korea Is Angered by ‘Libya Model’ in Nuclear Talks] [What North Korea learned from Libya’s decision to give up nuclear weapons]

However, if Israel uses a deceptive strategy to destroy Iran, the next country to be destroyed by a deceptive strategy could be Russia (or China or India). The governments of Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi would be destroyed not militarily, but by the Likud faction as a color revolution-like espionage operation, subverted by domestic political opponents. Iran is a test of the future relationship between Israel, Russia, China, and India. Trust between major powers (poles, regional hegemons) is paramount to the stability of a multipolar world (and the global economy). BRICS exists for this purpose. The Jews who have been in charge of managing the hegemony (investors who want to stabilize and develop the world economy) are well aware of this (even in the British, the intelligence officers are not Anglo-Saxons but Jews such as the Rothschilds). I have a feeling that Iran’s government may not be overthrown as expected. （Central Asia doesn’t need another great game）

Trump recently gathered leaders of Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, at the White House for a meeting. Central Asia is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a joint regional hegemonic organization between China and Russia. The media has reported that Trump is pushing aside China and Russia to target Central Asia’s oil and gas. However, Trump, who is secretly a multipolar proponent, is not seriously targeting the region dominated by China and Russia. The oil and gas talk was merely a distraction; his main goal was to ask the Muslim Central Asian countries to be friendly with Israel. Kazakhstan has already decided to join the Abraham Accords. （Kazakhstan, which already recognises Israel, to join ‘Abraham Accords’）

At the meeting with Middle Eastern diplomatic experts mentioned at the beginning, Russia also stated that it would not intervene in international politics in the Middle East (Israel’s hegemonic rule) as long as its interests and those of its neighbors were not violated. The region near Russia refers to the former Soviet Union’s Central Asia and the Caucasus. If Israel simply wanted to turn Islamic countries pro-Israel, rather than exploiting Central Asian oil and gas interests through Trump, Russia would have no problem. However, if exploitation were a serious goal rather than a diversion, it would violate Russia’s interests in the region and undermine the multipolar world. It remains unclear whether Israel truly respects the multipolar world.

Developments in the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan, raise concerns about whether Israel will uphold order in Russia’s vicinity. Under the pretext of strengthening its containment of Iran, Israel took over Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic north of Iran, and forced Armenia, which Israel had previously supported, to make concessions and return Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. In this process, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have significantly weakened their dependence on Russia and even displayed hostile attitudes toward Russia. Israel is encroaching on Russia’s regional hegemony, but the Putin regime, which received the upper hand from the Likud faction in the Ukraine war, is silently complying. (Israel abandoned Armenia and allied with Azerbaijan./アルメニアを捨てアゼルバイジャンと組んだイスラエル）

Will Israel be satisfied with regional hegemony in the Middle East, or will it continue to use the hegemonic power of the US intelligence community to further compel Russia and China to compromise and destroy the newly formed multipolar world? This will affect not only Putin and Xi Jinping, but the future of all humanity.

Even before considering how far Israel’s expansion of hegemony will go, most people are unaware that the world has shifted from a British-style hegemonic system to a multipolar one. The left-wing Maduro regime in Venezuela, which is on the verge of being invaded by Trump, is asking countries that were in conflict with the US under the previous hegemonic system, such as Russia, China, and Iran, to send weapons. In a multipolar world, one pole does not intervene in the conflicts of other poles as a general rule. Russia, China, and Iran will not send weapons to Venezuela. I wonder if Maduro is acting with full knowledge of this. The left is unaware of the current changes in the world (which is why they are acting on the left).（Maduro Urgently Seeks Military Aid From Russia & China With US Bulls-Eye On Venezuela） [Opinion: Nicolás Maduro is looking outward for a bailout. It isn’t coming] [Maduro’s last chance to negotiate a peaceful exit from power] [Maduro’s Dictatorship is About to End]

Notes:

1. The hyperlinks with the parentheses ( ) at the end of some paragraphs were added by the original author. Those hyperlinks in the paragraphs and those with brackets [ ], with the italic letters at the end of some paragraphs were added by the translator for the convenience of the reader.
2. The views and/or opinions in those hyperlinks added by the translator do not necessarily reflect those of his. In addition, it is either impossible or unavailable for the translator to verify the genuineness of the information in those links. He does not take any responsibility for the contents in those relevant links at all.
3. One or a few supplementary words, phrases or sentences in Italic letters without underlines in brackets [ ] or Gothic letters were added to show the original author’s message in some contexts or sentences clearer where deemed necessary, while the essential meaning in the original message of the author was retained, neither modified nor changed at all. 
4. The views and/or opinions expressed in the above-mentioned article are those of Sakai Tanaka, who is the original author. His views and/or opinions do not necessarily reflect those of those of the translator. Therefore, the reader is kindly requested to understand, interpret or judge those views and/or opinions at his or her own responsibility.
5. The original article in Japanese was published more than a few days or a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the situations and/or conditions referred to in the article might have been changed. This also means that the author’s argument expressed and/or the information provided in the article might have become inadequate or less or least adequate, obsolete, out of date or no longer valid by the time the reader reads this English translation article.

Sakai Tanaka:  After graduating from university, Sakai Tanaka started working at the Kyodo News Agency in 1986.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Jan Oberg

The fact that the outlandish and quackish Trump “peace” plan for the genocided Gaza was passed by the UN Security Council defines the end of every understanding of true peace.

18 Nov 2025 – The UN Security Council adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution on November 17, 2025, endorsing Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. It authorised an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), backed a transitional governing body called the “Board of Peace”, and declared that conditions may now exist for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and eventual statehood. The vote passed 13–0, with Russia and China abstaining. This is UN SC Resolution 2803.

This goes against everything the UN stands for. Of course, China and Russia wisely abstained. They want no involvement and co-responsibility with this fake peace plan and are smart enough to see that it will never lead to true peace.

I ask myself – did the Trump Regime give the UN its death knell yesterday? It remains to be seen, but the consequences will be devastating and, tragically, associated with the name of its otherwise decent S-G, who has been completely outmanoeuvred.

