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By Rima Najjar

Author’s Note: This essay asks and answers a single, urgent question: Why are Western powers aligned with Israel — despite its collapse, its open embrace of ethnic supremacy, and its strategic liability? The answer unfolds across history, ideology, and institutional complicity. From the coerced origins of the U.S.-Israel alliance to the legal codification of Palestinian criminalization, the essay traces how Western governments, universities, think tanks, and cultural institutions have embedded themselves in a settler-colonial project that no longer offers liberal cover. It documents how crisis management replaces justice, how resistance is rebranded as terrorism, and how empire sustains itself through silence, surveillance, and semantic warfare. Israel will fall. And the West — having mortgaged its credibility to defend the indefensible — will face the cost of that investment. The question is no longer whether the settler regime will collapse. It’s whether the West will collapse with it.

Introduction: Stability Without Justice

Western powers are not confronting the crisis in Palestine — they are managing it. Their goal is not resolution, but equilibrium: a state of controlled violence, where the settler regime remains intact and indigenous resistance is fragmented, surveilled, and administratively contained. This is the paradox: they seek stability without justice, and containment without transformation. Every diplomatic gesture — recognizing Palestinian statehood, calling for “humanitarian pauses,” proposing reconstruction frameworks — is designed to preserve the architecture of dispossession while muting its most visible symptoms.

This is why Trump’s “Board of Peace” includes Tony Blair, architect of the Quartet’s post-Oslo entrenchment, and why Canada’s symbolic recognition of Palestine comes with no enforcement mechanism. It’s why Germany bans pro-Palestinian speech while funding Israeli arms development, and why Macron can host Netanyahu in Paris days after condemning the bombing of Rafah. These are not contradictions; they are the operating logic of Western crisis management. The settler state must remain, but its violence must be rebranded, outsourced, or delayed.

So we must ask: why are Western powers aligned with a settler-colonial project that no longer offers liberal cover? Why do they continue to invest in a regime that openly defies democratic norms, international law, and basic human decency?

Israel was once marketed as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” a bulwark of Western values. That façade is gone. The Knesset is dominated by parties openly advocating ethnic cleansing. Israeli ministers call for flattening Gaza, starving civilians, and annexing the West Bank outright. The liberal alibi has collapsed — but the support remains. Why?

Because Israel is not merely a strategic foothold. It is a Western-engineered settler colony whose survival depends on a transnational Zionist infrastructure that penetrates policy, media, academia, and arms industries. This influence manifests in AIPAC’s legislative chokehold, in the IHRA definition weaponized to criminalize anti-Zionist speech, in Hollywood’s decades-long erasure of Palestinian narratives, and in the revolving door between Israeli intelligence and Silicon Valley’s surveillance empires exemplified by NSO Group, whose Pegasus spyware was co-developed by Israeli veterans of Unit 8200 and is sold to democracies and dictatorships alike to surveil journalists, activists, and political dissidents, effectively globalizing Israel’s model of population control. It also manifests in the institutional complicity of Harvard, Columbia, Sciences Po, and the University of Sydney — each of which has censored, punished, or expelled students and faculty for opposing Zionism. These institutions claim to uphold free inquiry, human rights, and global justice. Yet they enforce silence, because they are embedded in the same ideological consensus that treats Israel’s existence as civilizational necessity.

But this consensus was not inevitable. As documented in If Americans Knew, the U.S. was dragged into the Zionist project against its own strategic interests. Truman overrode his own diplomats, who warned that supporting Israel would destabilize the region, alienate Arab allies, and entangle the U.S. in permanent conflict. The U.S.-Israel alliance did not emerge from shared democratic values or strategic necessity — it was forged through ideological coercion. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Zionism was reframed as a moral imperative, and any refusal to endorse Israeli statehood was cast as antisemitic betrayal. The Cold War deepened the coercion: Israel was rebranded as a civilizational outpost, a bulwark against communism, and a proxy for Western supremacy. This ideological scaffolding — rooted in guilt, propaganda, and strategic panic — forced the West into an alliance that contradicted its own interests, values, and legal frameworks. It was not consent. It was entrapment.

Today, the myth persists: that the U.S. and Israel are allies because “they share the same values.” But what values are these? Ethno-nationalism? Militarized borders? Manifest destiny? The shock is not that Israel behaves like a settler state — it’s that the U.S. sees itself in that mirror. The alliance is still against U.S. interests. It has cost trillions in military aid, provoked endless wars, radicalized global opinion against American hypocrisy, and undermined its own legal and moral frameworks. The U.S. is not gaining from this alliance — it is hemorrhaging credibility, influence, and internal cohesion.

Israel is not a mirror of Western values. It is a mirror of Western pathology: the refusal to confront settler violence, the addiction to domination, and the belief that indigenous life can be managed, not liberated. The genocide in Palestine does not merely reflect Western interests — it exposes their internal rot. The unraveling of liberal cover forces a reckoning with both complicity, and the cost of that complicity. The West has mortgaged its credibility, its legal frameworks, and its democratic pretenses to sustain a state that openly defies them. It has criminalized dissent, alienated the global South, and radicalized its own youth. The price of propping up a settler regime that no longer pretends to be liberal is both moral and strategic. The West is bleeding legitimacy, and Israel is no longer a mirror. It is a liability.

The Oslo Illusion and Its Aftermath

Oslo was never a peace process. It was a containment strategy — engineered by Western powers to defer Palestinian liberation while preserving Israel’s strategic utility. The architecture of Oslo has overseen a more than quadrupling of the settler population in the West Bank, from approximately 250,000 in 1993 to over 700,000 today, rendering a contiguous Palestinian state a geographic impossibility. The accords outsourced repression to the Palestinian Authority, rebranded occupation as “negotiation,” and created a donor economy (a de-development paradigm) that tethered Palestinian survival to Western largesse. The goal was pacification.

The architects knew this. Shimon Peres called Oslo “a way to end the intifada without ending the occupation.” Bill Clinton’s administration framed it as a “confidence-building measure,” not a path to justice. The EU poured billions into PA institutions while ignoring settlement expansion. The World Bank and IMF designed economic frameworks that deepened dependency and erased resistance. And academic institutions — from Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies to Sciences Po’s Middle East program — trained a generation of technocrats to manage the fallout, not dismantle the system.

So again we must ask: why do Western powers uphold a framework that entrenches occupation, fragments resistance, and contradicts their own democratic pretenses?

Because Oslo gave them plausible deniability. It allowed them to claim engagement while outsourcing violence. It created a bureaucratic buffer between Western capitals and settler brutality. And it gave their universities, think tanks, and NGOs a role — not as challengers of empire, but as managers of its contradictions. The illusion served everyone — except Palestinians.

Oslo created a system where every Western institution could claim a role: universities could study it, think tanks could advise it, NGOs could administer it. It gave them relevance, funding, and access. But for Palestinians, it delivered fragmentation, surveillance, and deferred liberation. The illusion of peace allowed empire to rebrand itself as benevolence. And the institutions that should have challenged it instead became its stewards.

The deeper question, then, is this: why do these institutions uphold a project that undermines their own stated values — academic freedom, human rights, democratic governance?

Because they are not autonomous. They are structurally embedded in the same ideological scaffolding that treats Israel’s existence as a civilizational necessity. To challenge Zionism is to risk funding, access, and legitimacy. So they manage contradictions instead of confronting them. They perform critique while preserving the system.

But that illusion is collapsing. The PA is discredited. The donor economy is imploding. And Israel no longer pretends to negotiate. The West is left with a naked settler regime and no liberal cover. The question now is not whether Oslo failed — it’s whether the West can survive its unraveling.

The Collapse of Liberal Democratic Alibis

The liberal alibi is dead. Israel no longer pretends to be a democracy. Its ministers call for flattening Gaza, starving civilians, and annexing the West Bank outright. The Knesset is dominated by parties that openly advocate ethnic cleansing. Settlers livestream pogroms. Soldiers post trophy photos. The judiciary rubber-stamps apartheid.

And yet, Western powers continue to call Israel a “partner,” a “democracy,” a “friend.”

This is not ignorance. It is ideological investment. The collapse of liberal cover has not led to rupture — it has led to recalibration. Western governments now defend Israel not with democratic language, but with civilizational panic. They invoke “shared values” without naming them, because to name them would mean admitting what those values are: ethno-nationalism, militarized borders, and settler supremacy.

Academic institutions have followed suit. Harvard rescinded fellowships for human rights advocates who criticized Israel. Columbia suspended students for organizing sit-ins. Sciences Po threatened disciplinary action against faculty who refused to normalize Zionist speakers. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a coordinated retreat from liberal principles in defense of a settler regime.

The question is not whether these institutions believe in free speech or human rights. The question is why they abandon those principles when Palestine is named, why they manifest the “Palestine Exception to Free Speech” — a documented phenomenon identified by organizations like Palestine Legal, which has tracked thousands of such cases in the U.S.

Cultural institutions are no different. The Berlin Biennale censored Palestinian artists. PEN America disinvited speakers who criticized Zionism. The Sundance Institute pulled funding from films that centered Palestinian resistance. These organizations claim to champion artistic freedom and moral courage. But when the settler project is threatened, they enforce silence.

Why?

Because complicity is safer than confrontation. Because Zionist donors fund endowments, fellowships, and exhibitions. Because governments threaten visas, grants, and accreditation. And because the ideological scaffolding that upholds Israel also upholds their own legitimacy. To challenge Zionism is to challenge the West’s imperial self-image. And that is a risk they will not take.

But the cost is mounting. Students are radicalized. Artists are defecting. Scholars are refusing to comply. The institutions that once claimed moral authority are hemorrhaging credibility. The alliance with Israel is not just a liability for governments — it is a liability for every institution that has staked its reputation on liberal values while enforcing illiberal repression.

The reckoning is not coming. It is here.

Manufactured Ethnic States as Strategic Assets

Why does the West cling to Israel, even as its liberal façade collapses?

Because Israel is not an anomaly — it is a prototype. Western powers have long relied on manufactured ethnic states to anchor imperial permanence. Like the pieds-noirs of French Algeria, Israeli settlers see themselves as a vanguard of Western civilization, their political power in the metropole (Paris then, Washington now) vastly disproportionate to their numbers, holding the imperial project hostage to their own supremacist demands. Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, and Northern Ireland followed similar logics. These were not accidents of history — they were strategic designs.

Israel fits the mold precisely. It is a settler state engineered to serve as a forward base, a regional enforcer, and a civilizational proxy. But its utility goes beyond geography. It offers the West a model of governance: militarized borders, ethno-nationalist identity, and permanent emergency. It is a test site for surveillance technologies, crowd control tactics, and counterinsurgency doctrine. Israeli firms like NSO Group export spyware to Western governments. Through programs like the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), U.S. police chiefs travel to Israel to receive training in counter-terrorism and crowd control from Israeli military and police, directly importing tactics used in the occupation of Palestinian cities to the streets of American cities like Atlanta and St. Louis. The IDF’s tactics in Gaza are studied at NATO academies.

