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By Craig Murray

26 Sep 2025 – Yesterday saw two announcements. Starmer is to introduce compulsory digital ID cards in the UK, and Tony Blair is put forward by the White House to be the colonial administrator of Gaza for five years.

The political economy of the world appears locked in a vertiginous downward spiral. You don’t have to scratch very hard to find that Tony Blair’s hand is also behind the compulsory ID plan. He has been pushing it for nearly thirty years, and now it comes with added links to Larry Ellison, Palantir and Israel.

The government will be able to garner and centralise knowledge of everything about you. Every detail of your financial transactions, your DNA, your family, your medical records, your education, employment and accommodation. It will be a very short time before the digital ID is linked to your social media accounts and your IP access to monitor your browsing.

There is already the intention to control us through our access to financial services. I have spoken with one of the women charged for protesting outside the Leonardo factory in Edinburgh. She has had her bank accounts cancelled – simply losing the money in them – and cannot open a new account. You may recall they tried to debank Nigel Farage. The campaign to defend Julian Assange suffered multiple banking cancellations.

The desire of the state to control people politically through their ability to carry out ordinary transactions is not in doubt. It is demonstrated. Once you have a compulsory digital ID linked to transactions – which will follow very swiftly, I am quite certain – they will be able to simply switch off your ability to pay for anything. Add this to a digital currency which tracks all of your expenditure – all the key elements of which are already installed – and total control will be in place.

Starmer is trying to dress up a digital ID as an immigration control – whether you support immigration control or not, the notion that it will make a significant difference is nonsense. Landlords, employers, banks and lawyers already have to check the ID and status of their clients. For those bent on evasion, one more piece of bureaucracy will make little difference. It is the law-abiding who will be enmeshed in the system of control.

Increases in state surveillance and restrictions on personal freedom are always falsely framed as protection against a terrible threat – paedophiles or fraudsters or immigrants or Russians. Yet despite an ever-shrinking area of personal freedom, none of these real or invented threats ever actually recedes.

Starmer is the most unpopular PM in history. Attempting to force through this deeply unpopular measure is going to cause him real difficulties in parliament. The calculation is that Reform will oppose the measure on libertarian grounds, and that this will allow Starmer to show himself as tougher on immigration than Reform. The breathtaking cynicism of this is typical of the Starmer government, which believes in nothing except their own power.

As for Blair being made effectively Governor of Gaza, this is so sickening as to be beyond belief. The man who killed a million Iraqis on the basis of lies about WMD, who has made hundreds of millions of pounds through PR services to dictators, whose Tony Blair Institute has drawn up “Gaza Riviera” plans for Trump, and who has been discussing with western oil companies the takeover of Gaza’s gas field, is touted to administer the mass grave which Gaza has become.

In any reasonable world this would be impossible. The degeneration of western society is profound. There are no ethics in play beyond the dominance of power, wealth and greed. Blair manages to embody these in one person.

Craig John Murray (born 17 Oct 1958) is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former diplomat for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

6 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Dr. Maung Zarni

TRANSCEND Media Service is having a fund drive to keep its valuable service – tailored to those of us who want in-depth and critical analyses – not sensationalist corporate media reportage with its shallow “Trumpish-All-sides” “balance”.

In most cases of realities that involve blood, invasion, genocides, war crimes, exploitation, systematic acts of state propaganda, “all sides” and “balance” in journalism, are not simply acts of moral cowardice, but the total absence of intellectual substance. Peace, nonviolence, social justice, are TMS ideologies rooted on basic human rights and needs, non negotiable principles.

Noam Chomsky, the author of Manufacturing Consent, would agree if I make an “outlandish statement” such as there are no ‘Gold Standards’ in journalism. The idea of Gold Standard is itself propaganda.  Ask James Bond’s real world employer – Military Intelligence Unit 5 or “MI5”, which has been vetting the BBC’s hiring since the “Master Class” Propaganda Industry’s inception when the broadcast technology was the cutting edge.

So, I’d rather throw TRANSCEND a lifeline than watch BBC and pay the license fee.  Who in their right mind would pay to be brainwashed by yet another military-industrial complex?

Think about it and Please Act making your financial contribution TODAY! Thank you.

