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By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

16 Aug 2025 – Donald Trump came into office promising to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now, six months later, his high stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska may have put the United States and Russia on a new path toward peace, or, if this initiative fails, could trigger an even more dangerous escalation, with warhawks in Congress already pushing for another $54.6 billion in weapons for Ukraine.

After emerging from the meeting, Putin correctly framed the historical moment: “This was a very hard time for bilateral relations and, let’s be frank, they’ve fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War. I think that’s not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole. Sooner or later, we have to amend the situation to move on from confrontation to dialogue.”

Trump said he will follow up by talking to NATO leaders and Zelenskyy, as if the U.S. is simply an innocent bystander trying to help. But in Ukraine, as in Palestine, Washington plays the “mediator” while pouring weapons, intelligence, and political cover into one side of the war. In Gaza, that has enabled genocide. In Ukraine, it could lead to nuclear war.

Despite protests from Zelenskyy and European leaders, Trump was right to meet with Putin, not because they are friends, but because the United States and Russia are enemies, and because the war they are fighting to the last Ukrainian is the front line of a global conflict between the United States, Russia and China.

In our book, War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, which we have now updated and revised to cover three years of war in Ukraine, we have detailed the U.S. role in expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, its support for the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, its undermining of the Minsk II peace accord, and its rejection of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine after only two months of war in 2022.

We doubt that Donald Trump fully grasps this history. Are his simplistic statements alternately blaming Russia and Ukraine, but never the United States, just a public façade for domestic consumption, or does he really believe America’s hands are clean?

At their first meeting in Saudi Arabia on February 18th, senior U.S. and Russian negotiators agreed on a three-step plan: first to restore U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations; then to negotiate peace in Ukraine; and finally to work on resolving the broader, underlying breakdown in relations between the United States and Russia. Trump and Putin’s decision to meet now was a recognition that they must address the deeper rift before they can achieve a stable and lasting peace in Ukraine..

The stakes are high. Russia has been waging a war of attrition, concentrating on destroying Ukrainian forces and military equipment rather than on advancing quickly and seizing a lot more territory. It has still not occupied all of Donetsk province, which unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine in May 2014, and which Russia officially annexed before its invasion in February 2022.

The failure of peace negotiations could lead to a more aggressive Russian war plan to seize territory much faster. Ukrainian forces are thinly spread out along much of its 700 mile front line, with as few as 100 soldiers often manning several miles of defenses. A major Russian offensive could lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian military or the fall of the Zelenskyy government.

How would the U.S. and its Western allies respond to such major changes in the strategic picture? Zelenskyy’s European allies talk tough, but have always rejected sending their own troops to Ukraine, apart from small numbers of special operations forces and mercenaries.

Putin addressed the Europeans in his remarks after the Summit:

“We expect that Kyiv and the European capitals will perceive [the negotiations] constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works, will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.”

Meanwhile, more U.S. and NATO troops are fighting from the relative safety of the joint Ukraine-NATO war headquarters at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden in Germany, where they work with Ukrainian forces to plan operations, coordinate intelligence and target missile and drone strikes. If the war escalates further, Wiesbaden could become a target for Russian missile strikes, just as NATO missiles already target bases in Russia. How would the United States and Germany respond to Russian missile strikes on Wiesbaden?

The U.S. and NATO’s official policy has always been to keep Ukraine fighting until it is in a stronger position to negotiate with Russia, as Joe Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022. But every time the U.S. and NATO prolong or escalate the war, they leave Ukraine in a weaker position, not a stronger one. The neutrality agreement that the U.S. and U.K. rejected in April 2022 included a Russian withdrawal from all the territory it had just occupied. But that was not good enough for Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, who instead promised a long war to weaken Russia.

NATO military leaders believed that Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the fall of 2022 achieved the stronger position they were looking for, and General Milley went out on a limb to say publicly that Ukraine should “seize the moment” to negotiate. But Biden and Zelenskyy rejected his advice, and Ukraine’s failed offensive in 2023 squandered the moment they had failed to seize. No amount of deceptive propaganda can hide the reality that it has been downhill since then, and 69% of Ukrainians now want a negotiated peace, before their position gets even worse.

So Trump went to Alaska with a weak hand, but one that will get weaker still if the war goes on. The European politicians urging Zelenskyy to cling to his maximalist demands want to look tough to their own people, but the keys to a stable and lasting peace are still Ukrainian neutrality, self determination for the people of all regions of Ukraine, and a genuine peace process that finally lays to rest the zombification of the Cold War.

The whole world celebrated the end of the Cold War in 1991, but the people of the world are still waiting for the long-promised peace dividend that a generation of corrupt, war-mongering leaders have stolen from us.

U.S. officials must be honest about the U.S. role in provoking this crisis. They must demonstrate that they are ready to listen to Russia’s concerns, take them seriously, and negotiate in good faith to achieve a stable and lasting agreement that delivers peace and security to all parties in the Ukraine war and in the wider Cold War it is part of.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.

18 August 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Maung Zarni

Israel’s genocidal patron, namely the leaderships of the United States, have shown an utter and complete lack of human empathy, conscience or regard for the post-Hiroshima, post-Holocaust international law, which they helped create.

7 Aug 2025 – Standing at the giant parking lot of Kerem Shalom Crossing in southern Gaza next to the Egyptian border on 29 August 2024, I drew a parallel between Auschwitz and Gaza.

All comparisons typically fail to capture certain aspects. My comparison is no exception.

The aerial images captured from some Jordanian air craft engaged in air drop of aid to Gaza’s population being starved to death by what “Jewish Fascists” of Israel as apartheid “ethnocracy”, to borrow the words of Oxford University’s Avi Shlaim, boast as “the world’s most moral army” blows a hole in my Auschwitz analogy. (See “First Thing: Gaza from the sky – a landscape of rubble, dust and graves”, The Guardian, Wed. 6 Aug 2025.)

Gaza is more than a slaughter house

As evidenced from the freshly emerging videos and photographs, Gaza’s physical landscape today resembles Hiroshima City in the morning after on 7 August 1945. Just as Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians of all ages is the direct, intended outcome by Israel’s planners of this “war for annihilation” of an entire Palestinian society so is the near total destruction of the physical infrastructure that sheltered the 2.3 million Palestinians at the start of the war on 8 October 2023.

The vastly undercounted deaths of over 60,000 — of whom more than 16,000 were babies, and children – by the Gaza Health Ministry must be paired with the staggering number – 377,000 – presented by Dr. Yaakov Garb, Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev who are “missing” (presumed dead and buried under dozens of tons of rubble of bombed out Gazan buildings).

Let’s also not forget that Israel had allowed Gaza to exist as its “open air prison”, to use the term publicly utter by retired IDF naval admiral Ami Ayalon who also served as the chief of Shin Bet, or Shabek, which runs Gaza like prison guards, since 2007. That was the year when the Hamas became the elected government of the 28-mile strip along the hydrocarbon rich Mediterranean Sea, something Israel eyes with its characteristic lust for land and resources.

Chillingly, the common element here is both Hiroshima and Gaza have been variously vaporized by the American weapons.

Obviously, the estimated 80,000 tons of the explosives delivered through Made-in-USA 1,000 and 2,000 lb bombs, all provided by the bipartisan Washington dropped from F-35s, almost daily and nightly over 660 days, could do a similar degree of physical destruction as Truman’s Bombs did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Who then needs atomic bombs to destroy Gaza?

Here worth noting is the fact that the American Creator of history’s first-ever atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, the German-trained professor of theoretical physics at the flagship campus of the University of California, in Berkeley, was capable of painful and honest self-reflection that “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds“.

