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By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putin addressed the Europeans in his remarks after the Summit: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Azmat Ali 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Guillermo R Barreto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Refaat Ibrahim

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Blocking Access to Food and Aid

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

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

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

Another driver said:

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

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

The WFP declined to comment on the testimonies.

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

2. Engineering Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Destroying Agricultural Infrastructure

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israel has:

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

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

4. Trapping People and Strangling Cash

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

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

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

5. Weaponizing Bureaucracy

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

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

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

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

6. Criminalizing Survival

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

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

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

7. Controlling the Narrative

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

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

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

Academic Lens on Gaza’s Famine

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

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

Refaat Ibrahim is a journalist from Gaza

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ralph Nader

August 15, 2025

New York Times:
Patrick Kingsley
Aaron Boxerman
Isabel Kershner
Adam Rasgon
Natan Odenheimer
Ronen Bergman
International Editor: Philip P. Pan

Washington Post:
Louisa Loveluck
Shira Rubin
Abbie Cheeseman
Miriam Berger
Gerry Shih
John Hudson
Associate Editor: Karen DeYoung

Wall Street Journal:
Foreign News Editor: James Hookway

The American Prospect:
Editor, David Dayen

Dropsite News:
Ryan Grim
Jeremy Scahill

The New Yorker:
Editor, David Remnick

You are some of the leading reporters and editors who have covered the Netanyahu genocidal mass murder and mayhem in Gaza. This important plea asserts that you all know better than to rely only on the extensive understatement of the deaths and serious injuries put forward by Hamas. You need to DO BETTER for your readers by digging deeper into the much higher estimates of deaths by experts in disaster casualties. Eye-witness accounts which do not support the Hamas undercount.

Both Hamas and Netanyahu, for different reasons, favor undercounts. Hamas, the governing entity in Gaza, keeps a strictly defined undercount of casualties from Israeli bombardments, does not count the large immediate secondary fatalities from the effects of Israeli blocking of food, water, medicine, healthcare, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies for what’s left of destroyed hospitals and clinics.

An official undercount from the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose fifteen counters are now themselves starving, temper accusations by the people of Gaza and its allies that Hamas has not protected them, even by sharing bomb shelters. Hamas badly underestimated the total savagery of the Israeli response to its October 7 attack through the mysteriously collapsed multi-tiered Israeli border security complex. Hamas fell into a lethal trap prompted by fears that a near deal between the U.S., Israel, and Gulf Arab states would sideline permanently the question of Palestine.

As sensitive journalists, you probably agree that the undercount is significant. As the Washington Post Foreign Affairs Editor, Karen DeYoung has often said, “…Independent media are not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza and the casualty counts are most certainly under-reported.”

In thousands of news articles, there is the same exact obligatory reference, to wit: “More than X number of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.” That severe undercount becomes the reported casualty figure despite the Israeli unchallenged, daily demolition bombing of Gaza.

As a result, unlike other armed conflicts in the world, the vast undercount of fatalities and injuries in Gaza is a vastly underreported story. Coming to more accurate estimates would affect the intensity of the political, diplomatic, and civic pressures for a ceasefire. It would also prompt more strenuous calls for immediate humanitarian aid, an immediate ceasefire, and peace negotiations.

Start with common sense. Gaza had 2.3 million people before October 7, 2023, in a cramped area the geographical size of Philadelphia. The Gaza Strip has experienced the most intense, daily bombardment on civilians and civilian infrastructure since World War II. There are no army bases or airfields in Gaza, only an under-armed small guerrilla force hiding in tunnels facing a super-modern military backed by super-modern U.S. military weapons and other Biden/Trump assistance.

As of mid-April 2025, University of Bradford (U.K.) Emeritus Professors Paul Rogers, a specialist on aerial and artillery bomb devastation, described the level of destruction in totally besieged Gaza as the “equivalent of six Hiroshimas, but even more destructive” because many more of the bombs over Gaza drop over targeted locations – schools, apartment buildings, hospitals, clinics, markets, refugee encampments, roads, water mains, electricity circuits and even the agricultural areas to deny the people of Gaza from growing some of their own food. Starvation, death by uncontrolled fires, infections, and the thousands of babies born into the rubble each month spiral the daily accelerating toll.

Now, if you take the current Hamas figure of just over 62,000, you are telling the public that 97% of Gazans are still alive. This is lethally absurd. A more conservative figure is that over 500,000 Palestinians have been killed from Netanyahu’s non-stop Palestinian Holocaust (more than all the U.S. soldiers killed in WWII.) This means that an incredible about one-out-of-four Palestinians have been killed.

American doctors and other health workers back from Gaza say almost all the survivors are either sick, injured, or dying. Without insulin, medicines for cancer, asthma, and heart disease for many months, with no shelters, with dense/deadly air pollutants, from incessant bombings, their observations are not surprising.

So, reporters and editors, start working on casualty estimates that accurately reflect the realities, in addition to respecting the Palestinian dead and properly highlighting the Trump/Congress role in this slaughter. Imagine if you will, if the shoe were on the other foot; does anyone think such an undercount would be tolerated from the outset?

The State Department testified in late 2023 that their estimates were higher than Hamas, and the witness, an Assistant Secretary of State, was shut down from further disclosure. FOIA litigation, pending before the Biden and Trump State Departments, is confronting the usual stonewalling that this Department has long been conducting.

There are credible sources for you to pursue among universities, international relief organizations, and UN food and humanitarian agencies. Specialists (e.g., the University of Edinburgh’s Global Health Department, The Lancet, etc.), have spoken out or published reports on the undercount. Reporting on the work of these and other specialists will advance the public’s right to know.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Gaza hospital volunteer, has compiled many of these sources and can be reached through the website gazahealthcareletters.org. His writing for The New York Times and other established publications and electronic media is compelling and reflects the on-the-ground reality in Gaza. (See my lengthy interview with Dr. Sidhwa on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, to be released on August 16, 2025).

Thank you for considering the higher significance of your crucial profession,

Ralph Nader

16 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya 

The US Alliance applied sanctions on Russia several days before its illegal invasion of Ukraine. However no significant sanctions have been applied to Apartheid Israel after 22 months of the Gaza Massacre that has transmuted to a Gaza Urbicide (most of Gaza demolished), a Gaza Genocide (680,000 Gazans killed by violence and deprivation, mostly children) and now horrifying mass starvation. The civilized World must apply sanctions to Apartheid Israel and all its state terrorists supporters.  

The World is seriously and existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change [1, 2] but for starving Gazans seeking scarce food,  “deaths from violence and imposed deprivation” (Google the phrase) is a present daily reality. Gaza Genocide-promoting Trump America is bullying the World with lies, threats and tariffs while it supplies the weapons, munitions, bombs, missiles, $3.8 billion annually of military assistance, and the US vetoes at the UN Security Council that enable Zionist Israeli impunity in its unforgivably-imposed and remorselessly ongoing Gaza Genocide. Zionist Israeli imposition of mass starvation on Gaza  will not only kill hundreds of thousands but is so shocking an ongoing war crime as to threaten all of Humanity through an erosion of common humanitarian values.  The World must immediately  stop the killing,  the mass starvation and genocidal Occupation by urgently applying rigorous and comprehensive sanctions on Zionazi Apartheid Israel and its key supporters, notably US, UK, neo-Nazi Germany, France, Australia and US Alliance state terrorism. These appalling realities are succinctly detailed and quantitated below.