Donate – Please Choose Your Option to Support TMS

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

6 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Richard Falk

29 Sep 2025 – My responses to a Brazilian journalist to questions about the recent diplomatic surge of recognitions of Palestinian statehood, as provisionally represented by a PLO coalition of political actors, chaired Mahmoud Abbas, and in the 1990s given the supposedly temporary, ambiguous title of the Palestinian Authority with its capital in the West Bank city of Ramallah. This political development resulted from the Oslo diplomacy that allowed the PLO to represent the Palestinian people although within a pro-Israeli partisan framework that empowered the US to serve as intermediary without requiring Israel to freeze settlement activity or to comply with international humanitarian law during ‘the peace process.’ The central expectation of this process was that a Palestinian state would emerge from a complex series of bilateral negotiations, but what occurred was an evident lack of political will on the part of Israel and Washington to produce such an outcome. The whole undertaking was contradicted and discredited by the continuous expansion of unlawful Israeli settlements on the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. The Palestinians were advised at the time by the US to withhold their objections to Israeli behavior until the final stages of statehood negotiations were reached (which never happened), and the Palestinian team foolishly heeded the advice, and itself lost credibility for consenting to take part in a diplomatic exercise that did not even acknowledge the Palestinian right of self-determination.

At the outset a certain skepticism seems prudent. It suggests a cautious response to this foundational question: Should this new surge of internationalist enthusiasm for ‘two-statism’ be viewed as a buildup for a replay of the Oslo process or as something new? Underlying conditions are different as  

Israel’s military operations Gaza are now normalized, even in most of the previously complicit liberal democracies of the West and in most influential venues of political discourse as ‘genocide.’ This has resulted in Israel’s delegitimation and emergent identity as a rogue or pariah state that has become the target of hostile civil society initiatives ranging from BDS to rising pressures to impose arms embargoes, suspension of diplomatic relations, and expulsion or suspension from the UN.  It has also produced pushback by the US in the form of sanctioning UN appointees by barring entry and freezing assets, denying visas to PLO members, including the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and classifying Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. Israel has reacted defiantly to calls for Palestinian statehood and to the boycott of Netanyahu’s speech at the 80^th anniversary session of the General Assembly. To date, France and the US have put forward peace proposals, with some cooperation and encouragement from Arab governments, that end the genocide, but reward Israel by excluding Hamas from any future political role in Gaza, and dubiously presupposing the adequacy of the PA to represent the struggle for Palestinian rights, including the establishment of a functioning state. My responses below are based on a strong conviction that until the Palestinian people are given the choice as to their political representation by way of an internationally monitored free elections in Gaza and the West Bank or through a reliable referendum allowing for the selection or ranking of political representation options, no peace process should be accorded legitimacy by the UN or civil society assessments.

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1. How can the recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Belgium, and others help in a plan to officialize the creation of the State of Palestine?

The push toward Palestinian recognition will probably has now extended to at least 157 of the 193 members of the UN, representing a large majority of the world’s peoples. The only major opponents being Israel and the United States, along with s Hungary, Paraguay, and Argentina, autocratic middle powers. The longer-term undertaking of the states bestowing statehood recognition is a two-state solution of the underlying conflict. This objective has been most influentially articulated so far by France, and somewhat separately by the US although it has not yet openly challenged Israel’s refusal to allow the emergence of a Palestinian state in any form. It is based on the belief that the only way to end the conflict and achieve regional stability is by promoting a solution that provides an alternative to Israel’s One-State Plan (Greater Israel) but also by a Euro/Arab packaging of Palestinian statehood to preclude a genuine Palestinian liberation. Israeli one-statism is structured in accord with Israel’s 2018 adoption of a Basic Law institutionalizing Jewish supremist dominance in Israel and the OPT according to an unacknowledged adoption of a settler colonial approach to apartheid control imposed on the subjugated and dehumanized native population of historic Palestine. President Trump’s assertion that he would not allow Israel to annex occupied Palestinian territory may depict a middle ground of permanent Israeli occupation and gradual Israelization without a Palestinian state of any sort coming into existence.

The French-backed solution, now competing with the Trump US proposal along somewhat similar lines, is centered on endorsing the establishment of a Palestinian state following the release of hostages held captive in Gaza since October 7 and the gradual dismantling of Hamas by an International Stabilization Force with an armed Arab administrative presence in Gaza. Palestinian governance of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem would be eventually entrusted to what is generally referred to as a reconstituted Palestinian Authority, originally brought into existence within the framework of Oslo Diplomacy of the 1990s. Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime, quasi-collaborationist President of the Palestinian Authority told the General Assembly speaking online as barred entry to the US, that he favors a demilitarized Palestinian state, the demilitarization and exclusion of Hamas from a governance in role , and opposed the October 7 attack, while indicting Israel for ‘genocide’ in shaping its response. Abbas has not so far insisted that Israel be required to implement the right of return enjoyed by an estimated 8 million Palestinian refugees living in the OPT and neighboring countries.