Alas, there is absolutely no sign of such capacity for honest soul-searching amongst the American political leaders and their foreign policy advisors: the United States continues to be the destroyer of worlds, that is, other peoples’ worlds (whole sale societies, countries and nations), from the Korean peninsula to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to throughout the Muslim Middle East of Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza and all of the Occupied Palestine, as well as Latin America.

In the early autumn of 2016, I visited Hiroshima , with an old British friend of mine, Professor Edward Vickers, whose father is a retired Royal Air Force pilot. Ed resides in Japan with his Japanese partner and their children. I was in Kyoto for a small international seminar on comparative cases of genocidal violence where I presented my main research theme of my own “Buddhist” country’s genocide against Rohingya people, still ongoing to date.

I decided to take a long train journey from Kyoto to Hiroshima and asked Ed to join me at Hiroshima, a place we had both wanted to go. For me, Hiroshima has long had a personal ring: the extended American family (of two sisters, both of whom did their undergraduate degrees at Oppie’s university when the man was on the faculty of physics) who practically adopted me as a young foreign graduate student in Northern California was entangled in the Manhattan Project. The older sister got a job at Los Alamos National Lab where the bomb was developed, specifically as Oppenheimer’s personal secretary. As a matter of fact, her boss walked her down the aisle at a small chapel established for the thousands of project workers as she fell in love with and married a young scientist working on the project.

In the video below, Marilyn Langlois describes her pilgrimage to Hiroshima, Japan, in April 2025, recalling her family connection to the first atomic bomb, countering myths surrounding its use, and stressing the urgency of “never again.”

One Thousand Paper Cranes

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTjaoflsuq8]

If it weren’t for the name Hiroshima and our historical knowledge it triggers, we would see neither the traces of the old Hiroshima nor the evidence of the first atomic bomb’s impact on the physical and natural environment.

When I visited the dark site, Hiroshima is no more dark or tragic, no traces of the atomic scars of the World War II savagely fought amongst Western imperialists and the axis of fascists for 6 years.

It looks and feels like another vibrant and populous Japanese city, eighty years after the city was reduced to rubble and a large number of its residents instantly vaporised.

That is, until we approached the Hiroshima Peace Park where the museum is located. We immediately recognized an iconic landmark of the vaporised city: the skeleton of a building with its dome, which has been kept as an unreconstructed memorial to the old Hiroshima which existed until 8:15 am on 6 August 1945.

Israel’s genocidal patron, namely the leaderships of the United States, have shown an utter and complete lack of human empathy, conscience or regard for the post-Hiroshima, post-Holocaust international law, which they helped create.

The United States has long become death, and destroyer of the worlds, while its corporate political class continues to celebrate its power of annihilation and seeks to send the massage that they will continue to destroy the world, natural and human, in order to rule over it.

For that reason alone, I am not so sure that we can be optimistic about Gaza’s reconstruction alas post-war Hiroshima, even as a Trumpian dystopian Riviera on the “unmarked mass graves of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians exterminated in their extended families over 2-3 generations.

As Rev. Dr Munther Isaac, the renowned Palestinian theologian of Shepherd’s Field, Bethlehem, said in his recent address to the Churches for the Middle East Peace Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the ongoing US-Israel’s joint mass extermination campaign against his fellow people in Gaza, (and the West Bank) is the clearest indication of the total collapse of the current moral order of this post-Holocaust world.

In Isaac’s words, “Never again!” is really ‘Yet again!” while the Zionized Imperialists have integrated elements of both Auschwitz (closed on 27 January 1945) and Hiroshima (destroyed on 6 August 1945) in their annihilation of Gaza, both the physical environment and residential human population.

Isaac continues, “the law (now) protects the perpetrators of genocide in Gaza while punishing those who oppose (this crime against humanity.”

In passing, I will point out that even the relentless attempts to deny, defy and erase truths about USA and Israel by the planners, executioners and supporters of the genocide in Gaza have a precedent in the way the United States as the occupying military power in Tokyo handled the atomic bomb survivors’ attempts to document and tell the factual truths about what the Americans did with their atomic bomb in a single morning at 8:15 am on 6 August 1945.

The flyer I picked up from the Special Exhibition during my visit to Hiroshima speaks volumes about the typical perpetrator behaviour: erasure or concealment of evidence, oral or physical.

It reads: “In 1950, five years after the bombing, Hiroshima City invited its residents to send stories of their A-bomb experience in order to share with others and thereby help create a peaceful nuke-free world. A total of 165 stories were collected. …

However, due to various reasons such as the intensifying Cold War with the outbreak of the Korean War, a Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6 that year was cancelled at the last minute by order of the GHQ (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers), which had occupied Japan.”

Fast forward to 2025
The destroyers of Gaza today see themselves as God’s chosen people with the divine right to perpetrate a Holocaust of their own against the largely Muslim population of Palestine whose land they have stolen to build “the Jewish national homeland”, under the imperial patronage of first Britain and now the USA.

There are daily crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Gaza by USA and Israel over 660 mornings – and still counting.

So expect these two states to become even more shrill and extreme as they struggle to exterminate factual truths about their victim-livestreamed crimes against Palestinians, specifically, the bogus “antisemitism” laws as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) run by the Jewish Supremacist or Jewish Exceptionalist psychopaths working for the genocidal state of Israel.

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

18 August 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Richard Falk

15 Aug 2025 – In contemporary conflict the “weaponization of information” or “targeting of journalists” shows a pattern of squashing dissent. Analysts like Martin Libicki and John Arquilla argue how information itself becomes a battlefield in what they call noopolitik. The U.S. and Israel are historically accustomed to exploiting land, sea and air. Manipulating the information space is also nothing new. +972 Magazine’s Yuval Abraham indicated that Israeli intelligence, or Aman, formed Legitimization Cells to preempt Gaza journalists as Hamas members when Palestinian reporting was spot on, although the press with a political affiliation is commonly accepted elsewhere in the world.

In this Q&A, legal scholar and international relations expert Richard Falk discusses the 10 Aug 2025 Israeli airstrike that killed four Al Jazeera journalists and two others in Gaza. Falk argues that discrediting truth-tellers and murdering the press is consistent with the apartheid worldview that dominates Zionist ideology.

Daniel Falcone: When we first spoke on the ruthless censorship of Palestinian journalism, you emphasized how they play a crucial role in challenging the symbolic dominance of the Israeli narrative, often costing their lives. How do you interpret the ongoing deliberate censorship of Palestinian journalism in both Israel and the U.S. and what does that say about the perceived threat of their reporting to dominant geopolitical interests?

Richard Falk: When our eyes and ears are conveying a sense of reality that collides with the strategic interests of autocratically disposed governance, the established elites and special interests attached to the status quo become anxious. One response is to exert pressure on private sector media, including advertisers, to engage in self-censorship of a character that obscures perception with ambiguities and false accusations. Israel, with Euro-American acquiescence has gone along with the weaponization of antisemitism to situate criticisms of Israel and Zionism in a zone of uncertainty that blunts action-oriented responses based on international law or shared values, while discrediting or punishing those critics however strong their credentials as skilled analysts and trustworthy presenters of reality as honestly perceived.

The prolonged reluctance of influential media in the West to name the assertion of Jewish primacy in various domains of Israeli life as racial or ethnic discrimination that constituted an institutional adoption of a governance style that violated the 1973 International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is a striking pre-October 7 example of this phenomenon. Both Western governments, especially, the United States and its NATO partners, remained silent about these apartheid accusations even in the face of a series of academic style reports by the most respected international human rights NGOs (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International), the UN (ESCWA 2017), and even the leading Israeli human rights NGO (B’Tselem) each documented the apartheid allegation.

