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By Dr. Ghassan Shahrour

The tragedy unfolding in Gaza continues to challenge the moral conscience of our world. Entire families have vanished under the rubble, hospitals lie in ruins, and generations of children carry trauma that no ceasefire can erase. For those of us who serve in the health and humanitarian fields, Gaza is not a headline — it is a wound in humanity’s body, still bleeding despite the promises of diplomacy.

As health professionals and advocates for disarmament, peace, and human rights, we are bound by an ethical duty: to defend life, to protect dignity, and to refuse silence when politics crush compassion. Peace cannot be built on selective empathy or on temporary calm that ignores the roots of injustice.

U.S. President Donald Trump now claims credit for the Gaza agreement, yet his record and articles of the agreement tell another story — one that reveals the gulf between words and deeds:

• He backed Israel’s war machine with billions in weapons. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project (Sept 2025), U.S. aid to Israel between Oct 2023 and Sept 2025 reached $33.77 billion.(Biden/Trump). It encompasses both aid to Israel and broader U.S. military activities in the Middle East.
• He punished the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister, shielding war crimes from accountability — the first such act in modern history.
• He sanctioned Palestinian human rights groups that cooperated with the ICC.
• He repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions, even when all other members supported them.
• His “peace plan” omitted international law, victims’ rights, and any commitment to end occupation or annexation.
• It excluded Palestinian representation, sidelined the UN, and promoted privatized reconstruction under business elites.

This is not peacemaking — it is power disguised as diplomacy.

This is not reconstruction — it is control through commerce.

True peace requires more than deals between governments. It demands accountability, justice, dignity, international humanitarian laws and Palestinian self-determination — not a “Riviera of the Middle East” built on rubble and repression. Genuine peace grows from truth and equity, not from silence and spectacle.

To talk about peace while avoiding the question of justice is to perpetuate an illusion. Every demolished home, every denied permit, every child deprived of medical care and education is not only a personal tragedy but a violation of international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and attacks on civilians, yet such violations continue with impunity. When international law is applied selectively, it loses both its authority and its soul.

Peace that ignores accountability is fragile; peace without dignity is impossible. History has shown that oppression, when left unchallenged, reproduces itself under new names and flags. The lessons of South Africa, of Vietnam, of Bosnia — all remind us that reconciliation without justice merely postpones conflict.

As a medical doctor, I have seen how the human body mirrors the moral state of our societies. In Gaza’s hospitals, medical workers perform surgeries without anesthesia, parents search for missing children in the debris, and patients on dialysis die because fuel for generators has run out. These are not statistics — they are names, faces, and stories. They remind us that neutrality in the face of such suffering is not humanitarianism; it is complicity.

Disarmament, too, must be understood in moral terms. It is not only about reducing weapons stockpiles, but about dismantling the systems that arm injustice: unchecked power, economic greed, and the silence of those who know better. The architecture of impunity — built through vetoes, military aid, and political shielding — sustains the violence as much as the weapons themselves.

If humanity is to survive its own contradictions, it must reclaim moral clarity. The right to life, health, and safety cannot depend on geography or identity. The world cannot insist on accountability in one conflict while excusing atrocities in another. Selective outrage erodes the very foundation of universal human rights.

Peace is not a transaction; it is a transformation — of power into justice, of fear into dignity, of silence into truth and advocacy. It begins when we recognize that every life, Palestinian or otherwise, holds equal worth.

We must speak — for truth, for justice, for every person denied care, shelter, and recognition. The price of silence is far greater than the cost of courage.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” — Noam Chomsky

Last but not least, only when we embrace that responsibility — as citizens, professionals, and human beings — can the world hope to move from ceasefire to peace, and from peace to justice.

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour is a medical doctor, writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, and disarmament.

13 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- After months of forced displacement under Israeli threats, thousands of Palestinians are returning to their neighborhoods in northern Gaza, Gaza City and Khan Younis following the withdrawal of Israeli forces as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal under Trump’s plan. But for many, the first question they ask friends and neighbors is not about safety, food, or water, it is a simple, painful question:

“Is your home still standing?”

For displaced families who fled under Israeli bombardment, this question now defines the emotional weight of return.

“I walked for hours to reach my home in the Sheikh Redwan neighborhood,” Amal Haboub, 42, who fled with her children to a UN shelter in central Gaza during the early days of the Israeli assault on Gaza City following an Israeli order, told QNN. “There was no roof. The walls are cracked and blackened. But it is still standing — and that’s more than I hoped for.”

Others weren’t as fortunate.

“My house is gone,” Mahmoud al-Jabari added to QNN while standing in front of a pile of rubble that used to be his family’s home in northern Gaza. “There is nothing to rebuild. I found my mother’s teacups buried in the dust. That’s all I have left.”

Across the strip, returning residents speak of neighborhoods transformed into wastelands. Entire streets are flattened, infrastructure is destroyed, and schools and hospitals bear the scars of war.

Despite the destruction, people are coming back, driven by the need to reclaim their land, their lives, and their dignity.

“I didn’t come to look for walls,” said Huda al-Najjar, a schoolteacher in Khan Younis. “I came to stand on my land, to show my children that we still exist.”

In some areas, families are now pitching tents beside the ruins of their homes, sweeping the rubble away, planting flags, and starting fires for tea, small acts of resistance and routine amid devastation.

“The Israeli genocide may have ended, but the suffering continues,” said Nouran Mohamed, a nurse at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. “We are dealing with trauma, injury, and immense psychological damage. And yet, people are showing resilience I cannot describe.”

Entisar Ashour, a resident of Tel Al-Hawa who was forced to flee under heavy Israeli attacks, told QNN that the “destruction is unbelievable. My family home—the place where we were raised and built so many memories, is gone.”

In mosques, markets, and makeshift shelters, the question repeats like a refrain:
“Is your home still standing?”

Sometimes, the answer is yes. More often, it’s silence. Or tears.

Still, life is returning to Gaza, slowly, painfully, as families piece together what remains and look toward rebuilding, not only their homes, but their futures.

11 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.

It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.

Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.

Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.

Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”

Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”

Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?