A handful of states apparently oppose this approach, most unambiguously, Israel, as it is inconsistent with Israel’s firm commitment to a one-state solution, and refusal to accept any form of Palestinian statehood. Israeli state propaganda opposes these recent Global West recognitions of Palestine by its former allies, several earlier complicit in supporting the genocide diplomatically, and some of these governments continuing their material support. Israel condemns these diplomatic moves as somehow ‘rewarding’ Hamas and its allegedly ‘terrorist’ assault of two years ago, but it hard to fathom how Hamas gains from this variation of two-state advocacy that includes the punitive exclusion of Hamas from any future role in the administration of Gaza. In other words, this variant of the two-state approach appears to reward the perpetrator of genocide and punish the victim. In fact, it may reopen the road to political and economic normalization and acceptance within the Arab Middle East.

The seeming majority Palestinian approach rejects both Israeli one statism and the two-statism as delimited by Emanuel Macron as set forth in the New York Declaration, arising from summit on Palestine co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, as well as the 21 Point Program for conflict resolution put forward by Trump in consultation with Arab countries. The most independent and trustworthy Palestinian voices are calling for the selection of a new more legitimate mechanism than the PA for the pursuit of national liberation objectives. This would be expected to require mechanisms for a meaningful exercise of the Palestinian right of self-determination by the Palestinian people including those Palestinians and their descendants living in neighboring countries or the OPT as refugees. Authentic Palestinian representation would likely take the form of a fully unified sovereign secular state (presumably renamed and deZionized) encompassing Palestinians and Jews in viable, ethnically neutral governance structures and integrated with guaranteed rights of return for Palestinians living as exiles or in refugee camps and of Jews living in the diaspora. Palestinian statehood could take the form of a viable, fully distinct, equal, and sovereign Palestinian state co-existing with a post-Zionist Israel that embodied the principles of ethnic equality, implying either the revision of Zionist ideology or its complete abandonment, reflecting approval by authenticated Palestinian representatives.

The recognition diplomacy of former supporters of Israel’s response to and characterization of October 7, even though vigorously repudiated by Israel, does not bring the conflict closer to a just and durable outcome. In effect, despite Israel’s apparent rejection, if the Palestinian statehood proposals is ever implemented along these proposed lines would not only reward Israel for genocide, and additionally have the perverse effect of extending the conflict rather than ending it. If ending was the true objective then Israel would be required to reject the practice, policies, and ideology of Zionism as the basis of Israeli governance and to refrain from establishing new settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, if not called upon to remove some or all of the settlements. As of the present, Israel is strongly opposed to the Franco/American approaches as has been made clear in words, and also by its actions, particularly threats  of partial or complete annexation of the West Bank and new provocative expansions of settlements, including a new particularly controversial settlement in E1 where a proposed settlement would bisect occupied the West Bank effectively ending any prospect of a viable Palestinian state.

2. Israel has criticized the recognition of a Palestinian state, claiming that it will strengthen Hamas. Netanyahu has said there will never be a Palestinian state. How do you see this?

Netanyahu signaled by the Doha attack of September 13 seeking to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team that Israel’s priorities remain the extermination of Hamas as a source of resistance, a discrediting of the PA as capable of being ‘a partner of peace,’ and an overall, unshakable commitment to Greater Israel, which implies opposition to any form of Palestine statehood, however limited. As suggested it also implies total extermination of Hamas as the organized center of continuing Palestinian resistance. Israel as now constituted remains currently unwilling to end the genocide, and seeks political rewards as measured by land and the removal of Palestinian residents to offset its political loss of legitimacy. As noted, Israel is now a politically isolated pariah state that is  economically subject to an increasing variety of civil society harassments. The underlying conflict between the two peoples remains frozen with no horizon of durable peace visible to informed eyes.

3. With so many nations recognizing Palestinian state, what will be necessary to make the transition from a symbolic reality to a sovereign territorial reality with recognized borders and governmental authority?

As the foregoing seeks to make clear, this sequence of diplomatic recognitions at this point seems to produce a diplomacy of futility, acceptable to neither side, and lacking the will and capabilities at the UN and elsewhere to overcome the ongoing stalemate created by Israel’s refusal to consent to coexist with a viable, and fully sovereign Palestinian state, or even a willingness to accept a Palestinian state with ghost characteristics. Israel seems poised to prolong the agony pushing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Back to leave or die. In effect, to create a third mass dispossession of the sort that in 1948 and 1967 led to the mass expulsion of Palestinian residents to obtain and preserve a Jewish majority population. Israel to fulfill the apparent goals of the Zionist Project must not only claim and exercise territorial sovereignty over the land and ethnic dominance with an apartheid matrix of control over remaining Palestinian but continuously act to defuse the demographic bomb resulting from Palestinian fertility rates being higher than that of their Jewish oppressors and from the persisting legally based claims of Palestinian refugee communities to implement their long deferred right of return.

