Archives: Articles

By Rima Najjar

From Caracas to Gaza — The Machinery of Demonization

There is a pattern to how empire speaks. It criminalizes resistance, rewrites history, and recasts domination as defense. Whether the target is a Latin American leader, a Palestinian movement, or an Iranian militia, the language is the same: terrorism, fanaticism, chaos. The goal is not just to justify violence — it’s to make it feel inevitable.

This is the logic behind the Trump administration’s $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro. Framed as a crackdown on “narco-terrorism,” it’s a textbook case of regime change propaganda. The bounty is not about justice — it’s about spectacle. It tells the world who the villain is, and it sets the stage for assassination as policy.

But this logic doesn’t stop at Caracas. It echoes across the propaganda Hugo B has been spouting in our exchanges on Medium.

Who Is Hugo B?

Hugo B is a prolific commenter whose posts consistently reproduce the ideological scaffolding of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Over the course of our exchanges, he has:

• Reduced Palestinian resistance to “jihadist nihilism”
• Blamed Arab states for the Nakba while absolving Zionist militias
• Dismissed refugee status as a weapon to prolong war
• Denied the right of return, the right to resist, and the right to narrate
• Framed Jewish self-determination as sacred while denying Palestinian existence
• Rejected international law when it affirms Palestinian rights

His language is not original — it’s derivative of a broader imperial playbook. And it mirrors the same tactics used to justify U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine.

Shared Tactics Across Geographies

1. Criminalization of Resistance

Maduro is labeled a narco-terrorist. Hamas is reduced to jihadist fanaticism. Iraqi militias are proxies. The goal is to strip movements of political legitimacy and recast them as threats to global order.

2. Erasure of Context

Hugo B speaks of Palestinian violence without acknowledging siege, displacement, or apartheid. U.S. officials speak of Venezuela’s collapse without referencing sanctions, economic warfare, or CIA-backed destabilization.

3. Moral Inversion

The oppressor claims the moral high ground. The U.S. presents itself as a defender of democracy while backing coups and bombing civilians. Hugo B echoes this inversion by portraying Israeli legislation as democratic while denying Palestinians basic rights.

4. Narrative Control

The bounty on Maduro is a media event. It defines the villain. Hugo B’s rhetoric operates the same way: it’s not about debate — it’s about defining who gets to be human and who gets to be erased.

The Broader Pattern

From South America to the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy follows a formula:

1. Identify resistance as extremism
2. Deploy economic, military, or legal force
3. Control the narrative through media and proxies
4. Justify intervention as humanitarian or defensive

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s imperial management.

And Hugo B, whether knowingly or not, is reproducing that logic in miniature — using the language of supremacy, erasure, and moral panic to delegitimize Palestinian life and resistance.

Toward a Just Peace

If peace is ever to be real — whether in Venezuela, Palestine, Iraq, or Iran — it must begin by dismantling the propaganda that criminalizes resistance and sanctifies domination. It must reject the logic that says sovereignty is only legitimate when it aligns with U.S. interests, and that survival is only moral when it belongs to the powerful.

A just peace means:

• Ending siege and occupation, not managing them
• Recognizing the right to resist, not pathologizing it
• Restoring the right of return, not erasing it
• Upholding international law, not selectively applying it
• Centering the voices of the oppressed, not speaking over them

It means confronting the legacy of U.S. interventionism — from coups in Latin America to invasions in the Middle East — and refusing to replicate its logic in our discourse, our media, or our diplomacy.

It means seeing Palestinians not as proxies, but as people. Venezuelans not as narco-states, but as a nation under siege. Iraqis and Iranians not as threats, but as communities with histories, futures, and the right to self-determination.

Peace will not come from bounties, bombs, or rhetorical erasure. It will come from truth, accountability, and the radical act of listening to those we’ve been taught to fear.

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.

7 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic

24 years later. The commemoration of 9/11. One of the most momentous and tragic events in America’s history. 

This video production focusses on the unanswered questions of 9/11. What was the role of Al Qaeda and the alleged “act of war” by Afghanistan against the United States of America on the morning of September 11, 2001. 

Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts were known. He was hospitalized on September 10th, 2001, one day before the 9/11 attacks. (CBS Report, Dan Rather)

How on earth could he have coordinated the attacks from his hospital bed in a heavily guarded Pakistani military hospital located in Rawalpindi.

English (original)

Français,  عربي, Русский, Español, 中文, Farsi, Српски, 日本語, Deutsch, Italiano, Türkçe

Our objective is to reach out to people worldwide.

Forward the video directly to your friends worldwide. click below: languages with hyperlinks

Our longstanding commitment is to world peace and “true democracy.”

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

8 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

Chairman

World Forum for Peace & Justice

Washington, D.C.