Despite these responsibly asserted apartheid accusations they were neither substantively challenged nor commented upon but completely ignored. Indeed, the most forthcoming response, although not intended as such, was from Israel, which indirectly confirmed apartheid allegations in the Knesset Basic Law adopted in 2018. This type of legislation enjoys the highest status in Israel, which has no constitution. The 2018 law explicitly identified Israel as the state of the Jewish people exclusively enjoying the right of self-determination, privileging Hebrew as the official language, and oblivious to the human rights of Palestinians and other minorities living in Israel as well as in the Palestinian Territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

This slippage of Israel’s formal democracy into the silent embrace of apartheid was revealingly not treated as relevant in any way to a proper appraisal of Palestinian resistance in the context of the October 7 attack. Instead, public discourse almost totally decontextualized October 7 without reference to the harsh Israeli blockade of Gaza maintained since 2007 or the periodic massive Israeli military incursions of 2008-09, 2012, 2014 or the failure to even explore the diplomatic initiative of Hamas for a long-term ceasefire with a duration of up to 50 years.

The response to the publication of the UN ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission of West Asia) report, of which I was co-author along with Virginia Tilley, seems especially illustrative of this impulse to fight back against fact-based scholarship, journalism, and independent experts. Shortly after its issuance in March 2017 our report was attacked in a Security Council meeting by the Israeli and American diplomats in a typical diatribe that was obviously intended to divert attention from the apartheid allegations to claims that the authors were biased against Israel. Seeming to expect self-censoring discipline even at the UN after October 7, the Trump chief representative at the UN, Ambassador Nikki Haley, dutifully launched a venomous personal attack on me (“What’s wrong with this Falk guy?”) and threatened U.S. defunding of the UN if the recently selected UN Secretary General, António Guterres, did not repudiate apartheid report.

In response, Guterres appeased the U.S. by ordering the report withdrawn from the ESCWA website, where it was reported to be receiving record number of requests, but stopped short of repudiating its contents. It was enough of a cave in to prompt the principled resignation of the Executive Secretary of ESCWA, Rima Khalif, to resign. [See “Dismissing Israel apartheid report is an abuse of power writes author,” Middle East Monitor, April 26, 2017.]

This ESCWA anecdote is significant because it demonstrates that the diversionary formula of silence + defamation + naming inhibitions + threats was relied upon before October 7 to protect Israel not only from allegations of serious international crimes but from truth-telling efforts by experts and scholars to name the realities reported upon in a truthful, recognizable language by individuals whose work was highly respected in professional circles. It should not occasion surprise that the same tactics of deflection have been used with even greater vigor to obscure the shameful realities of Gaza genocide. These tactics are losing their self-censoring implementation in recent months as the persistence of genocidal language and tactics by Israeli leaders become increasingly undeniable, not so much by words as by the daily images of dying children and starving Palestinians being shot and often killed at crowded and unruly U.S./Israeli administered aid sites while struggling for death-averting sacks of food.

Daniel Falcone: The recent Israeli strike that killed several Al Jazeera journalists outside Al-Shifa Hospital, including Anas al-Sharif, was later accused posthumously of being a Hamas operative, a practice from allies and outlets with actual problematic connections. How does international law evaluate such retroactive justifications for targeting press members in conflict zones?

Richard Falk: I regard as this post-hoc justification for targeting and killing Anas al-Sharif in a Gaza hospital safe zone as an extension of Israel’s determination to destroy, discredit, and inhibit scathing criticism of its genocidal campaign against a defenseless civilian population, estimated at about 2 million survivors of an October 7 population of 2.3 million. Israel tries here to envelop brave Gaza journalists in an intentionally dense ‘fog of war,’ reinforced in relation to Anas al-Sharif by the inflammatory accusation without any accompanying evidence that he is an undercover Hamas operative.

Ever since this military onslaught commenced nearly two years ago, Israel has been targeting the most influential journalists by relying on advanced surveillance techniques being developed by Palantir and Anduril, companies mentioned by name in the UN Special Rapporteur in her report that led to her formal sanctioning by the U.S. Government on July 9. The report to the UN entitled “From the Economics of Occupation to the Occupation of Genocide,” devoted to depicting corporate complicity drawing upon a large data base. This continues Israel’s policies of non-cooperation with the most carefully crafted critical journalism that justifies punitive action against truth-telling journalists by an appeal to economic and political national interests.

The U.S. Government acting outside the combat zones in Gaza or neighboring Israel has been experimenting with less lethal tactics that have similar goals of inducing confusion, silence, and uncertainty, reinforced by strongly discouraging naming of the carnage and accompanying dehumanizing language as ‘genocide’ on principal media platforms. The defunding of leading university research programs by claiming to be reacting to campus antisemitism and the mounting challenges to undocumented foreign students seems both integral to the commitment to silence Israel’s critics and an aspect of the wider Trump agenda to discredit knowledge based governance, which would make the citizenry even more susceptible to the ultra-right belief-based agenda of the MAGA base, which includes waging a regressive epistemological war against reliance on science-oriented experts. Such a worldview diverts attention from the gravity of increased global warming and indulges the most rapacious dimensions of capitalism.

Let me conclude my response by grieving over Anas al-Sharif’s untimely and vengeful assassination by quoting his words indicting our silence and passivity: “If this madness doesn’t end, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased—and history will remember you as a silent witness to a genocide you chose not to stop.”

Daniel Falcone: Al Jazeera has long accused the IDF of running a campaign of incitement against its journalists, calling it a tactic to justify the targeting. How do you view this use of dehumanizing language in priming the public for violence against media workers?

Richard Falk: I regard Al Jazeera’s accusations as well founded as a first approximation. The fact that more than 230 journalists have been killed by Israel firepower in Gaza since October 2023, many by design and at close range does give these accusations what lawyers call a prima facie case. It would seem consistent with the stress that Israel has long put on the control of the public discourse pertaining to the underlying Israel/Palestine conflict with tactics shifting as the context shifts. The gravity of the sustained assault on Gaza has gradually turned the tide of public opinion against Israel including its escalations of attempts by Israel to suppress journalistic realism and smear brave journalist as they try to cover the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the weakening of Western support for the Zionist Project. Al Jazeera has led this effort to tell it like it is, generating extreme hostility among the war planners and political leaders in Tel Aviv. It still not appreciated that this genocide is reaching the point of no return, where the next phase of lament will be in the spirit of ‘we did too little too late.’

Israelis have ‘a need not to know,’ and that places a strain on its highly effective state propaganda machine given what is seen and heard daily throughout the world with decreasing or abandoned filters. For journalism to flourish in this era it needs to be liberated from the beliefs of the ruling elites and get back to addressing the facts as impartially interpreted. There is no other means of assuring a revival of reality-based journalism that is not life threatening to the journalist, but this will depend on the educating the citizenry to demand the protection and valuing of such reportage by organizing civil society pressure on government and special interest private sector lobbying.

As suggested earlier in the moving words of Anas al-Sharif it may be already too late, even if such pressures arise forcefully to help end the suffering of Gaza survivors, but we owe it to ourselves and to the human future to shed cautious impulses, and go all out to end this horrifying spectacle of genocide and seek an edifying process by which the perpetrators are held accountable. At present it seems a dream, but some dreams are indirect agents of change.

Daniel Falcone: The journalists killed at the gates of the hospital were at a protected site under international law. This compounds the violation. Does this all suggest a greater erosion of respect for international humanitarian norms in Gaza?

Richard Falk: Such targeted assassinations aggravate the criminal offense of killing journalists properly identified. This assessment is especially true in relation to Gaza which remains an Occupied Territory subject to compliance by Israel with the framework of international humanitarian law, especially as set forth in the Geneva Convention IV governing Belligerent Occupation.