How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?

How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?

Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?

By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?

Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?

How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?

How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?

Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?

What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?

And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?

“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”

Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.

Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”

Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.

This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.

The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.

Chris Hedges worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

11 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Author’s Note

This essay argues that the Nobel Peace Prize, in its current form, rewards imperial alignment while erasing anti-colonial resistance. Through recent examples — including the sidelining of Palestinian figures and the elevation of Western-aligned dissent — it exposes the Prize’s structural complicity and calls for a renaming that centers justice alongside peace.
 — -

I. The Illusion of Neutrality

Established in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will to honor those advancing “fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses,” the Nobel Peace Prize was meant to champion genuine reconciliation.

Yet its history with Palestine exposes a stark contradiction: a selective benevolence rooted in Western realpolitik, where awards legitimize elite diplomats and state actors while marginalizing grassroots resistors—imprisoned Palestinian dissidents, martyred civilians, literary figures like Ghassan Kanafani, and humanitarian activists on flotillas like the Mavi Marmara. It is a ritual that endorses “peace efforts” divorced from justice, sustaining narratives of harmony amid occupation, displacement, apartheid, and systemic violence.

II. A Legacy of Stabilizing Injustice

This pattern repeats in the prize’s fault lines, rewarding gestures that contain rather than dismantle conflict.

• Henry Kissinger’s 1973 award celebrated Vietnam ceasefire talks while bolstering U.S. support for Israeli military dominance.
• Jimmy Carter’s 1978 honor for the Camp David Accords normalized Egypt-Israel ties but sidelined Palestinian statehood, leaving millions stateless.
• Barack Obama’s 2009 prize arrived amid surging U.S. military aid to Israel and vetoes of UN resolutions against settlement expansion.

These laureates exemplify peace as pacification—stabilizing power imbalances without addressing root inequities.

Donald Trump’s 2025 nomination fits this mold precisely. Backed by Benjamin Netanyahu and allies for his role in Israel-Hamas ceasefires and hostage exchanges, Trump’s bid ignored Palestinian calls for sovereignty, reparations, and recognition. Though rejected, it underscored the Committee’s tolerance for nominations that prioritize containment over liberation, echoing a pattern where imperial narratives masquerade as neutrality.

III. Selective Solidarity in 2025: Machado’s Award and Palestine’s Erasure

Nowhere is this clearer than in this year’s announcement: the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights.” Hiding from regime threats, Machado dedicated the honor to “the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support,” hailing him as a “courageous visionary,” even though it is U.S. sanctions that have crippled Venezuela’s economy by restricting its oil exports and access to global markets.

Her ascent, fueled by her positioning as a recognizable opposition figure, aligns with forms of dissent that are legible to Western institutions — those framed as pro-democracy, market-friendly, and compatible with U.S. foreign policy interests.

Yet her vocal solidarity with Israel — backing Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party through a 2020 cooperation agreement on politics, ideology, and security, and expressing support post-October 7 — exposes the irony: a “peace” laureate who champions the very forces fueling Gaza’s siege and genocide.

Global backlash ignited, decrying the award as a “Kissinger-level farce” that rewards conservative, Western-aligned figures while erasing anti-colonial resistance — from Venezuelan analysts slamming her calls for U.S. military intervention to X users labeling it proof “peace has lost its meaning.”

This echoes the Committee’s silence on Palestine: elevating struggles that reinforce U.S. interests, like Machado’s sanctions-backed “democracy,” while ignoring those threatening its foundations, such as Gaza’s aid flotillas, and cloaking both in peace rhetoric.

To starkly illustrate this bias, consider the following contrast:

On the one hand, María Corina Machado’s elevation reflects a broader pattern in which Western-aligned dissent is celebrated while anti-colonial resistance is systematically erased. Her advocacy for U.S. sanctions and military intervention in Venezuela, coupled with her alignment with Likud and praise for Trump, rendered her legible to dominant media narratives as a “heroic” figure.

On the other hand, Palestinian activists who confront U.S.-backed Israeli policies do so at immense personal risk, often enduring solitary confinement, targeted surveillance, and assassination. Figures like Ghassan Kanafani, assassinated by Mossad in 1972 for narrating dispossession through literature, and the passengers of the Mavi Marmara flotilla, killed in 2010 while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, exemplify resistance that is punished rather than recognized.

Educational activists like Sireen Fraijeh, who opposed occupation in Nablus and survived military confinement, remain illegible to Western institutions. Even symbolic nominations — such as that of six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by an Israeli tank shell while pleading for rescue — are buried under lobbying pressure, dismissed as politicized or “biased.”

These individuals and their legacies are not just overlooked; they are actively suppressed by mechanisms that reward imperial alignment and erase anti-colonial struggle from the global stage.

This disparity reveals not a neutral standard of peace, but a choreography of recognition that rewards imperial alignment and silences those who resist its violence.

Machado’s “peace” is imperial choreography, Palestinian resistance is inconvenient truth.

IV. Nominations as a Battleground of Narratives

The nomination process lays bare these inequities, turning symbolic recognition into a weapon.

Liberal Israeli-Palestinian NGOs, like the Parents Circle-Families Forum — which fosters joint bereavement workshops — are routinely spotlighted for “coexistence” efforts. Humane as they are, critics argue they humanize personal tragedies without confronting occupation’s structures, depoliticizing Palestinian suffering.

In visceral contrast, pro-Palestine icons languish: the posthumous nomination of six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by an Israeli tank shell in Gaza City in January 2024 while pleading for rescue on a desperate phone call to paramedics — “I’m so scared, please come” — stands as a gut-wrenching symbol. Arizona State University Law Professor Khaled Beydoun, in consultation with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, submitted her bid to honor “every Palestinian child whose life has been stolen,” yet it fades amid the 338 candidates, overshadowed by Machado’s polished dissent.

This sidelining is not isolated.

UNRWA and UN Secretary-General António Guterres were also nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize — UNRWA for its humanitarian work amid the Gaza siege, and Guterres for his leadership in defending multilateral diplomacy and refugee rights. Yet both faced intense backlash from pro-Israel lobbying groups, who accused them of bias and called for their removal from consideration. Their nominations, like Hind’s, were not just overlooked —Pro-Israel lobbying groups targeted their nominations to suppress recognition of Palestinian suffering.

