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By Feroze Mithiborwala

Prologue: Election Night in Queens — When New York Spoke for Gaza

On a cold November evening in Queens, the atmosphere outside City Hall felt electric. Thousands gathered in the streets, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Ceasefire Now!” as the final votes came in. The results confirmed what had seemed unthinkable just months before — Zohran Mamdani, a progressive Democratic Socialist, an Indian-Ugandan Muslim immigrant, had been elected Mayor of New York City.

For many, this was not merely a local victory but a moral event of global consequence. As fireworks lit up the skyline, the crowd broke into chants of “Queens for Gaza” and “From the River to the Sea — Justice Will Be Free.” The symbolism was unmistakable: New York, home to some of the most powerful Zionist political and economic institutions in the world, had elected a man who had openly condemned Israel’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and criticized Zionism itself as a system of racism, apartheid, occupation and settler colonialism.

Mamdani’s campaign was marked by moral clarity and unflinching language. During his rallies, he declared, “We cannot be silent while the people of Gaza face extermination. Zionism, like apartheid, must be named and opposed.” For the first time in U.S. history, a major city had chosen a leader who not only rejected AIPAC money but also vowed to hold Israel accountable under international law.

As Mondoweiss reported in Michael Arria’s analysis, “Mamdani’s victory represents a breaking point — a signal that the Gaza genocide has permanently altered the place of Israel in U.S. politics.” His supporters saw it as a moral referendum, a vote not only for affordable housing and labour rights but also for global justice.

For many in the Global South, the moment was reminiscent of the anti-apartheid victories of the 1980s — a rare convergence of ethics and politics in one of the world’s most powerful cities. Mamdani’s success, they argued, had cracked open the edifice of fear that had long prevented U.S. politicians from criticizing Israel.

2. The End of the Zionist Consensus in American Politics

For decades, support for Israel was a bipartisan article of faith in Washington. To criticize Israel — or even call for conditioning aid — was considered political suicide. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was the gatekeeper, ensuring compliance through campaign donations and targeted opposition.

That era, however, is now unravelling – nearing it’s end.

The turning point came during the Gaza Genocide, the Holocaust of 2023–25 being perpetrated by Israel, when images of bombed hospitals, refugee camps, and starving children flooded social media feeds. Millions of Americans, including young Jews, marched in solidarity with Palestinians. The genocide scholars’ open letter to the United Nations in late 2024, describing Israel’s campaign as “an unfolding genocide,” marked a profound moral rupture. Even Holocaust scholars such as Omer Bartov and Raz Segal spoke out, urging the world not to remain silent in the face of state-organized mass killing – calling it a genocide.

By the time of the 2025 elections, the political landscape had shifted dramatically. In New York, California, Virginia, and Ohio, candidates funded by pro-Israel PACs faced growing backlash. In Virginia, Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi — spoke at an anti-Israel protest and opposed legislation combatting antisemitism — won a surprise election, making her the first Muslim woman to win statewide offices anywhere in the US. Ghazala Hashmi is of Indian, Asian origin.

But it was New York that delivered the decisive blow. Mamdani’s triumph — achieved despite a $20 million campaign by pro-Israel donors backing Andrew Cuomo — demonstrated that the so-called “Israel litmus test” no longer held. As Arria wrote, “The Zionist consensus in American politics has finally met its limit.”

Across the U.S., public opinion was shifting. Polls conducted in late 2025 showed that over 60% of Democrats and 45% of independents believed that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza. A majority of voters under 35 favoured cutting military aid to Israel. The AIPAC model — once a guarantee of victory — had become a liability.

This sea change was not merely about foreign policy; it was about moral legitimacy. As Mamdani himself said on election night, “You cannot stand for justice in Harlem and be silent in Gaza. You cannot claim to fight racism here and ignore apartheid abroad.”

3. The Jewish Awakening: From Zionism to Justice

Perhaps the most striking element of Mamdani’s campaign was the level of Jewish support it attracted — not from the institutional establishment, but from anti-Zionist and progressive Jewish groups.

As Middle East Eye reported in its feature “Why so many Jews are campaigning for Zohran Mamdani in New York City,” hundreds of young Jewish volunteers joined Mamdani’s campaign, knocking on doors and organizing interfaith solidarity events. They came from groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, and Rabbis for Ceasefire, who framed their activism as part of a moral struggle within Judaism itself.

“Being Jewish no longer means being Zionist,” said one organizer quoted in the report. “It means standing on the side of the oppressed, just as our ancestors demanded of us.”

The generational divide within the Jewish community is now undeniable. Younger Jews are breaking with the unconditional support for Israel that characterized their parents’ generation. As Philip Weiss wrote in Scheerpost, “Zohran Mamdani’s historic run will help free Jews, and U.S. politics, from Zionism.” He described the campaign as a moment of spiritual liberation — the ability for Jews to reject ethno-nationalism without rejecting their identity.

This transformation has deep theological and historical resonance. Many Jewish intellectuals have drawn parallels between Mamdani’s message and the prophetic tradition in Judaism — the insistence that justice for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan stands above loyalty to any state.

For decades, Zionist institutions such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC presented themselves as the voices of the Jewish community. But their credibility has collapsed among young Jews, who increasingly see them as defenders of apartheid & genocide. Polls by the Jewish Electorate Institute show that less than 20% of Jews under 30 believe Israel is a democracy; over 60% say they feel “ashamed” of its actions in Gaza.

As one Brooklyn rabbi put it at a Mamdani rally, “We are the children of the prophets — not the lobbyists.”

4. Mamdani’s Doctrine: Moral Clarity as Political Strategy

While most politicians navigate moral crises with ambiguity, Mamdani’s success came from his refusal to equivocate. His message was uncompromising: “Silence is complicity. To be neutral in the face of oppression is to take the side of the oppressor.”

Throughout his campaign, Mamdani insisted that foreign policy was a local issue. “When New York police are trained by Israeli forces, when our tax dollars fund the bombing of Gaza, when our tenants can’t afford rent because billionaires buy our politicians — it’s all connected,” he told a rally in the Bronx.

This framing connected international justice with local economic struggle. Mamdani’s platform combined calls for rent control, union expansion, and climate justice with demands to divest city funds from companies profiting from Israeli settlements and weapons sales.

His boldest statement came during an interview with The Nation, where he declared that if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — indicted at the International Criminal Court — ever set foot in New York, “we would have a moral obligation to arrest him for war crimes.” That statement, initially dismissed as political theatre, became one of the campaign’s most viral moments, shared millions of times across TikTok and X.

Mainstream commentators derided him as “radical,” but voters saw courage. His coalition, very ethnically and religiously diverse — spanning progressive Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Black socialists, Hispanics, LGBTQ community, trade unionists, and climate activists — reflected a new political alignment.

The campaign also took on billionaires and corporate landlords, many of whom poured money into his opponents’ campaigns. Mamdani called it “the same system — where money silences morality.”

As Scheerpost noted, Mamdani’s doctrine of moral clarity succeeded because it combined ethics with strategy. It was not only about what he opposed but also about what he affirmed: solidarity, dignity, and a shared struggle for justice.

5. Post-Zionist Politics: The Road Ahead

Mamdani’s victory marks the beginning of a new chapter in American political life — one that challenges decades of deference to Israeli power and the Zionist narrative.

For the Democratic Party, this is a watershed. The party’s base — especially among millennials and Gen Z — is demanding an end to the unconditional military and diplomatic support that Washington provides to Israel. Leaders like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar have already called for accountability measures, but Mamdani’s win shows that these positions can now command majority support at the ballot box and that too in New York itself!