The manner by which these Al Jazeera journalists were targeted should also be legally and morally condemned as forming a vital component of the ongoing genocide by its obvious intention of punishing an influential journalist who conveyed to readers the true nature of the Israeli tactics, thereby warning surviving journalists to avoid truth-telling if they hope to live, a terrifying message that hopes to insulate this Israeli genocide from scrutiny and sanctions.

Daniel Falcone: Reports indicate possibly 186 journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023. Are we witnessing a collapse of traditional protections for war correspondents (Also see: “the limits of the war photograph” – Mary Turfah)? Or does this mark a change in how information and its messengers are deliberately neutralized as part of military strategy? Israel almost seems proud of this rogue element and technique to state building through state violence.

Richard Falk: You pose an essential question that it is difficult for me to offer a helpful response as I lack necessary familiarity with developing doctrine and how reporting the news is manipulated to avoid friction with public support for military operation. One of the learning lessons of Washington think tanks and foreign policy advisors was the misleading belief that ‘the war was lost in American living rooms,’ and especially seeing flag-draped coffins on TV carrying the remains of combat casualties. The solution devised, which conveniently relieved the military strategists for the political outcome of the Vietnam War was to embed journalists in combat units, supposing more favorable coverage of military operations and less emphasis on depicting casualties.

Israel seems to have followed a much cruder approach in relation to allegations of genocide -given plausibility by fearless journalists reporting from Gaza’s many ground-zero sites of devastation and suffering. Simply put, it is a matter of discrediting truth-telling journalists and other experts if the damaging reports are from Westerners, assassinating if from Palestinians, a pattern borne out by the statistics so far compiled and consistent with the apartheid worldview that dominates Zionist ideology and is subscribed to by a broad echelon of high-level Israeli advisors.

__________________________________________

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee Member, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. 

18 August 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ranjan Solomon

The story of Ukraine is inseparable from the twilight of the Soviet Union. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced Perestroika and Glasnost, promising economic modernization and political openness. Europe and the United States, charmed by his popularity, cheered these moves, yet often misread the signals. Gorbachev’s reforms unleashed centrifugal forces within the USSR: nationalist movements surged, the economy teetered, and political authority fragmented. While celebrated abroad, he lacked the domestic authority to stabilize the union, and Western encouragement at times accelerated disintegration rather than containing it.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and military pressure had already strained the Soviet economy. By 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving Boris Yeltsin to preside over a Russia in chaos. Privatization created oligarchs while ordinary citizens endured hyperinflation and unemployment. Into this vacuum, the United States and Western Europe moved decisively. Clinton’s administration (beginning 1993) expanded NATO eastward despite reportedly promising Gorbachev that the alliance would not “move an inch eastward.” Each new member—Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states—was, from Moscow’s perspective, a strategic encirclement (Carnegie, 2015). Europe, meanwhile, applied selective morality: promoting democracy while advancing its economic and security interests, often overlooking the historical and cultural complexities of Russia’s neighbours.

By November 2013, Ukraine found itself at a crossroads. President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an EU association agreement in favour of closer ties with Moscow sparked the Euromaidan protests. Over three months, violent clashes left more than 100 dead (BBC, 2014). The West hailed this as a democratic uprising, yet it also aligned Ukraine decisively with NATO and EU strategic objectives. Russia viewed the ouster as a direct threat, leading to the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the insurgency in Donbas (Carnegie, 2015; CEPA, 2016). NATO’s eastward posture, long framed as defensive, had become an instrument of strategic projection.

Into this volatile environment rose Vladimir Putin, who assumed the Russian presidency in 1999. He quickly consolidated power, curtailed oligarchic excesses, and restored a sense of national purpose. Putin approached Ukraine as both neighbour and buffer, acutely aware of NATO’s encroachment. Western actors, by contrast, often pursued episodic interventions, emphasizing short-term strategic goals rather than sustained, historically grounded policy.

Ukraine’s political turbulence continued. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian, won the presidency with over 73% of the vote. He faced a divided country, Russian-speaking eastern regions, and Western expectations that often-constrained sovereignty. Billions in U.S. and EU aid flowed to Kyiv, sometimes contingent on policy directions. Zelensky publicly protested some conditions, highlighting how international assistance can shape, and sometimes constrain, domestic governance (USA Facts, 2025; EEAS, 2025).

The military-industrial complex looms large. The U.S., responsible for roughly 40% of global military expenditure, allocated $182.8 billion to support Ukraine by 2025 (China Daily, 2025), while the top Pentagon contractors received $771 billion from 2020 to 2024 (Quincy Institute, 2025). For Ukraine, physical damage has reached $152 billion, with reconstruction estimates up to $486 billion (Social Europe, 2023).

Diplomatic efforts illustrate the asymmetry of power. The 2025 Alaska summit between Trump and Putin excluded Zelensky from initial talks, exemplifying how Ukrainian sovereignty can be sidelined (The Australian, 2025). Biden’s administration, despite structured support, often acted reactively, constrained by domestic politics and NATO consultation. The result has been a perception of indecision in the West, contrasting sharply with Russia’s disciplined strategy.

International institutions, including the UN Security Council, remain limited. Dominated by five permanent members—the victors of WWII—the council struggles to mediate impartially. NATO’s operational posture, framed as defensive, often functions as strategic projection, exacerbating conflict rather than preventing it.

Way Forward: Philosophical and Strategic Perspective

The Ukraine crisis challenges the post-Cold War unipolar paradigm. A durable solution requires embracing multipolarity, historical literacy, and mutual respect for sovereignty. Peace is cultivated not through military aid or sanctions alone, but through dialogue that acknowledges demographic realities, historical grievances, and security concerns. Western powers must reckon with the consequences of past interventions; Russia, Ukraine, and Europe must negotiate in a framework that transcends zero-sum thinking. Philosophically, the crisis compels a re-evaluation of international ethics: power without justice, strategy without history, and aid without sovereignty, cannot achieve lasting peace. Global governance structures—UN, NATO, EU—must evolve to reflect equitable participation and shared responsibility, ensuring no nation is perpetually marginalized or encircled.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

Donald Trump came into office promising to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now, six months later, his high stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska may have put the United States and Russia on a new path toward peace, or, if this initiative fails, could trigger an even more dangerous escalation, with warhawks in Congress already pushing for another $54.6 billion in weapons for Ukraine.

After emerging from the meeting, Putin correctly framed the historical moment: “This was a very hard time for bilateral relations and, let’s be frank, they’ve fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War. I think that’s not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole. Sooner or later, we have to amend the situation to move on from confrontation to dialogue.” 

Trump said he will follow up by talking to NATO leaders and Zelenskyy, as if the U.S. is simply an innocent bystander trying to help. But in Ukraine, as in Palestine, Washington plays the “mediator” while pouring weapons, intelligence, and political cover into one side of the war. In Gaza, that has enabled genocide. In Ukraine, it could lead to nuclear war.

Despite protests from Zelenskyy and European leaders, Trump was right to meet with Putin, not because they are friends, but because the United States and Russia are enemies, and because the war they are fighting to the last Ukrainian is the front line of a global conflict between the United States, Russia and China.

In our book, War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, which we have now updated and revised to cover three years of war in Ukraine, we have detailed the U.S. role in expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, its support for the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, its undermining of the Minsk II peace accord, and its rejection of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine after only two months of war in 2022. 

We doubt that Donald Trump fully grasps this history. Are his simplistic statements alternately blaming Russia and Ukraine, but never the United States, just a public façade for domestic consumption, or does he really believe America’s hands are clean?