On October 14, the China Academy and its editor, Mimi, of “China Roughly” conducted the interview below with me, which begins with my harsh criticism of this nonsensical, absurd, and unacceptable way of making peace.”Peace.” No wonder the video title: “Trump’s Gaza Ceasefire Plan Was Hilarious from the Start – Best US Joke Ever.”

I call it a joke, and I will add that, if this has anything to do with peace, there is no need for political satire anymore. This is a satire on peace, intellectualism, international law and political ethics.

Quick and simple reasons for that:

• A party to a conflict can not be a mediator or peacemaker; it has to be a neutral third party. The US has been on the side of Israel all the time and is the leading enabler of its genocide.
• A war criminal and habitual international law-violator cannot be a mediator or lead a peace process; Trump and his suggested “peace” board member, Tony Blair, both have that status, albeit being non-convicted.
• The conflicts that lie under and cause the unspeakable violence in Gaza, characterised by words such as apartheid, historical injustices, asymmetry, nuclearism, occupation and Zionism, as well as Hamas militancy, are not analysed or addressed. The underlying conflict, not the surface violence, is the key to solving a conflict. This “peace” plan is pure symptom treatment.
• The larger conflicts in the Middle East region that this conflict is part of are not addressed.
• The whole project smacks of contemporary colonialism – we Westerners put ourselves up as those who shall run Gaza, and we have decided that it shall be demilitarised while we say nothing about Israeli militarism, occupation and nuclearism.
• There is no understanding of this particular type of a-symmetric conflict which requires different approaches from symmetric conflicts.
• All involved parties have not been addressed with three simple but fundamental questions: What do you think this conflict is about? What do you fear most and what future would you prefer or accept to live with – from which a mediator begins to look at possible arrangements and various possible futures.
• There is no idea about consultations leading to a negotiation table. It is all done from outside by an incompetent, impossible “mediator” who has snatched the conflict from the weaker party.
• Professional peace-making would build economic and other relations into a plan in such a way that the parties to a conflict would see it as more advantageous to cooperate than to fight each other in the future. There is no mention of anything like that, and of course, there will be more violence and no peace.
• Professional peace-making would have utilised the world’s most experienced peace-making machinery, namely the United Nations. Instead of experienced, principled, trained and neutral UN peacekeepers and other UN elements drawn from around the world, this plan will deploy personnel from countries with a special political and/or economic interest that have no training in peacekeeping – perhaps, God forbid, even NATO countries.
• A professional peace-making would have focused on post-violence processes and institutions such as forgiveness and reconciliation, a truth commission, security sector reform, de-militarising all sides, and discussing how schoolbooks, culture and cooperative projects could help the parties to live with what has happened and, slowly but surely, become partners in a process leading eventually to peace, stability and cooperation among all parties.

One could go on and on.

The fact that the UN Security Council has passed this cynical, miserable humbug “peace” resolution and virtually all parties and media call this a peace plan speaks volumes of the world’s peace illiteracy, of its peace and overwhelming endorsement of militarism.

That the UN Secretary-General goes along with this sidelining of his organisation and the defilement of everything the UN stands for only adds to the tragedy.

And why is true peace, as predictably as tragically, now dead?

Because people of low intelligence and/or being uneducated in conflict understanding prefer violence to non-violence.

Because we have no peace education, no peace academies, no university-level peace research and public education. Because media, politics and research have cancelled, tabooed and disappeared peace, by and large, since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia – that is, the ravaging of the US-led unipolar world that is now coming to its end, also with this resolution.

Because not a single government leader has an adviser who knows the slightest about alternatives to militarist “solutions” – knows about mediation, peace-making and reconciliation – as a science and an art.

Because kakistocrats and the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – see all problems as something to use a hammer on because they only have a hammer in the toolbox.

Because peace requires creativity, knowledge and empathy – which are no longer characteristic of, or needed in, foreign policy- and security policy-making.

I am sure that with this Las VeGaza “peace” plan, Trump will be a high-ranking candidate for the 2026 NATO-aligned Nobel Peace Prize – that is, if it doesn’t finally decide to give it posthumously to Adolf Hitler…

PS The countries of the Security Council that made this fatal decision are: The US, Russia, China, France, the UK (all permanent members) + Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia – in other words, mostly countries that will follow orders from Washington. As mentioned, China and Russia abstained.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGS-ddUgZiA]

Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research-TFF in Sweden and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By India Today

US President Trump’s 28-point peace plan, delivered to his Ukrainian counterpart President Zelenskyy, outlines major concessions for Ukraine and has drawn strong criticism from European governments.

21 Nov 2025 – US President Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine has been formally delivered to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, setting off a wave of political reaction across Europe and inside Kyiv.

The plan, developed with input from both Washington and Moscow, leans heavily in Russia’s favour by calling on Ukraine to give up territory, halt its NATO ambitions and accept several other concessions.

HERE IS THE FULL TEXT OF THE PEACE PLAN:

1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.

2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.

3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and NATO will not expand further.

4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.

5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.

A US official told Axios this would be an explicit security guarantee for Ukraine from the US, the first time that has officially been on the table during these talks, though the proposal does not offer further details on what it entails.

6. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel. Note: Ukraine’s army currently includes 800,000-850,000 personnel, and included around 250,000 prior to the war, according to a Ukrainian official.

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.

8. NATO agrees not to station troops in Ukraine. Note: NATO countries including France and the U.K. have been working on separate proposals that would include small numbers of European troops on Ukrainian soil after the war. This plan appears to disregard that possibility.

9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.

10. The US guarantee: The US will receive compensation for the guarantee; If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee;

If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked; If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St. Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.

11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is being considered.

12. A powerful global package of measures to rebuild Ukraine, including but not limited to:

• The creation of a Ukraine Development Fund to invest in fast-growing industries, including technology, data centers, and artificial intelligence.
• The United States will cooperate with Ukraine to jointly rebuild, develop, modernize, and operate Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities.
• Joint efforts to rehabilitate war-affected areas for the restoration, reconstruction and modernization of cities and residential areas.
• Infrastructure development.
• Extraction of minerals and natural resources.
• The World Bank will develop a special financing package to accelerate these efforts.

13. Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy:

• The lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis.
• The United States will enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.
• Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8.

14. Frozen funds will be used as follows:

$100 billion in frozen Russian assets will be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine;

The US will receive 50% of the profits from this venture. Europe will add $100 billion to increase the amount of investment available for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen. The remainder of the frozen Russian funds will be invested in a separate US-Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas. This fund will be aimed at strengthening relations and increasing common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.

15. A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.

16. Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.

17. The United States and Russia will agree to extend the validity of treaties on the non-proliferation and control of nuclear weapons, including the START I Treaty.

Note: New START, the last major U.S.-Russia arms control treaty, is due to expire in February.

18. Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

19. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant will be launched under the supervision of the IAEA, and the electricity produced will be distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine 50:50.

20. Both countries undertake to implement educational programs in schools and society aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures and eliminating racism and prejudice:

Ukraine will adopt EU rules on religious tolerance and the protection of linguistic minorities.

Both countries will agree to abolish all discriminatory measures and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education.

(Note: Similar ideas were incorporated into Trump’s 2020 Israel-Palestine peace plan).

All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.

21. Territories:

• Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States.
• Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact.
• Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions.
• Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk Oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognized as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarized zone.

22. After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply in the event of a breach of this commitment.

23. Russia will not prevent Ukraine from using the Dnieper River for commercial activities, and agreements will be reached on the free transport of grain across the Black Sea.

24. A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve outstanding issues:

• All remaining prisoners and bodies will be exchanged on an ‘all for all’ basis.
• All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children.
• A family reunification program will be implemented.
• Measures will be taken to alleviate the suffering of the victims of the conflict.

25. Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.

26. All parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future.

27. This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J. Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations.

Note: This is the same general structure Trump proposed to govern the Gaza peace agreement.

28. Once all parties agree to this memorandum, the ceasefire will take effect immediately after both sides retreat to agreed points to begin implementation of the agreement.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ranjan Solomon

When police raided the Kashmir Times office in Srinagar this week, they did more than search the premises. They attempted to rewrite a story the state has long struggled to control: the story of Kashmir’s last surviving independent newspaper. The “recovery” of AK-47 cartridges and bullets from a decades-old newsroom was presented with official flourish, but the real intention behind the operation was unmistakable. The raid was a spectacle meant to delegitimise, criminalise, and ultimately silence an institution that has refused to surrender its independence.

For observers who understand Kashmir’s political landscape, the idea that a small, financially strained newspaper—surviving on legacy archives and outdated equipment—has suddenly become an ammunition hub is as implausible as it is convenient. This incident fits neatly into a familiar pattern: a press outlet that refuses to toe the line is made to appear suspicious; its credibility is attacked; and a narrative of “security threats” is deployed to justify coercive action. The raid on Kashmir Times is not an isolated police operation. It is the continuation of a larger, systematic attempt to erase the last functional spaces of independent journalism in Jammu & Kashmir.

A Newspaper That Refused to Die

Founded in 1954, Kashmir Times is one of the oldest English newspapers in the region. Over the decades, it has reported on human rights abuses, disappearances, custodial violence, crackdowns, and political repression—issues many larger outlets hesitated to touch. It has done so with limited resources but with unwavering editorial integrity. That commitment to uncomfortable truths made the paper a lifeline for Kashmiris and a thorn for those who wanted the Valley’s narrative sanitised.

After the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, the newspaper faced a new form of suffocation. Government advertisements—the primary oxygen source for local media—were abruptly cut. The Jammu office was sealed without explanation. Its editor, Anuradha Bhasin, was harassed for challenging the communications blackout in court. Reporters faced police summons, surveillance, and travel restrictions. Despite this, Kashmir Times continued to publish—shrinking in size but not in courage.

To raid such an institution under the guise of finding bullets is not only improbable—it is an act of political theatre.

The Manufactured Suspicion

The police claim that “incriminating material” was found. But this phrase—repeated across FIRs in Kashmir—has become so elastic it can include documents, books, pendrives, or ordinary objects interpreted in extraordinary ways. The recovery of ammunition, asserted without independent verification, serves one purpose: to shift the narrative from press freedom to policing. It allows the state to imply that the newspaper is not a newspaper but a front for something darker.

This technique is not new. For years, journalists in Kashmir have been framed through vague allegations ranging from “anti-national activity” to “glorification of terrorism.” Many cases began with raids exactly like this one—doors forced open, equipment seized, decades of archives thrown into chaos, and a manufactured fog of suspicion hanging over the newsroom.

In this case, the ammunition appears at a moment when the government faces heightened scrutiny over its treatment of independent media. The timing and symbolism are too striking to ignore.

The Landscape of Fear

Journalism in Kashmir today operates under an ecosystem of fear. Reporters face UAPA charges. Others have had passports seized. Many have been repeatedly questioned about their stories, sources, and even social media posts. The chilling effect is visible: self-censorship has become a survival skill.

In this environment, publishing truth is no longer simply professional—it is an act of political bravery. A headline can invite interrogation; an investigative story can result in a police visit; a critical editorial can become evidence of sedition.

Kashmir Times is one of the few outlets that still insists on reporting without fear or favour. That is its primary fault line with the establishment.

Why the Raid Matters for India

It may be tempting for the rest of the country to dismiss this as a “Kashmir issue.” But what happens in Kashmir rarely stays in Kashmir. Techniques perfected in the Valley migrate to the national stage. Raids on newsrooms, police enquiries into reportage, digital surveillance of journalists, and the criminalisation of editorial independence are no longer distant possibilities—they are already visible across states.

Kashmir is the testing ground. India is the laboratory. When bullets are “found” in a Kashmiri newsroom today, a reporter in Delhi, Bengaluru, or Lucknow should understand what that signifies for their own future.

Press freedom is not lost in one dramatic moment; it erodes through a series of calibrated assaults—advertising pressure, raids, legal intimidation, and the reframing of journalists as suspects. By the time the attacks appear normal, the institution they target has already been hollowed out.

A War on Witnesses

The Indian state is not afraid of weapons in Kashmir—it has more than enough of its own. What it fears is witnesses. Kashmir Times has been a witness for 70 years. It has documented stories the state hoped would disappear and has given voice to the voiceless.