These patterns reveal a system where symbolic gestures are tolerated only when they align with dominant power structures, while voices that challenge those structures are buried under pressure.

V. Norway’s Parliament: A Mirror of Ideological Fault Lines

Norway’s Parliament, which appoints the Nobel Committee, embodies the ideological fault lines that shape the Prize’s selections.

In May 2024, the Norwegian government formally recognized the State of Palestine, joining Ireland and Spain in endorsing a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders — a decisive shift away from the euphemistic legacy of the Oslo Accords toward a clearer global consensus on Palestinian sovereignty.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide framed the move as support for “moderate forces” and a necessary step toward peace, emphasizing that both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live in secure, independent states.

This recognition was backed by a parliamentary majority, with strong support from left-leaning and centrist factions, labor unions, and civil society groups.

The Norwegian Labour Party, under pressure from its base, amplified calls for decolonization and human rights, aligning with the EU and Saudi Arabia in the Global Alliance for the so-called “two-state solution.”

May Day demonstrations across Oslo echoed this sentiment, with union leaders demanding an end to Israeli occupation and full recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Yet this momentum is countered by the Progress Party, Norway’s largest opposition bloc, which chairs the Israel Allies Caucus and maintains close ties to groups like the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.

These affiliations reflect a theological and geopolitical alignment with Israeli settler narratives, and the party routinely frames pro-Palestinian solidarity as anti-democratic or extremist.

This internal polarization — between restorative justice and geopolitical fealty — renders the Nobel Committee not a neutral arbiter, but an extension of Norway’s domestic contest over empire, recognition, and resistance.

VI. Fractures from Gaza: Emerging Moral Reckonings

The Gaza genocide has shattered the Nobel Committee’s veneer of neutrality.

By July 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had documented at least 186 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023 — over 70% of them Palestinian — in what CPJ calls the deadliest and most deliberate assault on press freedom in its history.

These deaths include targeted strikes such as the August 2025 killing of Al Jazeera journalists outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, where seven people — including three Al Jazeera correspondents — were deliberately attacked while sheltering in a media tent.

The toll averages three journalists per week, a staggering rate that underscores not only Nordic unease but a deeper moral abdication.

Despite this, the Nobel Committee refused to honor figures like UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, whose nomination was backed by over a million signatures through Avaaz and Change.org campaigns.
 Albanese’s tireless documentation of human rights violations in Gaza, and her outspoken condemnation of Israeli war crimes, drew political backlash — including U.S. sanctions — but also widespread support.

Albanese’s exclusion from the laureate list sparked global rebuke, especially as the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a key intellectual guide for the Committee, shortlisted CPJ for its documentation of these atrocities.

This dissonance has galvanized younger parliamentarians and civil society actors across Europe, particularly in Norway, where protests surged in response to the Committee’s silence on Gaza.
 Demonstrators demanded laureates who embody justice, intersectionality, and decolonization — not sanitized diplomacy.
 Their calls reflect a shifting ethical landscape, one that rejects peace devoid of equity and transparency.

In this context, Donald Trump’s nomination — once framed as a stabilizing gesture for his role in ceasefire negotiations — now appears as a relic of eroding consensus, mistaking complicity for peace.

Similarly, Machado’s laurels, awarded despite her alignment with Likud and support for U.S. intervention, mask colonial complicity under the guise of democratic virtue.

The cracks are no longer symbolic — they are seismic, evidenced by mass civil society mobilizations across Europe, deepening splits within Norway’s Parliament over Palestine recognition, and global backlash against the Nobel Committee’s nomination choices.

These ruptures signal not just discomfort, but a structural reckoning with the Prize’s complicity in sustaining geopolitical hierarchies.

VII. Toward a Prize for Justice

To restore moral clarity and confront the Prize’s complicity in imperial hierarchies, I propose renaming it the Nobel Prize for Peace and Justice.

This change is not only necessary — it is entirely doable, with historic precedent: in 1968, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was added to the original five Nobel categories, demonstrating that the Nobel framework is flexible when institutions deem it ethically urgent or structurally necessary.

Renaming the award to the Nobel Prize for Peace and Justice would mark a paradigm shift in the Committee’s values — recognizing that peace without justice is hollow, and that true laureateship demands confrontation with structural violence, not mere diplomatic restraint. Far from a cosmetic gesture, this change would redefine how global institutions understand moral courage, resistance, and repair, expanding the criteria to include decolonial struggle, human rights advocacy, and institutional courage. It would signal that peace, to be worthy of recognition, must be inseparable from justice, and that strategic moderation alone is no longer sufficient grounds for honor.

Such a revision would reshape the nomination landscape, inviting figures and movements whose legacies have been historically suppressed or rendered illegible by imperial frameworks.
 Consider the following hypothetical laureates:

• Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli tank shell while pleading for rescue, whose posthumous nomination honored “every Palestinian child whose life has been stolen.”
   Her recognition would affirm that innocence amid atrocity is not apolitical, and that bearing witness to suffering is itself a form of resistance.
• Ghassan Kanafani, assassinated by Mossad in 1972 for narrating Palestinian dispossession through literature, whose work fused artistic brilliance with revolutionary clarity.
   A justice-oriented Prize would acknowledge that storytelling under siege is not peripheral, it is foundational to liberation.
• UNRWA, relentlessly attacked for its humanitarian work amid the Gaza siege, would be honored not for neutrality, but for steadfastness in the face of geopolitical vilification.
   Its nomination would reflect a commitment to institutional courage, not just diplomatic decorum.

In contrast, past recipients like Barack Obama (awarded in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”) or Juan Manuel Santos (honored for negotiating peace with FARC) were celebrated for strategic restraint, ceasefire diplomacy, and alignment with Western interests — not for confronting the structural roots of violence.
 Their legibility hinged on geopolitical convenience, not principled confrontation.

A renamed Prize would reorient the Committee’s compass toward those who challenge empire, not accommodate it.

