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By The New Arab Staff

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has revealed that at least 50,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed or wounded since the start of Israel’s military assault in October 2023.

In a post on its official X account on Monday, the UN agency said that civilians, including children, humanitarian workers, medical staff, and journalists, continue to be killed and injured in Gaza amid Israel’s indiscriminate offensive.

UNRWA’s statement comes as Israel’s army chief, Herzi Halevi, ordered an expansion of military operations in northern and southern parts of the enclave. According to an Israeli military statement, the aim was to “create conditions for the return of hostages and defeat Hamas”, though rights groups warn that the operations were contributing to mass civilian casualties and widespread devastation.

The military also claimed it would set up new distribution centres for humanitarian aid – an effort international organisations have dismissed as ineffective and exclusionary.

Israel has closed border crossings to humanitarian aid for more than 90 days, deliberately pushing 2.4 million people toward famine. A new Israeli- and US-backed aid mechanism launched last month, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has also come under fire.

UN bodies have cast doubt on the group’s legitimacy, and its operations in so-called “safe zones” in southern Gaza have repeatedly ended in chaos, including deadly shootings by Israeli forces at distribution points.

On Sunday, Israeli forces opened fire on crowds waiting for aid in Rafah, killing 32 Palestinians and wounding over 250, according to Gaza’s media office.

On Sunday afternoon, artillery fire killed three Palestinians, including a disabled child, and wounded over 20 in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis. Other strikes destroyed a kidney dialysis clinic in the north and hit areas near the al-Dhabit junction in central Gaza.

The health ministry said 37 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, with 136 injured. Many more remain trapped under rubble or in inaccessible areas as rescue teams struggle to reach them.

Beyond the physical toll, Gaza is witnessing a mental health emergency, particularly among children. A recent study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme found that 70 percent of displaced children show symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

Ten-year-old Lana Khalil Sharif, from Khan Younis, developed vitiligo and premature greying of her hair after surviving a nearby airstrike. Her mother told The New Arab’s Arabic language edition that doctors linked her condition to severe trauma. The girl has since become socially withdrawn and refuses to go outside.

In another case, six-year-old Malak Ahmed, who was born with autism, lost her father in an Israeli strike on Nuseirat. She has since developed serious health complications and now requires treatment unavailable in Gaza.

Children who survive attacks are increasingly left orphaned and emotionally scarred. Jude Abu Saleh, four, lost both parents in a bombing and now suffers from frequent nightmares, panic attacks, and extreme separation anxiety, according to his aunt, who is now his guardian.

Doctors are also reporting unexplained illnesses among children, including cases like 10-year-old Rahaf Ayad, whose hair and weight have dramatically declined, leaving her skeletal and immobile. Her condition has baffled local doctors, who say the lack of medical infrastructure prevents proper diagnosis.

The war has rendered Gaza’s healthcare system nearly inoperable. Israel has destroyed 38 public hospitals, shut down 81 health centres, and disabled over 160 clinics. Since March, no medical supplies, fuel, or food have been allowed through border crossings, creating a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

Dr Amal Abu Abada, head of community centres at the Gaza Mental Health Programme, told The New Arab that chronic fear and repeated trauma were driving serious psychological and physiological conditions in children.

“The more the fear grows, the worse the health becomes,” she said.

2 Jun 2025

Source: newarab.com

Athens /PNN /

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Greek capital on Saturday in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people and in protest against Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The march, organized by Greece’s largest labor union, the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), stretched over 2.5 kilometers from central Athens to the Israeli Embassy.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags and held banners condemning what they described as a campaign of genocide against Gaza, chanting slogans in support of Palestinian freedom and independence.

Participants included a wide cross-section of Greek and Arab activists, members of the Palestinian community in Greece, and international supporters. One of the most moving moments of the march came when Arjwan Al-Farra, a young Palestinian girl wounded in Gaza, recited lines from Mahmoud Darwish’s famous poem “On This Land.”

Mohammad Eqneibi, head of the General Union of Palestinian Workers in Greece, delivered a speech, highlighting the urgent need for global solidarity in the face of ongoing violence and displacement.

Palestinian Ambassador to Greece Yussef Dorkhom expressed his gratitude to the protesters for their continued support.“Together, with unwavering determination, we will bring an end to this brutal assault,” he said.

31 May 2025

Source: english.pnn.ps

By Ranjan Solomon

Quds News Network reports that at least 31 starving Gazan civilians were killed and dozens more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on them while seeking food at aid distribution points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US-Israeli organization assigned to deliver aid following more than 80 days of total Israeli blockade. This is yet another crime to the long list of Israel’s war crimes. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry,  the killings “reflect the nature of these areas as mass death traps, not humanitarian relief points…. “We confirm to the entire world that what is happening is a systematic and malicious use of aid as a tool of war, employed to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing points, managed and monitored by the occupation army and funded and politically covered by the occupation and the US administration, which bears full moral and legal responsibility for these crimes.”

And just a few hours before writing this piece, there have been reports that the Israeli occupation army killed three more Palestinians heading to receive aid from an Israeli-American aid distribution site in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today. Dozens of Palestinians were also injured by the Israeli fire near the aid distribution site. As if all of these killing sprees were not enough, the Israeli occupied army persists with blowing up homes and buildings in eastern Gaza City, northern Gaza, and the eastern Khan Yunis areas in the southern Gaza Strip.

These killings follow Israel’s launch of a controversial aid distribution mechanism, backed by the US administration, through an American group known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Disregarding disapproval by the international community and the UN, who warned it was ethnic cleansing and forced displacement covered up as aid, at least 49 Palestinians have been killed and over 305 others injured by Israeli fire near aid distribution points in Gaza since the start of Israel’s aid distribution mechanism.

Desperately hungry people gather in large numbers at laid distribution spaces run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American organization backed by Israel. The IDF strategy is to wait until enough numbers approach the site, Israeli military vehicles then open fire, and drones drop explosives, resulting in mass casualties. These centres are like suicide points and are “extremely dangerous,” noting that ambulances had difficulty reaching the wounded due to ongoing gunfire. Some victims were evacuated using carts.

Israeli forces also  fire on civilians approaching another American aid center near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza. Medical sources at Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp reported that at least one Palestinian was killed and 20 others were injured when Israeli forces fired on crowds near the Bureij refugee camp. Israeli army spokespersons feign innocence/ignorance. Gaza’s government media contradicts these false reports and accuse Israel of “using humanitarian aid systematically and maliciously as a weapon of war to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing zones.”

