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By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Geneva – The US State Department’s decision to sanction UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, is deeply alarming. It reflects the official US stance against any independent effort to expose the genocide and systematic violations committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

This decision marks a dangerous shift away from the core principles of international law and human rights. It directly targets the United Nations and its mechanisms, undermining the independence of special rapporteurs, who should be protected and supported in carrying out their impartial mandates, not punished for fulfilling them or for recognising crimes as such.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on Wednesday evening against the Special Rapporteur, citing her efforts to “prompt action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”

Euro-Med Monitor stresses that Francesca Albanese was among the few who demonstrated the moral and professional courage to call events in Gaza what they truly are: a genocide unfolding in full view of the world. She spoke openly about the complicity of major powers, led by the United States, in arming and covering up this crime, and criticised states that failed to act on the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he transited through their territory or airspace.

Albanese’s work is legitimate and fully aligned with her official mandate from the Human Rights Council, which tasks her with monitoring violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Her documentation efforts and calls for accountability lie at the heart of that mandate. Calling for accountability is not “warfare,” as Rubio claimed, but an act of upholding international law.

Furthermore, recommending sanctions or an arms embargo is consistent with the peaceful measures permitted under international law to address international crimes. It is entirely unreasonable to treat advocacy for upholding international law as a crime.

The US sanctions violate the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which grants UN officials, including special rapporteurs, immunity from legal or administrative action for acts or statements made in their official capacity.

Albanese’s reports and statements fall squarely within her official duties and mandate, making her legally protected from any retaliatory or punitive measures, including economic or political sanctions imposed in response to her official work.

As a party to the Convention, the United States is legally obligated to respect the functional immunity of special rapporteurs and refrain from taking any action against them in response to their official work.

Instead of reviewing its harmful policies regarding Israeli crimes, the US administration chose to punish those who exposed its complicity. Sanctioning Albanese is a desperate attempt to suppress the truth and a warning to anyone who dares to defend the victims of Israeli crimes.

Beyond the United States’ blatant double standards and constant use of sanctions as a political tool, this move signals explicit and official opposition to the foundations of international law, including the principle of accountability and the mechanisms for its protection and application. It amounts to a direct assault on international law and a systematic effort to undermine its framework, revealing a clear intent to subordinate the legal order to power and hegemony rather than justice.

The US decision is a clear expression of deepening official complicity in the genocide, not only through military and political support, but also by targeting anyone who seeks to expose or stop it, even through speech or legal means, as seen previously with sanctions against International Criminal Court judges who issued arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals.

Euro-Med Monitor fully supports Francesca Albanese and her principled stance based on international law and moral conscience. These sanctions should provoke widespread international condemnation and genuine solidarity, as they aim to intimidate independent voices and silence witnesses to ongoing crimes.

The United Nations, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, all UN Special Rapporteurs, and the international community must act urgently to safeguard the independence of the international human rights system and prevent it from being held hostage to political blackmail by major powers.

Justice is not a crime, and speaking out about the genocide in Gaza is not a crime; silence and complicity are. The world now faces a crucial test of its commitment to values, the rule of law, and justice.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

11 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formally ordered the Israeli military to create plans for the building of a giant concentration camp on the ruins of Rafah, where the population of Gaza would be moved in preparation for their forcible expulsion, Haaretz reported Wednesday.

The Israeli newspaper reported that Netanyahu made the order at a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet on Saturday, before he left for Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s report by Haaretz adds to the growing mountain of evidence that Israel is actively moving ahead with its ethnic cleansing plan, despite the presentation in the US media that Trump and Netanyahu are seeking “peace” and a “ceasefire.”

Two days after Netanyahu ordered the military to start planning the concentration camp, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced preparations for what he called a “humanitarian city.” Katz stated that the Israeli military would patrol the camp, and that once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave. He also said that the building of the camp would be coordinated with “the emigration plan, which will happen.”

On the same day as the meeting with Trump, Netanyahu said the “relocation plan” was on Israel’s agenda, calling it a “brilliant vision.”

Only last week, Haaretz reported the existence of an internal briefing by the Israeli military that the “concentration and movement of the population” is an official goal of Israel.

In May, Netanyahu named the implementation of the “Trump plan” for ethnic cleansing as one of its official aims of the war.

International human rights organizations have condemned the ethnic cleansing plan. In a statement Wednesday, the Euromed Monitor called it “a deliberate effort to depopulate Gaza and impose a new demographic reality that advances a colonial project to erase the Palestinian presence.”