This is not partnership. It is ideological franchising.

And yet, the alliance is corrosive. Israel’s open embrace of genocidal policy has shattered the liberal façade. Western governments are forced to defend the indefensible, eroding their own credibility. Cultural institutions censor dissent. Universities punish critique. Civil society fractures. The cost of maintaining the settler regime is no longer just moral — it is strategic. The West is bleeding legitimacy, and Israel is accelerating the hemorrhage.

So why do they persist?

Because manufactured ethnic states offer something empire cannot relinquish: permanence. They are designed to outlast elected governments, diplomatic shifts, and popular uprisings. They anchor Western power in regions where direct control is no longer tenable. Israel, like Algeria before it, is not just a state — it is a mechanism. A settler garrison. A symbolic firewall against indigenous resurgence.

But the firewall is cracking. The global South is defecting. Youth movements are radicalizing. Internal dissent is growing. And the manufactured state is no longer stable — it is volatile, exposed, and unsustainable.

The question now is not whether Israel serves Western interests. It’s whether Western powers can survive the consequences of pretending it still does.

Crisis Management vs. Justice

The West does not oppose Palestinian armed resistance because it is violent. It opposes it because it is effective.

Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other factions are not terrorist organizations — they are liberationist movements confronting a settler-colonial regime. Their tactics, rhetoric, and ideological frameworks emerge from the same historical terrain as the FLN in Algeria, the ANC in South Africa, and the Viet Minh in Vietnam. Each was branded “terrorist” by the colonial powers they fought. Each was later recognized — begrudgingly — as legitimate representatives of their people.

Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 in one of the most transparent elections ever held in the Arab world. A US diplomat involved in the 2006 monitoring, former President Jimmy Carter, called the election “orderly and peaceful” and stated, “I don’t know of any time that we have ever had a better and more open election.”

The West responded not by respecting the outcome, but by imposing a blockade, funding a coup, and criminalizing the entire Gaza Strip. The message was clear: Palestinian democracy is only acceptable if it produces collaborators. Resistance is not permitted — even when it is popular, organized, and rooted in international law.

The designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization is not a legal judgment — it is a political weapon. It strategically ignores that under international law, occupied peoples have a recognized right to armed resistance (as affirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43). While the laws of war prohibit targeting civilians, the designation is applied categorically to the groups themselves, not specific acts, criminalizing the very right to resist an illegal occupation.

It allows Western powers to dismiss Palestinian demands for liberation, justify collective punishment, and criminalize solidarity. It enables the U.S. to bomb refugee camps, the EU to freeze aid, and Canada to prosecute speech. It is not about violence — it is about control.

Meanwhile, Israel’s violence is never framed as terrorism. Its bombing of hospitals, schools, and UN shelters is called “self-defense.” Its use of white phosphorus is “regrettable.” Its starvation of civilians is “complex.” This is not a double standard — it is a colonial standard. The settler state is allowed to defend itself against the people it occupies. The indigenous are allowed to suffer, not to fight.

Western crisis management is built on this inversion. It seeks to pacify Palestine, not liberate it. It funds NGOs to “build resilience,” not resistance. It trains PA forces to suppress dissent, not settlers. It offers reconstruction, not return. And it criminalizes the very movements that demand justice.

Justice would mean dismantling the settler regime. Crisis management means preserving it — quietly, bureaucratically, indefinitely.

Preservation Through Rebranding: From Liberation to “Terrorism”

Western crisis management is built on inversion. It does not mean resolving conflict — it means enforcing imperial order. It is the language of counterinsurgency, not diplomacy. In Palestine, it means suppressing resistance, stabilizing occupation, and preserving settler control under the guise of humanitarian concern. The West does not manage a crisis — it manages a population. It does not seek peace, it seeks quiet. And it does so through aid conditionality, security coordination, and legal repression. The term itself is ideological camouflage: it transforms colonial violence into administrative necessity.

The strategy begins with language. The West does not dismantle Palestinian resistance — it rebrands it. Liberation becomes “terrorism.” Self-defense becomes “extremism.” Martyrdom becomes “radicalization.” This is not semantic drift. It is ideological warfare.

When Hamas won the 2006 elections, the U.S., EU, and Israel refused to recognize the result. Instead of engaging a democratically elected government, they imposed a blockade, froze aid, and backed a coup. The message was clear: Palestinian governance is only legitimate if it collaborates. Resistance — even through electoral means — is intolerable. Hamas was not criminalized for its tactics. It was criminalized for refusing to surrender.

The same applies to the PFLP, DFLP, and other factions rooted in Marxist, pan-Arab, and anti-colonial traditions. These groups are listed as terrorist organizations not because they target civilians, but because they target empire. Their ideological frameworks — land return, armed struggle, anti-normalization — threaten the settler regime’s permanence. So they are erased, banned, and silenced.

This rebranding is essential to Western preservation. It allows governments to justify surveillance, censorship, and military aid. It enables universities to expel students, NGOs to withhold funding, and media outlets to frame resistance as chaos. It transforms a liberation movement into a security threat, and a settler state into a victim.

And it works. The average American cannot name a single Palestinian faction outside Hamas — and even then, only as a caricature. European governments pass laws banning “support for terrorism” that include waving the Palestinian flag. Australian media refers to resistance fighters as “militants” while ignoring settler pogroms. The rebranding is total. It is not about truth. It is about control.

But the cracks are showing. Young people are asking questions. Scholars are defying bans. Artists are naming Zionism. The rebranding is no longer enough. The violence is too visible. The contradictions too stark. And the cost of preserving the illusion is rising. The cost of entanglement is already being paid. In 2024, for the first time, a European country (Ireland) and a member of the G7 (Canada) officially intervened in the ICJ case, not in support of Israel, but to argue for the court’s jurisdiction — a quiet but monumental diplomatic shift signaling the erosion of the Western consensus.

The West can no longer manage the crisis by renaming it. It must now decide: will it confront the settler regime, or continue to criminalize those who resist it?

This is not just ideological — it is codified. The criminalization of Palestinian resistance is embedded in legal frameworks that treat liberation as threat and settler violence as policy.

The U.S. Anti-Terrorism Certification (ATC) forces NGOs to sever ties with grassroots resistance, criminalizes political expression, and turns aid into surveillance. The EU’s PEGASE mechanism rewards the PA for suppressing dissent and punishes any deviation from Oslo-era compliance. Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-36) has been used to target Palestinian advocacy groups, restrict speech, and criminalize solidarity. Australia’s Criminal Code Amendment designates Hamas in its entirety as terrorist, criminalizing even symbolic support. The UK’s Counter-Terrorism and Security Act mandates universities to monitor “extremist” speech, silencing pro-Palestinian voices under the Prevent program.

These laws do not protect civilians. They protect empire. They transform solidarity into sedition, resistance into extremism, and liberation into criminality. They are not neutral — they are colonial.

A Call to Rupture

Israel will fall. Not because the world wills it, but because settler regimes cannot survive permanent contradiction. A state built on dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic supremacy cannot endure in an era of global reckoning. The façade is gone. The violence is visible. The resistance is rising. And the settler project is out of narratives, out of cover, out of time.

But Israel will not fall quietly. It will drag its allies with it. The U.S. has mortgaged its global standing to defend the indefensible. The EU has fractured its legal frameworks to accommodate apartheid. Canada and Australia have criminalized dissent to preserve diplomatic ties. These powers are not just complicit — they are entangled. And as Israel collapses, they will face the cost of their investment: diplomatic isolation, internal unrest, ideological discredit.

This is not a warning. It is a forecast.

The West cannot reform its way out. It cannot rebrand genocide as “security.” It cannot manage liberation through donor frameworks. It cannot silence the global South, its own youth, or the facts on the ground.

The only path forward is rupture: a severing of ties, a dismantling of complicity, a refusal to uphold a regime whose demise is inevitable.

Rupture means ending military aid. Ending diplomatic cover. Ending cultural normalization. It means naming Zionism as a colonial ideology and treating Palestinian liberation as a global imperative. It means choosing justice over empire — even if empire resists.

Because the longer the West clings to Israel, the deeper it sinks into its own crisis. The settler regime is not a shield — it is an anchor. And the only way to survive its collapse is to let go.

Palestine will be free. The question is whether the West will be free with it — or fall defending the lie.

*

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.

3 October 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Ahmed Adel

The delivery of Tomahawk missiles to Kiev could lead to a serious escalation and perhaps even direct military conflict between Russia and the United States. Nonetheless, in the event that these American-made cruise missiles appear in Ukraine, Russian forces have at their disposal an entire arsenal of weapons – air defense, electronic warfare assets, and aviation as primary instruments of defense and countermeasures.

Although the Tomahawks pose a serious missile threat, the delivery of these missiles to Ukraine remains politically and operationally contentious, with multiple obstacles standing in the way — from US restrictions and technology controls to logistics and the risk of escalation.

Washington understands the full responsibility of handing over the Tomahawk missiles. These missiles are purely American-made, and therefore, the control and management system, which incorporates elements of satellite communication, is also American. This means that management will not be handed over to third countries and will be operated by US officers.

Although the Trump administration is mulling the idea of delivering Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, some scenarios must first be considered. Any violation of Russian airspace will undoubtedly lead to a counterattack, while Washington is also a party to international agreements on the proliferation of missile technologies. At the same time, it cannot be excluded that if Tomahawk missiles attack Russian territory, it would constitute direct US participation in the war on the side of Ukraine, which would have serious consequences, such as Russia carrying out strikes on where these missiles are deployed and leading to American deaths.

In any case, Tomahawk missiles will not change the situation on the front for Ukraine since all Russian air defense systems were developed from the very beginning with the fight against American cruise missiles in mind, and can effectively counter them.

US Vice President J.D. Vance recently said Washington was considering Ukraine’s request to purchase the long-range missiles, adding that President Donald Trump would make the “final determination.”

Russia is carefully analyzing the US Vice President’s statement that Washington is considering Kiev’s request to obtain Tomahawk missiles, with a range of up to 2,500 kilometers, enough to hit Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the key question is who will launch these missiles and who will determine the targets, the US or Ukraine.

However, Washington is cautious about handing over Tomahawks, even to its closest allies, and Kiev does not have the necessary platforms to launch the missiles. Tomahawks are typically deployed on ships, submarines, and strategic aircraft. If the US were to sell these systems to Ukraine, it would need to create the possibility of launching cruise missiles. Therefore, it is doubtful that the Trump administration will decide to share these weapons with Ukraine.

The land-based Tomahawk has a range of 1,600 kilometers and can carry a nuclear warhead. As such, it will become the most powerful destabilizing factor, which, of course, must be met with a serious response. Washington is attempting to increase pressure on Russia in this manner, aiming to expedite the negotiation process. Trump’s team is interested in presenting certain results to its voters that they could use as a trump card ahead of the Congressional elections.