(1). The West rightly applied sanctions on Russia  for its war criminal invasion of Ukraine.  Under Stalin Ukraine was subject to collectivisation and a consequent huge famine (Holodomor) in which 7 million perished in 1930-1933. In WW2 the Ukraine was the scene of huge fighting against  the invading Germans with 4.5-7 million Ukrainians  serving in the Red Army, and 6 million Ukrainians dying, including  1.5 million Jews. Some nationalist and fascist Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazi German invaders. The fall of Communism in the Soviet Union led to Ukrainian independence in 1991. However US machinations led to NATO territory steadily moving eastwards and accordingly aggravating the Russians. The removal of the pro-Russian president Yanukovych in 2014 after he rejected moves to join the EU led to Russian seizure of the strategic and mostly Russian-speaking Crimea and armed backing of rebels in the Eastern Ukraine  regions of  Donetsk and Luhansk. A Russian scholar informs that  the difference between Ukrainian and Russian is like that between English in Glasgow and London.

Led by the US, the US Alliance countries and other countries imposed sanctions on Russia on 21 February 2022 after it recognised the independence of the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine.  After the Russian invasion  on 24 February 2022, Western countries applied increasingly severe economic sanctions on Russia with the aim of devastating the Russian economy. Donald Trump after courting Vladimir Putin is now threatening even more severe sanctions on Russia if it doesn’t agree to a ceasefire [3, 4]. Russia has been damaged economically but has maintained oil, gas,  grain, fertilizer and vegetable oil exports to non-sanctioning countries, notably China and India [5].  Marianne Stein : “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused an immediate disruption in the global wheat market, with serious implications for food prices and global food security… Global wheat prices jumped by 28% in the early phases of the war, but within a few months, they began to decrease, although they remain 2-3% higher than before the invasion. Price increases of 2-3% may not seem like a lot, but it comes on top of ongoing global inflation, and it contributes to worsening food insecurity in many poor countries that are already suffering from high prices and inadequate supply of staple foods” [7-9]. About 7.4 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year, overwhelmingly in the Global South and about 70% under-5 year old infants. It is not known how many millions (?) may have died avoidably from deprivation the Global South [1] as a result  of the global fertilizer, vegetable oil and wheat price increases due to the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine has been devastated by the war but has kept the Russians at bay with arms from the US, NATO and Australia and clever use of drone technology. It is estimated that Russian military dead and wounded total 250,00 and 700,000, respectively, and Ukrainian military dead and wounded total 100,000 and 300,000, respectively [10, 11]. The populations of Russia and Ukraine are 146 million and 39 million, respectively. There are 5 million Ukrainian refugees across Europe and a further 8 million are internally displaced [12]. UN Ukraine (10 July 2025): “Since the beginning full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022, HRMMU [the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine] has documented the deaths of at least 13,580 civilians, including 716 children, and 34,115 civilians injured, including 2,173 children” [13].  

(2). The US, West, Australia and US Alliance State terrorists back genocidally racist, egregiously mendacious, endlessly thieving and serial war criminal Apartheid Israel.

Ideologically the Palestinian Genocide notably began with espousal of  a British form of proto-Zionism in the mid-19th century by mass murderer and racist psychopath Benjamin Disraeli (the Irish Famine, Indian famines, Australian Aboriginal Genocide, genocidal British imperialism) [14-20]. Continental European Zionism was founded in the 1890s by genocidally racist Jewish Hungarian psychopath Theodor Herzl  who regarded non-Europeans as “barbarians” and proposed ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Orthodox Jews firmly opposed Zionism and indeed Nathan Birnbaum who coined the term “Zionism” later rejected it and returned to the Orthodox Jewish position (no Jewish return to Zion before the Messiah arrives). Herzl  thought about Argentina as a Jewish State  (it had already been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous inhabitants by the Spanish) but returned to favour  Palestine for Eurocentric and geopolitical reasons [21-26]. Indeed there have been about 20 sites world-wide proposed for Jewish colonization, including in my own country Australia [27-29].    

Oil was discovered in Iran in 1908, the British navy was shifting from coal to oil, the British invaded Ottoman-ruled Iraq in 1914 after deliberately forcing Turkey into WW1, and the British and French prospectively divided up the Ottoman-ruled Middle East by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Palestinian Genocide  began in earnest over a century ago with catastrophic famine in Palestine due to World War 1 (WW1) that caused a demographic deficit of 110,000-250,000 Palestinians [30-37]. Palestine had been continuously inhabited by the Semitic forebears of the present Palestinians for over 4,000 years. Conversion to Islam occurred in about 640 CE. The Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (Al Quds) is the third holiest site in Islam. In  1516 the Ottoman Turks conquered Palestine and thence the Ottoman Caliphate ruled for 400 years until the British invasion in 1917 in WW1. The British forced Turkey into war by seizing warships paid for by Turkey, and then set about sharing the Ottoman Empire between the UK and France who in 1916 signed the secret Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement to divide up the Middle East (notwithstanding the T.E. Lawrence-promoted Arab revolt on promise of Arab independence). In 1917 the Turks were defeated by a British-Arab coalition,  a key Allied victory being the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba on  31 October 1917.  2 days later, on 2 November 1917,  the UK Balfour Declaration was issued granting a Jewish Home in Palestine  with the caveat that there should be no detriment to Arabs and Jews. In actuality the Balfour Declaration was an inducement for Russian Zionists to keep Russia in the war, but in the event Russia sued for peace and the caveat was quickly violated [38].

Violent mass killing of Palestinians commenced on 10 December 1918 when soldiers of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) massacred 100 Palestinian men and boys in the Surafend Massacre [39]. As of  August 2025 the ongoing, century-long, UK- and US-backed, and Zionist-imposed Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.7 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.2 million, and from imposed deprivation, 2.5  million, since the British invaded the Middle East in WW1 for oil and imperial hegemony. In  1922 the Palestine League of Nations Mandate was granted to Britain.