Israel set up four aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza, with intent to evacuate Palestinians from northern Gaza into the south. Israel’s aid distribution plan aims to turn the territory’s north into a “completely depopulated area.” These tactics of eliminating people by accumulating hopelessly hungry Palestinians at what are supposedly food distribution points will add points to the allegations of  genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against civilians in the enclave.

In solidarity

Ranjan Solomon

2 June 2025

By Ricardo Vaz

26 May 2025 – Venezuela’s ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) and political allies emerged as overwhelming victors in Sunday’s regional and parliamentary elections.

According to the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE), the Great Patriotic Pole received around 4.55 million votes, 82.7 percent of the total cast, in the election for the unicameral National Assembly. It was followed by the Democratic Alliance and UNT-Única, two opposition coalitions, with 6.25 and 5.18 percent, respectively.

Far-right opposition factions led by María Corina Machado urged a boycott of the legislative and regional elections. The US-backed groups maintain a claim of victory in the July 28, 2024, presidential elections that saw President Nicolás Maduro secure a third term in office.

The May 25 elections saw Venezuelan voters select a new 285-member National Assembly alongside 24 state governors and 260 regional legislators. A total of 54 political parties participated in the contests.

Venezuela’s electoral authority delivered the first bulletin on Sunday night with a reported 93 percent of polling stations tallied. The voting totals represent a turnout of just over 25 percent of the electoral roll. CNE President Elvis Amoroso said that 42.7 percent of “active voters” participated, though he did not define them.

The turnout figure is in line with the previous legislative elections in 2020 that were likewise the subject of a partial opposition boycott. Machado’s supporters focused on the turnout following the release of the results, alleging it was lower than official figures.

In his press conference, Amoroso praised the peaceful nature of the electoral process and congratulated the Venezuelan people for participating.

“Venezuela has once more given an example of peace and democracy to the whole world,” the official stated. “This was an extraordinary event in which the people expressed themselves.”

Amoroso went on to thank the Venezuelan armed forces for ensuring the safety of the voting process and the electoral officials who worked at polling stations. Sunday’s elections were held in nearly 16,000 polling stations countrywide.

Socialist Party leader and campaign chief Jorge Rodríguez reported that the vote was carried out without a single incidence of violence. However, three security officials lost their lives in an accident while transporting voting materials in Apure state.

CNE Vice President Carlos Quintero reported the National Assembly seats adjudicated from national lists, with the PSUV-led coalition awarded 34 of 40 posts already assigned. Rodríguez led the pro-government list and is expected to remain at the head of the legislative body.

The two most voted opposition coalitions reportedly elected three deputies each, with former two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles entering the National Assembly, marking his return to an elected post after having been previously barred from holding office. The remaining parliament members, coming from regional lists and 133 first-past-the-post circuits, have yet to be officially announced.

The Great Patriotic Pole currently holds more than 90 percent of the outgoing National Assembly following its 2020 victory. The new legislature is set to begin its five-year term on January 5, 2026.

At the time of writing, the CNE has not published results broken down by voting center.

Socialist Party completes regional near-sweep

Sunday’s elections also represented a massive success for the pro-government alliance on a regional level, obtaining 23 of the 24 governor seats. According to the CNE, PSUV candidates triumphed with overwhelming numbers, with ten of them surpassing 90 percent of the vote.

Incumbents such as Elio Serrano (Miranda), Rafael Lacava (Carabobo) and Luis Marcano (Anzoátegui) comfortably secured new terms. The ruling coalition likewise emerged with significant majorities in regional legislative councils. Regional officials serve four-year mandates.

Cojedes state was the only governorship retained by anti-government forces, which failed to hold the Barinas, Nueva Esparta and Zulia states they had won in 2021. Barinas, with its symbolic importance as the birthplace of Hugo Chávez, was won by the former president’s brother Adán Chávez.

The May 25 contest also saw voters choose representatives for a would-be Guayana Esequiba state, with Admiral Neil Villamizar taking the governor post. Some 21 thousand Venezuelans registered as Essequibo Strip residents were eligible to vote in 12 polling stations set up in Bolívar state. However, the impact is largely symbolic as Guyana wields control of the disputed territory.

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Richard Falk

The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal, a consensus document prepared in conjunction with participants in the first of two Public Sessions of the Gaza Tribunal, was released on 28 May 2025. The second session of the tribunal is scheduled for late October. The proceedings in Sarajevo consisted of survivor testimony from Gaza, invited expert speakers, a round-table on media complicity, and the reports of three chambers tasked with documenting evidence and consequences of alleged genocide and crimes associated with forcible application of the Settler Colonial Project to Gaza following 7 Oct, as well as the failure of the UN, growing public protests, and of leading governments to bring the genocide to an end in accordance with international law and hold the perpetrators accountable.

The Sarajevo Declaration is a comprehensive text intended to convey the orientation, broad scope of the goals of civil society solidarity activation and reflecting the diversity of concerns among members of the Gaza Tribunal community. Sarajevo was our chosen site to express symbolic solidarity with an earlier genocide at Srebrenica that occurred 30 years ago. Encourage wide sharing of the Sarajevo Declaration. It is my honor to serve as president of the GTP in concert with dedicated scholars, witnesses, and activists from around the world, including the inspiring participation of our Palestinian sisters and brothers.

The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal

28 May We, the members of the Gaza Tribunal, having gathered in Sarajevo from 25 to 29 May 2025, declare our collective moral outrage at the continuing genocide in Palestine, our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and our commitment to working with partners across global civil society to end the genocide and to ensure accountability for perpetrators and enablers, redress for victims and survivors, the building of a more just international order, and a free Palestine.

We condemn the Israeli regime, its perpetration of genocide, and its decades-long policies and practices of settler colonialism, ethno-supremacism, apartheid, racial segregation, persecution, unlawful settlements, the denial of the right to return, collective punishment, mass detention, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment, extrajudicial executions, systematic sexual violence, demolitions, forced displacement and expulsions, ethnic purges and forced demographic change, forced starvation, the systematic denial of all economic and social rights, and extermination.

We are horrified by the Israeli regime’s systematic devastation of Palestinian lives, lands, and livelihoods, including its intentional destruction of all sources and systems for food, water, healthcare, education, housing, culture, as well as mosques, churches, aid facilities, and refugee shelters, and its targeting of medical personnel, journalists, aid workers, and United Nations staff, and its direct targeting of civilians, including children and older persons, women and men,  girls and boys, persons with disabilities and those with medical conditions.