Within days of the election, progressive mayors in Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco released statements endorsing a ceasefire and pledging to review city contracts linked to Israeli weapons manufacturers. Many U.S. city councils and other local bodies passed non-binding ceasefire resolutions calling for a halt to fighting in Gaza. Reuters’ municipal tally showed dozens of U.S. cities doing this. Seattle City Council passed an amended resolution supporting a long-term ceasefire; the council record and press coverage are public. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a ceasefire resolution; Mayor London Breed criticized it but declined to veto the non-binding measure. AP and local reporting document that. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson publicly made strong critical remarks about Israel’s actions in Gaza that were characterized by CAIR as recognizing the campaign as “genocidal.” CAIR and press outlets published responses. 

Even in the Republican Party, Thomas Massie & Marjorie Taylor Greene, both who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Congress, have raised the banner of revolt against the AIPAC Israel First Zionist control over their party and the Trump White House. Marjorie Taylor Greene has decided to contest the Republican party primaries for the Presidential nominee for 2028. She has already galvanised her support base across the country and is determined to get her agenda into the national debate. This is not good news for the Israeli Lobby in retreat. To counter the popularity of these two Republicans, Jewish Zionist Billionaire Miriam Adelson has decided to pour in $20 Million to defeat Thomas Massie in the upcoming elections in his congressional district in Kentucky.

Interestingly, Tucker Carlson, among the most prominent journalists and the leading Christian Conservative voice in America, said that Zohran Mamdani was not an antisemite. In fact, increasingly Christian Conservative voices who were earlier pro-Israel, have now taken a sharp anti-Israel position, the most prominent being Candace Owens, who is among the world’s leading and influential podcasters. For Israel, for the Lobby to lose the American Christian Conservative vote will be a catastrophe, as they will have lost popular public opinion, the Church-going American Christian voter! This is in addition to the Zionist Lobby already having lost the majority of the Democratic party voters, though they yet control the Democratic establishment. Which is the very Democratic establishment that Zohran Mamdani challenged and smashed in New York.

Undoubtedly, the ripple effects of Mamdani’s epic win were global. In London, Members of Parliament from the Labour left cited Mamdani’s win as proof that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” Labour MP’s and leaders reaffirmed this position and they included Dianne Abbot, John McDonnell, Bell Ribeiro, Rebecca Long-Bailey and (ex-MP) Chris Williamson. Both Jeremy Corbyn & Zarah Sultana who resigned from the Labour Party due to grave differences on the ongoing Genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of the Keir Starmer government, both congratulated Zohran Mamdani for his grassroots socialist campaign.

Palestine solidarity activists from across the world who have been mobilising in their millions, invoked New York’s example as evidence that moral politics can prevail even in the heart of empire.

Political scientists are calling this the dawn of post-Zionist politics — a framework that sees liberation, equality, and human rights as universal principles, not privileges reserved for one nation or people. In this new paradigm, to be anti-Zionist is not to be anti-Jewish, but rather to affirm the shared humanity of Palestinians and Jews alike.

Still, the road ahead will not be easy. The backlash has already begun. AIPAC and allied organizations have launched new political action committees to unseat anti-Zionist lawmakers. The ADL has intensified its campaign to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Major media outlets continue to amplify Israeli narratives.

Yet the tide has turned. The fear that once silenced critics of Israel has been broken. A new generation of activists, scholars, and politicians is speaking with moral confidence — and Mamdani stands at their forefront.

As Mondoweiss concluded, “Mamdani’s New York is not just a city; it is a message — that liberation is indivisible, and that justice must be universal.”

Conclusion: A New Chapter in American Political History & the Weakening of Zionist Lobbies

Zohran Mamdani’s victory was not just about one man or one city. It was a referendum on the moral soul of American democracy. It proved that courage, when anchored in justice, can overcome money, propaganda, and decades of religious and political conditioning.

In the coming years, historians may look back on this election as the moment when the U.S. political establishment’s uncritical support for Israel finally began to erode. It will be remembered as the point when New York — a city built by immigrants, shaped by diversity, and tested by inequality — stood up to empire and chose solidarity over silence.

As Mamdani said in his victory speech:

“The struggle for Gaza is the struggle for all of us. Because until every people is free, none of us are.”

Feroze Mithiborwala is an expert on West Asian & International Geostrategic issues. He is the Founder-Gen. Sec. of the India Palestine Solidarity Forum.

13 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- As the ceasefire enters its second month, Israel violated the agreement at least 282 times between October 10 and November 10. These violations included continued airstrikes and direct shootings, as well as the obstruction of vital humanitarian aid and the destruction of homes and infrastructure across the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, the Gaza Government Media Office said Israel violated the ceasefire agreement at least 282 times from October 10 to November 10, through the continuation of attacks by air, artillery and direct shootings.

The Office said Israel shot at civilians 88 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 12 times, bombed Gaza 124 times, and demolished people’s properties on 52 occasions. It added that Israel also abducted 23 Palestinians from Gaza over the past month.

According to Al Jazeera, Israel has attacked Gaza on 25 out of the past 31 days of the ceasefire, meaning there were only six days during which no violent attacks, deaths or injuries were reported.

Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, Israel has killed at least 242 Palestinians and injured 622, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Israel has also continued to block vital humanitarian aid.

From October 10 to November 9, only 3,451 trucks have reached their intended destinations inside Gaza, according to the UN2720 Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard, which monitors humanitarian aid in Gaza.

According to the Government Media Office, as of November 6, only 4,453 trucks had entered Gaza since the ceasefire began, out of an expected 15,600.

This averages about 171 trucks daily, far short of the 600 trucks per day that were supposed to enter.

In addition, Israel has blocked more than 350 essential and nutritious food items, including meat, dairy, and vegetables crucial for a balanced diet. Instead, non-nutritious foodstuffs are being allowed, such as snacks, chocolate, crisps, and soft drinks.

13 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that U.S. bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth—it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other U.S. interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.

As a U.S. armada gathers off Venezuela, a U.S. special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) — the “Nightstalkers” — the same unit that, in U.S.-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.

Western media portray the 160th SOAR as an elite helicopter force for covert missions. But in 2005 an officer in the regiment blogged about joint operations with the Wolf Brigade as they swept Baghdad detaining civilians. On November 10, 2005, he described a “battalion-sized joint operation” in southern Baghdad and boasted, “As we passed vehicle after vehicle full of blindfolded detainees, my face stretched into a long wolfish smile.”

Many people seized by the Wolf Brigade and other U.S.-trained Special Police Commandos were never seen again; others turned up in mass graves or morgues, often far from where they’d been taken. Bodies of people detained in Baghdad were found in mass graves near Badra, 70 miles away — but that was well within the combat range of the Nightstalkers’ MH-47 Chinook helicopters.

This was how the Bush–Cheney administration responded to Iraqi resistance to an illegal invasion: catastrophic assaults on Fallujah and Najaf, followed by the training and unleashing of death squads to terrorize civilians and ethnically cleanse Baghdad. The UN reported over 34,000 civilians killed in 2006 alone, and epidemiological studies estimate roughly a million Iraqis died overall.

Iraq has never fully recovered—and the U.S. never reaped the spoils it sought. The exiles Washington installed to rule Iraq stole at least $150 billion from its oil revenues, but the Iraqi parliament rejected U.S.-backed efforts to grant shares of the oil industry to Western companies. Today, Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, India, the UAE, and Turkey—not the United States.

The neocon dream of “regime change” has a long, bloody history, its methods ranging from coups to full-scale invasions. But “regime change” is a euphemism: the word “change” implies improvement. A more honest term would be “government removal”—or simply the destruction of a country or society.