At their first meeting in Saudi Arabia on February 18th, senior U.S. and Russian negotiators agreed on a three-step plan: first to restore U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations; then to negotiate peace in Ukraine; and finally to work on resolving the broader, underlying breakdown in relations between the United States and Russia. Trump and Putin’s decision to meet now was a recognition that they must address the deeper rift before they can achieve a stable and lasting peace in Ukraine.

The stakes are high. Russia has been waging a war of attrition, concentrating on destroying Ukrainian forces and military equipment rather than on advancing quickly and seizing a lot more territory. It has still not occupied all of Donetsk province, which unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine in May 2014, and which Russia officially annexed before its invasion in February 2022. 

The failure of peace negotiations could lead to a more aggressive Russian war plan to seize territory much faster. Ukrainian forces are thinly spread out along much of its 700 mile front line, with as few as 100 soldiers often manning several miles of defenses. A major Russian offensive could lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian military or the fall of the Zelenskyy government. 

How would the U.S. and its Western allies respond to such major changes in the strategic picture? Zelenskyy’s European allies talk tough, but have always rejected sending their own troops to Ukraine, apart from small numbers of special operations forces and mercenaries. 

Putin addressed the Europeans in his remarks after the Summit: 

“We expect that Kyiv and the European capitals will perceive [the negotiations] constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works, will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.” 

Meanwhile, more U.S. and NATO troops are fighting from the relative safety of the joint Ukraine-NATO war headquarters at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden in Germany, where they work with Ukrainian forces to plan operations, coordinate intelligence and target missile and drone strikes. If the war escalates further, Wiesbaden could become a target for Russian missile strikes, just as NATO missiles already target bases in Russia. How would the United States and Germany respond to Russian missile strikes on Wiesbaden?

The U.S. and NATO’s official policy has always been to keep Ukraine fighting until it is in a stronger position to negotiate with Russia, as Joe Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022. But every time the U.S. and NATO prolong or escalate the war, they leave Ukraine in a weaker position, not a stronger one. The neutrality agreement that the U.S. and U.K. rejected in April 2022 included a Russian withdrawal from all the territory it had just occupied. But that was not good enough for Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, who instead promised a long war to weaken Russia.

NATO military leaders believed that Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the fall of 2022 achieved the stronger position they were looking for, and General Milley went out on a limb to say publicly that Ukraine should “seize the moment” to negotiate. But Biden and Zelenskyy rejected his advice, and Ukraine’s failed offensive in 2023 squandered the moment they had failed to seize. No amount of deceptive propaganda can hide the reality that it has been downhill since then, and 69% of Ukrainians now want a negotiated peace, before their position gets even worse.

So Trump went to Alaska with a weak hand, but one that will get weaker still if the war goes on. The European politicians urging Zelenskyy to cling to his maximalist demands want to look tough to their own people, but the keys to a stable and lasting peace are still Ukrainian neutrality, self determination for the people of all regions of Ukraine, and a genuine peace process that finally lays to rest the zombification of the Cold War.

The whole world celebrated the end of the Cold War in 1991, but the people of the world are still waiting for the long-promised peace dividend that a generation of corrupt, war-mongering leaders have stolen from us. 

As negotiations progress, U.S. officials must be honest about the U.S. role in provoking this crisis. They must demonstrate that they are ready to listen to Russia’s concerns, take them seriously, and negotiate in good faith to achieve a stable and lasting agreement that delivers peace and security to all parties in the Ukraine war, and in the wider Cold War it is part of.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of a new edition of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, just published by OR Books.

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Azmat Ali 

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)—often hailed as the father of modern drama—stands as one of the most daring playwrights of the 19th century, unafraid to strip away the genteel veneers of society to reveal its moral hypocrisies. Ibsen’s Ghosts (1881) offers a searing meditation on the legacies of intergenerational consequences. In the play, despite all attempts by Mrs. Alving to shield her son Osvald from his father’s immoral influence, she fails against the inescapable force of inheritance, and subsequently Osvald inherits his father’s immorality. He not only resembles his father in looks and behaviour but also suffers from the congenital syphilis, as he confesses that “The disease is hereditary, mother… It’s my father I have to thank for it.” His plight is not simply personal; it is the embodiment of how past activities seep into the present.

Today, across the besieged landscape of Gaza, countless young people find themselves in a parallel condition. Born into a territory under prolonged blockade, occupation, and recurrent military assault, Gaza’s young people inherit wounds that are not merely personal but the cumulative result of decades of dispossession, displacement, and structural violence. International law names these conditions—collective punishment, denial of self-determination, and siege—as violations, yet they persist, shaping the psychological, physical, and cultural landscape in which these young lives unfold. They maintain their identities through remembrance of events, most prominently the Nakba—a “collective trauma” that spans generations. According to the UN:

“The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighboring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population.

As early as December 1948, the UN General Assembly called for refugee return, property restitution and compensation (resolution 194 (II)). However, 75 years later, despite countless UN resolutions, the rights of the Palestinians continue to be denied. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) more than 5 million Palestine refugees are scattered throughout the Middle East. Today, Palestinians continue to be dispossessed and displaced by Israeli settlements, evictions, land confiscation and home demolitions.

The Nakba anniversary is a reminder not only of those tragic events of 1948, but of the ongoing injustice suffered by the Palestinians. The Nakba had a profound impact on the Palestinian people, who lost their homes, their land, and their way of life. It remains a deeply traumatic event in their collective memory and continues to shape their struggle for justice and for their right to return to their homes.

On 30 November 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution A/RES/77/23 requesting the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat, for the first time in the history of the UN, to dedicate its activities in 2023 to the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba, including by organizing a high-level event at the General Assembly Hall on 15 May 2023. Furthermore, the UN General Assembly adopted another resolution A/RES/79/82 requesting the Division to commemorate the anniversary of the Nakba, including by organizing annual events and through the dissemination of relevant archives and testimonies. On 15 May 2023, for the first time in the history of the UN, this anniversary was commemorated pursuant to the mandate by the General Assembly (A/RES/77/23 of 30 November 2022).”

In Gaza and in refugee camps, children grow up immersed in the narratives of exile and loss told by their parents and grandparents, learning the fears and hopes of those who lived the original trauma. In this way, the “cyclical nature of trauma” ensures that “psychological scars and sociocultural disruptions are inherited by following generations,” perpetuating “a legacy of suffering and resistance” within families and communities. Like Osvald, Gazan youth are caught in systems beyond their control—but their parents’ trauma is no disease of chance. It stems from systematic oppression. Researchers describe Palestinian trauma as a convergence of collective, colonial, and transgenerational wounds: the forms of ongoing siege, displacement, and episodic bombardment of Gaza inflict repeated blows to civilian life, breeding communal grief and existential threat. Each war and checkpoint, home demolition and school destroyed reinforces lessons of loss that parents internalize—lessons passed wordlessly to their children. As one study puts it, the endless “intersecting” traumas of Gaza create “a web of psychological, social and cultural challenges” that the next generation must navigate daily. In these conditions, resilience and new forms of resistance become crucial means of survival.

Gaza’s young people are not simply passive victims of inheritance; they are transforming inherited pain into fruitful purpose. UN observers report that “a generation of young people” in Gaza is showing “extraordinary resilience and leadership,” even under siege. Twenty-five-year-old volunteer Dina, for example, carries the scars of five wars, displacement and hunger in her life. Instead of collapsing, she channeled that experience into organizing aid: since October 2023 she and her Y-PEER team have started ten humanitarian projects in northern Gaza, from safe youth spaces to food and hygiene distributions. As UNFPA reports, Gaza’s youth “are not just surviving but actively working to support their communities and inspire hope for a brighter future.”