The Tomahawk poses a challenge to air defense systems, but Russian air defense systems are specifically designed to counter such threats. Additionally, Russia also possesses electronic warfare capabilities that can confuse or divert missiles from their intended path. At the same time, it is recalled that in Syria, a large number of launched Tomahawks were shot down or did not hit targets of the former Assad regime.

Although the Tomahawk is a formidable weapon, it is somewhat outdated, as these missiles have been in operational use since 1983. Both the guidance system and the characteristics themselves are outdated, although the US is modernizing them.

The primary targets of the Tomahawk are military infrastructure, including airfields, deeply fortified bases, and production facilities. But if such weapons are used on the territory of the Russian Federation, this will inevitably lead to the loss of human lives of Russian citizens and the destruction of infrastructure, to which Moscow, of course, will respond with all the might of its forces.

Due to damage to the railway infrastructure in Ukraine, the logistics and transportation of such weapons will not be easy or unnoticed. For this reason, it would be a straightforward task for Russia to destroy the missiles before they are launched. However, Trump is acting cautiously, and for now, the stories about the delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine are not a reality. The true intentions of the US will only be revealed through concrete actions, and not through media hints, speculation, or rumors.

*

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

3 October 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

When war becomes peace, when concepts and realities are turned upside down, when fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction, 

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, when the deliberate killing of children is upheld as “collateral damage,”  

When those who resist the US-NATO-led invasion of their homeland are categorized as “insurgents” or “terrorists,” 

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population,”

When the Commander-in-Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker.”

Take action worldwide against Global Warfare and the derogation of fundamental human rights.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” —William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, 1623

My response to Shakespeare: “Send the devils back to where they rightfully belong.”

Michel Chossudovsky, October 2, 2025

***

Pete Hegseth’s “Hot War” to “Ensure Peace”

“Good morning and welcome to the War Department because the era of the Department of Defense is over.

….The origin dates to fourth century Rome and has been repeated ever since, including by our first commander in chief, George Washington, the first leader of the War Department. It captures a simple yet profound truth. To ensure peace, we must prepare for war.  Pete Hegseth

Nonsensical, Uninformed and Dangerous Statement

The United States of America is now officially on a  war path which –if applied– threatens the future of humanity. The agenda is to “ensure peace”.

Hegseth proposes an all out war at a global level as a mean to achieving peace. The use of nuclear weapons as well as “A.I. military decision-making” are an integral part of this global military agenda.  

“From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win”,

Hegseth is also intent upon eliminating the peace movement. 

“That’s why pacifism is so naive and dangerous. It ignores human nature and it ignores human history”.

In the words of George W. Bush: 

“I just want you to know that,

when we talk about war,

we’re really talking about peace,”

Engaging in war as a means to achieving peace?  Since 9/11, propaganda statements abound:

• The conduct of  “humanitarian wars”,
• America’s “War on Terrorism”,
• Going after Al Qaeda,
• Going After Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Responsibility to Protect (R2P),
• The “Just War”

Video: Pete Hegseth’s  Speech

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbKeNVV0PX4]

_______________________________________________

Continuity: From the Truman Doctrine To MAGA Trump

Successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump have been involved in carrying out a hegemonic blueprint for global domination, which the Pentagon  calls the “Long War”.

The Truman Doctrine formulated by George Kennan at the outset of the Cold War hinted

“to the importance of not only articulating a military solution but in maintaining the people of Asia in a state of poverty.”

What Kennan had also envsaged was a strategy of creating divisions as well as ensuring that Asian countries do not establish a relationship with the Soviet Union which would hinder US hegemonic interests.

According to Kennan:

“The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better”

There are obvious similarities of Hegseth’s statement to both the Truman Doctrine as well as the Project of the New American century (PNAC) released in September 2000 a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House.

The PNAC was a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.

The PNAC’s declared objective was:

“Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous theater wars”.

Those proposed wars were not to be conducted in a “consecutive” fashion. One after the other. They were to be conducted simultaneously in different regions of the world. “And we shall win those wars”.

What is distinct in Hegseth’s War Department is that the “War is Peace” doctrine is now official. The  fake “Peace Department” has been replaced by “the War Department”. War is presented as an instrument of peace. Diplomacy and international relations are defunct.

…” warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace.

We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver.”

Global warfare is presented as a  means to achieving peace. This forcloses de facto peace negotiations and diplomatic dialogue.

Is this not tantamount to an “unofficial” declaration of  World War III? 

In the words of Hegseth quoting Trump “we have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close”.

The above statement is all the more dangerous inasmuch as Hegseth fails to comprehend  that the United States’ military arsenal exhibits significant weaknesses in comparison to that of the Russian Federation.

“…we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us.

Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies”,  FAFO”

America’s “enemies” will continue to challenge Washington’s hegemonic agenda through peaceful means.

US-NATO interference as well as Worldwide attempts to instrument “regime change” or color revolutions will continue to be challenged.

What is the meaning of FAFO within the US Armed Forces

FAFO is an acronym that stands for “F— Around and Find Out.”

Michel Chossudovsky, October 2, 2025

___________________________________________________

Transcript 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico, Virginia

Sept. 30, 2025

emphasis added by GR

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Mr. Chairman, the joint chiefs, generals, admirals, commanders, officers, senior enlisted, NCOs, enlisted and every member of our American military, good morning.

UNKNOWN: Morning.

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Good morning and welcome to the War Department because the era of the Department of Defense is over. You see, the motto of my first platoon was those who long for peace must prepare for war. This is, of course, not a new idea. This crowd knows that.

The origin dates to fourth century Rome and has been repeated ever since, including by our first commander in chief, George Washington, the first leader of the War Department. It captures a simple yet profound truth. To ensure peace, we must prepare for war.

From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver.

Our number one job, of course, is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place. The president talks about it all the time. It’s called peace through strength. And as history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it.

That’s why pacifism is so naive and dangerous. It ignores human nature and it ignores human history. Either you protect your people and your sovereignty or you will be subservient to something or someone. It’s a truth as old as time.

And since waging war is so costly in blood and treasure, we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO.

Video: Pete Hegseth’s  Speech

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbKeNVV0PX4]

UNKNOWN: Fantastic.

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.

Another way to put it is peace through strength brought to you by the warrior ethos, and we are restoring both. As President Trump has said, and he’s right, we have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close.

This is true largely because of the historic investments that he made in his first term, and we will continue in this term. But it’s also true because of the leaders in this room and the incredible troops that you all lead. But the world, and as the chairman mentioned, our enemies get a vote. You feel it. I feel it.

This is a moment of urgency, mounting urgency. Enemies gather. Threats grow. There is no time for games. We must be prepared. If we’re going to prevent and avoid war, we must prepare now. We are the strength part of peace through strength, and either we’re ready to win or we are not.

You see, this urgent moment of course requires more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers. It requires more innovation, more AI in everything and ahead of the curve, more cyber effects, more counter UAS, more space, more speed.

America is the strongest, but we need to get stronger and quickly. The time is now and the cause is urgent. The moment requires restoring and refocusing our defense industrial base, our shipbuilding industry and onshoring all critical components. It requires, as President Trump has done, getting our allies and partners to step up and share the burden.

America cannot do everything. The free world requires allies with real hard power, real military leadership and real military capabilities. The War Department is tackling and prioritizing all of these things, and I’ll be giving a speech next month that’ll showcase the speed, innovation and generational acquisition reforms we are undertaking urgently. Likewise, the nature of the threats we face in our hemisphere and in deterring China is another speech for another day coming soon.

This speech today — as I drink my coffee, this speech today is about people and it’s about culture. The topic today is about the nature of ourselves, because no plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.

If I’ve learned one core lesson in my eight months in this job, it’s that personnel is policy. Personnel is policy. The best way to take care of troops is to give them good leaders committed to the warfighting culture of the department, not perfect leaders, good leaders, competent, qualified, professional, agile, aggressive, innovative, risk-taking, apolitical, faithful to their oath and to the Constitution.

Eugene Sledge in his World War II memoir wrote, “War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors are my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other.”

In combat, there are thousands of variables, as I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as so many of you did in so many more places. Leaders can only control about three of them. You control how well you’re trained, mostly how well you’re equipped, and the last variable is how well you lead. After that, you’re on your own.

Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders. That is who we need you all to be. Even then, in combat, even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets a vote. We have a sacred duty to ensure that our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders. This is one thing you and I can control, and we owe it to the force to deliver.

For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.

For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts. We’ve pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing. We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments, promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists instead. You name it, the department did it.

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the woke department. But not anymore. Right now, I’m looking out at a sea of Americans who made a choice when they were young men and young women to do something most Americans will not, to serve something greater than yourself, to fight for God and country, for freedom and the Constitution.

You made a choice to serve when others did not, and I commend you. You are truly the best of America. But this does not mean, and this goes for all of us, that our path to this auditorium on this day was a straight line, or that the conditions of the formations we lead are where we want them to be. You love your country and we love this uniform, which is why we must do better.

We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes, to just tell it like it is in plain English, to point out the obvious things right in front of us. That’s what leaders must do. We cannot go another day without directly addressing the plank in our own eye, without addressing the problems in our own commands and in our own formations.

This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department, to rip out the politics. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris.

As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit. I’ve made it my mission to uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal. That said, the War Department requires the next step.

Underneath the woke garbage is a deeper problem and a more important problem that we are fixing and fixing fast. Common sense is back at the White House, so making the necessary changes is actually pretty straightforward. President Trump expects it. And the litmus test for these changes is pretty simple.

Would I want my eldest son, who is 15 years old, eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently wielding? If in any way the answer to that is no, or even yes but, then we’re doing something wrong, because my son is no more important than any other American citizen who dons the cloth of our nation. He is no more important than your son, all precious souls made in the image and likeness of God.

Every parent deserves to know that their son or their daughter that joins our ranks is entering exactly the kind of unit that the secretary of war would want his son to join. Think of it as the Golden Rule test. Jesus said do unto others that which you would have done unto yourself. It’s the ultimate simplifying test of truth.

The new War Department golden rule is this: do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops or alongside people who can’t meet basic standards, or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in, in a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and warfighting? The answer is not just no, it’s hell no.

This means at the War Department first and foremost we must restore a ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards. I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat unit with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons platform or task or under a leader who was the first but not the best. Standards must be uniform, gender neutral and high. If not, they’re not standards. They’re just suggestions, suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed.

When it comes to combat arms units, and there are many different stripes across our joint force, the era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings leadership ends right now. At every level, either you can meet the standard, either you can do the job, either you are disciplined, fit and trained, or you are out.

And that’s why today at my direction — and this is the first of ten Department of War directives that are arriving at your commands as we speak and in your inbox. Today, at my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard only. Because this job is life or death. Standards must be met. And not just met. At every level, we should seek to exceed the standard, to push the envelope, to compete. It’s common sense and core to who we are and what we do. It should be in our DNA.