The likely outcome of increasing international pressure to end the genocide and settle the conflict by a diplomatic compromise is currently taking the mainstream shape of a two-state outcome has little prospect of realization, given the opposition of both Israel and Palestine (if legitimately represented). If a Palestinian demilitarized statelet should be accepted by a weak and dependent PA leadership, that is, not of Palestinian choosing, it will at best recreate a pre-October 7 set of conditions of de facto Israeli one-statism periodically challenged by resistance violence. It may also lead to creative efforts by Palestinian activists and countries in the Global South to gain enough international backing for a justice-driven solution to produce a new conflict-resolving diplomacy. Two-state advocacy would likely be discredited and soon superseded by Palestinian advocacy and civil society activism that will increase over time pressures within Israel to contemplate ways to restore national legitimacy and overcome the perceptions and practices of being a pariah state. This would be, as was the case in racist South Africa, a transactional adjustment rather that a reevaluation of priorities and identity.

In conclusion, the French-Arab-American led diplomatic approaches should be critically analyzed on grounds of their misleading and concealed allegiances with many of the underlying tenets of Israel and Zionism that amount to a continuing denial of fundamental Palestinian rights. Until Palestinian representation is determined by Palestinians rather than by external political actors, whether the US, the UN, or others. Only when Palestinian international representation is reliably established will it become credible to embark upon a truly genuine effort, with integral Palestinian participation and truly neutral intermediation to devise a durable and desirable solution based on a mutually acceptable governance arrangements and agreed boundaries either of a binational single state or of two coexisting equal sovereign states.

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

6 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Jonathan Yerushalmy, Carmela Fonbuena, Sam Jones and Lisa O’Carroll

Thousands demonstrate around the world after flotilla was stopped and activists including Greta Thunberg detained.

Follow latest updates live

2 Oct 2025 – Israel’s long-anticipated interception of the pro-Palestinian aid flotilla has prompted criticism and condemnation around the world, triggering mass demonstrations, diplomatic rebukes and retaliation, and the threats of massive labour strikes.

In Italy, where there was a general strike in support of the Global Sumud flotilla last month, thousands turned out in cities across the country to back the group of more than 40 civilian boats carrying about 500 parliamentarians, lawyers and activists, including Greta Thunberg.

Hundreds of people gathered in front of Termini station in Rome, chanting: “Let’s block everything.” This led authorities to limit access and close some metro stops. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in Milan, Turin and Genoa, while protesters in Naples and Pisa briefly occupied station platforms and blocked trains. Thousands also gathered in Bologna carrying banners and flags.

Italian media estimated 10,000 protesters had taken to the streets of Rome in support of the flotilla, while local television networks speculated on the fate of the several Italian parliamentarians who were part of the flotilla.

Demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Free Palestine” and called for the resignation of the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, with the spontaneous protests garnering wall-to-wall coverage across Italian news channels. Two of the country’s largest unions called a general strike for Friday.

“The aggression against civilian ships that were carrying Italian citizens is an extremely serious matter,” the CGIL union said, calling the strike, which other smaller unions said they would join. The USB union said it intended to block the port of Genoa. Over the past two weeks, protesting Italian dockworkers have prevented various ships from docking and loading, targeting vessels they say are involved in trade with Israel.

Protests were also reported in Brussels, Athens, Buenos Aires and Berlin.

The boarding of the boats and detention of the activists on Wednesday evening set off a wave of angry reprimands from around the world.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, tore into Israel for the military action, saying the country “has once again shown the madness of its genocidal leaders trying to hide their crimes against humanity in Gaza”.

Spain’s labour minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, described the attack as “a crime against international law” and demanded that Israel immediately release those it had detained. Writing on Bluesky, she added: “The EU needs to break off relations with Israel right now.”

Spain’s foreign minister said he had summoned Israel’s top diplomatic representative in Madrid to discuss the situation, adding that there were 65 Spaniards travelling with the flotilla.

The Irish deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, Simon Harris, convened a meeting of senior officials on Thursday morning to discuss the evolving situation.

“This is a peaceful mission to shine a light on a horrific humanitarian catastrophe,” Harris, the tánaiste, had said hours earlier. “Ireland expects international law to be upheld and all those on board the flotilla to be treated in strict accordance with it.”

The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, expelled all remaining Israeli diplomats from the country on Wednesday over what he called “a new international crime” by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The leftist Petro severed relations with Israel last year but four diplomats remained posted in the country, a source at the Israeli consulate in Bogotá told Agence France-Presse.

Brazil’s foreign ministry said it “deplores the Israeli government’s military action, which violates rights and endangers the physical wellbeing of peaceful protesters”, while Mexico demanded the rights of its citizens on the flotilla be respected.

The Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, condemned the interception, saying: “These vessels carried unarmed civilians and life-saving humanitarian supplies for Gaza, yet they were met with intimidation and coercion.”

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said his country strongly condemned the “dastardly attack” by Israeli forces. “This barbarity must end,” he said. “Peace must be given a chance and humanitarian aid must reach those in need.“

The British Foreign Office said it was very concerned by the interception, adding that it was in touch with the families of the British nationals on the flotilla.

“The aid carried by the flotilla should be turned over to humanitarian organisations on the ground to be delivered safely into Gaza,” it said.

Australia said on Thursday it was aware of reports of “detainments” by Israeli forces and stood ready to provide consular assistance to its affected citizens onboard.

Israel’s navy had previously warned the flotilla it was approaching an active combat zone and told it to change course. It had said it would transfer any aid peacefully through safe channels to Gaza, denouncing the mission as a stunt.

6 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Akshita Singh

On the occasion of Gandhi’s anniversary, here is an excerpt from the renowned historian-biographer’s book that lays out the main arguments on the contemporary relevance of the Mahatma (2 Oct 1869 – 30 Jan 1948).

2 Oct 2025 – On Gandhi Jayanti every year, it has been a tradition to ask: Is he relevant today? His lessons of truth and non-violence sound sagely, other-worldly. His method, Satyagraha, seems impractical at best. For the sake of progress, development and order, a little bit of brute force, some economy of truth is indispensable, it is argued. His world was different, and his approach won’t work today.

But in the long history of humanity, a century has not drastically changed the ways of the world. In attempting to do what is required for peaceful co-existence, he also met many challenges in his time. And the problems he faced are as age-old as the means he devised to solve them. Gandhi is, if anything, more relevant for today’s strife-torn world than in the world back then.

How? Excerpted from Why Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy, a book by Rajmohan Gandhi, renowned biographer of the Mahatma and historian, published by Aleph in 2017.

Why Gandhi Still Matters

Is Gandhi of interest to India and the world of today? The year 2017 mark[ed] the hundredth year of the Champaran satyagraha, and 2019 [saw] the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. Do these dates establish Gandhi’s relevance for a polarised nation and a violent world?

If Gandhi was all that persons like Einstein and Tagore, Gokhale and Nehru and Patel and Martin Luther King, Jr said he was, and what Barack Obama says he was, then why (it may be asked) was India besmirched by Partition and carnage in 1947?

Also, why do corruption and animosities mark India in 2017? As for non-violence, can anyone look at Syria and still talk of its applicability?

It says something for a person when his relevance is measured by success or failure in leaving behind a perfect world. In India, Gandhi has been criticised not only for not overcoming all the challenges of his time, including the partition demand, but also for not solving all the problems of our age!

In fact, this interest, two entire generations after his time, in what Gandhi failed to accomplish, speaks of what he inspired India to expect of him, which was everything, miracles included. He, too, on his part, claimed that if he were perfect, the world around him would change to his liking. Since it did not, we have proof that he was not perfect. Which is exactly what Gandhi always tried to say.

This short book hopes to present a relevant, fallible, amazing and accessible Gandhi. We can agree that perfection and relevance are not the same thing. A person becomes relevant not by solving all contemporary and future problems (which even God seems unable or unwilling to do) but by offering hints for making life more bearable or interesting, or by showing a way out of a forest.

Gandhi showed Indians how to demand freedom without humiliating themselves as petitioners, and without inviting reprisals on fellow Indians, which was the outcome, often, of the pre-Gandhian method of assassinating the Raj’s functionaries. Relevant or not, Gandhi remains interesting. If nothing else, his contradictions give him appeal. As one of his American friends, E. Stanley Jones, remarked, Gandhi was of East and West, the city and the village, a Hindu influenced by Christianity, simple and shrewd, candid and courteous, serious and playful, humble and assertive. ‘While the savour is sweet,’ added Jones, ‘the preponderating impression he leaves is not sweetness but strength.’

In his final years, a close associate of this lover of the name of Rama was the staunch atheist and fighter for caste equality, Gora (Gopalraju Ramachandra Rao), a Telugu Brahmin. To give another example of Gandhian irony, when Gandhi arrived in Delhi in September 1947 (on the way, so he thought, to carnage-hit Punjab), he stayed in the home of his wealthy friend Ghanshyam Das Birla, but one of the first men he talked with on the day of his arrival—to obtain a true picture of what was happening on the streets of Delhi—was the Communist leader, P. C. Joshi.

Gandhi was to then travel by train from Delhi to Wardha before making another journey, agreed to by Jinnah, to Pakistan. Earlier in the day, the historian Radha Kumud Mookerjee had given Gandhi a copy of his latest book.