The raid is not about bullets. It is about erasing witnesses.

When a newspaper that has chronicled half a century of conflict is treated like a criminal enterprise, it signals not the strength of the state but its insecurity. A confident government does not fear reporting. A functional democracy does not weaponise searches. And a secure nation does not plant suspicion in a newsroom to avoid the burden of answering questions.

The Larger Meaning

The raid on Kashmir Times is an attack on journalism. It is an attack on truth. And it is an attack on the Indian public’s right to know.

Every Indian who believes in constitutional democracy—regardless of political preference—should be alarmed. Independent journalism is not a favour granted by the state; it is a democratic guarantee. When it is crushed in Kashmir, it is weakened everywhere.

Kashmir Times has refused to die. That is why it is under attack. And that is why it must be defended.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

22 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Roger D. Harris

Washington is targeting the Venezuelan people in an escalating regime-change offensive, combining open military violence with an economic siege that has quietly claimed far more lives.

Most of the world looks on in disbelief at the now-routine murders on the high seas off Venezuela’s coast – serial killings that the newly minted War Department calls Operation Southern Spear.

On October 31, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the attacks, saying that the “mounting human costs are unacceptable.” The People’s Social Summit in Colombia (November 8-9) excoriated Washington. Four days later in Caracas, a meeting of jurists from 35 countries denounced the “homicidal rampage.” The Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild charged “egregious war crimes and violations of international human rights, maritime, and military law.”

Even The New York Times, an outlet that is not squeamish about US atrocities, described Washington’s flimsy drug-interdiction rationale as being “at odds with reality.”

The notion that the US – the world’s leading consumer of illegal narcotics, the major launderer of trafficking profits, and the cartels’ favored gun runner – is concerned about the drug plague is ludicrous.

In reality, Venezuela is essentially free of drug production and processing – no coca, no marijuana, and certainly no fentanyl – according to the authoritative United Nations World Drug Report 2025. The European Union’s assessment of global drug sources does not even mention Venezuela.

Most inconveniently for Mr. Trump, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment does not list Venezuela as a cocaine producer and only as a very minor transit country. Nor is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro cited as a drug trafficker.

The State Department is designating the so called Cartel de los Soles, allegedly headed by Maduro, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), However, the entity is nowhere to be found in the DEA assessment for the simple reason that it does not exist.

Meanwhile, the body count from the killing spree is nearing one hundred, yet not an ounce of narcotics has been found. In contrast, the Venezuelan government has seized 64 tons. Clearly Washington’s intent is not drug interdiction but regime change.

Sanctions kill

As horrific as the slaughter by direct US military violence against Venezuela may be, a far greater contributor to excess deaths has received scant media attention. The toll from sanctions is well over a hundred-fold larger.

Sanctions are not an alternative to war but a way of waging war with a less overt means of violence – but deadly, nonetheless.

Sanctions, more properly called illegal unilateral coercive measures, are as lethal as the missiles Washington rains down on small boats in the southern Caribbean and the Pacific from Ecuador to Mexico.

Economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs demonstrated that US sanctions imposed 2017-2018 drastically worsened Venezuela’s economic crisis and directly contributed to an estimated 40,000 excess deaths.

By 2020, former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas estimated a death toll of over 100,000. An expert in international law, de Zayas argues that sanctions function as collective punishment, harming civilians rather than government officials.

Washington is now escalating its regime-change offensive – while maintaining the sanctions – precisely because Venezuelans have successfully resisted the punitive measures.

Sanctions disproportionately kill children

A peer-reviewed scientific report in The Lancet reveals that a disproportionate number of the sanction’s victims globally are children under the age of five. In fact, the study finds that more human life is extinguished by sanctions than by open warfare.

The SanctionsKill! Campaign describes itself as an activist project to expose the human cost of sanctions and what can be done to end them. They are inviting health workers to sign a letter to the US Congress and the executive branch to end these child-killing sanctions.

Drawing from The Lancet study, the health workers’ letter details how sanctions are particularly deadly for small children by:

•   Provoking increases in water-borne illnesses and diarrheal diseases

•   Causing low birth weight

•   Exacerbating hunger and malnutrition

•   Denying lifesaving cancer care and organ transplants

•   Obstructing access to and import of antibiotics and other common medicines

•   Hindering sanctioned countries from receiving assistance during natural disasters

Among the signatories are Margaret Flowers, MD, a pediatrician and long-time health reform advocate; professor emeritus Amy Hagopian, PhD, at the University of Washington and former chair, International Health Section, American Public Health Association; internist Nidal Jboor, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide; and pediatrician Ana Malinow, National Single Payer leader.

Others include health policy professor Claudia Chaufan, MD and PhD, York University; child and adolescent psychiatrist Claire M. Cohen, MD, National Single Payer, PNHP; and Kate Sugarman, MD, Georgetown Law School and George Washington School of Medicine.

Their letter concludes that there is a clear consensus in the literature that broad unilateral economic sanctions have devastating health and humanitarian consequences for civilian populations: “This is a global public health crisis caused by US government policy. We implore you to fulfill your inescapable obligation to end it…Imposing such collective punishment on the innocent is morally reprehensible.”

Sanctions and slaughter

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone quips: “civilized nations kill with sanctions.” That the US kills by both sanctions and open military force does not prove her wrong. Rather, it demonstrates that today’s US empire is not civilized.

Because open warfare is more dramatic than unilateral coercive measures, there is a danger that child-killing sanctions are becoming normalized.

Indeed, this form of hybrid warfare by the US impacts roughly one-quarter of humanity. History shows – as in the case of the 1961 John F. Kennedy sanctions against Cuba – that once imposed, sanction regimes are politically difficult to end.

The campaign against unilateral coercive measures is as central to the struggle for peace as opposition to overt military aggression. Sanctions are not a benign substitute for war; they are an additional mechanism of lethal collective punishment.

PS: The health-workers’ letter will not be submitted until early 2026, so health professionals of all disciplines still have time to sign on.