We demand an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the genocide, to all Israeli military action, to forced displacement and expulsions, to settlement activities, to the siege of Gaza and restrictions on movement in the West Bank. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners, including the thousands of Palestinian women, men and children held in abusive Israeli detention facilities. We insist on the immediate resumption of massive humanitarian aid to all of Gaza without restriction or interference, including food, water, shelter, medical supplies and equipment, sanitary equipment, rescue equipment, and construction materials and equipment. We call as well for a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces from all Lebanese and Syrian territory.

We call for an end of the smearing of UNRWA and other humanitarian workers, for the free and unhindered access of UNRWA and all other United Nations and humanitarian organizations in all areas of Gaza and the West Bank, for full compensation by the Israeli regime for damage caused to UN and humanitarian facilities, alongside full compensation and reparations to the Palestinian people, and for full accountability for the harassment, abduction, torture, and murder of UNRWA and other humanitarian workers and their families.

We call on all governments and on regional and international organizations to end the historic scandal of inaction that has characterized the past nineteen months, to urgently respond with all means at their disposal to end the Israeli assault and siege, to uphold international law, to hold perpetrators to account, and to provide immediate relief and protection to the people of Palestine.

We denounce the continued complicity of governments in the perpetration of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine, and the shameful role of many media corporations in covering up the genocide, dehumanizing Palestinians, and in the dissemination of propaganda fueling anti-Palestinian racism, war crimes, and genocide.

We equally denounce the wave of persecution and crackdowns on human rights defenders, peace activists, students, academics, workers, professionals, and others, perpetrated by Western governments, police agencies, the private sector, and educational institutions. We honor those who, despite this persecution, have had the courage and moral convictions to stand up and speak out against these historic horrors, and we insist on the full protection of the human rights of free expression, opinion, assembly, and association, as well as the right to defend human rights without harassment, retaliation, or persecution.

We reject the unjust tactic of smearing as “antisemites” or “supporters of terrorism” all those who dare to speak up and act to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and to condemn the injustices and atrocities of the Israeli regime and its perpetration of apartheid and genocide, or those who criticize the ideology of political Zionism. We stand in solidarity with all those who have been smeared or punished in this way.

We are convinced that the struggle against all forms of racism, bigotry, and discrimination necessarily includes the equal rejection of Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, and antisemitism. It also includes an acknowledgment of the horrific effects that Zionism, apartheid, and settler-colonialism have had and continue to have on the Palestinian people. We commit to fighting all such scourges.

We also reject the destructive ideology of political Zionism, as the official state ideology of the Israeli regime, of the forces that colonized Palestine and established the Israeli state on its ruins, and of pro-Israel organizations and proxies today. We insist, in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that there are no exceptions to this rule. We call for decolonization across the land, an end to the ethno-supremacist order, and the replacement of political Zionism with a dispensation founded on equal human rights for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others.

We are inspired by the courageous resistance and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of over a century of persecution, and by the growing movement of millions standing in solidarity with them around the world, including the principled advocacy and nonviolent action of thousands of Jewish activists who have rejected the Israeli regime and its ethnonationalist ideology, and have declared that the Israeli regime neither represents them nor acts in their name.

We recognize the right of the Palestinian people to resist foreign occupation, colonial domination, apartheid, subjugation by a racist regime, and aggression, including through the use of armed struggle, in accordance with and as recognized in international law and as affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly.

We recall that the Palestinian right to self-determination is jus cogens and erga omnes (a universal rule not subject to exception and binding on all states) and is non-negotiable and axiomatic. We recognize that this right includes political, economic, social, and cultural self-determination, the right to return and full compensation for all harms suffered in a century of persecution, to permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and to non-aggression and non-intervention. We respect Palestinian aspirations and full Palestinian agency and leadership over all decisions affecting their lives, and we stand in solidarity with them.

We are gravely concerned at the direction of international relations, international politics, and international institutions, and by attacks on those international institutions that have challenged genocide and apartheid in Palestine. We believe that the normative foundations of the global order, grounded in human rights, the self-determination of peoples, peace, and the international rule of law, are being sacrificed at the altar of ruthless political realism and obsequious deference to power, with the people of Palestine left undefended and vulnerable on the front lines. We insist that another world is possible and intend to fight to bring it about.

We fear that the nascent and flawed international normative order, built up since the Second World War, with human rights at its center, is at risk of collapse as a result of the sustained attack waged on the system by the Israeli regime’s Western allies in their quest to buttress Israeli impunity. We pledge to oppose this attack and to work to protect and advance the project of building a world in which human rights are governed by the rule of law, beginning with the struggle for Palestinian freedom. And we believe that the weaknesses and inequities hard-wired into the international system from the start, including the geopolitical right of exception codified in the United Nations Security Council veto, the disempowerment of the General Assembly, and the structural obstacles that mitigate against the enforceability of International Court of Justice (ICJ) decisions, must be reformed and rectified.

We demand immediate action to isolate, contain, and hold accountable the Israeli regime through universal boycott, divestment, sanctions, a military embargo, suspension from International organizations, and the prosecution of its perpetrators, and we commit ourselves to this cause. We equally demand individual criminal accountability for all Israeli political and military leaders, soldiers, and settlers implicated in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or gross violations of human rights, as well as accountability for all persons and organizational actors guilty of complicity in the regime’s crimes, including external proxies of the Israeli regime, government officials, corporations, arms manufacturers, energy companies, technology firms, and financial institutions.

We applaud the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its ongoing historic genocide case against the Israeli regime and for its landmark advisory opinion findings on the illegality of the Israeli occupation, of the apartheid wall, and of the Israeli practice of apartheid and racial segregation, and its findings that the rights of the Palestinian people are not dependent upon or subject to negotiation with their oppressor and that all states are obliged to abstain from treaty, economic, trade, investment, or diplomatic relations with Israel’s occupation regime. We celebrate the principled action of South Africa in bringing to the ICJ the historic genocide case against the Israeli regime.

We call on all states to ensure the implementation of all provisional measures adopted by the ICJ in the genocide case against Israel, to fully respect the findings of the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2024, to comply with all elements of the United Nations General Assembly resolution of 13 September 2024 (A/ES-10/L.31/Rev.1), ending all arms trade with and implementing sanctions on the Israeli regime, and to support accountability for all Israeli perpetrators.  We urge civil society organizations and social movements around the world to initiate and strengthen campaigns to support the ICJ’s decisions and opinions on Palestine, and to press their own governments to abide by them.

We similarly applaud the International Criminal Court for (albeit belatedly) issuing arrest warrants for two senior Israeli regime leaders and call on the ICC to both expedite action on these cases and to issue further warrants for other Israeli perpetrators, both civilian and military.  We call on all ICC State Parties to urgently act on their obligations to arrest these perpetrators and hand them over for trial, and we demand that the United States lift all ICC sanctions and cease all obstruction of justice.