The camp would be “built on the ruins of a destroyed city lacking even the most basic necessities of life,” the Euro-Med monitor reported. “The zone will be placed under strict security control, with severe restrictions on movement, including a ban on exiting. This effectively constitutes the establishment of a closed mass concentration camp, where the population will be forcibly held outside any legitimate legal framework.”

It added that the move is “an organized act of genocide, involving the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions aimed at the gradual destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip through starvation, humiliation, mass detention, and forced subjugation.”

Last week, the Financial Times reported on a secret strategy document drawn up by the Boston Consulting Group, a major US corporate consulting firm, for “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza. In a front-page article on Sunday, the newspaper revealed that the plan was created with the involvement of staffers of former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—the US- and Israeli-backed organization that purportedly delivers a trickle of aid—has drawn up a proposal for establishing camps, which it calls “Humanitarian Transit Areas,” both inside and outside Gaza.

The involvement in the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing plan by the Boston Consulting Group, one of the largest corporate consultants in the world, has created a political crisis at one of the pillars of the global corporate establishment.

On Thursday, the Boston Consulting Group announced that two of its senior partners were resigning over their role in the project.

Boston Consulting Group’s chief risk officer, Adam Farber, and the head of its social-impact practice, Rich Hutchinson, will be stepping down from their roles but will not be fired by the company.

The firm is clearly attempting to limit the damage to its reputation by claiming its involvement in the scheme was the product of individual bad apples. “An independent investigation confirmed this was the result of individual misconduct coupled with failures in oversight and judgment,” the firm told the Wall Street Journal.

“Even if this was not in any way, shape, or form a formal BCG project, our association with it is real—deeply troubling, and reputationally very damaging,” Boston Consulting Group CEO Christoph Schweizer wrote in a letter obtained by the Journal.

In reality, the firm was clearly complicit in the planning of war crimes and crimes against humanity, putting its executives in legal jeopardy of prosecution.

Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its daily massacres and mass starvation policies in Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a clinic in central Gaza killed 10 children and six adults.

The clinic, which was run by the humanitarian organization Project HOPE, screens children for malnutrition and provides them with nutritional supplements.

“Project HOPE’s health clinics are a place of refuge in Gaza where people bring their small children, women access pregnancy and postpartum care, people receive treatment for malnutrition, and more. Yet, this morning, innocent families were mercilessly attacked as they stood in line waiting for the doors to open,” Project HOPE said in a statement.

Malnutrition is surging in Gaza, with over 5,000 children between six months and five years old diagnosed with acute malnutrition in May, according to UNICEF.

Gaza’s hospitals are on the verge of running out of fuel, with Reuters reporting Thursday that doctors are attempting to preserve scarce energy supplies by cramming multiple premature babies into single incubators.

“Premature babies are now in a very critical condition,” Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Reuters, saying that Israel’s blockade is “depriving these vulnerable people of their basic right to medical care, turning the hospital into a silent graveyard.”

11 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, August 2022

#Srebrenicia.  On the wall of the barracks from where the Dutch Peacekeepers withdrew and let the genocidal killing begin, is a graffiti that reads, “United Nothing”. The United Nations had failed the Bosnian Muslims  30 years ago.  It has failed in Palestine again today.  Srebrenicia was only the best known killing fields of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

Mostar, Sarajevo, Stolac and many other towns & villages witnessed the slaughter and the mass rape as a weapon of genocide.  Thirty years on, what the US-led Western states and the trigger puller Israel, the Jewish Fascist state, are killing is not “just” Palestinians in Gaza as the emerging Auschwitz run by the Jewish Fascists abd their SS – known as the IDF – but also  international law  and all the global governing institutions, above all the UN. 

The West as a community of states are not going to come back from this.  

After German Nazis,  and their genocide on the Continent of THE CIVILIZATION, and WWII, the West or “western civilization” – had a chance to make amends and redeem itself.  

Alas,  the ruling elites of the West have proven utterly incapable of learning from history – something Hagel is said to have observed: “we learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

Worse still, what we call “the West” (as in states and corporations) has been without humanity (compassion & conscience), to belabour the obvious. One thing which colonialists/ imperialists and German Fascists had in common is empty rhetoric of “rights” “freedom” “humanity”. 

In 2025, the Western imperialists & Jewish  Fascists don’t even bother with such pretense as humanity.

Here I was paying my respect to 8,000 Bosniak men, boys and elderly men (Bosnian Muslims of the three generations in many cases)) genocidally executed by the Serbian nationalist killers in July, 1995.

Genocides are a crime against humanity.  It is an affront to us all as humans. 

If you don’t stand up and speak out against such crime your humanity is questionable. 