This man of action—the man who turned down a plea for a treatise by him on non-violence by saying, ‘Action is my domain’— told his close aide Brij Krishna Chandiwala on the last day of his life, ‘Ask Bisen [another aide] to pack Professor Mookerjee’s book with my things.’

From both sides of bitter divides, politicians continue to invoke Gandhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi does so all the time even as opponents charge Modi with driving nails into Gandhi’s age-old coffin. Palestinians regularly recall Gandhi’s warnings from the late 1930s against flooding Palestine with European Jews, while Israeli Gandhians back Palestinians in non-violent resistance.

Old Indians can recall the support, surprising to many, given in October 1947 by Gandhi, the non-violence advocate, for flying Indian soldiers to defend Srinagar, which is what both Sheikh Abdullah and Maharaja Hari Singh had urged. Pakistanis remind India that Gandhi wanted the people’s will to prevail in Kashmir too, not merely in Hyderabad and Junagadh.

On the subcontinent or indeed anywhere else, few individuals from the first half of the twentieth century are remembered as frequently as Gandhi. A few years ago, Syrians unhappy with their regime spoke of three Gandhian principles they wanted their resistance to stick to: no sectarianism, no foreign involvement, no violence.

The wisdom of those abandoned principles was emblazoned, in letters of blood and fire, in Syria’s subsequent grief-laden story. Gandhi’s flaws too may be seen in this book, including a failure to give sufficient attention to the wishes of his wife, sons and numerous other relatives. This failure was connected in part to the ethos of his times, and in larger part to the all-demanding struggle to which Gandhi felt called. Still, the pain felt by Kasturba, Harilal, and other close ones was all too real.

That the imperfect Gandhi was an utterly astonishing human being also emerges from this book, which seeks to present the historical Gandhi, a Mahatma released from myth and also from the slander provoked by his positions, some of which were decidedly unpopular in orthodox circles.

Can a man as complex as Gandhi, and possessing more than one interesting dimension, be presented in a limited number of pages? This too was a question and a demand which this book seeks to answer.

Excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.

6 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei strongly condemned the Israeli regime’s attack on the Sumud humanitarian flotilla in international waters and the violent arrest of the activists supporting the Palestinian people as terrorist act aimed at perpetuating the famine imposed on Gaza.

Referring to the participation of citizens of 47 countries in Sumud humanitarian campaign aimed at breaking the cruel siege of Gaza and confronting the genocide of Palestinians, Baghaei stressed the need for all governments and the United Nations to support this campaign, hold the Zionist regime accountable, and immediately release those detained.

Referring to the transfer of the detainees of the Sumud Flotilla to the infamous Katziyot prison, which is known as a symbol of the occupation regime’s torture and inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners, Baghaei said: “The arrest of pro-Palestinian activists and their transfer to this prison, along with the insulting behavior of the Zionist regime’s Minister of Internal Security towards them, is another sign of the regime’s moral decline.”

Expressing disgust at the continued support of the United States and some other Western countries for the genocide of the Palestinians, he said, “All governments have a legal and moral responsibility to stop the genocide and to try and punish the criminals.”

IRNA

5 October 2025

Source: nournews.ir

By Aditi

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg claimed she faced harsh treatment while in Israeli custody following her arrest during a flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. The 22-year-old told Swedish officials that she suffered dehydration, lack of food, and unsanitary conditions during her detention, the Guardian reported.

Greta Thunberg alleges mistreatment after Gaza aid Flotilla detention

“The embassy has been able to meet with Greta,” reads the email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry, obtained by the Guardian. “She reported dehydration and said she has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes, which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She described harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.”

Another detainee reportedly said Thunberg was made to hold flags while photographs were taken. The flags’ identities remain unclear. Thunberg reportedly asked whether images of her had been shared publicly.

Witnesses aboard the flotilla, including Turkish activist Ersin Çelik described the shocking scenes at the detention centre. “They dragged little Greta by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” Ersin said. Journalist Lorenzo D’Agostino added that Thunberg was “wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy,” as fellow activists watched in disbelief.

According to Swedish officials, Thunberg was asked by Israeli authorities to sign a document during her detention. “She was unsure about what the document meant and did not want to sign anything she did not understand,” the email from the Swedish foreign ministry stated.

Israel responds, calls allegations “complete lies”

The Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv visited nine Swedes held in detention on Friday.  “The Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv remains in contact with Israeli authorities to stress the importance of swift processing and the possibility of returning home to Sweden,” the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli embassy rejected the claims, calling them “complete lies.” It said all detainees involved in the flotilla had access to food, water, toilets, medical care, and legal counsel. “Israel is and will remain a state governed by the rule of law, committed to upholding the rights and dignity of all individuals according to international standards,” the embassy added.