We express our gratitude and admiration to the independent special procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council for their expert contributions and for their strong and principled voices in holding the Israeli regime to account and defending the human rights of the Palestinian people. They have shown themselves to be the conscience of the organization, and we call on the United Nations and all member states to defend and support these mandate holders without fail. We applaud, as well, the principled action of those United Nations agencies that have acted to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and to provide aid and relief to the survivors of genocide in Palestine in the face of unprecedented risks and obstacles, foremost among them, UNRWA.

We believe that the world is approaching a dangerous precipice, the front edge of which is in Palestine. Dangerous forces in both the public and private spheres are pushing us toward the abyss. The events of the past nineteen months, and our own deliberations, have convinced us that both key international organizations and most countries of the world, whether acting individually or collectively, have failed in defending the human rights of the Palestinian people and in responding to the Israeli regime’s genocide in Palestine. We are convinced that the challenge of justice now falls to people of conscience everywhere, to civil society and to social movements, to all of us. As such, our work in the coming months will be dedicated to meeting this challenge. Palestinian lives are at stake. The international moral and legal order is at stake. We must not fail. We will not relent.

____________________________________________________

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, 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.

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Juan Cole

Gaza, “a Gaping Wound on Humanity”

26 May 2025 – The Spanish wire service EFE reports that delegations from 20 countries met yesterday in Madrid in a push to pressure Israel to halt its total war on Gaza and to establish a Palestinian state. Convened by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, the conference sought to move to concrete actions.

Israel had blocked all humanitarian aid for two months beginning in March, provoking a crisis of malnutrition in Gaza, almost all of whose people have been made internal refugees several times over by the Israeli military. Israel began letting a small amount of aid in last week, apparently under the pressure of the Trump administration, but United Nations officials decried it as “a drop in the ocean” compared to the urgent needs of 2.2 million Palestinians.

Addressing the attendees at the conference on Sunday, Madrid’s foreign minister said, “The sole interest that all of us gathered here today have is to stop this unjust, cruel, and inhumane Israeli war in Gaza, break the blockade of humanitarian aid, and move definitively toward a two-state solution.”

Of this last point, according to the Anadolu Agency, he asked, “What’s the alternative? Kill all the Palestinians? Send them, I don’t know where -— to the moon?”

Albares said, “Gaza is a gaping wound in humanity… There are no words to describe what is happening in Gaza—but just because there are no words doesn’t mean we will remain silent.”

He said that the proposed measures were not intended to be anti-Israel and that Spain recognized Israel’s legitimate security needs. “But,” he observed, “exactly the same right to peace and security that the Israeli people possess is also possessed by the Palestinian people.” He added,”the Palestinian people cannot be condemned eternally to the estate of a people of refugees.”

Albares called for three tangible steps, including the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement. As for the second, he insisted, “We all need to implement an arms embargo; there can be no arms sales to Israel.” Third, he called for a review of the list of individual sanctions maintained by each country and the EU. He noted that Spain had for some time put sanctions on individual Israelis who were “making the two-state solution impossible” and urged the other countries in attendance to do the same.

The foreign minister said that Spain would introduce a Security Council resolution with the State of Palestine (which Spain recognizes) demanding the immediate entry of massive civilian aid for Gaza without hindrance.

Speaking of the gathering, he observed optimistically, “There is a lot of diplomatic muscle in Madrid.” He urged the breaking of the “vicious circle” of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The Madrid Plus group of nations met once before with 10 attendees, including Western European nations that had recognized the State of Palestine (Ireland, Spain and Norway), along with the Middle Eastern countries of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye. The membership has doubled for this meeting. Germany, Italy, France, and Portugal joined this time, having been absent at the first gathering. Brazil was also there.

_____________________________________________

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment.

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Chris Hedges

A bankrupt liberal class, by signing on for the Zionist witch hunt against supposed antisemites and refusing to condemn Israel for its genocide, provided the bullets to its executioners.

26 May 2025 – The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.

Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.

In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.

When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed  “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.

The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.

NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.

Shafik volunteered that Franke, who is Jewish and whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suing Columbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.

The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:

In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position after an esteemed 25-year career. The move — “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” according to Franke’s statement — stems from her advocacy for students who speak out in support of Palestinian rights.

Her ostensible offense was a comment expressing concern about Columbia’s failure to address harassment of Palestinians and their allies by Israeli students who come to campus straight from military service — after Israeli students sprayed Palestinian rights protestors with a toxic chemical. For this, she was investigated for harassment and found to be in violation of Columbia’s policies. The actual cause of her forced departure is the crackdown on dissent at Columbia resulting from historic protests opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Franke’s fate was sealed when former Columbia president Minouche Shafik threw her under the bus during her cowardly appearance before Congress.

You can see my interview with Franke here.

Despite her capitulation to the Zionist lobby, Shafik resigned a little more than a year after assuming her position as head of the university.

The crackdown at Columbia continues, with an estimated 80 people arrested and over 65 students suspended following a protest in the library in the first week of May. Former television journalist and Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, stating,“Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies…Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”

Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.

Watching these liberal institutions, who are hostile to the left, be smeared by Trump for harboring “Marxist lunatics,” “radical leftists,” and “communists,” exposes another failing of the liberal class. It was the left that could have saved these institutions or at least given them the fortitude, not to mention analysis, to take a principled stand. The left at least calls apartheid apartheid and genocide genocide.

Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.

Examples include, The New York Times: “Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling,” “I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,” and “Universities Face an Urgent Question: What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?”; The Washington Post: “Call the campus protests what they are” “At Columbia, excuse the students, but not the faculty”; The Atlantic: “Campus Protest Encampments Are Unethical” and “Columbia University’s anti-Semitism Problem”; Slate: “When Pro-Palestine Protests Cross Into Antisemitism”; Vox: The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on College Campuses Amid Gaza Protests”; Mother Jones: “How Pro-Palestine Protests Spark Antisemitism on Campus”; The Cut (New York Magazine): “The Problem With Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus”; and The Daily Beast: “Antisemitism Surges Amid Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Universities.”

The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.

In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.

Hochul made clear in October 2024 that she considered pro-Palestine slogans  to be explicit calls for genocide of Jews.

“There are laws on the books – human rights laws, state and federal laws – that I will enforce if you allow for the discrimination of our students on campus, even calling for the genocide of the Jewish people which is what is meant by ‘From the river to the sea,’ by the way,” she said at a memorial event at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains. “Those are not innocent sounding words. They’re filled with hate.”