A coup usually involves less immediate violence than a full-scale invasion, but they pose the same question: who or what replaces the ousted government? Time after time, U.S.-backed coups and invasions have installed rulers who enrich themselves through embezzlement, corruption, or drug trafficking—while making life worse for ordinary people.

These so-called “military solutions” rarely resolve problems, real or imaginary, as their proponents promise. They more often leave countries plagued by decades of division, instability, and suffering.

Kosovo was carved out of Serbia by an illegal US-led war in 1999, but it is still not recognized by many nations and remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main U.S. ally in the war, Hashim Thaçi, now sits in a cell at the Hague, charged with horrific crimes committed under cover of NATO’s bombing.

In Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloody war and occupation, the United States was eventually defeated by the Taliban—the very force it had invaded the country to remove.

In Haiti, the CIA and U.S. Marines toppled the popular democratic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis of corruption, gang rule, and despair that continues to this day.

In 2006, the U.S. militarily supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install a new government—an intervention that gave rise to Al Shabab, an Islamic resistance group that still controls large swaths of the country. U.S. AFRICOM has conducted 89 airstrikes in Al Shabab-held territory in 2025 alone.

In Honduras, the military removed its president, Mel Zelaya, in a coup in 2009, and the U.S. supported an election to replace him. The U.S.-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a narco-state, fueling mass emigration—until Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, was elected to lead a new progressive government in 2021.

Libya, a country with vast oil wealth, has never recovered from the U.S. and allied invasion in 2011, which led to years of militia rule, the return of slave markets, the destabilizing of neighboring countries and a 45% reduction in oil exports.

Also in 2011, the U.S. and its allies escalated a protest movement in Syria into an armed rebellion and civil war. That spawned ISIS, which in turn led to the U.S.-led massacres that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in 2017. Turkish-backed, Al Qaeda-linked rebels finally seized the capital in 2024 and formed a transitional government, but Israel, Turkey, and the U.S. still militarily occupy other parts of the country.

The U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership that only half the population recognized as a legitimate government. That drove Crimea and Donbas to secede and put Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, setting the stage for the Russian invasion in 2022 and the wider, still-escalating conflict between NATO and Russia.

In 2015, when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement assumed power in Yemen after the resignation of a U.S.-backed transitional government, the U.S. joined a Saudi-led air war and blockade that caused a humanitarian crisis and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis—yet did not defeat the Houthis.

That brings us to Venezuela. Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the U.S. has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.

But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. U.S. presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.

In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots—attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean—have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by U.S. senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.

Yet Trump still claims to be “ending the era of endless wars.” His most loyal supporters insist he means it—and that he was sabotaged in his first term by the “deep state.” This time, he has surrounded himself with loyalists and sacked National Security Council staffers he identified as neocons or warhawks, but he has still not ended America’s wars.

Alongside Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean, he is a full partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran. He has maintained the global empire of U.S. military bases and deployments, and supercharged the U.S. war machine with a trillion dollar war chest—draining desperately needed resources out of a looted domestic economy.

Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor was an incendiary choice for Latin America, given Rubio’s open hostility to Cuba and Venezuela.

Brazilian President Lula made that clear when he met Trump in Malaysia at the ASEAN conference, saying: “There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina.” At Lula’s insistence, Rubio was excluded from talks over U.S. investments in Brazil’s rare earth metals industry, the world’s second largest after China’s.

Cuba-bashing may have served Rubio well in domestic politics, but as Secretary of State it renders him incapable of responsibly managing U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Trump will have to decide whether to pursue constructive engagement with Latin America or let Rubio corner him into new conflicts with our neighbors. Rubio’s threats of sanctions against countries that welcome Cuban doctors are already alienating governments across the globe.

Trump’s manufactured crisis with Venezuela exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of his foreign policy: his disastrous choice of advisers; his conflicting ambitions to be both a war leader and a peacemaker; his worship of the military; and his surrender to the same war machine that ensnares every American president.

If there is one lesson from the long history of U.S. interventions, it’s that “regime change” doesn’t bring democracy or stability. As the United States threatens Venezuela with the same arrogance that has wrecked so many other countries, this is the moment to end this cycle of imperial U.S. violence once and for all.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

12 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

It has been a month since Trump announced a “ceasefire” in Gaza and subsequently posed for photos with his spineless Arab vassals in Sharm El Sheikh, standing before bold white text that read “PEACE 2025.” In the days since the Truth Social announcement and the photo op, Palestinians in Gaza have seen anything but peace.

The Israelis have broken the agreement in every conceivable way, with the full backing of the United States — the main broker and guarantor of the supposed truce. In a single night of bombardment, the Israelis killed 104 Palestinians — 46 of them children — during the so-called “ceasefire.” Only a fraction of the agreed 600 daily aid trucks are entering Gaza, perpetuating the epidemic of hunger among Palestinians, who have endured more than two years of relentless bombardment with some of the most devastating weapons developed in Western factories of death and destruction.

With barely any pressure on the Israelis from the deal’s guarantors to end their incessant criminality, there appears to be no end to Palestinian suffering in the near future.

Marking a month since the “ceasefire” came into effect on October 10, Hamas issued a statement affirming its commitment to the agreement and detailing 13 ways in which the Israelis are violating it. Citing “international humanitarian law” and appealing to the “mediators, guarantors, countries, international organisations, and free people of the world,” Hamas has urged the occupation to implement the clauses listed in the agreement.

Here is the Hamas statement from November 10 in full:

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

In this statement, we in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas affirm our thanks and appreciation for the efforts of the brotherly mediators and all countries, international and humanitarian organisations, and free people of the world who took a courageous ethical and humanitarian stance in rejecting the genocide carried out by the occupation against our people in Gaza. We value the efforts of the mediators who contributed to reaching the ceasefire agreement.

In the context of the commitment of the Movement and the resistance forces to implement the agreement, stemming from their national and humanitarian responsibilities, it calls on the brotherly mediators, guarantors, countries, and international organisations to continue working to pressure the occupation and oblige it to stop its repeated excesses and violations aimed at torpedoing the agreement and undermining efforts to stabilise and sustain it. These violations were as follows:

First: Hamas’s full and precise commitment to the agreement

Since the ceasefire agreement signed in Sharm El Sheikh came into effect, the resistance forces have adhered with full, precise commitment and in good faith to implementing the agreement. It handed over the twenty living captive occupation soldiers within 72 hours of the implementation’s start. It also continued meticulous search operations for the bodies of Israeli captives in daily coordination with mediators and the International Red Cross.

This was despite the extremely difficult field conditions created by the war, its complete changing of the Strip’s features, the destruction of its infrastructure, the occupation’s control over 60 percent of the Strip’s area, working amidst hundreds of tonnes of unexploded ordnance dropped by the occupation on Gaza, the lack of sufficient excavation and rubble removal equipment (which the occupation continues to prevent from entering), the martyrdom of a large number of resistance fighters who were guarding the occupation’s captives, and the vapourisation of the bodies of hundreds of Palestinian fighters and civilians (and the possibility of the same for some of the occupation’s captives).

Despite this, the Movement was able to recover 24 bodies out of 28. Through mediators and the Red Cross, it provided coordinates for the locations of other bodies in areas under occupation control. Meanwhile, the Movement continues its intensive efforts to find the remaining bodies. The Movement has left no pretext the occupation tried to fabricate, addressing each one, confirming through actions and field facts its full commitment to the text and spirit of the agreement.