In 1880 in Palestine there were about 500,000 Indigenous Palestinians (90% Muslims and 10% Christians) and 25,000 Jews, of whom half were immigrants. In  1900-1939 the  Jewish population rose from 50,000 to 300,000 under the racist British Mandate. Many Palestinian tenant farmers lost their livelihoods as owners sold their land to Zionist colonizers. In 1936, there was a  Palestinian general strike, and a guerrilla war broke out between Indigenous Arabs and the British-armed and British-trained invading Jewish colonizers [40]. About 10% of the adult male Palestinian population were killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled [41, 42]. In 1939 with war looming a  British White Paper constrained Jewish immigration in order to placate the hundreds of millions of Muslim British Empire subjects  but nevertheless in 1939-1945 there was substantial illegal Jewish immigration of Jews fleeing the Nazis. In 1944 the British War Cabinet secretly approved post-war Partition of Palestine. In 1947 the UN adopted the  UN Partition Plan that ignored the desire of many parties for a secular, unitary and democratic state in Palestine (that still remains the most practical and humane option for Palestine) [43]. In  1948 the British left, the UN recognized the State of Israel (but not a Palestinian State), and war commenced between Israel and neighbouring Arab states. The genocidal Zionists committed major atrocities (notably the  Deir Yassin Massacre and the Tantura Massacre, with over 100 and 200 killed, respectively), 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians were expelled, 530 villages were emptied, 120 mosques were ultimately destroyed, 15,000 Palestinians were killed and the Zionists seized 78% of Palestine [44, 45].The residual Indigenous Palestinian  population  in Israel was subject to martial law  until 1966, suffered dispossession from land,  and still suffers discrimination under 65 race-based, Nazi-style discriminatory laws [46, 47].

In 1956 Israel revealed its role as an agent of Western imperialism by colluding with  the UK and France in invading Egypt at the same time as Russia was quashing the Hungarian revolt (the US successfully demanded UK, France and Israeli withdrawal). The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964.  In 1967 Apartheid Israel  (now nuclear-armed with US and French help) attacked all of its neighbours (and the defenceless USS Liberty) with occupation of the Sinai (Egypt), Gaza (Egypt), the West Bank (Jordan), Jerusalem (Jordan) and the Golan Heights (Syria) and the expulsion of a further 400,000 Indigenous Arabs. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Egypt versus Israel) Egypt unsuccessfully attempted to recover the Sinai that had been captured by Israel in 1967. In 1974 PLO leader Yasser Arafat addressed the UN. In  1976, 6 Palestinians were killed, 100 were wounded and hundreds were arrested in Palestinian protests  in Israel over land seizure (there have been subsequent annual 30 March Land Day protests). US offices secured peace with Egypt in 1979 with return of the Sinai to Egypt. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon as far as the capital Beirut where it was complicit in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres (3,000 Palestinians murdered in Israeli-occupied Beirut by Christian Falangist Israeli allies). The period 1982-2000 saw Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The first Palestinian Intifada (revolt; Arabic “shaking  off”) commenced in 1987, and in  1988, Arafat eschewed violence and recognized Israel. The 1993, US-brokered Oslo Agreement for Palestinian self-government permitted small arms arming of Palestinians. Apartheid Israel continued seizure of Arab lands in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

In 2000 Israeli abuses provoked renewed Intifada, and in 2004 Arafat died (unexpectedly high levels of polonium were found on his clothes). In  2005 Apartheid  Israel pulled out from Gaza but imposed strict border controls with continued air attacks on a densely populated Gaza Concentration Camp. Apartheid Israel expanded the Apartheid Wall and  illegal Jewish settlements on ethnically cleansed Arab land in the military-ruled and increasingly diminished West Bank. In 2006 the Muslim Hamas organization convincingly won the Occupied Palestinian elections held under Israeli guns. The US Alliance and Israel rejected the result, and Hamas MPs were variously imprisoned, killed, exiled or confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp . In  2007  Hamas defeated Fatah and took control of Gaza. Apartheid Israel made repeated  violent attacks by land, air and sea  on the Occupied Palestinians confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp [48] (2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2021 Gaza Massacres) with thousands killed, tens of thousands wounded, massive infrastructure and home destruction, and imposition of a deadly blockade to deliberately achieve near-unliveable conditions. The excuses for these ongoing Gaza Massacres were home-made rockets fired from Gaza that killed about 40 Israelis this century.

The genocidally racist Zionists continued their illegal and war criminal Occupation with massive, illegal Jews-only settlements and Jews-only roads in the Occupied West Bank. 90% of Palestine was ethnically cleansed, this rendering the “two state solution” impossible, and underscoring the reality of Israeli Apartheid recognized by global and Israeli human rights groups. In  2017, Trump America recognized all of Occupied East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, this prompting weekly Friday demonstrations by unarmed Occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Concentration Camp (over 180 killed, and 9,200 wounded in the Great March on Return).

(3). The state of 15 million Indigenous Palestinians before the Apartheid Israel-facilitated  Occupied Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp.

The  Apartheid Israeli-facilitated Occupied Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp on 7 October 2023 was evidently to secure 250 Israeli hostages to bargain for 5,000 Palestinians prisoner held by Apartheid Israel  and indeed for 5.6 million Occupied Palestinian hostages of the genocidal Zionazis. Before 7 October 2023  there were about 15 million Indigenous Palestinians: (a) 5.6 million mostly impoverished  Occupied Palestinians confined under highly abusive Zionist Israeli military rule to West Bank ghettoes (3.2 million) or the Gaza Concentration Camp (2.4 million), denied all human rights [46, 47] and excluded from voting for the government ruling them (i.e. subject to egregious Apartheid ), (b) 2.1 million “lucky” Israeli Palestinians (who can vote for Zionist-vetted  candidates for the government ruling them but as Third Class citizens subject to 65 Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws ), and (c) 7  million mostly utterly impoverished Exiled Palestinians forbidden to return to the land continuously inhabited by their forebears  for over 4,000 years [36, 49- 51]. The ongoing, century-long Palestinian Genocide had been associated by 2023 with 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since 1916 whereas  5,000 Zionist invaders/Israelis have been killed by Palestinians since 1920 [36, 44, 52].

The Occupied Palestinians (5.6 million pre-war but as few as 4.9 million now according to expert epidemiologists [52-79] and also by National Security Agency (NSA)-advised President Donald Trump [79]) have zero human rights, live under violent  military rule, are brutally confined to small  parts of their own country, and cannot vote for the government ruling them [36]. This is egregious Apartheid as pointed out by eminent Jewish and non-Jewish commentators in South Africa and around the world [80, 81]. Before 2023  the per capita GDP was $55,500 for Apartheid Israel, $3,500 for the Occupied Palestinians, and was only $1,000  for Gazans after 16 years of blockade in which the Zionist Israelis permitted entry of carefully calculated food for bare survival. The life expectancy of Occupied Palestinians is 10 years less than that of Israelis. Apartheid Israel was violating (and still is violating) 15 major International Laws and Conventions, notably the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid [81, 82], the Geneva Conventions [83], the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [84], the UN Conventionon the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN Genocide Convention)[85] and the UN Charter[36, 86].

(4). 22 months of the Gaza Urbicide, Gaza Massacre, and Gaza Genocide: Gaza demolished and 680,000  Gaza deaths from violence and imposed deprivation by 25 April 2025.

A brutally  Occupied and subjugated people (like the Occupied Palestinians for 58 years) have the right to defend themselves according to the UN Charter [86] and the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [84]. Conversely, Occupiers (like Apartheid Israel that has brutally and criminally subjugated Occupied Palestinians for 58 years and the Indigenous Palestinians in general for 77 years) do not have the right to defend themselves in a belligerently occupied territory.  The Occupied Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp on 7 October 2023 was evidently to get 250 or so hostages to exchange for about 5,000 Occupied Palestinians imprisoned by the Zionazis (there are now about 10,000) and indeed 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians held hostage by Zionazi Apartheid Israel for 58 years [36, 48, 49].