Today, at my direction, we are also adding a combat field test for combat arms units that must be executable in any environment at any time and with combat equipment. These tests, they’ll look familiar. They’ll resemble the Army Expert Physical Fitness Assessment or the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. I’m also directing that warfighters in combat jobs execute their service fitness test at a gender-neutral age normed male standard scored above 70 percent.

It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the secretary of war can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.

So, whether you’re an airborne Ranger or a chairborne Ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test. And as the chairman said, yes, there is no PT test. But today, at my direction, every member of the joint force at every rank is required to take a PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year of service.

Also today, at my direction, every warrior across our joint force is required to do PT every duty day. It should be common sense, and most units do that already, but we’re codifying it. And we’re not talking, like, hot yoga and stretching, real hard PT and as — either as a unit or as an individual.

At every level, from the Joint Chiefs to everyone in this room to the youngest private, leaders set the standard. And so many of you do this already, active, guard and reserve. This also means grooming standards. No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.

Because it’s like the broken windows theory in policing. It’s like you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes, so you have to address the small stuff. This is on duty, in the field and in the rear. If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.

We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans. But unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refuse to call BS and enforce standards, or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards. Both are unacceptable. And that’s why today, at my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over.

No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done. Simply put, if you do not meet the male level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test or don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position or a new profession.

I sincerely appreciate the proactive efforts the secretaries have already taken in some of those areas — service secretaries. And these directives are intended to simply accelerate those efforts. On the topic of standards, allow me a few words to talk about toxic leaders.

Upholding and demanding high standards is not toxic. Enforcing high standards, not toxic leadership. Leading warfighters toward the goals of high, gender-neutral and uncompromising standards in order to forge a cohesive, formidable and lethal Department of War is not toxic. It is our duty consistent with our constitutional oath.

Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit. Real toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies that are an anathema to the Constitution and the laws of nature and nature’s God, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we’re correcting that. That’s why today, at my direction we’re undertaking a full review of the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.

Of course, you can’t do, like, nasty bullying and hazing. We’re talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They’ve been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs. No more. Setting, achieving and maintaining high standards is what you all do. And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.

Second, today, at our direction, we’re ensuring that every service, every unit, every schoolhouse and every form of professional military education conduct an immediate review of their standards. Now, we’ve done this in many places already, but today it goes across the entire Department of War.

Any place where tried and true physical standards were altered, especially since 2015 when combat arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify, must be returned to their original standard. Other standards have been manipulated to hit racial quotas as well, which is just as unacceptable. This too must end; merit only. The President talks about it all the time, merit-based.

Here are two basic frameworks I urge you to pursue in this process, standards I call — my staff’s heard all about them, the 1990 test and the E-6 test. The 1990 test is simple. What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat, or was the change due to a softening, weakening or gender-based pursuit of other priorities? 1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any.

And the E-6 test. Ask yourself does what you’re doing make the leadership, accountability and lethality efforts of an E-6 or, frankly, an O-3, does it make it easier or more complicated? Does the change empower staff sergeants, petty officers and tech sergeants to get back to basics? The answer should be a resounding yes. The E-6 test or O-3 test clarifies a lot, and it clarifies quickly.

Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

As we all know, this is you versus an enemy hell bent on killing you. To be an effective lethal fighting force, you must trust that the warrior alongside you in battle is capable, truly physically capable of doing what is necessary under fire.  You know this is the only standard you would want for your kids and for your grandkids. Apply the War Department Golden Rule, the 1990 test and the E-6 test, and it’s really hard to go wrong.

Third, we are attacking and ending the walking on eggshells and zero defect command culture. A risk averse culture means officers execute not to lose instead of to win. A risk averse culture means NCOs are not empowered to enforce standards. Commanders and NCOs don’t take necessary risks or make tough adjustments for fear of rocking the boat or making mistakes.

A blemish free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives. You, we as senior leaders, need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion and empower our NCOs at all levels to enforce standards. Truth be told, for the most part we don’t need new standards. We just need to reestablish a culture where enforcing standards is possible.

And that’s why today, at my direction, I’m issuing new policies that will overhaul the IG, EO and MEO processes. I call it the no more walking on eggshells policy. We are liberating commanders and NCOs. We are liberating you. We are overhauling an inspector general process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.

We’re doing the same with the equal opportunity and military equal opportunity policies, the EO and MEO, at our department. No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

Of course, being a racist has been illegal in our formation since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment. Both are wrong and illegal. Those kinds of infractions will be ruthlessly enforced. But telling someone to shave or get a haircut or to get in shape or to fix their uniform or to show up on time, to work hard, that’s exactly the kind of discrimination we want.

We are not civilians. You are not civilians. You are set apart for a distinct purpose. So, we as a department need to stop acting and thinking like civilians and get back to basics and put the power back in the hands of commanders and NCOs, commanders and NCOs who make life and death decisions, commanders and NCOs who enforce standards and ensure readiness, commanders and NCOs who in this War Department have to look in the mirror and have to pass the Golden Rule test, my kids, your kids, America’s sons and daughters.

So, I urge you all here today and those watching, take this guidance and run with it. The core of this speech is the ten directives we’re announcing today. They were written for you, for Army leadership, for Navy leadership, for Marine Corps leadership, for Air Force leadership, Space Force leadership.

These directives are designed to take the monkey off your back and put you, the leadership, back in the driver’s seat. Move out with urgency because we have your back. I have your back, and the commander in chief has your back.

And when we give you this guidance, we know mistakes will be made. It’s the nature of leadership. But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that’s why today, at my direction, we’re making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.

People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career. Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes, and that’s not the business we’re in. We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you.

Fourth, at the War Department, promotions across the joint force will be based on one thing: merit; colorblind, gender-neutral, merit based. The entire promotion process, including evaluations of warfighting capabilities, is being thoroughly reexamined. We’ve already done a lot in this area, but more changes are coming soon.

We’ll promote top performing officers and NCOs faster and get rid of poor performers more quickly. Evaluations, education and field exercises will become real evaluations, not box checks, for every one of us at every level. These same reforms happened before World War II as well. General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson did the same thing, and we won a world war because of it.

As it happens, when he started the job, Chairman Caine gave me a frame and a photo to hang in my office. A matching frame and photo hangs in his. It’s a photo of Marshall and Stimson preparing for World War II. Those two leaders famously kept the door open between their offices for the entirety of the war.

They worked together, civilian and uniform, every single day. Chairman Caine and I do the same. There is no daylight between us. Our doors are always open. Our job together is to ensure our military is led by the very best ready to answer the nation’s call.

Fifth, as you have seen and the media has obsessed over, I have fired a number of senior officers since taking over, the previous chairman, other members of the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and other commanders. The rationale, for me, has been straightforward. It’s nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture, even if that culture was created by a previous president and previous secretary.

My approach has been simple. When in doubt, assess the situation, follow your gut and, if it’s the best for the military, make a change. We all serve at the pleasure of the President every single day. But in many ways, it’s not their fault. It’s not your fault. As foolish and reckless as the woke department was, those officers were following elected political leadership.

An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that “our diversity is our strength.” Of course, we know our unity is our strength. They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal.

They were told that we need a green fleet and electric tanks. They were told to kick out Americans who refused an emergency vaccine. They followed civilian policies set by foolish and reckless political leaders. Our job, my job, has been to determine which leaders simply did what they must to answer the prerogatives of civilian leadership and which leaders are truly invested in the woke department and therefore incapable of embracing the War Department and executing new lawful orders.

That’s it. It’s that simple. So, for the past eight months, we’ve gotten a good look under the hood of our officer corps. We’ve done our best to thoroughly assess the human terrain. We’ve had to make trade-offs and some difficult decisions. It’s more of an art than science. We have been and will continue to be judicious but also expeditious.

The new compass heading is clear. Out with the Chiarellis, the McKenzies and the Milleys, and in with the Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs and the Pattons. More leadership changes will be made, of that I’m certain, not because we want to but because we must. Once again, this is life and death. The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. Personnel is policy.

But I look out at this group and I see great Americans, leaders who have given decades to our great republic at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families. But if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service.

But I suspect, I know, the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite. These words make your hearts full. You love the War Department because you love what you do, the profession of arms. You are hereby liberated to be an apolitical, hard charging, no nonsense constitutional leader that you joined the military to be.

We need you locked in on the M, not the D, the E or the I, not the DEI or the DIE of DIME. By that I mean the M, military, of the instruments of national power. We have entire departments across the government dedicated to diplomatic, informational and economic lines of effort. We do the M. Nobody else does. And our GOFOs need to master it in every domain, in every scenario, no more distractions, no more political ideologies, no more debris.

Now, of course, we’re going to disagree at times. We would not be Americans if we didn’t. Being a leader in a large organization like ours means having frank conversations and differences of opinion. You will win some arguments and you will lose some arguments. But when civilian leaders issue lawful orders, we execute. We are professionals in the profession of arms. Our entire constitutional system is predicated upon this understanding.

Now, it seems like a small thing, but it’s not. This includes as well the behavior of our troops online. To that end, I want to thank and recognize the services for their new proactive social media policies. Use them. Anonymous online or keyboard complaining is not worthy of a warrior. It’s cowardice masquerading as conscience. Anonymous unit level social media pages that trash commanders, demoralize troops and undermine unit cohesion must not be tolerated. Again, 0-3s, E-6s.

Sixth, we must train and we must maintain. Any moment that we are not training on our mission or maintaining our equipment is a moment we are less prepared for preventing or winning the next war. That is why today, at my direction, we are drastically reducing the ridiculous amount of mandatory training that individuals and units must execute.

We’ve already ended the most egregious. Now we’re giving you back real time; less PowerPoint briefings and fewer online courses, more time in the motor pool and more time on the range. Our job is to make sure you have the money, equipment, weapons and parts to train and maintain, and then you take it from there.

You all know this because it’s common sense. The tougher and the higher the standards in our units, the higher the retention rates in those units. Warriors want to be challenged. Troops want to be tested. When you don’t train and you don’t maintain, you demoralize. And that’s when our best people decide to take their talents to the civilian world.

The leaders who created the woke department have already driven out too many hard chargers. We reverse that trend right now. There is no world in which high intensity war exists without pain, agony and human tragedy. We are in a dangerous line of work. You are in a dangerous line of work. We may lose good people, but let no warrior cry out from the grave “if only I had been properly trained.”

We will not lose warfighters because we failed to train or equip them or resource them. Shame on us if we do. Train like your warriors lives depend on it, because they do. To that point, basic training is being restored to what it should be, scary, tough and disciplined. We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future warfighters are forged.

Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits. This does not mean they can be reckless or violate the law, but they can use tried and true methods to motivate new recruits, to make them the warriors they need to be. Back to basics at basic as well.