Roger D. Harris is a founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network and is with the Task Force on the Americas and the SanctionsKill! Campaign.

22 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

How Israel and the U.S. Keep Miscalculating Palestinian Power

Author’s note: For over a century, external powers have attempted to engineer Palestinian politics from above. This essay argues that U.S.–Israeli strategies consistently miscalculate Palestinian resilience, and that Trump’s plan is only the latest iteration of this failed logic.
 — -

At this point, it is hard not to wonder which phase of Trump’s Gaza–West Bank plan we are living through: forced demilitarization, territorial fragmentation, or the installation of a local administration under permanent Israeli security control. In practice, these stages have collapsed into one another.

On the surface, the plan appears to be advancing. Daily Israeli incursions into the West Bank — this morning Nablus, yesterday Jenin — reproduce the familiar cadence of control. “Ceasefires” are punctured almost nightly by Israeli violations, while the Palestinian death toll rises steadily, echoing the pattern before October 7.

Coverage has reverted to the routine architecture of domination: pre-dawn raids, checkpoint killings, mass arrests, and the relentless attrition of a people meant to remain “manageable.” Yet there is scant acknowledgment of the resistance that exposed the limits of Israeli and American power.

During the period between October 7 and the ceasefire, Arab media revealed something extraordinary amid devastation: Palestinian armed groups endured, administered, and repeatedly challenged an army backed by the full weight of U.S. power. Against every prediction, they survived for over a year. Has subjugation finally been achieved? Evidence suggests otherwise.
 — -

Hamas Re-emerges, Society Endures

After the 2025 ceasefires, Hamas officials and police returned to Gaza’s streets with remarkable speed: patrolling neighborhoods, distributing aid, reasserting authority, enforcing order — sometimes harshly through executions of alleged collaborators — and overseeing hostage exchanges. Reuters and The New York Times described Hamas as “swiftly reestablishing its hold” wherever Israeli troops withdrew — parading fighters, regulating commerce, even setting prices for essential goods.

This policing signals several realities: local communities continue to recognize Hamas’s power; enough organizational structure survives to enforce rules; the movement’s command was battered, not broken.

Polling data underscores a paradox. While many Palestinians resent Hamas for authoritarianism and the destruction wrought by war, there is overwhelming rejection of unilateral disarmament imposed from outside. 
That opposition forms a bright line: no pacification on foreign terms, no surrender orchestrated in distant capitals. Simultaneously, distrust Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, runs deep, fueling a preference for technocratic or unity governments.

Here lies the core contradiction. Trump’s 2020 plan — like other U.S.-sponsored proposals — offers a “reformed” technocratic Palestinian administration, but only after disarmament Palestinians overwhelmingly reject. The governance model they prefer is dangled as a reward for capitulation.

Yet even when such administrations are installed — whether under figures like Mohammad Shtayyeh or other technocrats — they remain stripped of sovereignty, operating under the shadow of Israeli security primacy and donor dependency.

In practice, these governments cannot exercise independent authority over borders, resources, or security, making them administrative shells rather than sovereign institutions.

And while regional governments — Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf monarchies — have repeatedly aligned with U.S. and Israeli frameworks, their publics remain far more sympathetic to Palestinian rights. This disjuncture reinforces the theme: power is exercised from above, but legitimacy resides below.
 — -

The Historical Pattern of Subjugation And Reawakening

Hamas was never designed for day-to-day governance. Its identity is armed resistance, not bureaucracy. It was forced into administration only after its 2006 electoral victory triggered isolation, blockade, and rupture with Fatah — circumstances that pushed it into managing a besieged enclave it never intended to rule indefinitely.

Palestinian resistance has upended the central premise of U.S.–Israeli policy: that overwhelming force, diplomatic backing, and infrastructural destruction would quickly break both armed resistance and political cohesion. Instead, history shows otherwise:

The pattern is relentless. The British crushed the 1936–39 Revolt, exiled leaders, banned parties — Palestinian society reconstituted underground and fought in 1947–48. Jordan and Egypt suppressed the fedayeen — out of exile the PLO was born. Israel’s military occupation bred the First Intifada. Oslo’s “state-building” doubled settlements and detonated the Second Intifada, ending in Hamas’s electoral victory. The Gaza blockade entrenched Hamas. The 2023–25 war tried total decapitation — Hamas reappeared faster than Israel withdrew.

Each time the colonial power believes it has engineered the final generation of Palestinian submission. Each time the next cohort proves more unwilling than the last. Seen through this lens, Hamas’s re-emergence is not an aberration but the predictable outcome. — -

The Limits of Coercion

For fifteen straight months (October 2023 — January 2025), Palestinian factions fought under conditions no modern armed movement has ever survived: total siege, continuous bombardment, destruction of hospitals, universities, bakeries, communications blackouts, induced famine. Israel declared brigade after brigade “eliminated.” They reappeared. Commanders were assassinated; replacements stepped forward within days.

This was never just about tunnels or Iranian missiles. It was the sociological fact that Palestinian society — clan networks, neighborhood committees, shared refusal of surrender — is more resilient than the hierarchical structures Israel is designed to decapitate.

Western analysts still describe this as “Hamas resilience.” It is not. It is the resilience of a people whose collective identity and claim to land remain intact despite devastation. When belonging itself is the last possession, no amount of military destruction can extinguish the will to resist.
 — -

Conclusion: The Lesson Refused

The United States and Israel continue to believe that if they destroy enough, fragment enough, and install enough collaborators, the Palestinian national subject will dissolve. History keeps answering: it reconstitutes, often harder, more absolute, more exclusive than before.

Until the political conditions that generate armed resistance — occupation, siege, fragmentation, denial of sovereignty and return — are dismantled rather than managed, the next iteration is already growing in the rubble. The delusion of finality will be attempted again, with new technology, new administrators, new resolutions. And it will fail again.

Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. The question is not whether Palestinians will endure — they already have — but what lesson the United States and Israel imagine they are learning. If the lesson drawn from a century of failed coercion is to double down on coercion, the cycle will reproduce itself. If the lesson they refuse to learn is that legitimacy cannot be manufactured at gunpoint, then the very forces they aim to eradicate will continue to endure — not because they are invincible, but because the political conditions that generate them remain untouched.