That is, whatever the name of the victim population – Rohingya, Bosniaks, Cambodians, Palestinians, etc. 

I was there at the Srebrenica  in the fall of  2022

The following year on my travels to Ukraine, I made an effort to pay my homage at the place where the Belarus-born Polish Jewish legal genius  and activist lived and studied law in the now Ukrainian city of Lviv in the 1920’s.

Lemkin died in the US, at 59, destitute and alone having witnessed how the victorious states – themselves criminal states against humanity (such as USA, UK, France, USSR – in particular)  – water-downed his comprehensive conception of GENOCIDE, 3 years after Auschwitz was closed.  

He would be turning in his grave that (liberal) imperialist West and the Jewish Fascist state of Israel have merged into a single criminal spanning across the whole world.  

What a sick and criminal class of men (and women) that are ruling us billions of We the Humans.

I fear the Western Civilization – “Judaeo-Christian now?” –  has as yet to hit its rock bottom. by all indications. 

M Zarni

11 July 2025

New York. July 11, 2025.

With deep reverence for the courageous and fearless souls who laid down their lives so the people of Kashmir could live with dignity and honor, Washington-based ‘World Kashmir Awareness Forum’ arranged digital trucks campaign throughout the New York City to observe the 94th Kashmir ‘Martyrs’ Day. 

The digital trucks displaced the messages: “Blood of martyrs will not go in vain: Freedom from India Kashmiris will attain;” “Voices from martyr’s graveyard are clear and loud: Indian occupation of Kashmir will not be allowed;” “In occupied Kashmir women being raped and children blinded: International community needs to be reminded;” “Voices of freedom in occupied Kashmir being throttled: Freedom of press completely stifled;” “Occupation of Kashmir travesty of justice: United Nations should take the notice;” “United Nations pay the heed: India has turned Kashmir into a killing field;” “Martyrs of Kashmir paid ultimate price: Kashmir beseeches world to rise.”

Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, President, World Kashmir Awareness Forum said that Kashmiris have continuously given immense sacrifices under the post- independence India. Massacre after massacre have continued to take place under Indian occupation, ethnic cleansing and colonization. Indian state under Modi’s Hindutva has abolished even the celebration of Martyrdom from the Kashmiri calendar since annexation of Kashmir on August 5, 2019, but the people of Kashmir have vowed to resist, no matter at what cost. 

Dr. Mir added that freedom is not offered on a platter. The Martyrs Graveyard in Srinagar will always remind us of the sanctity of those who sacrificed their lives for truth, justice and for freedom. 

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, ‘World Forum for Peace & Justice’, reflecting on the tragic day, stated, “It was on July 13, 1931, that foreign occupying Dogra forces cold-bloodedly shot dead 22 Kashmiris in front of Srinagar Central Jail. July 13th remains etched in the collective memory of the Kashmiri people as the day when their call for freedom and justice was met with bullets. Today, ‘Martyrs’ Day’ honors not only those 22 lives lost in 1931, but also the countless innocent victims who have been forcibly silenced by Indian military and paramilitary forces since 1989. “

Dr. Fai stressed that the desire for self-determination is an important factor India should take seriously — yet it continues to present a façade to the world community, pretending it does not exist. Regardless of how long India chooses to ignore the truth, the decades-old movement in Kashmir will not simply fade away.” 

Kashmiris are asking, Dr. Fai pointed out: “Is the lesson of Kashmir to be that a nuclear-armed state, like India with an appealing economic market can defy international law, human rights, and moral accountability with impunity? What message does that send about the global commitment to non-proliferation? What does it mean for the cause of humanity? And what does it say about our collective will to uphold international norms, universal values, and—above all—the authority of United Nations Security Council resolutions?”

Dr. Imtiaz Khan, Kashmiri American scholar said that government of India is living in fool’s paradise by believing that Kashmir can be usurped by brute force. Notwithstanding the fact their forces have unleashed reign of terror, massacred more then 100,000 civilians, gangraped women, blinded youth by pellet guns and buried the bodies in mass graves the voices of freedom have not died down.

Dr. Khan added that the generations of Kashmiris have promised themselves that they will leave no stone unturned unless Kashmir is freed from Indian occupation. The important question is that what price will be paid by the world for Indian hubris and disrespect of international laws.

Dr. Khan warned that the region being sandwiched between three nuclear states is a powder keg that can explode without prior warning. This was recognized by former USA president Bill Clinton and has also been acknowledged by President Donald Trump. Minor skirmishes between India and Pakistan can lead to nuclear conflagration that will engulf half of world population. It will be a major disservice to the human race if international community leaves this protracted problem unattended and allow the continuation of blatant Indian atrocities on the freedom loving people of Kashmir.

Raja Mukhtar, Spokesperson, JKLF North America and organizer of the event stated that “Kashmiris are demanding to exercise their right to self-determination as mandated by the UN and international community. They ask the world powers to stand up and speak up for the freedom of Kashmir.

Raja Mukhtar appealed to Trump Administration to seriously engage India, Pakistan and legitimate representatives of Kashmir, like incarcerated most popular leader of Jammu & Kashmir, Mohammad Yasin Malik in a result-oriented peaceful resolution of this most serious conflict of the world.”

Raja Mukhtar explained that while India, initially, explicitly accepted the Security Council resolutions mandating a free and impartial plebiscite in Kashmir under the auspices of the United Nations, it soon reneged on its own obligation realizing that the people of Kashmir would vote against India in an unfettered plebiscite.

Sardar Taj Khan, Senior Vice Chairman, Kashmir Mission, USA co-organizer of the evert said that the only solution to all major problems in the region lies in the peaceful resolution of Kashmir. And that bilateral talks between India and Pakistan have never taken off and direct involvement of President Donald Trump is needed if we are serious to achieve tangible results. 

Sardar Taj added that we all should ‘hang together’ rather than being hanged separately. Right of Self- Determination is ‘The Only Solution’ for our survival. Freedom of Kashmir is imperative & inevitable.

Sardar Sawar Khan, former Advisor to the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir said that it was the duty of global Kashmiri diaspora to support the people of Kashmir who are struggling for the right to self-determination. Our objective is to draw the attention of the world powers to the situation in Kashmir and to exert pressure on the government of India and to resolve dispute over Kashmir and help stop human right violations there.

Sardar Zarif Khan, Advisor to the President of Azad Kashmir said that the people of Kashmir have suffered long and needlessly because of this brutal conflict. The people of Kashmir deserve peace. Peace in the region of South Asia would remain elusive until the Kashmir dispute is resolved.  

Sardar Zarif emphasized that the brutalities of Indian government cannot and should not go unnoticed. It is the responsibility of the Kashmiri diaspora to be the voice of voiceless people in the corridors of powers all over the world.

Sardar Shoaib Irshad, General Seretary, Kashmir American Welfare Association (KAWA) said that despite claiming to be the largest democracy, India’s policy towards Kashmir has been uniformly colonial, brutal, deceitful and undemocratic. The people of Kashmir will never rest until they achieve their ultimate objective which is the right of self-determination.

Sardar Zubair Khan, Director, ‘Voices of Justice in Kashmir’ made an urgent plea to the world powers, including US government and Congressional leaders to heed the unbearable plight of hundreds of senior Kashmiri political leaders who are suffering from serious health issues. 

Sardar Zubair Khan added that senior political leaders, like Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Masarat Aalam, Aasia Andrabi and internationally known human rights activist, Khurram Parvez must be released unconditionally to create an atmosphere for dialogue and negotiations.

Raja Liaqat Kiyani, President, Kashmir House Washington said that the sacrifices of the people of Kashmir will undoubtedly lead the Kashmiri freedom struggle to its logical conclusion, that is freedom from the occupation and alien subjugation.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness Forum.

He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435. or. gnfai2003@yahoo.com

www.kashmirawareness.org

By Rima Najjar

The detention of Nasser Al-Lahham Is About More Than Press Freedom

Palestinian journalism isn’t just a fight for visibility — it’s the unburnable archive of survival, and it will outlast the occupation that seeks to silence it

Before dawn on July 7, 2025, Israeli forces stormed the Bethlehem home of Nasser Al Lahham — veteran journalist, editor-in-chief of Ma’an News, and head of Al Mayadeen’s Palestine bureau. Dragged from his apartment without charge, he became one of dozens of Palestinian media workers held under administrative detention. But Al Lahham is no ordinary reporter. For decades, his work has chronicled the pulse of Palestinian resistance. Israel now seeks to silence that pulse.

They will not succeed.

His arrest is not a rogue act. It’s part of a calculated campaign to erase Palestinian journalism altogether.

Since 2023, Israel has waged a sweeping offensive against journalists in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond. The toll is staggering: 217 reporters killed in Gaza alone — many in press vests, many mid-broadcast. Al Mayadeen’s Farah Omar and Rabih Al Maamari were assassinated in a precision strike in southern Lebanon. Shireen Abu Akleh, Ghufran Warasneh, Fadel Shana’a — their names fill cemeteries and legal petitions. These are not tragedies. They are policy. (See Israel’s war on Palestinian Journalists in List of journalists killed during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a compilation of incidents across decades.)