Of course, and you know this, basic training is not where mission readiness should end. The nature of the evolving threat environment demands that everyone in every job must be ready to join the fight if needed. A core credo of the Marine Corps is every Marine a rifleman.

It means that everyone, regardless of MOS, is proficient enough to engage an enemy threat at sea, in the air or in a so-called rear area. We need to ensure that every member of our uniformed military maintains baseline proficiency in basic combat skills, especially because the next war, like the last, will likely not have a rear area.

Finally, as President Trump rightly pointed out when he changed the department name, the United States has not won a major theater war since the name was changed to the Department of Defense in 1947. One conflict stands out in stark contrast, the Gulf War. Why? Well, there’s a number of reasons, but it was a limited mission with overwhelming force and a clear end state.

But why did we execute and win the Gulf War the way we did in 1991? There’s two overwhelming reasons. One was President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup gave an overwhelming advantage, and two, military and Pentagon leadership had previous formative battlefield experiences. The men who led this department during the Gulf War were mostly combat veterans of the Vietnam War. They said never again to mission creep or nebulous end states.

The same holds true today. Our civilian and military leadership is chock full of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who say never again to nation building and nebulous end states. This clear eyed view all the way to the White House, combined with President Trump’s military buildup, postures us for future victories if, and we will, and when we embrace the War Department.

And we must. We are preparing every day. We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend. Defense is something you do all the time. It’s inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach and mission creep. War is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

That’s all I ever wanted as a platoon leader. And it’s all my E-6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E-6 rule. We let our leaders fight their formations and then we have their back. It’s very simple yet incredibly powerful.

A few months ago, I was at the White House when President Trump announced his liberation day for America’s trade policy. It was a landmark day. Well, today is another liberation day, the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.

We are not an army of one. We are a joint force of millions of selfless Americans. We are warriors. We are purpose built not for fair weather, blue skies or calm seas. We were built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons, or Zodiacs in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul to go to dangerous places to find those who would do our nation harm and deliver justice on behalf of the American people in close and brutal combat if necessary.

You are different. We fight not because we hate what’s in front of us. We fight because we love what’s behind us. You see, the Ivy League faculty lounges will never understand us. And that’s okay, because they could never do what you do. The media will mischaracterize us. And that’s okay, because deep down they know the reason they can do what they do is you. In this profession, you feel comfortable inside the violence so that our citizens can live peacefully. Lethality is our calling card and victory our only acceptable end state.

In closing, a few weeks ago at our monthly Pentagon Christian prayer service I recited a commander’s prayer. It’s a simple yet meaningful prayer for wisdom for commanders and leaders. I encourage you to look it up if you’ve never seen it. But the prayer, it ends like this. And most of all, Lord, please keep my soldiers safe, lead them, guide them, protect them, watch over them. And as you gave all of yourself for me, help me give all of myself for them. And amen.

I’ve prayed this prayer many times since I’ve had the privilege of being your Secretary, and I will continue to pray this prayer for each of you as you command and lead our nation’s finest. Go forth and do good things, hard things. President Trump has your back and so do I, and you’ll hear from him shortly. Move out and draw fire, because we are the War Department. Godspeed.

2 October 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Mujeeb Rahman Kinalur

In recognition of this powerful show of support, H.E. Abdullah Abu Shawesh, the Palestinian Ambassador to India,visited Kerala in recent days—a visit that drew significant attention. He held meetings with the Chief Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and various political party heads. During these meetings, he expressed gratitude for Kerala’s unwavering support, lending international significance to the state’s solidarity.

Massive Political Rallies Across the State

The CPM’s rally on Kozhikode Beach, the Muslim League’s massive gathering in Malappuram, and the Congress party’s events across various districts saw attendance in the hundreds of thousands. The primary focus of these gatherings was on human rights, justice, and peace. Political leaders stood united in their condemnation of the attacks on the lives and property of the Palestinian people.

Among Indian states, Kerala stands out for its profound public support and active political mobilisation in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for rights. Following the recent escalation of the situation in Gaza, Kerala’s streets have been flooded with demonstrations of solidarity. Major political parties, including the CPM, Congress, and Muslim League, along with various Muslim religious and social organisations, spearheaded rallies and public gatherings attended by hundreds of thousands. These robust demonstrations in Kerala have even sparked national conversations on the issue.

The Historical Roots of the Kerala-Palestine Connection

Several crucial factors explain why the pro-Palestinian stance is so deeply embedded in Kerala. From the era of India’s independence struggle, Kerala has maintained a strong stance against colonialism and imperialism. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was widely viewed here as a manoeuvre to protect British imperial interests. The pro-Palestine foreign policy adopted by India under Jawaharlal Nehru deeply influenced Kerala’s political and public consciousness.

Gulf Ties and Arab Influence

Gulf expatriates are integral to Kerala’s socio-economic fabric. Close relationships with Arab nations, constant exposure to Arab media, and a shared emotional connection to the Arab world have given Malayalis direct and consistent awareness of the Palestine issue. The Gulf connection serves as a conduit for Middle Eastern sentiments to swiftly reach Kerala.

Yasser Arafat and the PLO

Since the time of Israel’s formation, the majority of the people in Kerala have stood by the Palestinians. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leader Yasser Arafat enjoyed massive popular backing in the state. Seen not just as a national liberation movement but as a symbol of the broader anti-imperialist struggles in West Asia, the PLO received strong support from both the Indian government and the people of Kerala. While the core solidarity remains firm, recent events have also prompted discussions and challenges:

The Stance on Hamas and Islamist Movements

A key question debated is whether political disagreements with Islamist movements like Hamas have created an opposition to the overall Palestinian struggle within Kerala society. However, the majority of Malayalis continue to view the issue primarily through the lens of the Palestinian people’s fight for survival against Israeli occupation.

The Responsibility of a Civilised Society

Kerala is a vibrant secular, democratic society. Therefore, the Palestinian issue is viewed as a fundamental human rights concern and the responsibility of a civilised society to uphold justice. Even as discussions around political Islam arise, Kerala’s political parties and the general public remain unwilling to compromise on their support for the basic rights and justice of the Palestinian people.

Kerala’s solidarity with Palestine transcends geographical distance; it is a cultural commitment rooted in the values of humanity, justice, and secularism. This sustained stance is a powerful reflection of the state’s secular-democratic ethos.

Mujeeb Rahman Kinalur is an author, writer and cultural critic based at Calicut, Kerala

1 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sudhanva Deshpande and Vijay Prashad

The Israeli genocide of the Palestinians has persisted for two years —a “live-streamed genocide”, as Amnesty International called it in its April 2025 annual report. Thus far, Israel has murdered over 66,000 Palestinians —the overwhelming majority of whom are civilians; 20,000 of the dead are children, meaning a Palestinian child has been killed every hour since October 2023. Two million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to remain on the move as Israel continues to pummel the small area with missile and bomb attacks. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank have faced eviction as part of a broader ethnic cleansing policy Israel is pushing for the entire region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

During these two years, Israel has violated the sovereignty of seven states, from Lebanon to Qatar, killing uncounted numbers of people in these countries with no official United Nations sanction. This murderous rampage appears endless, but world opinion has now almost entirely turned against Israel. When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity, spoke at the United Nations, the General Assembly hall was almost empty. Netanyahu is now unwelcome in most countries.

Almost, most. These qualifications are necessary because many countries continue to provide political support for the Israeli genocide and broad-ranging military support for the mass killings. Two recent reports measure this enduring support for Israel’s genocide. The first, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, came from Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Published in June 2025, the report prompted direct and virulent personal attacks on Albanese, even extending to her husband, who works at the World Bank. The report’s substance, detailed below, elicited no rebuttal from the Western governments, which would be hard-pressed to respond to the factual claims about Western corporate complicity in the genocide.

The second report, Profit and Genocide: Indian Investments in Israel, was written by Hajira Puthige of the Centre for Financial Accountability in New Delhi. Published in September 2025, it details the complicity of Indian corporations in the Israeli genocide.

Western Support

Israel’s most important ally is the United States, whose government continues to provide diplomatic support —the US vetoed a sixth UN Security Council cease genocide resolution in September 2025— while supplying weapons and money. Since October 2023, the US has sent over a thousand weapons shipments to Israel.

Apart from the United States, Israel’s closest allies are the states of Europe, both individually and in the European Union. These states have cracked down on their own citizens for peacefully protesting the genocide while they made arms deals with Israel. For instance, Germany began a major embargo on weapons sales to Israel but simultaneously signed a deal to import €350 million worth of weapons from Israel. Although many European states have pledged to recognise Palestine, this aligns with their existing agreements to a two-state solution; they have yet to sanction Israel in any way for its genocide.

Albanese’s report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, demonstrates not only how Western states have defended Israel’s genocide but also how Western corporations have profited from both the genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation and apartheid across the Israeli landscape, including the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Western companies are no longer merely implicated in West Bank apartheid, as previously documented, but are now embedded in the economy of genocide. The report documents complicity across eight key sectors: arms manufacturers, technology, construction, mining, finance, insurance, universities, and charitable organisations. Albanese developed a database of 1000 corporate entities but highlighted only a handful, such as Amazon, BlackRock, Caterpillar, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft. Technologies previously used to control and dispossess Palestinians are now being used to inflict mass violence and immense destruction.

The report asserts that international law provides no safe harbour for firms complicit in genocide. Albanese argues that corporate engagement with any component of the genocide violates jus cogens (compelling law) norms and constitutes international crimes. She notes that the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants “signal the risk that corporate entities – and their executives – that engage in the [Occupied Palestinian Territory] are implicated in serious international crimes”. The report concludes with a call for corporations to cease relations with Israel until the occupation and genocide end. Albanese advocates for comprehensive sanctions, arms embargoes, the suspension of trade agreements, and the prosecution of corporate executives to pressure the world to stop its support for this genocide.

Indian Support

In recent months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu have exchanged public birthday wishes on X. In early September 2025, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich —member of a far-Right party who expresses such extreme racism and homophobic views that he is sanctioned by several governments, including the UK— led a delegation to Delhi to meet with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. They signed a major bilateral investment agreement to boost trade and investment. Sitharaman stressed the need for greater collaboration in “cybersecurity, defence, innovation and high-technology”.

A few days later, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel stated unequivocally that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Sporadic news reports over the past two years have detailed India’s continued arms relationship with Israel. Al-Jazeera published reports on recent arms transfers, based on documents that its journalists had seen. Albanese’s report also documents weapons transfers from a company in Hyderabad to Israel. However, until recently, there has been no major study of the Indian complicity in the genocide. This gap is filled by the Centre for Financial Accountability’s publication of Puthige’s report, which details the complicity of the Indian billionaire class and their corporations.

Here are some examples:

Adani. Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India, Ltd. manufactures the Hermes 900 drone, which has been used in Gaza. Adani Ports, which owns Haifa Ports, is therefore the owner of an Israeli navy facility that harbours Israel’s submarine fleet.