It would elevate intersectional justice, decolonial resistance, and grassroots courage — not just statecraft or symbolic gestures.

It would also respond to growing global demands for ethical consistency, especially in light of recent controversies surrounding laureates whose actions reinforce geopolitical hierarchies rather than dismantle them — from Barack Obama’s drone warfare to Juan Manuel Santos’s post-accord paramilitarism, from Donald Trump’s ceasefire theatrics to Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense of military atrocities against the Rohingya.

In short, renaming the Prize would not rewrite its history — but it could reshape its future.

It would affirm that peace, to be meaningful, must be anchored in justice, and that recognition must extend to those who resist violence, not just those who negotiate its terms.

Note: First published in Medium

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

11 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Shujaat Ali Quadri

For more than a century, the Nobel Peace Prize has been portrayed as the world’s most prestigious recognition of those who champion peace, democracy, and human rights. Yet beneath its celebrated veneer lies a deeper, more troubling reality: the prize has often been less about genuine peacemaking and more about legitimising the geopolitical and ideological priorities of the West  particularly those of the United States and its allies. The 2025 nomination and global media praise of Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado is only the latest chapter in this pattern, one that reveals how the Nobel Peace Prize is routinely used as a soft power instrument to reward pro-Western actors and advance capitalist, U.S. aligned interests.

When Alfred Nobel conceived the Peace Prize in 1895, his intention was to honour individuals and organisations that had “done the most or best work for fraternity between nations.” However, over time, this noble aspiration has been co-opted by political calculations. Particularly after World War II, the Nobel Committee based in Norway but deeply influenced by Euro-Atlantic geopolitical thinking has shown a clear preference for laureates whose work aligns with Western narratives of democracy, free markets, and liberal interventionism.

Figures such as Henry Kissinger (1973) and Barack Obama (2009) are telling examples. Kissinger’s award, given despite his direct involvement in brutal wars and coups from Vietnam to Chile, was widely seen as a reward for advancing U.S. hegemony under the guise of diplomacy. Obama, awarded the prize less than a year into his presidency, had not yet made any significant contribution to peace but he represented a refreshing, liberal U.S. face to the world. Both cases illustrated a pattern: the Nobel Peace Prize often functions as a seal of approval for those who protect, expand, or legitimise Western global influence.

The Case of María Corina Machado

The recent glorification of María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader hailed in Western media as a “defender of democracy,” perfectly illustrates this trend. Machado’s political trajectory has been deeply intertwined with Washington’s agenda in Latin America. A staunch critic of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, she has consistently advocated neoliberal economic policies and aligned herself with U.S. efforts to isolate, delegitimise, and ultimately overthrow the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

While Machado and her supporters claim to fight for “democratic change,” her politics often overlap with Washington’s regime-change playbook. She has openly supported U.S. sanctions measures that have crippled Venezuela’s economy and caused immense suffering to ordinary Venezuelans. Moreover, she has participated in parallel “shadow governments” backed by the United States, directly undermining Venezuelan sovereignty and the outcomes of its electoral processes.

Yet despite this or rather because of it Western institutions and think tanks have lionised Machado as a symbol of democracy and resistance. The fact that she was even considered a frontrunner for the Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates how far the award has strayed from its original mission. Machado’s nomination is not about rewarding peace or reconciliation; it is about legitimising a U.S.-friendly political project in a region historically targeted by American interventionism.

The Nobel Committee’s ideological bias is perhaps most evident in who it chooses not to honour. Grassroots leaders, anti-imperialist movements, and activists who challenge Western dominance are routinely overlooked. Figures like Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, or even Nelson Mandela (honoured only after the end of apartheid when he was no longer a revolutionary threat) were sidelined or demonised until their causes became politically convenient.

Even more striking is the absence of recognition for whistleblowers like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, whose revelations about Western surveillance and war crimes arguably contributed more to global peace and accountability than many past laureates. Their exclusion reflects the uncomfortable truth that the Nobel Peace Prize is rarely awarded to those who challenge Western power  only to those who reinforce or sanitise it.

Seen in this light, the Nobel Peace Prize functions less as a neutral arbiter of moral virtue and more as a strategic tool of Western soft power. It amplifies voices that support liberal capitalism and U.S.-led global order while marginalising alternative visions of justice, sovereignty, or post-colonial solidarity. It transforms political actors into global icons not for their universal contribution to peace, but for their usefulness to a particular geopolitical narrative.

This dynamic also serves a domestic purpose within the West: by celebrating figures like Machado, the Nobel Committee signals to global audiences that democracy and human rights are synonymous with Western leadership, even when that leadership is tied to coercive sanctions, military interventions, or economic exploitation.

If the Nobel Peace Prize is to retain its moral authority, it must free itself from ideological captivity. It must recognise that peace is not merely the absence of war or the spread of free markets, but the dismantling of structural violence  including the economic and political systems that perpetuate inequality, imperialism, and neocolonialism. This would mean rewarding those who resist oppression in all its forms, not just those sanctioned by Washington or Brussels.

Until then, we must view each Nobel Peace Prize announcement with a critical eye. The applause and glowing headlines that follow are often less about honouring genuine peacemakers and more about reaffirming the global order as defined by Western interests.

The case of María Corina Machado is a stark reminder: when the world’s most prestigious peace award is used to validate regime change politics and neoliberal orthodoxy, it ceases to be a symbol of peace. It becomes, instead, a weapon wielded not for humanity, but for hegemony.

Dr Shujaat Ali Quadri is the National Chairman of Muslim Students Organisation of India MSO, he writes on a wide range of issues, including, Sufism, Public Policy, Geopolitics and Information Warfare.

11 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michelle Ellner

When I saw the headline Maria Corina Machado wins the Peace Prize, I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.

If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.

Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty, and denying its people the right to live with dignity.

This is who Maria Corina Machado really is:

• She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.
• She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
• She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
• She pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class. 
• She helped construct the so-called “interim government,” a Washington-backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.
• She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.
• Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.

Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t “peaceful protests” as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it “resistance.”

She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.

Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.

If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”

Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace: the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the journalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the Flotilla sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and conviction.