Gaza’s artists turn crisis into creativity: one painting shows a family baking bread on a UN aid flour bag, symbolizing survival under siege. In every field—art, culture, activism—Gaza’s young people are pushing back. Surrounded by rubble and ruin, they literally “paint despair into defiance,” says Al Jazeera—wheat flour bags and aid boxes become canvases, “every paint stroke tell[s] a story” of resilience. As one 18-year-old artist from Jabalia explains, “when I paint on a flour bag, it feels as if I’m writing our history with a brush dipped in suffering and resilience.” In other words, Gaza’s heritage of trauma becomes the raw material for resistance art. Even amid mass destruction—after dozens of cultural centers and galleries have been bombed—artists “manage to turn pain into hope,” insisting their work is a testament to survival. As journalist Asem al-Jerjawi notes, this creativity is itself an act of defiance: “Even after losing so much, my art remains my defiance.”

The Shababeek art gallery in Gaza, once a hub of creativity, now lies in ruins after air strikes. Still, young Gazans refuse to let their culture die. This determination is echoed by many. Even as occupation forces target Gaza’s teachers and students—acts some term “educide” and “epistemicide”—Gaza’s youth maintain community life and memory. They draw murals in destroyed neighborhoods, write blogs and poems, and circulate images of daily life under fire. Every keffiyeh scarf worn and Palestinian flag flown becomes a statement that they live and remember. As one young artist declares, “the occupation seeks to erase our culture and identity. But art preserves our memory. Every painting I create is a document, telling the world that we are alive, we dream and we hold onto our roots.”

Gaza’s youth resist in many forms; they document brutality on social media, organize protest camps (even as universities are shelled), and care for one another in the wreckage. For instance, in art and culture, they use murals, music, poetry, and theater to process trauma and rally solidarity. Students and artists turn burnt flour bags and crumbled walls into canvases that “tell the story of the war’s destruction,” embodying the will to survive. Volunteer networks (like Y-PEER Palestine) have sprung up everywhere. Teenagers train to counsel peers, distribute food, and keep schools open despite bombings. One UN report highlights youth initiatives that have set up safe spaces, provided hygiene kits, and delivered vital aid in besieged areas. These grassroots efforts carry forward the culture of mutual aid long observed in Palestinian refugee camps.

Gaza’s young people (and their supporters abroad) have amplified their story online. Across the globe, symbols of Palestinian identity—the keffiyeh, Handala cartoon, even the watermelon (referring to banned flag colors)—are proudly displayed in rallies and on social media. Graphic posters, street art, and viral videos confront global audiences with Gaza’s reality, helped by the “pivotal role of social media” in challenging propaganda. This worldwide cultural activism has reshaped public opinion, with polls showing growing youth support for Palestine and a surge of international protests demanding justice.

The bridge from Ibsen’s Ghosts to Gaza may seem long, but the patterns align. In both, silence and secrets breed suffering, yet the afflicted generation chooses how to respond. As one analyst puts it, “family legacy and unspoken suffering” can either crush or ignite us. Gaza’s youth—acutely aware of the “ghosts” of Nakba and occupation haunting their lives—have chosen to ignite a voice. Their defiance joins a century-long Palestinian tradition of cultural resistance: from the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and the cartoons of Naji al-Ali to today’s digital campaigns. By transforming inherited trauma into creative resistance, they follow in the footsteps of earlier generations that said no to erasure.

In Ibsen’s play, Osvald sinks under the weight of his inheritance. In Gaza, a new generation bears those weights defiantly. They illustrate that wounds can be turned outward, not just inward. The syphilis Osvald inherited brought only despair; the Gaza youth have inherited violence and dispossession, but they aim to turn those “ghosts” into fuel for freedom. As Ghosts reminds us, “untreated trauma and secrecy can lead to desperate actions”—and indeed the ongoing conflict has driven some Gazans to despair. Yet it also teaches that visibility and solidarity can break cycles. By speaking openly—through art, protest and community—Gaza’s young generation is breaking the silence that Ghosts so sternly warned about, and forging resistance from the ashes of suffering. Unlike Osvald, whose illness ends in helpless surrender, Gaza’s youth transform their inherited traumas into acts of resistance, creativity, and resilience—whether through political activism, cultural expression, or the sheer act of survival.

Azmat Ali | Instagram ID: @azmata90_lle | is a student of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

References:

War-related trauma in narratives of Gazans: challenges, difficulties and survival coping – PMC
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11949732/
UNFPA Arabstates | Rising from the Ashes: Youth Resilience and Leadership in Gaza
https://arabstates.unfpa.org/en/news/rising-ashes-youth-resilience-and-leadership-gaza
Art as survival: Gaza’s creators transform pain into protest | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/2/12/art-as-survival-gazas-creators-transform-pain-into-protest
Palestinian Cultural Resistance in the Service of the National Project
https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/palestinian-cultural-resistance-in-the-service-of-the-national-project/

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The consequences of the Israeli genocide in Gaza will be dire. An event of this degree of barbarity, sustained by an international conspiracy of moral inertia and silence, will not be relegated to history as just another “conflict” or a mere tragedy.

The Gaza genocide is a catalyst for major events to come. Israel and its benefactors are acutely aware of this historical reality. This is precisely why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a race against time, desperately trying to ensure his country remains relevant, if not standing, in the coming era. He pursues this through territorial expansion in Syria, relentless aggression against Lebanon, and, of course, the desire to annex all occupied Palestinian territories.

But history cannot be controlled with such precision. However clever he may think he is, Netanyahu has already lost the ability to influence the outcome. He has been unable to set a clear agenda in Gaza, let alone achieve any strategic goals in a 365-square-kilometer expanse of destroyed concrete and ashes. Gazans have proven that collective sumud can defeat one of the most well-equipped modern armies.

Indeed, history itself has taught us that changes of great magnitude are inevitable. The true heartbreak is that this change is not happening fast enough to save a starving population, and the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment is not expanding at the rate needed to achieve a decisive political outcome.

Our confidence in this inevitable change is rooted in history. World War I was not just a “Great War” but a cataclysmic event that fully shattered the geopolitical order of its time. Four empires were fundamentally reshuffled; some, like the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, were erased from existence.

The new world order resulting from World War I was short-lived. The modern international system we have today is a direct outcome of World War II. This includes the United Nations and all the new Western-centric economic, legal, and political institutions that were forged by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This includes the World Bank, the IMF, and ultimately NATO, thus sowing the seeds of yet more global conflicts.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was heralded as the singular, defining event that resolved the lingering conflicts of the post-WWII geopolitical struggle, supposedly ushering in a new, permanent global realignment, or, to some, the “end of history.”

History, however, had other plans. Not even the horrific September 11 attacks and the subsequent US-led wars could reinvent the global order in a way that was consistent with US-Western interests and priorities.

Gaza is infinitely small when judged by its geography, economic worth, or political import. Yet, it has proven to be the most significant global event defining this generation’s political consciousness.

The fact that the self-proclaimed guardians of the post-WWII order are the very entities that are violently and brazenly violating every international and humanitarian law is enough to fundamentally alter our relationship with the West’s championed “rule-based order.”

This may not seem significant now, but it will have profound, long-term consequences. It has largely compromised and, in fact, delegitimized the moral authority imposed, often by violence, by the West over the rest of the world for decades, especially in the Global South.

This self-imposed delegitimization will also impact the very idea of democracy, which has been under siege in many countries, including Western democracies. This is only natural, considering that most of the planet feels strongly that Israel must end its genocide and that its leaders must be held accountable. Yet, little to no action follows. 