The Governor successfully pressured City University of New York (CUNY) to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies professorship at Hunter College which referenced “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his new book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” leads efforts by the Democratic Party — which has a dismal 27 percent approval rating in a recent NBC News poll — to denounce those protesting the genocide as carrying out a “blood libel” against Jews.

“Whatever one’s view of how the war in Gaza was conducted, it is not and has never been the policy of the Israeli government to exterminate the Palestinian people,” he writes, ignoring hundreds of calls by Israeli officials to wipe Palestinians from the face of the earth during 19 months of saturation bombing and enforced starvation.

The grisly truth, openly acknowledged by Israeli officials, is far different.

“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.

The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.

Trump surrounds himself with neo-Nazi sympathizers such as Elon Musk, and Christian fascists who condemn Jews for crucifying Christ. But antisemitism by the right gets a free pass since these “good” antisemites cheer on Israel’s settler colonial project of extermination, one these neo-Nazis and Christian fascists would like to replicate on Brown and Black in the name of the great replacement theory. Trump trumpets the fiction of “white genocide” in South Africa. He signed an executive order in February that fast-tracked immigration to the U.S. for Afrikaners — white South Africans.

Harvard, which is attempting to save itself from the wrecking ball of the Trump administration, was as complicit in this witch hunt as everyone else, flagellating itself for not being more repressive towards campus critics of the genocide.

The university’s former president Claudine Gay condemned the pro-Palestine slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which demands the right of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, as bearing “specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”

Harvard substantially tightened its regulations regarding student protests, in January 2024, and increased the police presence on its campus. It barred 13 students from graduating, citing alleged policy violations linked to their participation in a protest encampment, despite an earlier agreement to avoid punitive measures. It placed more than 20 students on “involuntary leave” and in some cases evicted students from their housing.

Such policies were replicated across the country.

The capitulations and crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism, academic freedom, freedom of speech, suspensions, expulsions and firings, since Oct. 7, 2023, have not spared U.S. colleges and universities from further attacks.

Since Trump took office, at least $11 billion in federal research grants and contracts have been cut or frozen nationwide according to NPR. This includes Harvard ($3 billion), Columbia ($400 million), University of Pennsylvania ($175 million) and Brandeis ($6-7.5 million annually).

On May 22, the Trump administration intensified its attacks on Harvard by terminating its ability to enroll international students that make up around 27 percent of the student body.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, DHS Secretary wrote on X, when posting screenshots of the letter she sent to Harvard revoking foreign student enrollment. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.

They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.

______________________________________________

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

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Vijay Prashad

Once plundered of both its wealth and people by colonial powers, Africa now faces IMF-imposed austerity, obscene debt, and forced underdevelopment.

22 May 2025 – At the start of 2025, Sudan registered an alarming debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio of 252%. This means that the country’s total public debt is 2.5 times the size of its entire annual economic output. It is not hard to understand why Sudan is in such dire straits: as we outlined in last week’s newsletter, the country has been engulfed in a conflict for decades, which has severely disrupted any possibility of economic growth and financial stability. Yet, in a way, Sudan – one of the richest countries in terms of resources but poorest in terms of household income and wealth – is also representative of what has been happening on the African continent. As of 2022, the average debt-to-GDP ratio in Sub-Saharan countries was 60%, having doubled from 30% in 2013. This rise in indebtedness is shocking.

Africa’s total debt is over $1 trillion, with debt servicing costs of $163 billion per year. Developing countries’ total debt reached $11.4 trillion in 2023, four times the 2004 total of $2.6 trillion. This extraordinary increase has induced a debt crisis in over thirty out of sixty-eight low-income countries. This ballooning debt impacts development in two primary ways:

1. Due to an increased risk of default, further credit becomes very expensive and is often only available through commercial lenders. Africa’s total commercial debt is now 43% of its total external debt – more than twice what it was in 2000.
2. High debt servicing limits fiscal flexibility, forcing many governments to cut spending on education, healthcare, industrial development, and infrastructure. In many African countries, this has led to austerity measures across the board: in 2022, twenty-two countries spent more paying interest on their debt than on healthcare and six of them spent more on debt service than on education. A high debt burden ultimately leads to austerity measures, and therefore to economic contraction.

Only a handful of African countries have been able to immunise themselves from the crisis, largely because they have smaller populations and export high-value goods. One of these countries is Equatorial Guinea, which has a population of 1.8 million, earns $5.13 billion per year (largely from crude oil and natural gas exports), and has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 31.3%. Another is Botswana, which has a population of 2.5 million, earns $5.33 billion per year from diamond exports, and has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 27.4%.

Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund (May 2025) is the third in a series dossiers that examines the impact of Africa’s economic crisis (the first was Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives in April 2023, followed by How Neoliberalism Has Wielded ‘Corruption’ to Privatise Life in Africa in November 2024). This three-part series, written by Senior Fellow Grieve Chelwa and me, will be published by Inkani Books later this year in an expanded form and with a substantial introduction.

The series argues that:

1. The colonial era impoverished the African continent of both its wealth and its people, millions of whom were captured, taken to the Americas, and brutally enslaved. By the time African countries won their independence in the 1960s and 1970s, they simply did not have the state resources or accumulated capital in the hands of the private sector necessary for major infrastructure construction and industrialisation.
2. African countries that attempted to amass domestic savings and borrow from the socialist bloc for major infrastructure projects – such as dams and electricity systems that had been neglected wilfully by the colonial rulers – faced assassinations (the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba in January 1961 and Burundi’s Louis Rwagasore in October 1961) and coups (Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah in February 1966).
3. The neocolonial system structured the world economy in such a way that African countries have been compelled to sell their raw materials for low prices; earn minimal royalties from Western multinational corporations; pay high prices for imported finished products (in many cases for energy sources); borrow money through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western commercial creditors to cover their budgetary shortfall; pay high debt service fees; implement austerity programmes at the behest of the IMF; and then enter into a debt spiral seemingly for eternity.
4. The IMF and its various associated agencies (such as Transparency International) pressure governments in vulnerable African countries to further erode their state capacity by shutting down regulatory departments and reducing their own competence to negotiate agreements with Western creditors and multinational mining companies. A shrunken state means that the people in that country – and the continent as a whole – have less power to negotiate within the neocolonial structure.