It is now clear that Apartheid Israel knew of the planned Breakout a year in advance and by greatly delayed IDF response permitted and facilitated the Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp guarded by a double-layer, state-of-the-art security fence and surveillance system [87-92]. Just as Hamas was materially supported by Israeli Shin Bet and Apartheid Israel in a divide-and-rule Zionazi policy to cripple Palestinian resistance, so too the 7 October 2023 was clearly facilitated by the Zionazis to provide an “excuse” for  the subsequent genocidal atrocity (680,000 Gazans killed by violence and imposed deprivation by 25 April 2025). The Zionazis immediately declared “7 October” to be “the worst atrocity against Jews since the [Jewish] Holocaust” and “Israel’s 9/11”. Ignored by Western Mainstream media, 32 million Muslims died from violence (5 million) and imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance after the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 Americans [93, 94]. 9/11 and 7 October were described by the Americans and the Zionazis, respectively, as massive intelligence failures yet the US and Apartheid Israel lead the world in high technology intelligence acquisition and analysis .  

 On 7 October 2023 about 6,000 unarmed or lightly armed Occupied Palestinians escaped from the Gaza Concentration Camp, 1,600 were killed, and 150 were captured.  1,200 Israelis were killed (perhaps 600 of them killed in the belated IDF response involving high explosive shelling and hellfire missiles from helicopters). 97.5% of the Israelis killed (1,170) were adults and hence (because of compulsory  Jewish Israeli military service) overwhelmingly former or present members of the war criminal and Zionazi IDF occupying and abusing the Occupied Palestinian Territories including the Gaza Concentration Camp. About 2.5% of the Israeli dead (36) were children, many of whom would have been killed by high explosive fire from the responding IDF, this belying Zionazi propaganda about the Palestinians trying to exterminate Israelis on 7 October 2023 [91]. About 250 Israeli hostages were taken and these dominate the Western discussion, but ignored are the 10,000 political prisoners held by the Zionazis, this including 400 children. From 7 October 2023 to April 2025, the number of Palestinian political prisoners doubled, rising from 5,250 to nearly 10,000 [95]. 

As estimated from data published by a succession of expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet, 136,000 Gazans died violently by 25 April 2025 with  a “conservatively estimated” 4 times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths that is under-reported 10 fold by Western Mainstream media. In impoverished countries  about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation are those of under-5 year old infants (see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country [1]). It is estimated that the 680,000 dead Gazans (28% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.4 million) included  380,000 under-5 year old infants, 479,000 children in total, 63,000 women and 138,000 men [52-79].

Now the surviving Gazans are suffering man-made famine and mass starvation while the world looks on. This crime has been perpetrated many times in history, notably in the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust  (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death in 1942-1945 for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British under fervent Zionist Winston Churchill with food-denying Australian complicity) (for details of this and some 70 other genocide and holocaust atrocities see Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial & the crisis in biological sustainability” [96]) .

There need to be ICC-led Nuremberg-style war crimes trials  dedicated to the trial and punishment of all those responsible for the Gaza Massacre, Gaza Genocide and Gaza Urbicide. If these ICC processes are insufficient or otherwise thwarted then People’s Tribunals  should be emplaced after the fashion of the People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War. Apartheid Israel like Zionist-perverted America rejects the authority of the  ICC and indeed rejects  some 15 major  International laws  and conventions [36]. There is a shocking list of 52 Zionist- and Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany comparisons [97]. Indeed it appears that the IDF and the Israeli Government have committed war crimes against Jewish Israeli  citizens by allowing and facilitating  the 7 October 2023 Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp and operating under the so-called Hannibal Directive (killing Israelis to stop them becoming hostages) [90].

(5). Genocidally racist  Apartheid Israel wants all the land of Palestine (and more) but not the Indigenous inhabitants who are to be expelled, killed or confined to ghettoes or concentration camps. 

The consistent theme of the Holy Bible’s  Old Testament (The Torah of Judaism) is ethnic cleansing of Canaan (Palestine) [98]. The genocidally racist Zionists follow this obscene imperative as clearly and horribly stated by Zionist leaders from racist psychopath Theodor Herzl in the 1890s to racist psychopath Benjamin Netanyahu today [98]. Indeed today the Israelite “God” would be charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for advocating and ordering genocide, noting the UN Genocide Convention: “Article I. The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish. Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such : (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Article III. The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide” [85].

By way of example, Theodor Herzl (1895): “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit counties, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly” [98] and Benjamin Netanyahu (1989): “Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories” [98].

A brief summary of Zionist-imposed Palestinians Genocide by the numbers [31, 35, 43, 44]:

(i) 1881 (450,000 Palestinians/25,000 Jews).

(ii). 1916 (600,000 Palestinians/60,000 Jews): mass murder by famine of 100,000-250,000 Palestinians occurred in WW1.

(iii). 1922: large Zionist immigration started

(iv). 1936 (1,000,000 Palestinians/360,000 Jews):   90% of tenant farmers were kicked out by Zionist land purchases, this leading to the Arab revolt in which 10% of adult males were killed, imprisoned or expelled by the British and British-armed Zionists.

(v). 1946 (1,270,000 Palestinians/543,000 Jews): massive immigration despite ostensible WW2 British constraints.

(vi). 1947 (1,324,000 Palestinians/630,000 Jews): British-armed and British-trained Zionist terrorists started the ethnic cleansing  of Palestine.

(vii). 1948, Nakba (Catastrophe): 800,000 Palestinians expelled, Jews seized 78% of Palestine; subsequent immigration from Western-dominated Muslim countries.

(viii). 1967, Naksa (Setback): 400,000 Arabs expelled, Jews seized all of Palestine plus parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

(ix). 2023 (before the Gaza Massacre): 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians (2.4 million Gazans, 3.2 million West Bank). 9.8 million in Apartheid Israel (7.2 million Jews, 2.1 million Palestinians , 0.5 million  others).  Jews were 46.8% of Apartheid Israel Subjects, Palestinians 50.0%.  The Zionazi killing  of 700,000 Gazans (so far) means that Jews are now 48.3% of Apartheid Israeli Subjects, and Palestinians are  now 47.6%.

The West with the exception of Trump America still dishonestly  clings to the fig-leaf of a 2-state solution that has been rendered impossible by Zionazi Israeli settlements  and is firmly rejected by US-backed and genocidally racist  Apartheid Israel that wants all the land of Palestine (plus neighbouring lands) but not the Indigenous inhabitants who are to be expelled, killed or confined to ghettoes or concentration camps.  Trump America notoriously advocated complete ethnic cleansing of the remaining 1.7 million Gazans to make way for Riviera-style luxury American real estate development [79]. 

(6). Horrific Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratios in the Zionist-imposed Gaza Genocide – terrorism is as terrorism does,  Nazism is as Nazism does.