Second: The occupation’s violations one month into the agreement

Since the agreement began, the occupation has not stopped undermining and violating it daily, at every moment, and attempting to fabricate pretexts for violations. This is represented in:

1. Killing and targeting of civilians: 271 Palestinians have been martyred as a result of deliberate bombing and shooting by occupation forces. Civilians constituted more than 91 percent of them, with 94 percent inside the Yellow Line and the rest adjacent to it. Among the martyrs were 107 children, 39 women, and 9 elderly persons, meaning 58 percent were children, women, and the elderly, in a scene that reflects the occupation’s continued policy of systematic killing against the unarmed population.
2. Injuries: 622 citizens were injured by bombing and shooting. 99 percent of them were civilians, including 221 children, 137 women, and 33 elderly persons, meaning 63 percent of the injured were children, women, and the elderly, which confirms the vengeful and systematic nature of the occupation’s crimes.
3. Arrests: The occupation arrested 35 Palestinians, including fishermen at sea and others from areas adjacent to the Yellow Line; 29 of them remain in detention.
4. Demolition of homes inside the Yellow Line: The occupation continues, on a daily and systematic basis, to demolish homes located inside the areas it controls behind the Yellow Line, in a clear and explicit breach of the agreement. These violations have continued for a full month without stopping, leading to widespread destruction of citizens’ property inside that area.
5. Exceeding the temporary withdrawal line: The occupation has not adhered to the agreed-upon withdrawal line for the first phase. It is exceeding the Yellow Line by an area estimated at 33 square km, which includes fire control within distances ranging from 400 to 1,050 meters inside the line, and the incursion of military vehicles into these areas. The occupation has also placed concrete blocks that exceed the Yellow Line by distances ranging from 200 to 800 meters along the temporary line.
6. Preventing the entry of UNRWA aid: In an explicit violation of the agreement’s text, the occupation continues to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid provided by UNRWA, which has led to the backlog of more than 6,000 shipments of vital supplies. UNRWA is considered the most capable and professional body for distributing humanitarian aid, given its more than 77 years of experience in relief work and serving Palestinian refugees in its various fields of operation.
7. Restricting the entry of aid and fuel: The occupation has deliberately and systematically violated the agreement’s clauses stipulating the entry of at least 600 aid trucks daily, including 50 fuel trucks of all types. Actual humanitarian aid did not exceed 40 percent of the total trucks entering during the first month, numbering less than 200 trucks per day.
   Commercial trucks constituted 60 percent, a part of which were registered as aid despite being commercial. It also only allowed 38 gas trucks and 92 diesel trucks, i.e., 8.4 percent of the agreed-upon quantity. Fuel is the oxygen for restarting life — for operating hospital generators, opening roads, running transport facilities, and rehabilitating infrastructure amid a total power outage. This confirms the occupation is working in a calculated and systematic way to maintain the state of paralysis and prevent the return of life. The occupation also continues to close the Zikim crossing, the main route to facilitate and speed up aid entry from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. The occupation also controls the types of materials allowed in, preventing basic foodstuffs like meat, poultry, eggs, and livestock, except in minimal amounts. In 31 days, only one truck of eggs was allowed in. It also prevents the entry of tents and shelter supplies despite the harsh onset of winter; what has entered is less than 5 percent of the Strip’s urgent needs, deepening the humanitarian crisis.
8. Failure to operate the power generation plant: Despite a month having passed since the agreement was signed, Gaza residents have not seen any practical steps toward restarting the power generation plant, even though the agreement’s text affirms that preparations for its operation should begin immediately upon the agreement’s entry into force. This keeps the Strip in a state of partial paralysis affecting all aspects of life.
9. Preventing infrastructure rehabilitation: The occupation continues to prevent the entry of heavy equipment and materials needed for rubble removal, as well as obstructing the entry of necessary supplies for operating power and water stations, sewage systems, bakeries, and hospitals. It also prevents the entry of construction materials and civil defence equipment needed for reconstruction, which systematically prevents efforts to rehabilitate infrastructure and restore civilian life in the Strip.
10. Closure of the Rafah crossing: Despite the agreement to open the Rafah crossing in both directions starting October 20, 2025, the crossing has remained closed since March 18, 2025, despite 21 days having passed since the agreed-upon date for its reopening. The occupation government continues to prevent citizens from travelling and returning, which has multiplied the suffering of thousands of stranded individuals, patients, and students, in a direct breach of the agreement’s clauses.
11. Incitement by occupation leaders to return to war: Political, military, and security leaders of the occupation continue their public, near-daily incitement to resume the war and not abide by the agreement’s terms, in clear disregard for the international community and defiance of world leaders who affirmed at the Sharm El Sheikh summit the necessity of stabilizing the ceasefire. The occupation’s cabinet also voted, one week after the ceasefire agreement, to change the war’s name to the “War of Resurrection” (Harb al-Ba’ath), a step that shows its insistence on continuing the aggression and its rejection of the ceasefire path and international efforts for stability.
12. Mutilation of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs: The occupation handed over dozens of Palestinian bodies that had been brutally mutilated, including bodies crushed under tank treads, and others which were field-executed while bound and blindfolded. This constitutes a fully-fledged war crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
13. Detainees and the missing: The occupation continues to manipulate the delivery of a list of names of Palestinian detainees from Gaza, despite a full month since the ceasefire went into effect; it has not provided the final list as stipulated in the agreement. It continues to evade the mediators, providing incomplete lists from time to time, omitting the names of dozens of detainees it had previously acknowledged in earlier lists, in addition to repeating some names or including names of persons who were previously released.

The Movement affirms the existence of more than 1,800 missing persons from Gaza whose fate is still unknown. The occupation also continues to detain the nurse Tasneem Marwan Al-Hams from Gaza, along with dozens of women and children from the West Bank, and prevents the families of deported detainees from meeting their released relatives.

We in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and the resistance forces affirm our full commitment to the agreement signed in Sharm El Sheikh and to our ethical and humanitarian responsibility towards our people. We hold the occupation fully responsible for its continued gross violations and breaches. We call on the mediators, guarantors, governments, and international civil society organisations to take immediate and serious action to oblige the occupation to stop its aggression, lift its siege, allow in aid, and guarantee the Palestinian people’s rights to security, freedom, and dignity.

Based on the resistance’s commitment to the agreement, international law, and international humanitarian law, we call on the brotherly mediators, guarantors, countries, international organisations, and free people of the world to act urgently to ensure the occupation is obliged to implement the following clauses:

1. Precise adherence to the clauses of the ceasefire agreement signed in Sharm El Sheikh, affirmation of its continuation, and prevention of any breach.
2. Immediate cessation of killing, massacres, and violations against our people in Gaza.
3. Withdrawal according to the temporary line agreed upon in the first phase, and preventing any field transgressions or additional fire control.
4. Commitment to allowing in the agreed-upon quantities of aid and fuel as stipulated in the agreement, and preventing their reduction or obstruction.
5. Allowing UNRWA to work with full freedom inside the Gaza Strip immediately, and enabling it to enter and distribute humanitarian aid as the most experienced and capable body to do so.
6. Operating and opening the Rafah crossing in both directions for the travel and return of citizens, and lifting the restrictions imposed on it immediately.
7. Opening the Zikim crossing for the entry of humanitarian and relief aid via the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan without restrictions or delay.
8. Urgent allowance for the entry of 300,000 tents for immediate shelter to enable citizens to protect themselves from the bitter winter cold.
9. Entry of equipment and machinery necessary for infrastructure rehabilitation, and adherence to the agreed-upon humanitarian protocol.
10. Immediate cessation of demolishing and destroying homes and civilian facilities in the areas the occupation still controls.
11. Allowing entry of equipment necessary to operate the power generation plant in Gaza, and entry of the required quantities of diesel for it.
12. Full and immediate disclosure of the fate and data of all Palestinian detainees and missing persons from the Gaza Strip.
13. Allowing entry of medical, humanitarian, media missions, and civil defence teams to provide their humanitarian and relief services freely.

The Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas
Monday, 19 Jumada al-Awwal 1447 AH
Corresponding to November 10, 2025

Unlike the perpetually lying Israelis and their Western backers, the correspondence from the Palestinian leadership throughout the last two years of the genocide has always been impeccable — clearly highlighting the treachery of the genocidaires and their enablers, and outlining the leadership’s basic and reasonable demands for their long-suffering people.

Perhaps it is due to the Palestinian leadership’s coherence — in speech and in deeds — that no mainstream media ever airs their perspective. Doing so would further unravel the carefully crafted, vile, and monstrous lie of the “civilised” Israelis versus the “barbaric” natives. Sinwar’s Flood is washing away every lie that has sustained this savage, anti-human entity for nearly 80 years.

12 November 2025

Source: palestinewillbefree.substack.com

By Uri Weltmann

It is the olive harvest season. Palestinian communities are preparing for it, as they have for generations. This is not only economically vital, but also a practice rooted in their history, culture, and traditions.

However, not all Palestinian farmers can simply go to the family plot and collect the olives growing on the trees. In dozens of villages across the Occupied West Bank, Palestinians face harassment, beatings, and sometimes even fatal attacks, carried out by extremist Israeli settlers.

During last year’s harvest period, while international attention was largely focused on Gaza, more than 1,400 settler attacks were documented in the West Bank. Especially notorious are the so-called “Hilltop Youth” — far-right hooligan settlers that have repeatedly attacked Palestinians, destroying homes and uprooting trees.

Last week, I went along with dozens of other peace activists from Israel to participate in the olive harvest, as an act of Protective Presence, whereby the physical presence of Israeli volunteers who accompany Palestinian farmers can help prevent violence from the settlers, and possibly allow the Palestinians safe access to their lands. The logistics of the action was organised by Rabbis for Human Rights, with Standing Together mobilising its activists.

Early in the morning, we headed from Tel Aviv towards the West Bank, with more people coming from Jerusalem and the north. After an hour’s drive we arrived at Deir Ammar, near Ramallah. There we met with village leaders, and conversed in a mixture of Hebrew, Arabic and English to plan our day’s work. Nawras — a Palestinian citizen of Israel, organiser of the Standing Together local group in the centre of the Galilee — helped to translate. We had a sizable group of activists, numbering around thirty.

As we were heading towards the olive groves, we saw on the nearby hill a few makeshift buildings. “This is the new settlement,” we were told.

It had popped up less than three months ago, and is inhabited by Hilltop Youth. In Israel, these are known as “illegal outposts.” All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal according to international law, but these impromptu “outposts” are considered illegal even according to Israel’s own laws, as they were set up without the government’s consent. The zealous settlers who inhabit them don’t believe they need anyone’s approval to “settle the holy land,” harassing the nearby Palestinians and trying to force them to leave.

We arrived. Activists and villagers started to hand pick the olives and put them in buckets. Others laid plastic sheets on the ground below the olive trees, and combed the tall branches with rakes, causing ripe olives to fall. For a while, the entire scene was buzzing with people hard at work.

A couple of minutes later, an army jeep arrived. Five young soldiers — perhaps 18 or 19 years old — came out, weapons in hand. Dotan — an experienced Standing Together activist from Tel-Aviv — approached them to negotiate.

“You can’t be here,” they told him. “Why is that?” he enquired. “Security reasons. You must leave this place at once.” They continued to talk, with Dotan maintaining his calm, asking questions. He knew what he was doing: stalling for time, keeping the soldiers busy, so the rest of us could make the most of these precious minutes to hurriedly harvest more olives.

Finally, an agreement was reached. “You can only harvest the olive trees on this side of the road, and not on the other side,” the soldiers told Dotan. Why exactly? What was the reasoning behind this strange restriction? No point in trying to find logic in it. Under the occupation, many things are arbitrary. The whim of a young soldier is transformed into law, and questioning that is useless.

After more minutes passed, with our buckets filling with olives, the soldiers returned, saying: “This has now been declared a closed military area. You need to head back to the village.”

It was then, when someone noticed a movement nearby. “Settlers are heading our way!.” One car was driving from the outpost towards us. Another group of settlers, carrying sticks, was making its way on foot. We gathered our equipment, fearing confrontation. As we were about to leave, we saw the settlers standing very close, and pulled out our phones, starting to film.

Capturing their faces can sometimes deter them. Suddenly, some settlers — their faces covered — threw rocks at us. “Why aren’t you stopping this?” we shouted at the nearby soldiers, who looked unimpressed. After they noticed everything was recorded on video, they moved towards the settlers, doing as little as possible to actually stop them.

It was at this time that I saw Ruth — a young Standing Together activist from Jerusalem, where she studies at the university — standing behind me, looking visibly shaken. It seems that while we were preoccupied with the rock-throwing settlers, the other group of settlers arrived behind us, and started to beat two Palestinian villagers who were still in the olive grove.

Ruth was filming them with her phone, when one of the settlers reached her and tried to pull it out from her hand. One villager, beaten badly, had to be carried away to be hospitalised. Ruth was now busy trying to get a reception on her phone, to upload the video of the settler attack. If our presence can’t deter the settlers from beating the Palestinians, at least we can document their crimes.

We began to retreat towards the village, while a dozen settlers — some of them armed with guns — were standing very close, shouting and taunting. The Palestinian villagers with whom we marched were stopping every few metres to shout back at them: “This is our land!” “These are our olives!”

The soldiers tried to hasten our departure. Two of the soldiers, their faces also covered, were the most confrontational. “If you don’t leave this place in a minute, I have authorisation to use stun grenades and to make arrests. Don’t test my patience,” one of them told us. “You’ll never harvest these olives,” the other grinned. No reason was given as to why the settlers were allowed to stay, while the Palestinian villagers who owned this land were forced to march back to their village.

We made it back to the village, buckets of olives in our hands. Despite the interference by the army and the settler attack, we didn’t return empty handed. We said our goodbyes, and headed back to our vans.

There is nothing especially unusual or exceptionally dramatic on this day of olive harvest.

This is the reality of so many Palestinian families in the Occupied West Bank, whose every aspect of their daily lives is dictated by an army of a state which is not their own.

While the world has its eyes on the Gaza Strip and the atrocities that our government commits there, we mustn’t let go of the fact that settler violence is on the rise in the West Bank, and action is needed to be taken there as well.

Our van was driving westwards, approaching the Green Line (the pre-1967 border), which separates the State of Israel from the West Bank. There we had to pass through an army checkpoint in order to get back into Israel.

A soldier ordered us to stop, and peeked inside our minibus. It was full of dishevelled activists, wearing bilingual purple T-shirts. “Where are you coming from?” he asked. No use lying, was it? It’s not as if we could pass for tourists.

“We come from the olive harvest at Deir Ammar.” The soldier looked back at us with blank eyes. He didn’t expect this answer. He seemed to be exhausted from merely having to think about it. “Just go,” he said. So we went.

Uri Weltmann is the national field organiser of Standing Together (www.standing-together.org).