Flotilla intercepted, detainees held in high-security prison

Thunberg was part of the Global Sumud flotilla, a coalition of 40+ vessels carrying aid to Gaza. The move aimed to challenge Israel’s maritime blockade. Between Thursday and Friday, Israeli forces intercepted all ships and detained every crew member. Most are being held at Ketziot prison in the Negev desert, primarily used for Palestinian security detainees.

Legal teams representing the flotilla say the detainees were denied basic rights, including food, water, sanitation, medication, and immediate access to legal counsel. Thunberg was reportedly given only “a packet of crisps shown to the cameras.” During a visit to Ashdod port, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was filmed calling activists “terrorists” while they were ordered to sit on the ground. Some protesters responded by shouting “Free Palestine.”

5 October 2025

Source: financialexpress.com

By Orly Noy

Gaza City is engulfed in flames, as the Israeli army embarks on its long-threatened ground offensive after weeks of relentless bombardment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already facing an international arrest warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity, described this latest assault as an “intensified operation.” I urge you to watch the footage streaming out of Gaza, and see what this euphemism really means.

Look into the eyes of people gripped by a terror unmatched even in the darkest moments of this two-year genocide. See the rows of ash-covered children lying on the blood-soaked floor of what was once a medical center — some barely alive, others wailing in pain and fear — as desperate hands try to comfort them or treat them with whatever medical supplies remain. Hear the screams of families fleeing with nowhere to run. Witness parents scouring the inferno for their children; limbs protruding from beneath the rubble; a paramedic cradling a motionless girl, pleading with her to open her eyes, in vain.

What Israel is doing in Gaza City is not the tragic byproduct of chaotic events on the ground, but a well-calculated act of annihilation, executed in cold blood by “the people’s army” — that is, the fathers, sons, brothers, and neighbors of us Israelis.

How is it that, despite the mounting testimonies from Gaza’s concentration and extermination camps, no mass refusal movement has taken root in Israel? That after two years of this carnage barely a handful of conscientious objectors sit in prison is truly inconceivable. Even the so-called “gray refusers” — reserve soldiers who do not oppose the war on ideological grounds but are simply exhausted and questioning its purpose — remain far too few to slow the killing machine, let alone bring it to a halt.

Who are these obedient souls who keep this system running? How can a society so deeply fractured — between the religious and the secular, settlers and liberals, kibbutzniks and urbanites, veteran immigrants and new arrivals — unite only in its willingness to slaughter Palestinians without a moment’s hesitation? 

Over the past 23 months, Israeli society has spun an endless web of lies to justify and enable Gaza’s destruction — not only to the world, but above all to itself. Chief among them is the claim that hostages can only be freed through military pressure. Yet those carrying out the army’s orders, raining mass death upon Gaza, do so knowing full well they may be killing the hostages in the process. The indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods, coupled with this disregard for the lives of Israelis held captive, proves the war’s true aim: the sweeping annihilation of Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel is unleashing a holocaust in Gaza, and it cannot be dismissed as the will of the country’s current fascist leaders alone. This horror runs deeper than Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich. What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.

The urgent task now is to bring this holocaust to an end. But stopping it is only the first step. If Israeli society is ever to return to the fold of humanity, it must undergo a deep process of denazification.

Once the dust of death settles, we will have to retrace our steps back to the Nakba, to the mass expulsions, the massacres, the land seizures, the racial laws, and the ideology of inherent supremacy that normalized contempt for the native people of this land, and the theft of their lives, property, dignity, and the futures of their children. Only by confronting this deadly mechanism inherent to our society can we begin to uproot it.

This denazification process must begin now, and it starts with refusal. Refusal not only to take an active part in Gaza’s destruction, but to put on the uniform at all — regardless of rank or role. Refusal to remain ignorant. Refusal to be blind. Refusal to be silent. For parents, it is a duty necessary to protect the next generation from becoming perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Denazification must also include the recognition that what was cannot remain. It will not be enough to simply replace the current government. We must abandon the myth of Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” character — a paradox whose iron grip helped pave the way to the catastrophe we are now immersed in. 

This deception must end with the clear recognition that only two paths remain: either a Jewish, messianic, genocidal state, or a truly democratic state for all its citizens.

The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end. 

Denazification will be long and all-encompassing, touching every aspect of our collective life. We will likely sacrifice more generations — both victims and perpetrators — before this scourge is fully uprooted. But the process must begin now, with the refusal to commit the horrors taking place daily in Gaza, and the refusal to let them pass as normal.