On 7 October 2023 (Day 1 of the latest Gaza Massacre) the  Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio was 1,600 /600 = 2.7 (assuming that the overwhelming high explosive firepower of the shells and missiles of the responding IDF was responsible for 50% of the Israeli deaths) [100]. Thus on Day 1 of the Gaza Genocide the Zionazis had already exceeded the Biblical injunction of an “life for life, eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” by a factor of about 3. Whereas the Old Testament stated: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”( Exodus 21, 23-24),  the wonderful Jewish Palestinian humanitarian Jesus stated: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5, 38-39) [101].

As of 14 December 2023 (Day 70 of the Gaza Massacre), Palestinian dead in and near Gaza = 24,711 + 1,600 (fighters killed in Israel on 7 October) + 8,000 (dead in rubble) = 34,311 [100]. Conservatively assuming that the responding IDF killed half of the 1,200 Israelis who died on 7 October 2023 (i.e. 600) then the Occupied/ Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio = 34,311/ 600 = 57, nearly 3 times greater than the Occupied/ Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio of 10  ordered by Nazi leader Hitler and carried out in the 1944 Ardeatine Cave Massacre [99]). Nazism is as Nazism does.

As of 25 April 2025 (Day 570 of the Gaza Massacre) the Occupied/ Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio was 680,000/ 600 = 1,113 or over 100  times greater than the Reprisals Death Ratio ordered by Nazi mass murderer Adolph Hitler. Nazism is as Nazism does. Terrorism is as terrorism does. By 25 April 2025 the genocidally racist Zionazis have exceeded the Jewish Torah’s injunction of “life for life” by a factor of over 1,000. Applying this West-backed and  Zionazi-imposed  Reprisals Death Ratio of 1,113 to the 0.7 million Gazans killed so far would indicate Reprisal killings of 780 million, similar to the 2025 population of  NATO countries (958 million) and greater than the population of all NATO countries minus the US and Canada (571 million). Applying the relatively “modest” Nazi-advocated Reprisals Death Ratio of 10 to 0.7 million massacred Gazans would mean 7 million Reprisal Deaths, this being about the same as the number of Jewish Israeli Subjects of Apartheid Israel (7.2 million) [50]. Nazism is as Nazism does. Terrorism is as terrorism does.

And the killing continues while the World looks on and genocidally racist, Zionist-perverted and Gaza Genocide-backing Trump America vetoes any UN action.

I was a founding member of Free Palestine Melbourne that helps organize huge Sunday Rallies for Gaza that until recently were  held weekly in the Melbourne CBD since 7 October 2023 (due to Zionist pushback they are now held monthly). I have attended most of these rallies. Sometimes I see people with  placards saying that the Gaza Genocide started in 1948 and not on 7 October 2023.  I have corrected them, saying that the Gaza Genocide actually started in World War 1 (see section (2) above).  However the UN has recorded Palestinian and Israeli deaths in the violence in the Gaza Strip in the circa 16 years  of Israeli-imposed blockade of the Gaza Concentration Camp prior to 7 October 2013. In the Gaza Genocide  from 2008 to  6 October 2023  the Death Ratio from 7,077 Palestinian deaths/340 Israeli deaths was  21 [102, 103]. As of 25 April 2025 or Day 570 of the present, post-7 October 2023  Gaza Massacre  the Death Ratio was a shocking 1,113.

For decades I have been observing that while terrorists are rightly condemned  for bombing and other atrocities that kill a few to scores of people (e.g. 130 were killed in the appalling 2015 Paris atrocity), the retaliatory consequences from   such atrocities   are vastly more deadly. Thus 32 million Muslims died from violence, 5 million, and imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity that killed about 3,000 innocent Americans [93, 94]. The Palestinian  Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp on 7 October 2023 was associated with 1,200 Israeli deaths of which perhaps 50% were caused by the responding IDF. If the Palestinians guessed that  they might kill about  600 Israelis in capturing 250 hostages (the evident purpose of the Breakout)  then on the basis of the previous 16 years of conflict in Gaza, they could have estimated that 21 x 600 = 12,600 Palestinians would be killed in Reprisals by the Israelis. Culpable sangfroid indeed to mount an operation that would surely kill 12,600 fellow Palestinians, albeit killed by mass murdering Zionazis. I must presume that they had no conception that their actions would have the consequences of massive demolition of densely populated, 4,000 years old and culturally super-important Gaza (the Gaza Urbicide)  and an ongoing a Gaza Genocide killing  680,000 people by 25 April 2025 (28% of the pre-war population and mostly children) with Zionist-perverted America  and Zionazi Apartheid Israel  adumbrating total ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

(7). All terrorism is evil but Western “state terrorists” are vastly more deadly than Western-declared “non-state terrorists” or indeed numerous national resistance people the genocidally racist West doesn’t like.  

 This leads us to definitions of what is a terrorist. In the post-9/11 world and indeed in the post-WW2 world, the most generally applied Western definition of a  terrorists is that of national resistance  people that the US doesn’t like. However a vastly more objective and quantitative definition of “terrorism” would necessarily include the numbers of people killed, and on that basis Western “state terrorism” is vastly more deadly and horrific than utterly repugnant “non-state terrorism” in its various manifestations.  Indeed one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

We have limited freedom of speech in Zionazi-perverted and US lackey Australia and so because I value my physical liberty I am extremely reluctant to comment on the specifics of US Alliance-asserted “non-state terrorism”. However by way of example,  the Zionist- and US-perverted Australian Broadcasting  Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) obtained expert legal opinions that the late and great John Pilger (Australia’s greatest journalist) would have violated Australia’s draconian anti-terrorism laws by comparing Iraqis resisting the illegal UK, US and Australian invasion and Occupation of Iraq with the heroic French Resistance fighters operating against Nazi Germany in WW2.

Below is a brief sketch of US Alliance state terrorism that is involved in the post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust, the century-long Palestinian Genocide, and the Gaza Genocide.

 US. Apart from inevitable border spats, most countries in the world have not invaded other countries. In stark contrast, as of 2023 the US has invaded 72 countries (52 since World War 2],  has committed 469 invasions from 1798 onwards, committed 251 invasions since 1991, invaded or otherwise had a military presence in all but 3 countries, and has 800 military bases in over 70 countries. Indeed there are only 3 countries that have not had US forces on their territory [104-114]. About 32 million Muslims died from violence, 5 million, and imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 innocent Americans [115-118]. 1950 onwards US Asian wars were associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and imposed deprivation [1]. The US under both Biden and Trump  supplied Apartheid Israel with 69% of  its weaponry, funded the Gaza Genocide with $3.8 billion each year, supplied  the bombs and missiles to destroy Gaza and kill 680,000 Gazans, and used its veto at the UNSC to block any international action to stop the Gaza Genocide.    