September 6, 2025

Sometimes circumstances bring back old gold memories. That is exactly what happened few days back when I was at a grocery store in Northern Virginia and unexpectedly met an old friend from Kashmir, who happened to be from the Pandit community. At first, he was genuinely happy to see me after such a long time. We then went outside to a nearby restaurant, but soon the conversation became a little tense. He asked me why the Muslim community had let them down in the 1990s, and why they do not openly say that the Pandits should return to the Valley. Why should not Yasin Malik face the justice when he was responsible for the exodus of Pandits in 1990s? He added that, although he personally does not subscribe to it, some Pandits still speak of having a separate homeland in Kashmir. We had lunch and spent more than two hours together, and I tried to address all his concerns so that he would feel more at ease when discussing these issues with his family. I wish to present a summary of our discussion for the benefit of the wider Pandit community.

To begin with, in addressing the Pandit community, we could evoke the memories, the sympathies and the aspirations and much else that is intangible which together constitute Kashmiriyat — now as in the past. However, due to propaganda that has been unleashed by certain elements, even an expression of genuine sentiment is liable to be misunderstood.

I believe that the time has come for the members of the Pandit community mentally to extricate themselves from India’s fatal grip and reattach to Kashmir. In Kashmir, they have same future as their compatriots. For what can India do for you? It is, of course, large enough to accommodate you.  But it can only provide you shelter in a refugee camp. It cannot make possible you’re living as a community. Torn away from Kashmir, the Pandit community will become a mass of dispersed individuals and families, forced to speak alien tongues, driven to cope with an inhospitable climate, made to walk on unfamiliar soil. I tell you most sincerely that we are dismayed by that prospect.

You have left the Valley in large numbers, living rootless lives in an unfeeling environment. You are not only uprooted; you are also told lies. You are being kept in Delhi and Jammu in conditions of insult and injury merely to be used as concocted evidence against the resistance in Kashmir. The privileged members of your community can fend for themselves even in a calamity, but our concern is for those who are not so resourceful. They must be rehabilitated in safety and with honor in their homes in Kashmir. Even that process of rehabilitation will depend for its success on the goodwill which your Muslim compatriots have for you, and which draw an affectionate welcome from them. The smiling embrace of your neighbors must mark your return to your homes.

Late Syed Ali Geelani, former Chairman, All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), consistently said that Pandits are an integral part of Kashmiri society and that Kashmir would be incomplete without them. Geelani said on January 20, 2017, as reported by Deccan Chronicle that, “We will welcome return of Pandits to the Valley. They are a part of our society, and we have always asked them to return, and we will welcome if they are willing to settle within us and in our society.”

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, former. Chairman, APHC said while meeting with the leadership of the Jammu & Kashmir Peace Forum in New Delhi in January 2025 that “I would once again ask Pandit brethren to return to their motherland which awaits them, and live here as they did in the past, in our common and shared heritage. It’s time to reconcile and rebuild the broken bonds. We owe it to our next generation.”

Dr. Syed Nazir Gilani, Chairman, Jammu Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) and a renowned Jurist has consistently advocated for the return of Kashmiri Pandits to their homeland. He has emphasized that their displacement is a significant loss and has condemned it in various reports, including the 1996 JKCHR report which was submitted to the Secretary General of the United Nations where he stood for their right to return to their homes in safety and dignity.

A group, we are told has emerged among you with the slogan of ‘Separate Homeland. We are appalled at the group’s blindness to reality and at the self-induct desperation that drives it to demand for itself a separate homeland. Why prefer a ghetto to a home – the home of all Kashmiris, the home that has been devastated by Indian occupation, yet devastated homes are repairable? 

I totally agree with Mr. Sanjay Tickoo, Chairman of Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, who said that “the separate zones will set a dangerous precedent.” He added, “Wherever there is minority (community) it should live with the majority.”

Mr. Tickoo truly represents the sentiments of all Kashmiris when he emphasized that “Separate settlements will go against the basic ethos of Kashmir and Sufi tradition.” You will fall into a trap devised by those who do not – and cannot – wish your community well.

It is alleged that you trusted your Muslim compatriots who let you down. The fact is that you did not trust them. In reality, the Muslim community did not let Pandit community down. You have so isolated yourselves from Kashmir that not once, have you raised a voice against the barbarities being committed by Indian army on civilian population there. The brutal forces of Indian occupation wanted you out of Kashmir in order to misrepresent – indeed, to disfigure – the resistance as an anti-Hindu campaign and also to clear the field for acts of mass slaughter and rape arson. We doubt that you can be happy with the results. This was a fatal blunder. That is the sad part of the story. The happy part is that the blunder is reversible.

We all know that the Pandits languishing in the refugee camps in Jammu, Delhi and elsewhere were victims of the tragedy of Kashmir for which the Government of India must take responsibility. Only Governor Jagmohan made this Pandit community flee and desert Kashmir at its hour of trial. They were made to abandon their own people. It is a pity that India is using these helpless victims of India policy as pawns in a cynical propaganda game. Kashmiri Pandits want to return to their homes. Muslim families, despite their own plight, are ready to welcome them back. But I am afraid that Indian authorities will try to score points in the debates. To them human rights are of secondary importance.
 
Some Kashmiri Hindus (Pandits) have realized that their fleeing from Kashmir was misguided and ill advised. Dina Nath Raina (Kashmiri Pandit) described the exodus in his book Kashmir: Distortions and Reality. There is evidence that the transport was provided in a planned manner to Pandit families in particular localities and the police department was fully involved in organizing the exodus.

Dr. Farooq Abdullah, former Federal Minister of India & Chief Minister of former Jammu and Kashmir said on March 22, 2022, that late Jagmohan Malhotra, Governor of Jammu & Kashmir in 1990, had put Kashmiri Pandits in buses and told them they would be brought back in two months. However, that did not happen, he said.  

Now, the question is why shouldn’t Yasin Malik face justice? The answer to this question was given by one of the eminent journalists of India and a seasoned diplomat, Ambassador Kuldip Nayyar, who wrote in Redfiff.com on August 7, 1999, “The first militant, Yasin Malik, who raised his gun at a public meeting in the heart of Srinagar, has turned nonviolent and vegetarian. Now he is a follower of Mahatma Gandhi.”

Let me mention a report published in local newspaper in April 2015. It says that a group of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley joined JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik in the protest at Maisuma early this week. Reportedly, “The procession marched towards Lal Chowk chanting slogan Sang Sang Jiyain Gay, Sang Sang Marain Gay (we will live together and die together). .

We all know that because of his non-violent ideology, Yasin Malik was invited by Dr. Manmohan Singh on February 17, 2006, for strengthening a dialogue between the Governments of India & Pakistan and the people of Kashmir.    

Considering these factors, we are of the view that releasing Yasin Malik could serve as a constructive step toward fostering dialogue and reconciliation among India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiri leadership, thereby strengthening the broader peace process.

In conclusion, let us agree that both Muslims and Pandits of Kashmir have endured tremendous pain over the last three and half decades. While the Pandits faced displacement and exile, the Muslim community has suffered daily under conflict, with countless families torn apart. Recognizing each other’s suffering is the first step toward healing.

It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of Kashmiri Muslims want the Pandits to return to the Valley. Their presence is part of our shared history, culture, and identity. The call for their return is not just a matter of politics but of conscience — Kashmir feels incomplete without them. It is also true that while some Pandits have spoken of a separate homeland, this idea only creates division. True security and dignity for Pandits will not come from isolation, but from living side by side with their Muslim neighbors, as was the case for centuries. The strength of Kashmir has always been its diversity.

Lastly, our children deserve a Kashmir where Pandits and Muslims live together with dignity, peace, and mutual respect — just as our ancestors once did. That is the future we must work toward.

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

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

www.kashmirawareness.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

In another vicious onslaught on the truth, Israel has killed five more journalists as it bombed the top half of the Kan Younis Nasser Hospital complex in the southern Gaza Strip, on Monday.

More than 10 other Palestinians were killed in the bombing carried out by Israeli planes according to Gaza health authorities and eyewitnesses.

The bombing of the Nasser Hospital Complex is seen as another run-of-the-mill strike which Israel has carried out in the last 22 months on the different parts of the Gaza Strip’s in what is seen as the worst genocide in human history.

The five are Hussam Al-Masri, a photojournalist with Reuters News Agency, Mohammed Salama, a photojournalist with Al Jazeera, Mariam Abu Daqa, a journalist with several media outlets, including Independent Arabia and AP and Moath Abu Taha, a journalist with NBC News. Ahmad Abu Aziz later succumbed to his injuries, raising the journalists’ death toll to five.

[https://twitter.com/DeclanKearneySF/status/1959900606790844642]

The social media has been rife with the latest bombardment and killing of the journalists who have been active in reporting the Israeli genocide with the journalists including Hossam El-Masry who worked for Reuters, camerman Mohammad Salama who worked for Al Jazeera, independent journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa and journalist Moaz Abu Taha who worked for the NBC network.

The latest onslaught on the hospital is confirmed by the Gaza Ministry of Health which states that other people were injured in the bombings.

The Ministry pointed out the Israeli military hit the fourth floor of one of the complex’s buildings in two airstrikes. It noted that the second strike occurred as rescue teams arrived to evacuate the wounded and recover the dead according to the Anadolu news agency.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said in a statement that a fire engine driver was killed in the strike and seven others from his team were injured as they attempted to rescue victims and recover the bodies.

Israel has made it a point of targetting journalists in its genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. Israeli bombs and drones have killed 244 journalists and media workers. This is not to mention the over 400 journalists it injured.

The Gaza Media Office calls on “the international community, international organizations, and organizations involved in journalism and media in all countries of the world to condemn the crimes of the occupation, deter it, prosecute it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and bring the occupation’s criminals to justice.”

Dr Asmar is an Amman-based writer and blogs on crossfirearabia.com

25 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By BHRN

25 August 2025

Today marks eight years since Myanmar’s security forces carried out coordinated attacks against the Rohingya population in Rakhine State, burning entire villages, killing thousands of men, women, and children, and subjecting women and girls to widespread sexual violence. More than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh. These atrocities shocked the world, but they were not isolated. They were the culmination of decades of persecution, the stripping of citizenship, apartheid-like restrictions, and state led efforts to erase the Rohingya from Myanmar. Genocide is a process, and for the Rohingya, that process began long before 2017.

For years, the international community witnessed the persecution escalate, and still it did nothing.

The 1982 citizenship law rendered the Rohingya stateless, denying them recognition in their own country. In the decades that followed, they were confined, denied education, healthcare, and livelihoods, subjected to marriage and family restrictions, and regularly targeted with violence and harassment by security forces. Waves of violence in 2012 forced more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps where they remain today. Hate speech and propaganda from state authorities, nationalist monks, and online platforms dehumanized the Rohingya, portraying them as outsiders and enemies.

The structures of genocide were in plain sight. Still, the world did not act.

When security forces launched “clearance operations” in 2016 and 2017, burning villages, killing civilians, and engaging in widespread rape and torture, the international community once again failed to respond with the urgency required. Even as hundreds of thousands crossed into Bangladesh with harrowing testimonies, many governments hesitated to call the crimes by their name: genocide.

Still, the world did not act to prevent further atrocities.

Since the 2021 coup, the situation has only worsened. The military junta has intensified its persecution of the Rohingya, imposing severe restrictions on movement, blocking humanitarian aid, and conscripting Rohingya into forced labor and military service. Arbitrary arrests, torture, killings, and sexual violence continue with total impunity. At the same time, the Arakan Army has also targeted Rohingya communities, carrying out extrajudicial executions, forced displacement, arson, and spreading anti-Rohingya propaganda and hate speech. An estimated 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since mid-2024. And still, the world has failed to act to prevent the ongoing genocide.

Today, more than a million Rohingya remain trapped in Bangladesh, denied legal status and rights, facing shrinking aid, food insecurity, and the loss of education and livelihoods. Across the region, Rohingya continue to die at sea or are detained and turned away from safety. Inside Rakhine State, they remain under siege, confined, deprived of humanitarian assistance, and subjected to systematic persecution by both the junta and the Arakan Army.

International justice efforts are underway. The International Court of Justice is hearing The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar, the International Criminal Court is investigating crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, and courts abroad are pursuing cases under universal jurisdiction. These processes are critical, but they remain slow, and survivors of genocide cannot live on promises of justice tomorrow while they continue to suffer today.

If states truly wish to honor their obligations under the Genocide Convention, they must act not only to punish, but to prevent. Prevention means restoring aid and ensuring protection for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and across the region. Prevention means halting the ongoing crimes of the junta and the Arakan Army. Prevention also requires protecting other Muslim communities in Myanmar, including the Pathi, Panthay, Pashu, Kaman, and Myaydu, who face systematic persecution and attacks amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, which also may amount to genocide. Prevention means dismantling the entrenched structures of persecution, propaganda, and apartheid that sustain genocide against the Rohingya.

Eight years on, remembrance without action is complicity. If “never again” is to mean anything, states must act now, decisively and urgently, to end the ongoing genocide and secure justice, safety, and dignity for the Rohingya people.

Organisation’s Background

BHRN is based in London and operates across Burma/Myanmar working for human rights, minority rights and religious freedom in the country. BHRN has played a crucial role in advocating for human rights and religious freedom with politicians and world leaders.

Media Enquiries
Please contact:

Kyaw Win
Executive Director
Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN)
E: kyawwin@bhrn.org.uk
T: +44(0) 740 345 2378

Ye Min
Editor
Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN)
E: ye.min@bhrn.org.uk
T: +66(0) 994 942 358

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud 

The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on August 10 has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.

By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.

More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist”. This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.

This Israeli discourse, which dehumanizes entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.

This cruelty of language would be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric, except that Israel has, in fact, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports, destroyed over 70% of Gaza’s infrastructure. 

While extremist language is often used by politicians around the world, it is rare for the extremism of the language to so precisely mirror the extremism of the action itself. This makes Israeli political discourse a uniquely dangerous phenomenon. 

There can be no military justification for the wholesale annihilation of an entire region. Yet again, the Israelis are not shying away from providing the political discourse that explains this unprecedented destruction. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin chillingly said, last May, that “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy… not a single Gazan child will be left there.” 

But for the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible.

These figures powerfully illustrate this point: according to a report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on the latest satellite damage assessment conducted in July, 97% of Gaza’s educational facilities have been affected, with 91% in need of major repairs or full reconstruction. Additionally, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have been killed.

But why is Israel so intent on killing those responsible for intellectual production? The answer is twofold: one unique to Gaza, and the other unique to the nature of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism.

First, regarding Gaza: Since the Nakba in 1948, Palestinian society in Gaza has invested heavily in education, seeing it as a crucial tool for liberation and self-determination. Early footage shows classrooms being held in tents and open spaces, a testament to this community’s tenacious pursuit of knowledge. This focus on education transformed the Strip into a regional hub for intellectual and cultural production, despite poorly funded UNRWA schools. Israel’s campaign of destruction is a deliberate attempt to erase this generational achievement, a practice known as scholasticide, and Gaza is the most deliberate example of this horrific act.

Second, regarding Zionism: For many years, we were led to believe that Zionism was winning the intellectual war due to the cleverness and refinement of Israeli propaganda, or hasbara. The prevailing narrative, particularly in the Arab world, was that Palestinians and Arabs were simply no match for the savvy Israeli and pro-Israeli public relations machine in Western media. This created a sense of intellectual inferiority, masking the true reason for the imbalance.

Israel was able to “win” in mainstream media discourse due to the intentional marginalization and demonization of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. The latter had no chance of fighting back simply because they were not allowed to, and were instead labeled as “terrorist sympathizers” and the like. Even the late, world-renowned Palestinian scholar Edward Said was called a “Nazi” by the extremist, now-banned Jewish Defense League, who went so far as to set the beloved professor’s university office on fire.

Gaza, however, represented a major problem. With foreign media forbidden from operating in the Strip per Israeli orders, the Gazan intellectual rose to the occasion and, in the course of two years, managed to reverse most of Zionism’s gains over the past century. This forced Israel into a desperate race against time to remove as many Palestinian journalists, intellectuals, academics, and even social media influencers from the scene as quickly as possible—thus, the war on the Palestinian thinker.

The Israeli logic, however, is destined to fail, as ideas are not tied to specific individuals, and resilience and resistance are a culture, not a job title. Gaza shall once more emerge, not only as the culturally thriving place it has always been, but as the cornerstone of a new liberation discourse that is set to inspire the globe regarding the power of intellect to stand firm, to fight for what is right, and to live with purpose for a higher cause.

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

24 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israel has intensified its attacks on Gaza City, with residents describing a “night from hell” as Israeli forces push deeper into the area as part of a stated plan to occupy it and forcibly displace about one million people.

Local sources and residents described last night as a “night from hell,” marked by relentless Israeli bombardment, including quadcopter fire, tank shelling, Apache helicopter strikes and fire, and the detonation of booby-trapped robots in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood, Sabra, Jabalia, and Jabalia al-Nazla.

Gaza City Occupy Plan

Last week, Hamas agreed to a proposal by Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a 60-day ceasefire, which according to Qatar would see the release of half of the remaining captives in Gaza.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently rejected this, saying he had instructed negotiations to begin only for the release of all remaining captives and an end to the war in Gaza on terms “acceptable to Israel”.

Once the temporary ceasefire begins, the proposal is for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire that would include the return of the remaining captives.

However, mediators have been waiting for days for an official Israeli response to their latest ceasefire proposal.

Israel’s security cabinet two weeks ago approved plans to seize Gaza City, despite international condemnation from the United Nations and states.

The plan reportedly involves forcing around one million residents southwards before surrounding the city and launching incursions into residential areas, followed by an expansion into refugee camps in central Gaza.

On Thursday, Netanyahu said he will give final approval for the seizure of Gaza City despite talks for negotiations.

Speaking to soldiers near Gaza, Netanyahu said he was still set on approving plans for seizing Gaza City, the densely populated centre at the heart of the Palestinian enclave, forcibly displacing close to 1 million people and carrying out the systematic demolitions of Palestinian homes.

The wide-scale operation in Gaza City could start within days after Netanyahu grants final approval.

Israeli forces have already stepped up attacks there, and thousands of Palestinians have left their homes as Israeli tanks edged closer to Gaza City over the last 12 days.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) estimated that 90 percent of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, warning that shelters are deteriorating and any further displacement will worsen the catastrophic situation.

The Palestinian Ministry of Interior denounced Israel’s push to seize Gaza City as a “death sentence” for the more than one million people living there.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has reportedly ordered military chief Eyal Zamir to “besiege” Gaza City, saying anyone who doesn’t flee “can die of hunger or surrender.”

“We ordered you [to carry out] a quick operation. In my opinion, you can besiege them. Whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them,” Smotrich said, according to Channel 12 news.

“No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want and your capable [of doing it].”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also warned last week that “soon, the gates of hell will open” and “Gaza City will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun.”

“Soon, the gates of hell will open” if Hamas does not agree to “Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament,” Katz said.