25 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Heather Stroud

In proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, along with criminalising many of those who have challenged this government policy decision, the British Government have opened themselves up to criticism and ridicule. In the past few months alone there have been over 2,000 politically motivated arrests, mostly of elderly people who have held up placards saying that they ‘Oppose Genocide’ and ‘Support Palestine  Action’. Lawyers, journalists and doctors caught up in this dragnet of invented criminality for expressing views in support of Palestine, have faced arrests and interrogation under counterterrorism laws. Particularly absurd was the arrest of someone for wearing a tea shirt that read, ‘I support Plasticine Action’.

Freedom of thought, of speech, and political action is under attack in Britain. However this suppression of free speech is selective and highly politicalised. It is okay to publicly offer verbal support for Netanyahu and his genocidal regime as was recently demonstrated when a man, (clearly trying to emphasize this point), confronted the police by openly chanting; ‘I support Netanyahu and I support the genocide of Palestinians’. The individual concerned was told that he wouldn’t be arrested because; ‘in Britain we have the right to free speech and free expression’. Those protesting the genocide alongside him could only smile, since arrests were taking place within their midst of people voicing opposition to genocide and expressing their support for movements that carry out direct action. The man in question admitted to his audience that he opposed genocide and acted in the manner, he did, to demonstrate the double standards of the actions of the police.

We are at a pivotal juncture in British society. Do we risk our own liberty by standing up for freedom of speech and supporting the rights of Palestinians to live in freedom and dignity; do we stand up for our own rights to take a moral stance against the influence of a foreign hostile force; or do we ignore the capture of our State and allow ourselves to sink further into despotism.

What the British Government has done, through the misuse of the terrorism act, is to expose their disregard for the rights of the British people in favour of supporting a foreign power that is carrying out a genocide on the Palestinian population in Gaza. In this crackdown people opposing a crime that should be abhorrent to anyone with a modicum of morality, the government and police have displayed an authoritarianism that is reminiscent of the crackdowns on free speech and protests that occurred during the beginning stages of Stalin’s Soviet State purges and 1930/40’s Nazi Germany.

Most dictatorships and tyrannical governments of the past, have considered themselves legal in the narrow sense of the law. They have adopted tyranny above any kind of recognition of justice, democracy and blatantly ignored the ‘spirit of the law’ which relates to justice and honesty. What we are witnessing today in Britain is little different from the strategies used by past tyrannical regimes – the Kafkaesque secret courts, the enacting of new laws and the proscribing of any group or movement who opposes them, as terrorist. Of particular concern is that these charges are applied with increasing severity for the benefit of a foreign state against those who oppose their zionist aims in occupied Palestine. By using Parliament to enact these zionist US/Israeli inspired terrorist laws against domestic and foreign resistance movements, the British Government attempts to justify their criminalisation of those who demonstrate support for the ‘proscribed’ resistance movements.

However legal and law are not necessarily the same thing. Setting aside considerations of morality, under international law there are legal obligations that place a responsibility on States and individuals to do everything within their power to resist unjust laws. Under international law, occupation and genocide are crimes. In fact genocide is considered to be one of the most heinous crimes a state can commit. Taking action to frustrate the execution of genocide, even action that falls into what might otherwise be considered illegal, is justified.

The persistent mass of people gathering globally to demonstrate support for the rights of Palestinians to live in without fear and starvation, has sent a chilling message to the establishment that Israel has lost the narrative. The veil has been lifted on this racist, brutal genocidal ideology underpinning zionist aims. Israel’s claim of victimhood and of defending itself, has collapsed. States that occupy other people do not have the right to defend themselves against those resisting their brutal occupation. Buying TikTok, and paying $7,000 a post to influencers willing to put forward Israeli propaganda, isn’t going to change this.

However, given the brevity of the crime, the imminent starvation and daily toll on Palestinian lives, the urgency of events persuaded many it was time to go beyond marching and do whatever was within their power to prevent this genocide. Just as the suffragettes, and other protest movements ultimately turned to direct action as a means of bringing about change rather than requesting change, Palestine Action chose to directly target the weapons manufacturers who were producing the armoury that kills Palestinians. 

In underestimating the support that direct action for Palestinians has in the U.K. and the abuse of the terrorism Act, the government have lost legitimacy and exposed how deeply entrenched they are in a hostile Zionist ideology.

Heather Stroud is an activist

25 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Zorhan K Mamdani

If tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution, and we have paid a mighty price… We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great.

Zohran Mamdani delivered the following remarks to supporters gathered in the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn after winning the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday, November4, 2025.

Thank you, my friends. The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”

For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands.

Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.

Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani Victory Speech

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tPBasNfhLs]

I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.

On January 1st, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City. And that is because of you. So before I say anything else, I must say this: Thank you. Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past.

You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you, because we are you.

Or, as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum.

Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties.

To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too. This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night. A New Yorker who lives elsewhere, who commutes two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city.

It’s about people like the woman I met on the Bx33 years ago who said to me, “I used to love New York, but now it’s just where I live.” And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now.

This victory is for all of them. And it’s for all of you, the more than 100,000 volunteers who built this campaign into an unstoppable force. Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again. With every door knocked, every petition signature earned, and every hard-earned conversation, you eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics.

Now, I know that I have asked for much from you over this last year. Time and again, you have answered my calls — but I have one final request. New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know.

We have held it in anticipation of defeat, held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, held it because we cannot afford to exhale. Thanks to all of those who sacrificed so much. We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.

To my campaign team, who believed when no one else did and who took an electoral project and turned it into so much more: I will never be able to express the depth of my gratitude. You can sleep now.

To my parents, mama and baba: You have made me into the man I am today. I am so proud to be your son. And to my incredible wife, Rama, hayati: There is no one I would rather have by my side in this moment, and in every moment.

To every New Yorker — whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all — thank you for the opportunity to prove myself worthy of your trust. I will wake each morning with a singular purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before.

There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same.

And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn. New York, we have answered those fears.

Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy.

And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.

Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: “A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

Tonight we have stepped out from the old into the new. So let us speak now, with clarity and conviction that cannot be misunderstood, about what this new age will deliver, and for whom.

This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt. Central to that vision will be the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia: an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care across our city.

Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come. This new age will be one of relentless improvement. We will hire thousands more teachers. We will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy. We will work tirelessly to make lights shine again in the hallways of NYCHA developments where they have long flickered.

Safety and justice will go hand in hand as we work with police officers to reduce crime and create a Department of Community Safety that tackles the mental health crisis and homelessness crises head on. Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception. In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.

In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.

And we will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power.

No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election. This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed at odds with one another. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.

For years, those in City Hall have only helped those who can help them. But on January 1st, we will usher in a city government that helps everyone.

Now, I know that many have heard our message only through the prism of misinformation. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbors that this new age is something that should frighten them. As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system. We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.

Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.

After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.

This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.

We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.

New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.

So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them. A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.

If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all. And we must chart a new path, as bold as the one we have already traveled. After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate.

I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

And yet, if tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution, and we have paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party, and too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they’ve been left behind.

We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great.

Our greatness will be anything but abstract. It will be felt by every rent-stabilized tenant who wakes up on the first of every month knowing the amount they’re going to pay hasn’t soared since the month before. It will be felt by each grandparent who can afford to stay in the home they have worked for, and whose grandchildren live nearby because the cost of child care didn’t send them to Long Island.

It will be felt by the single mother who is safe on her commute and whose bus runs fast enough that she doesn’t have to rush school drop-off to make it to work on time. And it will be felt when New Yorkers open their newspapers in the morning and read headlines of success, not scandal.

Most of all, it will be felt by each New Yorker when the city they love finally loves them back.

Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the… [rent!] Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and… [free!] Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal… [child care!]

Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together. New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you.

Thank you.

Zorhan K Mamdani is a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly and on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, was elected mayor of New York City.

6 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Israel has continued to breach the ceasefire in Gaza, with reports of killings, shootings, shelling, and home demolitions across the enclave.

Two Palestinian men were killed in separate attacks in central Gaza. Israel’s military said they crossed the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, a non-physical demarcation line separating the Israeli occupation forces from certain areas of Gaza, while maintaining control over approximately 50% of the enclave. However, local sources confirmed that a group of civilians came under attack while collecting firewood.

Israeli forces also carried out a series of air raids and demolition operations to the east of Gaza City.

Heavy artillery shelling and air raids were reported this morning in the eastern parts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Since the ceasefire took into effect on October 10, Israel continues to violate the agreement.

The violations included crimes of direct gunfire against civilians, deliberate shelling and targeting, and the arrest of a number of civilians, restrictions on the flow of aid and number of trucks, reflecting the occupation’s continued policy of aggression despite the declared end of the war, said the Gaza Government Media Office, after Israel stepped up attacks across Gaza.

At least 250 Palestinians have been killed so far in Israeli attacks across the enclave, including over 90 children.

6 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michel Rauchs

For historical and cultural reasons, the Commons has remained largely overlooked or misunderstood. But today, it’s more important than ever to restore it as a vital third mode of provisioning—one that complements and moderates both markets and governments.

A Misunderstood Legacy

If the Commons is such a compelling alternative, why is it still so marginal in public discourse?

Ask around, and you’ll likely get one of three reactions:

• “The what?”—from those who’ve never encountered the term.
• “That old hippie idea?”—from those who associate it with 60s idealism and dreamy utopias.
• “Ah yes, the tragedy.”—from those trained in economics or political science.

Each of these reactions is understandable. And each reflects a different kind of misunderstanding or forgetting. By the end of this article, we hope to see why these responses are normal—and why it’s time to leave them behind.

A Brief History of the Commons

For most of human history, the Commons was the central way that communities organised to meet their needs.

Forests, rivers, fisheries, grazing lands, and many other essential resources were held ‘in-common’—not as private property or state assets, but as shared wealth stewarded by and for a community. In many indigenous traditions around the world, relationships to land, water, plants, and animals were reverential and carried a spiritual dimension. Nature was kin to be respected and cared for, not a commodity to be exploited and processed.

But with the combined rise of capitalism and the modern nation-state, this came to an abrupt end. Beginning in Europe and propagating through colonial expansion, commons were systematically enclosed, marginalised, or dismantled. Land was fenced, forests logged, waterways diverted, and entire communities displaced. Local customs were replaced by legal ownership structures that favoured private gain. And rights that were honoured for generations were revoked or erased.

This process was not accidental.

It served to free up land, labour, and resources for commercial enterprise and imperial ambitions. Commons were seen as obstacles to economic growth and the consolidation of state power. They had to be removed, or at least made insignificant. And so, in many places around the world, the practice of commoning was violently pushed aside and gradually faded from view.

Fast forward to 1968, when a six-page essay by biologist Garrett Hardin, titled The Tragedy of the Commons, seemed to put the final nail in the coffin.

Using a theoretical scenario and principles from game theory, he argued that individuals with open access to a shared resource would inevitably overuse and destroy it—unless it was brought under private ownership or state control. The story spread like wildfire. For decades, it gave policymakers, economists, and corporate interests an academically-sanctioned rationale for enclosure: if communities could not be trusted to manage common wealth, better to nationalise or—preferably—privatise it.

The political and economic shifts of the 1970s and 1980s further accelerated the global expansion of capital flows and markets. Deregulation, privatisation, and structural adjustment were implemented across much of the world, along with a new, stylised—if ridiculous—model of the human as an isolated individual motivated only by rational self-interest. Community provisioning came to be seen as naïve, inefficient, or even dangerously utopian.

But just when the Commons seemed consigned to history, a quiet resurgence began—first intellectually, then practically (more on that in Part 4).

The intellectual turning point came in 1990, when political scientist Elinor Ostrom published Governing the Commons. Drawing on decades of fieldwork, she meticulously documented how communities around the world had long governed natural resources—from alpine meadows to coastal fisheries—using self-made rules, peer monitoring, and institutions of their own design. Her work revealed that commons were not only possible, but in many cases more sustainable, resilient, and adaptive than comparative modes of market or state provisioning.

Her work gained traction across academic disciplines, and, in a moment of stark vindication, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009—just when global markets and national governments had both been brought to their knees.

Defining the Commons: A Living Social Practice

So what exactly is, and makes, a commons?

At its core, a commons consists of three interdependent elements:

1. A shared resource (physical or immaterial);
2. A community of people who jointly use and manage that resource;
3. A set of rules and norms developed and enforced by that community to ensure fair access, responsible use, and long-term stewardship.

Commons can apply to a wide variety of resources. Some are physical, such as natural ecosystems, farmland, housing, or energy infrastructure. Others are immaterial (or intangible): knowledge and culture, data and software, systems of care, and even forms of money.

But in all cases, what makes something a commons is not the resource itself. What matters is the relationships, practices, and agreements that emerge around its stewardship—with the community at its centre. Rather than a place or a “thing”, a commons is a living social system for governing the use of shared wealth.

Garett Hardin’s tragedy, then, was a mischaracterisation. By focusing solely on the resource and assuming unregulated access, he described not a commons but a “free-for-all”: an ungoverned, law-of-the-jungle space where cold self-interest reigns supreme until the resource is decimated or destroyed. But a true commons includes a dedicated community that collectively defines, monitors, and enforces rules to ensure long-term sustainability—through shared responsibility and accountability.

In this sense, “the Commons” may be better understood in its verb form, ‘commoning’: an ongoing process of collective care and co-creation, rather than a static structure. It is a living social practice based on active participation, mutual commitment, and relational trust.

The etymology of the word itself hints at this dynamic: political thinker Alain Lipietz traced it back to the Norman word ‘commun’ (with roots in the Latin word ‘munus’), which means both ‘gift’ and ‘counter-gift’. Thus a commons always implies a reciprocal relationship—with a shared duty to contribute and give back.

Because each commons is shaped by its specific context, no two look exactly the same. The nature of the resource, the history and needs of the community, the cultural norms and tools available—all of these factors influence how a particular commons takes form. And because commons emerge from lived experience, they tend to evolve gradually through practice rather than design.

This flexibility makes commons both resilient and highly adaptable. Without a fixed blueprint, they can be found almost anywhere in the world. Some fail; others flourish. Still, successful commons tend to share certain enabling conditions, many of which Ostrom summarised into eight design principles. They include clearly-defined boundaries, local autonomy and governance, collective peer monitoring, and accessible mechanisms for conflict resolution.

Common(s) Myths

Despite all this, the Commons remains widely misunderstood. To avoid further confusion, it may help to spell out more clearly what it is not.

• Not anti-state, but sceptical of large, centralised bureaucracies that disempower communities and impose uniformity from above and afar. In practice, many commons complement public services and work in partnership with supportive local government. The key principle here is subsidiarity: decisions should be made as close to—and by—those affected as possible.
• Not anti-market or anti-money, but critical of extractive corporate practices and financialised economies that undermine genuine exchange and fuel speculation. Many commons use market tools and forms of money where appropriate—but designed in ways that prioritise circulation and regeneration over accumulation and extraction.
• Not anti-profit, but opposed to economic models that rely on continuous growth and expansion to generate short-term profits, often with little regard for real value creation or the social and environmental costs left behind. In a commons, any surplus is re-invested in—and shared by—the community that generated it, while taking care that the resource isn’t depleted.
• Not against private property, but resisting enclosure—the process that converts shared wealth into private gain, excluding others from access and benefit.
• Not ideological or partisan, but pragmatic and capable of transcending traditional left-right divides. The Commons enables thriving small businesses and decentralised innovation (which resonates with conservatives); practices fairness and pre-distribution by design (which appeals to the left); favours localised supply chains and ecological stewardship (which greens value); and reduces dependence on centralised state bureaucracies (which libertarians welcome).
• Not a fixed institution, but a living social practice that is diverse, adaptable, and constantly evolving.

These distinctions matter. The Commons should not be seen as an ideological countersystem or some abstract utopia. It is a pragmatic, time-tested approach to provisioning that allows communities to take initiative, assume responsibility, and share in the benefits.

Comparing Provisioning Modes: Market, State, and Commons

As we have seen, there are three major modes of provisioning—that is, ways we organise to ensure our needs are met:

• The Market, where access is mediated through prices and money;
• The State, where access is allocated through law, bureaucracy, and entitlements;
• The Commons, where access is guided by community relationships and shared rules.

Note: for this analysis we set aside the Household—one of the oldest institutions of provisioning—due to its naturally limited scale.

Each mode has distinct logics, structures, and outcomes. To better understand what makes the Commons different, let’s see how they compare.

Each mode brings both strengths and important limitations.

• Markets are dynamic and highly efficient at facilitating exchange and innovation at scale, without the need for central planning. But they also tend to be extractive, concentrate wealth, and overlook the social and environmental damage they may cause—unless explicitly regulated.
• States can provide universal services, redistribute resources to reduce inequality, and offer legal protections that foster stability. But they are often slow to adapt, operate through distant and convoluted bureaucracies, and remain vulnerable to political inertia or capture.
• Commons enable communities to meet needs directly, are highly adaptable to local conditions, and promote reciprocity and responsible use. But they also require strong and sustained participation, local capacity, and do not scale in the same way as markets or governments.

While all three modes can, in principle, be applied across many domains, certain sectors tend to align more naturally with particular logics. Crucially, these modes need not compete. They can co-exist, interact with, and even support one another in hybrid configurations. The key is to find the right balance between them, drawing on each one’s strengths while buffering their respective weaknesses.

Conclusion: Why the Commons Matters Now

In today’s world, markets dominate most aspects of life. Where markets fail, we turn to government. We have come to rely so heavily on these two modes that we’ve forgotten the third.

The Commons, though much older than both, remains marginalised and largely unrecognised. This imbalance has contributed to many of the systemic failures we see today, from ecological overshoot and extreme inequality to the gradual erosion of democratic agency.

The Commons can fill critical gaps left behind by the Market-State binary. But we need to realise that no single mode can, on its own, respond to the scale or complexity of today’s overlapping crises. In my view, it is only when markets, governments, and commons work together—each in service of people and planet—that a truly healthy and resilient society can emerge. It’s therefore imperative that we strengthen the Commons and restore it as a vital third pillar—not to reject the other two, but to complement and moderate the excesses of both.

The beauty of the Commons is that it’s a peaceful mode of collective action, rooted in community initiative and voluntary participation. By inviting us to reimagine provisioning as something communities can actively do—not just passively receive—it inspires us to take action.

And it already exists all around us.

Once we recognise the principles of commoning, we start to see them everywhere: neighbours sharing childcare or tending a community garden. Local repair cafés and tool libraries. Digital communities building and maintaining open-source projects on the Internet.

Chances are, you’re already part of a commons. You just haven’t called it that (yet).

Michel Rauchs is a researcher, educator, and consultant focused on alternative currency and credit systems that serve real communities.

7 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of $461 billion, has been awarded a $1 trillion pay package over ten years, putting the CEO on course to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Commenting on the scale of the payout, which was approved Thursday, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen wrote, “One trillion dollars is unfathomable. A million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is about three decades. A trillion—30,000 years. If Musk works a 40-hour work week with two weeks’ vacation, or about 200,000 hours for 10 years, that’s $50 million an hour.”

Musk’s unprecedented payout came the same week as the Trump administration announced plans to slash food stamp benefits, threatening tens of millions of American families with hunger.

The pay package was awarded following a vote of approval by 75 percent of Tesla shareholders. Among the institutions voting in favor were financial services company Charles Schwab Corporation and Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global fund. “We firmly believe that supporting this proposal aligns both management and shareholder interests,” Charles Schwab said in a statement.

The prominent endorsement of Musk’s pay package by Schwab Corporation and Morgan Stanley, coupled with behind-the-scenes “yes” votes by other major financial institutions, points to its broader significance. The massive payout for Musk sends a clear message from Wall Street that the sky is the limit for CEO pay and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.

Musk, a fascist who welcomed the second inauguration of US President Donald Trump with a public Sieg Heil salute, said his primary motivation in seeking the pay package was to secure direct personal control over life-and-death decisions for humanity. “I don’t feel comfortable building a robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence,” Musk said.

The payout would make Musk’s wealth equivalent to the entire market capitalization of Tesla, which currently stands at $1.5 trillion. Musk controls 15 percent of Tesla’s shares, which will increase to nearly 28 percent under the share agreement. The stock will be dispersed in twelve chunks over ten years.

The public justification given for the pay package, the largest in history by nearly an order of magnitude, is to align the interests of Musk and Tesla shareholders by incentivizing the CEO to meet sales and share targets.

But this is just a pretense, and the agreement allows Tesla’s board, largely consisting of Musk’s cronies, to award him the shares even if he fails to meet the goals set out. “While it purports to be tied to some very ambitious goals, in fact it gives the board discretion to award him the amount of shares whether he meets those goals or not,” said corporate governance expert Nell Minow, who is chair of ValueEdge Advisors.

Tesla has been facing increasingly stiff global competition from Chinese automakers, and its profits have fallen 9 percent year on year.

Musk said the vote opens a “whole new book” in the history of Tesla. The company is planning to refocus on making humanoid robots, Musk said, declaring, “You start getting into like, some pretty wild sci-fi sort of scenarios.”

Tesla has been peddling statements like this throughout its existence, repeatedly declaring that self-driving cars, together with self-driving taxis and semi-trucks, were constantly around the corner. These claims have repeatedly failed to materialize.

What has materialized, however, is the continued rise in Tesla’s share prices, which closed at an all-time record Thursday and have doubled since April.

In addition to being the largest shareholder in Tesla, Musk owns major stakes in SpaceX, the space launch monopoly that controls 84 percent of the market for space launch; and X, the social media network previously known as Twitter, which Musk is using to train X’s Grok Large Language Model.

Musk’s pay package is orders of magnitude larger than anything awarded to any chief executive in history. According to the AFL-CIO’s database on executive compensation, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earned just over $79 million in 2024. Apple CEO Tim Cook made about $75 million, and Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol received slightly less than $96 million.

In 1965, a typical CEO made 20 times the pay of an average worker. This figure reached 122 in 2016 and grew to 348 by 2016.

In the past 12 months alone, the 10 richest US billionaires became approximately $700 billion richer. Over this period, their wealth grew by a staggering 40 percent, from $1.79 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

Earlier this week, the Oxfam charity reported that since 2020, the inflation-adjusted wealth of the ten richest men in America has increased six-fold. Elon Musk, whose wealth stood at $33 billion in March 2020, has since surged to $469 billion, a 14-fold increase.

US President Donald Trump, himself a billionaire, has pledged to do everything possible to expand the wealth of this financial oligarchy, which forms the constituency for his effort to transform the United States into a presidential dictatorship.

7 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org