UK. A genocidally racist, settler colonialist and imperialist Britain has invaded 193 countries over the last millennium [1, 113, 119]. Britain has had a long history of slavery, and genocidal colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. About 1,800 million Indians died avoidably from British-imposed deprivation in the 2 centuries between the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million died) and the 1943-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian complicity) [120]. The UK was a key participant in the US War on Terror (aka the US War on Muslims) including the Iraqi Genocide (1990-2011, 5 million killed) and the Afghan Genocide (2001 -2021, 6.8 million killed) [1, 117, 118]. The UK was responsible for giving the ancient and important country of Palestine to the  genocidal Zionists, enabling mass immigration of Zionist settler colonialists and arming and training Zionist terrorists. The UK assisted Zionazi Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Genocide with overflight intelligence and US use of British bases. PM Keir Starmer’s Starmer Troops have recently been  used to arrest 500 British activists supporting non-violent Palestine Action that has been proscribed by the UK Government as a “terrorist organization”, an action that  has been described by legal experts as a dangerous shift in British  law [120].  A good peace activist friend of mine for decades, Allen Jasson, was among those arrested in this travesty of justice that threatens the civil rights and human rights of all people in Britain and consequently of all Humanity. I have told  Allen that I admire his moral courage and will use my present freedom to continually update the World about the circumstances of him and his fellow arrested peace activists. 

Germany. Germany commenced a century of genocide with the genocide of the Indigenous Hereros and Namas in South West Africa. In the 1940s genocidal German  racism was responsible for the following atrocities (deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in brackets): WW2 Sinti and Roma Holocaust (1 million), WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million), WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million), WW2 Soviet Holocaust (23 million) and the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million) [1].  Germany gave billions of dollars in reparations for the WW2 Jewish Holocaust  to support Apartheid Israel’s remorseless Palestinian Genocide, supplied Apartheid Israel with 30% of its weapons imports, supported the US War on Muslims, suppled 5 submarines to carry Israeli nuclear weapons, fervently supports Apartheid Israel and persecutes pro-Palestinian human rights Jewish and non-Jewish Germans [121]. The post-WW2 de-Nazification of Germany was clearly insufficient.

France. France has invaded 80 countries and has a long history of slavery and genocidal colonialism in the Americas, Africa and Asia [113, 122], supplied advanced weapons systems  to Apartheid Israel, enabled Apartheid Israel to acquire nuclear weapons [123], was a key player in the post-9/11 War on Muslims in Africa [115], helped the UK devastate Libya, and fervently supports Apartheid Israel and hence the utterly vile crime of Apartheid. The pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid new Vichy France soils “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”.  

Australia. Variously as a UK or US lackey Australia has invaded 85 countries with 30 of these invasions being genocidal [113, 124-127]. The over 2-century Australian Aboriginal Genocide was associated with 2 million Indigenous deaths from violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease, the forced removal of Indigenous children from their mothers  (that is still proceeding at a record rate), and massive Aboriginal Ethnocide (of 350-700 unique languages and dialects before the British invasion in  1788 , only 120 survive with all but 20 endangered) [127]. Australia has been involved in all 1950s onwards US Asian wars (atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and imposed deprivation) [1]. Variously as a UK lackey, a US lackey or as one of the world’s worst climate criminals Australia has violated all 81 Indo-Pacific countries. Indeed Australians were involved in 8 US-backed Coups in the Indo-Pacific, namely Laos (1960), Indonesia (1965), Cambodia (1970), Chile (1973), Australia (1975), Fiji (1987), Fiji (2000), and Australia (2010) [134, 135]. The Australian Labor Government and the Coalition Opposition are complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways [136] and lie for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways [137-139].

 One notes that none of these state terrorist countries recognize the State of Palestine (although they have recognized the genocidally racist and serial war criminal State of Israel since 1948),  all of them are members of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic,  anti-Jewish anti-Semitic   and holocaust-ignoring International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) [128-131], all reject the absolutely vital Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) that stands between Humanity and near-total annihilation [132], are associated with nuclear terrorism, and all showed their true colours by utterly disgracefully voting No to the annual UN General Assembly anti-Nazi Resolution [133]. 

It gets worse. The carnage inflicted by the US Alliance is exhaustively analysed in my huge book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”  that (among many other things)  includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country” [1], noting that elevated avoidable mortality occurs in threatened countries, occupied countries and in countries after the occupier leaves. In Chapter 3, “Correlates and causes of post-1950 avoidable global mass mortality”, I estimated 1950-2005 “avoidable deaths from deprivation” in countries variously occupied by aggressor countries in the post-WW2 era. The results for the victims of the following major occupying countries  of present interest are shocking:  Apartheid Israel (24 million),  Australia (2 million), France (142 million), the UK (727 million) and the US (82 million). In the period analysed Australia had only occupied Papua-New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a major occupier, however as a party to all US Asian wars it has a notional share in the deaths of the 40 million Asians who died from violence and (mostly) deprivation in those US atrocities [1]. Likewise, Germany temporarily stopped killing in 1945 but as a NATO member was involved in the 2001-2021 Afghan Genocide (6.8 million Afghan deaths from violence, 0.4 million,  and deprivation, 6.4 million) [1, 96, 117, 140-142], and thus in the 32 million deaths from violence (5 million) and deprivation (27 million) in the US-imposed post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide [1, 93, 117, 118, 142]. 

(8). From 2008-7 October 2023 inclusive the number of  Israelis murdered by fellow Israelis (2,475)  greatly exceeded the number of  Israelis killed by Occupied Palestinians (940). 

Assuming that 50% of those killed on 7 October 2023 (i.e. 600) were killed by the responding IDF then the number of Israelis killed by Occupied Palestinians (a) from 2008 to 6 October 2023 inclusive was 340 [102], and (b) from 2008-7 October  2023  2008 to 7 October 2023 inclusive  was 600 (7 October 2023) + 340 (2008 – 6 October 2023)[102] = 940.

The murder/homicide rate in Israel proper was 19.4 killed per million of population per year in 2022 [143]. The average Israeli population in the period 2003-2025 was 8.1 million [1, 50]. Accordingly the number of Israelis killed by Israelis in the period 2008 – 7 October 2023 inclusive was (19.4 per million of population per year ) x 8.1 million population x  15.75 years = 2,475. In contrast, the number of Occupied Palestinians killed in Israel in this period was 7,077 (2008-6 October 2023) [102] + 1,600 Breakout Occupied Palestinians = 8,677.

Accordingly the number of  Israelis killed by Israelis from 2008-7 October 2023 (2,475) was  (a) 7.3  times greater than the number of Israelis killed by Occupied Palestinians in the same period (940) and (b) was 3.5 times lower than the number of Occupied Palestinians killed by Israelis (excluding the West Bank) in that period [1, 50]. 

From 2008-7 October 2023 Israeli murders of fellow Israelis (2,475) vastly exceeded deaths of Israelis killed by  Occupied Palestinians (940). Following the reprisals logic of the egregiously mendacious Zionazis, why didn’t the IDF  respond to these Israeli homicides by fellow Israelis by reducing  Tel Aviv to rubble and killing 680,000 Israelis? For a similar 2017 analysis entitled “Israelis Kill Ten Times More Israelis In Apartheid Israel Than Do Terrorists” see [144].

(9). Terrorism as terrorism does.