But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That’s the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and every nation of the Global South deserves.

 Tell the Nobel Committee: The Peace Prize belongs to Gaza’s journalists, not María Corina Machado!

Michelle Ellner is a Latin America campaign coordinator of CODEPINK.

10 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Roger D. Harris

Spoiler alert – it already has. This is not a glib answer but a comment on the nature of the conflict. The US mission to wrench Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution out from its roots has a quarter-century pedigree. Stick around to the end of the article for an assessment of the likelihood of an overt military attack inside Venezuela. But first a little historical context.

Regime change has failed…so far

In 2002, a US-backed military coup temporarily ousted Hugo Chávez. A mere 47 hours later, the people of Venezuela spontaneously arose and returned their rightfully elected president.

Washington has persistently interfered in the internal affairs of Venezuela, pouring millions of dollars to rig elections. Yet, the perpetually divided and unpopular US-fostered opposition is more isolated and discredited than ever.

Undeterred by its 2002 failed coup, the US has repeatedly sponsored attempts to achieve by violence what they could not do by interfering in Venezuelan elections. In 2020, the so-called “Operation Gideon” was designed to kidnap President Maduro. Derisively dubbed the “Bay of Piglets,” this coup attempt along with numerous others failed. Local fisher folk apprehended the mercenaries.

Among the many diplomatic efforts at regime change by Washington, the Lima Group was cobbled together in 2017. The cabal of 11 rightwing Latin American states and Canada aspired to facilitate “a peaceful exit” to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. By 2021, nearly half of the Lima Group countries had elected progressive governments and that diplomatic offensive fizzled.

Meanwhile in 2019, the US anointed unknown 35-year-old Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela. On December 21, 2022, his own opposition found the puppet so toxic and corrupt that they gave him the boot.

Previously in 2015, Barack Obama certified that Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat” to US national security. He imposed unilateral coercive measures designed to destroy the Venezuelan economy. Euphemistically called “sanctions,” this form of collective punishment is illegal under international law. Regardless, each subsequent US president has continued and to varying degrees augmented the economic warfare.

Combined with oil commodity prices cratering – the source of almost all of its foreign earnings – Venezuela experienced the largest peacetime economic contraction in recent world history. Inflation reached 2,000,000% and the days of the Bolivian Revolution appeared to be numbered. However by 2023, in a heroic effort under the resolute political leadership of President Maduro, Venezuela reversed the economic freefall and recorded a 5% GDP growth rate, which has continued in a positive direction.

US trapped in its imperial imperative

Without further detailing the multitude of illegal US regime-change machinations, it is sufficient to say that the very successes of the Venezuelans have forced Uncle Sam to escalate the conflict. Forced because, as an imperial power, the United States is structurally driven by its inherent pursuit of hegemony – rule over all potential challengers. This compulsion is codified in its official security doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance.”

Venezuela has indeed been a challenge. Even before Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, former President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the country’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – in 1976. Chávez increased state control over the oil industry and expropriated international oil company assets.

Chávez’s precedent of using the country’s natural resources – including Venezuela’s substantial reserves of natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, gold, coal, and diamonds – to fund social programs, rather than handing them over for private profit, is anathema to the US. Not only does the imperium lust over the oil for its own corporations, but control of such strategic resources are geopolitically critical for maintaining global dominance.

Venezuela has also been a leader in promoting regional unity that is independent of the US, forging alliances such as CELCA and ALBA. It is a close ally with Nicaragua and Cuba, also on the US enemies list. Through OPEC, Friends in Defense of the UN Charter, and other initiatives, Venezuela has encouraged Latin American unity with Africa and Asia. Venezuela has “strategic partnerships” with China and Russia and is close to Iran. A champion of Palestine, it broke relations with Israel in 2009. Venezuela also supports an emerging multilateral international community.

For all these “offenses,” the Bolivarian Revolution’s existence is insufferable to the Yankee hegemon…to be crushed.

The guard rails are down

Trump is operating with virtually zero institutional constraints. A mere five congressional Democrats recently awoke from their slumber to send a letter meekly suggesting that presidential “powers are not limitless.” But the Senate just voted against a war powers resolution to constrain attacks on Venezuela.

Democrat representatives on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted on X: “Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela. The American people don’t want another war.” However, their colleagues in the Senate provided a unanimous mandate to the very same Republicans who ran on a “Maduro must go” platform. They rushed to do so, without debate, in the very first hours of the new administration.

Within the bipartisan consensus for regime change in Venezuela, the differences are cosmetic. The Democrats would prefer to overthrow the sovereign state “legally.” Truthout reports that some senior Democrats warned “fellow members against opposing Trump’s war, saying that it would be tantamount to throwing their support behind Maduro.” If the Republicans precipitate an attack, the Democrats at best will agree with the ends but not the means.

The follow-the-flag press prepares public opinion for a strike

On September 26, NBC News reported “from the White House” that the US is planning strikes inside Venezuela. The one-minute video is actually of a guy standing in the street outside the White House, claiming that he had chatted with four unidentified “sources.” Subsequently, this unsubstantiated scoop went viral, picked up by almost every major corporate press outlet. 

The New York Times editorialized: “Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by Venezuelan officials that they have no part in drug trafficking.” What doesn’t occur to these Pentagon scribes, is that neither has Mr. Trump shown any enthusiasm for giving up power voluntarily or even admitting to the documented conclusion by the US in drug trafficking.

In one of its typical propaganda pieces trying to pass as a news story, the Times tells us “what we know” about Washington’s offensive against Venezuela: “the endgame remains opaque.” Apparently, they don’t know jack, because the endgame is regime change. In remarks aimed at Venezuela, Mr. Trump threatened: “We will blow you out of existence.”