“If they do not agree, Gaza [City], the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoon,” he added, referring to two cities in the Gaza Strip reduced to ruins during previous Israeli operations.

Anyone in Gaza City Who Doesn’t Flee ‘Can Die of Hunger or Surrender’: Smotrich

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has reportedly ordered military chief Eyal Zamir to “besiege” Gaza City, saying anyone who doesn’t flee “can die of hunger or surrender.” This comes as Israeli forces push deeper into the city as part of a stated plan to occupy the area and forcibly displace around one million people.

“We ordered you [to carry out] a quick operation. In my opinion, you can besiege them. Whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them,” Smotrich said, according to Channel 12 news.

“No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want and your capable [of doing it].”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also warned last week that “soon, the gates of hell will open” and “Gaza City will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun.”

“Soon, the gates of hell will open” if Hamas does not agree to “Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament,” Katz said.

“If they do not agree, Gaza [City], the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoon,” he added, referring to two cities in the Gaza Strip reduced to ruins during previous Israeli operations.

24 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

Israel’s razing of Gaza is not only about ethnic cleansing. It is about the erasure of a people, a culture and a history that expose the lies used to justify the Israeli state.

As Israel ticks off its list of Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians, including mass starvation, it prepares for yet another – the demolition of Gaza City, one of the oldest cities on Earth. Heavy engineering equipment and gigantic armored bulldozers are tearing down hundreds of heavily damaged buildings. Cement trucks are churning out concrete to fill tunnels. Israeli tanks and fighter jets pummel neighborhoods to drive Palestinians who remain in the ruins of the city to the south.

It will take months to turn Gaza City into a parking lot. I have no doubt Israel will replicate the efficiency of the Nazi SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who oversaw the obliteration of Warsaw. He spent his final years in a prison cell. May history, at least in terms of this footnote, repeat itself.

As Israeli tanks advance, Palestinians are fleeing, with neighborhoods such as Sabra and Tuffah, cleansed of its inhabitants. There is little clean water and Israel plans to cut it off in northern Gaza. Food supplies are scarce or wildly overpriced. A bag of flour costs $22.00 a kilo, or your life. A report published Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classifications (IPC) , the world’s leading authority on food insecurity, for the first time has confirmed a famine in Gaza City. It says more than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing “starvation, destitution and death”, with “catastrophic conditions” projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis next month. Nearly 300 people, including 112 children, have died from starvation.

European leaders, along with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, remind us of the real lesson of the Holocaust. It is not Never Again, but, We Do not Care. They are full partners in the genocide. Some wring their hands and say they are “appalled” or “saddened.” Some decry Israel’s orchestrated starvation. A few say they will declare a Palestinian state.

This is Kabuki theater — a way, when the genocide is over, for these Western leaders to insist they stood on the right side of history, even as they armed and funded the genocidal killers, while harassing, silencing or criminalizing those who decried the slaughter.

Israel speaks of occupying Gaza City. But this is a subterfuge. Gaza is not to be occupied. It is to be destroyed. Erased. Wiped off the face of the earth. There is to be nothing left but tons of debris that will be laboriously carted away. The moonscape, devoid of Palestinians of course, will provide the foundation for new Jewish colonies.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to…the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich announced at a conference on increased Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

All that was familiar to me when I lived in Gaza no longer exists. My office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. The coffee shops I frequented. The small cafes on the beach. Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have vanished, no doubt buried under mountains of debris. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.

The imposing Qasr al-Basha fortress in Gaza’s Old City — built by Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the 13th century and known for its relief sculpture of two lions facing each other — is gone. So too is the Barquq Castle, or Qalʿat Barqūqa, a Mamluk-era fortified mosque constructed in 1387-1388, according to an inscription above the entrance gateway. Its ornate Arabic calligraphy by the main gate once read:

“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. The mosques of God shall establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, and fear none except God.”

The Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, the ancient Roman cemetery and the Commonwealth War Cemetery — where more than 3,000 British and commonwealth soldiers from World War I and World War II are buried — have been bombed, and destroyed, along with universities, archives, hospitals, mosques, churches, homes and apartment blocks. Anthedon Harbor, which dates to 1100 B.C. and once provided anchorage for Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman ships, lies in ruins.

I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.

The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.

History is a mortal threat to Israel. It exposes the violent imposition of a European colony in the Arab world. It reveals the ruthless campaign to de-Arabize an Arab country. It underscores the inherent racism towards Arabs, their culture and their traditions. It challenges the myth that, as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said, Zionists created, “a villa in the middle of a jungle.” It mocks the lie that Palestine is exclusively a Jewish homeland. It recalls centuries of Palestinian presence. And it highlights the alien culture of Zionism, implanted on stolen land.