International law is explicit. Journalists are civilians under Article 79 of the Geneva Conventions. UN resolutions demand press protection. Yet in Palestine, these safeguards collapse like the bombed-out newsrooms they were meant to shield. Media offices are razed. Press tents shelled. Outlets like Al Jazeera and Al Aqsa TV are banned outright. The goal is not just to destroy infrastructure — it is to obliterate the Palestinian narrative itself.

So where can Palestinian journalists turn? Not to the Palestinian Authority. Fragmented by geography and bound by security coordination with Israel, the PA lacks both the capacity and the political will to defend them. Gaza’s journalists work under siege. Exiled voices are drowned out.

Civil society groups like Al-Haq, Addameer, Samidoun, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have long fought to document abuses and push for justice. Now they, too, are targets. Israel brands them as “terrorist organizations,” shuttering their offices, jailing their staff, and criminalizing their networks of solidarity abroad.

This assault stems from fear on the part of Israel. Palestinian armed resistance, despite overwhelming odds, has chipped away at Israel’s claims of military invincibility. Meanwhile, global solidarity is swelling around Palestinian voices. That’s why the crackdown has intensified. Israel isn’t just suppressing facts — it’s manufacturing a myth: of unchallengeable dominance, of Palestinian voicelessness, of a conflict without witnesses.

But the archive will not burn.

Epistemic Violence → Erasure of Narrative

Across courts, campuses, and transnational movements, a new framework is taking shape. Palestinian organizations are reframing media destruction as epistemic violence — a systematic assault on memory, knowledge, and communal voice. Legal briefs now do more than count casualties; they expose an entire architecture of erasure.

Scholars and activists worldwide are rallying around terms like epistemic apartheid and narrative suppression (for example, refusing to believe Indigenous knowledge systems are valid, erasing histories of oppressed groups from textbooks, discrediting someone’s testimony because of their race, gender, or class.) These aren’t just academic concepts — they’re calls to action in a battle for epistemic sovereignty: the right of a people to preserve and proclaim its truths.

Even within the UN, shifts are underway. The 2025 Commission of Inquiry accused Israel of trying to “erase Palestinian cultural memory.” Special Rapporteurs have warned that the destruction of archives, schools, and media amounts to cultural extermination. The language of epistemic violence hasn’t yet entered international doctrine — but the floodgates are opening.

This moment demands more than appeals to press freedom. It requires recognizing journalists, poets, and archivists as frontline defenders of collective survival. It demands that epistemic violence be named, condemned, and prosecuted. And it insists, unflinchingly: If international law won’t protect Palestinian truth-tellers, then global conscience must speak through them, through their words, through their media.

Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, wrote a book titled They Can’t Kill Us All, popularizing that phrase, a phrase that emerges from grief and rage and asserts refusal to be intimidated by systemic violence.

Palestinian resistance to erasure does not end with arrests or assassinations. It lives in those still filming, still writing, still teaching — they can’t kill us all. The archive breathes. And its guardians are done asking for permission.

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

10 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

The sanctioning by the Trump administration of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, is an ominous harbinger of the end of the rule of international law.

When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.

Albanese, who regularly receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold.”

She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statue. The Rome Statue criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.

She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.

You can see the interview I did with Albanese here.

Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

You can read my article on Albanese’s most recent report here.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”

The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheidesque existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.

This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”

Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed.

Chris Hedges worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

10 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli plan, announced by Defence Minister Israel Katz, to transfer the entire population of the Gaza Strip to a so-called “humanitarian zone” over the ruins of part of Rafah marks a dangerous escalation in the ongoing genocide. It reflects a deliberate effort to depopulate Gaza and impose a new demographic reality that advances a colonial project to erase the Palestinian presence.

The proposed plan aims, in its initial phase, to gather hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians inside the Gaza Strip as a prelude to confining them in a “humanitarian zone” built on the ruins of a destroyed city lacking even the most basic necessities of life. The zone will be placed under strict security control, with severe restrictions on movement, including a ban on exiting. This effectively constitutes the establishment of a closed mass concentration camp, where the population will be forcibly held outside any legitimate legal framework.

The danger of this plan is compounded by Defence Minister Katz’s endorsement of what he termed the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians, clearly indicating Israel’s adoption of a policy of external displacement targeting the population of the Gaza Strip. This confirms that the concentration of people in the south is not a humanitarian measure but a transitional phase within a systematic plan to depopulate Gaza. It is a direct continuation of the policies of ethnic cleansing pursued by Israel since the Nakba of 1948, aimed at erasing the Palestinian presence and uprooting them from their land permanently.