All the elements are in place for a strike inside Venezuela          

• Diplomatic relations with Venezuela have been broken since 2019.
• In 2020, the US indicted President Maduro for narco-terrorism, placing a $15 million bounty on him, subsequently raised to $25m and now $50m.
• On January 20, Trump took office. Executive Order 14157 declared a “national emergency” and designated international drug-trafficking groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) and “specially designated global terrorists,” citing authority under the Alien Enemies Act.
• By February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that FTOs posed an “existential threat” and laid the groundwork for treating cartels allegedly linked to President Maduro as enemy combatants.
•  In May, the administration opened the path to use military force against FTOs.
• Then in July, a “secret directive” authorized military operations against FTOs at sea and on foreign soil.
• By August, the US launched a massive naval deployment off the coast of Venezuela. By October, troop deployment reportedly reached 10,000.
• On September 2, the US blew up the first of four or five alleged drug boats in international waters off of Venezuela, resulting in extrajudicial murders of the crews.
• By mid-September, the Pentagon notified Congress under the War Powers Resolution that US forces were engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
• This was followed on October 1 by the Defense Department’s “confidential memo” and more congressional briefings that the US was engaged in armed conflict.
• Trump then terminated the last back-channel diplomatic contacts with Venezuela.

If the “international community” can’t halt the ongoing US/zionist genocide in Palestine, the Yankee juggernaut faces little effective resistance in the Caribbean. A US attack inside Venezuela is imminent!

Roger D. Harris, a founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network, is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas and on the secretariat of the US Peace Council.

10 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

“The Third World was not a place. It was a project.” (Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations”)

When BRICS was first conceived, it was often reduced in Western commentary to an economic acronym, a clever grouping of emerging markets seeking to balance the financial weight of the United States and Europe. Yet beneath that pragmatic exterior, BRICS has always contained a deeper philosophical vision: the assertion that the Global South will no longer be dictated to by imperial centres of power, but will reclaim voice, agency, and destiny.

Palestine’s entry into BRICS will be more than another accession. It will be the completion of a circle that began at Bandung in 1955, when leaders of Asia and Africa declared that the age of colonialism was over, that the newly independent would not be pawns in a Cold War, but agents of a multipolar world.

If Bandung was the first great articulation of non-alignment, Palestine’s entry into BRICS will be the declaration of a new era: decolonisation in practice, backed by institutions, resources, and political muscle. BRICS is not NAM reborn, it is its spiritual heir, built on a decolonial vision. Where NAM offered a moral counterweight, BRICS offers structural counterpower:

• The New Development Bank, a rival to the World Bank and IMF².
• The push for de-dollarisation, weakening the chokehold of the U.S. currency².
• South-South technology, energy, and infrastructure exchanges².
• A political bloc representing over 40% of humanity, speaking from the margins of empire².

Kwame Nkrumah warned that *“neo-colonialism is the last stage of imperialism” *³. BRICS is a collective refusal of this stage. It seeks to build a world where development is not hostage to conditional loans, where trade does not mean dependency, and where sovereignty is not crushed by sanctions. In the writings of Samir Amin⁴ and Immanuel Wallerstein⁵, dependency theory and world-systems analysis exposed the way global capitalism entrenched the periphery’s subordination to the core. BRICS is a concrete effort to erode that structure.

If any nation embodies the unfinished business of decolonisation, it is Palestine. Edward Said reminded us that Palestine is not only a territorial struggle but a symbol of resistance against the permanence of colonial domination⁶.

While Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and others eventually broke the chains of settler colonialism, Palestine remains under siege — militarily, economically, and epistemically. Its admission into BRICS would be a profound correction of historical injustice: the occupied will now sit among the architects of a new order. This would mark a Bandung 2.0 moment. As Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth: *“Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the thing which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.” *⁷

Palestine’s entry into BRICS is precisely this: a declaration that Palestinians will not only resist occupation but actively shape the emerging multipolar world. Their participation ensures that decolonisation is not only a memory of the twentieth century but a living practice in the twenty-first.

Beyond Europe’s hollow gestures, it is tempting to see recognition by European states as victories.

But recognition without consequences is empty ritual⁸. When states recognize Palestine yet continue to trade arms with Israel, buy its spyware, and shield it diplomatically, such gestures become acts of complicity. Recognition without sanctions rewards the oppressor and abandons the oppressed.

BRICS offers something far more consequential: structural support⁹. Access to the New Development Bank, South-South investment, alternative trade mechanisms, and, above all, political solidarity from some of the world’s largest economies. It is the difference between polite applause and tangible partnership. In this sense, Palestine’s inclusion in BRICS marks a strategic divergence from Europe’s hypocrisy: it is not interested in symbolic recognition, but in real participation in shaping the world’s political economy.

Palestine’s entry into BRICS would inject a new moral legitimacy into the bloc. For years, BRICS has been dismissed in Western capitals as a mere club of emerging economies, focused on trade balances and financial institutions. But the presence of Palestine – a people whose struggle is universally recognized as one of the last great decolonial battles would anchor BRICS in the moral terrain of justice and liberation. It would demonstrate that this is not only a coalition of states but a movement grounded in ethical purpose. Palestine would embody the principle that multipolarity is not simply about power-sharing but about redistributing dignity. Within all this is the implications for authentic multipolarity are played out.

There is also the question of geopolitical weight. Alone, Palestine has often been pushed to the margins of global negotiations, its voice drowned by the stronger lobbies of powerful states. Within BRICS, however, Palestine gains a shield of legitimacy and strength, backed by the world’s two most populous nations and several of the largest economies. This alters the calculus of diplomacy. Israel and its allies will no longer negotiate with Palestinians as a people in isolation, but with a state backed by a bloc representing nearly half of humanity. The asymmetry that has plagued the “peace process” for decades would begin to shift.

The third implication is the continuity of decolonisation. From the mid-twentieth century, the Bandung Conference, NAM, and the G77 articulated a vision of political freedom and economic sovereignty. BRICS carries that vision forward, but with institutional instruments capable of delivering material results — development banks, currency alternatives, and infrastructure alliances. Palestine’s entry bridges past and present. It reminds us that decolonisation is not finished business, not a closed chapter of history, but an ongoing project. Palestine in BRICS would symbolize the direct line that connects yesterday’s anti-colonial movements with today’s struggle against neo-colonialism.

Finally, Palestine’s entry would catalyse a shift in narrative. In Western discourse, Palestine is almost always framed as a “problem” to be managed — a humanitarian crisis, a source of instability, an obstacle to peace. By contrast, BRICS would frame Palestine as a partner, a sovereign actor with agency, creativity, and a future to shape. This re-framing is not cosmetic; it is transformative. It rejects the infantilization of Palestinians and affirms that they are equal contributors to global dialogue. In this sense, Palestine’s membership in BRICS becomes not only an act of solidarity but a restoration of subjectivity — the right to speak, decide, and participate as equals in the making of a multipolar world.

From Bandung to Johannesburg, from Nkrumah to Lula, from Nehru to Mandela — the arc of the Global South’s vision has always bent toward a world free from colonial domination. Palestine in BRICS is not an aberration; it is the logical culmination of this arc. We must add too, in optimism the inevitable reality: Martin Luther King asserted: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Nelson Mandela’s refrain was: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” *¹⁰

When Palestine sits at the BRICS table, it will not only speak for itself. It will embody the struggles of all peoples still shackled by occupation, neo-colonialism, or economic dependency. And it will remind the world that solidarity is not charity, that justice is not a gift, and that decolonisation is not yet finished.

Palestine’s entry will be the Bandung of our century: a gathering not just of governments but of histories, memories, and unfinished dreams. It will tell the oppressed everywhere that the world is shifting, that empire is not eternal, and that the Global South — with Palestine at its heart — is building a future where freedom is not granted by the powerful but claimed by the people.

References / Endnotes

1. Vijay Prashad. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. The New Press, 2007.

2. BRICS official statements and communiqués, BRICS Secretariat, 2023–2025.

3. Kwame Nkrumah. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965.

4. Samir Amin. Accumulation on a World Scale. Monthly Review Press, 1974.

5. Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System. Academic Press, 1974.

6. Edward Said. The Question of Palestine. Vintage Books, 1992.

7. Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 1963.

8. European Union policies and public recognitions of Palestine, 2023–2025.

9. AA News / Al Jazeera, “Palestine Applies for Full Membership in BRICS,” 2025.

10. Nelson Mandela. Speech, United Nations, 1990.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator and has long articulated the central core of South-South solidarity

9 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Azmat Ali

After nearly two years of war in Gaza, a sudden and surprising development has emerged. Hamas has issued a statement agreeing in principle to release all Israeli captives it holds — both the living and the remains of the dead — and to hand over the administration of Gaza to a Palestinian technocratic body.

The concession came in response to US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, unveiled in Washington alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump had warned in typically stark terms: ‘If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.’

On his Truth Social account, he pressed further: ‘RELEASE THE HOSTAGES, ALL OF THEM, INCLUDING THE BODIES OF THOSE THAT ARE DEAD, NOW! An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time.’

Hamas’s reply was cautiously affirmative. ‘The movement announces its approval of releasing all occupation prisoners — both living and remains — according to the exchange formula contained in President Trump’s proposal, with the necessary field conditions for implementing the exchange,’ it said.

Trump hailed this as vindication of his approach. ‘Based on the statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE. Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly! Right now, it’s far too dangerous to do that. We are already in discussions on details to be worked out. This is not about Gaza alone, this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.’

An opening — but not a deal

For the first time in nearly two years of war, both Israel and Hamas face narrowing options. Neither can simply reject Trump’s proposal outright without incurring costs. Families of Israeli hostages, long desperate, see the latest developments as a sliver of hope. Anat Angres, the mother of Israeli soldier Matan Angres, 22, wrote on X: ‘Thank you President Trump. After two years of suffering, I feel closer than ever to hug my son Matan again.’

Palestinians in Gaza, enduring immense suffering, see the potential for at least a pause in the bombardment. International mediators, including Qatar and Egypt, are already working on mechanisms for implementation.

Israel’s position

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office released a statement: ‘In light of Hamas’s response, Israel is preparing to immediately implement the first phase of Trump’s plan for the immediate release of all hostages.’ Netanyahu also affirmed his cooperation with the US president’s initiative, saying: ‘We will continue to work in full cooperation with the President and his team to end the war in accordance with the principles set forth by Israel that are consistent with President Trump’s vision.’

Speaking in Hebrew to a domestic audience, however, Netanyahu underlined that he had not agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and insisted Israeli forces would remain in most of Gaza. In the meantime, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has continued. At least 72 Palestinians were killed in strikes on Friday, according to medical sources.

Sticking points

Three issues stand out as potential deal-breakers:

First is sequencing. Trump has demanded that hostages be freed quickly, within a 72-hour window, under a suspension of Israeli military operations. But who will monitor the ceasefire? Who guarantees safe passage in an active war zone? Without clarity, even small violations could unravel the process.

Second is governance. Hamas reiterated: ‘The movement also reaffirms its approval to hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian body of independents (technocrats) based on Palestinian national consensus and supported by Arab and Islamic backing.’

Trump’s idea of an external ‘Board of Peace’ with international figures was rejected bluntly. ‘We will never accept anyone who is not Palestinian to control the Palestinians,’ Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera, adding that the appointment of Tony Blair would be particularly unwelcome because of his role in the Iraq war. The tension between external oversight and internal legitimacy remains unresolved.

Third is disarmament. Trump’s 20-point peace plan calls for Hamas and other factions to be demilitarised and barred from any role in Gaza’s governance. For Netanyahu and his allies, Hamas must be stripped of its military capacity. Yet Hamas’s statement made no reference to disarmament, leaving the issue for future discussion. For the group, observers note, surrendering arms without political guarantees would be tantamount to capitulation.

Justice and accountability

The humanitarian toll provides the stark backdrop to these manoeuvres. According to Gaza health officials, more than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, with tens of thousands more injured and massive displacement across the territory.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Israeli organisations such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council have accused Israel of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Trump’s plan, however, is silent on accountability for Gaza’s devastation. It promises reconstruction funds and a ‘redeveloped’ territory but avoids naming responsibility for the destruction. Critics warn that rebuilding without justice risks entrenching control rather than delivering peace. As Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has long insisted: ‘We are a people under occupation, and our rights are inalienable. Peace without our rights is no peace at all.’