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

21 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- UNICEF warned on Friday that almost two children have been killed every day in Gaza since the ceasefire began. The agency says Israel’s attacks continue even though the agreement was meant to stop the killing.

Speaking in Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said: “Since 11 October, while the ceasefire has been in effect, at least 67 children have been killed in conflict-related incidents in the Gaza Strip. Dozens more have been injured.” He said this means nearly two children lose their lives every day under a ceasefire that was supposed to protect them.

Pires stressed that every number represents a child whose life ended violently. “These are not statistics,” he said. Each child had a story, a family, and a future stolen.

UNICEF teams continue to witness unbearable scenes on the ground. Children sleep outdoors with amputated limbs. Others live as orphans in flooded, makeshift shelters. Many shake with fear and survive without dignity. Pires said: “I saw this myself in August. There is no safe place for them. The world cannot normalize their suffering.”

UNICEF expanded its operations, but the agency says the response still falls short. Pires said the UN could “do a lot more if the aid that is really needed was entering faster.”

With winter approaching, the risks for hundreds of thousands of displaced children continue to rise. Pires warned that “the stakes are incredibly high” because winter acts as a threat multiplier. Children have no heating, no insulation, and too few blankets. Respiratory infections rise. Contaminated water spreads diarrhea.

He described children “clambering over broken rubble barefoot,” a daily reminder of danger and deprivation.

“Too many children have already paid the highest price,” Pires said. “Too many are still paying it, even under a ceasefire. The world promised them it would stop and that we would protect them.” He ended with a call to action: “Now we must act like it.”

22 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ahmed Bouzid

I obviously can’t say with certainty what kind of private advice President Barack Obama, AOC, Bernie Sanders and other DNC establishment consultants may have given New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani during the campaign or in the days after his victory, but I can make an educated guess.

My guess is that they counseled him to subside with the tumult, recede in the background, quietly focus heads-down on delivering something concrete (and do it fast) by working with the people who hold power, including the governor, his two senators, the congressional delegation, and especially Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

And so, not even one month into the transition and we’re already seeing the imprints of that advice.

Pointed case in point: Chi Ossé, a young Brooklyn councilmember known for his outspoken progressive stance and willingness to challenge the Democratic establishment, inspired and energized by Mamdani’s win, has emerged as a potential insurgent rival to Hakeem Jeffries in the coming 2026 Democratic primaries. Ossé, like Mamdani, is a Democratic Socialist, and just like Mamdani was back in the fall of 2024, he is a very long shot as things stand. Flush from his landslide victory, one would have thought that Mamdani would declare him his first official protege and would have declared that he would put all of his weight behind supporting him.

But according to both Politico and The Daily News, instead of siding with his fellow Democratic Socialist, Mamdani has “spoken to the Brooklyn lawmaker more than once to talk him out of running and has distanced himself from the effort” to mount that challenge. And when pressed about whether he supports Ossé, Mamdani has retreated to a tightly controlled line: “I ran to deliver on an affordability agenda, and that agenda continues to be my focus.” And behind closed doors, as reported by the Daily News, he has pleaded: “I believe that endorsing [Osse] makes it […] more difficult to deliver on the life-changing policies that more than 1 million New Yorkers voted for just two weeks ago.”

The establishment’s handlers could not have drafted a more compliant sentence.

The thing is that this is exactly the wrong thing to do at this moment, when the ambers of victory are still glowing.

If Mamdani wants to deliver on his promises to his constituents, he needs to take seriously the basic reality that is about to confront him. In order to govern, he needs to focus on building a governing power base strong enough to withstand establishment obstruction that is bound to be thrown on his path.

Doing this requires keeping his base united and energised, and the battle he has been waging going, while flexing his political muscle by helping elect and establish real allies and fellow mission travellers rather than count on domesticated figures who call their caution “strategic” but have mastered the art of protecting the very status quo that sustains their careers. In other words, Mamdani needs people who share his worldview, not those who, as rightly Ossé puts it, “have failed to deliver a vision that we can all believe in.”

And that means backing, nurturing, and multiplying insurgents, not abandoning them in the name of staying on good terms with the very establishment that never wanted him elected in the first place and does not wish him well.

Now imagine if Mamdani were not to shy away from Ossé’s challenge to Jeffries but instead embraced it as part of his governing strategy.

Imagine him helping build a campaign for Ossé that dethrones Jeffries or even comes close to unseating him. Either outcome would shift the balance of power, making it Jeffries who must stay in Mamdani’s good graces rather than the other way around. If Jeffries loses, he becomes a moot issue, replaced by a congressional ally, making Mamdani the de facto leader of the party, well positioned to run for congressional seat or the governorship in 2030. And if Jeffries wins by a narrow margin, he would still have every incentive to keep Mamdani close and perhaps even work to help re-elect him as mayor in 2029 or governor in 2030.

Beyond such calculations, if Mamdani were to signal early on and unmistakably that his mission is a principled one, that he will not be turned into a Cuomo-stripe horse trader, that he would rather fail while fighting Deep Gotham on behalf of his constituents and upholding the principles they elected him to defend than succeed by keeping the machinery of business as usual running, he would force the fundamental realignment he needs to advance the decisions the establishment will do everything in its power to resist. He would show that his election was not a ceremonial victory but the opening salvo of a project aimed at fundamentally changing the balance of power.

The worst thing that Mamdani could do now is behave as though the establishment’s cooperation is necessary for him to govern. It is not. The establishment’s obstruction is already guaranteed. What matters is whether he prepares the public to recognize that obstruction for what it is and ensures that they remain behind him, loud, engaged, and visible. Because his power comes from the people, not from political operatives who are intent on draining that power by urging him to cooperate with them, only for him to end up with neither real results nor a movement worthy of the name.

This is the moment for Mamdani to paint a clear picture: That the biggest obstacles to his agenda will not come from Republicans but from within his own party; that those obstacles can only be overcome by a movement strong enough to make obstruction politically dangerous; and that such a movement can only grow if he backs leaders who share his commitments, not those who have been absorbed and neutralized by the system.

If Mamdani imagines that he can deliver a couple of marquee promises while leaving the rest of the machinery intact, then he will prove to have been as naïve as his opponents accused him of being. The establishment is not afraid that he will govern modestly. They are afraid that he will govern boldly. They do not fear a mayor who passes a few programs here and there. What they fear is a bold mayor who inspires bold successors. Because, to state the obvious, their goal is not to help him succeed. Their goal is to ensure that he becomes a cautionary tale and a lesson to all would-be insurgents that the path to power ends in co-optation.

Keep in mind this tidbit, which may come as a surprise or even a shock if you were not aware: Just like New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama never officially endorsed Zohran Mamdani, even when it was clear that he was going to win. Yes, Obama can claim that he doesn’t endorse local elections. But then again he did endorse Karen Bass in Los Angeles for her Mayoral race in 2022. So what’s the difference? The difference is that she is a dyed-in-the-wool establishment Democrat with a decade in Congress and a term as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Mamdani is not. Mamdani is not part of the Big Establishment Family.

And so what does this tell us?

This tells us that the only way to defeat the deeply embedded logic of an establishment that thinks that it is entitled to play chess and strategic pursuit with the will of the people, is to fight not as an isolated figure but as the tip of a spear. Let them try to obstruct him, not alone, but in full view, and against a mobilized, expanding movement, with the people visibly behind him, continually in the game, engaged, with their ranks swelling as the battle for their dignity rages on and as the ugly mask of a shaken establishment falls time and again with every confrontation. Let his opponents fight not just him but a generation rising behind him. That is how real power is built against an establishment that will not relinquish it without a bitter fight.

Dr. Ahmed Bouzid is an organizer, writer, technologist, and podcaster committed to challenging concentrated private power and revitalizing democracy.

21 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ghassan Shahrour 

Introduction

World Children’s Day, celebrated each year on November 20, honors the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and serves as UNICEF’s global day of action. The 2025 theme, “My Day, My Rights,” is a reminder that every child everywhere has the right to safety, learning, health, and dignity. But in Gaza, children do not wake to their day—nor their rights. They wake to bombardment, hunger, and grief, in a world that has failed them at every turn.

“My Day, My Rights”: A Theme Gaza’s Children Cannot Live

The theme asks children worldwide to imagine what their day should look like: a morning free of fear, a school to learn in, a safe place to play, and adults who protect their rights. But a 12‑year‑old girl in Rafah told UNICEF staff: “My day is running… running from explosions, running to find water, running to search for my brother.”

How can Gaza’s children claim their day when every hour is a struggle for survival? How can they assert their rights when even the right to life is not guaranteed?

A Humanitarian Emergency that Destroys Childhood

Since October 2023, the scale of suffering in Gaza has been catastrophic. International agencies—including UNICEF, WHO, and UN OCHA—have documented the following:

• More than 19,000 children killed, with tens of thousands injured.
• Over 56,000 children orphaned, many losing entire families in a single airstrike.
• Nearly 2 million displaced, with children forming the majority in overcrowded shelters or makeshift tents.
• Repeated bombing of schools, hospitals, and clinics, stripping children of safe spaces to learn or heal.
• A sustained blockade of food, medicine, electricity, and humanitarian aid, causing widespread malnutrition and preventable deaths.

Humanitarian workers describe children too weak to cry, infants dying in collapsed neonatal units, and schoolchildren carrying their notebooks through rubble—hoping learning may still be possible one day.

This is not only the destruction of buildings. It is the destruction of childhood itself.

Listening to Children: Their Day, Their Pain

The 2025 theme urges adults to listen directly to children. And when we listen to Gaza’s children, this is what they tell us:

• “I want bread. Only bread.”
• “I miss my toys.”
• “I want my mother back.”
• “Why did they bomb my school?”
• “I’m afraid to sleep because bombs come at night.”

These are not political statements. They are the universal expressions of children whose basic rights have been denied.

One boy was found clutching his school notebook in the rubble, its pages covered in dust. He told aid workers: “I want to keep learning, even if my school is gone.” This image captures the resilience of Gaza’s children—and the cruelty of a world that denies them their rights.

And among them are children with disabilities, who suffer doubly. A 9‑year‑old boy, injured in an airstrike and now using crutches, told a relief worker: “I cannot run when the bombs fall. I just wait and pray.” His words remind us that children with disabilities are not only more vulnerable in war, but also more invisible in its aftermath.

A Lifetime of Advocacy for Children’s Rights

My work over decades has centered on the protection and empowerment of children:

• In 2016, my publication “Stop Violence Against Deaf Children…Toward a Community-Based Approach” addressed the vulnerability of children with disabilities.
• In my 2022 World Children’s Day article, I warned of the impact of war on Ukrainian children and invoked the UN’s Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non‑Violence for the Children of the World.
• Through Child‑to‑Child initiatives, I have long emphasized children’s capacity to contribute to health, peace, and community well‑being.

These experiences affirm that children’s rights are universal, indivisible, and non‑negotiable—whether the child is in Damascus, Kyiv, or Gaza.

Accountability and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law

For Gaza’s children, rights will remain abstract unless the world enforces the laws designed to protect them.

Human rights organizations—including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—have documented grave violations of international humanitarian law, including:

• Attacks on schools, hospitals, and shelters, all protected under the Geneva Conventions.
• Sieges that block food, water, and medical aid, which constitute collective punishment.
• Indiscriminate and disproportionate strikes in densely populated civilian areas.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees the right to life, education, health, and protection from violence. Gaza’s children have been denied every one of these rights.

Accountability must include:

1. Independent international investigations into violations of humanitarian law.
2. Prosecution of grave breaches, including attacks on civilian infrastructure.
3. Enforcement mechanisms—not only resolutions—by the UN and state parties.
4. Mandatory humanitarian access, guaranteed and monitored internationally.
5. Reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and homes with child‑centered and disability‑inclusive plans, ensuring accessibility for all children.

Without accountability, violations repeat. Without enforcement, rights remain theory.