As  previously observed, one person’s “terrorist” is another person’s “freedom fighter” or “national resistance fighter” like the WW2 French Maquis (French Resistance). A quantitative and hence more objective measure of “terrorism” would be the number of people killed by the asserted “terrorists”.   Paradoxically Apartheid Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence organization covertly supported Hamas in a divide-and-rule Apartheid Israeli policy of backing division between the Islamic Hamas and the secular PLO [145]. As outlined above in section (8), in the period 2008-7 October 2023 inclusive, Israeli  deaths attributable to  Hamas totalled 940-1,500. Before the Gaza Massacre Hamas was involved  heavily in social service delivery in severely blockaded Gaza and had substantial popular support. Similarly, about 2,000 Apartheid Israeli invaders were killed by the Lebanese national resistance group Hezbollah in fighting Apartheid Israeli invaders  from 1982 onwards [146]. Hezbollah has substantial popular support in Lebanon and has numerous democratically-elected Parliamentary representatives, whereas Apartheid Israel excludes its Occupied Palestinian Subjects (5.6 million pre-war, now fewer than 5.0 million) from all human rights and voting for the government ruling them .

In stark contrast, as set out in section (8), the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, the US Alliance and Apartheid Israel are variously complicit  in the following genocidal atrocities (deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in brackets): the Gaza Genocide (680,000 by 25 April 2025), the century-long Palestinian Genocide (2.7 million), 1950 onwards US Asian wars  (40 million) and the post-9/11 War on Terror aka US War on Muslims (32 million). It should be noted that according to world-famous Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Apartheid Israeli PM Benjamin  Netanyahu and key US warmonger Paul Wolfowitz planned the destruction of Iraq [147, 148], and former  top US General Wesley Clark revealed the US Pentagon plan to invade and devastate 7 Muslim countries, namely Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran [149] (all these atrocities eventuated). 

Accordingly, if Hamas and Hezbollah can be described as “terrorists” or “non-state terrorists” over the deaths of several thousand Israeli invaders, then  the US Alliance countries including Apartheid Israel can surely be describes as “state terrorists”, over various involvements in the deaths from violence and imposed deprivation of several millions to several tens of millions of Indigenous people in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

It is therefore appropriate to  refer to Apartheid Israel state terrorism, US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, German state terrorism, French state terrorism, Australian state terrorism and US Alliance state terrorism that are variously involved in the Gaza Genocide, the century-long Palestinian Genocide  and in the ongoing US War on Muslims that has devastated the Muslim world for decades.

The key ethos of decent Humanity is Kindness and Truth but Zionazi Apartheid Israel and the Zionist-perverted US Alliance are committed to murderous state terrorism involving  genocidal racism, egregious Orwellian mendacity and remorseless grand theft. In the Zionist-perverted UK the state terrorist Starmer Labour Government has turned reason on its head and has declared the non-violent Palestine Action group a “terrorist organization” with 500 of  those publicly supporting its peaceful aims arrested and threatened with draconian custodial punishment. In Zionazi Trump America  the best of America – its anti-racist students,  academics and universities –  are subject to threat. In Zionist-subverted and US lackey Australia the Australian Labor Government state terrorists and the Coalition Opposition state terrorists are complicit  in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways [136], lie for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways [137, 138] and threaten civil rights and human rights with draconian “anti-terror” laws and Zionist McCarthyism [69].   

Inaction is complicity and silence is complicity. What must decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can (Mainstream Western presstitutes certainly won’t) and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Zionazi Apartheid Israeli state terrorism and against all its US Alliance state terrorist supporters.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”,  Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[3]. “Ukraine”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine .  

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[6]. Gideon Polya, “Ukraine War & US Killing By War & Sanctions”, Countercurrents, 26 March 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality-since-1950-ukraine-war-us-killing-by-war-sanctions/ .

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[9].Stephen Devados and William Ridley, “Impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the global wheat market”, January 2024, World Development, volume 173, 106396: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X23002140?via%3Dihub .

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[17]. Adam Kirsch, “Benjamin Disraeli”, Schocken, 2008.

[18]. Mark Burdman, “How Britain’s biggest racists invented Zionism”: https://archive.org/stream/HowVeniceTookOverEnglandandOtherArticlesEIRPalmerstonsZoo/How%20Britains%20Biggest%20Racists%20and%20Financiers%20Created%20Zionism%20-%20by%20Mark%20Burdman_djvu.txt .

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Charles III Coronation Ignored Imperialism, Colonialism, Genocide, Trauma, Deadly Colonial Legacy & Palestine”, Countercurrents, 9 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/charles-iii-coronation-ignored-imperialism-colonialism-genocide-trauma-deadly-colonial-legacy-palestine/ .

[20]. Frederick Treves, “The Land that is Desolate”, Smith, Elder & Co, 1913.

[21]. Theodor Herzl. “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State”), 1896; Chapter 2.

[22]. Nathan Birnbaum, “In Bondage to our fellow Jews”, pp1-9,  in Michael Selzer, (editor), “Zionism Reconsidered”, Macmillan, London .

[23]. Neturei Karta, Jews united against Zionism, “Orthodox Jews demand an end to Zionist arocirites in the Middle east ”: http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Statements/2006July18.cfm .

[24]. Michael Selzer, (editor), “Zionism Reconsidered”, Macmillan, London .

[25]. True Torah Jews against Zionism: http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/about/index.cfm .

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[27]. Leon Gettler, “An Unpromised Land”, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, Western Australia, 1993.

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Book review: “An Unpromised Land” by Leon Gettler” – How Australia escaped becoming Apartheid Israel”, MWC News, 8 July 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/bookreviewsbydrgideonpolya/gettler-leon .

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[36]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

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[38]. Sir Martin Gilbert, “First World War 1”, p373.

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[123]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Buries Serial War Criminal, Genocidal Racist And Nuclear Terrorist Shimon Peres”, Countercurrents, 1 October 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/10/apartheid-israel-buries-serial-war-criminal-genocidal-racist-and-nuclear-terrorist-shimon-peres/ .

[124]. Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm ;

[125]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Big Fix” By Albert Palazzo: Why Australia Should Quit AUKUS & Spurn Genocidal US”, Countercurrents, 3 August 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/08/review-the-big-fix-by-albert-palazzo-why-australia-should-quit-aukus-spurn-genocidal-us/ .

[126].Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”, Countercurrents, 14 October 2013: https://countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm .

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[128]. Gideon Polya, “IHRA Letter To Australian Labor MPs Exposes Australian Crimes & IHRA Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 9 October 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/10/letter-to-australian-labor-mps-exposes-australian-crimes-ihra-anti-semitism/ .

[129]. Gideon Polya, “30 Ways Anti-Jewish Anti-Semitism Against Anti-Racist Jews Entrenched In Australia & West”, Countercurrents, 23 July 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/07/30-ways-anti-jewish-anti-semitism-against-anti-racist-jews-entrenched-in-australia-west/ .

[130]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/ .

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[132]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-Subverted, US Lackey Australia Rejects TPNW, Backs US, UK & Israeli Nuclear Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 8 November 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/11/zionist-subverted-us-lackey-australia-rejects-tpnw- .

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Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad 

It was astonishing to read about the death of Ahmad Saeed Tazazaa (20 years old) on 3 August 2025 inside Israel’s Magiddo prison. Just months earlier , reports emerged that Israeli forces  had killed another Palestinian prisoner in Megiddo, Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad (16 years old), on 24 March. Both young men,  boys really, had been picked up from the West Bank; Ahmad from Jenin and Walid from Silwad. Initially, the Israelis remained silent about the death of Walid but later  consented to an autopsy.