Tata. Tata Consultancy Group has been working on the Project Nimbus system, which provides surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza. Tata has sold Israel Land Rover vehicles, which the Israeli military has converted into the MDT David, an armoured vehicle it uses in patrols in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Ambani. Reliance Jio has been working closely with Israeli digital firms to build Israel’s digital infrastructure, while Reliance Defence has worked with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to build missile systems and drones for the Israeli military.

|Jains. Jain Irrigation, through NaanDanJain, works to supply and build irrigation systems in the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank of the OPT.

The report provides evidence that powerful and influential sections of Indian business, like their Western counterparts, are directly complicit in the genocide.

Sudhanva Deshpande is a leading theatre personality of India. Deshpande has been associated, as an actor and director, with Jana Natya Manch (Janam) (People’s Theatre Front) , a radical theatre activist group, since 1987. 

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

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Soma Marla

On September 29, 2025, President Trump has unveiled a  20 point peace plan to end the  two year long Gaza genocide by Israel. The proposal comes, amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that caused enormous human suffering of human life that was  never heard of since World War II.  The plan  is offered at a time  when global outcry condemning Israeli genocide and major western nations recognized the Palestinian state and demanded immediate ceasefire. While, Israeli Prime minister Netanyahu has immediately supported the plan, Hamas ( pressured by mediators Egypt, Qatar and other Arab nations) is  reviewing and yet to  express its decision. Public outcry is visibly seen in huge demonstrations in  cities across the world,  demanding  end of brutal Israeli genocide on innocent Gazan children and women.  In the midnight of 1^st October, several boats with climate activists led by Greta Thunberg carrying aid material to Gazan population were  intercepted and arrested in mid sea by Israeli army.

The plan outlined by Trump in the presence of Netanyahu contains 20 points. The plan  proposes a gradual withdrawal of Israeli Défense Forces from the Gaza Strip in  different phases, Israel to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Hamas freeing remaining  hostages; a Board of Peace, headed by former British Prime minister Tony Blair will oversee security in Gaza by a  temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF), led by Arab partners. However, The plan, unveiled, does not  consider  many outstanding  issues on  immediate provision of relief material, execution of the plan,  with no credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood or two state  concept.

The plan is likely to fail, similar to past Middle East  peace agreements. Analysts around the world  sees this  a design mainly through real estate economic development lens by transforming  to a tourist commercial venture to benefit a few billionaires  by uprooting Gazan population from the territory.

There are Major problems not considered in devising this Peace plan.

The  plan is  proposed by USA and Israel is unilateral without  consultations with major stalk holders- Hamas and Palestinian authority. Despite its  the brutal and unmindful attack on Israel’s youth camp on October 7, 2023, Hamas is the democratically elected body to govern Gaza  since 2007. President Trump and his ally Mr. Netanyahu have even issued an ultimatum to Hamas to accept the plan. If Hamas doesn’t accept the plan, Israel will continue the war and to totally eliminate Hamas but also Palestinian population from Gaza strip.  Mr. Trump  in the press conference declared his full support for Israel to continue the war. As per the plan, Hamas should release all hostages, alive and dead, within 72 hours, and Israel forces will withdraw from the territory. Once the hostages are  freed, Hamas would be given amnesty  after surrender with no roll in the governance of Gaza. If Hamas agrees to the plan, Israel will free 250 Palestinian prisoners (sentenced to life), and 1,700 Gazans detained after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.

Lack of Trust

With promises to gradual withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and formation of regional stabilizing force  there is no mention  of time frame for its implementation. There is lack of  trust between both sides right now. And several aspects of the plan are so vague, there is a big risk both sides could accuse the other of breaking their promises. It happened in the past  as Netanyahu backed out  from  accepted ceasefire agreements. The  main intention of Netanyahu appears to total elimination of Hamas and Palestinian freedom fighters from the territory with no special desire for release of   surviving Israeli hostages. By   elimination of Hamas, condemning self determination and formation of Palestinian state  and totally silencing Palestinian  resistance Mr. Netanyahu  wants earn political capital to get re-elected again as Prime minister  in the forthcoming elections.

Will The Plan succeed

There is no concrete  time line for Israel’s withdrawal and  who would monitor this process.  There is no guarantee on the indecent decisions by other middle Eastern nations proposed to be members of the proposed   Stabilizing force. Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia  did  show little  support and solidarity with  genocide affected Palestinians in the recent past. Most of these nations walk in the shadow of past Abraham accord and  are strongly tied  to USA  militarily.

it would also be very difficult for Netanyahu to accept “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” as outlined in the plan. He has firmly rejected this in the past, as seen from his recent address   to the UN General Assembly last week. He depends  too much politically for his survival  on ultra orthodox Jewish allies in his coalition government. As  per the indications Hamas is unlikely to accept the plan. It would be a total  submission  to Israel’s  expansionism and an end to  self determination and statehood of independent Palestinian state.

India’s Tacit Support to Israel

 Tacit political  and military support  by many countries continue to emboldens Israel to pursue  shamelessly  genocide and  mass killings. Total reversal of Indian foreign policy  towards Palestine and outright support to criminal deeds of Israel are dictated by both economic, military  and political interests. India’s  silence in UN deliberations, warm greetings exchanged between Prime Ministers Modi and Netanyahu, Union Finance minister  Smt. Nirmala Sitaramn signing a  bilateral trade aggrement with visiting Israeli  finance minister, Indian corporate exports to Israel, India’s dependence on military spy software, military  imports and especially cementing trade alliance between Indian and Israeli corporates.

For example Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India, Ltd. manufactures the Hermes 900 drone, which are used in Gaza. Adani’s Haifa Port harbours Israeli navy facility  and  facilitates  Israel’s submarine fleet. Tata Consultancy Group has been working on the Project Nimbus system, which provides surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza. Tata has sold Israel Land Rover vehicles, which the Israeli military has converted into the MDT David, an armoured vehicle it uses in patrols in the West Bank and in Gaza. Jain Irrigation, through NaanDanJain, works to supply and build irrigation systems in the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian settlements. Reliance Jio has been working closely with Israeli digital firms to build Israel’s digital infrastructure, while Reliance Defence has worked with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to build missile systems and drones for the Israeli military.

President Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan seems to evict Palestinian population from Gaza and  establish his real estate ventures. Also, USA and Israel  wants show to the world that  that  no one dares to challenge the economic, military  hegemony of  US and Israel in the region. This is nothing but a continuation of imperialist  colonial policy of west and an united global resistance and solidarity with Palestinian independence  can only revert these draconian antihuman  policies.

Dr. Soma Marla, Principal Scientist & Head, retd., Genomics division, NBPGR, ICAR, New Delhi.

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark 

He had moments of discomfort and embarrassment – pressed into calling the Qatari Prime Minister by his host to apologise for striking Doha and made to pay lip service to the prospect of a Palestinian state – but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had many reasons to be pleased.  On September 29, President Donald Trump advanced a peace proposal that essentially preserves Israeli pre-eminence regarding the fate of Palestinians, though it entails a cessation of hostilities, an affirmation that Gazans would not be expelled (those leaving would have the right to return), and an injunction against Israeli annexation of the Strip.  But Hamas, militarily and politically, would have to surrender all claims, with the Palestinian Authority shepherded and supervised by foreign powers.

Trump’s peace proposal comprises twenty points.  They include a “deradicalized terror-free zone”, Gaza’s redevelopment for the benefit of its people aided by “a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving miracle cities in the Middle East”, and an immediate end to the war on its acceptance by the parties.  Israel would withdraw to an agreed upon line in anticipation of a hostage release, during which all military operations would cease pending complete withdrawal.  All hostages, dead and alive, would be returned within 72 hours, to be followed by the release of 250 Palestinian life sentence prisoners and Gazans detained since October 7, 2023. 

Hamas and militant factions will forfeit any role in governing Gaza, with any offensive infrastructure and equipment destroyed, but any of its members wishing to commit to “peaceful co-existence” and decommissioning of weapons will be granted amnesty, with those wishing to leave given safe passage to receiving countries.  Compliance by the militant group will be overseen by “regional partners”.  Full aid would resume, with the UN and Red Crescent restored to their role as chief distributors.

On the issue of governance, a temporary technocratic “apolitical Palestinian committee” of qualified Palestinians and “international experts” would form a temporary transitional body, subject to a “Board of Peace” personally chaired by Trump.  Most unfortunately, it is likely to include such figures as Sir Tony Blair, the Middle East’s typhoid Mary when it comes to peace.  The transitional authority would hold the reins till reforms by the Palestinian Authority had been completed.  With immediacy, however, the US would work with Arab and international partners to deploy an “International Stabilisation Force” to Gaza.  The ISF will be responsible for training Palestinian police forces and provide support in terms of vetting recruits, with assistance from Jordan and Egypt.

The proposal clearly envisages a significant role for the ISF, though says about who will comprise it.  Israel will not, under the plan, occupy or annex Gaza, surrendering what territory it has taken to the ISF.  Even if Hamas were to delay or reject the proposal, the Israeli Defense Forces would still hand over occupied territory of “terror-free areas” to the stabilisation force but retain a security perimeter to stem “any resurgent terror threat.”

The plan also envisages the establishment of an interfaith dialogue to promote the values of peace between the parties, and a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” if the programs for Gaza’s redevelopment and PA reform take place as planned.  A vague US promise to “establish a dialogue” between Israel and the Palestinians regarding peaceful and prosperous co-existence rounds off the points.

There was palpable grumbling from the Israeli camp.  Netanyahu undoubtedly harbours ambitions of finishing “the job”, and there is little to say the war will not resume once the Israeli hostages are returned.  Having previously rejected any governing role of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, he now reluctantly accepts the idea subject to a “radical and genuine overhaul” of the body. 

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the right-wing heavies in the Israeli cabinet, is threatening to withdraw his Religious Zionist Party from the coalition.  Agreeing with the plan had been “an act of wilful blindness that ignores every lesson of October 7.”  It would only “end in tears.”  Fellow zealot, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is also likely to be seething.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid is also suspicious of Netanyahu, who tends to say “yes” when visiting Washington, “standing in front of the cameras at the White house, feeling like a breakthrough statesman.”  On returning to Israel, however, he always seemed to add a qualifying “but”, his political base always reminding him “who the boss is.”

In keeping with history, the Trump plan, even if it were to be implemented to the letter, enshrines the essential subordination of Palestinian goals to the dictates of other powers.  Palestinian military presence is not only to be curtailed but essentially eliminated altogether.  Hamas, never consulted regarding the peace terms, is to accept its own effacing.  The PA is to accept its own subservience and infantilisation.  The Gazans are also to accept an economic and development program dictated and directed from without.  Statehood is to be kept in cold storage till appropriate, controlled conditions for its release are approved – and certainly not by the Palestinians themselves.  They, it would seem, remain the considered errant children of international relations, mistrusted and requiring permanent, stern invigilation.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. 