The shift in Western public opinion in favor of Palestinians is astounding when considered against the backdrop of total Western media dehumanization of the Palestinian people and Western governments’ blind allegiance to Israel. More shocking is that this shift is largely the result of the work of ordinary people on social media, activists mobilizing in the streets, and independent journalists, mostly in Gaza, working under extreme duress and with minimal resources.

A central conclusion is the failure of Arab and Muslim nations to factor into this tragedy befalling their own brethren in Palestine. While some are engaged in empty rhetoric or self-flagellation, others subsist in a state of inertia, as if the genocide in Gaza were a foreign topic, like the wars in Ukraine or Congo.

This fact alone shall challenge our very collective self-definition—what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim, and whether such definitions carry supra-political identities. Time will tell.

The left, too, is problematic in its own way. While not a monolith, and while many on the left have championed the global protests against the genocide, others remain splintered and unable to form a unified front, even temporarily.

Some leftists are still chasing their own tales, crippled by the worry that being anti-Zionist would earn them the label of antisemitism. For this group, self-policing and self-censorship are preventing them from taking decisive action.

History does not take its cues from Israel or Western powers. Gaza will indeed result in the kind of global shifts that will affect us all, far beyond the Middle East. For now, however, it is most urgent that we use our collective will and action to influence one single historical event: ending the genocide and the famine in Gaza. 

The rest will be left to history, and to those who wish to be relevant when the world changes again.

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

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Guillermo R Barreto

Haidar Eid is a Palestinian professor who used to teach postcolonial and postmodern literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. That university no longer exists thanks to the missiles and the Zionist minds that fired and guided those missiles. His book Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind was recently published in Spanish by La Trocha publishing house in Santiago, Chile. I met Haidar earlier this year. His home was completely destroyed, and perhaps we could be ironic and say that he was lucky to have been warned by the criminals who gave him five minutes to evacuate.

Not everyone was so “lucky.” Since 7 October 2023, 60,038 people have been killed, of whom 18,592 are under the age of 18. These figures could be underestimated if we review the assessments reported in the journal The Lancet, which in June 2024 already estimated the death toll at 37,336, to which we should add 14,400 missing persons and so-called indirect deaths, that is, deaths from starvation, which have risen alarmingly in the last month. The aggression carried out by the state of Israel in the Gaza Strip has destroyed more than 70% of homes, displaced some 2.3 million people, and has been openly and selectively directed against the civilian population, attacking and destroying schools, universities, mosques, churches, hospitals, shelters, and even shooting at people at food collection sites. Journalists, health workers, humanitarian workers, UN personnel, and especially children have been killed as part of a plan aimed at wiping out the Palestinian people. This plan unambiguously qualifies as a crime of genocide.

The history of this aggression did not begin on October 7. The Zionist project dates back more than a century. It is a colonialist, racist, and supremacist project that has used murder and forced displacement as policy, all endorsed by a world that looks on with indifference at what is happening there.

The occupation of Palestinian lands by European Zionism began with the purchase of land in the early 20th century, supported by the British government. The process of dispossessing the Palestinian population before 1936 was described by the writer and activist Ghassan Kanafani in his book The 1936-1939 Revolution in Palestine, published by 1804 Books. Kanafani recounts that by 1931 some 20,000 peasant families had already been displaced from their lands. This interesting and fundamental text recounts the conditions to which the British Mandate subjected the Palestinian population, which included not only the loss of their lands but also the closure of their productive spaces and the imposition of disadvantageous labor regimes.

The use of terrorist tactics became the modus operandi of Zionism with the aim of displacing the indigenous population of Palestine. Many massacres were committed by Zionism, especially during and after the Nakba in 1948. On April 9, 1948, for example, squads from Irgun (a Zionist terrorist organization) entered the village of Deir Yassin, killing more than 100 Palestinians, including the elderly and children who were unable to escape. On July 11 of that year, commandos under the command of Moshe Dayan attacked Lydd, killing 426 people. Moshe Dayan would later become Israel’s Minister of Defense. Between October 14 and 15, 1953, the infamous Battalion 101, led by Ariel Sharon, entered the village of Qibya, killing 69 people. Sharon himself, who would become Prime Minister of Israel, would oversee the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, in which at least 3,500 people were killed.

But it is not only massacres of this kind that Israel has committed. The selective assassination of individuals has been common practice and state policy. These are murders planned and carried out anywhere in the world by Israel’s secret service, the Mossad, known on the streets of Tel Aviv as “the Institute.” Recent examples include the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, spokesperson and official negotiator for Hamas, on 31 July 2024, in Tehran, and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah in Beirut on 27 September 2024.

Israel is not a state, it is a European colonial project whose founders were not native to that land. Theodor Herzl was Hungarian, David Ben Hurion and Shimon Peres were Polish, Golda Meir was Ukrainian, Moshe Dayan was the son of Ukrainians, Ariel Sharon was the son of Belarusians, to give a few examples. The manipulated biblical account is just a convenient excuse that serves to create a mythical narrative that gives a foreign population rights of occupation over a supposed promised land. In practice, what we have is a state founded on massacres, murders, and forced displacement of the original population in permanent violation of international law. An apartheid state that distinguishes between first-class citizens who enjoy rights and second-class citizens with limited or no rights. The aggression that has been taking place since October 2023 is nothing more than the continuation of a project of dispossession, extermination, and replacement of an entire people, endorsed, sponsored, and financed by the US and carried out by Israel. This project is perpetuated because it is also generating extraordinary profits for a significant number of multinational corporations in the Global North, as recently evidenced in the report A/HRC/59/23 prepared by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese.

How is it possible that such horror can occur and cannot be stopped? How is it possible that the mere veto of the US in the Security Council is enough to prevent action from being taken? How is it possible that even those who support Palestine continue to uphold the “two-state solution” as a solution? Haidar Eid, in the book we referred to at the beginning, seriously questions this “solution.” Two states means that we normalize the existence of a state that uses death as a practice, a state that normalizes and teaches racism and hatred in its schools, a state that does not hide its desire for expansion through violence and the extermination of other peoples. World War II did not end by handing over part of Germany to the Nazis. The conflict will not end by handing over part of Palestine to Zionism.

A ceasefire is imperative, but not enough. A crime is being committed and those responsible must be held accountable. It is time for the money used to kill to be used to repair the damage and begin reconstruction. Palestine has a right to exist and it is obvious that a red line that makes a “two-state solution” unviable, has been crossed. Only a democratic and sovereign Palestinian nation can be considered a solution. A solution that respects the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and right to exist. A nation that allows coexistence, regardless of religion or ethnic origin. It seems like a utopia, but it is utopia that allows us to move forward. Let’s make it our slogan! So far, there has been no progress. The United Nations is proving ineffective, and Palestine cannot wait.

Guillermo R Barreto is Venezuelan and holds a PhD in Science (Oxford University).

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir raided the cell of the most prominent Palestinian detainee, Marwan Barghouti, and threatened him.

A widely shared footage on social media shows Ben-Gvir telling Barghouti, who has been in prison since 2002, including years in solitary confinement, “You won’t win. Whoever messes with the nation of Israel, whoever murders our children and women – we will wipe them out. You should know this, [this happened] throughout history.”

[https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/1956084100756050099]

Relatives of 66-year-old Barghouti who viewed the footage told Al Jazeera Arabic there is a “shocking” change in his features, apparently from “exhaustion and hunger”, and expressed fear that he will be killed in custody.

Back in October, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society accused Israeli prison staff of “brutally assaulting” and injuring Barghouti while he was being held in solitary confinement.