The report is painful. The post-mortem of Walid revealed that he had suffered from extreme body muscle and fat wasting, air collections in his chest and abdomen (‘likely caused by blunt trauma’), and there was evidence of oedema and congestion in his large intestine (‘consistent with traumatic injury’). The autopsy confirmed that he died because of starvation and beatings by Israeli prison guards.

Khaled Ahmed, Walid’s father, recalled that his son was not only a top student, but also the highest scorer in his local football team. ‘Walid was preparing to join the Palestinian national team,’ said Khaled. Walid  was killed three days before Suleiman al-Obeid, known as the “Palestinian Pele”, was killed by Israeli fire while waiting in line to get food for his family in Gaza. In just a few days, football lost two of its brightest stars  to the Israeli genocide.

Today, 10,800 Palestinian political detainees and political prisoners languish in Israeli jails. Since 1967, 320  political prisoners have died inside Israeli prisons. On 12 August 2025, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society published a report detailing  the state of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The report is painful to read because of the harsh conditions described. The Society notes that the Israeli prison administration ‘in a systematic and planned manner’ has ‘deprived prisoners of their humanity’ to the point of causing them ‘physical and psychological exhaustion, which may end in their martyrdom’. The three words they used  to describe the overall situation are ‘torture’, ‘starvation’, and ‘cruelty’. Since October 2023, 76Palestinian prisoners have died in custody.

Electric Shocks

Over 2000  Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces  at  food distribution points. With those numbers in mind, it is difficult to truly comprehend  what is happening to the Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Yet, this brutality must be  understood within a broader context, which is Israel’s shredding of the Oslo Accord.

Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing in Gaza through genocidal bombing, bulldozing Palestinian villages and towns in the West Bank, encouraging the settlement of that land with Israelis, and forcibly seizing all of Jerusalem. The bombing of Gaza continues, and in the  West Bank and Jerusalem, the Israelis are arresting the political leadership of the resistance and torturing them in their prisons. The bombing in Gaza and the arrests in the West Bank and Jerusalem are therefore part of the annulment of the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs released a chilling report on the torture of Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gilboa Prison in northern Israel. The Israeli prison guards storm the cells to conduct inspections, restrain detainees, take them to the prison yard, and then beat them, insult them, and subject them to electric shocks. They are then taken to the showers, drenched in water, and then shocked again. A lawyer from the Commission recounts the situation, ‘the electric shocks are administered using specialized stun guns, which are also wielded as weapons to strike detainees on the head. Being made of solid metal, they cause deep wounds, leaving many detainees bleeding, while guards mock and laugh at them. The level of torture is so severe that numerous detainees lose consciousness’. The use of this violence is intended not only for the detainees to blackout, but for them to also lose their sense of self and be totally deprived of basic sanity. Raed Abu al-Hummus, the Palestinian Commission’s head, said, ‘The goal is clear: to wear them down emotionally, to push them into a state of psychological collapse. This is not isolated. It’s part of an intensifying Israeli policy inside prisons’.

If the political leadership of Palestine has had their sense of self broken, the political formations of resistance will suffer. The electric shocks, therefore, are as brutal as the bombs dropped on hungry civilians  in Gaza: both are intended by the Israelis to crush any Palestinian resistance to the occupation of their lands.

Magiddo prison, one of the worst Israeli prisons amongst a range of terrible prisons, holds special isolation sections for senior Palestinian political leaders such as Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat. Marwan Barghouti (born 1959) is a major leader in Fatah who was arrested during the Second Intifada, and has been in prison for twenty-three years and four months. The Inter-Parliamentary Union found that his treatment at arrest ‘precluded any possibility of a fair trial’ and that he should not be held as he is. During the past few years, Barghouti was beaten in his cell till his ribs broke. The attempt to break his spirit continues unabated. Ahmad Sa’adat (born 1953), Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has been in prison for twenty-three years and three months – one month less than Barghouti. He had initially been arrested by the Palestinian Authority and held in Jericho Prison, where the Israelis illegally seized him and brought him to Magiddo. The point of capturing and holding these leaders for long periods of time is to prevent the development of a focal point in Palestinian society that would revitalise Palestinian politics. This is what the Israeli political theorist Baruch Kimmerling calls politicide, the death of politics. Israel is not only killing Palestinians to seize the land, but they are killing the possibility of Palestinian politics.

Politicide

What is remarkable about groups such as the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Addameer: Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, and Al-Haq: Defending Human Rights is that they have continuously stood with Palestinian political prisoners and not allowed their resistance to be forgotten or diminished. In October 2021, the Israelis outlawed six Palestinian groups – Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Centre for Research and Development, Defence for Children International-Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. The Israelis accused these groups of being in contact with the PFLP. In November 2021, the Israeli military commander of the West Bank declared these organisations to be ‘unlawful associations’. This takes politicide to another level. Now, not only are the political groups – such as PFLP – treated as terrorist groups, but even organisations that speak for the prisoners are outlawed.

Ahmad Saeed Tazazaa was a young man who deserved to live a full and long life. In September 2024, he was arrested in his home in Qabatiya. The Israelis invaded his  city in the northern part of the West Bank,went to a house and threw Palestinians off the third floor. Ahmad was arrested, brought to Magiddo, tortured, and then killed. The way that they treated him in prison was even more brutal than the way they threw his fellow Palestinians off the third floor.

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

14 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jonathan Cook

Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under their cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.

If you thought western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.

As ever, events have moved on – even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.

Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it. At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinan people. 

The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” – Israel’s new term for a concentration camp – where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion. 

At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.

Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” – that is, delay – weapons  shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months. 

Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions – evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children – to an entirely different story.

Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.

We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide – analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?

Life and death

It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel – assuming it follows through – not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza. 

It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories – in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago. 

But on 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard. 

Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign. 

Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp. 

But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover. 

Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”. 

Two-state trickery

Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution. Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s. 

The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” – which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.

Lisa Nandy, Britain’s culture secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.” 

Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”

In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat – and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people. 

Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work. 

Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land – which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state – and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.

Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” – in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu. 

Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza – with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz warning this week that settlers had been given “free rein”.

A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem  released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing. 

Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.

Alibi gone

It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, western leaders have revived their interest only now – as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.

That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza – its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone. 

Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with western assent. 

Suddenly, western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.

US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major western powers – led by France, Britain and Canada – have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.

Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”

That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.

That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient – British policy for decades – he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel. 

He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure. 

Extracting concessions 

Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes. 

Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.    

And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.

According to France’s foreign affairs minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”

In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.    

Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army. 

As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.

Boot on Gaza’s neck 

How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.

While western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.

Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.

Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen – misnamed a “humanitarian city” – alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to  bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings. 

The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture. 

Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. 

There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages. 

Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this. 

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.

An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel – or those who enabled them.

Jonathan Cook is a British independent journalist, who has covered issues of Palestine and Israel for much of his over 20-year career.

15 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org