When I covered the genocide in Bosnia, the Serbs blew up mosques, carted away the remains and forbade anyone to speak of the structures they had razed. The goal in Gaza is the same, to wipe out the past and replace it with myth, to mask Israeli crimes, including genocide.

The campaign of erasure banishes intellectual inquiry and stymies the dispassionate examination of history. It celebrates magical thinking. It allows Israelis to pretend the inherent violence that lies at the heart of the Zionist project, going back to the dispossession of Palestinian land in the 1920s and the larger campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, does not exist.

The Israeli government bans public commemorations of the Nakba, or catastrophe, a day of mourning for Palestinians who seek to remember the massacres and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians carried out by Jewish terrorist militias in 1948 for this reason. Palestinians are even prevented from carrying their flag.

This denial of historical truth and historical identity permits Israelis to wallow in eternal victimhood. It sustains a morally blind nostalgia for an invented past. If Israelis confront these lies it threatens an existential crisis. It forces them to rethink who they are. Most prefer the comfort of illusion. The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.

Erasure calcifies a society. It shuts down investigations by academics, journalists, historians, artists and intellectuals who seek to explore and examine the past and the present. Calcified societies wage a constant war against truth. Lies and dissimulation must be constantly renewed. Truth is dangerous. Once it is established it is indestructible.

As long as truth is hidden, as long as those who seek truth are silenced, it is impossible for a society to regenerate and reform itself. The Trump administration is in lock step with Israel. It too seeks to prioritize myth over reality. It too silences those who challenge the lies of the past and the lies of the present.

Calcified societies cannot communicate with anyone outside their incestious circles. They deny verifiable fact, the foundation on which rational dialogue takes place. This understanding lay at the heart of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Those who carried out the atrocities of the apartheid regime confessed their crimes in exchange for immunity. By doing so they gave the victims and the victimizers a common language, one rooted in historical truth. Only then was healing possible.

Israel is not only destroying Gaza. It is destroying itself.

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.

22 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- A United Nations-backed global hunger monitor has officially declared a famine for the first time in Gaza City and its surrounding areas, as Israel continues to block aid from entering the war-torn enclave. Aid organizations and world leaders have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

According to the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) on Friday, famine was taking place in Gaza City and surrounding areas, in an area home to around 500,000 displaced Palestinians, with the number due to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions, characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the IPC briefing said.

Here’s how the world reacts to the IPC findings:

Palestine

Palestinian group Hamas called for an immediate end to the war and the lifting of the Israeli siege on the territory after the UN declared a famine in parts of Gaza.

In a statement, the group called for “immediate action by the UN and the security council to stop the war and lift the siege” and demanded that crossings be opened “without restrictions to allow the urgent and continuous entry of food, medicine, water and fuel”.

The group went on to say that the declaration by the UN has confirmed the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and accused Israel of using starvation as a “tool of war”.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said the IPC report and comments from UN officials confirm that famine in Gaza is now “a proven fact” that may amount to war crimes.

The reality in Gaza is even more grave and catastrophic than depicted in the UN-backed report, the office said in a statement, calling on the international community to intervene.

It said Israel’s own data on allowing several dozen trucks of aid into Gaza on average during the past weeks show that the volume going in is much lower than what’s needed by the famine-stricken population in the enclave. The figures “incriminate, not exonerate” Israeli authorities, the office added.

The statement said the technical terms used in the IPC report indicate that famine is now “a fact that cannot be manipulated” by Israel or its allies, and that “any state or organisation that turns a blind eye to this crime becomes complicit in its continuation and falls under the scope of international law”.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the IPC report “closed the door to interpretation and speculation regarding the occurrence of famine”.

“It has confirmed that what is required now, before it is too late, is the mobilisation of international influence in all its forms and dimensions to immediately halt the famine and the aggression against our people,” it said in a statement.

It also urged the UN Security Council and the international community “to address with utmost seriousness and concern” the contents of the report.

UN

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Gaza’s famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.

“Famine is not only about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival,” Guterres said. “People are starving. Children are dying. And those with the duty to act are failing.”

The UN chief said Israel, as the occupying power, has “unequivocal obligations” under international law, including the duty to ensure that food and medical supplies are made available to the population of Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, has highlighted that “months of warnings have fallen on deaf ears”, but now that the famine is confirmed in Gaza City and the surrounding areas, it is “time for political will” to end it.

“We cannot allow this situation to continue with impunity,” he said. “No more excuses. The time for action is not tomorrow – it is now.”

The UN human rights chief Volker Turk said that the emergence of famine in northern Gaza is the “direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government” and added that deaths from starvation might amount to a war crime.

“The famine declared today in Gaza Governorate by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government,” Turk said in a statement to reporters, referring to the IPC report.

“It is a war crime to use starvation as a method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of willful killing,” he added.

The famine in Gaza should “haunt us all” and was entirely preventable had the United Nations not been systematically prevented from bringing in food, UN aid chief Tom Fletcher told reporters in the Swiss city of Geneva.