The Israeli plan constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the absolute prohibition on the forced transfer and mass detention of protected populations under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It falls within the scope of forced displacement, persecution, and apartheid, which are patterns of policies and practices that individually amount to crimes against humanity under international law.

The most dangerous aspect of this plan is the concentration of nearly two million Palestinians in a devastated, sealed-off area deprived of basic living conditions and subject to severe movement restrictions. This constitutes an organised act of genocide, involving the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions aimed at the gradual destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip through starvation, humiliation, mass detention, and forced subjugation.

Katz’s statements about exploiting the temporary ceasefire, currently under negotiation, clearly indicate that the ceasefire is not intended to halt the ongoing genocide but to give the Israeli army time and the necessary ground conditions to establish mass concentration camps. These camps are meant to receive hundreds of thousands of civilians who will later be forced to flee under the pressure of escalating killings, starvation, and forced displacement.

According to the Israeli minister, the plan involves transferring 600,000 Palestinians after subjecting them to so-called “security checks,” imposing severe restrictions on their movement and preventing them from leaving the area. This constitutes a flagrant violation of core principles of international law, including the prohibition of forced transfer, the right to freedom of movement and return, and protection from arbitrary detention and racial discrimination. It also breaches the peremptory norm prohibiting genocide, which may not be violated under any circumstances and imposes immediate legal obligations on all states to prevent the crime, stop its commission, and hold perpetrators accountable.

These official statements, which reflect a deliberate and declared policy, confirm that Israel is pursuing a systematic plan of forced displacement in the Gaza Strip through demographic engineering aimed at erasing the Palestinian presence by concentrating civilians in closed and besieged areas resembling mass concentration camps and forcibly imposed ghettos.

The contradiction between Defence Minister Israel Katz’s announcement of a plan to forcibly transfer and confine Gaza residents and the Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir’s statement two days earlier that transferring the population is not a military objective exposes a deliberate effort to mislead public opinion and the international community.

While the Israeli army seeks to deny such intentions, Katz outlined a detailed plan that fully aligns with the facts on the ground, including mass killings, forced evacuation orders, the targeting of shelters, and the confinement of hundreds of thousands of people in besieged areas.

Field evidence clearly shows that this is the execution of a political plan, not the result of emergency military operations. Katz’s statements, rather than the army’s denials, reflect the true intent and official policy, serving as conclusive evidence of mass forced displacement carried out under military cover.

The use of misleading terms such as “humanitarian zone” in the context of ongoing crimes, including bombing, starvation, and forced displacement, is a blatant attempt to conceal a full-fledged crime and mislead the international community. The plan has no genuine humanitarian dimension; it serves only as a cover for a clear strategic objective to forcibly alter the demographic composition of the Gaza Strip and gradually depopulate it.

The aid distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, located within the so-called “humanitarian zone,” have effectively become death traps, with 758 Palestinians killed and over 5,000 injured since the centres opened in late May. This offers a stark warning of what awaits hundreds of thousands of civilians if forcibly transferred to that zone under a false humanitarian pretext that conceals a systematic genocide.

Katz’s statements, along with the latest Reuters’ reporting on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s plan to establish “humanitarian transit areas” inside and potentially outside the Gaza Strip to house Palestinian residents, clearly expose the true and dangerous nature of the ongoing scheme. It aims to compel Palestinians to flee under a false humanitarian pretext.

According to Reuters, the plan proposes establishing “transit areas” for Palestinians to “temporarily reside,” potentially paving the way for their transfer outside the Gaza Strip. This model establishes forced displacement as an explicit political objective, while phrases like “deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish” serve as rhetorical tools to market a pre-announced process of ethnic cleansing.

Labelling these camps as “humanitarian zones” or “humanitarian transit areas” is a deliberate manipulation of language, intended to justify coercive policies and reshape Gaza’s demographic reality. The use of false humanitarian rhetoric, such as claims to “gain trust with the local population” or promote deradicalisation, serves as a deceptive security pretext for depopulating the Gaza Strip.

Forced displacement is a standalone crime under international law, involving the expulsion of people from areas where they are lawfully present through force, threats, or other coercive means, without any recognised legal justification.

Coercion in this context extends beyond direct military force to include the creation of unbearable conditions that make remaining practically impossible or pose a real threat to life, dignity, or livelihood. This coercive environment takes various forms, including fear of violence, persecution, detention, intimidation, starvation, or any other circumstances that effectively strip individuals of their free will and compel them to leave.

