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By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The airdrop of aid into the Gaza Strip is yet another act of humiliation and degradation against Palestinians. It endangers civilians crowded into less than 15 per cent of the enclave and serves a graver purpose: enabling Israel’s policy of mass starvation, deliberately used as a tool of genocide in its systematic effort to eliminate Palestinians in Gaza.

The resumption of aid airdrops, following months of widespread starvation, neither meets the minimum humanitarian needs nor alleviates the catastrophe caused by Israel’s deliberate policy of starvation. Instead, it perpetuates the illusion of relief while starvation continues to be used as a weapon against civilians.

This step, approved by Israel and implemented on Saturday evening, does not reflect a genuine shift in the humanitarian response. Rather, it aims to mislead international public opinion and downplay the severity of the crime, diverting attention from Israel’s systematic starvation policy in the Gaza Strip, which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. This catastrophe is marked by widespread famine, denial of food, water and medicine, destruction of supply chains, obstruction of land-based aid delivery, and continued attacks on those seeking food. These actions reveal Israel’s persistent use of starvation as a primary tool to decimate the population and undermine their means of survival.

The catastrophic conditions on the ground underscore the severity of Israel’s starvation policy, especially after 55 people were officially declared dead from starvation and malnutrition in just one week. It is also estimated that around 1,200 elderly people have died in the past two months due to a lack of food and medical care, amid the total collapse of the healthcare system and the continuing blockade.

The airdrops do not constitute a genuine humanitarian response but rather mark a new chapter in the ongoing humiliation of civilians in the Gaza Strip, following the public degradation and repeated killings at distribution centres operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation under Israel’s direction.

Instead of opening safe and organised land corridors, residents are forced to crowd into dangerous areas under bombardment to retrieve parcels dropped randomly from the air, in conditions that compromise their dignity and endanger their lives, as has occurred repeatedly. Such practices strip relief of its humanitarian purpose and reproduce a colonial dynamic based on subjugation and control, reducing the right to survival to a humiliating favour instead of a fundamental human right.

With 2.3 million Palestinians displaced into less than 15 per cent of the Gaza Strip due to Israeli control and forced evacuation orders, airdropped aid poses a serious risk to civilian lives amid severe overcrowding and the absence of safe areas.

Euro-Med Monitor recalls that when airdrops were first introduced several months ago, even while the accessible area was relatively larger, they led to the deaths of 18 Palestinians and injuries to dozens more.

Last night’s airdrops injured at least 11 civilians, further highlighting the failure of this mechanism to ensure safe and orderly access to aid. It also reinforces serious concerns that civilians are being placed in harm’s way rather than protected, especially amid severe overcrowding and the shrinking of safe areas due to Israeli-imposed policies of forced annexation and displacement.

The reality on the ground demonstrates that airdropped aid is scarce, randomly distributed, and poses serious risks. It frequently lands in densely populated areas, on displaced people’s tents, in evacuated zones, in areas under Israeli control, or in the sea, making it an unsafe and ineffective method from a humanitarian perspective.

The extreme starvation civilians are enduring has, for weeks, driven them to seek aid along delivery routes and at distribution centres, despite knowing these places are humiliating and have become death traps. Their desperate search for aid has turned into a daily scene of collective humiliation, exposing them to immediate danger and fuelling tension and conflict among the population over access to scarce food supplies.

Addressing the famine in Gaza cannot be achieved through superficial or gaudy measures but requires an immediate end to the blockade and the opening of safe, stable land corridors to enable the regular and sufficient delivery of food, medicine, and fuel. This must be done through official UN mechanisms that previously managed aid distribution through approximately 400 centres, before Israel deliberately dismantled them. Only the restoration of this system can ensure that aid reaches all those in need fairly, safely, and transparently, without discrimination or subjugation.

Operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation must be halted. Established by Israeli authorities, the foundation functions as a mechanism of collective humiliation and military control over aid, operating outside any recognised legal or humanitarian framework. Rather than ensuring fair and safe access to aid, it enables Israel to manipulate distribution in line with its own objectives. Under this system, distribution centres have become sites of mass killing, managed directly under Israeli supervision.

The continued operation of this foundation obstructs any genuine humanitarian response and reinforces Israel’s full control over relief channels. This is evident in the airdrops conducted under Israeli supervision, driven by a colonial logic rooted in genocide, deliberately stripping the besieged population of both humanitarian aid and human dignity.

States must urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade, as this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid, given the imminent threat of famine.

The establishment of safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision is vital to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip, with independent international monitors deployed to verify compliance.

All states, individually and collectively, must urgently fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms. This includes taking concrete measures to protect Palestinian civilians in the enclave, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and the International Court of Justice rulings, and guarantee full accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor also calls for the enforcement of the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, and for their swift surrender to international justice without regard to immunity.

The international community is urged to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their grave and systematic breaches of international law; these sanctions should include comprehensive arms embargoes and the suspension of all forms of political, financial, military, and intelligence cooperation. In addition, Euro-Med Monitor calls for freezing the assets of responsible Israeli, US, and any complicit EU officials, banning their travel, halting their military and security companies’ access to international markets, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that facilitate Israel’s ongoing Western-backed crimes against the Palestinian people.

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

28 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza’s Government Media Office warned that an extreme shortage of baby formula could lead to the slow death of tens of thousands of malnourished infants, as Israel has blocked aid, including baby formula, from entering the Palestinian enclave for more than four months.

“There are over 40,000 infants under one year old in Gaza currently at risk of slow death due to this brutal and suffocating blockade,” the Office said, accusing Israel of blocking entry of the product for 150 days.

“We urgently demand the immediate and unconditional opening of all crossings and the swift entry of baby formula and humanitarian aid,” the office continued.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Gaza City has been the area “worst-hit” by malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, with nearly one in five children under five there now acutely malnourished.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, a total of 147, including 88 children, have died due to hunger and malnutrition since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

“This is a silent massacre. The Ministry of Health holds the Israeli occupation and the international community fully responsible. We urgently call for the immediate opening of all crossings to allow the entry of food and medicine,” it added.

Over 100 humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and Oxfam, warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” is spreading across Gaza, with their colleagues in the enclave wasting away from hunger as Israel continues to block the entry of aid for more than four months.

“Doctors report record rates of acute malnutrition, especially among children and older people,” they said in a statement.

“Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”

“Distributions in Gaza average just 28 trucks a day, far from enough for over two million people, many of whom have gone weeks without assistance,” they said.

“The UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning.”

The NGOs said governments must stop waiting for permission to act.

“It is time to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; ensure access to everyone in all of Gaza; reject military-controlled distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund principled and impartial humanitarian organisations,” they said.

“States must pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.”

On Sunday, at least one Palestinian died of hunger every 80 minutes in Gaza as “Israel maintains a systematic starvation policy against 2 million residents,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Moreover, Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 900 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 60,000 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Additionally, 49 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”

“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

28 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Juan Cole

The United States has focused on the Middle East since World War II, seeking its oil, gas, and other mineral resources and coveting control of its strategic waterways. The old colonial powers and the superpowers of the Cold War era most often backed dictatorial regimes there, because they were easier to control than democracies, and this country also supported the Israeli settler colony as a bulwark of Western interests. President George W. Bush was the first president to depart (at least rhetorically) from America’s romance with regional authoritarians, pledging to “democratize” the Middle East, though he left office with little to show for it. Now, you have to wonder whether, in some strange sense, the shoe is on the other foot and the pathological U.S. support for dictatorships there is now spreading across the Atlantic Ocean, just as the trade winds blow Saharan sand and dust toward the American Southwest.

Democratic Backsliding

Here’s something that should sound familiar in the United States today: Qais Saied of Tunisia, elected president in 2019, campaigned against homosexuality and — yes! — African immigrants. In 2021, he lawlessly dismissed his prime minister and parliament and went on to rewrite the country’s constitution so that he could appoint yes-men to its Supreme Court. Then he began jailing his political opponents. In four short years, Saied undid all the political progress Tunisia had made in the previous decade, creating a dictatorship arguably worse than that of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in January 2011 in the first of several major Arab Spring youth revolts.

Worse yet — and this should sound familiar, too — Tunisia seemed to sleepwalk into authoritarianism. Trade unionists hoped the president would reject the neoliberalism of the International Monetary Fund, while civil society organizations hoped he would curb the Interior Ministry’s past repressiveness. No such luck. Europe declined to punish the newly developing dictatorship by cutting off aid, instead rewarding Saied with an economic deal in return for his willingness to crack down on African emigration. Of course, such democratic backsliding has been a feature of the Middle East for decades, since local civil society remains weak, pro-regime billionaires have proliferated, and Western governments have seldom reacted negatively to (and all too often rewarded) any move toward dictatorship.

Now, you might say that the shoe is on the other foot. What Saied did to Tunisia might as well have been a blueprint for Donald Trump. Although he hasn’t yet actually tried to rewrite the constitution, the MAGA leader has been the beneficiary of a decades-long $250 million dark-money plot, led by obscure Federalist Society apparatchik Leonard Leo, to reshape the Supreme Court. The result: a set of justices who are distinctly inclined to let Trump do his damnedest — even expel undocumented residents of the United States to gulags in third-world countries with no court process. Meanwhile, labor union members have too often placed faith in Trump’s pledges to bring back industry by using tariffs to reduce competition. And the centrists of the Democratic Party are the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights, too paralyzed to react effectively as he transforms this country into an ever more autocratic state. They also seem all too inclined to let our democracy slip away, while placing their hopes in a 2026 congressional blue wave that, even if it happens, may be too late to stop Trump from creating his version of a one-party state.

Raw Milk and Vitamin A

Consider it typical of our times that Field Marshall Abdelfattah al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against the only freely elected Egyptian government since the country’s monarchy was toppled in 1952 had no significant adverse consequences in Washington. In 2014, a leading officer in the Egyptian army, which receives $1.3 billion a year in American aid, made quixotic health claims. Major General Ibrahim Abdel-Atti announced that he had personally “defeated AIDS with the grace of my God at the rate of 100%. And I defeated hepatitis C.”  In the process, he confused the foundational nucleic acids DNA and RNA, provoking one Egyptian comedian to suggest that the country’s medical schools should never again accept anyone from Abdel-Atti’s village. However, the North Korean-like pall that has blanketed freedom of speech in Egypt was precisely what permitted such bizarre official behavior, since there was little way for the public to respond to even his most absurd claims.

Yet, imagine this: Abdel-Atti appears almost sane and sober in comparison with the antics of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has discouraged vaccinations even as a measles outbreak has begun to run wild (and prove fatal in a few cases) 25 years after the U.S. officially eliminated the disease. Kennedy’s proposed treatment for measles?  Raw milk and vitamin A. Sadly, overdoses of the latter have caused liver disease in some children.

Kennedy is also working hard to gut the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The damage he’s doing in the Trump era to America’s vital and effective vaccination infrastructure could unleash serial plagues upon the public. And it’s not likely to get better any time soon, given the irrational demagogue now in the White House, just as Egyptians suffer under megalomaniacal generals.

A Kafala System

And here’s another Middle Eastern peculiarity inherited from Western colonialism that will sound all too familiar in Donald Trump’s America: the large numbers of non-citizens and stateless people who suffer from a lack of basic civil and human rights. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial Great Britain made treaties with small sheikhdoms along the coast of the Persian Gulf to ensure the security of its shipping and check rivals like the Ottoman Empire. When the British finally withdrew completely from the Gulf in 1972, they left behind postage-stamp countries with vast oil and gas wealth, which did not have a sufficient native-born population to work the rigs or staff the energy companies. The British Empire had often brought into its colonies, like Kuwait and Bahrain, subjects from British India.

After decolonization, such workers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were coded as foreigners in the Arab Gulf. They began laboring under a “guarantor” (kafala) system in which a local entrepreneur would take responsibility for migrant laborers who often surrendered their passports to him for as long as they were in the country. The guarantor would then take a cut of their wages or business profits. No matter how long such migrants lived in those countries, they and their children almost never became eligible for citizenship, and they could have their visas revoked at any time. Others now have trouble even getting in. Typically, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January announced a ban on visas (for Afghans, Libyans, Yemenis, Somalians, Lebanese, Bangladeshi, Cameroonians, Sudanis, and Ugandans). And that should sound familiar, since the Trump regime has already implemented a visa ban on 19 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries. In short, the policies toward immigrant labor in the two regions seem to be converging.

Countries like the United Arab Emirates have a little more than a million citizens and 10 million mostly South Asian guest workers, some of whom have lived there all their lives or are even second or third generation residents. Such migrant workers, however, have no right to form unions or strike. Any encounter with law enforcement, even a fender-bender, can result in their expulsion. New York University Professor Andrew Ross was typically banned from the country simply for researching labor conditions. British academic Matthew Hedges was imprisoned on false espionage charges in 2018, tortured, and threatened with deportation to a UAE black site in Yemen before ultimately being released. New York University has a branch in Abu Dhabi, where the students and faculty have had run-ins with the government of President Mohammed Bin Zayed, which surged in the past two years because the country does not permit social media posts criticizing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

And it’s not only migrant laborers in the Middle East who can be denied citizenship despite long residence. Indigenous people, too, sometimes become non-citizens (just as Native Americans were denied U.S. citizenship until 1924). The Arab nationalists of Syria denaturalized some 100,000 Kurdish Syrians in Hasakah Province in 1962 and, over time, that figure grew to several hundred thousand. The Middle East is a patchwork of citizenship hierarchies, where the line can be drawn capriciously by nationalists, fundamentalists, or monarchs.

It does not take much familiarity with Donald Trump’s policies in the past six months to see the ways in which his administration seemingly yearns for similar levels of citizenship and limited residency to be imposed in this country. He has even threatened to deport naturalized American citizens like (can you believe it?) Elon Musk or Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, for their criticisms of him. If his fondest wishes were fulfilled, he might even prefer his country to be more like Israel when it came to anyone he didn’t like living there.

Expelled for Gandhism

An analogy could also be made between the “foreign” migrant workers in the Gulf, who have no local citizenship or rights, and the Palestinians under Israeli rule in the West Bank or Gaza. Like the Syrian Kurds of Hasakah, they have been made stateless in their own country. They lack a national government and the rights and passport it would give them. Palestinians in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank that is directly ruled by the Israeli military, see rights like unionizing or striking routinely curbed. Like Gulf workers, Palestinians are subject to expulsion at the whim of the Israeli military. And keep in mind that, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, some 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from it or, if working abroad, forbidden to return home.

Some of those trapped by the decades-long occupation have also been subject to arbitrary removal. The Israeli authorities illegally expelled Palestinian pacifist Mubarak Awad from his homeland in 1988 for advocating Gandhi-style nonviolent noncooperation. Tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians have been forced from their homes in the past two years, as entire refugee camps have been razed, the Israeli military has destroyed homes, and Israeli squatters on Palestinian land have enacted pogroms.& Since the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023, at least 100,000 Gazans have been forced out of Palestine entirely by Israeli commanders, who have ordered that some 90% of the housing stock there be damaged or destroyed.

Inside the Jewish ethnostate of Israel, the 21% of the population who are of Palestinian heritage are distinctly second-class citizens. Human Rights Organizations like Adalah have identified 65 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian-Israelis. In 2018, the Israeli parliament declared that national sovereignty is invested solely in the country’s Jews. Since October 2023, Palestinian-Israelis have been under strict surveillance and have to be careful about their Internet postings. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that they can be stripped of their citizenship and expelled for breach of loyalty to the Israeli state.

SEVIS Hits

Like the rulers of some Gulf states, Trump and his crew want to treat all noncitizens on visas in the U.S. — and even some naturalized citizens — arbitrarily. Since he returned to power in January, thousands of visas have been revoked for even minor contact with law enforcement, just as happens to hapless migrants in the UAE. Trump officials ran the data in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) against police reports and zeroed in on 6,400 of them, terminating their SEVIS entries without notice. That was, of course, in contravention of government regulations. Most of the hits involved cases where charges had been dropped or were minor. Affected students filed more than 60 lawsuits and consistently prevailed in court, forcing ICE to restore the SEVIS records, at least for now.

In addition, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to revoke the visas of students who had been active in protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza (in precisely the same way and on the same grounds as the Emirati government does). Among such high-profile cases, the State Department targeted figures like Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil, who had permanent resident status in the country but was arrested anyway and sent to a Louisiana prison. Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who had written a mild opinion piece for her student newspaper criticizing her school’s response to events in Gaza, was similarly seized. Apparently, the plan was to avoid letting them appear before a judge and instead summarily deport them, but the courts insisted they be given hearings, upholding the apparently imperiled principle of habeas corpus. Chapters of the American Association of University Professors, along with the Middle East Studies Association, have sued on First Amendment grounds to overturn Rubio’s policy of declaring speech to be a national security emergency, permitting the deportation of visa and green card holders.

In 1945, the case of Bridges v. Wixon established that not just citizens but all people residing in the United States enjoy the protection of the Bill of Rights. As the Cold War heated up in the 1950s, however, the court did allow a few deportations of non-citizens due to their membership in the Communist Party (as in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy in 1952). Eighty years later, in a distinctly new world, Rubio and his colleagues wish to reverse Bridges and make the U.S. a giant version of the United Arab Emirates, functionally an absolute (Trumpian) monarchy. Instead of emulating the best of Middle Eastern values such as generosity to guests and love of learning, Trump and crew seem to admire only Western-imposed authoritarianism.

Ironically, in the second Trump era, America’s billionaires and corporate elites have decided that this country should be ruled with some of the same techniques that they and their Middle Eastern proxies have long used abroad. Instead of America democratizing the Middle East, it’s increasingly clear that Trump and crew have decided to Middle-Easternize the United States.

Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan.

24 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

The world watches in horror as Gaza endures an unfolding catastrophe, a brutal assault that bears all the hallmarks of a genocide. Yet, amidst the global outcry, a once-staunch champion of the oppressed remains chillingly silent, its voice muffled by the clinking of arms deals and the whispered promises of Western patronage. India, once the beacon of non-alignment and a moral compass for the Global South, has embarked on a perilous journey, abandoning its global justice paradigm for narrow interests that threaten to leave it stranded in a geopolitical desert, devoid of respect and true allies.

For decades, India’s foreign policy was defined by its unwavering commitment to anti-colonialism, self-determination, and the rights of the marginalized. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi forged a legacy rooted in principles, standing resolutely with Palestine as a symbol of the larger struggle against injustice. Mahatma Gandhi, the moral conscience of the nation, explicitly condemned Zionism, stating, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.” This was not mere rhetoric; it was the very essence of India’s identity on the global stage.

Today, that essence is corroding. The current Indian government, far from upholding this legacy, has seemingly embraced a transactional foreign policy, where principles are traded for perceived strategic advantages. The deepening embrace of Israel, particularly through a burgeoning arms trade, is perhaps the most egregious manifestation of this moral abdication. Reports, including those from Al Jazeera, indicating that India is supplying rockets and explosives to Israel amidst the ongoing slaughter in Gaza are not merely concerning; they are a direct complicity in what many, including leading international legal bodies, deem to be a plausible genocide. This is not “strategic autonomy”; it is a strategic betrayal, a dark stain on a nation that once championed human rights.

The argument that this is merely a pragmatic diversification of defence procurement is a hollow one. When a nation that suffered centuries of colonial oppression actively arms an occupying power facing accusations of ethnic cleansing, the historical irony is unbearable. It signals a chilling indifference to the plight of Palestinians, an abandonment of the very people whose struggles mirrored India’s own. As one prominent critic recently lamented, “India is now seen as part of the problem, not the solution, when it comes to Palestine.”

Furthermore, India’s recent voting record at the United Nations, marked by abstentions on critical resolutions calling for humanitarian truces and protection for civilians in Gaza, is a clear indicator of its compromised position. While it may still vote for a two-state solution in some instances, its reluctance to unequivocally condemn Israeli aggression speaks volumes. This is not principled neutrality; it is a deliberate dilution of its moral voice, a performance designed to appease its new Western allies while offering superficial gestures to its historical commitments. This vacillation is precisely why India’s claims to leadership of the Global South ring increasingly hollow.

Indeed, the intellectual and political depth of the current foreign policy establishment, particularly under External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, faces growing scrutiny. While adept at articulating India’s “multi-alignment” strategy, critics argue that this approach often devolves into a reactive, rather than proactive, diplomacy that prioritises Western approval. The perception that Jaishankar “lacks political skills and just global perspectives” and merely “follows His Master’s Voice” – whether that master is Washington or the domestic political agenda – is not without merit. His rhetoric, often sharp and nationalistic, frequently contrasts with a perceived timidity when confronting the actions of powerful allies. There is a palpable absence of the bold, principled stand that once characterised Indian diplomacy under figures like V.K. Krishna Menon or the resolute stance of Indira Gandhi.

This pragmatic shift also forces an uncomfortable self-reflection. When we hold the mirror to India’s internal policies, the accusation that India is increasingly resembling a “racist Zionist State with discrimination as its cornerstone” becomes tragically resonant for many. The escalating religious polarization, the systematic marginalisation of minorities, and the erosion of secular democratic norms within India itself, draw disturbing parallels with the ethno-nationalist project in Israel. This internal reality severely undermines India’s credibility to speak on global justice issues, exposing a hypocrisy that makes its foreign policy contradictions even more stark. As an article in Countercurrents highlighted, “The historical and political foundations of the Hindutva-Zionist nexus…exploring its impact on India’s political trajectory” reveal a worrying ideological alignment.

The consequence of this abandonment of principles is a slide into irrelevance on the global stage. Contrary to the narrative of India’s rising prominence, the nation’s perceived lack of moral clarity means it “carries no respect anywhere – whether in the West or Global South.” The West may engage with India out of strategic necessity, but often with an underlying disdain for its social inequalities and democratic backsliding. Meanwhile, the Global South, witnessing India’s muted response to their shared struggles, will increasingly look elsewhere for leadership. How can India claim to represent the aspirations of developing nations when it shies away from condemning the most egregious violations of human rights perpetrated against one of their own?

Our West Asia policy, particularly its tilt towards Israel, is not merely a diplomatic choice; it will be our undoing in global relations. It alienates crucial partners in the Arab and Muslim world, jeopardising not only energy security and economic ties but also the welfare of millions of Indian expatriates in the region. The long-term strategic costs of this short-sighted policy far outweigh any immediate perceived gains.

To reclaim its standing and restore its moral compass, India must urgently return to the bedrock principles of the Nehruvian-Indira Gandhi era. This means a radical reorientation of its foreign policy paradigm where the minister stands up for truth and principles, not just transactional gains. It means unequivocally condemning the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, actively supporting international investigations into war crimes, and unequivocally siding with the oppressed. India should not shy away from leading the lobby that punishes Israel with sanctions, boycotts, and divestments – a stance that would truly align with its historical anti-apartheid legacy.

The bitter truth is that India has “slid into irrelevance.” The once-vaunted soft power derived from its moral leadership has evaporated. To suggest that “Pakistan’s standing has bypassed us” might seem inflammatory, but in the context of moral fortitude on the Palestinian question, it is a stark, uncomfortable observation that many are beginning to make. While India boasts economic growth and military might, its silence on Gaza and its deepening ties with an apartheid state speak louder than any economic statistic.

India can, and must, do better. Its global standing and its very soul depend on it. The time for moral courage is now.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

25 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ezzideen from Gaza*

I swear to you. Before God. Before this wretched century. Before whatever last flicker of humanity may still remain in me, what I saw today was not life.

It was the collapse of everything that ever claimed to be sacred.

Once, Fridays in Gaza were holy.

Not because of tradition, but because they were tender.

A father would come home with fish, or perhaps a piece of chicken, and for one hour, we would eat like people.
We were poor, but not degraded.

We would smile across the table, thank God for a small plate of meat, and feel alive. We felt worthy of breath.

Even the poorest among us knew this dignity.

They saved all week. They endured hunger not out of habit, but for hope.

For that one day.

That one meal.

That illusion of a normal life.

But now?

Today is Friday.

And I walked through the streets of Gaza, not to celebrate, not even to feed, but to hunt for rice.

Rotten rice.

Gray grains that stick to your fingers and taste like nothing.

Anything. Anything at all to fool the stomach into silence.

My brother searched one market. I searched for another.

We returned with crumbs.

We paid with the last coins we had.

They ask for gold in exchange for ash.

And we pay it, because the children must eat, and because we no longer dare to say what is fair.

But I have not come to speak about rice.

I have come to confess what I saw.

A truck passed by.

It was empty.

Its floor was covered in a thin layer of flour dust.

Just dust.

Not bags. Not bread. Only the trace of something that might once have saved a child.

And then I saw them.

Not rebels. Not criminals.

Children.

They ran, ran like hunted things, toward that truck. They climbed it with hands that have never held toys.

They fell to their knees as if before an altar.

And they began to scrape.

One had a broken lid.

Another, a piece of cardboard.

But the rest, the rest used their hands.

Their tongues.

They licked it.

Do you hear me?

They licked flour dust from rusted steel. From dirt. From the back of a truck that had already driven away.

One boy was laughing.

Not because he was happy, but because the body goes mad when it is starving.

Another was crying, quietly, like someone who no longer believes anyone is listening.

And I stood there.

With all my shame.

With my hands in my pockets, like a man waiting for a bus.

Like I wasn’t watching the end of the world.

I wanted to scream.

But what scream can reach Heaven, when Heaven itself is deaf?

What words can I offer?

What words can explain the sound of a child’s tongue scraping against rust for a taste of flour?

There are no metaphors left.

There is no beauty in this.

Only sin.

Only crime.

And we are all guilty.

You. Me.

The ones who sent the truck.

The ones who sent the planes.

And God?

If You are watching, then cry with us.

And if You are silent, then we are alone in this hell.

This is the twenty-first century.

But history has not moved forward.

It has swallowed its own children and called it progress.

I don’t want to write this.

I want to unsee it.

I want to forget the boy who licked the floor.

But I can’t.

Because I saw him.

Because he is real.

Because he is more real than all the words i’ have written.

And because if I forget him, then I am no longer human.

*Doctor Ezzideen, sometimes a writer, other times a Doctor. Revealing hidden stories, a voice for the unheard. Witness to humanity’s darkest depths.

For more about Dr. Ezzideen, his work, and stories, please visit: https://x.com/ezzingaza?lang=en

25 July 2025

By Helena Cobban

Dear friends–

There. Are. No. Words.

No words in the English language, or really any other human language– except perhaps a primal scream– can convey or encompass the depravity of an international system that allows a project of the deliberate starving of two-plus million people to proceed.

As a U.S. citizen, I want to be clear. This project of starving the Palestinians of Gaza is not just a U.S.-allowed Israeli project. It is not just a U.S.-supported Israeli project. It is a project being jointly undertaken by my government acting as a full partner alongside the Israeli government. And we citizens here in the United States– a strong proportion of whom are opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza– are currently powerless to end our government’s active participation in this genocidal project.

Yesterday, Pres. Trump abruptly withdrew his envoy Steve Witkoff from the “proximity” negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire that Witkoff has been conducting in Qatar with representatives of Gaza’s leading resistance movement, Hamas. Trump blamed Hamas– and only Hamas– for the breakdown of the talks. And he gave a clear green light for escalated Israeli military actions in Gaza, when he added this about Hamas: ” I think what’s going to happen is they’re going to be hunted down.”

For their part, the Hamas leaders responded that:

to hear this stance (from the US) is truly a strange position, and we did not expect something like this, especially given what was reported that negotiations would resume…

As for us, we are… serious about reaching an agreement that ends this war completely and permanently, and also resolves the issue of prisoners held by the resistance.

* * *
In Gaza, the Israeli military has been engaged in at least three different kinds of extremely damaging actions. First, they’ve been bombing and shelling various locations– sometimes (possibly?) to attack suspected armed resistance fighters and sometimes to try to empty entire regions of their remaining residents, and to concentrate these people into ever smaller and smaller zones.

These two maps, from the UN on July 16 (left) and July 23 (right) show how this process of concentration has been going. Israeli military orders in Gaza “allow” Gaza’s people to remain only in the zones that are not shaded either purple or red:

Second, they’ve sent demolition squads riding massive armored bulldozers to systematically raze to the ground vast swathes of Gaza’s densely built environment.

And third, they’ve sent armored and special forces units to work alongside hired American mercenaries to control, terrorize, and oftentimes attack the crowds of desperate Gazans thronging around the “aid” distribution centers run by the appallingly ill-named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Yesterday, the BBC ran a short, very important interview with a retired lieutenant-colonel from the U.S. military called Anthony Aguilar, who said he’d worked with the GHF’s all-mercenary guard force in Gaza until the gross abuses he had witnessed there forced him to resign in protest.

Most of the abuses he described had been committed by Israeli military units working alongside the mercenary force: “Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the IDF,” he said.

‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza, former worker at GHF aid site tells BBC

[https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cy8k8045nx9o]

The Trump administration’s scofflawry, domestic and global

I’ve been using the term “scofflawry” a lot over the past 21 months to describe (mainly) Washington’s complete disregard of the requirements of international law. Actually, what I like about the term is that it goes further than conveying just a disregard for the requirements of a legal system: beyond that, it also conveys a desire to scoff at, to mock, or even to actively seek the dismantlement of a whole system of law.

As I wrote in my newsletter last week, that attitude of scofflawry has marked the policies of the U.S. government toward the Palestine Question, and all the requirements of international law pertaining to it, for several decades now. And it became intensified after Israel’s mid-October 2023  launching of its policy of genocide in Gaza. Pres. Biden scoffed at any notion that Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 breakout from Gaza needed to be guided by such requirements of international humanitarian law as that it be proportional to military goals sought, or that Israel should take active steps to prevent harm to non-combatants. Instead, he just piled ever larger and larger batches of U.S. weapons onto planes and ships to send them to Israel, while he crowed loudly about the “ironclad” strength of his support for Israel and worked ceaselessly to prevent any effective UN action on a ceasefire.

And now we have Pres. Trump, who scoffs openly at any suggestion that his administration’s actions need to be guided by the requirements of any broader legal system– both internationally and domestically. In his six months in office he has gleefully torn up many of the constraints that the U.S. Constitution should have placed on him, in both spheres.

Domestically, he has ridden roughshod over fundamental constitutional values including the separation of powers between the administration and the legislative and judicial branches, all of which were designed to function as “co-equal” branches of the federal system. We have seen this in his use of the (quite extra-legal) DOGE cabal to over-rule, in many instances, the idea that Congress should uniquely control the “power of the purse.” We’ve seen it in the (often quite illegal) harshness and cruelty of his actions against immigrants. We’ve seen it in the attacks he’s launched against universities and the whole concept of academic freedoms. And we’re seeing it now unfolding in his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein file.

(Have you noticed how, in many of these actions, there has been a clear pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian connection? In the campaign against immigrants and the actions against universities, the whole “Gaza issue” proved to be tightly embedded within the broader Trump-era campaign of repression…)

At the global level, meanwhile, Trump’s scofflawry has made Biden’s look penny-ante by comparison. As I’ve noted before, he doesn’t even bother to pay heed to any notion of the kind of “rules-based order” that has pertained between states of European origin since 1645, the year when the Treaty of Westphalia codified the idea of different nation states coexisting in a system in which they did not seek to overthrow each other’s rulers on ideological grounds.

With Trump it’s been, “Let’s take Greenland!” “Canada as our 51st state!” Partnering ever more openly with Israel in its pursuit of genocide in Gaza and a completely illegal military attack against Iran. Trashing the international trading system. Storming out of venerable international bodies.

Many great civil-society organizations here in the United States have worked hard to end this active scofflawry– both regarding Gaza, and now, in the Trump era, at the broader level too. But we have been quite unable to succeed. And it’s true that there’s been a significant  and welcome increase in public support here for the idea that Palestinians are people too and deserve to have their full human rights… But still, the extreme clunkiness, the disregard of public opinion, and the grossly distorting role that money plays in the U.S. electoral system between them mean we’re unlikely to see any domestically motivated change in U.S. policies on Palestine any time soon.

And meantime, our friends, our colleagues, and our brothers and sisters in Gaza are dying– are being deliberately killed by Israel, in numerous ways– in ever greater numbers.

All of us who care about this carnage (or indeed, about the international rule of law, more broadly) need to see concerted action by the rest of the world to over-rule Trump’s genocidal collusion with, and protection of, Israel at the earliest possible date. 

In the early 1940s, the Axis powers besieged Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) for 872 days. The city’s 3.2 million people suffered an estimated 1.5 million deaths, many from starvation, before the Soviet Red Army was able to break the siege in January 1944. Now, 80 years later, how can the siege of Gaza be broken?

There are various small projects underway to try to do this. The courageous activists of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition set sail from Gallipoli, Italy, last Sunday, aiming to take some aid and a lot of hope and solidarity over to their friends and colleagues in Gaza. Just hours before they sailed, they suffered some serious sabotage: “The truck sent to deliver fresh water to our boat for washing and cooking on the journey, carried not water, but sulfuric acid. It splashed on a crew member’s leg, causing chemical burns… ”  Read more about that, here.

Their boat, the Handala, is nearing Gaza now. Track it in real time here.

And the Jordanian government is reportedly also gearing up to do a repeat of the aid air-drops into Gaza that it did last year (to very little effect.)

But none of those efforts will end the now-occurring mass starvation in Gaza, or indeed the broader US-Israel campaign of genocide of which it is a part.

The Commissioner General of the UN Agency UNRWA notes that, 

UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all. They are increasingly fainting from hunger while at work. 

When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing…

Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt.

But the US-Israel alliance continues to prevent the UN from carrying out its full, unimpeded humanitarian mission in Gaza… While it also continues to block any progress toward the ceasefire that is so desperately needed, along with any progress toward ending the illegal, 58-year-long Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which lies at the root of the region’s towering mountain of woes.

Back on June 14, the Just World Ed board issued a Call To Humanity that argued that only concerted action by China, the European Union, the BRICS nations, ASEAN, and other nations can, “nullify Washington’s veto on Middle Eastern issues and thereby… regain for the United Nations the degree of diplomatic leadership with respect to war prevention and global security that was promised to the peoples of the world in the UN Charter.”

We repeat this call, with even more urgency, today.

Two more powerful PalCast episodes

I just want to note that since I last wrote this newsletter, our amazing friends and colleagues Yousef Aljamal and Tony Groves have released two more episodes of the PalCast that bring to listeners the powerful voices of writers and thinkers who’ve been continuing to struggle against all the odds in Gaza. These were their conversations with writer Huda Skaik, and then with journalist and academic Ahmed Al-Najjar.

You can catch Huda’s episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or Ahmed’s, also on Apple or Spotify. It is so important to have these testimonies, live from within the this ongoing genocide’s “heart of darkness.”

Our deep thanks for bringing us these podcasts, Yousef and Tony.

* * *Well, I guess for someone who said she had “no words” for what is happening Gaza, I’ve penned quite a lot of them here. Sorry if you think I went on too long…

You stay well! Such terrible days we’re living through. 

Onward to building the better future that we know is possible–

~ Helena

July 2025

Source: mailchi.mp

By Dr Gideon Polya

Over 23 horrific months the people of Gaza (47% children before the present Gaza Massacre) have suffered  bombing, shooting, burying under rubble, near-total devastation of homes and infrastructure, and substantial deprivation from water, food, shelter, fuel, electricity, medicine, and medical care. The mass murder of 680,000 Gazans by violence and imposed deprivation has now transmuted to man-made famine and mass starvation that has galvanized the global conscience.

As estimated from data published by a succession of expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet, 136,000 Gazans died violently by 25 April 2025 with a “conservatively estimated” four times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths that is under-reported ten-fold by Western mainstream media. In impoverished countries  about 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation are those of under 5-year old infants (see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country). It is estimated that the 680,000 dead Gazans (28% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.4 million) included  380,000 under 5-year old infants, 479,000 children in total, 63,000 women and 138,000 men (Gideon Polya, “Gaza Genocide By Numbers: Apply BDS Over 0.7 Million Gaza Deaths From Violence And Imposed Deprivation”, 4 July 2025).

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

The World’s major powers must

(a) order Apartheid Israel to immediately leave the Occupied Palestinian Territories (as demanded by the International  Court of Justice),

(b) immediately provide life-sustaining food and medical services to Gaza (as demanded of any Occupier for its Occupied Subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” by Articles 55 and 56 of the  Fourth Geneva Convention), and

(c) immediately impose rigorous Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its racist supporters, notably the US and neo-Nazi Germany, until reparations and war crimes trials are delivered.

28 countries (all European except for Japan) have issued a statement demanding aid to Gaza, an immediate end to the killing and condemning the Zionist Israeli-imposed killing, deprivation, starving and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Palestine. Words are cheap but something is better than nothing. Of these 28 countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK), only nine actually recognize the State of Palestine (Cyprus, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Slovenia, and Spain). France will recognize Palestine at the September UN General Assembly.

Notably absent from this list of 28 concerned countries were the Zionist-perverted and fervently pro-Apartheid Israel US, neo-Nazi Germany and the perpetrator, nuclear terrorist and genocidally racist Apartheid Israel itself. The US has supplied most of Israel’s weaponry, supplied the bombs and bullets that have killed 28% of Gaza’s pre-war population, and vetoed any action  by the UN Security Council. Neo-Nazi Germany has supplied 30% of Israel’s weapons imports and like the US, the UK and Australia has a rotten record of persecuting humanitarians  demanding  human rights  for Palestinians.

Australia is second only to the US as a fervent supporter of Apartheid Israel and is complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways and lies for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways but has merely applied sanctions against two far-right Israeli extremist politicians – something is better than nothing. The Zionist-perverted and fervently pro-Apartheid Israel US, UK, German and Australian Governments assiduously refrained from criticizing Apartheid Israel for the nearly two years of the Gaza Massacre and actively sought to hide the horrors of the Gaza Genocide by hysterical and false campaigns alleging “antisemitism” by anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarians demanding equal and full human rights for the sorely oppressed Palestinians.

Australians are repeatedly told by Zionists and the fervently pro-Zionist Australian Labor Government and Coalition Opposition that there has been  an asserted increase in “antisemitism”  in Australia. A Jewish Zionist “Antisemitism Envoy” and a Christian  Egyptian Australian “Islamophobia Envoy” were appointed to inform the government. Antisemitism occurs in two equally repugnant forms, anti-Jewish anti-Semitism and anti-Arab anti-Semitism  (including Islamophobia) but these three key terms (and indeed about 80 related terms) were not mentioned in the recently released “[Antisemitism] Special Envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism” sent to the Australian Government.

I individually addressed the following letter to major mainstream Australian media under the subject heading “Aussie anti-Jewish anti-Semitism against anti-racist Jews” and copied it to all Federal and Victorian State MPs (however  it was not published and the silence has been deafening in Australia):

Dear Editor,

For 3 decades I have been researching “deaths from violence and imposed deprivation” of subjugated peoples in the global South due to European-imposed war and hegemony, with the findings reported in a thousand  huge and exhaustively referenced articles and 9 huge books (this including massively updating editions). However Google the phrase “deaths from violence and imposed deprivation” and you will find that the West simply doesn’t want to know, even though UN demographic data show that 1,500 million people have died avoidably from deprivation since 1950, 70% of them under-5 infants.

Data published by expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet indicate that 136,000 Gazans died violently by 25 April 2025 with  a “conservatively estimated” 4 times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths. In Australia (as well as the US and UK) this carnage has been under-counted by a factor of 10 and deliberately masked by a massive “antisemitism hysteria” campaign that now threatens a McCarthyist curb on free speech in Australia. Also ignored by Mainstream Australian media and politicians are 30 ways Aussie anti-Jewish anti-Semitism against anti-racist Jews (anti-Zionist Jews) is entrenched in Zionist-perverted Australia* (cc MPs).

Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya [Melbourne contact details].

*

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

25 July 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Roger D Harris and John Perry

With the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Whether animated by “America First” or globalism, the objective remains “full spectrum dominance.” And now with the neocon capture of the Democrats, there are no guardrails from the so-called opposition party.

Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where the barbarity of war worsened to genocide. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s war on the world assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt.

Making the world unsafe for socialism

Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures.

In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or deficiency within society is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire’s aim is to incite internal discontent, distort people’s image of the government, and ultimately dismantle social gains.

While Cuba is affected worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US ended. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants along with cuts in the remittances they had sent (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP) further impact their respective economies.

Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.

However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now daily losses of electrical power. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.

Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

Troubled waters for the Pink Tide

The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with the buffoon in White House, who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interdictions and more on his southern neighbor.

Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to single terms. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to make it through their first-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate.

As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.

Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism and (we can assume) keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments.

With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet with less than majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference.

Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is locked in a self-destructive internecine clash between former President Evo Morales and his ex-protégé and current President Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian rightwing is spoiling for the August 17^th presidential election.

Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration

Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with others likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.

At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has becomes the region’s second largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.”

Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico.

In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017.

Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, the US Peace Council, and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Nicaragua-based

John Perry is with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and writes for MR Online, the London Review of Books, FAIR and CovertAction, among others.

23 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Bierut – Syria’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, with widespread infrastructure destruction, severe shortages of medicines and supplies, a shrinking health workforce, and the closure of several medical facilities. Millions of lives are at risk, especially in the country’s northern regions.

The rapid deterioration stems from years of armed conflict that have exhausted the health sector and deepened its fragility. The absence of effective state institutions to provide basic services and the population’s near-total reliance on humanitarian aid further compounds the crisis.

This structural fragility is compounded by a sharp decline in foreign funding for medical services, deepening the crisis and driving many medical facilities into insolvency or closure. A key turning point was the decision by the administration of US President Donald Trump to halt USAID programmes, cutting off one of Syria’s main sources of medical support.

Since the beginning of the conflict, Syria has faced a severe shortage of medical supplies and hospital services. The United States had addressed a significant portion of these needs through non-governmental organisations operating in areas outside the former regime’s control. According to The Washington Post, the US provided over $18 billion in humanitarian aid over 14 years, much of it directed to the health sector. However, the decision by President Trump’s administration to halt USAID operations has worsened humanitarian suffering, particularly in the medical field.

European funding, while relatively stable, remains insufficient to meet the escalating needs of the health sector. Years of conflict have caused widespread destruction of medical infrastructure, placing millions of lives at risk, especially in the northern regions of the country.

Ongoing instability in Syria poses a grave threat to the provision of essential health services, as an estimated 15.8 million people are in urgent need of medical assistance. Only 57 per cent of hospitals and 37 per cent of primary healthcare centres are operating at full capacity. Most facilities face critical shortages of medical supplies, outdated equipment, and extensive infrastructure damage.

Many hospitals and medical clinics in northern Syria have been forced to cease operations or significantly scale back services, while many humanitarian and medical organisations now offer only minimal support due to reduced or halted external funding. This has placed additional strain on the limited capacity of those organisations still operating or less affected by the suspension of international aid.

The humanitarian situation in Syria must be treated as a continuing health emergency, demanding an urgent and coordinated international response. This includes increased funding for the health sector and measures to ensure its long-term sustainability.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011 and throughout the ensuing 14-year war, Syrians have relied almost entirely on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs. This dependence stems from the absence of functioning state institutions capable of providing even minimal public services, particularly in the healthcare sector. This situation has persisted despite the fall of the former regime in December 2024.

The continued deterioration of Syria’s economy, along with the near-total breakdown of key sectors including healthcare, has further weakened the health system and limited the population’s access to medical care. The effects of war and economic sanctions, although now lifted, mean that tangible improvements in daily life are unlikely to be felt in the short term. It will take considerable time before Syrians witness real progress in the quality of health services and the availability of essential medical supplies.

In a statement, Zuhair Karat, Director of Planning and International Cooperation at the Syrian Ministry of Health, noted that several organisations previously implementing projects with US funding, including IRC, International Relief, Shafak and GOAL, were forced to suspend their health, relief, education, environmental sanitation and shelter programmes. This disruption has affected more than a million people in northwest Syria and has also caused significant harm in the northeast, despite the limited availability of data on the situation there.

According to Save the Children, around 416,000 children in Syria are at risk of severe malnutrition following the suspension or reduction of internationally supported food and health programmes. The organisation was also forced to halt approximately 40 per cent of its food assistance in northwestern Syria due to the cessation of US funding.

An estimated 246 health facilities in northern and northeastern Syria are expected to shut down due to insufficient funding, according to data from the World Health Organization. Many of these facilities are essential for responding to medical emergencies. In April 2025, Al-Kasra General Hospital in Deir ez-Zor announced the closure of its wing dedicated to treating malnourished children following the suspension of USAID funding.

Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicate that around 90 per cent of Syrians live below the poverty line, 12.9 million suffer from food insecurity, and more than half the population struggles to access clean water. These conditions underscore the urgent need for a functioning health system, as facilities face mounting challenges due to the new Syrian administration’s inability to secure adequate funding, compounded by the suspension of US aid. This has deepened the health crisis and further limited access to basic healthcare services.

Unilateral decisions to suspend or reduce funding, without regard for the humanitarian consequences, have created serious gaps in health response efforts that local and international institutions are unable to fully address. The primary responsibility for upholding the right to health lies with the Syrian authorities, who must develop and implement a comprehensive national strategy to rehabilitate the health infrastructure and ensure sustainable funding. This strategy must be grounded in transparency, efficiency and equitable distribution to end excessive dependence on foreign aid.

The international community and donors must uphold their moral responsibilities and legal obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, particularly the duty to facilitate access to medical aid and to provide support within available resources.

Collective and coordinated funding mechanisms are essential to bridging the current gap, ensuring the continuity of essential health services, and preventing the collapse of critical facilities, thereby averting a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

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

23 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Oscar Grenfell

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed at least 81 Palestinians in Gaza in the 24-hours beginning dawn Tuesday, as part of the Zionist regime’s stepped-up offensive this week targeting all areas of the Strip, including the city of Deir al-Balah, which had previously been spared heavy bombardment.

According to Gaza health authorities, 31 of the dead were aid-seekers. The total number of starving Palestinians shot dead by Israel while seeking food now exceeds 1,000 since the establishment in May of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

On Tuesday, United Nations (UN) human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told the Associated Free Press: “As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys.” 

The US and Israeli controlled foundation is a mechanism for corralling Palestinians into the southernmost part of the Strip, where they are routinely gunned down by Israeli forces. The aim is to prepare the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza entirely, while legitimising Israel’s ban on all genuine aid organisations transporting desperately needed supplies into the Strip.

On Sunday, the IDF massacred 92 aid-seekers. On Monday, it responded to global shock and horror by murdering some 130 Palestinians. Together with the killings on Tuesday, that takes the three day toll to at least 303. 

The direct killings are being accompanied by a rapid rise in the number of Palestinians dying of starvation as a direct consequence of the Israeli blockade.

On Tuesday, 15 Palestinians succumbed to starvation. Among them were four children, including 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died at a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, and six-week-old baby Yousef al-Safadi.

The baby’s uncle, Adham al-Safadi, told Reuters that the family had been desperately trying to find baby formula for days. “You can’t get milk anywhere, and if you do find any it’s $100 for a tub,” he said.

At least 21 children have starved to death in the past three days. Of the 101 Palestinians confirmed to have died from hunger, 80 were children, almost all perishing over recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Professor Nick Maynard, a British surgeon volunteering in the last functioning hospital in the south of the Strip, detailed the horrific conditions on the ground. 

In a report published in the Guardian, Maynard stated: “I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn.”

“The phrase ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged,” Maynard wrote. “We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.”

The hospital has run out of baby formula so if forced to use “10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value.” Mothers are frequently too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international doctor sought to bring formula into Gaza for use at Nasser Hospital, it was confiscated by the Israeli authorities. 

Growing numbers of patients, Maynard reported, are dying after surgeries, because they are too weak to fight off infections. He warned that the “enforced malnutrition” would imminently claim “thousands” of lives.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres made a similar warning to a meeting of the Security Council in New York this week, describing the situation in Gaza as a “horror show, in the level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times.”

“Malnourishment is soaring. Starvation is knocking on every door, and now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles. This system is being denied the conditions to function, denied the space to deliver, denied the safety to save lives.”

Guterres denounced Israel’s deliberate targeting of UN and international humanitarian facilities, noting that it was a violation of international law.

That targeting has continued with Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Deir al-Balah. The city in central Gaza is the only one not to have previously been hit with massive aerial raids in the 21-month long genocide. 

The IDF reportedly believes that a number of the remaining Israeli hostages are held in the city. Israeli rights’ groups and some relatives of hostages responded to this week’s offensive against the city, by noting that it again shows that the Israeli regime has no interest in repatriating the hostages and is simply using them as a pretext for the war on Gaza.

Because it had been relatively unscathed, Deir al-Balah had become a refuge for tens of thousands of civilians, forced to flee other parts of Gaza. Several international aid organisations headquartered their operations in the city for the same reason.

As the IDF launched a massive aerial bombardment, tank incursion and shelling of the city Monday, they were a central target. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) main warehouse was bombed as were the residential quarters of its staff. WHO employees and their families were then handcuffed and stripped by IDF soldiers, with four being detained. The WHO was compelled to evacuate its staff, effectively crippling its operations.

The invasion of Deir al-Balah is part of a broader escalation of the Israeli offensive. 13 of the Palestinians killed yesterday, died in an IDF shelling of tens for displaced families at the al-Shati refugee camp north of Gaza city.

The escalation underscores the fraud of claims by the major imperialist powers and much of the western press that a new ceasefire agreement may be imminent. To cover over their complicity in the unfolding horrors, the leaders of 25 countries issued a statement this week criticising the killing of civilians, including aid seekers and the enforced starvation. 

The countries which issued the call for Israel to “comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law,” are either directly arming the IDF to commit the genocide, such as the UK and Australia, or have politically backed it throughout.

Such statements present the atrocities in Gaza in isolation, and as the result of excesses, rather than deliberate policy. In reality, the aim of Israel, since October, 2023, has been to ethnically-cleanse the Gaza Strip, as part of a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem,” and an attempt to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East in partnership with American imperialism.

The same countries issuing crocodile tears, either openly hailed or tacitly endorsed the expansion of this program in the US airstrikes on Iran last month. 

The intensified offensive against Gaza has gone hand in hand with stepped up Israeli operations in the West Bank, where at least 1,000 Palestinians have been murdered since the genocide began. Over the past 24 hours, the IDF has raided the Am’ari refugee camp, having earlier stormed the Sateh Marhaba neighbourhood in nearby Ramallah.

The ongoing regionwide war was the subject of a meeting between Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz and the IDF’s top generals on Tuesday night. The Jerusalem Post reported that Katz told the military chiefs that “actions” had to be taken to “resolve” Gaza, in line with “aggressive offensive policy,” while they should also “be prepared for further forceful action” in the West Bank.

Katz spoke of the need to deepen offensive operations against Yemen, and hailed Israel’s bombardment of Syria last week. He reportedly declared that Israel would “consider resuming its campaign against Iran.”

This broader context of an eruption of imperialist militarism, underscores the reality that opposition to the genocide cannot be confined to single-issue protests. Nor can such opposition go forward through appealing to the very governments responsible for the atrocities to change course.

In a statement Saturday, the World Socialist Web Site called on the millions of workers and young people seeking to end the genocide to focus their attention on the expansion of the class struggle globally.

It explained: “A new strategy is needed—one that bases the fight against the Gaza genocide on the industrial and political mobilization of the international working class. Workers all over the world are being drawn into struggle against the same ruling class that is sponsoring mass murder in Gaza.”

23 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org