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Author’s Note
 This essay argues that disarmament must begin in Jerusalem — the epicenter of supremacist sovereignty and settler-colonial control — not in Gaza, which remains besieged and starved. It traces the betrayal of the 1947 corpus separatum designation, documents the ongoing erasure of Palestinian civic and cultural life, and indicts the international complicity that sustains it. The essay then outlines four modalities of resistance — armed, legal, international, and cultural — each refusing not only Trump’s plan, but the Jewish supremacist ideology that made it possible. What matters is not diplomatic tone or strategic optics. What matters is the ideological clarity of the rejection.
 — -

Opening: It isn’t Gaza that should be disarmed. It’s Jerusalem.

When Western powers — namely the United States, the United Kingdom, and France — through Zionist machinations first tried to impose the 1947 UN Partition Plan on Arab Palestine, Resolution 181 proposed dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem designated as a corpus separatum: a demilitarized city under international administration.

The plan was drafted not in consultation with Palestinians, but in defiance of their overwhelming rejection. It was engineered by colonial powers who had already failed to protect Jewish refugees in Europe and now sought to offload their moral debts onto Palestine. The architects — Harry S. Truman, Ernest Bevin, and Georges Bidault — must have had an inkling that Zionist exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem would turn it into a flashpoint of settler-colonial expansion and Jewish supremacy. As it turned out, they were right.

After occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel moved quickly to erase Palestinian political and civic presence. It dissolved the elected Palestinian municipal council, deported officials like Mayor Rawhi al-Khatib, and replaced local governance with Israeli administrative control.

And the takeover didn’t stop at bureaucracy.  Israel began systematically expelling Palestinian residents, revoking their residency rights under arbitrary criteria, and denying family reunification. Entire neighborhoods — Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah — were targeted for Jewish immigrant settler expansion, with homes demolished under the pretext of lacking permits Palestinians were never allowed to obtain.

This is an ongoing chapter in Palestinian history. The complicity is not historical — it is active. The U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and the EU’s silence on residency revocations all signal endorsement.
Corporations like Caterpillar and Hyundai supply the machinery of demolition.
UNESCO’s designation of Jerusalem as “shared heritage” is undermined by its failure to protect Palestinian access.

Furthermore, Israel weaponizes access to holy sites: Muslim worshippers face military checkpoints and age restrictions at Al-Aqsa, while Christian Palestinians are routinely denied permits to visit holy sites in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Surveillance, land confiscation, and settler violence are daily tools of control.

The goal is to continue to Judaize the city, to erase its Arab Palestinian character, and to make indigenous life untenable — going to the extreme of digging tunnels beneath Haram al-Sharif in pursuit of a mythical Jewish temple.

Israeli authorities erase municipal records from East Jerusalem’s city hall, confiscate keys at checkpoints, and deny recognition of Palestinian property deeds in court.

Israeli maps rename streets, erase neighborhoods, and redraw boundaries to fabricate permanence. But cartography is not sovereignty. It is a tool of it — and it can be refused.

Jerusalem was meant to be protected from sovereignty — not subjected to its supremacist execution.

So, let us be clear.

If disarmament is to mean anything, it must begin with the city where the settler-colonial Jewish supremacist regime is headquartered.

If disarmament is to mean anything, it must begin with the city that was meant to be protected from Zionist sovereignty, not the one besieged and crushed by it.

—

Resistance Is Vital and It Continues in Many Forms

• Armed Resistance

Intensified not as escalation but as insistence: we will not be erased.

In Gaza, the Al-Qassam Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continued operations despite catastrophic losses, framing their actions as existential defense rather than tactical aggression. In Khan Yunis, new formations like the Counterterrorism Strike Force (CSF) emerged, declaring their intent to resist both Hamas repression and Israeli occupation.

Tribal militias such as those led by Husam al-Astal and Yasser Abu Shabab — though controversial — signaled a fracturing of control and a refusal to accept externally imposed governance models. The Resistance Committees, led by Ayman Al-Shishniya, rejected the Trump administration’s postwar plan as a “recycling of the Deal of the Century,” warning that international blessings for the plan amounted to complicity in genocide and ethnic cleansing.

—

• Legal and Diplomatic Resistance

Sharpened its indictments: naming genocide, naming apartheid, naming complicity.

In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, citing four of the five acts defined by the Genocide Convention — including deliberate starvation, destruction of infrastructure, and targeting of children.

Amnesty International echoed this, calling for an end to the “political economy enabling genocide,” and naming corporations complicit in the supply chain of destruction — from Boeing and Lockheed Martin to Elbit Systems and Palantir.

Legal scholars and human rights bodies convened in forums like the Jurists for Palestine webinar to explore peacekeeping mechanisms and civilian protection strategies, emphasizing the need for third-state accountability and international criminal prosecution.

—

• International Solidarity

Fractured and reformed, with students, workers, and artists declaring: we will not be neutral.

On September 22, 2025, nearly one million people across Italy staged a general strike in support of Palestine, shutting down ports, train stations, and major junctions under the slogan “Blocchiamo Tutto” (“Let’s block everything”).

In Berlin, artists projected images of Gaza’s destruction onto embassy walls, while in Beirut, refugee-led collectives organized teach-ins and cultural vigils.

Education International issued a global call for solidarity with Palestinian teachers and students, condemning the destruction of every higher education institution in Gaza and the killing of over 10,000 children.

And in the Mediterranean, the Global Sumud Flotilla — a civilian-led fleet of over 40 vessels carrying 500 activists from more than 40 countries — set sail to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.  Despite drone attacks off the coast of Greece and aggressive interception by Israeli warships near Gaza’s exclusion zone, the flotilla presses forward, broadcasting live footage and refusing to turn back.

Among those aboard are climate activist Greta Thunberg, South African MP Mandla Mandela, and French-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan. Their mission is not just symbolic; it is juridical: to deliver humanitarian aid and to indict the blockade as a tool of starvation and siege.

“We sail on undeterred by Israeli threats and tactics of intimidation,” the flotilla declared.
 “The humanitarian demand to break the blockade cannot be walked back to port.”

—

• Cultural Resistance

Surged — poets, illustrators, archivists, meme-makers — each refusing the terms of the plan by refusing its grammar.

Artists like Lina Abojaradeh used murals, comics, and poetry to evoke radical empathy and defiance, declaring that “art gives us a space to stop. To feel. To recognize the humanity in the people suffering.”

The deaths of cultural figures like Heba Abu Naha and Refaat Alareer — whose poem “If I Must Die” became a global rallying cry — marked not just personal loss but cultural devastation.

Visual artists such as Sliman Mansour and Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara continued to be cited as foundational voices in the aesthetics of resistance, their works circulating in protests, classrooms, and digital archives.

Among the most incisive voices in cultural resistance is Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh, whose stark black-and-white illustrations refuse euphemism and demand indictment. His work refuses to normalize ethnic cleansing.

—

What Matters Is the Ideological Clarity of the Rejection of Trump’s Plan

We should not have been shocked at Trump’s plan, but we were — because even those of us who have spent decades witnessing and recording Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — of annexation, of demographic engineering, of mass incarcerations, of checkpoints, of house demolitions, of land confiscation, of settler rapaciousness — still feel the sting when the mask slips entirely.

Our grief is the grief of recognition.
 The ache of seeing what we already witnessed and knew, now stripped of pretense and doublespeak — the genocide in Gaza, the mass displacement, the starvation, the targeting of journalists, hospitals, schools, cemeteries.

Trump’s plan is a declaration that the machinery of erasure no longer requires euphemism.

And so, after the shock and grief, we mobilized again to reject. To refuse. To clarify.
 From Gaza, from the camps, from the diaspora, from the streets of Ramallah and the refugee corridors of Berlin and Beirut, came a chorus — not of surprise, but of refusal.

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.

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Víctor de Currea-Lugo

The peace plan proposed by Israel and the United States for Gaza is not only a trap, but it repeats the same mistakes of the past that did not lead to peace.

1. It reduces resistance to terrorism and limits terrorism to what Hamas does; there is no mention of Israeli terrorism. In this context, neither genocide nor occupation is recognized.
2. The plan is unclear on the limits of Israeli troop withdrawal. Considering Netanyahu’s statements after launching the proposal, such withdrawal is unlikely to happen.
3. It does not mention the more than 10,000 Palestinians detained illegally. Like previous proposals, it imposes duties on the occupied before the occupier.
4. Israel would release less than 15% of those detained since October 2023. The plan acknowledges that minors are among those held.
5. It proposes Hamas’ surrender. In other words, it seeks to win at the negotiating table what Israel failed to achieve on the battlefield. Israel has already failed militarily.
6. The delivery of humanitarian aid is conditional on Hamas’ surrender. Humanitarian aid, by definition, must be unconditional. Supporting this is supporting the use of hunger as a war strategy.
7. The self-determination of Gazans is not even hinted at. The proposal of an “apolitical government” is self-contradictory. Furthermore, a government led by Trump and Tony Blair offers no guarantee. The plan subjects the Palestinian Authority to externally imposed reforms aimed at “attracting investors.” In other words: annexing neoliberalism to genocide.
8. It claims no one will be forced to leave or denied return. Yet the 1948 refugees are still waiting for Israel to respect UN resolutions and allow them to return. Israel’s constant practice is deportation.
9. Hamas is more than an armed group. Excluding it from Gaza’s future is naive and perverse. The plan also envisions a demilitarized Gaza, incompatible with a sovereign Palestinian state.
10. The regional threat cited in the plan is Hamas, even though it has not bombed Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Qatar.
11. The gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza repeats the failed Oslo Accords formula. Why trust Israel? The plan also sidelines Gaza, excluding the West Bank and East Jerusalem from the discussion.
12. If Hamas refuses, Israel hands over control to international stabilization forces. This ensures that the political agenda of the proposed force follows Israel’s direction.
13. The plan speaks of peace as an abstraction, conveniently avoiding Jerusalem, the wall, and settlements. Yet it is called a “peace plan.”

Peace Plan, Beyond a Shopping List

The plan, overall, has several fundamental flaws:

• It treats Gaza as separate from the West Bank, making any mention of Palestinian unity or self-determination empty.
• The project exposes the hollow nature of recent international recognition of Palestine. Countries that wanted to recognize Palestine now follow a plan that does not truly acknowledge it.
• Palestinian statehood is treated not as a legitimate right of an occupied people, but as a bargaining chip. Recognition is conditional on political convenience.
• In 1982, the international community offered Palestinian armed groups safe withdrawal from Beirut refugee camps via the UN, promising to protect civilians. Weeks later, the Sabra and Shatila massacre occurred. Are Palestinians now expected to believe the international community will protect them?
• Entrusting Gaza’s governance to representatives of today’s British elites (descendants of those who supported Israel’s creation) and to the U.S. president who backs genocide is unacceptable. Palestinian voices, especially Gazans’, are ignored.
• The Oslo Accords showed what not to do: confuse starting conditions with endpoints, sign agreements without intent to implement, prioritize the victim’s duties over the occupier’s, trust the international community as a safeguard, and negotiate while ignoring international law. The plan seems destined to fail.