His wife, Fawda, has said Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners are subjected to many hardships behind Israeli bars.

[https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/1956104006075330560]

“They are still, Marwan, chasing you and pursuing you even in the solitary cell you’ve been living in for two years, and the struggle of the occupation and its figures with you continues. The shackles are on your hands, but I know your spirit and determination, and I know you will remain free, free, free,” she wrote in a post on Facebook.

“I know that the only thing that can shake you is what you hear about your people’s pain, and the only thing that crushes and wounds you is the failure to protect our sons and daughters. You are of the people; wherever you are among the people, you are one of them and part of them.”

Palestinian National Council (PNC) Chairman Ruhi Fattouh condemned what he called physical and psychological attacks on jailed leader Marwan Barghouti.

Fattouh said he holds Israel fully responsible for the life of Barghouti, who he said had been subjected to inhumane conditions while in solitary confinement, causing his apparent state of “weakness and emaciation”.

“These violations come within the bloody comprehensive war targeting our Palestinian people and its leadership, led by the prisoner Marwan Barghouti, and the aggression of ethnic cleansing launched by the right-wing terrorist government on the Palestinian territories,” he said, calling on the Red Cross and other rights groups to intervene immediately to ensure the safety of Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also released a statement to say it considers the Ben-Gvir visit “an unprecedented provocation and organised state terrorism, falling within the framework of the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation faced by the prisoners and our people”.

Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said, “There is no longer any meaning to brutality except in the form of one of the leaders of this inhumane entity.”

“A Zionist minister gathers his army, his guards, and the blood of his state and stands before a captive leader, shackled and isolated in solitary confinement, barely able to stand, and addresses him, saying: ‘You will not triumph over us!’” al-Risheq said.

“If Ben-Gvir had been victorious in Gaza, he would not have said what he said. But this is the arrogance of a criminal who failed to achieve his goal, whose prestige was defeated, and whose reputation was tarnished by the shame of the ages,” he said.

The group said in a separate statement that the threat was “a cowardly display that reveals the occupation’s fascism and hostility to all human values”.

It added Barghouti’s resolve will only be strengthened as a result of the move, which will “strengthen the unity of the prisoner movement in the face of the policies of systematic repression and abuse practised by the occupation’s prison administration”.

“This criminal behaviour is an extension of the war crimes committed in the Sde Teiman prison, which witnessed horrific violations against prisoners, including doctors, nurses, and journalists,” it said.

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Refaat Ibrahim

Israel is not starving Gaza by accident; it is by design. The siege, destruction of farmland, and obstruction of aid point to a calculated policy to deprive more than two million people of food.

Quds News Network has gathered first-hand testimonies proving that Gaza’s famine is no accident. It is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made weapon.

Israel has built it step by step, blocking food, destroying farms, choking cash, and turning survival into a crime.

This is what academics call engineered famine: a deliberate policy to starve a population into submission. Alex de Waal defines such acts as “starvation crimes”; policies that create mass hunger through sieges, destruction of livelihoods, and aid obstruction. Amartya Sen’s landmark Poverty and Famines shows that famine often happens not when food is gone, but when people are stripped of the legal and economic means to access it.

Political scientists, including Hendrix and Haggard, see famine as a tool of control used to punish or break entire populations. In Gaza, every element of that playbook is in motion.

Here is Israel’s step-by-step blueprint for creating famine in Gaza.

1. Blocking Access to Food and Aid

Thousands of aid trucks wait at the border, but Israel decides which move and which rot. UN officials say only 14% of needed aid gets in.

Drivers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told QNN they are ordered to stop at exposed intersections like Morag and unload under Israeli military watch. They are being ordered not to reach UN warehouses.

“We are told to stop at intersections. If we don’t unload there, the truck gets bombed,” a driver told QNN.

Another driver said:

“If a truck passes beyond the designated zone with aid still inside, it will be bombed.”

These drop points are “red zones” where Israeli snipers fire on civilians. Safe delivery to UNRWA warehouses is blocked. Anyone trying to secure supplies risks being killed.

The WFP declined to comment on the testimonies.

Israel forces aid truck drivers to stop at specific locations, where the cargo is then looted, either by Israeli-linked armed groups or starved civilians.

2. Engineering Chaos

In these unsafe zones, armed Israeli-linked gangs and collaborators loot the aid and sell it at black market rates. A kilo of flour now costs 100 shekels (about $30), up from $2 before the war.

Israel allows some trucks in, but often only those linked to Israeli-affiliated companies. Meanwhile, UN warehouses are blocked, and some NGOs act selectively, delivering aid to specific groups while others starve.

A Gaza business owner told QNN an Israeli trader, claiming to speak for the army, offered 10 trucks of goods, including two with US aid:

“The two ‘aid’ trucks would be used as bait for crowds. The other eight had to be guarded by armed men, sold at high prices, and paid for only after sale. The occupation would take the money when the goos are sold, then I would get my share.”

The owner refused. Others agreed, fueling runaway prices and draining millions in cash.

Dr. Zaher al-Wahidi of Gaza’s Health Ministry told QNN:

“Aid that enters is stolen under the cover of the Israeli army. 95% of citizens cannot afford goods; only a tiny few can.”

3. Destroying Agricultural Infrastructure

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israel has:

• Destroyed 90% of farmland (167,000 dunams)
• Wiped out 459,000 tons of produce worth $325 million
• Killed 36 million chickens and destroyed 2,500 poultry farms
• Demolished 33% of greenhouses and 46% of wells

Large swathes of farmland have been converted into Israeli-controlled buffer zones. This obliteration of agriculture erases any possibility of local food production, forcing total dependence on aid, or starvation.

4. Trapping People and Strangling Cash

Crossings are shut, checkpoints trap civilians, and drivers cannot reach warehouses. Hunger lines are drawn by military barriers.

Cash is also strangled. Since October 2023, no currency has been allowed in. Banks are destroyed. People must pay up to 50% of their own money’s value to access cash from traders.

A handful of traders, tied to Israel, import non-essential goods at massive markups, draining scarce liquidity while food remains unaffordable.

5. Weaponizing Bureaucracy

Israel allows only a narrow list of goods (sugar, flour, processed cheese). No meat, eggs, vegetables, milk. The diet keeps people barely alive but malnourished.

Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Gaza’s Health Ministry head, said:

“Instead of infant formula, the occupation sends chips and biscuits. They are engineering famine while fooling the world.”

This policy ensures only minimal survival, calories to keep people alive but not healthy.

6. Criminalizing Survival

Fishing and gardening are restricted. Last month, Israel banned fishermen from the sea entirely, cutting off the last independent food source.

Gunboats have fired on fishing boats, arrested crews, and seized their catch.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army continues to target starved aid seekers at US-Israeli aid distribution centers, which are being called “death traps”. Israel has killed over 1800 starved aid seekers at aid centers.

7. Controlling the Narrative

Israel tells the world there is no famine. Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu called photos of starving children “lies” and blamed the UN for “rotting” aid.

He claimed that “tons of tons of aid” is “rotting on the Gazan side of the border because the UN was, and still is, unwilling to deliver all of it.” 

A few hours after that press conference, Israel killed five Al Jazeera journalists who had documented hunger. Foreign reporters are barred from entering Gaza.

Academic Lens on Gaza’s Famine

• Sen’s Entitlement Theory: Food may exist, but most Gazans can’t afford it. Prices soar, cash vanishes, access collapses.
• De Waal’s Starvation Crimes: Gaza meets all key motives: punishment, control, displacement, weakening.

Under international law, starving civilians is a war crime. The ICC has already issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials over deliberate famine tactics.

Refaat Ibrahim is a journalist from Gaza

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org