A fragile opening

Despite its flaws, the exchange of statements between Trump and Hamas has shifted the political landscape. Hamas has approved the release of captives and the transfer of governance to a Palestinian consensus-based body. Trump has demanded Israel halt bombing to enable a peace plan. Netanyahu, under pressure from all sides, has agreed to cooperate with Trump’s initiative.

It would be premature to call this a turning point. Past efforts have collapsed on the rocks of mistrust, asymmetry, and maximalist demands. Disarmament, sequencing, and sovereignty remain unresolved. But the significance of this moment lies in the fact that all parties are, however reluctantly, engaging with the same text.

Breakthrough or False dawn?

Whether this proves to be a genuine breakthrough or another false dawn depends on the coming days. If hostages are returned, bombardment suspended, and a neutral administration begins to take shape, then the trajectory of the war could shift. If not, recriminations will deepen and violence may escalate further.

Palestine peace efforts fail not because they lack plans or funds, but because they lack trust, credible enforcement, and political will. Unless this moment delivers those, Trump’s 20-point plan will join the long list of abandoned initiatives. If it succeeds, he may renew his claim for the Nobel Peace Prize, presenting himself as the mediator who brought peace not only to Gaza but to the wider Middle East.

For now, the world is watching. Trump has forced new words onto the page. Both parties Hamas and Israel, reluctantly, agree. On further initiative rests not only the fate of hostages and civilians in Gaza, but the peaceful co-existence of the entire region.

Azmat Ali is a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

10 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Arun Mitra

The agreement reached between Israel and Hamas has raised a ray of hope that the massacre of Palestinian children and women, being carried out by the Israeli army for nearly two years, might finally stop. However, reports continue to emerge that Israel has not ceased its bombings even after the agreement. Still, there is some hope that these attacks may subside in the coming days. This massacre, however, has revealed many important truths.

On October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked inside Israel, killing over 1200 innocent people and taking 251 hostages, it shattered Israel’s long-standing claim of having an impenetrable security shield. The world widely condemned Hamas’s attack because innocent people were killed or taken hostage. But the way Israel retaliated in Gaza, unleashing a large-scale massacre, is nothing but genocide and is violation of all International humanitarian laws.

Many people justified Israel’s brutal response by saying that Hamas’s attack was wrong and provoked Israel’s actions. However, it must be understood that Israel’s intentions in the region were already clear — this incident merely provided the pretext. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated, Hamas’s attack “did not occur in a vacuum”. It was the outcome of years of oppression. Reports suggest that Israel itself had indirectly allowed Hamas to grow — even funding it — to weaken the peaceful Palestinian liberation movement led by the PLO. Since Hamas’s armed approach could never gain global support, it benefitted Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that his country would “eliminate Hamas,” but the war waged was not limited to Hamas. On one side stood children and women, and on the other, heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Starving and displaced, children were shot dead even while trying to fetch water. According to reports, over 65,000 people have been killed, 60% of them women and children. Some reports estimate that if those buried under the rubble are included, the death toll could exceed 100,000.

During the same period, Israel’s ambitions became even clearer — it launched attacks not only on Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, but also continued expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes and dividing their territory into disconnected enclaves. Movement between these areas now requires passing through Israeli checkpoints, making daily life of Palestinians extremely difficult.

It has now become evident that American imperialism aims to erase Palestine entirely and rebuild Gaza as a modern city for tourism, corporate and strategic interests. Major multinational corporations and construction lobbies are already eyeing profits from rebuilding Gaza — but where will Palestinians go?

Clause 12 of the agreement says that no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza. There is nothing about returning to their original homes, which is an indication that Palestinians no longer have a place in Gaza. The Palestinians will not have full control in governance.

The United States has played a central role in maintaining and strengthening Israel’s military might by continuously supplying advanced weapons and bombs used in Gaza. Even when Israel faced difficulties in its war against Iran, the U.S. provided intelligence and support. There were even attempts to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar. Western nations largely stood by Israel throughout this massacre even though people in these countries held several protests against Israeli action.

During the Holocaust in 1940s , the world had little knowledge of the ongoing genocide against Jews. But today, the world has watched the killing of children and the suffering of the hungry and thirsty in real time — yet remained silent. Palestinians may have hoped for support from other countries, but none of the Arab regimes openly backed them. Most of these are monarchies where democracy is absent, and rulers value their ties with the U.S. more than the will of their people. Even Pakistan, which calls itself an “Islamic republic” and advocates an “Islamic NATO,” did nothing meaningful for Palestine and is now trying to align closely with the U.S.

Meanwhile, corporations profited from the massacre. A UN report revealed that several companies supplied Israel with weapons, drones, and surveillance chips that strengthened its military and prolonged the genocide. This UN report lists companies complicit in Israel’s ‘genocide’. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has issued a report naming several US giants among companies aiding Israel’s occupation and war on Gaza. Companies from other countries – from China to Mexico – are also named.

The Government of India openly sided with Israel, abandoning its long-standing pro-Palestine stance. Several Indian companies also supplied equipment to Israel, and Indian laborers were sent there to replace Palestinians expelled from their jobs — even at the cost of risking their lives.

In typical fascist fashion, anyone who spoke against Israel’s actions was labeled “anti-Semitic.” In India, anti-Muslim hysteria was used to suppress voices supporting Palestine. India’s historic solidarity with Palestine was undermined. In BJP-ruled states, not only were public demonstrations for Palestine banned, but even indoor discussions  were prohibited. Right-wing Hindu fundamentalist groups were mobilized to disrupt such meetings — exposing the ideological similarity between Israeli Zionism and Hindutva nationalism.

These developments have raised serious questions about the future of global geopolitics and how imperialist and neo-colonial powers are again attempting to dominate other nations. It is also ironic to note that Donald Trump who stood by Israel in the massacre is now eyeing for Nobel Peace Prize.

Hence, in the times ahead, it is essential to unite and struggle against imperialism — for peace, justice, and human dignity.

Dr Arun Mitra is a Practicing ENT Surgeon in Ludhiana, Punjab. He is also the President of Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD)

10 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org