In our latest dossier, we show how the IMF’s new policy on the African continent is much like its old policy (as is the case elsewhere in the world, as we discuss in our October 2023 dossier, How the International Monetary Fund Is Squeezing Pakistan). We provide a short summary of the continued attempts to build African financial institutions, such as an African Central Bank, an African Investment Bank, a Pan-African Stock Exchange, and an African Monetary Fund. The target date set to build these has already passed, but the need for them remains on the African Union’s Agenda 2063 (set in 2013). We also make the case for regionalism on the continent using the debate around the African Continental Free Trade Area. There is no easy panacea. At the end of the dossier, we look at the case of Senegal to understand the challenges facing countries that assert their sovereignty. When the country’s new progressive government, led by Diomaye Faye, audited the data reported to the IMF and showed that some of it was erroneous, the IMF responded by suspending Senegal’s $1.8 billion credit facility. Now what is Senegal to do? Faye’s government will go back to the IMF in June. We end the dossier by asking: ‘Will other paths open up for Senegal, or will it be fated to trudge through the IMF debt-austerity agenda that has plagued countries of the Global South for decades?’.

The year before the pandemic, I flew from Uganda’s Entebbe airport to the town of Kisoro, near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A guide named Katende and I drove to the border that goes through the town of Bunagana, where the M23 rebel group (the March 23 Movement, backed by Rwanda) had taken up residence on the DRC side of the border. We passed through the beautiful green hills of southwestern Uganda until arriving at the largely deserted town and desolate border post. There had been discussions about upgrading the border post because of the large volume of goods that crossed on both sides. But now, as a result of the ongoing war, all that is visible are a few bicycles, often just waved through by lackadaisical guards and customs officials.

Through Katende, I spoke to a few people who were milling around a small shop called a duuka (from the Hindi dukan, brought to this part of Uganda by Indian traders known in the old days as dukwallas). At this shop, I met an elderly trader who often crossed the border with goods from the DRC. What kind of goods? All kinds, sometimes also diamonds. Her name was Ssuubi and she spoke Luganda. She said something that made Katende laugh. I asked what it was. He took my notebook and wrote down what she had said: Akakonge ak’omu kkubo. Bwe katakukuba magenda, kakukuba amadda. Then he handed me the notebook in which he had written: ‘If the small stump of a tree in the path does not trip you on your way, then it will trip you on your return’. I suspect that Ssuubi was talking about smuggling and customs guards. But perhaps this was just a reflection of life, with fate at the heart of her poverty despite being involved in smuggling diamonds – so inexpensive here yet so expensive by the time they get to the Gulf states and Antwerp and, eventually, high-end jewellery shops around the world.

Ssuubi will remain at the duuka buying a juice, eating a packaged meal, standing in the sun waiting to see if it is safe to cross the border and then deal with the M23 gunmen on the other side, find someone to sell her diamonds and other things, walk back, try not to trip, and, finally, sell the diamonds for almost nothing to a dealer who will take them to the port in Mombasa, Kenya, where they will be shipped out of Africa. None of the people involved – the person who found the diamonds in the ground, the person who sold them to Ssuubi, Ssuubi herself, or the person who buys them from her and takes them to Mombasa – gain the wealth. By the time the ship docks in the Gulf states or Antwerp and finds its way to the person who will polish the diamonds, capital begins to accumulate. Before then, it is poverty that accompanies the jewels from hand to hand as those who do so live a hand-to-mouth existence. This is the reality of African wealth and its theft. This is what lies beneath the debt burden and the IMF austerity agenda.

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

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Tom Fawthrop

Vietnam is still plagued by the toxic legacy of the US chemical warfare.

27 May 2025 – It was Vietnam’s 50th anniversary on April 30—marked by millions celebrating the end of the US war, and a new era of peace, independence, and reunification.

But 83-year-old Tran To Nga, who over 50 years ago was a frontline journalist, is too busy fighting a last-ditch legal battle over the war’s toxic legacy to join in the celebrations. The festivities continued throughout last month, culminating in the historic collapse of US-installed South Vietnamese regime on April 30, 1975.

It defies belief that five decades later, Vietnam is still plagued by the toxic legacy of chemical warfare, and countless unexploded bombs, bomblets and land mines, scattered across many provinces.

These cruel legacies still haunt over 2 million Vietnamese victims of “Agent Orange.” The chemical war was not forgotten either by the victims and all those seeking accountability and justice led by the Hanoi-based Vietnamese Association for the Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA).

Is the Vietnam War over, without resolving the cruel legacies of war? I first met Tran To Nga at the VAVA forum in Ho Chi Minh City. “It was my work as a war correspondent role in the Cu Chi district. American helicopters sprayed it, and I was exposed to this substance many times.”

In her autobiography, she described how, in 1966 in the region of Củ Chi (north of Saigon), she saw a “white cloud,” a long trail in the wake of an American war plane C-123. “A sticky rain trickles down my shoulders and smears on my skin. A fit of coughing takes me.”

During her presentation, she explained she would never give up her campaign to keep the litigation going in France, despite a bitter trail of legal setbacks for Vietnamese litigants in both US and French courts.

Why has the last hope for Agent Orange accountability ended up in the jurisdiction of a French Court?

Nga is the only person who fulfills all the criteria that enable her to sue foreign companies. Only French citizens with a French residence are entitled to utilize a law that permits international lawsuits for victims of foreign companies.

Since her exposure to the chemical spraying, she has suffered from breast cancer, and, 59 years later, is ailing from type 2 diabetes, alpha-thalassemia, and recurrent tuberculosis—all conditions caused by Agent Orange.

With assistance from her three pro bono French lawyers, she has accused these corporations of choosing to manufacture Agent Orange herbicide laced with an extra dioxin contaminant that is the cause of the chronic health problems that have dogged her for many years.

The Aspen Institute reported that the dioxin in Agent Orange was “exceptionally toxic” to humans based on the chemical formula 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin, or TCDD. It is a persistent organic pollutant.

Nga’s eldest daughter, Viet Hai, born in 1968, suffers from a heart defect, tetralogy of Fallot. Her daughter died at the age of 17 months. Tran To Nga has two other daughters, one born in 1971 and the other in prison in 1974. They both have heart and bone defects.

The US government and Pentagon exercise sovereign immunity, hence only the 14 US companies that manufactured Agent Orange could potentially be held accountable.

In 2005, many years before Nga’s lawsuit was filed in France, VAVA launched a class-action lawsuit in the US courts. The Vietnamese victims, nearly all civilians, were encouraged in their pursuit of global justice by the success of US war veterans (who had been exposed to Agent Orange contamination) in gaining recognition and support from the US government. The US War Veterans department had acted on a medical investigation that linked exposure to Agent Orange to 19 extremely serious diseases, documented in the 2018 report “Veterans and Agent Orange” (updated in 2004). Vietnamese investigators separately produced a similar list.