Any departure from the Gaza Strip under the current circumstances cannot be deemed voluntary, as the population is effectively deprived of the ability to make a free and informed choice. Legally, such departures constitute forced displacement, which is prohibited under international law. Those forced to leave the enclave retain their inalienable right to return to their land and property immediately and unconditionally, along with the full right to compensation for all damages and losses resulting from Israel’s crimes, including loss of housing, violation of dignity, psychological and physical harm, and deprivation of basic rights.

The indifference of relevant states and UN organisations to Israel’s policy of forced displacement in the Gaza Strip cannot be explained by incapacity. Rather, it reflects a level of tolerance, and in some cases, complicity in advancing plans aimed at depopulating the Strip.

Since the first mass evacuation order issued by Israeli forces on 9 October 2023, hundreds more have followed unabated and without any effective pressure to stop this crime. As a result, most of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced, left without shelter or protection, in one of the most extreme and brutal cases of mass displacement in modern history.

Since the beginning of its assault, Israel has pursued a policy of comprehensive destruction targeting the fabric of life in the Gaza Strip as part of a genocidal campaign. This policy systematically dismantles all means of survival, forcing the population into displacement through siege, starvation, and devastation. The people have been exhausted, their resilience depleted, amid clear international complicity that enables Israel to persist in its crime of forced displacement, with no regard for the fate of over two million people on the brink of annihilation.

Euro-Med Monitor is alarmed by the international community’s inaction, with over 21 months passing without halting a single tool of Israeli genocide. The forced displacement of the population cannot, under any circumstances, be justified by military or security considerations. Ongoing international silence effectively enables the continuation of this crime.

Euro-Med Monitor calls for comprehensive and independent international investigations into the role of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in facilitating and executing serious crimes committed against Palestinian civilians. These investigations should address the individual responsibility of the organisation’s founders, directors, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any other staff members, whether through planning, facilitating, directly contributing, or knowingly failing to prevent the commission of crimes.

We urge all states with territorial or universal jurisdiction to open immediate criminal investigations against all individuals affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its contracted private security firms, in order to hold them accountable for their role in crimes committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, particularly including wilful killings, starvation, and cruel or degrading treatment.

Euro-Med Monitor urges all states to recognise that what the people of the Gaza Strip are facing is not evacuation, but the systematic erasure of an entire people. It is not enough to merely acknowledge or condemn these crimes; states must stand firmly between the people of Gaza and the completion of the genocide, to protect them from annihilation and to ensure their right to remain on their land with dignity.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; holding Israel accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip; and providing redress to victims as per international law.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity. They must also hold accountable their citizens found to have committed violations against Palestinians, in line with their national and international legal obligations and within their territorial or personal jurisdiction.

Furthermore, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must expedite its investigations and issue arrest warrants for every Israeli official involved in international crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. These crimes must be formally recognised and treated as acts of genocide. States Parties to the Rome Statute are reminded of their legal obligation to fully cooperate with the Court, ensure the implementation of the arrest warrants, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

10 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 17 people, including 10 children, were killed in an Israeli strike while they were queuing for food supplements in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on Thursday morning.

Local and medical sources confirmed that mothers and their children were queuing for nutrient supplements at a medical point when an Israeli strike hit, killing 17 people, including 10 children. Dozens of injured people also included women and children.

Gaza Health Ministry Director, Dr. Munir al-Bursh, said the Israeli occupation is “systematically targeting children,” adding half of those killed in the attack on the medical point were children and women.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1943214228967444972]

10 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Busani Ngcaweni and Shiping Tang

The post-Cold War order is unravelling. The global trading system and the multilateral order, painstakingly built after the Second World War, have been torn apart. What once stood as a framework for cooperation is now a weapon of mass bullying. Trade wars strike like sudden cyclones. Tariffs rise unpredictably. One day they are 15 percent, then they shoot to 50 percent, jump to 100 percent the following week and drop again to 20 percent days later. Such turbulence shakes small and large economies alike, bringing uncertainty, disrupting supply chains and sending countries scrambling for new markets and solutions.

This new age of upheaval calls for BRICS+, a dynamic group of countries that believe in multipolarity. BRICS+ must rise not just as an economic grouping but as an empowering and stabilising structure for the Global South. BRICS+, is a brick-solid, enduring and purpose-driven framework.. Moreover, BRICS+ has to be empowering. Like any well-built structure, it must be firm enough to contain  the landslide of confusion yet adaptable enough to let water pass through,  allowing flexibility without compromising strength.

But it is not enough for BRICS+ to simply hold the line. It must also pave the road forward. Over 45 percent of the global population lives in BRICS+ countries, mostly in the Global South where life remains precarious and economic security is far from guaranteed. Strong bricks must be laid to create roads that lead towards resilience, inclusive growth and shared prosperity.