A Call to Conscience

World Children’s Day is not a celebration for Gaza’s children—it is a global test of conscience. If we honor the theme “My Day, My Rights,” then:

• Their day must be free from bombardment.
• Their rights must be enforced—not admired from afar.
• Their future must matter more than geopolitical calculations.

The international community cannot light blue monuments or issue symbolic statements while ignoring the children trapped under rubble and siege.

Closing Reflection

Every child deserves a day of safety, learning, love, and joy. But Gaza’s children wake to fear, hunger, and loss. On this World Children’s Day, let us truly listen to their silenced voices—including those of disabled and injured children—and act with the urgency, accountability, and humanity that their rights demand.

References

• UNICEF Situation Reports on Gaza, 2024
• UN OCHA Humanitarian Updates, 2024–2025
• WHO Emergency Health Reports, 2025
• Amnesty International Investigations, 2024–2025
• Human Rights Watch Reports, 2024–2025
• UN Human Rights Council Statements on Gaza Blockade, 2024

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour is a medical doctor, writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, and disarmament.

21 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The so-called Gaza ceasefire was not a genuine cessation of hostility, but a strategic, cynical shift in the Israeli genocide and ongoing campaign of destruction.

Starting on October 10, the first day of the announced ceasefire, Israel transitioned tactics: moving from indiscriminate aerial bombardment to the calculated, engineered demolishing of homes and vital infrastructure. Satellite images, corroborated by almost hourly media and ground reports, confirmed this methodical change.

As direct combat forces seemingly withdrew to the adjacent “Gaza envelope” region, a new vanguard of Israeli soldiers advanced into the area east of the so-called Yellow Line, to systematically dismantle whatever semblance of life, rootedness, and civilization remained standing following the Israeli genocide. Between October 10 and November 2, Israel demolished 1,500 buildings, utilizing its specialized military engineering units.

The ceasefire agreement divided Gaza into two halves: one west of the Yellow Line, where the survivors of the Israeli genocide were confined, and a larger one, east of the line, where the Israeli army maintained an active military presence and continued to operate with impunity.

If Israel truly harbored the intention of, indeed, evacuating the area following the agreed-upon second phase of the ceasefire, it would not be actively pursuing the systematic, structural destruction of this already devastated region. Clearly, Israel’s motives are far more insidious, centered on rendering the region perpetually uninhabitable.

Aside from leveling infrastructure, Israel is also carrying out a continuous campaign of airstrikes and naval attacks, relentlessly targeting Rafah and Khan Yunis in the south. Later, and with greater intensity, Israel also began carrying out attacks in areas that were, in theory, meant to be under the control of Gazans.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, 260 Palestinians have been killed and 632 wounded since the commencement of the so-called ceasefire.

In practice, this ceasefire amounts to a one-sided truce, where Israel can carry out a relentless, low-grade war on Gaza, while Palestinians are systematically denied the right to respond or defend themselves. Gaza is thus condemned to relive the same tragic cycle of violent history: a defenseless, impoverished region trapped under the boot of Israel’s military calculations, which consistently operate outside the periphery of international law.

Before the existence of Israel atop the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, the demarcation of Gaza’s borders was not driven by military calculations. The Gaza region, one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, was always seamlessly incorporated into a larger geographical socio-economic space.

Before the British named it the Gaza District (1920-1948), the Ottomans considered it a sub-district (Kaza) within the larger Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem – the Jerusalem Independent District.

But even the British designation of Gaza did not isolate it from the rest of the Palestinian geography, as the borders of the new district reached Al-Majdal (today’s Ashkelon) in the north, Bir al-Saba’ (Beersheba) in the east, and the Rafah line at the Egyptian border.

Following the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which codified the post-Nakba lines, the collective torment of Gaza, as illustrated in its shrinking boundaries, began in earnest. The expansive Gaza District was brutally reduced to the Gaza Strip, a mere 1.3 percent of the overall size of historic Palestine. Its population, due to the Nakba, had explosively grown with over 200,000 desperate refugees who, along with several generations of their descendants, have been trapped and confined in this tiny strip of land for over 77 years.

When Israel permanently occupied Gaza in June 1967, the lines separating it from the rest of the Palestinian and Arab geography became an integral, permanent part of Gaza itself. Soon after its occupation of the Strip, Israel began restricting the movement of Palestinians further, sectionalizing Gaza into several regions. The size and location of these internal lines were largely determined by two paramount motives: to fragment Palestinian society to ensure its subjugation, and to create military ‘buffer zones’ around Israeli military encampments and illegal settlements.

Between 1967 and Israel’s so-called ‘disengagement’ from Gaza, Israel had built 21 illegal settlements and numerous military corridors and checkpoints, effectively bisecting the Strip and confiscating nearly 40 percent of its land mass.

Following the redeployment, Israel retained absolute, unilateral control over Gaza’s borders, sea access, airspace, and even the population registry. Additionally, Israel created another internal border within Gaza, a heavily fortified “buffer zone” snaking across the northern and eastern borders. This new area has witnessed the cold-blooded killing of hundreds of unarmed protesters and the wounding of thousands who dared to approach what was often referred to as the “kill zone.”

Even the Gaza sea was effectively outlawed. Fishermen were inhumanely confined to tiny spaces, at times less than three nautical miles, while simultaneously surrounded by the Israeli navy, which routinely shot fishermen, sank boats, and detained crews at will.

Gaza’s new Yellow Line is but the latest, most egregious military demarcation in a long, cruel history of lines intended to make the lives of the Palestinians impossible. The current line, however, is worse than any before it, as it completely suffocates the displaced population in a fully destroyed area, without functioning hospitals and with only trickles of life-saving aid.

For Palestinians, who have been battling confinements and fragmentation for generations, this new arrangement is the intolerable and inevitable culmination of their protracted, multi-generational dispossession.

If Israel believes it can impose the new demarcation of Gaza as a new status quo, the next few months will prove this conviction devastatingly wrong. Tel Aviv has simply recreated a much worse, inherently unstable version of the violent reality that existed before October 7 and the genocide. Even those not fully familiar with the deep, painful history of Gaza must realize that sustaining the Yellow Line of Gaza is nothing more than a dangerous, bloody illusion.

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

21 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org