However, the class-action suit of Vietnamese suffering from many of the same diseases as US war veterans received far more hostile treatment in the US court, as if the Vietnamese were still the enemy. In 2005, the class-action lawsuit was rejected.

Fred A. Wilcox, author of Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, told the Vietnamese news agency VN Express that “the US government refuses to compensate Vietnamese victims of chemical warfare because to do so, would mean admitting that the US committed war crimes in Vietnam. This would open the door to lawsuits that would cost the government billions of dollars.”

Hence, in 2014, the Agent Orange baton of US accountability and the legacy of chemical warfare ended up in the hands of Tran To Nga.

“My descendants and I are poisoned. Examination of the famous list of diseases established by the Americans allows us to say that.”

Between 1962 and 1971, the US army sprayed 80 million liters of herbicides. Agent Orange accounted for 60 percent of highly toxic dioxins sprayed over 78,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles of South Vietnam).

“After more than 10 years of US chemical warfare in Vietnam, the impact on their health has been staggering,” is the assessment of Dr. Jeanne Mager Stellman and her fellow researchers. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were directly exposed to Agent Orange.

Stellman’s report also lamented that nearby rice paddies, ponds, and rivers were poisoned, and residual dioxins were able to enter the food chain, causing future generations to experience grotesque childbirth deformities passed on to now the fourth generation. Despite the steady growth of evidence about this chemical defoliant’s pernicious and wide-ranging impacts, the Paris appeals court in 2024 ruled that it “did not have jurisdiction involving the wartime actions of the United States government, on whose orders the chemical companies supplied Agent Orange.”

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers and its members have challenged the French court’s interpretation of the Pentagon’s contract with these big corporations. “ADL believes the French court did not consider the fact that the production of the toxic chemicals for the US military in the Vietnam War was not compulsory for the chemical companies, but they were free to participate in tenders to produce toxic chemicals for profit. The Court also did not consider the fact that the chemical companies had known that dioxin was a highly toxic substance.”

The French Appeals Court failed to address the key issue of the dioxin selected by the private manufacturers as part of a tender 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin, or TCDD. It is a persistent organic pollutant that contaminated Agent Orange. After the legal setback, Nga showed her tenacity in her press statement: “The legal struggle is not over yet. The road is still long, and I will go to the end, until my last breath!”

In Vietnam one year later, she repeated her determination to fight on all the way to France’s highest court. “This is not my trial alone, this is not my fight alone. By now, the name Tran To Nga should only be a symbol. This is a fight for the people, for truth. We will take our case to France’s highest court.”

Chuck Searcy, a US army war veteran who is now the coordinator of US war veterans’ Project Renew, clearing unexploded bombs in Quang Tri province, told The Nation that he is deeply moved by Tran To Nga. “Her struggle is an immense challenge, a David-and-Goliath struggle. She is going up against the international corporatocracy and the government’s that have been bought off by them. I admire her bravery and tenacity.”

How can it be that global justice has to depend on the extraordinary dedication of a frail and debilitated 83-year-old woman in order to prevent the issue of the largest chemical war ever waged, from being ignominiously buried forever as a footnote in history?

It took the US government 41 years to do something concrete about the huge area of contamination around their military bases. It was only in 2012 that joint US military and Vietnamese army teams finally started the cleanup operations at a former US air base in Danang.

In 2025, the largest remaining dioxin hotspot is the Bien Hoa air base. Shortly before Trump’s aid cut, USAID had secured an additional $130 million for the project. A book by Vietnamese expert Charles Bailey, From Enemies to Partners: Vietnam, the US and Agent Orange, is highly skeptical about the outcome. According to Bailey, “Much of the remaining soil was heavily contaminated and needed to be treated in an as-yet unbuilt incinerator. This basically leaves a very large mountain of contaminated soil.”

It appears that every possible obstacle has been put in the way of Agent Orange victims from Vietnam, to block any path to finding justice in US courts. Now Tran To Nga is going for a last-ditch legal challenge in France to the long-standing impunity of US Corporations.

Her last message to this correspondent was on May 4: “Je suis grièvement malade et suis hospitalisée” (I am very ill and admitted to hospital). Now the indomitable but seriously ill Tran Nga fights on from her hospital bed to bring the case up to the French Supreme Court.

Molecular geneticist Matthew Meselson of Harvard Medical School, one of the first scientists to visit Vietnam after 1975, denounced the poison in the strongest terms, saying, “An evil genius could not devise a toxin with more evil properties.”

Tran To Nga by challenging their claim to legal and moral impunity from the evidence of ecocidal destruction, the poisoning of farmers crops, and complicity in causing so many types of cancer, believes eventually truth will triumph.

For her, justice for millions of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange is the driving force, the fire in her heart that gives her strength to overcome all difficulties and obstacles to continue the fight “till the end.” In her autobiography, she says, “That fire will never stop, and that is the path I am taking.”

__________________________________________________

Tom Fawthrop has extensively reported in South-East Asia since 1979, filing stories for The Guardian, The Economist, and The Irish Times, and he is a contributor to the BBC World Service in Cambodia, Dili, Philippines and Thailand.

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ann Garrison

Eritrea remains true to the revolutionary ideals forged during its 30-year War of Independence.

28 May 2025 – On May 24th, Eritrea celebrated its 34th Independence Day. From September 1, 1961, to May 24, 1991, the Eritrean people waged a 30-year war to free themselves from the Ethiopian empire, first under the control of Emperor Haile Selassie and then under the Derg regime’s Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Eritrea was the first of five African nations now refusing to collaborate with AFRICOM , the US Africa Command. It has also refused to saddle itself with IMF or World Bank debt, but the African Development Bank has praised its progress and provided funding for one of its renewable energy projects and for its education initiatives.

I spoke to Eritrean-American journalist Elias Amare , who hosts his own YouTube channel , most of which is in the Tigrinya language, about Eritrea’s hard won independence.

ANN GARRISON: Elias, I know it’s difficult to summarize 30 years, but nevertheless, can you tell us the salient points we might understand about the Eritrean independence struggle, including the process that led to UN recognition?

ELIAS AMARE: That is a tall order, but let me start with some personal connection. I was born the year the armed struggle for national liberation was launched in Eritrea, in 1961, so my entire life has been within the struggle, first to liberate the land and, secondly, to defend the Eritrean sovereignty that was won with huge sacrifices, both human and material, during the 30-year struggle.

First we must bear in mind that the armed struggle was launched by Eritreans only when all peaceful political avenues had been closed to it. Eritrean demands and protests for national self-determination had just led to more deaths and more repression. In 1961, a band of armed men led by Hamid Idris Awate and inspired by the Algerian national liberation struggle finally launched the armed struggle.

Sectarianism and division along narrow, ethnic, and religious lines haunted the early movement until a progressive vision emerged. It was established that the leadership of the armed struggle had to be within Eritrea, on the battlefield, not sitting outside in comfortable zones like Cairo or Sudan, and that religious and ethnic divides had to be set aside for the sake of the national struggle.

The movement also prioritized popular democracy emerging from feudalistic culture, with political education, eradication of illiteracy, equality among fighters, and strict egalitarianism. Leaders and the rank and file had the same living standards; they shared the same accommodations, ate the same food, and received the same medical attention as needed. Their children got the same education.

There was popular democratic debate, criticism, and self-criticism. The emancipation of women was also prioritized, and that was extremely revolutionary within the patriarchal societies of that time.

This process gave birth to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, and the egalitarian principles it established have carried through to this day.

On May 24, 1991, after the sacrifice of 65,000 heroic Eritrean fighters, the EPLF finally defeated the Ethiopian army, whose troops gave up and fled, with some even heading into Sudan.

The Eritreans never took any vendetta against them. They even gave them food and water along their way. All they wanted was a peaceful end to the war.

The Ethiopian Derg regime collapsed at the same time, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took over. Eritreans had fought with the TPLF in the interest of defeating a common enemy.

Once EPLF had established de facto control of Eritrean territory, it established a transitional government. Then, in 1993, there was a referendum on becoming an independent nation that was monitored by the United Nations and other international observers. There was no question that this was a free and fair election, and Eritreans voted for independence by 99.85%. The official declaration was delayed until May 24, 1993, because we wanted our independence to coincide with the day we defeated the Ethiopian army.

Within minutes of the declaration of independence, after the results of the referendum, five countries stepped forward– Egypt, Sudan, Italy, and the United States–to recognize Eritrea. The United States had opposed Eritrean independence since the 1940s, but it finally accepted the reality on the ground and became one of the first countries to officially recognize us. After that, the floodgates opened, and one country after another recognized.

On May 28, 1993, Eritrea was officially admitted as the 182nd UN member state. I was part of the Eritrean delegation that officially went to the United Nations when Eritrea was officially accepted as a free, independent nation, and it was the most moving experience of my life to see the Eritrean flag being raised in front of the UN after a 30-year struggle. Tears of pride, tears of joy, rushed down my face.

AG: I believe that meant that, in accordance with the UN Charter, the Security Council had passed a resolution to recommend recognition to the UN General Assembly, with at least nine votes and no vetoes from the five permanent members, and then the General Assembly had voted to recognize by at least a two-thirds majority.

EA: Yes, I believe that’s the procedure.

AG: OK, now another huge question. What has Eritrea achieved in 34 years of independence?

EA: Most of all it has sustained its status as an independent and sovereign nation. The vast majority of African states are neocolonial, proxy, or puppet states. Eritrea is the only African nation that has been truly independent for decades. Although it sounds simple, that is in itself a huge accomplishment. With the emergence of the Alliance of the Sahel States, I hope that more and more African states may join the movement for ending neocolonial relations, ending Africa’s decades-long subservience and marginalization.

When I say that Eritrea is truly independent, I mean that it designs its own economic programs, not accepting the dictates of the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. It charts its own economic development path and undertakes its own development projects. It rejects foreign aid. It rejects the NGOs that proliferate all over Africa, the Trojan horses that cripple and paralyze African states.

It has been proven beyond a shadow of doubt that foreign aid is in fact devastating to Africa’s development. Our president, Isaias Afwerki, has famously said that aid is like a drug; if you keep taking it, you become addicted.

The massive foreign aid that is dumped in Africa makes it more dependent, makes it poorer, instead of helping it develop. Africa is dependent on food aid year in, year out, even though its agriculture has huge potential.

Six decades ago, Africa fed itself. Today, for the most part, it cannot, but Eritrea can. It has prioritized the development of dams and irrigation, resolving that no drop of water will fail to irrigate and no drop will erode the soil.

I can point to other significant infrastructural achievements in  road building, highway connections, education, and health. This progress was impeded because the US did not like the look of Eritrea’s independence. The US used Ethiopia’s TPLF regime as its regional “anchor state” for nearly 30 years, from 1991 to 2018, when it was overthrown in a popular uprising. In 1998 the US gave tacit support to the TPLF to launch a “border war” against Eritrea, which led to a devastating loss of life on both sides. The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission created by the Algiers Peace Agreement ruled in Eritrea’s favor regarding the contested border regions, including the town of Badme, the casus belli of the conflict. However, Ethiopia, with US support, refused to accept its ruling.

Eritrea was also punished by UN sanctions initiated by the US from 2009 to 2018. They were based on wholly false claims that Eritrea had helped al-Shabaab terrorists. Eritrea also had a border conflict with Djibouti based on another manufactured lie.

The US imposed even more crippling sanctions, exclusion from the SWIFT system for conducting international financial transactions, during the 2020 to 2022 Ethiopian civil war in which the US backed their longtime proxy, the TPLF. The US has sustained these sanctions even though the Ethiopian war ended in November 2022.

Both rounds of sanctions severely hurt Eritrea’s economy, but nevertheless, it continued to make slow, steady progress. It eradicated illiteracy and provided free education from grade school through college. It drastically reduced the spread of communicable disease, such as malaria and tuberculosis. It ended the horrifying practice of female genital mutilation. It is corruption free.

We have begun to tap into our significant mineral wealth, but not without demanding fair ownership percentages, technology transfer, and training from foreign mining corporations.

AG: Regarding the freedom from corruption, I met a number of Eritrean cabinet ministers when I was there in 2022, and I didn’t see any driving fancy cars, wearing fancy clothes, or working in fancy offices. I also didn’t see any gross disparities of wealth or anyone begging on the streets.

EA: Yes, that is evidence that we have remained true to our original revolutionary ideals.

AG: What do you see in Eritrea’s future?

EA: Well, as you know, there is great instability and conflict in the Horn of Africa, where Eritrea remains an oasis of stability. It does and will continue to try to encourage regional movements to establish genuine sovereignty while at the same time standing up to Ethiopia’s new threats of military aggression. 

Internally, within Eritrea, regardless of whether there is chaos and conflagration in the region, Eritrea will remain firmly focused on its own development. It will not be held hostage to external chaos agents, and will not veer from its path of national economic development and the improvement of life for all its people. It will stay the course.

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

2 Jun 2025

Source: transcend.org