Víctor de Currea-Lugo serves as a presidential advisor to Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, focusing on Middle Eastern affairs. 

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Israeli forces intercepted, boarded, and took control of several ships that are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Activists on board were abducted, prompting widespread international condemnation.

Israeli media reports confirm that the Israeli navy has seized around 40 vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla and is towing them to Ashdod port.

Israeli forces have detained 223 international activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, a Gaza-bound aid convoy. Despite more than 40 reported interceptions, one vessel, Mikeno, successfully broke through and reached Palestinian waters for the first time in a historic development, breaching the Israeli blockade.

What Happened?

Israeli naval forces intercepted a flotilla of boats carrying humanitarian aid on Wednesday, according to statements from the flotilla organizers.

They reported that the forces boarded the vessels about 70 nautical miles (130km) off the coast of Gaza, cutting communications and jamming signals as the flotilla neared the blockaded enclave.

Global Sumud Flotilla spokesperson Saif Abukeshek has provided a “mission update” in a post on Instagram, confirming that Israeli forces have intercepted 13 boats at sea.

Abukeshek said there were more than 201 people from 37 countries on those boats, including 30 participants from Spain, 22 from Italy, 21 from Turkey and 12 from Malaysia.

He said the group’s “mission is going on” despite the arrests, and vessels are continuing to sail “through the Mediterranean to break the siege on Gaza”.

The flotilla in all includes more than 40 civilian boats and about 500 activists from dozens of countries.

The raid came hours after Italy, Spain, and Turkey withdrew their military escorts and surveillance drones, leaving the humanitarian flotilla exposed.

The mission included South African politician Mandela Mandela, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, French MEP Rima Hassan, and former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.

Initial list of the activists and politicians abducted by the Israeli navy on board the Global Sumud Flotilla:

Greta Thunberg – climate activist
Mandla Mandela – grandson of Nelson Mandela
Luizianne Lins – Brazilian congresswoman
Mushtaq Ahmad Khan – ex-senator
Manuela Bedoya – Colombian activist
Luna Barreto – Colombian activist
Bruno Gilga – Brazilian union leader
Zizi Kirana – Malaysian singer
Farah Lee – influencer
Heliza & Hazwani Helmi – activists
Thiago Ávila – organizer
Enissa Amani – comedian & activist
Ada Colau – former Mayor of Barcelona
Gustaf Skarsgård – actor
Arlin Medrano + 5 Other Mexicans
Irish Senator Chris Andrews
Jasmine Ikeda — US Citizen
Nestor Prieto — Journalist
Rima Hassan — Member of the European Parliament

The Global Sumud Flotilla left Spain in late August with 45 boats carrying hundreds of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activists from more than 40 countries.

The mission included South African politician Mandela Mandela, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, French MEP Rima Hassan, and former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.

Organizers said the ships carried baby formula, food, and medical supplies. They described the effort as peaceful and aimed at breaking Israel’s siege on Gaza.

But Israel accused the flotilla of attempting to breach its naval blockade, claiming that it is affiliated with Hamas.

On September 30, Italy ended its naval escort of the flotilla, halting at the 150-nautical-mile line that Israel declared off-limits. Rome urged participants to abandon the mission.

Spain followed suit on October 1. Defense Minister Margarita Robles said the Spanish warship Furor would track the flotilla but not intervene unless “absolutely necessary.”

Earlier the same day, Turkey’s Akinci drone providing aerial cover left the area around 01:45 UTC.

The withdrawals left the flotilla without international protection when Israel launched its assault.

The flotilla had already faced multiple drone strikes and firebomb attacks in September. Activists said Israel was trying to intimidate them into turning back.

Despite the risks, flotilla leaders vowed to continue until aid reaches Gaza, where more than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.

“This mission is peaceful, non-violent, and urgent,” the group said. “The people of Gaza are starving and under siege. We cannot stop.”

Italy’s Largest Union Calls Nationwide Strike Over Israeli Attack on Gaza Flotilla

Italy’s Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) trade union announced a nationwide general strike for October 3. The move came after reports that Israel intercepted the Gaza-bound aid flotilla known as the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The union said it was fulfilling its earlier pledge to halt work if the convoy was attacked. It accused Israel of violating international law.

“Attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla Israel attacks international law. Now is the time to block everything,” USB declared on X, the US-based social media platform.

The group urged immediate mobilizations “in all squares” before the strike.

On Friday, Italy’s largest trade union, CGIL, also threatened a general strike if the humanitarian flotilla was blocked or attacked.

The coordinated action signals rising labor opposition in Italy to Israel’s military campaign and its blockade of Gaza.

The Global Sumud Flotilla set sail at the end of August. It carried humanitarian aid and medical supplies bound for Gaza.

More than 50 ships, the largest convoy in years, joined the mission. On board were 532 civilian supporters from over 45 countries.

The flotilla had been expected to reach Gaza’s coast by Thursday morning under normal conditions.

[https://twitter.com/Globalsumudf/status/1973452133568774359]

[https://twitter.com/fjadaoud/status/1973482317793599719]

[https://twitter.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1973481168994705610]

Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been living under Israeli blockade for nearly 18 years. Israel tightened the siege further on March 2, closing all border crossings and blocking food, medicine, and aid.

The restrictions pushed Gaza into famine as aid trucks piled up at the borders.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed more than 66,100 Palestinians, most of them women and children. Constant bombardment has made Gaza uninhabitable. Starvation and disease continue to spread.

“Carrying Nappies, Called Terrorists… What a World”: QNN Speaks to Irish Comedian Tadhg Hickey Before Gaza Flotilla Israeli Attack

Israeli naval forces stormed six ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla on Wednesday, kidnapping participants and redirecting the convoy to Ashdod port. The Flotilla left Spain in late August with 45 boats carrying hundreds of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activists from more than 40 countries.

Just hours before the Israeli navy attacked the Flotilla, we spoke with Irish comedian Tadhg Hickey aboard one of the vessels heading to Gaza. The flotilla, carrying humanitarian aid and medical supplies, aims to break the 18-year-long Israeli blockade. Hickey shared his thoughts on the mission, its risks, and his motivation for joining.

Calm Before the Storm

“How’s the situation?” we asked.

“Situation is good,” Hickey replied. “We’re literally just sitting here, expecting an interception at any hour. It could be in ten minutes, an hour, or later tonight. We just don’t know.”

Hickey, on a small boat with ten people, said the group has rehearsed safety drills and built strong camaraderie. “We’re calm and relaxed. There’s very little fear because we know what we’re doing. Spiritually, we’re calm because we’re upholding humanitarian law. Why would we feel nervous? It’s the oppressor who should feel anxiety or shame. But that’s not how the world works.”

“Historically, these interceptions happen at night”, Hickey said. “The worst operations always happen at night in Gaza. But we’re prepared for anything. There’s never been a mission of this scale; 40 to 50 boats. Israel may start during the day for visibility, but by nightfall, we’ll be 50 or 60 nautical miles from Gaza, near where the Handala was stopped. We’re hopeful, though. We believe in international law, and we’ve promised the people of Gaza we will not abandon them.”

“I was astonished at the lack of real diplomatic pressure on Israel,” Hickey said speaking about his motivation. “Two years into what can only be called genocide, humanitarians are heading into Palestinian waters. Governments talk, but they do almost nothing.”

He described Israel and Italy’s warnings as absurd. “It’s almost like a bad sitcom. We’re bringing nappies, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid, yet we’re being labeled as terrorists. I felt it was my duty to act. My family supports me, which means a lot. This mission is about making a tiny difference in a world that often ignores human suffering. And it’s only the beginning. The global solidarity movement for Palestine is relentless, beautiful, and formidable.”

Gaza’s Global Impact

Hickey outlined the possible outcomes: “We could reach Gaza and break the siege, that’s the optimum. Or, we could be intercepted and detained, labeled criminals or terrorists. Worst case, there could be an attack like in 2010, with casualties. Whatever happens, people must act. Ireland and Europe should put pressure on their governments. Western leaders often lack moral clarity, so the people must lead.”

“Gaza has changed everything,” he said. “Watching Palestinians endure unimaginable horror every day forces the world to question itself. It challenges our authenticity, solidarity, and resilience. People now see the complicity of Western leaders and the mainstream media. The world is awake. They can choose to act or ignore it, but they know the truth.”

Satire, Family, and Solidarity

Hickey also reflected on his role aboard the ship. “I like to think of myself as a clown,” he said. “I bring levity to dark situations. My practical skills are limited, but I help keep people sane.”

Ireland’s history of colonial struggle shaped Hickey’s solidarity. “It’s in our bones,” he said. “We understand oppression, starvation, and labeling resistance as terrorism. Ireland and Palestine share a colonial experience. Supporting Palestine brings the best out of Irish people, reconnecting us to our roots.”

“Contrary to the Hasbro-style propaganda claiming you need a degree in geopolitics to understand Israel-Palestine, from an Irish perspective it’s clear: it’s settler colonialism, brutality, racism, and ethno-supremacy. The Irish have lived through that same colonial playbook; in many ways, Ireland is Palestine.”

His commitment comes with personal sacrifice. “I have three kids, one older daughter, and two young daughters. My youngest was just 16 weeks old before I left. My partner made huge sacrifices too. Solidarity is a family affair. I want my children to grow up knowing they’re equal to others. We cannot turn away from suffering and pretend it doesn’t exist. This is about teaching values, not just speaking about them.”

“In the West, and especially in Ireland, there’s this mindset of just looking after your own kids. People hold the delusion that they’re good, while their world shrinks smaller and smaller. But suffering is everywhere, and I believe we are all equal. As I often say, Ireland is Palestine, so turning your back on Palestinian children while kissing your own kids goodnight, thinking you’re a good person, just doesn’t add up for me.”

A Message to Gaza

Israel often labels pro-Palestinian activists as Hamas. Hickey shrugged off the accusations. “I’m not a member of Hamas; my Catholic background prevents that. These claims have no credibility. We’re carrying humanitarian aid. Israel is desperate, labeling anyone it dislikes as Hamas. It’s evidence they’ve lost the argument, and I’m happy about that.”

Finally, Hickey shared a message for Palestinians in Gaza. “I’m lucky to be in contact with some people there. My message is simple: we won’t give up. Even if we don’t reach Gaza this time, flotillas are coming. This mission is only the beginning. Global opinion is shifting. We haven’t forgotten you. We love you, and we’re coming. You are not alone.”

As night fell, the boats drew closer to Gaza, bracing for confrontation. For Hickey, the choice was already made: “If governments fail to act, the people must act. That’s why we are here.”

2 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org