To achieve this, BRICS+ must deliver real and tangible results. People need to feel the benefits of cooperation. They need jobs, stable markets, corridors of trade and access to opportunities. The New Development Bank (otherwise known as the BRICS Bank) was a strong start. It is making a difference across Asia, Africa and South America, as a strong alternative to the traditional multilateral and private funding systems that have often proven difficult for developing countries to access on equitable terms. It is time now to build more permanent BRICS+ institutions that implement summit  resolutions.

These outcomes must not gather dust,  rather they must be carried out consistently and transparently. For this, we need permanent institutions that support policy coordination and implementation across member states, institutions that increase education and training exchanges between countries, institutions that manage trade, and that quickly respond to natural disasters. These are the institutions that should actively manage contradictions between BRICS+ members, taking mandates from heads of states.

To achieve this key goal, BRICS+, primarily needs a permanent secretariat. Without it, BRICS+  risks appearing as a provisional  or noncommittal  mechanism. Crudely stated, without a permanent secretariat, the grouping resembles a structure built without cement to bind all its bricks together.

For BRICS+ to increase trade among its members, it must mobilise all productive forces. It must ramp up manufacturing output and focus on producing more value-added goods. Only then will countries have something meaningful to offer each other beyond raw materials. Trade among friends must be more than substantial, it has to be mutually enabling.

Thus, the primary task for BRICS+ is to become an enabler of builders. No country can modernise without its leaders, development-oriented elites, stakeholders willing to make sacrifices and citizens yearning for a better life. But they can certainly use a little bit of outside help. Indeed, developing countries can utilise outside assistance more effectively if it can empower and enable their efforts.

In our globalised world, many developing countries still need outside assistance to weather the storms. As such, BRICS+ can also act as a shelter, a place of refuge for those battered by the storm of today’s economic bullying. The volatility we are witnessing is not new, it is just a variant of what the Global North has long imposed upon the Global South. The difference now is that it is more erratic and bombastic, equally traumatic if you listen to the rhetoric about the Middle East and recent warnings to countries like Namibia where economic pathways are being dictated by external parties.

Let us restate what many ignore when analyzing what sustained BRICS beyond a decade and a half. The leaders are more focused on what unites them than on sources of divisions. There is mutual respect and interest to build a multipolar world.  Contradictions are not being buried but actively managed by the leaders. That is a marker of strength, a signal to the Global South that the bond of solidarity can take nations forward.

The task before BRICS+ is daunting, yet necessary. The Global South cannot afford to be sidelined any longer. It is time to lay  firm, interconnected and enduring bricks that will advance development, shelter, security and shared prosperity for the people of the Global South.

Busani Ngcaweni is Adjunct Professor at Wits School of Governance, South Africa

Shiping Tang is Professor at Fudan University’s School of International Relations Public Affairs.

9 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza is on the brink of total collapse. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Tuesday that 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza have not eaten for days. Their children face life-threatening risks; premature birth, death, and permanent health problems.

The World Health Organization echoed the alarm. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the severe shortage of food, fuel, and medicine is killing civilians, especially children.

At the heart of the crisis is a broken aid system created by the US and Israel as a tool to use aid for military goals. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed the US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), calling its aid delivery mechanism “completely unacceptable.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also raised the alarm. It reported a sharp rise in mass casualty events at aid distribution points across Gaza. The increase has overwhelmed Gaza’s already shattered health system.

Since late May, when GHF began managing aid sites, the ICRC’s field hospital in southern Gaza alone recorded over 200 deaths and treated more than 2,200 gunshot-wounded patients, many of them from over 21 separate mass shootings.

“The scale and frequency of these incidents are unprecedented,” the ICRC said. “We treated more casualties in just weeks than we did in all mass injury incidents last year.”

Meanwhile, Israel continues to block aid. Since March 2, it has sealed Gaza’s crossings to most humanitarian trucks. Only a few dozen are allowed in daily only to be looted by Israeli-backed gangs. At least 500 trucks per day are needed to meet minimum survival needs.

Israel’s genocide, backed by the US, has devastated Gaza since October 7, 2023. The ongoing genocide includes indiscriminate bombing, mass displacement, starvation, and the targeting of aid sites.

The results are catastrophic. More than 194,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. Over 11,000 remain missing under the rubble. Hundreds of thousands are displaced, and famine is claiming more lives daily, many of them children.

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to stop the genocide. But Tel Aviv continues, undeterred by global appeals or legal rulings.

9 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org