“It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.”

Amnesty International

“This famine is the direct consequence of Israel’s deliberate campaign of starvation in Gaza,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement.

She said the IPC’s famine declaration is “a scathing indictment of the failure of states to press Israel into ending its genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip”.

“The deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, and the direct killings of civilians are a clear manifestation of how Israel is inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as part of its ongoing genocide,” she said.

“History will never forgive us for standing by as emaciated children die, while food remains just miles away, yet blocked by Israel.”

Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Israel must meet the basic needs of Gaza’s civilians for food, water and medicine, following Friday’s “devastating and entirely foreseeable” IPC report.

“Under international humanitarian law, Israel, as the occupying power, must ensure that the basic needs of the civilian population in Gaza are met, using all the resources it has available,” the ICRC said in a statement, adding that the famine declaration “must serve as a catalyst for immediate and concrete action.”

Oxfam

Oxfam said the IPC’s declaration of a famine in Gaza City confirms what the charity and its partners have been witnessing for months, and has called for aid to be immediately allowed into the territory.

“The famine in Gaza is entirely driven by Israel’s near-total blockade on food and vital aid, the horrifying consequence of Israel’s violence, and its use of starvation as a weapon of war,” said Helen Stawski, policy lead at Oxfam GB, the global poverty-focused NGO’s British arm.

“Despite warnings in July that famine was imminent, Israel has continued to deprive Palestinians of food, denying almost every request from long-established humanitarian agencies, preventing them from delivering vital food and aid that could have stemmed hunger, malnutrition and disease.”

She said that Oxfam had more than $3.3m worth of aid, including high-calorie food packages, sitting in warehouses outside Gaza.

“Israeli authorities have rejected it all, at a time when it is needed more than ever,” she said.

CAIR

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that Friday’s findings of famine in northern Gaza must push US President Donald Trump and the US Congress to end Washington’s unwavering support for Israel.

“This famine is not a natural disaster – it is the intended outcome of Israel’s brutal blockade, targeted destruction of food systems, and systematic obstruction of humanitarian aid. For months, international aid organizations have sounded the alarm,” CAIR wrote on X.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia expressed concern after the IPC’s famine report and said that the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza “will remain a stain on the international community”.

The situation in Gaza “is a direct result of the absence of deterrence and accountability mechanisms for the repeated crimes of the Israeli occupation”, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It urged that the UN Security Council “quickly intervene immediately to end the famine and stop the war of genocide and crimes committed by Israel against Palestine”.

Kuwait

Kuwait has denounced the “policy of starvation, oppression, and displacement” pursued by Israel against civilians in Gaza.

The country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Israel’s policy is “in blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law”, as well as UN Security Council resolutions and in disregard of relevant international legitimacy resolutions.

Kuwait also called on the international community and the Security Council to take action “to allow the urgent entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, to halt the genocide being perpetrated against the brotherly Palestinian people, and to hold the occupying power accountable for the crimes it commits against humanity”.

Gulf Cooperation Council

Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, stressed the need for immediate action by the international community to pressure Israel to open the crossings and allow the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza without restrictions.

In a statement on Friday, Albudaiwi pointed out that the official declaration of famine in the Gaza Strip by the IPC, which has reached catastrophic levels, “clearly reflects the dangerous, inhumane, and illegal starvation policies pursued by the Israeli occupation forces against the brotherly Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”.

United Kingdom

The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the famine in Gaza as a “moral outrage” and a “man-made catastrophe”, after it was declared by the IPC.

“The confirmation of famine in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhood is utterly horrifying and is wholly preventable,” Lammy said in a statement.

“The Israeli government’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into Gaza has caused this man-made catastrophe. This is a moral outrage.”

23 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Over 18,800 children are among the more than 62,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since the start of its genocide in Gaza nearly two years ago, amid warnings that no place is safe for children in the enclave with relentless bombardment, forced displacement, and starvation.

“Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres as early as November 6, 2023.

On Tuesday, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that no place is safe for children in the enclave. UN-run schools have become shelters for “hundreds of thousands of people” in Gaza amid constant Israeli bombardments that have levelled homes, UNRWA said.

Citing the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, UNRWA noted that in the past five months of the war, since Israel violated a ceasefire deal and resumed its assault, “an average of over 540 children have been killed every month, per reports”.

[https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1957784210904621206]

[https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1958208748305989667]

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, over 18,800 children have been killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the assault in October 2023.

122 children and infants have died due to malnutrition and starvation since the war began, as Israel continues to block aid from entering the enclave, including food, medicine, and fuel.

According to the Ministry in mid-July, more than 900 children were killed by Israel before their first birthday.

Many were killed in their beds. Others while playing. Some were buried before they learned to walk.

Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one child per hour during the Israeli assault. “Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children was killed, every day for nearly two years,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council.

22 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org