Orly Noy is an editor at Local Call, a political activist, and a translator of Farsi poetry and prose.

18 September 2025

Source: 972mag.com

GAZA / PNN /

In Gaza, misery deepens by the day. Grief-stricken families and children find no respite, no time for play or relief, as survival has become the only pursuit.

In tents crowded with widows and children, the daily search for scraps of stale bread has turned into a life-or-death struggle. For many families, especially women who lost their husbands in Israel’s war on Gaza, the sole focus has become finding bread and water to stay alive.

The family of Nadia Abu Arar is among countless others trapped in this ordeal. Her husband was killed, leaving their children without a provider. Now a widow, she says she cannot meet her children’s basic needs in a war that spares neither the young nor the old. With food and clean water almost unattainable, even bread has become a desperate commodity.

For her son Mohammed, childhood has been replaced by the role of breadwinner. Instead of sitting in a classroom or playing, he roams the rubble and streets in search of dry bread to feed his siblings.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OTuVeyZ9ag]

Nadia shares her tragedy. She lives in a single tent alongside five other widows and about 20 children. At night, the overcrowding suffocates them; bodies pressed together, feet entangled, with little air, no food, and no water. “We wait for morning just to escape the suffocation,” she says.

By day, the children set out to scavenge scraps of bread left behind by others. They move together in groups, often walking through streets and alleys where the risk of shelling looms at any moment. Sometimes they even sift through piles of rubbish, hoping to find enough to bring home for their younger siblings.

Nadia recalls one devastating day when her children returned without her youngest daughter, who went missing during their search for bread. Since then, she has wandered from street to street, among the ruins of bombed homes, searching for her. During one such search, she says, smoke from a nearby Israeli strike burned her face.

Her son Mohammed, his face marked by hunger and exhaustion, says he and his siblings have grown weary of eating the stale bread they collect near rubbish heaps. “This bread will make us sick. We don’t want it, but we have no choice,” he says, fighting back tears. His only plea: “We just want fresh bread, flour, food and water. We are tired of this war.”

The plight of Mohammed mirrors that of thousands of children across Gaza. For their mothers, like Nadia, despair is overwhelming. “God is our only witness against those who did this to us. We have no food or water to survive,” she says.

Another widow, Um Rami Abu Arar, lost her husband and grown sons who once supported the family. She now shares the tent with Nadia and others. “Life here is unbearable,” she says, describing the suffocating conditions and lack of resources. 

Each morning, she sends groups of children out with plastic bags to collect bread, instructing them to stay together for safety. When they return, they roast the scraps over fire, trying to disinfect them and sprinkle salt to cover the stench.

Today, more than one million children in Gaza live under catastrophic humanitarian conditions since the war began on October 7, 2023.

According to United Nations agencies, children are the most affected: many have lost parents and relatives and spend their days searching for a crust of bread or contaminated water. Health experts warn that relying on stale bread and unsafe food exposes them to severe malnutrition, dehydration and life-threatening disease.

With the blockade tightening and supplies of food and clean water nearly exhausted, UN bodies warn that half of Gaza’s population is now facing extreme food insecurity, with tens of thousands already at risk of famine.

This story was produced as part of the Qarib programme, implemented by the French media development agency CFI and funded by the French Development Agency (AFD).

9 September 2025

Source: english.pnn.ps

By Alexander Vyatsky

Today, several Hungarian media outlets reported on President Zelensky’s alleged plans to carry out sabotage operations in Romania and Poland with the goal of blaming Russia. According to these reports, Bankova is preparing its own version of the “Gleiwitz incident” — aimed at creating a casus belli for a war between Russia and NATO.

Based on the available information, the Kyiv regime’s plan appears to be as follows:

Repair several downed or intercepted Russian UAVs.

Equip them with combat payloads.

Direct these drones, controlled by Ukrainian specialists but disguised as “Russian UAVs,” toward major NATO transport hubs in Poland and Romania.

Simultaneously launch a disinformation campaign across Europe to place the blame on Moscow.

Provoke an armed conflict between the Russian Federation and NATO.

For the purposes of this provocation, on September 16, Russian-made Geran UAVs were reportedly delivered to the Yavoriv training ground in Western Ukraine, home to the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security of the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Academy. The drones had previously been repaired at the LORTA plant in Lviv.

According to Hungarian journalists, the motive behind these actions is clear — the AFU is suffering a devastating defeat. The collapse of Ukraine’s forces is no longer just at the tactical level, but has reached a strategic scale.

If this information is confirmed, we must recognize: Europe has never been so close to the outbreak of a Third World War in modern history.

*

Alexander Vyatsky is from Russia. He is passionate about civic engagement and community activism.

3 October 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca